"Since You Went Away" (1944)

Famed producer David O. Selznick wanted to make the definitive war picture about America's struggles on the Homefront, an answer to the highly successful "Mrs. Miniver" that illustrated the same theme for Britain (and bolstered national patriotism to boot). And even though we get a wide-ranging snapshot of what the country was dealing with, it's all told through the microcosm of one family. Claudette Colbert is the noble and selfless wife of an Army officer who's been shipped overseas. She's got two teenaged daughters (Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple who Selznick wooed out of 'retirement') and has to contend with all manner of family dramas, the highs and lows. Adapted by the producer himself from an epistolary novel by Margaret Buell Wilder, the rambling plot bounces easily from laughs to tears to romance with each scene. Because times are tough, Colbert has to take in a boarder so Monty Woolley shows up for comic relief doing his patented grumpy fussbudget bit. Then there's Woolley's estranged grandson Robert Walker, a new recruit who falls for Jones. When Walker gets his assignment in the Pacific they have one of the most heartwrenching train station goodbye scenes ever filmed. You can feel Selznick trying to cram in every homefront touchstone into the script. There's Victory gardens, USO dances, scrap metal recycling, and Colbert even gets a job as a Rosie the Riveter in a munitions factory, but it all works because of the earnest efforts of the cast. What's most fascinating is director John Cromewell and ace cinematographer Lee Garmes choosing not to sentimentalize everything in a cozy glow, instead they opt for a moody almost noirish chiaroscuro lighting that hints at the darker realities of wartime living. There are some stunning visuals here amongst the quotidian doings.

"Captains Courageous" (1937)

This is one of those glorious big production MGM adaptations of a literary classic that they did so effortlessly back in the Golden Age of cinema. Rudyard Kipling's seafaring tale of a super rich spoiled brat who gets his comeuppance and learns big life lessons aboard a Portuguese fishing vessel is heartwarming without being cloying. Big credit goes to the actors. Spencer Tracy won the Academy Award for his earthy, kind hearted sailor, Manuel. His Iberian accent leaves a little to be desired but he's so genuine you forgive it. Freddie Bartholomew was second only to Shirley Temple as one of the great child actors. Here he's so hateful as the thoughtless Richie Rich kid that you wanna slug him, but watch his journey of self-discovery as he learns the value of hard work, friendship, honor, and respect for others. You believe the transformation. Melvyn Douglas and Lionel Barrymore are also on hand to round out the fine cast as Freddie's well-meaning but clueless father, and the ship's salty captain (was there ever a sea captain in the movies who wasn't salty?) Fine family fair that's a timeless classic.

"Bad Day at Black Rock" (1955)

This film has so many of the stylistic motifs of westerns that it feels like one. And maybe that's the point. That many of the elemental questions that adult westerns posit, like What's the role of the individual versus the needs of society? What does it mean to be 'civilized'?, And How does a man define his own sense of honor?...are all universal and still relevant today. A taut noir thriller filmed in color (a genre rarity), and set in a small Western town smack dab in the middle of a vast desert--think Nevada or interior California--opens with a one-armed stranger (Spencer Tracy) who's come to town to look for the father of an old Army buddy and finds out the man died mysteriously. The whole town wants to keep it a secret so they make the stranger's visit increasingly difficult. No, make that downright impossible. A nasty Rogue's Gallery of character actors make up the bad bunch that Tracy has to contend with, and eventually defeat. Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin, John Ericson, all led by the town's malevolent boss, Robert Ryan (one of the most underrated actors of his generation). Walter Brennan and Dean Jagger are also on hand as other townies to lend a sympathetic hand. But it's Tracy's evenhanded and measured performance you remember best. He makes it look all too easy. Look for the tight compositional direction John Sturges brings to heighten the tension. He gives the picture an almost graphic quality in his superb use of the widescreen Cinemascope vastness. The players are like chess pieces moving around a stylized desert chessboard.

"The Naked City" (1948)

What would an episode of TV's "Law & Order" look like if it were filmed in 1948? Probably something like this fine proto-policier. It's a pretty straightforward plot: a murder is committed right after the credits finish and a couple of New York City's finest detectives use standard legwork and deduction to track down and capture the culprit by the final reel. Two things distinguish it though. First, is the senior detective is not your standard matinee idol. Here he's short, dumpy, Irish-brogue character actor Barry Fitzgerald. It's odd (and refreshing) to see his star turn here. He's at times smug, irascible, and funny. He's aided by his younger tenderfoot partner (Don Taylor) who's basically around to be the pair of legs to chase the bad guy. The second outstanding feature is the direction and real life location shooting. Director Jules Dassin and Oscar winning cinematographer Billy Daniels broke with convention and shot large chunks of the action on the actual streets of the Big Apple, something practically unheard of at the time. Inspired by the Italian neo-realism pictures of the time, the gritty, grimy, photogenic city looks like a series of Weegee photographs in motion. Many of the later modern day film noirs owe a debt of gratitude to this picture. Classics like "The French Connection", "Serpico", and "Dog Day Afternoon", all captured the dirty kinetic energy of New York, but "The Naked City" did it first and wrote the book on how to do it.

