Reviews

I wish I could get on the 'we love "Bonnie and Clyde"' bandwagon. But I cannot. I found its paint-by-numbers storytelling style boring and predictable.

Based upon the lives of depression-era criminals Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, the film routinely shows us how they met, lived and eventually came to their undignified doom.

Certainly, the Oscar winning colour cinematography of Burnett Guffey is breathtaking, the recreation of the thirties depression era superb, an excellent musical score adds immeasurably to the film's ambiance and the acting of the supporting characters is stellar. Sadly however, that's it for me. I found Warren Beatty's Clyde Barrow was forced and unconvincing, with Faye Dunaway's Bonnie Parker less depression thirties than hippie sixties.

Unfortunately, I also did not see much in the way of on screen chemistry between the two leads. For me they were more like a couple of limp lettuce well past their best before date. Only Gene Hackman's good-old-boy brother Buck, Estelle Parsons near- hysterical wife Blanche, and most especially Michael J. Pollard's quirky C. W. Moss add any spark to their characters.

"Bonnie and Clyde" is not exactly a time waster, but do also check out Joseph H. Lewis's 1949 black and white, totally fictional cheapie "Gun Crazy" for a vastly more satisfying take on the B & C story. For this commentator it is far more interesting, with the on screen chemistry of Peggy Cummins' Laurie Starr and John Dahl's Bart Tare threatening to ignite everything around them. Indeed, total conflagration in the Lewis film may only have been avoided because the director had to sanitize his movie past the prissy Hays office.

No, "Gun Crazy" may not have the opulence or graphic violence of the Arthur Penn/WarrenBeatty (who produced) collaboration, but it makes up for it in so many other ways.

Like many, I do not particularly care for "The Old Man and the Sea". And unlike the previous year's one-man show, "The Spirit of St. Louis", this one, although considerably shorter, is a much more lugubrious slog. It starts out well, with some very warm, authentic grandfather/young boy interactions between Spencer Tracy and Felipe Pazos Jr., who sadly only appeared in this one film. Their palpable, on-screen chemistry is magical, leaving one feeling cheated because it is so quickly replaced by the numbingly boring, poorly matched water-tank phoniness that makes up the core of this film.

Based upon Ernest Hemingway's novella of the same name, the story basically delves into what happens when an old man goes out fishing and manages to land 'the big one!' At times very symbolic and allegorical it made for a fascinating, thought-provoking read. But in adapting it to the screen, "The Old Man and the Sea" loses most of its impact. Partly done in by its apparently limited budget, only the brilliant cinematography of James Wong Howe makes it a worthwhile watch.

In the lead role, Spencer Tracy gamely tries to make the 86 minute enterprise interesting. Sadly, for this viewer at least, he can't. Even Tracy's scoring a nomination for a best actor Oscar in a lead performance is undermined by his own brilliant performance that same year in the screen adaptation of Edwin O'Connor's "The Last Hurrah!", the film for which he should have been so honoured.

Finally, a word about Dimitri Tiomkin's often thundering, bombastic score. I find it quite unfortunate that producer Leland Hayward, who had hired Franz Waxman to score "The Spirit of St. Louis" didn't rehire him to pen the music for this one as well. Often overblown and over-bearing, Tiomkin's score is more intrusive than supportive, lacking any sense of a main identifiable theme or even much in the way of Cuban rhythms. It may have won the music scoring Oscar in 1958, but why I have yet to fathom.

It may be silly, sentimental hokum, but as Christmas movies go, it just doesn't get any better than "Going My Way." Bing Crosby is the world's perfect priest, paragon of virtue Father Charles O'Malley, Barry Fitzgerald its most lovable and the story that drives this film makes you wish it was all true. It isn't of course. It's fantasy of the most fantastic kind, a feel-good, warm/fuzzies movie that is and always will be a Christmas tradition with me, like hearing Gene Autry sing "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" or Judy Garland warble "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas."

Set towards the end of the second world war, "Going My Way" opens at St. Dominic's Roman Catholic church, a vulnerable bricks and mortar edifice teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, threatened with foreclose by the Knickerbocker Loan and Trust Company as headed by Ted Haines Senior (Gene Lockhart.) To try to save the parish the bishop assigns Fr. O'Malley to take over the running of St. Dominic's without first telling forty-five year incumbent Fr. Fitzgibbon (Barry Fitzgerald.) Conservative, persnickety, and extremely set in his ways, Fr. Fitzgibbon does not initially take very kindly to the more modern, hep younger man and his 'progressive' approach. But somehow O'Malley manages to bring the old man on board without once trespassing on his dignity or defiling his self esteem.

