|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Jul 7, 2024 18:39:35 GMT
FadingFast said: "That said, if that stupid fake tennis-match scene didn't end, I was considering suicide as an alternative to continuing to watch it."
Please, FadingFast, do me a solid and kill me first! |
|
|
|
Post by BunnyWhit on Jul 7, 2024 18:47:05 GMT
FadingFast said: "That said, if that stupid fake tennis-match scene didn't end, I was considering suicide as an alternative to continuing to watch it."
Please, FadingFast, do me a solid and kill me first!
I know you and AndreaDoria will at least save me a spot on the escalator. |
|
|
|
Post by Grumpytoad on Jul 7, 2024 23:58:06 GMT
Been absent on here since April. Got wrapped up in podcasts for the first time. Also some full runs of old tv shows, from the 90’s mostly.
Time to return.
Border Incident (1949)
Illegal worker procurement in California.
Starring:
Ricardo Montalbán, George Murphy and Howard da Silva.
Well written screenplay that keeps the story moving at a very good pace.
Had preconceptions about Montalbán going in. To me he was the big star from a tv show I detested, or a demented character from the Star Trek franchise. Then I read he did musical roles before this film. I knew Border Incident was no musical, so what would he bring?
Thankfully, good things. As a Mexican federal cop, he was convincing. Confident, smart. Firm in his convictions, tough when needed. When his character was pretending to be a civilian, he showed convincing kindness to a coworker.
Murphy is new to me. Just did not buy in to his portrayal as a U.S. counterpart to Montalbán’s character. Main issue was that when he had to talk tough, it was just wooden. Still, I looked for film clips afterward to see some of his other work, mostly in musicals. Seems he was a pretty good singer and dancer.
Howard da Silva is great as a crime boss who uses others to do his dirty work. That said, I am somewhat partial to anything performed by him. He is one of only three Hollywood actors/actresses that I have seen live on stage. In fact, his stage work is where I discovered him.
The movie itself is shot film noir style, with rich blacks and whites. Even in the few outdoor daylight scenes in the movie, there is a sense of the world closing in on the characters. A scene of a cliff is especially striking.
The movie is apparently infamous for its excessive violence. Slightly disagree. Although there is one incredibly intense killing, I thought the rest of the movie’s unpleasantness was pretty typical for its time.
Highly recommend this picture.
|
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Jul 8, 2024 7:48:15 GMT
Been absent on here since April. Got wrapped up in podcasts for the first time. Also some full runs of old tv shows, from the 90’s mostly.
Time to return.
Border Incident (1949)
Illegal worker procurement in California.
Starring:
Ricardo Montalbán, George Murphy and Howard da Silva.
Well written screenplay that keeps the story moving at a very good pace.
Had preconceptions about Montalbán going in. To me he was the big star from a tv show I detested, or a demented character from the Star Trek franchise. Then I read he did musical roles before this film. I knew Border Incident was no musical, so what would he bring?
Thankfully, good things. As a Mexican federal cop, he was convincing. Confident, smart. Firm in his convictions, tough when needed. When his character was pretending to be a civilian, he showed convincing kindness to a coworker.
Murphy is new to me. Just did not buy in to his portrayal as a U.S. counterpart to Montalbán’s character. Main issue was that when he had to talk tough, it was just wooden. Still, I looked for film clips afterward to see some of his other work, mostly in musicals. Seems he was a pretty good singer and dancer.
Howard da Silva is great as a crime boss who uses others to do his dirty work. That said, I am somewhat partial to anything performed by him. He is one of only three Hollywood actors/actresses that I have seen live on stage. In fact, his stage work is where I discovered him.
The movie itself is shot film noir style, with rich blacks and whites. Even in the few outdoor daylight scenes in the movie, there is a sense of the world closing in on the characters. A scene of a cliff is especially striking.
The movie is apparently infamous for its excessive violence. Slightly disagree. Although there is one incredibly intense killing, I thought the rest of the movie’s unpleasantness was pretty typical for its time.
Highly recommend this picture.
View Attachment
|
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Jul 11, 2024 10:06:47 GMT
Gambit from 1966 with Michael Caine, Shirley MacLaine, Herbert Lom and John Abbott
Gambit slots into the heist-romcom niche subgenre of movies that had a brief heyday in the 1960s. These spirited efforts usually centered on a he-she team of smart, well-dressed and polished crooks flirt fighting their way through an elaborate, high-profile heist and into love.
