What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Edward]

@Edward

Just a fun question:
Would you count the Rowing Club House in Hereford as a "boat house" or just a landbased club house?

I'm not familiar with the Club itself, but I think the nature of the building would determine its nomenclature. A boathouse would be very specifically a location for the storage of boats; if it's a social space for meetings and events owned and run by the Club, it's be a Clubhouse.

 

[Harp]

^ Jeremy Brett and Rathbone Holmes twist parallels my annual Sims-Scott Scrooge quandry.

 

[Harp]

A lazy Monday overcast afternoon yesterday recommended a favorite film,
The Cincinnati Kid (1965) and journey back to Depression angst 1933 New Orleans
where two stud poker kings vie for game's title crown. Steve McQueen, Edward G Robinson
are poker protagonists supported by an exceptionally strong cast including Karl Malden, Joan Blondell, and Rip Torn.

Critics initially faulted this film against The Hustler, however, The Cincinnati Kid has aged well
like a lesser-grade vintage wine as a more developed sub plot period work.

 

[Edward]

That said, it makes me sad that the kids of today will mostly be first encountering the character via the Guy Ritchie/Robert Downey Jr. films, and they'll think Holmes is a quippy action hero...

Over here for some years it was most likely to be the Gatiss / Moffat Sherlock TV series with Benedict ***berbatch. The first series was an interesting exploration of the premise of setting the Victorian stories in the present day, with contemporary policing technology available. Rally hit its stride in the second series. Unfortunately (I blame Moffat, given it adopted his signature style - 45 of fifty minutes being "look, look, me so clever" writing, followed by a rushed and lazy conclusion - exactly what he did to Doctor Who) the final two series and the one-off special were dreadful, in particular by effectively reducing the great detective to some sort of magical wizard who just knew rather than deducted.

If Prime's Young Sherlock series carries on in popularity long enough, I wonder if they'll age the characters up to do the original stories. That seems to be the main reinvention of Holmes for a new audience currently.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Edward - Totally agree on Sherlock. It started off very, very strong, but eventually lost its way.

But I think it's really an open question as to which Sherlock Holmes interpretation young folks of today are likely to encounter first... especially including all the other films and series featuring Holmes. (I seem to recall that he's the character second only to Dracula in having generated the most associated productions, right?) And you know, most of my beloved old Universal Rathbone films are public domain, and I see them popping up all over cable, etc. constantly.

scofeild618 - Also agree - Paprika is a very interesting, unique anime flick.

 

[Harp]

Stumbled over a wonderful find, The Professor and The Madman, a Mel Gibson production (2019)
focused development of the Oxford English Dictionary and Simon Winchester's book published under same title.

An American Civil War physician, William Minor, suffering schizophrenia and post traumatic
stress, kills an innocent man in London. Incarcerated in an insane asylum; Minor begins general public solicit study on the dictionary; eventually posting thousands of meticulously researched word entries to James Murray, project manager.

Mel Gibson portrays linguist Murray; Sean Penn-in a remarkable performance-crazed Dr Minor;
and Natalie Dormer, widow of Minor's murder victim. A thoughtful penetrating film with a richly
textured sub plot look at human redemption and the power of love over ignoble hate.

 

[Fading Fast]

Transgression (1931) with Kay Francis, Richard Cortez, and Paul Cavanagh


Depression-era audiences loved movies about rich people misbehaving, perhaps because they enjoyed seeing the luxury but also because the lives of the rich were far from problem free. Whatever the reason, Depression-era cinema was full of upper-class melodramas.

One of those is Transgression, where a wealthy English couple, played by Kay Francis and Paul Cavanagh, spend a year apart, while he does some engineering work in a remote part of India. Naturally, he suggests his young, pretty wife spend it in Paris, because he's an idiot.

He doesn't seem like an idiot as he has a very responsible job and he talks intelligently, but no sane man sends his wife to Paris to play for a year while he's away. Why not just hire a lover for her – cut out the middleman, the city in this case – and be done with it?

Cavanagh, however, completely trusts his wife, so as he leaves for India, she leaves for – what's that other name for Paris, oh yes – the city of love, affairs, and casual s*x. It would be like sending your wife to 1980s New York, where bar restrooms doubled as fiat bedrooms.

After some time in Paris, naive, loving wife Francis takes on the trappings of a cosmopolitan woman, believing her new look and fancier wardrobe also makes her smarter – they don't. She's ripe pickings for a sophisticated womanizer like the character played by Richard Cortez.

Her movie transition montage is surprisingly modern as French couture and beauty merchants turn the simple English woman into a "fabulous" Parisian sophisticate in a series of rapid images. Watch for the silly one where Francis chooses the type of eyebrows she should have.

