1950s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[knives]

What do you mean by 'typhoid marying'.

[domino harvey]

That you're so infected by the film's charms that you will probably spread interest to others

[knives]

Oh, good. I was worried that I was being accused of being hyperbolic which I probably am. It reminded me of the Matarazzo's, though I suspect it will be more palatable to those who didn't find the more populist of those films good. It's hard to imagine someone disliking the film at least.

[matrixschmatrix]

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (Howard Hawks, 1953)

I didn't participate in the Musicals project much because I'm not sure that I actually like the musical as a genre- a lot of the classics leave me cold, and I generally feel as though that's more on my end than on the movie's. So perhaps this is one of those genre movies for people who don't like the genre, because god damn but it's fun- it declares at the outset that it's going to stomp all over you in sequined gowns, and proceeds to crush you with a a bizarrely inflected juggernaut of feminine power, using largely the devices usually used to render women powerless in movies.

Russell seems like she should be stuck in a thankless, sexless, best-friend role, but instead she's as wolfishly on the prowl as anyone I've ever seen in a musical, and she carries herself as though she were a ten foot tall dominatrix- throughout her performance as Lorelei in the courtroom she looks like she's prepared to devour her audience whole. Though she's stuck getting married to a guy who is, compared to our leads, just some jerk at the end, she doesn't seem prepared to give anything up, and the movie reinforces that feeling- the ladies are bedecked in blinding gowns, and the camera doesn't give a shit about what the men look like. We know what we're watching for.

Monroe's role obviously seems like it should be problematic- Lorelei seems like the ultimate in misogynistic caricatures, a dimbulb golddigger who views men only in terms of their bank accounts. Yet, without actually denying that Lorelei is very much in it for the money, the movie has endless fun with the idea that anyone would presume to think themselves better than her because of that- it comes out in any number of places, but the best is in the deadly nasty Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend number, which posits that self-commodification is the only means to power for a woman who is inevitably going to be objectified and commodified in any case. And of course, Lorelei is far from stupid- in many ways, she's the most grounded and realist character in the film, and she manages to be so while still seeming genuinely charming rather than bottomlessly cynical.

I'm not sure I'm describing the movie well, it's got an insane Triumph of the Will steamroller quality that makes it impossible to resist but all of the frontal attacks are buoyed rather than undermined by the ironies in the movie's depiction of women. It's also just a lot of fucking fun.

[zedz]

I rewatched the film for the musicals project and liked it a lot more this time around. Enough, in fact, to get it on my list, but I still find it gets pretty coarse and clunky once it arrives in Paris and the plot starts to steamroller (good word, matrixschmatrix) the elements that were most charming beforehand - the camaraderie, the character grace notes, the gender flips and twists. It almost seems like that part of the film suffered some ruthless cutting or something.

[knives]

The Long Long Trailer
The Long Long movie. This is probably the worst Minnelli I've seen with a lackluster plot that's desperate to come up with something to make plot. Ball does a reasonable job of breathing life into this corpse, but that can only go so far. The direction is probably the most aggravating thing since Minnelli can do such great things when he wants to, but the camera work here is pure television and leaden.

Man Rivers to Cross
Western Comedy, don't need to say anything more than that though Eleanor Parker's hamming almost makes it all worth the effort. There's of course great films with her to actually watch (the four of you who haven't seen Caged yet do it now), but to be able to lift a film this bad into something enjoyable on any level is as great a show of talent as possible. The other funny thing is the pure bullshit dedication at the beginning to women.

Terminal Station
I'm beginning to think that all of De Sica's films are better than his most famous movie. It's almost hilarious here how the famous main two characters are almost sidelined for these excursions for these side characters like the little boy or those cops. We get the generic familiar spine to hang things off of which almost allows for De Sica to express his most interesting cinematic thoughts. The movie's gorgeous by the way with some startling lighting that makes Jennifer Jones nearly unrecognizable.

The Horse Soldiers
Given the reactions here I was expecting really mediocre Ford here, but outside of some odd traits for Wayne's character to create conflict I guess I thought it was really genius with some of the most successful comedy I've seen from Ford and a lovely pacing that allowed the film to feel entirely formless while focusing on these Fordian characters (I'd say the senator hopeful is my favorite of the lot, but it's hard to not call Towers the best since she gets a lot of the best moments). The film is also really sharply shot with explosive blues bordering in musical level painterly choices.

