Pandora and The Flying Dutchman (1951): Love Across Time and Space

Posted on August 30, 2021 by 4 Star Films

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Albert Lewin’s romantic fable opens in Esperanza on the Mediterranean coast of Spain. If the director is a generally unknown name, then Jack Cardiff might just as easily draw your attention with his distinct, intoxicating color tones. It’s true the picture opens with a wonderful shot perched from a bell tower. It’s sounding the alarm and, true to form, all the local populations are flooding the beach.

As we get closer, we see what has elicited such a rapid response: a boat beached on the shoreline. How it got there is really the whole reason for telling this story. Geoffrey Fielding (Harold Warrender) is a distinguished and learned fellow of linguistics and ancient antiquities who was an observer of these curious events.

However, he also proves an apt entry point into the story, which is fundamentally obscured from the outset. The erudite chap helps us out by recounting the details, how they happened from the beginning. Breaking with Hollywood convention, for some puzzling reason, he speaks directly to us, and it’s just as well. The movie is replete with these kinds of mystifying pieces of logic.

Whether it’s something in the water, the air, or just the script, characters float through scenes in this mesmerizing near-dream state. Nearly every male, in particular, orbits around a woman named Pandora (Ava Gardner) as if she is the Sun at the center of their solar system. Drunkards, race car drivers, artists, matadors — it’s all the same — and the gorgeous nightclub singer from the Carolinas seems to welcome their advances.

While Pandora Reynolds is not Ava Gardner exactly, it’s difficult not to see how the part plays on her own reputation — one of beauty, high times, and carousing with a penchant for drama. She famously moved to Spain to get away from Hollywood (and probably Frank Sinatra) only to make a life for herself abroad.

Again, this is not an exact representation of Gardner, but Pandora tosses men around like playthings. She gets emotional highs off other people’s passionate pronouncements of romance. She’s also an impertinent even impetus woman who measures love in the most reckless ways with a hedonistic comprehension.

One man (Marius Goring) turns into a blithering alcoholic falling over himself with jealousy. Another man (Nigel Patrick), madly in love with her, gladly pushes his most prized possession — a racing car — off a cliff into the oceans below as a show of devotion. She agrees to an impromptu marriage in its wake. He’s proved his undying commitment at her behest.

However, there is someone else, a Dutchman named Hendrik van der Zee (James Mason), who is quite different. She is drawn to him; his ship is anchored off the coast and she swims toward it — the solitary light it casts in the night sky. For the first time, someone is unphased by her allure and the directness she goes about her affairs.

In fact, he somehow knows more about her than she knows about herself. He’s an artist painting her or at least painting Pandora and her box as she is a present embodiment of a creature who was incarnated eons before. In this way, Pandora and The Flying Dutchman evokes a broader scale by turning a belle, Pandora Reynolds, into a transcendent archetype. It trades worldly coincidence for the heights of mythology.

When Mason and Gardner witness each other for the first time — both garnering a striking closeup — we know we’re in for something ignited with the flames of passion. Because they’re both the picture of attractive Hollywood A-Listers. Mason, of course, started out in the U.K. and this is a British production but he would hop the pond soon enough.

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From thenceforward, the movie is ruled by this uncanny lucidity bridging the years between encounters across time and space. Mason brings with him an aura of his own, and there’s a newfound mystical ecstasy around the frames.

Still, there is some semblance of reality. Pandora Reynolds is to be married. Another past suitor, a cocksure Matador (Mario Cabre), is quick and bold in his new professions of love. Whereas the Dutchman lets her go, the bullfighter tries as brashly as he can to pull her away from the man she is betrothed to. He probably believes rightfully so that she doesn’t truly love her fiancee. It’s more of a token agreement based on his devotion.

Because while the racecar driver is a miserable sot and probably oblivious to the kind of wavelength all the other characters seem to speak and react on, the Matador knows who his true rival is. It goes unspoken and yet he goes to the Dutchman to have it out.

In one of the most curious scenes splitting with any shred of reality and narrative logic, there is a confrontation, a murder, a nightmare — whatever you want to call it. And yet inexplicably the story wakes up the next morning as if nothing has happened.

James Mason and Ava Gardner and Geoffrey take their places at the bullfight only to watch the famed Matador get gored to death. The fates of love are not working in his favor.

If you’ll remember, Pandora and The Flying Dutchman opened with the beaching of a ship with bodies aboard. In the end, this hardly seems to matter. It is material only on this celestial sphere we call earth where living and breathing are of the utmost importance. This is a story not so much concerned with such mundane themes. Instead, it tackles love on this cosmic scale spanning the centuries even the millennia and brings people together like ships passing through the nights of time.

They conquer death — and we are led to believe even eternity — for the sake of their all-encompassing love. The grandiose metaphors are always arresting and make one’s heart swell with an appreciation for the throes of romance. Gardner and Mason aren’t a bad couple to hang our hopes on in this regard even if the narrative shards feel thin or at the very least discombobulating.

