Category: Nominees – 1940s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wilson – 1944

This review is going to be pretty straight forward.  There were several things I liked and several things I didn’t.  For example, I liked that it was filmed in Technicolor, which was surprising for a movie released in 1944.  I liked the historical accuracy and the epic scale of the narrative.  However, I didn’t like the film’s slow pace, the acting skills of the actor playing Woodrow Wilson, Alexander Knox, the way Wilson’s character was written, and the music.

So, we’ll start off with what I did like.  I went into the film knowing nothing about it except that it dealt with Woodrow Wilson.  I saw a name or two in the opening credits that I recognized and enjoyed Charles Coburn as Doctor Henry Holmes, and Thomas Mitchell as Joseph Tumulty.  I recognized Vincent Price as William Gibbs McAdoo, and Geraldine Fitzgerald as Edith Bolling Galt.

The film was actually pretty accurate in things like events and places, though it is hard to determine the accuracy of how these historical figures were portrayed.  The film’s producer, Darryl Zanuck and the script writer, Lamar Trotti were obviously huge Woodrow Wilson fans.  The problem was that they portrayed him as a veritable saint.  He was too perfect.  The character hadn’t a single personality flaw, and as we all know, real human beings aren’t like that.

But I get it.  I know why he was portrayed as such an insanely perfect character.  This was, first and foremost, a propaganda film.  The United States was deep into World War II, and anything anyone could do to bolster support for the war was like gold to the Allies.  It was good for the public to be reminded of the remarkable president who was critical in bringing about the end of World War I, the man who’s first and most important agenda was world peace.  So as a result, the film vomited patriotism all over the viewers and it did so unapologetically.  If I hear another marching band playing Hail to the Chief or God Bless America, I’m going to stuff red, white, and blue cotton in my ears!

Anyway, I did like the epic nature of the plot.  The plot followed Wilson’s political career, beginning with his run for the office governor for the state of New Jersey, and ending with him stepping down after completing his second term as President of the United States.  But as an interesting note, the film decidedly neglected to mention that despite his health problems, the real Woodrow Wilson had hopes of being elected for a third term, even though he had no support for such a campaign.

In between, the movie actually showed a lot of the really wonderful and important things Wilson did while in office.  It didn’t go into details, but it did show some of the important bills and acts that he signed into existence, and if you could read them fast enough as the bills were displayed on the screen, you could get a general idea of what they were.  The movie covered all of the key points of his two terms in office.

The film also covered some important parts of his personal life like the death of his first wife and his relationship and subsequent marriage to his second.  It delved into the reasons behind some of his key decisions like his policy of keeping the United States out of World War I until the time was right.   Then it covered his reason for entering the conflict and his conviction concerning the rightness of it.  The use of actual WWI newsreel footage was used, and that was interesting, as well.

But the movie came off as being cold and sterile, something I mostly attribute to the writing.  It tried to be factual and inspirational with its anti-war, pro-peace message.  Knox was nominated for Best Actor, but I found his portrayal a little forced and a little cold.  Geraldine Fitzgerald was good, but I wouldn’t say great, and I have always liked Thomas Mitchell.  Just watch out for the incredibly slow pace and you’ll be fine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Since You Went Away – 1944

This was a great big WWII propaganda film.  My biggest beef with it was its forced wholesomeness.  It was so forced as to be incredibly fake.  Where else would you have to listen to a grown man saying things like “golly gee whiz!” or “I sure had a swell time!”  I’m sure that there were people that really talked like this, but when these lines are spoken as dialogue, it felt unnatural and forced.

Then there was the score.  It was written by Max Steiner, and he won the movie’s only Oscar for his efforts.  But again, I don’t understand why.  The category for which it won was Best Original Score Comedy, though I’m not sure I’d call the film a comedy.  The music, while lush and dramatic, was sometimes like a bull in a china shop.  There was very little subtlety, and I knew what I was in for after the first few minutes.  The movie opens as the camera pans across a room, focusing on a few objects that tell of a married couple with children.  When we see a wedding photo, the music throws out a few bars of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.  Then it pans over a pair of bronzed baby shoes and we are treated to a few measures of Brahms’ Lullaby.  I don’t want to call that lazy writing, but it wasn’t as clever as Steiner thought it was.  It was just a bit heavy handed.

The movie starred Claudette Colbert as Anne Hilton, a woman whose husband, Tim, has just gone off to fight in WWII.  Of course, being a propaganda film, it is revealed that Tim went off to fight with a heart full of pride and civic duty.  He and every other man was eager to enlist and excited at the prospect of fighting and dying for his country.  Anne has two daughters, Jane and Bridget, played by Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple.  Of course when Pop goes off to war, money gets tight so they have to let the maid go.  Fidelia, played by Hattie McDaniel loved the family so much that she nearly begs Anne to work for them for free.

