1948 - MR BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE, still amusing post World War 2 comedy

 A film about the post World War II housing explosion that occurred in the United States.  Cary Grant is Jim Blandings an advertising executive living in NYC in a cramped apartment along with his wife and two daughters.  Blandings decides enough is enough and buys a rundown house in Connecticut which as it turns out can't be refurbed but needs to be torn down instead.  The humor comes from his decision to build a new home on his now vacant lot.  There are lots of jokes about dealing with contractors, dealing with commuting into NYC and dealing with the hidden expenses of home building.

Cary Grant gives another expert comedy performance as the put upon Blandings.  Myrna Loy is his wife and Melvyn Douglas is the family friend who is also the narrator of the film, he's kind like a Greek chorus commentating on the action.  These three actors were movie stars in the classic Hollywood sense, good looking and charismatic.  They were also expert comedians and knew how to get the most out of a humorous situation.  

 

The director was H.C. Potter and expert at film comedy.  The writers/producers were a couple of Hollywood pros Melvin Frank and Norman Panama who had started out their careers as joke writers for Bob Hope and worked into the 1970's as writer/directors, an impressive career run.

 

A quick shout out to the cinematographer James Wong Howe a Chinese-American who shot over 130 films and was a noted black and white stylist, this is a good looking film from another golden age Hollywood legend.  Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House was a box office success and considering the talent in front and behind the camera couldn't miss.

The running time is 93 minutes. 

1948 - THE AMAZING MR. X, is a fairly good little thriller

This not bad thriller about spiritualism has a nice gothic atmosphere to it mostly due to the cinematography of John Alton.  Alton bathed the film in lots of creepy light and shadows.  Alton was a pro he had photographed a very successful series of films working with director Anthony Mann.  They certainly brought out the best in each other with films like, T-Men, Border Incident, Devil's Doorway, Raw Deal and my personal favorite Reign of Terror. 

Anyway the story, two sisters living together in one of those expensive ocean side homes which they couldn't possibly afford believe they are being haunted by the ghost of the older sister's dead husband.  They consult a spiritualist who may or may not be the real thing but is definitely a smooth talker.  The spiritualist is played by some actor named Turhan Bey who is certainly a slick looking dude.  Also in the cast are femme fatale Lynn Bari, Cathy O'Donnell who was always a "girl next door" type and the ever reliable Richard Carlson who is probably remembered mostly for his science fiction films It Came From Outer Space, Creature From The Black Lagoon and Valley of the Gwangi. 

 

If this film has a flaw it's probably due to the improbable ending.  The filmmakers set up a fairly interesting situation but apparently couldn't figure out how to resolve it.  But this isn't the first film that had a messed up ending and it won't be the last one. 

The film was written by  Crane Wilbur, Muriel Roy Bolton and Ian McLellan Hunter, Hunter was a front for blacklisted writers during the Hollywood blacklist.  The running time is 78 minutes. 

1948 - CORRIDOR OF MIRRORS, arty British drama full of gothic touches

This is an interesting film, kind of a cross between Hitchcock's Vertigo and Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast.  The film's plot involves an eccentric wealthy artist (what else) Paul Mangin played by Eric Portman.  He believes he has found his reincarnated lover whose name is Mifanwy Conway (whew).  He manages to lure her to his extravagant villa where I guess they become lovers although it's hard to tell since this is a 1940's film.  After lots of scenes of Mifanwy wandering around the villa she manages to break free of his influence and ends up with some boring British guy and settles in for a nice boring domestic life unfortunately.

The film has lots of artistic photography and some very elaborate sets.  There is a scene set at a party hosted by Mangin that is an elaborate reincarnation of something the Borgias would have given in Renaissance Italy.  The set is really something to see.  No arguing that this is a very good looking film.

 

As for the acting, Eric Portman is the eccentric artist and he manages to give a good performance without sliding into some weirdo overacting thing.  The object of his obsession Mifanwy Conway is played by the screenwriter of the film, Edana Romney.  Unfortunately I don't think Romney really had the acting chops to pull the part of the possibly reincarnated love interest off.  She saunters around the villa in a perpetual state of overacting anxiety without really being able to convey the characters conflicted feelings about Paul Mangin.  

 

 The film was directed by Terence Young who was primarily and action director. Young's place in film history was as the director of three James Bond films with Sean Connery.  These films defined the series which obviously continues to this day.

The running time is 105 minutes.

1948 - SITTING PRETTY , late 1940's period comedy

Maureen O'Hara and Robert Young play a husband and wife living in the suburbs with three hyper active children. Unable to find any kind of help with the children, the wife runs an advertisement in the paper and ends up with actor Clifton Webb playing a character named Lynn Belvedere a person who bills himself as a "genius." Belvedere's strict approach to child care results in his bringing order to the household much to the relief of the parents.  But Mr. Belvedere appears to have other reasons for living with this family.

