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BEHIND CLOSED DOORS
****
USA
A newspaperwoman hires a
private eye to pose as a manic-depressive in order to enter an asylum
where she believes a wanted criminal is hiding out.
A tense, criminally neglected B-noir package that manages to evade
plausibility and never lose you for a minute thanks to the likable actors and
Budd Boetticher's commendable pacing and economy.
dir: Budd Boetticher
wr: Eugene Ling, Malvin Wald
ph: Guy Roe
cast: Richard Carlson, Lucille Bremer, Douglas Fowley, Ralf Harolde,
Thomas Browne Henry, Herbert Hayes, Tor Johnson
BICYCLE THIEVES
****½
EASTER PARADE
***½
FORCE OF EVIL
***
USA
A racketeer's lawyer struggles
to protect his estranged brother.
Earnest, claustrophobic melodrama, with impressive photography and
location work
relieving the tedium.
dir: Abraham Polonsky
ph: George Barnes
cast: John Garfield, Thomas Gomez, Beatrice
Pearson, Marie Windsor
FORT APACHE
***½
USA
A leisurely John Ford Western,
not as evocative as his best, but
pleasant.
Henry Fonda is an uptight, racist commanding officer and John Wayne is an
easy-going man's man made to serve under him. There's also Shirley Temple,
all grown up and grating, as Fonda's daughter and long shots of all the
familiar bits from Monument Valley that never fail to bring on a sense of
nostalgia. The first of Ford's cavalry trilogy, it was followed by "She
Wore a Yellow Ribbon" (1949) and "Rio Grande"
(1950).
dir: John Ford
cast: Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Shirley Temple,
Ward Bond, John Agar, George O'Brien, Irene Rich, Victor McLaglen, Anna
Lee, Guy Kibbee, Mae Marsh
GERMANY,
YEAR ZERO
***½
Italy
The third and least sustained chapter in Roberto Rossellini's War Trilogy. In his
search for an elemental humanity in the crushed enemy, Rossellini
discovered some striking locations and a fascinating social context but he
failed to come across any half-competent actors. Whenever anyone speaks in
this melodrama of Shakespearean aspirations, the illusion is wrecked - and
this illusion is crucial to neo-realist story-telling. Still, the glimpses
of post-War Berlin are galvanising and the film's finale, which unfolds in
excruciatingly tense real time (and, thankfully, in silence), packs a
punch.
dir: Roberto Rossellini
ph: Robert Juillard
cast: Edmund Moeschke, Ernst Pittschau, Ingetraud Hinze,
Franz-Otto Krüger, Erich Gühne
HAMLET
***
HE WALKED BY NIGHT
*****
USA
One of those semi-documentary
noirs popularised earlier in the year by Dassin's "The Naked
City", this one is more convincing and genuinely naturalistic than most -
music and dialogue are used sparingly. The picture still feels almost
contemporary, or at least somehow timeless and strangely poetic. The plot concerns
an investigation by those noble, tireless guys at the LAPD into
the murder of a cop. The psychopathic culprit is played astonishingly
well by Richard Basehart. There's no nervous twitching or eyes bulging
here. It's a restrained, remarkably controlled performance (decades ahead
of its time in how unshowy it is). The other star is cinematographer John Alton at
the peak of his considerable powers here - particularly in the climactic
chase, which anticipates the legendary sewer sequence in the following year's
"The Third Man". Although Alfred Werker is credited as
director, a certain Anthony Mann did a lot of his work and it may very
well be the latter's strongest.
dir: Alfred Werker, Anthony Mann
ph: John Alton
ed: Al DeGaetano
cast: Richard Basehart, Scott Brady, Roy
Roberts, Whit Bissell, James Cardwell, Jack Webb
KEY LARGO
****
THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI
***½
THE
LAST STAGE
***½
Poland
Shortly after liberation, Auschwitz survivor Wanda Jakubowska returned to
the actual camp to recount her experiences in a stark, searing
semi-documentary style that has a lot in common with the neo-realists. The
scenes showing the heartless Nazis behind closed doors are awkwardly
caricaturish in contrast to the immediacy of the prisoners' plight. But
sixty years and countless generic, borderline-exploitative Holocaust
melodramas later, the film's impact hasn't been diluted.
