by ·Comments Off on Anatomy of a Murder (1959, Otto Preminger)

Based on a true story, shot on location in Michigan, and the source of all the lawyer quotes (the judge is played by the real “at long last have you no sense of decency” guy, and Jimmy Stewart tells him “I’m just a simple country lawyer”). Also a fleet, twisty, morally ambiguous story of an underdog law team winning a defense case that they maybe should’ve lost.

Jimmy and his clients:

Jimmy takes the case of killer Ben Gazzara, who murdered the rapist of his wife Lee Remick. Now the prosecution (“Mitch” at first, until non-country lawyer George C. Scott takes over) wants to prove that Ben definitely shot the bartender, and anyway his wife is too hot for this town so she had it coming, and the defense (incl. underpaid secretary Eve Arden) wants to prove that the bartender is a rapist and he had it coming.

Lee and the defense team:

A couple far-fetched characters: Arthur O’Connell (Elvis’s dad/uncle in Kissin’ Cousins) is a hopeless drunk ex-lawyer who sobers up instantly and permanently to help Jimmy on the big case. And the manager at the bar (Kathryn Grant, dealer/spy of The Phenix City Story) is secretly the dead man’s daughter, a mess that George Scott steps in during cross-examination after she comes forth to help the defense.

The moment George steps in it:

Trounced by Ben-Hur at the oscars, but at least Duke Ellington won all the grammies. Classic orchestral or modern drone scores can be good sometimes, but most film directors should simply seek out the most artistically credible jazz band that will answer their phone calls.

Duke and Jimmy jamming:

Sean Gilman: “arty of the irst art”.

Sallitt:

One of Preminger’s big contributions here is his total comfort with the idea that the good guys and their mission are more or less on the side of evil (incarnated by Ben Gazzara), and their opponents are trying to do society a big favor by locking Gazzara up.

by ·Comments Off on My Son John (1952, Leo McCarey)

Annoyingly square 1950s movie with a worm of weirdness in the middle. Mostly it’s clumsily-made propaganda, but the dialogue pops at times, and EGOT Helen Hayes is very good, bringing real personality to a bland mother role. Movie feels like a play, with long takes (ruined with weird edits via optical zoom), the family naturalistically stuttering over their lines. You wouldn’t think it’s the work of a 30-year veteran director, but at least it’s lovably eccentric – you also wouldn’t guess this all-talk bible-vs-communism story would end in a car chase and shootout.

Dad vs. Red John:

Mom listens in:

Mom has nothing to talk about except when her kids were little, which seems familiar. John (Robert Walker, department store worker in One Touch of Venus) is doing important work in Washington while the other two songs (one from a John Carpenter movie, the other from a movie John Carpenter remade) head off to war. Dad (sheriff of Forty Guns) is exasperating, decides John is a commie then whacks him with a bible and pushes him over a table. Nobody in this movie can take a joke – that’s the root of the problem.

John really is a commie though, and FBI agent Van Heflin (a major player on the cowboy scene in 3:10 to Yuma) is hanging around the house, dancing around what exact degree of treason the kid is being charged with. After John doesn’t survive the car chase, movie peters out with his pre-taped speech warning the youth about soviet infiltration.

Mom vs. the FBI:

Cowboy Dan reviews the rushes:

My second movie in consecutive weeks where someone calls a person “whozis.” Will Sloan: “Contains some nice Game of Death-style trickery to conceal the fact that the titular Son John died during production.” Rosenbaum: “At once profound about the dynamics of family discord involving cultural differences and deranged about the Communist menace.” Kehr: “An appalling masterpiece. Resist the temptation to laugh at the film’s violent anticommunism and try to see it as the audiences of 1952 did, and you’ll experience the most wrenching right-wing film ever made.”

by ·Comments Off on The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957, Jack Arnold)

Scott “Biff” Grant of The Monolith Monsters yachts through a glitter cloud, his wife (of I Was a Male War Bride) unaffected since she was in the cabin. “People actually decrease in height during the day,” says a doctor trying to comfort him. But it’s no use, doc, Biff is definitely getting smaller, and being a real pain in the ass about it. He goes out on the town and meets circus midget April Kent, but that doesn’t help either. Finally he’s small enough to be chased around by the family cat – he escapes into the cellar, but his brother Charlie arrives, and refusing to look in the cellar declares his brother definitely dead then wanders off with the hot wife. Meanwhile, Biff makes a grappling hook (this is exactly what I used to assume I’d do in any desperate situation) to defeat a spider, after which he reaches transcendence as he vanishes into atoms.

