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.

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

**This article was contributed by Publius, who maintains a book- and film-review site at Worthy of Note.  Enjoy this review of Hitchock's early classic!**

I don't consider myself much of a connoisseur of Hitchcock films.  I've seen my fair share -- "The 39 Steps" was my first, and "Rope" may be my favorite --  but my personal preference is for more recent films.  On the other hand, whenever I discover a new Hitchcock film I know for a fact that I'm in for a treat, so occasionally I carve out to time to watch one.  Thus I found myself watching "The Lady Vanishes," one of Hitchcock's last works before he moved to produce for American studios, and the film that firmly established his early reputation.

The first half-hour or so of the film is quite slow.  A large number of passengers are waiting for a train that has been snowed in, and must stay overnight at an already crowded inn.  We first see the events of the film through the eyes of two British gentlemen, Charters and Coldicott, utterly enraptured by the sport of cricket and utterly enraged at their inability to learn the score. They meet a young happy couple on their honeymoon -- a secret kept from both their real spouses -- and a chatterbox of an English governess, Ms. Froy (played by the inimitable Dame May Whitty).  At length we shift perspectives to Iris, a beautiful but rather spoiled young lady vacationing in Europe on her distant fiance's money. She bribes the innkeeper to stop the noise coming from the room above her, and meets the charming and worldly Gilbert, who was trying to transcribe a local country dance. Finally, as the night concludes, we return to Ms. Froy, listening in raptures to the trilling melody of a serenading guitarist.

As the music ends, the guitarist is strangled.

**Finish reading this article at Worthy of Note reviews**

Holiday Inn (1942)

Bing Crosby croons Irving Berlin's "White Christmas,"
a song written for this 1942 holiday classic

Whoever though of putting Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby in the same film was a genius. The most popular dancer and the most popular singer of their generation made for the ultimate musical because they could compensate for each other's weaknesses. As if this were not good enough, however, the score by Irving Berlin features several classics including the first appearance of the song "White Christmas," which makes this holiday outing one for the ages.

The thin sliver of a plot goes something like this: Bing Crosby is a night club singer who's tired of his harried life of show business, and plans to marry and retire to a farm in the country. Even after his fiancée bales on him to be with his former partner Fred Astaire instead, Crosby remains determined to make his rural life a success. He quickly discovers he has no pleasure in farming, so he decides to turn his house into a night club that's open holidays only, appropriately to be named Holiday Inn, He quickly makes a hit of it, and falls for his new leading lady, but Fred Astaire shows up steal her away just as she and Crosby get engaged. Is history doomed to repeat itself again or will Bing's new love endure the debonair dancer?

Astarie gets three great dances to show off his twinkle-toes in this film. Perhaps the most iconic, however, is his solo number "Say It with Firecrackers," in which he taps and throws down small firecrackers to create a secondary rhythm. Not only is it a feat of musical timing, but  when Fred throws down a whole string of cracklers and lights them all at once, it becomes a stunning display of his fleetness of foot to watch him dance around them. The token romantic couple dance comes in the form of "Be Careful, It's My Heart," which is sung by Bing. Not surprisingly, the combination of Bing's velvety voice and Fred's graceful turns on the dance floor make for a breathtakingly beautiful combination. There's another wonderful number in which an inebriated Fred stumbles around the dance floor trying to dance with his partner. Fred does a spectacular job flailing about as if he were not in control of his faculties and adds just enough flourishes to make us think that even a completely sloshed Fred Astaire would still be quite a sight to behold,

As mesmerizing as Fred Astaire can be with his feet, though, the heart of this movie lies with Bing Crosby's character. Crosby was great at conveying the impression of being an average Joe just trying to get by in a hostile world. He does so well that this marks the only movie in which I do not want Fred Astaire to get the girl. Although he does not dazzle us as much as Fred does, he does get the honor of being the first person ever to sing the classic "White Christmas," and there really has never been a better rendition since then. He also gets to croon most of the other selections for the other holidays on the calender, many of which are quite memorable in their own right, and all of which are quite different from each other.

