Movie Review: Clash By Night (1952)

A romantic drama with an edge, Clash By Night uses a love triangle to contrast domesticity with animal magnetism.

Ten years after departing, Mae Doyle (Barbara Stanwyck) returns to her humble California hometown fishing community, having failed to find neither a husband nor a fortune on her travels. Her brother Joe (Keith Andes) treats her return with suspicion, but his girlfriend Peggy (Marilyn Monroe), who works at the cannery, makes quick friends with Mae.

Steady and respectful Jerry (Paul Douglas) runs a successful fishing boat and starts dating Mae. She finds him reliable but unexciting. Jerry introduces Mae to his friend, cinema projector operator Earl (Robert Ryan). Mae and Earl are of the same caustic and cynical breed, and are naturally attracted to each other. But Mae chooses security over danger, marries Jerry, and they have a child. When Earl re-enters Mae's life, trouble follows.

An adaptation of the 1941 play by Clifford Odets, Clash By Night hugs its stage origins. Director Fritz Lang inserts contextual fishing town shots of waves crashing against the shoreline, clouds traveling across the sky, and scenes of fishing activity as Jerry's boat brings in the daily catch. But that's the extent of the film's outdoor ambition. The bulk of the scenes are staged indoor dialogue exchanges, with theatrical performances to match.

The adult - sometimes torrid - subject matter is moderately engaging. The script by Alfred Hayes boldly tackles lust and adultery, and allows space for Mae to explore her options without immediate condemnation. More generally, Clash By Night underlines a theme of women wriggling free of men's expectations and speaking out about their individual wants and needs. Jerry, Joe and Earl are different men but their offerings are predictable. In their search for happiness, Mae and Peggy articulate - or demand - evolved treatments.

As the returnee who stirs the sleepy town's pot, Mae recognizes the comfortably boring benefits of Jerry, but has an inner dark side yearning for a shiftless man like Earl. Barbara Stanwyck thrives in the role's duality, but could have benefited from elaboration on Mae's wilder instincts. The rest of the performances are robust, rising up to the challenge of frequent shouting.

A sub-plot, probably intended as comic relief but hardly delivering any, involves Jerry looking after his rickety and frequently inebriated father with the dubious help of scrappy uncle Vince (J. Carrol Naish). These secondary characters meander in and out of scenes to cool down the overheated romantic agitations.

Demonstrating progressive sparks, Clash By Night doesn't break down the walls but is a worthwhile catch.



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Movie Review: Niagara (1953)

A film noir featuring stunning scenery and Marilyn Monroe's first starring role, Niagara offers luscious visuals but suffers from underdeveloped characters and a distracted crime story.

Polly and Ray Cutler (Jean Peters and Max Showalter, credited as Casey Adams) head to the scenic Canadian side of Niagara Falls for a delayed honeymoon. At the motel they meet troubled couple Rose and George Loomis (Monroe and Joseph Cotten). George has spent time at an army mental hospital and remains agitated. Rose is bored with her husband and has no hesitation flaunting her sexuality.

As the Cutlers enjoy the local tourist attractions they stumble upon Rose carrying on an illicit affair with the hunky Patrick (Richard Allan). Polly feels sorry for George and reaches out to offer support. Rose has a nefarious plan in mind to move on with her life, but her plot will unexpectedly unravel, leaving Polly in the middle of churning danger.

The first film to feature Marilyn Monroe as the primary star name, Niagara shamelessly showcases both the famous falls and Ms. Monroe's figure. The murder-most-foul plot does contain intriguing nuggets including unresolved mental health and infatuation issues. But the narrative takes a back seat as director Henry Hathaway is preoccupied with finding the best angles to capture the forceful waterfalls and his force-of-nature star.

This includes celebrating her derriere and hip-swaying walk in a famous scene that lingers as Monroe sashays away from the camera. Hathaway also dresses - and undresses - his star in a series of legendary outfits, pushing 1953 cinematic boundaries and cannonballing Monroe into superstardom as the world's premier sex symbol.

