Reviews

The contest between greed and community, the major theme of the 1930s, was always brilliantly conveyed by John Huston, who articulated it in his first masterpiece, "The Maltese Falcon" (1941). He resumed this preoccupation once WW II was out of the way. After adapting perfectly Dashiell Hammett's great novel, B. Traven's great novel was next. Huston excelled at depicting the inevitable sadness of life with humor and wit. He was proud of directing his father , Walter Huston, to his first Oscar for acting after three fruitless nominations. And he continued his splendid collaboration with Humphrey Bogart, who was to Huston what John Wayne was to John Ford. The casting and performances are superb, with music and photography to match. Other themes involve respect for native Americans, the natural world, and the elderly before these concerns were fashionable. The plot is riveting and meticulously structured.

The King Brothers commissioned this screenplay from blacklisted Dalton Trumbo and, in 1957, it earned an Oscar for Best Story. A claim that the story, "Emilio and Bull" by Paul Rader, submitted to the Kings in 1951, was the basis for the script was settled out of court. Perhaps, inspiration was provided by Albert Lamorisse's magnificent French short "White Mane" (1953), another story of a small boy, who develops a rapport with a big animal, that adults also claim for commercial purposes. But this Technicolor, Cinemascope feature film, set in Mexico, with a score by Victor Young, received much more attention and praise. It is a pleasure to visit Mexico City in 1956, to see the handsome old cars and enter the ring with the bullfighters. Director Irving Rapper gets good performances from all, including the bull and Trumbo handles the rising suspense masterfully.

"We had faces," says Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in "Sunset Boulevard" (1950). No better example of what she meant by demeaning the writer's dialogue compared to the actor's performance exists than this classic, much of it in extreme close-up. Falconetti's performance is unexcelled in film history, and the support, even in the smallest roles, is worthy of her. Carl Th. Dreyer's staging for the camera expanded the language of cinema. This film, along with George Bernard Shaw's play, "Saint Joan," is a uniquely vivid account of the contest between the desire for life versus the necessity of virtue.

The late 1950s appear to be the age of the child-woman, from "La Strada" (1954) and "Baby Doll" (1956) to "Lolita" (1962) and "Term of Trial" (1962). Smack in the middle, we find this adaptation of a pulp novel by Wade Miller, introducing Sharon Farrell to a long career in TV and movies. Her brother, Steven Hill explains that she has the mind of a six-year old. All the characters are very unusual, but the skillful cast brings them to life in a slow developing but intriguing plot. Oddly, it was director Albert Lipton's only effort. The talented musician, Johnny Richards, also had a brief career. Farrell, who was married several times, worked with her first husband here, Andrew Prine. Did life follow art? This was 94 well spent, but somewhat mystifying, minutes. What exactly was wrong with her?

During the Great Depression, not even the supremely wealthy were safe! Bette Davis, following Tallulah Bankhead's Broadway performance in the role, is an energetic 23 year old heiress, enjoying the high life, when she is diagnosed with brain cancer. She falls hopelessly in love with the handsome brain surgeon (George Brent), who saves her for awhile. Her best friend (Geraldine Fitzgerald) serves as the Greek chorus for this ersatz tragedy. Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan appear in support. Oscar nominations followed for Davis, Musician Max Steiner and for Best Picture. Those impoverished in the 1930s could rest assured that they were not alone in their misfortune. For me, the most moving films are not so relentless in hammering away at that purpose.

This is one of the earliest atom bomb stories following Arch Obler's "Five" (1950). Unlike "On the Beach" (1960), a good movie that strives to move the audience emotionally, "Split Second" offers major characters, who are often not likeable, such as the lead Stephen McNally, a criminal holding hostages in a Nevada ghost town scheduled for destruction in a nuclear bomb test. In his second picture as director Dick Powell got excellent performances and eventual best-selling novelist Irving Wallace shared story and screenplay credits. Three years later, Powell shot "The Conqueror" also in the Nevada desert, which, behind the scenes, was a true atom bomb story, with dolorous results for many involved.

