[6] Elia Kazan makes a concerted effort to be less ‘theatrical’ and more ‘cinematic’ with Panic in the Streets, a New Orleans thriller about a policeman and a doctor searching the streets for a killer infected with pneumonic plague. Richard Widmark plays the doctor and Paul Douglas plays the cop. They’re forced to work together and begrudgingly do so for a while, but they eventually …
[6] A bold film for its time, A Summer Place deals with sexual awakening and reawakening. Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue play the teenaged lovers; Richard Egan and Dorothy McGuire play the adulterous middle-aged ones. The first forty-five minutes of the story are pretty strong, but once the affairs are out in the open, the script struggles to find its focus. Highlights include a terrific …
[7] John Ford reteams with frequent leading man John Wayne in what is often considered one of the best Hollywood westerns ever made. Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, a loner returning home from the Civil War. After his brother’s family is murdered by Camanches, Ethan begins a five-year search for his kidnapped niece (Natalie Wood). Wayne plays more than a charicature of himself for once, bringing …
[6] No, it’s not a movie about a whore. It’s Greer Garson, for fuck’s sake! Her Twelve Men, also known as Miss Baker’s Dozen, features Garson as a new teacher at an all- boys’ school where she’s not made to feel terribly welcome. The head of the school (Robert Ryan) doesn’t think she’s qualified and since she’s the first female faculty member they’ve ever known, …
[3] Robert Altman made his directorial debut with this inauspicious teenaged rebellion romp. Tom Laughlin stars as Scotty, a young guy who just wants to hang with his girlfriend (Rosemary Howard), but her parents intervene to keep them apart. So poor old Scotty does what all grown-ups in 1950s America thought teenagers did: he joins a gang of hoodlums. The girlfriend gets caught up in …
[3] Gordon Scott makes his debut as Tarzan in this entry. He’s a taller, beefier Tarzan — kinda cute, but certainly the dumbest of the lot. Poachers are in the jungle (again), and a well-meaning animal doctor is accidentally leading them into an area of the jungle ripe with big game. There’s also a skiddish African tribe called ‘the Sukulu’ drifting around in the screenplay. …
[4] Near the end of both Singin’ in the Rain and An American in Paris, there is a big, epic dance number that feels very out of place. It’s the only thing I don’t like about Singin’ in the Rain, and the only thing I DO like about An American in Paris. The later film is essentially a superb 20-minute dance number tacked onto an …
[7] William Holden leads an ensemble cast in Billy Wilder’s adaptation of Stalag 17. The film takes place entirely in a German prisoner-of-war barrack, where the captured Americans are beginning to suspect that Holden’s pessimistic black marketeer character may be informing on them to the Germans. But Holden knows better — that there’s a German spy planted in their midst, secretly thwarting all their chances …
[6] Often regarded the best of the atomic age ‘giant critter’ flicks, Them! is best in the beginning, during two police officers’ discovery of a little girl roaming the desert in a catatonic state. Looking for her family, they come across a demolished trailer and a destroyed store, a few dead bodies — and what’s that eerie sound? It’s genuinely spooky for a while. Production …
[6] Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr meet aboard an oceanliner and fall in love, despite the fact they are both already in relationships with partners waiting for them stateside. I like the first half of An Affair to Remember. Grant and Kerr are playing it cool in traditional screwball comedy fashion during that part of the film. And as far as romance is concerned, I …
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