1944 - MADEMOISELLE FIFI, producer Val Lewton's World War II propgranda films.

You weren't a Hollywood studio or producer worth your salt if you didn't crank out a propaganda film or two during World War II.  One of the oddest propaganda films to come out of RKO studios was from classy low budget horror movie producer Val Lewton.

Rather than kicking out another Allies vs the Nazis film with actors like Erroll Flynn, Humphrey Bogart and especially John Wayne.  Lewton and his director Robert Wise chose to film something a little more subtle.  Using the same source material as John Ford and his writer Dudley Nichols used for Stagecoach, Mademoiselle Fifi has a group of people with different backgrounds all riding a stagecoach.  In this case the stagecoach happens to be in France during the late 1800's when it was occupied by Prussians aka Germans.

The cast is a group of character actors which I can assure you no one has ever heard from.  John Emery (Rocketship X-M, The Girl Can't Help It), Kurt Kreuger (Sahara, Unfaithfully Yours) and Alan Napier ( Alfred in the original Batman TV series) to name a few.  Probably the biggest name in the cast was French actress Simone Simon who had a very spotty career in Hollywood in the 30's and 40's before she returned to France.  Simone Simon is remembered for her role as Irena in The Cat People.

 

Mademoiselle Fifi is essentially a rather talky drama about the role the French people had in dealing with the Prussian invaders occupying their county.  Simone Simon plays the only character who has the guts to stand up to the Prussians.  The film is very obviously a not so subtle comparison of  the Nazi occupation of France in the late 1940's.

 

The film is interesting especially if you are a fan of Val Lewton's films.  The dialog is literate and Robert Wise does a fairly good job making this very talkative script cinematic. Val Lewton always aimed for something a little more different than the regular movie stuff that Hollywood spit out during the 1940's.

The film was written by Josef Mischel and Peter Ruric although Lewton probably had his hands in it as well.  The running time is a brisk 69 minutes.

1944 - WEIRD WOMAN, an Inner Sanctum mystery

As a bit of background, the Universal Inner Sanctum series was based on an old 40's radio show that was sort of a version of the Twilight Zone or some kind of spooky series.  Universal apparently bought the rights or partnered with the makers of the series to produce some rather indifferent B-movies for the most part.

 

The series starred Lon Chaney Jr., hardly  a guy one would associate with leading man type roles.  Weird Woman was one of the films in this series and probably one of the better ones.  Chaney plays a college professor with a new wife he picked up on some tropical island.  The wife is a big believer in the occult which Chaney scoffs at.  He probably should have been a little more aware for it seems at the college that Chaney teaches, black magic is being used to advance the careers of certain members of the faculty at his expense and maybe even his life.

Weird Woman is based on a book by a fantasy writer named Fritz Leiber called Conjure Wife.  Considering the 63 minute running time the film does a fairly decent job of following the the plot of the book.   

 

This film isn't bad but considering it's age it does sort of play like an extended version of Rod Serling's Twilight Zone TV series.  The screenplay was by  Brenda Weisberg .

1942 - ROAD TO MOROCCO, Bob Hope 1940's comedy

An example of what passed for comedy during World War II.  The film stars Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and perennial third wheel Dorothy Lamour.  This very silly film has something to do with Hope and Crosby ending up in Morocco which looks like something out of the Arabian Nights instead of 1940's Morocco.

The film is completely held together by the comedic bits of Crosby and Hope, Lamour was always the "straight man" in these films although she does wear her costumes well.

 

The film has some musical interludes as is to be expected since Bing Crosby is in it.  There is one hit song "Moonlight Becomes You," but the rest of the film is just goofy scenes and shtick.

 

If there is one outstanding thing about this film, it's Bob Hope.  Here he is at the top of his abilities basically stealing scenes away from about every other actor in the film.  When Hope was good there was no one who could bring the kind of razor sharp comedy timing that Hope brought to a gag.

For the most part the film is an ordeal to sit through but it was extremely popular with audiences looking for some entertainment during the war years.

Written by Frank Butler and Don Hartman with uncredited assistance from Crosby and Hope's gag writers.  The running time is 82 minutes

1944 - MINISTRY OF FEAR, minor Fritz Lang spy thriller

Somewhat disappointing World War II thriller based on a Graham Greene book.  Ray Milland is the mental patient who after being released from the insane asylum finds himself up to his ears in German spies and traitorous Englishmen during the London Blitz.

