The Usual Choices
Gigi (Vincente Minnelli)
Separate Tables (Delbert Mann)
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
But how about...
Man of the West (Anthony Mann)
Apparently a cult Western (according to Danny Peary), this is an adult movie for the usual reasons: sex (sleazy and aggressive) and violence (cruel and casual), but also because it's a story of redemption (always a favourite). Gary Cooper is the ex-badman who used to run with eternally-badman Lee J Cobb and his dirty gang...but Gary met & married a good woman, saw the potential-tragedy of his ways, and corrected his life just in time. Now he's reluctantly back with the creeps...can he protect Julie London from their intentions? Well-acted by all (Lee J even manages to restrain himself more than usual, even though he's in a role that calls for largeness) and excitingly staged and shot (the cinematography is wonderful), this revenge tale gives out a lot more emotional richness than the usual Western revenge tale...it's for those of us who truly are grown-up now and have been through some stuff. And it's another quality Anthony Mann Western...even possibly his best.
...and what about...
Murder By Contract (Irving Lerner)
Is this the coolest movie ever made? While I am not one to revere killers, I am one to revere style that outlives its age (Raybans are forever). Vince Edwards (man, can he brood) is a hitman who's purely in it for the money...but he takes pride in his work...doesn't like guns (they're old-hat and obvious) so favours unexpected, clever murdering that takes some figuring out: death by barbershop, exploding television and incompetent nursing. But one job goes all wrong, keeps going all wrong, there's gotta be a jinx on him, and no matter what he comes up with, it's a flop. Talk about a bad day at work. Vince chatters incessantly to anyone who is around about his Philosophy of Life: you can get it if you really want + emotions are obstacles that should be avoided + the problems of little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. This is Day of the Jackal crossed with 77 Sunset Strip. Like, wild.
...not to mention...
Happy is the Bride (Roy Boulting)
This is one of the funnier British comedies (certainly one of the best Boulting Brothers movies) but it's rarely ever mentioned when Top 100 lists are drawn up. The story is structured around a wedding, and the humour comes from the usual lighthearted digs at an array of British societal institutions: unionism & the law & class & the family & village life & heritage over change & of course, sex. Leading hero Ian Carmichael doesn't play a gormless twit this time (well, not entirely), which is nice for a change, but what really pushes this up into the heights is the amazing character-actor cast: Cecil Parker! Edith Sharpe! Terry-Thomas! Joyce Grenfell! John Le Mesurier! Irene Handl! Miles Malleson! Athene Seyler!...even if you don't know the names, you'll pick the faces. It's not often a comedy makes me laugh out loud...this one managed it at least half a dozen times...a new record for a British rom-com.
...and one personal unmentionable...
The Goddess (John Cromwell)
aka The Marilyn Monroe Story...whether anybody wants to admit it or not.
What a drudge. From beginning to end, this is a chore to watch because there isn't a wisp of joy or even lightness in it...no shading whatsoever; all heavy downstrokes. Sure, the story of an unloved & unwanted child who grows up to be a mentally disturbed & suicidal adult is probably not going to be a barrel of laughs, but nobody's entire life is this dour, and certainly not Marilyn Monroe's, regardless of how tragic it was. So, as I watched, I looked for humour wherever I could find it: We are expected to accept that little Patty Duke would grow up to become big & blobby-ish Kim Stanley AND, even more ludicrously, we are asked to believe that Ms Stanley is a viable Marilyn Monroe copy...can you imagine her in Some Like It Hot or Bus Stop or Gentlemen Prefer Blondes?...no, of course not, nobody could. And, to top it off, watching this implanted the music virus in my brain that is Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is", and that's not funny either.
