What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

Wasn't it Groucho in "Horsefeathers" who as Dean of a University said and I quote loosely:

"I'm going downtown to buy a couple of Football Players!"

Worf

Good one. It's pretty amazing, but the 1930s are chockablock with movies about how corrupted and corrupting college football was.

 

[EngProf]

Good one. It's pretty amazing, but the 1930s are chockablock with movies about how corrupted and corrupting college football was.

That has some great university and anti-university ideas in it.
The faculty meeting where Groucho sings a song "Whatever it is, I'm against it!" fits some faculty perfe

Good one. It's pretty amazing, but the 1930s are chockablock with movies about how corrupted and corrupting college football was.

That has some great pro-university and anti-university ideas in it.
The faculty meeting where Groucho sings a song, "Whatever it is, I'm against it!" fits some faculty perfectly.
So much so that our Dean of Engineering, who had a great sense of humor, devoted a regularly-scheduled faculty meeting to showing "Horse Feathers" in its entirety. No other business, just the movie... He was making a point.

 

[Fading Fast]

Son of India from 1931 with Raman Navarro and Madge Evans


This short precode packs a powerful interracial-relationship punch inside a smartly constructed story that reveals people were thinking hard about race relations and prejudices in the 1930s.

There are two ways to try to understand Son of India. You can think about it in the context of its day and the views and beliefs that were held about race then, or you can simply feel smug and superior by considering it in a modern-day context only.

Ramon Navarro plays the son of a precious jewels merchant. His life is selflessly saved by an Indian holy man who hid Navarro when bandits came to steal his father's jewels.

Later, an American tourist saves Navarro from a trumped-up charge of thievery. Navarro's father raised the boy to believe that gratitude is "the highest command of God and that no God will ever forgive a man who breaks the command of gratitude." The die is cast.

Years later, Navarro is himself a wealthy merchant of precious jewels when he meets a pretty American tourist, played by pretty Madge Evans. Soon the two begin a very tentative and cautious affair.

Both recognize the race prejudices of the time "forbid" their affair. The Indian community would not accept her any more than the white community would accept him, so their affair risks ostracism for both.

As in almost every inter-racial love-affair movie ever, the one thing we the audience see and care about is that the two lovers are sincere in their love - our sympathies are rightfully with them. Yet in 1930 it was not easy to say "it doesn't matter."

The water everyone swam in then was water where the races didn't intermarry. It's the game theory "everybody knows that everybody knows you don't do that" tenet, which controls behavior more than any written law ever could.

Evans and Navarro are ready to chuck their communities for love, but great pressure, in the form of outstanding debts of gratitude, comes down hard on Navarro. Evans is steadfast, but will Navarro crack under the emotional blackmail being put upon him?

As an actor, Navarro hasn't yet dropped all his silent film mannerisms, but here he creates an honorable and likable character who tries to do the right thing when there is no easy, or even clear, right thing to do. He's an appealing leading man.

Evans had already adjusted her acting style to talking pictures, making her portrayal of a woman who cares about love not race sincere and natural. She also delivers one of the money lines of the movie with powerful conviction:

"I'm a woman in love, that's what I am for the first time in my life, and I'll not allow any stupid prejudices to rob me of my happiness."

Son of India has an early talkie clunkiness to it, plus it is in need of a restoration, yet director Jacques Feyder told his risky-for-the-time story of an inter-racial couple with inspiring confidence.

Today, most of our "risky" movies are not risky at all as they align to the prevailing views and only fight prejudices of the past that are roundly denounced anyway by most people today. Feyder, conversely, was punching at the prevailing views of his time.

Son of India shows that race prejudice wasn't as "locked down" in the past as it is often argued today or a major studio, MGM, wouldn't have produced a picture challenging the accepted ideas on inter-racial couples.

Maybe it didn't go far enough, but that's easy to say today. The movie's existence alone is its value, as major social change doesn't come about in a flash of new thinking; the ideas behind radical change always have a long gestation period.

 

[GHT]

View attachment 647364
Son of India from 1931 with Raman Navarro and Madge Evans


This short precode packs a powerful interracial-relationship punch inside a smartly constructed story that reveals people were thinking hard about race relations and prejudices in the 1930s.

There are two ways to try to understand Son of India. You can think about it in the context of its day and the views and beliefs that were held about race then, or you can simply feel smug and superior by considering it in a modern-day context only.

Ramon Navarro plays the son of a precious jewels merchant. His life is selflessly saved by an Indian holy man who hid Navarro when bandits came to steal his father's jewels.

Later, an American tourist saves Navarro from a trumped-up charge of thievery. Navarro's father raised the boy to believe that gratitude is "the highest command of God and that no God will ever forgive a man who breaks the command of gratitude." The die is cast.

Years later, Navarro is himself a wealthy merchant of precious jewels when he meets a pretty American tourist, played by pretty Madge Evans. Soon the two begin a very tentative and cautious affair.

