Kind Hearts and Coronets

This is probably my favourite Ealing comedy.

And thus why it came on again.

"I'd say that your nose was just a little too short, your mouth just a little too wide..."

The Two Faces of January (2014 Hossein Amini & scr)

A canny film, actually I think more successful than Ripley, from same novelist Patricia Highsmith.

Viggo Mortensen, Kirsten Dunst, Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis ).

Great Zippo sounds.

Music Alberto Iglesias, ph. Marcel Zyskind in Panavision, edited by Nicolas Chaudeurge (Andrea Arnold's films) & Jon Harris (Kick Ass, Eden Lake ).

Bus. 1.11.12. In hat.

Singapore (1947 John Brahm)

An exotic city, a gal, a bag of pearls, and a bad guy who wants them. Solid film is unexceptional but Fred MacMurray, Ava Gardner, Roland Culver, Richard Haydn, Spring Byington and Porter Hall (recognisable to us from Preston Sturges) are always watchable. With Thomas Gomez and George Lloyd as baddies.

From prolific writer Seton Miller for Universal. Shot by Maury Gertsman (showing off well in the French import DVD), rather fine music from Lassie's Daniele Amfithetrof, and edited by William Hornbeck.

Heaven Can Wait (1943 Ernst Lubitsch)

Don Ameche, Gene Tierney, Charles Coburn, Spring Byington, Laird Cregar (great as urbane Devil), Eugene Pallette, Marjorie Main.

Very stylish colour photography by Edward Cronjager.

Thanks DVD Beaver

An entire life written with dry wit by Samson Raphaelson (also Shop Around the Corner and Trouble in Paradise ) from a play by Lazlo Bus-Fekete.

On the latter absence of Gene from our screens:

The Left Hand of God (1955)... was to be her last performance for seven years. The pressures of a failed marriage to Oleg Cassini, the birth of a daughter who was mentally retarded in 1943, and several unhappy love affairs resulted in Gene being hospitalized for depression. When she returned to the screen in Advise & Consent (1962), her acting was as good as ever but there was no longer a big demand for her services.

 From IMDB biography by Denny Jackson.

The Letter (1940 William Wyler)

Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson (good as lawyer), Gale Sondergaard, Victor Sen Yung (good as slightly sinister office clerk, recognisable to us from Across the Pacific and the Charlie Chan films; he alone is a good reason for watching).

Scene where they collect the letter, with its lighting, tinkly music, opium pipe and shadows is just wonderful. It's another Steiner-Gaudio collaboration for Warners, an atmospheric Howard Koch adaptation of Somerset Maugham.

Joke featuring Yung and small car is very timely.

Double Indemnity

Here.

But - "She started crying softly like the rain on the window" while Rózsa kicks in.... Brilliant.

Christmas in July (1940 Preston Sturges & scr)

63 minutes zips by, though not top drawer Sturges has much to entertain. Dick Powell. Ellen Drew, Raymond Walburn good as a frustrated and sarcastic businessman, William Demarest, Franklin Pangborn. Includes great line "Well dog my cats!" Sturges writes great rhythms, like "Get me Minsk, Minsk, Pinsk and Pinsk!" that are recognisably only his. And laughs with logic - "Isn't it bad luck if a black cat crosses your path?" "It depends what happens afterwards."

Beginners (2010 Mike Mills & scr)

Ewan McGregor and great dog (which at one point is subtitled "I understand 150 words but I don't speak") which belonged to dead gay father Christopher Plummer (won Oscar). Visually inventive film jumps around in time to good effect and charts progress of relationship with Mélanie Laurent (though what actually happens here is a bit murky and the film is a little anticlimactic). Still, a most interesting and successful film from a virtual Beginner himself (the not so good Thumbsucker in 2005 his only other feature). The mood reminds me of A Single Man with a bit of Wilbur wants to kill himself mixed in.

The Great Lie (1941 Edmund Goulding)

Pilot George Brent has married flighty concert pianist Mary Astor in a hurry, so much of a hurry they're not in fact married. He soon begins regretting leaving long term Maryland gal Bette Davis and her surrogate mum Hattie McDaniel.

Astor (who won Oscar) and Davis perfectly suited to material like this, written by Lenore Coffee from Polan Banks novel.

Max Steiner music includes some brilliant variations on the Tschaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1. Suspect the dark TCM print we see was darker than Tony Gaudio shot it.

