Screen Savers Movies » Life and Times in America

Stars in My Crown (1950)

Jon Hansen, Publisher — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 04:01:48 +0000

Some exceptional movies are so gentle, and achieve their effects so delicately, that the mere act of recommending them almost feels like a disservice to their charms. Can such movies bear the weight of high expectations? I fear overpraising MGM’s Stars in My Crown because of its simplicity and modesty, two elements that make it a convincing and winning piece of period Americana. After all, it doesn’t have a big pay-off; it isn’t ambitious; it’s merely a series of lovely scenes strung together. Did I say merely? We must not overlook the effort, however invisible, that goes into the creation of beguiling films like Stars in My Crown—including My Brother Talks to Horses (1946), Margie (1946), and Come Next Spring (1956)—that gracefully bring the past to very specific and evocative life. It’s no small feat to render a long-ago era onto the screen and have it just be. Stars in My Crown is a film that makes you want to go fishing or bake a chocolate cake, even if you’ve never wanted to do these things before. It’s a heartwarmer without goo.

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
© 2008 Hansen Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.

Learn more about Stars in My Crown

Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988)

Jon Hansen, Publisher — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 04:01:39 +0000

As a rule, Hollywood—the dream factory—doesn’t make movies about the American dream being a fraud, which is one reason why this film isn’t easily forgotten. In Tucker, the better product is smothered and banished so that the continuing profits of fat corporations can be safeguarded. If Coppola had chosen to tell this true story as an earnest message picture, the results might have been unrelentingly depressing and disheartening. Instead of falling into this miring trap, he made a film that’s informed by post-war enthusiasm and possibility, set to a jitterbugging background score and photographed with all the saturated color and glamour associated with escapist movies of the period. Tucker the movie reflects Tucker the car: both are sleek, streamlined, impeccably crafted, and have real “drive.” The troubling points about our free-enterprise system are not swallowed up by Coppola’s dazzling technique, but, rather, emerge with clarity in a film whose buoyancy keeps audiences attuned to what it has to say. If the ending seems too determinedly upbeat, well, it isn’t unjustified: Tucker does make his wonder car, and it’s everything he said it would be. The film chooses to find optimism in the fact of the Tucker itself—the actualization of a dream—even though only 50 cars were produced. Tucker celebrates personal achievement and refuses to diminish its central character because he wasn’t able to reap the benefits his invention merited. The losers are the American people, denied the best that’s available to them so that Big Business can thrive unchallenged. It’s a tricky balancing act for Coppola to deal honestly with downbeat themes while delivering a spiffy entertainment, but he succeeds. Tucker is gorgeous to look at, swiftly paced, and still strikes all the right nerves.

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
© 2008 Hansen Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved

Learn more about Tucker: The Man and His Dream

Rambling Rose (1991)

Jon Hansen, Publisher — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 04:01:52 +0000

Far rarer than films that rely on a sole significant performance, or those elevated by a scintillating team, are movies borne aloft by three equally tremendous performances at their centers. I don’t mean films with ensemble casts, such as All About Eve (1950), The Godfather Part II (1974), or Shakespeare in Love (1998), in which it would be easy to pick out three, or more, outstanding performances. I’m talking about instances in which three performers take charge of a film, play off and inspire each other, and raise the bar of each scene’s potential with their instinctive gifts and refined techniques. It’s there in the Clark Gable-Myrna Loy-Spencer Tracy tragi-comic trio of Test Pilot (1938) and the glimmering Cary Grant-Katharine Hepburn-James Stewart threesome of The Philadelphia Story (1940). A quintessential example is Lolita (1962), a film in which James Mason, Shelley Winters, and Peter Sellers are each so extraordinary that I’m sure one of them is stealing the movie, but I keep changing my mind about who it is that’s doing the stealing. This is a highly pleasurable predicament, and it also happens to me every time I see Rambling Rose. It stars Laura Dern, Robert Duvall, and Diane Ladd (Dern’s real-life mother), and just one of their splendid performances would be enough for this, or any, movie. Thanks to their glorious three-ring show, the independent Rambling Rose is one of the best-acted movies of recent years, a patchwork quilt to wrap snugly around you. Calder Willingham wrote the screenplay, based on his 1972 novel.

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
© 2008 Hansen Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.

