What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

I just finished watching It, and I'm still "digesting" everything. Wow, it's pretty intense. Hunsecker is one nasty fellow. He definitely deserves it when his sister leaves. I'll post more thoughts later. I love seeing the dark side of the old days.

Definitely a forward-looking movie in its gritty reality and cynical outlook. Heck, "Pillow Talk -" also a New York City movie - was made two years later and it's all rainbows and unicorns. Both movies reflect NYC, both late '50s, but it's as if they were shot on different planets.

Lancaster is incredibly chilling - basically psychotic - in his portrayal. He reflects greed, evil and anger coming out of immense power. He is very powerful, but wants even more power - he wants to control everyone in his universe.

Curtis is also greed, evil and anger, but he's coming from a position of weakness. He's trying to find a way to break through to "get some" for himself. His is a frantic, scared, angry evil, but inside a package that can exude surface charm and, almost, boyish innocence. But his innocence / his charm is always quickly revealed for the smarminess that it is.

Big picture - and probably one of the points - Lancaster and Curtis, basically, are mirror images of each other - immoral, selfish, with no humanity or compassion left. The are human wrecking balls of malice smashing everyone they can to get what they want. Different styles; same ends.

I stupidly deleted from my DVR when I finished watching it - I can't wait to see it again and soon.

 

[Doctor Strange]

It's a great film, but how about some credit to Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets (and director Alexander Mackendrick), who WROTE it? It's beautifully played and filmed, but its power really comes from the script. These guys started with a blank page: that's actually a much tougher job than the actors had.

 

[Fading Fast]

It's a great film, but how about some credit to Ernest Lehman and Clifford Odets (and director Alexander Mackendrick), who WROTE it? It's beautifully played and filmed, but its power really comes from the script. These guys started with a blank page: that's actually a much tougher job than the actors had.

Fully agreed. As a writer of significantly (monumentally) less talent, I am always willing to say that the real genius is usually the original source material. Kidding aside, yes, the writing is fantastic - the dialogue sizzles.

I want to pick up a copy of the book - I looked around on line and it looks like it was a "novelette."

 

[PeterGunnLives]

I am also going to look for a copy of the book.
Along with various films noir, I see this as a kind of thematic precursor to that show that some of us love, Mad Men.

It's easy to look at the past through rose-colored glasses and assume that everything was hunky-dory and everybody was nice. But movies like Sweet Smell of Success remind us that wasn't quite so.

 

[Fading Fast]

I am also going to look for a copy of the book.
Along with various films noir, I see this as a kind of thematic precursor to that show that some of us love, Mad Men.

It's easy to look at the past through rose-colored glasses and assume that everything was hunky-dory and everybody was nice. But movies like Sweet Smell of Success remind us that wasn't quite so.

One of the appeals of film noir is that it offered an alternative view to the basic movie narrative of general decency and morality of the Era. To be sure, the bad had to be punished in most noir films of the Era, but still, the message was there for anyone paying attention.

As a kid, my access to old movies was whatever local stations chose to run and, while they ran some film noir - mainly gangster films - there were, to my memory, none of the more challenging-to-the-narrative ones.

Hence, when AMC (back it was a TCM clone, and before TCM existed [I think]) started showing a wider selection and I saw movies like "The Lost Weekend" or "Double Indemnity" for the first time, I was blown away. Even the relatively tamer noir films like the ones with Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd - "The Blue Dahlia," "The Glass Key," etc., - were stunning in their rawness.

As you noted, they were definitely the real-deal antecedents to "Mad Men," with "The Apartment," The Hucksters," "The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit" and others all practically being a blue print for "MM."

 

[AmateisGal]

Currently home sick and watching A Majority of One on TCM. Wow. It's terrific. Rosalind Russell is incredible. I'm still wondering why they cast Alec Guinness as a Japanese businessman, but I'm overlooking it.

 

[Fading Fast]

Currently home sick and watching A Majority of One on TCM. Wow. It's terrific. Rosalind Russell is incredible. I'm still wondering why they cast Alec Guinness as a Japanese businessman, but I'm overlooking it.

