BIGGAR'S DICTIONARY OF FILM: Letter I (W/O -- not to be confused with David Thomson's)
Apr 16 '03 (Updated Apr 23 '03)
The Bottom Line This humble entry, a tiny part of a reference work, the brainchild of Simply Crispy, will eventually be to Film what The Oxford English Dictionary (Unabridged) is to words.
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Hopefully, you have come from the "H" entry of youngching:
http://www.epinions.com/content_3236405380
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The Letter I
I, pron., Necessary to any human activity. Particularly destructive in marriage, politics, business, or building a New World Order. Often used incautiously by Epinionators (including the author of this section). Needed in all the Arts, including Movies, where its usefulness must be determined on a case by case basis. [Aaron Aronofsky -- possibly good; Baz Luhrmann -- probably bad.]
I ACCUSE! *** (Jose Ferrer, 1958): Jose Ferrer (as Dreyfus), Anton Walbrook, Emlyn Williams, Viveca Lindfors, David Farrar, Leo Genn, Herbert Lom (Emil Zola), Harry Andrews, Felix Aylmer, George Coulouris, Donald Wolfit. A little sleeper with an incomparable cast about one of the first great modern Civil Rights scandals. The film's failure to continue Ferrer's success as a stage director into movies signified the decline of his career. Notable for Walbrook's performance as the traitor Esterhazy, the last major work of his career.
THE ICEMAN COMETH. **** (John Frankenheimer, 1973): Frederick March, Lee Marvin (as Hickey), Robert Ryan, Jeff Bridges, Martyn Green, Bradford Dillman. Eugene O'Neil's great pre-existentialist play about a group of barflies (Us?) waiting for their Hickey (God? Godot?) to come and make it all better. The most distinguished example of an interesting experiment, the American Film Theater, which mounted TV/Theater productions and showed them in movie theaters on a subscription basis. Incredible final performances by March and Ryan.
THE ICE STORM. **** (Ang Lee, 1997): Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Sigourney Weaver, Christina Ricci, Elijah Wood, Tobey McGuire, Jamey Sheridan, Kathy Holmes. A dead-on portrait of the American middle class, as its cracked conventional facade shattered completely in the early 1970's: victim to sex, drugs, rock n' roll, the Vietnam War, and Watergate. From a well-received novel by Ron Moody, set in New Canaan, Connecticut, in the historical "Great Ice Storm of 1973." Director Lee's best work to date. Fine performances all around, notably among the younger players, many of whom are just becoming major stars today.
Ichikawa, Ken (1915 - ). Renowned Japanese director and screenwriter. His most lasting work will probably be his films about the Japanese Army in World War II: THE BURMESE HARP (1955), FIRE ON THE PLAINS (1959) and ALONE IN THE PACIFIC (1966).
IDIOT'S DELIGHT **** (Clarence Brown, 1939): Norma Shearer, Clark Gable, Edward Arnold, Charles Colburn, Joseph Schildkaut, Virginia Grey. Sharp satire from that end of a world year, 1939, about a group of travelers, including a troupe of chorus girls led by Gable, stranded in a hotel near the Italian border as World War II is about to erupt. Gable sings and dances "Puttin' on the Ritz" -- an experience which left him sweat-soaked with nervousness. From a Pulitzer Prize winning play by-now forgotten Liberal playwright, Robert E. Sherwood. Underrated.
I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING! ***** (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1945): Wendy Hillier, Roger Livsey. One of the great romantic films. A smart young Englishwoman, preparing to make a socially safe marriage to a boorish tycoon, is marooned on a Scottish Island with a charming Laird, who may be a ghost. A rare superb film beginning with . . . the Pronoun I.
I'M ALL RIGHT, JACK. **** (John Boulting, 1959): Ian Carmichael, Terry-Thomas, Peter Sellars, Richard Attenborough, Margaret Rutherford, Dennis Price, Miles Maleson. A British satire on the collusion of a family-owned business with a crooked union leader. A harbinger, perhaps, of the general attack on labor unions in Western Industrialized Society after World War II. Hailed in America for Sellars' malevolent (and sharply funny) portrait of a jack-booted labor leader.
