What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

The Pleasure of His Company from 1961 with Fred Astaire, Lilly Palmer, Debbie Reynolds, Gary Merrill, Tab Hunter, Charles Ruggles and Harold Fong


The Pleasure of His Company is a genuine comedy-drama where both elements get equal attention in this funny, but also serious movie about love, loss, regret and responsibility, all set in the world of upper-class San Francisco.

Debbie Reynolds plays a debutante about to marry a wealthy rancher, played by Tab Hunter. Reynolds' mother, played by Lilli Palmer, and stepfather, played by Gary Merrill, are happily planning for the big day until Tolstoy's stranger comes to town.

Reynolds' father, played by Fred Astaire, has been absent for seemingly all of Reynolds' life, but instead of hating him, she's romanticized his globe-trotting playboy lifestyle. So when Astaire shows up at the beginning of the week of the wedding, Reynolds is excited.

Palmer, though, is not excited to see her ex-husband. She still likes him, that's obvious, but knows his nonchalance brings with it a lot of mischief and disruption. Merrill, as nice a husband and stepfather as one could want, spends the entire movie trying to keep up.

What is Merrill, a nice-guy businessman who pays the bills and makes sure the family's trains run on time, to do when shown up against an international playboy whose entire personality is built on surface charm, romance and excitement?

Reynolds, who's had a comfortable but sheltered upbringing, was content to marry practical Hunter, until sparkling Dad fills her head with tales of world travel. Astaire isn't a bad guy, but his motives are mixed as he's lonely and looking for Reynolds' company.

The movie is really Astaire versus Palmer going mano-a-mano for Reynolds' future with the sidebar that Astaire wouldn't be opposed to winning Palmer back, which seems possible as Palmer hasn't completely lost her itch for Astaire.

Director George Seaton, working with a screenplay based on a Samuel A. Taylor and Cornelia Otis Skinner play, perfectly balances the comedic and dramatic elements as you laugh a lot, but never forget that several futures hang in the balance.

That tension elevates the picture above most comedies of the era where the "drama" is just there to usher in the next joke. Scenes like the one where Reynolds and Astaire share a late-night snack in the kitchen are taut drama smartly tucked inside a comedy.

That scene should be taught in acting classes as two performers, not generally known for their dramatic skills, have you hanging on every word as they, on the surface, casually cut a cake and get some forks, while really discussing their future in a round-about conversation.

The real star, though, of the movie is Palmer. She has Astaire's number from the start - she's his ex-wife after all - but even she isn't immune to his charm. Knowing this, her real mission is to get rid of him while preventing him from thwarting Reynolds' wedding.

Every scene with Palmer is a joy. She's frustrated and angry with, but also aroused by a man she divorced. She knows he isn't good for her or her daughter, but darn it, she likes him.

Poor Merrill can do nothing more than look on from the sidelines to see if he'll keep his wife. Charles Ruggles gets in a few good lines as the bemused grandfather who seems to enjoy watching the drama in his family unfold.

Somewhat taken under Astaire's charming wing, Harold Fong is excellent in the unfortunately stereotypical role of the houseboy, but his talents add some nuance and spark to the part.

Left out in the cold by Astaire (much like Merrill), Hunter, too, surprises, as he spends most of the movie as a macguffin - will Reynolds marry him or not - but then delivers a heck of a dressing down to Astaire toward the end that says this pretty boy had some acting chops in him.

With several on-location scenes shot in San Francisco at a time when the city couldn't have looked more appealing, the movie makes you want to time travel back to that era, especially if you can live in Palmer's beautiful house overlooking San Francisco Bay.

While you think you know what will happen, until the end, everything is up for grabs. The Pleasure of His Company is a comedy that never loses sight of its drama. Fittingly, rapscallion Astaire even pulls a few fun last-minute rabbits out of his hat.

This movie gets surprisingly little attention today from either old-movie fans or Fred Astaire fans. While it's not a musical or dancing movie, Astaire does trip the light fantastic a few times with his wife and daughter. The man is fluid motion even at sixty-two.

There is a moment or two when Fred's "romancing" of his daughter - he wants her to travel with him - feels almost creepy, but maybe that's our modern radar. Overall, The Pleasure of His Company is a smart comedy-drama in the best sense of that genre mashup.


N.B. There was also a book put out based on the play that is a fun fast read. Comments on the book are here: #9,211

 

[Edward]

Watched a few bits and pieces recently while I've been on leave. In particular of relevance to these parts The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare on streaming. Entertaining enough, given the true story on which is is based. Parts of it feel like a "very British" (English) version of Inglorious Basterds. The alternative exploits of the British crew who came to an untimely end in that basement... The first two thirds of the film are rather more entertaining than the final act, which descends more into big explosions and extended fight scenes. Still, an interesting enough picture that it has encouraged me to remember to seek out the non-fiction book on which it is based.

 

[Trenchfriend]

ST: First Contact (1996)

In original tone!

