Off Script: The Thing from Another World

Film: The Thing from Another World
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

I have a huge soft spot for science fiction from the 1950s. There’s something wonderfully naïve and goofy about it, a charm that really doesn’t exist in any other combination of time and genre in film history. Science fiction from these years contain the promise of galactic exploration and the danger of alien civilizations, often tinged with hints of Cold War politics. There’s nothing quite like them. When The Thing from Another World popped up on TCM, I jumped at the chance to record it and rewatch it.

The biggest issue with The Thing from Another World is something that isn’t its fault. The film was reimagined in 1982 by John Carpenter, and Carpenter’s version is just about perfect. Unless you’re already a fan, it’s hard to get really excited about a version of the story that isn’t as good as the one you’ve already seen. Still, it’s sometimes nice to see where it comes from, and in this case, The Thing from Another World paved some ground that Carpenter later used to his own great advantage.

Prop Plane Propaganda

Film: Air Force
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

I have a strange fascination with World War II propaganda films. I think the main reason for me is that World War II feels like the last time we had a right to make propaganda films in the U.S. Air Force is one with which I was not familiar. As the name implies, we’ll be spending a lot of time in the air with this one, and in the case of this film, it will be with the crew of a single bomber. This was a film made in 1943, right in the middle of the war, and it takes us from the day before Pearl Harbor to the start of air raids on Japan. Actually, based on the timing of the film, it might well be the famous Doolittle raid that is hinted at in the closing moments.

As the film starts, we meet the crew of the Army bomber Mary-Ann, and it is a motley assortment. Our pilot is “Irish” Quincannon (John Ridgely), a former instructor with a wife and young son. He is assisted in the cockpit by Williams (Gig Young) and bombardier Thomas McMartin (Arthur Kennedy). The navigator is Monk Hauser Jr. (Charles Drake), son of a legendary World War I pilot. The ship’s crew chief is Robbie White (Harry Carey), who has a son stationed on Manilla. Rounding out the relevant crew are radiomen Peterson (Ward Wood) and Chester (Ray Montgomery), assistant crew chief Weinberg (George Tobias), and gunner Joe Winocki (John Garfield). It soon comes to light that Quincannon and Winocki know each other. Winocki was washed out of pilot training because of an accident, and Quincannon was the man who pulled the trigger.

Oh, Pancho!

Film: Viva Villa!
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

Viva Villa! has been sitting on my DVR since last February. I’ve just never quite gotten around to it. I go through periods of recording films and periods of burning through as many of them as I can. At the moment, I’m more or less engaged in both. Movies that are more difficult to locate keep showing up on cable, which means I continually need to make room for them. There was a certain logic in knocking out something that had been sitting around for a good 15 months.

There are a couple of giant problems lurking in the heart of Viva Villa! I’m not sure the film can really be understood fully without addressing these two glaring problems. The first is one that I often complain about on this blog. Viva Villa! is much more than simply a warts-removed biography of Pancho Villa. It is an almost entirely whole cloth fabrication that bears resemblance to the man only on the surface. The film claims, for instance, that Pancho Villa spent time as Mexico’s putative president. Names are changed, as are a ton of verifiable facts.

We Need More Karloff

Film: The Criminal Code
Format: Internet video on laptop.

A film like The Criminal Code is evidence that the American movie-going public has been fascinated with crime films pretty much since there have been films, or at least talkies. As it happens, The Criminal Code is a decent example of a prison film, albeit one filled with what would become every prison movie stereotype in existence. The power of this film is dimmed significantly by the fact that it was released around the same general time as Little Caesar and The Public Enemy, both of which are superior in all ways. Still, for what it is, there’s some fun to be had here.

We start with Robert Graham (Phillips Holmes), a young man who has just turned 20 and has also gotten himself into a lot of trouble. Another man paws Graham’s date in a speakeasy, so Graham retaliates with a bottle upside the guy’s head. Unfortunately for Graham, this kills his victim, and even with a plea bargain down to manslaughter, Graham is sent up for ten long years in prison.

Ball of Fire

Film: Ball of Fire
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

So I had these fantastic plans. I was going to watch Driving Miss Daisy tonight, and then tomorrow I was going to post a complete list of the Best Picture winners ranked from worst to first. However, the disc I got from NetFlix today was cracked down the middle, meaning I still haven’t watched Driving Miss Daisy. So, hooray for the backup plan—my DVR and the movies I’ve recorded from Turner Classic Movies. And when I’m this disappointed, a Barbara Stanwyck movie is sweet, sweet balm. So, Ball of Fire (also called The Professor and the Burlesque Queen) it is.

Ball of Fire is a screwball comedy of the old school in that it paints very broad characters who can’t really and don’t really exist in the real world, puts them in crazy situations, and seeks not to educate but to entertain. I like some screwballs and dislike some others, but since this one features Barbara Stanwyck playing a burlesque singer, I’m predisposed to like it. I can take or leave the Gary Cooper connection.

Hot Tati

Film: Playtime
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

There are times when I feel like the last defender of the work of Jacques Tati. While today’s film, Playtime (sometimes written as two words or as one word with a capitalized “t”), is rightly appreciated by film fans, I sometimes get the sense that among 1001 Movies bloggers, Tati has few fans. More than once, I’ve read or heard that comment that three Tati films on The List is at least one too many. I can’t disagree more. I find Tati’s work sweet and endearing, silly, poignant, bizarre, and often infused with subtle humor.

Playtime is very much a Jacques Tati film, the sort of thing that only he could get away with making. From a lesser or different filmmaker, we would never put up with an extended sequence where we essentially stand outside an apartment building and hear almost no dialogue. With Tati, it all works.

Sex for Fun and (Mostly) Profit

Film: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library through interlibrary loan on rockin’ flatscreen.

This one is going to be interesting. On the one hand, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is Howard Hawks at close to his best, one of Marilyn Monroe’s few films, and Jane Russell consistently stealing the show. On the other hand, this film represents pretty much everything I hate about the sensibilities of 1950s comedies, romances, and musicals. There’s a lot here to like, but a lot here to object to as well.

This is a pretty standard late-screwball-era screwball. There’s all manner of people getting the wrong ideas from harmless actions and people acting stupidly. Plus there’s a shit-ton of singing and dancing. Singing duo Lorelei Lee (Marilyn Monroe) and Dorothy Shaw (Jane Russell) preform a quick number and we’re then introduced to them. Lorelei is interested only in wealthy men, which is why she’s being romanced by the nerdy but screamingly rich Gus Esmond, Jr. (Tommy Noonan). Her plan is for them to be married in Paris, but Gus is forced to stay home by his father when Lorelei and Dorothy go on tour across the pond.

