What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

White Banners from 1938 with Fay Bainter, Claude Rains, Bonita Granville, Jackie Cooper and Kay Johnson


White Banners is a charming movie with a fairytale quality whose strong writing and talented acting prevent it from becoming cloying. It's easy to understand why this uplifting story and the novel it is based on were well-received in the challenging 1930s.

Fay Bainter plays a drifter in the Depression who shows up one day at the back door of a middle-class family comprising a mother played by Kay Johnson, a father played by Claude Rains, a teenage daughter played by Bonita Granville and a baby.

Johnson hasn't fully recovered from the birth of her new child, plus she's stressed because money is tight mainly for the reason that her husband, highschool teacher Rains, spends all their excess funds on his, so far, unsuccessful inventions.

Daughter Granville, as cute a teenage girl as was ever made, has a crush on the son of the town's wealthy banker, played by famous child actor Jackie Cooper. He likes her, but he's also a bit of a spoiled troublemaker who acts up in Rains' classroom at school.

As only happens in a movie, Bainter stays with the family as a kindly housekeeper working for a pittance. Her presence immediately changes the atmosphere of the household for the better.

She smartly stretches the family's modest food budget, allows the mother, Johnson, to get some much-needed rest, sets up a laboratory for Rains' inventions in the basement and helps sooth Granville's crazy-normal teenage mood swings.

Cooper, steered by Bainter, and, initially, as punishment for misbehaving in Rains' class, starts helping Rains with his first invention that shows promise, a refrigeration system to replace the icebox.

From here, the story is one of a kid, Cooper, a natural at science, maturing as he sees the value of hard work and honesty, while Rains' family go through some more ups and downs as his invention succeeds, but the patent is potentially stolen.

That off-the-shelf-story, which could be the plot of a Hallmark movie today, is almost unimportant as the magic in this movie is Bainter's calming influence and turn-the-other-cheek philosophy that changes everyone's outlook and fortune.

When crises hit, Bainter keeps morale up. When Rains or Cooper want to fight an injustice, she encourages them to move on to positive work and not burn energy fighting. You might not agree with her passive philosophy, but it helps the family.

Bainter, playing a modest-looking middle-aged woman, gives an inspiring performance as a Christlike figure dropped into this struggling family to improve everyone's life with kindness, decency, charity and a preternaturally forgiving outlook.

Rains, too, is pitch perfect as the somewhat bumbling, but kind titular head of the household who needs Bainter guidance. Granville and Cooper are wonderful as "typical" teenagers who bloom under Bainter's calming influence.

Johnson shines in the small but impactful role of the weary mother and wife trying to hold her family together under the strains of the Depression. Her situation had to be very relatable to 1930 audiences facing the exact same challenges.

There's a well-telegraphed twist revealed later on (no spoilers coming) that explains Bainter's presence in this particular family, at this particular time, but it's almost unimportant as this is a story of hope and faith, not facts and logic.

The special ingredient in White Banners, the reason the movie works, is the exalting feeling of joy you get seeing Bainter's uplifting spirituality and innate serenity revitalize a family in peril. It's fantasy, but it's wonderful fantasy.

White Banners could have easily failed as adult fairytales are hard to pull off. But smart writing, thoughtful directing by Edmund Goulding and incredibly talented acting created a magical movie that uplifted Depression-era audiences, something it still has the power to do today.

 

[Worf]

"Knock at the Cabin" - I'm not much of a fan of M. Knight Shamalamadingdong's movies. With one or two notable exceptions I feel he's a decent director TRYING to be an auteur. Sometimes he pulls it off but most of the time he winds up over his skis. Still and all I was intrigued by the concept of this film. Four strangers, armed with homemade weapons that would give Frankenstein second thoughts, come to a remote cabin rented by two dads and their adopted Asian daughter. They respectfully ask to come in and talk, when this fails, the bust in and tie up all but the girl.

They then proceed to tell the two dads that they won't or can't harm them BUT to avert the coming apocalypse, one of the three must be willingly sacrificed. Of course the Dads say GTFOoH. But each time they do, one of the four intruders is dispatched by the others with gruesome efficiency and a plague is loosed on the earth. That's the set up. The movie's a mix of Bible prophecy sprinkled with other mumbo jumbo. I found the film to be surprisingly good actually. What ever implausible plot holes are forgiven in the face of such outstanding acting. Dave Bautista is and ACTOR! He has thoroughly shed any pretense of being just an "action hero". He sells the premise so earnestly and convincingly that I was hooked from the time he comes on screen. All the actors, and I mean all, do a fantastic job which is impressive considering this is a "bottle" film. I think this one is worth the rental.

