What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

Please Don't Eat the Daisies from 1960 with Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige, Spring Byington, Richard Haydn and Jack Weston


Hollywood made many lighthearted battle-of-the-sexes romcoms around this time, but even these movies needed some real bite to fully work. And if the romcom couple involved is married, the marriage has to look truly rocky to give the story some friction.

Please Don't Eat the Daisies is pleasant as all heck, but it doesn't have the courage of its convictions to make it a great battle-of-the-sexes romcom. It's funny, often witty and its leads are incredibly likeable, but you never buy that their marriage is wobbling.

Doris Day plays, as always, the nicest singingest mother who is the wife of a charming and only a tiny bit grouchy man played by David Niven. Niven, a drama professor, just took a job as a Broadway theater critic at a major New York City newspaper.

Theirs is the marriage you want. They genuinely like being with each other, can pleasantly complete each other's sentences and have a rhythm to their homelife that makes their small NYC apartment, crowded with four young boys and a large, lazy dog, chaotic but happy.

The problem comes as Niven, heretofore an obscure professor, becomes a popular critic after he pillars a play. Even though we know Niven is a fair man, he gets a reputation as a critic who enjoys "destroying" playwrights and actors.

At the same time, Day is pushing to have the family move to “the country,” which Niven doesn't want since he's becoming "the toast of Broadway." As is true today, many young NYC families, needing more space, kid themselves into calling the suburbs “the country.”

That sets up what little plot conflict there is: Day is a bit put off by Niven's new professional snarkiness, which is really tame, while Niven is irritated about having to move to the suburbs and commute into the city.

There are a few more wrinkles, one involves Janis Paige playing a stage actress whom Niven lambasted, but her idea of revenge is hitting on him to break up his marriage. In truth, though, she's a nice woman who really doesn't want to do any harm.

Another wrinkle has Day starring in the kids' school production of a play that, unbeknownst to her or Niven, Niven wrote in college. It's an awful play that an angry Broadway producer, whose play Niven criticized, is trying to use to embarrass Niven.

If that sounds silly and convoluted that's because it is. While the "climax" tries to sell us on the idea that the marriage is on the rocks, Niven never shows any real interest in Paige and Day never really believes that Niven would be unfaithful.

What you are left with is two really nice people who have a good marriage. Yet it is one with all the bumps that even good marriages have, especially when you throw four young boys and a big lummox of a lovable sheepdog in the mix.

You're also left with a lot of funny and witty scenes, sharp dialogue and great on-screen chemistry between Day and Niven. It's almost like a series of good sitcom episodes strung together. (Not surprisingly, the premise was subsequently turned into a TV sitcom.)

The supporting actors all add to the movie's easy-going chemistry. Spring Byington as Day's quirky but good-hearted mom, Richard Haydn as Day and Niven's best friend and Jack Weston as a taxicab driver wannabe playwright are fun and pleasant characters.

The early scenes of Niven adjusting to his new job as Day manages the household, while still meeting Niven for lunches and dinners, are the movie's highpoints. Their banter is sharp and funny and the entire atmosphere is New York City mid-century cool and enjoyable.

The later plot twist of moving to "the country," which becomes a harmless version of Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House, loses some of the movie's spark, but it does allow Ms. Day to belt out a few songs as she rehearses for her kids' school play.

Please Don't Eat the Daisies is too nice to even rise to the level of a true battle-of-the-sexes romcom. But darn it, Niven, Day and their sheepdog are so freakin' likable and the script has enough good barbs, that you can't help enjoying this harmless piece of fluff.

 

[Fading Fast]

Lazy River from 1934 with Robert Young, Jean Parker, Maude Eburne, Nat Pendleton, C. Henry Gordon and Ted Healy


Hallmark movies rightfully get made fun of today as the vast majority of them have embarrassingly simple and obvious plots, tiny budgets, awkward dialogue and poor production qualities, but quite often, a decent cast who still can't save the material.

The antecedents to these movies, though, can be found in some of the studio-era's B pictures, the "second feature" of a double bill. These were shorter, low-budget movies, often with simple stories and up-and-coming stars or talented A movie character actors.

As the richest and glossiest of the Golden Era studios, even MGM's B movies had a high quality to them. This is why Lazy River, made at MGM, could be a Hallmark movie today if Hallmark had a larger budget and wrote tighter stories.

Lazy River opens with three convicts, played by Robert Young, Nat Pendleton and Ted Healy, being released from prison. Young is a society boy gone bad, but he's befriended the other two who are more traditional inmates.

All three head down to Louisiana planning to scam the mother of another inmate out of money as her son bragged to everyone in prison about how wealthy his mother's shrimping business is.

Once there, they discover the business, run by the mother and her daughter, played by Maude Eburne and Jean Parker, respectively, is all but bankrupt. Since Parker is cute as heck and the convicts are really good guys, they stick around trying to help.

The plot gets a bit messy here, but the basic outline is that a Chinese "fisherman," played by C. Henry Gordon, is trying to run Eburne and Parker out of business and buy up their property in the ensuing bankruptcy proceedings.

Gordon, who is not really a fisherman, runs an illegal immigration business. He needs Eburne and Parker's dock and access road so his supply line of illegal Chinese immigrants can more easily avoid detection from the Coast Guard and the police.

The bulk of this short movie centers on Young falling in love with Parker, while he and his two buddies help Eburne and Parker keep their business. Being a precode, the boys do some shady things themselves, but it's "okay" as it's in service to a greater good.

The climax, no spoilers coming, becomes more intense as Young's wife, whom Parker didn't know about, shows up just as Gordon kidnaps Young. A few very convenient twists happen, and everything works out fine as you knew it would pretty early on.

Audiences weren't unsophisticated then. They understood these B pictures were lesser efforts intended to be simple entertainment. On that scale, Lazy River works.

Young does a good job playing a former rich boy finding his way in a poor fishing community. Parker has an appealing Claudette Colbert combination of niceness and cuteness. Pendleton and Healy, too, are good as ex-cons with some larceny in them, but no meanness.

