My July movie-watching I (1932-1954)
Aug 01 '05 (Updated Jun 05 '08)
The Bottom Line lots of noirs
My July movie-watching was dominated by preparation for making lists of the best noirs and the best post-WWII German movies, especially long in movies directed by Anthony Mann and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Onscreen, it was a dark and perilous July here. (Outside it was a very pleasant month with warmish days and cool nights.)
Chronologically by their initial release years:
The long-unavailable The Old Dark House (1932, directed by James Whale, 2.5 stars) is neither very funny nor very scary, but showcases Melvyn Douglas, Charles Laughton, Raymond Massey, and Gloria Stuart seeking shelter from a storm and having to deal with Boris Karloff, et al. It's not even close to being as entertaining as Whale's "The Bride of Frankenstein," although there are some fine b&w visual compositions.
Black Fury is not a blaxpolitation movie. It is a 1935 movie, directed by Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) focused on miners and mobsters. Paul Muni (Scarface, The Good Earth) plays (very broadly) Joe Radek, a slow-thinking and loudly blustering, but strong bohunkie" (Hungarian?) dupe for a conspiracy not so much to destroy the miners' union as to foment conflict that the conspirators can then be paid to repress. To make up for having led his friends into disaster, Joe eventually prevents anyone getting into the mine (the laxity of the security is more than a little hard to believe!). With less makeup than in some of his other roles, Muni's look is still manipulated: he has blond hair. He also has a very thick accent. The villains are cartoonish, the crowd scenes are remarkably dull, and the sentimentalizing of the good fellows is very heavy handed in one of the lesser Warner Brothers social problem flicks. (2.2 stars)
The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936,directed by Pare Lorentz, 4.4 stars) is the second movie I've ever watched for its musical score (by Virgil Thompson). The subject of this documentary is the causes of the 1930s dust bowl (see its title). It includes footage on the exodus from the Great Plains and more sparing narration than that for "The River," but still is repetitious .
The River (1937, directed by Pare Lorentz) is a documentary sponsored by the Farm Security Administration showing deforestation, soil erosion, flooding, and celebrating the Tennessee Valley Authority. The images of the Mississippi and its tributaries are striking and there is another splendid score by Virgil Thompson, but the narration is more than overbearing. 5 stars for the music and the images, 4 for editing, 1 for the script.
Strange Illusion (1945, directed by Edgar G. Ulmer, 2.7 stars) The suspicions of a college student (Jimmy Lydon) that his mother's (Sally Eilers) new romance (the very-dapper mustachioed Warren William) killed his father and an earlier wife lead him into an insane asylum run by a psychiatrist in the Dr. Caligari mode. I don't see the basis for Ulmer's posthumous reputation. The dream sequences are very hokey, the story is told with no particular flair or (especially for a B movie) speed. Warren William's performance is the only one of any subtlety (ham that he could be and was in other roles).
Two O'Clock Courage (1945, directed by Anthony Mann, 3 stars) Ann Rutherford is entertaining as a cab driver who takes on helping amnesiac murder suspect (Tom Conway). The plot involving theater people is quite convoluted, with Jane Greer beginning her femme fatale career. No indication of the Mann noirs soon to come other than Greer, but it's a fairly charming 66-minute B movie.
Sing Your Way Home (1945, 3.2 stars) An Anthony Mann musical comedy? (Even after the sort of "Thin Man" investigations of "Two O'Clocl Courage.) I knew he moved from noirs to westerns to epics, but even earlier was this movie set on an ocean voyage in which an egomaniacal war correspondent (Jack Haley) returns to the US as the chaperone of a group of young American entertainers who have also been out of the country for three years. No memorable songs (OK. Anne Jeffreys's singing "The Lord's Prayer") or great dance production numbers, but some wit. (And there are seven movies directed by Mann that were earlier still.)
The Bamboo Blonde (1946, directed by Anthony Mann, 3.5) is completely predictable, but enjoyable nonetheless. It harks backs to many 1930s screwball comedies in which the rich were shown to be not such bad folks, ready to accept even a nightclub singer, at least one obviously having a heart of gold. This is mixed with a making illusions real theme that has some similarities to Preston Sturges's "Hail the Conquering Hero" (though mixed with with his "Palm Beach Story" with Jane Greer as a latter-day Kay Francis as she was in "In Name Only"). Those fostering illusions include the Army Air Force and a glib nightclub promoter. There are too many songs (delivered by the title character, who's played by Frances Langford). Like many a noir, "Bamboo Blonde" is told in flashbacks, has a femme fatale (Jane Greer, just before "Out of the Past"), lots of nightclub scenes, and a multiply humiliated hero, but it's a romantic comedy with a little military comedy (and hoky combat scenes) and with no crimes.
