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487K views 3K replies 121 participants last post by  ChromeJob 
#1 · (Edited)
I thought we might have a thread for capsule reviews of older titles. I've arbitrarily picked 30 years (from 2009). For more recent titles, see:
1979 does not seem that long ago to me; the summer of ALIEN and APOCALYPSE NOW and "1941" and LIFE OF BRIAN...ah, such, such were the days...

I'm not going to get into Best/Worst/Top 100, etc. I'm also not going to argue the merits of these films; just post some thoughts and move on.

-Bill
 
#77 ·
 Mary Poppins (1964)


First time for me!


Remarkably lush, detailed and rich-looking children's musical from Disney. Gorgeous color and nice effects. Some spectacular dance numbers.


Julie Andrews is, as always, bright and shiny. Dick van Dyke (awful accent!) is an odd case: he has such a familiar comic face, but in some of the close-ups looks like a different person. He can dance too.


Two and a quarter hours; maybe a bit long.


-Bill
 
#78 ·
 A Walk in the Sun (1945)


GI view of WW2 fighting in Italy, made shortly after the event. Just a few hours of one day, from the predawn landing craft to what looks like an ill-advised assault on a farmhouse.


Long periods of watching, waiting, talking and slogging down the road, punctuated by moments of violence and unsentimental death. The conversation ranges from the very natural and inconsequential to the high-flown and meaningful. All the soldiers are "characters".


The photography is plain and raw, sometimes verging on the surreal. The sound-track includes an unfortunate balladeering narration song from time to time.


As an aside: I recall George Macdonald Fraser writing than anyone pulling a grenade pin with his teeth would be needing dentures. Maybe the Brits had different gear.


-Bill
 
#79 · (Edited)
Cat People (1942), produced by Val Lewton, directed by Jacques Tourneur.

A low-budget psychological thriller with hints of the supernatural and wonderful use of light and shadows. Intimations of awful revelations lurking just off screen.

A young bride cannot be intimate with her husband for fear of an old world curse that will turn her into a black panther. She believes it so much that others begin to believe it too, and then when she becomes jealous...

In The Bad and the Beautiful the eager film-makers, assigned a dumb no-budget "cat people" project, salvage it by realizing that not showing the creature is scarier than showing it, a clear reference to this film.

The 1982 remake retains one fine scene, where Irena stalks Alice at the swimming pool.

Valuable commentary track on the DVD.

I've just discovered Val Lewton and now have to see all of his films. He did not live long enough to make more than a few. I think he may be the patron saint of those who produce works of art for bosses who don't give a damn. The studio execs hated it when they saw the final product: too sophisticated, too arty. As it turned out, Cat People was enormously profitable for RKO, which needed a hit after taking a big loss on Citizen Kane.

[Later: thumbnails are from the Criterion Blu-ray].



-Bill
 
#80 ·
The Search (1948)


In post-World War II Germany, a small boy who survived Auschwitz wanders alone - feral, mute and terrified. He finds a makeshift home with a big-hearted GI, while the mother he does not remember searches desperately for him. Starring a then-unknown Montgomery Clift in his movie debut, directed in a near-documentary style by Fred Zinnemann and filmed in the ragged, rubble-strewn skeleton of Nuremberg, The Search vividly captures the horrifying human cost of war. This milestone of filmmaking won two 1948 Academy Awards(r): Best Motion Picture Story and a special award to Ivan Jandl for his haunting performance as the lost child.


This is a wonderful film that shouldn't be missed. Montgomery Clift was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar as well.
 
#81 · (Edited)
The Curse of the Cat People (1944), produced by Val Lewton, directed (partly) by Robert Wise.

In some ways a sequel to Cat People in that the actors reprise their roles and refer to the previous film. In other ways an entirely different intent and tone, a dark look into childhood fantasies and imaginary friends. On location photography in an old town with big trees and old houses. (Later: actually filmed at the RKO Ranch).

Some rough and smooth; as explained in the commentary track we are missing quite a few scenes that were never made. The parts dealing with the eccentric old woman with her scary daughter in the scary house are not worked out very well. Films featuring much dialog with children tend to be a bit stiff, but there are some exceedingly odd and disturbing moments. The title and studio advertising are entirely misleading.

