Author Topic: ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!  (Read 2533840 times)

Offline MaineWriter

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Re: ABCs at the Movies: Round 1941
« Reply #2090 on: December 12, 2007, 10:49:06 am »
As we move further back into movie history....

Round 1941!
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Offline MaineWriter

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"A" is L'Assassinat du Père Noël
« Reply #2091 on: December 12, 2007, 11:01:48 am »
==comment==

from IMDb: This was the first film that the Nazis allowed to be made in France after the occupation and installation of the Vichy government. Many denounced its director as a collaborator because he made a film sanctioned by the Nazis. But to the discerning eye, this unusual film does anything but cooperate with the enemy.

In its fairy-tale setting, the various characters appear as symbols in a constantly shifting allegory of good and evil. The literal-minded Nazi censors apparently didn't get the message, because any particular character might appear in one scene as a symbol of the collaborators, and in the next as a loyalist and supporter of resistance. Even as the symbolic alignments shifted too rapidly for the Nazis to detect them (much the way resistance fighters themselves often had to) the message of hope and patriotism and faith remained quite clear.

The story concerns an old globe-maker who is mysteriously killed while going through the town portraying Pere Noel ("Father Christmas" aka Santa Claus). The unraveling of the mystery is entwined with a love story concerning an aloof nobleman who might be a scoundrel, or might be Prince Charming. But the story is little more than a pretext for the message and the pervasive sense of magic that the film weaves.;

Of special note is the performance of Harry Baur, the famous Yiddish actor, as the Globemaker. His subtly Jewish Santa Claus is, in and of itself, a bold act of resistance. This was the next to last film Baur made. He was soon taken prisoner by the Nazis and reportedly died at the hands of the Gestapo.

I saw this film in 1980 when the Cinematheque Francaise sent a huge program of films to Los Angeles in collaboration with UCLA and The L.A. County Museum of Art. I do not know of it being shown in this country since. I have heard of an untranslated VHS of it being in existence, but I have been unable to find it. Do not miss this film if you are afforded a chance to see it.

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Online southendmd

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"B" is Babes on Broadway
« Reply #2092 on: December 12, 2007, 11:27:47 am »

Offline memento

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"C" is Citizen Cane
« Reply #2093 on: December 12, 2007, 12:08:13 pm »



Offline MaineWriter

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"D" is The Devil and Miss Jones
« Reply #2094 on: December 12, 2007, 12:45:58 pm »
==comment==

This is a wonderful story from the days immediately preceding America's entry into WWII, when the values that made America great were on display in the movies. A powerful department store owner, played by Charles Coburn, gets a job as a lowly clerk in his own store, in order to ferret out the workers who are trying to organize a labor union. He gradually gets caught up in the lives of the clerks in the shoe department (co-stars Jean Arthur, Bob Cummings, Spring Byington, Edmund Gwen) who accept him as just a poor, older man, and his view of things begins to shift. There are some excellent scenes in this movie, especially one in which Coburn is arrested while on a day at the beach with his fellow workers, and has to be kept out of jail by Cummings' bravado. Of course, everything works out well in the end, because this movie was made in the days when good was destined to triumph over evil.

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Online southendmd

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"E" is Escort Girl
« Reply #2095 on: December 12, 2007, 02:07:31 pm »
Slim pickins for "E" this year.  Described as "slick, seedy, but doesn't show anything".



Offline Ellemeno

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"F" is Freedom Radio
« Reply #2096 on: December 12, 2007, 02:27:24 pm »


From IMDb:

I was very pleasantly surprised to find it an intelligent drama about Germans in the 1930s who gradually come to realise that their country is becoming more and more totalitarian, and are pushed into an attempt at redressing the balance with the only weapon they can think of: the conviction that if only, somehow, they can get the truth out there, things will change. For our part we know, of course, that it didn't work; even they know they won't be able to get away with it indefinitely (although having an ally on the inside can prove invaluable...) But in a world where friends and neighbours are swept up by national loyalty and propaganda or become informers for their own personal profit, in a Nazi Germany that is not yet at war -- even a gesture at resistance can give hope.

