The Remake Debate: Love Affair (1939) vs. An Affair to Remember (1957)

Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in the 1957 remake.

People have been debating this since 1957 when Leo McCarey decided to remake his 1939 romantic classic Love Affair as An Affair to Remember, and the debate has only become more heated for old-movie buffs as the years pass. The story goes like this: director/screenwriter Leo McCarey, wrote the original 1939 script with Cary Grant in mind for his leading man, but Grant was unable to do it because of other obligations (he did, however, make Gunga Din and Only Angels Have Wings that year, both of which are fantastic pictures). Instead McCarey was forced to go with French actor Charles Boyer, whose tenuous grasp of English made his rendition of the famous final scene much less powerful than the performance Grant gave eighteen years later. Even though the film was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar that year, McCarey was not happy with the result, and thus after waiting a decent interval, he secured Grant as a leading man and decided to go ahead with a remake. That picture greatly eclipsed the fame of the original, mostly because it did not have to compete with Gone with the Wind the way its predecessor did.

That being the case, many people have argued - and rightly so - that despite Grant's superior performance and the more lavish production values, the remake feels somewhat hallow compared to the original. There are reasons for this, too. To start with the female lead was originally written for and performed by Irene Dunne (who, incidentally, had terrific chemistry with Grant in The Awful Truth, My Favorite Wife, and Penny Serenade which makes it especially a shame that they couldn't do the original together as planned), and she's absolutely perfect, blending just the right amount of humor and pathos - and doing her own signing with her light-lyric operatic soprano, unlike Deborah Kerr, who was dubbed in the remake and seems harder and more stilted in her acting style. Then there's the problem of pacing: the original seemed just right, telling its story in just under 90 minutes, whereas the 2-hour pace of the remake drags at times, especially in the second half. Most glaringly awful of these additional/updated scenes are the musical sequences with Kerr's elementary school class, which are corny without either being charming or adding anything to the narrative.

Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer in the 1939 original.

Apart from Cary Grant, though, there quite a few things to like about the remake. As mentioned above the famous final scene is much stronger in the remake, and since it's the emotional center of the story, you can argue for the remake's overall superiority on that ground alone. I also really love the cinematography, especially a certain shot on the ocean liner where Grant and Kerr kiss on a staircase, but we only see their legs, making the moment amazingly evocative; it's the kind of minimalist technique that filmmakers today would do well to emulate. The score, too, seems to blend perfectly with each scene, and the theme song is particularly memorable and reprised to great effect.

So which to I really prefer? I can't really say. I grew up with the Cary Grant version and will always prefer his performance as the male lead, but I'm becoming fonder and fonder of the original as I get older, especially because I adore Irene Dunne. I therefore find myself in the most disagreeable position any arbiter of taste can be: that of being unable to say equivocally which has more merit. Both are equally worth watching, though, so my advice is simply to watch them both and decide for yourself.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

To Catch a Thief has the distinction of being the first Hitchcock film I ever saw (as a child of 10), so it has a special place in my heart. It's fairly lighthearted as Hitchcocks go and is probably the closest thing to a true whodunit that Hitchcock ever filmed, which makes it a distinctive entry in the canon. Of course, since it stars Cary Grant and Grace Kelly and is set in the French Riviera, it fairly reeks of charm and refinement, and when combined with the good story and snappy dialog, it can hardly fail to please viewers looking for an entertaining romp. If you're looking for the heavy drama and real danger of some of Hitchcock's more iconic films, however, you may find this one somewhat lacking.

Cary Grant plays a reformed cat burglar who finds himself in trouble with the law once more when someone starts committing a new string of crimes copying his MO. With the police and all his old friends equally convinced of his guilt, Grant soon discovers that the only way to clear his name would be to catch the real thief himself, and so he sets out on an unlikely quest to beat the criminal at his own game. With the help of a Lloyds insurance agent, Grant insinuates himself into high society so he can be near the people who have jewelry worth stealing. Unfortunately a thrill-seeking socialite (Grace Kelly) uncovers his true identity, but instead of handing him over to the police, she wants to get in the excitement of helping him on a heist. Once she realizes he's innocent, though, she settles instead on scheming with him to catch the real thief.

