The Silver Screen Oasis

Anne wrote:

Day Break would not be a film for me to see, plus the fact that this sounds like it could actually happen

The film was based on a compilation of true stories, so, in essence, it did (does) actually happen.

I hate to think of people living in that kind of government.

If I'm not mistaken, our Government allows capital punishment, too.

One of the fascinating components in the film is how well the prisoners are treated by their fellow inmates and the guards. No one is a saint, and there are prisoners who get solitary, etc. But there is a lot of compassion, too.

As I figured, this film won't leave me alone.

MichaganJ:

. . . "the execution is postponed. Day Break is about a condemned man awaiting his execution, and the repeated failure of the victim's family to show up. His internal agony, endlessly caught between life and death, is excruciating."

This is the kind of thing that would keep me up all night for several nights. I'm not knocking the film at all, please don't get that idea, I'm only saying how hard it would be for me to watch it. As a simple example, do you remember Not Without My Daughter, with Sally Field? The first time I watched that, I had to turn it off before I smashed in my TV screen. It seriously took me a long time before I could watch Alfred Molina in anything; anytime I saw him, I wanted to beat him to a pulp and give him some of what he gave. I knew in my head it was a part he played, but he did it so well, I really hated him during the movie. I'm over it now, but whenever I see his name, I still think "Oh, he's the guy who played the husband in . . . my daughter." So watching a man go through the torment of waiting for death over and over again while coming so close each time would make me nuts. It would be like living in a taped scene that was looped and played over and over again.

Believe me Michigan J, it's just my weird way of looking at things.

Anne

MissGoddess wrote:I just finished CAGED with Eleanor Parker. The last thing on my mind movie-wise
was a women's prison flick but I've heard so much about this one for years.

Anyway, it was excellent. John Cromwell directed and I don't think I have yet to see a
single movie of his I didn't like. I can't even say that about my favorite directors.

Eleanor Parker should have won the Oscar (did she?) for that performance. Man, I would
not have believed she had it in her to show so much range in a single film. She goes from
a (totally believablej) naive, frightened witless 19 year-old incarcerated for getting mixed up
in her husband's armed robbery attempt where he got shot. The money taken was returned
and was only $40 and change and they told her had it been $5 less she wouldn't even have
been charged for a felony. This is just in the first ten minutes and I was about as scared
by then as Eleanor.

By the end of the film she's put through the wringer but I never felt the movie was exploitative,
which I sometimes felt about a couple of pre-codes I've seen on the same subject. They
seemed to want to make a point about reforms and I warn anyone who sees it that there's
no Hollywood ending. I was impressed.

Hope Emerson is "dream" casting as the warden, Harper (Harpie?) and boy does she
fill those shoes like she was born to it, poor thing! lol! I still can't get over her name....

Lee Patrick, Agnes Moorehead, Ellen Corby and Jan Sterling co-star. It's pretty
uncompromising for a 1950 movie and I recommend it if you're in the mood for that
sort of thing.

Caged is a very good picture. While Eleanor Parker stars as the young convicted felon Marie Allen, Agnes Moorehead, in her final picture under contract at Warners, takes second lead as prison superintendent Ruth Benton, the crusading reformer for better living conditions and rehabilitation for inmates. Hope Emerson is also good as the sadistic matron Evelyn Harper, for which she received a supporting actress Oscar nomination.

The character of Ruth Benton is based on the real-life women's prison superintendent Miriam van Waters who, shortly before this film was released, was undergoing her own public hearing process in Framingham, Massachusetts to retain her position. For three months her court battle against allegations of immorality in the prison attracted crowds of onlookers, made daily newspaper headlines in Boston, and caught national attention.

I find similarity not only between Dr. van Waters and Ruth Benton, but between van Waters and Miss Moorehead who was indeed ideally cast. A quick google search on her name will bring up several interesting articles, such as these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miriam_Van_Waters
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q ... ntent;col1
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/newton/a ... mers_life/

By all accounts, her biographer Estelle Freedman has done an admirable job in her book Maternal Justice: Miriam Van Waters and the Female Reform Tradition:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/presssite ... kkey=43137
http://www.paloaltoonline.com/weekly/mo ... WATER.html

I read the book Not Without My Daughter and that was enough for me, some real life events are deeply disturbing.

