The Breaking Point

Michael Curtiz, 1950, bw (8.7*)
Well after To Have and Have Not (1944), which was loosely based on the Ernest Hemingway novel and which introduced Bacall to Bogart, this remake from famed director Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) attempted to remain more faithful to the novel, and the author himself thought it was the finest cinema adaptation of any of his works. This was a much more serious and cynical treatment than the Hollywoodish original.

John Garfield is the small boat captain who’s not too particular about who hires out his boat, as he’s seeing some rough economic times, and he needs to make a boat payment pronto or it could e repossessed. He takes on a charter that definitely involves clandestine, illegal activity that may find him in over his head.

Patricia Neal turns in one of her best performances as the woman who drifts into his life from the other side of tracks (or other side of the harbor in this case), and her coy, self-assured demeanor seems more real than Lauren Bacall’s in the original (and I liked Neal even more), as if she’s honed this act on many men before now, and on a classier batch then Garfield. The two had an apathetic, jaded type of chemistry onscreen, which seems more likely given most Hemingway characters; Garfield treated her like a distraction, not an attraction.

The reason the film has been forgotten is that just before it’s release Garfield was called to testify before the HUAC in Congress, and the studio dropped support for the film and the actor like a hot potato, and Garfield’s career never really recovered, ending just two years later. Though Garfield is certainly no Bogart as an actor, in a way he’s even more of an average joe type of guy, so this is the perfect role for him.

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Outcast of the Islands

Carol Reed, 1951, bw (9.0*)
One of the best adaptations of any Joseph Conrad novel, this is from his Almayer series, about a British merchant (Robert Morley) on a Malayan island paradise. In this tale, an unscrupulous white trader, Trevor Howard, falls in love with a beautiful native islander and basically sells his soul for money so he can entire her away. I and many others think that Howard gave his best performance here, as a weak anti-hero, but really as a typical, self-serving individual.

A terrific cast of veteran British actors includes (along with Morley and Howard), Ralph Richardson, Wilfred Hyde-White, and Wendy Hiller. Conrad had a way of using real action to explore and reveal the depths of one’s character (or a group), such as in this, Heart of Darkness, and The Nigger of the Narcissus. This was one of my favorite novels of his and Reed has done it justice.

There are some haunting images in this that one will never forget, especially some shot in a torrential tropical rainstorm. I would say this is a a must-see, overlooked classic, perhaps Reed’s best film. It received two BAFTA nominations, for best film and best British film.

This is an unjustly overlooked film, and has only been rated by 300 people at IMDB, while dumb, sophmoric comedies have over a hundred thousand. It's due to be released on DVD in 2012. Look for it.

Mostly noted for the noirish The Third man (1949, bw), Reed also directed the Oscar®-winning best picture Oliver! (1967), the musical based on Dickens’ novel, which was a birarre concept but it worked, except for a lead actor who couldn’t sing a lick, but Oscar-nominee Jack Wild was super as Artful Dodger, which led to his own tv show for kids, appropriately named H. R. Puff-n-Stuff. I recently reviewed Reed’s suspense thriller Odd Man Out (1947), with IRA gunman James Mason on the lam.

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I Vitelloni

Federico Fellini, Italy, 1953, bw (8.4*)
Enjoyable early Fellini comedy film about a group of slackers, ne’er do wells who are content to merely chase women, drink, and dream rather than apply themselves to constructive endeavors.

One of a small group of friends, Fausto Moretti, seduces Sandra, a sister of his friend and companion Moraldo Rubini, then against his intuition, he does the right thing and marries her. After their honeymoon, he takes a boring job as a salesman of religious objects in a small shop that barely has any customers. He still looks at (and goes for) other women, along with his friends. He even mistakes some messages from his bosses wife and tries to seduce her, and is fired.

Still, not much changes in the lives of any of the group. This film is not about going anywhere in particular, but just as much about not making much effort to get anywhere either, and have some pleasures along the road to nowhere if possible. Fellini is merely giving us a snapshot here of a lazy lifestyle, or rather a beautifully photographed cinematic portrait, in the era of the growing beatnik movement, when work was considered the opposite of freedom.

