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Post by topbilled on Feb 26, 2023 14:51:54 GMT
This neglected film is from 1933.
Dignity and strength
Author Theodore Dreiser was known for stories where the main characters lack a strong moral code. His acclaimed novel ‘An American Tragedy’ is a perfect example of this, and so is his later publication ‘Jennie Gerhardt,’ based on the lives of his sisters.
Paramount adapted these literary works as motion pictures with Sylvia Sidney prominently featured in both. What makes Miss Sidney’s performance as Jennie Gerhardt so successful is how she is able to take the working class heroine from naive to mature in a relatively short period of time on screen.
Edward Arnold plays her first suitor, a wealthy senator much older than Jennie. He meets her at a posh hotel, where she is cleaning a stairway one day. He is instantly smitten with her. While Jennie’s humble German parents are grateful to the senator for his assistance when things get tough financially, old Mr. Gerhardt disapproves of the unusual romantic relationship.
He instructs Jennie to break things off, which she does at first. But then the senator pursues her again. This is a recurring theme in the story, that Jennie is never able to fully say goodbye to those who matter to her.
Eventually Jennie agrees to marry Senator Brand. It is a precode drama, so we can be sure they have been enjoying a sexual relationship. However, before the wedding occurs the senator is killed in a train accident.
A short time later Jennie learns she is pregnant. It’s interesting how the film conveys this without using the word ‘pregnant.’ After Jennie moves away to have the baby in secret with the help of a cousin, we have a unique birthing scene that occurs off-screen. She is experiencing the pains of labor while occupants in a boarding house eat their meal as if nothing exciting is happening!
Soon Jennie has taken work as a maid for the wealthy Kane family. In the novel, Dreiser has her work for an elderly woman who is visited by the Kanes. But in the movie, Jennie is able to interact more directly with the family’s attractive son (Donald Cook) without contrivance. It plays like an American version of Upstairs Downstairs and the courtship scenes are done with sincerity.
Jennie is living a double life. During her off-hours, she spends time with her cousin and daughter. She hasn’t told Lester Kane about the fact she has a child. Little Vesta (Cora Sue Collins) is precious and steals every scene she is in.
Eventually Jennie admits to Lester that she has a daughter. He accepts Vesta and sets up a home with them, though he doesn’t marry Jennie. In a precode sense, she is his mistress but it seems as though they could marry at some point. However, Lester’s snobby sister (Dorothy Libaire) has other plans for him, and pushes him towards a more acceptable match– society matron Letty Pace (Mary Astor).
Mary Astor had been in quite a few pictures during the end of the silent era, and at the beginning of the talkies, as a leading lady. Probably her role in this picture is one of her first real supporting character parts…and she is brilliant. She doesn’t overplay her character’s affectations, but Letty is certainly less likable and more ‘villainous’ than the virtuous Jennie.
Of course, this would not be a melodrama if Lester married Jennie. He makes the wrong choice and marries Letty. What follows are a series of scenes where both he and Jennie get older. Through the years that follow, she keeps track of his life as a successful industrialist by clipping newspaper articles and pasting them inside a scrapbook. She goes to watch newsreels at the local theater, in the days before television, so she can glimpse him on screen.
There is even more drama at this juncture, because Jennie’s daughter Vesta is about to graduate from school but suddenly takes ill. Vesta dies from typhoid fever, and the death scene contains some of Miss Sidney’s most realistic acting. In grief, Jennie reaches back out to Lester. However, he is now becoming infirm himself.
On his deathbed a short time later, Lester asks to be reunited with Jennie. Their last scene together is very poignant and nicely played. After Lester’s death, Jennie attends the funeral, standing along the sidelines since she is technically not his widow or part of his family. The final shots have her watching the casket loaded on to a train where it is taken off for burial.
This evokes the death of the senator by train earlier in the movie. Everything comes full-circle, with Jennie as survivor. While this production pours on the sorrow, it is a good indicator of how Depression-era audiences needed to see the working class heroine at the end. She loved and lost, a few times, but she still has her dignity. Jennie Gerhardt always has the strength to persevere and get through whatever happens next.
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Post by topbilled on Mar 10, 2023 15:20:35 GMT
This neglected film is from 1946.
He's from Virginia
There have been many different incarnations of this favorite western story. It began as a book by writer Owen Wister near the turn of the 20th century, based on incidents that had happened in Wyoming a decade earlier. Wister quickly adapted it into a stage play. A short time later, the star of the theatrical production, Dustin Farnum, reprised the lead role in a silent film version directed by Cecil DeMille for Paramount.