Git Along, Little Doggies

Film: Red River
Format: DVD from NetFlix on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I don’t love Westerns. I don’t dislike them specifically, but I rarely want to watch one. I suppose that this is something I have in common with most modern film viewers. The Western genre seems like one that hangs around at the edges of consciousness, with a couple coming out every year. Every now and then, one will pop up into the mainstream only to quickly fall away, taking the rest of the genre with it. While Westerns will never disappear forever, I think it’s safe to say that their heyday is gone and gone for good. I need to will myself to watch a lot of Westerns unless they are ones I’ve seen before and know I like. Red River is one I had to force myself to watch, and sometimes had to remind myself to keep watching.

Oh, this isn’t a bad film. It’s just a very standard horse-and-saddle picture with a few very weird conclusions drawn at the end. It’s a morally vague picture that never intended to be morally vague, I think. At least now, 65 years after it was filmed, the moral lessons of this film are decidedly sketchy. The other thing is that this is a story I’ve seen played out before. It’s really little more than Mutiny on the Bounty with horses and cows and a different ending. But mostly, the reason my mind wandered at times and I had to jump back to pieces I’d zoned out over is that this is a film that telegraphs where it’s going minutes before it gets there. There’s no Western or film cliché that this film starts that it doesn’t finish right on cue.

The World is Yours

Film: Scarface: Shame of a Nation, Scarface
Format: DVDs from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.

At the start of every quarter in school, I ask my students to answer a few questions for me juts to help me learn their names a little better. One of those questions, naturally, is their favorite movie. Scarface gets named with relative frequency, and when it does, I ask the student in question if he (it’s invariably a guy) means the original or the remake. “The original!” he’ll say each time. “The one with Pacino!” And so I sadly shake my head and explain how that’s the remake, and that particular class never again gets in my grill about my movie knowledge.

The original, frequently called Scarface: Shame of a Nation will be familiar to those much more comfortable with the remake, because the remake really is a remake in a lot of ways. In this case, though, we are dealing not with a Cuban cocaine lord but a Prohibition-era Italian beer runner named Tony Camonte (Paul Muni). Camonte is the muscle for a booze runner named Big Louis, but Big Louis doesn’t make it past the first ten minutes of the film. It’s pretty evident that Camonte is the man behind the trigger, and that he is working at the behest of Johnny Lovo (Osgood Perkins).

A Painful Delivery

Film: Bringing Up Baby
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I’m going to say something relatively controversial here—Bringing Up Baby annoyed the living shit out of me. There. I said it, and I’ll say it again if I have to.

I really didn’t expect this. Cary Grant is one of my favorite actors, I’ve always liked Katherine Hepburn, and I even like Howard Hawks pretty well. This film is in many ways the birthplace of the screwball comedy, and so I came to it expecting to love every frame. Instead, 15 minutes in, I was ready to turn off the player and walk away from it. I. Am. Annoyed.

The reason is because Bringing Up Baby manages to do everything that a screwball comedy does, and does it all in a way that makes me angry. It gets all of the pieces right, but combines them into an annoying whole. Screwball comedies trade on the idea that crazy things happen in the lives of its characters mainly because of mixed-up communication. Because they are comedies, everything works out in the end, but it’s a long time getting there because of the trips and hiccups along the way.

In the case of this film, all of this falls squarely in the lap of Susan (Hepburn). It caused me to consider what makes this film different in my opinion from the typical screwball comedy that I tend to enjoy, and it comes in the form of Susan, the spoiled little rich girl who stands at the heart of all of the problems.

See, in many a screwball, things happen as a matter of course in the proceedings of the plot. Things get mixed up because of miscommunications or mistaken identities. That’s the source of Top Hat, for instance. One person thinks someone is someone else, and through a number of missed chances, continues to think that. And it works. Often, the zaniness is there for a specific reason. In The Philadelphia Story, for instance, Katherine Hepburn puts on an act as a way to shoo the press off of her. Sometimes, like with His Girl Friday, the characters simply get caught up in something above their heads. It’s not the fault of the characters, who are smart and funny.

But not here. Oh, not here at all. Here, our main female character is clueless and walks through life causing havoc for other people and not caring enough to realize what a complete menace she is. This isn’t an endearing trait. She steals people’s cars at random, destroys a man’s life’s work, potentially damages his professional reputation, and, because there has never been a single consequence of any of her actions ever, is oblivious to the fact that her actions are almost universally destructive. And we’re supposed to root for her.

Dr. David Huxley (Grant) has been working on the skeleton of a brontosaurus for four years and needs only a bone called an intercoastal clavicle to finish. Finally, one has been found on a dig he has sponsored, and it will arrive in the morning, which also happens to be the day he is to be married to his priggish and emotionally cold assistant, Alice (Virginia Walker). The day before the wedding, he is to play golf with Mr. Peabody (George Irving), the lawyer of the wealthy Elizabeth Random, who is planning on donating $1 million somewhere. David, naturally, wants that money to go to his museum.

Enter Susan, who destroys the golf game, wrecks David’s car and then steals it, destroys his tuxedo that evening, and knocks the lawyer unconscious with a rock. She also receives a live leopard from her brother in Brazil, and deciding that David is a zoologist rather than a paleontologist, recruits him to help her. And, naturally, it turns out that the wealthy Elizabeth is her aunt. This doesn’t help, as she proceeds to destroy David’s reputation with the woman who can support his museum. Oh, and she decides that she’s madly in love with him to boot.

And, of course, there are the screwball antics that make the screwball comedy work otherwise—Elizabeth’s dog steals the bone (despite the fact that it would be petrified and unappealing to a dog unless the dog also likes rocks). The baby of the title—the leopard—gets out and causes havoc, and everyone eventually ends up in jail.

Through all of this, Susan is blissfully unaware of anyone but herself. Nothing that she does to David (and she does a lot) matters to her because it either serves her purposes or—and this is the key to my aggravation here—she doesn’t care enough to find out why it matters. No one can tell her anything, and it’s not because she knows better. It’s simply because she doesn’t care. She does what she wants, and if she’s not in trouble for it, damn the carnage and collateral damage. I know there are people who live in their own little bubble of self-satisfaction, caring nothing about what goes on farther away than three feet in front of them. I don’t like being told that this is someone I should like and respect. I don’t like this character, I don’t want her to get what she wants, and the predictable ending only makes it more frustrating.

The entire love story turns on this attitude, in fact. She decides that she loves David, and thus the poor man is doomed. He doesn’t get to have a say in it. Should he decide that he could justifiably kill her, it doesn’t matter. She gets what she wants because she just does, and if you don’t like that, too bad. That’s the world she lives in, and collateral damage doesn’t matter as long as her life continues blissfully unaware of consequence.

In other words, I’d have been happier if Baby had eaten her.

