Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 9, 2020 9:01:11 GMT -8
I wonder if I've seen Kiss of Death. It's a twofer: a heist film and a Noir. It also includes the hamishly entertaining Victor Mature. Your description of Widmark makes me think I have seen that. But I'll see if I can find it.
Colleen Gray plays the designated dame.
As a bonus we get buddy-boy Karl Malden thrown in as Sgt. William Cullen. |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 11, 2020 12:12:14 GMT -8
This next movie is said to be the precursor to Dragnet. Jack Webb does have a small part in it. But Jack Webb (other than playing the role of a square) never made the police look stupid in his signature TV series. In He Walked by Night, the police at times are hilariously stupid. The cop characters in this are shallow and one-dimensional. This is in dynamic contrast with an interesting performance by a very young Richard Basehart as the bad guy. He is steely and realistically a bit odd. This is loosely based on a true story…very loosely, from what I’ve read from other reviewers. But it’s very watchable. And I have to relate to Artler the truly libertarian moment at the opening of this film. It’s late at night and Basehart is trying to pick the lock of some Main Street storefront. He sees a patrol car coming from way off and calmly walks away. A young patrol officer stops him and questions what he’s doing there. Basehart just says he was out walking and saw something in the store window that interested him, a very plausible story. The officer isn’t satisfied with that an asks for his I.D. Basehart says he left his wallet at home but has his military idea in his other pocket. He reaches for it — it’s a gun, of course — and blasts the nosey police officer. It’s sort of funny how that plays out, and it's more than a bit police-state-ish by the cop. Another unintentionally funny scene occurs soon after. Word gets out that there is a man who has been shot and is down at such-and-such an address. We watch as two patrol officers pick this up on their radios while cruising about. They seem attentive but in no particular hurry to get to the address. Then another report comes in: “The shooting involves a police officer.” Then the two cops really bare down and step on it. So if you’re John Q. Public and are lying bleeding on the sidewalk, the message is “We’ll get there when we get there.” So many of these old movies like this are so ham-fisted. But, for me, it’s another level of entertainment to appreciate. Anyway, although this is supposed to be a pro-cop show — and perhaps came off that way in 1948 — modern viewers are likely to be less impressed. But it’s a good ending with them chasing Basehart through the underground water drainage system of Los Angeles. This is at times goofy and one-dimensional. But Basehart is good. You even get a good performance from The Time Tunnel's Whit Bissell in a younger role for him as well. Overall, it is quite entertaining.  |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 11, 2020 12:33:15 GMT -8
There are two movies here in 1948’s Pitfall. In the early going, we get a quite intelligent film about a bored family man (played wonderfully by Dick Powell) who gets a little too involved with one of his insurance nvestigation cases. Lizabeth Scott plays the femme fatale. But she’s not a whore, hooker, or a bad girl. She’s just weak and needy. John Forbes (Powell) just happens to come along when her boyfriend is in jail. In fact, that’s why Forbes is there, to confiscate the $10,000 worth of items that her boyfriend gave her through some sort of insurance fraud. In the opening of the film, we see John Forbes’ 100% all-American house and family. He’s got an all-American young son and a dutiful and beautiful all-American wife played by Spock’s mother. But he's just bored with his life and wishing for a little excitement. Meanwhile, a very stalky (as in propensity to stalk…but he’s also a bit stocky as well) Raymond Burr plays the go-to private eye who John Forbes often uses as an investigator. He’s the one who found the dame, Mona Stevens (Lizabeth Scott), to begin with. She definitely has "femme fatale" vibe because private investigator J.B. “Mac” MacDonald immediately goes into a full-blown case of stalk-the-woman. He wants her even though she wants nothing to do with him. In defense of the second half of the movie, I do think it’s quite likely that a number of people behave this stupidly. But unfortunately, the realism that Dick Powell brings to the character in the early going is all lost in the later going. His decisions smack of 100% McGuffinism….meant merely to move the plot along and in no way reflect what had started out as a realistic, complex, and even sympathetic character. Synchronistically, although Lizabeth Scott is effective in small doses, as the movie goes on and she is asked to carry more it it, her performance is less than riveting. The only constant is the Harvey-Weinstein-like Raymond Burr character who is a hoot in his light villainy. So even at a relatively sparse 86 minutes runtime, this movie feels much longer. I'd put it on your rainy-day list. But I wouldn't drop everything to watch it.  |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 12, 2020 7:19:28 GMT -8