That is like overlooking the water in a flood. Possible one of Hollywood's strangest casting decisions. If makeup can make someone look like the ethnicity their playing, then I'm fine with it, but he no more looks Japanese than he looks Martian in that movie.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Yeah, but Guiness was the great lead character actor, the go-to guy for oddball characters, and NOBODY then considered "yellowface" casting the horror that today's PC police do. How about Marlon Brando in Teahouse of the August Moon? Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's? You don't have to go back all the way to the days of Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto for examples of non-Asians cast as lead-role Asians. It was the reality of the time, and no amount of hand-wringing about it now will change whether it was right, wrong, or immaterial.

 

[Fading Fast]

Yeah, but Guiness was the great lead character actor, the go-to guy for oddball characters, and NOBODY then considered "yellowface" casting the horror that today's PC police do. How about Marlon Brando in Teahouse of the August Moon? Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's? You don't have to go back all the way to the days of Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto for examples of non-Asians cast as lead-role Asians. It was the reality of the time, and no amount of hand-wringing about it now will change whether it was right, wrong, or immaterial.

I agree, which is why I made the point that my view isn't against one ethnicity playing another (that's all today's handwringing), my issue is that he didn't (nor did Rooney) do it well - Rooney was horrible in a belittling and disrespectful way. Guinness played it straight and respectful (I'm doing this from memory, haven't seen it in long while), but it just was obvious he wasn't Japanese. Actors play roles, I don't care if a Spanish person plays a Italian or a Mexican plays a Swede as long as it is done credibly and respectfully.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I haven't seen it many years, but I don't recall Guiness's performance being the film's biggest problem. I seem to remember that the entire plot situation is stagey and contrived, and obviously a not-great adaptation of stage play. A historical artifact of drama used to improve Japanese-American relations in the decade after the war.

 

[AmateisGal]

Guinness definitely doesn't look Japanese in the film. I think what I enjoyed most about the movie was Rosalind Russell's performance.

 

[PeterGunnLives]

It's interesting that in those days, for certain ethnic roles in movies, actual ethnic minority actors were used for background characters, but white actors in makeup were used for the roles that were more prominent. You see this a lot in westerns with Native Americans, for example.

 

[AmateisGal]

It's interesting that in those days, for certain ethnic roles in movies, actual ethnic minority actors were used for background characters, but white actors in makeup were used for the roles that were more prominent. You see this a lot in westerns with Native Americans, for example.

Yes, exactly. What I found particularly ironic about A Majority of One was that they were focusing on bigotry and overcoming it; yet they didn't have a Japanese man playing the lead role. Wonder how the director/studio reconciled that in their heads?

 

[Touchofevil]

Goodfellas and The Departed played in the background earlier today. So well done. I have watched both so often that having them play in the background was kind of comforting or something of the sort.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Melissa, you're really overthinking A Majority of One from a modern-agenda POV. Nobody cared that the male lead wasn't Asian, least of all those who made the film. Even the original production of the play had cast Sir Cedric Hardwicke in the role!

Alec Guiness was cast because he was a big star from The Bridge on the River Kwai (etc.), and casting a star was (and is) standard operating procedure if you wanted to guarantee your picture a degree of success. As well-intentioned as the film was in helping to promote cross-cultural understanding, it was still made by Hollywood, and movies were a business first and foremost. There was no Asian actor who was a big enough star to hold his own against Roz Russell then, so they went with a British master thespian who had a long history of disappearing into character parts.

 

[Fading Fast]

"The Best of Everything"

1959 movie based on the meaningfully more enjoyable (in an I'm-not-proud-of-myself-for-reading-this-soap-opera way) book by Rona Jaffe.

If memory serves, in an early episode of "Mad Men," the book is a being read by one of the characters. Makes sense as the book was a big hit at the time of its release and, now having seen the movie again since having seen "Mad Men," it is clear that "MM's" style was inspired, in part, by "TBOE."

And that is the most enjoyable part of the movie because the movie doesn't have the time necessary to develop the characters' backgrounds the way the book does. So the story sort of flies by in snippets - enough to let you follow it, if you haven't read the book, but not enough to truly engage you.

So instead, enjoy the full-on late-'50s style. From the modern office buildings - including several shots of Mid Century Modern icon "Lever House -" to imported sports cars, to Chanel-like suits for the women and natural-shouldered ones for the men, it is 1950s, NYC business world on full display. And one can't fail to point out that model-perfect Hope Lange appears to have a size 20 waist, seemingly defying the laws of human anatomy.

