michaelchager Reviews

Caught Plastered (1931)

Dorothy and Bert

[8/10 · 3 May 2024]

A beautiful print for 1931. Dorothy Lee.gets drunk and sings with Bert in a musical moment of wonder. Wheeler was a genuine romantic lead opposite Lee with Woolsey as avuncular liaison to Mother whose business picks up with the right kind of medicine. There are no slow spots in the 69 minutes this takes. There are several laugh out loud moments. Amidst a stream of consciousness like "Those moth balls are no good. I've never hit a moth with one yet. Still I'm glad I didn't. Because if I did the moth would cry and I can't stand to see a moth ball." The comparison to Burns and Allen is closer than most. The cast is loaded with characters unburdened by Code limitations e.g. Woolsey hooks up briefly with a flirtatious book buyer whose prurient interest ultimately a book can't satisfy, as Woolsey explains to her, losing the customer.

Five Graves to Cairo (1943)

Suspense

[8/10 · 14 April 2024]

Nothing wrong with suspense that evokes strong identification with Allied heroes in WWII. Those in the movie theaters in the US had been guaranteed that Allied losses were not in vain. Baxter personifies what we were fighting for. Tone provides the heroic road to victory. In 1943 there was nothing the war didn't touch. The global patriotism the immigrant Wilder fully expresses is now somewhat forgotten. His direction is impeccable and the camera is of the highest art. The supreme acting talent of the terrified Tamiroff is balanced against his equal and opposite in the terrifying totalitarian field marshal. The collective presence of the Nazis in their motorized columns and their mechanical manners at headquarters mark a curse where death waits to happen.

The Sea Hawk (1940)

Impressive

[10/10 · 13 April 2024]

Dame Flora Robson brings the Shakespearean Elizabeth to life all for a good cause against villain Spain as the proto- Axis Empire. Flynn could not be improved upon in taking over every aspect of this huge movie. Korngold defines the adventure soundtrack and inside the Curtiz concept of a complex of coordinated variables of rare spectacle. Two massive ships connect in combat, the piratical takeover choreographed minutely down to the abandonment and sinking. Lavish sets, costumes, furniture, dialogue, sheer numbers of cast that keep on coming as a preview of WWII production, the wealth of nations beyond the familiar movie budget by a lot. You say this isn't historically accurate but we see it with our own eyes. Not just political optics for 1940 Hollywood but party to Anglophone history America is born in this era and never escapes from clashes of empire.

The Two Mrs. Carrolls (1947)

Two Bogarts

[7/10 · 11 April 2024]

Bogart was someone you want in charge as in Sahara and countless roles where he is the hero. Then there is the guy gone off the rails as in numerous Warners mob movies through his many oddball and psychotic roles later. Then there is here the younger Babs who finds herself in a gothic situation. Babs has a revolver, in a good way, taking the edge off Phyllis from Double Indemnity. As a wife killer Bogie goes well beyond Milland to the outer realms of Karloff and Lugosi. The reduction of Stanwyck to fending off a monster was not such a step back here where her glamour, bounce and acting chops make this memorable.

I Like Your Nerve (1931)

B - movie charm

[5/10 · 7 April 2024]

Young had eloped with Grant Withers the year before this production. This perhaps exploits the factual although implausible that Fairbanks Jr., would be so enthralled. However everything here is implausible, which is the point. The hero breaks up a wedding to claim the bride. Romance defeats finance as would be a theme in the 30s. Young could play powerful roles while still a teenager, here she is 18, but this is Fairbanks Jr.'s movie. He is not stopped by the roadblocks. The hypothetical Central American setting helps because If this had been set in the US the economic and class issues could not have been so readily dispensed with. The movie goer in 1931 gets some momentary relief from reality.

The Lady Refuses (1931)

Her Own Code

[6/10 · 2 April 2024]

This is another Compson story that does not avoid the scandalous. While the Code would not want supposedly middle class moral families exposed to a lower class prostitution story, there is nothing in the plot that strays from praising wealth and condemning immorality. Veblen's conspicuous consumption is the reason to watch. In the absence of strict censorship, high fashion provides cover for quasi-nudity. This not so early talkie has inconveniences like camera noise, bad dialog and incoherent acting. But concerning the looks of apartments, night clubs, the sounds of jazz, fashions, beauty, dark lighting, noisy editing, a blurry camera this is fairly inimitable. To show prostitution as an economic choice was still normal in 1931.

