Calling all Classic Film Lovers!

I didn't even know there was a song connection! Just goes to show that lazy titles were a thing then and now!

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

Just watched It's a Wonderful Life.

Long story short, I loved it and understand why it's so beloved, but man. There were so many things that I didn't really expect.

In particular, the whole bit about people struggling with housing...that kinda stung, not gonna lie. I guess some things never change even after over 70 years...

Might right a more comprehensive review, but for now I'mma give this movie...hmm, three stars out of four. There were some bits that I really didn't like, but overall I think this deserves its accolades.

Edited by dRoy on Jan 15th 2023 at 9:37:36 PM

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

The scene where George Bailey is at Mary's house and he's telling her that he never wants to get married always seems so naked and personal to me that it makes me feel like I shouldn't be watching it (kind of how I imagine Mary's mother feels when she runs back up the stairs).

After this one, I will probably watch Raging Bull.

It's probably a classic film too, depending on who you ask, but sadly outside of this thread's time range. XP

I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.

It's a Wonderful Life is one of those super popular movies that gets over-generalized by the public (see also Titanic) that when they do actually watch the whole thing, they're surprised by how dark and relevant it still is. And it's usually the only kind of classic film people see or have some idea about, so they think that a lot of classics are in the same vein which is not the case at all. In any case, happy to see another person enjoy the film because it's great!

There is a New Hollywood thread here (I think it's been buried) where you can discuss your Raging Bull thoughts.

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

The reaction to Jackie’s death from Doorway to Hell always stood out to me. Very quick, but also impactful.

Edited by electricmastro on Feb 18th 2023 at 11:37:58 AM

Watched Fritz Lang's While the City Sleeps (1956) with a couple of friends. Of all Fritz Lang films I have watched, this might be the weakest one. I wouldn't say it's bad, but there's a lot of wasted potential and some aspects have aged absolutely terribly. The basic setup is that there is a serial killer of young women on the loose in New York City, and we mostly follow this case as it develops from the perspective of a news corporation. That's a pretty decent setup for a Film Noir.

To go into a bit more detail, the owner of the news company has just died and his son Walter Kyne (Vincent Price) who inherits the company decides to have the senior employees compete for a promotion by getting the scoop on the murder investigation. Vying for this position are the head of the newswire department Mark Loving (George Sanders), editor of the newspaper Jon Day Griffith (Thomas Mitchell), and news photographer Harry Kritzer (James Craig). The main character is anchorman Ed Mobley (Dana Andrews), who is not interested in the promotion but wants to help his friend Griffith. There are also three important female characters: Kyne's wife Dorothy (Rhonda Fleming) who has an affair with Kritzer, office flirt Mildred Donner (Ida Lupino), and secretary Nancy Liggett (Sally Forrest) whom Mobley tries to seduce.

One thing that immediately stood out to us was that there is an almost cartoonish level of casual (and not-so-casual, for that matter) misogyny and otherwise crappy attitudes towards women. Some of it is intentional. The murderer (John Drew Barrymore) is explicitly motivated by a hate for women in general, for instance. It might have been interesting to draw parallels between this and the more everyday sexism of the principal characters, but the movie does not seem to recognise the latter. One of the earliest scenes depicts both Andrews and Sanders' characters engaging in some pretty brazen workplace sexual harassment—I commented that it appeared that the only thing keeping them from requesting explicit sexual favours was The Hays Code—but the movie does not really portray them as sleazy for doing so, it portrays the whole thing more like unsuccessful attempts at courtship.

It kind of gets worse from there. Forrest for some inexplicable reason agrees to marry Andrews—it's pretty clear that we're meant to view her as the "good woman" in contrast to Fleming's adulteress and Lupino's... slut, I suppose—after he pretty much just refuses to take "no" for an answer and eventually wears her down. He then proceeds to use her as bait for the killer without asking her first, only telling her that's how it's going to be after he has already put a target on her back by insulting the killer on live television and announcing their engagement so the killer will seek revenge on him by harming her. She's not exactly happy about it, but she does agree to go along with it (not that she had much of a choice). Later, Lupino joins Andrews at a bar while he's getting sloshed and invites him to her place. They end up kissing in the taxi on the way there and then... we don't find out what happens as the movie cuts away. Andrews says he thought better of it and didn't follow her inside, but it's left ambiguous whether he's telling the truth. His fiancée is pretty upset about it, while he insists that he didn't do anything wrong. If the movie had at this point gone in the direction of Andrews facing the consequences of his absolute heel move with Forrest deciding she wants him out of her life permanently, I wouldn't have minded so much, but she eventually forgives him and they end up getting married, which really rubbed me the wrong way.