You can't help rooting for the good guys - the ex-cons, Eburne, Parker and the fishing village - to defeat crooked Gordon. Hallmark regularly uses a recycled offshoot of this plot, usually with a large company looking to shut down a beloved locally owned family business.

MGM's attempt at portraying the Louisiana Creole fishing culture is, by today's standards, insensitive. For the 1930s, though, it's just the usual slapdash effort with a lot of rear-projection stock footage of Louisiana and actors speaking in horrible accents.

Lazy River is a simple feel-good movie for its day. The ex-cons are really decent guys; the poor fishing villagers are honest, hard-working folk and the bad guys are two-dimensional crooks. Of course, everything works out in the end.

It's a 1930s style Hallmark movie, but with the talent of a major studio behind it, so the result is a silly but enjoyable effort. If Hallmark had a bigger budget and better talent behind the camera, it would be churning out movies like Lazy River today.

 

[Fading Fast]

Take Aim at the Police Van a Japanese film from 1960


Japanese director Seijun Suzuki is known for making a series of B movies cult classics in the 1950s and 1960s that incorporated elements of film noir and crime drama overlaid with Japanese culture and surrealism.

Take Aim at the Police Van is an accessible Suzuki effort as the surrealism doesn't overwhelm the story. Despite a somewhat confusing plot, it's still a reasonably straightforward crime drama with engaging characters and, for the time, a lot of action.

When a police van transporting convicts to prison is attacked by a sniper and two prisoners are killed, the prison guard on the van, Tamon, is held responsible and suspended for six months.

It is very Japanese to hold someone in charge responsible for bad things that happen on his or her watch even if, as in this case, he did nothing wrong as he did not have the resources to stop the attack. A culture's gonna culture.

On suspension, Tamon tries to track down the killer as he wants to clear his name. What follows is a man of integrity slowly exposing a vicious world of sex trafficking wrapped inside a family business power struggle.

The movie gets hard to follow if you try to neatly tick and tie all that happens as characters come and go, plus it's intentionally confusing so that the viewer experiences the investigation as Tamon does.

It's easier to keep straight at a high level. We quickly learn that the van shooting is tied into a modeling agency that is really a front for a sex trade business, which includes the ugly immorality of pressuring young and vulnerable girls to become "working" women.

Further complicating the story, the head of the business is "away," so his young pretty daughter is trying to run the business, but other senior executives are trying to push her aside. Behind it all is the shadowy figure of Akiba, he's powerful but elusive.

That makes the story sound more straightforward than it is as we mainly see the movie from Tamon's bottom-up investigative point of view as he encounters thugs trying to stop him, young women trying to seduce him and "businessmen" trying to kill him. The scenes fly by.

Tamon meets a pretty young girl who loves American rock 'n' roll. She seems like a happy teenager until we learn that she's being pressured into the sex trade. Tamon tries to help her, but he's one man against a powerful organization.

Tamon later gets close to learning something from one of the "models," only to find her killed with an arrow through her breast. The action continues to amp up, which includes an improbable but gripping scene with a gasoline tanker about to be set on fire.

It works because of its style. The men are almost all dressed in Rat Pack cool suits and ties, and the women wear a variety of clothing from traditional Japanese dress to slutty cocktail attire depending on the who, what, when and where.

It's surrealist escapism to a visually engaging and stylish world of crime, violence and sexual imagery. Like American or French film noir, real Japan probably never was this cool, sexy or wantonly violent, but that's part of the film's appeal.

It would be hard to believe that modern directors like Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie weren't inspired by Suzuki's work as their films, too, create elaborately stylish, appealing and unrealistic worlds where crime, sex and a warped sense of honor do battle.

Take Aim at the Police Van is a film noir/crime drama with very Japanese characteristics. Go in expecting a confusing but cool-looking world of well-dressed hoods, warped morality and licentiousness and it's a fun ride through mid-century Japanese cinema.

 

[Fading Fast]

Double Indemnity from 1944 with Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward G. Robinson, Richard Gaines and Porter Hall.


"Margie, I bet she drinks from the bottle."

- Edward G. Robinson playing insurance inspector Barton Keyes


Double Indemnity deserves its status as one of the great film noirs of all time. Is it also the first? That is an endless parlor game for genre aficionados, but for the rest of us, we can just enjoy a timeless classic that helped define film noir.

The two main characters, Fred MacMurray as the corruptible insurance salesman with a sexual taste for the trashy and Barbara Stanwyck as the psychotic lurer and killer of men, are the focus, but the movie's singular genius is Edward G. Robinson's character insurance inspector Keyes.

A seemingly bored housewife, played by Stanwyck, seduces a cocky insurance salesman, played by MacMurray, into killing her husband, but only after she gets MacMurray to sell her husband a double indemnity life insurance policy. Even that, though, is a cheat.

The husband doesn't want more insurance, so MacMurray has him take the policy unknowingly with some fast shuffling of papers and signatures. What's falsifying a document when a murder, made to look like an accident, is the endgame?

With the policy in place, it's planning time. MacMurray takes the lead as he thinks he knows all the angles, especially since he has worked with the industry's best insurance inspector, Robinson’s character, who can spot fraud no matter how cleverly it's been concealed.

The murder has a complicated plan, never a good sign, involving a fake cast, impersonation, a slow-moving train, crutches strewn on the tracks as a feint and Stanwyck and MacMurray having nerves of steel for months later as the investigation unfolds.

Thrown into the mix are Stanwyck's bitter stepdaughter, played by Jean Heather, and the stepdaughter's sometimes boyfriend, played by Byron Barr, who looks like he's never had a sincere or decent thought in his life.

There's also a brief aside as a witness to "the accident," played by Porter Hall, unintentionally twists MacMurray around a few times in Robinson's office, while Robinson grills Hall as part of his meticulous investigation of Stanwyck's "accident" claim.

Every scene, like the Hall-twisting-MacMurray one and one where Robinson debones his cocky boss, played by Richard Gaines, who thinks he's "solved" the case, is not only perfectly played, but each one also sets up the only battle that matters: Robinson versus MacMurray.

