Category: Nominees – 1940s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kings Row – 1942

Ah, Kings Row, the town with its own special kind of crazy.  Kings row was a movie that, on the surface, it is the story of a group of childhood friends that grow into adults.  But the seeds of problems that are planted in the children come into flower as they mature.  Specifically, the film focuses on five individuals – two boys and three girls.

The main protagonist is wunderkind Parris Mitchell, played by Handsome Robert Cummings.  Super smart, super talented, and super nice to boot, Parris falls in love with deeply troubled Cassandra Tower, played by Betty Field.  Parris’s best friend is Drake McHugh, a wealthy playboy, played by Ronald Reagan.  At first, Drake’s big love interest is Louise Gordon, played by Nancy Coleman.  But when her parents disallow the relationship, Drake turns to and falls in love with low-born, but beautiful, Randy Monaghan, played by Ann Sheridan.

What was actually wonderful about the characters was that they were each very well written.  They were all genuinely nice people, especially the boys.  They were honest, fine, upstanding individuals.  They were good to each other and respectful to their superiors.  They were easy to like, which in turn, made the movie easy to like.  But life is not always fair.  Sometimes, bad things happen.  Sometimes, bad people do bad things, and sometimes plain bad luck strikes.

But here is why I say that Kings row is a town with its own kind of crazy.  There was some evil and sadistic things happening around this small group of incredibly nice people.  These are things that, honestly, the movie did not, and could not, do a sufficient job of fully explaining.  The pesky Hayes Code took a very controversial novel that had some very seedy aspects, and watered it down so much that the underlying dirt was made virtually invisible.  If it hadn’t, I don’t know if audiences of the 1940s would have loved is so much, though by today’s standards, it would have been a fantastic drama.

First of all, Cassandra’s father, Dr. Tower, played by a favorite of mine, Claude Rains, seemed to be a benevolent father figure to the naïve Parris.  But when Cassandra was very young, he mysteriously took her out of school and kept her locked behind closed doors, allowing her virtually no contact with the outside world.  The film never really explained why.  It implied that she showed signs of dementia, like her deceased mother.  But when Parris started seeing her behind her father’s back, she turned out to be crazy and frantic, the kind of crazy that was a step away from a straight-jacket.  She was desperately afraid of her father.  My research told me that in the original novel, her father had been habitually molesting her since her mother’s death.  Ah, now it makes so much more sense!!

Then there was something that I got a sense of while watching the film, but I dismissed it as an innocent 1940s sensibility.  There were a few scenes between Parris and Drake that looked a little more intimate than best friends.  But come to find out, the novel had a definite homosexual theme that I believe could only have existed in that particular relationship.  But the Hayes Code said “Not on our watch!”

The novel also portrayed Drake’s character as more sexually promiscuous than the film.  The movie implied it, but was never explicit about it.  And finally, there was the euthanization of Parris’s grandmother, beautifully played by Maria Ouspenskaya, carried out by Parris, himself.  The Production Code Authority, which administered the Hays Code, once again said “For the good of the movie-going public, we say no!”

But the one that the movie got away with was the sadistic butcher of a doctor who performed unnecessary operations to fulfill his own sense of justice or possibly even to satisfy a sick passion.  He was Louise’s father, Dr. Gordon, a man who didn’t approve of Drake as his daughter’s love interest.  So when Drake was mildly injured, he amputated both of his legs, making him an invalid for the rest of his life.

Reagan actually turned in a spectacular performance, one that turned him into an overnight success.  He was all set up for super-stardom as a Hollywood actor, but it just so happened that he was drafted into the U.S. Army to fight in WWII.  Most critics say that Kings Row was the best performance of his career, not counting his Presidency.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

49^th Parallel – 1942

OK, this was obviously a shameless war-time propaganda film.  But oh, it was so much more than that.  It was a mere breath away from a plain and simple public service announcement.  It didn’t even try to hide the fact from the viewing audience.  The movie had a message that was shouted out loud and clear.  Nazis are every bad thing you can imagine, but worst of all, they were utter morons.

The film was about seven crew members of a German U-boat who become stranded in Canada, specifically in the Hudson Bay.  It becomes their goal to make their way south to the 49^th parallel, otherwise known as the U.S. border, because the United States was still neutral territory.  Once there, they would be turned over to the German Embassy and presumably freed.

At least, that was the plan.  Over the course of the film, 6 of the 7 Nazi sailors are either captured, killed, or even executed until only one remains.  That one is the commanding officer, the fanatical Hitler supporter and the dumbest one of them all.  And at the end, the climax of the movie, the question is brought up.  Will the Americans allow him to go free, or will they take a stand against the Nazis?  What do you think happened?

