What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

Indiscretion of an American Wife from 1953 with Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift


"You didn't look very wicked. I'm not an imaginative woman. It was you. It was Rome! And I'm a housewife from Philadelphia." - Jennifer Jones as Mary Forbes explaining to Montgomery Clift's character why she had an affair with him


Director Vittorio De Sica with much involvement from producer David O. Selznick created an odd cognate to Brief Encounter, director David Lean's 1945 low-key cinematic masterpiece about an extra-marital affair.

Indiscretion of an American Wife opens with the affair ending, but this is no story-told-through-flashback effort.

Instead, the movie's entire sixty-three minutes of runtime is Jennifer Jones, playing a married American wife and mother, now at a Rome train station, trying to say goodbye to her half-Italian, half-American lover of the past few months, played by Montgomery Clift, who is trying to convince her to stay.

Jones doesn't want to leave Clift, but she also doesn't want to blow up her marriage, her life in America and her very young daughter's home for an affair that is still in the rip-our-clothes-off-each-other stage (more on that in a moment).

Filmed almost exclusively in that Rome train station, there is so much background noise and activity that it often eclipses the story as all the hustle and bustle is as distracting to the lovers as it is to the viewer.

Sure it's realistic, but the point of the movie is to show the poignancy of an affair potentially ending, not how hectic a train station can be. There are documentaries for that purpose.

Also distracting is an Italian nephew of Jones - this branch of her family is why Jones is visiting Italy - a young boy who shows up to keep her company as she waits for her train. He does nothing but annoy Jones and the viewer as he makes it hard for Jones and Clift to talk.

You quickly get the easy-to-understand-conflict: Jones is in love but does not want to destroy her American family, while Clift, single and in love, just wants Jones.

That basic argument plays out through most of the movie as the couple fight, part and make-up a few times, while Jones' luggage gets shuffled around by her changing train plans. All this happens as Jones and Clift get constantly jostled about by waiters, porters and passengers.

Tucked inside this train station pastiche is a not-subtle storyline about a very poor family, who Jones briefly helps, whose mother sacrifices everything for her children - message received.

The more engaging incident is when Jones and Clift, making up once again, hide away in a not-in-use railcar and are caught going at it by railroad employees. It's 1953, so they don't show that, but the couple is taken to some sort of train-station holding room because of their "inappropriate" behavior.

The fallout is the movie's money moment as the brutal embarrassment that primly dressed and coiffed Jones has to endure from the side glances and smirks of the railroad employees witnessing the superintendent question her about her behavior is excruciatingly painful for her.

Today we laugh off any sexual misadventure, but in the 1950s, a married woman caught having sex with her lover in a public place, and then being questioned about it in front of others was deeply humiliated for a woman, no matter how we think about it in 2023.

Jones earned her salary for perfectly portraying a woman trying to maintain some shred of dignity, while really wanting to crawl into a hole and die.

Like Brief Encounter, Indiscretion of an American Wife comes down to a last minute decision to board or not board a train (there's also a similar scene in the Audrey Hepburn and Gary Cooper movie Love in the Afternoon).

Indiscretion of an American Wife took a good idea, but mainly failed in its execution as it let a few unimportant things - a loud train station and a petulant nephew - distract from its narrowly-focused story.

Jones' and Clift characters, also, already seem about to begin the "you annoy me" stage of their relationship, so you're not rooting for their illicit love to work out as you are for Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard's to work out in Brief Encounter.

Maybe that was the fault of the actors, the director or the screenwriters, but regardless, the one thing all great love stories and every run-of-the-mill romcom need is a likeable couple you are rooting for at the center of it. Indiscretion of an American Wife could have overcome all its flaws if it had had that one essential ingredient, but alas.

 

[Bushman]

Edge of the City (1957) starring Sidney Poitier, John Cassavetes, and Jack Warden. Great jackets in this one, but even better story. Ends a bit abruptly, but that was pretty common for that era.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Great cast all together. Cassavetes did some directing and spot on actor.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

"CASABLANCA".
I am a 44 year old man and I have been playing this movie almost every week since I was about 11. Not only is it my favorite movie but I think it is the most stylish work of art ever created.

