1952 - THE BEAST MUST DIE - excellent crime thriller

From Argentina comes this excellent crime thriller.  The Beast Must Die concerns the fate of a writer who after his son is killed in a hit and run, attempts to find out who the responsible driver was.  Going undercover, his investigation causes a series of major complications.

The film was directed by Román Viñoly Barreto who worked during what is now considered the classical era of Argentina's film industry which ran from the 1930's to the 1950's.  The Argentina cinema at one point was releasing approximately 40 films a year in spite of political pressures from the Peron government and the Church.  In fact one of the performers Libertad Lamarque managed to earn the enmity of Evita Peron probably not a real healthy situation for her.

The Beast Must Die actually originates as a detective novel from a British author, Cecil Day-Lewis.  The director Claude Chabrol was so impressed with the story he also made a French version.

In spite of my digression on this post, I would emphasize again that this is an excellent thriller. 

This film was written by Narciso Ibáñez Menta and Román Viñoly Barreto, the running time is 95 minutes.

1952 - THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, the remake

 Well if it worked once it will work again.  MGM purchased the rights for a remake of The Prisoner of Zenda from producer David O Selznick for a cool $225,000. Previously the studio had a success with Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr in their remake of King Soloman's Mines, so Granger and Kerr were teamed up again this time with Granger as Rudolf Rassendyl and the King of Ruritania and Deborah Kerr a performer who was born to be filmed in technicolor, as  Princess Flavia.

What's so interesting about this remake of the 1937 film is that the director Richard Thorpe literally duplicated every scene right down to using the same camera angles and dialog.  The sets and the costumes even look the same.  MGM also used Alfred Newman's score from the 1937 version.  Incredibly this film was shot in a month since there was no need to get very creative after all they were just rehashing the original.

About the only differences in the two films were that this version was shot in color and the action scenes were staged better.  Ronald Colman in the original film was a fine actor but looked a little stiff in the sword fight scenes.  Steward Granger seems to handle a saber with a little more panache. 

How's the film?  Well not that bad.  The story if rather on the far fetched side is entertaining and the damn thing apparently made a good profit for MGM.  In 1998 Universal Studios and director Gus Van Sandt tried the same stunt doing a scene for scene remake of Hitchcock's  Psycho but this time this gimmick didn't pay off, the film was a flop financially and critically.

The screenwriters are basically the same bunch from the first film since this was a slavish remake, the running time is 96 minutes.

1952 - THE WHITE SHEIK, early Fellini film

The White Sheik was made early in the career of Fellini, it's the second film that he directed.  The story is a simple one.  A married couple traveling to Rome are selected for an audience with the Pope. However the wife secretly wants to meet the hero of a comic book called The White Sheik.  In Italy at that time some comic books were actually posed picture books with actors being hired to stage scenes instead of artists drawing  graphic panels.  The wife essentially runs away from her husband and as is typical, she finds that the fantasy of the comic book hero and the reality are a big contrast.  Meanwhile the husband desperately searchers Rome for her before the audience with the Pope.

Interestingly one of the characters the husband runs into is a prostitute named Cabiria, who about five years later will get her own film.  The prostitute is played by Fellini's long suffering wife Giulietta Masina, in what is essentially a cameo performance.

 

I suppose The White Sheik would be considered a minor Fellini film but compared to some of his almost unwatchable films like City of Women, And the Ship Sails On and Fellini Satyricon this film actually plays pretty well.  This simple story is in a lot of ways preferable to some of the overstuffed films he directed in the 1970's.

The film was written by Federico Fellini, Tullio Pinelli and Ennio Flaiano.  The running time is 83 minutes.

1952 - HIGH NOON , classic 1950's western

This famous western about a sheriff facing down a gang of outlaws without any help from the cowardly townspeople plays a tad slow today.  However this is an extremely well made film on a modest budget.  The director Fred Zinnemann, was one of Hollywood's best filmmakers when it came to making important films that were also entertaining.  The editor Elmo Williams went on to bigger and better things but  was responsible for the careful structure of the story.  The film plays in real time something that was rarely done in the movies.  The film was well photographed by Floyd Crosby who had been associated with the documentary movement. The composer was Dimitri Tiomkin who along with the lyricist Ned Washington wrote the famous ballad that played throughout the film.

The cast of the film was interesting.  Gary Cooper who had spent a large part of a career playing western characters was the sheriff.  His performance is a study in the less is more style of acting. Grace Kelly practically starting out her career is his wife,  with a 28 year age difference between her and Cooper.  Kelly really didn't take off until she worked with John Ford in Mogambo.  The fascinating Mexican performer Katy Jurado played Cooper's former mistress.  The rest of the cast is filled with character actors, Thomas Mitchell, Lloyd Bridges, Lon Chaney Jr., Harry Morgan and Lee Van Cleef.