Another aspect that hasn't aged well is the killer, or more precisely his psychological profile. It starts off alright: he kills women because he's a misogynist. That seems true to life—we see this nowadays with incels and whatnot. But then it turns out that the reason he hates women is that he was adopted and his adoptive mother would have preferred a daughter... I've complained about Hollywood Psych from this era before, and my opinion hasn't changed. There's also a weird New Media Are Evil kind of moral panic about comic books (the killer reads comics, which I suppose is meant to tell us that he's both childish and a weirdo?) that seems really silly now.

In terms of wasted potential/missed opportunities, there were two things that really stood out to me. Firstly, the movie very deftly sets up the potential for a case of mistaken identity with regard to the killer seeking revenge on Andrews by going after his fiancée. It actually does this twice, where the killer could conceivably mistake either Fleming or Lupino for Forrest. Forrest and Fleming are both blondes and thus look at least somewhat alike, and the apartment where Fleming and Craig have their affair is right next to Forrest's. On the other hand, the killer doesn't know what Forrest looks like and happens to spot Lupino and Andrews talking in a bar (in the aforementioned scene where Lupino seduces Andrews). I really thought this was where the movie was going, not least because Forrest has a plainclothes policeman as protection at all times (she's used as bait for the killer, after all) while Fleming and Lupino obviously don't, and it would to my eye fit in with the sexual morals of the times for one of the morally dubious women—the adulteress or the aspiring homewrecker—to be killed in the "innocent" one's place (which is a whole other can of worms...). But instead the bartender sets the killer straight about Lupino not being Andrews' fiancée and he intentionally targets Fleming in a fit of rage when Forrest keeps her door locked and won't let him in. The other thing where I wish the movie had utilised the full potential of the set-up is more a matter of preference, but the movie revolves mostly around the office politics at the news corporation and I would have liked more focus on the investigation aspect. The internal power struggle is perfectly alright as a subplot, but when I watch a film noir I'm usually more interested in the crime aspect that in this movie doesn't get a whole lot of focus.

All in all, the movie has a strong cast and a great director along with a decent premise, but the execution is lacklustre due mainly to what I would characterize as unforced errors in scriptwriting.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Ah, I think I recall Lang. I think he made some 20s and 30s movies, but didn’t know he made 50s ones.

Big directors from these times are often remembered (by most people today) for one or two films, while they actually made films for three decades or more.

This may be a consequence of statements like "He's the guy who directed Metropolis" and then we associate the director with one decade.

Edited by gropcbf on Apr 11th 2023 at 11:30:35 AM

Fritz Lang is probably most known for Metropolis (1927) and M (1931)^note See here for my thoughts about it when I rewatched it about a year ago, if you're interested, but he made a bunch of other quality films years and even decades later as well. After fleeing Nazi Germany for the United States, he proceeded to make the rather good Fury (1936) about a man who becomes the target a lynch mob due to a case of seriously bad luck and You Only Live Once (1937) which I thought was okay. In the 1940s, he made Hangmen Also Die! (1943) about a fictionalized version of the aftermath of the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich which I highly recommend (and made the page for), Ministry of Fear which I have yet to watch but gather is pretty good, and the Film Noir classics The Woman in the Window (1944) and Scarlet Street (1945) which make for a good double feature and where the latter in particular is excellent. In the 1950s he made additional movies in the film noir genre such as The Big Heat (1953) which is generally considered to be pretty good but I'll have to admit I barely remember (and as I recall I wasn't particularly impressed), Human Desire (1954) which I really enjoyed, and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) about a man who frames himself for murder in an effort to discredit the death penalty which I recall thinking was okay.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

I saw The Big Heat, and I think I enjoyed it, though I'll admit I don't remember much about it either.

Optimism is a duty.

Watched The Lost World (1925) with a couple of friends. We watched this restored version which is 1h44m, or about 40 minutes longer than the version that used to be the only one available. I haven't watched the abridged version, but I can understand why a lot of material was cut since we all thought the pacing was kind of bad. I suspect this was less of an issue when the film was brand new since it is very much a movie where the main draw is the special effects.

