Secret Beyond the Door (1947)

Film: Secret Beyond the Door (1947)

Stars: Joan Bennett, Michael Redgrave, Anne Revere, Barbar O'Neil, Natalie Schafer

Director: Fritz Lang

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

Joan Bennett & Fritz Lang starred together in four films that they were both credited on (Lang reportedly also helped on Bennett's 1941 war film Confirm or Deny).  Three of these films were film noir, while a fourth (Man Hunt) apparently is not technically noir but has lots of noir-like tendencies.  We have reviewed two of these films before on this blog (click The Woman in the Window and Scarlet Street below), but we had not gotten to the third, so this year where we're doing some cleanup and seeing some blind spots in key filmographies it made total sense for us to move into the last movie that Bennett & Lang made together, 1947's Secret Beyond the Door.  Given that I loved both of their other movies together for this series, the expectations were high...and not really met.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Celia (Bennett), a beautiful & wealthy woman on vacation, and in need of a new husband.  Though she has more appropriate choices pursuing her, she settles for the enigmatic Mark Lamphere, and they wed after knowing each other for a short time.  The two move to his estate, and there she finds out that she's Mark's second husband...and that he comes with a creepy child from her first marriage.  She also befriends Mark's more gregarious sister Caroline (Revere) and his odd assistant Miss Robey (O'Neil).  Mark's house is unusual, as it holds six rooms, all of which depict a different famous murder scene, and it has a seventh, locked room that Celia cannot see.  Initially, she starts to believe it to be a scene from his first marriage, a sort of confession that he killed his first wife (a belief shared by his son), but when she opens it, she realizes it's a recreation of her bedroom, and the candles are uneven just like in her room...the room depicts that he wants to kill her, not his ex-wife.

We're going to take an unusual step here and stop mid-summary because I need to acknowledge-this is an AMAZING idea for a movie if they had pursued it.  The film until this point is a bit dry, and there's a lot of intrigue around that seventh room, to the point where I figured there was no way that they could live up to the hype.  In that moment, though, I was genuinely floored-it hadn't occurred to me that they were recreating a murder that hadn't happened yet, and man did I wish that they had stuck with that premise, which they actually do for a little bit afterward.  We see that Mark did want to kill her, living out a childhood trauma of him being locked in a room for hours (which he blamed on his mother, even though it had just been done as a prank by his sister), but he can't go through with it because he loves her.

The film ends with him getting better, his childhood traumas cured, and Miss Robey burning down the house ala Mrs. Danvers, obsessed with her employer that she will never possess romantically.  None of this works-it's too placid, too dull, and makes you care about a romantic relationship that doesn't work (Redgrave & Bennett do not have good chemistry).  But for a brief moment about an hour into the picture, you think that Lang has created an under-appreciated classic, either with her fleeing her own, planned murder (which she's walked right into) or Mark actually confessing to his "ultimate" crime creation...changing the ending here, this film is the rare movie I'd actively love to see remade.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

Brute Force (1947)

Film: Brute Force (1947)

Stars: Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford, Yvonne de Carlo, Ann Blyth, Anita Colby

Director: Jules Dassin

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

While one theme of the titles of this year's Film Noir Month is focused on "finishing off filmographies" as we watch movies from actors and directors that I've seen almost all of their film noir pictures (or we're getting much deeper cuts than usual), there are still both important directors that I have seen very few of their movies, as well as actual film noir classics that I've never gotten around to.  Of our English-language titles this year, no film stands out more as an "I can't believe you haven't seen that yet" title than Brute Force, a 1947 drama that generally is considered a standout in the genre.  It's also made by Jules Dassin, who made a number of well-considered film noir movies during this time frame, and I had, before catching Brute Force, only seen one of his pictures (1950's Night and the City).  Dassin grew up in the New York Theater world before moving to Hollywood, getting jobs as a director-for-hire working on projects starring Joan Crawford and Charles Laughton, before in the late 1940's starting to make genuinely good movies like Brute Force.  He was blacklisted in the 1950's, and spent much of the decade making films in Europe, including the two movies he's best-known for today: Rififi and Never on Sunday, the latter of which won him Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Screenplay.

(Spoilers Ahead) We will be watching two films from Jules Dassin this month, both noirs made prior to him getting blacklisted, and we're starting, as I said, with Brute Force, which was a vehicle for Burt Lancaster, who at the time was regularly appearing in film noir movies.  This is about a prison break, where Lancaster is portraying Joe Collins, a man stuck in jail as his wife Ruth (Blyth) is dying from a cancer that she won't treat with surgery unless Joe is by her side.  Given that he'll never escape the sadistic Captain Munsey (Cronyn), he coordinates with some of his fellow inmates in the prison to escape, and in the process, they all share what caused them to be in jail, in many cases either wrongful convictions or being born "on the wrong side of the tracks."  The film ends with a bit of a twist for 1947.  The men do get to escape, or at least they come close, but in the process Munsey kills many of them, going mad with power, and in a fight both he and Joe die.  The movie doesn't end there though, but with a soliloquy from character actor Art Smith playing the prison doctor, breaking the fourth wall and talking about the damage of a prison industrial complex where "no one gets out."