This film while directed by Fritz Lang was heavily influenced by the producer and screenwriter Seton I. Miller in his first shot at producing.  Lang was known for his domineering personality on movie sets but apparently Miller was able to bend him to his will. 

 

The result if kind of a boring and lets face it fairly bland film.  It does have a number of Lang's directorial touches because nobody could make more of fog and shadows than Lang when it came to staging scenes.  Ministry Of Fear also features one of Lang's stock characters the larger then life policeman who represents the voice of authority.

 

All in all this is a decent 1940's thriller made by a great director who was fairly constrained by his producer and probably Paramount studio.

The running time is a quick 87 minutes.

1944 - 30 SECONDS OVER TOKYO, the Doolittle raid told the MGM way

Coming in at an incredible 138 minutes, 30 Seconds Over Tokyo is one long haul of a World War II propaganda film.  The film tells the story of the famous Doolittle Raid which occurred 4 months after the attack on Pearl Harbor.  The raid was a morale booster for the United States and sent a message to the Japanese that everybody was in this war for the long haul.

In MGM's version of the raid Van Johnson is the all American white guy along with Robert Walker as the hick from Montana.  They clearly stand in for what the military had in mind as examples of American servicemen who are just like you and me and are ready to get the job done.  Spencer Tracy portrays Colonel Doolittle and he has a few scenes but he basically steals the show from the other actors with his commanding performance.

The length of the film is probably due to all the time spent on Van Johnson's love life with the actress Phyllis Thaxter the stand in for American womanhood in this case.  We are frequently told how cute Thaxter is but I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder to be charitable.

 

The most entertaining aspects of the film are unsurprising the training and actual raid over Tokyo which takes over most of the 2nd half of the film.  Here MGM's technicians and special effects crew really shine with some excellent special effects.  It looks like the B-25's actually blew up most of Tokyo unlike real life where the actual raid did very little damage to Tokyo.

The film was filmed by uninspired but competent director Mervyn Leroy.  Comparing this film to Howard Hawk's Air Force shows the difference between competent and excellent film making.  Air Force was propaganda as well but it was extremely well made and engaging.  This film is interesting but be prepared for a lot of boring lovey dovey stuff between Van Johnson and Phyllis Thaxter.

1944 - MURDER MY SWEET, first shot at a Chandler mystery

The first shot at translating a Raymond Chandler mystery, in this case the film based on Chandler's  Farewell My Lovely came off fairly well.  The screen writer John Paxton used a framing device of Chandler's private detective Philip Marlow being interrogated by the police.  This allowed the Marlow character to narrate the story in a flashback using a lot of Raymond Chandler's hard boiled dialog.  Probably the only misstep was having to work a last minute love story into the film at the end.

The big news with this film was the transformation of singer Dick Powell from one of Busby Berkley's performing pawns in his extravagant Warner Brother's musicals.  Powell does a very good job playing Marlowe.  He gets able assistance from a decent supporting cast, Mike Mazurki as the dumb brute of a gangster, Moose Malone.  Claire Trevor as Helen Grayle the "femme fatal" and Otto Kruger as some sort of phony psychic healer Jules Amthor.  The actor Anne Shirley, real name Dawn Evelyn Paris is Marlowe's love interest Ann Grayle a rather weak role in the film.

 

Considering how confusing these Raymond Chandler stories can be the director Edward Dmytryk does a pretty good job of keeping the plot straight.  The film has lots of noir touches which actually became murder mystery cliches  copied by other detective films.  However Murder My Sweet used them first.

 

The film runs an entertaining 95 minutes, screenplay by John Paxton.

1944 - AN AMERICAN ROMANCE, a tribute to industrial America

This expensive MGM film was a labor of love for the director King Vidor who not only produced the film but also wrote the story.  The film was filmed in technicolor by Harold Rossen so it couldn't have been cheap to make.  MGM  professed to like the film but went ahead and cut 30 minutes out of Vidor's finished film.  Vidor was so angry that he ended his association with MGM a studio he had worked at since 1923.

The film is rather unsatisfactory cast with Brian Donlevy playing the lead, an immigrant who rises to the top of a company he has built.  Vidor shoots a lot of scenes of factories assembling cars and planes and it's all kind of interesting up to a point.  

 

It would have been interesting to see how the film would have played if it hadn't been hacked to pieces.  As it is it's kind of fascinating.

Written by  Herbert Dalmas and William Ludwig, running time 121 minutes.

1944 - TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT, Bogie meets Baby.

