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Post by topbilled on Oct 23, 2024 15:21:35 GMT
This film is from 1939. By the way this one is in the public domain, but I do think it is overshadowed by the 1957 remake, and is somewhat unfairly neglected.
The finest affair of them all
Irene Dunne and her leading man, Charles Boyer, cited this motion picture as their personal best, and both were in a lot of great films. They would costar in another production a few months later when they were teamed to do a romance drama at Universal called WHEN TOMORROW COMES. It was probably meant to cash in on the success of this first pairing. Then, Columbia teamed them up one last time in the mid-1940s for a romantic comedy, aptly titled TOGETHER AGAIN.
But as good as their subsequent collaborations might be, it’s the special magic they create in Leo McCarey’s 1939 version of LOVE AFFAIR that everyone remembers.
The characters they portray meet rather casually on board a luxury liner heading for America. They each have significant careers, and they have other romantic commitments. So they aren’t looking for love. During the cruise they get to know one other and quickly develop a warm friendship.
There’s a stopover at a port where Boyer gets off to see his grandmother (Maria Ouspenskaya). He bumps into Dunne outside the ship, and she decides to go with him. They only have four hours, and they will make a little adventure out of it.
Madame Ouspenskaya is utterly charming as the grandmother. She has only 12 minutes of screen time but does such a spectacular job, she would be nominated for a Supporting Actress Oscar. (Dunne was also nominated for her lead role, and altogether the film earned six nominations in various categories.)
The segment where the couple visits Ouspenskaya takes the story in a new direction. They go to a little chapel to pray, and it is clear they are friends who feel there is something more between them now– as though a higher power has ordained it.
I won’t spoil the plot anymore. It wouldn’t be fair if someone reading this hasn’t seen the film yet. But the feeling that’s conveyed in these early scenes deepens as the story unfolds.
There are some melodramatic contrivances when Dunne and Boyer arrive in New York. For awhile, it looks as though their love is not meant to be. But of course, we know their hearts have to overcome any possible obstacles. The ending is truly satisfying. There’s a reason the story has been remade several times, and why other romantic films reference it. That’s because it’s an affair for the ages.
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Post by topbilled on Nov 1, 2024 14:57:44 GMT
This neglected film is from 1934.
Full of woe
Based on a moderately successful Broadway play, this RKO adaptation was presented by studio producer Pandro Berman. Berman brought child star Frankie Thomas to Hollywood for his motion picture debut; Thomas had wowed critics and audiences back in New York as a ten year old boy full of woe, deeply troubled by his wealthy parents’ sudden breakup. It’s a searing look at a broken marriage and the child caught in the middle.
For the role of the father, Edward Arnold has been cast as a successful businessman. He’s a man who loves his son but finds himself pulled in other directions.
When he’s not closing deals and making money, he’s dealing with a cheating wife then a messy divorce. After the divorce, he still doesn’t seem to have time for the boy; since there’s a new woman (Shirley Grey) in the picture competing for his affections.
In the role of the mother RKO borrowed Karen Morley from MGM. Morley was not known for her sympathetic portrayals, and she does not disappoint in this offering. She’s a wild cheating wife who realizes too late the error of her ways.
After her affair has been found out, she’s belted by Arnold, which is then used against him in the divorce court. The marriage is soon dissolved, and she gets custody of her young son. But she has quickly remarried which causes great tension.
There is some interesting dialogue. At one point Thomas’s character prays to god to kill his new stepfather.
In the final act, when he’s been sent off to a military academy, he tells a roommate (David Durand) that he no longer has parents and boys are all he’s got. It’s heartbreaking stuff. Since this is a domestic melodrama, the angst is poured on thick in a few spots; but the performances are so good, and the characters so carefully etched, all that can be forgiven. It’s a thought-provoking story about the devastating long-term effects of a family splitting apart; still trying to find something to smile about.
RKO remade it in 1946. That time the film was called CHILD OF DIVORCE. Frankie Thomas’s character Bobby was also called Bobby in the remake. However, the child was a girl named Bobby, short for Roberta, played by Sharyn Moffett. If you’re in the mood for a well-produced, well-acted think piece, I recommend watching.
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Post by topbilled on Nov 4, 2024 15:31:48 GMT
Note: I am placing my review for this Pathe film into the RKO thread, since Pathe merged with RKO right after the film was released.This neglected film is from 1930.
Luck and fate on easy street
This original screen version of Philip Barry’s hit play is a masterpiece. A beautiful Oscar nominated performance is rendered by Ann Harding. And Mary Astor is an excellent ‘foil’ and other side of the sibling coin. The actor who plays the father (William Holden, born 1862) has an incredibly good stage-trained voice; formidable at every turn, dictating without intimidating if that is even possible. Then we have Edward Everett Horton and Hedda Hopper in delightful supporting performances, showing us what friendship and cattiness are about. I love the entire cast.
