We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
(Visited 1,785 times)
We figured it was time to have a place to talk about Steve’s latest video subjects that do not have an UMR page.
HI STEVE: At last! – but as usual the wait was well worthwhile with for example some really meaty trivia about The 3rd Man one of my all-time fave movies.
You will remember that the 1st time in the movie that Joe Cotten’s Holly Martins sees Welles’ Lime [whom Holly thinks is dead] is when a light shines momentarily on a darkened doorway and there briefly is Lime smiling mockingly at Holly only for the sighting to disappear when the light moves away.
So maybe there’s hope for you and me yet: possibly years from now you or I will be passing a darkened doorway and a brief flood of light will reveal the Work Horse smiling at us before the image immediately retreats back into the darkness to be gone forever. We will then do doubt thank heavens for small mercies as the saying goes!
Regarding your point about communist sympathisers I find it difficult to form a conclusive view where American affairs are concerned because the bar for accusation over there seems to me much lower -and particularly so during the classic era of movies that coincided with the McCarthy era – than is the case in GB where somebody who would have been classed as a communist in the US would simply be regarded as a “lefty” within our system and might even be repeatedly elected to parliament.
During the Watergate scandals it was revealed that Richard Nixon had kept a hitherto secret “enemies” list and one entry was marked “Paul Newman-trendy Liberal-needs watching”.
Now Paul of course was no threat to the system being a multi-millionaire respected professional actor who joined the likes of Republican Chuck Heston on civil rights marches and who possibly wanted to see guys at the bottom of the food chain get some breaks.
Bob, here’s a rough cut of what I posted earlier at the UMR before it was unceremoniously removed, flung into the spam bin and set on fire. My missing post included a comment on your recent UMR posts. So it might be worth you reading it if that post ever resurfaces.
Hi Bob, thanks for the review, generous rating, info and quotes, much appreciated. Happy you liked the posters, stills and lobby cards.
200 film noir on 7 videos dating from 1940 to 1949, many of them all time classics. Let’s see how the 1950’s compare. I will have to include ‘colour noir’ for the first time.
I had the impression while researching these films that more than a few noir directors (and some of the actors too) were communist sympathizers.
Four films scored 10 out of 10 from one or more of my sources and they are the top 4 on my chart.
My Video Top 5 –
The Third Man 9.15
White Heat 8.9
All the King’s Men 8.15
The Set-Up 7.8
Criss Cross 7.7
The UMR Critics Top 5 –
White Heat 9.1
The Third Man 9.0
All the King’s Men 8.6
Champion 8.3
Criss Cross 8.2
IMDB Third Man Trivia. Orson Welles said that when he agreed to play Harry Lime, he was offered either a straight salary or a percentage of the profits. Welles chose the salary, but he later regretted it because the film went on to become such a huge hit, the percentage was ultimately worth far more than the salary. Welle’s contribution to the film included writing the film’s most famous passage of dialogue The Cuckoo clock speech. There are many oblique angles in the movie, where the camera is tilted so the horizon line is not horizontal, to give a feeling of awkwardness and uneasiness (in film theory these are called Dutch Angles). After he saw the movie, William Wyler, a friend of Carol Reed, sent him a spirit level with a note: “Carol, next time you make a picture, just put it on top of the camera, will you?” By the time David Selznick released the film in the U.S. Anton Karas ‘Harry Lime Theme’ was already a sensation, selling out at record stores. He capitalized on this by including the tag line, “Featuring the Famous Zither Score by Anton Karas… He”ll have in you a dither with his zither!” in the ad campaign and trailers.
With reference to Steve’s 1949 noir video [and Alan Ladd has been a big part of Steve’s noir series overall] Chicago Deadline substantially brings-down the curtain on Ladd’s career as major film noir player which in terms of stardom had commenced way back in 1942 with the classic This Gun for Hire.
He did a handful of noirs in the 1950s But when I was fortunate to come across Laddie in the early 1950s he was settling into his new careers as an Indiana Jones figure in colourful adventure films and as a Wild West Hero – what versatility!
He made 9 adventure films such as Desert Legion, Thunder in the East, Botany Bay and Hell Below Zero but it was primarily as an A-list western star, especially after the now- legendary Shane, that Laddie probably became known to us in the 1950s.
He had had I think a bit part in maybe just one western before he became a star: 1940’s The Light of Western Stars. After that he made I think just one more western prior to the 1950s: 1948’s Whispering Smith.
In the 1950s though he made up for lost time and between 1950 and 1960 he starred in a run of 11 westerns including apart from Shane The Badlanders [which was a western reworking of Huston’s classic Asphalt Jungle] and One Foot in Hell in which he played a criminal villain for the 1st time since his star-making role of Philip Raven in 1942’s This Gun for Hire [though in 1960s war film All the Young Men he was cast in the unsympathetic role of a racist picking on Sidney Poitier].
In fact in One Foot in Hell Dolores Michaels as a prostitute has a distinction of maybe being the only person -certainly the only woman – to ever kill-off the great Alan Ladd in a western!
And GREAT he was but don’t take just my word for it: the highly-respected James Mason who carefully-studied Ladd when working close-up to him in Botany Bay proclaimed him a “phenomenon” and I can never recall -except perhaps on THIS site – anyone bestowing that accolade on for example Jace Statham or Myrna Loy.
