Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

A ballet danseuse is forced to look for a job as a Hula dancer, when the head of the New York ballet falls in love with her. For me this seemed quite a convoluted story a bit in the Cinderella style. Going through the script was quite amusing though. Especially those remarks in the style of "inappropriate movement, discuss with the office of Dr. Blah" were hilarious to read. Apart from that I felt that O'Hara's character somehow came off way too saintly. She is danseuse, all right, but there was a certain lofty idealism about her character. On the other hand, I really thought it was fascinating how she told off her casual pursuer. Another thing that was striking about the movie was Lucille Ball. Her rambunctious attitude is quite refreshing and I thought that she stole quite a lot of the scenes from O'Hara. I think it says on imdb that the two actresses became extremely close friends after the film. Another little gem is Maria Ouspenskaja, appearing (after...

A shoplifter ends up spending christmas eve with the district attorney and - obviously - falling in love with him. My favorite scene is definitively when the car ends up on the meadow and a cow sticks her head into the car, trying to lick Barbara Stanwyck. Cows are funny creatures, as people have known long before Preston Sturges, but they still work - at least for me. Quite possibly it is their balancing on the tightrope between curiosity and fear, combined with their large, brown eyes that makes them so relentlessly funny. Maybe a character like that might prove interesting. The film as a whole didn't work so good for me, although it has some very funny scenes: the scene with the small town judge/sheriff and some of the exchanges of the couple. It gets a bit too sentimental at the actual xmas ceremony and fails to pick up over that. I did like the ending which was kept at least slightly ambiguous: will he still be there when she comes out? A script analysis would maybe st...

A chance meeting of an officer and a dancer protracts into a romance, a series of misunderstandings, and multiple heartbreak. It took me quite a while to get into this film, but towards the end it was a very enjoyable and touching experience. It starts off maybe just a bit too slow, with the flashback in the beginning being just a touch too campy. Maybe the over-the-top start was putting me off. As mentioned elsewhere, this is a rather tame remake of an earlier film, which itself is a rather tamed version of a racy stage play. The film has two scenes I remember fondly, the dance scene of the two lovers - which was beautiful to watch. According to imdb LeRoy decided to do this without dialogue and it is a deeply touching scene. The scenes on the bridge were maybe not as memorable, but I liked how they used the location quite effectively as a place of the highest and lowest moments in the script. No doubt a leftover from the play. It's interesting how difficult it must have b...

A practical, but highly unpolitical foreign correspondent finds himself at the heart of political turmoil in WWII Europe A very enjoyable movie, although the overall plot seemed a little constructed within the greater realms of things. Just about when WW2 is to break out, Europe already seems infested with the bellicose virus carried by warmongerers and other despicable criminals. This is the mess that Joel McCrea steps into and tries to get out of. Action story and love tales are always difficult to combine convincingly, I've found, but it works here to some extent. There is not a lot of character development throughout this story. McCrea's guy basically sticks to his guns, and the delightful George Sanders basically rules most of the action in the picture. I would have liked to see more fundamental doubts/changes in the characters. The scene at the mill is quite fantastic. A lot of suspense as McCrea doesn't try to get caught, while moving most of the time. It...

Two truck-driving brothers dream of a better future and financial independence in a sea of good and bad fortune. Although the film has all the ingredients of a film noir, like the selfish femme fatale, Bogart, and many night scenes, this is something you could consider a feel-good movie. It pretty much surprised me with its turns and twists and I also wasn't prepared in the least to see Bogart as the sidekick, instead of the lead. In terms of interesting characters, Ida Lupino as the selfish wife that tries to seduce George Raft's Joe she is definitively at the most intense when she slowly sheds all the layers of sanity towards the end. Although her motives are a bit unclear - the amazing thing about her behavior is that she values love over money. In that perspective the movie feels like a tragedy, as (except for the loan shark) everybody has comparatively sophisticated understanding of emotion and life.

The grumpy family head and  hobby sleuth gets hired by the local bank. I have never (gasp) watched a WC Fields movie before, so it took my pretty long to get used to this - in its time well known - personality that is quite a misanthrope. The pacing of the actual film felt slow and the scenes had not a lot of connection to the grand story, basically just setting the stage for the gags Fields was performing. It is quite interesting if you start to sympathize for such a thoroughly unsympathetic character on screen. Maybe because the man basically just wants to be left alone - everything that happens to him, even under the most contrived circumstances doesn't affect him in the least. It doesn't even look like he is interested in the money. Except for the money part, the disaffectionate personality seems like a rather modern rendering of the hedonistic generation Y, despite all vintage look-and-feel. I wonder about the other films, hope to get around to see them soon.

A shop clerk falls in love with a woman through letters while squabbling with the young lady he gave a position in the shop. A very play-like story, most of it taking place in the shop and in the manager's office, and as a apron the store door in the morning. The story is pretty straightforward and is entirely set in the daily universe of the participants.  I like how all the different characters story came together in the end and the story only had to rely on very few "information bringers" - there is the detective reporting the infidelities of his wife to Matuschek - and even there he is only shown once to clear up the store owner's mistake. There was a strong nostalgic and (obviously) Christmasy atmosphere throughout the film, but it was still quite enjoyable.

 An ex-alcoholic ex-husband tries to win back his wife on the eve of her new marriage. Strangely enough, I didn't enjoy this viewing as much as I hoped to. I couldn't warm up too much to Hepburn and Stewart, her seeming a bit too cold and distant and Stewart being a bit over the top at all times. I was really amazed by Grant's performance, he really is a master of comedic timing - although once in a while there was a little help from the editing room. There were a couple of really funny scenes, my favorite being the opening shot with this totally absurd act of violence of Grant's character towards Hepburn. The side characters had not enough definition for me, especially the mother and Uncle Willy, I would have loved to see them more absurd, like in "The Lady Eve", where everybody is totally over the top. I could also strongly feel the theatrical character of the play shining through very often. There are often situations where the characters just ...

A family from Oklahoma is driven west by the economic downturn, hoping to find a future in California. The film is structured into scenes that were very carefully selected to underline the humanism and helpfulness of many of the fellow people that the family encounters. I remember the book being much more depressing and the ending nothing short of scary. The arc of Tom's arriving back to his family was pretty awesome. I've strongly felt that this could also be a post-nuclear war story, with everybody struggling for crumbs of the cake. The acting is breathtaking by everybody, especially the preacher and the mother character were so convincing that I went back to see some of their scenes again. Photography is also very intense, a lot of very high contrast imagery, that transformed the landscape into sinister sets when the car was driving through.