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Post by Fading Fast on Jun 23, 2024 9:37:08 GMT
Behind Office Doors from 1931 with Mary Astor, Robert Ames, Richard Cortez and Edna Murphy
Behind Office Doors would be just another clunky early precode with an awkward plot, except for Mary Astor's performance. She imbues her portrayal of an über secretary with so much integrity, intelligence and complex emotion that you're completely vested in her character.
Astor plays the super-smart, and super-efficient secretary to the retiring head of a paper company. She is attracted to a young man in the company, played by Robert Ames, romantically, but she also sees him as a rising executive.
Astor's guidance swiftly elevates Ames to the presidency of the company, where she serves as his invaluable, yet uncredited, business advisor despite officially only being his secretary. Astor also pines hard for Ames, but he only sees her as an assistant.
Ames, without fully realizing it, takes credit for a lot of Astor's work, but the reality is that the person at the top takes credit for and gets blamed for a lot of things going on in the company. The real rub here is that Ames doesn't see Astor as a woman, but only as his secretary.
While not quite a reverse MeToo scenario, it is intriguing to see an executive in the 1930s ignore the sexuality of his very attractive and willing secretary. As always, the past is rarely as one-sided or black and white as our modern, and politically convenient, thumbnail understanding avers.
Richard Cortez, playing a married man who claims his wife won't give him a divorce, pursues Astor hard, but Astor doesn't want to be one half of an affair, plus she can't really let Ames go even as he ignores her.
Ames, for his part, works his way through one floozy after another. He sees young women as just diversions. Still, this parade of blonde hair and cheap perfume hurts Astor, who even has to endure working with one that Ames hires as a second secretary even though she's useless.
All you care about, though, is Astor who has sort of boxed herself in. She can't blame her boss for not making advances on her, but she doesn't want any other men. This status quo holds until Ames gets engaged, which is a dagger right through Astor's heart.
Ames' fiancée is not as blind to Astor as Ames is. She stirs the pot to protect herself by all but forcing Astor out of the office and into Cortez' arms. It comes down to whether or not Ames will see his fiancée's manipulation in time and, finally, also see Astor as a woman.
It's 1931 and Hollywood is still learning how to make "talkies." Ames' acting is wooden and Cortez feels very stagey here. Astor, though, seems to have been touched from above at birth to act in talking movies as she has no silent film ticks and is completely natural.
Her performance, with an assist from Edna Murphy playing her best friend and coworker, carries the movie. Astor's character is real because she's so human: intelligent, efficient and deeply honest in business, yet completely irrational in her approach toward romance.
Hallmark today makes several versions of this movie annually, but with the woman being a business executive and not a secretary. Still, Hallmark uses the same concept of a woman being smart in her professional life, but not personal life.
What Hallmark doesn't do, though, is create a subtle, complex and appealing woman like Astor's character here. Hallmark is too obvious, but in Behind Office Doors, Astor is someone we know because she's a flawed, complicated and attractive woman.
Despite being over ninety years old and made with outdated and wonky technology, Behind Office Doors surpasses many modern films with their whiz-bang CGI and other tricks because its honest portrayal of human complexity is what still makes movies great. |
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jun 23, 2024 12:33:00 GMT
I wonder if the fact that Mary Astor wasn't part of that early pipeline to Hollywood from the New York theater helped her circumvent that "proper" style of acting which, contrary to expectation, didn't translate well to the screen. But mostly I think you're right that it was just something innate in her, that ability to connect with an audience. I'll look for this movie.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jun 23, 2024 12:43:08 GMT
I wonder if the fact that Mary Astor wasn't part of that early pipeline to Hollywood from the New York theater helped her circumvent that "proper" style of acting which, contrary to expectation, didn't translate well to the screen. But mostly I think you're right that it was just something innate in her, that ability to connect with an audience. I'll look for this movie.
