What Was The Last Movie You Watched?

[Fading Fast]

The Little Kidnappers (1953) with John Whitely, Vincent Winter, Duncan Macrae, Jean Anderson, and Adrienne Corri


Two just-orphaned boys, aged four and eight, who go to live with their grandparents in Nova Scotia in the early 1900s, find it a bumpy adjustment in general. One specific bump is that their grandfather, a strict religious disciplinarian, denies them their only real wish: a dog.

Gruff grandpa is also in the middle of a land dispute, which reveals both his distrust of the law and his hatred of the Boers, since his son – the boys’ father – died fighting them in the Boer War. There's also an aunt there fearing spinsterhood as her crush on a local doctor is unrequited.

Two things surprise you: first, that anyone made a movie from this story at all, and second, how incredibly good it is. It's proof again that the number one thing in storytelling is to get the audience to care about the characters.

In The Little Kidnappers, you care about the characters because they are real, flawed people. The two boys who lost their parents and have been shipped from their place of birth, Scotland, to a strange country seem almost shell shocked as they have a preternatural calmness to them.

The boys, played by John Whitely and Vincent Winter, take reasonably well to their spartan existence on a provincial farm in a remote Canadian province. They even take reasonably well to their dogmatic grandfather, played by Duncan Macrae, but still, they want a dog.

Stuck in the middle of the two boys, their grandfather, and the pining aunt is "grandma," played by Jean Anderson. She is a beaten-down yet kind woman who has found a way to make life with a dictatorial man work, though it clearly takes a toll on her.

Everything you need to know about “grandma” comes in one scene when the grandfather takes one of the boys out to the woodshed for punishment. It breaks her heart, but she tries to convince herself it’s fair. For her, there is no other possible attitude.

A lot surprisingly happens in this "small" story – the titular kidnapping, a few legal disputes, a love story revived, a traumatic first week of school, and even the trial of an eight-year-old boy – are just the highlights.

It all works because nobody is perfect and most evolve. Grandfather, we learn, had a harsh upbringing, but in his own way, he is sincerely trying to do what he thinks is right and even changes a bit as life forces him to look at his convictions and decisions. It's believable growth.

The boys, of course, do some growing up, and both grandma and the aunt are changed by the pileup of events. It's honest life coming at you on the screen, all advanced by strong and sincere performances. You become fully – absolutely fully – vested in these characters.

How they found not just one but two child actors of Whiteley's and Winter's abilities is hard to fathom, but these are professional actors who are also children. Macrae, Anderson, and the aunt, played by Adrienne Corri, all give moving performances as well.

Filmed on a small budget, in black and white, with the Highlands of Scotland standing in for Nova Scotia, you feel transported back to the early twentieth century. It helps that to create a poor farm from that era, you basically just have to strip away everything modern.

No spoilers, but know that the movie ends with an incredible one-two punch of a trial where men of character act with honor so remote to us today, it feels like life on another planet – followed by an epilogue that will have you in tears if you have any compassion in you.

Taking the movie at face value, it was a harsher time and a more honorable time, as many believed in or believed they had to act like they believed in the Bible. Today, we are, thankfully, less harsh, but also less honorable. One day, we will hopefully get the balance right.

The Little Kidnappers is everything a "small" movie should be: a good story that transports you to a different time and place, while creating characters you care deeply about who evolve as they face challenges and tests of courage – all with no special effects used or needed.

 

[Miss Moonlight]

Hitchcock's autumnal dark comedy, The Trouble With Harry, from 1955.
Autumn's golden livery, a tiny pre-'Leave It To Beaver' Jerry Mathers, Shirley MacLaine in her film debut, John Forsythe, Edmund Gwenn, Mildred Natwick. Romance, comedy, drama. A really fun movie I watch a couple times a year.

Someone (not me) uploaded a good copy to YT:

 

[Fading Fast]

Blind Date (1959) with Hardy Krüger, Micheline Presle, and Stanley Baker


Director Joseph Losey, an expat American working in England to avoid the House Un-American Activities Committee, made Blind Date, but since it has the outstanding look, feel, and quality of so many postwar British films, you'd never guess an American was behind it.

Everything about this film is consistent with those wonderful UK movies: the B&W cinematography is beautiful; the story, tight; the characters, well developed; and the acting, spot on. Losey even captured the hard rub of the British class system in several vivid moments.

A struggling single expat Dutch painter, played by Hardy Krüger, working in London, meets a married aristocratic French woman, played by Micheline Presle, and she goes after him hard. He's rude and dismissive, but when a pretty woman wants a man for an affair...well.

We only learn this, however, through flashbacks after Presle is presumed murdered and Krüger is the chief suspect. The lead inspector on the case, played by Stanley Baker, plays both good cop and bad cop with Krüger as he tries to untangle the details of the murder.

Weighing on Baker, meanwhile, is his commoner background – a career advancement hurdle because Scotland Yard still functions like an "old boys" network. This becomes apparent when a top government official, a lord, played by David Markham, is indirectly linked to the case.

Baker is cryptically told to keep Markham's name out of the case, which makes the investigation more difficult as Krüger swears his innocence, Markham remains "hands off," and Presle inconveniently proves to have a connection to Markham.

There is a stage play feel to the effort as several scenes are just Baker and Krüger alone arguing over Krüger's apparent guilt. There is, though, also a police-suspect tension in those exchanges that matches any of the billion modern and well-done TV crime shows today.