Cheers,
Trim.

This film Casablanca is a standard of its era. Her late Majesty Queen Elizabeth was a World War II veteran,
a subaltern in the Auxiliary Territorial Service and drove ambulances thru London's hellish blitz. Her Majesty's
passage marked historical page turn for the splendid Second World War generation. Casablanca endures
for any variety of reasons but the generation sacrifice burnished this standard to immortal classic.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Suspect from 1944 with Charles Laughton, Ella Raines, Rosalind Ivan and Stanley Ridges


The Suspect feels like another wonderful, modest English movie about desperation over an ugly marriage driving a good person to do bad things, but surprisingly, this one was made by Universal Studios in California.

Perhaps The Suspect gets its international feel from German-born director Robert Siodmak directing English-born actor Charles Laughton in a not-big-budget effort, but whatever the reason, it is a movie, like many English movies of that era, driven by story and character, not special effects of histrionics.

Set in England in the early 1900s, Charles Laughton plays a man unhappily married to a shrew of a wife, played with over-the-top maliciousness by Rosalind Ivan. Ivan, clearly enjoying her role here, is so awful that their adult son, played by Dean Harens, moves out after she burns some of his work papers in a fit of rage.

Laughton, a successful mid-level manager of a retail establishment, now in late middle-age, and after his latest effort at making peace with his wife is rebuffed, begins an innocent friendship with a young, pretty and lonely typist played by Ella Raines.

Laughton's acting here is exquisite as ever, but the man can't help capturing your attention (think, a male Bette Davis). He's that physically imposing, that talented and that much of a screen presence.

Raines, either by instinct or smart strategy, plays her character softly, which avoids competing with Laughton (a nearly impossible effort), but instead lets her carve out a quiet complimentary niche. It's a wonderfully understated performance.

When Laughton's wife learns of her husband's relationship with a young woman - a character like Ivan always does learn these things, it's in their DNA - and despite it being innocent, she threatens to expose it as an affair.

At that time in England, this type of scandal would ruin both Laughton and Raines as they would be fired and unable to find another position, plus they'd be ostracised from their society.

Laughton, a placid, moral and respectable man then does what a few men will do when pushed to a breaking point: he takes action dramatically out of character and kills his wife.

The police declare it an accidental death, which allows Laughton and Raines, after a respectable amount of time, to resume their relationship, but now in the open.

All is going well until that quintessential British character - the pleasant but persistent Scotland Yard investigator, played by Stanley Ridges - shows up, "just to ask a few questions."

Ridges has no proof, but he has that one thing that all good investigators have, a suspicion he won't let rest. Ridges is adequate in the role, but others who have played the perennial Scotland Yard investigator, like English actor John Williams, have brought an extra verve to this stock character.

From here, the movie is Laughton moving on with his happy new life - he marries Raines - while he and Ridges engage in a discrete chess match as Ridges looks for incriminated clues while also trying to break Laughton psychologically.

There's a good side story about Laughton's neighbors - a pleasant woman, played by Molly Lamont, married to a physically and mentally abusive man, played with a low-key sinisterness by Henry Daniell - that gets woven into the main plot in a slowly devastating way.

All of this "action" takes place on a few sets that say "pleasant English village in the early 1900s." Universal spent the money necessary on the sets and costumes to create a believable period look. Yet the movie has so little action and so much dialogue, it feels, in a good way, like many "small" English pictures of this era, more like a filmed theater production than a movie.

You won't be proud of yourself as you know it's wrong, but at least a part of you is hoping Laughton won't get caught. His wife was evil and vile; his new life is happy and fun and what purpose is really served by convicting Laughton? Oh, yeah, it's that darn justice thing.

The Suspect's ending, no spoilers coming, is so English and so Laughton that you'll want to watch the movie again just to enjoy the ending's understated elegance. Kudos is owed to Universal Studios for making a very English movie in the best sense of the phrase.


