What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[ChrisDamned]

The storm is here (Brittany, France) and car driving is prohibited. But to get around on foot, I take out this other treasure REDSKINS (FR) from the great era. Brown cowhide carcoat and sheepskin collar with this incredible emerald green lining and wooden buttons...

 

[Trenchfriend]

Operation Petticoat

I must say, although it's really dated, it's a nice entertaining comedy for me!

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

A break from Breeder's Cup intelligence gather and analysis I watched Ruffian, a Yank thoroughbred
'Gentleman's C' grade backstretch barn flick that suits a handicapper respite but not general audiences
unaddicted to game and sport. Ruffian, a gifted filly born for speed, snapped her ankle and was subsequently
put down after surgery. Ruffian is buried at Saratoga.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Big Caper from 1957 with Rory Calhoun, James Gregory, Mary Costa, Robert H. Harris, Paul Picerni, Corey Allen and Roxanne Arlen


The Big Caper suffers more from its limited budget than its bumpy script as many heist movies have bumpy scripts, but when the production quality of a motion picture feels more like that of a 1950s TV show, all the flaws get magnified.

With better production qualities, The Big Caper's solid cast of B actors and its neat twist on a heist movie, plus plenty of mid-century atmosphere, would have added up to a much better noir. Even with its drawbacks, it's still an entertaining and, at times, tense picture.

Rory Calhoun plays a thug who brings a bank heist idea to an older, wealthy criminal, played by James Gregory, for leadership and funding. Gregory maps out an elaborate strategy and assembles a team of unstable but supposedly talented-at-crime misfits.

The plan starts with Calhoun playing house with Gregory's young, pretty girlfriend, played by Mary Costa, for a few months in the town with the bank, so that they can ingratiate themselves into the community while doing extensive reconnaissance for the heist.

Part of Calhoun and Costa's cover as a married couple includes buying a gas station and home. The neat twist is that as they play house, and start to make money running the gas station, Costa and, eventually, Calhoun begin to see the benefits of an honest life.

They are further attracted to normalcy as they make friends in the neighborhood and become part of the community. They both slowly see the upside of having normal, not-thug friends to rely on. Plus they also fall for each other.

If it was them alone, they'd now call off the heist, marry, run the gas station, have 2.5 kids, etc., but just as their feelings and good intentions start to sort themselves out, Gregory and the gang slowly show up for the heist. And what a gang it is.

First on the scene is Robert H. Harris playing a sociopathic, alcoholic explosives expert who lives to get drunk and see things go boom! Shortly after, Paul Picerni as a henchman and his loud, uncouth girlfriend, "Doll," played by Roxanne Arlen, arrive.

Rounding out this motley gang is "Roy," played by Corey Allen, a big, dumb, blonde muscle beach guy who, if the movie was made today, would clearly have been older man Gregory's boy toy. But instead, he's just one scary psycho.

This team's serial arrival leads to some of the movie's most fun scenes as these are not people that are easy to explain to your normal "let's have a barbecue this weekend" neighbors. Once the gang's all here, though, it's time to get on with the heist.

The heist sequence, no spoilers coming, is well done for a movie with a small budget. But as always happens in heist movies, one thing after another goes wrong forcing the crooks to improvise, which as we all know, never works out well.

The Big Caper's odd blend of a happy 1950s Leave it to Beaver town with a The Asphalt Jungle plot and crazy characters is entertaining, especially when Costa and Calhoun start to see that maybe they, and not the people who live honest lives, are the mugs.

While the biggest name in the cast is Gregory, and he's good as the only crook with a brain, the entire cast creates believable characters. A particular nod is owed to Harris for his performance as the alcoholic explosive expert who lives for a drink and dynamite.

The Big Caper is also wonderful time travel to mid-century America with a pretty downtown, full-service gas station, brick foursquare school and huge cars. Plus, the gangsters in their downtime bring in some "edgy" jazz, daytime drinking and casual sex to spice things up.

If not held back by its TV-level production quality, or said another way, if it had an A picture budget and production unit, The Big Caper would be a better movie. But even with its challenges, it's an entertaining low-budget noir trip to an idealized 1950s American city.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Caper reminds me of a film I thought about the other day: The Thomas Crowne Affair with Steverino
and Faye Dunaway, but it's been that long ago I cannot recall much beyond a few snippets; other than
Steve's tailored wear and out-of-character persona and his chess game crime duel with Dunaway. Fog.
He could wear a suit including a plain deal coffin trench, and intellectually fence or flirt with ladies like
Dunaway or Natalie Wood. Although the notion of criminals actually making good with precise planning
and strictly pro meticulous attention to detail is definitely my cuppa, I recall how this flick clicked but not
its ending. And toss in political incorrectness, did he best Dunaway? If this were shot now the girl would win,
kick ass Buffy the Slayer of Vampires she would.

