TCM
TiVo ALERT
For
August
8–August 14
DAVID’S
BEST BETS:
STAGECOACH (August
12, 12:15 pm) As you'll read below in our We Disagree, I'm not a fan
of all John Wayne films. However, this is one of the best Westerns
ever made. This 1939 film, directed by John Ford, is about a
group of people – including a prostitute, an alcoholic doctor, a
pregnant woman, a gambler, and a bank embezzler – traveling
by stagecoach in 1880 through hostile Apache territory in the
Southwest. Along the way, they pick up the notorious Ringo Kid
(Wayne), who helps fend off the Indians. The cast that also features
Claire Trevor, John Carradine and Donald Meek is the strong-point of
this film with each actor getting enough screen time to
let viewers be interested in every character. Wayne is
perfectly cast as the young gun who's wrongfully accused, but fast
with a six-shooter and charming despite being rough around
the edges. This was Ford's first talkie Western and one of his best.
As with nearly all of Ford's films, the scenery in Stagecoach is
breathtaking.
BALL
OF FIRE (August 13, 2:00 pm): Barbara Stanwyck
is a hot nightclub performer hiding from the police and her mob
boyfriend in a house with brilliant, eccentric professors writing an
encyclopedia. Director Howard Hawks – with the assistance of Billy
Wilder, who co-wrote the screenplay from one of his short stories –
does a great job blending the two worlds together to make an
outstanding romantic comedy. The main professor, Bertram Potts (Gary
Cooper), is focusing his work on American slang. The slang of 1941 is
dated, but the scenes that have Potts learning the words of the day
from Stanwyck's character, Sugarpuss, are hysterical with Cooper
doing an excellent job as the straight man. Also of note are the
wonderful acting performances of the other professors, all who are
considerably older than Potts. It's a funny, entertaining film that
leaves the viewer with a smile on his/her face for most of the movie.
ED’S
BEST BETS:
FAST
AND FURIOUS (August 8, 10:45 am): The Thin
Man movies were popular must sees with moviegoers.
Unfortunately, MGM couldn’t grind them out as fast as fans would
have liked. To fill in the gap, MGM and other studios filled the
screen with other husband and wife duos, hoping to strike another
mother lode. This series centered around married rare booksellers
Joel and Garda Sloane lasted for three films, and was generally
entertaining. Unfortunately, MGM didn’t know what it wanted to do
with the series and in each film we saw a different couple as Joel
and Garda. This was the last film in the series and starred Franchot
Tone as Joel and Ann Sothern as Garda. It was also Tone’s last film
under his MGM contract, as he left for the stage. This time the
Sloanes become involved with a murder at a seaside beauty pageant.
The film is fast-moving, well-plotted, and entertaining, leading
viewers to wonder how well the series could really have done if the
studio wasn’t always changing the leads. MGM quickly lost interest
in the Sloanes when William Powell and Myrna Loy agreed to return
in Another Thin Man. MGM didn’t make mistakes often,
but here they had the chance to create a good B-series to stand in
between Powell and Loy outings. Watch and see if you agree.
LADIES
THEY TALK ABOUT (August 13, 9:00 am) No one was
better in the Pre-Code era than Barbara Stanwyck, and is at her best
in this, the grandmother of women-behind-bars flicks. She’s a bank
robber sent to prison, where she encounters all the later standard
prison clichés: the large, burly matron, scheming jealous rival
inmates, the hard-line warden, and the older lifers, led by Aunt
Maggie (the excellent supporting actress Maude Eburne) who mentors
Babs and shows her the ropes. There’s also a brief glimpse into a
muscular cigar-smoking inmate. Maggie warns Babs about her: “She
likes to wrestle.” And we all know what that means. Though the film
cops out at the end as Babs gets involved – and reformed by – a
radio evangelist (Preston Foster), it’s still the template for
later women-in-prison movies, none of which have ever topped it. A
psychotronic classic.
WE
DISAGREE ON ... THE QUIET MAN (August 12, 8:00 pm)
ED:
A+. If ever a film
could be said to be a paean poem, it is The Quiet Man,
for it is John Ford’s loving tribute to Ireland, the home of his
parents. (He was born in Maine.) John Wayne is somehow just right for
the role of Sean Thornton, a boxer who comes to the village where he
was born in Ireland to find peace, claim his homestead, and find a
wife. He’s haunted by the past, having quit the ring after
accidentally killing his last opponent. He catches the eye of Mary
Kate Danaher (Maureen O’Hara), but her brother, Squire “Red”
Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen), the richest farmer in the area, has
it in for Thornton. Sean’s homestead separates Danaher’s spread
from that of the Widow Sarah Tillane (Mildred Natwick) and Danaher
had his eye on it before Sean’s arrival. Now Danaher contrives to
keep Sean and Mary Kate separate, and when they do marry, he does
everything in his power to demean Thornton. He’s clearly scrapping
for a fight, but Sean won’t fight because of the bad memories. But
he must fight if he is to look manly in the eyes of his wife, and the
village. It is Thornton’s dilemma that drives the film, and when he
finally confronts his bullying brother-in-law, it’s a scene for the
ages. O’Hara is clearly the star of the film. Her Mary Kate easily
outshines both Wayne and McLaglen, no easy task since the film
revolves around the enmity between them. Barry Fitzgerald also shines
as Michaleen Flynn, the local matchmaker and cart driver who can’t
seem to tell anyone a thing without getting a mug of stout from them
first. It’s a wonderful film with the longest fight scene in
history. This is what is meant by the term “film classic.”
DAVID:
C. The Quiet Man is one of the most
overrated films in cinematic history. John Wayne plays Sean Thornton,
an Irish boxer who killed a man – surprisingly not with
his overacting – with his fists in the ring. He's back in
Ireland to forget about his past and live on his family's farm. While
he's at it, he grabs a woman to be his wife. The lucky lady is Mary
Kate Danaher (Maureen O’Hara). She's fiery, but Wayne can tame
her – or can he? Danaher's jackass of a brother (Victor
McLaglen), who is a major property owner in town, tries to get in his
way. Director John Ford attempts to inject humor into this film as
the town conspires to make sure Thornton claims Danaher as his
property against the will of her brother. One charming scene has
Thornton dragging Danaher across a field full of animal dung. This
was Ford's tribute to his native country. Apparently he's not a big
fan of Ireland. The main storyline is Thornton doesn't want to fight
because he killed a man, Danaher's brother is itching for a scrape
with him and the townsfolk want to see violence. Thornton won't fight
so everyone considers him the coward of the county (with apologies to
Kenny Rogers). His wife won't, um, be intimate with him until he gets
a dowry from her brother. She apparently believes she is property
with a certain financial value. Score one for women's lib! Fighting
seems to be the only way people in this film solve their differences.
To make it more ridiculous, the two start to like each other as they
exchange exaggerated punches. Mary Kate feels closer to her husband
and her brother as the fight goes on and on and on. If I'm looking
for a long entertaining fight scene I'll watch They Live.
Much is made about The Quiet Man's romantic
storyline. Love equally violence in this film. The scenery is
beautiful, but the same can be said of a National Geographic
documentary of the Irish countryside. And it's not like this is a
quick watch. The film drags on for two hours and nine minutes.
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