To Have and Have Not was clearly made to capitalize on another wartime romance, Casablanca, Howard Hawks teamed up 19 year old Lauren Bacall with 45 year Humphrey Bogart.  As they say the romantic sparks practically flew off the screen.

 

In a lot of ways this is almost a plot-less film.  Hawk's interest seemed to be mostly devoted to having his two leads take smart with each other throughout the film.  The result is a highly entertaining love story.

 I guess it doesn't need to be repeated that Bacall and Bogart married in real life.  The film is generally considered a high point in Hawk's career and is an excellent example of quality 1940's film making.

The screenplay was by old Hollywood pro Jules Furthman and William Faulkner of all people.  The film runs 100 minutes.

1944 - HOLLYWOOD CANTEEN, Hollywood pats themselves on their collective backs

The Hollywood Canteen was an entertainment center started by Bette Davis and John Garfield to entertain servicemen either shipping out for combat or returning from combat.  Never an industry to pass up a chance to make themselves look good, Warner Brothers produced this butt kissing salute to how wonderful they were.

The film is loaded with lots and lots of 40's star mostly and unsurprisingly from the Warner Brothers studio.   There is actually a sort of plot to this film.  A soldier recovering from war wounds wants to meet his crush Joan Leslie.  This is an excuse for the soldier to run into a lot of stars.  Look it's Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Jane Wyatt, Eddie Cantor, Joe E Brown, you get the picture lots of actors that no one remembers today.

The film has a lot of musical numbers and little comedy bits from the stars.  It's harmless stuff, kind of boring and extremely dated.  In 1944, people watching this film could take comfort that "the stars" were ordinary people just like you and me.

Hollywood Canteen is over two hours but seems a lot longer.  Some of the musical numbers aren't too bad but the flag waving looks mighty corny these days.  Oh and the soldier "Slim" does get to go out on a date with Joan Leslie, God Bless America.

124 minutes, the director Delmar Daves also wrote the screenplay.

1944 - THE UNINVITED, a serious ghost story

A brother and sister try to get to the bottom of a ghost haunting their home in Cornwall, England.

The Uninvited is a ghost story where the ghost is real for a change.  However the actual story is basically a mystery which borrows a lot from Rebecca.  Ray Milland is the star. Milland was always a reliable if kind of boring leading man in 1940's films.  He happened to luck into getting the main lead in Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett's The Lost Weekend, which won him an Academy Award and gained lots of cred for him in the industry.  It's not surprising that the producer of The Uninvited Charles Brackett cast Milland in this film.

This is an interesting film, well made and written if a little stiff in the storytelling.  I would say this is a typical 1940's Hollywood film, trying to be a little different but not too different.

 

99 minutes.

1944 - THE FIGHTING LADY, documentary from World War II with lots of shooting

Another interesting documentary/propaganda film made during World War II the chief selling point in this film is the photography with the camera mounted right next to the fighter's guns.

The film proposes to tell the story of the aircraft carrier Yorktown.  The film was shot in 16mm color and it's very well done 

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The head of 20th Century Fox Studios Darryl F. Zanuck saw this film and was so impressed with it that he decided to release it.  Zanuck must have taken the film and given it the big studio polish, Alfred Newman was the music director and the actor Robert Taylor narrated the film.

The footage of the attacking fighters has been used repeatedly in other documentaries and war films.  Watching The Fighting Lady allows the viewer to see these scenes in the context that was intended.  The strafing of the Japanese ships is still amazing to watch. 

61 minutes.

1942 - THE DOVER BOYS AT PIMENTO UNIVERSITY OR THE RIVALS OF ROQUEFORT HALL & 1944 - HELL-BENT FOR ELECTION two short films by Chuck Jones

Two of animator Chuck Jones more interesting cartoons that are unlike anything he did for Warner Brothers. 

The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall is one of his funniest cartoons.  A spoof of The Rover Boys series of books about some morally upright young lads whose fiancee Dainty Dora Standpipe is kidnapped by the evil Dan Blackslide.

The animation is more stylized than usual for a Warner's cartoon.  This is a spoof of a boys own adventure series like The Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew.  Very different from the typical Merrie Melodie cartoons that Warners was producing.  What really counts is that The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall is hilarious.

9 minutes.

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Hell Bent for Election is a campaign film that Jones made for the presidential campaign of 1944.  It's amazing how much of the same liberal vs conservative stuff is still being argued about even today.  The film was made at the early incarnation of the UPA group, the animation studio that specialized in stylized and minimalist backgrounds.  This is an excellent example of using film as a piece of propaganda.

