handcrafted by maryann johanson (human) | 100% free of AIs and algorithms
A powerful drama with the flavor of Shakespearean tragedy, On the Waterfront is a timeless story of corruption and those who fight it. Terry Malloy (a mesmerizing Marlon Brando) is a former boxer who works as a goon for union racketeers running the docks in the harbors of New York.
No, sorry, I don’t get it. From Here to Eternity is supposed to be this great, tragic melodrama, but I just don’t see it. As far as I can tell, every dumb guy in this movie has only himself to blame for all the stupid things that happen to him.
It’s got baby gorillas, dogs riding horses, and Jimmy Stewart as a clown. Man, The Greatest Show on Earth is one fun flick.
As if there was any doubt that An American in Paris was nothing but an excuse for some fabulous singing and dancing, the film wraps up with a spectacular 18-minute ballet sequence. It’s got only the vaguest connection to plot or character, but it’s a gorgeous piece of filmmaking.
From the snarky opening scene, I knew I was gonna love All About Eve. Written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, this is perhaps the first film with an attitude we today would call modern.
Goodness me, this movie could not have been more prophetic had Nostradamus himself written it. All the King’s Men, based on Robert Penn Warren’s novel, is the story of Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), a nobody from an unnamed state who rises from the mud of the backcountry to become governor. Along the way, there’s a succession of broads and dead bodies, the use of intoxicating substances and the bribing of state troopers. And finally, oh yeah, impeachment.
To further emphasize this human disjoint from nature, religion enters the argument. One soldier laments that ‘the only thing permanent is death and the Lord,’ the god of humans, of course, whose supposed existence somehow elevates us above nature. Pvt. Witt is a big believer in eternity; he smiles as one of his comrades dies because he ‘knows’ the dying man is going to his immortality. First Sgt. Edward Welsh (a nicely modulated Sean Penn) is the lone voice of rationality (what idealists call cynicism). ‘There’s no other world,’ he says, ‘just this rock,’ but no one seems to pay him much heed.
Olivier’s take on Shakespeare’s story of madness and murder most foul is unmistakably a filmic one — with its monologues recast as internal thoughts heard in hushed voiceovers and use of dizzying camerawork to show Hamlet’s inner turmoil, this could never have worked on stage. The emotional desolation of Elsinore’s inhabitants is conveyed with a roving camera that swoops down on characters plotting or moping in huge, empty halls.
Gentleman’s Agreement proves that The Lost Weekend of two years earlier wasn’t an aberration — Hollywood in the 40s, while not abandoning sheer entertainment (though often with solemn underlying themes), began exploring serious social problems in an upfront manner. Gentleman’s Agreement may be a trifle too earnest at times, but it’s obvious that screenwriter Moss Hart and director Elia Kazan felt strongly about their subject.
In postwar 1946, three soldiers are coming home to their small midwestern city. Air Force Captain Fred Derry (Dana Andrews), a soda jerk before the war, returns to the railyard slums of his parents; Army Sergeant Al Stephenson (Frederic March), VP of a small bank, has a lovely wife (Myrna Loy) and two perfect children waiting for him in their luxury apartment; Homer Parrish (Harold Russell), a Navy grunt and a kid from a middle-class family, has lost both his hands and hides himself away in his parents’ house.
sample sponsored post (sponsored) - Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Fusce quis risus odio.
