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

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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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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.

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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.

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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 Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show) 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Long Day's Journey Into Night - 8 of 10
Stars list - Katharine Hepburn

Katherine Hepburn gives a very mannered and scenery chewing performance that is at once very hammy and extraordinarily believable, it's all in her eyes, really she really believes in the character, and the character lives through her eyes. It's worth watching simply for the remarkable fragility and tenacity of this character and her multiudinous ways of expressing different degrees of negative emotions and false positivities that occulde a desperate depression behind the words.

I must say, though, that Night was long gone and it was day again before I finished the film (I had gotten it a couple years ago from netflix and eventually sent it back unwatched after three weeks or so because I could not work up the muster to watch a three hour melodrama, even if it did have my favorite actress of all time).

It is tremendously clear that this film is a play, not a movie, it is a play about four souls trapped in purgatory together, they were a family once, when they were alive, but now that they are dead they are condemned to each other for the harms they inflicted upon each other in their prior life. I make this claim of purgatory because we never leave the house, there are only four characters and they are surrounded by a dense impenetrable fog. characters claim to leave the house but we never accompany them and the family is very careful to talk around certain subjects of suicide, drug abuse, depression and death (though by hour three we are rewarded by the writer allowing the characters to talk about these things directly for the first time, rather than the ever more maddening obliqueness). The whole result is a very Henry James esque effect, and indeed, the film is set in the same era in which he was writing, so I feel the nod is deliberate.

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

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Jane Eyre - 5 of 10
stars list - Elizabeth Taylor

this shouldn't be a Liz Taylor selection, she's in it for no more than five minutes and the character she plays, Helen, is insignificant in this adaptation, if she had more of the presence she has in the book it perhaps would be a great early role for her. In the book Helen is the presence that gentles Jane and shows her how to reason and be reasonable, and it also her elegant doctrine of universal salvation that has enormous impact on Jane's mental and spiritual character. Here Helen is a friend who gives Jane a bit of kindness, bread and solidarity.

In terms of adaptation the film is too breathless and impedes Jane's character in countless ways to recreate a more traditional romance than the very progressive aspects of Bronte's novel. Here Jane is defined by her relationship to Rochester, she isn't allowed to be an interesting individual in the film until she has met and becomes infatuated with Rochester. The end of the film has Jane running back 'home' to Gateshead and becoming a failure, forced to return to Rochester so they may graciously 'forgive' each other. It is essential in the book that Jane is willing to die after Rochester's rather loathsome betrayal of her trust and doubly betrayed by his offer to make her his mistress. We need to see that she is willing to die a pauper and begger rather than be destroyed and owned by a man. It is essential that we see her succeed and establish herself independently, to achieve another suitor and to return to Thornfield entirely on her own terms to settle her affairs (and mind) herself. All this and more is missing from the film. one of the most troubling aspects is that Jane's intelligence wit and barbs are all gone from her dialogue, that is all given over to Rochester to deliver.

That said the casting was absolutely perfect. both in the young Jane and Fontaine and Welles as the romantic couple. Their chemistry is excellent, and within the confines of the un-Bronte script both nail the characters completely. It's a damn shame we don't get to see Rochester dress up as a crone, Jane leave Thornfield to wind up at the Rivers' and numerous other minor and excellent scenes. the film should have been another forty minutes long.

The direction by Robert Stevenson is very good within the confines of the stage. It's ironic that Jane Eyre so heavily influenced Rebecca as a novel, and the film of Eyre is clearly quite influenced by Rebecca the film. Everywhere around Thornfield (now a castle not a manor) is thick dry ice fog, constantly swirling around the stage. The photography is quite interesting but over the top. but not so overthe top as the score which is simply too much. the score is all exclamation points, in bold-face, it hammers scenes viciously with measures of music rather than underscoring and enhancing the scenes.

In all a short disappointment but made with enough talent that you wish there could be more of it. But a defanged Jane is not nearly so interesting as the much more complex and independent Jane of the novel.