The studio remade it as a talkie in 1929 with Gary Cooper as The Virginian and Walter Huston as nemesis Trampas. Then in 1946, Paramount released this handsome Technicolor offering with Joel McCrea and Brian Donlevy in the lead roles. Of course, it would later become a long-running western TV series in the 1960s and 1970s.
I’m not sure if Joel McCrea’s a better actor than Gary Cooper, but he comes across as more wholesome. He works nicely opposite Mr. Donlevy, as well as Sonny Tufts who plays Steve. It seemed to me while watching this film last night that Tufts’ more humorous portrayal of Steve seems to have inspired Doug McClure’s performance on TV, since McClure’s take on Trampas is not really villainous. McClure plays it more as if Trampas is a light-hearted buddy of The Virginian (James Drury).
There’s a cattle rustling scheme which threatens a tenuous peace between ranchers and homesteaders (usually called nesters on the TV show).
Brian Donlevy is superb at conveying the darker aspects of Trampas. We are left with no ambiguity that he’s an outright villain, and The Virginian will have to defeat him to restore peace in Medicine Bow.
In addition to the relationship between The Virginian, Trampas and Steve, the men interact with a sophisticated new school teacher named Molly (Barbara Britton). She's taken the train west all the way from the east coast. She's a real lady, exhibiting the finer social graces of a proper upbringing. Her ongoing courtship with The Virginian is genuine yet comical at times.
Just like the TV show, we never find out what the title character's real name is. Only that he's from Virginia, and this adds a bit of mystery to him. I should also mention that the TV show eliminated the character of Molly in its second season. But there were plenty of other desirable females who came through Medicine Bow and turned up at the Shiloh ranch, whom the men loved and often lost.
Slick production values, a logical script with plenty of character development and a strong supporting performance from Fay Bainter make this hit from 1946 a winner.
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Post by topbilled on Mar 22, 2023 22:24:56 GMT
This neglected film is from 1951.
Rescue drama
There’s a country-western tune from 1989, sung by George Strait, with these lyrics: “You’ve got to have an ace in the hole, a little secret that nobody knows.”
In Billy Wilder’s classic 1951 exposé on the sleazy relationship between the press and the news it reports, Kirk Douglas plays a cad who has an ace in the hole and a huge secret the public doesn’t know.
A journalist who’s bounced around the country after various firings, Douglas lands on his feet in Albuquerque working for a small paper. Douglas intends to get back in the big leagues, so the minute the story to end all stories falls in his lap, there’s no stopping him.
The proverbial ace in the hole is a Mexican-American man (Richard Benedict) who has fallen into a cave dwelling of sorts where ancient native artifacts are said to be located. Minosa, the man in question, is literally stuck in a hole, and it will take half a day to dig him out.
Douglas conspires with a crooked sheriff (Ray Teal) and an equally crooked engineer (Frank Jaquet) to go the long way in rescuing the poor sap. This plan to delay the rescue and milk it for publicity is kept secret from the hordes of people who show up at the site.
Gradually we come to realize there will be no rescue, and Minosa will die down there. The hole is basically a tomb for the soon-to-be-dead. Edgar Allan Poe would’ve had a field day with this type of story. And truthfully, I think that if it had been played as a tale of the macabre with some black comedy thrown in, the film might have been more enjoyable. At times it feels as if Wilder is making the story way too serious, which is a bit of a misfire, since most of the characters in the story are fools worth laughing at.
In addition to Douglas, other lead roles are taken by Robert Arthur, billed as Bob Arthur, on hand as a young photographer…and Jan Sterling as the trapped man’s unfaithful money-hungry wife. Both Arthur’s character and Sterling’s character fall under the spell of Douglas’ character, becoming corrupted by him and the carnival like atmosphere that occurs.
In 1987, there was a real-life media frenzy when little Jessica McClure fell down a well in her aunt’s yard in Midland, Texas. Baby Jessica was only 18 months old at the time, and it took 56 hours– over two days– for her to be pulled out of the well.
As we know, Jessica McClure’s story had a happy ending. But Billy Wilder’s film does not.
The lack of a happy ending probably affected ACE IN THE HOLE’s chances of turning a profit at the box office. Though it seems like Paramount overspent on making it, which was always going to cut into any potential profit margins. Nonetheless what we have is a gritty and dark motion picture…a true classic that gives us much to consider about human nature.
