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What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

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17,190
Location
New York City
310toyuma1957.jpg

3:10 to Yuma from 1957 with Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, Felicia Farr, Leora Dana, Henry Jones and Ford Rainey


3:10 to Yuma is a wonderful morality tale, the Western's stock-in-trade. It's a good-versus-evil story that still causes your allegiances to shift here and there, because it mixes in enough moral grayness and conflicted personalities to give the movie texture.

Glenn Ford plays a likable - he just is - head of a gang that holds up a stagecoach, steals its gold shipment and kills the driver. Afterwards, he heads into the nearby town and ends up having a quickie with the barmaid.

Make no mistake about what happens: Ford walks into town, shows a sensitive side to a lonely and pretty barmaid, played with a perfect bored wantonness by Felicia Farr, and they go at it. Start to finish, it's done in under an hour as Ford has to get out of town in a hurry.

The law, though, catches up with Ford before he can get away. But it's a small town with one law officer, a sheriff, and everyone knows Ford's large and professional gang will come back for him. The sheriff needs help, yet few want to be deputized.

The owner of the stagecoach lines offers $200 a man to, effectively, escort Ford to Yuma by train. This catches the attention of a broke farmer and family man, played by Van Heflin, who will lose his farm if he can't buy water to tide him over until the next rain.

Heflin accepts the offer. With a double-barreled shotgun, he takes a handcuffed Ford to his house to hold him overnight. Heflin plays down the risks to his two boys and wife, played by Leora Dana, but sharp-witted and strategic Ford sees Heflin's vulnerabilities.

After that, it's onto a nearby town for Ford and Heflin to hold up in a hotel until the 3:10 to Yuma train comes. But of course, Ford's gang, trying to find him, has a scout in town.

What works is the interplay of Ford and Heflin. Ford has one objective, to get away either on his own or with the help of his gang. Heflin wants to complete his job, get the $200 and he wants to do the right thing, but he also doesn't want to die trying.

Personable Ford relentlessly works on Heflin's psyche offering him thousands of dollars to let him go free - (paraphrasing) "My gang will free me anyway and you're not a lawman, so why not take my money, save your farm and family and not get killed?"

Ford points out that even if Heflin gets him to Yuma, he'll still probably escape, so what is Heflin risking his life for? It's compelling enough to get Heflin thinking.

If he dies, what's to become of Heflin's wife and kids? Doesn't he morally owe them more than getting killed over this job? Yet without the $200, he can't save his farm. Plus, Heflin is a man who feels the tug of "do the right thing." You never fully know what's motivating him.

The head games are intense as Ford and Heflin spend a claustrophobic day in a hot hotel room waiting for the train. It becomes a brutal one-on-one battle of wills. You know it's wrong, but for a second, you'll want Heflin to take the money Ford offers and let him go.

Of course there is a final shootout as the train arrives, but nothing is cookie cutter in director Delmer Daves thoughtful portrayal of this surprisingly complex story. Its resolution is more open ended than happens in 3:10 to Yuma's earlier movie cognate High Noon.

Ford is the glue in this one playing a bad guy that you can't help liking. It's easy to see how his charm, charisma, smarts and cunning has allowed him to thrive as the head of a criminal gang. Ford, who usually played good guys, seems to relish this chance to play a villain.

He's oddly but equally matched by Heflin who is Ford's antithesis. His personality is rough and he's not cunning or "sharp," but he is, basically, a moral man. He thinks slower than Ford, but he's smart in his own way. It's an outstanding performance by Heflin.

Farr as the lonely barmaid and Dana as Heflin's wife, who brings her own will to their marriage, both carve out small but impactful roles as all but the only women in the movie.

Henry Jones as a drunk with more courage than you expect and Ford Rainey as the sheriff in need of deputies help to round out a strong cast where every small performance adds to the movie's crisp narrative.

The black-and-white cinematography, the bleak landscape - the ground is parched owing to the lack of rain that is bankrupting Heflin's farm - and the simple wood buildings give the movie the perfect spartan atmosphere for this good-versus-evil tale to play out.

3:10 to Yuma is a classic for a reason. It took a story that is simple on its surface - bring a murderer to justice - and layered in two complex personalities and some moral confusion to give the audience a nail-biting, exhausting and thought-provoking viewing experience.
 