Before winning three Academy Awards for color cinematography while working for David Lean, Francis did a fine job here, featuring some excellent exterior night scenes. The suspense is built around the defusing of a Saboteur's bomb (Victor Maddern) and whether the bomb defusing expert (Glenn Ford) will save his marriage to his French wife (Anne Vernon), who has been complaining about being bored. We're more interested in the Saboteur: lone maniac or IRA soldier? This is never explained, a weakness in view if the time spent, out of the 72 minutes, focusing on the comings and goings of the hot tempered wife. A feeble-minded senescent attempts comic relief by repeatedly saying, "I like trains." John Addison provides a busy score.

Following his success with "Winchester 73" (1950), Producer Aaron Rosenberg assembled the same group, Director Anthony Mann, Screenwriter Borden Chase, and Star James Stewart for another go-round, this time with less artistic, but more box office success. It's cliche-riddled claptrap, brimming with more character types than a silent comedy: Jay C. Flippen is the earnest farmer, seeking to "settle" the Oregon wilderness with two lovely, nubile daughters, highly skilled in cooking and laundry (Julia Adams and Lori Nelson) and a meaty older woman who keeps the girls in line (Frances Bavier), a hard-bitten, trail boss (James Stewart), who's a notorious Missourian and his cheeky side-kick (Arthur Kennedy), who's an equally notorious Kansan, some wild "injuns," who get themselves killed because they're much slower, fatter and dumber than the slim, clever white men they attacked, a "dude," dressed to the nines, always immaculate, who makes his living with a deck of cards (Rock Hudson)--all three men are natural buddies due to their skills with a six-gun--a large, loud, bossy black woman, "Aunt Tildy" (Lillian Randolph), who keeps a not very bright, slender, meek, black man (Stepin Fetchit) under control, and some, hard-drinking, lazy, scheming proles (Harry Morgan, Jack Lambert, Royal Dano) who respond only to stern authority (this five years after the Taft-Hartley Act). This was the second and least of the five impressive Mann/Stewart westerns made in the early 1950s. A paddlewheel steamer and the snows of Mount Hood are the unique features. And it's in color. A better title might be, "Mr. Rosenberg Lays An Egg."

This was the first of five westerns directed by Anthony Mann and starring James Stewart, made in the early 1950s. Like the films of Budd Boetticher, starring Randolph Scott, and John Ford, starring John Wayne, they elevated the genre to the point where it received international legitimacy and sparked similar films in nations defeated primarily by the USA in WW II: Italy and Japan. The story involves a rare rifle, 1 of a 1000, won in a contest by Stewart, then stolen. The portrait of the west in this well-structured, brickly paced adventure seems plausible and informative. The casting and performances are superb. The lightly comic Stewart is replaced by one with a temper.

This biopic was the first picture to get 10 Oscar nominations, including one for Assistant Director Russ Saunders, who had been a football teammate of John Wayne at USC. It begins with Zola (Paul Muni) struggling in a drafty garret with Paul Cezanne (Vladimir Sokoloff), both maintaining their integrity as artists, despite a vision that contrasts with governmental and academic preferences. Poverty is the early consequence. When Zola meets "Nana," a girl of the streets, his somewhat salacious account is an overnight bestseller and all subsequent books find an audience. Condemned by Cezanne for his self-satisfied prosperity, he encounters Anatole France (Morris Carnovsky), who draws his attention to the plight of Capt. Dreyfus (Joseph Schildkraut), a Jew unjustly convicted of treason. Begged by Mrs. Dreyfus (Gale Sondergaard) to intervene, Zola puts his career, fortune and even his life at risk. Would someone, so well positioned, risk everything for a similarly righteous cause today? A movie that argues so plainly and forcefully for virtues, such as honesty, responsibility and intellectual courage will probably not be made again, at least not in Hollywood.

