Periodic Movie Post

I have not watched many movies in recent months, but as my list seems to be coming back around more to the sorts of things I like, perhaps I will get back into something of a routine.


The Birds (1963)


The well-known Hitchcock movie that I had never seen before. It is above all great-looking and in places nostalgia-invoking, and these are the parts of it that I liked best. The actual characters and dialogue are rather starchier and blander than I currently have a taste for. I find I have very little to say about this, though at the time I enjoyed watching it, mostly just because it is from the classic period. I am going to try to remember things about it that made an impression on me.

1. The quaintness of the town of Bodega Bay and apparent unspoiled beauty of the California coast in the area in general. It is still like that? One could imagine it being so expensive that it has been able to preserve something of its character. There were, at least until recently (I haven't been exploring in remote corners much over the past few years) still some lost-in-time places like this in Maine and even to some extent on the north shore of Massachusetts.


2. The furnishings in the house in Bodega Bay where the main family lived, because it reminds me of my grandparents' basement.


3. Tippi Hedren's car and clothes.


4. The schoolhouse against the background of the deep blue sky.


I am bored of this exercise.






Black Beauty (1994)


A pretty faithful adaptation of the (once?) classic book, and probably even a little instructive, if, like me, one hasn't spent much time in life thinking about or looking at horses, but its most salient characteristic is that having been made as it was at the tail end of the pre-internet era it comes across as DOA as far as making any kind of impact, an instant antique. I don't think my children, or any modern children, could watch this. There is nothing about it that grabs the attention, that is necessary. Perhaps if you have read the book, which I had recently, and have a curiosity to see a cinematic depiction, you might have enough interest to get through it, as I did, but even there the movie does not differ greatly from what a normal reader will have pictured in his imagination. So I don't have a lot to say about this either.

The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1947)


Gene Tierney is starting to become for me like that girl you went to school with who was so good-looking that you weren't even going to bother spending any time thinking about her (because it would have been pointless), but then she turns out to be in a bunch of your classes so that, inexplicably given the ordinary laws of the universe, you actually end up getting to spend a significant amount of ordinary, relaxed time in her proximity, which has a salutary effect, on you at least. I say this because Gene Tierney has now turned up in a number of movies that have come up on here in recent years, all of which have been rather good, though not, as far as I could tell, especially spectacular or famous. For the record these others were Leave Her to Heaven and Laura. A Bell for Adano, which looks to be in a similar vein of quality as these others, has also come up on the list, though I have not been able to find a way to see that one yet. All of these movies are from the years 1944-1947, which besides being the brief but memorable peak of Gene Tierney's career, you know is well within the range my top five, probably top three favorite cinematic periods of all time. Given the fairly random nature of my system I could easily have missed them all, as I doubtless have to this point managed to miss out on the essential oeuvre of some director or star whom it is very likely I would find to my taste. But as I have noted in the past where I have had little runs heavy on particular stars (Toshiro Mifune, Burt Lancaster, Cary Grant) in this little stretch of years it happens to have been Gene Tierney of all people that I have gotten to know a little more than I would have otherwise imagined I would.

The Ghost and Mrs Muir seems, upon modest researches, to be a little more widely known and regarded than I would have thought, many people, both internet critics and professionals, listing it among their all time favorite movies. I wouldn't rate it quite that highly, though I liked it well enough, and it belongs to a class of film to which I am decidedly partial, the unbusy, rather somber, calmly romantic picture of the mid to late 1940s. It does feature a lot of big names who have appeared in my reports on numerous occasions, Joseph Mankiewicz the director, Rex Harrison, Natalie Wood (as a child), even George Sanders, who is a popular figure among cinephiles, though I cannot say I have ever really loved him in anything to date. And while I have warmed up to Gene Tierney a little bit, as noted above, she is still not what I would consider a great actress who excites much in the way of emotion or pathos. I don't find the idea of ghosts, except when they are used for comic or absurd effect, to be very interesting, and overall I thought the plot was a little thin. These are my reasons for not finding it great. On the whole I liked it, and it is very strong in its particular 1940s movie escapist type qualities, and many others like it much more than this.