Secret Beyond the Door (1947)

Film: Secret Beyond the Door (1947)

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

Director: Fritz Lang

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Reckless Moment (1949)

Film: The Reckless Moment (1949)

Stars: James Mason, Joan Bennett, Geraldine Brooks, Henry O'Neil, Shepperd Strudwick

Director: Max Opuls

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

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

One of my favorite actresses to talk about on this blog when it comes to film noir is Joan Bennett, who has been a regular feature in this series since its inception.  Bennett, one of the famed acting Bennett sisters, is a strange actress because her career is sorted into three chapters.  The first, when she was a blonde & in the shadow of her older sister Constance.  In the third, she took on matronly roles in movies like Father of the Bride (and in her most famous role, Elizabeth Collins Stoddard in the TV soap opera Dark Shadows).  But it's the second phase that's the most interesting.  Bennett, more than almost any actress save for Lizabeth Scott, was known exclusively during the height of her fame for the film noir genre specifically.  Throughout the 1940's and into the 1950's, she made eight film noirs, most of them classics of the genre, including the prototypical The Woman in the Window (links for a review of that, as well as a number of other Bennett films, at the bottom of the article).  Today we're going to to with a movie of Bennett's that was initially dismissed by audiences, but since has been rescued by critics.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie focuses on Lucia Harper (Bennett) a conventional suburban housewife disturbed that her 17-year-old daughter is seeing a man named Darby (Strudwick) who is 13 years her senior.  Lucia initially plans on bribing Darby to stop seeing her daughter, but when he's clearly willing to take the bribe, she assumes this will be a way to get her daughter to stop seeing him.  However, when her daughter Bea (Brooks) goes to confront Darby, she attacks him, and while she doesn't realize this, eventually we see that, in a daze from her striking him on the head, he falls off of a balcony and dies, essentially causing Bea to be guilty of manslaughter.  Lucia wants to keep her daughter safe, but there's a catch-two men have the love letters that Bea sent to Darby, one of them being Martin Donnelly (Mason), who is blackmailing her to keep Bea's name out of the paper (and out of the police's clutches).  This sets off a desperate dance between Lucia and the blackmailers, with one of them (Martin) slowly falling in love with her in the process.

If some of this sounds familiar, it's because this is not the only big-screen adaptation of this story, called "The Blank Wall" by Elisabeth Sanxay Holding.  This was made in 2001 with Tilda Swinton & Josh Lucas in a movie called The Deep End, and in that movie it's Swinton's son who is being seduced by Lucas's Darby (and in a memorable scene, it's clear that they are doing more than just necking).  It's fascinating because this movie honestly plays Darby a little bit queer-coded too, so the Lucas interpretation might make more sense than the original by Ophuls.

In terms of this being a rediscovered classic, it's definitely good, but I don't know that it's great.  Bennett is a bit too matronly for my taste (I like it when she's got more fatale in her film noir leading ladies), and Mason is weirdly out-of-step with the character (not just the accent work, but also it's not totally clear why he has fallen in love with Lucia other than her beauty).  The direction is the best part.  Max Ophuls had just made the film masterpiece Letter from an Unknown Woman a year before, and is very good at having multiple actions onscreen at once with his direction, making sure there's little exposition, which is hard in a plot-heavy film.

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

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

Neo-Noir: Blade Runner, Body Heat, Farewell My Lovely, Fargo, From Afar, The Long Goodbye, Night Moves, Nightcrawler

The Woman on the Beach (1947)

Film: The Woman on the Beach (1947)

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

Director: Jean Renoir

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scarlet Street (1945)

Film: Scarlet Street (1945)

Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Dan Duryea, Margaret Lindsay, Rosalind Ivan