Why to watch Bringing Up Baby: It’s where screwball comedy really got its start.
Why not to watch: Holy crap, Susan is annoying!

Up in the Air, Junior Birdmen

Film: Only Angels Have Wings
Format: DVD from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I’ve never read a Harlequin Romance. It’s my understanding, though, that in most of these books, the guy in the romance tends to be dangerous in some way (like a pirate) or have a dangerous occupation (like bounty hunter). I have no proof that the idea for this came from Only Angels Have Wings, and it probably doesn’t, but the traditional Harlequin Romance and this film have this particular aspect in common.

Geoff Carter (Cary Grant) runs a small airline based in a remote South American village. He and his crew of pilots fly the mail, work emergency medical transport cases, and otherwise handle air traffic in the area. Much of this air traffic has to fly through a particularly difficult mountain pass, which leads me to think that we may be in Chile or Peru. As the movie begins, a large ship pulls into the port, and a young, attractive woman named Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur) steps off and finds her way into the company of two of the pilots, Les Peters (Allyn Joslyn) and Joe Souther (Noah Beery, Jr.). The two compete with each other to see which one of them will get to buy Bonnie dinner.

As it turns out, there’s no real competition. Joe gets sent up to deliver the mail and Les gets sent off somewhere else while Geoff offers to buy the girl a steak…but she’s not taking, which means that you can bet these two will end up together. Of course, the fog rolls in, and Joe is forced to return to the ground, but he can’t see the runway or even the runway lights. Geoff tells him to stay up in the air, but Joe wants that dinner with Bonnie, so he brings the plane in and crashes, giving us proof that this is a dangerous occupation and creating some additional tension between Geoff and Bonnie. Why? Because Geoff and the other pilots seem to treat Joe’s death as just a thing—Joe suddenly becomes “Joe Who?” and it’s as if no one remembers him. Eventually, Bonnie figures out that this is the pilots’ way of dealing with the constant threat of death that hangs over them, even when the job is as mundane as transporting the mail.

A sort of romance blossoms between Bonnie and Geoff, but it’s one tempered by the reality that Bonnie won’t be staying long and that Geoff refuses entanglements with women since having his heart broken. We also learn that the airline, run by Geoff but financed by Dutchy (Sig Ruman) is in dire straits. They’ve agreed to a six-month test run of the mail route with the knowledge that they’ll earn a lucrative contract if they are always on time.

Now in need of a pilot, Geoff hires Bat MacPherson (Richard Barthelmess), who is actually Bat Kilgallen. This is important for two reasons. First, Bat Kilgallen is known as a pilot who jumped out of his plane, causing the death of his mechanic. It happens that the dead mechanic is the brother of Kid Dabb (Thomas Mitchell), who happens to be Geoff’s best friend. Second, Bat’s wife is Judy MacPherson (Rita Hayworth), who happens to be the woman who broke Geoff’s heart. Geoff takes Kilgallen on, but as the man who will take the worst assignments. The rest of the movie, then, needs to somehow redeem or curse Kilgallen, resolve his conflict with Kid Dabb, deal with the failing airline, and also deal with Geoff and Bonnie.

What struck me most about this film was the presence of Thomas Mitchell. Had you asked me about him a couple of years ago, I probably wouldn’t have known who he was. If I had known, he would have been Uncle Billy from It’s a Wonderful Life exclusively. I knew I’d see the same actors over and over, but I had no idea how much I would see him, or how much I would come to respect his presence in a film. The same is true of Noah Beery, who was tragically underused in this film.

If the movie has a place where it obviously fails for a modern audience, it’s the flight sequences. They simply do not have any sort of realistic impact. They look, frankly, fake. It’s not always easy to overlook the obvious “studio-ness” of old special effects, and they’re pretty egregiously poor here. Fine for 1939, perhaps, but not so much in this day and age.

Fortunately, the film doesn’t really focus on the flight, but instead on the relationships between the characters. There is a sort of “boy’s-own” adventure quality to the proceedings that feels very typical of this style of film and films from Howard Hawks of this era in general. These are manly men doing a dangerous and manly job; they face death on a regular basis and live wildly on the ground because of it. Death is treated not as a tragedy, but a matter of course—Joe’s demise is certainly regretted, but treated as an inevitability. Geoff and everyone else knew he’d crash some day, but Geoff let him fly anyway, because he knew Joe would rather die than be grounded. This comes into clearer focus when Geoff is forced to ground Kid because of Kid’s rapidly deteriorating eyesight. It’s a touching scene, one that dips into the ideas of aging and male bonding without losing a forced (and effective) light tone and an essential masculinity.

Jean Arthur is a wonder in this film, adapting as quickly as possible to the devil-may-care attitude of Geoff and the men, but revealing frequently that this is merely on the surface. She’s a character of surprising depth for a female lead in 1939, even more surprising because of how she is treated and talked about by the male cast.

Only Angels Have Wings is not a film I would rank with the greats in terms of its overall story or technical prowess, but I would rank it as a film that is essential for understanding the history of the medium. This, like similar films of the era (Gunga Din and Stagecoach--both from the same year and one starring Grant and the other Mitchell) are very much the beginning of a path of the action film with romance elements. That there is less action here is not so important; the danger is implied throughout and extant in enough places that we remember it without being buried by it. Geoff Carter is a natural ancestor to characters like Indiana Jones and John McClane. To get to those, you have to go through here.

Why to watch Only Angels Have Wings: A surprisingly deep and effective cast.
Why not to watch: Audiences have become accustomed to things looking more realistic.

Propaganda

Film: Sergeant York
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television.

Films like Sergeant York have the power to turn me into a conspiracy theorist. Released in 1941 before America entered World War II, this film feels very much like a pure propaganda piece created so the folks back home would support the troops in the war. It’s almost as if Roosevelt, knowing that war was coming, tapped Howard Hawks on the shoulder and commanded him to make a film that glamorized one of America’s greatest war heroes, leaving in just enough dirt to make it real, then pouring on the schmaltz to give the audience war(m) fuzzies.

The film is a mostly-warts-removed biopic of Alvin York (Gary Cooper). We start with the warts. York is a hellraiser in his backwoods area of Tennessee, drinking every night and disturbing church services with his carrying on. We learn that he and his family are dirt-poor and are farming a patch of top land, which is not nearly as productive as the rich and fertile bottomland. Alvin runs afoul of the local preacher, Rosier Pile (the always great and identifiable-by-voice Walter Brennan), who cautions Alvin that the Devil is working through him.

