September 1945: Mildred Pierce






















Surely I’ve seen this Joan Crawfordaganza before, but it really doesn’t seem very familiar…

This is the Criterion-restored DVD version. It’s good, but it doesn’t look as brilliant as their best restorations do. The blacks never go down to full blackness, so everything is a bit washed out… but perhaps that’s what the director was going for.

And speaking of directing: This film is one awesome film noir show after another. It’s really quite astounding. Everything underlines the tension and the mystery; everybody’s smoking all the time; all the guys crack wise and all the gals are gorgeous.

It’s noirer than noir. Well, at least the framing section is: The main part of the movie is a flashback to brighter times, and the cinematography changes radically.

There’s no menzion of ze var except for one guy saying that “nylons are out for the duration”, which I assume is about stocking shortages…

I guess it’d be extremely easy to make a parody of this movie, because it’s so over the top and bits of the storyline are so… well… clichéd. Like the very-much telegraphed sex/death thing. But the melodrama really is gripping.

I think it sags when we get into the Vedaness of the plot and it kinda spins off into boredom.

Mildred Pierce. Michael Curtiz. 1945.

Popular movies in September 1945 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
166048.0Mildred Pierce
3378.0Come Out Fighting
81837.7Dead of Night
12727.6Our Vines Have Tender Grapes
21706.8The House on 92nd Street
30406.6Isle of the Dead

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

August 1945: Love Letters



!!!













Dum ti dum ti dum…

WHAAAA AYN RAND!

So it this going to be a super-corny schmaltzy ode to objectivism?

It’s a budget movie? It looks like it’s been filmed on the cheapest, most cramped sound stages.

I assume that it ended up in my queue due to block-voting on imdb (I selected movies that had a combination of significant views and high votes).

This is Cyrano de Bergerac repeated not as a comedy, but as a turgid sentimental tragedy of a romantic movie.

It’s twaddle, but some scenes are so awkward that they’re almost great.

Love Letters. William Dieterle. 1945.

Popular movies in August 1945 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
9247.4Pride of the Marines
19327.3The Southerner
2867.3The True Glory
2117.2Divorce
11277.2Love Letters
8447.1The Shanghai Cobra
28637.1State Fair
10107.0Lady on a Train
8686.9The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry
22726.6Ziegfeld Follies

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

July 1945: Christmas in Connecticut
















Hey! Why did this premiere in July? I assumed they did Xmas movies at Xmas? Is imdb wrong about the release date?

Oh, this is delightful. It’s got a classic screwball set-up, charming actors and witty repartee.

The “You have a baby? I want to give him a bath!” bit is even more unintentionally hilarious than the rest of the proceedings (which are very funny indeed).

Geez! It’s difficult to find anything to say when a movie is this amiable. It’s not a perfect movie by any means, but it’s extremely enjoyable.

Christmas in Connecticut. Peter Godfrey. 1945.

Popular movies in July 1945 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
2938.0Mr. Muggs Rides Again
53437.5Christmas in Connecticut
62187.2Anchors Aweigh
3567.1The Cheaters
2236.9Incendiary Blonde
2456.7Guest Wife
13596.6Along Came Jones
3846.5The Falcon in San Francisco
2426.5Over 21
3816.1A Thousand and One Nights

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

June 1945: Murder, He Says













It feels like weeks since I saw the previous movie… perhaps because it was?

Gotta catch up now then.

Wow, this is an odd movie. It’s a screwball comedy, but it’s set in a such a nightmarish milieu that it’s sometimes difficult to know whether to be horrified or amused: It’s about a hapless insurance guy trapped by a murderous hillbilly family.

Fred MacMurray is fine here, but the movie has other problems than mixing torture, murder and comedy: You could see how this would work if they’d just keep pouring the absurdities on, but there’s pacing problems. The jokes just don’t land.

But you have to give it props for originality.

There’s something weird with the interlace on this DVD:

Is MPV interpreting the lines in the incorrect order or something? Switching deinterlace off made things nice, though.

Murder, He Says. George Marshall. 1945.

Popular movies in June 1945 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
14077.8Murder, He Says
14687.5The Naughty Nineties
23527.4Story of G.I. Joe
14967.2Wonder Man
22297.1Conflict
4647.1War Comes to America
9717.0Rhapsody in Blue
40386.9The Woman in Green
4776.9A Bell for Adano
2086.8L’espoir

This blog post is part of the Decade series.