"Caged" (1950)

The Grandmamma of all women's prison pictures. And if the mention of that phrase conjures up all the tropes of the genre, just ripe for parody and played for laughs, there's always a source for those cliches and "Caged" is it. But there's no humor here. This hard-edged and soul-stripping noir is very serious stuff. Eleanor Parker gives a sensational performance (she was justifiably Oscar nominated) as a meek little wife who's sent up for armed robbery as an accessory to her husband's two bit larceny. As the main credits close, so do the bars on her entry into the tough brutal world of a woman's penitentiary. And even tho she's got a champion in the prison's sympathetic warden (a surprisingly warm Agnes Moorehead), she's got to survive this ugly world and grapple with the biggest, baddest cell block guard of them all, Faith Emerson. Nasty, conniving, vindictive...this is the Queen Bitch you don't want to cross, but Parker does, and through the course of her struggle, she transforms before your eyes into a merciless hardened creature. Parker is so stunning it's a pity Hollywood never really knew how to harness her talents later in her career (no, Baroness Schrader in "The  Sound of Music" doesn't count). Warner Brothers and underrated director John Cromwell mount a first rate production and even infuse it with some cautionary messaging about our penal system that still applies today.

"Sunset Boulevard" (1950)

One of the best movies ever made. Period. If you've never seen it, or don't know what's it's about, it begs the question, "What cultural rock have you been hiding under?" There's probably not much of value I can add here that hasn't already been said umpteen times (and probably better), about this unique film noir that breaks all the rules of the genre and, despite its being set firmly in the last mid-century still resonates for a current audience. The best films take on new and different shadings based on what life stage you view them. It's a simple story of a good looking young Hollywood screenwriter who becomes the kept man of an older, former silent movie screen star. There's much more, but that's the basic plot. As a young viewer, you see the woman (Gloria Swanson in an iconic performance for the ages), as a creepy monster clutching at the hunk (and boy, is William Holden a hunk). Years later, you realize he's the no-talent monster, preying on the generosity and fragile psyche of the lonely Swanson. And in 2016, the film plays as sad commentary on our obsessive  Culture of Youth, our fear of aging, and the societal stigma we (still) put on older woman/younger man relationships. Yes, it's takes a lot of shots at Hollywood, but that's an easy target. It's the larger themes that haunt all our minds and our "faces out there in the dark". This is cinema GOLD. Do yourself a favor, see it.

"The Thomas Crown Affair" (1968)

An unparalleled triumph of style over substance. Some movies you watch for the deft plotting or the character development, some maybe for the crackling dialog. This movie has none of those things. What it does have is visual panache in spades. The unquestionable King of Cool in the 1960's was Steve McQueen. He attained that rare nexus that few actors achieve: men wanted to be him, women wanted to do him. Here, his aloof masculinity is put to perfect use as a millionaire financier whose hobby is masterminding perfect bank heists just for the thrill of it. He's pursued by an insurance investigator played by Faye Dunaway who was just cresting her own chic a la mode notoriety on the heels of her iconic role in "Bonnie and Clyde". Nothing really happens, the plot is just an excuse for these two beautiful specimens to traipse through a world of money, clothes, sports, cars, and architecture, it's a "Playboy" photo spread come to life. There's no better time capsule pictorial of what the American Male of the mid-century deemed desirable. And to add even more style to the proceedings, director Norman Jewison utilizes a multi-frame editorial device in key sequences to heighten the visual stimulus. Think of a Modrian painting populated with elegant eye candy pictures, all to the haunting strains of the movie's earworm love theme, "The Windmills of Your Mind". Oh, and don't forget one of the sexiest seduction scenes ever filmed where the leads do nothing but play...chess! Unforgettable sophistication.

"Kitty Foyle" (1940)

Gingers Rogers had some pretty stiff competition the year she won the Academy Award for best actress in this sudsy melodrama...Joan Fontaine in "Rebecca", Bette Davis in "The Letter", and Katherine Hepburn in "The Philadelphia Story"...each of them powerhouse performances, all still memorable. Rogers' ace in the hole was that her natural and likable portrayal of a working girl torn between two lovers who each propose to her on the same night, came as a complete departure from all those lighter-than-air musicals she did with Fred Astaire. She get's to really act, but it's a sincere, self effacing performance. Told completely in flashbacks, we learn how she got in this enviable fix between the good looking and charming Main Line scion (Dennis Morgan), and the good looking and charming young doctor (James Craig). You can probably figure out the denouement ahead of time,  but it's fun waiting until the last line of the picture to really find out who she chooses. Just hang on for some gut wrenching waterworks along the way (I said it was a melodrama, didn't I?) And for all you trivia lovers, this is the movie that inspired the garment industry term "Kitty Foyle dress", a dark fabric shirtwaist frock with white collar designed by costumer Renié that Rogers wears, it was mass produced for years afterward.