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Post by kims on Mar 22, 2023 22:58:14 GMT
I think this film continues to have relevance. I like many of Kirk's films. I can't watch them back to back and need a couple of weeks between films. To explain, I recently watched THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL which I enjoy. A few days later I was watching SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, another film I like, but I hit the record button to watch later. When I watch his films too close together, in the second his acting seems almost laughable. I think it's his intensity, he seems hammy. Waiting a week to watch SEVEN DAYS I could enjoy his performance. My absolute favorite Kirk film is TOUGH GUYS with Burt. If you haven't seen it, put it on your list
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Post by topbilled on Mar 30, 2023 15:05:57 GMT
I think this film continues to have relevance. I like many of Kirk's films. I can't watch them back to back and need a couple of weeks between films. To explain, I recently watched THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL which I enjoy. A few days later I was watching SEVEN DAYS IN MAY, another film I like, but I hit the record button to watch later. When I watch his films too close together, in the second his acting seems almost laughable. I think it's his intensity, he seems hammy. Waiting a week to watch SEVEN DAYS I could enjoy his performance. My absolute favorite Kirk film is TOUGH GUYS with Burt. If you haven't seen it, put it on your list |
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Post by topbilled on Mar 30, 2023 15:09:33 GMT
This neglected film is from 1946.
Ladd and Fitzgerald are strategic
There is so much right with this film…where to start. I suppose I could start with the strong central performances by Alan Ladd and Geraldine Fitzgerald as Americans working undercover in France to thwart the Nazis. Or I could start with Paramount’s fine production values, giving this political thriller the right amount of light and shade with plenty of thought-provoking music on the soundtrack.
Or maybe I could start with Richard Maibum’s highly intelligent script which underscores at every turn the sacrifices individuals make to ensure that freedom is not obliterated. Maibum would go on to write quite a few screenplays in the James Bond franchise.
While Alan Ladd’s character is not quite a forerunner to 007, the general feel of danger and excitement does suggest later Bond elements. It’s interesting to see Ladd play a crook that is so clever, he’s sought by the U.S. government to play spy games in Europe. For her part, Miss Fitzgerald is no Veronica Lake, which might actually give her an edge, since she’s a lot less glamorous than Lake, but exudes the right amount of braininess and class to get the job done alongside Ladd.
The best performance, though, may be from John Hoyt, in his screen debut as a twisted Gestapo officer who develops an unhealthy crush on Fitzgerald. He manipulates her into a romantic relationship then takes her on a fateful train trip where she gets back at him by attempting to blow him up. Maibum’s script establishes Fitzgerald in France posing as a sculptress. So when she gets involved with Hoyt, she makes a bust of his head…
But little does Hoyt know, Ladd has helped stuff explosives into the sculpture.
Unfortunately, Hoyt survives and when Fitzgerald runs off with Ladd’s help, they become wanted by the Gestapo. From here there are an assortment of subplots as we see other characters working in tandem with our leads, trying to stymie the Gestapo and prevent the German occupation of France.
One very moving subplot involves an O.S.S. agent (Richard Webb) sending coded messages to an office in Britain that are received and decoded by an operative (Gloria Saunders) who falls in love with him while exchanging messages.
The scene where the Gestapo catch Webb in the act of transmitting his last communication, assassinating him on the spot, while the gal in Britain realizes there will be no more messages…is heartbreaking.
This review wouldn’t be complete if I didn’t give a quick history of the real-life O.S.S. The acronym stands for the Office of Strategic Services, and much of their activity involved wartime espionage against the Axis powers.
The O.S.S. functioned from June 1942 through September 1945 and was reorganized after the war. O.S.S. activities led to the development of the Central Intelligence Agency.
When Paramount execs decided to green light this project, the O.S.S. was in the process of being reorganized. Several Hollywood studios were anxious to do a postwar pic about O.S.S. maneuvers. Paramount was the first studio to get its story on to the screen.
If you enjoy this film as much as I do, check out these similarly themed pictures: Warner Brothers’ CLOAK AND DAGGER, released later in ’46 with Gary Cooper in the starring role; and 20th Century Fox’s 13 RUE MADELEINE, released in early ’47 with James Cagney as an O.S.S. agent.
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Post by topbilled on Apr 12, 2023 14:07:01 GMT
This neglected film is from 1952.
Lots of people love Betty Hutton
Betty Hutton burst on to the Hollywood scene about ten years before she made this biopic. She had a meteoric rise and fall at Paramount. By most accounts, including her own, she was notoriously difficult to work with on set. Probably because she was a perfectionist…well, that, and she could be insecure.
Despite her personality flaws, Hutton was a bonafide talent. Adept at song, dance and comedy, her hyperactive performance style went over like gangbusters with the public.
Paramount put her in a series of musical comedies and romantic comedies in the 1940s. A lot of these productions were hits at the box office, even if they were mostly forgettable. Arguably, her greatest films came at the end of her heyday, in the early 1950s.