Worf

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

View attachment 517579
White Banners from 1938 with Fay Bainter, Claude Rains, Bonita Granville, Jackie Cooper and Kay Johnson


White Banners is a charming movie with a fairytale quality whose strong writing and talented acting prevent it from becoming cloying. It's easy to understand why this uplifting story and the novel it is based on were well-received in the challenging 1930s.

Fay Bainter plays a drifter in the Depression who shows up one day at the back door of a middle-class family comprising a mother played by Kay Johnson, a father played by Claude Rains, a teenage daughter played by Bonita Granville and a baby.

Johnson hasn't fully recovered from the birth of her new child, plus she's stressed because money is tight mainly for the reason that her husband, highschool teacher Rains, spends all their excess funds on his, so far, unsuccessful inventions.

Daughter Granville, as cute a teenage girl as was ever made, has a crush on the son of the town's wealthy banker, played by famous child actor Jackie Cooper. He likes her, but he's also a bit of a spoiled troublemaker who acts up in Rains' classroom at school.

As only happens in a movie, Bainter stays with the family as a kindly housekeeper working for a pittance. Her presence immediately changes the atmosphere of the household for the better.

She smartly stretches the family's modest food budget, allows the mother, Johnson, to get some much-needed rest, sets up a laboratory for Rains' inventions in the basement and helps sooth Granville's crazy-normal teenage mood swings.

Cooper, steered by Bainter, and, initially, as punishment for misbehaving in Rains' class, starts helping Rains with his first invention that shows promise, a refrigeration system to replace the icebox.

From here, the story is one of a kid, Cooper, a natural at science, maturing as he sees the value of hard work and honesty, while Rains' family go through some more ups and downs as his invention succeeds, but the patent is potentially stolen.

That off-the-shelf-story, which could be the plot of a Hallmark movie today, is almost unimportant as the magic in this movie is Bainter's calming influence and turn-the-other-cheek philosophy that changes everyone's outlook and fortune.

When crises hit, Bainter keeps morale up. When Rains or Cooper want to fight an injustice, she encourages them to move on to positive work and not burn energy fighting. You might not agree with her passive philosophy, but it helps the family.

Bainter, playing a modest-looking middle-aged woman, gives an inspiring performance as a Christlike figure dropped into this struggling family to improve everyone's life with kindness, decency, charity and a preternaturally forgiving outlook.

Rains, too, is pitch perfect as the somewhat bumbling, but kind titular head of the household who needs Bainter guidance. Granville and Cooper are wonderful as "typical" teenagers who bloom under Bainter's calming influence.

Johnson shines in the small but impactful role of the weary mother and wife trying to hold her family together under the strains of the Depression. Her situation had to be very relatable to 1930 audiences facing the exact same challenges.

There's a well-telegraphed twist revealed later on (no spoilers coming) that explains Bainter's presence in this particular family, at this particular time, but it's almost unimportant as this is a story of hope and faith, not facts and logic.

The special ingredient in White Banners, the reason the movie works, is the exalting feeling of joy you get seeing Bainter's uplifting spirituality and innate serenity revitalize a family in peril. It's fantasy, but it's wonderful fantasy.

White Banners could have easily failed as adult fairytales are hard to pull off. But smart writing, thoughtful directing by Edmund Goulding and incredibly talented acting created a magical movie that uplifted Depression-era audiences, something it still has the power to do today.

White Banners showed up somewhere on the tube years ago, and it seemed a little, ahhhh, "melodramatic" to me. Foggy memories made me think it was about the triumph of modern refrigeration, and what it meant to world harmony, but your review puts the story in the right light. Another solid summation, FF-

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

1955's Chicago Syndicate brought to stately Shellhammer manor Dennis O'Keefe and Abbe Lane in a briskly-paced crime story directed by Fred F. Sears, the driving force behind the camera for Cha-Cha-Cha Boom!, Calypso Heatwave, and The Night the World Exploded. O'Keefe is former WW2 accountant lured by a (wealthy) citizens' group and a healthy stipend to infiltrate the eponymous Chicago syndicate and bring them down.