Vitellone is literal for fatted veal calf, but on the dvd, Fellini defines it as aimless, do-nothing guys, or slackers. It is said that this film is autobiographical, at least partially so. It is also given credit for defining the modern term, or usage of slackers as well.

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Le Plaisir

aka House of Pleasure (U.S.)
Max Ophüls, France, 1952, bw (8.2*)
This Ophüls' film of French romance is divided into three episodes, corresponding to three Guy De Maupassant short stories. In the two short stories that bookend the title one, we actually find the bitter sarcasm typical of Maupassant's style, though somewhat softened by Ophüls' sympathic human touch.

The first story is a man who disguises himself as a much younger man so he can still go out on the town and enjoy balls, dancing, and the company of younger women. Meanwhile, his wife waits at home, resigned to his activities and his fight to retain lost youth. It's little more than an introductory vignette into French night life, and is actually sad as "father time" gets us all in the end.

The excellent centerpiece here is "La maison Tellier", the brothel of a French province town, and is typical Ophüls, beautifully designed and filmed; in fact, the art direction was nominated for an Oscar. It's also the longest section of the film. We are shown the brothel of the title first through it's windows, as if an outsider peeking inside, and the camera moves from room to room from this outside position. The house has two parts, one for commoners, like sailors, connected to the bar. The other, for the well-to-do, is upstairs and visited by all the town's wealthiest merchants and politicians, and it's interesting that all these 'respectable' citizens have wives and children at home, and we see them making excuses (lies) to rush off the the brothel after supper.

In the film's integral section, the prostitutes take a day off to go to a First Communion celebration in the countryside, for the niece of the madame. Ophüls shows us this episode with fondness, a willingness to forgive people their faults and pettiness, adding the director's sense of humor. When the brothel is realized closed by the local men, the whole social order is upset and they become beacons of unrest. Sailors start a brawl, and even respectable citizens, such as the mayor and merchants, begin petty quarrels.  The beautiful Danielle Darrieux lends her beautiful talents to this story, as well as Jean Gabin (La Grande Illusion), who plays Joseph at the country estate they visit, and who tries to give Danielle his own personal 'thanks' in her room at one point.

The courtesans are actually moved by the Communion Mass, and are soon all weeping, perhaps realizing some lost innocence of their own. But as soon as it's over, they rush off to the train because "the house can be closed for one night, but not two" (heck, the town would likely be in flames!) In spite of their hurry, it's a gorgeous day so they stop and all pick flowers. The day makes a poetic, pastoral contrast to their typical night life of drinking, dancing, and partying til dawn.

The last story features Simone Simon as a woman seen by an artist on the street, who is infatuated with her beauty. She becomes his model, then lover, as they move in together after his paintings of her start to sell. However, passions based on beauty don't always last, and this story is no different. Perhaps the most cynical response to love of the three stories, it's also the most realistic, showing how many people simply settle for their lives.

Fans of this film (in 1957, Kubrick said it was 'his favorite') and Ophüls should also watch La Ronde, similar in style in that it's a series of stories about romance revolving around common friends who party in the same circle. Perhaps his finest film, however, is The Earrings of Madame D., click for our review (#268 on our top 1000 films compendium).

This is among the most visually beautiful of all the works of Ophüls, who himself is one of the best in French cinema; ironic, since he emigrated there from Germany (born Max Oppenheimer). Ophüls said, "everyone has two fatherlands, his own and Paris". From Germany, he emigrated there because he liked "breakfast with cognac in your glass, gigolos and prostitutes at night".

Note: this style has been copied often, especially from the 90's on.. see our upcoming review of Hsien-hsiang Hou's Three Times for a similar recent film about Taiwan.

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Nights of Cabiria

Federico Fellini, Italy, 1957, bw (8.5*)
Cabiria is a wide-eyed, waifish street walker from a poor section of Rome, wonderfully played by Guilietta Masina. We can pretty much surmise her life from the few scenes shown to us by Fellini.

