WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[JackFavell]

Moira, you really pointed up the 'highlights' of the film, lol! the battlefield scene for me really puts this one in a class by itself. You are right, because the songs are so good, it almost doesn't matter that the rest of the film is odd to say the least. I still couldn't get past some of the dance sequences - you'd think that a choreographer couldn't help but be inspired by the wonderful music, but the direction this inspiration took was well..... laughable.

Cary still manages to do a capable job, and I am finding I like Alexis Smith more and more lately. I used to dislike her intensely, but I think it's the studio's fault, dumping her into roles that completely wasted her, or using her as a substitute for Olivia de Havilland with Errol Flynn.

Speaking of big stars and musical interludes, did anyone else catch the really fine number presented by those famous crooners Spencer Tracy, John Garfield, and Sheldon Leonard yesterday in Tortilla Flat?

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This movie may be the most misguided gathering of great actors ever, but some of Steinbeck's ideas about men losing the 'I' and becoming 'we' still have the power to move me. The acting all around, including Hedy's, was excellent. Watching this group of scene stealers including Allen Jenkins, Akim Tamiroff, John Qualen and Frank Morgan was sheer joy, despite the unpleasantness of Tracy's character and the racial stereotypes that Steinbeck perpetuated. Is there something good we can still take away from this movie? I think so.

[charliechaplinfan]

I've read quite a few of Steinbeck's books but not Tortilla Flat and I haven't watched the film either, that cast intrigues me too, I'll have to have a look around for it.

I've always liked Alexis Smith although I was never sure that she got that much to do in her pictures, she seemed more capable than the script ever gave her to do. When I watched her in The Constant Nymph I realised there was more to her. I might give Night and Day another go, I love Cole Porter's music and Cary Grant. I'd heard that Cary played the role as a favour to Cole Porter who wanted himself portrayed by Cary Grant, which man wouldn't?

[RedRiver]

Elsa steals the picture

Always! I like Harry Davenport too. SON OF FURY sounds great.

"What Is This Thing Called Love?"

I like Benny Hill's interpretation. "What is THIS thing called, Love?"

There'll be more explanation of all that i'm sure in the next Captain America movie

Shouldn't it be the other way around?

[RedRiver]

I like TORTILLA FLAT. It's not a great movie. It lacks direction. But it's character based. The story is driven by the people in it. It's tender and touching in a sleepy sort of way. The book is wonderful. More like a collection of short pieces than a novel, it's as good as any of Steinbeck's short fiction.

[JackFavell]

I have to admit Tortilla Flat was my favorite Steinbeck book (and he was my favorite early 20th century author till I read Fitzgerald), but I haven't read him since I was in junior high. I think it's time to revisit him. I remember the book being very important to me, more about living life than getting somewhere -that's unfortunately been my path so far, I think I should have had a little more ambition. I'm a paisano.

[charliechaplinfan]

Me too, I'm not into all that rushing around and pushing myself forward, no problem with with ambition in people but I want to be able to enjoy books, film, music and most of all family time.

I've read Of Mice and Men (don't think I could bear to watch the movie again) East of Eden and Grapes of Wrath, each one gave me food for thought, especially Grapes, Ford's version is so close to the book and Henry Fonda, he is Tom Joad.

[moira finnie]

Bogie!! Thanks for reappearing. You were missed more than you know.

Re: Night and Day (946)
Based on my early exposure to Night and Day (it used to be on tv about once a month) and other movies such as The Second Mrs. Carroll, I long believed that Alexis Smith was an ice queen. After seeing The Constant Nymph a few years ago I finally realized that Warners had this amazonian leading lady and didn't know what to do with her (esp. since their leading men, Cagney & Bogart in particular, were not all that tall). Given half a chance and a good director, she was an interesting actress.

I see what you mean about the choreography, Wendy, but other than the tremendous verve of James Cagney's brilliant routines in another Michael Curtiz musical, Yankee Doodle Dandy, was that film's dancing better than it was in Night and Day?

Alison, if you didn't like Night and Day (I try to suspend disbelief during outlandish biopics) be sure you avoid De-Lovely (2004) with Kevin Kline & Ashley Judd as Cole and Linda. While more factually accurate, the movie completely avoided the joy that Porter's words and music gave to the world, concentrating on the private sorrows of the two complex individuals. I recall much bally-hoo about De-Lovely, which was supposed to be part of a hoped-for resurgence of the musical when it was released, but that moment in the past doesn't seem to be bridgeable from the twenty-first century. For me, at least, the sublime music triumphed over every qualm about Night and Day (1946).

