The Best Years of our Lives
There has always been an issue of Post war trauma for returning veterans who have gone through hell and have to come back to a normal life. Director William Wyler directed this iconic film to handle this issue straight on.
He created a fictional town called Boone City and brought home from WW2 three service men from different walks of life, interconnecting them to each other via one plane ride home and a chance meeting at a bar.
The elements that put me off of the movie were the producer’s choice of making a point of its fictionalization. They created a fictional American City, when they could easily have created a real city such as Cincinnati, from which the airborne shots of the city were filmed. Then they made the fighter pilot (Dana Andrews) into an uneducated soda salesman. If I am not mistaken education was a perquisite for being a pilot and in any case, why wouldn’t a fighter pilot work as a pilot after the war? In addition there is a bank manager as one of the returning vets who was just a grunt in the war. The screenwriter may not have had knowledge of the military and my belief is that they confused the two characters war background.
The movie concerns the return to civilian life of three veterans. The first two has the pilot married to one of those shallow low life blonds who only married him for his uniform, not expecting him to return alive. The Bank Manager is one of those down to earth middle age family men with a great wife and wonderful children. This includes a collage age daughter who will conveniently fall in love with the pilot helping to close the loop in bringing the characters back together. It is the third returning VET, named Homer who was a seaman and who lost both hands in the war that makes this movie special. Homer is played by a non-actor and real live handicapped vet named Harold Russell. No special effects or special acting was needed in order to show his handicap as the metal hands he used were really his own. The pain of his new handicap seemed real in the film. There is one strong scene where he shows his fiancé how hard it is for her to just help him get undressed. The film shows Homer’s girlfriend, unlike the pilot’s wife, as a good and decent girl as she decides to stick by him due to her unselfish love. All the moments in the movie with Homer are the best scenes of the film. It gives the story strong bites of reality that allow the film to flow and help the audience care for all the characters.
For this reason the film is a success as it shows the difficulty of people who came from another horrible but completely structured world into the real unpredictable world of real life. The ending has a typical Hollywood feel of goodness and leaves the movies characters and the audience with great hope for their future. There is nothing wrong with that.
Paisan (Paisa)
Roberto Rossellini was the person who put cinema’s Poetic Realism on the map with his heartbreaking and revisionist film, “Open City” (see my post from 1945). In, “Paisan”, he attempts to tell the story of clashing cultures during the American liberation of Italy. For this film he uses an episodic style, telling six different stories, set throughout Italy and told via six episodes. Poetic realism uses a combination of real actors and non-actors playing critical parts. While the non-actors in, “Open City”, were gritty and believable, their acting in this film is obviously amateuristic. Their cardboard delivery of some of the main characters diminishes the otherwise strong elements of the film. The episodes are all centered on the clash of cultures between Americans and Italians. Neither of which is made to look superior to the other. The first episode introduces the movies theme by following a sea landing in Sicily and the American soldier’s initial mistrust of the Italian civilians that they meet. It follows a human connection between the soldier and a pretty village girl as they both are uneasy with the other until its violent conclusion opens up a sort of love, based on their common hate of the German enemy. In other words, war makes unlikely bedfellows. Episode 2 is my favorite episode as it deals with a black American Army policeman in a the liberated port of Naples who gets his shoes stolen while passed out drunk. The thief is a poor war orphaned Italian child. We are first introduced to the soldier completely drunk and as an unsympathetic figure. Then he is transformed the next day into a determined machine of vengeance. When he catches the child thief and sees how the child lives in utter poverty, he is heart-stricken and ceases to care about his stolen shoes. The Pathos shown in the change of the character tells us quite a bit on the grim humanity of the war and the human element we all have within us. The third episode deals in the romantic interchanges that went on between soldiers and local woman. It shows us an Italian prostitute in Rome taking in a drunken American soldier who is not interested in her sexual favors. All he cares about is an Italian girl he met six months earlier and for whom he thinks he fell in love. After passing out, the prostitute realizes that she herself is the girl he is referring to. She leaves him a note explaining where she lives and then goes back home to wait for him. When he wakes up, he reads the note and believes it to be a trick trying to lure him into a whore house. His throwing away of the note leaves the girl waiting in vain for his return. We the audience are left to ponder if she really was his lost love or if she just wanted to be that person. This gives us a feeling of lost hope and emptiness that surely must have been felt by many Italians at the time. Later in the film we have an episode showing desperate people risking their lives to reach their loved ones in an area where the battle still rages. They end up dying in their quest and their death is watched in fascination by some American soldiers. Then there is an episode that deals with the religion of war as Italian Monks host an American catholic priest, American Protestant minister and an American Jewish Rabbi. Throughout their supper together they refuse to eat as a way of converting all their guests into Roman Catholicism. The final episode revolves around capture, death and sacrifice as, Italian partisans, captured by the Germans are killed and the American POWs sacrifice their own lives in attempt to save them. An amazing amount of material and themes are jammed into the 134 minute running time of this historic and timely film of war. Once you get used to the bad acting, the strong message of horror and humanity, through culture and language, is powerful, and the movie leaves a lasting image on its viewer.