Man in the Vault
Going in I wasn't expecting much since this is a small noir directed by Andrew McLanglen, but it really manages to be intense and is without question the man's best movie (that I've seen). A lot of this lies on the sharp oddball cinematography of William Clothier who did a gorgeous job on the movie up above (also a ton of '50s Wellman's too it seems). This is without question Clothier's show as he does what he can to make evocative this routine potboiler. That's not to say he's alone in making this more than it should be. Berry Kroeger as the villain in appropriately slimy and fun to watch with a real petty ineffectual streak going down.

Plunder of the Sun
Speaking of ineffectual villains this movie is made only of them. Every character is out to kill the other, but is too self interested and unable to keep up with their own problems to do anything of it. Even our hero played by nobody's favorite Canadian Glenn Ford is a total twat who screws up in his (rightfully) paranoid double crossing over typical for this sort of film women troubles. If it weren't for the film being so deadpan I would think that Farrow was deliberately going for a parody of The Maltese Falcon. Speaking of the highlight of the film without question is Francis L. Sullivan doing his best Sydney Greenstreet impression. Of a pathetic dying lot he's the most obtuse and silly. Half the time it seems like he's going to die of natural causes in the scene yet he still tries to be this intimidating super genius.

[tarpilot]

I was actually quite fond of Plunder of the Sun. Ford is just so likably unlikable ("Look at yourself. Who would want to kiss that?"), Sullivan continues the John Farrow tradition of deliciously campy supporting turns (joining Vincent Price in His Kind of Woman, Claude Rains in Where Danger Lives, and Charles Laughton in The Big Clock) and there are a number of really bizarre, visually interesting moments, particularly in the desert (if I were in a sillier mood I might call it proto-Marienbad!). I have a huge soft spot for goofy classic adventure in general, though.

[knives]

I agree entirely (though I don't think I'd ever be in silly enough of a mood for the Resnais comparison).

[matrixschmatrix]

Man of the West (Anthony Mann, 1958)

I enjoyed this, but I think I'm a bit nonplussed by it- I really can't see it how it topped the Westerns list, as of the three Mann Westerns I've seen (this, The Furies, and Winchester '78) it seemed the least striking. There are definitely parts that stand out- I was impressed that, almost solely amongst Westerns I've seen, it managed to make the violence seem depressing and childish, and even aging, fat Cooper is still a joy to watch, but I guess I just didn't catch whatever made it especially great.

It is definitely instructive to compare this to Unforgiven, though. I love Unforgiven, but it never fools you for a moment that it's particularly against the violence it displays- you're waiting the whole movie to see Eastwood's coiled spring of a man unleash, and the violence that does come is orgiastic and totally satisfying. Here, it's pathetic, both in that nobody's superhumanly good at it and that it seems to come out of a place of childishness and petulance- the villains aren't even all that villainous, just stupid and scared and not good at impulse control. It's possible that one of the reasons I was nonplussed by this is that I went in expecting something like Unforgiven, and was tensed for something that wasn't going to come- as with when you drink liquor and expect soda, it's not that the stuff itself is bad, but it reads wrong in the moment. I'll have to give it another try sometime.

[knives]

You should. It was my second Mann (after The Naked Spur which is still my number one from him) and I was similarly non-reactive at first since it was nothing like that predecessor to Peckinpah. On my many subsequent rewatches though it has become fascinating in the poisonous way the guilt has eaten Cooper away and now acts like a virus. The past is constantly attacking the present whether it is in secret like in the beginning or out in the open like toward the end. If you've done bad no matter what you do your past remains a part of reality and the only way to honestly come to terms with it so that it doesn't take over your present and future is by meeting with it head on. Cooper winds up loosing a lot and probably hurting those he loves by doing this, but it was gives him the freedom to make what he wants of his future through this stone throwing.

[Tommaso]

Europa '51 (Roberto Rossellini, 1952): probably the least known of all the Rossellini/Bergman titles due to the lack of an (official) release with subs, and one really wonders why nobody has managed to port the very good Cristaldi disc yet, because the film clearly deserves it. The film has its didactic bits, but Ingrid Bergman's performance is outstanding and makes the whole story of a society woman turning into an 'angel of the poor' because of the death of her child not only believable, but deeply touching. Rossellini perhaps tends to cram too many things into the film: the superficiality of the luxury class people, a semi-neorealist depiction of the poverty of the lower class, a documentary shown at a cinema about the changes brought by modernisation, and most importantly, a quasi-melodramatic plot which is informed both by the Joan of Arc-story and Rossellini's earlier St. Francis-film.

And strangely enough, it works. The scenes at the mental asylum are particularly impressive because Rossellini plays the (supposed) madness of the inmates down (compare, for instance, Litvak's "The snake pit", which is a great film, too) but still conveys the atmosphere by some very well chosen, brief close-ups on some of the women's faces. Fantastic use of light and shade on Bergman's face in other scenes, too. Gripping, and almost certainly on my list.

