The Usual Choices
Black Narcissus (Michael Powell)
Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk)
Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan)
Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding)
Odd Man Out (Carol Reed)
Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur)
But how about...
They Made Me a Fugitive (Alberto Cavalcanti)
A London 1940's film noir, so instead of cigarette smoke & shadows, you get chimney smoke & fog...and every backstreet glistening with rain. In this revenge thriller, Trevor Howard plays a WWII vet who is experiencing postwar-England hard times (drink; poverty; malaise) and falls in with a criminal gang. Objecting to their dabbling in drugs, Trevor threatens to quit, so the boss (Narcissus is his name...!!...shortened to Narsy, I could've sworn they were calling him Nazi) frames Trevor for killing a copper. And so a desperate man's hunger for revenge begins. A straightforward plotline is used to string up some memorable scenes: a woman who wants her drunken husband shot...when refused, she just does it herself; the truckie who picks up a hitchhiker and through inane chitchat finds out more than he wants to know; the final confrontation inside a funeral parlour, which sports a portentous RIP sign on its rooftop. An exciting and gloom-sodden crime drama of the British kind...which, let's face it, is regularly-welcome viewing.
...and what about...
Driftwood (Allan Dwan)
Are you all seated comfly-bold two-square on your botty? Then I'll begin: a little girl with daisies between her toes (9YO Natalie Wood in her best film performance) lives with her great-grandfather/preacher in Backwoods USA. One night, as he sermonizes to his congregation of 1, the ancient gentleman drops dead...quite accepting of this turn of events, Natalie casually walks through the black forest towards the nearest town...nearby, a plane crashes which the little girl believes to be a sign of Satan lurking about...a collie escapes the wreckage and tags along with her...a kindly doctor drives by and brings them into town...the girl & dog live with him and his chemist friend, as she tries to fit in with the town kids...the local bully attacks the girl with a spinning top but the dog retaliates by pulling the jerk's pants down...the dog is arrested, jailed and put on trial...then there is an outbreak of Spotted Fever which threatens all children (because their parents don't believe in immunization)...but the dog's blood turns out to be a miracle cure...and so it goes. Sounds nutty, right? And it is, but somehow the film holds and affects you, being both of this world and another fantasy realm entirely, all in together as one tale. How the bloody hell did they do that? You have got to see this; it's something else.
...not to mention...
Nicholas Nickleby (Alberto Cavalcanti)
This is an impressive Dickens adaptation; what it lacks in humorously-eccentric characters (only Stanley Holloway as Crummless is a match for Mr Micawber or Nathaniel Winkle), it makes up for in nasty or pathetically-eccentric characters (Cedric Hardwicke as Uncle Ralph is one of literature's scummiest villains, and Aubrey Woods as Smike is one of its most pitiable victims). The cinematography & set design are appropriately sunless and dank, with the usual Dickensian commentary on poverty and child abuse way up front. Not a flawless film unfortunately (the casting of the title character and his sister is uninspiring...Derek Bond & Sally Ann Howes are both quite anemic and drippy), so therefore not up to the cinematic heights of 1935's David Copperfield or 1946's Great Expectations...but certainly a strong companion piece for 1935's The Mystery of Edwin Drood and 1952's The Pickwick Papers.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Mine Own Executioner (Anthony Kimmins)
An unusual film that means well, but is so badly-bogged in its 1947 time that in 2019 it can't even be charitably labelled "quaint". This is an early attempt at a psychological thriller with an emphasis on psychoanalysis. Premise in a nutshell: London Shrink Burgess Meredith treats an ex-POW for PTSD...but the doctor isn't exactly cooking on all burners himself. Freudian imagery (extension ladders, anyone?) and mental illness terminology such as depression and schizophrenia (sorry...multiple personality disorder...or is it called something else now?) are scattered about like a rigged scavenger hunt...Can YOU find what their problem is? The film also weaves in a physician-heal-thyself backstory that aims for adult sophistication but seems more like an adolescent giggle to those of us who know better. There is an unexpectedly grim finale which manages to boost the impact-quotient somewhat, but then it throws that asset away by tacking on a cutesy postscript. A laudable attempt, but this is more yellowing medical textbook than engrossing narrative.
