“Have you ever noticed it… for some reason you want to feel completely out of step with the rest of the world, the only thing to do is sit around a cocktail lounge for the afternoon?”-Lizabeth Scott’s Mona Stevens to Dick Powell’s John Forbes in Pitfall (1948)
Pitfall stars Dick Powell as John Forbes a disaffected insurance agent working for Olympic Mutual Insurance who needs more umph in his life when the daily grind begins to get to him. He’s married to Jane Wyatt who needs more than just his boring kiss on the cheek. But she’s the good wife in this crime story!
Lizabeth Scott is one of the ultimate noir femme fatales. In Pitfall she plays the sultry Mona Stevens –And when Forbes comes to recover the embezzled loot that her boyfriend bad boy Bill Smiley (Byron Barr) absconded with and lavished on her, she tells Forbes- “You’re a little man with a briefcase.”
Next thing you know it’s late afternoon and Mona’s sobbing in her gin at the dimly lit cocktail lounge, and Johnny Forbes is just a sucker for those dreamy eyes and that wispy voice of hers…
Boyfriend Smiley’s got pinched and is spending a year in the slammer thinking that Mona’s gonna wait for him but she and Forbes begin spending time together. She even tells him about the motorboat Smiley gave her, and it get’s conveniently omitted from his report. I mean after that sea sprayed, whirling, bumpy, ride with her blonde hair blowing alongside the mighty wakes from her untamed steering style, it seems to get him just a bit unraveled– I’m surprised he didn’t lose his hat!
But Mona’s not all fatal and when she finds out he’s married she lets him off easy telling him though she’s the kinda girl he’s always dreamed of she’s gonna let him go ‘without an angle… I could be nasty, but I’m not going to be.”
And besides he doesn’t want to tempt fate any more than he already has…
BUT!!!!!
Raymond Burr who plays the sinister private detective J.B. MacDonald who, Forbes hired to find Mona in the first place, is a tad unstable. He’s got a growing psychotic fixation on Mona and starts stalking her in the shadows. When Forbes confronts MacDonald– he wants revenge, so he visits Smiley in jail and tells him that the two are having an affair setting in motion an even bigger pitfall!
Watch out for those pitfalls… Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl
Directed by J. Lee Thompson (Blonde Sinner 1956, Tiger Bay 1959, Cape Fear 1962, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud 1975) the outre surreptitious Eye of the Devil (1966) is an atmospheric smorgasbord of uncanny & haunting images encircled by the air of clandestine and provocative underlying forcefulness. With ease, the film pulls you into an esoteric world of ancient rites and beliefs and primal fears and urges to prevail against or more aptly in honor of the pagan notion of the rule & reign of the old ways, and the dominant elementals. It’s a bit of a cryptic occult meditation on reverence, immortality, sacrifice, and reaping what you sow.
Niven is urbane and resolute in his stature as Patriarch of the French family who comes home to the ancestral chateau to tend to the vineyards, (the past season’s crop has suffered) and take his rightful place during the rites of the ceremonial harvest. Phillipe must not only observe the deadly family secrets that have survived for centuries but more horrifying than that, it must continue to be passed down to his children.
Philippe’s Aunt Countess Estell “ Christian Caray is a very wicked boy and his sister Odile is no better”
Eye of the Devil works so well to capture our ideologies by the throat partly because of the convincing performances by the enormously talented cast who inhabit this secret world, Deborah Kerr, David Niven, Flora Robson (Beast in the Cellar 1970 ) as Phillipe’s Great Aunt Countess Estell, Donald Pleasence as a malefic cleric Pere Dominic with a shaved head and solemnity, David Hemmings, Sharon Tate, and Emlyn Williams.
Both Sharon Tate and David Hemmings play two beautiful yet sinister figures lurking about. David Hemmings went on to do Michelangelo Antonioni‘s Blow Up (1966) and Sharon Tate whose first movie this was, went on to do Roman Polanski’s originally called Dance with The Vampires, now called The Fearless Vampire Killers, a comedic romp through the classical vampire story, though a little numbing possessed a few hilarious moments.Â
The film is an adaptation of Philip Lorain’s novel Day of the Arrow.
Once again absolutely stunning visuals frame the picture by cinematographer Erwin Hillier.
Erwin Hilliercombined with director J. Lee Thompson’s directing style is a tense and well-focused gaze creating a closed world of authentic dis-ease. Beautifully photographed with slight suggestions of The Wicker Man. There is an intoxicating ambiance perfectly underscored by the simplistic yet alluring music by composer Gary McFarland. Hillier’s close-ups capture fertile images of evil & arcane sensuality.
David Niven is the Marquis Philippe de Montfaucon who is the owner of a historic Vineyard. When a dry season hits the harvest he is summoned to the castle Bellenac. Deborah Kerr plays his wife-Catherine de Montfaucon who is told to remain in Paris with the children, but she follows him anyway. And for her trouble, she is assailed in the woods by very ominous figures in hoods which make for a very potent scene… which does not cease even up to the end’s shocking climactic conclusion.
The opening frames are quick cuts that utilize the sound of a speeding train, cut away frames between reveal shots of a sharp arrow, we hear the train sirens, a lavish cocktail party in high society, an old world-looking bearded man on the train, the arrow is raised- it pierces the heart of a white dove, the woods are filled with hazy black hooded figures, eerie and ominous they stand by the trees. A cross of branches is set on fire. Close up on Sharon Tate then close up on Hemmings then the screen goes black and the credits roll"¦..
It's a post-modern and riveting way to open a film with an esoteric narrative "¦the film’s title is set against the speeding to train its windows like eyes themselves staring back at us.