Fortunately, the story was cleverly written.  If it hadn’t been, the movie would have just been a thin and vapid plot woven around one admonition after another, all with a single purpose: to get the United States involved in the war.  Granted, history tells us that it was the right thing to do, but there was a complete lack of subtlety about it.

The lead actor was Eric Portman as Lieutenant Ernst Hirth, the Nazi officer who almost made it across the border.  He was the biggest Nazi fanatic of them all.   But he was portrayed as pretty dumb.  For example, the group of men made their way into a town populated by German Canadians.  The people lived lives of peace and harmony, both with the land in which they lived, and with each other.  Because their community was so remote, they felt very distant from the war and led their lives without fear or trouble.

Lieutenant Hirth was so crazy that he stood up in a town hall meeting and tried to convince the Germans Canadians that they were living under the oppressive rule of the Canadian / British government.  In a fiery Hitler-like speech, he shouted things like, “Join with us, brothers, and we will give you freedom!”  And I thought to myself that it was like the fisherman telling the fish, “If you let me catch you, I’ll give you all the water in the lake!”  How stupid was this guy?  But I guess that was the point.  He was a fanatic for whom logic rarely entered the picture.  But not only did his speech fail to convince the people to join the Nazi cause, he also let everyone know that he and his men were the Nazis that had been murdering people.  Dummkopf!

The film also sported a couple of other really big Hollywood names who agreed to be in the film for half their normal pay because they believed in the importance of the film’s message:  Sir Lawrence Olivier, who was still riding high from his acclaimed performance in Wuthering Heights, and Leslie Howard, who was in Gone with the Wind only two years earlier.

Now, before I move on, I have to mention something that I noticed, and which critics of the film apparently noticed as well.  Olivier was horrible.  His French Canadian fur-trapper accent was over the top, as was his performance in general.  I couldn’t get over how he was making his dialogue sound like a farcical parody of a French accent.

The 6 Nazi soldiers who seemed like they were being picked off, one by one over the course of the film were all stereotypically cruel, petty, heartless, and murderous.  They killed without compassion or remorse in the name of the Fuhrer and his Reich.  All of them, that is, except one.  He was Vogel, wonderfully played by actor Niall MacGinnis.  He is the one who went native.  While in the peaceful Hutterite community outside of Winnipeg, he fell in love with their easy, peaceful way of life.  For this, Lieutenant Hirth executed him for trying to leave the Nazi party and betraying the Fuhrer.  His part was well written, though tragic.

And finally, at the last, in the scene in which Hirth has made it across the border onto U.S. soil, sure that he has won, the American border patrol is able to send him back to Canada on a technicality, proving once again that the smug Nazis are dumb and can be easily out-smarted.  Please join the war effort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suspicion – 1941

Alfred Hitchcock does it again.  This time he does it with Carey Grant and Joan Fontaine playing his two leads, Johnnie Aysgarth and Lina McLaidlaw.  He is a rich, handsome, young, playboy who has never worked a day in his life.  She is a well brought up, but sexually repressed young lady.  When the two of them meet, sparks fly and the quick marriage that follows starts off wonderfully.  But then, the cause of many failed marriages, money, rears its ugly head, specifically, the fact that he has none.

Johnnie only knows how to live on borrowed money, building up sizeable debts and sometimes resorting to criminal behavior like embezzling from his cousin.  He also has a reputation as a compulsive gambler, a fact that Lina only learns after their vows are taken.  He knows how to spend money, but not how to earn it.  They start having financial problems almost immediately.  But this was the 1940s, and a woman would never leave her husband for such a paltry thing.  Never-mind the fact that he betrays her, lies to her, treats her horribly, and has no respect for her or her parents.  All this and yet she loves him anyway.

It doesn’t take long for the title of the movie to become apparent.  She becomes suspicious of everything he does.  She doesn’t trust him as far as she can throw him.  Johnnie’s closest friend is a rich, tender-hearted, bumbling, and endearingly naïve man named Beaky, wonderfully played by Nigel Bruce.  Beaky spills many of Johnnie’s secrets and lies to Lina, telling her not to be concerned with his dishonesty.  That’s just Johnnie.  Lina learns to care for Beaky as a dear friend.

As the film was directed by Alfred Hitchcock, I was expecting something of a suspense thriller.  The plot certainly had plenty of good build-up for it.  But I didn’t really get what I wanted until the last half hour of the movie.  For that reason alone, I would say that Suspicion was not one of Hitchcock’s best films.  But that is like saying that a nine is not as good as a ten.  It was still good.  All that build-up was done well and made the end more suspenseful.