Gorgeous photography.



-Bill
 
#82 ·
 Never on Sunday (1960) , written, directed by, and staring Jules Dassin.


Comic tale of a vivacious Greek prostitute and the nerdy American intellectual who tries to reform her by preaching philosophy at her.


Films about happy, singing and dancing drunken people who live life to the fullest and break lots of glassware -- a little bit goes a long way.


Famous theme song.


-Bill
 
#83 · (Edited)
I Walked with a Zombie (1943), produced by Val Lewton, directed by Jacques Tourneur.

Often described as "Jane Eyre in the West Indies with voodoo" you might as easily compare it to Rebecca or The Woman in White. Sixty-nine minutes is not a lot of time to develop literary allusions, so those are just passing fancies. It is, as we have come to expect from Lewton and Tourneur, gorgeously filmed, more mysterious and suggestive than explicit. It was Lewton's favorite from his RKO horror series.



RKO's conditions for Val Lewton's pictures were:


  1. We pick the titles.
  2. Must be under 75 minutes.
  3. Must be on time (about three weeks) and within budget ($150,000).

#1 gave him the most heartburn, but he worked around it by producing the films he wanted rather than the ones the studio expected. He did not seem to mind the budget restrictions. Being a "B" film director gave him more freedom to do things his own way.

The film has levels of indirection and plot bluffs: who is doing the fooling, and who is being fooled? It might be a metaphor for Lewton's relationship with the studio.

One of the complements always paid to Lewton is that he gave realistic and dignified roles to minority actors. The voodoo religion, although strange and scary to the outsider, is treated rather respectfully here. They did quite a lot of research on it.

The DVD has an informative commentary track by two film historians talking a mile a minute. I presume that viewers understand that "zombie" did not originally mean "flesh-eating ghoul".



-Bill
 
#84 ·
 Crazed Fruit (1953) , directed by Kô Nakahira.


In Japan, after the Occupation, a gang of rude rich kids spend their summer on the shore, drinking, water skiing, being bums. Two brothers meet a girl with secrets. Cupid gives it to them all, good and hard. Tragedy.


Remarkable effort from a first time director. The DVD commentary track has quite a lot on how the film was a breakthrough in Japan, and how influential it was.


Criterion DVD.


-Bill
 
#85 ·
Last night I watched a newly released SD DVD UK Region 2 PAL edition of the 1954 British film "An Inspector Calls."

Quote:
Synopsis

A young girl is murdered, and an Inspector calls on a prosperous Yorkshire household investigating the sad circumstances behind her death. Each one of the family has a secret - and each one is partly responsible for the girl's fate. The determined Inspector must prove their collective guilt and the shattering denouncement reveals why. An adaptation of J.B. Priestley's classic play.

The classic play referenced is a stage play of the same name. (It may help to remember that an inspector in the UK is the equivalent of a detective here.)

Quote:
An Inspector Calls is a play written by English dramatist J. B. Priestley, first performed in 1945 (in Russia) and 1946 (in the UK). It is considered to be one of Priestley's best known works for the stage and one of the classics of mid-20th century English theatre. The play's success and reputation has been boosted in recent years by a successful revival by English director Stephen Daldry for the National Theatre in 1992.


The play is a three-act drama, which takes place on a single night in 1912, and focuses on the prosperous middle-class Birling family, who live in a comfortable home in Brumley, "an industrial city in the north Midlands". The family is visited by a man calling himself Inspector Goole, who questions the family about the suicide of a young working-class woman, Eva Smith (also known as Daisy Renton). Over the course of the evening, the entire family, under interrogation by Goole, are revealed to have been responsible for the young woman's exploitation, abandonment and social ruin, effectively leading to her death. Long considered part of the repertory of classic drawing room theatre, the play has also been hailed as a scathing critique of the hypocrises of Victorian/Edwardian English society and as an expression of Priestley's Socialist political principles. The play was studied in English secondary schools for many years as one of the prescribed texts for the English Literature GCSE examination. An Inspector Calls is still part of the syllabus for GCSE in some secondary schools.