 

High Noon had a very high critical reputation at the time of it's release, maybe a little too high.  For a relatively simple story it was burdened by a lot of "deep" insights from film critics.  It was seen as a metaphor for the current state of politics in the United States at the time and was reviled by John Wayne as an "un-American" film.  The gutless behavior of the citizens of the the town Cooper is trying to protect do seem to be a metaphor for the Hollywood blacklist of the 1950's.  

 

The film has a complicated production history between the writer Carl Foreman and the producer Stanley Kramer.  It did very well financially and for all the baggage the film carries it's a good film  thanks to Fred Zinnemann's skill as a director.

The running time is 85 minutes.

1952 - KANGAROO aka The Australian Story

With money tied up in Australia, 20th Century Fox sent director Lewis Milestone over to the "land of down under."  To bad they couldn't have sent him a better script.  Kangaroo has the benefit of being filmed entirely in Australia, particularly in some hell hole called Mount Brown which really looks like a place no self respecting tourist would go.  The plot has something to do with a cattle ranch trying to keep their herd alive in the drought stricken outback by driving them to water.

Into this situation come a couple of bad guys. Richard Boone a real bad guy with no redeeming features and Peter Lawford a bad guy with some redeeming features.  Living on the ranch is British actor Finley Currie and his daughter played by Maureen O'Hara.  Boone and Lawford conspire to steal the ranch from Currie by having Lawford pretend to be Currie's long lost son.  Lawford falls in love with O'Hara and you can basically guess how this is going to end.  The director Lewis Milestone clearly realizing what a dumb plot this is, focuses on the cattle drive instead. This takes up much of the running time of the film thankfully.

 

This film is not without interest, the on location filming in color is impressive and Milestone knows how to stage action scenes.  It's too bad that more work couldn't have been put into the script.  As it stands the film is basically an American western shot in Australia.

 

The screenplay is by Harry Kleiner, the running time is a brisk 80 minutes.

1952 - THIS IS CINERAMA , first film in the Cinerama process

This film that introduced the widescreen Cinerama process to the public complete with an enhanced soundtrack.  John Ford's producer Meriam C. Cooper was involved in the process along with journalist Lowell Thomas who provided the introduction and was the narrator throughout the film.

Obviously no home screen television set up can compete with the Cinerama film going experience so the viewer has to somewhat imagine what it must have been like to see the film in the theater thanks to a formatting process called "smilevision"  essentially a curved picture.

The film itself gets off to a slow start after a point of view roller coaster ride.  The viewer has to sit through scenes of a boys choir singing Ave Marie and an excerpt from the opera Aida.  All very dull stuff

Finally after the intermission things kick up a considerable notch.  A water skiing show at Cypress Gardens and some impressive shots of the canals of Venice and a bullfight in Spain.  The film finishes up with a dramatic fly over of the American West.

This Is Cinerama is probably of interest as a period piece then and actual film.  As the filmmakers got used to working with the widescreen process  and the Cinerama films got better.

Running time 115 minutes.

1952 - THE NARROW MARGIN, excellent film noir

 Coming in at the beginning of the 1950's, this film is an extremely well made noir made on a low budget with a minimum of sets, and a cast of "B" actors which actually give a lot of verisimilitude to the film's plot.

Charles McGraw plays the tough cop transporting a mobster's spouse on a train so she can testify at an important criminal trial.  The wife played by Marie Windsor is one tough cookie who McGraw basically can't stand.  The action in the film comes from McGraw having to keep Windsor alive while a couple of mob hit men try to knock her off.  The enclosed space on the train which is imaginatively photographed and staged, creates a lot of tension.

The director is Richard Fleischer at the start of his career before he moved on to bigger budgets and more prestigious assignments. The screenplay is by Earl Felton who would go on to write Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and a good comedy called The Happy Time.

The running time is a tight 71 minutes.

1952 - RETREAT HELL, schizo Korean War film.

This is a rah rah get those commies war film with lots of stock footage of planes dropping bombs.  The characters are right out of the book of soldier war movie cliches. The cowardly soldier who sucks it up, the old hardened vet who has seen it all and the civilian called up from the reserves etc.

However as you watch this film it becomes clear that the director Joseph Lewis is more interested in showing how grim war really is in particular the Korean War fought at times during the freezing winter months.  Hard to sell a lot of "of go get em" propganda when soldiers are freezing to death.