Both recognize the race prejudices of the time "forbid" their affair. The Indian community would not accept her any more than the white community would accept him, so their affair risks ostracism for both.

As in almost every inter-racial love-affair movie ever, the one thing we the audience see and care about is that the two lovers are sincere in their love - our sympathies are rightfully with them. Yet in 1930 it was not easy to say "it doesn't matter."

The water everyone swam in then was water where the races didn't intermarry. It's the game theory "everybody knows that everybody knows you don't do that" tenet, which controls behavior more than any written law ever could.

Evans and Navarro are ready to chuck their communities for love, but great pressure, in the form of outstanding debts of gratitude, comes down hard on Navarro. Evans is steadfast, but will Navarro crack under the emotional blackmail being put upon him?

As an actor, Navarro hasn't yet dropped all his silent film mannerisms, but here he creates an honorable and likable character who tries to do the right thing when there is no easy, or even clear, right thing to do. He's an appealing leading man.

Evans had already adjusted her acting style to talking pictures, making her portrayal of a woman who cares about love not race sincere and natural. She also delivers one of the money lines of the movie with powerful conviction:

"I'm a woman in love, that's what I am for the first time in my life, and I'll not allow any stupid prejudices to rob me of my happiness."

Son of India has an early talkie clunkiness to it, plus it is in need of a restoration, yet director Jacques Feyder told his risky-for-the-time story of an inter-racial couple with inspiring confidence.

Today, most of our "risky" movies are not risky at all as they align to the prevailing views and only fight prejudices of the past that are roundly denounced anyway by most people today. Feyder, conversely, was punching at the prevailing views of his time.

Son of India shows that race prejudice wasn't as "locked down" in the past as it is often argued today or a major studio, MGM, wouldn't have produced a picture challenging the accepted ideas on inter-racial couples.

Maybe it didn't go far enough, but that's easy to say today. The movie's existence alone is its value, as major social change doesn't come about in a flash of new thinking; the ideas behind radical change always have a long gestation period.

As reviews go, they don't get much better than that. Fair, carefully considered, tolerant and informative. I enjoyed reading your assessment.

 

[Fading Fast]

High and Low a Japanese movie from 1963


It doesn't do it justice to simply call this incredible movie "film noir" as it has impressive elements of a crime drama, a psychological thriller, an ethical dialectic, and social commentary, with each taking center stage at times without any dominating.

More than anything else, High and Low is a series of morality tales and philosophical questions wrapped inside a kidnapping story.

The one big question it raises and leaves for you to answer is if being rich is a moral crime, especially if there are poor around you. It implicitly asks: if you follow the laws of your country, work hard, succeed honestly and become rich, have you in some way stolen from the poor?

Economists' answers to this question usually fall into two broad camps – the same two camps that seem to divide everything. While that question is the movie's philosophical backbeat, a few moral dilemmas and a fantastic police-procedural story drive its plot and tension.

It all opens with a business meeting where we learn a shoe tycoon has leveraged himself to the hilt trying to take over the company he's a minority shareholder in, but then he gets a call that his son has been kidnapped. The ransom demand will bankrupt him, but he's prepared to pay.

It turns out, though, that the kidnapper made a mistake and took the tycoon's chauffeur's son, but the kidnapper still demands the same ransom from the tycoon. This sets up moral dilemma number one: Should the tycoon bankrupt himself for his chauffeur's son?

With the police called in and a smart young detective heading up the investigation, this question gets fleshed out in an amazingly thoughtful way, as the tycoon's life, business and financial security are not simply dismissed as unimportant in an all-out effort to save the boy.

Once that decision is gut-wrenchingly made, the movie becomes an incredibly gripping police drama as the detective heads up an immense team trying to find the kidnapper. The police are impressively modern, skilled, detailed and devoted.

You come away with one thought: It would be very hard to successfully kidnap someone if the Japanese police are committed to finding you, as everything from a tiny sample of scraped paint to an infant's almost comical drawing is smartly leveraged as clues.

The climax doesn't let the tension drop as the search for the kidnapper reveals Japan's seedy world of dope addicts and dealers with an honesty that American films were still a decade away from showing on screen.

Finally, in more of a 1950s crime-drama/capital-punishment-analysis style, the closing scene (no spoilers coming) is a raw examination of the original question about the morality of wealth and poverty living side by side. The question is not answered, but it is powerfully raised.

Based on the 1959 novel King's Ransom by Ed McBain, High and Low is a good story, but what makes this movie great - and it is great - is the acting, the skilled directing by Akira Kurosawa, and the 1960s Japaneseness of it.

Tatsuya Nakadai, a major star, plays the head detective as a thoughtful man who has the skills to inspire others, but also the ability to investigate the clues himself. He is such a competent professional that you'll want him cloned and made the head detective, well, everywhere.

It is an engaging performance that centers the movie as Nakadai's character sits between the tycoon, played by Toshirô Mifune, who plays his businessman like an angry samurai, and Tsutomu Yamazaki, who plays the kidnapper like a ruthless but smart sociopath.

