What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

Another look at Summer of '42 starring absolutely hauntingly beautiful Jennifer O'Neill.
...

Agreed, but surprisingly, she didn't have the career you would have expected her to have had.

 

[2 Days Dubai]

Agreed, but surprisingly, she didn't have the career you would have expected her to have had.

Now that you mention it, this is true; although her luminous elegiac beauty so eloquently displayed in Summer of '42 uniquely affected me to such extent that this film defines Jennifer for me. Raucher's book initially grabbed my heartstrings but a later look in college revealed its literary flaws. Yet the film holds exceptionally well.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Mackintosh Man from 1973 with Paul Newman, Dominique Sanda, and James Mason


Sometimes it seems that the Cold War existed not to pit two irreconcilable ideologies against each other in a global struggle of good versus evil, but to provide an endless supply of intricate espionage plots for Cold War novels and movies.

The Mackintosh Man is one such espionage movie with an intricate Cold War plot, but it's too opaque to be great – as you spend too much time trying to figure out what the heck is going on.

With a strong cast, however, led by Paul Newman, James Mason, and Dominique Sanda – and with John Huston directing – it's still an engaging spy-versus-spy effort of the staid British kind.

Paul Newman plays a British intelligence agent who, under an assumed identity – and after some good opening razzle-dazzle about a diamond heist – is sent to prison to infiltrate a communist spy ring. As with much in this movie, it will take you a while to figure that out.

Newman then breaks out with the suspected spy – now his "buddy" – and, with the help of a secret organization, they’re taken to a safe house where they – being hunted men – will be given new identities and shipped abroad.

All that takes a bit too long, but the safe house action, where Newman has to escape again – this time in dramatic fashion – kicks off the film’s second half. With Sanda now as his partner, they try to hunt down the deep spy in British Parliament who’s presumed to have been behind everything.

James Mason – maybe the deep spy – plays an arch-conservative politician (that's the big clue) who revels in embarrassing the government, a role the very urbane Mason was born to play.

After several reasonably realistic chases, fistfights, ***battles, and other standard spy action sequences, the movie climaxes in a very 1970s apathetic shrug that helped make Tom Clancy such a success by contrast – Clancy didn't do apathetic ideological shrugs in his spy novels.

What works is Newman, Sanda, and Mason. Newman is just a touch older here but still looks Newman-cool as the no-nonsense cold warrior who has an actor's talent of letting you see him thinking. Mason, as noted, wears his imperious polished-politician persona like a second skin.

The kicker in this one is Sanda. Everyone has youth for a time; some even have beauty, but what God combined in Ms. Sanda is something else – a kind of ethereal glow that prepossesses. But can she act? Yes – you only wish she had more screen time.

Her aloof – "I've been wounded in some way I won't talk about –" manner works well with Newman's usual, "I only care about getting the job done, but if I can help you when I'm not busy, let me know" persona. Had the fates aligned, these two would have made more movies together.

Look for their long scene in their beat-up truck in Ireland to see on-screen chemistry at work. The usual partners' dynamic is for one extrovert and one introvert to play off each other, but here, two introverts create an intriguing couple that should have been explored further.

Their reserved chemistry also mirrors the tone of the movie’s physical world – elegant, restrained, and quietly immersive.

Filmed in the UK, Ireland, and Malta, at lugubrious country homes, luxurious estates, and upscaled hotels – plus the vast desolate boglands and quaint pubs of Ireland – the film has a more realistic international flavor than a Bond movie, but still an enjoyable travelogue quality.

It also managed somehow to avoid the worst of the 1970s style, as the hair, clothes, and cars don't scream disco ugly. For a decade that got so many things wrong, several incredible – and many just good movies, like The Mackintosh Man – somehow managed to come out of it.

You don't have to hunt it out, but if The Mackintosh Man pops up somewhere easy for you to see, it's well worth watching this 1970s Cold War spy movie – especially with Dominique Sanda gently rattling clear thinking out of your head.

 

[2 Days Dubai]

^ The John le Carre genre I've largely eschewed however occasional snags occur,
leaving memorable glimpses into spycraft. The Gary Oldman George Smiley flick a few years ago and the Enigma break film about Touring's intrepid accomplishment around the same time release were utterly remarkable whiskey-not simple popcorn-viewing.
Mackintosh Man I should have seen if just for Newman alone.

