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Post by NoShear on Apr 1, 2024 18:22:44 GMT
"The Passenger" was screened on TCM this past Saturday evening. The 1975 movie is lethargic cinema, often mirroring the oppressive heat of North Africa, making for slow but interesting viewing. There's some suggestion of neo noir shades of "Casablanca" with its geography and gun-running, and a paranoia accompanies Jack Nicholson's sojourns. I found myself frustratingly thinking that no man is a strife embattled nation, but with friends like these...
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 7, 2024 10:01:49 GMT
Escape from East Berlin from 1959 with Don Murray, Christine Kaufmann. Werner Klemperer and Ingrid van Bergen
Escape from East Berlin's minimal political commentary might appear surprising, but when a movie is predicated on a country having built a wall to keep its people in and, then, shooting those who try to breach it, do you need to say more about that country's political system?
The movie opens with one man trying a daring escape by smashing the newly built wall with a heavy truck and then running through the hole he creates. Unfortunately, the East German soldiers shoot him dead when he's only a few feet on the West German side.
With that opening, director Robert Siodmak tells the viewer this is a life and death struggle. The dead man's sister, played by Christine Kaufmann, asks her brother's friend, played by Don Murray, to help her get out so that she can join her brother, whom she believes is alive.
Murray doesn't have the heart to tell Kaufmann her brother is dead, so guilt compels him to help. Plus, Murray's family also wants out and encourages him to do it. Murray says he doesn't want to go, but agrees to build a tunnel for them to the West. Why a tunnel?
Murray's family's house is only yards from the wall, so with much labor and some smart engineering, a tunnel is their best chance of escape. Most of the movie is showing the challenges of building a tunnel with the Stasi, the East German police, hovering nearby.
The Stati patrol in front of the wall and the house day and night. As in any police state, the police are as scared of failure as the people are of the police. Everyone lives in fear as in a communist/socialist reality, the individual matters not to the all-powerful state.
The other risk is an informant, another feature of a "people's paradise." Informing is a way to gain favor with the state. It pits everyone against everyone. Siodmak captures this fear as we see the family tip-toeing through its days as the tunnel gets built.
There are a few scary mishaps including a minor cave in and a telephone trunk line getting nicked. The scene of the telephone company repair truck's caterpillar tracks slowly crunching the ground down over the tunnel is a well-done nail-biting moment.
While the picture slows a bit in the middle, tunnel building is only that interesting, the palpable sense of fear keeps it engaging right up to the climatic escape attempt as the police, because of an informant, raid the house just as the escape begins.
It's a gripping and well-filmed climax. Also, having been very loosely based on a true escape that took place only months before the film was made, there had to be a bit of a "docudrama" or "true-events" feel for those watching the movie upon its release.
Despite its small budget and fast production schedule, Siodmak captures the genuine feeling of the fear and dread that pervades the East Germany police state. He also creates several complex characters you come to care about.
Murray lets too much of his American show through his supposedly German character to be fully convincing, but you still like this grouchy guy as he's balancing a lot of pressures coming at him from several angles.
Kauffman is excellent as the young girl who pressures Murray, but for a good reason. She's just a teenager who wants to live in a free country. In West Germany she'd be playing her records too loud; in East German, she becomes a "political criminal" by necessity.
The Berlin Wall, by dividing one city/one people, created a nearly perfect controlled experiment for looking at communism versus capitalism. The intellectuals can fight all they want, but it was the people from the East who risked death to get to the West, not vice versa.
Murray's sister, played by Ingrid van Bergen, is outstanding as the slightly selfish girl who wants to get to the West to live a life not spent worrying about power outages and empty store shelves. She's no hero; she's just a regular person who wants a better future.
Eventually, the list of escapees grows. Most of them aren't heroes either; they are just regular people who want to live lives where they don't fear their government and where personal effort not "informing" on others will let them improve their lot.
Fans of the TV show Hogan's Heroes will enjoy seeing Werner Klemperer in a dramatic role where he shows he has real acting chops. You aren't sure which way he's leaning until nearly the end. It's a strong and nuanced performance from Klemperer.
