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Post by Fading Fast on Dec 30, 2022 15:14:52 GMT
Roadblock from 1951 with Charles McGraw and Joan Dixon
Diane (Joan Dixon): Someday you're going to want something nice and expensive that you can't afford on a detective's salary.
Joe Peters (Charles McGraw): Like what?
Diane (Joan Dixon): Like me.
Roadblock is a work-a-day noir in the best sense of the phrase. It's not groundbreaking or original and it has several plot flaws and a low-budget obviousness, but at just over an hour, it delivers a solid punch of noir including a few particularly good blows like the quote at the top.
Charles McGraw plays an honest insurance detective (noirland was chockablock with interesting insurance detectives in the 1940s and 1950s) who meets a gold-digging grifter, played by Joan Dixon, at an airport.
She, unbeknownst to him, uses him to get a reduced fare for herself by tricking the ticket agent into believing McGraw is her husband. (Scamming airlines over their "rules" clearly goes back at least as far as the 1940s.)
It's a cute-meet, film-noir style, as he's a bit miffed at first, but these two quickly take to each other. Yet Dixon immediately kiboshes any affair because - and a big kudos to Dixon's character for brutal honesty - she tells him she has no interest in a $350-a-month insurance detective (again, see the quote at the top).
McGraw and Dixon have good on-screen chemistry and well-written dialogue as her dismissive nickname for him "Honest Joe" and a coin-flipping game they play to make small joint decisions captures the silly fun that happens during the flirting stage of new relationships.
But he's poor by her standards of a champagne and limousine life, so they go their separate ways. They meet up again later, though, when he's investigating a fur robbery of a company his firm insures because her new "boyfriend," a big-time gangster, is the chief suspect.
Being around Dixon this time is just too much for "Honest Joe," so "Honest Joe" hatches a dishonest plan to get "big" money in order to get Dixon. The twist is that just as he makes this decision, Dixon begins to see the downside of being a kept woman and devoting her life to money. Now, she even seems willing to take McGraw on his terms and salary.
But these two never get on the same page, so the rest of the movie is a pretty good "inside job" heist movie - a payroll truck, money "buried" while it's "hot," a police and insurance investigation (McGraw tries to squirrel that effort) - and a star-crossed-lovers tale.
You know a noir movie is doing something right when you are kind of - and you don't like to admit this, even to yourself - rooting for the bad guys to get away with their crime because you empathize with them and don't really care about some big anonymous company that had its payroll robbed.
McGraw and Dixon are good as a B noir team, so much so, you wish they had done a few more movies together. He has the right square-jawed look to be "Honest Joe," but also a vulnerability that makes you almost understand why he turned.
Dixon, cursed by being a Howard Hughes discovery, didn't have much of a Hollywood career, but in Roadblock, she shows an ability to play a young gold-digger who never really goes full femme fatale when love and life's realities hit her. It's a challenging bit of acting that she pulls off reasonably well. Plus, oddly for a Hughes "protege," you don't immediately notice her bustline.
Roadblock, with its small budget, is a daytime noir, as its action - investigators questioning suspects, car chases, crooks stuffing suitcases with stolen money and plenty of body heat - mainly takes place in the sunshine and not on noir's usually playground of nighttime, neon-lit shadowy-and-wet streets and alleyways. To be fair, though, a sunshine look worked for the set-in-Mexico noir classic The Big Steal.
There are better noirs than Roadblock, but one of the things that makes film noir such an incredible genre is the large number of small-budget films that swam in the wake of the genre's big-budget classics.