I was impressed with how well the special effects have aged. I mean, it's obviously stop motion and miniatures, wires are occasionally visible, and the scenery is made up of props and matte paintings, but it still looks pretty good. I particularly liked a beautiful shot of a sunrise that I'm not entirely sure how they did (it's at roughly 38m30s in the linked version). There is only one major Special Effect Failure, when a stop-motion dinosaur is superimposed over live-action city footage and the lighting doesn't even remotely match (at approximately 1h37m40s).

One thing that has aged absolutely terribly is the inclusion of a Blackface character who speaks in a Funetik Aksent. Every time that character appeared onscreen it took me right out of the movie. My immersion was also lessened by familiarity with King Kong. I knew ahead of time that there were going to be some similarities, but I wasn't prepared for them to be this extensive, and it was a bit jarring at times. All in all I thought it was worth a watch, but it's more of an interesting watch than a particularly entertaining one.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched Hiroshi Inagaki's trilogy about Miyamoto Musashi starring Toshiro Mifune—Samurai I: Musashi Miyamoto (1954), Samurai II: Duel at Ichijoji Temple (1955), and Samurai III Duel At Ganryu Island (1956).

It's an adaptation of an epic novel, and the first film in the trilogy kind of functions as an origin story for the main character. This unfortunately means that the first film is not itself all that interesting a story—it sets up the next two films by introducing the characters and their relationships and whatnot, but the plot is a bit meandering and the character arc of our protagonist is not as engaging as perhaps it should be. It's the shortest of the three films at 93 minutes but it felt more like two hours. On the positive side, it's absolutely gorgeous, one of those films where you could pretty much pause the film at random, print out what's on screen, frame it, and hang it on the wall.

The next two films are in my opinion clearly superior in terms of the story (though unfortunately they do not have as stunning visuals as the first one). In particular, I much more enjoyed watching the title character be the legendary swordsman than become the legendary swordsman. In these films the plot is also a lot more straightforward, which helps.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched Fritz Lang's House By The River (1950). It's about a writer who is something of a creep towards his maid, and when she rebuffs him he (semi-)accidentally kills her. He then gets his decent-but-credulous brother to help him cover it up. There are, of course, complications.

While not one of Lang's best films, I rather liked it. It works fairly well as a character study of the two brothers in particular, and there is also a clear theme of what people will do out of love. The writer's wife loves him unconditionally even though he treats her poorly—we get some hints that he is at least somewhat abusive early on, and it only escalates from there—and she is forced to reevaluate their relationship as events unfold. There is of course the brotherly love that motivates helping with the cover-up. The brother and the writer's wife are also clearly fond of each other, though it is ambiguous whether they are in love but have decided against acting upon it out of a moral sense of decency or just close friends (the jealous writer suspects the former and suggests that protecting the wife was at least as a strong motivating factor for his brother helping with the cover-up as protecting him was). The brother's housekeeper is outright stated by another character to be unrequitedly in love with him and to have a Woman Scorned kind of motivation for her actions. And so on.

The crime/mystery aspect is also pretty good. There are a few twists and turns, though some are rather predictable. The only real negative is the resolution at the end, which feels very rushed and kind of ridiculous.

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched Fritz Lang's final film, Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse (1960). I watched it with some friends, and we had different levels of previous familiarity with the franchise: I was the only one who had watched both Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933), the others having watched only the latter (with me) or neither. It turns out that the films are so loosely connected that not having watched the other entries is no problem—though I would recommend against watching them out of order as that would spoil events in the earlier instalments. Personally, I think the films get better as the series progresses, though I gather that the second one is generally regarded as the highlight of the trilogy? Gert Fröbe of Goldfinger (1964) fame stars as Inspector Kras (though I mentally substituted "Lohmann" as he plays basically the same role as that character in the previous entry) who investigates the latest in a series of murders linked to a hotel by the name of Luxor.

I rather liked the film. There is a large number of characters and several parallel plotlines that intersect intermittently, which made it a bit difficult to keep up at times, but it all comes together quite beautifully at the end, so I think it ultimately worked in the film's favour. (Come to think of it, it reminds me a fair amount of the storytelling style used by Guy Ritchie in films like Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels (1998), Snatch. (2000), and RocknRolla (2008), all of which are films I like.) There are quite a few twists and turns (some but far from all of which I was able to see coming), which is something I generally like in films like this—as I've mentioned before about Scarlet Street (1945) [1], The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) [2], Angel Face (1952) [3], and Elevator to the Gallows (1958) [4].

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

What is your favourite pre-1970 biblical epic?

The five best Superman writers are Dan Jurgens, Jeph Loeb, Geoff Johns, Kurt Busiek, and Peter J. Tomasi.