Here, a Brit, played by Michael Caine, in Hong Kong, recruits a Eurasian woman, played by Shirley MacLaine, to aid him in a complicated heist of a priceless ancient Chinese bust held in the private collection of a Middle Eastern multimillionaire, played by Herbert Lom.
Caine and his lowkey partner, played by John Abbott, want MacLaine because she bears a striking resemblance to Lom's much beloved deceased wife - who also bears a striking resemblance to the very valuable bust Caine and Abbott want to steal.
The heist plan is quite complicated, and you'll want to experience it fresh, but it's fun seeing Caine's plan executed, first, as he imagines it: it goes James Bond-like perfect as MacLaine distracts, while Caine suavely infiltrates Lom's penthouse and stealthily makes off with the bust.
We all have our daydreams. When Caine and MacLaine get to the MidEast for real, little goes as planned. Hotel clerks don't bow before Caine's upper-class and condescending persona "Sir Harry Dean," nor does Lom fall madly for MacLaine because she looks like his deceased wife.
You don't watch Gambit for the heist itself, though, you watch it for the wonderful on-screen chemistry Caine and MacLaine have. He starts out cool, cocky, aloof and arrogant, while she's placidly reserved, but quickly, MacLaine irritates him by asking too many questions.
MacLaine, in her innocent "kooky" persona, asks questions that punch hole after hole in Caine's plan, but he's not yet ready to hear that. He's irritated and she's annoyed at being dismissed; however, MacLaine blithely goes along because she doesn't care that much. It's a fun dynamic.
It's MacLaine, though, who proves faster on her feet as she, time and again, saves the scheme, which starts to engender some grudging respect from Caine. You know this dynamic as you've seen it in movies over and over because it's charming when it works.
It works here in spades as director Ronald Neame lets it slowly build. Caine is off-putting at first, but MacLaine isn't bullied as she has her own quietly confident way of looking at things. It takes three quarters of the movie for Caine to "see" her, but when he does, it's a romcom payoff.
Neame also handles the heist itself well as there needs to be real tension and danger for the movie to hold together, which he creates despite the overall mirthful tone of the picture. The other piece of the puzzle that works is Lom's character.
In Caine's plan, Lom falls for MacLaine, which gives Caine the opening to steal the bust. In reality, Lom knows something is afoot with Caine and MacLaine from the start, but he's so intrigued that he lets them play out their game for his amusement and curiosity.
It's not quite a spoof, but it is playful. Caine, though, is serious, yet it's MacLaine and Lom who are smarter and have the most fun. It's a 1960s version of the popular 1930s "screwball society jewel thief" movie, which like Gambit, were often romcoms masquerading as heist tales.
In his updated take, Neame gives the movie a very 1960s stylish period look - mod clothing, a jazzy soundtrack, and an insouciant attitude - that adds to its charm. This aesthetic makes Gambit visually appealing, complementing its clever plot and spirited performances.
There are, though, a few too many twists and coincidences, plus the final wrap up, which brings Caine's partner Abbott back into the picture, is preposterous. Yet it's easy to forgive Gambit its flaws if you take it in its intended lighthearted manner. Plus the acting is just that good.
Caine, about to burst into megastardom, is outstanding as the smart guy who tries too hard to be a criminal mastermind. He does, though, wonderfully let his character be brought down a few pegs. MacLaine, at the peak of her stardom, is a master of brilliantly underplaying a scene.
Other than a shared vignette in one other movie, these two, unfortunately, never worked together again. Like Peter O'Toole and Audrey Hepburn in How to Steal a Million, in Gambit, they made a "caper" movie that is silly, fun and dated, and yet, still enjoyable as all heck today. |
|
|
|
Post by I Love Melvin on Jul 11, 2024 11:23:38 GMT
You're right about there being too many coincidences, but you're also right that it's easy to forgive the movie's flaws. Alicia Malone recently said that Shirley was the one who insisted on Michael Caine as her co-star and Shirley's instinct was right. They're both terrific at playing their own counterparts, first in the "fantasy" sequence as a well-oiled machine and then in reality as the rag-tag operators they essentially are. You put this movie in the right category by comparing it to How to Steal a Million.
|
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Jul 16, 2024 10:05:03 GMT
Armored Car Robbery from 1950 with Charles McGraw, William Talman and Adele Jergens
Armored Car Robbery is a frills-free B-movie crime drama from RKO Radio Pictures and director Richard Fleischer that starts as a heist movie, but then becomes a classic "cop avenging his dead partner" tale. Along the way, it sneaks in a touch of noir here and there.