Cold Souls (2009 Sophie Barthes)

With its link to Russia and theme of soul collecting, made me wonder if the inspiration was Gogol's 'Dead Souls'. Could also have been the sort of mad idea Woody Allen would have written, though made it funnier. (Experience of being without a soul isn't really plumbed.) Film certainly inhabits its own little galaxy.

Paul Giamatti is as good we we've come to expect. He's supported by Emily Watson, Dina Korzun (The Last Resort) and David Strathairn as the somewhat diffident clinic director. Katheryn Winnick is the striking looking Russian actress.

A peculiar film which put me in mind of the rather better Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Old Acquaintance (1943 Vincent Sherman)

Screenplay and play John Van Druten (Bell Book and Candle, I am Camera, The Voice of the Turtle, Gaslight, Raffles ), with the prolific Lenore Coffee (since 1919, including Davies vehicle The Great Lie ). Lots of good writing.

Bette Davis (we seem to be having a bit of a celebration at the moment), Miriam Hopkins (who spoils proceedings somewhat by being too over the top), Gig Young, John Loder, Dolores Moran (who I didn't recognise as the brunette in To Have and Have Not), Francine Rufo (young Deirdra, one of only two films).

Ph. Sol Polito. Music Franz Waxman.

"That's alright - I like a girl who doesn't shave."

Shadow of a Doubt (1942 Alfred Hitchcock)

Written by Thornton Wilder, a writer who Hitch most admired, subtly twisty tale has Uncle Charlie Joseph Cotten coming home to visit sister (Patricia Collinge) and favourite niece, Charlie - Theresa Wright. Their mirrored relationship is nicely captured by the shots of each on their own beds, one being the reverse of the other.

Good sub-plot has Henry Travers and neighbour Hume Cronyn trying to posion each other, also lots of good overlapping dialogue scenes with the kids. Note also the way Wright's friend is trying to cop off with the elder policeman.

Listen to the Directors discussing one scene:

Truffaut: I'm puzzled by one detail of the picture. In the first scene at the station, when the train carrying Uncle Charlie is coming in, there's a heavy cloud of black smoke coming out of the engine's chimney, and as the train comes closer, it darkens the whole station. I have the feeling that this was done deliberately because when the train is leaving the station, there's simply a small puff of light smoke.

Hitch: That's right; I asked for lots of black smoke for the first scene. It's one of those ideas for which you go to a lot of trouble, although it's seldom noticed. But here, we were lucky. The position of the sun created a beautiful shadow over the whole station.

Truffaut: The black smoke implies that the devil was coming to town.

Hitch: Exactly. 

Music: Dmitri Tiomkin. Ph. Joseph Valentine. Hitch is playing cards on the train.

The Little Foxes (1941 William Wyler)

Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, Teresa Wright (her debut), Charles Dingle (odious uncle), Dan Duryea (apparently pronounced Dur-ee-ay; his debut also), Patricia Collinge (alky aunt), Jessica Grayson (wise maid).

The black characters have a Voice.

Gregg Toland's photography has such dark blacks it's almost had ENR. Great use of staircase; perspective camerawork is at times almost weird. Clever touches e.g. we can just see Carl Benton Reid's legs behind the curtain. Deep focus wonderful - about the only time we have shallow perspective is when Marshall is dying up the stairs in the background.

Play / screenplay Lillian Hellman.

The three leading ladies, Hellman, Wyler, Daniel Mandell (editing - William Hollmes won for Sergeant York), Meredith Wilson (music) and Film were all Oscar nominated - but not Toland or Marshall, who both deserved to be.

Incredible long takes allow acting to flourish. There are frequently times when you expect a reverse shot for a character's reaction - but one isn't given. This happens for example in long scene with Marshall and Davis, where we see the back of her head for a while until she turns into profile. But the stand-out scene involves Wright, Collinge, Marshall and Grayson, with only a couple of different shots, both of which frame all or most of the actors, and its emotional power is increased by this very simple and effective blocking / treatment.

Quite open ending too - we presume Wright's going to leave home (her last look to mother is deep) but aren't sure; and sense Davis' plot may backfire on her.

Incredible.

Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938 Ernst Lubitsch & prod)

Brackett and Wilder teamed with Lubitsch - how could this be anything other than a bumptious, bouncy comedic classic, full of quick gags, subtle Lubitsch touches and madcap situations e.g. involving Louis IV's bath, pyjamas!

