What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

Ship of Fools from 1965 with Jose Ferrer, Heinz Ruhmann, Michael Dunn, Vivien Leigh, Lee Marvin and Werner Klemperer


Glocken: "Lowenthal, you are blind; you're absolutely blind! You can't see what's going on in front of your own face."

Lowenthal: "What do you mean? Ah, you mean this business about the Jews? You don't understand us. The German-Jew is something special. We are Germans first and Jews second. We have done so much for Germany; Germany has done so much for us. A little patience, a little good will; it works itself out."

[Glocken scoffs endearingly]

Lowenthal: "Huh, listen, there are nearly a million Jews in Germany. What are they going to do? Kill all of us?"

[Glocken looks frightened]


Set in the early 1930s, the ship in Ship of Fools, based on Katherine Anne Porter's popular 1962 novel, is a German passenger liner on its way from Veracruz to Germany.

Its stories are the usual soap opera tales of any passenger ship, but these take place under the shadow of an aborning Nazi Germany, resulting in a grippingly depressing series of vignettes interlaced with foreboding.

First class has the regular cross section of the rich and strivers, while steerage, on this ship, is packed with Spanish day laborers being forcibly returned from Cuba to Spain.

Knowing what post-war audiences knew, the parallels to the WWII refugee ships of unwanted Jews was painfully clear.

At the personal level, we meet a series of people including the ship's sad doctor, played by Oskar Werner, whose unhappy family life and heart trouble has caused him to "escape" to sea.

On this voyage, he meets an exiled-from-Cuba Spanish national and drug addict, played by Simone Signoret. These two lost souls find each other in what appears to be a doomed relationship.

Also on board is a wealthy, lonely middle-aged American widow, played by Vivian Leigh, who finds men who will sleep with her, but nothing more. It is a point painfully made clear to her by a disgruntled third officer played by Werner Klemperer.

Additionally, we meet a young couple, played by George Segal and Elizabeth Ashley, who have great sex, but pretty much fight about everything else. In the mix, too, is a Spanish dance troupe, which is really just a cover for a ship-board prostitution service - yup.

But the heart and soul of Ship of Fools is the forced propinquity of its few Jewish passengers, one, a nice salesman played by Heinz Ruhmann, with its strident Nazis, one in particular, played with pseudo-intellectual menace by Jose Ferrer.

Ferrer's and Ruhmann's performances, effectively serving as surrogates for the Nazis and the German Jews, respectively, are as powerful and meaningful today as ever, with Ruhmann's portrayal of a weary but hopeful Jew poignantly juxtaposed against Ferrer's fanaticism.

From which table one sits at to which berth one gets in a shared cabin, the tension between the Jews and Germans run high. The Nazis, just coming to power in Germany, are emboldened, while many of the Jews, as seen in the quote at the top, believe "this too will pass."

In a critical role is the little person actor (referred to in the movie as a dwarf) Michael Dunn who acts as the conscience of the story often awkwardly breaking the fourth wall, albeit with funny, satirical or insightful comments.

The cast in Ship of Fools is talented and impressive, which helps shepherd this soap opera over its bumpy parts, while giving more depth to what, even then, were off-the-shelf stories.

Director Stanley Kramer, though, somehow kept all the stories moving along at a good clip, while providing each member of this professional cast an opportunity to highlight his or her talents in several memorable scenes.

What makes Ship of Fools most memorable, though, is how deeply sad it is. Audiences in 1965, when the movie was released, like audiences today, knew that all this 1930s ideology and animosity would eventually result in the horror and carnage of the Holocaust and World War II.

Watching Ship of Fools, you can't help thinking, "if only it could have been stopped," but perhaps author Porter's title was referring to more than just this particular ship as many in the 1930s saw that the world was sailing into a cataclysm, but they were powerless to stop it.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Goodbye Girl from 1977 with Richard Dreyfuss, Marsha Mason and Quinn Cummings


The truly best romcoms have no higher purpose than to be a romcom. They don't attempt to make timeless philosophical or political commentary about men, women or their relationships and they don't need to break new ground; it's often better if they don't.

Like a dog chasing a tennis ball, the joy is in the simple repetitive act itself. The Goodbye Girl is a perfect little dog-chasing-a-tennis-ball romcom. It's funny, romantic and nothing more; it is the romcom in its purest form.

