Eleven movies, one mini-series

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Criterion Channel, Max, YouTube.]

The Jackpot (dir. Walter Lang, 1950). Elaine found it, a movie with a screenplay by Henry Ephron and Phoebe Efron (Nora and Delia’s parents) from a story by the New Yorker writer John McNulty. Jimmy Stewart and Barbara Hale star as a canasta-playing suburban couple suddenly drowning in canned soup, meat, trees, and countless other prizes from a radio quiz show (totaling $24,000, or $304,000 today). They not only have to find space for their new stuff; they have to figure out how to pax taxes, which leads to various crazy harebrained schemes. It’s all as corny as downstate Illinois, with a few bright moments, and a chance to see Barbara Hale (Della Street) in a comic role. ★★ (YT)

*

Telemarketers (dir. Sam Lipman-Stern and Adam Bhala Lough, 2023). A documenttary exposé of fundraising for police, firefighters, and PACs, with Sam Lipman-Stern and Pat Pespas, two men who know the world well. The business model is, no surprise, shady, but in so many ways: fifty shades of shady, with false claims and crafty dodges abounding. Pat, a now-recovering addict, is something of a more genuine (and far less affluent) Michael Moore, speaking to people in high places, some of whom receive him with genuine interest, some of whom are merely patronizing (I’m looking at you, Senator Richard Blumenthal). This three-part series makes me feel good about all the times I hung up on yet another solicitation; it makes me feel even better about having ditched our landline and the distractions it brought our household. ★★★★ (M)

*

The Night Runner (dir. Abner Biberman, 1957). Truly, deeply strange: Roy Turner (Ray Danton), a mental patient with a propensity for sudden violence, is released from a institution (they need the space) and finds refuge at a small roadside motel, where he readies himself to reenter the working world as a draftsman. A romance develops with the motel owner’s daughter (Colleen Miller), and all goes well until her father learns about Roy’s past. Some genuinely suspenseful moments as Roy (no mere maniac) tries to avert suspicion. Hey, watch out for that nail polish. ★★★ (YT)

*

A Woman’s Vengeance (dir. Zoltan Korda, 1948). “You seem to think this business is like something in the movies, or in a novel,” says one character to another. Well, yes: when a wealthy, unhappy, sickly woman (Rachel Kempson) dies, suspicion falls on her nurse (Mildred Natwick), her oldest friend (Jessica Tandy), and her philandering husband (Charles Boyer), who has recently taken up with a teenager (Ann Blyth). Was it murder, or was it a suicide designed to look like murder? The herring here is bright red, but the movie is, still, melodrama of a high order, with strong performances from Boyer, Tandy, and Cedric Hardwicke as a doctor who makes house calls. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Keep Sweet (dir. Don Argott, 2021). A documentary about the polygamist Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whose members follow the teachings of their prophet Warren Jeffs, who advises women and girls to keep sweet, pray, and obey. It’s fascinating to hear women of this community speak: they sound smart and self-aware, at least until one remembers that they follow a leader who arranges marriages between girls and men, sends boys into exile to ensure enough girls for the menfolk, and takes wives from husbands and reassigns them to other men. The documentary goes off the rails in its second half, with the filmmaker expressing greater and greater sympathy for the beleaguered faithful (there’s a murky property dispute) and declaring that they‘re ”pretty amazing people,“ that he likes everyone he’s met, and that no one has told the story from ”both sides.“ Dangerously delusional if you ask me. ★ (M)

*

From the Criterion Channel’s Noir by Gaslight feature

Experiment Perilous (dir. Jacques Tourneur 1944). Released almost seven months after George Cukor’s much better known Gaslight, this movie too is about a psyop, with a wealthy older man (Paul Lukas) making his young wife (Hedy Lamarr) believe that she’s mad. As the doctor determined to free young Allida from her domestic prison, George Brent is not especially convincing: even when he runs through a house, he looks like a man pretending to run. Lamarr is fragile, soft-spoken, barely there, which leaves Lukas in control of the movie. The final moments, with exploding fishtanks and a fight on a spiral staircase, are worth waiting for. ★★★★

Ivy (dir. Sam Wood, 1947). Ivy Lexton (Joan Fontaine) is a Edwardian schemer: married to an unsuspecting ne’er-do-well (Richard Ney), she’s dallied with a lover (Patric Knowles) and is now interested in a much wealthier third man (Herbert Marshall). So how might she kill those first two birds with one stone? It’ll take the detective smarts of Cedric Hardwicke to tease out the truth. Little bits of Double Indemnity and Laura inform this satisfying story. ★★★★

Blanche Fury (dir. Marc Allégret, 1948). It plays like a mix of Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Double Indemnity. Blanche Fullerton (Valerie Hobson) takes a position as governess and soon marries her cousin/employer Laurence Fury (Michael Gough), becoming the mistress of his great estate. But she has eyes for stableman Philip Thorn (Stewart Granger), the illegitimate son of the dead Fury patriarch. “You are out of your mind!” ★★★★

Corridor of Mirrors (dir. Terence Young, 1948). A bizarre tale that looks forward to Vertigo: a wealthy artist (Eric Portman) is convinced that he once lived in Renaissance Italy, where he loved a woman who betrayed him. He keeps a massive portrait of her behind a curtain. Visiting a nightclub, he spies a woman (Edana Romney) who’s the exact image of his portrait. Complications follow, with great scenes of a costume party, a room of mirrors, and Madame Tussaud’s. ★★★★

So Evil My Love (dir. Lewis Allen 1948). On board a ship sailing back to England from the West Indies, scoundrel Mark Bellis (Ray Milland), meets and charms a widowed missionary, Olivia Harwood (Ann Todd). Olivia is soon involved in Mark’s criminal schemes, which culminate in a desperate ploy to blackmail the husband of her old friend Susan Courtney (Geraldine Fitzgerald) with Susan’s youthful (naughty) correspondence. And then things really get wild. The final scene in a hansom cab, though easy to anticipate, is shocking. ★★★★

So Long at the Fair (dir. Terence Fisher and Antony Darnborough, 1950). Hard to see it as noir, but it’s certainly the most Hitchcockian movie in this Criterion feature, a variation on The Lady Vanishes. When brother and sister Johnny (David Tomlinson) and Victoria (Jean Simmons) arrive in Paris for the 1889 Exposition, Johnny disappears from their hotel; his name cannot be found in the register; what Victoria thinks is his room turns out to be a bathroom; and no one recalls ever having seen him. It’s left to plucky amateurs Victoria and George (Dirk Bogarde) to join forces and solve the mystery. Cathleen Nesbit gives a great performance as the scary omnipresent hotel proprietor. ★★★★

Madeleine (dir. David Lean, 1950). Based on the true story of Madeleine Smith (Ann Todd), a respectable Glaswegian in her parents’ household, in love with Émile L’Angelier (Ivan Desny), a French clerk whose lower status requires that Madeleine keep their relationship a secret from her parents, who are pressing their daughter to marry a suitable man. When Émile is found dead, suspicion falls on Madeleine, who made a recent purchase of arsenic. The plot is more than a little murky, and the movie never calls attention to what the patriarchy demands of daughters (after all, it’s 1950). The best moment comes from neither of the stars: it’s from André Morell as the defending counsel, speaking on behalf of his client. ★★★

[The other movies in this Criterion feature: Ladies in Retirement, Gaslight, The Suspect, Hangover Square, Dragonwyck, Moss Rose. All worth seeing, and our household has seen them all.]

Related reading
All OCA “twelve movies” posts (Pinboard)