Niagara's visual objectives demand vibrant exposition, and so this is a film noir bursting with colour. Hathaway plays with window blind shadows creating prison stripes and a few moments of suspense, but otherwise allows Rose's femme fatale and her evil intentions to stand alone against the rather incongruous backdrop of spectacular imagery.

With attention focused elsewhere, the real shadow falls on the wholesome characters of Polly and Ray. Supposedly the entryway into the story, they are reduced to passive observers as the plot unfolds. Ray is a dorky businessman oblivious to the evil brewing in the cabin next door, and he mainly represents the red-blooded male exhibiting helpless tongue-hanging-out lust at Monroe's sensuality. Meanwhile the attempts to insert Polly into the swirl of tension are only partially successful, and she also has to tolerate Ray's infantile attempts to overtly glamourize her once he's exposed to the Rose calibre of sexuality.

The conniving Rose and troubled George are by far the more interesting characters, but they are not provided sufficient context to harbour sympathy. The background of George's mental health troubles deserved a deeper dive than afforded in the script co-written by producer Charles Brackett.

Hathaway's best Hitchcockian sequence comes courtesy of a bell tower and a suspenseful chase up the stairs serving as a build-up to an act of sorrowful revenge followed by unexpected entrapment. Niagara is frustratingly sprinkled with moments of promise, but drenched by a near-exploitive yet star-making agenda.

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Movie Review: The Prince And The Showgirl (1957)

A romantic comedy that fails on both counts, The Prince And The Showgirl is a monumentally dull waste of talent.

It's 1911 in London, and members of the royal family of Carpathia, a fictional Balkan country, arrive to witness the inauguration of a new British monarch. Charles (Laurence Olivier), the Prince Regent of Carpathia, is ruling the strategically important nation until his 16 year old son King Nicolas (Jeremy Spenser) achieves adulthood. The Dowager Queen (Sybil Thorndike), Charles mother-in-law, is the other key member of the delegation. British civil servant Northbrook (Richard Wattis) is assigned to satisfy Charles' every demand. The Prince goes looking for female companionship for the night, and picks unknown American stage actress Elsie Marina (Marilyn Monroe) to join him for a private dinner and romance at the Embassy.

Elsie resists the Prince's stiff and insensitive romantic advances, but nevertheless gradually starts to develop an affection for him. Meantime, she also gets wind of political turmoil back in Carpathia, with King Nicolas seemingly involved in a plot to overthrow his father. As the day of the inauguration arrives, Elsie believes she has survived her interactions with the royals, but she soon finds herself in the company of the Dowager Queen attending the grand ceremony, and then playing peacemaker between the Prince and the young King-to-be.

Produced and directed by Olivier, The Prince And The Showgirl is an adaptation of the 1953 play The Sleeping Prince. The film effectively locks itself into the Embassy of Carpathia for 115 endless minutes, with characters swinging in and out of rooms for no particular reason other than to introduce some camera movement. There are a few touristy scenes related  to the inauguration event, and these could have been lifted from any British travel advertorial.

Fundamentally, the film never comes close to a convincing romance between Charles and Elsie. He is a boorish lout looking for a one-night floozy, she is suddenly much savvier than a ditzy showgirl. Elsie only starts to express some feeling for the Prince when he overloads her with alcohol, and at no time does he actually do anything to deserve any sympathy. What remains is a stiff Olivier performance playing a cartoonish villain, and a game Monroe doing all she can to match her co-star in the acting department, but it is all for naught. Not even a hint of a spark breaks through the listless Terence Rattigan screenplay.

The subplots related to the political turmoil in Carpathia and the family intrigue swirling between the Prince, the King and the Queen are neither properly developed nor remotely successful as comedy.

The Prince And The Showgirl incessantly attempts to milk a single joke about how to properly address the various members of the Carpathian royal family. The simple answer is to summarily send them all back to Carpathia, unaddressed.

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Movie Review: Some Like It Hot (1959)

A madcap comedy and romance, Some Like It Hot is a brilliantly constructed celebration of romance at its most complicated, incorporating gender politics, criminals on the loose, and an audacious anything goes, nothing to lose attitude.