Paul Stewart is the smooth, business-like head of said syndicate, who takes on O'Keefe and his stunning accounting skills as a vital asset in his criminal empire. Abbe Lane is the nightclub singer-gangster moll who can be captivating on stage and hard as nails when the show's over.

Occasional voice overs and montages move the plot along with a newsreel feel. Exteriors of what I took to be the actual Chicago were very cool. Sears' direction never flags, and we see some rough-and-tumble mob action from time to time.

In the cast is Xavier Cugat, waaaaay pre-Charo, as Benny Chico, noted bandleader somehow tied up with the syndicate. When his band performs at a swanky nightclub, be sure to check out the smiling, energetic maracas player, whose verve, pizzazz, and fluid dance moves elevate rhythmic gourd-shaking to a whole new level.

 

[Edward]

Last week I finally caught up with 2021's The Suicide Squad. Unlike many, I did like the original Suicide Squad picture, however the 2021 version is significantly better. There's a sense that this version has a greater sense of what it's trying to do, and rather than adapt to a mainstream audience, it gives in to the gonzo nature of the source material and runs with it. Although playing a different character in the end, Idris Elba is a significant upgrade on Will Smith, with a much better handle on the nature of the material. Smith always felt a little too obviously knowing in the role, whereas Elba sells the deadpan. To be fair, Elba also gets a better script, shorn of the cloying sentimentality that infected the material with which Smith had to work somewhat. Margot Robbie shines all the brighter as the living embodiment of Harleen Quinzel with the improved script and story. I hope to see more of this.

Elsewhere in comic book land, I hope Marvel have taken notes from both the opposition's Joker and the success of their own Logan, and realise the potential for alternative-take one-shots. Spiderman Noir really deserves a run on the big screen....

 

[Fading Fast]

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance with James Stewart, John Wayne, Vera Miles, Woody Strode and Andy Devine


Director John Ford uses the Western as a canvas to say one very important thing in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: when legend and fact differ, and the legend is in service to a greater good, go with the legend.

There are also important side stories about education, freedom of the press, dirty politics and the value of quiet heroism, all delivered by a talented cast, while centered around a love triangle.

Tucked inside, as well, is a quietly positive portrayal of woman and a black man that might not align to today's unforgiving-of-any-deviation view, but that was forward-looking and inspiring for its day.

James Stewart plays a young lawyer coming from the east to the western territory of Shinbone to set up law practice, but on the way, an outlaw, Liberty Valance, played by Lee Marvin, stops the stagecoach Stewart is in and robs and beats up Stewart.

Later, John Wayne, playing a rancher and the town's de facto protector - the town's sheriff, played by Andy Devine, is ineffective - comes upon a prostrate Stewart and brings him into town to be tended to by Wayne’s sort of girlfriend, played by Vera Miles.

Stewart, once he recovers, works as a busboy with Miles in a restaurant as he tries to establish his law practice in the back of the town's newspaper building.

Stewart also establishes a small school when he learns that Miles and many other adults and children in the town do not know how to read or write.

That sets up the movie's main themes and storylines as Wayne and Stewart argue over the effectiveness of the rule of law versus the rule of the gun, while Miles, kinda Wayne's girl, begins to fall for smart and gentle Stewart.

Wayne, meanwhile, with his friend and hired hand, a black man played by Woody Strode, uses the rule of the gun to keep Marvin's gang from completely terrorizing the town.

Stewart, though, still wants Marvin arrested, tried and convicted, which leads to the big Stewart versus Marvin gunfight that Stewart amazingly wins. (That’s not a spoiler.)

From there, with his reputation made as "the man who shot Liberty Valance (Marvin)," Stewart's political career takes off while Wayne steps out of the love triangle seeing that Miles truly loves Stewart.

The movie is told as one long flashback bookended by "present day" scenes about thirty-five-years later where we see that an older Stewart, now a US Senator married to Miles, is back in Shinbone with Miles for Wayne's funeral.

John Ford told a morality tale inside a Western that is so good you almost forget it's a Western as the bigger issues - law, order, violence, education, freedom of the press and the US political system - seen through the lives of three men, absorb your attention.

Ford also, and impressively for the times, quietly created two supporting characters in Miles and Strode who are more interesting, rational and thoughtful than his leads.

