The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

Film: The Cincinnati Kid (1965)

Stars: Steve McQueen, Edward G. Robinson, Ann-Margret, Karl Malden, Tuesday Weld, Joan Blondell, Rip Torn

Director: Norman Jewison

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2026 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the men & women who created the Boom!-Pow!-Bang! action films that would come to dominate the Blockbuster Era of cinema.  This month, our focus is on Steve McQueen: click here to learn more about Mr. McQueen (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Steve McQueen is a weird star persona today.  In his era, McQueen was a big name, one of the biggest in movies, but because of a combination of factors (movies that aren't entirely in the modern zeitgeist, as well as his estate limiting his visage in merchandise after death), he's not remembered in the same way as other stars of his era.  James Dean died younger, Elvis Presley was more ubiquitous, Robert Redford & Paul Newman lived longer and were therefore able to make movies with men like Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, & Chris Evans (i.e. the next generations of action heroes).  McQueen is remembered today by pop culture for Bullitt, being really cool, and dying young.  But he made a comparable amount of hits to Redford & Newman, and certainly more than Dean or Presley and he started it earlier in his career.  While he spent most of the 1950's doing television, theater, and B-movies (like The Blob), a chance skirmish in the Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra essentially fired Sammy Davis, Jr. from working on Never So Few after they had a fight) gave McQueen the chance to really prove his worth, nearly stealing the picture from Sinatra.  The following few years included some massive hits, all led by McQueen, including The Magnificent Seven, The Great Escape, and The Carpetbaggers, a now-forgotten sudser that was the #4 film of 1964, behind certified icons of the year Mary Poppins, Goldfinger, & My Fair Lady.  All of this is to say that by 1965, when McQueen was leading an all-star cast of Old & New Hollywood figures, he was already one of the definitive actors of the decade.

(Spoilers Ahead) Despite its name evoking a gangster picture, The Cincinnati Kid is not an actual action film (we'll get into a few of those to match our monthly theme with McQueen in the coming weeks).  The film is about The Kid (McQueen), a dynamite poker player who is tired of playing big games around New Orleans, and wants to move up in the ranks, potentially even moving to Miami, but knows he needs to beat Lancey (Robinson), the greatest poker player in the city, first.  The film's first half really focuses on the lead up to this, with Lancey clearly threatened by the Kid potentially coming for his throne, while the Kid's relationship with his best friend Shooter (Malden) and his girlfriend Christian (Weld) are thrown asunder, particularly as Shooter is blackmailed by local mobster Slade (Torn) into trying to fix the match for the Kid.  The film's most famous scenes are in the back half of the movie, when we see an aggressive, long-stakes game of poker between the Kid & Lancey, along with a host of other characters, most colorfully Joan Blondell as a boozy gambling diva named Lady Fingers.  The movie ends with Lancey once again beating the Kid, proving that youth and his cool demeanor are not enough to dethrone the champ.

The film's ending is maybe the most interesting part of the picture.  The entire high-stakes game is really something, and genuinely (and surprisingly, for a sports film) thrilling to see who might win.  It's pretty clear that so many of the side characters, especially Slade & Shooter's lusty wife Melba (Ann-Margret) want the Kid to win, which in movie language means that he won't, but the idea of the villainous older guy needing to make way for a new generation is also a trope of this genre that is ignored.  The ending also differs depending on the cut you see.  The one I saw was not what director Norman Jewison wanted.  He wanted a much more dour ending, with the Kid losing a game of penny-pitching against a kid who has been trying to beat him all film, ending with another shocking defeat for our leading man.  Instead, we get a more conventional ending with McQueen & Weld embracing, her forgiving him for having slept with Ann-Margret a few minutes earlier.

The movie's script needs tightening in this regard, but I get why this became storied in the world of poker, as it glamorizes the skill needed to make it in the world of poker, and the badass nature of it.  Most of the young cast is really hot, sexy cool spilling out from every corner of the film, including the end credits with a sleek, jazzy song by Ray Charles.  This might not shock people reading this about, say, McQueen or Ann-Margret or Tuesday Weld, but modern audiences will shocked to be reminded that Rip Torn at one point was a total Chad.  I can't quite put my finger on what might improve this film (one wonders if Karl Malden was miscast...you could see this part being played better by, say, Gene Hackman a couple of years later, and I say this as someone who generally likes Karl Malden), but most of it's great, including Robinson in one of his last roles, and Blondell totally stealing the picture.  As for McQueen-he plays this placid, unflappable, introverted character so well it makes sense it would become his go to for much of his career.