Things begin to change when Alvin encounters Gracie Williams (Joan Leslie), who has blossomed into quite the beautiful young woman. He faces neighbor and local rich guy (relatively speaking) Zeb Andrews (Robert Porterfield) for the girl’s affections. While she shies away because of his reputation, Alvin has convinced himself that the real problem is that the doesn’t have a piece of that bottomland. He mortgages everything to acquire it, pledging to come up with $70 in 60 days to pay the balance, and works like a dog to get the money. He comes up short, and the land dealer sells it to rival Zeb.

And this is where the movie takes its first turn into schmaltz and propaganda. York, drunk off his ass, decides to go hunting for the men who did him a bad turn, specifically Mr. Tompkins the land dealer (Erville Alderson) when he is struck from his horse by a bolt of lightning. Awakening, Alvin wanders into a nearby church and gets himself some old-time religion thanks to the ministrations of Pastor Pile. Once properly a part of the church both in body and spirit, Alvin goes out to ask forgiveness of Tompkins and Zeb Andrews, and both men repay him with similar kindness. The romance between Alvin and Gracie blooms, and the two plan to get married and sharecrop the land Zeb bought until he can buy it for himself.

And then the war comes. Alvin, thanks to his new beliefs, attempts to register as a conscientious objector, but is rejected and drafted. In boot camp, it is discovered that York is not only a proper soldier, but also one hell of a shot. In fact, he’s so good that he gets promoted to Corporal and is asked to instruct other men in target shooting. The problem is that his religious beliefs still won’t let him abide by killing other men, even if they are enemies of his country.

Fortunately for him, he has probably the most understanding base commander in history, who lends him a book on American history and gives him a 10-day leave to go home and think it over. He tells York that if he comes back and truly can’t bring himself to fight, he’ll be recommended for an exemption. Naturally, though, York contemplates history and the Bible, and decides to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and go fight in Europe.

Now, it would be easy for me to gloss over the military part of this story as simply more propaganda and schmaltz, but I really can’t. It’s documented. In the Meuse-Argonne offensive, Alvin York captured 32 machine guns, 132 German prisoners, and killed 28 German soldiers on his own, feats for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor. I’m not going to poke at this, because it’s proof that the real life Alvin York had gigantic metal balls.

The good news for all of this is that it seems to honestly follow the general path of Alvin York’s actual life. He was by all accounts a drinker and a hellion, and did get religion and head onto the straight and narrow path in a denomination that foreswore violence. And he did go kick serious ass in Europe and walk away not only with the highest military honor of this country, but also with the French Croix de Guerre and medals from Italy and Montenegro. Dude was badass.

And yet there is a part of me that can’t get past the fact that this really feels like the story has been run through a Hollywood cleansing machine to make it that much more inspiring. It seems like the story doesn’t need that much in terms of inspiration, but with patriotic music swelling in the background and down-home wisdom coming from the backwoods hero, it has a very distinct sense of nationalistic manipulation. And it certainly doesn’t hurt that the bad guys here are German.

I don’t really believe the conspiracy idea here. It was probably common knowledge that we were heading toward war throughout 1941, so it’s no surprise that this sort of film would start being standard fare at local movie houses.

And yet, films like this don’t translate well to the modern era. Most filmgoers have seen far too many modern war movies to buy into the tale being told here and accept it as truthfully told. There are seams evident on the patchwork done to Alvin York’s life that diminish the film somewhat. The characters, York included, are too much out of central casting for this to really be an unvarnished tale. It’s kind of a shame, because capturing 132 prisoners shouldn’t need much in the way of varnish.

Why to watch Sergeant York: Eleven Academy Award nominations.
Why not to watch: It’s filled with patriotic syrup.

Ultimately, It's Kind of "Have Not"

Film: To Have and Have Not
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

There are a few things that tend to make me look favorably on a film. I tend, for instance, to like almost all film noir regardless of quality, and the nastier the better. I tend to like everything that stars Humphrey Bogart, too. I’m a sucker for exotic locations, even when they are depicted in black and white. I dig films that have the balls to have a character named Frenchy. More than anything, I always fall for great dialogue, which is one of the reasons I tend to love film noir.

To Have and Have Not isn’t really film noir, although it does have some relation to the genre. It’s a tangential war drama in that it takes place around World War II just after the fall of France. While not specifically film noir, it does have all of the other elements I fall for. It takes place in Martinique, stars Bogart, has marvelous dialogue, and even has a hotel manager named Frenchy. In many ways, it’s a poor man’s Casablanca. It even has an evil fat guy and a singing piano player in this case played by Hoagy Carmichael.

Harry Morgan (Bogart, and not the guy who played Colonel Potter on M*A*S*H) has a boat for hire on Martinique which he runs with his often-drunk assistant Eddie (Walter Brennan), who likes to ask people if they’ve ever been bitten by a dead bee. Their current client is an American named Johnson (Walter Sande) who has lousy luck reeling in fish. After a little more than two weeks on Morgan’s boat, Johnson is ready to call it quits, and he tells Morgan he’ll pay him the $800 or so he owes him in the morning.

Enter Marie (Lauren Bacall), an American who appears to live through looks, charm, and pick pocketing. She lifts Johnson’s wallet and Morgan catches her at it. He confronts her, and Morgan tries to get Johnson to sign over some travelers checks, since it appears that he was going to skip the island without paying. In the meantime, Morgan is asked by his hotel manager Frenchy (Marcel Dalio) to meet with some French Resistance looking to smuggle people to fight the Nazis. Morgan refuses. The Vichy government of Martinique catches wind of the Resistance and a shootout occurs at the hotel, leaving Johnson with a bullet in his chest and Morgan broke, which means that he’ll have to take that job smuggling Resistance fighters.

Marie and Harry circle around each other like sharks, or perhaps cats in heat. They even come up with nicknames for each other; she calls him Steve, presumably because he works on a ship even though he isn’t a stevedore while he calls her Slim, an nickname that is immediately picked up on by the hotel piano player, Cricket (Carmichael). Eventually, Harry brings in the husband and wife Resistance team of Paul and Hellene du Bursac (Walter Szurovy and Dolores Moran) and incurs the wrath of tubby Vichy police guy Captain Renard (Dan Seymour), whose name is just a few letters off the Claude Raines police chief in Casablanca (Renault, if you’re playing along at home).

That similarity highlights the similarities of these two movies. Both take place in an area currently under control by Vichy France, both involve moving Resistance fighters through this troubled area using the assistance of an American expatriate. Both make frequent use of the piano player both as mood music and as minor plot point. The problem for To Have and Have Not is that Casablanca is the superior film in every respect.

