What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[AmateisGal]

Watch on the Rhine with Bette Davis and Paul Lukas. An incredible film (I had to buy it on DVD but TCM had it on today).

North by Northwest because it was a loooooong day and that is one of my comfort movies (it was also on TCM).

 

[Fading Fast]

Watch on the Rhine with Bette Davis and Paul Lukas. An incredible film (I had to buy it on DVD but TCM had it on today).

North by Northwest because it was a loooooong day and that is one of my comfort movies (it was also on TCM).

NBNW is, rightfully, a classic, but WOTR is also a heck of a good movie. Lucile Watson and Paul Lukas really shine in that one.

 

[Fading Fast]

Contempt from 1963 with Bridget Bardot, Michael Piccoli, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang and Giorgia Moll


A bigger budget does not always make for a better movie. French New Wave film impresario Jean-Luc Godard used his larger-than-usual budget for Contempt to film in color and hire some big-name actors, including, reportedly, half the budget going to one of that moment's "it girls," Bridget Bardot.

Yet Godard is rightfully better known for his smaller-budget black and white offerings with not-well-known actors.

In Contempt, the ostensible story is about a bullying American film producer, played by Jack Palance, trying to use money and persuasion to hire a French screenwriter, played by Michael Piccoli, to give his updated movie version of the classic Greek tale The Odyssey commercial appeal.

The "real" story, though, is about the disintegration of Piccoli's marriage to his new bride, played by Bridget Bardot. Woven into both stories are parallels in character and plot to The Odyssey that feel forced or, at minimum, superfluous.

Thrown into the mix is Fritz Lang playing himself as the director of the movie within a movie and Giorgia Moll playing Palance's assistant, translator (he only speaks English) and, one assumes, sexual play thing.

Palance tries to bully, and entice with money, Piccoli into improving the screenplay, while he also tries to seduce Piccoli's wife, Bardot. Piccoli, a nauseatingly insecure man, sort of uses his wife to help seal the deal, which seems to throw their marriage into crisis, but it's a bit vague.

Whatever the exact reason, the core of the movie is Piccoli whining to Bardot that he thinks she doesn't love him anymore and Bardot, alternatingly, telling him she does love him and doesn't love him, both proclamations, usually, delivered with a bored, spiteful tone.

These two passive aggressively fight about big and small things with one of the major arguments being whether or not he is "selling out" by writing for Hollywood and not the theater, back when that seemed to matter. Bardot and Piccoli switch sides in this argument so many times that you lose track of who is arguing for what.

For one-hundred-and-forty-two minutes, the movie revisits the same territory: Palance being the arrogant and pushy American producer expecting to get his way and Piccoli and Bardot's marriage breaking apart.

The first big theme, clearly, is the corrupting influence of money in film as artists - writers, actors and directors - have to grovel before wealthy businessmen who don't care about art (Palance disdains the word "culture") because they only produce movies to make money and capture some of the shine of fame.

What is always lost in this perennial artist lament against money and capitalism is that someone will always have to pay for the movie to be made as, even in a socialist paradise, filmmaking is not free. Every movie made by the ministry of culture means there will be less resources for other societal needs like food, medicine or clothing.

Competing thematically with the money-art issue is some kind of commentary on marriage, love, sex and lust as we sense that Piccoli married Bardot because of her beauty and sexual allure, while Bardot married Piccoli, maybe, because she felt he was a true artist. She, then, lost her love when she watched him somewhat whore her and his talent out to get Palance's well-paying screenwriting job.

Bardot is very good as the bored and smarter-than-she-looks sex goddess, but she's also a distraction because, well, she's Bridget Bardot! in a movie that didn't need a big star. Not helping were her few nude scenes (back not front) because, as fun as they are to see - and they are - they felt forced.

Piccoli is excellent as the cripplingly diffident lover and writer. Lang, in a smaller role, is also excellent as the director who wearily knows he has to balance his artistic aspirations with his paymaster's demands. Palance, perhaps on purpose, comes across as a stereotype of an ugly American producer.

Filmed in Italy with many scenic location shots, Contempt is often quite pretty but feels off as the attractive settings in beautiful color do not fit the angst, ennui and anger of its themes. It's a movie begging for black and white film.

If you free Contempt from the baggage and expectations of Godard and "French New Wave Cinema," it's an okay, slow-moving picture that explores some traditional movie subject matter with several excellent performances.

