u/BrandNewOriginal

So I just happened to watch these two movies in tandem, not realizing they both featured master-apprentice narratives. A few thoughts on each:

Bandidos: I quite liked this one. I thought it was very well done in most respects, especially strong in the direction (Massimo Dallamano) and cinematography (Dallamano and Emilio Foriscot) departments. An Italian "spaghetti western," this stars Enrico Maria Salerno as an aging sharp-shooter who is brutalized in a train robbery by Venantino Venantini and his murderous gang (and partner gang), after which Salerno takes Terry Jenkins as his apprentice ("Ricky Shot") in a traveling sharp-shooting act – while Salerno also grooms Jenkins to be his shot at revenge against Venantini. Some simple but effective plot twists with the characters gives this added tension and intrigue, and Salerno and Venantini are especially good as Richard Martin and Billy Kane respectively. (It was also pretty amusing hearing the repeated words "Billy Kane" in that sing-songy Italian lilt.) For his part, Jenkins is good, poised somewhere between Clint Eastwood and Franco Nero, which was probably no coincidence given the slew of variations (and, let's face it, imitations) that came in the wake of Sergio Leone's groundbreaking spaghetti westerns. This one's worth looking for, especially for spaghetti fans. 4/5

Day of Anger: This seems to be fairly well regarded and the better known of the two movies, maybe especially because of the presence of Lee Van Cleef, but I thought it was very much the weaker of the two, and not an especially good movie. This also stars Giuliano Gemma as the "garbage boy" and town bastard who takes up with drifter Van Cleef after the latter comes to his defense in a local dispute. Van Cleef was at the peak of his spaghetti heyday as he became a big star in Italian westerns after his unforgettable turns in Leone's For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), and he's fantastic here. Unfortunately, I thought Gemma was somewhat less so, the direction, set design, and cinematography were rather too clean and flat, and the story rather muddled and hindered by pacing problems and underdeveloped characters. Overall, despite a couple of great scenes (a rifle "duel" on horseback is memorable), I found this pretty disappointing, and frankly, kind of boring. Still arguably worth a look for spaghetti and especially Van Cleef fans, but I found Van Cleef's The Big Gundown (1966) and Death Rides a Horse (1967) both quite a bit more satisfying than this, and would definitely recommend those two. 2.5/5

Have you seen either or both of these movies? What are your thoughts and feelings about them?

If you're a noir junkie like me and you haven't seen Kansas City Confidential, be sure to look for it. I rank it with movies like The Narrow Margin (also 1952) and Armored Car Robbery (1950): one of those "B" noirs that seems to be fairly well known amongst genre fans but is still maybe just slightly under the radar relative to other noirs. It stars John Payne as a war veteran and floral delivery driver who is framed for a major bank robbery ($1.2 million!) by Preston Foster, who has put together a heist team consisting of Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef, and Neville Brand – yes, Jack Elam, Lee Van Cleef, AND Neville Brand! Foster requires all the members of the team wear masks during the robbery, so they don't know each other when he assembles them in a Mexican seaside resort to (ostensibly) split the earnings. Payne manages to track them down and insinuate himself into their milieu, and of course, complications ensue.

This is a fantastic little crime thriller/noir with a tidy but detail-oriented plot, excellent direction and cinematography (by Phil Karlson and George E. Diskant respectively), and some crackling dialogue. Foster is especially good in a role that requires some nuance: I found the complications the screenplay gave his character entirely welcome. I'm also a big fan of Payne in film noir, while the teaming of Elam, Van Cleef, and Brand is pretty much noir character actor heaven. (Elam, Van Cleef, and Brand may or may not have been among the very best actors around, but they all had incredible faces and screen presence. All three were big in westerns as well, with Van Cleef becoming a major western star many years later with his "arrival" in Sergio Leone's 1965 "spaghetti western" For a Few Dollars More.) This also features Coleen Gray (excellent as a smart, tough young woman) and Dona Drake (also good as a flirtatious young Mexican woman urging trinkets and souvenirs on Van Cleef!).

Anyway, I just wanted to give a shout-out to this great little noir, especially for those who have yet to see it. If you have seen it, what are your thoughts?

