1950 - AMERICAN GUERRILLA IN THE PHILIPPINES, bland Fritz Lang film.

The book American Guerrilla in the Philippines was purchased by the head of 20th Century Fox Darryl F. Zanuck towards the end of World War II.  The film version of the book was being prepared when studio head Zanuck decided to discontinue making the now exhausted genre of the propaganda film.  The film sat in limbo until it was reactivated a few years later with Fritz Lang as the director

 

For a film made five years after the war it's still mired in a 1940's World War II sensibility.  The Japanese are the demonic invaders, the American soldiers stranded in the Philippines are the usual cross section of good old GI Joe's, and there's lots of rah rah military music on the soundtrack.

The film is supposedly based on the actual experiences of a navel officer who was stranded in the Philippines during the Japanese invasion.  Along with some other stranded soldiers they set up a spy network to keep tabs on the activity of the enemy.  Since this was basically a script written during World War 2 there's the usual inappropriate love interest in this case a sexy French woman for the hero to romance.

 

The star of this film was one of Fox's biggest performers back from serving in the war, Tyrone Power.  Power was frankly starting to age out of these kinds of roles and he had started to lose his boyish good looks.  The female love interest was Micheline Presle who had been in an "ou la la" French film called Devil in the Flesh  a film about a love affair between a teenage boy and an older married woman.  Presle came over to California looking for a Hollywood career but as was typical ended up stuck in uninteresting pictures.

 

 

The director Fritz Lang had stated that this picture was his least favorite but he should be given credit for shooting this film on location and in color.  In 1950 this was still not a common occurrence and the fact that Lang turned in a professional job is worthy of some praise.  American Guerrilla in the Philippines is a mediocre film only redeemed by the on location color photography.

The film was written by Lamar Trotti, the running time is 105 minutes. 

1950 - KING SOLOMON'S MINES, movie adventure in the grand tradition

MGM put to together a lavish remake of this old H. Rider Haggard story featuring the character Alan Quatermain.  Quatermain is  clearly the inspiration for Indiana Jones and just about every other adventurer in the movies.  

With this film MGM shot on location in Africa in what must have been really challenging locations considering the period the film was made in.  The story in a very brief nutshell has Quatermain leading a safari in search of the missing husband of Deborah Kerr.   The husband apparently had a map which lead to the fabled King Solomon's diamond mines. The various incidents that occur along the safari highlight the on location scenes and the wild animals of Africa.

Stuart Granger plays Alan Quatermain and Deborah Kerr with her flaming red hair (photographed in technicolor) is obviously going to be the love interest.  But probably the most interesting casting are the native Masai tribe.  I doubt any audience had seen anything like them especially while they were performing their ceremonial dances.

 

The film was photographed by Robert Surtees one of MGM's greatest cameramen who particularly excelled at color photography. Surtees had a long career starting in 1928 and working until 1978.  When you needed someone to master a complex production and produce great photography he was the man.

 

Compton Bennett was the original director but was replaced by Andrew Marton a specialist in photographing "2nd unit" action.  In this instance Marton was the right man for the job, King Solomon's Mines is a classic Hollywood adventure film.

The film was written by Helen Deutsch another old Hollywood pro, the running time is 103 minutes.

1950 - DEVIL'S DOORWAY, good revisionist western

 A good western from Anthony Mann with an able assist from his cameraman John Alton.  Devil's Doorway speaks to the mistreatment of the Native American at the hands of a bunch of racists white men.

Robert Taylor plays the Native American, Lance Poole a Civil War veteran medal of honor winner who is cheated out of his land by an unethical attorney.  Let's face it Taylor is completely miscast in the role but does a very good job as Lance Poole, who isn't going to roll over and let white men walk all over him.

 

The action when it comes is very good and the film makes it points without hammering the viewer over the head about the mistreatment of Native Americans.

The film was written by Guy Trosper and runs 84 minutes.

1950 - ALL ABOUT EVE, high point in the career of Joseph Mankiewicz

Joseph Mankiewicz's career high as a writer/director.  This bitchy drama about the various shenanigans on Broadway featured Bette Davis in her last important role as Margo Channing reigning theatrical diva of the New York stage.  Little does Margo know, her personal assistant Eve Harrington is maneuvering to steal her boyfriend and her career.

