287. Bad Day At Black Rock (1955)

Directed By John Sturges

Synopsis

A one armed man (Spencer Tracy) comes into a town, the town does not make a brilliant job at being unsuspicious and he quickly understands that something is wrong there. This makes him their potential next victim.

Review

Well this was an extremely satisfying film, and that is something that John Sturges is always great at doing, films that are excellent but don't really make you notice how excellent they are, they just take you for a ride.

This film is a perfect case of that, Spencer Tracy is simply excellent here, in one of his best parts. You are so riveted watching him do his thing throughout that the film is just a breeze to watch. This only works because his supporting cast is equally excellent, what two best thugs could you have than Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin?

Then there is excellent dialogue, deep while still quite earthy the dialogue is a delight here. Last but not least there is a great message about the excesses of patriotism, as they say being "patriot drunk", and the horror of complicity and covering up. Oh, and there is one of the best fight scenes in the history of cinema as well!

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Nicholas Schenck, MGM's president at the time, nearly did not allow the picture to be made because he felt the story was subversive.

The film's producer, Dore Schary, wanted Spencer Tracy as Macreedy. Concerned that Tracy might not agree, Schary ordered the script changed so that Macreedy was a one-armed man. He rightly concluded that no actor would turn down the chance to play a character with a handicap.

This was Spencer Tracy's last film for MGM. This was MGM's first motion picture to be filmed in Cinemascope.

Preview audiences reacted negatively to the film's original opening sequence. A new shot showing the speeding train rushing at the camera was created instead. The shot was taken from a helicopter as it flew away from the moving train. The film was run in reverse to create the opening shot.

Bad Day at Black Rock was filmed in Lone Pine, California and the nearby Alabama Hills, one of hundreds of movies that have been filmed in the area since 1920. The "town" of Black Rock, Arizona was built adjacent to the Lone Pine railroad station, which was the last stop on the Southern Pacific Railroad's "Jawbone Branch," which served the northern Mojave Desert and Owens Valley.

Trailer:

286. Pather Panchali (Song Of The Little Road) (1955)

Directed By Satyajit Ray

Synopsis

The film follows the life of an impoverished Brahmin family in Bengal. A mother who takes care of two children, the oldest the thieving Durga and the young Apu. The father tries to make a living as a priest, accountant and writer but never seems to make enough money.

Review

There is not much to say in terms of the plot of the film, except for its unflinching realism, and this is the only problem with it, all the actors are pretty good with an excellent really old lady playing the "auntie".

The reasons for watching this film and loving it are other ones. Firstly it is shot beautifully, the contrast and luminosity of the whole thing is breath-taking as are the angles, full of lyric beauty. It is one of those films where each frame would make a beautiful picture.

Secondly, the documentary style of the film is also great, you see a day to day life of a Bengali family, warts and all, people are constantly eating, faffing about, working, playing or sleeping. And lastly you have amazing music by Ravi Shankar which pervades the film and fits beautifully with the imagery. A truly stunning film.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In 1949, acclaimed French director Jean Renoir came to Kolkata to shoot his film The River. Satyajit Ray helped him to find locations in the countryside. It was then that Ray told Renoir about his idea of filming Pather Panchali, which had been on his mind for some time, and Renoir encouraged him to proceed. In 1950, Ray was sent to London by his employer advertising agency D.J. Keymer to work at its head office. During his six months in London, he watched 99 films.Among these, the neorealist film Bicycle Thieves would have a profound impact on him. Ray later said that he had come out of the theater determined to become a filmmaker. The film had reconfirmed his conviction that it was possible to make realistic cinema with an amateur cast and shooting at actual locations. The realist narration style of Pather Panchali is indebted to Italian neorealism and the works of Renoir.The international success of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon and Bimal Roy's Do Bigha Zamin (which was shot partly on location and concerned a peasant family) inspired Ray to hope that Pather Panchali also might find an international audience one day.

