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| Syd |
 Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2017 7:40 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Viva Zapata! features Marlon Brando as Emiliano Zapata!, the Mexican revolutionary leader, Anthony Quinn as his brother Eufemio Zapata!, Jean Peters as Emiliano's eventual wife Josepha Zapata!, Fay Roope as long-time dictator/tyrant Porfirio Diaz, Harold Gordon as major revolutionary Francisco Madero, Alan Reed as Pancho Villa!, and Frank Silvera as Victoriano Huerta, who's much more ruthless than Madero, Villa! and the Zapata!s. You may have notice that only one of these names sounds Mexican, and you're right: Anthony Quinn was born in Chihuahua. (Silvera was born in Jamaica.) This means there is a lot of dark makeup, which isn't particularly distracting, since the cast is just fine. Besides, Quinn does look a lot like Eufemio Zapata!, and Roope like Diaz (and several World War I incompetent generals, and Silvera like Erich Ludendorff, which is who Huerta was a dead ringer for.
The first half of the film sees the peasants being forced off their corn fields by bigger landowners who want it to grow sugarcane. The peasants, led by Emiliano approach Diaz, and show them their land grants (from Spain, and later from Mexico) and he informs them that all they have to do to legally regain their land is locate the boundary stones, which are of course in the stolen fields and guarded by armed men. Emiliano protests and gets his name circled by Diaz for further notice. Regardless, Emiliano leads them through the fence and a sort of battle ensues, which is easy to follow since Emiliano owns what is apparently the only white horse in Mexico.
After Emiliano tries to court Josefa, which is difficult since he has little to offer, he is arrested on a previous charge, and is paraded on foot among a group of men on horseback. As he is marched along, peasants join in the procession until we have a sizeable parade. This begins a revolt in the South, Madero is leading a revolution via Texas, and Diaz is forced out to everyone's pleasure. Now we discover that was that was the easy part, as a kaleidoscope of revolutionary figures enter and leave the stage. It took Mexico over twenty years to really get a stable government and the movie shows why. Zapata! mostly remains the voice of integrity, but even he has to make brutal decisions that test his conscience.
Really well done, and written by John Steinbeck, no less, with Elia Kazan the director, and exciting performances by Brando and Quinn.
(Pancho Villa! was the subject of an earlier movie, Viva Villa!, hence his exclamation point!.) |
Last edited by Syd on Tue Dec 26, 2017 12:35 am; edited 1 time in total
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2017 12:08 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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I first saw Viva Zapata in my 10th grade history class.
Laid back teacher showed it to explain the issues in the Mexican Rev.
Solid film.
I like how Pancho Villa raised funds for his fight against the gov't by selling movie rights to a Hollywood film company in 1914. Reenacting battle scenes that weren't captured on film during the real thing to fill in gaps in coverage. Villa was also hoping for more favorable press coverage in the US. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2017 6:23 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Carmen Jones was important in its time, and there's still quite a bit to like, including Ms. Dandridge and Pearl Bailey, and raises the odd question: If you have Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte starring in a musical, why dub them? The answer is that Otto Preminger wanted it as an opera, and Dandridge and Belafonte weren't opera singers. Fortunately, Dandridge is dubbed by Marilyn Horne, who made an effort to sound like Dandridge might if she were an operatic soprano, which pays off big in "Dat Love," the movie's translation of "Habanera," Not so much in "Card Game," is more in Dandridge's range. Belafonte is less fortunate being dubbed by LeVern Hutcherson, which is like having him open his lips and having Pavarotti come out. It's ludicrous. Pearl Bailey is not dubbed because you don't dub Pearl Bailey.
This is all set during World War II in Mississippi and Chicago with an all-black cast, and Carmen now a worker in a parachute factory. (Note: If you want to trap somebody, drop a parachute on them.) The toreadors are replaced by boxers, which leads to the lyrics:
Quote: Stan' up an' fight until you hear de bell,
Stan' toe to toe,
Trade blow fer blow,
Keep punchin' till you make yer punches tell,
Show dat crowd watcher know!
