TCM Look-Ahead - August 7
A weekly feature here on Big Heads that looks forward to the week ahead on the mighty Turner Classic Movies. For your viewing and recording pleasure.
Friday August 7
10:00 p.m. PDT The Dawn Patrol (1938) Okay, not the superior original version from 1930 by Howard Hawks, but a pretty damned irresistible fly-boy drama with Errol Flynn and David Niven and their rakish pencil mustaches. Film serves as an interesting lesson in auteurism, if one were inclined to dive in. Hawks (auteur pre-eminent) vs. the director here, Edmund Goulding (basically a talented hack). Pretty obvious when doing the comparison, eh? But this is still plenty of Zero Hour fun.
It is quite a good picture, well-directed and in some cases well-acted, but I don't believe it's true-a great deal of self- pity and romanticism have gone to the making of this excellent ham-sandwich. – Graham Greene
Saturday August 8
Steve McQueen birthday extravaganza. A whopping 10 films, starting off with...
08:15 a.m. PDT The Getaway (1972) A misanthropic adaptation by Sam Peckinpah of a misanthropic novel by Jim Thompson. Don't threaten me with a good time. McQueen actually does make the ex-con thief seem sympathetic when he isn't blowing guys heads off. Ali McGraw is his old lady who takes him back (much to his suspicion). McQueen and McGraw fell for one another while filming.
It's fast, furious, full of shoot-outs and car chases, lovely little side-forays into suspense and irony, and tidbits of genuine humor. – Judith Crist
Sunday August 9
The star of the day is Gene Tierney.
04:00 p.m. PDT Whirlpool (1950) Pretty whacked out even by Otto Preminger's noir standards. Tierney plays a shoplifter who is manipulated by an enigmatic shrink (Jose Ferrer) in taking the fall for a murder. Byzantine plot and ace compositions and that wonderful Tierney overbite.
Preminger's ambiguous relation to his characters and his sense of moral relativity have seldom been put to such haunting use. – Jonathan Rosenbaum
08:00 p.m. PDT Leave Her to Heaven (1945) And speaking of whacked out. Is there a more disturbing scene in all of cinema than Tierney, with white coat and ice-cool sun glasses, and her unsuspecting brother-in-law on the lake? Directed by the Master of Melodrama, John M. Stahl.
Gothic psychologizing melodrama, so preposterously full-blown and straight-faced that it's a juicy entertainment. – Pauline Kael
Monday August 10
02:00 p.m. PDT Two Weeks in Another Town (1962) Vincente Minnelli's meta-cinematic follow up to The Bad and the Beautiful (1955), and another poisonous toast to the town that made him. Kirk Douglas returns, this time as a mentally unstable actor instead of Bad's bad-boy producer. He joins his old mentor, basically a has-been, beautifully portrayed by the forever damaged Edward G. Robinson in one of his last major roles, in Rome. Rome is pretty, but the goings on are not. A must see, but don't expect a "love letter to the cinema."
One of the sharpest and most perceptive movies about the film industry. – Richard Brody
Tuesday August 11
And now we get Barbara Stanwyck!
08:00 p.m. PDT The Lady Eve (1941) Preston Sturges at the height of his powers. Stanwyck as a ship-board gold-digging card-sharp temptress and Henry Fonda as the snake-loving heir she sets her sights on ("snakes are my life" "what a life"). Populated by slangy, almost surreal dialogue and a cast of supporting characters on the periphery threatening to steal the movie. But make no mistake. The chemistry between Stanwyck and Fonda is is the show and it's real. In fact, it is rumored Fonda fell in love with Stanwyck on the picture. There is no doubt why.
The dialogue is so good, the direction so light and witty and the whole atmosphere so essentially farcical that one does not bother about improbabilities. – George Orwell
Wednesday August 12
The star of the day is Groucho! Marx Brothers films are a too-obvious rec, but record them all anyway.
01:45 a.m. PDT The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946) In a week dominated by melodramatic rec's, this one probably wins the top prize. Stanwyck plays the titular character with a childhood murder in her past that she tries to cover up with the help a childhood friend who eventually becomes her husband (Kirk Douglas in his film debut). But another childhood friend who may know the truth (the perpetually put-upon Van Heflin) and may have sights on Ivers' wealth.
American gothic, with Barbara Stanwyck as the heir to an industrial empire, bound to her ambitious husband (Kirk Douglas) by a deep, dark secret (1946). The screenplay by Robert Rossen (All the King’s Men, The Hustler) is pervaded by his guilty-liberal fascination with power and money. – Dave Kehr
Friday August 14
And to bookend a great week of "Stars for the Day" we conclude with Jack Lemmon.
01:30 p.m. PDT How to Murder Your Wife (1965) On the whole I think Lemmon is regarded a light, likable leading man, but he could play venal expertly. Here, he is a cartoonist and committed bachelor, who finds himself one hungover morning "accidentally" married to the delicious Virna Lisi. For some reason he finds this to be an unwanted fate, and fantasizes about offing her. Mid 60s misogyny trigger warning for sure, but underrated auteur Richard Quine directs with flair and Lemmon has an enormously good time.
In the screwball tradition, but the old shack has been redecorated with solid-mahogany furniture, plush drapes and wall-to-wall carpeting. – Dwight McDonald
03:30 p.m. PDT The Fortune Cookie (1966) Lemmon plays a sports cameraman who is run over on the field by a genial half back. His relative, a shifty lawyer monikered "Whiplash Willie" (Oscar winning Walter Matthau) sees the opportunity, as does his no gudnik ex-wife, whom Lemmon wants back. He plays along with for a while, but feels increasingly guilty. Billy Wilder at his misanthropic best, and Matthau is a joy to behold.
Billy Wilder is a cranky, perhaps even dangerous, man. That is, he is an unregenerate moralist whose latest version of the American Dream, titled "The Fortune Cookie," is a fine, dark, gag-filled hallucination, peopled by dropouts from the Great Society. – Vincent Canby
