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

[zedz]

it's mean-spirited without being mean

I like this observation. Even though the world of the film is horribly poisonous, and the film sort of wallows delightedly in that fact, Mankiewicz gives all of the characters a fair shake, even Eve and Addison. They get to make the best account of themselves and their motivations that they can, without having the dramatic dice loaded against them, and the ultimate message is that this is just the way the game is played. If you can't deal with it, go be a waitress.

[knives]

I'm actually glad you said that Dom because I considered saying something, but couldn't think of a way to phrase things smartly with symbolism and all that basically amounting to what you just said. Without hearing that second voice I wasn't sure if that was a good boost of the film as a great one (and it will certainly be near the top of my list).

[Sloper]

I spent so much time and focus on what the movie was saying about gender politics or homosexuality or whatever else that I'm not sure I was really following what it was about in a straightforward way. And I'm not certain I have much to say about the gender politics etc, except that I do think it's silly to assume the movie is straightforwardly encoding DeWitt and Eve as gay and therefore eeevil.

I really don't want to tread on anyone's toes by disparaging their favourite film, so maybe just ignore this if you'd rather not hear my bitter ramblings on All About Eve...

I used to enjoy this film so much as a straightforward bit of deliberately overwrought, dialogue-heavy entertainment, and would have agreed entirely with Domino about it, but as I kept re-watching a specific element grated more and more on my nerves: Gary Merrill and Hugh Marlowe, whom I find it near-impossible to distinguish from each other, and therefore regard as 'a specific element'.

At first I thought it was just the actors who were annoying me, and that's certainly part of it; Merrill in particular is called upon to display a pomposity which he can't sell either as charismatic showmanship or amusingly obnoxious 'theatre people' behaviour. I just want to throw a brick at him. Marlowe, whenever I see him in a film, always looks to me like he's faintly surprised to have been given an acting job and has decided to just tread water until he's fired.

But what really got to me about these two was the nature of the characters they were playing. The film seems to say that it's perfectly fine for these two transparently talentless men to pursue their careers indefinitely, while their women need to figure out that their true place is in the home. Not a surprising or controversial message for a 1950 film to be pushing - but it does seem like most of the problems here arise from women trying to have careers. The three central women are arranged in a kind of spectrum, with Celeste Holm on one end as the good housewife, Anne Baxter on the other end as the woman who's all about her career (the Eve who has to have the forbidden fruit), and Bette Davis in the middle gradually realising which end of the spectrum she should really be on. (If memory serves, Thelma Ritter disappears after the first hour or so? I was never sure her character had been given much thought, but it's a great part and a great performance anyway.)

Now I swear I'm not being chivalrous about this, and I can swallow as much casual misogyny as the next classic film buff, but the way the film insidiously makes its case ended up pissing me off no end. The fact that the two men are such talent- and charisma-free zones certainly doesn't help. As I remember it there are no strong male actor figures in the story - Merrill and Marlowe are a director and writer respectively - and of course one big issue with the Davis character is that she's supposedly getting too old to continue her career; she's reached that age when, being a woman, she needs to bow out gracefully and get on with doing the job she was made for. I wonder what difference it would have made to the story if one of those men had been a fellow actor, or if one of the women had been a fellow writer or (perhaps more of a stretch at this time) director? In some sense, maybe the film is about that aspect of the theatre - the way that it depends on passionate, strong-willed women to act in these great parts (written and directed by men), but inevitably rejects them once they approach middle age; it's about the tensions that just as inevitably arise in relationships among theatre people given that this rule doesn't apply quite so rigorously to men.

Anyway, I hope and expect to be told that I'm mis-reading the film, and would be interested to hear from people who still like it.

[knives]

I honestly can't tell what you mean as the film never gives being a good housewife as an option and the male characters all exhibit extremely negative traits that like the female characters is related to their work. Yet none of the characters are punished for being workers. It's a natural thing and is born out of passion, the only value which the film seems interested in. It simply acknowledges that passion can lead to a terrible sort of competition that is defeating and violent. While the film concerns itself primarily with the female characters I think that's rather deceptive since it seems to be not concerned with gender beyond how it complicates self preservation.

Also Ritter stays in the picture until the bitter end.