Mankiewicz was a big fan of the theater so his screenplay is filled with lots of references to actors and plays that probably the average viewer wouldn't even remotely have a clue about.  The dialog in the film is sharp and the cast knows they have the advantage of a great script and talented director.  However it should probably be noted that the producer of the film Darryl Zanuck had considerable influence on the film.  He had Mankiewicz pare down his 3 hour plus script to a more manageable 138 minutes.  Zanuck was an excellent editor and tightened the film's story.

 The assembled cast is good particularly George Sanders as critic Addison DeWitt and Anne Baxter as the villainous Eve Harrington.  Most people watching the film are usually aware that this was one of Marilynn Monroe's early film.  She has a small part and she's pretty good in it.

Over the years this film has at times gotten the reputation as a camp classic and it's easy to see why,  the film is a little over the top and it's hard to believe a tough cookie like Margo Channing wouldn't see through Eve's scheming.  Still, a very good film.

1950 - PANIC IN THE STREETS, Kazan starts to grow as a filmmaker

The director Elia Kazan really gets out of the studio for this story about a modern day plague that might strike the city of New Orleans.  Two hoodlums are infected with the plague and it's up to the authorities to find them in 48 hours. 

The stars are Richard Widmark who is kind of over the top with his performance and Paul Douglas who's underplaying seems a little more in tune with the film's tone.  One of the strength's Elia Kazan brought to his films was his ability to get good performances out of his cast.  I'm not sure what happened with Widmark but everyone else is very good in this film particularly Zero Mostel as a small time hood.

The attraction of this film is really the on location filming in New Orleans.  Kazan and his cinematographer Joseph MacDonald really capture the flavor of and the era of the city in the early 1950's.  The Blu Ray makes the images really stand out.  The on location chase at the end of this film is very exciting. 

Not one of Kazan's great films but Panic In The Streets is very good. 

96 minutes. written by Richard Murphy,  Daniel Fuchs, Edna and Edward Anhalt

1950 - SO LONG AT THE FAIR, attempt at a Hitchcock like thriller

A brother and sister travel to Paris to attend the Paris Exposition of 1889.  The brother mysteriously vanishes or does he?  Everyone the sister meets tells her that she traveled alone and no brother ever existed.  Let the mystery begin as the sister and some guy she meets attempt to figure our what is going on.

The stars are the very pretty Jean Simmons and British matinee idol Dirk Bogarde before he became a real actor.  The brother is played by David Tomlinson who everyone will recognize as Mr Banks from Mary Poppins.

This film kind of plods along as the mystery of the brother's disappearance unravels.  Frankly the film is so stolid and kind of lifeless that the resolution is disappointing.  The film really needed an Alfred Hitchcock to whip it into shape and juice up the suspense situations.

86 minutes, written by Hugh Mills.

1950 - THE ELUSIVE PIMPERNEL, a not very good Powell and Pressburger film to put it mildly.

A stinker is a stinker even from Powell and Pressburger.  The producers Alexander Korda and Samuel Goldwyn persuaded The Archers to remake The Scarlet Pimpernel.  However Powell and Pressburger seemed very uninspired considering the end result.

The film has pretty color photography and enough foppish behavior from the cast to completely distract the viewer from the story which is about rescuing French aristocrats during the French Revolution.  Frankly the sight of David Niven with curls in his hair is not one easily forgotten.

As usual the film is drenched in technicolor as is the way with Powell and Pressburger, it is a gorgeous film to look at. However the film is just about dramatically inert with the climax involving the chief villain sneezing after inhaling a bunch of pepper up his nose!

The Elusive Pimpernel shows the further decline of the Powell and Pressburger team, good looking films but eccentric and off putting entertainments.

109 minutes.

1950 - RIO GRANDE, John Ford, John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara, soldiers on horseback

John Ford's western film made before The Quiet Man is what would be called a "typical" John Ford western.  Ford as usual indulges himself with scenic compositions of soldiers on horseback, military honor and lots of unspoken domestic drama at an army post in the southwest.

