A movie that haunts me, a movie I’ve memory-holed, and a movie beloved by Steven Spielberg:
Voice in the Wind
release: March 3
nominations: Best Score (Michel Michelet), Best Sound (Mac Dalgleish)
dir: Arthur Ripley
pr: Rudolph Monter / Arthur Ripley
scr: Friedrich Torberg, story by Arthur Riplery
cin: Richard "Dick" Fryer
The French-Caribbean island of Guadeloupe serves as a sieve for the refugees of Nazi-occupied Europe. One such refugee is a man with no name, an amnesiac who plays beautiful piano in a dive bar; across the square, another refugee, a young woman, lays dying, crying out for the pianist husband she left behind in Czechoslovakia. And, of course, there are sinister elements around and between them, not just the violent crooks who fleece the desperate expats seeking asylum, but the memories of the horrors inflicted on them by the Nazis. But this film is neither quite the melodrama that would imply, nor is it quite the noir it's advertised to be, though there is truth in advertising with one of its taglines: "A Strange New Kind of Picture!" Strange it is, with its foggy exteriors and almost pitch-black interiors, its odd narrative rhythms where reality and perception can be a little blurry if you're not paying attention; there's a dreamlike quality, not as in dream logic, per se, but as in the quality of a lucid dream that takes place in this great emptiness. A reflection of our pianist's addled mind...even, perhaps, an idea that this island is Purgatory for the people who arrive stripped of money, citizenship, and identity. It's a tragic film about the wickedness of men, it's a romantic film about the immortality of love, it's a curious film that can be neither dismissed or embraced easily. I don't think I've seen anything like it, though the way it plays with artists as characters and artifice within a grounded setting does remind me of Ben Hecht's directorial efforts. Worth checking out!
A Guy Named Joe
release: March 10
nominations: Best Original Story
dir: Victor Fleming
pr: Victor Fleming / Everett Riskin
scr: Dalton Trumbo, adaptation by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan, original story by Chandler Sprague and David Boehm
cin: George J. Folsey / Karl Freund
A reckless pilot (not named Joe, which I guess is a catch-all nickname for any military pilot), is killed in action and returns as a guardian angel to a young pilot who is now courting the dead man's girl, a civilian pilot. Spencer Tracy, Van Johnson, Irene Dunne, respectively, though as I recall, the best performance is given by Ward Bond, surprisingly enough, not that he's got a tough role, just really solid in it. I mean, Dunne's usually great, she's not terrible here, but I'm sorry, I don't feel the spark of anything between her and Johnson, and I just barely sense it between her and Tracy. Not sweet enough, not romantic enough, not good enough. Steven Spielberg, on the other hand, cites it as one of the movies that made him want to become a director, and later remade it as Always.
Passage to Marseille
release: March 11
dir: Michael Curtiz
pr: Hal B. Wallis
scr: Casey Robinson and Jack Moffitt, from Sans Patrie by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall
cin: James Wong Howe
Nine days before this film came out, Casablanca won Best Picture; this film boasts the same producers, same director, same score composer (Max Steiner), and four of the same actors (Humphrey Bogart, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre). It also boasts the nuttiest narrative structure I've seen yet: a journalist comes to the English countryside to see the secret Free French air force in action; in flashback, the captain tells of him of meeting some of the pilots at sea, when his holiday cruise found some of them lost and disheveled at sea; in flashback, they confess of their time on an island prison and of their plan of escape, a plan whose success hinges on a mysterious loner inmate; in flashback, his backstory is revealed. And eventually those flashbacks all resolve until we're back in the present. Handsomely mounted but somehow it's not very involving.
Knickerbocker Holiday
release: March 17
nominations: Best Musical Score (Werner R. Heymann / Kurt Weill)
dir/pr: Harry Joe Brown
scr: David Boehm and Rowland Leigh and Harold Goldman, adaptation by Thomas Lennon, from the play by Maxwell Anderson and Kurt Weill
cin: Philip Tannura
Adaptation of the Broadway show that gave us "September Song," here performed by Charles Coburn. It's about New Amsterdam (before it became New York) and the tensions between the Director-General Peter Stuyvesant and a young upstart Broem Broeck, who believes in everything that will eventually make America great! In Broeck's entreaties against tyranny and totalitarianism in a Dutch (Deutsch?) setting, the film could be an allegory for WWII; the original stage show was, apparently, an allegory against FDR. So I guess it's about defeating fascism but also being aware of the possibility of same at home? Nelson Eddy's in fine form as the hero, but Coburn is menacing and amusing as Stuyvesant, and his version of "September Song" may be one of the best I've ever heard.
