xan-the-crawford-fan's Reviews

Lady of the Night (1925)

6/10

13 November 2021

While not a masterpiece in the true sense of the word, Lady Of The Night is a masterpiece in ways that you wouldn't expect. The story is predictable, yes, and the intertitles aren't the best, but acting and the mood captured in the film as a whole are splendid.

A prisoner only gets to see his daughter for a little while before he is imprisoned again. The judge who sentences him has a daughter the same age. Eighteen years pass, and the two girls grow up. One is kind, sweet and respectable Florence. The other is loud, bawdy (and implied to be a prostitute) Molly. Neither of them know each other until an inventor named David comes into their lives. He likes Molly as a friend, but she falls in love with him. When he meets Florence, their love goes both ways. It is not hard to guess what happens next.

I revisited this film after immersing myself in Norma Shearer films, good and bad. This one is, I believe, one of her best performances. The amazing part is that Molly and Florence are not twins, but rather completely different women. They come from different classes, and that is made very clear. They have hopes, desires, and romances. You can root for both characters, as the writers didn't go down the very clichéd "one is good and one is evil" route. Neither of them are evil. There is just a difference in social standing. Florence is the daughter of a respected judge. Molly lives in the gutter. Joan Crawford made her film debut as the body double for Shearer in some scenes- in the scene where the two women meet in the car, she's the tawdry one. I only wonder if Norma Shearer could see that she'd have some competition in the future, even at that moment.

Neither of the male leads are all that interesting. Malcom McGregor as David captures the hearts of both women, and you can see why. Naturally, the one he ends up with causes the other one heartbreak, but there is a reason for this. George K. Arthur as Chunky, Molly's baby-faced (literally- he looks about eleven years old) boyfriend, is perhaps only there for some comic relief. Some of it is actually funny and some of it is just tiresome.

Monta Bell is a wizard behind the camera. He uses different colour tinted film for different scenes- the scenes with Molly (except at the beginning) are amber, the ones with Florence purple, and to show the night, he uses dark blue. There are lots of good shots to look for, lots of shots that mean more than they seem to show. Hidden emotions captured subtly. The print is in very good condition considering its age- very little crackling and acid damage. I am not sure if any scenes were lost (maybe), but if they were, it does not affect the telling of the story.

This is such a well-made film, with well done acting. If only there were a substantial plot to be encased in this, but there isn't. However, it is not tedious, and it is not tired. My rating for this one is only 6.4/10, but despite that, I do recommend it.

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Night Must Fall (1937)

7/10

Night Must Rise

12 November 2021

There are several golden age films I can think of where they start with a bang and sort of fizzle out about halfway through. Night Must Fall is just the opposite of that. If you don't stay with it and turn it off before the first forty minutes, you're missing out on a damn good movie.

A missing woman has caused a buzz in a small village- pretty sure it's in England, but they don't say. A charming stranger, liked by everyone, has a few secrets of his own, including a hat box that he carries around. He charms his way into an (rich) old woman's life, but when the missing woman's headless body is found, the people in the house of the old woman begin to grow suspicious.

This film was based on a stage play by Emlyn Williams (he wrote The Corn Is Green, which was also adapted into a good movie), and it never quite loses its stage origin, but that does not affect the telling of the story...for the most part. As mentioned above, the first forty minutes are very dull and talky. But good acting and a none-too-intrusive score (there is actually no score in most parts of the film) keep it shuffling along. The revealing of the killer may not be a surprise to anyone who's seen these kinds of movies before, but it had me guessing right until the very end.

Robert Montgomery is terrific as Danny, the charming psychopath. Completely smashing typecasting, he proves that not only could he act, he could also do it well. His descent into both paranoia and mental illness is pretty much seamless, save for right at the end- he screams a bit too much. His Irish accent is very impressive, especially for an American actor- they can never do British accents convincingly, but he did. He was nominated for an Oscar this year, and he should have won.

Dame May Whitty is very fun as the niece-hating charmed-by-Danny old widow. She also gives a very good performance, despite not having much more than your average "bitchy old aunt" characterization to work with- yet one could argue that she does. Rosalind Russell I felt was very miscast in her role as the skeptical niece Olivia- she didn't click with me the way that the rest of the cast did. Perhaps it was because her character seemed to be the weakest written, all smart and confident one moment and all shy and defensive the second. Prototypical Roz and Atypical Roz did clash quite a bit while Russell was seemingly deciding how to play her character. It was not until the second half of the film that she actually started to make an impression. (I can see a Rebecca-era Joan Fontaine in her role, but Joan Fontaine was not an established star yet.) The rest of the actors are alright.

This is an M-G-M production, but the studio refrains from adding too much glitz and glamour to the set design and costumes. There are no fancy Adrian gowns, no sprawling Art Deco sets. Montgomery's break of typecasting made sure of that. They have also made sure not to inevitably make the two top-billed leads fall in love with each other, although some of the stupid decisions Roz's character makes in the second act (why did she claim the hat box was hers suddenly?) may indicate otherwise. There is a deliciously creepy mood to the film, not one that will make you scream and cry, but rather one that will make you check the locks on the doors and maybe throw a glance over your shoulder.

Overall, I recommend this film, even with a tedious beginning and a miscast main actress. It more than delivers in the end, and if it were set in America, it could be considered an early film noir.

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Design for Living (1933)

7/10

These three

2 November 2021

In Paris, a woman gets on a train with two sleeping men. They do not notice she is there until she falls asleep and they wake up, but introductions soon follow. Gilda (they pronounce it Jill-da) Farrell (Miriam Hopkins), a commercial artist, is the woman, and George (Gary Cooper) and Thomas (Frederic March), a painter and a playwright, are the men. In a typical 30s comedy move, George and Thomas both fall in love with Gilda, but in an atypical 30s comedy move, Gilda falls in love with both of them as well. Gilda's friend Max (Edward Everett Horton) does not like either George or Tom, and wants to protect Gilda from what may happen.

After a bit of fighting, they (Gilda, Tom, George) enter a "gentleman's agreement", where both of the men share Gilda (read: a threesome), but she's just there to critique their work, and there is no sexual contact between the three. Unfortunately for this agreement, Tom gets a play published and goes to London to open it. Gilda and George are left alone for a long time, and it's implied that she becomes his mistress- she appears to have chosen her man. However, when Tom comes back, George is gone, and Tom goes to see Gilda. Tom spends the night at Gilda's apartment (you can guess what activities went on)-- but George comes home early. A fight happens, George reluctantly lets Tom and Gilda go together, but Gilda sneaks out the back while the two are busy arguing. Max then marries Gilda, as he thinks that she has been rid of the two, but are they still there in Gilda's heart? What will happen next? Watch the film.

On paper, the character of Gilda is not a very likable woman. She keeps two men tied to her (there's another one in the beginning), and is more than happy to toss one aside whenever the other isn't there. Likewise, my introduction to Miriam Hopkins wasn't very positive- she was introduced to me in Old Acquaintance (pure camp). Here, where she's allowed to do her own thing and doesn't have to succumb to crazed histrionics and over-overacting so as not to get stomped on by Bette Davis, she's quite good. She's not quite convincing as a woman who two men would give up everything for, but she's convincing as a woman that two men would agree to share.

Gary Cooper is much more energetic than usual as George- this may be one of the few times where the viewer has the privilege of seeing him have a temper tantrum on-screen. He was quite attractive at this point, even if he did mumble a lot. Frederic March is also quite handsome, in a sort of Dracula-esque way, and he is good here as well (actually like him a bit more after watching this film). Edward Everett Horton does his usual character, but here he isn't a sidekick to Fred Astaire. There aren't really any other important actors other than those four.

The film is very well directed, the sets are pleasing to the eye (even if the poor Paris apartment is your typical "Hollywood Paris" setpiece), and all of the cast is dressed nicely. Seeing as the release year was 1933, this is Pre-Code, but apart from the more frank discussions about sex (than usual) and Miriam's dress at the end, it's not noticeable.

While not an //amazing// comedy, and certainly not worthy of a Criterion release, it is above average and a very enjoyable watch from start to finish, thanks to the charms of the actors and the slightly unpredictable story.

