Tonight's motion picture was "Cross Of Iron" (1977), an ultra-realistic and action packed WW2 film directed by.........Sam Peckinpah.
You ask: "What are you, Ad, a glutton for punishment"? and I reply halfheartedly that I had already checked out "Cross Of Iron" from the Libe along with "Junior Bonner" and "Major Dundee", and I wanted to finish up my Peckinpah mini-fest even though "Dundee" was one of the worst films I've seen in years, and "Bonner" - while fairly engaging - didn't have much of a story. Also, I've long hated "The Wild Bunch" (don't get me started!), and I just generally wasn't a fan of Sam. He always seemed like a degenerate to me, though as I've said he was no doubt a technically proficient filmmaker.
Anyhow, so I checked out all these Peckinpah movies from the Libe last week, just because I needed something to see. Having watched the other two, I figured I'd give "Cross Of Iron" a go this evening. The timing was right; I'm in between books and have yet to begin a new drawing (the new one I'm practicing for is super difficult), so I had the entirety of my evening break to devote to the lengthy film (132 minutes). I was prepared to turn it off at the very first slowdown or patented Peckinpah curveball, where he diverts the action to an endless drinking scene, or cuts to a sudden romance that has nothing to do with the movie.
But to my great surprise, not only did I not turn the movie off, but.....I was riveted to my seat throughout.
I guess I owe Ol' Sam an apology. I mean, I still think "Major Dundee" sucks in a record-breaking way, and I detest the critical popularity of "The Wild Bunch". Please see it for yourself and tell me it's a great film, it isn't and it's terrible.
But maybe Sam's forte wasn't the Western. Maybe if he had made a "bunch" (wink wink) of WW2 flicks instead of outlaw oaters, I might be touting Sam Peckinpah as one of my favorite filmmakers.
Because, and I almost hate to say this but I have to in the name of honesty : "Cross Of Iron" is one of the greatest war movies I have ever seen. I would put it in my top five WW2 films for certain.
There is no fooling around with this movie, no attempt to be cute or to present his actors as macho icons (a previous Peckinpah downfall). This is just straight-up "War Is Hell" filmmaking from start to finish. You are in the war every bit as much as the actors. The action footage is very advanced for 1977, and is edited to a high degree of precision, a Peckinpah staple even in his lesser films.
Okay, so the war is happening and it's in your face. James Coburn is a corporal in the German infantry. Right away, we see that he is one of those "mythical" movie soldiers who aren't destined to die, no matter how many artillery shells explode around him, nor bullets whizzing by in crossfire.
If you've heard the song "Rooster" by Alice In Chains, Coburn is like Jerry Cantrell's Dad.
"He ain't gonna die". And so all the soldiers in his platoon trust him, even though the German Army in is retreat in the middle of Russia, where they are getting hammered by bombs and enemy fire on an hourly basis. Coburn is only a Corporal, the lowliest of soldiers excepting a Private, and yet he commands the respect of even the higher-ups down in the command bunker several miles away.
The Major in command of the battalion is Chames Mason. I just thought I should mention that, and please don't forget the correct pronunciation of his name. If you need help, just raise your hand.
Mason and the other command officers (including David Warner in a brilliant performance) have given up on the war. They are just going through the motions in giving out orders because the Russians are kicking the daylights out of them. James Coburn, however, is out in the field with his men. He can't afford to give up. Every moment is life or death for his platoon.
Into this picture steps Maximillian Schell. Man, what a great actor he was. He plays a Captain who has been on R&R on the French Riviera but is now reassigned to the Russian Front. He claims that he asked for the reassignment in order to face combat. He tells Corporal Coburn specifically that he intends to be awarded The Iron Cross, Germany's version of the Purple Heart.
Schell desires The Cross simply because he is a bourgeois Prussian Aristocrat, a wealthy man who has become an officer merely because of his position in life. He has no combat experience, yet he shows up in the bunker and singles out Coburn for punishment, simply because he has heard all the foot soldiers praising him. Coburn as a Corporal is leading his squad because there aren't any sergeants left. The Germans are using teenagers. The Russians are using little kids and women.
Peckinpah shows you the real thing, including brief glimpses of scenes so horrifying, of what soldiers really saw, on the ground, of what happens to a person who used to be a human being, that you will need to simply let the footage register and pass by. To linger on images like these is not healthy for the mind.
The plot will come down to an end game struggle between Captain Schell, the privileged Prussian who will stop at nothing to obtain The Iron Cross, and Corporal James Coburn, who is only trying to get his men safely back from behind enemy lines. He is going though sheer hell while Maximilian Schell hides out in his bunker......though he is getting increasingly shelled himself. Russian tanks are crawling over the German encampment.
Man, what a movie! There are a few subplots taking place as well, including a stay for Coburn in an Army hospital due to concussion. There, he hallucinates past battle scenes in footage that would now be considered evidence for PTSD.
And yet he removes himself from the hospital, against Nurse Senta Berger's orders (which you or I would follow), so that he can rejoin his men. His entire life has been shaped by his combat experience. All he knows is that he must lead his platoon out of their horrific situation in Russia. Forget the hospital, forget the orders coming in from the bunker. This is do-or-die.
And Captain Schell resents him for his loyalty. ////
I shant tell you any more, but I will give "Cross Of Iron" Two Gigantic Thumbs Up, and will recommend it to anyone who is a fan of classic World War Two films. It's one of the very best I've seen, even a near masterpiece, a rendering of the terrible chaos of battle so immediate that you are in the platoon yourself, stepping over the ruined bodies of your fellow soldiers as you dodge incoming rounds and machine gun fire.
I've said it before but it bears repeating : How anyone got through WW2, I'll never know.
It was a time when the Devil took over the Earth. ////
Kudos to Peckinpah for "Cross Of Iron". See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Monday, June 17, 2019
Sunday, June 16, 2019
"Black Legion" staring Humphrey Bogart, tremendous yet scary
Tonight I watched a very dramatic Humphrey Bogart movie called "Black Legion" (1937). Bogie plays a drill operator working in the machine shop of an unnamed factory. He is well-liked and also a top worker, so when an opening comes up for shop foreman, he expectantly believes the job will be his. When another young man is given the promotion instead, Bogart fumes silently. He has already made promises at home : a new car for his wife, baseball gear for his boy. He was counting his chickens, however, and they didn't hatch. He is forced to come home and tell his wife and son the bad news.
The young man who is given the job as the new foreman is a cut above the average blue collar tradesman. He is shown reading engineering books on his lunch break. He has already invented a cooling system for the drill presses that has saved the company a lot of money in time and equipment.
His name is Joe Dombrowski. He lives on a chicken ranch with his father. They are Polish immigrants trying to make good in the United States, and they are American citizens.
This is where the movie turns, and keeps turning until it gets downright scary.
You see, while Bogie is fuming about the foreman job he thought was his, there are other people who are much more upset than he, about "immigrants taking our jobs". Holy Trumpian Smokes, folks.
Fascism is never far away in America, and in 1937, there were a lot of people who sympathized with Hitler, and more to the point of this movie, with the Ku Klux Klan.
There are a couple of Bogie's co-workers who have openly called out the promotion of Joe Dombrowski for shop foreman. They make fun of his intelligence, as the mooks will do when faced with their own lack of same. See Trump once again. But far more threatening is their hatred of Dombrowski's ethnicity. Humphrey is not by nature a bigot, but he takes note of the bigots who are sticking up for him. Then he hears on the radio a strange program advertising membership in a Nationalist political group, a group that is "standing up for American jobs, and values"!
I am telling you, folks - though this dialogue was written 83 years ago, it could have just as easily been written today. Nothing has changed on the Xenophobia Front.
One of Bogie's factory cronies is a particularly vicious bigot. The focus in this movie is on a general prejudice against "foreigners", but the message is clear : we could be talking about black folks or Jewish people, and the movie came out in 1937 at the height of Hitler's power. So Bogie has this co-worker who sees how upset he is at losing his promotion to Dombroski, and he talks Bogie into joining his secret lodge, a group of violent racists made up of local workers and businessmen. The group is called "The Black Legion" and they are a frightening bunch indeed.