I'm reading Haunted Idol and I thought it would be the right time to catch up on a few of the early Cary films I've had waiting to be watched and revisit some old favorites.

First was Wedding Present with Joan Bennett, almost a forerunner of My Girl Friday but not as witty and possessing a complicated plot, has a funny ending (Conrad Nagel deserved it) it's a nice way to pass an hour and a half whilst ploughing through the ironing.

Second, Wings in the Dark, I really enjoyed this one. In it he's teamed with Myrna Loy, always a good pairing. They both play fliers only Cary's flier Ken gets blinded in a freak accident and can't complete the groundbreaking flight that he was going to attempt. He takes it badly and retreats to the country, Myrna's character Sheila makes the gift of a guide dog (who nearly steals the whole show) manages to support him secretly and encourages him in his endeavours to fly his plane whilst blind (that's the bit I didn't quite believe) if you can swallow that one when Myrna goes on a flight from Moscow to New York and gets stuck in the fog Cary goes up in his plane and guides her down. It's sounds completely implausible but it makes for a very good movie. I can only think that it would have the added attraction of coining in on the Lindbergh legend. Cary plays a very convincing blind man.

I've been watching Macao a visual feast for the eyes in more ways than one. Directed by Josef Von Sternberg with help from Nicholas Ray. An exotic film noir with Jane Russell as chanteuse and Robert Mitchum as a bum and Brad Dexter as an underworld figure who thinks Robert Mitchum's Nick Cochrane is a member of the police, he's not but it makes for a good plot, Gloria Grahame features as the gangster's moll.

And don't forget the 4th wheel on the Macao rickshaw: William Bendix, all a-brim with eye-pops & double-takes & snarling pearls of unsolicited advice at every turn.

I forgot to mention him, although why I forgot I don't know. He looks a bit like Jimmy Durante's young brother.

Watched a double-bill of director Jean-Paul Rappeneau films last night. La vie de Château is a terrific comedy, with the gorgeous Catherine Deneuve playing a bored housewife, who falls for a Resistance fighter. Add some Nazi occupiers, a German commanding officer--who also has the hots for Deneuve (and who can blame him?), D-Day, oh yea, and apples, and you have one fun romantic comedy! Philippe Noiret is particularly funny as Deneuve's weak-willed husband. His comedic timing is impeccable, and though much of his comedy is slapstick, he always maintains his character, adding to the humor. One of my favorite actors.

Next up was Bon voyage, a mad-cap romp about a number of Parisians who flee Paris before the German occupation and head south. Rappeneau expertly juggles the plethora of characters, including the beautiful Isabelle Adjani, (who is terrific as a manipulative and very self-centered "actress"), a Nazi spy, and a physics student, who is in possession of a "top-secret formula" . Not fare telling much more, but this film, too, is great fun. One wishes that Rappeneau would make more movies.

My life has been quite hectic these last weeks;there's simply too much to be done at Work and too many things going on in our lives. I have seen very few films.

Last sunday I watched three movies in a row which I had on the hard disk of my DVR:

"Paris After Dark" (1943). A highly dramatic movie set in Paris during the German occupation. Brenda Marshall plays a nurse whose husband, played very well by Philip Dorn -a hero of the Resistance- is a POW in a German camp. Marshall works in an hospital with an Aristocratic French doctor played by George Sanders -I found him dull in this role- who also aids the Resistance. The hero comes back to his home, but he's changed....The film is interesting, but overly dramatic in certain points and propagandistic. I felt that Dorn gave one of the best performances and Brenda Marshall is quite good, but at times I felt she lacked subtlety in her portrayal. Madeleine Le Beau, who had a secondary role in "Casablanca" (1943) plays a friend of Brenda Marshall's character and fellow member of The Resistance. A better director could have improved on the result.