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Remember the Night (1939)

8/10

Nice little Christmas movie

30 October 2021

Lee Leander (Barbara Stanwyck) is a woman who gets caught shoplifting, right in the middle of the holiday season. John Sargent (Fred MacMurray) aims to have her prosecuted, but decides to resume court proceedings after the holiday so that Lee does not have to spend Christmas in jail. Initially indifferent to Lee, John takes her on a road trip after discovering that both of them are from the same state. After Lee's mother basically tells her to get lost, John takes Lee with him to his family, where she discovers true warmth, kindness, and family love. Another kind of love is brewing between Lee and John, but will the impending court date squash their relationship? Watch the film.

Barbara Stanwyck gives a very fine, if one of her typical "tough dame" performances as Lee, making her character seem very realistic, although I couldn't help but notice that Lee is mentioned to be poor (living in hotels, a life of stealing) quite a lot, yet Stanwyck is always dressed to the nines- furs, shoulder pads, feathers and the like. That bothered me when I first started to watch the film, but I ignored it as the story drew me in.

Fred MacMurray gives one of his usual honest performances as well, and I really don't mean that in a bad way. He has amazing chemistry with Barbara Stanwyck, to the point where you can tell their characters are going to fall in love before it even happens. Character actress Beulah Bondi plays MacMurray's mother, and she is pretty food as well. The rest of the actors were quite well cast as well, although- and I'm not one to focus heavily on this kind of thing- the portrayal of John's servant right at the beginning was rather racist, and it kind of turned me off a bit. He was off the screen quickly, so more sensitive viewers can just fast-forward ten minutes or so and go back to watching the film.

Since this is a Christmas movie (a fact of which I was not aware until I started watching the film), expect the standard amount of cheese, slight plot idiosyncrasies, a happy-sappy resolution, and an underlying message. This film has all of those, although not in as large of an amount as something like It's A Wonderful Life. The plot is quite good, actually, and handled very well (it helps that Preston Sturges was having an "on" day when he wrote the screenplay.) The dialogue is slightly cheesy in some spots, as can be expected as well, but there's no going on about the magic of Christmas and angels getting wings and morals and so on. Did feel that the film was oddly directed, the director nearly always (make that always always) opting for a fadeout to end a scene and cutting some scenes too short.

Not sure of what genre this film was supposed to be exactly- comedy, dramedy or full-on melodrama. It seemed most like a dramedy, because of the plot and the way it was handled, yet there were quite a few sight gags and amusing moments. Once it got going, this film was an enjoyable experience right to the finish.

Overall, quite heavily recommended. Would have given this nine stars out of ten, but the shoddy directing made me drop it to an eight. Remember The Night was a much better film than I thought it would be- wasn't expecting much going in.

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Mourning Becomes Electra (1947)

2/10

"I'm not asking God or anyone else to forgive me! I forgive myself!"

26 October 2021

Warning: Spoilers

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why I decided to watch this film. Maybe I wanted to be one of the rare reviewers who actually //enjoyed// Mourning Becomes Electra. But the truth is, there just isn't much to enjoy. It isn't even much fun as camp. Eugene O'Neill was a good playwright, but his plays don't adapt well to film (dude also needed a stopwatch- this play is eleven acts on stage.)

The story opens with three people gossiping with the housekeeper about the Mannon family and how messed up they are. It seems that the grandfather of the house had kicked one of his sons (there's no picture of him on the wall) out of his life because he got a common girl pregnant out of wedlock. The story goes that the grandfather then built the house that the current Mannons live in out of spite. Suprise- the current Mannons are just as messed up as the old crop.

Lavinia (Rosalind Russell) walks in on her mother Christine (Katina Paxinou) kissing a much younger man named Captain Brandt (Leo Genn), a man who we presume she had set her sights on. Lavinia begins to conspire ways to expose her, as her mother is still married, but Lavinia's father Ezra (Raymond Massey) is still away at war. Ezra comes back and dies quickly (at the hands of Christine) soon after, and we also find out that Brandt is the son of that Mannon brother and the common girl.

Then the poor brother Orin (Michael Redgrave) comes home and gets warnings from his mother against his sister, saying that she's insane, and more warnings from his sister against his mother, saying that the mother is just using him against her. Lavinia takes Orin on a casual snooping trip to Brandt's ship, where Orin is shown that in fact Christine //is// guilty of murder and she //is// having an affair. Worse comes to worst soon after when Orin shoots and kills Brandt. When Christine finds out, she shoots and kills herself. What happens next is that Orin becomes bitter and angry and Lavinia becomes a sort of psychopath, damaging the lives of others as well as themselves- Orin ends up killing himself and Lavinia completely descends into paranoia and mental illness. But what did you expect from a Eugene O'Neill play? 😏

Rosalind Russell is both too old and not the right kind of actress for her role (paging Joan Crawford or Bette Davis!). She (Roz) had done drama and filmed stage plays well before, but in this one, she seems to have forgotten how to act and instead chooses to overact, bugging her eyes out every moment that she can (cue dramatic soap opera music). Katina Paxinou is even worse than Roz. With her thick Greek accent, two-thirds of what she says is incomprehensible, and it doesn't help that she alternates between screeching her lines and muttering her lines. Michael Redgrave dissolves into monologue after monologue as Orin, Leo Genn as Brandt is no better- neither is Raymond Massey as Ezra- and the only main character saved from this web of over-overacting is Henry Hull, who plays Seth the gardener. Small roles are given to Nancy Coleman and Kirk Douglas, as Hazel and Peter, the respective love interests of Orin and Lavinia. They also seem to be the only actors who know what they're doing.

Lavinia is a character you should feel sorry for, because of her descent into illness and her inability to find happiness, but she's not written to be a likable character- the rest of the characters are just despicable. The film as a whole, partially due to its two hour and thirty-eight minute runtime (dragged out to feel so m u c h l o n g e r) and the uncomfortable, to the point of almost making the viewer feel sick, subject matter (they were allowed to make films like this in 1947?)

Anyone who watched this film all in one go is seriously powerful- it took me a week to get all the way through because I felt so uncomfortable watching the film. I'm not the only person on this board who has that point of view. This film is messed-up, prickly, squirmy, and times almost physically sickening. The house set is impressive, engulfing the viewers and at the same time adding to the general claustrophobic feel of this film- I should appreciate the set design, but I felt like it was going to swallow me whole. Pretty sure the story is set in the Civil War era, as all the women are in hoop skirts and everyone is in horse-drawn carts. One character also mentions Lincoln's assassination.

Overall, I regret subjecting myself to the torture that was Mourning Becomes Electra. It makes Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You In The Closet And I'm Feeling So Sad (which I also gave two stars) look like a great film. Please do not watch this- hence why I wrote such a detailed plot summary. Unless you want to, then I can't stop you, but it won't be a good idea, unless you liked The Lion In Winter/ The Anniversary (also uncomfortable family stories). 😑

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Torch Song (1953)

4/10

Joan, what? Why? How?

25 October 2021

Warning: Spoilers

A combination of badly curated, poorly made camp and drama that's actually quite decent (considering how bad I thought it was going to be), Torch Song is at times a good film and at times a terrible one. It's filled with problems that could have easily been solved. It turned Joan Crawford into Joan Caricature, but it also showed that she was in control of her screen image. Most of the camp lies in the musical numbers, which if they had been cut would have made this quite a decent film. It's far from Joan's worst film, but certainly not her best. At least it's only an hour and a half.

Jenny Stewart (Joan Crawford) is a Broadway hellion- uh, star- who terrorizes everyone except for her (teenage?) fans. She's tough, jaded, and lonely, but she'd never admit the last one, with a much younger boyfriend (Gig Young), who basically puts up with her temper tantrums and violent outbursts.

When a blind pianist named Ty Graham (Michael Wilding) comes into her life, Jenny is not amused, and almost instantly has him fired, but then un-fires him after going to his apartment, and it turns out that he wants her. What? After one odd scene of boredom where she pretends to be blind (why), Jenny's mom comes to visit, and Jenny has a party where everyone there is male (ego?), which disbands quickly when people start asking her questions about Ty.

When Jenny eventually does meet up with Ty, he tells her that he feels sorry for her, and she roars at him that he //must// go to Philadelphia with her, and there's a big ol' argument. He tells her that she will end up a drunken, lonely alcoholic (foreshadowing for the real Joan?), and Jenny goes back to her mother again. It turns out that Ty wrote a glowing article about Jenny in a show many years before, and Jenny reminisces. What happens next? You can guess.