In the 1950s, someone had the bright idea to make a sequel to this film and entitle it White Christmas. Astaire and Crosby were to reprise their original roles, but when Astaire wasn't available, they replaced him with Danny Kaye. The new cast does a credible job with the script they are given, but neither the writing nor the music feels as inspired as the original. Likewise, since Fred Astaire is the apex of cinematic dancing, any film's dances when compared to his are bound to feel less graceful and elegant. Also where the situations in the first film feel scripted but earnest, there's a conscious corniness in the sequel that impedes my ability to believe the characters or suspend disbelief in the same way. It's not that White Christmas is a bad film. On the contrary I find it quite enjoyable on occasions, but it just doesn't hold a candle to the original.

I rate this film a solid 8 out of 10, purely joyous musical holiday entertainment at its finest.

Fitzwilly (1967)

For the rest of the month, I intend to review Christmas films, and while Fitzwilly isn't a traditional feel-good holiday movie, it does take place entirely at Christmastime, so I figured I'd put it in, especially since Turner Classic Movies was featuring it on their lineup of Christmas movies. This film is so rare, moreover, that it deserves to be reviewed while it's still fresh in my mind.

This charmer stars Dick Van Dyke as the butler Fitzwilliam, affectionately known to his employer Miss Vicki as Fitzwilly. The son of a butler, Fitzwilly was taken  in by Miss Vicki when his parents died suddenly and was given an Ivy League education to complement his considerable mental faculties. Out of filial devotion to Miss Vicki, he looks after her as both her butler and the steward of her estate.

Unbeknown to Miss Vicki, she has gone broke giving away her money to charities, so in order to support her in the manner to which she is accustomed, Fitzwilly starts pulling elaborate heists and scams, all of which Miss Vicki remains in ignorance. Ironically, almost all the money Fitzwilly makes gets given by Miss Vicki to charities, so he can never amass enough capital to give up the life of crime. In addition we get the feeling that Fiztwilly enjoys the thrill of heist, so it's not much of a sacrifice on his part.

The whole arrangement comes into jeopardy, however, when  Miss Vicki hires a secretary named Juliet--played by Get Smart's Barbara Feldon--to edit the book she's writing. At first she loathes Fitzwilly's controlling ways, but sensing a deeper story hidden underneath his unorthodox way of running the houshold, she soon finds herself falling in love with the cunning butler. Her investigations, however, nearly prove fatal to the gang's thieving operations. When she learns the truth of the source of Miss Vicki's income, Juliet makes Fitzwilly promise to give up his life of crime before they get married, so he plans one last grand heist to ensure that Miss Vicki will never have to worry about money again.

Being a simple face, this film doesn't need a believable premise to be enjoyable, and it succeeds in providing us with plenty of amusing situations and some really ingenious heists. It's a not laugh-out-loud funny movie, but it certainly holds our interest for an hour and a half. Barbara Feldon and Dick Van Dyke prove themselves to be just as entertaining on the big screen as they were on the small, and I especially appreciate that there's no estrangement between their characters when she finds out the truth about his job because that's such a cliche. In addition the character actors never fail to delight, especially Edith Evans as Miss Vicki and John McGiver as the butler Albert.

I give this film a 6.7 out of 10. It's not brilliant, but it's smart enough to be one of Blackadder's cunning plans.

Mr. Skeffington (1944)

Every once in a while you come across a film which you cannot decide to like or not. It's not that the movie doesn't have parts that you greatly admire, but there are enough problems to diminish both its enjoyability and rewatchability. Such, of course, is the film Mr. Skeffington, or I would not employ such words to describe my chagrin. Parts of this film are absolutely brilliant, but an almost equal portion of it is a drag.

Covering a span of twenty-five years from 1913 to 1938, the story chronicles the lives of Job and Fanny Skeffington, one of the richest men and one of the most beautiful women in New York, respectively. Most of the scenes focus on Fanny, whose vain and frivolous ways blind her to the things that are really important in her life until she almost loses them all. That makes the film very difficult to watch especially since Fanny is such an unlikable character for much of the film and makes no progress towards growth until the very end. Actress Bette Davis usually brings wonderful nuances to her roles, but for this performance she seems like a straight coquette out of the Scarlett O'Hara mold without out any of the aforementioned character's deep passions or ambitions. Fanny does start out with some humanity since she marries Job Skeffington in order to save her brother from embezzlement charges, but once her brother dies in World War I, she becomes almost like a caricature until the end of the film.