"The Red House" (1947)

Is it possible for a movie to be film noir and not be set in the dark alleys and shadowy streets of the city? If any movie successfully comes close to pulling it off then "The Red House" is it. Helmed by Delmer Daves (he would direct a fine noir the following year with Bogie and Bacall, "Dark Passage") this atomospheric mystery thriller takes place entirely in the bucolic world of a sleepy rural community. But with the angst and psychological feel of the noir genre. Kindly farmer Edward G. Robinson and his sister, Judith Anderson, have an adopted teenage daughter (Allene Roberts). She's got a crush on a local boy (Lon McCallister) who's the new hired hand. Trouble begins when the teens ignore the dire warnings of Robinson and start to venture off the farm and into the local woods, a place he has deemed strictly verboten because, well, there's a mysterious red house their where spooky unmentionable things once happened. Are you starting to catch all the not-so-subtle symbolism here? Forbidden places, burgeoning sexuality, coming of age, it's all here at a fever pitch. Throw another couple of naughty teens into the forrest, played by the unbelievably gorgeous Rory Calhoun and Julie London, who vie for our heroes' budding love and libidos, and you've got a steamy stew of secrets and young lust that would make Bruno Bettelheim blush. From Little Red Riding Hood to the Blair Witch, there's always a good scare to be had when you go deep into the woods. Follow this troupe and you won't be disappointed.

"The Night of the Iguana" (1964)

The lurid tagline was "One man...three women...one night...", obviously trying to cash in on the sultry psycho-sexual plots of other films adapted from Tennessee Williams' plays. But this one was something different, a tale of finding redemption and inner peace with life's demons. A disparate group of lonely types find themselves in a remote corner of Mexico removed from civilization in a down-at-the-heels hotel. A defrocked alcoholic priest hanging on to the last shreds of his faith (Richard Burton), a saintly vagabond artist caring for her elderly father (Deborah Kerr), a shrewish Bible thumper on a cook's tour (Oscar nominated Grayson Hall), and the hotel's earthy free-sprit proprietor (Ava Gardner). These lives are at their at the end of their rope just like the metaphorical iguana tied under the property's porch. Maybe one night's soul searching will set everyone free. The acting is aces all around. Burton was always good at inner anguish. Kerr makes decency attractive when it could easily be off-putting. And Gardner shines. She's loose, bawdy, and sexy as hell, never better. It took the rascally director John Huston to corral these big personalities and the result is a fine adaptation of a rare open-hearted Williams piece.

"To Be or Not To Be" (1942)

Jack Benny's movie career was mostly a grabbag of film shorts, lightweight comedies, and cameos. His lengthy career in vaudeville, radio, and TV are really what kept his star burnished for decades. But he did have one truly excellent film to his credit, one helmed by a master director with a first rate script and stellar supporting cast. And it was an out and out bomb. If ever there was the right picture at the very wrong time, "To Be or Not To Be" was it. It's a WWII thriller-comedy about a Polish theatre troupe putting on subversive anti-Nazi plays making fun of Hitler and the Third Reich while they try to foil a plot that could endanger the underground resistance. With the real Axis powers goose--stepping through Europe and the Pearl Harbor attack just four months prior, the picture was doomed from the get-go. To add to the tragedy, Benny's co-star, the luminous Carole Lombard, was killed in a plane crash a few weeks before the release date. But time has been kind and it's now a comedy classic. The movie zips from farcical gags, perfectly timed banter, to hairbreadth escapes in a flash, all the while making some serious commentary on the the damnable madness of the Nazi scourge. Benny has the timing of Swiss watch and Lombard was that rare combo platter of smarts and sex appeal. A comic gem.

"And Then There Were None" (1945)

French director René Clair made relatively few films outside his native France but his adaptation of Agatha Christie's most famous of whodunnit puzzlers was made in Hollwood and it's first rate, still probably the best version of this mystery ever filmed. There's a light touch to what is essentially a horrific premise: a fiendish murderer has invited ten strangers for a weekend getaway to a secluded mansion on a  small island off the English coast and the guests are eliminated, some gruesomely, one by one in the fashion of a children's nursery rhyme, ("Ten little Indian boys went out to dine, one choked his little self, and then there were nine"...you get it). Each of he guests has a nefarious incident in their past where they themselves caused the death of an innocent, the killer is playing a deadly game of judge and jury. In between the mayhem and fingerpointing among the culprits, you get funny dialog and a few well-placed shivers. The cast is first rate, boasting some of the great character actors of the time like Walter Huston, Barry Fitzgerald, and Judith Anderson. Don't even attempt trying to figure out the identity of the murderer, Dame Agatha was too skillful for that. Just enjoy watching the puzzle unfold right up to the last macabre joke before the endtitles.

