Have I mentioned that I love movies? Gosh, I sure do! With my interest right now in older movies, I spend quite a bit of time perusing the schedule for Turner Classic Movies in an effort to discover older films that I may have missed. As I wrote in an earlier post, in my younger days I didn’t like the films of Laurel and Hardy but appreciate them now, and I’m wondering what else I’ve missed. It’s fascinating to me that a movie which is fifty, sixty, seventy years old or older can be brand new to someone who’s only seeing it for the first time—even if the fashions, styles, and technology are all obviously dated.
One such film is “Sunset Boulevard” from 1950, which a friend and former co-worker turned me onto recently. I knew about the film but never really had an interest in watching it; what I fool I was! TCM showed it early during their 31 Days of Oscar programming in March, and my friend was lamenting that she was out of town the night it was running and would miss it. So I took it upon myself to record the film to my DVR with the intention of putting it onto a DVD for her. To paraphrase my friend, it’s a sharp and smart movie to say the least. Actually, I think this movie is pure genius. That a film about a down and out screenwriter (William Holden as Joe Gillis) who is treated better after he dies than when is he alive, and a disposable silent movie star (Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond) who’s all but forgotten by a Hollywood system that hasn’t necessarily changed for the better, ever got made in the first place is the $25,000 question; it doesn’t expose the dark undersides of 1950 Hollywood, but it’s not a flattering picture either. Some odd real life twists in this movie. Swanson’s butler is played by Erich von Stroheim; in one scene he’s running a movie projector as Gillis and Desmond are watching one of her silent films. The film: 1929s “Queen Kelly” starring Gloria Swanson and directed by von Stroheim--and this in a film that’s lamenting how silent movie stars had been forgotten by that time. An excellent film, right up to the end where Gloria Swanson looks straight into the camera and utters the oft misquoted line, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close up.” This one has quickly moved up in the ranks of my favorite films.
Lately I’ve been watching a lot of Jimmy Cagney movies. My interest in his films was kindled a few months back when I recorded “Picture Snatcher” from 1933. Cagney usually played the gangster or thug type character, and he played them well. Though many of the characters he portrayed early in his career were violent types, Cagney brought a sense of class and calm composure to these roles, almost as if these violent men understood the value of making their intended victims live in fear before the coup de grace. “Picture Snatcher” was a bit of a change, as he played an ex-con who tries to go legit after being released from prison by taking pictures for a newspaper. At one point he sneaks a camera into a prison in order to photograph an execution, something that actually occurred in 1927 when Tom Howard, a crime photographer in Chicago, secretly photographed the execution of Ruth Snyder in Sing Sing Prison.
Today for lunch my fare is chicken fried chicken (which seems repetitively redundant) and Cagney’s 1931 breakthrough film, “The Public Enemy.” Cagney had played a few roles in the two years leading up to this one, but “Enemy” was the one that put him on the map. Originally, co-star Edward Woods (no relation to the legendary B-movie director Ed Wood) was cast to play the lead role of Tom Powers that Cagney would go on to play. In the film Cagney and Woods play two childhood buddies who go from being juvenile delinquents to big-time players in the bootleg beer business during Prohibition. Most people are somewhat familiar with this movie—the scene where Cagney shoves a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s face appears in this film. There are two scenes I find humorous in this movie. First, during the opening credits, there was a time when instead of listing a cast of characters movies would open up with the actors themselves appearing with the name of the character they played next to or underneath their image. When Cagney makes his appearance in the credits, he grins at the camera and makes a punch-like motion with his right hand. I’m sure in 1931 everyone interpreted it as him throwing an imaginary punch; to me it looks like a vaguely obscene and suggestive hand gesture. But as my friends would be quick to point out, I’m a little “off” anyway. The other scene comes about twenty minutes into the film when Cagney and Woods, flush with money after their first real successful heist, are being fitted for new suits. The tailor taking measurements is quite fey, grabbing Cagney’s upperarm and stating, “Oh, what a muscle!” I’m surprised that character even made it into the final cut as production codes at the time prohibited effeminate male characters. By way of degrees of separation, Robert O’Conner, who plays the Irish bootlegger Paddy Ryan, also appears in the aforementioned “Sunset Boulevard” as Jonesy, the older guard at the Paramount gate, which was his last film role.
Another Cagney movie I’ve enjoyed watching lately is “White Heat.” It was made in 1949 and was Cagney’s first gangster role in a decade. He made eleven movies during that ten year period, “Yankee Doodle Dandy” being perhaps the most memorable of those. The script for “White Heat” is supposedly based on Ma Barker and her criminal family. Cagney plays a gangster with a mother complex who takes the rap for a crime to protect his mother and the location of a large amount of stolen money. While in prison a mole planted there by the police tried to befriend him in an attempt to find out where the money is. The two of them break out of prison and Cagney hooks up with his old gang in order to steal the payroll at a chemical company. Cagney finds out his friend is a police detective in the middle of the robbery, by which time the place is crawling with “coppers.” He escapes the payroll office and finds his way to the top of a chemical tank, where police, obviously not concerned with setting off a huge explosion, open fire on him. As the flames caused by broken chemical lines surround him, he looks up and yells, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” about the time the chemical tank explodes. The film is almost fifty-six years old but it still holds up well after all this time. An excellent script, and the storyline moves along very well. And I can’t wait to get home this afternoon as I set my DVR to record two more movies of his this afternoon: “Angels with Dirty Faces” and “The Roaring Twenties.”
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