Review older films here: 1979 and earlier - Page 9

M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang.

It starts as a monster hunt, suggesting German folktales and villagers with torches in a Frankenstein movie. But this is the big city and the monster is real: a child killer who leaves no clues and taunts the police with letters. We're not told what happens to the children; they all seem to be girls and are found in a certain "condition", phrasing that reminded me of Jack the Ripper.

Fear washes over the city. We see it from many perspectives. Mobs are accusing and seizing random people. The police are making a maximum effort, concentrating on the underworld. This hampers crime so much that the syndicate mounts their own campaign to find the killer, who they hate as much as anyone. We have a race between the police and crooks, who are just as hard working and efficient, to find the madman and deal with him. This is really fine movie making.

The criminals get to him first. The story lags a bit as the police try to figure this out and catch up. But then we move to a vivid and moving trial before the assembled underground.

The crooks are remarkably hard-nosed about crime and punishment. Let him off because of insanity? Absurd. Put him in prison at taxpayer's expense, maybe let him out so he can kill again? No way. The defense counsel argues forcefully that a man operating under uncontrollable compulsion has no free will. The State must render him harmless but it would be immoral to punish him. The underground will have none of it.

In the end -- we don't know the end.

Peter Lorre, bulging eyes and goblin face, is entirely believable as the monster. We want him caught, but when he becomes the hunted this conflicts with our impulse to root for the underdog, the fox rather than the hounds.

Watch his hysterical plea at his "trial": the crooks understand, but do not pity.

Lang's first sound picture. Like Hitchcock, he regretted the passing of the silent era and you can see this in many quiet compositions.

The old film stock obviously has a lot of history and has seen rough treatment. Criterion did quite a bit of cleanup and the Blu-ray has been praised for it's high definition image. I think a DVD would have been about as good, but I have not seen one to compare, and I don't have the large display needed to make credible judgments anyway.







-Bill

I said at the start of this thread that I would just post reviews without discussion, but sometimes I can't resist.

The issue of celebrity fame during WW2 is interesting and I don't know if anyone has done a general study. Why were some figures liked and others not?

I've heard the criticism of John Wayne before, and William Manchester said of Frank Sinatra: "I think he was the most hated man of World War II, much more than Hitler, because Sinatra was back home making all of that money and being shown in photographs surrounded by beautiful women." (He was 4F because of a perforated eardrum).

Now Errol Flynn was also 4F (heart, lungs, some other embarrassing stuff) but did USO tours of the Aleutian islands and the troops were nuts for him. In this case they seemed to admire his ladies' man reputation. Maybe it was because just a few years earlier they were kids watching his adventure films, but why wouldn't Wayne get the same consideration?

As an aside, Flynn was much reviled in Britain for Objective, Burma! (1945) because it showed the Americans winning the war there. George MacDonald Fraser (who was there) later defended him, pointing out that the Americans did have a sector of Burma and why shouldn't they make a movie about it? And anyway, actors don't write the stories.

As a further aside, I want to write up an appreciation of Fraser someday. Soldier, novelist, screenwriter.

One final off topic: a WW2 vet of my acquaintance most admires Marlene Dietrich as a war time celebrity. Probably because he saw her perform and she took her show to the front line (real bullets incoming) when many others wouldn't (or perhaps couldn't). Further notes here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlene...h#World_War_II

-Bill

Indeed. Often when looking at an actor's bio I see things I almost wish I didn't know: alcohol, abusive behavior, unlovely political attachments. I try not to worry about those things when watching movies.

But sometimes you find startling things that make you look at an actor in new and appreciative ways. Remember William Smith who played Joe Riley in the 1960s LAREDO tv show?



I always thought of him as just a hunky good looking guy, a cowboy for the ladies. Read his bio here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Smith_(actor).

Apart from his bodybuilding and athletic accomplishments he flew spy planes over Russia during the Korean War, spoke a bunch of languages and taught Russian at UCLA.

I will remember those things next time I see one of his films.

-Bill

Bigger Than Life (1956), directed by Nicholas Ray.

A distinguished schoolteacher has some secrets. He is ill and hiding it from everyone. He has a part time job and conceals it from his wife. Some other oddities: the walls of their house are covered with maps and travel posters but they do not seem to go anywhere; he says "we are dull people." He has a modest job but considerable pride of intellect.

When he collapses the doctors say he will die without a new experimental drug (cortisone!) He makes a quick recovery and becomes manic, either way up or way down. He speaks his mind a bit too freely to parents at school and makes grandiose plans. He is abusing the prescription and becomes mentally unbalanced. During this phase we wonder if his illness and medication aren't just an excuse, a way to drop his inhibitions and let his real self run riot.

We hope that's not true when he turns murderously psychotic and the story becomes more of a thriller or horror picture. But: there is a happy ending, in fact it's a bit syrupy.

James Mason (who produced the film and contributed to the script) is absolutely chilling. A psycho-dad or psycho-husband is always a scary prospect, but add his intellect and penetrating demeanor and we have entered nightmare country. His breakdown proceeds slowly and goes on for a long time but the tension never flags.

I didn't have time to listen to the commentary track. It seemed to be sociological: shallow suburbia, hypocritical nuclear family, cold war, conformism, etc. Well, maybe. I've been listening to that lecture all my life and wonder if it isn't time to give it a rest.

I'm always pleased to see Barbara Rush and will have to watch It Came From Outer Space again soon. Also with young Walter Matthau.

Gorgeous 1950s cinematography. The last time I saw even bits of this movie it was on a small boxy black and white TV; I didn't even know it was in color and Cinemascope. Moments like this make me feel like I have been transported into the future.

I spotted an effect which I presume is already known to fans. Several scenes have a medicine cabinet; when the mirror swings you get a glimpse of other people in the background. Whether this is the crew or director or a spectral observer I don't know; I'm sure it is intentional. Very creepy. You need frame-by-frame to see the figures clearly.

Criterion Blu-ray.



-Bill

Blackmail (1929), directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

A young woman, dating a police detective, is unwisely seeing an artist on the side. Late one night she goes to his studio and is persuaded to change into costume so he can draw her. When he assaults her she stabs and kills him. Best to go home and not mention it, but her boyfriend is on the case. He figures it out but covers for her. Both are distraught even before the sleezy blackmailer appears...

This is a fun one, much more like the pacing and tone of later Hitchcock films, at least compared to the other early ones. It culminates in a famous chase through the British Museum.

Called the first British "all-talking" picture, it is a retrofitted silent film. Hitchcock made a separate silent version with a different actor as the Chief Inspector; I don't know if that version has been preserved.



-Bill

Rooster Cogburn (1975), directed by Stuart Millar.

Cross True Grit with The African Queen and what do you get? Mainly a showcase for John Wayne and Katherine Hepburn (both age 68) with lots of comic back and forth between a missionary and a reprobate. The plot, despite the high body count, seems half-hearted. Some gossipy production notes in the IMDB.

Not well reviewed or successful at the box office. Since then, with the aging of the baby boomers, geezer adventures and romances have become more common. In this case the star power of the leads actually harms the movie; it seems too staged.

Someday someone will edit all three films into alternate reality time-shifting story.

Miss Hepburn was dressed by Miss Head.

"Keep the faith, M'am. See you at the hangin'".

The DVD is 4:3 letterboxed. Beautiful Oregon locations.



-Bill

Stagecoach (1939), directed by John Ford.

Enormously satisfying western about a disparate set of passengers on a stagecoach trip through hostile Indian territory. In Monument Valley, of course! The characters are well-known, but that doesn't harm the story. We have:

• the boyishly charming outlaw (John Wayne)
• the floozy with a heart of gold (Claire Trevor)
• the courtly Southern gambler (John Carradine)
• the drunken doctor (Thomas Mitchell)
• the pregnant soldier's wife (Louise Platt)
• the timid salesman (Donald Meek)
• the embezzling banker (Berton Churchill)
• the colorful coach driver (Andy Devine)
• the stalwart sheriff (George Bancroft)

The little subplots and interactions are just great. All done with John Ford's customary realism and fine composition.

Seeing Claire Trevor makes me want to watch Key Largo again. This is a break-out role for John Wayne, but he had made over seventy pictures before. John Carrdine's is the only tragic character: the Southern gentleman who has fallen on hard times, still retaining a sense of honor and code of conduct. Perhaps a last chance at redemption.

Notice how the timid whiskey salesman starts giving orders after the baby is born. He's the only family man in the group.

A continuing theme in Ford's films is that the people who tame the West have no place there once it is settled. This story has perhaps the happiest resolution to the problem.