The sets are amazing. While clearly recorded on a Hollywood soundstage, the rooms are spacious and elegantly furnished. The church set is especially grand with its large overarching structure. There are little touches like tables placed at specific angles with ornamental flourishes; a fireplace crackling away in the background; and an elevator that whirrs along gracefully till the stop button is pushed.
The clothing is just as detailed. The women are allowed to dress in mature fashions without being matronly, but without seeming like casual products of the roaring twenties. Hair is attractive, not too conservative, and not necessarily neatly combed.
HOLIDAY (1930) is basically a filmed play, but it doesn’t seem like the usual talkie. Nor does it seem like the tawdry precodes from the era. This is a story about luck and fate on easy street, and what it costs the most delicate souls. The Seton family is now ‘old money,’ but weren’t always so.
What impresses me most is how carefully defined the family relationships are, even the extended family, like the cousin (Hallam Cooley) and his wife (Elizabeth Forrester). Over them all is the specter of a pioneering grandfather, now deceased, still watching and looking down at them. These are real people, not caricatures.
The problems involving their wealth are fascinating and realistically portrayed. The story could have devolved into stereotypes, which I think the remake does to some extent trying to be too funny for its own good, but here these characters remain believable throughout…as people with serious problems, not exaggerated for comedic effect, though some of what happens is amusing.
It occurred to me that these people are living a tragedy…and they are all doomed until Astor’s troubled fiancé (Robert Ames) breaks free, which causes Harding to also break free at the end. The brother (Monroe Owsley) is still living a tragic life and so is Astor and their father. Maybe someday they, too, shall be liberated from their joyless existence. But they don’t have fun rooms or any understanding of what a holiday can be.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 4, 2024 16:18:04 GMT
Holiday from 1930 with Ann Harding, Mary Astor, Robert Ames, William Holden and Hallam Cooley
This 1930 version of Holiday, being so early in the "talkie" era of Hollywood, is stagey and technologically inchoate compared to the better-known 1938 version. Yet, on its own and even in comparison, the 1930 picture is an engaging movie with an interesting cast.
The 1938 version benefits from the eight years of a learning curve Hollywood had in between, making it more fluid, more "like a movie," than the 1930 version. Yet, the two movies' pluses and minuses almost net out making neither one the clearly better picture.
The story in both, based on a 1928 stage play, is almost the same. A young woman from a very wealthy and socially prominent New York City family meets and becomes engaged to a young man while on a ten-day vacation. He has no idea her family is immensely rich and important.
When they return to New York, the woman's free-spirited sister is excited about the engagement, but her father is measured as, of course, "we need to know more about this boy." The boy, while a successful up-and-coming banker, has unconventional ideas about work and money.
He plans to work just long enough to save the money needed to take a few years off and "find himself." The sister thinks this is a grand idea; his fiancée thinks it's "unusual;" and dad thinks it is unacceptable. It's just a construct, though, to pit conventional values against bohemian ones.
As the story plays out, the sisters learn a lot about each other as the engaged one pushes her fiancé to drop his unconventional thinking, while her sister cheers him on, which sets the sisters against each other. Dad never wavers, so eventually there's a climactic showdown.
There are, of course, a few side stories echoing the movie's main theme: a sensitive brother forced to work in the family business who turns to drink as the work is crushing his soul, and a pair of married cousins who are all in on the "work and make more money" approach to life.
With the same story and, often, the same dialogue, the differences in the two movies lie in the cast, directing, and the noted technology. Director George Cukor brings a screwball joie de vivre to the 1938 version; whereas, Edward H. Griffith keeps his earlier effort stolid and stagey.
With Cukor kicking things up and the improved technology, the 1938 version will feel more familiar and polished to modern audiences, but the biggest differences come down to the cast.
Mary Astor, in the earlier version, playing the engaged sister, brings greater nuance and appeal to the role than does Doris Nolan playing the same character in the later version.
A note has to be made about how poorly written the Astor/Nolan role is, as the character is presented early on as someone nice and understanding of her sister's view, but later she becomes a shrew-like defender of her father. It feels inconsistent and weakens the story.
As to the patriarch himself, Henry Kolker's portrayal of the stern father has a more rounded feel in the later version than does William Holden's in the earlier one. In that one, Holden plays the father like a union boss in a tuxedo.
That leaves us with the crucial role of the bohemian sister, which couldn't have gone to two more different actresses. In 1930, the serene actress Ann Harding plays the liberal sister as a beaten-down young woman looking to find some fresh air to breathe.
In the 1938 version, Katherine Hepburn plays the sister like a cage lioness pouncing on any opportunity to wound her enemies and escape prison. Harding's performance is introspective; Hepburn's is a showy full-force gale.