Stanwyck, with her tacky blonde wig and pruriently tawdry anklet, is excellent as a psychotic killer with low-rent pheromones steaming out of every pore. Still, the movie is MacMurray versus Robinson, so much so, the picture is framed as a memo from MacMurray to Robinson.

Right from the start we know that MacMurray didn't get away with some murder as a wounded MacMurray dictates a confession to Robinson on his office dictaphone. It's a bit of an awkward framing that works much better after you've seen the movie a few times.

Robinson, built like an oversized garden gnome, is a man who found his perfect place on earth as an insurance inspector. He studies actuarial tables, smokes cheap cigars, has no patience for stupidity and sees deceit in corners few ever notice.

His portrayal of the insurance inspector as friendly but arrogant – Robinson knows he's smart and likes showing off – is perfect. With his voice quacking about "his little man" (his intuition), he likes being the one who exposes the bad guys after others have given up.

He also likes MacMurray as he knows MacMurray is smart. MacMurray likes Robinson, too, in a respect-driven way. He knows "the little man" is smart, doesn't suffer fools lightly (nor does MacMurray) and has integrity, which at least in Robinson, MacMurray regards.

Their banter over cheap cigars, cheap women (see the quote at the top) and cheap criminals, punctuated by insightful insurance talk, is the magic in the movie. It also highlights the movie's moral divide: Robinson must catch MacMurray no matter how much he likes him.

Double Indemnity is all the above plus style. Based on a novel by James M. Cain, a screenplay by Raymond Chandler and directed by Billy Wilder, the movie's film-noir bonafides couldn't be stronger.

Filmed in crisp black and white with shadows haunting several scenes, plenty of Los Angeles (noir's third best city) on-location shooting, snappy and cynical 1940s urban argot and Art Deco sets, the movie says film noir from its first scene to its last.

You can't take in half of what a great movie has to offer until you've seen it several times; even then, you are still just getting started. The law of diminishing returns must apply to Double Indemnity, but at least not until you're in the double digits of viewing experiences.

As time passes, the public is aware of fewer classic old movies. Casablanca and The Wizard of Oz still have currency and others, like Gone With the Wind, stay in the conversation so that the elite can virtue signal their wonderfulness, but too many great old movies have been forgotten.

Double Indemnity is one sadly slipping from the public's consciousness. Yes, it takes a little effort to understand the "language" of an eighty-year-old movie like Double Indemnity, but once you do, you can appreciate the brilliant way it captures timeless aspects of human nature.

That never gets old or dated.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Barbra Stanwyck caught my eye during adolescence with her matriarch Big Valley role
as Victoria Barkley, sexy as any dame even Linda Evans, her daughter Audra. What a woman
ideally cast major film, more of a competitor match for her male costars.

 

[Fading Fast]

Barbra Stanwyck caught my eye during adolescence with her matriarch Big Valley role
as Victoria Barkley, sexy as any dame even Linda Evans, her daughter Audra. What a woman
ideally cast major film, more of a competitor match for her male costars.

I watched Ms. Stanwyck in the 1957 movie "Forty Guns" this past weekend in which she played a role that foreshadowed her "The Big Valley" matriarch role a bit. Once I get time to write a review of "Forty Guns," I'll post it here. I think you'd like the movie.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Ms Stanwyck had a tragic mystery about herself that seemed to project upon her film character roles. Perhaps partly actor craft, still she carried more of her own self into a film
than others seemed to have done.

 

[Fading Fast]

Forty Guns from 1957 with Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, Dean Jagger, John Ericson and Eva Brent


Forty Guns is a good Western written and directed by Sam Fuller that tries to be a bigger movie than it is, but in an endearing way. Fuller didn't make the epic he seemed to be trying to make, but for a film that borders on camp, he created a fun and engaging picture.

In a fantastic opening scene, actress Barbara Stanwyck charges down a hill on a white palomino leading forty men, riding two by two, on horseback. The horses split so that when they ride by three men in a now-stopped buckboard, the horses thunder past on both sides.

The image left in the viewer's mind is one of a powerful woman commanding an army of men, men who would not fear the three men in their shabby buckboard. But it turns out, the three men are brothers; two of them are federal marshals planning to arrest one of Stanwyck's gang.

A lot happens from here and it is sometimes hard to keep each name and character straight, but the big picture is pretty easy: Stanwyck plays the leader of not only her forty men, but the entire corrupt town where she pulls all the strings behind the scenes.

Barry Sullivan plays the lead marshal who is a threat to Stanwyck as part of her hold on power is showing her men that she has the connections to protect them from the law. Stanwyck and Sullivan verbally spar often as they also begin to fall in love.

Sullivan, a former gunslinger turned marshal, is tired of being a hired gun. Stanwyck seems to be equally tired of the demands of running, effectively, a large corrupt political organization. Yet these old warhorses can't just quit and walk away into the sunset.

Stanwyck has to protect her very stupid younger brother, played by John Ericson, who does violent and corrupt things knowing that his big sister will save him. Sullivan, simultaneously, is trying to steer his youngest brother away from the life of a gunslinger.

There is more, including Sullivan's other brother falling in love with the local gun merchant's daughter, played by Eva Brent, who sports a 1950s full-force feminine body and a knowledge of guns that is superior to that of most men.

Fuller wasn't done though, as he also has the local and very corrupt sheriff, played by the outstanding actor Dean Jagger, pining hard for Stanwyck, who sees him only as an employee, and not one whom she respects.

All these threads and a few others smash together over the course of several days as Sullivan arrests Stanwyck's man, which leads to a power play that unfolds in several gun battles, tense negotiations and backroom deals amidst a swirl of sex, loyalty and betrayal.

Maybe it's the limited budget or maybe it's Fuller's way of telling a story, but the effect is that you never forget that you're watching a movie trying to be an epic. You enjoy it anyway, though, because the acting is outstanding and Fuller's enthusiasm for his tale is contagious.

Without Stanwyck, or an actress of her stature and abilities, this movie doesn't work. Her screen gravitas and believability help shepherd the movie over Fuller's bumpy script and sometimes cringe-worthy dialogue.