Again, we see she just seemed to have some innate ability to "feel" the right way to act in talking pictures. Or perhaps, she astutely studied the way acting styles translated to talking pictures and methodically adjusted her acting to get it right quickly. It's possible. |
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Post by NoShear on Jun 24, 2024 19:13:00 GMT
Last Monday Night: T CM'S BIG SCORE Really enjoyed last Monday night's big score of films on T CM... If you sent me to that proverbial desert island with two of Sidney Poitier's 1967 movies, I would not be disappointed. One is "TO SIR, WITH LOVE", and the other kicked off the(me) evening emphasis on soundtrack scoring:  I didn't plan to watch the follow-up feature in its entirety, but I was so engaged by Superman that I did anyway, reinforcing my long-held thought that it's the standard by which to judge every cinematic comic adaptation which has slew-followed the 1978 movie. I thought of how Larry Hagman's slimy yield is just one example of the eventual shedding of his All- American Tony on I DReAM of JeANNie. Another is Mother, Jugs & Speed, and then an ambulance pulled up!! THE AviatoR filled out T CM's skyline for the rest of the evening. Gotha appeal of the big Howard Hughes shoot for the HELL'S ANGELS dogfight was wild without the necessitation of four fatalities that the 1930 talkie is said to have incurred:  |
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Post by Fading Fast on Jun 25, 2024 9:46:51 GMT
Never Open That Door from 1952, an Argentinian film.
Director Carlos Hugo Christensen made a movie based on three Cornell Woolrich short stories, but owing to the demands at the time of Argentinian theaters, he broke his effort into two movies: the first containing two stories and the second movie containing just one.
The two movies are widely considered classics of "Argentinian film noir." With their beautiful black-and-white cinematography, haunting atmosphere and tales of lust, greed, betrayal and retribution, often going horribly wrong, they echo the themes of America's dark film genre.
In the first tale in Never Open That Door, a brother is trying to help his sister, who is in some kind of trouble, but she won't tell him what it is. The sister has lost a lot of money gambling, but the brother only finds this out indirectly when he sees that funds are missing from their account.
Angry that she has misappropriated family funds to pay off her debt, his reproach of her leads to dramatic consequences. He then learns, in a frighteningly quiet and oblique way, that his attempt to avenge the harm done to his sister has gone tragically wrong.
In the second vignette, a poor blind mother who lives with her pretty young niece talks glowingly about her son who has been away for eight years. The mother ignores the slight of him having never written to her as her love makes excuses for his behavior.
He then comes home but proves not to be the good son she thought he was. In a slow turn, the blind mother realizes she must stop her son from doing more bad things. The final harrowing scene foreshadows Audrey Hepburn's blind girl fighting for her life in 1967's Wait Until Dark.
These overviews have been intentionally vague as the only way to enjoy the movie is to see the two different plots develop without knowing their twists. Just like in good short stories, much of the fun is in their surprises.
Something good is happening on screen when a ringing phone causes intense fear in a character and the viewer, or when a car accidentally running over a misplaced shovel has you gripping your armrest. Christensen masterfully places several moments like these throughout his movie.
If these vignettes also sound somewhat like TV episodes from Alfred Hitchcock Presents or The Twilight Zone, that's because these short, tightly written tales feel very much like high-end episodes of those future TV shows.
There is also a subtle complementary commentary weaved into both vignettes. The first story is all about a rich world - penthouses, swanky nightclubs, furs, jewelry, etc. - that looks pretty, but can often be a cauldron of lies, deceit and intense pressures.
The second story, though, is mainly set on a poor rural farm where the religious mother and niece are happy and respected in their community. The son, though, reaching for more, like the gambling sister in the first vignette, shatters the comity of his home.
Never Open That Door, now beautifully restored, is a window into post-war Argentinian cinema that avers noir's themes of greed, lust and betrayal, lurking just below the surface of societal respectability, were as relevant south of the border as they were north.
There is also something very modern about a late 1940s Argentinian film noir movie being based on short stories written by an American writer born in New York City. It's an organic cultural exchange that is more sincere than many of our forced, modern efforts.
Worse, today some would be offended (read: those who are always offended) that an Argentinian film was based on an American-penned story. The rest of us (read: the adults in the room) just applaud the healthy and felicitous cultural cross pollination.