When Phillippe the Marquis arrives in Bellenac the villagers all seem to revere him, lifted their hats to him, head downward, humbled and proud. He meets up with the cleric Pere Dominic (Donald Pleasence) the mood and furnishings give one the idea of an Orthodox Christian sect.
Some thought he would not return to Bellenac the butler knew he would return"¦ Phillippe asks how about your father?
"I’ve never doubted the path you have chosen" Phillippe-"What makes you think I've chosen it?"
Pere Dominic-"You came back didn't you."
The priest places an elaborate amulet on the table. Phillippe picks up the amulet Dominic tells him "I think you have chosen it Phillippe, my son."
Family friend Jean-Claude Ibert (Edward Mulhare) sits by the fireplace in Paris talking about Phillippe’s trip back to Bellenac. Catherine tells him the first time she was there after their wedding she says it was the most frightening place almost as though they were back in the Middle Ages. Jean-Claude tells her that Phillippe had always been obsessed with the place as if he was trying to solve its diabolical secret.
Once at the castle, Philippe seems distant as if he is following a mysterious compulsion guided by the pervading force of a cult that recognizes ancient pagan rituals, and perhaps sacrificing his own life in order to save the vineyard. Catherine can do nothing to change her somnolent husband’s mind to leave and come back with her and the children to Paris.
Both Sharon Tate as the luminous Odile de Caray and David Hemmings as the impish Christian de Caray play two beautiful yet otherworldly and sinister figures lurking about with bows and arrows. Turns toads into doves, and is fixated on the children.
Odile mesmerizes both Jacques and Antoinette. She asks if they believe in magic, then she demonstrates her powers by changing a frog on a lily pad into a dove. Could she be using the art of hypnosis to create an illusion?
Catherine does not want her brother Christian to kill any more doves on the property and isn’t happy to see her influence over her children. It begins to rain. But Odile tells her that they are not life-giving clouds and that they will pass quickly. Catherine asks why she is at Bellenac. Odile tells her that she and her brother come there often… Then Christian appears and shoots an arrow into a tree right next to Catherine. The siblings wander through the landscape like other-worldly minions.
Phillippe begins to pull away consciously from his wife and children, he tells her to take them and leave. She pleads with him to come home with her and that she can help him. In a sense, it’s all begun and even if she tries to make a fuss afterward, no one will either believe her or come forward to help her.
She says he must be mad, that he’s dying for nothing, walk away from this stupid evil.
“I’m dying for what I believe.”
“No one can help me, not even you. You don't understand you could never understand”
He is preparing for a glorious pilgrimage of the soul. He is beyond being reached. He is prepared for the festival of ‘The Thirteen Days” or rather The Thirteen Dancers…
Alain de Montfaucon (Emlyn Williams) tells Catherine that he expects to be a living God and that Pere Dominic is more than part of it… He is all of it. He is a Pagan. And Bellenac is… A Fortress of Heresy…
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
IMDb fun fact:
Originally Kim Novak was cast in the role of Catherine de Montfaucon. Filming began in the fall of 1965 in France. Near every scene had been filmed when Kim Novak fell from a horse and wasn’t able to complete her scenes. Deborah Kerr was hired to take over and every scene that featured Miss Novak had to be re-shot with her replacement.
The film’s opening credits read-Introducing Sharon TateJ. Lee Thompson on the set with Sharon Tate
HAVE A SO-REAL SUNDAY NITE- FROM YOUR EVERLOVIN’ MONSTERGIRL!
Very dark satire with a screenplay by Clifford Odets. This is a Film Noirmasterpiece directed by Alexander Mackendrick (The Lady Killers 1955)
Starring the enigmatic Burt Lancaster as J.J. Hunsecker… a power-hungry columnist whose unethical practices and megalomania make him a force to be reckoned with. Tony Curtis plays the smarmy climber– press agent always on the make–Sid Falco. He’s J.J.’s wingman who has to clean up the wake of the destruction he leaves behind with his brutal and persuasive influence. It’s a dark and sinister condemnation of the world of entertainment, publishing, nightclubs, social circles… the works!
The film also stars Martin Milner as Steve Dallas a jazz musician who wants to marry J.J.’s younger sister Susan (Susan Harrison) There’s a very strong undercurrent of incestuous fixation on the part of J.J. toward his sister, as he controls her every move and tries to destroy the young woman’s relationship with Steve. Fantastic dialogue throughout and James Wong Howe’scinematography is exquisitely framed for the dark and intriguing atmosphere of New York City’s nite life. Elmer Bernstein adds his wonderful score to this urban morality play.
I love Barbara Nichols as Rita the cigarette girl…
Always sweet here at The last Drive In-Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl!
Anne Bancroft is a lady who lunches and listens to gossip in The Pumpkin Eater – being held hostage by the intensely neurotic Yootha Joyce a lonely housewife sitting next to her while trapped under the hair dryer of life… The woman at the hairdresser’s-“It’s like I told you, my life is an empty place!” Jo-“Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
“The question isn’t who’s going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”– Ayn Rand.
Cognition-(noun) The mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses.” A result of this: a perception, sensation, notion, or intuition.
These 4 particular films seem to be part of a trend of films that deal with either women’s brewing emotional turmoil or in the case of Jean Seberg’s Lilith- a creeping organic madness, perhaps from childhood trauma that is not delved into.
Let’s consider women either in distress or the oft-used “hysterical’ trademark that summons every neurotic ill associated with women. With these 4 films, it’s the same root problem: Why should society determine what counts as an emotional problem? This is especially true for women as if she were the engendering source of a specific kind of female mayhem, the creator of the tumult itself… Capable of giving birth, does she also give birth to a certain kind of madness directed inwardly or aimed outward at society and its unyielding ethical questions?
