1941-1950

The U.S. Cavalry knows that traveling the unmapped Arizona Territory canyons and trails in search of a woman kidnapped by Apaches could mean riding into a trap. So they ask the help of Ward Kinman, a prospector and scout who knows both the terrain and the ways of the warring tribesmen. Nearly a decade after Billy the Kid, Robert Taylor saddled up a second time and portrayed Kinman in Ambush, the film that began his steady string of work in a genre that suited him like a Colt .45 tucked easy into hip leather. Marguerite Roberts (True Grit) offers a script filled with blazing action and romantic subplots. Among the co-stars: Chief Thundercloud (Tonto in The Lone Ranger serials of 1938 and 1939). From Warner Brothers!Read More »

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Nothing like a love triangle to spice up Christmas, right? Don Hartman’s Holiday Affair delivers that and…well, not much else, but it’s still an enjoyable romantic comedy that’s fallen well under the radar during the last 70 years. At the center or if all is young widow Connie Ennis (Janet Leigh); she lives with her precocious son Timmy (Gordon Gebert), works as a comparison shopper, and has been dating lawyer Carl Davis (Wendell Corey) for two years. After a mistake almost costs Connie her job, she’s saved by clerk Steve Mason (Robert Mitchum)… that is, until he’s promptly fired for not calling her out. Nonetheless, their resulting afternoon is spent together and she takes a liking to the smooth- talking war veteran, who also leaves quite an impression on little Timmy. Carl, of course, is skeptical.Read More »

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As if it weren’t obvious already, Raoul Walsh’s Strawberry Blonde confirms what most men have known for decades: Betty’s always a better choice than Veronica. This charming comedy starring James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, and Rita Hayworth may be over 80 years old — and it mostly takes place in the 1890s — but it’s still as accessible as ever, providing you don’t mind overused music cues and/or extended flashbacks. It’s the kind of crowd-pleasing fare that’s solid enough for “movie night” yet equally easy to enjoy as a light and breezy afternoon matinee.Read More »

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Who directed Jane Eyre? The credits clearly state Robert Stevenson, but a cult of sorts has sprung up over the decades since the film’s 1943 release to claim that it was really helmed—in spirit if not in letter-by its star Orson Welles. Stevenson’s wife and kids argue quite vociferously to the contrary, and certainly the public record, while tantalizingly ambiguous about what (if anything) Welles contributed, does not seem to support this thesis. But there is simply no denying that there is a huge Wellesian influence looming over the film like one of its intrinsically Gothic shadows. Stevens and cinematographer George Barnes often frame things in much the same way Welles and his cinematographer Gregg Toland did in Citizen Kane or how Welles and Stanley Cortez approached The Magnificent Ambersons. Read More »

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Small-time crook Nick Bianco gets caught in a jewel heist and despite urgings from well-meaning district attorney D’Angelo, refuses to rat on his partners and goes to jail, assured that his wife and children will be taken care of. Learning that his depressed wife has killed herself, Nick informs on his ex-pals and is paroled. Nick remarries, gets a job and begins leading a happy life when he learns one of the men he informed on, psychopathic killer Tommy Udo, has been released from custody and is out for revenge against Nick and his family.Read More »

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LETTER FROM AN UNKNOWN WOMAN is set in Vienna at the turn of the century, an era Ophüls loved and had used in LA RONDE and LIEBELEI. Joan Fontaine gives a moving, heartfelt performance as Lisa Berndl, a romantic young woman who falls in love with the handsome concert pianist Stephan Brandt (Louis Jourdan).

After a brief affair, which she takes for love, not seeing that he is just a philanderer, he leaves for a concert in Italy and never returns to the now-pregnant Lisa. She bears the child herself and later enters into a stable marriage, although one lacking the passion and love she still feels for Stephan. Ten years later, when he returns to Vienna, Lisa attempts, at the risk of her marriage, to see if he loves, or even remembers her. Fontaine and Jourdan perfectly project the feelings of a woman in love and a man too selfish to notice or care.Read More »

At Oslo in 1945, a French doctor, Guilbert, is abducted by a group of Nazis and taken aboard their submarine. The Germans plan to evade capture by the Allies by steering a course for South America. Guilbert finds himself in the company of several unsavoury fugitives, including a Gestapo chief, a German general, an Italian industrialist and a French journalist who collaborated with the Nazis. When news of the armistice is received, mutiny breaks out aboard the submarine.Read More »

Based on a true story. The name of the real ship, that sunk Feb 5 1941 – during WWII – was S/S Politician. Having left Liverpool two days earlier, heading for Jamaica, it sank outside Eriskay, The Outer Hebrides, Scotland, in bad weather, containing 250,000 bottles of whisky. The locals gathered as many bottles as they could, before the proper authorities arrived, and even today, bottles are found in the sand or in the sea every other year.Read More »

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Based on the book by Charles Dickens Great Expectations (1946) tells the story of a young boy by the name of Pip (Antony Wager/John Mills) who lives in the British countryside with Joe Gargery (Bernard Miles), a poor blacksmith, and his bossy wife Mrs. Joe Gargery (Freda Jackson). They reside in a rundown house not too far from the local cemetery.Read More »