October 1946: My Darling Clementine

















As westerns go, it doesn’t get more western than a movie directed by John Ford starring Henry Fonda (!) as Wyatt Earp (!!) in Tombstone (!!!).

Shirley, I must have seen this movie before, but I really can’t remember anything about it…

This Criterion restoration of the film is almost … too much? The blacks are #000 and the greys are very dramatic and beautiful, but in some of the scenes things definitely are too dark. And has it been de-grained? Perhaps not; Ford used beautiful film stock for most his movies…

It’s (unsurprisingly) very good. The plot twists and turns in ways I didn’t expect, and while some of the performances are a bit hokey (Cathy Downs, for instance), it really works.

The bluray has two versions of the movie: Zanuck took the movie over and cut a whole bunch of footage (and added some new bits). A nitrate that contains many of these scenes was discovered at a university in the 90s, so we get that one too, as well as a comparison between the two versions.

My Darling Clementine. John Ford. 1946.

Popular movies in October 1946 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
170327.8My Darling Clementine
12507.4The Jolson Story
6217.4Margie
21577.3Deception
8177.1Dangerous Money
27957.1The Dark Mirror
2677.1The Crimson Ghost
10136.6Blue Skies
10846.6The Strange Woman
4186.4So Dark the Night

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

September 1946: La belle et la bête





















Huh! It’s an opera? Sounds very modern? I didn’t know that Jean Cocteau did operas? How odd.

Oh!

Philip Glass composed an opera perfectly synchronized to the film. The original soundtrack was eliminated, and he composed the opera to be performed along with the film projected behind the orchestra and voice talent. The compact disc recording of Glass’ “La Belle et la Bête” can be played alongside the film with a very similar effect. Note: the opera is recorded on two compact discs; hence it will be necessary to pause the film once while changing discs. In the US, the second DVD release of this film by the Criterion Collection gives the viewer the option of hearing the original soundtrack or the Glass opera version, which, in a sense, gives you two movies for the price of one.

So there’s two audio tracks to this… Uhm… I think I’ll keep watching the Glass version.

It works really well. The movie is so over-the-top that it seems made for the opera treatment. It’s dreamy and stylised.

It’s wonderful.

La belle et la bête. Jean Cocteau. 1946.

Popular movies in September 1946 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
5817.9Panique
6787.2Sister Kenny
3347.1Monsieur Beaucaire
18296.9Angel on My Shoulder
11346.8Decoy
2976.8The Overlanders
17526.6Cloak and Dagger
8136.6Crack-Up
2516.6Three Wise Fools

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

August 1946: Black Angel















What’s this then?

I wasn’t prepared for the segue into film noir was going to be this abrupt. Of the films after the war ended, virtually all the movies have been noir.

This is another one, and it’s weird. I did see the twist coming a mile away, but there’s just so much strange little details here all over the place, like when June Vincent goes to spy on slash seduce Peter Lorre…

And all those weird little cinematographic ticks.

It’s really quite something.

Black Angel. Roy William Neill. 1946.

Popular movies in August 1946 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
761818.0Notorious
659918.0The Big Sleep
23437.9The Time of Their Lives
145667.9The Killers
18757.0Black Angel
3586.6Spook Busters
2176.4Step by Step
3066.1Holiday in Mexico

This blog post is part of the Decade series.