Regularly updated blog charting the most important films of the last 104 years.
Friday, March 28, 2008
227. Rio Grande (1950)
Directed By John Ford
Synopsis
John Wayne is a Lt. Col. in the Cavalry, his son, which he hasn't seen for 15 years joins his regiment. His mother, Wayne's estranged wife comes to get her son back. Wayne starts re-conciliating. There's some Indians as well who Wayne slaughters, with the help of his son.
Review
Not a very interesting film, really. I haven't seen the other two previous films of Ford's Cavalry triology, but they seem to be quite independent. Anyway, the kind of western I have always dislike is the "white men versus Indians" one, it smacks of genocide.
Here is another example of a demonisation of Native Americans, they are portrayed as little more than drunken animals, with barbarian singing and kidnapping children. It's pretty awful. Other than that Wayne is not that great here, playing the character with all the subtlety of a plank of wood.
The cinematography is quite good, and there are some pretty impressive stunt scenes. Ford gives us more sights of the Monument Valley. Thanks Ford. And that is pretty much it. Oh and fuck the musical moments. Final Grade
6/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Ford wanted to make The Quiet Man first, but the man pulling the purse strings at Republic Pictures, Herbert Yates, insisted that Ford make Rio Grande first, using the same combination of Wayne and Maureen O'Hara; Yates didn't feel that the script of The Quiet Man was that good, and wanted Rio Grande out first to pay for The Quiet Man. (To Yates's surprise The Quiet Man, on its eventual release in 1952, would become Republic's number one film and become a favorite of Ford/Wayne fans.)
There's this pretty nifty Winchester 1873 to be won at a contest in Dodge. Jimmy Stewart wins it against a guy he has a beef against. The guy steals Jimmy's gun and gets out of Dodge. Jimmy follows hunting the man and the rifle. The guy loses the rifle to this gun-runner who then gets it taken from him by Indian Chief Rock Hudson, who then gets shot by the cavalry passing the gun on to this guy who is with a woman Jimmy has some interest in, although it was actually Jimmy who had shot the Chief, but he was gone by then. Well this guy goes to this house where he meets another guy called Waco who shoots him for the gun. Waco meets the first guy who Jimmy had a beef against and in order to get in on the job gives him the gun. Jimmy comes along kills the guy who had killed his father and happens to be his brother and takes the gun, and gets the girl.
Review
As you can see this is one of those films where it is actually easier to watch it than to explain it to someone else. It doesn't feel as complicated while you are watching it I swear. The problem with explaining it is one of the good things of the film, as the film is basically about the gun as much as it is about any of the characters.
The gun serves as a way to introduce you to a bunch of interesting Wild West characters, serving as a conducting thread throughout the film. Interestingly the guy who lost the rifle probably doesn't even know half of what happened to it by the time he recovers it, as he recovers it from the same guy who stole it in the first place.
All that said, the film isn't particularly impressive in any other way, the acting is all great, but that is only to be expected, and the directing is unobtrusive with some good use of scenery, just not as good as John Ford. So a good western all in all, but then I just love Westerns, probably because I grew up with them, as my father is also a fan.
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
One of the most successful, and certainly one of the most famous Winchester rifles was the Winchester Model 1873, originally chambered for the 44-40 cartridge, although it was later produced in .38-40 and .32-20, all of which also became popular handgun cartridges of the day. Having a common centerfire cartridge in both revolvers and rifles allowed the owner to carry two firearms, but only one type of ammunition. Interestingly, the original Model 1873 was never offered in the military standard .45 Colt cartridge; although a number of modern reproductions of the rifle are chambered for the round. There was a limited number (approximately 19,000) of 1873 Winchesters manufactured in .22 rimfire caliber, which lacked the loading gate on the right side of the receiver. The Winchester Model 1873 was produced in such quantities that they became a common sight in the American West, leading to the rifle being nicknamed "The Gun that Won the West" on account of its prevalence and versatility.
Three men meet under the ruined Rashomon gate and discuss the facts of a murder/rape case that has been presented to the authorities in three different versions. Further on we realise that one of the men witnessed the situation and he relates his own version of events. All of the stories serve a particular agenda.
Review
Few films give you so much food for thought as this one, making it one of the most original films on the list. Firstly its non-linear narrative structure is something very new in cinema and then its implications to the whole concept of fact and fiction are equally interesting.