And here we arrive at the moment when Suspicion dropped the ball.  The end.  But it wasn’t Hitchcock’s fault.  I think that the article I read on Wikipedia said it best and so I’ll quote it here.  “Suspicion illustrates how a novel’s plot can be so altered in the transition to film as to reverse the author’s original intention.  As William L. De Andrea states in his Encyclopedia Mysteriosa (1994) Suspicion ‘was supposed to be the study of a murder as seen through the eyes of the eventual victim.  However, because Cary Grant was to be the killer and Joan Fontaine the person killed, the studio – RKO – decreed a different ending, which Hitchcock supplied and then spent the rest of his life complaining about.’  Hitchcock was quoted as saying that he was forced to alter the ending of the movie.  He wanted an ending similar to the climax of the novel, but the studio, more concerned with Cary Grant’s ‘heroic’ image, insisted that it be changed.”

Yup, he was supposed to kill her for the money he would get through her insurance policy.  But instead, it turned out that he was going to kill himself rather than face a prison sentence for his embezzlement.  In doing so, he would also free Lina from a marriage to a loser husband.  But no, she loves him so much that she convinces him to take his just punishment, go to jail, and she will work through the hard times with him.  How very noble of them both.

You see, Hollywood once again makes the point, at least in this film, that love really does conquer all.  But the original novel’s ending was better.  He murders her, she allows it because without his love, she would rather be dead, and he gets away scot-free.   In fact, in the original book, Johnnie is a much darker character.  He is actively involved in the death of Lina’s father, and he has several affairs outside of his marriage, one of which is with the maid, Ethel, in which the poor girl gives birth to Johnnie’s illegitimate son.

But for all its faults, Suspicion was ultimately a good film.  I got sucked in by Hitchcock’s masterful skills as a director.  Was Johnnie really guilty or were Lina’s suspicions all in her head?  Was he going to murder her, or was he planning something else.  Not knowing what was in the original novel or how Hitchcock was forced to change things, I was kept guessing right up to the very end.  I liked the movie, despite its relatively weak ending.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sergeant York – 1941

Shameless!!  This was a shameless example of a war-time propaganda film!  It was pure and unadulterated, pro-war, patriotic, join the army propaganda!  And darn it if it wasn’t a pretty good movie as well!

Gary Cooper played the role of the famous WWI hero Sergeant Alvin York.  But the first hour and 45 minutes of the 2 hour and 15 minute film took place before our hero even joined the military.  But believe it or not, this was the secret to the film’s success.  I was expecting a war film, but it really wasn’t.  It was a portrait of a war hero.  The fact that the movie spent so much time developing his character, making the viewers familiar with his personality and giving them insights into the reasons for his actions during the war, made those actions so much more meaningful and amazing.

The film was based on the diaries that the real York kept.  I did the research and found that for the most part, the film remained very historically accurate.  There were a few details that were changed, like the size of his family and that kind of thing, but nothing very crucial.  I actually wondered if all the hubbub about his fame and popularity after the war were over-inflated for the cameras.  But I found that they were remarkably understated.  Not only did everything in the film actually happen, but so much more, that it would take another two hours in the form of a documentary to cover all the honors and praise that was heaped upon the real York.

The story is actually a very basic one which I should be able to sum up in short order.  A young and wild Tennessee hillbilly named Alvin York is a drunk and a troublemaker.  He falls in love with a girl and tries to clean up his act to gain her affections.  She accepts him even though he has nothing in the way of property or money to offer her.  He fails in his plan to acquire his own farm and is nearly killed by a lightning bolt during a storm.  He turns to religion and becomes a devout believer in the teachings of the Bible.

He is drafted into the army to fight in France during WWI.  He wrestles with his conscience on the subject of killing, but when the big battle starts, he decides that more lives can be saved by killing German soldiers. He kills as few as possible and finds a way to take 132 of them prisoner.  He becomes the most highly decorated American war hero ever.  Noble to the end, York turns down all of the offers of money and fame.  But when he returns home, he accepts a hefty gift from the state of Tennessee.  Not only did they buy him his farm, they built him a big house as well.  The end.

Of course, those are just the barest bones of the plot, but like I said, it was so well done, and it was a perfect role for Cooper.  Cooper made me like the character even when he was being an irresponsible ruffian.  Now that I have seen several movies starring Cooper, I am beginning to give him some well-earned respect as an actor.  I’m starting to understand why he was so popular.

Other actors in the film who did a good job were Walter Brennan as Pastor Pile, York’s friend and mentor, Joan Leslie and Gracie Williams, York’s love interest, Margaret Wycherly as Mother York, Stanley Ridges as Major Buxton, York’s commanding officer, and George Tobias as “Pusher”, York’s Army buddy.  And just as a side note, a very young June Lockhart played Rosie, York’s younger sister.