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Post by Fading Fast on Jun 27, 2024 9:23:15 GMT
If I Should Die Before I Wake from 1952, an Argentinian movie
If I Should Die Before I Wake is the third Cornell Woolrich short story that director Carlos Hugo Christensen turned into a movie. It was originally the last installment in the movie Never Open That Door, but theaters wanted shorter movies, so Christensen broke his movie into two.
While that tidbit of Argentinian movie history is interesting, If I Should Die Before I Wake works wonderfully as a stand-alone movie. It might even have benefited from the forced separation as it's a haunting and timeless effort worthy of consideration on its own.
A young boy, Lucio, is a bit of a clown at school as he teases the girls he clearly likes, doesn't pay attention in class and gets into minor scrapes. None of this pleases his stern but not unreasonable father, a police detective who feels his career has stalled.
In order to learn how a female classmate gets so much candy, Lucio makes a firm promise (think pinky swear) to her. She then tells him that a "nice man" gives it to her and promises to give her even more soon. Hearing this, the deep dread you feel as a viewer is awful.
The girl is then reported missing, but other than suspecting a serial killer, the police, with Lucio's father heading up the investigation, have no clues. Lucio, honoring his promise to the girl, says nothing even when he, as all her classmates are, is questioned.
The girl is eventually found dead - it's that horrible - but the crime is never solved. Time goes by and Lucio and his dad continue to struggle to find common ground. Lucio is still messing up at school, which prompts his dad to become sterner, which only drives them further apart.
Lucio then becomes friendly with another female classmate who seems to have an endless supply of expensive colored chalk. When she tells Lucio about the "kind man" who gives them to her, the pit in the viewer's stomach is even deeper this time.
When she goes missing, Lucio is initially distracted by a fight he has with a bully at school and then the ensuing punishment by the school and his father. Haunted, however, by the previous incident, Lucio doesn't sit still like he did before.
His efforts to save the missing girl, which require overcoming his fears, overlap with the police investigation, headed up, once again, by his father. It's a brutally tense race to try to save the girl that has you white-knuckled gripped on your armrests.
Woolrich's story with director Christensen at the helm perfectly captures the difficult nuance that every child has to learn at some time: when is it right to break a promise and where is the line between "snitching" and working for the greater good?
It's one of life's hardest lessons that doesn't really get that much easier as an adult, which is why the movie is timeless despite its dated appearance. Lucio's struggles with his father are also perennial, as we see a father and son, both sincere, talk right past each other.
All of this takes place in a noir / The Twilight Zone atmosphere as the innocent look of childhood - kids dressed in nice school uniforms playing games at recess - is juxtaposed with the menace of a psychotic killer stalking young girls with promises of candy and gifts.
If I Should Die Before I Wake and its cognate Never Open That Door are parables or fables with If I Should Die Before I Wake even being introduced by a voiceover comparing it to a fairy tale with monsters and heroes: think psychotic killers versus young boys and police detectives.
Argentinian movies like If I Should Die Before I Wake show that film noir was a world-wide phenomenon, which is hardly surprising as all countries have crime, psychotics, fear, angst and dark forces to contend with.
What makes Christensen's movies relevant today is, yes, their impressive and engaging noir style, but even more so, the haunting and powerful way they capture timeless human struggles and challenges in seemingly "simple" stories. |
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Post by Fading Fast on Jun 29, 2024 11:59:51 GMT
Psycho from 1960 with Janet Leigh, Anthony Perkins, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam and John McIntire
Psycho is still a scary movie. Despite all the imitations and expansions on its themes and style that have been done since its release, and despite being sixty-plus years old, Psycho is still a compelling horror/mystery/thriller movie that pulls you in and scares the bejesus out of you.
Director Alfred Hitchcock knew he was making something different and special with Psycho's tale of greed, a warped Freudian Oedipus complex and violent murder. He hawked it like P.T. Barnum, but he had the product to back up the hype.
Full-figured Janet Leigh plays a Phoenix office worker with a California boyfriend, played by John Gavin - a boyfriend she sleeps with when he's in town, in a cheap, sweltering hotel room on her lunch breaks - who can't marry her because his alimony payments have him all but destitute.