There's also a big twist about two-thirds of the way in that you want to see fresh – it reshuffles the deck for the viewer and Baker. It goes over well because Presle plays a difficult role with impressive equanimity.

Despite being a bit of an arrogant jerk, your sentiments are aligned with Krüger as you don't believe he murdered Presle, even as the evidence mounts against him. Presle proves the more complex character, however, as more sides of her personality roll out slowly toward the end.

For the era, credit to Losey, Krüger, and Presle for getting the point across that, in bed, commoner Krüger lights up posh Presle like a pinball machine. This explains some of her later actions, but also stands in tantalizingly stark contrast to her haughty, aloof French demeanor.

Stepping back, the picture can be seen as the lower classes – Krüger and Baker – against the upper classes – Presle and Markham – but that's more of a college film-study view, as the movie basically plays as a darn good whodunit with some normal class overtones.

Krüger is strong playing the surly artist, bitter at his lack of success; although, in a few scenes he overplays his anger. It is Presle, though, who quietly gives the picture its spark. She somehow manages to be cold and ***y as her forbidding pose puts an edge on her libido.

Baker, like Krüger, overplays his working-class pique a bit, but he also carries good chunks of the movie along where it would flag without his inner angst, anger, and insecurities coming through his supposedly controlled British "investigator" demeanor.

Shot in the noted beautiful black and white of the era and on location all around London, Blind Date serves as a time capsule of London just before the 1960s "mod" style was about to hit.

It also serves as just what a regular movie should be: quality entertainment with characters you come to care about, who experience personal growth as complex events buffer their lives. It's straightforward darn-good mid-century British cinema.

 

[Fading Fast]

After Tonight from 1933 with Constance Bennett and Gilbert Roland


Love, war, romance, and spying are a combustible mix that Hollywood has returned to time and again, as in After Tonight, an early entrée in the "enemies who don't know, at first, they are enemies fall in love" subgenre of spy/war movies.

Constance Bennett plays a Russian posing as an Austrian on her way from Paris to Vienna during World War I. On the train platform, she meets an Austrian captain, played by Gilbert Roland, going to Vienna – he's beginning an appointment in Austria's intelligence service.

They flirt; he's smitten hard, but she bolts in the rain. They don't meet up again until she's a nurse in Vienna where he's looking for the notorious spy "K-14," who has been passing Austrian military secrets to the Russians.

It's no spoiler, as the viewer is told right away, that Bennett is K-14 – invisible ink, secret drops, hidden messages, etc. – using her nursing work as a cover. In a way that's both the setup and the story, as everything from here goes exactly as expected until the climax.

Bennett and Roland fall in love, but he, with a nurse, and she, with what she thinks is just some captain, as she doesn't know he is a spy hunter looking for, well, her specifically. The movie is at its best when Bennett is doing spy stuff or the few times when she's nearly caught.

There's a scene in which she, along with several other suspects, is searched in a general roundup. A matron does the, umm, detailed work, but Bennett's spirited post-search comments make it clear that no part of her, inside or out, was left, umm, uninspected. It's precode prurient and fun.

While her spy work is a bit hokey – look for the bit with the sliding stair panel, it's silly but somehow cool at the same time – the movie isn't camp or comedy. That point is drilled home when one of Bennett's contacts, a fellow spy, is captured and executed practically in front of her.

The movie flounders when it focuses on the Bennett-Roland romance, which probably explains its box-office failure. Despite both actors being appealing individually, they don't have the on-screen spark that makes all the difference.

There's no getting past that fatal flaw. The spy drama plays out as you can guess up to the point when the lovers discover who each one really is, but what follows after that is an average climax and questionable epilogue.

Made in 1933 at RKO and in need of a restoration, the movie has an "early talkie" feel with choppy transitions, uneven sound, modest sets, and some silent film mannerisms still hanging on. One guesses that had MGM or Warner Bros. made it, it would have had a more modern polish.

This was Bennett's last rodeo under her RKO contract, so the studio blamed the movie's failure on her, but she is very good in several scenes. That said, she does lack the "exotic" European flair – sultry look/husky voice – that a Garbo or Dietrich brought to these types of roles then.

If anyone let the studio down it was Roland who is a bit wooden, but still, the man is a talented actor who hardly embarrassed himself. He does, even if a bit stilted, have that God-given gift of standing out in a scene.

After Tonight, which has its moments, failed for one reason: you don't feel the passion – the romantic love – between the two stars. Everything else – the off-the-shelf spy story, the obvious sets, etc. – wouldn't have mattered had the two stars caught fire on screen, but alas.

 

[Mister Cairo]

As part of an early start to the Cairo Cavalcade of Hallowe'en Horror, one of our favourites, the film Dark Shadows, with Johnny Deppe, Eva Green and Mochelle Pfieffer.

I have never seen the TV show it is based upon, I am told repeatedly the show is excellent, that the film does not hold a candle to it, etc.

I DO NOT CARE!

We enjoy the film!

 

[Doctor Strange]

A lot of original Dark Shadows fans like me - we were glued to this "spook opera" every afternoon for years as teens - absolutely hate the Tim Burton film because it's an out-and-out comedy, not the deadpan serious melodrama of the original.

But I love it. Any attempt to recapture Dark Shadows as serious drama - like the brief nineties revival - is doomed to fail, because almost everything about the story/characters is so silly.

