This is the seventh entry in a series of thumbnail reviews of films I’ve watched on the Criterion Channel streaming service, starting in September 2021. I finished off this set of 10 films during December and early January 2022. This lot includes two early French New Wave films, one Hitchcock thriller, a “railroad” Western, a post-WW2 drama, a fictionalized account of a real-life scam, a film noir, a crime docudrama, a drama set in the Aussie outback, and an Italian drama from the late-neorealist period.
Till the End of Time (1946): Guy Madison and Robert Mitchum star as US Marines who return home to Los Angeles after the end of WW2 in 1945. Both face challenges settling back into civilian life, as they re-engage with family and friends, meet other ex-servicemen, and make new acquaintances. Dorothy McGuire, fresh off her acclaimed performance in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, headlines the movie, playing a war widow who falls in love with Madison’s character. Although a reasonably well made film, it doesn’t have the emotional depth of the similarly themed The Best Years of Our Lives, which was released around the same time. Robert Mitchum became a genuine star a year later with the release of the film noir classic, Out of the Past. Director Edward Dmytryk continued to make well-regarded films with big movie stars for another two decades, including The Caine Mutiny (Humphrey Bogart), The End of the Affair (Deborah Kerr), Raintree Country (Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor), The Young Lions (Clift and Marlon Brando) and Shalako (Sean Connery and Brigette Bardot).
The Baron of Arizona (1950): Samuel Fuller’s second directorial effort is the highly fictionalized account of a real-life scam which made headlines in the late 19th century. Vincent Price is compelling as the fraudster, James Reavis, a real-estate agent who concocted an audacious scheme in the 1870’s, using forged documents to lay claim to about 19,000 square miles of land across Arizona and New Mexico. The story becomes progressively more bizarre and sordid, as Reavis builds layer upon layer of falsehood to shore up the legality of his claim. Famed cinematographer James Wong Howe infuses even the daytime scenes with a sense of darkness, in keeping with the subject matter. Given the period and location, the film is sometimes classified as a Western, although not with the usual tropes of that genre. Fuller followed up with the progressive-minded war film Steel Helmets (covered in #11-20 in this series), thereby setting a pattern of war, westerns and noir as his preferred genres.
His Kind of Woman (1951): Australian director John Farrow (father of actress Mia Farrow) directs this unconventional film noir set at an upscale resort in Baja California. “Noir king” Robert Mitchum plays a professional gambler, who is offered $50,000 to complete a mystery assignment at a retreat for the rich and famous; Jane Russell brings her typically sassy screen persona to the role of the femme fatale; Vincent Price delivers a shamelessly over-the-top performance as a hammy Shakespearean actor, also a guest at the resort. Mitchum’s character soon discovers that there is more to the assignment than he has been told, and has to use his wits and new-found allies to survive. The release of the film was delayed after studio owner Howard Hawks took control away from the director, and added reshoots to incorporate additional story elements and a recasting of a key role. Given the added costs, it wasn’t a surprise that the film lost money at the box office. However, audiences enjoyed the on-screen chemistry between Mitchum and Russell (as did I), and they were immediately cast by the studio in the entertaining noir thriller, Macao. Director John Farrow survived the mistreatment and went on to win an Oscar a few years later for co-writing the screenplay of Around the World in 80 Days.
Boomerang! (1947): Elia Kazan’s third feature film was shot in a factual, semi-documentary style, and tells the true-life story of a high profile murder case in Connecticut in the 1920’s. Square-jawed leading man Dana Andrews, brings his grim-faced, no-nonsense acting approach to the role of the State Attorney, who comes under relentless pressure from local politicians to close the case quickly, in the face of mounting public anger. The Attorney is determined to see that justice is done, rather than just push through a convenient prosecution. Jane Wyatt plays his wife, who also is targeted by vested political interests to make her husband toe the line. This was the first of Elia Kazan’s films to garner him awards for directing (winner of the National Board of Review and New York Film Critics Circle Awards); he also got a nomination at Cannes. His next film, Gentleman’s Agreement, would win Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture, besides a host of other nominations.
Le Beau Serge (1958): Claude Chabrol’s debut effort as director is considered to be the first film of the French New Wave. Chabrol was the first of the contributors to the film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, who went on to become a director and along with other critics-turned-directors, Éric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut, changed the course of French and world cinema. Le Beau Serge starts off with a young man, François (played by Gérard Blain), returning to his village in central France, to rest and recuperate after a recent illness. He seeks out old acquaintances, and discovers that his close friend, Serge (played by Jean-Claude Brialy), has become a bitter alcoholic in the intervening years. The film narrates François’ efforts to navigate the social fabric of the village, where everyone appears to be discontented and resentful. In terms of tone, the film is grounded and austere, compared to the irreverence and spontaneity of subsequent French New Wave films…nevertheless, shooting on location with no props and no movie stars gave Chabrol’s film the authenticity that was the hallmark of the La Nouvelle Vague movement. It was a low key start, and in fact, it was only after the release of Chabrol’s second film, Les Cousins, and Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, a few months later, that the movement became recognized as such. Chabrol was just 27 years old when he made this film, and he would go on to direct a film a year for the next half century, in addition to documentaries and TV shows!
