The Lost Weekend (1945)

Third viewing, probably; previously viewed on November 24, 1992 and, possibly, once before that between 1983 and 1986.

An alcoholic man is getting ready for a weekend in the country away from liquor with his brother. Things do not go as planned, though.

The excellence of this drama comes from an  honest screenplay, a taut narrative, and the expert technique with which it was filmed. It is not, in my opinion, a complete analysis of alcoholism. Many troubles the protagonist goes through do not seem to be directly derived from alcohol itself -- some of them are caused by the repression of alcoholism, and some others might be attributed to his personality. And, on the other hand, many noxious traits found in some alcoholics, e.g. physical violence, are simply absent from his behavior. There is a philosophical aspect to addiction on which the film touches very slightly, namely the fact that the distinction between a bad habit and good one is not that easy to establish, and both in the final analysis are psychological constraints on the individual which could become real mental prisons. As we all tend to form habits, we all tend to become addicts one way or the other. I found Milland's resemblance to Nicholson in this film remarkable, and apparently something of that perception is shared by Paul Mayersberg in this review of The Shining. And here is a fine review of The Lost Weekend by TV Guide.

Rating: 83 (unchanged)

The Great Gatsby (1974)

Second viewing; first viewed between 1983 and 1986.

A man of obscure origins who has acquired great wealth tries to reapproach the woman with whom he had once a brief relationship, and who is now married.

People generally say there is a problem with this film, but perhaps the problem is that people took seriously what is undoubtedly a dark comedy. There is nothing, not one scene in it that is not laugh-inducing, and that is not a bad thing for those who like a good laugh. Even the bad performances fit like a glove when you look at it that way. You might say it is not the best comedy ever made about rich people, and there I would agreee with you, but that is a different matter.

Rating: 56 (down from 60)

Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)

Second viewing; first viewed between 1983 and 1986.

Lawman Wyatt Earp allies with dentist-turned-gunfighter 'Doc' Holliday to fight outlaws in the old West.

Decent Western, competently written and directed. Its most appealing point is perhaps the analysis of how a friendship develops in somewhat uncommon circumstances.

Rating: 67

The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939)

Some events in the life of the inventor of the telephone.

Energetic biographic story with a dire subject (technology always is). The Hollywood treatment has some respect for the viewer's intelligence and the film is watchable, if only barely.

Rating: 40

American Gigolo (1980)

Second viewing; first viewed between 1983 and 1986.

A male escort and prostitute is framed for the murder of one of his clients.

Viewing this film for a second time was a pleasanter experience than my first one. Formally, there are evident qualities in it. In other aspects as well, it is not as bad as I previously thought (e.g. the main actor's performance). Nevertheless, I could not completely shake off a certain boredom over the progression of the plot and certain pieces of dialogue. Furthermore, the film's underlying concept seems unfocused, and what superficially seems to be an utterly secondary plot point came across, in my analysis, as the film's underdeveloped real center. The point in question, as expressed by one character, is the situation when "you have stepped on too many toes, and nobody cares about you". It is very hard to gather, from the movie itself, what exactly those "toes" are, but then again the events in question may be of a strictly imaginary order.

Rating: 40 (up from 30)

Crime et châtiment (1956)

English title: Crime and Punishment

Based on the novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, first published in 1866, in serial form.

A student kills an old woman whom he despises expecting to steal her money. An investigation ensues.

I do not remember the novel very well, but its themes seem to be present in the movie as well. I do not think it is a particularly brilliant movie, because, although in its first half it lays out the basic problem in an intelligent way, the second half provides somewhat poor solutions to it, appealing as it does to the religious nature of a prostitute and her influence being too easily applied on the protagonist. It has merits, though, and the leading player, and most supporting ones, do their parts well.

Rating: 59

The Westerner (1940)

Second viewing; first viewed somewhere between 1983 and 1986.

A community of cattle herders conflicts with newly arriving homesteaders because the latter start to build fences around their properties. Amid this scenario, a wandering man is accused of horse theft and stands a summary trial presided by the leader of the cattlemen.

This Western has a comedic form which clashes with its dramatic background plot. It is made with the utmost care and the end result is perhaps flawed yet interesting. A good review  was written by Robert J. Maxwell on the IMDB user review section (you will have to browse this page).