In one of the more blatant scenes in early studio movies, Bogart - after he joins the group - is made to participate in an initiation ritual that differs not much from a Satanic Rite. The Legion members are all decked out in their Klan-style hoods and gowns. Their hoods have a skull & bones on them (Hey! Skull & Bones, anybody?) Bogie is made to swear his oath to the group with a gun pointed to his head, outdoors around a campfire. This is some really weird stuff for a major Warner Brothers release in 1937, I kid you not.
But now that he is sworn in, he can't leave. He will be killed if he tries. The Black Legion are neo-Nazis, and the first victims on their agenda is to be the Dombrowskis and their chicken farm. Bogie gleefully takes part in the violence against this family, and soon he is fully involved in the Legion's evil doings.
Back at home, his loving wife (the stunning early actress Erin O'Brien-Moore) can't understand the sudden changes in his behavior, why he stays out so late and why he snaps at her for no reason.
His best friend (Dick Foran) doesn't get it either. Foran is one of the good guys at the factory who gets along with everyone. He has recently straightened up his own act to stop drinking and break up with his floozy girlfriend so that he can marry his sweetheart neighbor Ann Sheridan (who you would marry, too, if you had the chance). Foran had supported Joe Dombrowski when the mooks of the factory tried to undercut his new position of leadership, and now that he and his family have gone missing, Foran senses something is wrong. He notices the same things about Bogart that the wife has mentioned. Something about Bogie has changed, and it's getting worse.
The nighttime excursions of the Black Legion become regular and increasingly more bold. Now they are going after other factory workers and anyone in town who supports equality. We are shown that there is a financial motive for those who head up the movement, men who never take part in the action (like Trump) but who have the money to build it into a national front, and thus profit from membership dues and the sale of handguns to the members.
I mean.......folks!......here is a movie, in 1937 - 82 years ago! - taking on the f%@#king NRA, perhaps the most evil lobbying group in American history, and in the film they are showing the businessmen at the top of the organisation tallying up their profits from the sale of mandatory handgun purchases to their members.
This is one Hard Core truth telling motion picture, my friends. And made so long ago, but still current and even more so today.
I won't go any further with the plot to avoid spoilers. It does turn into a courtroom drama for the last 10 or 12 minutes, but here I want to harp on script development one more time, just because I love great movies and because the script has so much to do with the success, or failure, of any film.
The running time of "Black Legion" was 83 minutes. In addition to the main plot, there are a few subplots involving Bogie's wife and her allegiance to her husband, and another more developed theme about Dick Foran's involvement with the floozy, who tries to steal him from Ann Sheridan. This subplot is played in intervals to show Foran's turnaround to a wholesome life, and his realization that his friend Humphrey Bogart is in deep trouble. Foran, having recovered his own values, will try to rescue Bogie.
But he is up against some amoral and sociopathic gangsters, real nutjobs, and it will be hard going for him in his attempt to set things right.
Wow. This is some Early Bogie, one of his first dozen roles, and I think it is up there with his best. He has to really emote in many of the critical scenes, rather that just doing his Humphrey Bogart thing, and these are my favorite movies by him, when he shows what a great actor he was, given the chance.
"Black Legion" is an unusually hardcore movie from a Hollywood studio in the Golden Era. I give it Two Gigantic Thumbs Up for it's realism and courage to face the truth.
It's not for the squeamish, but then again it's only 1937, so there's nothing too graphic.
Highest recommendation. See you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
The young man who is given the job as the new foreman is a cut above the average blue collar tradesman. He is shown reading engineering books on his lunch break. He has already invented a cooling system for the drill presses that has saved the company a lot of money in time and equipment.
His name is Joe Dombrowski. He lives on a chicken ranch with his father. They are Polish immigrants trying to make good in the United States, and they are American citizens.
This is where the movie turns, and keeps turning until it gets downright scary.
You see, while Bogie is fuming about the foreman job he thought was his, there are other people who are much more upset than he, about "immigrants taking our jobs". Holy Trumpian Smokes, folks.
Fascism is never far away in America, and in 1937, there were a lot of people who sympathized with Hitler, and more to the point of this movie, with the Ku Klux Klan.
There are a couple of Bogie's co-workers who have openly called out the promotion of Joe Dombrowski for shop foreman. They make fun of his intelligence, as the mooks will do when faced with their own lack of same. See Trump once again. But far more threatening is their hatred of Dombrowski's ethnicity. Humphrey is not by nature a bigot, but he takes note of the bigots who are sticking up for him. Then he hears on the radio a strange program advertising membership in a Nationalist political group, a group that is "standing up for American jobs, and values"!
I am telling you, folks - though this dialogue was written 83 years ago, it could have just as easily been written today. Nothing has changed on the Xenophobia Front.
One of Bogie's factory cronies is a particularly vicious bigot. The focus in this movie is on a general prejudice against "foreigners", but the message is clear : we could be talking about black folks or Jewish people, and the movie came out in 1937 at the height of Hitler's power. So Bogie has this co-worker who sees how upset he is at losing his promotion to Dombroski, and he talks Bogie into joining his secret lodge, a group of violent racists made up of local workers and businessmen. The group is called "The Black Legion" and they are a frightening bunch indeed.
In one of the more blatant scenes in early studio movies, Bogart - after he joins the group - is made to participate in an initiation ritual that differs not much from a Satanic Rite. The Legion members are all decked out in their Klan-style hoods and gowns. Their hoods have a skull & bones on them (Hey! Skull & Bones, anybody?) Bogie is made to swear his oath to the group with a gun pointed to his head, outdoors around a campfire. This is some really weird stuff for a major Warner Brothers release in 1937, I kid you not.
But now that he is sworn in, he can't leave. He will be killed if he tries. The Black Legion are neo-Nazis, and the first victims on their agenda is to be the Dombrowskis and their chicken farm. Bogie gleefully takes part in the violence against this family, and soon he is fully involved in the Legion's evil doings.
Back at home, his loving wife (the stunning early actress Erin O'Brien-Moore) can't understand the sudden changes in his behavior, why he stays out so late and why he snaps at her for no reason.
His best friend (Dick Foran) doesn't get it either. Foran is one of the good guys at the factory who gets along with everyone. He has recently straightened up his own act to stop drinking and break up with his floozy girlfriend so that he can marry his sweetheart neighbor Ann Sheridan (who you would marry, too, if you had the chance). Foran had supported Joe Dombrowski when the mooks of the factory tried to undercut his new position of leadership, and now that he and his family have gone missing, Foran senses something is wrong. He notices the same things about Bogart that the wife has mentioned. Something about Bogie has changed, and it's getting worse.
The nighttime excursions of the Black Legion become regular and increasingly more bold. Now they are going after other factory workers and anyone in town who supports equality. We are shown that there is a financial motive for those who head up the movement, men who never take part in the action (like Trump) but who have the money to build it into a national front, and thus profit from membership dues and the sale of handguns to the members.
I mean.......folks!......here is a movie, in 1937 - 82 years ago! - taking on the f%@#king NRA, perhaps the most evil lobbying group in American history, and in the film they are showing the businessmen at the top of the organisation tallying up their profits from the sale of mandatory handgun purchases to their members.
This is one Hard Core truth telling motion picture, my friends. And made so long ago, but still current and even more so today.
I won't go any further with the plot to avoid spoilers. It does turn into a courtroom drama for the last 10 or 12 minutes, but here I want to harp on script development one more time, just because I love great movies and because the script has so much to do with the success, or failure, of any film.
The running time of "Black Legion" was 83 minutes. In addition to the main plot, there are a few subplots involving Bogie's wife and her allegiance to her husband, and another more developed theme about Dick Foran's involvement with the floozy, who tries to steal him from Ann Sheridan. This subplot is played in intervals to show Foran's turnaround to a wholesome life, and his realization that his friend Humphrey Bogart is in deep trouble. Foran, having recovered his own values, will try to rescue Bogie.
But he is up against some amoral and sociopathic gangsters, real nutjobs, and it will be hard going for him in his attempt to set things right.
Wow. This is some Early Bogie, one of his first dozen roles, and I think it is up there with his best. He has to really emote in many of the critical scenes, rather that just doing his Humphrey Bogart thing, and these are my favorite movies by him, when he shows what a great actor he was, given the chance.