The whole film is online, here's part 1:

285. Guys And Dolls (1955)

Directed By Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Synopsis

Detroit has to get his floating crap game going, he needs a grand to do it however, as the only place available to him wants him to pay up front. Fortunately Sky, the high roller is in town and Detroit tries to get him to bet on a sure thing in order for him to get his grand. So he bets Sky that he can't take this Salvation Army type Sergeant to Havana next night. Well Sky is Marlon Brando so of course he can sweep her off her feet. Detroit loses the bet and has the game at the mission. Sky still has to prove his love to the Sergeant, however, and he does so by filling her mission with sinners.

Review

This is a really fun and original musical. Firstly you have Marlon Brando in an all-singing, all-dancing part... and that's just weird, secondly the dialog is miles above the average Musical dialogue, it is actually pretty great, witty, fast, very smart.

The choreography is great, and fortunately the film isn't overrun by it, the set numbers are well selected and short, and the music is pretty fantastic, with some of the funniest words ever put to musical music. I don't think I ever heard another song with the word Streptococci in it.

Of course there is a slight religious message to the whole thing, but it is treated in a flippant enough way that it never gets preachy, and for the ladies the benefit of a Marlon Brando in very well cut suits before he quadrupled in size is always a treat. Highly Recommended.

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

* The scope of the gambling by the 'high rollers' is often misjudged as their bids are in the thousands. However, US$1,000 in 1950 has the same buying power as US$8,361 present day (2007).

* There is a suggestion that Nathan Detroit may be Jewish, due to his frequent use of Yinglish phrases, especially in the song "Sue Me" which includes "nu" (an interjection roughly meaning well, as of expectation), and turns of phrase such as "What can you do me?" and Gesundheit.

* When "Angie the Ox" tells Nathan to guess who he saw having a "steak breakfast", Nathan sarcastically mutters "Hitler". Part of the sarcasm is that Hitler is popularly believed to have been a vegetarian.

Luck Be a Lady Tonight:

284. Artists and Models (1955)

Directed By Frank Tashlin

Synopsis

A struggling artist (Dean Martin) and a struggling writer (Jerry Lewis), who is a big comic book fan, get involved in the world of comic books, the Cold War and ladies!

Review

Let's get some things out of the way, firstly Jerry Lewis isn't funny unless you are under 12 or French, secondly the film is nonetheless entertaining with some fun double entendres and some quite dirty moments for the mid-50s,thirdly it's about comic books and originally it is about what was going on in Pop-Culture at the time the film was made.

That out of the way let me say that I am a huge Comic Book geek, and yes I said Comic Book and not Graphic Novel, as Graphic Novels are nothing more than big comics, or several comics bound together. I am particularly a DC Comics fanboy, which makes some of the things that happen in this film particularly interesting to me. Several of the events are based on true things happening in the mid 50s and before in the Comic book world, controlled at the time by DC, when Marvel was still Atlas Comics.

Firstly the main comic book character in the film is Bat Lady, an obvious reference, secondly there is a panel show on TV which is clearly discussing Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, a book that came out in 1954 criticising Comics as all kinds of Evil, as the GTA of their time, the film makes a bit of fun of that idea. Thirdly there is a story concerning National Security and a comic Jerry Lewis dreams up based on a true thing that happened at DC, quoting from Superman Homepage:

“Battle of the Atoms” was originally going to appear in late 1944, but finally appeared in Superman #38 (January-February 1946) and featured a classic battle with Luthor save for the fact that Luthor’s new weapon was an “Atomic Bomb”. Since the Manhattan project, which gave rise to the first two American nuclear weapons, was in full swing in 1944, the Defense Department wanted nothing tipping off the Germans that America was even considering work on an atomic bomb, not even from a comic book. While the weapon used by Luthor looked nothing like the actual weapon, and was not anywhere near as destructive as the real bomb, government agents came to DC’s offices and demanded that the story not be printed until official clearance was given, citing the need for a unified national defense. Obviously, the people at DC were confused, realizing that they must have come up with something more than their normal fantastic story.