Rating: 58 (unchanged)

A pensão da D. Estela (1956)

The film depicts the life of the dwellers at a boarding house during a few days. The owner is a widow and has marrying designs on one of the customers, who is her accountant and has a mistress on the side. The latter shows up unexpectedly at the boarding house one day and decides to become a guest too. The owner's daughter is a singer who dates an unemployed young doctor. The new cleaning lady is also a struggling singer. Another customer is a monarchist who never pays his rent. And there is also a solitary woman who pretends to be married. The boarding house has a mortgage which has to be payed but there is no money.

Very tame comedy which was very successful in Brazil when it came out. Here you can find some stills and a text in Portuguese with some information.

Rating: 31

Totò sceicco (1950)

English title: Toto the Sheik

Antonio is a majordomo who travels to North Africa to rescue his employer who joined the Foreign Legion.

I am probably not going to do justice to this movie, so I will refrain from reviewing it. A sympathetic review is found on Wikipedia, so I suggest you just read it (provided you know a little Italian, that is).

Rating: 34

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)

A struggling musician struggles also with a cat.

The folk phenomenon of the 1960s was a cooptation of popular aesthetics by urban youths, gathering mostly in New York City. So, it was a bourgeois capitalist phenomenon from the outset, and thus an illustration of the alliance between Capital and the Cultural Left. One of the tropes of historiography is the conflict of, on one side, the several races in their respective homelands, and, on the other, foreign elements which come and go with catlike ease. The literary reference for this film seems to be Joyce's Ulysses with its circular narrative (I have not read the book). The templates for the novel's hero Bloom are many, from its ostensive Greek model to the Wandering Jew legend, who in turn may be a later version of Cain, the first homicide, who was doomed to perpetually roam the Earth. So, it is striking that both Capitalism and Leftist Liberalism have this in common, that they abhor borders. That they have joined to ape and profit from that which was essentially -- to quote the name of the book by Kip Lornell -- an ethnic, grassroots and regional genre is ironic, but what isn't in modernity? The film in question is a humorous piece, moderately enjoyable, as are the schoolgirlish attempts by critics at deciphering its erudite in-jokes.

Rating: 57

Cape Fear (1962)

Second viewing; first viewed on September 25, 1996

A man, seeking revenge against a witness whose testimony sent him to prison, moves to his target's town and makes veiled threats against his wife and teenage daughter.

A very thrilling movie, despite its far-fetched premise. It postulates a very sound and plausible main thesis, namely that the law tends to decrease in effectiveness as it increases in liberalism. In real life, one is not likely to find the violence and the organization displayed by Cady in one single individual. Thus, for the film to be properly understood, one must consider that he and his surrounding characters are a simplified fictionalization of a sum of forces: on the one hand the disorganized violence of individual criminals and on the other the organized ideology of leftism.

Rating: 77 (down from 82)

An American Tail (1986)

A family of Jewish mice in Russia emigrate to America. At mid-trip the young son falls overboard and is given as dead.

Disappointing animated fictionalization of the immigration phenomenon at the beginning of the 20th century in America. While it manages to evoke certain real-life events and characters with some success, certain incidents in the narrative, such as the cats, poorly translate to real-life concepts. Ultimately, the film sacrifices meaning to the need to entertain an audience of kids in the usual corny way.

Rating: 40

Pas de problème! (1975)

English title: No Problem!

A man dies at a young woman's apartment, and she asks a man she meets at a nightclub to help her dispose of the body. The situation gets complicated, involving further people.

Comedy which borrows, as IMDB user dbdumonteil reminds us, the premise from The Trouble with Harry. The film is funny, the actors are marvelous, everything works well. It is not meant to be groundbreaking or anything, but it made me laugh several times. A series of stills from it are featured in this review.

Rating: 60

Path to War (2002) (TV)

A dramatization of the Johnson administration, focusing primarily on the Vietnam War.

This film does make for a very acceptable crash course on the Vietnam War, and I am glad I watched it. However, no TV drama is complete without those ridiculous human interest adornments which, among other dubious points, will lead an ignorant man like myself to deduce that Mrs. McNamara's stomach problems were just another nasty effect of the war. Johnson comes across as a semi-moron, and I have no further information that will put this labeling into question. The Negro question serves as a countertheme, and is perhaps useful for an analysis of what really happened both in American and in Asian hearts and minds at that period. The question of why would America get involved in the affairs of a distant country at all, apart from the sound military considerations by George Ball, is not once raised in the movie. Vietnamese division into two countries makes for a stark contrast to the cohesiveness of the North Vietnamese people, and is a matter of wonderment to me. Why would anyone try to politically divide a people which is so homogeneous in everything else? The reverse of that question is, why is Johnson so emphatic in his speech about his policies being not for the North, nor for the South, but for the whole America? Why would anyone try to politically unite a people which is so heterogeneous in everything else?