[matrixschmatrix]

Does she? I don't remember her having a line after her admission that she can't stand Eve, less than an hour in. And Davis' character has a big speech about how a woman isn't really a woman and life isn't worth living unless you're some dude's wife- though I think it's reasonable to assume that what she's saying shouldn't necessarily be taken at face value.

The ideas that it's graceful and inevitable that Margo should bow out from the stage and that her paranoia about people's perception of her age was justified and that she really is getting too old for the stage both seem kind of problematic, but it's one of those movies where I never feel as though I have a grasp on when something is being expressed in character and when it's a genuine expression on the part of the movie. After all, I left the movie really kind of liking DeWitt, and on a surface level it seems as though he's meant to be a monster- as Dom says, the movie has a certain tolerance for him, an acceptance that he's just part of theatrical life.

[knives]

As you say I don't think the film is as straight faced as all of that with a sense of irony seeping in everywhere. Margo's eventual retirement seems more a bored whim and an excuse to have sex than anything else. Given the ending I don't think Mank is saying that there is a good time to bow out, but that show business isn't worth the competition people give to it (as Dom said out of self interest and self absorption). The film just as it is so to be speak and to place judgment on characters who already do that to themselves in excess seems cruel and appears to be the last thing Mank wants. In this respect I'm highly reminded of Variety Lights which similarly has horrible people acting out in things that might not fit modern perceptions very well (a very dull person could accuse the Fellini of misogyny over the ending which could be twisted to say better married to a bad person than not at all). Likewise Fellini is just raising his hands and going there it is. I absolutely love all of the characters in All About eve no matter how horrible to each other they may be because that's just part of the game.

[swo17]

Sidney's Jupiter's Darling (commercially unavailable) will be on TCM this Tuesday. I know domino's a fan.

[Tommaso]

I saw Youssef Chahine's Cairo Station, which I would definitely recommend. The tone vacillates between a chaotic sort of observant neorealism, airy comedy and dark psychodrama. Chahine appears to be making a sneaky political point here about the status of women in Egyptian society - it is hard not to see Qinawi as a symbol of a patriarchy using religion or tradition as tools in the perpetuation of a chauvinist system. With Qinawi, Chahine seems to be blaming Egyptian chauvinism on sexual frustration brought about by the tensions between the lust for sex and the social obligation of marriage. Hanouma is not an especially likeable character, but Chahine positions her as deserving of respect for her basic personhood. On the other hand, Qinawi, the protagonist-turned-'antagonist', inspires pity rather than contempt.

I've just watched it, and would agree about the last point especially. Qinawi is one of the few early examples of a 'likeable' murderer. But my problem is that Qinawi (or the actor who plays him), being a social outsider with a limp in the first place, comes across as actually too likeable, and too simple-minded in a good way to be fully convincing when he turns into a jealousy-stricken madman in the second half of the film. He indeed inspires pity rather than contempt, but in a less interesting way than Karlheinz Böhm would two years later in "Peeping Tom". The occasional sudden close-ups on his eyes earlier in the film, with which Chahine tries to underline the onset of madness, feel a little forced in the context of what is basically going on: a semi-neorealist portrait of the people around Cairo Station which is not without humour. I found those humorous/ironic bits involving the water-selling girls or the attempts at creating a union actually more engaging than the 'madman plot', and very much in the 'lighter' Italian style.

The visual and structural style of the film changes all the time, too - from deep-focus tableaux to long, sophisticated travelling shots to rapid montage to noir-inspired lighting setups.

Indeed, stylistically the film is all over the place, and I'm not fully sure whether that really works as a whole. A fine film, certainly, with excellent cinematography, but I'm not as much raving about it as some other people here seem to do.

[puxzkkx]

I actually found the intense shifts in style and the 3rd act 180 in tone really intriguing and they are part of the reason why I like the film so much - but I can see how they could be annoying. Generally I like the idea of a film completely subverting an atmosphere that it's worked hard to construct (see A Bloody Spear on Mount Fuji).

[Sloper]

I honestly can't tell what you mean as the film never gives being a good housewife as an option and the male characters all exhibit extremely negative traits that like the female characters is related to their work.