Joan Crawford is maybe acting, maybe not as Jenny Stewart- it depends on what details you believe about her life-- but whatever you believe or not, it's amazing how she managed to utter all of this dialogue with a straight face--- sober. She doesn't look as much like a drag queen here as she did in some other films of this period (Johnny Guitar, Female On The Beach), and while her singing and dancing aren't what they used to be, she should not have been dubbed by India Adams. Crawford was never a singer to begin with, but it's common sense that a forty-eight-year-old alcoholic and smoker would not sound like India Adams, who was the dubber for Cyd Charisse (who was in her mid twenties).

Also, why at around 40:12 does she have an earring in her hair? No one explains this, she doesn't notice it, and she goes to Ty's apartment with that earring still stuck in her hair- you can tell Michael Wilding looks like he really wants to yank it out so that she doesn't make a fool of herself.

Michael Wilding is a rather bland leading man in a rather bland role, and that's made even more evident by the fact that he has zero chemistry with his leading lady. Gig Young has zero chemistry with Joan as well- in fact, Joan has better chemistry with the actress who plays her mother (Marjorie Rambeau) than she does with either of her leading men. Nice to see Maidie Normand as Jenny's secretary, although I'm not sure how she deserved a role in this production.

The set design is very campy (read: very fifties), and so are most of Joan's costumes. In spite of all of its flaws, the film is well directed, but of course there's that infamous one number where everyone decides to wear blackface for no reason, and yeah, it's worse than they say it is. Don't watch the screen about 62-67 minutes in, or that image will be burned into your brain forever. I know that I'll have to wash my head out after seeing it. Yikes. 😬 Just yikes. It practically exemplifies why I think all of the musical numbers should have been cut- I'm honestly surprised that Joan wasn't tanked when this number was filmed. Although it was the sparkles in her eyebrows that did it for me. 😑

This isn't really a film that one recommends- rather, it's a film that one stumbles on by accident. A box set I owned had this film, so I had to watch it, and I'm not saying I'm glad that I did, but it wasn't unwatchable. Just strange viewing.

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Sadie McKee (1934)

8/10

Above average "Working Crawford" pic

25 October 2021

Sadie McKee (Joan Crawford) is a cook's daughter. She runs away from home to marry her sweetheart Tommy (Gene Raymond), despite protesting and ribbing from the son of the family she works for, lawyer Michael (Franchot Tone). They (Sadie and Tommy) get an apartment of their own and all seems to be going well. Trouble is, Tommy's overheard singing and whisked off by an entertainer named Dolly (Esther Ralston), essentially standing Sadie up at the altar.

Sadie then takes a job at a nightclub, where wealth practically falls in her lap- a rich alcoholic by by name of Jack Brennan (Edward Arnold). Jack's alcoholism is a burden to Sadie, who makes it her duty to run him dry. She succeeds at that, but can't quite hide another thing- she still loves Tommy. Jack agrees to give her the divorce, but Tommy's got some troubles of his own. What are they? Will they get back together? Watch the film.

Joan Crawford gives an honest portrayal of a hard-working young woman with her turn as Sadie McKee. This was still the Pre-Code era, but tastes were changing, so instead of using her body and good looks to get a better life, riches just happen to come to her by coincidence. Seeing as this is an M-G-M production, Joan is given lots of sumptuous gowns to wear, and she rocks every one. It's films like this that I recommend to people when they tell me that Crawford couldn't act. (This film is also the one they used in What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? To show that Blanche was a good actress.)

Gene Raymond is a rather colourless actor and a slightly-more-than-mediocre singer, but he's attractive, and there's a certain quality that he has that makes him believable as a love interest for Joan Crawford. They're a very cute couple. Edward Arnold is good as rich drunk Brennan, even if his role does eventually descend into a clichéd caricature. Franchot Tone just does his usual, except his character is a bit more of an arse than you might think. Esther Ralston is alright as Dolly, and Jean Dixon provides some comic relief in the beginning as Sadie's friend Opal.

The plot, as you may have noticed from my description above, is fairly soapy, but the stars make it work. However, the writers seem to have run out of ideas by the third half, although I guess I appreciated that (minor spoiler) the two first billed stars didn't end up together at the end- something that happens in 98% of the films of this era- although they were such a nice couple that it also made me a bit sad. Clarence Brown, never a flattering director, directs this film with much more effort than usual. His shots are mostly better than usual, although some could have been improved.

The film was also the one that introduced standard Al I Do Is Dream Of You, later used in the film Singin In The Rain- it works better here as a ballard.

My complaints are outnumbered by the things I like about this film, however. This is a good film in the entries of all parties involved, but if it isn't your thing, that's okay.

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Sparrows (1926)

8/10

For her last "kid" role, Mary Pickford picked well

21 October 2021

Deep in a hellhole of a swamp, a man named Grimes (Gustav von Seyffertitz) sells hogs but also illegally operates a baby farm, where he abuses the kids and doesn't give them enough food. Grimes and his wife () also have a son who seems to have it out for all of the children.

The oldest, Molly (Mary Pickford), acts as sort of a mother to the kids, who were all illegally brought there, and endows on them the belief that God will rescue them from the swamp. Grimes and his lackeys soon kidnap the baby of a rich man (who Molly grows fond of quickly, and vice versa), setting off a giant search and potentially exposing Grimes's actions. At the same time, Molly and the kids attempt to escape the farm through the swamp, braving mud, water and alligators. Will they end up well? Watch the film. The ending is a slight twist from what you're expecting.

Before watching this film, I had never seen the appeal of Mary Pickford, other than the fact that she was capable of playing adolescents for quite a while, without it seeming too creepy. Here she delivers an honest, if a bit overgesticulated (even for a silent movie), performance, and manages to make her character seem realistic. At thirty-three, she is still almost entirely convincing as a teenager. The rest of the cast is pretty good, the man who played Grimes perfectly evil (and scary-looking), the starving children in the barn actually (with the exception of Pickford, but she was the star) looking like they'd starved a while and been subject to cruel treatment. And gosh, is that baby's hair ever so curly.

The production values do leave something to be desired. The cinematography is pretty good, but the general mood does seem a bit dated. When watching this film, I was more than sure it was from the late 1910s- later I looked it up and was surprised to find that it was in fact from 1926. The story is truly melodramatic, and I see how that could be a problem for some people, but it doesn't go //completely// overboard. The runtime makes it short and sweet. (IMDb says that this film is an hour and fifty four minutes or something. The print I had was just under an hour and twenty. Who's wrong?) I also wish that they had lessened the slapstick antics in the first half, as they do nothing but detract from a story that really didn't need people pratfalling into some mud.

Overall, recommended, but you have to be used to silent films to fully appreciate it. So far, this is the best Pickford silent I have seen.

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Baby Face (1933)

6/10

Stanwyck uses her feminine assets to get up to the top.

14 October 2021

Warning: Spoilers

Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck) is a small-town girl who works in her father's bar, sexually exploited by the frequents there, with no hope of ever doing anything with her life, until one day a man at the bar tells her to go out into the world (he reads some Neichtze to her). She goes to New York, using her feminine wiles to bed and bait every man she comes across, the boss of the company included, in order to climb her way up the corporate ladder. She gets men fired from jobs, dumped by their fiancées, and just generally scandalized, but this is Pre-Code, so it's okay. You know, it's amazing how this manages to be a film about *** without actually mentioning the word.

It's all going fine and dandy until one day where her lover Stevens (Donald Cook) bursts in on her with another lover, Carter (Henry Colker)- which results in a murder/suicide. Tainted by scandal, Lily is forced to relocate to Paris, where she snags the new boss of the company, Trenholm (George Brent), and marries him...but ends up falling in love with him, too. When his company goes broke, he asks her for money (she has savings hidden in a briefcase under her bed), which she initially refuses to give him, even going so far as to attempt to sail away from him...but a record playing makes her change her mind, and realize that maybe she loves the man behind the money- she dashes off the boat and looks everywhere for him.

Unfortunately for her, she comes home to see (spoiler) that Trenholm has shot himself. She weeps and begs him to stay with her, because she's never loved anyone but him. It ends up okay, though- an ambulance comes, and the ending scene is her tenderly stroking his hair while the doctor tells her that she dropped her suitcase, and she tells him that she doesn't care.