 

[Fading Fast]

Early Spring from 1956, a Japanese film


"That's what we got waiting for us – just disillusionment and loneliness" — an older man in a bar approaching retirement age.


Disillusionment and loneliness are major themes of Early Spring, one of noted Japanese director Yasujirô Ozu's post-war looks at Japan's "salaryman," which loosely translates to white-collar office drone.

For perspective, it's necessary to remember that Japan lost in World War II – taking as brutal a beating as Germany did. But also like Germany, the resilience of its people had, by the mid-1950s, the country heavily rebuilt and on its way to becoming an economic powerhouse.

Part of that economic revival was owed to the army of office workers – the salarymen (which included a minority of women too) – who did the grinding paperwork that kept companies going in a pre-computer age.

They look like businessmen, but as shown here, they seem more like factory workers in suits who come in, do the same job day after day for low pay and even have union representation. With an oversupply of labor, however, they have little leverage.

This is Japan, though, so nobody goes Norma Rae; instead, they just grind it out, grumbling into their beer at night. Ozu shines a light on this type of life by focusing on one young married couple, Shôji and Masako, who lost their only child, a six-year old, to illness about a year ago.

They go through the motions of being husband and wife, but are distant, which eventually leads to Shôji having an affair with a cute, aggressive coworker, Chiyo. After a time, Masako finds out, and while hurt and angry, she feels almost relieved as it gives her the excuse she wanted to leave.

If there is a climax to this slice-of-life, not plot-driven story, it's whether a transfer for Shôji will lead to a reconciliation with Masako. With that as a climax, you have probably figured out by now that you're not here for the ostensible story.

What you are here for is an intimate look at a large segment of Japanese society at that time. For contemporaneous audiences, it was a window into their world in a society that didn't often talk publicly about its shortcomings; for us today, it's a time capsule of mid-century Japan.

Ozu's style is to let the camera sit still and linger so you become intimate with a scene, its setting, and its people. It's almost like someone placed a camera behind a plant and just sliced together the parts of the day that mattered the most.

The scenes of young men and a few women sitting for long hours at rows of uniformed desks working on nondescript ledgers in a large unairconditioned office building in sweltering Tokyo echo the upscaled American version of this as seen in movies like The Apartment (1960).

Similarly, Ozu lets his camera capture the quiet boredom of the housewife's life in a small house in the suburbs that echoes the many post-war American movies of wives washing, cleaning, and preparing meals in modest homes – but nicer modest homes than in Japan.

In the story itself, Shôji seems like a man who wants to do his duty, but after the death of his son, he is questioning if that really has any meaning to him anymore. It's not an excuse, but had Chiyo not been the aggressor, there probably wouldn't have been an affair as he's too lethargic.

Masako is right to feel wronged, but she has checked out too – which could happen to any parent who loses a child. What will strike modern audiences – and would have struck 1950s American audiences too – is how politely Shôji and Masako are to each other even when separating.

Early Spring, like most Ozu movies, has aged well because the director wasn't trying to wow you with his plot twists or surprises. He was trying to immerse you in the daily life of a Japan that has a lot of emotional turmoil below its placid facade, but only if you look closely.

You're almost happy when someone like Chiyo has had enough and loses it, as she does on Shôji – she yells at him and even slaps him several times – because he's so unresponsive to her questions about their relationship.

Chiyou feels, in her own frustrated youthful way, like the old man in the bar quoted at the top, as – in this portrayal – disillusionment and loneliness stalk 1950s Japan.

Maybe that is because the war – a generation defining event – is only discussed obliquely or because traditional Japanese values of duty and honor are struggling to find a place in this post-war world.

Having a fervent belief in duty and loyalty to an emperor and to a geopolitically expanding country selling a story of racial superiority is not the same as having duty and loyalty to one of thousands of random and mundane companies. Japanese faith was struggling to find a home.

Beautifully restored, Early Spring is a gem for those who like slice-of-life movies that show more than they tell – movies that let you see and decide for yourself. Ozu's camera is so intimate at times, there's almost a ******istic feel to his movies like Early Spring.

 

[Worf]

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All Quiet on the Western Front from 1930


All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) is one of the most powerful anti-war movies ever made. Its stark contrast between Germany's pre-war rah-rah patriotism – it enthusiastically sent its young boys off to fight – and the horror and death of trench warfare is chilling to this day.

