On The Town 1949 - MGM Directed By Gene Kelly + Stanley Donen
SYNOPSIS
Three Navy sailors (Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Jules Munshin) get 24 hours of shore leave and head out into New York City looking for fun and girls.
MY THOUGHTS
A fun and enjoyable musical romp through New York City.
The music was great and never annoying as I find in many musicals. On the Town is not overcrowded with music to the point where you have to yell out "oh god, another one!." Several songs were written by Leonard Bernstein, including the New York, New York (It's a Heckuva Town.) The script has very witty and cheeky sense of humor and has more pop culture references in it than a typical movie of today (rare for the time.)
As a history buff, it was great to see NYC as it was in the late 40's.. and especially in all its technicolor glory. Much of the film was shot on location (also rare for the time even more so for a musical.)
There's not a weak performance among the actors. Kelly and Sinatra have great chemistry, which is why they were teamed up several times.
The film is practically a remake of the Kelly/Sinatra film Anchor's Aweigh just set on the opposite side of the country. But who cares? The magic struck twice.
Racket Busters 1938 - Warner Brothers Directed By Lloyd Bacon
SYNOPSIS
Gangster Pete Martin (Humphrey Bogart) makes moves to control the produce market in New York. He starts by targeting the trucking business. This angers many truckers including popular driver Denny Jordan (George Brent.) Martin threatens to harm Jordan's pregnant wife (Gloria Dickson) if he doesn't join Martin's new truckers union. Jordan bends and loses many friends in the process... but how many of them must be beaten and killed before he sees the light and helps to kick the gangsters to the curb?
MY THOUGHTS
An enjoyable, but non-essential, Warner Brothers gangster film from the 30's.
Humphrey Bogart is at his snarling bad-guy best here... making the most out of very little. His character has only one ambition - to take control of the city's food supply. That is all he's used for. We never learn anything else about the character. It's very one dimensional. Bogart played thugs like this left and right during this time in his career and always turned in a solid performance despite the weakly written characters. This part was weaker then most. He was given top billing but George Brent, as the hero, has more screen time. Bogart isn't on screen long enough to light up a smoke (I don't recall him smoking once in the film which must have been a departure for him!)
Brent's character is much more fleshed out and he even has a character arc where he grows learns and changes. Brent does a suitable job but the character seems to be all over the place. At the beginning he's a cynical and wisecracking happy-go-lucky type. Once he's 'gone to the dark side,' he does a 180 and is cold, wooden and dull. Such a drastic change doesn't seem realistic at all.
Realism is what the screenwriters were going for here. The scenario seems like it was ripped from the headlines of the day and cobbled together and rushed into a screenplay. With a little more time the script could have been much better... and less predictable.
The magic of the Warner Brothers gangster films does add some needed gloss to the production, as do many familiar faces like Allen Jenkins. The costumes and good use of the studio's backlot add a lot to the production values of this B-movie.
A blackmailer (Robert Arden) wants to get the riches of the wealthy Mr. Arkadin (Orson Welles.) He decides to romance his daughter (Paola Mori) but instead falls in love with her. Arkadin finds out about his blackmail scheme and hires him for a job. Arkadin doesn't remember anything that happened to him before 1927 and now the blackmailer must travel all over the world to find out what happened prior to that time.
MY THOUGHTS
Orson Welles is generally considered a film-making genius... Mr. Arkadin proves him to be a mad one.
The film is bizarre, chock full of unique and interesting camera angles, lighting, and a non-linear storyline. The lighting and the camera angles are so severe at times that they draw attention to themselves. At times, I was drawn away from the narrative so badly that I missed chunks of dialogue which left the film even more confusing.
Arkadin jumps around in time and never lets the audience in on where or when the story is which adds to the confusion. A typical film would have an establishing shot of a building or location at the start of the scene. Instead, we jump right into the middle of the scene mid-sentence, unsure of what's happening. I'm unsure why Welles would do this, other than to say he's being different. One of the cardinal rules of directing should be "Don't lose your audience." This is violated nearly every 10 minutes.
Many of the supporting performances are so laughably ridiculous and over-the-top they derail any seriousness that Welles may have been attempting. This is mainly the men and women the blackmailer seeks out when looking for clues to Arkadin's past. One horribly bad performance after another.
There are several different versions of the film and I'm not entirely certain which one this was, but the sound and picture quality was terrible.
If you're looking for a film on the same level as Welles' Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, or the Magnificent Ambersons... look elsewhere. This is made by the same man, but not clearly the same master.
