Portrait in Black (1960)

Film: Portrait in Black (1960)

Stars: Lana Turner, Anthony Quinn, Richard Basehart, Sandra Dee, John Saxon, Ray Walston, Anna May Wong

Director: Michael Gordon

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Sandra Dee: click here to learn more about Ms. Dee (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

I missed last week for Sandra Dee (I was traveling out of town and didn't quite have time to get this written as I was having too much fun on my trip), so we'll find a way at some point this month to make up with a double feature on a Saturday, but not today.  Today we're going to talk solely about Portrait in Black, a movie that was part of an effort for Dee to be taken more seriously as an actress.  Coming after her success with Imitation of Life, she was teamed with Lana Turner (this time playing her stepmother) in another glossy sudser, but critical success did not come to Dee.  Like most of her attempts at drama, critics didn't want to sign up for the film, and they wanted her to be more like Gidget, not getting the dramatic fare that some of the other young actresses at the time (like Natalie Wood) were getting that came with Oscar nominations.  Instead, she got more financial success-Portrait in Black was a big hit, getting her into the Top 10 biggest box office draws of the year, and led to her eventually renewing her contract with Universal (which would give her the eventual distinction of being the final major star under contract to a studio under the old Hollywood system).

(Spoilers Ahead) Portrait in Black is a classic soap opera movie, one that would go out of fashion as actual soap operas became more prominent.  Turner plays Sheila Cabot, a trophy wife caught in a loveless marriage to a dying, wealthy old man.  She's having an affair with her husband's doctor, David Rivera (Quinn), and the two eventually plot to kill him, making it look like an accident.  The only problem is that she's being blackmailed-someone seems to know that they knocked off the old man & are planning on running away together.  Is it Sheila's stepdaughter Cathy (Dee) or perhaps Howard Mason (Basehart), the other man that's madly in love with Sheila, or her servant Tawny (Anna May Wong, in her final screen performance).  More murder and soliloquies follow, until we get the bizarre kicker that it was Sheila herself, worried that David was going to leave her, who started the blackmail plot that would lead him to kill again...and eventually fall off the roof to his death in a fit of madness.

Portrait in Black is not a great movie-critics of the era got it right.  But I have kind of a soft spot for this type of melodrama, all torrid embraces & fashionable crime, and so I was into it.  I tend to really like Lana Turner, even if she's not a great actress, and this uses her well, giving us a fashionable, aging beauty who will do anything to get what she wants...though maybe a little bit more malice would've made this a proper femme fatale sort of figure, which is what the role is begging for it to turn into.  Anthony Quinn is less my cup-of-tea, but this fits-his tendency for hammy overacting lean into David's need to clear his conscience, which ain't happening given he, well, killed someone.

As for Dee-she's good, though not great.  This isn't the type of part that generally gets you plaudits (Turner & Quinn get better roles as the leads), but she does find some interesting corners to this character.  She's so naive, I really wanted more scenes between she and Sheila, giving us two generations of beauties, but one that (due to the virtues of youth) is the more desirable one in the construct of the story, and would feed Sheila's jealousy.  Weirdly that's not where this goes-Cathy is meant to be more plot point than hurdle, but Dee does make sure we know by the end that she's an option for David, the writing just isn't good enough to go there.

Shoot the Piano Player (1960)

Film: Shoot the Piano Player (1960)

Stars: Charles Aznavour, Marie Dubois, Nicole Berger, Michele Mercier, Serge Davri

Director: Francois Truffaut

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 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.

The "neo-noir" era largely came about because Hollywood stopped making traditional film noir pictures.  While there were noir films made in the early 1960's that one could question whether they should count as "neo-noir" or not (most frequently I see "neo-noir" as being labeled anything 1960 or later, which feels a bit arbitrary given that films like Key Witness and The Secret Ways read less like something innovative or changing and more just like low-budget noir when it was past its peak but still came from major studios), by-and-large the final years of noir with classics like Touch of Evil and Odds Against Tomorrow were the end of Hollywood taking the genre seriously until the late-1960's.  Instead, the genre was picked up by both European and Japanese cinema, and in particular the French fell in love with it.  This was when noir became a building block to the French New Wave, one of the most interesting eras in world cinema.  Most of this month we've been tackling deep cuts and largely forgotten film noirs (in many ways living up to the genre's reputation as a place for B movies), but today we're going to forgot that and go with a film revered by artists as diverse as Martin Scorsese to Bob Dylan: Shoot the Piano Player.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie in many ways borrows from Citizen Kane, giving us much of the plot in flashback.  We have Charlie (Aznavour), an invisible piano player who works nightly at a bar, who is interrupted by his brother, and then two men trying to hunt him (and his brother) down.  It turns out, as we learn while Charlie and Lena (Dubois), the waitress at the bar who is falling in love with him, that Charlie has lived a double life.  At one point he was a well-known and esteemed pianist named Edouard Saroyan, who escaped abject poverty and a likely life-in-crime with his siblings, and became the toast of Paris.  But after his wife Therese (Berger) confesses that she slept with a record producer to get Charlie his big break, and then after he initially refuses to forgive her she kills herself before he can change his mind, and he escapes into obscurity again.

The movie alternates between Charlie's inability to act and his instinct to do the right thing...too late.  The film's best attribute is that contradiction.  Charlie is presented as a good guy, but his indecisiveness is cruel.  There are multiple scenes in this movie where both Therese and Lena are seen as the sources of his inevitable happiness; all he needs to do is go after the thing he most wants, rather than reluctantly seeing if it'll come closer to him, and he would be happy.  But that's not how life works, and it's not how Shoot the Piano Player works.  We have Charlie nearly finding love twice, but in both instances his need to go back to his own masculinity, to his own sense of self-doubt, costs them their lives.  The film ends with Charlie playing piano back at that same bar, on auto-pilot, knowing that he's now lost happiness twice...and he lives with the knowledge that it wasn't him who paid the ultimate price even he caused it.