Today people remember Hutton for the work she did on loan to MGM in ANNIE GET YOUR GUN. And for a memorable collaboration with Fred Astaire in LET’S DANCE. As well as her starring role in Cecil DeMille’s Oscar winning spectacle THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH. She was coming off these career highs when she was assigned to do SOMEBODY LOVES ME. But this would be her last starring vehicle at the studio.
Hutton wasn’t pushed out at Paramount for the reasons other people were pushed out. She had not actually run her course, she was not past her prime. In fact she was in the middle of a lucrative contract. She left Paramount because she was embroiled in a dispute with upper management over the type of material and treatment she was getting. In frustration, she did what Alice Faye had done at Fox at the height of her popularity…she walked out.
When you walk out on the big kahunas in Hollywood, you usually pay the piper. And Betty Hutton did. After leaving Paramount, she was blackballed and her career quickly lost momentum. She would be lucky to get hired in low-budget independent films, or to find sporadic work on TV in the years that followed. Some of Hutton’s downfall involved her off-screen addictions, but that’s another set of issues. She retreated from the limelight, though she never lost her zest for performing and entertaining.
As a big budget biopic, SOMEBODY LOVES ME is a decent enough effort. Hutton is cast as an old-time vaudeville star named Blossom Seeley who made a name for herself in the 1910s and helped bring jazz and ragtime into the mainstream. Seeley formed a team with another singer of the era, Benny Fields, whom she married. Seeley & Field’s partnership is chronicled in the movie, and there are some nice moments…such as a sequence with Jack Benny who used to perform in the same places as them.
For the role of Benny Fields, Paramount borrowed Ralph Meeker from MGM, a surprising choice to costar opposite Betty Hutton. Surprising because Meeker was a disciple of the Method (he had been directed by Elia Kazan on Broadway, when tapped to fill in for Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire). Meeker’s acting style couldn’t have been more different from Hutton’s if you tried.
Also, Meeker was not exactly musically inclined, and the role of Benny Fields requires musical talent. Despite these obvious discrepancies, Meeker does manage to register a fair amount of chemistry alongside Hutton, so it’s not a total wash…and SOMEBODY LOVES ME was a hit for Paramount.
Musical biopics were in vogue in the 1940s and early 1950s. Hutton had previously played Texas Guinan in INCENDIARY BLONDE. Audiences liked to be reminded of their favorite old-time entertainers from yesteryear…people like Texas Guinan, Al Jolson, Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields. It was escapist entertainment for moviegoers who were needing a nostalgia fix.
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Post by topbilled on Apr 24, 2023 14:37:02 GMT
This neglected film is from 1932.
Entertaining precode is presented by a distinguished cast
George Raft once quipped that Mae West, making her screen debut in this Paramount precode, ‘stole everything except the cameras.’ Or some such comment, referring to what a scene stealer she was. Miss West was fourth-billed here and did so well making an impression with moviegoers that she was quickly promoted to starring roles at the studio. Incidentally, NIGHT AFTER NIGHT was the first starring role for Raft at Paramount, as he had recently made a splash with a supporting turn in SCARFACE.
Both Raft and West would have long careers and considerable box office clout over the years. And while they are certainly a reason to watch this film, I think the other players are just as worthy of singling out for praise. In particular, I find Constance Cummings in the lead female role to be most appealing.
I used to confuse Constance Cummings with Mae Clarke, though they are not really much alike. Clarke often played grittier characters, whereas Cummings brought a more polished air of sophistication and class to her studio assignments.
Cummings had arrived in Hollywood only a year earlier at the age of 21, as a discovery of producer Sam Goldwyn. Goldwyn shared the actress’s contract with Harry Cohn, so most of her early precodes were at Columbia. By the time she was loaned to Paramount for NIGHT AFTER NIGHT, she had already done more than a dozen pictures in a year’s time, all of them starring roles.
Cummings’ career would take an interesting turn a year later, when she wed British writer-director Benn Levy who would become an influential politician. She had two children with Levy and their marriage lasted for 40 years until his death. So just as quickly as she had burst on to the scene in Hollywood, Cummings left and moved to Britain.
As an expatriate American, Constance Cummings appeared in British films over the next several decades, including David Lean’s BLITHE SPIRIT (1945). While her movie output remained consistent, she found more success on the London stage and was eventually made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) after Levy’s death. Interestingly, she’d return to the U.S. for a run on Broadway in the late 1970s, which netted her a Tony award.
Anyway, back to our movie…the point I’m making is that NIGHT AFTER NIGHT features several distinguished performers at the start of their careers, plus it has veterans of the stage and screen like Alison Skipworth and Louis Calhern. Miss Skipworth would be remembered for her frequent pairings with W.C. Fields at Paramount, but she’s just as memorable here.