"Black Legion" is an unusually hardcore movie from a Hollywood studio in the Golden Era. I give it Two Gigantic Thumbs Up for it's realism and courage to face the truth.
It's not for the squeamish, but then again it's only 1937, so there's nothing too graphic.
Highest recommendation. See you in church in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Saturday, June 15, 2019
"The Trip" starring Peter Fonda, directed by Roger Corman (Grimsley brought it over)
Tonight's movie was "The Trip" (1967), directed by Roger Corman and starring Peter Fonda as a director of television commercials who goes on a nightmarish LSD "trip" after his wife (Susan Strasberg) divorces him.
Now wait a minute.
"Hey Ad! What are you doing watching a movie like this"?
Good question. For starters, Roger Corman is high on my list of worst directors, perhaps even higher than Sam Peckinpah. It's not that Corman pretends any different. He is celebrated for making low-budget C-Grade films and he has made a career out of it. He has no pretense to being an artiste (ala Peckinpah, who is in my doghouse at the moment), and so can be forgiven the lack of quality in his motion pictures. With Corman, you know what you are getting going in, which is why I generally don't watch his films. I mean, I enjoy movies that are "good" bad, like "Plan 9" or something of that ilk, but Roger Corman movies, by and large, are "bad" bad.
The other thing is, I generally am not a fan of movies from the 1960s. This is not to say that there aren't many good and even great films from that decade. See "2001: A Space Odyssey" for evidence. It's just that the Studio System, which produced so many hundreds of great films from the 1930s through the early 1960s (up to 1962), was collapsing by the time the counterculture of the mid-60s got rolling. By 1966 or so, many independent filmmakers were trying to cash in on the emergent youth culture by making movies about hippies, or drug usage, or both. Most of these films were B-Grade garbage or worse, and if you try to watch them now, they seem hopelessly dated, whereas you can watch an even older, professionally made Studio film from the 40s, and it is timeless. The Studio films play just as well in 2019 as they did when they were released.
Not so the films from the Hippie Days. Many of them (not all) are cringeworthy bad.
Please note that I am not picking on Hippies here, just crummy movies. I was a kid in the 60s - and it was a decade like no other - I thought Hippies were fun (and weird) and though I never wanted to be one, they were on the whole cool people who helped define their generation. They believed in peace and love, and most of them went on to lead productive, successful lives even after their acid taking days were over. Interestingly, they were also the last generation to carry on the tradition of marriage and family, which my own generation seems to have thrown by the wayside, but the deal is, before the Hippies settled down, they were Pretty Far Out There for a few years, say from 1966 to 69.
And that was because of hard drugs like LSD, which was introduced into the youth culture by the CIA, but that's another story.
But back to my premise, I would not ordinarily watch a movie like "The Trip", simply because nostalgia for the hippie days and acid trips aren't my trip. I won't misrepresent myself, I took a few trips in the late 70s at Van Halen concerts and the like, but LSD wasn't my thing. It was fun for an hour or two but you couldn't turn it off. And in the movies made in the 60s, to commemorate those times, the young people taking these trips are portrayed as hopelessly naive and lackadasical, and frying their brains on drugs, exactly as the CIA wanted them to.
Though I took my share of drugs as a young person, I stopped 22 years ago, and now I don't think it's a good thing. I could go on a tangent here, or even a tirade, but I think that the exponential upswing in marajuana use among young people now is just terrible, because the pot is legal - they can buy it in pot shops - and it is quadruply stronger than it used to be.
You pot smokers are frying your brains and you don't even know it, because you are doing it slowly, like the frog in the pot of gradually heating water. Man, am I glad I quit. Thank you, Lord.
Grimsley brought the movie over, and that is why we watched "The Trip" tonight. I do have a nostalgia for the fun parts of the 1960s, and the year 1967 (when the movie was made) was the year of Flower Power and also of The Summer Of Love. The Beatles put out "Magical Mystery Tour" that year, so I mean....c'mom. It was an amazing time.
And most of the musicians took at least one acid trip. Paul McCartney was the first Beatle to do so, even before John Lennon. All of the famous pop music we know and love was influenced by drugs in one way or another, usually in a direct way.
But none of this makes Movies About The Hallucinogenic Hippie Days very interesting, because almost all of them were made by B or C grade filmmakers. "The Trip" does have a few interesting scenes, when Peter Fonda runs out of the house he is tripping in, and heads down to the Sunset Strip and the psychedelic rock scene that is in full force in the clubs. His nightmare will continue, now amidst the crowds.
There is a lot of colorful painted scenery in "The Trip", and a brief entry by Bruce Dern as The Guy Who Supplies Fonda With The Acid. Dern is Fonda's "guide", he doesn't take any acid himself.
Most of the movie's 80 minutes are taken up by sequences of strobe-lit kaliedoscopic color patterns double exposed over actors having sex, or Peter Fonda freaking out. There are Go-Go Dancers in the clubs wearing body paint, gyrating away while a wild 1960s style of bluesy jamming plays over the scenery as a soundtrack.
This is Grim's world. He is seven years older than me and his heart is clearly in the Hippie Years of the 1960s, especially in the psychedelic part of that era.
I sat through the film, and it wasn't too bad, not nearly as godawful as last night's "Major Dundee", which was a major studio movie.
But really, "The Trip", though it had an interesting premise and some very colorful and disorienting photographic effects to portray Fonda's experience, really didn't have anything resembling a lasting story, and this is the demise of many an attempted motion picture. So be it, LSD or no LSD.
Don't take drugs. The 60s were incredible but don't hang your hat there. See you in the morn.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Now wait a minute.
"Hey Ad! What are you doing watching a movie like this"?
Good question. For starters, Roger Corman is high on my list of worst directors, perhaps even higher than Sam Peckinpah. It's not that Corman pretends any different. He is celebrated for making low-budget C-Grade films and he has made a career out of it. He has no pretense to being an artiste (ala Peckinpah, who is in my doghouse at the moment), and so can be forgiven the lack of quality in his motion pictures. With Corman, you know what you are getting going in, which is why I generally don't watch his films. I mean, I enjoy movies that are "good" bad, like "Plan 9" or something of that ilk, but Roger Corman movies, by and large, are "bad" bad.
The other thing is, I generally am not a fan of movies from the 1960s. This is not to say that there aren't many good and even great films from that decade. See "2001: A Space Odyssey" for evidence. It's just that the Studio System, which produced so many hundreds of great films from the 1930s through the early 1960s (up to 1962), was collapsing by the time the counterculture of the mid-60s got rolling. By 1966 or so, many independent filmmakers were trying to cash in on the emergent youth culture by making movies about hippies, or drug usage, or both. Most of these films were B-Grade garbage or worse, and if you try to watch them now, they seem hopelessly dated, whereas you can watch an even older, professionally made Studio film from the 40s, and it is timeless. The Studio films play just as well in 2019 as they did when they were released.
Not so the films from the Hippie Days. Many of them (not all) are cringeworthy bad.
Please note that I am not picking on Hippies here, just crummy movies. I was a kid in the 60s - and it was a decade like no other - I thought Hippies were fun (and weird) and though I never wanted to be one, they were on the whole cool people who helped define their generation. They believed in peace and love, and most of them went on to lead productive, successful lives even after their acid taking days were over. Interestingly, they were also the last generation to carry on the tradition of marriage and family, which my own generation seems to have thrown by the wayside, but the deal is, before the Hippies settled down, they were Pretty Far Out There for a few years, say from 1966 to 69.
And that was because of hard drugs like LSD, which was introduced into the youth culture by the CIA, but that's another story.
But back to my premise, I would not ordinarily watch a movie like "The Trip", simply because nostalgia for the hippie days and acid trips aren't my trip. I won't misrepresent myself, I took a few trips in the late 70s at Van Halen concerts and the like, but LSD wasn't my thing. It was fun for an hour or two but you couldn't turn it off. And in the movies made in the 60s, to commemorate those times, the young people taking these trips are portrayed as hopelessly naive and lackadasical, and frying their brains on drugs, exactly as the CIA wanted them to.
Though I took my share of drugs as a young person, I stopped 22 years ago, and now I don't think it's a good thing. I could go on a tangent here, or even a tirade, but I think that the exponential upswing in marajuana use among young people now is just terrible, because the pot is legal - they can buy it in pot shops - and it is quadruply stronger than it used to be.