Truffaut's camerawork here is really strong.  Both Aznavour and Dubois give dynamite performances, but they're helped by Truffaut's use of long-shots, especially toward the end, to give us a sense of Paris (in some ways, you can see Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris in the way that he shoots the City of Lights).  The ending, though, far removed from the capitol, is the best part.  We see Marie Dubois being gunned down, and rather than have her collapsing in a conventional sense, we instead see her shot, and then rolling down a snowy hill, her beautiful body careening through the ice and wet, the audience not only aware she's dead, but also that she's slipping away from the happy ending she was so close to moments before.  It's this sort of specificity, this sense of irony, that Truffaut would become a legend for, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a movie that better captures that the final sequences of Shoot the Piano Player.

1940's: Act of Violence, The Big Sleep, The Blue Dahlia, Blues in the Night, Born to Kill, Brighton Rock, Brute Force, Call Northside 777, Caught, 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, The Naked City, Nightmare Alley, Out of the Past, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Raw Deal, The Reckless Moment, Ride the Pink Horse, Scarlet Street, Secret Beyond the Door, Side 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, A Woman's Secret

1950's: Ace in the Hole, Affair in Trinidad, The Asphalt Jungle, Beat the Devil, The Big Combo, The Big Heat, The Big Knife, 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, Kansas City Confidential, 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, Whirlpool

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

OVP: The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Film: The Magnificent Seven (1960)

Stars: Yul Brynner, Steve McQueen, Horst Buchholz, Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, Brad Dexter, James Coburn, Eli Wallach

Director: John Sturges

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Yul Brynner: click here to learn more about Mr. Brynner (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Throughout this year, we're profiling a lot of western stars, obviously, and with that, a lot of westerns.  These are all westerns that I've never seen before, and for the most part, are westerns I'm pretty comfortable saying that I've never seen before.  The films of Anthony Mann & Budd Boetticher are classics, but if we're being honest, they're not classics in the same way that The Searchers or The Wild Bunch are...they aren't universally-seen films by most film fans.  Today, though, we're getting to one of the few classic films of the western genre that I'm kind of looking sideways on, admitting that I have somehow never seen before.  Yul Brynner in 1960 was cast in a movie that, quite frankly, didn't do super well at the domestic box office (it was a smash hit overseas, particularly in the Soviet Union), but in the years that followed has become synonymous with the genre and is arguably the most important (culturally) western that we'll profile all year, and one pretty much everyone who is invested in the genre has seen before.  It is also one of the only westerns to spawn a genuine franchise, with three sequels, a remake, and a TV series all coming out of it, along with an Elmer Bernstein score that counts as one of the most iconic in film history.  Today, we are going to talk about The Magnificent Seven.

(Spoilers Ahead) Based on Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, the movie is about a poor Mexican village that is run by Calvera (Wallach), a ruthless leader of a group of bandits who frequently rob the villagers, who are defenseless, of their food to feed his men, leaving them largely to live by on scraps.  They decide one day to fight back, and look to initially buy guns to defend themselves.  When Chris Adams (Brynner) tells them that men are cheaper than guns (great line), Chris helps them recruit a band of men, seven in total, to defend the city.  Throughout, we learn about these men, who come from different backgrounds (a hotheaded young shootist, a fortune seeker, a knife expert, a drifter...it's a motley crew), but come to find some honor in defending the people of the city.  This honor is what Calvera, who keeps assuming they'll give up, can't see beyond, and it is his downfall.  In a shootout that kills four the seven, Calvera dies, and the townspeople are saved, with Chris and one of the other men, the drifter (played by McQueen) going off into the sunset, with Chris ending with the enigmatic line "only the farmers won...we lost...we'll always lose."

The film itself, I'll be honest, is a pretty standard western on its surface.  The cast was in various stages of their careers, with Brynner at the peak of his stardom, while McQueen, Coburn, & Bronson were all years away from the peak of theirs, and it shows in the casting.  Given where they were in their careers I get why some of these supporting parts weren't given stronger credence in the story (Brynner was the headliner in 1960), but Bronson & Coburn are such good actors I kept wanting more from them.  So the cast itself feeds into the standard western line-a basic story, admittedly one stolen from one of the greatest films ever made, with a misused cast should be cause for complaint.

But it's impossible to care too much because even if it's misused, the film itself still comes off successfully.  The scenes we do get of Coburn, Bronson, and especially Wallach are well-done, and the dialogue is solid, and a bit above-the-board for a western in 1960.  It's also aided by a grand slam score from Elmer Bernstein.  This lost to the theme from Exodus, which is a fine piece of music, don't get me wrong, but given that Bernstein was writing one of the defining pieces of music (it is regularly used in everything from Oscar clips to commercials to other movies) at the time, and that the theme from Psycho, another anthem of Hollywood, wasn't even nominated...the Academy missed the train a little bit on this one.

Please Don’t Eat the Daisies (1960)

Film: Please Don't Eat the Daisies (1960)

Stars: Doris Day, David Niven, Janis Paige, Richard Haydn, Spring Byington

Director: Charles Walters

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Spring Byington: click here to learn more about Ms. Byington (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Jumping from 1948 to 1960 is a big gap in Spring Byington's career, and a large part of that jump happens because during that time, Byington found the sort of leading lady stardom that had alluded her in her career in movies.  In 1952, Byington had started to work on the CBS radio program December Bride, where she plays a woman who has been widowed, but is intent on finding a new husband (hence, becoming a "December Bride").  Desilu Productions thought that this would make a good companion to I Love Lucy, and brought the radio show to television, putting it on immediately after I Love Lucy, which meant it was a Top 10 hit for the first four seasons it was on.  This allowed Byington, now in her seventies, to be the lead in one of the most-watched shows in America.  Byington even got two Emmy nominations for the series (losing both to Jane Wyatt on Father Knows Best), but when the series moved out of the comfy slot behind I Love Lucy, it tanked and was quickly cancelled.  Byington would only briefly return to one last movie after that, today's film Please Don't Eat the Daisies.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Kay Mackay (Day) a housewife with four sons who is living in a cramped New York apartment with her drama critic husband Larry (Niven).  The two find out that they're being evicted, and rather than stay in the city, they move to a dilapidated old house in the middle of the country, with Kay's mother Suzie (Byington) in tow.  This causes friction in their marriage, with Larry leaving the city frequently, and letting his newfound fame as a viper-tongued critic go to his head.  This is particularly a problem when an actress he lambasted, Deborah Vaughn (Paige) initially makes a scene, slapping him at a restaurant, and then realizing the publicity this could get both she & Larry, starts to coordinate moments for more publicity, trying to start an affair with him.  Suzie eventually convinces Kay that she needs to fight for her husband, and she does, with the two of them making up, now happily settled into their country domesticity.