Burton's film, though a comedy, is clearly coming from a team with enormous affection for the original show, and you can feel it. It's got a lot more legitimate charm than Burton's godawful recent films, that's for sure, and some strong performances too. Making Barnabas more a fish-out-of-water in the 1970s was a clever choice.

And if the beautiful witch Angelique (understand: Lara Parker's original was very important to my pubescent development!) is now Eva Green as a blonde in a totally unhinged, scenery chewing performance, what's not to like?!?

 

[Worf]

As part of an early start to the Cairo Cavalcade of Hallowe'en Horror, one of our favourites, the film Dark Shadows, with Johnny Deppe, Eva Green and Mochelle Pfieffer.

I have never seen the TV show it is based upon, I am told repeatedly the show is excellent, that the film does not hold a candle to it, etc.

I DO NOT CARE!

We enjoy the film!

Actually I loved the adaptation. Unlike my sister... I did NOT run home to watch Dark Shadows on the tube after school. Later in life I watched the two films which I found entertaining but that was it. I thoroughly enjoyed the Johnny Depp version... Him walking through the town for the first time to the strains of Curtis' Mayfield's "Superfly" was hilarious. His reaction to television was equally funny. It was a good movie as far as I'm concerned.

Worf

 

[Mister Cairo]

What sorcery is this?! Reveal yourself, tiny songstress!!!

Actually I loved the adaptation. Unlike my sister... I did NOT run home to watch Dark Shadows on the tube after school. Later in life I watched the two films which I found entertaining but that was it. I thoroughly enjoyed the Johnny Depp version... Him walking through the town for the first time to the strains of Curtis' Mayfield's "Superfly" was hilarious. His reaction to television was equally funny. It was a good movie as far as I'm concerned.

Worf

 

[Biff42]

Hey guys, a little off-topic, but I just heard about a 1969 British film titled Kes. The short clip I watched made it seem like it was almost a documentary. I had a hard time understanding what was being said, but it looks like a good movie.

have any of you watched it?

 

[Fading Fast]

Hey guys, a little off-topic, but I just heard about a 1969 British film titled Kes. The short clip I watched made it seem like it was almost a documentary. I had a hard time understanding what was being said, but it looks like a good movie.

have any of you watched it?

That's an interesting find. Based on the IMDb page https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064541/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_1_nm_7_in_0_q_kes%20 it looks like a movie - and a good one - to me. I have not seen it, but have added it to my "to be watched" list.

 

[Fading Fast]

Death Wish (1974) starring Charles Bronson


"A neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality" – Irving Kristol


There's little chance Irving Kristol was thinking specifically about the movie Death Wish when he came up with his reasonably famous quote, but it perfectly summarizes the theme of this 1974 movie – one of the decade's defining films.

Once safe and clean, by the 1970s, cities like New York had become filthy and violent. Citizens planned their evening activities to avoid dangerous areas, sparsely populated subway lines, or to even be walking alone in "safer" neighborhoods – day or night – on quiet streets.

Liberal New Yorkers eventually voted for mayors who would put criminals behind bars and make the streets and subways safe again. While the exact policies that worked are still debated to this day, no one denies the incredible change for the better in New York City by the 1990s.

Before that transformation, movies like Death Wish were being made to capture the city's anomie. Charles Bronson, here, plays an uber-liberal New Yorker – he was a conscientious objector who served as a combat medic in the Korean War and is now a successful architect.

When his wife is murdered and his daughter violently ****d in their apartment, while he's at work, Bronson slowly starts to break. An ensuing business trip to Arizona, with its then "old west" attitude toward ***s and justice, strikes a chord with an emotionally struggling Bronson.

Back in New York, he becomes a vigilante – going out at night to the dangerous places to find and kill the criminals. There's no judge, no trial, no jury, no discussion – just Bronson with his ***, killing one mugger or *****t after another.

While his identity is unknown, he becomes a media sensation and an embarrassment to the police. Yet, with muggings and murders down because of him, the city's top officials need to "finesse" the situation as they can't admit it's working, but they don't want to revert back either.

Vincent Gardenia plays the police lieutenant tasked with finding the vigilante. He provides a revealing look at how a 1970s police force examined every small clue to triangulate its way to Bronson. It's rougher, but familiar to fans of the billion police procedural shows on TV today.

Other than Bronson's weepy son-in-law, played by Steven Keats – a nice guy who makes warm butter look strong willed – that's the setup for Act Three. There, something will have to change as the police need to stop Bronson, but not make the muggers feel safe again.

There's much our modern politics wouldn't like about Death Wish. In one scene, a liberal laments that the vigilante is killing more blacks than whites, which is rebutted by another saying there are more black muggers – do you want racial equality in the number of muggers?

Regardless of how you feel about that, this 1974 movie shows how few ideas we have are really new. What the movie also captures is the sense of helplessness the average citizen felt, which explains why a vigilante could be embraced, and why a man like Bronson could break.

Bronson plays his vigilante with an unemotional "getting business done" approach where he doesn't look like he's enjoying it. It's a smart take as it fits both his former liberal self and his new avenger for justice persona – none of which is what he wants.

For us today, the biggest star is New York City itself in all its crime-ridden, trash-strewn-about glory. The city was broken – the government couldn't even provide the basic services of law enforcement and sanitation – yet there was still an incredible vibrancy to the streets.

You feel it in all the daylight scenes and the nighttime ones in crowded areas: this is not a city being abandoned. Many today, in a not completely crazy view, lament the loss of the honest, raw energy and the genuine passion for living the city embraced back then.

