WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[MissGoddess]

Thank you very much, Moira, for your analysis of You Only Live Once. I'm going to watch it again soon with your observations in mind, most of which I totally missed!

When I was watching it, I kept having in mind many of Lang's comments about himself and his films from the interview on the CONTEMPT bonus disc, especially about his romanticism. I do see him as a man who possessed sensibilities of another, earlier time, yet at the same time who never lost his curiosity about all things "progressive" (art, technology, societal issues, et al)

[MissGoddess]

The Mountain Road - 1960

Listening to Robert Osborne's comments before the movie last night, It was interesting to realize
I've actually seen a movie he hadn't! Although it had been a while and so it was nice to watch
it again. This time I thought about how rare it was to see Jimmy Stewart in a movie filmed in
a country other than the U.S. The Shop Around the Corner felt as American as it did
"Hungarian" and was shot on a soundstage, anyway. There was Hitchcock's The Man
Who Knew Too Much and what else? He and Henry Fonda may seem so very "American"
to me because they rarely strayed from home on the screen. Coop, Gable, Taylor, Holden,
Grant, Brando and even John Wayne all ventured to other shores on screen more often.

As for the movie itself, it's better than I remember and more realistic than I recall, too. Stewart
plays a major in the Army who, with a small band of soldiers, is assigned to blow up an
amunition dump in China before the Japanese can get to it. Along the way, he picks up the
widow of a Chinese general, played by the very pretty Lisa Lu. I thought the relationship and
behavior between Stewart and the men under his command was very believably presented.
I wonder if this was how Jimmy was in the service? Colonel Potter was there (Harry Morgan)
and had one of his best parts. He was in a few movies with Jimmy over the years.

And there was Glenn Corbett for the second time in a row, this time moving me to
tears for his act of "mercy" and its consequences.

Good movie and the topic can still be considered relevant by many I'm sure.

[moira finnie]

I'd never seen The Mountain Road until last night either, Miss G. Even though the film was not anything big budget by American standards of most big star productions, the focus on Jimmy Stewart's job--something the actor does very well when given the chance, (I'm just realizing how many work-themed films the guy made...as the ball player in The Stratton Story, a jet pilot in Strategic Air Command, an oil man in Thunder Bay, a musician in The Glenn Miller Story and an inventor in Carbine Williams, and some very interesting--and troubled, cowpokes too). Except in this movie, it does a really good job of showing a guy who destroys things for a living (though he does mention designing bridges in civilian life). And boy, is he good at it, in his single-minded way.

It takes Glenn Corbett as a sensitive soldier interested in Chinese society, and Lisa Lu and several disgruntled dogfaces, led by the always good Harry Morgan to remind him that he's not just dealing with an engineering problem in wartime China, but, as his c.o. tries to tell Stewart at the beginning of the movie, he has power, more power than he realizes and his exercise of it has consequences. One thing I liked very much about the movie, aside from the expressiveness of Stewart's discomfort as he realized the import of what he was witnessing and initiating, was that nothing was aggrandized. The events seemed to be everyday tragedies and momentary triumphs as Jimmy has his consciousness raised. Quite well done and I particularly liked the conclusion.

[charliechaplinfan]

I got to watch another Ronald Colman movie this time he was teamed with Ginger Rogers in Lucky Partners. I admit I'd never heard of this film and it's great.

It starts by Ronald Colman wishing Ginger Rogers good luck in the street, she gets good luck by being given a $300 coat by a complete stranger. She then goes halves with him on a lottery ticket, his condition that he take her on a platonic honeymoon before she settles down. They win, go on the honeymoon and fall in love. Of course, it doesn't run that smoothly. All the little twists and turns work there way brilliantly into the plot. For fans of Ronald or Ginger, it's a must.

[MichiganJ]

I watched two films starring Jeanne Moreau, Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l’échafaud) , a terrific film noir, with twists and motivations that aren’t predictable and best discovered. The jazz score by Miles Davis works amazingly well, especially during the long, rainy night Moreau spends looking for her lover....

Roger Vadim’s Les Liasons Dangereuses updates the now oft-filmed 18-th century novel about two spouses who revel in each other’s extramarital dalliances. Having mixed feelings of Vadim as a director, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed all of the devilish highjinks. Moreau, by the way, looks ravishing (which is redundant, I know) and there’s an interesting Thelonious Monk score featuring Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.

[Hollis]

Good evening all,

I felt pretty good (relatively speaking) tonight so I watched my NetFlix delivery "Primal Fear." I hadn't seen it since it's theatrical release back in 1996 and so it was almost like watching it for the first time. You know I'm not skilled at reviewing movies and am certainly no film historian, but this movie has to rank up there as among the best I think I've ever seen. After watching it I looked at TCMdb.com and found out that this was Edward Norton's first film outing. Amazing! What a performance. He was nominated for an Oscar as best supporting actor, but didn't win, but did receive the Golden Globe Award in the same category. All I can say is that it was well deserved. That's without knowing who he was in competition with. I'm kind of surprised that he only has 22 credits to his name as an actor but has several more as a writer, editor, producer and director. And all before he turns 39! I'll bet he's got some kind of a career ahead of him. I'm curious to know what those of you that have seen this movie think about it and about Mr Norton's performance as well. It also might be the best performance I've ever seen from Richard Gere also.