The best man at Anne and Tim’s wedding was a naval officer named Tony Willett, played by Joseph Cotton.  He is a bit of a playboy who is secretly a perfect gentleman.  To earn some extra cash while Pop is away, the Hiltons take on a lodger, Colonel William Smollett, played by Monty Woolley.  He is a stern, crotchety man who treats all the women in the house like his personal servants, though he is really an old softy.  His estranged grandson, Bill, is played by Robert Walker.  In order to prove himself to his grandfather, he happily joins the army.  Then to round out the cast, Agnes Moorhead played Mrs. Hawkins, the mean old hoity-toity who is too aristocratic to help in the war effort, and who nobody likes anyway.  And don’t be fooled by the film’s poster.  Sure Lionel Barry was in the movie as a preacher… for all of 1 minute and twenty seconds of the three hour movie..

The movie is all about how civilians deal with the absence of their loved ones because of the war.  There are a lot of tears and even a few deaths to give the drama some depth.  And you can be sure that Max Steiner’s schmaltzy score did its best to emphasize it all.  The movie wasn’t bad.  It just wasn’t as good as it thought it was.  It went on about an hour too long.  So much could have been taken out.

The actors all did just fine, but it seemed that some were better than others.  For example, when it came to the three Hilton women, their acting skills seemed to be a direct reflection of their ages.  Shirley Temple was alright.  This is the only time I have seen her on the silver screen during her teenage years, and she seemed to be struggling to break away from her baby doll roles.  Jennifer Jones was better, but some of her dialogue felt too forced.  And Claudette Colbert was, as always, very good.  She had an ease in front of the camera that made her character feel natural.  Most other characters in the movie were passable, but it wasn’t their faults.  They were written as caricatures, not characters.

And it wouldn’t be a true 1940s Hollywood movie if it didn’t have those predictable romances.  Young Jane loves Uncle Tony.  Tony is constantly hitting on Anne.  Anne can only think of her husband.  Tony is shipped off to war and Jane falls for Bill.  Bill gets killed in action, and Jane, who has become a nurse’s aide, falls in love with a wounded soldier.  And in the end, Anne gets a telegram saying that her husband, Tim, after having been missing in action for some time, is safe and is returning home just in time for Christmas.  Happy ending!

But I have to make special mention of one wonderful scene that made me fall out of my seat laughing, and not because it was in any way funny.  The 1980 movie, Airplane! is one of the funniest movies ever made.  In it, there was a scene in which a young girl is saying goodbye to an army soldier as the airplane is taking off.  The melodramatic music starts playing and the soldier stands in the open door of the Boeing 707 as it starts speeding away for take-off.  She runs after the plane, knocking down pylons, and shouting her tearful goodbyes.  This hilarious scene was a direct spoof of Jane saying farewell to Bill as his train takes him away from her.  Airplane! spoofed the scene perfectly, from the dialogue, right down to the exact clothing Jane was wearing!  Priceless!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gaslight – 1944

I described this movie to a friend as being like a Hitchcock film without the Hitchcock.  It had the same creepy aura as Hitchcock’s only Best Picture winner, 1940’s Rebecca.  Gaslight starred Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman in two incredible performances, as well as Joseph Cotton, and an 18 year old Angela Lansbury.  Boyer, Bergman, and Lansbury were all nominated for Oscars for Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress, respectively.

It really was a great psychological suspense-thriller, a film noir.  Boyer plays Gregory Anton, a pianist who meets and marries a beautiful young singer named Paula Alquist, niece to the famous soprano, Alice Alquist, who had been murdered when Paula had been a child.  The newlywed couple move into the house in which the unsolved murder had taken place.

Paula is haunted by the ghosts of the past, and it soon becomes apparent that she is losing her mind.  She becomes forgetful and loses things.  She steals things and forgets her own thievery.  She alone hears mysterious noises coming from the attic where all her aunt’s old things have been stored.  And she believes that the gaslights go dim every evening when nobody else can see them.

Bergman was fantastic.  Her portrayal was genius.  The descending levels of her tenuous hold on reality are clear and easy to see, meaning that she doesn’t go crazy all at once – It happens in stages.  Not only that, but she was also easy on the eyes.  It was a plum role that any actress would have loved to play, but Bergman really did it justice.

Boyer also delivered a wonderful performance.  As the criminal who was going out of his way to push her into madness, Boyer kept me guessing until the very end.  There were times I wasn’t sure who to believe.  But when the truth was revealed in the end, that his entire relationship with Paula had been a scam for him to get back into the house where he had murdered her aunt, he got his just deserts in a satisfying way.  Sure he was simply carted off to jail, supposedly to await trial and execution, but the big climax scene was so well written.

Joseph Cotton played a Scotland Yard police investigator who recognizes Boyer from the events surrounding the original murder.  He begins asking questions and snooping around.  He uncovers Gregory’s true identity and his true motives just in time to save Paula’s sanity and put her persecutor in prison.

