July 1947: Brute Force
























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:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
67427.7Brute Force
56757.4Crossfire
63097.3The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
2957.1Vesna
7937.1The Perils of Pauline
13887.1They Won’t Believe Me
3087.0So Well Remembered
3796.9Deep Valley
3096.8Something in the Wind
10946.7The Hucksters

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

Useful Consumer Review

I’ve had an Epson Expression 10000XL for over ten years, and it works very well.

I mainly use it to scan covers of LPs and the like, so the A3+ size is perfect. It’s only got two problems: It’s slow, and it has a noisy fan. I can live with the latter, because the fan only goes when I’m actually working with the scanner.

And since I’m usually only scanning a few covers, the slowness doesn’t really bother me that much.

However, a couple of months ago I had a major scanning project, and if I were to use the slow scanner I would still have been at the job for the next three years.

Instead I got an Epson DS-50000. It has no fan, and it’s really fast. It can scan a grey scale A3 image in about six seconds, which is great.

Scanning project finally over, last night I was going to replace the old scanner with the new one and donate the old one, but after installing the new scanner in the cubbyhole…

DISASTER!

The imaging area isn’t as big as on the 10000XL! It’s like 15mm narrower!

That’s the 10000XL…

And that’s the DS-50000.

How useless, Epson! Fie!

I guess this mean that I’ll have to find room for both of the scanners… somehow…

*sigh* So many vitally important problems!

June 1947: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir











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:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
321847.9Miracle on 34th Street
122497.9The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
2907.3Dear Ruth
5447.2Ivy
3787.0The Upturned Glass
13886.8Desperate
6476.8The Unfaithful
3596.6Cheyenne
13496.6The Woman on the Beach
2806.2Living in a Big Way

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

May 1947: Possessed



















Oh My Emacs! Another Joan Crawford movie? Is this like the 30th in this blog series? Who bought these movies anyway?

This is super noir. They even found rainy days to shoot in Los Angeles.

As usual, you can’t fault Crawford’s er expressive performance. The other actors also plays it large, and it’s pretty great. It’s got the classic noir structure of everything being told in a flashback, and the story being told is on fleek. I really didn’t see a lot of the plot twists coming. And the way the movie deals with mental health problems is refreshing. I mean, they play it BIG, but it’s fresh.

This is a riveting movie.

The bluray transfer is beautiful. Some restorers go for maximum details so they keep the dark portions grey, but here everything drops off to #000. And so much grain.

Possessed. Curtis Bernhardt. 1947.

Popular movies in May 1947 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
163248.0Black Narcissus
3417.2Le silence est d’or
32427.2Possessed
5467.1The Web
2847.0Repeat Performance
4636.9Dear Murderer
10386.7The Long Night
6446.5Dishonored Lady
2726.4High Barbaree
6926.4Dick Tracy’s Dilemma

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

April 1947: Monsieur Verdoux


















Oh, this is Chaplin’s “serious” movie? Didn’t that flop spectacularly?

Chaplin was subjected to unusually hostile treatment by the press while promoting the opening of the film, and some boycotts took place during its short run. In New Jersey, the film was picketed by members of the Catholic War Veterans, who carried placards calling for Chaplin to be deported. In Denver, similar protests against the film by the American Legion managed to prevent it being shown.

Indeed. But that may have had more to do with Chaplin’s politics (left wing) than the movie itself.

This is what they call a “black comedy”, which means that a whole bunch of women get killed, because that’s always funny. Besides, they’re all silly women (SILLY WOMEN) so it’s no big loss, right?

Chaplin plays the sympathetic serial killer, and the other actors don’t quite know whether they’re in a hilarious slapstick movie or a bizarre thriller. It’s downright disturbing at times. Martha Raye is perfect, though. Loud-mouthed and irrepressible. And this movie ended her film career? She did a ton of movies until this one, and then no movies until 1962. (But a lot of TV.)

There are amusing scenes here, although I don’t really… like the movie.

Monsieur Verdoux. Charles Chaplin. 1947.

Popular movies in April 1947 according to IMDB:

PosterVotesRatingMovie
121088.0Monsieur Verdoux
21037.6It Happened on Fifth Avenue
16457.5Buck Privates Come Home
33177.3Born to Kill
17166.9Tarzan and the Huntress
2616.8New Orleans
4626.8The Private Affairs of Bel Ami
2186.8Hard Boiled Mahoney
6576.7The Macomber Affair
2426.7Calcutta

This blog post is part of the Decade series.