With just enough music and plot twists to keep everything briskly flowing, "Going My Way" is that rare film that never lags during its two hour and seven minute running time. The perfect Christmas confection, it is never preachy, thus making its core message that much more powerful. Yes, it may be a schmaltzy old relic from a bygone era, but its incandescent glow is as warm and comforting today as it undoubtedly was when first released in 1944. The perfect 'let's pretend' movie, the multi Oscar winning "Going My Way" (best picture, director, actor and supporting actor among others) is the perfect antidote to our twenty-first century seasonal madness of rampant consumerism fuelled by unbridled greed. Definitely not to be missed!!!

Next to "Easter Parade", "Meet Me In St. Louis" is my favourite Judy Garland vehicle from the MGM film-factory days. Chock full of those freshly scrubbed, wholesome family values that Hollywood used to love to propagate (if not necessarily emulate), the picture is a warm, endearing fantasy with just enough realism to keep it out of the treacle jar.

Opening in the summer of 1904, it starts innocently enough with Esther Smith (Judy Garland) mooning over boy next door John Truitt (Tom Drake), older sister Rose (Lucille Bremer) pining for Warren Sheffield (Robert Sully) with everyone happily laughing and singing about the impending world's fair coming to St. Louis next spring. So far, so predictably good. But then the plot gets seriously leavened as we are introduced to Tootie Smith (Margaret O'Brien), the youngest sister of the clan whose girlish pranks and blood-curdling prose mix a little comedy with some genuinely mean-spirited Halloween behavior that take us to the darker side of human nature, adding some much needed sinister malevolence when it is most needed. But there's more as the plot thickens still further when patriarch Alonzo Smith (Leon Ames) imperiously (albeit with the best of intentions) informs everyone, the day following Halloween, that the family is leaving St. Louis for New York. Initially laughed off, this unexpected announcement turns out to be one post-Halloween trick that is no treat as nobody, wife Anna (Mary Astor) included, is much amused.

"I don't believe it!"

"It's true: I'm to start the first of the year. We'll leave right after Christmas."

With noteworthy attention to period detail, the film is brilliantly directed by Vincent Minnelli, trumpets some excellent acting from its ensemble cast, and includes an engaging Ralph Blane/Hugh Martin score that, for the first time in motion picture history integrates the songs directly into the plot, something pioneered for the stage a year earlier by Rodgers and Hammerstein when "Oklahoma" premiered on Broadway. Better yet, "Meet Me In St. Louis" also deftly combines Christmas candy and homespun virtue with the contemporary reality of the danger of making the business agenda, the bottom line, the sole arbitrator of what really counts, even if that wasn't the film's original purpose. Indeed, with the Smith's standing in for all of us, the movie is not just an enjoyable, warm/fuzzies romp through a bygone era. It is also a timely reminder that even the best of well intentioned actions can elicit unforeseen responses, that people, not impersonal automatons, are the final repository of all human actions, noble, imperious or mean-spirited.

Like a few posters before me, I truly wanted to like "White Christmas." Sadly, I cannot, at least not very much. Set mostly post WWII, this one has Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye as discharged army buddies who make it big in show business, eventually winding up in a far-too-balmy Vermont (for December) trying their best to help their retired general (Dean Jagger) to make a go of his debt-ridden inn. Bing is the driven one, Kaye more the playboy, with Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen falling into line as the sister act/plot device that ushers in the cliché-ridden romantic complications. A noble effort to be sure, the film struggles mightily to overcome its paint-by-numbers script and leaden direction, but all to no avail. Lacking even a modicum of genuine on-screen chemistry between Bing Crosby and Rosemary Clooney, this bloated, lugubrious mishmash simply staggers from one over-produced dance routine to the next, literally at times 'stopping the show.' Yes, there are a few shiny bobbles to be found thanks to Bing's excellent vocalizing, the multi-talented Danny Kaye's sharp comedy timing (and hoofing), Vera-Ellen's superb dancing, and costumes icon Edith Head's wardrobe expertise. But that is it! All too often Bing Crosby looks decidedly uncomfortable and out of place, Rosemary Clooney appears to be auditioning to be the next Hitchcock 'ice-blond' and Michael Curtiz seems to have been bizarrely seized of the notion that 'sledgehammer directing' was the only way to ensure musical comedy success. Oh where was Stanely Donen when we needed him.

Being a lover of musicals, and genuinely respecting the many great talents involved in this enterprise, it makes me very sad to come on as the Grinch with this one. But try as I might, I just can't be very positive about it.

Like 1955s "A Man Called Peter" and 1961s "The Hoodlum Priest", 1964s "One Man's Way" is a tightly focused study of one man and his unshakable faith in God and himself. Collectively this trio of films affirms for all believers, but most especially for those in full time service, the paramount necessity of those twin pillars of faith if one is to survive, to adapt from William Shakespeare, the slings and arrows of outrageous society. Individually each film deals with unique yet often similar personalities, providing us with some interesting insights as to what motivated whom and why.

