Random Thoughts

Ooo! Bette Davis!

I thought that perhaps I’d seen this before, but if so, it must be a long, long time ago, because scenes seem familiar in vague flashes. Perhaps I saw it as a child?

But, man, Davis is amazing here. Didn’t get the Oscar, of course.

Isn’t it weird how it’s more difficult to find something to write about good movies than bad movies? With bad movies you can just kvetch away with abandon, but this is a kinda perfect movie. Well, you could quibble with the clichéd portrayal of the controlling and venomous mother, but it’s done so perfectly that you just have to admire the artistry.

Oh, and bonus: This has Mary Wickes as the enterprising nurse.

Now, Voyager. Irving Rapper. 1942.

Popular movies in October 1942 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	11715	8.1	Now, Voyager
	1724	7.8	Who Done It?
	2308	7.2	For Me and My Gal
	4940	7.2	I Married a Witch
	1143	7.0	George Washington Slept Here
	2783	6.8	Flying Tigers
	836	6.8	Eyes in the Night
	611	6.8	The Moon and Sixpence
	519	6.5	The Falcon’s Brother
	660	6.4	Night Monster

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

What could be more appropriate after watching a movie with Fred Astaire than a movie with Ginger Rogers?

Had they stopped working together by this time? The computer says yes, almost.

This is directed by Billy Wilder, who’d worked in movies a lot before this, but it’s only his second directorial feature (and the one before this was in 1934). He’d go on to become one of the most well-regarded Hollywood directors, of course (doing all those Marilyn Monroe pictures)…

This is really funny and so out of left field. It’s so weird. And super, super, super creepy! Who on Earth OK’d this? But perhaps it’s more self-aware than the kooky madcap icky surface plot appears, but to explain that means that I have to something that I really hate to do, which is to give a plot recap:

Rogers’s character leaves New York because she’s fed up with being sexually harassed. To get a reduced-price train ticket, she poses as a 12 year girl (and in the process, she overhears a boy talking about a new hit book called “Why I Hate Women”). She’s basically trapped in that role by several characters for most of the movie, but that doesn’t mean that the sexual advances stop: Several cadets (and what age are they supposed to be? teenagers, I guess, but certainly older than 12? who can say?) at a military base maul her, and her protector’s fatherly seems to slip into a knowing zone at points.

So is this really a scathing critique of misogyny and sexual exploitation of children, or is it a…

Really creepy movie?

I don’t know, but it’s funnier if read the first way. I laughed a lot.

It was apparently written with Cary Grant in mind as the avuncular figure, but he wisely passed?

The Major and the Minor. Billy Wilder. 1942.

Popular movies in September 1942 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	4600	7.6	The Major and the Minor
	3942	7.3	In Which We Serve
	4165	7.1	The Glass Key
	935	7.1	My Sister Eileen
	676	7.0	Orchestra Wives
	3354	6.9	Across the Pacific
	1563	6.9	Desperate Journey
	3060	6.8	Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror
	228	6.7	Counter-Espionage
	232	6.6	The War Against Mrs. Hadley

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

Yes! Fred Astaire! Bing Crosby! Irving Berlin! Bluray!

I wonder whether I have the release date wrong here… or did they really release an Xmas movie in August? Watching movies by month I wanted to experience the change of the seasons, but…

Anyway, it won the Oscar for best song: White Christmas, and no surprise.

The setting is the classic musical setting: In a theatre. That makes it a lot easier to drop some musical numbers in at random without having to work the pieces into the actual story line.

The director, Mark Sandrich, had done a series of extremely successful (both at the box office and otherwise) musicals in the 30s. I mean… The Gay Divorcee, Shall We Dance, Follow the Fleet… And this is very much in that mode.

Which is fine by me: This is non-stop amusement with the occasional hilarious moment. It’s just so well made; it’s just perfection. Really the thing to distract you from what’s going on in Europe (except for a brief moving collage in the last third).