Perhaps my memory is failing me, but I thought Merrill and Marlowe were made out to be very decent men; doesn't one of them have a terribly impressive scene where he turns down Eve's advances? I agree with matrix that it's hard to tell when a character is or is not being used as a mouthpiece for Mankiewicz himself, and that's one of my big problems with the film: so often the writer-director's wit and flair seem to take precedence over character development. But to me the film seems much too didactic to fit the 'just telling it like it is' model - the most judgemental and uncomfortable scene is that last one between Addison and Eve, where he says 'we deserve each other'. It's a violent and punitive exchange that on some level shows Eve getting what she deserves; Margo may have lost out career-wise, but she'll be much happier now that she's learnt not to take her career so seriously. The irksome thing is that the men don't seem (or need) to learn a similar lesson.

[domino harvey]

Round four of my walking tours through the complete output of selected auteurs. Recommended titles in red.


FRANK CAPRA

Riding High (1950) R1 Paramount (OOP)
Here Comes the Groom (1951) R1 Paramount (OOP)
A Hole in the Head (1959) R1 MGM

Eager to prove himself again to a skeptical Hollywood, Frank Capra put all of his eggs in one basket for Riding High (1950), a remake of his own Broadway Bill. Bing Crosby, Coleen Gray, Charles Bickford, William Demarest, and an unbilled Oliver Hardy are all on hand for this genial horse racing comedy slash musical. Full of the sunny optimism that guides the best of Capra's humanistic comedies, it's an over-stuffed crowd-pleaser that is genetically engineered to entertain and often does. Take a nice long look, folks, because it's all downhill from here. Here Comes the Groom (1951) drains all good will bought by Riding High as Capra and Crosby pair again and Holy Hannah in a handbasket is the resultant product of lesser quality. A typically annoying Crosby messiah character (he's a wisened reporter who tricks rich fogies into adopting war orphans-- no, really) tries to worm his way back into a relationship with Jane Wyman in this literally unwatchable "romantic" "comedy" (""). A little distance doesn't help A Hole in the Head (1959) either, with Frank Sinatra and Eleanor Parker both phoning in their perfs and Capra working uneasily in the 'Scope frame. Capra's forgets how to package and deliver complicated characters and even piles on the maudlin emotions halfassedly, with the artificial dourness borne from Sinatra's character in particular coming across as tone def.


DELBERT MANN

Marty (1955) R1 MGM
the Bachelor Party (1957) No commercial release
Desire Under the Elms (1958) R1 Paramount (OOP)
Separate Tables (1958) R1 MGM (OOP)
Middle of the Night (1959) R1 Sony

I know that bloated prestige pictures get the brunt of modern-day derision from film fans, but to my eyes they're far less egregious than that other interminable subgenre of the fifties, The Serious Play Adaptation. No American director had a longer string of joyless, oppressively and cartoonishly downbeat pictures this decade than TV director turned "Film" director Delbert Mann. From his first inexplicable cross-quadrant hit Marty (1955), a teleplay stretched to feature length that somehow took home a handful of primary Oscars, the pattern was set. These are miserable, unwatchable movies: the Bachelor Party (1957), with its morose men whining about their lot in life in a pathetic approximation of middle age white reality (It like Marty and Middle of the Night is penned by Paddy Chayefsky and while I love Network as much as the next guy, his work in the fifties is a crock of shit); Desire Under the Elms (1958), which is theatrical to the point of pulling off a rare duality: It's overly-mannered and histrionic; Separate Tables (1958), an inconsequential collection of interlocking marquee star-slummings; Middle of the Night (1959), a May-December romance in which Kim Novak and Frederic March shack up, much to the dismay of every single person in the entire world, ever. Sitting through these movies is staggering work: they are lifeless telefilms with longer scripts and slightly opened up camera work to remind the audience they aren't at home. But to what end? Legitimacy, no doubt: Hollywood has long co-opted working parts from other mediums, and teleplays were important in making television respectable (and appealing, with their onscreen talent), but these films in particular get the tone wrong. Who in the fifties was asking for turgidly dour films of infanticide, movie theatre groping, &c? Interestingly enough, Mann would go on to direct several lively comedies in the next decade while concurrently continuing in the telefilm seriousness vein.


