What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Worf]

Pork Chop Hill (1959) headlined by Gregory Peck, directed by Lewis Milestone. The cast of supporting players is lengthy and incredibly recognizable. There is not a wasted shot or evidence of padding in the whole hour and a half. This has been mentioned before, but Peck never once fires his weapon; towards the end of the film he throws a hand grenade towards the advancing enemy forces. One of my favorite films and not just in the genre of war.

I've watched it many times and found it significant in one overlooked aspect. Korea was the first time U.S. armed forces fought as an "integrated" unit. Until this time Blacks and Whites were, by regulation, not allowed to fight and die together, other than White Officers commanding "Colored" troops. In the film Peck is concerned about Woody Strode, "melting away" as some commanders called it. Instances where Black Soldiers, many of whom faced intense racism at home, were less than enthusiastic to fight in foreign lands against other peoples of color. They'd done it in every war since the Revolution and still had "freedom" in name only in some instances.

At one point in the film Peck confronts Strode and he flat out tells him that he was drafted and that this war meant nothing to him considering the state of his life back home. You've NO idea how controversial the subject and that scene was considering the times. Muhammed Ali would echo the same sentiments a decade later when discussing a similar war.

Worf

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Binge watching continues unabated with The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2018) directed Mike Newell. Lilly James leads cast as a 1946 investigative journalist researching a slight rumour about Isle of Guernsey folk who periodically escaped the German occupation by literary comradeship.

Think old slipper comfort reassurance or Sherlock Holmes' Persian slipper filled tobacco while seated near
a blazing fireplace with briar bulldog pipe, matches, and a tumbler of whiskey neat or iced within reach.
Branagh supposedly set to direct Kate Winslet but both fled this island film for whatever cause. Definitely not
Bard stuff here but beach sand, yet still waters run deep, especially a woman's heart. Lilly James is never nude,
restrained anger but not without gentility, refined femininity, elegance. In short, a lady.

And director Newell understood his subject protagonist superbly. The key to comprehend why this film is
so refreshing is Newell's grip on emotion. Such as a woman breaking her engagement and returning her ring.
Or when she later proposes to the man she loves and reveals her honest feelings for him.

A chick flic when properly done isn't really chickadee.
Jameson Black Barrel, ice

 

[Fading Fast]

Conflict from 1945 with Humphrey Bogart, Alexis Smith and Sidney Greenstreet


Conflict's director Curtis Bernhardt did a highly competent job making this engaging noir crime-drama mystery. Still, you can't help wondering what Alfred Hitchcock would have done with the same material as the story and characters are right in the famed director's sweet spot.

Humphrey Bogart plays a middle-aged engineer in a tired marriage laced with mild hostility who falls in love with his wife's younger, pretty sister played by Alexis Smith.

His angry wife, who knows Bogart has fallen in love with her sister, will not give him a divorce as she doesn't want to let her life turn into a Greek Tragedy. So for Bogart, the question is, what to do? Very early on, we see Bogart answer that question with murder.

Bogart arranges an elaborate death for his wife, which includes running her car off a deserted mountain road into a deep ravine. With that "problem" solved, Bogie attempts to play the grieving husband for his "missing" wife as the accident goes undiscovered.

But is the problem solved? That is the core mystery at the heart of Conflict as odd things start to happen to Bogart. A piece of his wife's jewelry and then a handkerchief of hers shows up.

He also receives a note in her handwriting and a suspicious phone call. A pawnshop ticket is sent to him for his wife's locket. He even smells his wife's perfume in their bedroom. Finally, he thinks he sees his wife on the street, but isn't able to catch up to her.

Is he going mad? He killed her, or so he thinks. But is she, maybe alive? He never went down to the ravine to check on the body, but it was a violent and fatal looking accident.

Or is his sister-in-law, Smith, the object of his affections, having figured out what he did, trying to smoke him out? Smith, a tall, pretty woman plays a tall, pretty, cold-looking sister-in-law, here, who maybe loves Bogart or maybe thinks he murdered her sister.

