Swing Time (1936)

SWING TIME (RKO) Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Victor Moore, Helen Broderick. Incredibly lucky gambler/dancer must choose between his dull childhood sweetheart and a beautiful, talented dance partner. Duh.

Though stocked with memorable Jerome Kern songs, spirited dance numbers, and opulent sets, this film is nearly sunk by a sappy script and the fuddy-duddy comic duo of Moore and Broderick who don’t belong anywhere near it. And how about that greasy band leader? However, Astaire is at his best and Rogers is so graceful and alluring that the picture is saved. Barely.

Scale of 10: I give it 6.

That Uncertain Feeling (1941)

THAT UNCERTAIN FEELING (United Artists) Merle Oberon, Melvin Douglas, Burgess Meredith, Eve Arden. Boredom afflicts the six-year marriage of a young Park Avenue pair, creating an opportunity for an eccentric musician to step in and liven things up.

Once upon a time Hollywood turned out truly “adult” films that were sexy but subtle. Since they were totally over the head of youngsters and contained no overt sex, they could be viewed by the whole family. Here is a prime example, produced and directed by the master of the bedroom farce, Ernst Lubitsch. It is amusing from start to finish and has some hearty laughs thrown in. The screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart, adapted by Walter Reisch, sparkles despite its age while the principals perform smoothly with Meredith offering some special verve.

I daresay that even young adults of today may appreciate the style and class of this movie while oldsters re-experience the sophisticated film fun that provided respite from the harsh realities of depression and war in the 1930s and ’40s.

Scale of 10: I give it 8.

The Blue Gardenia (1953)

THE BLUE GARDENIA (Warner Brothers) Anne Baxter, Richard Conte, Ann Sothern, Nat Cole, Raymond Burr. A just-jilted woman agrees to date a ruthless womanizer, and the date ends in murder.

With TV booming in the early 1950s, this is the sort of stuff the big studios turned out to keep the theater screens lit up even though few were attending. Baxter is pretty and a good actress while Conte glides through and Burr is a caricature as the playboy. Sothern wisecracks but finds little to do. The title song, promoted throughout, is mediocre even with Nat Cole singing.

The story was obviously just tossed together, but it may keep you mildly interested. I was distracted by the fact that everyone was constantly puffing on a cigarette while downing booze or coffee. And that’s the way it was.

Scale of 10: I give it 3.

The Big Heat (1953)

THE BIG HEAT (Columbia) Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Lee Marvin. An ex-cop and a gangster’s girl take on a crime syndicate.

Ford was soft-spoken and had warm eyes, but he was just as tough as Bogart or Cagney, He also was an all-around good actor as he proves again in this tough crime story. The plot is a little hard to swallow, but director Fritz Lang maintains a tense pace and the tangles mostly iron themselves out. It will probably hold your interest.

Scale of 10: I give it 6.

Human Desire (1954)

HUMAN DESIRE (Columbia) Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford. A Korean war vet gets involved in lust and murder on the railroad.

Though Ford and Grahame do their best to make this film believable, the clumsy script of Alfred Hayes and weak acting by Crawford drag it down to comic-book level. Fritz Lang directed. Pity he had nothing better to do.

Scale of 10: I give it 3.

Jezebel (1938)

JEZEBEL (Warner Brothers) Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, George Brent, Eddie Anderson. A high-spirited young woman toys with admirers in antebellum New Orleans as gentlemen fight duels and war clouds gather; then yellow fever strikes and true character is revealed.

Under the expert direction of William Wyler, this sweeping production offers a fascinating view of the Old South, its manners and mores, and the attitudes that produced the rebellion. However, the magnetic personality of Bette Davis dominates the film, and the Oscar she won for her performance was well deserved.. Fonda and Brent also are excellent. As a side note, the actor named Eddie Anderson, who makes a brief dramatic appearance, went on to play “Rochester” on Jack Benny’s comedy shows.