The Devil Is A Sissy 1936 - MGM Directed By W.S. Van Dyke
SYNOPSIS
Privileged British boy Claude (Freddie Bartholomew) moves in with his poor father in Manhattan's lower east side. He soon meets tough street kids Buck (Jackie Cooper) and Gig (Mickey Rooney) and wants to be friends. When Gig's father is sent to the electric chair, Gig wants to raise money for a tombstone. Claude knows a place full of toys that the trio can rob to pawn to get enough money. The three get caught... but do they have enough in them to give up crime and go straight?
MY THOUGHTS
MGM was used to and more known for producing lavish musicals and bringing classic works of literature to life. Socially-conscious films were usually the domain of Warner Brothers, but that didn't stop other studios like MGM from attempting them as well. The Devil Is A Sissy was an attempt at this, in the vein of Dead End. (please see my review of Crime School for more on this era.)
MGM was a little out of their element here and it does show. The whole air of the film has a bit of phoniness to it. The backlot of MGM is used to great effect as New York, but it seems too clean to be the slums. The film even has a brief musical number (a singalong) that feels out of place with the more serious tone of much of the film. The script also is fairly predictable. You can fairly easily guess who the trio robs, as well as how the film will end.
However, the film's trio of young lead actors do rescue the film from these weaknesses.
Freddie Bartholomew is just as endearing and earnest as he was in David Copperfield and Little Lord Fauntleroy and makes for a great contrast with his American buddies.
Jackie Cooper, 5 years removed from his Little Rascals days, is tough but likable.
Mickey Rooney is the real standout here. Gig's a nice guy buried under a pile of bad breaks. Rooney gains sympathy when his father is executed and plays the emotions very realistically, more so than most performances of the pre-method era.
This three are arguably the biggest male child actors of Hollywood's Golden Age and this was the only time all appeared in the same film together.
The film definitely benefits from their team-up, lifting this from a ho-hum production, to a memorable one.
There are a few scratches and speckles that appear from time to time (usually at the starts and ends of the original reels of film) but they are not so bad they detract from the watching experience. Much of the film looks to be in excellent shape.
Crime School 1938 - Warner Brothers Directed By Lewis Seiler
SYNOPSIS
After committing a brutal beating, Frankie Warren (Billy Halop) and his gang (the other Dead End Kids) are sent to reform school, where brutality reigns. The new Deputy Commissioner of Corrections Mark Braden (Humphrey Bogart) finds out about the extreme conditions and cleans the place up and tries to steer Frankie on the right path so he won't become a hardened criminal. But falling for Frankie's sister (Gale Page) may make it difficult for Braden.
MY THOUGHTS
A Broadway play premiered in 1935 that would signal a new direction for Hollywood's crime films. Dead End was a smash hit detailing the lives of young street kids who were on the path to be the next big gangsters in newspaper headlines. The story proposed that these so called 'Dead End Kids' were to become bad as a result of their environment. The squalor of the tenements of the lower east side of Manhattan were to blame for their life of crime.
Independent film producer Sam Goldwyn snatched up the movie rights to the play and released Dead End in 1937, to universal acclaim and several Oscar nominations, including Best Picture.
All this... at a time when Warner Brothers was considered the go-to studio for socially conscious films. In fact, Warner's I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang actually led to widespread prison reforms across the country and a full pardon to the author who wrote the autobiographical tale.
Dead End would have been a perfect match for the studio. It even featured two Warner Brothers actors out on loan, Humphrey Bogart and Allen Jenkins, along with future contract players, The Dead End Kids.
Warner Brothers snatched up the boy's contracts after Goldwyn let them go following their reign of terror during Dead End's production, leading to thousands of dollars in damages to the studio.
The Dead End Kids largely played the same roles (though with different names) they did in the stage and film versions of Dead End. They are as likable and fun to watch as their first appearance. Their energetic and anarchic personas move the film at a brisk pace, and also offer a generous amount of hi-jinks and humor.
Bogart's role couldn't have been more different. In Dead End, he was the notorious Babyface Martin, wanted gangster, and someone the boys looked up to with awe. Here, Bogart is a crusader for good who must win over the hearts of the boys with much effort. This was the strongest of his pre-fame 'good guy' performances, mainly because it was the meatiest part. He played a similar role as a District Attorney in Marked Woman, but the part wasn't written with as much depth. This was one of his first lead roles since landing at Warner's for his powerful supporting performance in The Petrified Forest, which led to countless numbers of gangster roles for Bogart (like Babyface Martin.)