Playing Bogart's friend and foil in this one, in the role of a noted psychologist, is Sidney Greenstreet who brings his personal brand of mirth and menace to his character. He has long conversations with Bogart about the morality of murder in a way that only movies of that era did without irony.

Conflict, though, is Bogart's movie and the always-tired-looking leading man does an admirable job playing a murderer who becomes befuddled when his putatively dead wife seems to keep sending him messages. His slow mental breakdown is effective and engaging.

Director Bernhardt set a fast pace for the film while ending it in under ninety minutes as he understood there is not a longer movie here. He also drops a big clue in early, laces the picture with a lot of misdirection and ends with the big reveal, which you will have probably figured out ahead of time.

With several top stars in the cast, Conflict is an A picture from Warner Bros. However, being shot mainly on sets, with only a little action and a lot of talking, it often feels more like a play than a movie.

One can't help wondering, though, what Alfred Hitchcock might have done with the same material, as a decade later, in Dial M for Murder, he played with several similar story elements.

Conflict feels a bit heavy and flat in a way that Dial M for Murder doesn't, in part, because Dial M gives you one thing Conflict is lacking - and something nearly every Hitchcock movie has - a few people to passionately root for.

Despite its shortcomings, Conflict is an entertaining effort, ably carried by Bogart, with solid assists from Smith and Greenstreet. You can't help thinking, though, that there was a better movie to be made from the same material.


N.B. In The Big Sleep, Bogart’s character denigrates Elisha Cook Jr.’s character by telling the diminutive Cook Jr. that the woman he's interested in is "too big for you." Well, Bogart was throwing rocks out of glass houses as Alexis Smith must have had at least an inch of height (sans Bogie's lifts) and twenty pounds on Bogart in Conflict.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I went to a theater to see the new Miyazaki film, The Boy and the Heron (Japanese title: How Do You Live?)



If you've enjoyed Miyazaki's earlier animated films, you'll definitely like it. The hand-drawn animation is as outrageously gorgeous and subtle as you expect, with powerful moments of jaw-dropping imagery. Miyazaki's "greatest hits" are nearly all here - strong young characters, the freedom of flight, moments of restful nature, bizarre character designs, mysterious ruins, unexpected narrative flip-flops, villains who aren't exactly villains...



However, I found the story - which flirts with today's overused fantasy tropes, time travel and multiversal dimensions - to be confused, and I missed a couple of key character-relationship points that could have been made much clearer. Sure, it's fantasy, but the film's world's rules seem to be whatever Miyazaki wants to do in any given sequence. It doesn't have the more straightforward narrative logic and clear messages/lessons of his other masterworks.

Which isn't to say there isn't valuable wisdom in the story, just that it's a bit more obscure. It's not about "growing up and taking responsibility" like Spirited Away or "facing scary moments in childhood with courage" like My Neighbor Totoro, though it includes both of those themes. Frankly, I think it might take another viewing or two to entirely "get it".



But these complaints are pretty minor. It's another remarkable film that only Miyazaki could have made. And if it's his final film - he's in his 80s and has already retired twice - it's a worthy finale.



Recommended if you like his earlier films... but I wouldn't suggest it be the first Miyazaki film you watch.

 

[Edward]

I've watched it many times and found it significant in one overlooked aspect. Korea was the first time U.S. armed forces fought as an "integrated" unit. Until this time Blacks and Whites were, by regulation, not allowed to fight and die together, other than White Officers commanding "Colored" troops. In the film Peck is concerned about Woody Strode, "melting away" as some commanders called it. Instances where Black Soldiers, many of whom faced intense racism at home, were less than enthusiastic to fight in foreign lands against other peoples of color. They'd done it in every war since the Revolution and still had "freedom" in name only in some instances.

At one point in the film Peck confronts Strode and he flat out tells him that he was drafted and that this war meant nothing to him considering the state of his life back home. You've NO idea how controversial the subject and that scene was considering the times. Muhammed Ali would echo the same sentiments a decade later when discussing a similar war.

