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Post by topbilled on Feb 17, 2023 15:33:21 GMT
This neglected film is from 1938.
Nice drawn characters and sparkling performances
This is a gem of a movie. The characters are so believably presented and so expertly performed that it’s easy to overlook some of the more far-fetched aspects of the plot. Not that it’s too outrageous, but this is after all, a political satire.
In some ways the premise is not outdated. We still have an oligarchy running our government today, represented by moneyed families that find ways to put their relatives into office– to protect their big business interests and other capitalistic enterprises. We also have a working class poor and a marginalized segment of society struggling to gain a toehold in political parties, in order to turn the proverbial tide in their favor.
Our story has William Powell cast as a third-generation butler of a wealthy count (Henry Stephenson) who has been in his excellency’s employ for a dozen years. The count is a long-standing parliamentarian who gives vague and uninspired annual speeches to placate the masses and ensure re-election. Only this time, he has a new opponent.
Powell has been elected as a new member of parliament to claim a vacated seat for the labor party. In the law-making chamber, Powell seeks to attack his boss’s weak domestic policies.
Part of the humor comes in the fact that Powell refuses to quit his job as a butler. So there is still this pre-established relationship between the two men at the count’s estate. But in town, they remain adversaries. In addition to this, we have Powell’s ongoing relationships with the count’s silly but imperious wife (Helen Westley) and their daughter (French actress Annabella in her U.S. film debut).
The daughter is married to a slick baron (Joseph Schildkraut). Some of what happens involves a triangle between Powell, Schildkraut and Annabella. We learn Powell has wanted to improve his station in life, to impress the count’s daughter, since he secretly adores her despite her spoiled behavior. There is a great scene near the end where Powell finally confesses his feelings for the lovely lady. She realizes she shares these feelings, and that her marriage to Schildkraut has been a sham.
This is a comedy about politics, a comedy of manners, a comedy with romance, and a comedy that is able to delight audiences with its nicely drawn characters and its sparkling performances.
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Post by topbilled on Feb 24, 2023 13:48:33 GMT
This neglected film is from 1933.
Overlooked Best Picture winner
This may be the most overlooked Best Picture winner. It contains marvelous acting, lavish sets and dialogue from Noel Coward’s hit play…and there are many other noteworthy elements.
The story begins at the turn of the twentieth century. On New Year’s Day 1900, Britain is in the midst of the Second Boer War– a situation that affects a wealthy upper class couple, played by Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook; as well as their servants, Herbert Mundin and Una O’Connor.
Both husbands are heading off to Africa on military duty, leaving the women and children behind. Wynyard and Brook have two young sons, while Mundin and O’Connor have an infant daughter. There is also a friend of Wynyard’s (Irene Browne) who has a young daughter. Though we don’t realize it in this initial phase of the story, the girls will become the love interests of the two sons when they grow up.
While the men are away fighting, the women do their best to soldier on at home. There’s a scene inside a London theater where Wynyard and Browne are watching a musical performance one afternoon. The splashy number is interrupted with news that the Second Boer War is over. The men are coming home. The women are greatly relieved, but wonder if things can go back to how they were before.
After the men return from the war, life seems to have changed for everyone. Mundin and O’Connor have managed to save enough money to buy a pub, so they quit their jobs and move away. In scenes that follow, it’s revealed Mundin is drinking up all the profits and has become an alcoholic. There’s a poignant reunion between Wynyard and O’Connor when Wynyard stops in at the pub one day to see how they are getting on…she learns about the problems that have befallen her former employees.
Wynyard leaves, and a terrible tragedy occurs. Mundin drunkenly runs out into the street and is trampled to death by an oncoming horse and carriage. O’Connor is able to retain ownership of the pub, but decides her daughter (Bonita Granville) who has shown a flair for dancing, will have a better life.
With the passage of time we flash ahead a few years. The Marryots’ oldest son (John Warburton) is courting the daughter (Margaret Lindsay) of his mother’s best friend. They are soon engaged to marry.