This was filmed to be a visual spectacular, filmed entirely in Monaco and the French Riviera at a time when on-location shooting was just coming into vogue. Grace Kelly is also as her best as a sometimes-icy socialite yearning for adventure, and of course it was during the filming of this movie that she caught the eye of Prince Ranier of Monaco, whom she would eventually marry. It also features her driving recklessly on precipices not far from the very ones that would claim her life tragically, so it gets points for eerie foreshadowing. Cary Grant is sublime in this picture because he gets to showcase his great physical prowess in addition the charm, sophistication, danger, and exasperation he always portrays so well in his characters.

In all, I rate this film a 7.7.


Buy it on DVD:
To Catch a Thief

Vertigo (1958)

Many people regard this film as Hitchcock's magnum opus. It was made at the height of his artistic powers in the mid-to-late 1950s, and starts one of his favorite actors James Stewart in one of the darker, edgier roles that became a staple of that great actor's late career. It's also probably the most emotionally complex and morally ambiguous of Hitchcock's films, which is probably why it's always been a favorite with critics.

For me, however, Vertigo has always been one of those movies that I can admire only from an artistic perspective. As innovative and influential as the film is, I cannot love it  with the same affection that I have for other great Hitchcock works such as Rear Window, Rebecca, Notorious, and The 39 Steps (my four favorites). Both the dark ending and James Stewart's actions in the final reel combine to alienate me from the plot and characters emotionally, leaving me strangely repelled as the curtain closes.

Set in San Francisco, Vertigo tells the story of John "Scottie" Ferguson (James Stuart), a detective who is forced to retire after he nearly falls off a roof and watches one of his fellow officers plummet to his death, a trauma which has afflicted him with a severe case of acrophobia. When an old college friend asks Ferguson to trail his wife Madeline (Kim Novak), whom he fears is going insane, Scottie agrees reluctantly but soon comes to agree that the woman is dangerously unbalanced. She appears to be suffering from psychotic episodes where she believes herself to be her great-grandmother, Carlotta Valdes, a kept woman in 1850 San Francisco who went insane and killed herself after her lover deserted her and took their child with him. This theory seems to be confirmed when Scottie watches Madeline throw herself into San Francisco Bay, at the dangerous currents at the base of the Golden Gate Bridge. After the rescues her from drowning, the two fall in love, and she confides in him  the strange visions she's been having. Scottie discovers from these clues that she's been dreaming about the Spanish mission at San Juan Bautista, so he takes her there hoping to cure her of mania. Unfortunately her presence there triggers an episode, and she runs up the steeple of the mission and flings herself off. Scottie, of course, tries to stop her, but his vertigo prevents him from getting up the steeple in time. Madeline's death sends Scottie into a complete mental breakdown from which he relapses when he meets a girl named Judy who looks amazingly similar to Madeline. He quickly becomes obsessed with this girl and drawn at the same time by an almost supernatural force towards the shocking truth about Madeline's death.

I'll start by saying that Hitchcock did a great job using real San Francisco and Bay Area locations for the filming. Hitchcock was a great lover of Northern California, as evidenced by the way he uses various locations it in this movie, as well as the towns of Santa Rosa in Shadow of a Doubt and Mendocino famously in The Birds. The City by the Bay lives and breathes in this film, feeling much the same in many scenes as it does today, especially the ones shot at Fort Point (underneath the Golden Gate Bridge), Mission Dolores (also known as Mission San Francisco de Assisi, after which the city of San Francisco was named), the Legion of Honor Museum, and the Palace of Fine Arts. San Juan Bautista also looks the same today, but that's because it's a historical museum so it's purposely preserved like that. In addition I tip my hats to them for using the rings on the section of the redwood tree in Muir Woods for Madeline to contemplate her own mortality as a great way to tie the movie's theme into local landmarks.The only two gaffes the movie's editors made were saying the Valdes house was located in the Western Addition when reality it appears to be across the street from Grace Cathedral on Nob Hill and driving the wrong way through Lincoln Park in one shot in order to get to the Legion of Honor.