Virginia Dale isn’t a name I’m familiar with, but watching her dance with Fred Astaire is a thrill. They really fit together wonderfully.

There’s a plot of sorts in between the various bits that doesn’t really amount to much of anything, but it’s much better put together than these things usually are. It’s a movie that’s obviously been put together as a simple showcase for Bing Crosby, but it ends up being kinda perfect.

(But it might be problematic because of the blackface scenes. It’s interesting that they intercut this scene with scenes of the black maid (who is called, yes, “Mamie” (played wonderfully by Louise Beavers (last seen in Reap The Wild Wind))) and the maid’s children singing along with the song.)

This movie could perhaps have been a bit tighter in the last third, where it gets more plot heavy.

FSVO plot and heavy.

The meta bits at the very end, where Bing enters the set where they’re recreating his inn (which is, of course, just the inn set) is whee.

Holiday Inn. Mark Sandrich. 1942.

Popular movies in August 1942 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	9299	7.6	Holiday Inn
	1812	7.6	Pardon My Sarong
	5515	7.6	The Talk of the Town
	1333	7.4	Tales of Manhattan
	99419	7.3	Bambi
	422	7.0	Smart Alecks
	1412	7.0	Wake Island
	225	6.9	The Goose Steps Out
	492	6.7	The Gay Sisters
	944	6.5	The Big Street

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

Oh. This is about some sports guy? Who got a disease named after him? And it was nominated for all the Oscars? But only won for “Best Film Editing”? And it’s directed by schmaltzmeister Sam Wood, who we previously saw in Our Town and Kitty Foyle?

I fear the absolute worst!

And, yes, Wood lays it on with a trowel. There’s barely a scene without a sentimental bed playing beneath. Cooper does his best, especially playing the teenage Gehrig, but it’s an uphill struggle.

This is a well-received movie, getting a 93% tomato rating. Naturally, since I didn’t enjoy this film at all, I’m just going to quote with the one reviewer that didn’t like it either:

Nominated for 11 Oscars (it won one, for best editing), The Pride Of The Yankees has a vaunted reputation as a sports-movie classic, perhaps because the only scene anyone remembers is Gary Cooper humbly, affectingly delivering Gehrig’s famed farewell address at Yankee Stadium. The film that surrounds that speech, however, is surprisingly dreary and lifeless, a slapped-together piece of studio hackwork that’s thick with sentiment and short on illuminating details about Gehrig’s life and career.

Word.

2.0.

Anyway, this does have some good melodramatic scenes (like when Cooper stands up to his mother on his wife’s behalf), but it’s surrounded my much tedium. I wonder whether the positive reception is more about the idea of a film about Lou Gehrig than the actual end result.

The Pride of the Yankees. Sam Wood. 1942.

Popular movies in July 1942 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	17470	7.9	The Magnificent Ambersons
	7960	7.8	The Pride of the Yankees
	320	7.2	The Pied Piper
	313	6.9	The Magnificent Dope
	789	6.7	Crossroads
	206	6.2	Calling Dr. Gillespie
	338	6.1	I Married an Angel
	1041	6.1	Invisible Agent
	388	6.0	Her Cardboard Lover

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

This movie won all the Oscars. So I approached this with some scepticism.

But it’s irresistibly charming. The actors playing the Minivers are absolutely wonderful, but there are some variable performances otherwise. The plot’s not quite what I expected, either…

Still, I don’t think this is quite as good as Wyler’s previous movie The Little Foxes. It’s still plenty great and very touching.

Mrs. Miniver. William Wyler. 1942.

Popular movies in June 1942 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	11977	7.6	Mrs. Miniver
	248	6.9	The Foreman Went to France
	546	6.7	The Big Shot
	214	6.6	The Affairs of Martha
	279	6.5	The Night Has Eyes
	261	6.4	Maisie Gets Her Man
	450	5.8	They All Kissed the Bride

This blog post is part of the Decade series.