After Gregory is caught, but before he is taken away, Paula asks to see him alone.  Her little speech was so good that I’ll include it here.  “If I were not mad, I could have helped you.  Whatever you had done, I could have pitied and protected you.  But because I am mad, I hate you.  Because I am mad, I have betrayed you.  And because I’m mad, I’m rejoicing in my heart, without a shred of pity, without a shred of regret, watching you go with glory in my heart!”  The whole scene was very well played.

Also, I have to give a special thumbs-up to Angela Lansbury.  She had a rather small part, but it was very memorable.  She was the couple’s housemaid.  Now, maybe I was biased towards Lansbury because I already like her as an actress, but she really did well with the small role.  She was supposed to subtly despise Paula because she was secretly lusting after Gregory, and it all came across quite clearly, without being over-the-top.

In my research, I found that Patrick Hamilton’s original 1938 play had already been made into a movie in 1940, starring Anton Wallbrook and Diana Wynyard.  It was a British film, and I was surprised to read that when MGM bought the rights to do a remake, they allegedly ordered that all prints of the 1940 film be destroyed.  Bad show, MGM!  Fortunately, if this were true, the order was not successfully carried out.

Also, though director George Cukor is a hit or miss in my book, he did his job well with Gaslight, making great use of on-screen and off-screen action, and creative use of shadows to imbue the film with the right mood. I only know him from his other Academy Award nominated films like 1933’s Little Women, 1935’s David Copperfield, 1936’s Romeo and Juliette, which I hated, 1940’s Philadelphia Story, and of course 1964’s Best Picture winning My Fair Lady.  So, I suppose, in retrospect, he had more hits than misses.

The only thing I could have done without was the annoying character of Miss Bessie Thwaites, played by Dame May Whitty.  She was an old busy-body who was… I don’t know – comic relief?  She really had no purpose but to be a bothersome neighbor who seemed interested in death and unsolved murder cases.  She could have been written out of the script and the movie would have been better off.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Double Indemnity – 1944

Who knew a movie about insurance fraud could be so good?  There were a lot of reasons why this movie took the movie-going public by storm, why critics, even today, praise it for its hard-hitting film noir style, and why it will be forever remembered as one of the great classics of the cinema.  Double Indemnity was a story that was told on multiple levels, through its incredible cast of actors, its music, its cinematography, and its brilliant script.  The film’s director Billy Wilder knocked this one out of the park.

Many call Double Indemnity the first real example of the film noir genre.  It was a film style that has been copied over and over again in Hollywood.  Film noir is defined as having (paraphrased from Wikipedia) “a plot about how a crime is perpetrated, told from the point of view of the criminal, psychosexual themes that are explored, and visually dark and claustrophobic framing, with key lighting, casting strong shadows that both conceal and project characters’ feelings. Double Indemnity includes all of these traits.”

When casting, Wilder was turned down by most Hollywood actors, the script being very sordid and dark for its time.  But, ironically, three of the highest paid American actors were convinced to do the film.  Barbara Stanwyck, Fred McMurray, and Edward G. Robinson played the leads and they were all incredible in their own ways.

We’ll start with McMurray, playing the role of Walter Neff, insurance salesman and all around good guy.  The whole film takes place from his perspective.  Within the first few minutes of the film, he confesses to committing fraud and being a murderer.   He also explicitly states his motives, saying, “Yes, I killed him. I killed him for money – and a woman – and I didn’t get the money and I didn’t get the woman. Pretty, isn’t it?”  Then the rest of the movie is the flashback which tells us how it was all done.

McMurray was wonderful in the role.  He knew how to play both the nice guy and the cold murderer.  He knew how to put you at ease before making you feel uncomfortable, and he did it all with a hard edged cynicism that kept you guessing which way he was going.

Stanwyck was also a powerful screen presence.  She was the shady, sleazy woman who was a cool killer.  Her character, Phyllis Dietrichson, wanted her husband dead, so she seduces Neff and manipulates him into committing the murder.  Stanwyck was incredible in her cold, emotionless demeanor.  The subtle looks, the insanity boiling under the surface, the determined focus, and the uncaring selfishness all added up to make a very stylized, and yet convincing, character.

And finally Robinson, who really surprised me with the sharp and powerful portrayal of Barton Keys, Neff’s co-worker and long-time friend.  His job at the insurance agency was to find fraud and root it out.  I could tell, just by watching Robinson, that he knew his part in-side-and-out.  He was perfect in his delivery, his mannerisms, and his motivations.  Very well done, Mr. Robinson!

The cinematographer also made great use of lighting, casting shadows everywhere.  He made wonderful use of venetian blinds to cast shadows that looked like prison bars, giving the whole film a trapped and claustrophobic feel.

I also have to mention the genius of the film-score by Miklos Rozsa.  It had incredible tension and danger in all the right spots.  It was dramatic without being melodramatic.  Of course, Rozsa is also known for writing other great scores like 1945’s The Lost Weekend, and 1959’s Ben-Hur.  He truly was a master of his craft.