Barbara Stanwyck is pretty good in her role, not outstanding, but the character is written to be fairly one-dimensional. Stanwyck was pretty, yes, even I can admit that, but she wasn't a sort of men-fell-at-her-feet sort of beauty. She worked better as the female protagonist in westerns (they should have cast her in Johnny Guitar) and fluffy comedies/ melodramas than she did in "Poor girl sleeps her way to the top" pictures in the vein of what your Crawfords and Harlows were doing. However, because she was a good actress, she pulled it off. She was blonde in this film...was that an early Barbara Stanwyck thing? (Not familiar with her work- I'll have to watch more of her earlier films.)

All of her leading men are bland and colourless, not particularly memorable and overall disappointing. The production values are slick, much more realistic than they would have been if this were an M-G-M production, and Barbara gets to wear some very nice (also very, very of their time) dresses and hairstyles (okay, her hair isn't the best). Did feel that the film could have expanded on some parts, like Lily's beginning, but it's amazing how much they managed to cram into 75 minutes. Her sympathetic turn in the last third was also unnecessarily moralistic.

This film may invoke comparisons to Red Headed Woman, a film released the year before and starring Jean Harlow. Both feature a protagonist who sleeps her way to the top, but in Baby Face, Lily gets punished for her sins, and in RHW, Lil (Harlow) does not seem to. Stanwyck also plays her character with a much more sympathetic edge than Harlow did. I preferred Red Headed Woman, but I liked this one too.

6.4/10 from me.

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A Star Is Born (1937)

5/10

Maybe I just don't like the story 😕

13 October 2021

I watched this film a while back and only remember the barebones plot of it. It didn't touch me in the heart, I didn't cry, I didn't feel sympathy for Esther Blogett/ Vicki Lester (Janet Gaynor) or Norman Maine (Frederic March). Although I will admit that I didn't enjoy the most recent remake (2018) of this film either, which I saw about a year (this year) after I watched this original version (the 1954 version has been on my list for some time, but it isn't looking good for that one. And don't get me started on Barbra Streisand.)

The problem with the film is that it just isn't very engaging. It goes on for hours and hours, even though the film is only an hour and fifty minutes. Whoever directed it has a static sort of style, the camera barely moving. The acting is okay, I guess, but it's 1930 acting in a 1937 film (people who have seen a few early talkies will get what I mean)

Janet Gaynor was an actress in silent films- who worked much better in silent films. However, she does look very nice in colour. Esther Blogett is a kind of character that she might have played in a silent film, and perhaps the kind of character that should have stayed in a silent film- not dissing Janet Gaynor's acting ability-- but her petite looks and general style were just more suited to films like Street Angel and Lucky Star. Her impressions of Katharine Hepburn, Mae West and Greta Garbo (as well as a send-up of Joan Crawford's style of applying lipstick) are very spot-on and a welcome part in a movie that definitely overstays its welcome.

Frederic March, as Norman Maine, plays...wait for it...an alcoholic. Now there's a shocker (he did the same thing before and better in Merrily We Go To Hell, Susan And God, and I'm sure I should think of ten more) . Matter of fact, I think this was the film that made me not like him as an actor. Standing next to Janet, he looks very creepy. I do not remember the rest of the actors, there was the one who played Esther's grandmother at the beginning who was pretty good. For those who have only seen the Garland/Manson, Streisand/Kristofferson, and/or Cooper/Gaga versions, be aware that this is not a musical. There is not singing, just pure melodrama. And the melodrama is often laid on thicker than it needs to be- even for me. However, the ending is heartbreaking.

Overall, I wish I could give this film a higher rating, but this story has been done better and more effectively both before and after ASIB- supposedly the screenwriters of this film borrowed from an earlier Constance Bennett flick named What Price Hollywood? (1932)-- I'll probably have to see that one sometime soon. If it's your journey to see every ASIB film, I can't stop you, but be aware that this one isn't the best.

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We Were Dancing (1942)

7/10

Norma is blonde

13 October 2021

Count Nicki Prax (Melvyn Douglas) and Princess Victoria "Vicki" Wilkomirska (Norma Shearer) marry after falling in love at first sight during a party held to celebrate Vicki's engagement to another man, Hubert Tyler (Lee Bowman). They pretend to be poor (and not married) to get themselves the life they were used to leading, as rich aristocrats. However, their scheme is discovered when they're found sleeping in the same room (not in the same bed, it was the production code era).

When they actually fall poor, they take up lodgings with a whole bunch of rich friends, but will their marriage be as temporary as their wealth? There's another woman named Linda Wayne (Gail Patrick) who Nicki promised himself to before he met Vicki, and Hubert may want to get back together with Vicki. Nicki and Vicki (heh) soon divorce, but since this comedy is screwball in tone, you know it will end the same way that The Awful Truth and The Philadelphia Story ended.

I found that the film was well-paced at the beginning, lost steam in the middle and finished on a mediocre note, with a happy conclusion that seemed forced but in truth wasn't. The acting is pretty good.

Norma Shearer is her usual self (maybe a bit less mannered) as Princess Wilkomiska- she's clearly been made to look more 1940s, an ill attempt to transfer her image over to the new decade (this was her second-last film before retiring). She has a lightened, more 1940s hairstyle which makes her look both younger and older at the same time (shades of Billie Burke), and is placed in a lovely variety of pantsuits, suit-skirt combos and suit-looking dresses, many with tassels. Her character is supposed to be Polish, but Norma's about as Polish as maple syrup. She makes it work, launching into long threads of Polish (I think it's Polish, I don't speak the language so I wouldn't know) when she gets upset. Melvyn Douglas is also his usual self, charming, debonair, with that terrible mustache. He has very good chemistry with Norma, but I must admit, he had chemistry with all of his leading ladies. Even Greta Garbo.

The two leads also have reliable support from several notable character actors; the aforementioned Gail Patrick, Lee Bowman, Marjorie Main and Reginald Owen. They basically just do their usual as well. (Gail Patrick's eyebrows still freak me out. 😑) The film is nice to look at, with the usual M-G-M treatment of luscious production values and big sweeping Art Deco rooms. However, as I mentioned above, the plot isn't executed well, as the pacing is a bit off. It could have been shorter in some parts and longer in others. As well, exactly WHY Vicki and Nicki divorce is a bit unclear- you can't tell me that all Gail Patrick had to do was walk into the room.

It's not as bad as I expected it to be- much better than Her Cardboard Lover- but it doesn't rank among the best films of any actors involved. If you managed to slog your way through HCL, I'd watch this one- or if you just want to see Norma as a blonde. 🙂

Solid 6.5/10 from me, and no, I am not the only reviewer hung up on Norma's hair colour. 😁

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Riptide (1934)

7/10

Decent film, but dated as well

10 October 2021

A free-spirited young woman named Mary (Norma Shearer) meets a stuffy English aristocrat named Philip (Herbert Marshall) at a costume party. They fall in love and get married on a whim, but are soon a happy husband and wife, with a daughter. However, the wife embarks on an affair with a charming young man called Tommie (Robert Montgomery), despite her initial refusal. The man falls from a balcony to his death, causing scandal for the woman and leaving people wondering if it was an accident, murder, or suicide.

I watched this film a while ago, so I don't remember the exact details. It's pretty much a paint-by-numbers Norma Shearer Pre-Coder, complete with an unwelcome moralistic happy ending at the end. Norma had pretty much entirely grown out of her silent movie mannerisms by this point, so her performance is more palatable than usual (for non-fans) here. Herbert Marshall is his usual, boring, stuffy self, and Robert Montgomery-

I feel bad for Robert Montgomery's characters in his Norma Shearer films. He's always so in love with, and clearly a much better fit for her (and much better looking) than the man she is lusting after (Marshall, Chester Norris, Rod la Rocque, you name it), yet after a quick affair, she always tosses him aside and goes after the dull-as-dishwater leading man she had initially done away with. Ah, morals.

The plot, as I mentioned above, is predictable, and doesn't hold up well today, giving the film a sort of time capsule feel ("Oh, look at the quaint little antique, because after all, film history started with The Godfather!"). All stars have done better, but in this film, they are passable entertainment. The beginning is amazing- Herbert and Norma in insect-man suits (!)- but the film gradually peters out and is rather dull by the time it ends. I hate to say this, but most of Norma Shearer's Pre-Coders haven't held up well.

