What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Touchofevil]

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Night and the City from 1950 with Richard Widmark, Gene Tierney, Googie Withers and Francis L. Sullivan

This is a noir morality tale bordering on Greek Tragedy. London-based petty grifter Widmark tries to break into big-time wrestling promotion, after much scheming and a bit of luck, by signing a famous wrestler.

But London wrestling is mob controlled meaning Widmark really needs connections, money and muscle to succeed and he has none of the three. The entire movie is, basically, watching this small-timer with big aspirations desperately run around London trying to get the three things he needs and, ultimately, failing at each turn. The mob didn't get to be the mob by letting street detritus muscle in on its territory.

This turf battle takes place against a backdrop of outstanding noir style centering on Widmark who - in a fancy light-colored suit, collar pin, tie and white shoes - looks like a low-rent bounder versus all the dark suits, dark alleys and dark clubs he haunts. And when the action shifts outside at night, London's overly lit club and theater streets make an always-scrambling Widmark look like a pinball getting smacked around by the flippers.

In typical noir fashion, Widmark wrecks a bunch of lives along the way - an older, respected wrestler dies owing to a Widmark scheme, Widmark steals from his ridiculously devoted girlfriend (Tierney) and he destroys the marriage of his business partners leading one to suicide. Not bad for a day's work in noirland.

Sadly, the few decent people in this seedy world suffer the most. Widmark's girlfriend's unconditional love is repaid with neglect, abuse, (the aforementioned) theft of her property and one-last desperately humbling attempt to save Widmark.

Meanwhile, the marriage Widmark destroys is between an older heavy nightclub owner (Sullivan) and his younger-ish shrew wife (Withers) whom he nonetheless loves unconditionally and treats incredibly well. Widmark needs to pit these two against each other to raise funds for his promotion. The wife seeing an out to her marriage lets lose an invective on her husband when she leaves that breaks him, in part, because he knows he still completely and stupidly loves her and would take her back.

So, while Widmark's tale is a basic noir one - a second-rate grifter reaches too high and gets smacked down hard by the criminals with more skills and brains - the real lesson here is a Greek Tragedy one. It painfully exposes how life destroying unconditional love for the wrong person can be. Peters is a broken woman at the end while (spoiler alert) the nightclub owner takes his own life when his wife leaves. It's rough justice and rough morality in Night and the City.

It's not always easy to watch Widmark get bounced around this seedy corner of London, but it's an outstanding British entry into the noir genre propelled higher by the incredibly stylish directing of Jules Dassin, its classic black-and-white cinematography and its meta-tale of unconditional love getting punished unconditionally.

Yep!

 

[Fading Fast]

On TCM now - and on in the backroom as I work - is the 1927 silent "Spring Fever," which seems to be all about young rich people playing golf and flirting heavily (a guess from the little I've seen).

But here's the thing, the movie looks like a Ralph Lauren advertisement forty years before there was a Ralph Lauren company.

The clothes are "Ralph" country club and golf perfect. I had a friend who worked for Ralph Lauren for years and she said they went back to the books, magazines, movies, etc., of the '20s ad '30s for "inspiration" all the time. I'd bet this movie was part of that inspiration.

These pics from the movie all but look like Ralph Lauren ads.

Oh, and that is a ridiculously young (24 years old) Joan Crawford.

 

[AmateisGal]

B.F.'s Daughter, with Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin. As always, Stanwyck is wonderful. It's a bit of of a schmaltzy film, but I enjoyed it nevertheless.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Long Night from 1947 with Henry Fonda, Barbara Bel Geddes, Vincent Price and Ann Dvorak

• This A-movie with an A-movie cast was given a good B-movie script, but nothing more, so you get a lot of acting and a long movie with a story that would have been better told in sixty or seventy, not a hundred, minutes