That's easy to say from the safe distance of time, protected by effective policing, but when you see how dangerous it was to walk down a quiet street, ride a sparsely populated subway car, or – God forbid – go into a park at night in the 1970s, you get that it had to change.

One man with a *** and a death wish wasn't going to be the real change agent – it took the hard work of solid day-to-day policing to make that happen – but amidst the chaos, the movie was a nice fantasy for a public that wanted to see the bad guys on the run.

Death Wish is an okay movie for its time, but a great capture of its time period. You watch it today less for its story than for its zeitgeist, for its immersion in 1970s New York City – a city that was breaking yet, paradoxically, never more alive.

 

[Biff42]

That's an interesting find. Based on the IMDb page https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064541/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_1_nm_7_in_0_q_kes%20 it looks like a movie - and a good one - to me. I have not seen it, but have added it to my "to be watched" list.

free with ads on Youtube.

 

[Biff42]

View attachment 731604
Death Wish (1974) starring Charles Bronson


"A neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality" – Irving Kristol


There's little chance Irving Kristol was thinking specifically about the movie Death Wish when he came up with his reasonably famous quote, but it perfectly summarizes the theme of this 1974 movie – one of the decade's defining films.

Once safe and clean, by the 1970s, cities like New York had become filthy and violent. Citizens planned their evening activities to avoid dangerous areas, sparsely populated subway lines, or to even be walking alone in "safer" neighborhoods – day or night – on quiet streets.

Liberal New Yorkers eventually voted for mayors who would put criminals behind bars and make the streets and subways safe again. While the exact policies that worked are still debated to this day, no one denies the incredible change for the better in New York City by the 1990s.

Before that transformation, movies like Death Wish were being made to capture the city's anomie. Charles Bronson, here, plays an uber-liberal New Yorker – he was a conscientious objector who served as a combat medic in the Korean War and is now a successful architect.

When his wife is murdered and his daughter violently ****d in their apartment, while he's at work, Bronson slowly starts to break. An ensuing business trip to Arizona, with its then "old west" attitude toward ***s and justice, strikes a chord with an emotionally struggling Bronson.

Back in New York, he becomes a vigilante – going out at night to the dangerous places to find and kill the criminals. There's no judge, no trial, no jury, no discussion – just Bronson with his ***, killing one mugger or *****t after another.

While his identity is unknown, he becomes a media sensation and an embarrassment to the police. Yet, with muggings and murders down because of him, the city's top officials need to "finesse" the situation as they can't admit it's working, but they don't want to revert back either.

Vincent Gardenia plays the police lieutenant tasked with finding the vigilante. He provides a revealing look at how a 1970s police force examined every small clue to triangulate its way to Bronson. It's rougher, but familiar to fans of the billion police procedural shows on TV today.

Other than Bronson's weepy son-in-law, played by Steven Keats – a nice guy who makes warm butter look strong willed – that's the setup for Act Three. There, something will have to change as the police need to stop Bronson, but not make the muggers feel safe again.

There's much our modern politics wouldn't like about Death Wish. In one scene, a liberal laments that the vigilante is killing more blacks than whites, which is rebutted by another saying there are more black muggers – do you want racial equality in the number of muggers?

Regardless of how you feel about that, this 1974 movie shows how few ideas we have are really new. What the movie also captures is the sense of helplessness the average citizen felt, which explains why a vigilante could be embraced, and why a man like Bronson could break.

Bronson plays his vigilante with an unemotional "getting business done" approach where he doesn't look like he's enjoying it. It's a smart take as it fits both his former liberal self and his new avenger for justice persona – none of which is what he wants.

For us today, the biggest star is New York City itself in all its crime-ridden, trash-strewn-about glory. The city was broken – the government couldn't even provide the basic services of law enforcement and sanitation – yet there was still an incredible vibrancy to the streets.

You feel it in all the daylight scenes and the nighttime ones in crowded areas: this is not a city being abandoned. Many today, in a not completely crazy view, lament the loss of the honest, raw energy and the genuine passion for living the city embraced back then.

That's easy to say from the safe distance of time, protected by effective policing, but when you see how dangerous it was to walk down a quiet street, ride a sparsely populated subway car, or – God forbid – go into a park at night in the 1970s, you get that it had to change.

One man with a *** and a death wish wasn't going to be the real change agent – it took the hard work of solid day-to-day policing to make that happen – but amidst the chaos, the movie was a nice fantasy for a public that wanted to see the bad guys on the run.

Death Wish is an okay movie for its time, but a great capture of its time period. You watch it today less for its story than for its zeitgeist, for its immersion in 1970s New York City – a city that was breaking yet, paradoxically, never more alive.

Funny you posted this one as I recently stumbled on the video titled Charles Bronson DEATH WISH (all 5 films) Every shot fired in CHRONOLOGICAL order. While watching the clip, it struck me how modern-day police body camera footage gives us the same sense of satisfaction/justice when justice is meted out by deadly force. Many secretly enjoy watching criminals get their comeuppance because they follow the system and try to do right by the law.

Your comments about NYC being the centerpiece of the movie ring true, and make me think I need to do a re-watch and post about the Warriors movie soon.

 

[EngProf]

View attachment 731604
Death Wish (1974) starring Charles Bronson


"A neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality" – Irving Kristol


There's little chance Irving Kristol was thinking specifically about the movie Death Wish when he came up with his reasonably famous quote, but it perfectly summarizes the theme of this 1974 movie – one of the decade's defining films.