Yet if you only see one of these "Norma Shearer plays a classy, slutty free soul who ends up with the same guy she ditched in the beginning" films, let it be Riptide. One question, though- why did she often play characters named Mary?

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Rebecca (1940)

8/10

Dark atmosphere; fabulous film

10 October 2021

An unnamed heroine (Joan Fontaine) meets the charming, and much older, Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). After a quick courtship, Maxim brings his new bride back to his home of Manderly, but the spirit of his first wife, as well as one servant's- Mrs. Danvers- inability to forget Rebecca. But what really happened to her? Where did she go, and why are some people unwilling to forget, yet others not wanting to remember? Watch the film.

It's not a thriller in the conventional sense- there's no threat, no one is trying to kill any of the main characters, no one is descending into mental illness. The film achieves its effect by having the spirit of the first Mrs. De Winter loom over the picture, largely and heavily. You never see any pictures of her on the walls, never see her in any flashbacks- yet she still dominates the picture. She is only mentioned by name, and her room is still preserved, but she creates an uneasy atmosphere.

Judith Anderson, who played Mrs. Danvers, also adds to the uneasiness. Obsessed with the titular Rebecca, and unwelcoming towards the second Mrs. De Winter (Joan Fontaine), she is cold and calculating, like a snake. She doesn't even blink. Laurence Olivier is also quite creepy as Maxim de Winter, which he isn't supposed to be, but as the film goes on, he becomes more likable. Joan Fontaine is much better here than any other film I've seen her in- she plays one of her usual meek and mild characters, but is more meek and mild than usual. I do feel that she overdid her character's patheticness in the beginning, but with some of the other characters present and her seeming inability to ever replace Rebecca, it is understandable and I don't mind it at all.

Alfred Hitchcock directs the film very well, very skillfully, much better than he would direct some of his later, more highly regarded films, adding a Gothic touch to the romance/suspense without letting his actors descend into camp. As I mentioned above, the set design is very good, the house making one feel claustrophobic despite the large, Victorian-style rooms. I did feel that the film went on a bit too long, not that it overstayed its welcome, but rather that the courtship between Larry and Joan could have been shorter, as it didn't hold my attention very much. On the flip side, the ending is fabulous, and unexpected (even better if you don't read the spoilers), but what happened to Rebecca is different from the book to the movie- liked what happened in the book better, but this was the production code era, so they had to make that part moralistic.

Overall, recommended, but it helps to get to know Joan Fontaine and Larry Olivier before watching- they're both acquired tastes. But this is one of Hitchcock's best.

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What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

8/10

Everyone's favourite scary old hags doing what they did best

6 October 2021

What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? Is an odd film to pin down and analyze. It's very good in terms of plot and acting, but it's very campy in terms of how it handles the plot and some of the interplay between the two main stars. There are some plot points that make so little sense that you can't forgive them, but some characters that are so well captured by the actors, you can //almost// forgive some of them.

The first plot point that makes little sense is the main one- Baby Jane's descent from slightly bitchy old hag to full-on demented psychopath. Going by the cues the film gives the viewer as to what time it is, the film takes place over just a few days. Even if Baby Jane had being going crazy over decades, as is implied, there's no way that she'd become that demented that quickly. The way that Jane descends into mental illness is also rocky, as Bette Davis flies from camp to acting to camp and back to acting like a pendulum with her acting performance. I have no respect for any of Bette Davis's acting after All About Eve, and unfortunately, this film is no exception. Wish it could be, but it's not. She was mostly good, but at the same time hammed it up to the point where I genuinely wondered if she was okay.

On the flip side, Joan Crawford gives one of her best career performances as Blanche. While Davis's Baby Jane is a sort of paint-by-numbers, she gave this exact performance in other films (Of Human Bondage, Dangerous, The Little Foxes, Mr. Skeffington, Beyond The Forest, and The Star, to name a few) prototypical Bette Davis performance, Crawford's Blanche is one of the most un-Joan Crawford performances she ever gave- where else are you going to see her method act? She may have not had the flashier role, but she had the more complicated role in that she had to convince us she was a) as pathetic as Blanche Hudson was and b) she was a paraplegic. Bette Davis just had to convince us that she was a demented old hag- not hard for her to do.

The twist at the end was unexpected, with the roles of protagonist and antagonist, and who's the evil one flipped. There was also genuine emotion in Bette Davis's voice when she said "Ya mean all this time we coulda been friends?" Baby Jane and Blanche could have been friends if their selfishness hadn't got in the way, just like Davis and Crawford in real life. As well, the film as a whole is actually terrifying, something that not many psycho-biddy films can boast (most of them are unintentionally funny 😏).

There are lots of other cons, though, and that can be expected of a psycho-biddy film, even the one that invented the genre. The film is way too long, scene after scene dragging and at times almost causing the viewer physical pain (I felt THAT kick- I have every reason to believe that it was real...not even Joan Crawford could act a look of pain like that). There is also a stupid subplot introduced around halfway though the film involving a piano player named Edwin Flagg (Victor Buono)- if all of those scenes had been cut, the film would be at least half an hour shorter (which would have been perfect). I might not have minded so much if Buono's less-than-remarkable performance had been better, but it was nothing to write home about.

In fact, none of the supporting actors are even close to as good as Davis and Crawford are- save for Maidie Normand's character of Elvira, who gets her just desserts when she finds out things she isn't supposed to find out. Immense respect for Robert Aldrich for directing this film and being able to continue on with his career- even if he'd just turned on the camera and let that make the film, he still had to deal with two warring hags who had no sympathy for each other on or off-screen. The music score is disappointingly average, but now I'm just nitpicking.

Overall, I'm torn. Part of me wants to give it a ten, and part of me wants to give it a five. It's much better than being "just" a cult classic or "just" a gay film, but it's not quite good enough to be a classic of either star. Both actresses deserved better than what they got after, but Strait-Jacket will always be my favourite psycho-biddy film. 😊

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The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)

7/10

Basically a filmed play, but in a good way

6 October 2021

Not quite as good as Smilin' Through, The Barrets Of Wimpole Street is saved from sinking ship with good set design and costumes (bar the ones for Frederic March, but we'll get to those later 😅), as well as one of Norma Shearer's most Oscar-worthy performances.

Elizabeth Barrett (Shearer) is the oldest of nine children, and the most sickly- and a poet. She's the only one who can't get out of bed, but all of her siblings are kept in a sort of prison-like situation by their domineering father (Charles Laughton). The father does not know that Elizabeth has been writing to another poet, Robert Browning (Frederic March). Elizabeth and Robert fall in love and start dating behind her father's back, but Elizabeth is still unnerved by her father's shadow looming over her (it's implied that he has designs on her, but ther Hays code had just recently come into effect)- as is her sister, who also has a secret boyfriend. This is a story of triumph, as Elizabeth both gets well and is also able to stand up to her father.

Norma Shearer gives one of the best performances of her career (she wasn't playing a "spunky, sexually liberated upper-class woman", so that helped her broaden her acting horizons) as Elizabeth Barrett, and she makes you believe that she wrote the poems that were once penned by the real Elizabeth Barrett Browning. True, she could have been made to look more sickly, but she acts sickly, and you feel sympathy for her, especially in the scene where she pictures herself walking down the stairs, and it feels like she's really doing it, but it turns out that she hasn't moved at all.

Frederic March is rather unremarkable and not believable as Robert Browning- I believe he was just there because he was willing to wear pants that tight. Boy, are they ever tight- you can see the entire outline of his balls! He must have been in A LOT of pain filming- unless he really liked to wear pants that make the costumes of the male ABBA members look like baggy rapper jeans. 😑 He's more palatable than usual, though (I don't like him).

Charles Laughton was also disappointing as the father- he was only nine years older than Norma, but he looked like he could be her father. However, he overacts quite a bit in his role, and while if does look like he does have designs on Norma (he famously said regarding this role, "They can't censor the gleam in my eye"), that's the only convincing part of his performance- sadly. I wished he could have been better, but you can't have everything.

The rest of the actors who play the family are good, an exception being a VERY ANNOYING actress who plays an equally annoying character (a cousin of the Barretts). Costumes are good, not wacky or über-glamorous, but effective. Set design of the house is exceptional.