With all its baggage, expectations and big budget, though, Contempt is an effort hobbled by, one, not saying something really new about its well-worn themes and, two, a prepossessing blonde actress who put in a very good performance, but who still detracted from the movie's balance and flow.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I saw this recently and had a similar reaction. I'm not a Godard fan in general, but this film was such a bizarre mix of elements and so beautifully shot that it held my interest. I'm not saying it's good, and it's certainly not a must-see classic, but I found it a weirdly interesting mess.

What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

The Wheeler Dealers from 1963 with James Garner, Lee Remick, Jim Backus and John Astin "You don't go wheelin' 'n' dealin' for money. You do it for fun. Money's just the way you keep score." The Wheeler Dealers is not meant to be taken seriously; it's really a 1960s version of the 1930s...

www.thefedoralounge.com

 

[Worf]

View attachment 496471
Contempt from 1963 with Bridget Bardot, Michael Piccoli, Jack Palance, Fritz Lang and Giorgia Moll


A bigger budget does not always make for a better movie. French New Wave film impresario Jean-Luc Godard used his larger-than-usual budget for Contempt to film in color and hire some big-name actors, including, reportedly, half the budget going to one of that moment's "it girls," Bridget Bardot.

Yet Godard is rightfully better known for his smaller-budget black and white offerings with not-well-known actors.

In Contempt, the ostensible story is about a bullying American film producer, played by Jack Palance, trying to use money and persuasion to hire a French screenwriter, played by Michael Piccoli, to give his updated movie version of the classic Greek tale The Odyssey commercial appeal.

The "real" story, though, is about the disintegration of Piccoli's marriage to his new bride, played by Bridget Bardot. Woven into both stories are parallels in character and plot to The Odyssey that feel forced or, at minimum, superfluous.

Thrown into the mix is Fritz Lang playing himself as the director of the movie within a movie and Giorgia Moll playing Palance's assistant, translator (he only speaks English) and, one assumes, sexual play thing.

Palance tries to bully, and entice with money, Piccoli into improving the screenplay, while he also tries to seduce Piccoli's wife, Bardot. Piccoli, a nauseatingly insecure man, sort of uses his wife to help seal the deal, which seems to throw their marriage into crisis, but it's a bit vague.

Whatever the exact reason, the core of the movie is Piccoli whining to Bardot that he thinks she doesn't love him anymore and Bardot, alternatingly, telling him she does love him and doesn't love him, both proclamations, usually, delivered with a bored, spiteful tone.

These two passive aggressively fight about big and small things with one of the major arguments being whether or not he is "selling out" by writing for Hollywood and not the theater, back when that seemed to matter. Bardot and Piccoli switch sides in this argument so many times that you lose track of who is arguing for what.

For one-hundred-and-forty-two minutes, the movie revisits the same territory: Palance being the arrogant and pushy American producer expecting to get his way and Piccoli and Bardot's marriage breaking apart.

The first big theme, clearly, is the corrupting influence of money in film as artists - writers, actors and directors - have to grovel before wealthy businessmen who don't care about art (Palance disdains the word "culture") because they only produce movies to make money and capture some of the shine of fame.

What is always lost in this perennial artist lament against money and capitalism is that someone will always have to pay for the movie to be made as, even in a socialist paradise, filmmaking is not free. Every movie made by the ministry of culture means there will be less resources for other societal needs like food, medicine or clothing.

Competing thematically with the money-art issue is some kind of commentary on marriage, love, sex and lust as we sense that Piccoli married Bardot because of her beauty and sexual allure, while Bardot married Piccoli, maybe, because she felt he was a true artist. She, then, lost her love when she watched him somewhat whore her and his talent out to get Palance's well-paying screenwriting job.

Bardot is very good as the bored and smarter-than-she-looks sex goddess, but she's also a distraction because, well, she's Bridget Bardot! in a movie that didn't need a big star. Not helping were her few nude scenes (back not front) because, as fun as they are to see - and they are - they felt forced.

Piccoli is excellent as the cripplingly diffident lover and writer. Lang, in a smaller role, is also excellent as the director who wearily knows he has to balance his artistic aspirations with his paymaster's demands. Palance, perhaps on purpose, comes across as a stereotype of an ugly American producer.