Director: Fritz Lang

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

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

Robinson, Bennett, Duryea, & Lang...four names that are quintessential if you're talking about 1940's film noir, not just because they were all in the foundational work The Woman in the Window (one of the most important noirs of 1944), but also because they'd all make a number of film noirs throughout the decade (both Bennett & Duryea will be back later this month for another one of their noirs).  Despite the success of The Woman in the Window, lead actors Bennett & Robinson would only make one more picture together a year after that film's success, Scarlet Street.  You could make a legitimate argument that of all of the films that we're going to profile this month for our film noir features, this is the most famous one that I still hadn't seen.  Generally considered one of the best examples of the form, it proved that not only could Robinson & Bennett strike lightning twice, but also that the second time around, they would be able to pull off an ending worthy of the work they'd just done.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is about Chris Cross (Robinson), a cashier for a clothing retailer who has a pretty miserable life.  His wife Adele (Ivan) hates him, wishing he was her first husband (who has died), while he works a life that's pointless-the only joy he gets out of life is his amateur painting.  Enter Kitty March (Bennett), a gorgeous brunette whom he chances upon after stopping a man (who turns out to be her boyfriend Johnny, played by Duryea) from robbing her in the streets.  Despite a one-sided attraction (Kitty only loves Johnny), they become friends, with Chris robbing from his employer to give Kitty the money that she needs.  Kitty is convinced that Chris is getting the money from his successful paintings, but it turns out that this is just a hobby, a misunderstanding that Johnny clears up...except then an art critic realizes the paintings are good, and wants to sell them.  Johnny decides to say that Kitty made the paintings, cutting Chris out of the deal, and Chris is so happy that he's being appreciated (and that it makes Kitty the money she desires), that he is fine with her taking the credit (and the money).  When Adele's first husband shows up, though, invalidating Chris's marriage, he goes to Kitty, and after she laughs at him for thinking she'd find him attractive, he murders her.  Johnny, though, takes the fall, and in a bit of a twist for 1945, is executed for the murder.  Chris doesn't get away freely, though.  He attempts later to kill himself (unsuccessfully) and to claim credit for the murder (unsuccessfully).  He ends up destitute & homeless, all the while his paintings are making a fortune under the assumption that the beautiful, dead Kitty painted them.

The film, like the best noir, is nasty & a bit vicious.  The treatment of Chris, who is a good guy if a bit of a wimp, is heartbreaking-he's stuck in a loveless marriage to a woman who idolizes a brutish other man...and is in love with a woman who is doing the same.  He is a case of a guy who picks the wrong girls, and I was intrigued that he didn't get the chair in the end because it feels much worse that he is constantly haunted by that cruelty.  Film noir is best when it lays bare the harshness of the human experience, and you get that here-Kitty doesn't get off scot-free, but she does get away with her con & spends eternity with Johnny while Chris wanders the streets alone...that's not exactly getting your comeuppance.

The film's writing and acting set it apart, as does the ravishing production design.  Robinson, one of the best actors of his era, is vulnerable & heartbreaking as Chris, the man who just wants to be loved.  Bennett is equally good as Kitty.  Gone are some of the other roles she'd be famous for, where her femme fatale was more exposed than dangerous, and she nails the part of this viper with aplomb.  Duryea, as well, is superb.  I love the way that you genuinely don't think Johnny loves Kitty...that there's a weird mirror effect where, like Chris, Kitty is in love with a man that will never love her.  I wish they'd given maybe one more scene to underscore this, but it's there in plain writing (I also would've loved one more moment with Adele, either for Chris's good or bad).  All-in-all, this is a terrific movie, and one of my favorites we'll profile this month.

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

Madame X (1966)

