Calling all Classic Film Lovers!

If you listen to some of the dialog between Miriam and her two dates, there's some stuff there that can be read as sexual innuendo. It's been awhile since I've seen it, but I believe she tells the guys she wants to get a hot dog, and one of them asks "Oh, are you hungry?" to which she replies "Not really, but sometimes I just want something in my mouth" (or words to that effect). One of the guys says something to indicate he's confused, and she laughs at his confusion. It's one of the earliest references, even so veiled, to male genitalia (if that's even what it is) that I can think of in a mainstream American movie.

I took everything together to mean that she was nasty, vindictive, and promiscuous to boot. I don't know why she needed to be promiscuous in addition to being nasty and vindictive. At the time, and in Hitchcock's hands, I suppose it certainly would have made her a less likable character; I suppose as well that one might think of her nasty vindictiveness as possibly a response to her husband's treatment of her, while her promiscuity isn't something that can really be blamed on anyone else. Hitchcock clearly wants her to be unlikable so that we don't feel especially bad that she gets killed.

Edited by Robbery on Aug 9th 2021 at 2:16:16 AM

Recently rewatched Sunset Boulevard. Apparently Donald Trump is a fan? I wonder if he thinks Norma is supposed to be an aspirational character or something.

Watched Le Doulos, a 1962 French crime film in the vein of Rififi or Bob Le Flambeur. It has a pretty good plot about criminals, heists, cops, informants, and betrayal. I particularly liked The Reveal towards the end: an extended flashback scene where one character tells another how all the pieces fit together. That scene also makes it fairly obvious that the film was based on a book (because of the way it was "structured", for lack of a better word), and it is even more obvious when one considers how little characterization any of the characters get—the latter is in my experience a typical problem with book-to-film adaptations. As a result, I didn't really root for any of the characters, I was mostly just curious to see how it would all play out. I had a similar experience with Elevator to the Gallows, another French crime film from this era that was based on a book.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Wached A Day at the Races. I usually like the Marx Brothers, but this was just painfully unfunny for the most part. I miss the pun-based humour I enjoyed so much in Animal Crackers.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched Stagecoach. Despite my love of classic film this is only the 3rd John Wayne movie I've seen (True Grit and Flying Tigers the others). Really enjoyed it, Wayne had a great presence on screen. I loved the stunts done au naturel. My main complaints are the aboriginals are reduced to a plot device and the final showdown with the brothers felt anticlimactic.

I really need to see The Searchers one of these days.

I'm also someone who's getting an interest in watching the older films. And starting to gain an appreciation with them. Definitely like the Dollars trilogy of film, seeing Clint Eastwood be a total badass. And also just watched High Noon, a good western and I feel for Kane as he's a man with honor who ended up taking a a huge threat alone when no one else is willing to help him. Would like to see more of these classic Westerns, more of Eastwood and John Wayne

I really like High Noon too, though it's funny how many people at the time did not, or at least had issues with the basic premise of a western sheriff asking for help. I think it was Howard Hawks who said that John Wayne wouldn't go around town "begging for help," and then made Rio Bravo to drive his point home.

I really like High Noon too, though it's funny how many people at the time did not, or at least had issues with the basic premise of a western sheriff asking for help. I think it was Howard Hawks who said that John Wayne wouldn't go around town "begging for help," and then made Rio Bravo to drive his point home.

I think High Noon is more famous than Rio Bravo in my country for some reason.

Matthew I recommend starting with Stagecoach if you want to watch films with John Wayne. As you can see it is quite popular among us, and it is one with a young John Wayne. Also watching later films makes more sense if you have watched a few early ones.

If you liked High Noon, I highly recommend Silver Lode, which I've talked about before. Whereas Rio Bravo is a kind of repudiation of High Noon, Silver Lode takes the opposite approach of going a step further than High Noon in pretty much every way.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

I watched Lifeboat! I liked it and since it's rare to see a good Talullah Bankhead movie, it was even better. I think of all the "stuck-in-a-room" movies of Hitchcock, I like Dial M for Murder best, but this was definitely a good one.

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

Dial M for Murder is great, though it is pretty obvious that it was initially written as a stageplay (hence the limited set). Of Hitchcock's "limited set" films, I think the best one has to be either that one or Rear Window. I recently(-ish) rewatched the latter and would have to rewatch the former in order to decide which I like better.