Here’s what I mean. Bogart is Bogart, certainly, but here he’s much more mercenary than Rick is in Casablanca. There, the Bogart character is all about doing what he can for the French Resistance and damn the cost. That film also has the interesting love triangle, and there is no such triangle here. Oh, Slim might think there is, and she reacts to Hellene du Bursac as if they were rivals, but they really aren’t. Hellene is too obviously in love with her husband to even think about straying. I may really like Hoagy Carmichael, but he’s no Dooley Wilson, and Walter Sande isn’t anything like a replacement for the great Peter Lorre. In Casablanca we have the aforementioned Claude Raines as the smarmy but likeable cop; the closest character here is probably Frenchy, who is really without much in the way of personality. In terms of plus-sized villains, Sydney Greenstreet has both menace and class while Dan Seymour has a beret and a voice that grates on me like nails on a chalkboard.

I don’t want to give the impression that I didn’t like this movie, because I did. I generally like Walter Brennan and I almost always enjoy any movie that contains Humphrey Bogart. It’s just that the comparison with Casablanca is so natural here, and this film simply can’t measure up to one of the greatest screen romances ever created.

On the one hand, I liked this movie because it's hard not to like. On the other hand, Casablanca is far superior in every way.

Why to watch To Have and Have Not: Bogart and Bacall when they became Bogart and Bacall.
Why not to watch: Because Casablanca is better.

The Old West, the New West

Films: The Big Sky, Hud
Format: VHS from Kankakee Public Library through interlibrary loan on big ol’ television (The Big Sky), streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television (Hud).

Anyone who watches film becomes more attuned to some genres and less attuned to others. I like horror, for instance. I don’t watch a lot of musicals or romance films. It continues to surprise me how little I know of Westerns as well. I’d have thought I knew as much about them as any typical genre, but the more I look at, the more I see films that I should know and don’t.

I know that someone out there is convinced that I am not a complete filmgoing person until and unless I have seen The Big Sky, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out why this is the case. I’m completely stumped as to why this film made the list when other 1952 films like The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Western Bend of the River didn’t. I don’t choose the movies, though, and this is what I’ve got. The Big Sky is a must-see, and so I saw it.

Jim Deakins (Kirk Douglas) lives in Kentucky, where he encounters Boone Caudill (Dewey Martin). Their friendship starts out Old West style, with Boone punching Jim in the face a couple of times for a few imagined slights, and Jim reacting to this with good-natured acceptance. See, we’ve established right away that these two guys are rough and tough, solve things by punching them, and see physical violence as an acceptable way to greet another person.

Anyway, they head off to Missouri to meet with Boone’s uncle, Zeb Calloway (Arthur Hunnicutt, who also acts as the film narrator and sort of wishes he were Walter Brennan). The pair run afoul of some locals and get tossed into jail, where they find Zeb. Zeb is a trapper-type. He wears a lot of buckskin and has a lot of whiskers, and he is intensely disliked by the local fur trading company because he is an independent. The trio are bailed out of jail by Zeb’s partner Frenchy Jourdonnais (Steven Geray).

The plan is to take a keelboat up the Missouri to Blackfoot country. No white man has ever successfully traded with the Blackfoot tribes, but Zeb and Frenchy have a ace in the hole: Teal Eye (Elizabeth Threatt in her only film role). Teal Eye is a Blackfoot and the daughter of a chief. She was taken from her people and Zeb and Frenchy are returning her, using this act of not-quite charity as a way in to trade with the natives. In fact, Zeb calls her a hostage.

So Zeb, Frenchy, Boone, and Jim head upriver in a keelboat with a crew of French Canadian woodsmen. As they pull and paddle the boat for mile after mile, they encounter threats, difficulties, and setbacks. Their biggest problems are the Crow tribes, who have decided to attack them, and the fur trading company, which wants its trading monopoly and might well be behind the Crow attacks.

We also get some relationship things going on—Jim is initially attracted to Teal Eye. Boone, who hates Indians on principle, dislikes her. Teal Eye and Boone squabble over the fact that Boone possesses the scalp of a Blackfoot warrior; Zeb has told him it’s the scalp of the man who killed Boone’s brother. Teal Eye frequently tries to steal the scalp from him, and the two fight quite a bit. If you’ve ever seen a Western before, you should realize from their first encounter that Boone and Teal Eye are attracted to each other despite any misgivings they might have.

Really, that’s the whole film. The boat moves upriver. A problem is encountered. The problem is dealt with. The boat moves on.

Some of the problems are at least causes for some good action sequences. The major attack by the Crow, for instance, sees several members of the party getting separated from the boat. Zeb and Boone split off in one direction and make it back under heavy attack. Later, a somewhat insane and whisky-obsessed guide named Poordevil (Hank Worden) makes it back at night, saying that Jim is still out there with the Crow. Boone runs off to find his friend and is tailed by Teal Eye. They find him, patch the bullet wound in his leg, and hide out for a week before rejoining the party in what results in the best confrontation in the film.

There’re also some attempts at showing not only our heroes’ toughness, but also the realities of trail life. After a minor accident, Jim finds that one of his fingers on his left hand is completely numb and no longer bends. Rather than leave it flopping around, the other members of the boat crew get him roaring drunk and then amputate it. The scene is played for humor, but that humor sits over something relatively grisly.

But for all of this, it’s a pretty standard Western. We have good guys who are tough beyond all measure of toughness. We have bad guys who essentially act exactly like the good guys do, but since they are opposed to the heroes, they are bad. The aims of Frenchy and Zeb and the aims of the trading company are, after all, the same thing—they want to trade with the natives upriver. What we’re led to believe is that as independents, Zeb and Frenchy won’t cheat the ignorant natives, but this isn’t the case. At one point during the trading scenes, Zeb comments that Frenchy will probably never get furs for a better price again in his life.

And then there’s the romance part of the film. The love triangle was an interesting addition, but wasn’t played up as much as it could have been. Really, the triangle exists only for those unfamiliar with film convention—the actual romance between Boone and Teal Eye was decided the moment that we know Boone dislikes Indians and that there’s an Indian woman aboard the keelboat.

I like my films a little more complex, a little more interesting, a little less predictable. The Big Sky is a fine Western, but it wouldn’t make my top 10, or probably my top 20. The scenery is pretty, and the on-location shooting is great, but other than that, you’ve seen this all before. It’s telling that this film doesn’t have a DVD release in the States. From what I’ve seen of Howard Hawks, this is the least of his films to reach canonization.

On the other hand, the value of Hud is almost immediately evident. Within the first 20 minutes of this film, I knew I was watching something that would stay with me and that had classic status for a reason. It’s not merely the iconic landscape of the Texas Panhandle, nor is it the fact that the film features the twist of taking place in the modern day rather than the classic Western period. No, this is a film about the characters and about the performances.