Your mileage with this film will largely depend on your thoughts on Doris Day as a leading woman.  Few actresses enjoyed the kind of sustained success that Day did from the early 1950's to the late 1960's, and Please Don't Eat the Daisies was no exception (it was a huge hit for MGM), but I get that her movies tend to be a bit repetitive and somewhat reductive (that the onus on fixing her husband's wandering eye falls to Day's wife rather than Niven's character is not lost on me).  But I generally like Doris Day's movies, and this is cute.  Janis Paige is fun (as always) as a vamp, and I think it's always enjoyable.  There should've been more antics from the sons (particularly the adorable baby obsessed with Coca-Cola), and more singing from Day (she only does the film's bizarrely-monikered title song), but this is enjoyable.

It's also a fitting sendoff for Byington, playing yet another charming mother character.  Though she'd live until 1971, dying from cancer at the age of 84, she'd never make another movie, working in television instead on programs as varied as The Tab Hunter Show, Dennis the Menace, Mister Ed, The Flying Nun, and in a recurring role on the western Laramie.  Next month, we're going to switch gears a little bit as we focus on an actress who, unlike Byington, was not only a leading lady, but throughout the 1930's & 40's was a big star...but whom modern audiences, if they remember her at all, recall her for her immaculately-bedecked television show in the 1950's.

OVP: The Last Voyage (1960)

Film: The Last Voyage (1960)

Stars: Robert Stack, Dorothy Malone, George Sanders, Edmond O'Brien, Woody Strode, Jack Kruschen

Director: Andrew L. Stone

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Disaster movies have been around Hollywood for as long as they've made pictures.  We've talked about early films on this blog like The Hurricane and In Old Chicago, both of which were disaster films of the 1930's, and you can go back to the infamous Saved from the Titanic (starring real-life Titanic survivor Dorothy Gibson to find examples in the Silent Era).  The 1960's are an interesting era to look at for disaster films, though, as this isn't really one of the heyday periods for the genre, certainly not when compared with those earlier films in the 1930's or the true renaissance period for the genre, the 1970's, when movies like The Poseidon Adventure, Earthquake, and The Towering Inferno were conquering the box office.  As a result, I was fascinated by what The Last Voyage would bring-would it be similar in tone to the 1930's or the 70's, and what I found was that while it is definitely something that the 1970's would be more inspired by, there are a lot of growing pains that made those later all-star extravaganzas so much more delicious.

(Spoilers Ahead) The SS Claridon is a luxury liner nearing the end of its time at sea, and will soon be scrapped.  Its captain, Robert Adams (Sanders), though, has a spotless record and has every confidence in the ship, even though in the film's opening scenes there's a fire happening in the boiler room.  This is noticed but dismissed in passing by Cliff (Stack) & Laurie (Malone) Henderson, both traveling with their daughter Jill to Tokyo for work.  When an explosion rips apart the ship, Laurie is stuck under a pile of debris, and Jill is trapped in an adjoining room in what has basically become the equivalent of an open elevator shaft.  The three Hendersons, along with a crew that is being led by a delusional Captain Adams, must figure out a way off of the ship, as this, for the Claridon, is definitely "the last voyage."

The movie itself is a clunker in terms of its actual plot, with all of the impressive call sheet running for cover not just because of the fast-sinking ship, but also because they're pigeonholed into some truly egregious acting scenarios.  Dorothy Malone (Oscar Winner Dorothy Malone, let's not forget) spends 80% of the film stuck under a piece of fallen wall, with Robert Stack attempting to save her.  Seriously-like an hour of the film's 90 minute run time is just us hearing how Malone's Laurie isn't going to be saved...except she is in the end as Stack & Woody Strode come to her rescue.  The plot, particularly for a disaster film, is too thin, not just because the movie is rife with cliche, but it doesn't give the character any room for growth after the first explosion.  Even George Sanders (again, Oscar Winner George Sanders), can't save it as a stoic captain who won't believe the ship will sink.  Also, Tammy Marihugh's Jill is beyond annoying in proof that child acting is a difficult skill to pull off.

The movie's sole claim to fame, though, is impressive.  The Last Voyage was nominated for Best Visual Effects, and it's a richly-deserved nomination.  The film used an actual French ocean liner that was being decommissioned, giving it a proper authentic feel and makes the actual explosion effects pop.  There are sequences in the film that feel deeply real, perhaps too real if film legend is to be believed (supposedly Edmond O'Brien was so worried about safety on the set that he left in protest, only to return to a safer set...and the script being rewritten so that his part wasn't as big as it had been).  The actual boiler room flooding & the captain's quarters being capsized are among the most impressive moments.  It's hard to watch this and not thing the more formidable Poseidon Adventure and Titanic didn't clear owe an homage (if not just a "you're copying me") from The Last Voyage's brilliant effects sequence.

