The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

After skipping another week - my job was annoyingly and perfectly calibrated to cause posting any of these at night to be either impractical or literally impossible - I'm back this week.  And I'll have to delay my Orson Welles marathon once again, because I have once again watched an older movie that has inspired me to write about it.

In this case, it's an acknowledged classic, The Best Years of Our Lives.  Unlike Freaks, which went unappreciated in its time, The Best Years of Our Lives could literally have not been more appreciated.  It won seven Oscars and was the highest grossing film of the 1940s.  Critical and commercial success does not even begin to describe this film's reception.

Does it hold up is the question.  It was made 74 years ago - I doubt anyone reading this actually watched it in theaters when it first came out.  And it tackles what was then not really that well-known.  That veterans have a lot of trouble when they return home from war.

And the answer is yes and no.  I'll say this for the movie: given the time period and what the movie is tackling not to mention the Hays Code, I don't actually think it was possible for this movie to hold up completely no matter what they did, given how much more knowledge we have about veterans.  Like I think it holds up as well as you can reasonably expect.

I'll share my specific gripe, and while I say gripe, I don't actually know if the movie had a choice in this respect.  But first, the good parts: Harold Russell.  Just like Freaks, this movie benefits heavily from some serious realism and casting a man who had his hands blown off and has to function with hooks is one of the movie's greatest benefits.  What's it like to come back to war with literally a part of your body missing?  That's Harold Russell and the character he plays here's story.

Also, Fredric March plays Al Stephenson, and in his case, I actually think it benefits from being in 1946.  Because a more modern movie would make a much bigger deal about his alcoholism.  This movie just has it be a thing.  It doesn't comment on it.  He's just heavily drinking in just about every scene.  His wife is a goddamn saint, and given that the movie doesn't cover that much time, it's reasonable to think she will have put up with it for that long - but it won't be forever.

Then there's Captain Fred Derry, played by Dana Andrews.  He impulsively marries a woman 20 days before he has to leave for the war and he pays the consequences.  He barely knows the woman and they run into issues pretty much immediately.  And while they don't exactly make the wife particularly likable, I will say that her comment that he came back a different person is probably true and a reason for their struggles.

However, to my gripe.  The romance with Stephenson's daughter, Peggy, as played by Virginia Mayo.  First off, for me anyway, it gets off to a rough start.  Derry is immediately aggressively pursuing her, and yes he's drunk, but he hasn't even seen his wife yet.  When he's sober, he's more reticent, so you can safely blame the booze, but uh, I can tell you that if booze will so easily have him attempt to cheat on his wife, he's definitely going to cheat on Virginia Mayo at some point.

Secondly, it's very much not clear how old Peggy is supposed to be.  She lives with her parents and it's at least somewhat of a surprise she's not married yet, but since this is 1946, that could very well be "she's 20."  Dana Andrews looks 40, although I think he was in the late 30s and is meant to playing someone younger than that.  So I spent a good portion of the movie wondering if this movie was being creepier than intended.  I think this might just be a weird convergence of "Dana Andrews doesn't look young, Virginia Mayo looks young, and also I'm very used to people in Hollywood at 24 playing teenagers."

The age thing, whatever, that comes with the territory with older movies and I acknowledge I'm reading too much into it.  My problem is that this movie is trying to reflect reality - and it accomplishes that with the alcoholic and Harold Russell.  With Andrews, it's Hollywood.  A true reflection of his story is more bleak.  He impulsively married someone he didn't know, that should absolutely not have a happy ending.  The romance is there purely because he needs a happy ending and for some reason, having her be Al's daughter is the most convenient for plot-reasons.

So when I say it does age well and it doesn't, that's what I mean.  I think a bleaker ending for Andrews' character would have made this movie absolutely perfect.  You have the purely happy ending, the marriage, the not really but seems like a happy ending with the alcoholism, and then the not so good ending.  Instead the scale is off.  And I get why.  It was made in 1946 and I'm not even sure if director William Wyler was allowed to make a sad ending about World War II veterans because of the Hays Code.

