The Man from Laramie (1955)

Film: The Man from Laramie (1955)

Stars: James Stewart, Arthur Kennedy, Donald Crisp, Cathy O'Donnell, Alex Nicol

Director: Anthony Mann

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 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 Jimmy Stewart: click here to learn more about Mr. Stewart (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We've jumped about a bit with Stewart, last week discussing some of the films he made in the late-1950's with Alfred Hitchcock, attempting to escape in some respects the persona with which he'd long been associated.  This week, we're still in the mid-1950's, but I want to discuss a bit what happened in the latter half of Stewart's career.  Today's film was his last movie with Anthony Mann, but it was hardly his final western.  In the decades that followed, that was mostly what Stewart would make, but with less assured results.  The actor worked steadily throughout the 1960's & 1970's, but usually in cameos that traded on his star power.  More so, he appeared in flops, including an ill-fated eponymous television show (did you know there was a Jimmy Stewart sitcom in the 1970's?!?).  He made only two classics during this period, both of which starred John Wayne, both of which were westerns, and one of which is a personal favorite (hence why we aren't ending with it): The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance and The Shootist.  Today, though, we're going to discuss Stewart's eighth and final film with Anthony Mann, The Man from Laramie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie follows Will Lockhart (Stewart), who is delivering supplies from Laramie to Coronado, a desolate western town, while also trying to find the man who led to Apaches killing his brother by selling them guns.  Concurrently, we have a wealthy landowner named Alec Waggoman (Crisp) who is haunted by the thought that someone is going to kill his ne'er-do-well son Dave (Nicol), whom he loves but cannot control.  Dave after shooting many of Will's mules after he mistakenly takes salt from one of Alec's lakes, gets into a fist fight with him, and while most of the town wants Will to leave, he wants to find the gun runner who led to his brother's death.  He ends up in a course collision with much of the Waggoman family, including their attractive niece Barbara (O'Donnell) and a hired hand Vic Hansbro (Kennedy) who is jealous of Dave since Vic has been truly loyal to Alec.  As we continue, it becomes clear that Dave & Vic were the reasons for Will's brother dying, and both end up dead before the credits roll, though neither by the hand of Will Lockhart, who doesn't have the stomach for cold-blooded murder.

The movie is glorious, and that starts with the cinematography.  Shot by 18-time Oscar nominee Charles Lang, this was one of the first westerns shot on CinemaScope, the film is beautiful, desert shots (such as the gorgeous final shootout between Stewart & Kennedy), the movie looks sensational, and is a fitting end to Mann & Stewart's partnership.  Stewart is once again excellent in this mold, learning a bit from his previous iterations as a cowboy by leaning into the "last ride of a legend" motif.  You know from the opening scenes that he's going to end this standing tall, but also that he will never rest, a wandering spirit of the west.  The film suffers in its supporting actors, particularly with a miscast O'Donnell & Crisp, but Stewart's performance and all of the technical aspects are first rate, and I loved the title track.

Jimmy Stewart, as I mentioned above, continued making movies, some of them successfully, well into the late 1980's, though he worked sparingly.  The only really important movie of his post-1960 era was The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, which is his best western and brought him face-to-face with John Wayne.  I wrote about this the first time I saw it ten years ago, and it's only grown in my estimation since then as one of the great movies of the year, and one of the bitterest endings in all of Classical Hollywood.  Next month, we're going to talk about another actor whose modern mythos is associated with a gentle, kind figure, one that Oscar also noticed, but whose fame throughout the 1950's came from wearing a cowboy hat.

OVP: Claudelle Inglish (1961)

Film: Claudelle Inglish (1961)

Stars: Diane McBain, Arthur Kennedy, Will Hutchins, Constance Ford, Claude Akins, Chad Everett

Director: Gordon Douglas

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Costume Design)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