[JackFavell]

I see what you mean about the dancing in Yankee Doodle Dandy Moira, another case of blocky, chunky choreography. For me, the dancing in YDD seemed to fit the time period it was portraying. I think Curtiz and James Wong Howe got a superb feeling of turn of the century stage shows with the look of the film, the feel of footlights. The mood of the film was dictated by wartime patriotism adn carried over into the staged dance numbers. It always makes my heart swell to see You're a Grand Old Flag or Over There, because of the dual nature of portraying a war as a second war was going on. And Curtiz or maybe it was the choreographer Seymour Felix, infuses meaning and verve into those numbers which make them a part of the movie as a whole.... in other words, they fit.

Most of the dances in Night and Day felt completely disconnected to me. Disconnected from the time period they were supposed to be portraying, and disconnected from the movie itself and the story it was telling. I am shocked to see LeRoy Prinz's name as choreographer, they seem like odd modern insect-under-a-microscope dances, that have very little to do with the songs or the plot of the film. I did like the numbers that were supposed to take place in people's homes or rehearsal halls, they seemed more organic and natural. Curtiz did not integrate the stage numbers so well into the body of the story. They just seem foreign to me, like they plopped this weird group of fancy dressed people from the future into a movie that is supposed to take place between the 1920's and the 1930's and called it sophisticated. So yes, for me, anyway, there is a big difference between the two films.

[RedRiver]

Wendy, if you digested GRAPES OF WRATH in junior high, you were a pretty smart kid! I'm a paisano too. Live for today. Don't give a heck of a lot of thought to tomorrow!

[JackFavell]

Nope, Red, I didn't manage Grapes of Wrath till long after junior high.....it was sometime in high school I think, but I remember I didn't have to read it for school. I should have said I started Steinbeck in junior high. The little novels like Cannery Row, Tortilla Flat, Travels with Charlie, etc. were all my meat and drink at a pretty young age.

I was a huge reader and discovered in junior high that classic literature was waay more interesting than Afraid to Ride or Anne of Green Gables or Scholastic books. Steinbeck was also very easy to get right into, no fussiness or fustiness for a young mind to stumble over. I used to go to my mom's bookshelf all the time, read some pretty intense books (Carl Sandburg's Lincoln was a favorite to pick up on a rainy day, also Poe, Louis Nizer and Nicholas and Alexandra). Then my mom would take me to the library all the time, and we also went to the bookstore a lot and I discovered Penguin classics in paperback. I started Pride and Prejudice about the same time, from my mom's shelf, I'm pretty sure I didn't make it through the first third which is really hard to access. I must have gone back to it sometime in high school or college. I was nothing if not tenacious and I believed it was my problem if I couldn't get through something, not the author's, so I always went back and tried again. Really, there was nothing else for us to do back then, no TV, video games...it was read or go outside.

[charliechaplinfan]

I love Yankee Doodle Dandy, Cagney is so good that it doesn't matter that some of the biographical elements are a bit slow.

I only discovered reading when I started working, my Mum never bought us books or took us to the library, which was a pity, I missed so many joys of children's literature. I'm naturally a big reader but to my Mum to read a book is a sin when you could be doing housework, even now when she's confined mostly to the house she will not pick up a book and looks down on us who do. Personally there's nothing as snug as being curled up with a book, a pet and a cup of hot chocolate.

[JackFavell]

Wow. I can't even imagine looking down on readers. It must have been very tough growing up without books. I suspect Andrew feels a little like that, not so much the looking down part, but that reading is something to do only when there is nothing left after a hard day's work, and of course work is never done so reading is never an option. It's a luxury. I always feel that a book is more important than any housework!

[RedRiver]

Steinbeck is an easy, but still serious, read. It has depth, complexity. But the prose is more digestible than say, Dickens or Victor Hugo. I don't read many classics. It's too much work! A lot of Steinbeck, some Twain, WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Mostly, I'm happy in the Mystery/Suspense section!

[JackFavell]

If you got through Wuthering Heights, you did good, Red.

I like mysteries too.