Hud (Paul Newman) is a layabout and a wastrel, interested only in his own pleasures and having enough money to pursue them. This puts him greatly at odds with his father, Homer (Melvyn Douglas), who is upright and upstanding. Homer runs a cattle ranch, and doesn’t much like the life his son leads. Also on the ranch is Hud’s nephew Lonnie (Brandon de Wilde), who is torn between the two adult male role models in his life. One the one hand he is attracted to the freewheeling lifestyle of Hud, but he also sees the necessity and value of Homer’s morality and honesty. The fourth member of the ranch house is Alma (Patricia Neal), the middle-aged housekeeper. Both Hud and Lonnie find themselves attracted to Alma, who was left by her husband years before, and is just hard-bitten enough to not really be that interested in the lecherous Hud or the too-young Lonnie.

Into the middle of the family drama comes the incident that sets off all the problems. Homer has discovered one of his cows dead in the middle of the ranch with no apparent cause of death. Fearing the worst, he calls for the vet despite Hud’s warnings, and it turns out to be the worst possible situation—hoof and mouth disease. The old man bought a few dozen Mexican cattle on the cheap and rather than quarantine them, he mixed them in with his entire herd. This means that the entire herd needs to be slaughtered, destroying the family business. The best insight we get into Homer is during these moments—driving his entire herd into a hole dug into the ground and ordering them shot. Later, with two cows that he raised from calves left, Homer watches them for a few moments, then walks out calmly to add them to the body count as well.

Hud sees this as his golden opportunity, and starts proceedings to essentially have the old man declared incompetent so that he can take over the ranch himself. It also comes out that Lonnie’s dad—Hud’s brother Norman—was killed in a car accident caused by Hud. For Hud, this has been the thing between him and his father for the past dozen years or so, but Homer’s resentments run quite a bit deeper.

What makes Hud work is not the situation of the ranch or the unexpressed emotion between Alma and Lonnie and between Alma and Hud. All of the trouble and problems that happen here are there so that we can see the lives of these people boil over. In terms of this, the film belongs to Lonnie, since it is he who is the one character capable of determining the course of his future. Homer’s life is the way it is; Hud is a man Homer dislikes, but Hud is his own man and chose his own life. Lonnie is stuck between them, between living the life he knows is correct and the life that looks tempting and fun. It’s a sort of coming of age film in that sense despite the fact that Newman’s character almost always takes center stage.

More than anything, it is the performances that truly sell this film and make it what it is. Homer is the sort of gruff patriarch we might expect, but he has enough personality and individuality to make him a unique character. Lonnie is a typical teen—confused, excited, wanting to please, and wanting to give in to his natural urges. Alma wants only to be taken seriously for what she does and otherwise left alone by the men until she’s ready. And Hud. In a career of incredible performances, this one is one of Newman’s most memorable, most powerful, and best. The character comes across as a sort of primer for Luke in Cool Hand Luke. He’s more intense than Luke, but also less subtle. Still, this is Newman at his best.

Paul Newman won an Oscar for his role in the otherwise forgettable The Color of Money. The reason he won for that film is because he didn’t win for The Hustler or Cool Hand Luke or Hud despite being nominated for all three (and he was additionally nominated for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Absence of Malice and The Verdict and received a nomination for supporting actor for Road to Perdition). It’s my contention that it would be seen as another stain on the Academy if Newman never won after that many nominations—sort of like how Hitchcock never won Best Director.

In addition to the strength of the central performances (both Patricia Neal and Mervyn Douglas did win gold statues), much of what makes Hud so attractive is the overall look of the film. The stark black-and-white photography paints the world of the Texas Panhandle in exactly the shades that our characters see them. For Homer, the world is one of black and white-morality or indolence. For Hud, black and white is also the theme—what benefits him and what doesn’t. And yet for Lonnie, the world is filled with various shades of grey as he determines which of these two men he should follow. The landscape is one of empty spaces and open sky, big country where the horizon runs unbroken. In color, this would be beautiful, but in black-and-white, it looks harsh and unyielding. Hud is another film that benefits from the choice of avoiding color photography.

Great film, great performances, great photography. Hud breaks some genre stereotypes and is all the better because of it.

Why to watch The Big Sky: Great on-location filming and a few exciting sequences.
Why not to watch: Predictable and straightforward.

Why to watch Hud: Paul Newman, plus a supporting cast as good as he is.
Why not to watch: Mass cattle slaughter.

Do Not Forsake Me

Films: Rio Bravo, High Noon
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library (Rio Bravo), DVD from DeKalb Public Library (High Noon) on laptop.


There is a real charm to a good western movie, particularly an old-school one from more than 40 years ago. There’s a simplicity to them that is refreshing. After watching films where the protagonist is evil, or insane, or conflicted, or more an anti-hero than a true hero, a classic western brings back that sense of comfort. There are good guys, there are bad guys, and the two never mix. Anyone who has fallen and wants to be redeemed can be, and the bad guys will eventually fall to their own wicked ways in the end.

Regardless, Rio Bravo is that simple, straightforward picture mentioned above. There’s a heroic sheriff named John T. Chance (John Wayne) who arrests Joe Burdette (Claude Akins) for murder after Chance witnesses a bar fight. Also in the bar is “Dude” (Dean Martin) ex-deputy of the sheriff who has since crawled into a bottle. In fact, it’s Dude who starts the fight. As the town drunk, he’s frequently made sport of. Burdette knows Dude is desperate for a drink, and tosses a dollar into the bar’s spittoon. A fight ensues, and when he’s prevented from striking Dude again by a bystander, Burdette shoots the interloper, only to be thrown into jail to await justice.

Unfortunately, things get complicated immediately. A wagon train pulls in led by Pat Wheeler (Ward Bond), but is laid up for a day due to the situation. It seems that Joe Burdette is the no-good brother of Nathan Burdette (John Russell), who is the wealthiest man in the area. He’s hiring anyone he can get his hands on to help spring his brother from jail, with the fate of Sheriff Chance unimportant. Dead, alive, whatever.

Also showing up in town are two important players: Colorado (Ricky Nelson) and Feathers (Angie Dickinson). Colorado is running guard on Wheeler’s wagon train. Feathers is the widow of a crooked gambler, and there’s a warrant out for her, making her a prime target for Chance’s attention. Wheeler wants to help out his old friend the sheriff, who refuses the assistance. Colorado refuses to help, too. Feathers, on the other hand, is somewhat attracted to the lawman, but he’s not having it from her. For his desire to help his friend, Wheeler is gunned down in the street by a paid killer, sparking a new desire for revenge in Chance.

We also have some comic relief, as any classic western had. Working with Chance and the attempting-to-clean-up Dude is Stumpy (Walter Brennan), a lame old man who complains endlessly, but is dependable and guards the jail. Running the hotel where Chance lives is Carlos Robante (Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez), who frequently mangles the language and is mangled in turn by his wife.