Based on a German novel, director Lewis Milestone imbued his picture not with an "our side versus yours" perspective, but with an every-soldier feel. You often forget it is German soldiers you're following as they just become any group of young men living and dying awful lives.

It starts in the classroom in Germany where a jingoistic teacher encourages his class of all high-school-aged boys to enlist voluntarily for the glory of fighting for "The Fatherland." While almost every country has done this to some extent, the ferver feels distinctly German at this moment.

Young, handsome boys, a bit scared, are whipped into a frenzy of patriotism and heroism, and, amidst peer pressure, march off to war en masse, with brass bands playing nationalistic songs as crowds cheer (to be fair, the latter could also have come right out of WWI-era America).

From boot camp on, though, war quickly loses its allure for the boys, but even after enduring the stereotypical near-*****tic drill sergeant, they head off to the front still clinging to the belief that glory awaits.

Optimism takes another blow when they meet the "veteran" soldiers – men and boys just like them who have been fighting for months or years and find they aren't talking about heroism or their country, but cynically about the awfulness of fighting, their fears, and their hunger.

With their confidence and idealism in full retreat now, the only hope left is the fighting itself, which proves to be the horrible hell we today all know it is. Milestone brilliantly captures that horror – the fear, filth, maiming, and death – with one vivid sequence after another.

Over the course of this two-plus-hour movie, Milestone shows appendages being blown off or amputated in the "surgery" by doctors too weary to remember how many amputations they've performed that day. Bombs fall, men scream, men duck, men die, and on it goes.

Men, ordered to take a piece of land that looks like every other crater-pocked piece of land, charge out of their trenches to be bombarded with artillery and, if they make it through that, run into a wall of ***fire – it's slaughter, not a battle.

It's also all confused orders, no food, filth, more trenches, sickness, and brief furloughs where the men try to shove in as much living – food, drink, ***, sunshine – as they can before it's back to the confused orders, no food....

Lew Ayres – in the lead playing one of the boys who, pumped up on patriotism, enlists – gives a career performance as we slowly see his idealism diminish to where, as many soldiers say happens, he's only fighting for the men around him – everything else is long-lost idealism.

Look for the scenes where he goes home on furlough and meets his former teacher and a bunch of older men who tell him what needs to be done to win the war. Milestone and Ayers understood the power of less being more.

Written today, Ayers' character would give bloviating anti-war speeches that were really the screenwriters' virtue signaling. Instead, he says very little, which only serves to make the teacher and the old men look smug and small. It's brilliant, powerful and effective filmmaking.

The final scene in All Quiet on the Western Front is a classic you'll want to see fresh, but like everything in this thoughtfully done movie, it shows more than it tells.

Somehow, in 1930, in the early years of "talkies," when Hollywood was still trying to master the new technology, it made an anti-war movie that has stood the test of time.


N.B. Lew Ayers was a conscientious objector in WWII who pushed to serve as a medic in combat zones. One can only wonder if this early anti-war role affected him or if he chose it because it aligned with his already-existing beliefs.

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One review of this film called it "nightmare fuel" and I totally agree. I much prefer this version to the one recently done via streaming. This film was/is RAW, it pulls no punches and the back and forth scene between the French and German trenches is a masterpiece, a word I don't throw around lightly! My biggest gripe with the remake is that it doesn't follow the kid back to his hometown on his furlough and the classroom scene where he tears his old teacher a new one is completely missing. One of the greatest films ever made.... pure and simple!

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

The Wet Parade from 1932 with Dorothy Jordan, Robert Young, Neil Hamilton, Lewis Stone, Walter Huston, and Jimmy Durante


"They got good liquor then. They didn't have to dodge machine-*** ******s when they went walking on Sunday." – An observation made during Prohibition on the benefits of pre-Prohibition life.


The Wet Parade is not like our present era of virtue-signaling moviemaking where few films have the courage and confidence to present a balanced viewpoint. Instead, The Wet Parade examines Prohibition, warts and all, in a movie that says it is a well-intentioned idea that is failing fatally.

Prohibition was the law when The Wet Parade was made, giving it a peek-into-history feel, as Prohibition would soon end – but nobody, at the time, knew that for sure. The movie starts in 1916 showing how drink ruined a man, played by Lewis Stone, and his family in the south.