(Sorry to cut and paste but these clips tell what needs to be said better than I can.)


It's a classic - at least across the pond. The most notable actor is the venerable Alastair Sim. OAR 4x3. Mono audio. B&W. The film is in excellent condition. The disc is "spiffy."





Dana
 
#86 ·
Have you ever seen Julie Andrews do a strip tease? I have. I just watched the 1970 film "Darling Lili" In it, Julie - inspired by a strip tease of a little known but very attractive actress Gloria Paul - decides to incorporate one of her own in a musical number on a stage. And it is very well done. She was - and is - beautiful and in 1970, she was physically and vocally in her prime at age 35.


But, don't get your hopes up. This is a "G" rated movie. (One wonders about the rating system, however, as this movie is all about seduction.)

Quote:
Plot


Set during World War I, it centers on Lili Smith (Julie Andrews), a popular British music hall performer who is regarded as a femme fatale. She is actually a German spy, and the uncle she dotes upon is really Colonel Kurt Von Ruger (Jeremy Kemp), a fellow spy and her contact with the German military. In hopes of gaining valuable information, Lili begins using her feminine wiles on Major William Larrabee (Rock Hudson), a top American pilot. However, Lili soon falls in love with Larrabee and cannot find the courage to betray him. When Larrabee discovers Lili's secret, he refuses to turn her in.

I always thought this movie was considered a clunker so I watched it tonight thinking I was taking one for the OPPO team. (I bought it about two years ago before I smartened up and started renting, but never got around to watching it until tonight.) I was wrong. It's really a very good film. A top notch cast, a great director in Blake Edwards (who is the husband of Julie Andrews), new songs by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini (plus plenty of WW I era authentic songs), musical numbers staged by Hermes Pan, great costumes and ancient automobiles, realistic WW I flying combat scenes with replica planes, it has everything!


So why a box office flop?

Quote:
The film's distribution was badly managed by Paramount executives and barely got a release in most of the United States. Despite setting box-office records at Radio City Music Hall, the film was a critical and commercial failure. Budgeted at $25 million, it grossed only $5 million in the US, and later earned $3.3 million in videotape rentals.

A knowledgeable commentator notes:

Quote:
I remember seeing DARLING LILI when it ran its short original theatrical release. I also remember being the only person in the theatre during the particular showing I attended. It saddens me now as it did then that this beautifully crafted and delightful film was so sneered at and snubbed by critics and audiences alike. Movie musicals made a brief comeback in the early sixties and peaked with THE SOUND OF MUSIC in 1965. Hollywood continued to make them and even though two of them, OLIVER! and FUNNY GIRL, were mildly successful, the genre was again on the decline. The movie musicals of the late 60s all died at the box office including DOCTOR DOLITTLE, CAMELOT, FINIAN'S RAINBOW, GOODBYE MR. CHIPS, CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG, PAINT YOUR WAGON, HALF A SIXPENCE, SWEET CHARITY, HELLO DOLLY! as well as Andrews' other underrated drama with music, STAR! which I consider a companion piece to both DARLING LILI and Andrews' comeback film, VICTOR,VICTORIA. But even in 1970 the movie musical struggled to survive with not only DARLING LILI but two other large scale musical extravaganzas, ie: ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER and SCROOGE. Much salt was added to the wound when not only 'LILI' but also 'CLEAR DAY' and SCROOGE tanked at the box office. These films failed not because they were bad films but because audiences had grown cynical and no film was any good unless it was "realistic". It seemed that going to the movies was no longer an exercise in temporarily putting one's troubles aside for a few hours of nurturing the spirit and soul with beautiful singing and dancing...

It's the Director's Cut, 136 minutes long on a SD DVD released in 2005. OAR 1.85:1 Panavision. Technicolor. DD 5.1 audio. Top drawer in every way. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song and won a Golden Globe for Best Original Song. Andrews was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actress, Musical or Comedy and the film was also nominated for Best Picture, Musical or Comedy.


Thoroughly enjoyable, something I can't say about every film I watch.





