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It Always Rains on Sunday (1947): Drizzly British Noir
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 28, 2020
“Lovely weather for a manhunt.” Childhood vacations to England have given me a lifelong cache of fond memories of the British Isles. Tea and scones conjure up only good things as do Cathedrals and cobblestone streets. Somehow even the daily drizzle, when it feels quintessentially Englis read more
A Walk in The Sun (1945) with Dana Andrews and Company
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 26, 2020
Opening as it does with the cover of its source material, A Walk in The Sun makes itself out to be a bit grand and simultaneously undermines a certain amount of its ethos as a gritty war picture. Is it a fallacy to think a book can never capture all the textures of life? Does the same hold true wit read more
Objective Burma (1945): Errol Flynn During Wartime
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 24, 2020
It’s nearly ubiquitous for all the old war movies to open with an instructive title card supplying some context and placing us in the scenario at hand. While not the apex of visual storytelling, it does serve a concrete purpose. Objective Burma is, of course, about the Burma campaigns — read more
Quai Des Orfevres (1947): Directed by Henry-Georges Clouzot
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 21, 2020
Unearthing Quai Des Orfevres is a glorious discovery of post-war French cinema. Because Henry-Georges Clouzot is always a man I heedlessly clump together with Jacques Becker when it comes to French film history. Not because of an immediate connection but, on the contrary, it’s the very thinne read more
The Story of G.I. Joe (1945): Robert Mitchum Shows His Chops
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 19, 2020
Charles M. Schultz was one of the great memorializers of WWII in that he kept events like the D-Day invasion or the art of Bill Maudlin in the public forum for as long as Peanuts was syndicated. If I remember correctly, it was also through his strip I first became aware of the name Ernie Pyle. It&# read more
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944): WWII Written by Dalton Trumbo
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 17, 2020
“One-hundred and thirty-one days after December 7, 1941, a handful of young men, who had never dreamed of glory, struck the first blow at the heart of Japan. This is their true story we tell here.” It’s easy enough to lump Air Force and Destination Tokyo with this subsequent film read more
Bob Le Flambeur (1956): Melville’s Noir Heist
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 14, 2020
“Montmartre is both heaven and…hell.” While Melville would continue to cultivate his own unique canvass and pulp sensibilities, Bob Le Flambeur, as a slightly earlier work, shows its deep abiding debt to the American noir cycle. Because it was at this juncture in time where read more
Sahara (1943): Bogart Against The Nazis…Again
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 12, 2020
The opening crawl of Zoltan Korda’s Sahara sets the scene, though contemporary audiences were probably already well aware of current events. This war film details the exploits of members of the Armored Corps of the Army Ground Forces. In June 1942 an American detachment joined British forces read more
Five Graves to Cairo (1943) and The Desert Fox
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 10, 2020
For modern audiences especially, the movie’s opening crawl gives us a bit of helpful context. It’s June, 1942. Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps was pounding the Brits back toward Cairo and the Suez Canal. His notoriety as a tactician and “The Desert Fox” is read more
Touchez Pas Au Grisbi (1954): Gabin’s Aging Gangster
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 7, 2020
On only two occasions have I had the pleasure of watching a Jacques Becker film, and I hold him in the highest esteem even based on this admittedly meager sample size. It seems a fitting observation to acknowledge how closely he was tied to one of France’s foremost titans, Jean Renoir, servin read more
Destination Tokyo (1943) and There’s No Place Like Home
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 6, 2020
“This is sort of a blind date. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.” – Cary Grant as Captain Cassidy No pretense can be made to suggest Destination Tokyo functions as an original entry of a “men on a mission movie” from a couple decades later. For one th read more
Air Force (1943): Howard Hawks Takes on WWII
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 4, 2020
At times, Air Force functions like a staged documentary. It feels both instructive and informed by Howard Hawks’ own passion for aviation. It has the simple task of making sure the folks at home can empathize with their boys up in the air. In fact, it falls short of being a mere instructional read more
Pride of The Marines (1945): John Garfield Plays Al Schmid
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 2, 2020
During WWII there’s no question John Garfield was integral to the war effort despite having never served in the military. He did yeoman’s work when it came to morale, through his pictures at Warner Bros, originating the famed Hollywood Canteen with Bette Davis, and going on war bond tou read more
Classic Hollywood Baseball Movies
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Nov 1, 2020
Gary Cooper and Babe Ruth Given its hallowed place as American’s original national pastime, I thought it would be worthwhile to share some of the best baseball movies classic Hollywood ever offered during its heyday. I’m not sure if the industry ever made a baseball masterpiece during th read more
Dancing Lady (1933): Joan Crawford & Clark Gable
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Oct 29, 2020
You know the drill. In the throes of the Depression, the idle rich fritter their wealth away at such social events as striptease and then attend the ensuing night court until they get bored with the whole affair. Tod Newton (Franchot Tone) is one of their ilk, but he’s more engaged than other read more
Possessed (1931): Joan Crawford and The “In” Crowd
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Oct 27, 2020
We open up on the Acme Paper Box Co., which has a down-and-dirty industry strewn about its edges. If the people flooding out of the factory are any indication, this will be a dusty, grubby, little picture. Two of their employees are Al Manning (Wallace Ford) and Marian Martin (Joan Crawford). He read more
Getting to Know Peggy Dow: Harvey and Beyond
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Oct 24, 2020
source: IMDb The L.A. Times headline in 1951 read: “Peggy Dow Sketches Future as She Quits Hollywood to Wed” Many people recall how Grace Kelly famously married Prince Rainier of Monaco and from thenceforward left her stirling Hollywood career behind out of a sense of love and duty. That read more
Our Dancing Daughters (1928): Joan Crawford Ascending
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Oct 22, 2020
Our Dancing Daughters is an inflection point of silent film for the very fact it stands out for setting Joan Crawford up to be in incandescent star for generations to come. She calls upon her flapper talents and bouncy effervescence fully embodying the jazz age through the character of “Dange read more
Alias Nick Beal (1949): Ray Milland’s a Devil
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Oct 21, 2020
This is my entry in the CMBA Politics on Film Blogathon. Alias Nick Beal handily flips the paradigm of cinematic angels in vogue with Hollywood, specifically during the 1940s. You could make a whole subgenre out of them. As its name suggests, the lynchpin character of the whole movie is Nick, thoug read more
The Unknown (1927): Silent Cinema Out on The Big Top
4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Oct 20, 2020
As someone always trying to steep myself in more and more silent cinema, I still have much to contend with when it comes to the careers of Tod Browning and Lon Chaney. However, from everything I can gather, The Unknown is a wonderful melding of their talents, Browning drawing on his penchant read more