Movie Review: Johnny Guitar (1954)

Genre: Western

Director: Nicholas Ray

Starring: Joan Crawford, Sterling Hayden, Mercedes McCambridge, Ward Bond, Ernest Borgnine

Running Time: 110 minutes

Synopsis: Tough saloon owner Vienna (Joan Crawford) stands to make a good profit by selling her property to the rail company. The mysterious Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden) arrives in town just in time to find Vienna locked in a feud with Emma (Mercedes McCambridge) and cattle baron McIvers (Ward Bond). Emma is also Vienna's rival for the affections of the slick Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady), who leads an outlaw gang. Johnny has to decide where to park his loyalties as Vienna is given a deadline to leave town or face the consequences.

What Works Well: This is cerebral western with acidic dialogue exchanges oscillating between icy and steamy, and only rarely interrupted by bursts of action and violence. All the drama is propelled by the ambitions and passions of two headstrong women. Director Nicholas Ray uses patient sequences to delve behind character facades and uncover simmering secrets and psychological hang-ups. Scene staging and framing are often superb, with clever character placements enhanced by vivid colours to underline emotional turmoil. An exuberant Joan Crawford delivers a domineering, larger-than-life performance, which Sterling Hayden counterbalances with a perfectly lackadaisical attitude. John Carradine and Ernest Borgnine further enrich the supporting cast.

What Does Not Work As Well: Even at just 110 minutes, a trim would have sharpened the pacing. The lack of an escape route out of town, presumably due to rock blasting, is far-fetched.

Conclusion: A uniquely compelling western, riveting in both style and content.



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Movie Review: Sudden Fear (1952)

A woman-in-distress suspense drama, Sudden Fear features stylish tension, playful plotting, and an overabundance of wide-eyed acting.

Myra Hudson (Joan Crawford) is an independently wealthy and successful middle-aged playwright, about to launch her new Broadway show. During rehearsals she insists on firing actor Lester Blaine (Jack Palance), because she does not believe he is handsome enough for the leading role. The show opens and is a great success.

On a train trip back to her hometown of San Francisco, Myra bumps into Lester. He is exceptionally gracious, they spend time together, fall in love and are soon married. Myra is deliriously happy to have found true love and starts planning to update her will to include Lester. Suddenly a woman called Irene (Gloria Grahame) appears in their social circle, and everything changes.

An RKO Pictures production with Crawford a driving force in pulling the project together, Sudden Fear has enough quality to engage. Romance, drama, deception and murder plots gel into a potent Hitchcockian noir package.

A slow and prolonged first half introduces the main characters but plays more like a fluffy romance than any kind of thriller. The suspense elements take off in the second half with a ticking clock, greed, a compromised conspiracy and a convoluted preemptive revenge plan. Director David Miller deploys plenty of panache and a large serving of style as he focuses on Myra's predicament to deftly skip past some of the unlikely logic.

With Crawford fully committed to an almost silent movie level of overacting, Miller optimizes what he has. The dialogue all but disappears from the final 30 minutes, the excellent Elmer Bernstein music takes over and genuine tension is generated as despite the preponderance of plotters, nothing goes according to any plan. The twisty and hilly San Francisco locations (with some subbing by Los Angeles) echo the intermingling plots and add plenty of ambience.

The good cast contributes to the enjoyment level. With Crawford consuming the sets and her costars with her eyes, Jack Palance provides a robust counterpart as a complex charmer and struggling actor intent on proving just how good he is at romance. Gloria Grahame as Irene introduces a jolt of naked avarice, impatient to grab her undeserved slice of what rich society has to offer. Bruce Bennett and Mike Connors appear as brothers and lawyers Steve and Junior Keaney, the latter also entangled with Irene.

Miller throws in plenty of toys and red herrings to maintain an edge. Technology in the form of a sophisticated (for the day) recording system stands alongside playfulness represented by a wind-up dog gadget to amplify moments of revelation and tension. Any film where a tiny toy dog is transformed into a suspense device is tracking in the right direction.

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The Movies Of Joan Crawford

All movies starring Joan Crawford and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Grand Hotel (1932)

The Women (1939)

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Flamingo Road (1949)

Sudden Fear (1952)

Torch Song (1953)

Johnny Guitar (1954)

What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962)

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Movie Review: Flamingo Road (1949)

A hard edged and fast moving political drama, Flamingo Road combines noir elements with a gripping and asymmetrical personal duel between a man who embodies established corruption and a woman with nothing on her side except steely determination.