She only seeks true love, but is instead nearly drowned by her boyfriend, who also steals money from her. A movie star takes her home. An accountant says he saw her on the stage once, fate brought them together again. and so on.. In spite of all this, she still inhabits a sad and lonely world - after all, this is Italian realism. No "pretty woman", this is more like real life - the hookers in Hollywood (Klute, Pretty Woman, L.A. Confidential, with Oscars for those 3 actresses by the way) all seem to be only the high-class escort variety, not real streetwalkers.

This is a simple film, carried totally by the performance of Masina, who snares the audience early and then you're caught. To me, this is the best performance in all of Fellini's films. She seems resigned to her life, yet is also childishly hopeful. She still possesses a vitality that life should have drained by now. The fact that Fellini is her husband makes this perhaps the finest collaboration of spouses in Italian cinema. Thankfully, Fellini didn't fill this story with surrealism, it's more like La Strada than 8 ½.

Oscar winner for foreign language film, and a total of 15 awards, 4 for Giulietta Masina for best actress. No. 223 on the IMDB 250, No. 136 on our compendium of all net polls.

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The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T

Roy Rowland, 1953 (8.2*)
Totally fantastic story by Dr. Seuss, who also provided the set design and some song lyrics. This wonderful spoof of childhood music lessons features Hans Conreid as diabolical Dr. Terwilliker, who is writing the world's first piano concerto for 500 boys on a monstrous serpentine piano of his own creation, hence the film's title - his concerto takes 5,000 fingers.

Tommy Rettig plays one of the music students, who are basically held prisoner, and forced to play rehearse nearly all the time, staying in cells, and with the music school surrounded by an electrified fence. His help comes in the form of a surrogate dad, played by Peter Lind Hayes, who is an amateur inventor with a planned surprise invention for Dr. Terwilliker.

This is a fun movie all-around, it's surprising that it's not better known, given it's Dr. Seuss connection. It's just crazy enough to be an unforgettable children's fantasy.

Just one of the goofy set designs of

Dr. Seuss in 5,000 Fingers

The piano that seats 500 boys

I want one of these hand beanies

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Touch of Evil

Orson Welles, 1958, bw (8.3*)

Whether you love Welles or not, you have to admit that this is one unique and bizarre crime film. True to classic noir, this one also has its seminal scenes at night, in fact most of the action is in the dark, like the souls of many in this film. It's a dark and almost dreary film, but that's true of much of classic noir.

Charlton Heston is Mike Vargas, a Mexican narcotics officer, whose honeymoon to Janet Leigh is interrupted by a murder in a border town that happens after someone places a bomb in the trunk of a car on the Mexican side of the border that then drives back across, while on the same street. Vargas is soon dealing with the police chief on the U.S. side, a long-time corrupted Hank Quinlan, to whom his law is 'the law', played with cynical gusto by Orson Welles. Quinlan is all too ready to convict an innocent Mexican-American, but Vargas begins probing into his checkered past.

Meanwhile his wife Susie (Leigh) is not only out of danger at a seedy motel, but right in the middle; this part is inexplicably broken up by a sudden comic appearance by Dennis Weaver as the dumbfounded but pruriently interested hotel clerk, in one of the more bizarre performances in cinema history.

This examines racism along the Mexican border as well as police corruption, and does it in classic film noir dark palette and lighting, with hardly a character you'd want to know personally, even Heston's, for he wouldn't last long in the real world by diving into the fire. More than a clash of individual personalities and ethics, it becomes an inter-racial and cross-cultural statement on mutual cooperation and understanding.

Those interested in Welles should by all means see Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. Touch of Evil is No. 125 on the IMDB 250, and is No. 30 on our compendium of all film polls - so it's obviously ranked much higher by critics than the public.

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Diabolique

aka Les Diaboliques
Henri-Georges Clouzot, France, 1955, bw (8.7*)
In this classic French suspense film, Michel (Paul Meurisse), the principal of a boarding school for boys has a wife Nicole (Simone Signoret), and a mistress Christina (Vera Clouzot, the Brazilian wife of the director), who are both teachers at the school. Michel is abusive, and his wife convinces the mistress to help her murder him.

Things go well at first, and like most crime films, things start to go wrong. First the husband's body goes missing, and then a retired police inspector shows up who is determined to help Nicole find her missing husband. He seems to be interested in Nicole himself, so he won't leave her alone.

