In CÉCILE IS DEAD! (1944) Santa Relli (Jour de Fête) plays a young woman named Cécile, who keeps coming to Quai des Orfèvres to see Inspector Maigret about disturbing events in her household. The esteemed detective and his colleagues are annoyed…until Cécile winds up dead. Maigret must crack the mystery in this stylish film noir from director Maurice Tourneur (Lorna Doone).Read More »
Plot Synopsis from allmovie.com
Doctor Beware was the U.S.-released title of Vittorio DeSica’s 1941 effort Teresa Venerdi. DeSica not only directed, but played the leading role of orphanage official Dr. Vignali. The thinnish storyline finds the good doctor becoming romantically involved with three women. It is up to orphaned girl Teresa Venerdi (Adriana Benedetti) to untangle all the plot lines–and, as a bonus, to come to the financial rescue of the improvident Vignali. When the film was released to the U.S. in 1951, supporting actress Anna Magnani, cast in a secondary role as one of Dr. Vignali’s amours, was given star billing.Read More »
Summary
This tender, muscular, fatalistic film rematches Jean Gabin and Michèle Morgan (after Le quai des brumes) in an anguished love triangle with Madeleine Renaud, Grémillon’s favorite actress. Love, obligation and desire play out against the backdrop of the merciless ocean and the seductive escape of sea-going.
Laurent (Gabin) is a tugboat owner who rescues a merchant vessel from a violent sea. Besides its unscrupulous captain, the rescued ship’s most dangerous cargo is his restless and seductive wife (Morgan). Meanwhile, Gabin’s devoted but ailing wife (Renaud) waits impatiently for him at home…
As dbdumonteil notes, the plot is banal… but Gabin, Prévert and Armand Thirard’s luminous lighting paint it in forty shades of grey.
(filmnutz)Read More »
Synopsis:
Electric company foreman Hank McHenry (Edward G. Robinson) works with his friend Johnny Marshall (George Raft). Upon the death of an older worker in an accident, Hank and Johnny visit the man’s daughter, Fay (Marlene Dietrich), who has just been released from jail. Johnny takes an instant dislike to the jaded Fay, but Hank begins courting her and, despite not loving him, Fay eventually marries him. Later, when Hank brings Johnny home for care when he is ill, Fay falls in love and sparks fly.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 »