derlang Reviews

International Lady (1941)

Get off the balcony!

[21 August 2006]

This comment contains a spoiler. I was watching this on TCM and enjoying it, with reservations, but stuck with it for the intriguing WWII plot (codes sent to the enemy through music and singing on the radio) and for seeing old masters like Basil Rathbone, George Zucco and Gene Lockhart.

But then Ilona Massey (gawd, she's beautiful!) and George Brent, toward the end of the movie, are up on the balcony of a downtown hotel where Brent, unbeknownst to him, is about to be shot by a villain stationed on an equally lofty vantage point across the street. Ms. Massey, her love for Brent overcoming her "duty" as an enemy spy, tries desperately to get him off the balcony. She knows he is going to be shot.

Brent refuses to move, arguing with her. She keeps tearfully pleading with him, while eyeing the bad guy across the way.

But she never once says, "Darling, there's a man across the street who's going to shoot you." If he'd heard THAT, he would have got off the damned balcony right away! And then, and you know it's coming, she grasps him and turns him so that she gets the bullet in the back. That's when I turned the movie off.

Phantom Lady (1944)

Elisha's drum scene is a flashback!

[10 September 2005]

I watched Ball of Fire tonight, the 1941 Harold Hawks comedy with Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, and got a pleasant surprise. There's a scene near the beginning of the film in which Cooper's character visits a nightclub where Stanwyck is singing. The band backing her is Gene Krupa's, and there's a sequence during one of her big numbers where Gene takes off on a frenetic drum solo. His face and his body movements reminded me very strongly of Elisha Cook's awesome scene in Phantom Lady.

Who should show up in the same nightclub scene as a waiter but . . . Elisha Cook, Jr.! I'll bet he was inspired in his Phantom Lady performance---three years later---by Krupa's scene in Ball of Fire! In fact, I wonder if the drumming in Phantom Lady was actually supplied by Krupa? Two enjoyable movies.

Hank Williams First Nation (2005)

All kinds of good things in this movie

[8/10 · 17 July 2005]

My family and I saw this July 16, 2005 in the newly refurbished Park Theatre in Vancouver. The theatre is owned by Leonard Schein, and I cite him because he makes a point of bringing local audiences good movies from everywhere, including Canada.

Hank Williams First Nations is excellent: funny, moving and thoughtful. One of the funniest running themes in the movie is the radio broadcasts of "The Old Man on the Mountain." Everyone stops what they're doing and LISTENS to his commentary. It's not knee-slapping funny, it's sweet funny, and every time he comes on (you never see him) everyone in the audience starts laughing even before he speaks.

Colin Van Loon, part-Cree and one of the stars of the film (he just turned 20) was on stage after the movie---again, a Leonard Schein idea---and answered questions from the audience. A nice folksy close to a nice and not always folksy movie.

Seek this one out, people. It'll stick with you.

Silent Barriers (1937)

where was lilli?

[5/10 · 20 June 2005]

A friend burned this onto a DVD for me, and I watched and enjoyed it earlier today.

There are lots of historical inaccuracies in the film, but I liked it, anyway. The guy playing Moody, Roy Emerton, was effective.

To cite just one small inaccuracy (not a spoiler) a reference is made to the first train going through the Rockies, its destination given as Vancouver. The first train was actually bound for Port Moody, at the eastern end of Burrard Inlet, and arrived there July 4, 1886. The first train into Vancouver, a few miles farther west, didn't get there until May of 1887.

He Walked by Night (1948)

Not influenced by Carol Reed

[7/10 · 29 January 2005]

Watching this movie, which is very good if dated, I thought of The Third Man, too. But it was made BEFORE the Carol Reed film, so can hardly be said to have borrowed heavily from it. In fact, I wondered if Reed had been influenced by Werker! The Third Man is an incomparably better film, one of my Desert Island movies. But He Walked By Night was a competent and at times really interesting flick. The scene where the robbery victims collaborate on building the villain's face was excellent.

Another enjoyable aspect was spotting so many familiar faces. I caught a very brief glimpse of Kenneth Tobey and half a dozen other performers whose faces, if not their names, were very familiar . . . like the nutty lady talking to "milkman" Scott Brady.