 

[Edward]

Stumbled across Unfrosted on Netflix last night. It's a 2024 picture made for the streamer, co-written and directed by Jerry Seinfeld. I've not been familiar with Seinfeld's work post his eponymous show from the 90s (which for me rather overstayed its welcome, but that's common with big US sitcoms). This is a very different beast. It's kinda cutesy, very much a surrealist, whimsical take on the story of the invention of Pop Tarts, with a lot of great laughs along the way. In tone, it's like a post-Barbie run on The Hudsucker Proxy (though anyone whose issue with Barbie was its feminist revisionism of the Barbie concept and/or take-down of the self-proclaimed 'menninist' thing won't find anything along those lines to be upset by here). It's reminiscent in many parts (including the early 60s 'could still be the 50s' look of the whole thing) of Mad Men had that been a whimsical comedy piece; indeed, there's one nice little sequence which parodies Mad Men beautifully, including a couple of very familiar faces. All the players involved (quite a few big commercial names from the last decade of cinema) pitch the material beautifully, with enough confidence in the writing not to overplay their roles. Fans of Hugh Grant's villain in Paddington 2 will greatly enjoy him here as a pretentious, English, Shakespearean actor forced to make a living playing a cereal mascot. A pleasantly escapist hour and a bit. One I'll probably rewatch at some point, if not immediately.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

The ongoing House of Shellhammer Film Fest and Continual Soiree has traversed the movie spectrum of late-

One Minute to Zero (1952) directed by Tay Garnett, with Robert Mitchum, Ann Blyth, William Talman, Charles McGraw, and Alvin (Miracle on 34th Street) Greenman. An RKO production overseen by Howard Hughes, we see the sudden attack into South Korea by North Korea, whose troops are aided and abetted by Russian tanks, fighter planes, and armaments. Mitchum is an advisor to the ROK army who is suddenly thrown into the task of evacuating US citizens, and ultimately fighting a defensive action to hold the advancing North Korean army. Blyth is a UN health worker who is idealistically convinced hostilities can stopped by diplomacy. Battle-hardened colonel Mitchum knows better. Being Hollywood, a romance develops twixt the two. McGraw is the tough as nails sergeant, Talman the Air Force officer handing the evacuation air operations and eventually takes on the dangerous job of air strike observer.

There are numerous scenes taken from the actual Korean war, jolting in their gruesomeness, and the action in the movie can is also violent. At the crux of the plot is Mitchum's decision regarding how to deal with the infiltrating North Korean soldiers who mix with the refugees fleeing the fighting. You'll have to watch it to see what happens.

Grand Central Murder (1942) Van Heflin is a PI that riles Inspector Sam Levene during the investigation of a murder in Grand Central Station (Terminal?). The character Mida King was a widely-unliked Broadway star who is murdered in a private car in the Grand Central place. Heflin and screen wife Virginia Grey are allowed to work with the NYPD homicide crew, with Heflin cracking wise with Levine, and Grey making with the zingers to hubby. Director S. Sylvan Simon keeps the story moving along, and the mystery is wrapped up in a pleasant 1 hour and 13 minutes. Yes, you probably won't guess whodunnit until Heflin explains all for you.

 

[Fading Fast]

Thank You All Very Much (US release) / A Touch of Love (UK release) from 1969 starring Sandy Dennis


"Boy you've been a naughty girl / You let your knickers down" - McCartney-Lennon


Thank You All Very Much is a "kitchen sink drama" for upper-class Fabian Socialists in Swinging late-1960s London. A bit daring in its way at the time, today it is a dour curio since single motherhood, thankfully, no longer carries a stigma.

Sandy Dennis plays the daughter of wealthy socialists. She is working on her PhD thesis while living alone rent free in her parents' large and comfortable London flat because her father has a government appointment overseas and he and his wife aren't charging their daughter rent.

Dennis moves in a clique of similar highly educated, wealthy and "liberated" young people, but Dennis is perpetually sad; whereas, her friends are perpetually horney. Men want to sleep with Dennis, but she's too depressed for sex.

Until she isn't one night with a new man she's been kind of dating in her detached way. As we all know, you only have to let your knickers down one time to get pregnant. When Dennis learns she's "with child," she treats it like everything else in her life – as a reason to be sad.

She slowly passes on all the usual options of that era: she doesn't tell the man she slept with that she's pregnant, she refuses the offer of marriage from another man maybe trying to help her, she won't get an (available) illegal abortion, and she won't give the baby up for adoption.

In her aloof, passive, yet stubborn way, she wants to be a single mom. If there's any humor in this downbeat picture, it's seeing upper-class socialist Dennis navigate the bureaucracy of the beloved-in-theory-by-socialists National Health Service.

Dennis' solidarity with her fellow pregnant moms only goes so far, as she is quite happy to get special treatment when her influential father reaches out to an important doctor. This gives her a pang of guilt here or there, but it's really socialism for thee, not for me.

If there is a money scene to this sloggy movie, it's when Dennis, at wit's end because the Health Service bureaucracy won't let her see her baby after the baby has had heart surgery, just sits down and screams, literally, nonstop and at the top of her lungs in the hospital.

Who hasn't felt like that at the DMV or when facing any government bureaucracy? But she only "wins" because her father's doctor friend takes charge. Had it been you or me, security would have "escorted" us out of the building or worse.

There is no real climax, it's only Dennis now raising her baby "intrepidly" by herself. Oh, but in that big flat paid for by her parents. She also has a woman – who one assumes is paid for by her parents as well – who comes in to take care of the baby when Dennis has classes, etc.

Dennis was a hot star at that moment, so she is the movie as everyone else - boyfriends, girlfriends, doctors, a sister, etc. - just float by as half formed characters who pop up when needed to advance Dennis' single fight against, well, not really that much.

Even as shown in this sympathetic portrayal, none of it is really hard on Dennis: Some disparaging looks, some tut-tutting and little pressure from a few bluenoses to give the baby up for adoption are balanced by a lot of support from family, friends, nurses and her doctor.

This is no Joan of Arc tale as Dennis comes across as more of a depressed spoiled rich brat with a stubborn streak than a modern-day feminist. Maybe that's the role, so it's not a knock on her acting talents, but it does make her character unsympathetic

Based on the novel Millstone (charming), by Margaret Drabble, this was seen as a bold feminist story in its time. And it was in a way, as Dennis, despite all the cushions her parents' money could buy, still had to stand a certain amount of social opprobrium, which mattered back then.