N.B. Everything written above needs to be taken with a grain of salt as my brain goes into vapor lock anytime the quietly beautiful Ella Raines is on screen.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Pickup on South Street (1953), written and directed by Samuel Fuller, so you know the story and the visuals are tough and gritty and dark and you can't stop watching. Top-billed Richard Widmark plays Skip, pickpocket extraordinaire, who lifts some of the contents of Jean Peters' handbag, which contents include something vital to 1953's national security, meaning valuable to Communist spies here in the US.

Thelma Ritter, the frazzled mother of Miracle on 34th Street, is hypnotic in her role as an underworld informant. Tough homicide detective and a Federal agent join forces to track down Skip.

Fuller contrasts some really rough action with close-ups of Peters and Widmark kissing in tight clinches for the maximum time limit allowed by Code. Widmark is flip, the police are tough, the Federal agent seems to be a bit more restrained, and Peters is part Shelley Winters, part Ida Lupino, and part Priscilla Lane. The Communist agents are uniformly brutal.

 

[Fading Fast]

Pickup on South Street (1953), written and directed by Samuel Fuller, so you know the story and the visuals are tough and gritty and dark and you can't stop watching. Top-billed Richard Widmark plays Skip, pickpocket extraordinaire, who lifts some of the contents of Jean Peters' handbag, which contents include something vital to 1953's national security, meaning valuable to Communist spies here in the US.

Thelma Ritter, the frazzled mother of Miracle on 34th Street, is hypnotic in her role as an underworld informant. Tough homicide detective and a Federal agent join forces to track down Skip.

Fuller contrasts some really rough action with close-ups of Peters and Widmark kissing in tight clinches for the maximum time limit allowed by Code. Widmark is flip, the police are tough, the Federal agent seems to be a bit more restrained, and Peters is part Shelley Winters, part Ida Lupino, and part Priscilla Lane. The Communist agents are uniformly brutal.

I enjoyed your write up. It reminded me of how much I like this movie, which I wrote about several years ago here: #26,953 (please feel free to ignore). Now I want to see it again.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Laughton always a jeweled pocket gold watch. With chain I see to a detective.

Film well done I love. Critique afterwards inside a warm cozy pub.

There is a film study out and about, the last hangman in the system, and another, or perhaps same slice
with a look at the last woman hung. Terrible justice.

I prefer a chess match without all violence, sex, computer graphic. Last just ruined Tolkein.
British postwar concentrated low budget more to mind over muscle.

 

[AmateisGal]

Took a trip to my hometown to see my family. Introduced my mom to North By Northwest and she loved it!

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Introduced my mom to North By Northwest and she loved it!

You introduced your mum to Cary, right? Better late than never, so how did she like the film?

 

[Doctor Strange]

From TCM: the 1945 British film Vacation From Marriage (original British title: Perfect Strangers), with Deborah Kerr, Robert Donat, Ann Todd, and Glynis Johns, directed by Alexander Korda.

A film about the effects of WWII service on people, which was no doubt an important concern at the time (also reflected in other films like The Best Years of Our Lives).

Londoners Kerr and Donat had married in the mid-thirties and live a dull life. He's an accountant in a stuffy office, she's a timid housewife, and their life has become entirely routine.



Donat joins the Navy when the war breaks out; after he leaves, Kerr joins the Wrens (*). Both of them find that the challenges of the service make them stronger and more self-reliant, and both of their personalities evolve. Kerr ends up piloting a launch as shells explode all around her; Donat ends up surviving a sinking and rows a lifeboat for days with badly burned hands... Both of them grow as people.

(* The closed captioning kept saying "Reds," which had me confused, though it was clearly the women's naval auxiliary. My mom served in the Marines during the war, so I can relate.)

Their leaves never coincide, and it's over three years before they see each other again. (Both have almost-affairs during this time, Donat with the superbly lit Todd.) When they finally are going to reunite, both have changed so much that each expects the other to be their pre-war selves, and that they will no longer get along. Kerr even wants a divorce. It's a bumpy reunion, as both are NOT what the other expected.