However, their happiness is short lived when they take a honeymoon on the Titanic. Yes, these characters seem to experience all of world history.
Before long there is another international conflict– war against Germany. The second son (Frank Lawton) happily enlists along with his father. While on a furlough, he falls in love with a dance hall girl. She happens to be his childhood playmate, the former servants’ now grown daughter (Ursula Jeans).
A nicely performed scene occurs when Wynyard sees her son off to battle in Europe. It is reminiscent of a scene earlier in the movie when she had seen her husband off to war in Africa.
As the characters evolve through the years a cavalcade of human emotions parade across their faces. Miss Wynyard’s character seems to anchor the drama. We witness her noble sacrifices and see her suffering as these events take a toll on her.
The actress gives an Oscar-nominated performance in this movie. She should have received the award. Not to slight Katharine Hepburn’s work in MORNING GLORY, but I think Wynyard had a much more challenging role here and she delivers on every level.
The moment where she is visited by O’Connor and they learn the youngest son was killed in action by the Germans– is the scene that cinched it for me.
The production is meticulous in every detail. All the roles have been carefully cast. The WWI montage in the middle of the film is a remarkable achievement in special effects and editing. Also, director Frank Lloyd was able to eliminate a lot of the staginess of the original play. As a result, we have a unique look at civilized society and its indomitable spirit as seen through the eyes of these characters.
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Post by Fading Fast on Feb 24, 2023 14:57:08 GMT
Note, this is one of many outstanding movies Topbilled introduced me to.
Cavalcade from 1933 with Diana Wynyard, Clive Brooks, Una O'Connor and Herbert Mundin
Even for fans of Classic Hollywood, 1933's Cavalcade falls short of its Best Oscar winning expectations, but it is still an outstanding effort that captures the sweep of thirty tumultuous years of the British Empire.
Starting in 1900 and using an "upstairs-downstairs" construct, we follow the lives of the upper-class Marryot family (father and mother played by Clive Brooks and Diana Wynyard) and their lower-class servants, represented by the married Bridges, the Marryot's butler (played by Herbert Mundin) and head housekeeper (Una O'Connor).
Cavalcade opens with the Boer war and then moves through Queen Victoria's passing in 1901, the peak Empire years of pre-WWI, the Titanic tragedy, the hell of WWI, the Jazz-Age 1920s and the hopes of the early 1930s.
We see the Marryot's and Bridges' fathers and sons go off to wars. Some return even prouder of the Empire, while others, of course, never return. The Bridges leave "service" having bought a business as they attempt to "move up" in the world. The children are raised, houses redecorated, alcoholism smashes one family, World War I reshuffles everything and then the 1920s partying hits.
Cavalcade is people being people with their hopes and dreams and kindness and meanness, but to a modern audience what most stands out is how the English people saw themselves in a particular way when the Empire was at its peak. They took pride in just being a part of the Empire in an English way that is different from how Americans, with their focus on individuality, saw themselves in the second half of the twentieth century when America was ascendant.
Queen Victoria was more than just the titular head of state, she meant something to the English people in a way that leaders do not anymore. Dying in battle was still a great individual and familial loss, but many saw those efforts as part of the cost and glory of "Rule Britannia." Yet we see, as the toll of wars add up, people begin to question the cost of that "Rule." Those doubts would flourish in post WWII England.
At the end, in 1933, the now elderly mother and father of the Marryot family - having suffered much loss and experienced much joy over the past thirty-plus years - toast the New Year with hesitant hope. With the Depression just having started and WWII too far away to see, we know what they don't - the cavalcade is only going to get much rockier from here.
Thirty years of very busy history is a lot for one movie to tackle, especially as Hollywood was still figuring out "talkies." Based on a Noel Coward play, Cavalcade, oftentimes, feels stagey, while at other times, janky with its awkward transitions to show the passage of time. Yet, conversely, its use of montages is effective at capturing a period's zeitgeist.