It’s not that I think Barbara Barrie is troubled because she falls in love with a black man. It’s that the world is troubled by her decision. Because of her choice, a society inherently cruelly punishes her by taking away the one thing she had personal power over, to remove her child from her life. Although she has a wonderful relationship with Frank, both are being judged and condemned.
The judge awards custody of her little girl to the biological father even though he is not the better parent. Not too long ago, women could be hospitalized just for being menopausal, based on what their husbands said.
Women were at the mercy of white male society’s judgment. So if a white woman loves and marries a black man in the volatile climate of the civil rights 60s, it would absolutely cause turmoil and quite the commotion.
All these women experience cognitive commotion but are not necessarily crazy. One Potato Two Potato is about the societal impositions forced upon an interracial couple and the strain of a child custody battle forcing her to qualify herself as a good mother. The sentiments of the time, the courts, and society, in general, are disempowering Julie through her motherhood.
This inflicts an agonizing torture on Barbara Barrie’s character Julie. Barrie’s performance as well as Bernie Hamilton as a man whose own masculinity is tested, tears me up inside…
A white woman, Julie Cullen, falls in love with Frank Richards, a black man, against the will of everyone around them, including his parents, who think he should stick with his own kind. Eventually, Frank’s mother and father come around and embrace Julie and her daughter, who considers Martha and William her grandparents.
Julie has a son with Frank…and suddenly is being faced with a white judge deciding on who will gain custody of her little girl from a previous marriage to a man, Joe Cullen, who abandoned them years ago. Not til he finds out that she is being raised by a black man does he rise to take action and gain custody of his daughter.
This is a courageous story to relate to in 1964. Barrie’s anguish is one that is not self-inflicted, there is no mental disorder or neurotic dilemma yet it would challenge anyone who dares to be truthful and follow their heart in a world where many people must hide who they are. A beautiful love story that becomes tainted by the stain of ingrained hatred and ignorance. And causes ruination to a happy family. Barbara Barrie’s performance as Julie Cullen Richards is nothing short of intuitively astounding.
Just for funzies, I wanted to paint some contrast into the mix, therefore pointing to films that truly deal with women and mental illness.More than cognitive commotion, they’re unstable, non compos mentis, deranged, knife-wielding, murderous femmes, traumatized, delusional dames… or all out CRAZY NUTS!!!!!!!!!
And…
I’ll probably write about all these films mentioned–the women on the verge of a nervous breakdown or already on the shoulder of the weary road of life with all four tires flat at some point. I’ll consider Charles Vidor’s Ladies in Retirement 1941 where Ida Lupino has to take care of her two dotty sisters, Elsa Lanchester and Edith Barrett, as the Creed sisters… They’re wonderfully cuckoo!!! I did a little piece on this gem a while back…
Robert Siodmak’sThe Dark Mirror 1946 with Olivia de Havilland playing twins Terry & Ruth Collins, Gene Tierney gorgeous yet cunningly homicidal in Leave her To Heaven 1945, Laraine Day is totally unhinged in The Locket 1946, Joan Crawford as Louise Howell has a nightmare filled flashback in Curtis Burnhardt’sPossessed 1947.
“she is shown as alienated and stricken with psychological torture”– {source Marlisa Santos The Dark Mirror; Psychiatry and Film Noir
Then again, in Anatole Litvak’s story, actually set in a mental institution with Olivia de Havilland stuck in The Snake Pit 1948, Vivian Leigh is the consummate delusional Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ AStreetcar Named Desire 1951… Marilyn Monroe gives a riveting performance as the deranged babysitter–(oh god kid just be quiet for Nell) in Roy Ward Baker’s Don’t Bother to Knock 1952,Joanne Woodward is in emotional conflict with three different personalities all herself…In The Three Faces of Eve 1957.
Eleanor Parker gives a stunning portrayal of multiple personality disorder in Hugo Haas’Lizzie 1957, I’ve written about Liz Taylor almost getting her frontal lobe sucked out at the request of her domineering Aunt -(Katherine Hepburn) just to hide her son’s sordid secret life in Suddenly, Last Summer 1959, Jean Simmons tries to find happiness in a loveless marriage that isn’t her fault in the engrossing Home Before Dark 1958, Ingmar Bergman’s Striking minimalist piece about mental turmoil in his beautifully photographed Through a Glass Darkly 1961, William Castle’s groundbreaking gender-bending Homicidal 1961.
Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve 1957.
Joan Marshall is Homicidal in 1961 in William Castle’s answer to Psycho.
Carroll Baker is a traumatized rape survivor in Something Wild 1961 and what I found to be a misogynist romp wasting several wonderful actresses who were offered these humiliating roles in The Chapman Report. In particular, Clare Bloom deserved better with her talent -as a nymphomaniac struggling with her sexual desires until she ultimately commits suicide in The Chapman Report 1962 and good old William Castle’s once again with his Strait-Jacket 1964 starring one of the ultimate Grande Dames Joan Crawford this time wielding an axe in addition to her nightmarish flashbacks.
Now… none of the 4 women I am covering here are homicidal or dangerous, all these women are experiencing a psychic struggle with issues that speak from their place in the world as women… who are defining somehow in their own way, what their identity means to them… Well, perhaps Lilith is a bit more volatile in terms of how she wields her sexuality and influences men & women! But she is a divine innocent albeit-nymphomaniac living in a dreamy world of her own –not a homicidal vamp who devours men and spits them out… She is innocent without malice. The men do the damage to themselves…
“And her eye has become accustomed to obvious ‘truths’ that actually hide what she is seeking. It is the very shadow of her gaze that must be explored”--Luce Irigaray
Max von Sydow,, Harriet Andersson, and Gunnar Bjormstrand in -(1961)-Through the Glass Darkly directed by Ingmar Bergman.