OVP: The Gunfighter (1950)

Film: The Gunfighter (1950)

Stars: Gregory Peck, Helen Westcott, Millard Mitchell, Jean Parker, Karl Malden

Director: Henry King

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Motion Picture Story)

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 Gregory Peck: click here to learn more about Mr. Peck (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we talked through last week, headed into 1950, Peck had had a few years of alternating success-and-failure.  Films like Gentleman's Agreement and Twelve O'Clock High had succeeded, but there was enough question mark with other films flopping that it wasn't clear how Peck would hold up in the dawning era of television.  While our movie today, The Gunfighter, was not a commercial success, Peck would soon recover the following year with Captain Horatio Hornblower (which we discussed a few years ago when our Star of the Month was his leading lady Virginia Mayo), which would start a run of successful films for Peck...that wouldn't necessarily be critical hits.  David and Bathsheba, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, Roman Holiday, and The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit would all be big hits for the actor, but with the exception of Roman Holiday none of them were well-received by critics.  During this time frame, Peck fought his profile as a western star, frequently turning down roles for fear of typecasting, including the lead role in High Noon that would win Gary Cooper an Oscar.  An exception to that was The Gunfighter, our movie today, which was the reverse of much of his 1950's work-a middling commercial performance, but a success with the critics.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with a headstrong cowboy named Eddie trying to start an argument with Jimmy Ringo (Peck), a gunslinger whose reputation within the confines of the film rivals that of Wyatt Earp.  He shoots him dead, but it underlines the main point of Ringo's life.  A youth that made him a legend (and a criminal) has turned into a curse, as he is now hounded by men trying to shortcut to their own legend.  Chased out of town by this man's brothers, he returns to his home town, where he meets an old friend who is now the local marshall Mark Strett (Mitchell), and tries to find his wife Peggy (Westcott), who is under an assumed name because of fear that people will know her (and her son's) connection to Ringo.  There he tries to sort out his life, and we learn of his regret over leaving his wife & son, as well as we understand that part of the Ringo legend is just that, but it's impossible to escape.  In the end, another cowboy shoots the youth who has spent much of the film bragging about being just as good as Ringo (to the point where he also tries to shoot him), shoots Ringo in the back.  Ringo, dying, insists that the youth not be hanged but instead have to endure the shadowy half-life he's been forced into, as men will soon try to prove themselves against "the man who shot Ringo."

The Gunfighter was nominated for Best Motion Picture Story, and man was that earned.  There are aspects of the film that honestly function more as an episode of The Twilight Zone than as a standard western.  The film has a thoughtful treatise on what it means to make mistakes in your youth that haunt you.  You understand as we go that much of Ringo is myth, not real (for example, he disputes with an old woman exactly how many men he's killed, claiming it's far less than what she's heard), but it's something he can't escape.  His ability to have a normal life is stolen from him not by anyone else, but by his own misdeeds.  The ending is vicious, with him inflicting that pain, one far worse than a hanging, onto the young man who has no concept of what he's just done to himself by trying to steal a legend rather than earn it.

Peck is very good in this movie, and I personally found the mustache (which producer Darryl Zanuck hated), quite fetching & a good look for him.  He embodies the spirit of a man who once threw his life away, but who desperately wants it back even if he's still slightly too immature to understand at the outset that that's impossible.  The rest of the cast, though, is underwhelming and keeps this from being a classic.  Helen Westcott so underplays Peggy that you secretly wish Jean Parker (who is a saloon girl) was taking on the part as at least it would have some life to it, and Millard Mitchell, a constant presence in westerns of this era, is kind of boring in a key role as a marshall trying to protect Ringo (but more so trying to protect his own reputation due to his connection to Ringo).  Even Karl Malden as a barkeep is given nothing to do.  These side parts are crucial in giving us the more human side of Ringo, but instead of giving us the complicated reading the remainder of the picture does of legend, they feel kind of like filler.