Most of the middle of the movie is Francis running around with Cortez, but then she gets news that her husband is coming home and she calls off the affair - an affair that s*xually never got started. Phew, that was close – but then she goes and makes a mess of everything.

Act III is melodrama on steroids and full of holes, but if you just go with it, it's the only part of the movie that rips by. Thunderstorms, mountain-top lovenests, betrayals, duplicitous servants, blackmail, a late-night letter, a vicious sister-in-law, and, yes, faith all drive ricocheting events.

There's still an epilogue to go where everything gets revealed and wrapped up with early 1930s moviemaking efficiency – meaning even the most complex story could be resolved in five minutes or less, three if made at Warner Brothers: "And so, God made man and earth, the end."

In a few years, Kay Francis would be the darling of the fabulously wealthy and stylish melodrama, but here in 1931, she's still getting her society bed-hopping sea legs, which is nice as she's not hardened yet. When her character feels bad, you actually believe she does.

Glamorously made up and wearing couture gowns and hats became Francis' personal screen brand, despite an awkwardly proportioned body, a lisp, and the ugliest head of hair a major Hollywood star has ever had. Credit her, though, she had a heck of a run for several years.

Husband Cavanagh is something out of a dream, as few men ever would trust their wife this much, especially as the evidence against her piles up. The only sane interpretation is that he preferred acting that way and keeping his marriage to having to face the obvious.

That leaves us with Cortez, an all-but-forgotten-today major star of the early 1930s who plays to his personal brand here as the suave, insincere Latin lover. He's a handsome man, but every pore in his body oozes deceit. Still, though, it worked for the public then in picture after picture.

Filmed entirely on sets that would fool no one today or in 1931, and being an RKO production, England, France, and Spain all look the same, just with different buildings that look like sets, not buildings anyway. There is however an early-1930s Tinseltown quaintness to the effort.

Transgression is nothing more than a tossed-off rich-people Depression-era melodrama – a "keep the theaters supplied with pictures" effort – that only works today if you are into one of the stars or just like this pre-Code subgenre.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family (1941), a Japanese film


**************************************************
Unmarried Toda sister, facing downward economic mobility, meets her office-worker friend and tells her friend that she'd like a job like hers.

The friend's response: "My family's been on the receiving end of orders. You've been on the giving end. There's a huge gap between the two."
**************************************************


In The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family, Japanese director Yasujirō Ozu travels on familiar ground examining the genuine culture and feelings buried under the surface politeness that define even the "close" relationships within middle-class Japanese families.

When the patriarch of the proud and comfortable Toda family passes away, his wife and adult children learn that he was deeply in debt. This forces them to sell off most of his possessions and properties, leaving his widow and unmarried adult daughter without a home or money.

The other children, all married and living on their own, except for "the black sheep" son, take in the mother and daughter, Setsuko, in rotation, but underneath the politeness, they do it grudgingly, which makes whichever household the two are at unpleasant for all.

Most of Act II is the excruciatingly painful way the adult children and their spouses passive-aggressively, and sometimes just aggressively, belittle the two "houseguests." One goes so far as to make the pair stay out of the house when she entertains her friends for hours.

It's small slights and sharp elbows like those that wear everyone down – the mother and Setsuko, the host family, and the viewer. It's well done and insightful filmmaking, but it's not a lot of fun to see a family being quietly nasty to its most unfortunate members.

There is a good Act III where that black sheep son who had gone off to China to explore opportunities comes back – his scene addressing his selfish relatives is so good you might want to play it over. It's brutal honesty completely commanding a situation.

To make sense of this, remember it is 1941, the Japanese military is riding high, and the government is encouraging young Japanese to move to the areas in China it had conquered. The propaganda message is that China is a land of great opportunity now for the Japanese.

Since no one in 1941 knew how that would all work out (not well for the Japanese in the end), it's presented in a favorable light here. Heck, had the Japanese won the war, those who moved there early would probably have done well, but alas for them (yet good for the rest of the world).

Besides that geopolitical historical curio, Ozu, as usual, does an excellent job of peeling back the layers of family relationships, which shows that they have at least as many problems in Japanese families as families anywhere. He also shows some striking differences.

It was quite common for relatives to pick out a spouse for a single son or daughter, but the son or daughter could refuse if he or she had a persuasive argument. However, the American argument "none of your business" wasn't an option.

The scene where Setsuko badgers the black-sheep son (the two are close) into marrying her best friend is wonderfully insightful. The masks come down for a bit with Setsuko showing some backbone and her brother revealing his insecurities. It's outstanding cinema.

Another striking cultural norm is how poorly most, not all, treat their servants. The British at this time – Empire confidence and all – have nothing on the Japanese for rigid class structure and haughty disdain of those "beneath" them.