From the company picnic - at the boss' country club, naturally - to lunch in the lobby coffee shop, to the aforementioned clothes, cars and office buildings - and some great shots of Park Avenue and Central Park - this movie is better time travel than those travel film shorts shown on TCM.

Finally, a kudos to Joan Crawford in a supporting role - well past her prime and playing with a cast of one strikingly young, beautiful girl after another - for not only holding her own, but showing that true acting is a skill that time doesn't erase. She quietly holds your interests with an intensity and focus that knows when to tread softly and when to stomp on it. She's an actress.

 

[AmateisGal]

Melissa, you're really overthinking A Majority of One from a modern-agenda POV. Nobody cared that the male lead wasn't Asian, least of all those who made the film. Even the original production of the play had cast Sir Cedric Hardwicke in the role!

Alec Guiness was cast because he was a big star from The Bridge on the River Kwai (etc.), and casting a star was (and is) standard operating procedure if you wanted to guarantee your picture a degree of success. As well-intentioned as the film was in helping to promote cross-cultural understanding, it was still made by Hollywood, and movies were a business first and foremost. There was no Asian actor who was a big enough star to hold his own against Roz Russell then, so they went with a British master thespian who had a long history of disappearing into character parts.

Good point. And this casting still continues today. I think Scarlett Johansen is playing a role that is supposed to be Asian, and there's been a big outcry over it. Same with the casting of Tilda Swinton in Doctor Strange.

 

[PeterGunnLives]

"The Best of Everything"

1959 movie based on the meaningfully more enjoyable (in an I'm-not-proud-of-myself-for-reading-this-soap-opera way) book by Rona Jaffe.

If memory serves, in an early episode of "Mad Men," the book is a being read by one of the characters. Makes sense as the book was a big hit at the time of its release and, now having seen the movie again since having seen "Mad Men," it is clear that "MM's" style was inspired, in part, by "TBOE."

And that is the most enjoyable part of the movie because the movie doesn't have the time necessary to develop the characters' backgrounds the way the book does. So the story sort of flies by in snippets - enough to let you follow it, if you haven't read the book, but not enough to truly engage you.

So instead, enjoy the full-on late-'50s style. From the modern office buildings - including several shots of Mid Century Modern icon "Lever House -" to imported sports cars, to Chanel-like suits for the women and natural-shouldered ones for the men, it is 1950s, NYC business world on full display. And one can't fail to point out that model-perfect Hope Lange appears to have a size 12 waist, seemingly defying the laws of human anatomy.

From the company picnic - at the boss' country club, naturally - to lunch in the lobby coffee shop, to the aforementioned clothes, cars and office buildings - and some great shots of Park Avenue and Central Park - this movie is better time travel than those travel film shorts shown on TCM.

Finally, a kudos to Joan Crawford in a supporting role - well past her prime and playing with a cast of one strikingly young, beautiful girl after another - for not only holding her own, but showing that true acting is a skill that time doesn't erase. She quietly holds your interests with an intensity and focus that knows when to tread softly and when to stomp on it. She's an actress.

Though the melodrama is a bit much for me (kind of laughable), I love the visual style of this movie.

 

[Fading Fast]

Though the melodrama is a bit much for me (kind of laughable), I love the visual style of this movie.

You are correct, it's a soap opera, period, full stop. But a really good one in the book, it just didn't translate to the screen well as they decided to keep almost all the characters and threads going - so everything got a superficial treatment.

They needed to cut some characters and story lines and, instead, focus more on Hope Lange's character in more detail so that the viewer would get engaged with her and her life; instead, you don't feel vested in any of the characters as it's all, as you said, surface melodrama.

But what style. I loved that little white sports car - the '58 Jag - and the so-period-perfect and over-the-top "preppy" outfit the "rich" kid wears at the club with his tie-as-belt "nonchalant" look.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Yes, but Tilda was great in Doctor Strange - a far more interesting take on the Ancient One than someone like say, James Hong would have been as a stereotypical wise old Asian. All of the now-embarrassing thirties Orientalism baked into Doctor Strange (based on stuff Stan Lee had absorbed back in his childhood like The Shadow, Lost Horizon, and especially Chandu the Magician) was a real problem with the material that they made an effort to de-emphasize. Of course, they weren't entirely successful. But at least they didn't have something like Alec Guinness in Asian makeup...