Have a great evening all,

As always,

Hollis

[moira finnie]

I watched two films starring Jeanne Moreau, Louis Malle’s Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l’échafaud) , a terrific film noir, with twists and motivations that aren’t predictable and best discovered. The jazz score by Miles Davis works amazingly well, especially during the long, rainy night Moreau spends looking for her lover....

Roger Vadim’s Les Liasons Dangereuses updates the now oft-filmed 18-th century novel about two spouses who revel in each other’s extramarital dalliances. Having mixed feelings of Vadim as a director, I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed all of the devilish highjinks. Moreau, by the way, looks ravishing (which is redundant, I know) and there’s an interesting Thelonious Monk score featuring Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers.

Hi MichiganJ,
I loved Elevator to the Gallows (Ascenseur pour l’échafaud) too. I'll watch just about anything with Moreau, but then, Jeanne Moreau sulkily reading the Paris phonebook can be fascinating. Have you seen Truffaut's adaptation of Cornell Woolrich's The Bride Wore Black (La Mariée Etait en Noir) (1968)? Talk about female empowerment?! Yikes. That Jeanne; she's great when she's deadly.

I usually have not liked Roger Vadim's movies, but will check out his version of Les Liasons Dangereuses, which sounds worthwhile.

[MichiganJ]

Truffaut is one of all time favorites and I love The Bride Wore Black. Of course Jules and Jim is near the top of my Truffaut list (when it comes to Trauffaut, there's nothing near the bottom), and I, too, would gladly watch Moreau read the phone book. I even suffered through Jean-Jacques Annaud's The Lover, simple because Moreau narrated it.

[charliechaplinfan]

I'm a Jeanne Moreau fan too. My favorites include Lift to the Scaffold, Les Amants, Diary of a Chambermaid and Jules Et Jim.

A couple of nights ago I watched Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow a film with three stories of these Adelina is the best. All three stories star Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.

Adelina is set in Naples. Adelina is played by Sophia Loren, she has been sentenced to go to jail for selling contraband cigarettes but the courts cannot send her as she is about to have a baby. Only after the baby is six months old can she be sent to prison. So Adelina makes sure her husand Carmino (Marcello Mastroianni) keeps getting her pregnant. They have seven children!!! and Adelina flourishes with each one, she works every day selling her cigarettes and Carmino looks after the kids. The children do not have the same exilarating effect on him. He fails to get her pregnant with number eight and she takes him to a doctor. The Doctor is confused he thinks they want birth control. The poor man is worn out, living on a poor diet. The short story is highly humourous but it harks back a little to the realism of pre war cinema by giving the viewer a glimpse of what live in Naples was like.

The second story Anna is the weakest of the three. Anna is a bored rich woman from Milan who has picked up a writer Renzo. She desperately wants him to commit to her until he dents her car.

Mara the third story is a high class call girl who turns the head of a young seminarian so much he wants to leave his calling. Augusto is her customer desperate for service. Only she can't as she makes a promise to the young seminarian's grandmother that she will pray and abstain for one week until Umberto goes back to the seminary.

It's all good fun.

Linking Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni together, has anyone ever seen La Notte?

[MissGoddess]

Dishonored Lady, from 1947 starring Hedy Lamarr as a the
"lady" in question. It was directed by Robert Stevenson, who was behind
one of my favorite romances, Jane Eyre as well as numerous episodes
of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents".

Dishonored Lady reminded me of many other movies: Spellbound and
Vertigo with Laura, Cat People and East Side, West Side thrown in for
good measure. It is somewhat rough in the transitions but then so much
happens it's amazing what the director was able to encompass in just one
movie.

Hedy's character, Madeleine Damien (something about that name...), is a
highly strung, successful and glamorous business woman who cannot find
happiness or contentment in any area of her life it seems, least of all her
private life which consists of a series of affairs with men she doesn't love.
What I think the script tries to indicate in this highly censored period is
that she may be a nymphomaniac, though it's hard to pin that down since
the term is obviously never used. What is clear from the first scene is that
she is suicidal and rather a _itch to deal with at the office.

Something's got to give, so after reluctantly deciding to see a psychiatrist
(who conveniently rescued her from a suicide attempt), she follows his
advice to cut off all her past associations and start life anew away from
the high life of New York's social whirl and take up her abandoned
painting career. Of course, she doesn't leave the City, she just moves her
posh furnishings downtown, trading Park Avenue for Washington Square.
However Washington Square seems to agree with Madeleine because
she's now charming, sweet and patient (I love Hollywood!) Margaret
Hamilton reprises her nosy landlady role from You Only Live Once and
probably many other movies; Natalie Shafer, still young and viviacious
before she settled to being a Howell is the gossipy, envious "friend" and
collegue; and a Morris Carnovsky plays the analyst, rather too smoothly
in my opinion. Topping it off as the two principal objects of Hedy's, well,
attentions, are playboy John Loder who appeals to her sensual weakness
(think Ava Gardner and James Mason with the roles from East Side, West
Side reversed) and Dennis O'Keefe in his best, blonde Dana Andrews
mode as the honorable research scientist, her true love who can't
conceive Madeleine is anything but the simple young artist who will be his
loyal bride and continue to happily illustrate his theses with drawings of
cells. There are, predictably, complications which threaten to separate the
lovers but they are surprisingly twisty and the whole movie moves along
at quite a pace. The only part that is rather routine is the actual
courtroom drama near the end but otherwise, Dishonored Lady is one of
Hedy Lamarr's most emotional performances, and most interesting
movies. Her character is not just the passive catalyst for events, but, as
in The Strange Woman she's a true femme fatale who cannot help it if
men get all tangled up over her.