At seventy-three minutes and with a basic story told and acted well, Roadblock is a enjoyable "quick hit" of noir that does its job and then, like a good noir antihero, gets off the screen. I'll have to put Roadblock on my watchlist. Just one year later, McGraw would star as the lead in one of my personal favorite film noirs, The Narrow Margin. |
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Dec 30, 2022 19:02:16 GMT
Watched Whistle Stop (1946 United Artist) with featured George Raft, Ava Gardner and Tom Conway; OK film, with the best acting coming from Conway and Victor McLaglen as a thug caught between Raft and Conway. Here is what screenwriter Philip Yordan had to say:
In February 1945 Yordan sold the project to producer Seymour Nebenzal.[4] Yordan remained associate producer in exchange for 50% of the profits.[5] The film was financed by a bank in Palm Springs.[6] Ava Gardner was borrowed from MGM and Tom Conway from RKO.[7]
Yordan said "my script was very good" but felt the producer made a mistake casting Raft. "He had been a big name around the world and he was on the skids and we could afford him, but he looked like hell and who wanted to see this old man with Ava Gardner? It should have been a young guy like Burt Lancaster
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Post by cineclassics on Dec 30, 2022 21:06:58 GMT
I'll have to put Roadblock on my watchlist. Just one year later, McGraw would star as the lead in one of my personal favorite film noirs, The Narrow Margin. Yes, you are so right! Were they ever in a movie together? |
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Post by Fading Fast on Dec 30, 2022 21:48:18 GMT
I'm with you, "The Narrow Margin" is outstanding. I really like that one. Have you noticed that, in that era, McGraw looked a lot Lawrence Tierney? Yes, you are so right! Were they ever in a movie together? |
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Post by Fading Fast on Jan 2, 2023 11:59:48 GMT
Indiscretion of an American Wife from 1953 with Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift
"You didn't look very wicked. I'm not an imaginative woman. It was you. It was Rome! And I'm a housewife from Philadelphia." - Jennifer Jones as Mary Forbes explaining to Montgomery Clift's character why she had an affair with him
Director Vittorio De Sica with much involvement from producer David O. Selznick created an odd cognate to Brief Encounter, director David Lean's 1945 low-key cinematic masterpiece about an extra-marital affair.
Indiscretion of an American Wife opens with the affair ending, but this is no story-told-through-flashback effort.
Instead, the movie's entire sixty-three minutes of runtime is Jennifer Jones, playing a married American wife and mother, now at a Rome train station, trying to say goodbye to her half-Italian, half-American lover of the past few months, played by Montgomery Clift, who is trying to convince her to stay.
Jones doesn't want to leave Clift, but she also doesn't want to blow up her marriage, her life in America and her very young daughter's home for an affair that is still in the rip-our-clothes-off-each-other stage (more on that in a moment).
Filmed almost exclusively in that Rome train station, there is so much background noise and activity that it often eclipses the story as all the hustle and bustle is as distracting to the lovers as it is to the viewer.
Sure it's realistic, but the point of the movie is to show the poignancy of an affair potentially ending, not how hectic a train station can be. There are documentaries for that purpose.
Also distracting is an Italian nephew of Jones - this branch of her family is why Jones is visiting Italy - a young boy who shows up to keep her company as she waits for her train. He does nothing but annoy Jones and the viewer as he makes it hard for Jones and Clift to talk.
You quickly get the easy-to-understand-conflict: Jones is in love but does not want to destroy her American family, while Clift, single and in love, just wants Jones.
That basic argument plays out through most of the movie as the couple fight, part and make-up a few times, while Jones' luggage gets shuffled around by her changing train plans. All this happens as Jones and Clift get constantly jostled about by waiters, porters and passengers.
Tucked inside this train station pastiche is a not-subtle storyline about a very poor family, who Jones briefly helps, whose mother sacrifices everything for her children - message received.
The more engaging incident is when Jones and Clift, making up once again, hide away in a not-in-use railcar and are caught going at it by railroad employees. It's 1953, so they don't show that, but the couple is taken to some sort of train-station holding room because of their "inappropriate" behavior.
The fallout is the movie's money moment as the brutal embarrassment that primly dressed and coiffed Jones has to endure from the side glances and smirks of the railroad employees witnessing the superintendent question her about her behavior is excruciatingly painful for her.
Today we laugh off any sexual misadventure, but in the 1950s, a married woman caught having sex with her lover in a public place, and then being questioned about it in front of others was deeply humiliated for a woman, no matter how we think about it in 2023.
Jones earned her salary for perfectly portraying a woman trying to maintain some shred of dignity, while really wanting to crawl into a hole and die.
Like Brief Encounter, Indiscretion of an American Wife comes down to a last minute decision to board or not board a train (there's also a similar scene in the Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper movie Love in the Afternoon).
Indiscretion of an American Wife took a good idea, but mainly failed in its execution as it let a few unimportant things - a loud train station and a petulant nephew - distract from its narrowly-focused story.
Jones' and Clift characters, also, already seem about to begin the "you annoy me" stage of their relationship, so you're not rooting for their illicit love to work out as you are for Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard's to work out in Brief Encounter.