It’s more an exercise in Delphic style than it is riveting storytelling and yet there is something moderately powerful in working in ambiguous shades of dream-like reality, where players walk around in this heightened state bursting with almost obscene amounts of color. Romance is considered in these glorious arenas of speed racing and bullfighting and then stretches across great fathoms of time into the annals of history and myth itself. There’s nothing subtle about it, and visually it’s too gorgeous not to appreciate on that level alone.

3.5/5 Stars

Classic Movie Beginner’s Guide: Ava Gardner

Posted on August 14, 2021 by 4 Star Films

We wanted to continue our ongoing series by highlighting a few of the best films of an actress we’ll be writing about in the next weeks. Ava Gardner was renowned throughout her career as one of the most alluring leading ladies in Hollywood.

And although she was linked romantically with everyone from Mickey Rooney to Frank Sinatra, and wound up plastered all over the tabloids, we want to acknowledge some of her most noteworthy films. Because she left an indelible mark on cinema. Let’s have a look at her career, shall we?

The Killers (1946)

This is the movie that put Ava Gardner on the map and rightfully so. She still remains one of the most deadly film noir sirens thanks to her turn opposite the tragic Swede played by Burt Lancaster. She casts a spell on him (and her audience), thereafter catching him deeper and deeper in her tantalizing web of destruction.

Pandora and The Flying Dutchman (1951)

With a flip of the coin, you could just as easily choose The Barefoot Contessa. However, thanks to the bewitching Technicolor of Jack Cardiff and this kind of fated love story collapsing time between Gardner and James Mason, it’s hard not to recommend Pandora. Part of the reason comes with how it plays with the mythology around Gardner’s own reputation. Regardless of the plot, it’s transfixing for totally capturing her supernal beauty.

Mogambo (1953)

It’s easy to think of this as the prototypical Gardner role. She’s gorgeous as per usual, but she also has spunk, running off her mouth and ably sparring with anyone who comes her way, be it man or beast (ie. Clark Gable). She flaunts herself all over the screen, cracks jokes, and leaves yet another lasting impression in John Ford’s picture.

The Night of The Iguana (1964)

She held her own in On The Beach and Seven Days in May with the likes of Gregory Peck and Burt Lancaster, but it’s her part opposite Richard Burton here that shows how her persona evolved over time. She’s seen the world and gives the repressive film a vitality and richness that would be lacking otherwise.

Other Films: Bhowani Junction, Shadow of The Thin Man, Singapore, Show Boat, My Forbidden Past, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, The Band Wagon

Do you have your own favorite Gardner films that you would recommend to a first-time viewer?

The Last of Sheila (1973): A Mystery Missing Its Columbo

Posted on February 14, 2020 by 4 Star Films

Last_sheila_movieposter “That’s the thing about secrets. We all know stuff about each other; we just don’t know the same stuff.”

The Last of Sheila is an intricate murder mystery with origins in real-life parlor games put on by Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim for some of their socialite friends in New York. While these mapped out scavenger hunts did not involve actual murder, they are easily adapted to fit such a storyline. Because all we need are a group of folks thrown together, some friendly competition involving misdirection, and a boatload of lies, and we are on our way.

James Coburn takes up his position as the grinning master of ceremonies inviting a group of his closest “friends” aboard his yacht. In the wake of his wife’s death from a hit-and-run driver, he plans The Sheila Green Memorial Gossip Game in her honor. Aside from being rather facetious, it becomes obvious it’s a chance to get some wicked revenge.

The rest of the cast reads easily enough. You have Dyan Cannon playing a bubbly talent agent modeled after Sue Mengers (her real-life agent), Richard Benjamin as a struggling screenwriter, and Joan Hackett as his well-off but generally sincere wife. Raquel Welch is her typically alluring self and Ian McShane fills in as her husband/talent manager. James Mason is our final guest bringing his gravitas as a veteran director, probably in the mold of Orson Welles.

Soon enough, they are all thrown together on the yacht, floating off the coast of France. The ever-conniving Clinton (Coburn) develops quite the complex ordeal to throw them into with each obliging player given a specific card because this is a game with double meaning. It is part leisure and the other more sinister aspect is meant to unveil deep dark secrets.

The first clue is a sterling key that sets them off exploring the local digs like giddy school children out for a lark. This is the fun and games portion. Then, the following afternoon, someone turns on the turbines causing a near-traumatic accident or a very insidious murder attempt.

The next locale for the escapades is a deserted island monastery meant to be the showcase for another clue or personal secret. But the frolicking goes awry when our master showman is found dead, brutally bludgeoned to death by a stone column. It becomes obvious one of our company is a murderer. It’s just a matter of deciphering who it might be.

Since this is a type of parlor game, it’s fitting everyone gets gathered together for the obligatory convening to begin sifting through the facts and slipping the pieces together. These new conjectures don’t keep another member from being left for dead in the bathtub. Our number of suspects is beginning to dwindle.

If it’s not exactly a false climax, it does feel like the picture peaks too early, and it kind of peters out. Because there are still some variables to plug in, but there’s nothing astonishing about the final resolutions.

What’s most important to the architects is the stalwartness of the story, making sure all the pieces fit together into a fundamentally sound puzzle. Unfortunately, the characters are then pushed to the fringes and become of lesser importance. When you’re boasting such a wide-ranging and potentially intriguing cast, it does feel like a bit of a waste.

