Watchingwell 

                                                                              

                                                             Curated classic films

February

        In this, the month of Valentine sentiment, thoughts turn to movie romances. Oh, I know I could have reminded you of Ilsa and Rick, Rhett and Scarlett, Robin and Maid Marian, Ma and Pa Kettle, and all the best-known romantic couples in filmdom, but instead I recommend to you to some of my favorite screen romances. Each of my choices have some characteristic that elevates them, in my opinion, above others in the genre.

        Starting with one of my all-time favorites from 1935, Hands Across the Table, starring Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray, and co-starring Ralph Bellamy, in what was to become his specialty, the perpetually losing suitor. Lombard and MacMurray have real screen chemistry, -- they made three more pictures together. This film exhibits why Lombard was such a big deal in her short career (she died when her plane went down as she was returning from a war bond rally at the age of 33). The camera loves her and her voice is a combination of sensitive and hard-boiled. She plays a manicurist who is determined to marry a rich man. She mistakes MacMurray for an heir to a fortune, but it turns out he needs to marry for money. Circumstances put them together for a week in her one-bedroom apartment (although there is an illogical access to the roof, where they spend some very romantic evenings looking at the stars). This is directed by Mitchell Leisen, who never really achieved the recognition of some of the other well-known directors of the Golden Age, but whose work exhibits a consistency of visual elegance, due to his training and experience in set and costume design.

 

        From 1939, the great year of great films, the adaptation of the Emily Bronte novel, Wuthering Heights, stars Merle Oberon as Kathy, and Laurence Olivier as the wild orphan she loves against her will. A rather faithful, if truncated adaptation – written by the quality team of Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, expertly directed by William Wyler. Why is it that the more thwarted it is, the greater our estimation of the love story? There have been many remakes, but Olivier is Heathcliff like Gable is Rhett Butler.

         In Love Affair, also from 1939, Irene Dunne is paired with Charles Boyer, who, in my opinion, was the epitome of romance. His deep, French-accented voice pronouncing the ingredients in a Caesar salad were enough to make women swoon. They play two independent people who fall in love and give themselves six months to get their lives in order before they marry. Directed by Leo McCarey, who also directed the remake in 1954 with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. As much as I love Cary Grant, the original is better.

        To give you another example of the romantic charms of Charles Boyer: in Back Street, from 1941, an adaptation of the Fanny Hurst novel, Chuck plays a man so irresistible that although he is married, a woman, played by Margaret Sullavan, is willing to spend her entire adult life waiting for the occasional tryst that he can fit into his other life. Now that’s real love. Or is it? Sacrifice that is so one-sided would be a subject for a Dr. Phil program today, but in 1931, when the novel was published, society had the view that women’s sacrifice was expected and ennobling. This version of the novel (there were three) is blessed with sensitive direction from Robert Stevenson, excellent supporting cast, and performances by Sullavan and Boyer that give the characters credibility and poignancy. A three-hanky picture.

        Something a bit more lighthearted from 1941, but deliciously watchable, is Come Live with Me, starring James Stewart and Hedy Lamarr and costarring Ian Hunter. The breathtaking Ms. Lamarr is a refugee from the war in Europe and she is desperate not to be deported as her visa is soon to expire. Her influential boyfriend, played by Hunter, is trying to fix it all, but things are moving too slowly. Enter Stewart, a financially desperate writer, who agrees to accept a sort of salary to marry Hedy (strictly business). We all know what will happen, but it is a fun trip with Stewart finding success as a writer and challenging boyfriend, Hunter, with suspicious government investigators added to the mix. Clarence Brown direction makes it easy to watch them interact.

      Of all the love stories of the Golden Era, Random Harvest would probably get the most votes for favorite from people who know classic films. From 1942, we have another adaptation of a popular novel, this one by James Hilton. Mervyn Leroy directs two of the most beautifully spoken voices in the English language, Ronald Colman and Greer Garson, as two lovers separated for years by the usually cheesiest of plot devices – amnesia. I say, usually, because in this case, it is done in a subdued and intelligent manner. It offers an underlying proposition that if people are meant for each other, they will find each other in this or another life. I defy you not to shed a tear in the last scene.