I Confess (1953)

Film: I Confess (1953)

Stars: Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, Karl Malden, Brian Aherne, OE Hasse, Dolly Haas

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Anne Baxter-click here to learn more about Ms. Baxter (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Similar to last month, we're going to end our month devoted to the career of Anne Baxter with the reason she's included in this series, her teaming with Alfred Hitchcock.  We've already discussed this a bit, but Baxter nearly was cast in 1940's Rebecca, but was deemed too young for the role by Hitchcock himself.  13 years later, he was ready for her, though, with today's film I Confess.  In 1953, Baxter was not the ingenue that she'd been when Hitchcock had first met her.  Last week we talked about her in the 1948 film The Luck of the Irish, but in 1950 she'd have what would be her defining role, and her sole nomination for Best Actress, as the titular Eve Harrington in All About Eve.  While that was a huge hit, Baxter decided not to sign again with Fox three years later, and instead became a freelance actor, with I Confess being her first film under this newfound status as an artist-for-hire.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Father Logan (Clift), a priest who has heard the confession of German immigrant Otto Keller (Hasse), who has murdered a man he was trying to rob.  Keller knows that Logan is bound by the sanctity of the confessional, and therefore cannot tell a sole his crime.  In the coming days, though, Inspector Larrue (Malden) begins to suspect Logan is the killer, and indeed it does feel like he's done some suspicious things, and has an unusual relationship with Ruth Grandfort (Baxter), the wife of a local politician.  As the film wears on, we learn that Ruth & Father Logan were once in love, but when he went off to fight in World War II they split apart.  They reconnected years later, and spent a (chaste) night together when she was married, and both were being blackmailed by the man that Keller murdered, threatening to cause a scandal for catching them together in such a compromising position.  As the film wears on, Father Logan stands trial, and while he's found not guilty, the public is not convinced.  In the end, though, Father Logan is exonerated when, after killing his wife who is about to expose his secrets, Keller confesses in a gunfight with the police & Father Logan, the latter never breaking the sanctity of the confessional despite being put through great trial.

I Confess is one of the least famous movies in Hitchcock's filmography of the 1950's, and considering the very buzzy cast here, I was genuinely curious as to why.  The reason, it turns out, is that the movie itself isn't particularly good.  The film casts Clift as a sexless lover, and one could make a sincere argument that he's supposed to be gay (many Clift characters of this era you could make that argument about the closeted actor), but he doesn't work as the lead.  Baxter has stated since then that Clift's heavy drinking & depression made him a difficult leading man to work with, and one wonders if she would've pulled off better chemistry with a James Mason or Farley Granger in the lead role.  As it is, the movie drags and is a bit tedious with a tepid chemistry between the two leads, and no one comes out the better here.  This is perhaps the least of all of Hitchcock's films from this decade.

Anne Baxter would continue making movies for most of the 1950's, and would have one of her most iconic roles three years later as Nefretiri in The Ten Commandments (give or take All About Eve, this is what modern audiences most associate her with now), but like many actresses of her era, she began the shift to television, making appearances on Dr. Kildare, Ironside, and Batman.  Her most noted role was in Hotel, in the 1980's, a series she'd do until her death in 1985 from a stroke, a role that she'd win when a different actress dropped off of the project...in a true sense of life imitating art, that woman was Bette Davis.  Next month, we're going to take a trip back to the 1940's as we briefly break chronology to talk about one of Classic Hollywood's most lasting figures, and one of Hitchcock's favorite leading ladies.

OVP: The Hanging Tree (1959)

Film: The Hanging Tree (1959)
Stars: Gary Cooper, Karl Malden, Maria Schell, George C. Scott, Ben Piazza
Director: Delmer Daves
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"The Hanging Tree")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We're going to conclude our weeklong look at films nominated in the music categories at the Oscars with The Hanging Tree, a film on the tail-end of Gary Cooper's career (this morning we took a glance at Mr. Cooper's early work in The Cowboy and the Lady).  The Hanging Tree is during arguably my favorite period of the film western, when the industry was willing to start encountering the era's violent & problematic past, while still having the grandeur of the classic American western.  This film certainly comes in with a sense of history.  Gary Cooper was on the Mt. Rushmore of American western stars, rivaling John Wayne & Jimmy Stewart in that regard, and this is his final entry in the genre, and darn near his final film (he'd have three more films in him before his death in 1961 at the age of 60).  Being an on-again-off-again fan of Cooper's (sometimes I'm all there, other times I feel like he relies too much on his intense handsomeness), I was curious what I'd make of this film.  As it turns out, what I should have been more curious about is how I'd react to a truly strange movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on Joseph Frail (Cooper), a stiff-lipped doctor in Montana tending to the sick during the middle of a gold rush.  He's surrounded by prospectors, and takes in one who tries to rob from the main hoard of prospectors named Rune (Piazza), who he takes on as his ward (through blackmail-he keeps the bullet that Rune was shot with).  Eventually, Frail also has a beautiful young woman in his care, a Swiss woman who was in a stagecoach robbery, and was blinded as a result.  She regains her sight through Frail's care, but she also starts to see him for what he really is-a controlling man, wanting to "own" people through blackmail and debts they can't possibly repay.  This causes her to go into business with Frenchy (Malden), a local louse who has been trying to make moves on her the entire movie.