I'll be honest-it kind of makes sense that Brute Force is made by an alleged Communist because it's very liberal with its politics.  The movie's attacks on the prison system in America, and the way that it profits off of what is basically slave labor, is really ahead of its time.  Most of Brute Force, in fact, is ahead of its time.  The way that the production design (absolutely wonderfully cavernous prison recreation) feels like we're stuck in this world as an audience (our only looks outside of it come in the memories the men have), and is detailed and rich, and I loved the ending, with it giving us a lot more sour than I was anticipating for a movie about a decent (if embittered) man trying to get home to his dying wife.

The only thing that doesn't work for me is Lancaster.  I have said this many times on this blog before, but Burt Lancaster is not my favorite, and I think that while he doesn't get in the way of the story, he doesn't add enough either-a better actor would've made the main character a bit more two-dimensional.  But there is a fine piece of acting in the movie, and that's Hume Cronyn.  He plays this part ruthlessly, and perhaps crucially, very, very gay.  It's 1947 so the Hayes Code isn't going to allow him to say this, but it's obvious that he is sexually obsessed with controlling Lancaster's sweaty, shirtless Joe, and is using his power as a proxy for getting to well, fuck him.  You think that's me just reading into the movie, but watch it-it's very obviously there, and Cronyn's increasing insanity at not being able to achieve his desires is what makes the ending work.  Really good stuff, and it makes me excited for our next Dassin picture, which we'll get to in a few days.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Cry Wolf, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

Cry Wolf (1947)

Film: Cry Wolf (1947)

Stars: Errol Flynn, Barbara Stanwyck, Geraldine Brooks, Richard Basehart

Director: Peter Godfrey

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

One of the things you notice quite often with film noir is that it's not always clear if films that are "marketed" as film noir will perfectly fit into that genre.  Frequently you'll get what is essentially an adult drama or a gangster picture or even just a straight-up thriller that will be marketed as a film noir, with a bit of a buyer remorse on the other end (especially if you're writing a series about film noir).  Less often, you'll run into a movie like Cry Wolf, from 1947, a movie that is clearly a film noir.  We have an enigmatic, beautiful woman entering a man's office in the opening scene to talk about a mysterious death-pretty much everything involved in a film noir boils down to that sentence.  But what makes Cry Wolf so intriguing is that if it was done right, it wouldn't be a noir.  It would be a horror movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Sandra Marshall (Stanwyck), whose young husband has recently died, and left her the entirety of his estate.  She goes to retrieve her inheritance from her husband's uncle, Mark Caldwell (Flynn) who did not know about the marriage, and initially wants to contest it-a vast fortune, one that would likely go to he or his niece Julie (Brooks) is on the line, and he's not giving that up easily.  Sandra stays at the family estate in the meantime, and while she does, they become better acquainted, but she is still suspicious of what he's doing in his off-limits laboratory, particularly after Julie dies in a horrible accident (or "accident" in Sandra's mind).  The film's closing turns out that there is something nefarious happening in Mark's lab, but not what she thinks.  It's not Mark, but her late husband Tom (who is not actually late, but is played by Richard Basehart) who is up to no good, as he's mentally insane and has killed a man, which is why Mark has been keeping Julie & Sandra away from it.  Before Tom can kill Sandra, he falls to his death, and the movie ends with Sandra & Mark likely to end up together romantically, living off of Tom & Julie's money.

That last sentence is not as ruthless as it sounds in the movie, but it's as ruthless as it should've been in the movie.  The Hayes Code frequently meant that movies had to be morally upright, and it's clear in a film like Cry Wolf that this is getting in the way of the plot (I'm aware this is based on a novel-I have not read it so I don't know if the novel is different, but if you have, I would love some insights in the comments).  The reality is that the way the film is set up, it's far more interesting if one of the leads are actually the killer, rather than Basehart who shows up out of nowhere and the film really needs you to trust him initially, even though we know that he's clearly the bad guy given the time and setting and that the studio would want Stanwyck or Flynn to get together.  A movie where Flynn is a mad scientist and the ending shows Stanwyck being chased through the house by the man she's fallen in love with...or a movie where Stanwyck kills Flynn and gets the entire fortune & it's revealed she's been a heartless gold-digger killing this family for its fortune (ala Saltburn) the whole film...both of these are better conclusions.

Because honestly, there's a lot to like about Cry Wolf.  The mood and ambience are strong from the beginning, and it has such a great premise, you really want a ghost story or at least some set of deception.  Flynn and Stanwyck are really unlikely partners onscreen (this was the only film they ever made), and their chemistry is strong until they make sure you know that they're both on the up-and-up.  There are even hints of a werewolf subplot afoot (wouldn't that have been terrific?), which comes to nothing.  Cry Wolf is in its end, a moody, well-crafted (great score) movie that's more good ideas than good execution.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

Born to Kill (1947)

Film: Born to Kill (1947)

Stars: Lawrence Tierney, Claire Trevor, Walter Slezak, Phillip Terry, Audrey Long, Elisha Cook, Jr., Esther Howard