Filmed in Italy with many scenic location shots, Contempt is often quite pretty but feels off as the attractive settings in beautiful color do not fit the angst, ennui and anger of its themes. It's a movie begging for black and white film.

If you free Contempt from the baggage and expectations of Godard and "French New Wave Cinema," it's an okay, slow-moving picture that explores some traditional movie subject matter with several excellent performances.

With all its baggage, expectations and big budget, though, Contempt is an effort hobbled by, one, not saying something really new about its well-worn themes and, two, a prepossessing blonde actress who put in a very good performance, but who still detracted from the movie's balance and flow.

Hey Mods!!!!!!! I must protest! Such.... feminine pulchritude so early in my morning is not good for my mental state!!!! Can't concentrate nay bit as the few brain cells I have left are all scattered and distracted!

Worf

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

From William Wyler, it was 1941's The Little Foxes, with Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, Teresa Wright, Richard Carlson, and a good many others, adapted from the drama of the same name.

Yikes.

Here's the summary from IMDB: The ruthless, moneyed Hubbard clan lives in, and poisons, their part of the deep South at the turn of the twentieth century.

Davis is unimaginable as driven leader of the Hubbard family, desperate for funding from a Chicago investor, to prop up their cotton business. Her two brothers are by turns weak, cowardly, venal, fraudulently jolly, and disgustingly cruel to wife, family, and hired help.

Marshall is stricken with a heart ailment, which threatens his life. The film opens without him, then when he shows up, he's almost an invalid. The relatives scheme to get the finances in the most heartless way. It's an unappealing universe.

Wyler sets up some scenes in a more cinematic way, taking us outside of the stage play origins of the story. The film-school-student-that-I-never-was noticed the placement of some characters close to the camera, with a second character in the middle ground, and a third in the distance. Additionally, he has a conversation going on in the foreground, and we see someone move into frame sort of in the background or off to one side. These set ups are used several times to good effect.

Fun fact: This was the screen debut of Dan Duryea (Cornell '28) who performs his role from the play. His character is a million years away from the hood roles that came his way later on.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Watch on the Rhine with Bette Davis and Paul Lukas. An incredible film (I had to buy it on DVD but TCM had it on today).

North by Northwest because it was a loooooong day and that is one of my comfort movies (it was also on TCM).

A great comfort film is the Second World War Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Book lovers on the Isle
during the war and immediate post war era, life, death, and love. What else here in this category...hmm...Of course, Casablanca, Wizard of Oz; Waterloo Bridge with Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh, WWI lovers reminiscence film...tissues; and A League of Their Own, another box. The Trouble With Angels with Rosailand Russell and Haley Mills. Good cuddlers. With hot chocolate. Ok, Sabrina and Breakfast at Tiffanys. I'll know I can think of more.

 

[AmateisGal]

A great comfort film is the Second World War Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Book lovers on the Isle
during the war and immediate post war era, life, death, and love. What else here in this category...hmm...Of course, Casablanca, Wizard of Oz; Waterloo Bridge with Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh, WWI lovers reminiscence film...tissues; and A League of Their Own, another box. The Trouble With Angels with Rosailand Russell and Haley Mills. Good cuddlers. With hot chocolate. Ok, Sabrina and Breakfast at Tiffanys. I'll know I can think of more.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is a fantastic movie - and the book is also wonderful!

 

[AmateisGal]

Everything Everywhere All At Once.

What an utterly bizarre movie, yet it was so good. One of the strangest movies I've ever seen. Stellar performances by the cast, though, and they all deserve the award nominations and wins they've been receiving.

 

[Touchofevil]

Ocean’s 11 (2001) and Ocean’s 12 (2004) this rainy afternoon. Great cast in both movies. I had forgotten how entertaining both movies are.

 

[Fading Fast]

Peter Ibbetson from 1935 with Gary Cooper, Ann Harding and John Halliday


If they had been making movies in the nineteenth century, Peter Ibbetson, based on writer George du Maurier's 1891 novel of the same name, would have been the type of movie audiences would have understood and appreciated.

Du Maurier (grandfather of noted author Daphne du Maurier) was a writer of the Romantic Era where individual heroism, intensely felt emotions, a transcendental connection to nature, a general religious spiritualism and epic romances were celebrated as some of mankind's highest ideals.

All of these values imbue director Henry Hathaway's thoughtfully slow movie interpretation of Du Maurier's Peter Ibbetson.