Escape from East Berlin is important because it is true, despite its characters being fiction. East Berlin was a communist police state that built a wall to keep its people in and then shot them if they tried to escape. The movie's value today is that it reminds us of that evil.
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Post by dianedebuda on Apr 7, 2024 14:13:39 GMT
Saw a post on SSO that Wonka (2023) was on HBO. Saw it last night and was completely charmed. Two songs from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005) were included: short segments of Ompaa Lumpaa and one of my favorites, Pure Imagination. Went down the youtube rabbit hole again for hours listening to versions of it. My favorites were and still are:
and
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nickandnora34
Junior Member
Just a grease spot on the L&N
Posts: 76
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Post by nickandnora34 on Apr 7, 2024 21:14:05 GMT
Escape from East Berlin from 1959 with Don Murray, Christine Kaufmann. Werner Klemperer and Ingrid van Bergen
I just wanted to say thank you, Fading Fast for this post; I have been searching for a movie similar to this for the past 8 years to no avail, and was able to find it due to this post jogging my memory. Wow. A quest has finally come to an end. For those wondering, the two movies are not all that similar... Something just managed to jog my memory lol. The film I've been trying to find was "Wake Me When the War is Over" (1969) with Ken Berry, that I randomly watched when I was about 15.
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Post by kims on Apr 9, 2024 0:37:51 GMT
I dared confess my viewing Hallmark films at Christmas, here's another confession. I'm watching THE WIZARD OF OZ. I go so far back that I remember when the film was introduced on tv by Danny Kaye, Richard Boone, and Dick Van Dyke different years. I'm not sure that memory serves me correctly, but in those years I think there was only one intermission for ads. And I believed the hosts were somewhere in the background watching the film at the same time.
Historians: if this film flopped at the box office in 1939, why did CBS risk paying for the rights to air it and make the special introductions?
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 9, 2024 9:40:27 GMT
If Winter Comes from 1947 with Walter Pidgeon, Deborah Kerr, Angela Lansbury, Janet Leigh, Reginald Owen and John Abbot
While the 1950s were the heyday of the movie melodrama, saponaceous stories didn't spring de novo mid-century as Hollywood has been churning them out ever since there's been a Hollywood.
If Winter Comes would probably have been done in color and with a bigger budget had it been made in the 1950s, but this black-and-white post-war effort from MGM still has a strong cast to shepherd its engaging tale of love, scandal and backstabbing along.
Walter Pidgeon plays an editor who, jilted by his true love, played by Deborah Kerr, marries on the rebound a very pragmatic and socially ambitious woman, played by Angela Lansbury. It's no love story, but the marriage is working for the moment.
With WWII looming, though, Kerr returns to the small town and immediately pursues a "friendship" with Pidgeon. Lansbury, thinking she's being smart, allows it to go on as she assumes it will burn itself out. Bad move as her husband and Kerr's friendship flourishes.
Another wrinkle in Pidgeon's life is that his boss at work doesn't like him because Pidgeon's views are too liberal for the conservative publisher. The boss would like to fire him, but can't unless Pidgeon violates his contract's "morals clause."
Through it all, Pidgeon is simply a nice guy. He's kind to the two domestics his wife imperiously orders about. Then, when a local village girl, played by Janet Leigh, gets "in trouble" and is put out by her father, Pidgeon takes in the young pregnant girl.
That's too much goodness for Lansbury and for the town's gossip mill. Lansbury moves out and files for divorce. Ironically, Pidgeon has been nothing but kind and proper to Leigh, while his behavior with Kerr has been inappropriate, but it's the former that's causing the trouble.
There's more "shocking" melodrama to come, that's best left to be seen fresh, but know that divorce papers will be dramatically served, an inquest will pivot on a pharmacist's poison book and a suicide note might clear everything up, if it survives an attempted burning.
It is fun melodrama skillfully handled by a cast of professionals. Pidgeon is wonderful as the kind, life-affirming Englishman whose quiet world is ripped apart by a good deed. Kerr is equally engaging as the woman who wants to correct a mistake, but is maybe a bit too late.
Lansbury is perfect playing the martinet wife who made the mistake of marrying a decent man when she needed an ambitious and cold one like herself. At twenty-two, Lansbury convincingly plays a woman in her thirties as, even young, she always looked a bit matronly.
