From Those Were the Days:

1940 - Invitation to Learning was first heard on CBS Radio. The educational radio program ran for 15 years on the network.
10:39:40 PM    comment []  trackback []  

“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.”

I had last night off from work, so I started up another edition of Late Night DVD Theater with several of my favorite movies, beginning with The Manchurian Candidate (1962). I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but there’s a remake of this remarkable film due out this year, providing ample evidence that Hollywood has officially run out of ideas.

I can’t figure out for the life of me why anyone would want to remake this film. The original (based on the 1959 novel by Richard Condon) is a political paranoiac masterpiece, with a fine script by George Axelrod (I love how Candidate balances both spooky suspense thriller with jet-black comedy), top-notch direction by John Frankenheimer (no doubt about it, Candidate is his best film) and an amazing cast including Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, Angela Lansbury (one of filmdom’s most memorable villainesses), James Gregory, John McGiver (a great performance as a somewhat liberal Republican, a rare commodity these days), Khigh Dhiegh, James Edwards, Henry Silva and Douglas Henderson. There are so many great touches in this film—my favorite is when Gregory (a Joe McCarthy clone) asks wife Lansbury if there’s any way they can agree on the number of Communists that are allegedly working for the government; there’s a shot of him pouring ketchup on a steak, and then a cut to him making a Senate speech avowing that fifty-seven Reds are currently getting a federal paycheck. Some of the dialogue is both funny and far-out; my favorite exchange is between Sinatra and the Secretary of Defense during a Senate hearing that is interrupted by Gregory, with Frankie saying: “Mr. Secretary, I’m kinda new at this job…but I don’t think it’s good public relations to talk that way to a United States Senator…even if he is an idiot.” I remember the first time I saw The Manchurian Candidate (not in its original run, but its re-release in 1989) and it blew me away—and still does; the movie ages like fine wine. (During the 2000 campaign, my father and I took to calling CNN’s Candy Crowley “the Manchurian Correspondent,” since every report of hers seemed to end with the observation that “George W. Bush is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.”) After watching Candidate, I found myself in the mood for an encore of Frankenheimer’s Seven Days in May (1964), a film that’s not nearly as good but it did keep me entertained.

Oftentimes I find myself watching a movie if I’ve just finished hearing a particular actor on a radio show I’ve listened to of late. For example, after hearing Orson Welles on The Black Museum, I hunted down my copy of The Stranger (1946) and took a peek at that (The Stranger is considered by many to be considerably lesser Welles, but I particularly enjoy it because it has one of my favorite Edward G. Robinson performances in it, as an investigator who tracks fugitive Nazi Welles to a small New England town.) Last night, I was sort of in a Jack Webb mood, so I popped Sunset Blvd. (1950) into the DVD player. It’s a funny thing about Webb, he was at one time a very impressive actor, as witnessed in Sunset and The Men (1950)—but I think he became the victim of his own success with Dragnet, since the program changed his acting style into that familiar Joe Friday “stick-up-his-butt” persona he exhibited in every movie role after that series. I’ve had this DVD of Sunset Blvd. for quite a while now, and I’ve just recently gotten around to opening it up—but I’m glad I did, because although I’ve seen the movie countless times the DVD is really superb. Billy Wilder’s corrosive and cynical look at Hollywood just gets better and better with each passing year, but then again, most of Wilder’s movies in general have that quality. (I remember vividly the year that director Fernando Trueba won Best Foreign Language Film Award for Belle Epoque; he accepted his prize by commenting: “I would like to believe in God in order to thank Him. But I just believe in Billy Wilder, so, thank you, Mr. Wilder.” Now that’s a statement I can get behind.)

I decided to wrap up the movie marathon with the 1950 noir classic D.O.A., in which Edmond O’Brien—“the sweatiest man in noir”—frantically tries to solve the mystery of the individual responsible for slipping him a lethal mickey (in the form of a luminous toxin, which will eventually kill him). Again, it’s a movie with which you just can’t go wrong—and for OTR fans, you can get a glimpse of both Jess Kirkpatrick and Lawrence Dobkin in small roles.
10:24:08 PM    comment []  trackback []