John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara are the estranged husband and wife.  During the Civil War, Wayne's character Kirby York, (a continuation of his character from Fort Apache) burned down his wife's family plantation.  Throw in a subplot about fighting Indians who can escape to Mexico, which was an unsubtle reference to the cold war.  Oh yea forgot about The Sons of the Pioneers, a country group who show up occasionally to warble a song or two.

Ford as usual loaded the cast up with cronies from his previous film.  Victor McLaglen plays his usual boisterous Irish Sergeant.  Ben Johnson and Harry Carey Jr are also present for Ford to kick around.

Ford was one of the masters of scenic black and white compositions so the film looks very good.  Overall, this is a good if typically overindulgent John Ford western.

105 minutes, written by James Kevin McGuinness.

1950 - STAGE FRIGHT, disappointing murder mystery from Hitchcock

Working my way through the Hitchcock DVD's.  This one is a real letdown.  An odd mystery set in England with lots of colorful British character actors, lots of talk and not much suspense. 

Not sure what the attraction for Hitchcock was in this film, being back in London or working with Marlene Dietrich.  Hitchcock apparently liked working with Dietrich, however Dietrich thought he was kind of an oddball. 

Even in a nothing picture like this, Hitchcock is still the master.  He knew how to move the camera and compose interesting shots.  The last 10 minutes of the film are the best as the police trap the murderer in a theater.  Hitchcock really knows what he's doing, setting up a suspenseful situation through camera work and editing.  This kind of film making is virtually forgotten.

Still, Stage Freight is just not a very compelling film and you have to sit through 100 minutes of quirky but not very funny British humor and meandering and confusing story telling.

110 minutes.

1950, HOUSE BY THE RIVER, good noirish film from teutonic terror Fritz Lang

House by the River was made during Fritz Lang's wanderings from studio to studio.  The walking stereotype of the screaming German director, Lang had a lot of trouble getting along with the various Hollywood studios he worked for.  As a result, he wandered into lower budget projects and productions.

Working at cheapskate studio Republic, Lang filmed this melodrama and brought a lot of style to a low budget production where at times there are some pretty bad looking painted backdrops. The cast was pretty second string as well with only Louis Hayward as a guy who accidentally kills a woman and gradually comes around to the idea of letting his brother take the rap for it.

What the film has going for it his Fritz Lang's way with creating an atmosphere and mood of menace.  This was a film maker who really knew what to do with light and shadow especially when filmed in black and white.

Herr director Lang getting ready to terrorize the cast after his coffee break.

In spite of the low budget and somewhat shaky story line, Fritz Lang keeps this film very interesting, he has an actor in Louis Hayward who if he isn't a Mabuse like villain is still a pretty nasty character.

A low budget film noir worthy of some respect, House By The River has a memorable ending.

88 minutes.

1950 - ARMORED CAR ROBBERY, good little crime film with Charles McGraw

Tough guy cop Charles McGraw is on the trail of a gang of robbers who committed an Armored Car Robbery that was responsible for the death of his partner.

McGraw is really a piece of work, slamming down cigarettes and being a total bad ass in his trench coat.  No time to romance the broads in this tight little film.

Armored Car Robbery has good direction from Richard Fleischer and packs a lot of tough guy action into it's short running time.

McGraw's the man.

67 minutes.

1950 - RASHOMON, classic Kurosawa film is looking mighty creaky.

Watching Rashomon again after a number of years was a minor ordeal to sit through on this viewing.

Everyone is familiar with how the film made the reputation of Akira Kurosawa and brought Japanese cinema to international notice.  The film is still on a number of "greatest film" lists.  The story structure was very unique at the time as the film looked at what is truth. 

With this viewing I found the film to be pretty rough going.  In particular the over exaggerated acting styles of the cast made it seem like an exercise in very hammy acting.

 I know that Kurosawa liked it a little broad in his films but at times the performances of Toshiro Mifune and Machiko Kyo look like Mickey Rooney's character Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's.  It's just not pretty.