Skipworth and West play acquaintances at Raft’s speakeasy, who have experienced a few setbacks before working together to pool their resources. Skipworth is a lady of manners hired by Raft to teach him the finer social graces, so he can impress an heiress (Cummings). But all the teaching in the world may not help Raft, who fails to register with Cummings initially, since she has plans to marry a wealthier man (Calhern) in order to reclaim a fortune lost after the stock market crash.
Yes, the plot points seem a bit dated now. But as a movie where the characters have overt agendas and don’t often achieve the results they are hoping for, it’s a fun and amusing outing. While film historians may go out of their way to label NIGHT AFTER NIGHT as Mae West’s debut, it provides strong work by all the main players. And as a diversion running 70 minutes plus, you could do worse.
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 24, 2023 15:13:05 GMT
Night After Night from 1932 with George Raft, Constance Cummings, Alison Skipworth, Mae West and Wynne Gibson
A former boxer, now bootlegger, buys a foreclosed Park Avenue mansion at the start of the Depression and turns it into a very successful nightclub/speakeasy, but now he has to defend it against a rival gang.
The speakeasy owner also starts taking etiquette lessons because he wants to mix with the swells, which happens when the beautiful daughter of the mansion's former owner shows up one night.
George Raft, an actor no one would accuse of having too-much range, is tailor made for the role, here, of a handsome gangster trying to come up in the world socially - a surprisingly popular 1930s movie theme.
With the wonderful Alison Skipworth playing his tutor, Raft wants to leave his world of mugs, thugs and dames behind, which isn't easy as his former girlfriends - played by Mae West, with a lilt, and Wynne Gibson, with venom - keep trying to hold him in that old world.
Enter society cutie Constance Cummings, the daughter of the former blue-blood owner of Raft's mansion/nightclub/speakeasy, who comes to the club to see her old home. Raft and she kinda hit it off as she's the exact type of girl he's been looking for: pretty and "class."
She, in return, is attracted to him in a "he's interesting albeit in a crude" way, but she's engaged to a staid, wealthy and socially respectable man, played by Louis Calhern.
She likes Calhern, but is only really marrying him because his money and position would give her back what she lost in the Depression.
That's the setup and it's a good one for the movie's theme of "coming up or down in class" to play out in multiple ways.
The theme is sharply symbolized when we see the overly decorated bedroom of Raft's - he's bought what he thought were all the "right" things - contrasted with the simple elegance of Cummings' new bedroom. Raft, immediately, sees what he's done wrong.
Raft is considering selling his club to the rival gang, as the club represents his old world of crime and thuggery, so that he can marry Cummings with a fresh start. The problem is, while Cummings likes Raft, she can't see herself married to a gangster.
It's not snotty condescension, just someone, at least initially, unable to see past her old world. But like Raft is rethinking his values, she's rethinking hers as entering a marriage without love is weighing heavily on her.
The nuance that the writers and director Archie Mayo got right is showing Cummings as an honest woman. She tells Calhern, and she admits to herself, that she is only going to marry him because he has money and position. You like her more for her honesty.
The other neat nuance is that Raft, the gangster, former boxer and the guy who doesn't know which fork to use, loses respect for her when she tells him she's going to marry for money and position. He's a "thug," but he believes in marrying for love.
That's the main story in Night After Night, but an added spark is the side story of Raft's tutor Skipworth - a pleasant, refined older woman who is refreshingly non-judgemental of Raft - spending an evening drinking with Raft's old girlfriend, Mae West,
West, in her screen debut here, already had her "Mae West" brand of sex, humor and mirthful greed fully developed. So as with Raft and Cummings, Skipworth and West represent the clash of two worlds that surprisingly works well for both of them.
West sees that Skipworth is a nice woman who's "refinement" could help her in her business (West owns a string of beauty parlors for the swells), just as Skipworth sees that West could offer her a way to escape her boring, albeit "proper," life.
West and Skipworth's scenes together, which could stand alone as comedy sketches, are some of the best in the movie. You feel the genuine warmth these two opposites quickly develop, especially as West introduces Skipworth to champagne and hangovers.
Skipworth and West, like Raft and Cummings, represent an extreme version of something many in the Depression were facing: a new world where people from formerly different classes were now forced to mix socially and professionally and, quite often, in a speakeasy.
It's the acting talents of those same four, Skipworth, West, Cummings and Raft (giving Raft a bit more credit than he deserves) that give soul and depth to this fast-moving effort.
You will also marvel at how well and quickly an old stage actress like Skipworth adjusted to the new medium of "talking" movies.