This film is pretty Hitchcockian in its own way, it's just missing his trademark humor and brevity. This film doesn't spend much time developing the plot, it dives right in. It's actually more sophisticated than most murder films; it's more psychological than pathological, and displays more suspense (and no gore) than American murder films. It was actually poorly remade here with Sharon Stone, but I would definitely skip that poor imitation.

Diabolique is No. 182 on the IMDB 250, and won 3 awards. Director Clouzot directed the classic The Wages of Fear, also The Raven, made at the end of World War II, about a poison pen letter writer in a small town. Each of these films is a classic in its own way.

Véra Clouzot and Simone Signoret in Diabolique

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The Lavender Hill Mob

Charles Crichton, 1951, bw (8.5*)
This is one of a line of wonderful Ealing Studios British comedies in classic b&w, the best of which starred Alec Guinness, such as the futuristic spoof of capitalism, The Man in the White Suit, in which a scientist invents an indestructible cloth; and The Ladykillers, remade with Tom Hanks, in which a scholarly gang of bank robbers rents a room in a boarding house from which to tunnel into a bank. Also, my favorite, Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), a hilarious spoof of tontines in which one member becomes a serial killer in order to hasten his collecting the booty.

In The Lavender Hill Mob, Guinness heads a small group of criminals who plot to steal a truckload of gold buillion (he works on the shipments, so he's the inside man), then smuggle it in a very unique way, which of course, cannot be foolproof, this being a crime comedy.
The cast is one of those typically talented veteran British casts, headed by Stanley Holloway, a later Oscar®-winner for My Fair Lady; Guinness would later win for actor in The Bridge On the River Kwai. The only time they still make comedies like these is when they remake one of these. These each had something unique for their time and became archetypal spoof of whatever they tackled. The general theme with most of these is 'greedy people, even if well off, will even resort to murder to gain even more wealth, and they aren't always the sharpest tacks in the toolbox either'.

If you like the crime spoof comedies, be sure to check out the late Italian master Mario Monicelli's hilarious take on heist films Big Deal on Madonna St (1959) Italy, bw with a gang that severely lacked a mastermind, or really any type of mind. Monicelli died last year at 95, after working on over 100 films as either director or writer.

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Bad Day at Black Rock

John Sturges, 1955 (8.8*)
In one of the more bizarre crime films ever, Spencer Tracy plays a one-armed stranger who arrives one day in the near ghost town of Bad Rock, somewhere in the desert southwest. He is not the only Oscar® winner in this incredible cast - others in the town include Oscar winners Ernest Borgnine, Walter Brennan, and Lee Marvin, and also features Robert Ryan (in one of his best performances), Russell Collins, Anne Francis, and Dean Jagger. Ryan, Borgnine, and Marvin all shine here as despicable bad guys; Tracy, in his dark suit and white shirt, is an open contrast to everyone else's languid casualness and bored apathy.

Tracy is mysterious about his visit, and the locals are all tight-lipped, unfriendly, and act very suspicious, especially when he names the man he is looking for, who is apparently long absent. As the story develops, the narrative evolves from mystery to thriller to crime. This is a short, fact, sparse film, without much dialogue or wasted footage. (Perhaps the real mystery of this film is why anyone would choose to live here in the first place)

This was one of the first films to openly deal with racism towards Asian-Americans, and as such it demands a place in the history of american cinema. It forces the viewer to witness those who take a moral stand vs. those who don't, much like a classic western. As such, it really is an updating of westerns, placing people in the same setting but a century later. The desert setting, and the resulting heat, work as metaphors for the type of ethical vacuum these characters live in.

The entire movie was shot in the Alabama Hills section of the Sierra foothills, near Lone Pine, California in the Owens Valley, east of the Sierras, with a view of Mt. Whitney in the background - it's a famous destination for campers and backpackers (I've been there many times myself - the sun setting on the Inyo Mountains, then rising on the eastern face of the Sierras makes the trip there a lifetime experience).