Hell Bent for Election lays out its point of view very effectively using the metaphor of the modern democratic and rickety republican trains in a race to see who will win the presidential election. 

13 minutes

1944 - MEET ME IN ST LOUIS, very nostalgic sentimental slop from MGM extremely well done

Vincent Minnelli, working for the producer Arthur Freed and collaborating with one of MGM's biggest stars, directed this fantasy about upper middle class white people living in St. Louis.  This is the kind of film that MGM loved to make, a musical extolling the values of the American way of life if you happened to be fairly well off and Caucasian.

This was a big film for Judy Garland who was the very embodiment of Midwestern middle class virtues.  Garland had three hit songs and the film is very focused on her.  Judy Garland's major competition in this film was the actress Margaret O'Brien.  O'Brien was an intense child actress, who Minnelli would direct in the crying scenes by telling her he was about to kill her pet, she is very over the top.

Meet Me In St Louis, was a big MGM production filmed in the then still unique process of technicolor.  Technicolor required lots of light to look good on the screen so the film is very bright and very pretty.  Vincent Minnelli was one of the few directors who could film musicals and bring a great deal of sensitivity to what could have been a very over the top sloppy and sentimental film. 

This film is expert Hollywood product, impeccably made entertaining and almost completely lacking in any kind of substance.

113 minutes.

1944 - Hitchock's banned World War II film AVENTURE MALGACHE

Hitchcock's 2nd World War II propaganda short after Bon Voyage had him taking a screen credit this time. This short film was made as a tribute to the French Resistance but was never released in France.

 

This film has a complex story telling style. It alternates between scenes of actors putting on a play and a story of a resistance leader in a battle of wits with a local Vichey official. Many of the French in this film are shown as untrustworthy and willing to betray their own countrymen to the authorities. A more realistic view of the French during World War II then anyone was ready for, it was not the rah rah film the Allies thought they were getting from Hitchcock.

A film where Hitchcock had more interest than making a standard propaganda piece. As usual "truth is the first casualty" during a war. The French weren't ready to even begin to confront the truth about themselves and their disreputable involvement with the Germans until 1969 when Ophul's The Sorrow and the Pity was released.

30 minutes.

1944 - Unseen Hitchcock BON VOYAGE

Guilt tripped by the British film establishment into contributing to the Allied war effort during World War II, Hitchcock returned to England and directed a couple of propaganda shorts, one of them called Bon Voyage was released in 1944.

It's a short film at 26 minutes and it plays like an episode of an Alfred Hitchcock presents TV show. The story is about an RAF officer escaping with another prisoner through France with the help of the French Resistance. The film doesn't have very many Hitchcock touches and Hitchcock appeared to be working with a very small budget.

No undiscovered masterpiece here and probably not worth the viewer's time, for Hitchcock completists only I guess. Watch Foreign Correspondent instead.

 

Written by Angus MacPhail and J.O.C. Orton.

1944 - COBRA WOMAN Starring Maria Montez "When I look at myself, I am so beautiful I scream with joy!"

 STRANGE LOVES, UNBELIEVABLE ADVENTURES in the SOUTH SEAS! EXOTIC LOVE! featuring the Stars of "Arabian Nights" TOLLEA! TEMPTRESS OF TERROR! Gorgeous, glorious adventure romance in a pagan paradise !

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The quote in the header is supposedly from Maria Montez after she saw herself on screen. Supposedly a "camp classic". But is it anymore stupid than 2008's Indiana Jones meets Space Ghost, or the Kinda Incredible Hulk?  Both of which I sat through this summer.

The young lovers are torn apart on their wedding day when on a beautiful south seas island the bride is kidnapped by members of the cobra cult. It seems that the bride is actually descended from royalty and has a very evil twin sister who resides on Cobra Island. Here her evil twin, rules in terror. As an appeasement to the "fire gods" which is a model volcano, the evil sister dances around her subjects choosing sacrificial victims like she was picking people for her grade school dodge ball team. She wears some sort of glittery snake dress outfit while she struts her stuff, all very cool.

Our hero sails to the rescue of the nice twin sister along with help from his sidekick Sabu, who is armed with a lethal blow gun. The action really doesn't let up for the entire running time of the film.

This movie is only 70 minutes, written by Richard Brooks and Gene Lewis.