Today, the on-location shooting all around late-1960s London – including the British Museum's architecturally incredible Library Reading Room – is enjoyable time travel. You'll also simply want to live in Dennis' sprawling old flat.

Thank You All Very Much is not well known today for a good reason as its pretentious, upper-class "socialist" values and elitist brand of "feminism" have not aged well. It looks out of touch even with the many working-class "kitchen sink" dramas being produced at that time.

If you drill down far enough, though, the fight for single mothers in Thank You All Very Much is admirable, just not wrapped in this package. Its value today is simply its time-capsule-like capture of a small sliver of British society at a moment of meaningful social change.

 

[Monte]

Watching now. Impressive flick.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Royal Bed from 1931 with Lowell Sherman, Mary Astor, Nance O'Neil, Anthony Bushell and Robert Warwick


The Royal Bed is an early and stagy talkie that riffs on one of classic Hollywood's favorite themes: royals who are bored and tired of being royals. This one includes the common subplot of a young royal prince or princess wanting to marry for love and not monarchical obligation.

In these stories, there are always a few members of the family who enjoy being royalty as they love the riches and pomp. The smarter family members, though, see how in the twentieth century (when most of these stories take place), they've become almost comical figures.

Set in a small fictitious European constitutional monarchy, Lowell Sherman plays the smart and bored King who would rather play checkers with his servant than attend another one of the royal functions that his wife, played by Nance O'Neil, thinks are oh-so important.

Sherman's real problem, though, is his daughter, played by Mary Astor. She wants to marry his secretary, a commoner played by Anthony Bushell, and won't agree to the diplomatically advantageous marriage arranged by her mother to the prince of a nearby kingdom.

The other wrinkle in Sherman's Kingdom is that his pompous and ambitious Prime Minister, played by Robert Warwick, is using the recent rebel activity in the Kingdom to arrogate power for himself.

All of this is played as smart parody with exaggerated characters and situations. Sherman, who also directed the movie, is in complete control, though, and never lets it slip into arrant camp or full-on farce.

Sherman is also the linchpin that holds the movie together, especially in the climax, no spoilers coming, when it takes a lot of kingly finesse to resolve all the storylines. His performance and directing adroitly walk a tightrope that keeps the film witty, not silly.

Long since forgotten, Sherman was a successful "double threat" as an actor and director in his day. Sadly, he died at the peak of his career, at the age of only forty-six in 1934. Here, you can easily see, had he lived, he likely would have had a long and distinguished career.

Young Mary Astor, who would go on to have a long and distinguished career, is still learning her craft in this one - and learning how to tone down her stagy mannerisms for the movies - but her talent and screen presence are noticeable.

Warwick, who was born to play a pompous anything, and O'Neil, as the insincere yet arrogant queen, are okay playing their obnoxious, two-dimensional characters, with only O'Neil showing a little nuance in the final scene.

Movies about useless royals were a busy genre for most of the twentieth century as real-life geopolitical events were pushing royalty off the world stage. The best of the lot is Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn tenderly capturing the sad, gilded-caged life of a princess.

The Royal Bed, though, is a respectable entry. Based on a play by the busy playwright and screenwriter Robert Sherwood, the movie's director and star, Sherman, and the cast made an early, witty and fun version of this oft told tale.

 

[Fading Fast]

Separate Tables from 1958 with Wendy Hiller, David Niven, Burt Lancaster, Rita Hayworth, Gladys Cooper, Deborah Kerr and Rod Taylor


When a movie can expose people's hopes, fears, insecurities, failings, kindness and decency, with sympathy and honesty, and on all but one set and with no more action than a slap or shaking of another's shoulders, something special is happening.

Something very special happens in Separate Tables, a gem of a movie that brings to life several characters staying at a seaside hotel in post-war England.

From a play by Terence Rattigan, with crisp directing by Delbert Mann and several moving performances, Separate Tables transfers the intimacy of theater to the big screen in a film made in the US that feels like a smart, modest-budget post-war British picture.

The drama is all interpersonal, starting with "the Major," played by David Niven, who fears he'll be exposed as a fraud and lose the respect of the one woman, played by Deborah Kerr - shy, middle-aged and dominated by her mother - that he's ever connected with in his long, lonely life.

Rod Taylor, in a small but nuanced role, plays a medical student trying hard to convince his free-spirit girlfriend, played by Audrey Dalton, to marry him, and let him study, but she just wants to have – well, demands to have – sex without commitment. Yup.

Staying in separate rooms for appearances, it's still very clear when she says "bed!" to him in the hotel's salon, twice and firmly, that she isn't tired and it isn't a request. Taylor and Dalton's conundrum is only a side story in the movie, but for the time, it was risque.

Even more tangled is the love triangle involving the hotel's proprietress, played by Wendy Hiller, her alcoholic writer fiancé, played by Burt Lancaster, and Lancaster's former wife, an icy model, played by Rita Hayworth, who shows up unannounced to reclaim Lancaster.

With the hotel's spiteful self-appointed arbiter of morals, played by Gladys Cooper, ready to expose any indiscretion, this ostensibly charming seaside hotel becomes a pressure cooker of repressed passion, cloaked addictions, buried personal histories and social snobbery.

It's the 1950s in England where appearances, traditional moral values and class distinction still matter, which is what writer Rattigan quite effectively exposes as oppressive, hypocritical and debilitating.

He gets an incredible assist here from all the actors, but most notably, from Niven's moving performance as the pompous Major trying to hide his secrets so as to hold his fragile ego together.

Hiller's performance is equally moving as the good, kind, practical, but weary woman and hotel owner who might just lose her fiancé to the prettier, selfish woman.

Deborah Kerr's heartbreaking performance as the emotionally crippled woman trying to find love and get out from under her mother's control is also noteworthy.