The film is, of course, a work of fiction, but it seems to show itself openly as a lie here, much like the lies perpetrated by all the narrators of the film. If there is anything wrong with the film it is that it doesn't work as well on screen as it does later in your head. The film has some amazing flourishes, like the fluid camera movements and moments like the medium speaking through the voice of the dead man, but the way the film works it's way into your thoughts is actually the great strength of it.
The perspective on human nature granted by this film is not a comfortable one, everyone acts on their own self interest, and even if there is some redemption in the end, we always end up not knowing what is the actual truth of the film. The woodcutter's narrative seems to be the most truthful, as he is the one with less to gain in distorting events. Nevertheless we learn that even he is hiding the fact that he acted in his self-interest in order to rob the dead man of a precious dagger, casting doubt on his own narrative. This is a film that opens a can of worms in what concerns the reliability of any narrator, including the film's narrator. An impressive masterpiece with wide-ranging repercussions on the whole medium until today. Essential viewing. Final Grade
10/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
The film won a Golden Lion Award at the 1951 Venice Film Festival, and is widely credited to have introduced both Kurosawa and Japanese cinema to Western audiences. The film pioneered several cinematographic techniques, such as shooting directly into the sun and using mirrors to reflect sunlight onto the actor's faces. The film is also notable as an instance in which the camera "acts" or plays an active and important role in the story or its symbolism.
The film's concept has influenced an extensive variety of subsequent works, such as the films Vantage Point, "Virumaandi" Courage Under Fire, The Usual Suspects, One Night at McCool's, Basic and Hoodwinked, the television series Boomtown and episodes of television programs such as Star Trek: The Next Generation, A Different World, CSI, My Name Is Earl, Veronica Mars, Good Times, The X-Files, Happy Days, Carter Country, and Farscape. An episode of Dexter's Laboratory even mimicked the wooded glen for its background. The first act of Michael John LaChiusa's musical, See What I Wanna See, is also based on the same short stories by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, and features a main character who goes to a theater to see Rashomon. The 1964 western movie The Outrage, which starred Paul Newman, Claire Bloom and Edward G. Robinson, was a remake of Rashomon. The movie Hero has also been compared to Rashomon.
In the film Inside the Edges, German filmmaker Werner Herzog said that Rashomon is the closest to "perfect" a film can get.
In Taiwan, press used to refer to a case in which each party involved is having different versions of what actually took place (ex. a crime or a meeting between politicians) as "a Rashomon".
No good excerpts of the film on Youtube so here's Werner Herzog speaking about Rashomon:
Herr Doktor comes out of jail where he has been hatching a plan for a heist of plenty of diamonds, he needs people to make it happen and he finds a motley crew that will help them. As he rightly suspects, they are being betrayed by the financier/fence of the operation. After the heist, that works perfectly, everything goes wrong because of backstabbing.
Review
There is a huge problem with the production code, and that is the fact that a film like this doesn't work as well as it could if you are aware of the code. You immediately know that no criminal is going to get away with it, because it would not be allowed. So you are watching the film just waiting to see if they get caught or killed, but knowing that no one will get away.
John Huston shows his obsession with greed yet again, after Maltese Falcon and Treasure of Sierra Madre he gives us another cautionary tale about how whoever wants all, loses all. The film is extremely successful in all respects, the acting is great, the back story of all characters is fully developed, they feel real.
As a one of the first heist films it doesn't really focus on the heist in the way an Oceans 11 or Thomas Crown Affair does, the crime is just a pretext to explore human relationships and the overwhelming destructive power of greed. A good film.
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
* This highly regarded film noir was one of the first thrillers to show a crime and the consequences from the point-of-view of the burglars and their accomplices. According to film critic Tim Dirks, "[This was] something usually considered morally improper under the Production Code."
* When The Asphalt Jungle was made, Marilyn Monroe was a little known actress and given a small part. Whenever the film is reissued, Monroe usually figures prominently in the print ads or cover art.
* The Asphalt Jungle was based on the novel of the same name by the prolific W.R. Burnett, who earlier wrote the novel that became the well-known 1931 film Little Caesar.
* Regarding the overall theme of this film noir, film critic Lawrence Russell writes, "The approach is out of the tradition of American naturalism as seen in the novels of Norris, Dreiser, Lewis, and others, where character is determined by environment, the architect of fate. The characterizations are driven by the human need for freedom rather than the psychopathic need to kill."