The Last of Sheila is a tantalizing prospect with less than stellar results. The mysteries feel mostly compartmentalized, and they string us along without ever completely gripping us. This is no Agatha Christie who-done-it nor does it have the intriguing characterizations of a Columbo episode holding it together.

The star power is there but not the actual concern in the story. Because there is no Columbo to hold it together with levity and groggy charm. In fact, it’s as if the whole cast is filled out by Mystery Movie guest stars. Any of these players might have easily crossed over. Cannon does the most admirable job of bursting out of a ho-hum characterization to leave a real living, breathing impression.

But again, it is a story of first world problems, of Hollywood glamour, feuds, scandals, and ultimately, excess. Somehow the murders of such people in the context of this film, where we never truly get to know anyone, feels relatively pointless and blase at best. Because these are icy cold individuals. There is no emotion (only Hackett shows a sensitive side); everyone else feels hardened or fickle, made callous by the world and the lives they have chosen.

If it had dipped more deeply into the cynicism earlier, it might be different. But this is hardly a commentary. It’s merely a decent excuse to exercise some mental ingenuity for the benefit of an audience. This narrative could have been so much more, but we are forced to settle for something gleaming with star power and only moderately compelling as a mystery drama. Sometimes high expectations can sour an experience. The Last of Sheila would be another prime example of this phenomenon.

3/5 Stars

Bigger Than Life (1956): Nicholas Ray and George Mason Fit The Bill

Posted on December 10, 2019 by 4 Star Films

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James Mason gleaned the idea for Bigger Than Life from a contemporary article featured in The New Yorker by a medical writer named Berton Roueché. He detailed the side effects of the drug cortisone featured in real-life horror stories.

The title is certainly far from a misnomer and James Mason gives a performance to fill up the expanses of the screen bursting off it with furious abandon in all sorts of unwonted ways.

If my memory serves me correctly, there’s a shot at the entrance of the school where he’s being dropped off by his wife (Barbara Rush) who demurs that he’s always been 10 feet tall to her. The shot following has to be about the lowest angle conceivable with Mason positively towering over us until he walks forward and things become normalized.

It’s almost playful and still a disconcerting manipulation of the typical visual field. It’s indicative of much of the film. On the top layer, it’s the portrait of 1950s suburbia seen over and over again. There’s even an inadvertent connection to the quintessential nuclear family thanks to a pint-sized cameo from Jerry Mathers. But there’s also something pernicious gnawing away at our protagonist.

The film readily brings back the palette of Rebel Without a Cause we know and love, using the up-and-coming widescreen Cinemascope format, typifying the luscious productions of its era.

Ed Avery (James Mason) is a school teacher, one of those shining beacons of pedagogy and some things certainly have not changed. For such a noble profession, he can’t claim to be affluent. In fact, he’s moonlighting a couple nights a week in a cabbie service to make a bit more money. His wife Lou has a sneaking suspicion he might be cheating but how could he? He’s an utter angel.

His relationship with his best friend is borne in an introductory shot. Wally is played by none other than Walter Matthau. If that’s not enough, we meet him in a school corridor with a catcher’s mask strapped over his head and baseball gear filling up his hands. It’s a fairly slight part but as Matthau had a lengthy pedigree ahead of him, it’s a satisfying morsel to start.

Meanwhile, Barbara Rush gets few laurels as an actress, but she works handily as the loving spouse who Ed returns home to every evening. It feels strangely ironic because I almost unconsciously traced the line between Magnificent Obsession. It lies in their deep abiding roots in medical melodrama. The first features Rush as a grown daughter and now she has progressed to a maternal figure, but the trauma remains constant.

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Because, as it turns out, Avery is a fairly sick man with the clock ticking away on his life. Thank goodness there’s a miracle drug, “Cortisone,” which while still widely unknown has been used with some success on such cases as his. At first, the unassuming pills seem to be doing the trick.

Riding a generous streak, he takes his wife out to a dress shop to buy her the finest things and then gets his son a shiny new bicycle. James Mason is a riot in the store leaving his family speechless. He’s walking on cloud nine. Positively the picture of good health and yet every bit of heightened euphoria is a hint of something far more ruinous working underneath the surface.

Because the changes are no longer comical or imperceptible for that matter. It comes to tossing the football in the living room chiding his son’s lack of ability and resolve. There are unwarranted mood swings to follow and the broken shards of a mirror blatantly suggest what is to come.

Back to school night is highlighted by an uncharacteristic rant about the woes of childhood and the claptrap of modern education, which has parents in a huff. It’s the most recent sign of coming attractions. Megalomania begins to overtake him with ensuing ravings about new missions and leaving matrimonial shackles behind with increasingly radicalized rhetoric injected with delusions of grandeur.

Now his only resolve is to rear his son in the pursuit of self-efficacy as he begins to enact a dictatorial behavior over all his domain, berating a wayward milkman, turning an uninterested eye on food, sleep, feelings, or anything else that might get in his way. To get psychological, he blatantly disregards Maslow’s hierarchy of needs leaping straight to the pinnacle.

