Random Thoughts

Noir! Sirk! Colbert!

*gets popcorn*

This is brilliantly paranoid; a vortex of (possible) gaslighting, (possible) insanity and (possible) conspiracies.

They give away the game a bit too early, I think, and from then on it all seems a bit too predictable.

But it’s fun and it’s funny and gripping and it’s quite Douglas Sirk. Sirk is, of course, one of my favourite directors, and I’m going to see all his movies.

Sleep, My Love. Douglas Sirk. 1948.

Popular movies in February 1948 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	6290	7.4	Call Northside 777
	397	7.2	To the Ends of the Earth
	1117	6.9	Sleep, My Love
	559	6.8	Blanche Fury
	391	6.7	Albuquerque
	413	6.6	Tenth Avenue Angel
	1079	6.4	Arch of Triumph
	368	6.3	Three Daring Daughters
	473	6.0	On Our Merry Way
	389	5.9	Summer Holiday

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

Bogie! And… other people…

I thought this was going to be a western, but it’s contemporary and is something much more singular. It’s the kind of movie you (I mean, me) have no idea what direction it’s going to go in.

It’s by John Huston, so of course it’s good, and as usual with a Huston movie, it’s very homosocial: It’s all men talking to other men.

This won all the Oscars and bunch of other prizes, too.

Bogie’s transformation to wide-eyed lunatic is really convincing!

Oh, this is the movie with “we don’t need no steenkin badges”. It’s so weird recognising well-used samples in olden movies.

This is like an audience participation movie. The audience is going “DON”T BE AN ASSHOLE< BOGIE" and then we're constantly somewhat disappointed.

It's a really good movie. It's almost brilliant.

The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. John Huston. 1948.

I couldn’t find the DVD! I apparently ripped it in 2014, but it’s not… here…

Popular movies in January 1948 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	83116	8.3	The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
	234	7.1	I Love Trouble
	1443	7.1	I Walk Alone
	1959	6.7	Anna Karenina
	240	6.5	Vice Versa

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

*gasp* Orson Welles!

And Orson is dubbed into a comedy Irish dialect!? WTF?! His lips don’t match up to the audio all the time, at least, so I’m assuming it’s not Welles himself doing the awful impression…

This is such a weird movie! I love it! It makes no sense! I assume that Welles’ diet consisted of nothing but diet pills and coke around this time.

I’m not sure this is a good movie, but it’s absolutely brilliant.

Well. That was so weird that I have to google it.

Here’s Wikipedia:

Cohn strongly disliked Welles’s rough cut, particularly what he considered to be a confusing plot and lack of close-ups (Welles had deliberately avoided these, as a stylistic device), and was not in sympathy with Welles’s Brechtian use of irony and black comedy, especially in a farcical courtroom scene. He also objected to the appearance of the film—Welles had aimed for documentary-style authenticity by shooting one of the first major Hollywood pictures almost entirely on location (in Acapulco, Pie de la Cuesta, Sausalito and San Francisco) using long takes, and Cohn preferred the more tightly-controlled look of footage lit and shot in a studio. Release was delayed due to Cohn ordering extensive editing and reshoots.

Well, that explains it! All those weird, excessive close-ups: It’s like Welles went “YOU WANT CLOSE-UPS!? I”LL FUCKING GIVE YOU FUCKING CLOSE-FUCKING-UPS!”

Welles removed himself from the directorial credits of this movie, and we can only imagine what Welles’ original version looked like: “As with many of Welles’s films over which he did not have control over the final cut, the missing footage has not been found and is presumed to have been destroyed.”

The version we have now is absolutely bonkers, and is compulsive watching.

The Lady From Shanghai. Orson Welles. 1947.

Hey! I should have taken the balcony furniture inside, I guess…

Popular movies in December 1947 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	2007	7.9	Good News
	20088	7.7	The Lady from Shanghai
	10687	7.6	The Bishop’s Wife
	4152	7.4	Brighton Rock
	2547	7.3	Road to Rio
	2180	7.1	A Double Life
	2070	7.0	T-Men
	942	6.9	High Wall
	1318	6.9	Captain from Castile
	395	6.8	The Voice of the Turtle

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

This is a film noir, but it starts off as like a 50s Tennessee Williams movie. But then you get all of the genre trappings: Flash-backs, gangsters, dames, beaches, repartee.

I’ve never realised how similar Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas are. They’re basically the same person. Mitchum is a bit more muscular, but otherwise they’re confusingly similar. I wonder whether that was the effect they were going for, or whether it’s the usual result of the casting director having a “type”.

This is a very well-regarded movie:

Out of the Past is considered one of the greatest of all films noir.[5][6][7] Robert Ottoson hailed the film as “the ne plus ultra of forties film noir”.[8]

I don’t quite get it. Nothing really sizzles here. I find myself being almost completely disinterested in Mitchum and his mysterious past. The cinematography isn’t particularly striking, and the dames aren’t compelling.

But I concede that I might be totally wrong about this one. It just didn’t hold my attention, so perhaps it’s really a masterpiece and I just kinda zoned out on the good bits? It’s possible.

Out of the Past. Jacques Tourneur. 1947.

Popular movies in November 1947 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	24312	8.1	Out of the Past
	11481	7.4	Gentleman’s Agreement
	889	7.4	It Always Rains on Sunday
	523	7.1	Monsieur Vincent
	618	7.0	The Lost Moment
	236	6.9	Mine Own Executioner
	251	6.8	Where There’s Life
	1524	6.7	Daisy Kenyon
	1571	6.5	The Fugitive
	407	6.5	An Ideal Husband

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

This has few votes on imdb so I assumed that it was a B movie. But this is an MGM high budget costume drama… with Lana Turner and Donna Reed.

And what costumes!

It was nominated for a handful of technical Oscars as well as Best Cinematography and was apparently quite popular upon release.

That it’s apparently mostly forgotten today isn’t very surprising. It’s… what’s the word… like totally lame?

There’s no rapport between the alleged lovers. Van Heflin is particularly problematic: When he first appeared I thought he was portraying a leering pervert of some sort, but then he turns out to be a hero or something?

The pace is glacial. It goes on for two and a half hours and seems to have enough drama for about half an hour. Were they going for a Gone is the Wind vibe?

I don’t know whether to admire or roll my eyes at the brazenness of the plot contrivance in the middle (involving a drunken letter).

The earthquake effects are really quite impressive.

This is a horrible movie, but I’ll up the dice on account of the earthquake scene. But beware!

Green Dolphin Street. Victor Saville. 1947.

Popular movies in October 1947 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	5367	7.8	Nightmare Alley
	860	7.3	The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap
	1624	7.2	The Unsuspected
	1030	6.9	Green Dolphin Street
	764	6.8	Song of Love
	341	6.7	The Exile
	890	6.7	Forever Amber
	244	6.6	Bowery Buckaroos
	1059	6.5	Magic Town
	269	6.5	Merton of the Movies

This blog post is part of the Decade series.