You can tell Hitchcock really went all-out on this production in terms of cinematography not only because of the expense he went to by shooting on-location but also because the images and techniques he incorporates to convey the growing insanity of Jimmy Stewart's character and the sensation of vertigo he feels. Of course in the post-CGI revolution world, they appear childish and corny at times, but to audiences of the 1950s they were an extremely innovative way to convey emotion. Despite this, I cannot help feeling that it represents a step backwards for the integrity of film-acting because it marks the beginning of the ascendancy of visual effects over acting prowess as a way of establishing verisimilitude and connection with the audience.

For me, however, this film really stops working when Scottie starts manipulating Judy in order to turn her into a Madeline substitute. It's not that I don't believe that Scottie would want to turn Judy into Madeline, but the way in which he goes about affecting the transformation is so disturbing . Any woman who's ever been trapped in an abusive relationship will be horrified at how Scottie traps Judy into changing her wardrobe and hairstyle, telling her things like "It can matter to you." This is so callous, so selfishly manipulating - to say nothing of being a strange fetish - that I lose all sympathy for Scottie and instead can only feel extreme pity for Judy, who, like most women in abusive relationships, cannot extricate herself from the bad situation because of her feelings for her abuser. I will say, however, that until that point I believe every stage of Scottie's grieving process including his following Judy around and wanting to date her. I find it especially heartbreaking when he goes to Madeline's house and stares at her car - it's one of those things that people who've experienced the tragic death of a loved one understand all too well.

I have two final complaints to lodge about this film, the first about the plot and the second about the acting. I won't give away the ending, but I will say that I don't buy Judy wearing the fateful necklace around Scottie because she'd have to be really stupid to think he wouldn't recognize it. I'd understand him discovering it inside her jewelry box because it fits with his obsessive behavior, but it doesn't make sense for her to put on the necklace around him as if she didn't know its significance. As to the acting, I also have to say that Kim Novak's performance as Madeline seems lacking to me when she's having her sane moments. When she's acting insane I believe her, but when she's supposed to be acting normal, she comes off as so wooden that I lose all suspension of disbelief on her performance.

Despite these flaws and despite my persona distaste for it, Vertigo remains an extremely significant film in the history of the cinematic arts. With all the masterful suspense of a Hitchcock classic, the dark fascination with the macabre and honest portrayal of human frailty, this film has been holding audiences spellbound for over fifty years for a very good reason. Unlike my favorite Hitchcock films, however, this movie plunges us so deep into the darkest parts of reality without enough relief from the light so to make it emotionally stable. I have no doubt that this is exactly the effect Hitchcock intended, but for me that makes it too intense to enjoy it as much as I'd like to. I can, however, still watch it with a kind of detached admiration.

I give this film a 7.5 out of 10, well-executed with a decided vision and great cultural significance, but not to my taste.


buy from Amazon:
Vertigo (Collector's Edition), Rear Window (Collector's Edition), The 39 Steps: The Criterion Collection, Rebecca, Notorious

Richard III (1955)

Laurence Olivier dons the false nose to play
Shakespeare's Richard III.

For most of the twentieth century, no actor was so identified with the Bard of Avon than Laurence Olivier, who received not only a knighthood but also peerage for his work on the English stage. Olivier had the combination of dashing good look that made him perfect for romantic leads along with a truly menacing quality that enabled him to do heavier roles like Hamlet, Othello, and Richard III.

I must confess that the thought of putting one of my favorite heartthrobs of the silver screen in a false nose and hunchback in order to play Shakespeare's most famous villain seemed almost sacrilegious to me, but in the end the allure of Olivier doing Shakespeare proved too strong for me to overcome.

From the moment he utters his "Now is the winter of our discontent," speech in the opening scene, Olivier holds us spellbound with his performance until his inevitable fall on Bosworth Field. The highlights of the performance are probably Richard's aforementioned opening soliloquy, which gave me goosebumps, and actor John Gielgud's pathos-laden rendering of Clarence's dream in the Tower.

Shakespearean purists will note some changes made, such as the courting of Lady Anne broken up in to two separate scenes so as to render it more credible and the elimination of Queen Margaret's vengeance on the House of York. The vast majority of the text, however, remains intact.