At the opening, we see a crook meticulously planning a heist of an armored car outside of Los Angeles' old Wrigley Field (a minor league ballpark). William Talman plays this thinking man's criminal who has never been arrested, so he has no police record.
Talman even anonymously reports a fictitious crime at the stadium to learn the police's response time. He then assembles a team of hoods, one of whose estranged wife, played by long-legged, full-bodied Adele Jergens, Talman himself is sleeping with. Even criminals have messy love lives.
The heist, as always, has a hiccup: a police car happens to be in the neighborhood, which brings a police lieutenant, played by Charles McGraw, and his partner quickly to the scene. A gun battle ensues; McGraw's friend and longtime partner is killed and the revenge match is on.
Talman has the heist money, but one gang member is wounded and the police have set up roadblocks. In a tense scene - one seen in a lot of crime dramas from this era - Talman and crew just manage to bluff their way through one of the checkpoints.
Armored Car Robbery kicks into full crime drama now as the police marshall impressive resources, including a dragnet well coordinated with radio communication and forensics that help identify gang members. Diligent, old-fashioned legwork also plays a big part in the effort.
While the police do their professional thing, Talman puts his intellect to work. He is still on the run, but he has an edge since the police don't know anything about him. Then through luck and strategy, he ditches or kills the rest of the gang to hide out with the money in a motel by himself.
As the French would say, cherchez la femme, with Jergens being the only woman involved as the wife of one of the dead gang members. Talman has the money, and he has conveniently killed Jergens' husband, but he also wants Jergens for himself.
Now we get to Thomas Jefferson, yes, one of the Founding Fathers, who is often credited (perhaps apocryphally so) with saying, "I am a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it."
McGraw, on a personal vendetta mission, leads the police through an extensive and exhausting search for Talman, but it takes a little luck to break the case open. Still, the police were only in the position to benefit from the luck because of all the hard work they did beforehand.
It's the 1950s, so Talman isn't going to get away - the Motion Picture Production Code would never allow it - leaving the ending certain, but still well done, including a tiny foreshadowing of the popular noir The Killing. The spark in this one, though, is the McGraw-Talman dynamic.
McGraw is good playing a rough-edged Dick Tracy, who turns the hunt for Talman into a personal mission. While not quite an A-list leading man, McGraw is perfect playing a laconic, angry cop, a role he'd perfect a few years later in the outstanding noir The Narrow Margin.
Talman is an excellent foil for McGraw as his mien says both smart and a bit off, like most intelligent criminals are. He and McGraw are able to convey a lot of thought and emotion with their God-given and somewhat tortured facial expressions.
This mano-a-mano drama also benefits from its shot-on-location LA backdrop, which brings a realism that studio sets never can. With most of the action happening in the day and only a touch of noir style, the movie mainly has a crime-drama-documentary feel.
The other fun thing here is Ms. Jergens as a greedy, philandering, blonde burlesque dancer who switches her allegiances to the more successful hood. She is not really a femme fatale, but more of a gunmoll with a mid-century-style bombshell body and no conscience.
Armored Car Robbery works because it stays in its lane. It's a simple heist movie that seamlessly transitions into a manhunt with a police revenge angle that creates compelling tension and personal drama throughout.
This type of story has been done many times before and since, but Armored Car Robbery stands out for its raw human emotion and unadorned execution, making it a memorable, albeit not groundbreaking, entry in the genre.
 |
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Jul 21, 2024 10:20:37 GMT
Woman on Pier 13 from 1949 with Robert Ryan, Laraine Day, Thomas Gomez, Janice Carter, John Agar and William Talman
Those looking for an anti-communism/film-noir mashup have come to the right movie in Woman on Pier 13. The propaganda works about as well as all heavy-handed propaganda works, but the film-noir aspects are pretty good, helped along by a talented cast.
