Blue is the Drippiest Color

Film: The Blue Veil
Format: Internet video on the new internet machine.

For a number of years, I’ve been under the opinion that there are some movies on the Oscar lists that I simply will not get. That still bothers me a little, but I’ve more or less learned to live with it as well as I can. That said, when one of those movies shows up, I tend to be interested. That’s what happened with The Blue Veil. This is a film that relies heavily on as much heartstring pulling as it can muster, which means we’ll be doing a deep dive into melodrama.

Louise “LouLou” Mason (Wyman, although the real star might be her makeup artist) is in the maternity ward as the film starts, but this is not a happy occasion as it turns out. We find out that in addition to already being widowed. LouLou’s child dies a few days after he is born, leaving her now completely alone. She takes a job as something akin to a nanny for Frederick K. Begley (Charles Laughton), whose wife died in childbirth. What started as a 2-week appointment is soon full time and long term.

Crazy Joan Crawford

Films: Possessed
Format: DVD from NetFlix on rockin’ flatscreen.

Say what you want about Joan Crawford and the reliability of the “Mommie Dearest” memoir, the lady could act. There’s lots of good Joan Crawford out there, but for me, the best Joan Crawford is crazy Joan Crawford. And so it was that I was really excited about the possibilities contained within Possessed where she plays a woman suffering from schizophrenia. It was either going to be an entertaining but complete train wreck or it was going to be sublime. The truth, as with most things, falls between those two possibilities, of course, but Possessed is more success in some ways than failure.

The film starts with a woman named Louise Howell (Crawford) wandering the streets of Los Angeles looking for a man named David. She’s eventually rounded up and sent to a hospital where it is determined that she’s got some significant mental issues going on. A little medication later and Louise is ready to recount her life story, which means that the rest of the film is going to be in flashback to get us to Louise showing up in the hospital.

The Song that Almost Never Ends

Film: Interrupted Melody
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

I’ve never made it a secret that I’m not a fan of musicals in general. When that musical is actually opera, I cringe even more. So it’s no surprise that Interrupted Melody has been sitting on my DVR since mid-December. I haven’t wanted to watch it. In fact, I’ve honestly been dreading it. I tried to watch it a few months ago and didn’t get past the first few notes of operatic soprano belting before it was time to try something else. Little did I know that the opera would be the least egregious part of this film.

Interrupted Melody is the story of Marjorie Lawrence, a woman who went from the Australian outback to an internationally acclaimed diva. The high concept part of the film is that at the height of her career, Lawrence was stricken with polio, cutting her career short and spiraling her into a depression. This was the film that I expected, and I suppose that in some sense I got it, but it takes us some time to get there.