What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

The Birds from 1963 with Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy and Suzanne Pleshette


The Birds is an excellent movie without much of a plot. Basically, the entire story is a girl chases a boy while an old girlfriend, a mother and some birds get in the way.

Did Hitchcock make a movie starring his famous macguffin? From Wikipedia: "In fiction, a macguffin is an object, device, or event that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself."

Is Hitchcock trolling us in The Birds? Do you really care about the why of the birds or are they just the thing that Hedren and Taylor have to overcome so that they can be together?

Hedren is a spoiled socialite with a checkered sexual past (nude swimming in a fountain in Rome at a time when that was still shocking). Taylor's the pragmatic lawyer with an old-school mom, Jessica Tandy, who has no truck for Hedren's rich-girl antics.

In a crazy get-the-guy Hail Mary, Hedren uses a flimsy excuse about bringing some love birds to Taylor's younger sister, whom she doesn't even know, to drive forty miles to Bodega Bay to see a man she only briefly met once in San Francisco. Something is going very right in your life when lithe, blonde, beautiful and rich Tippie Hedren is using subterfuge just to be with you.

Once in Bodega Bay, while Hedren is trying to find reasons to keep seeing Taylor, she stumbles upon what she thinks are her real obstacles: Taylor's still-pining-for-him ex-girlfriend, Suzanne Pleshette, and Taylor's Oedipal-Complex mother, Jessica Tandy.

Then the bird attacks start. At first, it's a small isolated event here or there. Yet, eventually, the Bird Wars begin and gulls and crows mass and attack off and on, while Hedren's never-changed-once-during-the-weekend pale-green suit gets dirtier and, one imagines, riper over the following few days.

Hitchcock, though, knows how to do suspense and fear. In the first mass bird attack, we see Hedren sitting perfectly quaffed on a bench outside of a lost-in-time schoolhouse as the sounds of kids singing gently waft out. The camera keeps returning to Hedren as crows eerily mass on the monkey bars and overhead wires behind her; the dread builds as the background becomes ominously populated with birds.

Then comes the attack, which for the time was visually impressive, but today, the effect isn't too scary or realistic. After that, it's wash-rinse-repeat as we see the birds attack a few more times over the next few days (the in-town attack is pretty darn good action). Taylor, Hedren and the town slowly realize something more than "a few isolated incidents" is going on.

That's pretty much it though. It's cinematically impressive and engaging in that 1950s/1960s way Hitchcock mastered, but other than a few quick speeches, we never learn much more about the birds, nor do we really care because they're the macguffin.

At the end, as torn-and-frayed Hedren, Rod Taylor, his mother and his sister drive away from the bird hell of Bodega Bay, we're left with this slightly altered story: a girl chases a boy and some birds kill the girl's rival (ex-girlfriend Suzanne Pleshette) and cow the won't-cut-the-apron-strings mother, so the girl can get the boy.

Not shown in the movie, but as their car slowly leaves Bodega Bay, with Taylor and Hedren presumably on their way to matrimony, Hedren gives a discreet thank-you nod to the birds.

 

[Harp]

I took a look at The Birds in college but for some reason this Hitchcock never registered despite
my crush on Susie-Q; really likened Birds to a bowl of JELLO without any substance, rhyme, or reason.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My mother saw this picture in 1963, and never stepped foot in a phone booth ever again.

 

[Zombie_61]

...Then the bird attacks start. At first, it's a small isolated event here or there. Yet, eventually, the Bird Wars begin and gulls and crows mass and attack off and on, while Hedren's never-changed-once-during-the-weekend pale-green suit gets dirtier and, one imagines, riper over the following few days...

Riper? Nawww, the whole movie takes place in Bodega Bay, California, where the temperature rarely gets high enough to be uncomfortably warm let alone make people perspire in the "ripe" range.

My mother saw this picture in 1963, and never stepped foot in a phone booth ever again.