Sullivan, Ericson, Jagger, Brent and several others also do their part to keep Fuller's vision alive. Plus, in fairness to Fuller, the man did a lot with a very limited budget, starting with that incredible opening sequence that has your heart pounding.

Forty Guns is no classic, but it's a heck of a fun ride. It probably gets better the more times you see it, as it's a bit confusing at first. Yet once you have the plot and characters down, it will be easier to enjoy the excellent acting and Fuller's exaggerated storytelling style.


N.B. Fans of Ms. Stanwyck's will see a foreshadowing of her iconic role a decade later as matriarch in the classic TV Western The Big Valley. For some reason, this tiny woman has the screen presence to believably command men and horses in Hollywood's "Old West."

 

[Worf]

"Late Night With the Devil" - This quick and quirky gem of a horror movie is something else. It essentially is a time worn tale. "Dance with the devil, the devil don't change. The devil changes you!". A radio jock turned late night TV star sets his sights on overtaking Johnny Carson. It's implied he makes a deal with the cellar dweller but he STILL never catches or surpasses his quarry. To make things worse his ratings have dropped to the point of near cancellation by his network. In an effort to boost his ratings he decides to do a "Halloween Special" , and predictably... things don't go as planned.

The guest panel is comprised of a "Psychic", a skeptic debunker and a "possessed girl and her psychiatrist/handler". Things start out simple enough but soon take a left turn for terror town. But its NOT your typical Exorcist rip-off. This film does no jump scares, no darkened hallways... Its horror and tension is in the little things. A girl who somehow always is facing the camera and staring now matter which one is on. A fraudulent psychic that suddenly finds that someone IS calling from the great beyond. All this is overlain by the professional skeptic who seems to offer explanations for all that occurs... until he can't.

It's a great ride, it's on SHUDDER and can be rented on the cheap. If you're looking for some good scares... this one works well.

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

White Tie and Tails from 1946 with Dan Duryea, Ella Raines and William Bendix


For a short B movie, White Tie and Tails punches well above its weight class because of its strong cast, fun romcom story, smart dialogue and wonderful personalities. All it needs today is a film restoration so that it can be seen as intended.

The story itself is a rehash of some off-the-shelf plots and storyline twists. It starts with a young talented butler, played by Dan Duryea, who is beloved by the wealthy family he cares for. The feeling is mutual as he enjoys caring for them.

When the family goes on vacation, Duryea, who has fine taste in everything, indulges his rich inclinations by harmlessly playing lord of the temporarily empty manor. Masquerading one night as an upper-class gentleman, he meets a pretty society deb played by the stunning Ella Raines.

Duryea and Raines flirt, but Raines is distracted because her younger sister, whom she mothers, is in some kind of trouble. Fast forward, and Duryea is trying to help Raines pay off the sister's huge gambling debt to a gangster, played by William Bendix.

By 1946, that is as tired a story as they come, but it works here because Duryea is wonderful as the butler who truly loves being a butler because he likes helping people. He also genuinely loves all the luxury of the upper-class world, but in an appreciative, not avaricious way.

When Duryea meets Bendix, the first thing he does is help a frustrated Bendix tie his bowtie, Afterward, Bendix notes that it's slightly crooked. Duryea quips, "You don't want it perfect; it should look 'not premeditated'." Duryea and Bendix's ongoing banter provides a playful spark throughout.

Bendix, with a smart nuance, plays a thug with money who is trying to come up in the world, but knows he somehow is not doing it right. He keeps asking Duryea for sartorial tips, which Duryea is happy to supply. It's a fantastic dynamic.

Duryea, being a former artist wannabe who went to art school and painted in Paris for a bit, understands the value of paintings. This plays into the plot when Bendix takes a few paintings from Duryea's employer's home as collateral on Raines' sister's debt. It's a muddle for sure.

Raines and Duryea are the movie's other fun relationship. She first thinks he's of her class, but when she learns he's a butler and a former struggling artist, her interest in him deepens.

Their evolving relationship adds charm as when she piquantly gives him a hard time for selling out his artistic aspirations for a cushy job.

Raines sparkles as the rich girl with brains and fortitude. She holds her own with Bendix, who has plenty of gangster menace in him, plus she is the only one who throws Duryea off his game when she pushes him to return to his art. This pretty girl has it all.

The plot, since a movie needs one, has Duryea and Raines scrambling to cover Raines' sister's gambling debt so that Duryea can get his employer's paintings back before the family returns.

The quick solution is for Raines to marry a rich man who'll pay off the debt - and Raines conveniently has one waiting in the wings - but Raines and Duryea are in love. In true romcom fashion, expect a few deus ex machina moments to maybe save the day.

Is any of this believable, of course not, but you don't care. What you care about is Duryea's wonderful portrayal of a happy butler whose comfortable life gets turned upside down by pretty Ella Raines.

You also care about Raines and Duryea as you want these two to be together. And you, oddly, care about Bendix, playing against his noir tough-guy image here as the gangster who wants to learn how to be a gentleman. His respect for Duryea's extensive vocabulary is comedic gold.

With a small budget, White Tie and Tails delivers a large punch of romcom magic because of the talents of Duryea, Raines and Bendix. Had it been fifteen years later, the chemistry these three have is so good, the movie could easily have been spun off into a weekly TV series.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

View attachment 620475
Forty Guns from 1957 with Barbara Stanwyck, Barry Sullivan, Dean Jagger, John Ericson and Eva Brent


Forty Guns is a good Western written and directed by Sam Fuller that tries to be a bigger movie than it is, but in an endearing way. Fuller didn't make the epic he seemed to be trying to make, but for a film that borders on camp, he created a fun and engaging picture.

In a fantastic opening scene, actress Barbara Stanwyck charges down a hill on a white palomino leading forty men, riding two by two, on horseback. The horses split so that when they ride by three men in a now-stopped buckboard, the horses thunder past on both sides.