Now I must put the spotlight back on Olivier to to speak of his portrayal of the title character. Many scholars rightly feel that Richard is a fairly flat villain: a simple power-monger without any nuances or redeeming qualities. Of course they're essentially correct, so it takes an actor of extraordinary prowess to breathe some life and subtly into him. Most people play Richard as such a slimy character that it's hard to believe anyone listening to him or following him. Olivier, however, imbues just enough dignity and nobility into him for the audience to understand how Lady Anne falls under his hypnotic influence.

Despite all these good points, the film suffers from the same malady as all Shakespearean movie adaptations up to this point, namely that it still feels like a glorified stage play. This is not to say that the sets and costumes aren't lavish, but they're still not realistic enough to suspend disbelief the way you can in a Zeffirelli or Branagh production of Shakespeare. Sadly it took the Brits a lot longer than the Americans to get this right simply because their films did not receive the same funding.

In the end, I give this film a 7.7 out of 10, solid Shakespeare worth watching purely for Olivier's performance.

Some Like It Hot (1959)

**Article first published as Movie Review: Some Like It Hot (1959) on Blogcritics.**

"Well, nobody's perfect."

If you've seen this film, you will instantly recognize the line I'm quoting. It's one of the most famous lines in cinema history, up there with "May the Force be with you" and "You had me at 'hello'." If you don't know this film, I won't spoil the joke, but you should stop reading this review now. You need to see this movie. In 2000, "Some Like It Hot" was rated by the American Film Institute as being the funniest American comedy of all time. It doesn't disappoint.

The first scene offers an unusual spectacle: a full squadron of police cars, sirens wailing, in hot pursuit of a hearse. We soon realize that "Some Like It Hot" is set in Prohibition-era Chicago, and that the local gangs have been using funeral homes as cover for loud and raucous night-clubs. The film quickly introduces us to the main characters, Joe and Jerry, two musicians who lose their jobs, lose their money, and nearly lose their lives in rapid succession. After inadvertently witnessing the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre, the two musicians are forced to flee the city and cover their tracks. Joe and Jerry become Josephine and Daphne, and join an all-girl's band en route to a Florida resort. This is where the comedy kicks it up a few notches.

Continue reading on Blogcritics.
This reviewwas cross-posted on Worthy of Note.

To purchase this film, check out Amazon.com:
Some Like It Hot

I Confess (1953)

Wow.

"I Confess" is widely regarded as a mediocre entry in the Hitchcock canon. Certainly, in terms of the artistry and technical ingenuity, this film cannot compare to the greatest of Alfred Hitchcock's oeuvre. Even so, the film wrestles with issues of truth, morality, honor and the Catholic practice of faith in an almost unprecedented manner. "I Confess" may be my favorite out of all the films of Hitchcock.

The premise is simple enough: a man is murdered and a priest hears the murderer's confession. Under Catholic canon law, a priest is barred from revealing any information disclosed under the seal of confession. To my knowledge, this prohibition covers all confessions, even those that involve a crime... and even if the priest himself is suspected for that crime.

Continue reading at Worthy of Note.

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

**excerpt of a review written for Worthy of Note. For the full article, please click here

Although I found this movie far too scary to watch as a child, I enjoy it greatly now that I'm older. One of the key reasons for this is because they used the music from Tchaikovsky's magnum opus, The Sleeping Beauty for most of the score. As an admirer of Tchaikovsky, therefore, I'm already hooked on that point. Sleeping Beauty, however, is a very different film from anything Disney made before or since. While some of the innovations are positive, and it proves to be a beautifully lyrical production, fans of the older style Disney production may find this film lacking.

One major point in which this film differs from the rest of the Disney oeuvre is in the animation. The incredible animators at Disney tried their best to make the art look like illustrations in a medieval tapestry, and they succeeded to a large extent. So we are treated to the bright colors and flat, angular style of the Middle Ages, which certainly renders a fairytale aspect to the proceedings. Until that point, Disney had tried to do their full-length films in a semi-realistic style with some cartoon-ish shapes and flourishes reserved for comic relief characters. Animation aesthetics started changing in the 1950s, however, and Disney had been slow to adapt. In Sleeping Beauty, however, Disney proved that the new taste could be catered to while paying homage to the great illustration traditions of the past.