Preppy Climber

Familiar Face
Messages
75
Wow
View attachment 599349
3:10 to Yuma from 1957 with Glenn Ford, Van Heflin, Felicia Farr, Leora Dana, Henry Jones and Ford Rainey


3:10 to Yuma is a wonderful morality tale, the Western's stock-in-trade. It's a good-versus-evil story that still causes your allegiances to shift here and there, because it mixes in enough moral grayness and conflicted personalities to give the movie texture.

Glenn Ford plays a likable - he just is - head of a gang that holds up a stagecoach, steals its gold shipment and kills the driver. Afterwards, he heads into the nearby town and ends up having a quickie with the barmaid.

Make no mistake about what happens: Ford walks into town, shows a sensitive side to a lonely and pretty barmaid, played with a perfect bored wantonness by Felicia Farr, and they go at it. Start to finish, it's done in under an hour as Ford has to get out of town in a hurry.

The law, though, catches up with Ford before he can get away. But it's a small town with one law officer, a sheriff, and everyone knows Ford's large and professional gang will come back for him. The sheriff needs help, yet few want to be deputized.

The owner of the stagecoach lines offers $200 a man to, effectively, escort Ford to Yuma by train. This catches the attention of a broke farmer and family man, played by Van Heflin, who will lose his farm if he can't buy water to tide him over until the next rain.

Heflin accepts the offer. With a double-barreled shotgun, he takes a handcuffed Ford to his house to hold him overnight. Heflin plays down the risks to his two boys and wife, played by Leora Dana, but sharp-witted and strategic Ford sees Heflin's vulnerabilities.

After that, it's onto a nearby town for Ford and Heflin to hold up in a hotel until the 3:10 to Yuma train comes. But of course, Ford's gang, trying to find him, has a scout in town.

What works is the interplay of Ford and Heflin. Ford has one objective, to get away either on his own or with the help of his gang. Heflin wants to complete his job, get the $200 and he wants to do the right thing, but he also doesn't want to die trying.

Personable Ford relentlessly works on Heflin's psyche offering him thousands of dollars to let him go free - (paraphrasing) "My gang will free me anyway and you're not a lawman, so why not take my money, save your farm and family and not get killed?"

Ford points out that even if Heflin gets him to Yuma, he'll still probably escape, so what is Heflin risking his life for? It's compelling enough to get Heflin thinking.

If he dies, what's to become of Heflin's wife and kids? Doesn't he morally owe them more than getting killed over this job? Yet without the $200, he can't save his farm. Plus, Heflin is a man who feels the tug of "do the right thing." You never fully know what's motivating him.

The head games are intense as Ford and Heflin spend a claustrophobic day in a hot hotel room waiting for the train. It becomes a brutal one-on-one battle of wills. You know it's wrong, but for a second, you'll want Heflin to take the money Ford offers and let him go.

Of course there is a final shootout as the train arrives, but nothing is cookie cutter in director Delmer Daves thoughtful portrayal of this surprisingly complex story. Its resolution is more open ended than happens in 3:10 to Yuma's earlier movie cognate High Noon.

Ford is the glue in this one playing a bad guy that you can't help liking. It's easy to see how his charm, charisma, smarts and cunning has allowed him to thrive as the head of a criminal gang. Ford, who usually played good guys, seems to relish this chance to play a villain.

He's oddly but equally matched by Heflin who is Ford's antithesis. His personality is rough and he's not cunning or "sharp," but he is, basically, a moral man. He thinks slower than Ford, but he's smart in his own way. It's an outstanding performance by Heflin.

Farr as the lonely barmaid and Dana as Heflin's wife, who brings her own will to their marriage, both carve out small but impactful roles as all but the only women in the movie.

Henry Jones as a drunk with more courage than you expect and Ford Rainey as the sheriff in need of deputies help to round out a strong cast where every small performance adds to the movie's crisp narrative.

The black-and-white cinematography, the bleak landscape - the ground is parched owing to the lack of rain that is bankrupting Heflin's farm - and the simple wood buildings give the movie the perfect spartan atmosphere for this good-versus-evil tale to play out.

3:10 to Yuma is a classic for a reason. It took a story that is simple on its surface - bring a murderer to justice - and layered in two complex personalities and some moral confusion to give the audience a nail-biting, exhausting and thought-provoking viewing experience.
Wow! Superb film review! Now I have to watch 3:10 to Yuma. I see it's available on Peacock.

I've heard others rave about your reviews and now I know why. Thanks for the entertaining read!
 

Doctor Strange

I'll Lock Up
Messages
5,245
Location
Hudson Valley, NY
A recent film, Pain Hustlers with Emily Blunt and Chris Evans.