The image left in the viewer's mind is one of a powerful woman commanding an army of men, men who would not fear the three men in their shabby buckboard. But it turns out, the three men are brothers; two of them are federal marshals planning to arrest one of Stanwyck's gang.

A lot happens from here and it is sometimes hard to keep each name and character straight, but the big picture is pretty easy: Stanwyck plays the leader of not only her forty men, but the entire corrupt town where she pulls all the strings behind the scenes.

Barry Sullivan plays the lead marshal who is a threat to Stanwyck as part of her hold on power is showing her men that she has the connections to protect them from the law. Stanwyck and Sullivan verbally spar often as they also begin to fall in love.

Sullivan, a former gunslinger turned marshal, is tired of being a hired gun. Stanwyck seems to be equally tired of the demands of running, effectively, a large corrupt political organization. Yet these old warhorses can't just quit and walk away into the sunset.

Stanwyck has to protect her very stupid younger brother, played by John Ericson, who does violent and corrupt things knowing that his big sister will save him. Sullivan, simultaneously, is trying to steer his youngest brother away from the life of a gunslinger.

There is more, including Sullivan's other brother falling in love with the local gun merchant's daughter, played by Eva Brent, who sports a 1950s full-force feminine body and a knowledge of guns that is superior to that of most men.

Fuller wasn't done though, as he also has the local and very corrupt sheriff, played by the outstanding actor Dean Jagger, pining hard for Stanwyck, who sees him only as an employee, and not one whom she respects.

All these threads and a few others smash together over the course of several days as Sullivan arrests Stanwyck's man, which leads to a power play that unfolds in several gun battles, tense negotiations and backroom deals amidst a swirl of sex, loyalty and betrayal.

Maybe it's the limited budget or maybe it's Fuller's way of telling a story, but the effect is that you never forget that you're watching a movie trying to be an epic. You enjoy it anyway, though, because the acting is outstanding and Fuller's enthusiasm for his tale is contagious.

Without Stanwyck, or an actress of her stature and abilities, this movie doesn't work. Her screen gravitas and believability help shepherd the movie over Fuller's bumpy script and sometimes cringe-worthy dialogue.

Sullivan, Ericson, Jagger, Brent and several others also do their part to keep Fuller's vision alive. Plus, in fairness to Fuller, the man did a lot with a very limited budget, starting with that incredible opening sequence that has your heart pounding.

Forty Guns is no classic, but it's a heck of a fun ride. It probably gets better the more times you see it, as it's a bit confusing at first. Yet once you have the plot and characters down, it will be easier to enjoy the excellent acting and Fuller's exaggerated storytelling style.


N.B. Fans of Ms. Stanwyck's will see a foreshadowing of her iconic role a decade later as matriarch in the classic TV Western The Big Valley. For some reason, this tiny woman has the screen presence to believably command men and horses in Hollywood's "Old West."

View attachment 620476

I recall Stanwyck's Thorn Birds later role. A diminutive woman whose sexual charge always
electric, she easily commanded center stage.

 

[vintagewool]

Another Duryea gem is Scarlet Street (1945):

Scarlet Street (1945) ⭐ 7.7 | Crime, Drama, Film-Noir

1h 42m | Approved

www.imdb.com

 

[Fading Fast]

Heroes for Sale from 1933 with Richard Barthelmess, Aline MacMahon and Loretta Young


"Smash the machines!"


Director William A. Wellman and Warner Bros. let their inner communist rip in Heroes for Sale, a precode Depression-era tale of cardboard-hero communists/socialists and cardboard-villain capitalists and police.

Richard Barthelmess plays a soldier in WWI who, owing to a fluke occurrence on the battlefield, has his heroic deeds effectively stolen by another soldier, the son of a banker - the Depression's number one capitalist villain.

After the war, Barthelmess ends up working for that banker, but owing to a morphine addiction he acquired recovering from his war injuries, he is unjustly fired. After rehab in a clinic - a surprisingly frank look at drug addiction for the time - he tries his luck in another city.

There he gets a job in a commercial laundry, moves up, marries a pretty co-worker, played by Loretta Young, and they have a boy. He even invests in a labor-saving machine, but only on the condition that nobody will lose their job if it's installed - good grief.

When the owner of the laundry dies, the new owner breaks the agreement and fires many of the workers. The men, now unemployed in the Depression and in a Luddite moment, attack the factory to "destroy the machines that took their jobs."

Barthelmess, a sort of communist Jesus here, is mistakenly arrested for inciting that riot even though he tried to stop it. Worse, his wife, Young, is killed in the riot. So it's off to jail for Barthelmess, while his son stays with his disciple, uh, friend, played by Aline MacMahon.

Five years later Barthelmess is out and rich from the profits from the laundry machine he invested in, but seeing the hardship around him, he gives all the money to MacMahon, who runs a soup kitchen, to help feed the hungry.

The red squads - quasi-official gangs of men hired by local businesses to get rid of the "agitators" - then chase Barthelmess out of town, forcing him to join the unemployed masses of men roaming the country looking for work.

That's most of it, and if you put the lens exactly where you want it, as Wellman and Warner Bros. do, it's all true, but shift the lens around and there are other interpretations of the causes and effects. Shift it some more and heroes and villains appear on both sides.

Heroes For Sale isn't interested in any of that as its purpose is to be a communist/socialist fairytale. To that end, it's mildly effective agitprop. It helps that Barthelmess' low-key acting style fits his saintly role in this one as his calm-in-crisis vibe feels savoir-like.

MacMahon, a reasonably big star and even bigger talent from that era who's been all but forgotten today, is equally good as a Barthelmess/Lenon follower.

The Depression's suffering was on a massive scale leading to many interpretations with an equal number of social and political movements and ideologues proffering solutions. The capitalists have their take and the socialists/communists - as shown here - have theirs.

Part of precode Hollywood's value is that blatant propaganda pictures like Heroes for Sale could be made. While most are not great movies, today they remain as historic curios revealing how some artists tried to promote their prefered ideology through early cinema.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Reckless Moment from 1949 with Joan Bennett, James Mason, Geraldine Brooks and Frances E. Williams


The Reckless Moment is a gem of a movie that masquerades as a crime drama, but is really a hard look at upper-middle-class, mid-century values as seen through the eyes of a desperate mother trying to save her daughter and family.