In the early 1960's, film was starting a pretty steady migration from black-and-white & color being used interchangeably to the latter being predominant; by the end of the decade, black-and-white films would be used sparingly, to the point where they'd be a novelty for the most part in the 1970's.  This resulted in some oddities in the Oscar categories, like Costume Design, which distinguished between black-and-white and color for their nominations until 1966.  One of these oddities was Claudelle Inglish, a largely forgotten early 1960's melodrama about sexuality in a small town that got a nomination for costume design.  This was a recent random "cleaning out my DVR" screening, and will be today's film on the blog.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on Claudelle Inglish (McBain), a lovely young teenage girl who is the daughter of a poor sharecropper Clyde (Kennedy) and his miserable wife Jessie (Ford).  Claudelle wants to escape the horrendous marriage between Clyde & Jessie, the latter of whom has been resentful for years that Clyde never provided more money for their family.  Claudelle seems to want to repeat her mother's mistake when Linn (Everett), a handsome local boy, begins courting her, but there's a catch.  Linn is drafted into the army, and Claudelle, trying to secure his affections, sleeps with him before he goes off.  While he doesn't die in the army, he does marry another girl, making Claudelle heartbroken.  Claudelle decides (inexplicably) that the best revenge against Linn is to become a "bad girl" wearing makeup & provocative dresses while sleeping with all of the local boys if they buy her presents.  Jessie & Clyde don't know what to do with their suddenly sexually-awakened daughter, but she draws the attention of Clyde's boss ST Crawford (Akins) a man twice Claudelle's age who tries to court her, but she rebuffs him, despite her mother's insistence that she should seek out a wealthy man.  The film ends with Claudelle learning the error of her ways too late, after two of her beaus fight, with one killing the other, and Claudelle being murdered by the father of the slain boy...whom she had also slept with just the day before for a free dress.

Claudelle Inglish is not a good movie, even if it's a pretty titillating one.  McBain inhabits Claudelle with a clear movie star beauty (you can see why every guy in town is taken with her), but she's rarely more than pretty in the lead role, and she doesn't entirely know how to understand Claudelle & what's happening to her.  It doesn't help that she's saddled with a sanctimonious script that assumes that the only joy that Claudelle could get out of sex is getting pretty things from boys & trying to scorn Linn (who has no idea what is happening to Claudelle) rather than, you know, enjoying sex.  It's not that this isn't realistic (being a bit sexually adventurous after a breakup is something many have experienced), but we leave having very little understanding of Claudelle & the cruelty she inflicts as the film goes by, and they don't entirely know how to explain why she'll sleep with, say, the shopkeeper whom she has little interest in sexually for a new dress but not ST Crawford.  This lack of consistency is rough, and about the only person who feels like they're genuinely interesting is her mother Jessie, who repeatedly doesn't understand why her daughter won't use her beauty to trap wealth (rather than revenge), which is what she wishes she could do with it.

The film's Oscar nomination is not really earned, even if it's not a bad nomination.  Claudelle's wardrobe shifts dramatically as the film progresses, specifically a gorgeous white trousseau that initially is meant to be a wedding dress but eventually becomes a marker of both Claudelle and Jessie's adultery, as they wear it to entice men.  The rest of the costumes never stack up to this simple, chic gown, and so this nomination is mostly predicated on how drawn you are to this specific garment, which is great, but...one dress shouldn't warrant an Oscar citation.

OVP: Cheyenne Autumn (1964)

Film: Cheyenne Autumn (1964)
Stars: Richard Widmark, Carroll Baker, Karl Malden, Sal Mineo, Dolores Del Rio, Ricardo Montalban, Gilbert Roland, Arthur Kennedy, Patrick Wayne, Elizabeth Allen, John Carradine, James Stewart, Edward G. Robinson
Director: John Ford
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We conclude a week's worth of all-star films from all walks (horror, musicals) with a western, one that expanded 155 minutes and managed to have time for a plethora of stars crawling out of the woodwork (it also, weirdly, has a connection to The Swarm in that both films feature Oscar-winner Ben Johnson, albeit here he is in an uncredited cameo).  Cheyenne Autumn is a bit of a bittersweet picture not just because it's very somber (plot coming in a second), but also because it's the end of the line for a director we have discussed on this blog a lot through the years-John Ford.  While Ford would make one more feature film (1966's 7 Women with Anne Bancroft & Sue Lyon), this was the final western that the director would make, and as a result is something of a sendoff of Ford's own career.  I love John Ford's westerns as a rule (alongside film noir, the western is my favorite Hollywood genre), so this is definitely right up my alley.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is long, and has a lot of plot, including a completely ancillary to the story middle section.  The main story is about a Cheyenne tribe of 300 moving from Oklahoma territory to Wyoming, led by two chiefs (played by Roland & Montalban in the film).  They are being watched & pursued by Captain Thomas Archer (Widmark), who is sympathetic to their plight, and are joined in their journey by a Quaker woman named Deborah (Baker) who is teaching the tribe's children to speak and read English.  Along the way they get into a battle at Fort Robinson, led by the drunk Captain Wessels (Malden, and in a strange twist for a western, alcoholism isn't meant as a sign of endearment here), and attract the attention of Secretary of Interior Carl Schurz (Robinson), who comes and states that the tribe can return to their home, and he'll work with Washington to ensure that promise can be kept (though he pointedly calls it a "gamble" since he knows "promise" is a broken word to the Cheyenne).  The film ends with the Cheyenne tribe returning home...and with Sal Mineo's Red Shirt being killed for sleeping with another man's wife.