Finally, Ms. Hayworth, here playing a model fearing aging, shows, once again, she is a talented actress and not just an impressive head of hair with a pretty face and a body that won't quit.

In a quiet seaside hotel, many of life's challenges - youthful overconfidence, aging, repressed love, fragile egos, classism, sexual passion, addictions and loneliness - are poignantly portrayed through the stories of a handful of characters you quickly come to care deeply about.

Separate Tables is an almost perfect movie that exposes the complexities of life hiding under our studied facades.


N.B. #1. The final scene in the dining room (no spoilers coming) is a wonderful moment of kindness being used as an act of defiance.

N.B. #2. Lancaster's character chooses the wrong woman in the end.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

A brief recapitulation of movie-viewing, here at stately Shellhammer Manor-

Two for Breakfast, Barbra Stanwyck and Herbert Marshall in 1 hour and 7 minutes of sort of a screwball comedy from 1937. Marshall is the nominal head of a steamship company, Stanwyck a competing millionaire who sets her hat for Marshall. She buys corporations as you or I buy gummy bears, but with her it is with an eye to romance. It never achieves real screwball quality, and Marshall seems better suited to urbane powerfully self-possessed characters.

The Falcon's Adventure (1946) offers us Tom Conway as the Falcon, Madge Meredith as a Brazilian niece of a Brazilian inventor, Edward Brophy as the Falcon's sidekick, and so many more folks. Brazilian inventor has a formula for making industrial diamonds: Uncle Sam could use it best, but some criminals want it, too. Another fine, solid entry in the series.

Foreign Correspondent, released in August of 1940, masterfully directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with Joel McCrea as an American reporter sent to get the real story of troubles brewing in Europe, Laraine Day as part of the Universal Peace Party, and Herbert Marshall (again) as Day's dad, the head of the UPP. Presented against the real-world backdrop of war clouds in Europe there's skullduggery, potentially fatal run-ins with ruthless bad guys, and a wild finish way out in the North Atlantic. Being a Hitchcock film, look for his cameo, for the over-head camera shots, the use of sound to drown out dialogue, and folks who are not what we think they are. Top-notch film-making.

 

[Fading Fast]

Green for Danger from 1946 with Alastair Sim, Trevor Howard, Sally Gray, Rosamund John, Leo Genn and Megs Jenkins


British filmmaking from the 1930s to the 1950s is a treat. Done with smaller budgets than Hollywood, the Brits more than made up for it with intelligent stories, talented actors, beautiful crisp black-and-white cinematography and sharp, fast and witty dialogue.

All of those features are on display in the murder mystery Green for Danger set in a rural English hospital during WWII where three nurses and two doctors are under suspicion for one, and then two murders.

Leo Genn and Trevor Howard play the doctors and Sally Gray, Rosamund John and Megs Jenkins play the nurses (what wonderful names the actresses playing the nurses have) whose love lives look like a complicated Venn diagram.

Into this mix of sex and murder enters a smart, irreverent Scotland Yard inspector, played by Alastair Sim. He's investigating the death of a postman/air warden who died on the operating table after being brought to the hospital, owing to injuries received in a Nazi "flying bomb" attack.

The story is complicated as heck, and you probably won't fully follow every twist or catch every clue. But you will enjoy the atmosphere of the hospital as the nurses and doctors all seem highly professional at work, while they lust after each other in a proper British way after work.

The sexual table setting: Gray breaks off her engagement to Howard, which is all the opening playboy Genn needs to take a run at Gray, which hurts Rosamund, who quietly pines for the handsome Genn, all while Gray spends the movie pinging back and forth between the two men.

You enjoy it because the actors are talented and appealing. Gray and John are British sexy in that reserved not-a-hair-out-of-place way English women do it. Howard and Genn are real-world handsome men who also stay cool, until they don't and finally have a fist fight over Gray.

With British calm on the surface, but libidos sizzling underneath, almost every scene crackles. This is all helped along by Sim, who intentionally stirs the carnal pot by playing his inspector role like a mirthful troublemaker at a boarding school.

There's a night scene where, with a staff party in progress inside, several of the suspects and Sim play, effectively, a game of hide and seek in the heavily shrubbed surrounding outdoors, which all ties into one of the murders. Sim sparkles here as a Peck's bad boy with a purpose.

That night, when they stop hiding and seeking, the exchanges are fast and smart. Sim seems a bit goofy, but his sharp, pointed questions throw each suspect off his or her balance. Credit to the writers, though, as the suspects get in their shots too. It is verbal ping-pong at its best.

The murder mystery itself swirls around maybe all the bed hopping or maybe someone's personal demons related to the war, family, death or loneliness. The complex hospital equipment also plays a part in the, well, complex murders.

Today, part of the fun is the time travel to a studio-created version of a rural hospital, a set that won't fool you, but it still has a British village charm. It's so of-the-period that the nurses who share "rooms" have a coin-operated gas meter, which plays a part in the murder mystery too.

In addition to creating that intriguing set, director Sidney Gilliat shows he knew how to do a lot with a small budget. His camera draws you in, switching the atmosphere from idyll to film noir in a heartbeat, while the pacing keeps you engaged as it only slows down for crucial exchanges.

You also can't praise the actors enough as each one - Gray, Genn, John, Jenkins, Sim and Howard - gives his or her character a unique personality. They are all characters you come to care about, even the ones you don't like.

Green for Danger is one of the many quiet gems of British cinema from this era. You'll need to watch it more than once to catch all the clues, twists, and smart dialogue. That's not a problem, though, as this is one you'll want to see at least a few times.

 

[Fading Fast]

Hell's Heroes from 1929 with Charles Bickford, Fred Kohler and Raymond Hatton


Does an end-of-life act of kindness, of self-sacrifice and of charity change the eternal judgement of one's soul? Is a man the sum of all his life decisions, or can a final redeeming act reshuffle the moral deck?