My Top 10 Films of 1958
 |
| "We've travelled over 500 miles across blistering desert, fought angry Arabs & mad Nazis, put up with 50 degree heat, sandstorms, scorpions and chronic jock-itch just to get here, and all they've got is bloody Southwark." |
#02 A Vertigo (Hitchcock)
#03 A- Murder By Contract (Lerner)
#04 A- A Night to Remember (Baker)
#05 A- Man of the West (Anthony Mann)
#06 A- Happy is the Bride (Boulting)
#07 A- Separate Tables (Delbert Mann)
#08 A- I Want to Live! (Wise)
#09 A- Ice Cold in Alex (Thompson)
#10 B+ Dracula / Horror of Dracula (Fisher)
Overflow: More A-/B+ Films
#11 B+ The Quiet American (Mankiewicz)
#12 B+ Wind Across the Everglades (Ray)
#13 B+ The Defiant Ones (Kramer)
#14 B+ I Accuse! (Ferrer)
#15 B+ The Proud Rebel (Curtiz)
#16 B+ Some Came Running (Minnelli)
#17 B+ The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (Robson)
#18 B+ I Married a Monster from Outer Space (Fowler)
#19 B+ The Long Hot Summer (Ritt)
#20 B+ Carve Her Name with Pride (Gilbert)
#21 B+ Party Girl (Ray)
#22 B+ The Horse's Mouth (Neame)
#23 B+ Fiend Without a Face (Crabtree)
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> B The Reluctant Debutante [aka The Kay Kendall Show with Rex Harrison and Angela Lansbury helping out]
> B The Black Orchid [a Sophia Loren + Anthony Quinn true-love-travels-on-a-gravel-road movie]
> B The Last Hurrah [features cinema's longest deathbed scene and John Ford's version of Irish]
> B The Young Lions [has a From Here to Eternity impact, but Monty & Hope are the only major attraction]
> B Auntie Mame [has its comedic moments and a vibrant cast but the film is clunkily structured]
> B King Creole [Elvis sings & looks GREAT in this and it's better than the muck that came after...but so what?]
> B The Sheepman [an OK Western with OK features and OK acting...hey, at least it's OK]
> B Cat On a Hot Tin Roof [virile performances but the original play has been neutered]
> B The Lineup [police procedural that gets its man but can't find its pizzazz]
> B Home Before Dark [another lying-husband-drives-wife-insane story but Jean Simmons lifts it]
> B The Matchmaker [the cast is perfect but the script is stagebound Americana beloved by long-gone Americanas]
> B The Roots of Heaven [a Save-the-Elephants story set in Africa that somehow isn't grand or overly rousing]
> B- The Vikings [why do all historic men's men put hands on hips, throw heads back and laugh too loudly?]
> B- Lonelyhearts [well-intentioned but overly earnest and everybody feels too much]
> B- The 7th Voyage of Sinbad [too much kids' stuff and not enough Harryhausen...there's never enough Harryhausen]
> B- I was Monty's Double [interesting British WWII true-story with far too much attempted humour]
> B- The Big Country [impressive words like "epic" & "sweeping" & "grand" sure, but it's really just another Western]
> B- Attack of the 50Ft Woman [another one of those fun 1950's sci-fi monster movies with lousy SFX]
> B- Houseboat [Cary + Sophia + 3 cute kids + rom-com = pretty much what you'd expect]
> B- Orders to Kill [wants us to know that it's not so easy to kill someone, but I'd already figured that]
> B- No Time for Sergeants [another military comedy with a drunk scene, a barroom brawl and a buffoonish colonel]
> C Indiscreet [intended as a sophisticated mature comedy but ended up with bland stunted coyness instead]
> C Too Much Too Soon [Errol Flynn gives his greatest performance; Dorothy Malone auditions for Peyton Place]
> C Virgin Island / Our Virgin Island [there is nothing more boring than watching nice people be happy]
> C The Space Children [even with Uncle Fester and the girl who screamed "Them!", this is lame sci-fi]
> C Gigi [I think I'm allergic to Maurice Chevalier]
> D The Goddess [A Personal Unmentionable]
> D The Blob [I've seen scarier black gunk between my toes]
"Ah!..Sweet Mystery of Life...": 1958 Films I Apparently Still Need to See
