Reviews

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A taut thriller. Although I've seen this film many times, it wasn't until the most recent viewing that the many ways in which it is about theater/"play acting" became apparent to me. How could it be otherwise, when the two main characters are a playwright (Myra) and an actor (Lester)? When Myra learns of the plot against her, we see her plan for revenge as it unrolls in her mind, like a play, and when she decides not to go through with it, it is because she gets a glimpse of her frantic, gun-toting self in a mirror. When Lester affirms his love for Myra, he quotes from her play. At various times, in Myra's mansion, people excuse themselves from a gathering, and go into another room, to connive; we follow them, as though going "offstage" to see what a character is up to.

There are wonderful bits of business for Crawford to do, as when she fakes an injury--first excusing herself from her guests, then going to a bedroom, unsnapping garter belt, rolling down stocking, applying stage makeup for the "bruise," etc, and ultimately "falling" down some stairs, in view of her guests. What dexterous fingers she had! In view of the brutal reality of her marriage, the title of her play, in which she meets her future husband before having him fired, is ironic--"Halfway to Heaven." Also paradoxical is the use of the beautiful and meditative bedtime reading that Lester provides for Myra (she is at this point on to his murderous conniving): "Let mystery have its place in you. Leave a little fallow corner in your heart...." The author is the 19th-century Swiss writer Henri Frederic Amiel and the quote is from his "Journal Intime."

Really powerful, with two forces of nature: Monroe and Niagara. As she ecstatically croons "Kiss," in tight close up that lets us see a little of her bright red, low-cut dress, Monroe's Rose--great name--is truly as phenomenal as Niagara. We know that she is thinking of her lover--earlier in the film there is a shot of them kissing, mist-covered, near one of the falls. Her longing is so intense that she seems vulnerable and we can almost feel it in our own bodies.

This is super melodrama and quite irresistible. Interesting contrast between the wholesome young couple, Jean Peters and Casey Adams, from Iowa (or Ohio?) and the spectacularly mismatched and dysfunctional couple played by Monroe and Cotten. Even for melodrama, the final meeting of Peters and Cotten on the boat strains credibility, but is satisfying in the way that it reiterates the unlikely bond that has formed between them.

I don't know if this is a good movie, but it certainly is riveting. Everyone in it is either cowardly or despicable, and the atmosphere is venomous with cynicism. Stuart Whitman's Rojack is a combative blowhard. Eleanor Parker's Deborah is monstrous in her cruelty (prefigured some 20 years earlier in her Mildred in Of Human Bondage). Everyone looks pallid in the film's harsh lighting, and the movie could be called "Fear and Loathing in L.A.--Cherry's rooftop "garden" is surrounded by elevated freeways and is an apt metaphor for the pervasive aridity. The movie is like a car accident that one can't resist gawking at. A remarkably lovely song was written for one of the film's characters to sing: "A Time for Love" (dubbed by Jackie Ward, who also dubbed for Natalie Wood in Inside Daisy Clover).

A truly delightful and rich comedy, with serious undertones. The first film directed by Billy Wilder, "The Major and the Minor" deals with assumed identity and role playing, as would many of his films, including "Some Like It Hot" and "Kiss Me, Stupid," and as his earlier screenplay for Mitchell Leisen's "Midnight" (1939) also did. The film is full of allusions to what it means to be an adult, among them, a reference to a tadpole that metamorphoses into a frog. On a larger scale, there is reference to the likelihood of a world war, and the kind of national responsibility that would be required in that event. It is of course inconceivable that anyone would ever mistake the adult Ginger Rogers for the 12-year-old that she pretends to be, and that is part of the fun (and there are some unsettling Lolita elements attendant to Ray Milland's attraction to her).

A sense of unavoidable doom hangs over this film from the start, when an ambulance, its siren blaring, races to a mansion whose owner has almost been asphyxiated by gas--whether by accident or design is not clear.

Jean Simmons is mesmerizing as the haunted and haunting Diane, who lives luxuriously in postwar L.A. , but whose wartime-London childhood has irreparably scarred her. (Robert Mitchum' s hapless Frank would have done well to remember that in Roman mythology Diana was the huntress.) This film has one of the most melancholy scenes of any film near its end when Diane wanders disconsolately through a deserted mansion. She enters and leaves rooms where she had once been happy, and Dimitri Tiomkin's music painfully underscores the character's desolation. That loneliness is later echoed in the final image: a cab driver drives up to the empty house and honks his horn in vain for passengers who will never appear.

I first saw this western many years ago on TV, and the wonderful villainy of several characters, as well as the sly music for them, stayed with me. Especially that of the Patricia Neal character. She insinuates herself to the accompaniment of a sultry tango-like Max Steiner theme, and seems to relish her every double cross. After decades, I saw the movie again, and that theme still tickles me. One wonders how Neal and Zachary Scott, another Warners player, and fine as a scheming scoundrel, would have worked together.

