What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Touchofevil]

View attachment 303056
The Apartment from 1960 Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine and Fred MacMurray

Jack Lemmon is a young New York City insurance company employee who informally loans his bachelor apartment out to some of the married senior executives to use for their affairs. But since Lemmon's smitten by one of the office building's female elevator operators, Shirley MacLaine, his attention is elsewhere as he's nothing more than amused by his bosses' assignations, even as he begins to benefit from this arrangement as his pandering bosses promote him.

However, when he accidentally discovers that a very senior married executive, Fred MacMurray, is having an affair with MacLaine, which MacMuarray sees as nothing more than a casual side adventure, despite leading MacLaine to believe it's more, Lemmon's indifference is shattered. When MacLaine painful learns the truth of her status in a crushing scene where MacMurray all but hands her cash for their recent roll in the hay, she attempts suicide in Lemmon's apartment only to be rescued and nursed by back to health by Lemmon and his doctor neighbor.

The rest of the movie is Lemmon coming to terms with his part in these "harmless" affairs, MacMurray, as things unravel, viciously trying to keep the affair secret from his wife and MacLaine accepting that she's been played hard while, finally, noticing that Lemmon isn't just a friend.

Having seen this one several times over several decades, what struck me during this viewing was, yes, how frank, even nonchalant, the movie is about extra-marital affairs and, yes, how stone-cold selfish Fred MacMurray's character is (and how frighteningly good MacMurray is at playing him), but even more so, how soul-crushingly sad almost everyone's life in this movie is.

While the men joke about their affairs, there's no real joy in them as the men are bitter, cynical husbands who seem to be going through the motions of having affairs either as a temporary escape or to have something to brag about at work.

And while their "girlfriends" might giggle and put on a show of happiness on the outside, they too seem broken and bitter just below the surface. They're either disappointed that they are "the other woman" or are cynically playing the men for money and gifts while the men are playing them for sex without commitment. No one is really enjoying themselves.

Standing atop all this miserableness is MacMurray who plays the perfect husband and dad at home while lying to everyone, all the time, to keep his two worlds apart. And even though it's easy and right to despise him for his brutal nastiness - he keeps a former aging "girlfriend" on as his secretary to, as she notes, see the younger models come and go - he seems no happier than anyone else - financially successful, yes; happy, no.

In The Apartment, director and co-writer, with I.A.L. Diamond, Billy Wilder serves up an amazing rebuke to all those lighthearted, early 1960s "battle of the sexes" movies - think Rock Hudson and Doris Day in Pillow Talk - where single middle-aged adults don't have sex and marriage is the answer to all problems. In Wilder's much darker world, Shirley MacLaine sums up the disaffection felt by all when Lemmon, noticing that her compact mirror is cracked, asks her if she knows it's broken, responds, "yes, I know, I like it that way, it makes me look the way I feel."

Very well said, Fading Fast!
Beautiful cinematography, very good acting, and entertaining; I always watch it when I stumble upon it.

 

[Doctor Strange]

The Apartment is definitely my favorite Billy Wilder film... and most of his work is brilliant, so that's no small thing!

Folks with NYC TV stations take note - coincidentally, Channel 13 (WNET/PBS) is running it tonight (Saturday) at 9PM Eastern.

 

[AmateisGal]

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood starring Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers.

What a wonderful film. It will make you cry, but they will be good tears. Tom Hanks, as usual, turns in an excellent performance, though you never quite believe he's Fred Rogers, but just a really good version of Tom Hanks if that makes sense.

At any rate, it was a great story about a man who really was among the best of us.

 

[Harp]

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood starring Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers.
What a wonderful film. It will make you cry, but they will be good tears.
At any rate, it was a great story about a man who really was among the best of us.

A bit after my time, I was a Captain Kangaroo kid; and, a Mickey Mouse mouseketeer.
My mom used to chide me about my crush on mouseketeer Annette Funicello, and, my official
mouseketeer credentials remain impeccable to this day.
Aside from these accomplishments, I was also in Sister Mary Therese's First Grade Huckleberry Hound
reading group.
Mr Rogers was a Dartmouth commencement speaker and all the kids started singing with him "their song"
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Beyond memorable, it was magical majesty.

