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Re: I came looking for "Arsenic and Old Lace" here (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
You are welcome, Jason.
ARSENIC AND OLD LACE is pleasant enough, a record of the greatest farce in the history of the American Theater. Curiously enough, it was turned down by almost every Broadway producer, and the playwright never wrote another successful play.
Just as curious, the speech you so admire in THE GREAT DICTATOR was considered a flaw by many contemporary critics. You might also want to explore the fascinating life of Robert Metzger, Chaplin's assistant director, who is credited with some of the film's most effective sequences.
I hope you will sample some of my other picks, if you have not already done so.
Regards, friend.
Alex
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Jun 27 '11
10:28 pm PDT
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I came looking for "Arsenic and Old Lace" here (Reply to this comment)
by thewasp
but that was not a great film. "The Great Dictator" is and I was very glad to see it included here. I consider the speech at the end to be absolutely immortal.
Sincerely,
Jason
(thewasp)
P. S. Thank you for friending me on Facebook.
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Jun 27 '11
2:48 pm PDT
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Re: The Killers (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Dear Jan: I'm glad you liked THE KILLERS. It is a picture I can watch every so often as if it were new. It has such a classic sense of fatality about it.
Yes, DOUBLE INDEMNITY is an oversight, but I said that I was putting emphasis on comedies, and so, there were sacrifices.
Thank you for the comment.
[Macresarf1]
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Sep 29 '03
9:43 am PDT
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The Killers (Reply to this comment)
by jankp
Recently enjoyed that one. Have meant to watch Walter Mitty for so long. I'll see if it's at netflix. This seems a thorough list, but what about Double Imdemnity?
Jan
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Sep 28 '03
12:54 pm PDT
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Re: I'm back---yet again, it seems ... (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Dear Brandon: I have already seen the runes of your return, and given you some note.
I doubt we shall ever see a period in the movies like the 1940's again. In fact, as you suggest, the 1970's may be it's only rival. Sixty years on from now, the cyborgs will be staging the "realies," and our grand children and great grand children are scheduled for prominent roles.
Nice to see you back, in such salubrious condition.
Regards.
[Macresarf]
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Sep 28 '03
12:10 pm PDT
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I'm back---yet again, it seems ... (Reply to this comment)
by brandon_m
Ah yes---a best films of the decade listing. I myself did this for the '80s. Just click on my name to read what you rad many months back.
Very interesting, throughally enjoyable read. No doubt, for mainstream hollywood filmmaking, the '40s were as seminal & as important and the independant film scene was to '70s.
Now armed with a better paying job and more financial support, a beautiful understandin' wife and way too much free time on my hands, the main horror reviewer of Epinions is back to give my thoughts on low budget wounders, zombic 'epics' and dime store slasher flicks with subtext that probably isn't there as mucha s most horror writers who read into them think they are.
Never let it be said I don't go out of my way for the few fans I have. Take care now ...
- Brandon Middleton
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Sep 27 '03
5:00 pm PDT
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Re: Re: Re: The one (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Dear Stephen: I think what is remarkable about John Huston (or in a different way, Michael Curtiz) is that no one ever called him "a genius." He was never regarded an Eisenstein, a Welles or a John Ford, but he was able, over a long career, to make a remarkable number of very good films in several genres.
ROOTS OF HEAVEN is definitely an exception. Strange financing, difficult locations and a varied cast created a mess under Huston's hand.
Now, Picture by Lillian Ross is one of the first serious, first seriously regarded, American studies of the making of a film. What Ross, one of the Eastern intelligentsia, neglects to appreciate is that Huston was, at the time, a studio director under contract to MGM; his father had been a major character star for 20 years. Huston knew the system. She faults him for not fighting the cut of 20 minutes from the climax of his film, but he knew that the wonder was that Louis B. Mayer had even allowed him to make an MGM movie without a major star in it, without a love interest. It is indeed a "might have been."
On the other hand, though it begins awkwardly, in my estimation, THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING is a splendid film. It represents faithfully and vividly Kipling's "love-hate" relationship toward empire in general, and the British Empire in particular. In its caution to egalitarian imperialists, THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING is a picture which George W. Bush, our Daniel Dravot/Fred C. Dobbs of the moment, should view every evening.
I don't know if you have read my review of the above picture, but if you have read my piece on "The Battle of San Pietro," you should know that I share your concerns about it. However, my thumbnail here, touches on both points you raise. Huston, Eric Ambler and Jules Buck shot much of this documentary (and much that was cut out) in no man's land between the opposing American and German forces. He was adopting the combat photography methods of Robert Capa.
