#2,727. Giant (1956) - The Men Who Made the Movies

 

One of the taglines for George Stevens’ award-winning movie Giant screams “The Legendary Epic That’s as Big as Texas!”. This 1956 film is certainly that. A sprawling, gorgeous motion picture about a cattle rancher and his family coming to terms with a changing world, Giant is a mountain of a movie.

While purchasing a horse in Maryland, Texas rancher Jordan Benedict (Rock Hudson) - called “Bick” by his friends - meets and falls in love with East Coast socialite Leslie Lynnton (Elizabeth Taylor). The two eventually marry and head to Reata, Bick’s cattle ranch, which stands on over half a million acres of the great state of Texas.

Though impressed with the grandness of her new home, Leslie also finds herself an outsider, butting heads with Bick’s stern sister Luz (Mercedes McCambridge) and shocked at how poorly the Benedicts and their friends treat their Mexican employees, who live in poverty.

As the years pass, Bick’s and Leslie’s family grows, and though determined to hold on to tradition, Bick soon finds himself at the mercy of former employee and current millionaire Jett Rink (James Dean), who took a small parcel of land smack dab in the middle of Reata and turned it into a thriving oil business.

Giant is an epic in every sense of the word. Beautifully shot by cinematographer William C. Mellor, who somehow manages to make the sparse Texas landscape come alive, Giant also has one hell of a cast. Hudson and Taylor are at their best as the loving, headstrong couple who seldom see eye-to-eye, while James Dean, in what would prove to be his final role, damn near steals the show, giving us in Jett Rink a character we root for early on, and come to despise as the story progresses.

Equally as impressive are McCambridge as Bick’s tough-as-nails sister; Chill Wills as Bick’s kindly uncle Bawley; and Dennis Hopper and Carroll Baker as Bick's and Leslie’s adult children, both of whom experience the pitfalls of being a Benedict. Also turning up briefly are Rod Taylor as an early suitor of Leslie’s and Sal Mineo as Angel, the son of one of Bick’s Mexican workers, who is sent off to fight in World War II.

While the main thrust of the story focuses on the Benedicts and how the incursion of oil drilling changed the Texas landscape, Giant also takes aim at bigotry. Soon after arriving at Reata, Leslie takes a great interest in the local Mexican population, and is horrified to learn that while she and Bick live comfortable lives, others only a mile or two away are dying of hunger. Leslie does what she can to help these employees, going so far as to have a doctor brought in to tend to them on a regular basis, despite the fact Bick has flat-out forbidden her to get involved (there are scenes where he refers to his Mexican employees as “those people”).

George Stevens would go on to make the exceptional The Diary of Anne Frank and the bloated The Greatest Story Ever Told, but Giant would be his final masterpiece. It is a prime example of a Hollywood movie done right, and a motion picture that remains, to this day, an undisputed classic.
Rating: 10 out of 10

#2,724. To Have and Have Not (1944) - The Men Who Made the Movies

 

“You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow”

The story goes that, while on a fishing trip, Howard Hawks turned to his good friend Ernest Hemingway and said that he could make a great movie out of his worst book. When Hemingway asked which one Hawks was referring to, the director allegedly responded “that hunk of junk To Have and Have Not”.

True to his word, Hawks did his part to make this 1944 Warner Brothers production a great movie, but it was the chemistry generated by his two stars, Humphrey Bogart and newcomer Lauren Bacall, that ultimately transformed To Have and Have Not into a Hollywood classic.

The year is 1940. The setting: French-controlled Martinique. Captain Steve Morgan (Bogart), with the help of his good friend, the oft-drunk Eddie (Walter Brennan), charters his small boat for fishing trips, his most recent client being a wealthy, foul-tempered American named Johnson (Walter Sande).

The political climate in Martinique has changed in recent weeks, with the German-friendly Vichy government taking control and weeding out anyone sympathetic to the Free France movement. Morgan, who is first and foremost a businessman, remains neutral, going so far as to refuse to help hotel owner “Frenchy” Gerard (Marcel Dalio) when he and his Free France buddies attempt to hire his boat for a dangerous mission.