One of the most fortunate developments of Hollywood in the 1950s, arguably its Golden Age, was the rise of great actors to become great producers. To the list of Kirk Douglas, But Lancaster, and Humphrey Bogart, we can add James Mason for, sadly, this unprofitable picture. After his presentation of the limitations of middle class life, in "Rebel Without A Cause" (1955), Director Nicholas Ray was ideally chosen for this related project. "A man's home is his castle" was a saying heard in the 1950s, as people fled their apartment buildings for a palace of their own in more natural settings. Wives and children were verifications of their prowess. In this screenplay, to which Clifford Odets made an uncredited contribution, James Mason is stricken with a rare illness for which an experimental drug is prescribed. His psychological changes lead to a megalomaniacal line, spoken with great certainty, one of the best in film history, "God was wrong!" The smugness of the bourgeois is deftly mocked. Barbara Rush returned as the unhappy housewife in another excellent suburban story, "Strangers When We Meet" (1960) with Walter Matthau again the helpful neighbor. During Mason's living room breakdown, on the TV is a whirling amusement park ride. Did it inspire Vincente Minelli's magnificent climax to "Some Came Running" (1958)? There's good reason why Jean-Luc Godard considered this one of the ten greatest American sound movies, which is higher praise than I can give it.

"Men fall in love with their eyes, women with their ears," wrote Oscar Wilde. Women are often evaluated by their appearance and when Anna Holm (Joan Crawford) excites the interest of Torsten Barring (Conrad Veidt), she is swept away. Self-conscious and socially stigmatized by a severe burn endured in early childhood, she has grown used to averting her face from others to spare them the sight of her disfigurement, an ugliness that has permeated her soul, as she pursues a life of crime by heading a blackmail ring. Torsten eggs on her career, which occasions a meeting with a great plastic surgeon (Melvyn Douglas). Can he save her face and the character it conceals? This is one of the greatest triumphs in the careers of Joan Crawford, Director George Cukor, DP Robert Planck, and Editor Frank Sullivan. This intense focus on the conflict between appearance and reality, face and heart, makes this an especially strong "women's picture."

The overall somber tone of this prison escape picture enhances its claim to realism, which is belied by the parade of Hollywood character actors in Mark Hellinger's cast and the strong Miklos Rozsa score leading up to "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950), a much better escape story. Along with "The Killers" (1946) and "Desert Fury" (1947), both also scored by Rozsa, this movie made Burt Lancaster a major star, instantly. A leader of doomed men, fighting sadistic Captain Munsey (Hume Cronyn), he's a paradigm of the All-American tough guy, who, teeth clenched, took lead but kept dishing it out from 1941 to 1945. Its suspense is interrupted by flashbacks to "the girls they left behind," a weakness in its overwrought plotting.

In the post-mortem following World War II, the possibility of fascist totalitarianism was concerning. How had it happened? The jitters about the vox populi are due to concerns about the gullibility of the mob, but overlooked is the fact that neither Hitler nor Mussolini were popularly elected. They were appointed to high office by, respectively, President Paul von Hindenburg and King Victor Emmanuel III, with the acquiescence of an arista. Sinclair Lewis sounded the alarm with his 1935 novel, "It Can't Happen Here," followed by a stage version in 1936. MGM bought the rights to the novel, adapted by Sidney Howard, but the project was scuttled, following objections from the German and Italian markets, conveyed to Louis B. Mayer by Will Hays and Joseph Breen. After the war, the alarm could be safely raised in Robert Penn Warren's 1946 novel, adapted by writer-director Robert Rossen, soon to be called on the carpet by HUAC in 1951. It's an involving film, modeled on the career of the late Huey Long, with perfect casting and performances. The original four hour movie was cut finally by Robert Parrish, but the football subplot still seems unnecessary. However, the alarm has been sounded loudly about the "great unwashed," referred to here as "hicks."