 

[Touchofevil]

Abandoned (1949) on TCM’s Noir Alley. Snappy dialogue with an entertaining story and a nice cast. As per usual, I am attracted to the visuals of the world of Los Angeles during this time. This was a fun movie just for the cinematography.

 

[Fading Fast]

Abandoned (1949) on TCM’s Noir Alley. Snappy dialogue with an entertaining story and a nice cast. As per usual, I am attracted to the visuals of the world of Los Angeles during this time. This was a fun movie just for the cinematography.

Recorded it and will watch it, hopefully, soon. Like you, I love the "time travel" of these old movies. Have to ask, did LA's Angels Flight funicular show up as that is a regular go-to LA film noir icon?

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ The revised but canceled Perry Mason set LA 1930s did this. And a stunner series all round lot.
Why in devil HBO killed this show so detailed done right with magic yet.

 

[Touchofevil]

Recorded it and will watch it, hopefully, soon. Like you, I love the "time travel" of these old movies. Have to ask, did LA's Angels Flight funicular show up as that is a regular go-to LA film noir icon?
View attachment 558048

I have noticed it in a number of films although I did not see it, but I could have missed it. It was worth a look even if I had found the movie to be boring.

 

[Touchofevil]

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers following Abandoned on TCM. Entertaining and a nice cast.

 

[Zombie_61]

Mark of the Vampire (1935). "When a nobleman is murdered, a professor of the occult blames vampires, but not all is what it seems." Directed by Tod Browning and filmed/produced by MGM, this movie is a loosely based remake of a lost Lon Chaney Sr. movie called "London After Midnight" (also directed by Tod Browning). Starring Lionel Barrymore, Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill, Elizabeth Allan, and Carroll Borland, among others, it's interesting but wasn't particularly successful at the box office when it was released. I can think of worse ways to spend an hour.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Passionate Friends from 1949, directed by David Lean and starring Ann Todd, Claude Rains and Trevor Howard


David Lean directed movies are better the more times you see them.

No longer distracted with learning the plot and, in this one, keeping straight the confusing and overlapping flashback sequences, one can just enjoy the movie's atmosphere, character development and relationships - Lean's strengths.

Those features drive The Passionate Friends where Ann Todd, plays a woman who marries a man she likes, played by Claude Rains, instead of the man she loves, played by Trevor Howard, for the lifestyle and position the former can give her.

All is going fine in Todd and Raines' perfectly friendly marriage until she accidentally runs into Howard, which happens twice over a nine-year period. Each time knocks Todd off her emotionally delicate perch.

No one ultimately enjoys these brief encounters* as Rains gets jealous that Todd only likes him, but loves Howard, even though that is the bargain he knew he struck when he married her.

It's no better for Todd and Howard, as each encounter has them experiencing anew the loss of their true love. It is the reopening of an emotional wound every time they meet.

Their scenes together, though, are the highpoint of the movie's romance. They are two people who truly love each other, in part, because they simply enjoy each other's company.

Look for the scene where Todd comes over to Howard's small but charming apartment for lunch. It wonderfully captures the simple ease these two have in each other's presence.

From that quietly intimate scene, you quickly, but fully understand their love. Budding directors trying to learn how to portray on film the small, almost silent details of love, should study it.

The movie's melodrama, however, comes from the love triangle. It gets tense and ugly as not one of the three is now happy with the compromise Todd and Rains struck many years ago.

The center of this triangle is, no surprise, Todd because she wants both men for different reasons. Howard is her true love, but he has neither the wealth nor social position that international banker Rains can provide.

It's a frank look at a woman torn between love and money. Todd is neither angelic, "I'll scrub floors as long as we are together," nor evil as she truly is fond of Rains and was honest with him about her motives.

More would tread into spoiler-alert world, but the climax stresses the triangle to an extreme. It's also a little forced, but movie's need a dramatic ending, or writers and directors think they do anyway.

The Passionate Friend's black-and-white cinematography is post-war British gorgeous. England struggled with many things after WWII, but making outstanding black and white movies wasn't one of them.

It helps that Ann Todd is simply stunning to look at. At forty, she looks thirty and more beautiful than almost every other thirty-year-old actress. You have no trouble believing men would lose their minds over her.