Meanwhile, his wife is scared stiff. Worried for her husband’s well-being as much as she is for her boy. And yet, if it gets around about mental trouble in the family, there will be no reprieve and so she tries to weather the storm. It becomes a suburban horror tiptoeing along an impossibly sickening tightrope. You couldn’t contrive something more calamitous if you tried.

Would you cope living with an utter tyrant if it meant your spouse and father could go on living? If pain was the only issue, then the answer seems ridiculously simple, but sometimes those conundrums are the most devastating to crack. In fact, it makes me sick in the stomach watching the mental breakdown exacerbate.

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Overwhelmed by his psychosis, Ed begins spouting off scripture, one moment contemptuously, the next clearly intent on following Abraham’s lead by sacrificing his son without a second thought, twisting the words into another perverse commitment. He states his sentiments quite bluntly in one sequence as his wife hopelessly pleads in favor of compassion, “God was wrong.”

Turgid melodramas grow tiresome by the minute, and yet that fails to be the case when a film has far more to offer us whether it be artistry, irony, or social commentary. Equally compelling is a stirring dramatic situation at the core of Bigger Than Life.

Like the best films of Douglas Sirk, Nicholas Ray is able to pull off the histrionics of such a derided mode of filmmaking and allow it to remain enduringly interesting — even resonant today — to the extent possible. Far from wearing it thin, the passage of time makes it seem more horrifying by the hour.

However, as comes with the territory of such ludicrous dramaturgy, it easily becomes a hit or miss proposition. It will go too far for some and for others just far enough to make it compelling. I think I fall in the latter category because this is not just a sitcom episode. It surpasses those rhythms for something more substantial.

In its final moments, Bigger Than Life morphs into a frenzied Hitchcock thriller in a weird, insane way as we watch a banister snap like matchwood in the midst of chaos and a deranged man is caught in a frantic confrontation with his best friend.

And as inauspiciously as it began, it comes to an end like the lingering remnants of a bad dream, resolved and forgotten just as quickly. The status quo falls back into place in the culminating shot and wife and son reaffirm faith in their family unit, cradled in the loving arms of the man of the house.

James Mason is generally remembered as a suave villain, but he proves his merits equally so as a family man gone off the rails. His performance seamlessly hits all these beats that are simultaneously heightened, while still ringing with some note of inner truth. He is a tragic hero of the post-war, suburban age.

All of a sudden, evil comes not from within man himself but from outside stimuli. Though one could easily infer that such behavior indicates the perversity lying dormant, just waiting to be unleashed. It simply takes certain chemical triggers to send him hurtling back toward his darkest inclinations. Regardless, it’s a terrifying portrait of instability in technicolor. Often real-world nightmares are the worst of all.

4.5/5 Stars

The Reckless Moment (1949): Max Ophul’s Balboa Island Noir

Posted on November 29, 2019 by 4 Star Films

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The scene is set. It’s a week before Christmas. We find ourselves in the charming community called Balboa, 50 miles from Los Angeles, and Joan Bennett drives off into the city for very urgent business. She meets an undesirable in a bar, but this is by no means a tryst. She is facing a sleazy opportunist named Ted Darby to forbid him from seeing her impressionable daughter.

In her opening actions, we already know so much about her. She is assertive and willing to go to great lengths to ensure the safety and protection of her family. Like Shadow of a Doubt before it, we start out in the symbolic sordidness of the city only to return back to the oasis by the sea. The Reckless Moment becomes another home noir where worlds clash.

Ironically Bennett has shed her femme fatale exterior and has come to watch over a household fending off the wiles of the world to keep them from entangling her children. She lives with her elderly father and a young son constantly badgering her while the family’s servant Sybil (Frances E. Williams) proves her most faithful ally. An affluent, hardworking husband is said to exist, nevertheless, he is never seen as he’s away on business in Germany.

For all intent and purposes, it’s Lucia Harper’s ship to run while her husband’s away, and she weathers quite the ordeal. Max Ophuls reacclimates his leading lady with her home, laying out his typical red carpet complete with a spiraling shot up the stairs.

Her daughter Bee (Geraldine Brooks) starts out as a little terror though not quite capable of Ann Blyth’s treachery, because she sees the error in her ways. It comes to pass after her older suitor Darby pays a house call in the dead of night to rendezvous with the young girl. However, it is in the cloak of darkness the youth recognizes his true lecherous character, fighting to get away from him and fleeing the scene as he tumbles, ultimately, to his death.

He effectively disrupts their tranquility by diffusing from the urban center and breaching the sphere of domesticity ruled over by Lucia. The mother hen goes to great lengths to protect her daughter, even further implicating herself.

Because the next morning she finds the body, puts two and two together, and realizes she must do something. With nerves wrought of steel, she somehow manages to dispose of the body in order to protect her daughter. Of course, as we already know there was no need to, but it does make for an intriguing moral drama, and we have yet to even get a glimpse of James Mason.

He does finally arrive and once more, like Darby before him, he is yet another threat to Lucia, invading her drawing room unannounced. His price is $5,000 for some incriminating letters they have of the girls, which might easily implicate her with the police. For the woman of the house, you wonder if this nightmare will ever end because this is what noir always manages.