If that last sentence seems out-of-place, well, it does a little bit in the movie too.  The film is gorgeous (cinematography was a well-earned nomination, with William Clothier painting Monument Valley in a wash of sandy color, and really these stand up with films like The Quiet Man and The Searchers in terms of beauty from Ford's filmography), but it's incredibly disjointed.  Mineo's character never actually speaks in English (supposedly this is because Ford was worried that Mineo's thick Brooklyn accent would be impossible to overcome), but as a result you see a very famous actor in a dismissible part, and you put the crux of the film on us connecting to a somber final battle between Mineo & Montalban's Little Wolf.  It doesn't work.

That said, a lot of the film doesn't work that well even if it's all pretty.  Widmark is stoic, Baker angelic, and Robinson wry, but they don't add anything of value to the film-it just sort of meanders.  It isn't often I wish a film starred John Wayne, but one wonders if the natural gravitas Ford could pull out of Wayne would have been a better fit for the lead than Widmark.  As it is, there's nothing truly great going on through two-thirds of the film, and you'd be forgiven for skipping this if you're just skimming through Ford's filmography...

...except the sequence with Jimmy Stewart as Wyatt Earp totally makes up for it.  There's no real point to this long sequence-it's not important to the plot at all, and feels more like a short film buried in the picture than anything else, but it's hilarious & completely awesome.  Stewart is at his fumbling best here, playing the sharpshooting Wyatt Earp so well you kind of wonder why this isn't crowed about more by his fans.  There's a scene where he, John Carradine's Jeff Blair, and Arthur Kennedy's Doc Holliday are playing poker while all hell is breaking loose (and Elizabeth Allen's Miss Plantagenet, a lady of the evening, is trying to convince Wyatt Earp they've met before) and you'll cackle.  The whole chase sequence is great, the ending obvious but still terrific delivery.  I haven't seen enough of 1964's Best Supporting Actor contenders to say this with certainty, but I totally would have considered Stewart for an Oscar nomination here, as this is a triumphant extended cameo.

High Sierra (1941)

Film: High Sierra (1941)
Stars: Ida Lupino, Humphrey Bogart, Alan Curtis, Arthur Kennedy, Joan Leslie, Henry Travers, Cornel Wilde
Director: Raoul Walsh
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Ida Lupino-click here to learn more about Ms. Lupino (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

We continue on with our month of Ida Lupino this week with the film that is almost exclusively associated with someone else's legend, even though it's Lupino who earned top billing for the picture.  High Sierra is the final film that Humphrey Bogart ever made where he received less than top billing until his death in 1957, because as hard as it is to believe, at the time Ida Lupino was the bigger star for Warner Brothers.  Her career was on an upswing after They Drive By Night, and the studio wanted to capitalize on that by re-teaming her with George Raft, but Raft turned down this role, which would become one of the bigger mistakes of his career (he would go on to turn down The Maltese Falcon, and if urban legend is to believed, Casablanca, so it's clearly not the biggest mistake of his career).  Instead Raoul Walsh cast Humphrey Bogart in the lead, and though Bogart was resentful of Lupino getting the top spot on the poster (the pair did not like each other, and would never work together again despite two hits in a row), this film cemented him as a leading man in the eyes of audiences, as well as High Sierra's screenwriter John Huston, with whom Bogart would make most of his best pictures.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is a film noir, but one that weirdly doesn't center on the inner city, but instead takes place for long stretches in the outdoors.  Roy Earle (Bogart) is a gangster recently out of jail, is asked to take part in a heist at a luxury hotel, and agrees despite his recent pardon from the governor granting him a new lease on life.  He holes up in the country with three small-time criminals (Kennedy, Curtis, and Wilde), and one of their girlfriends, Marie, who is about as close to a prostitute as 1940's censors would have allowed (she worked at a "dance hall" before the movie).  They also live near a kindly family, the daughter of whom, Velma (Leslie) Roy takes a shine toward despite her clubbed foot.  He pays to have it fixed, but she spurns his advances and so he ends up with Marie, who adores him but he seems largely ambivalent toward even if he eventually finds he loves her.  The crime goes south when someone is shot during the holdup, and two of the three small-timers die in a car accident during the police chase, with the third squealing on Roy & Marie.  The film ends with Roy, on the run, climbing into the Sierra Nevada Mountains but of course because of the Hays Code at the time, he dies in a gunfight, surrounded by a sobbing Marie and an adorable dog named Pard who has been sweet on Roy the whole movie.