My older brother took the woman who would become his first wife to see The Birds on their first date, not knowing she had a pathological fear of the feathered creatures. The whole time she was hiding her eyes and otherwise reacting to the movie out of genuine fright, he was thinking how well the date was going and that he was sure to "get lucky" later in the evening.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Millionaire from 1931 with George Arliss, Evalyn Knapp and David Manners


Yes, it's an early pre-code talkie which, often and in this case, means it doesn't have a soundtrack, needs a restoration and is a clunky effort overall, but The Millionaire is both fun time travel and a good, simple story with engaging characters.

If you can adjust your expectations to the limitations and style of early pre-codes, in The Millionaire, you get a quick, fun eighty-minute movie about the perils of retiring early; a story which Hollywood has been telling ever since. Also tucked inside The Millionaire's main tale is another Hollywood favorite, the "should I marry for love or money" story.

Auto magnate George Arliss is forced to retire by his wife and doctor for health reasons, but after a few months of "rest and relaxation," sixty year old Arliss is about ready to shoot himself from boredom. He stumbles upon a gas station up for sale and partners with a young mechanic to buy and run it, an effort Arliss keeps secret from his family and doctor.

His partner, David Manners, is a college educated architect forced to make a living as a garage mechanic in the Depression. Arliss' cute-as-heck daughter, Evalyn Knapp, and Manners begin flirting when she comes by the station to fill her car up. Arliss always hides when she does as neither Manners nor Knapp is aware of the other's relationship to Arliss.

Other than Arliss and Manners having to get even with a local businessman who tried a flim-flam move on them, the above is the story and it works in a simple, straight-forward way.

(Spoiler alert) You know from the start things are going to work out, it's just that kind of movie, so it's not really much of a spoiler alert to tell that, one, Arliss' health improves the more he works and, two, the station becomes a big success. Arliss and Manners then sell the station so Manners can start his own architecture business and marry Knapp.

The joy in this one is Arliss having fun as the former big auto company tycoon running a small, corner gas station. It's also fun to see his adorable daughter, who's not snobbish at all, happily dating "working-man" Manners, while rejecting the advances of the dull trust-fund kid from the "right class" who's chasing her.

The Millionaire is nothing special, but even today, it still entertains and, as noted, comprises two very early versions of stories - the downside of early retirement and why one should marry for love not money - Hollywood has been telling ever since. Plus, it's darn good time travel to 1930s America.


N.B. #1 If you do see it, look for the incredible cameo of a pre-stardom James Cagney playing a slick-talking insurance salesman. It's hard to think of anything more Cagney than a slick-talking insurance salesman. You can see the star he'll soon become.

N.B #2 In the great tradition of pre-codes and, really, code-era 1930s movies, lissome Evalyn Knapp proves once again a woman can wear a sheer dress without a bra.

 

[Harp]

Mark,
I am dying for a FF movie review. Something I can sink my teeth into. Preferably with Ms Pleshette, Tippi,
or other gorgeous creature so as to enflame artistic chaste pure-as-driven snow objective analysis.
The Millionaire isn't what I had in mind. Looks like Birth of A Nation or a Buster Keaton silent.

 

[Fading Fast]

Mark,
I am dying for a FF movie review. Something I can sink my teeth into. Preferably with Ms Pleshette, Tippi,
or other gorgeous creature so as to enflame artistic chaste pure-as-driven snow objective analysis.
The Millionaire isn't what I had in mind. Looks like Birth of A Nation or a Buster Keaton silent.

Hang in there, time permitting, I got a pretty good 1950s noir - with Alexis Smith cheating on her fiancee - coming tomorrow.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Turning Point 1952 with Edmond O'Brien, William Holden, Alexis Smith and Tom Tully


The 1950 Estes Kefauver United States Senate Committee looking into organized crime has been the gift that just keeps giving to Hollywood. It even inspired the famous scene in The Godfather: Part II where attorney Tom Hagen gets to scream out "This committee owes [my client] an apology."

The Turning Point is one of Hollywood's early bites at the Kefauver apple. Attorney Edmond O'Brien returns to his hometown of Los Angeles to head up a government commission looking into organized crime in the city. With his pretty fiancee, Alexis Smith, at his side, he's the white knight coming home to clean up Dodge City.

He immediately meets his childhood friend, cynical newspaper reporter William Holden, who doesn't believe much will come from O'Brien's effort. The first hint of trouble for O'Brien appears when O'Brien's father, veteran policeman Tom Tully, is hesitant to take a position working for his son's committee.