"Die Morder sind unter uns" (The Murderers Are Among Us, 1946, written and directed by Wolfgang Staudte, 3.3 stars), the first post-WWII German film has visual continuity with the pre-Hitler crime dramas of Fritz Lang. Of interest as an early representation of Germans processing guilt for atrocities, it makes the slow re-emergence of German cinema even more puzzling.
Nightmare Alley (1947, directed by Edmund Goulding, 3.4 stars) is not a noir, what I was expecting, though it has a femme fatale and a chase through a carnival by night at the end. Having just played a sort of saint in "The Razor's Edge" (also directed by Goulding), Tyrone Power sunk his teeth into the role of a heel and fraudulent psychic. He shoulda played despicable characters more often (see "Witness for the Prosecution"). Still, the movie is too long, establishing the payoffs of the last quarter hour.
The Devil Thumbs a Ride (1947, directed by Felix E. Feist, 3.6 stars) is a lurid lesson on bad decisions about hitchikers (and drivers!) with a gleeful vicious turn by Lawrence Tierney and an especially wise-cracking blonde one by Betty Lawford. It races along, clocking in at 62 minutes. It doesn't look particularly noirish (though shot at night, most of it takes places within a car) but has a vicious villain and some startling black comedy. (And a great title!) I have reviewed this movie (not in the epinions database) at http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/806485/the_devil_thumbs_a_ride_a_1947_mix.html?cat=40)
After the tedious introduction, T-Men (1947) is the best of the 1940s Anthony Mann movies I've seen. Having US Treasury agents (Dennis O'Keefe and Alfred Ryder) as its heroes, there is not the ambivalence of real noirs, though they go undercover into very murky waters. Wallace Ford is outstanding as "The Schemer." The whole noir syntax of unease is deployed by master cinematographer John Alton. (4.3 stars)
Raw Deal (1948, directed by Anthony Mann, 4.2 stars) is also not prototypically a noir in being mostly nonurban in setting, though it has a cowardly bully, Rick Cole played by Raymond Burr, ensconsed in what is supposed to be San Francisco as Joe Sullivan (Dennis O'Keefe) heads his way. It is unusual in having the voice-over narration coming from a woman (Claire Trevor as Pat). It fails to make any use of a stuffed bear in its first big fight scene (though O'Keefe initially mistakes it for Burr). Neither of the two women smitten by Joe is a femme fatale. John Alton provided more exemplary noir cinematograhy.
The Street with No Name (1948, directed by William Keighley, 4.1 stars) has an oustanding turn from Richard Widmark as a neurotic gang leader and outstanding noirishcinematography from Joe MacDonald in one of the movies J. Edgar Hoover cooperated with to glorify himself and the FBI.
Thieves' Highway (1949, directed by Jules Dassin, 4.2 stars) is an interesting, noirish movie about truckers and corrupt wholesale produce middlemen, shot on the San Francisco waterfront (and Santa Rosa, and Altamont Pass).
Devil's Doorway (1950, 3.9 stars) Anthony Mann's first western starred dealt with the often-portrayed battle between homesteaders and cattle ranchers. The twist was that the cattle baron was a Shoshone—and a twist on the twist was the he was played with heavy makeup by Robert Taylor. Less surprising is that the vicious villain was (a) a lawyer and (b) played by Louis Calhern at his most dastardly. Opposing counsel was a woman on the frontier (played by Paula Raymond). The treatment of the Native Americans, including a Civil War veteran who won the Congressional Medal of Honor it painful to watch. In addition to being an early Hollywood representation of the mistreatment of Native Americans, the movie is notable for a bar fight in which the pain is not stylized away.
Thunder Bay (1953, directed by Anthony Mann) has 5-star cinematography of the Gulf of Mexico and Morgan City, Louisiana and one of the obsessive beyond the point of crankiness James Stewart performances Mann regularly elicited from James Stewart. The two love interests barely register as individuals and the story is both predictable and very hoky (2-star or less).
Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (1954, directed by Jacques Becker, 4.7 stars) resurrected the career of Jean Gabin, began that of Lino Ventura, and advanced that of a nearly unrecognizably young Jeanne Moreau. The compositions, both visual and narrative, are so good that one almost needs to watch the whole movie over again fully to appreciate what Becker wrought.
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I saw so many movies in July (including one titled "In July") that my jottings on them won't fit in one epinion!
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