* W.R. Burnett's novel The Asphalt Jungle was also the basis of the western film The Badlanders (1958) directed by Delmer Daves.
* According to film scholar Carlos Clarens in Crime Movies: An Illustrated History, "[The film] was criticized for its liberal attitude toward the underworld ... in Huston's words: 'My defense...was that unless we understand the criminal...there's no way of coping with him.'"
* The movie open shows a dismal city skyline, that of Cincinnati, OH and was shot from The Public Landing on the banks of the Ohio River.
* The film takes place in an unnamed city, but because Sterling Hayden says he is from Boone County, KY we can assume the unnamed city is Cincinnati.
Do you know the story of Orpheus? Then it's like that, only transposed to the modern world and Orpheus falls in love with Death and Death falls in love with him, while a ghost chauffeur falls in love with Eurydice. Oh and people can walk through mirrors into the underworld, which is kind of an inquisitorial, bureaucratic place.
Review
First things first, the book states that this is from 1949, but all other sources have it as 1950, so we can consider it the first film of the 50s on the list and be done with it. So we inaugurate the 50s. Yay!
Cocteau has a talent like no one else at the same time in cinema to create an otherworldly environment unlike anything you have ever seen. The ingenious use of very simple and very effective Special Effects alone make the film worthy of admission.
Cocteau has the kind of experimental love for the format of the film as a visual piece that seems to have been lost since talkies came along. Very few directors, and certainly no American director, in the 30's and 40's were interested in experimentalism, on using the screen as a canvas for artistic exploration, the advent of speech led to having elaborate plays on camera, where the dialogue is as important if not more than the image.
Cocteau has the great artist's eye for the cinema as a visual medium primarily and a literary medium secondarily. That does, unfortunately create the only problem in the film, where the story told is quite inferior to the imagery used to tell it. But if you only let yourself be swept away in the dream-like weirdness of it all you will just love it for what it is. A beautiful, ingenious and brilliant piece of art.
Final Grade
10/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Cocteau adds many elements from the culture of his time. For example, the messengers of the Princess of Death are grim, leather-clad motorcyclists. The underworld is represented by buildings in France which were still in ruins after World War II, and Orpheus's trial in the underworld is presented in the manner of an inquest held by officials of the German occupation attempting to discover members of the French resistance. At the very end of the film, the Princess and Heurtebise are prisoners, brought forward to face the tribunal, ominously elevated on a pedestal above them.
Most notably, the element of the myth in which Orpheus looks back at Eurydice as she is being led out of the underworld, exactly what he was told not to do and which causes him to lose her, is represented by Orpheus happening to glance at Eurydice in the rear-view mirror of a car.
Three sailors have a 24 hour shore leave. They want to have sex. They get girls and have it. Well, except for Gene Kelly, who doesn't have the chance.
Review
OK, that synopsis is considerably more racy than the film itself. You never actually see anyone have sex, but there are so many double-entendres that it is hard not to get it.
Basically that is what the film is all about, not much of interest in terms of plot, there's this story with Miss Turnstiles, which serves to move the film on but that's nothing to write home about.
There are however, pretty interesting things about the film, firstly it is one of the first musicals to film on location, which gives a different dimension to musical acts, it is also very well photographed in glorious Technicolor. And here we can see directly the influence of Red Shoes including a little set-piece which recounts the film through the medium of Dance. Also kudos to Bernstein for a great score, even if the lyrics are not always the smartest things, or in the best of taste, you can really see Bernstein shine in the set-piece which is not sung.
Final Grade
7/10
Trivia
About New York, New York:
The song was parodied in the first issue of Sam and Max in which Sam sings the song with the third line "and the mimes are food for the bums underground," identifying it as from a musical "about a quaint French circus that comes to town and is immediately cannibalized by the local mole men."
Post-War Vienna is a haven for all kinds of racketeers, Harry Lime is one of these, and he has supposedly died, whether from an accident or murder is unknown. His friend Holly has just arrived in Vienna at his invitation just to find him dead. He decides to investigate, until he discovers Harry, a bit livelier than expected. Oh and there's some kind of romantic thing going around as well.
Review
The Third Man is one of those iconic films that is actually a different film in people's minds than on the actual screen. Orson Welles is always being sold as the star of the film, but he shows up in it for quite a short time, as a testament to his acting ability he does steal the show when he is on. Joseph Cotton is the real star here.