Nominated for three Oscars®, actor (Tracy, who won best actor at Cannes), director, and screenplay (Millard Kaufman), nominated for a BAFTA for best film, a director's guild award for Sturges. This film has only 7k ratings at IMDB, which is dreadfully low for a classic American movie. Ernest Borgnine won the Oscar® that year (55) for his performance in best picture winner Marty. Awards page at IMDB

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Witness For the Prosecution

Billy Wilder, 1957, bw (8.3*)  bw

This is my second favorite film of an Agatha Christie story (this was a short story, not a novel), after And Then There Were None from French director René Clair. I believe this story is unique for her, as it's a legal film, with the entire story unfolding in a courtroom, but it still has the Christie touch, meaning an unexpected plot twist that most can't see coming.

An excellent cast makes this film better than it would have been from the story alone. The impeccable Charles Laughton, a two-time best actor winner, here an aging attorney recovering from a near fatal heart attack, agrees to defend Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power) in a murder case, in spite of the fact that his wife, Marlene Dietrich, is going to be a witness for the prosecution. Dietrich turns in one of her best dramatic performances, relying on acting in this film, not her beauty nor her sultry singing.

Though not one of Wilder's best (perhaps a little too 'Hollywood'), such as Sunset Boulevard, Stalag 17, Some Like It Hot (perhaps if it had started with an 's'), or The Apartment, it's still a very good mystery, and a good courtroom drama, and Wilder's only work with Laughton or Dietrich. Fans of Christie, or Laughton, who was one of the best actors ever on film, will not be disappointed.

Nominated for 6 Oscars® (Picture, director, actor for Laughton, supporting for Elsa Lanchester, who won the Golden Globe), 5 Golden Globes, and 5 other awards, and ranked #129 on the IMDB top 250, with a rating of 8.4, the same as I gave it - not quite as high for me as And Then There Were None.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, The Seven Year Itch, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, The Fortune Cookie.

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The Seventh Seal

[This is our 700th film reviewed]
Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1957, bw (9.2*)
Though not particularly pleasant viewing as it deals with a dying world amid a plague, this is probably Bergman's masterpiece, and a film that generally goes beyond cinema and into the realm of mythic art. Max Von Sydow plays a medieval knight returning home, who is trying to escape the bubonic plague with his family.

He is constantly shadowed by death, the Grim Reaper (Bengt Ekerot, as the most compelling character in the film) who tells him its time - a pale faced figure in a black cloak with whom he plays an ongoing game of chess for his life [see photo below], with whom he discusses life and death and God. Full of moody, gothic, yet beautiful black and white images, the film almost seems to be medieval paintings in motion. The overfall effect of this film is hypnotic; Bergman was at the height of his directing eye in composing these frames. I'm not usually a Bergman fan (his films are sometimes more painful than a trip to the dentist, and often longer, without the same positive result), but this film is easy to recommend. I'm just rating it down a notch from perfect because it's just so grim a story.

This is one of just three films that Woody Allen said went "beyond cinema and became art" - the other two being Antonioni's L'avventura (1960) and Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937).

The famous chess match with the Grim Reaper

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Summertime

David Lean, 1955 (8.6*)
Beautifully shot soap opera as American spinster Katharine Hepburn (at her most beautiful), while traveling in Venice, strikes up a romance with married Rossano Brazzi. There's nothing deep here, but Lean's direction makes eye candy of both the city and both stars. This is one of the best and most palatable romances ever put on film. Lean never allows the melodrama to go beyond credibility; I'm sure most viewers have had a travel romance similar to this one.

David Lean, who would later helm best picture (and director) winners Bridge On the River Kwai and
Lawrence of Arabia, was nominated for a best director Oscar®, and he won the NY Film Critics award for director. Hepburn was deservedly nominated for a best actress Oscar® in one of her most credible and touching performances. This is a romance that I can watch over and over, which is rare for this type of film.

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The Wages of Fear

Henri-Georges Clouzot, France, 1953, bw (8.4*)
aka La Salaire de la Peur
Best Picture (BAA)
Excellent French film in classic b&w, now considered by many an all-time classic. Yves Montand leads the cast as one of four hungry, jobless men in the middle of nowhere in South America who agree to drive trucks of nitro-glycerin for an oil company in order to put out an oil well fire. Naturally, this is an extremely explosive situation, the slightest jolt could set off the chemicals.

