Reviews

Delectable black and white, clear and crisp. Robert Wise at his best. Beautiful, artistic camerawork throughout. Flawless all around. Robert Preston was not always the music man. We see another dimension of his fine acting skills here. Mitchum is Mitchum at his best. Walter Brennan, one of Hollywood's best character actors, does his best work here. And, yes, we had forgotten how beautiful was the young Barbara Bel Geddes. Well-crafted script with human dimension. This is a top-notch western worth watching,

I was caught completely off-guard when this movie ended. Like they forgot to thread up the last reel. A guy struts around looking strange and killing people with a portable air tank. No one ever calls 911. Tommy Lee Jones appears to be in a totally different movie. One star for atmosphere and sound effects,

If you are not sure what film noir is, run this movie. Push the pause button when you get to the scene of the New York street at night after a rain. It's a wide shot showing a huge Gillette clock high above with neon signs marking cocktail bars and supper clubs. The wet street glistens. A movie buff might want this "still" framed and hung on the wall. What a neat and gritty movie, artistically done. Those who don't consider Victor Mature much of an actor should take a closer look at this one. He's great. Well, everybody is. As others have pointed out, Hope Emerson steals every scene she's in. What a tough cookie. A rare role for any actress and she waltzes away with it. This flick is one to study in film school.

Certainly a most intriguing entry from a young filmmaker destined to become a big-name. We get to see another side of the great Boris Karloff. Always a gentleman in real life, he pokes fun at himself here as a horror hero. Transitions between the Karloff story and the Shooter seem pretty and smooth. My favorite part is the scene at the drive-in theater. The film captures the somewhat eerie audio of the soundtrack playing over the hundreds of little drive-in speakers. Loved seeing those huge projectors in operation. What other movie ever took you inside the huge drive-in theater screen? You see it here and the movie on the screen is Karloff at his campiest. A fascinating entry from the 60s and an interesting time capsule it is.

What a fun and bouncy few reels of musical fun we have here! Music is everywhere, even in the shoveling of snow and the steam of a locomotive. As mentioned by others, the wipes, transitions, and segues are novel and creative, still fresh, really, after going-on 90 years. Charlie Ruggles is as delightful as ever. And who knew Phil Harris was ever this good-looking and could play the chief love interest in any kind of film? But he was and he did. And this wasn't just any kind of film. Creative photography is a just a little over-the-top in a way keeps that keeps your eyes on the screen. It's all a little surreal and funny and fine.

The mystery is such that you can't take your eyes from the screen. Someone has disappeared along with his hotel room. There seems to be no trace of him. No one has even a memory of seeing him in the hotel. His sister begins to think she is losing her mind. Wow. Who can turn away from such a plot? The young people here are beautiful: Bogarde and Simmons. The French atmosphere is delightful. Even if you don't understand French, which is spoken frequently, you will still fall in love with the dialogue. You will watch this one more than once.

100 minutes never seemed so long. The architecture of Columbus, Indiana, does not receive enough screen time. The characters in this movie need a great deal of analysis, since they seem to be in funk most of the time. The dialogue is the opposite of crisp. You could take a nap between some of the speeches, as the actors attempt to add depth by simply speaking very, very slowly about pretty mundane things. Hard to figure out who some of the characters are. A great deal of humor involved in just asking if mother is on meth. Over and over. It was no funnier the fourth time. OK, it is an art film. Maybe that explains why it is so hard to follow. Interesting sounds and camera angles will entertain film students. If you want a good story, go elsewhere.

When I told friends that this movie was about the conspiracy surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, some of them said, "What conspiracy?" It seems that John Wilkes Booth has totally upstaged the several other people who conspired with him to either kidnap or kill the 16th President of the United States. Well, he was a great actor, you know. He was also the only one who fully accomplished his goal. One conspirator backed out of murdering Vice President Andrew Johnson. Another attempted to kill Secretary of State Seward. Seward was badly hurt but survived. One conspirator slipped out of town before anything went down. He was John Surratt. His mother Mary ran the boarding house where the evil deeds were hatched. After Lincoln's death, Mary faced conspiracy charges. She claimed she knew nothing about what was being discussed by her boarders. To her, she said, they were simply sources of income. Prosecutors, however, claimed to have evidence that she was up to her apron strings in the conspiracy. This movie is about her trial. Was she guilty? Was the government using her to get to her son, who was nowhere to be found? This picture captures well the atmosphere of Washington in 1865. The country was dealing with its first Presidential assassination. Swift justice was in demand. Every actor from Ford's Theater was under arrest for a time. Did the nation really want to send a woman to the gallows for the first time? Any history book will tell you the facts, but this movie brings the past to life.

There is a richness of the old Technicolor which makes every frame an oil portrait. Combine that visual beauty with Tiomkin's lush score, and you have a motion picture masterpiece. The film provides not only a lesson in the lifestyle of a Quaker family in Indiana, it reveals the personal impact and heartbreak of the American Civil War. It was hard for a young man to adhere to his family's pacifist beliefs when he knew his friends were going off to war to defend the very place he called home. Civil War buffs unwittingly romanticize this national trauma which took the lives of over 600,000 young men. This movie brings it down to a personal level. Although filmed closer to Hollywood, the story takes place in Jennings County, Indiana. Although the soil of the Hoosier State was very lightly touched by battle, the fear of invasion was real. The little town of Vernon, mentioned in the movie, is still much the same as it was in the 1860s.

The title is way off, but I agree with those who say this is great film noir. I like it for its light touches of sophisticated humor. It is a treat to see Laird Cregar in the same frame with Betty Grable. The soundtrack is interesting and impressive, too, and I very much enjoyed hearing "These Are the Things I Love," which was a pretty popular big band tune of the time. Like others, I wondered why "Over the Rainbow" was chosen as the love theme between Victor Mature and Betty Grable. It is so familiar to us now that all we can think about is "The Wizard of Oz." The only answer is that it must not have been that familiar in 1941. As I understand it, "Oz" was not a huge success on its first release. Could it be that "Over the Rainbow" was not yet ingrained into everyone's memory bank? At any rate, I enjoyed hearing it in its various arrangements in the background of this fine period piece.

Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) loved steamboating. He said that the ambition of every boy in Hannibal, Missouri, was to become the pilot of a grand and mighty steamboat. He realized his dream. He became a cub pilot under master pilot Horace Bixby. This movie accurately represents the trials, dangers, and adventures of steamboating in America in the middle of the 19th century. Robert Lansing deserved an Academy Award for his portrayal of Horace Bixby. His gruff manner, tender heart, and deep-down love of the steamboat life comes through. If you have never read a book by Mark Twain, and don't intend to, the best thing you can do is watch this movie. It will tell you what Twain was all about.