Worf

I must look out for that one. I remember MASH doing a take on the subject of integrated troop units being a new thing - the episode with the guy who demands only to be given a transfusion from "white blood". Notably, at that early stage MASH was set in Korea, but very much a cipher for commentary on a later conflict as well. Knowing the writers had to fight for a lot of stuff on that show, I wonder if the existence of that earlier picture helped in any way give them the sway to do that piece.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Dad served in Korea with the Lancasters and after the war sometime in the late 60s bumped
into Michael Caine, another cockney who also was in Korea, inside the Queens Head in Piccadilly. This was
after Zulu and Caine remarked that its director, a Yank had cast him an officer, something a caste and class
conscious Brit director would never have done.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Alice in Movieland (1940) a Warner Bros. short with Joan Leslie as small-town hopeful Alice Purdee, who wins a contest to go to Hollywood for a screen test. She doesn't 't make a favorable impression, but spunk mixed with ambition can go a long ways, even in Tinseltown.
It was directed by Jean Negulesco, who uses a fluid camera, some interesting angles, and some that-wouldn't-happen-in-real-life compositions, such as applauding hands (and their arms) flowing into both sides of the frame, creating a sort of screen for a dissolve. Some time back I commented on Negulesco's direction on a 1942 Glen Gray and his Casa Loma Orchestra "music video." I will look into some of his feature films.
Also, a Vitaphone "Broadway Brevity" short, with Dave Apollon presiding over and performing in several musical and dance numbers. His performance on the mandolin is nothing less than stunning. I can't recall the title, but it followed the Alice in Movieland short, courtesy TCM.
Wrapping up Alexander Nevsky, off of you tube...

 

[Fading Fast]

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison from 1957 with Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum


A nun and a marine have to survive alone on an, alternatingly, abandoned and occupied-by-the-Japanese island in the South Pacific in WWII. It's a "two fish out of water forced together" tale that is funny, dramatic and romantic in all the right ways.

In Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison, Robert Mitchum plays the sole survivor of a sunk submarine who washes ashore on an island where Deborah Kerr, playing a nun, is the last remaining member (she stayed behind to care for a dying priest) of a Catholic mission.

Mitchum is a not-well-educated orphan who found his identity in the marines. The marines are his family in the way that clearly educated Kerr found her identity and family in the Catholic Church. On paper these two should be oil and water.

They aren't though because Mitchum is a marine driven by honor who kills to defend freedom and protect innocents, not out of a love of killing. Kerr, having seen the horrors of war, understands the need for men like Mitchum.

It helps that casually Christian Mitchum has a respect bordering on reverence for nuns. He sees his job on the island being one to protect her, not as a weak woman, but as a vessel of God to be admired, respected and consulted.

Kerr is strong, but recognizes Mitchum has skills she doesn't. It's an oddly modern relationship without any of today's forced ideological need to show Kerr throwing boulders around or physically saving Mitchum.

All of this comes out as Mitchum and Kerr live together on the island, initially, in a kind of peaceful refuge from the war all around. Then, when the Japanese show up to occupy the island, Kerr and Mitchum are forced to hide in a cave.

It's survival time now as Mitchum has to sneak into the Japanese camp for food for them. It's a tenuous existence, giving them time to get to know each other. Then the Japanese leave and it's celebration time, but they are back to being alone on the island.

When reasonably safe, there's some joy to their existence as they manage, after much bumbling, to capture a large sea turtle for food. There's also humor as when Mitchum assiduously whittles Kerr a comb only to learn that she never uncovers her short hair.

This intimacy leads to romantic feelings, but she is a nun and he, despite all his uncouthness, is a gentleman in the true sense of the word. Things will only happen if Kerr, who has yet to take her final vows, makes a life altering decision.

Director John Huston seamlessly shifts the movie back and forth from low-key comedy, to subtle romance to, at the end, drama and action when the Japanese reoccupy the island and the US Navy begins bombarding it for an invasion. It's impressive filmmaking.

Kerr garnered a much-deserved Oscar nomination as the thoughtful and pragmatic nun, but Mitchum, a Hollywood outsider, was passed over for his equally compelling performance as an innately kind soldier. Their on-screen chemistry is wonderful.