Per Criterion, Joe Dante (of course!) loved this movie, and cast the doctor in Innerspace… the same cat who tried to kill Biff later starred in Breakfast at Tiffany’s… I should really watch the remake with Lily Tomlin and Charles Grodin.

by ·Comments Off on China Gate (1957, Samuel Fuller)

Watched this again on beautiful blu. The commetary points out all the political complications and contradictions in the thorny Indochina war where Fuller sets his yarn. Angie Dickinson (pre Rio Bravo) runs a mission with foreign legioners including sympathetic Nat King Cole and her less sympathetic baby-daddy Gene Barry. Excellent cast, including Captain Dubov of five other Fullers, and suave villain Lee Van Cleef.

by ·Comments Off on The Big Knife (1955, Robert Aldrich)

Dour noirish plotty Hollywood blackmail thing, mostly valuable for getting to watch Ida Lupino’s eyes for half the movie. She’s the estranged wife of Jack Palance, back at their fancy house to try convincing him to reclaim his art and not sign a lucrative long-term contract with a crap producer. Various friends and gangsters and agents get themselves involved, but Palance signs to make the bad guys go away, then goes upstairs and kills himself. Just six months after Kiss Me Deadly, with fancier lighting – not the kind of drama I go for, but very nicely shot and acted.

Rod “Run of the Arrow” Steiger as the producer, getting overexcited:

Singin’ in the Rain lipsyncer Lina Lamont knows everyone’s secrets:

Shelley Winters (shortnin’ bread in The Visitor) knows too much:

Welles fave Everett Sloane as the agent, with a naked Palance:

by ·Comments Off on On Dangerous Ground (1951, Nicholas Ray)

“Nobody likes a cop.” A woman picks up her husband’s gun in the first second of the movie post-credits, what would Chekhov say about that? Robert Ryan (between The Set-Up and Clash by Night) is very tame for a supposedly short-tempered, violent officer on the trail of two cop killers. His team catches the guys, but Ryan is sent away to the country to cool off, where Ward Bond is on a rampage, promising to kill his daughter’s murderer without a trial. The suspect’s sister is blind Ida Lupino, so the movie stops its killer pursuits to hang out while these two assholes torment her. Her brother surfaces and spares the two men from having to kill him by falling off a cliff while running away.

Ryan in the country with Ward:

Ryan is good, at least, relative to the rest of the movie. Country and city folk have perfect diction, nothing feels authentic or lived-in – a couple shots of great truth and intensity, but a phony movie. The title always reminds me of crap 90s Steven Seagal social-issues actioner On Deadly Ground, but it turns out there was also a crap 90s Rob Lowe social-issues actioner called On Dangerous Ground.

Ryan in the city with his jittery informant, Welles regular Gus Schilling:

by ·Comments Off on El (1953, Luis Buñuel)

Mustache Man/Land Baron Francisco spots hot girl Gloria during foot-fetish church and chases her relentlessly, firing everyone in his path, breaking up her engagement with construction guy Raul, winning the girl through sheer force.

Soon he’s going off on Gloria in jealous rages, while fighting for some property he claims was stolen from his ancestors. When they meet hunky Ricardo on their honeymoon he goes insane and attacks the guy. Back home, he gets a conspiracy against his wife between her mother and servant and priest, then shoots her with blanks as a threat to stop talking. She finds Raul and flashbacks half the movie, while Francisco finally loses his mind completely in public.

I’m surprised Bunuel worked with this cinematographer again – he appears to have lit the scenes with a searchlight positioned behind the camera, so everyone has a shadow right behind them. Also surprised the letterboxd crowd hasn’t declared this and The River and Death and Archibaldo de la Cruz a trilogy since Carlos Baena plays priests in all three. Don F is best known for The Skeleton of Mrs. Morales, Gloria was an Argentine film star, and the servant was a work boss in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

by ·Comments Off on 3:10 to Yuma (1957, Delmer Daves)

Butterfield’s stagecoach and a nearby cattle farmer’s horses get robbed by Glenn Ford’s gang, then Glenn hangs out casually in Bisbee falling for bartender Felicia Farr (Jubal) while the posse runs away from town searching for him. The sheriff tries to enlist the cattle farmer Cowboy Dan (Van Heflin: a major player on the cowboy scene) in a scheme to capture Glenn – he refuses until Butterfield offers more cash than a drought-ruined farmer can pass up.

The plan: they arrest Glenn knowing his murder-gang will try to rescue him, and pull a switcheroo at the farm so the gang won’t know they’re holding Glenn at the hotel. Then simply wait for the 3:10 train and put Glenn aboard, easy peasy. But the gang has spies and once they find the hotel, they kill Drunk Alex (the only other guy who’d take the money for this assignment), Butterfield walks out, and nobody thinks Van/Dan can get Glenn onboard to the train alive (he can). Glenn is terrific at playing the overconfident villain, should’ve done that more often. I have not much interest in the remake, despite Alan Tudyk playing the drunk.