• A WWII vet and, now, factory worker (Fonda) - a salt of the earth guy - falls in love with a pretty, innocent young woman (Bel Geddes), but he has a rival for her affections in an older magician/showman/grifter (Price) who appears more "worldly" to Bel Geddes

• Also amping up the tension in this love triangle is Price's sometimes assistant, a life-weary showgirl (Dvorak), who makes a play for Fonda when Bel Geddes tilts toward Price

• The thing about Dvorak is not only that she always looks ready for a roll in the hay (which she does), but also that she always looks like she just had one

• Unnecessarily told through flashbacks, we are given the climax in the opening scene: Fonda shoots and kills Price as he can't stand the thought of - as Price mercilessly taunts Fonda - that he, Price, "deflowered" Fonda's girlfriend, Bel Geddes

• Since the ending is told at the beginning, the only real suspense comes from watching the police try to capture Fonda who, with a gun, is barricaded in his apartment. It's overwrought and forced as a straight-timeline story would have been less complicated and made for a better movie

 

[belfastboy]

I broke down and spent the $7 rental fee in order to watch..."Mr. Jones". A wonderfully constructed movie about the Brit/Welsh journalist Gareth Jones and his work in uncovering and writing the truth about Stalin's government forced starvation of the Ukrainian population. It also exposed the role Walter Duranty and the NY Times played in covering it up and pushing Soviet lies to the western world. That Duranty's Pulitzer was never revoked leaves a stain on journalism that lingers today. A gripping story well told.

 

[Bushman]

Caught a late night showing of the 1953 Clark Gable adventure "Mogambo" on TCM last night. This was my first time seeing this movie as a whole, and not as parts. Loved Ava Gardner's spunky, fun personality clashing with Grace Kelly's stuck-up, two timing activities. And then there's Clark Gable thinking with the wrong head and stuck in the middle with a clueless Donald Sinden. Beyond the romantic triangle, the film is a great adventure through the eastern African continent, and was shot entirely on location using a soundtrack captured while filming. Some fantastic vintage safari gear in this one too.

 

[Fading Fast]

Caught a late night showing of the 1953 Clark Gable adventure "Mogambo" on TCM last night. This was my first time seeing this movie as a whole, and not as parts. Loved Ava Gardner's spunky, fun personality clashing with Grace Kelly's stuck-up, two timing activities. And then there's Clark Gable thinking with the wrong head and stuck in the middle with a clueless Donald Sinden. Beyond the romantic triangle, the film is a great adventure through the eastern African continent, and was shot entirely on location using a soundtrack captured while filming. Some fantastic vintage safari gear in this one too.

I enjoy this one more each time I see and, agree, Gardner's devil-may-care attitude is key.

If you haven't seen it, keep an eye out for "Red Dust;" it's the 1932 original version of "Mogambo" and, get this, also stars Clark Gable. But Jean Harlow has the Gardner role and Mary Astor; the Kelly one.

Overall, I enjoy "Mogambo" more, but "Red Dust" is a darn-good movie. Also, when do you get to see the same actor, in the same role, in a remake made twenty-one years later?

 

[Doctor Strange]

The new version of Little Women written and directed by Greta Gerwig. (Oddly, it's already available at Starz On Demand... though it hasn't yet had a prime time premiere on any of the Starz cable channels.) Very well done, with a fantastic cast.

There's just one thing I didn't like: the flashback-structure storytelling. It begins with Jo already a writer in New York, Amy in Europe with Laurie, etc., and bounces back and forth to tell the earlier events. Of course, this is a very popular contemporary storytelling methodology, but I would much preferred a straight-ahead chronological telling. Anyone who comes to this film unfamiliar with the book or earlier adaptations (if there is anyone like that!) could have a rough entry, expected to to instantly sympathize with characters whose backstories haven't been explored.

And as good as it is, it will NEVER replace my love for the 1994 film, which I consider a near-perfect adaptation.

(I notice that Robin Swicord, the screenwriter of that version, has a producer credit on this one. She's a writer/director I've long admired... though I think she's better known now for being Zoe Kazan's mom!)

