The Films of 1949 (part three)

The films that I liked but didn't love are an interesting bunch:

I had originally included She Wore a Yellow Ribbon at the bottom of my top ten but while I liked this film I didn't love it, so I chose to go with a top 8 instead. I hate to dis a fine performance by John Wayne, one of his few efforts where he's really stepping outside of his typical bravado pose. Here he is an aging, struggling outpost commander who's being retired and cast off and doesn't really quite know what to do with himself. He fears the uselessness that awaits and he doesn't have the sensibility necessary to embrace it the way his character in The Searchers does, so it all just plays like a downer here. Even the wild attempts at humor seem melancholy. A fine film but I found the romantic relationships confusing and a little intrusive.

All the King's Men is a good film, won the Best Picture that year but its driven by its captivating performances more than its grandiose political commentary. Watch for Broderick Crawford and then go read the novel.

House of Strangers veers back and forth between gripping drama and laughable melodrama--and it works both ways! Edward G. Robinson is a tough-minded Italian immigrant who does what it takes to survive and over the years builds a respected community bank. But when the depression comes, its tough times for everyone and the regulators start working over time to place blame on someone other than themselves. Though Robinson is a beacon of hope and goodness in his hardscrabble neighborhood, the symbol of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and becoming a success, it turns out maybe there was some double-dealing at work behind the scenes. And the double-dealing continues when the patriarch's sons squabble over who will take the blame and who will protect the family name. A very watch-able film, entertaining and Robinson is pretty solid with his broad Brooklyn Italian accent--won Best Actor at Cannes, if I'm not mistaken. (And I can't deny these people reminded me of my family, in good and bad ways)

White Heat is one of James Cagney's classic roles and it is a pretty cool flick. Cagney is a career criminal with an ingenious plan: avoid taking the rap for the big score but pleading guilty to a piddly score he had nothing do with. But the cops get wise to his scheme and send in an undercover to keep an eye on him. It all makes for a good gritty crime drama from back in the day. (Though I'll probably always remember this for Cagney's cameo in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid. Martin: 'Say something like uh…no no ma look listen to me.' Cagney: 'No, no, ma. Look, listen to me--' Martin: 'That's good, good.')

Adam's Rib is not one of the films I watched recently, rather I watched this one a few years back when I was a kick of watching films adapted from plays. As I recall I liked it a lot and anything with Judy Holliday in her prime is fine with me. George Cukor directing a Garsin Kanin script will always be worth watching--Tracy and Hepburn are just a bonus!

On the Town, too, is one I watched years ago and I can't say as I remember it so well. Gene Kelly was just becoming a big star at this time and this was one of his first big showcases. From here it was on to American in Paris, Singin' in the Rain and then exile in France (eluding Senator McCarthy), which pretty much crippled his career.

Battleground was a solid war film for its time and a Best Picture nominee (perhaps it split the war movie vote with 12 O'Clock High allowing the politically cynical All the King's Men to take the top prize). It boasts a handful of intricate set piece battle scenes with a fine mix of the camaraderie moments that the great war films handle so well. A fine flick, producer Dore Schary followed this with Red Badge of Courage directed by John Huston.

The Set Up is the story of a washed-up fighter who wants to fight just one more time though his wife begs him to give up the whole dirty business. The fighter is feeling pretty good that night but little does he realize that his manager has assured the local mobster that he will take a dive. Since the manager has no faith in the boxer to win anyway, he sees no need to cut the fighter in on the deal. When the fighter comes out blazing, the mobster is pissed, the manager is in trouble and we see quickly that this is not going to end well. The characters are fine, the gritty realism works well and the story is compelling but unfortunately its all rather slight. There's not a heck of a lot going on and while the parts are satisfying, the totality leaves you hungering for more. Not bad, in fact I wanted to like it more than I did, but this movie is like half a lunch. (Also, I couldn't help but think that The Set-Up was Tarantino's inspiration for the early scenes of the Bruce Willis portion of Pulp Fiction)

Ah, Border Incident. This is the film that inspired this season's Netflix queue and it lands firmly in the middle of the pack. Howard de Silva gives a marvelous supporting performance and John Alton's command of light is in full effect. As a film its fine, perhaps a little risqué, even exploitative for its day. But it's got heart and a lot of talent oozing around the edges.

