AFI 100 Years Series Discussion & Challenges, vol. 2 - Page 12

Adam_S · 04-04-2008, 11:05 AM

The Longest Day - 8 of 10
Stars list - Robert Mitchum

Robert Mitchum plays one general in an ensemble of generals in the Longest Day, in particular, he'll be landing at Omaha Beach, not a good place to be on D Day as it turned out.

the film is a sweeping and seemingly methodical overview of the French resistence, Allied invasion, and German occupation on June 6th 1944. Starting a few hours before midnight the night before the film covers 24 hours leading into the invasion. up until the actual landing on the beach the film was absolutely outstanding, then you get the impressions the allied forces stormed the beach and took it with about five percent casualties. Men are being gunned down everywhere, but it lacks the impact of recent WWII films, most especially Saving Private Ryan. Some of the aerial shots, on the other hand, are amongst the most breathtaking I've ever seen, some truly incredible work there.

The ensemble cast is very good, lots of great actors, Richard Burton is especially memorable in only two scenes he stands out more vividly in my mind than any other actor. John Wayne is omnipresent throughout the movie, and his barking distinct tone and commanding size and presence make him dominate the rest of the cast. Henry Fonda takes the opposite route, underplaying Theodore Roosevelt jr so that he's almost not a presence in the film. Various other performances from Sal Mineo and others are pretty damned good.

The scale of the film is impressive, and for having three directors it is one hell of a lot more cohesive and coherent than How the West Was Won. Production Design is top notch and the effects are phenomenally effective.

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Lew Crippen · 04-04-2008, 06:26 PM

I thought that The Longest Day was longer than a summer day in Nome.

Adam_S · 04-04-2008, 07:54 PM

I thought it moved pretty quickly for the first hour, but it made me want to rewatch Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan more than be motivated to finish the film. By the time I finished the second hour I was ready for the film to be over and astonished I still had an hour to go.

Adam_S · 04-05-2008, 06:55 AM

Crossfire - 8 of 10
Stars list - Robert Mitchum

Crossfire is an outstanding film and noir, more of a detective story than just about anything. Mitchum is almost a peripheral character, almost the lead. He plays the sergeant of a group of soldiers and he decides to play detective when his roomate, Mitchell, becomes suspected of the murder of a jew that opens the film. Mitchell is a nice kid but dealing with coming home in a tough way and he can't really cope, he's been drinking with a couple of guys Monty and Floyd and he's not sure what happened that night and no one can find him. But Monty is awfully helpful at telling the police just everything all open and honest about what happened. mmhm. Mitchum does a great job in his role, but the role seems to be more about running interference on the actual detective to stretch out the runtime than a really essential character. the film also has a spiel about hate crimes that is fascinating and bold for the time period but a bit on-the-nose today.

Good cinematography and sharply edited, it also features some nice double exposure effects to highlight Mitchell's distorted or drunken view. Very well done.

Adam_S · 04-06-2008, 08:22 AM

The Asphalt Jungle - 8 of 10
Stars list - Marilyn Monroe

One of Monroe's first films probably isn't the best representation of her on this list as she has two scenes. She is quite good in both scenes.

John Huston's heist film is starkly and beautifully lit, the tight script keeps things going at a relentless and steady clip resulting in a boiling over plot and a constantly fascinating film. Unfortunately

Spoiler:

but the film does a fantastic job of capturing a meticulously planned big job go off almost flawlessly but just one slight miscalculation and everything starts to crumble, you almost want it to end quicker because you know they're not going to get away with it. In this respect, Kubrick's The Killing is far superior in the rapidity of its resolution after the climatic heist is accomplished. Still, excellent performances, particularly from Jaffe and Sterling Hayden. a fine film.