Following that, another story, “Crime Paradise”, was also censored and delayed. It ultimately appeared in 1946 in Action Comics #101 and told the story of Superman covering an atom bomb test, actually filming it for the Army. It featured a great cover by Wayne Boring and Stan Kaye showing an explosion with the now familiar “mushroom cloud”.

So yeah I am a geek like that. There are also references to other movies, with a particularly funny one to Rear Window. But then, it is kind of a ephemeral film, it won't stay with me that long, entertaining but not great, and Jerry Lewis is annoying.

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Tashlin brought a lot of sexual innuendo to Artists and Models, making it more adult in content than most of Martin and Lewis's previous movies and indulging his own fetishistic fascination with female characters in revealing costumes. Some of his most suggestive ideas were disallowed by the Production Code; in Tashlin's original script, Lewis's character was named "Fullstick," but the censors ordered the removal of this phallic joke. The censors also asked Paramount to cut a scene where Dorothy Malone is seen wearing only a strategically placed towel, but the studio did not remove it. The finished film contains many jokes that push the boundaries of what was acceptable in the mid-'50s, including many about women's breasts and a number of double entendres.

Look at Jerry Lewis being annoying and women in Skimpy clothes:

283. Salt Of The Earth (1954)

Directed By Herbert J. Biberman

Synopsis

Shock! Horror! Companies will exploit workers for profit! Unions help workers! Women's work isn't easy! Institutionalised racism exists!

Review

Ok let's get the technical bits out of the way. The non-professional cast does few favours to the film, there isn't much to talk about in terms of direction or camera-work, the film is in bad need of restoration that no one will do as it is in public domain so there is no money to be had.

That said, if you thought Carmen Jones with its All-Black cast was a gutsy film to make in the mid 50s, then this will blow you away. Of course the film teaches nothing new to today's informed people, but in the 50s during McCarthy's reign of terror it was dangerous indeed to imply that workers have rights, and that striking is a useful tool. Remember that Civil Rights activism was still some years away.

Weird thing is that it isn't that different in many places in the States today, from companies who don't allow workers to be unionised to the exploitation of migrant workers, many of the subjects addressed by the film are equally relevant today, and that is truly sad.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film was denounced by the United States House of Representatives for its supposed Communist sympathies, and the FBI investigated the film's financing. The American Legion called for a nation-wide boycott of the film. Also, film-processing labs were told not to work on Salt of the Earth and unionized projectionists were instructed not to show it.

After its opening night in New York City, the film languished for ten years because all but twelve theaters in the country refused to screen it.

Lee Hockstader writing for The Washington Post wrote: "During the course of production in New Mexico in 1953, the trade press denounced it as a subversive plot, anti-Communist vigilantes fired rifle shots at the set, the film's leading lady [Rosaura Revueltas] was deported to Mexico, and from time to time a small airplane buzzed noisily overhead....The film, edited in secret, was stored for safekeeping in an anonymous wooden shack in Los Angeles."

You can watch it all on Youtube, here's part 1:

282. Sansho Dayu (Sansho the Bailiff) (1954)

Directed By Kenji Mizoguchi

Synopsis

The family of a disgraced but compassionate ex-governor is sold into slavery while travelling to visit him in exile. The mother is sold as a courtesan, and the son and daughter as labourers for Sansho, a cruel bailiff who tends the lands of the Minister of the Right. Hearing some news about their mother the daughter helps her brother escape. In order not to give away his destination she commits suicide. The escaped boy becomes governor and abolishes slavery, but too late to save his sister. He leaves office, as his actions of abolishing slavery would put him in a terrible position with the central government, and goes to meet his mother.