Until you hear dat bell,
Dat final bell,
Stan' up an' fight like hell!"
Which is translated into standard English in the movie version, and is impossible not to sing along to. It rivals "Neither a Borrower nor a Lender Be" from the musical Hamlet on Gilligan's Island.
Carmen, of course, is a vixen who sets her eyes on hapless soldier Joe, who is taking her to civilian jail after the parachute incident. He puts up a brief resistance and so is doomed, both by Carmen's wiles and his own temper. Joe has a fiancee named Cindy Lou* who is sweet and wholesome and no challenge to Carmen. Pearl Bailey and Diahann Carroll are Carmen's friends who are helping to grease the tracks of her railway to doom.
*My sister's second husband and my sister's names, so this is a family saga. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Dec 26, 2017 9:09 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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| Dandridge is pretty great in that. All fiery and sexual and physical. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2017 1:50 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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Syd wrote: ...This is all set during World War II in Mississippi and Chicago with an all-black cast, and Carmen now a worker in a parachute factory.... |
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That was great for you. How was it for me? |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2017 1:32 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Blues in the Night (1941): This is a musical which starts off with the formation of a blues band which forms in a jail cell, gradually grows bigger with Priscilla Lane becoming their lead singer (really good actually, though I was confused when the cast list called her "Character" until I realized that was her character's nickname; her real name was Ginger.) The first half hour has them riding box cars, accumulating members, until they finally get robbed (for $5.60) by a gangster named Del (Lloyd Nolan) who decides he likes them and gives them a steady gig at a road house, which means they finally get an audience which outnumbers the band.
Unfortunately they also meet femme fatale Kay Grant (Betty Field), who is Del's ex, is currently involved with the manager of the road house, and sets her sights first on the band's only married member, then on the pianist. It is at this point that the film goes off the rails. Until now, it's been a fun road comedy with great music, including the famous title song which was nominated for an Oscar, but now gets into melodrama, with Kay driving the pianist into madness (with one of the worst mad scenes in movie history) and a really bad song, and after he reunites with the band, lures him again into disaster. This is how a musical with mostly great music and such a promising beginning becomes a train wreck.
One of the band members is Elia Kazan, who, observing what happened to this movie, resolved to become a director himself because he figured he had to be better. (The director, Anatole Litvak, did go on to direct The Snake Pit, Anastasia and Sorry, Wrong Number, but his career doesn't compare with Kazan's despite Kazan's becoming notorious during the McCarthy era.) This is as close as he ever came to a lead performance in a movie, and he's not bad. Neither are Priscilla Lane or Richard Whorf, but Betty Field is pretty awful.
I was misled to this film because Netflix informed me it was an Elia Kazan film that was Oscar-nominated. The only Oscar nomination was for the Johnny Mercer title song (which did deserve it), and Kazan was an actor, not a director. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2017 7:33 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939). Sentimental in the good sense, showing elderly Mr. Chipping greeting the students at the beginning of the school year, greeting every one of them from memory, and obviously well-loved, and the film shows us how he got to be beloved, from a young school master uncertain how to discipline his new charges, to his sudden falling in love in middle age with a much younger woman, to his lonely decades as a widower, and old age, when World War I hits and he has to announce the deaths of students he knew and loved. Robert Donat won an Oscar for playing Mr. Chips through sixty years of his life, beating out Clark Gable forGone With the Wind, James Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Laurence Olivier for Wuthering Heights, so I guess you could say it was a strong field. Greer Garson is the love of his life, and she and Donat are really good together, with one of the best "meet cutes" in film, in the mists in the Austrian Alps.