Cavalcade was an ambitious undertaking for 1933 Hollywood that mostly works. However, compared to other much-more-famous movies of the 1930s, you can see why Cavalcade, with its "British Empire" theme, "stagey" feel and dated production techniques, has been "forgotten." Still, for old-movie fans, it is a picture that's well worth seeing.
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Post by topbilled on Mar 6, 2023 15:18:13 GMT
This neglected film is from 1957.
Neither the sea nor Burton shall have her
For some reason this film has remained with me, long after my initial viewing of it. When I sat down to rewatch it recently, I discovered why. Part of its charm is that at its heart, it’s a profound character study. We also get a sense of each person’s spirit.
I also realized during my second viewing that it resembles a few other 20th Century Fox motion pictures I enjoy. For instance, there’s a ship explosion near the beginning with passengers scrambling into lifeboats for safety. I wouldn’t be surprised if these were the same boats and extras seen in TITANIC (1953).
When our lead characters, played by Richard Burton and Joan Collins, hop into an inflatable raft and drift off, this part reminded me of Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr in HEAVEN KNOWS MR. ALLISON (1957). Especially when they make their way to an uncharted island and must survive by working together. Another similarity here is that Deborah Kerr’s character is a nun, and so is Joan Collins’ character.
There are some differences in this story. Burton and Collins are joined in the raft by two other wreckage survivors. One is a prejudiced old English gent (Basil Sydney), and the other is a young black man (Cy Grant). This part of the movie seems to draw on Hitchcock’s LIFEBOAT (1944). One of these supporting characters has a very memorable on screen death that predates JAWS.
Another difference is that Collins, unlike Kerr, doesn’t mention she’s a nun. She hides this important information from Burton. She has a reason for keeping it secret. Though one wonders if the real reason is because she might like to stay on the island forever with Burton, as his wife.
This brings me to the title. None of the four main characters go by their given names. The old man is called Mr. Bulldog, presumably because he acts like one. The black man is known as Number 4, since he was the fourth person to get into the raft. Burton is called Biscuit because he brought a tin of biscuits (cookies) along with him, which they ate to stay alive at sea. And Collins is known as Sea Wife.
At one point, Burton tells Collins his given Christian name to get closer to her, but she doesn’t reveal her Christian name.
Collins tries to maintain a physical distance from Burton. There isn’t even one kiss shared between them, though they do press their bodies against each other during a raging storm. The end of the film is quite poignant. Burton is trying to find Collins some time after they’ve been rescued by a ship. He is told by the other survivor that Sea Wife died.
Of course we know she didn’t exactly die. She has donned her nun’s habit again and gone back to God.
One final note…during the 1985-86 season of Dynasty, Joan Collins’ character Alexis dressed up as a nun to escape some guerrillas in war torn Moldavia. Alexis was far from holy. I wonder what it felt like for Collins to take up the habit again all those years later. I suppose it is nun of my business. I will end this review now and go find a biscuit to have with my tea.
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Post by sagebrush on Mar 6, 2023 23:49:01 GMT
This neglected film is from 1957.
Neither the sea nor Burton shall have her
.....One final note…during the 1985-86 season of Dynasty, Joan Collins’ character Alexis dressed up as a nun to escape some guerrillas in war torn Moldavia. Alexis was far from holy. I wonder what it felt like for Collins to take up the habit again all those years later. I suppose it is nun of my business. I will end this review now and go find a biscuit to have with my tea.
Ha -"Nun of my business." That made me laugh!  |
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Post by topbilled on Mar 16, 2023 15:09:10 GMT
This neglected film is from 1947.
Moss Rose by any other name
When I first viewed MOSS ROSE a few years ago, I enjoyed it but couldn’t quite accept Fox contract player Victor Mature in a Victorian setting. Perhaps because I tend to associate him with Betty Grable musicals and SAMSON AND DELILAH.