You pot smokers are frying your brains and you don't even know it, because you are doing it slowly, like the frog in the pot of gradually heating water. Man, am I glad I quit. Thank you, Lord.
Grimsley brought the movie over, and that is why we watched "The Trip" tonight. I do have a nostalgia for the fun parts of the 1960s, and the year 1967 (when the movie was made) was the year of Flower Power and also of The Summer Of Love. The Beatles put out "Magical Mystery Tour" that year, so I mean....c'mom. It was an amazing time.
And most of the musicians took at least one acid trip. Paul McCartney was the first Beatle to do so, even before John Lennon. All of the famous pop music we know and love was influenced by drugs in one way or another, usually in a direct way.
But none of this makes Movies About The Hallucinogenic Hippie Days very interesting, because almost all of them were made by B or C grade filmmakers. "The Trip" does have a few interesting scenes, when Peter Fonda runs out of the house he is tripping in, and heads down to the Sunset Strip and the psychedelic rock scene that is in full force in the clubs. His nightmare will continue, now amidst the crowds.
There is a lot of colorful painted scenery in "The Trip", and a brief entry by Bruce Dern as The Guy Who Supplies Fonda With The Acid. Dern is Fonda's "guide", he doesn't take any acid himself.
Most of the movie's 80 minutes are taken up by sequences of strobe-lit kaliedoscopic color patterns double exposed over actors having sex, or Peter Fonda freaking out. There are Go-Go Dancers in the clubs wearing body paint, gyrating away while a wild 1960s style of bluesy jamming plays over the scenery as a soundtrack.
This is Grim's world. He is seven years older than me and his heart is clearly in the Hippie Years of the 1960s, especially in the psychedelic part of that era.
I sat through the film, and it wasn't too bad, not nearly as godawful as last night's "Major Dundee", which was a major studio movie.
But really, "The Trip", though it had an interesting premise and some very colorful and disorienting photographic effects to portray Fonda's experience, really didn't have anything resembling a lasting story, and this is the demise of many an attempted motion picture. So be it, LSD or no LSD.
Don't take drugs. The 60s were incredible but don't hang your hat there. See you in the morn.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Friday, June 14, 2019
"Major Dundee" by Sam Peckinpah.....man is it ever bad
Tonight's movie was "Major Dundee" (1965), a 136 minute Western directed by Sam Peckinpah, whose much shorter "Junior Bonner" (99 minutes) we enjoyed and reviewed last night. We noted that even though the film had very little in the way of story, Peckinpah managed to make it entertaining by keeping things moving.
This time, with "Major Dundee"? Not so much.
I mean, yikes! This movie got so slow by the 100 minute mark that it almost ground to a halt. I only stuck it out to the finish because I had already invested so much time.
Note to self : don't do that anymore. If a movie starts to suck, and still sucks fifteen minutes later, turn it off. Life is too short. Sitting through the last hour of "Major Dundee" was excruciating, and as Sheriff Bart said to The Waco Kid : "Why you do that to yourself"? I have no legitimate answer to that question tonight, except to say that I had already watched the first 90 minutes, 75 of which weren't bad, so when the next 15 began to suck - as if somebody pulled the plug from the production - I kept watching only because I hoped the film would recover.
My new rule, stated above, will prevent me from making that mistake ever again.
I am loathe to go into a lengthy description of "Major Dundee" because I am wiped out from watching it, but I will try to give you the basics of the beginning. In 1864, in Arizona Territory, the Apaches have annihlated a settler's camp. The adults have been tortured and the children taken away to be raised "Apatch", as the white men pronounce it. In depicting this massacre, Peckinpah shows a preview of the blood and guts approach he will use to maximum effect in the heralded (but crummy) "The Wild Bunch" four years later.
Charton Heston is an Army Major, relegated to captaining an Arizona prison camp due to his insubordinations during the Civil War. When he gets word of the civilian slaughter by the Apaches, he vows on the spot to avenge it, and to bring the stolen children back home as well.
Sounds like a good plot for a Western, eh? Maybe even a classic one, when you have a cast that includes not only Chuck Heston but also Richard Harris in a co-starring role as a Confederate prisoner in Heston's charge, Jim Hutton as a by-the-book Lieutenant, James Freakin' Coburn as a one-armed scout, and a slew of Great Western supporting actors including everyone from Ben Johnson to Slim Pickens to Dub Taylor to R.G Armstrong.
What could go wrong with a cast like that?
Plenty, because the director was Sam Peckinpah. His success with "Junior Bonner" notwithstanding, I am beginning to wonder if he wasn't one of the most overrated filmmakers in motion picture history. I am gonna ask you to do the reviewing work for me tonight. Do you think you could do that, just this once? All I need you to do is to go to IMDB, look up "Major Dundee" and scroll down to the bottom of the page, where there will be a single review posted by a random viewer. Now, this movie has an inexplicably high rating of 6.8. There are nearly 75 reviews in all, and many of the reviewers give the film high marks but then qualify their praise by calling the movie a "flawed masterpiece" or something of that nature. These are the folks who think Peckinpah was a genius, and even they say, "well, it's a great movie but".....
What I want you to do, is to use the link at the bottom of the page that says "see all reviews", and to then scroll through them until you come to the occasional ones that give "Dundee" 3 out of 10 Stars, or right around that level. The reviews that agree with what I am telling you. There are several of them within easy scrolling distance.
Please read a few of those, because they will tell you everything you need to know about "Major Dundee", including how Charlton Heston had to assume the directorial duties at one point because Sam Peckinpah became so dissolute that he wasn't even showing up on set anymore. Peckinpah loved Mexico, where the movie was filmed, because he could indulge himself there in undisclosed ways that weren't possible in the United States. If I am not mistaken, he wound up living there.
According to one reviewer, Heston was so worried that the film would not get finished that he donated his salary so that production could continue. Another reviewer says that in his autobiography, Heston spends more time talking about "Major Dundee" than any other film he worked on, because it was such a debacle. He said that Sam Peckinpah was making the film up as he went along, and it shows.
Unbelievably, he actually had a halfway decent picture happening until the 65 minute mark.
You've heard me say that "such-and-such movie" was 15 minutes too long, or maybe 20. On rare occasion maybe even 30.
"Major Dundee" was 50 to 70 minutes too long, depending on your tolerance level. But the thing is, it actually could have been a good movie (not great but good), even in the hands of Peckinpah, had he not been such a crazy s.o.b.
I mean, he is still not even close to being a great director, even if he had completed "Major Dundee" and made it into a decent film. I reiterate this opinion because I detest what I will call "critical hipness" that says a filmmaker is great simply because he was an outrageous person.
Sam Peckinpah was a technically talented director who made films that were okay at best. His image, of a rough and tumble outlaw, so outweighs the quality of his movies that it's a shame he has been raised to legendary status.
This is not to denigrate the man as a person, but just to say that the critics - as usual - are vastly wrong.
I'd have been better off watching "Crocodile Dundee" than "Major Dundee".
See you in the morning. Don't watch movies that suck, and I'll try to take my own advice on that score too.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoo :):)
This time, with "Major Dundee"? Not so much.
I mean, yikes! This movie got so slow by the 100 minute mark that it almost ground to a halt. I only stuck it out to the finish because I had already invested so much time.
Note to self : don't do that anymore. If a movie starts to suck, and still sucks fifteen minutes later, turn it off. Life is too short. Sitting through the last hour of "Major Dundee" was excruciating, and as Sheriff Bart said to The Waco Kid : "Why you do that to yourself"? I have no legitimate answer to that question tonight, except to say that I had already watched the first 90 minutes, 75 of which weren't bad, so when the next 15 began to suck - as if somebody pulled the plug from the production - I kept watching only because I hoped the film would recover.
My new rule, stated above, will prevent me from making that mistake ever again.
I am loathe to go into a lengthy description of "Major Dundee" because I am wiped out from watching it, but I will try to give you the basics of the beginning. In 1864, in Arizona Territory, the Apaches have annihlated a settler's camp. The adults have been tortured and the children taken away to be raised "Apatch", as the white men pronounce it. In depicting this massacre, Peckinpah shows a preview of the blood and guts approach he will use to maximum effect in the heralded (but crummy) "The Wild Bunch" four years later.