"The Wages of Fear" (Le Salaire de la Peur) (1953)

You come to this French film with the knowledge that it's one of the most edge-of-your-seat thrillers ever made. But, really, it was made almost 65 years ago, it's probably a little tame by today's standards, right? WRONG. It not only lives up to the lore but it exceeds it. How could it not with this--pun intended--powderkeg of a plot: a group of ragtag, down-on-their-luck oil workers have to deliver two truckloads full of nitroglycerin over an impossibly treacherous 300 miles of backroads in some Godforsaken South American country to a blazing refinery fire so that it can be extinguished. The first hour is all about the set up and character exposition, if we didn't care for these sad fellows then none of the rest of the picture makes sense. Once they hit the road, they're put through one white knuckle setpiece with those trucks after another. These scenes are almost Rube Goldbergian in complexity and these players have to figure out each 'trap' or they're blown to Kingdom Come. The director, Henri-Georg Clouzot, is oftentimes referred to as "the French Hitchcock", with good measure. Each scene is not only squrm-inducingly suspenseful, but character defining as well. The break out star is Yves Montand. Handsome as all get-out, brashly cocksure, and filled with almost fatally flawed hubris, you want to throttle him for being so reckless. There's not a little commentary about the rapacious nature of the big American oil company that is giving so little value to the lives of these men, and by extension to the environment it's harming. You can bet that if Big Oil was a bad thing back then it's even worse now. Minute for minute as exciting as the best roller coaster you've ever ridden, don't miss this one.

"Eyes of Laura Mars" (1978)

Director Irvin Kirshner did something pretty special here. He captured the visceral pulsating atmosphere of the dying days of that immoral Me Decade, the 1970's, and the cultural nexus where all that grime, grit, glitter, and glamour was in full swing, the scary and wonderful New York City that President Ford had written off with a tart 'drop dead', but was still a thriving hothouse of creativity and social taboo busting. It's all wrapped in a so-so thriller, but the plot, pure Hollywood twaddle,  is beside the point. It's all about the visual milieu, the dirty streets, downtown discos, and pre-mall-ified SoHo. Faye Dunaway is a high fashion photographer who's work is a mixture of style and violence, sex and danger. Gorgeous models are coldly impassive in tableaux vivant with guns, blood, fire, wrecked cars, and barking Dobermans. It's Helmut Newton gone even more gonzo. But just like that she starts suffering from psychic spells where she's seeing through the point of view of a crazed killer's eyes. Everyone around her is getting bumped off. Dunaway pulls off the balance of strong career gal and vulnerable victim admirably, and she probably never looked better on film. Those cheekbones and stiletto heeled long legs were made to play a couture ice goddess. An earnest Tommy Lee Jones shows up as the hunky detective assigned to crack the implausible case and to save (and bed) Dunaway. If you don't see the identity of the murderer coming from a mile away you're more blind than Laura Mars. Just revel in the time capsule nature of the film and take yourself into that exciting pre-scrubbed-up Manhattan of yesterday where the dangerous mixed with the chic, and the result was decadently stimulating.

"A Place in the Sun" (1951)

Film noir can be hardbitten and cynical or lushly romantic, but there's one rule characters in the genre must live by: the deterministic, inexorable power of Fate. In this haunting effort, an streamlined updating of Theodor Dreiser's dense novel "An American Tragedy", Montgomery Clift is an eager but poor young man who travels cross country to work in his rich uncle's clothing factory. He can see before him all the possibility of what wealth can bring, clothes, cars, big homes, and most importantly, a girl. And what a girl this is. Elizabeth Taylor in her first adult role ("Before that, all my leading men were either dogs or horses."). Her Angela Vickers is the embodiment of everything post WWII American men wanted and what women wanted to be. It wasn't an easy role, she's aspirational but not haughty, flirty but not off-putting, sexual but still innocent. No wonder Clift falls hard for her. But of course, there's a problem: he's gotten his previous girlfriend pregnant, a drab and dowdy scene-stealing Shelley Winters. If only this Debbie Downer were out of the way, and that's when things turn sinister. Director George Stevens alternates between the two worlds tearing at Clift, the working class dead-end life with Winters, and the glamorous enviable world of Taylor, with languorous overlapping dissolves. And effective way of juxtaposing the dichotomies. And was there ever a more attractive screen pairing than Taylor and Clift? Their famous kissing close-ups are rapturously beautiful. And as added eye candy you get Edith Head's much-copied ball gown, the one with a spray of white lilacs showcasing Taylor's bosom. One look at her in that get-up and he's a goner for sure. Just like us the audience.