Leigh, a ten-year trusted employee at a small real estate concern, then absconds with $40,000 late on a Friday and heads to California to be with her boyfriend. This feels fake as nothing in Leigh reads criminal, and more importantly, nothing in her reads idiot as she will be caught.
It's all just a setup, though, to get Leigh to the Bates Motel, a small, empty establishment on a now abandoned local service road because of the new highway. The hotel is mid-century austere, but tucked up behind it on a hill is a creepy Victorian house that seems of another time.
Nervous Leigh meets the motel's genial, young, good-looking but off-in-some-way owner, played by Anthony Perkins. He bonds a bit with Leigh before she settles in for the night alone in her room with her $40,000 and guilty conscience.
Everything that happens from here, for the few people who haven't seen the movie, would be a spoiler, so just know that several classic moments in movie history are coming, moments that are so iconic they've been riffed on innumerable times since.
There is the classic shower scene brilliantly enhanced by Bernard Herrmann's music score, the car painfully slowly sinking into the swamp, the silhouetted mother in the window and a "don't go down into the basement" moment for the ages. These have all become cultural touchstones.
Bernard Herrmann's original and often piercing score throughout, not just in the shower scene, plays a pivotal role in amplifying the film's tension and horror, making it one of the most memorable and influential soundtracks in film history.
There is also the slow-grinding investigation driven by Leigh's sister, played by Vera Miles, and Leigh's boyfriend, Gavin, who go from slightly hostile to maybe interested in each other as they force the investigation for the missing Leigh forward.
In addition to Miles and Gavin, Simon Oakland as a-bit-too-cocksure psychiatrist, John McIntire as a thoughtful sheriff and John Anderson as a slick investor help round out an impressive cast that makes almost every scene engaging.
Martin Balsam, too, deserves mention as the smart private detective, hired by Miles, who catches Perkins' biggest mistake. Yet even Balsam didn't realize the level of evil he was dealing with. Balsam is one of those quiet professional actors who elevates every movie he is in.
None of this, though, would work without Perkins' incredible acting as possibly the most-broken cinematic mama's boy of all time. His affable but fidgety personality, with a frightening anger trigger that seems to make him calmer but crazier, is performance at its zenith.
His portrayal of Norman Bates delves deep into the character's disturbed psyche, bringing a psychological complexity that elevates the horror beyond mere physical threats. You don't want to be in the room alone with this man.
This overriding feeling of dread is advanced by Hitchcock's decision to shoot in black-and-white, in a mainly color era. Hitch coupled that with innovative camera angles and editing techniques to create an atmosphere of intense suspense and unease that still resonates with audiences today.
Yet, despite its black-and-white film, the movie doesn't scream 'film noir' or 'horror,' but instead has a timeless 'anywhere' feel. The Bates Motel exists forever in some kind of The Twilight Zone madness.
A classic film fan can almost get Hitchcock hagiography fatigue because the famed director's legend exists on such an elevated plane, in part, because Hitch put it there himself. But then you watch one of his movies, like Psycho, and you are simply glad he did what he did. |
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jun 29, 2024 18:39:29 GMT
Well, a boy's best friend is his mother.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jul 1, 2024 12:58:28 GMT
Leigh, a ten-year trusted employee at a small real estate concern, then absconds with $40,000 late on a Friday and heads to California to be with her boyfriend. This feels fake as nothing in Leigh reads criminal, and more importantly, nothing in her reads idiot as she will be caught.
Good point. It does feel fake and it soon became obvious that Leigh was really just there as a setup for the shock of having a major star killed so early in the film. Hitchcock's real interest was in Vera Miles, whom he'd previously cast in Vertigo until she became pregnant, so Leigh's character was basically disposable from the get-go and as a consequence wasn't all that well thought out. When Hitchcock used a similar situation in Marnie of a trusted employee absconding with company funds, we saw her criminality right away as she made her getaway looking like a completely different person. Leigh didn't need to make that much sense as a character because she wasn't going to be around that long and didn't have to stand up to so much scrutiny. You're correct about it not feeling right and Hitchcock kind of left us hanging by not filling in any of the blanks about her character. |
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Post by BunnyWhit on Jul 1, 2024 16:20:44 GMT
Leigh, a ten-year trusted employee at a small real estate concern, then absconds with $40,000 late on a Friday and heads to California to be with her boyfriend. This feels fake as nothing in Leigh reads criminal, and more importantly, nothing in her reads idiot as she will be caught.