The Sundowners (1960): This engaging and well-made drama, adapted from Jon Cleary’s 1951 novel of the same name, is set in the Australian outback in the 1920s. The term “sundowners” refers to transient laborers who would travel from farm to farm for work. Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr bring great heart and warmth to their roles as the Irish-Australian couple, Mr. and Mrs. Carmody, traveling with their son Sean through rural Australia. Mr. Carmody loves the nomadic life, whereas Mrs. Carmody and the boy dream of buying a place and settling down. The story takes us through various episodes in their lives, and the interesting characters they meet, particularly an Englishman played by Peter Ustinov. It’s a touching story, let down by a somewhat unsatisfactory ending (not to mention Mitchum and Kerr’s dodgy Aussie accents!). Although nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, it is less well-known compared to director Fred Zinnemann’s classics High Noon, From Here to Eternity and A Man for All Seasons.
Les Cousins (1959): By the time Claude Chabrol had the financial wherewithal to release his debut film Le Beau Serge, he had already finished his follow up, Les Cousins, featuring the same two actors Gérard Blain and Jean-Claude Brialy. There is a symmetry to these two films – Le Beau Serge is set in the countryside and showcases village residents bitter and resentful about their lot in life; Les Cousins is set in Paris and chronicles the cynical, devil-may-care lifestyles of the young urban set, who lived for the day and couldn’t care for tomorrow. In Les Cousins, studious and earnest Charles (played by Blain) comes to Paris to study law; he stays with his cousin Paul (played by Brialy), who is Charles’ diametric opposite in terms of value systems and behaviour. We follow Charles’ wide-eyed introduction to Paul’s wild life in the big city – the women, the parties, the booze – and the inevitable impact that Paul’s decadent lifestyle has on him. The film won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. Ironically, although he kick-started the movement, Chabrol was perhaps the most restrained and least experimental of the French New Wave directors, which makes his films more accessible to the casual viewer.
Rope (1948): I went through a phase about 15 years ago, when I diligently watched a dozen of Alfred Hitchcock’s most well-known movies. Given how prolific he was, there are several remaining on my watchlist that I tick off from time to time, with Rope being one that I was happy to find on Criterion. Two privileged young men (played by John Dall and Farley Granger) plan and execute a “perfect murder” in their penthouse apartment, confident they won’t get caught. James Stewart plays their former prep school housemaster, who is unwittingly responsible for their convictions of intellectual superiority, and may be the only person who can bring about their downfall. The film is notable for its long takes, with the entire narrative taking place in the apartment in real time. This required an extraordinary degree of on-set choreography, leaving many critics of the view that the technical challenges distracted from the storytelling. The film was not well received by the public either, perhaps because none of the characters are particularly likeable (in fact, some are downright unpleasant) and because of the homosexual subtext. I found it to be a gripping viewing experience and was completely drawn in by the dialogue and the suspense. Granger reappeared three years later in Strangers on a Train, and these two Hitchcock films remained the highlights of his career. John Dahl had further success as the lead in the 1950 film noir, Gun Crazy, and a key part in the 1960 historical epic, Spartacus.
Girl in the Window / La ragazza in vetrina (1961): The 1940’s heralded the era of neorealism in Italian cinema, but by the early 50’s, audiences started resenting these soul-crushing stories of poverty and destitution; filmmakers responded by including comedic elements into these films, giving rise to the term “pink neorealism”, which then morphed into the commedia all’italiana, or “Italian style comedy” genre of the 60’s. The Girl in the Window is considered an example of pink neorealism, although there is nothing intentionally comedic in the narrative. It was an early starring vehicle for Italian acting icon Lino Ventura, as well as for striking French actress Marina Vlady. Ventura plays a seasoned Italian coal miner, working in a mine in the Netherlands, who takes a newcomer (Bernard Fresson) under his wing and shows him the ropes. The first half of the film puts the audience into the heart of the black seams underground, while the second half sees the two men let off steam during a night out on the town. Given the daily hazards the men experience at work, one can understand their almost childlike need for entertainment and companionship. Overall, I would describe the film as informative and insightful, rather than entertaining. This is not surprising, given that director Luciano Emmer was known primarily for his documentaries, although he did make a few well-regarded comedies. Remarkably, he continued to work until just before his death in 2009, at the age of 91.
Denver and the Rio Grande (1952): This American “railroad Western” is a fictitious retelling of an armed confrontation that took place in the late 1870’s, between two competing railroad companies for “right of way” through a pass on the Colorado-New Mexico border. Edmond O’Brien and Sterling Hayden play the chief antagonists representing the two railroads; character actor O’Brien is cast as the conscientious engineer, Jim Vesser, while Hayden brings his signature tough guy act to the character of McCabe, a bully who must win at any cost. The story is packed with gunfights, legal battles, corporate espionage and even a spectacular train crash, although the obligatory love interest subplot feels a bit forced. It’s a watchable movie, but Edmund O’Brien did not really tick the box for me as a charismatic leading man. Director Byron Haskin had previously directed the excellent noir, I Walk Alone, which I covered in #21-30. He does a good job managing the large-scale action in this movie, and this experience probably helped when he graduated to big-budget sci-fi films like The War of the Worlds (1953), From the Earth to the Moon (1958) and Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964).
Here are the links to the previous thumbnails: #1-10, #11-20, #21-30, #31-40, #41-50 and #51-60.
Chronophlogiston 