But when I watched MOSS ROSE again recently, I found Mature to be more than adequate…in fact, it made sense they had cast him as a half-Italian, half-British man that had been raised in Canada. After all, Mature whose family name is Maturi, was a second generation Italian-American.
Another item I originally questioned was Mature playing Ethel Barrymore’s son, since she seems considerably more refined. Though the story does explain how his father took him away from her as a small boy, so he technically wasn’t reared by her.
Off camera, Victor Mature’s agent was Myron Selznick, brother of producer David Selznick who had Miss Barrymore under contract and had loaned her to Fox for this production. So that explains why Barrymore and Mature seem to get on so well in this story, as they were probably familiar with each other before working together.
I do like how prominent Barrymore is in this picture. Often she’s assigned supporting roles with limited screen time, typically as an invalid at this phase of her career. But in MOSS ROSE she plays an active role, and she is quite villainous…she may look like a kind old lady, but cross this gal at your own peril!
The top-billed star of the picture is Irish import Peggy Cummins. What I’ve always liked about Miss Cummins in all her movies is how she’s a real beauty but has a natural flair for character roles. She gives a very spirited and engaging performance here as a chorus girl who discovers the death of her best friend, another chorine.
While the police are looking for the killer, Cummins spots wealthy Mature who had been seeing the dead girl. It doesn’t take long for Cummins to decide to use this to her advantage, since she knows Mature would become a person of interest in the investigation, if not the main suspect. The scenes where she visits Mature at his hotel room and blackmails him are uproarious…she’s a novice at this sordid negotiating, but her scheme proves successful.
Cummins’ character does not want money to stay quiet. Instead, she will keep her mouth closed and not offer up incriminating testimony, if Mature will take her to his mother’s luxurious countryside estate. You see, Cummins has always wanted to be a lady of society. Hobnobbing with Mature’s mother (Barrymore), as well as Mature’s upper crust fiancee (Patricia Medina) will allow her to indulge in this fantasy.
The scene where Cummins arrives at the estate and Barrymore gets one look at her is even more hilarious than the blackmailing. This girl is in way over her head but somehow she charms everyone.
A short time later things turn sinister, when Medina’s character ends up dead…in much the same way that the murder of the chorine had occurred in London. When these women die, they have supposedly been praying and a moss rose (hence the title) is used to mark a certain passage in their bibles.
When the inspector (Vincent Price) and his assistant (Rhys Williams) arrive to investigate the strange death, they collect circumstantial evidence, as well as the bible and the rose. In an intriguing scene, Price learns that Barrymore is very proud of her flowers, and he notices she’s been growing a bunch of moss roses.
By this point, the audience surmises that Barrymore is the bible killer who leaves the flowers behind…but dense Price arrests Mature, believing him to be the culprit. Meanwhile Mature has realized he loves Cummins, and though she’s scared and wants to leave, she decides to stick by his side.
Barrymore discovers that Cummins will now be marrying her son, and she wants her son all to herself. So she quickly arranges to commit another murder.
Fortunately, Barrymore’s attempt to kill Cummins is foiled. This means Mature is off the hook, and he’s free to marry Cummins. The narrative wraps up rather quickly, but it is still nonetheless quite satisfying. Barrymore gives the best performance, but they are all wonderful. I am looking forward to watching this film again.
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Post by Fading Fast on Mar 16, 2023 16:15:47 GMT
That's a really good review of a movie I had never heard of and adds another one to the long list of movies I want to see.
I like Peggy Cummins in everything I've seen her in, but she'll always be the insane girl from "Gun Crazy" to me.
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Post by topbilled on Mar 27, 2023 14:17:29 GMT
This neglected film is from 1954.
Garden party
The story begins with a group of American men drifting into a Mexican town near Acapulco. They are delayed on their way to California and have a few days to find something to do. They step into a cantina and see young, pretty Rita Moreno dance.