And finally I have to mention the director, Billy Wilder.  He had a vision of a particular style that was all his own.  He seemed to be involved in every aspect of the film, putting his own touch, his own imagination into its making.  He did a wonderful job spearheading the project and I was both surprised and disappointed to learn that though the film was nominated for 7 Oscars, it didn’t win a single one.  It was beat out for Best Picture by Going My Way, which in my opinion, was a far inferior film.  Wilder, you got robbed!

A little bit of interesting trivia I found while reading up on Double Indemnity was that Barbara Stanwyck originally didn’t want to take the part of Phyllis because she didn’t want to tarnish her Hollywood image by playing a murderess, saying, “I said, ‘I love the script and I love you, but I am a little afraid after all these years of playing heroines to go into an out-and-out killer.’ And Mr. Wilder – and rightly so – looked at me and he said, ‘Well, are you a mouse or an actress?’ And I said, ‘Well, I hope I’m an actress.’ He said, ‘Then do the part’. And I did and I’m very grateful to him.”  So are the rest of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Watch on the Rhine – 1943

Bette Davis is back in this nominee, this time playing the part of Sara, an American woman married to German revolutionary, Kurt Muller, played by Paul Lukas.  He is revolting against, you guessed it, the Nazis.  Sara believes in his work so much that she is willing to sacrifice him to further the cause of freedom, not just for herself, but for all people.  You can’t get much more patriotic than that.  Buy war bonds!

Of course, that barely begins to cover the details of the plot, but it more than suffices for the overall scope of the film.  It is just another example of an anti-Fascist propaganda movie.  There was no subtlety in it, no finesse.  It seems as if Hollywood, if not the world, was beyond subtlety at this point in history.  There was nothing left but a heavy hand, bearing the unequivocal message that the Nazis needed to be put down.

Sara has been living abroad with her husband and their three children, one of whom was so annoying that I wanted to reach into the screen and slap him.  I guess I should explain that.  The three children, Joshua, Babette, and Bodo, were played by child actors Donald Buka, Janis Wilson, and Eric Roberts, respectively.  The character of Bodo was walking the fine line of breaking the cardinal rule of filmmaking.  Cute for the sake of cute is never cute.  Never.

But this time I don’t blame the actor.  It was the way the character was written.  He was the youngest sibling, and the author was trying to make the point that the children had been robbed of their childhoods because of the dangerous nature of their father’s important work.  So, Bodo went out of his way to be as grown-up as possible by using unusually articulate, grown-up dialogue.  Sadly, it just came across as precocious and annoying.  I wanted him to shut-up just as much as his brother and sister did.

The family is fleeing Europe and make it to the States under assumed names, where they move in with Sara’s super-wealthy mother, Fanny Farrelly, wonderfully played by Lucile Watson.  Watson did a fantastic job as a well-meaning but self-centered busy body with more money than she knew what to do with.  The actress was a dead-ringer for Patricia Routledge as Hyacinth Bucket in the popular British TV series, Keeping Up Appearances.  Same look, same personality, same voice.  If I didn’t know any better, I would have sworn it was her.

The conflict for the movie took the form of an evil Nazi sympathizer who, from the very beginning of the film, is established as the bad guy.  He even got his own ominous music whenever he appeared on the screen, just in case the viewer was unsure of the character.  He is Teck de Brancovis, played by George Coulouris.  He is a weasel who is dishonest, shady, and unnecessarily arrogant.  The character was neither deep nor complex.  What he was, was predictable.  He and his wife Marthe, played by Geraldine Fitzgerald, with whom he shares a loveless marriage, are staying at Fanny’s house as guests, though the film never really explains why they are staying there.

Kurt learns that a fellow rebel who had once saved his life from the Gestapo, nearly at the cost of his own, has been captured by the Germans.  He has no choice but to return to Germany to attempt a rescue.  To make a long story short, Teck finds out who Kurt really is, and blackmails him, threatening to turn him over to the Nazis, as he is on their most-wanted list.  This would mean an automatic death sentence.

But the end of the film pleasantly surprised me.  Kurt actually did something that made sense, though it did not follow the stereotypical Hollywood hero formula.  He murders Teck.  Not only does he kill the man in cold blood, he is completely honest about it with his wife, his mother-in law, and Sara’s brother, David, played by Donald Woods.  And not only do they agree with his reasons, they help him get away with the crime.  Logically, it is what should have happened.  It was the only way to ensure his safety during his rescue mission.

But here’s the really interesting part – the Hayes Code tried to put their stamp on the film, saying that a man cannot get away with murder without being punished for it.  They wanted the director, Herman Shumlin to include a scene, making it known Kurt eventually got killed by the Nazis, and therefore paid for his crime.  But he actually defied the Hayes Code, and, with the support of Warner Brothers Studios, allowed Kurt to get away with it, saying that Teck was an evil character who deserved what he got.  Of course, the actual killing took place off-screen.

