What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[MisterCairo]

Cairo Cavalcade of Hallowe'en Horror, with Frankenweenie, Tim Burton's full-length, black and white motion stop version, with Disney, of his short live action film from 1983 or so, at Disney, for which Disney fired him given the exorbitant cost!

A charming film we enjoy each Hallowe'en, though our eldest daughter traditionally cries when the dog is killed.

She did not this time round.

 

[Harp]

Harp, have you seen Pandora and the Flying Dutchman? Ava Gardner looks extra stunning in that way-strange flick!

No I haven't, but Ava Gardner's role in Night of the Iguana forever seared her image in my heart.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I agree that she's wonderful in that role. Night of the Iguana has been a personal favorite of mine forever, my second- or third-favorite Tennessee Williams. Richard Burton and Deborah Kerr are also excellent.

"Not now, Nonno."

 

[Fading Fast]

Fourteen Hours from 1951 with Paul Douglas, Richard Basehart, Barbara Bel Geddes and Howard Da Silva


A man, Richard Basehart, walks onto the ledge outside his high-floor hotel room in New York's Wall Street district, setting off fourteen harrowing hours of police and psychiatrists trying to talk or pull him back in, while a crowd below and a febrile press create a circus-like atmosphere to Basehart's, now, public anguish.

Taxicab drivers throw money into a betting pool guessing on the time he'll jump; office workers give up their lunch breaks to watch events unfold; huge WWII spotlights are brought in to shine on Basehart at nightfall; a young man and woman in the crowd start a romance and a divorcing couple at their lawyers, seeing, right outside their lawyer's window, what really matters in life, decide to give their marriage another try.

Today, there would be a special police unit called in with well-established policies, procedures and protocols, but in 1951, the police handle it as best they can with first-on-the-scene traffic cop Paul Douglas, sitting on the ledge with his head out the window, immediately bonding with Basehart.

Douglas is an atypical leading man as he has "regular guy" looks and demeanor, but the screen presence to carry a movie. Ostensibly about Basehart on the ledge, the real story in Fourteen Hours is how an "average Joe," using a mixture of common sense, compassion and some (unacceptable to many today, but normal for the era) harsh admonishment, keeps Basehart engaged and not jumping, for hours and hours.

Even the psychiatrists, in a rare moment of humility, quickly realize Douglas is the man for the job, while they stay in the background researching Basehart's family and medical history. Once they have those details, the psychiatrists then run them through the era's dominant Freudian-Oedipal-Complex calculator to get the answer they expected: he hates his father and wants to sleep with his mother.

Okay, this is 1951, so they don't really say that, but that's the message the psychiatrists concoct as they decide Basehart is on the ledge because he's angry at his father for divorcing his mother. A mother, according to these same doctors, for whom he's never fully lost his "normal" teenage-boy romantic feelings (ick).

This, in theory, also explains why Basehart can't commit to his cute-as-heck girlfriend, Barbara Bel Geddes. Whatever, today we also have our condescensions and biases that we bray are unassailably logical and moral, yet some will look no less silly in seventy years.

While the psychiatrists massage the facts to fit their theories, each time they send out a family member to talk with Basehart, things get worse or, at least, not better. That leaves the real work in trying to save Basehart to Douglas.

(Spoiler alert) Douglas' good guy, beat cop, loving husband and father persona - along with his honest admission to Basehart that everyone gets scared in life at times - finally throws the right switch in Basehart's head.

(One more spoiler alert) Yes, there's a dramatic last minute rescue, but it's the example of Douglas' simple but good life that gives Basehart the will to live. The implied message is that every life, no matter how seemingly mundane, is important, significant and worth fighting for.

It's a good message, but the magic in Fourteen Hours is less the message than seeing regular-guy Paul Douglas, by "just doing his job," save the day.


N.B. #1 I've worked in buildings like the one used in the movie - big, tall, old pre-war offices in New York City's financial district. What's hard to appreciate today, with our hermetically sealed modern office buildings, is that these pre-air-conditioning-era edifices had very large windows, without screens, that opened all the way. You viscerally felt the height, so much so, just sticking your head out one of those opened windows a bit could give you vertigo.

N.B. #2 The wife part of the divorcing couple that reconciles is twenty-two-year-old Grace Kelly, in her movie debut, looking more beautiful than anything and anyone else ever put on earth.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Ripped from the headlines!

View attachment 371341
Fourteen Hours from 1951 with Paul Douglas, Richard Basehart, Barbara Bel Geddes and Howard Da Silva

 

[MisterCairo]

Hallowe'en Cavalcade of Horror continues with John Carpenter's The Fog.

I remember renting this on VHS (indeed, we had to rent the VCR itself!) back in the early 80s.

One of my favourites, nicely creepy, no gratuitous gore, and of course, Adrienne Barbeau.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Hallowe'en Cavalcade of Horror continues with John Carpenter's The Fog.

