Yogi's Movie Consumption Blog

An ambitious night-club hustler tries to make it big by setting up his own wrestling show. But his incessant cheating and the ruling mob make his plans fall apart. Only his faithful girl stays at his side. Widmark plays a very convincing small-timer, and he gets to show off - at one or two moments he's quite over the top, but still enjoyable. He manages to keep the character likeable, somewhere in between childish naivete and ruthless egomaniac. His character, Fabian, runs into trouble with pretty much everyone in a pretty small universe of the London underworld. Favorite scenes: The wrestling match between the two brutes is amazing to watch, especially knowing that whatever the outcome might be, Fabian would have had it. Another great scene is the exchange between Fabian and the night club owner that he tried to con out of money. (Actually, he is the only one, Fabian didn't con) - Best use of a drumkit in a scene, ever. Good script to look at.

The daughter of a businessman in Shanghai is lured into the swamp of booze and gambling by the owner of a troubled casino. This movie caught me on the wrong foot. Largely, I didn't know what to make of it WHILE I was watching. It seems to me, that this is the much better *after* you've seen it, than during the course of its run. There is a bizarre quality in how Sternberg has framed his shots. Sometimes it felt that he just recorded close-ups of every actor, added some stunning total shots and then tried to figure out the script after the fact. Obviously, this is totally untrue, but those amazing close-ups only came to life in my head after the film was over. Huston as the brooding father with the dark past has amazing images and looks like somebody with a seemingly very dark past. The hairstyles have not to be commented on - an image is more than enough and Tierney looks breathtaking. There is one jaw-dropping sequence where the camera enters the casino for the first ...

A writer marries a beautiful woman, who turns out to be a controlling sociopath. I really liked the story idea, and how the layers of "acceptable" behaviour are peeled one by one from the beautiful wife. Maybe if I had a harder time accepting that she really is that kind of self-indulging, egocentric and jealous woman, she turns out to be might have made the film way more exciting. The film uses flashback technique to brace the actual story, but that didn't work quite well for me. Also, I think that the murder of the little boy in the lake could have been more haunting. Maybe Hitchcock should have treated this script - it would have made great sense within his own oeuvre. Still there remain myriads of things in this film that I love. Foremost, the absolutely stunning photography, the colors, the nature, the sea. Everything looks really beautiful and the colors are breathtaking. Tierney is a must see, possibly one of the most authentic 40s beauty ideal  I can think...

A poor farmer has to raise 50 dollar before the weekend to keep his little farm on Tobacco Road. Although highly stagey, both in idea and execution, this was a fabulously funny film to watch (although I went through some problems until I could understand the characters). Also, the ending is quite amazing with the beautiful realization that it's not so easy to really change. I was quite touched by it and it also was a big surprise for what I expected to become a really run-of-the-mill happy end. I remember many beautiful details of the film: the dog, running to the mans lap to be stroked, the naughtily innocent Gene Tierney (in her first role?), the insolent husband of the other daughter and the obnoxious little boy. His incessant rambling is simply hilarious, and the blazing stupidity of his character are of such, as I cannot remember from any other film I have seen. This might be very worth re-watching, maybe with focus on the dialogue.  There is a lot of it, a bit hard to...

A philandering man has to go to heaven to fully grasp his wife's loyalty. It's quite a bizarre piece of advocacy - in heaven a man comes to his senses when he realizes that his wife was his only true love (despite many other attempts by him to court others), and they sort of live happily ever after. Although smart in execution I feel that this premise makes for a rather one sided view of things. And the longer I think about it, the more depressing it actually gets. It's not so much the anti-morality I object, but simply that it's not funny enough. Quite possibly it is sort of a WW2 Vegas-weekend movie version, and the undertones simply don't work anymore these days. Other than that, this is Technicolor at its fullest glory (especially RED) and quite an amazing picture to watch. But maybe expectation for this Lubitsch were light years, so I could have only come out disappointed. Still looking forward to Trouble in Paradise, though.

 A homicide detective tries to solve the murder of a young career woman when the victim suddenly appears before him - alive and well. The story is very interesting, but the trope of a guy falling asleep in his chair and dreaming the whole story has been played out so many times in exactly this way, that I thought the latter half of the picture being a dream. I am not totally sure if Preminger did play with that or if this type of trick was already common back then. There is also a strange shift of character. We begin with Waldo's voice-over, but we completely lose his perspective during the film. In Sunset Boulevard, that has worked better, where in consequence the dead man still owns his voice-(over).