Titanic, 1953

Fanscination with The Titanic rolls ever onward - in its centenary year. We will soon have a new 4-part series written by Lord Julian Fellows (DOWNTON ABBEY), and of course whatever one thinks of James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster, the second half after the iceberg hits is stunningly well done as one really feels the ocean invading and sinking the ship ... so it was interesting to catch Jean Negulesco's 1953 version. Winner of three Academy Awards, the 1953 TITANIC holds up well, even on a much smaller budget - as does the 1958 A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, with Kenneth More, perhaps the best all-round version of events without silly stories at the forefront.

Fascination with the fate of the huge and opulent liner is as strong as ever, especially since improved technology has led to more breathtaking visits to the ship's resting spot on the floor of the Atlantic where state-of-the-art robots with cameras explore the crumbling interiors of the still eerily majestic but rapidly decaying wreck.



20th Century's contribution to the story hold the interest with Clifton Webb and Barbara Stanwyck heading the cast as an ill-matched couple; she is in fact leaving him and returning to America with their children as he joins the ship at the last minute to reason with her. Webb and Stanwyck bring their expertise to this soap opera story and it remains very affecting. Add in young Robert Wagner, more like a 50s teenager than a 1912 one, and Thelma Ritter as the famous Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Brian Aherne as the captain and the stage is set for some dramatics. Negulesco keeps it going nicely and it has that early 50s 20th Century Fox look in spades.

The tempestuous exchanges between Webb and Stanwyck are strongly and believably acted, and then we have the sinking of the vessel - not as graphically done as in the later versions, but suitably stiff upper lip to the end. Interesting to compare these versions this anniversary year, we shall be hearing more about them.

Its that time: Christmas in Connecticut or France ?

Some seasonal viewing: a '40s Hollywood christmas tale, or a recent French look at another dysfunctional family during the holiday season ?

CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT: Released the last year of WWII in 1945 (I was born that December), the film is full of subtle patriotic gestures and holiday nostalgia but never sinks to sentimentality. Stanwyck is sexy and sassy as always and is a lot of fun here. She is a cooking columnist who's built up this whole image of living on a small Connecticut farm with husband and baby cooking all these marvelous delicacies. Trouble is she's unmarried, childless, writes her column from her apartment in New York and doesn't know how to boil water. But her writing is a hit with the public. Trouble comes when she's hijacked into cooking a home Christmas dinner for a war hero sailor played by Dennis Morgan who gets to sing a couple of songs as well. Her publisher Sidney Greenstreet likes the idea so well that he invites himself to the dinner. So with borrowed farm, baby, and Reginald Gardiner who'd like to make it real with Stanwyck she tries to brazen it through. S.Z. Sakall adds a great deal of Hungarian malaprop & double-entendre humor in support as Babs' true source of culinary talent & Una O'Connor is hilarious as Gardiner's obnoxious Irish housekeeper. A nice treat then.


A CHRISTMAS TALE: Fancy another French family dysfunction drama? Rather like Assayas's SUMMER HOURS (reviewed at French label), only this one is two and half hours long in the company of some unsumpathetic people as the Vuillard family gathers: parents Junon and Abel, a daughter Elizabeth and her son Paul, Henri and a girlfriend, Ivan, his wife Sylvia and their young sons, and cousin Simon. Six years before, Elizabeth paid Henri's debts and demanded he never see her again or visit their parents' home. Paul, at 16, has mental problems and faces a clinical exam. Junon learns she needs a bone marrow transplant if she's to live beyond a few months: thus the détente bringing all together. Two family members have compatible marrow, but the spats, fights, cruel words, drunken toasts, and somewhat civilized bad behavior threaten all; plus Junon may simply refuse treatment.

It turns out to be an overly long and incredibly talky dysfunctional family drama, by Arnaud Desplechin, led by a chilly Catherine Deneuve as the dying matriarch (such a contrast to her sunny role in the delicious POTICHE (yes, also reviewed recently at French label). She's dying of a rare kind of cancer, and the spectre of that eventuality plus the proximity of brothers and sisters who haven't seen each other for a while and have scores to settle puts everyone in a reflective mood. It rather strikes home if you too have brothers and sisters who do not see or have much contact with each other .... Melvil Poupaud (so effective in Ozon's TIME TO LEAVE - yes, its at the french label) scores as the youngest son.



We also of course have the perennial IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE with Jimmy Stewart running through Bedford Falls in the snow as he gets his life back, and THE MIRACLE ON 34TH STREET (the Maureen O'Hara-Natalie Wood one) and '54's WHITE CHRISTMAS though how many times can one watch that? and of course theres always those recent christmas perennials like ELF and BAD SANTA and GREMLINS. I was pleased to catch up with favourites Lee Remick and Angela Lansbury in the glutinously sentimental tv film A CHRISTMAS STORY: THE GIFT OF LOVE from 1982, and dear Loretta in CHRISTMAS EVE one of her final roles in '85, as the rich old lady with not long to live re-uniting her family, assisted by ailing Trevor Howard. If that does not get you crying for christmas nothing will ! Perfect viewing anytime though, and particularly at this time of year, is the 1952 film of the play THE HOLLY AND THE IVY, a perfectly British treat with Ralph Richardson, Margaret Leighton and Celia Johnson all sublime (and yes see Richardson, Leighton or Johnson labels for review); and let's not forget the lovely if rarely seen HOLIDAY AFFAIR from 1949 with Janet Leigh having to choose between Robert Mitchum or Wendall Corey! It should be a holiday staple too.

Blowing Wild: homage to Gary Cooper

BLOWING WILD - nice to re-acquaint myself with this nifty 1953 tough little meller, which I saw at a Sunday matinee back in the 50s. Directed by Hugo Fregonese and scripted by Philip Yordan it assembles 5 tough cookies somewhere in South America for a tale of oil riggers versus bandits. When your cast is Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Anthony Quinn, Ruth Roman and Ward Bond then wait for the fireworks!

Coop and partner Bond have their oil digging operation ruined by bandits and have to seek work. Enter wealthy Quinn and his predatory Medusa-like wife Stanwyck who once had the hots for laconic Coop and wants him back - he though falls for new girl in town Roman, playing a nice girl here .... then the bandits come back for the final explosive shoot-out - after Stanwyck has disposed of Quinn, so like all bad girls she has to pay the price. Stanwyck and Cooper (their third teaming?) are great together.



This had made me realise how much I love Gary Cooper, particularly his later films - perhaps the most beautiful man of the 1930s (check out his two with Dietrich MOROCCO and DESIRE, and the delirious THE FOUNTAINHEAD with Patricia Neal in 1949 and he and Ingrid Bergman are perfect together in SARATOGA TRUNK in '43), he was ageing rapidly in the '50s - like Gable, Tracy, Bogart, Flynn, Power and those other early '30s hellraisers who partied hard with all that smoking and heavy drinking - most of them did not see much of their 60s or the 1960s.

He turned out lots of routine movies but I particularly like him in Wyler's still charming FRIENDLY PERSUASION, that fondly remembered hit of 1956 (Samantha the goose and Pat Boone's theme song) and then Wilder's LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON in 1957, one I did not see until lately but this one does not work for me at all, Audrey Hepburn being far too young for his ageing roue - Wilder may have intended a light souffle in the spirit of Lubitsch but not for me. Much better is TEN NORTH FREDERICK in '58 from John O'Hara, and that brace of tough westerns: Anthony Mann's MAN OF THE WEST with Julie London and Lee J Cobb, and Delmer Daves' THE HANGING TREE in '59 with Maria Schell and Karl Malden, a particular childhood memory. Rossen's THEY CAME TO CORDURA is also a tough drama with the ageing Coop and Rita Hayworth very touching here. He then made his final two in Britain for Michael Anderson - the Hammond Innes adventure THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE with Charlton Heston and a great supporting cast (Michael Redgrave, Virgina McKenna, Richard Harris etc) and the thriller THE NAKED EDGE in '61, again the cast is the thing, with Deborah Kerr, Diane Cilento, Hermoine Gingold etc but it is impossible to think Coop could be the murderer. He was clearly ill by then and died on May 13 1961, aged 60, shortly after Gable's passing a few months earlier.



Seeing Coop now always reminds me of my father as my dad was a very Gary Cooper kind of man, both in looks and manner. We will always keep watching Coop and Cary Grant and James Stewart and Bogart and John Wayne, perhaps the greatest of the great male stars - there are others like Gable, Tracy and others whom we do not see so much now, perhaps their later films were not that special and are not revived much now.

Don't mess with Stanwyck !

Barbara was one tough dame. Here she is in full throttle '50s mode .... I first discovered her in those westerns like CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA, THE MAVERICK QUEEN, 40 GUNS, THE FURIES, TROOPER HOOK and dramas like CLASH BY NIGHT and BLOWING WILD, then there was her blazing turn in WALK ON THE WILD SIDE when she (understandably) wants Capucine for herself.

It was a revelation to go back and see the early Stanwyck of THE LADY EVE, BALL OF FIRE (Sugarpuss O'Shea!) and as Phyllis Dietrichson, that "Medusa of the suburbs", biding her time in '40s California in Billy Wilder's classic DOUBLE INDEMNITY. When I was growing up that great star quartet comprised Davis, Hepburn, Crawford and Stanwyck. Barbara played it straight down the line... That recent biography by Jane Ellen Wayne was a brisk canter through her early years on Broadway and Hollywood, those gay rumours that swirled around her for decades, her long marriage to Robert Taylor, and that purported romance with a young Robert Wagner!

A mixed bag ...

KITTEN WITH A WHIP - A delicious 1964 farrago with the then rising Ann-Margret who is the sole reason to see this one. She is the wild teen running away from reform school who takes up residence in nice but dull guy John Forsythe's suburban home while his wife is out of town. Instead of calling the police the very wooden Forsythe tries to help her! Life with Ann is a rollercoaster as her mood swings drive Forsyth (a long way before DYNASTY) around the bend as he tries to get rid of her before family and neighbours find out. Ann then invites her teen hood friends to the party, including Skip Ward (the bus driver from NIGHT OF THE IGUANA) and then they all go slumming to Tijuana over the Mexican border... as they all cheat and double-cross each other to a fitting finale. Its certainly one to laugh at, now has anyone got a copy of Ann's THE SWINGER or BUS RILEY IS BACK IN TOWN?

TROOPER HOOK - I really liked this 1957 western when I saw it as a kid so nice to see it again 50 years later. I like Barbara Stanwyck's other '50s westerns too (CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA, THE MAVERICK QUEEN, THE FURIES, 40 GUNS), this is a nice black and white one made the year after THE SEARCHERS and is also about a woman being rescued from living with the indians - here though its a mature woman with her son by the Apache chief Nanchez (Rudolfo Acosta). Joel McCrea is the Trooper Hook of the title who has the task of taking Cora and her son back to her husband as they travel though Indian territory on a stagecoach which also has Senorita Susan Kohner, cowboy Earl Hollimann, and the splendidly venal Edward Andrews on board). Stanwyck is very compelling as Cora and plays it mainly silent as she re-adjusts to civilisation. Nanchez is also in pursuit as he wants his son. John Dehner is the husband who wants his wife back but not her half-breed child ... its tense and nicely resolved and its one of Stanwyck's better '50s films, all wrapped up in 80 minutes and there is even a Tex Ritter theme song!

RAW WIND IN EDEN - Another delicious farrago from 1957 this sudser has playgirl Esther Williams (though she seems rather mature...) and Carlos Thompson crashing their plane in a remote Italian island where mystery man Jeff Chandler lives with the locals including Helen of Troy herself Rosanna Podesta. Esther and Carlos move into their shack and its a mystery how Esther has a never ending supply of clean clothes and makeup. She and Jeff eventually get together and it all gets rather steamy. Esther's career was practically over by this time (she made one more little regarded melodrama) but Jeff had a good run in the '50s squiring those ladies like Loretta Young (BECAUSE OF YOU), Lana Turner (THE LADY TAKES A FLYER), June Allyson (STRANGER IN MY ARMS), Kim Novak (JEANNE EAGELS) and Susan Hayward (THUNDER IN THE SUN) as well as adventures like SIGN OF THE PAGAN, MAN IN THE SHADOW, 10 SECONDS TO HELL and YANKEE PASHA. He died in 1961 after complications following an operation... Esther later wrote in her autobiography that Jeff was a cross-dresser with a penchant for polka-dot dresses, but it seems it was not true.

THE SPANISH GARDENER - 50+ years later this is still a compelling drama, from a A J Cronin bestseller, and is a nice look at the Costa Brava in the '50s as stuffy minor diplomat Michael Hordern and his neglected son Jon Whiteley (the little boy in MOONFLEET) arrive, following the father's divorce. Dirk Bogarde is the gardener hired by the father who soon forms a bond with the lonely boy who has no friends as he and the father move around a lot. The father though soon grows jealous of the friendship between gardener and boy - is he jealous of his son or of the gardener? Hordern excels as the buttoned-up repressed man unable to express his feelings. Things take a melodramatic turn as the father forbids his son to continue associating with Jose, the gardener, and the servant (Cyril Cusack) engineers a theft for which Jose is blamed. Soon Jose is on the run with Nicholas (Whiteley) seeking him out and the father now humbled and sorry for his actions in pursuit as it is all nicely resolved. Director Philip Leacock made some interesting movies before moving into television.

NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY - Jack Smight's 1968 black comedy was a treat back then and is still so now, as serial killer Rod Steiger dons different disguises to con his way into the homes of lonely middle aged women ... it of course boils down to his mother complex! Rod runs a theate so has access to lots of disguises as we see him in turn as an Irish priest, a Polish plumber, in drag as a woman scared to go leave a bar, and hilariously as a camp hairdresser! George Segal is Mo Brummell, the harrassed Jewish detective on the case - plagued by his very Jewish mother Eileen Heckart who is great fun here. Lee Remick is the girl who may provide a clue and she is charming here making something special of the standard girl role. Just one quibble: wouldn't the mother fixated killer go after Segal's mother rather than his girlfriend? It's got a nice late '60s feel .... below, right: Steiger in drag with another victim...



PARANOIA, or A QUIET PLACE TO KILL - a friend into those Italian giallo thrillers lent me this Umberto Lenzi thriller from 1970 and its a whole lot of fun as the melodramatic plot twists and turns as racing driver Carroll Baker crashes her car on the circuit and ends up slightly wounded in hospital. During her period of recovery, she accepts to stay at her ex-husband (Jean Sorel) and his new wife's mansion. Two attractive women and one handsome guy in one house can only result in extended sequences of sexual intrigue, double-crossing and conspiracies to murder, particularly when the precocious daughter of the second wife arrives with a plot of her own. Baker and Sorel excelled as this kind of thing and Carroll frequently disrobes to add to the sexual tensions. It all rises to a crescendo and a final twist that leaves one dazed !

50s/60s westerns

The ‘50s really was the heyday of the western – not only several classics [starting with HIGH NOON] but also all those routine oaters and programmers, 1954 being a particularly good year. JOHNNY GUITAR the first film I ever saw aged 8 was an incredibly vivid experience: the woman in the white dress going to be hanged, and the other woman in black shooting down the lamps setting the casino on fire… My father was taking me to see other westerns: SHANE which I did not care for, but certainly liked DRUM BEAT (Alan Ladd), THE COMMAND (Guy Madison) and SITTING BULL with Dale Robertson, who was also THE GAMBLER FROM NATCHEZ. Tyrone Power was THE MISSISSIPPI GAMBLER, Rock Hudson was in lots of westerns like SEMINOLE and as Taza in Sirk’s TAZA SON OF COCHISE. Jeff Chandler was COCHISE in ’54 and again in THE BATTLE AT APACHE PASS in ’52. Charles Bronson the apache leader in Delmar Daves’ DRUM BEAT. Generally any western with Indians and covered wagons was a must see. Hathaway’s GARDEN OF EVIL from '54 was a nice discovery recently, great Scope compositions and a rousing Herrmann score with Cooper, Hayward and Widmark top-lining. Maybe not really westerns as such but Wyler’s two, FRIENDLY PERSUASION in 1956 and THE BIG COUNTRY in 1958 are dramas with western backgrounds – both have been firm favourites over the years. A rather droll late 50s western was THUNDER IN THE SUN with French Basques taking their vines to California and being attacked by Indians. Susan Hayward as the widow and Jeff Chandler as the scout were in their element here. Daves wrote WHITE FEATHER with Jeffrey Hunter and Robert Wagner, who were also leads in Nick Ray’s THE TRUE STORY OF JESSE JAMES in ’57. Two excellent Gary Cooper westerns are Anthony Mann’s MAN OF THE WEST in ’58 with great widescreen vistas, where he opposes Lee J Cobb and his gang, with Julie London in nice support; and Delmar Daves THE HANGING TREE in ’59 where Karl Malden runs riot and Maria Schell is the woman doctor Cooper is nursing back to health. Then they strike gold….
Mann of course also had that series of westerns with James Stewart, starting with WINCHESTER 73 in '50 and including titles likes THE NAKED SPUR and THE MAN FROM LARAMIE.