Film: Madame X (1966)
Stars: Lana Turner, John Forsythe, Ricardo Montalban, Burgess Meredith, Constance Bennet, Keir Dullea
Director: David Lowell Rich
Oscar History: No nominations
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 Lana Turner-click here to learn more about Ms. Turner (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Most discussions of the career of Lana Turner end where we left it last week, with the three-part punch of Peyton Place (and her sole Oscar nomination), the trial of her daughter Cheryl Crane for the death of Johnny Stompanato, and then her seismic return-to-glory with the blockbuster Imitation of Life.  But Turner lived for over thirty years after Imitation of Life, and a lot of that time she was acting, albeit in smaller and less-memorable roles.  So we're going to end our discussion of her career not in 1959, but instead in the 1960's, with Turner's last starring role in a major Hollywood production, Madame X.  By this time, Turner was in her mid-forties, still gloriously beautiful but clearly a woman whose hard life (and smoking & drinking) had started to wear on her once porcelain demeanor.  She'd picked up two more husbands since Imitation of Life, and her daughter Cheryl was no longer living with her.  She'd had several hits, none as big as Imitation of Life, but she was hardly hurting for work, when Ross Hunter came along and brought her this script.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film unfolds in three acts.  The first is a romance between Holly Parker (Turner), a woman who has recently married Clay Anderson (Forsyth), the crown jewel of a very 'old school money' American family, managed by her disapproving mother-in-law Estelle (Bennett, in her final screen role-she'd die of a brain hemorrhage before this movie was released).  As Clay is constantly away, Holly becomes involved with a local playboy (Montalban), whose death she inadvertently causes when she pushes him in self-defense after she wants to end the affair.  Estelle finds out, and blackmails her daughter-in-law into faking her own death in exchange for covering up the "crime."  Holly does this, moves to Europe, and essentially becomes a wonton woman (there's strong insinuations that she's making money as a prostitute, though it's never fully confirmed), and is` blackmailed by a local drunk Dan Sullivan (Meredith) when he finds out her real identity.  In a twist-of-fate you'd only find in a movie, her attorney ends up being the son she left behind, now played by Keir Dullea, who begins to love this woman not realizing she's his mother.  She dies before the verdict is known to the audience, but not before her husband realizes who she is (she has gone in the press simply as "Madame X," hence the title), not telling his son that he has just tried to save the life of his own mother.

Madame X is kind of a bizarre crossroads of two major trends, one of the 1960's and another of the 1980's.  In the 1960's, the concept of the Grand Dame Guignol films were all the rage, with former beauty queens like Joan Crawford & Bette Davis forced to debase themselves in less glamorous roles, essentially showing that they had in fact aged, and the public could look at them and gawk that youth doesn't last forever.  This certainly happens in Madame X.  Initially it feels like Turner isn't willing to show that she's in fact in her mid-40's, but as the film progresses, vanity goes aside as we see caked on makeup being used to show the passage of time, aging not only in the way she does her hair, but instead by having the gaul to exhibit crow's feet.

This might confuse Madame X with some other films of the era like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, with Elizabeth Taylor throwing her vanity to the wind, but Madame X is not Virginia Woolf.  This is a pretty heavy melodrama with little to advise it other than if you love voyeuristically looking into the world of the rich-and-damned and a particular type of intense scenery-chewing (this is a genre that's a guilty pleasure for me, hence why it's getting a 3-star rating when it easily could be lower).  Turner is so good at this sort of thing though.  This isn't great acting, but man is it great star-performing.  She sinks into her Holly, and all of the nasty turns her life takes, with aplomb.  Few actresses of her generation would have taken on such a role, their vanity potentially being at stake, but Turner had already had her dirty laundry aired so fervently in real life, what could a fictionalized character do to her legacy?

In a lot of ways, this film is a fore-bearer to the nighttime soap operas of the 1980's, when screen stars of Turner's era such as Barbara bel Geddes and Joan Collins would be forced into continually ridiculous dialogue & chicanery, albeit with the backdrop of obscene wealth & glamour.  Turner would be a part of this world, in fact.  After Madame X, Turner never made a movie of this sort of pedigree again, working in lesser-and-lesser films from smaller studios, trying (and struggling) to establish herself in TV and theater in a way that would be comparable to her time in movies.  The closest she came was a brief stint on Falcon Crest where she went to toe-to-toe with Jane Wyman.  Turner died of throat cancer at the age of 74, with her daughter Cheryl by her side.  She had a hard life, but it was at least a relatively full one.  Next month, we're going to talk about a different Hollywood sex symbol whose life was comparatively brief, but whose death made her immortal.

OVP: The Woman in the Window (1944)

Film: The Woman in the Window (1944)
Stars: Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett, Raymond Massey, Dan Duryea
Director: Fritz Lang
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Score)...for the 1945 Oscars, so we're using that tag below since tags follow the OVP, even though the film was released in November 1944.
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Throughout the Month of June, as a birthday present to myself, we'll be profiling 15 famous film noir movies I've never seen (my favorite film genre).  Look at the bottom of this review for some of the other movies we've profiled.