I MARRIED A WITCH **** (Rene Clair, 1942): Frederick March, Veronica Lake, Robert Benchley, Susan Hayward, Elisabeth Patterson. The exiled distinguished French Director had lots of fun with American Puritanism here. If you want to see what all the shouting about Peekaboo Lake entailed before dope brought her down, see this romantic satire. In its way, an American bookend for I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING!
I'M GONNA GET YOU, SUCKA **** (Keenen Ivory Wayans, 1988): Keenen Ivory Wayans, Bernie Casey, Antonio Fargas, Isaac Hayes, Jim Brown, Ja'net DuBois, Dawn Lewis, Clu Galager, Kadeem Hardison, Damon Wayans, Gary Owens, Eve Plumb, Kim Wayans, David Alan Grier, and Robert Townsend. Parody of a Blackploitation revenge movie. (Wayans is after those who allowed his brother to overdose on gold chains.) Underrated, suggesting that the triple threat Wayans may be just too good for contemporary expectations.
THE IMMORTAL STORY **** (Orson Welles, 1968): Orson Welles, Jeanne Moreau, Roger Goggio, Fernando Rey. A rare later Welles film completed and shown as he intended. Based on an Isak Dinnesen story, set in Portuguese Macao, the film tells a myth-like story of how an old merchant lives out his sexual fantasies by watching others. It continues the theme which obsessed him from his teenage years on: How powerful white men, as they grow older, attempt to maintain control over the people in their world, especially women. Made for French Television.
Ince, Thomas (1882 - 1924). Pioneer producer and director, best known for CUSTER'S LAST FIGHT (1912), CIVILIZATION (1915), and HUMAN WRECKAGE (1923), expensive epics of human waste all three. But he is really remembered because he died enigmatically on the yacht of William Hearst, some said by gunshot, in some scuffle over Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies. Obscure guest that weekend, Louella Parsons, soon-to-be Queen Bee of Hollywood gossip columnists, signed a lifetime contract with Hearst papers shortly after the incident. Subject of Peter Bogdanovich's recent CAT'S MEOW.
IN COLD BLOOD ***** (Richard Brooks, 1967): Robert Blake, Scott Wilson, John Forsythe, Paul Stewart, Charles McGraw, Jeff Corey, William Geer. Haunting adaptation by Brooks of Truman Capote's true crime "novel" about two ex-cons (Blake and Wilson) who terrorized, robbed and murdered the Clutter farm family near a quiet Kansas town -- for not much more than a young girl's souvenir silver dollar. Blake's performance as Perry Smith is one of the great film performances. (Ironic, now, that Blake is going on trial for murder.) Scott Wilson's debut role; he never had a better one. Old Welles' major domo Stewart stands in for Capote. Charles McGraw, as Perry Smith's nightmare primal father, appears an unforgettable apparition to take the hangman's place on his son's gallows. Superb black and white photography by the late Conrad Hall.
THE INDIAN RUNNER *** (Sean Penn, 1991): David Morse, Viggo Mortensen, Valaria Golino, Patricia Arquette, Charles Bronson, and Sandy Dennis. An auspicious first time job of directing by Penn on what may be the great American theme of the last quarter of the 20th Century: How do we come to terms with the Vietnam War? (We are in the process of showing that we cannot.) A typical story of a younger brother's anguish in trying to understand his older brother who, in this case, served in that war. Well handled, effective drama. An early role for Mortensen, who is achieving real stardom only now in the Ring Trilogy.
Industrial Light and Magic. George Lucas's highly successful special effects factory in Marin County, California, has probably done more to estrange moviegoers from the real experience of immersing themselves in Movies than any other recent factor. Blue screens, bursting bombs, conflagrations, and various kinds of artificial sensations have won the Box Office, driving up costs, and turning many of the younger generation into people who see movies more as a kind of amphetamine than a humanly emotional or artistic experience. What films have contracted the services of Industrial Light and Magic? Just look at a list of the highest box office grossers since 1977. I'm too heartsick to undertake the chore at the moment.
