Paramount had a hit putting Alan Ladd into a colour Western in Whispering Smith so they did it again for Branded. This could have been a minor classic because it's got a solid story and Ladd is very well cast - he's a gunfighter who is persuaded to impersonate the child of rancher Charles Bickford, abducted when he was four.
All the appropriate subplots are there - Charles Bickford wants an heir, Ladd has a partner keen to kill Bickford so they can cash in, Mona Freeman is the son's hot sister who Ladd falls in love with, Selena Royle is mom, there's the people from Ladd's past who are out to get him, he tracks down the missing son who turns out to be raised by a Mexican bandit...
But the film never gets the juice out of them. The script badly needed scenes of Ladd bonding with Bickford, Royle and Freeman, becoming a better person through knowing them; his character needed to improve somehow.
Even worse, the family disappears in the second half of the film which is about bringing back the son. Bickford and/or Freeman needed to go on the trip to get the son, and someone needed to go after Ladd. There's no real villain once Robert Keith is out of the picture since Joseph Calleila is basically benign.
Bickford is terrific, Royle a wet blanket, Robert Keith an engaging rogue, Peter Hansen terrible as the genuine missing son (blonde hair, Mexican accent), Joseph Calleila a decent bandit. Rudy Mate's handling isn't terribly vigorous. There is however some impressive colour photography and location work in Arizona.
Monday, February 29, 2016
Saturday, February 27, 2016
Movie review - "Chicago Deadline" (1949) ** (warning spoilers)
This was based on a novel written in 1933 but it didn't get made until over a decade later, changed into a vehicle for Alan Ladd with an eye, no doubt, on the box office receipts of Laura, which it resembles. It's a fascinating comparison because while Laura works this doesn't.
Dana Andrews in Laura was a cop so it was his job to investigate the crime. There were only a handful of suspects who we got to know well - Judith Anderson, Vincent Price, and particularly Clifton Webb - meaning we got to dig in to their characters. Andrews found himself falling in love with Laura, who then appeared half way through... so the story then had massive stakes.
Here Alan Ladd is a reporter so he really doesn't have to investigate. There's a whole bunch of people he talks to (54!), none of whom we get to know well - brother Arthur Kennedy, blonde June Havoc, gangster Sheppherd Strudwick, rich dude Barry Kroeger, her first husband... they kept coming and coming and coming and I got confused.
Donna Reed is too girl next door to be that interesting as the dead girl. (You know who would've been good? Veronica Lake.) And she remains dead, so there's no romance or point, no acceleration or twist. I found it hard to follow then I got bored for all the other people who were knocked off.
Dana Andrews in Laura was a cop so it was his job to investigate the crime. There were only a handful of suspects who we got to know well - Judith Anderson, Vincent Price, and particularly Clifton Webb - meaning we got to dig in to their characters. Andrews found himself falling in love with Laura, who then appeared half way through... so the story then had massive stakes.
Here Alan Ladd is a reporter so he really doesn't have to investigate. There's a whole bunch of people he talks to (54!), none of whom we get to know well - brother Arthur Kennedy, blonde June Havoc, gangster Sheppherd Strudwick, rich dude Barry Kroeger, her first husband... they kept coming and coming and coming and I got confused.
Donna Reed is too girl next door to be that interesting as the dead girl. (You know who would've been good? Veronica Lake.) And she remains dead, so there's no romance or point, no acceleration or twist. I found it hard to follow then I got bored for all the other people who were knocked off.
Movie review - "Fletch" (1985) ****
Maybe it's due to nostalgia because I liked this as a kid but I feel it's held up extremely well - Chevy Chase was never more perfectly cast than as the wisecracking detective, Andrew Bergman's script is terrific and Michael Ritchie handles the difficult task of combining action and comedy. It is very funny but also scary - we genuinely worry about Fletch at times getting into scrapes (he's constantly almost busted by doctors, mechanics, caretakers, cops, etc) and how he gets out of trouble is genuinely scary.
The support cast is to die for - Geena Davis as his loving co-worker, Dana Wheeler Nicholson is the love interest, Jon Doe Baker is terrifying as a bad cop, Tim Matheson engaging as a mysterious businessman, Emmett Walsh as a doctor, etc. Great funky music score, very strong mystery story to underline the gags.