The  cast is a bunch of "B" movie actors with the headliners being Frank Lovejoy, Richard Carlson and Russ Tamblyn.  Tamblyn was usually seen in MGM musicals dancing around or as a dancing street hood in West Side Story.

The film was made with the cooperation of the Marines and was filmed at Camp Pendleton in sunny California with Camp Pendleton standing in for freezing North Korea.  Well that's Hollywood realism for yea.

94 minutes

1952 - THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH, is certainly one of the longest.

Clocking in at over 2 hours this Cecil B. DeMille corn fest finally wears out it's welcome towards the last 20 or 30 minutes of the film.  For all the subplots and characters in the film, the story has a "seen it all before" quality and seen it made a lot better by other people.

The cast is certainly unusual.  The insufferable Betty Hutton is the female lead who manages to fall in love with two men.  If there was one thing that Betty Hutton could never project as an actor that was sex appeal.  If you needed a loud mouthed overbearing and clueless personality Hutton was the one to cast.  Cornel Wilde is the trapeze artist who is a continental European Lothario in the best tradition of "B" movie screen lovers. His French accent is really terrible.

 

 Charlton Heston is the brooding circus manager.  Heston wants to bring the circus to all the small towns of America but he is so intense and scary in his performance he would make an audience want to run to one of those new fangled outdoor drive in 50's movie theaters instead.  In the supporting cast is one of the 50's hottest actors, Gloria Grahame who nobody seems to hit on much.  I guess when you have Betty Hutton around why would you want Gloria Grahame.  Finally there is James Stewart playing "Buttons a clown."

After what seems like hours and hours of circus parades and clown antics the film climaxes in a spectacular train wreck sequence.  The sequence would have been even more spectacular if the train didn't look like a model that was filmed in some kid's hobby corner.  DeMille always made epic films with less than epic special effects.

A kind of a disappointment from Cecil B. DeMille, but the film made a lot of money by 1950's standards.

152 minutes.  Written by Fredric M. Frank, Theodore St John,  Frank Cavett and Barré Lyndon.

1952 - THE SNIPER, the psycho killer on the loose 1950's version.

An attempt to dramatize a story about a deeply disturbed Army veteran, The Sniper is finally done in by the conventions of 1950's attitudes about mental illness. 

Arthur Franz is the psycho shooter who has a real hatred of women. In fact he hates them so much he decides to get rid of them.  He's sort of an early version of Norman Bates without the stuffed body in the cellar.  The police have to get Franz before he pops more women which is probably the most interesting aspect of the film.  The on location photography in San Francisco and the police investigation of the killings are also quite interesting.

However the least successful element of the film is the very dated psychoanalysis of the killer's mind by a police psychologist attempting to help the police understand his motives.  At one point the psychologist makes an earnest plea for locking up anyone who even remotely has some kind of deviant thought.  If you think about it, that would be most of the population of this country.

For all the overblown pseudo psychoanalysis, the film actually ends on a tense and understated note.  It's unfortunate that the rest of the film couldn't have been used this approach.

87 minutes.

1952 - IVANHOE, outstanding adventure film from MGM

Here is a film that completely hits it marks.  Ivanhoe is a large scale action adventure filmed in England with a big budget.  This story of knights, Richard The Lionheart, Robin Hood (here called Robin of Locksley) and chivalry is so well done it's easy to ignore the mix of American and British actors in the cast.

The driving force behind Ivanhoe was producer Pandro S Berman, one of Hollywood's best film makers.  He had a distinguished career working at RKO with Fred Astaire, Katherine Hepburn, George Stevens and George Cukor among others.  Later he moved to MGM where he continued to produce films of high quality.  The director Richard Thorpe was a working director who probably was never on anyone's "A" list, but was a reliable craftsman.  F.A. Young was the cinematographer.  Young went on to work with David Lean on Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago and Ryan's Daughter.

The cast included a couple of stunning women, Joan Fontaine and Elizabeth Taylor.  Taylor was probably 19 years old when she filmed Ivanhoe and she was an extremely attractive young woman although she never was much of an actor.  Robert Taylor played Ivanhoe and he brings a commanding presence to a part that could have come off as silly. 

Ivanhoe has some excellent action scenes with a castle siege by Robin Hood's men being a real standout.  A great film made by a group of professionals who really knew what they were doing.

Written by Aeneas MacKenzie, Noel Langley and Marguerite Roberts the running time is  107 minutes.

1952 - RED SKIES OF MONTANA, only you can prevent forest fire films

Smoke jumper Dick Widmark and his team of smoke jumpers jump into a forest fire, all of them die except for Widmark who has that dreaded movie disease amnesia and can't remember what happened.  The rest of the film involves Widmark having to prove he wasn't responsible for the deaths of his men etc.