With Washington and Hollywood in the grips of anti-communist fever back then - a fact well documented and covered incessantly, to this day, by commentators of classic Hollywood - there were plenty of movies metaphorically lamenting the fate of those caught in the witch hunt.
There were also a few at that time, like RKO studio head Howard Hughes, who tried to make movies supporting the anti-communist efforts. Hughes, though, always his own worst enemy, tinkered so much with his picture that the result is a politically stultifying but still okay movie.
Kicking it off, Robert Ryan plays a successful manager of a shipping company who has been chosen by the other shippers to represent them at the ongoing labor negotiations with the dockworkers' union, which we will soon learn is covertly controlled by the Communist Party.
Ryan, a former stevedore, is thought to be the perfect choice because labor and management both respect him. But newly married Ryan has a secret in his past: in his youth, he was a member of the Communist Party, while he also dated another party member, played by Janis Carter.
Ryan's innocent new wife, played by Laraine Day, who married Ryan after a whirlwind two-week romance, knows none of this. Life hack: Don't marry someone you have known for only two weeks.
The local Communist Party head, played by Thomas Gomez, can't believe his good luck, as the key negotiator for management, Ryan, is someone he can easily blackmail by threatening to expose his Communist past.
The movie is now a swirl of threats and intrigue. Gomez and Carter - she's still smarting over being dumped by Ryan years ago - pressure Ryan to follow "the Party's" orders. Ryan, though, tries to break free of the Party without having his Red past exposed to his new wife or others.
Thrown into the mix is Carter seducing Day's innocent younger brother, played by John Agar, as she tries to turn him Commie, which would toss a heavy piece of metal into Ryan's new marriage. Also, stirring things up is William Talman playing a paid-for-hire thug for Gomez.
Gomez plays the Communist Party boss like a smart, unemotional 1940s American mob boss. But like all good Communists, he justifies every evil thing he does as being good for the Party, which by proxy, he avers, is good for the worker, so every immoral thing he does is really moral.
It's the same twisted tautology that has the Party care greatly about "the people," in theory, but in practice, no individual life really matters and can be sacrificed for the good of the state, which, abracadabra, then flows back to the good of the individual. Uh-huh.
While all that communist ideology is being argued about, a decent film noir is in progress as Ryan fights hard to break the Party's hold on him, while Gomez and Carter try to squeeze harder to get Ryan to do the union's/Party's bidding.
One thing Hughes did capture is how Communism - the workers' party ideology - was in vogue in elite saloons, back then, full of well-dressed and pretentious intellectuals eating hors d'oeuvres and drinking champagne, while expressing words of solidarity with the working man.
The surprise in all this is pretty Day, who has no real idea what is going on. She can see, though, that her husband and brother are in trouble, so she refuses to be quiet. She forces a final confrontation between everyone in an over-the-top but very-of-the-era film-noir gunfight climax.
Despite its clumsy politics, Ryan, Carter, Day and Gomez are pros who turn this often muddled script into an okay noir. Unusual for noir at this time, Carter and Day really drive the picture, with Carter being a smart femme fatale Commie and Day a strong, brave woman fighting for her family.
With some on-location shooting in Los Angeles and San Francisco, black-and-white cinematography, plenty of dark scenes at night, on the docks and in menacing warehouses, and a careless disregard of life, the movie looks, feels and says film noir.
Just a little tweaking could have turned this into a very good noir that subtly made the point that the Communist Party had infiltrated the dockworkers' union. But Hughes, in his enthusiasm and micromanagement, made his anti-communist message turgid and too blatant to be effective.
Woman on Pier 13, today, works as an okay noir with a talent-heavy cast that also stands as a mid-century curio left over from the Cold War Communist fear that gripped America for over a decade.
N.B. Woman on Pier 13 was initially released under the awful title I Married a Communist, but when it bombed, Howard Hughes re-released it under its new and innocuously noirish title.
 |
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Jul 25, 2024 10:34:07 GMT
Up the Down Staircase from 1967 with Sandy Dennis, Patrick Bedford, Eileen Heckart and Roy Poole
You can pull some "timeless lessons" out of Up the Down Staircase, if you really try hard, but it is easier to just see it as a well-acted relic of late 1960s idealism meets reality in an "inner city" school. Think of it as America's To Sir, with Love.