Maybe that was the fault of the actors, the director or the screenwriters, but regardless, the one thing all great love stories and every run-of-the-mill romcom need is a likeable couple you are rooting for at the center of it. Indiscretion of an American Wife could have overcome all its flaws if it had had that one essential ingredient, but alas. |
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Post by topbilled on Jan 2, 2023 14:50:16 GMT
Watched Whistle Stop (1946 United Artist) with featured George Raft, Ava Gardner and Tom Conway; OK film, with the best acting coming from Conway and Victor McLaglen as a thug caught between Raft and Conway. Here is what screenwriter Philip Yordan had to say: In February 1945 Yordan sold the project to producer Seymour Nebenzal.[4] Yordan remained associate producer in exchange for 50% of the profits.[5] The film was financed by a bank in Palm Springs.[6] Ava Gardner was borrowed from MGM and Tom Conway from RKO.[7] Yordan said "my script was very good" but felt the producer made a mistake casting Raft. "He had been a big name around the world and he was on the skids and we could afford him, but he looked like hell and who wanted to see this old man with Ava Gardner? It should have been a young guy like Burt Lancaster |
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Jan 2, 2023 17:19:32 GMT
Watched Whistle Stop (1946 United Artist) with featured George Raft, Ava Gardner and Tom Conway; OK film, with the best acting coming from Conway and Victor McLaglen as a thug caught between Raft and Conway. Here is what screenwriter Philip Yordan had to say: In February 1945 Yordan sold the project to producer Seymour Nebenzal.[4] Yordan remained associate producer in exchange for 50% of the profits.[5] The film was financed by a bank in Palm Springs.[6] Ava Gardner was borrowed from MGM and Tom Conway from RKO.[7] Yordan said "my script was very good" but felt the producer made a mistake casting Raft. "He had been a big name around the world and he was on the skids and we could afford him, but he looked like hell and who wanted to see this old man with Ava Gardner? It should have been a young guy like Burt Lancaster Also Burt Lancaster wouldn't have been a big enough name to carrier the film prior to The Killers. Thus Raft was a better marketing choice for United Artist and their actors-for-hire approach as it relates to casting Whistle Stop. But Raft is miscast IMO; just too old and worn out to make the character's turn around work. |
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Post by topbilled on Jan 2, 2023 19:13:58 GMT
It sounds like Yordan felt he was writing THE KILLERS and not WHISTLE STOP. Also Burt Lancaster wouldn't have been a big enough name to carrier the film prior to The Killers. Thus Raft was a better marking choice for United Artist and their actors-for-hire approach as it relates to casting Whistle Stop. But Raft is miscast IMO; just too old and worn out to make the character's turn around work.
I always enjoy watching Raft, and I think he still had some mileage left in him at this point...but if I remember correctly, and it's been awhile since I've seen WHISTLE STOP, the story seems to be driven more by McLaglen's character...so Raft was doing a rather thankless role, for the money. |
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Post by sewhite2000 on Jan 2, 2023 19:21:41 GMT
Hey, everybody, I'm about to begin my annual quixotic enterprise of attempting to report on every movie I watch over the course of a calendar year. This is something I've attempted every year on the old message boards since, I think, 2017. Thus far, all my annual attempts have petered out somewhere in the April-July range, as the sheer number of movies I see proves to be overwhelming, and I find myself a week or two (or more) behind and, lacking the energy to ever catch up, I abandon the project. Probably that will happen again this year. Not gonna lie. But I'll plunge into it again this year. New year, new message board. Let's see how it goes. Hope those of you who choose to do so enjoy coming along this journey with me!
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Post by Andrea Doria on Jan 2, 2023 19:31:50 GMT
Looking forward to it, Sewhite!
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Post by cineclassics on Jan 3, 2023 0:20:55 GMT
A film noir done in broad daylight, Drive a Crooked Road, released in 1954, arrives during the latter end of the classical film noir era. Mickey Rooney plays a timid mechanic who dreams of racing professionally. When he meets a small-time gangster's moll, he's manipulated into serving as a getaway driver for a bank heist.
Drive a Crooked Road has many of your typical noir tropes, but I think what really impressed me about this film was the on location shooting (Malibu, California) and Mickey Rooney's understated and convincing performance. Rooney's role here is a departure from his typical frenetic, boy-next-door roles that he excelled at during the 1930s and 1940s. If you're ever in doubt that Rooney was a well versatile actor who could showcase his range, Drive a Crooked Road should be on your watchlist.