It then shifts to a northern family, where the patriarch, played by Walter Huston, is also succumbing to drink. He steals, cheats, lies, and eventually ruins his family, too – in a dramatic way – all from alcohol.

These seemingly disparate stories are tied together when the drunkard son of the southern family, played by Neil Hamilton, visits his old college friend, the teetotaling son of the northern one, played by Robert Young.

Hamilton's sister, played by Dorothy Jordan – another teetotaler – then comes looking for her brother. She and Young click in part because they are both non-drinkers whose families have been rocked by alcohol abuse.

Prohibition follows, but the country keeps drinking in speakeasies and elsewhere, on plentiful bootleg liquor. Worse, the banned booze generates a flow of illegal money that funds mobsters. Crime and alcohol consumption both increase under Prohibition – so much for good intentions.

Young, a true believer in abstinence – now married to Jordan – joins the Treasury Department as a Prohibition agent, partnered with a spirited oddball agent played by Jimmy Durante. From here it's the story we know well of mobsters outgunning and outnumbering T-men.

Toss in a lot of violence, Hamilton being blinded by bootleg booze (sadly, a real danger at the time from denatured alcohol), Durante risking his life to save Young from mobsters, Jordan and Young having a child, and The Wet Parade wraps up about two hours after it started.

From a casting perspective, it's a fantastic collection of 1930s talent, starting with Stone and Huston giving outstanding performances playing patriarchs who fail their families owing to drink. Hamilton is equally impressive as a "good-time Charlie" undone by booze.

Young manages to be a pro-abstinence figure without coming off as sanctimonious. It's a much more nuanced performance and character portrayal than Kevin Costner gave five-plus decades later in a similar role in 1987's The Untouchables.

Jordan, too, plays the pro-Prohibition role well – especially since we see it destroy both her father and brother.

A note is owed to Durante, who always seems to be playing himself – but somehow it works, as it does here. You'll respect his sincere – if slightly off-the-wall – portrayal of a T-man.

Director Victor Fleming, shepherding a complex story and large cast, showed in this early effort why he would go on to become one of Hollywood's top directors of the era.

The Wet Parade feels modern, with its multiple overlapping storylines and laundry list of characters who come, go, and often return later. Fleming skillfully corralled all these parts into a cohesive narrative that engages you with its ripped-from-the-headline plot.

In a lesson of balance to modern filmmakers, Fleming also honestly portrays Prohibition's great contradiction: yes, alcohol destroys many lives, but prohibiting it brings its own set of life-destroying problems. Prohibition fit the cliché of the cure being worse than the disease.

Today, The Wet Parade's real-time depiction of Prohibition has historical value. It helps us better understand how 1932 America saw both sides of the issue and why the effort ultimately failed. That's a pretty good achievement for a nearly a hundred-year-old film.

 

[Edward]

One review of this film called it "nightmare fuel" and I totally agree. I much prefer this version to the one recently done via streaming. This film was/is RAW, it pulls no punches and the back and forth scene between the French and German trenches is a masterpiece, a word I don't throw around lightly! My biggest gripe with the remake is that it doesn't follow the kid back to his hometown on his furlough and the classroom scene where he tears his old teacher a new one is completely missing. One of the greatest films ever made.... pure and simple!

Worf

For me, it's a bit like the Texas Chainsaw films (Equally gruesome, with a side order of one-upping Leatherface by being 'real') in that each version brings something of its own to the story, but the original will always be the best. The recent Netflix version was interesting in that it very deliberately chose to move away from the personal and root the story in the context of the bigger struggle itself. Of course, Remarque's audience originally, and likely most of the audience for the original film on release, didn't much need telling about the Great War as they'd lived it. The bit that intrigued me particularly was the modification of the end of the story to take in the pointless brutality of the final hour of that war, nodding of course to the 'stab in the back' mythology that would later help to fuel Germany's WWII-era leader's rise to power. Also a notable take for being the first German-made version.

Did you ever see the 1979 version made by CBS? Originally for US TV, but it got a theatrical release elsewhere in the world. Not a bad version of the story, though as it sticks very closely to the original it arguably offers little new in the way of the 2022 run. Worth seeing, nonetheless. Probably brought a lot of attention back to what was a semi-forgotten film at that point. Certainly brought the story to an audience who weren't interested in B&W (I remember seeing a business documentary about the Bob Hoskins picture 24 7, made in the 90s and shot in B&W. The documentary put the case that it was a mistake to film in B&W because the market didn't want that. And so art is encouraged to stab itself in the heart on the altar of profit....).

