A pretty good month, though not many films that I like that I have not mentioned previously. As usual I recommend any and everything by John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, Raoul Walsh and, in August, Gregory LaCava and Preston Sturges.
On Aug. 1 is one of Sturges's best film, The Lady Eve (1941) and John Brahm's melodrama Let Us Live (1939).
On Aug. 2 is John Stahl's quirky Our Wife (1941) and Albert Lewin's mythopeic Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), with its beautiful color cinematography by Jack Cardiff
On Aug. 13 is Fritz Lang's Brechtian Hangmen Also Die (1943)
On Aug. 15 are two superb Westerns starring Rod Steiger: Samuel Fuller's Run of the Arrow (1957) and Sergio Leone's Fistful of Dynamite (1972) with, of course, an Ennio Morricone score.
On the 19th is Buster Keaton's beautiful The General (1927)
On the 23rd there are several Rogers and Astaire musicals, my favorite of which is Follow the Fleet (1936) with songs by Irving Berlin
Vincente Minnelli's tense Some Came Running (1958) is on the 24th.
Sunday, July 28, 2019
Saturday, July 27, 2019
Roy Rowland's Gun Glory
Gun Glory is an ironic title: Gunfighter Tom Early (Stewart Granger) returns to town after abandoning his wife and son for gambling and gunfighting; when he asks his son where his wife is Tom Early, Jr. (Steve Rowland) points over to her grave, under a nearby shade tree. When Junior tells his father that Early, Senior is a "legend" Granger says "a legend is a lie that just snowballs,"
Most Westerns are some combination of libertarian and populist and Gun Glory is no exception. A cattleman is planning to drive 20,000 head through town, effectively destroying the town, and the populace decides to strike back, led by the preacher (Chill Wills). Early provokes a stampede that wipes out the cattlemen and saves the town, though the preacher is killed and Early swears he will finish building the church.
There's a great deal else that goes on, of course, including the rescue of an abused woman (Rhonda Fleming) and a final shootout with the nefarious cattleman (James Gregory). The film was made at MGM with cinematographer Harold J. Mazorati and screenwriter William Ludwig, who were MGM stalwarts, using beautiful locations shot in Cinemascope. Rowland's direction is both effective and inobtrusive. Granger is nicely low-key in an unusual Western role, though my favorite Granger role is in Fritz Lang's oneiric period piece Moonfleet (1955).
Most Westerns are some combination of libertarian and populist and Gun Glory is no exception. A cattleman is planning to drive 20,000 head through town, effectively destroying the town, and the populace decides to strike back, led by the preacher (Chill Wills). Early provokes a stampede that wipes out the cattlemen and saves the town, though the preacher is killed and Early swears he will finish building the church.
There's a great deal else that goes on, of course, including the rescue of an abused woman (Rhonda Fleming) and a final shootout with the nefarious cattleman (James Gregory). The film was made at MGM with cinematographer Harold J. Mazorati and screenwriter William Ludwig, who were MGM stalwarts, using beautiful locations shot in Cinemascope. Rowland's direction is both effective and inobtrusive. Granger is nicely low-key in an unusual Western role, though my favorite Granger role is in Fritz Lang's oneiric period piece Moonfleet (1955).
Thursday, July 25, 2019
Lesley Selander's Gunplay 1961
I am not particularly knowledgeable about the "B" Western but even when I was a kid I thought that motorcars in so-called Westerns (such as those of Roy Rogers and Gene Autry) were absurd and ridiculous. Gunplay is one of seven movies that Tim Holt made in 1951 -- he made mostly Westerns but also appeared in Orson Welles and John Huston films -- and sticks fairly close to the populist iconography of the serious Western, with a drunken sheriff and a corrupt and murdering banker who owns the whole town and everybody in it. The movie is intense and emotional, sixty minutes of a search for justice for a young boy whose father is lynched by cohorts of the banker. Tim Holt plays a character named "Tim Holt" who goes to work on a ranch run single-handedly by Joan Dixon and he and his Mexican-Irish sidekick discover the young boy, lost and crying for his dead father, and take it upon themselves to seek justice.