This brings us to the quote at the top that also defines one of the major themes of the movie: the Toda family, especially the mother and Setsuko, are coming down hard in the world and are not prepared for it. It isn't a stretch to see the universality of this problem.

Ozu, well regarded for his long, low-angle shots, is already using them here. Quite frequently you see a room or a hallway shot from the ground before and after the action of a scene takes place as if to show the permanence of location versus the impermanence of people.

That is the point of The Brothers and Sisters of the Toda Family – all of life is impermanent. The Toda family was important until it wasn't; rich until it wasn't; proud until, well it still tries to be proud. The film's value is its reveal of true life under the mask of surface calm.

For us today, there's also an incredible "time capsule" value to 1941 Japan, revealing what its culture is like – a blend of Western and traditional Japanese dress, for example – and how it compares with today's "democratic but with Japanese characteristics" nation.

 

[Fading Fast]

Miss Europe (aka Prix de Beauté) from 1930, a French film starring Louisa Brooks


Miss Europe is a true transition movie from the era when silent film was giving way to talking pictures. It started life as a silent movie and was largely filmed that way, but before release, it was reworked and premiered as a sound picture (albeit with star Louise Brooks' voice dubbed).

Movie historians love to debate all that, but sometimes the movie itself – and it's a good one – gets lost in the bigger film history and the "life of Louise Brooks" swirl. That's a shame because, even all these years later, the movie is entertaining, in large part, because of Ms. Brooks.

The story is simple, starting with a young pretty girl, Brooks, playing a typist who works at the same newspaper where her boyfriend, André, is a compositor/typesetter. Early in we see them spending their weekend at the beach where Brooks looks fantastic in a bathing suit.

All seems good until Brooks, who has been pleasantly resisting his "let's get married now" efforts, enters the newspapers beauty contest, which causes André to become extremely angry. She wins, he pouts, but off she goes to the larger contest where she wins Miss Europe.

Now feted, he gives her an ultimatum: quit and marry me or we're through. She agonizes, but quits, marries him, and winds up living in a shabby apartment doing boring housework all day in a pre-appliance universe. Do laundry by hand and then tell us your thoughts about marriage.

Brooks is outstanding in the scenes when she is alone in the apartment slowly going mad from the boredom and drudgery. It's not her beauty that's acting; it's an actress at the top of her game convincing you by showing that she's an unhappy housewife.

The Miss Europe world then reaches out to her and it's decision time again for Brooks who has now seen the true day-to-day of marriage. Act III follows and it's a good one as the two worlds pull at Brooks in unpredictable ways leading to a dramatic climax you'll want to see fresh.

Away from the noted movie history, the 1930s conflict – should Brooks pursue her own career? – is no longer a question for us today. Heck, had André had a more expansive mind back then, he would have encouraged her career, become her manager, and life could have gone well.

André, however, is stuck in the "man provides" framework and seems to sense that once a wider world opens up for his beautiful wife, he'll lose her. He was probably right because he didn't know how to go along for the ride – a ride his wife wanted him on.

Why does this simple story work? In a word, Brooks. To be fair, director Augusto Genina used a European silent-film style that was much more natural than Hollywood's stilted and overly emoting silent films, so the picture has a modernish feel.

Act II does get bogged down in spots, but Genina rips through Act I, almost like a modern picture, with quick shots, sparkling images, and fast transitions. It's a style he picks up again in Act III, which includes its powerful final closeup of an incredibly haunting image.

What really fascinates today though is the bobbed black-haired starlet. Brooks' beauty is not moored to her era as translucent skin, a perfect jawline, and sleek, symmetrical features are timeless markers of pulchritude. There is no era when she isn't stunning to look at.

Beauty alone, though, does not make a movie star. Brooks has the two other qualities required: she can act and the camera loves her. In the early beach scenes, she coruscates just walking along in the sand in her simple black one-piece bathing suit. All the other actors disappear.

The same inner light that eclipses everyone else appears at the beauty pageant and, one final time, in the climax to Act III. Yet, she's no statue, as she always communicates something of her inner feelings in every scene. She can convey deep emotion with just her facial expressions.

Today there is, yes, all that film transition history and the Louise Brooks mystique, but better still, in Miss Europe, there is a good movie – including some fun time-travel to 1930s France and its newspaper industry – powered by a singular young beauty.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Iron Man (1931) with Lew Ayres, Robert Armstrong, Jean Harlow, and John Miljan


If Sylvester Stallone didn't see The Iron Man before writing all those Rocky movies, it's only because so many other boxing movies had riffed on The Iron Man since 1931 that he could have cribbed similar parts of his saga from those later films.

This is no knock on Stallone as almost all movies are recycled from earlier ones as there are very few completely new stories. What is impressive is how much of the later Rocky stories are already here.

