Twelve movies

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

The Harder They Come (dir. Perry Henzell, 1972). When the grandmother of a Jamaican country boy (jimmy Cliff) dies, he comes to Kingston in search of a job. And a dream comes true: he gets to record a song of his own, “The Harder They Come.” Reggae plays in or underneath scene after scene, but the movie is in the end about capitalism and its discontents: economic exploitation in the music business and the ganja trade, and the paucity of opportunity that might prompt someone to seek fame as an outlaw. With handheld camerawork, many non-actors, and strong echoes of American movies — Little Caesar, High Sierra, Gun Crazy, and Bonnie and Clyde among them. ★★★★ (CC)

*

Grand National Night, aka Wicked Wife (dir. Bob McNaught, 1953). British horse racing is part of it, but the movie focuses on domestic turmoil: horse-centric husband Gerald (Nigel Patrick) and his horse-hating, philandering wife Babs (Moira Lister). When the partners clash and Babs is accidentally killed (trust me, that’s not a spoiler), suspicion falls on Gerald, who insists that his wife wasn’t home that night. This movie begins well, but its human interest drains away quickly. A trick at the end turns the story into something like a lesser episode of Murder, She Wrote. ★★ (YT)

*

Uranium Boom (dir. William Castle, 1956). In Colorado, prospectors Brad and Grady (Dennis Morgan and William Tallman) fight, make up, forge a friendship, and part ways when Brad marries Grady’s girlfriend Jean (Patricia Medina). Grady plots revenge, but everyone lives happily ever after. Unnecessarily snappy patter — “The old do-re-mi, that’s what I want, and plenty of it” —enlivens this rather dopey movie. My favorite line: “Bad day at Yellow Rock.” ★★ (YT)

*

The Midnight Story (dir. Joseph Pevney, 1957). A priest is murdered in a San Francisco alley, and Joe Martini (Tony Curtis), a rookie traffic cop and the priest’s best friend, resigns from the force to solve the crime. To do so, he ingratiates himself with the man he’s identified as a suspect, Sylvio Malatesta (Gilbert Roland), working for him and living in an extra bedroom in his house. And thus Joe falls in love with Sylvio’s sister Anna (Marisa Pavan). All three leads are excellent: Roland is especially strong, giving little indication of whether he is or isn’t the killer. The ending is quite a surprise. ★★★★ (YT)

*

The Choppers (dir. Leigh Jason, 1961). Inane junk that’s not quite bad enough to be good. We’re meant to understand that a gang of teenaged boys can siphon the gas out of a car, put back just enough gas to make the car run out on a deserted road, strip the car when the driver walks to a gas station, and sequester what they’ve stripped in the back of a poultry truck while one teen watches from a distance and warns of danger via walkie-talkie. My favorite line, apropos of nothing else in the movie: “She never puts anything on a sandwich to make it swallow easy — no butter, no nothin’.” These young hoods would pair well with the girl gang of The Violent Years. ★★ (YT)

*

Bodyguard (dir. Richard Fleischer, 1948). Lawrence Tierney was already known for off-screen brawling, so it’s no wonder that the movie begins with his character, suspended police detective Mike Carter, slugging his lieutenant and shouting “I can explain!” as his fellow cops restrain him. The story is thin: the suspended Carter serves as a bodyguard for the endangered head of a meatpacking company, and mayhem ensues. Much of the backstory speeds by in a few lines of dialogue, and the movie seems to have suffered significant cutting, reducing its coherence and removing what was likely a gruesome ending in a meatpacking plant. Priscilla Lane is on hand as Mike’s resourceful girlfriend Doris Brewster, though how she puts up with her feral beau is an open question. ★★ (TCM)

*

Goodfellas (dir. Martin Scorcese, 1990). I’m not a great fan of Mafia movies, but the dark comedy of this one suits me. Robert DeNiro, Ray Liotta, Joe Pesci, Lorraine Bracco, and Paul Sorvino star in the story of a Brooklyn youth, Henry Hill (Liotta), who becomes a somebody in the world of crime before ending up a nobody — but an alive nobody. What led me to watch this movie for the first time in many years: a clip of Joe Pesci as Tommy DeVito, telling a story in a way that I suspect spoke strongly to Donald Trump, who has named Goodfellas among his favorite movies. The picture of gangsterhood this movie presents, of outer-borough men who do whatever they want, take whatever they want, and brook no opposition would no doubt speak strongly to the disgraced ex-president. ★★★★ (F)

*

Jennifer (dir. Joel Newton, 1953). Undeservedly obscure, I think. Lonely Agnes Langsley (Ida Lupino) signs on a caretaker to a deserted estate whose last caretaker, Jennifer, seems to have disappeared, leaving behind a diary and other personal effects. What happened to Jennifer, and what might the estate’s owner (Howard Duff) or a schlubby grocery clerk (Robert Nichols) have to do with it? A modest, spooky production with strong Rebecca vibes and brilliant cinematography by James Wong Howe — just look at that shadow creeping snakelike up the steps. ★★★★ (YT)


*

Trial (dir. Mark Robson, 1955). Glenn Ford plays David Blake, a law professor who is told to beef up his credentials with some courtroom experience; thus he ends up defending Angel Chavez (Rafael Campos, Morales in The Blackboard Jungle), a Mexican-American teenager accused of causing the death of a white girl who fled and died of a heart attack after she and he necked. Racism and legal corruption are at the heart of the story, with Blake’s new employer (Arthur Kennedy) looking to exploit the case by turning Chavez into a found-guilty martyr to be exploited by an American Communist organization. I wonder whether Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (1952) influenced Don Mankiewicz’s novel Trial (1955) and this screenplay: the picture of an organization exploiting and abandoning is unmistakably similar. With Dorothy McGuire as a sharp secretary and Juano Hernandez as a judge who takes no guff from anyone. ★★★★ (TCM)

*

Gambit (dir. Ronald Neame, 1966). An amusing game of cat and mouse and cat and mouse and cat and mouse. Michael Caine is an aspiring criminal who hatches a plot to steal an ancient bust of a Chinese empress with the help of a showgirl (Shirley MacLaine) who bears a remarkable resemblance to the dead wife of the bust’s owner (Herbert Lom). The pleasure in this movie comes from seeing the many differences between the perfect criminal scheme, as Caine’s character envisions it, and its execution. Tricks abounding, all in an Orientalist “East.” ★★★ (TCM)

*

Convicted (dir. Henry Levin, 1950). “A man’s dead — somebody’s gotta pay for it”: that would be Joe Hufford (Glenn Ford), who killed a politician’s son in a bar fight and gets sent up for manslaughter. Joe’s life becomes more interesting when the DA who prosecuted him (Broderick Crawford) becomes the new, remarkably benevolent warden, and the DA’s adult daughter (Dorothy Malone) comes along to live on the prison premises (what?). The prison parts of the picture are solid, with Millard Mitchell as an inmate with nothing to lose. But long before the story is over, it spirals into romantic ridiculousness. ★★ (YT)

*

The Locket (dir. John Brahm, 1946). Childhood deprivation and humiliation help shape the adult Nancy (Laraine Day), a beautiful woman with a deeply disordered personality. She’s a destroyer of lives, one after another, in a story that takes shapes as a flashback within a flashback within a flashback. Robert Mitchum shines as a painter and Cassandra (unheeded prophet). Extraordinary noir cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca. ★★★★ (TCM)

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