Aside from Neal, Steve Cochran is a suitably conniving and lecherous counterpart, and quite an eyeful in his leather vest. Dolores Hart is quite good as the good girl. Dennis Morgan is a bit tired in this one. Fairly standard territory-squabble plot

See it for Pat and Max.

From the opening credits, underscored by Max Steiner's propulsive, unrelenting theme, this is a powerful film. Although loosely based on "The Letter," it is really not about sexual hypocrisy, but rather deals with the price of loneliness that World War II exacted on women at the home front. That price would of course also affect the returning soldiers, spouses of those women. At one point a character refers to the adulterous wife's "debt to society"--certainly not the sort of comment that would be likely to turn up in a film today--but the movie also takes pains to present the wife as a basically decent and honest person.Other films of the time that dealt with variations on that theme are "Till the End of Time" and "The Best Years of Our Lives." The discontents of the returning soldier have been depicted for millennia, as attested by the "welcome" that Agamemnon receives on returning home from the Trojan War.

While the narrator at the movie's start accurately says that the story could take place anywhere, post-war Los Angeles is very nicely evoked, with quite a bit of location shooting. Among them: the atrium office building also featured in "DOA"; a hillside cable car, and a seedy hotel located opposite a high, menacing traffic embankment. There is also some nice blocking of the action in the suburban house, the emblem of the American Dream gone awry. (That Zachary Scott's character is a housing developer, when his own household is in disarray, has a paradoxical aspect.)

Fine performances from all the principals, especially Ann Sheridan, who really shines. Eve Arden is also fine as an unexpected ally and, in contrast to her usual comic roles, has some strong dramatic moments.

Another of Hollywood's many takes on the independent woman/"career girl" (whoever uses that term these days?), "Hilda Crane" is somewhere mid-point in the cycle. It was made just a few years before that quintessential career-girl movie "The Best of Everything." Hilda has "lived" but is not condemned to suffer, as would have been the case perhaps in a film of the 40's. Late in the film there's a very 50's having-one's-cake-and-eating-it-too scene that would seem to indicate that an adulterous episode has occurred, but also contains some very ambiguous dialogue in that regard. It's interesting to compare the film's take on the proper role of women with the questions that "Bigger Than Life" of the same year raises about men's roles in society. While "Hilda Crane" does not have the degree of subversiveness that Ray's film does, there are still questioning undercurrents. Things were percolating, and it was just a few years before Betty Friedan blew the lid off.

It starts with Hilda's defeated return from New York to her small-town home, just as "Clash by Night" begins with the return of a character played by Barbara Stanwyck. While in many triangle films it is the man who must choose between an exciting "bad" girl and a dull "good" girl, here, as in "Clash by Night," it is the woman who must decide--in this case, between the dangerous and foreign literature professor and the loyal, somewhat plodding boy-next-door type. (Most boys next door, however, do not look like Guy Madison.) The film features not one but two monstrous mothers.

Jean Simmons brings her usual loveliness, intelligence and dancer's grace to the part of Hilda, and David Raksin provides another dynamic score that combines melody and dissonance (he did study after all with Arnold Schoenberg, master of atonal music). Some ten years earlier Raksin did the score for another career-girl triangle film, "Daisy Kenyon."

This is another of those pre-Code movies in which someone literally gets away with murder--as can happen in real life. Neither the killer nor the victim is totally good or bad, which is also the way life is. That was until 1934, after which point in Hollywood the murderer was always punished and "fallen" women were always doomed to suffer.

The film covers a long period of time, giving elegant Kay Francis the chance to appear in clothing of many styles. She could be very compelling in her performances, although it was a somewhat declamatory style of acting very much of its time. Consistent with that is the "old" make-up for the character--essentially, silver hair and a touch less lipstick. Wistfulness was something that she did very well, and with her cello-like voice and big shining eyes, she was a treat to hear and see.

The storyline is somewhat improbable (surprise) and Kay is the only thoroughly likable character, but if you just go with it, there are some rewards--her cardsharping is a lot of fun.

This film has a memorable opening sequence: under the credits, we see a cab driving slowly through the deserted streets of a small town, to the accompaniment of Bronislau Kaper's haunting theme. It sets the tone of the whole film, which is about longing. (The theme was re-used in "Invitation.") Several years earlier Kaper had written another beautiful theme for Turner's "Green Dolphin Street." Turner does very well in a role that one feels may have had a certain resonance for her: when her Lily talks about the emptiness of her life as a model, one senses that the actress really drew upon thoughts of her own life. Somewhat paradoxically she is presented with ugly hair styles and dresses that were presumably meant to imply elegance.

The early scenes in the office of the modeling agency have a nice fluidity and capture the controlled chaos of the milieu. Cukor brings vivid performances from Tom Ewell and Jean Hagen (both of whom he directed in "Adam's Rib") and especially Ann Dvorak. The shattering of the porcelain shoe at the end of the film is a kind of reversal of the Cinderella slipper idea, and is emblematic of the fact that Lily's life is indeed her own, and not dependent on any kind of prince charming for meaning.