A young fighter and his no-nonsense manager battle their way up, then a bad woman, an ego-driven lack of training, and arrogance in the ring brings him down. It's all in one movie here, while Stallone managed to wring several pictures out of the same material.

Lew Ayres – who looks like he belongs on an Ivy League boxing team, not in the brutal professional fight game of the 1930s – plays the young boxer on his way up. Then pressure from his spendthrift wife prompts him to ignore his manager's instructions and lose a key fight.

The manager, played by Robert Armstrong, sees right through the wife, played by Jean Harlow. Still, it's only when she leaves Ayres, because his career is floundering, that Armstrong can get Ayres to train and fight hard again. With Harlow gone, Ayres eventually becomes champion.

Guess who shows up now? Having never divorced her, Harlow comes back and is all lovey dovey, except she's really sleeping with her "friend," played by John Miljan. Their plan is to elbow Armstrong out and take over managing Ayres...and his money.

Act III resolves all this in one of the few ways most boxing movies resolve such conflicts, but you'll want to see it fresh. The shame is the solid acting and classic boxing story are underserved by the directing, technology and, now, a desperate need for a restoration.

Scenes transition so abruptly that it feels as if something's been cut out – which could be the case, as the movie hasn't been restored, so the copies out there could have been sliced up for TV. Regardless, it's jarring to jump from place to place with, sometimes, no transition.

It's also sometimes difficult to hear the actors or see the background details. The fight scenes are pretty rough too: many are filmed with a high overhead shot that makes the boxers look like marionettes, who don't really align with the interspersed close-up shots.

Despite these challenges, the acting is engaging. Ayres gives a solid performance as the young boxer who loses his head over a woman – it's been known to happen. He's matched by Armstrong, whose terse, laconic style was tailor-made to play a boxing manager.

Armstrong, though, is too good an actor to give a two-dimensional performance, as you see that under his curmudgeon exterior is a man who cares and hurts. It was, though, an era where the cultural default setting was for a man not to show those types of emotions to others.

Harlow is young but on her game and, thankfully, not playing to the Harlow image as she did in some of her later performances in her all-too-short career. She's a cold, cruel woman here and she plays it that way straight down the line.

When things get rough between her and Miljan, it's Harlow who shows no sentiment, as she tosses him in the trash now that he can't help her. It's morally vicious, but precode perfect as women often were the stronger s*x in these early talkies.

The Iron Man, unrestored, is only for devotees to early talkies or completists for one of the stars, but it is an early and excellent example of a "boxing as a metaphor for life" movie. A metaphor that would be used over and over again in boxing movies for decades to come.

 

[Harp]

^ Must mention The Cinderella Man (2005) directed Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe
as James Braddock, a Depression era boxer who rose up off life's canvass to gain triumph within the ring.
The always fantastic Renee Zellweger plays his wife.

Absolutely positively must see film classic.

 

[Fading Fast]

4 for Texas (1963) with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Ursula Andress, Anita Ekberg, Victor Buono, Charles Bronson, and (for no logical reason whatsoever) The Three Stooges


Ursula Andress, Charles Bronson, Victor Buono, Anita Ekberg, Dean Martin....... and Frank Sinatra: Of course, the last two were the big "Rat Pack" stars, but this list is ordered by who gave a strong performance, in part because they took 4 for Texas seriously.

Yes, it is a comedy/Western, but comedians take their work very seriously even if they have some fun and joke around when the camera isn't rolling. The work of making a comedy is not somehow less than the work of making a drama or action film. It is serious acting.

Director Robert Aldrich clearly couldn't control Frank Sinatra near the peak of his Rat Pack fame. Reports abound that Sinatra blew in, did his scenes, and blew out, unwilling to do rehearsals or retakes – a lack of professionalism from a man who could act when he wanted to.

The reason for Sinatra's behavior doesn't matter, but the result does, as you often wonder why Sinatra's character, one of the leads, seems so disengaged. It's hard to take a movie seriously when the actors don't.

That's where the rest of the list at the top becomes so important, as they do take it seriously and deliver some engaging scenes and performances, but unfortunately, in an effort that overall just doesn't work as it never commits to one style: serious Western or comedic Western.

Ursula Andress is on fire in this one: she looks fantastic, worked out, serious, and pretty in a worked-out and serious way. She's the anti-Anita Ekberg, who is all woman (plus several pounds) in ruffles and fabric everywhere. Andress is a skiff to Ekberg's dreadnought.

Ekberg tries to act, but paired with Sinatra, who mailed in most of his performance when he deigned to show up, it is a heavy lift as she's acting and he's mugging for the camera. Andress had Martin, who mugged a little too, but he also put in some real effort.

The one scene that has Martin and Sinatra both trying is the opening, when, through a series of twists, each one attempts to rob the same stagecoach and each other, with the upper hand changing a few times. It's a scene that can stand alone away from the movie.