Night After Night has some early "talkie" clunkiness, a few bumpy transitions and it could use a soundtrack, but it is also surprisingly funny and insightful as it chews through a ton of story and character development in its short, entertaining seventy-three-minute runtime. |
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Post by topbilled on Apr 24, 2023 15:38:35 GMT
Night After Night from 1932 with George Raft, Constance Cummings, Alison Skipworth, Mae West and Wynne Gibson
We will be looking at THE HOUSE ON 56TH STREET during the Live on Sunday series in May...and in that film, Kay Francis returns to her old Park Avenue mansion after a stint in prison. It too has been turned into a speakeasy, and since she no longer has money, she takes a job there as a card dealer. So it's kind of interesting to see how some of these themes are repeated in stories at other studios. |
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 24, 2023 15:51:59 GMT
Night After Night from 1932 with George Raft, Constance Cummings, Alison Skipworth, Mae West and Wynne Gibson
We will be looking at THE HOUSE ON 56TH STREET during the Live on Sunday series in May...and in that film, Kay Francis returns to her old Park Avenue mansion after a stint in prison. It too has been turned into a speakeasy, and since she no longer has money, she takes a job there as a card dealer. So it's kind of interesting to see how some of these themes are repeated in stories at other studios. |
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Post by topbilled on May 11, 2023 13:45:59 GMT
This neglected film is from 1955.
Glory and adulation
Anna Magnani might be an acquired taste for some. Her performances tend to be overripe and at this point of her career, she still didn’t have full command of the English language. So it’s no surprise she delivers large chunks of dialogue in her native Italian. That in itself is fine, since she’s playing an immigrant woman.
But Miss Magnani is so forcefully dramatic that all subtlety is lost in the role. One starts to think this woman can’t even walk into the kitchen for a cup of coffee or use the toilet without it becoming a huge event. It would’ve been nice if producer Hal Wallis had asked director Daniel Mann to reign the actress in a bit, so we have some variety of human emotion that indicates how a housewife normally behaves day to day.
Yes, I understand…some people are high maintenance and everything that happens to them occurs at top volume. But it sort of becomes exhausting to watch what amounts to serious overacting. It also doesn’t help that leading man Burt Lancaster fails to convey any subtlety with his characterization. As a result we have two extreme scene stealers operating full throttle, trying to outdo each other.
Fortunately Mr. Lancaster doesn’t appear until the 52-minute mark. If we had to endure two hours of them going at it, then it might have been unbearable.
The reason I believe Magnani earned the Oscar, and deservedly so, is that despite the amped up shouting, she does register considerable earthiness. Also, she seems to comprehend the crux of the drama, which is that a long-suffering wife who gave her “rose” of a husband all the glory and adulation in the world, was horribly betrayed. So we have grief prolonged, that gives way to embarrassment.
Per Tennessee Williams’ conception of the character she has to experience public humiliation in order to reach humility. The church scenes where she confronts the local priest (Sandro Giglio) about her husband’s confessions is probably the best part. We can see how difficult acceptance and forgiveness will be for her.
I also feel Marisa Pavan does quite well as the daughter experiencing growing pains in this dysfunctional household. There are tender, understated moments between Miss Pavan and Ben Cooper who plays her sailor boyfriend. To be honest, this part of the story reminded me of the invalid daughter and gentleman caller in Williams’ earlier masterpiece, The Glass Menagerie.
Mr. Cooper is suitably attractive, and he is able to generate the requisite amount of sincerity needed for the role. We want Pavan’s character to find lasting happiness with him. There’s a great scene where the boyfriend is made to kneel and pray to a statue of the Virgin, vowing he’ll keep the daughter’s innocence intact until marriage.
In the original Broadway stage production, a young Don Murray played the sailor, and Maureen Stapleton had Magnani’s role. Interestingly, Stapleton took a supporting part under Magnani in THE FUGITIVE KIND in 1960, which was also written by Williams.
I did appreciate this film as a legitimate piece of theater turned into cinema. But I also got a bit of a headache from the loud stereotypes.
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Post by topbilled on May 17, 2023 13:30:47 GMT
This neglected film is from 1944.
“I’ve done things I wouldn’t do in a nightmare!”
Sidney Lanfield directed a series of light romantic comedies at Paramount in the 1940s. He had already directed Paulette Goddard in a previous film, so this was a reunion for them. It was also a reunion for Goddard and leading man Fred MacMurray who had worked together in Paramount’s action drama THE FOREST RANGERS two years earlier. They shared excellent chemistry and it’s no wonder the studio wanted to pair them up again.