And that’s the set-up here. Chance, Dude, and Stumpy need to hold off Burdette and his gang of hired men until the marshal shows up to take Joe Burdette into custody. There are attempts on everyone’s life and attempts to break into the jail. Through it all, Chance refuses the help of everyone, convinced instead that anyone who tries to help him will end up on the wrong end of a bullet courtesy of Burdette. The death of Pat Wheeler more than anything tells him that he should keep everyone else safe by keeping them out of the situation.

Of course, this is a traditional, old-school western, which means that it’s going to turn out the way you want it to. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad. Anyone worthy of being redeemed (Dude, Feathers) is redeemable, and anyone who isn’t will eventually get what’s coming to them. Even our comic relief (Carlos and Stumpy) shows up at critical moments to provide real assistance, even if Chance didn’t want their help.


On the opposite end of the spectrum is High Noon, which is similar in terms of plot and action but completely different in terms of how the characters approach their situation. As with Rio Bravo (actually the other way ‘round because High Noon came first), we have a lawman facing off virtually alone against a gang of thugs.

Will Kane (Gary Cooper) has just gotten married to the beautiful and much younger Amy Fowler (Grace Kelly). In addition to being a sweet young thing, Amy is also a Quaker, and she objects heavily to Will’s occupation as a town marshal. Consequently, he also has decided to hang up his badge and head off for a much quieter, less gun-filled life.

It’s at this moment, though, that Will is given very distressing news. Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), a man he sent to prison a year earlier, has been released. Miller is coming into town on the noon train (hence the name of the movie), looking for revenge, and he’s bringing his entire gang with him.

This leaves Will in a predicament. He knows that Miller will want his revenge whether Kane stays the lawman or not, and having the power of that star on his chest should make things a little easier for him, at least in theory. He takes back the badge, knowing that a fight is coming in a little more than an hour.

Amy objects, unable to resolve her religious differences with the idea of the violence her new husband simply cannot avoid. While she seems to understand that he can in no way avoid the coming fight, she still pleads with him to leave and try to make a getaway from the Miller gang. When he says that he will or cannot, she threatens to leave on the noon train without him, so strong is her conviction for non-violence.

The film unfolds in front of us in real time. Will spends the bulk of the time up until noon looking for anyone in town to come to his assistance and finding no one. Even his own deputy (Lloyd Bridges, looking about 12 years old) deserts him, leaving him alone to face the Miller gang. Those who want to help him back out at the last minute when they see that they are the only ones who have come to his aid. Everyone is willing to help as long as everyone else is, but no one is willing to take the first step to stand beside Will.

And thus we have the main difference between these two films. In Rio Bravo, Chance won’t ask anyone for help, believing instead that it is a man’s duty to stand on his own and face the dangers without putting anyone else at risk. However, right-thinking people (Colorado and Feathers especially) come to his aid again and again. In High Noon, Will Kane asks for the help he knows he needs and is refused at every turn. When noon finally strikes, he is forced to stand alone against terrible odds, and fight on as best he can.

Which way is better? I like the philosophy of High Noon better, personally. I think there’s something to be said for the idea that people can ask for help, even if it’s refused. Rio Bravo seems to work on the philosophy that asking for help is a sign of weakness. In my experience, it’s more a sign of impending failure. That no one comes to Will Kane’s aid is not a failure of his asking, but a failure of their own courage and character.

Both films were remade a few times. Rio Bravo was turned into El Dorado and then Assault on Precinct 13. High Noon has been remade as High Noon twice and also seems to be a pretty strong influence on the sci-fi film Outland.

Both films are great. High Noon is tighter, grittier, and more nihilistic, and therefore makes (I think) a stronger statement.

Why to watch Rio Bravo: For a straight western, it’s hard to find a better one.
Why not to watch: Ricky Nelson is a lightweight compared with the rest of the cast.

Why to watch High Noon: Every reason you or I can think of.
Why not to watch: There is no reason not to watch this film.

Bogart and Bacall

Film: The Big Sleep
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on middlin’-sized living room television.

There are certain things that, when I see them on the description of a film, give me a very good feeling. Certain elements almost guarantee that I will enjoy a film very much. I tend to like films done in the noir style, for instance. I also tend to really like films that star Humphrey Bogart. This gives The Big Sleep a lot of potential.

Okay, I’m kind of bullshitting here. I’ve seen The Big Sleep before and I know I like it. I’ve even read the book it was based on—in fact, I read the book before I saw the film. Philip Marlowe is in many ways the greatest of the noir detectives, and Bogart is really the best guy to play Marlowe. And here, he gets to play opposite his real-life eventual wife, Lauren Bacall. What could be better?

The Big Sleep starts simply and gets complicated quickly, like many film noirs. Marlowe (Bogart) is called to the house of General Sternwood (Charles Waldron). Sternwood is old, sickly, and near death. Those aren’t the problems on his mind, though. What is on his mind is the actions of his two daughters. The older is Vivian Rutledge (Bacall). She has her vices, which include gambling and booze, and she also married badly, considering her husband is now out of the picture. The younger daughter, Carmen Sternwood (Martha Vickers), is a bigger problem. Carmen has all of Vivian’s problems and more. Her biggest problem is that it appears that she likes men far too much.

In this case, Carmen has incurred a number of promissory notes to a man named Arthur Gwynn Geiger, who runs a rare bookstore. It looks like a simple case of blackmail. General Sternwood wants Marlowe to take care of the problem because his old go-to guy has gone missing for the past year or so. Marlowe goes to investigate and discovers that the woman who works at Geiger’s store appears to know nothing of antique books.

Marlowe tails Geiger to his house and guess who shows up. It’s Carmen. A few gunshots later, and Marlowe rushes in to see what’s happened. He finds Geiger dead on the floor and Carmen dressed up in a slinky outfit in front of a hidden camera and drugged off her ass. It’s never stated outright, but Carmen has descended into the world of pornography, either to pay off those promissory notes or for some other reason.

And this is where things get complicated. Bodies begin to pile up. The Sternwoods’ chauffeur ends up blackjacked and dead in the bay, and bodies seem to tail Marlowe wherever he goes. Much of this is in the pursuit of finding the pictures of Carmen. But in comes many more complications and many more people and more and more shooting. Marlowe and Mrs. Rutledge flirt with each other, and eventually, the bad guys get what they deserve.

The joy of any film noir is in the dialogue between the characters and the twists and turns of the plot and all of the gunplay. The Big Sleep has all of this in spades—and it’s got Bogart and Bacall doing what they do best. This is what a film noir should be. I could say a lot more, but it’s more fun to see this film for the first time and watch where it goes, to see the back and forth between the characters, and enjoy Bogart do what he does.

Why to watch The Big Sleep: It’s noir. What more do you need?
Why not to watch: So many characters, so much shooting.