Speaking of Wyler, he absolutely earned that Best Director win.  It's a very long movie that deserves its length.  He made the decision to cast non-actor, Russell, in a part for authenticity.  Russell rewarded him by winning an honorary Oscar, because the Academy thought he had no shot to win, and then he won for Best Supporting Actor too, making him the only person to win two Oscars for the same movie.  It's well-paced and he is able to utilize access to an abandoned strip of fighter jets late in the movie.

Gregg Toland was the cinematographer, who might be one of the greatest of all time in his field.  He unfortunately died very young two years later, but he had built up quite the resume even before this movie, such as Citizen Kane and The Grapes of Wrath.  He was nominated for six Oscars, winning one, but he didn't even get nominated for his work here.

All in all, like I said, I wish one of the stories got a sad ending and the most obvious route is the guy who knew his wife for two seconds before he got married, but I don't think it's realistic to expect that given the time period so it's stupid to blame them for that.  And otherwise, it holds up, which is an incredible achievement by itself.

3.5/4 stars

Freaks (1932)

I have recently discovered I have access to Turner Classic Movie online, which has the added effect of making me watch many, many older movies as of late.  I was under the mistaken impression that the TCM channel was full of old movies with no discernment of quality, but I have found that actually there are something like 20 good movies on that channel at any given time.

It has opened me up to a wonderful list of movies that may have taken me years to get to, if at all.  One of these such movies was Freaks, the 1932 horror classic that was reportedly so scary that it was banned in the UK for over 30 years after its release.

That's a great tagline, but I did not find this movie scary.  It doesn't even really seem like it's supposed to be a horror movie.  It's an everyday slice of life film that turns into a revenge flick.  And I fucking loved it.

Yeah, if you're wondering why I'm taking the time to write about this specific movie instead of the other TCM movies, it's because I loved this movie.  I mean I loved this movie so much that it might legitimately be one of my favorite movies ever.

The "freaks" in question seem to refer to the carnival sideshow performers, who range from dwarf siblings, conjoined twins, a legless man, a limbless man, and microcephalic characters.  For the first half of this movie, the movie just chronicles their everyday lives, and shows how they're just as normal as you and me.

As far as the plot is concerned, it's minimal.  A woman in the sideshow named Cleopatra, who is "normal," wants to seduce one of the dwarves, marry him, and steal his money.  She schemes with Hercules, a strongman.  Cleopatra played by Russian actress Olga Baclanova, forgets she's not in silent movies anymore and plays her way over the top, but it works anyway, because she's more or less meant to be cartoonishly evil.

The movie benefits greatly from the fact that all the performers are really genetic anomalies.  They're the real deal.  We are really watching a limbless man light a cigarette with just his mouth.  We are really watching a man with no legs getting around with only his arms and hands.  No movie trickery.  

Browning was also the real deal.  Before he was a film director, he was in a traveling circus much like the one featured in the movie.  That comes through in the final product.  It feels like what it would be like to travel with sideshow performers during the Great Depression.

Speaking of, another added layer to this movie is when it was made.  Right in the heart of the Great Depression.  And right at the absolute height of the eugenics movement.  At least retrospectively, it is seen as a rejection of that movement, a celebration of people with differences.  Perhaps not quite as necessary today, but the normal, every day interactions of the "freaks" serves to normalize them to everyone else.

Which absolutely did not work at the time.  Freaks had a test screening in late 1931 that apparently made people literally run, and I mean run, out of the theater halfway through the movie.  The movie studio cut THIRTY minutes off the movie, and the version we see today is the reduced 64 minute version.  Wikipedia features an absolutely shocking review, which makes me think audiences at the time didn't like the movie for a very... unfortunate reason.

does not thrill and at the same time does not please, since it is impossible for the normal man or woman to sympathize with the aspiring midget. And only in such a case will the story appeal

What the fuck??  So yeah my suspicion is that people simply didn't want to look at the "freaks" and that's why it was not appreciated at its time and not for any other reason.  It was reevaluated during the 1960s by European audiences, being shown at the 1962 Venice Film Festival and that eventually spread its way to America.