There are many stylistic things in the film which are quite interesting, many of them have been prefigured in Odd Man Out, the other Carol Reed film we have already had on the list. The tilted angles, the love of architecture, the fascinating quirky characters, the great dialogue. But Reed does refine that here.
And if Odd Man Out was already a near perfect film, The Third Man is only more so. One of the big highlights for me was the chase scene in the sewers, where the sense of entrapment is brilliantly achieved by Reed. The lighting and cinematography are amazing as well and very much worth noticing. A great film. Final Grade
10/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
In 1999, the British Film Institute selected The Third Man as the best British film of the 20th century; five years later, the magazine Total Film ranked it fourth. The film also placed 57th on the American Film Institute's list of top American films, "100 Years... 100 Movies" in 1998, an accolade which is controversial because the film's only American connection was its executive co-producer, David O. Selznick; the other two, Sir Alexander Korda and Carol Reed, were British. In 2005, viewers of BBC Television's Newsnight Review voted the film their fourth favourite of all time; it was the only film in the top five made prior to 1970.
A woman's daughter's boyfriend dies accidentally. The mother finds the body and to protect her daughter disposes of it. The boy is found and soon enough she starts being blackmailed with some letters that her daughter wrote to the guy. But it is a nice blackmailer who falls in platonic love with her. Thing is he has a partner in the blackmailing, and he doesn't want to quit. Good blackmailer kills bad blackmailer in fight and tries to dispose of the body, he crashes against a tree while driving the body and admits guilt to the murder of the other guy letting the woman and her daughter go scot-free.
Review
This film was a bit of a hit and miss, it feels surprisingly modern in terms of direction, and all the merit for that goes straight to the great Max Ophuls, but there are some problems with the story.
It is for example not very obvious why James Mason would fall in love, maybe the film could have been a bit longer than it's 1 hour 18 minutes length and explored that a bit further. We understand that Mason is having an existential crisis, because he feels he has never done anything right in his life, but you don't really feel his motivation enough.
The camera work is great in following characters all around the place, and the film is subdued enough that it feels very modern, there is very little melodrama here, and it is easy to see why a lot of French directors loved Ophuls so much. Not an amazing film, but worth watching.
Final Grade
8/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Bosley Crowther's New York Times 1949 review praised the actors but noted, "But it isn't all right with this picture. Although it is rather well staged, with credible location settings in Balboa and Los Angeles, it is a feeble and listless drama with a shamelessly callous attitude. The heroine gets away with folly, but we don't think this picture will."
This criminal has an unhealthy obsession for mummy. He gives himself in to the cops for a crime he didn't commit in order to avoid a bigger sentence for a crime he did commit. The police puts a spy in his cell, to try and get more from him, they eventually escape, and after realising his mother is dead, Cody starts going more insane than usual. He tries to rob a payroll with a trojan-horse like plan, but the spy manages to contact the police and it all goes up in a big ball of fire.
Review
This is a great film, Cagney was always at his best when playing evil bastards, and Cody is one of those. Completely ruthless and slightly insane, but he does love his mommy. This is probably the most violent film on the list until now, the first 4 minutes have 3 deaths and one guy getting his face steamed off.
As all good action films it ends with a great big explosion, but in this case it also gets one of the best quotes ever : "Made it Ma, Top Of the World!". Before he gets blown to bits. That just makes for a high quality film.
Of course the production code would let this film through, as the bad guys do pretty much get decimated in the final scene, but still, the level of viciousness is refreshing at the end of the 40's. Raoul Walsh is really going to the edges of what was possible to put out and this is one of the few American films of the 40's to have a 15 certificate in the UK. Great film.
Final Grade
9/10
Trivia
From Wikipedia:
Critical reaction to the film was positive, and today it is considered a classic. Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it "the acme of the gangster-prison film" and praised its "thermal intensity". Tim Dirks on the website Filmsite.org writes that the film may have also inspired many other successful films:
"This classic film anticipated the heist films of the early 50s (for example John Huston's 1950 The Asphalt Jungle and Stanley Kubrick's 1956 The Killing), accentuated the semi-documentary style of films of the period (the 1948 The Naked City), and contained film-noirish elements, including the shady black and white cinematography, the femme fatale character, and the twisted psyche of the criminal gangster."
The film is rated 100% fresh by Rotten Tomatoes. It was also part of Time magazine's all-time top 100 list.
