Classics Around The Dial

[movieman1957]

This is well off the beaten path but since a few of us remember who Johnny Unitas was Sunday night on ESPN there is a documentary on "The Greatest Game Ever Played" staring the 1958 Baltimore Colts and New York Giants.

With Mel noting his "Go Giants" theme and Klondike and I having exchanged thoughts on classic football I thought you two at least might find it interesting.

Unitas still rules in this town.

[ChiO]

Here's one that I haven't seen and looking forward to:

SLATTERY'S HURRICANE (Andre De Toth, 1949)
July 4, FMC @ 10:00am (EST)

De Toth directed several favorites -- NONE SHALL ESCAPE (1944), DARK WATERS (1944), PITFALL (1948), THE STRANGER WORE A GUN (1953), CRIME WAVE (1954), DAY OF THE OUTLAW (1959) -- and is always worth the time, even with the less-than-favorites.

The movie concerns the Navy's storm warning service and the pilots who fly into hurricanes to report on their location. The cast includes: Richard Widmark, Veronica Lake (about mid-point in her marriage to De Toth), Linda Darnell, and Gary Merrill.

De Toth had this to say in reflecting on the movie: Hurricanes and Florida are synonymous. The people in the film were living in a hurricane, and were fighting their own private hurricane....The chance of flying in hurricanes to reach the hurricane's eye intrigued me. It promised to be quite a venture.... With today's marvelous aids, it would have been much easier but less fun to shoot that epoch. We shot real life. It was real rain. Real rain? The engines were drowning. At the assigned ten-, fifteen-thousand-feet altitude, we were in a shower in leaking cockpits. And it was real wind, not wind-machines, that blew real tree limbs across the PB-4 Y's path before touchdown. God, was it fun.

[Mr. Arkadin]

IFC has been showing Samurai classics every Saturday morning. This week it's Three Outlaw Samurai (1964):

http://www.ifc.com/movies/335039/Three-Outlaw-Samurai

Other films of interest July 4 might be:

Cleo From 5 to 7 (1962)
http://www.ifc.com/movies/9960/Cleo-from-5-to-7

Drugstore Cowboy (1989)
http://www.ifc.com/movies/14863/Drugstore-Cowboy

[Mr. Arkadin]

Late tonight (or early Wednesday morning) on FMC:

Trouble Man (1972)

A Los Angeles man (Robert Hooks) is hired by gangsters (Paul Winfield and Ralph Waite) to harrass a competitor.

Cast: Paul Winfield, Ralph Waite, Gordon Jump, Robert Hooks, Ivan Dixon

Director: Ivan Dixon

Middle of the road Blaxploitation classic, probably best known for score by Marvin Gaye.

[Mr. Arkadin]

I deleted this message.

[ChiO]

FIXED BAYONETS (1951)

Gripping Korean war drama of a platoon cut off from the rest of its outfit. Look for James Dean (uncredited) as one of the soldiers.

Cast: Samuel Fuller, Richard Basehart, Gene Evans, Craig Hill, Michael O'shea, James Dean

Director: Samuel Fuller

If someone can point out James Dean, I'd appreciate it. As many times as I've watched it, I've yet to see him. At any rate, a brilliant follow-up to THE STEEL HELMET and a must-see for Basehart fans.

And a thousand thanks for the ARMY OF SHADOWS tip.

[Dewey1960]

Hey Ark: Thanks for that much needed heads up on the trio of Melville
films over on the Sundance Channel; all three rank among my most
favorite French crime films!!
BOB LE FLAMBEUR / BOB THE GAMBLER
[youtube][/youtube]
And ChiO sez re: FIXED BAYONETS on FMC: "At any rate, a brilliant follow-up
to THE STEEL HELMET and a must-see for Basehart fans."
Ah yes, Basehart is totally yummy in this one, much more so than that icky
Gene Evans from STEEL HELMET!!

[Mr. Arkadin]

A special end of month surprise from the Sundance Channel, 7/31:


That Obscure Object of Desire (1977)


Bunuel's last film and a great one!

[Mr. Arkadin]

HBO has been showing some great boxing documentaries lately. Thriller In Manila (2008) was a fascinating story of the rivalry between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, delving into the lasting physical and mental impact of their adversity. Tomorrow (July 1/09) HBO premieres Assault in the Ring, an interesting true account of the Collins/Resto scandal and the dark side of the fight game where pressure to succeed is often linked to tragedy.

http://www.hbo.com/events/assaultinthering/index.html

Catch this one if you can, but I'm sure it will reshow.

[moira finnie]

Mister 880 (1949-Edmund Goulding) with Edmund Gwenn, Burt Lancaster and Dorothy McGuire will be broadcast this coming week on Tuesday, September 1, 10:00 am ET on the Fox Movie Channel.

Not surprisingly, given the presence of Edmund Gwenn as a gentle counterfeiter (he only printed small bills and it was only what he needed for his simple needs), this rarely broadcast and not on DVD movie is quite delightful. The story is based on an actual case. This film was originally intended for Walter Huston, who was tested, signed and, unfortunately died just before filming began. Though it is tempting to wonder about the edgier performance that Huston might have given in the role of the doddering felon on the loose for a good decade before being caught, Gwenn, as our former visitor to the SSO, Matthew Kennedy wrote in Edmund Goulding's Dark Victory, his bio of the director, was just perfect in his own way, and "could charm the stripes off a zebra."

I think you might like this one.

[moira finnie]

Somewhere in the Night (1946), the first film directed by Joseph Mankiewicz and a seminal film noir (even when it kids the genre a bit) is being aired on Sat., Sept. 12th from 10AM to 12PM EDT and Fri., Sept. 18th from 1:30 PM to 3:30 PM EDT on the Fox Movie Channel. John Hodiak, Richard Conte, Nancy Guild, Lloyd Nolan, Fritz Kortner and Sheldon Leonard all pop up in the story of a man who can't remember his name or life. All he knows is the name "Larry Cravat". The unlikely but rather engaging story takes off from there.

Be sure to watch how readily Lloyd Nolan steals every scene he is in with his utterly seamless naturalistic characterization of a cop. Nolan is especially deft in a scene with yards of dialogue set in a Chinese restaurant. You can almost see some of the other actors, especially Richard Conte, watching him in bemused awe throughout this sequence! Of course, this being a Joe Mankiewicz movie, the talk is usually central to the story.

[movieman1957]

Which channel?

I accidently erased "Drango" so I will have to get it later.

[jdb1]

Normally I don't care much for Hodiak, but I started watching Somewhere in the Night this morning on Fox, and I recorded the rest since I had to go out for a while. Very interesting and very well directed, I thought. And who should pop up uncredited but two of our favorite characters, Harry Morgan and Whit Bissell? You can't go wrong when they're in the mix. I'm looking forward to viewing the entire movie later today. That Nancy Guild has a pretty face that can look like a dozen different actresses at different angles.

I had teacher in junior high named Mr. Cravat. Haven't thought of him in years, but I can picture him now -- he looked like that Doogie Howser guy.

[moira finnie]

D'uh. FMC, Chris. No more multi-tasking for me! It's on again on Friday (see above) and Somewhere in the Night is also available on DVD.

Judith, I loved Harry Morgan's sarcasm, as in the line "What makes you think he'd be in the desk?" Did you also spot Jeff Corey as the bank teller? It was amusing to see the name "Howard Koch" on the cheap hotel register that Hodiak was looking at in one scene, given the fact that Koch was the a well known screenwriter (contributing to Casablanca, among other scripts) and later a director and producer too. Allegedly, no less than an uncredited W. Somerset Maugham worked on the screenplay! Perhaps he was slumming and needed some busy work while visiting Hollywood to adapt his novel The Razor's Edge for the screen (though hardly any of his script was used in that Tyrone Power flick). Howard Dimsdale, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Lee Strasberg and Marvin Borowsky got the screen credit for Somewhere in the Night, however. Strasberg and Maugham...only in Hollywood.

[jdb1]

I finished watching Somewhere in the Night this evening. An interesting noir. I thought Hodiak was very good as the amnesiac caught up in a noir situation he didn't understand, but seemed to be the center of. Very good character performances by Fritz Kortner (is that the name?) and a tough-talking floozie played by Margo Woode, an actress with whom I'm not familiar. Josephine Hutchinson had a nice little melodramatic interlude in the middle of the proceedings. Richard Conte wasn't of particular note to me -- he was just there.

The top supporting performance for me was Lloyd Nolan, who played a low-key and very sharp policeman. The weak link, I thought, was Nancy Guild (rhymes with "wild"). This was her first feature film, and it showed. Some scenes were very well played, and the rather clever and snappy dialogue went down well. But at other times she looked nervous and stiff, and delivered her lines like an amateur. It seemed that a sort of Lauren Bacall/Veronica Lake hybrid was called for by the director, and she only hit her mark 50% of the time. Still, she wasn't terrible, and she looked pretty.

There were a few quite amusing scenes, like the one with Harry Morgan that Moira described, and one involving Hodiak, Margo Woode and Sheldon Leonard, all talking in a sort of code, and giving knowing looks. It's too bad that Leonard, Morgan, Bissell (who apparently is killed offscreen at some point) and Jeff Corey had such small parts. Only Leonard got screen credits. According to IMBd there was a lot of cast who didn't get credit, including Jim Davis (I didn't spot him), and the voice of John Ireland.

However, as the film progressed I became increasingly confused as to what was going on; I think there was just too much plot and too many detours.