While she entertains them, the men down a few drinks and strike up a conversation. The leader of this group is Gary Cooper, somewhat past his prime. We learn he’s a former sheriff, and he’s rather tightlipped about his old life. The second American is a gambler, portrayed by Richard Widmark, who likes to find out about other people he meets, including how much money they might have. Then there’s the third guy, a bounty hunter who is perhaps a bit more rugged, played by Cameron Mitchell.
Part of what makes this trio interesting is the fact that our three lead actors have such different performance styles. Widmark and Mitchell are method actors, with Widmark exhibiting his usual propensity for scenery chewing, though he does dial it down somewhat. But Gary Cooper is anything but a method actor, a more natural aw-shucks type of performer whose scene choices may ironically be much more deliberate than his costars…though he is slow to bring things to the surface, unlike the other two who quickly reveal their bag of tricks and burn out.
A fourth man appears in the story. He is a Mexican film star, Victor Manuel Mendoza, who seems to be there to give the proceedings some authentic ‘flavor.’ Mendoza was a popular star in Mexico who first achieved fame in the late 1930s and made many hit films in the 1940s, winning major awards as a leading man. But by this stage of his career, he was transitioning to character roles. GARDEN OF EVIL was one of a few Hollywood westerns he did.
Into this mix we have Susan Hayward as a feisty woman, what else, who comes riding into town looking for some help. She wants to hire the men for an important mission since they have time to spare. She has a husband (Hugh Marlowe) who’s trapped in a gold mine near a recently erupted volcano, and she needs their assistance to pull her husband out. She will pay the men well for their troubles.
Much of the first half of the film involves Miss Hayward’s efforts to take the men to the mine. On the way, director Henry Hathaway and cinematographer Milton Krasner treat us to quite a few beautiful Mexican vistas. All the scenic images are enhanced by 20th Century Fox’s new CinemaScope technology. This was one of the first Fox pictures shot primarily outdoors, exploiting the CinemaScope lens and what it could capture.
Looking at it now, CinemaScope seems like a gimmicky optical illusion. In order to provide more panoramic-type images, the process sacrifices anything extra it captures on the left and right side of the ‘extended’ screen by losing some of what appears at the top and bottom. The result is a sort of super compressed or flattened visual feel.
Cooper had made several films with Hathaway at Paramount in the 1930s, and this would be their last collaboration together. However, Hayward, who had already made the western RAWHIDE with Hathaway would go on to make another one with him at the end of the decade, 1959’s WOMAN OBSESSED. It helps that the leads not only work well with each other, but that they are comfortable working under a director they already know from previous movie projects.
The story itself isn’t too deep. We know that once they reach the mine, there will be temptation and possible betrayal if some of the men want to get their hands on the treasure themselves. Saving Hayward’s husband will be a secondary concern.
And while Hayward’s husband is still alive, we can guess he won’t live very long in this world especially when they come across some natives on the warpath. For if the husband survives, then Hayward won’t get a happy ending with Coop. And yes, that’s where it’s all headed.
This film isn’t a bad way to spend 100 minutes. But it isn’t exactly the best way to spend it either…unless you are a fan of CinemaScope and countless scenes of Susan Hayward outriding the men, then the garden of evil will be your paradise.
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Post by topbilled on Apr 1, 2023 15:16:06 GMT
This neglected film is from 1951.
A tale of treason
I am not too well-versed on Rommel’s career or the German military strategies that were waged against the British and its allies during the second world war. But I don’t think a casual viewer watching this film needs to know all those things. The film is fairly easy to follow. Producer-writer Nunnally Johnson provides us with a nicely paced script, which is based on a biography about the famous field marshal of the third reich. The book was a bestseller and had been written by Lt. Col. Desmond Young.
Young was a member of the British Indian Army who crossed paths with Rommel, and he appears as himself in this carefully mounted 20th Century Fox production. Key passages of the story are narrated by Fox contract player Michael Rennie, who is supposed to be speaking in Young’s “voice” since these are Young’s own studies and thoughts about Rommel. Young had interviewed Rommel’s widow Frau Lucie, played by Jessica Tandy.