Marsha Mason plays a single mom of a ten-year-old girl, played by Quinn Cummings, whose actor husband left her and their daughter years ago and whose current actor boyfriend just left them flat in their large shabby New York City apartment.

Worse, the actor boyfriend subleased the apartment out from under Mason and her daughter to another actor, played by Richard Dreyfuss, who shows up the same night the boyfriend left looking to move in. Mason and Dreyfuss do not have a meet cute.

These two, instead, start right off at the "we don't like each other" phase of the romcom relationship, but you still notice the spark. After a good amount of fighting, they agree to share the apartment.

He's a self-absorbed, somewhat hippy-dippy actor and she's a pragmatic single mom who has been burned twice by actor boyfriends, so you know where this is going: he meditates and then practices his lines, while she wants to discuss food-sharing rules and "boundaries."

Writer Neil Simon basically reassembled the parts of his signature creation, The Odd Couple, but this time with a romantic subtext that becomes the story. It's not groundbreaking, but it works, helped along by rapid-fire dialogue laced with sharp one-liners and funny asides.

The rest of the movie plays out as every good romcom ever plays out. Mason and Dreyfus irritate the hell out of each other, but they also begin to develop feelings for the other. It helps that Dreyfuss bonds well with Mason's daughter.

Eventually, Mason and Dreyfus start to admit, a bit, to themselves that something is going on between them. Then some contrivance brings them close together, followed by some other contrivance pushing them apart until they have the climatic decision moment of do we go for this or not?

It works because Mason, Dreyfuss and Cummings - all real-world normal-looking people - create fun quirky characters you are rooting for. Yes, of course, Cummings plays a precocious kid, but not so much so that she isn't still a kid and a quite likable one.

Dreyfuss, who won an Oscar for his performance here, is at the top of his game as the self-centered actor who is an odd blend of hyperkinetic cockiness and insecurity, which has him spitting out dialogue, machine-gun like, at an often flummoxed Mason.

Mason, stuck with the less-desirable somewhat-"Felix" role here, does a good job of being an anxious and rightfully angry and defensive single mom who shows enough vulnerability and kindness to keep her character from being brittle.

New York City, especially their rundown and ramshackled old apartment, is like a fourth character. The chaos of the City in the 1970s - daylight muggings and garbage everywhere but still, with a pulsating energy - makes the need to find a connection with someone palpable.

The Goodbye Girl leverages the basic romcom formula with a Neil Simon New York City Odd Couple overlay and the acting talents of Mason, Dreyfuss and Cummings to create a nearly perfect 1970s (thankingfully) apolitical romcom that loses nothing to time.

The Goodbye Girl is such a pure romcom that, with an almost unchanged script, it could easily have been a pre-code Hollywood movie. It would have also worked in a tamer form during the code-enforced era and it still shines today as it did when it was released in the 1970s.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I saw this in theaters when it came out, a very enjoyable flick. Neil Simon had fallen in love and married Marsha Mason a few years before writing this film, and the love is there in the character: there's more real feeling and less schtick than usual for a Neil Simon script.

But I notice that you didn't mention the now cringeworthy subplot about Dreyfuss appearing in a "groundbreaking" production of Richard III where the director insists that he plays him as a "campy homosexual". This was already a lazy cheap shot at getting big laughs back in 1977, and it's pretty embarrassing now.

 

[Fading Fast]

I saw this in theaters when it came out, a very enjoyable flick. Neil Simon had fallen in love and married Marsha Mason a few years before writing this film, and the love is there in the character: there's more real feeling and less schtick than usual for a Neil Simon script.

But I notice that you didn't mention the now cringeworthy subplot about Dreyfuss appearing in a "groundbreaking" production of Richard III where the director insists that he plays him as a "campy homosexual". This was already a lazy cheap shot at getting big laughs back in 1977, and it's pretty embarrassing now.

That's a good point as that "Richard III" thing was pretty stupid. I started typing, what I hoped would be, a sentence about it, but it quickly became a paragraph as I try to be very careful about how I touch on subjects that are very sensitive today. Once it became a few sentences, I decided to take it out from my comments altogether as I had stayed out of the granular details of the plot anyway.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Going back a while, and in no particular order,
The Mob (1951) with Broderick Crawford, Betty Buehler, Neville Brand, Ernest Borgnine, and a host of others, dir. Robert Parrish. Crawford goes undercover to solve murders connected to waterfront union corruption. High-speed delivery of tough talk, and some dangerous bad guys.

