The Desperate Hours.

Review #2551: The Desperate Hours.

Cast: 

Humphrey Bogart (Glenn Griffin), Fredric March (Daniel C. Hilliard), Arthur Kennedy (Deputy Sheriff Jesse Bard), Martha Scott (Ellie Hilliard), Dewey Martin (Hal Griffin), Gig Young (Chuck Wright), Mary Murphy (Cindy Hilliard), Richard Eyer (Ralphy Hilliard), Robert Middleton (Samuel Kobish), Walter Baldwin (George Patterson), Whit Bissell (FBI Agent Carson), Ray Teal (State Police Lieutenant), and Ray Collins (Sheriff Masters) Directed by William Wyler (#509 - Roman Holiday, #1022 - Jezebel, #1360 - Mrs. Miniver, #1368 - The Best Years of Our Lives)

Review:  

In 1952, there was a family in Whitemarsh Township, Pennsylvania that encountered three escaped convicts (Joseph and Ballard Nolen, Elmer Schuer) that held them hostage for 19 hours. The Hill family did not receive harm, and the convicts were soon apprehended (read: two of them died in a shootout in New York while the other got years in jail) after leaving the house. Influenced by the ordeal, Joseph Hayes wrote a novel in 1953 called The Desperate Hours that soon saw a theater production in 1955 (set in Indianapolis*), which saw Robert Montgomery stage it while featuring Karl Malden & Nancy Coleman as the parents opposite the convict leader played by Paul Newman. For the film, they wanted Spencer Tracy to play the second role opposite Bogart, but neither wanted to yield top billing, so you get Fredric March instead. You might say this is Bogart coming full circle, as his turn in The Petrified Forest (1934 play and 1936 film) as a gangster on the run was the one that catapulted him into public attention (of course, months before this film was released, Bogart starred in a televised production of that play); diagnosed with esophageal cancer in 1956, this was his penultimate role prior to his death the following year. This was the fourth of seven movies in the 1950s for Wyler, sandwiched between Best Picture nominee films Roman Holiday [1953] and Friendly Persuasion [1956]. Hayes wrote the screenplay for the film (various others have been listed as doing contributions, although this might not be correct). Made on a reported budget of over $2 million, the movie was not exactly a hit with audiences. In later years, it was adapted into a TV film in 1967, a film for India with 36 Ghante [1974] and a 1990 American remake with Desperate Hours that had Michael Cimino as director.

Sure, it probably doesn't hit as well as other thrillers, particularly since it strains a bit of credibility at a certain point in its housebound trappings, but you'll get a few interesting performances to make a decent time regardless with the Hilli(ard) family. It's a thriller not so much about when the cops get into the picture but instead a thriller about if that would actually turn out well for the family at all. It mainly rests on the shoulders of Bogart to make it all work with such an unsettling nature that basically sets the tension on the same level as cutting through butter, doing so with such smoothness that you can't take your eyes off him and his weary eyes, regardless of how movies like this were inevitably going to go back then. March does hold it together in a different type of intensity that wants to hold it all together for the sake of his family that is fairly palpable to where you probably can see him working fine over if it had been Tracy instead. It's a bout of men trying to assert who is the bigger man that happens to involve spectators that could get in harm's way (well, in a movie made a few decades later, probably more so for "harm", but still). Scott and others are more just ordinary, although there is a few moments of sophistication from Young* to go with piggishness from Middleton. It's a big house to set a film in, which is why there are moments spent away from the house because, well, you can only go so far with tension unless you set in the workplace (or, in one instance, the dispatching of one of the criminals). By the time it closes out its 113-minute runtime, you've closed the book on a movie that is fairly solid in lean suspense involving the threat of those with the supposed power and strength to hold you down in your place of residence before the inevitable hit of reality (for a movie at least) steps in. 

Overall, I give it 7 out of 10 stars.

song of the day!