 

[Fading Fast]

Taste of Honey from 1961 with Rita Tushingham, Dora Bryan, Paul Danquah and Murray Melvin

How the heck did this movie get made in 1961? It's like the Brits snuck a pre-code movie from the early 1930s into the movie houses of the early 1960s.

A white, negligent single mother, who had a daughter out of wedlock and who still sleeps around, all but abandons her, now, teenage daughter when she marries a man ten years her junior. Odder still, she's no cougar and he's a decent catch.

The daughter, now simply struggling to survive, moves into a horrible dump, takes a job in a shoe store and - think about the era - has a love affair with a young black merchant sailor about to ship out (he tells her this upfront). Of course, after he's gone, she discovers she's pregnant, but fortunately, an all but openly gay young man (did I mention this movie was made in 1961) moves in with her to help with the rent and, after she gives birth, the baby.

And if the plot isn't enough real life for you, each character is flawed, complex, inconsistent and emotional - you know, like real people. Even as bad as the mother is, she still has some love and kindness for (and, occasionally, feels guilty about her treatment toward) her daughter.

The daughter - a truly damaged person as anyone with her upbringing would be - is alternately kind and angry. However, in a haphazard fashion, she is also trying to build a better life for herself and her unborn child. It's painful to watch this much-nicer-than-her-mother young woman try to find a path to a decent life without having a positive past framework or normal upbringing to guide her.

And before shipping out, we see that her sailor paramour is a good and kind man, but he also seems emotionally lost as he tries to make more of his brief relationship with the daughter than she wants. Finally, in the most heartbreaking of all performances, the young gay man that the daughter befriends is caring and gentle, but adrift, as he hasn't come to terms with his sexuality or found his place in a society that views his feelings as a sin and a crime.

Sadly, but true to life, all of these characters in anger and frustration periodically lash out at each other, themselves and society causing everyone pain. Watching people make emotional decisions that hurt themselves and others, while also showing bursts of kindness and humanity, can be tough, but it is also engaging viewing as it's real life.

The climax pivots around which family structure the daughter will choose. First, the mother returns to the daughter after sabotaging her advantageous marriage. Her mother is struggling and poor because she makes bad decisions and not because of a cruel or greedy society. So, the question is will the daughter let her returning mother help her raise the baby or will she stay with her gay friend who treats her well and who is excited to be a father to her child?

But the climax is less important than the journey in this one. And it's an amazing journey for 1961, which, in addition to all the above taboos it breaks, also includes a frank discussion of an abortion with nuance and honesty that one hears little of in today's brittle debate. It also gives lie to today's period books and movies that have characters in the early '60s spouting abortion arguments perfectly aligned with today's thinking.

We'll close where we opened, which is how did a movie about an negligent mother abandoning her born-out-of-wedlock white teenage daughter who, shortly after that, becomes pregnant as the result of a brief affair with a black man but, then, moves in with a gay man get made in 1961? But thankfully it did as it's well worth the watch because, like its 1930s pre-code progenitors, it powerfully asserts that life and people were much more complex - and similar to us today - than most of the movies of that time showed.

 

[belfastboy]

View attachment 249768
Taste of Honey from 1961 with Rita Tushingham, Dora Bryan, Paul Danquah and Murray Melvin

How the heck did this movie get made in 1961? It's like the Brits snuck a pre-code movie from the early 1930s into the movie houses of the early 1960s.

A white, negligent single mother, who had a daughter out of wedlock and who still sleeps around, all but abandons her, now, teenage daughter when she marries a man ten years her junior. Odder still, she's no cougar and he's a decent catch.

The daughter, now simply struggling to survive, moves into a horrible dump, takes a job in a shoe store and - think about the era - has a love affair with a young black merchant sailor about to ship out (he tells her this upfront). Of course, after he's gone, she discovers she's pregnant, but fortunately, an all but openly gay young man (did I mention this movie was made in 1961) moves in with her to help with the rent and, after she gives birth, the baby.