Director: Robert Wise

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

Throughout the many years of this series, we have encountered a lot of actors who were huge names in Hollywood, both then-and-now.  Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, Harry Belafonte, Kirk Douglas...big glossy names that are synonymous with the Classical Hollywood period.  But not all leading players survive into modern consciousness, and that isn't because they don't have great stories behind them.  The name that you're probably noticing from that call sheet above is Oscar Winner Claire Trevor, and surely Trevor is one of the great femme fatales of the 1940's.  But the name you should be noticing is Lawrence Tierney.  Tierney became a star after the 1945 surprise hit Dillinger, and for a brief time in the following years was a leading man, mostly in crime or noir pictures.  But Tierney was also a menace off-screen, getting arrested 12 times during the time that he was a headliner, frequently for violent assaults that almost certainly destroyed any chance he had at getting into the true A-list or getting the kinds of opportunities (like Oscar-winning films) that his costar Trevor would get.  One of Tierney's most famous films at the time was Born to Kill, our picture today.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie looks at Helen Brant (Trevor), who is fresh off of a divorce and staying out the waiting period in Reno until it's official.  Unbeknownst to her, one of the women that live at her flat has been killed by her jealous boyfriend Sam (Tierney), and he is on the run on the same train that Helen is on.  Both Helen & Sam are broke, but her foster sister Georgia (Long) is not, and has a large fortune that Sam (and, for anyone paying attention, Helen) both have their eyes on, with Sam pursuing Georgia romantically, but clearly still intent on ending up with Helen.  All of this is happening while the police are looking into the death of the first woman, which Helen has realized must have been Sam.  The film culminates in a shootout, with Helen confessing all of the plan to Georgia, but in the process getting herself killed by Sam, who is then shot by the police.

The film is quite interesting, and I get why this is a respected deep cut (that 3-star rating up top is a 3.5 on Letterboxd, so I like it better than I'm letting on).  Trevor is such a good actress that it's a bummer her part isn't written with a bit more malice; she does a really good job of being abjectly horny for Tierney's Sam, basically squandering everything she's worked for just to get into bed with him.  But there's not enough background to her-I think a bit more writing would've made this a more classic femme fatale part, and maybe a better movie.  As it is, she's strong, but not as strong as someone like Esther Howard as her bawdy landlady, who steals the picture wholesale.

Tierney's also solid, though given his offscreen persona it's hard not to wonder if part of the menace of his role is knowing that he was like this in real-life (were it not for Tom Neal, Tierney would be the most appropriately true-to-life actor in classic film noir).  Tierney, it's worth noting, would get dozens of chances in Hollywood before his death in 2002 at the age of 82, including in a key role in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.  In proof that people don't actually change, Tarantino cast him as an homage to an Old Hollywood long dead...but before the end of filming, had gotten into a fistfight with Tierney and the two never worked together again.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Brighton Rock, Criss Cross, Crossfire, Daisy Kenyon, Dead Reckoning, Detour, Fallen Angel, The Fallen Idol, Force of Evil, Gilda, High Sierra, I Walk Alone, I Wake Up Screaming, The Killers, The Lady from Shanghai, Leave Her to Heaven, Ministry of Fear, Moonrise, Murder My Sweet, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Sorry, Wrong Number, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, Stranger on the Third Floor, They Drive By Night, They Won't Believe Me, Too Late for Tears, The Woman in the Window, The Woman on the Beach

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Blue Gardenia, The Breaking Point, The Burglar, Cast a Dark Shadow, The Crimson Kimono, Elevator to the Gallows, Gun Crazy, The Hitch-Hiker, House of Bamboo, In a Lonely Place, Julie, The Killing, Kiss Me Deadly, Lightning Strikes Twice, Murder by Contract, Night and the City, Odds Against Tomorrow, On Dangerous Ground, Pickup on South Street, The Prowler, Slightly Scarlet, Sudden Fear, Sweet Smell of Success, They Live By Night, While the City Sleeps

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Late Show, The Long Goodbye, Lost Highway, Night Moves, Nightcrawler, Le Samourai

That Hagen Girl (1947)

Film: That Hagen Girl (1947)

Stars: Ronald Reagan, Shirley Temple, Rory Calhoun, Conrad Janis, Lois Maxwell

Director: Peter Godfrey

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2024 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the women who were once crowned as "America's Sweethearts" and the careers that inspired that title (and what happened when they eventually lost it to a new generation).  This month, our focus is on Shirley Temple: click here to learn more about Ms. Temple (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Shirley Temple was the biggest star in Hollywood in the 1930's.  But that would not extend to the 1940's, when she would be forced to grow up onscreen.  Temple was still a big name, and there were studios that tried to woo her, including MGM (where Arthur Freed allegedly sexually exposed himself to her, and when Temple laughed, he refused to work with her), but no one could find material that fit Temple.  Compared with figures like Deanna Durbin and Judy Garland, she didn't have the talent or the singing ability to transform into a proper adult movie star, and most of her films of the era were flops.  She did have two memorable films (The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer with Cary Grant and Fort Apache with John Wayne & Henry Fonda), but I've seen both of those movies, and so instead as we talk about the end of Temple's career (and what came next) we're going to talk about one of the most notorious films of the 1940's, generally considered to be one of the worst movies ever made: That Hagen Girl.

(Spoilers Ahead) The plot of this movie is insane so bear with me on this.  The movie is about Mary Hagen (Temple), a young woman whom the entire town assumes is the illegitimate daughter of Tom Bates (Reagan), an attorney who used to live there.  Mary's mother has died, and most of the town's "polite society" won't let their children be party to her because they think she's too scandalous.  Tom befriends Mary, and it's not entirely clear whether the two are meant to be romantically-involved or it's just Tom befriending a girl who might be his daughter, as they form a strange love triangle with Julia Kane (Maxwell, who randomly got a Golden Globe nomination for this that is weird even by HFPA standards), Mary's teacher.  As the film ends, it chooses the weirdest possible ending, with it turning out that Mary is not the byproduct of an affair (Tom is "not the father" to use Maury Povich speak)...and the two end up together romantically after an entire movie where we're led to believe that he might be her father, with Julia Kane stepping aside and letting this grown man marry her student.