Huston was revolted by the sentimentality of the addition of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to his footage of the people emerging after the battle, and he told the officers in charge that. The suggestion that God had a special providence for us went against everything he had shown in the film.
I'll trade you what was cut out of "The Battle of Midway" for what John Ford (a wonderful but truly sentimental director) left in "The Battle of Midway."
I don't think John Huston was a genius, but he was a damn good director, his own man, and he won more artistic battles than he lost, by far.
Enough.
Before this armchair battle of critics becomes too ridiculous --
Ever eat at "Joe's Fish House," down the Mission? If not, try it. Might help you recover from your recent LEGAL SEAFOOD experience in Boston.
Regards.
[Macresar1]
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Sep 24 '03
9:50 am PDT
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Re: Re: The one (Reply to this comment)
by Stephen_Murray,  in Movies
Lillian Ross's book on the making of "Red Badge of Courage" (and recent viewing of "Roots of Heaven" and "The Man Who Would be King") make me more suspicious of Huston's genius. Maybe the director's cut of "San Pietro" was a masterpiece, but what's available is mostly sentimental shots of children and battle scenes that seem far more remote from danger than those in "The Battle of Midway" (BTW, the incredibly racist mockumentary about Japanese Hawaiian subversion was made by Greg Toland and toned down by Ford).
Eisenstein had to deal with heavy-handed bureaucrats, too, and if "might have beens" are on lists of the best, why not "Ivan the Terrible, Part III"? or von Sternberg's "I, Claudius" with Charles Laughton?
(And, yeah, I eat often in the Mission (Nicaragua, Can Cun, Lotus Garden--all further south than the Mission Bar and Grill.)
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Sep 23 '03
12:41 pm PDT
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Re: You put a heck of a lot of work in this (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Dear JAGUARDOG: You raise an interesting aesthetic question. Unlike a typical Western kid, who has had his sensibilities blunted on bad TV, and movies thrown together around his most base interests, you came to Movies in mid-prime. What might we learn from a thousand individuals like you about appreciating movies?
In addition to books, pictorial art and sculpture, the Movies and Jazz are Art forms that have been captured for the future as they were made. And they are new forms, for which there is little historical perspective. We don't know exactly how Shakespeare's plays were presented and received. We don't know what it was like to hear Mozart's music as it was first played. But forgiving the deterioration which comes to all things with time, we can hear Duke Ellington or see Chaplin's or Ford's films pretty much as they were created.
All classics, by definition, win the title by appealing to generation after generation.
If you went through the hundred or more films I have listed [almost all of them available on tape or DVD), what would you (and 999 like yourself) say about them?
What would be your groups consensus on The 10 Best Movies of the 1940's?
Get cracking, JAGUARDOG!
Thank you for the praise.
[Macresarf1]
P.S. -- It was not so much the time it took to gather the information, but the time required to reconstruct it all, when my computer acted funny. That always depresses me. M.
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Sep 20 '03
2:35 pm PDT
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Re: Umm... yeah. Wow. (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Thanks, Brian. I trust that you will find some of these worthwhile.
Regards.
[Macresarf1]
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Sep 19 '03
3:47 pm PDT
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Re: The one (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Dear Stephen: I invite you to read my full review, which gives a pretty thorough account of the film and its making. "The Battle of San Pietro" and also Huston's THE RED BADGE OF COURAGE are like Welles' THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS, great movies destroyed by censorship and supervisorial judgment gone amok.
The original ". . . San Pietro," nearly 90 minutes in length, was cut to a bit over a half hour because it was too gory for the sponsoring senior officers. In other words, it was not patriotic to show American soldiers being cut down in rather foolish frontal assaults. (There are films made over two years ago, even more remotely offensive, which are only being seen now because of a similar squeamishness. And as I look at the papers today, casualty figures obviously still being doctored. It's not good for a democracy to fool itself.) I guess "The Battle of San Pietro" is on my list as a kind of artistic casualty of World War II.
John Ford's "Battle of Midway" may be a better film, but it is a true short, about 18 minutes. Pictorially, in color, it has some spectacular shots (some taken personally by Ford), the significance of the battle much greater, perhaps, but there is a distance to it. Though it may be merely relative, no matter the danger, these sailors, if their ships survived, washed themselves clean in salt water showers. They did not wade through mud and rock dust, and blood for days, as the 143 Infantry Regiment did at San Pietro.