Village of the Damned (1960)

Film: Village of the Damned (1960)
Stars: George Sanders, Barbara Shelley, Martin Stephens
Director: Wolf Rilla
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

We're going to conclude our month devoted to Golden Age horror with a movie that, even if you haven't seen it, you know about as it as it landed a pretty high perch in pop culture at the peak of a TV classic's power.  Pretty much everything at this point has been skewered by The Simpsons, but one of my favorite Simpsons episodes was where the kids sneak out and watch The Bloodening, a scary movie about children who can read their parents' minds, and then to get back at their parents for a city-wide curfew, the kids put on a radio show telling their parents' secrets in hopes of it stopping.  That episode is actually based on a film from 1960 called Village of the Damned, and will be the final movie we'll highlight this month as we end (for now) our month of Old Hollywood horror.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with the inhabitants of the British village of Midwich all suddenly fainting or falling asleep.  There is no explanation as to why (it isn't gas or some sort of attack), but when the people awake unharmed, two months later the women of the village find themselves pregnant, despite in some cases these women not having had sex.  One of the pregnant women is Anthea (Shelley), whose husband Gordon (Sanders) is overjoyed that he'll be able to start a family.  However, when their son David (Stephens) is born, he develops quickly, to the point where it's not clear if he's even human.  The children all have glowing eyes and bright blonde hair, and are clearly "not quite right."  Gordon begins teaching them, noticing their unusual IQ's, and they begin to be able to read the thoughts of those around them.  Eventually they start to use their powers as retribution to those in the city who think ill of them or mean to do them harm.  While trying to escape, David enlists the help of his father, who sets a trap for the children.  He blocks out his mind by not focusing on the bomb that is in the school, and before the children realize what happened, the bomb goes off, killing all of them, including Gordon.

The movie is genuinely scary, not just silly (though you'll be forgiven if you utter "we know all your secrets" every once-in-a-while during the children's controlled cadences).  The film smartly doesn't entirely explain the children's motives.  They don't necessarily want to kill-they just want to learn, but we don't know why they want to learn.  It is heavily implied that they are some sort of alien life force, sent to Earth for some unknown purpose, perhaps something to do with nuclear war (the film talks quite a bit about nuclear bombs, obviously this being a major year during the Cold War), but I liked the lack of clarity-it's creepier not knowing.

The acting in the film is genuinely good too, particularly Sanders & Stephens, who have a weird chemistry.  Sanders is so slimy in so many of his roles that he's the perfect choice for a reluctant hero.  A man who has spent much of his life not having a son, getting to have one with such ambition for power & knowledge is enviable for him-you kind of expect him to join this army, even if it could spell his doom, knowing that through his son he can have dreams other, weaker men can't...there's a lot under the surface of this movie.  1960 would not mark the end of this type of horror, focused more on psychology & scary faces than blood & gore, but there's a menace in Village of the Damned that simply wouldn't have been possible in the heyday of Boris & Bela...something we may take a look at next year.  Until then...Happy Halloween!

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, Werewolf of London, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob, The Masque of the Red Death

The World of Suzie Wong (1960)

Film: The World of Suzie Wong (1960)
Stars: William Holden, Nancy Kwan, Sylvia Syms, Michael Wilding
Director: Richard Quine
Oscar History: No nominations, though Kwan won the Best Newcomer Golden Globe and was nominated for Actress in a Drama, which generally would indicate she was close to getting a nomination.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 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 Nancy Kwan-click here to learn more about Ms. Kwan (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Nancy Kwan's stardom almost certainly wouldn't have happened were it not for Marlon Brando's wandering eye.  Kwan had been understudying the role of Suzie Wong in the national touring production of the play, which starred actress France Nuyen in the lead role.  Nuyen was more famous than Kwan due to her role in the blockbuster South Pacific, and as a result was the frontrunner for the film part opposite William Holden, even though some (including star William Holden) had preferred Kwan's audition, and so Nuyen was hired to the lead (with Kwan getting the consolation of the part on Broadway).  However, Nuyen's troubled relationship with Marlon Brando, whom she suspected was cheating on her (and knowing Brando, he probably was), caused her to gain weight on the set & not to be able to handle playing the part.  She was fired, and Paramount hired Kwan as the female lead (weirdly, two years after Suzie Wong, Nuyen would costar with Holden in Satan Never Sleeps, so there wasn't too much ill-will from this situation with either party).  And thus, Kwan had something very rare for an Asian-American actress in 1960's Hollywood-the opportunity to play the lead in a major studio motion picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around Robert Lomax (Holden), a struggling artist living in late-1950's Hong Kong.  In the opening scene he meets a girl named Mei Ling (Kwan) on a boat who seems to be the over-privileged daughter of a wealthy Chinese figure, who accuses him of stealing her purse.  When Lomax accidentally books a hotel in a red light, he realizes the girl is not the daughter of a wealthy man, but a verbose prostitute who goes by Suzie Wong.  The film chronicles his complicated relationship with Suzie, who is secretive (she will learn about you, but doesn't want you to know too much about her), and of course their relationship breaks both racial & class norms considering she is a Hong Kong prostitute and he's a painter with connections to wealth (but he himself doesn't have money).  The film has some dark turns in its second act (we learn that Suzie's got a secret son and that Sylvia Sims' Kay, Suzie's rival for Robert's affections, is not the open-minded progressive she seems to be when it comes to fighting for his heart), but overall it's a pretty light movie up until the last thirty minutes, a romantic drama with some comic elements.

The film is really hard to review for someone modern-day.  The movie is interesting in the sense that Suzie is a fully-fleshed character-this is very much her story, not Robert's, and she's not a side distraction as he figures out his next move.  But this is also a movie that deals with a lot of stereotypes about Asian women (exoticizing them, making all of the named female Asian characters play prostitutes, and she does play a subservient role to Robert).  Robert is occasionally violent with Suzie, and Suzie seems to encourage this as a sign of affection, something we wouldn't allow in a modern film, and it's by-far the most uncomfortable aspect of the movie.  But it was also a step forward for Hollywood to have any Asian actress getting such a significant role.  While actors like France Nuyen & Miyoshi Umeki were getting important roles in movies, they weren't leads, and really Kwan was the first actress since Silent Film Star Anna May Wong to be afforded an opportunity like Suzie Wong.  Along with James Shigeta (her future costar) getting to play a lead role in Columbia's The Crimson Kimono the year before, in 1960 we were seeing a brief moment where Hollywood was willing to give Asian actors the kind of stardom that had eluded them since the Silent Era.