My Top 10 Films of 1947
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| Golf Course of the Immaculate Heart: For those nuns who need to get in some swing time...FORE! |
#02 A The Ghost & Mrs Muir (Mankiewicz)
#03 A Out of the Past (Tourneur)
#04 A Brighton Rock (Boulting)
#05 A Black Narcissus (Powell)
#06 A- They Made Me a Fugitive (Cavalcanti)
#07 A- Nicholas Nickleby (Cavalcanti)
#08 A- Driftwood (Dwan)
#09 A- It Always Rains on Sunday (Hamer)
#10 A- Kiss of Death (Hathaway)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11 A- Miracle on 34th Street (Seaton)
#12 A- Crossfire (Dmytryk)
#13 B+ Brute Force (Dassin)
#14 B+ Deep Valley (Negulesco)
#15 B+ Angel and the Badman (Grant)
#16 B+ Hue and Cry (Crichton)
#17 B+ The October Man (Baker)
#18 B+ Pursued (Walsh)
#19 B+ Daisy Kenyon (Preminger)
#20 B+ Odd Man Out (Reed)
#21 B+ Body and Soul (Rossen)
#22 B+ Boomerang (Kazan)
#23 B+ The Voice of the Turtle (Rapper)
#24 B+ Gentleman's Agreement (Kazan)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> B Born to Kill [merciless noir where everyone is corrupt, psychotic or a sap]
> B Ride the Pink Horse [where the director/leading actor only does a good job with the directing]
> B The Loves of Joanna Godden ["it's all very well being a woman farmer, as long as you don't stop being a woman"]
> B The Macomber Affair [apparently, if you run away from a marauding lion, you are not a man]
> B A Double Life [a psychological thriller that has too much Shakespeare and not enough Hitchcock]
> B The Lady from Shanghai [more bizarre than noir, it takes ages to get to the mirrors]
> B T-Men [well-directed gangster semi-documentary with enough wooden acting to build gallows]
> B My Favourite Brunette [Bob Hope does Bob Hope in an okay Raymond Chandler parody]
> B Song of the Thin Man [a perfectly acceptable murder-mystery that sadly could've starred anyone]
> B- The Private Affairs of Bel Ami [Paris in 1880, filled with womanizing men and manizing women]
> B- Monsieur Verdoux [Charlie Chaplin as a serial killer who is sentimental, self-excusing and too bloody chatty]
> B- The Egg & I [Ma & Pa Kettle started here...oh, and there are some other people in it too]
> B- Road to Rio [some jokes I get; some I don't, mainly 'cos I was born long after 1947]
> B- The Farmer's Daughter [Capra-esque political-comedy that is actually a pleasant neither]
> B- Bush Christmas [aka The Famous Five are Copied in Australia]
> C Just William's Luck [bland film version of Richmal Compton's immortal boy played by a bland child actor]
> C Mine Own Executioner [A Personal Unmentionable]
> C The Bishop's Wife [sticky Xmas schmaltz nearly made palatable by Cary Grant]
> C The Paradine Case [long, boring courtroom melodrama where everybody has far too much to say]
> C Life with Father [nostalgic & charming in 1947; stagy & dull in 2019]
> C Buck Privates Come Home [A&C comedy which unfortunately features a cute kid and a midget racer]
> D Dark Passage [irritating & gimmicky Bogart'n'Bacall noir murdered by a lousy script]
> D Lady in the Lake [irritating & gimmicky Philip Marlowe noir murdered by some lousy acting]
> D Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome [the newspaper comic strip was more animated than this]
"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 1947 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
Adventure Island (Newfield); The Bachelor and the Bobbysoxer (Reis); The Beginning or the End? (Taurog); Black Gold (Karlson); The Brasher Doubloon (Brahm); The Brothers (Macdonald); Bury Me Dead (Vorhaus); Calcutta (Farrow); Captain Boycott (Launder); The Corpse Came C.O.D. (Levin); The Courtneys of Curzon Street (Wilcox); Cry Wolf (Godfrey); Dear Murderer (Crabtree); Desert Fury (Allen); Desperate (Mann); The Devil Thumbs a Ride (Feist); Dragnet (Goodwins); Fame is the Spur (Boulting); Fear in the Night (Shane); Frieda (Dearden); The Fugitive (Ford); Fun on the Weekend (Stone); The Gangster / Low Company (Wiles); The Ghosts of Berkeley Square (Sewell); Good News (Walters); Green Dolphin Street (Saville); The Guilt of Janet Ames (Levin); Her Husband’s Affairs (Simon); High Wall (Bernhardt); Hungry Hill (Hurst); An Ideal Husband (Korda); I Walk Alone (Haskin); Holiday Camp (Annakin); If Winter Comes (Saville); It Had to Be You (Mate); It Happened on Fifth Avenue (Del Ruth); Ivy (Wood); Johnny O’Clock (Rossen); Killer McCoy (Rowland); The Late George Apley (Mankiewicz); The Long Night (Litvak); Lured (Sirk); Magic Town (Wellman); The Man I Love (Walsh); Moss Rose (Ratoff); Mother Wore Tights (Lang); Mourning Becomes Electra (Nichols); My Brother Talks to Horses (Zinnemann); Nora Prentiss (Sherman); The Pearl (Fernandez); The Pretender (Wilder); Railroaded! (Mann); Ramrod (De Toth); The Red House (Daves); Red Stallion (Selander); Repeat Performance (Werker); The Sea of Grass (Kazan); Secret Beyond the Door (Lang); The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (McLeod); The Senator was Indiscreet (Kaufman); The Shop at Sly Corner / Code of Scotland Yard (King); Smash Up, the Story of a Woman (Heisler); So Well Remembered (Dmytryk); Take My Life (Neame); They Won’t Believe Me (Pichel); 13 Rue Madeleine (Hathaway); The Trouble with Women (Lanfield); The Upturned Glass (Huntington); Uncle Silas / The Inheritance (Frank); The Unfaithful (Sherman); The Unsuspected (Curtiz); The Web (Gordon); When the Bough Breaks (Huntington); While the Sun Shines (Asquith); The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap (Barton); The Woman on the Beach (Renoir)
Best Performances of 1947
Ronald Colman in A Double Life
Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street
Susan Hayward in Smash Up - The Story of a Woman
Deborah Kerr in Black Narcissus
Marjorie Main in The Egg & I
Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past
Robert Ryan in Crossfire
Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death
But how about...
Eleanor Parker in The Voice of the Turtle
I've always considered Eleanor Parker to be one of the more artificial of actors...rarely believable, a little aloof and superior, seemingly in competition with Greer Garson for the epithet of Queen Haughty. I struggle to come up with any performance given by her which wasn't a turn-off...apart from this one (alright, and 1957's Lizzie, too). In TVotT, Eleanor plays a young, slightly obsessive-compulsive theatre actress who doesn't want to be hurt by Love again. (Yeah, I know, it doesn't sound promising) BUT, this is a gently endearing rom-com, and Eleanor is surprisingly at home in the part...she's a dizzy dish, and you can see why Ronald Reagan (yeah, I know, but...moving on) would quickly fall for her. With a ghastly hairdo (it looks like she's wearing a crash helmet) but a self-deprecating, all-encompassing manner (she even sympathizes with household appliances!), Eleanor makes us fall for her too. Now, why couldn't the actress do that in all her other films?
...and what about...
John Wayne & Gail Russell in Angel and the Badman
"Sweet" is hardly one of the words you would use to describe John Wayne's film persona, yet in this Western (which is actually more a gentle love story), that is exactly how the actor plays it. An infamous gunslinger (he even tangled with Doc Holliday), John is shot up & near-death when he enters the life of a farming Quaker family. Gail is the angelic daughter who falls in love with a man destined for the noose. This couple's courtship (which was also going on backstage...John & Gail were a hot item) is based on mutual respect...she doesn't preach or demand; he doesn't belittle or dismiss. Their physical attraction is tender rather than earthy (I am particularly moved by their first embrace: he falls into her arms) and John's inevitable conversion to her outlook on life is his way of saying "I do". No Western I can think of is so unconcerned with having its central tough guy appear vulnerable. And the movie's last line, "Only a man who carries a gun, needs it", should be dropped into conversations at the next NRA rally.
...not to mention...