It takes this perfect post-war reverie and middle-class suburbia then injects it with something terrifying, even calamitous. But thankfully, with performers of the caliber of Bennett and Mason, we get a far more nuanced development.

These central roles are key because everything else revolves around them. They are two poles of the noir world who drag each other toward a murky center where she dips her toes into to the ugly underbelly and he, in turn, gains a coat of chivalry to redeem his moral character.

Because not only does this handsome crook begin to harbor sympathy for this woman — he even extends clemency to her — and as a result of their numerous interactions, he starts to fall in love.

It becomes an increasingly curious relationship because at first, it’s purely that of a helpless mark and the greedy profiteer. But as time passes, it gets ceaselessly complicated. With the husband out of the picture, and James Mason such a prominent star in his own right — it does feel like a secret tryst — a bit of a hidden love affair.

Except it never amounts to anything, because he covers for her, falling back into the dark depths of his old world, and she is able to sink back into hers. Our final image is of her, back turned to the camera, tears in her eyes, reassuring her husband everything is fine on the home front. The credits roll but I’m almost just as intrigued to know the aftermath of such a cataclysmic shift in her life.

Will her clandestine relationship with this man come to light and be seen through the sacrificial lens it probably deserves? Will she ever be able to share her dark secrets with her family and husband? Will the tranquil island getaway of Balboa ever be the same?

Yes, there are time restrictions to this story but the beauty is how much we still are invested in everything falling outside the frame. Here is a testament to an immersive film full of volatility and perplexing emotion that carries a certain weightiness.

It helps to have an intimate connect with this location. I even spent one summer during my youth working on Balboa Island and it is a sandy, relaxed, tourist trap. There’s no doubt about it. I can only imagine how much it would change if your memories of it were imprinted with something so ghastly.

Locals know the annual boat parade at Christmas. Of course, it takes on a different meaning with brawls in boathouses and dead bodies dredged up in the bay. At least it’s only a movie. Knock on wood…

4/5 Stars

5 Favorite Films of the 1950s: The B Sides

Posted on May 17, 2019 by 4 Star Films

Just a day ago a whole slew of individuals shared their 5 Favorite Films of the 1950s for National Classic Movie Day. Thank you again to The Film & TV Cafe for spearheading that quality endeavor!

In retrospect, I realized all my choices were really “A Pictures,” which were difficult and yet at the same time fairly easy to choose. They were all no-brainer picks because I love them a great deal. Many others also chose the likes of Singin’ in The Rain, Roman Holiday, and Rear Window (for good reason, I might add).

However, the decisions that left me the most intrigued were, of course, the dark horses and the underappreciated gems. Certainly, you have to start somewhere when it comes to embarking on the classic movie journey, but half of the fun is unearthing treasures along the way. For instance, I was left charmed by the following picks, all wonderful films in their own right, that I would have never thought to choose:

People Will Talk, The Narrow Margin, The Earrings of Madame De…, It’s Always Fair Weather, The Burmese Harp, and Night of the Demon, just to name a handful.

All of this to say, I was inspired by these folks to take on “Round 2” for my own edification. I’m going to leave my highly subjective list of “A Sides” behind for what I’ll term the “B Sides.” The only rule I’m going to place on myself is that this fresh set of picks must be what I deem to be “underrated movies.” Again, it’s a very subjective term, I know.

Regardless, here they are with only minor deliberation!

Stars in My Crown (1950)

Jacques Tourneur is an unsung auteur and if all he had on his resume were Cat People (1942) and Out of The Past (1947), his would be quite the legacy. However, throughout the ’50s, he helmed a bevy of fabulous westerns and adventure pictures. I almost chose Wichita (1955), also starring Joel McCrea. In the end, this moving portrait of a frontier minister won out because it cultivates such a fine picture of how one is supposed to live in the midst of a bustling community of disparate individuals. This involves conflict, tension, tragedy, and ultimately, a great deal of human kindness.

The Breaking Point (1950)

Howard Hawks’s To Have and Have Not with Bogey and Bacall is probably more well-known but this version has merits of its own. Namely, a typically tenacious and compelling John Garfield playing a returning G.I. and family man trying to make a living in an unfeeling world. His wife portrayed by Phyllis Thaxter deserves a nod as well for her thoroughly honest effort. The movie gets bonus points for shooting in and around my old summer stomping grounds on Balboa Island.

Bigger Than Life (1956)

It does feel a bit like Nicholas Ray was the king of the 1950s. Rebel Without a Cause is the landmark thanks, in part, to James Dean. However, his best picture, on any given day, could be Johnny Guitar with Joan Crawford, On Dangerous Ground with Robert Ryan, or The Lusty Men with Robert Mitchum. Today I choose Bigger Than Life because James Mason gives, arguably, the performance of his career as a man turned maniacal by the effects of his new miracle drug, cortisone. It employs the same gorgeous Technicolor tones and Cinemascope Ray would become renowned for while also developing a truly terrifying portrait of 1950s suburbia.