"Jamaica Inn" (1939)

Alfred Hitchcock only made three costume pictures in his entire career, it wasn't a genre he was entirely comfortable with, "I'm always thinking 'where do they go to the bathroom?'" Much maligned (even by the master himself), a fresh look proves there's a lot to like about this moody tale of early 19th Century coastal scalawags. Adapted from Daphne DuMaurier's atmospheric but somewhat plodding bestseller, the plot was smartly re-structured to align with one of the director's laws of suspense: give the audience more information than the characters. We learn quickly who the bad guy is, when will the heroine? Therein lies the tension. A winsome Maureen O'Hara, just a teenager and making her solid film debut, is a young English lass who comes to live with her long lost aunt and uncle in the title establishment, a place of nefarious reputation. See, Uncle, a craggy Leslie Banks, is the leader of a band of "wreckers", land pirates who lure unsuspecting ships to their doom on the treacherous Cornish rocks and then scoop up the booty killing all aboard. Headstrong O'Hara will have none of it, and she enlists the nearby kindly squire, Charles Laughton, to help undo the deadly dealings. The whole affair is filled with little Hitchcockian touches, you can't tamp down pure talent, but the most fascinating realization when watching is that the entire picture was shot on studio sets. Shipwrecks. Crashing waves. Rocky coasts. Horse drawn carriages traipsing up and down the desolate English moors. All created in a controlled environment and it looks superb. Unbelievable  film craftsmanship that deserves a viewing.

"M" (1931)

This justifiably famous proto-noir broke so much cinematic ground upon it’s first release that it still looks fresh all these umpteen years later. A serial killer preying on young little girls is terrorizing a large German city. Taking the form of a police procedural, the film follows detectives and departmental brass methodically pursuing the psychopath before he can kill again. What gives this basic premise more stylistic heft is the concurrent effort of the city’s underworld denizens as they also hunt down the culprit. With so much police presence on the streets it’s cutting into their livelihood, this sicko is bad for business. Exacting director Fritz Lang cross cuts both groups’ efforts with the murderer, the “M”, as he creepily stalks more children. But by portraying the villain (a career defining performance by Peter Lorre) as a victim himself to psychological inner demons and not purely a monster, Lang broke new territory. Wrap it all in a pervasive depiction of a festering, fear filled German society and you get a uneasy glimpse into how this Depression saddled era could bring rise to something as pernicious as Nazism. A must for Film History 101 students of any age. 

Encore review: "Blowout" (1981)

MoviefiedNYC is running my capsule review of Brian DePalma's '80s thriller "Blow Out" this week.
You can read the full review here.

"Stagecoach" (1939)

This was the western that started it all, that legitimized the genre as more than just horses, guns, shootouts, and Injuns, that it could be about Bigger Themes. What is the role of the individual vs. society? What's morally right and wrong, and who defines it? And a biggie, What is man's place in this world? Heady stuff. But don't worry, this oater is still chock full of horses, guns, shootouts, and Injuns, and despite it's age holds up extremely well as a piece of pop culture entertainment. On initial release the simple premise was dubbed "Grand Hotel on wheels", a group of disparate travelers are just trying to get from Point A to Point B in a Wells Fargo wagon, but it's their journey of self-discovery that's gives the story resonance. The familiar types, a prostitute being run out of town (Claire Trevor), a gambler (John Carradine), a shady businessman (Berton Churchill ), the alcoholic doctor (Thomas Mitchell), the prim and pregnant army wife (Louis Platt), the milquetoast whiskey salesman (Donald Meek), and the outlaw (John Wayne in a star making performance as The Ringo Kid) are a perfect cast. The human stories are compelling but the picture really delivers on the action. The final chase thru Apache territory is still one of the most thrilling sequences in movie history. The stunts are jaw dropping. And of course, attention must be paid to director John Ford's masterful use of what would become his favorite location, Utah's Monument Valley. All those eerie, majestic rock formations and mesas as a backdrop for the small human drama that unfolds in front of it.

Moviefied review: "Let's Make Love" (1960)

My recent review of "Let's Make Love" with Marilyn Monroe and Yves Montand from 1960 was picked up by the nifty movie site MoviefiedNYC.com where I've done some contributing. You can read it here. Enjoy.

www.moviefiednyc.com

"Suddenly, Last Summer" (1959)