[swo17]

Just a heads up: Kardos' Small Town Girl, which is only available on DVD in the Warner Archive, will be airing on TCM this coming Thursday morning.

[domino harvey]

Probably still my favorite of the "Small Town" subgenre of musicals (which sounds familiar, so I've probably said that once or twenty times before)-- worth it for the astonishing jumping-through-town number, which will physically exhaust you just from watching someone else perform it!

[matrixschmatrix]

Julius Caesar (Joseph Mankiewicz, 1953)

This felt to me a bit like what people are always accusing Olivier's Shakespeares of being, a filmed play distinguished by excellent performances and weakened by a lack of cinematic verve. Nearly everything feels like it's taking place behind a proscenium, and when it doesn't- as with the battle near the end- one wishes it was, as the whole thing suddenly feels appallingly fake. It's still not a bad movie, I suppose, and all three leads are marvelous- Brando is an unsurprisingly forceful and convincing Antony, Mason plays Brutus somewhat like his character in Odd Man Out, a decent man torn by an unhappy task and slowly dying inside, and Gielgud a vain and flattering but also redeemable Cassius- but I think it never gets away from the self-appointed pomp of studio system Shakespeare.

[zedz]

You should. It was my second Mann (after The Naked Spur which is still my number one from him) and I was similarly non-reactive at first since it was nothing like that predecessor to Peckinpah. On my many subsequent rewatches though it has become fascinating in the poisonous way the guilt has eaten Cooper away and now acts like a virus. The past is constantly attacking the present whether it is in secret like in the beginning or out in the open like toward the end. If you've done bad no matter what you do your past remains a part of reality and the only way to honestly come to terms with it so that it doesn't take over your present and future is by meeting with it head on. Cooper winds up loosing a lot and probably hurting those he loves by doing this, but it was gives him the freedom to make what he wants of his future through this stone throwing.

Further to this, I think that the Mann / Stewart westerns (plus Man of the West, which is kind of the culmination of that cycle, with Stewart AWOL) really work best seen in release order, since the themes develop and darken as they progress. It helps to view Man of the West coming straight off the more overtly Shakespearean Man from Laramie, since they're both sniffing around the western adaptation of King Lear that Mann always wanted to make.

[matrixschmatrix]

Fair enough, I kind of skipped to Once Upon a Time in the West directly off of A Fistful of Dollars there, and I think Mann is a filmmaker whose deeper currents are fairly easy to miss- I'll start working my way through the rest of the cycle and see how Man of the West strikes me afterwards.

I still really fucking love The Furies, though.

[knives]

Funny thing there is that Once Upon a Time in the West was the first western I ever saw, in theaters no less. To say I fell in love at the time is a pretty big understatement.

[Felix]

I love those films inspired by and spinning off from Vertigo (La Jetee, Body Double) perhaps more than the film itself,

Nothing to do with this thread Colin but have you seen Lou Ye's Suzhou River? Hasn't been much discussed on this forum and I think it did not go down well with at least one contributor but I think it channels Vertigo beautifully right down to that green as an undercurrent throughout. Loved it.

[colinr0380]

I'm afraid that I haven't seen Suzhou River yet, though I really should some time! The Vertigo connection had not registered with me before, so I'll try and get to it with that in mind!

[puxzkkx]

I saw Suzhou River before seeing Vertigo and enjoyed it a lot - it runs the risk of being too 'stylish' for its own good but Zhou and especially Jia give it a necessary sadness and piquancy.

[swo17]

Every film I've seen from Quine this decade is a national treasure. Drive a Crooked Road (Columbia Noir III set) and Pushover (Columbia Noir II) are excellent, lean noirs. The former could work as a sort of prequel to last year's Drive (they don't call Mickey Rooney the Ryan Gosling of his generation for nothing!) though its concerns are much more humanistic. Pushover is even better, a really smart, tense film about a cop who gets mixed up in some bad business, but once he's committed to it, finds he has to do a lot of improvising. I'm apparently last to the party for My Sister Eileen, but suffice it to say that anyone who counts this among the greatest musicals is surely not wrong. It's certainly one of the best choreographed ones I've seen. (I especially liked the wordless dance-off between two guys trying to out cool-hat-trick each other, when if one of them wanted to win, he should have just gone in and pulled Janet Leigh out of that unseemly audition.) The Solid Gold Cadillac (long OOP and going for solid gold cadillac prices, though Blockbuster Online currently has it available for rent) features a touching courtship between atypical romantic leads, and is the delightful sort of film where things happen like a character being asked on the stand (under oath!) whether she is in fact in love with her beau, or a stockholder meeting interrupted by the delivery of barrelfuls of letters. Bell Book and Candle (looking marvelous on the new Twilight Time Blu-ray) may be somewhat predictable as far as sorcery romances go, but has a lot of nice touches like the color scheme used at the witch club, Ernie Kovacs' restrained mumbling (in a role that anyone else would have played a lot bigger), or Jack Lemmon's delivery of the line "He's a cool cat." You know who else is a cool cat? You, if you watch these movies.