They're big pharma sales execs who essentially pay off doctors to prescribe their fentanyl-based pain medication, leading to huge profits and Wolf of Wall Street-like excess. But ultimately, Blunt realizes that besides making massive fortunes, they're addicting and killing thousands of people, and she rats them out to the Feds.

It was okay, but the same story has been told better in other projects. Blunt definitely has fun at the beginning playing a high-school dropout, single mom stripper with a Florida accent. (Evans revises her resume, declaring her a Phd biochemist - the first indication that truth is optional in his business.)
 

FOXTROT LAMONT

One Too Many
Messages
1,722
Location
St John's Wood, London UK
^ I missed the Yuma Bale Crowebar redo. A first trailer sight look only. Thought it over topped shennanigans with this one maverick twirly pistol playact ass with the stagecoach burning and passengers inside.
I haven't yet the original with Ford and Heflin but its classic pub reputation is strong. American western film
converse work or pub mentions Yuma as much High Noon. My favourite is another Heflin, Shane with Alan Ladd
as titled character. The scene when he shows the farm lad his .36 Colt pistol action shoot and the bar fight
against Jack Palance. The walkout regret look on his face, world weary resignation, his talk with the boy,
and his rideout and his arm dangling because of his wound. Absolutely classic film.
 

Preppy Climber

Familiar Face
Messages
75
That's kind of you to say. Now I really hope you enjoy the movie.
@Fa
That's kind of you to say. Now I really hope you enjoy the movie.
@Fading Fast I hopped on Peacock yesterday looking forward to watching 3:10 to Yuma. Alas, it was the 2007 remake. All wasn't lost however as the original is available on Amazon Prime Video. Anyway, what a fantastic film! I enjoyed it from beginning to end and any movie that gets me teary-eyed (as the ending in this one did) is a winner IMO. 3:10 to Yuma also made me want to get back into watching the classics, not to mention I'm now interested in other Glenn Ford movies. What a charmer he was in this film! For a second or two there I wondered whether his character was going to get lucky again on the same day and this time with Leora Dana's character. :D

As an aside, my husband noted, "You notice how all the men are clean shaven day after day?" :)

Thanks again for the review! It led to a fun evening.
 
Messages
17,190
Location
New York City
@Fa

@Fading Fast I hopped on Peacock yesterday looking forward to watching 3:10 to Yuma. Alas, it was the 2007 remake. All wasn't lost however as the original is available on Amazon Prime Video. Anyway, what a fantastic film! I enjoyed it from beginning to end and any movie that gets me teary-eyed (as the ending in this one did) is a winner IMO. 3:10 to Yuma also made me want to get back into watching the classics, not to mention I'm now interested in other Glenn Ford movies. What a charmer he was in this film! For a second or two there I wondered whether his character was going to get lucky again on the same day and this time with Leora Dana's character. :D

As an aside, my husband noted, "You notice how all the men are clean shaven day after day?" :)

Thanks again for the review! It led to a fun evening.

That's great. I'm so glad you enjoyed it and that it sparked a renewed interest in you for the classics. There are a lot of good Ford movies, as well, out there for you to discover.

To your husband's point, I'm always "amazed" at how good everyone's teeth looked the "Old West."
 
Messages
17,190
Location
New York City
Cothlbrifor fed.jpg

The Charge of the Light Brigade from 1936 with Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Patrick Knowles, Donald Crisp. Nigel Bruce, Henry Stephenson, Spring Byington and David Nivens


Marginally framed by Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, this Warner Bros. movie by the same title shows the studio and Errol Flynn at their action-adventure best even if historical accuracy is a less than secondary consideration.

Flynn, in the 1930s and at the peak of his handsomeness, made several wonderful action-adventure movies, but The Charge of the Light Brigade has a touch of something more because the historical event behind it is magnificent in its valor if not strategy.

The thumbnail history of the battle is that owing to a misunderstanding of an order somewhere along the chain, a British light cavalry unit charged on a well-fortified Russian artillery battery in 1854 in the Crimean War.

It was a slaughter, as it had to be, for the British. Yet memorialized weeks later by Tennyson's poem, it glorified the courage of the troops and became part of the legend of the British Empire. If your modern politics can't abide this history, this is not the movie for you.

In Warner's hands, with director Michael Curtiz at the helm, a love triangle - amongst Flynn, Patrick Knowles, both officers in the Light Brigade, and Olivia de Havilland, a commanding officer's very comely daughter - provides the story's structure.