Ashes and Diamonds (1958)

I skipped James Dean’s most famous film, but never fear because in his place is a film featuring an actor who channeled the American icon’s angsty cool. In Andrzej Wajda’s Polish drama, set at the end of WWII, Zbigniew Cybulski embodies much of the same electric energy. His defining performance is central to a gripping tale about a country absolutely decimated by war, between German occupation and the ensuing columns of Russian soldiers arriving on their doorstep.

Good Morning (1959)

This might be my personal favorite of the Yasujiro Ozu’s films for its pure levity. The images are meticulously staged as per usual with glorious coloring. Every frame could easily be a painting. However, against this backdrop is a domestic story about two brothers who hope to wage a pouting war against their parents who won’t cave and buy them a TV like they want. The conceit is simple but the results are absolutely delightful.

Well, that just about wraps up my 5 supplemental picks…

Except I would be remiss if I didn’t share at least a handful of other outliers. Let me know what you think of the films I chose!

Honorable Mentions (in no particular order)

Odd Man Out (1947)

Posted on November 11, 2017 by 4 Star Films

In my profession, there is neither good nor bad. There is innocence and guilt. That’s all. ~ Denis O’Dea as the Police Inspector

What Carol Reed did so impeccably with The Third Man and here in Odd Man Out is developing a very specific atmosphere. He made the worlds of Vienna and in this case, the unnamed avenues of Northern Ireland come alive not simply by developing the setting in such a way that’s full of character and intrigue but still managing to craft a compelling story within that very same framework. It sets the stage for numerous vivid individuals to come alive because all the contours are colored in and filled out for the audience to enjoy.

Particularly in Odd Man Out, you can visualize Reed taking a certain historical moment and broadening its scope. Because his story, based off a novel by FL Green, is really about the IRA in Ireland who some would call patriots and most would call terrorists. Even some of their fellow people. Still, the majority would shower them with indifference but that’s where the narrative finds its footing. It opens with the following interlude:

“This story is told against a background of political unrest in a city of Northern Ireland. It is not concerned with the struggle between the law and an illegal organisation, but only with the conflict in the hearts of the people when they become unexpectedly involved.”

In this sense, a highly charged situation is pulled from its cultural subtext and Reed masterfully focuses on the universal aspects of the human experience that are found there. James Mason gives one of the most stirring performances of his career both vulnerable and strangely reserved. For much of the film he takes a back seat, almost working on the fringes of the storyline and yet it works quite well. I suppose in some ways, like Harry Lime, a couple years later, even when he’s not in the frame he’s of paramount importance because his name is on everyone’s lips.

The reason is this. Following his release from prison, Johnny has begun the planning stages of a bank heist in broad daylight. It’s never stated very explicitly but the assumption si that they need some capital to bankroll their cause. Still, Johnny and three buddies hold up the joint. But on the way back to the getaway car Johnny gets detained by a guard and a discharging gun leaves both men mortally wounded.

The whole film hinges on the aftermath of this even and the fact that this is a heist film is quickly forgotten because it surpasses the basic parameters of a crime movie destined for grander aspirations altogether. Look at it more closely and again and again Odd Man Out reiterates the fact that this is really about all people. Because any given conflict will always and forever elicit some sort of response from any single person. That’s how we are wired and one conflict will cause a ripple of interpersonal conflicts in any person who becomes involved. That’s where this film is coming from.

It’s such a classic menagerie of figures each with their own distinctiveness. Moments where they reveal even a very little bit about who they are. Whether it’s the old crone who invites the fugitives into her parlor only to call the cops of them. Maybe it’s a cabbie or a bar owner or a vagabond obsessed with birds who lives with a delusional painter. The story takes us through the bar halls, the streets, private homes, trams, carriages, churches, and wherever else the general public spends their waking hours. Much of Dublin’s Abbey Theater was called upon to star in the film and they certainly are a colorful lot.

At first, it was off-putting that the film sunk into almost hallucinatory territory as Johnny drifts in between delirium, visions, and bits and pieces of memories that all come to the fore as he struggles with his excruciating pain. The hourglass is slowly winding down. But his faithful love Kathleen (Kathleen Ryan) is resolutely looking to save him from the clutches of the police and anyone else who might want to do him harm.

In one particularly stirring moment, Johnny can be heard recounting a few jumbled tidbits from 1 Corinthians 13:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I thought as a child, I understood as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.

Meanwhile, Kathleen is seeking counsel with Father Tom and she seems to come to much the same conclusion. She opts for love over his religion because that is what she feels pulsing through her with all its overwhelming strength. Her faith is in her love. Nothing else.

It all culminates in a deadly finale. We could not expect anything less still that does not make the film’s conclusion any less jarring. Even today it’s a surprisingly candid denouement. There are no two ways about it. No ambiguity left. We know what fate befalls someone such as Johnny. This is a tragic human drama after all.

So in some scenes, it indubitably has twinges of film noir. Visually it’s indisputably noirish, atmospheric not only in lighting but with the additions of elements from pelting rain to falling snow. Still, the philosophy that runs through its frames feels far different than your typical hardboiled cynicism. There’s something else working here and that’s just a bit of what sets Odd Man Out apart from its various contemporaries. Johnny and Kathleen represent something slightly different. Still, it does beg the question, can their love (or charity) be their ultimate redemption?