I was scrolling through my YouTube feed, and I found a video (from the "Old Movie Watching With Rob" channel – fun channel, btw) where Rob reviewed Anthony Mann's 1947 noir Railroaded! I remember liking that movie quite a lot, and I realized it's never been released on blu-ray and that I'd love to see it on the HD format. I'm already both a noir junkie and a home video collector, so I love picking up classic-era film noirs on blu-ray or 4K, and some of those older black and whites look absolutely stunning in HD (or UHD). So I was thinking about the noirs that I've enjoyed that haven't had good HD releases. So here's a little list I put together of noirs that I'd especially like to see on HD home video. It's heavy on some of the movies from the old Fox Film Noir DVD series – which to my understanding are now owned by Disney, which most people say is unlikely to either sell the rights or release these movies on HD home video anytime soon, if ever.

Overall, HD has been just a huge boon to older movies, and it's great that so many movies are now available to watch in such high quality (often gorgeous) transfers. In fact, I discovered that my wish list is relatively small – but there are still at least a few great (or at least very good) movies that are M.I.A. (if not D.O.A.!) from the format. Anyway, if you have them, please add your own wish list titles. For the most part, I didn't list out-of-print titles (partly because I've been lucky enough to pick up most of the ones I've wanted), but feel free to include these if it's relevant to you. Who knows, maybe someone's paying attention to pages like this??

Fallen Angel (1945)

The Dark Corner (1946)

The Locket (1946)

Somewhere in the Night (1946)

Born to Kill (1947)

Desperate (1947)

High Wall (1947)

Kiss of Death (1947)

Railroaded! (1947)

The Street With No Name (1948)

Tension (1949)

Armored Car Robbery (1950)

D.O.A. (1950) (has been released, but still needs a good remaster)

No Man of Her Own (1950)

No Way Out (1950)

Where Danger Lives (1950)

The House on Telegraph Hill (1951)

The Blue Gardenia (1953)

Note: The images above are from Railroaded and The Blue Gardenia respectively.

That is, what do you make of the famous first lyric of "2112," the suite of songs from the album of the same name?

The line is obviously a paraphrase of the saying, attributed to Jesus from the so-called Sermon on the Mount in the Christian gospels, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth." (Matthew 5:5.) I've always kind of wondered where Rush was coming from with this line. That is, is it meant sincerely? Ironically? I guess my main stumbling block to understanding the intent of the lyric is the fact that the music that both precedes and follows the line seem – at least to me – decidedly non-"meek": it's Rush in full power trio mode, the music arguably as heavy and hard-hitting as anything else they've done before or since. The line also seems to be in the context of some sort of nuclear armageddon: it follows what sounds like the destruction of the "elder race of man" by nuclear explosions – after which society is apparently run and controlled by the priests of the Temples of Syrinx.

I want to make absolutely clear that I love "2112" – I think it's brilliant songwriting, and (like much of Rush's music) some of the best interaction of guitar, bass, and drums in rock history. Lyrically, it also takes the listener on a journey and has something to say. But does that include the idea that "the meek shall inherit the earth"? What are your thoughts?

As a noir junkie – and just a cinephile in general, I find it's sometimes both fun and instructive to watch lesser, more obscure movies, and I think the movie I watched tonight, Blind Alley, falls into both of those categories. It's no barn-burner, but it holds interest for its short run-time of 69 minutes.

The setup is simple and rather obvious: an escaped murderer (Chester Morris) and his small gang invade the lakeside home of a psychiatrist (Ralph Bellamy) who is giving a dinner party, the convict hoping to escape with the arrival of a getaway boat. In the encounter, said psychiatrist manages to analyze the convict's recurrent nightmare which features pouring rain, a leaky umbrella, and bars that surround and enclose him. Issues are raised about the convict's parents and childhood, and all signs point to trouble and trauma there. Just enough tension is built into the situation: Will the gang escape before the police track them down? Will the convict go insane and murder more of the house guests? Will the psychiatrist successfully "cure" the convict of his sociopathic tendencies?

The drama is all relatively cut and dried, and Bellamy arguably plays psychiatrist Dr. Shelby a little on the smug, avuncular side, while Chester Morris brings a decided lack of subtlety to his criminal Hal Wilson. (I actually really enjoyed Morris's intense, manic performance, but I can see where others might find fault.) Still, the movie's an interesting case study in Hollywood's interest in and appropriation of Freudian psychology, a sub-genre of sorts ("psychological noir"?) that would proliferate in the mid-40s. And a couple of dream sequences seem to me a good example of the link between German Expressionism and film noir, the latter of which hadn't quite flowered by 1939.

