Film
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Just when I was beginning to think that the Hollywood memory-loss well had run dry, along comes Whirlpool and another variant of the world's most flexible mental affliction. This time: loss of memory by hypnosis. It could have been a good film: Ben Hecht, Otto Preminger, Gene Tierney, Jose Ferrer. But it's gimmicky and the…
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Amnesia is perfunctory in this "pre-Code" melodrama. Comes and goes without much stress. Rich snotbucket monocle-wearing attorney Charlie "Beauty" Steele is beaten, thrown into a river and presumed dead. He is rescued and wakes up without a glimmer of memory but is otherwise entirely functional. In his new, raccoon-skin-hat personality he falls in love with…
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We watched the 1969 western, Rio Bravo, and were crushed with disappointment. How could a film with such famous actors, directed by Howard Hawks (Red River 1948), amount to such piffle? We could not restrain ourselves from jeering at its flagrant, grotesque failings. A thin, cliched plot, pieced out with obvious meaningless padding. Incoherent, contradictory…
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Here's a colorized illustration of Ruth Chatterton as Alison Drake in the "pre code" romance Female (1933). Although she's surrounded by a bunch of official looking executives, she runs the show. Miss Drake owns and manages factory that manufactures automobiles. She's in a male preserve — it's not a cosmetic factory or something…
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TCM, the indispensable channel, has been delivering us a raft of old George Raft movies. They Drive by Night (1940) of course, but also such unmemorable noirs as Johnny Angel (1945), Race Street (1948), and I'll Get You (1952) as well as a couple of others so unsubstantial that, although viewed during the past month, they've…
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t There are amnesia movies and there are gaslighting movies. The Secret Fury is both, and, I'm sorry to say, it fails to hit two separate marks. A bad bad lawyer and cadre of hired subordinates contrive to gaslight rich Ellen Ewing (Claudette Colbert) into believing that, while amnesiac, she killed a man. In any…
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Some very serious contributors to film art created this almost forgotten whodunit. Deadline at Dawn was adapted from a novel by Cornell Woolrich and the screenplay was written by Clifford Odets. Cinematography was by Nicholas Musuraca and direction by Harold Clurman. That's some pretty good bloodlines. Moreover, the principal roles were played by young, sparkling…
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We watched the first season of Yellowstone (eight episodes, or about 350 full minutes, all told). It's not our usual fare, but because a close relative, an accomplished actor, has just contracted to appear in Season Four, it seemed important to investigate. Yellowstone sustained our interest but in my opinion it's mighty derivative. I think…
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I Kathy Ferguson, played by reliable Barbara Stanwyck, starts out as a tough, no nonsense witty newspaper woman not scared to go toe-to-toe with her male superiors. She's a 1930s kind of liberated movie gal who wants a lot more out of life than a husband and kids and an avocado-colored refrigerator. She's on her…
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Mogambo (1953), directed by John Ford, is an eternal-triangle story in which earthy Ava Gardner and prim Grace Kelly compete for white hunter Clark Gable. Unfortunately, it's less engaging as a romance than as a travelogue — it offers spectacular footage of African megafauna (hippos, giraffes, lions, gorillas, etc.). Whenever I watch classic films set…