The film is, and I cannot stress this enough, strange.  I've seen countless westerns through the years, and there's definitely a lot of the tropes there.  The noble woman keeping her chastity in the hardest of circumstances, the lone frontiersman with the checkered past, and the villainous drunk who wants to tear them apart...these are classic western cliches.  But the movie doesn't really play with that idea.  It's more interested in the strange claustrophobia of these characters, all of them desperate for gold but perhaps more so for recognition, and doing whatever it takes (even if it's self-destructive) to get to that point.

This would normally make for a really good movie-this is, after all, what made films like The Searchers and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance masterpieces, that sense that the western needed to be dismantled.  But The Hanging Tree doesn't quite work, perhaps because it doesn't have enough vision in the way its characters are seen.  None of the performances are three-dimensional.  Physically Schell's work is impressive, but you don't leave understanding anything about her Elizabeth in a real way-she's still a cartoon.  The same is true for Cooper & especially Malden (who is actively bad in some scenes).  It's rare for a classic Hollywood film to fall apart not because of the writing but because of the acting, particularly since Cooper & Malden have genuinely been Oscar-worthy in the past, but this doesn't work because of the performances.  It always feels like it's trying for something higher, but none of them are giving the kind of work you'd need to ensure that it hits that plain.  Still, it's a valiant effort & a watchable curiosity (the art direction is also very strong-I loved all of the watermills).

The film's music nomination happened in Best Original Song, where the titular number is sang by Marty Robbins.  The tune is catchy, and quite the diddy (it was covered by Frankie Laine, the quintessential western crooner), and it definitely is connected to the story, but like the film itself, it feels a bit off-balance.  This is the rare situation (I'm running out of these) in the OVP where this is the first nomination I've had from a category-I haven't seen A Hole in the Head, The Five Pennies, The Best of Everything or The Young Land yet (has anyone...these are pretty obscure titles?), but this lands in the middle for me-fun, but forgettable.

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.

OVP: Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)

Film: Birdman of Alcatraz (1962)
Stars: Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, Thelma Ritter, Neville Brand, Betty Field, Telly Savalas
Director: John Frankenheimer
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Actor-Burt Lancaster, Supporting Actor-Telly Savalas, Supporting Actress-Thelma Ritter, Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, but it never stops being true: biopics are rarely successfully executed onscreen, particularly from the aspect of a screenplay.  The films that make it to the screen are of famous people, frequently famous people who are living or who have people who know their life and have admiration for their lives.  As a result, to avoid libel, we get whitewashed instances of a person onscreen being far more puritanical and noble than they actually were in real-life.  Still, though, it's hard to remember a time this was more true than in Birdman of Alcatraz, the sort of film that literally takes a murderer and turns him into a martyr.  The film, from acclaimed-director John Frankenheimer, has to be one of the most bloated endeavors I've seen from such a usually polished director, and I left disappointed and actually hoping for a remake.

(Spoilers Ahead) The reason for this is that there's actually an interesting story here.  Robert Stroud (Lancaster) is a man who was convicted of murder, avoided the death penalty, and then spent decades of his life in solitary confinement.  He doesn't go mad during this time, though, but instead becomes an ornithologist of sorts, keeping dozens of birds in his jail cell, studying them, and eventually becoming quite noted in the scientific community.  He eventually gets to leave Alcatraz, which is the ending of the film, meeting his biographer.

In the middle, though, he ends up being the kindest, gentlest of convicts that you ever did meet.  Fellow inmates of Stroud's later complained that Frankenheimer and Lancaster owed them an apology for the sugarcoating of a convicted murderer.  Played by Lancaster he becomes a struggling Mr. Smith of the penal system.  It doesn't help matter that Lancaster, who is admittedly a fine actor, can't really damp down his stage-actor sensibilities.  He reads every line from Stroud like he's doing the final act of King Lear, earnest and tough grit and poise.  It's impossible to imagine an inmate with Stroud's roots becoming so instantly posh and sensitive, and yet that's what Lancaster does to him.  Even worse is the way that Karl Malden, the prison's warden, is made out to be the villain of the tale.  Malden, who also has that noble-actor thing down pat, can't help but feel extremely wooden in the role, seeming like someone who must always be at his absolutely most perturbed, never allowing for any sort of sympathy for Stroud, even though in the film he's basically a saint.

