Showing posts with label Wendell Corey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wendell Corey. 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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| Everett Sloane talks to Jack Palance |
THE BIG KNIFE (1955). Producer/director: Robert Aldrich. Screenplay by James Poe from the play by Clifford Odets.
Movie star Charles Castle (Jack Palance) was involved in a hit and run that killed a child, but his p.r. man, Buddy (Paul Langton), took the rap for him. Charles' wife, Marion (Ida Lupino), who is separated from him, swears she'll divorce him if he re-signs with Stanley Hoff (Rod Steiger), who probably helped engineer the deception. Now there's a new complication: Castle had a woman with him in the car that night, Dixie Evans (Shelly Winters), and she's drunkenly shooting her mouth off everywhere she goes. Now Hoff and his associate Smiley (Wendell Corey), want to take care of Dixie -- permanently ... The Big Knife might have worked on the stage, and the Odets original was undoubtedly better than this half-baked adaptation, but the film sinks almost from the get-go. The chief problem is the epic miscasting of Jack Palance. Charlie might have evoked some sympathy in the viewer if he was played by a man who could get across his essential weakness and confusion, but Palance seems incapable of ever displaying the slightest trace of vulnerability. It gives the actor his presence and strength, but he's just all wrong for this picture. His scenes with Ida Lupino are stagey and over-rehearsed and just don't work at all -- both of them are busy "acting" instead of being. We're constantly being told of how wonderful Castle is and of his supposed integrity, but all we see is a corrupt, self-absorbed individual who allowed another man to take responsibility for his actions, slept with the man's wife, and acts like a dickhead throughout. When he protests at the idea of "silencing" Dixie, it's hard to believe that he would object -- he's the last one to take a high moral stance. It's up to the supporting cast to give the film whatever limited stature it has. Rod Steiger has some ferociously effective scenes as Stanley [some might think he's merely showing off]; Wendell Corey underplays beautifully as the slimy Smily; Everett Sloane is as solid as ever as Charles' agent; and Paul Langton has a beautifully and powerfully delivered speech to Castle at the end of the film that is one of the most memorable bits in the movie. As for the women, Ilka Chase offers a dead-on portrait of an oily, if stereotypical, gossip columnist, Shelley Winters is so-so as Dixie, and Jean Hagen fails to impress as Buddy's sluttish wife, Connie. Wesley Addy has a nice turn as the writer Hank Teagle. Oddly, a confrontation between Dixie and Hoff that might have been quite cinematic and dynamic is mentioned but not shown, but the film isn't "opened" up very much. It's hard to like or enjoy a movie in which virtually every character is either unpleasant or annoying. Robert Aldrich was the wrong director for this, as well. For a worthwhile Odets adaptation, see Clash By Night.
Verdict: A fairly embarrassing mess of Hollywood pseudo-profundity with horribly miscast leads. **.
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| Hitch does his cameo in Rear Window. |
Photojournalist "Jeff" Jefferies (James Stewart) is stuck in an apartment with a broken leg and a cast when he'd rather be out covering action in far-flung places with exotic names. Jeff has a beautiful girlfriend named Lisa (Grace Kelly), but he fears proposing to her because he doesn't think her patrician, elegant manner will go well with the places he has to travel to [although nowhere is it written that the wife must accompany her husband on such assignments]. Bored and needing distraction, Jeff begins observing his neighbors (on a marvelous, detailed set that shows many different kinds of apartments and tenants), such as the voluptuous dancer across the way, a pair of newlyweds who disappear behind the shade after moving in, a frustrated composer of romantic music, and a woman he calls "Miss Lonelyhearts" (Judith Evelyn) who talks to imaginary dates while she's having supper and gets drunk in bars. Eventually Jeff focuses on a man named Thorwald (Raymond Burr), whose nagging wife disappears one afternoon and never comes back. Jeff has reasons to believe Thorwald murdered the woman -- and eventually gets both Lisa and his nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) on his side -- but his smug detective friend Doyle (Wendell Corey) assures him that he checked and the woman really is out of town. But is she? Jeff and the ladies begin an investigation of their own that leads them into some serious danger. Some viewers of this wonderful film don't like being put in Jeff's position all the time, peering through windows, and find the film claustrophobic, but I can't agree. The movie, while imperfect, is very cinematic and well-made. It does take a while for the basic mystery plot to begin unfolding, but the two main characters and their dilemma -- two very different people in love but uncertain of how it will work out -- are interesting enough to hold the attention, and Stewart and Kelly give fine performances, along with Ritter, Evelyn and others. [This is another film like The Tingler in which the talented Evelyn gets across a character without really saying a word.] The movie builds in suspense and has a creepy and exciting finale. One thing Rear Window is missing is a great score by, say, Bernard Herrmann, but you can't have everything. John Michael Hayes' screenplay is full of black humor, even relating to the dismemberment of the woman's corpse, which is a plus or a minus depending on how you look at it. Based on a story by Cornell Woolrich.
Verdict: Smooth, unusual suspenser from the master. ***1/2.
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| Douglas Dick and Loretta Young |
"What do you think suicides are? Some little person thinks their little problems are all that matter in the world." -- Dr. Tuttle
College psychology professor Dr. Wilma Tuttle (Loretta Young) is concerned with a brilliant but brash and difficult student named Bill Perry (Douglas Dick). When Bill forces a smooch on her at an isolated spot, she reacts by hitting him repeatedly and killing him. Instead of coming clean, she covers up and hopes his death will be attributed to a bad dive off of a cliff into the water below; he was wearing swimming trunks. Perry's lawyer, Warren Ford (Robert Cummings), who didn't really know Perry that well nor especially like him, comes to town and begins a romance with Wilma even as homicide detective Lt. Ted Dorgan (Wendell Corey) begins to get suspicious ... The Accused features a good lead performance from Young [Because of You], fine support from an especially notable Douglas Dick and the wry, sardonic Corey [The Big Knife], but Bob Cummings is horribly miscast [as he always was in movies like this] and is terrible. Another problem with the movie is that while Perry does kiss Wilma forcibly and without permission, it doesn't necessarily mean he would have sexually assaulted her, and her viciously hitting him over and over again seems like literal overkill. Sara Allgood and Ann Doran are also in the cast, and Sam Jaffe offers a flavorful performance as Dr. Romley, whom Wilma finds ghoulish. Victor Young's score is a plus, and Ketti Frings' screenplay has some interesting dialogue. Unfortunately The Accused runs out of gas long before it's over. Dieterle directed Dark City and many, many others.
Verdict: Physician, heal thyself. **.
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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. ***.