*For whatever reason, Life magazine published an article about the doubt of the Broadway show and had pictures of the actors in the house that the family lived in when they were held hostage and called the play a "reenactment". The Hills decided to sue them for violating the privacy law in New York. It eventually wound up in the Supreme Court, where Richard Nixon actually argued for the Hills. Narrowly, in 1967, the court found in favor of Time, Inc.

*The play hasn't been on Broadway since. Incidentally, Sammy Davis Jr did do a run of it for a playhouse a few times: Sammy Davis, Jr. - Theatre - “The Desperate Hours”

*This is the first time I've covered a movie with Gig Young in it. Young, a future Academy Award winner, was plagued by alcoholism in the later years of his life. In 1978, he murdered his wife and killed himself at the age of 64.

Beat the Devil.

Review #1622: Beat the Devil.

Cast: 
Humphrey Bogart (Billy Dannreuther), Jennifer Jones (Mrs. Gwendolen Chelm), Gina Lollobrigida (Maria Dannreuther), Robert Morley (Peterson), Peter Lorre (Julius O'Hara), Edward Underdown (Harry Chelm), Ivor Barnard (Major Jack Ross), Marco Tulli (Ravello), Bernard Lee (Inspector Jack Clayton), Mario Perrone (Purser on SS Nyanga), Giulio Donnini (Administrator), and Saro Urzì (Captain of SS Nyanga) Directed by John Huston (#081 - The Maltese Falcon (1941), #094 - The Misfits, #224 - Casino Royale (1967), #419 - Key Largo, and #1379 - The African Queen)

Review: 

This is quite an interesting film to stick out in the careers of the people who made it, since it was the sixth and last collaboration between famed director John Huston and star Humphrey Bogart. It seems to have come full circle, since they first worked together with The Maltese Falcon (1941), and it has been argued that this film serves as a spoof of the earlier film - in fact, it has even been thought of by cult audiences as a campy favorite and cult classic. The fact that the film exists in the public domain and was not an immediate success probably aids in that argument. The film was an adaptation of the novel of the same name that was written by Claud Cockburn (using the pseudonym James Helvick, owing to his Communist ties). The author was quite interested in Huston directing a movie off his book, with him reportedly reciting portions of Cockburn's novel to Bogart over the phone, which helped convince him to help fund the film through his production company Santana Productions, while Romulus Films (who had worked with Huston before with The African Queen). Cockburn (whose works were once described as preoccupied with portraying the paradox of good intentions by his son, who grew up to be a journalist in his own right that named his column after the film) started work with Huston on the screenplay, although he was not credited for this (much to some irritation). According to his son, the film needed a change for its ending during the last days of filming, and Truman Capote (famed novelist and short story writer) happened to be visiting the set while in Italy (the author was in Ireland), which led to him being drafted to do work, although it is contended that the zippy dialogue is not so much Capote but Cockburn (Capote, for his part, described it as a spoof on the type of film like The Maltese Falcon); however, Huston in his autobiography stated that him and Capote (who by one report was suggested by David O. Selznick, an eager manager of his wife Jones) would write scenes just hours before they were to be shot. To add on to all the screenplay hubbub, Anthony Veiller and Peter Viertel had been hired to pen the initial script, but it was soon rejected. 