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The Barefoot Contessa - 10 of 10
Stars list - Ava Gardner

A Contessa, Maria, has died and three men amongst the crowd at her funeral know the story of what brought her death about. We push through the rain to the one man without an umbrella, standing in just a trenchcoat being soaked as he reflects upon how he knew Maria. Henry Dawes (Bogart) is a film director and writer. he's been hired by a wall street financier to to discover a 'new face' and make an independent movie starring her. He, the financier, Kirk Edwards, Edwards' mistress and publicist Oscar Muldoon (Edmund O Brien) arrive at the madrid pub where Maria dances and performs. They arrive after her performance and want her to do another for them. Edwards sends Muldoon to convince her, which fails, he then sends Dawes and he succeeds in bringing Maria out to meet them. Edwards and Muldoon just assume she wants to be a star, isn't very intelligent, and that the glamour is more important to her than self-respect. she runs away and Edwards orders Dawes to find her and bring her to Rome for a screentest. As Dawes finds her they discuss her dreams, her lack of romance, his having found true love a few years ago, and her thoughts on Cinderella. She likes going barefoot because her family couldn't afford new shoes when she was little, but she's often felt as though she's a Cinderella waiting for a prince to pull her out of the ashes. She goes with Dawes, and he advises her, prevents Edwards from crushing her and helps turn her into a star. The rest of the story is told by Muldoon and Maria's eventual 'prince' and husband, an Italian Count. But it turns out fairy tales don't come true
Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

Gardner is superb as Maria and the rest of the cast is also outstanding. it mocks and exposes Hollywood, the star system, ideas of fame and wealth while referencing James Dean and Sunset Blvd, presciently predicting Grace Kelly. Great dialogue, fine photography, and outstanding direction, Mankiewicz delivers yet another masterpiece.

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Waterloo Bridge - 7 of 10
Stars list - Vivian Leigh

Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)
Myra is a dancer in the international ballet, she's on waterloo bridge when an air raid sounds. an officer joins her and they head to a shelter. Soon they are spending the evening together and falling in love. the next day he gets 48 hours leave and they try to marry but are prevented by technicalities to their dismay, then his leave is cut short and they are unable to marry the next morning. as a result of her daliance Myra is thrown out of the ballet and her best friend quits in solidarity. Soon they are quite destitute, unable to find anywork and her friend expresses obliquely her fear of starvation, implying she's reading to start turning tricks. Then Myra recieves a message from Roy's mother and goes to meet her for tea while she is London. While waiting for his mother she reads Roy's name in the list of fallen officers in the paper. unable to tell his mother herself she brushes her off rudely, then collapses into illnesses, her friend turns tricks to be able to afford to care for her and after she is well and discover's her friend's new profession she eventually begins doing the same thing herself. Until she runs into her love and her world shatters all over again.

I'm No Angel

I'm No Angel - 6 of 10
Stars list - Mae West

Not as good as My Little Chickadee and a bit of a disappointment for now well known the film is. The film takes its time with establishing West's situation, character and the characters that surround her. they take a lot of time to set up the trial but never bother to set up Cary Grant and Mae West's relationship. On one level this is fascinating, in that it makes West so completely independent of the strictures of a romance plot, on the other hand it's frustrating because there's no motivation to believe in the relationship between the two of them.

plot summary:
Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show)

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New York Hat - 6 of 10
Stars list - Mary Pickford

what I noticed most about this film is that Pickford ages six or seven years in exterior scenes compared to her interior scenes, ah the power of good lighting. The second thing I noticed was the unbalanced compositions when someone sits down and their head and shoulders are in the very bottom left corner. and lastly, Pickford outdid everyone on that screen and delivered an excellent performance. and in this fairly mundane melodrama I was quite impressed with Griffith, though perhaps I liked this story more because the scenarists were Francis Marion and Anita Loos. but I really like the way Griffith handles drama, even if it is a more than a little bit over the top and simplistic, it's a nice little film with a fine performance by Pickford, but any longer than 12 minutes would be too much. :p

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The Man Who Came to Dinner - 10 of 10
Stars list - Bette Davis

Bette Davis is phenomenally good in this fantastically bitchy screwball comedy. In fact I would say this is one of her three best performances, up there with All About Eve and Now Voyager. The film is absolutely beautifully directed with a terrific sense of timing and pace. the dialogue is unbelievably good, and as fresh today as it was 66 years ago--of course, from the playwrights of You Can't Take it With You as adapted by the screenwriters of Casablanca the dialogue better be damned good. the rest of the ensemble, with Jimmy Durante, Billie Burke, Ann Sheridan and others are also marvelous.