The strongest part of this movie is Claude Raines in the title role. He portrays the self-made, fabulously wealthy Jewish banker Job Skeffington, who falls in love with Fanny Trellis, the prettiest girl in New York, a girl who's already turned down dozens of eligible men. Surprisingly enough, she consents to marry Skeffington, and even though he knows it's not for love, he's content to wait for her to learn to love him. Not surprisingly, the marriage is a rough one, and the couple eventually divorces, leaving Skeffinton to raise their daughter alone. He end up moving them to Europe to look after their business interests, but their Jewish ethnicity makes them the target of Nazi aggression. Eventually Job makes it back to America, but not before having his fortune confiscated and being tortured and blinded by the Nazis. We only hear about this abuse after the fact, but it doesn't detract from the statement about the war and antisemitism .Raines as always does a wonderful job at playing the complex emotions of the character he is given and breaks our heart as he suffers and broods in silence.

Of course we get a semi-happy ending despite these complications. Fanny loses her beauty to diphtheria and has a crisis when she realizes that her days of being an object of desire to men were over forever. Just after all this happens, she hears about Job's plight and that he's willing to reconcile with her, unaware that Job is now blind, she manages to overcome her vanity and agree to meet with him only to discover to her joy that he will never know of her disfigurement. This ending feels a bit of a cop-out because I think it would have been much more character growth for Fanny if Job had been able to see her in her altered state and she could have learned that true love exists regardless of looks. Of course there's a certain poetic beauty in the fact that he will always see her as the beautiful young woman he feel in love with, but I don't know if that's worth the reduction in payoff we get after watching over two hours of Bette Davis being a shallow coquette.

One last thing I would like to note is that this film is quite explicit about dealing with issues of prejudice against Jewish people, which was extremely rare for the 1940s, and I applaud it for that. At the same time, though, they didn't turn this into a race film but kept the reality tragically understated, as if there were nothing to be done for it.

I give this film a 6.5 out of 10. It has great potential and wonderful moments, but it ultimately falls flat from the lack of progress from an unlikable protagonist.

My Top 9 Most Emotionally Scarring Disney Animated Movies

I admit that I was a wimpy little kid, especially when it comes to Disney movies. Just about every one of them had a scene that I had to fast forward because I found it too intense. Some of these scenes I look back on and laugh to think that they used to bother me that much, but I still feel that there's a lot of Disney movie moments that are legitimately not kid-friendly. Thus I now create my list of the films that bothered me most as a child to honor the suffering of all the children who had to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous Disney movies. I realize that I don't include a lot of Disney Renaissance films on this list, and that's not because they don't have their disturbing moments but rather because I was too old when they came out for them to affect me as deeply as the ones I saw in my preschool days. Also I really feel that Disney had learned at that point to tone down their villains in comparison to their early work, so the level of terror in the newer films will never again reach the level that their forerunners possessed--although The Princess and the Frog seems to have made a decent attempt at it.

Of course fear isn't the only factor that puts movies on this list. Some of my deepest mental scars do not come from the villains themselves but rather from the suffering of the good characters. Deaths and unfairly cruel situations can be just as unsettling to children as the image of a scary monster. In fact I will contend that they are inherently more frightening than monsters because in the case of monsters at least parents can tell their children that they aren't real whereas suffering and death cannot be explained away because they are an inevitable part of every person's life.

There's a lot of people who are of the opinion that these kind of films toughen kids up and prepare them for the real world, but I think that's not necessarily true for all children. Honestly, some children just can't take that kind of brutality at a young age, and exposing them to it before they're ready will only result in more neuroses than if they'ed worked up to that level of intensity gradually. And unfortunately I fell in that category as did my brothers and many of my acquaintances. So in honor of all these casualties, here is the list of Disney movies I condemn as unsuitable for little kids:

Even the flowers in this film are ready to kill Alice
at a moment's notice.