Kim Stanley gives an unnerving performance as a delusional and dangerous woman who plots to kidnap a child so she can claim her psychic powers and then locate her…
And of course the two titans of Grande Dame Guignol fêtes courtesy of Robert Aldrich…
Roman Polanski’s very post-modern, almost Brechtian/Picassoesque ode to insanity starring Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion 1965.
There’s always Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964), showcasing an unstable female in distress brought on by childhood trauma. Considering Hitch’s lavish colors and overt psychological embellishments that have created a pulpy romanticized landscape, which at times obfuscates the mental turbulence rather than letting it surface on its own. I chose to set this film aside and instead include the more off-the-beaten-path of psychological leanings pictures. 1964 seemed to be one hell of a year for Women in Distress by virtue of the female psychological crisis, once again to reiterate -not the ‘hysteria’ kind, mind you.”
Tippi Hedren and Louise Latham in Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964).
“From the socially conservative 1950s to the permissive 1970s, this project explores the ways in which insanity in women has been linked to their femininity and the expression or repression of their sexuality. An analysis of films from Hollywood’s post-classical period (The Three Faces of Eve (1957), Lizzie (1957), Lilith (1964), Repulsion (1965),Images (1972) and 3 Women (1977)) demonstrates the societal tendency to label a woman’s behavior as mad when it does not fit within the patriarchal mold of how a woman should behave. In addition to discussing the social changes and diagnostic trends in the mental health
profession that define “appropriate” female behavior, each chapter also traces how the decline of the studio system and rise of the individual filmmaker impacted the films’ ideologies with regard to mental illness and femininity.”
— from FRAMING FEMININITY AS INSANITY: RE PRESENTATIONS OF MENTAL ILLNESS IN WOMEN IN POST-CLASSICAL HOLLYWOOD by Kelly Kretschmar
WOMEN ON THE VERGE… OF A BREAKTHROUGH!
Curt Jurgens carries Samantha Eggar after she has fallen off her horse. There is more going on than Patricia Neal’s blind eye can see.
Ann Bancroft and Peter Finch are a married couple in crisis. Having perpetually popped out a myriad of children, she is yet again pregnant. Will this keep him home this time…? The Pumpkin Eater (1964).
Barbara Barrie falls in love and marries Bernie Hamilton. Once her ex-husband realizes that his child is being brought up by a black man, times get even tougher for the couple.
Alison Crawford (Patricia Neal) –“Love has to stop somewhere along the line, otherwise it’s almost “like committing suicide. “
PSYCHE 59 (1964) –Alexander Singer (A Cold Wind in August 1961 with Lola Albright and Scott Marlowe) directs the remarkable Patricia Nealas Alison Crawford, a woman struck down with a form of psychosomatic or hysterical blindness. Alison is aware that the affliction is all in her mind since the doctors can’t find anything organically wrong with her sight. Her ‘hysterical blindness’and memory loss of the events leading up to her accident follows a fall down the stairs while she is pregnant. When she awakens, she is unable to see.
Alison “My Brain won’t accept the images that my eyes make.”
What is happening for Alison is that she is subconsciously blocking out the truth about her husband and her younger, coquettish sister Robin.
She is now living a very quaint life with her husband, played by the austere Curd Jürgens (I love him as the devilishly urbane concert pianist Duncan Mowbray Ely in The Mephisto Waltz, 1971).
Aside from her intense husband Eric, Alison’s very sexually charged sister Robin (Samantha Eggar) has now come to live with the couple after a divorce. Robin hovers very close to Eric like a carrion bird waiting to pick the bones of Alison’s troubled marriage. While Alison doesn’t have any cognitive memory of what led up to her fall, it’s obvious to us that she can sense the strong attraction between her husband and younger sister. At one time, her younger sister Robin and Eric had been involved before Alison caught and married him. Robin hasn’t stopped lusting after him. Slowly, Alison’s memory comes back as the flashes and images of what she experienced right before she lost her sight literally come into view.
Singer builds the tension in the air slowly, methodically, until it all comes to a head against the skillfully contained cinematography by Walter Lassally (The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, 1962, Zorba the Greek, 1964, To Kill a Clown, 1972).
IMDb tidbit-Patricia Neal was offered the lead in The Pumpkin Eater, but it was not 100% confirmed she would get the role. She then opted, to her later regret, to make Psyche 59 (1964) instead, since it was an official offer.
Neal gives a restrained yet powerful performance of a woman who is trapped in self-imposed darkness by her fear of the truth.
There is very subtle theme of self-brutality that exists for each of the characters, Alison’s self-imposed sightlessness, Eric’s indignant stoicism is palpable as he walks through the story like a trapped stray dog, He is agitated by Robin’s presence because he can not resist her.
Robin, her younger sister, must have been quite young at the time of her relationship with Eric, which begs the question of appropriate behavior on his part. Robin constantly asserts a seductive influence on Eric right in front of the disadvantaged Alison.
She is both a hyper-sexual narcissist and a bit self-destructive at the same time; either way, she gets off on playing the seductress, torturing Eric, right in front of her sister, dark sunglasses, and delicate pout. Although Alison suffers from blindness, she maintains a certain dignity that, although all three characters seem like she is, one of the trapped animals in a psycho-melodramatic forest, we get a sense that she will one day regain her freedom and spread her wings and fly away from it all, truth in hand.
Alison “We must be near the marshes” Robin “We just passed it “¦ Coming to the old windmill soon”¦ it’s still turning.. nothing’s changed” Alison “There’s a factory there now, Don’t protect me, Robby. Don’t make up windmills.”