Review

Again Japanese cinema presents us with another winner. There are some similarities between this and Uguetsu Monogatari, not because of the plot but because Mizoguchi manages to emulate the same oppressive and slightly otherworldly feel.

There are no elements of the supernatural per se here, but there is a feeling of irresistible forces all played under a veneer of delicacy. As with most Japanese films of this time it is excruciatingly depressing, summed up better in the lyrics of the song endlessly repeated throughout the film: "Isn't life torture?"

There is a level of emotional honesty in Japanese cinema that was not mimicked by any other cinema in the 50s, even Italian neo-realism seems simplistic and manipulative next to it. The depression of Japanese cinema is admittedly not that of day to day life, but it stems from a deeper, more existential disappointment with human life in general, and in that way it is even more universal.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Sansho was the last of Mizoguchi's films to win an award at the Venice Film Festival, which brought him to the attention of Western critics and film-makers. It is greatly revered by many critics; The New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane wrote in his September, 2006 profile on Mizoguchi, "I have seen Sansho only once, a decade ago, emerging from the cinema a broken man but calm in my conviction that I had never seen anything better; I have not dared watch it again, reluctant to ruin the spell, but also because the human heart was not designed to weather such an ordeal."

Trailer:

281. Carmen Jones (1954)

Directed By Otto Preminger

Synopsis

The story is about the same as Bizet's Carmen, but transposed to the second world war. A soldier falls in love with a factory worker who trades him for a richer boxer (a Toreador in the original), the soldier kills her out of jealousy.

Review

To direct a film in the mid 50s with nothing but black actors was a bold move, and that is exactly what Otto Preminger did. I was recently thinking about the fact that in the past on this list there have been very few speaking parts for black actors and even those have always been in secondary roles.

There was a silent film, the not very good Within Our Gates back in 1920 on the list, where the cast was mostly black. But to have a major, colour film, all singing all dancing, is something else, and if for nothing else this films deserves its place in history.

Some of the acting is slightly dodgy, particularly by Harry Belafonte's first girlfriend, but Dorothy Daindridge quickly makes you forget it, with a mesmerising performance as yet another uncommon character for the time of a sexy black woman. Recommended.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In 1955, Carmen Jones received the third Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy. Dorothy Dandridge was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, the first African-American so honored. Herschel Burke Gilbert, who arranged the film's score, was nominated for the Oscar for Best Music (Scoring of a Musical Picture). In 1992, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". Halle Berry, who played Dandridge in the 1999 TV biopic Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, which included a re-enactment of one of the film's famed scenes, was the first African-American actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for the film Monster's Ball.

Nine of Spades:

280. Silver Lode (1954)

Directed by Allan Dwan

Synopsis

Just like High Noon but there is no train, no clocks, no great music and the bad guys present themselves as U.S. Marshalls.

Review

The Western often gets the undeserved reputation of being an essentially politically conservative film form. But in this heyday of McCarthyism no genre was as quick to condemn it as the Western.

This film ends up being a sub-par remake of High Noon but it has the political courage of making the parallels with McCarthyism all the more obvious by calling the villain McCarty and making him present himself as a defender of the law.

So the film has balls, and it entertains and educates for the 80 minutes it takes, still if you must watch a Western about McCarthyism it has to be the incomparable High Noon, which makes this film kind of redundant. Scrap that, completely redundant. Unless you are so obsessed with watching films in colour that you can't watch High Noon, and if you are one of those sub-humans what are you reading this blog for? Can you even read?

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

After making a series of westerns and comedies, Dwan directed fellow Canadian Mary Pickford in several very successful movies as well as her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, notably in the acclaimed 1922 Robin Hood.

Following the introduction of the talkies, in 1937 he directed child-star Shirley Temple in Heidi and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm the following year.

Over his long and successful career spanning over 50 years, he directed over 400 motion pictures, many of them highly acclaimed, such as the 1949 box office smash, Sands of Iwo Jima. He directed his last movie in 1961.