You're going to see a lot of classic (or below-the-line) classic movies with our month-long tribute to film noir, but you might wonder why I started with this particular picture, and I wish I had a better counter to make than "it was first chronologically"...but I don't.  I saw this one first because I couldn't find a more binding theme without getting into the twists and turns of noir, one of the few Classic Hollywood genres that genuinely has surprises in the plot formula.  After watching The Woman in the Window (no relation to the novel by AJ Finn which is being made into a movie with Amy Adams & Gary Oldman later this year), though, I think it's the perfect film to kick off our tribute to noir.  Sneaky, beautifully-acted, and with enough twists to both comment on the brilliance of film noir (and point out the clearest flaw of the genre), The Woman in the Window is pretty much everything I love about the genre wrapped into one 99-minute package.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie centers on a married psychology professor Richard Wanley (Robinson) whose wife and family are out-of-town and he's being egged on by a few coworkers to make the most of his temporary bachelorhood by pursuing a woman while he's alone.  He demurs, saying his randy days are over, but soon meets the subject of a beautiful painting that he's walked by earlier in the film, Alice Reed (Bennett), who invites him back to her place for "drinks."  The movie then takes a sharp turn as Alice's lover finds them, and tries to murder Wanley in a jealous rage, when Alice kills the lover to save Wanley's life.  However, it's obvious at this point that no one would believe that they didn't kill the man, so he attempts to cover up the crime by driving the man to the middle of nowhere, dumping the body, and hoping to ensure that they get away with it.  This doesn't work out, and Wanley gets a firsthand account of what he did wrong as he's invited by a mutual friend to watch DA Lalor (Massey) track down the killer, not knowing that it's Wanley himself who committed the crime.  There's a great subplot involving Dan Duryea playing a blackmailer who also makes some cheap passes at Alice (even though she's trying to poison him) before we get to the movie's controversial ending.

1944 was essentially the beginning of film noir as a mainstream Hollywood entity.  While it had certainly been prevalent in previous years with movies like The Maltese Falcon and The Glass Key, 1944 brought about what would be four staples of the genre: Double Indemnity, Laura, Murder My Sweet, and of course The Woman in the Window.  Most of what we see here is classic, standard-fare film noir tropes, with a beautiful woman (Bennett) bringing an honorable man (Robinson) down while the law (Massey) is watching.  The movie rises above just being a prototype, though, with bravura work from all involved.  Robinson was such a good actor (truly one of the best performers never cited for an Oscar), and has great rapport with Bennett despite not having the traditional leading man good looks of a Dana Andrews or Tyrone Power.  I liked Bennett (though I've always been a bit more partial to her sister Constance), and thought Dan Duryea was fabulous as the blackmailing Heidt, giving us all of the nasty villainy that we're lacking from the seemingly "good people" played by Bennett & Robinson.  The movie won one Oscar nomination, for Best Score, and it definitely deserved it-Hugo Friedhofer creates an atmospheric, moody piece that totally matches the desperation of the main characters and plot.

The problem with the film is the ending, and it's why we're going with 4 stars rather than 5 here, as it would have assuredly gotten to five with a better finale.  The film likely was precluded by the censors from ending with Eddie Robinson, having just moments earlier gotten away with the murder (thanks to a series of circumstances outside his control, the cops had come to believe it was Duryea's Heidt, not Wanley or Alice, who had killed the lover), killing himself after going down his slow march to hell, a desperate Joan Bennett running to try and stop him.  However, we instead got a hackneyed dream sequence (which was probably not all that hackneyed in 1944, but still feels cheap) where we learn all of the preceding events had been an illusion, and we get a comic piece at the end with Robinson seeing another beautiful woman in front of a shop window who wants a light, and him running in fear from her for fear that the dream will become reality.  I don't like "it was all a dream" sort of plot laziness, but there's too much good here to say that the movie is ruined by its ending.  However, the finale stops it from being the true masterpiece it probably should have been.