Mine would be The Ten Commandments.

I like to keep my audience riveted.

I'll admit to not being terribly fond of any Biblical epics, but I will say that I respect the hell out of Barabbas (1961) for portraying the sky turning dark by filming during an actual solar eclipse (the film itself may or may not be good—I haven't watched it).

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.

Watched Brief Encounter. I'm familiar with David Lean's epic work so to watch him direct something smaller was a point of interest. The film is about two people having an affair and the film does a rather even handed job of portraying them, not condemning them for having an affair but not glorifying it. The use of a dutch angle when Celia Johnson almost kills herself is a standout moment. 8/10.

Shock (1948). Decent thriller with Vincent Price (sans mustache) playing a doctor who has the woman who witnessed him killing his wife committed to an asylum which he runs. Good thriller but aside from Vincent Price I'm not sure there's much to recommend here. 6/10

The 49th parallel. Interesting movie, probably the first propaganda movie of WWII. Shot on location in Canada. Laurence Olivier's attempt at a Quebecois accent is something to behold. Enjoyable film, far more enjoyable than a propaganda movie has any right to be. 8/10

x3 Mine too. Ben Hur is pretty great, but The Ten Commandments has that truly epic quality I love.

I think mine might be The Robe - I love how heartfelt and joyous it is, the silly villain, the swashbuckling action scenes, and the protagonist (reviews of the movie always bash Richard Burton's acting, and I don't get that at all. I think he's great in it).

I love Samson and Delilah, The Ten Commandments, Demetrius and the Gladiators, and The Bible: In the Beginning. I think King of Kings and The Greatest Story Ever Told are okay but not as good as later Jesus films. I'm actually the weirdo who doesn't like any version of Ben-Hur.

The British film industry was trying to get people psyched up for the war before it actually began in Europe. For example, the 1937 movie Fire Over England, which is full of "England stands alone against a tyrannical power that controls Europe" and "England is where people are free" rhetoric (to the point that it has Queen Elizabeth I claim, very anachronistically, that her subjects have freedom of thought). It was partly aimed at Americans, to make them more pro-British, and partly at British people, to make them more patriotic. (Alexander Korda, the producer, was a friend of Winston Churchill and collaborated with his government on later propaganda films. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jan/05/churchill-film-maker-dream-england-alexander-korda ) In 1939 and 1940 the British film industry was already putting out stuff like The Lion has Wings (admittedly, only some of Lion is narrative-with-actors, but it is feature length) and For Freedom (definitely a feature-length fiction drama, and a year older than 49th Parallel).

Edited by StarformDCX on Oct 26th 2023 at 9:08:02 AM

The five best Superman writers are Dan Jurgens, Jeph Loeb, Geoff Johns, Kurt Busiek, and Peter J. Tomasi.

The 1927 King of Kings is my favorite Jesus flick. I guess I'm just a sucker for DeMille.

My war propaganda stuff got ninjad. FWIW, I prefer Fire Over England over the other Elizabeth I films I've seen, partly because it allows Elizabeth and the English in general to be visibly religious. It's got a very loose relationship with reality, but it's a fun swashbuckler with a likable balance of espionage and court intrigue.

Edited by StarformDCX on Oct 26th 2023 at 9:17:02 AM

The five best Superman writers are Dan Jurgens, Jeph Loeb, Geoff Johns, Kurt Busiek, and Peter J. Tomasi.

Speaking of propaganda, I watched Fritz Lang's Ministry of Fear (1944) with a bunch of friends. The story revolves around a man unwittingly stumbling upon a Nazi spy ring in Britain. It was alright, but I don't think I'll remember much about it in two years' time. The plot is a bit too convoluted for its own good and I doubt it would hold up to close scrutiny if I bothered to think about it too much. Ray Milland is good as the lead, and the rest of the cast isn't bad either. We had a moment of Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize, kind of: Dan Duryea, whose name I recognized immediately in the opening credits and whom I am familiar with mainly from Silver Lode (1954) [1], plays a character who dies in his second scene after a total of maybe 30 seconds to a minute of screentime and a handful of brief lines of dialogue. I immediately pegged this as fake on the basis of "relatively famous actor exiting the movie too early having done too little". One of my friends, who recognized Duryea from Scarlet Street (1945) [2], concurred while noting something along the lines of "he hasn't had enough time to be a sleazeball yet".

Ceterum censeo Morbillivirum esse eradicandum.