I think the movie might have been more successful had it opened up its dark eye on its supporting characters just a little more. As it is, just the hint of a link is drawn between Wilson and the "normal" denizens of the dinner party, for instance, the sister (?) who is apparently carrying on an adulterous affair. Likewise, I'm not sure if a kind of twinning was suggested or not in the somewhat similar appearances of Shelby's wife (Rose Stradner) and Wilson's moll (Ann Dvorak). I did find the subtle connection suggested between the young Shelby son and Wilson – both shown sleeping in adjoining cuts – effective and touching.

As evidence of its influence, this was remade in 1948 as The Dark Past starring William Holden as the convict and Lee J. Cobb as the psychiatrist. I would be more likely to recommend somewhat more effective (and slightly more subtle and sophisticated?) psychological noirs like Spellbound (1945), The Locket (1946), and The Dark Mirror (1946), but (even) simpler movies like Blind Alley and The Dark Past have a kind of rudimentary charm as well, and I think they are worth seeing despite – or perhaps even because of? – their apparent shortcomings. 6/10

Actually, that's the price in Paper Moon (1973) that Addie Loggins – that is, Addie Pray – charges one recently widowed woman for a "Deluxe Edition" of the bible that, according to widow-swindler Moses Pray (who may or may not be Addie's pa – they got the same jaw), the widow's husband had ordered for her before his unfortunate demise.

Anyway, to paraphrase the popular saying, if you've seen the movie, you know. If you haven't, the Criterion 4K is, coincidentally, also $24 during the Barnes & Noble half-price sale. (Okay, actually $24.99, but while quibble?) Ha, I'm not trying to sell bibles or physical media, but I haven't seen so much about this wonderful movie here, so I just came to recommend it. I remember loving it, but I just rewatched it after not having seen it in at least 24 years (ha), and yeah, it held up and then some – so good I think Frank D. Roosevelt would approve: a wonderful script (from Alvin Sargent), simultaneously funny and moving; fantastic direction (from Peter Bogdanovich); truly stunning black and white cinematography (László Kovács); fabulous production design (Polly Platt); and the unforgettable central performances from Ryan O'Neal and his daughter Tatum. (Etc.) Oh, and you get Madeline Kahn along for part of the ride, too!

Long story short: this is one of my all-time favorite movies, just lovely, and I encourage everyone to give it a spin. The Criterion release is housed in a facsimile of Addie's cigar box: it may only be a plastic disc in a cardboard sleeve, but it's pretty special.

Here is my review. What are your thoughts about this movie?

I’d seen this once before maybe twenty years ago, and I had a voiceover in my head that said it might very well be the quintessential noir. I still think it might be, as we have a world-weary detective (Robert Mitchum, absolutely fantastic), a femme fatale for whom he falls (Jane Greer), and murder and other nefarious machinations. (Kirk Douglas is also very memorably on hand in only his second movie role, and the scenes between Mitchum and Douglas are electric, especially given their mutual but quite different masculine personas.) There’s also some of the best and most judicious use of noir dialogue around: just enough truly witty repartee and one-liners that feel like the characters might actually say. (Let’s face it, some noirs overdo the clever lingo to the point that it distracts from the story, as if a movie might be mostly just an exercise in arch language. Not here.) Perhaps most of all, this has the noir look: stunning direction (from Jacques Tourneur) and absolutely gorgeous black and white cinematography throughout (courtesy of Nicholas Musuraca), with the highlight arguably the fist fight between Mitchum and his ex-partner in a mountain cabin. In fact, that was the noir scene that really made me sit up and watch (and listen) and ultimately led me down many noir dark alleys (and country roads, etc.) – that really got me into noir. But this time I wondered if the cinematography wasn’t almost too beautiful – and the production almost too slick (and vaguely impersonal): to some extent, these aspects almost undercut what I think of as noir, at least insofar as I think of noir as representing a rather gritty and dingy underworld. But the slick design and sometimes fake-seeming world may also be partly the point, insofar as Mitchum’s character is led down an increasingly treacherous and dehumanizing path. It also features one of the movies’ great final scenes in a simple head nod from a poignant character. Slight reservations aside, this is pretty much a must-see for classic film fans, especially those inclined toward shadowy images and characters. 5/5

Actually, I don't mind the sale haul posts at all myself since I love movies and also, yes, collecting them. This was, in fact, my biggest single sale haul to date – ten movies (Hud is on preorder).