Other Articles: Intro to Film Noir Month

OVP: What Price Hollywood? (1932)

Film: What Price Hollywood? (1932)
Stars: Constance Bennett, Lowell Sherman, Neil Hamilton, Gregory Ratoff, Louise Beavers
Director: George Cukor
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

My brother has pointed out to me on several occasions that when I'm reviewing older movies for the OVP, ones that I have not seen before but are random nominees for Screenplay or Costume or something (the one-and-done sort of nominees), I end up with the inevitable 2-star ranking.  This seems to be true, I will have to admit.  While I love old movies, I have seen most of what are deemed the "classics" and while I'm usually just as hard on new releases, I tend to have to separate myself quite a bit from old-timey sexism or attitudes toward women and minorities (and I'll fully admit that I can only stretch too far before I break, as evidenced here).  That being said, when an old film doesn't feel the need to infuse too much sexism, but instead style and panache and glamour and put it all under a microscope, I am fully able to give a strong review, which is exactly what happened to me when I saw the forgotten classic What Price Hollywood? a film that I'd never heard of before I saw it pop up on TCM and one that I'm absolutely giddy about having viewed.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie tells the tale of Mary Evans (Bennett), who is a down-on-her-luck waitress who desperately wants to be a star in the motion picture industry.  Mary is one of those wisecracking waitresses that exist only in TV sitcom reruns today (the kind that used to be played by Eve Arden or Linda Lavin), but she's a joy to be around, and this is something that director Max Carey (Sherman) realizes after drunkenly hiring her to be in a small role in his next picture.  Like all waitresses discovered in movies, she ends up being a big star, a huge headliner who falls in love with a playboy named Lonny (Hamilton, and yes that's the same Neil Hamilton who played Commissioner Gordon in the Batman TV series), and eventually meets her downfall.

But interestingly enough, it's not because she gets pregnant or ends up pining over her beau, but because she's too loyal of a friend.  Max is a director who is devoted to the bottle and despite the insisting of both Lonny and her producer friend Julius (Gregory Ratoff, who also memorably played a producer in All About Eve) she stands by him, insisting that she be loyal to the man who discovered her despite her husband leaving her as a result of it.  When Max, who clearly has depression along with his alcoholism, ends up shooting himself after realizing his life will have no saving, Mary is blamed in the scandal and watches her career erupt in flames.  She flees the country when she thinks Lonny is after her baby, but in true Hollywood fashion, she gets a ludicrously sweet ending with Lonny chasing after her and her son and they all get a happily ever after.

The ending aside, though, this is a really fantastic picture, and even the ending has its charms (I LOVED that it was just as important that she not only got her husband, but a career comeback was in the works as well-Mary values her career just as much as her romantic life, and I admired that so much for an era that never did something like that-even the Star is Born pictures, which are clearly borrowing from this movie, didn't have the guts for that).  There are so many little nuances of Hollywood and its ugly side, particularly toward women that made me really fascinated by its aptness so many decades ago.  George Cukor (famous for his "women's pictures") is a fine director, but it's surprising that so early in his career he was able to make a movie where the female protagonist chooses her friends and career over a husband and isn't punished for it.  So frequently, even with great films, the women have to show no other devotion before the man comes into the picture, but she seems nonplussed by her husband being called Mr. Mary Evans and seems to actually enjoy her success, not just doing it until she has a man.

Feminism is refreshing, but it doesn't make this a terrific movie.  What does is a script that moves briskly, finds frequent heart and humor and truth (look at the way that Mary is thrown under the bus for a scandal where she was the good guy), and that shows the shallowness and the marketing involved with Hollywood (how they use Mary to shape a narrative).  The film is also elevated by Constance Bennett's excellent work as Mary Evans.  There's a truly wonderful scene (the best scene in the picture) where Mary, after botching a seemingly easy role, goes home and practices for hours and hours.  In most performances we'd get to the point where she is able to do the role well.  Bennett, on the other hand, makes the performance not only be good, but also shows how difficult being a star is by being outstanding, better than what we'd even have expected.  It's a sly trick to show how much her vigor and timing are bringing to the role and for the rest of the film, unlike some other pictures, we're fully aware of why the country is captivated by Mary Evans-she has the sharpness and excellence of one of the Talkies first big stars.

All-in-all, while I wish the ending wasn't quite so pat, the rest of the film is just aces so I'm doing something I rarely do and give this a five-star review (I was debating between four and five, but it's Friday and I'm going to be generous-Bennett would surely get five stars and possibly my Oscar were she nominated, which she tragically wasn't).  What are your thoughts-do you ever find yourself perplexed by how good a random movie that you've never heard of was?  Do you, like me, have a serious talent crush on Constance Bennett?  And of course, where does What Price Hollywood? rank next to the screenplays of Lady and Gent, The Star Witness, and the victoriously-named The Champ (which won, of course)?  Sound off in the comments!