VINCENTE MINNELLI

Father of the Bride (1950) R1 Warners
Father's Little Dividend (1951) Public domain
An American in Paris (1951) R1 Warners
the Bad and the Beautiful (1952) R1 Warners
the Story of Three Loves (1953, sgmt "Mademoiselle") R1 Warner Archives
the Band Wagon (1953) R1 Warners
the Long, Long Trailer (1954) R1 Warners
Brigadoon (1954) R1 Warners
the Cobweb (1955) R1 Warner Archives
Kismet (1955) R1 Warner
Lust for Life (1956) R1 Warners
Tea and Sympathy (1956) R1 Warner Archives
Designing Woman (1957) R1 Warners (OOP)
Gigi (1958) R1 Warners
the Reluctant Debutante (1958) R1 Warner Archives
Some Came Running (1958) R1 Warners

I can think of no auteur who had as schizophrenic an output this decade as Minnelli. Several of the film he made are full-stop masterpieces, and even more are just plain terrible. As ever, YMMV on which are which. Minnelli starts off the decade strong with Father of the Bride (1950), a hugely popular hit that provided warm, slight family entertainment that became more and more rare as TV overtook cinema-going. It's all very cute and well-done, neither descriptor being how I would categorize Minnelli's quick sequel, Father's Little Dividend (1951), which is every bit the uninspired cash grab it sounds like. An American in Paris (1951) enchanted the country upon its release-- it was until very recently widely considered to be the greatest Hollywood musical. I can't co-sign the sentiment, but I can at least understand the appeal of Gene Kelly and his discovery, Leslie Caron. The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) is the first of Minnelli's masterpieces this decade, a gleefully acidic anti-Hollywood romp that will find favor with anyone familiar with studio practices of the era. Minnelli's segment in the portmanteau romance the Story of Three Loves (1953), "Mademoiselle," is the middle piece of the three-part puzzle and that's about where I'd rank it's effectiveness relative to the other tales. The film has a bit of personal family resonance in that my mother was named after Leslie Caron's character, but unless you're me or she's your mother also, I can't imagine seeking this out on purpose. The third segment with Kirk Douglas and Pier Angeli's worth TCM-ing it, though.

What can one say about the Band Wagon (1953) other than that it should be regarded as the greatest Hollywood musical? It is a film that should and could be preserved to explain the entirety of the genre to future generations. Heaven help us if that task fell to Brigadoon (1954), a disastrously mismanaged adaptation of the popular stage musical that, despite starring Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, and Van Johnson, is not an experience you'd want to live over and over (though it does feel like it never will be over). The Long, Long Trailer (1954) is for-hire work pairing popular TV couple Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. I disagree with knives' earlier statement that its blocked for TV, as there is some imaginative mise-en-scene, but that's the faintest praise I can allot this humorless, jokeless mess. The Cobweb (1955) doesn't even have the decency to be a fascinating mess, as this is yet another Hollywood film exploiting psychiatric unease for cheap melodrama. The biggest offense is the wasted cast, one of Minnelli's best, and one given nothing to do but whine about curtains for two hours.

Kismet (1955) is one of the more contentious Minnelli musicals, though I'm in the small but vocal minority that loves it-- Minnelli approximates gaudy fantasias of araby and uses them to further his musical aims, what's not to love? Lust for Life (1956) has its defenders on the board but this is just another of the endless dull biopics this decade, and how Anthony Quinn got an Oscar for a pretty phoned-in Anthony Quinn Role is a mystery. Tea and Sympathy (1956) is perhaps a little better than its modern reputation would suggest, thanks solely to Minnelli's candy-colored visual palette that counteracts the outward aims at masculine respectability by undermining the rigid formality with femininity. Designing Woman (1957), sadly no relation to the later TV series (it could use some of the sass, lemmetellya), is a dull Wilder/Tashlin-lite riff that somehow won an Oscar for its witless script. Speaking of Oscars, Gigi (1958) swept the awards and the hearts of everyone who loves infantalizing and romanticizing schoolgirls. I have tried so many times to engage this film on any level and have always failed to find any enjoyment: everyone involved has done better things worthy of the legacy this film's achieved.

If there's an overlooked gem from Minnelli this decade, it's the Reluctant Debutante (1958), a cheerfully mean-spirited class conflict comedy that actually bolsters social inequality as a worthy line of argument! Would find favor with the nastier arguments of Bunuel et al. It also makes an interesting pairing with his best film, Some Came Running (1958), one of the key texts of fifties American cinema, with its focus on social identity and conformity. Minnelli sets his subjects within their roles and then lets them bump up against each other, peeling away at the public veneers the characters have created and maintained until we're left with the ultimate punishment for social mobility. Essential, even if you've already seen it!


