50s WATCHING THREAD

[caley]

3:10 to Yuma was good and manly.  Rancher Dan agrees to take noted outlaw Ben Wade to Contention City and get him on the train to Yuma, in exchange for the $200 he needs to keep his struggling ranch afloat for a few more months. I liked it better than the remake, actually, it had a nice brisk pacing at about 90 minutes and the final shoot-out made more sense in this one than the original.

In the original, outlaw Ben Wade decides to help out Dan, the rancher by pointing out where his fellow outlaws are and warning him, and, at the end, advises him to leap onto the train with him.  In the remake, he actually takes a gun and helps Dan by gunning down his own outlaws.

 

There's also a great exchange between Dan's kids when one says "$200 is a lot of money, isn't it?" and the other son says "Not if he doesn't come back, it's not."

[jaedmc]

A Star Is Born (Cukor, 1954)

I wrote about this on my blog. Besides thematic stuff, Cukor's directorial style seems ahead of its time in the early scenes on the red carpet. It feels very controlled but the amount of people is dizzying- reminding me of movies from the 70's. I think Bob Fosse was probably influenced heavily by this film, both in camera and editing. Some of the songs are forgettable, but Judy Garland is astounding the whole way. I love that extended number with her doing a multicultural song and dance in her apartment.

 

La Strada (Fellini, 1954)

I've seen, I think 4 Fellini films including this: 8 1/2, La Dolce Vita, and Nights of Cabiria. It's probably Giulietta Masina, but I prefer this and Cabiria to the other more lauded films. She's so magnetic as an actress, with a hugely expressive face. It also helps that this has circus performers in it, which is a good way to get me interested. There's a really cool Absurdist(in the Camus- sense, not in the modern goofy sense) dillema posed by the tight rope walker. These pebbles must have a purpose, otherwise why the fuck am I here/ Eventually I'll die doing what I think my purpose is and everyone will forget about me because I don't matter. Certainly worth watching.

 

Niagara (Hathaway, 1953)

Feels like a poor man's Hitchcock, with Marilyn Monroe and Jean PEters pulling most of the weight. Cotten is unstable, but not nearly as dynamic on the screen as the other two. The last 30 had a strange pace and I found my self drifting out of interest. 

 

Born to Be Bad (Ray, 1950)

Joan Fontaine in a Nicholas Ray film, playing a sly gold diggin home wrecker. That's really all I should have to say. Fontaine who was the sweet and innocent in Rebecca, is fucking devilish here and plays the part of conniver without telegraphing that she's lying. For a second you're not even sure if she's doing it on purpose, but then shit starts adding up and you realize she's a terrible person. If you find this on DVD watch the alternate ending too, because it's funny and over the top.

[ohtani's jacket]

BLESSINGS OF THE LAND (Manuel Silos) -- classic Filipino melodrama about a family of villagers trying to cultivate lanzones as calamity after calamity occurs. As it's a melodrama, the calamities are naturally quite convoluted and mostly revolve around a villager who is wrongly accused of murder and becomes a murderous recluse and attempted rapist, but it's an excellent piece of 50s melodrama and I deeply regret the amount of Tagalog cinema that lacks subtitles.

 

SHREE 420 (Raj Kapoor) -- Kapoor is in full-on Chaplin mode here, creating his most obvious tribute to the Tramp while even paying homage to silent cinema. I love Kapoor, so I enjoyed this lively tale of the rags to riches rise of the Chaplin character and the price he has to pay with his soul, even if it also borrows the most didactic parts of Chaplin, including a Great Dictator style speech. Kapoor was a massive talent and it's a shame his work isn't better known in the West. 

 

THE MONEY (Kim So-dong) -- a bunch of poor villagers talk about money... a lot... Picks up in the second half when the central character loses all his and everything turns to shit, but takes a long time to get going, and yeah, "money is the root of all evil" ain't the most original theme and is more fun with Bollywood songs (see above.)