Based on the novel by Françoise des Ligneris, with a screenplay by Julian Zimet (who wrote Horror Express 1972 and one of the best atmospheric little horror obscurities The Death Wheelers 1973 formally called Psychomania about a group of British motorcycle thugs and their pretty birds who dabble in the occult. Beryl Reid and George Sanders being one of their relatives, learn the secret of immortality. But you have to die first to obtain it.)
Psyche 59 is an interesting psychological mood piece, almost post-modernly impressionistic with its stark and polished black and white photo work. And Patricia Neal who had just won an Oscar for her role as Alma Brown in Hud 1963and gave a command performance in 1957 as Marcia Jeffries in A Face in the Crowdis just exceptional as Alison who is trying to navigate the dark world surrounding her.
The film is strange and at times subtly cruel yet Neal’s character relies on our visual journey which becomes quite painful at times yet beautiful as she begins to emerge. In the film, Patricia Neal’s relationship with Curd Jürgens has an eerie parallel to real-life marriage to writer/spy Roald Dahl, but I don’t want to get into the sensationalized tidbits of public people’s wreckage.
The film also stars Ian Bannen as Robin’s poor, befuddled boyfriend, Elspeth March, and Beatrix Lehmann as Alison’s staunch, science fiction-reading grandmother—I wish I had one of those!
Miriam Hopkins has a luminous, quiet dreamy beauty.
Born in Savannah Georgia Oct. 18th, 1902 she died Oct 9, 1972-a chorus girl in New York City at the age of 20 she made her first motion picture after signing with Paramount Pictures called Fast and Loose (1930).
In 1931, she raised some eyebrows in 1931’s horror thriller Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde directed by Rouben Mamoulian.
InDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931),Miriam Hopkins portrayed the character Ivy Pearson, a prostitute who becomes mesmerized by Jekyll and Hyde a tale of sexuality in revolt. Though many of her scenes were cut from the film she still managed to get rave reviews for the mere 5 minutes she spent on the screen.
Frederick March walked away with the Oscar for Best Leading Man in that horror gem. Miriam Hopkins had been up for the part of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone With the Windbeing that she was an authentic Southern lady, but the part… of course went to Vivien Leigh… “As God as my witness, they’re not going to lick me”
Miriam would make three pictures with Ernst Lubitsch,The Smiling Lieutenant 1931, Trouble in Paradise 1932, and Design for Living 1933.Design for Living is my favorite!
William Wylerrevising the film release of The Children’s Hour 1961, had been based on his original theatrical presentation with Hopkin’s in what was called These Three (1936). In the remake, she plays Aunt Lily Mortar to Shirley MacLaine’s troubled Martha, stepping into the role that Hopkins once portrayed.
These Three (1936) starring Joel McCrea, Merle Oberon, and our Miriam Hopkins as Martha Dobie in William Wyler’s toned-down version of the Lillian Hellman play.
IMDb trivia: William Wyler cut several scenes hinting at Martha’s homosexuality for fear of not receiving the seal of approval from the Motion Picture Production Code. At the time, any story about homosexuality was forbidden by the production code. Â
Directed by William Wyler, cinematography by Franz Planer(Criss Cross 1949, Breakfast at Tiffany’s 1961) working with Wyler they used effective mood changes with his lighting, creating an often provocative atmosphere. The film showcases some truly great performances by the entire cast, Audrey Hepburn,Shirley MacLaine, and James Garner (who sadly passed away on July 19th of this year.) Including Veronica Cartwright and Fay Bainter. Miriam Hopkins mixes a sad yet infuriating empathy toward her flighty judgmental and often elusive tie to the theatre she harkens back to. She is incapable of being there for her tormented niece.
The story concerns the struggle of two young and independent women trying to make a go of it by running a private boarding school for adolescent girls. The intrusion of a lie, ultimately founded on a malicious rumor concocted by the spoiled young niece Mary Tilford (Karen Balkin) begins to spread like deadly poison that Karen (Hepburn) and Martha (Maclean) are having a lesbian relationship. And the lie proceeds to ruin Karen’s engagement to Joe, worried parents flood to the school to pull out their children at risk of being exposed to that ‘love that dare not speak its name!’ and basically causes the ruination of Karen and Martha’s dream.
Whether the idea is true or not, the wake of the devastation of all the lives involved leads to poetic & unfortunate tragedy.
Martha and Karen's quite independent business relationship and personal friendship seemed to challenge very conventional standards of a woman's role, creating an uncomfortable pall over the town, the school, and the women involved in the scandal, and we sense this dis-ease on film. This all seems to feed the accessibility of suspicion when Mary makes her accusation, fueled by things she’s overheard Aunt Lily recklessly say about Martha.
Mrs. Lily Mortar–“Friendship between women, yes. But not this insane devotion! Why, it’s unnatural. Just as unnatural as can be.”
Mrs. Lily Mortar:Any day that he’s in the house is a bad day. You can’t stand them being together and you’re taking out on me. You’ve always had a jealous, possessive nature even as a child. If you had a friend, you’d be upset if she liked anybody else. And that’s what’s happening now. And it’s unnatural. It’s just as unnatural as it can be.
Miriam Hopkins is an added unpleasant moral eccentric and parasite who feeds off Karen and her niece Martha who have always had an apparently strained relationship because she’s money-grubbing, spineless, and a user right from the beginning.
Miriam Hopkin’s Aunt Lily glides through the film like narcissus’ secretary waiting for that great part that is never coming. Supposedly on tour with a drama company, or just avoiding the scandal, when she could have cleared the women’s reputations and saved the school from being shut down.
At times’s she histrionic, over-theatrical, melodramatic, and a relic of bygone days. Like an obsolete thespian Harpy who lingers around the house, tormenting poor Martha who is struggling with her own inner demons that Aunt Lily seems all too well to recognize.