Despite some hackneyed writing and cliches, there is a sincerity in the effort here to portray a breaking school, in a breaking neighborhood that still, somehow, has a thread or two of hope left. Almost all of that hope, though, rests on the tiny shoulders of lead actress Sandy Dennis.
Dennis was well cast as she looks more like a cute school teacher than a movie star. In this setting, she really looks like Bambi entering a hunters' ambush as she is a fresh out of a prissy college idealist young teacher full of hopes and dreams about "enriching young minds."
Those hopes and dreams smash into a harsh reality as the school is a rundown, bureaucratic monolith of conflicting rules and endless forms to fill out, but few supplies. Bells ring randomly and the obvious titular metaphor shows kids and teachers ignoring staircase directions.
Worse for Dennis is that her job is less about teaching than just controlling her classroom packed with the era's student cliches: a kid who sleeps through class because he works at night, a lonely girl, a shy boy, a tough "hood," an angry young black student, and on and on.
You know the basic arc from almost the first scene. Dennis will slowly have her enthusiasm sapped as the social problems of her students, their unruliness and the limited resources of the school overwhelm her good intentions.
Dennis gives it a good fight, though. She bends over backwards to help a smart but disaffected "hood." She reaches out to a painfully shy and lonely young girl. She even, surprisingly, gets the class to see the significance of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities to their own lives.
That latter is one of the movie's uplifting moments. The class is rowdy as all heck, but because the kids are engaged with the idea of "two cities/societies" existing side by side in one. Usually the class is rowdy to be disrupted, but here it's rowdy because everyone wants to participate.
Each victory, however, is met with some painful defeats as a student attempts suicide at the school, another abuses Dennis' trust and her classroom, overall, often descends into chaos.
The suicide is a chilling scene. You are going along seeing kids getting involved or kids emotionally checking out, but when one throws herself out of a high-floor window, the fragility of these children's lives is laid bare.
The other teachers are a mixed bag as well. Some, like the one played by Eileen Heckart, are middle aged and still trying to be good teachers. Others, like one played by Roy Poole, see the kids as an invading army to be contained at best.
Worse, some are working out their own personal demons like the English teacher played by Patrick Bedford. He is a frustrated failed novelist who often bullies his students over grammatical errors to feel better about himself.
There are a lot of good vignettes of students arguing with each other or with the teachers, or of the teachers arguing with each other or the administrators. There are also a few upbeat vignettes of the teachers, students and even administrators rowing in the same directions.
Since movies need a climax, you get the exact one you expect when Dennis tries to resign, but first has trouble getting the bureaucracy to find the resignation form for her. Will a student telling Dennis that she made a difference in her life be enough to change Dennis' mind?
The acting is uniformly good, but this is Dennis' movie and she carries it with her unique blend of innocence, bird-like nervousness and plucky gumption that has you believing this fragile-looking young woman can survive and maybe even thrive in this Thunderdome highschool.
Today, the movie's restored and cool color stock, shot on locations around Manhattan, is a wonderful time capsule of New York City back when the chaos on the streets - drugs, crime, garbage, graffiti and a dispiriting cynicism - seeped into the schools.
Inner city schools have been a challenge for well over half a century now. Most are better funded today, but the social ills of the communities and the large cultural issues of society are still buffeting attempts to educate the kids in these difficult neighborhoods.
None of this was new even in 1967. Over ten years earlier, movies like Blackboard Jungle trod similar ground. Still, Up the Down Staircase is a respectable addition to the troubled-school subgenre of movies.
For us today, it's also a great visual trip back to the late 1960s, serving as a poignant reflection of that era's challenges and hopes. |
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Jul 27, 2024 9:44:09 GMT
Street Scene from 1931 with Sylvia Sidney, David Landau, Beulah Bondi and William Collier Jr.
Director King Vidor, working from a screenplay based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning stage play by Elmer Rice, captured a realistic portrayal of life that is rarely seen on screen. It's not perfect, but it is a darn good look at a slice of immigrant life in a tenement building in early 1930s New York City.
Set on the stoop of a tenement building in Manhattan's working-class Hell's Kitchen during a broiling few summer days, the beauty in Street Scene is in the showing. The heat causes many of the tenants to sit or pause on the stoop as their apartments swelter in those pre-air-conditioning days.