Davis plays the secretary to world reknowned opinion maker Sheridan Whitefield. Whitefield is an ass, and the edge on his wit and the speed and venom with which he dispenses it makes the audience instantly dislike them (he is everything everyone hates about an entitled and elitist newyorker) and most every character in the film try to pretend to love him (because to be disliked by someone so great is like getting praise from someone who doesn't matter, simply because you're being noticed, call it the Simon Cowell effect) while they are quietly dismayed at how completely repulsive a figure Whitefield is. Whitefield is a radio personage and he's on a December tour across the country. He stops in small town Ohio for a lecture and his secretary has arranged dinner with the most prominant family of the town (the man who knows the local factory). Whitefield whines protests and belittles his host family before meeting them and he's even worse when he does meet them. Upon ascending the stairs to enter their home he slips upon a patch of ice and tumbles down the stairs injuring his hip. the family rushes him inside and the doctor orders him to stay in the house for at least ten days. Whitefield is in an absolute rage, he threatens to lawsuits and demands the most extraordinary concessions from the family as he takes control of their house. Davis runs interference between the family and Whitefield in these initial scenes and in the first half of the film she's the only one not intimidated or frightened of Whitefield and she can throw barbs back at him just as quickly as he can dispense them at her or at others. But when the owner of the local paper comes calling for an interview Davis finds her guard down and soon he's under her barbed wire fence and sparks are flying off one another. Eventually it's going to interfere with Whitefield's life and he conspires to interfere with their relationship. Unfortunately for him Davis is utterly wise to his games and is conspiring back against him. crosses, double crosses, triple crosses and uncrossesings (I said it was a screwball, that requires me to make up new gerunds to adequetly describe it) that makes the whole ending completely fantastic and breathtaking and tremendously fun.

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The Shootist - 9 of 10
Stars list Lauren Bacall

I've never seen John Wayne's last picture, though I have often meant to. I was slightly put off by numerous reports that it was merely mediocre and not that great. I would say that may be true of the look of the film, to some degree (it's no Ford, Hawks, Mann or Stevens, certainly) which is quite similar to the visually bland True Grit, but it is definitely not true of the performances and script which are top notch. Bacall is wonderful as the widow woman who runs a boarding house that takes in Wayne. Wayne plays a dying gunfighter, sometime sheriff sometime outlaw. He's one of the last living legends in 1901 and his presence is news and attracts the publicity--and the Robert Fords--that you would expect. He simply wants to die in peace and relative, anonymity, but no one, save perhaps his old friend and doctor (played beautifully by Jimmy Stewart in a few marvelous scenes), can keep their mouths shut about who he is. Most interesting of all is the young Gillum, played by Ron Howard, giving perhaps his career best performance as the kid enamored by a living legend and forced to make a pair of hard choices in the climatic finale of the film. Excellent from start to finish, this is one that I very well may end up buying, if only for Wayne's absolutely superb performance. Although he won for the cantankerous and largely uninteresting work in True Grit, this is more in line with his career best performances in Searchers and Man Who Shot Liberty Valence.

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The Fall of the Roman Empire - 4 of 10
stars list - Sophia Loren

This is not very good at all. a tremendously overbearing score, horrifically bad dialogue and much, much too long. too much pageantry and the battle scenes are not that interesting. the sole redeeming feature is alec guiness' excellent performance as Marcus Aurelius. It's clear watching this why Anthony Mann was fired from Spartacus, this film is an absolute mess.

Sophia Loren is adequete but unexceptional in a fairly uninteresting role (somehow all the roles except Aurelius are uninteresting) as the emperor's daughter (which the dialogue reminds you of everytime you see her: 'what ho, it's the emperor's daughter.' There's even a late confession of paternity of Commudus that is even more laughable than the one in Braveheart. This is a film that makes you really realise just how remarkably good a film Gladiator is.

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Mildred Pierce - 8 of 10
Stars list - Joan Crawford

Mildred Pierce is one of those major classics I hadn't gotten around to, and I'm certainly glad I finally saw it. It's an excellent film with a crackling script, great photography and a nicely intricate plot that surprises you with how it twists around on top of itself (and actively deceives you) to get where its going. I would probably like it more if I wasn't ill at the moment, but this is definitely one I'll revisit.