Marvin is pure evil while Stewart, playing to his personal brand, is the bookish nerd who learns that, sometimes, violence is necessary.

Wayne, also playing to his personal brand, is the tough guy who knows, but won't admit, his way of keeping peace needs in time to cede to the government.

These men are good, but they are archetypes; whereas, both Miles and Strode play nuanced characters who are smarter and calmer than the emotional and prideful men they support.

Watch carefully and, amazingly, you'll see the real heroes of the movie are a woman and a black man.

Miles' impatience with Wayne's and Stewart's stubborn egoes sets up several of the movie's funniest scenes, while Strodes' level-headedness in crisis saves Wayne on more than one occasion. This is a strong-woman and strong-minority movie 1962 style.

There are other compelling characters and side stories as almost every scene in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance has multiple layers and complexity belying the movie's surface simplicity.

Can a lie, fabrication or sin of omission be justified by the greater good it does? John Ford thought it could, but to decide, you'll have to watch the movie to see the actual sin of omission, propelled by a quiet act of humility, that leads to a greater good.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, with its compelling storylines, timeless themes and complex characters deserves its enduring reputation. Plus, like all timeless movies, there are so many good scenes and lines, that the picture all but demands multiple viewings.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Saw this in Hong Kong years ago. American cinema, a picture with thousands of words, carries the director's
vision thru theatres world wide for better or not. Most current cinema is tepid over sexed trash that is hardly literate
but reflective fast food, crisis crime ridden communities, drugs, and cultural rubbish. Valence turns page to another far more stark period where bias and racial prejudice squeezed society but what emerged appears more consequential
with meaning and purpose seldom seen today.

 

[Worf]

"Conan the Barbarian" I own it, but still love to watch it. Basically a Samurai tale of revenge writ large. Arnold is no one's idea of an "actor" but this role was made for him. Large, hulking, brutish with just enough of a smile to win anyone over. His scenes with James Earl Jones are amazing. In that I read almost all of the R.E. Howard books as a youth, I guess I was primed for this one. Jason Mamoa's take was "alright"... But there will ever be only one Conan for the silver screen.

"No one can you trust Conan. Not men, not women, not beasts... But this (father points to a sword) this you can trust."

"Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the son's of Arya's lived a world un-dreamed of...."

Worf

 

[Trenchfriend]

@Worf
I think, I should give it a try.

 

[Edward]

"Conan the Barbarian" I own it, but still love to watch it. Basically a Samurai tale of revenge writ large. Arnold is no one's idea of an "actor" but this role was made for him. Large, hulking, brutish with just enough of a smile to win anyone over. His scenes with James Earl Jones are amazing. In that I read almost all of the R.E. Howard books as a youth, I guess I was primed for this one. Jason Mamoa's take was "alright"... But there will ever be only one Conan for the silver screen.

"No one can you trust Conan. Not men, not women, not beasts... But this (father points to a sword) this you can trust."

"Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the son's of Arya's lived a world un-dreamed of...."

Worf

It does still hold up as fun.... though I actually came to prefer the newer version with Momoa. Different animals, I think... Arnie's has a period, kitsch sensibility to it, whereas Moma's feels truer to the source material to me. Not unlike the two versions of JUdge Dredd..... the difference being that, unlike Stallone's risible 1995 effort, I can certainly bear to rewatch Arnie's Conan. (The sequel not so much. Pity we never got a sequel to the Momoa version; perhaps had it come a few years later on when Thrones fandom had bedded in a bit more? It always seems to me a much better film than it got credit for at the time, just one that didn't quite find its audience.

 

[Worf]

It does still hold up as fun.... though I actually came to prefer the newer version with Momoa. Different animals, I think... Arnie's has a period, kitsch sensibility to it, whereas Moma's feels truer to the source material to me. Not unlike the two versions of JUdge Dredd..... the difference being that, unlike Stallone's risible 1995 effort, I can certainly bear to rewatch Arnie's Conan. (The sequel not so much. Pity we never got a sequel to the Momoa version; perhaps had it come a few years later on when Thrones fandom had bedded in a bit more? It always seems to me a much better film than it got credit for at the time, just one that didn't quite find its audience.

