Twelve movies

[One to four stars. Four sentences each. No spoilers. Sources: Netflix, TCM, YouTube.]

Don’t Look Back (dir. D.A. Pennebaker, 1967). A documentary made from footage of Bob Dylan’s 1965 English tour. I watched out of a sense of responsibility to cultural history and was deeply underwhelmed. The robotic strumming, the wheezing harmonica, the typing while Joan Baez sings, the snarkitude at everyone’s expense, especially Donovan’s: Dylan strikes me as an emperor in need of a good haberdashery. Strange: the first words he says on camera are “Did you see my cane?” — and this is before his motorcycle accident. ★★ (TCM)

*

The Clouded Yellow (dir. Ralph Thomas, 1950). British intelligence agent David Somers (Trevor Howard) gets the boot after one mistake and takes a short-term job cataloging butterflies at a country house. Thus the title, suggesting, perhaps, migratory movement and, certainly, nets and fragile beauty. When Sophie Malraux (Jean Simmons), the allegedly disturbed niece of the house, is accused of murder, David takes her on the lam, and through a grand tour of English landscapes. A movie made of wonderful Hitchcockian episodes, à la The 39 Steps, but there’s little chemistry between Howard — who seems himself an avuncular figure — and Simmons. ★★★ (YT)

*

Footsteps in the Night (dir. Jean Yarborough, 1957). A man is found dead in a Los Angeles motel room, and suspicion falls on a neighbor with a gambling problem whom the dead man inveigled into long nights of cards. The movie plays like an hour-long episode of Dragnet, with two detectives cracking occasional jokes and plodding along from place to place until there’s a bit of high drama at the final minutes. Worth watching for brief appearances by James Flavin (veteran of hundreds of movies) and Harry Tyler (Bert the short-order cook in The Grapes of Wrath). Both men must have understood that there are no small roles, only small actors. ★★ (YT)

*

I Confess (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1953). Wearing a priest’s cassock, a church caretaker in Quebec City (O.E. Hasse) commits murder and confesses to the very priest whose cassock he wore, Father Michael Logan (Montgomery Clift), who’s required by church law to keep the confession secret. Logan of course soon becomes a suspect, and his relationship with an old sweetheart (Anne Baxter), suggests he had good reason to kill. With Clift as a man with a secret to hide, there’s a strange meta quality to the story. Difficult to see much chemistry between him and the hammy Baxter; Hasse and Dolly Haas are more genuinely desperate partners. ★★★ (TCM)

[In the Small World department: Dolly Haas was married to Al Hirschfeld. Our friends Seymour Barab and Margie King were their friends.]

*

The Secret Fury (dir. Mel Ferrer, 1950). Someone’s turned up the gaslight — but who? Deeply strange, with Claudette Colbert as Ellen Ewing, a classical pianist who’s about to marry some guy (Robert Ryan), and as the ceremony gets underway, a stranger stands up to say that Ellen is already married. Three movies in one: a melodrama, a courtroom drama, and a very dark noir. Paul Kelly is great as a district attorney; and look for VIvian Vance as a hotel maid. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Hell Is a City (dir. Val Guest, 1960). When an escaped criminal (John Crawford) heads home to Manchester and pulls off a robbery and murder, it’s up to Inspector Harry Martineau (Stanley Baker) to track him down — or to climb up after him. Location filming and a strong cast (Donald Pleasance, Vanda Godsell, Billie Whitelaw) make for a terrific movie. I suspect the strong influence of The Naked City (the movie) and Naked City (the television series). What clinches it for me: several scenes of domestic tension between Martineau and his wife Julia (Maxine Audley) — in keeping with the Naked practice of showing cops in their private lives. ★★★★ (YT)

*

This Is the Bowery (dir. Gunther von Fritsch, 1941). A short film from the series The Passing Parade, with John Nesbitt’s narration. It’s a ludicrously or poignantly optimistic look at life on the Bowery, with one man (Charles St. John) resolving to give the straight life one more try. Hearty soup and strong coffee served at the Bowery Mission help him on his way. Filmed on location — the real street and its semi-residents, many of them looking remarkably well kempt. ★★★ (TCM)

*

How Do You Like the Bowery? (dir. Dan Halas and Alan Raymond, 1960). A short documentary by NYU students Halas and Raymond. Here the men of the Bowery speak, and the urgency with which some of them address their interviewer makes me think of the souls in Dante’s hell. It’s one memorable face after another. My Bowery triptych would have these two short films flanking Lionel Rogosin’s full-length 1956 movie On the Bowery. ★★★★ (YT)

*

Suddenly (dir. Lewis Allen, 1954). A damaged war vet (Frank Sinatra) has contracted to assassinate the president of the United States, traveling to the town of Suddenly and taking over an isolated house from which to shoot a rifle. It’s up to the people held captive in the house to stop him: a grandfather (James Gleason), his war-widow daughter (Nancy Gates), her young son (Kim Charney), the town sheriff (Sterling Hayden), and a TV repairman (James Lilburn). The movie is almost all plot, with a brief touch of romance and a few hints of the vet’s feral war record. So strange to watch and think about Sinatra’s fleeting friendship with John F. Kennedy; so strange to watch and think about one the names Donald Trump used when making phony calls to the press: the vet’s name, John Barron. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Flowing Gold (dir. Alfred E. Green, 1940). Bromance, romance, and fossil fuels: a wanted man (John Garfield) shows up at an oil field, saves the foreman’s life (Pat O’Brien), and falls in love with an oilman’s daughter (Frances Farmer). Aside from a spectacular explosion, everything here is predictable. The reason to watch is Frances Farmer, who looks like someone from at least fifty years in the future. A bonus: Cliff Edwards, “Ukulele Ike,” the voice of Jiminy Cricket. ★★★ (TCM)

*

Fyre (dir. Chris Smith, 2019). My daughter made a joke about a cheese sandwich, and suddenly I was looking up the details of the notorious Fyre music festival, a scam perpetrated by Billy McFarland, an entrepreneur who promised festivalgoers exclusive lodgings and fine food on a private island. Instead, the marks got surplus tents, rainsoaked mattresses, and cheese sandwiches in foam containers. And now McFarland is out of prison and planning Fyre Festival II. A con man, exposed as such, and trying a second time: I wonder if McFarland has met a leading Republican contender. ★★★★ (N)

*

Two O’Clock Courage (dir. Anthony Mann, 1945). A pick for TCM’s Noir Alley, and an Anthony Mann movie we’d never heard of — and it starts off so well, with fog and foghorns, and a shadow (Tom Conway) staggering away from the camera. A perky cabdriver (Ann Rutherford) drives onto the screen, and the story turns into something like a radio whodunit with touches of comedy, as the cabbie helps the amnesiac shadow sort out clues to his identity and prove he’s no murderer. A fun element: the story takes place in a city that never sleeps, with clothing stores open all night, and landladies awake and fully dressed at all hours. A bonus: Jane Greer in her first speaking role, as a drunken actress. ★★★ (TCM)

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