The film is engaging if a bit dull for a noir.  It's always hard to tell for a formative movie like High Sierra, which in a lot of ways invented a genre (along with other movies like The Maltese Falcon and Laura)-how do you judge something that was so inventive then but feels dull to modern eyes because so many people have borrowed from it?  But High Sierra has its attributes-the outdoors shots in the actual Sierra Nevada Mountains are breathtaking (there are even shots of the movie near Mt. Whitney, California's highest peak), and the love triangle is actually quite intriguing.  Roy never seems to entirely get over Velma's rejection, clearly picking up Marie as a rebound who ends up being the last love of his life, and while the ending wants them to be the "true soulmates" of the movie, Bogart's performance informs the audience that this isn't the case; either Roy was incapable of ever finding a true love, or his true love had to be someone like Velma, who made him feel like he was better than he was.

Bogart's mesmerizing in the role, and clearly understood the part in a way that Raft probably would have lacked (Bogie, despite his tough guy bravado, was always best playing guys with a rough outer shell but a soft heart).  He'd rarely play criminals after this, but it's a great role to go out on, and he gives the movie's best performance.  This isn't a knock on Lupino (who is only a borderline lead here despite her billing-Bogart gets considerably more screen-time), who is great as a lover who knows she's not his first choice, but Bogart really comes into his own here, and shows the greatness that would eventually lead to him taking on fascinating, complicated work in pictures like Casablanca and Treasure of the Sierra Madre.  Next week we will turn to what might be the most critically-acclaimed work of Lupino's career, and certainly the role for which many (including Warner Brothers) assumed she'd get that Oscar nomination that eluded her her entire career.

OVP: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Film: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Stars: Peter O'Toole, Alec Guinness, Anthony Quinn, Jack Hawkins, Omar Sharif, Jose Ferrer, Anthony Quayle, Arthur Kennedy
Director: David Lean
Oscar History: 10 nods/7 wins (Best Picture*, Director*, Actor-Peter O'Toole, Supporting Actor-Omar Sharif, Adapted Screenplay*, Original Score*, Cinematography*, Art Direction*, Film Editing*, Sound)
(Not So) Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

In college, I majored in Film History, and in order to graduate with honors, I had to do a thesis paper that literally constituted one year of my life focused on the transition period from Classical Hollywood to New Hollywood cinema.  While I saw dozens of films for the project (in fact, that's the reason I started to subscribe to Netflix in the first place), the central thesis of the paper was focused on four movies: The Graduate, Bonnie & Clyde, The Manchurian Candidate and (in particular) Lawrence of Arabia.  I'm not going to get into the why's and how's of what I argued about these films (if you're curious, go into the comments or slip into my Twitter DM's and I'll share), but suffice it to say I know these movies very, very well, and Lawrence has remained a part of my life ever since in large part because I spent a year focusing on every minute detail of the film, because while I compared the 1962 classic to the three other pictures, it was Lawrence that was the guts of my argument.  So engrained is the film into my psyche, that when I made my bucket list at the age of 25, I only included one "see X film on the big screen" as a requisite for the list, and that was the tale of a complicated World War I colonel.  Thanks to TCM, I got to make this dream a reality last Sunday, and while I've written literally 100 pages worth of thoughts on the film, I haven't shared any of them on this blog, so let's get a review out there for posterity, shall we?

(Spoilers Ahead...though seriously-you've never seen Lawrence of Arabia?) The film is 220 minutes long, so trying to summarize it into one paragraph as explanation feels to do it a disservice.  Suffice it to say the film is told in flashback (though it's one extended flashback, so you'd be forgiven for forgetting such a framing device) as we see in the opening moments that a seemingly ordinary man on a morning drive on his motorcycle has been killed, and then suddenly we're at St. Paul's Cathedral, where the man is storied enough to have a bust of him in a place where he literally sits on the ashes of kings.  We learn that Lawrence was a complicated man, as even those who knew him don't really have a way to explain him, and then we are transported into the life of TE Lawrence, as played by a young, beautiful Peter O'Toole.