Dana
 
#87 ·
I was recently reminded of Cary Grant's next to last film, the 1964 romantic comedy "Father Goose" which I own. I've seen it before but never with my current 47" LCD and OPPO BDP-83 Blu-ray player. So, I popped it in the player and sat back to enjoy! What a treat.


Grant plays against type as a scruffy loner who escapes the confines of wearing a tie while teaching history to students who have no interest in it by running away to the South Pacific only to have WW II catch up to him.


It has an all-star cast including Leslie Caron, Trevor Howard and Jack Good. While it's a romantic comedy, the work of coast-watchers which Grant "volunteers" to undertake in actuality was no joke - very serious and dangerous business. The title of the film comes from his radio code name.


It's a grand film and the repartee among the actors is LOL humorous at times. No wonder it won the Academy Award for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay in 1965.


It's on a 2001 SD DVD in Technicolor, OAR 1.85:1 letterboxed. I used the "full" zoom to fill my 16x9 screen perfectly. Mono audio. Filmed on location in Jamaica and on the Universal Studios' back lot in Hollywood.


Cary Grant was 60 at the time of production, easily old enough to have been Leslie Caron's father; she was 33. Yet, their ultimate romantic attraction to each other after initial tension is entirely believable. Grant was quite a comedian; Caron was a delightful foil. The entourage of seven children Miss Caron's character has in tow adds a lot to the fun. None of them had any previous film experience.




Dana
 
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#88 ·
"Who'll Stop The Rain" based on the novel Dog Soldiers by Robert Stone. Vietnam vets Hicks [Nick Nolte] and Converse [Mike Moriarty] are smuggling heroin back to the states. When Hicks delivers the package to his friends wife Marge [Tuesday Weld] they are ambushed by two henchmen [Ray Sharkey and Richard Masur] who work for a corrupt cop [Anthony Zerbe] who knows everything about Converse's plan to bring the drugs to America. What he didn't count on was dealing with Hicks. Directed by Karol Reisz this taut thriller is a character actors field day with a career defining performance by Nick Nolte. He grabs his role by the throat and does'nt let go for the entire film. A terrifying look at the dark side of the seventies
 
#89 · (Edited)
The Body Snatcher (1945), produced by Val Lewton, directed by Robert Wise.

From the RL Stevenson story. Doctors in 1830s Edinburgh need cadavers for anatomy studies. With a limited supply, what do you do?

This period thriller is stiffer than others in the Val Lewton series, with the young hero being particularly wooden. Some of the actors have Scots accents, others don't. Nonetheless it was a smash hit.

Henry Daniell and Boris Karloff save it. Their mutual hatred and nasty bantering is vastly entertaining. Karloff was particularly grateful to Lewton for getting him out of the monster movies, and is quoted as saying things like "he saved my soul" and "brought me back from the dead". Many Karloff fans think this is his best performance; he is hypnotically evil, but this is disorienting because the object of his malice is no angel either.

Robert Wise contributes a commentary track for the DVD, but it is not specific to this film. Another commentator gives some ghastly details on the historical facts behind the story, as well as more history of the production.



-Bill
 
#2,272 ·
The Body Snatcher (1945), produced by Val Lewton, directed by Robert Wise.

From the RL Stevenson story. Doctors in 1830s Edinburgh need cadavers for anatomy studies. With a limited supply, what do you do?

This period thriller is stiffer than others in the Val Lewton series, with the young hero being particularly wooden. Some of the actors have Scots accents, others don't. Nonetheless it was a smash hit.

Henry Daniell and Boris Karloff save it. Their mutual hatred and nasty bantering is vastly entertaining. Karloff was particularly grateful to Lewton for getting him out of the monster movies, and is quoted as saying things like "he saved my soul" and "brought me back from the dead". Many Karloff fans think this is his best performance; he is hypnotically evil, but this is disorienting because the object of his malice is no angel either.

Robert Wise contributes a commentary track for the DVD, but it is not specific to this film. Another commentator gives some ghastly details on the historical facts behind the story, as well as more history of the production.
(Additional thoughts and new thumbnails from the Blu-ray).