dir: Wanda Jakubowska
wr: Wanda Jakubowska, Gerda Schneider
cast: Tatjana Gorecka, Antonina Gordon-Gorecka, Barbara Drapinska,
Aleksandra Slaska, Barbara Rachwalska, Wladyslaw Brochwicz, Edward
Dziewonski, Alina Janowska, Kazimierz Pawlowski
LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN
***½
LOUISIANA
STORY
***
USA
Robert J. Flaherty's final feature film, this semi-documentary traces the
arrival of an oil derrick into an idyllic bayou populated only by a Cajun
boy, his Ma and Pa and his cuddly pet raccoon.
As an opening intertitle asserts, Flaherty devoted his career
to documenting "the eternal things in human life" and the
necessary changes, and this picture is purportedly his portrayal of the
way that industry can blend into and strengthen the harmony between Man
and the land. That's right, the underlying message is that the
construction of an oil rig can only improve nature. When the oil drill and
the workers arrive, our wide-eyed hero greets them like a Holocaust orphan
would an American soldier in a tank. The picture's producers - the
Standard Oil Company - could only ever nod in earnest approval.
The general impression however, is that Flaherty isn't at all
distracted by the political underpinnings of his movie. He just wants to
make pretty pictures about a boy, his dinghy and his raccoon. And the
pictures are indeed pretty but they lack the majesty of Flaherty's earlier
work and they're somewhat muted by the relentless score (which tinkles in
innocent glee every time the kid picks up his shotgun).
dir: Robert J. Flaherty
ph: Richard Leacock
cast: Joseph Boudreaux, Lionel Le Blanc, E. Bienvenu, Frank Hardy,
C.P. Guedry
MACBETH
***½
USA
Orson Welles' movie adaptation of Shakespeare's story - easily the best of
the American ones - is famous for having been made in 21 days. The sets
were made of papier-mache and have an otherworldly quality that aids the
mood enormously. The performances vary in tone and conviction - as do the
Scottish accent attempts - though they're generally adequate at the very
least.
dir: Orson Welles
ph: John L. Russell
cast: Orson Welles, Jeanette Nolan, Dan O'Herlihy, Roddy
McDowall, Edgar Barrier, Alan Napier, Erskine Sanford, John Dierkes, Keene
Curtis, Peggy Webber, Lionel Braham, Archie Huegly, Jerry Farber,
Christopher Welles
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MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM
HOUSE
***½
THE
NAKED CITY
****½
USA
In a landmark move, producer Mark Hellinger and director Jules Dassin took
their noir police procedural straight to the streets of NYC. The actors are stiff and the omniscient commentary by
Hellinger - more often than not - grating. But the social detail of
post-war day-to-day New York, the breathless pace and the stark, raw
elegance of the visuals make the film vivid and enduring.
dir: Jules Dassin
wr: Albert Maltz, Malvin Wald
ph: William Daniels
ed: Paul Weatherwax
cast: Barry Fitzgerald, Howard Duff, Dorothy Hart, Don Taylor,
Ted De Corsia, House Jameson, Anne Sargent, Adelaide Klein, Grover
Burgess, Frank Conroy, Mark Hellinger
OLIVER TWIST
****
RAW DEAL
*****
USA
A convict escapes from jail to
get revenge on the sadistic criminal responsible for the crime for which
he was imprisoned.
A tense, well written, stunningly shot noir.
dir: Anthony Mann
wr: Leopold Atlas, John C. Higgins
ph: John Alton
cast: Dennis O'Keefe, Claire Trevor, Marsha Hunt,
John Ireland, Raymond Burr, Curt Conway, Chili Williams, Regis Toomey
RED RIVER
***½
USA
As many have observed,
the story, though based on a book called "Chisholm Trail"
is nothing more than "Mutiny on the Prairie", with John Wayne
playing the tyrannical head of a cattle drive and Montgomery Clift (in his
first role) as his adopted son who rebels. It's an epic Western - there's
a lot of cattle - with a steady supply of comic relief, well-shot and even
well-paced until it hits a detour about half-way through the second hour
and gets bogged down in a redundant romantic subplot.