Once safe and clean, by the 1970s, cities like New York had become filthy and violent. Citizens planned their evening activities to avoid dangerous areas, sparsely populated subway lines, or to even be walking alone in "safer" neighborhoods – day or night – on quiet streets.

Liberal New Yorkers eventually voted for mayors who would put criminals behind bars and make the streets and subways safe again. While the exact policies that worked are still debated to this day, no one denies the incredible change for the better in New York City by the 1990s.

Before that transformation, movies like Death Wish were being made to capture the city's anomie. Charles Bronson, here, plays an uber-liberal New Yorker – he was a conscientious objector who served as a combat medic in the Korean War and is now a successful architect.

When his wife is murdered and his daughter violently ****d in their apartment, while he's at work, Bronson slowly starts to break. An ensuing business trip to Arizona, with its then "old west" attitude toward ***s and justice, strikes a chord with an emotionally struggling Bronson.

Back in New York, he becomes a vigilante – going out at night to the dangerous places to find and kill the criminals. There's no judge, no trial, no jury, no discussion – just Bronson with his ***, killing one mugger or *****t after another.

While his identity is unknown, he becomes a media sensation and an embarrassment to the police. Yet, with muggings and murders down because of him, the city's top officials need to "finesse" the situation as they can't admit it's working, but they don't want to revert back either.

Vincent Gardenia plays the police lieutenant tasked with finding the vigilante. He provides a revealing look at how a 1970s police force examined every small clue to triangulate its way to Bronson. It's rougher, but familiar to fans of the billion police procedural shows on TV today.

Other than Bronson's weepy son-in-law, played by Steven Keats – a nice guy who makes warm butter look strong willed – that's the setup for Act Three. There, something will have to change as the police need to stop Bronson, but not make the muggers feel safe again.

There's much our modern politics wouldn't like about Death Wish. In one scene, a liberal laments that the vigilante is killing more blacks than whites, which is rebutted by another saying there are more black muggers – do you want racial equality in the number of muggers?

Regardless of how you feel about that, this 1974 movie shows how few ideas we have are really new. What the movie also captures is the sense of helplessness the average citizen felt, which explains why a vigilante could be embraced, and why a man like Bronson could break.

Bronson plays his vigilante with an unemotional "getting business done" approach where he doesn't look like he's enjoying it. It's a smart take as it fits both his former liberal self and his new avenger for justice persona – none of which is what he wants.

For us today, the biggest star is New York City itself in all its crime-ridden, trash-strewn-about glory. The city was broken – the government couldn't even provide the basic services of law enforcement and sanitation – yet there was still an incredible vibrancy to the streets.

You feel it in all the daylight scenes and the nighttime ones in crowded areas: this is not a city being abandoned. Many today, in a not completely crazy view, lament the loss of the honest, raw energy and the genuine passion for living the city embraced back then.

That's easy to say from the safe distance of time, protected by effective policing, but when you see how dangerous it was to walk down a quiet street, ride a sparsely populated subway car, or – God forbid – go into a park at night in the 1970s, you get that it had to change.

One man with a *** and a death wish wasn't going to be the real change agent – it took the hard work of solid day-to-day policing to make that happen – but amidst the chaos, the movie was a nice fantasy for a public that wanted to see the bad guys on the run.

Death Wish is an okay movie for its time, but a great capture of its time period. You watch it today less for its story than for its zeitgeist, for its immersion in 1970s New York City – a city that was breaking yet, paradoxically, never more alive.

FF deserves a Fedora Lounge writing award for this capsule description of New York in the mid-seventies.
"For us today, the biggest star is New York City itself in all its crime-ridden, trash-strewn-about glory. The city was broken – the government couldn't even provide the basic services of law enforcement and sanitation – yet there was still an incredible vibrancy to the streets.

You feel it in all the daylight scenes and the nighttime ones in crowded areas: this is not a city being abandoned. Many today, in a not completely crazy view, lament the loss of the honest, raw energy and the genuine passion for living the city embraced back then."

Back in those days ('70's) the girlfriend of that time and I would travel to New York from Nashville specifically to see the "wonders" of the City.
We used to say during the shuttle bus ride from the airport that going into Manhattan was like being plugged in to an electrical socket.
It was like visiting a combination zoo, nuthouse, and circus, with all the NY inhabitants being the animals, the patients, and the performers.
Some examples:
We were young and dressed to minimize danger so we were often out and about at late hours. Blending in, so to speak...
1. We were sitting in our seats on the subway and two guys sat down behind us and started dividing up the take from their very recent robbery. One guy said he would take the jewelry and the other guy could have the cash. We just sat looking straight ahead and they didn't bother us. After the split they got off and went their own way.
2. We were walking down a street in Greenwich Village and a guy walked by going the other way and we noticed he had on a pair of Western chaps with *nothing* on underneath.
3. At an intersection, a cab driver started yelling at and exchanging insults with a guy on the corner.
The guy on the sidewalk walked out into the street and pulled a big knife and was waving it around.
The light finally changed and the people behind the cab started blowing their horns. Cab went on and the knife-wielder went back to his sidewalk. Not a big deal by '70's NY standards...
4. We also went to San Francisco and it was SPOTLESS. Even the hotels' firehose connections were polished brass.
However, just walking around, we saw a trash can that had been turned over and had everything spilled out on the sidewalk.
We both stopped and stared and I said, "Wow! A little bit of Manhattan brought here just for us."