       Without Love from 1945 is not one of the best known of the Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy body of work.  It is not really a comedy and it is not the usual kind of romance, but the two stars exhibit their well-known chemistry, nonetheless.  Tracy is a tunnel-visioned scientist doing war work.  Hepburn is letting him use her Washington home, while she departs to the country – only she doesn’t, because she offers to help him with his experiments.  After a while, they think they are both at a point in their lives where they would be happy with a marriage of convenience – hence the title.  It is a kind of backwards love story, starting as friends, but ending just like the regular kind of couple, with regular kinds of problems, arguments and jealousy. Directed by Harold S. Bucquet, with good supporting performances by Lucille Ball and Keenan Wynn.

 

 

     Of all the films with Cary Grant with all the different leading ladies I have enjoyed, I must choose Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious from 1946 as the most truly romantic. There is no comedy here, no lighthearted Cary. In a restrained performance, he finally expresses his love for costar, Ingrid Bergman, at the very end, in some of the most intimate moments you'll ever see in a Hitchcock film. But as this is a Hitchcock film, there is also a great deal of suspense and tension between the two stars and also between Bergman and supporting star, Claude Rains, as Grant, the government agent, uses Bergman to uncover ex-Nazis in South America.

      Speaking of movies that have been remade a lot, A Star is Born is too often thought of as the story of the journey to stardom, but it is really a love story. Personally, I like the 1954 version with the iconic performances by Judy Garland and James Mason. The desperation  of the romance when one of the partners is on the way up and the other is on the opposite path is heartbreaking, until at last sacrifice is all that remains. These two actors are at their best in this doomed love, directed by George Cukor and ably supported by Charles Bickford and Tommy Noonan.

         From 1958, the first pairing of Paul Newman and his soon-to-be wife, Joanne Woodward, in The Long Hot Summer is exciting in itself, but in addition, they spend most of the film insulting each other, which always indicates true love will be revealed in the last scene. Adding to the background tension is Woodward’s brother, played by Anthony Franciosa, and his overtly sexy wife, played by Lee Remick, a domineering father, played by Orson Welles, and his lady friend, Angela Lansbury. Directed by Martin Ritt, who directed Paul Newman in five films in all.

       The next Newman/Ritt collaboration was Paris Blues in 1961, the most February-themed story in that it is appropriate for both Valentine’s Day and Black History Month. It demonstrates once again the eternal question of following one’s muse or following one’s heart.  Americans, Joanne Woodward and Diahann Carroll, have come to Paris to soak in the cultural scene, and meet musicians, Newman and Sidney Poitier, at a jazz club. The two couples fall believably in love. But these are serious musicians and find the Paris jazz scene difficult to leave, particularly, Poitier, who feels liberated from the segregated culture in the U.S., though Carroll thinks he should join her back home in the civil rights movement. Wonderful performances by the four stars, wonderful music by Duke Ellington, and a cameo appearance by Louis Armstrong.

       While we are recognizing Black History Month, I highly recommend Nothing But a Man from 1964. Directed by Michael Roemer, in a neorealistic mood, starring Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln, it tells the story of a railroad worker who falls in love and marries a preacher’s daughter. Without any artifice or sentiment, we see life in a small southern town for a black man who tries to live with self-respect, before the changes that come with the civil rights movement. The script is powerful and authentic, the black and white cinematography documentary-like. A wonderful supporting cast includes Gloria Foster, Moses Gunn, Yaphet Kotto, and Esther Rolle.

        And for my favorite love story, probably because I first saw it at a most impressionable young age – Fanny. Yes, another story of lovers separated by choices one makes and regrets. This is taken from the third of the Marcel Pagnol Marseilles trilogy. Leslie Caron plays Fanny in this 1961 version, Horst Buchholz plays the love of her life, Marius, who longs to go to sea. Charles Boyer, in a knockout performance, plays his father, and Maurice Chevalier is the older suitor, Panisse. Directed by Joshua Logan with a haunting score by Harold Rome.

 

Watchingwell 

                                                                              

                                                             Curated classic films

Happy Families

 

My thoughts turn to family at this time of year. In this season of family gatherings, I am reminded of some films where families are a necessary background to the plot. Some of these are genuinely heartwarming. And then there are some -- well, you might want to think twice about spending the holidays with some of the families in the following films.