Joan Bennett plays the smart, comfortable Balboa, California housewife with a nice home, car, two kids, housekeeper, fur coat and husband working overseas. The latter leaves all the adult decisions in the family to Bennett as her father-in-law, who also lives with them, is obtuse.

When her late-teen daughter gets involved with an older opportunist, mamma-bear Bennett takes action. After a series of events go very wrong, Bennett finds herself dumping the opportunist's dead body in a bay to save her daughter, played by Geraldine Brooks, from a manslaughter charge.

The things we do for our children. Bennett will keep doing them, too, as shortly after the body is found, a mobster, played by James Mason, shows up with letters linking Brooks and the dead man – letters that he'll give to the police unless Bennett gives him $5,000 ($65,000 today).

Mason drops in like an alien to Bennett's world, which is usually free of mobsters and blackmail. Crime in Bennett's community is rare and something you call the police to take care of. Mason's demand pulls Bennett out of that nice law-abiding sphere into his violent and criminal one.

Bennett now frantically tries to raise the money, an event her nice existence has left her woefully unprepared to do. The bank wants to know too much as does the loan company, and the pawn shop is a debasing experience, while also heavily discounting the value of Bennett's jewelry.

Bennett can see and feel each step down. The bank is clean and the bank executive is polite. The loan company is warren-like and its representative is indifferently matter of fact. The pawn shop is grimy and it has a cage around its cashier area. By then, Bennett knows she's not in Kansas anymore.

As all this crazy is going on, Bennett tries to keep up a normal appearance for her spoiled children - the idiot daughter and a younger son - her unaware father-in-law and the smart housekeeper, played by Frances E. Williams.

Odder still, Mason begins developing feelings for Bennett. He transitions from aloof and mildly threatening, to an understanding interlocutor between her and the mob, to ultimately being Bennett's full ally. It's a wide arc, but Mason, clearly having a come-to-Jesus life moment, pulls it off.

In a complex, only-in-Hollywood climax (no spoilers coming), a lot happens as the two worlds Bennett has worked feverishly to keep apart - the mobster/crime one and the polite Balboa one - come close to colliding.

The resolution itself, surprisingly for a movie made under the strict Motion Picture Production Code that liked to tie up all loose ends in a legal and God-fearing way, leaves a lot of messy morality strewn about. And no one strews it about more than Bennett in a movie that is almost entirely hers.

The picture's reason for being is to see this nice upper-middle-class housewife fight like an alley cat to save her family. One minute before it happens, you doubt Bennett would believe she'd ever drag a dead body along a beach, but there she is, driven by a primal instinct to protect her daughter.

Later, this woman, who probably never bargained with anyone more than lightly haggling with the grocer, is negotiating hard with mobsters and not blinking. Then, without a hair out of place, she's humbling herself in a pawnshop, because, well, it's for her family.

The only other main character that counts is Mason playing one of movieland's oddest mobsters. We learn he was raised a good Catholic by a woman like Bennett, but ended up a thug. Seeing Bennett fight for her daughter sparks some weird Freudian feeling in Mason for Bennett.

Mason: "She's [your daughter] lucky to have a mother like you."
Bennett: "Everyone has a mother like me. You probably had one, too."

Bennett even develops some reciprocating feelings. When your brain loses its way for a moment, you almost want something good to happen for Mason, but a flash of kindness doesn't undo a life of gangsterism. It's an odd, doomed to never even start affair.

Director Max Ophuls knew he wanted his movie to be a sly look at upper-middle-class values inside a crime drama. Bennett's black housekeeper, Williams, is the only person in the house, besides Bennett, with intelligence and true compassion for someone other than him or herself.

While there were rare exceptions, most black women who worked in that era were stuck in roles like housekeeper. Unsaid – but clear – is the societal unfairness that has this smart, kind woman, Bennett's equal in intelligence and character, facing such limited opportunities.

Ophuls' other bold commentary is the entire premise behind Bennett's action: why should an upright citizen protect her daughter from a deserved charge of involuntary manslaughter? Bennett, despite garnering our sympathies, proves time and again, to be a tribalist, not a law-abiding woman.

Ophuls also uses the movie's black-and-white cinematography brilliantly as Bennett's Balboa world is crisp and pretty, but her trips into noirland - dive bars, seedy pawn shops and beach huts with dead bodies - takes on a menace she probably never saw before in her life.

Bennett's mid-century affluent look - furs, polo coats, classic sunglasses, expensively coiffed hair - and her clean, healthy beauty also highlight the juxtaposition of the two worlds she has to navigate to save her family.

Any half-witted police force would have tied the crime back to the daughter in a matter of days. But the crime is the least important thing in The Reckless Moment as the reckless event isn't the stupid daughter committing manslaughter; it is the smart mother covering it up.

The Reckless Moment, an awkward title, is rightly described as a noirish crime drama, but its value is not in its story; its value is its subtle and shrewd commentary on upper-middle-class values in post-war America.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Two very different bills o'fare for the House of Shellhammer Film Fest and Continual Soiree-

The Cover-Up (1949) with Dennis O'Keefe, William Bendix, and Barbara Britton, in which no-nonsense insurance investigator O'Keefe tries to determine if an insured death was suicide or homicide, and Bendix as the small-town sheriff (think Pixley PD) seems to stall the investigation, and Britton, despite a growing romance with O'Keefe, seems to want the whole case dropped. Solid gumshoe-ing leads to a sudden twist. We liked it.

...and, The High and the Mighty, (1954) with top-billed John Wayne, Claire Trevor, Laraine Day, and a whole lot more. A flight from Honolulu to San Francisco experiences engine trouble and facesthe prospect of ditching in the raging Pacific Ocean. The Missus and I viewed it as a soap opera in a fuselage, but really, there's some cool acting going on, with director William Wellman setting up some nice long takes of dialogue between characters, most of whom, by the way, have some real rotten backstories revealed to us via flashback. The Missus really enjoyed it.