The Postman Always Rings Twice
Tay Garnet’s 1946 version of the iconic James M. Cain novel is the 2nd film rendition of the book from the 1001 movies, after the earlier and far superior Italian version (see my review from 1943). This version at least retained the name of the book. The story is one of greed and lust that follows what happens to a traveling vagrant when he comes upon a small town diner owned by a simple, middle aged and overweight man with a blond, bomb shell, beauty of a wife. The period placement of the story in depression era America allows for the belief that such a knock out would marry an unattractive simple man because of his minor financial security. The diner in question was not making millions, but in those days any work that would sustain a constant income was worth a lot. After her marriage, however this female predator keeps looking for a way to get out of it, while retaining its financial security. The fact that she comes to the conclusion that murdering her husband is the only way out says a lot about the benefits of our modern divorce laws that demand the financial security for all parties. It appears that In those days the only way out was murder. She enlists the vagrant, by way of her sexual charms and lures him into her murderous plans. The two main protagonists are played by the gorgeous Lana Turner and the physical John Garfield. They are good choices for their roles. Turner has the body and look of a real seductress. An interesting aspect of the film is how the director has her dressed almost all the time in white. In the golden age of Hollywood the color white was meant to signify good, and placing this evil person always in white gave an added effect of deception to her character. The movie succeeds in seducing the audience at the same time as Garfield is being seduced. Garfield is a physical actor who brings the required animal magnetism and lack of will power that is needed for his character to fall within the plots web of deceit. There is a real attraction felt when the two of them are together on the screen. Rumor has it that they actually had an affair while working on the set. Unfortunately, the production code censors of the time did not allow the director to show the true nature of the sexual games going on in the story. The Italian version made three years earlier did not have this limitation which is why that film was more successful in giving us the true feel to the sordid story. In addition the café owner in this film is a very boring character. We care so little about him that it is not very shocking when they kill him. The animal magnetism felt in the scenes with Turner and Garfield make this rendition watchable, but next to the earlier Italian version, this interpretation seems kind of wilted.
My Darling Clementine
The gunfight at the OK Corral is a gunfight between the Earp and Clanton brothers that occurred in 1882 and is the most filmed historical western occurrence in Hollywood. There have been movie versions of the tale in 1939 (Frontier Marshal), 1957 (The gunfight at the OK Corral), 1993 (Tombstone) and 1994 (Wyatt Earp), to name a few. Notice the names of those movies as they concentrate on the actual fight, the lawless town or the gun fighting hero. In 1946 John Ford made the best interpretation of this story with, “My Darling Clementine”. Notice the name of his film. It sounds like a romantic comedy or musical. Not a tough western. That is the beauty of this movie. The gunfight occurs at the end but serves only as a strong concluding statement. It is not the heart and soul of the movie. That belongs to the Wild West itself and its progression from wild and uncivilized to a civilized, modern world. The character who represents civilization in the movie is the pretty and wholesome Clementine. This is why the film’s title is so appropriate. The movie incorporates some clear and obvious elements of the western world, such as vengeance, violence and danger, while mixing them in with the deep characterizations of real people who lived during those times. Countless, powerful scenes of action and danger are interspersed with quite gentle scenes of tenderness. The plot revolves around a group of cattle men herding their cattle next to the tough town of Tombstone. They are brothers (The Earps) and they want to drink a couple of beers and a shave in the nearby town. They leave the youngest sibling to guard the cattle, seemingly because he is too young to drink. Before they leave, they bump into an old man and his sons (The Claytons) and the hard evil stare of the old man forebodes what is to come. While in town there is a scene where the elder and smarter brother (Wyatt), played with perfection by Henry Fonda, notices that lack of law in Tombstone, forcing him to stop a shooting rumpus in the bar because it is interfering with his shave. When the brothers return to their cattle they find the cattle stolen and their little brother shot dead. The previous scene when they met old man Clayton, makes it clear to the Earps that it was this evil man and his sons who killed their brother. Revenge becomes the prime motive as the brothers return to town and take the law upon themselves by claiming Wyatt as the new sheriff. At the time of their taking up the law, the town is run by a fast shooting, hard drinking and former doctor named Doc Holiday. In a lesser movie, Holiday would have been either a villain to be dispatched or a good hearted comedic character to join forces with the heroes. In this movie, Doc, who is played by a wonderful Victor Mature, is a complex character who through bad fortune and tragedy, stopped practicing medicine and hides behind a veneer of malicious toughness. Holiday has two women who love him. The local Mexican gal, Chihuahua and the nice girl he left behind in his previous life. This nice girl is Clementine who suddenly shows up at the same time, having searched for Holiday as she is dead set in bringing him back to his previous life. The pity of