Serving as both a study in the all consuming tyranny of manipulation and loneliness, as well as another solid heist entry into the film noir genre, Drive a Crooked Road is a fairly underseen picture and it comes highly recommended. |
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Post by sewhite2000 on Jan 3, 2023 0:39:57 GMT
1/1/23
The Reluctant Astronaut (Universal, 1967)
Source: TCM
I didn't make it home in time yestarday for Spaceballs, though I saw large chunks of it on HBO when I was in middle school. My favorite bit was the reprise of the alien bursting out of Jon Hurt's chest from Alien. ("Oh, no, not again!"). Mel Brooks and Jon Hurt seem like an odd friendship, even a professional one, but Hurt also cameoed as Jesus in History of the World, Part I.
So, my first movie of the new year was this Don Knotts vehicle from the Summer of Love year, though there was nary a hippie to be found in it. I'm too young to have caught The Andy Griffith Show firsthand, but it was all over TV in syndication in my youth. I'm of the generation that got to know Knotts through his '70s/'80s Disney movies with Tim Conway and of course his role on Three's Company. I remember The Incredible Mr. Limpet was on HBO probably the same year i watched Spaceballs, and the ads with its Bedknobs & Broomsticks-style interaction of live actors and animation led me at that age to assume it was a Disney film - and by extension, I'd always assumed the same thing about this movie, which I'd never seen before last night. But Knotts was actually under contract to Universal after leaving Andy Griffith. I learned from Ben M. that two writers from that show produced the script for this movie, drawing on the same techniques they'd used to make Barney Fife such a memorable character.
So, the premise is Knotts is the operator of a carnival ride in the (I assume) fictional town of Sweetwater, Missouri, that simulates the experience for the kiddies of being in a lunar capsule. The running gag throughout the film is that he's deathly afraid of heights, so much so, that just walking down the three steps from the capsule entrance to ground level are almost unbearable for him. On multiple occasions in the film, he fools his friends and family into thinking he's about to board a plane, when we then see him hiding in tall grass as it takes off, after which he proceeds to find the nearest Greyhound. We're told he's 35 and still living with his parents (Knotts was 43 at the time). They're played by Arthur O'Connell and Jeanette Nolan. In one scene, Knotts emphatically declares himself to be an only child, but five minutes later, he's being serenaded by four young girls we're told are his nieces, which would imply the existence at one time of a sibling. He's sweet on the girl who runs the fairground concession stand. In typical age-mismatch movie fashion of the day, she's played by a 25-year-old with whom I was unfamiliar nsmed Joan Freeman. I wasn't sure how to read her character at first, which was probably intentional. She's kind to him but manages early on to feint any efforts he makes at becoming amorous, always with a completely innocent excuse, however.
We're told the O'Connell character was a corporal in World War I, and he and his buddies routinely gather to drink shots while singing "Parlez Vous" and playing John Philip Sousa marches and patriotic tunes on the Victrola. O'Connell wants his boy to also serve his country and without Knotts' permission fills out an application for an astronaut position at NASA. To his bewilderment, Knotts learns he's been hired, making him a local hero, but he arrives in Houston to discover that he's been hired as one of several dozen assistant janitors! He tries to come clean with everyone back home, but the pride gleaming in his father's eyes and the fact that the concession girl develops an admiration and possibly love for him cause him to keep quiet. He makes friends with an actual astronaut played by Leslie Nielsen, doing his standard deadpan, somewhere midway in his career between being the dashing leading man of Forbidden Planet and the great comic stoneface of Airplane! and the Naked Gun movies. Odd for someone from my generation to see Nielsen playing essentially a straight role in a wacky comedy.
Through a contrived set of circumstances, Knotts is selected for an actual launch, and the final act of the movie has him actually in Earth orbit. There appears to have been a low budget for effects, as we almost entirely see him in this stage of the movie in the interior of the capsule. There are some amusing anti-gravity shots. Earlier in the film, Knotts walks past an astronaut who propels from street level to the roof of a building using a jet pack, and this scene is prety impressive and left me wondering how they pulled it off in the pre-CGI era, wires or ... an actual jetpack? I'm naive enough to buy into it. A shame that they seemed to mostly be employing budget consciousness for the final sequences. What appears to be some actual stock footage on loan from NASA is mixed in lieu of the SFX department having to come up with it themselves.