Full disclosure: I chose this movie because I seem to remember the haunting theme music, as whistled, used as the intro and bumper music for the local LA television channel nightly movie, you know, the local tv outlet gambit of renting a package of studio titles and running them every week night. Just hearing the music was a form of time travel for my soul...

 

[Fading Fast]

Captain Blood from 1935 with Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland and a strong cast of many from Warner Bros.' deep bench of talent.


Errol Flynn was a versatile actor who played roles in comedy, romance and dramatic pictures, all while his personal life was a swirl of booze, sex and scandal, but none of that really matters as God put Flynn on earth to do one thing: play a swashbuckling film star in 1930s Hollywood.

In his first leading role, Flynn stars in Captain Blood, a tale of 17th century European war and piracy on the high seas. Once again, some combination of France, England and Spain are sending their ships out against each other for God, King and country (and plunder).

Using history as a jumping off point, Flynn plays an Irish doctor who, for treating a rebel to the English Crown, is shipped to the Caribbean and sold into slavery by the bad King James. There he is bought by the daughter, played by Olivia de Havilland, of the island's military commander.

Being a white slave sold to a white master, modern politics wrongly nods indifferently at the inhumanity, but the scene serves to establish a subtext of sexual domination and submission in the Flynn-de Havilland romance. These two "adversaries" flirt fight the rest of the movie.

Flynn then leads a band of slaves in an escape where they capture a Spanish warship so that the real fun can begin as Flynn, in revenge for all the wrongs done to him and his men, becomes the feared pirate Captain Blood, terrorizing English, French and Spanish ships alike.

Flynn is now in full flower as the demanding but also cheery, just and thoughtful captain of his pirate ship. His crew is loyal to him as they respect his intelligence, courage and that he shares their bounty with a transparency that would impress modern-day bank regulators.

Flynn, though, since the movie needed some more conflict, cuts a bad deal with a fellow pirate played with true pirate lust and greed by Basil Rathbone.

This all happened to set up the scene when Flynn buys de Havilland from Rathbone, who had captured her on an English ship he raided. The Flynn-de Havilland sexually alluded dominance-submission relationship has now been flipped.

After that, it's Flynn learning that bad King James has been kicked off the throne by good King William. This, plus a convenient pardon for Flynn and his men, inspires Flynn to once again hoist the English flag to save an English port in the Caribbean under attack.

Even if you aren't familiar with these swashbucklers, you will probably still feel the happy romantic ending coming all along as what is the point, especially in the 1930s, of putting two beautiful people - Flynn and de Havilland - in a movie and then not having them get together.

The plot in all of Flynn's swashbucklers is the same at a high level: he's a good man who's been wrong and who is misunderstood and disliked by the pretty damsel in distress, so he becomes an avenging hero for what is right, which eventually, allows him to win the girl.

These are fun escapist movies. In Captain Blood, Warners Brothers gave director Michael Curtiz the money he needed to make a heck of an action movie. To this day, the scenes of the wooden warships firing cannonballs at each other as the ships splinter are fantastic.

When Flynn, leading his men, swings from his sinking ship onto the enemy ship to take it, you're ready to grab a sword and fight for Captain Blood. At the peak of his handsomeness and with an action-hero-perfect mischievous but mirthful smile, Flynn is the iconic 1930s antihero.

All the details are well done, too. Flynn's crew is a merry band of misfits; character actor Guy Kibbee puts in a notable performance as the master gunner. Flynn's wonderfully choreographed swordfight with Rathbone is engaging. Curtiz knew how to make a swashbuckler.

De Havilland is very good, too, here playing the arrogant girl who has to be humbled, a standard plot device in these movies. She would be given a meatier version of the same role in 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood, where she also stars opposite Flynn.

Captain Blood is studio-era Hollywood swashbuckling escapism at its absolute best. Other fine actors starred in other fine swashbuckling movies, but in the 1930s, no one commanded a merry band of pirates or rebels or whatevers better than Errol Flynn.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Great review, FF. I just love this movie. A few additional notes...

Let's recall this isn't an original story, it's from a Rafael Sabatini novel. Sabatini also wrote "The Sea Hawk", which Flynn would star in later, but there'd been an earlier silent adaptation of The Sea Hawk... and some of the studio tank model naval battles from that film were reused in Captain Blood.

This was the first time that very young Flynn (24) and de Havilland (19) were paired, and their chemistry was so palpable that they did 7 or 8 more films together.

I love the stylized, sometimes minimalist sets, for example, the courtroom scene at the beginning. As beautiful as the storybook Technicolor is in the later Adventures of Robin Hood, I equally love the gorgeous b/w of this film.

The Wagnerian score by Erich Wolfgang Korngold is fantastic... though his Robin Hood score is even better.

As you mentioned, the supporting cast is great. Besides Guy Kibbee, there's Lionel Atwill, Donald Meek, J. Carrol Naish, Henry Stephenson, and as navigator Jeremy Pitt, Ross Alexander, who'd unfortunately die a couple of years later.

I adore Basil Rathbone, but as Captain Levasseur, he rocks the worst French accent from a great English actor ("Vill you not zign the art-ick-ells, mon cap-EE-taan?") until Laurence Olivier's even more embarrassing French trapper in Forty-Ninth Parallel!

Of course, Rathbone and Flynn's exciting duel on the beach set the stage for their more elaborate Adventures of Robin Hood duel. Rathbone was actually a far more accomplished fencer, but Flynn had such charisma and athleticism - his flashy method of playing swordfights was later termed "Flynning" by film industry swordmasters.

This film also looks forward to Robin Hood in making its hero essentially a freedom fighter against an oppressive regime. This political (sub)text is even stronger in Robin Hood, probably because Europe was on the brink of WWII when it was in production in 1938

 

[Fading Fast]

Love Letters from 1945 with Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotton, Gladys Cooper, Robert Sully, Cecil Kellaway and Ann Richards


During and immediately after World War II, with so many young men and women dealing with loss, Hollywood produced several pictures with a variety of fantasy spins on death and separated or departed lovers, including A Guy Named Joe, A Matter of Life and Death and Love Letters.