Later in the 50s came those taut westerns like THE LAW AND JAKE WADE [Robert Taylor –v- Widmark], 3.10 TO YUMA [Glenn Ford –v- Van Heflin], LAST TRAIN FROM GUNHILL [Kirk Douglas –v- Anthony Quinn] and the Budd Boetticher ones with Randolph Scott – SEVEN MEN FROM NOW being particularly right, with Lee Marvin in his element. NIGHT PASSAGE remains a favourite, with James Stewart, Audie Murphy and young Brandon de Wilde. DAKOTA STATION was memorable too in ’56 with that stagecoach of survivors including Linda Darnell and Dale Robertson fighting off the redskins. Audie Murphy turned out all those programmers, and was in Huston’s excellent THE UNFORGIVEN in 1960, where Lillian Gish exemplified the old west, Jack Lemmon was out west in COWBOY and Glenn Ford was THE SHEEPMAN (both '58). Then of course Ford’s now immortal THE SEARCHERS, which one never tires of. That moment when John Wayne picks up Natalie Wood remains a screen epiphany which can still reduce grown men to tears. Hawks’ RIO BRAVO in 1959 is another milestone (I liked Angie Dickinson as Feathers and Ricky Nelson as Colorado) and I particularly liked those other Wayne horse operas like THE COMMANCHEROS and NORTH TO ALASKA. Dmytryk’s WARLOCK was good too, as was THESE THOUSAND HILLS (with Lee Remick excellent as ever, as the ‘saloon girl’ not good enough for ambitious Don Murray, who marries that nice Patricia Owens instead), and Aldrich’s THE LAST SUNSET (Hudson –v- Kirk Douglas). Westerns didn’t look right in the ’60s – they were too jokey or modern like CAT BALLOU – Brooks’ THE PROFESSIONALS was ace though and of course the Cinerama HOW THE WEST WAS WON re-uniting all the western greats one more time in '62, and Ford came back with THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE, with James Stewart and Vera Miles out west again and Lee Marvin coming into his own; then Peckinpah finished the decade with THE WILD BUNCH, and then there was Butch and Sundance…

JOHNNY GUITAR in 1954 is still astounding to see and re-see how. Nick Ray makes it all so vivid, Sterling Hayden is, well, sterling and Joan Crawford and Mercedes McCambridge are both iconic here. The showdown at the end is electric and Mercedes and her crew whipping up the mob to lynch Vienna and torch her establishment still engrossing. The sexual politics are weird, perhaps Mercedes’ Emma cannot admit it is Vienna she wants and not the Dancin’ Kid … Vienna sitting at her own piano in her own place waiting for the railroad to come and facing down the mob, and her dialogues with the laconic Johnny are timelessly classic for me. Nice to see Scorsese enthusing about it on the dvd.

Barbara Stanwyck was out west several times too: Mann’s THE FURIES, Sam Fuller’s 40 GUNS, Dwan’s CATTLE QUEEN OF MONTANA, are all terrific – I just watched her as Kit Bannion helping another Butch and Sundance in THE MAVERICK QUEEN (’56) where Barry Sullivan and Scott Brady are sterling support. Best though is a very forgotten 1957 one TROOPER HOOK, a small black and white western, following on from THE SEARCHERS, where Barbara is the white woman rescued from the Indians and has a young child by the Apache chief, Rodolpho Acosta. Joel McCrea is the cavalry officer Trooper Hook assigned to take her home, but her husband will accept her but not the child, whose father is also in pursuit to claim his son. Its totally gripping and Stanwyck plays it very quiet and still as the woman getting used to being back among white people. Others on the stagecoach are Susan Kohner and regulars Royal Dano as the driver, John Dehner and Edward Andrews. Stanwyck of course went on to THE BIG VALLEY, and even Bette Davis went west in WAGON TRAIN, THE VIRGINIAN and GUNSMOKE.

HOUND DOG MAN in ’59 may not be a western at all but is an amiable, pleasing backwoods comedy drama by Don Siegel set in rural Americana showcasing Fox’s new talent: singer Fabian as the confused teen, Stuart Whitman as his ne’er-do-well pal who takes the kids on a weekend of hunting, Carol Lynley and Dodie Stevens are the girls, Arthur O’Connell and Betty Field the parents, and its all perfectly delightful. Siegel also scored next year putting Elvis out west in the stirring FLAMING STAR.

NORTH TO ALASKA is Hathaway’s rousing 1960 sprawling comedy western with Wayne and Stewart Granger having lots of fun guying their images as the prospectors who strike gold, Fabian as the kid brother and Capucine as the woman drafted in to replace the girlfriend of Granger who could not wait any longer. Its handsomely mounted with nice detail, like the (superfluous) early scenes at the logging camp. Capucine shows her flair for haughty comedy, Ernie Kovaks is the schemer trying to get his hands on the mine. Set in Alaska it captures the frontier town just as well as Altman does with his McCABE & MRS MILLER, and is a pleasure to see any time.