Reginald Owen and John Abbot are excellent as Pidgeon's scheming, but English-prim-and-proper looking boss and co-worker, respectively. A very young Janet Leigh is adorable as the daughter sadly thrown out of her home for "shaming" the family.
Shot on sets and in Florida for some exterior scenes, no one will mistake any of it for England. Still, MGM created a romanticized English village that nicely fits the story of a pleasant-looking community simmering with scandal and prejudice just beneath the surface.
If Winter Comes is a fun full-on soap opera from one of Hollywood's top studios, which leveraged its deep bench of talented actors to make a standard potboiler story engaging. It's fluff, but it's entertaining-as-heck fluff.
N.B. If Winter Comes is based on the 1921 novel by A.S.M. Hutchinson. Comments on the novel here: "If Winter Comes"
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Post by I Love Melvin on Apr 9, 2024 12:28:06 GMT
I dared confess my viewing Hallmark films at Christmas, here's another confession. I'm watching THE WIZARD OF OZ. I go so far back that I remember when the film was introduced on tv by Danny Kaye, Richard Boone, and Dick Van Dyke different years. I'm not sure that memory serves me correctly, but in those years I think there was only one intermission for ads. And I believed the hosts were somewhere in the background watching the film at the same time. Historians: if this film flopped at the box office in 1939, why did CBS risk paying for the rights to air it and make the special introductions? Somebody at CBS had the smarts, I guess. I still have some of my OZ making-of books, so I checked. MGM rereleased the movie theatrically in 1949, which is when it finally made a profit, and again in 1955. In the 1955 release the sepia tone was replaced with black-and-white, which may have jogged somebody's interest in terms of television, since most Americans still had black-and-white TV 's at that point. The next year (1956) there was a trial run on TV when CBS negotiated the rights for a single showing and that was a ratings success, which gave them an idea of what the potential of the movie was on television. I guess they mulled it over for a few years, but in 1959 they gave it another go with a single showing, with even better results, so they got the rights for annual showings after that. Their commitment was tentative at first, but they were smart enough to pay attention to the numbers. I remember those early showings too and how excited everyone was at school the next day. And don't worry about your confession. Your secret is safe with us.
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Post by kims on Apr 10, 2024 22:15:14 GMT
Thanks for the info, Melvin. I wasn't aware of a re-release in '49. I only hear that it was a disappointment at initial release.
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Post by topbilled on Apr 11, 2024 6:30:31 GMT
I found a copy of OKLAHOMA! (1955) that I have...it's been ages since I've seen it. What an experience this film is...I can only imagine what it's like for people who watch it live in a theater.
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 12, 2024 11:24:42 GMT
The Inside Story from 1948 with Charles Winninger, Gene Lockhart, Florence Bates, Marsha Hunt, Robert Shayne, Roscoe Karns, Allen Jenkins and Gail Patrick
It is not often that a motion picture from Hollywood's studio era addresses:
- The Monetary Equation MV=PQ (money time velocity equals price times quantity) - Fractional Reserve Banking - The Gold Standard
But The Inside Story, a genuinely lighthearted offering from Republic Pictures, does all that in a fable-like story of the Depression that can be enjoyed even if economics is not your thing.
Bookended by two scenes in, then, present day 1948, the movie is told as one long flashback to a small Vermont town in 1933 dying from a lack of money in circulation due to the Depression. Very little business gets done as everyone owes money, but no one has any.
The town's hotel might go into receivership as it has few paying customers and can't even meet its own restaurant's food bill. A local lawyer's marriage might fail as his ego can't accept his wife supporting them with her out-of-town work as a dress model.
Even the skinflint and slightly crooked local grocer might fail as he can't make his rent payments to his kind landlady who owns the local mills that she had to close due to lack of business. You get it, the town is dying because no one has any money.
Then a man from a collection agency comes to town with $1000 for a local farmer. Owing to a series of coincidences, the money, which was being stored briefly in the hotel's safe, accidentally ends up in circulation.
The hotelier pays his grocery bill, which allows the grocer to pay his landlady, who then hires the lawyer and on it goes. The townsfolk start to feel optimistic as the money circulates.