And Nancy Kwan took that opportunity & made it her own.  She's the best part of the film, and while the character is problematic & occasionally you can see that this is her first movie (certain line readings feel a bit rehearsed), you can't deny she's an intoxicating film presence.  She makes Suzie her own & runs with it, completely crafting a character that feels three-dimensional as the movie wears on.  While the film itself gets too heavy-handed (though the bay shots in Hong Kong are gorgeous, and kind of jaw-dropping to see such well-lit location shoots in the 1950's), especially in the back-half, it's the sort of role that would've normally gotten her Oscar talk, and given her Globe nomination, one has to wonder if she was somewhat close to being the first openly-Asian actress to ever be nominated for an Oscar (Merle Oberon was not open about her ethnicity, and is to-date the only Asian actress to be cited for Best Actress).  The box office wouldn't have hurt her AMPAS case-Suzie Wong was a smash hit, becoming Paramount's second-biggest hit of the year after Psycho, and gave the studio an overnight sensation star that didn't fit their typical mold.  Unlike Lena Horne earlier this year, though, Kwan would be able to follow up Suzie Wong with a groundbreaking musical...which we will take a look at next week.

OVP: Pepe (1960)

Film: Pepe (1960)
Stars: Cantinflas, Dan Dailey, Shirley Jones (and a mountain of celebrity cameos we'll mention below)
Director: George Sidney
Oscar History: 7 nominations (Best Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Scoring, Sound, Original Song-"Faraway Part of Town")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

A few months ago (which somehow feels like only a week ago and at the same time years ago...Covid is messing with my internal clock, y'all), we reviewed Around the World in 80 Days, a box office smash that won the Best Picture Oscar.  It featured the American debut of a Mexican comedian named Cantinflas, who won a Golden Globe for it and became a sensation, and inevitably was someone that would get another big movie.  However, as Hollywood struggles to cast actors-of-color, especially in the 1950's, Cantinflas would have to wait four years before getting his next break in another glossy, epic film where he did his shenanigans against the backdrop of a star-studded bonanza.  That film was Pepe, our Best Editing (amongst other things) installment today.

(Spoilers Ahead) For a movie that clocks in at three hours, the film doesn't have a lot of plot.  Essentially we have Pepe (Cantinflas), a horse trainer who thinks of his horse Don Juan as his son, and calls him that despite the confusion of everyone.  He cannot buy the horse in the opening scene, as it is instead purchased by Ted Holt (Dailey), a struggling movie director.  Pepe comes to take care of the horse, and after a successful night in Vegas, begins to bankroll Holt's next movie, under the condition that he cast Suzie Murphy (Jones), a dancer that Pepe is in love with, and soon, so is Ted.  As this is a movie from 1960, white, blonde Shirley Jones is going to end up with Ted as her winning love interest rather than Pepe, whom she thinks of as a friend, but Pepe still is able to win back Don Juan, and have him sire a number of foals, happily back in Mexico.

Pepe was a flop-a big one.  It's considered one of the largest money losers of the 1960's, and has never even been released on DVD (I caught it on TCM).  There's a reason for that-Pepe borders on awful.  Cantinflas' humor doesn't work without a proper straight man, and Dan Dailey is no David Niven (Dailey is, for my money, one of the worst actors to be nominated for an Oscar at some point in their career).  Cantinflas plays him as a racist cartoon-he's dismissed as "not really a man" by Shirley Jones at one point, and she sings about him like he's a puppet.  I don't begrudge Cantinflas too much here, even if he doesn't add to the character since his being a Mexican man who got to lead a movie was a big deal in 1960, but then-and-now this plays poorly, and is hard to get behind.

The saving grace of the movie is the star cameos, which I always love.  The film is DRIPPING with not just cameos, but in many cases the cameos are extended, and almost always involve actors playing themselves.  Edward G. Robinson is basically the fourth biggest part in the movie as himself, and we get a lot of appearances from everyone from Greer Garson to Jimmy Durante to the entire Rat Pack (one of only three movies to feature Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, & Joey Bishop).  These aren't always successful (Bing Crosby's is ludicrous, Cesar Romero's unfunny), while others are great, though none compare to Jack Lemmon, playing himself as if he's filming Some Like It Hot, so we get to see (in color!) him in his Daphne drag from the movie (Tony Curtis appears later in the film, and not as his character).

The movie's seven Oscar nominations are all a waste, to be honest.  The costume work (Edith Head) is maybe the best element, but they're mostly fun when they're on Kim Novak or Janet Leigh than on any of the actual characters, while the sets feel like vacant movie lots, even the ones that take place outdoors.  The movie features a number of songs, but they're all staged too long & while it's great to hear legends sing, this doesn't rise above what you'd hear on a record.  This is true even of the nominated song, sang by Judy Garland (who for some reason doesn't even cameo despite singing the nominated song), which doesn't fit the mood of the movie at all (it sings like a torch ballad).  The cinematography is flat, the sound work routine, and the editing...the movie is three hours long & will go on huge stretches of boredom, while glossing over Ted's mistreatment of Pepe.  All-in-all, while I wish this movie was more readily available (even as a flop, it's still nominated for seven Oscars and stars the most important Mexican comedian in Hollywood of the Golden Age), I'm glad to have it in the rearview mirror with the OVP.