Street Girl (1929)

Earliest RKO

[8/10 · 27 March 2024]

Betty Compson's 4 boys are a successful jazz band with awesome music also from Gus Arnheim. Jack Oakie is quite the dancer. From Wesley Ruggles this has some sound problems and can hear the camera but wouldn't change that. Compson easily drives this highly successful hit for RKO, a true star. Ned Sparks to Compson regarding her break up,"when they're jealous they always come back." Nothing better than a twenties musical based on a jazz band and here with a mushy love story. The piano player is the prime mover. A New York night club floor show with wonderful jazz dancing and proto- Busby Berkeley camera. If you don't like early jazz not so special. Thank Pre-Code for giving us a beautiful Snow White street-wise Aregonian homeless violinist who moves into a spacious one room apartment with four jazz guys and winds up wearing furs and jewels and gives the piano player his rightful romantic expression. For a remake would have had Streisand and Ryan O'Neal.

The Public Enemy (1931)

Cagney

[10/10 · 15 March 2024]

This is the unique intersection of elite talent assembled in one place and time. Robert E. O'Connor holds this together as the father figure. Wellman could not have done it better even if there are some continuity issues. This has the feel of being improvised throughout as this is alive. Cagney brings improvisation to even his standard lines. His meeting with Harlow on the street is the iconic aftermath of the grapefruit scene. The violence is in stark contrast to Blondell's love nest - in all her pre-Code radiance. Wonderful location scenes abound including the opening period flashbacks to the teens era. Among the best acting ensembles Warners ever had especially with the juveniles providing strong nostalgia for the Pre-Prohibition era.

St. Ives (1976)

Worth watching

[7/10 · 2 March 2024]

Apparently the story was derived from a book. That helps the film if not the book. This has little to do with books or any such deliberative thinking, even if the protagonist is an author. This has little to do with feature movies like with suspense or dramatic turns that hold the audience to the end. This is a B- movie/TV show that satisfies an expectation. A better funded production than a Kojak or Rockford this Bronson vehicle is very watchable on TV with excellent hand-held photography, good color, perfect soundtrack, interesting sets, wild stunts, surprises and actors like Guardino as a guarantee of authenticity - from that golden age of caper action. Moreover, an opportunity to see Bronson actually act at which he was very good.

Alias a Gentleman (1948)

B plus

[7/10 · 25 February 2024]

Dorothy Patrick plays a young actress hired by mobsters to play the long lost daughter of parolee Beery to access his fortune. Beery's protege from prison days, Tom Drake, becomes her boyfriend. By the time Patrick spills to Beery that his real daughter is deceased the family bonds have been forged. Clever ending with a nightclub shoot out wraps up this B length feature. The lone flaw is that Gladys George has too small of a role. This is a distant cousin of Vertigo where the actress hired in a criminal deception also gets personally involved. Beaumont's no nonsense direction and MGM quality, vintage 1948, make this entertaining and effortless.

The Great McGinty (1940)

A Sleeper

[8/10 · 17 February 2024]

What Bosley Crowther said, not expecting much from this modest Paramount product. Which grows on you, moving at an Oscar winning pace and no down spots. Not a big picture this meanders, as a tale told in a dive bar, on the theme of personal chemistry. Tamiroff and Angelus provide contrasts with a somewhat surprising result, the script freed, ex machina, from significance. So lucky for movie fans that Sturges found a way to direct what he wrote, populating his world with Demarest and others like him. Fans of Tamiroff have here something worth watching in this forceful unleashed larger than life performance. Donlevy as well.

The Crowd Roars (1932)

The sum of its parts

[7/10 · 8 February 2024]

A quorum of star talent is assembled in this over-the-top melodrama. Cagney cranks up the emotional extremes and gets even more larger than life. Blondell makes it work with Eric Linden who comes of age by the end. Dvorak's career is not enhanced here until toward the end when subtlety is permitted. McHugh is indispensable to the plot although expendable. The benefit of melodrama is the course of obstacles, twists and turns. The unlikely decisions of Dvorak and Blondell in their respective romances are obvious when extremism in this pursuit is no vice. Hawks has it so the action speaks for itself.

The Racing Scene (1969)

Garner's best role

[9/10 · 5 February 2024]

Garner's motorsports quest gave him a life of real intentionality. Here he is immersed in a community that shares his passion that oh by the way comes with the risk of death. From the love of the sport, teamed with experts he trusts, captured in close ups. Nothing is missed of the drama unfolding. And most of it happens as just matter of fact like a home movie in the Garner narration. This quest for elite performance with his team leads to a a notable denouement in Quebec. Talk about living with breakdowns. The inside story is these performers have a very short time frame to prepare anything and nothing is for certain.

