by ·Comments Off on Night of the Hunter (1955, Charles Laughton)

After the cops nab father Peter Graves (star of Parts: The Clonus Horror), false priest Robert Mitchum moves in and takes care of mother Shelley Winters, then starts working on the kids to reveal their bank robber dad’s missing loot until they escape downriver and find a protector in Lillian Gish. I wasn’t getting the fantasy storybook quality of this movie when I watched it thirty years ago on TCM, just the plot and some odd moments, such as Mitchum popping up like a cartoon to get shot by Gish at the end.

Terrence Rafferty:

[Screenwriter James] Agee was steeped not only in the right kind of southern sensibility but also in the work of the silent-film pioneer D. W. Griffith, which Laughton, with near miraculous intuition, believed should be the touchstone for the telling of the story; Griffith was the master of heightened, poetic melodrama, and that’s what Laughton wanted for The Night of the Hunter. He screened as many of Griffith’s movies as he could dig up at the Museum of Modern Art, and hired the terrific cinematographer Stanley Cortez, who had done brilliantly imaginative work in black and white on Orson Welles’s second film, The Magnificent Ambersons. The black-and-white imagery of The Night of the Hunter is in a different, more deliberately archaic style from that of the Welles film, keyed to the basic emotions of love and fear, just as the great silent movies were.

David Ehrenstein:

The Night of the Hunter has the feel and the force of an American folk fable; yet, it’s a curious and highly eccentric sort of folk fable, mixing, as it does, rural humor with gothic humor, biblical quotation and Freudian symbolism, and everyday realities with a near-mythic confrontation between the forces of good and evil. … It may be frightening, but not in the melodramatic manner of a conventional thriller. Its story is told from a child’s viewpoint, yet it has nothing in common with the likes of Disney or Spielberg. Then, there is its style to contend with—an incredible mixture of naturalistic three-dimensional space on view one moment, replaced by theatrical two-dimensional images the next. It is clear what the film is aiming at: images from our nightmares, brought into the lucid light of day.

Only instance in history of an adult in a movie believing a kid over another adult:

Bad shadow:

Good shadow:

by ·Comments Off on Laughter (1930, Harry d’Arrast)

Starving artist Glenn Anders (Lady From Shanghai) loves Nancy Carroll (Broken Lullaby), but Nancy loves Parisian Fredric March (romantic lead(s) of I Married a Witch), but she is married to older Frank “The Wizard of Oz” Morgan. She’s right to prefer March – he’s a charming nut, playing piano duets with the servants and romping around wearing bear rugs. Among all this romantic intrigue, the husband makes eight million dollars on a business deal and nobody in the family can be bothered to care. There’s a cute stepdaughter, and the artist tries smooching her, but ultimately decides to shoot himself since he can’t have Nancy, an act which shocks her into leaving her rich husband for March.

Bonding with stepmom:

Moments before they’re arrested for breaking into this house:

by ·Comments Off on Man’s Castle (1933, Frank Borzage)

Great writing and premise, as poor hungry gal Loretta Young (who I just saw in The Stranger) is pitied by rich guy Spencer Tracy and taken out for a nice meal. Only he’s not rich, just pretending, and they get kicked out and retreat to his shanty town.

She loves the place and wants to settle down there, but Tracy likes to move from town to town, plus they’ve gotta eat to stay alive, so already a few conflicts before throwing in the predatory criminal next door (a banker in The Devil Doll, a burglar here) who wants to rob the factory guarded by their preacher friend Walter Connolly (a millionaire in 5th Ave Girl). Throw in a pitiful/sympathetic drunk (Tobacco Road star Marjorie Rambeau) and a showgirl who unaccountably falls for Tracy (Glenda Farrell of Little Caesar) and a not-so-surprise pregnancy, and you get a lot of plot for 75 minutes. Lovely ending as hard-headed Tracy realizes the girl doesn’t have to prevent him from leaving town if he takes her along. Loretta very wonderful if this had been silent, but miscast in a talkie, delivering homey lines like “he don’t know his own strength, he don’t” with perfect posh diction.

Loretta with Marjorie, whose redemption comes from shooting the thief:

Dave Kehr was a fan: “Few love stories have achieved the emotional intensity of Man’s Castle, and most of the others belonged to Borzage as well. He possessed the most delicate romantic sensibility in the movies, and his films are pervaded by a sublime spiritual quality that no one else has been able to capture.”

Did street pigeons look like this in 1933?

by ·Comments Off on Days of Heaven (1978, Terrence Malick)

Richard Gere is kinda not the good guy in this – he keeps killing his bosses. His “sister” was in Invasion of the Body Snatchers the same year, making her the cinema queen of 1978. I recently saw farm owner Sam Shepard leading The Right Stuff and haunting Hamlet, but he’s one of those guys I can’t seem to recognize. Linda Manz is given incredible lines and makes a great narrator; I need to catch up with her in Out of the Blue. Happy to finally get around to watching this beautiful blu-ray, hope I get to see it in an actual theater someday. Good reactions: Brendanowicz, and PD187 (katy said the same thing). Guess I’ve written up all the Malick movies… Badlands doesn’t have an entry, but was covered here (and is due a rewatch, as are ALL of them, including this one).