When the carnival is driven out of Boldon City, weary dancer Lane Bellamy (Joan Crawford) decides to stay behind, tired of a life on the move. She befriends the clean-cut Fielding Carlisle (Zachary Scott), Boldon's deputy sheriff. He helps her to find a job as a waitress and they quickly fall in love. But Sheriff Titus Semple (Sydney Greenstreet), the local power broker, has big plans for Fielding, and they don't include Lane. Titus pressures Fielding into dumping Lane and marrying the wholesome Annabelle (Virginia Huston).

Backroom political operative Dan Reynolds (David Brian) and Titus then combine forces to have Fielding elected as a state senator. Lane, unbowed, resists Titus' attempts to run her out of Boldon, and instead finds her way into Reynolds' heart, and they get married. As Lane makes a giant leap upwards and joins the social elite, Titus sets his sights on backing Fielding to win the governor's seat. This causes a rift between Titus and Reynolds, leading to turmoil among the king makers and a new showdown between the sheriff and the former carnival dancer.

Directed by Michael Curtiz and written by Robert Wilder, Flamingo Road is a breathless combination of brutal politics and personal rivalry. Clocking in at 94 minutes, Curtiz demonstrates the best attributes of efficient film making, packing in multiple romances, backroom dealings, political manipulation, threats and blackmail, and an intense, years-long hatred between Titus and Lane.

The title refers to the street where the social elites have their homes, a neighbourhood that Lane can only dream of attaining as she tangles with Titus. It's an intriguing confrontation between a powerful ruthless man, and a disadvantaged weak woman. Titus is the ultimate insider and insatiable puppet master who controls the city, influences the state, and deploys every dirty trick to get what he wants. Lane, the literal outsider, appears to be hopelessly outclassed. But the plucky performer finds ways to survive, and then thrive, to once again become a thorn in the side of the despicable sheriff.

Sydney Greenstreet gives one of his best performances this side of The Maltese Falcon, creating in Titus an indelible and hate-worthy villain. Titus never loses his temper, and is never ruffled. He treats every setback as another opportunity to dish out more severe punishment and colder revenge, as Greenstreet revels in the character's rich narcissism, either holding court on the hotel patio or guzzling milk by the jugful. Crawford provides a worthy opponent as only she can, Lane relying on her hard-earned survival skills to hold her ground after deciding that she's had enough running for one lifetime.

The film does stumble to find a satisfactory ending, with Curtiz and Wilder appearing to run out of time and ideas, and resorting to obvious methods to settle the score once and for all. It's an unfortunate conclusion, because otherwise Flamingo Road earns its residency along the street of noir gems.

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Movie Review: Torch Song (1953)

A bewildering Joan Crawford dramatic romantic musical, Torch Song is a ludicrous love story made worse by a garish visual style that assaults the senses.

Broadway star Jenny Stewart (Crawford) is in rehearsals for her new show. She is a demanding diva with an uncompromising attitude and a sharp tongue, and maintains a tepid relationship with boyfriend of sorts Cliff Willard (Gig Young). When the regular rehearsal pianist fails to show up, his replacement is the blind and soft-spoken Tye Graham (Michael Wilding), who starts to rile up Jenny by introducing his own musical ideas and firing back at her insults. But she is anyway slowly attracted to him, as it becomes clear that he aims to win her heart.

Jenny begins to enjoy sparring with Tye and starts spending more time with him. Unsure why she is beginning to care about the blind and romantic pianist, she turns to her mother (Marjorie Rambeau) for advice. Gradually, the secret of Tye's infatuation is revealed.

Directed by Charles Walters, Torch Song marked Crawford's return to MGM, the studio she had left in 1943. It is also Crawford's first film in colour, a fact rammed home with ridiculous fashions and set designs creating a disorienting kaleidoscope. The production was slapped together in about three weeks, and it shows. The film reeks of recycled sets freshened up by paint, and with no budget for elaborate musical numbers, the story mostly offers up rehearsals.

The drama fails to compensate for the abject miserliness, an inane romance and unconvincing performances combining to bad effect. Crawford overacts as the theatrical diva, and is unable to generate any genuine star charisma to justify the behaviour. Her song and dance numbers are stiff and awkward, and late in the film there is a dumbfoundingly awful and inexplicable blackface rendition of Two-Faced Woman that drops onto the stage like an anvil to squash the last breath out of the already gasping film.

