Random Thoughts

Wow! Bacall! Bogie! Agnes Moorehead! I haven’t seen this before? I don’t think so? Why!? It’s the most noir thing ever!

It’s an absolutely thrilling and riveting movie. The first-person camera in the first section of the film is amazeballs. The constant coincidences in the plot makes such paranoid sense.

It’s fantastic!

I’m not familiar with the director here, Delmer Daves, but I guess I’ll have to check out more of his films.

The only weak section in this movie is when we get to the denouement, where things just get kind of boring when we learn how everything happened. There’s still fabulous acting going on (yay Moorehead), but everything just makes too much sense.

Dark Passage. Delmer Daves. 1947.

Popular movies in September 1947 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	3597	7.7	Quai des Orfèvres
	13482	7.6	Dark Passage
	1647	7.4	Ride the Pink Horse
	1423	7.1	Unconquered
	602	6.9	Dreams That Money Can Buy
	4741	6.8	Fun & Fancy Free
	243	6.7	Heaven Only Knows
	274	6.7	The Foxes of Harrow
	1115	6.7	Railroaded!
	325	6.6	The Unfinished Dance

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

Technicolor! Irene Dunne! William Powell! Elizabeth Taylor!

This is not a noir!

Unfortunately, the DVD version seems to be sourced from a torrent copy of the movie at a bitrate of “there’s a bitrate?”, and the torrent was sourced from an NTSC broadcast, so it’s very pretty on my screen. It looks like it originally was, though, so that’s a shame. It was nominated for some technical Oscar awards…

So how did this movie end up on the 50-movie DVD box set that only has B movies? Let’s see…

Ah!:

Through a clerical error, Life with Father was not renewed for copyright and has fallen into the public domain.

Anyway, it’s a very amiable piece of period fluff. It’s not the kind of comedy you laugh out loud to a lot, but the Dunne/Powell scenes proceed in a very amusing fashion indeed.

The storyline (FSVO storyline) isn’t very thrilling, though. A bunch of folderol. With a Christian taint. It moves so slowly… but… it’s nice? I mean, I like it, but I’m not that enthusiastic.

I wonder whether Ingmar Bergman had this movie in mind when he made Fanny & Alexander.

Oh!

That sounds so familiar! I’ve that as a sample in a song somewhere… Hm… It must be Meat Beat Manifesto! From Armed Audio Warfare, perhaps? Storm the Studio?

Life With Father. Michael Curtiz. 1947.

Popular movies in August 1947 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	3340	7.8	Body and Soul
	5427	7.5	Kiss of Death
	3509	7.3	Life with Father
	4637	7.1	The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
	743	7.1	The October Man
	3408	7.0	Song of the Thin Man
	1931	7.0	Lured
	359	6.9	The Romance of Rosy Ridge
	223	6.7	Holiday Camp
	432	6.7	Mother Wore Tights

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

Now this is noir! Burt Lancaster is in jail (where it rains all the time) planning an escape!

I’m reading Miracle of the Rose by Jean Genet these days, which is told from an er slightly different perspective than this movie. But there are certain parallels: Both are told from the perspective of the prisoners, and neither shy away from the prisoners’ brutality. The scene here where they kill the snitch in the machine shop is as fetishised as anything in Genet.

But with a slightly er different perspective.

It’s brutal. Wasn’t there a backlash against “lurid violence” in movies in the early 50s? This is quite lurid.

The psychopathic Captain is really convincing… although they could have skipped all the signifiers of him being gay, I guess.

The flashback scenes to outside life is the weakest part of the movie.

Brute Force. Jules Dassin. 1947.

Popular movies in July 1947 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	6742	7.7	Brute Force
	5675	7.4	Crossfire
	6309	7.3	The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
	295	7.1	Vesna
	793	7.1	The Perils of Pauline
	1388	7.1	They Won’t Believe Me
	308	7.0	So Well Remembered
	379	6.9	Deep Valley
	309	6.8	Something in the Wind
	1094	6.7	The Hucksters

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

This is pure entertainment, and I love that. Gene Tierney is perfect as the plucky widow, and Rex Harrison camps it up as the ghost of a ship captain.

It’s such a perfect fluffy thing. It meanders pleasantly without straining the brain.

But then! In the third act! Drama!

This kind of thing works much better without real conflict, but filmmakers feel obligate to inflict that on us anyway. Otherwise it wouldn’t, like, be a proper movie.

Fie, I say! Fie!

If this had just gone on being a pleasant dream (with, perhaps, Mrs. Muir hooking up with a hot, cool guy), then it’d have been perfect.

Still! It’s pretty lovely.

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz. 1947.

Popular movies in June 1947 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	32184	7.9	Miracle on 34th Street
	12249	7.9	The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
	290	7.3	Dear Ruth
	544	7.2	Ivy
	378	7.0	The Upturned Glass
	1388	6.8	Desperate
	647	6.8	The Unfaithful
	359	6.6	Cheyenne
	1349	6.6	The Woman on the Beach
	280	6.2	Living in a Big Way

This blog post is part of the Decade series.