Gunplay was one of nine movies that Lesley Selander directed in 1951. His direction is crisp and the black-and-white cinematography by J. Roy Hunt (who photographed eight films in 1951) is straightforward and unobtrusive; Tim Holt does most of his stunts himself. and Joan Dixon plays a no-nonsense woman who is not afraid to get dressed up for a stagecoach ride. It is not surprising that in 1951 "B" Westerns were on the way out, replaced by the more claustrophobic TV Western.
Gunplay was one of nine movies that Lesley Selander directed in 1951. His direction is crisp and the black-and-white cinematography by J. Roy Hunt (who photographed eight films in 1951) is straightforward and unobtrusive; Tim Holt does most of his stunts himself. and Joan Dixon plays a no-nonsense woman who is not afraid to get dressed up for a stagecoach ride. It is not surprising that in 1951 "B" Westerns were on the way out, replaced by the more claustrophobic TV Western.
Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Delmer Daves' Jubal 1956
Jubal is an intense and beautiful Western, photographed in Cinemascope and Technicolor by Charles Lawton, Jr., who worked with Budd Boetticher and John Ford and knew how to capture men on horseback in the wilderness; the mountains, meadows and forests of Jubal are beautiful but the behavior of some of the human beings is sometimes quite ugly. The characters in Jubal may be stereotypes in some ways -- out of "Othello" -- but Daves effectively brings out their personalities: Rod Steiger as Iago, Ernest Borgnine as Othello, Valerie French as Desdemona. Glenn Ford is the drifting character who ends up working at Borgnine's ranch and falls in love with Felicia Farr, who is traveling West with a group of gentle religious zealots, one of whom betrays them, while resisting the flirtations of the boss's wife.
Daves made a number of excellent Westerns, including 3:10 to Yuma in 1957 and The Last Wagon in 1956, before exhausting his limited fatalistic approach to the genre and becoming the house director for Troy Donahue's Warner Brothers melodramas. Jubal is full of elegant compositions and sweeping camera movements that unite the ranch hands to the landscape and Daves does a superb job with the many veteran and new character actors in the film --Noah Beery,Jr; Jack Elam; Charles Bronson (a small but important role), et al.
Daves made a number of excellent Westerns, including 3:10 to Yuma in 1957 and The Last Wagon in 1956, before exhausting his limited fatalistic approach to the genre and becoming the house director for Troy Donahue's Warner Brothers melodramas. Jubal is full of elegant compositions and sweeping camera movements that unite the ranch hands to the landscape and Daves does a superb job with the many veteran and new character actors in the film --Noah Beery,Jr; Jack Elam; Charles Bronson (a small but important role), et al.
Sunday, July 21, 2019
Big Sky by Kate Atkinson
By the time Jackson was thirteen his mother was already dead of cancer, his sister had been murdered, and his brother had killed himself, helpfully leaving his body -- hanging from the light fixture -- for Jackson to find when he came home from school. Jackson never got the chance to be selfish, to sprawl and make demands and fold his arms sarcastically. And anyway, if he had, his father would have given him a good skelping. Not that Jackson wished suffering on his son --God forbid -- but a little less narcissism wouldn't go amiss.
Kate Atkinson, Big Sky: Little, Brown and Company,2019
Welcome back Jackson Brodie. This is Atkinson's fifth novel about private detective Brodie, and the first since 2010 (It would be helpful, but not necessary, to read the earlier ones first). In between Brodie novels she has written novels that experiment with narrative conventions and she has gradually introduced those experiments into the Brodie novels. Actually Brodie in Big Sky is only one of the many characters, including a group of golf buddies and their families, with the golfers running a sex trafficking ring. And almost every character hears, in parentheses, someone in their head "talking" to them. Brodie hears his former lover, Julia, while trying to take care of their teenage son Nathan and their dog Dido, Queen of Carthage.