And if the plot isn't enough real life for you, each character is flawed, complex, inconsistent and emotional - you know, like real people. Even as bad as the mother is, she still has some love and kindness for (and, occasionally, feels guilty about her treatment toward) her daughter.

The daughter - a truly damaged person as anyone with her upbringing would be - is alternately kind and angry. However, in a haphazard fashion, she is also trying to build a better life for herself and her unborn child. It's painful to watch this much-nicer-than-her-mother young woman try to find a path to a decent life without having a positive past framework or normal upbringing to guide her.

And before shipping out, we see that her sailor paramour is a good and kind man, but he also seems emotionally lost as he tries to make more of his brief relationship with the daughter than she wants. Finally, in the most heartbreaking of all performances, the young gay man that the daughter befriends is caring and gentle, but adrift, as he hasn't come to terms with his sexuality or found his place in a society that views his feelings as a sin and a crime.

Sadly, but true to life, all of these characters in anger and frustration periodically lash out at each other, themselves and society causing everyone pain. Watching people make emotional decisions that hurt themselves and others, while also showing bursts of kindness and humanity, can be tough, but it is also engaging viewing as it's real life.

The climax pivots around which family structure the daughter will choose. First, the mother returns to the daughter after sabotaging her advantageous marriage. Her mother is struggling and poor because she makes bad decisions and not because of a cruel or greedy society. So, the question is will the daughter let her returning mother help her raise the baby or will she stay with her gay friend who treats her well and who is excited to be a father to her child?

But the climax is less important than the journey in this one. And it's an amazing journey for 1961, which, in addition to all the above taboos it breaks, also includes a frank discussion of an abortion with nuance and honesty that one hears little of in today's brittle debate. It also gives lie to today's period books and movies that have characters in the early '60s spouting abortion arguments perfectly aligned with today's thinking.

We'll close where we opened, which is how did a movie about an negligent mother abandoning her born-out-of-wedlock white teenage daughter who, shortly after that, becomes pregnant as the result of a brief affair with a black man but, then, moves in with a gay man get made in 1961? But thankfully it did as it's well worth the watch because, like its 1930s pre-code progenitors, it powerfully asserts that life and people were much more complex - and similar to us today - than most of the movies of that time showed.

I have this one recorded....thank you, I will make sure I watch it soon.

 

[Fading Fast]

I have this one recorded....thank you, I will make sure I watch it soon.

It's not always easy watching, but it is real and amazing for 1961. I look forward to your comments on it.

 

[Doctor Strange]

It's a classic example of the British "kitchen sink" dramas that were in vogue then. Also see Room at the Top, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Entertainer, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, and a bunch more. The cycle burned itself out a few years later with Alfie and Georgy Girl. Mike Leigh's films are recent spiritual descendants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink_realism

 

[Fading Fast]

It's a classic example of the British "kitchen sink" dramas that were in vogue then. Also see Room at the Top, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, The Entertainer, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, and a bunch more. The cycle burned itself out a few years later with Alfie and Georgy Girl. Mike Leigh's films are recent spiritual descendants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_sink_realism

Thank you, I've seen about half your list. Loved "The Entertainer," but was still surprised at the social issues "A Taste of Honey" put front and center. I'm going to keep my eye out for the ones I haven't seen.

 

[Fading Fast]

I Wake Up Screaming from 1941 with Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Betty Grable, Laird Cregar and Elisha Cook Jr.