FRED ZINNEMANN

the Men (1950) R1 Artisan (OOP)
Teresa (1951) No commercial release
High Noon (1952) R1 Lionsgate (OOP) / Olive
the Member of the Wedding (1952) R1 Sony (OOP)
From Here to Eternity (1953) R1 Sony
Oklahoma! (1955) R1 Fox
A Hatful of Rain (1957) No commercial release
the Nun's Story (1959) R1 Warners

What makes a Fred Zinnemann film? You might as well ask what makes a Henry Hathaway film, or a Lloyd Bacon film. Zinnemann is always at the mercy of his collaborators, be they screenwriters, producers, cameramen, editors, &c. The result is the occasional good film, but never one with an auteur's hand. After all, arguably the auteur behind Brando's screen debut the Men (1950) is producer Stanley Kramer, not the director. Not that either should have been eager to stake a claim on this rather rote look at WWII paraplegics (which even has the gall to cast Teresa Wright in a nearly identical role to her wife in the Best Years of Our Lives, except this time she's not all that understanding). Teresa (1951) is another look at the lingering effects felt by servicemen in post-war America, but it features one of the weakest, most immediately unpleasant leads in memory. The absurdly stacked amount of glamour shots for (the very young looking) Pier Angeli in her debut is about all that this one has going for it, and she's been in better material this decade if that's a selling point. High Noon (1952), which you may have heard of, of course ruined modern cinema. The Member of the Wedding (1952) is a twice-removed adaptation inescapably hobbled by the grating, laughable, painfully unaware performance of Julie Harris, over twice as old as the twelve-year old Southerner she's allegedly portraying. From Here to Eternity (1953) found resonance with readers of the source novel, perhaps, because as a free-standing film this is a clumsy, audience-baiting epic that like High Noon has inexplicably become a social marker.

All that being said, praise due where it's due: Zinnemann did the unthinkable and made a good film version of a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical with Oklahoma! (1955). R+H are an inescapable phenomenon of the fifties and early sixties and since anyone trying to understand the mindset of fifties America needs to see at least one R+H musical, this is the one for a couple reasons. Above all, despite the cracker barrel dialog (If Twain hadn't already been dead it'd have killed him), it's the least annoying: the songs are decent and the performances are at-times mismatched (Rod Steiger, appearing in a different film from everyone else), inexplicable (Gloria Grahame gives a performance from the Richard Widmark in Saint Joan school of so awful it might be genius), and spot-on (Shirley Jones, perfect as the huffy young lass in her film debut), but always game. But above all Zinnemann finds a genius way to present the stage show to a film audience by using real locations as artificial backdrops: the natural vistas of the plains provide a living background that looks fake, and therefor the film doesn't fall victim to the same fate as other late-period musicals that mismanage location shooting. When actual artifice crops up in the dream ballet, it nearly feels redundant! (Note: there are two versions of the film made for differing ratios and my comments on the mise-en-scene are derived from the 2.55 'Scope version)

A Hatful of Rain (1957), Zinnemann's best film, is a surprisingly virtuoso visual treat-- one wonders if Zinnemann intentionally took an opposing track to the over-editing on High Noon with his glorious long takes and fluid camera right out of a Preminger flick. The performances are great too-- not just Anthony Franciosa, who earned an Oscar nom for Best Actor despite being a supporting role, but the rest of the supporting cast: An aging Lloyd Nolan, whose lout of a dad shows range heretofore unexplored by his contract bits of the previous decades, and Henry Silva (playing a pusher named Mother!) and William Hickey make a memorable pair of drug-slingers, with Hickey being particularly fascinating for every second of his limited screen-time. If there's a weak spot its Don Murray's central dope-addict perf, but only because he's surrounded by so much greatness. Zinnemann seems intimidated by the material of his final film of the decade, the Nun's Tale (1959), and so for most of the running time he steps back and the film breathes fresh life into stories of nunnery drudgery. It's only when Zinnemann takes the film into a more predictable and Hollywood direction, with Audrey Hepburn flirting with a romance, that the film falters before righting itself in the end. A flawed but worthy picture from a flawed but occasionally worthy director.


STILL TO COME: Delmer Daves (!), Samuel Fuller, John Huston, Stanley Kramer, Fritz Lang, Anthony Mann, and Mark Robson

[knives]

Have you seen Capra's educational films from the period? That's got to have been a weird experience for him. Also do you know if The Bad and the Beautiful ever got a non-snapper release?