OVP: Let's Make Love! (1960)

Film: Let's Make Love! (1960)
Stars: Marilyn Monroe, Yves Montand, Tony Randall, Frankie Vaughan (as well as some fun cameos I'll reference in the review)
Director: George Cukor
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Scoring)
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 Marilyn Monroe-click here to learn more about Ms. Monroe (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

For our final two weeks with Marilyn Monroe, we're going to focus on the very tail end of the actress's career.  Last week we talked about one of the biggest triumphs of Monroe's career, Bus Stop, which brought her critical hosannas (serious ones) for the first time in her career, and was a huge box office hit for Fox.  This was followed with two legendarily difficult shoots for Marilyn, the first being the now-maligned The Prince and the Showgirl (with Laurence Olivier) and then the smash-hit classic Some Like It Hot, where she feuded relentlessly with costar Tony Curtis & director Billy Wilder.  Despite Some Like It Hot's success (it won Monroe her only competitive Golden Globe), she took another year off before making her next movie, today's film Let's Make Love!.  The film was a big deal not only for Monroe, but her costar Yves Montand, who was making his English-language debut after a decade of starring roles in European cinema, and becoming the toast of the New York theater scene with his one-man show.

(Spoilers Ahead) In a weirdly similar opening to The Seven Year Itch, we go through the family tree of Jean-Marc Clement (Montand), a billionaire whose ancestors all had a knack for making money and were frequently distracted by "balloons" (the script's entendre, not mine).  He is considered a spoiled playboy, and a local theater production about famous figures of the early 1960's is skewering him.  He goes down to show he's "in on the joke" as a bit of publicity, but there is mistaken for an actor pretending to be Jean-Marc Clement, and goes along with the casting when he falls for Amanda (Monroe), a beautiful actress who leads the production.  Jean-Marc gets to see a woman actually fall for him, and not his money, as she just assumes he's an out-of-work actor.  However, Amanda is dating the show's leading man, Tony (Vaughan), so Jean-Marc, along with his assistants (including Tony Randall playing the same role Tony Randall always played in these types of films-the best friend), recruit the help of legendary entertainers in hopes of making the no-talent Jean-Marc a rival for Amanda's affections.

You can imagine how that turns out (happy ending!), but arguably the best part of Let's Make Love! is the scenes with the legendary performers.  Milton Berle, Bing Crosby, and Gene Kelly all play themselves, recruited to make the hapless Jean-Marc seem like a funny song-and-dance-man, with amusing results (Berle basically steals the movie during his segment).  And I will admit I actually liked the score for the film, even though it's not as memorable as it might have been.  The Oscar nomination may have been something of a gimme given the film's high profile (we were entering a period where musicals struggled to gain traction with audiences), but Vaughan can sing, and he-and-Monroe have a gay sort of chemistry that is fun-to-watch.

This is not true for Monroe & Montand.  While Montand generally was a popular figure in the era, his comedy bits don't age well and he's stiff in a lead role that would have been a better fit for someone like Cary Grant or Rock Hudson.  Montand isn't helped by a script that has no punch.  The joke bits aren't that funny (Berle & his segment are the only ones that really work), and while Monroe is enjoyable in her part (George Cukor would never totally fail his leading actress), the script is just sort of there for us to ogle her.  One of the striking things between the sex symbols of the 1930's/40's and the 1950's is that while Jean Harlow and Rita Hayworth were given different types of roles to excel in, Monroe always played some version of this Amanda.  When it was in Some Like It Hot, with great writing and costars like Jack Lemmon, it's glorious.  Let's Make Love!, though, is pretty disposable and wouldn't be thought of at all today except it was Marilyn's penultimate film.

The movie had no good memories for any involved.  Monroe hated the part, considering it her worst role, and not soon after watched her marriage to Arthur Miller dissolved (she had had a very public affair on-set with Montand, who was married to Monroe's friend Simone Signoret at the time).  The film was moderately successful, but considered a disappointment given Monroe's star power and how gossip columns had been swirling about her relationship with Montand.  After three rough productions, Monroe was still famous and bankable enough to demand headlines, but producers were worried about hiring her for anything.  She lost out at the time on the role of Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's, a part that was written specifically for her by Truman Capote, and which would win Audrey Hepburn an honor Monroe never received: an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Instead, Monroe would make a different film, one that would sadly be her last, and one that we'll discuss next week.

OVP: Bells are Ringing (1960)

Film: Bells are Ringing (1960)
Stars: Judy Holliday, Dean Martin, Fred Clark, Eddie Foy, Jr., Jean Stapleton
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Scoring)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I see a lot of movies (clearly), and write about a lot of movies (again, clearly), but in writing those reviews, I sometimes run into trouble when I try and rate the pictures.  Take Bells are Ringing, a movie I saw recently for the first time which was the end of producer Arthur Freed's long run with both MGM and Vincente Minnelli (13 of Minnelli's directorial efforts were produced by Freed, including absolute classics like Meet Me in St. Louis and An American in Paris).  The movie itself is so much fun, a real blast of a musical the kind of which they don't make anymore, but sadly at the time was so passé that the movie was a flop when it came out.  But the real revelation here is Judy Holliday, who of course shouldn't be a revelation at this point (Holliday is always terrific), but I feel like this is an entirely different level of performance from what we know of her.  So come along as I decide whether one performance can elevate an entire film's score.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Ella Peterson (Holliday), a phone switch operator at an answering service who takes on multiple different personalities, but not her own, while trying to solve the problems of the customers of Susanswerphone (it's fun to say).  She is in love with a playwright who calls in named Jeffrey Moss (Martin).  After being chastised for being too involved in her customers lives by her boss Sue (Stapleton, who is divine in a supporting role that leans into her natural comedic gifts), Ella sneaks over to Jeffrey's house to ensure he doesn't botch an interview.  She uses a fake name & doesn't tell him that she's the woman from the answering service, and of course they fall in love, even though they come from completely different worlds.  The film ends with them getting together, of course, but first Ella learns that she needs to love herself first-and-foremost, and be there for Ella.

The movie is a little bit heavier than you'd think for a movie featuring Dean Martin and directed by Minnelli, especially during this era of his career.  The Ella self-growth is real, and it's entirely driven by bravura work from Holliday.  This is a stupendous performance, with Holliday acing the musical numbers and bringing some solid comedic acting chops to her performance, with just a hint of sadness.  She makes Ella incredibly modern for a woman whose job is so antiquated most younger audiences wouldn't even know it once existed.  I love the way that while Martin's Jeffrey is who she ends up with in the end, really her ending is all about her-a woman who suddenly feels okay in her own skin-which is a great message for a musical comedy, a genre that frequently saw "a man" as the only answer to what a woman wants.