There are more tales of NY, but you get the idea, and FF ****ed it *exactly*.
Since they made New York into Disneyland North, I have not had any interest in going there.

 

[Fading Fast]

FF deserves a Fedora Lounge writing award for this capsule description of New York in the mid-seventies.
"For us today, the biggest star is New York City itself in all its crime-ridden, trash-strewn-about glory. The city was broken – the government couldn't even provide the basic services of law enforcement and sanitation – yet there was still an incredible vibrancy to the streets.

You feel it in all the daylight scenes and the nighttime ones in crowded areas: this is not a city being abandoned. Many today, in a not completely crazy view, lament the loss of the honest, raw energy and the genuine passion for living the city embraced back then."

Back in those days ('70's) the girlfriend of that time and I would travel to New York from Nashville specifically to see the "wonders" of the City.
We used to say during the shuttle bus ride from the airport that going into Manhattan was like being plugged in to an electrical socket.
It was like visiting a combination zoo, nuthouse, and circus, with all the NY inhabitants being the animals, the patients, and the performers.
Some examples:
We were young and dressed to minimize danger so we were often out and about at late hours. Blending in, so to speak...
1. We were sitting in our seats on the subway and two guys sat down behind us and started dividing up the take from their very recent robbery. One guy said he would take the jewelry and the other guy could have the cash. We just sat looking straight ahead and they didn't bother us. After the split they got off and went their own way.
2. We were walking down a street in Greenwich Village and a guy walked by going the other way and we noticed he had on a pair of Western chaps with *nothing* on underneath.
3. At an intersection, a cab driver started yelling at and exchanging insults with a guy on the corner.
The guy on the sidewalk walked out into the street and pulled a big knife and was waving it around.
The light finally changed and the people behind the cab started blowing their horns. Cab went on and the knife-wielder went back to his sidewalk. Not a big deal by '70's NY standards...
4. We also went to San Francisco and it was SPOTLESS. Even the hotels' firehose connections were polished brass.
However, just walking around, we saw a trash can that had been turned over and had everything spilled out on the sidewalk.
We both stopped and stared and I said, "Wow! A little bit of Manhattan brought here just for us."

There are more tales of NY, but you get the idea, and FF ****ed it *exactly*.
Since they made New York into Disneyland North, I have not had any interest in going there.

Thank you. I appreciate your kind words and love your stories (the heist divide is a great one – plus, it has a film noir echo). I have similar ones from the '70s and '80s. It was a truly insane time and place.

 

[Fading Fast]

Yojimbo from 1961, a Japanese film


To an American audience, Yojimbo feels like the ethos of the classic American Western was absorbed by famed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa and transformed into a samurai movie with uniquely Japanese characteristics. That is just one potential take on this complex picture.

It is only complex, though, if you choose to see it that way, as its plot is simple on the surface: a samurai arrives in a town with two warring factions currently at a stalemate, which has all but shut the town down.

Sure, there's a bunch of stuff about why they are fighting and about their rival businesses – silk and sake are the main ones – but what matters is there are two rivals. So, the samurai watches, plays one side against the other, a bunch of fighting happens and then (no spoilers) it's over.

What works is the seeming austerity of both the story and setting that belies all the conflicting human nature and emotions - greed, love, hate, family rivalries, and, of course, ***ual desire – swirling around almost every twist.

Good luck to you, too, if you plan on following every story twist the first time you see it, as there are a lot of subplots and subtext in play – plus, for an American audience, you're trying to follow all that in subtitles, which means you miss some facial expressions and body-language cues.

For the first viewing, it's probably best to just take it in at a high level – almost let the story, the stark visuals (filmed in beautiful black and white), the fights, and the passions wash over you – knowing that you'll fill in the pieces in subsequent viewings.

Also, for that first viewing, do the obvious and follow the lead character, the samurai, played by Toshirô Mifune. He has the cool look and swagger of a good Western loner hero bordering on antihero who, like you, is trying to put the pieces of this jigsaw-puzzle town together.

There are no American Westerns that predate Yojimbo that match its plot perfectly – kudos to Kurosawa for that originality – but elements of Shane, High Noon, and many film noirs can be seen in the outsider, almost apathetically, trying to "fix" a town beset by rival gangs.

It's also hard to say how seriously you are supposed to take this movie as Kurosawa tossed in some humor and stylistic comedy. It's clear that sometimes the rival gangs don't want to really fight, so they bluster like children and then both go home happy they didn't do battle.

There are, additionally, many side stories and vignettes. One early one to watch for is when Mifune susses out that the wife of the leader he's currently working for plans to kill him rather than pay him: like in the old west of American lore, life is cheap and honor is often for sale.

Through it all, this is Mifune's movie. Without him, it's High Noon without Gary Cooper or The ***fighter without Gregory Peck. You only really care about this idiotic town and its dumb factions because super-cool Mifune is there to straighten it out.

The man has a screen presence equal to those American icons. He has the swagger when needed, but also the aloof nonchalance that really defines cool. Watch for the early scene where he stays, literally, above the fray and observes the battle from a perch.

You know, he knows, and everyone fighting below knows he could change the course of the battle quickly if he decides to get engaged, but he's not ready for that. It's a smart cinematic framing that builds tension for what you know are the coming battles with Mifune involved.