Perhaps in appreciation of the new Blu-ray I am seeing deeper into the film this time, finding even more profound corruptions of the soul:

Karloff: You're a fool, Toddy, and no doctor. It's only the dead ones you know.

Daniell: I am a doctor. I teach medicine.

Karloff: Like Knox taught you? Like I taught you? In cellars and graveyards? Did Knox teach what makes the blood flow?

Daniell: The heart pumps it.

Karloff: Did he tell you how thoughts come and how they go? And why things are remembered and forgot?

Daniell: The nerve centers, the brain.

Karloff: What makes a thought start?

Daniell: The brain, I tell you, I know!

Karloff: You don't know and you'll never know or understand, Toddy. Not from Knox or me would you learn those things. Look, look at yourself. Could you be a doctor, a healing man with the things those eyes have seen? There's a lot of knowledge in those eyes, but no understanding. You'd not get that from me.
Our principle players:


  • Boris Karloff: The scruffy, sinister cab driver intrigues us at once. He is kind to children and his horse but kills a dog. What is the history he shares with the esteemed doctor and the doctor's housekeeper (and lover)? His sole joy in life is tormenting the doctor, who has to put up with it.

    Certainly one of Karloff's best and meatiest roles. He was always grateful to Val Lewton (who didn't want him at first) for giving him a chance to do some proper work.
  • Henry Daniell: The esteemed doctor with no bedside manner is missing something in his character and his life is blighted by cab driver Gray. And yet he does know his science, wants to teach others and takes honest satisfaction in healing.

    Daniell was most often a supporting actor, but he shines in a more substantial role, probably his biggest part in film. I always think of him as Moriarty to Basil Rathbone's Holmes in The Woman in Green (1945), the same year as this film.
  • Bela Lugosi: A smaller part, but a good one as the servant who tries to blackmail a killer. Lugosi was in pain and medicated and struggled in his acting, but they were patient with him. Karloff treated him well, which you might not suspect from watching Ed Wood (1994). This was the last of their films together.

It's a great film when any combination of the three are on screen. The rest is filler and tends to drag it down, particularly the stiff Russell Wade as the medical assistant. That's too bad. The costumes and sets have a static quality common to films of that era.

Roy Webb score.

Available on Blu-ray from Shout Factory. On a commentary track the director gives an account of his early career and this film. This is followed by thoughts from film historian.



-Bill
 
#90 ·
When we read about Audrey Hepburn, there is often mention that ...

Quote:
(s)he appeared in a handful of European films before starring in the 1951 Broadway play Gigi. Hepburn played the lead female role in Roman Holiday (1953), winning an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for her performance.

One of the "handful of European films" in which Audrey appeared (apprenticed?) has been recently released on SD DVD in the UK and I wanted to see it. It's called "Secret People." It was the last film she made there - released in 1952 - before she won the Oscar for her endearing performance in "Roman Holiday."


While the theater poster for "Secret People"




suggests that Audrey Hepburn had a featured role, in fact it was a small part that cast her as a young novice ballerina which was not far from the truth in real life. At least she had some lines as apparently in some earlier films, she didn't. It is likely that the co-writer/director Thorold Dickinson had in mind that she might be sufficiently well known in the USA to get his film distributed in this country as well as in the UK. It never was.


Audrey went on to great heights. The other actors didn't. There is a brief analysis of the film in a Special Feature I watched. The commentator goes on about the film, its plot significance, the director and actors - never mentioning Audrey - before finally acknowledging that the film flopped at the box office. The director's reputation was damaged and he soon after turned to teaching film studies.


I found the film preachy and boring. Audrey added some life to it but wasn't on screen long enough to save it.


On a © 2010 SD DVD PAL Region 2. B&W. OAR 4x3. Mono audio. It is a very good transfer, the blacks are very black and the detail is very good. Too bad the film isn't.


Dana
 
#91 ·
I watched recently "The Man Who Never Was" which ...