If you can sit through this boring drama you get to see some cool forest fire footage with lots of trees exploding and burning.  This kind of stuff is always fascinating to see since the film was shot in the early 1950's which means no computer imagery and involves actually sticking actors in the middle of a burning forest.

The film is also interesting for a lot of on location early color filming in rural Hicksville USA also known as Montana.  Lots of cool old cars and buildings to look at.

Widmark was always a bad ass but the story in this film is very lame.  However the spectacular fire  fighting sequence towards the end is very impressive

99 minutes

1952 - RUBY GENTRY - over heated southern drama is really overheated

King Vidor and Jennifer Jones reteam for another nutty sex epic along the lines of Duel in the Sun.

Jennifer Jones is oversexed Ruby Gentry with an "itch down there."  Jones spends the first part of the film stroking shot gun barrels and running around in tight jeans and push up bras.  Jones has the hots for Charleton Heston who talks about "big pumps" and generally turns into a horn dog when ever he is around Ruby.  Heston won't marry Ruby because she is from "the wrong side of the tracks."

Jones marries Karl Malden the richest man in town and takes her revenge on Heston for two timing her.  It all ends in another shootout with some striking similarities to the climax of Duel in the Sun.

This piece of southern melodrama cheesecake is well directed by King Vidor who at this point in his career is a long way from The Crowd or Our Daily Bread.

82 minutes, written by Arthur Fitz-Richard and Silvia Richards.

1952 - WHAT PRICE GLORY, auteur film from John Ford, although nobody's going to talk about it.

About as auteur as you are going to get, but this is the flip side of letting a film director run amok.  John Ford was hired to direct a remake of the silent World War I film What Price Glory, in what was originally conceived to be a musical of all things.  Fortunately sanity prevailed and and they went with a war drama without the songs (except for 1 pretty bad love song). 

During World War I marines and mortal enemies Captain Flagg and Sergeant Quirt fight their own personal war for the local village prostitute Charmaine.  Since this is a war film from the 1950's you have to read between the lines to figure out that the girl is a prostitute. 

The chief impression left by What Price Glory is of a lot of people yelling at each other for the running time of the film.  James Cagney yells at Dan Dailey, Dailey yells back at Cagney, Cagney yells at the other officers, Dailey yells at the enlisted men and on and on.

Being a veteran of World War II, Ford seems to think that lots of soldiers yelling and shouting is funny.  He throws in a lot of little visual jokes and humor which seems more heavy handed than usual.  There was always of part of Ford that liked to use cornball humor in his films and sometimes this approach worked to lighten up the heavy drama of films like The Searchers or How Green Was My Valley.  But in this film he really runs amok with the lowbrow jokes which completely destroy the story. 

The was shot completely on the back lot of 20th Century Fox, the sets look phony and the fighting in the trenches during the battle scenes is completely unbelievable.  It's hard to believe this is the same director who filmed Four Sons, a much better World War I drama 24 years earlier.  What Price Glory, was a stage play when it was first performed in 1924, that might have been part of the problem with this film.  The whole thing just seems very stiff, perhaps Ford felt he needed to have the cast constantly yell at each other to distract the audience from it's theatrical origins.

111 minutes, written by Phoebe Ephron and Henry Ephron.

1952 - DIPLOMATIC COURIER, working definition of the term "sub par Hitchocock like thriller."

Those 1950's Communists are at it again but thank goodness the United States has it's top Diplomatic Courier on the case.  A diplomatic courier is basically a glorified errand boy for the State Department but in this film he's Tyrone Power defender of freedom and fighter of those commies.

It seems the United States can learn when the Commies will attack Europe.  Information that is "three times more explosive then Pearl Harbor" is floating around Europe.  For some reason Power races around trying to get this information before the Ruskies can get it, all the while trying to figure out if husky voiced Hildegard Neff is either a commie or a righteous dude woman of freedom like himself

The whole film is just pretty poor in almost every way.  The screenplay by Casey Robinson stumbles along from one sloppy plot point to the next.  The film is supposedly set in Europe but it's pretty clear that they sent a second unit over seas with a stand-in for Tyrone Power and had him run around some scenic locations which they then fit into the usual studio back lot settings.

Henry Hathaway was always a good contract director but there was only so much he could do with this kind of film. 

The film has a few things going for it in the cast.  Patricia Neal is a traitorous American who attempts to seduce Power, she's actually fun.  Karl Malden shows up as a military policeman playing his usual second banana role.  Last but not least is Lee Marvin as another military policeman.  It must have been one of Marvin's very early roles since he has dark hair.

Overall the whole film is pretty pathetic.