Sitting on the other side of O'Brien is the local mob boss Ed Begley who has a tight grip on the city's criminal activity. He has enough people on his payroll, in the right places and on both sides of the law to protect his interests. With that setup, The Turning Point is a solid crime drama cum soap opera that packs a lot of punch into its eighty-five minutes.

(Spoiler alert - it happens early, but it's the key to the entire story). Reporter Holden confirms his suspicion that O'Brien's father, Tully, is a cop on mob boss Begley's payroll. Unaware of this, O'Brien keeps failing to find anything to stick on Begley.

At about the same time that Holden is outing Tully, he and Alexis Smith, after a little flirt fighting, begin an affair, shockingly for this period, based on not much more than they like each other and want to hop in the sack. Remember, Smith's fiance O'Brien and Holden were childhood friends.

(Spoiler alert) Holden, trying to help the friend he's (effectively) cuckolding, realizes that the only way O'Brien's committee can be successful is if O'Brien is told his now-dead father - the mob killed dad because he was too much of a liability - was on the take. Almost at the same time Holden tells O'Brien about his dad, Smith confirms to O'Brien his suspicions about her affair with Holden.

Talk about a bad day. Umm, your policeman father, who was a paragon of virtue to you, was on the take and your childhood friend is snaking your fiancee, but good news, you might have a new angle on how to bring down the mob.

O'Brien, oddly, does kind of take it all in stride and uses this new information to go after Begley and (spoiler alert) takes him down with Holden's help, but it costs Holden his life. These sacrifices aren't done or taken lightly as reflected in the tight and realistic dialogue of screenwriter Warren Duff.

Duff has his characters discussing the meaning of justice and honor and what citizens, politicians and the police should be willing to sacrifice for the good of society in a reasonably honest, natural and impactful manner. If only modern screenwriters would learn to pen dialogue and not speeches, so many modern movies wouldn't sound so preachy.

The Turning Point is tough stuff for 1952. In addition to one of the heros getting killed, the rackets are shown to be a well-organized syndicate running large illegal activities - numbers, bookmaking, loansharking, drugs, etc. - in part, by buying protection from the officers and politicians who are supposed to be protecting the people.

Yes, in this movie, the good guys win overall, but you don't really take a happy message away from The Turning Point. As with several other 1950s noirish crime dramas, what America saw in The Turning Point was a mob that had become more professional (versus the mob of the 1930s shoot-'em-up movies) and more corrupting of its police and politicians.

The Turning Point's biggest strength is its interpersonal relationships where deep betrayals seem, dispiritingly, to be part of the fabric of the times. But it also does a darn good job of connecting the dots to show how organized crime uses its ill-gotten gains to buy muscle and influence to protect itself. Some movies are good because they are different; others, like The Turning Point, are good because they do all the expected things of their subgenre very well.


N.B. For time travel, The Turning Point is a heck of a trip to early 1950s Los Angeles, including the incredibly cinematic Angels Flight funicular, seedy apartment houses, government buildings done in inspiring classical architecture, dive bars and the period-perfect Grand Olympic Auditorium hosting a period-perfect boxing match.

 

[Trenchfriend]

La grande illusion (1937) DVD.

 

[Harp]

As I live in Chicago, a town which mirror reflects past is prologue crime, politics, baseball, and football
The Turning Point and all such film are more wistful and less catalyst for meaningful change. However, there is a discernible sense here that national sentiment might prove a cudgel strike to crime with incumbent avarice and incompetence; tinged no doubt by Covid fluctuations, vaccine mandates, and continued mutant viral strain.
In this sense The Turning Point has some relevance beyond time capsule looks at 1950s Los Angeles or sexual ground breaking. Holden and Smith cast morality in sharper focus; which is now ironic, considering modern production obligatory add-onism societal blindness. Such candor creates a timeless movie.

 

[Edward]

My mother saw this picture in 1963, and never stepped foot in a phone booth ever again.

Seems to have had that effect on people. My mother's phobia of birds seems to date to having seen it in a small cinema in Portrush.