 

[Trenchfriend]

Blade Runner (1982) - Final Cut, original tone.

 

[EngProf]

View attachment 707424
The Wet Parade from 1932 with Dorothy Jordan, Robert Young, Neil Hamilton, Lewis Stone, Walter Huston, and Jimmy Durante


"They got good liquor then. They didn't have to dodge machine-*** ******s when they went walking on Sunday." – An observation made during Prohibition on the benefits of pre-Prohibition life.


The Wet Parade is not like our present era of virtue-signaling moviemaking where few films have the courage and confidence to present a balanced viewpoint. Instead, The Wet Parade examines Prohibition, warts and all, in a movie that says it is a well-intentioned idea that is failing fatally.

Prohibition was the law when The Wet Parade was made, giving it a peek-into-history feel, as Prohibition would soon end – but nobody, at the time, knew that for sure. The movie starts in 1916 showing how drink ruined a man, played by Lewis Stone, and his family in the south.

It then shifts to a northern family, where the patriarch, played by Walter Huston, is also succumbing to drink. He steals, cheats, lies, and eventually ruins his family, too – in a dramatic way – all from alcohol.

These seemingly disparate stories are tied together when the drunkard son of the southern family, played by Neil Hamilton, visits his old college friend, the teetotaling son of the northern one, played by Robert Young.

Hamilton's sister, played by Dorothy Jordan – another teetotaler – then comes looking for her brother. She and Young click in part because they are both non-drinkers whose families have been rocked by alcohol abuse.

Prohibition follows, but the country keeps drinking in speakeasies and elsewhere, on plentiful bootleg liquor. Worse, the banned booze generates a flow of illegal money that funds mobsters. Crime and alcohol consumption both increase under Prohibition – so much for good intentions.

Young, a true believer in abstinence – now married to Jordan – joins the Treasury Department as a Prohibition agent, partnered with a spirited oddball agent played by Jimmy Durante. From here it's the story we know well of mobsters outgunning and outnumbering T-men.

Toss in a lot of violence, Hamilton being blinded by bootleg booze (sadly, a real danger at the time from denatured alcohol), Durante risking his life to save Young from mobsters, Jordan and Young having a child, and The Wet Parade wraps up about two hours after it started.

From a casting perspective, it's a fantastic collection of 1930s talent, starting with Stone and Huston giving outstanding performances playing patriarchs who fail their families owing to drink. Hamilton is equally impressive as a "good-time Charlie" undone by booze.

Young manages to be a pro-abstinence figure without coming off as sanctimonious. It's a much more nuanced performance and character portrayal than Kevin Costner gave five-plus decades later in a similar role in 1987's The Untouchables.

Jordan, too, plays the pro-Prohibition role well – especially since we see it destroy both her father and brother.

A note is owed to Durante, who always seems to be playing himself – but somehow it works, as it does here. You'll respect his sincere – if slightly off-the-wall – portrayal of a T-man.

Director Victor Fleming, shepherding a complex story and large cast, showed in this early effort why he would go on to become one of Hollywood's top directors of the era.

The Wet Parade feels modern, with its multiple overlapping storylines and laundry list of characters who come, go, and often return later. Fleming skillfully corralled all these parts into a cohesive narrative that engages you with its ripped-from-the-headline plot.

In a lesson of balance to modern filmmakers, Fleming also honestly portrays Prohibition's great contradiction: yes, alcohol destroys many lives, but prohibiting it brings its own set of life-destroying problems. Prohibition fit the cliché of the cure being worse than the disease.

Today, The Wet Parade's real-time depiction of Prohibition has historical value. It helps us better understand how 1932 America saw both sides of the issue and why the effort ultimately failed. That's a pretty good achievement for a nearly a hundred-year-old film.