I thoroughly agree with your take on Judge Dredd. The second film captured the whole concept of the Judges perfectly. And he NEVER took off his helmet! You may be correct. Had Momoa's version come at the height o GoT fever it may have been better received. But Momoa had another handicap, there's no villain today to match James Earl Jones in stature or sheer power! Batman has his Joker, Supes his Lex Luthor, Captain America his Red Skull.... Arnold had James Earl Jones! It just don't git no better!

Worf

 

[Edward]

I thoroughly agree with your take on Judge Dredd. The second film captured the whole concept of the Judges perfectly. And he NEVER took off his helmet! You may be correct. Had Momoa's version come at the height o GoT fever it may have been better received. But Momoa had another handicap, there's no villain today to match James Earl Jones in stature or sheer power! Batman has his Joker, Supes his Lex Luthor, Captain America his Red Skull.... Arnold had James Earl Jones! It just don't git no better!

Worf

JEJ is sure a one-of. And I'll love him forever for the way he parodied himself in Big Bang Theory.

 

[Fading Fast]

Looking Forward from 1933 with Lewis Stone, Lionel Barrymore and Elizabeth Allan


Looking Forward is a smartly written, directed and acted Depression Era film that personalizes the challenges of the Depression as seen through two very different English families whose lives intersect at a large and venerated, but now-failing London department store.

Lewis Stone plays the president of the store that was started by his great grandfather, but with business in a long slump and shareholders and partners to answer to, he has to make cutbacks, which includes laying off his long-time employee and friend, a clerk in the "counting room," played by Lionel Barrymore.

Barrymore's middle-class family is knocked back, but then rallies as they all give up small luxuries while working hard to start a modest bakery. We also see the way a depression spirals as Barrymore's family has to let its maid/cook go; it's a fast lesson in how a business contraction spreads.

Stone's family is less understanding of the need to cut back as his second wife (his first wife passed away) and son and daughter from his first wife are too used to luxury to easily accept a reduced lifestyle.

Stone fights to save the store, but it looks as if it will have to be sold to a down-market competitor. The buyout money would save Stone's family, but destroy the store's reputation and legacy and, of course, lead to extensive layoffs at the store.

Looking Forward succeeds as it avoids most stereotypes and cliches. Stone is neither a cardboard evil greedy capitalist nor a saint; he's a man facing the first real crisis in, what had been, his easy life. He is sincerely struggling to figure out what is the right thing to do.

His family is real, too, as a few eventually show some mettle, while others only look to take care of themselves. All-but-unknown-today actress Elizabeth Allan gives one of her best performances as a spoiled daddy's girl who starts to see what life is really about.

Director Clarence Brown personalizes the big-picture story of the Depression rocking the country (England here, but the same was going on almost everywhere in the developed world) by showing us the impact on everyone including the owner of the store, the store's employees, their families and the businesses that rely on the affected families' patronage.

The climax (no spoilers coming) wonderfully brings Barrymore and Stone, two men whose lives and families were rocked by the Depression, together again as Stone faces the biggest decision of his life, while Barrymore gets to be the one giving some advice.

The unresolved, yet cautiously optimistic ending is a bit forced, as movies will often do to wrap things up, but it's moving and reasonably realistic nonetheless.

It's 1933 and no one knows how or when the Depression will end. Hollywood often showed the Depression as a story of class struggle, but Looking Forward presents the business contraction as a force sweeping across all classes.

For us today, Looking Forward is like opening up a time capsule to see how people were responding to the worst economic depression in decades. It's not perfect and, of course, it has its own biases and agenda, but Looking Forward is still a fascinating and entertaining window into 1933.

 

[Touchofevil]

Dial 119 on TCM’s Noir Alley this morning. Right now on TCM, The Star. Enjoying the visuals of the exterior shots for b movies is the primary reason for both movies this morning. Both are entertaining although very different forms of entertainment.

 

[Touchofevil]

The Godfather I and II, yesterday. Well, off-and-on they were in the background as I could not commit that much of my day to sitting in front of the television. Both are very entertaining and done so well that I never tire of watching them.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Wandering YT and caught some commentary about 2003's Master and Commander starring Russell Crowe
as Cpt Jack Aubrey RN lifted a paperback series unfamiliar with. Saw some of the film and I must say quite taken
by this and believe it is indeed a little noted classic somehow slipped past the public's radar screen.
Do give it a go if you've mind.