Morgan has a change of heart, however, when he meets and falls for “Slim” (Bacall), a pretty American con artist who wants desperately to leave Martinique. To raise money for her ticket home, Morgan assists Frenchy and the others by picking up rebel Paul de Bursac (Walter Surovy) and his wife Helene (Dolores Moran) and sneaking them into Fort-de-France.

But with Vichy policeman Capitaine Renard (Dan Seymour) hot on his trail, it’s going to take some quick thinking for Morgan to get Slim out of the country.

Having never read Hemingway’s novel, I can’t say how bad it was, yet what I do know is that the film version of To Have and Have Not (which changed the setting from Cuba to Vichy-controlled Martinique) is a briskly-paced, expertly acted motion picture, with a handful of exciting scenes. Chief among them is the nighttime sequence in which Morgan and Eddie shoot it out with a patrol boat. This 1944 film also features plenty of crisp, memorable dialogue, thanks in large part to another of Hawks’ buddies, William Faulkner, who helped pen the screenplay. The supporting cast is strong, chief among them Walter Brennan as the likable inebriate Eddie and Dolores Moran as Helene de Bursac, the dutiful, overly-cautious wife of a French patriot. 

But from the moment Slim asks Morgan for a light, To Have and Have Not belongs to Bogart and Bacall.

Bogart is predictably excellent as Morgan, playing a character not unlike his Rick in Casablanca: a businessman who doesn’t take sides, yet is willing to help his French buddies against the Vichy. Even more impressive, though, is Bacall, who at 19 was making her screen debut. Sultry and alluring, you simply can’t take your eyes off of her, and the scenes in which she and Bogart are together are the film’s best.

It’s no wonder that Bogart and Bacall fell in love while making To Have and Have Not; both were amazing actors, yet the chemistry between them was much too potent to have been a performance. They would make other movies together, including the noir thriller The Big Sleep and one of my all-time favorite films, 1948’s Key Largo.  But to see Bogart and Bacall at their absolute best, one need look no further than To Have and Have Not.
Rating: 10 out of 10

#2,722. The Roaring Twenties (1939) - The Men Who Made the Movies

 

Director Raoul Walsh and his three screenwriters (Jerry Wald, Richard Macauley and Robert Rossen) pack a whole lot of story into The Roaring Twenties, one of the best of the Warner Brothers early gangster films.

After serving his country during World War I, soldier Eddie Bartlett (James Cagney) returns home and has a hard time landing a job. With the help of his old pal Danny Green (Frank McHugh), Eddie becomes a nighttime cab driver, and finds himself shuttling around some very shady characters.

With prohibition in full effect, Danny also does his part to help the bootleggers, making booze deliveries for speakeasy owner Panama Smith (Gladys George) before finally becoming a bootlegger himself. Teaming up with fellow war veterans George Hally (Humphrey Bogart) and Lloyd Hart (Jeffrey Lynn), Eddie rises to the top of New York's criminal underworld, and uses his success and influence to help singer Jean Sherman (Priscilla Lane) become the headline performer at Panama’s club.

Eddie is madly in love with Jean, and promises to go straight, and eventually leave his life of crime behind if she’ll just wait for him. But Jean has eyes for someone else, a reality that may spell the end of not only Eddie’s obsession, but also his reign as the city’s top criminal.

Director Walsh and company utilize an almost documentary approach throughout The Roaring Twenties, with a narrator (John Deering) breaking in on occasion to introduce each new historical era (World War I, prohibition, the rise of speakeasies and tommy guns, all the way up to the stock market crash of 1929). Interspersed within these history lessons is the story of Eddie Bartlett, played with gusto and tons of charisma by James Cagney, who, as he did in The Public Enemy, brings a likability to what amounts to a very shady character.

This time around, though, we’re given the full picture, and know exactly what it was that pushed Eddie into a life of crime. It’s here that The Roaring Twenties truly works its magic, shining a light on social issues of the time. Returning home from World War I, Eddie couldn’t land a job, an issue that plagued many former GI’s. Then, late in the film, Eddie, like millions of Americans at the time, loses everything in the stock market crash. By framing its fictional story within a fact-based context, The Roaring Twenties further distinguishes itself from other gangster films of the 1930s.