Based on a H.G. Wells novel, there is none of Wells' science fiction in The Passionate Friends. Instead, human emotions - love, regret, anger and fear - are all thoughtfully and excruciatingly explored. (Comments on the novel here: #8,214 )

For us today, the elegant post-war travel in the movie is travel porn. There's no statacto "calling zone five;" instead, it's a pleasant, "may I get you something, ma'am?" It looks ridiculously luxurious and comfortable.

The same goes for the sleeper compartments on trains, a Chris Craft tender "taxi" service and a tram in the Alps. Yes, travel was exclusively a rich person's pleasure then, but it was elegantly done.

The Passionate Friends is poignant in a very real-life way. It's an "anti-Hollywood/Hallmark" movie as the story is about a woman who married for money not love and then has to live with the consequences of her decision.

David Lean would go on to make some of the 1960s' great romantic epics, but in The Passionate Friends, he shows he already knew how to capture the often quiet despair of lifelong heartache and longing.


N.B. Ann Todd's wardrobe in The Passionate Friends is worthy of its own study. Her elegant and stylish hats, evening gowns and casual clothes perfectly fit each scene. Most importantly, she looks at ease in every single outfit.


* The parallels to Lean's subtle masterpiece, Brief Encounter, are obvious, but The Passionate Friends is an expansion of the theme. Brief Encounter is a perfect "little" jewel of a movie about a moment in time; a brief encounter when two married people have a passionate affair. The Passionate Friends, takes the conflict of lovers married to others and expands it across two decades.

 

[ChrisDamned]

Apologies for my mistake in where to post.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

View attachment 558143
The Passionate Friends from 1949, directed by David Lean and starring Ann Todd, Claude Rains and Trevor Howard


David Lean directed movies are better the more times you see them.

No longer distracted with learning the plot and, in this one, keeping straight the confusing and overlapping flashback sequences, one can just enjoy the movie's atmosphere, character development and relationships - Lean's strengths.

Those features drive The Passionate Friends where Ann Todd, plays a woman who marries a man she likes, played by Claude Rains, instead of the man she loves, played by Trevor Howard, for the lifestyle and position the former can give her.

All is going fine in Todd and Raines' perfectly friendly marriage until she accidentally runs into Howard, which happens twice over a nine-year period. Each time knocks Todd off her emotionally delicate perch.

No one ultimately enjoys these brief encounters* as Rains gets jealous that Todd only likes him, but loves Howard, even though that is the bargain he knew he struck when he married her.

It's no better for Todd and Howard, as each encounter has them experiencing anew the loss of their true love. It is the reopening of an emotional wound every time they meet.

Their scenes together, though, are the highpoint of the movie's romance. They are two people who truly love each other, in part, because they simply enjoy each other's company.

Look for the scene where Todd comes over to Howard's small but charming apartment for lunch. It wonderfully captures the simple ease these two have in each other's presence.

From that quietly intimate scene, you quickly, but fully understand their love. Budding directors trying to learn how to portray on film the small, almost silent details of love, should study it.

The movie's melodrama, however, comes from the love triangle. It gets tense and ugly as not one of the three is now happy with the compromise Todd and Rains struck many years ago.

The center of this triangle is, no surprise, Todd because she wants both men for different reasons. Howard is her true love, but he has neither the wealth nor social position that international banker Rains can provide.

It's a frank look at a woman torn between love and money. Todd is neither angelic, "I'll scrub floors as long as we are together," nor evil as she truly is fond of Rains and was honest with him about her motives.

More would tread into spoiler-alert world, but the climax stresses the triangle to an extreme. It's also a little forced, but movie's need a dramatic ending, or writers and directors think they do anyway.

The Passionate Friend's black-and-white cinematography is post-war British gorgeous. England struggled with many things after WWII, but making outstanding black and white movies wasn't one of them.

It helps that Ann Todd is simply stunning to look at. At forty, she looks thirty and more beautiful than almost every other thirty-year-old actress. You have no trouble believing men would lose their minds over her.

Based on a H.G. Wells novel, there is none of Wells' science fiction in The Passionate Friends. Instead, human emotions - love, regret, anger and fear - are all thoughtfully and excruciatingly explored. (Comments on the novel here: #8,214 )

For us today, the elegant post-war travel in the movie is travel porn. There's no statacto "calling zone five;" instead, it's a pleasant, "may I get you something, ma'am?" It looks ridiculously luxurious and comfortable.

The same goes for the sleeper compartments on trains, a Chris Craft tender "taxi" service and a tram in the Alps. Yes, travel was exclusively a rich person's pleasure then, but it was elegantly done.