 

[Edward]

Wandering YT and caught some commentary about 2003's Master and Commander starring Russell Crowe
as Cpt Jack Aubrey RN lifted a paperback series unfamiliar with. Saw some of the film and I must say quite taken
by this and believe it is indeed a little noted classic somehow slipped past the public's radar screen.
Do give it a go if you've mind.

Caught that one a few years ago - it was very good indeed, should appeal to anyone who enjoyed the likes of Hornblower. It did indeed have the feel of something designed for a series that never happened. According to Wikipedia it "barely recouped" its budget - "only" something like USD212 million made, against a cost of USD160 million. Perhaps a combination of it not being a big money spinner and negative publicity around Russell Crowe at the time put paid to it. A shame, though. As memory serves I watched it on a plane journey on which I'd already seen pretty much everything else on offer, and enjoyed it very much.

 

[Fading Fast]

That Brennan Girl from 1946 with Mona Freeman, James Dunn and June Duprez


If Hallmark today had confidence in its audience - and if it had talented writers, directors and actors - it would make movies like That Brennan Girl. It helps that the movie was made back when Hollywood still treated Christianity with respect and not seething contempt.

With elements of both film noir and spiritualism, That Brennan Girl defies easy categorization. Plus, star Mona Freeman doesn't fully convince you with the "bad girl" part of her split personality. Yet still, the result is an enjoyable and uplifting movie.

Mona Freeman plays the wonderfully named Ziggy (a riff on her real name Zenia), whom we meet in a flashback scene when she is fourteen and bringing her mom a Mother's Day flower. But her single mom is a gold digger, scammer and partier and not a "thank you for the flower" type of mother.

Freeman's hope for that mother-daughter moment is completely dashed when Mom, played by June Duprez, tells daughter Freeman to call her "sis," so that Mom can hide her age and increase her desirability to the oleaginous men in her world.

In this flashback, we also see that Freeman's innate decency is being beaten out of her by a mother who encourages her to grift and graft her way through life, especially after she introduces Freeman to a gangster friend of hers, played by James Dunn.

Dunn, himself, is a complex character. He is, yes, a gangster, but also an incredibly loving son (and not in a warped Cagney in White Heat way). He will evolve over time - a stint in jail plays a big role in that - as will his influence on Freeman.

We next flash forward several years to see Freeman is now a partier and low-level crook like her Mom. She then meets a genuinely decent man, a sailor. They quickly get married; he ships out; Freeman learns she is pregnant, but soon after, he gets killed in action.

Freeman's good old Mom, horrified that people might learn she'll soon be a grandmother, kicks Freeman out. Freeman, who never fully bought into the grifter life, tries to make an honest go of it as a single mom with her husband's modest insurance money, but life is tough.

Dunn, now out of jail and apparently reformed, reconnects with Freeman. He encourages her to stay on a straight path as he seems to care about her and her baby. Despite their large age difference, Dunn and Freeman have great screen chemistry.

The movie climaxes when Freeman's dual good-girl/bad-girl personality leads to a crisis where she has to choose one or the other direction in life now that the law and her baby are involved.

A symbolically baptismal-like walking to church in the rain and Dunn's new-found goodness help point the way, but Freeman, whose upbringing gave her a broken moral compass, will have to decide this one on her own.

Freeman is an engaging star and quite believable playing a good girl trying to escape a bad upbringing. Her slips into petty crime and the "nightclub" life, however, feel forced as, in these scenes, she looks more like a decent kid on a rumspringa than a true femme fatale.

Likable Dunn, too, is more believable as a reformed man than criminal. Be prepared, though, for director Alfred Santell laying it on a bit thick showing Dunn's devotion to his cliched-to-the-max Irish immigrant mom who is always stuffing her son full of corned beef and cabbage.

Despite its drawbacks, That Brennan Girl gives you the one thing almost all successful movies have, a character or two to root for as you can't help wanting good things to happen to Freeman and Dunn.

It helps, too, that Santell's directing keeps the action moving along at a good pace with smooth transitions. Almost all movies have bumpy elements to their stories, but as seen here, talented directing and acting can shepherd the picture over them.

Modern movies with an overlay of Christian spirituality are usually poorly produced efforts shuffled off to low-budget cable TV channels because, today, Hollywood is too cynical and "sophisticated" to believe in personal redemption through faith and individual effort.