Adam_S · 04-06-2008, 10:20 AM

My Little Chickadee - 6 of 10
Stars list - Mae West

Mae West does her awesome Mae West thing that she's so damn good at doing. this time the setting is the old west and when her stage is hijacked by the masked bandit she's abducted as well. But the bandit quite likes her and returns her safely. but when a shrill busybody later sees the bandit embracing West in her room she is run out of town on the railroad. The busybody follows her. The train picks up WC Fields and the movie picks up as well. Before the train arrives, Mae shows off her shooting prowess by gunning down eighteen indians with three six shooters when they try to attack the train. then she's denounced again by the busybody as an unfit woman unless she's married and settled down and West realizes the next town will be no different for her. so she oppurtunistically grabs a fellow that looks like a preacher and has him do a sham marraige between her and Fields. Upon arriving in the new town, Fields begins to try and swindle folks and is made the town sheriff as the quickest way to get rid of someone (they're all shot). Meanwhile West falls for two new men in the town, a tall strapping reporter and an dark and elegant owner of the saloon. One of them is naturally the bandit (it's not hard to figure out) and she and fields get mixed up quite a bit throughout the film, though the highlight is when she puts a goat in their bridal bed while fields is in the bath and slips out for a rendevouz with her masked lover. Naturally it all turns out cozy in the end, with West free from her sham marraige and free to carry on a swinging life with her two lovers, which is a little more unexpected. Quite funny throughout and West holds the screen as she always does, quite good.

george kaplan · 04-06-2008, 11:03 AM

Quote:

I thought that The Longest Day was longer than a summer day in Nome.

Adam_S · 04-07-2008, 06:49 AM

Night of the Iguana - 9 of 10
Stars list - Ava Gardner

and costarring Richard Burton delivering another one of his magnificent performances. Deborah Kerr also enters not long after Ava herself does. this overwrought drama has superb dialogue and the performances bring it off with gusto. But the film is really elevated in the extensive final scenes between Kerr and Burton while she gently coaxes him back from a suicidal mania by simply talking. openly, honestly without judgement.

Burton opens the film as a reverand he fumbles giving a sermon then turns on his congregation and castigates them, running them out of the church. Cut to many years later, Burton is a tourguide in mexico for the worst tour company there is. He's taking a bunch of teachers at a private girls school around mexico and they aren't enjoying it much, and the lead teacher has a ward with her, a young girl who was brought along to get her away from a boy she was enamored with. being a young girl (about seventeen or so) she promptly falls in love with the next hunk of man flesh she lays her eyes upon and attempts to throw herself upon Richard Burton professing her undying love for him (quite like the young sunday school teacher that had gotten him in such trouble before). unfortunately for burton, all anyone else sees is him seducing her, not the other way around. and the matronly (butch-dyke, Burton calls her) woman determines he has molested her after she pulls the girl out of his room one night. distraught, Burton sees his world crumbling, hijacks the tourists and takes them to his favorite 'resort' run by Ava Gardner. He's convinced if only they have a few days to cool down the women won't insist on ruining him. No dice. A few moments later a woman (Kerr) and her 97 year old grandfather show up as something of a begging/performing artisan act, hoping the hotel might employ them. Soon enough Burton has finally rebuffed the young girl (and her lascivious attentions wander in rapid succession to some shirtless mexican boys to the younger busdriver of their tour) only to become ensnared in a sort of passive-aggressive love triangle between himself, Kerr and Gardner. The whole thing is quite fantastic and melodramatic, and as I said the script is tremendously good. John Huston's superb direction doesn't let you down, more and more I am convinced he is one of the most superb--and shamefully overlooked--directors of american film.

ETA I just realized this was a Tennessee Williams play, no wonder the speeches and monologues are so damn good.
I thought you were sexless. But you've just become a woman. And do you know how I know that? Because you like me tied up! All women, whether they wish to admit it or not, would like to get men into a tied-up situation.

Adam_S · 04-10-2008, 04:45 AM

The Woman in the Window - 7 of 10
Stars list - Edward G Robinson
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From MGM in the mid-forties comes this Fritz Lang film about an unlikely murder that goes awry when the murderer decides he can dump the body and get away with it, considering the circumstances.