Another interesting point about this film is that the role of Sara was really a small, supporting role.  Kurt was the main character.  Bette Davis was a huge name in Hollywood and took the small part because she really believed in the film’s message and pro-war point of view.  She even tried to convince the studio to give her second billing, but that request was denied.  The studio said that if they gave her top billing, more people would come see the film, which was the whole point of her participation in the first place.

 

The Song of Bernadette – 1943

I’ll start this review off by saying that I am a religious man, though I am not Catholic.  That being said, I found this film to be incredibly good.  It was religiously uplifting without being preachy.  It was overtly Catholic but seemed to show both positive and negative qualities that can be associated with the Catholic Church.  It was incredibly well acted on all fronts and masterfully scripted.  The director also did a fantastic job, making good use of unique camera angles and lighting.

The movie starred Jennifer Jones in her big-screen debut.  In fact, she did such a good job she won the Academy Award for Best Actress that year.  She played the role of Bernadette Soubirous, a 14 year old girl, living in southern France with her parents, and three siblings.  She isn’t terribly bright, but she is honest and sincere.

One day she is gathering firewood with her sisters near the local garbage dump and she sees a vision of a lady dressed in white.  The lady asks her to come to her for fifteen days.  She also says some pretty disturbing stuff like, “You will never be happy in this life, but you will in the next.”

The lady, who only Bernadette can see or hear, is obviously the Virgin Mary.  The movie that follows is the story of how Bernadette becomes Saint Bernadette.  It goes through the difficulties that the young girl faces as she struggles to obey the lady, who, incidentally, Bernadette never directly identifies as the Virgin – a significant point, since the city officials who spend the entire film interrogating her and attempting to discredit her, try to get her to name the lady, which would give them grounds to legally persecute her.

The various characters all start off thinking Bernadette is hallucinating or making up stories.  But through her honesty and her unwavering conviction in the truth of what she is seeing, she wins them all over.  At first, only her family follows her, still not believing her story.  Then more and more of the poor townsfolk start to follow her and believe her.

Then everything changes when the miracles start happening.  A spring of clean water that has healing properties appears.  Uneducated Bernadette starts using phrases and concepts that she knows nothing about.  Eventually, emperors and bishops hear of her amazing tale and get involved.  And through it all, Jennifer Jones maintained her phenomenal performance.  The performance was genuine and uplifting and I think she really deserved the Oscar she won.

In addition to Jones, great performances were given by Vincent Price as Prosecutor Vital Dutour, one of her main persecutors, Charles Bickford as Father Peyramale, the priest who grudgingly became a believer, Anne Revere as Bernadette’s mother Louise, and Roman Bonhen as her father Francois.

Also, Gladys Cooper turned in an incredible performance as Sister Marie Therese Vauzous, a nun who hated Bernadette because the Virgin appeared to her.  She believed that the only true path to righteousness was through pain and suffering.  She spent her life taking as much of both as she could in her efforts toward godliness.  Her catharsis and revelation were powerful to watch.

That revelation came in the form of a big reveal for the audience as well.  Sister Marie Therese said, “Why were you the one who was chosen?  What do you know of suffering?”  Bernadette could give no answer but to reveal that she had been suffering all her life in a most unbelievable fashion.  She apparently had bone marrow cancer, and for those of us who don’t know, bone marrow cancer is incredibly painful.

As I said, the film was incredibly inspirational and religiously uplifting.  The actors all did a fine job, but of course, none of it would have been quite the same without the wonderful score by Alfred Newman, who also won an Oscar for his work on the film.  It was very well written, enhancing the images on the screen without being melodramatic or overpowering.  The sweetness of the film’s score was delicate and yet powerful at the same time.

And finally, as with all films about historical figures, I have to do a little reading to find out how accurate the film was to real life.  Apparently, this one was fairly accurate.  A few characters had some altered motives, some points of view were intensified to give it more drama, but for the most part the story was historically true.  Some biographies are good enough to tell without having to change much.

True, it was a fictionalized account of miraculous events, and I must leave it to everybody to believe or not believe in the events that allegedly took place, but I’m not so naïve as to believe that I know everything there is to know about the world.  Who can say whether the real Bernadette was visited by the Virgin Mary or not?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Ox-Bow Incident – 1943

This was actually a very short nominee, coming in at an hour and 15 minutes.  It starred Henry Fonda, Dana Andrews, Harry Morgan, and Frank Conroy.  This film had a lot about it that was very well done.  The casting was perfect, the plot had some substance, the subject matter was engaging, and both the actors and the director, William Wellman, did a fine job.

But there were also a few things about the film that I felt were lacking.  The biggest thing for me was that, in the beginning, the characters were never introduced or developed, and the audience was just expected to pick things up as they happened.  When the lead characters would do things, or not do things, as the case may be, I had no frame of reference to understand why, because I had no idea who they were.  Another problem was that there was the sub-plot of a romance story, of sorts, that had nothing to do with the main plot, the “incident.”  The film would have lost nothing if it had been left out.