• An early, solid if slightly quirky noir effort with overtones of the better-noir Laura to come

• A sports and celebrity promoter (Mature), on a bet, tries to take "nobody" waitress Landis (still sporting her tight One Million B.C., body, but with more clothes on here) and turn her into a "hot property" by dressing her up and bringing her around to NYC's social spots, of-the-moment nightclubs and marquee sporting events

• It works so well that Hollywood comes knocking, but before graspy Landis can leave, she is killed, thus, turning the rest of the movie into who-done-it

• In addition to lead-suspect Mature, a creepy but dogged detective (Cregar), a few other of Landis' new society friends and her apartment building's odd switchboard operator (Cook) are suspects

• Amping up the sexual tension is foil-to-her-sister, good-girl Grable who has a crush on Mature even while suspecting him of killing her sister

• The rest is good, standard noir stuff: a wrongly accused man, rough police interrogations, chase scenes through dark, wet city streets and plenty of snarky lines and creepy shadows, all topped off with a sexual deviant who turned his apartment into an altar to Landis

• And finally, there's this, Over the Rainbow, the least-noir song ever, is the leitmotif of the movie - you hear it in the background all the time. It maybe, kinda works in the way the happy sound of an ice-cream truck heightens tension in a harrowing situation. Still, it's a crazy choice for a noir-movie theme song

 

[steve u]

Finding Neverland (2004)
I enjoyed this movie very much. Solid production with great cast, and music.
A real tear-jerker though.

 

[Fading Fast]

Torrid Zone from 1940 with James Cagney, Ann Sheridan and Pat O'Brien

Yes it's an A-movie with an A-cast and A-quality special effects, and all those things help, but it's basically a very good formulaic movie of the week with a bigger budget.

A large banana company's Caribbean plantation foreman, O'Brien, tries to both cajole and bully his top man, Cagney, into coming back to work for him as Cagney is about to leave for a cushy job in the States. Simultaneously, O'Brien, trying to keep order in the nearby town where he acts like a dictatorial mayor, wants to ship out recently arrived for unknown-but-suspected-untoward reasons nightclub-singer and card-shark Sheridan.

No surprise, Sheridan and Cagney meet, rub each other the wrong way, but while they won't admit it, they really like each other. Cagney, with a month to spare before his new job, agrees to a two-week stint for a big paycheck to help O'Brien "get the fruit moving again." Thrown into the mix is a local rebel leader who keeps stealing the plantation's workers away and another plantation manager whose wife is having an all but open affair with Cagney.

From here, the movie warps through a lot of plot and action with Cagney and O'Brien spitting out dialogue in machine-gun fashion at everyone (the best part of the movie). Also, the rebel leader is captured, escapes, is hunted down and captured by Cagney anew, and then, kinda, escapes anew; meanwhile, the bananas sometimes get on the train and sometimes don't.

And while he's dealing with all that, Cagney engages in a lot of verbal fighting and foreplay with both Sheridan and the manager's wife. It's another movie where Cagney has several job issues and women all up in the air at once with him spinning like a top to keep everything from crashing down. Basically, it's Cagney being Cagney in a Cagney movie and that's a very good thing especially when he has equally talented O'Brien as a verbal sparring partner.

It's fun, it's entertaining and fast moving. Warner Brothers knew the movie gold it had in Cagney, O'Brien and Sheridan and it let its horses run. Why is Sheridan stuck on a Carribean plantation with an extensive wardrobe of Cafe Society outfits? Who knows and who cares. She's there for, sorry gotta say it, the oomph (with Cagney parodying her famous sexual sobriquet by referring to her as "fourteen carrot oomph").

Also, what is it with Ann Sheridan having to beg for sex - how is that possible? In Honeymoon for Three, the movie opens with Sheridan asking for a "quicky" from George Brent and lamenting his rejection. Here, when a female rival says Cagney's no longer interested in her, Sheridan complains that Cagney never showed enough sexual interest in her in the first place, "You can't be jilted when you haven't been given a tumble." Something is wrong with a world where Ann Sheridan is always begging for sex.

It's a quick and by-the-numbers movie that works because Cagney, O'Brien and Sheridan are insanely enjoyable to watch, especially as they fire off one-liners at each other. The story is off the shelf, but the movie is worth the watch for the talented acting and star power alone.