I thought this was a very historically interesting film, if not quite a classic. And it captures Kerr a moment before she became a full-blown star (it was made between The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and Black Narcissus). She's not afraid to be portrayed as really dowdy and timid in the first act. The rest of the cast is good, including a VERY YOUNG Glynis Johns as Kerr's fizzy pal in the Wrens.

Recommended, especially for Kerr fans.

 

[FOXTROT LAMONT]

Ms Kerr is a fav but this almost classic, whether times or what never went the distance, pulled up short.
Quite short. No affairs either, quite insipid and incredulous plot here for the war being what it was and all
as everyone can attest the bedroom theatre of love and world war. And these two are on the cup edge
to begin with. And the honourable King and Country active service separate rooms queers pitch no end.
Two adults in this era, sailors not saints and to tell no jolly roger flags flown amidst all the jolly rogering.
No dearest jonathan, dearest jane. Tosh, and lukewarm that.

Lovely Ms Kerr is at rest in Surrey.

 

[ChazfromCali]

The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
Anything with Christian Bale is usually something I want to see. He's one of the best.

It's good that films like this are even being made these days..... I can understand why its rating is kinda low, no explosions, no car chases, no slam-bang action. Also seems about ten IQ points higher than the usual fare. In other words it's a bit of a throwback to movies that demanded some thought on the viewers part.

The guy who plays E.A. Poe is terrific. It had slipped my mind that Poe was a southerner.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Flame from 1947 with John Carroll, Vera Ralston, Robert Paige, Broderick Crawford and Constance Dowling


Recipe: Mix equal parts noir and melodrama with a splash of gothic atmosphere using mainly B actors and a dash of a Czech actress playing a French nurse but with a Czech accent, shake vigorously and serve in crisp black-and-white cinematography for an enjoyable albeit a bit slow-moving-in-parts Republic Pictures movie.

The Flame is a solid noir/melodrama offering from the height of the film noir era that opens with two men shooting each other in a prosperous looking apartment house only to then tell its story through one long flashback.

As the flashback begins, we see that one of the men who was shot is a prodigal brother, played by John Carroll. Carroll has spent his inheritance, but wants to marry his French girlfriend and former nurse (he was injured in WWII) played by Vera Ralston - the aforementioned Czech actress with the wrong accent for the part.

Lacking the funds to continue living a lavish lifestyle, he convinces vacant-eyes Ralston to become his infirmed and wealthy brother's nurse.

The plan from there is for the sickly brother to fall in love with, marry and leave everything in his will to Ralston, then die, thus, clearing the path for Carroll and Ralston to marry with the dead-brother's money now all theirs. Good grief.

Problem number one with all this is the brother, played by Robert Paige, looks like the healthiest man on earth. While he lives in a modestly haunting gothic mansion and irritatingly fills the house with sounds from his sonorously melancholy organ playing all the time, the guy is the picture of haleness.

Problem number two is you never understand Ralston's character as she seems like a nice girl who would have, immediately, told Carroll to pound sand with his mean and selfish plan.

Problem number three is the plan itself isn't illegal - immoral as heck, but not illegal - as you don't get arrested for thought crimes or marrying with deceit in your heart (otherwise, the jails would be overflowing) as Carroll and Ralston aren't contemplating murder, but planning to let nature take its course to finish off Paige.

With their cockeyed plan now in motion, two things happen to squirrel it: Ralston falls in love with the putatively dying brother, while a blackmailer, played with pitch-perfect low-key sinisterness by Broderick Crawford, discovers Carroll's scheme.

Carroll, who was quietly counting his future money, now has to worry about Ralston not coming through for him and Crawford either exposing his plan or bleeding from him the money he doesn't even yet have.

Further complicating things, it turns out Carroll's neighbor, a nightclub singer played wonderfully with unembarrassed selfishness by Constance Dowling, whom Carroll is dancing in the sheets with on the side, is the object of Crawford's affections. Yet she'll only be with Crawford if he has money to provide her with a luxurious lifestyle.

Yes, the slant rhyme storylines are obvious screenwriting 101, but Crawford provides a needed burst of energy to this sometimes somnambulant effort. He's smart, sinister, physically imposing and steals every scene he's in.