You might think "different era," but even in 1947, this reads as creepy, and more so it's weird because it never comes across to the characters played by Mary & Tom that them ending up together is unthinkable given at one point Mary was convinced Tom was her father (Hays Code, were you just napping through this film?).  In some world this might've been seen as a tawdry soap opera, but neither Temple or Reagan are good enough actors to pull that off (or at least give us a little bit of camp like someone like Lana Turner or Elizabeth Taylor would've done with this script).  It reads as a staid, boring melodrama with the world's most insane plot.  The "worst movie ever" title feels earned.

Temple would retire from film in 1949 with A Kiss for Corliss, but like her costar Ronald Reagan, she would have a second act in politics, albeit not as successful.  A devout Republican, Temple ran for Congress in 1967 as the most right-leaning candidate to replace J. Arthur Younger in California's 11th congressional district, coming in second.  After Henry Kissinger took her under his wing, she would end up a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly, and would serve as Ambassador to Ghana & Chief of Protocol of the United States during the Ford administration, and later during the first Bush administration, as Ambassador to Czechoslovakia, where she witnessed the fall of Communism in the country and developed diplomatic relations with Vaclav Havel, the country's final president before it became the Czech Republic.  Temple would never go back into acting during her diplomatic career, but would pick up numerous awards including a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Kennedy Center Honor, and the SAG Lifetime Achievement Award.  She died in 2014, at the age of 85.

Next month, we're going to talk about another devout Republican (it was more common in Classical Hollywood than you'd think), and another America's Sweetheart.  But this America's Sweetheart managed to pull off the feat in the 1940's, when the trope of America's Sweetheart was decidedly out of fashion...and still cobbled together a hugely successful career that would end (sadly) with her becoming something of a sitcom punchline.  We'll get to her on Friday.

The Woman on the Beach (1947)

Film: The Woman on the Beach (1947)

Stars: Joan Bennett, Robert Ryan, Charles Bickford, Nan Leslie, Irene Ryan

Director: Jean Renoir

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Throughout the month of June, in honor of the 10th Anniversary of The Many Rantings of John, we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

As I mentioned last week, we were not done with Joan Bennett in our month-long tribute to film noir.  Bennett, along with actresses like Lizabeth Scott, Lana Turner, Gene Tierney, & Rita Hayworth, derived much of her fame from in the 1940's specifically from this genre.  Bennett had spent the 1930's being overshadowed by her sister Constance, who was briefly a big name in movies (you'll notice if you look at the bottom of this review they share a "Bennett Sisters" tag on TMROJ), and by the 1940's Joan felt like she was on the way out as a star until The Woman in the Window brought her a big comeback.  That movie changed everything, and suddenly the actress had capital.  By 1947, so important was Bennett to the studio that she actually had some creative control on the movie The Woman on the Beach, where she got to select the film's director, and she went with Jean Renoir, who was struggling to make his identity in American pictures after crafting two of the most celebrated films of all-time in his native France (Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game).  As we'll discuss today, though, Bennett's ability to have this level of control quickly faded as a result of The Woman on the Beach, even though Bennett's celebrity would have a bizarre third act...but first, the movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Scott (Ryan), a Coast Guard officer who is having nightmares that feature a woman that looks a lot like his girlfriend Eve (Leslie) dying tragically.  Scott initially thinks that marrying her right away will do the trick, but they decide to wait on the engagement a few weeks rather than elope so that Eve can settle her business affairs.  In the meantime, Scott meets Peggy (Bennett), a beautiful woman whom he finds is in a loveless marriage to a blind man named Tod Butler (Bickford) who used to be a genius painter but has since spent his years torturing Peggy in their isolation.  Peggy eventually confesses that in a drunken rage she was the one who blinded Tod, but Scott is not so sure.  He believes that Tod is pretending, and as he has fallen in love with Peggy (casually breaking off his engagement to Eve), he tries to prove it, which leads to him taking Tod to a far away beach, but even when Tod falls off of a cliff, proving he is blind, Scott continues to plot against him, trying to free Peggy so he can have her himself.  The film's showdown is the two men going out on a boat, with Scott intent on killing them both if that's what it takes to free Peggy, but they both live...just long enough for Tod to burn all his paintings, worth a fortune, "freeing" Peggy to leave him because she doesn't have the money he's held as blackmail against her all of these years.  Tod & Peggy, codependent to a fault, embrace, and Scott leaves alone, realizing that it was Tod she loved all along.

The Woman on the Beach is a notable film because it basically ended Jean Renoir's domestic career.  The son of the famed impressionist painter was too ahead-of-his-time for the conventions of American cinema in the 1940's, and when The Woman on the Beach was run by test audiences, they hated its moody looks at loneliness, isolation, and mental health.  Instead, they wanted something sexy & dangerous like what Bennett had been doing the previous years with more traditional film noir like The Woman in the Window.  The film was heavily edited (it's only 71 minutes long), and even with these cuts it was a box office disaster.  Renoir would live another thirty years but would never make another American film for the rest of his career.  Bennett was also reaching the tail end of her film noir career at this point.  Though she'd make a couple more pictures, the most interesting part of her creative career was waning, and she'd eventually find a third act in the early 1950's as the mom in the Father of the Bride movies.  This would end with Bennett's real life turning into a proper noir (her husband would shoot her lover in broad daylight, nearly killing him), but that's a story for another day.