Yojimbo is the "old west" transported to Japan and interpreted by one of the country's auteurs. To an American viewer, it's both familiar and foreign in an accessible way. Putting that film-school mumbo-jumbo aside, it's most importantly, an entertaining-as-heck picture.

 

[Biff42]

View attachment 732480
Yojimbo from 1961, a Japanese film


To an American audience, Yojimbo feels like the ethos of the classic American Western was absorbed by famed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa and transformed into a samurai movie with uniquely Japanese characteristics. That is just one potential take on this complex picture.

It is only complex, though, if you choose to see it that way, as its plot is simple on the surface: a samurai arrives in a town with two warring factions currently at a stalemate, which has all but shut the town down.

Sure, there's a bunch of stuff about why they are fighting and about their rival businesses – silk and sake are the main ones – but what matters is there are two rivals. So, the samurai watches, plays one side against the other, a bunch of fighting happens and then (no spoilers) it's over.

What works is the seeming austerity of both the story and setting that belies all the conflicting human nature and emotions - greed, love, hate, family rivalries, and, of course, ***ual desire – swirling around almost every twist.

Good luck to you, too, if you plan on following every story twist the first time you see it, as there are a lot of subplots and subtext in play – plus, for an American audience, you're trying to follow all that in subtitles, which means you miss some facial expressions and body-language cues.

For the first viewing, it's probably best to just take it in at a high level – almost let the story, the stark visuals (filmed in beautiful black and white), the fights, and the passions wash over you – knowing that you'll fill in the pieces in subsequent viewings.

Also, for that first viewing, do the obvious and follow the lead character, the samurai, played by Toshirô Mifune. He has the cool look and swagger of a good Western loner hero bordering on antihero who, like you, is trying to put the pieces of this jigsaw-puzzle town together.

There are no American Westerns that predate Yojimbo that match its plot perfectly – kudos to Kurosawa for that originality – but elements of Shane, High Noon, and many film noirs can be seen in the outsider, almost apathetically, trying to "fix" a town beset by rival gangs.

It's also hard to say how seriously you are supposed to take this movie as Kurosawa tossed in some humor and stylistic comedy. It's clear that sometimes the rival gangs don't want to really fight, so they bluster like children and then both go home happy they didn't do battle.

There are, additionally, many side stories and vignettes. One early one to watch for is when Mifune susses out that the wife of the leader he's currently working for plans to kill him rather than pay him: like in the old west of American lore, life is cheap and honor is often for sale.

Through it all, this is Mifune's movie. Without him, it's High Noon without Gary Cooper or The ***fighter without Gregory Peck. You only really care about this idiotic town and its dumb factions because super-cool Mifune is there to straighten it out.

The man has a screen presence equal to those American icons. He has the swagger when needed, but also the aloof nonchalance that really defines cool. Watch for the early scene where he stays, literally, above the fray and observes the battle from a perch.

You know, he knows, and everyone fighting below knows he could change the course of the battle quickly if he decides to get engaged, but he's not ready for that. It's a smart cinematic framing that builds tension for what you know are the coming battles with Mifune involved.

Yojimbo is the "old west" transported to Japan and interpreted by one of the country's auteurs. To an American viewer, it's both familiar and foreign in an accessible way. Putting that film-school mumbo-jumbo aside, it's most importantly, an entertaining-as-heck picture.

View attachment 732481

This is a great review. The plot also sounds similar to a Fistful of Dollars.

I've never watched a Kurosawa film and I need to change that soon.

 

[Doctor Strange]

Not just similar! A Fistful of Dollars was literally a western remake of Yojimbo. Director Sergio Leone knew it and star Clint Eastwood knew it.

Kurosawa also knew it, and he brought a lawsuit and won. Fifteen percent of A Fistful of Dollars' revenue was paid to Toho, the Japanese studio that made Yojimbo.

 

[Fading Fast]

Reducing from 1931 with Marie Dressler, Poly Moran, Anita Page, and Sally Eilers


Marie Dressler was a top comedic movie star in her day. Some of her routines have aged well, and some not so much, as tastes and styles in comedy have changed. Her slapstick material feels dated, but her sharp asides, well-timed facial expressions, and compassion are evergreen.

In Reducing, Dressler is paired with Polly Moran, one of her regular acting partners, in a silly vehicle that exists mainly to let Dressler, well, be Dressler – a confused but smart woman who tries to navigate her family of nitwits through day-to-day life in the Depression.

Many of her movies are some variation on that theme, but in Reducing, the pitch is off as Dressler seems less smart here. The reason these movies usually work is that underneath her surface bumbling and muttering, you feel that Dressler is the woman who should be in charge.

In this one, though, you're not so sure. The story has Dressler's down-and-out family – an idiot husband, two annoyingly rambunctious and not-so-bright young boys, and a pretty and reasonably intelligent adult daughter, played by Anita Page – moving from Indiana to New York City.

Dressler's rich sister, played by Moran, who has her own pretty adult daughter, played by Sally Eilers, pays for Dressler's family to come and stay with her out of a combination of goodness and a desire to laud her successes over her sister – yup, it's a broken family dynamic.

Once in New York, and after the initial hugging and kissing, Moran takes Dressler into her business – a combination high-end beauty parlor and "reducing" clinic. Dressler proceeds to break a bunch of expensive things in the shop with her – and it has to be said – stupidity.

Meanwhile, Page meets Eilers' steady society boyfriend, played by William Collier Jr., and he immediately has eyes for Page. Eiler was lining the rich boy up for marriage, but now her cousin is gumming up the works.