It's a fine off-the-shelf Warners 1930s way to tell this story, especially since Flynn and de Havilland have appealing on-screen chemistry, but you can ignore all that "mushy" stuff if you want as the military tale is what really engages in this one.

Early on, Flynn has a friendly relationship with the leader, known as Surat Khan, of a local Mid East tribe, until "the Khan" violates an agreement and attacks a lightly fortified British outpost manned by the Light Brigade and kills many women and children.

Later, with the British now fighting the Russians in the Crimean War, Flynn is given orders for the Light Brigade to not attack. Knowing, though, that the Surat Khan is there with the Russians, he defies these orders, which leads to the famous Charge of the Light Brigade.

While confusion over the orders led to this colossal historical mistake, it assuredly did not happen as shown here. But Flynn, who also protects his brother from the battle because de Havilland asked him to, has to be the hero in the picture, so he is.

All of these military machinations - Flynn is given orders which he rewrites, puts in an envelope and seals in wax - are the backbone of the movie as the love triangle slightly disappoints because de Havilland chooses the wrong guy, Knowles (you learn that early).

It all leads up to a battle scene that had to amaze audiences in 1936, since it is still captivating today. Kudos to Curtiz as he created a panoramic landscape of a charge that seemed to use a full brigade of men and horses. DeMille had to be jealous.

Men armed with sabers on horses, in an open field, charging an artillery battalion holding the high ground and firing cannonballs at it is a crazy, futile and beautiful thing to see (if you're not doing the charging).

The famous quote "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton'' avers the British Empire was not happenstance, but a well-orchestrated system. Those boys who became soldiers didn't always win, but they conducted themselves with impressive valor.

Even with a large cast comprising some of Warner Bros. top talent - including Donald Crisp, Henry Stephenson, Nigel Bruce, Spring Byington and, even, a young David Niven - this is Flynn's movie.

Flynn was a talented actor with surprising range - he had an underappreciated talent for comedy and a well-appreciated talent for bedding women - but God put him on earth to play swashbuckling heroes and he didn't let God down.

With the passage of time, futile acts of courage can become inspiring stories that can become the stuff of legends as happened with The Charge of the Light Brigade.

You watch Warner Bros. 1936 version of The Charge of the Light Brigade to enjoy the inspirational legend expertly if inaccurately told by a Hollywood studio system that knew how to push all the right emotional buttons of its audience.

You turn to the history books if you want to learn what really sparked that famous charge on that singular day in 1854.

of30S2.gif
 

Preppy Climber

Familiar Face
Messages
75
View attachment 599864
The Charge of the Light Brigade from 1936 with Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Patrick Knowles, Donald Crisp. Nigel Bruce, Henry Stephenson, Spring Byington and David Nivens


Marginally framed by Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, The Charge of the Light Brigade, this Warner Bros. movie by the same title shows the studio and Errol Flynn at their action-adventure best even if historical accuracy is a less than secondary consideration.

Flynn, in the 1930s and at the peak of his handsomeness, made several wonderful action-adventure movies, but The Charge of the Light Brigade has a touch of something more because the historical event behind it is magnificent in its valor if not strategy.

The thumbnail history of the battle is that owing to a misunderstanding of an order somewhere along the chain, a British light cavalry unit charged on a well-fortified Russian artillery battery in 1854 in the Crimean War.

It was a slaughter, as it had to be, for the British. Yet memorialized weeks later by Tennyson's poem, it glorified the courage of the troops and became part of the legend of the British Empire. If your modern politics can't abide this history, this is not the movie for you.

In Warner's hands, with director Michael Curtiz at the helm, a love triangle - amongst Flynn, Patrick Knowles, both officers in the Light Brigade, and Olivia de Havilland, a commanding officer's very comely daughter - provides the story's structure.

It's a fine off-the-shelf Warners 1930s way to tell this story, especially since Flynn and de Havilland have appealing on-screen chemistry, but you can ignore all that "mushy" stuff if you want as the military tale is what really engages in this one.

Early on, Flynn has a friendly relationship with the leader, known as Surat Khan, of a local Mid East tribe, until "the Khan" violates an agreement and attacks a lightly fortified British outpost manned by the Light Brigade and kills many women and children.

Later, with the British now fighting the Russians in the Crimean War, Flynn is given orders for the Light Brigade to not attack. Knowing, though, that the Surat Khan is there with the Russians, he defies these orders, which leads to the famous Charge of the Light Brigade.