I have no real complaints about the film, except to be nit-picky.  The scene of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive which took place on October 8, 1918, was very well done.  The depiction of battle and slaughter were exciting to watch.  American soldiers were being killed left and right, again true to reality.  The one thing I didn’t like is how the dying men died.  It was the only unrealistic thing about the film.  In order to draw the viewer’s eyes, the men who were being gunned down would each perform the same hokey death move.  They would arch their backs, throw an arm up into the air, throw back their heads, and display a look of agony on their faces.  It was as if they were children being shot in an imaginary game of cops and robbers.  This death move was so choreographed that it almost looked like ballet.

But other than that, it was a very good and enjoyable film to watch, made even more so because of its historical accuracy.  Well done Sergeant York!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One Foot in Heaven – 1941

I know it might seem like sacrilege, but I have to say that I didn’t like this movie.  I call it sacrilege because the movie was very obviously spouting a wholesome, Christian set of values.  It was trying to model how a proper Christian life was a life of happiness and fulfillment.  It showed how hard work, sacrifice, prayer, spiritual study, and discipline were ultimately rewarded with the attainment of ones desires.

Or did it?  Based on the memoirs of Hartzell Spence about his father’s life as a Methodist minister, the film followed the life and marriage of William Spence, played by Frederick March, and his wife, Hope, played by Martha Scott.  William was a devout man who always put God first in his life, first before his children, before his wife, and most certainly before himself.  But then after God, he put himself before his children, and most certainly before his wife.  And as any good wife would do, Hope put her husband before everything, bowing to his will despite her own feelings, because of course, complete and absolute subservience to her husband is what would give any woman her greatest happiness.

And based on the way Rev. William Spence is portrayed in this movie, I really didn’t like his character.  He was dishonest, though he purported to be always truthful.  He was manipulative, even once resorting to blackmail, and bullying, though he condemned others as sinful for their scheming.  He was unbelievably insensitive to his wife and children caring only for what he wanted, claiming that it was God’s will.  And yet the filmmakers were trying to portray him as a saint.

One of my greatest disappointments in this movie was William’s treatment of his wife.  In the beginning, he was to become a doctor before he married her.  But before the wedding, he gets the call to ministry.  She loves him enough to leave her life of wealth and privilege and go with him to a poor town in rural Iowa.  OK, I can buy that.  She is sad at first, but he sweet-talks her and she learns to be happy in the life that she chose to live.  But then the first time she tries to assert her own will in the naming of her third child, a name which William does not like, William gives in and promises to let her name the boy.  Then at the christening, William names him what he wanted to all along.  He lied right to her face with no concern at all for her feelings or her desires.

After that first major betrayal, more and more situations arose in which Hope attempted to assert her own opinion, only to be shot down and callously ignored by her supposedly loving husband.  I love you so much, just don’t ever try to have or do anything that I don’t like.  You finally made this house a livable home and you want to stay?  Too bad.  I’ve decided we’re moving.  Now go make my dinner.  And it was all ok because giving in to his will made her happy and spiritually fulfilled.  That kind of malarkey would never fly in today’s world.

In addition to that, when the egos of some of the rich members of a congregation were bruised, the pompous and arrogant parishioners. Mr. and Mrs. Thurston, played by Gene Lockhart and Laura Hope, turned against him and attacked him by hurting his son.  They had him falsely accused of getting a young girl pregnant.  Now, at this, some of the anger he felt was justified, but when he learned the truth, he barged into their home, denounced them as sinners, and threatened to publicly humiliate them for their cruelties in one of his sermons unless they agreed to put up eighty-five thousand dollars to build a new church.  His exact words were, “Thank God I’m a Christian or I’d kill you,” and “You don’t deserve to live.  The only reason you don’t dies is that the good Lord wouldn’t know what to do with you!”  Very un-Christian-like, indeed!

And lest we forget Beulah Bondi as Mrs. Sandow, a snobbish, well-to-do widow who left his parish because he had the audacity to minister to her gardener when she wasn’t home.  Oh, the scandal!  How dare you talk to one of my servants instead of me!  And when she learned that a new church was being built, she wanted to contribute money in her husband’s memory.  So he refused to let her back into his congregation unless she put up over thirty-five thousand dollars for luxury additions to the new church like a tree of Jessie window, carillon bells, and a Skinner organ.  Where does the desire for a new place of worship end and self-indulgence begin?

The movie was made well enough, but it was the movie’s ambiguous moral center that I didn’t like.  And yet it was nominated for Best Picture.  What was it about the film that the Academy loved so much?  It wasn’t nominated in any other categories.  Today, I can’t imagine that anybody remembers it for lasting social significance.  The acting was average, the score by Max Steiner was trite and unimaginative, and the costumes and cinematography were nothing to write home about.