Martin gets the final drop and the money, but soon after, he and Sinatra are both in Galveston and both still fighting for the same stagecoach money. Sinatra has a finger in most things in the town, including Ekberg, but Martin locks his money in the bank and teams with Andress.

She wants to restore an old riverboat and open it as a saloon, restaurant, and casino, but it takes money, which Martin now has. Sinatra wants the money and the boat, but his power only reaches so far as he's reminded by the town's banker, played by Victor Buono.

Buono is a gluttonous, corrupt banker, but even he can't just take Martin's legally deposited funds, so he and Sinatra spend the movie trying to find a way to steal Martin's money. Buono plays his character so campily – his eating is grotesque – that you can't take him seriously.

Buono has even hired a hitman, played by Charles Bronson, to take out Sinatra. Bronson plays the entire movie like a serious Western, but more than anything, it's the two actors' completely different styles that have you losing faith in the modest narrative value of the picture.

Bronson's playing in The G*nfighter, and Buono is in the Batman TV series. Aldrich lost control of his actors and movie. You can harmonize Andress and Ekberg as two different types of femininity, but Buono and Bronson have wandered in from different movie universes altogether.

If you care about the plot, and you won't and you shouldn't, it eventually comes down to Martin and Andress battling Sinatra for control of the floating casino, while Buono and Bronson try to take both sides out and grab it for themselves. Then, into all this, wanders the Three Stooges.

It's that type of movie. Perhaps Aldrich simply quit trying. When the studio offered up the trio, he must just have shrugged. So, into 19th-century Galveston pop three mid-20th-century comedy icons. Dear God.

One scene to watch for is when Andress tries to seduce Martin, who is obsessing over the expenses of refurbishing the boat. She's s*xy and shown in silhouette in a way you won't soon forget. How Martin stayed focused on the books for a bit refutes all we know about masculinity.

If you like Andress or one of the other leads, it's kind of worth watching – Martin has a charm that's irrepressible – but the real crime is the missed opportunity. Aldrich had assembled a talented cast and a good-sized studio budget and then lost control.

4 for Texas is another "it could-have/should-have-been" Hollywood tale of woe. Sinatra has not one thing to be proud of here, nor does Aldrich, who needed to find some way to rein Sinatra in. Instead, he seems to have lost control, and the movie quietly circled the drain.

 

[Harp]

^ Great provocative shot of Ursula.

A more serious take.... Sinatra in retrospect is a deuce, neither giant nor killer shepard,
An admittedly capable Magio in From Here To Eternity, but the character really wasn't a
stretch for Hoboken hustler Frankie, and Oscar rightfully blushed in his hands. A draft dodger;
whose private life reeked sordid perversities, he remains in death a deuce. Vic Damone, Billy Eckstine, Sammy Davis, and Tony Bennet easily bested him before a microphone. Every once so often Hollywood pulls a joker out from life's card deck and christens a king.

 

[Fading Fast]

Little Friend (1934) with Nova Pilbeam, Lydia Sherwood, and Matheson Lang


Divorce is never easy, and it is never easy on the kids – or here, in Little Friend, on the one child: a twelve-year-old girl played by fourteen-year-old Nova Pilbeam. She struggles when her lovely upper-class English world is quietly shattered as her parents' marriage begins to fail.

Her mother and father, played by Lydia Sherwood and Matheson Lang, have worked hard to give Pilbeam a secure and happy childhood, but despite trying to protect their daughter from the fallout as their marriage pulls apart, Pilbeam's world gets pulled apart too.

It's very British as there's something polite about the parents' "rows" that flare and then settle back down, after which everyone goes on as if nothing just happened. But something did happen and the accumulation can't be papered over with surface niceties for much longer.

Pilbeam is at that age when she's playing with dolls one minute and discussing adult issues with her governess the next. As her parents' fights increase, Pilbeam spirals spasmodically back into earlier childhood and forward toward adulthood: psychiatrist, here I come.

None of it is healthy for the child whose sleep becomes a tangle of surrealist bad dreams. On her scooter in the park one day, she runs away from her governess and is saved by a local boy, just as she was blindly heading into traffic.

Dad moves out but it's presented to Pilbeam as if he's going on a business trip. Mom has a lover – a well-known actor – who, of course, is introduced to Pilbeam as "just a friend of Mummy's." Pilbeam's not stupid; she gets it; she just hates it all violently.

Despite their efforts to keep it from spinning completely out of control, after one particularly bad birthday party for Pilbeam's paternal grandfather, the couple makes a complete break: it's a brutal scene as the marital dysfunction spills into the open.

Yet, they don't even do that well, as Lang keeps "popping" in, which gets Pilbeam's hopes up that "dad will return," while Sherwood runs out after the party to be with her lover. Fast-forward and Pilbeam, looking to help her mother, almost finds Sherwood in her illicit love nest.