The support cast is to die for - Geena Davis as his loving co-worker, Dana Wheeler Nicholson is the love interest, Jon Doe Baker is terrifying as a bad cop, Tim Matheson engaging as a mysterious businessman, Emmett Walsh as a doctor, etc. Great funky music score, very strong mystery story to underline the gags.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Script review - "Rush" by Peter Morgan
Not sure what draft of this I read but it contains a lot less voice over than in the final film. It does lack a little something - I think Morgan never really develops the lead two characters beyond "flashy playboy" and "determined Austrian". No other characters get much of a look in - the girlfriends are just girlfriends, although I did enjoy the Richard Burton cameo. There is some interesting stuff about the importance of having an enemy. And reading it while listening to the Hans Zimmer score was pleasant enough.
Monday, February 22, 2016
Movie review - "Bird of Paradise" (1951) **
Broken Arrow was a big hit so 20th Century Fox got Delmer Daves to try his hand at another tale of doomed inter-racial love, with Debra Pagent and Jeff Chandler returning as beautiful native girl and noble savage respectively. Instead of James Stewart as the white guy who falls in love with the native there's Louis Jourdan, who is handsome but also French so the culture clash isn't as obvious - not to my English speaking ears, anyway.
A couple of other things make this less effective than Broken Arrow. There's not the underlying conflict between cultures - no colonialism, despite Jourdan's Frenchness; Chandler is educated in the USA and is mates with Jourdan from school there. Jourdan goes native on the island pretty much straight away, walking around in a sarong most of the time, reducing culture clash. Most of the conflict comes not from a logical source, i.e. people squabbling over land, but due to a witch doctor going "tsk tsk" at him being on the island.
There is some pleasing scenery - location work - and it's shot in colour. I enjoyed the scenes of the natives and Jourdan surfing - this must be one of the first surf movies. It's fun to see characters called "Kalua" and "Kahuna". And there's a very effective bit where Jourdan comes across an English beachcomber, Everett Sloane, who lives in paradise with a family but who hates it.
But it's a silly movie. There's not much of a story, just Jourdan falling for Paget and dealing with native superstition and frolicking in the water. The deaths in Broken Arrow were a tragedy; here Paget is an idiot for walking into a volcano, and their society is idiotic for letting it happen. And after a while I didn't care about the people or anything they did.
A couple of other things make this less effective than Broken Arrow. There's not the underlying conflict between cultures - no colonialism, despite Jourdan's Frenchness; Chandler is educated in the USA and is mates with Jourdan from school there. Jourdan goes native on the island pretty much straight away, walking around in a sarong most of the time, reducing culture clash. Most of the conflict comes not from a logical source, i.e. people squabbling over land, but due to a witch doctor going "tsk tsk" at him being on the island.
There is some pleasing scenery - location work - and it's shot in colour. I enjoyed the scenes of the natives and Jourdan surfing - this must be one of the first surf movies. It's fun to see characters called "Kalua" and "Kahuna". And there's a very effective bit where Jourdan comes across an English beachcomber, Everett Sloane, who lives in paradise with a family but who hates it.
But it's a silly movie. There's not much of a story, just Jourdan falling for Paget and dealing with native superstition and frolicking in the water. The deaths in Broken Arrow were a tragedy; here Paget is an idiot for walking into a volcano, and their society is idiotic for letting it happen. And after a while I didn't care about the people or anything they did.
Book review - "Orson Welles' Last Movie: The Making of the Other Side of the Wind" by Josh Karp
It's remarkable - I think I've enjoyed every single book I've read about Orson Welles: Simon Callow's, Peter Bogdanovich's, Barbara Leaming's, Joseph McBride's, Henry Jaglom's... even the now lamented Charles Higham's and Pauline Kael's. Three reasons - he attracts good writers, he was an amazing figure, and his life lends itself to narrative.
Welles' cinematic life is full of "if only"s... if only he'd been around the supervise the editing of The Magnificent Ambersons/Touch of Evil; if only he'd had a big hit; if only Chimes at Midnight had been given a decent release; if only a star had agreed to do The Big Brass Ring, etc. Now can be added "if only he'd finished The Other Side of the Wind.
We still don't know how good a film Wind is - fragments are easily available, there's copies out there, we are constantly promised to see a copy, but even in 2016 the film is hard to see - which actually makes this book a bit frustrating because there's no happy ending, not even a bittersweet one. But it remains a touching yarn.
The project stars off well enough, with Welles enjoying an early 70s renaissance of sorts... he found financing hard to get but he had support of Peter Bogdanovich and the admiration of new Hollywood, and had a lucrative career on talk shows and doing ads. He used his spare money to finance his own film, had the admiration and love of cameraman Gary Graver, and rallied a great collection of cast and crew - John Huston agreed to play the lead, Bogdanovich had a key role. Working with Welles was clearly an exhilarating experience, the man was a genius. I'm not sure Wind had the greatest plot of all time, being cobbled from Welles' old life and earlier movies, but it would've been directed like a dream.