For her part, Tandy does an effective job conveying a housewife who stands by her man all the way, even if he is standing by Hitler and they have their doubts about Hitler. Lucie and Erwin Rommel are depicted as high-ranking members of the Nazi party who ironically oppose Nazism. This characterization by Young has led to myths about Rommel which is a topic of considerable discussion.
This is a postwar propaganda piece…a piece about a “good” German who was a close friend of Hitler’s in the early days and still led troops that defeated the Allied forces on several important battle fronts.
Perhaps it is easy to glorify the Rommels here, because we want to believe there had to be at least one German officer and his wife who were not Hitlerian puppets. There had to be one couple that was able to think critically and decide on their own terms not to support the barbarism of Der Fuhrer. A major component of this film is that the Rommels are committing treason. However, it’s a form of treason that British and American movie audiences in 1951 would have applauded.
Part of the film’s purpose is to generate sympathy for the Rommels. And the way James Mason and Jessica Tandy choose to play their scenes does help elicit sympathy, especially when they are interacting with a doctor (Cedric Hardwicke) who wants them to endorse a plan to kill Hitler (Luther Adler).
Going along with such a plan would undoubtedly put the Rommels at odds with their closest associates within the Nazi party. There is even a suggestion in an early scene that the Rommels’ son might be under the thumb of the Nazis, which would make him an enemy of his parents.
This is a different sort of role for Tandy. She is the only credited female in the entire cast…though there is one uncredited woman with limited dialogue who plays the Rommels’ maid. Tandy gets a chance to stand out a bit because she is providing the only real vantage point for women that may be in the audience watching.
Shot in a semi-documentary style, we get staged scenes intercut with the newsreel footage…all of it emphasizing the seriousness of war. At first I found this a bit gimmicky and tedious, but as the story continued, I decided that I liked the flavor of actual history that the news clips provide.
Do I consider the Rommels heroic? Well, I don’t exactly think they are like the Von Trapps in THE SOUND OF MUSIC. But from a dramatic standpoint, I enjoy the irony their situation brings to the screen. Incidentally, the studio made a follow-up two years later, THE DESERT RATS (1953), which is a prequel. In that later film Mason returns as Rommel, in active battle along the northern part of Africa. He speaks more German in the second film, and he is a bit more villainous. That’s because he hadn’t yet become a treasonous hero.
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Post by topbilled on Apr 10, 2023 13:06:14 GMT
This neglected film is from 1946.
What is it all for?
I’ve always felt Somerset Maugham’s stories were so full of finely detailed situations, involving the most complex characters, that it’s almost impossible to do justice to his writing on screen. However, I think 20th Century Fox’s superb cinematic adaptation of ‘The Razor’s Edge’ does a remarkably decent job.
It helps that producer Darryl Zanuck has hired director Edmund Goulding to helm the project, since Goulding is an old pro at classy melodramas. It also helps that some of the studio’s very best, most attractive young actors are cast in the four main roles: Tyrone Power, Gene Tierney, John Payne and Anne Baxter.
Plus we have skilled character actors in the supporting roles: Clifton Webb, Herbert Marshall, Lucile Watson and Elsa Lanchester. Everyone is more than up to the task of putting the material across in the most accessible way possible…keeping it understandable for the masses while ensuring none of Maugham’s intelligent ideas are lost.
A few scenes are a tad too lengthy. Editing could have trimmed a few minutes from the nearly two and a half hour running time, without sacrificing any of the drama’s essence or impact.
The first half spends a little too much time focusing on the relationship between the characters played by Power and Tierney. This means the rest of the ensemble, except for Webb, don’t really get a chance to shine until the story expands in the second half. These are minor quibbles.
The best performances are the two Oscar nominated ones. Webb is pitch perfect as a sissified society snob who wants to bring glory to his friends, in the hopes that it will bring glory to himself. He plays a boffo deathbed scene near the end with the right combination of tragedy and redemption.