The Film Noir marathon on Amazon Prime Video continues with Please Murder Me. Raymond Burr plays lawyer, Craig Carlson. Angela Lansbury plays femme fatale, Myra Leeds. This is so plot-driven I can’t say much more about it other than this is a movie I’d put in the category of “lost gem.” Perhaps the problem with it is that I would have come up with a better ending. I think this is exactly why this movie doesn’t have the renown it deserves. But you can’t have everything. What you do have is Raymond Burr not playing the bad guy. He is transitioning. In fact, there is a courtroom scene where he is indistinguishable from the Perry Mason character he would start playing the next year (1957) in the TV series. Completely and wholly he’s the same character in the courtroom scenes. Outside the courtroom, it's true he might be a bit less squeaky clean. But not by much. The man of courtroom justice has emerged.  |
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Post by timothylane on Mar 12, 2020 7:20:28 GMT -8
It's interesting that the photo is definitely recognizable as Raymond Burr to a fan of Perry Mason, but Lars Thorwald in Rear Window is much less recognizable. Maybe a photo would work. There was at least once in the movie when his voice was clearly recognizable as Burr's.
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Post by timothylane on Mar 12, 2020 7:28:18 GMT -8
There was an Alfred Hitchcock episode involving a similar situation -- a lawyer gets a murderer off, then finds out he was guilty. In that episode, the killer (played by Frank Gorshin) laughingly admits it once he's been acquitted, knowing that the Fifth Amendment's double jeopardy ban protects him.
This was also used in the movie The Jagged Edge, in which a female lawyer falls in love with the defendant accused of murder and gets him off -- helped by anonymous messages that lead her to exculpatory evidence the prosecutor (illegitimately) tried to hide. Then she finds that her boyfriend has the typewriter on which the notes were written (as indeed the prosecutor had claimed), and things get really interesting.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 12, 2020 7:28:24 GMT -8
Hitchcock had Burr doing a pretty good bit of intense character acting for Torwald with help of a wig and beady-eye glasses. It's interesting in that, as I recall, he has relatively few lines in the movie and yet Hitchcock (and Burr) are splendid in making him so menacing.  |
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Post by timothylane on Mar 12, 2020 7:31:45 GMT -8
Thorwald is mostly seen at a distance, of course, and then the final assault on the photograper is in a darkened room (hence his use of flashbulbs to delay Thorwald). He speaks very little until that final segment, and his voice then doesn't sound much like Perry Mason. The moment he really did was when he was doing some gardening at one point.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 12, 2020 7:44:53 GMT -8
The next movie up is Another Man’s Poison. I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with Bette Davis. I find many of her movies pretentious and boring. But sometimes she’s cast in a role that is suited to her and that few could match. I’m not sure how this one will come out. It doesn’t look particularly promising so far. Her husband and his partner-in-crime, George Bates (Gary Merrill, who could make Columbo look dapper in this one), have just robbed a bank somewhere in England. Bette Davis’ husband shot a security guard in the process. Bates has come to mystery writer Janet Frobisher Preston’s (Davis) home looking for her husband. Davis says he’s not there. The husband’s hat, coat, slippers, and other items betray otherwise. Finally Davis admits that he is in his study behind locked doors. But it won’t do Bates any good trying to knock down the doors because he’s dead. “I killed him.” She poisoned him with some medicine she got from a veterinarian for her prized horse Then Bates gets it in his head that instead of trying to go on the lamb, he would impersonate Davis’ husband because no one in the area has every seen the man and thus they don't know what he looks like. She doesn’t like this idea. Meanwhile, very late at night (McGuffin, McGuffin, McGuffin) the veterinary doctor stops by to pick up the rest of the horse medicine because, as he said, it’s pretty dangerous stuff to leaving lying around. That’s a lot to swallow in the opening of this movie, including the terrible plot point of the doctor coming back late at night for the unused medicine. So perhaps you can see why my hopes aren’t high. The only thing we can know for sure is that Davis’ character hasn’t yet played all her cards. She’s obviously got plans within plans and it would be surprising if Bates (or Davis) make it out of this movie alive. I think the horse will though.  |