 

THE WHITE REINDEER (Erik Blomberg) -- this Finnish film is like Nanook of the North if Nanook of the North was a horror film. A newly wed woman visits a shaman to get a spell for keeping her husband at home and is turned into a bewitched vampire reindeer. Interesting to say the least.

 

CARMEN COMES HOME (Keisuke Kinoshita) -- Japan's first colour film and quite a beloved one at that. Good old Hideko Takamine stars as a cabaret dancer who returns home to the country to visit her aging father and causes quite a stir. The colours are beautiful, there's a nice musical influence and some earthly humour, but as with most of Kinoshita's films it's lacking something, in this case probably an extra layer to Takamine's character.

 

THE BLACK PIT OF DR. M (Fernando Mendez) -- moody and atmospheric horror about two doctors who make a pact to discover if there's life after death, with horrific consequences. Mendez really was a pro and did wonderful things with a simple budget and single studio lot. I would put him on the same level of Bava and Franco. Great B director.

 

HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (William Castle) -- I wanted a ghost story not a whodunit, but if that doesn't bug you then this is one of Vincent Price's juicer roles and I suppose one of his better films. He has some venom soaked lines, that's for sure.

 

LILI (Charles Walters) -- everyone talks about how heart warming and charming this is, but aside from the puppets I wasn't that sold. The love story was unconvincing to me, and when the love story is unconvincing in a romantic comedy drama, you've got problems. The dream sequence that closes this out is also talked up a lot, but it's got nothing on An American in Paris. The whole puppet thing works well, though, even if it's a little on the nose in terms of what it represents.

 

YIELD TO THE NIGHT (J. Lee Thompson) -- excellent entry to the female prisoner on death row genre, a popular one in the 1950s. Diana Dors, a British Marilyn Monroe type, does extremely well going against type as the female inmate, and Thompson avoids any and all traps when it comes to sentimentality or melodrama. Sturdy film.

[caley]

Trouble Along the Way: TCM was showing a big batch of John Wayne flicks the other day and my DVR was almost full, but I managed to record this one.  John Wayne plays a former college football coach turned bookie who gets recruited by a small-time college to head up a football department in order to save the school from bankruptcy.  Wayne, meanwhile, is dealing with a custody battle where his long-absent ex-wife is trying to get visitation rights with his tomboy daughter, to get back at him.  Well, of course the social worker is gorgeous (Donna Reed) and of course sparks fly between the two.  It's actually fairly prescient in that one of the big controversies of the film is that in order to get a more competitive team Wayne pays his players which is something of a hot-button right now with regards to the NCAA.  Anyways, it's silly, it's corny, it's extremely old-fashioned (Wayne counsels the single social worker to stop working so much and find herself a man) but it's actually a pretty lovable film and the ending's even a little more open-ended and less pat than you'd expect.  I enjoyed this.

[ohtani's jacket]

SUDDEN RAIN (Mikio Naruse) -- chose a random Naruse to watch since there's so much of his filmography I haven't see. It was all right, but the impression I get with Naruse is that he was inconsistent, particularly with the material he chose to shoot. Yet in some quarters they rave about each of his films because they were previously unknown and not canon. I'm not sure he deserves the plaudits. At least not on a film by film basis. This was also a film about a married couple bickering, and if you're married you'll know that's not always what you want to watch.

 

WHEN CHIMNEYS ARE SEEN (Heinosuke Gosho) -- this was the first Gosho film I've seen, and despite it being the umpteenth million post-war Japanese drama about hardship and people living on the fringes, Gosho's love of Rene Clair meant this had a wonderful comic charm to it. Like most comedies it ran out of steam, but it was a good introduction to Gosho and I'd recommend it for people who like Shohei Imamura's films.

 

O DRAKOS (Nikos Koundouros) -- considered by Greek critics to be the greatest Greek film ever made, this is a noirish character study about a sad and lonely officer worker who is mistaken for a notorious criminal. Since he hates his life, you can pretty much guess what follows. It was quite frenetic to begin with and I had some trouble with what was going on, but the photography won me over and the end shot in particular was really gorgeous. The story itself wasn't the most original, but I was into it by the final third. Not bad.