 

[AmateisGal]

A bit after my time, I was a Captain Kangaroo kid; and, a Mickey Mouse mouseketeer.
My mom used to chide me about my crush on mouseketeer Annette Funicello, and, my official
mouseketeer credentials remain impeccable to this day.
Aside from these accomplishments, I was also in Sister Mary Therese's First Grade Huckleberry Hound
reading group.
Mr Rogers was a Harvard commencement speaker and all the kids started singing with him "their song"
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Beyond memorable, it was magical majesty.

I loved watching "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood." I was fascinated with the Land of Make Believe, King Friday, and all the puppets. And his voice was always so soothing and calming.

 

[Stanley Doble]

There is a scene in The Apartment that no one ever mentions but it haunts me. That is the one where we see a vast floor of the insurance office stretching away into infinity filled with identical desks each one with its office drone and hand cranked Friden calculator. And reflecting that in a few years all of them will be replaced by an IBM computer.

 

[Fading Fast]

There is a scene in The Apartment that no one ever mentions but it haunts me. That is the one where we see a vast floor of the insurance office stretching away into infinity filled with identical desks each one with its office drone and hand cranked Friden calculator. And reflecting that in a few years all of them will be replaced by an IBM computer.

Great observation. It had a haunting 1984 vibe to it as well. So many of these '50s/'60s movies show offices with armies of workers doing tasks that would soon be eliminated. Most offices used to have seas of secretaries. There where, in my field, finance, armies of men and women doing bookkeeping, statement processing, etc. tasks that have all been eliminated. It is why many things cost less - stock trades that used to cost clients hundreds, even thousands, of dollars are now free - but it required firms to automate all those jobs out of existence.

 

[Fading Fast]

Enchantment from 1948 with David Niven, Teresa Wright, Evelyn Keyes and Farley Granger

In present day (WWII) London, a curmudgeonly old man, David Niven, living in a beautiful 19th century house, grudgingly offers a room to his young niece, Evelyn Keyes, serving as an ambulance driver during the Blitz. Through flashbacks, sparked by family discussions with Keyes, we learn that, when Niven was a child, his father had taken in a young girl, Teresa Wright, as his charge when Wright's parents died suddenly.

While Niven and his brother embraced this addition to the family, his only sister, Jane Meadows, resented Wright from the start. Later, as a young adult, we see that Meadows had already become a hard and bitter woman who, after their father died, was Wright's antagonistic and spiteful legal guardian.

All that ramps up when Niven and Wright fall in love. Meadows, furious, maneuvers to break them up by having army officer Niven shipped overseas. Two lessons come out of this movie's misery.

One, never believe in or accept that some entity, so empowered, will look after your interests in a benevolent way. Even when good, it pleasantly steals your freedom, and when bad, and, eventually, it always becomes bad - see Meadows and Wright - it dispirits, imprisons and/or defeats in some other way the individual soul and, often, the body.

And, two, at least according to old man Niven's advice to his young niece being courted by a fighter pilot, Farley Granger, always pursue true love despite the costs, risks and trade-offs. Keyes is a young, thoughtful woman trying to weigh the practicality of marrying a man who might die tomorrow; Niven, now an old man, having missed his chance at young love, passionately advises Keyes to go after it despite any practical concerns.

That's the story, but this is less of a story-driven movie than an emotional and sentimental one. The aforementioned house itself narrates as it has "shared the joys and miseries of all the different generations that have lived inside its walls" [paraphrasing]. The star-crossed lovers have a timeless quality to their youthful passions as Niven and Wright's past challenges are mirrored in the present-day problems of Keyes and Granger. And impractical grand romantic gestures - like selling your last possession to buy your girlfriend an expensive necklace - are treated with reverence.