But it seemed to have a self-importance about it.  It was a story that was told in the form of an epic, following the family over the course of twenty-five or thirty years.  We see his children born and grown, his eldest, Hartzell, played by Frankie Thomas and his sister Eileen, played by Elizabeth Frasier.  We see the family as they weather one run down parish after another, never staying in one place for too long all because William lives by the adage that a rolling stone gather no moss.  Who cares if your wife doesn’t want to roll anymore?  Oh well.  The 1940s sure were a different time, but the movie doesn’t hold up well for modern audiences.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Maltese Falcon – 1941

This was a fun movie to watch.  I’ve never been a huge Humphrey Bogart fan, but it seems like he was made for this kind of a role, a gum-shoe private investigator who is not afraid to step on the wrong side of the law when it suits him.  Fortunately, he is a good guy at heart, so in the end he always does the right thing.  It just isn’t always clear what the right thing is.

This is a classic example of a genre called film noir, and is actually the first time I have ever seen one.  It is a film that made full use of all the old character clichés: the private dick, the femme fatale, the smooth criminal mastermind, the nervous henchman, and the true-blue secretary.

Each has a place in the story and they always show up when you least expect them.  Bogart plays the lead, Sam Spade, the private investigator who is good at what he does.  He walks into his office to find the beautiful Mary Astor, playing the part of Brigid O’Shaughnessy, waiting in his office, doing her best to look both sexy and innocent at the same time.

She tells her story and hires Sam and his partner Miles Archer, played by Jerome Cowan to find her sister.  Archer tails the man the sister is supposed to be with, but gets murdered by a mysterious figure.  This plot point has the effect of making the case personal to Sam, though he doesn’t seem very distraught about his partner’s demise.

The following plot has more twists and turns than any other Best Picture nominee I’ve ever seen.  The pace was fast and never let up.  Enter the mysterious henchman Joel Cairo played by Peter Lorre and his nefarious employer Kasper Gutman played by Sydney Greenstreet.  Gutman’s hit-man is a very cold-hearted, hot-tempered young man named Wilmer Cook, played by Elisha Cook Jr.

The whole point of the case is finding a priceless statue of a falcon.  The mystery and mystique of the fabulous object is heightened when its back-story is given.  It consisted of an ancient and royal gift of tribute, a solid gold falcon, being given from one kingdom to another which, when being transported by boat, was stolen by pirates.  It then showed its golden head in several obscure moments over the years, during which time it was covered in a black lacquer.  Where was the bird?  Who had it?  How much would people pay to obtain it?  Who would be killed while trying to get it?

Sam Spade was a character that was an expert on looking out for himself, as any good detective should be.  And yet, he wasn’t a flawless character.  It was implied that he had been having an affair with his dead partner’s wife.  He was no stranger to alcohol, and he seemed to have the emotional range of a doorknob.  But despite that, there was even an unprofessional love story going on between Spade and the dangerous Miss O’Shaughnessy, though I must admit that I could have done without that little tidbit of a sub-plot.

As far as the cast went, they all played their parts well, but I have always had a soft spot for Peter Lorre.  He was a wonderful character actor, usually taking the supporting roles.  But he had a unique look and a distinct Austro-Hungarian Jewish accent that was undeniably his own.  Even though he was one of the bad guys, I liked his character, though as a henchman, he was pretty inept, especially when pitted against the dashing Sam Spade.

The film contained plenty of suspense, misdirection, and intrigue.  Even the climax of the movie was a fake-out.  When the statue finally makes its appearance on the screen, we learn that it was a forgery of the real statue all along.  It was a worthless mock-up!  All the lies, all the murders, and all the betrayals meant nothing. And really, I was a bit disappointed, myself.  It was a let-down when the big reveal was another deception.

But it was a necessary plot point to get to the proper ending.  Spade’s name is cleared and he sends all the criminals to jail, including his love interest, Miss O’Shaughnessy, who turned out to be his partner’s murderer.  He even implies that he would consider waiting for her to get out after a probable 20 year sentence.  Of course… noble and forthright to the end.  Thank you Hollywood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Little Foxes – 1941

Once again, Bette Davis plays a mean and vicious woman who is willing to stoop to murder to get what she wants.  True, she does a good job with such a part, so I guess I can’t blame her.  There was the Letter and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, just to name two.  Sure, Davis played many other kinds of characters, but these seemed to be some of her more memorable roles.  But even parts that didn’t require her to be a murderess seem to have had an acerbic edge that one could call a recurring theme in her career.

In The Little Foxes, we see her play Regina Giddens, a Southern aristocrat who struggles to gain wealth and power.  However, as a woman in the early 1900s, she is completely dependent on her husband for her financial security.  Her husband, Horace, played by Herbert Marshall, who also played her husband in The Letter, is a sick man who is being treated for a weak heart.  Their sweet and innocent daughter, Alexandra, played by Teresa Wright, is a good girl who seems to be uninfluenced by her parents hateful fighting and her mother’s selfish scheming.