9. Alice in Wonderland (1951)
This movie disturbed me as a kid because nothing in it made sense, and everyone, even the Cheshire Cat, seems vaguely menacing. The other awful thing about this film is that even though Alice is in distress, no one seems to even care, let alone try to help her. Also they all have sharp tempers and fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. Probably the worst point for me is when the walking pencil erases Alice's path and strands her, making her sit down and cry about never getting home. So even though the main villain of this film, the Queen of Hearts, doesn't seem that threatening, this remains a movie that's not at all designed to be comforting to kids. That's what you get from a movie written by a junkie while doing opium.

8. The Little Mermaid (1989)
I was only three when this movie came out, which meant I was still young enough to have my psyche injured by it. Ursula's lair is a profoundly dark and evil place, and when she gains the power of the trident, she's just as cruel and vindictive as any villain you can name. Surprisingly, though, I found one "good" character to be almost equally disturbing. The way King Triton flies into a rage and destroys all of Ariel's things scared me almost as much as Ursula herself. Talk about sending mixed signals to a kid. Still, I have to admit that I liked the music in this film so much that I continued to watch it despite the scary elements. So while this movie may be scary, it's not quite unwatchable most of the titles on this list.

These cats practically exude evil even in this picture.

7. Lady and the Tramp (1955)
I haven't seen this movie in many years, but reading a review of it recently reminded me why I could never sit through it as a child. I hated how Lady gets neglected and mistreated after her owners have a child. I think this feeds into children's fears that their parents might stop loving them or that something might supplant them in their parents affections. Then there are some other dogs and dog-catchers who are scary, and Trusty's accident in the end is disturbing, especially when it looks like he could be dead. I haven't even touched on the Siamese cats yet, who are both cruel and calculating. And somehow I found their song really disturbing as a kid even though I didn't really understand what the were saying. Still, they make a bunch of trouble and plot for Lady to take the rap, which I found deeply unfair and unesttling.

6. Fantasia (1940)

For those of you who don't remember, the "Night on Bald Mountain" segment is about the devil. 'Nuff said. I can appreciate it now that I'm an adult, and realize how well they matched their imagery to Mussorgsky's music, and the fact it gets defeated by Schubert "Ave Maria" (Schubert for the win!!!!). But especially since I've believed in the devil since I was taught the concept, seeing such a depiction was horrifying, and the music feeds perfectly into the terror. I can understand why that segment was banned in many countries in its initial release. Fortunately I escaped without bad mental scarring by not being exposed to this film until I was six or seven. The fact that it still makes the list, though, tells you just how powerful the effect is. Also there are parts of the dinosaur "Rite of Spring" segment, especially when the T-Rex kills and eats a stegosaurus that made me want to run for cover. Little Foot's mom eat your heart out; that's a gruesome scene.

Maleficent is doing nothing in this frame, and she still
is frightening.

5. Sleeping Beauty (1959)
All I really have to mention is Maleficent and her army of orc/demons to get my point across. Man, is that a scary combination! Especially when she transforms into a large, toothy dragon. She definitely gave me more nightmares than any other Disney villain by far simply because of the physical design of her character. Her image literally became seared into my brain as the personification of pure evil. The fact that I was first exposed to her image at the impressionable age of three doesn't help either. I think Maleficent seems particularly menacing because she's so powerful, with seemingly limitless stores of malice and dark magic. The decent into her realm is literally a descent into hell on earth.

4. Pinocchio (1940)
This movie is just dark and disquieting. There's so many things I can complain about, but I'll confine myself to two instances primarily. The first is the part where all the boys turn into donkeys, and the second is Monstro the whale, who swallows all the characters except the good fairy. That thing was so huge with such monstrous teeth that there's no wonder he's been frightening children for generations. In addition I find the Pinocchio's whole world to be generally creepy. Think about it: does he actually meet any nice, kindly people on his whole adventure? If Pinocchio's world really existed, I would never want to leave my house. Then there's the suffering of Geppetto, who not only has the pain of thinking he lost his "son," but then gets eaten by a whale in his attempt to find him.