There's also
additional fun for cinema studies professors who would delight at the probably
unintentional but palpable subtext to scenes like Clift and his cowboy pal
feeling up each other's guns - as the irrepressible Walter Brennan himself
points out, "them boys is having a peculiar kind of fun".
dir: Howard Hawks
wr: Borden Chase, Charles Schnee
ph: Russell Harlan
ed: Christian Nyby
m: Dimitri Tiomkin
cast: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru, Walter
Brennan, John Ireland, Noah Beery Jr., Harry Carrey, Harry Carrey Jr.,
Paul Fix, Coleen Gray
THE RED SHOES
****½
ROPE
***
RUTHLESS
***
USA
An Edgar G. Ulmer-helmed small-scale version of "Citizen
Kane". It's ambitious and
hides its Poverty Row origins quite successfully, but the supporting characters are
more interesting - and better-acted - than the principals. And more time
than necessary is spent on impenetrable stock exchange lingo.
dir: Edgar G. Ulmer
cast: Zachary Scott, Louis Hayward, Diana Lynn,
Martha Vickers, Sydney Greenstreet, Lucille Bremer, Edith Barrett, Dennis
Hoey, Raymond Burr
SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR
***
USA
Another in a post-war string of
melodramas abusing the trend of Freud re-interpretation, this one is more
abusive than just about any other. Rich girl Joan Bennett (Fontaine must
have been unavailable) marries a shady suitor, goes to live in his shady
mansion and quickly comes to suspect him of shady dealings. She spends
half the time recounting in voiceover things that are perfectly obvious to
the viewer's eye. "I looked around," she narrates. She then
proceeds to look around. In time she finds out her predecessor died under
suspicious circumstances, her spouse is obsessed with serial woman-killers and
has unresolved issues with domineering women. And there's things like fog
and lightning and a wonderfully misconceived trial of the subconscious in
the lead up to several ludicrous climaxes. Fortunately by this point
you've learned to enjoy the picture in the same way you would one by Ed
Wood.
dir: Fritz Lang
cast: Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne
Revere, Barbara O'Neill, Natalie Schafer
SORRY, WRONG NUMBER
***
USA
A crippled woman accidentally overhears a murder plan on the telephone.
The interesting thing about this melodramatic suspenser is that Stanwyck is
playing the kind of husband-threatened wife Joan Fontaine and Ingrid
Bergman tend to play in Hitchcock films, but it's a decidedly ignoble
variation. She's an anti-heroine: spoiled, domineering and unstable, she
gets in the way of two young lovers and wrecks their lives. She could just
as easily be the villainous wife in a noir where a steamy couple like Burt
Lancaster and, let's say, Ava Gardner schemes to knock her out to get to
her money. However, she's also crippled, which in Hollywood code means she
is to be pitied, and unfortunately, also means she can't leave the room
and has to call up a number of random people to have the convoluted plot
explained to her. It's not the most potent of set-ups.
dir: Anatole Litvak
cast: Barbara Stanwyck, Burt Lancaster, Ann
Richards, Wendell Corey, Harold Vermilyea, Ed Begley, Leif Erickson
THEY
LIVE BY NIGHT
****
USA
Nicholas Ray embraced his fetish for fatalism from his first film and it takes over hardcore in this romance
between a teen escaped convict and an outcast country girl. It's life's fault that Farley
Granger is drawn time and time again to kill and rob banks and it's
life's fault that hardened-beyond-her-years Cathy O'Connell can't help but
follow him where he goes. Ray romanticises his doomed young lovers to no
end, and even though you may be able to see through it, his passion for
them is infectious.
The movie is an adaptation of a novel called "Thieves
Like Us" which was filmed again and very evocatively by Robert Altman
in 1974.
dir: Nicholas Ray
ph: George E. Diskant
cast: Farley Granger, Cathy O'Donnell, Howard da Silva, Jay C.
Flippen, Helen Craig, Will Wright, Marie Bryant, Ian Wolfe
THE THREE MUSKETEERS
***½
THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE
*****
UNFAITHFULLY YOURS
***
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