Character Vs. Plot

Films I Know Where I’m Going!, His Girl Friday
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on big ol’ television (Going), DVD from DeKalb Public Library on itty bitty bedroom television (His Girl).

Depending on who you ask, there are only a few real stories in the world. Some will tell you that there are only seven basic plots. Joseph Campbell made a big deal of the fact that there’s really only one story. Whichever of these ideas you subscribe to, there’s a good reason why the same characters, the same plots, and the same ideas show up in movie after movie.


I Know Where I’m Going!, a Michael Powell/Emeric Pressburger collaboration, is an early example of a woman torn between what she wants and what she thinks she wants. This movie gets released about once a month, frequently starring Kate Hudson. Here’s the basic set up: a woman goes off in pursuit of marriage to a successful guy she probably doesn’t love, but who can set her up with a life of ease and privilege. One the way to her impending wedding, acts of God and man prevent her from meeting up with her husband-to-be, but she does encounter an attractive, romantic bachelor who she is both repelled by and attracted to. She spends the entire movie trying to decide between the two men—the one she obviously loves and the one who can give her the life she’s always dreamed of.

In short, I Know Where I’m Going! is a film you’ve almost certainly seen at least a dozen times, and there are no surprises here except for some of the set pieces like the massive whirlpool that threatens our heroine at the end of the film. In this case, the woman in question is the headstrong and difficult Joan Webster (Wendy Hiller), and the young, poor suitor is Torquil MacNeil (Roger Livesey). He is a poor Scottish laird, unable to enter his own castle due to a terrible curse. She is promised in marriage to a wealthy industrialist about the age of her father.

They meet because she is headed to an island on the Hebrides to be married to the old man, but the classic Scottish weather prevents her from getting there. Instead, she’s stuck on a different island with Torquil, a guy with a name that only Powell and Pressburger could even attempt to foist on an audience.

The plot is cute, but there are no surprises here unless you’ve never seen a romantic comedy in your life. From the moment Torquil walks on screen, the end is a foregone conclusion. And that would be fine if I gave much of a rat’s hindquarters about the characters, particularly Joan.

Quite frankly, I don’t like Joan. She’s bitchy, superior, and unpleasant. Most of the press material and many of the comments I’ve seen on this movie call her headstrong—as far as I’m concerned, that’s nothing but a euphemism for spoiled rotten. She’s sassy and brassy, and if she were a man, everyone would call her an asshole, but since she’s a woman, we’re supposed to be charmed by her. Wendy Hiller has virtually no chemistry with Roger Livesey, and frankly, I blame her, but that’s only because I really enjoy Roger Livesey. His voice is exactly what I think of when I think of upper crust British, and I could listen to him read a menu and be entertained by it. Frankly, in this film, Torquil is a much better match for Catriona (Pamela Brown), a local girl who is far more interesting than Joan could ever hope to be.

With better chemistry between the characters, or frankly with a character better than Joan Webster, I can be compelled to care about a story I’ve seen a dozen times. I enjoy both versions of Sabrina, for instance, even though I know exactly how it’s going to end every time. There’s a joy in seeing things come out the way we want them to. I’m as much a sucker for that as the next person. But not when I think there are better endings to be had out there. It doesn’t help that the theme song is horrifying, and made my dog twitch until it finally ended.

So what’s going for it? A few things. The Scottish countryside is beautiful, and beautifully filmed here. It’s also fun to see Petula Clark (as Cheril, the young girl with the giant glasses) as a young child, long before she sang “Downtown” or “Don’t Sleep in the Subway.”


But not every retreaded plot means for a dull movie. His Girl Friday features version 2.0 of the love triangle in I Know Where I’m Going! We again have one woman and two men, but things are a little more complicated. The basics are the same. Hildy (Rosalind Russell) is a newspaper reporter who is recently back from an extended vacation. The reason for the vacation was a quickie Nevada divorce from her husband and editor, Walter Burns (Cary Grant). This divorce was entirely one-sided—Burns didn’t want it, doesn’t want to accept that Hildy has really divorced him, and wants her back, both in a marriage and on the paper.

However, Hildy has shown up to break some news to Walter. First, she doesn’t want back on the paper; she’s retiring. Second, the reason she’s retiring is that she’s getting married again, to a stable, but excessively dull insurance salesman named Bruce Baldwin (Ralph Bellamy). Now that you know the players, you should be able to figure out what happens. Walter does whatever he can to throw a wrench in the works between Hildy and Bruce, and also does everything he can to get her back on the paper. It doesn’t hurt that there’s a whale of a story going on at the moment.

A man stands accused of killing a police officer and is about to be executed. Walter Burns wants to save the man, and he needs Hildy to write the story. She finally agrees because Walter says he’ll take out a massive insurance policy on himself to give Bruce a fat commission. And, naturally, everything conspires to work out a happy ending for, well, at least Walter and Hildy.

The difference here, even though the story is pretty straightforward, is the characters themselves. Unlike Joan, Hildy really is a firebrand. She’s quick, she’s funny, and she’s just a little bit nasty. Walter is a conniving jerk, but he’s doing it because he can’t imagine his life without Hildy by his side. What’s great is how much of a match she is for him. She knows that Walter will pull particular stunts to prevent her and Bruce from boarding their train to Albany, so she takes all of their collective money and has him hide the commission check. Sure enough, Bruce is falsely arrested based on a tip to the police from Walter, and everything he owns is confiscated—but she’s outfoxed her ex, because the money and the check are safe.

We want these characters to be happy. They match each other and do so well. Even more, they can keep up with each other. As the story spins out of control and things continue to get crazy around them, they are the only ones who seem to know what is going on. They’re both frenetic, and both completely alive when something exciting is going on around them. They deserve eac other, and more than anything, we want them to end up were they should be.

The retread plot doesn’t matter here, because anyone who’s ever seen a romantic comedy before has a pretty good idea of where things are going to end up when the short running time finally winds down. We’re not watching this for the plot, but for the people going through the familiar story. If we like the people, we like the story, and Walter and Hildy are too clever and too fun to really dislike.

In short, good characters make even the most tired plot entertaining, and it never hurts to have Cary Grant.

Incidentally, if you’ve ever seen the Coen Brothers film The Hudsucker Proxy, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s role as Amy Archer, the hard-bitten, tough reporter looking for a scoop is very much a sop to Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday. Leigh is a good actress, but in a side-by-side comparison, she’s no Rosalind Russell.

Why to watch I Know Where I’m Going!: There’s comfort in a familiar story.
Why not to watch: Why would anyone want the unpleasant Joan to end up with everything she desires?

Why to watch His Girl Friday: Snappy banter and fun, smart characters.
Why not to watch: Everyone talks at once.