THE INFORMER *** (John Ford, 1935): Victor MacLaglen, Heather Angel, Preston Foster, Margot Grahame, Wallace Ford, Una O'Connor, J.M. Kerrigan, Joe Sawyer, Donald Meek. Landmark American film about the Irish Revolution which proved to both European and American critics that we could make art films. Ford applied his new training in German Expressionist methods to this tale of a Judas; based on the novel by Liam O'Flaherty. The symbolic use of a blowing newspaper, thirty pieces of silver, the Black and Tans, and drifting smoke or fog is still memorable, although the Revolution has been going on so long, it's hard now to conceive that THE INFORMER concerns similar Irish grievances like those of today. Ford wrung one of the classic film performances out of MacLaglen as a stupid, sentimental, drunken giant of a coward, Gypo Nolan. MacLaglen received an Oscar, as did Dudley Nichols for his screenplay, and Max Steiner for his death march musical score.
Ingram, Rex (1892 - 1950). AKA, Reginald Hitchcock, Ingram, an Irishman, went to Hollywood as one of the first actor-screenwriter-directors. So successful was he, that he may have been the first truly Independent within the Studio System. He set up his own studios in Nice, France, where he made such Silent Epic Blockbusters as THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE (1921), THE PRISONER OF ZENDA (1922), SCARAMOUCHE (1923), and MARE NOSTRUM (1926). Writer/Director Michael Powell learned film making there under Ingram's guiding hand.
Ingram, Rex (1895 -1969). Magnificent, distinguished, sadly forgotten by some, Black actor, who took often memorable parts in some of the most entertaining and successful Hollywood movies ever made: HEARTS OF DIXIE (1929), THE SIGN OF THE CROSS (1932), KING KONG (1933), THE EMPEROR JONES (1933), CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935), THE GREEN PASTURES (as De Lawd -- 1936), HUCKLEBERRY FINN (1939), THE TALK OF THE TOWN (1942), SAHARA (1943), CABIN IN THE SKY (1943), KING SOLOMON'S MINES (1950), THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956), GOD'S LITTLE ACRE (1958), ANNA LUCASTA (1959, ELMER GANTRY (1960), and HURRY SUNDOWN (1967). A former doctor, he was never out of work in the movies from the age of 33; with his deep baritone voice and commanding presence, always in some demand. He may be best remembered as the clever Genie, who fools Sabu, in Alexander Korda's THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1939).
IN OLD CHICAGO *** (Henry King, 1938): Tyrone Power, Alice Faye, Don Ameche, Alice Brady, Andy Devine, Brian Donlevy, Phyllis Brooks, Tom Brown, Sidney Blackmer, Bobby Watson. A sprawling, lavish recreation of Chicago before the Great Fire of 187l, focussing on the O'Leary Family, whose cow kicked over the lantern which started the notorious fire. The kind of innocent, melting pot Americana we don't make anymore.
THE INSIDER **** (Michael Mann, 1999): Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, Diane Venora, Philip Baker Hall, Lindsay Crouse, Rip Torn, Michael Gambon, Wings Hauser. Important expose film of how Big Tobacco pressured CBS (Sixty Minutes) to suppress proof of murderous practices in that industry, which kills hundreds of thousands of Americans, and maims as many more, every year. (Such evidence as soaking paper in concentrated nicotine juice, shredding the paper and adding it to the cigarettes; buying up radio-active charcoal on the cheap to manufacture the famous Microlite Filter, etc.) THE INSIDER received critical acclaim, but the American Public preferred their cancer-sticks, and the film was considered a financial disappointment. Marvelous impression of Mike Wallace by Plummer, and Crowe's best performance to date as the Whistle Blower.
INTERMEZZO **** (Gregory Ratoff, 1938): Leslie Howard, Ingrid Bergman, Edna Best, Cecil Kellaway. Story of a renowned violinist's affair with a music student (Bergman). An excellent love story, a remake of an earlier Swedish film. Memorable, if for nothing else, as Bergman's introduction to American audiences. It is interesting and sobering to make a contrast of this film with Billie August's recent MARTIN'S SONG.