Port of New York (1949) starring Scott Brady, Richard Rober, K. T. Stevens, and Yul Brynner with hair. Brady and Rober fight drug-smuggling Brynner, whose character could have been played by George Sanders. An uncredited Neville Brand is a Neville Brand-type hood. Interesting to watch along with the documentary series on Disney+, To Catch a Smuggler. Both sides of the smuggling issue are light-years more sophisticated now.

Lady and the Tramp, the live action reboot from 2019. Live action partially, due to a strong presence of CGI. Watched with the grandkids. (Can Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow be called live action, when about 90% of what's on the screen is CGI? Inquiring minds want to know.)

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

That's a good point as that "Richard III" thing was pretty stupid. I started typing, what I hoped would be, a sentence about it, but it quickly became a paragraph as I try to be very careful about how I touch on subjects that are very sensitive today. Once it became a few sentences, I decided to take it out from my comments altogether as I had stayed out of the granular details of the plot anyway.

I myself just stick to Henry V and Agincourt St Crispin cheerio. No more not even the tennis balls smalltalk. Leave that Shakespeare racket to the pros.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Blade Runner - FC, old 2007s DVD

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954) with Neville Brand, Emile Meyer, Frank Faylen, and Alvy Moore, the iconic Mr. Kimball of Green Acres as a hardened con. Prisoners riot in protest against harsh conditions in prison. The movie opens with news footage of other prison riots from that time, and used the fictional story to drive home the need of prison reform, including vocational training for life after serving their time. Directed by Don Siegel, so you know it's rough, tough, and moves at a rapid clip.

 

[Fading Fast]

Female from 1933 with Ruth Chatterton, George Brent, Ruth Donnelly and Ferdinand Gottschalk


Female is one type of movie for fifty-six of its sixty-minute runtime and then jarringly shifts into being another type of movie for its last four minutes.

For those first fifty-six minutes, though, Female is an amped-up precode that takes girl power to a level equal to - and just as wrong as - the behavior that sparked the recent MeToo movement.

Ruth Chatterton plays the domineering head of a major automobile company. We see that she's smart, focused and ruthless in business as she pushes her management team of all men around with the confidence and force of will of any strong business leader.

It's impressive and enjoyable to see, but there is also a downside as she uses her younger staff of male secretaries, designers, etc., as sexual playthings. She walks around the complex, literally, choosing her next carnal snack.

Chatterton then invites that employee over to her house under the pretext of having a "business" meeting at night. Once he's there, she turns on the charm and pours the vodka, making it clear what is expected. It's stunning to see how predatory she is with these handsome young men.

Back at the office the next day, if any of these men express a romantic feeling toward her, she ships them off to the Montreal office with a bonus and a brusque goodbye.

A woman in a position of power invites her handsome young male employees to her house on the guise of doing business only, to then ply them with liquor and push herself on them sexually. If they squawk later, some hush money and a transfer solves that problem.

It's MeToo as SheToo 1933 style and, yes, it's fun to see the tables turned, but it is a bit disturbing too.

There's more, though, as Chatterton doesn't only use the company as her personal sexual stud farm, she also, bored one night at a "society" party, skips out to go trolling for men at a nearby amusement park.

It's 1933 and this successful, upper-class woman likes one-night stands so much she's cruising honkytonk amusement parks for pickups.

That night, she meets a handsome young man, played by George Brent, who is a bit charmed by her, but flat out rejects her come-on for a quick tumble, which leaves her frustrated and angry.

The rest of the movie is Chatterton thrown off her game when she discovers Brent is the new genius engineer she just hired sight unseen. She keeps pitching for a quicky in the sheets, but he wants to keep it strictly business.

All of this stunning - and this is the only phrase for it - female sexual harassment takes place in a beautiful world of 1930s Art Deco offices, cars and homes. Exterior shots of Frank Lloyd Wright's Ennis house are used for Chatterton's sex palace, umm, residence.

Chatterton, herself, delivers an understated performance here. She seemed to understand that the character as written was shocking enough so that any exaggeration on her part would have slipped into camp.

Brent is fine as her foil and there are fun supporting performances by Ruth Donnelly and Ferdinand Gottschalk as secretaries of Chatterton, but Female is really a one-woman show with Chatterton carrying the movie on her confident and lustful shoulders.

Precode movies, though, didn't operate in a censorship-free world as state censorship boards and church leaders had legal and moral influence, respectively, that could hurt a picture's box office.

