ARSENIC AND OLD LACE
****½
THE CURSE OF THE CAT PEOPLE
**
A young girl befriends a ghost.
A lacklustre sequel which only retains from the original some of the appalling acting and dialogue
and none of the terror and brilliance. More family
entertainment than horror.
dir: Robert Wise, Gunther von Fritsch
cast: Ann Carter, Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Jane
Randolph, Julia Dean, Elizabeth Russell, Eve March
DOUBLE INDEMNITY
*****
USA
A rich vamp seduces an insurance salesman and convinces him to murder her
husband.
A tightly packed, quintessential noir, where the dialogue crackles, the
stars fixate and not a frame is wasted.
dir: Billy Wilder
wr: Raymond Chandler, Billy Wilder
cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck, Edward
G. Robinson, Porter Hall, Jean Heather, Tom Powers, Gig Young
GASLIGHT
**½
GOING MY WAY
**½
THE
GREAT MOMENT
**½
USA
Probably the beginning of Preston Sturges' decline (though technically
he filmed it in 1942 - it was taken out of his hands by the studio and
released two years later). His first more or less straight drama, it's a
beautifully photographed but otherwise stilted biopic of the dentist who
invented anaesthetics - or at least claimed to have done. Several
gentlemen in the medical field independently disputed his right to the
patent, and the makers of this picture are so crudely and desperately
insistent to portray these gentlemen as misguided that you start to get a
bit wary.
The script is also credited to Sturges but the dialogue is so
wooden it's difficult to accept he could be responsible for it.
wr/dir: Preston Sturges
ph: Victor Milner
cast: Joel McCrea, Betty Field, Harry Carey, William Demarest,
Louis Jean Heydt, Julius Tannen, Edwin Maxwell, Porter Hall
HAIL THE
CONQUERING HERO
****½
USA
Preston Sturges reshuffles his terrific ensemble so that gawky Eddie
Bracken plays a would-be Marine who has to return home without ever having
entered into battle, William Demarest is the sergeant who reinvents him as
a returning war hero before his awestruck hometown and Freddie Steele is
the soldier who's always looking to protect his poor mother. The movie has
the warmth of 40s' Hollywood's concept of middle America, the bite of
a very clever political satire and the verbal and visual imagination of
Preston Sturges at his verbal and visual peak.
wr/dir: Preston Sturges
ph: John Seitz
cast: Eddie Bracken, William Demarest, Ella Raines, Freddie
Steele, Bill Edwards, Raymond Walburn, Georgia Caine, Alan
Bridge, Franklin Pangborn, Jimmie Dundee, James Damore, Stephen
Gregory, Len Hendry, Esther Howard, Elizabeth Patterson, Jimmy Conlin,
Arthur Hoyt, Harry Hayden
HENRY V
***½
JANE EYRE
*****
LAURA
****½
LIFEBOAT
****½
MADEMOISELLE FIFI
**
USA
During the Franco-Prussian war,
a stagecoach carrying several aristocrats and a patriotic French laundress
is stopped. The laundress is forced to have dinner with a Prussian
officer.
The heroine is probably a prostitute and the Prussian officer probably
wants more from her than to share a meal, but nobody can say that out
loud. Clearly this was not the time and place to bring this story to the
screen but there remained potential here nonetheless for fascinating
subplots about things like class barriers and personal pride compromised
for the common good. Guy de Maupassant probably concentrated on these in
the two stories that formed the basis for this movie. But the movie is
content to veer off with much awkwardness into a war resistance melodrama and
subtly demand that you get out of the theatre and enlist.
dir: Robert Wise
cast: Simone Simon, John Emery, Kurt Kreuger, Alan
Napier, Jason Robards Sr., Helen Freeman, Norma Varden
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MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS
****½
THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK
*****
MURDER,
MY SWEET
*****
USA
The only slightly less excellent of two highly excellent adaptations of
Raymond Chandler's relatively excellent "Farewell, My Lovely"
(which was this film's UK title, as well as the original title of the
terrific 1975 remake). Dick
Powell is no Bogart (or Mitchum, for that matter), but he's a surprisingly
solid Marlowe, and Claire Trevor - almost as surprisingly - a delectable
femme fatale (you can hear the [new] money in her voice).
1944 was pretty much early days for noir, but Edward Dmytryk
already had the tone and unmistakable visual style down pat. Writer John
Paxton tidies up Chandler's typically unwieldy plot and fills in most of
the holes. The dialogue, as you'd expect, is cracking.
dir: Edward Dmytryk
wr: John Paxton
ph: Harry J. Wild
ed: Joseph Noriega
cast: Dick Powell, Claire Trevor, Anne Shirley, Mike Mazurki,
Otto Kruger, Miles Mander, Douglas Walton, Donald Douglas, Ralf Harold, Esther
Howard
PHANTOM LADY
**½
SHOW BUSINESS
**½
USA
The careers and love lives of a
quartet of vaudevillians.
Around the half-way point, the snappy exchanges and catchy tunes are
pushed aside to make way for soap opera and this dilutes the fun.
dir: Edwin L. Marin
cast: Eddie Cantor, George Murphy, Joan Davis,
Constance Moore, Don Douglas, Nancy Kelly
SINCE YOU WENT AWAY
**½
TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT
****½
TORMENT
***
Sweden
A senior at a strict high
school is tormented by a sadistic teacher.
Seen today, this essentially plays as a routine melodrama about a
troubled teenager, his alcoholic girlfriend, a perverted headmaster and an
oppressive education system. What distinguishes it from the others,
however, is that it was made at least a decade before this sort of thing
became routine (at least in Hollywood) and was starring James Dean. It's
at its best when its scriptwriter's imprint is most clearly apparent - so
basically, the less polished bits. Bergman was also assistant director and
the film was a major international success.
dir: Alf Sjöberg
wr: Ingmar Bergman
cast: Stig Järrel, Alf Kjellin, Mai Zetterling,
Olof Winnerstrand
THE
UNINVITED
***½
USA
Siblings Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey purchase a Cornish seaside mansion,
despite its unusually low asking price, its attic that sends pets
squealing to the neighbours, and its adjacency to a very steep cliff that
formed the site of a suspicious death 17 years earlier. Sure enough, they
find themselves caught up in a very polite and very watchable ghost story,
with the exquisitely wooden Gail Russell as the maiden in peril and a lady
called Cornelia Otis Skinner playing a graduate of the Gail Sondergaard
School of Sapphism and Psychiatry. The spooky effects are that much more
effective for bursting out amid all the light-hearted banter and
irreproachable civility.
dir: Lewis Allen
ph: Charles Lang
cast: Ray Milland, Ruth Hussey, Gail Russell, Dinald Crisp,
Cornelia Otis Skinner, Alan Napier, Barbara Everest, Dorothy Stickney
THE WAY AHEAD
**½
THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW
****
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