STANDING ROOM ONLY is a frothier concoction. Goddard is employed at an Indiana toy factory. She toils on an assembly line putting wooden donkeys together (what else) when one of the top execs (MacMurray) makes an appearance. All the women swoon over MacMurray, though he is engaged to the owner’s daughter (Hillary Brooke). After MacMurray returns to the front office, one of the foremen notices that Goddard is making mistakes and this is the third time she’s received a warning. Goddard is sent to the office to be fired.
At the office, we see Brooke visiting her father (Edward Arnold). Brooke realizes that MacMurray, her fiance, has an attractive looking secretary and she prevails upon her father to sack the secretary. While this is happening, Goddard shows up to collect her pay. In the waiting area, she learns that MacMurray’s secretary is getting the heave-ho, so she angles her way into that position, because she needs a new job.
There are some genuinely funny bits here as Goddard invents her own made-up shorthand and quickly joins MacMurray on a business trip to Washington D.C. And so the basic scenario is established. From here things become increasingly outlandish, in a good way, as motion picture comedies go. There’s a housing shortage in the nation’s capital. We are told that a million people in 1944 need accommodations there, but the city only has housing for 150,000.
This is worth noting, because Goddard fouls up the hotel reservations. Now that they cannot stay at the hotel and cannot even find a room to rent in D.C., they must sleep in the park during a massive rainstorm. In order to get out of the cold, Goddard finds accommodations for them the next morning by answering an ad for domestic help at a swanky mansion. The place is owned by Anne Revere and Roland Young, who have a field day playing a couple experiencing gender role reversals. While Revere is a Major off helping with the war effort, Young functions as the main housekeeper and he finds time to cozy up to Goddard.
Part of the fun during this sequence is MacMurray not realizing that Goddard has told Young and Revere he’s a butler, and that Goddard is a cook and is also MacMurray’s wife. When MacMurray realizes the terms under which they are staying in this nice warm dry home, he is incredulous. But then he realizes they don’t have a choice and he actually admires Goddard for her resourcefulness.
At this point the story becomes a satire on class differences and social manners. And most of it is quite clever. Goddard is just as inept as a cook as she was at being a secretary and assembly line worker. But somehow, she is a good luck charm for MacMurray…the man (Clarence Kolb) he came to see in Washington to secure an important contract is coming over for dinner. This will give him a chance to try and pitch his ideas to Kolb.
Complicating matters, turning this into a grand farce, is the arrival of Arnold and Brooke who are shocked to learn that MacMurray is now employed as a servant. Of course, Brooke loses MacMurray to Goddard in the romantic sweepstakes, no surprise there, and miraculously, everything turns out okay in the end. The contract is secured, and we know that everyone will go back to the midwest better off.
As studio fluff with a wartime theme, STANDING ROOM ONLY delivers some amusing situations with considerable laughs. Working together, the characters are able to overcome the odds. Goddard is an unusual secret weapon MacMurray uses in obtaining victory.
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Post by topbilled on May 26, 2023 14:16:40 GMT
This neglected film is from 1933.
Heroism, demons and death
Carole Lombard’s participation in this Paramount flick about WWI aviation is rather unique. She is cast against type as a seductive nightclub patron; her character isn’t given a name (she’s just listed in the credits as ‘The Beautiful Lady’); and she first appears at the 46-minute mark. Her extended sequence ends at the 53-minute mark, which means she only clocks in seven minutes of screen time. Yet when the studio reissued the title in 1939, its advertising played up Lombard’s involvement.
The studio also played up Mitchell Leisen’s contribution. The original print listed him as associate director, but the re-release bumped him up to co-director since he was now red hot at Paramount, directing hit after hit and establishing himself as a well-regarded set designer.
Paramount’s initial choice to helm THE EAGLE AND THE HAWK was William Wellman who’d scored a triumph with 1927’s WINGS, which earned an Oscar. It’s probably a good thing Wellman turned it down. He no doubt would have expanded the story to make it more epic and probably would have included more aerial sequences. Part of what makes the film work is its quaint charm and restraint.
Fredric March and Cary Grant portray rival flyers during the war in 1917, who consider each other ‘dirty deuces.’ March is an American who’s joined up with a British flying squadron. He and Grant, and another American pilot (the wisecracking Jack Oakie) are sent to France. They fly missions close to the ground, taking photos of German troop movements.
Because they operate so close to the enemy on the ground, they run a greater risk of being shot. March loses five copilots, when his aircraft is shot up on successive missions. He starts to become haunted by the experiences; and in fact, March delivers some of the best acting of his career when his character suffers a mental breakdown.
To help March regroup, the unit’s Major (Sir Guy Standing) sends March to London for a short leave. There he meets Lombard, then returns to France re-energized. Nothing like a quickie precode affair to make things better!