The film won four Oscar nominations, with the Cinematography actually being quite good in the film-the lighting is very strong in certain scenes, and it helps that Burnett Guffey (the man who won an Oscar for lensing Lancaster a decade earlier in From Here to Eternity) knows when his big moments to shine (like the prison break and the light-filled scene on Fisherman's Wharf) are, and he takes them.  The actors, though, are all playing rough facsimiles of their cliched selves.  Lancaster doesn't know how to temper his performance, so his Stroud is only strong when he's doing something virile and noble, and not when he's trying to show any sort of shading.  Telly Savalas is scene-stealing, and I get where this nomination came from (he's showy in a way that no one else is), but unnecessary to the plot and ultimately pretty two-dimensional, even for someone whom the script demands be a simpleton.  Weirdest of all is Thelma Ritter, a supporting actress par excellence, who is given a massively BAIT-y role (hence the nomination, her sixth), but does nothing with it.  She's supposed to be the mother-from-hell, but in reality she underplays all but her final scene, and there's little to nothing in this performance, and the script doesn't care about her enough to project onto her.  Is she jealous, a publicity hound, or part of an Oedipal situation we can't understand since it's 1962?  It's hard to say, and Ritter doesn't play it as any.

All-in-all, then, this is a disappointing film.  There's too many talented names attached for it not to succeed on occasion, but when you have Burt Lancaster, Thelma Ritter, and John Frankenheimer together you should do better than just succeed on occasion.  If you've seen it, weigh in-are you as underwhelmed as I am?  And if you haven't seen it, at least let me hear your favorite performances from the frequently Oscar-cited Lancaster and Ritter.

Karl Malden (1912-2009)

Perhaps moreso than any other death in the last week, Karl Malden's seems to have hit me the hardest. Yes, Michael Jackson's music transcended the airwaves and Farrah's flip was awe-inspiring, but for me, it's always a return to the movies.

And there's really nothing you can say about the movies that Karl Malden didn't personify. He was a steady, sometimes sensational, always reliable actor who graced our presences with dynamite roles such as On the Waterfront (seriously, where have the films that could produce three worthy Oscar-nominated supporting turns gone?) to the solid work of Patton. And yet, for me, he will eternally be Harold 'Mitch' Mitchell.

I was eleven the first time that I saw A Streetcar Named Desire, and up until that point in my life, films were merely a place to spend $2 on popcorn, pop, and candy (yes, kids, my theater experience was enough for a $5 allowance). And yet, with that haunting Alex North score, and the cast of four (there are other players, but for me, it's the four central), I found myself in love eternally with the cinema. Something happened on that couch while I watched Mitch, Stella, Blanche, and Stanley in their dangerous ballet of deception, lying, and hidden emotions, and I would never be the same. Maybe it was the performances (legendary, and the best I've ever seen), the script (brilliant, and the best I've ever seen), or the direction (claustrophobic, tortured, and fickle all at once), but one thing was for certain-I would eternally be in love with the movies.

Mitch, of course, was the least central of the four characters-Malden's character wasn't part of the love triangle, but instead the most obvious victim of Blanche and Stanley's mind game duels. He starts off sweet, stumbling across the haunting (some would say faded, I'd say more crystalized) beauty of Vivien Leigh. Watch how playful Malden is when he is attempting to flirt with Blanche-he understands that this character is far less experienced than he thinks he is, and is melding old-fashioned ideals with the recklessness that his friends (like Stanley) exhibit daily. One of the film's most underrated, and most frightening scenes, is Malden's penultimate turn in the film, when he decidedly turns on Blanche, showing her the maleviolent nature that is so obviously outside of his nature. Malden is truly brilliant, and takes his character to heights a lesser actor would have made 2-dimensional.

I remember when Kim Hunter died in 2002, I recessed in her character's contradictory earthiness; in 2004, when the world lost its finest actor, I found myself looking at the coldness and the impossibly sensual Stanley with new eyes. And so, tonight, as I take another ride onto the Streetcar named Desire, I look forward to seeing what newness I will find in Mitch. And as always, Ms. Leigh, Mr. Brando, Ms. Hunter, and, of course, Mr. Malden, thank you for making me fall in love with the movies.