OVP: Topper (1937)

Film: Topper (1937)
Stars: Constance Bennett, Cary Grant, Roland Young, Billie Burke
Director: Norman Z. McLeod
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Roland Young and Best Sound Recording)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

They don't make 'em like they used to do.  That's such a bizarre cliche, mostly because you frequently don't want them making them like they used to do.  In a lot of ways films have shifted to reflect modern tastes, and someone like, say, Susan Hayward wouldn't really be in place in today's modern dramas-she'd come across as too histrionic.  However, when it comes to screwball comedies, then yes, they don't make them like they used to, mostly because they don't really make them at all.  The screwball comedies, films like The Awful Truth and The Thin Man and Bringing Up Baby-they sort of exist in the past like Impressionist paintings and Baroque music.  Luckily for me, Turner Classic Movies still runs them and so I caught the charmingly daffy Topper this past week.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film stars Cary Grant and Constance Bennett as George and Marion, two Manhattan society types with a great idea for fun but not much of an idea for responsibility.  They're regularly galavanting around town, trying to find a good time, but oftentimes not taking any personal responsibility for themselves and driving cars like mad men.  They have an old friend named Cosmo Topper (played by Roland Young, and frenemy may be a better word at the beginning of the picture) who is the exact opposite-Topper is predictable and very responsible, but he receives no joy from life, and neither does his social-climbing wife Clara (Billie Burke, and yes that is Glinda the Good Witch), who spends most of her time berating Topper.

You can kind of see where this is going, with both sides needing to find an equilibrium with the other, but there's a twist-George and Marion die about a third of the way through the movie.  I knew this was coming, but otherwise would have found this a bit shocking.  Being that this is a screwball comedy, it doesn't phase them in the slightest, however, but they do realize that in order to get to heaven they probably need to do something worthwhile with their lives, and as a result they decide to help Topper to get a little bit more joy out of life and to stand up to his wife.  In the end, after a series of madcap adventures, Topper in fact does this, and the couple are granted access to heaven.

The plot of this film is probably why it couldn't work today.  Modern audiences would view George and Marion as being completely callous and dangerous with their driving, rather than an utter delight, and while a berated Topper is believable, he's hardly what you'd call a character that works as a leading man (though I can't help but cast Eddie Redmayne, Emma Stone, and Richard Jenkins for these parts in my head).  Still, that doesn't mean the film isn't totally worthwhile, because it most definitely is.  The chemistry between the two leads is absolutely wonderful.  This was the first major comedy hit that Grant had that wasn't opposite Mae West (random fact that I am guessing most don't know: Cary Grant's career actually started with Blonde Venus opposite Marlene Dietrich and a pair of major hits opposite Mae West, but he didn't become a headliner in the way he is remembered today until 1937), and it's worth noting this is probably one of the last films he would make as a leading man where he didn't get top billing (that went to the more famous-at-the-time Bennett).  It's also worth noting that during the late 30's/early 40's that Grant was incredibly smart with both his scripts and his leading ladies.  Constance Bennett is utterly charming, though largely unknown today, and has wonderfully wry chemistry with both Grant and Young.  Grant would follow up this film with performances opposite Irene Dunne, Katharine Hepburn, and Rosalind Russell, showing that his agent clearly knew what he was doing.

The film received two Oscar nominations, one for Roland Young as the title character and another for Best Sound.  Young is okay most of the time, and occasionally even fun (though in my opinion Bennett and Grant always steal the show), though I'd question a bit his supporting role.  He's not only the title character, but he seems to have more screen-time than either Grant or Bennett despite what the billing may indicate, and it seems like he got this nomination more out of the way that Hollywood operated in those days (either you were a star or a character actor).  I would have liked to have seen a little bit more either slapstick sensibility from him or appreciation for his new self as the film went on, as that would have gotten me a bit higher on the performance.  The sound nomination is surely for the effects that happen throughout the film, where Bennett and Grant are frequently speaking in a voiceover (which would have been a less common effect then than it is now), and I suppose that's impressive, though the rest of the film never really seems special in that regard and it seems weird to call it one of the year's best for a trick.