Just another one of those Tennessee Williams family dramas involving murder, incest, blackmail, psychosis, and cannibalism. A musical it ain't. But if you're in the mood for two of the great screen divas going for the jugular and for broke, this vehicle does nicely, thank you. Katherine Hepburn is an ultra-rich dowager still mourning the death of her mannered, aesthete, and clearly gay son, Sebastien, from a year prior. She wants to enlist a brain surgeon who specializes in lobotomies (Montgomery Clift) to work his special scalpel skills on her niece (Elizabeth Taylor) who was with her son at the time of his mysterious death. Mute the niece and you mute the Terrible Secrets that will surely be spilled by the final act. Screenwriter Gore Vidal does an admirable job of expanding Williams small one-act play. This being the late 1950's, a lot of the Gran Guignol aspects of the plot are merely hinted at, but enough of the playwright's purple dialog and lurid shocks still pack a wallop. Audiences went to it in droves and for good reason. Hepburn is chillingly frightening as the gorgon of all mothers who had one creepy relationship with that son. Clift is merely passable (this was a charity role from his post-accident career phase gifted to him by Taylor), but she shines as the hysterical ingenue on the brink of mental collapse. And who can forget her now iconic presence in that white bathing suit on the beach right before the final horrific denouement?

Lover Come Back (1961)

There was something about the on-screen chemistry between Doris Day and Rock Hudson that just clicked. Yes, their characters' bickering and bantering in all their films had a fizzy rhythm, the sexual tension that would finally consummate by the final reel. But you also get the feeling the two stars were cognizant of the underlying joke of it all. Her virginal star 'brand', the All-American Good Girl, would never allow her bed anyone, not even a Hollywood's hottest hunk. And he, perhaps the most famous of the closeted leading men of that time, was never going to come within a thousand miles of HeteroLand. So what to do? Play it like broad farce and have as much fun as you can. And it showed. This was one of their better pairings. Each of them works for big warring advertising agencies that are literally across Madison Avenue from each other (think "Mad Men" but with laughs). They wind up competing for the same big account but she thinks he's the inventor of the product, not her arch enemy. The racy jokes and double entendres still work, if a mite tamer by today's standards. What's more fascinating are the sly subtle references to Hudson's real life sexuality; it's like watching the film through a fun house mirror. Add to that Day's title ditty and her endless parade of Jackie Kennedy-esque fashions...plus, you can play Spot That TV Character Actor...look for Tony "The Odd Couple" Randall, Ann B. "Brady Bunch" Davis, Donna "The Beverly Hillbillies" Douglas, Joe "McHale's Navy" Flynn, Ted "That Girl" Bessell,  Richard "The Dick Van Dyke Show" Deacon, and Jack "Chico and the Man" Albertson.

Encore reviews: "Don't Bother to Knock" (1952) and "The Seven Year Itch" (1955)

Two past reviews have been posted on Moviefied.com this week.
You can read them here.

Let's Make Love (1960)

This was to be Marilyn Monroe's penultimate movie, a witty musical rom-com that showed she could bring a modicum of acting ability to a role instead of just being a magnetic on-screen 'presence'. The director here, the old master George Cukor, who had a reputation for skillful direction of female leading ladies, would say afterward, "...she couldn't sustain scenes. She'd do three lines and then forget the rest, she'd do another line and then forget everything again. You had to shoot it piecemeal. But curiously enough, when you strung it all together, it was complete. She never could do the same thing twice, but, as with all the true movie queens, there was an excitement about her." If the performance was created with the magic of editing, it doesn't show, Monroe is smart, touching, and of course, unabashedly sexy. She's a struggling off-off-Broadway actress rehearsing a small topical review in a Greenwich Village theatre-in-the-round. One of the notable celebs the show is poking fun at is a headline making billionaire playboy (Yves Montand). He deigns to travel downtown to see for himself if he should get litigious with this pipsqueak show and he gets mistaken for a neophyte actor auditioning for the piece. He falls for Monroe who doesn't know his real identity. Yes, it's a gimcrack plot device but isn't that the price of entry for most musicals anyway? What makes it work is Monroe's undeniable star quality; when she's in the frame you look at nothing else. Every leading male star at the time turned down this picture because of her infamous behind the scenes shenanigans, so props to Montand for giving a funny, nuanced performance that holds its own against her mega-watt charisma. You really feel his struggle to find a partner who doesn't love him for his bank account alone. There are some nifty musical numbers supplied by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen, mostly for Monroe and her show-within-a-show co-star, Frankie Vaughn, who's like a strapping Tony Bennett clone. And credit goes to Cukor for maintaining the right smart tone for the whole piece, not letting it veer into corny schtick and to coax the goods out of his difficult star. Somehow he got everything he needed to 'string it all together' beautifully.

Encore review: "The Last of Sheila" (1973)

This is an expanded review of one I originally did a few years ago. It's now appearing on Moviefied.com where I'm supplying some articles.
You can read it here.