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I just rewatched Fritz Lang's M (1931) for the first time, having watched it once perhaps 10-12 years ago. I watched it with my wife and a friend, neither of whom had watched it before. It's remarkable how well the movie has aged. I mean, on the technical side there is some light undercrank and there is occasionally the telltale complete absence of ambient noise found in early talkies, but the actual plot and the way it is told have aged phenomenally. Spoilers ahead.

The basic setup is that there is a serial killer of children on the loose, and the police have pretty much no leads to go on. Under immense public pressure to produce some kind of result, the police start cracking down on organized crime, resulting in the criminal underworld initiating an investigation of their own to find the killer to get the police off their backs and end the disruption to their business.

On its own, this is a great plot idea for a movie. We get a lot of interesting cross-cutting between the police and the criminals, highlighting similarities and differences. Part of the movie becomes an outright Police Procedural (though it is unfortunately only so comparatively briefly and cannot hold a candle to Akira Kurosawa's High and Low (1963)—which I've gushed about before—in this regard), which is a genre I really like when it's done well. There is also quite a bit of social commentary. For instance: we see how citizens turn on each other out of suspicion, and the criminals enlist the help of beggars to keep an eye on things since they are effectively invisible as everyone actively ignores them (nobody said it had to be subtle).

What makes the movie brilliant is however its portrayal of the serial killer, played by Peter Lorre. Lorre is mostly known for playing really slimy characters, but that's not at all the characterization in this movie. Instead, he's pitiful. The film clearly communicates both visually and in dialogue that he kills children not out of malice, but compulsion, and that he doesn't want to do it. One also gets the impression that he is somewhat below average intelligence and/or a bit emotionally stunted. The decision to portray him sympathetically was a very ballsy one, and it really paid off.

The highlight of the film is the climax, where Lorre's character is put on trial by the criminals. Lorre's acting really shines here, as does the writing. The dialogue gets into a bunch of interesting questions about the character, criminal justice, and so on. This is of course the reason the scene of a trial conducted by the criminals was written in the first place, so the movie can discuss these things. However, I find that the question of the in-universe reason for this trial to also be a very interesting one. It is entirely clear from the word go that they have already made up their minds about killing him. Still, they go through the motions of having a trial (of sorts) rather than just lynching him right away. They even appoint one of their own to act as a defense attorney (who seems to have taken a couple of drinks in preparation of this unenviable task, which I thought was a nice touch). Conducting a trial must also have been planned in advance rather than being a spur-of-the-moment decision, seeing as the criminal who was caught by the police knew where they would bring the killer after catching him, a large number of people are already gathered in the makeshift courtroom waiting when Lorre's character is brought there, they had specifically brought a blind witness to identify the killer, and they have some specific props at hand including photos of his victims.

The criminals express a lack of faith in the "official" criminal justice system's ability to properly deal with the killer (at least long-term) owing to his mental illness, but handing him over to the police would get them off their backs regardless. Clearly, the reason they don't do that is that they want to kill him. So why the trial? The reason to conduct a trial where the outcome has already been determined ahead of time is typically to be able to claim some sort of legitimacy. That doesn't make much sense in this case, however, because it's not like they can announce publicly that they have put the murderer on trial and executed him—they would all be arrested for murder if they did. They're not conducting the trial for the benefit of anybody outside of the room, and they're not doing it for the benefit of the serial killer (who unsurprisingly rejects their authority to conduct the trial and demands to be handed over to the police). No, they're putting him on trial because they want to. They do that even though it means that the police will keep disrupting their business, because the police won't know that the killer is no longer at large and will still be looking for him.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

M is such a fantastic film. I think it's one of the greatest transition films (from silent to talkies) there is. Lang really uses sound (and the lack thereof) really well. He lost none of movie language gains that disappeared when sound came from 1930-1931-ish. One visual that comes to mind is the chalk outline of the "M" which reminds me a lot of classic silent film visuals. And sonically, I can never hear "In the Hall of the Mountain King" without thinking about this film. Just wonderful and Peter Lorre is just perfect.

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

Watched a pretty interesting Film Noir I had never heard of, Out of the Fog. It's one of those classic allegory films against fascism that Warner Bros. had no issue pushing out unlike Creator/MGM.

John Garfield is a gangster racketeer who is charging boats $5/week for "protection". Thomas Mitchell is one of the fishermen this affects and is indignant but eventually has to pay the fee for fear of his boat being burned. Turns out the gangster has also set his eyes on Mitchell's daughter, played by Ida Lupino. Cool early noir with lots of the classic hallmarks of film noir - chiarscuro, ambiguous characters, etc.