In "A Man Called Peter", we are first introduced to a young boy seized with the notion of going to sea. Years later an adult Peter Marshall, walking in a blinding fog across the Scottish moors, believes it is the voice of God that saves him from a perilous tumble into a lime pit. A life-changing event, that experience inaugurates his unshakable belief that 'The Chief' would always guide him to wherever he was meant to be.

"The Hoodlum Priest", Father Charles Dismas Clark was a Roman Catholic cleric whose equally unshakable faith propelled him into efforts to ensure that ex-convicts got a chance for a better life upon release from prison. The payoff was Dismas House, a halfway house established in St. Louis, Missouri, mandated to ease the transition from regimented prison routine to rehabilitated ex-con able to move beyond his criminal past.

"If the Lord ever calls me, I'm not going." So says a a very young Norman Vincent Peale in "One Man's Way", a film based upon the book "Minister To Millions" by Arthur Gordon. Somewhat loosely based upon Dr. Peale's life, the man became, like Dr. Marshall, a charismatic orator who filled empty churches. Unlike Dr. Marshall, he also went on to author a number of best selling books, most famously led by "The Power of Positive Thinking."

Sadly (at least for me) "One Man's Way" lacks the gravitas of the other two. Oscillating between synthetic biography and near Billy Graham polemic sans altar call, it never really establishes Peale as an either likable or interesting character about whom we should care. Playing off more as a cheapie made-for-television movie-of-the-week than compelling, theatrical motion picture, its only saving grace is the screen debut of Diana Hyland as Peale's hard-to-get, reluctant girlfriend/eventual spouse. But even there, we have no sense of how this woman with the notable lack of faith (a) handled the presumably ever present demons of her past thinking when those inevitable challenges/troubles arose or (b) more importantly, the transition from rebellious, near non-conformist to dutiful minister's wife dealing with the ladies who lunch and go to Dr. Peale's church. (Dr. Marshall's wife Catherine seems to have had no such issues mainly because she seemingly grew up a more conforming believer who went regularly to church.) Regrettably, William Windom and Virginia Christine as Peale's parents are, unsurprisingly, quagmired as one dimensional cardboard cutouts who deserved much better.

Interestingly, actor Don Murray essays the very disparate Father Dismas Clark and Dr. Norman Vincent Peale with the sort of unassailable sincerity he always brought to such endeavours. It's just too bad he didn't have as much to work with in this one because he showed in earlier efforts like "Bus Stop", "The Bachelor Party", "A Hatful Of Rain", "These Thousand Hills" and most especially "From Hell To Texas" a lot more depth and range than he gets to display in "One Man's Way." Indeed, because he also lacked the vocabulary of Richard Todd's Dr. Peter Marshall, Murray's preaching scenes are often annoying and long winded. An actor I have long admired, I am only sorry that I can't give this film more than a civil five.

Finally, three other titles worth checking out, "Dead Man Walking" with Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn and "Romero" with Raul Julia, both of which, also focus on specific full time service believers and social justice concerns. Also "The Cross and the Switchblade", the story of the Rev. David Wilkerson (portrayed by Pat Boone, directed by Don Murray) and Wilkerson's work with troubled street kids.

It's a pity that actor Steven Ritch disappeared from the scene in 1962 as his very affecting performance as Duncan Marsh, the accident victim who is victimized in more ways than one indicated a talent that was waiting to be discovered but sadly was not.

Eschewing the hokey full moon/silver bullets thing, THE WEREWOLF is a neat combination of sci-fi/horror that is nicely augmented with a few film noirish touches. The story, while a little trite revolves around Marsh, who is rescued from an auto accident only to be subsequently violated by a couple of misguided scientists who shoot an experimental serum into him with the predictable, tragic results.

Filmed in glorious black and white at Bear Lake, the difficult terrain and looming mountains in the background not only add visual splendor to the film, they also represent notworthy metaphors for the tough moral and ethical struggles of the local sheriff, doctor, nurse, victim's wife, son and, above all, the victim himself. And given that, THE WEREWOLF might just tear at your heart a little, a not very common reaction to 'B' enterprises such as this.

Happily now available in a two DVD/four title set, THE WEREWOLF was originally released as the lower-half to the talky yawner EARTH VS FLYING SAUCERS. However, I have just finished watching it as the top half of a double bill that concluded with THE CREATURE WITH THE ATOM BRAIN, an admittedly more routine, far less moving chiller that does nevertheless make for an excellent duo and is also included in the two DVD package. (The other titles are the ridiculous THE GIANT CLAW and the surprisingly effective ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU.)

Bottom line? WEREWOLF is definitely VERY highly recommended as is seeing it in tandem with ATOM BRAIN.