Charton Heston is an Army Major, relegated to captaining an Arizona prison camp due to his insubordinations during the Civil War. When he gets word of the civilian slaughter by the Apaches, he vows on the spot to avenge it, and to bring the stolen children back home as well.
Sounds like a good plot for a Western, eh? Maybe even a classic one, when you have a cast that includes not only Chuck Heston but also Richard Harris in a co-starring role as a Confederate prisoner in Heston's charge, Jim Hutton as a by-the-book Lieutenant, James Freakin' Coburn as a one-armed scout, and a slew of Great Western supporting actors including everyone from Ben Johnson to Slim Pickens to Dub Taylor to R.G Armstrong.
What could go wrong with a cast like that?
Plenty, because the director was Sam Peckinpah. His success with "Junior Bonner" notwithstanding, I am beginning to wonder if he wasn't one of the most overrated filmmakers in motion picture history. I am gonna ask you to do the reviewing work for me tonight. Do you think you could do that, just this once? All I need you to do is to go to IMDB, look up "Major Dundee" and scroll down to the bottom of the page, where there will be a single review posted by a random viewer. Now, this movie has an inexplicably high rating of 6.8. There are nearly 75 reviews in all, and many of the reviewers give the film high marks but then qualify their praise by calling the movie a "flawed masterpiece" or something of that nature. These are the folks who think Peckinpah was a genius, and even they say, "well, it's a great movie but".....
What I want you to do, is to use the link at the bottom of the page that says "see all reviews", and to then scroll through them until you come to the occasional ones that give "Dundee" 3 out of 10 Stars, or right around that level. The reviews that agree with what I am telling you. There are several of them within easy scrolling distance.
Please read a few of those, because they will tell you everything you need to know about "Major Dundee", including how Charlton Heston had to assume the directorial duties at one point because Sam Peckinpah became so dissolute that he wasn't even showing up on set anymore. Peckinpah loved Mexico, where the movie was filmed, because he could indulge himself there in undisclosed ways that weren't possible in the United States. If I am not mistaken, he wound up living there.
According to one reviewer, Heston was so worried that the film would not get finished that he donated his salary so that production could continue. Another reviewer says that in his autobiography, Heston spends more time talking about "Major Dundee" than any other film he worked on, because it was such a debacle. He said that Sam Peckinpah was making the film up as he went along, and it shows.
Unbelievably, he actually had a halfway decent picture happening until the 65 minute mark.
You've heard me say that "such-and-such movie" was 15 minutes too long, or maybe 20. On rare occasion maybe even 30.
"Major Dundee" was 50 to 70 minutes too long, depending on your tolerance level. But the thing is, it actually could have been a good movie (not great but good), even in the hands of Peckinpah, had he not been such a crazy s.o.b.
I mean, he is still not even close to being a great director, even if he had completed "Major Dundee" and made it into a decent film. I reiterate this opinion because I detest what I will call "critical hipness" that says a filmmaker is great simply because he was an outrageous person.
Sam Peckinpah was a technically talented director who made films that were okay at best. His image, of a rough and tumble outlaw, so outweighs the quality of his movies that it's a shame he has been raised to legendary status.
This is not to denigrate the man as a person, but just to say that the critics - as usual - are vastly wrong.
I'd have been better off watching "Crocodile Dundee" than "Major Dundee".
See you in the morning. Don't watch movies that suck, and I'll try to take my own advice on that score too.
xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoo :):)
Thursday, June 13, 2019
"Junior Bonner" starring Steve McQueen
Tonight's movie was "Junior Bonner" (1972), starring Steve McQueen and directed by Sam Peckinpah. McQueen plays Junior, an aging rodeo star, much like Cliff Robertson's role in "J.W. Coop", which was made the same year and which we saw a few months ago. Junior is headed for a meet in his hometown of Prescott, Arizona and when he arrives we see him drive up to the old family homestead, to the house he grew up in. The name on the mailbox is Ace Bonner, his father (played by Robert Preston). But the house is abandoned, Ace is nowhere to be seen, and bulldozers are parked nearby, awaiting a demolition.
Junior then goes to visit his mother (Ida Lupino), who is separated from Ace. She tells him that Ace is in the hospital, the result of a drunk driving accident. He isn't seriously hurt, and we soon discover that the film itself will not involve a heavy dramatic plot, and as the minutes pass we further observe that there won't be much plot at all. "Junior Bonner" is the simple story of a man following his dream, even as it threatens to break him. Rodeo culture, by 1972, is on it's way out. Maybe it still draws crowds in 2019, I don't know, but in the film it is portrayed as being a thing of the past. The point is, even if you would not ever go to see a live rodeo yourself, you can nevertheless get a feel for the culture by watching a well-made movie about it.
"Junior Bonner" is exceptionally well made, and it is the craftsmanship by Peckinpah and his attention to detail involving the setting of Prescott that kept me watching. I have mentioned in a previous blog or two that I am not a huge Sam Peckinpah fan, simply because I have watched a handful of his films and while I have found some to be mildly entertaining, I have rebelled at the notion - held by some critics and fans of cinema - that he is a directorial genius. I don't find that to be true at all, and I have stated in at least one prior blog that I think "The Wild Bunch" - regarded as an Epic by some - is really a bad film by any measure, regardless of the slo-mo violence that got the film such critical notice in 1969. If you watch that movie with an unbiased eye, you can see that it is torturously slow and boring, not even close to being a good Western let alone a film of classic status.. It only received acclaim because Sam copied "Bonnie and Clyde" and one-upped the graphic bloodshed in that flick to make up for the utter lack of an interesting story in his own.
However, to be fair to Peckinpah, he was a top-notch technician. He did know his camera angles and how to use close ups, especially in action scenes. Most of all he was a very good editor. This is why he could go on to make a picture like "Junior Bonner", in which there is no serious violence to be exploited as a gimmick, and make the movie entertaining despite a lack of story.
McQueen feuds with his brother Curly (Joe Don Baker), who has shunned the family occupation to become a wealthy land developer. It is Curly who has bought out their father's land and demolished his house, to build condominiums. He tries to recruit McQueen to work for him; to quit the rodeo circuit. But McQueen, even though he is broke, won't even consider Curly's offer.
Like his father Ace, whom he both protects and idolises, he is following a dream, however broken it has become. Riding broncs is all he knows how to do. He is good at it, or at least he used to be, and all he wants is one last chance to ride a terrible, red-eyed bull named "Sunshine", the wildest of them all, to prove - to himself and everyone else - that he can still do it.
In the context of rodeo rules, all it takes is 8 seconds. That's how long a rider has to stay on top of an aggressively bucking horse or bronco bull to win a contest. Just 8 seconds, but most riders can't do it.
The power of the movie is in it's celebration of rodeo culture and the people who live it. The only major plot point is Ace's desire, when he gets out of the hospital, to move to Australia to search for gold. He is 60, too old to ride anymore, and he has already extended another dream to it's expiration point, the finding of silver in Nevada. Ace is an unrepentant dreamer. It has cost him his marriage to Ida Lupino and the respect of one son, Curly. But Junior sticks by him, because he has followed his Dad into the rodeo riding profession. Now, as he is older and feeling the aches and pains, and is broke just like his Dad, he can empathize with what Ace was trying to achieve.......
Which was really just about following his dream of riding and competing in rodeos and living for the glory of winning, just like an athlete in any sport.
I should add that I have huge feeling for Kevin Durant and what he is going through. I am not even a Golden State fan (obviously), but just to see a guy come back when he wasn't healed from a previous injury, just to help his team, and then to experience another far worse injury.....
How horrible, y'know?
In a way, this is what "Junior Bonner" is about, just following your dream no matter what.
It's the same thing I've been reporting on concerning the career of Thomas Gabriel Fischer, who created Celtic Frost out of nearly nothing, in his life as a teenager in rural Switzerland.
I give "Junior Bonner" Two Thumbs Up, regardless of the limited appeal of the subject matter to today's audiences. To me, it is almost a documentary of the time and place of a rodeo in 1972 in Arizona, and of the people you would see there if you were in attendance.
What makes it so watchable is, as always, the acting.
Steve McQueen shines once again, in an understated role. Providing support are the great actors Ida Lupino, Ben Johnson, Robert Preston and Joe Don Baker. Plus the gorgeous Barbara Leigh as Junior's girlfriend.