While confusion over the orders led to this colossal historical mistake, it assuredly did not happen as shown here. But Flynn, who also protects his brother from the battle because de Havilland asked him to, has to be the hero in the picture, so he is.

All of these military machinations - Flynn is given orders which he rewrites, puts in an envelope and seals in wax - are the backbone of the movie as the love triangle slightly disappoints because de Havilland chooses the wrong guy, Knowles (you learn that early).

It all leads up to a battle scene that had to amaze audiences in 1936, since it is still captivating today. Kudos to Curtiz as he created a panoramic landscape of a charge that seemed to use a full brigade of men and horses. DeMille had to be jealous.

Men armed with sabers on horses, in an open field, charging an artillery battalion holding the high ground and firing cannonballs at it is a crazy, futile and beautiful thing to see (if you're not doing the charging).

The famous quote "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton'' avers the British Empire was not happenstance, but a well-orchestrated system. Those boys who became soldiers didn't always win, but they conducted themselves with impressive valor.

Even with a large cast comprising some of Warner Bros. top talent - including Donald Crisp, Henry Stephenson, Nigel Bruce, Spring Byington and, even, a young David Niven - this is Flynn's movie.

Flynn was a talented actor with surprising range - he had an underappreciated talent for comedy and a well-appreciated talent for bedding women - but God put him on earth to play swashbuckling heroes and he didn't let God down.

With the passage of time, futile acts of courage can become inspiring stories that can become the stuff of legends as happened with The Charge of the Light Brigade.

You watch Warner Bros. 1936 version of The Charge of the Light Brigade to enjoy the inspirational legend expertly if inaccurately told by a Hollywood studio system that knew how to push all the right emotional buttons of its audience.

You turn to the history books if you want to learn what really sparked that famous charge on that singular day in 1854.

View attachment 599865
Do you write movie reviews for a living or as a side gig? Or simply for fun? You're quite good at it and prompt me (and I'm sure plenty others) to watch the movies you write about. This one is now on my list.

Oh, and I like the mushy stuff. :)
 
Messages
17,190
Location
New York City
Do you write movie reviews for a living or as a side gig? Or simply for fun? You're quite good at it and prompt me (and I'm sure plenty others) to watch the movies you write about. This one is now on my list.

Oh, and I like the mushy stuff. :)

Thank you. I just write these reviews for fun and to share here and on a classic movie forum. I hope, as you note, some people are encourage to watch some of the movies I comment on. I do write professionally, but in my field, which is finance.

As to the mushy stuff, my favorite genre of movie is the romcom. I'm a proud fan of the mushy stuff.

The love triangle - the mushy stuff - did, though, in "The Charge of the Light Brigade" feel forced, but I think they wanted a female lead, so they built in the love triangle for that reason.
 

Preppy Climber

Familiar Face
Messages
75
Thank you. I just write these reviews for fun and to share here and on a classic movie forum. I hope, as you note, some people are encourage to watch some of the movies I comment on. I do write professionally, but in my field, which is finance.

As to the mushy stuff, my favorite genre of movie is the romcom. I'm a proud fan of the mushy stuff.

The love triangle - the mushy stuff - did, though, in "The Charge of the Light Brigade" feel forced, but I think they wanted a female lead, so they built in the love triangle for that reason.
I, too, love romcoms. One of my favorite movies is not a romcom, but it is romantic, somewhat haunting, and full of mush: Somewhere in Time starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. The film received mixed reviews, but I'm a sucker for it.
 
Messages
17,190
Location
New York City
MV5BY2RkM2NlZGUtZjQ3Yi00YTZhLTg4NDgtMGRkNzcwYzBmNGViXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMTk2MzI2Ng@@._V1_.jpg

Girl with Green Eyes from 1964 with Rita Tushingham, Peter Finch and Linda Redgrave


Couple toasting themselves alone:
Woman: "To love."
Man: "To simplicity."
Woman: "To you."
Man: "To us."
Woman: "Forever after."
Man: "For while we're happy."


Maybe it was a bit daring in its day, but even with its edge worn down by our shifting cultural center, Girl with Green Eyes is still a moving tale of two people at very different stages of their lives briefly finding love and comfort in each other.

Rita Tushingham, with her quirky looks, oversized eyes and gaminish appeal, plays the girl with green eyes, a poor Irish farm girl who moves to Dublin to escape her dreary and dogmatically religious home.

Living in a one room flat with her best friend, played by Lynn Redgrave, working in a small grocery and partying at night with friends, Tushingham feels the weight of the world has been lifted from her shoulders now that she can have youthful fun without guilt.