Cover Girl
release: March 22
wins: Best Musical Score (Carmen Dragon / Morris Stoloff)
nominations: Best Original Song ("Long Ago, and Far Away"), Best Cinematography - Color, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration - Color (Lionel Banks / Cary Odell / Fay Babcock), Best Sound (John P. Livadary)
dir: Charles Vidor
pr: Arthur Schwartz
scr: Virginia Van Upp, adaptation by Marion Parsonnet & Paul Gangelin, story by Erwin Gelsey
cin: Allen M. Davey / Rudolph Maté
Rita Hayworth is a showgirl who has an opportunity to hit it big as a cover girl model, thanks to her resemblance to a magazine editor's former flame; her boyfriend Gene Kelly, who runs the show, doesn't want to lose her but doesn't want to stand in the way, either. Phil Silvers completes the trio of besties, he's there to quip, occasionally about the war going on over there, somewhere else. But thank God, that war didn't claim this crew, otherwise we might not get to watch Cover Girl, one of those perfect movies that remind you why The Golden Age of Hollywood was so dubbed. There's more than a smidge borrowed for the later masterpiece Xanadu: not only does an uncanny resemblance inspire an old benefactor, but Kelly's characters in both films share the same name (it's said they're the same guy by some, but that doesn't quite track). Justly nominated for "Long Ago, and Far Away," though most every number is a humdinger, especially Kelly's "Alter-Ego Dance", which I've included above. The second of four collaborations between director Vidor and star Hayworth, including Gilda and The Loves of Carmen; he always directs my favorite Hayworth performances.
It Happened Tomorrow
release: April 7
nominations: Best Score (Robert Stolz), Best Sound (Jack Whitney)
dir: René Clair
pr: Arnold Pressburger
scr: Dudley Nichols and René Clair, additional dialogue by Helene Fraenkel, ideas by Lewis R. Foster, from a play by Lord Dunsany and a screenplay by Hugh Wedlock, Jr., and Howard Snyder
cin: Archie Stout
Dick Powell, reliably fun, plays a newspaperman who is able to receive the next morning's news, allowing him to get The Scoops needed to boost his career - though, of course, there are consequences. An amusing enough fantasy that climaxes in an uproarious shootout, worth watching just for that. And Powell, too, he's wonderfully fun, a clear forerunner of Michael J. Fox.
Jane Eyre
release: April 7
dir: Robert Stevenson
pr: William Goetz / Kenneth Macgowan
scr: Aldous Huxley & Robert Stevenson and John Houseman, from the novel by Charlotte Brontë
cin: George Barnes
I'm not gonna summarize Jane Eyre, if you don't know it, look it up. Joan Fontaine is tasked once again with navigating a possible psycho in a big mansion, though there's an edge to her this time, a defiance; Orson Welles is Mr. Rochester, very sexy and brooding. Cuts out the fortune-teller nonsense and instead allows Rochester a straightforward conversation with Blanche Ingram, as awkward as you'd imagine such a thing could be, but perfectly, intentionally so. A noble adaptation.
Up in Mabel's Room
release: April 7
nominations: Best Score (Edward Paul)
dir: Allan Dwan
pr: Edward Small
scr: Tom Reed, additional dialogue by Isabel Dawn, from the play by Wilson Collison / Otto A. Harbach
cin: Charles Lawton, Jr.
You know, I can't remember the inciting incident, but I do know it's about newlyweds tailspinning on the from the idea that their spouses Had Pasts...and this, as they go on a weekend getaway with former friends and beaux! Charlotte Greenwood is mischievous fun, every twist and misunderstanding is horny without being crude, a perfect encapsulation of winking middle-class innuendoes, everyone thinking they're in on the joke but everyone's telling a different joke! One of the better "My God Just Tell Her" subgenre of films because the secrets being kept are, in this case, pretty reasonable - or, at least, the way each character is written, you understand why they're secrets.
Lady, Let's Dance
release: April 11
nominations: Best Musical Score (Edward J. Kay), Best Original Song ("Silver Shadows and Golden Dreams")
dir: Frank Woodruff
pr: Scott R. Dunlap
scr: Peter Milne and Paul Gerard Smith, from the story by Bradbury Foote and Scott R. Dunlap
cin: Mack Stengler
Let me tell you my journey with this movie: I do not remember it. I saw the title just now and could not recall a single moment. So then I looked it up on IMDb and saw that it starred figure skater Belita and, while it did not jog my memory specifically, I did reflexively curl my lip and mutter, "Fucking Belita, goddammit." I'm not gonna say anything else against it, because I don't remember it, but apparently my instinct is very anti.
The Lady and the Monster
release: April 17
dir/pr: George Sherman
scr: Dane Lussier & Frederick Kohner, from Donovan's Brain by Curt Siodmak
cin: John Alton
I read Curt Siodmak's autobiography or memoir or whatever, Wolf Man's Maker, and he seemed perplexed but resigned to Hollywood's inability to make a good film from his Donovan's Brain. He bitches a lot in the book, but watching this adaptation of his novel about a multimillionaire whose body dies but whose brain is saved, only to wreak havoc via telekinesis, I have to wonder if he's justified. This movie sucks! I have read that leading lady Vera Ralston was a figure skater and refugee whom Republic Pictures studio head Herbert Yates was in love with. I don’t think acting is quite her thing, not here at least.
Tomorrow, our first Best Picture nominee!
No comments:
Post a Comment