One of the more tense, suspensful films ever made, so popular that it was reshot in 1977 as Sorcerer by William Friedkin, shortly after his success with The French Connection.

Beautifully shot by master director Clouzot, who made The Raven and Diabolique, and many other classic films. The beautiful babe playing Linda is Clouzot's wife Vera Clouzot. This was her first film - she only appeared in films by Clouzot, Diabolique being the most famous. [photo below]

Winner of 5 awards, all best film awards, including a BAFTA for "best film from any source". Now #174 all-time on the IMDB top 250, which is amazing for a French bw film from thr 50's..

Vera Clouzot, wife of director Henri-Georges, a Brazilian born musician -

she only appeared in Clouzot films, notably Wages and Diabolique

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The Seven Year Itch

Billy Wilder, 1955 (8.2*)
When the wife's away, will swinging cats play? That's basically the premise of this Billy Wilder screwball comedy, in which a temporarily stag husband, Tom Ewell in his best performance (a Golden Globe winner for best actor), whose wife and kids are away all summer on vacation, is tempted by the close proximity of blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe, who becomes his platonic pal.

Ewell has a constant pained look on his face (and we guys know where that comes from), while Monroe plays the innocent virginal girl to the hilt. The most famous scene is when she stands above a subway air vent and lets the warm air blow up her dress and blast her 'nether regions', a scene often copied in later films.



There's not much to think about here, as Wilder has given us the cinematic equivalent of repressed sexual frustration, and lets our fantasies do all the work. Maybe not his best comedy, but like any Wilder film, not only worth seeing but a level above all the others of his generation. One of Monroe's best, as she works as a parody of herself, a woman who's almost too hot to touch while seemingly begging to be ravaged by someone.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

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Rashomon

Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1954, bw (8.7*)
Famous and often-copied bw classic by Japan's best filmmaker examines a crime from various points of view: from the criminal's, the victim's, the victim's spouse, and an angel present at the time. Of course, no two versions of the crime are exactly alike, which is the point of the film, that our own mindset and point of perspective make objectivity nearly impossible, that the world is shades of gray filtered by our own ego and the mind's preconceptions, making an accurate recollection of 'reality' highly improbable. Maybe the world isn't exactly what you perceive it to be, but what we do perceive is altered by our minds.

This is one of Akira Kurosawa's best films, who often based his films on Shakespeare, like Throne of Blood, based on Macbeth. If you aren't familiar with his work, this is a good beginning film. It may be a bit slow for western audiences, as most of his films slowly evolve rather than rush through the story, but it will reveal artistic rewards for discerning film fans. A classic of his with more action is The Seven Samurai, generally considered one of the best films ever made, and one that is always in my top 10 all time.

A recent film which used this technique is Vantage Point, a 2008 political thriller about the shooting of a U.S. president in a foreign country, which examined the plot from about 10 characters until the entire story was revealed.

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Kapó

Gillo Pontecorvo, Italy, 1959, bw (8.4*)
A long overlooked holocaust story is now available on dvd. Director Pontecorvo is best known for the ultra-realistic war docudrama The Battle of Algiers, which is a must see for fans of both war films and Italian cinema. Before making that classic, he gave us a smaller war film, yet a universal story no doubt enacted over and over in World War II.

Susan Strasbourg gives a strong and realistic portrayal of a 14-year old Jewish girl thrown into a concentration camp with her parents. She quickly realizes that children and the elderly are being executed, so she assumes the identity of an adult criminal in order to survive. She becomes a favorite of the SS officers due to her youth, and they eventually make her a kapó, prisoners who are quasi-officers above the other prisoners, who basically work for the Nazis and against their own brothers in order to get more food and other benefits.

This is not a pleasant tale, but a heroic and realistic one. Those who enjoyed Schindler's List and Stalag-17 should also like Kapó, it's that good, and belongs on the short list of excellent holocaust and prison films, and films with strong women.

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Big Deal on Madonna Street

Mario Monicelli, 1959, Italy, bw (8.5*)

This spoof of heist films is one of the funniest Italian films ever made. If you've seen the French heist classic Rififi, you'll understand Monicelli's aim here - if you haven't, you'll still be able to appreciate this gang of low-budget crime misfits attempting a major jewel robbery, from the discovery stage, through the planning, then the execution.