This must have had incredible impact in 1939, with yet another generation of youths heading off for war. (The novella came out shortly after Hitler assumed power, and James Hilton likely saw all too well that Europe was headed for war.) |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2017 2:55 pm |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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I've been watching a fari bit of old noirs by simply typing "film noir 1947" into youtube, then moving on to 1948. That's how I got linked to Lured with Lucille Ball.
Just watched I Love Trouble (1948) with Francois Tone as a Philip Marlowe type, looking into blackmail, which turns into something else. It's more or less a mashup of lots of other noirs such as Murder My Sweet. But it has some good cracking dialogue, a large fun cast of characters, and is pretty enjoyable. There's a really funny bit with a surly waitress at the 1'02".45 mark that is pretty great.
A mere 261 votes on IMDb for what is really a classic style noir done well. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2017 8:05 pm |
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Joined: 27 Apr 2010
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Location: Black Hills
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It's Franchot.
The PL here has a weirdly large collection of noir including Lured and ILT, which I will try. Hope everyone is someplace warmer than here -- it's 10 below zero right now. Freakish polar vortex. |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Sun Dec 31, 2017 12:32 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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I think spell-check "fixed" his name for me.
Franchot is a weird name. Hmm, must've been me.
Seems his full name was Stanislaus Pascal Franchot Tone.
One thing a little overdone in I Love Trouble is how all the women Tone runs across seem to fall for him instantly. The film even makes a joke of that in the very last line of the film. Tone is kind of a pretty boy, but rather slightly built, but his private detective only has to act tough once or twice, but otherwise gets conked on the back of the head frequently.
I saw him star in another noir recently Jigsaw (1949).
Where a murder investigation uncovers a fascist network.
Not that great, but interesting and brief cameos from Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, Burgess Meredith and others. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Fri Jan 05, 2018 10:15 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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| Getting ready to watch "Liliom," which is the film Fritz Lang made in France between fleeing Germany and migrating to the US. I've seen the last ten German films Lang made before fleeing Germany (That's "Destiny" through "The Testament of Dr. Mabuse") and his first American film, "Fury", and liked, mostly loved all of them, and this is a major gap in my film viewing, whether or not it's good. I've been looking for it for years, and TCM finally showed it as part of a Charles Boyer night. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Jan 06, 2018 11:17 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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| Well, Fritz Lang was 20-1, and is now 20-2. Liliom is really pretty awful, with Charles Boyer playing a 19th century version of an Apache (the French 20s movement, not the Indian tribe.) It ends in a supernatural scene that come out of nowhere, and was cut mercifully short because TCM doesn't know the length of its fucking movies. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2018 12:48 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Or maybe I just goofed, because I cut off at least ten minutes of the film. Liliom is about a carnival barker who flirts with the customers, which brings in a lot of money, but the female owner is jealous of one of the women, Julie, and demands Julie not be allowed to ride the carousel again. Liliom refuses, is fired, goes off to live with Julie, refuses to work, gambles and hits her, but she stays with him anyway. Liliom gets an offer to go back to the carnival, but refuses when he discovers Julie is pregnant. So he gets involved in a robbery, it goes wrong, and he goes to Purgatory...
That's as far as I recorded and I'm astonished I made it that far without any sense of recognition. Yes, Liliom is the play Carousel is based on. The play was filmed at least three times in the thirties, before being made into the popular musical which was made into an apparently bad movie. I've seen it on stage but haven't seen the movie since I've been warned off. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| whiskeypriest |
| Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2018 4:06 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: "It's a Dry Heat."
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| Hail, Caesar!, which I watched this morning, is the best movie I have seen since Hidden Figures, which I watched Friday night. I expect it to remain so until the next movie I see, and no longer. |
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| bartist |
| Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2018 11:31 pm |
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Location: Black Hills
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Unless you watch Ladykillers. But that would be intolerable cruelty...unless you had a proxy to watch for you.
The best Coen flick starting with H is the Swedish director's (Tydlum?): "Headhunters." |
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He was wise beyond his years, but only by a few days. |
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