Despite all these fun comparisons, the story is so similar that you often feel like you're watching the same movie, which also means you're seeing the stage play's same flaws. It is a fun soap opera, but the embedded bias is so obvious, it is more like propaganda.
Not all rich people are cold and singularly focused on accumulating ever more money, while stuffing life into a set of tiresome social rituals. Nor are all liberal thinkers kind, free spirits who don't care about money or status, but that's how it is presented in both versions of Holiday.
Both versions of the movie are also entertaining fluff, with the latter version benefitting from the noted improved moviemaking prowess. The earlier version, handicapped as it is by technology, nearly equals the 1938 version because of Astor and Harding.
The fun today is simply the "lab experiment" these two versions of Holiday offer us to see the advances Hollywood rapidly made with the introduction of sound and the distinct ways a role can be interpreted by different actors.
The movies are both good, with the comparison being the real kick for old-movie fans.
N.B. Another fun connection between the two versions is that the actor Edward Everett Horton plays the same character, a friend of the free-spirited sister, in both versions, with his role expanded a bit in the later one. |
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Post by topbilled on Nov 11, 2024 14:05:49 GMT
This neglected film is from 1949.
Cry murder!
The highly regarded suspense writer Cornell Woolrich was a tortured man, afraid of dying. He spent much of his time inside and rarely went out. It’s not surprising that Woolrich saw life as something where innocent people were trapped by circumstances beyond their control. His most well-known stories featured characters that are haunted to some degree.
THE WINDOW is an RKO production based on Woolrich’s short story ‘The Boy Cried Murder’ which had been published a few years earlier. The studio optioned the story, developed a script and started filming in mid-November 1947 in New York. Filming lasted until early January 1948. This was the first time the studio made a motion picture in its new RKO-Pathe facility in New York City. Some exteriors were done at tenement buildings in impoverished neighborhoods, which adds a layer of gritty realism.
Though the film was edited and ready for release by mid-1948, Howard Hughes had taken over the studio and forced producer Dore Schary out. Hughes viewed a finished print of the picture, and didn’t like what he watched because he thought Bobby Driscoll was a bad child actor.
He had no intention of releasing something he felt would not earn money (an opinion he had about several pictures he had taken over from Schary). But Hughes was finally persuaded to release THE WINDOW in mid-1949. The movie earned plaudits from critics and helped Driscoll, who was also making hit films for Walt Disney, a special Oscar.
Driscoll plays a stand-in for the frightened inner-boy that existed in Woolrich. He is a twelve year old kid who lies all the time. So it is no wonder that when he accidentally witnesses a man being killed and dismembered, his parents (Barbara Hale & Arthur Kennedy) do not believe him. They think the ‘murder’ is just another product of Driscoll’s vivid imagination. The mother is particularly distressed by the supposed fabrication.
Of course, Driscoll’s character is telling the truth, and the killers— a neighbor couple (Ruth Roman & Paul Stewart)— know this. They are aware he saw what they’ve done, which puts his life in danger. It’s a dandy set-up in terms of creating suspenseful drama and terror on screen.
Woolrich’s short story is not quite fifty pages long, but he presents a gem of an idea about a boy and a group of adults who either believe him or disbelieve him. While the movie adds other neighborhood kids to the mix, the emphasis is always on Driscoll and what his character must do to deal with such scary circumstances.
THE WINDOW was remade as a British feature in 1966 which used Woolrich’s original title. But in that version, the family is on vacation to Yugoslavia where the murder occurs. There was another British film in 1970 which told a similar story, that time the kid lived with a grandparent and saw a political assassination. Back in America, Hollywood gave the story another go in 1984 when Universal made CLOAK AND DAGGER.
The mid-80s production starred Henry Thomas in the main role, hot off his recent success in E.T.; with Dabney Coleman as the father. In CLOAK AND DAGGER the father is widowed and the crux of the story is whether a dad believes his son. The basic scenario is embellished so that the kid gets drawn into a killing involving FBI agents, a secret military formula and spies. The evil husband and wife who must silence him are an elderly twosome played by longtime character actor John McIntire and his wife Jeanette Nolan.
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Post by topbilled on Nov 22, 2024 14:47:24 GMT
This neglected film is from 1931.
A slice of New England life
When interviewed years later about this film, supporting actress Bette Davis admitted WAY BACK HOME was no masterpiece. She was right, it’s not. However, she thought it was still a rather quaint slice of New England life. I am not sure I’d go that far; it does have some quaint moments, but it hardly looks like Maine where the story is supposed to take place. It’s obvious RKO filmed it on a sound stage in Hollywood and with occasional exteriors done at the studio ranch.