[domino harvey]

I have (I don't usually include TV work or shorts in my auteur guides)-- they left no impact on me that I can recall. And as far as I know, there's not a non-snapper of the Minnelli, though I said the same thing about Mrs Miniver and someone proved me wrong so who knows? I don't get the anti-snapper league anyways

[knives]

Too bad, maybe Warners will put it in one of those sets they've been putting out.

[matrixschmatrix]

Haha, I've been putting off watching High Noon for years, but I think that dismissal is intriguing enough to push me into watching it

[knives]

The dismissal is dead right, though I prefer his quip about it in the westerns thread. That said I'd give Zinnemann more credit than Dom did as there's more story personality if not visual to his work than say Hathaway. That said most of his work I've encountered is shit with the only serious exception being The Nun's Story which is one of the best uses of Hepburn ever even if it gets a little silly in Africa.

[Gropius]

...and one given nothing to do but whine about curtains for two hours.

You say that as if it's a bad thing.

[Sloper]

Haha, I've been putting off watching High Noon for years, but I think that dismissal is intriguing enough to push me into watching it

The dismissal is dead right, though I prefer his quip about it in the westerns thread.

I literally can't fathom why anyone wouldn't like High Noon - easily one of my favourite westerns. I've noticed it being disparaged on this board before, but haven't really picked up on the reasons. I know some people find it a pompous 'lesson in civics' or something, but for me it's just a brilliantly paced (and not at all over-edited) thriller, completely involving on every level for every single minute of its duration. And this feeling only gets stronger every time I watch it, which is whenever it happens to be on TV. Quite often, in other words.

I think what I love most about it is that it isn't just a film about Gary Cooper being a Great Man who rises to a challenge and comes through with flying colours. The real emphasis is on [spoilered since some people haven't seen it]

Spoiler

his disappointment and his fear. He finds himself faced with this impossible situation, and only survives it through a mixture of skill and luck; and the feeling at the end is not one of triumph but of relief, and also of loss since he now knows how little his friends cared about him, and his wife has had to violate the principle most dear to her in order to save his life. (Her climactic use of violence doesn't authorise killing as such; as in Destry Rides Again, violence is figured as a last, desperate resort, and one which always carries a heavy cost.) I know some people find the film a bit self-righteous when it shows all the townspeople abandoning Cooper, and especially in those speechifying scenes with the judge and the Lon Chaney character. But whatever the political 'message' behind the film, it can just be appreciated as a story about how your friends will tend to ditch you when things get difficult. Which they very much will. For me this doesn't stir any thoughts about society or politics or law and order - the anger and pathos that build up through the film are anchored in a basic observation about human nature, and I find this clear-eyed cynicism very exhilarating. I can't think of many films from this era that end on such a sour note.

[swo17]

High Noon was one of a handful of films (along with 12 Angry Men, On the Waterfront, The Graduate, and other such AFI top 100ish films) that shaped my early filmviewing experience, but several of these have ended up doing a lot less for me on repeat viewings once I had seen more than just a few hundred films. So I'm very curious to see how High Noon will hold up for me (I'm waiting for the Olive Blu to come out to rewatch it). This time around, I will of course be closely comparing it to Allan Dwan's excellent Silver Lode.

I might mention though a curious psychological phenomenon that I've noticed: Not to discourage anyone from posting critical comments about certain films, or from cracking wise in general, but I wouldn't be surprised if a comment like "High Noon ruined modern cinema" has the unintended effect of causing those people who disagree with the sentiment to move it up on their lists.

P.S. Isn't The Bad and the Beautiful OOP? Online prices and availability would seem to suggest that it is.

[domino harvey]

I've written about High Noon so much that it's all I could muster. It was going to do well on this list with or without my offhand japery, so I might as well stay true to form. And yes, Silver Lode is handily the superior film by any marker available

[domino harvey]

Swo: the Bad and the Beautiful by itself is OOP but there's a Kirk Douglas TCM set coming out in three weeks with it, Lust For Life, and Young Man With a Horn

[Gregory]

Swell. I already have Lust4Life and Young Man w/a Horn but really want The Bad and the Beautiful, so I'd basically still have to spend $25 to get the one DVD.