Now, to get into the substance of these movies just a little (and to answer the Criterion Haul Questionnaire!):

>3. No blind buys for me this time, which is actually fairly rare for me these days. There was a time when I would only buy movies I'd already seen and knew I liked (or loved), but I'm not quite such a purist anymore. At any rate, I haven't seen some of these in quite some time, so a few of them will almost be like blind buys.

>1. So yeah, I've really wanted to rewatch a few of these – pretty much all of them with the exception of Life of Brian and Mulholland Drive, both of which I have in fact rewatched recently. I'm especially looking forward to Black Narcissus, Defending Your Life, Point Blank, and The Man Who Wasn't There. Oh yeah, and All About Eve and Stray Dog! I guess I'll probably be watching Black Narcissus first. I remember the Englishman in shorts seeming a little goofy to me, but so much of the rest of the movie was a unique and strange fever dream. Powell and Pressburger were such huge talents.

>2. I've especially been looking forward to Life of Brian for a long time, and I'm so glad it's back in the collection (and on 4K!). It is, simply put, one of my all-time favorite comedies, and a movie that is simultaneously really smart and really funny. And since I'm a member of the manufacturing class, I especially like the fact that the Pythons understood the importance and primacy of the cheesemakers.

>4. I'm really looking forward to Hud – not only for the movie itself, but for master cinematographer Roger Deakins talking about master cinematographer James Wong Howe. That sounds like movie heaven (or at least movie special feature heaven) to me.

>5. I'm not a gay man, but I still find Bette Davis captivating. Oh, wait, was that not a question?!

Eh, just for fun: a spectrum of classic-era Hollywood actresses who looked somewhat similar. All were beautiful in my opinion (though I do have favorites: Irene Dunne and Marie Windsor!), I'm thinking the biggest stretch here is between Loretta Young and Ida Lupino, but they were similar physically and seem to occupy some of the same space in their onscreen roles.

Any actresses you would add in on either side or in between?

A separate post might link Lucille Ball, Ann Sheridan, Lauren Bacall, and Lizabeth Scott – do you think? Another might do Leslie Caron, Audrey Hepburn, Jean Simmons, and Vivien Leigh.

Oh yeah... in order, it's Joan Crawford, Marie Windsor, Loretta Young, Ida Lupino, Greer Garson, Irene Dunne, and Jeanette MacDonald.

I just watched this again since my first viewing a number of years ago and wanted to recommend here. Why, you ask? Here are a few reasons:

It stars Barbara Stanwyck and Walter Huston, two absolute titans of old Hollywood, and they're in peak form here. Huston is T. C. Jeffords, owner of the expansive ranch The Furies in 1880s New Mexico, and Stanwyck is his daughter Vance who both loves and locks horns with her outsized father.

This might be called an early "psychological western," and it seems to have some of its roots in both Greek tragedy (hence the title) and Shakespeare (with shades of King Lear). There's even more than a hint of incestuous feeling between father and daughter, which is both troubling and fascinating.

It's both beautifully directed and photographed by Anthony Mann and Victor Milner respectively. I'm a big, big fan of Mann, and this was arguably his graduation to the A-list of Hollywood directors, given big stars and an ample budget. He'd made some fantastic films noir in the late 40s, including such bangers as T-Men, Raw Deal, and He Walked By Night (though uncredited on the latter), and he would go on to make (and arguably become most famous for) five westerns in the 50s in collaboration with star James Stewart, including Winchester '73, The Naked Spur, and The Man from Laramie. The Furies was released the same year as Winchester '73 – AND Devil's Doorway! Stylistically, The Furies might very well be called a noir western, so while it absolutely stands on its own, it might also be called a bridge of sorts between Mann's noirs and his westerns. (Mann also made some great "period noirs" like The Black Book [aka Reign of Terror] and The Tall Target.)