As a propaganda piece this is quite extraordinarily restrained: the entire cast are played (hence the 'accents' jibe -- might the reviewer have found comic Teutonic vowels less disturbing, perhaps?) as people 'like us', as ordinary Englishmen and women of the period, from the young workman to the nosy neighbour and the Society doctor. The young artist Otto, whose SS work gradually takes over his life, has the vocabulary of a thoughtless young public-school-boy; the Gestapo officer Rabenau who tracks the heroes down is an upright and keen-eyed Intelligence commander who could have stepped out of Fighter Command HQ, not a Prussian caricature. When you consider that the film was made in the darkest days of the Second World War, the decision not merely to show 'good Germans', but to show 'bad Germans' -- Nazi loyalists -- as human (and to eschew the use of heavy foreign accents to represent foreigners speaking in their own language) is impressive.

Clive Brook, as ever, is superb as the thinking man's thinking man; Diana Wynyard brings conviction to the role of his wife, the actress whose talent brings favour from the Fuehrer himself. Raymond Huntley makes Rabenau a formidable yet admirable opponent who is never likely to be fooled for long, while the younger couple -- Derek Farr and Joyce Howard -- provide easy appeal to the eye as the young workman and his sweetheart.

The production values betray a wartime budget: the obvious impossibility of shooting on location in Continental Europe, the stock footage of Nazi parades, and the restricted sets and shortage of extras -- for example, we only ever see Irena's stage triumphs from behind the curtain, and the Gestapo never seem to be able to muster more than half a dozen members at once. There is also a telltale moment when the supposed passage of the Budapest express is marked by the unmistakable shriek of an English locomotive whistle! The script, on the other hand, benefits from a similar parsimony. Little is stated outright if the information can instead be implied: especially in the opening sequences. We know the chilling truth behind the 'rest home' for an inconveniently hysterical witness -- the characters don't. Exposition is neatly avoided, and by and large the film displays an admirable subtlety and restraint. The exception, naturally, is in the rival radio broadcasts -- state propaganda on the one side, claims of debunking on the other -- and there were moments at the end when I felt that the content of the impassioned speeches was too obviously aimed at wartime audiences rather than the 1930s populace it supposedly addressed. But under the circumstances, and given the inevitable ending, the attempt at some kind of upbeat content is understandable.
.....

This film has a lot to say about to what extent the allied powers knew about the horrors of the Nazi regime by 1940. The "cleared for general viewing" notice that appears just before this film starts adds a small something to this film now.
....

This is the sort of intelligent movie you simply won't meet with in modern cinema. Yes, it's blatant propaganda, and yet the film serves so much more as a clarion call for justice, civility, and yes, freedom too. What we have in the lead character, Dr. Roder has got to be one of the most real, most believable and admirable heroes in of cinema.

My advice is don't get bogged down with the occasional stuffiness of the production, enjoy this exultation on the bravery inside those who are able to stand up for what they believe in.

It's a shame Freedom Radio will only ever get seldom showings on obscure channels in the mid-afternoon. This is the sort of film we'd do well to show in history classes.
....

Offline oilgun

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"G" is The Great Lie
« Reply #2097 on: December 12, 2007, 03:14:13 pm »

Offline MaineWriter

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Re: ABCs at the Movies: Round 1941
« Reply #2098 on: December 12, 2007, 03:29:32 pm »
I would love to play the "H"  :)

Here's your chance....go for it!



Thanks, Leslie!  :-*

Meryl
« Last Edit: December 12, 2007, 03:52:58 pm by Meryl »
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Offline Meryl

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"H" is How Green Was My Valley
« Reply #2099 on: December 12, 2007, 03:32:23 pm »






Just by chance, I caught this movie on TCM last night and was reminded that it's always been one of my favorites.  My Dad's family is of Welsh descent, and when I was a kid, we lived in a coal mining town south of Pittsburgh, with many relations who could remember way back to the early days when my great-great-grandfather emigrated here from Wales.  The singing of the Welsh choirs, the big, close Welsh family, and the earnestness with which the film is made makes me tear up all through it.  It's my "Roots"!

In a year of great films, among them "Citizen Kane" and "The Maltese Falcon," HGWMV won the Best Picture Oscar.  A film that touches the heartstrings like this maybe couldn't succeed today, but it has an integrity that  keeps it from becoming too dated or overly sentimental. John Ford captured the spirit of the Welsh community, Walter Pidgeon and Maureen O'Hara never looked more handsome and beautiful, and Roddy MacDowell was the wide-eyed boy who took it all in and narrated the story.   
Ich bin ein Brokie...