The film is considered one of the quintessential, undisputed classics of Hollywood cinema for a reason-literally everything works in Lawrence of Arabia, and particularly on the big screen (just an FYI-you can totally see this on Wednesday still in select theaters, and while this isn't a paid plug at all, here's a Fathom Events link if you're interested as I am always willing to shill for a movie this good). The score, sets, cinematography-it's all marvelous.  Freddie Young won one of his three Oscars for lensing this movie, and it shows in the care he brings to the big screen.  The deserts look scorched, blistering in the sun, and he has a remarkable expertise not only with a wide shot, but with the occasional closeup of O'Toole or Omar Sharif's Ali.  The editing is flawless-Anne Coates (who recently died) finds little New Hollywood touches to put into a classic film like Lawrence; look at the way that instead of having an Old Hollywood dissolve between scenes she copies the French New Wave with quick, abrasive cuts between critical scenes, underlining the continued madness of Lawrence, especially in the second half of the film where he's forced to confront his narcissism, latent homosexuality, and bloodlust to varying degrees of failure.  From a sheer craft perspective, the movie rivals pictures like Gone with the Wind and Titanic in getting everything right-few films look as good on all cylinders as Lawrence of Arabia; it's not often that a movie gets ten Oscar nominations and you argue it's too few, but Lawrence gets there (it easily could have gotten an 11th nomination, but if legend is to be believed Phyllis Dalton wasn't submitted by the studio for Costume, and therefore missed out on a certain Oscar).

When an epic is this hot, it's easy to forget the acting, but that would be an insult.  The cast list (all men-Lawrence famously doesn't have any speaking parts for women, who only show up in the occasional crowd scene), reads like a who's who of character actors of the era.  Sharif was the one who won the Oscar nomination for Supporting Actor, and if they were only going to go with one that's probably the right call (Sharif is breathtakingly noble, striking & debonair but never someone who isn't believable as Lawrence's struggling conscience), but you have a smorgasbord of other great turns here.  There's Alec Guinness (in problematic brown face, so the fact that he wasn't cited might be for the best), charming as ever as Prince Faisal, or Anthony Quinn's proud Auda, struggling with modernity.  Even small parts like Jack Hawkins' General Allenby, Jose Ferrer's predatory Turkish Bey, and Claude Rains' glib Mr. Dryden make the film work-this is an epic movie with the casting care of a stage play, every part meticulously fitting to its inhabitant.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the onscreen marvel of Peter O'Toole's Lawrence.  O'Toole is one of the great actors of his generation, but he was never better than in his breakout role.  He instills layers of the character with the mannered walk and sky-blue eyes (you don't need to stretch the imagination to realize that this man was both gay and probably into some kinky shit, as is evidenced by real-life...even though in 1962 showing such a thing would've been impossible onscreen).  There's a madness that sets into his eyes, and a lesser actor wouldn't have been able to use sentences like "I'm extraordinary" without some sort of wink to the audience to show he's in on the joke.  The fact that O'Toole doesn't do that puts this up there with George C. Scott in Patton as a look at what war and death does to a man's sole, and how absolute power can corrupt even the most well-intentioned of leaders.  Lawrence is perfect, but Lawrence himself is a man of great fault, a person who has earned the title of hero, but also of the modern-day reality that comes with such a distinction.

Too Late for Tears (1949)

Film: Too Late for Tears (1949)
Stars: Lizabeth Scott, Don DeFore, Dan Duryea, Arthur Kennedy, Kristine Miller
Director: Byron Haskin
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2019 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different actress of Hollywood's Golden Age.  This month, our focus is on Lizabeth Scott-click here to learn more about Ms. Scott (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

One of my pet issues is film preservation.  We've done several articles in the past talking about lost films and ways that we should try to preserve cinema for future generations (I'm working on another, similar article right now but I'm not going to promise when it'll be done as it's taking an inordinate amount of research to complete, but I promise it'll be cool when I eventually publish it).  So when I get the opportunity to highlight an organization that is doing some of this terrific work, I'm going to take it.  The Film Noir Foundation basically saved Too Late for Tears by creating a properly cinematic version of the original film, rather than some of the bootlegged public domain copies that came under a variety of different titles.  This is incredibly cool, having an organization devoted to bringing the original, pristine forgotten classics back to film-lovers everywhere, and actually they've done it for another film we've featured in our Saturdays with the Stars series, 1950's Woman on the Run with Ann Sheridan.  Not only are these restorations vital to study these actresses from an historical perspective, they're also important for film fans themselves, because like Sheridan in Woman on the Run, Too Late for Tears gives us by-far the best performance from Lizabeth Scott we have had throughout our look at her career in June.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers around Jane (Scott) and Alan (Kennedy) Palmer, a seemingly normal couple on their way to a dinner party Jane is resistant to attend.  While swerving during a fight on the road, a car drives by carrying a brief case full of money, and throws it into the backseat of the Palmers' convertible.  This strange case of fortune causes a quick change in Jane, who sees this as a way for her to get the life she always dreamed of (we learn there's about $60k in the suitcase, which is just over $600k in modern money, so we're talking about a "change our lives forever" sort of situation here).  Alan, though, wants to go to the police, and to make things more confusing, a man (the man whose money it was supposed to be) named Danny (Duryea) shows up, and demands the money from Jane.  We get a second mysterious man soon after who claims to be an old army buddy of Alan's named Don (DeFore), who shows up just after Alan "goes missing" (but we know that Jane accidentally shot him on a boat, and buried him at the bottom of the lake since it's certain that she & Danny would be blamed for the death).

