1936 - THE GENERAL DIED AT DAWN, great title crummy film

Considering all of the talent involved in this film it should have been a whole lot better.  Gary Cooper is one of those "soldier of fortune" types they like in the movies.  He's supposed to deliver a bunch of money to an arms dealer in Shanghai. The people of a Chinese providence are under the thumb of an evil Chinese warlord called General Yang, played by Armenian actor Akim Tamaroff.  However the plan is to start a civil war to throw Yang out of power.

Cooper runs into trouble when he gets mixed up with the beautiful English actress Madeline Carroll and her father improbably played by comedic actor Porter Hall.  Throw in William Frawley, Fred Mertz of I Love Lucy fame, as a perennially drunk arms dealer and you have a very unusual cast to say the least.

The General Died At Dawn was directed by Lewis Milestone in his prime, photographed by one of Paramount's best cinematographers Victor Milner, who in this film shot glamorous close ups of Madeline Carroll.  The film was written by leftie playwright Clifford Odets and not very well.  The screenplay seems like a poorly written stage play with actors entering and exiting the camera frame like they were on a proscenium stage.  The stuff that comes out of the mouths of these characters almost boarders on the ridiculous.  I think Clifford Odets the noted New York playwright would have been very critical of Clifford Odets the Hollywood screenwriter.  The General Died At Dawn also has a particularly ridiculous end.

 

The running time is 98 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.

1945 - A WALK IN THE SUN, quiet war film,

 As the Second World War began to wind down, filmmakers started to tell war stories that were more accessible to the general public instead of the usual propaganda  formula that Hollywood churned out during the beginning and peak of the war.  One of these more intimate war films was Lewis Milestone's A Walk In The Sun which focuses on a platoon of soldiers during the invasion of Salerno Italy who are responsible for taking a farmhouse which contains a German machine gun nest.

 

The soldiers are a cross section of "average American Joes."  As the men march towards the farmhouse the screenplay focuses in on their personalities and at times isn't afraid to show the fear that some of the men develop worrying that they might be shot and killed.

 

The film has an excellent cast beginning with the underrated Dana Andrews as Sergent Tyne who  by default ends up leading the mission.  Norman Lloyd is a grumpy private, John Ireland is a minister's son and Sterling Hayden usually associated with comedic roles is the platoon medic.  Burgess Meredith narrates the film, and a ballad is performed throughout the film that counterpoints the action.

 

The film was made on a tight budget, but Milestone's skill still shines through.  When he was at the peak of his ability, Milestone was one of Hollywood's best directors.

The screenplay was by Robert Rossen who went on to become a distinguished director himself.  The running time is 117 minutes

1951 - HALLS OF MONTEZUMA, a World War II film with a rather odd antiwar subtext

This film is supposed to be a tribute to the fighting spirit of the United States Marines during World War II. It has the usual rah rah action and flag waving stuff but there is a strange subtext to the film involving the lives of the marines in a platoon trying to take a Japanese controlled island.

For a film about the tough guy marines there certainly seem to be a lot of emotional problems among this group.  Richard Widmark is the squad leader who is taking pills because he is suffering from "psychological migraines."  The company corporal is a coward, one marine loses his eyesight, another is a gun nut who goes out of control and tries to murder some Japanese prisoners.  This bunch is hardly the pride of the marines.  One wonders in the Pentagon actually read this script before agreeing to provide technical support to the production.

 

The film was directed by Lewis Milestone who was probably past his prime as an important director but is still professionally assembled by him.  As I said an odd bird of a gung ho fighting movie.

Written by Michael  Blankfort, running time 113 minutes.

1943 - EDGE OF DARKNESS, very poor World War 2 propaganda film

Class "A" talent in a very bad World War 2 film.  Set in Norway, this film is about the Norwegian resistance in a small town during Nazi occupation.  The film was extremely well directed by Lewis Milestone.  Robert Rossen, one of Hollywood's best writers and future director wrote the screenplay.  Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan two of Warners top stars have the leads and the supporting cast has very good actors like Walter Huston, Judith Anderson and Ruth Gordon.  With all of the talent involved this film is a complete mess.  