There's a great deal to keep track of in this multi-layered novel, more a novel of human relationships than a strictly crime or private detective novel (what little detecting Brodie does -- mostly divorce work --leads him into trouble and is mostly unsuccessful), especially the relationships between spouses, between parents and children and between siblings and half-siblings. Atkinson takes us in directions that lead to dead-ends and red herrings in strange parts of the East Coast of Yorkshire, where Brodie is now living, before the crimes are revealed, just as Laurence Stern and Tobias Smollett did.
Truth, in Jackson's experience, was often found skulking behind the lines. Sometimes, of course, that could be preferable to it charging you from the front with a bayonet.
Kate Atkinson, Big Sky: Little, Brown and Company,2019
Welcome back Jackson Brodie. This is Atkinson's fifth novel about private detective Brodie, and the first since 2010 (It would be helpful, but not necessary, to read the earlier ones first). In between Brodie novels she has written novels that experiment with narrative conventions and she has gradually introduced those experiments into the Brodie novels. Actually Brodie in Big Sky is only one of the many characters, including a group of golf buddies and their families, with the golfers running a sex trafficking ring. And almost every character hears, in parentheses, someone in their head "talking" to them. Brodie hears his former lover, Julia, while trying to take care of their teenage son Nathan and their dog Dido, Queen of Carthage.
There's a great deal to keep track of in this multi-layered novel, more a novel of human relationships than a strictly crime or private detective novel (what little detecting Brodie does -- mostly divorce work --leads him into trouble and is mostly unsuccessful), especially the relationships between spouses, between parents and children and between siblings and half-siblings. Atkinson takes us in directions that lead to dead-ends and red herrings in strange parts of the East Coast of Yorkshire, where Brodie is now living, before the crimes are revealed, just as Laurence Stern and Tobias Smollett did.
Truth, in Jackson's experience, was often found skulking behind the lines. Sometimes, of course, that could be preferable to it charging you from the front with a bayonet.
Friday, July 19, 2019
Russell Rouse's The Fastest Gun Alive 1956
The Fastest Gun Alive is a terrific little Western, giving life to some cliched situations and standard characters. In some ways this MGM film has something for everyone -- action, a complex love story, dancing teenagers, a little boy with a toy gun -- but director Russell Rouse, who only directed eleven films but also wrote some superb ones (especially D.O.A. in 1949), brings the characters and conflicts to vivid life in this film that takes place in 1889, as civilization is taking over the Wild West.
Glenn Ford plays George Temple, a frustrated storekeeper who has given up guns and alcohol for the sake of his wife (played by Jeanne Crain) and child on the way. But he gets angry when his customers are always complaining and gets somewhat inebriated, deciding to show his ability with a gun to the townsfolk, who are suitably impressed with his ability to shoot silver dollars in the air. Then bank robber Vinnie Harold (Broderick Crawford) rides into town with his gang, Taylor Swope (John Dehner) and Dink Wells (Noah Beery) while all the townspeople are in church. Harold hears that there is a fast gun in town and threatens to burn the town down unless Temple comes out to draw against him. Temple feels he has no choice but to save the town, even though he has again given up his guns for the sake of his family, Temple slowly walks into the street from the church and he and Harold shoot it out.
Rouse and his co-writer Frank Gilroy (on whose story the film is based) bring humanity to all the characters, Temple failed to confront his father's killer while Harold has been trying to prove he's the best ever since his wife ran off with a faro dealer. Swope and Wells leave town ahead of a posse (they had killed the sheriff's brother in another town while robbing a bank) while Harold only cares about proving he's faster than Temple.
This impressive psychological Western was photographed in beautiful black-and-white by George Folsey, who started in films in 1920, with an intelligent score by Andre Previn. Throughout Rouse uses unusual shots from high angles, suggesting that there might be a higher power watching. The film starts with the outlaws riding over mountains and past rock formations, identifying them throughout with the wildness of the West, contrasted with the town and its symbols of civilization: stores and a church.