The other Oscar caliber performance is the one rendered by Anne Baxter, who took home the best supporting actress trophy, as well as a Golden Globe award. She projects her character’s fragility and depravity in several stunning scenes. The most noteworthy moment occurs inside an opium den.
What I love about this film, what’s at the heart of Maughaum’s writing, is how interconnected everyone’s lives are, including their spiritual salvation. Yet things still divide people like money, social standing and careers. At the end, we must ask ourselves, what is it all for?
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 10, 2023 13:21:43 GMT
⇧ That's a really insightful and well-written review of a very good movie that also nails its biggest flaw - a dragged-out first half.
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Post by topbilled on Apr 10, 2023 13:41:28 GMT
⇧ That's a really insightful and well-written review of a very good movie that also nails its biggest flaw - a dragged-out first half.
While I would not have cut the scene entirely, I would have just condensed it into a thirty second montage, where we see them going out, arriving at the club, having dinner, dancing, etc. Just quick scenes with music and no dialogue. The more important part is what happens after dinner, when he is dropping her off and she invites him upstairs.
I also thought they spent too much time on Power's scenes with the mystic guru in the Himalayas. A lot of that could have been shortened, and edited down into another montage. All we need to know is that he is off in India, seeking answers about the meaning of his life and existence in general. The film just sort of stops when he is in India. I know it's an important part of understanding who he is and who he is in the process of becoming...but the film is much more interesting if we skip ahead to the point after his conversion, and we see him trying to help his troubled friends. |
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 10, 2023 14:04:30 GMT
⇧ That's a really insightful and well-written review of a very good movie that also nails its biggest flaw - a dragged-out first half.
While I would not have cut the scene entirely, I would have just condensed it into a thirty second montage, where we see them going out, arriving at the club, having dinner, dancing, etc. Just quick scenes with music and no dialogue. The more important part is what happens after dinner, when he is dropping her off and she invites him upstairs.
I also thought they spent too much time on Power's scenes with the mystic guru in the Himalayas. A lot of that could have been shortened, and edited down into another montage. All we need to know is that he is off in India, seeking answers about the meaning of his life and existence in general. The film just sort of stops when he is in India. I know it's an important part of understanding who he is and who he is in the process of becoming...but the film is much more interesting if we skip ahead to the point after his conversion, and we see him trying to help his troubled friends.
That would definitely tighten-up and shorten-up the movie. It's been awhile, but I remember those scenes with the guru being painful. |
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Post by topbilled on Apr 10, 2023 14:13:22 GMT
There is one scene I would have changed in the first half...it's the scene where Tierney and Power go out to dinner in Paris, before she takes him back to her uncle's place and debates whether to seduce him. It felt like the whole point of the dinner scene was to show off an elaborate set and play up the romance between Tierney and Power. But it goes on for about five to seven minutes, and I found it incredibly boring. We already know they are in a relationship, there is no need to convince the audience they are romantic with each other.
While I would not have cut the scene entirely, I would have just condensed it into a thirty second montage, where we see them going out, arriving at the club, having dinner, dancing, etc. Just quick scenes with music and no dialogue. The more important part is what happens after dinner, when he is dropping her off and she invites him upstairs.
I also thought they spent too much time on Power's scenes with the mystic guru in the Himalayas. A lot of that could have been shortened, and edited down into another montage. All we need to know is that he is off in India, seeking answers about the meaning of his life and existence in general. The film just sort of stops when he is in India. I know it's an important part of understanding who he is and who he is in the process of becoming...but the film is much more interesting if we skip ahead to the point after his conversion, and we see him trying to help his troubled friends.
That would definitely tighten-up and shorten-up the movie. It's been awhile, but I remember those scenes with the guru being painful.
There is one thing I would have added, however. Lucile Watson, who plays Tierney's mother, just sort of disappears midway into the movie. There is no mention of what happened to her. Maybe the book explains it. I am assuming she died at some point. But all of a sudden we go from having the mother and uncle (Webb) looking after Tierney, to just the uncle looking after her, with no explanation of what happened to the mother.