Joy of Living (1938)

Directed by Tay Garnett

Irene Dunne is a successful star of Broadway musicals (she even gets to display her lovely voice in some Jerome Kern tunes).  Constantly working, her family demands don’t allow for any relaxation.  Enter Douglas Fairbanks, a sea captain, who offers her an escape to the South Seas to experience some joy.  Irene must wrestle with responsibilities to family versus her own needs. With Guy Kibbee Alice Brady, Lucille Ball.

True to Life  (1943)

Directed by George Marshall

Franchot Tone and Dick Powell, radio writers for a show that is losing in the ratings, look for a new angle.  A chance meeting between Powell and Mary Martin leads to Powell moving in with her family and using their daily life as the subject of their radio show.  Things fall apart when Martin, with whom Powell has fallen in love, finds out.

5^th Avenue Girl (1939)

Directed by Gregory La Cava

An unhappy, wealthy businessman, Walter Connolly, and an unemployed young woman, Ginger Rogers, meet in the park and devise a business arrangement where she comes to live with him and poses as his mistress to shake things up among his neglectful family members. And she does, indeed. With Veree Teasdale, James Ellison, Tim Holt, Kathryn Adams.

The Young at Heart (1938)

Directed by Richard Wallace

A family of grifters, Billie Burke and Roland Young, and their son and daughter, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. and Janet Gaynor, on the run from the law, see opportunity in a train wreck when they rescue an old woman who invites them to live in her mansion. Alas, the woman is cash poor so they decide to work themselves into her will to gain possession of her property.  Meanwhile, they have to earn money and as time passes, they become somewhat successful and with the help of love interests, Paulette Goddard and Richard Carlson, develop a collective conscience.

Bombshell (1933)

Directed by Victor Fleming

Jean Harlow basically plays a parody of herself and the chaotic off-camera life of a Hollywood sex symbol.  Frank Morgan, the head of her dysfunctional family, is also her terrible manager, Lee Tracy plays her outrageous press agent, Franchot Tone and Pat O’Brien are possible suitors. Hilarious, rapid-fire, pre-code dialogue, good performances by all, especially Tracy, but this is Harlow’s film.

You Were Never Lovelier (1942)

Directed by William A. Seiter

In Buenos Aires, Fred Astaire woos suitor-less Rita Hayworth, oldest of four sisters, as a favor to her father, played by Adolphe Menjou, who insists on marrying off daughters in chronological order.  (Sounds a little like The Taming of the Shrew, doesn’t it?) Mistaken identity complications are punctuated by great tunes by Jerome Kern and of course, the dancing.

Shadow of a Doubt (1943)

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Teresa Wright is excited when her favorite uncle, played by Joseph Cotten, comes to visit the family, but starts to suspect that he may be the serial, “Merry Widow” killer, and finds herself in danger when her uncle recognizes that she knows.  As with most Hitchcock films, there is great tension that comes when the audience knows the truth before the characters.

Four Daughters (1938)

Directed by Michael Curtiz

The story of Claude Rains, the four daughters he has raised, played by three Lane sisters, Priscilla, Lola, Rosemary, plus Gale Page, and their suitors, in their quiet, cultured family setting until rebel John Garfield, in his first film role, bursts on the scene, in his tough guy pose, and things are never the same.

You Can’t Take it With You (1938)

Directed by Frank Capra

Typical Edward Arnold role of ruthless industrialist and estranged son, James Stewart, who doesn’t understand why he shouldn’t marry Jean Arthur, granddaughter of the anarchistic Lionel Barrymore and daughter of dotty, Spring Byington, and a father, Samuel S. Hinds, who makes fireworks. A very Frank Capra ending with reconciliation and harmonicas.

Meet Me in St Louis (1944)

Directed by Vincente Minnelli

A year in the life of Judy Garland and her family in St. Louis in 1903 awaiting the opening of the World’s Fair commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, when papa, Leon Ames, announces that the firm is transferring him to New York.  Not only will all their social plans and budding romances be ruined, but the family is crestfallen about missing the World’s Fair. Family solidarity saves the day. With Mary Astor, Lucille Bremer, Margaret O’Brien.