In addition to its approach and Cagney’s excellent turn, The Roaring Twenties features one hell of a performance by Humphrey Bogart as George, Eddie’s former comrade-in-arms who eventually becomes his chief rival, and there’s a romantic entanglement that only adds to the film’s intrigue (Eddie has no idea his good friend Lloyd, expertly portrayed by Jeffrey Lynn, is also deeply in love with Jean).

The Roaring Twenties is indeed a gangster film, but based on the above, I’d say it’s a lot more as well.
Rating: 9.5 out of 10

#2,720. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) - The Men Who Made the Movies

 

Frank Capra and the everyman: a winning combination!

Whether portrayed by Jimmy Stewart (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life), Clark Gable (It Happened One Night), or Gary Cooper, the star of 1936’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Capra’s “common man” always found their way into an audience’s heart, resulting in some of the finest, most uplifting movies of the 1930s and ‘40s.

After inheriting $20 million dollars from his late uncle, Longfellow Deeds (Cooper) leaves the small town of Mandrake Falls, Vermont behind, taking up residence in a spacious New York City mansion.

Considered by everyone to be little more than a backward yokel when he first arrived, Deeds eventually outwits con men, opportunists, art enthusiasts, bankers, and everyone else who wants a piece of his fortune. It seems the only person he can actually trust is his new flame, Mary Dawson (Jean Arthur).

But what Deeds doesn’t know is Mary is actually “Babe” Bennett, one of the city’s most ruthless reporters, who will stop at nothing to get the inside scoop on Longfellow Deeds. That is, until the moment she starts falling in love with him.

“Mr. Deeds Goes to Town was the first film I made in which I consciously tried to make a social statement”, Capra once told Richard Schickel. “I wanted to see what an honest, small-town man would do with $20 million - how he would handle it, and how he could handle all the predators that would surround him, and what good would come out of that thing, what statements you could make about a man being his brother’s keeper”.

Cooper is positively endearing as Longfellow Deeds, a man who enjoys playing his Tuba whenever the mood strikes him, and who rushes to the window to watch fire engines as they roar down the street. Though a man of simple pleasures. Deeds is no pushover. In an effort to convince him to make up a $180,000 loss, the New York Opera names Deeds their chairman, only to be put in their place when he starts asking questions, wondering what they’re doing wrong to be losing money, and refusing to subsidize the Opera until he looks into it further.

On the flip side, Deeds is quick to help those less fortunate than himself, and late in the film is willing to give away large chunks of his money to the poor and needy. It’s a move that causes greedy lawyer John Cedar (Douglass Dumbrille) to try and have Deeds declared mentally incompetent, so that he can seize control of his fortune.

Still, despite the occasional setback, the values that Longfellow Deeds holds firm to remain intact, and anytime someone tries to make a fool of him, or laugh at his small-town mentality, he’s usually one step ahead of them. Even Babe Bennett, who took the assignment of cozying up to Deeds when her editor promised her a month’s paid vacation, eventually sees his inherent goodness, and comes to regret the role she’s playing in turning his New York “adventure” into a nightmare; neither Deeds nor his assigned protector Cornelius Cobb (Lionel Stander) can figure out how his nightly exploits make the front page of the next day’s newspapers.

The character of Longfellow Deeds, bolstered by Cooper’s heartfelt, sometimes understated performance, gives Mr. Deeds Goes to Town a hell of a lot of heart. This is a movie that will have you smiling ear-to-ear!
Rating: 9.5 out of 10

#2,719. Bird of Paradise (1932) - The Men Who Made the Movies

Shortly after seeing King Vidor’s 1932 adventure / romance Bird of Paradise, Orson Welles commented that he thought its star, Dolores Del Rio, represented “the highest erotic ideal”. Ms. Del Rio is positively alluring as Luana, the island girl who falls in love with a sailor, and she is undoubtedly the best thing in what is an otherwise troubling motion picture.