The film continues to unfurl at a breakneck speed.  As we've seen in our profiles not only of the films of Ms. Scott this month, but also our film noir classics, the genre is good at throwing out loads of plot, frequently to distract the viewer from occasionally questionable acting decisions & thin budgets.  This isn't needed in Too Late for Tears, though, as it's very watchable and doesn't have a weak link in the cast list.  I loved the many clever choices with the plot, frequently throwing out twist-after-twist-after-twist which all make sense (Don being the former brother-in-law to Jane through her first husband probably felt a little bit much that late in the picture, but it was a good explanation as to why he so instantly hated her).  The biggest thing holding back the movie may have been the Hays Code-considering how much she sacrificed to get there, Jane almost certainly would have gotten to keep the money in a neo-noir, rather than plummeting to her death, a clenched fist of bloody bills her bon voyage (because it's also the 1940's, we get to see Scott looking radiant even though she just collapsed onto cement from a penthouse window).

Scott has never been better (and I've seen all of our films for her this month, so while I liked next week's movie, she's nowhere near as good as this).  This is almost certainly what Hal Wallis saw she was capable of when he forced her into stardom, and probably why select pockets of Film Twitter have been obsessed with her in the years since.  Her Jane is craven, beautiful, dangerous, and somehow still girlish.  This has been called one of the "quintessential" femme fatales, and it works best because Scott is so hard-to-read until the last moments of the film.  You can't quite tell how often she's just shocked that she's this evil or whether she just keeps getting pulled down further through a combination of greed and bad luck.  Either way, it's a marvelous performance, ruthless & unique; Joan Crawford was the original choice to play this part, but while Crawford is the superior actress of the two, it's impossible to think of her improving upon Scott's Jane Palmer, and in fact her hardened edge would have stolen some of the twists that would eventually come from the character.  Whereas other femme fatales need to make their characters' folly be love of a man or "imperfection in the eyes of her lover" sealing her doom, Scott's Jane Palmer is brought down simply by greed, a lust for what's just out-of-reach.

OVP: Some Came Running (1958)

Film: Some Came Running (1958)
Stars: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Shirley MacLaine, Martha Hyer, Arthur Kennedy, Nancy Gates
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Oscar History: 5 nominations (Best Actress-Shirley MacLaine, Supporting Actor-Arthur Kennedy, Supporting Actress-Martha Hyer, Costume, Original Song-"To Love and Be Loved")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Frank Sinatra has never been my cinematic cup-of-tea, I'm going to admit that right now.  His music-flawless, divine, something we should all listen to at least a few times in our lives as we drive home from a long journey, wondering what's next in store for our souls.  But his acting-ehhh.  I remember going into From Here to Eternity thinking of how I would stack him up against Brandon de Wilde and Eddie Albert, and then afterwards thinking the contest would be between the latter two (I still haven't seen Stalag 17, so don't worry Robert Strauss, you'll get your day in the sun).  As a result, the idea of seeing yet another James Jones adaptation starring the Chairman of the Board wasn't what I considered a great time investment, but five Oscar nominations can't be ignored and so I dove in, as a result getting one of the better performances I've seen from Sinatra to date (though I will admit I still find him dull onscreen, even if I see where the talent might have been for this craft), only to watch him be completely upstaged by a magnificent Shirley MacLaine.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about a former writer Dave (Sinatra), acclaimed but under-appreciated, returning to his home after a long adulthood of booze, war, and disappointment.  In town he visits his estranged brother Frank (Kennedy) who is constantly trying to make him a better man to help his own reputation, and a gambler named Bama Dillert (Martin), who is suffering from diabetes (though we don't find that out until later) and lives life sort of on the sly, never really committing to anyone except himself and occasionally a girl.  Frank is followed into town by Ginny (MacLaine) a lovable but nitwitted young woman that is on the rougher side of life and seems to be perceived as a "floozy."  Ginny loves Dave, but Dave is heartless and dismissive of her.  Frank introduces Dave to a more refined single friend of his named Gwen (Hyer) who seems to have feelings for him, but on a different level than Ginny and wants to get him writing again.  The story is set in place as a result of this.