A snide tenant, played by Beulah Bondi, stirs the pot with her nasty gossip delivered with a sanctimonious attitude. There's plenty to gossip about, too, with the big story being a married woman and tenant, played by Estelle Taylor, having an affair with the milk collector.
Taylor's husband, played by David Landau, is a cold and somewhat bullying man who is never happy with his wife, son or daughter, the latter and star of the movie is played by Sylvia Sidney. Sidney, like her mother, is too sensitive for the almost-always angry Landau.
It's hot and people are bored and uncomfortable, so gossip like, "did you hear who's having an affair?" takes off like wildfire. It also shows how there was no way to have a secret in a building like that, with everyone's windows opened and plenty of tenants alway milling out front.
The affair story frames the plot, but the beauty in the movie is simply in the seeing. It's seeing the older Jewish socialist spout anti-capitalist diatribes out of his first-floor window, as his embarrassed adult daughter tries to rein him in.
That man's son, played by William Collier Jr., meanwhile tries to turn his friendship with Sidney into something more. It's openly acknowledged in a very-of-the-era, matter-of-fact way that his being Jewish and her not is a big deal, which everyone but the two "kids" seems to care about.
Shocking for us today, and sadly true color of the era, you'll see how the derisive term "yid" is casually tossed around. The building's bully, played by Matt McHugh, also taunts, with vicious antisemitism, Collier Jr. to belittle him in front of Sidney. It isn't pretty, but it feels real.
In the building, there's also a nice Italian couple whose husband buys ice-cream for everyone. They are a sad couple, though, because they can't have children, a sadness emphasized by the nervous young father from upstairs who runs to get a doctor for his pregnant wife.
Thrown into the mix on the stoop is a dour Scandinavian couple - the husband is the building's super - a social worker who is condescending to a mother of two children about to get evicted (her husband left them flat), and an alcoholic tenant who's always off to the bar.
In the fiery climax (no spoilers), Landau comes home to find his wife and the milk collector together and not settling the family's milk bill. It's a good story arc, with the ramifications allowing for some sort of "wrap up," but the plot is the movie's least important aspect.
What is important is the depiction of this moment in America. Sure there's a lot of stereotyping, but stereotyping exists because it's a shorthand that captures commonalities. Not all Jews were socialist, nor were all Scandinavians dour, but they were reasonable oversimplifications.
If you read the newspapers from the era, Street Scene will look very familiar to you as tenement life in the papers was very much like the movie: affairs leading to violent outcomes, evictions of abandoned families and ethnicities mixing, often in genial ways, was all there.
Vidor draws you into the individual dramas early by keeping the camera narrowly focused on the tenement's front stoop. Later in, he pulls the camera back to remind you that this tenement, with all its drama, is just one of many in the massive city. It is an incredibly effective framing.
The acting too, despite sometimes feeling stagey, is impressive as Sidney, Landau, Bondi, Collier Jr., and others comfortably embody their characters' personas. Sidney is every enthusiastic teenage girl who wants to break out of her depressing surroundings.
Once the Motion Picture Production Code was fully enforced by the end of 1934, movies like this wouldn't get made, not because of their sex or violence - little is shown and it's not at all gratuitous - but because of their honest portrayal and discussion of sex, violence and the city's many ethnic groups.
The movie's stereotypes, which today we might find offensive, have an honesty and broadness to them that would morph into the code-approved "genial Italian, "plodding Scandinavian," "hard-working Jew," etc., that dominated the screen for the next several decades.
Street Scene is a gem that reasonably honestly captures the texture and nuances of New York City's bustling, striving and, sometimes, combustible immigrant life in the early 1930s. It serves today as an incredible time capsule of one type of the American immigrant experience.
|
|
|
|
Post by Andrea Doria on Jul 27, 2024 13:24:19 GMT
Thanks Fading Fast!
I just put Street Scene in my YouTube watch-later list. I love those old movies that are like trips back in a time machine.
The two screen shots are wonderful -- like Edward Hopper paintings.
|
|
|
|
Post by BunnyWhit on Jul 27, 2024 13:44:04 GMT
(I adore Beulah Bondi's dress!)
|
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Jul 27, 2024 15:01:38 GMT
Thanks Fading Fast!
I just put Street Scene in my YouTube watch-later list. I love those old movies that are like trips back in a time machine.