 

THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT (Frank Tashlin) -- Frank Tashlin films are always colourful and fun. This wasn't a masterpiece like Rock Hunter, but it was enjoyable. It was Tashlin's ode to rock 'n' roll and features a lot of the biggest names of the day like Little Richard, Eddie Cochran and Fats Domino.

 

ROOM AT THE TOP (Jack Clayton) -- I enjoyed this kitchen sink drama. The lead character was a bit of a prick, but Laurence Harvey was a good enough actor that I didn't despise him. His motivations were clear; the only real problem was that it wasn't convincing when he was supposed to be in love (with Simone Signoret.) That was the only real chink in the film's armour, though I wouldn't call Signoret's Oscar winning performance exceptional. 

 

THE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS (Roberto Rossellini) -- this is canon, but it's not the most exciting film is it? I liked a couple of the stories towards the end, especially the one about the siege, but I generally don't care for films that are chamber pieces or rather a collection of short stories. I get what Rossellini was trying to illustrate about the Christian spirit, but there wasn't much to hang your habit on. 

 

SURCOS (Jose Antonio Nieves) -- now this was an excellent neo-realism film. There were as many neo-realism films in the 50s as there were films about post-war Japanese society, but this sticks out as one of the better ones and certainly one of the best Spanish films of the decade. It's a familiar story of a family of farmers who move from their village to the big city in pursuit of a better life and full victim to the evils of the city, but it was extremely well made and managed to slip past the censors in the Franco regime. I would consider this the Spanish version of the Bicycle Thief or something similar. 

 

LA TRAVERSEE DE PARIS (Claude Autant-Lara) -- classic French comedy starring Jean Gabin and Bourvil. As usual with foreign comedy much is lost in translation, but the plot was amusing even if the jokes didn't make me laugh out loud, and I was impressed that the film didn't run out of steam. I probably won't vote for it, but I enjoyed it.

 

EDES ANNA (Zoltan Fabri) -- Sweet Anna was very sweet. Even my three year-old daughter said she was cute. She's the maid of a woman who treats her like shit in this Hungarian drama about a sweet girl pushed to the edge. A very good, economical film that as probably an analogy for some political thing I can't be bothered looking up. Since there's only a hundred spots on the list, this is the kind of film that's right on the cusp, but it was very good. Fabri is another guy where I'd like to see more of his stuff.

[Randy]

I watched Paths of Glory last night.  It's set in the French trench during WWI.  The scene where Kirk Douglas leads the charge into no-man's-land is amazing.  The focus on Douglas' character is what makes it.  It reminded me of the storming the beach scene from Saving Private Ryan.

[ohtani's jacket]

Here's the last batch of films I watched for this:

 

I BURY THE LIVING (Albert Band) -- great title, not so great film. The mystery takes forever to kick in and the pay-off is lame. The acting is pretty shoddy too. The saving grace is the photography, but not one of the decade's stronger B-films.

 

THE BAND WAGON (Vincente Minnelli) -- the musical for people who like to claim that Singing in the Rain isn't the best musical of the decade. Is it better than Singing in the Rain? No. In fact, I'm not convinced it was better than An American in Paris, but Fred Astaire devotees may disagree. 

 

THE BURGLAR (Paul Wendkos) -- pretty good under the radar noir. Has a bit of a problem with exposition, but the elements you want from a noir are there and the final set piece on the pier at Atlantic City is cool, even if the idea of a showdown at an amusement park was far from original. 

 

ICE COLD IN ALEX (J. Lee Thompson) -- quintessential British war film. Just a ripping good yarn. The bulk of the action deals with a group of soldiers escorting two nurses across the desert in an ambulance and is similar to Wages of Fear in terms of the dangers they face. Fantastically shot set piece scenes. Great acting. Plenty of tension and drama. This one had it all. Great note to end on. 

[Johnny Sorrow]

The Gangster scene in The Band Wagon was better than the Singing In The Rain " Broadway Melody Ballet" but Singing In The Rain is the better movie. And The Band Wagon is a great movie.