Happy New Year once again, and welcome to another year of blogging. I see that my total was way down last year, with only 261 blogs written as opposed to 331 in 2019 and an astounding 349 the year before that. I guess the main reason for the downturn is that my hours changed dramatically in 2020. After Pearl got out of the hospital last January, I became a round-the-clock caregiver. Since then, I am with her 22 hours a day, whereas before that, I had a lengthy break each night, during which I could write. Now, I am relegated solely to late night writing, a time I used to use to edit what I'd written earlier in the evening. At this time of night, I am too tired to write off the top of my head and then go back and clean it up, which is why my blogs take two days now, instead of one. I know that earlier in 2020, I was still managing a blog a day, but it wasn't easy, and by late Summer I threw in the towel and decided to cut everything in half. Maybe when I'm at home during my weeks off, I can try to write every day. I can't guarantee I'll achieve it, but let's make it a goal.
Well, how 'bout some movies? I started off the year in an excellent way with an Espionage flick, a genre we haven't frequented much, but this was a really good one and it was called "Berlin Correspondent"(1941), starring Dana Andrews as an American radio announcer working in Berlin (pronounced Behr - LEEN) just prior to the U.S. entry into World War Two. He's using code in his news reports, to sneak out messages to the US War Department concerning the movement of German troops. The date is Thanksgiving 1941, which means that the United States is still technically neutral (at least for another couple of weeks), therefore Andrews is in Germany as a neutral party reporting on the war, and is protected by the American Embassy.
But an upstart Gestapo Colonel, played par excellence by Martin Kosleck, gets wind of Dana Andrews' broadcast messages and decides to have him tailed, since he can't arrest him. He enlists his girlfriend in the scheme. Played by Virginia Gilmore, she is a young fraulein who's been brainwashed into believing in National Socialism. Many young Germans suffered the same fate.
The plot hinges on her personal crisis, because it turns out that her father is the man supplying Andrews with his information. Because she is the Gestapo Colonel's girlfriend, she is pressured to turn her Dad in. The Colonel promises her he'll be "well treated", because he'll be sent to a mental institution instead of a concentration camp. But Dana Andrews investigates, and discovers that lobotomy is the treatment of choice in the Nazi's nuthouse.
Martin Kosleck's performance sets the tone for this picture. You've seen his angular face before, and you'd recognize his officious onscreen persona. He specialized in playing fey-but-deadly Nazis and was very good at it, but in this film he goes too far by persecuting his girlfriend's father. She fights back, with the help of Dana Andrews, and the plot is set for a series of counterattacks by both sides. It's Grade A stuff for a B-Picture, one of those movies that's off and running at the starting gun. ////
Then tonight I found a top notch noir entitled "The Man Who Cheated Himself"(1950). Lee J. Cobb stars as a San Francisco homicide detective who's involved with a wealthy woman. When she kills her husband, Cobb helps her cover it up. But at the same time, Cobb's brother, also a detective (and played by John Dall of "Gun Crazy" fame), has just been promoted to homicide. In fact he's paired with his bro on the same case, the murder of the husband that Cobb has been covering up.
Because Dall is an eager beaver, trying to solve his first case, Cobb keeps having to shut him down, using seniority and experience as excuses. But Dall - who had a weird acting style bordering on caricature (but who was really good nonetheless) - keeps following his instincts, and little by little the clues add up that it's his womanising brother who is involved in the murder.
As with "Berlin Correspondent", "The Man Who Cheated Himself" runs at a steady pace, with no wasted scenes. You can't take your eyes off either film, and with "Man Who Cheated" you get a lot of great San Francisco location footage to boot. Lee J. Cobb was good at standing behind his physicality. He had that stocky physique, the cleft chin, and his deep voice, and like Brian Dennehy, he "threw his weight around" in the roles he played. His body was part of his acting. But here, in "The Man Who Cheated Himself", he is outdone by goofy John Dall, skinny and tall, whose combination of weirdness and earnest resolve - morally driven and relentless - are more than a match for the brawny Cobb belligerence that Lee J. was most known for.
Both movies are available in razor sharp prints on Youtube and both are highly recommended. If we can find enough John Dall, he could become our John Agar for 2021!
That's all for tonight. I am hoping, as you are too no doubt, that this year will not just be a rebuke of Trump, and an end to the pandemic, but something very special. Concentrate on what it means to you, and it will happen. ////
See you in the morning. Tons of love. Go Rams.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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