Jimmy Durante's oddball T-agent may be taking a bit from the real world's "Izzy and Moe":
Izzy Einstein and Moe Smith were famous Prohibition agents known for their outlandish disguises and large number of arrests. They were a two-man team working out of the New York City office, known for shutting down speakeasies and making arrests. Their most famous exploits involved disguising themselves as various characters, including Texas ranchers, opera singers, and a Chinese launderer.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

The Magnificent Seven (1960), again. I could recite most of the movie while in a medically induced coma, but I 'll watch from time to time anyway. James Coburn's reflective moment contemplating a flower whilst waiting for the bad guys is a direct lift of Miyaguchi Seiji's zen interlude scene in Seven Samurai, and the introductory scene of Coburn's duel with the cowboy (knife vs. six-shooter) parallels the original set-up in Samurai. Yul Brynner dominates most scenes, Steve McQueen tries to out-cool everyone, and Eli Wallach as bandit leader Calvera is almost cartoonish; deadly, but cartoonish nonetheless.

Target Zero (1955) with Richard Conte as US Army Lt Flagler, and ****y Castle as UN aid worker Ann Galloway. Directed by Harmon Jones, who was behind the camera in a ton of TV series. Overrun by North Korean and/or Chinese troops, scattered soldiers and a British-crewed tank re-group to get back to Easy Company headquarters. Galloway was on a medical aid mission, but had an accident with the UN sedan, and joined up with the battle hardened but affable soldiers. Not as well-done as Pork Chop Hill, but provided a few intense moments and some human interest sub-plots.

 

[Fading Fast]

Don't Touch the Loot (French title: Touchez pas au grisbi), a French film from 1954


There is so much style, nuance, and atmosphere layered in the nearly perfect French film noir Don't Touch the Loot that you can lose track of the story – which is clearly of secondary importance to noted French director Jacques Becker.

Instead, he immerses you in a community of gangsters and *** molls who live in a highly stylized and imaginative world of ritzy nightclubs, elegant bars, charming cafés, sleek cars, Art Deco apartments, and vintage champagne – all while dressed in expensive, finely tailored clothing.

The ostensible story is about a refined, aging, and smart gangster, played by French acting legend Jean Gabin, planning his retirement around a set of gold bars he heisted a while back and is now trying to turn into money, which requires "a fence –" someone to do the exchange.

It's not the plot nor the style, however, that drives the film – it's personal relationships that center the story, the characters, and the narratives. All of the plot pivots, all of the meaningful moments are actuated by personal loyalties or personal betrayals – even the one with "the fence."

Film noir fans in every country know that stealing something – jewels, furs, gold bars, or whatever – is, at best, half the story, as the now-hot property has to somehow be converted into non-traceable, spendable money, which is where a "fence" comes in. It's never easy to do.

All this would probably have gone fine for Gabin if his partner and long-time friend hadn't braggingly whispered about the gold to his girlfriend, who then told her new boyfriend, a tough gangster, who now wants to steal the gold from Gabin. There really is no honor among thieves.

This thoughtful and generally slow-paced movie then climaxes in a fast faceoff between rival gangsters worthy of any American mobster movie, as a ransom payment, a *** battle in moving cars, and hand grenades settle all scores for better or worse.

Becker then slows everything back down for an epilogue of gangster ennui and remorse, as Gabin continues outwardly playing the unflappable, elegant gangster, but you see the deadness in his eyes as he wonders what it is really all about.

It's those moments – moments when friendship, loyalty, and regret play out between people or echo in one's thoughts and reflections that make Don't Touch the Loot a movie that will stay with you. They're gangsters, but their lives have the same connective tissue as ours.

You don't watch movies for themes, though – you watch movies for engaging and entertaining storytelling, which is where Becker shines, as each scene is a little gem, almost its own movie.

When Gabin goes to his "uncle" (is he really his uncle?), who is also a fence, and he exchanges meaningful looks and a quick kiss with the full-figured 1950s secretary, we see a mini-drama playing out that could easily be built into its own movie.

The same is true of scenes in a nightclub and a nearly private café that Gabin frequents – plus a crazy scene in his "secret" apartment, where he and his best friend hide out for a night while being targeted by a rival gangster.

This reflects how deeply Becker understands that movies are, above all, about storytelling. He trusts the camera to linger, the silences to speak, and the actors' expressions to carry emotional weight without needing explanation.

You never learn about the heist behind the gold bars themselves, as it is a French MacGuffin – the unimportant thing that drives all the action but never reveals itself. In truth, you don't think that much about it as, everything else is much more interesting.

What is most interesting is Gabin's character: an honorable gangster trying to "retire" from a "profession" that doesn't let you retire. Gabin completely embodies the weary but still-successful gangster who now, in late middle age, sees the limits of the life he chose for himself.