Religious hard lining or legalism is hardly the answer and you could never possibly accuse someone like Father Tom of such a crime anyways. He seems a far more humble individual than that but that does put Kathleen’s decision as well as Johnny’s citing of the good book into some question as well. How far can you go in saying that love can be your salvation or does their need to be something further still? I guess you could say that’s the inner conflict in the hearts of many of these people who get involved: Love, charity, and innocence versus guilt.

4.5/5 Stars

The Verdict (1982)

Posted on July 1, 2016 by 4 Star Films

Paul Newman is one of those people who bring other people into theaters. They’ll watch him on reruns when they’re surfing through the channels or tell their children and grandchildren about him. That’s just it. He’s a universal actor who transcends the years with his magnetism and charisma. A lot of folks would follow him to the ends of the earth cinematically-speaking, and he plays the bums and ne’er do wells like nobody else.

In some ways, it seems like he should have no place in the film like The Verdict. It’s a slow, brooding drama that churns and grinds methodically through a script courtesy of David Mamet, adapted from Barry Reed’s novel. It’s completely void of humor or charm in many respects. It’s bitter and battered, personified by Frank Galvin, a washed-up lawyer drowning in booze and drifting in a fog of cigarette smoke. His pedigree isn’t so hot either. In the last three years, he’s had four cases and has not won a single one. To make matters worse, he’s an ambulance chaser, the type of prosecutor that every self-respecting citizen would scoff at with contempt.

The film generally lacks polish or pizzazz for that matter, but Paul Newman and director Sidney Lumet are well-established professionals, who know how to develop the courtroom drama in such a way that it remains compelling. All the necessary bits and pieces are there to go along with generally stark and somber visuals.

James Mason is the opposition, a white-haired man with a penchant for winning and doing his homework so that all the holes are stopped up. He’s representing not only two renowned doctors but also the Archdiocese of Boston since they own St. Catherine’s hospital. Galvin’s mentor and colleague is Mickey (Jack Warden), who watches out for him despite his many failings. Being divorced, Frank also tries to find companionship with the aloof beauty Laura (Charlotte Rampling).

Galvin is tempted by a giant settlement, but there’s something inside of himself that says, take the case to trial. Of course, right from the beginning, it’s a train wreck, because he cannot find the witnesses he needs, and Ed Concannon is a real pro with an extensive legal team to do his bidding. On the other side of the room, you only have Frank and Mickey.

They’re able to dig up key witness Kaitlin Costello, although Concannon turns that against them as well. Furthermore, Frank learns something about Laura that doesn’t help. And there we are at the end of the case, a gray-haired lawyer sitting there seemingly defeated. But he does the only thing he can do, in all sincerity plead with the members of the jury to do what is right and just. That is all he can do.

Some might find comparisons to The Verdict in Lumet’s earlier masterpiece 12 Angry Men, including the casting of Jack Warden and Edward Binns. However, I think what makes the director’s courtroom dramas work so well is that they really don’t dwell too much on the actual courtroom. 12 Angry Men is about the discussion going on behind closed doors and The Verdict concerns itself with all that is going on outside in preparation. We see Frank for who he is in the office and out of it. Thus, by the time we actually get into that court of law there’s so much more riding on this verdict.

What’s especially striking about Newman’s performance is that there is almost a complete absence of drama. There is one violent outburst and aside from that, it’s as if he’s utterly fed up with the world. Throwing his hands up in a sense and giving in. Instead, he plays pinball or sits pensively with a drink in hand. That’s why this case is so important because it means something. It signifies an attempt to care again about right and wrong. But the question is, Does anything actually change in the character of Frank Galvin? We leave him sulking in his office, slowly nursing yet another drink as the phone rings out in the silence. What’s the verdict then? Is he a winner or a loser? I’m not sure he even knows the answer to that question.

4/5 Stars

Review: North By Northwest (1959)

Posted on January 4, 2016 by 4 Star Films

Wedged between two landmark Hitchcock films in Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960), North by Northwest is iconic in its own right, but it boasts sprawling adventure and a bit of a lighter tone. It’s rather like Teddy Roosevelt wedged in between Jefferson and Lincoln on Mt. Rushmore but that comes later.

Supposedly the film was once to be called In Lincoln’s Nose, but when the now famous slanted North by Northwest logo hits the screen you instantly know you’re in for something extraordinary. The title sequence is wonderfully exciting given a boost by yet another impeccable score from Bernard Hermann.

This film is once again beautifully shot in color (VistaVision), but it covers more ground than Vertigo and has far more elaborate set pieces. The action begins ordinarily enough at an office building where advertising man Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) makes his way out of the office. It’s a busy day at the office, but Roger has a dinner engagement and an evening at the theater to look forward to. His plans and his whole life are put on hold after he fatefully flags down a waiter.

His actions don’t go unnoticed and two menacing men lead him off at gunpoint as he tries to head to a phone. He is utterly confused, but we know it has something to do with the name George Caplan. These men think that’s who he is, and not to be persuaded otherwise, they take him to their leader (James Mason), who is very interested to meet him. Over the course of a harrowing evening, Thornhill is left on the edge of the road in a completely drunken state to die. But instead he gets brought in on a drunk driving charge and of course, no one will believe his cockamamie story, even his skeptical mother (Jesse Royce Landis).