Glenn Ford plays George Temple, a frustrated storekeeper who has given up guns and alcohol for the sake of his wife (played by Jeanne Crain) and child on the way. But he gets angry when his customers are always complaining and gets somewhat inebriated, deciding to show his ability with a gun to the townsfolk, who are suitably impressed with his ability to shoot silver dollars in the air. Then bank robber Vinnie Harold (Broderick Crawford) rides into town with his gang, Taylor Swope (John Dehner) and Dink Wells (Noah Beery) while all the townspeople are in church. Harold hears that there is a fast gun in town and threatens to burn the town down unless Temple comes out to draw against him. Temple feels he has no choice but to save the town, even though he has again given up his guns for the sake of his family, Temple slowly walks into the street from the church and he and Harold shoot it out.
Rouse and his co-writer Frank Gilroy (on whose story the film is based) bring humanity to all the characters, Temple failed to confront his father's killer while Harold has been trying to prove he's the best ever since his wife ran off with a faro dealer. Swope and Wells leave town ahead of a posse (they had killed the sheriff's brother in another town while robbing a bank) while Harold only cares about proving he's faster than Temple.
This impressive psychological Western was photographed in beautiful black-and-white by George Folsey, who started in films in 1920, with an intelligent score by Andre Previn. Throughout Rouse uses unusual shots from high angles, suggesting that there might be a higher power watching. The film starts with the outlaws riding over mountains and past rock formations, identifying them throughout with the wildness of the West, contrasted with the town and its symbols of civilization: stores and a church.
Thursday, July 18, 2019
John Sturges's The People Against O'Hara (1951)
Anyone who reads this blog knows that I, generally, consider the director the major creative force on a film. In this day and age where most movies are, to a greater or lesser extent, meretricious one tends to notice more the major contributions to classical films of other artists. I have, for instance, always enjoyed movies where Ennio Moriconne wrote the music or John Alton did the cinematography, as he did for The People Against O'Hara. Alton demonstrated a mastery of chiaroscuro in several black-and-white films for Anthony Mann (Raw Deal, 1948; T-Men, 1947; Reign of Terror, 1949) and uses it most effectively in The People Against O'Hara, directed by the sometimes workman-like John Sturges.
There are enough elements of the film noir in The People Against O'Hara to qualify it for that genre, even if those elements -- fatalism, confusion, compromised authority -- are played down in this MGM film the way they would not be at RKO or Warner Brothers. There is even a small part for a femme fatale -- played by Yvette Duguay-- the wife of a mobster who is the alibi for O'Hara, who is too afraid of her husband to admit their relationship. Spencer Tracy, who was 51 when this film was made, had been playing old men for years. His dipsomania (in the film, that is) had made him turn from criminal law to civil but he decides to make a last stand to help the O'Hara family; the Irish in this film are mostly good guys, the Italians are the bad guys.
When Tracy slips back into drinking he bribes a witness in the trial and when he returns home to his loving daughter (played intelligently by Diana Lynn) the shadows of the railing on his stairs reflect on him rather like the bars of a cell. The film begins with an example of light and dark -- a murder viewed ambiguously in the light of a doorway in the distance of a dark street --and continuously sees the streets of New York as very much like the characters in the film, a combination of light and shadow.
There are enough elements of the film noir in The People Against O'Hara to qualify it for that genre, even if those elements -- fatalism, confusion, compromised authority -- are played down in this MGM film the way they would not be at RKO or Warner Brothers. There is even a small part for a femme fatale -- played by Yvette Duguay-- the wife of a mobster who is the alibi for O'Hara, who is too afraid of her husband to admit their relationship. Spencer Tracy, who was 51 when this film was made, had been playing old men for years. His dipsomania (in the film, that is) had made him turn from criminal law to civil but he decides to make a last stand to help the O'Hara family; the Irish in this film are mostly good guys, the Italians are the bad guys.
When Tracy slips back into drinking he bribes a witness in the trial and when he returns home to his loving daughter (played intelligently by Diana Lynn) the shadows of the railing on his stairs reflect on him rather like the bars of a cell. The film begins with an example of light and dark -- a murder viewed ambiguously in the light of a doorway in the distance of a dark street --and continuously sees the streets of New York as very much like the characters in the film, a combination of light and shadow.
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