As very young children, "Gogo" and "Mary" share a brief idyllic friendship as English expats in an upscale suburb of Paris. After his mother passes, though, while he is still a very young boy, "Gogo," whose real name is Peter, is taken to England by his uncle.

The movie then fast forwards to where we see that the adult Peter, played by Gary Cooper, is a strong-willed architect with an unfulfilled romantic yearning.

He is sent on assignment to build new stables for the Duchess of Tower, played by Ann Harding, whom we realize, before Cooper does, is the Mary of his youth.

Harding is married to a decent and kind Duke, played by John Halliday, with whom she has a pleasant, albeit seemingly passionless marriage.

That's a lot of set up - and it takes some time to unfold - for the rest of the movie, which has two parts. First, Harding and Cooper have to discover their shared past as they fall in love anew and, then, fate has to, once more, brutally separates the two lovers.

Parted again, Romantic Era idealism kicks into high gear as Cooper and Harding connect through their dreams, which allows them to live in some spiritually linked neverland on earth until they can finally reunite in the afterlife.

There are of course more earthly details - stables to be built, Dukes to fight, courts to pass judgement and prisons to be locked in - but Peter Ibbetson's heart and soul is the timeless romantic bond Harding and Cooper share from childhood into the great beyond, despite many secular obstacles.

Their abiding love is metaphysically tied through nature as it is not just a physical attraction or regular love; no, theirs is a love for the ages, a love one would gladly die for because it is a love that exceeds our earthly constraints.

Harding and Cooper do a good job carrying the heavy burden of portraying that type of eternal Romantic Era love.

Harding is blessed with an ethereal beauty, a prenatural calmness and a captivatingly dulcet voice that makes her almost look and sound like a visitor from another planet who took a perfect human form.

Cooper is both that handsome, and that good an actor, that he can almost make you believe in an anything-is-possible world.

Cooper would, later in his career, play another strong-willed individualist architect in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

Despite being known today as an ardent advocate of individualism and capitalism, Rand viewed her own writing as "romantic" in the sense of the Romantic Era.

She penned characters, like the architect Cooper played, as unyielding individualists passionately committed to the integrity of their work and the fidelity of their love.

Rand described Cooper's character as a hero not bowed by compromise or public opinion; a man of personal integrity and honor.

Seen in that light, Cooper's architect in Peter Ibbetson is an earlier incarnation of the Randian architect he would play a decade and half later.

Both his Ibbetson and Randian versions are really "romantics" willing to work for free (yes, even in the "capitalist-advocating" The Fountainhead), but the work must be carried out to their exacting standards.

Peter Ibbetson is a throwback movie to a time before there were movies; to a time in the nineteenth century when society's values were profoundly different than they are today or than they were even in the 1930s when the movie was released.

It takes an appreciation, or at least an understanding of the values of the Romantic Era to fully appreciate and understand the intensely romantic Peter Ibbetson. But if one can adjust his or her modern cultural mindset, Peter Ibbetson is a pleasant trip to a more-idealistic time.


N.B. The 2001 movie Kate and Leopold examines a Romantic Era outlook versus our present-day "realistic/pragmatic" outlook when accidental time-traveler Leopold brings his nineteenth-century romantic views of love and his unyielding personal integrity to Kate's 2001 world of business compromise and casual sex. It's a fun romcom whose pivotal moment forces modern Kate to decide which world she prefers.

 

[Fading Fast]

Peg o' My Heart from 1933 with Marion Davies, Onslow Stephens, J. Farrell MacDonald and Irene Browne


Peg o' My Heart's core story is the classic Hollywood tale of a poor somebody who surprisingly find that he or she will inherit a lot of money if he or she meets certain conditions of a will, which usually puts the poor person in a "fish out of water" situation amongst snooty rich people who don't want him or her there.

In this telling, it's Marion Davies as the poor "Irish lass" who lives in a small idyllic seaside village with her kindly fisherman dad, played by J. Farrell MacDonald.

She stands to inherit a big estate if she'll, one, go live on the estate in England for three years to be "educated" in the ways of her new class and, two, will agree to never see her Dad again.

A friend of the English family, played by Onslow Stevens, brings her Dad the news. When these two tell Davies about her inheritance, they intentionally fudge the part about Davies never seeing her Dad again so that she'll accept it and go to England. Thus, along with her dog Michael, off goes poor Irish girl Davies to live with the wealthy family in England.

