Hate Is Like A Loaded Gun

Oscar Noir: Week Twelve

Crossfire

Monday, August 9, 2010

Somehow the stars were aligned right today and Liz was able to join me for an entire evening.  Yay!  As we stood in line, we made up some fiction about the people that must have been the ones having fistfights in line.  We decided that the guy with the cane hit the lady with the bandage on her head, which resulted in another lady's toe getting broken and needing a bandage there, too.  I decided that the bandages were all still there because it takes a wound a lot longer to heal as you age.  I'm probably going to some kind of hell for that thought.

Tonight, the gal passing out the numbered cards was pretty much waiting for people to come to her at the door, which is not the way they'd been doing it all this time, and probably won't make people happy if they're just standing ignorantly in line.  Thank goodness I had Liz, who scouted out stuff before I got there.  I tried to find the guy with the binoculars from last week so that we could sit behind him, but he was nowhere to be seen.  We ended up sitting in our same seats from last week.

Randy H walked up to the podium to let us know that our short would have 30 seconds of silence because the audio didn't come out well in the restoration.  We were about to see 30 seconds that aren't included in the DVD.  After he was done saying that, I said to Liz, "I like him most of the time." 

Short: "Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Eleven: Valley of Death" (1941)

Billy didn't even need to turn into Captain Marvel in order to get Betty out of the sinking ship, and he swam to shore while holding her hand.  They all went into the city, and the Scorpion warned the guardians of the cave that the group would be on its way there.  The guardians liked to call the explorers "white infidels".  OK, but they're not that dark themselves.  Billy sees someone sending mirror signals, and Captain Marvel finds out how they intend to stop the team, and thwarts them.  When the team arrives at the cave, Billy and the guy with the turban stay outside while the others go into the cave and retrieve the lens.  The guardians, however, have caused the volcano to start blowing and the cave starts to crash down around them.  Next week is the finale!

Cartoon:  "Mother Hubba Hubba Hubbard" (1947)

This is by the same guy that did "Flora", so I guess he likes dogs.  Mother Hubbard, the butler, a mouse, and a dog blame each other for taking the bone from the cupboard.  "You took it!"  "I didn't took it!"

Feature:  "Crossfire" (1947), screenplay by John Paxton based on a novel by Richard Brooks, directed by Edward Dmytryk and starring Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, Robert Ryan, Gloria Grahame, Paul Kelly and Sam Levene.

• The film was introduced by Brian Helgeland, screenwriter for "L.A. Confidential", "A Knight's Tale" and "Mystic River".  I liked the way he talked about knowing when you're watching a film noir and when you're not.
• The screenplay, based on Brooks' novel "The Brick Foxhole", changed the original's murder victim from a homosexual into a Jew, since the former would have never been made back in those days.  They figured that hatred is about the same no matter who was the victim.
• The theme of bigotry is still poignant today.  I think that the reason I'm enjoying these films 60 or so years from when they were first shown is that the themes still apply today. They're truly classics.
• The stars were referred to as "the three Bobs".  I liked the way all of them played their characters.  I think I liked Mitchum's Keeley the most, though, because he had great lines.
• Finlay: "You still don't know where he is?"  Keeley: "No.  I didn't know when I came in here, and I haven't suddenly gotten any brighter."
• My favorite part of the movie was during Finlay's monologue about the Irish potato farmer and the hatred he faced in America.
• I loved Gloria Grahame as Ginny, probably because she's the smack-talking dame.  It's no wonder that she earned an Oscar nomination for her supporting role in this film.
• I also enjoyed watching Paul Kelly, who played The Man.  Who was that guy, anyway? And what the heck was he doing at Ginny's apartment?
• I liked that the music that played in the cinema when Mary found Mitchell was that of a big, sweeping romantic nature.
• Jacqueline White, who played Mary Mitchell, did a Q&A afterward, and talked about Robert Mitchum sometimes being very friendly and other times being indifferent, and that he was an interesting man.  She also talked about meeting her husband for the first time and saying to him that night, "I think I just met the man I'm going to marry."  He pretty much agreed with her and called her the next day every 15 minutes starting at 8:00 a.m. until her mom would answer the phone.  Cute.

I need to watch more Robert Mitchum movies.  I think I have a little crush on him. ;)

Next Noir: "A Double Life"