None of this would matter if director Kurosawa hadn't captured, in beautiful black-and-white cinematography, a stark and captivating portrait of 1960s Japan.

He portrays a country that has regained much of the confidence it lost in WWII, but one that is also dealing with all the challenges societies face as rapidly growing wealth is earned by those most driven, talented and lucky.

From Mifune's house on the hill, high above the poverty of the city it overlooks, to the despair of the drug addicts in Japan's version of Needle Park, Kurosawa uses his camera to advance the story and highlight the moral dilemmas raised – though all with distinctly Japanese characteristics.

Japan's unique and deeply held beliefs about honor, respect, saving face, and legal protection for personal property frame a story that challenges all of those values. A boy's life is on the line because a warped anger at the rich creates a scenario where only a rich man can save the boy.

There is so much story, philosophy and raw human emotion at work in High and Low, that it takes several viewings to absorb it all. This is a feature, not a bug, though, in this smartly complex picture that never forgets the first rule of moviemaking: entertain your audience.

To the first question: is High and Low film noir, neo noir, a crime drama, an ethical exploration movie or a psychological thriller – the answer is yes.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Great Man from 1956 with José Ferrer, Dean Jagger, Keenan Wynn, Joanne Gilbert, Ed Wynn and Julie London


Sometimes great movies hide in plain sight, as The Great Man does year after year. It's not obscure and gets good reviews, but it never comes up in discussions of top films or even in discussions about the best movie exposés of the broadcast industry's corrupt cynicism.

Citizen Kane and A Face in the Crowd are regularly noted, but with less fanfare, this José Ferrer co-written, directed, and starred-in effort cedes little to its famous brethren. It is, possibly, even more effective in its relentless reveal of the broadcast industry's arrant hypocrisy.

The picture opens with the death of "The Great Man," a beloved national radio personality we never meet. We learn about him, though, as Ferrer's character, a hard-boiled journalist, is assigned the task of creating and broadcasting the network's one-hour radio eulogy special.

The movie advances on two tracks from here as we see Ferrer investigate the Great Man, while his agent, played with vicious smarminess by Keenan Wynn and the network head, played by Dean Jagger, jockey for control of Ferrer as the Great Man's possible replacement.

It is no real surprise that the "beloved by America" Great Man turns out to be a louse - a selfish, conniving, manipulator of people and abuser of women. It's the old tale of the public image not aligning, at all, with the private person.

Ferrer rolls this story out through his investigation as he learns the dirt about the Great Man in interviews. Watch for the scene where Ed Wynn (yes, Keenan's father) plays the Great Man's first boss and reveals an ugly side of his former employee – it's an acting tour de force moment.

This is a movie full of impressive scenes and performances like that, including one with Julie London playing an alcoholic singer whom the Great Man kept in his stable of women. He helped her career, but also destroyed her self respect. London's performance is gripping.

While Ferrer is learning all the dirt on the Great Man, Keenan Wynn is trying to advance Ferrer's career, but only if he has complete control over Ferrer. Keenan Wynn, though, might have met his match in the network's head, Jagger, who plays the control game at a highly skilled level.

Jagger and K. Wynn’s battles feel like you are a fly on the wall at genuine C-suite meetings, where the gloves come off and ruthless, smart men pull hard on the sinews of authority, money, and control.

Tucked into all this brutal cynicism and jockeying for power is the wonderful relationship between Ferrer and his secretary, played by Joanne Gilbert. It's clear these two have worked together for a long time and developed a deep mutual respect and friendship.

They have an office rhythm that's hard to capture on screen, but they did it here. Yet we so dislike the idea of these relationships today, that we've all but eliminated the word secretary. Yes, there were often many things wrong with those relationships, but not always.

This is one of the not always. It's the warmest and nicest thing in a hard-boiled movie that will wear you down. Look for the scene where Gilbert tries to take a nap in Ferrer's office; it perfectly reflects the nuances of real life that can make a day feel silly and alive.

Gilbert also sees the picture's central conflict playing out slowly and painfully in her boss' inner conflict. Ferrer is going to face a come-to-Jesus moment deciding whether to play ball and give a fluff-piece eulogy or shock the audience with the truth that his reporting has discovered.

Playing ball means career advancement and big money for Ferrer, but it also means dumping his journalistic integrity in the garbage can. There's a neat, as we would say today, meta-twist to the conflict's resolution, just know that people in positions of power get there for a reason.

Though Ferrer wore many hats in the production, he didn't make it a vanity project; instead, he assembled a strong cast and let the story, not his ego, drive the movie.

The result is The Great Man is a great movie about greed, character, corporate power and the ruthless manipulation of public opinion driven by the tightly controlled creation of "personalities," all amplified by the near monopoly the broadcast industry had on reaching the public back then.

The internet and social media have broken that monopoly, so now we have many popular "personalities," tailor made for every subculture. It's more "democratic," but somehow it doesn't feel any better.