Next, it’s onto the U.N. Building to find out who Lester Townsend is, but of course, his captors are on his trail and just like that Thornhill is framed for murder and a fugitive on the run from the thugs and the cops. He tries to get away train ticket out of town, but in order to evade the law he ducks onto a train and meets the pretty blonde Eve Kendall (Eva Marie Sainte), who extends a favor. Little does he know what her angle is. Right now all he cares about is a little tete a tete and perhaps an amorous evening.

Kendall wistfully sends her new lover off to meet Caplan. Instead, he is met by a bi-plane and once again running for his life. But the build-up of this now iconic scene is wonderful. Hitchcock utilizes his background in silents to allow the scene to progress without hardly any dialogue and it unfolds ominously. However, he proves that even on an isolated roadside stop danger can still be present. Thornhill has new opinions of Kendall now and continues following the trail of Caplan which leads him to his old nemesis (Mason) and wouldn’t you know, Eve is by his side.

Roger feels like he has everything figured out, but he gets a visit from the mysterious Professor (Leo G. Carroll), who helps straighten him out with all the business surrounding the elusive George Caplan. With this new insight, Roger goes to the Professor to Rapid City and the one and only Mount Rushmore. It’s the perfect spot for a Hitchcockian finale to satisfy the director’s flair for the thematic.

North By Northwest is fun because we get to be right alongside Grant when he gets caught up in the whole mess. Although we see the picture a little more clearly than him, all the details are not handed over to us. So in a sense Hitch lets us in on a few secrets without showing us his entire hand. The staging is also wonderful whether it is the U.N. Building (with that marvelous aerial shot), or desolate Bakersfield, and even the soundstage set up to look like the surrounding area of Mt. Rushmore. It’s such a contrast to Rear Window and it uses the scenery very effectively similar to Vertigo.

Ernest Lehman’s script simply put is a lot of fun, because we have our villains, we have our romantic leads having a lot of great scenes together, and the pacing is surprisingly good. I am amazed how spry Cary Grant looks for his age (especially compared to aging Jimmy Stewart). Eva Marie Saint is great and in my estimation, she is the second-best Hitchcock Blonde following Grace Kelly, but you can easily disagree. James Mason plays yet another debonair villain and there are a handful of fun appearances by the likes of Martin Landau and Edward Platt.

One reason I’m constantly drawn to this film is that it feels rather like a road trip as we slowly cross the continental United States with Cary Grant. Furthermore, it’s simply good, unadulterated fun. There’s not a ton of analysis or commentary to mull over or to think deeply about (maybe some implications to the Cold War). But I’m content to sit back and watch with glee as a crop duster nearly clotheslines Cary Grant. Movies don’t get much better than this, seriously.

5/5 Stars

5 Fingers (1952)

Posted on November 23, 2015 by 4 Star Films

Honestly, this doesn’t feel like a typical Joseph L. Mankiewicz film. It was written by someone else and because he was nearing the end of his contract with 20th Century, he didn’t end up editing the project. Supposedly the overseeing of Daryl Zanuck led to several scenes being scrapped which Mankiewicz thought were good. Also, as a director, his name does not usually scream spy thriller like an Alfred Hitchcock. He’s more in his element with cultured dramas about relationships. However, 5 Fingers is still an engaging tale based on the historical wartime events surrounding the informant code-named Cicero.

In real life, Elyesa Bazna was an Albanian born valet who worked under the British ambassador to Turkey. He played both sides, first ingratiating himself as a gentleman among the Brits and then taking pictures of top secret information and passing it off to the Germans in the period between 1943-44. Cicero, as he was called, could easily come off as an abhorrent traitor and yet James Mason plays his character Diello with an adeptness that is underlined with an air of civility. We don’t particularly care for the man, but he’s not a monster, just a bit crooked and concerned with personal gain. Mason certainly did have a knack for playing the criminal type and I must admit I’m curious to watch more films with him because his performances have not quite won me over yet. There’s still time for that.

The film altogether is not that tense, but it does set the groundwork for some interesting interactions which all seem to stem from Cicero. He is subservient and aloof when it comes to serving the ambassador. He’s quite open with the Countess Anna Staviska (Danielle Darreux), who turns into a confident, romantic partner, and in some ways an accomplice — just wait. Meanwhile, he deals with the Germans self-assuredly knowing what he wants and how he’s going to get it. He’s no slouch and he seems devilishly good at the spy game.

Throw in some double-crossing from the countess and a dynamite word like “Overlord” (aka D-Day) and Dellio finds himself on the run with the Brit’s counterintelligence operative (Michael Rennie) hot on his tail. Thanks to his assistance, the Germans are trying to protect him as he gets ready to hightail it to South America. There’s one small thing he didn’t account for. He’s been duped. He and the countess both. All he can do is break out in a fit of laughter. I’m not sure if that’s how the real story ended — probably not, but it makes for a fitting conclusion of this tale as his money slowly drifts away in the wind.

3.5/5 Stars