A yacht sailing the Pacific makes its way to a tropical island, where its crew, including sailor Johnny Baker (Joel McCrae), are greeted by the natives. When Johnny is accidentally pulled overboard (by a shark he was trying to reel in), one of the natives, the beautiful Luana (Del Rio), dives in to save him.

Later that night, at a banquet hosted by the natives, Johnny once again meets Luana, and it isn’t long before the two have fallen in love. But Luana has been promised to another man, a prince on a neighboring island. What’s more, a nearby volcano has shown signs of waking up, and if it continues to spew smoke, Luana will be the next sacrifice to appease the volcano God!

Not willing to lose the woman of his dreams, Johnny whisks Luana away to a remote island, where he hopes they will live happily ever after. But should Luana’s people track them down, it could mean death for them both!

Bird of Paradise got into some trouble with censors as well as the Catholic League of Decency, all of whom objected to a nighttime underwater scene in which a nude Luana playfully swims alongside Johnny. While this certainly wasn’t the only pre-code film to feature nudity (The Sign of the Cross and Tarzan and his Mate, among others, also contained brief nude scenes), this sequence is sexy enough to have raised a few eyebrows back in the day. As for Del Rio, she is stunning, and while her character doesn’t speak English (save a few words towards the end, which she picked up from Johnny), She and Johnny have no problem communicating (the scenes when they are alone on their island are the film’s most romantic). Also turning up in a small supporting role, playing one of Johnny’s shipmates, is Lon Chaney Jr., making his screen debut (he was credited as Creighton Chaney).

Unfortunately, Bird of Paradise isn’t exactly kind to its non-white characters; when we first meet the natives, who have rowed out to greet the yacht, Johnny and a few others toss small objects overboard, and laugh a little as their new friends dive in to retrieve them. Even worse than this is the film’s finale, a grim reminder of a time when it was taboo to feature a romantic relationship between a Caucasian and any other race (these last few minutes actually pissed me off).

Bird of Paradise does have its strengths, from the captivating Delores Del Rio to its wonderfully shot underwater scenes (both nude and otherwise). But nowadays its more a relic of a bygone era, when Hollywood - and indeed the world - was belligerently intolerant.
Rating: 5.5 out of 10

2,717. The Big Parade (1925) - The Men Who Made the Movies

 

Released only seven years after the Armistice that ended World War I, King Vidor’s The Big Parade gave audiences what, at the time, was the harshest depiction of warfare ever to grace the silver screen.

As the movie opens, we’re introduced to Jim Apperson (John Gilbert), the idle son of a millionaire businessman (Hobart Bosworth). When war breaks out, Jim, caught up in the patriotic fervor, enlists in the army, winning the respect of both his father and his fiancé Justyn (Claire Adams).

Once in France, Jim - whose unit spends several weeks training in the rear echelon - befriends fellow recruits Slim (Karl Dane) and Bull (Tom O’Brien), and he even falls in love with French peasant Melisande (Renée Adorée). But when the call comes for them to march to the front lines, Jim and his comrades are quickly introduced to the terrible, frightening realities of trench warfare.

The first half of The Big Parade is dedicated to building its characters, establishing both the camaraderie that develops between Jim, Bull, and Slim as well as Jim’s whirlwind romance with Melisande. These early scenes are lighthearted and, at times, even comical; soon after arriving in France, Jim and the others are ordered to shovel pig manure, a sequence that ends with a big laugh.

Once the action shifts to the front lines, however, The Big Parade changes tone, hitting us with one intense scene after another. Before they’ve even made their way to the trenches, Jim and the others are fired upon by German machine guns, and are forced to don gas masks when a mysterious cloud moves their way. These two halves of The Big Parade compliment each other perfectly; having spent time getting to know Jim, Bull, and Slim at the outset, we’re as nervous as they are when the bullets start flying.

Prior to staging the battle scenes for The Big Parade, Vidor consulted several World War I veterans (including a few Germans) to ensure these sequences were as realistic as possible. It proved to be a wise move, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to call The Big Parade an anti-war film, it’s realistic depiction of the World War I battlefield must have surely raised a few eyebrows back in 1925.
Rating: 9 out of 10