The photography of cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa still holds up pretty well, but a lot of his style has been copied so much by other films and TV commercials that it's inevitable it also looks a little dated.

Unfortunately, that's the way it goes with some film classics.

88 minutes. Written by Akira Kurosawa and Shinobu Hashimoto.

1950 - DESTINATION MOON, obviously outdated space travel film is still interesting

The first trip to the Moon as envisioned by science fiction writer Robert A Heinlein in his quasi serious science fiction phase and produced by George Pal coming off of his puppetoon shorts. 

Well they got a lot of things right and they got a lot of things wrong.  Heinlein's story proposes that only private industrialists in an altruistic mood (!) will finance, build and fly the first rocket to the moon.  The United States government will be more of a pain in their side than a partner in this enterprise.  The film also contains warnings about an unseen foreign source agitating the public to undermine the space launch, the 1950's favorite bogeyman communist Russia. 

The crew was played by character actors which helps to communicate a sense of realism to the story, no big time Hollywood star to bring any image baggage to the film.  However one of the actors, Dick Wesson who plays Joe the radio operator, the comic relief, and man is he ever the comic relief with his cracks about hot dates with dames and trying to see who the Brooklyn Dodgers are playing from his view in space.  Wesson is very grating.  Joe the radio operator is supposed to be the regular guy along with these egghead scientists for the audience to identify with.

The famous 1950's science fiction illustrator Chesley Bonestell appears to have been responsible for a lot of the look of the film.  He certainly was in charge of the impressive moonscape paintings.  Destination Moon was filmed on a low budget, Bonestell's paintings had a lot to do with making the film look more expansive then it is.

The scenes outside of the spaceship are obviously animated using some of George Pal's puppetoon effects, very clever.

The spaceship "Luna" still looks very cool.

91 minutes.

1950 - THE BLACK ROSE, standard adventure stuff in Technicolor!!

Pretty boring Tyrone Power adventure story, shot on location in England and Morocco. 

Power is supposed to be a young English scholar in search of adventure.  Power looks to be in his 40's so he doesn't exactly have that young scholar thing going for him.  Tyrone Power doesn't even attempt an English accent and maybe that's for the best.  Orson Welles shows up as a Genghis Khan type of character and he actually underplays his scenes for a change and is pretty good.  A french actress Cecile Aubrey, is the love interest and she acts so infantile she seems like she's brain dead. 

The director is Henry Hathaway who should have been able to do this kind of adventure story in his sleep and maybe that was the problem, he must have been half asleep, the film has no energy, it's basically a technicolor travelogue.  The cinematographer was the legendary Jack Cardiff, but this film isn't up to the level of the Powell and Pressburger pictures he worked on.

The Black Rose is known as the film Orson Welles raided for costumes and props for his film version of Othello, in particular the fur coat he wears throughout that picture.  Othello is certainly a much better film than this.  Welles provides the only interest in this film

120 minutes.

1950 - SEVEN DAYS TO NOON, brilliant thriller about nuclear terrorism

An excellent film about domestic terrorism in London.  A research scientist working in a nuclear arms laboratory steals an atom bomb which he intends to use if the British government does not abandon their nuclear weapons program.

This is a nearly perfect original thriller.  The film is cleverly divided into three parts.  The first part involves Scotland Yard's realization that the scientist has disappeared along with a nuclear weapon.
The second part of the film focuses on the scientist himself as he hides out in London.  The final section of the film concerns the evacuation of London and the search for the scientist by the government. 

The acting is very good throughout the film.  The scientist is given enough character so the viewer can understand  his reasons for detonating the bomb even though he still comes off as a naive nutcase.   His character, played as a rather mild mannered person makes him even more interesting and scary. 

However  the film clearly stays  on the side of the government.  The British knew what it meant to have their cities attacked since this film came out five years after the end of World War II.  The scenes of the evacuation of London are extremely well done.  The abandoned pets and people walking around with "end of the world" signs were a particularly clever touch.  When you consider this film was made way before the days of computer generated Titanic people the actual logistics of staging these evacuation scenes is impressive.  