The Passionate Friends is poignant in a very real-life way. It's an "anti-Hollywood/Hallmark" movie as the story is about a woman who married for money not love and then has to live with the consequences of her decision.

David Lean would go on to make some of the 1960s' great romantic epics, but in The Passionate Friends, he shows he already knew how to capture the often quiet despair of lifelong heartache and longing.


N.B. Ann Todd's wardrobe in The Passionate Friends is worthy of its own study. Her elegant and stylish hats, evening gowns and casual clothes perfectly fit each scene. Most importantly, she looks at ease in every single outfit.


* The parallels to Lean's subtle masterpiece, Brief Encounter, are obvious, but The Passionate Friends is an expansion of the theme. Brief Encounter is a perfect "little" jewel of a movie about a moment in time; a brief encounter when two married people have a passionate affair. The Passionate Friends, takes the conflict of lovers married to others and expands it across two decades.

View attachment 558144

After the Second World War and peace had returned the winters were severe, coal low, wood scarce, and the Americans gone home, bless them all, but economically the land became a petrified forest, war torn and beggared with grief and hunger.
The Marshall Plan saved Britain and Europe and the peace itself. People made choices for better or worse along personal micro economic scale and for many these times seared their souls. I've never seen this film but its core strikes indelible post war choice and consequence carried forward in time but no less real.

Last evening I saw the final quarter hour of the 1956 film Tea & Sympathy which featured Deborah Kerr.
Movies like this are seldom seen these crazed times. A woman's kindness, heart, soul, and greatest gift matched wisdom given a doubtful young man with a depressed mindset that threatens his life.
Always stunning film. A rose whose equisite beauty struck lightning with thunderous grace echoed inside another heart lit fire.

 

[Worf]

Apologies for my mistake in where to post.

No biggie. I like a curve ball every now and then... keeps me awake enough to stop drooling on myself! Also I liked the jacket! Jackets and sech are what brought me to this loony bin in the first place. Nice reminder!

Worf

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Let's see, the ongoing Shellhammer Festival du Cine has been busy of late. Briefly, the list is -
The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, Arsenic and Old Lace, The Palm Beach Story, and Audie Murphy as a 146-pound prize fighter who wants big money, fast, so he can marry the girl of his dreams in The World in My Corner. The Cary Grant-heaviness is coincidental.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Myrna Loy in Blandings is a definite wife for Cary but aside from absolutely gorgeous elegance
she had a certain air of such 'presence' to be almost hypnotic-yes, I am hopelessly smitten by her
yet mine impression here is quite objective. If haven't seen, The Rains Came with Tyrone Power, a prewar
colonial India set filmed 1939 or so is a must see Myrna Loy film.

 

[Fading Fast]

Casque d'Or a French movie from 1952 with Simone Signoret, Serge Reggiani, Raymond Bussieres, and Claude Dauphin


Casque d'Or is a beautifully crafted Belle Époque love story that feels as if film noir traveled back in time and over to France, allowing director Jacques Becker to transform a doomed romance, based on a true story, into a film of raw emotions and abject immorality amidst a tranquil setting.

In late-1800s Paris, at an outdoor river cafe, a man, played by Serge Reggiani, recently out of prison and trying to go straight, is introduced by his old partner in crime to a boisterous gang of thieves and their girlfriends.

He dances with one of the women, played by Simone Signoret, and there is an immediate spark, but there's a double problem. She has a jealous boyfriend, played by Raymond Bussieres, and the gang's boss, played by Claude Dauphin, also covets her.

Signoret, with her formidable yet sensual presence - neither delicate nor demure - plans to have a say in the choice, but as a "kept" woman whose "profession" goes way back in time, it's not so simple.

Her thug boyfriend isn't going to just give her up so he, Bussieres, egged on by Dauphin, winds up in a kind of duel with Reggiani and loses. This leaves an inconvenient dead body, but one of three lovers out of the way. It's now Dauphin versus Reggiani.

Signoret, though, is all in on Reggiani, so with Bussieres gone, she and Reggiani have an idyllic period of making love in the countryside at a friend's small farm. Being a French film, they actually have sex without being married and without getting all worked up about it.

Dauphin, though, isn't happy as the odd man out, so he has a close friend of Reggiani arrested for Burssiere's murder knowing that will force Reggiani to come forward. After that, Signoret tries to bargain with Dauphin with the only thing a woman like her has to trade.

Unless Signoret is successful in soliciting (the exact right word for what she had to do) Dauphin's help, Reggiani will face the hangman and Signoret will have only Dauphin to return to.