This Great Depression/Dust Bowl era story of young people, scraping along, looking for their own "place in the sun," enduring peccadilloes and scrapes with John Law with pluck and determination starred John Garfield and his New York accent. Sent to a work farm, he meets bubbly, charming Priscilla Lane, stepdaughter of alcoholic oppressor Stanley Ridges. The screenplay veers deftly from genre to genre, from film noir to romantic comedy to Frank Capra style plea for the little Nobody and American democracy, like a drunk fording a stream by hopping from stone to stone. But the performances of the principals and strong support from kindly Charley Grapewin, Henry Armetta, Alan Hale and Ferike Boros holds our interest and sympathy for the entire 88 minutes. Will love conquer all? Please, Hollywood!

Although the nominal star is Kirsten Dunst, the real stars of this 40 million dollar exercise are the Art Directors Anne Seibel and Pierre du Boisberranger, Set Decorator Veronique Melery and Costume Designer Milena Canonero. Everything else is subordinated to their craftsmanship. But two hours of opulence is small potatoes to bring us to the capital moment, the conclusion to a rather common life, as perhaps longed for by contemporary audiences as by French ones in 1792. We may consult Isabel Jewell in "A Tale of Two Cities" (1935) if drama is what we're seeking. Writer-director Sofia Coppola has added contemporary music to the period picture, like a bored, somewhat sleepy, assembly line factory worker, whose boom box blares Martha and the Vandellas, in the hope to remain alert to what's happening.

Perhaps because of its title, this movie may be misappraised as a film about movie stardom and the idolatry of fans. Reflective of the humor and pathos of old age, as Samuel Beckett has done so well, it relates the irritability of an elderly man (Burt Reynolds), living in solitude with his dog, who is encouraged by an old friend (Chevy Chase) to accept a Life Achievement Award at an obscure Film Festival, near his hometown in Tennessee. Although not as poignant as "Umberto D" (1955), it relates well the guilt and shame some feel, when revisiting old mistakes, such as Kathleen Nolan, in her last role.

As pure and stark as a Franz Kline black and white abstract expressionist painting, this ranks as one of Sidney Lumet's greatest. Aided by the great DP Oswald Morris, Lumet, as with "12 Angry Men" (1957), stages every scene and composes every shot so superbly that these plays do not need "opening up" with exposition or back stories. For anyone contemplating a military career, this is must viewing. In an organization designed for violence, in a society of men--"men without women" as Hemingway phrased it--with total physical control over other men, things can go wrong in a hurry. It is at once a film about the military and incarceration, relentlessly tense, with wonderful performances, typical of the body of Lumet's best work.

According to Kevin Weeks, a member of Whitey Bulger's Winter Hill Gang, "The only resemblance to Whitey's character was the hairline.... The mannerisms--the way Whitey talked to us--he never swore at us. In all the years I was with that man, he never swore at me once. We never yelled at each other.... The language is all wrong...and Whitey would never have berated Stevie, either. Stevie was a psychopath. Stevie would have killed him...Stevie wasn't all sympathetic, mourning and sorrowful like he is in the movie. Stevie enjoyed murder." Of course, a gang leader who bullies his thugs may not have much future. Why this discrepancy? I suppose Hollywood people assume that gangsters are always menacing. The thought that they are often charming and solicitous would not occur to Hollywood people, who have more experience in offices than on the street. It's more fun and easier to have the bad guy twirl his mustache or dress in black than to create a nuanced, complex character. Leaders lead because their followers have selected them. Still, for people who haven't met many murderers, Johnny Depp's performance is very convincing.

Andre De Toth, one of the three great one-eyed Hollywood directors (John Ford, Raoul Walsh) fought censors to maintain the integrity of this film. Dick Powell, an insurance adjustor, is married to pretty, perky bourgeois housewife Jane Wyatt (a part that she continued to play so effectively on the very popular TV series, "Father Knows Best" (1954-1960). Powell has a fling with a blonde fashion model, tough post-War film noir heroine Lizabeth Scott, which scheming, sleazy private detective Raymond Burr knows about. Burr claims this babe as his own and conflict follows. Will Jane find out? Who will win Lizabeth? The challenges of Depression era destitution, struggling to find a place in the prosperous late 1940s and the respectability that can be easily threatened by brief human weakness, is vividly portrayed. De Toth is the perfect "auteur" for this moral dilemma picture, a problem analyzed further in his wonderful "Crime Wave" (1954).