the story is that Holiday is sick and dying with the realization that he will never return. Slowly, while we are introduced to this important side story, Clementine meets Wyatt and we see his gentle purpose and need to live a good quite life. His shy and unconfident, interest with this gentle beauty contracts brilliantly with the strong confidence he exudes as the vengeance seeking sheriff. There are many iconic and brilliant scenes in the movie such as the scene where Doc first meets the new sheriff, thinking to gun him down so he can reclaim the town for himself. When Doc enters the saloon, quite ensues as everyone stops talking. The effect of this scene was so powerful that it has since been used countless times in westerns and non-westerns to emphasize the effects of the enterance to a dangerous person. There are quite and tender scenes such as the church dance that succeeds through body language to express true happiness. Love is an important element the drives the plot. It is Doc’s love for Chihuahua that results in his deciding to end his dying life with honor and on the side if the righteous. It all ends with the wonderfully iconic gunfight and the final taming of Tombstone and of course, the West itself. This is an almost perfect western.
The Stranger
“The Stranger”, was supposed to be Orson Welles proving to Hollywood that he could make a commercial film and not just a money losing art film. The movie became a box office success and proved that the master could do anything he set his mind to. It is however much more than a good thriller. Welles was able to make a straight forward movie of a Nazi war criminal hiding in rural America under an assumed identity. The film however is far from straight forward as it includes wonderful photographic images and effects. His use of shadows, acute angles and especially depth-of-focus shots, are prevalent throughout the film. A great example of these elaborate shots is the shot taken of Welles (who plays the Nazi war criminal) playing chess in the drugstore, with the druggist of the small town he lives in. The whole town was created on a movie set that was built to almost real life size that had the town buildings set in related proximity to each other. As a result, the chess playing scene shows both of them playing through a mirror that then reflects their back to a window with the adjacent buildings and sunlight seeping in, against the reflection of the mirror. The set also allowed Welles to film some terrific long takes that follows his characters from one building, outside and across to another building. These photographic depths add an element of realism to the story which allows its nightmarish feel to truly shine. The story follows a Nazi hunter, played by Edward G. Robinson, who finds our Nazi villain in the small town, about to get married. He is pretending to be a prep school teacher and is about to marry a wholesome and religious young Lady. Robinson finds the villain by following another known Nazi. Once discovered by Welles, that Nazi is killed because he tells Wells of his need to confess his crimes. This I believe, is a way of the filmmakers attempt to differentiate unrepentant Nazis with those who admit their guilt. An important quirk in the character of Welles is his obsession to clocks. The clock fetish works to unmask his disguise. The town square, clock tower plays an important role in the plot and Welles in always tinkering with it on his spare time. It is also the location of his demise at the films finale. Another interesting element of this movie is that Welles incorporated real new relevant film footages of the holocaust into the film. It was one of the first times that the American Public saw evidence of the Nazi atrocities and Robinson uses the footage to convince Welles’ fiancé that her beau is in actual fact, a monster. The American film goers, who went to see this film, thought that they were going to watch just another Hollywood thriller. “The Stranger” is much more than that.
Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bete)
This 1946 children’s movie was the first cinematic rendition of the 18th century French fairy tale, concerning the Prince who was cursed to become a Beast until such time that a woman would love him for his inner beauty. Since then there have been numerous interpretations of the timeless tale, including the marvelous animated version from 1991, which takes its inspiration from this film. This is a classic French movie rendition of a fantastic tale of morals. Everyone knows the story of the beauty named simply Belle, who offers to take the place of her imprisoned father at the Beasts castle. Slowly after being forced to eat dinner with the beast each night, she comes to see the inner beauty of the man inside the beast. Many elements of Disney’s animated version came from this film. The castle in this movie is magical and truly amazing when considering the limitations the filmmakers had in 1946. Trick photographic effects are used to give us a building straight out of another universe. The walls in the building are held together by magical candelabra that have human arms extending from them. Entering this building for the first time lets Belle know without a doubt that she has entered a place of magic. The design is beautiful and was based on a famous 19th century artist. The director of this film was the poet Jean Cocteau and when watching the movie you felt like you were watching a cinematic rendition of a surrealistic poem. The love story at its center is heart rendering in its telling. Dialogue is limited and we feel what Belle feels through her body movements and actions. On one particular scene where she is meant to be afraid, she is shown as being aroused. Watching this movie is like watching a painting with wings. The timeless ending of the re-transformation of the Beast to a Prince and the happy ending is perfect in its show of true emotion. This is an adult fantasy masquerading as a children’s fairy tale.