Hollywood bowed a bit to those forces even before the Motion Picture Production Code was, usually, fully enforced after 1934.

In Female, as in many precodes, that "bowing" plays out awkwardly in the final minutes of the movie, but audiences, then and now, were smart enough to see that last-minute change for the obvious pandering that it was.

At sixty minutes, Female is mainly a fun and shocking roll-reversal romp through an Art Deco world of business and bedrooms with Ruth Chatterton as your guide. It's also a reminder that life was as complex, morally muddled and varied back then as it is today.

"Hey! Eyes up here, Boss."

 

[EngProf]

Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954) with Neville Brand, Emile Meyer, Frank Faylen, and Alvy Moore, the iconic Mr. Kimball of Green Acres as a hardened con. Prisoners riot in protest against harsh conditions in prison. The movie opens with news footage of other prison riots from that time, and used the fictional story to drive home the need of prison reform, including vocational training for life after serving their time. Directed by Don Siegel, so you know it's rough, tough, and moves at a rapid clip.

Real world identity:
Alvy Moore/Hank Kimball was a Marine rifleman on Iwo Jima - tough enough for anything.
(And Eddie Albert/Oliver Wendell Douglas won a medal for valor at the invasion of Tarawa.)

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Needed that spot on Fast. I frankly stepped briefly inside the Era room where the Judge tossed out the
seventeen year old madame and took a look Terrence and Harold, but am lost on these of late. Much too much.
Now Female hit the spot. A bit good gander wags wing at goose. And she's cooked.

I'm caught by the HBO series Perry Mason. If you haven't seen this fine work yet I highly recommend.

 

[Cuvier]

Not a classic but Murder on the Orient Express. Tonight I'm feeling Sherlock Holmes. I just got a box set of the late 30's early 40's Holmes. I'm looking forward to it.

 

[Edward]

Watched a c.2019 remake of The Philadelphia Experiment on streaming the other night. It was 'made for TV', according to Wikipedia, and it does feel it. That said, it holds up well enough. Interestingly, it dispenses with the time travelling adultery storyline for something a little less morally compromised without losing anything in the narrative.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Did I mention The Brasher Doubloon (1947), the re-titled film version of Raymond Chandler's The High Window? George Montgomery stars as Philip Marlowe, and his take on the character is less world-weary and cynical than hip and flip. Nancy Guild, an actress of whom I have never heard, plays not the femme fatale but an emotionally trapped "secretary" to dowager Florence Bates (who is hiding something), whose child, Conrad Janis (who is hiding something), is somehow tied up with the eponymous missing gold coin.
Tough cops, tough thugs, and snappy chatter lead us through solving the mystery.
Well-crafted and crisply-paced by director John Brahm, who did a ton of TV show directing. Suitable for an evening when you feel like watching something that falls between Viva Las Vegas and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

 

[Zombie_61]

*sigh* Well friends, I took one for the team. If you're thinking of watching "80 for Brady", don't. Allegedly based on a true story about a group of five women over the age of 80 who dubbed themselves the "Over 80 for Brady" club because they "like" Tom Brady, it's completely predictable and even worse than it sounds. In the movie, four of the ladies win tickets to the Super Bowl, manage to lose them before the game, but get in anyway. Along the way they meet Guy Fieri, Billy Porter, and, of course, Tom Brady (in the real world they have not yet met Mr. Brady), and hilarity ensues...oh, wait, no it doesn't.

Watch it if you must, but don't say I didn't warn you.

 

[Worf]

*sigh* Well friends, I took one for the team. If you're thinking of watching "80 for Brady", don't. Allegedly based on a true story about a group of five women over the age of 80 who dubbed themselves the "Over 80 for Brady" club because they "like" Tom Brady, it's completely predictable and even worse than it sounds. In the movie, four of the ladies win tickets to the Super Bowl, manage to lose them before the game, but get in anyway. Along the way they meet Guy Fieri, Billy Porter, and, of course, Tom Brady (in the real world they have not yet met Mr. Brady), and hilarity ensues...oh, wait, no it doesn't.

Watch it if you must, but don't say I didn't warn you.

Snarf.... more like Crusty Ole Ladies for Brady"! Trust me, as a charter member of "Raider Nation" since the Heidi Game in '68, I've hated Brady and the Patriots with a passion and vigor usually reserved for Satan himself. Why? "The Tuck Rule" AFC Championship. Look it up.... Must stop now before the expletives start.