In addition to these aspects, Sleeping Beauty also lacks the great quantity of musical numbers that we tend to see in the other films--though Disney had been straying from that model in the '50s as well. That tends to make it less appealing to young children. Combined, moreover, with the fact that the cast of characters is so small and the only real comic characters are the three good fairies and the two kings, it doesn't seem to paint with as broad a brush as the other princess films.

Cinderella (1950)

**Excerpt of a post I did for Worthy of Note. For the full article, please click here**

Unlike yesterday's review, this film is a true pleasure to review because it was one of my favorites as a young child. First off, it doesn't contain anything scarier than a mean stepmother and a fat old tomcat.  It's also got plenty of cute songs and anthropomorphic animals along with a comically violent king and inept stepsisters. So yes, this is a truly kid-friendly Disney film. How rare are those? Well, at the time this film was made, they were non-existent.

Unfortunately this movie's very popularity and watchability has made it the target of relentless over-marketing and shameless sequels. The marketing may be distasteful, but it doesn't bother me nearly as much as the sequels. Call me simplistic, but when a movie ends with the words "and they lived happily ever after," that should be the final word. If you want the "happily ever after" concept challenged, let me refer you to a lovely little Preston Sturges movie called The Palm Beach Story, which opens with a wedding and the caption "and they lived happily ever after--or did they?"Please don't do that to Cinderella unless it's a satire. Legitimate sequels ruin the whole point of a fairy tale.

Best-of-the-Decade Series: the 1950s

As reluctant as I am to re-hash an overused Dickens quote, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times," really does seem fitting for this decade in cinematic history. Whole new frontiers were opening their doors, and at the same time studios were facing their most dire financial crises as their audiences were being stolen by television. Of course those two media would learn to get along eventually, but for the moment they were each other's worst enemies. The sad part about the conflict was that movies started getting gimmicky to draw people in instead of relying on the tried-and-true methods of good acting and storytelling. This Cole Porter written for 1957's Silk Stockings lyric describes the situation perfectly:

"Today to get the public to attend the picture show
It's not enough to advertise some famous star they know
If you want to get the crowds to come around,
You gotta have glorious Technicolor, breathtaking Cinemascope, and stereophonic sound!"

Despite this, there were still plenty of good films made in that decade, and some even rank among the greatest of all time. I could probably fill this list just with memorable Hitchcock films made in this decade, but that would be unfair to the many other great movies that came out. I'm going to forget honorable mentions this time and simply list the films that have the greatest merit and watch-ability in my book. Please do not be offended if you think I've left out one of the many memorable films from this decade. I'm most likely aware of them, but they're not to my taste.


11. The Quiet Man (1952)
When John Ford made a sort of romantic comedy set in his beloved Ireland and decided to film it on location, everyone thought he was nuts. But he made it anyway, and 50 years later, it's still a great movie. John Wayne stars as an Irish-American prizefighter who hangs up his gloves and returns to his ancestral village in Ireland. He instantly falls for the local beauty played by Maureen O'Hara, but runs afoul of her surly brother, the town squire played by Victor McLaglen. Wayne's character has problems adjusting to this backwards, honor-based culture where fistfights are the only way to settle disputes, women can't marry without their guardian's permission, and dowries constitute a wife's self-respect. When Maureen's brother refuses to pay hers, John Wayne must either seriously reconsider his stance on renouncing violence or risk losing the woman he loves. Despite the seemingly dramatic plot, this move is quite funny, and all of the character actors are completely charming, especially Ward Bond as the parish priest, and Barry Fitzgerald as the town bookie and drunk. The brawl at the end was the longest fight every recorded for a movie, and it's hilarious. I really love this movie. The dialog is witty, the actors are great, and Ireland lives in all its verdant beauty.

10. Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
Based on an Agatha Christie play, this movie boasts a stellar performance from one of my favorite character actors, Charles Laughton. He plays an aging lawyer suffering from severe heart problems and takes on a case of an innocent man who seems to have a hopeless circumstantial case mounted against him. Marlene Dietrich is coldly brilliant as the defendant's wife who appears as a witness for the prosecution. This film made waves when it was released because of its shocking twist ending, and audience members were actually forbidden to tell anyone what happened, something that was parodied on an episode of The Honeymooners. The reason that this movie doesn't rank higher on this list is mostly do to Tyrone Power's hammy performance as the defendant.

