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The Lady Eve with Barbara Stanwyck and Nebraska-born Henry Fonda!
Watch a chunk of it last night on TCM - Stanwyck is just that good.
The Lady Eve with Barbara Stanwyck and Nebraska-born Henry Fonda!
Tonight's The Night^^^^ Eddie Munster's mom makes this flick for me boyo. What a fetching colleen.
Ava on Netflix with Jessica Chastain and John Malkovich, about a female assassin. I liked it, but it was a typical movie about a female assassin.
At the weekend we watched A Room with a View. I'd never seen it (nor read the book), the wife is a fan of both. Diverting enough little picture. Lovely clothes. Bittersweet ending knowing that -
Highlander. Had not seen it since probably 1988.
Better than I recalled it! Worth it to see Sean Connery playing a Spaniard from Egypt, or whatever he was supposed to have been...
View attachment 310779
The Big Heat from 1953 with Glen Ford, Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin and Jocelyn Brando
This movie is further proof that people living in the fifties knew that the fifties weren't the wholesome nirvana that later generations would tag it with as a shorthand.
A political machine, in bed with the mob, controls a city almost as an open and accepted-by-the-police secret. When a senior police officer, living in a pretty-darn-nice house for even a senior officer in those days, commits suicide, the word is sent down to investigate this one "lightly." Basically, "investigate," accept that it's a suicide, close the case quickly and move on.
When honest detective Glenn Ford tries to conduct a real investigation, he uncovers some "unpleasant" information and is all but told from above to stand down. But that's not Ford, so he barrels forward causing both the city's political leaders and local mob to come down hard on him: his wife, Jocelyn Brando, is murdered in a mob hit (Ford was the intended victim) and he is fired from the force.
But in an early cop-as-vigilante-justice-warrior effort, Ford, now off the force, keeps pushing hard and following every clue to avenge his wife's murder. This leads him directly to the mob and indirectly to the mob's political connections.
Eventually aided by an abused top-level gangster's girlfriend, Gloria Graham, he keeps shoving everyone out of the way and turning over every clue while playing by no rulebook but his own. (Spoiler alert) After a lot of fist fights and gun fights, a high body count and a beautiful woman's face (Graham's) horribly scarred - he exposes and brings down the political-mob nexus of corruption.
It's a solid anti-wholesome fifties story that director Fritz Lang tells by mashing the accelerator pedal down early and only letting his foot off a bit now and then. And at that speed, the city's arrant corruption and Ford's revenge-driven passion smash into each other time and again until all that's left is a lot of wreckage. A final scene of a cleaned-up police department feels snapped on to make the censors happy.
Equally impressive and engaging in this one are the performances by Ford, Lee Marvin and Gloria Graham. Ford is intense as the rogue former cop hell bent on revenge and Marvin is frighteningly oleaginous and despicable as the girlfriend-beating, smart-in-a-conniving way, dandily dressed gangster, but Graham is the real treasure in this one.
She is the vain, greedy and stupid (probably because she's never tried to think) girlfriend of Marvin whose unaware-but-provocative personality rolls in and owns scene after scene. But when disfigured by Marvin, Graham begins to think about the world and about right and wrong and, proving a quick study, becomes Ford's ally in his quest for revenge masquerading as justice. It's not an easy transition from idiot gun moll to scarred righteous crusader, but Graham is up for the challenge briefly providing a spark of hope to this grim tale.
Away from the aforementioned forced ending, this is a tight and dispiriting story of political corruption as a way of life where honesty and integrity truckle to malfeasance and graft in the institutions that are suppose to protect us. If an innocent life or two have to get heaved overboard now and then to defend the political machine, so be it. This is not a nostalgic-redolent happy picture of the fifties. But like so many noir movies, The Big Heat argues that the fifties never really looked that happy, especially to many who lived through them.
Gloria Graham rolls into a scene in The Big Heat.
View attachment 310780
I'm surprised to say that I've never seen this. The only Glen Ford movie that I can think of is the tv western movie "The Sackets" with Tom Selleck and Sam Elliot. But this looks sharp!View attachment 310779
The Big Heat from 1953 with Glen Ford, Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin and Jocelyn Brando
This movie is further proof that people living in the fifties knew that the fifties weren't the wholesome nirvana that later generations would tag it with as a shorthand.
A political machine, in bed with the mob, controls a city almost as an open and accepted-by-the-police secret. When a senior police officer, living in a pretty-darn-nice house for even a senior officer in those days, commits suicide, the word is sent down to investigate this one "lightly." Basically, "investigate," accept that it's a suicide, close the case quickly and move on.
When honest detective Glenn Ford tries to conduct a real investigation, he uncovers some "unpleasant" information and is all but told from above to stand down. But that's not Ford, so he barrels forward causing both the city's political leaders and local mob to come down hard on him: his wife, Jocelyn Brando, is murdered in a mob hit (Ford was the intended victim) and he is fired from the force.
But in an early cop-as-vigilante-justice-warrior effort, Ford, now off the force, keeps pushing hard and following every clue to avenge his wife's murder. This leads him directly to the mob and indirectly to the mob's political connections.
Eventually aided by an abused top-level gangster's girlfriend, Gloria Graham, he keeps shoving everyone out of the way and turning over every clue while playing by no rulebook but his own. (Spoiler alert) After a lot of fist fights and gun fights, a high body count and a beautiful woman's face (Graham's) horribly scarred - he exposes and brings down the political-mob nexus of corruption.
It's a solid anti-wholesome fifties story that director Fritz Lang tells by mashing the accelerator pedal down early and only letting his foot off a bit now and then. And at that speed, the city's arrant corruption and Ford's revenge-driven passion smash into each other time and again until all that's left is a lot of wreckage. A final scene of a cleaned-up police department feels snapped on to make the censors happy.
Equally impressive and engaging in this one are the performances by Ford, Lee Marvin and Gloria Graham. Ford is intense as the rogue former cop hell bent on revenge and Marvin is frighteningly oleaginous and despicable as the girlfriend-beating, smart-in-a-conniving way, dandily dressed gangster, but Graham is the real treasure in this one.
She is the vain, greedy and stupid (probably because she's never tried to think) girlfriend of Marvin whose unaware-but-provocative personality rolls in and owns scene after scene. But when disfigured by Marvin, Graham begins to think about the world and about right and wrong and, proving a quick study, becomes Ford's ally in his quest for revenge masquerading as justice. It's not an easy transition from idiot gun moll to scarred righteous crusader, but Graham is up for the challenge briefly providing a spark of hope to this grim tale.
Away from the aforementioned forced ending, this is a tight and dispiriting story of political corruption as a way of life where honesty and integrity truckle to malfeasance and graft in the institutions that are suppose to protect us. If an innocent life or two have to get heaved overboard now and then to defend the political machine, so be it. This is not a nostalgic-redolent happy picture of the fifties. But like so many noir movies, The Big Heat argues that the fifties never really looked that happy, especially to many who lived through them.
Gloria Graham rolls into a scene in The Big Heat.
View attachment 310780
I'm surprised to say that I've never seen this. The only Glen Ford movie that I can think of is the tv western movie "The Sackets" with Tom Selleck and Sam Elliot. But this looks sharp!
^^^Gloria Graham^^^Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool with Annette Bening is a semi biographical
study of an expatriate American actress with cancer....another missed flick.