Davies isn't wanted by the family, but is somewhat embraced as, per the will, the family gets paid money to "educate" her.

In addition to the cardboard matriarch, played by Irene Browne, who can't help looking down on Davies even though it's against her best interest, there's a daughter who is engaged to Stevens, but she is also having an affair with a married man.

The family, additionally, has a son, played as a stereotypical covertly gay man of the era, whom the family wants to marry Davies so that they can keep control of the money - good luck with that idea. Also thrown into the mix is the family's haughty butler, which leaves the odds stacked against Davies.

Finally, amidst all the confusing relationship and family dynamics, Davies develops a crush on Stevens.

The story is choppy, and as expected, things don't go well for Davies in her new family. Her simple honesty grinds the gears of the Kabuki Theater of aristocratic English society where people say and do things on the surface that are, often, the opposite of what they believe or want to do.

The climax (no real spoilers coming), as is normal in these stories, has the family learning a few lessons about itself that aren't pretty as Davies learns that "her betters" maybe aren't so better.

Some respect is gained here or there, but the resolution, playing to one of Hollywood's favorite tropes of all times, avers that poor people are happier than rich people.

Davies gives the role her all, even singing several songs along the way, and it's an impressive performance, but she still has a few too many silent-film mannerisms and is too inconsistent in her portrayal to look fully comfortable in the part. She isn't helped by a very uneven story that flubs its narrative once she gets to the English estate.

The only actors who look fully comfortable in their roles are, one, MacDonald as the dad giving up his much beloved daughter for what he thinks will be a better life for her, two, Onslow as the one guy who knows all the truths that are being hidden and, three, Michael the dog who is darn adorable throughout.

Peg o' My Heart tries hard, but director Robert Z. Leonard lost control of his movie's narrative as he lacked the strong hand to keep its many storylines flowing and characters consistent. After a solid setup in Ireland, the story atomizes in England and then is rushed to a conclusion that leaves many unanswered questions.

Hollywood has told versions of this story too many times to count (director James Cameron turned the fantastic technological and hubristic story of the Titanic into a boring rich-versus-poor-people tale in his 1997 movie), with Peg o' My Heart being just an average effort, interesting today mainly for Marion Davies fans.

 

[Fading Fast]

Requiem for a Heavyweight from 1962 with Anthony Quinn, Jackie Gleason, Julie Harris and Mickey Rooney


Powerful performances drive this engrossing and gritty Rod Serling screenplay about professional boxing's human backwash in an era when corrupt managers and the sport's physical punishment left ex-boxers destitute in middle age after the fight game was done with them.

In Requiem for a Heavyweight, Anthony Quinn plays a former heavyweight contender who just learned, after his last match (which includes a cameo by Muhammad Ali, when he was still Cassius Clay), that he can't fight anymore owing to an eye injury.

Quinn's character is big, proud, beat up, skilless out of the ring, punchdrunk, uneducated, kind, loyal and decent: a combination that leaves him with no clear path to future employment.

Jackie Gleason plays a hustler who's managed Quinn his entire seventeen-year career, but who now, after betting Quinn would lose in four rounds in his last fight, is in hock to the mob because Quinn went seven rounds.

Gleason's only out is to turn Quinn into a professional wrestler and use the revenue from his matches to pay off the mob.

The “hook” would be for Mexican Quinn to appear in an Indian costume with a tomahawk in hand and "whoop it up" before his matches to excite the crowd, something that would humiliate proud Quinn.

Quinn's cutman, and the third part of the team, played by Mickey Rooney, wants to help Quinn find a dignified post-boxing path, but other than a kind heart, Rooney has no skills as a career advisor.

These are Damon Runyon characters who are lost outside of their insular and seedy boxing world.

Enter a social worker, played by Julie Harris, who goes beyond the call of duty trying to help Quinn, but Quinn's own limitations and Gleason's trickery undermine her efforts.

Director Ralph Nelson, using realistically squalid sets, dreary New York City location shots and crisp black and white cinematography, creates a noirish landscape of a cold and grimmy world where boxing's losers desperately scramble to survive.

The "hotel" apartment Gleason, Quinn and Rooney share, with shirts hanging from overhead water pipes, a sink in the living room, exposed wires running up walls and a dive bar in the lobby, poignantly exposes the life all three men are living and facing.