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 14, 2020 6:50:05 GMT -8
This next movie/British-propaganda film from 1945 is still very watchable: Journey Together. I doubt that British chaps were all so positive, enthusiastic, and congenial. But there is charm and interest in a story the flies below the level of big and bombastic battle scenes and grandiose action. This one basically follows the training of RAF cadets, centering mostly on a young Richard Attenborough who is mostly so awe-shucks chipper and positive that you want to slap him. But we so often get the opposite in today’s movies, there’s nothing wrong with the excess in the other direction and is actually nice for a change. Attenborough plays David Wilton, a young man who very much wants to become a pilot. He and other cadets are tested and sorted. When they make it through the first phase, they are then sent to America for further training where they meet up with The Nicest Flight Instructor You Will Ever See in the guise of Edward G. Robinson. Edward takes Wilton under his wing. Wilton is struggling to make it to his goal and needs a little extra help. Later we rides with the boys on a mission over Berlin. The graphics and special effects are not up to today’s standards but the personal (but not over-personal) emphasis does not let this film devolve into a simple roller-coaster-ride in the air. You get a glimpse of that human element, for better and for worse. Granted, the “worse” isn’t all that bad because this is, for all intents and purposes, a very pro-RAF film. But then Sir Winston was right to declare “Never was so much owed by so many to so few.” So maybe the exaggeration is milder than it appears. The RAF was full of truly great men, most of whom will never be known to us.  |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 14, 2020 6:53:19 GMT -8
By the way, Another Man's Poison with Bette Davis was horrible and basically unwatchable. It was dragged down by a fantastically stupid plot. I couldn't stay with hit.
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Post by timothylane on Mar 14, 2020 7:36:10 GMT -8
I checked in wikipedia, and I see that Wilton (unlike his good friend, a natural pilot) fails piloting and is sent to be a navigator. He's reluctant until he's sent on a practice flight and somehow it's arranged that he comes to realize how important his job is. (It doesn't take much of a navigational error to miss your target even when it's a big city like Berlin, especially at night when you might not see the other planes in the stream too well.) And then, navigating for his friend the pilot on an actual mission, his ability as a navigator will receive the ultimate test. (And, this being a propaganda film, he passes with flying colors.)
It sounds like it could be interesting, or as much as a propaganda film can be. At least it's a propaganda film in which we agree with the message.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 14, 2020 7:52:13 GMT -8
We are shown, through the case of Wilton, just how crucial a navigator is. There is some truth that, in regards to WWII bombers, the pilot was just the chauffeur for the people who did the real work.
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 16, 2020 7:23:40 GMT -8
I’m fairly sure I had seen this before but I let it roll again: In Which We Serve. This is a Noel Coward film that he writes, directs, and stars in. This 1942 film follows the story of the British destroyer H.M.S Torrin, from the laying of her keel to her eventual sinking by the Germans. Most of the film is done in flashback, telling the tale of the various lives of the people in the life raft with their captain after having abandoned ship. The flashback format can get tedious. But the film is ambitious so a lot can be forgiven. This was put out at the time to show what people were going through and I’m sure there was a great sense of camaraderie induced by showing the trials and tribulations of the everyman…including the lives of an officer or two, of course. The proper words, as one reviewer wrote, is that it is “a pastiche of British society during the second world war.” So it is indeed. This would have been a welcomed and unifying film at the time. A little more action and a little less of the domestic scenes would have been appreciated. The other Coward/David Lean collaboration is the excellent Brief Encounter which also features Celia Johnson. I’m not sure if that’s current playing on Amazon Prime Video but you will find In Which We Serve there.  |