When Regina attempts to go into a lucrative business deal with her two brothers, Ben and Oscar, played by Charles Dingle and Carl Benton Reid, respectively, Horace refuses to give her the funds to complete her part of the transaction.  They fight even more.  Anyway, to make a long story short, Oscar’s son Leo, who works at a bank, is able to steal railroad bonds from Horace’s safety deposit box, thus obtaining the money they need in a way that shuts Regina out of the deal.

Horace learns of the theft and tells Regina that he will claim the stolen bonds to be a loan, ensuring that Regina will have no part in the deal.  But he has a heart attack before such a claim can be made.  Regina, sees the heart attack happen, and through deliberate inaction, allows him to die.  She uses her knowledge of the theft to blackmail her brothers into giving her a seventy-five percent share of the business deal.  Alexandra figures out what Regina has done and leaves her, wealthy, but alone.

So here is what I can’t figure out.  I’d call that murder, even though she did not cause the heart attack that killed her husband.  How did the Hays code let her get away with it?  It was cold and calculated, and perhaps even pre-meditated.  How was the character allowed to get away with it without being punished for her evil inactions?

Anyway, there were several performance that I’d like to mention as being noteworthy.  Charles Dingle’s portrayal of the shady businessman, Ben, did a good job of playing sin with a smile.  Even when he is bested by his sister in the end, his smile and gracious Southern manners in the face of his defeat was charming and well played.  I also liked Herbert Marshall’s portrayal of Horace.  I have never seen him in a role that I didn’t enjoy, and this was no exception.

But one of the more dramatic characters in the film was Birdie Hubbard, Oscar’s physically and emotionally abused wife, played by Patricia Collinge.  The scene in which she has her drunken breakdown, in which she admits to not liking her dishonest son, Leo, was not exactly deep or gut wrenching, but it was a little island of unexpected emotion in an otherwise cold and dispassionate film.  But I got it.  I understood that the lack of emotions in the three siblings was a plot point.  Either way, Collinge did a good job with her role.  We had already seen her husband strike her across the cheek so we can at least sympathize with her when we see her drink herself into such a powerful confession.

But Davis, of course, was their big star, and it was she whom the audiences loved to watch on the big screen.  I thought Davis did a competent job, but I felt that she could have done better.  In my research, I found that the movie’s director, William Wyler, had instructed Davis to see Tallulah Bankhead play the part in the 1939 Broadway production.  Not wanting to be influenced by Bankhead’s performance, she reluctantly agreed.  Bankhead had portrayed Regina as a victim forced to fight for her survival due to the contempt with which her brothers treated her, but Davis played her as a cold, conniving, calculating woman.  Maybe Davis should have followed her lead, though in later years, Davis praised Bankhead, and blamed Wyler for the different interpretation of the part.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hold Back the Dawn – 1941

This was an alright movie.  It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good.  It was slightly interesting, and yet painfully predictable.  Most of the acting was good, but not all of it.  The script was passable, but had some silly moments that tried too hard to be funny, and had me rolling my eyes.  It starred popular French actor, Charles Boyer, and the beautiful American movie star, Olivia de Havilland.  Their on-screen chemistry was there, but it had moments of weakness.

The movie was about a Romanian gigolo named Georges Iscovescu, played by Boyer, who finds himself in Mexico, wanting to move to America.  But immigration laws being what they were, he is put on a waiting list that would likely strand him in Mexico for seven to ten years.  He is in a Mexican-American border town where he runs into an old flame named Anita Dixon, played by Paulette Goddard.  She is a United States citizen who had once been in a similar situation.  Her scheme to gain her a quick citizenship was to marry an American to get into the U.S., then divorce him as soon as possible.

In an effort to follow her plan, he meets a beautiful but naive American school teacher on a field trip with a gang of some of the worst behaved schoolboys in human history.  She is Emmy Brown, played by de Havilland.  He passionately sweet-talks her and lo and behold, he gets her to marry him within the space of a few hours.  Not just engaged, but legally married.  After a few hours.  But he still has to wait for four weeks for the paperwork to go through before he can cross the border.

While he waits, he and Anita revive their old love affair.  U.S. immigration official, Inspector Hammock, played by Walter Abel, is on the prowl, looking for scams and con-artists looking for nefarious ways to make it into the States.  He begins investigation Georges and his sham marriage.  To make matters more difficult for Georges, Emmy returns to Mexico to spend time with her husband.  In order to avoid detection, the Romanian takes his new wife away on a honeymoon trip.