Overall, recommended, but watch Smilin' Through first. If you don't like that one, you definitely won't like this one.

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High Noon (1952)

8/10

Almost like a good film noir, that's how suspenseful it is

6 October 2021

A landmark in the making of moody westerns, High Noon proved that Gary Cooper still had it, despite being long past his prime. He gives an above average acting performance, and the screenplay is very good in most spots, too. In fact, a few scenes even play out like a silent movie (Gary Cooper was once in silent movies, believe it or not). It's not perfect, but it's almost perfect.

Gary Cooper plays a sherif of a small town in the middle of nowhere (typical western plot device 🙂) whose town is being threatened by a gang of two or three killers, who want to face him alone at high noon. Everyone else is scared, cautious, hiding, and they want Coop to come into hiding with them, especially his new bride Amy (Grace Kelly). The film alternates between the people who want Coop to do the right thing, and him getting ready for the intruders. There is an uneasy mood throughout the picture, and you can feel the fear seeping off of the characters. As I mentioned above, the picture is very well directed, the shots capturing exactly what they need to capture. I can still see whole swatches of the film in my mind, and I watched it over a year ago (from the writing of this review)- the ending scene in particular is very memorable.

The actors all give pretty good performances, especially Gary Cooper (seeing as ue was WAY past his prime) and the actress who played the Mexican woman (). I do wish they had cast a different actress than Grace Kelly, though.

I can slightly forgive her for being so disappointingly wooden as this was only her second feature film and first important role, but she was still this wooden by her final feature film, High Society (1956). She's pretty, but fans of her glamour will be disappointed- she only wears one dress throughout the film. Also did find the age difference between Kelly and Cooper slightly disturbing (twenty-nine years), but an age difference like that can be expected from a film of this era. Alright, now I'm just nitpicking.

Overall, one of my favourite westerns (I'm not typically fond of the genre), and for very good reason. May not be to everyone's taste, but neither is Casablanca. It's true that High Noon makes its hour-and-twenty-minute runtime seem a lot longer, but the film is shot in real time, so that's why.

Strong 8/10 from me. If only they'd cast another actress in the Grace Kelly role, and then it would be perfect.

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Princess O'Rourke (1943)

6/10

Slight wartime propaganda comedy

6 October 2021

Olivia de Havilland is the princess of an unnamed country who lives in New York with her uncle (Charles Colbrun with a monocle). Her uncle, who likes to pester her about how her job is "Make babies! You royal!", decides that she must go on holiday, and so she does. There is an amusing sequence where she repeatedly asks various members of the flight crew for sleeping pills, due to the fact that she is unable to fall asleep with all the turbulence of the plane, but why her character wouldn't realize that taking too many sleeping pills might run the risk of her never waking up (they're often used as suicide tools, Olivia)...I don't know. Let's say she led a very sheltered life- but the plane ends up turning around, so she's left to deal with the aftereffects of those darn sleeping pills!

Olivia then gets looked after by the pilot (Robert Cummings) of the plane, Edward O'Rourke, who tries to find who she is and where she comes from, and doesn't yet succeed. He drops her off with his friends, a married couple played by Jack Carson and Jane Wyman- a year before The Doughgirls 🙂. When Olivia wakes up, she finds that she's in someone else's house, wearing their eight-foot tall adolescent teenager's pajamas (why did they always do that in 40s comedy? Have the woman wake up at someone else's house wearing really big pajamas? It bothers me.)

She becomes a part of the group, she discovers that she loves Edward, she tells him she can't marry him even though she wants to, Edward thinks she's the mistress of someone else after he discovers that her uncle paid her plane ticket (he doesn't know that he's her uncle), her uncle says that it's okay for her to marry him after he finds out that he's from a family with a lot of boys. Boys good for royal family.

Unfortunately, Edward doesn't know that she's a princess, but he finds out? Will Olivia abdicate from the throne, or will Edward become Prince Consort O'Rourke? Don't worry- it's a wartime propaganda flick, so all ends triumphantly. Also because this is a wartime flick, there's a scene where Olivia decides to join up a sort of Girl Scouts for housewives sort of thing, and ends up being a CPR dummy because she can't cook, or clean, or sew (I actually found this bit by far the funniest scene). All in the course of three days. 🤔

Olivia de Havilland is quite good in her role- she wasn't very suited to comedy, but she isn't given much to do here anyway. She's very pretty, if you like that sort of look, but quite average. Perhaps it's the fact that her character is rather static, and apart from falling in love, she doesn't really change. Robert Cummings is mediocre as the love interest, but he has alright chemistry with Olivia.

Always fun to see Jack Carson and Jane Wyman as a couple (again)- she's blonde here, but I recognized her. Part of me wished that they had more scenes together, but I'll just have to satisfy my cravings by watching The Doughgirls again (😁). The film's pacing is weird, first half of the film flying by and then the second half just dragging on and on a n d o n. Most of the jokes have been used before, and better, in other films. But it isn't the worst film you'll ever watch- just slightly disappointing. Still gets an above average rating, though, because I have liked the stars in quite a few other films.

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Kitty Foyle (1940)

8/10

Ginger peachy, story soapy

5 October 2021

Warning: Spoilers

Small-town white-collar girl Kitty Foyle (Ginger Rogers) has a choice to make between two men after her current boyfriend proposes to her, and her former flame Wyn Strafford comes back into town. She has quite a history with said former flame, and the film tells in flashback (Kitty talks to herself in a mirror, and we are transported through a snow globe to the past) how their story came to be. He was rich, she was poor. She worked at his business and after accidentally pressing the fire alarm, pretended to faint so she wouldn't get in trouble. She later found out that he had been fooling around with his dictating machine. Their family refused to accept their class differences, and their relationship eventually fell apart. It's the other Philadelphia Story.

This film is remembered only because of the fact that Ginger Rogers's performance as Kitty Foyle beat out Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis for the Best Actress Oscar, but that isn't the only reason it should be remembered. Sure, the plot is trite (stay within your class otherwise bad things will happen), but the cast pulls it off, and you're guessing which man she will end up with at the end.

Ginger Rogers is much better than I had expected her to be in the lead role. Her playing Kitty as a child/teenager in the beginning is a bit "Uh...", but the film gets better after that. The part of her performance that guaranteed her the Oscar was after (spoiler) Kitty becomes pregnant with Wyn's child after they decide to call off their marriage, considers an abortion, but ends up deciding to keep the baby.

Insult is added to injury, however, when the baby is born dead and Kitty soon finds out that the woman Wyn was //supposed// to marry has had a son, like she was supposed to, and that son is around the same age that Kitty's son would have been. Ginger's facial expressions are heartbreaking 💔. She DESERVED that Oscar! Screw Katharine Hepburn! Taking some shade away from the other actors, Dennis Morgan was very good as Wyn Strafford, also.

Okay. If you're wondering why the plot sounds like an episode of a daytime soap, that's because it's pure and undistilled melodrama. The male characters are mostly stereotypes (the father, the true love that Kitty can't be with, the other guy), some of the dialogue is pretty hokey, but it's far from the worst soap you could ever watch. It's mostly well-acted and well-written-- if you haven't read the original novel by Christopher Morley, I'd recommend that you do that too.

Overall, recommended, but mostly for Ginger Rogers's performance. It's perhaps the only //great// dramatic film she ever did, because she was just *that much* better at light comedy or dancing with Fred Astaire.

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Hired Wife (1940)

6/10

Above average, but Roz has done better

30 September 2021

This film is your average Roz Russell farce from this era, yet it's something completely different at the same time. Obviously ANY follow-up to His Girl Friday would be significantly weaker, but that isn't a fair comparison, Hired Wife to HGF, because HIS GIRL FRIDAY. COME ON.

Roz does her usual (I mean that in a good way), Brian Aherne is take him or leave him, Virginia Bruce is okay as the other (eventual, of course) woman, and the rest of the cast is okay too. For a comedy, this film doesn't have many laughs, despite starring one of the silver screen's finest deadpan comediennes, our girl Rosalind.