International Pictures. One of the first Independent Hollywood Studios, which came out of RKO, in the wake of Orson Welles. Helmed by William Goetz and Leo Spitz, it's two most interesting films were Fritz Lang's THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW (1944) and Welles' own THE STRANGER (1946). Thereafter, it merged with Universal under Goetz and Spitz, and eventually became Universal-International Studios, leaving independence to later figures.
IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT *** (Norman Jewison, 1967): Sidney Potier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant, Scott Wilson, Larry Gates. A bit hokey now, this story of a black detective who finds himself in the Deep South helping an unreconstructed Sheriff solve a weird murder was, nevertheless, a landmark picture. The ensemble acting, the charisma of Potier, the wit, bite and humor of the dialogue, and Quincy Jones' splendid score were all winners. The film was highly successful at the box office, and Oscars went to Steiger, Stirling Silliphant's screenplay, and Hal Ashby's editing; and it gave Potier several sequels, playing Mr. Tibbs.
INTOLERANCE ***** (D.W. Griffiths, 1916). Robert Harron, Mae Marsh, Lilian Gish, Constance Talmadge, Bessie Love, Seena Owen, Alfred Paget, Eugene Paulette, and many others, including a number of future directors and stars. Made by Southerner Griffiths as his bewildered apology for the criticism deluged on his BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), it is a truly epic examination (178 minutes in extant copies) of Man's Inhumanity to Man, telling the same events over and over, from ancient Babylon to contemporary times. One of the first great American movies.
INTRUDER IN THE DUST **** (Clarence Brown, 1948): David Brian, Claude Jarman, Jr., Juano Hernandez, Porter Hall, Elizabeth Patterson. A fine early Hollywood attempt to come to grips with the subject of lynching, which had taken the lives of several thousand humans, mostly people of color, in the previous 50 years or so -- not counting race riots, such as those in St. Louis, Missouri, and the "pogrom" of Tulsa, Oklahoma, etc. Based on the novel by William Faulkner, with a towering performance by Hernandez.
THE INVISIBLE MAN **** (James Whale, 1933): Claude Rains, Gloria Stuart, Una O'Connor, Dudley Digges, Dwight Fry, John Carradine, Walter Brennan. Another one of H.G. Wells' potent fantasies became a delightful early special effects sound film. Rains, a scientist of outre interests, makes himself invisible, causing no end of trouble in a small English village. It was Rains' movie debut, a starring role in front of American audiences, no less. (When they could see him.) Another gem from James Whale in this period.
IN WHICH WE SERVE **** (Noel Coward, David Lean, 1942): Noel Coward, John Mills, Bernard Miles, Celia Johnson, Kay Walsh, Joyce Carey, Michael Wilding, James Donald, Richard Attenborough. One of the finest propaganda films of World War II. First-timer Coward directed (with the help of his young cutter, Lean) from his own screenplay. Taking the role of a British destroyer's skipper, he gives an account in flashback of the ship (and the crew) from its building and commissioning to its sinking. Rare for such a film, it is as vivid and true today as when Coward made it. (He also wrote the score.)
I REMEMBER MAMA **** (George Stevens, 1948): Irene Dunne, Barbara Bel Geddes, Oscar Omolka, Philip Dorn, Cedric Hardwick, Edgar Bergen, Rudy Vallee, Barbara O'Neil, Ellen Corby. A charming family motion picture of Norwegian immigrants growing up in San Francisco, in the early part of the 20th Century. It led to a long running TV series, Mama.
THE IRON HORSE **** (John Ford, 1924): George O'Brien, Madge Bellamy, Gladys Hullette, J. Farrell Macdonald. One of the early extraordinary epic action films. Ford gives us the building of the Transcontinental Railway in scenes which have seldom been matched -- but often copied.