Those and others are the weighty eschatological questions raised but not answered - who could answer them? - in Hell's Heroes, a short, very early "talkie" from noted director William Wyler. But you can also put all that "stuff" aside and just enjoy the movie as a darn good story.

Four crooks ride into a desert town, New Jerusalem (yup), rob the bank and shoot and kill a clerk in the process. Two of the crooks are also shot: one dies in the street, but the other one escapes into the desert with the remaining two gang members. It's a ruthless scene.

Now in the arid desert, the three remaining crooks – Charles Bickford plays the leader of the gang, Fred Kohler plays a gang member and Raymond Hatton plays the now-injured third gang member – plan to hit two known watering holes on their way to the distant next town.

A sandstorm causes them to lose their horses, though, so now on foot, they head to the first watering hole only to find it denatured. Hot, tired, and very thirsty, they head off to the second hole, but there, they come across a covered wagon.

When they find a young woman asleep in the wagon, the implication is that Bickford is going to "have his way" with her, but he discovers she is about to give birth. The rapid shift in tone from brutal carnal abuse to the men worrying about how to "birth a baby" is powerful storytelling.

This unexpected responsibility drastically changes their mission. Fast-forward and the woman gives birth, anoints the three men the baby's godfathers, asks them to promise to take the baby to his father in New Jerusalem and then dies.

But before she dies, when the men realize that the baby's father is the bank clerk they killed in the robbery, they all swear to her that they will take the baby to New Jerusalem. It's all moral conundrums from here.

What will the men do with the baby? Kohler and injured Hatton, despite being cold-blooded killers, never consider anything but taking care of the baby; Bickford, however, wants to "move on without it," a euphemism for letting it die.

They have very little water, especially once they discover the second watering hole has gone dry, so to keep the baby alive will mean more suffering for the men. A return trip to New Jerusalem also means the hangman's noose or jail for them.

Bickford argues against taking the baby with them, but a compromise is struck as the other two plan to honor their pledge to the mother and take the baby to New Jerusalem. Bickford says he'll go along until they get near the town, then he'll "head south."

Now the movie's magic can really kick in as three men, hardened criminals, have to figure out how to take care of a baby who gurgles, cries, fusses, smiles, eats, sleeps, laughs and wiggles his cute little hands and feet.

Watching these men, really Hatton and Kohler, men who have clearly never cared for a baby, try to figure feeding, diapering and all the rest out is subtle comedic gold. The book on babies they find amongst the mother's goods, that Kohler reads out loud, just adds to their confusion.

Look for the scene in which these hard-drinking, hard-living and hard-whoring men have built a tiny lean-to to protect the baby from the sun and night breeze. Or note the wonderful juxtaposition when a gurgle noise from the baby can garner all their attention.

Still, they now face a survival trek back to New Jerusalem in the broiling sun with few supplies and little water. Each man will face his own "come to Jesus" moment. What each is willing to sacrifice or not to keep the baby alive is the crux of the story.

Each actor, to that end, imbues his character with a complex morality. Hatton, an older man who is now dying from his wound, sees life in its full philosophical sweep. Kohler is more a man of emotion who just believes you have to take care of a baby. You come to know these men well.

It's Bickford, though, who has the furthest personal journey as he will face a clear "the baby's life or mine" decision. Even in only his second screen appearance, Bickford conveys an inner turmoil that explains why he would have a long and successful career in fickle Hollywood.

Also early in his career and in the first full year of "talkies," director Wyler shows he understood the value of "framing" a good story. His on-location desert shooting, with its barren, foreboding landscape, is the perfect backdrop for a Biblical-like tale of personal conscience and sacrifice.

Hell's Heroes, based on the novella Three Godfathers, has been filmed many times for the big and small screen. Each version has its own viewpoint, but in Hell's Heroes, 1929's rudimentary movie-making technology allows the raw emotion of the story to drive the picture.

Is it a tale of redemption, kindness and charity? Yes, of course. Is it a parable of the birth of Christ, yes, in its way. But you also can't watch Hell's Heroes and not think "what would I do; would I rise to the occasion?" Personalizing a struggle is what good movies and stories do.


N.B. At one point, Bickford, who is always against caring for the baby, but who always goes along grudgingly, turns to easygoing Kohler and asks him, "What the hell is a godfather anyway?" Bickford might not understand the term, but he becomes one all the same.

 

[Trenchfriend]

I'm really hoping, Alien: Romulus will give us something like a plot, THEN it could be interesting!

But if things go wrong and we will have too much of Resurrection included, meeeh...

 

[Fading Fast]

The Fastest Gun Alive from 1956 with Glenn Ford, Broderick Crawford, Jeanne Crain and Leif Erickson


The nuances of the story in The Fastest Gun Alive are complicated and come out rushed toward the end. Yet the high-level story of the eventual faceoff between a reluctant gunfighter and an egotistical one who is driven to always prove himself is Movie Western 101.

It's a common plot because it's a darn good story and a darn good metaphor. Metaphorically, it comprises everything from pithy expressions like "doers do" to our disdain for braggarts. It's the quiet professional versus the loudmouth. It's also Clark Kent becoming Superman.

As a story, it's just entertaining as heck, with the suspense building to the final showdown. Here, Glenn Ford plays the reluctant gunfighter, a man, effectively, hiding out in a small town with his wife under an assumed name and as a mild-mannered shop keeper.

The braggart, who opens the movie by shooting a man dead in another town simply because he wanted to prove he was faster on the draw than the now-dead man, is played by Broderick Crawford. Crawford is a big burly man born to play a loud-mouth braggart.