Two for the Seesaw (1962)

Seesaw

[8/10 · 29 January 2024]

Not a bad use of film to offer a good play that otherwise would not have reached such a large audience. Here the Previn score is an enhancement. This play is a two person dialogue like a Nichols and May improvisation with Mitchum and MacLaine negotiating the phases of an imperfect and improbable relationship that rather than end in mutual dislike or in living happily ever after, leaves the parties healed and strengthened as individuals. The twists and turns in the dialog drive the action where honesty leads to love being expressed. There is a pronounced cathartic effect in the love made palpable while the instances of temper and domination stand out as human flaws.

Pirates of the Prairie (1942)

The Badge

[7/10 · 19 January 2024]

Holt was in Ambersons that year and later Sierra Madre. Not a problem that he was maybe the best of a certain type in that era. He used the freedom given in these B westerns to make some magic. This is about the sacredness of the badge. This has beautiful photography with a flawless print. Ike is a big plus here particularly with his remarkable singing. Without the horses this is nothing. The task of bringing law to the lawless led seamlessly to the message at the end to buy war bonds. Readily apparent is the reason for the B's: that democracy requires defending, vulnerable to the enemies of its future.

The Fallen Idol (1948)

Transcendent

[10/10 · 15 January 2024]

Sonia Dresdel gives a glimpse of some of the most vivid acting captured on film. Not to be left behind, Sir Ralph delivers a most complex performance of a hidden love affair. And Michele Morgan provides the most perfect object of his affection. Amidst this complexity it's easy for the incredible child actor Bobby Henry to make mistakes figuring it out. And it is a mistake, a slip, that has all the artifice tumble down. Carol Reed's direction is so intense that it all becomes real. This film could go in a space ship as indication to other civilizations that there is intelligent life on this planet.

Trapped (1949)

Worth it

[8/10 · 15 January 2024]

Textbook perfect photography from Guy Roe. A beautiful print. Here there is no spoiler since the Feds are going to win and they are a seamless team. They have John Hoyt hanging out undercover and he is more than enough to carry this to completion. Lloyd Bridges is a very talented bad guy. Barbara Payton was the reason for buying a ticket to this in 1949 as she is beautiful, talented and truly stars here. The final scenes at the trolley yard add unusual visual fireworks. This genre showing T-men in action remains an essential for audience education. A professional job worthy of its subject depicting the Feds and the currency counterfeiters.

Blow-Up (1966)

End of the Code

[10/10 · 7 January 2024]

Between 1934 and 1966 the morality police dictated to distributors. This film broke the Code and restored a mood that was in Pre-Code that of dissolution and degeneracy. In fact, there are no police anywhere in this movie. In the Maltese Falcon, Ward Bond and Barton MacLane guaranteed there would be a prosecution for every murder. Although Bogie loved Astor she was going to take the rap. Not so here, Hemmings has found his match in Redgrave but she is elusive, has a partner in crime and goes free. There remains the question of how Hemmings having bumped into reality will now live. This goes on a double bill not so much with Rear Window as with Vertigo.

My Night at Maud's (1969)

Venus conjunct Mars

[10/10 · 23 December 2023]

One function of the movies has been to teach the varieties of sexuality and romance. The Catholic Church among others enforced an anti-prurience Code on behalf of families but not before Brooks, Mae West et al had gotten on screen. The iconic goddess continued to live but within moral guidelines. Here we have in Fabian a goddess who is from a higher plane of existence, those who encounter her do not recover. Her reappearance at the beach is of surpassing beauty, a vision. The merely human male protagonists protected by Catholic or Marxist philosophy are incapable of genuine escape or victory. Unseen is Fabian's ex-husband, the father of her daughter, also of higher powers from whom certain others do not recover.

Crack-Up (1946)

High Art

[8/10 · 22 December 2023]

There is a plot here which comes down to Ray Collins delivering a soliloquy, pistol in hand, that high art properly belongs to those who best appreciate it not to the museums with their inattentive masses. Who knew Collins was such a powerful actor. Such connoisseurs who criminally appropriate priceless art echoes Goring the art collector, WWII as an opportunity for acquisition. And maybe that is the full debrief. Pat O'Brien stands for the democratic popularity of great art. Claire Trevor delivers a masterclass in modern acting, the focus of what's happening in this deeply mysterious plot, later awarded an Oscar for her support in Key Largo but a more revealing performance here in a leading role. Herbert Marshall guarantees that this is worth watching to the end.