This is a very enjoyable comedy from 20th Century Fox studio which was mostly a show piece for actor Clifton Webb  essentially repeating his witty Waldo Lydecker character from his debut film Laura, this time without actually murdering someone as he did in that film.

 

The film has lots of amusing situations and you kind of get a feeling for what life might have been like in the post World War II world in the United States.  The film was a modest production but a hit for Fox Studio.  Webb's character was so popular he appeared in two more films playing the Lynn Belvedere character.

 

The film was written by F. Hugh Herbert and the running time is 83 minutes.

1948 - CALL NORTHSIDE 777, mixing fact with fiction

 The true story of a reporter's attempts to free a man found guilty of murder.  Set in Chicago and filmed primarily on location this type of film helped start a trend of on location filming getting Hollywood out of the studios.  The film appears to be a mixture of fact and fiction, although the basic story seems accurate.

James Stewart plays the reporter in reality actually a composite of two reporters working for the Chicago Times newspaper.  Stewart is on screen practically the whole time and gives a strong understated performance.  Probably legendary tough guy director Henry Hathaway had something to do with keeping his "aw shucks" mannerisms under control.

 The film's photography from Joe MacDonald is impressive considering it wasn't exactly and easy thing to film on location in the late 1940's.

 

Audiences today would probably find the film a little slow and lacking action, but this is really more of a procedural story with Stewart slowly unraveling with happened the day a policeman was shot and how an innocent man was arrested and sentenced for the crime

Written by  Jerome Cady, Jay Dratler, Leonard Hoffman and Quentin Reynolds.  The running time is 111 minutes.

1948 - FOUR FACES WEST, a good little western

A good little western with nice guy actor Joel McCrea as a bank robber who is chased by the legendary lawman Pat Garrett.  The story involves McCrea on the run from the law who for robbing a bank.  As McCrea attempts to escape he ends up at the ranch of a sick family.  McCrea has to decide if he will help the family or continue to make his way to Mexico to escape the law.

This film is a simple morality tale with a good cast that helps put the story over.  There is a love interest in the person of Francis Dee who was married to McCrea in real life.  Theirs was one of the more successful Hollywood marriages as they were together for over 57 years.

This film has nice scenery and a pleasant manner to it.  The film only runs about and hour and a half and tells its story efficiently.

90 minutes.

1948 - FORT APACHE on BLU RAY

This Blu Ray disc lets the viewer enjoy Ford's spectacular visual compositions in Monument Valley.  It's one gorgeous shot after another without overwhelming the story.

As usual with viewing Fort Apache, the fascination in the story is watching Henry Fonda essentially play the villain in this film.  John Wayne continued to improve as an actor and this is one of his best late 40's roles.  I think it's safe to say that the acting in the film is at a fairly high caliber.  Ford was not only a master of the visual but when he set his mind to it he was a very good director of actors as wel

The one acting exception in the film is Shirley Temple,  the one time child star who Ford had worked with when she was younger.  Her performance is full of actor tricks.  In particular her constant mugging and camera hogging almost brings the love story subplot crashing down around her and her then husband John Agar.

A good example of John Ford in his prime after his war service in World War II,  Ford is simplifying his approach to telling a story.

125 minutes, written by Frank Nugent.

1948 - RED RIVER, Criterion's impressive BLU-RAY

 

 

 

 

HAWKS DIRECTS WAYNE AND CLIFF

127 minutes.

1948 - HAMLET, Laurence Olivier version

Shakespeare's tragedy if performed complete can run about 4 hours.  For his film of Hamlet, Olivier cut major chunks of the play but it still logs in at about 2 1/2 hours which is a lot of time watching a film, especially a film based on a Shakespeare play which requires a lot of concentration in this ADD cinema watching age.

This version of the play could probably be called the "watch before I have a test on Hamlet in school." .  The performances are from the classical tradition with actors parading around in big costumes and reciting as if they were playing in a theater.  It's not bad acting, it just seems a little dated.  However Olivier is good as Hamlet he was a very good screen actor with an impressive presence.

This production unlike Olivier's version of Henry the V, is not in color but gloomy black and white.  At times parts of the films are so dark I don't think anybody even bothered to build a set for some of the scenes.  I know this play is a tragedy but things couldn't been that dark and depressing in Elsinore Castle all of the time.

Being the great Shakespeare critic that I am I must say I have always found the finale of Hamlet to be a little contrived.  All that poison sword tip business and poison chalice stuff seems like an easy way to wrap up a very long play.  I think the Bard probably could have used a little bit or a rewrite towards the end.