The movie has a few highs and a lot of lows, in my opinion.  The original novel by James Jones was lampooned, particularly for its consistent spelling errors (done on purpose to show the provincial nature of Dave's hometown), and while this clearly isn't an issue in the story, we're left with a pretty dry series of acts.  The movie moves too quickly, despite its long-length, and may have bitten off more than it could handle in terms of plot, as we have too many moments that we're just assuming things.  This gets particularly cumbersome and occasionally laughable during the moments between Dave and Gwen, as Dave tells her he's in love with her so soon it feels like we're pulled out of the movie.  I know that 1950's movies did things like this (I watch a lot of them), but it's jarring for this film because we've really had no soft moments beforehand that insinuated that Dave should love Gwen.  It also makes Dave seem insanely shallow, because the only reasons to like Gwen at this point are that she's beautiful and that she loves Dave's writing.  His attraction to her is entirely shallow and narcissistic, resulting in Dave being less a misunderstood writer and more of just a jerk.  As I pointed out above, this is still some of the better acting I have seen from Sinatra, but his character itself is almost unbearable in the way that he treats women, his family, and his life.

The rest of the acting still falls behind him.  Martin is fine, and may even have gotten plaudits but that's only because he doesn't sink when he tackles drama after so many years as Jerry Lewis' other half.  The supporting roles were both nominated for Oscars, but I didn't really feel either of them.  Arthur Kennedy, he of the perpetual Oscar nominations (he was the Amy Adams of his day, gaining four supporting nods and one lead citation without a win), definitely has a plum role (a social-climbing, adultering "man of morality"), but he doesn't really elevate the role.  This is the second of his nominations that I've seen and so far I haven't been wildly impressed; it seems more like he had a really good agent who landed him "nominatable" roles more than anything else.  Hyer isn't much better-she gets one really great scene with MacLaine late in the movie where they have a bit of an odd showdown over Dave, but she has zilch chemistry with Sinatra and as he's in all but one of her scenes, she gets a plum role (aging spinster, more enchanted by books than men (clutch the pearls!)), but does almost nothing with it.  She's an ice queen that thaws but no one seems to notice.

As a result the film is almost unsalvageable (its other two nominations, for Original Song and Costume, are both a snore-the former you honestly don't even realize is happening in the movie as it's relegated to background music and the latter is quite fine, but only because they're constantly putting MacLaine in flouncy flapper-style dresses and is more of a filler nomination for costuming icon Walter Plunkett), save for one saving grace: Shirley MacLaine.  MacLaine, a personal favorite of mine, is an actress that constantly is under-appreciated despite near universal critical acclaim-for some reason she gets forgotten when you list some of the great actors of her generation until someone reminds you and says, "oh, right, of course Shirley MacLaine."  Her Ginny is incredible.  Absent from good chunks of the movie (in today's category-fraud style days, she surely would have been marketed in supporting), she breathes new life into every scene and totally steals the movie.  I love the way that she is so honest and authentic onscreen-frequently sharing too many of her dreams with Dave in the perfect ying to Gwen's yang of sharing nothing.  Ginny is aware she's Dave's second choice, but loves him so much that it doesn't matter.  MacLaine shows a fully-fledged woman, one who clearly existed before the movie (these sorts of roles rarely are grounded in reality), but who has been lost for most of her time on the planet after a string of bad boyfriends.  MacLaine credited Sinatra with her Oscar nod, principally because he pushed for her, and not he, to die at the end of the film, but I think that's hogwash.  We were ready to nominate MacLaine long before she took that bullet.  That being said, the final scene is easily the coolest of the movie, with an extended long-shot and a great use of Cinemascope (Martin Scorsese later claimed to be very influenced by this sequence).  It's a weird juxtaposition to the traditional filmmaking used by Minnelli in the rest of the film, and feels like if the opening of Touch of Evil had been followed by a random 50's issues drama.