Backfire (1950)

Wagnerian

[7/10 · 22 December 2023]

Amfitheatrof's score is so intense the actors yell over it to be heard. The music played on camera on the piano and by a band with a singer have extremely warped dissonance. The soundtrack imposes a not so subtle conflict expressive of what has gotten out of hand in a noir hijacked by a serial killer. This would not have been a movie to see on a first date. Otherwise this treasure comes from a year graced by perfect camerawork and production quality. This is what a movie should look like and Edmund O'Brien and Virginia Mayo would soon become immortalized in White Heat. The furnishings and fashions are unmistakably 1949.

Playmates (1941)

What are you reading? Shakespeare. Who wrote it?

[7/10 · 17 December 2023]

Barrymore channels his inner Edgar Kennedy. But he stops to do some of a Hamlet soliloquy as good as it gets and then plays straight man to Ish Kabibble. There's a dream sequence where his likeness appears as a bull that attacks Kay the bullfighter. This is revealing because here he plays a villain meaner than his brother's villain Mr. Potter. But not meaner than Lupe Velez who is primed by his making a play for Ginny Simms. Pretty much everything you could ask for in a Kyser movie is here. There is a battle of swing versus opera where swing wins. Patsy Kelly holds this chaos together. May Robson, Lupe Velez, Peter Lind Hayes and the various band singers add up to a lot of talent requiring a lot of scenes making this go a bit long. Kyser is at the dramatic center as someone who can't act. He plays himself as does Barrymore, both doing self-parody. The Kyser band are not too bad as actors and can swing. There are out loud laughs here from a radio comedy vibe. This hip variety entertainment from the swing era helped defeat the Depression and would go on to boost troop and stateside morale.

Boy Meets Girl (1938)

Real Hollywood

[7/10 · 8 December 2023]

Cagney disguised in beret and thick sunglasses, is a different look. He also throws in some spontaneous dancing. This would be fun to watch in a theater with audience reaction, from a stage play. The true professional comedian here is McHugh whose timing is impeccable. Cagney and O'Brien turn up their famous verbal virtuosity as if as revenge for being valued below their own creations: the weak love interest involving a single mom, a singing cowboy who doesn't sing and the baby star. Here boy meets Marie Wilson and no one particularly wants them to get together but the plot could use it. Otherwise the Code might shut this down. Cagney and O'Brien are musketeers jousting with Bellamy and McHugh, enough for a rat pack.

All I Desire (1953)

Checkmate

[8/10 · 7 December 2023]

Melodrama means never having to be boring. The behavior here displayed is a species of small town life evolving in isolation from the conventions of urban civilization. Stanwyck, apparently having no birth family of her own, has escaped from her small town failed marital experiment only to be contacted from out of the distant past by of all people one of her daughters. With this contact the small town past is now real life and her show career bringing life to audiences is now unreal. There are no lawyers or psychologists back home to sort out the damages caused by her abandonment. But it makes for dramatic scenes among those impacted. Stanwyck travels to a place where they still call her wife and mother. This is a masterclass in star acting by Stanwyck against all the market forces that twenty years after her attainment of full stardom sought to move her to the periphery.

Fashions of 1934 (1934)

Purple plumes

[7/10 · 2 December 2023]

Paris as heaven. Davis lacks a single look but provides some acting in a movie that doesn't call for it. At one point she anticipates Veronica Lake. Her blonde hair and her many looks in Orry-Kelly are prominent. The plot is carried by William Powell and is of only incidental significance. The home run here is Berkeley's ostrich feather fan dance sequence which has a shot that tracks from overhead as a long shot to a close up in a dreamscape of white plumes. There are rows of harps on pedestals with jeweled strings as framed by stationary dancers This musical piece is a seamstress's dream as winds blow the feathers into a room where white feather fans on a high level open to white fans at a lower level that open to a blonde model wrapped in feathers to a room of fan dancers on many staircase levels. The camera moves through several settings to dancers in pairs to groups from overhead and also underneath as kaleidoscopes to the magisterial overhead shot of the blonde surrounded by 3 circles of blondes covered in white feathers rotating as the camera closes in to the close up of the center blonde who waves. Followed by a series of close ups of the dancers dressed in feathers with diaphanous feather backgrounds singing "... spin a little web of dreams". Then to tracking and close ups culminating in a boat with rowers on rubbery waving waves, etc. A Berkeley masterpiece.