 

[Harp]

Anybody seen Branagh's Belfast? Looks Oscar-locked in. Great buzz about town and gown here.

 

[Harp]

The American, starring George Clooney; directed Anton Corbijn. 2010

Anton Corbijn opened a Pandoran Box, but quickly slammed its lid down, and spent the remainder of The American examining the box itself, not the content inside. The human soul is without doubt as enticing a subject as it is mysterious, but to grapple with its mystery is to ultimately confront truth; and, as such this search is not for the weak or feint of heart.

Corbijn opens this pandoran by way of a planned murder of protagonist professional assassin, Clooney=Jack, who quickly eliminates competition and consort, the latter to cover himself. The lid closes. Jack leaves Sweden for Italy where he awaits further supervisory instruction.

The American proceeds along a quiet path, subdued, and set against the beauty
of rural Italy Corbijn's film is as elegant as it is elegiac. Jack is enigmatic, a laconic
loner as befits his trade, introspective. Shown shirtless, a US Army Special Forces
tattoo is stenciled on his right upper arm. A right paw signifies combatant service,
a southpaw scratch mere membership in the brotherhood. Further opine leads
to CIA, so Jackie is connected to the Company. Jack has lived his adulthood inside
the darkness, a shadow cast across life: no friends, but no enemies. A gray twilight
posing neither hate nor love, only loneliness. And the stillness is Jack's real nemesis.

Here Corbijn commits a fateful temporal error. He gives Jack enemies, all for art,
of course, and plot alternate direction since he already slammed pandoran lid shut.
And Jack's cold blooded merciless killing of his ladyfriend is ignored but hinted.
The film has fallen apart. Other foolishness is directorial political correction.
Corbijn brings females inside a professional sphere devoid of femininity to make
statement whereas deeper examin of protagonist was deliberately forsaken.
And the introduction is foolishly embellished so to give credit to characters
whom have no place in the inept narrative.

The American falls flat when compared to other assassin-for-hire fare such
as The Day of The Jackyl, which chronicled a fictitious plot to kill French president
Charles de Gaulle. A soldier turned sociopath whose degredation is brazenly
displayed without remorse. In the hands of a better, more able and courageous
director such as Alfred Hitchcock The American could have been a classic film.

 

[Fading Fast]

Marty from 1955 with Ernest Borgnine, Betsy Blair and Esther Minciotti


Marty is what most romcoms try to be: romantic stories that blend pathos and humor to reflect something like real life. Romcoms are too often formulaic and forced, but Marty is a believable tale of two romantically lost souls finding each other amidst the pressures and expectations of their Bronx, blue-collar, ethnic mid-twentieth-century world.

Thirty-four-year-old butcher Marty, Ernest Borgnine, lives at home with his immigrant Italian mother (she cooks big meals, goes to Mass each day and cleans her house all the time) as, even though he's the oldest child, he's the only one not married.

His Friday and Saturday nights are spent with his bachelor friends going to bars, dance halls or "hanging out" on popular street corners mainly in an attempt to meet "tomatoes," girls.

The boys all want to "score," while Borgnine’s mom wants him to meet a nice girl, but we quickly see that chubby, average-looking Borgnine is struggling to do either and beginning to get frustrated by both his own failure and all the "advice" he's getting.

One night at a dance hall, he meets what is supposed to be an unattractive woman, Betsy Blair, who was, effectively, abandoned by her blind date. While everyone refers to Blair as unattractive, in one of the movie’s few false notes, Ms. Blair is an attractive woman, but Hollywood’s gonna Hollywood.

Borgnine and Blair have an immediate connection and spend the evening walking and talking for hours sharing many of their secrets, emotions, hopes and dreams. She even briefly meets his mother and his best friend as happens in these ethnic enclaves. It’s a magical evening for both after years and years of romantic disappointment.

When they part, Borgnine agrees to call her the next day. Yet, when he gets home, his mother is down on her because mom recently realized, when Borgnine gets married, she’ll be alone. Additionally, Borgnine's friends are down on her both because of her looks, “she’s a dog,” and because they don't think he should give up his “freedom.”