9. An Affair to Remember (1957)
Being a woman, I had to include this film. I know it's sappy, but I cry every time I see the ending. Why is this film so great, though? What keeps people coming back to it despite its faults? Well, first of all Cary Grant breaks our hearts, especially in that final scene. The writing is really good. The script is witty and touching, and the music strikes all the right chords. Really the funny, charming beginning of the romance only highlights the tragedy that occurs in the middle and the glimpse of healing love we get at the end. Leo McCarey originally wrote this for Cary Grant and Irene Dunne back in 1939 but was unhappy with the result because he couldn't get Grant for the role. There's a lot of argument about the two films' comparative merits, but I like this one better because Grant does a much better job capturing our pathos, and since his character is the reformed rake, if that doesn't ring true for us, the rest of the film won't work.

8. North by Northwest (1959)
One of Hitchcock's most iconic films, North by Northwest follows the story of an innocent man who accidentally get implicated in a spy conspiracy, and must chase across the country to avoid their assassins. The two scenes that everyone remembers are the scene where Cary Grant gets chased by a crop-duster in a cornfield and the scene where he's hanging off Mt. Rushmore. It's certainly one of the best examples of the plotting and suspense for which Hitchcock is so rightly famous, but it falls down my list because Eva Marie Saint is such an abysmal actress in this film. She's just completely wooden, and it doesn't come off as being from her spy training. Also I feel like character is sacrificed in this in favor of action, and that's never something I can stomach. Still, it's a really good movie.

7.Some Like It Hot (1959)
I'm not much of a Marilyn fan, but I love this movie with Jack Lemon and Tony Curtis. People who don't think that guys and drag are funny have obviously never seen this film. After witnessing the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, two jazz musicians in 1920s Chicago go into hiding as women musicians bound for Florida. Situations just keep getting funnier as Tony falls for Marilyn and Jack finds himself with a rich suitor. We also get to see Curtis' famous Cary Grant impersonation when he pretends to be a millionaire in order to woo Marilyn but still maintain his female cover. "Well, nobody's perfect," it ends, and I'll leave you to find out why that line's so funny.

6. Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
Apart from making Passepartout Spanish instead of French, it's really a fairly good adaptation of Jules Verne's famous novella about a rich Englishman who embarks on a journey to go around the world in less than three months during the Victorian Era. David Niven is delightful as the punctilious and unflappable Phileas Fogg, and the film features the best array of cameos ever assembled. Old movie fans will be delighted to see Ronald Coleman, Frank Sinatra, Red Skelton, Marlene Dietrich, Charles Boyer, Buster Keaton, Ceasar Romero, Peter Lorre, Charles Coburn, John Mills, and countless other famous faces flit across the scene in bit parts. And it's just fun to see the characters go everywhere from Bombay to San Francisco and back.

5. High Noon (1952)
There's a lot of cliches in the western genre, but none more iconic than the showdown at high noon. Gary Cooper and Grace Kelley star in this classic gunslinger filmed in real-time. That's right: all the action in this two-hour film takes place in the two hours leading up to the duel at high noon. There's 5something poignant about this situation where everyone in town is too frightened to stand up and do the right thing except one man. Even Cooper's wife is opposed to his fighting because she's a Quaker.  But in the end, there are things worth fighting for and sacrifices worth being made, and this film affirms that so well that most other westerns pale in comparison.

4. Ben-Hur (1959)
This is probably the best movie of the epic genre that was popular in the '50s and early '60s. It is not, however, a particularly faithful adaptation of the novel by Lew Wallace. It won Best Picture, and Charlton Heston took home the Oscar for Best Actor on the strength of the compelling narrative and the sweeping ultra-widescreen in which it was filmed. The journey of Judah Ben-Hur from wealthy Jew to Roman Slave to nobleman, and ultimately from revenge to forgiveness for the false friend who betrayed him had captured imaginations of of people for it to be made twice as a silent movie, the latter of these by DeMille, but this is the one that most people remember. It certainly doesn't let us down in capturing the emotion of the character as well as a spectacular visual tour of the known world of the time. And then there's the chariot race. That scene has inspired countless homages including the pod race scene in Star Wars: Episode I, which is pretty much a moment-by-moment recreation of the scene, especially at the finale.

3. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)

I've only recently discovered the brilliance of this film, but I don't hesitate to tout its merits. Sir Alec Guinness won an Oscar for his role as the ranking British officer in a Japanese POW camp, forced to build a railroad bridge in Thailand to aid the enemy. Guinness struggles to maintain dignity for himself and his men while forced to labor under inhuman conditions. At first he refuses to do the labor himself, since it's against the Geneva convention for officers to do manual labor, but eventually he decides to go along with it if only to help his men, and his example grants them a modicum of self-respect needed to survive. Meanwhile William Holden and a band of Allied saboteurs trek across hostile territory to destroy the bridge before it's completed. Truly a fascinating film about how two men on the same side of a war can each be doing the right thing yet end up fighting each other. It really challenges our notions of what duty and honor mean.

2. Rear Window (1954)
This is without a doubt my favorite Hitchcock film, and arguably his finest of the decade--although people make cases for Vertigo and North by Northwest. James Stuart plays an invalid who believes he witnessed the murder of one of his neighbors from his apartment window, but his evidence is purely circumstantial. Thelma Ritter steals the show as Stuart's wisecracking nurse, and Grace Kelly is devastatingly beautiful and spunky as his girlfriend. Perhaps what makes this film so good is that it's got so many subplots in the lives of the many neighbors on whom Jimmy Stuart spies. In order to appreciate these nuances, though, this  movie requires a large screen preferably with an HD setting,

1. Singin' in the Rain (1952)
What can I say that hasn't been said or that I didn't already say last week in my Top 10 Movie Musicals? It's the greatest musical ever made, it made the top 10 of AFIs 100 Greatest Movies of All Time both the original time and for the 10-year anniversary. In fact it got bumped up five slots when it was re-assessed. The dancing is beautiful, the songs are great, the script is corny but really entertaining, and Donald O'Connor is way too funny for his own good. Jean Hagen is unbelievable as Lina Lamont and really fun to imitate with her squeaky, nasal voice. I just want to reiterate once more, however, that Gene Kelly is an inferior dancer to Fred  Astaire because he makes his audience feel how hard his dances are instead of making them free and effortless as the best dancers do.

Film Review: Dial M for Murder

A midnight phone call to Grace Kelly is the signal for murder
in this classic Hitchcock thriller.

Hitchcock in 3D! It sounds like a cheap gimmick in order to draw the crowds, and it was. But even top-name directors like Hitch were having problems getting people to go to the movies when they could stay home and watch their new-fangled television sets and get quality entertainment (Hitch himself would later give in to the phenomenon and launch the memorable Alfred Hitchcock Presents.). It's a well-documented part of film history that Hollywood almost went bankrupt in the '50s with the advent of television, and in order to compensate, they had to start offering something in their films that people couldn't see on television. Color film was one of the first changes, but when the 3D craze hit, it gave the movie industry an unexpected boost, and suddenly studios were clamoring to make as many 3D movies as possible. Most of them have no redeeming value, having been filmed only for their visual effects, but there were some good movies made during that period in 3D, ones which are intrinsically good regardless of how many dimensions in which they're seen.

Hitchcock based most of his work off plays, novels, or short stories, and this gem from 1955 is no exception.
Almost all the action in Dial M for Murder takes place in a single set, the apartment of a supposedly happily married couple in Mayfair, London. It's soon revealed, however, that not so long ago the wife (Grace Kelly) was seriously contemplating leaving her husband (Ray Milland) because she was in love with someone else (Robert Cummings). When we meet her husband, we suddenly understand why she would want to leave him, especially when it comes out that he is plotting to murder her for her money. He thinks up the perfect scheme for murder, but you know what the poet Burns said about the "best laid plans of mice and men"...

The man he hires to do the dirty work ends up getting killed himself in the scuffle with the wife. Seemingly never at a loss, the husband then tries to frame her for the hit-man's murder--and does an excellent job. She's a day before the scheduled execution when the detective starts to have second thoughts.