I don't consider this a horror movie to be honest.  The ending is, to be fair, filmed like a horror movie.  The rest of the movie isn't at all.  But at that point, I'm full on rooting for these guys.  It's like me rooting for Django to kill slave owners.  Are they brutal?  Yes.  Do the villains of the piece deserve it?  Fuck yeah do.

This movie was banned in the UK for 30 years, and for anyone expecting a justification of that, it's literally just because they didn't want to look at people with disabilities.  That's it.  In the original cut of the movie, Hercules was castrated, so yeah I could see it there.  But it was cut and there is no such implication of that happening.

The one flaw of the movie is a flaw I completely forgive: the ending is very abrupt.  It's clear it was bungled by cutting thirty freaking minutes of the movie.  Even so, that hardly impacts the final product.  Freaks is a great movie and dare I say one of my favorite movies ever.

4/4 stars

Welles Marathon: The Stranger (1946)

After a slight hiatus caused partially due to the fact that the MLB playoffs were happening and I think I just forgot about this last week, this feature is back.  I have just four more Orson Welles movies to cover.  Unfortunately, I haven't seen three of those movies in about a month, so my shoddy memory is going to have to be relied upon.  I'll make sure to put this disclaimer for each of the three where it applies.

I had certain expectations for most Welles movies - he has a ton of movies that he's either made or been in that are part of lists that I follow to determine classic movies to watch.  This is a double-edged sword.  Expectations are not necessarily the greatest thing to have when watching a movie, at least not in my case, because they tend to influence my opinion of the film for better or worse.  

If you go in expecting a classic, and the movie has some flaws, you are disappointed.  And it is very rare to find an older movie - from around Welles time - that is without flaws.  If you can watch a movie blind, which is a different type of risk, you and the movie are on neutral ground.

I bring all that up because I had never heard of The Stranger.  The Stranger, by all accounts, is a run-of-the-mill film noir, or so I was guessing.  It's not on any "Best of" lists whether that be all-time, the specific year it was made, or even within its own genre of film noir.  I had no real reason to expect much when I started this film.

So maybe it was that, but this is probably the film that surprised me the most in this marathon.  I liked this better than The Lady from Shanghai and I liked it better than The Touch of Evil.  I will not deny that both of those films are perhaps better from a filmmaking perspective - more innovative and whatnot.

But the brass tacks of actually making a good movie?  I think this is more effective.  The Stranger, on the heels of the end of World War II, is about an investigator who follows a famous Nazi into a small town in Connecticut to arrest him for war crimes.

It's not a chase movie despite the beginning premise.  The Nazi blends into the small town, and the investigator needs to learn who it is.  We learn who it is immediately.  That's how simple the premise is.  The investigator is played by Edward G Robinson, usually more well-known as a gangster tough guy.  He does what's needed for role, which is simply to be invested in him catching the Nazi, played by Welles.  

Welles has the harder part and he steps up to the challenge.  He needs to convince us how he's able to infiltrate the town - he does so by seeming to be normal, but there is just enough off about his performance that he's never completely lost the Nazi side of him.  And when he takes off the mask, so to speak, it's not completely disconnected from the rest of his performance.

The cast is rounded out by Loretta Young, Welles new bride, Phillip Mervale, a judge and the father of the bride, and Richard Long, the bride's brother.  But the real stars of the movie are Robinson and Welles, and the others are just there to support them.  (Young does get a bit more to do than I'm suggesting)

The Stranger is notable for two reasons.  The first is that it was the first film to feature footage of Nazi concentration camps following World War II, which maybe doesn't seem as shocking to us as it did at the time, but just for that fact alone, I'm surprised this movie isn't more well-known.  The second is that it's the only movie of Welles to show a profit in its original release.  So it was a fairly popular movie at the time.

If you're looking for a good film noir, you can't do much worse than The Stranger.  Hopefully, I haven't built up your expectations too much so that you don't suffer the same fate as I have with other Welles' projects.

4/4 stars