[domino harvey]

Well, if it helps, the set also contains Douglas' 2009 stage show, Before I Forget

[knives]

These things can usually be found for $11 a few weeks after release.

[knives]

Run for Cover
If nothing else this indicates how long this list has been going for since Dom's Ray guide says this has no release and now a Blu is out. Likewise to him though I found this film lacking compared to some of the real Ray juggernauts. Now there's nothing wrong with not being able to live up to Bigger Than Life or Party Girl (probably my favorite Ray of the decade), but that's a bullet the film has to live with. That said it is easily the best of Ray's westerns taking a lot of the same weird turns for the genre and eerie atypical use of colour (for the genre that is not Ray). The use of genre tends to be very compelling mixing melodrama and the western in a way that just about no one else could do and it even manages to toy with that (the opening sequence is practically out of Mann) in a way that's just fiendish. I guess to cut this short this seems more like the Ray western that Rivette was talking about rather than the actual one.

The Man Who Never Was
This is actually my first Neame as director film and it already gives me a strong idea of his auteurial voice. The script is pretty corse as is, but the direction pushes that even more so that it would rip flesh with a touch. I'm rather shocked that this sort of story would get made this openly even as late as it was. There's no intent to soften the blow either. the story just is and it is nasty. That said it isn't nihilistic though the characters do acknowledge that perhaps that sort of doubt is the only appropriate response to the madness of war let alone this act of madness. The film almost becomes too machismo for that with an acceptance in doing what's needed, yet it never raises that flag beyond a comical in hindsight opening scrawl. By highlighting the death of one person and the horror of all that it highlights the death of every soldier. The film ultimately does what I thought was impossible and goes against Kubrick's holocaust comment by allowing for the one story to reveal everything about the whole chaotic mess. In the face of overwhelming silence and lack of action I've gotten one of the most disturbing and true war movies ever.

The Lawless
Of course the white guy is the one to get top credit. Fortunately the film itself doesn't work the same way instead going into full ensemble mode. That said the main part of the ensemble, that of the news folk, is the least compelling part of the story and the more Nick Ray youth storylines make for a more unconventional and exciting movie. Part of this is how ordinary and uninspired the news story is. In noir it's been seen a thousand times before and seen better, but that's livable if the performances held an energy and excitement to bring that section to life, but no such luck. I really don't remember Carey in the other films I've seen him in, but here he is just grating and annoying. Trying too hard to be James Stewart with none of the charm and a voice like corn on the cob being shoved down a chicken's throat.

I guess even Losey has to strike out on occasion, though even here there's a lot to love. The main thing is the social element isn't treated with the easy solution or great white hope nonsense that so much of the era seems to think the answer is for. It also tries to not make the oppressed simply passive or stupid which is usually my biggest complaint with these sorts of films. Occasionally the oppressed does fuck up as in here and they have the most active role in their own lives even if the construct of society sometimes gives no option but to react. We manage a lot of different sort of people and they are people. It's not like there's this big Mexican face that represents all Mexicans. Like the white characters there's some good, some bad, and some who have a lot to learn.

The portrayal of the white characters is pretty good too. Carey and Russell aren't the lone saints protecting the oppressed from the snakes of the majority. They try to do right, sometimes are wrong and often disagree, but more importantly aren't the only good people present. Even the father of Hunter's dumb racist kid is ultimately a good person who tries to do right by the situation. That's where that noir cynicism comes in. Everyone, even the worst, is ultimately a good person or trying to be which makes it all the more tragic that nearly everyone isn't with flaws too big to hide or keep as good without at the very least several asterisks to their name. So who's to help out when someone who doesn't care about those asterisks comes along?

The Three Faces of Eve and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
These two are my introductions to Johnson as director and boy what a nice set they are. Straight from Eve's prologue which plays like an old Universal horror the films have this sense of being made by somebody who loves film, but doesn't really get how different things effect leaving an emotional playground rather unlike any in Hollywood at the time. There's something that reminds me of Samuel Fuller at his most deranged, yet Johnson keeps everything classy in that Fox sort of way. Even as the films start to lose their stuffing they never goes baroque or over the top instead having this almost chemical tone that almost leaves the sense of these being regular films. Their normal to the extant that their strangeness is highlighted to the extreme. That said despite the sense of the out of place there are many touching moments and a real humane heart, again rather like Fuller.