Although the acting is excellent, this movie is really carried by the plot. Ray Milland's character devises such an airtight plot to kill his wife that it holds the audience spellbound as they watch it unfold. Then they naturally watch to see if she can avoid the unjust execution. The Master of Suspense is at the top of his game in this oft-overlooked film.


I rate this movie an 8 out of 10. A solid Hitchcock hit.

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Dial M for Murder

Film Review: The Band Wagon (1953)

Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, Dancing in the Dark from
The Band Wagon, their first of two films together.

MGM had a successful string of musical films in the '50s with a slightly different formula than what they used in the past. Most movie musicals until that point were either screen adaptations of stages shows or original ideas with new tunes written just for them (see most of the Astaire and Rogers musicals). Occasionally you would get a tribute movie where the best works of a certain composer would be worked into the plot of a musical, often fictional biopics about the composer, but these were few and far between.

Beginning in 1950, however, MGM started a string of tribute musicals to great critical and popular acclaim. The first of these was Three Little Words with Fred Astaire and Red Skelton. It was a fun little biopic about composers Burt Kelmar and Harry Ruby, a fun little movie, and financially successful, but not terribly memorable. The next year someone at MGM had the bright idea to do a musical tribute to Gershwin, and thus An American in Paris was born, and would go on to win the Oscar for Best Picture in 1951, mostly for the brilliance of the ballet sequence and the fact that everybody loves Gershwin because apart from those two things, I don't think it was a very good picture. Spurred by the unprecedented success, the next year MGM did a musical tribute to Arthur Freed and Nacio Herb Brown set in the Roaring '20s. That film, of course, was the greatest movie musical of all time, Singin' in the Rain.

So this begs the question: once you make Singin' in the Rain, what can you do for an encore? The answer is 1953's The Band Wagon. While not as iconic as its predecessor, The Band Wagon is still a top-notch musical with a stellar cast, a wonderful score, and a clever plot. In fact, to use a baseball metaphor, if those four movies were MGM hitting for the cycle, Three Little Words would be the single, An American in Paris would be the double, Singin' in the Rain would obviously be the home run, and The Band Wagon would be a solid triple, one of those balls that bounces off the outfield wall and rolls into a corner so that it takes the fielder forever to chase it down, and if the 3rd base coach had just waved his hand at the right time, it could have been an in-the-park home run.

The unspoken theme of this movie is art imitating life. Fred Astaire plays a fictional version of himself, a middle-aged Hollywood dancer whose best years are behind him, Cyd Charisse plays a ballerina who is too tall for her dance partner, just as Cyd was too tall for Fred in real life, Jack Buchanan plays a thinly veiled parody of Jose Ferrer, and Nanette Fabray and Oscar Levant are knock-offs of the writing team of Betty Comden and Adolf Green, who did the screenplay for this movie as well as Singin' in the Rain.

The story starts off as a typical let's-do-a-Broadway-show plot, but things go horribly and hilariously wrong when the pretentious director (Jack Buchanan) decides to turn their unassuming little musical comedy into a modern version of Faust. In the end they conclude that it's better to do something simple and do it well than to fail at trying to be deep, which is something films in the '50s seemed to forget.

Some of the great musical numbers in this show include "That's Entertainment", "Shine on Your Shoes", "Dancing in the Dark", "I Guess I'll Have to Change My Plan", and "By Myself". They also throw in a musical sequence called "Girl Hunt," with a voice-over by Fred Astaire who narrates a parody of a film-noir detective story while he and Cyd Charisse dance it out. That scene along with the beautiful and quietly sensual "Dancing in the Dark" number are my favorite examples of Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse dancing together. Fred's "Shine on Your Shoes" number is also extremely fun and memorable, as his horrible luck makes a complete 180 just by stopping to have his shoes shined.

I give this movie an 8.7 out of 10, easily the 2nd best musical of the decade behind Singin' in the Rain.

Buy on DVD:
The Band Wagon (Two-Disc Special Edition), Three Little Words, Singin' in the Rain (Two-Disc Special Edition), An American in Paris (Two-Disc Special Edition)