Meanwhile, Blair has excitedly told her parents about Marty. You can feel the parents’ relief and trepidation as they want this to be good, but are worried about how their daughter would face another letdown.

With his mother and friends discouraging him, plus some other pressures related to a relative coming to live with them and the possibility of buying the butcher shop he works in, Borgnine doesn't call Blair the next day. That evening, we see Blair silently crying as she watches TV with her parents. This is heartbreaking stuff.

(Spoiler alert) Just when you think this meant-for-each-other couple will miss their chance, Borgnine has a personal epiphany moment, pushes all the negative advice aside and, in the closing scene, calls Blair. You then know it will all work out.

Marty is a romcom with grit. You might not have grown up in a Bronx Italian neighborhood in the 1950s, but you know shy and insecure-around-the-opposite-sex men and women like Borgnine and Blair who spend a lot of tough and disappointing years not finding love as they get pushed and pulled by others advice. But when they do finally find somebody, the moment is romcom and real-life magic. Kudos to Marty for sensitively capturing all of that.

 

[Doctor Strange]

FF, the only thing I'll add to your review is that Marty was originally a live TV drama that starred Rod Steiger. (There's a kinescope, and it's worth seeing.) When it aired, it was so praised and successful that it was quickly remade as a feature film. Oh, and how could you not mention that it was written by Paddy Chayefsky? It's the on-target writing that really makes the story work, even more than the actors.

I watched Guillermo Del Toro's new film Nightmare Alley. (And no, I haven't seen the 1947 Tyrone Power version, I'll have to be on the lookout for it.) It's a nasty, nasty forties-set noir with gorgeous production design and a great cast - Bradley Cooper (the weak link, frankly, he's not much of an actor), Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, David Strathairn, Ron Perlman, Willem Dafoe, Toni Collete, Richard Jenkins.

It held my interest, but it's too long, there are a lot of questionable plot points, and it telegraphs (and ruins) the ending. I love most of Del Toro's films, and this one again demonstrates his love for oddball monstrous characters and sumptuous visuals... but I wasn't moved. It's a mess. A good looking, occasionally fascinating mess, but not really successful.

 

[Harp]

^Borgnine won an Oscar for Marty, and kudos to the paddock for hack,
but the right script demands the right cast to really nail all that poetic prose
down to dactylic iambic sidewalk realism. Streets above most Hollywood as
the British often call a decent show with a wistful nod to seemingly bygone honesty.
Subjects like loneliness are taboo to the current crowd who scream about rights
but seldom, if ever, pause to consider innate or external responsibility.

 

[Edward]

Anybody seen Branagh's Belfast? Looks Oscar-locked in. Great buzz about town and gown here.

Not yet, I hear good things though. Several English critics were down on it for not dealing enough with "THe TRoubles" - though of course from what I'm hearing from trusted sources that's because it represents the reality of it for most people throughout those thirty odd years - it was a dull, thrum in the background, never not there but neither, for most of us, the single, defining factor of our lives. Branagh is a little over a decade older than me, so I'll be interested to compare his memories of NI in the late sixties to my first memories of the mid-late seventies.

 

[Harp]

Not yet, I hear good things though. Several English critics were down on it for not dealing enough with "THe TRoubles" - though of course from what I'm hearing from trusted sources that's because it represents the reality of it for most people throughout those thirty odd years - it was a dull, thrum in ....

Irish immigrants settled into my Chicago south side neighborhood often remarked
that 'the Troubles' were there but not such a constant so as to overwhelm sense
and sensibility but economics forced many to seek life elsewhere.

 

[Edward]

Irish immigrants settled into my Chicago south side neighborhood often remarked
that 'the Troubles' were there but not such a constant so as to overwhelm sense
and sensibility but economics forced many to seek life elsewhere.

Pretty much. I think more people left for work or because of the generally stifling nature of an extremely traditional society which was small enough that everyone knew and commented on your business than did over the territorial dispute, tbh. At least in my direct experience.

 

[Trenchfriend]

Does the new 2021's Estonia investigation footage count?

The first of the seven dives:

ROV's first dive | Estonian Safety Investigation Bureau

All seven:
https://www.ojk.ee/en/search/node/rov's dive