Probably the biggest offender is the horrible jingoistic script from Robert Rossen.  The Nazi's are a complete bunch of caricatures, no evil deed is too little for this bunch.  The resistance fighters mouth one freedom fighter cliche after another.  At one point Ann Sheridan is raped by a particularly nasty Nazi and instead of being traumatized by this event she finds time to make a speech about the Norwegian resistance movement.

Edge of Darkness has some impressive camera work and some of Milestone's skillful tracking shots.  The final battle sequence is exciting and extremely well done but can't redeem all of the jingoistic speeches from Errol Flynn, Walter Huston and Ann Sheridan.  Too bad, because they all give pretty good performances.

If you are looking for a well made World War 2 propaganda check out Howard Hawk's Air Force instead.

119 minutes.

1933 - HALLELUJAH I'M A BUM, forgotten 1930's musical from Rogers and Hart

You would think a film written by Ben Hecht, S. N. Berman, Richard Rogers and Lorenz Hart would be better remembered.  However you don't see a lot of cabaret singers crooning songs from this film probably because the approach to presenting them was very unusual.

Rogers and Hart in addition  to writing the songs contributed to the dialog with "musical rhyming" scenes where the actors sang/spoke lengthy portions of the film.  This is sort of like a 1930's version of Les Miserables, except the songs and in particular the lyrics are a lot better.

The interesting cast included Al Jolson as the mayor of the Hobos, silent film comedian Harry Langdon as a Communist and Frank Morgan as the mayor of New York.  In one scene Morgan lies in his bed drunk repeating "there's no place like home" six years before TheWizard of Oz came out.

The film was directed by Lewis Milestone in his full moving camera and montage editing mode. A fascinating experimental film combining, sound, visual florish and music.

82 minutes.

1960 - Original OCEANS 11 and the cult of the personality

A worthless movie. Peter Lawford found the story and actually wanted to make a serious movie out of it. Sinatra got involved and turned it into a in jokey party time for his flunkies and cronies AKA "The Rat Pack." 

 

Hoping to make some easy money, Sinatra gambled that he and his buddies were so cool and interesting the public would want to see them in a comic heist thriller. Warner Brothers ponied up the money. Lewis Milestone a reliable old director from the 1930's whose best days were behind him, signed up as producer and director of the film. Charles Lederer a veteran screenwriter who had written many Howard Hawks films certainly knew a thing about comedy and writing stories about men being men in a manly world, wrote the final screenplay.
 

Milestone had his hands full dealing with The Rat Pack. They were doing two shows a night and supposedly shooting the movie during the day. Sinatra never liked doing over 3 takes for a scene and there was always his legendary temper to deal with. One can only wonder what actual working actors like Richard Conti, Caesar Romero, Henry Silva and Norman Fell must have thought being a part of this goof off. For Milestone just trying to get a decent film out of this hodge podge turned out to be a chore.

I

It's almost touching to see Milestone try to bring some stylistic flourish to Ocean's 11. His legendary tracking shots and rhythmically composed editing techniques provide some visual interest. Milestone was also the one who apparently thought up the famous twist ending for the film.

 

For all the wrong reasons and let it be proclaimed, this is an entertaining movie. There's no question that Sinatra, Dino, Sammy and Lawford are fun to watch. These guys were all top professional entertainers who had been around long enough to know what strings to pull on an audience.

Oceans 11 made money for Sinatra, he tried to repeat the formula with Sergeants 3 and 4 for Texas, but the public had had enough of Sinatra and his boys. As a reward Lewis Milestone went on to finish directing Mutiny on the Bounty after Carol Reed quit. On that movie he had to deal with an even bigger pain in the ass than Sinatra, Marlon Brando.

 127 minutes