Random Thoughts

*gasp* I can see colours!

Technicolours!

Well, this is a high-ticket item. Directed by David Lean from a script by Noel Coward (and also produced by him).

Margaret Rutherford is wonderful as the most unlikely medium ever.

It’s a very, very English screwball comedy: A deceased woman comes back as a ghost to visit her husband. Hi-jinx ensue where English people talk very rapidly at each other in exquisite Estuary.

I so want this to be wonderful, but it doesn’t quite connect. The jokes just aren’t funny enough and it doesn’t get screwy enough.

I mean, it is funny and it is screwy. But it lacks that certain something to push it over the edge into hilariousness and ends up in the uneasy “well, that’s amusing” territory.

Rex Harrison and Constance Cummings may be the problem — they just don’t have the chemistry.

Blithe Spirit. David Lean. 1945.

Popular movies in April 1945 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	3898	7.2	Blithe Spirit
	228	7.1	Counter-Attack
	387	7.0	It’s in the Bag!
	1964	6.9	Tarzan and the Amazons
	957	6.8	The Horn Blows at Midnight
	747	6.7	Brewster’s Millions
	329	6.5	The Power of the Whistler
	546	6.4	Two O’Clock Courage
	555	6.4	Son of Lassie
	1427	6.2	Blood on the Sun

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

This is another cheap and cheerful B movie from that 50 movie box set.

Perhaps a majority of the movies on the box set are stage shows wrapped in a nonsensical excuse for a framing device. I don’t mind; it’s fun to watch those stage shows.

This is also an excuse to show a variety show, but it’s almost a real, proper movie, with great acting performances (a very young Jane Powell, for instance) and a real storyline. Well. Sort of.

It’s delightfully charming.

Delightfully Dangerous. Arthur Lubin. 1945.

Popular movies in March 1945 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	1887	7.7	The Corn Is Green
	9427	7.6	The Picture of Dorian Gray
	2328	7.5	The Clock
	661	6.9	A Royal Scandal
	1542	6.8	Without Love
	442	6.7	Hotel Berlin
	1320	6.6	Dillinger
	435	6.5	God Is My Co-Pilot
	259	6.4	Keep Your Powder Dry
	247	6.3	Thunderhead – Son of Flicka

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

This is like… neo-realism… before neo-realism. So is it realism?

Oh, this is Elia Kazan’s first movie. He’d go on to define the 50s with A Streetcar Named Desire, On The Waterfront and East of Eden.

This movie looks wonderful. It’s so sharp: The light and the shadows. New and fresh and a new thing.

And the performances are as meticulous and detailed as the images are. It’s remarkable.

Unsurprisingly, it was only nominated for a couple of Oscars (and won a supporting actor one).

This makes me want to watch all Elia Kazan movies. I’ve only seen the most famous ones… unfortunately there’s no bluray collection of his movies. The blu ray of this movie was only released in Spain?

Weird.

Anyway, every single frame of this movie is a delight to watch… I don’t even know whether it made much sense, but it’s just kinda beautiful.

The last half hour tips over into bad melodrama, though.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Elia Kazan. 1945.

Popular movies in February 1945 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	5625	8.1	A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
	289	8.0	Docks of New York
	2182	7.6	The Enchanted Cottage
	3308	7.5	The House of Fear
	1676	7.4	Hangover Square
	1029	7.1	Here Come the Co-eds
	355	6.7	Waterloo Road
	455	5.2	Fog Island

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

On a War Movie scale of 1 to 10 this is 25: It’s all soldier, all the time.

The director has the best profile picture ever on IMDB:

And the movie is just about what you’d expect from seeing that picture: It’s brash, manly and filled with robust humour.

And as you’d expect, it’s not actually funny.

The depiction of the minutiae of soldiering seems very modern. Many of the scenes in this film could have be edited into movies from the 70s and nobody would have noticed (except for the hairdos and the the film stock).

Oh! I was totally confused. I was trying to spot Errol Flynn here and the only one who looked Flynnish seemed too young. But Flynn was only 36 when this movie was made: I was confusing Flynn with Douglas Fairbanks. D’oh.

Here’s a plot summary: Some soldiers are dropped into Burma and then they wander around for an excruciating 140 minutes of screen time. There’s nothing wrong with any specific scene, and it’s… admirable?… in its focus on the guys in the jungle…

But it’s hard not to start dusting the bookcase while watching this. Or, if you have a cat, vacuuming the cat.

If this had been half the length, it still would have been challenging to keep concentrated.

Perhaps it should have been six times as long? Then it’d have been a 70s art movie. It could have been a double drive-in feature along with Out 1: Noli me tangere.

Still! I kinda like it.

Objective Burma. Raoul Walsh. 1945.

Popular movies in January 1945 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	3610	7.4	Objective, Burma!
	470	7.0	Roughly Speaking
	895	6.9	The Jade Mask
	973	6.8	A Song to Remember
	742	6.6	The Great Flamarion
	326	6.5	Madonna of the Seven Moons
	586	6.4	Tonight and Every Night
	246	6.3	I Love a Mystery

This blog post is part of the Decade series.

Oh, this is from the Icons of Screwball Comedy DVD “box”, which I can’t seem to find at the moment… I’m substituting the other box for the dice throw picture.

CONTINUITY ERROR

This is a supremely amiable movie. The actors are charming; the storyline is cute; the lines are witty.

It’s entertaining and amusing, but you know how this is going to end up: The mayor is going to resign her job, meaning that the village is going to be left in the unsuitable hands of that newspaper asshole.

So it’s kinda not very satisfying, although it’s a funny little movie.

Together Again. Charles Vidor. 1944.

Hey! I’m at the half-way point in this 40s blog series? Look at the stack of DVDs:

I think I must be. 1940-1945… That’s like… five years…

Popular movies in December 1944 according to IMDB:

Poster	Votes	Rating	Movie
	9190	7.6	Murder, My Sweet
	1811	7.5	The Keys of the Kingdom
	1006	7.5	The Suspect
	276	7.4	The Fighting Lady
	1533	7.3	I’ll Be Seeing You
	5174	7.3	National Velvet
	1388	7.3	Hollywood Canteen
	208	7.2	Sunday Dinner for a Soldier
	417	6.9	Together Again
	378	6.7	Music for Millions

This blog post is part of the Decade series.