What Pilbeam did or didn't see that night will be the key testimony in the ensuing divorce trial that, horribly, will put Pilbeam on the stand, as proof of adultery was the only way a couple could get a divorce then.

"I hate him and won't live another night under the same roof with him." "No divorce decree; you two loved each other once, go work it out. Next case!" "He cheated on me and here's the evidence." "Oh, that is naughty and it's adultery; decree granted."

It's a gripping courtroom climax with British justice on full display: oaths, witness stands, judges questioning anyone they feel like, seemingly six lawyers to each side (must be a charming bill), wigs, rude things said politely, and a sense of barely controlled chaos.

Sitting at the center of it all is poor twelve-year-old Nova Pilbeam's character. "So, umm, did you see your mother there that evening?" "What was she wearing...or not wearing?" Even a modern cynic can see how awful this is.

These scenes are painful, but the dramatic heart of the movie. With stark overhead camera angles, director Berthold Viertel and cinematographer Günther Krampf make you feel the weight of British justice pushing down on this scared twelve-year-old girl. It's creative cinematography in service to the story.

From there it's on to the conclusion you'll want to see fresh, but the value in this movie is over before the case is decided: it is the performance of young Nova Pilbeam. Since she's fourteen and this is her first movie, the natural talent on display is remarkable.

It's a natural talent that would see her become the co-lead of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, Young and Innocent, only three years later. Here she's still a child; three years later she's a woman – young, but a woman – yet in both, her talent shines through in part because the camera loves her.

Most of the other actors – it's a talented lot – still have some silent or theatrical stage tics, but Pilbeam seems like she's not acting at all. It's most obvious in scenes with her mother, Sherwood, who is "projecting," while Pilbeam just is. The contrast is striking.

Her parents are both good parents, but they are good in the nuanced, balanced, trade-off way that most parents are good. Pilbeam is simply driven by love, kindness, and a child's selfishness that shows her parents' calculations in a poor light. That contrast helps to make the picture.

In need of a restoration and with an antiquated British vibe, Little Friend is relevant because kids still suffer when their parents divorce. Here, preternatural acting talent Nova Pilbeam powers through all the cinematic drag to bring that suffering agonizingly into the open.

 

[Turnip]

Just watched „Die Brücke“, a German anti war movie from 1959, still intense, still impressing.

A movie about a group of school boys who die a senseless death in April 45, trying to hold a meaningless bridge against American troops after being enlisted just one day before.

A movie about mislead idealism, education and values under an autokratic system.

Not overwhelming in a matter of technical overkill but intense, great actors, almost a chamber drama.

Highly recommendet in case you should have the chance to watch it anywhere.

Here‘s a trailer.

 

[Fading Fast]

Short Cut to Hell (1957) with Robert Ivers, Georgann Johnson, and Jacques Aubuchon


There's so much quirky movie history swirling around this good crime drama/film noir that you almost forget the movie itself, as its Tinseltown lore proves quite interesting. After all, James Cagney only directed one movie in his career, so why this one?

Cagney is a giant of the golden era of the studio system, so again, why did he direct this specific movie? Apparently, friendship: he took the job largely as a favor to his old friend A. C. Lyles, who was producing his first picture.

For movie connective tissue, there's also this: Short Cut to Hell is based on the same Graham Greene novel, A G*n for Sale (published in the U.S. as This G*n for Hire), that became the film noir classic This G*n for Hire in 1942, which starred the coruscating screen couple Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.

It's not Citizen Kane, but still, why remake a well-respected movie with no aspirations to top the original? Who knows what motivated all these inside-baseball decisions, but if you put them aside, you're left with a quite good James Cagney-directed 1950s B-movie crime drama.

Robert Ivers plays the loner hitman who, early on in San Francisco, murders an executive and his secretary with cold-blooded methodicalness. He then collects his fee from a gangster, played by Jacques Aubuchon, whose cover is being a booking agent for nightclubs.

Aubuchon is a fat, fastidious man with a penchant for peppermint patties and young girls (today, it would probably be boys, as he seems "coded h*mos*xual" for the era) who pays Ivers off with bills whose serial numbers he reports to the police as stolen – nice.

Ivers is psychotic, but he's also smart and reverse engineers why the police are after him – he spent some money that was quickly traced back to him – which has him out to get Aubuchon. Aubuchon, though, has gone to Los Angeles.

Ivers quickly hops a train to Los Angeles. On board, he meets a pretty young woman, played by Georgann Johnson, who is the fiancée of a police detective. After exchanging some sharp elbows, they somewhat connect, but still, Ivers kidnaps her when he needs a human shield.