Most of us aren't gangsters, but most of us will face a time when more of life is behind us than ahead of us, and "turning it all around" isn't an option anymore. If we don't like where we're at, like Gabin, we'll continue living the life we know – but, as he does now, more by rote.

We'll continue to drive in the well-worn grooves that are familiar – but it's wearying and meaningless. We'll no longer be living our life – we'll be watching ourselves living it. That Gabin can show all this without words justifies his status as perhaps the greatest French actor of all time.

The French, like many other countries, put their own spin on American film noir during the 1950s. The British tended to emphasize the details of a crime investigation, but the French, being French, turned film noir into a philosophical story about style and emotional angst.

Don't Touch the Loot is style and angst, but in service to the themes of regret and loss of faith that happen when one's code of honor and relationships fall short of one's expectations because others fail you. It is a Gallic film noir gem.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Say what you want. A cast, as it would never happen again. + Charles Laughton.

And could you imagine any other in the role of Crassus as Sir Laurence Olivier??

 

[2 Days Dubai]

Say what you want. A cast, as it would never happen again. + Charles Laughton.

And could you imagine any other in the role of Crassus as Sir Laurence Olivier??

A scene between Olivier and Curtis within a bath where Crassus made a pass at the slave who declined is often cut. And another scene with Jean Simmons bathing **** trimmed.

I once had dinner with a professional acquaintance who had ties to the LA film scene and he recounted how JFK chased Jean Simmons all over that town to no end. Her agent forbade an affair, much to her lasting regret. This pix captures her remarkable exquisite elegance and grace.

 

[Zombie_61]

Nowhere Boy (2009). The story of John Lennon's (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) life between his late-teen and early-adult years, attempting to sort things out between two mother figures and working on becoming an adult. Kristin Scott-Thomas plays Lennon's Aunt Mimi, the person who was mostly tasked with raising him and forming him into an adult. Anne-Marie Duff plays Julia, Lennon's Bohemian biological mother. The story of the movie loosely focuses on the triangle formed by these three who, during this period in his life, appeared to have been in semi-regular contact while pitching in to raise young John. I use the term "appeared to have been" because this movie plays a little "fast and loose" with the reported facts of young John Lennon's life, like most of these biopics do. That said, anyone reading this who might actually have an interest in learning about a young John Lennon would probably do far better buying a book on the subject and reading that. This isn't a bad bio-pic, as long as you take it with a pinch of salt.

 

[Edward]

Caught up on three films this weekend, all pictures of relatively recent years which I had thus far failed to catch - one of which I wasn't previously aware of at all until chancing across it on Netflix - I suspect it might not have had a UK release before now.

Downsizing (2017) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1389072/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_Downsizi Never heard of this one at all. It's a fun, whimsical picture in which Matt Damon undergoes a revolutionary medical procedure permanently shrinking him to five inches tall, in order to live in a gated community of downsized people. The story goes that the process was invented by a Norwegian scientist as a green measure - basically tiny people put a tiny demand on the earth's resources. The film satirises consumer culture and greenwashing - most people who go through the process only do so not out of concern for the environment, but because the lower consumption required conversely inflates their relative wealth: an individual with half a million dollars in assets is suddenly worth 50 million equivalent. It also looks at conditions in the slums where the service workers live, servicing these newly rich people. Fun and clever little picture that deserved a lot more attention than it got.

In the Land of Saints and Sinners (2023) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15782690/ is a fairly standard 'old hitman retires then immediately comes out of retirement to do one last job' picture. It conforms to most, if not all, of the conventions of the hitman genre. The interesting thing here is the setting. Donegal, early mid 1970s. Liam Neeson plays a Donegal man who, alongside his friend, a local Garda, once well - the friends puts it well "I hated those Germany's WWII-era leadership B******ds so much I was happy to fight alongside the English." They live in a quiet, country village in rural Donegal - "the forgotten county". The action takes place when a trio of Provos turn up on the run from a bombing gone wrong in Belfast. Thy killed children in Belfast, and one of them beats a local child (his niece) in Donegal, earning Neeson's attention. Beyond that it's fairly standard fare - an unchallenging watch in many ways, but well carried by an excellent cast including Neeson and Ciaran Hinds (whom Loungers may well know from Game of Thrones). Nice period look to the whole thing - especially the opening scene in Belfast, with plenty of period cars (only one slight half-point lost for one of them having an English numberplate in the Belfast scene. People did occasionally buy used motors from England even then, but they'd have had them reregistered to a local plate very quickly).