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If you like a good whodunnit--and who dudn’t?-- then this acerbic and bitchy puzzle of a film is de rigueur viewing. In the best tradition of the genre, a group of suspects is plopped down in an isolated locale and the murderous hijinks ensue as clues, red herrings, and bodies pile up. Here, James Coburn plays a conniving Hollywood producer who gathers a group of his movie biz friends for a weekend of parlor games on his swanky yacht off the coast of France. But there’s an air of malice among the festivities; see, exactly one year prior all the attendees were present the night Coburn’s gossip columnist wife (the titular Sheila), was wickedly run down by a hit and run driver. Perhaps that murderer is now among the revelers? As the games progress, someone's not playing fair as the body count starts to rise. This was the first and only produced screenplay by the estimable Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim, a famous lover of word games, anagrams, and puzzles (his co-writer was Anthony Perkins-yes, that Norman Bates). The fascinatingly knotty plot (don’t even try to deduce the killer), is kept buoyantly afloat because it’s also a biting lampoon of all those awful denizens of LaLaLand. There’s the vapid starlet (Raquel Welch) and her leeching manager (Ian McShane), the has-been director (James Mason), the dried-up screenwriter (Richard Benjamin), and his mousy wife (Joan Hackett). Best of all is Dyan Cannon doing a lethal caricature of real life monster agent Sue Mengers. She’s got one terrific mad scene where her evil cackle curdles into a cry for help. Director Herb Ross keeps things moving along nicely in the stunning St. Tropez locations; there’s just the right amount of disturbing menace amongst the twisty doings and tart dialog. Kind of like what you’d expect at a Hollywood party filled with beautiful people…don’t turn your back or you’ll get stabbed. And who can resist a final ironic Bette Midler tune as the credits roll and you’ve just realized the answer to the caper has been staring you in the face all along?

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"Secret Agent" (1936)

They're well nigh on being 80 years old, but the films of Alfred Hitchcock's British Period, his vastly entertaining oeuvre before he crossed over the pond to the cinematic heights of Hollywood, are looking as fresh and fascinating as ever. Case in point: this very fine spy picture that boasts some haunting visual set pieces and a thoughtful study on the human toll of war and the causal need for state sanctioned murder. John Gielgud is a reluctant undercover British agent sent to Switzerland to find and kill a notorious German spy. He's aided by a scene stealing Peter Lorre as an amoral devil doll sidekick. There's no low ebb in this amped up performance; he's a walking id leering at all the ladies or dead set on enemy homicide. The cooly beautiful Madeleine Carroll--the proto "Hitchcock Blonde"-- is also on hand as the third spy assigned to the case. She's Gielgud's marital cover, slowly falling for her faux hubby, but also swatting away the advances of a charming American tourist, Robert "Marcus Welby" Young. The cast effortlessly handles the witty dialog and espionage derring-do, while Hitchcock cannily exploits the Teutonic locale. You get loads of Alps, mountain climbing, cute Dachshunds, and a sinister chocolate factory, but more importantly, a thoughtful meditation on the price of human life during wartime. Best of all, you can catch this gem on YouTube, see it here.

"This Gun for Hire" (1942)

He was chiseled but notoriously short for a leading man,  and her icy features were hidden most of the time behind a famous peek-a-boo hairstyle, but for a brief moment in Hollywood history they were the IT couple starring in seven films together. The best were films noir that showcased their sexy cool chemistry. Like this very fine outing, their first pairing. Everyone here is after oily Laird Cregar who has sold some wartime chemical weapons secrets to the Japanese (he's the heavy alright, much is made of his insatiable appetite). Ladd is an amoral hitman who Cregar has double-crossed, he's monomaniacally hellbent on revenge. Lake is a nightclub singer who the baddie has his eye on, so the Feds enlist her to ferret him out. And then there's Robert Preston as her affable detective boyfriend who's on the case too. It's a roundelay of chases and intrigue in a grimy, realistic Las Angeles, still looking worn and weary from the Depression. There are a number of offbeat touches that give the story some witty bite, like Lake's two nifty nightclub numbers penned by tunesmith Frank Loesser. Cutting through it all is the magnetic attraction of the two stars and the agitated tripwire performance of Ladd. No wonder this portrait of pure menace put him on the map. Poor Preston, he had top billing but you almost forget he's in the picture. Oh, extra points for one of the best film posters of all time too.

"The Fugitive Kind" (1960)

This screen adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play "Orpheus Descending" is rambling and messy but it boasts some fine acting by four of the last century's greats, all of them Oscar winners. A modern day telling of the ancient Greek myth of Orpheus, Marlon Brando is the studly guitar toting wanderer who happens upon a small Southern town and charms a trio of pent of up women. There's Maureen Stapleton, the bigoted local sheriff's wife, who mothers the stranger; Joanne Woodward, the artsy beatnik who just wants to bed him; and Anna Magnani, the middle aged proprietress of the town mercantile caught in a stifling marriage and in sore need of love. Director Sidney Lumet creates a fine sense of longing and desperation as the characters all intermingle and untangle until the final tragic denouement. (You don't have to be Edith Hamilton to know Brando's character is destined for a bad end, besides, this is Tennessee Williams Land, is there any other option?). See it especially for a couple of the playwright's patented and haunting soliloquy's; he had Brando in mind when he wrote the play, and the actor is mesmerizing here. There's a reason he was considered one of the best of his time. He's scary good.