 

[Fading Fast]

Tender Comrade from 1943 with Ginger Rogers, Robert Ryan, Ruth Hussey and Patricia Collinge

Let's get this out of the way up front. This film was used as part of the evidence by the House Un-American Activities Committee when it accused the movie's writer Dalton Trumbo of spreading communist propaganda. Eventually, Trumbo was blacklisted.

As a libertarian-leaning, raised-in-the-Cold-War-era anti-communist, clear blips appear on my radar for even small communist propaganda, but other than a ghost image here or there, I didn't see much agitprop nonsense in Tender Comrade.

To be sure, there are a few Marxist-ish lines about a bunch female factory workers sharing and sharing alike to save expenses and some other lines about the "fairness" of "having enough," but the latter weren't far off from the government's view, at the time, of war rationing and "pulling together" on the home front.

And, yes, Trumbo has some muddled thinking about democracy and economics that sometimes sounds faintly pink, but his thoughts, overall, struck me as more stupid than dangerous. If there was a crime committed by author Trumbo in this one, it was more for immature dialogue and pompous-but-trite speeches than any great subversive effort.

That's why the movie fails to be anything more than a "B effort" as a WWII "home front" movie that is clearly not in the same class with The Best Years of our Lives or The More the Merrier. In Tender Comrades, the characters often spew out rote lines that are just not that believable.

The simple plot here is four female factory workers, with husbands away at war and wanting to improve their living conditions, rent a home together. Of course, they all have their personality quirks and preferences that lead to them sharply bumping into each other now and then, but you know all along that they'll pull together when someone takes a war-related body blow.

So we see the obligatory arguments over rationing, volunteering, keeping one's lips sealed about their factory work, husbands and even sharing household chores. However, when someone learns that her husband has been taken prisoner or, on a positive note, a husband on leave is coming home, they all support each other and "pitch in." There's even the stock character (Hussey) who doesn't buy the "pitch in" stuff at first, but of course, she sees the light by the end as we learn her cynicism was, yawn, just a cover for her fears.

The only real bright spot in this flick is Ginger Rogers and her husband Robert Ryan as this not-obvious pairing has some real movie chemistry. You want to look for the scene where a calm Ryan nonchalantly asks Rogers to marry him and she immediately starts yelling at him for being "a wolf" and stringing her along.

He's more amused than angered because, as we soon learn, she's mad that he's kept his feelings so close to his vest that she didn't even know if he cared for her. To cut off her non-stop verbal pummeling, he gives her a much-deserved ultimatum - "say yes or no, not another word -" that brings the proposal to a happy conclusion.

And, heck, it doesn't hurt that Rogers has a rockin'-tight body on display throughout the proposal scene. Even in 1943, code and all, Hollywood knew how to fire up the prurience when it had the raw material to work with.

The movie needed more scenes like the proposal one and less pontification masquerading as dialogue. In this one, Trumbo's writing is ineffectual and obvious around the propaganda, but sometimes touching and astute when limning human foibles like Roger's insecurity in her relationship.

Finally, since we had to endure a bunch of cliches and way-too-much moralizing as dialogue, at least this bit of philosophy from Rogers, to a grumbling-about-America Hussey, landed a good blow: "Mistakes, sure we [America] make mistakes, plenty of them, You want a country where they won't stand for mistakes, go to Germany, go to Japan." Oh but for that wisdom today.

 

[belfastboy]

It's not always easy watching, but it is real and amazing for 1961. I look forward to your comments on it.

Well, we watched it Tuesday night. What a great movie and yes it dealt with themes I didn't think were allowed in 1960. I love Brit movies from that period, esp in black and white. They capture the grittiness of Brit life. Rita was great as was her mother. Neither of us liked the ending but overall a great movie.

