Showing posts with label 1950. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1950. Show all posts
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| Original title: Thelma Jordan." |
"Maybe I am just a dame and didn't know it. Maybe I like being picked up by a guy on a binge."
Concerned with possible burglars at her elderly aunt's estate, Thelma Jordan (Barbara Stanwyck) goes to see an assistant district attorney named Miles Scott (Paul Kelly) but winds up with another ADA, Cleve Marshall (Wendell Corey) who happens to be rather bored with his wife (Joan Tetzel) and children and their vacations and falls hard for Thelma while on a bender. The plot has various intriguing twists and turns as the two carry on a heated affair while Mrs. Marshall and the kids wait at the beach. Then, wouldn't you know it, someone gets murdered ... Stanwyck gives another fine performance in Thelma Jordan, and Corey is quite good as well; this is an actor who has hidden facets as well as versatility. Stanwyck plays one of her most unsympathetic characters but you're with her right from the start. Tetzel and Kelly are also fine, and Gertrude Hoffman is just right in her brief appearance as Thelma's aunt. No, this is no Double Indemnity, but it's absorbing and has a few tricks up its sleeve. To accept some of the more absurd plot turns takes a definite "suspension of disbelief," however. Some of Corey's best performances were in No Sad Songs for Me, The Big Knife, and his debut film Desert Fury, and he also somehow wound up in Women of the Prehistoric Planet.
Verdict: Stanwyck smoulders in grand style. ***.
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| The astronauts explore red planet Mars |
The first manned spaceship and its team -- consisting of Colonel Floyd Graham (Lloyd Bridges), Major William Corrigan (Noah Beery Jr.), Dr. Karl Eckstrom (John Emery of Kronos), Dr. Lisa Van Horn (Osa Massen), and Harry Chamberlain (Hugh O'Brian) -- take off for the moon but somehow, as if they were Abbott and Costello, wind up on Mars instead. Wandering around in stark, red-tinted landscapes, they discover stone age savages and have a depressing realization. The decent production values insure that the sets and FX are less cheesy than they are in similar movies, and there's a nice theme by Ferde Grofe [Albert Glasser was musical director]. The picture was also photographed by Karl Struss [Sunrise] and has a downbeat conclusion. Morris Ankrum gives perhaps the best performance as Dr. Fleming back on earth. There are no giant spiders in this although some may feel it could have used them.
Verdict: Not quite serious sci fi but close. ***.
"You are a swine, Stephen."
Struggling writer Stephen Byrne (Louis Hayward) makes a pass at a pretty maid, Emily (Dorothy Patrick), and winds up accidentally killing her, then gets his lame, bookkeeper brother, John (Lee Bowman), to help him cover up the crime and put her body in the river beside his house. Meanwhile the mystery over the disappearing maid provides enough publicity for Stephen to capitalize on for his writing career, but his wife, Marjorie (Jane Wyatt), finds his new success a little ghoulish. Then Emily's body is found and one of the brothers is arrested .,. With moody, beautiful photography from Edward Cronjager, a fine score by George Antheil, and a memorable lead performance by Hayward, House By the River is one of Lang's best pictures. Wyatt is quite good, Bowman also good [if not on Hayward's level], and we even get Ann Shoemaker as a friendly neighbor and Kathleen Freeman as a party guest. Jody Gilbert also scores as John's housekeeper, Flora. In the Lang canon, this falls somewhere between the awful Secret Beyond the Door ... and the excellent Clash By Night.
Verdict: Brooding, well-done suspense film that just misses being a real classic. ***.
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| Joseph Cotten and Joan Fontaine |
When their plane to New York touches down near Naples for repairs, two strangers -- businessman David (Joseph Cotten) and concert pianist Manina (Joan Fontaine) -- decide to use the time to go sightseeing together, but miss their plane. They decide to continue sightseeing, then learn that the plane they were supposed to be on crashed, killing everyone aboard -- and they are listed in the paper as two of the victims. Unable to get a divorce from his wife, Catherine (Jessica Tandy), David importunes Manina to start a new life with him in Florence, where they rent or buy a villa with the aid of her teacher, Maria (Francoise Rosay). But will this merely be a brief if intense affair, and will the pull of the past prove too much to them?