As westerns go, this is fairly unique in having a female protagonist and a somewhat melodramatic and psychologically-tinged plot. It also takes a complicated view – perhaps both celebratory and critical at the same time – of the western hero as represented by Jeffords, and it treats Jeffords' "enemies," the Mexican families that are "squatting" on "his" land, with considerable sympathy. Given its more florid and progressive elements, western traditionalists (if there is such a thing) may or may not entirely take to it, but Stanwyck fans certainly should, and I think it's pretty fantastic. There's some pretty great dialogue as well, though it gets a bit thick in places, as do the (somewhat confusing to me) money machinations of Vance when she determines to break her father.

This also features Wendell Corey, Gilbert Roland, Judith Anderson, and Thomas Gomez, among others.

It's beautifully shot, so see it in HD if you can. It's available on blu-ray from Criterion; I'm not sure where else you might find it at the moment.

Has anyone else seen this, have some thoughts?

Note: This discussion includes some mild spoilers and in general is probably most appropriate for those of you who have already seen this movie.

So, I just watched The Man Who Came to Dinner a few nights ago. It's from 1941, based on the stage play by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, adapted for the screen by Philip G. and Julius J. Epstein (also of Casablanca fame), directed by William Keighley, and starring Bette Davis, Ann Sheridan, and Monty Woolley.

First off, I'd seen some very enthusiastic commentary on this movie – this movie clearly has its ardent fans – but my own initial reaction was mixed at best: I recognized the screenplay's and the movie's energy, but I also found the central character, Woolley's art critic, lecturer, and popular radio star Sheridan Whiteside, almost entirely unlikable – and practically intolerable. Your mileage may vary, but some of the user reviews on imdb reflected my reaction: apparently I wasn't the only person who found it almost impossible to empathize with this supremely self-centered, insulting, imperious man – who is certainly clever in his way, but also probably not nearly so clever as he imagines himself to be. He lobbies rude "bon mots" at just about everyone, essentially takes over another family's house, and blames everyone else for his own failings (or literally, his own falling).

And yet – perhaps precisely because I found this character so annoying and unsympathetic – I recognized it as a possible challenge, that is, to empathize with him. And I began to think I saw something of what the movie was up to.

First, and I think this might be key to understanding the character and part of the movie's raison d'être, Sheridan Whiteside is clearly a gay man. (His secretary, Maggie Cutler [Davis], even calls him "Sheri" for short.) And apparently he was modeled on a prominent and famous drama critic of the day, Alexander Woollcott. I don't know, I guess it's possible I'm reading Monty Woolley's own (apparent) homosexuality into the character, but I don't think so: the character is clearly "gay coded" in any number of ways. He also seems to suggest a certain kind of effete, "cosmopolitan" gay man of the era – in this case one with a rare and acerbic wit (or one might say, "wit") who is never loathe to dominate his environment or launch nasty put-downs of whomever happens to be in his presence.

I'm a heterosexual male myself, and I neither mean to nor would presume to suggest these character traits are common to gay men in general. And yet, we're all familiar with the "flamboyant" gay man, and it's no secret that there were (and are) many homosexuals in the arts and entertainment world. My suspicion is that the original playwrights recognized this character – and for all I know, that they even related to the character on some level (perhaps they were gay themselves?).

Part of my point here is that Whiteside's homosexuality is a big subtext to who he is. In this context, his imperiousness and self-centeredness comes across as an exaggerated and all-too-well-honed "coping mechanism"(or "defense mechanism"), one in which certain gay men assume a kind of acerbic and arch wit and superiority that in some ways serves them extremely well. The character of Whiteside arguably takes the possibility of empathizing with him nearly to the breaking point (or beyond?) – but I think it's possible that despite his rather severe shortcomings (for which Davis's loyal and even loving secretary ultimately lets loose), the movie still wants us to empathize with him on some level, to at least try to understand where he might be coming from.

In fact, if the movie is in some ways very specifically about the preposterous pretensions that one gay man (and maybe some other gay men) assumes, it doesn't have to be only about that: that specific story could also be representative of just about anyone prone to dysfunction, maladaptive behaviors, or simple vanity. The fact that there is an axe murderer amongst the cast of characters is both funny and arch to the extreme as well as trenchant insofar as it suggests the real trauma and difficulty behind these characters' (and our) lives.

It was, for me, ultimately kind of difficult to pin down some of the movie's attitudes. What to make of its attitude to small-town America, for instance? Does the movie share Whiteside's contempt for what some now call the "flyover" part of the country? Certainly the ball bearing industrialist and his ditsy wife don't seem to be treated especially well by the screenplay. Then again, if we're meant to empathize with Whiteside, surely we can extend that honor to the other characters as well. And it's also true that Bette Davis's Maggie falls in love with the young editor of that small town's newspaper.