This is not a perfect film.  There are a couple of plot points and situations that are not very credible, however good films are not always perfect films.   The filmmakers  John and Roy Bolting, brothers who usually specialized in comedy,  produced directed and edited this film.

A very impressive accomplishment.

F98D6848-52B3-E752-8422-01C6E662EE81

1.03.01

1950 - WHEN WILLIE COMES MARCHING HOME, John Ford copies Preston Sturges

Even four time Academy Award winning directors have to eat which can be the only reason that John Ford got involved in this comedy.

A small town man who enlists in the Army at the start of World War II and ends up being stationed in his hometown for the duration of the war much to his embarrassment.  This is a very mild satire on patriotism and was clearly influenced by Preston Sturges much better comedy,  Hail The Conquering Hero.

The movie stars Dan Dailey who was a song and dance man in some Fox musicals, naturally Dailey does a couple of musical numbers which seem completely out of place.  Ford must have gotten along pretty well with Dailey since he appeared in two more of his  films.

Towards the end of the film, Dailey accidentally goes on a secret mission to France where he meets a beautiful French resistance fighter and brings back secret information on the Nazi V2 rockets.  This  mostly involves Dailey getting drunk on the secret mission and I guess that's supposed to be funny.  Ford was somewhat of a notorious binge alcoholic when he wasn't filming, he must have been able to relate to these scenes.

The movie ends with Dailey finally being recognized for his heroism, and it shows him flying off to be honored by the President of the United States.

The best thing you can say about this movie is that it's 82 minutes and that Ford keeps the broad comedy situations moving along at a fast pace.No underrated classic here, just a director putting in a day's work.

Written by Richard Sale and Mary Loos. The running time is 82 minutes.

1950 - FATHER OF THE BRIDE Vincente Minnelli phones this one in

Elizabeth Taylor is getting married, Spencer Tracy is the grumpy FATHER OF THE BRIDE end of story.

Vincente Minnelli directs this like a television sitcom. The movie has a few funny scenes and one surrealistic dream sequence that probably was the only part of the movie that interested him. 

A 90 minute time killer.

1950 - THIS IS KOREA, a lost John Ford film that probably should have stayed lost

Only on YouTube would something like this unseen John Ford film show up.

 

In 1950, John Ford traveled to Korea to supervise the filming of a propaganda film for the United States Navy.  Ford had a big success during World War II with his other short documentary film The Battle of Midway.  Ford and his team had filmed the The Battle of Midway, with color 16mm cameras, and at times got so close to the Japanese bombing of Midway Island that the camera film jumped out of the sprocket holes. Then, to avoid the War Department censors, he smuggled the film back to the United States edited it in secret and managed to get the film shown to President Roosevelt.

Released to the general public. The Battle of Midway was corny and very emotional but it also gave the 1940's audience a view of the war in color,  something that hadn't been seen at that time.

Ford during the filming of This Is Korea

By the time of the Korean War, the US Navy had persuaded Ford to make another documentary about our involvement in that conflict. This time Ford meet with a lot less success. Ford attempted to frame the conflict with his usual theme of "victory in defeat."  Ford had a subplot of an American unit surrounded by the North Koreans during the winter.  He actually had the audacity to compare this to George Washington at Valley Forge.  Ford included lots of shots of cute Korean kids being raised by Catholic missionaries, one kid is even renamed Babe Ruth. The film concluded with a Catholic Mass being observed during wartime which  was pretty manipulative.

Ford also loaded up the film with lots of footage of the United States Army shooting heavy weapons into the mountains, while a narrator announces what type of ordnance is being blasted into the hills. The viewer also gets scenes of planes dropping napalm onto houses, the narrator says things like "burn em out." Watching scenes of people being burned to death probably isn't going to advance the cause of
 democracy very much.

  

World War II had been the defining moment in John Ford's life. Ford saw a lot of action during that war and had photographed the Nazi extermination camps. He had to have been deeply affected by what he had been through and it turned him into a super patriot. Unfortunately for Ford, the Korean conflict did not really lend itself to the same film making style he had used on The Battle of Midway.