Based on a popular radio series, the film features actor Phillips Lord in the role of grandfatherly Seth Parker. He’d honed Seth’s mannerisms on the airwaves each Sunday, basing the character on his own real-life grandpa. No doubt, it was easy to transfer his portrayal to the screen. But he probably didn’t wear old-age makeup in the broadcast booth for the radio show. Lord was only 29 at the time; and his youthfulness still comes across despite white hair, a beard and clothing meant to conceal it.
Besides Miss Davis, who plays a neighbor girl who falls for a farm boy (Frank Albertson), the rest of the cast consists of character actors who bring idiosyncratic charm to the proceedings. One of the character actresses, appearing as a homely lovelorn sort, is played by Lord’s then-wife. We also have child actor Frankie Darro, who was about 14 and was playing a boy half his age.
Darro’s character has been living with Seth and Mother Parker (Effie Palmer) since he was abandoned by his abusive father (Stanley Fields). Pa’s returned and wants to reclaim the boy, who didn’t know he was adopted by the Parkers. This leads to various complications, including a fairly exciting buggy chase scene and Darro being sent to a juvenile home, till the Parkers are able to get him back.
While this drama is playing out, there is a romantic subplot involving Davis and Albertson. Davis is kicked out by her father for not breaking things off with Albertson. As a result, she goes to live with the Parkers until she and Albertson can get enough money to elope and start their own life together.
You get the idea, the Parker home is a haven for castaways. With all the folksy music that gets played in the parlor, people soon feel better and troubles just disappear. It’s hokum of the highest order.
RKO exec Pandro Berman allocated a decent budget, and I am sure listeners of Lord’s weekly radio series enjoyed seeing the characters come to life on the big screen. But as Bette Davis said, it’s no masterpiece, so don’t go into it expecting riveting cinema. It’s a comfort movie for people who defined comfort in a simple way in 1931. Back when 1931 felt more like 1911.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 22, 2024 16:41:02 GMT
Way Back Home from 1931 with Phillip Lord, Stanley Fields, Bette Davis and Frank Albertson,
Today, movies like Way Back Home are produced by Hallmark and its made-for-cable-TV ilk. It's a "homespun" tale about "simple folks" in a small rural community who solve their problems by being kind, decent, and understanding. It's Hallmark for the 1930s.
Phillip Lord plays a preacher who, along with his wife, years ago, took in a boy who was abandoned by his drunkard father after the boy's mother passed. They have, with kindness, raised the grateful boy, played by Frankie Darro, as their own.
There is also a local girl, played by a pre-stardom Bette Davis, in love with a local boy, played by Frank Albertson. He and his mother are somewhat outcasts because, before Albertson was born, his unwed mother went away for months and came back with a child, Albertson.
When Davis' father learns his daughter is dating Albertson, he gives her an ultimatum: stop seeing him or leave the house. Davis leaves and ends up staying with the kind Lords.
That's the setup that then gets spun around when Darro's mean, alcoholic ne'er-do-well father, played by Stanley Fields, shows up after all these years and tries to take the boy. Since the Lords never legally adopted Darro, they now have a fight on their hands.
The movie's plot from here is the Lords trying to keep Darro as Fields tries to both legally and physically take the boy from them. Also, the Lords try hard to get the community to accept Davis and "ba***rd" Albertson and Albertson's "sinful" mother into its fold.
It's fun to see Bette Davis so early in her career. She's noticeable and likable as the pretty girl next door. Maybe some saw her coming megastadrom from her role here, but most audience members then probably thought, "what a nice looking and spirited young girl."
While there are some forced action scenes around Darro being kidnapped and a race to a train station, the heart of the movie is the kindness, understanding and decency of Lord and his wife.
He's a preacher, a man of God, but his version of Christianity emphasizes the forgiveness and the "judge not lest ye be judged" aspect of the faith. If a young girl makes a "mistake" in her teens, this preacher argues for understanding and support.
Today, Hallmark produces movie after movie with the same basic philosophy. While Hallmark, usually, down plays the Christianity aspect and the "mistakes" are updated, it's preaching the same idea that we are all flawed humans deserving of forgiveness.
Just like in the modern version, this approach works in an early 1930s movie only because most of the townsfolk are genuinely good people, and the few bad ones either 'see the light' and reform or leave town.
In this community, people come over to the preacher's house for a night of taffy pulling and singing. Also, making preserves and giving them as gifts is a big thing. It's a charming portrayal of a romanticized view of rural life.
Fans of Hallmark movies today will recognize that shared spirit as Hallmark communities love to have get-togethers, sing-a-longs and small "festivals" to celebrate simple things like blueberry harvests or pie baking.
Did communities like the one in Way Back Home ever truly exist? Are there any communities today like those in Hallmark movies? Yes or no, the enduring popularity of these movies suggests there's a desire in people to believe that there are. That can't be a bad thing. |
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