Don't Worry Darling (2022) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10731256/?ref_=fn_all_ttl_1 Florence Pugh and Harry Styles star in this. The film got a lot of attention when it came out because of Styles (who at that point was fresh out of a very successful UK boyband and had launched a solo career. I think he's sidestepped into acting now, but I don't follow contemporary mainstream pop music so he could have a number one album that week and I wouldn't be aware). It actually deserves the attention as a picture in an of itself. I don't want to say too much for those who've not seen it, but let's leave it at 'Stepford Wives via Black Mirror'. Deserves to be viewed on its own merits - and Styles, for all the marketing made it look like stunt-casting, is actually very good. Much more so here than in the disappointing Dunkirk.

 

[Fading Fast]

Seance on a Wet Afternoon from 1964 with Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough


Really good stories have layers that are only revealed over the course of the telling – drawing you further and further in as your mind tries to reconcile the new information with what you already thought you knew. It's an engaging and smartly complex process.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon begins as one kind of story but becomes something more layered when its emotional and psychological underpinnings emerge, as director Bryan Forbes takes you on a journey through the minds of a husband and wife, while ostensibly telling a kidnapping story.

The apparent story starts with a medium, played by Kim Stanley, passive-aggressively convincing her milquetoast husband, played by Richard Attenborough, to kidnap a child. She then plans to use her "psychic powers" to find the child for the police – and become famous.

Sure, it's kind of a nutty plot, but Stanley believes in her psychic powers – she just thinks they need a little "extra" promotion here – and Attenborough is completely cowed. So off we go on an elaborate kidnapping.

Disguises, an audacious school-parking-lot abduction, fake hospital rooms in a house, circuitous trips through a subway to get ransom money, and other well-planned machinations play out in service to the scheme.

The wealthy family whose daughter is kidnapped is distraught, and the police are baffled. Even when Stanley shows up trying to help, they see her as probably just another crackpot. The police do, however, investigate her in one nail-biting scene at Stanley's house.

While all this action is going on, the real plot is unfolding in the minds of Stanley and Attenborough, who – and you'll learn this early – lost their only child years ago. It's a loss that Stanley cannot come to terms with.

To tell more is to give away key plot reveals that would diminish the movie for first-time viewers. Why all this works, though, has less to do with the story than the mood, atmosphere, and acting talents of Stanley and Attenborough.

Director Forbes uses black-and-white cinematography and a smart mix of sweeping shots and closeups to give his picture the feel of two worlds – the external world of the kidnapping, juxtaposed with the warped internal minds of the kidnappers.

Stanley and Attenborough complement this dichotomy: they function reasonably well in the external world when they have to, but their characters only truly come to life when they are alone – or alone together – in their large, brooding old house, justifying their insanity to each other.

Stanley's and Attenborough's acting – individually and in their scenes together – is sublime. The story plays on, the layers are revealed, and the atmosphere puts it all in the right time and place – but it is their acting that makes the movie mesmerizing at times.

A nod is also owed to that wonderful real-world creation: the taciturn Scotland Yard inspector, which led to the even better creation – his cinematic doppelgänger – the placid, quietly relentless, and unfailingly polite Scotland Yard inspector of countless movies like this one.

For a few decades after World War II, British cinema told stories on black-and-white film better than Hollywood, as the country's economic struggles forced it to work with small budgets, while Tinseltown used money – Technicolor, seas parting, chariots racing – to create a wow factor.

Despite the genre's growth since – handmaidened with incredible special effects – Seance on a Wet Afternoon proves the power of a strong story, a smart director, and talented actors to engage the viewer – often better than the more elaborate efforts with all their bells and whistles.

 

[2 Days Dubai]

I've just finished reading the ERA initial section story about the deceased infant whom had been abducted by two little girls to play with.
This looks an intriguing production but I need a time out and some coffee.

 

[Fading Fast]

I've just finished reading the ERA initial section story about the deceased infant whom had been abducted by two little girls to play with.
This looks an intriguing production but I need a time out and some coffee.

No big deal, but I think you might have meant to post this in the Day by Day thread.

 

[2 Days Dubai]

No big deal, but I think you might have meant to post this in the Day by Day thread.

No, this is the flicker. The deceased child connected and no coffee.