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.

Moviefied.com

Or, if you're lazy, just read it here:

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?

Moviefied.com

One of my past reviews has been featured on the very fine movie website Moviefied.com...a great place to find all matter of film features, reviews, fun facts, and opinions...a cineaste's dream.
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And see my post here.

"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.