Fonda plays the cowboy with a chip on his shoulder and a bottle of whiskey in his hand, Gil Carter.  His friend, Art Croft is played by Harry Morgan, known to most people as Bill Gannon from the TV show Dragnet, and Sherman Potter from the TV show M*A*S*H.  However, I found it interesting that he apparently didn’t have a big enough name to warrant giving him credit on most movie posters at the time, except for one that I found that got his name wrong, calling him Henry Morgan.  Either way, he had a fairly prominent role.

Anyway, the two cowboys ride into town and go to the local saloon.  The bartender serves up the alcohol and the prerequisite angry townsperson comes in and plays the jerk.  A pointless fight ensues and Gil gets laid out with a bottle smashed over his head.  Then the real plot starts and the film gets interesting.

Apparently, there have been some cattle thieves plaguing the town, but this time, they ended up murdering the cattle rancher.  The men of the town are angry enough to form a lynching posse.  They are idiots who want to punish someone, whether it is the guilty party or not.  The sheriff cannot be found, so the deputy oversteps his bounds by deputizing the entire posse, giving the angry mob the appearance of legality.  They go out looking for men to hang.

The leader of the mob is a former Confederate soldier, Major Tetley, played by Frank Conroy.  They find three men camping who seem to have the murder victim’s cattle with them.  To make a short story even shorter, they wake the three men up, accuse them, ignore their pleas of innocence, hang all three of them, and call it a day.

Of course, it is a bit more complex than that.  The leader of the three men is Donald Martin, played by Dana Andrews.  He did a fantastic job, flip-flopping back and forth between anger, confusion, fear, and sad resignation.  Watching his performance, it was hard not to imagine how I would feel if I were in his character’s shoes.  He was innocent, of course, but the crazed mob, especially Major Tetley, wouldn’t have believed him if he said the sky was blue.

The moral dilemma really became the driving force behind the plot as Donald asks to write a letter to his wife, explaining what was happening.  When his letter was read, it became clear that he was innocent.  But just before the hanging, Major Tetley gave anyone who didn’t agree with the farcical verdict the option to officially protest by stepping over a line.  Gil and his friend Art, amongst others, did so, and escaped the guilt of innocent blood.

There was a relevant little sub-plot, involving the Major’s son Gerald, played by William Eythe, in which it becomes clear that he has spent his life being bullied by his father.  During the lynching, he is forced to “be a man” and “do his part” by whipping one of the horses which will run out from under one of the hanging victims.  It is like being forced to pull the switch of an electric chair.  He can’t do it, and Major Tetley knocks him down before whipping the horse himself.

Of course, the sheriff shows up minutes after the deed is done, saying that the murder victim was actually still alive and the real cattle thieves have been apprehended.  It made for a profound ending.  But two more things happened to make it even more jarring.  Major Tetley goes home and commits suicide, and Gil reads Martin’s letter to the men of the guilty mob.  It speaks of how good men are capable of doing bad things, and how people who take the law into their own hands break all the laws of humanity.  Take that Germans.  Remember – we’re still in WWII.

And notice how I didn’t mention Gil’s ridiculous and vapid love story?  Nothing was lost, was it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The More the Merrier – 1943

I have to be honest.  This was a fairly weak example of a screwball comedy.  It had its amusing moments, but they seemed to be few and far between.  True, the movie had its virtues, but its failings seemed to outnumber them.  I’ll be upfront about it.  This shouldn’t have been nominated for Best Picture.

It is a fine movie if you just want to turn your brain off.  It was fluff and nothing more.  It had silly characters doing silly things that were mildly amusing, but the comedy simply wasn’t that funny.  Then, at times, they served up a competent romance story, but the confusing ending tossed all that out the window.  They had a couple of OK actors, but the lead female, Jean Arthur, just wasn’t a very good actress.  Sure, she looked pretty, but there were times when she seemed to be struggling with her lines.

The story was a simple one.  Due to a housing shortage in Washington D. C. on account of WWII, Constance (Connie) Milligan, played by Arthur, decides to rent out half of her apartment in an effort to “do her part” for the war effort.  See that?  See how they couldn’t help throwing us that patriotic, pro-war angle?

The movie’s most talented actor, Charles Coburn, played Benjamin Dingle, an amoral and amusingly dishonest old fuddy-duddy.  He lies and forces his way into the apartment, showing that the character makes his way through life by being cleverer then the average joe-on-the-street.  Coburn had some of the funniest lines in the film, which isn’t saying much.  At least he was charming in a mischievous sort of way.  He played his part well.  Without him, the film would have really fallen on its face.

After manipulating and intimidating the weak-willed Connie into letting him have the rental, he meets Joel McRae, playing the part of Joe Carter, an army officer in D. C. waiting to go off on assignment in Africa.  Dingle sublets half of his half of the apartment to Joe without telling Connie, the apartment’s owner.  And with the three of them there, together, hijinks ensues.