This is all a pity, because The Woman on the Beach is a great movie.  Renoir's moodiness, which in 1947 was too avant-garde for film fans, plays much better in retrospect.  The film plays off of the claustrophobia of Peggy's world, where she is less interested in Scott as a person, and more as a means of escape.  Bennett was really good at these types of characters-playing women that were "unlikeable" to use problematic modern parlance, but the audience could quickly relate to-of course she's going to use Scott, he's her only way out of this personal hell.  Combined with the ugliness of Tod-and-Peggy's relationship with each other, the film talks about how obsession consumes, and the ending, while "happy" in some regards is pretty bleak.  Tod and Peggy are together, but they're now penniless, with their entire fortune (the paintings) burnt to the ground...it's hard to imagine that this ends well for the two of them.  It's a bit hard to judge a movie that clearly had more to say (at least twenty minutes was trimmed from the film), and it's not all good (the Eve subplot could be lifted out without issue), but this was definitely one of my favorite new discoveries of this month's marathon.

Previous Films in the Series: Murder My Sweet, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, The Killers, The Big Sleep, Daisy Kenyon, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, Night and the City, They Live By Night, Gun Crazy, In a Lonely Place, Sweet Smell of Success, The Big Heat, Pickup on South Street, The Killing, The Long Goodbye, Body Heat

Daisy Kenyon (1947)

Film: Daisy Kenyon (1947)

Stars: Joan Crawford, Dana Andrews, Henry Fonda, Ruth Warrick, Peggy Ann Garner

Director: Otto Preminger

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Throughout the month of June, in honor of the 10th Anniversary of The Many Rantings of John, we will be doing a Film Noir Movie Marathon, featuring fifteen film noir classics that I'll be seeing for the first time.  Reviews of other film noir classics are at the bottom of this article.

We're looking at film noir throughout the month, but with that, we're going to occasionally veer into areas that aren't really film noir.  Usually when you think of noir, you think of something to do with crime, likely murder, and there's at least one antihero detective at the center, and probably a couple of glamorous women who might be bad news (or might be there to save the antihero before the count is done).  Daisy Kenyon is not a film noir, but it is frequently billed as one (hence why it's part of this series).  During inarguably the most creative period of Joan Crawford's stardom (coming off of her Oscar win for Mildred Pierce, for much of the rest of the 1940's & early 1950's Crawford made most of her best movies, and got the remainder of her Oscar nominations), she made several films, including some noirs, but Daisy Kenyon by my definition is not a noir-it doesn't have a crime element, and while its center is certainly a glamorous woman, she's not really dangerous.  That being said, it is a fascinating film, and so I'm glad it randomly came up for this series.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Daisy Kenyon (Crawford), who is having an affair with Dan O'Mara (Andrews), a married lawyer.  After he stiffs her one too many times, she goes on a date with Peter Lapham (Fonda), a widower who recently got back from the war.  This sets in motion a bizarre love triangle, where it's not entirely clear whether or not Daisy loves Dan or Peter more (or, in a weird twist, which one is better for her given their marital status and this being 1947), nor is it clear which of the two men truly love Daisy.  Dan has deep feelings for her, but doesn't want to disrupt his life, and Peter seems at times to be more in love with his dead wife than with Daisy, dating her more because he expected to be married than because she's the one he wants to end up with.

Daisy Kenyon is famous today for its approach to its material.  Dan's eventual divorce in most films of this nature would be handled through melodrama, with his long-suffering wife Lucille (Warrick) likely killing herself or looking out longing windows rather than actually getting revenge on him, but Daisy Kenyon plays this straight.  It's a bit jarring to watch, and kind of hard to explain, but treating divorce, adultery, & romance in a level-headed (rather than overtly cinematic) way is very unusual to watch, and the film reads more like something you'd see in the 1970's or 80's than out of Tinseltown's heyday.  The realism, though, hurts the ending, because it's clear by the end of the movie that neither of these men are good enough for Daisy, or particularly good for her in general, and it'd be best if she just ended up alone.

As a result, I liked it, but didn't love it.  I think it's a fascinating thought experiment, though not everyone seems to understand the assignment.  Fonda is badly miscast here, bizarre as Peter & honestly making him feel too abrupt to believably pair with the confident Crawford.  Despite arguably being the least of the three (very talented) leads, Andrews comes across the best of the crew, giving Dan a realism that you wouldn't expect.  Dan is obviously in love with Daisy, but wishes she'd be less-complicated, and be the sex goddess he clearly initially fell for; he's obviously mad at himself for falling in love with her & not being able to move on to the next woman, but toxic masculinity is never going to allow him to blame himself for having feelings.  Sadly, even in 1947 this movie doesn't quite have the foresight to explore such complicated work from Andrews, and I think while this is good, it's not the reappraised classic some describe it as.