Last night we watched The Entertainer. Another movie, from the same era directed by Tony Richardson. Wonderful performances from Laurence Olivier, and Joan Plowright. Two great Brit movies from the day.

 

[Fading Fast]

Well, we watched it Tuesday night. What a great movie and yes it dealt with themes I didn't think were allowed in 1960. I love Brit movies from that period, esp in black and white. They capture the grittiness of Brit life. Rita was great as was her mother. Neither of us liked the ending but overall a great movie.

Last night we watched The Entertainer. Another movie, from the same era directed by Tony Richardson. Wonderful performances from Laurence Olivier, and Joan Plowright. Two great Brit movies from the day.

Really glad you enjoyed "A Taste of Honey."

I loved both of those movies too.

If you care, my comments on "The Entertainer" here: #27315

 

[belfastboy]

View attachment 212539
The Entertainer from 1960 with Laurence Olivier, Albert Finney and Joan Plowright

Until this outstanding movie, I knew Laurence Olivier was an major talent because (1) his reputation said his was, (2) Rebecca and Wuthering Heights (he was fine in both, but no more) and (3) with a name like Laurence Olivier, you have to be a major talent - there are no Laurence Oliviers flipping burgers in this world.

But now I get it. Playing an all-but-failed second-rate performer in the dying music hall business (think vaudeville) of early '60s England - and a drunk - and a womanizer - and a cheater - and a check kiter - Olivier embodies this sad charlatan trying to keep all the deflating balls of his checkered life in the air by dint of personality and fear - if he stops, he knows whatever is left of him dies.

Drawn into his circle of failure is his second wife - whom he originally bedded while his first wife was giving birth to his daughter. Wife number two is now an alcoholic, in part, over fear that another woman will do to her what she did to the first wife (which seems like karmically fair, but brutal, punishment). Also in this circle is the aforementioned daughter (now a young woman with a preternatural ability to forgive her father), a couple of sons - one in the army, another Olivieir's factotum - and Olivier's father, a retired but more-successful version of Olivier, which eats away at the son.

Yes, it's a version of a kitchen sink movie with the family disfunction painfully limned in too much drinking - which starts early in the day and with the parents encouraging their just-adult children to join in - violent outbursts, fear of bill collectors, recriminations and general anger toward each other and life. But this one is broader as Olivier's failed career, life and family symbolizes England's post-war ennui and slide - highlighted by the aforementioned army son being mobilized to Egypt to fight for the embers of the Empire, but really for nothing anyone can explain.

Kudos to director Tony Richardson as we see Olivier's hackneyed performance of old material given to a sparse and disinterested crowd in a formerly impressive, but now torn and frayed, dance hall "palace," as the perfect metaphor for the British Empire in the early '60s: the signs of past glory are all around, but it can't be maintained and nobody really knows what to do but keep on keeping on even when that doesn't work. It isn't subtle, but it packs a punch.

While Oliviers' on-screen daughter played by Joan Plowright centers the story and the fragile family (sometimes parents get more from their children than they deserve), it is Oliviers' loud but nuanced performance (not an easy thing to do) that powers the movie forward. Be it an old dance-hall singer breaking down, a former Empire stumbling to find its footing, a factory job replaced by a robot or a desk job eliminated by computer code, our struggles today might be different in facts and circumstances from those before, but they don't really change in substance as we can all see a part of our lives in something as removed from our day to day as an old performer in 1960s London forced to face his professional obsolescence and personal failings. In the end, one thing you come away with is that Sir Laurence Olivier deserves his reputation.


P.S. Have to ask @LizzieMaine if she's seen this one as the parallel to vaudeville's decline in the US would, I think, be right up her alley?

Great review. I agree Olivier made the movie. One thought I had and not sure it would have worked but if I was the director I would have tried to make Olivier's character have some redeeming qualities.....just a little bit of something I could muster some sympathy for him. As it stood I found him such a reprehensible character that I wished him an ill fate throughout the movie and cared nothing for his demise.