Hawks Marathon: A Song is Born (1948)

I knew, going into this process, that A Song is Born was a musical remake of Ball of Fire, so I intended to spread them out as much as possible.  A Song is Born was also on Amazon Prime, a service which happens to remove movies without any notice at all, so after about a month, I felt enough time had passed to watch the musical remake.

Boy, they really weren't lying when they called this a remake.  This is exactly the same movie as Ball of Fire.  The difference is that Ball of Fire is obsessed with words, primarily early 1940s slang, while A Song is Born is obsessed with music, primarily jazz.  With the exception of when they play music, it's the same movie and I think almost the exact same dialogue.

Now, I can't say how I'd feel about this movie had I watched it first, but I didn't.  And so I really, really didn't like this movie.  And it's almost entirely due to the fact that everything about it is the same as Ball of Fire, but worse.  Everything is worse.

As I said in my Ball of Fire review, Gary Cooper didn't really do much for me in the few movies I'd seen him in prior to Ball of Fire, but nothing better exemplifies why he's good when you compare him to Danny Kaye in A Song is Born.  Now this is my first Danny Kaye movie and as I understand it, he's a lot different here than this in his other movies.  Which is good because it kind of feels like he's just trying to copy Cooper here, but poorly.

Then there's Virginia Mayo.  She really never had a chance.  Maybe she's good in other things.  But my reference point here is Barbara Stanwyck, and in the words of Howard Hawks, Virginia Mayo is no Barbara Stanwyck.  Few are, but never has that point been more clear than comparing Ball of Fire and A Song is Born.

Hell, I even like Dana Andrews as the gangster more in Ball of Fire than Steve Cochran here.  I'm telling you, every thing about this movie is worse than Ball of Fire.  And like I said, maybe if I hadn't watched that movie first, it'd be different.  Ball of Fire had a spark, the movie kept your attention, there was a rhythm to everything that happened.  This movie is just flat.

Well, except for one thing: the music.  I'd recommend A Song is Born just for the historical document, but I'd also tell you to skip everything but the music.  Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Barnett, Mel Powell - they're all in this movie and playing music and it's great.  It's the only good thing about the movie, but it's so good that it basically makes the movie worth watching by itself.

Speaking of, the plot makes much less sense here than in Ball of Fire too.  A grammarian working on an encyclopedia cut off from the outside world for years?  Makes sense that he isn't up to date on new slang.  A musical encyclopedia that is completely unaware of jazz makes... a lot less sense.  Surely these extremely smart professors know that music is constantly changing and they need to stay up to date.  I don't know, it seems insane to me that these experts on music just have never heard of jazz in 1948.

Sharing my distaste for this movie is... the director himself, Howard Hawks.  Who admitted that he only directed it because it came with a $250,000 paycheck, which is the equivalent of $2.7 million today.  He called Kaye a basket case because he had separated from his wife.  And he didn't have nice things to say about Mayo either, as expressed above.  He said it was a horrible experience.

How much can music save a film?  That's the question I'm debating when giving my grade, but let it be known that whatever my grade, the music is the only redeeming quality in this movie.  Just watch Ball of Fire instead.

2/4 stars

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

Laura (1944): Film Noir at its Finest

I don't know if I'd go as far as to say film noir is my favorite genre, but it's certainly close.  And Laura might be the very best of them.  I will confess I haven't seen quite of the few well-regarded classics so you could take my opinion with a grain of salt - more so than usual.  But still, Laura is a fantastic film.

Laura is a true mystery - I genuinely didn't know who had done it until it was revealed.  Even when the mystery was revealed, I suspected there was a chance McPherson was getting fooled.  The movie accomplishes this by presenting a few legitimate suspects - so many that I think it doesn't matter who was actually guilty in the end.

You'll note I'm not spoiling who did it.  I suspect not everyone who happens upon this blog will have seen this movie and while the mystery is far from the only reason this film is a classic, it's still a damn good mystery.  Ultimately, I think they made the right decision for the killer: in hindsight, he probably makes more sense than the others.

As Roger Ebert notes in his Great Movies review, neither Gene Tierney nor Dana Andrews steals the show.  It's Clifton Webb as Waldo Lydecker, who also happens to get the best lines.  He's not a good person, but he's so clever with his insults that it's almost impossible not to enjoy watching him.  Gene Tierney accomplishes the difficult task of being sort of a vaguely defined character and yet you can completely buy that she captures the infatuations of all these men.  I don't know how 1940 film noir films do this, but it seems to be the one genre that manages to make me understand guys all falling for the same girl.  Maybe it is the 1940s female stars, who certainly weren't better actresses than ones nowadays but somehow had... something else.

Anyway, I loved it and it's a must for any fan of film noir.

4/4 stars