So in that regard, the film is a smashing triumph, though in most other ways it's kind of a snooze.  MacLaine had a weird list of fellow nominees in 1958, with Deborah Kerr, Rosalind Russell, and Susan Hayward getting late-in-their-career nominations (the latter two their final nods) while Elizabeth Taylor, at the peak of her fame, played one of her most iconic roles that still takes second place to Paul Newman.  Someday we'll get to this lineup (when?-it could be a while), but I'm curious what you guys are thinking, as of the three I've seen I have liked all of them (I'm still missing Kerr and the victorious Hayward).  If you've seen any, share your thoughts in the comments.  And by all means, weigh in on Some Came Running and its cavalcade of stars/nominations.

OVP: The Window (1949)

Film: The Window (1949)
Stars: Barbara Hale, Arthur Kennedy, Paul Stewart, Ruth Roman, Bobby Driscoll

Director: Ted Tetzlaff

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Editing)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

There are occasionally films from the 1930's and 1940's that remind you that television didn't exist at the time.  Primarily, these are films like Andy Hardy or the Bowery Boys which would have almost certainly been a television series had that been an option at the time, rather than having 3-4 films coming out each year within the respective series.  The Window, on the other hand, is in the frame of the after school special, a cautionary tale that were it not for the pedigreed cast and impressive camerawork, would have been forgotten just as quickly as those afternoon movies.

The film stars young Tommy (Driscoll), who has a penchant for telling falsehoods while living in the tenament section of the Lower East Side and is constantly causing his parents (Hale and Kennedy) trouble, and almost gets them evicted in the film's opening scenes.  Like the boy who cried wolf, Tommy soons finds the need for people to believe him when he witnesses a couple (Roman and Stewart) commit a murder.  Tommy tries to convince his parents that the couple have committed the murder, and then tries to tell the police, but for nearly the entire film, no one believes him, except the culprits, who are told about Tommy's witnessing their deed, and then try to kill him.

(Spoilers ahead) The film gets a little ridiculous at this point, as Tommy consistently alludes what appears to be professional criminals, despite showing little intelligence earlier in the film, and we get to see daring scenes, including Tommy nearly dying in a collapsing building.  Since it's the 1940's, you know that Tommy will eventually convince his parents of the truth and the murderers are going to be caught, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't try and make it a little more unpredictable and less "convenient" (there's a scene where Tommy sees his father while being chased by Stewart's character, and waits until after his father gets into a cab to call out his name, defeating the purpose and giving away his location in one full swoop).

Most of what will sell this film for you is whether you buy into Driscoll's performance or not.  Barbara Hale (yes, Della Street herself) and 5-time Oscar nominee Arthur Kennedy are clearly fine actors, but they get one-note characters and don't take much time to stretch their acting muscles, and quite frankly, don't get enough screentime to save the film if you don't care for Driscoll's work, which I'll admit I don't.  Driscoll won the Juvenile Oscar that year, in part for his performance here (for the sake of the OVP, I will only be counting a Juvenile Oscar win amongst the Oscar-winning films if the film itself was specifically cited, like The Search or Pollyanna, but I will point out if a performer won the Oscar if the film received another citation from the Academy), but I am not a fan.  His performance is sometimes very naturalistic, but at other times he's clearly aware that he's being filmed, and I'm going to (fairly or unfairly) attribute his more naturalistic moments to Tatzlaff, rather than Driscoll himself.  Driscoll, a huge star as a child, would go on to have an extremely difficult life, eventually becoming homeless, a drug addict, and went to jail before his death at age 31 (he was also briefly a part of the Andy Warhol circle in the late 1960's).

The film received its only Oscar nomination for its best attribute, its editing.  The film is able to maintain much of its suspense through its pacing, knowing just when to keep the focus on one character long enough for us to worry about what is going on offscreen as we see it onscreen.  I specifically remember one scene where Stewart, having realized that Tommy has not in fact left the apartment (he had written a note stating that he is a running away), but is locked into his bedroom and trying to escape.  The camera sheepishly watches Tommy trying to grab the key, unaware that Stewart is on the other side of the door, ready to attack once he gets out.  Most editors would have intercut with both characters, but Frederic Knudtson (who received his first of six nominations for this film) smartly focuses on the sly Stewart, letting Tommy struggle to find the key before he finally puts it in his reach.  It's a smart way of telling just how dasterdly the villain is, and it gives genuine suspense to a seemingly meaningless scene.

And what about you-have you seen The Window?  Do you think that Driscoll's performance was worthy of the Academy Award (and what do you think about his brief filmography)?  And what other film staples of the pre-television era do you wish would make a comeback?