The "message" for 1948 post-war audiences is to not hoard money, to not store it in safe deposit boxes, but instead, to deposit it in the bank. Hoarding, it is argued, could bring on another depression, which was a significant post-war concern.
The economics is oversimplified, but at a high level, it captures the importance of the velocity of money - how the $1000 moves quickly through many hands - which is the "V" in MV=PQ. Faster velocity leads to more economic activity (PQ, price times quantity).
The economics here also touches on fractional reserve banking, which, oversimplified, means that when money is deposited in a bank and loaned out, it increases the "M," the money supply, which also leads to increased economic activity (PQ).
Gold gets a passing mention as the government, in the Depression, made it illegal to hoard gold. It's noted the government could do the same to paper money today, in 1948. This is a complex issue, but the message was to deposit your money in a bank.
Economic scholars still fight over the causes of the Depression, but the point of the movie was to try to prevent another one by having people deposit their money in the banks and not hoard it. With many caveats and at a high level, it's a good message.
If the above economics were central to the story, it would make for an awful movie, but the economics plays on in the background, while the "cuter" story of $1000 accidentally bringing life to this woebegone community is front and center.
The talented cast gives the movie an uplifting spirit. Gene Lockhart is excellent as the hotelier afraid he'll go to jail because he accidentally spent $1000 that isn't his. His daughter, played by Marsha Hunt, is cuteness on steroids trying to help her dad.
Charles Winninger is lovable as the befuddled hotel clerk whose common sense, often, cuts to the quick. Florence Bates is wonderful as the town's matron who tries to do right as she calls out the movie's one villain, the greedy grocer, played by Will Wright.
Robert Shayne, Roscoe Karns, Allen Jenkins, Gail Patrick and a few other B-movie regulars round out a likable cast that somehow make The Inside Story's tale of Depression Era challenges into a lighthearted comedy.
Today, it's hard to appreciate this story if you have no familiarity with the struggles of the Depression. If you do, however, the economics can slide by, and you can just have fun with the perennial plot device of "found money" making people happy…until it doesn't.
N.B. For fans of our "Is That What You're Wearing?" thread, note in the above picture the numerous items of classic American clothing. The gentleman on the far right is wearing a turtleneck, herringbone Tweed suit and a trench coat - hard to get more 20th century classic American casual than that. And the young actress, Marsha Hunt, is wearing a shawl-collar camel-hair polo coat - also a pretty darn classic piece of American attire. While those items are less common today, any one of them could still be worn in many modern situations and settings.
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Post by topbilled on Apr 13, 2024 17:28:28 GMT
What a great review of THE INSIDE STORY. For anyone who'd like to watch, there's a nicely restored print on YouTube:
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 13, 2024 17:52:23 GMT
What a great review of THE INSIDE STORY. For anyone who'd like to watch, there's a nicely restored print on YouTube:
Thank you, Topbilled, for the kind words. I should have pointed out that it was Topbilled who introduced me to this fun movie. As TB notes, the YouTube copy is outstanding - it's almost like HD.
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Post by dianedebuda on Apr 14, 2024 12:22:10 GMT
The Freshman (1990) A first year New York film student (Matthew Broderick) meets a "Godfather" look alike (Marlin Brando) and becomes his errand boy. Not a Brando or gangster film fan, but based on SSO comments that this was a comedy take on The Godfather (1972), decided to try it. Have only liked Brando in On the Waterfront (1954), was disappointed with his miscasting in Guys and Dolls (1955), and absolutely hated him The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956). A few other films pretty much solidified him as someone for me to avoid. Took decades for me to finally watch The Godfather trilogy and thought that was a complete waste of time.
I often try to match my dinner to a movie, but didn't feel like cooking, so had a Health Choice Chicken Margherita with Balsamic Steamer. Somehow that seemed to be a perfect match to this flick - a lite reflection of the original. 😂 So many zany situations that seemed believable. A fun movie ... but I will still continue to generally avoid Brando. 😆
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Post by intrepid37 on Apr 14, 2024 21:52:51 GMT
Marlon was a pretty headstrong person who was well aware of the realities of our culture - and it showed in his acting style.