I remember renting this on VHS (indeed, we had to rent the VCR itself!) back in the early 80s.

One of my favourites, nicely creepy, no gratuitous gore, and of course, Adrienne Barbeau.

Yeah, the atmosphere definitely got it. Very popular in old Germany, too.

 

[Harp]

N.B. #2 The wife part of the divorcing couple that reconciles is twenty-two-year-old Grace Kelly, in her movie debut, looking more beautiful than anything and anyone else ever put on earth.

I fell for Ingrid Bergman and Linda Darnell long ago and still carry a torch for both because their beauty
strikes lightning, its thunder echoes within my heart; Casablanca and The Mark of Zorro touched me deeply.
And Casablanca is one of few films that forced an examination of conscience and bequeathed understanding
of the cruelty that love, honor, and basic human decency can inflict on a man and woman.

 

[MisterCairo]

John Carpenter film festival continues, with his remake of The Thing.

It creeped me out as a teen, and love it to this day.

"You gotta be f@cking kidding...".

If you know the film, you know the scene...

 

[Doctor Strange]

Lansky (2021) with Harvey Keitel as dying Meyer Lansky in Florida, recounting the "true" story of his life to a wannabe writer (Sam Worthington), with interference from an FBI agent who's been on Lansky's case for years in search of Lanksy's allegedly hidden millions of dollars (David James Elliot).

Not bad, but with some sloppy period details in the flashbacks (e.g., contemporary plastic poker chips in 40s/50s casinos). But I found it interesting in comparison to the other treatments of Lansky seen in Boardwalk Empire, Bugsy, etc. And of course, the thinly disguised Hyman Roth in Godfather II.

 

[Fading Fast]

Lansky (2021) with Harvey Keitel as dying Meyer Lansky in Florida, recounting the "true" story of his life to a wannabe writer (Sam Worthington), with interference from an FBI agent who's been on Lansky's case for years in search of Lanksy's allegedly hidden millions of dollars (David James Elliot).

Not bad, but with some sloppy period details in the flashbacks (e.g., contemporary plastic poker chips in 40s/50s casinos). But I found it interesting in comparison to the other treatments of Lansky seen in Boardwalk Empire, Bugsy, etc. And of course, the thinly disguised Hyman Roth in Godfather II.

I read "Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life" by Robert Lacey back when it was release in the early 1990s and remember thinking it seemed well researched and more of a real portrayal, not a Hollywood version, of his life.

 

[Harp]

And of course, the thinly disguised Hyman Roth in Godfather II.

I recall a scene from II where Roth lectures Michael: "This is the life we chose."

 

[Trenchfriend]

I recall a scene from II where Roth lectures Michael: "This is the life we chose."

Yeah, I remember this as the movie's best scene!

 

[Zombie_61]

I read "Little Man: Meyer Lansky and the Gangster Life" by Robert Lacey back when it was release in the early 1990s and remember thinking it seemed well researched and more of a real portrayal, not a Hollywood version, of his life.

Added to my Amazon "Wishlist". Thank you for the recommendation!

 

[Fading Fast]

After Office Hours from 1935 with Clark Gable, Constance Bennett, Billy Burke and Henry Travers.


Despite having an A-list cast, at just over an hour and ten minutes and with a slapped-together wash-rinse-repeat plot, this is more like a well-executed B movie...and that's a compliment. Studios needed "product" for their theaters and there's nothing wrong with an entertaining piece of fluff like After Office Hours filling that bill.

Clark Gable (like almost every leading man in the 1930s did at some point) plays a hard-driving newspaper editor who will lie, cheat and steal to "get the story," all the while never losing his charming smile. The fly in Gable's ointment is when his society-publisher owner occasionally asks him to "lay off" one of the Mr. or Mrs. Highfalutins he's lambasting.

When Gable pursues a cheating-wife story, which involves aristocratic friends of both the paper's owner and its dilettante music critic, Constance Bennett, she and the owner pressure Gable to drop the story.

At this point - ten minutes in - regular moviegoers all but know what will happen: Gable and Bennett will fall for each other, deny it, argue over the story and, eventually, after a big fight about a sleazy thing Gable does to "get the story," have a last-minute reconciliation following some event that shows Gable is, deep down, a good guy.

Yup, that's what happens and it's reasonably entertaining especially with Henry Travers as Gable's go-to guy at the paper and Billy Burke playing the same high-strung, put-upon society mother she plays in, at least, fifty movies throughout the 1930s.

Also enjoyable for us today are the movie's cool Art Deco cars, offices, apartments and restaurants, plus an insanely neat houseboat (you want to live in this thing). Combined with its serviceable murder-mystery story, After Office Hours' sixty-plus-minutes of runtime flies by.

The "studio system" produced some of the greatest movies ever made, but it was also a factory that could churn out perfectly acceptable Fords, umm, short, fun and entertaining little movies like After Office Hours.