It works in a slow-moving way, but only if you are in the mood for a romantic and sentimental movie. I immediately started having an odd deja vu when the movie came on, even though I was pretty sure I had never seen it before. Somehow, the story felt faintly familiar, but it took until about twenty minutes in for me to realize that I had read the book the movie is based on, Take Three Tenses: A Fugue in Time by Rumer Godden. I believe the book was better, as it almost always is, but it too, was a highly romanticized and sentimental story.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I watched this recently too. It didn't make much of an impression, apart from being another one of those postwar "angel" flicks trying to somehow deal with the losses of the war - in this case, the supernatural aspect being the narration by the sentient house. They did a surprisingly good makeup job on Niven, while watching I thought another actor was playing the older Rollo.

Being a Black Narcissus freak, I'm always looking for other Rumer Godden adaptations...

 

[MisterCairo]

I introduced our daughters and my wife to that classic from 1979 - Alien.

Freaked them out, and not having seen it myself in decades, was really impressed by how well it stands up. We saw the 2003 Ridley Scott director's version. I have the four main films in a blu-ray collection, got it for $10 CAD having spent more than $50 at a local shop.

Also have Prometheus, the sort of prequel. I can see now the links between the two.

Next week - Buckaroo Banzai Adventures Across the 8th Dimension!

 

[Trenchfriend]

I introduced our daughters and my wife to that classic from 1979 - Alien.

Freaked them out, and not having seen it myself in decades, was really impressed by how well it stands up. We saw the 2003 Ridley Scott director's version. I have the four main films in a blu-ray collection, got it for $10 CAD having spent more than $50 at a local shop.

Also have Prometheus, the sort of prequel. I can see now the links between the two.

Next week - Buckaroo Banzai Adventures Across the 8th Dimension!

How old are your daughters?
Man, I wish I would have been maximum 12, when I first saw it in TV, not 17!!

 

[Zombie_61]

How old are your daughters?
Man, I wish I would have been maximum 12, when I first saw it in TV, not 17!!

I think you've mentioned an important component with regards to the impact a particular movie can have on a person--age. The first Alien movie was released in the U.S. in 1979. I was 18 years old by then, and grew up watching horror movies on television. So, while I thought it wasn't a bad movie, I didn't see what all the fuss was about when everyone in the theater with me were jumping and screaming every time they showed one of the Aliens creeping up behind one of the characters because I had already seen that bit before in a number of movies, and the other movies did it better.

 

[MisterCairo]

How old are your daughters?
Man, I wish I would have been maximum 12, when I first saw it in TV, not 17!!

12 and 14!

 

[Trenchfriend]

Das Boot - uncut TV series DVD (282 min nonstop). German synchro.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

I introduced our daughters and my wife to that classic from 1979 - Alien.

Freaked them out, and not having seen it myself in decades, was really impressed by how well it stands up. We saw the 2003 Ridley Scott director's version. I have the four main films in a blu-ray collection, got it for $10 CAD having spent more than $50 at a local shop.

Also have Prometheus, the sort of prequel. I can see now the links between the two.

Next week - Buckaroo Banzai Adventures Across the 8th Dimension!

When watching Buckaroo Banzai, keep an eye out for Dr. Lizardo's hospital orderly/guard: it's Jonathan Banks, eons before Mike Ehrmantraut.

 

[Worf]

Das Boot - uncut TV series DVD (282 min nonstop). German synchro.

Man is it me or do you watch this film EVERY week? Don't get me wrong, I've got it on DVD myself but c'mon... I'd be waterlogged watching that thing as much as you do.

Worf

 

[Harp]

View attachment 303688
Enchantment from 1948 with David Niven, Teresa Wright, Evelyn Keyes and Farley Granger

In present day (WWII) London, a curmudgeonly old man, David Niven, living in a beautiful 19th century house, grudgingly offers a room to his young niece, Niven, now an old man, having missed his chance at young love, passionately advises Keyes to go after it despite any practical concerns.

That's the story, but this is less of a story-driven movie than an emotional and sentimental one. The aforementioned house itself narrates as it has "shared the joys and miseries of all the different generations that have lived inside its walls" [paraphrasing]. The star-crossed lovers have a timeless quality to their youthful passions as Niven and Wright's past challenges are mirrored in the present-day problems of Keyes and Granger. And impractical grand romantic gestures - like selling your last possession to buy your girlfriend an expensive necklace - are treated with reverence.