Heaven Know, Mr. Allison gets overlooked today, probably owing to its out-of-vogue religious theme and its blend of genres - war, drama, comedy and romance - but it's a gem of a movie with two iconic stars made by an iconic director that, today, deserves more attention.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

^ Wonderful film. Deborah Kerr and Mitchum reunited over here for some Second World War romance
revisit elder couple kitchener but I only caught the briefest snippet and never looked back. Lord knows why
since I admire Mitchum and love Ms Kerr.

---Went to a physician's appointment the other day and we talked film. He revealed his admiration for
Heddy Lamarr and I tipped him to a Netflix docu on her. And Napoleon came up. We discussed the possibility
that Bonaparte died of arsenic poisoning versus stomach cancer, when I remarked that his penis had been
surgically removed and pickled in brandy and later sold at auction when a nurse entered the room.
He didn't know this, so the crimson faced lass held a prescription and clipboard while I explained all the
penile particulars. And I apologized to the demure nurse for my rather inappropriate commentary.
A real Siskel & Ebert session.

 

[Fading Fast]

Ladies of Leisure from 1930 with Barbara Stanwyck, Ralph Graves, Marie Prevost, Nance O'Neil, Lowell Sherman and George Fawcett


Many women turned to prostitution in the Depression to get by. The pretty and personable ones, like the characters played by Barbara Stanwyck and Marie Prevost in Ladies of Leisure, serviced the carriage trade. Occasionally, love would blossom across the class divide.

Even in precode Hollywood, because there were local censorship boards, church groups, etc., and theaters worried about public opinion (their customers), moviemakers still abided by certain moral standards, so the plot of Ladies of Leisure was tweaked for acceptability.

The male lead, played by Ralph Graves, is the son of a railroad tycoon and an artist wannabe. Graves, unaware of Stanwyck's profession," hires her to model. The story director Frank Capra wanted to tell had Graves being Stanwyck's client, but that was a moral bridge too far.

With that forced setup, the movie tells the common precode tale of a man, Graves, falling in love with a prostitute, Stanwyck. Then he, she or his family have trouble with what her past will mean to their future.

Capra and the writers make this one interesting by avoiding a lot of cliches. Graves doesn't go through the usual and stupid moment of being angry at Stanwyck when he discovers she's a whore.

Stanwyck, to her character's credit, understands the problem she'd present as a wife to a socially prominent man. She doesn't want to wreck kind and affable Graves' social standing, friendships and, most importantly, his relationship with his parents.

Graves' parents, too, aren't cliches as his dad, played by George Fawcett, is pretty understanding for the day and not the usually imperious captain-of-industry father. But it's the mother, played by Nance O'Neil, who shows incredible thoughtfulness and sensitivity.

The scene when she comes to talk to Stanwyck is the movie's real highlight despite the climax coming later. She doesn't talk down to Stanwyck or bully or threaten, but just lays out the facts of what a marriage to someone like Stanwyck would mean for her son.

The climax, no spoilers coming, will not surprise fans of this type of precode, but the real value in the movie is not its forced dramatic-for-a-second ending, but its journey through class and family conflict.

Today, a time when we at least profess to not care about these things, it's easy to denounce the class prejudices of the past, but they were real back then and would have meant exile for Graves from the only world he knew.

It's a good story, which is why it was told so often in that era and still resonates in some ways today. It only works if the female lead convinces you she is a hard-boiled prostitute with a heart of gold buried underneath.

Barbara Stanwyck was born to play such a role. She has the ability to show the grit of being a prostitute, but can then soften into a woman in love with a good man. We feel for her as she so wants to erase her past, but knows that she can't.

Graves is more than adequate as the gentle and a bit unaware man having to choose between his family, friends and social position on one side and Stanwyck on the other. But this is a woman's picture with Stanwyck, O'Neil and Prevost driving the action and emotion.

Prevost is wonderful as the friend and fellow prostitute who laughs off the mild fat-shaming Stanwyck light-heartedly throws her way. When called upon, Prevost steps up for her friend.

Tossed into the mix is Lowell Sherman playing, as he would quite often, the affable drunk friend who hits on every woman. He's here mainly to offer Stanwyck a way back to her old world, but he manages to work in some feeling and humanity to his stock character.