Quote:
... is a nonfiction 1953 book by Ewen Montagu and a 1956 World War II war film, based on the book and dramatizing actual events. It is about Operation 'Mincemeat', a 1943 British Intelligence plan to deceive the Axis powers into thinking Operation 'Husky', the Allied invasion of Sicily, would take place elsewhere.


The film was directed by Ronald Neame and starred Clifton Webb as Lt. Cmdr. Ewen Montagu, Gloria Grahame as Lucy Sherwood, Robert Flemyng as Lt. George Acres, Josephine Griffin as Pam, Stephen Boyd as Patrick O'Reilly, Laurence Naismith as Adml. Cross, Geoffrey Keen as Gen. Nye, André Morell as Sir Bernard Spilsbury, Michael Hordern as Gen. Coburn and William Squire as submarine commander Bill Jewell. It was entered into the 1956 Cannes Film Festival.

I read the book a million years ago and may have seen the film when it first came out. I bought the SD DVD about five years ago. But I'd never played it on my OPPO BDP-83.

Quote:
Synopsis


Operation 'Mincemeat' involved the acquisition and dressing up of a human cadaver ... as a 'Major William Martin, R.M.' and putting it into the sea near Huelva, Spain. Attached to the corpse was a brief-case containing fake letters falsely stating that the Allied attack would be against Sardinia and Greece rather than Sicily, the actual point of invasion. When the body was found, the Spanish Intelligence Service passed copies of the papers to the German Intelligence Service which passed them on to their High Command. The ruse was so successful that the Germans still believed that Sardinia and Greece were the intended objectives, weeks after the landings in Sicily had begun.

It was only in 2004 that the true identity of the body was established.


It's a rattling good story. The film was shot in CinemaScope and while the SD DVD offers both a full frame and wide screen version, I chose the latter. OAR 2.55:1 anamorphic. It plays with big black bars top and bottom and stretched fully across the 16x9 TV screen. (If ever there is a good reason to have a large screen, this is it!) Audio was DD 4.0 which availability is not noted on the keep case. It's filled with UK character actors from that era. Apparently shot on location. In color.


It played well.


Dana
 
#92 ·
Recently I watched the 1968 film "Madigan."


It's a police crime drama that takes place in New York City. I think it was intended to be an update - color, wide screen - of the B&W 1948 4x3 film "The Naked City." While it has some top notch actors including Richard Widmark and Henry Fonda, overall it isn't as good. Both films spun off TV series of the same name. Madigan ran for one season; The Naked City TV series ran for six seasons. I remember it well.


For one thing, the late '60s is a period that does not age well. Narrow lapels, narrow ties, narrow brims on men's hats, bulbous cars that bounce on their soft suspensions, ugly "fashionable colors," women's bee hive hairdos and rather laughable police procedures. A period piece. I lived through it and can only shake my head now at what I see. Widmark is always good. Fonda seems to sleep walk through his part.


On a Netflix rental SD DVD. Filmed in something called Technovision which apparently was akin to Panavision. OAR anamorphic 2.35:1. I used the 1.3 Zoom to get it to fill the screen horizontally with black bars top and bottom. Color. Mono sound.


Swedish born Inger Stevens had a prominent role in the film as Madigan's wife. In real life she died at age 35 as an apparent suicide in 1970, two years after the film.


It played without a problem.


Dana
 
#93 ·
Recently I watched the just released on a SD DVD PAL Region 2 "Western Approaches."


For those that don't know, the term refers both to an area in the sea west of the UK




and

Quote:
(t)he term is most commonly used when discussing naval warfare, notably during the First World War and Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War in which the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) attempted to blockade the UK using submarines (U-boats) operating in this area. Since almost all shipping to and from the UK passed through this area, it was an excellent hunting ground and had to be heavily defended.

This film was originally created during WW II as propaganda for the Home Front in the UK with particular emphasis on the heroic role of the Merchant Marine. It was also a classic bit of cinema in that there were no professional actors used. All the men in the film are either in the Merchant Marine or Royal Navy. The disc was made from a print preserved at the Imperial War Museum.


I watched the feature, a short extra and then watched the feature again with the Director's Commentary. (Amazing that he was still alive 60 years after he made the film!)