Crawford and his gang of two then rob a bank and escape into the desert. Meanwhile, unassuming Ford, liked but not respected as a man by the ranchers and men who carry guns in town, becomes a bit weary of being mildly looked down upon.

Badgering him the other way, albeit with good intent, is his wife, played by Jeanne Crain. She's pregnant, happy with their unassuming life and threatens to leave her husband if he takes up his gun again, which apparently has happened before and forced them to move.

For most of the movie, Ford's history is only alluded to, but the inference is that he's a top gunslinger with some tragedy in his past, maybe related to his father, that had him put down his gun for good, or so he has told his wife.

He's clearly still haunted by his history, but Crain's only interested in the gun staying put. Then, after being harassed by a customer over a dress order, Ford gets drunk and shows off his heretofore hidden gunslinger skills to the other men in town. It's a heck of a scene.

Ford dramatically sets up a test of his talents that includes him shooting two coins, tossed at the same time, out of midair. He's a man who knows guns. He's also feeling proud for the moment - the other men stand in awe of him (that had to feel good) - but Crain is none too happy.

The story, so far, is pretty straightforward, but now the writers get cute. The quick and dirty is that the town and Ford want to keep Ford's skills a secret because, otherwise, gunslingers from far and wide will come to challenge him and turn the town into a place of violence.

It's a good plan on paper and even includes a wonderful scene where everyone swears an oath of secrecy in church, at a time when everyone went to church. Yet while everyone is swearing, coincidentally, Crawford and his small gang ride into town, but only looking to steal fresh horses.

With the stage about to be set, there are several good scenes of Crawford, after learning about Ford's gunslinger skills by chance, strategically bullying his way into a gunfight with Ford. The man knows how to push buttons.

Meanwhile, Ford, under pressure to fight to save the town, bares his soul to the townsfolk, revealing a deeply hidden part of his psyche. More than the pending gunfight, it's the movie's money moment.

After the Ford-Crawford showdown, which we all knew was coming early on - and which is surprisingly fast, yet effective - there is one more twist left. You'll want to see it fresh, even though it's a bit hokey, because it kinda fits.

The movie works because Ford is outstanding playing the tortured soul at the heart of the picture. All along he conveys that there is something eating away at him as he impressively runs the gamut of emotions from unassuming, to showing off, to scared, to quietly brave.

Crain is excellent, too, as the wife who is fighting for her family. She's supportive, but she has also had enough. Basically, she's okay with her husband crying a bit on her shoulder in private, but then it's time for him to shut up, let the other men make fun of him and open the store.

Crawford is very on brand as the braggart, insecure and insane gunslinger. Still, after a movie of playing the called for cliched gunman, he shows why he was a top star. In the final scenes, we see, like with Ford, the deeper emotions and insecurities that drive Crawford's character.

A note is owed to Leif Erickson's performance as Ford's friend who supports Ford through his painful emotional journey. We can't help focusing on the stars, but Erickson's pivotal scene, as Ford is facing his personal crisis, is supporting-character acting at its best.

Shot in black and white on what look like "rent a Western town's facade" sets, director Russell Rouse kept the attention on Ford. This is a personal-drama western, not an open-range picture where Russell's smartly shot closeups of the guns/gunplay draw you into the story's action.

Tweak the story just a bit and you have the better version of this movie in 1950's The Gunfighter. That's no knock, though, as every picture is derivative of an early picture or story, and only one can be the best version.

The Fastest Gun Alive is a bit too constructed - Ford's emotional journey is overly complex - but still, it's a good tale, with characters you care about and a final gunfight that has you gripping your armrests: a good accomplishment for any Western.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Chalk Garden from 1964 with Hayley Mills, Deborah Kerr, Edith Evans, John Mills and Felix Aylmer


Almost all movies are contrived; how else can life be distilled down to a couple of hours or less of film. The good ones distill it well, and the really good ones, like The Chalk Garden, distill it powerfully.

In the movie, five lives intersect at the English estate of an offbeat, imperious, lonely but not unkind dowager, played by Edith Evans.

She lives there with her recalcitrant granddaughter, played by Hayley Mills, and her loyal, perceptive butler, played by Hayley's father, John Mills.

Then enters a new governess, without references, but with a smart and serious mien, played by Deborah Kerr. Kerr's task is to rein in H. Mills, a not easy task, as H. Mills is an inveterate liar and fire starter. She is an angry, intelligent child who lives to push other people's buttons.

The risk hanging over Evans and H. Mills is that H. Mills' mother – who left her daughter with Evans years ago when she left H. Mills' father (who subsequently died) and remarried – now wants H. Mills back. Evans, dealing with her own demons, is determined not to let this happen.

That's the table setting that sees H. Mills try to foil Kerr's efforts to be a good governess. It's an odd battle of wills as Kerr wants to do right, and H. Mills is really angry at her mother for abandoning her, so her anger toward Kerr is really a surrogate one that wobbles at times.

Kerr is dealing from an odd deck, herself, as her past, which is only revealed late in, is an incredible one that plays into her understanding of H. Mills in a deeply personal way. But it also provides provocative H. Mills with a secret to unearth, which is her superpower against adults.

J. Mills, as the quiet, smart and kind butler, shoots in and out of the drama not quite as a Greek Chorus, but more as a rational voice who knows he has no authority as a "servant," so he helps by persuasion and enlightenment.

His scenes with Evans – we eventually learn there is a history that explains J. Mills' respect for his quirky and often curt-with-him employer – are wonderfully English. He's clearly "the servant," but he still manages to say the things he wants to say and Evans even sometimes listens.

All the crosscurrents and subtext finally come to a head when Evans summons her old friend, a judge played by Felix Aylmer, to the house to advise her legally on how to stop her daughter from taking her granddaughter, H. Mills, from her. His visit brings everyone's secrets and fears into the open.