An affluent white couple (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) have adopted a black boy from war-torn Eritrea (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), who turns out to be the intellectual and athletic star of his high school. His quick wit and debating skills allow him to have an answer for everything. However, a black teacher (Octavia Spencer) senses problems. She attempts to enlist the "mother" in an attempt to keep her junior Franz Fanon on the straight and narrow, but Naomi Watts will do anything to shelter her "child," even at the risk of her marriage. Her faith is resolute. When her husband shouts, "I didn't want our lives to be a political f---ing statement," the outcome appears in doubt. The left-liberal conceit that all people are alike and infinitely adaptable is put to a strong test in this spell-binding drama.

Ever since the first maiden was tied to the railroad tracks by the first mustache-twirling villain, a woman in jeopardy has been one of the most popular of film genres. It reached its zenith with Frederick Knott's marvelously clever 1952 stage play, brought to the screen two years later by Alfred Hitchcock, with the perfect cast and his usual brilliant staging, compositions and camera movements. Dmitri Tiomkin's score underlines the considerable suspense. After an intermission, the suspense continues to build as the clever hero unmasks the villain. Despite the technical skill of the enterprise, it remains mere melodrama, a simple entertainment.

Veteran Production Designer Robert Eggers, in his second feature film as director following "The Witch" (2015), has crafted a beautiful black and white picture, co-written with his brother Max Eggers, and shot by DP Jarin Blaschke. Two men, toil together in an isolated lighthouse, a phallic symbol with a loud foghorn, during very bad weather. Once again, they are afflicted by hostile nature and hostile anthropomorphized animals. Fantasies involving both a mermaid and homosexuality torment the younger man, driven in a few weeks to masturbation, and challenge the audience to determine what is real and what is imagined. As in abstract expressionist painting, the disjointed story line impressed critics as "art," unburdened by coherency, and audiences may rest assured that their present job is better than what they might have been doing in the 19th century. The strong mood is memorable. Eggers reminds me of M. Night Shyamalan, who also creates odd, fraught situations that, unlike the well-written ones in Hitchcock's films, dissipate into nothing.

Some directors often shoot scenes that they have trouble cutting or shortening. They fall too easily in love with what they shot. And this screenplay suffers from the three biggest script problems: 1. Flashbacks 2. Coincidences 3. Arbitrary (versus obligatory) scenes.

These weaknesses are ameliorated by strong performances by Blake Lively as Lily Blossom Bloom and the director/lead Justin Baldoni as Ryle (rhymes with "rile") Kincaid. And the excellent sets, costumes and decor provide a welcome distraction (the flower shop looks like it's from a fairy tale for elves, rather than a commercial establishment). (And would a grown man, who earns a living with his hands, reach into an oven to snatch a tray in which supper is burning without protection? Some writer is not "cooking with gas.") For students of "The Battered Woman" by Dr. Lenore Walker, this domestic violence is rather minor, especially for 130 minutes of inaction. Greater insight into the nature of an abusive relationship would have been helpful. See "Caught" (1949).

Laurel & Hardy started this sub genre with "The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case" (1930) and Abbott & Costello continued with "Hold That Ghost" (1941) through a series of meetings with early 1930s Universal Studios monsters from Frankenstein in 1948 to The Mummy in 1955. Martin (Fun) and Lewis (Funny) joined the successful trend here in 1953, with what resembled a vaudeville show, with pretty girls (Dorothy Malone, Lizabeth Scott, Carmen Miranda), comics (Frank Fontane, Bob Hope, Bing Crosby), and heavies (Jack Lambert, Leonard Strong, Henry Brandon). This movie helps explain the shock and disappointment of movie fans, when they parted company to pursue separate careers in 1956.