Criterion Blu-ray. The source is in rough shape and I don't know how much restoration has been done or is possible. Not much improvement over my Warner DVD. The Blu-ray does have some nice extras.



-Bill

Hard Times (1975), directed by Walter Hill.

Aka Street Fighter.

Brutal bare-knuckles boxing story set in depression-era New Orleans. It's more like brawling: no rules other than empty hands and don't hit a man when down. The men strip to the waist and fight in their street clothes.

Walter Hill's first picture; an auspicious beginning. No frills, bare bones, just an authentically sad and grimy 1930s look to everything.

Chaney (Charles Bronson) drifts into town, just looking for a way to make some money. Speed (James Coburn), a gambler and fight promoter, becomes his partner. He's not quite as smart as he thinks he is, or maybe it is just an attitude and gambling problem. He never does figure Chaney out. Chaney has to ponder whether money really is everything before it is over.

Strother Martin is Poe, a fight "doctor". Two years of medical school and a weakness for opium. He has some great lines:

Introducing the fighter: "That's Chaney. He don't say much."

Sadly, when some losing gamblers won't pay up: "Somebody always shows up with a gun."

Cautioning his partner in a tense situation: "Steady on, Speed. These boys are not refined."

Jill Ireland, Bronson's real-life wife, is a tentative romantic interest.

It's hard to believe that Bronson is 54 years old in this picture. He still looks like he's made of iron. Some of his fans think this is his best film. He still has that laconic manner and immobile face, but somehow projects a deeply conflicted nature: proud and self-sufficient but lonely and without purpose.

Looking at his biography: Bronson started in the coal mines. In WW2 he was a B-29 tail gunner, flew 25 missions and had a Purple Heart.

The original US DVD release was a flipper with 4:3 pan & scan on one side and widescreen (anamorphic, I'm told) on the other. The reissue was 4:3 pan & scan only. Isn't that infuriating? The original aspect ratio is 2.35:1 so cropping it to 1.33:1 is a crime. Rather than take the risk that the seller of a used disc might not be aware of the differences, I imported an anamorphic PAL region 2 version. Prices are good now.



-Bill

Coffy (1973), written and directed by Jack Hill.

Pam Grier has a vendetta against drug kingpins and has to cope with pimps and corrupt cops and politicians on the side. She looks good with a shotgun and does what is necessary: no virginal wilting flower, she. Bloody, funny, with loads of sex and gratuitous nudity. That's entertainment.

Like lots of blaxploitation it combines the low-budget, the hip and the clumsy. The makers understand the plot is ridiculous and the acting rough. Add layers of humor and irony and somehow it comes out kind of exciting.

In a nice touch, once she starts down this road Coffy says she feels like she is in a dream, detached from reality and already having regrets.

My DVD was 4:3 letterboxed.



-Bill

Torchy Blane was an ace reporter said to be the inspiration for Lois Lane. She's aggressive, wise-cracking, and constantly frustrating her boyfriend, police detective Steve McBride.

The films are about an hour long, quickly made on a limited budget. It's more like a TV series where they jam in as much plot as possible by talking a mile a minute. Not exactly inspired film-making, but they are often funny and a few moments of proto-noir tone creep in from time to time.

This is the period where the cops, crooks, club owners and reporters all know each other from way back and form a more or less amicable society. But murder tends to upset things.

The first two entries star Glenda Farrell and Barton MacLane. He's a curious choice for the leading man. Unsmiling and sour, he is often a cop or a cowboy or a general (as in the I Dream of Jeannie series). I remember him as the nasty detective who smacks Bogart in The Maltese Falcon.

Smart Blonde (1937), directed by Frank McDonald.

All right, who killed the millionaire "promoter" in the middle of Torchy Blane's interview? The club owner, his bodyguard, his fiance, her brother, the singer, or some other gangster? Plenty of clues if you look for them and get to the scene early (how does she do that?) and Torchy sets a trap to catch the killer.

Fly Away Baby (1937), directed by Frank McDonald.

Murder, jewel theft, and an around the world air race, the last leg of which is via zeppelin from Germany to the US. Oh, the humanity. Since the racers are all passengers on the same craft it really isn't much of a race. Some interesting aerial footage.

The map showing the animated line of their journey has place names that became rather familiar just a few years later: Midway, Wake Island, Hanoi. And some countries that no longer exist on the map: Baluchistan, Siam.

Warner Archive titles, available for rent from http://www.classicflix.com/. Both titles are on one disc.



-Bill

Kelly's Heroes (1970), directed by Brian G. Hutton.

Comic WW2 caper film on an ambitious scale. Clint Eastwood is the star but it is an ensemble picture. Telly Savalas tends to dominate the scenes he's in. He's the only ethical character, doing it for the other men rather than the money. Extra comedy from Don Rickles ("Crapgame", a hustler) and Donald Sutherland ("Oddball", a hippy tank commander who must have a time machine somewhere).

It's mostly fun. They mow down armies of Germans in largely bloodless mayhem. The shouting and comic mugging was funnier then than now; time is hard on comedy. The whole tone is vastly cynical, but this was the Vietnam era and Hollywood respect for the military had been declining for a long time. There was a long period on TV and in the movies where officers were nothing but buffoons and no plot was too ridiculous.

Best to skip over technical problems, like the difference between mortars and artillery field pieces. Also: movie makers seem to have no idea how much gold weighs. The actors sling it around as if it were brass plated props.

There is one segment that stands out: the approach to and entry of the town with the Nazi gold before the big battle is nicely tense, well staged and photographed.

The "Burning Bridges" theme song, a bit of bubble-gum sung by the Mike Curb Congregation, is a woefully unfortunate choice. I remember it had some radio play. Other than that the Lalo Schifrin score is fine, particularly in the above mentioned pre-battle sequence.

Available on Blu-ray.



-Bill

Best of the Badmen (1951), directed by William D. Russell.

Interesting setup for a western: after the end of the Civil War, cavalry major Robert Ryan arranges the surrender of a gang of die hard bushwhackers (with Bruce Cabot and Walter Brennan), including (of course) the James and Younger brothers. His sensible idea is to give them the Oath and let them go, but this crosses some carpetbaggers (Robert Preston and Barton MacLane) who would rather have the bounty money. Ryan is sentenced to hang on a trumped up murder charge. Claire Trevor springs him from jail (why? it's complicated) but then he is an outlaw also.

After that it is more of a standard action/romance western but they pack a lot into 83 minutes. Definitely "classic" rather than "modern" tone. Hard charging score by Paul Sawtell

Warner Archive title, available for rent from http://www.classicflix.com/. The Technicolor has not entirely faded out yet, but the image is very soft in spots.



-Bill

Bend of the River (1952), directed by Anthony Mann.

Two men with dark secret pasts as Missouri border raiders: one (Arthur Kennedy) knows that nothing ever changes, that he will never be forgiven and will always be at war with society. The other (James Stewart) works for his redemption and hopes that eventually he can cross back over and be accepted by decent people. Who wins when they are on opposite sides?

This is the first time Anthony Mann has seemed more optimistic to me than John Ford. In Ford's westerns the hard men have to fade away once the west is settled. Here Stewart leads settlers to Oregon, thinks about staying with them, marrying and trying farming (or ranching!)

After an encounter with hostile Indians (who instantly drop dead when you throw a knife at them) things are pleasant and they reach a too-friendly town and are taken up river on a great stern-wheel steamboat. When winter supplies fail to arrive they have to go back and find out why the town is no longer so friendly. It's gold fever and the miners are hungry too. But a hard man will find a way.

The great cast includes Julie Adams (romantic interest), Rock Hudson (a gambler who is sometimes useful, sometimes not), Stepin Fetchit (ethnic/racial humor, he's getting gray), Harry Morgan, Jack Lambert, Royal Dano (villains), and Frances Bavier (Aunt Bea!).

The good guys really massacre the bad at one point.

I don't usually trouble about logical and historical flaws in movies, but:

• If I were sitting on a horse with a rope around my neck, I don't think I would want to be rescued by a man riding up and firing a rifle. (But what do you have to lose?)
  
• The signage in the town looks Art Nouveau to me. Bit early for that.
  
• The town boss writes with a quill pen. Steel pens had been common for a long time.
  
• How did they get that monster steamboat from the Mississippi to Oregon? I don't think it could go around the Horn or be carried across Central America.

[Harry Morgan]: The Law won't let you get away with this.

[James Stewart]: (pause, sideways glint) What Law?



-Bill

You would have to see this thing.


Part of the story was that it came from the Mississippi River.

-Bill