Overall though, this was a comedy delight even if it's never quite as good as Bringing Up Baby or The Philadelphia Story.  For those who have seen it-what are your thoughts?  Do you like the first film better, or are you partial to one of the sequels?  Do you think that Roland Young deserved his Oscar nomination, and perhaps even a win?  And what are your thoughts on Cary Grant's leading ladies-who is your favorite?  Speak up in the comments!

OVP: Father of the Bride (1950)

Film: Father of the Bride (1950)

Stars: Spencer Tracy, Joan Bennett, Elizabeth Taylor, Don Taylor, Billie Burke, Leo G. Carroll

Director: Vincente Minnelli

Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Picture, Actor-Spencer Tracy, Adapted Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

It seems fitting to start our wedding week OVP movies out with a classic happy ending tale (when I assembled the list, I just went with films that had "wedding" or "bride" in the title, so they might not all be traditional love stories).  One of the oddest things about this 1950 Vincente Minnelli picture is that many people today don't know it exists, despite the presence of Tracy and Taylor, as well as its high profile Oscar nominations.  When people think of Father of the Bride, they usually picture Steve Martin and Diane Keaton in the 1990's hit remake of the picture, but in fact there was a movie before Franz the  Wedding Planner.  Oddly enough, there was even a sequel with roughly the same plot as Father of the Bride II, except Joan Bennett didn't have to go through labor in that one.

For those seeing this film second, though, they'll be stunned to find that it is almost a scene-for-scene remake of the film.  We have Stanley (Tracy), an ornery old man in a happy home with his wife Ellie (Bennett) and their three children, the eldest of which is his beautiful daughter Kay (Elizabeth Taylor).  Soon, of course, Kay is bringing home a beau that is far more significant than the others named Buckley (Don Taylor), a relatively nice young man who would be a perfectly acceptable son-in-law, except of course that Stanley isn't ready for his daughter to grow up.

But grow up she does, and soon Stanley finds himself in the middle of wedding planning and in-law meet-ups and something of a midlife crisis (I loved the scene of Spencer Tracy beaming with pride to Joan Bennett when he can barely fit into his old tuxedo).  The film, which is quite short, gives Tracy a number of comedic scenes to exercise an acting muscle he was rarely asked to use (Tracy was the master of the melodrama and this was the only of his myriad Oscar nominations to be from a comedy).  Aside from the suit scene, his best comic scene is during the wedding rehearsal, where as the father-of-the-bride, he has a significant role but as a man not well-versed in such things, doesn't exactly get the concept of a wedding rehearsal.

The movie is at its best when its focusing on Tracy solo or when he's around Bennett, who is charming in a part that requires her to be little more.   They have a wonderful chemistry as a long-married couple, and I loved that they rarely quarreled, and when they did, it wasn't always his fault.  Stanley regularly needed reminders about how this was a "once in a lifetime" event, but you had to feel for the guy when he was writing out checks for bridesmaid presents to women he doesn't know or to an orchestra that no one really listens to or the movers that will take the stuff out of his living room for the reception only.

In the theme of wedding week, I will say that the bride's dress was absolutely lovely (Edith Head was loaned out specifically for this dress, and it shows)-Elizabeth Taylor was 17-18 when this was made, and couldn't have been more effervescent if she tried in that dress.  I also found some of the customs of the weddings strange, considering the film is over sixty years old.  I had never been aware of the bridesmaids walking separately from the groomsmen and I really didn't understand Tracy's objections to the wedding in a church (I figured most weddings at this time were in churches, but could someone well-versed teach me about this in the comments?).

The film could have used a bit more life from Taylor.  Though she would become a very accomplished actor later in life, Taylor's mannerisms were too childlike for my taste and she relied too much on the wide eyes and smile to make me appreciate her character.  Tracy is...fine in the lead role.  Tracy, an actor whom I don't have a lot of experience with (this is somehow my first of his nine nominated roles) doesn't seem right for comedy.  Had I not seen the remake, I would probably be a bit more forgiving (he can certainly sell some of the aforementioned scenes), but Steve Martin is such a wildly gifted comedian that it's impossible not to compare the two, and Martin comes out ahead even if this is a sturdier and stronger film.

Those were my thoughts-how about yours?  Were you aware that this film existed, and if you've seen both, which version of the film do you like the best?  Do you think Tracy should have prevailed over Jose Ferrer in the Best Actor race?  Share in the comments!