97 minutes, written by Casey Robinson and Liam O'Brien. 

1952 - SON OF PALEFACE,western spoof is pretty silly and pretty funny.

Bob Hope is "Junior," the The Son of Paleface .  A Harvard man on his way out to the wild west to collect his late father's fortune.  Jane Russell is the head of an outlaw gang who wants to steal him blind.  Roy Rogers is a government agent attempting to stop Russell. Trigger is Roy's horse.

A very funny Bob Hope western spoof.  Directed by Frank Tashlin in full cartoon mode.  The jokes, visual gags, wisecracks and pretty decent songs never stop coming.  Hope's like a dirty little boy leering at Jane Russel even though he was almost 50 when he made       

 

Who ever had the inspired idea of casting Roy Rogers and his horse Trigger as yet another foil for Hope should have received a bonus.  Rodgers is a pretty good sport since he gets to spend the entire film having his masculinity ridiculed by Hope.  Hope also does comedic battle with Rodger's horse Trigger in some really funny slapstick scenes.  The legendary scene with Hope sharing a bed with Trigger is still very funny.

Watching Bob Hope in his prime makes you appreciate how hilarious he could be.  Woody Allen borrowed a lot of Hope's comedy timing for his version of Hope's wise ass coward character.

By the time Son of Paleface was filmed, Hope had been around for so long that his comedy timing only needed to be on autopilot.  He was clearly a good enough sport to play along with Frank Tashlin's goofy visual gags.  And show me another performer who could get away with breaking the 4th wall in a film.

95 minutes, written by Frank Tashlin, Joseph Quillan and Robert L. Welch.

1952 - THE BIG SKY, big Howard Hawks production in a melancholy mood

The adventures of a keel boat expedition heading up the Missouri river to trade with the Indians. 

This was a big expensive Howard Hawks production.  Kirk Douglas was the star of the film but The Big Sky was really a low key ensemble piece with the actors delivering most of their lines with Howard Hawk's famous overlapping dialog technique.

It's hard to know exactly what Hawks was trying for with this film, he has a number of scenes that are among the best he has every directed. He also has a lot of scenes that seem to go absolutely nowhere.  Hawks really indulges himself with comedy and little character bits throughout the film at the expensive of any kind of narrative.  He has one extended scene where Kirk Douglas has his finger amputated.  Hawks has Douglas play the entire scene as a comedy.

Even the music in this film is unusual for a Hawks film.  The composer Dimitri Tiomkin who usually specialized in bombastic film music wrote one of his most low key scores.

The Big Sky is Howard Hawks at his most laid back, barely bothering with a story, the film is even more plotless than Hatari or Rio Bravo.  There does seem to be an overriding sense of melancholy running throughout the film for people and a time in American history that has now vanished. 

The Big Sky is a beautiful black and white film, photographed on magnificent Grand Teton locations.

122 meandering minutes, screenplay by Dudley Nichols.

1952 - STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER, the long awaited musical biography on the life of John Phillip Sousa

The movie ads used to say "Sean Connery IS James Bond" in the 1960's.  So I imagine they might have said "Clifton Webb IS John Phillip Sousa," in the 1950's.

Clifton Webb plays Sousa in the same style he played his other famous characters Mr. Belvedere in Sitting Pretty and Frank Gilbreth in Cheaper By the Dozen, sort of a prissy guy who has a heart of gold.

 

Recognizing the story of John Philip Sousa would have a very limited appeal to a younger audience, the filmmakers added Robert Wagner and Debra Paget as a couple of young lovers touring in Sousa's band. They have to keep their marriage a secret from Sousa, because he disapproves of wives accompanying their husbands on tour.  That's pretty much the central conflict of the movie.  Oh, Robert Wagner is also the inventor of the Sousaphone, a musical instrument he names after his mentor.  Whenever Wagner and Paget get in an argument she kicks him in the ankles to show her anger at him,  this is an important plot point.

At one point in the movie, before a concert performance, Sousa tells his band that they are about to perform a controversial piece of music which will probably get them run out of town.  The music turns out to be a conventional Broadway dance number with Paget tap dancing up a storm.   The filmmakers must have realized that there was only so many marching band songs the audience could listen to so they fell back on plan B, this silly musical dance number.

The film takes a strange turn towards the end, Wagner enlists in the army to fight in Cuba during the Spanish/American war.  He loses his leg to friendly fire, which means that Paget can't kick him in the ankle anymore when they fight.

The movie ends with Sousa performing the "Stars and Stripes Forever" for the first time, as the audience gets a montage of soldiers marching around the country.

90 minutes, written by Lamar Trotti who really should have known better.