hildacrane's reviews

It has some beautiful scenery, and a very hummable theme song, but other than that it's not very effective. Director Negulesco did much better with the studio-bound "Best of Everything." One doesn't really care about any of these self-involved people (well, maybe a little for the Joan Fontaine character). Zero chemistry between supposed lovers Brazzi and Carrere. For some much better film adaptations of Francoise Sagan novels, try Bonjour Tristesse and Aimez Vous Brahms (in which Yves Montand plays the same compulsive-womanizer type as Brazzi in "Smile," but somewhat more compellingly). I have to admit that Sagan's characters in general are pretty boring to me.

Who would ever think that amiable, but rather wooden, George Brent could have a deft comedic touch? In this, as a put-upon author, he is terrific, engagingly silly, with great timing. Maybe it is the truly snappy dialogue by the Epstein brothers, who worked on so many great Warners films, including Casablanca. Or maybe it was playing opposite Ann Sheridan (a year or so after the movie was made the two were married for a year). As Brent's long-suffering secretary, Sheridan also shines, as she did in most of her films, and is absolutely gorgeous as well. The film is fast-paced farce, with a double-dinner restaurant scene that is positively manic. If you ever get a chance to see this movie, grab it. It will leave you smiling.

"San Antonio" is a lively movie, with a lot going for it: two very attractive leads who look good together, beautiful Technicolor, enjoyably unsubtle and melodic Max Steiner score, good villains. It's a Saturday-afternoon kind of film, best accompanied with a bucket of buttered popcorn. The script isn't inspired, but it moves, and the big fight sequence toward the end is quite spectacular and well choreographed, and made me really appreciate the contributions of stunt players in this kind of film.

Alexis Smith is gorgeous and well-costumed, if a bit reserved, and gets to lip-sync two very pretty songs. There was always something very identifiable about Warner Bros. orchestration for musical numbers--a cheeky brassiness. Errol Flynn is characteristically cheeky in his own slightly self-mocking way, as when he carries on a conversation while interspersing it with bits of a romantic song, also strumming a guitar. Florence Bates does a reprise of her "mentor to the female lead" from "Saratoga Trunk." Victor Francen and Paul Kelly make a good, hissable pair of bad guys.

Director Cukor had a background in theater, and this is one of his films that allude to it (others include A Double Life, A Star is Born, Les Girls, and Heller in Pink Tights). He nicely evokes the camaraderie of a small group of travelling vaudevillians in 1890's France, and much of the action takes place backstage. Bert Lahr makes one of his few film appearances as Zaza's performing partner and conveys a gentle melancholy--possibly because his character is meant to be seen as gay and closeted or because he is hopelessly in love with Zaza. It's a little ambiguous, due perhaps to the Production Code. There's a wonderful and quite sensuous scene in which he casually plays piano and starts to sing a song that could be used by Zaza in the act and that she then starts to sing, first as she lounges on a bed in the next room. She is almost Dietrich-like, which is apt, as the song is by Frederick Hollander, who wrote so many of that diva's classics, including "Falling in Love Again."

It's a little hard to fathom Zaza's devotion to the character played by Herbert Marshall, and the film definitely shows its origins as a play, but it's worth taking a look at.

Definitely worth a look. Immediately following his "Beyond the Forest" and "The Fountainhead" (also Warners), this Vidor film is somewhat less feverish and over-the-top than those two, and accordingly does not pack the same punch, but still has a nice erotic frisson. It's a whodunit with romance--including a rainstorm when the two leads meet in an isolated house. Ruth Roman is lovingly photographed and underscored by luscious Steiner music in this threatened-bride tale. Mercedes McCambridge does some of the same kind of scenery chewing that Davis did in "Forest," while Zachary Scott reprises his charming scoundrel from many Warner's films.

This movie always leaves me smiling. Sure, it's not a masterpiece of cinema, and one has to be willing to go with the staginess of it (it was, after all, a play originally), but there's such an exuberance to the performances and gentleness to the story that the movie wins you over. In fact maybe there is something appropriate about the obvious artifice of the sets, since the movie is about the roles that people play and the dreams that they cherish. Certainly Lancaster's charming con man is a master of the orotund and theatrical spiel. Another haunting Alex North score that occasionally recalls some of the poignant themes that he wrote for "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Interesting to see Dietrich, early in her Hollywood career, working with a director other than her Pygmalion, Josef von Sternberg. The latter director provided beautiful but often-static set-ups for framing her, while Mamoulian's musicality and fluid camera release her. (Think also of his direction of Garbo in "Queen Christina," and that film's famous scene in which she moves lovingly and rhythmically--it was timed to a metronome-- around the bedroom, watched by her lover. )

I think this is one of Dietrich's best performances. She passes through many phases, from naive young girl to earthy woman. Her song "Johnny" is sublime--and moving, when she angrily tears into the second chorus after spotting in the audience the lover who had abandoned and disillusioned her.

"My Reputation" is a good example of a certain kind of vintage Hollywood product: it's glossy, yet carries certain real truths. In beautifully modeled black and white, set in a tony upper-class milieu, and with one of Max Steiner's creamiest scores, it examines a young matron's search for autonomy, when her husband dies after a long illness. Set in 1942, it makes numerous references to the war, so possibly this post-war film was meant to allude to the loss that many wives suffered due to the war (or it was one of those films made during the war but not released for several years).