Bachelor of Hearts (Rilla); The Badlanders (Daves); Bell, Book and Candle (Quine); Bonjour Tristesse (Preminger); The Brothers Karamazov (Brooks); Buchanan Rides Alone (Boetticher); Chase a Crooked Shadow (Anderson); Corridors of Blood (Day); Cowboy (Daves); Cry Baby Killer (Addiss); A Cry from the Streets (Gilbert); Cry Terror! (Stone); Damn Yankees (Abbott, Donen); Desire Under the Elms (Mann); The Doctor’s Dilemma (Asquith); Dunkirk (Norman); From Hell to Texas (Hathaway); Gideon of Scotland Yard (Ford); God’s Little Acre (Mann); Grip of the Strangler / The Haunted Strangler (Day); Gunman’s Walk (Karlson); Harry Black / Harry Black & the Tiger (Fregonese); The High Cost of Loving (Ferrer); High School Confidential (Arnold); I Bury the Living (Band); Imitation General (Marshall); Innocent Sinners (Leacock); Intent to Kill (Cardiff); It! The Terror from Outer Space (Cahn); Law and Disorder (Crichton); The Left-Handed Gun (Penn); The Light in the Forest (Daughterty); Machine-Gun Kelly (Corman); The Man Upstairs (Chaffey); Me and the Colonel (Glenville); The Missouri Traveller (Hopper); The Naked and the Dead (Walsh); Nowhere to Go (Holt); The Revenge of Frankenstein (Fisher); Rooney (Pollock); Run Silent, Run Deep (Wise); Saddle the Wind (Parrish); The Safecracker (Milland); Screaming Mimi (Oswald); Sea of Sand / Desert Patrol (Green); The Sheriff of Fractured Jaw (Walsh); The Silent Enemy (Fairchild); South Pacific (Logan); Stage Struck (Lumet); Stakeout on Dope Street (Kershner); Teacher’s Pet (Seaton); Ten North Frederick (Dunne); Thunder Road (Ripley); A Time to Love and a Time to Die (Sirk); Torpedo Run (Pevney); The Tunnel of Love (Kelly); The Two-Headed Spy (de Toth); Up the Creek (Guest); Violent Playground (Dearden); Voice in the Mirror (Keller); The Whole Truth (Guillermin)
Best Performances of 1958
Alec Guinness in The Horse's Mouth
Susan Hayward in I Want to Live!
Wendy Hiller in Separate Tables
Burl Ives in The Big Country
David Niven in Separate Tables
Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame
James Stewart in Vertigo
Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
But how about...
Montgomery Clift & Hope Lange in The Young Lions
I've always considered appearing to be madly in love with someone when you're actually not (sometimes you might even detest them) to be an actor's trickiest challenge. I mean really IN LOVE with them...head over heels, can't stop thinking about them, isn't the world just wonderful, the whole enchilada. And most actors can't do it, even with clothes off, tonsil-tickling & horizontal mambo-ing, I don't believe 'em. So it's refreshing (and genuinely moving) to see an onscreen couple who really do come across as lovers: Monty & Hope in the okay World War II movie, The Young Lions. I swear I see the exact moment when they fall in love and they both know it's real. While Dean Martin is a reluctant soldier whose girlfriend frets over his cowardice, and blondes-have-more-fun Marlon Brando is a Nazi whose girlfriend knows they're both doomed, Monty has Hope and they touch and whisper and get wet eyes and smile. Cherish this folks...we don't see enough true love effectively faked on film. And as Dionne said, what the world needs now...
...and what about...
Errol Flynn in Too Much Too Soon
Now this is an example of irony. Errol Flynn (drunk, hellraiser, serial fornicator, Tasmanian) gives his greatest performance (some would say his only performance) playing one of his best friends, John Barrymore (drunk, hellraiser, serial fornicator, Hamlet-to-Ham). I guess Errol didn't really have to act; it was more like business as usual. However, what he really didn't have to do was deliver this terrific portrayal as a stand-naked self-confessional, showing us the horror that is alcoholism and the parasitic sadness that dogs all addicts...all the while also showing us that he truly loved his friend John. Two movies and twelve months later, Errol was dead from booze too. From Captain Blood & Robin Hood to this and finally an autopsy table in Vancouver...which is a long way from 12 Aberdeen Street, Glebe. No matter how much hell he raised, that's worth a flower and a tear, surely.
...not to mention...
Spencer Tracy in The Last Hurrah
This is the defining Spencer Tracy role: a good, decent man. The great actor's greatest contribution to movies was showing that good, decent characters don't have to be dull (something that actors such as Tyrone Power, Ray Milland and Glenn Ford never entirely learnt...they only made an impact when they played twisted, troubled men). Spencer was the master at being natural, being honest and being open...while he lived a private life of alcoholic aggression and self-ruin. In The Last Hurrah (director John Ford's self-referential farewell to the old America he loved), Spencer is surrounded by an absolute stellar supporting cast (Pat O'Brien! Jeffrey Hunter! James Gleason! Basil Rathbone! John Carradine! Donald Crisp! Jane Darwell! Frank McHugh! Anna Lee!) who don't do much more than watch the craftsman do his thing. Often underestimated, and sometimes even dismissed (Pauline Kael was never a fan), Spencer Tracy is the prime example of an actor being great by not showing the acting.