Irons, Jeremy (1948 - ). Rather sepulchral British actor, whom we might imagine one day would be hired to do a biopic of Boris Karloff, if he would accept the part. Irons was an almost immediate hit in THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN (1981), but rather diffidently went straight back to the stage and into TV (BRIDESHEAD REVISITED, 1981). His biggest thing lately was the use of his voice in THE LION KING (1994), but he will be remembered for his Nazi-like social climber, Klaus von Bulow, in David Cronnenberg's (was-it-attempted-murder?) mystery, REVERSAL OF FORTUNES (1990), for which he received a well-deserved Oscar.
Isherwood, Christopher (1904 -1986). British novelist and short story writer, who after coming to the United States in 1939, with his partner, Major Poet W.H. Auden, gravitated to Hollywood, where he wrote screenplays for the edgy RAGE IN HEAVEN (1941, THE WOMAN IN WHITE (1943), THE GREAT SINNER (1949), and THE LOVED ONE (1965), etc. He will be best remembered among film buffs, however, for writing the original book of interrelated stories, Good-Bye to Berlin, on which CABARET (1973) is based. He also wrote a dramatic version of this work, which was made into the movie entitled I AM A CAMERA (1955).
I SHOT ANDY WARHOL **** (Mary Harron, 1996): Lili Taylor, Martha Plimpton, Danny Morgenstein, Donovan Leitch. Director Harron chronicles the real life of Valarie Solanas, from her writing of a Feminist tract ("The Scum Manifesto"), which declared males obsolete, until she shot Pop Art Genius Warhol at "The Factory" in New York City. Fascinating as Art and Social History. An incredible performance by Taylor.
ISLANDS IN THE STREAM **** (Franklyn J. Schaffner, 1977): George C. Scott, David Hemmings, Claire Bloom, Susan Tyrell, Gilbert Roland, Richard Evans, Julie Harris, Hart Bochner. An underrated adaptation of a posthumous novel by Ernest Hemingway describes a sculptor's efforts to bond with his sons, while placating his estranged wife, and hunting Nazi submarines in the Carribean during World War II. Though it does not seem a promising project, Schaffner's direction, Scott's performance, and the production values make it one of the better film dramatizations of Hemingway. The picture may be better than the novel.
IT ALWAYS RAINS ON SUNDAY **** (Robert Hamer, 1947): Googie Withers, Jack Warner, John McCallum, Jimmy Hanley, Susan Shaw, Sydney Tafler, Alfie Bass, Jane Hylton, Hermione Baddeley. Here is an unknown little masterpiece about a working class London neighborhood. It revolves around the repercussions of an escaped convict (McCallum) hiding in the flat of his ex-lover (Withers). The always interesting Withers later married McCallum and they eventually moved to Australia.
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT ***** (Frank Capra, 1934): Clark Gable, Claudette Colbert, Walter Conolly, Rosco Karns, Alan Hale, Ward Bond. One of the all-time distinguished romantic comedies, concerning an heiress on the run, who falls in love with a reporter. Their comic hitch-hiking adventures are legendary. With the marvelously droll Karns and a group of farceurs, who more often appeared as sidekicks for either Errol Flynn or John Wayne. A Classic.
IT'S ALL TRUE **** (Richard Wilson, Myron Meisel, Bill Krohn, 1942/1993): A documentary about the aborted creation of an epic Orson Welles project which was to encompass the liberation of Brazil, the liberating influence of that country's music, and of folklorico in Mexico, and Jazz in America, all bound together by the Samba. Politics, jealousies, money and Welles' own quixotic ways brought him and his production low. Thought lost for over 40 years, a frail Richard Wilson lovingly put together what he could from the discovered footage, his last service and homage to his late boss. Contains the complete "Four Men on a Raft" sequence, and fascinating material shot by Norman Foster in consultation with Welles in Mexico. Also gorgeous color footage of Carnival in Rio, circa 1942.
IT'S ALIVE! *** (Larry Cohen, 1974): John Ryan, Sharon Fare, Andrew Duggan, Guy Stockwell, Michael Ansara. Cult film about a murderous baby (!) set the stage for several sequels. It benefits from a score by Bernard Herrmann.
IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER **** (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen, 1955): Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, Michael Kidd, Cyd Charysse, Dolores Gray, David Burns. Loose sequel to Donen's superb ON THE TOWN (1949), this musical picks up three similar characters a decade after they have left the U.S. Navy. Another sharp script by Comden and Green. Marvelous dances by Charysse to unfamiliar songs. The advantage of the new Cinemscope process is fully utilized.
IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD **** (Stanley Kramer, 1963): Spencer Tracy, Edie Adams, Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Buddy Hackett, Ethel Merman, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Dorothy Provine, Phil Silvers, Jonathan Winters, Peter Falk, Jimmy Durrante, Terry-Thomas, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, William Demarest, and many others. Over the years, this marathon comedy shrank to 154 minutes, losing some of its madness. Recently, it was restored to its full 175 minutes. Tracy is a detective on the trail of the take in a huge bank robbery, along with about every comic actor and hanger-on available at the time. Jimmy Durante ("kicking off"), Dick Shawn, and Jonathan Winters stand out in my memory. The picture suffers from Kramer's usual stiff direction, but with so many wild comedians present, most of their old and new routines, adapted to the tale, yield lots of laughs. So you might as well go for the long version.
IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE **** (Frank Capra, 1946): Jimmy Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore, Thomas Mitchell, Henry Travers, Beulah Bondi, Frank Faylen, Ward Bond, Gloria Grahame, H.B. Warner, Frank Albertson, Todd Karns, Sheldon Leonard and Ellen Corby. A Christmas Carol of American Life. The familiar, sentimental story conveys a parable in which it takes a Guardian Angel (Travers) to show a hard-working, small town failure (Stewart) how much worse things would have been if he had not been on the scene. Capra's last great film, and his most beloved: a Christmas institution on American Television. Wonderful performances showing the common dwellers of the Homeland. A feel-good movie, if there ever was one. Yet, year by year, the good, unselfish, rather simple and kind Americans of the past seem to recede into myth. The people who never vote; the people who begrudge 40 percent of American children medical insurance while urging operations, and shedding tears over little Iraqi kids our smart bombs have blown the arms off; the fathers who "look out only for Number One" or their own families (and sometimes, if displeased, shoot their spouses and children as if they were possessions or dogs to be gotten rid of) -- they seem to have displaced Capra's good-hearted Americans. It is as if a story within the story were by Ray Bradbury: Millions of families, little green people with large, opaque purple eyes, sitting around the Television on Christmas Eve, watching the Americans they once thought they were.
IVAN THE TERRIBLE, PART ONE AND TWO **** (Sergei Eisenstein, 1943, 1946) Nikolai Cherkassov, Ludmila Tselikovskaya, Serafima Birman, Mikhail Nazvanov, Pavel Kadochnikov, Andrei Abrikosov. A cunning Prince of Moskovy brutally out-schemes feudal aristocrats to create Russia as a nation state. The seminal Russian genius of Cinema, Eisenstein, started this epic bio-pic of Ivan IV as a patriotic film similar to ALEXANDER NEVSKY (1938), but gradually in his disillusionment with Stalin, his portrait of the tyrannical but effective Czar became a parable of the totalitarian state. Part Two, which may, in retrospect, be better than Part One, ran into political interference, and was not completed on schedule. Once ready for release, Stalin thought he saw disloyal depictions of the absolutist methods of his Soviet State, and it was not shown until 1958, after his death. Part III was planned, but never got the green (or red?) light. Both parts were originally seen in black and white, but recently the banquet scene in Part Two was found in a jarring but ravishing version of Russian Technicolor. Laserdiscs and the new DVD have this print.
Ives, Burl (1909 -1995). Long-lived, legendary itinerant folksinger, who became famous for popularizing American ballads, on stage, radio, TV and in the movies, and who went on to become an actor, distinguished in several parts: EAST OF EDEN (1954), CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF (as Big Daddy, 1957), WIND ACROSS THE EVERGLADES (1958), THE BIG COUNTRY (1958 - Oscar), and OUR MAN IN HAVANA (1959).