He died in Los Angeles at the age of ninety-six, and is interred in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery, Mission Hills, California.

Allan Dwan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6263 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

As there are no videos of Silver Lode you get the full video of 1922's Robin Hood, directed by Alan Dwan (the same director as Silver Lode) starring Douglas Fairbanks:

279. Senso (1954)

Directed By Luchino Visconti

Synopsis

A superficial countess betrays her principles for vanity, lust and a piece of ass... surprisingly the lust object is not all it is cracked up to be. Shock!

Review

The film starts with an Italian opera (Verdi's Il Trovatore) and soon you realise that the film is itself a non-musical (not very good) opera, I am sure that this was a thought out reference by Visconti, but it comes off as melodramatic, overacted, and simplistic.

Good for Visconti for filming in colour, now he could get actors that don't need dubbing for every single line! Oh and a good editor would be a plus, there are several occasions where there is a visible bleep in the film in very unsmooth cuts, suddenly someone's head is 2 inches to the left.

Who exactly are you supposed to sympathise with here? Certainly not the cheating, womanising, bastard Austrian officer, although I enjoyed him humiliating the even more insufferable countess. She is vain, betrays her political principles, only because suddenly a young officer of the army she opposes seems to like her, and she is taken over by lust as she is married to an old man. She is stupid, unsympathetic and weak and yet it seems like we are supposed to sympathise... not me. Visconti did a great film in Ossessione, but here he falls flat. Gets a 7 for the last 20 minutes or so, which are quite good, but you have a long way to get to those, and they are only good because she gets humiliated and he gets shot, making me happy. Oh and the war scenes were quite good, as were dresses, sets etc.

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Tinto Brass adapted the story in 2002 as Senso '45 after reading the novella and finding himself unsatisfied with Visconti's version. The film starred Anna Galiena as Livia and Gabriel Garko as her lover. The story of the film is much more faithful to Camillo Boito's work than the earlier adaptation in terms of tone and story, but the action was transported from the War of Unification to the end of World War II, with Remigio becoming a Nazi Lieutenant and Livia updated to being the wife of a high ranking Fascist official. Brass later explained that the change in time was made because he couldn't possibly bring himself to compete with Visconti's vision of Risorgimento-era Italy. Unlike the 1954 version, Senso '45 did not romanticize the affair between Livia and Ruz (Helmut Schultz in the 2002 film), but showed it for what it was: a clinical study in vanity and lust.

Scene:

278. Shichinin no Samurai (The Seven Samurai) (1954)

Directed by Akira Kurosawa

Synopsis

A village is threatened by bandits, some villagers decide to recruit some Samurai to help defend it. They assemble a rag-tag team of seven samurai who defend the village with their lives.

Review

Well what to say about this? One of my favourite films of all time and not only mine but a favourite of most people who gave it the 3 hours plus it takes to watch it. It is a master piece of action cinema, eventually remade into the Magnificent Seven in a Western context, the best version is still the original one, this one, completely unmissable if you even presume to know anything about cinema.

The film is notable for a number of firsts. The idea of assembling a team done so often afterwards in films such as Ocean's Eleven has its start here, the use of slow-motion in action sequences starts here as well, for example. But it isn't so much the firsts that make this film amazing, it is how well it is put together.