The Big Knife (1955)

Hollywood has a penchant for making movies about itself. And the painfully obvious message in most of them is--SPOILER ALERT: It's a not very nice place filled with awful people! Duh, right? But if you can get past that plain fact, some of these pictures, like this very good entry from director Robert Aldrich, have much to recommend themselves. This one starts with an outstanding cast where everyone is giving it all they've got. Jack Palance plays one of his rare non-villain roles as a sensitive leading man, a big star who's put his career playing rote rolls in sub-par (but successful) westerns and boxing movies ahead of his family life and suffering wife, Ida Lupino. She and his obsequious manager (Everett Sloane) are the only two people in his corner. The rest of the cast are all out for a piece of his flesh. The slimy studio chief, a howling and teeth gnashing Rod Steiger, and his fixer, low-keyed and lethal Wendall Corey. Ilka Chase is a nasty Hedda Hopper-like gossip columnist who only wants some salacious copy and Jean Hagen and Shelley Winters are two Hollywood bimbos who both hold some secrets on Palance that could wreck his career. At times talky and overwrought, this adaptation of Cifford Odets play still delivers the goods because, well, don't we love to seeing all those rich and beautiful people suffer just a little for all the good fortune they've been given? You betcha.

"I'll Cry Tomorrow" (1955)

In the 1950's Susan Hayward was the queen of the biopics. This is her portrayal of the largely forgotten actress Lillian Roth. Back then there was no People magazine, no E! News, no Oprah. So when Roth published her tell-all autobiography about her quick rise to fame and fortune at a young age, and then the inevitable downward spiral into booze and the poor house, it was a media sensation.  The movie adaption was a lock. Hayward plays to the bleachers here with a performance that pulls no punches. She throws herself into one ugly drunken binge scene after another until, yes, she does end up literally blotto, stumbling into a gutter. Lucky for her there's kindly Eddie Albert as her AA coach to lift her back to sobriety and a noble ending. Jo Van Fleet is on hand as Roth's domineering and scary stage mother as well as a creepy turn by Richard Conte as a wife-beating husband. But it's Hayward's picture all the way, doing a more than admirable job at several big musical numbers showcasing Roth's big pop hits like "Sing You Sinners" and "When the Red, Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin' Along."

"Deception" (1946)

Passion, lies, murder...and classical music. Like Warner Brothers' "Mildred Pierce" with Joan Crawford the year before, this women's picture slash film noir, is a star turn for that other grand dame of the cinema, Bette Davis. She's the protege and former lover of an internationally famous composer played to the hammy hilt by Claude Rains. When the cellist lover she had assumed died in the War (Paul Heinreid) turns stateside and they rekindle their old flame, she decides not to tell him about her svengali ex, he's been through too much turmoil. And that's only deception #1. Davis' titular lies keep piling up like the shoulder pads on her '40s evening gowns. At times chatty and borderline campy, it's worth seeing if only for Davis' New York loft apartment, so ahead of it's time it could be on the cover of ELLE Decor next month. The several concert sequences are first rate, the black and white cinematography lensed by Ernest Haller is lush, and for an extra hoot, check out how they filmed Heinreid playing the cello: not one but two real instrumentalists slip their arms thru his jacket and 'double' for his fiddlin' arms! Sublime kookiness.

"Stage Fright" (1950)

For years afterward, Alfred Hitchcock would give this fine little film of his short shrift, saying he'd made a structural plot mistake that adversely affected the viewer's following of the story. He felt he didn't play fair with the audience. Yes...and no. I think the plot device he's referencing doesn't make or break one's appreciation for the film at all. There are too many other delightful ingredients in the mix here to dismiss it out of hand. Jane Wyman is an aspiring actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She's got a crush on another actor (Richard Todd) who the police believe has murdered the husband of London's biggest musical theatre star, Marlene Dietrich. Wyman turns into an amateur Nancy Drew trying to get the goods on Dietrich by going undercover as her maid to prove the diva did it. She even enlists the help of her doting father, the good-natured Alistair Sim, while she gets romantically involved with the dashing detective working on the case, a very likable Michael Wilding. There are lots of comic bits and scenes in the ambling plot, all infused with a light British sense of underplayed humor. But undoubtably the reason to see the picture is La Dietrich playing the prima donna role to the hilt. She's sly, sexy, suspicious, and irresistible to watch, stealing the picture right out from under everybody. Cole Porter even wrote a big number for her ("The Laziest Gal in Town") that would later become one of her signature concert staples. Who can resist her purring a number like that in a Dior original? It's obvious Hitchcock couldn't, he films her throughout in the most flattering closeups imaginable.