This picture runs long and the plot is mediocre, but for the reasons given above it is well worth seeing.

Scale of 10: I give it 8.

Kings Row (1942)

KINGS ROW (Warner Brothers) Ronald Reagan, Robert Cummings, Ann Sheridan, Betty Field, Charles Coburn, Claude Rains, Judith Anderson. Bizarre happenings in a quiet Midwestern town, circa 1900.

If you like melodrama, here it is in grand style with one of the most noteworthy casts ever assembled, including a future U. S. president. Though lengthy, it will no doubt hold your interest under Sam Wood’s solid direction, but you may agree with me that the whole thing is a bit much.

Though the supporting cast performs admirably and Reagan gives perhaps the best performance of his film career, Cummings does not live up to the requirements of his role and Sheridan somehow lost her oomph. (For those whose memories don’t stretch back as far as mine, she was known as “the oomph girl” for earlier roles.)

Scale of 10: I give it 6.

Platinum Blonde (1931)

PLATINUM BLONDE (Columbia) Jean Harlow, Loretta Young, Robert Williams. A rough-and-tumble newspaperman marries a beautiful rich girl.

Williams, an actor who might have been famous at one time but is long forgotten, struts and smirks through every scene of this very dated film while sweet Loretta pines for him and Jean (the p. b. of the title) inexplicably remains stuck with him until they finally break up and Loretta gets the “prize”. Ho-hum. Director Frank Capra, who went on to much better things, must have regretted his involvement with this one.

Sure, Harlow is interesting in tight satin dresses and on a massage table (the reason for the film, after all), but those fleeting titillations and the one or two laughs that the film furnishes  hardly justify the hour and a half that it consumes.

Scale of 10: I give it 2.

Citizen Kane (1941)

CITIZEN KANE (RKO) Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, Ruth Warrick, Agnes Moorehead, Everett Sloane. The life story of a controversial newspaper magnate told through interviews with those who knew him.

Awesome in its scope and dramatic flare, this motion picture is regarded by some as the best ever made. I am not qualified to pass such a judgment. However, it is a very engrossing picture and one which broke ground technically in its camera work (by Gregg Toland) not only for a striking treatment of light and shadow but also in originating, I believe, the technique of deep focus.

The movie is also unusual in that its star, director and co-writer (along with Herman J. Mankiewicz) is Welles, a radio phenom in his twenties who had never done anything in Hollywood before. Also the leading roles in the film are played by members of his radio company, not known as motion picture actors. Still, the most sensational aspect of the film is that it was widely believed to be based on the life of a living celebrity, the famous publisher and political power William Randolph Hearst. Though Welles denied this, Hearst apparently believed it and refused to advertise or even mention the film or Welles in any of his newspapers (one of which I happened to work for at the time as a 15-year-old copy boy !?!).

So, you see, it was a unique piece of cinema at the get-go (especially for me), masterpiece or not. The direction, acting and ageing make-up are remarkable. As possible negatives, there is a certain self-consciousness (hammyness?) to it and a definite political slant.

Scale of 10: I give it all of that.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE (MGM) Lana Turner, John Garfield, Cecil Kellaway, Hume Cronyn, Leon Ames, Alan Reed. A hired hand gets involved with the boss’s wife, and they plot to kill her husband.

Though this film is based on a novel by James M. Cain, who also wrote “Double Indemnity” which had a similar theme, this is not in the same class as the latter. Perhaps the fault is with the screen-writers who were not of the same class, either, or else they had more trouble with the censors than they knew how to handle.

Unlike “Indemnity”, which was tightly written, the plot of this one is rickety as the illicit lovers (Turner and Garfield) blow alternately hot and cold, making their commitment to kill seem incredible. But kill they do, whereupon the story stumbles over itself some more, turning into pure hokum at the end. Garfield is a stoneface and lovely Lana seems bored, but the supporting cast is outstanding.

Scale of 10…I give it 5.