Ladies of Leisure is the first of five Capra-Stanwyck efforts, which culminated in the classic Meet John Doe. Fans of Capra's later fairytale pictures might find these precodes, like Ladies of Leisure, less uplifting, but they are also more realistic movies.

Being a 1930 picture, there are, of course, some clunky early talkie production qualities and the lack of a soundtrack might turn some off, but here, it also makes the story more intimate.

Once the Motion Picture Production Code was enforced in 1935, women's pictures like Ladies of Leisure, with a prostitute as the heroine, would disappear from the screen for decades, making these precodes all the more valuable today as a truer window into the past.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Barbara Stanwyck is so angelic and breathtakingly beautiful.
She's a lass a lad wants to hold forever and never let go. I'll mark this.

Binge watching continues. Saw The Girl, Tippi Hedren and Hitchcock embroglio. It's been some since I sat Hitch's essential last two greats, The Birds and Marnie, both feature Hedren, so will hold review until afterwards.
Hitchcock has abundant canon writ and I'd enjoy a read or two about the man and his moment in film. A long
overdue study I admit to my embarrassment.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

They Were Expendable (1945), dir. John Ford, with Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, and Donna Reed. A selection of the Missus, who had never seen it before.

 

[Worf]

They Were Expendable (1945), dir. John Ford, with Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, and Donna Reed. A selection of the Missus, who had never seen it before.

One of my fave's. Some war movies weren't all propaganda, where America knew it was bound to win. This film, along with a few others showed how desperate 1942, 43 was, particularly in the Pacific. Brave men and women facing incredible odds and knowing that they were doomed, but kept fighting anyway with what they had. In the ring swinging, till they counted em out.

Worf

 

[Worf]

View attachment 571118
Ladies of Leisure from 1930 with Barbara Stanwyck, Ralph Graves, Marie Prevost, Nance O'Neil, Lowell Sherman and George Fawcett


Many women turned to prostitution in the Depression to get by. The pretty and personable ones, like the characters played by Barbara Stanwyck and Marie Prevost in Ladies of Leisure, serviced the carriage trade. Occasionally, love would blossom across the class divide.

Even in precode Hollywood, because there were local censorship boards, church groups, etc., and theaters worried about public opinion (their customers), moviemakers still abided by certain moral standards, so the plot of Ladies of Leisure was tweaked for acceptability.

The male lead, played by Ralph Graves, is the son of a railroad tycoon and an artist wannabe. Graves, unaware of Stanwyck's profession," hires her to model. The story director Frank Capra wanted to tell had Graves being Stanwyck's client, but that was a moral bridge too far.

With that forced setup, the movie tells the common precode tale of a man, Graves, falling in love with a prostitute, Stanwyck. Then he, she or his family have trouble with what her past will mean to their future.

Capra and the writers make this one interesting by avoiding a lot of cliches. Graves doesn't go through the usual and stupid moment of being angry at Stanwyck when he discovers she's a whore.

Stanwyck, to her character's credit, understands the problem she'd present as a wife to a socially prominent man. She doesn't want to wreck kind and affable Graves' social standing, friendships and, most importantly, his relationship with his parents.

Graves' parents, too, aren't cliches as his dad, played by George Fawcett, is pretty understanding for the day and not the usually imperious captain-of-industry father. But it's the mother, played by Nance O'Neil, who shows incredible thoughtfulness and sensitivity.

The scene when she comes to talk to Stanwyck is the movie's real highlight despite the climax coming later. She doesn't talk down to Stanwyck or bully or threaten, but just lays out the facts of what a marriage to someone like Stanwyck would mean for her son.

The climax, no spoilers coming, will not surprise fans of this type of precode, but the real value in the movie is not its forced dramatic-for-a-second ending, but its journey through class and family conflict.

Today, a time when we at least profess to not care about these things, it's easy to denounce the class prejudices of the past, but they were real back then and would have meant exile for Graves from the only world he knew.

It's a good story, which is why it was told so often in that era and still resonates in some ways today. It only works if the female lead convinces you she is a hard-boiled prostitute with a heart of gold buried underneath.