Very interesting both as a documentary of a little appreciated aspect of WW II but also as a remarkable bit of film making under difficult circumstances. Technicolor. Mono audio of good quality. OAR 4x3.


The playback was problem free.


Dana
 
#94 ·
Recently I watched "The Eddy Duchin Story" which...
Quote:
... is a 1956 biopic of band leader and pianist Eddy Duchin. It was directed by George Sidney, written by Samuel A. Taylor, and starred Tyrone Power and Kim Novak. The musical soundtrack recording, imitating Duchin's style, was performed by pianist Carmen Cavallaro. Harry Stradling Sr. received an Academy Award nomination for his cinematography in the film. It had four nominations in total, but won nothing. However it was one of the highest grossing films of 1956. Some of its box office success can be attributed to the appearance of Novak in ads for No-Cal diet soda. Novak became one of the first celebrities to be featured in advertisements for soft drinks, and each ad also featured a reminder to see Novak in The Eddy Duchin Story.

I own the SD DVD, having bought it when I got my first HD TV set in 2004. But, I'd forgotten much of it so I decided to give it a spin tonight on my 47" LCD with my OPPO BDP-83. I'd heard some of Duchin's music which reminded me of the film.


It's in CinemaScope OAR 2.35:1 anamorphic, audio is 3.1. In Technicolor. I thought the film was a little soft focus, maybe intentionally done in those days to give the stars a break. Tyrone Power was 42 at the time and playing a much younger man. (He died at age 44 of a heart attack.)


It's a tearjerker that reflects a real life hard luck story. The music is grand and I enjoyed watching/listening to it.


Dana
 
#95 ·
Recently I watched the 1957 Russian film "The Cranes are Flying."

Quote:
The Cranes Are Flying, directed by Mikhail Kalatozov in 1957, is one of the landmarks of Soviet film and, in Josephine Woll's words, the first indisputable masterpiece of post-Stalin cinema. The film was instantly greeted as a revelation in the Soviet Union and became an international success, winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Even today, seeing The Cranes Are Flying is a moving experience, and it may not be difficult for contemporary viewers to recapture the sensation which the film is said to have evoked in those who saw it when it was new: that of a fresh wind sweeping through a musty house.


In large and small ways throughout the film, the filmmakers affirm their commitment to personal drama above public platitude. Early in the narrative, which starts on the day of Germany's surprise invasion of Russia (June 22, 1941), the hero, Boris (Alexei Batalov), volunteers for the front. Avoiding glib appeals to nation and duty, the film foregrounds Boris' reluctance to tell his lover, Veronica (Tatiana Samoilova) that he has volunteered, and the pain and anxiety felt by Veronica and Boris's father, Feodor (Vasily Merkuryev), when they learn the truth. The film goes as far as to undercut rote patriotismin what must have been perceived as a daring stroke in 1957when Feodor impatiently cuts short and mocks the clichés of a farewell tribute addressed to Boris by two girls from the factory where he works.

It's a Netflix rental. SD DVD. 4x3 OAR. B&W. DD mono sound. English subtitles. A Criterion Collection disc. It played well.


Dana
 
#96 ·
Recently I watched the 1966 Russian film "Wings," one of two highly regarded films by Soviet-era director Larisa Shepitko released in a two DVD box set in 2008 by Criterion on its Eclipse label.

Quote:
A decorated fighter pilot from the glory days of World War II, Nadezhda Petrukhina (Maya Bulgakova), has been rewarded by the Soviet state with a position as the director of a provincial trade school. This heroic woman, with the clear blue eyes and high cheekbones of a figure on a propaganda poster, now finds herself in charge of disciplining unruly students who demonstrate the same spirit of independence she once did, and hates herself for being the voice of authority.

Unfortunately, this promising director was killed in an auto accident in 1979. She made a total of four films.


This is a Netflix rental. B&W. OAR 4x3. DD stereo. I used the English subtitles. A well made film. It played without a problem.


Dana
 
#97 ·
Tonight I watched "Across the Pacific," a 1942 action spy film depicting a Japanese threat to the Canal Zone on December 7, 1941 thwarted by our hero Humphrey Bogart.