Davis, in fact, ultimately anchors the movie, and maybe serves as the closest representative of the writers' own attitudes: she's easily the most level-headed character in the menagerie; the person who has sympathies and attachments to both the cosmopolitan world and to the small town; and the one character who seems to genuinely love and care about "Sheri" – but who reaches the limits of her patience with him when he tries to sabotage her own life. So in some ways, the sympathies (or at least the understanding) of the screenplay seem to be with the "cosmopolitan," but in other ways, the movie seems to mock such pretensions of "sophistication." It's a bit of a razor's edge, and one on which I'm not sure the movie does or doesn't manage to maintain its balance.

But while the character of Whiteside only seems to have a kind of pseudo-sophistication, the movie itself has some real sophistication. One memorable scene has Whiteside introducing a boys' choir on his Christmas Eve radio show, and the boys begin singing "Silent Night" as Sheridan waxes (what we realize is) rather falsely poetic about the Christian nativity story. (The scene is smart and funny because it pulls back the curtain on the sometimes [often?] insincere, self-serving, and exploitative nature of the entertainment industry. Also see 1946's Christmas in Connecticut for a sublime and very funny movie-length version of this.) But the movie might actually be sincere about the Christmas story on some level: the goings-on in the house that Whiteside has invaded are hardly silent or peaceful, and the difference is so striking as to be thought-provoking. And didn't Jesus as he was depicted in the Gospels ultimately preach to judge not, to get behind the surface of things, to the heart of the matter? In that sense, and as little as The Man Who Came to Dinner pulls its punches or gives in to either the warm or the sentimental, this movie might actually very much qualify as a Christmas movie. (With his white beard, Whiteside even looks a little like Santa Claus – but his character is very nearly the inverse of that mythical character, [almost] entirely selfish where Saint Nick is generous and giving.)

At the very least, the difficulties presented by the movie's problematic and challenging surface suggest getting behind that surface. Ultimately, while it had a decided energy, I'm still not sure I thought this "screwball comedy" was terribly funny. It certainly has me thinking, though!

What are your thoughts on this movie?

Another redditor recently shared a post about Frank Capra's 1938 Best Picture Oscar winner You Can't Take It With You – and I was reminded of this old review from critic Glenn Erickson (aka DVD Savant or Cinesavant). In my opinion, it's a wonderfully trenchant and perceptive analysis of the movie in particular and of Capra in general. (This despite the fact that I appreciate much of Capra's work. I also adore Jean Arthur. Ironically, as much as I love and value Erickson, I sometimes think he's a little too generous in his appraisals of some movies – I don't entirely trust his "Excellent" ratings, for instance!)

Anyway, here is the link to the review. It really is a must-read in my opinion. Please share your own thoughts on either the movie, the review, or both!

https://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s733cant.html

So yeah, this is no kind of revelatory post or anything – this is mostly just a little rant. But I just have to get this off my chest (which I prefer to use to breathe fresh air).

Anybody who's watched even a handful of classic-era movies knows that the actors/their characters were very often smoking or at least lighting up a cigarette (their own or someone else's). And I get it: smoking often has a powerful visual effect on screen, especially in black and white films, maybe even more so in high contrast movies like film noirs, for instance. It's "cool," it's "sexy," it's "glamorous." And apparently virtually everyone smoked back in the day. But I just watched The Man I Love (1946), and the movie had Ida Lupino smoking in what felt like just about every g*d d*mn scene! I mean, sometimes you feel like Hollywood felt like the thing everyone in the public wanted to see more than anything else in the world was their favorite actors or actresses lighting up a cigarette! It frankly sometimes annoys the f*ck out of me that my eyes are so often inevitably drawn to what the actor is doing with a cigarette. In fact, for me, smoking on screen often (not always) serves mostly to suggest a profoundly unhealthy society. In The Man I Love, for instance, one scene takes place at Christmas, and a few of the characters sing "Silent Night" together. But they spend scant time on that, and immediately return to their 1940s lifestyle of smoking and drinking. I'm hardly entirely against either (though I admit I find smoking as noxious as it seems sexy), but I don't think the filmmakers intended the disconnect (that I feel) between a song like "Silent Night" (and the health and peace it suggests) and a profoundly unhealthy world where virtually everyone smokes. And in my opinion, Ida Lupino (like Audrey Hepburn pictured above) had a natural beauty that was not especially enhanced when she smoked; in fact, rather the opposite. Watching The Man I Love, I found myself wanting to yell at Ida (or the movie's producers), "Please put out your cigarette and get outside and breathe! It's so much better for you, and you're worth it."