I think Barbara Stanwyck was incapable of giving a bad performance. Whatever the material, she shone and was absolutely "there." Early in the film there is a scene in which she reads a letter that her late husband had written in the knowledge that it would be read after his death, and she is devastating. There's a kind of bookend scene at the film's end when she tries to explain to her children the nature of her love for a man who has come into her life after their father's death, and again she breaks your heart. In much of that scene she is in shadow as she speaks, so that her voice alone carries the emotion.

Poor Ricardo Cortez. While undoubtedly a fine fellow in real life, in his reel life of the early '30s, he was almost always a cad, and, more often than not, he paid big time for it. He was very good at being a cad, as demonstrated in "Mandalay." The movie, set in a back lot Rangoon, is snappily directed by Michael Curtiz, who always brought his Hungarian verve to a film (Mildred Pierce, Casablanca, The Sea Hawk, among many). Some of the night club scenes are reminiscent of Josef von Sternberg's exoticisms.

Kay Francis can do no wrong, as far as I'm concerned (and I look forward to reading the new bio "I Can't Wait to be Forgotten"). Those big dark eyes and that velvety voice! And as a character in the film comments, she "certainly can wear clothes."

An elemental film, starting with the title. Anna Magnani was a force of nature, so the setting in the rugged Nevada mountains is apt, for this highly melodramatic tale. The passions of the characters are paralleled by images of raging rivers, rearing wild horses, and sheep giving birth, to the thunderous chords of Tiomkin's score. Several years earlier Magnani won an Oscar for her performance in The Rose Tattoo, and in this film she again dominates the screen. One of the most touching scenes is a quiet one at the beginning of the film, when she makes a connection with her niece, sensitively played by Dolores Hart. Anthony Quinn is enjoyable in this, although tending toward overacting. Franciosa holds his own with the two powerhouses.

This one is good, but not great, although it had a lot going for it: beautiful color photography of the Southwest, fine Franz Waxman score (somewhat reminiscent of the one he did a year earlier for The Furies, another and superior western), good-lucking leads--two diminutive blonds, both of whom are enjoyably minimal in their expressiveness. However, they do not have quite the chemistry that Ladd had with Veronica Lake, another diminutive blonde. In addition, the script could be a little more inventive, but its slant on the actual historical figure of Quantrell is interesting, and John Ireland makes the most of his part. So the film never quite catches fire the way that The Furies does--and in moody black and white--but it's certainly worth a look.

This one just keeps pulsating and bringing on the goods. Another of author Niven Busch's psychological westerns (preceded by "Duel in the Sun" and "Pursued"), this one has a dynamic father/daughter duo, a pretty and meek son (the late John Bromfield), and a smooth gambler seeking revenge for the death of his father. In fact, most of the characters are seeking revenge at one point or another---though the "Furies" of the title is the name of the contested ranch, in fact it could just as well refer to the motivations behind many of the characters' actions. Knockout score and photography and acting. Astounding that this one is not commercially available.

I have a particular fondness for this movie, which I first saw on Saturday afternoon TV many years ago as a kid. (This was in the paleolithic era when local channels showed movies.) While certainly not inspired film making, it ambles along pleasantly and has a whole slew of old-reliable character actors--Jack LaRue (a little less hot than in "Temple Drake" ten years or so earlier ), Eugene Palette, Lionel Stander, and the ever-delightful Ruth Donnelly, among others. Constance Moore is lovely and brings her rich voice to a number of songs; Jean Lenoir's "Speak to Me of Love," used in so many Hollywood films, is among the most notable, and it's also used in the background score--and as it's a song that I never get tired of, that's fine with me. Bill Elliott has a sweetness that's engaging. I do find the ending somewhat jarring and not in keeping with the rest of the movie.

This film doesn't get mentioned much, but it is a classic---it manages to be both hilarious and terrifying, and very satisfyingly so. It's a crazy take on the city slicker encountering a clan of inbred backwoods folk. The darkness of the story combined with the frantic pacing and classic farce set-ups really works, and the lack of musical score actually emphasizes the clamminess of the atmosphere.

The goofy and murderous family is of course profoundly dysfunctional (though the term wasn't thought of then), and the classic "old dark house," with its cellars and hidden passages, as almost the sole setting eventually seems like a metaphor for damaged and torturous relationships . Although there are a few disturbing scenes of abuse of a "teched" daughter, somehow within the over-all context of comic hysteria they are appropriate. Much of the film's success is due to MacMurray's impeccable comic timing. There's also great matching of reaction shots for Peter Whitney's turn as twins Mert and Bert.

Elizabeth Taylor seemed to go almost overnight in films from child to voluptuous young woman. But in this nice low-budget (for MGM) movie, made when she was 15 at most, there is something of the sweetly awkward colt about her, in the title role. There are scenes in which she sort of oscillates between childhood and adulthood--the visual equivalent of an adolescent's voice cracking--and it was in this movie that she got her first screen kiss (from an engaging James Lydon).

It's a bittersweet movie, about the deferrals and compromises that one has to make in life--the parents who don't continue their higher education, the soldier who resumes his, the refugee professor. As Cynthia's mother, Mary Astor brings her usual warmth and common sense, and there are vague echoes of her questing, yearning character in "Dodsworth." Cynthia's illness is used as something of a metaphor for domestic discontent, and in view of Taylor's chronic health problems is a little unsettling in retrospect.