So yes, there is quite a curiosity in the history before even watching the film, but it doesn't hide the relative enjoyment one gets from a pretty good effort in a sometimes-serious, sometimes-quirky effort from a spirited cast doing their best oddball adventure comedy, which works depending on one's patience for its trajectories. After all, Bogart called it a movie that only "phonies" like, and Jones called it a film made as a "three ring circus" by Huston that considered her character to have no reality of any kind. I think the phony line has some basis in reality when it comes to thinking about enjoying a film in irony, such as with The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and its supposed camp appeal, until one actually sits down and watches the film and realizes the trick (or finds enjoyment). Beat the Devil has its own trick: trying to play off adventure in a semi-serious manner that winks at you with the tenor of a old friend who has had a bit too much to enjoy in beverage but isn't being a complete cloying clod of clamminess. It might as well be the result of the version most people have seen, which was edited from its original preview version, which ran for 94 minutes (as opposed to the 90 in usual copies) - a 4K restoration that contains the original version was done five years ago, which contains no flashback structure and narration as seen here. The best parts of the film are here and there, in that the gulf between interest in the main trio of Bogart-Jones-Lollobrigida and the support of Morley-Lorre-Underdown-Barnard-Tulli is nearly dead even, to where one might desire the latter over the former. Bogart (who one might notice having a few less teeth here and there, as a result of a car accident) does fine here, befuddled at the game he has pulled himself into yet just as collected as one could expect from him without pretense. Jones may have been befuddled by her character, but at least she makes a spirited effort, which has some zippy charm placed within a serviceable chemistry with Bogart. Lollobrigida (who went from small roles in films in the late 1940s to exposure with an appearance in the Miss Italia pageant in 1950) gives off fiery & frosty spunk that pairs handily when placed next to Bogart or Underdown. Morley, no stranger to roles tinged with pompous attitude, proves quite amusing as the head crook, moseying on with push-and-go maneuvering in would-be crime blustering. Lorre (tinged with graying hair for once) go along just as interesting in offbeat charm, one that can muse about time being a crook just as well as trying to pull off a conniving scheme. Underdown plays stuffiness to a T, standing out in his own manner of off-kilter tone in a film that has quite a few nuts in the tree to begin with in its love...diamond-shaped romance. Barnard (in his last film role) and Tulli fill the ship of fools and scoundrels just fine, while Lee serves as the authority figure for the climax (after the sequence with soldiers on the beach of course). At any rate, there are some nice camera shots from Oswald Morris (one of his crew included Freddie Francis, who would become an acclaimed cinematographer and director in his own right) to go with scenery shot in Italy that makes for a weirdly intriguing ride and curiosity. It isn't the tightest-packed adventure, nor is it a broadly amusing film, this much is true. But if one looks at it closely, one will find a charming little movie that has a quiet place among the careers of Bogart and Huston as sly and slick entertainment, moving along on its own broad march of lyrics without issues such as conventions getting in the way, where it even laughs to close out its final revealing moment. Whether that will work all the way for you is up for decision, but a fair tide of cult following for this film in the six decades since release certainly helps the judgement. In other words, it will please those who seek curiosity with their adventures with chuckles.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

The African Queen.

Review #1379: The African Queen.

Cast: 
Humphrey Bogart (Charlie Allnut), Katharine Hepburn (Rose Sayer), Robert Morley (Rev. Samuel Sayer), Peter Bull (Captain of the Königin Luise), Theodore Bikel (First Officer of the Königin Luise), Walter Gotell (Second Officer of the Königin Luise), Peter Swanwick (First Officer of Fort Shona), and Richard Marner (Second Officer of Fort Shona) Directed by John Huston (#081 - The Maltese Falcon (1941), #094 - The Misfits, #224 - Casino Royale (1967), and #419 - Key Largo)

Review: 
"The directing of a picture involves coming out of your individual loneliness and taking a controlling part in putting together a small world. A picture is made. You put a frame around it and move on. And one day you die. That is all there is to it."
"The only thing you owe the public is a good performance."

Everyone needs a good adventure now and then. Who better to make an adventure than John Huston? He had grown from a bedridden childhood to a resilient early adulthood spent doing various things such as amateur boxing, acting, honorary membership of the Mexican cavalry, and eventually writing, first through magazines before finding his way to contract writing in Hollywood. However, it wasn't until 1938 that he found his way to substantial success as a serious writer, most notably with Jezebel for Warner Brothers. In 1941, he was granted a chance to direct his first film with The Maltese Falcon (1941), an influential noir classic. He directed two further films before serving in the US Army for World War II, where he made a few short films for the Signal Corps before returning to Hollywood for The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), where he won Academy Awards for directing and screenplay. In a career that lasted until his death in 1987, he directed and wrote over thirty films, notably directing his father Walter and his daughter Anjelica each to Academy Award wins for their acting in one of Huston's films. One particular actor who benefited from Huston was Humphrey Bogart. He had started his acting career in the theatre, which resulted in a few notices before trying his hand with film parts (with his debut being a short in 1928). Bogart's role in play The Petrified Forest (1935) helped in getting his foot firmly in the door for film roles when it came time for the film adaptation the following year. High Sierra (1941) was the first collaboration between Bogart and Huston (who wrote the film), and the two would collaborate in six films together as star and director.