...and one personal unmentionable...
Michael Gough & Melissa Stribling & Carol Marsh in Dracula / Horror of Dracula
The roughly-20 year run of Hammer Horror films was an impressive cinematic achievement when you take into account the low budgets, hardly-original characters and a relatively-limited creative team of directors, writers and actors. But many of the films were good-to-great and a couple were classic, despite the flaws. Michael & Melissa & Carol in Dracula were three of the flaws. While Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee play the vampire classic straight without even a whiff of camp or farce (and they were a wonderful acting team), the three support players carry on like they're using a performance guidebook: to show anguish you put your fist on your brow; deception is portrayed through narrowing the eyes; and desire needs you to heave that bosom...heave it, I say. The film fortunately survives this amateurism (it's pretty terrific in fact) but it's a shame that on a few occasions, you'll have to be prepared to wince.
My 10 Favourite Performances of 1958
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| "Burl...I'm begging you...get out of the boat." |
#02 Spencer Tracy in The Last Hurrah
#03 Michael Redgrave in The Quiet American
#04 Susan Hayward in I Want to Live!
#05 Jean Simmons in Home Before Dark
#06 Errol Flynn in Too Much Too Soon
#07 Kay Walsh in The Horse's Mouth
#08 Montgomery Clift & Hope Lange in The Young Lions
#09 The ensemble cast of Man of the West
#10 Shirley MacLaine in Some Came Running
Overflow: More List-Worthy Performances
#11 Alec Guinness in The Horse's Mouth
#12 Myron McCormick in No Time for Sergeants
#13 Anton Walbrook in I Accuse!
#14 Ingrid Bergman in The Inn of the Sixth Happiness
#15 Kay Kendall in The Reluctant Debutante
#16 David Ladd in The Proud Rebel
#17 Vince Edwards in Murder by Contract
#18 Rosalind Russell in Auntie Mame
#19 Elizabeth Taylor in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
#20 Sidney Poitier & Tony Curtis in The Defiant Ones
Sorry, They Didn't Make It...
> David Niven in Separate Tables [a pervert? all I can see is an actor]
> Deborah Kerr in Separate Tables [unfortunately chooses a shrill, grating note and stays with it]
> James Stewart in Vertigo [if his performance was stronger, I would've had more compassion for the character]
> Burl Ives in The Big Country [my, he's fat, isn't he?]
> Orson Welles in Touch of Evil [my, he's even fatter, isn't he?]
> Paul Newman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof [I thought he was supposed to be gay]
And so...onto the annual awards (with a nod of appreciation to Danny Peary)...
The Alternate Oscars for 1958 are:
FILM of the YEAR
GOLD: Touch of Evil (Orson Welles)
SILVER: Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)
BRONZE: Murder By Contract (Irving Lerner)
LEAD ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Spencer Tracy (The Last Hurrah)
SILVER: Michael Redgrave (The Quiet American)
BRONZE: Alec Guinness (The Horse's Mouth)
LEAD ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Susan Hayward (I Want to Live!)
SILVER: Jean Simmons (Home Before Dark)
BRONZE: Ingrid Bergman (The Inn of the Sixth Happiness)
SUPPORTING ACTOR: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Errol Flynn (Too Much Too Soon)
SILVER: Myron McCormick (No Time for Sergeants)
BRONZE: Anton Walbrook (I Accuse!)
SUPPORTING ACTRESS: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Wendy Hiller (Separate Tables)
SILVER: Kay Walsh (The Horse's Mouth)
BRONZE: Shirley MacLaine (Some Came Running)
ENSEMBLE or PARTNERSHIP: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: Montgomery Clift & Hope Lange (The Young Lions)
SILVER: Gary Cooper & Julie London & Lee J. Cobb & John Dehner & Jack Lord & Arthur O'Connell & Royal Dano & Robert J. Wilke (Man of the West)
BRONZE: Sidney Poitier & Tony Curtis (The Defiant Ones)
JUVENILE: PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
GOLD: David Ladd (The Proud Rebel)
SILVER: TBA
BRONZE: TBA
The Alternate Razzies for 1958 are:
CRAP FILM of the YEAR
The Blob (Irvin Yeaworth; Russell Doughton)
CRAP MALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Michael Gough (Dracula)
CRAP FEMALE PERFORMANCE of the YEAR
Kim Stanley (The Goddess)