Intending only to avoid the inspector, Georges just drives away, but ends up in a romantic little Mexican village where they are holding a festival to bless newlyweds.  Can you guess what happens from here?  I could.  Georges ends up actually falling for Emmy, but his original scheme is uncovered by Hammock.  Emmy wants to leave him, but eventually learns that he is really in love with her.  The two reconcile, the marriage becomes real, and after she legally brings him to America, the couple live happily ever after.  The end.

I was not wrong, though there were some interesting plot points.  Of course, it was a jealous Anita who told Emmy of Georges’ dishonest scheme.  And it took a nearly fatal car accident for Emmy to make Georges realize how much he loved her.  In desperation, he illegally drives across the border to be with her in her Los Angeles hospital.  The laughable police pursuit was ridiculous in that Georges was able to evade the authorities by pulling off the road and hiding behind a ground-level bill-board… twice.  And it was his presence at Emmy’s bedside that brought her out of her coma and gave her the will to live.

Is it the worst plot ever conceived?  Of course not.  But it wasn’t the best either.  It was passable.  So what aspects of the film stood out as particularly good or bad?  On the good side, the filming locations were good.  Director Mitchell Leisen got to show off some of Mexico’s natural beauty.  Boyer did a good job and carried the lead pretty well.  De Havilland looked gorgeous.  I also appreciated one of the little sub-plots in which a pregnant woman conned her way onto American soil just so her child could be born an American Citizen.  Maybe a little implausible, but interesting enough, though it did portray the border guards as morons.

But on the bad side, the script was often terribly written.  Every single character in the film was a walking stereotype.  The band of little school boys behaved like a pack of rabid howler monkeys, and the worst they got was a stern look and a mild reproach, even when one of them set off a firecracker in an unsuspecting adult’s hand.  Haha!!  Second degree burns!  Isn’t that funny?  Another example of poor writing is how scenes were often ended with a forced joke that had nothing to do with the scene.  It was akin to having the actors all freeze to facilitate a commercial break, except here they just made characters throw out lame one-liners to prompt scene changes. 

Now, does all that mean I didn’t enjoy the film?  No, but it felt like filler.  Fluff.  There was very little substance to it.  No harm, no foul.  Just don’t expect anything terribly deep or dramatic.  But if you are a fan of Boyer or de Havilland, then this movie will keep your interest easily enough.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here Comes Mr. Jordan – 1941

Well, I’ll start off by saying that this was a movie that had the potential to be good, but it just wasn’t.  The plot was, without putting too fine a point on it, dumb.  It just seemed like they were making things up as they went along.  Circumstances and characters did things that didn’t make sense except to make the plot convenient.  It left me rolling my eyes and shaking my head in disbelief.

But it was a fantasy movie, so I really need to cut it a little slack.  After all, fantasy films are allowed to make up their own rules.  But this film, dare I say it, was not very realistic.  It contradicted its own rules left and right, and left loose threads at the end that stuck in my craw.  I’ll explain.

The film starred Robert Montgomery as Joe Pendleton, a boxer who has a shot at the world championship title.  He is flying to New York to prepare for the fight, piloting his own one-man plane, when a malfunction causes the plane to crash.  In order to save Joe a painful death, Messenger 7013, an inept angel who is new to his job of collecting souls, played by Edward Everett Horton, takes Joe to heaven before the plane hits the ground.

But that was the snafu.  Joe was not fated to die in the crash.  Already, I am not liking the basic concept of the plot.  In my biased opinion, angels don’t make mistakes.  But never-mind that.  Remember, fantasies can make up their own rules.  So Messenger 7013 takes Joe to his supervisor, Mr. Jordan, played by Claude Rains.  Mr. Jordan decides to return Joe to earth, letting him inhabit the body of a person who is about to die since his own body was cremated.  But Joe is so obsessed with boxing that he refuses to accept any body that is not in perfect physical condition, as his own had been.  Joe turns down hundreds of candidates.

This causes Messenger 7013 to become so irritated with him that the two develop a hateful relationship.  Angels do not hate.  But never-mind that.  Infinitely patient, but showing signs of frustration and fatigue, Mr. Jordan takes him to the home of a millionaire who is about to be murdered.  The doomed man is one Mr. Farnsworth.  Joe reluctantly agrees to take the body, but only after he sees how evil the murderers are, and how the shady millionaire was victimizing the beautiful young girl, Bette Logan, played by Evelyn Keyes.

It is implied that the murderers, Mrs. Julia Farnsworth, played by Rita Johnson, and Tony Abbott, Farnsworth’s secretary, played by John Emery are having an affair.  And finally, the last notable member of the cast, Joe’s boxing manager, Max Corkle, who he contacts as the millionaire Mr. Farnsworth, and to whom he reveals his big secret, is played by James Gleason.

