CABIN
IN THE SKY
***½
USA
Vincente Minnelli's first film, this all-black musical fable is often
accused of racism. While such accusations are in part valid, in his
defence, Minnelli does treat his stereotypes with a warmth and compassion
that allows them some humanity. The earthiness and natural charisma of the
likes of Ethel Waters, Eddie Rochester, Lean Horne and Louis Armstrong
also help.
The plot - head generals for God and the Devil battle for the
soul of a pious woman's gambling husband - and the dialogue sections are
hokey. But every number is a treat.
dir: Vincente Minnelli
cast: Ethel Waters, Eddie Rochester, Lena Horne, Louis Armstrong,
Rex Ingram, Kenneth Spencer, John William Sublett, Oscar Polk, Mantan
Moreland, Willie Best, Duke Ellington
LE CORBEAU
*****
France
This exceptionally clever little thriller revolves around a provincial
town ravaged by poison pen letters. Clouzot keeps it moving at a perfect
pace, not only excising a maximum amount of suspense but also establishing
a collection of vivid, individual characters. The picture dispenses with
remarkable insight - on matters of small town and mob mentality, on the
kind of corruption that has a tendency to lurk beneath idyllic veneers - as it entertains. Within the
parameters of the whodunnit, it achieves a kind of perfection. (Don't tell anyone though, that it was financed by a
Nazi production company.)
dir: Henri-Georges Clouzot
wr: Henri-Georges Clouzot, Louis Chavance
cast: Pierre Fresnay, Ginette Leclerc, Perre
Larquay, Micheline Francey, Helena Manson, Noel Roquevert,
Sylvie, Liliane Maigné
DAY OF WRATH
*****
FIVE
GRAVES TO CAIRO
****½
USA
A taut mix of action, intrigue, humour and espionage, where a British
corporal takes shelter in an isolated North African hotel and is forced to
pose as an Alsatian double agent when the Nazis take over. The various accents and
adopted nationalities are taxing on your disbelief - what with
all-American Franchot
Tone playing a Brit playing a German (who can't speak German), and Anne
Baxter impersonating a charred maid from Marseilles. But the plot takes on
a new twist every five minutes, the one-liners whiz by and the staging is
expert. Billy Wilder directs - for only the third time - off a script he'd
written with Charles Brackett, and his plot handling and sense of economy
already bear the mark of a master. As a bonus, he even slips in some
feeling towards the end.
dir: Billy Wilder
wr: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett
ph: John Seitz
cast: Franchot Tone, Anne Baxter, Akim Tamiroff, Erich
von Stroheim, Peter Van Eyck, Fortunio Bonanova, Konstantin Shayne, Fred
Nurney, Miles Mander
HEAVEN CAN WAIT
****½
THE GHOST SHIP
***½
USA
A new officer arrives on the ship Altair and soon begins to suspect the
captain of homicide.
The least-seen of the many thrillers Val Lewton made in 1943,
this one had to be
withdrawn from circulation for about fifty years due to some reportedly
unfounded though legally enforced plagiarism accusations. No ghost actually turns
up at any point of the film, but even if you know that going in, you'd
probably still expect one to turn up at any moment.
Eeriness sets in pretty much
straight away - as soon as we are introduced to a pale, brooding (or at
least blank-faced) mute, who is the cleaner on the ship. He'd actually
make for a fantastic character, if his thoughts weren't turned into cheesy
voiceover. That and the story has little use for him for the most part. He
only gets to pop up in
non-sequitur shots to clean the deck or simply look surly.
On
the other side of the scale, the film's strongpoint is its imaginative use
of sound, which tones down the orchestra, cranks up the tension and makes
several sequences memorable, including one involving a wildly swinging
anchor, one involving the heavy chain of said anchor, as well as a bloody
climactic knife-fight.
dir: Mark Robson
cast: Richard Dix, Russell Wade, Edith Barrett, Ben
Bard, Edmund Glover, Skelton Knaggs
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I
WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE
***
USA
A young nurse is sent to care
for a living dead woman in the West Indies.