 

[Harp]

^Constance Bennett is cute, formulaic routine plot aside, she's worth watching.

And anything Gable is in, count me in. I recall he played an editor opposite Doris Day who taught
night school writing for ambitious scribes later in his storied career, cannot remember its title....
Gable had credibility whatever his critics can say, a most valuable thespian trait.

 

[Fading Fast]

^Constance Bennett is cute, formulaic routine plot aside, she's worth watching.

And anything Gable is in, count me in. I recall he played an editor opposite Doris Day who taught
night school writing for ambitious scribes later in his storied career, cannot remember its title....
Gable had credibility whatever his critics can say, a most valuable thespian trait.

That's "Teacher's Pet," a fun movie. The man can act and showed it right up to the end in his last performance in "The Misfits."

 

[Harp]

That's "Teacher's Pet," a fun movie. The man can act and showed it right up to the end in his last performance in "The Misfits."

Misfits I must catch sometime. If you haven't read David Niven's autobiog The Moon's A Balloon it
captures Gable from a friend's intimate perspective, revealing the man behind the image.

 

[Fading Fast]

A Face in the Crowd from 1957 with Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Walter Matthau and Lee Remick


A Face in the Crowd is Andy Griffith's movie as the vagabond "country boy" personality - plucked from obscurity by a local radio show producer, Patricia Neal - whose insincere homespun populism propels him to the top of the television world where his power extends into the upper echelons of Washington.

Writer Bud Schulberg and director Eli Kazan's movie is an early warning of the risks of the cult of personality (which has existed as long as humans have had personalities) leveraged by television's reach. Griffith, here, is a cruder and louder cognate to Burt Lancaster's portrayal of the cold and vicious J.J. Hunsecker in The Sweet Smell of Success.

All the things we've come to expect in this type of story are here as a cagey raw talent strikes a chord with the public, which creates a sadly symbiotic feedback loop: The public hears what it wants to hear about itself as the personality becomes immensely rich, powerful, egotistical and, ultimately, self destructive.

Griffith gives a career performance as the captivating modern-day TV tent preacher who is personally despicable, but publicly likable and captivating. He yells, screams, bullies and threatens everyone off stage/screen as he builds a media empire. Yet on stage/screen, his false sincerity - a mix of everyman yokel and "uneducated smarts -" connects with much of the public who sees itself in this "honest, simple" man.

The hidden gem in this movie, though, is Patricia Neal as the woman behind the man. She not only can't control her creation, she can't control her physical and emotional passion for him even though she knows who he is.

She's a strong, smart, independent woman (in a not obnoxiously forced modern way) who builds Griffith's cult of personality and, then, kinda falls for it herself. Her complex and contradictory characterization is believable and deeply engaging. She's too intelligent to be sucked in by Griffith, but she is.

Walter Matthau, one of Griffith's young, smart, Ivy-league staff writers, is also Griffith's foil. He's quietly in love with Neal and suffers as he watches Neal pine for Griffith even when Griffith marries a bimbo cheerleader (played with zeal by Lee Remick).

Matthau keeps reminding Neal of Griffith's hypocrisy, egomania and, at times, vicious meanness. Yet Neal, despite mounting evidence to the contrary, like Doctor Frankenstein, believes she can control and improve her creation. She has about as much success as that nineteenth-century Swiss doctor did.

For every screeching bravura of Griffith, Neal matches it with a nuanced facial expression showing hurt or love or confusion - it's possibly her best performance. It also oddly echoes her breakthrough performance eight years earlier as the enigmatic Dominique Francon in Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead.

In that effort, Neal is pulled between several men, one who, like Griffith, derives his power from his ability to manipulate public opinion via the major media outlet of that day, the newspaper. In that happier tale, the ultimate hero is a man of genuine ability who ignores public opinion, confident his integrity and true talent will be recognized.

There's no similar happy ending in A Face in a Crowd as Matthau, in the movie's coda, predicts, not only the now exposed-as-a-fraud Griffith will have a second act, albeit on a smaller scale, but that new Griffiths will rise in his place. He's right, but Rand had a point too: men and women of ability have found a way to thrive, despite the always present media-promoted snake-oil salesmen.


N.B. There is a lot of code-puncturing dialogue in A Face in the Crowd as when Griffith - who bangs just about anything in a skirt that moves - cynically dismisses Neal's sexual hesitancy with this humdinger: "You cold-fish respectable girls, inside you crave the same thing as the rest of them." The Motion Picture Production Code didn't die all at once; it was death by a thousand cuts.

 

[MisterCairo]

The Amityville Horror.

A young James Brolin and a young Margot Kidder in the film of the "true story" of the haunting of a home.

I had forgotten that Meeno Peluce, a once well known child actor, played one of the sons.

This scared the hell out of me as a kid. Still a good creepy film!

Fun fact- we had that issue with flies for real in our attic loft at our old house. Shop Vac took care of it as needed...