I don’t know.  There were just too many silly ideas like how he was able to hold on to his saxophone which should have been in the wreckage of the plane crash with his dead body.  But he has it in heaven, and it mysteriously appears in his hand when he takes over Farnsworth’s body.  Then when he loses that body and goes into another one, he still has it.

Then when Joe tells Corkle where Farnsworth’s body is, after Julia and Abbott murder it a second time, Corkle tells the police.  And the police never even question how he knew where the body was hidden?  He would have been a suspect!  Forget the fact that Corkle now had concrete knowledge of the afterlife.

Then there was the point that Farnsworth was a banker.  Joe didn’t know the first thing about banking.  He would not have been able to pass himself off as a banker.  He wouldn’t have fooled anybody.  For that matter, he was generally portrayed as a man who was a little low on smarts.  What was he doing flying an airplane in the first place?

I can forgive a lot in a film, but this movie just had too many faults for me.  I couldn’t get over them.  But like I said, the overall concept was a good one.  It was just the execution that was poor.  However, it wasn’t the actors’ faults.  It was the script writer.  I can’t explain why Sidney Buchman and Seton I. Miller’s script was so highly praised, even going so far as to win Oscars for Best Writing, Original Story and Best Writing, Screenplay.  I’m sorry but they wouldn’t have gotten my vote.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Citizen Kane – 1941

Everybody I talked to said that Citizen Kane was the greatest movie ever made.  I read on Wikipedia that “Citizen Kane was voted the greatest film of all time in five consecutive Sight & Sound’s poll of critics until it was displaced by Vertigo in the 2012 poll.  It topped the American Film Institute’s ‘100 Years … 100 Movies’ list in 1998, as well as AFI’s 2007 update.  Citizen Kane is particularly praised for its cinematography, music, and narrative structure, which were innovative for its time.

And there’s the trick.  For its time.  In 1941, and for many years after, I imagine that was true.  But the film is now 73 years old.  Am I to think, then, that in the last 73 years, not a single movie has been its equal except Vertigo?  Of course not.  I find that to be a silly notion.

But like I said, in 1941 it very well might have been the best film ever made, even though it LOST the Best Picture win to How Green Was My Valley.  But never-mind that.  I think it should have won.

But all its stigma aside, it was a very well made film.  It chronicled the life of Charles Foster Kane, played by Orson Wells.  He was a very good actor for such a young man, but it was his innovative genius as a director that really made him stand out.  He was apparently doing things that had never been done before in film.  But that was nothing new.  Hitchcock was a genius who was doing some pretty amazing things behind the camera as well.  In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that Hitchcock was a better director and made more interesting and captivating movies.

The film starts as Kane is on his death bed.  He utters the enigmatic word “Rosebud…”  He is one of the wealthiest man on the planet, one of the most eccentric, and near the end of his life, one of the most reclusive.  The film then tells the story of his life as a reporter for a magazine interviews the people who knew him best to learn what his final word meant.  Who or what was Rosebud?

The interviewer, whose face is never shown, speaks to Kane’s best friend, his lawyer, his manager, his second wife, his first wife having died in an automobile accident along with his son, and his butler.  He gets a very good sense of who the legendary man was, but learns nothing about the meaning of the strange last word.

His best friend, played by Joseph Cotton, told most of his story.  He told about his rise from a rich college dropout to a rich newspaper tycoon.  Apparently it was very telling of the man that his original goals were noble and righteous, championing the rights of the common man.  But as power corrupted him he became hard and tyrannical.  I though Cotton was the weakest member of the cast.  As the young man, he was just fine.  But as the old man giving the reporter his interview, he didn’t act very… old.

His manager Mr. Bernstein, played by Everett Sloan, did very well in his role and was also a likeable character.  He was loyal and honest, which made him appealing.  Kane’s first wife, Emily Monroe, was played by actress Ruth Warrick.  She was particularly good in the scene where she left Kane.

But the best actor in the film had to be Dorothy Comingore, playing the part of Susan Alexander, Kane’s second wife.  Her part was complex and tragic.  Comingore played it with depth and dramatic flair.  The scenes where she is being interviewed were incredibly well acted.  The character was nearly drunk enough to pass out, which must have been difficult for the actress to believably portray.

And in the end, we learn what the magazine reporter never does.  We learn what Rosebud was and what it represented.  In the very last scene of the film, as the reporter goes away disappointed, we see piles of junk, the flotsam and jetsam of Kane’s vast and wealthy existence.  Among the various items being thrown into the fire is a child’s sled.  On the sled’s surface is the painted word “Rosebud”

So what did it mean?  Well, it represented the only time in Kane’s magical charmed existence when he had been truly happy, when he was a child, before coming into his vast inheritance. Wells was making the unbelievably subtle point that neither money, nor power, nor position are as important as innocence and happiness, which, in the end, is all Charles Foster Kane ever wanted.