Ivory, James (1928 - ). American director who went to India where he formed a company which turned out SHAKESPEARE WALLAH (1964), about a group of wandering players, and his team was on its way. He has been in fashion (A ROOM WITH A VIEW, 1986; HOWARD'S END, 1991) and out of fashion (THE GOLDEN BOWL, 2001). I rather think he is still out of fashion, at the moment. I like best his most complete faillure in every way, THE WILD PARTY (1975).
I WAKE UP SCREAMING **** (H. Bruce Humberstone, 1941): Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Laird Cregar, William Gargan, Alan Mowbray, Alyn Joslyn, Elisha Cook, Jr. Also known as HOT SPOT. This dark little B-movie is about a sister, Jill Lynn (Grable), trying to find out who murdered her beautiful sister Vicky Lynn (Landis), who became "lost" in the big city. She has the unreliable help of Frankie Boticelli -- alias, Frankie Christopher (Mature) -- who was the ambitious model's promoter, and Police Inspector Cornell (Cregar). There are as many twists as there are suspects in this engrossing mystery, with psychotic undertones. Memorable hard black and white photography by Veteran Cinematographer Edward Cronajer, and a Cyril Mockridge score that incorporates intensely themes from THE WIZARD OF OZ. A very early film noir, seldom seen, which employed several actors who went on to have big careers, most importantly in the public eye, dancer Betty Grable and magnificent hunk Mature (one of his best early roles). It is the immense Cregar, though, who really impresses with his ability to own the screen. And Carole Landis, as brittle and beautiful as a living doll, gives her best performance and sings beautifully. (Ironically, like her character, she became "lost" in a scandal involving Rex Harrison, and was dead rather mysteriously by her own hand before she was thirty.) Looking at the film today, you may see the germ of NAKED CITY, THE BLUE DAHLIA, or LAURA; perhaps even TOUCH OF EVIL and PSYCHO. Recommended.
I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE **** (Jacques Tourneur, 1943): Frances Dee, Tom Conway, James Ellison, Edith Barrett, Christine Gordon, Theresa Harris, James Bell. One of the best of the Val Lewton RKO Gothic series. Dee is brought to a Caribbean island as a nurse for a statuesque blonde beauty, who walks in her sleep. Dangerous in a land where Voodoo is practiced. Tremendously atmospheric. Like most of Lewton's productions, the horror is in our imaginations. Another French exile, Tourneur gives excellent direction. The script uses JANE EYRE along with a dash of the first half of the novel Rebecca for its inspiration.
Iwerks, Ub (1900 -1971). The real genius behind Walt Disney. When you look at Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck, you are seeing Ub's handiwork, not that of Walt, who was not a very good draftsman. Iwerks also created the complicated special effects for Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS (1963).
I WONDER WHO'S KISSING HER NOW ** (LLoyd Bacon, 1947): June Haver, Mark Stevens, Martha Stewart (no, another one), Reginald Gardiner, Lenore Aubert, William Frawley, Gene Nelson. An entirely forgettable musical, but June Haver's fresh girl-next-door beauty sent a generation of boys to the library to try to find out where a woman's "now" is. [Sorry, it's the last entry in Maltin, and I couldn't resist it.] Haver married Fred McMurray and retired to raise a family.
A Happy Ending for her and the Letter I.
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Now go to the hands of pffridfdus7 -- Letter J:
http://www.epinions.com/content_3224084612
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This monumental work, to be published in the Fall of 2003 as BIGGAR'S DICTIONARY OF FILM, has been supervised under the General Editorship of Dr. C.W. Onions and Professor Simply Crispy.
Other Editors and their entries:
Artbyjude - B
cripper - F
dedemw - Y
d_fienberg - O
DrDevience - A
food_critic - M
JackSommersby - T
lemon_lime - R
Lynus -K
MACRESARF1 - I
mfunk75 - U
millinocket - C and Q
Pffrdfdus7 - J
Psychovant - D
Simply_Crispy – N and X
Skbreese – G
sleeper54 – P
SusiDee34 – Z
Vormancian - L and V
Weirdo87 - W
Wokelstein - S
Xxxxer -E
Youngchinq – H
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Obediently yours,
[Macresarf1]
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