The characters all have 3 dimensions even if at times there seems to be an almost Greek tragedy mask thing going on, particularly with the villagers, which weirdly works for the good of the film. The cartoonish expressions on some characters immediately give you a sense of their personality, as does their body language, it is a very visual and physical film. Never more than in the last battle as fighters splash in the mud under heavy rain. This heavy rain is the best use Kurosawa has done of weather as a mood intensifier, he had done rain in Rashomon and snow in Ikiru, but the rain in Seven Samurai is almost palpable, you can almost smell it, you almost feel damp with mud and sweat and rain. And then in the end only 3 Samurai survive, Japanese cinema can never give you a happy ending it seems, and I love that.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The single largest undertaking by a Japanese filmmaker at the time, Seven Samurai was a technical and creative watershed that became Japan's highest-grossing movie and set a new standard for the industry. Its influence can be most strongly felt in the western The Magnificent Seven, a film specifically adapted from Seven Samurai. Director John Sturges took Seven Samurai and adapted it to the Old West, with the Samurai replaced by gunslingers. Many of The Magnificent Seven's scenes mirror those of Seven Samurai and the final line of dialogue is nearly identical: "The old man was right. Only the farmers won. We lost. We always lose." The film spawned several sequels and there was also a short-lived 1998 television series.

The Indian film Sholay (1975) borrowed its basic premise from Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven. The film was declared BBC India's "Film of the Millennium" and is the highest-grossing Indian film of all time.

A sci-fi reworking is found in the Roger Corman release Battle Beyond the Stars (1980) which not only pays homage to the plot of Seven Samurai, it also employs one of the actors from the American remake The Magnificent Seven, Robert Vaughn.

George Lucas states in the DVD commentary for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, that Yoda's running his hand over his head (like Kambei) is a nod to Kurosawa and this movie. Also the line about the farmers' lot in life is to suffer is quoted in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope but as droids.

Sam Peckinpah’s use of slow motion violence in his films, most famously The Wild Bunch, which influenced manifold other directors, was, in fact, influenced by Kurosawa’s use of such in this film.

In 2004, Kurosawa's estate approved the production of an anime remake of the film, called Samurai 7, produced by GONZO, which provided an alternate steampunk-themed retelling of the classic story.

A sixth season episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine entitled "The Magnificent Ferengi" also spoofs the film. Even the 1986 comedy ¡Three Amigos! borrows several themes from Kurosawa.

The game Throne of Darkness gives the player control of seven samurai (four at a time) who all closely resemble Kurosawa's characters in role, style of combat and appearance.

Trailer:

277. La Strada (The Road) (1954)

Directed By Federico Fellini

Synopsis

A weird girl is basically "sold" to a brutal travelling strongman as his assistant. He mistreats her, she doesn't like it but bears with him, and when she has the possibility of escaping him she has a talk with a more human character which they met on their travels, The Fool, who makes her see that her place is next to the strongman, as there is no one else for him. She stays with him, until he kills The Fool by accident. She goes slightly crazier and he dumps her. Years later he learns of her death and cries on the beach.

Review

Yeah it's a good film, but I can't help but be disappointed with the majority of Italian films in the list until now. They have been sold to me by the intelligentsia as the greatest masterpieces of all time, and then I find myself much more touched by much obscurer directors like Yasujiro Ozu or Kenji Mizoguchi and slightly untouched by the Fellinis, Rosselinis and De Sicas of this world. I must have something for Japanese cinema.

That said there are glimpses here of things which Fellini would do in the future which are more interesting, moments of nightmarish surreality like when Gelsomina visits the sick child at the wedding.

Another that generally annoys me in Italian cinema is the insistence on dubbing, Anthony Quinn one of the characters with the greatest amount of speech is consistently dubbed, probably because his Italian wasn't that great, but a lot is lost in the performance. Still I have to tip my hat to the great Nino Rota for his soundtrack.

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

In 1992, Fellini told Canadian director Damian Pettigrew that he had conceived the film at the same time as co-writer Tullio Pinelli in a kind of "orgiastic synchronicity. I was directing I vitelloni and Tullio had gone to see his family in Turin. At that time, there was no autostrada between Rome and the north and so you had to drive through the mountains. Along one of the tortuous winding roads, he saw a man pulling a carretta, a sort of cart covered in tarpaulin... A tiny woman was pushing the cart from behind. When he returned to Rome, he told me what he'd seen and his desire to narrate their hard lives on the road. 'It would make the ideal scenario for your next film,' he said. It was the same story I'd imagined but with a crucial difference: mine focused on a little traveling circus with a slow-witted young woman named Gelsomina. So we merged my flea-bitten circus characters with his smoky campfire mountain vagabonds. We named Zampanò after the owners of two small circuses in Rome: Zamperla and Saltano.