A major problem with September Affair is the reaction the couple has to the news about the plane crash. They were on the plane, saw the passengers and some of the crew members, yet they never express the slightest pity for these people and their awful deaths, making them seem remarkably callous and self-absorbed. The plane crash and the deaths of over thirty people are simply an "opportunity" for these two losers. The shame of it is that just a brief moment of scripted compassion on their part would have made them more sympathetic and human. A bigger shame is that otherwise September Affair is not a terrible picture, although in the manner of soap operas it ignores certain realities such as remains and making a living. David writes Maria a check so she can cash it for him [considering the size of their palazzo it must have been a mighty sizable check], but he does it two days before the plane crash, making him seem positively prescient [or the check was post-dated].
On the plus side, Cotten and Fontaine, especially the latter, give very good performances, and Jessica Tandy [Adventures of a Young Man] nearly steals the picture as the confused, grieving wife. Robert Arthur also makes a positive impression as David's handsome, sensitive son [David is a selfish and terrible father, however.] The movie is drenched in romantic music, everything from "September Song" from Knickerbocker Holiday [an unofficial theme of the movie] to Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, which Manina plays in a concert. There are some beautiful Italian settings as well. A nice surprise is the appearance of Jimmy Lydon (Henry Aldrich) as a soldier in a restaurant who betrays a very pleasant voice when he sings "September Song" as Manina plays the piano. The frankly absurd ending seems forced by the production code of the period. William Dieterle also directed Love Letters with Joseph Cotten and many other movies.
Verdict: Lush and classy soap opera in many respects, but with a key flaw, confused and superficial script, and characters you sometimes may find it hard to root for. **1/2.
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| Zachary Scott |
Max Thursday (Zachary Scott) is a divorced ex-cop who spends his time drinking in a rundown boarding house. But he is galvanized to action - sort of -- when his ex-wife, Georgia (Faye Emerson), comes to tell him that their little boy has been kidnapped. Max goes to see Dr. Elder (Jed Prouty of the Jones Family movies), who may have some information, but the man winds up murdered. And there are other complications. Frankly, Guilty Bystander is a bit confusing as we follow Max's convoluted path from person to person, although there are some interesting characters and actors along the way: Mary Boland has a very different role to play than usual as the tough, tippling landlady, but she does it well. Sam Levene is Max's former boss on the force, Captain Tonetti, and perhaps the biggest surprise is a young Kay Medford as a sexy moll with whom Max dallies in his quest for answers. Scott [The Unfaithful] gives a very good performance, with Boland, Prouty and Medford [Two Tickets to Paris] not far behind him, but the movie is very minor film noir, although there are a couple of surprises before the conclusion.
Verdict: Perhaps too murky for its own good. **1/2.
PIRATES OF THE HIGH SEAS (15 chapter Columbia serial/1950). Directors: Spencer Gordon Bennet; Thomas Carr.
On the paradise island of Talua in the south pacific post-WW 2, Kelly Walsh (Tommy Farrell) is bedeviled by the crew of a "phantom cruiser" that shoots at his boat and then disappears into thin air. Said cruiser has the ability to dive underwater while retaining the outward appearance of a boat instead of a submarine [this ability is so under-utilized that it's a wonder the serial even bothers with it.]. Kelly sends for his old Army buddy Jeff (Buster Crabbe), who has no interest in returning to the south pacific but suddenly finds himself besieged by passengers who must get to Talua, including Kelly's pretty blond sister, Carol (Lois Hall); Whitlock (Gene Roth), who turns out to be the governor of the island; and Castell (Tristram Coffin of King of the Rocket Men), an agent who is after a Nazi war criminal named Van Horsdorff who has hidden away millions of dollars worth of diamonds somewhere in the vicinity of Talua. The clue to the location of the diamonds may be inside a music box that plays "Three Blind Mice." It is revealed early on that Whitlock is corrupt, to put it mildly, and has some nasty confederates, especially Shark, captain of the phantom cruiser, who as portrayed by Marshall Reed with two day's growth of beard is one of the sexiest sociopaths to ever appear in a serial. Handsome Shark thinks nothing of gunning down associates with impunity before they can impart important information to the good guys. There are a couple of memorable cliffhangers, such as when a heavy stone block comes crashing down on a coffin inside which Jeff is hiding; and a great bit when Jeff battles a hood on a flat piece of wall that has just been torn off the side of the jail and is being dragged behind a speeding truck as it careens toward a cliff. Most of the characters in this, even some of the good guys, are rather shady and duplicitous, including Lamar (Stanley Price), Whitlock's secretary, and the Lotus Lady (Symona Boniface), who runs the general store and whose loyalties are ambiguous. Pirates of the High Seas may not be one of the classic serials, but it is entertaining if overlong at nearly four and a half hours. Crabbe may be a bit paunchy and middle-aged in this but he still delivers the goods, and the other cast members are generally equally adept.
Verdict: Worth a trip on the Phantom Cruiser. ***.
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| Dana Andrews confronts Gary Merrill |
Detective Mark Dixon (Dana Andrews) is a tough cop who has been warned once too often to use less force when "interviewing" suspects, but he goes too far and inadvertently kills a war hero with a plate in his head (Craig Stevens of Peter Gunn), then covers it up. As part of his investigation he meets the dead man's estranged wife, Morgan (Gene Tierney), whose father (Tom Tully) is arrested for the crime. Mark's guilt increases as he and the lovely Morgan are drawn to one another, and she worries terribly about a man whom Mark knows is innocent. Will he do the right thing? Where the Sidewalk Ends reunites the director and leads of Laura and is good enough that you don't even miss Clifton Webb. Andrews, Tierney, Gary Merrill (as a crook Mark has been trying to ensnare), and even Craig Stevens all give adept performances, and there is good support from Tully, Karl Malden and Bert Freed as cops, Eda Reiss Merin as Freed's wife, and Ruth Donnelly as a restaurant owner and friend of Mark's. More proof that Dana Andrews was an under-rated actor.
Verdict: Smooth romance-suspenser with some fine performances. ***.
Early in Shadow On the Wall we learn that Celia (Kristine Miller), the wife of David Starrling (Zachary Scott), is having an affair with her own sister's fiance, Crane Weymouth (Tom Helmore). When sister Dell (Ann Sothern) learns of this ultimate betrayal, all of her pent-up sibling rage spills out and she shoots her sister dead; she then lets David take the rap. When she learns that David's young daughter Susan (Gigi Perreau) might have seen her commit the murder, she comes to the conclusion that the child must follow her stepmother into the grave. In the hands of a Hitchcock or any superior director, Shadow on the Wall might have been a nail-biting suspense item, but not only is it flaccid but it never quite recovers from its many improbabilities. For instance, little Susan is not an idiot and she's not that young, so she probably would have known her aunt Dell was responsible for the murder all along. And it's hard to believe that David would get the death penalty for a crime of passion that most likely would have been pled out as voluntary manslaughter. But at least the story holds your attention and the performances are good, including Nancy Davis-Reagan [East Side, West Side] as a child psychologist whose methods are bizarre to say the least, and John McIntire as her associate. Little Jimmy Hunt [Pitfall] has an amusing scene with Perreau [Journey to the Center of Time] where he covets a glass of chocolate milk she refuses to drink.A bathtub resuscitation sequence that is shot strictly from the victim's point of view in two shots and closeups is one of the more effective moments in the picture.
Verdict: Psychologically dubious. **.
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| Ann Francis and adorable tyke |
Dr. John Jason (Paul Henreid of Between Two Worlds) is the new psychiatrist at a reformatory for girls that is run with complete disregard for these young ladies' welfare by Mr. Riggs (Cecil Clovelly) and stone-faced nurse Mrs. Beuhler (Grace Coppin). Jason tries to get support from the rather beautiful assistant superintendent Ruth Levering (Catherine McLeod), but she's too afraid of losing her job. When Jason tries to get the girls to talk about abuses to board members, they clam up, having been threatened by Riggs or Beuhler. Jason is particularly concerned with four of the young women: Loretta (Anne Francis) who tries to use sex as a weapon; Jackie (Anne Jackson), who is sullen and may have a crush on Loretta; Delores (Rita Moreno), who is pretty and shy; and Jane (Enid Pulver), who is withdrawn and needs help. Loretta wants to give up her baby boy for adoption but while she pretends to have no feelings is more emotionally involved than she lets on. So Young, So Bad was released the same year as the more famous Caged, and the two movies have many similarities [although the latter film takes place in a bonafide prison with older inmates]. SYSB is a fairly absorbing film with real attempts at characterization, and is greatly bolstered by the performances of the cast, especially Francis [Forbidden Planet], Jackson, and Moreno, all of whom would go on to have highly successful careers [Pulver did a little TV work after she completed this film]. Instead of a kitten as in Caged, the girls have a pet rabbit that gets stomped on by the abusive Beuhler. The four adult leads are all quite credible. An interesting scene has Jackie utterly collapsing into anguished tears after she sees Loretta bonding with her baby, as if she feels left out or is suffering from lesbian heartbreak. Vorhaus also directed The Affairs of Jimmy Valentine. Henreid later directed movies somewhat similar to this one.
Verdict: Some very good acting helps put this over. ***.
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| Willie (Dan Dailey) is questioned by French resistance |
WHEN WILLIE COMES MARCHING HOME (1950). Director: John Ford.
After Pearl Harbor, small-town boy and bandleader Bill Kluggs (Dan Dailey) is anxious to enlist. Although his early training doesn't go so well, he eventually develops "the highest rating of any instructor," which means the Army has more use for him in camp than overseas. Unfortunately, said camp is located right in Bill's home town, where he stays -- and stays -- while other men ship out and his neighbors get more and more resentful. Eventually he goes on a mission and winds up behind enemy lines and working with the French resistance, and is sent back to England with important information -- unfortunately he can't talk about the mission. One annoying thing about this otherwise good and funny movie is that no one -- not even Bill's parents -- acknowledge that he's performing an important service as an instructor (an assignment that is not without its dangers). Dailey is excellent, and he has fine support from William Demarest [Pardon My Past] and Evelyn Varden [The Bad Seed] as his parents; Colleen Townsend as his girl, Marge; Jimmy Lydon [Henry Aldrich Haunts a House] as her brother; and Corinne Calvet as a beautiful lady with the French resistance.
Verdict: Well-done and keeps you chuckling, with a fine lead performance. ***.
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| Joan Crawford as Harriet Craig |
"I don't like trains. I don't like the feeling of being rushed along in the darkness. Having no control. Having my life completely in someone else's hands" -- Harriet Craig.
This remake of Craig's Wife is actually the third film version of George Kelly's play, which was first made as a silent. In this loose adaptation, Joan Crawford plays Harriet Craig, who likes order and neatness and everything in its place, including her husband, Walter (Wendell Corey of The Big Knife). She and her mother were abandoned by her father, and she needs to be in total control of her life and everyone else's, including her niece, Clare's (K. T. Stevens), who has lived with her and Walter for many years, and whose relationship with Wes (William Bishop of It's a Great Life) she tries to destroy. This version eliminates the character of Walter's aunt, and provides an even stronger motive for Walter's walking out on his wife. Crawford and Corey give very good performances, and the supporting cast, including Lucile Watson, Stevens, Ellen Corby, and Viola Roache, is notable.
Verdict: Crawford in dragon lady mode. ***.
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| Phyllis (Ella Raines) before her makeover. |
Phyllis (Ella Raines) is a plain but lovely woman who works for a bitter man, Paul (Bruce Bennett), whose pretty wife ran out on him. He sends Phyllis to Los Angeles to stay with a friend, Claire (Rita Johnson of Sleep, My Love), who tries to get her a job with a fashion house as a designer, but since she's required to do some selling on the floor first, she isn't hired due to her appearance. She goes to work for Claire's fiance, Allan (Roy Roberts of The Gale Storm Show), who is fooling around with a client's pretty daughter, and is "romanced" by the slimy Jerry (John Sutton of The Invisible Man Returns), who only wants to use her designs for himself. Phyllis is racing to prevent a possible murder when her car smashes into a truck -- now there's a chance that surgery can make her as attractive as she's always dreamed ... Most of the male characters in The Second Face are pretty loathsome. One guy breaks off with his fiancee by sending a telegram to another person, expecting her to relay the bad news to the rejected woman. An aging businessman (Pierre Watkin) is unspeakably blunt and cruel to Phyllis just to make a point about advertising. Meanwhile no one makes the point that Phyllis' sweet demeanor and feminine, charming aura would certainly make her appealing to some men, and none of her lady friends suggest make up or a new hairdo. In any case, Raines' performance is excellent, and the supporting players are adept enough. Eugene Vale's screenplay is often psychologically astute. Raines also made a good impression in The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry but was less effective in Impact. Kathleen Freeman has a nice bit at the end as a homely-but-happy married lady whose husband likes her just the way she is.
Verdict: An appealing Raines helps put this over. ***.