Barbara Stanwyck was born to play such a role. She has the ability to show the grit of being a prostitute, but can then soften into a woman in love with a good man. We feel for her as she so wants to erase her past, but knows that she can't.

Graves is more than adequate as the gentle and a bit unaware man having to choose between his family, friends and social position on one side and Stanwyck on the other. But this is a woman's picture with Stanwyck, O'Neil and Prevost driving the action and emotion.

Prevost is wonderful as the friend and fellow prostitute who laughs off the mild fat-shaming Stanwyck light-heartedly throws her way. When called upon, Prevost steps up for her friend.

Tossed into the mix is Lowell Sherman playing, as he would quite often, the affable drunk friend who hits on every woman. He's here mainly to offer Stanwyck a way back to her old world, but he manages to work in some feeling and humanity to his stock character.

Ladies of Leisure is the first of five Capra-Stanwyck efforts, which culminated in the classic Meet John Doe. Fans of Capra's later fairytale pictures might find these precodes, like Ladies of Leisure, less uplifting, but they are also more realistic movies.

Being a 1930 picture, there are, of course, some clunky early talkie production qualities and the lack of a soundtrack might turn some off, but here, it also makes the story more intimate.

Once the Motion Picture Production Code was enforced in 1935, women's pictures like Ladies of Leisure, with a prostitute as the heroine, would disappear from the screen for decades, making these precodes all the more valuable today as a truer window into the past.

Funny, I just saw Barbara Stanwyck's LAST film last Saturday night on "Svengoolie". It was called "The Night Walker" . Directed by William Castle and written by Robert Bloch of "Psycho" fame. Believe it or not she was cast opposite her EX-HUSBAND of 13 years earlier Robert Taylor! I found it a better than average horror/noir whodunit. Found it to be way better than I expected!

Worf

 

[Fading Fast]

The Man I Love from 1946 with Ida Lupino, Bruce Bennett and Robert Alda


The Man I Love tries to tell too many stories, but solid acting and directing keep it from becoming a multi-car pile-up even when a few storylines get dropped or are too-easily resolved. It also helps having petite, pretty and force-of-nature Ida Lupino centering this very busy movie.

Lupino's character is the older, wiser sister just visiting, at Christmastime, her parentless family comprising one sister (with a young son) married to a WWII vet who is in a military hospital with PTSD, a late-teen sister trying to find herself and an in-his-early-twenties brother looking for an easy path in life.

Things are further complicated by the struggling couple just across the hall that Lupino's family helps out. They have twin babies where the good-hearted father works nights and the good-time mother wants to party and not take care of her babies. She's having some kind of an affair with a local gangster, played by Robert Alda, who owns a nightclub.

Seeing that her family needs her help more than she thought, Lupino, a nightclub singer herself, extends her stay and gets a job at the nearby club, run by Aldo, where her, Lupino's, lazy brother also works.

If that isn't complicated enough, Alda begins hitting on Lupino - gangsters don't like to hear "no" from their female employees - but Lupino is falling for a former piano player, played by Bruce Bennett, who's now in the merchant marines. Most relevant to Lupino, though, he is still carrying a torch for his ex-wife.

It's a lot of moving parts that have you spending too-much time trying to keep the different storylines and characters straight, but if you just focus on Lupino, it's an okay movie that you can pretty much follow as she's the one that tries to fix everyone else's mess.

While doing all that, though, Lupino is also trying to keep the gangster wolf at bay and depressed Bennett interested in her. She's got a full plate.

The overall feel of the movie is one of a regular family with too much drama that's also somewhat entangled in the noir world of a mobster-run nightclub located on an always foggy waterfront.

Lupino's family's chemistry is pretty engaging as the siblings fight and make up regularly, while the neighbors across the hall provide soap-opera drama, especially since the husband has blinders for his philandering spouse.

Bennett is excellent as a man still pining for his ex-wife, but his character gets less screen time than he deserves. Finally, it is gangster Alda, always pursuing Lupino, who is the catalyst that could blow up the delicate balance of almost everyone involved.