Their performances are Oscar-nomination worthy. Quinn breaks your heart as a kind and proud man realizing the world has no place left for him. Rooney deeply moves you as Quinn's friend and as Gleason's conscience who is frustrated that he can provide no real help to Quinn.

Gleason's performance is wonderfully subtle as he realizes too late that Quinn deserves better from him. After hustling everyone, Gleason has a nuanced moment of self awareness and disgust at himself that is brilliantly done. He was so much more of an actor than just Ralph Kramden.

Harris is the outsider, the one clean thing in the movie, who tries to be the change agent, but who learns that good intentions can't fix a broken man living in a broken world. Her character's affection for Quinn is believable and free of condescension.

You also want to look for Madame Spivy's performance as Ma Greeny, the frightening, androgynous head of the mob to whom Gleason owes money.

In her brief appearance, she conveys a sinisterness and commanding presence that leaves you with no doubt she's in charge and Gleason is in deep trouble.

Requiem for a Heavyweight is a gem of a movie that somehow flies below the radar of even many classic film fans.

Serling's screenplay captured the nasty, brutal and heartless side of one of America's biggest sports in the middle of the twentieth century by personalizing it with characters that will stay with you long after you've watched the movie.

 

[Edward]

A great comfort film is the Second World War Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Book lovers on the Isle
during the war and immediate post war era, life, death, and love. What else here in this category...hmm...Of course, Casablanca, Wizard of Oz; Waterloo Bridge with Robert Taylor and Vivien Leigh, WWI lovers reminiscence film...tissues; and A League of Their Own, another box. The Trouble With Angels with Rosailand Russell and Haley Mills. Good cuddlers. With hot chocolate. Ok, Sabrina and Breakfast at Tiffanys. I'll know I can think of more.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is a real classic. I'm always amused at George Peppard's fine performance in this one, given that I'm of a generation whose primary experience of his acting was The A Team. Moon River is wonderful. (It would be, of course - Henry Mancini was a genius.) I do so hope, though, that eventually someone will do a new version that is faithful to the book. Some years ago - 2009, according to the Googles - there was a West End stage production starring Anna Friel as Holly, which did it all beautifully. True to the book, set in the forties, and with the original bookendings and conclusion to the story intact. I really wish someone would adapt that for the screen, though I fear that's the drawback of the original being such a well-love classic; it's very hard to remake that. Aside from the jarring change to the end, though (and Mickey Rooney's unpleasant yellowface), the original still holds up today.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Scandal Sheet (1952), directed by Phil Karlson, with Broderick Crawford, Donna Reed, and John Derek. Crawford plays the hard-charging, no-nonsense editor of a great metropolitan daily, tasked with turning a formerly prestigious newspaper into a profitable publication via the means of pandering, no-class tabloidism. Reed is the feature reporter with a strong sense of decency, and Derek is the eager newshound with the drive to land that blockbuster headline story.
Without giving anything away, Crawford does a crime, and, wouldja believe it, the crime gets investigated by his very own scandal sheet. Stay until the end for the pulse-pounding climax. Karlson peoples the screen with familiar faces, and a lot of saloon dwellers who look frighteningly like actual down and outers.

 

[Fading Fast]

Scandal Sheet (1952), directed by Phil Karlson, with Broderick Crawford, Donna Reed, and John Derek. Crawford plays the hard-charging, no-nonsense editor of a great metropolitan daily, tasked with turning a formerly prestigious newspaper into a profitable publication via the means of pandering, no-class tabloidism. Reed is the feature reporter with a strong sense of decency, and Derek is the eager newshound with the drive to land that blockbuster headline story.
Without giving anything away, Crawford does a crime, and, wouldja believe it, the crime gets investigated by his very own scandal sheet. Stay until the end for the pulse-pounding climax. Karlson peoples the screen with familiar faces, and a lot of saloon dwellers who look frighteningly like actual down and outers.

That's a really good summary. I enjoyed this movie a lot, despite it going a bit over the top on the melodrama. I always find John Derek interesting simply because I know acting was just a warm up to his real life's work, which was marrying several of the world's most-beautiful women.

 

[EngProf]

View attachment 498443
Requiem for a Heavyweight from 1962 with Anthony Quinn, Jackie Gleason, Julie Harris and Mickey Rooney


Powerful performances drive this engrossing and gritty Rod Serling screenplay about professional boxing's human backwash in an era when corrupt managers and the sport's physical punishment left ex-boxers destitute in middle age after the fight game was done with them.