Co-stars Michael Wilding and Gig Young are, ironically, on par with the material. Both are billed several notches higher than their limited talents deserve. Young's character is unceremoniously abandoned well before the end of the film, not that his presence or absence is noticeable either way. Somehow, Marjoie Rambeau nabbed a nomination for the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for a minuscule and conventional role.

A misfire at all levels, Torch Song is just wrong.

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Movie Review: Grand Hotel (1932)

A multi-star ensemble drama set entirely at a Berlin hotel, Grand Hotel is a lavish production that takes its time to develop some momentum, but eventually ties some threads together into coherent mini stories.

The lives of several people intersect at the luxurious Grand Hotel. Grusinskaya (Greta Garbo) is a Russian ballerina facing a motivation crisis. Baron Felix von Gaigern (John Barrymore) is a suave thief with significant money problems, pretending to be a distinguished gentleman. General Director Preysing (Wallace Beery) is an industrial magnate trying to conclude a key business deal, but he is distracted by stenographer Flaemmchen (Joan Crawford). Otto Kringelein (Lionel Barrymore) is a lowly accountant in Preysing's empire, and has a terminal disease.

Grusinskaya and the Baron meet and fall in love as he is trying to steal her pearls, and she finds her emotional salvation in his affection. Preysing runs into a tough negotiating team and has to bluff his way to a deal. Flaemmchen has to decide whether or not to compromise herself for a shot at glory as Preysing's mistress. And the Baron is the only person displaying genuine affection towards Kringelein. Before they all leave the hotel, their lives will collide with unintended consequences.

Directed by Edmund Goulding for MGM, Grand Hotel is the earliest example of a star-studded cast and multiple interwoven story lines connected primarily by a single location. And the cast of stars is in fine form, although they do all lean towards self-conscious theatricality. With Grusinskaya at her lowest ebb, Garbo gets to say "I want to be alone" and variations thereof three different times in a span of a few minutes, sentiments that would forever jump off the screen and be associated with the actress' general attitude towards life.

Both Barrymores are eminently watchable as they deliver committed performances. Wallace Beery defines "bombastic", and Joan Crawford takes a large step towards stardom as the third-billed star, and gives the film's most affecting performance as the pragmatic Flaemmchen.

The film is staged exclusively inside the hotel, and the sets are made to look appropriately luxurious. But with a running length of 112 minutes, Goulding does begin to run out of ideas on how to make the various hotel rooms and expansive lobby interesting.

The initial lack of focus on any single person or narrative hampers the opening 45 minutes of the film, as the characters take too long to introduce themselves and the events that landed them at the hotel. The early scenes are all longer than they need to be, and it's only once Grusinskaya and the Baron meet and discover a new spark in their depressed lives that Grand Hotel starts to hum.

As usual conflict helps to fan the flames of drama, and the friction between the haughty Preysing and the humble Kringelein finally emerges to provide Grand Hotel with its central theme of rich and poor, healthy and sick, the cold and the caring, the corporate and the individual intersecting at the same venue. By the time the Baron has made his last attempt to secure the funds that he needs, and Flaemmchen has confronted her ticket out of anonymity, all the stories collide in Preysing's suite. At the Grand Hotel the rich and powerful may try to control the agenda, but all the guests have to pays their bills.

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Movie Review: What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962)

A psychological thriller with horror elements, What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? burrows into the dark days when stardom fades and reality bites, with two aging sisters gnawing at each other.

In 1917, vaudevillian child star "Baby" Jane Hudson captivates audiences with a song and dance routine, but driven by her manager and father Ray (Dave Willock), she's an egotistical brat. By the 1930's Jane's sister Blanche (Joan Crawford) is the one who has achieved stardom in the movie business, with Jane (Bette Davis) fading fast and lacking the talent to succeed on film. In a sudden tragedy, Blanche breaks her back and is paralyzed in a car crash apparently caused by Jane. Both their careers come to an abrupt end.

25 years later, the sisters are living together in a modest Hollywood house, Blanche confined to a wheelchair and to her upstairs room, with the increasingly erratic Jane looking after her sister but drinking heavily and harbouring misguided dreams of a return to show business stardom. Living with the guilt of causing her sister's paralysis but beginning to lose touch with reality, Jane starts to psychologically torture Blanche, cutting her off from the outside world and starving her. Housekeeper Elvira (Maidie Norman) is Blanche's only ally, while Jane recruits struggling pianist Edwin Flagg (Victor Buono) as an accompanist as she starts to plan an unlikely return to the stage.