Certainly for me Laddie along with the likes of The Duke/Jimmy Stewart/towering Chuck Heston/Joan Crawford/Doris Day/Deanna Durbin/The Great Mumbler/Charlie Bill Stuart and Royal Edward Dano Senior [aka Ed Dano but sometimes known as Eldred G Peck] are among that select group of mega stars who traditionally have attracted one of the most flattering of all epitaphs: “We will never see their like again.”
Bob, my reply appeared here briefly but when I tried to edit it it was marked as spam and vanished. I hope Bruce finds it.
HI STEVE. Sorry about your spammer problems. I hope your post turns up as I was looking forward to it. One doesn’t have to say something too controversial on this site for one’s work to be identified as spam – just for example say Die Hard isn’t a Christmas movie or say the Oscars are now boring as indeed they are.
As you no doubt will have observed my initial posting on Friday was a bit askew. Parts 2 and 3 of that original post went straight to your page OK but for some reason yours would not accept Part One and my frantic repeat efforts to send it there only resulted in it continually ending up on Royal Dano’s page and numerous efforts to copy it across from Ed Dano’s page to yours failed .
I suppose that it is par for the course that a ship will stray into unintended waters when there is no captain on the bridge. However dry land at last: Sat morn’s effort succeeded and Part One now takes its rightful place with the other 2 parts on your page.
Part One is in fact such a magnificent post that it does no harm for it to be repeated a number of times elsewhere on the site!!!
Bob, I don’t think anyone’s home. I copied half of the post before it disappeared I’ll redo the other half and post it again later tonight. I’ve read all your previous posts btw and I sympathise. The glory days are over.
HI STEVE: I look forward to later tonight. I certainly wouldn’t be hanging around waiting for the Work Horse to contact me if I were you.
On this site these days I am reminded of the “Run Forrest Run” scenes in Gump where Forrest leads a troup of adoring runners over hill and dale for weeks on end and then one day in the middle of the run he suddently stops and tells his fawning ‘disciples’ that he wants to run no more and walks away leaving them flabbergasted and leaderless with them standing in the middle of the road and saying to each other “What are we going to do now? Where do we go ?”
For us too it will probably sadly be “Never glad confident Morning again” as Robert Browning expressed it in his great 1845 poem about betrayal by an admired and respected leader “The Lost Leader.” Wikipedia says about that poem –
“It berates Browing’s fellow-poet, William Wordsworth, for what Browning considered his desertion of the liberal cause, and his lapse from his high idealism. More generally, it is an attack on ANY leader who has deserted his cause.”
Do WE know any such leader?
The Bob, your Forrest gump comment was spot on. great movie related insight. for a cogerson spotting , check his reviews on letterboxd.
HI BOB
Thanks for your kind comments. Hope you are bearing-up OK following the savage grief that you have had to sustain recently. Best wishes and keep safe.
I have seen 31 top 1949 film noir titles. Favourites are The Third Man, White Heat, The Set-Up, Criss Cross, Champion, House of Strangers, Act of Violence, Thieves’ Highway, The Reckless Moment, The Window, Too late For Tears, Caught, Flamingo Road, Tension, The Bribe, The Undercover Man, Rope of Sand, Impact, Flaxy Martin, Trapped, Scene of the Crime, The Crooked Way, Red Light, and A Woman’s Secret.
Others I have seen are All the King’s Men, The Big Steal, Knock On Any Door, The Woman on Pier13, A Dangerous Profession and Port of New York.
Favourite posters and stills are from The Third Man, White Heat, The Set-Up, Criss Cross, Act of Violence, Thieves’ Highway, The Reckless Moment, The Window, Caught, Too Late For Tears, Tension, The Bribe, The Undercover Man, and Impact.
Hi Flora, late again sorry about that. Another great tally, 31 out of 40 is impressive. I’ve seen 7, maybe more if I could remember them. My favorites are The Bribe, White Heat and The Third Man. I’ve also seen All the Kings Men, Criss Cross, Champion and The Big Steal.
Thanks for commenting, always appreciated. Happy you liked the posters and stills. Another video next friday.
BEST STILLS/LOBBY CARDS
1/Jigsaw
2/Yul with hair
3/I married a Red
4/Red Light
5/Trapped
6/2 for White Heat
7/2 for Undertow
8/The Lady Gambles
9/1st for Manhandled
10/2 for Rope of Sand
11/2 for Undercover Man
12/ALL for The Bribe
13/Flamingo Road – was Joan The Queen of Noir?
14/Act of Violence
15/Both for Champion
16/Impact
17/Tension
18/ALL for The Third Man-deserves Top Spot with exception of maybe Chicago Deadline
19/Knock on Any Door- among the first half-dozen films that I ever saw. I vividly remember sitting in the Regent cinema in Belfast with my dad watching it in early 1950. I was 9 at the time .
20/2 for Johnny Stool Pigeon – early Bernard Schwartz supporting role
21/House of Strangers – remade as western Broken Lance in 1954 starring Old Cantankerous and Dickie Widmark and then again in 1961 as a circus romp The Big Show with Cliff Robertson.
22/Chicago Deadline –along with posters fitting material to mark the end of Ladd’s main film noir era. Classy!
23/The Setup – often considered the “most brutal boxing movie ever” apart from maybe Raging Bull. The powder puff Stallone wouldn’t have been allowed to watch either never mind star in them.