The plot of this one is that business executive Stephen Dexter (Aherne) asks his secretary, whose name is Kendal Browning (with just one L) to marry him, in name only, because he doesn't want to be taken over and lose his finances by a rival company...who want to take over his business and aren't afraid to be hostile about it, either. However, Kendal eventually falls for Stephen, despite the fact that he doesn't love her and is perfectly happy to carry on with another woman named Phyllis (Virginia Bruce). But Kendal, being as Rosalind Russell character, refuses to give up her man and engages in all sorts of schemes to keep him married to her. He decides that she isn't so bad after all.

Brian Aherne is sort of like a poor man's Leslie Howard meets Melvyn Douglas, and he's not making a //huge// effort to break out of that mold here. In fact, even Leslie Howard would have been better in Aherne's role. Virgina Bruce's role isn't as well-developed as I'd have liked it to be, but you can tell that this comedy was sort of thrown together in a rush.

Rosalind Russell makes almost everything better (she couldn't save She Wouldn't Say Yes, Mourning Becomes Electra, or Picnic, but that was just bad writing mostly), and she brings a sort of level-headedness to her role, even if she's given her stock part of "Right hand (wo)man to the big boss who gets enlisted to do some sort of task, and is also fiercely in love with the big boss, but we don't know that until later".

A slight recommendation, but be aware that the pacing stinks and all of the cast have done better- even together. If you liked My Sister Eileen, watch this one, but be aware that it's not as good as MSE.

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A Foreign Affair (1948)

8/10

Romance, Nazis, Congresswomen and air raids in occupied Berlin

29 September 2021

Congresswoman Phoebe Frost (Jean Arthur) goes to Berlin to investigate the state of affairs over there- it's after WW11, and the city isn't in great shape. She is less than amused by the state of affairs, particularly one John Pringle (John Dall), whom she meets at the airport to deliver a cake to (from a former flame). Said John Pringle is having an affair with ex-Nazi Erika (Marlene Dietrich), who's technically blacklisted, but thanks to her connections, has managed to avoid being taken away to be prosecuted. Things get complicated when Phoebe decides to conduct an investigation on Erika's previous connections with the Nazis, and enlists John to help her. As fate would have it, they fall in love, at the same time Erika's Nazi ex-lover comes to town...

Notice any similarities between this film and Ninotchka? I'm not the only one- compare the title characters. Slightly exaggeratedly stern woman goes to foreign destination which may be seen as a holiday destination (though this ain't Paris), disapproves of state of affairs, meets a slightly creepy yet charming man who has the complete opposite beliefs she does, ends up falling for him, beautifies herself for him, makes a fool of herself after getting drunk on champagne, looks like she's going to lose the man she loves, but,you know...they get back together. Jean Arthur wasn't quite as talented as Greta Garbo, and the locales of the films are different (plus Ninotchka was an M-G-M production and this was released by Paramount), but this goes to show that even in the 1940s, Hollywood wasn't that original.

That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy this film. I really did. Must confess here that I think Billy Wilder was a touch egotistical in his directing, to say the least (all of his films have a touch of "Look at me, aren't I so great? 😏 stamped into them), but he got good actors and he knew how to use them. He directs this film with his usual smug, overrated direction, but there are a couple of good sight gags, and he got some good shots of Berlin (this was filmed on location), as well as some very good performances out of his leads.

Likewise, I am not a Marlene Dietrich fan, but she gave the best performance out of the three leads. Now there's something I never thought I'd say. Seeing as Dietrich was a strong anti-Nazi who gave up her German citizenship in 1937 and aided the war effort from the American side, it's funny that she'd play a whorish Nazi, especially such an unsympathetic one- but she's a nightclub singer who all the men lust after, so we've got the usual Dietrich element there (at 47, she was a bit old to be playing Erika, but she's the ideal actress for such a role. You get to see her speak German and everything) . I was rooting for Dietrich more than I was rooting for Arthur in the first half of the film, but that changed fairly quickly. Dietrich gets a few catty lines in regard to Arthur, including criticizing her eyebrows (Marlene Dietrich criticizing someone else's eyebrows? 😏), and I don't think they were faking. Ha.

Jean Arthur seems to have watched Ninotchka several times to prepare for her role as the congresswoman, but she does a very good job. John Lund is the least likable character out of the three leads, and his sudden romantic desire for Jean Arthur is a bit unconvincing, but you can't have everything. He comes across with a twinge of Clark Gable, but not so much that his performance comes across as a full-on imitation.

Overall, not the best film Billy Wilder ever directed (in my opinion, that's Sunset Boulevard, and not because he directed it), but surely one of the best. It overstays its runtime a bit (doesn't every Wilder film? Some Like It Hot SHOULD NOT have been two hours, for example), and borrows quite a lot from Ninotchka fairly obviously, but that doesn't detract from the viewing experience any. Dietrich was much better here than she was in Witness For The Prosecution- my opinion.

Recommended, but I think it helps to be at least tolerant of one or more of the stars. Listening to Dietrich's singing could best be described as a slow and painful death by an infected broken leg, but that's really my only complaint. 😃

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The Temptress (1926)

7/10

The ending makes it. The rest isn't worth your time.

28 September 2021

Warning: Spoilers

Garbo had been here, done this by the time she starred in The Temptress. She had previously starred in Torrent, and would go on to star in Flesh And The Devil. In all three, she plays a seductive temptress who men just can't keep their hands off of. Her temptresses in all three of these are supposed to be Spanish- thank goodness for silent film, because Garbo is about as Spanish as Swedish meatballs. I would have liked to have just HOW she could have played a Spanish woman in the sound era.

Flesh And The Devil is the best film as a whole, and contains her best overall performance (despite the fact that the character of Felicitas is supposed to be an unattractive forty-some she-devil and Garbo was a cute little twenty-one-year-old Swedish import), but this film has by far the best ending of the three. Perhaps the best ending of any Garbo film ever.

She isn't given much to do with her role as Elena the temptress, other than simper, pout, and watch the men fawn over her. Antonio Moreno meets her at a costume ball, and follows her to Argentina. And how the men fawn over her! One guy gets shot in an argument over her, there's a brawl for her affections- what fun! She just sort of stands there and watches them do so.

The ending is fabulous, however. The rest of the film may be cheesy, stilted and very clichéd, Garbo would go on to greater things- even greater silents- but the way the film is shot as a whole, particularly THAT ENDING, makes it more than worthwhile.

Antonio Moreno's character goes to the big city, sees Garbo's character, recognizes her, but she doesn't recognize him. Tired, worn-out, ravaged by syphilis and probably on some kind of drug, she repeats that she doesn't know him, saying that she meets so many men. She has become a prostitute, a moral payback for her temptress life. Moreno's character buys her a drink, and she keeps repeating that she meets so many men- he is still in love with her, even watching her like this.

It finally ends with her being such a combination of drunk and raving sick, hallucinating that another man in the bar is Jesus. She gives him her ruby ring, then stumbles off into the sunset- we presume that she dies soon after. There is a happy ending print of this film, but I don't want to see it. The ending of this one is perfect. Just perfect. Arguably the only good part.

The intertitles aren't great, and once you've seen one Garbo-does-a-temptress film, you've seen them all, but if you have to see one, see the ending of this, the storm scenes of Torrent, and the entire Flesh And The Devil.

Recommended to Garbo fans and people who have never seen her in a silent film.

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Intermezzo (I) (1936)

5/10

Better than the remake, but still not very good

28 September 2021

Warning: Spoilers

A concert violinist, stripped of an accompanying piano player, returns home to his wife and children, who he never sees. He sees accompaniment in his daughter's young piano teacher, and despite a twenty-five year (!) age difference, the two start an affair, too in love to see what they're hurting- their families and their lives.

It isn't easy to like the two main characters of this film.

The man, Holger, is a pompous arse who is more than eager to leave his wife Margit and start an affair with his daughter's piano teacher Anita, going on tour with her and not really caring whoever he hurts- his wife, his daughter, his son. I'm not sure why his wife accepted him back at the end. She should have given him an old fashioned Joan Crawford-style smack around the head. With an axe.

The daughter's piano teacher isn't much better- she keeps going on and on about how what they're doing is wrong, yet she doesn't seem very eager to break off the affair. Ingrid Bergman was just twenty-one years old here, and had only been in films for a couple of years...it shows. She has more chemistry with the gut in this one than Leslie Howard, but that's not really hard to do.