A comeback project for both Crawford and Davis, who carried on a legendary off-screen feud, What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? is an engrossing exploration of the unsavoury side of sibling rivalry long after the spotlights have faded. The story of Jane and Blanche progresses from sad to macabre, two women who both tasted the heights, never got along, and are now forced to deal with each other while wallowing in the scrapheap of show business.

Working from a Lukas Heller screenplay adaptation of the Henry Farrell book, director Robert Aldrich gradually tracks Jane's journey into heinous delusion. Her destruction of Blanche is just another step towards a return to glamour that exists only in Jane's twisted mind. Jane impersonates Blanche's voice, forges her signature, and starts to serve her nasty surprises in her food, all to gain the upper psychological hand and break loose from Blanche's moral superiority. Filmed in black and white and mostly confined to the house shared by the sisters, the claustrophobic visual experience, featuring frequent close-ups, mimics Blanche's physical helplessness and Jane's mental entrapment.

Everything about the film is downbeat to reflect the sisters' mounting misery, from the caked-on make-up that Jane wears in a failed attempt to stave-off ageing to Blanche's inability to move around in her own house. Even the secondary characters are gloomy, Elvira a perpetually serious housekeeper, increasingly suspicious of what Jane is plotting, while the man-giant Edwin is a picture of clueless desperation, still living with his mother and looking for any break. The talentless Edwin sees through Jane's lunacy, but he plays along in pursuit of easy money.

Both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford turned back the years and reignited their careers. Davis received her tenth and final Best Actress Academy Award nomination for her fearless portrayal of Jane. While the madness part is relatively easy, the genius of her performance is in keeping Jane just barely on the edge of reason, able to function well enough to advance her contorted plans. Crawford gets the more sympathetic and stable role, portraying Blanche as attempting to maintain some level of normalcy while being at the mercy of her sister and worried that Jane's grip on reality is loosening.

As it turned out, what happened to Baby Jane was a sad, twisted and riveting drama. This kid is definitely not alright.

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Movie Review: The Women (1939)

A stylish view of life through the eyes of an all-female cast of characters, The Women is a whirlwind tour of what occupies New York's upper class. And for the women of high society, the main topic of obsession is men.

Mary Haines (Norma Shearer) is sweet and trusting, the loyal wife of Stephen (none of the men are ever seen or heard) and mother of Little Mary (Virginia Weidler). Mary's cousin Sylvia Fowler (Rosalind Russell) visits the beauty salon to get the latest Jungle Red nail colour, and learns from the gossipy manicurist that Stephen is having an affair with department store perfume seller Crystal Allen (Joan Crawford). The news spreads rapidly, and eventually reaches Mary. Initially Mary is respectful of the wishes of her mother (Lucile Watson) to keep her marriage intact, but eventually she confronts Crystal and then Stephen before deciding to get a divorce.

Mary travels to Reno, where divorces are quickly handed out to women marching out of their marriages. On the train she meets Countess de Lave (Mary Boland), who has divorced numerous husbands, the spirited Miriam (Paulette Goddard), and the delicate Peggy (Joan Fontaine). In Reno they all stay at the ranch house of the outspoken Lucy (Marjorie Main), who readily doles out advice to her guests. As Mary moves into a new phase of her life as a single woman, there is a nasty surprise in store courtesy of Stephen and Crystal, while Sylvia gets a shock of her own, leading to new alliances among the ladies of New York.

Directed by George Cukor, working to earn his title as a "women' director", The Women is a talky, often boisterous movie. Based on Clare Boothe Luce's play, this is a story set in the salons, gyms, kitchens, department stores, fashion boutiques and living rooms occupied solely by women. And the ladies talk and talk and talk, sometimes too quickly, often interrupting each other, at other times screaming in delight or anger. Nothing happens in the film other than what is talked about, in person or over the phone, and the stories of failing marriages, sordid affairs, divorces, pregnancies and revenge are all recounted through shared gossip or conversations often delivered at a rapid pace.