Apparently this film had a lot of "leftist" ideas that put the director under fire during the Red Scare. Probably didn't help the case against John Garfield either.

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

Not sure if this counts as a "classic", but I got into Little Shop Of Horrors recently, and...I actually like the theatrical ending more than the original/musical ending.

Yes, focus groups aren't always right, but I think they nailed it on the head for this in particular. After all, Seymour in the film feels much more sympathetic than in the musical. So while the original ending might've made more sense for his original incarnation, it wouldn't be fair for the movie version of him to go through all that work trying to undo the mess he made only to fail and cause the end of the world as we know it. And while I like bad endings sometimes, I can't say I'm not a sucker for the happy ones.

(Don't) take me home.

So are you talking about the '80's film version that adapts the stage musical?

Yep!

And I also do like the musical ending slightly more than the OG movie ending since that implies the main gang is still alive and ready to sing, just...stuck in a giant plant monster. Which alone kinda gives off more hope than "plant apocalypse, everyone dies, the end".

Edited by ATricksterArtist on Jun 8th 2022 at 7:28:49 AM

(Don't) take me home.

I caught Dorothy Arzner's Merrily We Go to Hell before it left the Criterion Channel earlier this month. It's about a young socialite woman falling for a writer who has a serious drinking problem, and by virtue of it being a pre-Code movie it's a lot more grounded and bleak in its depiction of alcoholism than you would expect something from the 30s to be. It features a young Cary Grant in a brief role and the lead actress is Sylvia Sidney, who folks on this site will more likely recognize as Juno in Beetle Juice and the grandma in Mars Attacks.

I watched the original King Kong on DVD recently.

"We do these things not because they are easy but because they are hard".

Did a Burt Lancaster double bill with Run Silent, Run Deep and the Sweet Smell of Success. I enjoyed the interplay between Lancaster and Gable in the former, although the dramatic tension is greatly diminished when Gable just agrees to let Lancaster take over. Still an enjoyable film, I love submarine movies.

Sweet Smell of Success was less enjoyable. Lancaster gives a commanding performance and Tony Curtis as his scummy toady is not a role you associate with him. Otherwise I didn't find the movie compelling.

I made the wiki for it. Merrily We Go to Hell.

I thought it was a pretty good movie, and like you said, very bleak in its view of alcoholism when it was generally the butt of jokes in the 30s and 40s.

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

I've been watching Random Harvest daily since it went into the Watch TCM rotation. IMHO the film is carried entirely by Ronald Colman and Greer Garson, who save it from being a sappy, unrealistic melodrama and make it into... well... something I'd watch every day for over week.

Watching the original Willy Wonka and the chocolate factory for the first time ever for me.

Happy New Year!

It's been a while!

• Test Pilot: I've been slightly obsessed with the history of aviation so this was an interesting watch - although it's more about romance and daring test pilots. It's a good movie though and proves that Myrna Loy has chemistry with almost anyone - not that it's hard to have chemistry with Clark Gable.

• Me and My Gal: The Criterion Channel calls this a screwball comedy which I would have to disagree. Romantic comedy, yes, but not quite screwball enough. Elements are thrown here and there (like Fourth Wall Breaking) but it's more of a Rom Com/Dramedy. Although pinning down what makes a screwball a screwball is sometimes hard - kind of like describing a film noir.

• Love Is News: This is a fun little screwball romp with extremely young cast of Tyrone Power, Don Ameche, and Loretta Young. Fluffy but fun! I recommend it if you want to watch something light.

• Call Northside 777: I thought this was going to be a b-movie, but it's actually really good! I think this is the precursor to Jimmy Stewart being a "simple, country lawyer" in Anatomy of a Murder. It's also (I think) the start of the asshole Jimmy Stewart persona where he plays a less likable main characters. Although he does soften up by the end of the movie, he's still kind of tough. Anyways, I recommend it!

• Odd Man Out: This film was on my watchlist for a really long time. And I regret not watching it sooner! This is a masterpiece through and through. I really think it does hold true in being a classic of British cinema. I don't think I've ever not liked a Carol Reed film (and The Third Man is fantastic) but I really thought this was top-notch. The ciascuro is on point, the tension is great, and, well, James Mason is as mellifluous as ever. However, I do wonder what the Irish/Northern Irish think of this film.

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Jan 2nd 2023 at 12:01:29 PM

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

Good grief. It was already tricky for me to remember which was which of Bells are Ringing and For Me and My Gal - now you're telling me there's also Me and My Gal?! Hollywood writers of the past, please pick a different song to lift titles from. Or at least a different line.