Robinson plays (brilliantly I might add, which this film clearly demonstrates) a professor of psychology. After celebrating his promotion to head of the department with friends at the men's club he lingers over the portrait of a woman in an art gallery window. suddenly he starts and the camera reveals (after his reaction, which I find fascinating) a reflection behind him of another person, a woman who looks exactly like the painting. They trade barbs and he gushes his admiration of the artistry, she invites him up to her apartment to see some more art. Heh. and we don't get to see the portfolio Robinson so admires, implying they are nudes. But everything has felt tonally wrong since this femme appeared out of the darkness, from her taking interest in a man such as Robinson to the luxury of her apartment, so it is not truly surprising that her benefactor decides that night to pay a call to his girl. And upon seeing Robinson he flys into a rage, completely overwhelming and choking the professor. Our woman presses a pair of scissors into Robinsons hand and he stabs them vigorously into the man's back to great effect and very little blood and the attacker dies almost at once (again there are many little things wrong, all sorts of interesting editing devices here, such as rather than seeing the action of passing off the scissors we see an extreme closeup of one hand pressing them into his, almost as if they appeared there because he willed it or needed it to overcome this monster attacking him). Robinson recovers, prepares to call the police then hesitates. He doesn't even know the girl's name, she doesn't know his, it's late at night, no one saw them, he hasn't left any traces of himself and even being involved in a killing in self defense would ruin his career. So he talks the woman into helping him get rid of the body fetches his car and decides to dump it. Lang meticulously catalogues each mistake Robinson makes and the people he encounters, but paradoxically these don't pay off as they might in a modern crime drama.

In a fascinating twist, once the body is found Robinson is drawn into the actual investigation due to one of his best friends being involved in investigating the case of this murdered millionaire. This gives us an oppurtunity to peer into the actual investigative police work without leaving the perspective of Robinson. It is very sophisticated and Robinson is stunned to learn how many things he didn't subsequently overlooked and he realizes that the stress is making him slip again and again and reveal incriminating circumstantial behavior/evidence.
But that's not all, there is a third party yet to be met, a blackmailing ex-cop who knows everything but who Robinson is. So how do you deal with a blackmailer when you're already in this deep? And there's a twist (or a cop-out) ending that is so classicly German-expressionist that for a moment you only wish it were a little more like Caligari than it already is, because it's just bland enough to be annoying and out of step with the rest of the film. though I dislike the ending, and the Code which probably required it, I can see how Lang could both justify it and make it work better by the way the film was designed in both it's cinematography and editing.

A sharp script and excellent performances make this exactly the sort of find and career-highlight film that makes the stars list very rewarding.

Adam_S · 04-14-2008, 04:07 PM

The Country Girl - 9 of 10
Stars list - Grace Kelly
"The last time we spoke, Mr. Dodd, you reduced me to tears. I promise you it won't happen again."

since hearing Mika's song Grace Kelly I've wondered where that line came from, now I know.

Grace Kelly delivers one of her best performances as the titular character. she is either a long suffering housewife or the cleverly shrewish and manipulative enabler of her despondent husband. Bing Crosby plays her husband and delivers his career best performance, by a long shot.

Crosby is a washed up star, a former broadway sensation and recording artist, now he's a drunkard and reduced to radio jingles to pay the rent. Ever since his son died he's never been the same, he feels responsible for the boys death, what's more he blames both his own egotism and his career for the child's death (the boy wanders away while he is posing for a gratutious picture). But a broadway producer wants him very badly for his biggest, latest play, the producer also feels somewhat responsible for Crosby's situation and he wants to restore him to his former status, and the country girl is either in his way or encouraging him along. He can't helped but be shocked at the duplicity of both of the couple, how they enable one another's worst tendencies (but how deeply they need each other) and almost from the moment he meets Kelly he's falling in love with her. The whole film is outstanding from beginning to end with some truly incredible speeches, the writing of the film is superb.