In France again, March meets up with Oakie who is dying after a tragic flight. March blames Grant for Oakie’s death, and they fall out after having earlier reached a slight truce. March goes up again and another one of his copilots is killed. When he lands, March really loses it this time and during a party, he goes off to his room and commits suicide.
Grant discovers March’s dead body a short time later. As a true pal, Grant takes March up in a plane early the next morning and shoots him with artillery to make it seem as if March died in combat. It’s a dramatic way to end the story, an ironic comment on heroism, demons and death.
Except for the lighter comic relief with Oakie and the romantic interlude with Lombard, this is a hard-hitting and unflinching account of the noble and ‘generous’ sacrifices made in war. It’s a perfect movie to watch on Memorial Day weekend.
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Post by Fading Fast on May 26, 2023 14:34:13 GMT
I'll open where Topbilled closed in his outstanding review: "It’s a perfect movie to watch on Memorial Day weekend."
 The Eagle and the Hawk from 1933 with Fredric March, Cary Grant, Jack Oakie and Carole Lombard
The Eagle and the Hawk deserves to be better known today for its powerfully realistic portrayal of the mental and physical toll aerial combat takes on the pilots and their crews.
Its depictions of the horrors of war makes it an anti-war film, but not in the self-congratulatory and, often, smug way so many anti-war movies do. Instead, it shows more and, other than a few brief speeches, tells less, leaving the viewer to decide what to think.
Few men of goodwill today think young men killing other young men for God, King or country should be celebrated, but no one has yet come up with a way to stop the Hitlers or Putins of the world without having young men and, now, women killing other young men and women.
The Eagle and the Hawk takes a hard look at some of these issues as it follows a few enlistees fighting for the British Royal Flying Corps in World War I.
Fredric March, in a moving performance, plays a thoughtfully enthusiastic young pilot who quickly loses his taste for war after his gunner (March pilots a two-man reconnaissance plane) is killed in his first flight.
Cary Grant plays an arrogant gungho gunner who dislikes March for washing him out as a pilot at flight school where March was his instructor. Not improving things, March, when these two meet up again at an airdrome in France, has already become cynical about war.
Finally, Jack Oakie plays to type as the comedic pilot, but even he shows a thoughtful reserve underneath his jockular exterior. He jokes, but he really just wants to survive.
As time goes on, these men are changed by the exhaustion of killing others and seeing their friends - men they fly with, bunk with, share a beer with and chat with about their girlfriends - killed daily.
This is where The Eagle and the Hawk shines as you understand how March and Grant each brought his own mindset into the war, but you also understand how their experiences slowly change them.
March, a highly intelligent and educated man, saw a nobility and honor in war when he started. Yet after seeing so many friends get killed and, then, seeing up close, a German pilot he killed - a young handsome kid - he no longer sees honor or nobility in it.
He never says it, but he seems to understand that the war still has to be fought and won, but it is now a distasteful task for him where honors, medals and even slaps on the back for shooting down the enemy depress him.
Grant's transition is equally moving as he came in arrogant and bitter with a bloodlust to kill the enemy. He starts out as a thoroughly dislikeable man; the Cary Grant "brand" had not yet been created.
He initially views March's newfound antipathy to killing as weak and disloyal, but the day-to-day experience of war changes Grant, too, as he slowly comes to respect March.
There's a short scene where March, on leave in London, meets a young woman played by Carole Lombard who is interested in him because he's the only military man not bragging about his exploits. He's a man who doesn't want to be feted as the hero he clearly is.
She's like an anti-war groupie as most of the women are attracted to the braggarts, but Lombard "gives herself" to March the night they meet because he isn't proud of his war exploits.
It's an odd but effective way to echo the movie's theme. Plus, despite Lombard's part being small, it gave the producers the ability to put the name of a female star near the top of the credits.
The Eagle and the Hawk's climax (no spoilers coming) is dramatic and moving. Directors Stuart Walker and Mitchell Leisen powerfully juxtapose a group celebration with one man's anguish, followed by an unlikely but touching honorarium. It's an ending that will stay with you.
For 1933, the aerial combat scenes are realistic and quite gripping. You feel as if you are up with the crew in one of their ridiculously fragile planes that are armed to the teeth with, effectively, machine and gatling guns.
It is nuts how much firepower these almost delicate planes have as everyone shoots at everyone else. When the bullets rip through the plane and one of the men slumps over, you understand how cruelly insane it all is.
The 1930s produced several fine and realistic anti-war movies based on WWI, with some, like All Quiet on the Western Front and Dawn Patrol, still talked about today.
Unfortunately, The Eagle and the Hawk has fallen off that radar, but because of its poignantly honest look at the toll aerial combat takes on the young men who fight our wars, it deserves to be rediscovered by film fans and critics today.
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