McCrae seemed like he didn’t really want to be in the movie.  There were times when he seemed like he wasn’t paying attention to what he was doing.  I was expecting more from him.  I wanted to see him react more to the action taking place around him.  But he just looked bored and uninvolved.  Maybe he was trying to imitate Gary Cooper’s strong, silent guy persona.  I don’t know.  But he just looked sleepy.

Also, I can’t help but look at the film with my modern eyes.  Would a woman in the 1940s really run to her room and sob into her pillow because she caught a man reading her diary?  Would a woman breaking an engagement really be cause enough for her to move away to another state because of the scandal?  Maybe a rich socialite woman, but not a woman as common and unimportant as the character of Connie.

And while I am bagging the film, I have to mention a couple of logistical issues I noticed.  First, when McCrae is in the shower, he neglects to close the shower curtain because we needed to see the action going on outside the bathroom door.  But not only would he have gotten water all over the bathroom, especially the way he was splashing water all over himself, but the people outside the bathroom would have gotten to see the Full Monty.  It just felt like the director, George Stevens, was being lazy rather than finding a different way to show what needed to be shown.

Second, near the end, when Dingle has an entire wall ripped out of the apartment so that the questionably happy couple would have not two bedrooms, but one, I had to protest!  Construction of that nature takes more than mere ours, and it creates a huge mess.  Not only that, but Dingle didn’t own the building, and any contractor who did the work would get sued in a heartbeat.  Sure it’s a silly comedy, but can we at least give a nod to reality in a Best Picture nominee?

Still, the film did have one relatively strong point.  As I have already mentioned, the romance scenes were well done.  Here is where McCrae looked like he was in the moment.  He was animated enough to make him seem credible as a romantic lead.  And really, he was a very attractive man.  Even Arthur did alright when her dialogue didn’t have to be delivered too quickly.  The scenes were cleverly written with a surprising amount of subtlety.

But the ending baffled me.  Connie and Sergeant Carter get married, though neither of them were happy about it.  But there was no reason they shouldn’t have been.  It was already established that they loved each other, but Connie couldn’t stop crying, and Joe was doing nothing to comfort her.  It made no sense.  Oh well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Madam Curie – 1943

This came dangerously close to being a silly movie.  I was expecting, or at least hoping for, a biopic about Marie Curie, a female scientist in a male dominated world who surpassed all her peers and discovered the elusive element radium.  Instead, what I got was a sappy romantic drama with poorly written dialogue.  I mean, really.  Some of the dialogue was distractingly bad.  Unfortunately, the Hollywood machine of the 1940s turned what could have been an interesting story into a typical, predictable, cookie-cutter film.

The movie spent most of its 2 hour length focusing on the fictionalized romance between the Polish born Marie Sklodowska, played by Greer Garson, and the Frenchman, Pierre Curie, played by, of course, Walter Pidgeon.  She was the brilliant and stunningly beautiful student who didn’t have enough money to buy food.  He was the dashing and handsome professor who thought that all women were vapid and distracting.  And they weren’t the only characters who were portrayed as walking stereotypes.

Pierre’s lab assistant, David, played by Robert Walker, was ridiculous.  Pierre, regretting that he had made the mistake of allowing a woman to work in his lab, says that women are either empty-headed nuisances or distractions.  David replies that female scientists are ugly as well.  But when the beautiful Marie arrives, David turns into a cartoon character, falling all over himself to make her notice him.  And apparently, when a man whistles, it means he is stupidly falling in love with a woman.

The ridiculous proposal scene really demonstrated the awful dialogue.  Pierre was positively silly as he asked Marie to marry him, saying things like, “You have a wonderful scientific mind.  I likewise have a scientific mind.  Our subsequent marriage would be one based on our mutual search for knowledge.  Love will be a secondary concern.  Would you consent to this arrangement?”  Unfortunately, I did not write down the actual dialogue, but I don’t think I’m that far off.  I’m sorry, but in reality, that kind of a man would be called a moron.

And that is just one example of how bad the dialogue was.  Here’s another approximation.  Marie and Pierre have drawn a black curtain around their experiment because it apparently requires lower light levels.  The camera stays focused on the evaporating bowl but we hear Pierre speaking to his wife from behind the curtain.  “Now all we have to do is wait, Marie.  Here, why don’t you sit down in this chair?  I’ll place this shawl around your shoulders to help keep you warm.”  After that, I expected to hear him say something like, “Now, I’m going to put my own chair next to yours so that we’ll be sitting close to each other.”

If only the film had cut out the forced sentimentality of the romance and stayed closer to the true story of Madame Curie, it would have been a much more interesting film.  The movie completely omitted several crucial facts about the extraordinary woman.  For example, Madame Curie actually discovered 2 elements, not just radium in 1898.  She also discovered polonium in the same year.  Also, her Nobel Prize in Physics, won in 1903, was shared with her husband.  But she earned her own Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911, 5 years after Pierre’s death in 1906.