Like I said, this is more of a rant than anything, but if you have your own thoughts, feelings, or insights into the phenomenon, please feel free to comment. Was is just that everybody smoked? Did the movie producers just think it was glamorous and sexy? Was the movie industry heavily funded by or otherwise beholden to the tobacco industry?

(Note: My parents were both of that generation that smoked like crazy, and I witnessed the ravages of that habit on their health. I guess Bogart might not have been Bogart or Bette Davis not Bette Davis without all their smoking, but sometimes the constant smoking is just maddening.)

Just picked this up, and I can hardly wait to dig in. I frankly wasn't sure whether to post this on the filmnoir subreddit or the Westerns subreddit – so I'm doing both! That is, I have the idea that Anthony Mann is best known for directing five westerns in the 1950s with star James Stewart, and maybe rightfully so. But he also directed some pretty fantastic noir movies in the late 40s, and I'm not sure I don't like some of those even more than the great Stewart westerns. (Maybe I'll call it a tie.) In fact, Mann's career is sometimes broken up into three phases since he turned to a pair of historical epics in the early 1960s.

In case you don't know, here are just some of the movies on Mann's very impressive resume:

Desperate (1947) (noir)

Railroaded! (1947) (noir)

T-Men (1947) (noir)

Raw Deal (1948) (noir)

He Walked By Night (1948) (noir; Mann was uncredited as director)

Reign of Terror (aka The Black Book) (1949) (period noir)

Border Incident (1949) (noir)

Side Street (1949) (noir)

Winchester '73 (1950) (western)

The Furies (1950) (western noir?)

Devil's Doorway (1950) (western noir?)

The Tall Target (1951) (period noir)

Bend of the River (1952) (western)

The Naked Spur (1953) (western)

The Far Country (1954) (western)

The Man from Laramie (1955) (western)

Men in War (1957) (war)

The Tin Star (1957) (western)

God's Little Acre (1958) (comedy/drama)

Man of the West (1958) (western)

El Cid (1961) (historical epic)

The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) (historical epic)

The Heroes of Telemark (1965) (war epic)

That, to me, is one of the most amazing filmographies of any director from the classic era. (Then again, my favorite genres are film noir and westerns!) I've seen most of them, and most of them are very good to fantastic.

Anyway, I just wanted to celebrate one of my favorite directors. Do you have any thoughts about Anthony Mann and his movies?

I just picked up this book by Kevin Grant, and glad I did. (It's a $40 book, but Amazon is currently listing it with a 30% off coupon.) The bulk of the book is an alphabetical listing of 90+ movies that Grant has chosen as precursors to the style we now call film noir. The Introduction is short but incisive: Grant expands the list of oft-cited influences on film noir – German Expressionism, the hard-boiled American crime stories and novels, the gangster movie – to include some early silent Hitchcock thrillers, Hollywood pre-Code "bad girl" movies, French poetic realism, British espionage thrillers, and so-called women's melodramas (etc.). Grant identifies elements of subject matter, style, or tone in these movies – for instance, an aura of fatalism in French poetic realism – that render them in some ways either "proto-noir" or close siblings of the noir style.

I haven't yet read all of the movie synopses and commentaries, but for me, the Introduction had the effect of making me realize to a somewhat greater extent than I had that our sometimes overweening tendency to (try to) categorize isn't all that important in the long run: ultimately, it's the individual movies themselves and their power to entertain, engage, and maybe even enthrall us that matters, and if one movie is, say, more Gothic melodrama than film noir, that might very well be just as wonderful. (But yeah, of course, I love film noir! But I also like how this book celebrates the roots of and the edges around the noir style.)

Has anyone else checked this out?

*And by "best western comedies," I'm not actually referring to comedies set at one of the franchise locations of the Best Western motel chain. (Though if you know of any good comedies set at a Best Western – or even a Best Buy – by all means feel free to share.)