For most women – in particular if they are already engaged – that would be a deal breaker, but Johnson has a social worker's sensitivity and sees some wounded-bird salvation in the stone-cold killer, so she stays with him in his hunt for "the fat man" (Aubuchon).

With the police, including Johnson's fiancé, searching for Ivers, Johnson and Ivers bounce around LA trying to avoid capture and find his quarry, leading to several near captures and eventually to Aubuchon, whose maniacal boss complicates matters.

There are several twists – watch for the scene at the used car lot where Johnson outplays Ivers so well that you, like him, aren't sure he's been played until it's too late – but eventually the action winds up at a very cool old factory with a manhunt, an exchange of b*llets, and a bomb shelter escape.

It's an outstanding sequence and shows Cagney's skill as the camera angles change seamlessly, smartly giving you both an ominous sense of the immense scale of the place and an intimacy when Ivers and Johnson are hiding in the bomb shelter part of the factory.

There's still one more sequence to go in which all accounts are squared the only way a mid-1950s crime drama could square accounts, but credit Cagney and the actors for a solid g*nbattle ending. That credit really extends throughout the movie.

Did Cagney have what it takes to make a great director? You can't say from this, but he clearly understood how to tell a story on film, how to keep it moving along, how to transition scenes, and how to get actors motivated – he could easily have made a living as a director.

What about the leads? Ivers soon transitioned to TV and less than a decade later began a second career in TV news, eventually working as an anchor and news director. But here he did all that was needed, playing a psychotic hitman who shows some human compassion to Johnson, perhaps the only person who ever showed any to him.

Johnson herself went on to have a long and successful career in TV, seemingly making at least one guest appearance on almost every TV show made for the next four or so decades. Aubuchon, who could make eating candy look menacing, also spent most of his career in TV.

It's played up much more in the 1942 version, but for buttoned-up mid-1950s cinema, you have to give Cagney, Johnson, and Ivers credit for creating some s*xual sparks between a law-abiding woman and a psychotic killer – they snuck that in there well.

The 1942 original version also leaned more heavily into its noir vibe, but by the mid-1950s, crime drama was becoming popular, while television was also pushing screen imagery toward brighter, more evenly lit compositions that played better on the small screen. So Short Cut to Hell feels more Dragnet than The Maltese Falcon.

That's also not a dig at Cagney or the cast, as Hollywood is first a business, and by then television was becoming an increasingly important second revenue stream for movies. Looked at that way, TV both killed and saved the movie industry.

It's a fun "intellectual" parlor game to assess movies as art, but what really matters is whether the darn picture entertains you, and on that scale, for fans of noirs and crime dramas, Short Cut to Hell succeeds as a solid piece of mid-century entertainment.

It also succeeds today as a heck of a time capsule of mid-century America where the cars have huge fins, the men and women dress exquisitely, the trains are efficient, the towns busy but clean, and the general vibe, despite the crime, is one of postwar upward prosperity.

James Cagney directing; Graham Greene providing the source material; solid performances all around; and a heck of a trip to mid-century California make Short Cut to Hell a darn good B-movie crime drama, with all the historical Hollywood lore there only if you care.

 

[Trenchfriend]

1984 (1984), original tone, Dominic Muldowney score.

 

[Harp]

^ Shortcut's mid-century California look is a real draw card. Cagney directed.

^ 1984 ---Haven't really touched any Orwell since college and never agreed entirely his
pessimism; although perhaps it's time to catch a few pieces of the cinema puzzle board.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Bachelor Father from 1931 with C. Aubrey Smith, Marion Davis and Ray Milland


This 1931 talkie proves again how little of what we see today is new, as The Bachelor Father is a version of the "a family can be any people who come together and love each other" story Hollywood has embraced ever since and with even more gusto in the past few decades.

Wealthy Englishman C. Aubrey Smith (a man put on earth to play a wealthy pre-WWII Englishman), after a life of many affairs but no marriage, has his three adult children informed that he's their father and brought to his estate to live with him.

While it's fun to see an impossibly young Ray Milland as one of the children, the only child that really matters to this story is a New Yorker, played by Marion Davies, providing the fish-out-of-water angle.

All the elements of this much-repeated TV and movie scenario are here: Davies is the unrefined New Yorker who shakes up the staid and "proper" home of curmudgeonly Smith, whose butler embraces the youth and enthusiasm she brings into the stuffy house. Meanwhile, Smith's older female friend looks down upon Davies, making one derisive comment after another.

If it sounds familiar, it is. As noted, it's been riffed on countless times since. Here, the movie gold is Smith as the cranky Englishman who slowly comes around to Davies' youthful antics and energy. Always a pro, the material allows Smith to show his full range of acting abilities and he doesn't disappoint.