I think a decent Hedy Lamarr box set would be wonderful, if it can include
Dishonored Lady, H.M. Pulman, Esq., The Strange Woman, I Take This
Woman and Algiers. Impossible, I know, since these movies weren't all
made at the same studio.

[charliechaplinfan]

I've only ever seen her in Algiers, not enough to make a full judgement.

I've just watched The Good Earth starring Paul Muni and Luise Rainer. This is two firsts for me, my first Muni film and first Luise Rainer film.

I'm in no doubt that they gave very good performances, in a rambling and sometimes tearful story. As Westerners they are quite believeable in the title roles. What they don't quite achieve with the makeup, they do with the movements. It doesn't suffer for having westerners in the leads for me.

Yet, I've always understood that Anna May Wong didn't get the role of Olan because it didn't play well in some parts of the world to have her making love to Paul Muni but wife number two has an affair with the youngest son of O-Lan and Wang who is played by a Chinese actor.

It has a very compelling tale with some very good effects like the locust plague. I think it's made me realise that I'm far fonder of escapist fare. Although The Good Earth has it's up's and downs when they are on a down it got me thinking that hey, this does happen in our world, people starve, what a cruel world. I think the movie is effective at getting this across. Perhaps to Depression audiences it gave them the message that you've had it tough but look to China, they are at the mercy of nature. Am I reading too much into it, perhaps, it's late a night here but nevertheless that's what will stay with me.

[MikeBSG]

I finally saw "Christmas in July" on DVD the other night. I really enjoyed it, and I thought it had the fastest pace of any Preston Sturges film I've seen.

On the other hand, it didn't quite feel like a Sturges movie. The heroine was very bland (okay, maybe I'm only thinking of "The Lady Eve" and "Palm Beach Story") and the characters seemed very New York ethnic compared to other Sturges films. Yet, I loved Raymond Walburn as the head of Maxford House Coffee. In a lot of ways, he seemed to steal the movie from Dick Powell.

Yesterday, I took my son to see "Prince Caspian." I enjoyed this movie, which is probably as close as we will get to a new movie that draws heavily on "Adventures of Robin Hood" and "Alexander Nevsky." The action was well-handled, and the characters seemed to have developed since the last film.

I know "Prince Caspian" has underperformed at the box office. I saw some grumbling that the film was too "dark" and should have been PG-13 instead of PG. Has anyone else experienced this? Certainly, the scene in which the White Witch (villain of "Lion, Witch, Wardrobe") is nearly brought back is extremely intense and creepy. (Frankly, it was better than comparable Lord Voldemort scenes in the Harry Potter films.)

[MichiganJ]

Ashamed to admit, but I never heard of French filmmaker Raymond Bernard but took a chance on the Criterion Eclipse collection, containing two of his masterpieces.
Wooden Crosses, an anti-war film, rivals, and in my estimation is even better than All Quiet on The Western Front The harrowing battle scenes are as visceral as any put on screen. Everything in the film works: the art direction is amazing, there are no false notes in any of the acting, and Bernard’s direction is impeccable. I’m generally not a fan of war films, but Wooden Crosses ranks among the very best I’ve ever seen.

As much as I admired Wooden Crosses, Bernard’s Les Misérables is simply awe inspiring. Probably the best literary adaptation I’ve ever seen (certainly the best Les Mis), the production values alone rival anything coming out of Hollywood or anywhere else at that time (1934). At nearly 5 hours (!), the film is broken up into three parts, (each with their own opening credits), allowing for a scope like a modern day “mini-series”. While my intention was to watch one installment a night, like a good book, I just had to continue onto the next chapter to see what happens. While all of the actors are wonderful, Harry Baur is just extraordinary as Jean Valjean. A special mention, too, for Gaby Triquet, who plays Cosette as a child. Be careful, she’ll break your heart.

Can’t recommend these films highly enough. Two of the best films I’ve seen in a long time.

[Ann Harding]

I am really glad Criterion released this set of pictures. Bernard is indeed a great director. You should also check his silent 'The Chess Player' which is available on DVD on R1US.

[charliechaplinfan]

I liked The Chess Player.

I watched Wooden Crosses recently. Whilst I recognise it's worth, artistry and comment about war, I found it a little hard going. A necessary film that needed to be made.

I admit to struggling with war movies.

Les Miserables is on my list to watch. I've never seen the musical or read the book, I'm going to be completely fresh to this work.