And ironically for this man-free zone, the lives of the women are almost solely preoccupied by their men. Mary and her friends are obsessed with the thoughts, actions, feelings of their husbands and lovers. Liberated as they are by 1939 standards, the lives of these upper class women are dominated by continuous plans to win, please, defend, support, seduce or punish their men. Other than one gossip columnist, none of the women appear to have any jobs worth mentioning, and the precocious Little Mary requires limited parenting, leaving the women plenty of time to exchange sharp barbs and hatch men-related schemes.

At more than 130 minutes in length, The Women is packed with...women. If the film has a weakness, it's in the large number of characters, often introduced in a hurry and proceeding to contribute a ton of verbiage. It's sometimes difficult to keep track of - or care about - all the multitudes of women who have to have their say. And inserted into the middle of the film is a technicolour fashion show sequence that is both jarringly out of place and a welcome respite from the overflowing rivers of estrogen.

The performances of the lead actresses are bright, energetic and catchy. Shearer gets the most extended and sympathetic role, and is generally closest to the relative sanity of reality. Russell is larger than life, sassy, funny and ensures that Sylvia is unable to control her urge to gossip, the girl who makes the world go round until it smacks her in the face. Crawford has few scenes, but Shearer's real-life rival vamps up the screen with a claws-out performances full of naked, marriage-wrecking ambition. Goddard and Fontaine also shine in smallish roles.

The Women gently takes some humorous pokes at its heroines while celebrating their emotional strength, resourcefulness and determination. These women may need their men, but they certainly also know how to thrive in their man-free havens.

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Movie Review: Mildred Pierce (1945)

A classic film noir, Mildred Pierce ensures that after endless struggles, happy endings are hard to find. Fortunes are squandered, loyalties betrayed, businesses ruined, love lost, and shots fired in a delicious cocktail centred around all-too-human failures. Joan Crawford in the title role dominates a cast of characters dripping with barely disguised devious self-interest.

The film starts with the murder of Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott), shot multiple times by an unseen assailant at a beach house. Monte's wife, Mildred Pierce Beragon (Crawford) tries to frame long-time friend and frustrated suitor Wally Fay (Jack Carson) for the murder, but the police don't buy it: they arrest Mildred's first husband Albert Pierce (Bruce Bennett) and accuse him of being the shooter, motivated by jealousy. Upon hearing this, Mildred claims to have murdered Beragon herself, and recounts her story in flashback.

Mildred's marriage to Albert fell on hard times when he lost his job, and they separated. Mildred struggles to make something out of her life, and sacrifices everything for the pleasure of her daughters Veda (Ann Blyth), a spoiled teenager who wants the best of everything and thinks her mother classless, and 10-year old tomboy Kay. Mildred works her way up from a lowly waitress to a restaurant tycoon, with help from Wally's business acumen and the management know-how of friend Ida (Eve Arden).

Calamity befalls Kay, but nothing is good enough for Veda. Mildred's troubles escalate when she falls for useless philanderer Monte Beragon, eventually marrying him for reasons other than love. But Veda is self-obsessed, mean-spirited, and insists that all planets revolve around her, resulting in a descent to tragedy.

After more than twenty years at MGM, Joan Crawford's career seemed to be on an irreversible downward trajectory. Mildred Pierce was her first movie for Warner Bros, and her captivating performance was rewarded with the Academy Award for Best Actress. Crawford infuses Pierce with steely determination undermined by the fatal flaw of smothering her daughter with a love of unchecked materialism, launching Veda into an orbit of doom. Mildred is a perfect tragic heroine, doing everything in her power to serve her daughter and being rewarded with a succession of disasters.

Ann Blyth is every parent's worst nightmare as Veda, a rotten apple fallen at the base of the tree and as evil as a manipulative teenager can get. Veda learns all the wrong lessons from her mother, filtering out the love and sacrifice and only internalizing an ever-growing need for status. Blyth's ability to switch from hateful schemer to tearful victim is all too chilling. Among the men, Jack Carson delivers an honest performance as Wally Fay, a man who always makes it clear where he stands, open about his relentless pursuit of Pierce and trading sharp banter with Ida.

The screenplay (co-written by William Faulkner) simplifies the James M. Cain novel in a classic example of edgy adaptation that breaks past the need to include every detail from the book. Director Michael Curtiz keeps Mildred Pierce moving at a brisk pace, making effective use of his trademark artistry with shadows and contrasts.

Mildred Pierce exposes the blind spot of unchecked parental adoration. A grotesque monster can feed on devotion and grow bigger with every serving.

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