It works in a slow-moving way, but only if you are in the mood for a romantic and sentimental movie. I immediately started having an odd deja vu when the movie came on, even though I was pretty sure I had never seen it before. Somehow, the story felt faintly familiar, but it took until about twenty minutes in for me to realize that I had read the book the movie is based on, Take Three Tenses: A Fugue in Time by Rumer Godden. I believe the book was better, as it almost always is, but it too, was a highly romanticized and sentimental story.

I've seen this, decades ago. Niven as I recall delivered a soliloquy to his niece. A car door closes,
a train leaves station-all about fate and how human life is affected. I immediately thought it quite
properly ranked with Shakespeare, Hamlet or Henry. And soon after Niven dies in an air raid.
Really puts the period at the end of a simple declarative sentence. And the house talks too???
I believe I recall this. Love this stuff. Seriously, only wish I had paid attention and followed advice
freely given and well worth remembering.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"Sweet Music," a delightfully-acrid Warner Bros. musical from 1935, starring Rudy Vallee and Ann Dvorak.

The Busby Berkeley pictures were Warners' front-rank musicals during the 1930s, but they had a good line in lower-budget musical programmers, and this little gem is a prime specimen -- with an absolutely hilarious performance by Mr. Vallee as a flat-footed parody of himself. Poor Rudy had had a terrible year in 1934, as the star attraction in one of the grubbiest divorce cases of the decade, and someone had a real sense of the occasion to cast him in this picture as an egotistical jackass of a bandleader with a pasted-on 60-watt grin and an insult for every situation. Most of these insults are aimed at Miss Dvorak as a second-rate vaudeville hoofer who seems to spend most of her act sniping insults right back at him thru a gritted-teeth stage grin of her own. When they end up paired on a radio hour, further sparks are exchanged.

Speaking of sparks, Ned Sparks is here in his usual role as a fast-talking agent -- talking here faster than ever, along with Allen Jenkins as a dopey publicist, Alice White as a dopey thyroid-eyed chorine caught up in a publicity stunt, and Robert Armstrong as her brother, a dopey gangster actually named "Dopey."

The musical numbers -- which Vallee plugged incessantly on his real-world radio show thruout the winter of 1935, to the point where the public was tired of them even before they went to see the move -- are fair to middling, but Dvorak -- who can't really sing, and dances about like I do -- is a real trouper here, and really sells her role. And it's always good to see Alice White, who was a road-company Clara Bow in the late silent days before Warners ran her into the ground at the dawn of the talkie era -- what she lacked as a leading lady, she more than made up as a character comedienne specailizing in flashy-bimbo roles. As for Vallee, he's clearly in on the joke and perfectly willing to be the butt of it, standing there with that idiotic grin on his face whether he's waving a baton or looking down the barrel of a gun.

Most of all, this is a picture that refuses at any moment to take itself seriously. It's the kind of picture that spent most of its run in the neighborhood houses, on the bottom half of a double bill, and while it didn't mean much to the critics and it didn't make a lot of money, and probably nobody but me would bother to watch it in 2021, I get the feeling Joe and Sally from Bensonhurst got a real kick out of it.

 

[Fading Fast]

...Dvorak -- who can't really sing, and dances about like I do -- is a real trouper here, and really sells her role. ...

Dvorak, starting with her name, was an odd fit for the time - not quite a leading lady and not quite a supporting actress, she did both well, but in her own way. She gives a career performance, in my opinion, in '33's "Three on a Match," as a poor girl who marries a wealthy and good man who, then, throws it all away for drugs and sex with a thug. Yup, as you would say, "a gentler time."

 

[Trenchfriend]

Man is it me or do you watch this film EVERY week? Don't get me wrong, I've got it on DVD myself but c'mon... I'd be waterlogged watching that thing as much as you do.

Worf

Not every week. I always switch between german and english synchro. Same on Alien and Aliens.