Previous Films in the Series: Murder My Sweet, The Woman in the Window, Scarlet Street, The Killers, The Big Sleep, Nightmare Alley, Ride the Pink Horse, Night and the City, They Live By Night, Gun Crazy, In a Lonely Place, Sweet Smell of Success, The Big Heat, Pickup on South Street, The Killing, The Long Goodbye, Body Heat

They Won't Believe Me (1947)

Film: They Won't Believe Me (1947)

Stars: Susan Hayward, Robert Young, Jane Greer, Rita Johnson

Director: Irving Pichel

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2022 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different Classical Hollywood star who made their name in the early days of television.  This month, our focus is on Robert Young: click here to learn more about Mr. Young (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we've mentioned a couple of times this month, Robert Young never became an iconic star despite decades of leading roles in the movies.  However, in the late 1940's he become something of a more interesting actor.  After his contract with MGM expired, Young turned into a freelance artist, and during this time frame he made arguably his best run of movies, including The Enchanted Cottage and Crossfire, both of which are movies that standup to modern scrutiny (you'll see if you click over to the reviews that I was a fan).  One of the movies during this period that he made was They Won't Believe Me, a gritty noir film from the era which had Young, atypical from his MGM days, playing a louse who regularly cheats on his wife.  Young would later say on The Dick Cavett Show that this was the one film where he got to play a "nasty character" and it resulted in a box office flop.  However, I'm a sucker for film noir (if you've read this blog a while you know it's my favorite genre), and was curious to see if Young, a rather limited actor, was better-suited for playing closer to the devil.

(Spoilers Ahead) Despite Hayward getting top-billing, this movie is very much Young's movie, with him playing Larry Ballentine, a mid-level employee at a brokerage firm who is able to enjoy a swanky lifestyle through his marriage to his wealthy wife Greta (Johnson).  Larry has regular affairs with Janice (Greer), whom he's been lying to about the state of his marriage in order to sleep with her.  When he tries to break things off with Greta (and run away with Janice), Greta essentially bribes him with a share in a high-scale brokerage firm, and he dumps Janice.  Once at the brokerage, he starts up an affair with a self-admitted gold-digger named Verna (Hayward), who is initially interested in him for his wife's money, but eventually falls in love with him.  Even after Greta once again tries to bribe Larry, it doesn't work, and he runs off with Verna, but before they can be married, they get into a car accident, killing Verna...whom the authorities assume is Greta.  Larry thinks he can take advantage of this situation by killing Greta when he gets home & disposing of her body, but when he gets there he finds that she's committed suicide.  As a result, he's gotten away with it-the money, and now he can pursue Janice once again, but it doesn't work.  When Greta's body is found, they assume he killed her, and while the jury gives a plea of "Not Guilty" (this entire story is told through flashback from the defense attorney's closing argument), Larry jumps out the window to his death before he can hear the verdict, already guilty of unforgivable crimes in his mind.

This, as I stated above, is a very atypical role for Young, who regularly played lighthearted romantic comedy roles during his MGM years, and even in movies like Crossfire and The Enchanted Cottage (both of which are heavier than his MGM fare) he's still a hero.  Young, though, given the opportunity to stretch his acting muscles, works really well here & this is easily the best I've seen him in a part.  His Larry is a cruel, callous man, and it juxtaposes well with Young's upstanding, upper-crust appearance & his longtime history as the good guy (even when he doesn't get the girl).  His rakish work here is admirable, and honestly I wish he'd been afforded more time to play parts like this.

Normally I'd be more gravitated toward his costars (film noirs are measured largely by how well the femme fatales show up, and here we have three of them), but somehow Young is best in show, even if Hayward comes close.  Hayward, another actor I don't always love, gives one of her best performances in this, her money-hungry beauty keeping the audience guessing as to her true motives (and true feelings about Larry) throughout the film's entire first half.  Greer & Johnson aren't quite as good as they could've been, a pity in particular for Greer, who was giving the greatest performance of her career in a different 1947 noir, Out of the Past.  But overall, this is excellent, and thankfully gave us a Young performance for me to finally champion.  Next week, we're going to conclude our month devoted to the actor with his final film role, in a movie that would serve as a blueprint for a picture that would later change the entire industry of Hollywood.

OVP: Body and Soul (1947)

Film: Body and Soul (1947)

Stars: John Garfield, Lilli Palmer, Hazel Brooks, Anne Revere, William Conrad, Canada Lee

Director: Robert Rossen

Oscar History: 3 nominations/1 win (Best Actor-John Garfield, Film Editing*, Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

John Garfield is not an actor many people discuss today, certainly in the same confines as we do most classic film stars of his ilk.  This happens-actors go out of fashion or don't land a classic in the way that others do, and as a result they are forgotten.  But Garfield's weird in that he starred in at least one proper classic film (The Postman Always Rings Twice), but more so he's an actor that sort of serves as a template to modern film acting.  Before Brando & James Dean, John Garfield kind of invented the schtick of a sensitive, brooding, & handsome soul that completely contradicted the era's other top stars & pillars of masculinity like Clark Gable & Spencer Tracy.  Garfield's life was tragic (he'd make a brilliant Star of the Month, and we'll probably get there at some point), but it's hard to understand why he hasn't caught on more in the way other classic film stars have gotten their renaissance.  If he did, surely we'd pay attention to this, his second of two Oscar nominations, and a film that would be a big hit...despite the fact that his career would virtually be over a few years later, when he'd die at the age of only 39.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie features Garfield as Charley Davis, a young man from the hood who, despite his mother's (Revere) protestations, becomes a boxing champion.  In the process of becoming a title holder, though, he becomes involved with the seedy underworld of boxing, and starts to take bets on himself, and participating in fixed matches.  We see much of the film in flashback on a night when Charley is deciding whether or not the huge payday he'll earn is worth giving up his title in a crooked fight after the death of his coach Ben (Lee).  Thanks to the love of his on-again-off-again girlfriend Peg (Palmer), he decides to stay in the match & win, thus retaining his dignity & respect even if he doesn't make his fortune.