Anyway, it's a silly movie, if a little predictable, and if not actual Disney is definitely in the live action family friendly Disney comedy style. I suppose actual Disney wouldn't have had O'Connell aned his pals throwing back shots (or Knotts himself getting plastered in a later scene). The plot is a bit thin and stretches credulity - yes, I know I'm not supposed to nitpicking how "real" a movie as ridiculous as this one appears to be, but it was hard to suspend disbelief even in these contrived circumstances. I liked best a scene where Knotts goes into full Barney Fife mode at a party back home thrown in his honor, snorting and putting on a front that he actually knows something about rocket science, until to his consternation, he's challenged in his facts by a know-it-all 12-year-old boy!
On the old website, I would always include a poster image or still from the film I was talking about, but I haven't yet learned how to attach an image successfully on here. I was just taught the other day how to quote another poster on the new message boards. I would greatly appreciate if someone could teach me how to attach an image on here!
Total movies seen this year: 1
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Jan 3, 2023 0:53:36 GMT
Also Burt Lancaster wouldn't have been a big enough name to carrier the film prior to The Killers. Thus Raft was a better marking choice for United Artist and their actors-for-hire approach as it relates to casting Whistle Stop. But Raft is miscast IMO; just too old and worn out to make the character's turn around work.
I always enjoy watching Raft, and I think he still had some mileage left in him at this point...but if I remember correctly, and it's been awhile since I've seen WHISTLE STOP, the story seems to be driven more by McLaglen's character...so Raft was doing a rather thankless role, for the money.Yes, the story in Whistle Stop was driven more by the McLaglen character than the Raft on. That is because the McLaglen character was the more interesting one. Also MOVIES-TV showed this Ava film while TCM was featuring Ava as Star of the Month; I had seen all of the Ava films TCM was showing but hadn't seen Whistle Stop so it was good to see something fresh (and also supports my theory that MOVIES-TV tries to follow TCM's programming). |
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Post by Fading Fast on Jan 3, 2023 9:11:44 GMT
View Attachment
A film noir done in broad daylight, Drive a Crooked Road, released in 1954, arrives during the latter end of the classical film noir era. Mickey Rooney plays a timid mechanic who dreams of racing professionally. When he meets a small-time gangster's moll, he's manipulated into serving as a getaway driver for a bank heist.
Drive a Crooked Road has many of your typical noir tropes, but I think what really impressed me about this film was the on location shooting (Malibu, California) and Mickey Rooney's understated and convincing performance. Rooney's role here is a departure from his typical frenetic, boy-next-door roles that he excelled at during the 1930s and 1940s. If you're ever in doubt that Rooney was a well versatile actor who could showcase his range, Drive a Crooked Road should be on your watchlist.
Serving as both a study in the all consuming tyranny of manipulation and loneliness, as well as another solid heist entry into the film noir genre, Drive a Crooked Road is a fairly underseen picture and it comes highly recommended.
For some reason, this really good noir and really good performance by Rooney (sad as all heck, but good), unfortunately, doesn't get much attention. I wrote about it here: "Drive a Crooked Road" |
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Post by Fading Fast on Jan 3, 2023 9:17:42 GMT
Yes, so obviously Yordan was speaking later, looking back in hindsight, after he'd seen THE KILLERS with Burt Lancaster already an established name.
I always enjoy watching Raft, and I think he still had some mileage left in him at this point...but if I remember correctly, and it's been awhile since I've seen WHISTLE STOP, the story seems to be driven more by McLaglen's character...so Raft was doing a rather thankless role, for the money. Yes, the story in Whistle Stop was driven more by the McLaglen character than the Raft on. That is because the McLaglen character was the more interesting one. Also MOVIES-TV showed this Ava film while TCM was featuring Ava as Star of the Month; I had seen all of the Ava films TCM was showing but hadn't seen Whistle Stop so it was good to see something fresh (and also supports my theory that MOVIES-TV tries to follow TCM's programming).
As to "Whistle Stop," as you said earlier, Raft was meaningfully too old for the role, which IMO, all but killed the movie. Plus, the "Movies!" channel copy was in pretty bad shaped, but heck, Ava looked so darn good, I stayed with it. |
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