TCM
TiVo ALERT
For
March 15–March 22
DAVID’S
BEST BETS:
CROSSFIRE (March
18, 10:00 am): Robert Ryan was a tremendous actor and this is my
favorite film to feature him. This 1947 film noir that deals
with anti-Semitism is considered the first B movie to be nominated
for a Best Picture Oscar. The film stars the great Robert Mitchum
with Robert Young outstanding as a police detective. But it is Ryan's
powerful portrayal of a white supremacist/anti-Semite GI who kills a
Jewish guy he and his buddies meet at a bar who steals the movie.
WATERLOO
BRIDGE (March
22, 12:00 pm): While the 1940 version of this film is a bit
overproduced – MGM, of course – it's still wonderful
with outstanding performances given by the leads, Vivien Leigh (her
first film after Gone
With the Wind)
and Robert Taylor. It's the start of World War II and Taylor is a
British Army captain while Leigh is a ballerina. It's love at first
sight, but things don't work out so easily with the Nazis trying to
blow up England. The two are to be married, but Taylor is called to
duty and it only gets worse. Leigh loses her job at the ballet and in
order to survive she becomes a prostitute. All hope is lost with
Leigh convinced Taylor died in the war after reading his name in the
list of those killed in battle. It shows you can't believe everything
you read. Some are critical of the ending, but with the Hays Code in
play, there wasn't much else to be done. It's still an excellent
film.
ED’S
BEST BETS:
42nd
STREET (March 15, 6:15 pm): The first and the best of
the backstage musicals churned out by Warner Brothers in the ‘30s.
All the cliches are there: the producer fighting poor health to put
on his next show because he’s broke, the gold digging chorines, the
star with an attitude, the kid from the chorus who is picked to
headline the show after the star can’t go on and the sugar daddy
who backs the show. Superbly acted by Warner Baxter, Bebe Daniels,
George Brent, Ginger Rogers and Guy Kibbee, it also contains some of
the greatest numbers even thought up by Busby Berkeley. This is a
film one can watch multiple times without becoming bored.
A
FACE IN THE CROWD (March 18, 1:45 pm): Budd Schulberg
wrote and Elia Kazan directed this prescient look at celebrity and
media-made pundits in the story of Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes (Andy
Griffith), a drifter discovered in jail by the hostess (Patricia
Neal) of a morning radio show in Pickett, Arkansas, and who, through
the sheer force of his “down home” personality eventually makes
his way to New York, where he becomes not only an entertainment
superstar, but a respected wielder of opinion; powerful enough to
make a nondescript senator into a formidable presidential candidate.
Rhodes, however, is rotten to the core, and as his fame and power
increase, the monster within him begins to break out. It’s up to
Neal, as a latter-day Frankenstein, to destroy the monster she
created before he destroys us, and she does it in a quite unique way.
Neal, of course, is her usual superb self, and Griffith gave the best
performance of his career, playing against type. He should have
gotten the Oscar, but he wasn’t even nominated, due to the less
than stellar box office of the movie and the liberal backlash against
director Kazan for supposedly “naming names” before Congress. (In
reality he didn’t name anyone that wasn’t already named again and
again.) What eventually brought critics around to giving this film
another look was Francois Truffaut, who championed the film as a
modern-day classic and a warning.
WE
DISAGREE ON ... CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (March 16, 6:00 pm)
ED.
A-. The censors watered down
Tennessee Wiliiams’s classic Pultizer Prize
winning play about greed and mendacity in the South, but it still
packs one hell of a punch, thanks to a great cast, especially
Elizabeth Taylor, who gives one of her best performances and steams
up the screen in doing so. Jack Carson scores in one of his last
roles as Paul Newman’s brother (and Burl Ives’ son).
Newman himself isn’t as dominant in this as he usually is
in other films, but still manages to give a powerful performance
nevertheless. However, considering the censorship, this is a film
that should have been made during the ‘80s, when such topics could
be honestly addressed, as Williams did in his play. It’s the
excellent cast that puts this film over the hump for the audience,
and it’s a wonderful film to see just for the performances.
DAVID: C+. This isn't a
bad film, but there are a number of reasons I don't think
it's anything special. First the good: Burl Ives is
fantastic as Big Daddy, the patriarch of the dysfunctional family
featured in the movie. He plays his role to near perfection. To begin
the not-so-good list, the screenplay of this Tennessee Williams' play
is too melodramatic. As I've mentioned before, I'm not much of a fan
of Paul Newman or Elizabeth Taylor. This 1958 film is an example of
why. The pair lack chemistry together, and, yes, I know the idea is
the two have marital issues. But that doesn't mean Newman and
Taylor can't work together to make a good film.
Taylor's character goes from understanding to psychotic in the
snap of a finger, and she fails to convey any authenticity. As for
Newman, he overuses method acting in this film as he was prone to do
when playing angst-ridden characters. His character broods and then
lashes out during the entire film for no logical reason. The Hays
Code wouldn't permit the heavily suggested homosexual aspects of
Newman's character that are in the play to be included in the film so
viewers are left to wonder: why is any of this occurring? To make
matters worse, the characters and the film are pretentious.
For the complete list of films on the TCM TiVo Alert, click here.
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