With her dark red lipstick, penciled eyebrows and silent-movie eyeshadow, she doesn't look much like Ingrid Bergman to begin with. Thank goodness Bergman had adopted a more natural look within a couple of years.

The guy who plays Holger () actually sort of looks like Leslie Howard if Leslie Howard had dark circles under his eyes and looked like he was always drunk. The actor who played Holger's son was pretty good too, although he was merely window decoration. The child actress who played Anne Marie was WAY better than the one in the American remake. As well, the actress who played Holger's wife was quite a bit better than the one in the remake as well...the rest of the cast was just the same in both the original and the remake.

In terms of production values, this film doesn't have much going for it. All of the actors are shot in soft focus, with shadows over one side of their faces, even more soft focus close-ups, and some scenes where there is so little lighting that the actors appear to be in silhouette. The whole film looks like a dream sequence, and I do not mean that politely. For such a serious story, a hazy, dreamy atmosphere just doesn't fit. And thank goodness for subtitles, because not only are the actors talking quietly, the background noises and music are recorded really loudly, louder than most of the dialogue.

Overall, it's better than the remake, but it still isn't good. I'd love to, but I can't give this film a rating above mediocre.

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She Wouldn't Say Yes (1945)

5/10

Wanted to say yes

26 September 2021

Warning: Spoilers

Rosalind Russell must have been tired of these films where she plays a career woman who doesn't need men, yet there is some slightly creepy guy who forces his way into her life, then she falls for him, or she marries someone out of convenience and ends up falling in love with him, or something like that. The Feminine Touch, Hired Wife, Take A Letter, Darling...the list goes on.

By this point, I'm guessing no one had quite noticed that they had bled poor Roz's typecasting dry...ah, well, better things (read: Auntie Mame) were around the corner.

Here, she's psychiatrist named Susan Lane, and *suprise* she doesn't need men. She meets Lee Bowman's character, a cartoonist and army man named Michael Kent, after he smashes a door in her face and knocks her down. He keeps following her, pretending they're married to get her a seat, sneaking into her office when she's working, getting chummy with her father and butler Albert, and eventually going so far as to marry her to him without her consent. Nice guy.

Of course, this being Hollywood, Roz does a complete 180 with twenty minutes left in the film and suddenly loves Lee Bowman, only for him to run away with one of her patients who has a hatred of men after a few unhappy coincidences(Adele Jergens), but don't worry, they get back together. On a train. How lovely (read: clichéd).

Rosalind Russell and Lee Bowman could have had great chemistry, as a couple of kisses in the film show, but unfortunately the script is so badly written that they're two hunks of oak. Roz does her usual, Bowman is written to be a creepy misogynistic stalker, Roz's father is written to be also very misogynistic. The butler should have been played by someone like Felix Bressart. Roz's secretary should have been played by someone like Zasu Pitts.

Griping aside, the set design and production values are very admirable, especially since this ain't an M-G-M production. LOVED the set for Roz's house, and the office. So much Art Deco 😻. Roz also gets a lot of nice gowns to wear, and for once she's given a flattering hairstyle and NO stupid hats. But I do like to watch for Roz's stupid hats, so that was slightly disappointing for me that there were no stupid hats. Ah, well, I'll just watch The Women again. 🙂

It's not the worst film you'll ever see from this era, but it's films like this that give the classics a bad name. There's more misogyny here than Woman Of The Year ever had, and that one's been catching flack recently. 😬

It's far from Roz's worst film, however. That would be Mourning Becomes Electra. Hands down.

Nor recommended, but I didn't hate it.

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Roberta (1935)

8/10

When the subplot is better than the main plot

26 September 2021

Had this only been a Randolph Scott/Irene Dunne outing, I would have only given this film a four and probably just barely have finished it. The addition of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as second bananas pretty much carried the film by itself. While that may seem harsh, I have liked Randolph Scott and Irene Dunne in other things- they were great together in My Favourite Wife- they just weren't very good here.

The plot is too heavy for an Astaire-Rogers outing. A traveling band led by a guy named Huck (Astaire) stop off in Paris, looking for a place to play. With them is a maybe-football player (Scott) whose aunt owns a dress shop. Working at the dress shop is a pretty Russian princess named Stephanie (Dunne), and one of the clients at the dress shop is the boisterous Countess Schwarenka (Rogers), who turns out to be Huck's ex-girlfriend Lizzie. Then the aunt dies, Randolph Scott inherits the dress shop, Randolph Scott pursues Irene Dunne, and Astaire dances with Rogers. How will it end? See if you can get to the end first.

Randolph Scott is very wooden and not given much to do to begin with- not that he makes an effort, he's very "Hey! Let's see how many times I can say 'Gee, that's swell.' to EVERY DAMN THING EVERYONE SAYS." If he said "Gee, that's swell" one more time, I might have thrown my tablet at the wall. Irene Dunne is no better, and she's about as Russian as the New York Times. She gets to do her cutesy American shtick that she did in pretty much all of her other films (unless there was someone to get her to reign it in).

Despite having leading roles in The Gay Divorcee (1934), Fred and Ginger were unfortunately relegated to supporting roles, and none of the important songs are sung until about forty minutes in. I'd say that after the aunt dies, the film gets better- more dancing and more songs. Not all of the songs from the Broadway show are in this film- but there were two others added, I Won't Dance and Lovely To Look At. Those songs proved so popular in the film that they have since been used in most stage productions of this musical afterwards.

The best dance number in the film is the I'll Be Hard To Handle one- it was the only dance number in the Astaire-Rogers series where they were on a wooden floor, so none of their taps were dubbed in. It was also filmed entirely in one take- and those giggles on the dance floor aren't scripted. Fred Astaire also has a good number to I Won't Dance, and obviously this pairing HAS to have one romantic number, so we've got Lovely To Look At- so swoony! 😊

If ypu can tolerate the boorish main plot, you're in for quite a treat with this one. Or you could, you know, look up the dance numbers on YouTube, but that wouldn't really be the same.

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It's Love I'm After (1937)

7/10

I definitely got a few chuckles from this one.

25 September 2021

In Of Human Bondage, he was a pathetic artist with a club foot and she was an anemic, horrible, selfish waitress. Their love led to torture for both and the eventual death of one of them. Their next film, The Petrified Forest, had her as a waitress again and him as a poetic drifter- that one didn't end well either, although that time it was for him. This film, It's Love I'm After, has them as warring hammy actors in a screwball premise. Huh?

Davis and Howard never had the //greatest// chemistry ever, hence why one of them was killed off at the end of Of Human Bondage/The Petrified Forest. Here, they're quite good together, and she's not playing a waitress.

Given the three leading stars involved- Bette Davis, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland- I didn't expect this comedy to be very funny. None of the actors cast in it were particularly //great// at comedy, Bette Davis being the worst offender for "if I just sCrEeCh mY LiNeS, THAT WILL MAKE THEM FUNNY!" and Leslie Howard being a rather boring screen presence to begin with (still like him though).

This was also my first Olivia de Havilland film (well, full one), and while she looks pretty uncomfortable at some points (comedy wasn't her strong suit either), she does a pretty good job with her role as the starstruck fan who falls for Leslie Howard.

However, it's Eric Blore that steals the show. Given a larger part than usual, he is allowed to run wild and make bird noises however much he so desires, and he's great. The supporting actors are all your average screwball gang, the sour note in the cast being Bonita Granville as an annoying kid who likes to peek through keyholes and has got some MAJOR eyebrow problems.

Her high-pitched laugh and poor-man's Shirley Temple "Aren't I cute? Aren't I? ArEn'T I?" grated on my nerves- was disappointed that she didn't get her just desserts at the end (they should have locked her in a closet, Sylvia Fowler style).

The warring couple who love each other underneath has been done before, and better (i.e. Private Lives), but it doesn't seem tired and forced here. Davis and Howard are both surprisingly funny, even if Davis does have those unfortunate bangs that made her eyes look even bigger. Both have quite a few good lines, but there's a large chunk of the film right in the middle where she's sort of forgotten about (and she has less time than Howard/de Havilland), and that throws the plot sideways. I was actually cheering for her return ☺.

If you hated Of Human Bondage/ The Petrified Forest (as I did), you should check this one out. It isn't exactly a hidden gem, nor is it unjustly forgotten, as some reviews are gushing, but it's a nice little film and a pleasant discovery.

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