"The Perfect Snob" (1941). It's an amiable piece of fluff with a very young and dashing Cornel Wilde, pretending to be poor and romancing snooty, beautiful Lynn Bari. Why Lynn Bari did not become a big star eludes me. She had a beautiful face and figure, class, a perfect voice, charm, talent, etc. She's really my type of woman. She and Wilde make a wonderful couple and instill this lightweight film with a fresh quality; in spite of the contrivances of the plot, the film works and succeeds in entertaing. A young Anthony Quinn plays Wilde's pal and he's quite dashing and apt at playing comedy as well. Add to the repertoire Charlie Ruggles and Charlotte Greenwood -who plays a snobbish character for a change- as Bari's parents and Alan Mowbray as Bari's suitor and you have a worthwhile, enjoyable B picture.

"No Room for the Groom" (1952). Quite the opposite that happened to me with the former comedy, I intensely disliked most of this film. The premise and situations did not work at all for me and I found everything terribly unfunny. Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie play a couple of newlyweds who have a failed honeymoon and who are later trapped in a house full of Laurie's annoying relatives, beginning with her mother -Spring Byington in a thankless role. Don De Fore plays the owner of the company Laurie works in and her suitor -and he's annoying too. Bad script. Laurie and Curtis fared much better in the fluffy fantasy "The Prince who was a thief" (1951), which at least was entertaining. The only worthwhile, sensible, human characters in this film are played Lillian Bronson -who impersonates Laurie's aunt- and Jack Kelly who plays Curtis' pal.

Last night I finally saw the long awaited "Gran Torino" (2008) and Clint Eastwood did not disappoint me at all- my expectations were satisfied

When I see a great film, like this excellent oeuvre, after it has finished I feel a certain je-ne-sais quoi that fills my body. A sensation of having witnessed a work of art. Clint Eastwood is magnificent in this movie that rests upon sincere performances, a very good script, Eastwood's immense talent and all the heart he puts in all his projects -No CGI, no far-fetched persecutions, no crash, boom, bangs; a simple, rich, human story, devoid of artificialness. He is able to transmit perfectly what he wants to state with this film about the redemption of a solitary man. Not since "The Bridges of Madison County" (1997) I had been so deeply moved by a movie in an "anti-manipulative", unsentimental, truthful way.

Mr. Eastwood you have accomplished to become one of the pivotal directors of our Era and I'm grateful for what you have given us.

Fernando, bravo on a great review!
I saw it just this week myself, and can heartily agree with all the points you covered; if fact, I've read your post about 3 times now, wracking my brain about what else to say . . I guess about all I can add, is to urge potential viewers not to misinterpret the basis of Eastwood's character - he is not any kind of variation on the grumpy old coot with a hidden heart of gold, and the fact that he is so far removed from that cinema stereotype is a large part of this film's strength.
In Gran Torino (a title referencing Eastwood's vintage muscle car, which actually claims very little screen time, or script), Clint Eastwood (white-haired, wrinkled, stiff-jointed, but still built like a light-middleweight boxer) plays Walt Kowalski, a reluctantly retired Detroit auto worker who's a brand new widower, with some brand new Asian neighbors, and so much churning angst from his Korean war memories & his two grown, condescending, apathetic sons, he'd just as soon level his cherished, crumbling old blue-collar neighborhood as go on looking at it.
To say more would be to leech away the deeply-textured power of discovery that awaits those who've not yet experienced this movie's raw courage, as it unfolds to portray a rare example of bitterness & loss evolving into a triumph of personal freedom, and a staunch refusal to surrender to the erosion of a community in physical decay.

Thank you very much Klondike, I found your review excellent. As Walt Kowalski Clint Eastwood gives such a rich, multi-layered performance. And he is so brave. A true hero.

BTW, Eastwood's fitness and build at 76 is incredible. I wish I could look half as good as he does when I turn sixty.

I don't usually go for new movies but I'll look out for this one, it's released on DVD here in late summer.

Clint Eastwood is 79-the same age as my Mom, not 76. He's a good, understated actor, but on the whole not one of my favorites. He's always been thin, so he has good genes in that regard. He's made a career out of playing macho parts, so he's always been a bit predictable to me.