I'd forgotten that David Niven was in it - he's a million miles away from Squadron Leader Peter Carter. Love the moment when he swims up to the diving platform only to ask "Should that be 'Yours truly' or Truly yours?'" then swims off again. Also scenes with mental hospital / man who thinks he's a dog.

Gary Cooper is in energetic and funny form. With Claudette Colbert, Edward Everett Horton, Franklin Pangborn.

Paramount. Shot by Leo Tover.

Screen cap from DVD Beaver

In This Our Life (1942 John Huston)

There's not much about this in Huston's book - he didn't like the script but was happy to be directing top Warners stars, was pleased that for the first time, a black actor had a decent social standing (i.e. not just a servant), and he let the 'demon' in Bette Davis go. She's certainly in 110% scary, spoiled, psycho mode, with the widest eyes on film, though Olivia de Havilland is just as good. Also sympathetic parts for Hattie McDaniel, Ernest Anderson and Frank Craven (father); with Charles Coburn, George Brent, Dennis Morgan and Billie Burke.

Shot in admirable deep focus by Ernie Haller, score by Max Steiner.

Mildred Pierce (1945 Michael Curtiz)

Novel James M. Cain. adapted by Ranald MacDougall, with a host of contract writers including - allegedly - William Faulkner.

Joan Crawford, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden, Ann Blyth (one of Hollywood's nastiest bitches) and (uncredited) Butterfly McQueen, who Ernest Haller would have worked with on GWTW. Seriously well shot drama-noir: it's so well lit because they had to light everything, and the great artists like Haller lit artistically and emotionally. And is every Max Steiner film great?

Still, would rather watch Classic Warner Bros film when not seeing double, in future

Topsy Turvy (1999 Mike Leigh & scr)

Much funnier than I remembered, with Allan Corduner and Jim Broadbent in outstanding form as Sullivan and Gilbert, film is also overlong and simply features too much silly opera, though it's a fascinating journey (reference to telephones, fountain pens etc. funny, as is Gilbert's ridiculous attempt to capture 'Japaneseness'). Japanese traditional theatre still appears weird to the Western eye - imagine how it must have seemed to the English of 1885! The fashion for dropping in French phrases also most amusing.

With Leslie Manville, Timothy Spall, Kevin McKidd (Scottish actor), Martin Savage (good as the somewhat effete Grossmith), Shirley Henderson, Andy Serkis, Mark Benton, Ron Cook (as D'Oyly Carte) and Alison Steadman. Shot by Dick Pope, edited by Robin Sales.

Q points out quite rightly that a biopic of Puccini would be great. We are very much looking forward to Turner.

Lassie Come Home (1943 Fred M Wilcox)

The film's dedicated to author Eric Knight, a Yorkshireman who relocated to the US, who was killed in the war in 1940. Great cast: Roddy McDowell, Donald Crisp, Elsa Lanchester, Nigel Bruce, Elizabeth Taylor (looking oddly grown up already), Dame May Whitty and her husband Ben Webster.

Oscar nominated photography from (The Yearling) Leonard Smith, music Danile Amfitheatrof with its 'four o'clock' cue. Adapted by Hugo Butler for MGM, with California and Washington standing in for Scotland and England. MGM dog trainer Rudd Weatherwax's dog Pal was Lassie.

Not sure I was that impressed by it on 9 April 1975: in fact, we watch it more like children now. Worst moment: Lassie jumping from first floor window. Best moment: Bruce and Taylor pretending they don't know the dog.

 Review from 4/6/94 is funny though:

'Shameless weepabilia from Bosey and Pepper owners despite obvious off-screen handling of wrongly sexed dog. Taylor, debuting at 10/11, looks weirdly like a child with an adult's face stuck on'.

AMOLAD

To guarantee a rounded evening's viewing pleasure.

See here.

The music playing in the Skakespeare rehearsal scene is Felix Mendelssohn's "Incidental Music for a Midsummernight's Dream".

The Way, Way Back (2013 Nat Faxon and Jim Rash)

Having watched two great films in a row it was important to maintain the standard - thus this film again, already, and it's just as good as the last time.

It all rests on the kid and Liam James is utterly convincing - relationship between him and Sam Rockwell is wonderful.

Jim Rash (right), Nat Faxon.