Aunt Lily trying to stir up dramaturgical dust while teaching her pupil’s elocution, shows herself to be out of fashion, a bit of an outcast, and as dried up as the dead flowers, the young conniving and at times socio-pathic Mary steals from the garbage to give to Lily as a ruse for being late to class.
Aunt Lily is needful, maneuvering, and scheming as she insinuates herself into the lives of Karen (Audrey Hepburn) and her niece Martha (Shirley MacLaine) A nonstop know it all"¦ with a showy flare for dramatics.
At the school, Aunt Lily teaches the girl elocution lessons, music, and theatre which is perfect for her narcissistic compulsion to inflate her own ego while pushing her highfalutin ideas of breeding “Breeding is everything”. Lily is materialistic, money hungry, and will use Martha for whatever she can get out of her.
After Lily accuses Martha's relationship with Karen as being "˜unnatural' And how her mood changes whenever Joe, Karen’s fiance (James Garner) is in the house. Martha throws her out. Paying her off so she'll stay away. Hopkins does a truly perfect job of being the parasitic opportunist who offers nothing but grief.
I loved Miriam Hopkins as the gutsy Mrs. Shipton -‘ The Duchess’ in The Outcasts of Poker Flats 1952.
Until 1970 when like most great screen sirens, who seemed to inevitably get handed that part of Grande Dame Guignol caricature of the fading Hollywood star. Hopkin’s last film was the brutally disturbing Strange Intruder in 1970. She playing the recluse Katharine Parker, who is befriended by a psychopathic woman hater, then terrorized by him- John David Garfield (Yes son of the great John Garfield). Gale Sondergaard plays her companion Leslie who staunchly remains at her side to no avail.
WhileMiriam Hopkinswho played Martha in the original filmThese Three (1936) agreed to play the part of Martha’s Aunt Lily, Merle Oberon, who played Karen in the original film, turned down the part of Mrs. Tilford.
Mr. Happy… Bosley Crowther once again fangs the performances of The Children’s Hour with his serpentine wit. Published in The New York Times review March 15th, 1962.
“But here it is, fidgeting and fuming, like some dotty old doll in bombazine with her mouth sagging open in shocked amazement at the batedly whispered hint that a couple of female schoolteachers could be attached to each other by an “unnatural” love.
If you remember the stage play, that was its delicate point, and it was handled even then with a degree of reticence that was a little behind the sophistication of the times. (Of course, the film made from the stage play in 1936 and called “These Three” avoided that dark hint altogether; it went for scandal down a commoner avenue.)
But here in this new film version, directed and produced by the same William Wyler who directed the precautionary “These Three,” the hint is intruded with such astonishment and it is made to seem such a shattering thing (even without evidence to support it) that it becomes socially absurd. It is incredable that educated people living in an urban American community today would react as violently and cruelly to a questionable innuendo as they are made to do in this film.
And that is not the only incredible thing in it. More incredible is its assumption of human credulity. It asks us to believe that the parents of all twenty pupils in a private school for girls would yank them out in a matter of hours on the slanderously spread advice of the grandmother of one of the pupils that two young teachers in the school were “unnatural.”
It asks us to believe the grandmother would have been convinced of this by what she hears from her 12-year-old granddaughter, who is a dubious little darling at best. And, most provokingly, it asks us to imagine that an American court of law would not protect the innocent victims of such a slander when all the evidence it had to go upon was the word of two children and the failure of a key witness to appear.
In short, there are several glaring holes in the fabric of the plot, and obviously Miss Hellman, who did the adaptation, and John Michael Hayes, who wrote the script, knew they were there, for they have plainly sidestepped the biggest of them. They have not let us know what the youngster whispered to the grandmother that made her hoot with startled indignation and go rushing to the telephone. Was it something that a 12-year-old girl could have conceivably made up out of her imagination (which is what she was doing in this scene)?
And they have not let us into the courtroom where the critical suit for slander was tried. They have only reported the trial and the verdict in one quickly tossed off line.
So this drama that was supposed to be so novel and daring because of its muted theme is really quite unrealistic and scandalous in a prim and priggish way. What’s more, it is not too well acted, except by Audrey Hepburn in the role of the younger of the school teachers. She gives the impression of being sensitive and pure.
Shirley MacLaine as the older school teacher, the one who eventually admits in a final scene with her companion that she did have a yen for her, inclines to be too kittenish in some scenes and do too much vocal hand-wringing toward the end.
Based on Davis Grubb’s novel and James Agee’s screenplay, Charles Laughton directs this visual masterpiece that plays like a dark fairy tale about children in danger being pursued by a relentless human monster.
Robert Mitchum is a sublime drifter Harry Powella bible-spouting psychopath with the words LOVE & HATE tattooed on each knuckle of both hands. Having been cellmate to Ben Harper (Peter Graves ) who committed a robbery and stashed the money with his two little children John (Billy Chapin) and Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce)
Powell first moves in on their mother Willa Harper (Shelley Winters) but John sees right through his righteous facade very quickly.
Powell marries their mother (Shelley Winters) and murders her after she overhears him asking Pearl about the money, and then proceeds to hunt and terrorize the children across a nightmarish yet beautifully shot landscape by cinematographer Stanley Cortez (The Three Faces of Eve 1957, Back Street 1961, Shock Corridor 1963, The Naked Kiss 1964)
Featuring wonderful performances by James Gleason as Birdie Steptoe, and Evelyn Varden as Icey Spoon.