3. Snow White (1937)
I've already been pretty explicit about why I think Snow White is a horrible movie for children, but just to reiterate briefly, the evil queen really lives up to her name. The scene in which she descends into the dungeon to make her potions frightened me beyond belief with its symbols of death and evil. I remember being viscerally frightened by that scene to the extent of having a panic attack, and having to leave the room. I also find the queen's death to be excessive and cruel. Not only do they show her falling off a cliff, but she's then crushed by a boulder, and we see two vultures swooping down towards her remains, which is quite gruesome. Then there's our heroine in a coffin with everyone mourning her death. This is a case of a classic fairytale in which you know the ending going in, but they still play on your heartstrings so much that you end up crying in spite of yourself.

2. Bambi (1942)
Even though the Nostalgia Critic ranked this as number one on his list saddest kids' movies because of Bambi's mom's death, it comes in second on my list because it doesn't have the sustained angst of Dumbo. Really, Bambi is a mostly joyful movie apart from three instances: encounters with MAN, the death of Bambi's mom, and the forest fire. And while the death thing is really bad, feeding into children's fears of losing their mother on whom they depend for so much, it's not dwelt upon at all, so we really get only one scene of Bambi suffering from it. The rest of the movie he's fine. So it's a traumatizing moment, yes, but it's nothing compared to the tear-fest film released by Disney the year before.

1. Dumbo (1941)
I absolutely revile this movie because of the scars it left on my psyche. It is without a doubt the cause of unquantifiable anxiety in my early childhood. Most of the film is actually a double tragedy. First it's the tragedy of a deformed, mute baby elephant deprived of his mother and forced to be mocked in front of a live audience every night. Then it's also the tragedy of Dumbo's mom, Jumbo, who gets locked away from her child because she tried to defend him. How horrible is that? What always reduces me to a quivering puddle even to this day is the scene where Dumbo sneaks out to see his mother, but all he can see is her trunk, and she proceeds to cradle him in that appendage and sing him a lullaby. And if all that weren't enough, I haven't even touched the "Pink Elephants on Parade" part. Oh yes, this is the charming part where Dumbo gets his trunk on some alcohol and proceeds to have a really disturbing nightmare, complete with scary voices and weirdly morphing, threatening dream shapes. If you still don't get what I'm talking about, I invite you to go back and watch this movie again, and imagine it through the eyes of a three-year-old child. Horrible.

The Princess and the Frog (2009)

**except of my final post in the Disney Princess series for Worthy of Note. For the full article, please click here

Being a lover of the Art Deco Era in which this movie is set, I absolutely could not resist reviewing it. Like most Disney animated films, it's not without it's problems, but I still find a lot to admire in The Princess and the Frog. Pixar head honcho John Lassiter had a large part in the restart of the Disney hand-drawn features, and his influence shows clearly in the quality of this film, which is higher than that of any Disney animated film since Mulan (I'm not counting Enchanted since it was mostly live action). It also features an earnestness in storytelling that recent Disney fare seems to have forgotten in the din pop culture references and cheap humor, and I think that quality will make this film stand the test of time.

Perhaps the most enjoyable element of this film is the characterization, especially of Tiana and Prince Naveen. Ironically both are extremely materialistic, though Tiana doesn't realize how much that aspect of her personality has affected her. I feel like with Prince Naveen we get our first realistic depiction of royalty from Disney: a prince who's a selfish, womanizing spendthrift and plans to marry for money. This is an improvement because it shows young girls that having a royal title doesn't necessarily make a man a desirable mate. Whereas Charlotte is prepared to marry Naveen purely to become a princess, Tiana won't even consider him until he has a major change of heart. I also find Naveen's chagrin at being raised to be "decoratively useless"--i.e. having no life and survival skills--to be quite believable, a common complaint of coddled children. Tiana's simple act of teaching him to cook, therefore, empowers him to take control of his own life instead of remaining a sponge. In fact his fulfillment in learning that skill reveals to us that his whole previous lifestyle was really what Pascal would call "diversion," a ploy to distract him from his meaningless existence. Once Naveen finds a purpose in helping Tiana achieve her dream, everything else takes is proper place in the order of importance for his life. He can still have fun playing the ukulele on occasion, but fun is no longer the point of his life.