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Reviews (6)
Oct 24, 2015
The screen's best Hitchcock homage paired with a stage-to-screen American comedy classic
Stanley Donen's CHARADE is the first and probably best of the many variations on Hitchcock themes. With Audrey Hepburn (at her most beautiful) as the main character in peril and Cary Grant (ageless) as the ostensible helper-protector who does not seem at all what he appears to be, a gender switch is the first of many twists in an enjoyably complex screenplay. With several soon-to-be-stars in supporting roles, authentic Paris filming, perfect music scoring by the amazing Henry Mancini and Hepburn in Givenchy designs, this rollercoaster-ride thriller is a timeless delight! ///// Henry Koster's HARVEY is a great adaptation of a classic stage comedy success. James Stewart gives one of the best performances of his long career (fourth Academy nomination) as a gentle, more-than-he-appears-to-be soul who exemplifies the idea that good people bring out the best in other people. Stage character actress Josephine Hull (Oscar-winning performance) as the exasperated sister who isn't quite sure that the invisible being her brother claims to be his best friend is in his imagination, is hilarious and propels the plot forward. Smooth, unobtrusive direction allowing a fine supporting cast to shine with lots of gentle and not-so-gentle laughs throughout, and a charming music score by Frank Skinner make this a winner!
Nov 08, 2010
The Miracle of the Bells: an ironic fable
The Miracle of the Bells, released in 1948 by RKO Radio Pictures, is an ironic holiday fable. Using the screen device of flashback and flashforward to tell the story, its themes of personal redemption through acts of duty, and true happiness through sacrifice, recall in its tone an earlier and far better-known film, It's A Wonderful Life. Straightforwardly and unobtrusively directed by Irving Pichel (the man who discovered and introduced a five-year-old Natalie Wood to a movie career), The Miracle of the Bells concerns a down-on-his-luck press agent who travels to a small Pennsylvania mining town. He is a man with a mission: to honor and fulfill the wish of someone he loved and lost. The departed loved one was an aspiring film actress who also had a mission: to give something great through her art to the people of the poor and downtrodden town she had grown up in. As life so often consists of seeming coincidences, of being in the right place at the right time, the obstacles the press agent must face as he proceeds to achieve his goal make it seem to him that he was in the wrong place at any time. Yet because life can also be full of irony, the more opposition that is placed before him the stronger and more determined he becomes. And not only does he become better than before, but so do many of the people he encounters. Thus the "miracle" of the movie's title has multiple shades of meaning. The press agent is played by Fred MacMurray with just the right balance of manly drive and conviction, and poignancy - one of the best performances by an actor best known for comedy. There is fine support from Lee J. Cobb as a cynical studio mogul, and from a very young-looking Frank Sinatra in his first dramatic role as a no-nonsense priest. Yet it is the performance of the Italian beauty Alida Valli (billed in her Hollywood films as simply, Valli) that imbues the entire picture with a special aura of warmth. Radiant, luminous, yet accessible in her feminine appeal, Miss Valli mesmerizes as the tragic actress and like the character she is portraying leaves you wanting more. The Miracle of the Bells is not a film for the unsentimental. In its simplicity of storytelling and its unabashed emotional truth, it shows how one selfless act can affect the lives of many and expand that to an even greater one. See this as a double-feature with It's A Wonderful Life and enjoy a good cry this holiday season! You'll be glad you did! Reynolds Clough
Nov 11, 2008
Kino's restored version of "Man...Eiffel Tower" : wow!
Attention classic-moviephiles, mystery-suspensephiles, Francophiles and just world-cinemaphiles in general: the wait is over! The fully-restored print of the 1949 The Man On the Eiffel Tower directed by stars Burgess Meredith and (uncredited) Charles Laughton is available at last and only by Kino International. At last we can now forget about the numerous public-domain prints that have circulated for years: faded muddy color or grainy choppy black-and-white. The UCLA Film and Television Archive is due our eternal thanks for discovering a believed-lost 35-mm print and restoring every frame of this vibrant, rare-in-color film noir that was filmed in the experimental Ansco process (murky and moody yet rich and vivid at the same time). An American-French co-production released by RKO Radio Pictures (the greatest film studio that ever was, IMO), the astounding on-location photography and gymnastic, eye-popping camerawork up and down and around the famed tower of the title (it is almost the central character) enables the movie - as well as the City Of Paris - to retain a freshness and aliveness and contemporary, independent film-look of today that would simply not have been there in a studio-bound production. It is also the non-glossy, non-shiny, grittiness of the AnscoColor lensing that is perfectly in tandem with the restrained, yet unmistakable "joie-de-vive" quality of the Georges Simenon novel on which the film is based. Also, this slightly jarring, off-the-center, look and feel of the movie (the "mies-en-scene" in film terms) beautifully underscores the subtlety of the fine-textured performances of the three male stars: Charles Laughton as the seemingly bumbling yet razor-sharp Inspector Maigret, Franchot Tone as the perpetrator who thinks he is above law and justice, and Burgess Meredith as the clumsy, vision-impaired scapegoat desperate to prove his innocence. At the time of its release, the critics generally regarded director-of-photography Stanley Cortez as the true star of The Man On The Eiffel Tower, underrating the acting as perfunctory and bland. Sixty years later it is time for reassessment and reevaluation, and this writer feels that it is the restraint and layered dexterity of the three male star performances juxtaposed against the spectacular backdrop of Paris that gives this picture an edgy effectiveness and slightly unvarnished, offbeat style in tune with today's style of filmmaking. I strongly recommend this dvd if you love Paris, or things French, or great crime stories, or actors the like of Laughton, Meredith and Tone that are quite irreplacable. Or like me, you are an appreciative afficionado of film restoration and are consistently amazed and grateful when a new, long-lost gem of cinema is restored to its original glory. Try to see this at least on a 32-inch tv screen for the next-best thing to a real theater - you will almost feel the City of Paris enter your living room! But accept no imitations! Look for the Kino label on the upper right corner of the box for the authentic, restored print - not the public domain prints. And enjoy a true film treasure! --- Reynolds Clough