The two screen shots are wonderful -- like Edward Hopper paintings. |
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Jul 30, 2024 9:38:58 GMT
![]() 
The Pleasure of His Company from 1961 with Fred Astaire, Lilly Palmer, Debbie Reynolds, Gary Merrill, Tab Hunter, Charles Ruggles and Harold Fong
The Pleasure of His Company is a genuine comedy-drama where both elements get equal attention in this funny, but also serious movie about love, loss, regret and responsibility, all set in the world of upper-class San Francisco.
Debbie Reynolds plays a debutante about to marry a wealthy rancher, played by Tab Hunter. Reynolds' mother, played by Lilli Palmer, and stepfather, played by Gary Merrill, are happily planning for the big day until Tolstoy's stranger comes to town.
Reynolds' father, played by Fred Astaire, has been absent for seemingly all of Reynolds' life, but instead of hating him, she's romanticized his globe-trotting playboy lifestyle. So when Astaire shows up at the beginning of the week of the wedding, Reynolds is excited.
Palmer, though, is not excited to see her ex-husband. She still likes him, that's obvious, but knows his nonchalance brings with it a lot of mischief and disruption. Merrill, as nice a husband and stepfather as one could want, spends the entire movie trying to keep up.
What is Merrill, a nice-guy businessman who pays the bills and makes sure the family's trains run on time, to do when shown up against an international playboy whose entire personality is built on surface charm, romance and excitement?
Reynolds, who's had a comfortable but sheltered upbringing, was content to marry practical Hunter, until sparkling Dad fills her head with tales of world travel. Astaire isn't a bad guy, but his motives are mixed as he's lonely and looking for Reynolds' company.
The movie is really Astaire versus Palmer going mano-a-mano for Reynolds' future with the sidebar that Astaire wouldn't be opposed to winning Palmer back, which seems possible as Palmer hasn't completely lost her itch for Astaire.
Director George Seaton, working with a screenplay based on a Samuel A. Taylor and Cornelia Otis Skinner play, perfectly balances the comedic and dramatic elements as you laugh a lot, but never forget that several futures hang in the balance.
That tension elevates the picture above most comedies of the era where the "drama" is just there to usher in the next joke. Scenes like the one where Reynolds and Astaire share a late-night snack in the kitchen are taut drama smartly tucked inside a comedy.
That scene should be taught in acting classes as two performers, not generally known for their dramatic skills, have you hanging on every word as they, on the surface, casually cut a cake and get some forks, while really discussing their future in a round-about conversation.
The real star, though, of the movie is Palmer. She has Astaire's number from the start - she's his ex-wife after all - but even she isn't immune to his charm. Knowing this, her real mission is to get rid of him while preventing him from thwarting Reynolds' wedding.
Every scene with Palmer is a joy. She's frustrated and angry with, but also aroused by a man she divorced. She knows he isn't good for her or her daughter, but darn it, she likes him.
Poor Merrill can do nothing more than look on from the sidelines to see if he'll keep his wife. Charles Ruggles gets in a few good lines as the bemused grandfather who seems to enjoy watching the drama in his family unfold.
Somewhat taken under Astaire's charming wing, Harold Fong is excellent in the unfortunately stereotypical role of the houseboy, but his talents add some nuance and spark to the part.
Left out in the cold by Astaire (much like Merrill), Hunter, too, surprises, as he spends most of the movie as a macguffin - will Reynolds marry him or not - but then delivers a heck of a dressing down to Astaire toward the end that says this pretty boy had some acting chops in him.
With several on-location scenes shot in San Francisco at a time when the city couldn't have looked more appealing, the movie makes you want to time travel back to that era, especially if you can live in Palmer's beautiful house overlooking San Francisco Bay.
While you think you know what will happen, until the end, everything is up for grabs. The Pleasure of His Company is a comedy that never loses sight of its drama. Fittingly, rapscallion Astaire even pulls a few fun last-minute rabbits out of his hat.
This movie gets surprisingly little attention today from either old-movie fans or Fred Astaire fans. While it's not a musical or dancing movie, Astaire does trip the light fantastic a few times with his wife and daughter. The man is fluid motion even at sixty-two.