A terrific all-star cast is led by Vittorio Gassman as the plan's leader, as he was given the details in prison from another convict who thought Gassman had been denied parole. When out, he recruits a local gang of cons who are all out of jail, including Marcello Mastrianni and Claudia Cardinale. Let's just say that none of the criminals is the sharpest tack in the drawer, so when they are all together it becomes a comedy of errors. Much of the humor is visual, and I found myself laughing out loud several times, which is rare for me, as most comedy is based on terrible one-line jokes and people being drunk.

As Rififi was an early heist classic that "defined the mold", Big Deal is one of the first spoofs of the newly popular genre, so it too defined a style that was later often repeated, with films such as Topkapi and Mad Mad Mad Mad World - think Peter Sellers, Alec Guinness, and the Ealing Brothers (The Ladykillers). Pure entertainment, a must-see classic of this style, and an Oscar® nominee for foreign language film.

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Oklahoma!

Fred Zinnemann, 1955 (7.4*)
This musical is so corny that it actually begins with Gordon McCrae as cowboy Curly riding beneath corn "as high as an elephant's eye" as he sings in the opening song 'Oh, What a Beautiful Morning'. Though not a Rodgers and Hammerstein fan myself (too simplistic and childish for me), I'll have to admit that I found myself singing this song for days afterwards, as it's definitely one of their best. In fact, this musical, their first, is probably their best overall, and I'd include 'Surrey With the Fringe on Top' as another of their best songs. Apparently in this obviously 19th century time frame, this was the best transportation available for impressing a woman on a date.

The story here won't hold much examination as it features the odd competition for Shirley Jones' affections (her first role) between McRae and the burly but thick-headed Rod Steiger as farmhand Judd. For some reason, director Zinnemann chose nearly an entire cast of non-singing actors, such as the awful Gloria Grahame (her singing may cause severe spinal pain) and Edward Albert as a traveling Persian salesman - no kidding. An odd choice, given that McRae is perhaps the best musical singer ever - his talent makes the others fairly unendurable, but may give one goosebumps as he hits all the high notes as well.

The pacing is pretty uneven, especially the unending picnic lunch auction-social dance scene, which unnecessarily seems to take up a third of the entire film - a scene which also implies that you can buy a woman for good, given that McRae and Steiger each risk their entire life's fortune for a meal of Shirley's - this also seems to border on the idea of 'women for sale' to the highest bidder. The story would probably have been better if made less serious (such as the final confrontation) and more humorous, for those lighter moments are the outstanding memories of this pleasant if hokey and cornball entertainment. The mouth-watering color in the dvd restoration makes this a must-see for fans of musicals of either the Hollywood or Broadway variety. Winner of two Oscars®

Note: I actually gave this a slightly higher rating than the fans at IMDB, where it's rated 7.1, but by only just over 4,000 viewers. One viewer wrote "a must for fans of Western musicals" - puzzling since the only other one I can recall is the terrible Paint Your Wagon, though I guess one can include The Harvey Girls, and perhaps Seven Brides for Seven Brothers as 'westerns'. Still, it's the tiniest of sub-genres, so this one is clearly tops. "Oklahoma, OK!"

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Stalag 17

Billy Wilder, 1953, bw (8.6*)
William Holden stars as a gritty POW in WW2 Germany in perhaps his finest role, winning an Oscar® for best actor. Apparently the barracks in which he's placed has a stool pigeon supplying information about prisoner's escape plans to the guards. Holden is a suspect because he's not only a loner, but appears to have a thriving black market exchange going on as well.

Another classic from master director Billy Wilder, who actually fled to the U.S. from Austria to escape the German invasion. Here he has made a psychological war film that's as much about what war does to men's minds as their bodies. Shot in a film noir style with many night scenes, a war classic. #208 on the IMDB top 250.

Wilder is one of the great directors, here's a small list of his best films:
The Front Page, Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Lost Weekend, The Spirit of St. Louis, One Two Three, Ace in the Hole, Sabrina, The Apartment, Some Like It Hot, Witness For the Prosecution, The Fortune Cookie.

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