Worf

 

[The one from the North]

When spring arrives I somehow get the urge to watch Africa-themed adventure movies. This time I've been watching different King Solomon's Mines -movies and today's was 50's version with Steward Granger. It was entertaining, good looking and definitely not a waste of time! Though my favourite is that 1930s version and I even like that Patrick Swayze miniseries. Now I guess I have to get courage to watch those 80's Richard Chamberling flicks! Maybe some brandy would help...

 

[Zombie_61]

Snarf.... more like Crusty Ole Ladies for Brady"! Trust me, as a charter member of "Raider Nation" since the Heidi Game in '68, I've hated Brady and the Patriots with a passion and vigor usually reserved for Satan himself. Why? "The Tuck Rule" AFC Championship. Look it up.... Must stop now before the expletives start.

Worf

Oh, make no mistake, my friend, the ladies in question couldn't have cared less about football or the Patriots except that watching the games was their way of being able to see Mr. Brady who, they readily, admit, "trips their triggers", "flips their switches", and any other euphemisms for generating sexual arousal. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ To each their own.

 

[Cuvier]

Currently watching The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes. 1935. It's not a good version but it's still a good movie.

 

[Fading Fast]

Rififi from 1955, French with English subtitles


French film noir stands with French wine, French cheese and French depressing philosophy as some of the greatest gifts France has given to the world.

Rififi is all but perfect French film noir. Despite the cigarette smoke and casual disregard for life, you can't help being drawn to its stylized underworld of crime and honor codes.

France's real criminal class in the 1950s probably neither looked as cool nor followed an omertà as it does in film noir, but documentaries exist for realism; movies do fantasy.

In Rififi, Jean Servais plays a man just out of prison who immediately beats his girlfriend for cheating on him while he was away. Worse from Servias' point of view, she was sleeping with a rival underworld leader.

While that behavior is unacceptable in any way to us, we come to see that Servais lives by a code, which requires strict loyalty and brutal punishment. Somehow, we immediately sense that Servais, in his world, gives the same honor he demands.

With that introduction, Rififi moves on to its main event as Servais, after initial hesitancy, assembles a small team for the heist of a jewelry store. Yes, he needs the money, but it is also his profession, so what else is he going to do but plan a heist?

The gang, as always, is an eclectic and intriguing group that plans and executes the heist with the precision one expects from professionals. Watching them test ways to defeat the store's alarm system makes you feel like you're part of the gang.

The heist scene itself, the men don't speak for fear of being discovered and there is no soundtrack, requires the team to quietly break into the targeted jewelry store through its ceiling.

It is thirty-two minutes of movie brilliance. Watching these professionals silently go about their work all but puts you in the room with them.

Why moral viewers, who wouldn't so much as shoplift a costume trinket, are rooting for profesional crooks to steal millions in jewels is one of those mysteries-of-the-universe questions that Rififi laughingly throws in your face.

Rififi is not a cops-versus-gangster tale, though, as the film's canvas is the underworld where the cops are only an irritant because the real opposition is rival gangs. This leads to the post-heist challenge not being the police, but Sevias' nemesis, the gangster who stole his girl.

The heist story and all its twists are very good, but what elevates Rififi to the pantheon of noir is style. It's men in hats and dark suits and women in long gowns or camel hair coats, always elegantly coiffed, but often running across wet pavement for nefarious reasons.

It is Art Deco cars, wet, empty early morning cobblestone streets, crowded bars, outdoor cafes and it is basement nightclubs where gun molls by day sing sultry torch songs at night to smartly dress gangsters and the demimonde.

Finally, it is the characters you care about even if you know these are bad people, a point searingly made by one gangster's wife to her husband in this devastating quote:

"There's something I always wanted to tell you. There are kids, millions of kids who've grown up poor. Like you. How did it happen? What difference was there between them and you, that you became a hood, a tough guy, and not them? Know what I think, Jo? They're the tough guys, not you."

Still Sevias and the "honorable" gangsters in his universe have a moral code that elevates them above the law of the jungle. Yes, the police need to hunt them down, but still, because of that code, you can't help affording them a modest amount of grudging respect.

Director and co-writer Jules Dassin translated an incredible vision to film - a vision of a stylized, code-bound underworld operating in the shadows of post-war Paris - with such a perfect understanding and design that the resulting Rififi is a nearly flawless film noir.