In the midst of this allegorical mayhem, Lillian Gish as Rachel Cooper supplants all adults like a fairy godmother protecting street children with her wise and fearless resolve…
Like Boxing=Noir which blends the aggressive masculinity of pugilism with the dark shadowy narratives of Film Noir… Director Frank Tuttle’ssuperbly structured gem Suspense 1946 integrates the art of ice-skating featuring the unusual beauty and poise ofBelita. Woven into the story of the love triangle amidst the almost carnivalesque milieu of figure skating, revenge, murder, a mysterious drifter Barry Sullivan as Joe Morgan who is hiding his dark past… Joe insinuates himself into the life of the married couple, skating/dancing sensation Roberta Leonard (Belita) and husband Frank Leonard (The always interesting Albert Dekker Dr.Cyclops 1940, The Killers 1946)
Sullivan and Belita conjure a very believable chemistry… She is classy and conflicted, he is smooth and seriously dark and dangerous.
Joe wants to consume everything around him until he controls the show and the object of his desire… the graceful and seductive Roberta.
The skating scenes are sensational. Belita seems to move on ice and off with effortless grace, the way snow moves through the air with a natural current that finds its mark with a precise beauty of motion. Absolutely stunning to watch, and never detracts from the taut and well-framed noir landscape. Eugene Palette is marvelous as assistant to the boss, Harry Wheeler. His gravel voice and the gentle presence of his obvious girth make him an added pleasure to the coiling tension of the film! Editor Otho Lovering (Stagecoach 1939, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance 1962) weaves a seamless stream of suspense!
Frank Paul Sylos’ (Caught 1949, Suddenly 1954), art direction and George James Hopkins’ ( Casablanca 1942, A Streetcar Named Desire 1951) set design is surreal and haunting.
Â
Barry Sullivan as Joe Morgan –“You’ve got plenty of nerve.. for a girl…”
Belita as Roberta Leonard– “You’ve got plenty of nerve… period!”
Suspensefully Yours… Your EverLovin’ MonsterGirl!!!!
"Noir exploits the oddness of odd settings, as it transforms the mundane quality of familiar ones, in order to create an environment that pulses with intimations of nightmare." – Foster Hirsch, The Dark Side of the Screen
You can read more about this iconic noir masterpiece in The Dark Pages feature issue.
Here’s the link below to order a copy of The Dark Pages for yourself or subscribe all year round… so you’ll always get your fill of everything Noir from this sensational publication!
Produced by Mark Hellinger (The Naked City, Brute Force, and The Two Mrs. Carrolls Music by Miklós Rózsa; Cinematography by Elwood Bredell (Ghost of Frankenstein 1942, Phantom Lady 1944). Boldly directed by the great Robert Siodmak. The Screenplay is by Anthony Veiller and uncredited co-writers John Huston and Richard Brooks.
The Killers (1946), with its doomed hero, flashbacks, and seedy characters is one of the finest in the film noir canon. The film is a gritty dream with carnal fluidity and monochromatic beauty. The Killers is a neo-gangster noir film with a liminal and evocative intensity. Director Robert Siodmak gives the film a violently surreal tone"” it's a stylishly slick, richly colorful black and white film where the players live in a world condemned by shadow. Burt Lancaster plays out the obsession theme with ‘unfaithful women’ leading to his ultimate demise.
The evocative opening scene is one of the most powerfully ferocious in film noir. It is faithful to Ernest Hemingway's short story. The determined thrust of the first twelve minutes mesmerizes. It has a villainous and cynical rhythm, paced like shadowy poetry in a dark room with no open windows. The film opens with Miklos Rozsa's ominous brassy jazz that later becomes the killer’s motif. Two men drive into a small town, Anywhere, USA. We see them from behind in the darkest black silhouette inside the car.
While cars and trains are iconographic means of escape in noir films, the opening sequence of The Killersoffers no escape. The two gunmen enter the screen in their vehicle veiled by the darkness of the highway road. The vision is more like one of bringing the means of death to this ordinary environment. The peculiar, unsettling gunmen Al and Max (Charles McGraw and William Conrad) are two dark forces invading an ordinary landscape with their malicious and aggressive presence. The dark highway is a typical Hemingway metaphor for the eternal strife, of ‘going nowhere’ and his cycle of ‘heroic fatalism.' The road is an unfinished trajectory, unpredictable and unknown with no way out but "˜the end.'
We see the two walking onto the street silhouetted in shadow. We know they are trouble. They enter a diner reminiscent of Edward Hopper's 1942 painting "˜Nighthawks.' Perhaps this American Diner scene influenced scavenger-hunting director Quentin Tarantino for his Pulp Fiction in 1994.
The men ask about a man they're looking for, "˜the Swede.' They make no effort to hide their malevolence. They revel in belligerence as they demean and degrade the men in the small-town diner. Al and Max begin to psychologically torture George (Harry Hayden) who works the counter and Nick the boy at the end of the counter. They exude an offensive egotism and a cruel antisocial spirit as they barrage the men with perverse assaults.
George: "What'll it be, gentlemen?""¨Max: "I don't know. What you want to eat, Al?""¨Al: "I don't know what I want to eat.""¨ Max: "I'll have the roast pork tenderloin with apple sauce and mashed potatoes.""¨ George: "That's not ready yet.""¨ Max: "Then what's it on the card for?""¨ George: "Well, that's on the dinner. You can have that at six o'clock. That clock is ten minutes fast. The dinner isn't ready yet.""¨ Max: "Never mind the clock. What have you got to eat?"
The conversation is absurd and meaningless. It is just a mechanism to bully these townsmen. They continue to harass George asking "You got anything to drink?" George tells them "I can give you beer, soda, or ginger ale." Al: "I said you got anything to drink?" George submits a quiet "no." Max says "This is a hot town, whatta you call it?"George: "Brentwood." Al turns to Max "You ever hear of Brentwood?"Max shakes his head no. Al asks George "What do you do for nights?"