Sam Peckinpah made a sweet movie about nothing much. As one character remarks, "If you've seen one rodeo you've seen 'em all". That remark could apply to life itself if you've been around long enough. But it couldn't account for the people in our lives or how we feel about them, even if our dreams are fading or if every day seems the same. /////
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Junior then goes to visit his mother (Ida Lupino), who is separated from Ace. She tells him that Ace is in the hospital, the result of a drunk driving accident. He isn't seriously hurt, and we soon discover that the film itself will not involve a heavy dramatic plot, and as the minutes pass we further observe that there won't be much plot at all. "Junior Bonner" is the simple story of a man following his dream, even as it threatens to break him. Rodeo culture, by 1972, is on it's way out. Maybe it still draws crowds in 2019, I don't know, but in the film it is portrayed as being a thing of the past. The point is, even if you would not ever go to see a live rodeo yourself, you can nevertheless get a feel for the culture by watching a well-made movie about it.
"Junior Bonner" is exceptionally well made, and it is the craftsmanship by Peckinpah and his attention to detail involving the setting of Prescott that kept me watching. I have mentioned in a previous blog or two that I am not a huge Sam Peckinpah fan, simply because I have watched a handful of his films and while I have found some to be mildly entertaining, I have rebelled at the notion - held by some critics and fans of cinema - that he is a directorial genius. I don't find that to be true at all, and I have stated in at least one prior blog that I think "The Wild Bunch" - regarded as an Epic by some - is really a bad film by any measure, regardless of the slo-mo violence that got the film such critical notice in 1969. If you watch that movie with an unbiased eye, you can see that it is torturously slow and boring, not even close to being a good Western let alone a film of classic status.. It only received acclaim because Sam copied "Bonnie and Clyde" and one-upped the graphic bloodshed in that flick to make up for the utter lack of an interesting story in his own.
However, to be fair to Peckinpah, he was a top-notch technician. He did know his camera angles and how to use close ups, especially in action scenes. Most of all he was a very good editor. This is why he could go on to make a picture like "Junior Bonner", in which there is no serious violence to be exploited as a gimmick, and make the movie entertaining despite a lack of story.
McQueen feuds with his brother Curly (Joe Don Baker), who has shunned the family occupation to become a wealthy land developer. It is Curly who has bought out their father's land and demolished his house, to build condominiums. He tries to recruit McQueen to work for him; to quit the rodeo circuit. But McQueen, even though he is broke, won't even consider Curly's offer.
Like his father Ace, whom he both protects and idolises, he is following a dream, however broken it has become. Riding broncs is all he knows how to do. He is good at it, or at least he used to be, and all he wants is one last chance to ride a terrible, red-eyed bull named "Sunshine", the wildest of them all, to prove - to himself and everyone else - that he can still do it.
In the context of rodeo rules, all it takes is 8 seconds. That's how long a rider has to stay on top of an aggressively bucking horse or bronco bull to win a contest. Just 8 seconds, but most riders can't do it.
The power of the movie is in it's celebration of rodeo culture and the people who live it. The only major plot point is Ace's desire, when he gets out of the hospital, to move to Australia to search for gold. He is 60, too old to ride anymore, and he has already extended another dream to it's expiration point, the finding of silver in Nevada. Ace is an unrepentant dreamer. It has cost him his marriage to Ida Lupino and the respect of one son, Curly. But Junior sticks by him, because he has followed his Dad into the rodeo riding profession. Now, as he is older and feeling the aches and pains, and is broke just like his Dad, he can empathize with what Ace was trying to achieve.......
Which was really just about following his dream of riding and competing in rodeos and living for the glory of winning, just like an athlete in any sport.
I should add that I have huge feeling for Kevin Durant and what he is going through. I am not even a Golden State fan (obviously), but just to see a guy come back when he wasn't healed from a previous injury, just to help his team, and then to experience another far worse injury.....
How horrible, y'know?
In a way, this is what "Junior Bonner" is about, just following your dream no matter what.
It's the same thing I've been reporting on concerning the career of Thomas Gabriel Fischer, who created Celtic Frost out of nearly nothing, in his life as a teenager in rural Switzerland.
I give "Junior Bonner" Two Thumbs Up, regardless of the limited appeal of the subject matter to today's audiences. To me, it is almost a documentary of the time and place of a rodeo in 1972 in Arizona, and of the people you would see there if you were in attendance.
What makes it so watchable is, as always, the acting.
Steve McQueen shines once again, in an understated role. Providing support are the great actors Ida Lupino, Ben Johnson, Robert Preston and Joe Don Baker. Plus the gorgeous Barbara Leigh as Junior's girlfriend.
Sam Peckinpah made a sweet movie about nothing much. As one character remarks, "If you've seen one rodeo you've seen 'em all". That remark could apply to life itself if you've been around long enough. But it couldn't account for the people in our lives or how we feel about them, even if our dreams are fading or if every day seems the same. /////
That's all I know for tonight. See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
"Brother Orchid" starring Edward G. Robinson
Tonight I watched Edward G. Robinson in "Brother Orchid" (1940), a gangster movie with twists not only in it's plot but in style as well. Robinson plays "Little John" Sarto, the leader of a gang of hoodlums that includes Humphrey Bogart. Bogie doesn't get much screen time in this film, but his role will be pivotal later on. He acts loyal to Robinson, but has designs on becoming The Boss himself.
As the film opens, the gang is meeting in a secret apartment. A squealer has just been arrested in connection with a crime committed by Robinson's boys. Edward G. thinks it's time for the gang to disperse for a while. He announces his plans to leave for Europe until the heat is off. While there, he intends to pick up some culture and class, values he is aware he is lacking. The use of humor in the script is apparent from the beginning, and once Ann Sothern shows up at the hideout, as Robinson's girlfriend, the patter turns Screwball. I have only seen Sothern in a few roles, but she was an expert at the rapid-fire timing of farce comedy. She also had the blonde cutie-pie looks of a 1930s comedienne. It's a wonder she wasn't a bigger star, but I suppose she did pretty well for a while.
When she is onscreen she takes over the movie. Edward G. tells her that he will be going to Europe alone, because in reality he is only stringing her along, but she snaps right back by telling him that she is involved - "only financially" she says - with a rich Oklahoma rancher (Ralph Bellamy) who is helping her to purchase a nightclub. Now Robinson is jealous........well, sort of.
Really he isn't, because he is a self-centered criminal with a scheming mind. Now, this is being presented as light comedy, so when Edward G. does go to Europe, in search of "class", he comes back empty handed, having been scammed at every turn. He has purchased diamonds and famous paintings, well known pieces of furniture, all to show himself as a Man Of Taste and to distance himself from his gangster image. But every piece he has purchased turns out to be a fake.
He returns home to New York broke and ready to rumble. Class is for chumps, he decides. He is back to take charge of his gang once again and do what he does best, which is crime. But in the five year interim, while he was away in Europe, moves have been made. Humphrey Bogart has taken over the leadership of the gang and he lets Robinson know this in no uncertain terms. Eddie's old girlfriend Ann Sothern is now romantically involved with Ralph Bellamy, her wealthy cowboy money pot.
Robinson has returned to America to discover that he is left with nothing. His empire has crumbled and he is pissed. Now the movie is about to turn from Screwball to drama, and rather solemn drama at that - but still lightly humorous.
First, things get serious. Robinson is shot after being set up to meet Bogart for a gangland "peace treaty". The meeting was a trick, Edward G. was taken out to the woods, and though he is grievously wounded, he manages to crawl his way to the doorway of a stone edifice in the middle of nowhere.
A monastery, of the Order of The Fleuristic Brotherhood, or something to that effect.
The monks grow flowers to sustain their existence and to provide for charity. They are headed up by the great Irish character actor Donald Crisp as their "Brother Superior". They take Edward G. Robinson in, heal his bullet wounds, and as he recovers and becomes aware of his new surroundings, he begins to see the monastery as a great place to hide out from the law. He even takes to the spartan lifestyle of the monks and becomes one of their most productive workers, even though he speaks in "gangster talk" to them, and even though he still seems to think that their whole setup is a scam in itself.