Animals of Heaven:

by ·Comments Off on O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000, Coens)

Rewatched for the first time since theaters.

I’ve been reading the Adam Nayman book on the Coens:

Nothing in the film is “original” except for the reconfiguration of elements, which is why the opening citation is more honest than it seems and, in its way, a signifier not of smarminess but of humility. The nod to The Odyssey admits that any artist in the Western tradition owes some currency of debt to Homer, and that to mount any story about homecoming is to reconnect with the roots of storytelling itself – to return to the primal scene.

Nayman:

“If it’s not new and it never grows old, it’s a folk song,” quips the hero of Inside Llewyn Davis, which is O Brother, Where Art Thou?‘s spiritual sequel. Taken together, the two films clarify the Coens’ relationship to a musical genre founded on familiarity. For filmmakers perpetually interested in circles and circularity, the cyclical proliferation and popularity of folk and bluegrass standards – songs largely without cited authors, passed down and performed by different singers through the generations – serves as a potent analogue to their thematic preoccupations.

by ·Comments Off on Boxcar Bertha (1972, Martin Scorsese)

Barbara Hershey, who also appears in two (but not all) of Scorsese’s movies where someone gets crucified, sees her cropduster daddy die then hits the Depression-era road. She and family friend Von (Bernie Casey of The Man Who Fell to Earth, In the Mouth of Madness) and railworker Bill (David Carradine, whose dad plays a railroad bigwig) meet up in various places and get into hijinks. Good performances, especially in the second half, and some sharp editing, but this is more a Roger Corman period adventure story than anything else.

Bertha caught between two Carradines:

The cops and strikebreakers in this are real pieces of shit. She meets a moneyman called Rake, she shoots a guy who calls everyone he dislikes a red, and she jailbreaks her friends… there’s a nice classic car wreck off a cliff, another gets smashed by a train, there are some shotgun murders, and Bertha and friends become professional bank robbers. She’s freed from a whorehouse by Von, but both guys finally get busted.

Von taking care of business:

Strikebreaker on the left would become a Scorsese regular, mustache guy would disappear.

by ·Comments Off on If You Could Only Cook (1935, William A. Seiter)

Nearly the same plot as Spaced: two down-and-out strangers apply for a couples-only newspaper ad. But here, another popular 1930’s plot is thrown in: the rich guy pretending to be a commoner. Trouble in Paradise star Herbert Marshall is a futurist auto mogul, God’s own Jean Arthur (same year as The Whole Town’s Talking) can cook very well, and they’re hired as cook-and-butler by some fellas. He’s trying to stay in charge of the company he founded, she is arrested when his secret auto designs are found in her possession, their criminal employer Leo Carrillo proposes to Jean, Herbert doesn’t fool anyone for long and when he returns to his old life, Leo kidnaps him from his society wedding – it’s a lot for a 70-minute movie, and it mostly works thanks to the cast.

by ·Comments Off on King of the Hill (1993, Steven Soderbergh)

Immediately after watching a movie by rule-breaker iPhone-cinematographer Soderbergh, roughly his 30th feature, it was fun to catch up with his third, a period piece with relatively subdued editing and energy. The movies would seem to have nothing in common, except that I’d just read David Ehrlich’s review of High Flying Bird, saying that Soderbergh is “drawn to stories about people who try to steal back a measure of self-worth,” and that connects. So now I’ve seen all of his movies except Side Effects, and I guess Mosaic.

Our boy is Aaron, abandoned by both parents due to work and illness, he and his little brother attempt to live in a hotel room in Depression-era St. Louis with no food or income for as long as possible. He tries breeding canaries, dances with an epileptic neighbor, sees the arrest of Adrien Brody and suicide (!) of Spalding Gray while avoiding cops and death himself, and finally escapes the hotel when his travelling salesman father returns.

Gray and Elizabeth McGovern:

Aaron with Lauryn Hill:

by ·Comments Off on Paper Moon (1973, Peter Bogdanovich)

Traveling salesman/con-man Moses (Ryan O’Neal of Barry Lyndon, The Driver) stops by the Missouri funeral of “a friend” and takes charge of the deceased’s daughter (and possibly his own) Addie (Tatum O’Neal, Ryan’s daughter). She proves to be at least as good with the cons as Moses, and she claims he owes her money and threatens to turn him in, so they stick together through Kansas. Moses gets sidetracked shacking up with the pampered Trixie (Madeline Kahn) so Addie schemes with Trixie’s maid Imogene to break them up. The rest of the movie is small-time scams and gradual bonding, all extremely winning.

Tatum O’Neal won an oscar for this. John Hillerman of Chinatown plays a dual role, Moses wrestles Randy Quaid. P-Bog’s fourth-ish feature, between What’s Up, Doc? and Daisy Miller. Screenwriter Alvin Sargent started in the 1950’s and is still around, writing Spider-Man sequels.

Tatum with Imogene (PJ Johnson):

Madeline and Ryan with charming desk clerk Burton Gilliam: