by Dean | Feb 1, 2019 | General
Audie Murphy was a war hero, but a charmless and very limited actor—too limited as a leading man. Still, the 1953 Gunsmoke, which stars Murphy, is another enticing Old Hollywood Western adapted from an obscure novel.
Here, Reb Kittredge, Murphy’s character, is hired to kill a man (Paul Kelly) but ends up buying his failing ranch instead. He becomes the instrument for protecting the rancher’s interests. However, he himself needs protection from Johnny, a coldly practical friend of his who might find it necessary to gun Kittredge down, and from big Curly, who resents Kittredge’s liking for Rita (Susan Cabot), the woman Curly is wooing.
I like that the film is in color, but Nathan Juran‘s directing is certainly unspectacular. There is extensive drama, though, and a handful of nifty performances (by Jack Kelly, Donald Randolph, Jesse White). Cabot’s Rita could have been an interesting character—as interesting as Susan Cabot herself, with her horrible life—but there is no development of her.
by Dean | Jan 30, 2019 | General
I don’t know how much the French priest John Vianney in the old film, The Wizard of Heaven (1949), resembles the real John Vianney, who died in 1859, but I like and respect this atypical Marcel Blistene (director)-Rene Jolivet (screenwriter) achievement. Vianney, acted by Georges Rollin, is a devout, sanguine, legalistic clergyman trying to convert the people of Ars. I suppose those who do convert—and they’re definitely there—give up dancing, which the priest plainly hates.
Wizard is like a more supernatural Diary of a Country Priest (the film). Satan contemptuously speaks to Vianney, and a crippled boy is healed by God. Philosophical idealism leaves materialism in the dust. The movie’s theme is reformation in the interest of upholding the cause of the Divine. Sometimes, in fact, this is self-reformation.
(In French with English subtitles. The French title is Le Sorcier du Ciel.)
by Dean | Jan 24, 2019 | General
Like Scarlet Street, The Woman in the Window (1944) is an Edward G. Robinson-Joan Bennett collaboration directed by Fritz Lang.
At first I thought the film might be about what ensues from the fear of injustice, but, no, it’s just about itself. It is film noir with a nearly jokey ending, but it’s riveting. . . I called Scarlet Street “nice-looking,” and so is this: it’s good to see non-glossy black and white. Bennett looked like Hedy Lamarr, so she is gorgeous. Lang’s cast is one to relish.
by Dean | Jan 22, 2019 | General
The protagonists in the 1961 Italian film, La Notte (“The Night”), are a married couple—emphatically married. Disillusionment, the weary efforts to understand and console, the fearful concern over having caused pain, the unwillingness to part—these and other realities so frequently subsisting in matrimony are beautifully depicted by director Michelangelo Antonioni. Beyond this, the film raises the following questions: Do Western cultures really care about marriage? Do they care about anything? Why does it seem as though nothing of substance takes place in our busy but non-communal cities? (I’m thinking of the sequence in which the wife, played by Jeanne Moreau, strolls through Milan.)
The second half of this near-classic is somewhat too talky, but the movie as a whole is one of the most technically clever, resonantly made pictures I’ve seen.
(In Italian with English subtitles)
English: Michelangelo Antonioni at the premiere of “Jenseits der Wolken” “jenseits der wolken” at cinema odeon, Cologne. Deutsch: Michelangelo Antonioni bei der deutschlandpremiere des films “jenseits der wolken” am 29. oktober 1995 im kölner odeon-kino. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Jan 20, 2019 | General
Ernst Lubitsch, directing the film adaptation of yet another play, gave us in 1937 Angel, more drama than comedy and wonderfully cast. Marlene Dietrich enacts Maria Barker, who feels neglected by her good husband, Frederick (Herbert Marshall), and takes a vacation to Paris to consort with her duchess friend Anna. There, however, she falls—in love?—with Anthony Halton (Melvyn Douglas), but pulls away from further temptation. But Halton does not pull away from her.
It’s a semi-comedy of manners about marital offense but is free of passionate anger and fierce jealousy. Lubitsch imbues it with the usual champagne, but he also knows there is much at stake. It is an actor’s piece: oh, it’s based on a play, all right, yet it is a movie.
by Dean | Jan 17, 2019 | General
A person with cerebral palsy who refuses or fails to become a Christian does not seem like much of an enemy of God. Yet, really, based on what Scripture teaches I believe he or she must be considered such, and now the question is: Is he or she destined to go to Hell?