Rating: 63

The Big Knife (1955)

Second viewing; first viewed on February 7, 1998

A Hollywood actor is facing a matrimonial crisis. The crux of the matter is his wife's opposition to the renewal of his contract with a producer. He can't get away from it without facing some dire consequences, though.

The review by Bosley Crowther, while it gives a good idea of the movie, is perhaps a little short-sighted (or narrow-minded) about it (the same probably goes for Pauline Kael, who called it "garish and overdone"). It all pivots on the question of whether the flaws pointed at were intentional or not, whether they were funny or not, and whether it matters whether this comicity is intentional or not. I am not able to settle this matter, but surely enjoyed the movie more than Crowther did. The obviously stupendous performances are Palance's and Winters'; on Steiger's hangs a similar doubt as I have about the movie.

Rating: 67 (unchanged)

El bruto (1953)

English title: The Brute

A slum's landlord issues a note of eviction to all the slum's tenants so that he can sell the land. Some tenants will not take this quietly, and that's when the titular character -- an employee at a slaughterhouse and the landlord's protégé -- enters the picture as an agent of dissuasion to the rebellious tenants.

As IMDB user dbdumonteil remarked, this has parallels with Frankenstein; perhaps it's even closer to The Golem, being the Marxism and Class Consciousness analysis of that story. The plot practically writes itself once the premise is established, but it is a nice watch all the same, with the usual cruel touches which are the director's trademark.

Rating: 61

Vou te contá.. (1958)

The infant son of a wealthy man is kidnapped. A reporter wants to find it and get the reward. At nearly the same time, another baby is taken from its carriage during an absence of its caretaker and, by a coincidence, the reporter is the baby's uncle and lives in the same house. Also coincidentally, the maid at that house is courted by a man who works for the kidnapper of the first baby.

As you may have noticed, the plot is full of coincidences. The film is a near-total disgrace, a disjointed mix of unfunny narrative and musical numbers. The latter are nothing special, although the kind of Brazilian music they show is not unpleasant. The most remarkable thing about the movie is the abundance of racial references in the dialogue and even in one song. The most curious one is perhaps a line by the black male servant about the mixed-race gangster: "when a guy is neither white nor black, beware of him!" This article (in Portuguese) has a commentary about this and another remark by the same character, besides similar ones in other Brazilian movies. Here is an extensive online review (also in Portuguese) which, despite getting the plot appallingly wrong, has some useful information about the actors and singers in the movie.

Rating: 12

Rue de l'Estrapade (1953)

English title: Françoise Steps Out

A woman finds out about her husband's infidelity and leaves home, setting up a new home at a modest apartment in a building with some other interesting lodgers.

This is possibly a seminal film for a genre that has become very popular, especially from the 1970s onwards, having as protagonist a cheated-on woman who after separation acquires a new outlook on life. While this is a genre that has steadily radicalized itself towards hatred of the male sex, this is not the case in question here, as this early item is very circumspect and would be deemed conservative by modern-day feminists. Anyway, it is not an especially inspired film, struggling as it does in its middle section to find incidents to fill the void between separation and reconciliation. But the acting is good, and the mood is light and agreeable.

Rating: 40

Sahara (1983)

Young American heiress to an automobile industry, and auto racer, goes to Africa to take part in a Sahara rally. Trouble is, there is a tribal war along the rally route.

Reportedly a variation on The Sheik (1921), with echoes also of The Wind and the Lion (1975), it is also an allegory on World War II, where Gypsies stand for Jews, and the two warring desert tribes stand respectively for the Nazis and the Allies. It would not be an unreasonable interpretation to say that circumstances dictated that America, a young virgin, would go to bed with the Soviet Union. Further parallels could be drawn at one's own risk. Apart from this amusing allegorical aspect, the film is antiquated, and will provide for some entertainment only on the most basic level.

Rating: 33

Baby It's You (1983)

The late sixties. A well-behaved high school girl with acting ambitions is courted by an academic misfit from a lower social class than her. If their relationship seems improbable even while they live in the same city, will it survive after high school is over and they have physical distance between them?

I suppose many people have known or heard about couples like the one in this film. Probably not exactly identical, but sharing some aspects with them. Anyway, this kind of story is always interesting. The "firstness" factor is crucial, and the filmmaker himself says as much. The film relies on this appeal, and handles the development in a correct way. Among the curious incidents, a teacher proposes a "puzzle" about Ulysses S. Grant to his class.

Rating: 50