You'll wish his and mercenary Dowling's roles were bigger. Dowling spices up the screen with her delicious blonde evilness, while Crawford, oddly but engagingly, wears his personal Kryptonite proudly on his sleeve: he can't live without an obviously selfish and venal woman. Their story is the more interesting of the two in the movie.

The climax, no spoilers coming, is unsurprising as it was somewhat telegraphed in advance. The flashback technique had a vogue in noir at that time, but often, it is a gimmick that, as it does here, undermines the tension in the plot as aware viewers use it to anticipate the movie's conclusion.

Henry Travers as the kindly family physician, Blanche Yurka as the bitter spinster aunt (effectively playing a weak version of the "Mrs. Danvers" role from Rebecca), Victor Sen Yung as Carroll's houseboy with misplaced loyalty and Hattie McDaniel, unfortunately, in the stereotypical maid role she knew all too well, round out the cast in parts that, had they been larger, would have given the movie a richer and more-textured feel.

Despite several plot holes, plus director John H. Auer setting too slow a pace here and there and an unsurprising climax, The Flame is still a very worthy effort. You just wish the ingredients in this noir-melodrama cocktail had been combined in a more skillful manner as there was an even better movie to be made from its parts.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Company She Keeps from 1951 with Jane Greer, Lizabeth Scott and Dennis O'Keefe


This short, minor picture is either a soft-hearted paean to the system of parole and second chances for prisoners or a slyly subversive movie mocking the parole system and its bleeding-heart advocates who believe all criminals are good people who just haven't found themselves yet.

In The Company She Keeps, a social worker, played by Lizabeth Scott, after fighting hard to get a convict, played by Jane Greer, out on parole, does everything humanly possible to give Greer a chance to succeed.

Greer, who knows how to play the game, can be sweet and contrite when necessary, like she is in front of the parole board, yet she also shows us her bitter, spiteful, selfish and, yes, criminal side when faced with the hard and humbling day-to-day work of reintegrating into society.

Scott gets Greer a job as a nurse's aide, a place to live and, in general, tries to help Greer over and above what Scott's job calls for. Greer, tries a bit, but seems to have an inner anger that flares at real and perceived slights.

Into this unstable situation walks Scott's boyfriend, played by Dennis O'Keefe, whom Greer quickly sets her sights on, seemingly and without cause, to spite Scott. Not knowing that Greer is a parolee and that Scott is her case worker, O'Keefe begins dating Greer.

With that setup, the movie is driven by the now insanely uncomfortable love triangle and Greer's continued efforts to undermine her own freedom, leaving Scott constantly trying to clean up or cover up for Greer's recalcitrance.

Matching Scott's bleeding heart, corpuscle for corpuscle, O'Keefe, suffering from a bad case of wounded-bird syndrome, dismisses Greer insolence, time and again, as he believes it's because Greer has had a tough life.

That's it other than a climax which brings the love triangle and Greer's status as a parolee to a head as Scott and O'Keefe take do-goodness to an angelic level, while Greer has her come-to-Jesus moment.

Greer does a good job as the angry parolee as does Scott as the understanding social worker, but had their roles been switched, the movie might have had more bite as Scott is more natural as a bad girl, just like Greer is as a good one.

Maybe director John Cromwell wanted to make a softer movie after his hard-edged female-prison movie Caged. Or perhaps he was punking us by making an ostensibly pro-parole movie that leaves us laughing at the unnatural saintliness of Scott and O'Keefe, while we wonder if society wouldn't be better off with the Greers of the world behind bars.

The Company She Keeps has some good prison argot early on and some time-travel-perfect location shots of LA, but it is too much of an obvious message movie to be anything but a short piece of fluff, unless you believe it's really a meta work intended to undermine its own message. That possibility makes it a more-interesting movie.

 

[Edward]

The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
Anything with Christian Bale is usually something I want to see. He's one of the best.