Learn more about Rambling Rose

Bad Company (1972)

John DiLeo — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 04:01:16 +0000

Set during the Civil War, [Bad Company]’s a war film that never gets near the war. Because the lead characters head west, it’s something of a western, though the “West” being sought never quite materializes, and is thus more an idea than a reality. With the war raging north, south, and east, and the West a question mark, Bad Company presents an America without a safe haven, a nation whose identity is in limbo. You might say that Bad Company, like Easy Rider, is “looking for America.” It’s a tale of displacement, a bit of historical fiction that illuminates an off-kilter time. Although it is set on the fringes of the big story (the war), the pain and loss of that conflict hovers over the film as the underlying cause of everything that takes place. Sometimes period films are marred by contemporary acting styles or forced modern sensibilities, but in Bad Company’s case the New Hollywood brashness of a cast led by a young Jeff Bridges results in an immediacy of identifiable feeling that makes effortless the potent connection between this tale of draft dodgers and a 1972 America in the thick of the Vietnam War.

Learn more about Bad Company

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)

John DiLeo — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:01:00 +0000

Warners’ I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is a blistering exposé of the brutality of chain-gang punishment and a pointed criticism of America’s forgetful treatment of its war veterans. Enormously profitable and highly praised in its day, I Am a Fugitive is still a sensational, startlingly powerful movie, directed by Mervyn LeRoy (who made Little Caesar) and anchored by a performance from nearly forgotten Paul Muni that gives credence to his once-hallowed reputation.

Learn more about I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang

Rambling Rose (1991): The Triple Threat of Dern, Duvall, and Ladd

John DiLeo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:03:44 +0000

excerpted from John DiLeo’s
Screen Savers: 40 Remarkable Movies Awaiting Rediscovery
© 2008 Hansen Publishing Group. All Rights Reserved.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988): The Land of Opportunity?

John DiLeo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:55:21 +0000

Bad Company (1972): The 1860s with a Vietnam Subtext

John DiLeo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:47:25 +0000

Five years after receiving enormous acclaim for their screenplay of the groundbreaking, tone-swerving Bonnie and Clyde (1967), writers Robert Benton and David Newman were at it again. Their Bad Company is a worthy companion piece to their ’67 classic, with its doses of comedy, unsettling blasts of violence, travels through a hard-times American heartland, and thieving main characters. However, the film caused little stir when it was released and was soon forgotten. Not only did Benton co-write Bad Company but he also made his directorial debut with it. (Arthur Penn directed Bonnie and Clyde.) Set during the Civil War, it’s a war film that never gets near the war. Because the lead characters head west, it’s something of a western, though the “West” being sought never quite materializes, and is thus more an idea than a reality. With the war raging north, south, and east, and the West a question mark, Bad Company presents an America without a safe haven, a nation whose identity is in limbo. You might say that Bad Company, like Easy Rider, is “looking for America.” It’s a tale of displacement, a bit of historical fiction that illuminates an off-kilter time. Although it is set on the fringes of the big story (the war), the pain and loss of that conflict hovers over the film as the underlying cause of everything that takes place. Sometimes period films are marred by contemporary acting styles or forced modern sensibilities, but in Bad Company’s case the New Hollywood brashness of a cast led by a young Jeff Bridges results in an immediacy of identifiable feeling that makes effortless the potent connection between this tale of draft dodgers and a 1972 America in the thick of the Vietnam War.

Stars in My Crown (1950): An Appreciation of Small-Town America

John DiLeo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:39:43 +0000

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932): Warner Brothers and Social Concern

John DiLeo — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 02:31:33 +0000

At the dawn of the talkies, Warner Brothers quickly established itself as the studio with a social conscience, specializing in uncompromising, realistic films about contemporary ills. The success of Edward G. Robinson in Little Caesar (1930) and James Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931) not only created iconic stars but made the gangster genre essential to the studio’s signature. Since the strictures of the Production Code were not yet being enforced, Warners’ early-30s crime output retains a ruthlessness that can still stun us, especially people who think of old movies as merely escapist merriment. The studio took their interest in national conditions beyond the realm of mobsters, tackling tabloid journalism (Five Star Final – 1931), homeless youth (Wild Boys of the Road – 1933), and labor (Black Fury – 1935). Warners’ I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang is a blistering exposé of the brutality of chain-gang punishment and a pointed criticism of America’s forgetful treatment of its war veterans. Enormously profitable and highly praised in its day, I Am a Fugitive is still a sensational, startlingly powerful movie, directed by Mervyn LeRoy (who made Little Caesar) and anchored by a performance from nearly forgotten Paul Muni that gives credence to his once-hallowed reputation.