Even though Welles kind of finished the film in 1971 it seems he couldn't stop - which led him fatally to constantly seek more money, resulting in an investment from the Shah of Iran's brother in law which ultimately led to the film being held up forever. Not that it was the poor dude's fault entirely - Welles' own personality played a large part, and did squabbling among his heirs and collaborators after he died. The project seemed dogged by bad luck - Welles falling out with former collaborators, being paranoid about executives, a seeming inability to finish the film. At first this is entertainingly exasperating but as the years go on and Welles' health problems pile up it gets more and more frustrating and sad.
Karp has written a moving, entertaining, insightful book, which can't help being a tragedy (a small scale cinematic tragedy but one nonetheless... especially for poor old Graver who dedicated his life to Welle). He's done heroic work in particular trudging through financial details of the film. A cracking read.
Welles' cinematic life is full of "if only"s... if only he'd been around the supervise the editing of The Magnificent Ambersons/Touch of Evil; if only he'd had a big hit; if only Chimes at Midnight had been given a decent release; if only a star had agreed to do The Big Brass Ring, etc. Now can be added "if only he'd finished The Other Side of the Wind.
We still don't know how good a film Wind is - fragments are easily available, there's copies out there, we are constantly promised to see a copy, but even in 2016 the film is hard to see - which actually makes this book a bit frustrating because there's no happy ending, not even a bittersweet one. But it remains a touching yarn.
The project stars off well enough, with Welles enjoying an early 70s renaissance of sorts... he found financing hard to get but he had support of Peter Bogdanovich and the admiration of new Hollywood, and had a lucrative career on talk shows and doing ads. He used his spare money to finance his own film, had the admiration and love of cameraman Gary Graver, and rallied a great collection of cast and crew - John Huston agreed to play the lead, Bogdanovich had a key role. Working with Welles was clearly an exhilarating experience, the man was a genius. I'm not sure Wind had the greatest plot of all time, being cobbled from Welles' old life and earlier movies, but it would've been directed like a dream.
Even though Welles kind of finished the film in 1971 it seems he couldn't stop - which led him fatally to constantly seek more money, resulting in an investment from the Shah of Iran's brother in law which ultimately led to the film being held up forever. Not that it was the poor dude's fault entirely - Welles' own personality played a large part, and did squabbling among his heirs and collaborators after he died. The project seemed dogged by bad luck - Welles falling out with former collaborators, being paranoid about executives, a seeming inability to finish the film. At first this is entertainingly exasperating but as the years go on and Welles' health problems pile up it gets more and more frustrating and sad.
Karp has written a moving, entertaining, insightful book, which can't help being a tragedy (a small scale cinematic tragedy but one nonetheless... especially for poor old Graver who dedicated his life to Welle). He's done heroic work in particular trudging through financial details of the film. A cracking read.
Movie review - "Pagan Love Song" (1950) **1/2
It's got pretty palm trees and scenery (Hawaii pretending to be Tahiti), Esther Williams in brown face as a half native girl, one of her best co-stars in cheerful Howard Keel (not really well remembered today, but a likeable cheery guy). But it's silly and dim.
The "plot" involves teacher Keel coming to Tahiti where he's bought a plantation. It's actually a run down shack, but he hires Williams as a maid, not knowing she's well off... she's not that well off though, certainly not enough to get a story going. There's some "conflict" from her not liking him scolding a fellow Tahitians, plus some "cute" kids and a comedy pig.
To be fair there is a nice south sea atmosphere - the location filming helps - and some pleasing tunes. But it sort of dribbles along. It's also kind of depressing Williams' character doesn't get to go to the US at the end; I know that she falls in love and Tahiti is nice, but surely they could've visited?
The "plot" involves teacher Keel coming to Tahiti where he's bought a plantation. It's actually a run down shack, but he hires Williams as a maid, not knowing she's well off... she's not that well off though, certainly not enough to get a story going. There's some "conflict" from her not liking him scolding a fellow Tahitians, plus some "cute" kids and a comedy pig.
To be fair there is a nice south sea atmosphere - the location filming helps - and some pleasing tunes. But it sort of dribbles along. It's also kind of depressing Williams' character doesn't get to go to the US at the end; I know that she falls in love and Tahiti is nice, but surely they could've visited?
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