I can't remember what the narration was in "The Battle of Midway," but Ford's unit was capable of hokum and sentitmentality, too. (Do you remember Uncle Sam (Walter Huston) sitting around in Hawaii when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor in Ford's "December 7th"?) As a matter of fact, the speech he had to write for General Mark Clark to one side, Huston's narration, in my memory, is low keyed and laconic. As I stipulate, he was not responsible for the addition of the Mormon Taberbacle Choir. (Even there, heavenly music has been more obscenely applied in movies.)
Huston was a captain. Ford was a rear-admiral!
You have to remember, too, though the distinction is now blurred, Rosellini's OPEN CITY, PAISAN and GERMANY: YEAR ZERO are powerful neo-realistic films, some taken on the spot, parts of OPEN CITY in the moment, but they are not, in terms of the 1940's, Documentaries.
Finally, note that I did not say, all the films I list in the prologue are the best films, only that they might be considered so by some.
KEEPER OF THE FLAME, though it goes lame in the end, is George Cukor's version of CITIZEN KANE, applied to a political figure (probably based on Senator Bankhead, Tallulah's father). It is, in its structure and atmosphere, a rare film for its time. We did not question our political leaders in 1943. KEEPER OF THE FLAME suggests that an American political leader and "patriot" is capable of being secretly a fascist.
Incredible stuff, in 1943!
The more I think of it, what a re-make might KEEPER OF THE FLAME be if applied to the life of Senator Prescott Bush! or even his son and grandsons!
Must think about that some more.
Thank you, Stephen, for another stimulating comment.
[Macresarf1]
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Sep 19 '03
1:23 pm PDT
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You put a heck of a lot of work in this (Reply to this comment)
by JAGUARDOG
Fantastic job and I'll bet it took many days of hard work to put this together. I have only ever seen 3 in your Top 10 and about 20 altogether. Even though I am 52 I really was never into Movies like I am now till I was about 40 I would guess. I have also never got into watching the old, old, old movies (sorry - lol) much either maybe I just care much for the B&W type not sure. Once again fantastic job on your list.
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Sep 19 '03
12:59 pm PDT
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Re: Just had a chance (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Dear George: You might be impressed by "The Battle of San Pietro," even in the butchered version going the rounds, given your Father's connections to the 36th Division. (The 143 Infantry Regiment and some "Texas Rangers" took San Pietro. Was your Dad in either of those outfits?) Yes, 29 bucks is a lot for a 30-odd minute movie. Perhaps, they will find the 60 minutes of it that was cut. Now there is a job for a film restorer!
Well, George, as I explained, I hammered the list together after losing my first one. I rather think there may have been a couple of different choices on the original list, but I tried to give it variety, and emphasize the genres and issues of the time.
Glad you liked the list as it stands.
Regards, as always.
[Macresarf1]
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Sep 19 '03
11:55 am PDT
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Umm... yeah. Wow. (Reply to this comment)
by voxpoptart
See, my top seven movies list of the 1940s goes (alphabetically) Blithe Spirit, the Body Snatchers, Citizen Kane, His Girl Friday, Miracle on 34th Street, the Philadelphia Story, and Rope. That's because other than a Capra movie I hated, those are the only seven films on this list that i've seen (I liked all of them, with Citizen Kane certainly being my #1 among them). I have, however, now added four of your top ten to my queue, so we'll see how it goes from there. Excellent piece!
- Brian
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Sep 19 '03
11:22 am PDT
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The one (Reply to this comment)
by Stephen_Murray, in Movies
I've seen most recently is the one I'd challenge: "The Battle of San Pietro." It seems very hokey and sentimental to me and the combat footage isn't as good as Ford's "Battle of Midway." Rosselini's "Open City," "Paisá," and "Germany Year Zero" all seem superior to it and are free of the sententious narration.
Some of the lists in your preamble are hackwork, too. Cukor's "Keeper of the Flame," to take another instance from my recent viewing.
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Sep 19 '03
9:48 am PDT
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Just had a chance (Reply to this comment)
by George_Chabot, in Movies
to buy BATTLE OF SAN PIETRO, the story of the 36th Division, but declined as it was $29.95 on VHS shipping. My dad served in the 36th during WWII but was a later replacement in the French Campaign. Audie L. Murphy was the most famous member of that bunch.
Some great choices, Alex; Mr. Scratch, Huston, Ford, Hawks, etc., etc. How did you narrow it down? Still need to catch up with THE RED SHOES. Very enlightening, as always! Your bud,
George
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Sep 19 '03
9:11 am PDT
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