His transition from the set-in-his-ways "Sir Basil Algernon Winterton" to a man laughing with a renewed energy for life is engaging and enjoyable. Davies, despite being a bit long-in-the-tooth for the role, still looks pretty as heck, but unfortunately dragged a few too many silent-acting mannerisms with her into the talkie era.

Even the big dramatic conflict in The Bachelor Father has become a stock plot twist in these types of stories. (Spoiler alert) Davies finds out, well after she's begun to love her new Dad, that she isn't his daughter, but doesn't tell him for fear of rejection. When this comes out, he, of course, believes she was playing him for money.

(Spoiler alert) Almost from the start, you know this one is going to end well, so after their parting over hurt feelings and reproach – the butler is crestfallen, the older female friend ecstatic – Smith begins to see he's being stubborn and stupid. When Davies is then hurt in an airplane crash, the reunion and happy ending are guaranteed.

The Bachelor Father has some of the usual early-talkie clunkiness and production limitations, but it's still fun to see Smith and Davies bring real verve to a story that Hollywood has employed countless times ever since.

 

[Fading Fast]

Nana (1934) with Anna Sten, Phillips Holmes, Lionel Atwill, Mae Clarke and Muriel Kirkland


There is some indefinable quality that makes a talented actor a star. That is a cliché, but like most clichés, it has some truth as we see Samuel Goldwyn's 1930s discovery, Anna Sten – "The next Garbo!" – is a fine actress, but she doesn't have that indefinable star quality.

Some actors and actresses own the screen in a way that makes them look bigger. Lombard, Grant, Bergman, Gable, and many others take over the screen, often just by their presence. It's not acting talent alone as some fine actors don't have it and some stars are only okay actors.

Say what you will of Greta Garbo or Marlene Dietrich, neither of whom could really deliver one ungarbled English sentence, but they owned the screen. In a movie, you can't take your eyes off them. Everyone else, other than another true star, fades in a scene with them.

When Samuel Goldwyn pulled Anna Sten out of Europe, he thought he had the next Garbo – an exotic, enigmatic "foreign" s*x symbol who could carry a picture. He trained, groomed, and promoted her with great expectations for her American movie debut: Nana.

The result was bland. No Garbo mysterious s*xual allure or Dietrich German dom*natrix subtext appeared on screen. Instead, she is just a reasonably pretty young woman and a reasonably talented actress, with not-so-reasonably good English. Meh.

From a cinematic history viewpoint, that's really all that matters about Nana. It didn't launch Sten, but was the start of a short and fast fizzle back to all but anonymity. Yes, she continued acting, married well, and by all accounts led a full life, but she was not the next Garbo.

Nana – a watered-down screenplay of an Émile Zola novel about love, lust, and brotherly antipathy – might not have been a great choice to launch her career, but subsequent movies proved her lack of star power. And to be fair, she acquits herself well, just not star-power well.

The high-level story in Nana is about a prostitute, played by Sten, who is earning a good living and gets a great break when a theatrical producer discovers and makes her a star. Now sleeping with the producer (there's always a cost), she falls for an army captain, played by Phillips Holmes.

In anger, the theatrical producer has her blackballed from the theater. Then Holmes' brother, a colonel played by Lionel Atwill – maybe out of concern for his brother – has him transferred overseas to separate him from Sten, whose reputation could ruin Holmes' military career.

It's one of the movie's stronger sequences, as her downward spiral hits like a one-two punch: first the scene where the theatrical producer says, "You'll never act in the theater again," and then, a few scenes later, Atwill says, "You'll never see my brother again."

Sten has had quite a ride so far – from ho*ker to theater star/mistress to a woman in love to a woman without a career or lover – still, there are a few more twists coming that you'll want to see fresh, but you'll feel one of them way ahead of time.

Despite all the effort and money of Goldwyn and others, the picture feels low energy. It often slogs its way from scene to scene with several awkward transitions, despite having a first-rate co-director in Dorothy Arzner, the only major woman director at the time.

The cast helps and hurts. Atwill is a professional, but he seems old for the role here and is unconvincing in his later scenes. Holmes, whose movie-acting career never made any sense, delivers another sleepy, uneven performance, often punctuated by yelling to imitate emotion.

The two pure joys in this are Mae Clarke and Muriel Kirkland as Sten's friends from her bordello days, who stay in touch and even live with Sten for a time after she's moved on. Their roles are small, but pay attention as they are given some great lines and fully embrace their parts.

Today, Nana exists mainly as a cinematic curio: Samuel Goldwyn's failed attempt to make Anna Sten the next Greta Garbo. Throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s, somebody was always about to discover the next Garbo – it never happened.

Nana aggressively argues that one of the great Hollywood lies is, "I'll make you a star." Nothing and nobody can make you a star if you don't already have star pixie dust in you. If you do, you still need the opportunity to show it; if you don't, you need a train ticket back home.