The film was adapted from the 1935 novel of the same name by C. S. Forester, which originally had the character of Allnut as an English Cockney (which was changed to him being a Canadian) along with an ambiguous ending for its main characters with its final line. The film had a mixed production between scenes shot in Britian and the Belgian Congo, with a good deal of the cast getting sick (except for Bogart and Huston, who apparently thrived on canned food and whiskey). In any case, one can see the tremendous craftsmanship on display in terms of directing and writing (Huston, James Agee, with un-credited work by John Collier and Peter Viertel) that go along with an incredible pairing with Bogart and Hepburn that make 105 minutes seem to go by quickly. Each play off each other with tense passion that can go for humor alongside drama without becoming a parody of itself. Bogart grabs your attention as he always does with his weary charm and plenty of concentration that is to be expected from him. As such, Hepburn matches up to him just as much in terms of great free-spirited presence that equates to an interesting match that charms the audience once it gets started. There are other members of the cast (such as Morley, who is in the first few minutes), but one spends a primary amount of time with Bogart & Hepburn and finds themselves lost as if they were actually on the boat besides them, complete with Technicolor photography from Jack Cardiff. One should not be surprised to know that this was a hit with the public, with Bogart even winning an Academy Award for his work in the film (while Hepburn and Huston received nominations for acting and directing/writing, respectively), and it is not hard to see why. It is a prime adventure story to serve as the template for plenty of other romantic adventure films, one with a dynamic duo game enough to interact with each other in amusing or touching ways that gives the audience enough curiosity for more in a decade that had plenty of crowd-pleasers to sift through.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

The Big Sleep (1946).

Review #951: The Big Sleep.

Cast:
Humphrey Bogart (Philip Marlowe), Lauren Bacall (Vivian Sternwood Rutledge), John Ridgely (Eddie Mars), Martha Vickers (Carmen Sternwood), Dorothy Malone (Acme Bookstore proprietress), Peggy Knudsen (Mona Mars), Regis Toomey (Chief Inspector Bernie Ohls), Charles Waldron (General Sternwood), Charles D. Brown (Norris), Bob Steele (Lash Canino), Elisha Cook, Jr. (Harry Jones), Louis Jean Heydt (Joe Brody), and Sonia Darrin (Agnes Lowzier) Directed by Howard Hawks.

Review:
This is the first film I've watched that was directed by Howard Hawks (he had done uncredited rewrites to The Thing from Another World (#519), and it is debatable on whether he had directed the film), and he does a good job at making a classic film noir. This was based off the Raymond Chandler crime novel of the same name, with the screenplay written by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett & Jules Furthman; as such, the lines are snappy and effective at making for an incredibly capable thriller. The appeal of the movie is seeing the investigation is executed and not merely just seeing it be solved (Chandler himself was asked by the filmmakers who killed the chauffeur - he responded that he didn't know), with Bogart being quite adept at being the hard-boiled wisecracking detective without any real missteps. Bacall does a fine job in this dazzling role filled with spunk and charisma, and her chemistry with Bogart is undeniably entertaining to watch, in part because of how easy they flow together while on screen together, with the racehorse dialogue being quite suggestive along with energetic. Ridgely does a fine adversarial job; Vickers manages to make her loopy character stand out quite nicely. The rest of the cast are pretty convincing in their roles (such as Malone and Steele), serving finely when compared to the dynamic of Bogart-Bacall, which stands out almost as much as the mystery itself. The movie operates at its own pace, and while it may be a bit hard to follow at times the movie has an undeniable amount of fun entertainment to it all.