There is a moment or two when Fred's "romancing" of his daughter - he wants her to travel with him - feels almost creepy, but maybe that's our modern radar. Overall, The Pleasure of His Company is a smart comedy-drama in the best sense of that genre mashup.
N.B. There was also a book put out based on the play that is a fun fast read. Comments on the book are here: "The Pleasure of His Company" |
|
|
|
Post by Fading Fast on Aug 1, 2024 9:45:35 GMT
Thank You All Very Much (US release) / A Touch of Love (UK release) from 1969 starring Sandy Dennis
"Boy you've been a naughty girl / You let your knickers down" - McCartney-Lennon
Thank You All Very Much is a "kitchen sink drama" for upper-class Fabian Socialists in Swinging late-1960s London. A bit daring in its way at the time, today it is a dour curio since single motherhood, thankfully, no longer carries a stigma.
Sandy Dennis plays the daughter of wealthy socialists. She is working on her PhD thesis while living alone rent free in her parents' large and comfortable London flat because her father has a government appointment overseas and he and his wife aren't charging their daughter rent.
Dennis moves in a clique of similar highly educated, wealthy and "liberated" young people, but Dennis is perpetually sad; whereas, her friends are perpetually horney. Men want to sleep with Dennis, but she's too depressed for sex.
Until she isn't one night with a new man she's been kind of dating in her detached way. As we all know, you only have to let your knickers down one time to get pregnant. When Dennis learns she's "with child," she treats it like everything else in her life – as a reason to be sad.
She slowly passes on all the usual options of that era: she doesn't tell the man she slept with that she's pregnant, she refuses the offer of marriage from another man maybe trying to help her, she won't get an (available) illegal abortion, and she won't give the baby up for adoption.
In her aloof, passive, yet stubborn way, she wants to be a single mom. If there's any humor in this downbeat picture, it's seeing upper-class socialist Dennis navigate the bureaucracy of the beloved-in-theory-by-socialists National Health Service.
Dennis' solidarity with her fellow pregnant moms only goes so far, as she is quite happy to get special treatment when her influential father reaches out to an important doctor. This gives her a pang of guilt here or there, but it's really socialism for thee, not for me.
If there is a money scene to this sloggy movie, it's when Dennis, at wit's end because the Health Service bureaucracy won't let her see her baby after the baby has had heart surgery, just sits down and screams, literally, nonstop and at the top of her lungs in the hospital.
Who hasn't felt like that at the DMV or when facing any government bureaucracy? But she only "wins" because her father's doctor friend takes charge. Had it been you or me, security would have "escorted" us out of the building or worse.
There is no real climax, it's only Dennis now raising her baby "intrepidly" by herself. Oh, but in that big flat paid for by her parents. She also has a woman – who one assumes is paid for by her parents as well – who comes in to take care of the baby when Dennis has classes, etc.
Dennis was a hot star at that moment, so she is the movie as everyone else - boyfriends, girlfriends, doctors, a sister, etc. - just float by as half formed characters who pop up when needed to advance Dennis' single fight against, well, not really that much.
Even as shown in this sympathetic portrayal, none of it is really hard on Dennis: Some disparaging looks, some tut-tutting and little pressure from a few bluenoses to give the baby up for adoption are balanced by a lot of support from family, friends, nurses and her doctor.
This is no Joan of Arc tale as Dennis comes across as more of a depressed spoiled rich brat with a stubborn streak than a modern-day feminist. Maybe that's the role, so it's not a knock on her acting talents, but it does make her character unsympathetic
Based on the novel Millstone (charming), by Margaret Drabble, this was seen as a bold feminist story in its time. And it was in a way, as Dennis, despite all the cushions her parents' money could buy, still had to stand a certain amount of social opprobrium, which mattered back then.
Today, the on-location shooting all around late-1960s London – including the British Museum's architecturally incredible Library Reading Room – is enjoyable time travel. You'll also simply want to live in Dennis' sprawling old flat.
Thank You All Very Much is not well known today for a good reason as its pretentious, upper-class "socialist" values and elitist brand of "feminism" have not aged well. It looks out of touch even with the many working-class "kitchen sink" dramas being produced at that time.
If you drill down far enough, though, the fight for single mothers in Thank You All Very Much is admirable, just not wrapped in this package. Its value today is simply its time-capsule-like capture of a small sliver of British society at a moment of meaningful social change. |
|