Throw in the usual irritation of living with relatives, and eventually the sisters have a blow-out fight, prompting Dressler and her brood of idiots to move out and into a more humble home.

All that's left is for the adult daughters to fight over Collier, which they do, leading to the climax and resolution. That, as always, requires homespun pragmatism and kindness from Dressler, but it, like the entire plot, is pretty forced.

Dressler, though, has so much talent, and Page and Eiler enough youthful pulchritude, vigor, and acting ability, that the movie huffs and puffs its way over the finish line, being moderately entertaining, but nothing more.

For modern audiences in particular, there's just too much slapstick – how funny is it watching Dressler break a bunch of expensive things in the beauty parlor or stumble over her kid's bike time and again at home?

It doesn't help that Moran, who never brings that much to the Dressler-Moran pairing, is so God awful annoying here with her passive aggressive and sometimes full-on aggressive superiority act that you'd forgive Dressler anything including manslaughter.

The best scenes are Dressler with Page or Eiler, as Dressler has an innate motherly quality that both young actresses respond to well. Also, give Page an extra star, as her scenes with Dressler often feel like a real mother and daughter interacting – fighting, loving, or just chatting.

One other fun thing for modern audiences is the over-the-top Hollywood Art Deco sets of both Moran's beauty/reducing parlour and her house. One doubts a successful small business owner could afford them, but they are fun as heck Art Deco dream creations.

The big mistake in Reducing is that Dressler is a beat off her stock character as, until the end, she seems bumbling and kind, but stupid. Yet the reason she appealed to audiences is that she was bubbling, kind, and smart. She's supposed to be a "regular" person Depression hero.

The final few scenes try to correct that, but it's a bit too late. Still Reducing is worth watching for Dressler completists, or if you are forgiving of slapstick, like Dressler, and want to see some cool Art Deco fantasy. Everyone else can pass and look for one of Dressler's better movies.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Spanish Gardener (1956) with Dirk Bogarde, John Whiteley, and Michael Hordern


As presented, The Spanish Gardener is an outstanding story about a father whose failing career and failed marriage have warped his relationship with his eleven-year-old son, until their new Spanish gardener forces the father to see the dysfunctional path he and his son are on.

Based on a book by A. J. Cronin, the novel's *******ual overtones between the son and the gardener are stripped out of the film, unless you read 1950s movie subtext into it. The challenge for the movie viewer is whether he or she takes the picture at face value or "interprets" the subtext.

At face value, the movie is quite good and reasonably believable. Michael Hordern plays a career diplomat who learns his next appointment is to a minor post in Spain as he's told he doesn't have the interpersonal skills to advance further in the diplomatic service.

That's not hard to understand as he's a cold, often brusque man who seems annoyed with other people most of the time. Even to his friends and bosses, he can be off putting. He does try hard to be nice to his son, played by John Whiteley, as long as Whiteley plays by his rules.

Those rules include treating the perfectly healthy child like he's "delicate," as an excuse to keep him from other children and activities, so effectively, Hordern becomes the boy's world. At his new post, the local gardener, played by Dirk Bogarde, befriends the boy and the trouble begins.

When Whiteley seems happy to be with Bogarde – a perfectly natural thing for a young boy, isolated from others, to do – Hordern becomes surly and then spiteful, eventually forbidding the two to even speak to each other.

A trip away for Hordern, leading to another career disappointment, combined with a malicious household servant, drives Whiteley to Bogarde, which so infuriates Hordern that he might ruin Bogard. In Act Three, it all comes to a head forcing Hordren to face up to the man and father he is.

It's a good story that is very well acted. Whiteley is a preternatural talent who plays the child with a calm decency that has you rooting for him all along. Bogarde, too, plays his character with a calm decency that stands in sharp contrast to Hordern's diplomatic but angry selfishness.

Smartly, Hordern is no cliché though as he, eventually, tries to see his mistakes and make belated amends. Mean as he can be, and he is mean, you also know that Hordern is hurting and lashing out. It's no excuse, but he's also not psychotic where he just enjoys hurting others.

In one scene, Hordern accuses Bogarde of stealing Whiteley's watch. It's a tense standoff and it's all Bogard's scene as his calmness is pushed to a limit, which has the actor showing you exactly where his breakpoint is. It's acting at its best.

Later, when Hordern tries to make amends, he maintains some of his patrician aloofness, which keeps his character real as one doesn't completely drop a pose and mindset one has developed over a lifetime. Like Bogard's and Whiteley's, it's an impressive performance.

Shot in Spain and on sets in London – and in Technicolor and VistaVision – the movie is also a beautiful look at post-war Spain and the gorgeous Spanish coast. Even the in-city scenes show a vibrant Spain, despite the country still trying to recover from the war.

All the above is true if you take the film as presented, but there are other interpretations. Today, our view is very suspicious of the closeness of Bogarde and Whiteley's relationship. Nothing wrong is shown, but our modern antenna can't help worrying about child abuse.

There are several scenes where Whiteley is shirtless with Bogarde. It's the hot Mediterranean, and they are often gardening or fishing together, but once you become aware of it, Whiteley's shirt comes off a suspiciously high number of times. Is that 1950s movie subtext?

There’s no one ‘right’ interpretation: each viewer watches and each viewer decides. Yet however you read it, The Spanish Gardener remains a beautifully acted and beautifully made film.