This movie was filmed prior to the end of World War II, but it was not released until after Warner Bros. released their backlog of war-related films. There are two versions of the movie. One cut (released only to troops in the South Pacific) lasts 114 minutes, while the released cut lasted 116 minutes. There are differences between the two versions, with scenes added in order to play up the Bogart-Bacall dynamic and portions were re-shot (one key scene cut involves Marlowe and a D.A in conversation); a consequence of this is that Pat Clark was unavailable for the re-shots, so Peggy Knudsen replaced her in the film. In any case, the earlier version apparently is more linear in plot but has less of Bogart-Bacall, so take that for what it's worth. It isn't a perfect movie, but it is at the very least a classic that should watched at least once for anyone who likes film noir, like I do.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: Key Largo.

Review #419: Key Largo.

Cast
Humphrey Bogart (Frank McCloud), Edward G. Robinson (Johnny Rocco), Lauren Bacall (Nora Temple), Lionel Barrymore (James Temple), Claire Trevor (Gaye Dawn), Thomas Gomez (Richard "Curly" Hoff), Harry Lewis (Edward "Toots" Bass), John Rodney (Deputy Sheriff Clyde Sawyer), Marc Lawrence (Ziggy), and Dan Seymour (Angel Garcia) Directed by John Huston (#081 - The Maltese Falcon (1941), #094 - The Misfits, #224 - Casino Royale (1967)

Review
Once again I have the chance to review a film directed by John Huston, and one with Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, who I loved in The Cincinnati Kid (#273), with Laura Bacall and Lionel Barrymore, who I last reviewed in America (not everyday you review a star who stars in silent and talkie films), so this was irresistible. And it did not disappoint. The main four (Bogart, Robinson, Bacall and Barrymore) all do respectable jobs, but Claire Trevor stands out among the rest, especially when she sings a capella in front of everyone, a moving scene. This film has a tense pace going, never letting go of its roots, having a climatic ending and a good directing job by Huston once again.

Overall, I give it 9 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: Casablanca.

Review #125: Casablanca.

Cast
Humphrey Bogart (Rick Blaine), Ingrid Bergman (Ilsa Lund), Paul Henreid (Victor Laszlo), Claude Rains (Captain Louis Renault), Conrad Viedt (Major Heinrich Strasser), Sydney Greenstreet (Signor Ferrari), Peter Lorre (Signor Ugarte), and Dooley Wilson (Sam). Directed by Michael Curitz.

Review
This film is a classic, as it has reached its 70th Anniversary, as it still entertains then and now. This was my first time watching this film (I watched it a day ago yet wrote the review a day in advance), and I like this film. I like how it get better in the last hour, with everything getting interesting and all. The acting is brilliant, with Bogart and Hepburn being the standouts. This film shows the ever good example of romance in a tale, which is...Not to over sap it. The film has romance, but it does not over ride the film into sappiness material. The film has memorable lines, a good pace, and a way to captivate audiences after 70 years.

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.

Movie Night: The Maltese Falcon (1941).

Review #081: The Maltese Falcon.

Cast
Humphrey Bogart (Sam Spade), Mary Astor (Ruth Wonderly/Brigid O'Shaughnessy), Gladys George (Iva Archer), Peter Lorre (Joel Cairo), Barton MacLane (Lieutenant Dundy), Lee Patrick (Effie Perine), Sydney Greenstreet (Kasper Gutman), Ward Bond (Detective Tom Polhaus), and Jerome Cowan (Miles Archer) Directed by John Huston.

Review
This is a classic film that should be watched at least once by people who like film. Yes, that's my first line. And it's truthful straight down to the last period. The acting is good, especially from Bogart. The film has a style to it that helps the film makes its case for a good film, if not already from the acting. The story's good, making you interested in it for the entirety of the film. This film is the stuff that dreams are made of...

Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.