Some of the themes of Crime School were previously used in the 1933 film The Mayor Of Hell starring James Cagney and Frankie Darro and this film is a partial remake of the earlier one. Cagney played a gangster who muscled his way in to change a rough reform school.
In Crime School, we see more of the kids life before reform school and it meshes perfectly with the world of Dead End, and touches on the same central themes. The boys have little to do but commit petty crimes. Once in reform school, it matches the Mayor of Hell in its depiction of the brutality of the warden and guards... and a man looking to civilize and reform the reform school.
The script for Crime School lacks much of the freshness and bite that both Dead End and Mayor of Hell had, and that's the film's weakness... but the performances make up much of the difference. Bogart is more realistic than James Cagney's gangster-wanting-to-do-good in Mayor, and the Dead End Kids have much greater chemistry than do Frankie Darro and a collection of glorified kid-actor extras.
The next and final time Bogart and The Dead End Kids would appear in the same film would be the finest example of the gangster film merging with the socially conscious film, Angels With Dirty Faces. Crime School pales in comparison to that film as well as Dead End, but is still a mighty fine entertaining film wrapped up with an important social message.
THE DVD
Crime School makes its home video debut as part of the new Warner Archive Collection. It is a selection of the studio's back catalog that it deemed not financially worthy of a general DVD release. It and hundreds of other films (from the silent era to the 1990's) are available at WarnerArchive.com The films are fancy pressed DVD-R's featuring an un-remastered print of the film. What you see is exactly the same copy you'd see on TCM or any TV station that would show the film. The exorbitant price of $19.99 per movie kept me from sampling Warner's new DVD line, but thankfully, a great Black Friday sale got me to buy, and I'm glad.
There are plenty of scratches, speckles and lines that appear from time to time (usually at the starts and ends of the original reels of film) but they are not so bad they detract from the watching experience. The disc also features what it calls a trailer... but it's just a few minutes of the start of the film and it fades out. It's nothing like the trailer that appears above.
As a fan of Bogart and the Dead End Kids, I'm glad to finally see this film (in any way I could) and you should definitely seek it out.
Comedienne Charlene Yi doesn't believe in love. She sets out across America to try and understand just what love is. Along the way she meets Michael Cera.
MY THOUGHTS
This unique quasi-documentary is a unique look at one of life's most difficult concepts.
Yi and the film crew head all over the country talking to people about love. This I thought was the most interesting and enlightening part of the film. She speaks to young and old about the good and bad sides of love. It's fascinating how everyone had a very different concept of love.
Those scenes feel intruded upon, when they add Yi's budding romance with Michael Cera. These scenes veer the film off course and it loses focus while juggling the two narratives. The young couple constantly complains about cameras being in the way, which gets annoying after the second mention. After you've heard it 30 times, you're annoyed.
Several liberties were taken to make Paper Heart not a real documentary. The director, who is a character in the film, is played by Jake M. Johnson and not the actual director (yet the character and director share the same name.) Also Yi and Cera were a couple before the film was made.
Paper Heart does have a charming quality to it, but it does wear thin after awhile. It has a good sense of humor too, but I could never describe it as 'hilarious.'
Overall, It's a good (but not great) way to spend an hour and a half.
The Edukators 2005 - Germany Directed By Hans Weingatner
SYNOPSIS
Three anti-capitalist revolutionaries spread their message by breaking into mansions. These so-called "Edukators" don't steal, just rearrange furniture and leave ominous notes to scare the homeowners. Their pastime is ruined when a homeowner comes home in the middle of an operation. They kidnap him and head into the country, unsure of what to do with him.
MY THOUGHTS
Politics and drama collide in an interesting tale of young revolutionaries.
The characters anti-capitalist message doesn't overcrowd the film, though it is always present. It's not so heavy-handed that it would offend people with an opposite viewpoint. It does get a little too preachy near the end, but doesn't go over the line. It does however cause you to THINK about politics and how you live your life. And that's always a good thing.
The camerawork is all hand-held and can be very jerky at times. I'm guessing this is supposed to reflect the anti-establishment-ness of the characters. It's very raw and low tech as opposed to swooping crane shots and other fancy camerawork you would find in a big money Hollywood film.
The performances are excellent, especially Daniel Bruhl, who also shined this year in Quintin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. The performances were helped greatly by an amazing script. It presented great characters with interesting interpersonal relationships, a plot full of twists and turns, and politics. With all those ingredients, the story never felt complicated and came across very realistic, and moved at a swift pace.
Weaving excellent characters among a gripping story with a political message that makes you think... The Edukators really delivers.
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