The Big Sleep
“The Big Sleep is a private eye murder mystery and crime thriller that if taken at face value leaves its viewers in total confusion. There are so many turns, twists and characters to this film that even after countless sittings, it is nearly impossible to understand everything that is going on. The plot concerns the iconic private eye Phillip Marlow (Played for the 2nd time by Humphrey Bogart), getting hired by a rich General to settle his daughter’s debt. The simple job turns into five murders, pornography, blackmail and lots of fabricated stories and deceptions. We move from location to location and then back again, only to have the story take a new and different turn. It is utter confusion. The amazing thing is that we do not care. All we care about is seeing Bogey and his then wife Lauren Bacall, sizzle the screen with smart, witty, sexual entendre between them. They were truly in love and in lust with each other and every scene they are together is dynamite. This is Bogart’s 2nd and last time playing Marlow and he has made the character his own. He is the ultimate cool dude who knows that he can get out of every predicament. Here he gets beat up, tied up and shot. He prevails and in the end finds the true killers, even if neither he nor we know how many of the murders they were responsible for. He is the ultimate hero who oozes machoism and confidence. The magnetic attraction he has to Bacall was real and that realism shoots out of the screen. It is a delight to behold. The plot does not matter and neither do the minor characters. Watch this film to see two great lovers who happen to be starring in a noire style crime thriller. Check out the nightclub scene when we think they are talking about racing horses. What they were really talking about would never pass the production code censors in 1946. Letting the audience in on this secret is what makes this movie so special.
The Killers
The first 20 minutes of this interesting movie are outstanding. We are shown two killers entering a small town store looking for a person they call the Swede. They are unfriendly and serious. They are also the killers of the movie’s title. Through questioning and detective work they discover the Suede in his apartment and quickly gun him down. The interesting part is that the Suede is warned of their arrival and allows himself to be shot. The murder becomes a suicide. We are then treated to pure film noire and flashbacks that explain the back story to this murder/suicide. The Suede is played by Burt Lancaster in his screen debut. The movie also introduces us to the beautiful Ava Gardner who previously to this movie had only small bit parts. Lancaster has the muscular physical presence to portray the Suede who is a former top notch boxer forced into crime because of an injury to his right hand. He falls in with the mob and the Mob leader’s girl (Gardner). Gardner plays the femme fetale to perfection and her body language and look make sure that at the same time as not being able to trust her, you are unable to take your eyes off of her. Lancaster gets mixed up in a heist that succeeds in netting his accomplices $250,000. Betrayal and deception follow as our hero ends up on the run. Throughout all of the turmoil we are treated to dark shadows with small spurts of bright light that make this one of the best looking Noir films ever. Since the ending is shown at the start, we can easily guess at the direction the plot will turn. The style and fun of getting there make this film great fun. The first twenty minutes are also iconic and introduced the world to the killer search for their victim theme that would be copied in many a gangster film since.
A Matter of Life or Death
“A Matter of Life and Death”, is a wistful romantic fantasy created by the British “Archers (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger). It has since become one of Britain’s most beloved films. Its fantasy and fantastic elements make for enjoyable viewing and has the right feel for Post War Britain at the time. The movie also has an intelligent and moral message at its core. It concerns an RAF pilot who goes down in flames over the Atlantic, during the war, while having his seemingly last conversation on earth with an American Radio operator, operating off the British shore. Their conversation is charming as it places an emphasis on the polite heroic nature of its hero, played by the most Gentleman of actors, David Niven. Instead of dying, however, our hero somehow survives the crash unscathed and is discovered by the American girl. It is considered a miracle and they both strike up a relationship that leads to true love. In the meantime we are shown visions of heaven where we are told that the pilot should have died and his survival was a big mistake. An angel played by the comedic presence of Marius Goring is sent down to bring him up to heaven. The complete gentle nature of this angel reminded me of the angel from, “It’s a wonderful Life”. He knows that he can force the issue but prefers to come to a mutual agreement with our pilot. Back on earth the pilot explains about his visit with the angel and is immediately diagnosed with a brain tumor and sent to the operating table. Meanwhile the angel strikes an agreement from his bosses in Heaven to allow the pilot to try and defend his death for life, by way of a heavenly trial that is juried with historic figures from past wars. God is the judge in this trial and his lawyer becomes the brain surgeon who is operating on the pilot’s brain back on earth. This has now becomes a twofold story. The fantasy (or reality) of the trial with god and the surgery back on earth. In real life, a person would very often ask god for help before a major surgery and the trial seems like a visual and fanciful rendition of that wish. The end of the film shows us a decision worthy of King Solomon that celebrates true love and sacrifice. This movie is full of bright British wit and colorful characters, making it a delight to watch.