Now, I don’t want it to sound like I hated the film.  On the contrary, it was entertaining enough, if, as I said before, a bit predictable.  Garson had some really strong moments in the film.  The film ended much like several of her other films like Blossoms in the Dust, where the last few minutes of the film are a heartfelt and inspirational speech about the importance of her character’s work and the importance of striving to become more than what you are.

I also liked Henry Travers, who most people know as Clarence Odbody, the Guardian Angel from the 1946 Classic, It’s A Wonderful Life, and Dame May Whitty who played Pierre’s parents.  They were both portrayed as a kindly couple, even if Eugene could get a bit cantankerous at times.  Marie and Pierre’s two daughters were almost throw-away characters.  The film barely mentioned them in passing until the last half hour of the film when they could be brought in for a little contrast to Marie’s depression over believing her experiment had failed.

All in all, the movie was mildly entertaining, but I believe it had the potential to be much more.  They just focused too much on the romance and not enough on the actual career of Marie Curie.  If you go into it expecting a biography, you will be disappointed.  It was really a romance, plain and simple.  But that being said, I have to agree that Garson and Pidgeon had a really good on-screen… chemistry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Which We Serve – 1943

This was another war-time propaganda film, as if the title hadn’t already given that away.  But this one was a bit different from the majority of the other examples I’ve seen for a few reasons.  First, it was definitely a British-made film, made from a decidedly British point of view.  It was about the stories of ordinary men and women from different classes, all of whom served in the Second World War with bravery and distinction in the Battle of Crete in 1941.

It was written by celebrated playwright, Noel Coward.  More than that, he directed and starred in the film as well.  This surprised me, because I have only ever known him as a playwright and not as an actor.  As is typical in Coward’s plays, much of the dialogue is fast, smart, and witty.  I suppose that is just his style.  In fact, that would be one of my criticisms of the movie.  Sometimes, the actors delivered their lines so fast that I had difficulty understanding what was being said.

The second thing that set this movie apart from most propaganda films of the era is the fact that it wasn’t your stereotypical Hollywood war-time action film with your attractive cast and extras.  Not to put too much emphasis on the looks of the actors, but it caught my attention that the actors, from the first to the last, had very average faces.  I found that little point to be significant because the lack of glamor made the stories being told more real to me than watching handsome Gary Cooper and gorgeous Ingrid Bergman fighting Germans in Spain, as in the fellow 1943 nominee, For Whom the Bell Tolls, or even watching the stunning Greer Garson and the attractive Walter Pidgeon in the 1942 Best Picture Winner, Mrs. Miniver.  After all, an actor or actress’s beauty is what sets them apart from the rest of us.  Take that away and they are just like us.

The film is about the British destroyer, the HMS Torrin, and the crew that manned her.  Coward, himself, played Captain Kinross, and I thought he did a fine job, though, again, he needed to slow down some of his dialogue.  In the first ten minutes or so of the movie, the Torrin is sunk by a barrage of German bombers.  Kinross and the men under his command are forced to abandon ship.  He and several of his crew, swim to a raft, though they are by no means out of danger.  The main body of the film is now told in flashbacks as the various men recall their loved ones.  This is where we are introduced to Mrs. Alix Kinross, played by Celia Johnson, and her children.  Their story represented the upper class.

Also on the raft is Chief Petty Officer Walter Hardy, played by Bernard Miles.  His memories focus on his wife Kath, played by Joyce Carey, and his aging mother-in-law, played by Dora Gregory.  Their story is an important one because the two women are killed in a raid.  It was a difficult scene to watch because the film did a good job of showing just how in love with each other Walter and Kath were, making the tragedy very poignant.  Their story represented the middle-class.

And lastly, representing the lower class, was Ordinary Seaman Shorty Blake, played by John Mills.  His back story recounts his meeting and subsequent marriage to Freda, played by Kay Walsh.  While at her husband is at sea, Freda gives birth to a son.  Mills actually stood out to me as one of the better actors in the film, though when it comes to it, the entire cast did a good job.

As the surviving men cling to the raft, they are slowly picked off, one by one, by gunfire from German planes, until they are rescued by another British destroyer.  The final scene in which Captain Kinross address the surviving members of his crew is both emotional and restrained in that stoic, British way.  The men are split up to replace killed crew members from other ships.  At this point in the film, I would have liked to have seen some epilogues, telling the eventual fates of the three men, but none were given, except for one.  It is revealed that Kinross goes on to command a battleship, though it never told whether or not he survived the war.  I’d like to think he and the other two men did.

Much of the film’s good acting was delivered by the women.  The scene where Kath Hardy and her mother are killed was particularly well done.  There is an inherent tension that builds in a scene where you can hear bombs dropping in the background.  The sounds gets closer and closer until the house starts to shake.   By then, the sound is pretty loud, and the characters have to acknowledge that they could be killed at any moment.  Then, when the moment came, it happened quickly and I was caught off guard, despite the build-up.

And, of course, the message of the film was shouted loud and clear.  If anyone dear to us has been killed in the war, we should only be inspired to fight harder and with more passion.  And at that time, who hadn’t lost someone dear.