Oooh! Hitch! And I don’t think I’ve seen this one before? Is that even possible?
This has been expertly restored by the Cohen Film Collection and the BFI. Looks really sharp, but with lots of grain.
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In 1978, film critic Michael Medved gave Jamaica Inn a place in his book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time.
That’s harsh, but this is a movie strangely lacking in tension. Apparently the production wasn’t a happy one — Laughton was the producer and lorded it over Hitch, and Hitch lost interest.
Oh, this is by the same guy who made the confusingly made “Wife, Husband and Friend” movie earlier this year. (Are they all the same person? Two people? Three?)
We’re now in May, for those people who don’t know where week eighteen is.
This is an odd one. I’m guessing this is a low budget B movie? But it doesn’t really look like one — the sets are nice and the cinematography is standard.
But the pacing and the performances are just way off. We’re now 15 minutes into the film, and there’s been just one awkward scene after another. The actors aren’t asking “line?” on camera, but it feels like they might have.
What the fuck!? Al Jolson is still doing his blackface thing? In 1939!? Didn’t that go out of style like five years earlier?
This really is an odd movie.
Oh, right! I forgot. This is supposed to take place in 1920? Never mind!
Among the lyrics is “dixie”, “mammie” and “Swanee river”.
Scary!
Shadows.
I was totally bored with this movie, but Rose finally gets signed by Ziegfeld for one of his follies, and then we get a long piece from that… and it’s absolutely magical!
But then we’re back to the plot and it’s boring again.
This isn’t a good movie. It’s nine hours of boredom and ten minutes of transcendent beauty. The plot isn’t that bad, but there’s no humour, and the stars haven’t really got any chemistry. It wouldn’t take much to tweak this into an entertaining screwball comedy — just Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant and some jokes — but it’s got none of that.
So this is the XVIIth, I mean, seventeenth week of 1939, which means that we’re in late April. What kind of movies are movies are they doing in spring?
This is really epic — it’s got that epic movie feeling going: One group of people is trying to get a railroad built (on a schedule), and some scoundrels are trying to sabotage it all.
There’s like two dozen characters and a clear objective.
It’s a type of movie I associate more with the sentimental 50s than the wise-cracking 30s?
Is this some kind of film trickery? Is this the same actor pasted four times onto the screen? Or is this an example of The Casting Curse: A casting director so fond of one type of face that they cast same-looking actors in all the roles?
This is gonna be difficult to make sense of.
OK, he looks different.
So evil!!!!
I thought DeMille was getting in some pretty heavy anti-racist stuff here…
But not really.
I really like Barbara Stanwyck’s extremely horny performance.
She’s Irish, see?
The movie loses most of its epicness in scenes like this. They seem to go on forever. As love triangles go, this one is… odd.
When the Native Americans (err, see above) finally attack, they’re more goofy than anything else, so I’m not sure whether to put that in the racist or anti-racist column for DeMille…
Anyway, the big scenes here are really fun and exciting, but there’s a bunch of really kinda dragging scenes in between. It’s not a bad movie — there’s a bunch of performances that are really fun to watch.
I thought this was gonna be a noir crime thing, but it’s a very dramatic drama instead? I’m digging it. Everybody’s talking like they’re in an early 30s crime thing, though. See?
Boo. When they introduce the male protagonist it goes downhill. (He’s the doctor in the background.)
Is this going to be one of those dreadfully earnest movies?
The doctor guy (George Brent) is totally suited for the role… but he’s so stoic that he’s practically dead, which is a bit much. Somebody a bit more lively might have worked here? Cary Grant would have been a bit too much in the other director, but… er…
It’s so difficult getting snaps of Bette Davis where she doesn’t look insane. In context it’s all wonderful, but all the snaps are like this.