Great Expectations
Great Expectations is one of the many wonderful novels written by Charles Dickens. In 1946, the emerging director, David Lean decided to make a movie from this literary masterpiece. He succeeded in turning a great descriptive literary story into a sweeping visual epic. At many points of this movie, there is a feel of dark foreboding terror that lends deep atmosphere to the proceedings. We are introduced to our hero and main character. “Pip”, while he is a boy and alone in a seashore marsh. The area has deep fog and he meets a dangerous escaped and chained convict, who has just escaped a prison ship. Pip decides for adventurous and boyish reasons to help the convict lose his chains and receive food. This opening scene is ominous for the story as it follows the boy being forced to work as a paid friend to a strange, rich lady, living alone in a dirty and spider webbed infested house. The basic premise of what we see is so odd for the 20th century audience and would be hard to accept, if it were not for the atmospheric filming, detailed period design and first rate acting. The Lady has a cruel and cold daughter, named Estelle, who Pip falls in love with. Love is always the driving force of any Dickens tale as both Pip and Estelle grow up together in the cold heartless world of the seemingly haunted house. When both he and Estelle turn 14, they separate. She is sent to France in order to study on how to be a lady and he starts his apprenticeship as a blacksmith. They will see each other sporadically from then on and until the bitter ending that the film gives us. At the age of 20 Pip is given a mysterious inheritance of quite a bit of money. His life changes drastically and what he makes of his life is the great expectations of the movie’s title. His belief that the Lady he was hired to befriend is his benefactor, is the magnet that keeps pulling him back to Estelle. The ending is a surprise that fits all the pieces together in great drama. The wonderful aspect of this film is that it succeeds in bringing a long forgotten Dickens world to life. I felt that I was looking into the past and into the world of Charles Dickens. A tremendous achievement for this fine film.
Notorious
“Notorious”, is one of the best movies from a director who made many great films. Alfred Hitchcock was considered the master of suspense and his master work is shown vividly in this movie. The plot centers on a convicted Nazi spy’s beautiful daughter and her recruitment by the American intelligence to spy on her Father’s former Nazi friends. One of which is deeply in love with her. Ingrid Bergman plays this part with the sensual beauty and despair of a good person who has known a lot of pain. Her performance is essential for the plot to work. The agent who recruits her, also trains her and during the training they fall in love. What compounds the melodrama is the fact that she is recruited to have an affair with the Nazi who loves her so that she can find the location of a nuclear plant being developed by the Post war Nazis. It takes a cold and professional sort of agent to send the woman he loves to do such a promiscuous and dangerous mission. The agent played by the tough and dashing Cary Grant, does this in part, by believing initially that she is a sexual predator who can never have any true feelings for one man. The Nazi they are trying to catch is a weak sniveling coward played by Claude Rains, in another one of his impressive roles. He is ruled by a hard and evil Mother who controls almost everything he does and correctly mistrusts our heroine. The movie has within its content some of cinemas greatest shots. In 1946, the censors’ production code did not allow any one kiss to last more than 3 seconds. Hitchcock worked around this in his big love scene between Grant and Bergman, by breaking off their kiss every three seconds, only to start again and break again while the camera circled the couple for a total of almost three minutes. The result has the effect of being more erotic and sensual then any one, long kiss would have had. Then there is the scene that emphasizes to Grant, the location of a critical key that he needs. The camera starts high at the top of the large villa and onto a large hall. Then the camera slowly and suspense fully tracks down and in on Bergman, finally ending with a close up of the key in her hand. It is a spectacular show of virtuoso film making. I believe that the strongest scene is the one that closes the movie. All three main characters appear. Two walk down to freedom and one walks to his doom. It is one of the most satisfactory endings ever filmed.
1001 Movies before you die 