The above are from the golden age. But I also recommend a modern family saga -- Avalon, from 1990, directed by Barry Levinson, the heartfelt story of four generations of an immigrant family in Baltimore.

Oh, and then there’s this family:

The Godfather

(1972) Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

 

Watchingwell 

                                                                              

                                                             Curated classic films

Listening Well

      If you're like me, you really appreciate the music in movies, and the many great composers of film scores. So, imagine my surprise when I happened across the American Film Institute's 25 greatest film scores of all time and saw that in their opinion, number one was the John Williams score for Star Wars.  (AFI's 100 YEARS OF FILM SCORE)  Seriously?  I can't help visualizing the age and sex of the average voter. But, besides the limitations in taste of this rating, there is also a limitation of imagination, the imagination to consider the whole 100 years of film and not just the ones that voters had personally experienced in the theater.  It reminds me of sports writers and commentators who anoint the player they are watching as the greatest of all times, without seriously considering the great athletes of the past.

      In fairness, there were some on the list from previous decades of film history, and some modern day composers that are actually among my favorites:  Nino Rota, John Barry, Bernard Herrmann.  In the end, it really is a personal thing -- which music lingers with you and is inseparable from the film in your memory.  So I would remind you of some scores that fit that description in the classic film category and hope that you seek them out, if only to check out the music.

      Meaning no disrespect for John Williams, Max Steiner's music for Gone With the Wind, the number two on the list,  is the more enduring. After eighty years, many people could identify the theme, I believe.  Not so sure that eighty years from now, there will be anyone who recognizes actual music, let alone the Star Wars theme.  

      Max Steiner had an extraordinary career.  He came to Hollywood from Vienna where he was a child prodigy completing his music studies at the age of 16. As a child, he received piano instruction from Johannes Brahms and studied conducting with Gustav Mahler.  He started writing music for films just at the advent of talkies and quickly made a name for himself for developing specific motifs for characters or scenes instead of the generic background melodies that were common with silent films.  His score for King Kong in 1933 changed the way American films were scored. He wrote the music for an astonishing number of films over three decades, Gone With the Wind being one of the most difficult.  

He was nominated for 18 Academy Awards and won 3. The first was for John Ford's The Informer (1935), haunting music which pulsed with the desperation of the main character, played by Victor McLaglen.  

The second was for the 1942 Bette Davis drama, Now Voyager, where a troubled and dominated young woman is transformed by a good wardrobe and a cruise-ship romance.

The third Oscar was for the 1944 film about life on the WWII home front, starring Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple, Since You Went Away.

But, recently I was watching another Bette Davis film, from 1940, one that I think rates among her best, The Letter, directed by William Wyler. I was so aware of the atmospheric effect of the score by Max Steiner that I was inspired to write this post.  The score for The Letter  was one of Steiner's 18 Oscar nominations. (The winner that year was the original score for Pinocchio by Leigh Harline, Paul Smith & Ned Washington, which was pretty good, too.)

       Erich Wolfgang Korngold, another Austro-Hungarian child prodigy,  who conducted his own work at the Hamburg Opera at the age of 23, was invited to score his first Hollywood film in 1935. Not having any desire to return to Austria after it was annexed by Hitler, Korngold stayed in Hollywood and composed an Academy Award winning score for the 1936 epic story of the orphan, Anthony Adverse , starring Fredric March and Olivia de Havilland.

He won again for the well-known, rousing score of The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938, starring Errol Flynn,

followed by another Flynn vehicle, the swashbuckling gem, The Sea Hawk in 1940.

One of his finest compositions and what some have contended is a very obvious inspiration for the above-mentioned John Williams and his theme for Star Wars, is the music he wrote for King's Row in 1942. 

Co-starring Ann Sheridan and Robert Cummings, this, in the opinion of many,  also happens to be Ronald Reagan's best film performance.  Take a listen and see what you think. 

But, before the first Academy Award, and before The Sea Hawk, he composed my particular favorite:  the music for Captain Blood in 1935, the original and the best pirate story, naturally starring Errol Flynn, and a nineteen-year old Olivia de Havilland.

       Yet another young musical talent fleeing Hitler's Europe and landing in Hollywood, Franz Waxman, had an early success with The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) in which he introduced some odd and discordant sounds that were thereafter a staple of the horror genre.

He also had a successful artistic collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock in two films in the 1940s. In these films, the music is able to switch from romantic themes to ones that alert us to danger. In his music for Rebecca from 1940,

and Suspicion from 1941,
Waxman seems to embellish Hitchcock's expertise with suspense.

By 1954, Hitchcock's style for Rear Window had a more contemporary style, with a more subtle Waxman score, leaving silence at the most nail-biting moments.

Before his work on Rear Window, Waxman had won Academy Awards two years in a row. In 1951, he won for the score for the Billy Wilder film noir, Sunset Boulevard .

For anyone who remembers the final scene where Gloria Swanson is walking down the staircase, the music matches the imaginary 'Salome' that Swanson's character thinks she is filming.

The next year, he won the award for his music for the George Stevens (Academy Award for Best Direction) adaptation of An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser,  A Place in the Sun, starring Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor and Shelley Winters.

        One might ask why so many child prodigies born in the first decades of the  twentieth century found their way from Europe to Hollywood. It is not so difficult to understand:  first, being a child prodigy doesn't pay much, and second, the rise of fascism and the very real threat of staying when their homelands are occupied.  

      Consequently, you should not be surprised that another great film composer was -- yes, a child prodigy! Miklos Rozsa obtained a doctorate of music from the Leipzig Conservatory and had his own music performed in Europe in the thirties. While in London, he was hired to score a film, a discipline he claimed to know nothing about, and learned the hard way. Eventually relocating to Hollywood, he had a distinguished career there for four decades.

There are many that are noteworthy, but the score for the  Hitchcock film, Spellbound in 1945, starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman, was innovative in his use of the theramin for a dream sequence that is illustrated by Salvador Dali images of a nightmare.

He also collaborated in 1945 with Billy Wilder on the powerful film Lost Weekend. Ray Milland painfully portrays an alcoholic who battles his habit over two days.  He used the theramin again to produce odd sounds that signify the distortion of the alcoholic's state of mind.

Also with Wilder, the great noir classic, Double Indemnity from 1944. The opening theme seems to reflect the doomed path that star, Fred McMurray, is on from the moment he sees co-star, Barbara Stanwyck.

After his success with Ivanhoe (1952), Rozsa was given assignments for scoring other epics, Julius Caesar (1954), 

Ben-Hur (1959),

for which he won the Academy Award, and El Cid (1961).

        Dmitri Tiomkin was born in Kremenchug, Russia to a distinguished family.  His father was a well-known doctor and his mother was a pianist and teacher.  His uncle was a rabbi and the first president of the World Zionist Union.  He studied at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and as a young man, was part of the artistic crowd in St. Petersburg.  He was friends with Sergei Prokofiev.  He became well-known on the concert stage as a pianist in Europe and New York. In 1929, MGM offered him a five-film contract. 

He then found a productive relationship with Frank Capra, collaborating on four pictures, using innovative sounds for Lost Horizon (1937), for which he received his first Oscar nomination,

and You Can't Take it With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), also nominated for an Oscar, and Meet John Doe (1941). In all, Tiomkin garnered 13 nominations and four wins.

He did two other rather notable scores, one from 1943:  The Hitchcock thriller, Shadow of a Doubt, in which the Merry Widow waltz is  a leitmotif for the menacing uncle, played by Joseph Cotten,

and in 1946, the epic western/soap opera, Duel in the Sun, starring Jennifer Jones and Gregory Peck as the bad brother to Joseph Cotten.

His scores for High Noon (1952) and The High and the Mighty (1954) both won Academy Awards, but I admire the score for The Thing From Another World (1951) an influential scifi classic that is given the creepy, alien sounds which established what 'alien' sounds like.

*FYI:  If you are interested in refreshing your memory or are intrigued to hear for yourself, most of the above mentioned soundtracks can be found in whole or in part on You Tube.

Issued in 1999