An oddly incompetent follow-up (with obvious Jane Eyre
parallels) to the production team's innovative "Cat People" (1942). Treating zombies as mental cases - and with a straight face -
director Jacques Turneur imposes upon it a ponderous pace he cannot and should not have to sustain,
resulting in several rushed, increasingly ludicrous and completely unnecessary
plot developments towards the end.
dir: Jacques Tourneur
cast: James Ellison, Frances Dee, Tom Conway, Edith
Barrett, James Bell, Christine Gordon
THE LEOPARD MAN
***½
USA
A stray leopard ravages a small
town in New Mexico.
An engaging addition to Val Lewton's influential series of low-budget
horror films, with outrageous dialogue but an assortment of effectively
eerie touches.
dir: Jacques Tourneur
cast: Dennis O'Keefe, Jean Brooks, Margo, James Bell,
Isabel Jewell
LASSIE COME HOME
***
THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL
BLIMP
***½
THE
MORE THE MERRIER
****½
USA
George Stevens was mostly a conventional director but he had a gift for
capturing intimacy. He was responsible for some of the most gush-inducing
scenes of Hollywood romancing, several of which take place in this gem
that brings together Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea and Charles Coburn in a
cramped Washington apartment during the WWII housing shortage. Technically it's Arthur's vehicle, and Coburn was the one
to snap up an Oscar, but it's ever patient, unassumingly sexy McCrea who steals
the picture. As well as his usual goofy charm he brings weathered
melancholy and yearning to a stock role. The script helps, for sure, as
does Arthur's charm and groundedness, but the love scenes wouldn't be half
as resonant without McCrea's conviction and half-buried vulnerability.
dir: George Stevens
wr: Robert Russell, Frank Ross, Richard Flournoy, Lewis R.
Forster, Garson Kanin
cast: Jean Arthur, Joel McCrea, Charles Coburn, Richard
Gaines, Bruce Bennett, Frank Sully, Clyde Fillmore, Stanley Clements
THE
OX-BOW INCIDENT
*****
USA
William Wellman's taut, unaffected Western explores the bloodlust that
overwhelms the outwardly wholesome folk of a frontier township when news
arrives that one of their own has been found murdered on the outskirts.
The picture is overtly incendiary in its evisceration of mob mentality and
the nastier basic human impulses, yet so subtle and probing in its
characterisations that a silent sideline exchange of glances between old
lovers is enough to evoke a scarring, tangled shared history. It mixes a
traditionally literary concern with the human condition with a
traditionally Hollywood sense of escalating tension as well as a visceral
and unusually confronting threat of violence. And it wraps up in just
under 75 minutes.
With its cynical undercurrent and blistering assault on
frontier mythology, this is the kind of 'classical Hollywood' Western that
makes you wonder how much of the claims of subversiveness and exposé of
the revisionist craze that began in the late 60s and is yet to really go
away is purely a matter of self-serious posturing.
dir: William Wellman
wr: Lamar Trotti
ph: Arthur C. Miller
ed: Allen McNeil
cast: Henry Fonda, Dan Andrews, Anthony Quinn, William
Eythe, Harry Morgan, Jane Darwell, Harry Davenport, Frank Conroy,
Mary Beth Hughes, Marc Lawrence, Victor Kilian, Paul Hurst, Margaret
Hamilton
THE SEVENTH VICTIM
****
USA
A Catholic schoolgirl goes to
Manhattan in search of her sister, who may have been involved with a
Satanist cult.
A strange horror-thriller - another one produced for RKO by Val Lewton
- that takes on topics it doesn't necessarily know a lot about. Yet it
works anyway, and it's not like any other film made at the time. There's
doom and death hanging in the air throughout and the tension quickly
reaches a high and doesn't let up before its haunting conclusion.
dir: Mark Robson
cast: Kim Hunter, Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Isabel
Jewell, Evelyn Brent, Erford Gage
SHADOW OF A DOUBT
****½
THE SONG OF BERNADETTE
**½
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