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 16, 2020 7:36:42 GMT -8
1952’s Venetian Bird starts fairly well. A private eye comes to Venice on behalf of a French insurance company to find a man and to give him some money. It turns out that this man (who may have a very dodgy past during WWII) is dead. Or is he? Whatever the case may be, Edward Mercer (the private detective) gets mixed up on an Italian conspiracy of some type. And although Richard Todd (as Edward Mercer) hardly has the charisma of James Bond, he would have been serviceable enough had the story held together. But, alas, it does not. We go from a somewhat interesting uncover-it-as-y0u-go-along spy thriller to a movie that inserts very stupid plot points that makes it appear that new writers came in and/or they all just wanted to get this movie over with and move onto the next one. What could have been a tight, but obscure, spy thriller morphs into something laughably stupid at times. With Venice as a backdrop, how do you screw this up? Well, they did. Don’t bother with this one, even on a rainy day or if you’re stuck home in quarantine.  |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 20, 2020 8:26:05 GMT -8
The Kung Flu self-isolation movie marathon continues. Angel on My Shoulder. You can find this on Amazon Prime Video. This is actually pretty good and I recommend it. The caveat is that this is a very good (even masterful) performance by Paul Muni ina film that contains some characters who are sometimes awful and plot points that are b-movie, at best. Watch this one for Paul Muni, the bad guy who is inserted into the body of his Doppelgänger. Claude Rains plays Beelzebub. Rains is one of my favorite actors, particularly because he’s so good in the best movie of all time: Casablanca. But in this one, like so many other, Claude Rains plays Claude Rains and brings nothing to the part. If you squint, I guess it works here and there, but it’s still Claude Rains playing Claude Rains. Anne Baxter is suitably awful as Barbara Foster. But Muni somehow makes this all work because of his engaging and strong performance as gangster, Eddie Kagel, place into the body of a judge. A good rainy-day or virus movie.  |
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 20, 2020 8:59:01 GMT -8
The Evil Mind. You’ll also find this on Prime Video. This stars Claude Rains as a vaudevillian who pretends to have psychic powers. With his wife, Rene (Fay Wray), his act is one of those shticks whereby Rene is in the audience holding someone’s pocket watch and through coded language passes on the identity of the item to a blindfolded Maximus (Rains). But soon Rains starts having real psychic episodes of clairvoyance. And this movie works reasonable well until it derails into a rivalry between his wife and another women. All hopes of having a charming and spooky psychological drama are lost for good with the stupid court scene at the end. I give Rains much higher marks in this one than in Angel on my Shoulder. They really needed to take this to a better and more satisfying conclusion: Its is really safe for someone to foretell the future? Might not they begin to see this power as a curse? They take a stab at this, but it’s bled off in the dull and predictable rivalry between the two women and the dead-end courtroom scene at the end which suddenly hijacks the move. This could have been a much better picture. As one review said, “Rains makes a far-fetched story work.” Well, it sort of works. Should you watch this? I’m on the fence about that. If you like Claude Rains, by all means do watch it. But this production is low-budged and full of amateurism. One reviewer saw the same movie I did: Wray is good in this and brings a sparkle whenever she is on the screen. 
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Post by timothylane on Mar 20, 2020 9:55:18 GMT -8
Seeing the future can be a problem. How many people want to know when and how they will die if they can do nothing about it?
I once saw the tail end of a movie on this. A woman had strange dreams about disaster striking people. Her boyfriend tried to take advantage of this by selling the details to the possible victims so they can prevent them. Then they get into a fight, and in her final moments she has such a deadly premonition about him getting stabbed -- and dies before she can tell him when and where.