Scenes from La Strada:

276. The Barefoot Contessa (1954)

Directed By Joseph L. Mankiewicz

Synopsis

A group consisting of a rich and sociopathic producer, an amoral clammy PR, a down and out director and scriptwriter and an actress go out searching for a "new face" for a film and they find Maria Vargas. Maria has more to her than meets the eye and soon is the greatest star in the world. Rags to riches usually ends well, well not here.

Review

I have mixed feeling about this film, while I quite liked it, thought some of the direction was very good and parts of the script were truly inspired, I also thought that some of the actors (yes, I am talking to you Ava) were not as good as they could be.

Ava is, of course, stunning, but she is playing a Spanish woman who seems to talk some kind of Swahili, because it sure as fuck is not the same language the other Spanish people use in the film. I found it particularly funny that she berates another character for not speaking good Spanish... that was hilarious. Another problem I had was with the music, the Hollywood recreation of Flamenco music and eventually Gypsy music was far off the mark, next time you find a Gypsy with a clarinet let me know.

Putting aside Hollywood's typical insularity in what comes to other cultures, it was a good film, but I can't help but be irked by these details that help ruin you experience of what would otherwise have been a pretty interesting flick, particularly with it's changes in perspective from character to character going almost Rashomon on you, but not quite.


Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

For his performance, O'Brien won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Mankiewicz was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Original Screenplay.

Mankiewicz is reported to have based the film's central character of Maria Vargas on part-Spanish movie star and one-time dancer Rita Hayworth.

Trailer:

275. A Star Is Born (1954)

Directed by George Cukor

Synopsis

An alcoholic actor starting his downward turn in career finds a singer who he helps become a star and then marries. The whole thing is doomed from the start.

Review

We've been having a great streak of films indeed, and we are not stopping now, there's more good stuff to come soon. And this is definitely a great film, even if it has Judy Garland in it, curiously partly because it has Judy in it.

I've never been a great Garland fan, but here she is something else, not only is her singing voice still great after all these years but her performance is an honestly touching one. If you know her life story you can tell why she related to the film, although ironically she is the one who would end up the addict.

It is a long one, three hours in its restored version, but it is worth it, it looks back to older musicals (it is a remake of one after all) but the plot qualities are such, as well as the amazing direction and cinematography that it is clearly marked as a modern film. A musical with a deep plot and emotional content, and James Mason... who unfortunately does not sing.

Final Grade

10/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The film was re-edited several times. Premiering at 181 minutes, the studio (Warner Bros.) cut the film by 30 minutes despite the objections of director Cukor and producer Sid Luft (Garland's husband). The cuts were made because theater owners complained the film was too long, limiting the number of daily showings. In 1983, all but 5 minutes of the cut footage was found and reinstated, but some of the footage had to be reconstructed using production stills. Most of the original multi-track stereophonic sound was also restored. This was shown in many theaters and then released on home video. Columbia Records released all of the songs in stereo; the recordings were later reissued by Sony on CD.

The premiere of the 1954 film at the Pantages in Los Angeles was a major event with Garland, Mason, studio head Jack L. Warner, and Jack Carson (who emceed), and dozens of A-list stars attending. As the celebrities arrived at the theater, it was televised live and a kinescope film has survived.

Despite the film's success, Warner Brothers cancelled Judy Garland's contract and refused to make any further films with her. In her autobiography, Doris Day admitted that both she and Garland battled "nervous breakdowns" in dealing with the studio. It was 1961 before Garland again appeared in a film, playing a crucial, dramatic supporting role in Judgment at Nuremberg.

The Man That Got Away: