WHAT FILMS HAVE YOU SEEN LATELY?

[MikeBSG]

I agree with your comments on the 1943 "Titanic." Several things about the film surprised me, however. The books always call it anti-British, and, apparently after WWII it was used as a "trophy film" in Soviet-ruled and influenced areas to stir up anti-British feeling. The movie is anti-British, but to me that mostly seemed concentrated in the final "courtroom" scene in which the (German) hero gives an anti-British speech about how Britain will be humiliated in the future. That scene is rather different in style from the rest of the film (perhaps added after Selpin's death?) There is one subplot about a Scottish woman who dies when the ship goes down, and she is treated with great sympathy (do/did the Germans distinguish between British and Scottish? I don't know.) The German hero risks his life to save a Gypsy woman (which struck me as odd given the anti-Gypsy genocide when the film was made) and the most hateful character in the film is Cuban, a gambler who robs and kills an elderly German passenger. These last things struck me as peculiar for a film usually dismissed as "anti-British propaganda." (Why not make the gambler a Brit then? Why is he Cuban?)

[JackFavell]

I would imagine that the German propagandists might have thought that by being sympathetic to the Scots and the Irish, they could drive a wedge (that might have already been there) into the British Empire, and gain allies. But that's only a guess.

[MichiganJ]

To me, the German Titanic is all propaganda. The "hero" is the made-up German first-officer character, who single-handedly could have avoided the tragedy, if only the inane British (aka Jewish) sailors would have listened to him. Captain Smith is portrayed as week-kneed, the British are so callous as to flee their stateroom, leaving their child to die (never fear, the First-Officer saves her!) and I saw the villain of the film was pointedly Ismay, who, despite his "obvious" guilty, is found innocent in the inept courts. And while the British/Jews were the target in the film, the German Titanic also excoriates capitalism in general. That the film is well-done, just shows how effective propaganda can be.

Speaking of propaganda: In his op/ed, Cal Thomas does mention the Stanwyck soap opera, bit also dismisses A Night to Remember as a Hollywood fabrication.

The gist of his musings is that no movie got the Titanic's sinking right, particularly in the way many of the films handle the class separations. According to Thomas, there is overwhelming evidence that first class passengers came to the aid of the less fortunate, and that the selfless men of power and prestige sacrificed their lives for women and children of the lower class. That, is the story that should be told about Titanic, according to Thomas.

While there are no doubt instances of such heroics, Thomas didn't bother to look at the numbers, which don't add up. There were as many deaths in third class as in the first and second class combined. The actual numbers lost: 130 first class passengers; 166 second class passengers; 536 third class passengers, including most of the third class women and children.

Of course you can't simply look at the survival rates of each class and compare them because they didn't start out equal. Even ratios need some balance. For instance, the ratio of third class children saved, compared with first class children, is close to 4 to 1. And it is true that nearly four times as many third class children were saved, but that's because there were so many more third class children. Since there were only 6 first class children, and all of them were saved, their survival rate is 100%. Comparing that with the 34% survival rate of third class children is misleading.

When one compares the expected survival rate, which is calculated with only sex and age as variables, and then looks at those rates by class, the figures are quite telling: The survival rate for first class passengers was nearly 40% higher then the expected first class survival rates. Third class was 30% below expected third class survival rates.

All this to say that Thomas continues to live up to my expectations.

[moira finnie]

I love The Actress. The acting is pitch-perfect, PERFECT. The blending of amusement and pain makes it a hard watch for me, I don't think I could bear it if Tracy did not turn out the way he does!

I could write more, but this sums up my feelings about The Actress as a blend of pain and mirth:

Haven't we all had days like these?

[JackFavell]

Oh lordy! YES!

Having been bit by the acting bug in high school, I have many many of those moments, plus the ones that Jean Simmons goes through. I've been that young girl, trying so hard, and lacking everything but the desire to become an actress. So many embarrassing moments....

[moira finnie]

Here's more, courtesy of Tumblr:


From James Curtis' "Spencer Tracy: A Biography"

George Cukor recalled his work with Tracy and Simmons in The Actress:

"He [Tracy] loved and respected Jean Simmons, who gave a wonderful performance, and there was a scene when she wanted to be an actress and stood on the steps in their house [and sang] and she was starting things off rather badly. And Spencer looked at her and he did something very funny: for no reason at all, he looked at the mother as though she had talked this girl into doing something. But then he looked at her with this eloquent face of his and his face changed color. And I said, "That was lovely." He said, "Well, I remember when I told my father that I wanted to be an actor and he looked at me, this skinny kid with big ears, and he said, 'Oh, that poor little son of a b****; he's going to go through an awful lot."

Tracy in his twenties.

[JackFavell]

Oh, that quote is so sweet! Thanks for finding the confirmation, Moira! That's so much better than I could ever have told it.

[RedRiver]

I've taken to wearing suspenders to avert the embarrasing situation Spencer finds himself in. My waist is WAY bigger than my hips!

[feaito]

Tonight I watched "The Wicked Lady" (1945), an entertaining adventure film set in the XVIIth Century in which Margaret Lockwood plays Barbara, a bold woman who'll do whatever she pleases to get what she wants from life; Patricia Roc is her lovely friend and cousin, Caroline, not aware of her real personality; James mason is a notorious highwayman -Jerry Jackson- who brings some excitement to Lockwood's life...but he's playing with fire; Griffith Jones (Sir Ralph) the good natured Gentleman who marries her unknowing her real nature and Michael Rennie (Kit), the only man she really cared for. Martita Hunt plays cousin Agatha (always a delight to behold in any film) and Felix Aylmer is Hogarth, Sir Ralph's very religious servant.

A Gainsborough production directed rather uninspiredly by Leslie Arliss. The film is far from perfect and has many flaws, mainly one-dimentional characters (perhaps except for Lockwood's contradictory and spoiled "Lady") and a rather too fast pace -for my taste- sometimes, but nevertheless it is worthwhile to watch. I'd never choose Lockwood over Roc, though....the latter's too beautiful.

[MikeBSG]

Tonight I watched "Frontier Marshal" (1939) directed by Alan Dwan.

Very good and very close to Ford's "My Darling Clementine." Some scenes/plot events are very close: Earp having to disarm the drunken Indian Charlie, the bad guys kidnap a performer (a Shakespearean in Ford, Eddie Foy in this film) and Doc Holliday has to perform emergency surgery. "Frontier Marshal" speeds along and has a pretty good cast. Ward Bond is a cowardly marshal replaced by Randolph Scott's Wyatt Earp, and Lon Chaney Jr. is one of the mean bad guys. Scott is rather wooden, but Cesar Romero rises to the occasion as Doc Halliday and effectively carries the movie.

The one real flaw in "Frontier Marshal" is that John Carradine is the most vivid bad guy in the film, and he is killed off at the 2/3rds point in the film OFF-SCREEN. What were they thinking?

Really worth a look for anyone who likes Westerns.

[RedRiver]

I'd love to see this movie. I like westerns. Like history. Would enjoy the comparison to Ford's film. I guess LAW AND ORDER, with Mr. Reagan as the lawman, is considered basically the same story. It would be nice to see all three versions.

[MikeBSG]

I know the 1932 "Law and Order," with Walter Huston as the Marshal and Hary Carey as the Doc Holiday figure (they have different names but are clearly Earp and Holiday) is a version of the Wyatt Earp story. It is a very good movie (John Huston wrote the script.) (I saw it at Case Western Reserve University in 1983. I don't know if it ever was on home video or DVD.)

I'm not sure if the Ronald Reagan "Law and Order" is the Earp story, but I guess I remember reading that "Frontier Marshal" was remade. Which is odd, because parts of it play so close to "My Darling Clementine" that the Ford film almost felt like a remake of Dwan's movie.

[MikeBSG]

Forgot to mention: "Frontier Marshal" turns up on the Fox Movie Channel a lot. It is also available on DVD as part of the Ford at Fox set. (I rented the DVD, and it had the Ford at Fox logo on the disc.)

[JackFavell]

I saw The Hunger Games, which was actually very good. Nice to see that Hollywood can put out a decent, appealing film nowadays, and according to my daughter, they remained faithful to the book. All the actors, especially Jennifer Lawrence, were quite good. cameos by Stanley Tucci and Donald Sutherland were greatly appreciated, by me anyway.

[MikeBSG]

Wasn't Donald Sutherland terrific? It was good to see him again. He didn't have a lot of time in the film, but he made it all count.