God, we know, commands us to love our enemies, so we would never have the right to torture them. The orthodox church must hold that this is something God can disregard for Himself, and if this means torturing forever a person with cerebral palsy, so be it. Needless to say, this is absurd. Jesus announced, “and I, if I may be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto myself” (John 12, Young’s Literal). Yes, for the Kingdom, for salvation (Psalm 22:27). I submit that God loves His human enemies enough to save every one of them. A c.p. victim would never be left out.
At what point does the Deity stop saying He loves His enemies and that He doesn’t care to find the one lost sheep but will simply stay with the hundred that are safe? And what does it mean for God to be “the all in all” once His cosmic plan has been fulfilled (I Cor. 15:28)? All in what all?
by Dean | Jan 15, 2019 | General
Interesting: a former member of the French Resistance became a jewel thief and now has reformed (albeit he is still in trouble). The role is not a good fit for suave Cary Grant, but we’re glad he’s in the film—i.e. To Catch a Thief (1955). We’re comfortable with him.
Interesting, too, is that women here can be plainly foolish. Feminists over the years have virtually communicated that women, except for Christian ones, are never foolish—a lie, of course. Even so, there should be no argument that however foolish Grace Kelly‘s cocky Francie can be, she is also excellent with her initiative-taking, her apologies, and her glamour.
Hitchcock‘s thriller deals with the suspicions befalling the Grant character when an unreformed burglar uses Grant’s modus operandi for current stealing. It’s a scenic joyride often filmed in the French Riviera, but some poor choices were made. Fades to black are constant, and a sequence with kissing and actual fireworks is awkward and hokey. A lot of contrivance exists in the not-great script, even if numerous lagniappes crop up. Maybe Thief is worth catching, but I wish it had been better. There is something canny, though, about a scene wherein a man sucks it up and tolerates a woman’s strikingly fast driving because he secretly wants to elude a car that is chasing him.
by Dean | Jan 13, 2019 | General
A horse falls on a boy called James in Larry Woiwode‘s 1993 story, “Silent Passengers,” and of course he is hospitalized with dreadful injuries. Where is God? Well, though He is never mentioned in the story, He is there. Woiwode, a Christian, writes in such a way as to intimate this.
The details here are very troubling, but the story ends with James’s survival and recovery. Hence we know God is there, but would we know it if James had died? We could have, sure, but it would have been harder for the author to work it out, to make it evident. Yet death is a reality, notwithstanding . . . so is recovery.
Another, longer literary gem, Woiwode’s “Firstborn” (1983), is a study in anger and guilt. Rough childbearing precedes a desire to utter, “Good God, forgive me,” for a husband has been unfaithful (as has his wife) and moderately, unfairly violent. Sad but hopeful, “Firstborn” is a religious story without Catholic or Protestant references. I do not quite think it has greatness, as “Silent Passengers” does, but it is exquisitely thoughtful and consistently powerful. The man of faith did it again.
by Dean | Jan 12, 2019 | General
The plot of Alias Betty (2001) is a bit too good for most screenwriters to have concocted, but not too good for the novelist Ruth Rendell, on whose novel–The Tree of Hands–it is based. A French film by Claude Miller, it concerns a mentally unbalanced woman who kidnaps a little boy in order to make a gift of him to her grieving, now childless grown daughter. What we have here is a person whose suffering drives her to become comfortable with an immoral situation. Several story strands are juggled perfectly; the novel is adroitly adapted. Nothing wrong with the acting either.
(In French with English subtitles)
Cover of Alias Betty
by Dean | Jan 5, 2019 | General
I would have enjoyed Elmer Kelton‘s novel, Shadow of a Star (1959)—“star” as in sheriff’s badge—a tad more had it been devoid of the hackneyed concept of townspeople demanding that a deputy turn over to them an appalling killer so that he might be lynched. The deputy, young Jim-Bob, is the sole person in charge of the killer now that the sheriff, Mont Naylor, has been badly wounded.
Ah, but for a short Western, the book is pretty rich and certainly exciting—not really tired. Hell is other people—Jim-Bob faces lawbreakers big and small—yet the tale is uncynical. Men can often be trusted, those can’t be are in genuine trouble. Further, there is much economy and little softness in Star. It can’t be much improved on.