The film's musical numbers are all delightful, even if they're so loquacious (like "Drop That Name") that they'd be hard to sing along to.  My favorite song in the Bells are Ringing score has always been "Perfect Relationship," which is a triumph as sung by Holliday, and richly felt.  It's a bit of a pity that not only was this movie a flop (enough to ensure Freed never made another musical), but it also ended Holliday's very brief career in the movies, as this was her final picture.  She was already supposedly ill while filming it, but while she'd live another five years, they were challenging ones-she'd die at the age of 43 after a long battle with breast cancer.  If you haven't already seen her in this, do yourself a favor.  I'm giving it 4 stars (some of Martin's character work isn't as clean as it should be), but Holliday is giving a 5-star performance and a great sendoff to a unique actress.

OVP: Spartacus (1960)

Film: Spartacus (1960)
Stars: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, Tony Curtis, John Gavin, John Dall
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Oscar History: 6 nominations/4 wins (Best Supporting Actor-Peter Ustinov*, Costume*, Art Direction*, Cinematography*, Film Editing, Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Over the past month, I finally finished a longtime goal of mine, one that has been sitting on my Bucket List for years just waiting to be completed: seeing all of the American Film Institute's 100 Greatest Films.  Yes, I managed to see all of the movies (on a 19-year-old list-don't judge, I had other stuff going on, and how many have you finished it?), and as a result I got a teensy bit behind on the reviews for the films because I saw a few in rapid succession.  This week we'll get reviews for the final three movies I saw from the list, one of which is Spartacus, the gladiator epic starring Kirk Douglas that somehow won a mountain of Oscars without a Best Picture citation.  Hopefully this will inspire you to complete a film or two off of the list yourself, as even the worst of the bunch are still iconic parts of American cinema.

(Spoilers Ahead) Spartacus came at arguably the height of the biblical or time-of-Christ epics, and like many of those films it is VERY long.  Clocking in at just over three hours, it's the sort of film you need a Saturday night and a bucket full of popcorn to complete, but thankfully that was the route I went as I really enjoyed the picture.  Telling the tale of Spartacus (Douglas), a slave who can no longer stand his station, he is sentenced to fight as a gladiator, but succeeds in killing his master and then escaping to form a slave army, causing a rebellion that makes its way all the way to Rome, where political maneuverings between Crassus (Olivier), Gracchus (Laughton), and an emerging Julius Caesar (Gavin) result in Spartacus' gaining great fame and eventually causing his doom, but not before hundreds of men die in a senseless act of violence that seals Spartacus' fate as a legend.  The film ends with Kirk Douglas hanging from a cross, seeing his son (who is now free) and having the comfort that he did not die in vain.

I am a self-professed fan of historical epics of this era (I loved Ben-Hur as you may recall), which may surprise some but I'm always a sucker for a gigantic story if it's done well, and this is true of Spartacus. The script, written in secret by Dalton Trumbo (it was essentially the film that ended the blacklist, as you'll recall from the recent biopic about the writer, and a lot of that had to do with Kirk Douglas demanding Trumbo get credit-Douglas was too big of a star for Hollywood to ignore, and the box office for this film was gargantuan so the blacklist suddenly had no purpose).  The movie's core is centered around a man largely devoid of fault, which made director Stanley Kubrick (isn't it weird to think that this is a Kubrick film since it's so alien to the rest of his pictures?), but in reality Spartacus is a man of deep pride who doesn't really know how to play his own game.  There are moments in the film where doing exactly what is right costs him dearly, and so he might be a man without blemish on his character, but tactically he's not always brilliant, so I didn't get the "saint" factor that sometimes plagues films of this nature.  He's essentially Ned Stark, for those of you who watch Game of Thrones, and they meet similar ends.

The film is of course noted for its iconic "I am Spartacus" scene and with good reason.  I'd seen this film in clip shows at least a hundred times before, but positioned in the final third of the movie, it is still a gut punch, and one that will leave you in tears.  Watching hundreds of men sacrifice themselves for a cause, particularly considering the way that this clearly was a metaphor for the Red Scare and what was happening to Dalton Trumbo himself during this era, is deeply moving.  History repeats itself, and Trumbo's script knows that that's the case, and finds ways to make sure the audience can see past the gladiator wear and into their own present.

The film is famed for the homosexual overtones between Crassus and Antoninus (Curtis), and the scenes between them are truly provocative (famously, as Olivier was dead, Anthony Hopkins did the dubbing for this scene which was re-introduced to the picture after being cut by censors in the 1960's when it was added back into the movie in the 1990's).  The scene is rather shocking as there's little subtlety or even hints that Crassus could be talking about something other than having sex with Antoninus, and while it's problematic that we have the "predatory gay" scene here (not to mention the absolute disgust from Antoninus over the entire situation), it's still pretty progressive in terms of simply acknowledging the clear homosexual overtones of a film where only Jean Simmons appears as a major female character.  Plus, any film with John Gavin is at least gay in my mind, so there's that.

The film won six Academy Award nominations, though oddly enough not one for Best Picture, with the Academy perhaps worn out of gladiator epics so soon after Ben-Hur won eleven trophies.  Still, it managed a stronghold on the tech categories, and rightfully so.  The cinematography is breathtaking, a wonderful Technicolor concoction, is one of the most beautiful of the era, and we see gigantic plains of actors, extras, and magnificent settings that feel fully-detailed.  Russell Metty was only nominated for an Oscar once in his career, but thankfully it was for the right picture here.  The Art Direction and Costume are full of great touches, and in the case of the Art Direction in particular the scenery feels (while clearly part of a movie set) relatively-detailed and manages to be both best AND most, which is something that we don't oftentimes see in this category.  The score by Alex North is instantly iconic, and rumbles throughout the picture but never in a way that feels like bombast (or at least when it does, it's tonally appropriate bombast as this is a sword-and-sandals film).  One of the few weak points in the nominations, though, would be the editing.  Occasionally the film's political scenes feel too talky and though I don't quibble with the movie being 184 minutes long, there are scenes that probably could have used some trimming to keep the focus a bit tighter.