Body and Soul is not original, but instead based on the play Golden Boy by Clifford Odets (which had already been a movie with Barbara Stanwyck & William Holden at this point).  It's therefore a film I don't feel too bad chiding a bit for its screenplay, which is rife with cliches, and while it was formative (the film is clearly the prototype for dozens of future boxing movies in virtually every way), it was still dealing with stories & tales we'd already seen before from arguably the cinema's most-overused sport.  That isn't to say it isn't good in parts.  The Oscar-winning editing is fantastic, and would become the Gold Standard for boxing movies for decades to come (both Rocky and Raging Bull owe the movie a debt of gratitude).  It gets points for being formative, but I'm not going to ignore the cliches.

It also doesn't help that the acting choices are unusual, and really ill-advised in some cases.  Garfield's good if never expanding into the tenderer & funnier moments we get in his early scenes (Charley the Charming is a better fit for Garfield than Charley the Cad), but his costars are all a miss.  Palmer has been great in other work (she deserved an Oscar nomination for her late-career performance in The Other Side of the Wind), but she has zilch chemistry with Garfield, and doesn't really have a read on Peg.  The same can be said for "other woman" Alice as played by Hazel Brooks.  The acting & writing are both misses for Body & Soul, and as a result I left mildly disappointed even if I get where it was coming from.

That said, the movie has a great reputation today in part due to its crazy backstory.  If you look through the call list of Body & Soul you'll notice that virtually everyone involved in this movie was eventually blacklisted (Garfield, Revere, Lee, director Rossen, screenwriter Abraham Polonsky), and that's not a coincidence.  Body & Soul is about as socialist of a movie as you could get past the censors in 1947.  The film is entirely about Charley abandoning capitalism (and portraying the money-hungry boxing managers as pure greed), in favor of the dignity of a working life, even if it foregoes comfort.  The film also is not shy about showing Garfield's Jewish heritage (something that Gentleman's Agreement, which the actor also starred in 1947, also showed), and at the time anti-Semitism wasn't far off from some of the "leftist" accusations of the HUAC committee.  It's fascinating to watch the movie knowing what would happen to so many people who made the film because the picture is not subtle.  Alas, it's too predictable for me to be all that intrigued outside of curiosity.

OVP: Green Dolphin Street (1947)

Film: Green Dolphin Street (1947)
Stars: Lana Turner, Van Heflin, Donna Reed, Richard Hart, Frank Morgan, Edmund Gwenn, May Whitty, Gladys Cooper
Director: Victor Saville
Oscar History: 4 nominations/1 win (Best Cinematography, Special Effects*, Sound, Film Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Lana Turner-click here to learn more about Ms. Turner (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Last week we talked about the film that graduated Lana Turner from playing the "random beautiful love interest" to a proper leading lady, someone who might be able to handle meatier roles after her triumph in The Postman Always Rings Twice.  This lasted only for a little while, but it did result in a number of high-profile films (and hits) in Turner's career, one of which we're going to talk about today.   A year after Postman, Turner emerged in one of the new, "more quality" roles that was now being afforded her, Green Dolphin Street, which would prove that she was at her peak in terms of financial viability for the studio (the movie was MGM's highest-grossing picture of 1947), but it also showed some of the limitations of Turner's acting ability, never quite understanding the woman who had sizzled across movie screens the year earlier.

(Spoilers Ahead) At 142 minutes, Green Dolphin Street (it gets the name from the ship in the film and a street in the town where the film is set) is a long movie, so I'll try and summarize the plot in a paragraph but might gloss over some points.  Essentially, you have two sisters, Marguerite (Reed) and Marianne (Turner), who fall in love with the same man William (Hart), who happens to be the son of their mother's former lover, played here by Frank Morgan (Edmund Gwenn is their father, Gladys Cooper their mother, and Dame May Whitty a Mother Superior in a pretty star-studded supporting cast).  The two sisters similar names get them in trouble when William, after being branded a deserter in the navy (he fell for an Asian prostitute in a problematic scene in the film, as she then robs him & leaves him out-in-the-cold to die), gets drunk and proposes to Marianne, when he means to propose to Marguerite, whom he claims is his true love.  Marianne goes, and convinced by his friend Tim (Heflin), who is in love with Marianne & doesn't want her dishonored, William proposes to her.  You can see where this is going-Marguerite becomes a nun, Tim shares his love for Marianne, but she rejects him because she loves William, and William realizes in the end that it was Marianne he was meant for.  Oh, and there's an earthquake.