It's good that films like this are even being made these days..... I can understand why its rating is kinda low, no explosions, no car chases, no slam-bang action. Also seems about ten IQ points higher than the usual fare. In other words it's a bit of a throwback to movies that demanded some thought on the viewers part.

The guy who plays E.A. Poe is terrific. It had slipped my mind that Poe was a southerner.

For some reason I thought this was a series - it's in my watchlist, though. I rather enjoyed revisiting The Raven a few weeks ago; that one was somewhat campy but a lot of fun. This looks, on trailer-impressions, to be a somewhat more sober take on a related concept.

I've just spent most of the last three weeks in front of the television. Much of what I watched is not really worth reporting here, though there were a couple of films of note. Glass Onion remains the best of them all. A Buster Crabbe Flash Gordon on Netflix, pretty much the same plot as the vastly camper 1979 version, was a pleasantly cosy afternoon watch. There's a tone to films from that era - the pacing, the rhythms of the dialogue, the whole look and feel - that I always find relaxing. Most likely it's connected subconsciously to wet Saturday afternoons circa 1980, when there were only three TV channels and this was the sort of thing you could watch on BBC2 when there was nothing but sport and news on BBC1 and ITV.

Minotaur (2006) was intensely disappointing. It's an attempt to do for an element of Greek mythology what the 2004 King Arthur picture did for that particular mythology - the old "Yeah, you've heard the myth, but here's the real story underlying it" schtick. It's a fun concept, unfortunately done very badly in this instance. Add a dash of white saviour trope along with jettisoning much of the important plot points of the original story. And, for luck, we'll pretend that Theseus - or 'Theo', as he is styled here - was just an ordinary villager rather than a prince as per the original story. Similar to Braveheart's rewriting of William Wallace's background; actually, the very many less-than-credible fictionalisations in Gibson's film are similar to the howlers here, albeit that Minotaur at least is not trying to pass off its particular liberties as actual history. One to avoid for all but the most dogged of Tom Hardy fans and/or those who have an academic interest in cinematic representations of ancient mythologies.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Via HBO, the highly praised and likely Best Picture contender The Banshees of Inisherin.



The story of a friendship gone terribly wrong between two men (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) on an Irish island in 1923, I thought it was good, but not great.

It's a beautifully made, well acted film, with a little comedy and a lot of tragedy in an interesting setting. But I don't think it's quite the masterpiece that it's being touted as. Your mileage may vary.

 

[PrivateEye]

Went to an ACTUAL movie theater for the first time in a few years this weekend to see "A Man Called Otto".

Reasonably enjoyable, a few clever lines, but fairly predictable.

 

[Julian Shellhammer]

Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950) directed by Gordon Douglas, with James Cagney, Barbara Payton, Helena Carter, along with Ward Bond, Barton MacLane, and a ton of familiar faces. Produced by James' brother William for their very own production company.
Leapin' lizards, what a rough movie. Violent, dark, erupting out of a universe peopled nearly entirely of corrupt, venal, vicious, murderous characters. Opening with a packed courtroom scene, we see the story unfold in multiple flashbacks (semi-Rashomon-like), starting with a prison farm break-out, then following Cagney as he sets up his own crime fiefdom via black mail, coercion and violence.
Carney's performance seems like director Douglas instructed him to "Give me your best Jimmy Cagney imitation." It's that wild and crazy.
If you watch this, have a Mary Tyler Moore episode cued up to balance out the heaviness.

 

[belfastboy]

The Pale Blue Eye (2022)
Anything with Christian Bale is usually something I want to see. He's one of the best.

It's good that films like this are even being made these days..... I can understand why its rating is kinda low, no explosions, no car chases, no slam-bang action. Also seems about ten IQ points higher than the usual fare. In other words it's a bit of a throwback to movies that demanded some thought on the viewers part.

The guy who plays E.A. Poe is terrific. It had slipped my mind that Poe was a southerner.

I too enjoyed this film. I read an interesting article about the film that suggests watching it a second time as there are clues/tells sprinkled throughout that leads to the ending. I might get around to it as I missed them all. Bale was his usual brilliant self.....not bad for a guy that never took an acting class or lesson.