The Harvey Girls (1946)

The frontiers of public awareness having now been completely broken down by the musical penetration of "The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fé," Metro's purveyors of screen provender have brought up "The Harvey Girls" as the ultimate refinement and promise of that inescapable song. And, substantially justifying its deservedly popular chant, this new musical, which came yesterday to the Capitol, is certain to prove an equal hit.

For the magnificoes of Metro have generously put into it an abundance of chromatic spectacle and an uncommonly good musical score. They have hired Judy Garland, Kenny Baker, Virginia O'Brien and Ray Bolger to sing and dance, and they have tossed the whole thing together in a professional though not especially imaginative style. It may not be the ultimate along the musical comedy line, but folks around here will find it a pleasant thing with which to pass the time of day. Frankly, the story has little of the power of old No. 9, even though a round-house full of writers has fetched it out of Samuel Hopkins Adams' book. It tells of a beauteous bevy of Fred Harvey waitresses—crisp and obliging handmaidens for the famous restaurant chain—who follow the Sante Fé Railroad into a Western frontier town and put on a sturdy exhibition of good girls versus bad.

And particularly it tells of one trim waitress who so frequently invades the town's sin den to tonguelash the haughty proprietor that he naturally falls for her and she for him.
But that dramatic framework encloses a picturesque locale and an excess of feminine magnificence, both of which are assets to a musical show. And within it there are frequent occasions for folks to express their sentiments in song. Best and most frequently chanted of the Johnny Mercer-Harry Warren tunes is that rattling railroad number that bids fair to live as long as "Casey Jones." It is the opening production number, is reiterated through the show and explodes rhythmically in final splendor for a dandy tap-dance by Mr. Bolger.
Good, too, is Mr. Baker's singing of the sentimental ditty, "Wait and See," and Miss O'Brien and Mr. Bolger make amusing "It's Wild in the Wild, Wild West." "The Train Must Be Fed" serves quite nicely for a handmaidenly parade and "Around and Around and Around" gets all the company into an elaborate and spirited waltz.

Miss Garland, of course, is at the center of most of the activity and handles herself in pleasing fashion, up to and including the high notes. John Hodiak acts rather surly as the saloon proprietor and Angela Lansbury, pouty and pomaded, looks dazzling as the queen of the den. Everyone else enters lightly into this beefsteak and hors d'oeuvre opera. It may be a rather lofty tribute to Fred Harvey's girls, but it's a show.

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

Frank Chambers (John Garfield) is a drifter who stops at a rural diner for a meal, and ends up working there. The diner is operated by a beautiful young woman, Cora Smith (Lana Turner), and her much older husband, Nick (Cecil Kellaway).

Frank and Cora soon have an affair after they meet. Cora is tired of her situation, married to a man she does not love, and working at a diner that she wishes to own. She and Frank scheme to murder Nick in order to start a new life together without her losing the diner. Their first attempt at the murder is a failure, but they eventually succeed.
The local prosecutor, Kyle Sackett (Leon Ames), suspects what has occurred, but doesn't have enough evidence to prove it. As a tactic intended to get Cora and Frank to turn on one another, he tries only Cora for the crime. Although they do turn against each other, a clever ploy from Cora's lawyer prevents Cora's full confession from coming into the hands of the prosecutor. With the tactic having failed to generate any new evidence for the prosecution, Cora benefits from a plea bargain in which she pleads guilty to manslaughter and receives probation.

Frank and Cora eventually patch together their tumultuous relationship, and now plan for a future together. But as they seem to be prepared finally to live "happily ever after", Cora dies in a car accident. Ironically, although it was in fact truly an accident, the circumstances seem suspicious enough that Frank is then wrongly convicted of murdering her by having staged the accident. He is sentenced to death.
When informed that his last chance at a reprieve from his death sentence has been denied, and thus his execution is now at hand, Frank is at first incredulous that he will be executed for murdering Cora, even though he is innocent of having done so. But when informed that authorities now have irrefutable evidence of his guilt in the murder of Nick, Frank decides that his impending death is actually his overdue punishment for that crime, despite his official conviction being for killing Cora.

Frank contemplates that when a person is expecting to receive a letter, it is of no concern if at first he does not hear the postman ring the doorbell, because the postman will always ring a second time, and that second ring will invariably be heard. After they escaped legal punishment for Nick's murder, but nonetheless with Cora now dead and Frank on his way to the death chamber, he notes that the postman has indeed rung a second time for each of them.

Chisum (1970)

As "Chisum" opens, there sits John Wayne on his horse, both of them frozen in profile by a lonesome pine. "Chisum, Chisum," thunder a chorus and orchestra, "he'll still keep goin' on." And you'd better believe it, especially with the same business repeated at the fadeout. In between, there are few surprises.

In this typical range-war exercise for Big John he plays his tough, laconic self of yore, a settled-down rancher who watches a New Mexico community slide under the heel of the villainous Forrest Tucker. It takes a lot to rouse Wayne, but the climax is a deafening tribute to justice triumphant, with a town leveled by a cattle stampede through a blazing gun were in the streets. You'll never be able to tote up the corpses.

Essentially, this is a conventional Western, not the kind that such directors as John Ford and Henry Hathaway have pulled up taut with sharp character components. As such, it has a couple of things in its favor, such as the excellent, panoramic color photography by William H. Clothier. A large, sprawling cast, trotting at the heels of Wayne, performs vigorously. And under the direction of Andrew V. McLaglen, it looks as Western as all get-out. It may ramble but it does move.

Tucker, for instance, comes across with snap and bite. Patric Knowles conveys the same, as an altruistic Englishman on the prairie. Young Geoffrey Deuel cuts a personable swath as Billy the kid, and several other hardies such as Ben Johnson, Glenn Corbett and Richard Jaeckel pitch in accordingly, with Pamela McMyler and Lynda Day as fetching ornaments.

Forget substance. Settle for color and commotion and you won't feel cheated.

Girl with Green Eyes (1964)

In narrative scope, this movie is no more than a confined and intimate account of what you might term a brief encounter between this lass, who clerks in a Dublin general store, and an older man, a novelist, who happens, at the time, to be separated from his wife.
It is a story of their first casual meeting, the cutely artful endeavors of the girl to get his attention and interest (with some blunt asistance from the girl with whom she rooms), their first strained attempt at love-making, their fulfillment of a narrowly needful love and then the tensions of possessiveness and ennui that this fulfillment precipitates.

Along the way, there is a howling Interruption by the father and other relatives of the girl who come roaring up from County Wicklow when they hear of the scandalous goings-on to haul the sinful lass back to the country and force her to submit to the rigid disciplines of her upbringing for a spell.

But that's about it—except for the little incidents that allow us to see the multitudinous shimmerings and shadows that fly across the girl's emotions and mind, some sly intimations of the Irish nature that bubble and pop through the film and flavorsome backgrounds of Dublin and the thorny countryside.

And out of it all comes a wistful but rather hearty appreciation of this girl who is an honest, human compound of aggressions, generosity, hopes and selfishness.

It is in the exposition of these factors that Miss Tushingham is so good—so fluent with her facial expressions, so intense with her attitudes and so eloquent and subtle in her projection of the volatile essence of this girl. She creates a vivid impression of perceptible emotional hues. Even though this is a black-and-white picture, you can sense that her great round eyes are green.

A Few of My Favorite Things

I love writing reviews on things and one of my favorite things is watching classic movies. Well, this new blog of mine is going to be dedicated to classic movies and why they are still wonderful today. I hope you enjoy this new blog.