In Love Letters, Hollywood took the already forced Cyrano de Bergerac story and upped the ante with a mysterious murder and a case of amnesia. This will have you spending some time trying to sort it out, just as the leads, Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotton, have to do.

The Cyrano angle has Cotton playing a soldier who writes beautiful letters for his army buddy, played by Robert Sully, to send to his girlfriend back in England. By proxy, Cotton and Sully's girlfriend become close through these exchanges.

The wrinkle, as the Cyrano wrinkle always is, is that the girlfriend, played here by Jennifer Jones, believes Sully is the sensitive man who wrote the letters, so he is the man she thinks she is in love with.

Now the story gets put into a blender. Cotton returns to London after an honorable discharge, due to an injury. He learns that Sully has married Jones, which depresses him, so he moves to a country house his recently deceased aunt left him.

Before leaving London, he meets a woman "Singleton," played by Jones who has amnesia. There are a lot of little twists that happen before Cotton learns that "Singleton" is the woman with whom he was exchanging letters.

Cotton also learns that Jones killed her husband, but has no memory of it. The trial found her guilty, but with mitigating circumstances - her husband beat her - so she spent only a year in jail, but never regained her memory.

If you're hanging in there so far, then you'll probably be okay with Cotton marrying Jones, despite Jones still not having regained her memory. From here, the movie is their marriage getting bumpy as bits and pieces of Jones' memory come back.

As her memory returns, helped along by much sleuthing by Cotton, the entire story eventually comes out, which makes as much sense as the rest of this highly improbable tale.

You don't stay with this movie for its forced and convoluted mystery, but for its romantic vibe. Cotton and Jones are sincere romantics who have been dealt a rough hand by life. You want to see them get their happily ever after.

Many in England at that time also wanted a happily ever after following so much death and destruction. So the audiences of that era were very forgiving of this Jenga plot and simply embraced its star-crossed lovers trying to find happiness.

Helping usher all of this mystery and romance along are old pro Gladys Cooper playing a caring ward to pre-memory-loss Jones; Cecil Kellaway in the underused role of Cotton's country-house caretaker and Ann Richards as Jones' post-memory-loss devoted friend.

It's a strong cast, but it takes the leads to pull it off and they just about do. Cotton is a natural at playing kind men with damaged psyches trying to heal themselves. Jones is good at playing a wounded bird lost in her own memory gaps. You want these two to find happiness.

Love Letters does drift into Hallmark territory, but with the noted strong cast, William Dieterle in his directing sweet spot and Ayn Rand writing the screenplay from a Christopher Massie play, the talent, pretty much, shepherds the story over its many bumps.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Fast, remarkable review, but my romantic regrets are roped airline stewardesses,
college girls, office pursuits, usual stud pub, party elk rutter pursuit, so this film plot with
amnesia, murder, and Jennifer Jones dulce et decorum pro patria mori stuff just slays me.
I like a linear approach.

 

[Fading Fast]

Behind Office Doors from 1931 with Mary Astor, Robert Ames, Richard Cortez and Edna Murphy


Behind Office Doors would be just another clunky early precode with an awkward plot, except for Mary Astor's performance. She imbues her portrayal of an über secretary with so much integrity, intelligence and complex emotion that you're completely vested in her character.

Astor plays the super-smart, and super-efficient secretary to the retiring head of a paper company. She is attracted to a young man in the company, played by Robert Ames, romantically, but she also sees him as a rising executive.

Astor's guidance swiftly elevates Ames to the presidency of the company, where she serves as his invaluable, yet uncredited, business advisor despite officially only being his secretary. Astor also pines hard for Ames, but he only sees her as an assistant.

Ames, without fully realizing it, takes credit for a lot of Astor's work, but the reality is that the person at the top takes credit for and gets blamed for a lot of things going on in the company. The real rub here is that Ames doesn't see Astor as a woman, but only as his secretary.

While not quite a reverse MeToo scenario, it is intriguing to see an executive in the 1930s ignore the sexuality of his very attractive and willing secretary. As always, the past is rarely as one-sided or black and white as our modern, and politically convenient, thumbnail understanding avers.

Richard Cortez, playing a married man who claims his wife won't give him a divorce, pursues Astor hard, but Astor doesn't want to be one half of an affair, plus she can't really let Ames go even as he ignores her.

Ames, for his part, works his way through one floozy after another. He sees young women as just diversions. Still, this parade of blonde hair and cheap perfume hurts Astor, who even has to endure working with one that Ames hires as a second secretary even though she's useless.

All you care about, though, is Astor who has sort of boxed herself in. She can't blame her boss for not making advances on her, but she doesn't want any other men. This status quo holds until Ames gets engaged, which is a dagger right through Astor's heart.

Ames' fiancée is not as blind to Astor as Ames is. She stirs the pot to protect herself by all but forcing Astor out of the office and into Cortez' arms. It comes down to whether or not Ames will see his fiancée's manipulation in time and, finally, also see Astor as a woman.

It's 1931 and Hollywood is still learning how to make "talkies." Ames' acting is wooden and Cortez feels very stagey here. Astor, though, seems to have been touched from above at birth to act in talking movies as she has no silent film ticks and is completely natural.

Her performance, with an assist from Edna Murphy playing her best friend and coworker, carries the movie. Astor's character is real because she's so human: intelligent, efficient and deeply honest in business, yet completely irrational in her approach toward romance.

Hallmark today makes several versions of this movie annually, but with the woman being a business executive and not a secretary. Still, Hallmark uses the same concept of a woman being smart in her professional life, but not personal life.

What Hallmark doesn't do, though, is create a subtle, complex and appealing woman like Astor's character here. Hallmark is too obvious, but in Behind Office Doors, Astor is someone we know because she's a flawed, complicated and attractive woman.

Despite being over ninety years old and made with outdated and wonky technology, Behind Office Doors surpasses many modern films with their whiz-bang CGI and other tricks because its honest portrayal of human complexity is what still makes movies great.