In Requiem for a Heavyweight, Anthony Quinn plays a former heavyweight contender who just learned, after his last match (which includes a cameo by Muhammad Ali, when he was still Cassius Clay), that he can't fight anymore owing to an eye injury.

Quinn's character is big, proud, beat up, skilless out of the ring, punchdrunk, uneducated, kind, loyal and decent: a combination that leaves him with no clear path to future employment.

Jackie Gleason plays a hustler who's managed Quinn his entire seventeen-year career, but who now, after betting Quinn would lose in four rounds in his last fight, is in hock to the mob because Quinn went seven rounds.

Gleason's only out is to turn Quinn into a professional wrestler and use the revenue from his matches to pay off the mob.

The “hook” would be for Mexican Quinn to appear in an Indian costume with a tomahawk in hand and "whoop it up" before his matches to excite the crowd, something that would humiliate proud Quinn.

Quinn's cutman, and the third part of the team, played by Mickey Rooney, wants to help Quinn find a dignified post-boxing path, but other than a kind heart, Rooney has no skills as a career advisor.

These are Damon Runyon characters who are lost outside of their insular and seedy boxing world.

Enter a social worker, played by Julie Harris, who goes beyond the call of duty trying to help Quinn, but Quinn's own limitations and Gleason's trickery undermine her efforts.

Director Ralph Nelson, using realistically squalid sets, dreary New York City location shots and crisp black and white cinematography, creates a noirish landscape of a cold and grimmy world where boxing's losers desperately scramble to survive.

The "hotel" apartment Gleason, Quinn and Rooney share, with shirts hanging from overhead water pipes, a sink in the living room, exposed wires running up walls and a dive bar in the lobby, poignantly exposes the life all three men are living and facing.

Their performances are Oscar-nomination worthy. Quinn breaks your heart as a kind and proud man realizing the world has no place left for him. Rooney deeply moves you as Quinn's friend and as Gleason's conscience who is frustrated that he can provide no real help to Quinn.

Gleason's performance is wonderfully subtle as he realizes too late that Quinn deserves better from him. After hustling everyone, Gleason has a nuanced moment of self awareness and disgust at himself that is brilliantly done. He was so much more of an actor than just Ralph Kramden.

Harris is the outsider, the one clean thing in the movie, who tries to be the change agent, but who learns that good intentions can't fix a broken man living in a broken world. Her character's affection for Quinn is believable and free of condescension.

You also want to look for Madame Spivy's performance as Ma Greeny, the frightening, androgynous head of the mob to whom Gleason owes money.

In her brief appearance, she conveys a sinisterness and commanding presence that leaves you with no doubt she's in charge and Gleason is in deep trouble.

Requiem for a Heavyweight is a gem of a movie that somehow flies below the radar of even many classic film fans.

Serling's screenplay captured the nasty, brutal and heartless side of one of America's biggest sports in the middle of the twentieth century by personalizing it with characters that will stay with you long after you've watched the movie.

View attachment 498445

I'd like to strongly "second-the-motion" concerning both the quality of "Requiem" and the acting skill of Jackie Gleason. A somewhat similar movie in which Gleason is superb is "The Hustler". His "Minnesota Fats" character out-acts Paul Newman by about 5 to 1.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

I'd like to strongly "second-the-motion" concerning both the quality of "Requiem" and the acting skill of Jackie Gleason. A somewhat similar movie in which Gleason is superb is "The Hustler". His "Minnesota Fats" character out-acts Paul Newman by about 5 to 1.

The acting skills Gleason showed as Minnesota Fats carried that film around the billiard table and beyond.
Requiem I haven't seen but after reading Fast's deep analysis I must.

 

[Touchofevil]

Currently, Shield for Murder (1954) on ScreenPix. Edmond O’Brien seethes with a believable never ending anger in this noir. The pistol-whipping scene in the restaurant made me almost root for this corrupt police detective.
It is definitely worth a watch.

 

[Touchofevil]

Began this morning with The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man on TCM. If Lady ToE and schoolwork allows for it, I will follow this up with The Third Man, Charade, Laura, Vertigo, and Rear Window. What a lineup for a rainy Sunday.