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The Misfits - 10 of 10
stars list - Marilyn Monroe

Great movie in every way.

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The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer - 8 of 10
stars list - Shirley Temple

Charming romantic comedy with the fabulous Myrna Loy and Cary Grant pairing. Temple is the titular Bobby-Soxer and she's in full annoying teenager with a crush form as she makes Grant's life an absolute misery by trying to be with him. In the interim, Loy (playing Temple's older sister) and Grant are falling in love after getting off to a very rocky start. Loy is a judge and she let Grant off easy after he was involved in a night club altercation, but when Grant is caught with her sister in his apartment things don't go nearly so easy and the settlement is to have Grant date Temple until her interest wanes as it would naturally be prone to do, not the best of ideas, but an interfereing uncle with ideas of romance for all is manipulating things to go the way he wants. Lots of good slapstick comedy and harmless situations throughout the film make it pretty entertaining, though not a great film.

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I started to watch Quo Vadis, which is on the list for Sophia Loren, as it aired on TCM today and Robert Osbourne informed me in the introduction that Loren only has a cameo in it. since we swapped out the other cameos that made it onto the stars list, I'm also swapping out this one for Loren's next highest rated English language film, Operation Crossbow.

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Charade - 10 of 10
Stars list - Audrey Hepburn

this has always been one of those movies that baffled me for never having seen it. An absolute splendiferous picture, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn are superb together, pulling off both comedy, romance and suspense with equal aplomb and making the movie go off like gangbusters.

An absolutely fabulous script, (everything in the film is outstanding but the script and Donen's direction deserve especial notice) keeps this mystery-romance-thriller-comedy clipping along. It kept me guessing as well.

Regina Lampert is unhappily married, on vacation, away from her spouse and has decided to divorce him. Fortunately the movie opens with the husband being thrown from the train (he is very dead). She runs into a quite glamorous old man and begins flirting with him, Cary Grant, naturally enough, introduces himself with dubious name of Peter Joshua (two first names, hmmm). Regina returns to Paris to find her home stripped bare, her husband sold everything and left with $250,000 which he did not have with him on his body or in his train compartment. there are a great many people interested in that money, the CIA, and several nefarious people connected to her husband's past, and maybe even helpful Mr. Joshua. as many twists turns and thrills as North By Northwest and just as good (if not better). Just fabulous.

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Daddly Long Legs - 8 of 10
Stars list - Mary Pickford

Mary Pickford is very good in this tale clearly inspired somewhat by Jane Eyre, but set in contemporary times.

A young Orphan with the unlikely name of Jerusha Abbott (some creative name combination from the headmistress) is raised in a strict and unpleasant place. she is rebellious and headstrong but clever, on the other hand she often runs afould of the trustees. despite this she grows up to be sent to college by the unseen 'new trustee' who insists on remaining nameless and faceless to her charge, she thereafter decides to refer to him as Daddy Long Legs due to having seen the long shadow cast by his legs. At College, she finds herself developing two love interests, one man her age and one older bachelor who is also enamored with her (the film hilariously has this develop with actual cupids, not on screen, but in a cut away to the cupids at the cupid office. ). She spends her summers on a farm of her benefactor and becomes a novelist, determined to pay back her education. All turns out well in the end. a nice scenario and very good photography (framing, exposure) and Pickford's superb and captivating screen presence make this captivating to watch.

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Ship of Fools - 6 of 10
Stars list - Vivien Leigh

On a cruise ship from Mexico to Germany 1933 the many lives of the tenents reveal that Germans are anti-semetic!

A bit heavy handed (even as it tries to keep a light tone) the clumsy script batters us about for a very long time. There is one fascinating relationship, between the ship's doctor and an aging revolutionary woman bound for a prison island, there's is the most tragic and most interesting, and most passionate and real, everyone else on the ship reflects merely as phonies by the pettiness of their complaints. This is a very tiresome and oft interminable film, with a very good cast, light handed direction and excellent cinematography and production design. It has just a slight hint of the sardonic running throughout, but it is underwhelming, you want to think about the film, but nothing in the film seems worth thinking about, it is all a bit foolish.