That earthquake is what the film is most famous for.  The film was nominated for four Oscars, and won one, and boy did it deserve it.  In an era prior to computer-generated effects (and location shooting, apparently because that could not look more like California if it tried), the film manages to have a gigantic earthquake sequence that shows the ground shifting, trees crashing, and then follows it with a spectacular flash flood that nearly drowns Richard Hart (I left quite petrified, and it was said in reviews of the film at the time that the audience could practically feel the earth shake from the movie).  The Oscar is richly-deserved, but it's the only nomination I'm getting behind.  The cinematography is fine (it's nice to be outdoors, I guess), but not all that compelling (mood lighting on a woman as beautiful as Lana Turner isn't groundbreaking), the editing is clumsy (the film drags on too long, and they use at least one shot twice during the earthquake scene), and the sound, outside of the earthquake scene, isn't important at all (also, it's not entirely clear during that scene who is screaming).

This is all to say that Green Dolphin Street is probably the type of movie that Turner was hoping for, but it's not what she wanted.  She's taken seriously as an actress here-it's easy to see a more storied thespian like Bette Davis in the role that Turner plays here, and she gets big, meaty speeches.  But the movie doesn't care much about defining her Marianne, and she doesn't either.  This is a woman who is strong, but also needs to be taken down a peg according to the script...but is constantly credited for being strong.  Turner gets off better than Reed, who is just there to look pious, and it's never clear exactly why Hart's William is in love with her since they barely spent any time together, and it's obviously Marianne who challenges & intrigues him.  Heflin is the best part of the film (and let's be honest, the best actor of the main four quartet in general), but he's inconsequential to the plot, and it's never clear again why he's fallen for Marianne, since an early scene shows he doesn't like strong women.  All-in-all, this is a lousy film with one truly great sequence in its center, the kind of "important" film that scoops up awards & box office, but feels utterly disposable afterward.  Turner was better off with the lower-budget but higher-quality Postman.

OVP: Mother Wore Tights (1947)

Film: Mother Wore Tights (1947)
Stars: Betty Grable, Dan Dailey, Mona Freeman, Connie Marshall
Director: Walter Lang
Oscar History: 3 nominations/1 win (Best Scoring*, Best Original Song-"You Do", Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2020 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress known as an iconic "film sex symbol."  This month, our focus is on Betty Grable-click here to learn more about Ms. Grable (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

By 1947 Betty Grable had reached the peak of her fame, and was basically printing money for Fox every time she got in front of the camera.  Even on a film where Grable was pregnant with her daughter Jessica, that wasn't enough for the studio system to wear her down, and with Mother Wore Tights we get her first of four pairings with actor Dan Dailey.  This was because in 1947 Mother Wore Tights was a huge success-it was the top grossing Fox release of the year, and at the time Grable's biggest hit.  We will be doing two films in a row of Grable's pairings with Dailey (though, thanks to When My Baby Smiles at Me not being available pretty much anywhere for viewing, not the two I had initially intended), to see why the two were such a well-liked cinematic match.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers on Myrtle McKinley (Grable), a young woman who is destined for business college, but instead ends up being hired as a chorus girl in a vaudeville troupe, where she meets Frank (Dailey), a bit of a scalawag who does the same tired comedy routine each night to less-and-less effect.  After some initial misunderstandings, Myrtle & Frank join together to create a successful duo, though it's clear that she's carrying him more than the other way around.  Weirdly, though, that's not the focus-it's instead on how their successful career keeps getting in the way of their quiet home life, where their two daughters Iris (Freeman) and Miriam (Marshall) must cope with having their parents away so often, and eventually, how their parents' "crude" acts & occupations interfere with Iris's pursuit of a posh businessman's son.

As we're three movies into this month, I'm going to confess something-I'm not loving Betty Grable so far.  I get the sunshine appeal, but while I loved that with Alice Faye (who always made sure her characters were smarter than the trope), Grable plays her characters for laughs and for ease.  As a result her daffy blonde doesn't become savvier than her male costars eventually, but just stays obedient and subservient to them.  In many ways Grable is the antithesis of another actress who dominated the 1940's, Bette Davis, who wouldn't be caught dead taking second fiddle to any man...and I love Bette Davis.  I'm hopeful that Grable will be able to win me over sometime in her last two pictures, but her roles have a level of domesticity that borders on the boring.

Nowhere is that clearer than in Mother Wore Tights, a title that is telling because it's subtly shading Grable for being both a matron and for being sexy (that's a joke that's told a couple of times in the picture).  Never mind that she's more talented than her costar Dailey, who is dull in this part (making me wish I could see When My Baby Smiles even more as Dailey infamously got the Oscar nomination most people thought would go to Humphrey Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and after seeing Dailey act in a similar picture, I'm flummoxed as to how Bogart's landmark turn could have been ignored in such a way).  The script, though, is so conservative and ridiculously quaint that the film ages instantly, probably not even being at home in the 1950's, much less the 2010's.  The idea of classism and feminism's answers being acquiescing to the rich males is absurd and wrongheaded.

The film won three Oscar nominations, including a victory for Best Scoring, but I wasn't onboard with any of these.  The cinematography is fine, if never noteworthy (I feel like they were commending the movie for its use of color for the sets & costumes than any trick of the lighting), while the musical numbers are forgettable.  The main track of "You Do" is sung twice in the picture (by Dailey and then at the end by Freeman), but it's so inconsequential to the earlier plot you don't get why it's being retread other than to help its Oscar chances.  The entire score is forgettable, quite frankly, and while I get how it won (considering the box office & the thin slate of musicals from 1947 it would have been my prediction in that lineup), I'm hopeful there's at least one hidden treasure in a slate of films where I haven't seen any of them.  Because Mother Wore Tights is certainly no treasure.