She then meets a middle-aged man played by Peter Finch. Finch, handsome in a mature, worldly way, especially to a farm girl who views Dublin as the height of sophistication, sees in Tushington a youth, innocence and simplicity that appeals to him after his failed marriage

Separated from his intelligent and cultured wife, who now lives in America with their daughter, Finch is ready for a mentally and physically easy romance. Tushingham, though, has to pursue him at first, then it takes off.

Based on Edna O'Brien's novelette, The Lonely Girl, (comments on The Lonely Girl here: #9,129 ) the second book in the trilogy, the story is told from Tushingham's perspective. She, like so many kids from poor, rural backgrounds, wants "more," but doesn't really know what that means, let alone how to get it.

Finch seems like a direct route. He's a writer from the upper class with the speech, clothes, home and mannerisms to match. Today, they'd have an open affair and see where it goes, but in Catholic Ireland in the early 1960s, they have a quasi-secret affair.

That creates some drama around getting a cover-story wedding ring and a gruesome sequence with her family when they try to kidnap her from "her life of sin." It's not a funny situation, but the resolution is the movie's funniest scene.

Director Desmond Davis wonderfully captures writer O'Brien's smart and nuanced insights as in the pitch-perfect sequence when Tushingham is made to feel unsophisticated and laughed at by Finch's "smart-set" friends.

Kind friends would have made Tushingham feel welcomed by including her in their conversation, but these supposedly cultured people purposely talk about things they know a young country girl wouldn't be conversant in. She's made to feel small, but they look small.

With the early glow of the relationship having passed, the climax, no spoilers coming, has the two facing the reality and challenges of their class-divided May-December romance. You might be surprised by what you hope will happen.

Sometimes billed as a "kitchen sink" drama because of Tushingham's rural escape, Girl with Green Eyes is more of a coming-of-age romance. Supporting that point, you don't want to kill yourself when the movie is over.

Filmed in Dublin in beautiful black and white, Girl with Green Eyes has a time capsule feel as you can sense the full 1960s cultural change about to burst onto the scene. Still, other than some forced 1960s film-school artsiness, it is a timeless story well told.
 

FOXTROT LAMONT

One Too Many
Messages
1,722
Location
St John's Wood, London UK
I honestly do not know if Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter ever made it to film. A slip mea culpa, but the look
of Finch has a Salem wintry chill cast draw to a woman in American letters. Her daughter has left the New World, she is alone but Hawthorne stressed she is loved. Quasimodo's yelled wisdom that love and luck
are joined, and facetious remark that The Thomas Crown Affair concludes facial cognition of love lost; a trait so unlike Casablanca where love survives. :)
 

Doctor Strange

I'll Lock Up
Messages
5,245
Location
Hudson Valley, NY
The Scarlet Letter has been adapated many times. There's a surprisingly good silent film with Lillian Gish from 1926 directed by the great Victor Sjostrom:

LillianGish-TheScarletLetter.jpg

And re Girl with Green Eyes, I saw it last year and liked it. I posted a brief review...

 

Julian Shellhammer

Practically Family
Messages
892
The Prince and the Pauper (1937) directed by William Keighley (who would later work on The Adventures of Robin Hood), featuring top-billed Errol Flynn, and actual twins Billy and Bobby Mauch, with Claude Rains doing his "power-hungry court intriguer" bit with poise. Flynn shows up about half-way through, so his lead billing and prominence in promotion is sort of bait and switch. The twins and Warners' character actors carry the movie through.

Based on a story by Mark Twain, it tells us about two kids born on the same day in 1500s England, who are identical, one the son of King Henry VIII, and the other the son of urban lout Baron MacLane. Through Hollywood whimsy* they meet, exchange clothing and places, then are carried along by the tides of royal politics, both wanting to get back to their regular lives. Being 1937, you just know things will wrap up agreeably for all. Courtesy the Warners' blu ray.

* Okay, okay - Twainian whimsy...
 

Edward

Bartender
Messages
25,074
Location
London, UK
Liam had the brogue down patrick, methinks Cork. 'Tis heard in the Paras Aldershot way more than seldom seen too.;)

I'd be surprised if his Cork accent was poor - he certainly had the feel of it in Michael Collins way back when (albeit that for me Brendan Gleeson's take no the Big Fella just pipped Neeson's, a few years previously in the Treaty, a much more studied, less 'Hollywood' take on a very specific period in Collins' life).
 

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