There was an episode of the 1980s Twilight Zone about a boy with the ability to tell the future. Everything goes fine until he sees that the end of the world is imminent, and there's nothing anyone can do to prevent it.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 24, 2020 7:35:34 GMT -8
More Noir delights to fill the void left by hysterical liberals over their reaction to flu season Last night’s feature film was Night and the City which can be found on the free TV Time: Feature Films channel. There are a few commercial interruptions but they are very short and usually involved just one commercial and (thus far in my experience) never more than two.. Richard Widmark plays a freaks-out-a-lot huckster who can’t be satisfied with living a 9-to-5 job, even if that’s all that the lovely Gene Tierney wants of him. Instead, Harry Fabian is falling for every get-rich-quick scheme that comes along. Someone this story morphs into a Greco-Roman wrestling movie (although a Noir one) with Charles Dreyfus none too happy to have another promoter muscling in on what is apparently his monopoly on the sport in London. But Fabian hustles Dreyfus’ father (an old-time Greco-Roman champ) to take on the top normal (freestyle?) wrestler of the day, The Strangler in a sort of "match of the century" in order to launch his new promotion company. Either Widmark deserves an Oscar for his performance or deserves an over-acting award. Sometimes both. But he is very intense in this and inserts 1500 volts into the Fabian character. He is so manic at times you have to wonder how an actor can find the ability to do that. Gene Tierney, on the other hand, is barely worth a spark and seems horrible miscast in this. Francis L Sullivan is terrific as the clip-joint owner who backs Fabian’s wrestling venture as a way to bring him down once and for all. He’s terrific in this as are a number of other minor characters. At the end of the day, you gotta see this one at least once. Even what I think is a pretty stupid ending (which I still don’t understand, and I’ve seen this more than once) can’t crush the pleasing Noir vibe of this classic film.  |
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Post by Brad Nelson on Mar 26, 2020 7:47:13 GMT -8
Here are a couple more films you can find for free on the TV Time: Feature Films. In Across the Atlantic, Bogie plays Rick Leland who gets involved in a spy thriller that mostly takes part on a ship headed for the Panama Canal. It’s a bit like Casablanca in the Canal Zone. Given that it repeats four actors from The Maltese Falcon (Bogart, Astor, Greenstreet, Hamilton), it shares some similarities with it as well. Sydney Greenstreet is terrific as the front for the Japanese. Unfortunately, Mary Astor is all wrong as the damsel-in-distress (or is she?) part of Alberta Marlow. There’s zero chemistry between her and Bogie. And she’s a pretty enough lady but she has one of the worst hairstyles I’ve ever seen on the silver screen for a classic star.  Another flaw of the movie is that it doesn’t take itself seriously. There’s too much of a Marx Brothers vibe to many of the characters, particularly the Japanese. I don’t mind racial stereotypes, particular in a war film. But if Major Strasser in Casablanca had been turned into a buffoonish caricature of a Nazi, the film would have lost the impact of realism. But somehow Bogart stays above the often mediocre material and keeps it interesting. However, this is another example of why John Huston is over-rated as a director. There is a distinct lack of wit, stylishness, and realism — the lack of which keeps this film from being sharper and more entertaining. This is a schlepped-out wartime film and looks like it. Still, it’s Bogie and is quite watchable. Next up is 1947’s Dead Reckoning. Whereas Across the Pacific could be said to be b+ movie material raised to the A-level by Bogart, Dead Reckoning is clearly b-movie material raised barely to a watchable level by the presence of Bogart. The plot isn’t so much convoluted as it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. It just seems to be a reason to keep Bogie on the move as he tries to find out what happened to his army friend who ran off right before receiving his Medal of Honor. It’s just a horrible and stupid premise to begin with and never really recovers. Lizabeth Scott shows why she’d never be a replacement for Lauren Becall (or perhaps anyone else) as she performs a cringingly bad nightclub-singer number. One reviewer writes “Worth watching if you like faux Chandler-type material.” That seems true enough. In the end, we don’t care about any of these characters, especially including they guy who went missing. It seems all for nothing. This is not one I’d recommend. Next up is The Big Shot. Bogie plays Joseph ‘Dude” Berne. This starts strong. Bogart is a three-time loser. One more conviction and he’ll be put away for life. But he’s approached by some of his old buddies to help knock over an armored car. Ah…a heist film! Well, part of it is. Irene Manning is pretty good as the triangular love interest. She’s nuts for Bogie but married a crooked lawyer while Bogie was serving one of his sentences. The scripting, and some of the characters, are not particularly sophisticated. There is the awful premise of the awe-shucks, just-got-caught-up-in-it-all George Anderson, played by Richard Travis. It’s a way to try to salvage Bogie’s criminality and give him a noble way out in the end. But it’s a cluster-fark of material and plotting. Still, any movie that shows Bogie breaking out of prison can’t be all bad. I think it’s more watchable than Dead Reckoning. When it is awful, it is awful in a more honest way. It also has some nice stunts and such. This movie is a good reminder that not everything Bogart appeared in was of quality. Still, it is watchable, if only to chuckle from time to time at some of the amateur-hour stuff. In the end, I did find it entertaining on many different levels. |
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