There's a short subject on the SD DVD that puts this film in historical perspective which makes the film more interesting than solely as standalone entertainment. It was one of the first films to be released post Pearl Harbor, in 1942. It has a propaganda agenda, but so does "Casablanca," a film classic that Bogart made also in 1942 immediately following this one.


This film is no classic but is interesting until believability falls by the wayside towards the end. This is apparently because the legendary director John Huston (this was his third film) left the set and joined the war effort, leaving the final scenes of the film to be shot by an uncredited lesser director as confirmed here. It shows.


The actors are good. Bogart, Mary Astor and Sydney Greenstreet are reunited following their success in "The Maltese Falcon" shot in 1941. Victor Sen Yung who was better known as Charlie Chan's son gets to play a duplicitous nesei here. In a bit part is Richard Loo, who was typecast during WW II playing Japanese villains although he was Chinese in ancestry and Hawaiian by birth.


The title is misleading. Not one scene in the film takes place in the Pacific! Only in Hollywood.


On a Netflix rental SD DVD. OAR 4x3 B&W. Mono sound. I watched all the Special Features, all but one of which were also circa 1942. It played well.




Dana
 
#98 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Kilgore /forum/post/17632337


Whenever someone says The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is Leone's best film (and it IS a great film), you can pretty much guarantee that they haven't seen Once Upon a Time in the West. Easily the greatest western ever made.


Fantastic cinematography. Charles Bronson's finest hour (with thhe possible exception of The Great Escape). Claudia Cardinale, one of the most beautiful women in the history of cinema. Great performance by Jason Robards. Henry Fonda as you've never seen before (playing a heartless, cruel villain like nobody's business). Another magnificent Ennio Morricone score.


This film also opens with the greatest performance by a fly in the history of the movies in a fabulous scene with the great Jack Elam.


I mean....what's not to like? Few films are as operatic as this one. The day this film is released on Blu-ray can't come soon enough.

Gotta listen to the commentary track or documentary - I forget which (probably the commentary track) that points out the homages and references to other Westerns and films.


OUATITW - I, too, prefer it to TGTBATU
 
#99 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by hitchfan /forum/post/17642528


I'm going to have to agree with you there. The Searchers is the greatest western on so many levels.


The enjoyment of "Once...", "The Good, The Bad..." and the other Leone westerns is predicated on our being in tune with a certain comical quirkiness of his directorial style. Which is not to say they aren't entertaining. I like them quite a bit. But they tend to work more as goofs or riffs on what we had grown to expect from a western than as great westerns in their own right. And when the time comes that we are no longer amused by the directorial quirkiness, there isn't much else there.


My vote for a great western of another kind and a pre-1979 movie worth revisiting or seeing for the first time is Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo (1959).

But ya gotta watch THE BIG TRAIL in the 70mm version (both versions come in the DVD set). Awesome in scope and cinematography. And, it has John Wayne!
 
#101 ·
A few posts back are my notes on the playback of "Across the Pacific" on a Netflix rental SD DVD. On the same DVD is a well done commentary on the role of film in the days leading up to and following our entry into WW II. It includes some clips and theater posters from such movies as "Sergeant York" (1941), "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942), and "Hollywood Canteen" (1944). One actor who appeared in all of those and many more is Joan Leslie .


As a kid growing up in this period, I really liked Joan Leslie. So, I was taken aback to see Joan Leslie participating in the discussion! OMG! How old can she be? If the various references are correct such as this one, she was born on January 25, 1925. She got started in film early as a child. She looks great in this short subject, thin and still beautiful - with flaming red hair! (All the movies I really remember her being in were B&W.) She talks coherently and with feeling about her involvement in the Hollywood Canteen (The real one, not the movie about it in which, by the way, appears Joan Leslie!) and patriotic films of the period. She was active in movies from 1936 to 1991. She married once, in 1950, had identical twin girls, and lived with her husband for 50 years until his death in 2000.


A normal, admirable life by a one-time big star on the celluloid who worked in the motion picture business but apparently never was adversely affected by it. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. I remember her fondly.


More here.




Dana
 
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