He is such a thoroughly dyed-in-the-wool hoodlum that he can't believe any group of men, even monks - who he is not familiar with - could possibly be sincere in their motives. At first, he thinks they are scammers like himself, and the way Edward G. pulls this off in his dialogue is a gem of understated comedy.
He just can't believe the monks are for real. They've gotta be putting on an act.
As the days pass, he learns otherwise as he is assigned various chores in the garden and the milking of the cows. He has never met any group of people like the monks, nor has he ever participated in a group lifestyle dedicated to giving rather than taking.
Thus, at the halfway point in the 87 minute picture, the story takes a 180 degree turn, and the character of the film goes from farcical gangster to serious message movie.
Can a career criminal become a devout Christian?
This is the gist of the message, though it is not presented in a heavy handed way. Hollywood was too smart for that, so they used light comedy, and an actor with the rubbery-faced talent of Edward G. Robinson to convey every shift in emotion.
"Brother Orchid" is on the surface a fast paced crime farce for the first half, then it becomes a pious drama with comedic undertones, and finally it returns to it's roots, for the above mentioned showdown between Bogie and Edward G.
I give "Brother Orchid" Two Very Big Thumbs Up. In the halcyon days of Organised Crime, Hollywood made pictures that tried to show the outcome of such a lifestyle. In this movie they contrasted it with that of monks, infused it with humor and had Edward G. Robinson send himself up against his image as a Tough Guy......and it all works to perfection.
I loved "Brother Orchid", a light hearted but complex story about one man's journey to redemption.
Highly recommended. /////
T'was 106 degrees today. This year I am gonna count the days when we have 100+ temperatures, just to see if we get a real summer or not. So far we've got three days. I will set an arbitrary goal of 25 days of 100+, to be reached by the end of September. That will constitute a Real Summer, even though in the old days we would have had twice that much.
Yeah, I know I'm nuts, but c'mon.....Summer Rules, and it's gotta be hot and not wimpy.
That's what makes it Summer. ////
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
As the film opens, the gang is meeting in a secret apartment. A squealer has just been arrested in connection with a crime committed by Robinson's boys. Edward G. thinks it's time for the gang to disperse for a while. He announces his plans to leave for Europe until the heat is off. While there, he intends to pick up some culture and class, values he is aware he is lacking. The use of humor in the script is apparent from the beginning, and once Ann Sothern shows up at the hideout, as Robinson's girlfriend, the patter turns Screwball. I have only seen Sothern in a few roles, but she was an expert at the rapid-fire timing of farce comedy. She also had the blonde cutie-pie looks of a 1930s comedienne. It's a wonder she wasn't a bigger star, but I suppose she did pretty well for a while.
When she is onscreen she takes over the movie. Edward G. tells her that he will be going to Europe alone, because in reality he is only stringing her along, but she snaps right back by telling him that she is involved - "only financially" she says - with a rich Oklahoma rancher (Ralph Bellamy) who is helping her to purchase a nightclub. Now Robinson is jealous........well, sort of.
Really he isn't, because he is a self-centered criminal with a scheming mind. Now, this is being presented as light comedy, so when Edward G. does go to Europe, in search of "class", he comes back empty handed, having been scammed at every turn. He has purchased diamonds and famous paintings, well known pieces of furniture, all to show himself as a Man Of Taste and to distance himself from his gangster image. But every piece he has purchased turns out to be a fake.
He returns home to New York broke and ready to rumble. Class is for chumps, he decides. He is back to take charge of his gang once again and do what he does best, which is crime. But in the five year interim, while he was away in Europe, moves have been made. Humphrey Bogart has taken over the leadership of the gang and he lets Robinson know this in no uncertain terms. Eddie's old girlfriend Ann Sothern is now romantically involved with Ralph Bellamy, her wealthy cowboy money pot.
Robinson has returned to America to discover that he is left with nothing. His empire has crumbled and he is pissed. Now the movie is about to turn from Screwball to drama, and rather solemn drama at that - but still lightly humorous.
First, things get serious. Robinson is shot after being set up to meet Bogart for a gangland "peace treaty". The meeting was a trick, Edward G. was taken out to the woods, and though he is grievously wounded, he manages to crawl his way to the doorway of a stone edifice in the middle of nowhere.
A monastery, of the Order of The Fleuristic Brotherhood, or something to that effect.
The monks grow flowers to sustain their existence and to provide for charity. They are headed up by the great Irish character actor Donald Crisp as their "Brother Superior". They take Edward G. Robinson in, heal his bullet wounds, and as he recovers and becomes aware of his new surroundings, he begins to see the monastery as a great place to hide out from the law. He even takes to the spartan lifestyle of the monks and becomes one of their most productive workers, even though he speaks in "gangster talk" to them, and even though he still seems to think that their whole setup is a scam in itself.
He is such a thoroughly dyed-in-the-wool hoodlum that he can't believe any group of men, even monks - who he is not familiar with - could possibly be sincere in their motives. At first, he thinks they are scammers like himself, and the way Edward G. pulls this off in his dialogue is a gem of understated comedy.
He just can't believe the monks are for real. They've gotta be putting on an act.
As the days pass, he learns otherwise as he is assigned various chores in the garden and the milking of the cows. He has never met any group of people like the monks, nor has he ever participated in a group lifestyle dedicated to giving rather than taking.
Thus, at the halfway point in the 87 minute picture, the story takes a 180 degree turn, and the character of the film goes from farcical gangster to serious message movie.
Can a career criminal become a devout Christian?
This is the gist of the message, though it is not presented in a heavy handed way. Hollywood was too smart for that, so they used light comedy, and an actor with the rubbery-faced talent of Edward G. Robinson to convey every shift in emotion.
"Brother Orchid" is on the surface a fast paced crime farce for the first half, then it becomes a pious drama with comedic undertones, and finally it returns to it's roots, for the above mentioned showdown between Bogie and Edward G.
I give "Brother Orchid" Two Very Big Thumbs Up. In the halcyon days of Organised Crime, Hollywood made pictures that tried to show the outcome of such a lifestyle. In this movie they contrasted it with that of monks, infused it with humor and had Edward G. Robinson send himself up against his image as a Tough Guy......and it all works to perfection.
I loved "Brother Orchid", a light hearted but complex story about one man's journey to redemption.
Highly recommended. /////
T'was 106 degrees today. This year I am gonna count the days when we have 100+ temperatures, just to see if we get a real summer or not. So far we've got three days. I will set an arbitrary goal of 25 days of 100+, to be reached by the end of September. That will constitute a Real Summer, even though in the old days we would have had twice that much.
Yeah, I know I'm nuts, but c'mon.....Summer Rules, and it's gotta be hot and not wimpy.
That's what makes it Summer. ////
See you in the morning. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
Tuesday, June 11, 2019
"The Bride Wore Red" starring Joan Crawford, Robert Young and Franchot Tone
Tonight I watched "The Bride Wore Red" (1937), starring Joan Crawford, Robert Young and Franchot Tone, and directed by Dorothy Arzner, one of the first or perhaps the first woman to direct at the major studio level. The story is a riff on the old Pygmalion theme. As the movie opens, George Zucco (playing a Count) is in a casino in Trieste, holding court with his friend Rudi (Robert Young), a wealthy young aristocrat. The Count is tipsy, going on and on about his belief that he, or Young, are essentially no different than the surrounding villagers, who have little money or means. The Count believes that only by the luck of one's birth does a person live a life of luxury, or conversely, one of poverty.
People are all the same inside, he tells Robert Young, who is having none of it. "What about breeding"?, Young asks. The Count declares it to be only a matter of training a child to speak and act in a certain manner. Young continues to scoff at the older man's theory, until The Count drunkenly declares that he can prove what he is saying. He decides that he and Robert Young will immediately decamp to "the worst most decrepit dive" in all of Trieste, so that he can pick out a woman who is equally beautiful and as sophisticated as Young's fiancee (Lynne Carver).
Young reluctantly agrees to accompany The Count to the local dive bar, but when he gets there he is repulsed, and he makes his exit, leaving The Count alone at his table. He is now determined to prove his point, and by extension to play a trick on the snobbish Young, so he asks the owner of the dive to introduce him to the most "decrepit yet beautiful" woman in the entire place. The owner selects his singer (Joan Crawford), who is typical as bar singers go - world weary, frustrated and cynical, but maintaining a good look.