That Brennan Girl shows that Golden Era Hollywood, though, could make these uplifting morality-tale movies inspiring but not embarrassing because it had the confidence in its audience to put in some real grit and struggle, one of the elements lacking in modern efforts.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Flashman to the rescue, and I am a bit still shaking my head over the O'Brien jury verdict.
I needed a good film analysis like yours to put some things in perspective.
/have you seen Dial of Destiny yet, do give it a tug please/

 

[Fading Fast]

The Eagle and the Hawk from 1933 with Fredric March, Cary Grant, Jack Oakie and Carole Lombard


The Eagle and the Hawk deserves to be better known today for its powerfully realistic portrayal of the mental and physical toll aerial combat takes on the pilots and their crews.

Its depictions of the horrors of war makes it an anti-war film, but not in the self-congratulatory and, often, smug way so many anti-war movies do. Instead, it shows more and, other than a few brief speeches, tells less, leaving the viewer to decide what to think.

Few men of goodwill today think young men killing other young men for God, King or country should be celebrated, but no one has yet come up with a way to stop the Hitlers or Putins of the world without having young men and, now, women killing other young men and women.

The Eagle and the Hawk takes a hard look at some of these issues as it follows a few enlistees fighting for the British Royal Flying Corps in World War I.

Fredric March, in a moving performance, plays a thoughtfully enthusiastic young pilot who quickly loses his taste for war after his gunner (March pilots a two-man reconnaissance plane) is killed in his first flight.

Cary Grant plays an arrogant gungho gunner who dislikes March for washing him out as a pilot at flight school where March was his instructor. Not improving things, March, when these two meet up again at an airdrome in France, has already become cynical about war.

Finally, Jack Oakie plays to type as the comedic pilot, but even he shows a thoughtful reserve underneath his jockular exterior. He jokes, but he really just wants to survive.

As time goes on, these men are changed by the exhaustion of killing others and seeing their friends - men they fly with, bunk with, share a beer with and chat with about their girlfriends - killed daily.

This is where The Eagle and the Hawk shines as you understand how March and Grant each brought his own mindset into the war, but you also understand how their experiences slowly change them.

March, a highly intelligent and educated man, saw a nobility and honor in war when he started. Yet after seeing so many friends get killed and, then, seeing up close, a German pilot he killed - a young handsome kid - he no longer sees honor or nobility in it.

He never says it, but he seems to understand that the war still has to be fought and won, but it is now a distasteful task for him where honors, medals and even slaps on the back for shooting down the enemy depress him.

Grant's transition is equally moving as he came in arrogant and bitter with a bloodlust to kill the enemy. He starts out as a thoroughly dislikeable man; the Cary Grant "brand" had not yet been created.

He initially views March's newfound antipathy to killing as weak and disloyal, but the day-to-day experience of war changes Grant, too, as he slowly comes to respect March.

There's a short scene where March, on leave in London, meets a young woman played by Carole Lombard who is interested in him because he's the only military man not bragging about his exploits. He's a man who doesn't want to be feted as the hero he clearly is.

She's like an anti-war groupie as most of the women are attracted to the braggarts, but Lombard "gives herself" to March the night they meet because he isn't proud of his war exploits.

It's an odd but effective way to echo the movie's theme. Plus, despite Lombard's part being small, it gave the producers the ability to put the name of a female star near the top of the credits.

The Eagle and the Hawk's climax (no spoilers coming) is dramatic and moving. Directors Stuart Walker and Mitchell Leisen powerfully juxtapose a group celebration with one man's anguish, followed by an unlikely but touching honorarium. It's an ending that will stay with you.

For 1933, the aerial combat scenes are realistic and quite gripping. You feel as if you are up with the crew in one of their ridiculously fragile planes that are armed to the teeth with, effectively, machine and gatling guns.

It is nuts how much firepower these almost delicate planes have as everyone shoots at everyone else. When the bullets rip through the plane and one of the men slumps over, you understand how cruelly insane it all is.

The 1930s produced several fine and realistic anti-war movies based on WWI, with some, like All Quiet on the Western Front and Dawn Patrol, still talked about today.

Unfortunately, The Eagle and the Hawk has fallen off that radar, but because of its poignantly honest look at the toll aerial combat takes on the young men who fight our wars, it deserves to be rediscovered by film fans and critics today.


N.B. @Worf, I think you would enjoy this one.