As such, he was not generally looked upon favorably by feminists or simps.
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Post by Fading Fast on Apr 20, 2024 10:06:52 GMT
The Rat Race from 1960 with Tony Curtis, Debbie Reynolds, Jack Oakie, Don Rickles and Kay Medford
The nice thing about "old movies" is that there's always another gem to be discovered. The Rat Race is a gem, but it takes some Motion Picture Production Code "translation" skill to understand the meaningful nuances going on in this often gritty picture.
Tony Curtis plays a "hick" jazz musician who comes to New York City from his hometown of Milwaukee, Wisconsin to make it big. Apartment hunting, he meets a young woman who, years ago, had come to New York to make it big as a dancer.
Curtis rents the tiny studio that the young woman, played by Debbie Reynold, was just about to be evicted from. She, obviously, hasn't made it big. Yet in the way that things only happen in movies, nice-guy Curtis lets Reynolds stay on with him for a few days.
This sets up an "odd couple" sort of relationship as Curtis is all optimism and New York City newbie enthusiasm, while Reynolds is all cynicism and bitter lethargy. He just believes, while she believes in nothing.
It's a smart juxtaposition as it feels like it could be a "before and after" tableau, but we don't know that Curtis will fail or that Reynold's luck won't change. This, though, is no happy early 1960s battle-of-the-sexes comedy as Reynolds is genuinely poor and bitter.
Her dancing dreams have been reduced to working as a taxi dancer in a club run by a thuggish pimp played by Don Rickles. Rickles gets to show his dramatic acting chops here as he tries to financially squeeze Reynolds into prostitution.
Reynolds, who has nothing left of her self respect but that she hasn't done "that" (you'll need some movie-code translation skills to understand this nuance), is trying to hold out. Curtis, meanwhile, gets "initiated" to New York City as he falls for several scams.
Curtis also begins to develop feelings for Reynolds, but she's so dispirited by life that she denies even to herself that she's beginning to like the kind man she's living with. But again, this is no romcom, so she has a real edge to her that keeps the romance at bay.
Jack Oakie plays the nice owner of the local bar that Reynolds and Curtis frequent more to hang out in than to drink. Kay Medford plays a cynical regular patron of the bar. These two function as older reflections of what Curtis and Reynolds might become.
Oakie, doing well in a rare dramatic part, as he usually plays a goofy character, is the sounding board and, often, conscience of Reynolds. She is so angry at the world that she needs someone to vent to and to calm her down. It's a subtly touching relationship.
The climax, no spoilers coming, is smartly handled as Reynolds is forced to decide if she's going to help a now struggling Curtis or if she's too resentful of the world to have any real humanity left in her.
Her actions put her in Rickles' crosshairs, leading to an excruciating scene. You'll need your translation skills again to get that Reynolds would be standing stripped fully naked in front of Rickles. Nothing else happens, but Rickles made his point. It's powerful.
Curtis, too, has one more moment of the rug getting pulled out from under him, which is more about him becoming a true New Yorker than anything else. The Rat Race isn't noirishly bleak, but it never sells out its "life is tough" street cred.
Curtis and Reynolds were both cast against type as Curtis, a born and bred New Yorker, doesn't naturally read flyover-country hick, just like corn-fed-looking Reynolds doesn't naturally read hardened New Yorker.
Kudos to both actors, though, as you quickly believe in their characters. 1960s moviegoers, though, weren't ready to see sweet Debbie Reynolds play a cynical New Yorker. It's probably why the movie flopped, but it's also why it's an "undiscovered" gem today.
The only miss in the movie is that, other than for a few exterior Times Square shots, it wasn't filmed in New York. For a movie that didn't hold back many punches for the era, it needed the true grit of on-location New York City filming to complete its realism.
The Rat Race reminds us that, over time, many outstanding movies fall between the cracks. A flop upon release, with its actors cast against type and in no clear genre - it's not a noir, a romcom or even a soap opera - the picture has always been ignored.
That, though, is what makes finding a movie like The Rat Race, today, that much more enjoyable for fans of old movies who wonder if there are any pictures left to wow them. The answer is there always are, you just have to keep looking and have a little luck.
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