155 Minutes

1948 - GERMANY YEAR ZERO, Rossellini's impressive post World War II film.

Filmed on location in postwar Berlin Roberto Rossellini captured the environment of a city defeated and occupied as it attempts to recover from the war. 

Apparently Rossellini was in Berlin about a year or so after the war ended to do research and prep his film.  It certainly pays, off the film has a very realistic feeling to it which is not surprising considering Rossellini was one of the founders of the Italian realistic movement in the late 1940's. 

The film focuses on a young boy caught up in the black market and living in conditions of near poverty.  He is exploited by his teacher who is still very much a fascist even with the defeat of the Nazis. 

The film is unsurprisingly extremely depressing to watch.  However a subject like this really doesn't lend itself to being filmed with a positive spin.  An important if difficult film to watch.


78 minutes.

1948 - BEHIND LOCKED DOORS, getting it done in 62 minutes

A private investigator goes under cover at a mental hospital looking for a criminal.  This is an early Budd Boetticher film, which is not a western and was shot quickly on a small number of almost empty looking sets. 

Film scholars are always looking for signs of an auteur in the early films of directors, they would probably have to look pretty hard to find something in this film.  The story while not uninteresting does kind of suffer from the cheap production, and the cast is capable but doesn't light the film on fire. 

Richard Carlson is the private investigator, Carlson was a reliable B actor, who never really hit the big time, but was in some entertaining films like, King Solomon's Mines, The Creature From The Black Lagoon and the Elvis Presley/Mary Tyler Moore classic, Change of Habit.  The film also has one time MGM starlet/dancer Lucille Bremer whose career also never took off after a couple of decent opportunities.  Add to this mix, Tor Johnson, who appeared in a lot of Ed Wood films, as a crazy ex fighter, who beats the crap out of Carlson, in probably the film's best scene.

Technically a film noir, with lots of shadows and scenes filmed at night, this film is no masterpiece, but at 62 minutes who's complaining.

62 minutes

1948 - THREE GODFATHERS, John Ford's Chrismas allegory is mighty sentimental

When John Ford mixes a lot of his patented sentimentality with a Christmas allegory story, watch out.

Three Godfathers is about three outlaws who find a baby in the desert and their efforts to save it.  Ford's favorite actor John Wayne is the leader of the outlaws and as usual John Ford has loaded up the rest of the cast with his favorites. the famous Ford stock company.

If this type of film isn't your cup of tea, (and believe me it has taken me three viewings to finally appreciate it), watch out.  However the film is very well directed and quite beautiful to look at.  Three Godfathers was filmed on location in Death Valley, California and was Ford's first film in color.  John Ford was always the master of the long shot and placing actors in them so the film is a pleasure to watch.

This is in many ways a "typical" John Ford film, it has John Wayne, beautiful visual compositions, a very sentimental story and lots of corny comedy and drama.  An impressive in many ways.

106 minutes, screenplay by Laurence Stallings, Frank S Nugent and Robert Nathan.

1948 - EASTER PARADE, the top moneymaking film of 1948

 A real ordeal to sit through and an Academy Award winning film ( best screenplay).

This was the big film of 1948, the top grossing picture of the year.  Fred Astaire stepped in to replace Gene Kelly after Kelly broke his leg.  Judy Garland was at the peak of her popularity.  Irving Berlin was hired to write some new songs for the film and the picture was filmed in Technicolor.  There were complaints about the age difference between Astaire and Garland, the least of the problems with Easter Parade. 

The whole film, sickeningly bland. As they say, no one watches musicals for the plot but this love story was even more vacuous than usual for this genre. Astaire and Garland play a dance team who fall in and out and in and out of love.  Fred's old partner Ann Miller dumped him to be a big star in the Ziegfeld Follies, you get the picture. 

There are some good Irving Berlin songs in this film.  Still, you also have to sit through the music and lyrics of classics like, "Snookey Ookums, The Ragtime Violin, When the Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam,"  and "The Girl on the Magazine Cover" and the songs just keep coming at you. 

The color photography is really garish even for a color film from this period.  A blazing purple couch,  glowing flowers and red lipstick.  Towards the end there is a fashion show where they really pump up the ugly color look of the film.  

One scene in a restaurant where a waiter tosses an imaginary salad for Judy Garland and her date has to be seen to be believed, its not even remotely funny and it just never ends.

Judy Garland's OK but what saves this film is Fred Astaire's smooth dancing. 

The whole film is an interesting look at what people in 1948 considered to be wonderful entertainment, audiences just kept coming back to see Easter Parade again and again.  Rent That's Entertainment and watch the excerpts from Easter Parade to save time or just skip the whole thing.

107 minutes.