Right there on the spot, The Count offers Joan an all-expense paid trip to a ritzy resort in the Alps, if she will agree to pose as "Anna Vivaldi", the mysterious daughter of an invented Count, reputed to be from the area. Count Zucco instructs her on how to act and what to say. He arranges for a fancy wardrobe to await her arrival, and soon she is there, at the hotel in the Tyrolean Alps.
She has been given an escort to the mountain location by a local postman (Franchot Tone), who is a little mysterious himself. He has no social stature, but has a poetic soul. He talks to Joan about the stars above in the night sky and the abundant nature surrounding them, and how this is his happiness. He brings this up because she is pretending to be a Society Woman and has asked him - her driver - how the peasants live.
Once she meets Robert Young at the resort hotel, her materialistic instincts will go into overdrive, and she will start doing that Joan Crawford Thing where she must rise above her station at all costs and to hell with anyone standing in her way.
Secretly, though, she is in love with Franchot Tone, because he is down to earth like she is, in her actual existence. He also exudes romanticism, whereas the sophisticate Robert Young - also romantic - is a phony because he is cheating on his fiancee with multiple women.
What has Joan gotten herself into? It's going to turn into a mess, because Franchot Tone, as the postman, also runs the telegraph office. He will receive messages from Count George Zucco that were meant for his society friends, to let them in on the joke that he is playing, and now Tone will know that Crawford is only playing a role. She is not rich nor part of the society, and now he is aware of that. As the postman, he delivers the mail and the telegraph messages.
What will happen if he decides to let the truth out?
He probably won't, because he has fallen in love with Joan......but she is "in love" with Robert Young, because she is in love with the idea of materialistic wealth. Having experienced a taste of the high life, she is not about to let it go, and she is going to scheme to marry Robert Young, so that she will never have to go back to singing in the dive bar. ////
It's a convoluted romantic plot, but for the most part Joan Crawford plays a sympathetic role, and it is nice to see her this way, as opposed to the types of harder-edged roles she became famous for when her makeup became more severe. Joan Crawford was a pretty lady, believe it or not, and I think she was every bit as good an actress as the more acclaimed Bette Davis. Joan could play vulnerable and she kind of made a career out of it, but unfortunately she became known for "Mommie Dearest" and arching drawn-on eyebrows. Hollywood will do a job on it's actors and actresses, and often - as talented as they are - these performers have serious emotional issues going in to their careers to start with.
I think Joan Crawford was one of the greats, however, her later "image" notwithstanding. Just watch her in her early roles, like this one, to see what a talented actress she was.
"The Bride Wore Red" runs just a little bit too long, maybe by ten or fifteen minutes, and could have benefited from some tightening up, but other than that I have no complaints, except maybe that Tone's character could have been made to be more sympathetic. He comes off a little cold as the romantic rival, but this does not detract from the drama, which is almost single handedly carried by Crawford, the mark of an exceptional actress.
I give it Two Thumbs Up, and would give it Two Big Thumbs if it had been edited to cut out the slower parts, just bits and pieces here and there.
It is recommended anyway, especially for the performances of Crawford, Young, and in a supporting role the portrayal of Robert Young's long suffering but loyal fiancee, by Lynne Carver. She was yet another stunning actress who had a short life, but she shines in this role and deserves to be mentioned.
Today was another Hot One, 103 degrees again. It was still around 90 or above when I went for my evening walk.
I am finishing up Tom G. Warrior's history of Hellhammer and early Celtic Frost, and it is blowing me off the map. Any creative person would be incredibly inspired by this book, I think.
That's all I know for tonight. Get ready for another day of 100+ tomorrow (me, I love it).
See you in the morning. Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
People are all the same inside, he tells Robert Young, who is having none of it. "What about breeding"?, Young asks. The Count declares it to be only a matter of training a child to speak and act in a certain manner. Young continues to scoff at the older man's theory, until The Count drunkenly declares that he can prove what he is saying. He decides that he and Robert Young will immediately decamp to "the worst most decrepit dive" in all of Trieste, so that he can pick out a woman who is equally beautiful and as sophisticated as Young's fiancee (Lynne Carver).
Young reluctantly agrees to accompany The Count to the local dive bar, but when he gets there he is repulsed, and he makes his exit, leaving The Count alone at his table. He is now determined to prove his point, and by extension to play a trick on the snobbish Young, so he asks the owner of the dive to introduce him to the most "decrepit yet beautiful" woman in the entire place. The owner selects his singer (Joan Crawford), who is typical as bar singers go - world weary, frustrated and cynical, but maintaining a good look.
Right there on the spot, The Count offers Joan an all-expense paid trip to a ritzy resort in the Alps, if she will agree to pose as "Anna Vivaldi", the mysterious daughter of an invented Count, reputed to be from the area. Count Zucco instructs her on how to act and what to say. He arranges for a fancy wardrobe to await her arrival, and soon she is there, at the hotel in the Tyrolean Alps.
She has been given an escort to the mountain location by a local postman (Franchot Tone), who is a little mysterious himself. He has no social stature, but has a poetic soul. He talks to Joan about the stars above in the night sky and the abundant nature surrounding them, and how this is his happiness. He brings this up because she is pretending to be a Society Woman and has asked him - her driver - how the peasants live.
Once she meets Robert Young at the resort hotel, her materialistic instincts will go into overdrive, and she will start doing that Joan Crawford Thing where she must rise above her station at all costs and to hell with anyone standing in her way.
Secretly, though, she is in love with Franchot Tone, because he is down to earth like she is, in her actual existence. He also exudes romanticism, whereas the sophisticate Robert Young - also romantic - is a phony because he is cheating on his fiancee with multiple women.
What has Joan gotten herself into? It's going to turn into a mess, because Franchot Tone, as the postman, also runs the telegraph office. He will receive messages from Count George Zucco that were meant for his society friends, to let them in on the joke that he is playing, and now Tone will know that Crawford is only playing a role. She is not rich nor part of the society, and now he is aware of that. As the postman, he delivers the mail and the telegraph messages.
What will happen if he decides to let the truth out?
He probably won't, because he has fallen in love with Joan......but she is "in love" with Robert Young, because she is in love with the idea of materialistic wealth. Having experienced a taste of the high life, she is not about to let it go, and she is going to scheme to marry Robert Young, so that she will never have to go back to singing in the dive bar. ////
It's a convoluted romantic plot, but for the most part Joan Crawford plays a sympathetic role, and it is nice to see her this way, as opposed to the types of harder-edged roles she became famous for when her makeup became more severe. Joan Crawford was a pretty lady, believe it or not, and I think she was every bit as good an actress as the more acclaimed Bette Davis. Joan could play vulnerable and she kind of made a career out of it, but unfortunately she became known for "Mommie Dearest" and arching drawn-on eyebrows. Hollywood will do a job on it's actors and actresses, and often - as talented as they are - these performers have serious emotional issues going in to their careers to start with.
I think Joan Crawford was one of the greats, however, her later "image" notwithstanding. Just watch her in her early roles, like this one, to see what a talented actress she was.
"The Bride Wore Red" runs just a little bit too long, maybe by ten or fifteen minutes, and could have benefited from some tightening up, but other than that I have no complaints, except maybe that Tone's character could have been made to be more sympathetic. He comes off a little cold as the romantic rival, but this does not detract from the drama, which is almost single handedly carried by Crawford, the mark of an exceptional actress.
I give it Two Thumbs Up, and would give it Two Big Thumbs if it had been edited to cut out the slower parts, just bits and pieces here and there.
It is recommended anyway, especially for the performances of Crawford, Young, and in a supporting role the portrayal of Robert Young's long suffering but loyal fiancee, by Lynne Carver. She was yet another stunning actress who had a short life, but she shines in this role and deserves to be mentioned.
Today was another Hot One, 103 degrees again. It was still around 90 or above when I went for my evening walk.
I am finishing up Tom G. Warrior's history of Hellhammer and early Celtic Frost, and it is blowing me off the map. Any creative person would be incredibly inspired by this book, I think.
That's all I know for tonight. Get ready for another day of 100+ tomorrow (me, I love it).
See you in the morning. Tons of love. xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo :):)
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