Ida Lupino in Deep Valley
Often compared to (and inevitably overshadowed by) Bette Davis, Ida Lupino initially made her cinematic mark playing angry and determined women (most famously in They Drive by Night, High Sierra and The Hard Way). Still, most of the tough roles in Warner Brothers movies were offered to Bette first, and Ida had to settle for not-so-famous B-picture parts...and occasionally, being cast against type. This is one of those rarities, and she is terrific in it. Ida is Libby Saul, a lonely farm girl living with her feuding parents in an isolated rural home. She is used by her unhappy family as not much more than a servant, and the young woman dreams of simply being accepted by others and loved by one. Hurt and sensitive (she has developed a self-conscious stutter and is generally afraid of people), Libby unexpectedly finds happiness with a troubled man (tragically, a convict on the run...wouldn't you know it?). A truly lovely performance (Ida is so warm in this), it makes you wish that the actress had been cast against type far more often.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter
Fading in and out of a Muppets-Swedish-Chef accent, Loretta delivers another performance which is totally anchored to its time, unable to budge. Playing a wholesome farm girl who moves to the big city, she starts off as a maid to a political family and ends up becoming a congresswoman (only in America). It's not that Loretta is awful in this, it's just that she's...nothing. All the freshness the actress showed in her early 1930's roles blew away when she took on increasingly grand and bland roles, designed to showcase...a Lady. It was only a matter of time that the Academy would reward her for such artistic development (and for turning into one of them)...and it was this performance which got it for her. Huh. The sparkling glamour of The Loretta Young Show was just seven years away, and apparently the only highlight of that was her swirling-gown entrances. How's that for an empty caboose on the end of your career?
My 10 Favourite Performances of 1947
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| "You don't mind, do you darling? It's for my blog." |
#02 Kathleen Byron in Black Narcissus
#03 Cedric Hardwicke in Nicholas Nickleby
#04 Ida Lupino in Deep Valley
#05 Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death
#06 Robert Ryan in Crossfire
#07 Natalie Wood in Driftwood
#08 John Wayne & Gail Russell in Angel and the Badman
#09 Eleanor Parker in The Voice of the Turtle
#10 Googie Withers in It Always Rains on Sunday
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11 Deborah Kerr in Black Narcissus
#12 Lilli Palmer in Body and Soul
#13 Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past
#14 Jean Simmons in Black Narcissus
#15 Rex Harrison in The Ghost & Mrs Muir
#16 Helen Walker in Nightmare Alley
#17 Trevor Howard in They Made Me a Fugitive
#18 John Garfield in Body and Soul
#19 Wanda Hendrix in Ride the Pink Horse
#20 Joan Crawford & Dana Andrews & Henry Fonda in Daisy Kenyon
#21 Tyrone Power in Nightmare Alley
#22 John Mills in The October Man
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> Ronald Colman in A Double Life [I know he got the Oscar for it, but I think he's miscast]
> Edmund Gwenn in Miracle on 34th Street [plays Santa to the utmost bearable degree of twinkling]
> Marjorie Main in The Egg & I [needs Pa to stop her being too much]
> James Mason in Odd Man Out [spends most of the film being understandably terrified...and that's all]
> Gregory Peck in Gentleman's Agreement [stolid, as usual]
> Charlie Chaplin in Monsieur Verdoux [it was a sad day for cinema when Charlie learnt to talk]
> William Powell in Life with Father [Finally! A crap performance from William Powell!]
And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 1947 are:
FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: Nightmare Alley (Edmund Goulding)
SILVER: The Ghost & Mrs Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz)
BRONZE: Out of the Past (Jacques Tourneur)
LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Richard Attenborough (Brighton Rock)
SILVER: Robert Mitchum (Out of the Past)
BRONZE: Rex Harrison (The Ghost & Mrs Muir)
LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Ida Lupino (Deep Valley)
SILVER: Eleanor Parker (The Voice of the Turtle)
BRONZE: Googie Withers (It Always Rains on Sunday)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Cedric Hardwicke (Nicholas Nickleby)
SILVER: Richard Widmark (Kiss of Death)
BRONZE: Robert Ryan (Crossfire)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Kathleen Byron (Black Narcissus)
SILVER: Lilli Palmer (Body and Soul)
BRONZE: Helen Walker (Nightmare Alley)
ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: John Wayne & Gail Russell (Angel and the Badman)
SILVER: Joan Crawford & Dana Andrews & Henry Fonda (Daisy Kenyon)
BRONZE: Gregory Peck & Joan Bennett & Robert Preston (The Macomber Affair)
JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Natalie Wood (Driftwood)
SILVER: Jean Simmons (Black Narcissus)
BRONZE: Natalie Wood (Miracle on 34th Street)
The Alternate Razzies for 1947 are:
CRAP FILM of the YEAR
Dark Passage (Delmer Daves) + Lady in the Lake (Robert Montgomery)
CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Robert Newton (Odd Man Out)
CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Loretta Young (The Farmer's Daughter)