Max takes a deep breath and groans "They eat the dinner, they all come here and eat The Big Dinner."The outsider mocks the small-town conformity of eating whatever is served. George looks downward murmuring "That's right"and Al says "You're a pretty bright boy aren't you?"He uses "boy" to demean. George mutters "Sure" and Al snaps back "Well you're not!"
Al now shouts to the young man at the end of the counter "Hey you, what's your name?" he looks earnestly at Al and says "Adams. Nick Adams." Al says, "Another bright boy." There is sadism at work here, almost subconsciously homophobic/homoerotic in the way they are using the term "boy" to subvert these bystanders' manhood. Max says, "town's full of bright boys."
The cook comes out from the kitchen bringing the plates. "One ham and one bacon and" George starts to serve the men the food and asks "Which one is yours?"Al says "Don't you remember bright boy?" the continued use of this phrase truly begins to tear at the layers of our nerve endings. George starts laughing and Max says "What are you laughing at?" "nothing."
"You see something funny?" "No.""Then don't laugh." "Alright."Again Max says "He thinks it's alright." Al says "Oh, he's a thinker." It's an antisocial backlash to an intellectual society that would perceive Al and Max as outcasts. This is where a noir film begins to break the molds of Hollywood’s civilized society. The two intruders have trespassed into an ordinarily quiet community to shatter its sense of security. It is the death of humanism in film language.
Max and Al tie up Nick and the cook in the kitchen. "I'll tell ya what's gonna happen, we're gonna kill the Swede, you know big Swede, works over at the filling station." He lights a cigarette. George says, "You mean Pete Lund?"Max takes the cigarette out of his mouth and the smoke enervates George's face, "If that's what he calls himself"¦ Comes in every night at 6 o'clock don't he?"
Georges asks "What are you gonna kill him for? What did Pete Lund ever do to you?" Max replies," He never had a chance to do anything to us he never even seen us." The conversation is so matter-of-fact that it's chillingly absurd. Again George asks, "What are you gonna kill him for?" Max smirks "We're killing him for a friend."Al pokes his head through the sliding window to the kitchen "Shut up you talk too much" but Max says "I gotta keep bright boy amused don't I?"
When George explains that "˜the Swede' never comes in after 6 pm, the killers head to the station where he works. George unties the men in the kitchen. Nick leaves to warn "˜Swedes,' jumping fences on his way to the rooming house.
At the rooming house, Pete (Lancaster) is on his bed in almost complete darkness, face hidden in the shadows, his body's repose in stark contrast to the backdrop of the frenetic orchestration by Rozsa. Nick enters and urgently warns him about the two dangerous men. Nick asks, "Why'd do they want to kill ya?"He replies: "There’s nothing I can do about it. I did something wrong. Once. Thanks for coming.” His tone is soft and fatalistic.
Nick offers "I can tell you what they're like?" Swede replies "I don't wanna know what they're like… thanks for coming.""Don't you wanna go and see the police?""No that wouldn't do any good." Nick asks "Isn't there something I could do?""There ain't anything to do.""Couldn't you get out of town?" He answers "No… I'm through with all that running around."
A merciful violin plays while Swede remains resigned to the dark bed. His large hands rub his face. We hear the squeaking of a door downstairs as it opens slowly and then shuts. The Swede turns his head looking slightly worried for the first time. He leans up in the bed, the light from outside hitting his face, as Al and Max mount the staircase that leads to his room.
The Swede listens like a trapped animal. He does not betray any fear, only a gloomy resignation that his life is about to end. It is not death that he ponders, but memories and another enemy. Cinematographer Elwood Bredellswitches between close-ups of Lancaster's face and the door, then suddenly the two men come in blasting. From pitch black begins a light show, arcing like electricity striking a void. The canon fire gunshots pour into a field of blackness. The killers walking up the stairs acts as foreplay and the gunfire is like violent intercourse"¦ White hot flashes of light break grave blackness. The last image we see as it fades to black is Lancaster's hand falling limp by the bedpost. The last words we hear are Swede uttering "Charleston was right, Charleston was right."
This is where the powerful prologue ends and Hemingway's story leaves us with no explanation as to the reason for Swede's murder, nor insight into why he acquiesces to his death by not trying to elude the killers and his fate. From this moment on Veiller's screenplay starts to expose the back story of the killing.
Look at the killer chemistry between Lancaster & Gardner… I’d get shot up in the dark for either one…!
Hugh O’Brian as the smarmy Hank Walker–“Haven’t I seen you around?”
Ruth Roman as the tough-as-nails Margot Eliot– “It’s possible. I’ve been there.”
Director Alexander Singer’s melodrama (Singer’s Psyche 59 (1964) starring Patricia Neal who suffers from hysterical blindness, has a much more compelling frenetic slick psychology) Love Has Many Faces comes off as a meandering soap opera in balmy Acapulco Mexico… as Lana Turner plays Kit Jordan a millionairess who marries Cliff Robertson a self-loathing malcontent who sold all 8 pints of his blood to be owned by her. Though her love is as ‘thin as ice…’
Enrique Lucerois marvelous as Lieutenant Riccardo Andrade a Mexican Columbo who is trying to get to the bottom of one of Lana’s young male lovers who apparently committed suicide over their break up.
Aside from wishing that the fabulous Ruth Romanand Virginia Greyhad more of a presence in the film…
Virginia Grey was the audacious Candy in The Naked Kiss 1964 … God she was gorgeous!
… I was struck by two things…
If you’ve been following my blog you’ll know that I love Ruth Roman-she has a raw natural sensuality that dwells in her eyes and oozes out of her pores.“Instant blackmail”Kit is never without a drink or a flashy beach ensemble!