My biggest complaint, and why this film doesn't hit five stars (and flirted dangerously with three), is that the acting isn't particularly good.  Kirk Douglas nails his lead role, but it's not a challenging one which is probably good as nuance was never Douglas' forte.  The rest of the cast, though, runs the line between hammy and hammier.  Casting Olivier, Laughton, and Ustinov in your movie is basically begging for Royal Shakespeare Company style acting, but it also means that they are all trying to one-up each other in scenery-chewing.  I am kind of flabbergasted that it was Ustinov over the showier Laughton and Olivier who managed the supporting nomination (perhaps their egos made it impossible for them to compete for anything other than lead?), but Ustinov's morally corrupt, but still with a slight heart of gold, mid-level official is hardly worth noticing except that Ustinov is always fun to watch in a camp sort of way.  The role and most of the other characters feel like cartoons more than anything else, and while Trumbo's script and Douglas' gravitas keep the movie grounded, the side scenes with these characters, except for when the occasional catty aside comes out are nearing the level of bad acting.

Those are my thoughts on this gargantuan movie.  I suspect (considering its status in American cinema) that most of you have seen this-if you have, please share your comments below.  Are you as shocked as I that this is a Stanley Kubrick film?  Are you with me that the film is great, but the acting a massive disappointment?  And considering Ustinov's competition, who were you cheering for in the Supporting Actor race of 1960?  See you in the comments!

OVP: The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960)

Film: The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond (1960)
Stars: Ray Danton, Karen Steele, Elaine Stewart, Jesse White, Warren Oates, Dyan Cannon
Director: Budd Boetticher
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Costume Design)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

With the Oscar Viewing Project, I frequently find myself watching films that I didn't really expect to be seeing.  This of course means that I see a lot of stuffy dramas and dull comedies (sorry, but AMPAS occasionally has a type that doesn't match-up to me), but in the case of this particular film, it's truly a movie that I'd never have expected to see primarily because I'd never even heard of the film prior to when it popped up on the TCM 31 Days of Oscar recently.  With a cast of virtual unknowns (when Dyan Cannon in a bit part is your biggest headliner, you've got some obscure casting), and a formulaic plot that recalls in many ways a Twilight Zone episode (though without the show's ingenuity), the movie feels plucked from a different place and time, a B-movie that somehow ended up in Oscar's good graces.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Ray Dayton as legendary gangster Jack "Legs" Diamond, a small-time crook trying to make it big, as he goes straight from being a petty thief to working his way up in the mob by (through moxie and circumstance) becoming the bodyguard for mob boss Arnold Rothstein.  Along the way, Legs seduces beautiful women and discards them just as easily, and slowly even eliminates from his life people that he cares about, particularly his brother Eddie (Oates) and his wife Alice (Steele).  The film progresses with Legs, like all men who rise too far to the top in the world of crime, eventually becoming too big for his britches and buying into his own legend, and after years of proving that he simply cannot be killed, ends up dying in a hotel room, alone and miserable.

I pointed out the film recalls a Twilight Zone episode in part because it does.  We have Legs Diamond, who wants nothing more than to be loved and respected, but also wants money and esteem after a life in the gutter.  He has two options to get them, one through the sweet-but-naive Alice, who loves the real Legs, and one through a life of crime where he can romance gorgeous women but has to essentially give up any sense of his humanity.  Because this is a movie, Legs ends up going through the latter option, and because this is a 60's B-Movie, he ends up never getting a proper chance at the former, ending up alone.  The Twilight Zone would have had him getting all these things from the devil, but that's a moot point.

The film honestly has little originality to lend to itself, except perhaps the angle of sex.  Since we are still in 1960 there's no nudity, but it's rare that I've seen a film this early that is this sexually-charged, particularly when it comes to Ray Danton's character.  While the film is quick to point out the beauty of Steele, Stewart, and Dyan Cannon in her film debut, they are also willing to show that Danton is exceedingly sexual, and this is one of the earliest films I've ever seen where a woman (in this case Stewart) gives in to her own sexual desires not for wealth or fame or love, but simply out of lust for Danton.  Women were so rarely given sexual desires in movies prior to this era and if they were it was always mixed with love rather than hormones, but this was the dawning of that era (look at Natalie Wood a year later in the far more mainstream Splendor in the Grass)-male beauty was becoming a real thing at the cinema, and you can see hints of a future sexual revolution in this picture.  This angle is actually quite interesting, and got me to switch the film from a thumbs down to a thumbs up, but keep in mind it's more curiosity than grand cinema.

The movie nabbed one nomination, for Costume, though part of me would have liked to have seen a nod for Cinematography as the movie has the feel of a picture from the 1940's, and in many ways it almost gives off the aura of a lost film, rather than one made fifteen years later (the graininess shows an artistic integrity I hadn't seen in a movie of this ilk before).  The costumes are gaudy and gorgeous, mob molls and sharply-tailored suits.  It's very stylish, and in many ways feels like it might have been plucked from the pages of a Look magazine spread than a film, as it seems strange that no one doesn't look immaculate in the picture.  Still, in many ways it recalls the gangster pictures of the 1930's, one of the earliest cases of Hollywood having nostalgia for itself at the Oscars, and it is surely distinctive, so well done on the citation, AMPAS.

Those are my thoughts on this obscure picture-what are yours (if you've seen it)?  Do you agree it feels like an odd citation for Oscar?  Do you have a favorite example of this era where lust for a man (rather than a woman) drove so much of the picture?  And what other films resemble a Twilight Zone episode? Share your thoughts in the comments!