Seriously (?), what are your favorite comedy westerns? Your number 1, top 5, 7, 10... whatever. I think I've only ever seen Blazing Saddles (love it) thus far myself.

(Note: I realize this is probably not the first post on this subject on this subreddit, but I'm relatively new here, and it's more fun to interact with y'all rather than search old posts.)

Okay, so first of all, yes, my post title is a quote from the 1980 comedy Airplane!, where it is very much a joke. (And I love Airplane!) But my question is real: do you like the so-called "sword and sandal" movies of the classic era (and beyond?). I'm not necessarily an aficionado myself – my favorite classic film genres are probably film noir, westerns, and screwball comedies – but I can enjoy an exotic epic getaway with a cast of thousands (or seeming thousands) on occasion. Off the top of my head, I've seen Quo Vadis (1951), The Robe (1953), Land of the Pharaohs (1955), The Ten Commandments (1956), Spartacus (1960), Barabbas (1961), El Cid (1961), and The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964). (I may or may not be forgetting one or two.) I like these well enough in some ways to varying degrees, while the one "sword and sandal" movie that I truly love is Ben-Hur (1959); that's one of my very favorite movies (and not just for the gay subtext, ha ha!). I love the epic quality of Ben-Hur, but it's also a very personal story – an "intimate epic," as they say, a term I've also heard applied to Lawrence of Arabia (1962), for instance.

Anyway, just wondering about people's thoughts on the genre. Do you like these movies? If so, which are your favorites? What are your thoughts on the use and impact of Cinemascope and Technicolor, for instance? What about the mix (in DeMille, for instance) of religiosity and titillation? Are other movies too "pious"? Also, how broad do you consider the genre to be? Does it include movies based on Greek myth, for instance? (Say, Ulysses from 1954? Jason and the Argonauts from 1963?)

Another Redditor recently posted his thoughts about Sidney Lumet's 1957 classic-era film 12 Angry Men, and it was an interesting discussion. But it also got me thinking about the barely-remembered Angry Man series* in general (*I don't think they actually called them "franchises" back then), and I was wondering if anyone else has been lucky (or unlucky?) enough to see these movies? They're obscure to the point that they're not even listed on imdb (!) – I guess it's a very rare case of the twelfth movie in a series thoroughly outclassing its predecessors (though I would make the maybe obvious argument that the original movie – that is, The Angry Man – is the best). The only other situation like this that comes to mind is the Malcolm franchise, with Malcolm X apparently the only movie in the series that anyone has ever actually seen... I mean, did the first nine Malcolm movies even make it straight to home video??

Anyway, below is a list I've compiled of all the Angry Man movies – at least as I remember them. Personally, I wish they would have stuck to one type of title (say, the number of angry men/the adjective/the word for "man" or "men" – "5 Ornery Fellows," for instance), but I guess variety is the spice of life, after all. Have any of you seen any of these? What are your favorites? What are the stinkers? (I thought 10 Hot Hombres was a real low point myself, the nadir of the series.) Have I forgotten any titles – or perhaps misremembered any of them? Please join in the discussion!!

Additional note: Though technically not part of the series, I'm also fond of Abbott and Costello Meet the Angry Man – even if [SPOILER ALERT] the Angry Man just turns out to be Bud Abbott himself.

(In case you're wondering, yes, it was a rather long, slow day at my day job. And no, I'm not planning on quitting. But nobody laughed at my jokes in the comments on the other person's post, so I obviously had to make my own.)

The movies:

1. The Angry Man
2. The Angry Man 2 (aka After the Angry Man)
3. The Angry Man 3: 3 Angry Men (originally released as The Angry Man 3 – in 3-D!)
4. Bride of the Angry Man
5. The Angry Man 5: 5 Ornery Fellows
6. Kid Gloves: Son of the Angry Man(?)
7. The Incensed 7 (the first of the two Angry Man westerns, a remake of Akira Kurosawa's Hara ga tatsu Samurai Seven)
8. 8 Chafed Chaps
9. The Good, the Bad, and the Angry Man (note the use of the Oxford comma)
10. 10 Hot Hombres (ugh)
11. 11 Ill-Tempered Blokes (a very slight improvement over 10 Hot Hombres)
12. 12 Angry Men
13. Angry Man (they just removed the "The" from the title!)
14. Angry Man vs. Predator (again, no "The")
15. Rocky Balboa