I've seen a few Elia Kazan films in the last few years (Gentleman's Agreement, Viva Zapata, Sea of Grass, Panic in the Streets), and while I haven't exactly gone loopy over any of the films, its easy to see what an up-and-coming force he was at this time. Still considered the finest theater director of the 20th century (along with Orson Welles, of course), Kazan came to Hollywood with a lot of muscle. It's hard to imagine anyone else making a film like Pinky in 1949. I didn't think it was an overwhelming film but the cultural taboos it sets its sights on are penetrating. Pinky is a light skinned black girl passing for white who has just returned to her backwoods Louisiana ghetto after a failed romance. She is goaded into caring for the ailing local matriarch (Ethel Barrymore) by her beloved granny (Ethel Waters) and finds herself at the center of a brewing controversy when the matriarch leaves Pinky all her money. The relationship between the two is always contentious but the lady respects Pinky and sees her as a capable human being and hopes that she will do good things with the fortune. (The film doesn't wonder aloud whether this is because of her abilities or her light skin but the question begs to be asked) In the end Pinky triumphs over petty cultural norms and claims her prize which she turns into a paradise for children. Rampant racism as shown in contemporary films always seems a little myopic and hackneyed to me, an easy target rather than worthwhile commentary. But to see its portrayal from 60 years ago, a time when Jackie Robinson was just becoming an accepted member of the American landscape, gives it a raw power--even when it looks exactly the same! This one was also imbued with recent events. Not even two weeks after the elevation of Barak Hussein Obama to Pennsylvania Avenue, it's hard to ignore the significance when Pinky asks her WASP boyfriend: 'Don't you know what kind of people live in that house?'

Sands of Iwo Jima was fine. It all seemed like a genre war movie, by the book, nothing spectacular but it did what it set out to do so its hard to give it a thumbs down. I liked John Wayne's excursion to the single mother's lonely home (and the by-gone morality of leaving without giving her the deep-dicking she truly desired). After Eastwood's recent Iwo Jima double feature this felt like an old-timey curio and that's all it was, wasn't it? Still, it was okay. Sunday afternoon with a hangover kind of movie.

Whiskey Galore! is one of those charming comedies that the British cranked out with regularity in the post-war years. I was never as huge a fan of them as most cinephiles but I don't dislike them and I can't deny their impact. This one is about a tiny village suffering through a wartime booze ration when a tanker filled with whiskey runs aground on their beach. The machinations the townspeople undertake to make the most of this gift from heaven is all pretty funny. But strangely none of the characters really stand out and that's a little bit disappointing. It all becomes a farce rather than something sweeter. That said, it is a harmless piece with plenty of laughs.

I was not an English major so I never read Madame Bovary. Also, somehow I'd never even seen an adaptation though there have been dozens, so my knowledge of the story wasn't as strong as I thought it would be. This version undertakes a curious bookend element: it begins and ends with the trial of Gustav Flaubert, the novel's author, trying to cast a light on the humanity of Madame Bovary (and keep himself out of prison). I don't think I needed that element but perhaps in 1949 the censors would've vetoed such a brazen display of romantic desire from a housewife. I wasn't so offended by her sexual needs as her incorrigible social-climbing which I found unnecessary and a little depressing, to be honest. She is a remote farm girl lucky to be loved by a successful, if only marginally talented, doctor. But when she discovers a whole new social scene as his wife, she is soon bored by her limited oafish husband. She craves more. But its not that she craves a new man (she quickly takes a lover at any rate), it is that she wants a whole new life. Now I understand that in the 1850s women weren't as free to have their own professional lives but when will we get the story of the woman who tries that route instead of simply trying to fuck ever-wealthier men? Madame Bovary is dissed by one lover and hounded by another, all the while devaluing the one man who believed in her and gave her a life she otherwise could never have had. I'm not suggesting she has to worship the husband or even stay married to him, but why can't she see him as a valuable piece of her life instead of an impediment? Oh well. This film was fine but the bookend elements didn't do anything for me and none of the performances were as noteworthy as this type of film probably requires. A fine adaptation but nothing superlative.

The Fountainhead is a tough one. I grew up on a steady diet of Ayn Rand and her precepts are well-known to me and in some sense still revered by me. While I want to like this adaptation of her magnum opus--she did write the screenplay herself--it really comes off as a parody of Rand more than an embrace. Everything is clipped and melodramatic so the rousing character of John Galt and his iron will seems cartoonish rather than admirable. There are still many fine moments (and it is a lot shorter than the book!) and Patricia Neal is particularly good so I still gotta give it a reluctant thumbs up.