The all-revealing "luncheon," with the five players, J. Mills serves, is moviemaking at its best as the verbal bombs and emotional expiating is wonderfully exhausting. It's smart dialogue, smart acting and smart plotting all paying out in one heartrending scene.

The movie's well-constructed story, though, only works because you care about the players. H. Mills imbues her obnoxious-child character with a vulnerability that makes you understand she acts out from pain, not malice. She can irritate you, but you never hate her.

The dialogue throughout is scintillating, as H. Mills fires off barbs well beyond her years that Kerr often calmly returns with equal effectiveness, as does J. Mills in his own reserved way. Evans is louder, but her volleys, especially with Kerr later in, are verbal ping-pong at its best.

Director Ronald Neame had a clear vision for this intelligent and emotionally moving movie. It feels like the stage play it comes from as almost the entire picture takes place on Evan's estate. That is a feature, not a bug, though, as the estate is the field of play for this battle of wills.

Life is never this well constructed with everyone having the perfect line to say, while the emotional moments fall into place like soldiers assembling for inspection. Yet, done right, as it is in The Chalk Garden, this kind of scrupulous plot construction makes for powerful storytelling.

The movie won a few awards and, with Hayley Mills' stardom near its peak back then, it did well at the box office, but it deserves more attention today, as it has aged surprisingly well.

Once you see past the datedness of an English estate with a high-handed dowager, you can take in the timeless story of a wounded child crying out to wounded adults for help. The magic in The Chalk Garden lies in how, through healing the child, the adults find their own path to healing.

 

[Fading Fast]

Merry Wives of Reno from 1934 with Guy Kibbee, Margaret Lindsay, Glenda Farrel and Frank McHugh

This is not a good movie, but - no buts! - this is not a good movie. Even some of the better talents from the Warner Bros. stable couldn't stand this one up on its hind legs. Other than some time-travel fun for us today, plus a look at Reno's divorce system at its peak, there's just not much here.

The plot has two wives, owing to misunderstandings with their husbands, heading off to Reno for divorces with said husbands fast on their heels, trying to change their wives' minds.

The misunderstandings - a mix-up about overcoats - that sparked the divorce trip are too silly to set this entire event in motion, but even that is further confused by another couple involved where the husband has a sheep with him for, one guesses, metaphorical value and comic relief.

After this circus lands in Reno, the confusion continues as the women stop and start divorce proceedings time and again depending on whether they believe their husbands' excuses and apologies at that moment or not.

Thrown into the mix is a hotel bellboy, played by Frank McHugh, who has a side business doing everything for the guests from getting them into card games to, umm, satisfying the women. In the end, most of the problems sort of work out, but you really don't care much at that point.

Almost everybody is miscast in this one. Talented Guy Kibbee is one of the husbands in trouble because he's a womanizer. This is ludicrous as he's fat, bald and older looking than his fifty years - young women aren't falling for this guy.

The lovely Margaret Lindsay is completely out of her element as an angry wife in a screwball comedy. Even the outstanding Frank McHugh seems uncomfortable playing a slicker-than-heck schemer, who ridiculously, is also the hotel's resident Lothario.

It is, though, a small window into history seeing how Reno's economy - including hotels filled with women trying to establish residency and office buildings chock-a-block with divorce lawyers - is set up to handle a good chunk of the country's divorce business back then.

There is also some neat 1930s time travel with cool period cars, trains and architecture, but it's not enough as, even at just over an hour, Merry Wives of Reno drags.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Red Balloon from 1956, A French film


When a thirty-four-minute-long French movie short from 1956 with almost no dialogue that is, literally, about a boy and a balloon can not only hold your attention, but also have you thinking about childhood, tribalism, war, religion and other big issues of life, somebody did something right.

It's possible that writer and director Albert Lamorisse wasn't thinking about all that big stuff when he made The Red Balloon, a quixotic film that can simply be seen as a charming childhood fantasy tale about a big red, helium-filled balloon befriending a six-year-old boy.

Kids can certainly appreciate its fun anthropomorphism - what six-year-old boy wouldn't want a balloon with a lively personality to be his companion? - without worrying about all the philosophical metaphors swirling around.

The boy, Pascal, finds a balloon, which has a short string dangling from it, on his way to school one morning, only to slowly discover the balloon has a will of its own. Being six, he just accepts this, treating the balloon almost like a pet. It's a moment of childhood innocence brilliantly captured on film.

Pascal then learns the balloon's spirited personality as they do things together like play a version of hide and seek. Later, when his mother won't let the balloon stay in their apartment, he begins to understand the meaning of friendship as the balloon just waits for him outside.

There is something unbelievably sweet about seeing the balloon float around outside Pascal's window waiting for him to come out again. It's the same sweetness that makes the balloon only want to have Pascal hold it.

Pascal, though, sees - at school and, later, at church - that adults don't share his passion for having a balloon always with him. They often, especially those in a position of authority, become annoyed by it. Message received: adults have lost some or all of their childhood wonderment.

Things then get more challenging as other, slightly older boys become jealous of Pascal's balloon and try to steal or destroy it. It isn't hard to see the metaphors of greed, tribalism and even warfare come into play as the boys throw rocks or fire them from slingshots at the balloon.

When a mob of boys chase Pascal around the streets and narrow alleyways, it's hard today, and had to be harder in 1956 France, not to see a disquieting analogy to the rounding up of France's Jews in WWII.

There is, though, an amusing ending, which is wonderful for kids, but requires a little more suspension of disbelief for adults. Still, in a metaphor-rich movie, it's easy to stretch one or more to cover the picture's final whimsical flight of fancy.

All of this movie magic is enhanced by its on-location shooting in the Belleville and Ménilmontant neighborhoods of Paris.

In 1956, these neighborhoods looked like a rumpled version of a storybook postwar rural French town. You'll want to visit the town's boulangerie and just stroll around its cobblestone streets. Heck, everything is so cute French, you'll just want to buy a bicycle and move there.

Lamorisse, either through luck - his budget ran out - or an astute understanding of the limitations of a childhood fantasy to remain engaging for adults, ended his movie at just over a half hour and while you are still enchanted.

The many philosophical metaphors are interesting and helped the film win several awards, as adults need to sound smart when praising a children's picture, but simple charm is the movie's magic.

The Red Balloon is a quirky gem that defies conventional storytelling, proving that simplicity can be profoundly impactful. Watching The Red Balloon today, one simply can't help but be charmed by its timeless portrayal of childhood wonderment and innocence.

 

[Fading Fast]

Topkapi from 1964 with Melina Mercouri, Maximilian Schell, Peter Ustinov, Robert Morley, Gilles Ségal and Jess Hahn


The 1960s was a wonderful decade for both serious and lighthearted heist movies, with the quirky Topkapi, by noted French director Jules Dassin, a spirited blend of the two. While a bit slow out of the gate, once it kicks into gear as the heist approaches, Topkapi is pure entertainment.

Melina Mercouri and Maximilian Schell play lovers and the head of a smart, small band of professional thieves planning an audacious theft of a famous jewel-encrusted dagger from the Topkapi museum in Istanbul.

Mercouri is the big-idea person, while Schell is the methodical one. The other gang members, played by Robert Morley, Gilles Ségal and Jess Hahn, each bring a particular and important skill to the team, and then there is the one bumbling quasi gang member, played by Peter Ustinov.

Ustinov's character is a failing street hustler of tourists who is used as a dupe by the gang early on, but ends up staying with them. He stays, in part, because he's been recruited by the Turkish secret police to keep an eye on the gang, whom the police have mistaken for terrorists.

The Turkish secret police bungle things a lot, but by staying close to the gang – through Ustinov, they track the gang's movements – they add the necessary tension of potential exposure for the gang, even before they can pull off the heist.

Look for the carnival scene, one of the movie's funnier sequences, where a homoerotic (this is not a modern reinterpretation of what is happening) wrestling match has the secret police so distracted it allows the gang to shake their Turkish tails.

By now, a twist of fate has the gang also needing Ustinov to take part in the heist. They coax the overweight and hesitant Ustinov into doing so with a blend of sex, Mercouri seduces, and greed, Schell dangles a big payoff in front of Ustinov.

That's the setup that does little to capture the movie's magic: the personalities. Mercouri, who manages by force of will to convince everyone she's a sexy woman they want to sleep with, intelligently vamps the gang forward, driven by her all-consuming desire for jewels.

It is, as they say in showbiz, a performance. She's matched by Schell as the planning and execution guy who leads the gang with a serious business approach. He has great chemistry with Mercouri, who can egg him on to almost anything as long as sex is part of the bargain.

The personality frisson is taken to a higher level, though, by the unique relationship between Schell's exacting and demanding Swiss character and Ustinov's overweight and nervous Englishman character, a man who is a slipshod washout from that once-great empire.

Schell should despise Ustinov, a weak man who is the opposite of disciplined Schell, but he can't help liking easily frightened Ustinov. The best thing in this movie is watching confident Schell hold insecure Ustinov's hand throughout the heist. It's the movie's special sauce.

In the middle of the heist, anytime Ustinov is about to freeze, Schell is there to encourage him on, in a kind, older-brotherly way. Initially, you expect Schell to snap when Ustinov wimpers, but Schell never loses his patience. Their dynamic plays on in the background, but it is movie gold.

The heist itself, an all-aerial effort because the museum floors are wired for touch, is so nail-biting good that it's been riffed on many times since, most notably in the 1996 Mission Impossible movie.

Even movies like the outstanding 2015 The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and all the Guy Ritchie and Quentin Tarantino mob pictures somewhat echo the playful banter and sexual tension of Topkapi.

Director Dassin made one of the greatest film noir heist movies ever in 1955's Rififi. In Topkapi, he turns down the noir and turns up the playful spirit to make a fun heist movie in a decade chockablock with similar movies like How to Steal a Million and The Italian Job.

You don't watch Topkapi because it's believable; you watch it because it's enjoyable. Most surprisingly, you watch it to see serious Maximilian Schell genuinely like and coddle big, blubbery and skittish Peter Ustinov, in one of movieland's oddest and most amusing pairings.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

The Caine Mutiny (1954) with Humphrey Bogart, Jose Ferrer, Van Johnson, and Fred MacMurray, under the direction of Edward Dmytryk. Bogart's Captain Queeg suffers from sort of "Napoleon complex", sometimes a martinet, sometimes a by-the-book commander. From time to time he experiences an emotional collapse, captive to indecision, and often times shifting blame for his mistakes to subordinates.
Based on actual incident, in which an Executive Officer relived the captain of a destroyer for endangering the crew's lives during a typhoon, the story here is less of a failed command decision during a crisis as rather a series of behaviors that reveal a character's "mental instability." The story up to the relieving of Queeg builds a case for perhaps what we would nowadays think is PTSD, coming to a head when Queeg cannot make decisions to ride out a terrible storm. This leads to a court-martial, prosecuted by E.G. Marshall, and Jose Ferrer as defense counsel. Strong performances all-around; the Missus had never seen it and was drawn into the story.

NB: in most of his films Bogart is carefully staged to appear taller than he actually was. Here (I think) no effort is made hide his height, and it could be to visually emphasize the character's chip on the shoulder mindset.