[domino harvey]

It does my heart good to see the Quine train keeps rolling. I may not always manage to get the board on board with my overlooked auteurs, but at least this is a success story. I doubt I'll have room for more than My Sister Eileen, but it'll surely be in my Top 5. You should start tracking down the World of Suzie Wong, Sex and the Single Girl, and Paris-- When it Sizzles for the 60s List, though!

[knives]

Big Leaguer
Aldrich's first film doesn't show the genius that would come to him not too soon later, but it still has enough spice going to remain highly entertaining in the bigger moments. All the actors give the film a passable weight though Robinson seems to be the only one who doesn't see it as slightly camp. All of the plot points are predictable and the attempts at a sad tone fail during the pruning scenes, but for such a throwaway type of film it still is fun.

Ring of Fear
Good lord this is awful. Maybe if I liked Spillaine this gimmick casting would work (his performance is like a second rate James Ellroy) if I liked the man, but as is he's pointless beyond some marketing thing. Really the only positive for this film is that Sean McClory finally gets to shine and does a wonderful if camp job of it. There's a genuine menace, if oftentimes accompanied by silliness, when he's on screen. Beyond that it's an absolute waste.

Track of the Cat
Here's what I really needed after that. A lean, mean, smart pseudo-western where all of the elements refuse to fit in the way they should. The film does set up lines and never really dares to cross them, but this is where things get cinematic and a lovely mix of some of Wellman's best camerawork (aided by that genius William Clothier) and some subversive casting toys with the limitations of the script so that it does become unpredictable and fierce. I can't be the only slightly disturbed at Bondi being so unlike her other characters here. Far more than the cat she's the meanest thing out in this desert, yet I can't help but give her the benefit of the doubt, and this is all because of casting, and have to examine her psychology all the closer as a result. This doesn't even go into technical star Mitchum who steals the show easily. His casting really changes the potential for the character from the script in a way that makes some of the events less predictable had a lesser known entity been cast in the role.

The Last Wagon
This is rather the opposite situation with all of the familiar faces acting in a familiar way. Of course this is good with somebody like Widmark who at this point in the career could be completely asleep at the wheel with this character and still be better than most actors. Fortunately it looks as if he has some real conviction here as this is easily the worst script I've ever seen Daves stuck with. No joke it contains the line, "I hate indians," as a way to help define a character. The entire first half follows suit with the politics being very obvious and the melodrama sadly underplayed (apart from our racist and Widmark of course). I'm not sure what clicks, but something does in the second half as the writing becomes more sharp and a lot of the biggest announces fix themselves to the extent of being forgivable. So while like all Daves westerns it is not the best show of his talent I'd say the second half makes it worth at least a rental.

Cowboy
More westerns from Daves and it starts as a comedy. Oh, joy. This one has a first half problem too where the opening hour is probably the worst thing I've seen from the man. Jack Lemmon gives the worst performance of his career essentially imitating Bob Hope and I have no clue what Ford is trying to do, but it works. Finally though in the last half hour the film drops all comedy (until the last minute) and basically turns into Red River with the two switching off the Wayne role willy-nilly. Had the whole film been this great (and it is easily the best western Daves has done in this glorious half hour) it would easily be amongst the best of the decade, but it really is a case of too little too late.

The Rainmaker (Anthony)
This one had a lot of potential just in the casting of Lancaster, but the Hepburn story is obnoxious and stupid to the point where I began to actively root against. There's one point in the film when Lancaster is trying to persuade her to his line of thinking, about half way through, and the acting on display from him is so good that he nearly convinced me even though the film had already gone out of its way to show what a pack of lies this line is. It is that good of a performance rivaling his master show in Sweet Smell of Success. The rest though is out of a different movie and not worth much, but in splitting my mind I have to say that Lancaster is so good in the film that it is criminal not to have seen it at least once.

[domino harvey]

Have you seen Elmer Gantry? Lancaster does the same sort of thing there, only better and in a good film (it's actually better than the Sinclair Lewis source novel, which is not usually the order those words appear in a sentence)

[knives]

I think I have, but I never caught the name of the film I'm thinking of. Black and white, he plays a religious leader who doesn't believe what he's espousing?