The climax, no spoilers coming, turns operatic with director Becker doing some of his finest work in the picture as the black and white cinematography is so moving and expressive, the ending sequence didn't even need its few words of dialogue.

Signoret, a huge French star for decades, drives this picture as the prostitute trying to free herself from her past when she finds true love. Reggiani, also a big star, plays his character quietly as he realized that is better than competing against Signoret's on-screen presence.

The gangsters, Dauphin and Bussieres, wear natty Belle Époque clothes, but they are film-noir-like villains whose ruthlessness and criminality stalk the two lovers throughout. As in noir, the gangsters have some warped code of honor, but as always, criminality destroys.

That is the movie's poignancy as everything pretty - the river bank cafe, the cobblestone streets of Paris, Signoret and Reggiani's farmhouse love redoubt and their love itself - is eventually soiled by the lovers' past connections to the underworld.

It is that juxtaposition of beauty and cruelty - of love and criminality - that gives the movie its pathos as the setting often looks like you walked into a Renoir painting, but then, you realize that these criminal popinjays are as ruthless as any film noir mob.

In Casque d'Or, Becker used Belle Époque Paris to tell his tale of star-crossed lovers doomed by their past, but his characters are so alive and timeless that you almost forget Casque d'Or is a period movie. Any director would be proud of achieving such temporal transcendency.

 

[Fading Fast]

Polly of the Circus from 1932 with Marion Davies, Clark Gable, C. Aubrey Smith and David Landau


Not every precode was about unbridled lust, some just used the freedom of the brief precode window to explore themes in a way that wouldn't be allowed once the Motion Picture Production Code was all but fully enforced.

In Polly of the Circus, a trapeze artist, played by Marion Davies, while performing in a small town, is injured during her routine and taken to the nearby minister's house for medical attention because the hospital is far away.

Davies and the minister, played by a very young Clark Gable, had a modest confrontation earlier when she accused him of forcing her revealing posters to be covered up, but he denied it.

So her now staying in his house is just a take on the romcom trope of two antagonists being forced to live together. In this version, Gable is genuinely likable, while Davies fumes a bit too much because, surprise, surprise, she really likes the handsome, single minister.

She's difficult; he's easy going; she's circus liberal; he's Bible. As she recuperates, though, they have a couple of heart-to-heart moments and soon they are married. But neither his congregation nor his stern bishop uncle, played by C. Aubrey Smith, like the marriage.

Gable, who had been a rising star in his parish, is let go from his church. Because of his wife, he's also been quietly blackballed from all the churches. Now, it's tough going for the newlyweds as Gable won't let Davies return to the circus to earn money.

He also only looks for "church" like jobs in missions or selling Bibles as religious work is in his soul. Davies pings from being supportive, "we'll find a way," to anger, "I'm sick of you and your church," but we know, deep down, she loves the guy.

The climax (no spoilers coming) has a very 1930s "dramatic" sacrifice and too-easy resolution. But Davies, Gable and Smith, with an assist from Davies' surrogate father and boss at the circus, played by David Landau, are all talented enough to pull it off.

What helps this fast, professional effort is Davis playing a bit against type as she tries to be tough. Gable, too, plays against type as he shows none of the "machismo" here he'd later be known for. This "reversal" helps both actors come across as being more genuine in their roles.

It's also enjoyable to see a pro-religious movie willing to upbraid the Church for being narrow-minded. That took some guts as America was a very Christian country at the time.

Today, most Hollywood movies that touch on religion are either arrantly anti-religion or pro-religion, but have small-budget and are treacly. Precodes better understood the value of balance and nuance.

Polly of the Circus is just another Marion Davies star vehicle, but with up-and-coming Clark Gable as a costar, a fun take on the romcom formula and a reasonably honest look at Church politics, it has held up pretty well.


N.B. While tame by today's trapeze-routine standards, the ones performed in the movie, by stunt doubles, are entertaining and even harrowing a few times owing to some very well-done camera work.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Fast I found a YT video done by a lady finance advisor dubbed ''The Financial Diet'' titled appropriately,
Millennial Women May Never Recover From The Romcom that you might find interesting. A take on millennial
women of today who watch current romcoms populated by female college grads with corporate magazine,
media, publication jobs that pay enough to afford downtown costly digs, pub nights every night with girl mates,
and fruitlessly futile search for husbands at least six feet six figure salaried and available. And how post covid millennial young ladies still must cope with dating life in the non movie world.

I never stopped to consider the social film connect with its confusion.