Good point. It does feel fake and it soon became obvious that Leigh was really just there as a setup for the shock of having a major star killed so early in the film. Hitchcock's real interest was in Vera Miles, whom he'd previously cast in Vertigo until she became pregnant, so Leigh's character was basically disposable from the get-go and as a consequence wasn't all that well thought out. When Hitchcock used a similar situation in Marnie of a trusted employee absconding with company funds, we saw her criminality right away as she made her getaway looking like a completely different person. Leigh didn't need to make that much sense as a character because she wasn't going to be around that long and didn't have to stand up to so much scrutiny. You're correct about it not feeling right and Hitchcock kind of left us hanging by not filling in any of the blanks about her character.
Makes me wonder: who's the MacGuffin -- Leigh, or her character?
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jul 1, 2024 19:24:22 GMT
Maybe Janet Leigh's motivation is right there in, "ten-year trusted employee at a small real estate concern." That office looked so depressing. The only men she probably ever met were creepy old guys like the one we see. Now, she's met a super handsome man who is promising her a new world away from all that. I agree she doesn't seem like the criminal type, but maybe like a woman who is desperate to get out of the rut and keep her man.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Jul 1, 2024 21:37:30 GMT
Makes me wonder: who's the MacGuffin -- Leigh, or her character?
Good question. Normally we'd be following the money, but the money is disposed of (unknowingly to Norman, but not to the audience) at the same time as her body and the car, so Hitchcock deliberately created a dead end where everything we thought was happening no longer was. |
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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 1, 2024 22:04:12 GMT
Maybe Janet Leigh's motivation is right there in, "ten-year trusted employee at a small real estate concern." That office looked so depressing. The only men she probably ever met were creepy old guys like the one we see. Now, she's met a super handsome man who is promising her a new world away from all that. I agree she doesn't seem like the criminal type, but maybe like a woman who is desperate to get out of the rut and keep her man. |
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nickandnora34
Full Member
Just a grease spot on the L&N
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Post by nickandnora34 on Jul 3, 2024 0:41:52 GMT
Out of the Fog (1941)
Starring Ida Lupino, John Garfield, John Qualen, Aline MacMahon, Eddie Albert, Thomas Mitchell.
I watched this for Ida Lupino, as she is one of the actresses on my "old Hollywood (& a few new Hollywood) actresses to watch more from in 2024" list. I daresay that title could be trimmed down, but at the moment I can't be bothered. Any suggestions?
Ida plays a young woman who is tired of her ordinary, hum-drum life who meets Garfield; through making his acquaintance, she is confronted with the chance to escape her small fishing town. Garfield is a crook with a Capital C, who bullies the local fishermen/dock-workers into paying him for "protection." One of these victimized men is Ida's own father, played by Mitchell. Mitchell and friend Qualen start to feel trapped by Garfield's demands, and come up with a plan to get rid of the hoodlum once and for all (Ida's dalliance with Garfield is another factor in their decision to do something drastic).
I thought this one was alright, very middle-of-the-road for me, but I am glad I watched another film from Ida's catalogue. And for those of you curious who all is on my list, I will share down below:
Jean Simmons, Ida Lupino, Bette Davis, Jeanne Moreau, Anouk Aimee (rip), Vivien Leigh, Francoise Dorleac, Diahann Carroll, Catherine Deneuve, Ingrid Bergman, Deborah Kerr, Joan Crawford, Cyd Charisse, Lena Horne, Jean Peters, Katharine Hepburn, Eleanor Parker, Joan Bennett, Rita Hayworth, & Shirley MacLaine. **if I do this again, I would like to include Susan Hayward and Carole Lombard**
Addendum: Thanks Fading Fast for inspiring me to get back into writing little reviews on here  |
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