I can see why a death scene for the mother would not be included, since we have the uncle's death on camera later, and that would be repetitive. But there needed to be some dialogue with Tierney explaining to Power, when he shows up to visit her after her marriage to John Payne, that the mother is no longer around because either she had passed away or was off traveling somewhere.
If the mother was off traveling, then she could have reappeared in time at the end for the uncle's great deathbed scene. It just seemed odd that the writers built up this relationship between the mother and the uncle, showing us how they worked in partnership to ensure that Tierney married a wealthy and successful man, only for the mother to just vanish halfway into the movie with no further mention of her. |
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Post by topbilled on Apr 22, 2023 7:10:08 GMT
This neglected film is from 1951.
Trading one nightmare for another
Women in peril stories usually make for suspenseful motion pictures. Of course some of them are more expertly made than others. The trend seems to have become fashionable after the success of REBECCA (1940). Joan Fontaine and Alfred Hitchcock revisited this theme a year later when they made SUSPICION (1941) for RKO. In 1944, it was MGM’s turn, adapting the British hit GASLIGHT (1944).
Warner Brothers jumped in with THE TWO MRS. CARROLLS in 1947– that time Barbara Stanwyck was the imperiled female. She repeated these duties at Paramount when she made SORRY WRONG NUMBER (1948).
20th Century Fox got in on the act with this film, made in 1951. THE HOUSE ON TELEGRAPH HILL seems to borrow from all those earlier hits, but I think it probably comes closest to emulating what is seen in GASLIGHT. Mostly because it relies on the idea that the endangered lady is played by a foreign actress, here Valentina Cortese who gives her best interpretation of what Ingrid Bergman accomplished.
In the story there’s a fine line between sanity and paranoia, bordering on hysteria. Perhaps it is because we already know that with English being her second language, and by her having only recently come to the U.S., she is vulnerable. Such vulnerability translates well on screen and combines with more fragile qualities.
Since this picture is directed by Robert Wise, it has an advantage that George Cukor’s film does not have. Wise trained under Orson Welles at RKO, so the elaborate sets and rich details seem directly inspired by THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1942), where the family’s dwelling is forbidding…limiting and restrictive…as it is explicitly mentioned in the title, it is a character in its own right.
The gothic mansion helps the dastardly villain (Richard Basehart) with all his sinister secrets conceal and entomb the wife, making it harder for her to get out or to get free.
Miss Cortese and Mr. Basehart fell in love off-screen and married shortly after completing the picture. That makes the scenes where she is enthralled by him on camera more convincing, believable to us that because she’s smitten she is unable to see him for the cad he really is until it’s almost too late.
Studio contract player William Lundigan is third-billed as a friend of the couple. His part is essentially the same as Joe Cotten’s part in GASLIGHT. He is there as a sounding board and extra love interest to the damsel in distress. He will help her break free and escape this hellish horror.
Since Wise’s version is made after the war, it includes some strong background details. The first five to ten minutes involves Cortese’s character surviving a Nazi concentration camp in Poland and stealing the identity of a wealthy Polish-American woman (Natasha Lytess). They’ve been stuck in the same camp, and when Lytess dies and her papers fall into Cortese’s hands, Cortese assumes the dead woman’s identity. Liberators then send her to America.
The irony is that she’s trading one hell for another. Frisco-based Basehart has custody of the woman’s young son and controls her assets. So naturally, it is in his best interests to control her and if she proves a problem, to eliminate her.
The third act of the film involves his plan with another woman (Fay Baker) to kill Cortese and probably kill the boy, too. The story has a dimension GASLIGHT lacks, since a child is also in danger, and it ups the stakes.
The film was nominated for best art direction, and Wise provides wonderful atmospheric touches. There are several profoundly gripping shots where Wise and cinematographer Lucien Ballard capture the shadows and movement within those shadows. The heroine and her viewers remain totally entranced and entirely off balance, until the very end.
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