The not-surprisingly complicated climax, no real spoilers coming, is all over the map with a sudden death, a happy reunion, a mobster standoff, scales falling from a husband's eyes and a sad lovers' goodbye all part of the mix.

It's too much to really work as The Man I Love bit off more than it could chew and never really decided what type of movie it wanted to be. But through it all - and it's a lot - Ida Lupino keeps in there swinging. She has enough screen presence and acting chops to make this muddled, but engaging picture worth the watch.

 

[Zombie_61]

---Went to a physician's appointment the other day and we talked film. He revealed his admiration for
Heddy Lamarr and I tipped him to a Netflix docu on her...

 

[Frunobulax]

Obligatory

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Obligatory

You guys are too much.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

American Sniper (2014) directed Clint Eastwood.
Bradley Cooper stars as famed US Navy SEAL commando Chris Kyle who racked 255 enemy kills during
four tours in Iraq wielding the Remington .300 Winchester rifle with floating barrel. Extraordinary accuracte
marksmanship morally contests innate human nature by Eastwood's ambiguous cinematic direction, a deliberate objective technique that pierces veil for life versus death tablestakes in a winner take all poker death match. Kyle triumphs over a legendary Iraqi insurgent sniper, which of course enflamed the film's usual suspects critical crowd. However, American Sniper raked in $547 million worldwide, definite box office bullseye.

 

[Fading Fast]

Shield for Murder from 1954 with Edmond O'Brien, John Agar, Marla English and Caroline Jones (in a fun, small role as a prostitute)


The thing about noir, for all its darkness, the good guys almost always win and the bad guys almost always lose - in the end. Until the late 1950s, that's what the Motion Picture Production Code allowed and, maybe, that's what America was ready to hear about itself.

Shield for Murder is a noir-crime drama about a cop gone bad. Four years prior, a version of this story was done well in the movie with the awful name The Man Who Cheated Himself. In Shield for Murder, a veteran detective, played by Edmond O'Brien, kills in cold blood, a bookie carrying a $25,000 bankroll for the big boss.

O'Brien wants the money so he can buy a house and marry his pretty waitress girlfriend, who, surprisingly, is not a femme fatale, but a nice girl who would have happily married O'Brien without the house. This one can't be fobbed off on the "bad" woman - a normal noir tic.

After this early set up, the rest of the movie is watching O'Brien's world slowly unravel. His younger partner, well trained by O'Brien, as O'Brien was a talented detective, notices the gaps and inconsistencies in O'Brien's story, but his mind isn't, yet, ready to connect the dots back to O'Brien.

In an early movie look at the "Blue Wall," directors O'Brien and Howard Koch show how the police circle the wagons when one of their own, O'Brien, is challenged. The precinct's first move, from the Captain down, it's instinctual, is to accept O'Brien's account, sweep inconsistencies under the rug and quickly move on.

The big mob boss, out $25,000, isn't sweeping anything under the rug as he sends his goons after O'Brien. The turn for O'Brien, though, where it all falls apart, is when a deaf mute comes forward as a witness to the killing. Unfortunately, he brings his story to O'Brien.

Now it's all a by-the-numbers tale of a crooked cop becoming desperate to cover up a story that's falling apart on him. (Spoiler alert) After O'Brien kills the witness, his young partner finally allows himself to connect the dots. O'Brien then goes completely rogue, even turning to the mob for help in escaping the city with the police now searching for him.

(A few more spoiler alerts) Bad move, as the mob is still mad about its "missing" $25,000, so they double cross O'Brien. Even his girlfriend goes to the police to help them find O'Brien; it's the right move, but still. All that's left is the obligatory showdown where a crazed O'Brien, with the stolen money in one hand, tries to shoot it out with the entire police force.

It's 1954, so we're told, effectively, the Blue Wall, if it exists at all, is really only for minor transgressions, but for serious crimes, the police will do the right thing even if they have to bring in one of their own.

In less than a decade, noir will morph into truly gritty and shocking stories where the cops can be the bad guys and the good guys lose, but for now, as in Shield for Murder, that wasn't a line that Hollywood would yet cross.