It's 1929 in Chicago. Penniless friends and musicians Joe (Tony Curtis), a risk-taking saxophonist, and Jerry (Jack Lemmon), a more cautious double bass player, narrowly escape a police raid on an illicit nightclub run by mobster "Spats" Colombo (George Raft). Still reeling, Joe and Jerry are next unwilling witnesses to a St. Valentine's Day-type massacre perpetuated by Spats on informant "Toothpick" Charlie (George E. Stone) and his men. Desperate to leave town to avoid Spats' wrath, Joe and Jerry dress up as women, adopt the personas of Josephine (Joe) and Daphne (Jerry), and join an all-girls music band heading to Miami.

Jerry: [in high heels] How do they walk in these things, huh? How do they keep their balance?
Joe: It must be the way the weight is distributed. Now, come on.
Jerry: It's so drafty. They must be catching cold all the time, huh?
Joe: Will you quit stalling? We're gonna miss the train.
Jerry: I feel naked. I feel like everybody's staring at me!
Joe: With those legs, are you crazy? Now, come on.
[They see Sugar Kane]
Jerry: Look at that! Look how she moves. That's just like Jell-O on springs. She must have some sort of built-in motors. I tell you, it's a whole different sex!
Joe: What are you afraid of? Nobody's asking you to have a baby.

On the train, they meet singer and ukulele player Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), and both men fall madly in love with her. Sugar confides in Josephine and reveals all her hopes and aspirations, including exactly what she desires in a man. Joe uses the information to take on the new persona of young intellectual millionaire Junior, heir to the Shell Oil fortune, and starts a serious pursuit of Sugar. Meanwhile Jerry (as Daphne) finds himself the target of lecherous eldery millionaire Osgood Fielding III (Joe E. Brown). With Spats still seeking to eliminate witnesses to the Chicago killings, Joe and Jerry frantically try to sort out their increasingly complex romantic entanglements and save their lives.

Jerry: Dirty old man...I just got pinched in the elevator.
Joe: Now you know how the other half lives.
Jerry: Look at that. I'm not even pretty.
Joe: They don't care. Just so long as you're wearing a skirt. It's like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
Jerry: Really. Well I'm sick of being the flag. I want to be a bull again.

Directed by Billy Wilder, who also co-wrote the script with I.A.L. Diamond, Some Like It Hot is one of Hollywood's perfect comedies. The laughs are derived from the ridiculous situations, the wild pacing and lust made troublesome by mixed-up genders. The dialogue is filled with zingers, the cast is deep with talent, and the script finds a loony groove and does not stop. The two hours are filled with frantic moments, and the antics of Joe and Jerry keep piling up. By the end of the film Joe has three personas, Jerry is still pining for Sugar but being pursued by both a millionaire and a bellboy, gangsters are at war with each other, and somehow it still all makes sense.

Osgood: You must be quite a girl.
Daphne: Wanna bet?

With the 1950s about to turn into the 1960s, Wilder and Diamond push the boundaries of sexual innuendo well past typical expectations for the era. With the plot device of an all-girls band providing the excuse for plenty of barely-dressed women to parade past Joe and Jerry in drag, Wilder deploys Marilyn Monroe as his weapon of mass distraction. Although apparently a horror on the set due to pill addiction, Monroe has never looked or acted better as the explosively innocent woman unaware of her impact on men. As an added bonus she also performs three songs at her breathiest best. For most of the second half of the film Wilder dresses her in daring possibly see-through dresses (impossible to tell in black and white) with just enough coverage to get past the censors.

Sugar: Water polo? Isn't that terribly dangerous?
Junior: I'll say. I had two ponies drowned under me.

And with Joe-as-Junior pretending to have lost interest in women and daring Sugar to cure him on Osgood's yacht, she needs no further invitation to unleash all her expertise to get a rise out of the millionaire of her dreams. Meanwhile, back on shore Jerry-as-Daphne and Osgood dance up a storm all the way until dawn to the tango tune of La Cumparsita, and in the morning Jerry is quite convinced that he will be marrying Osgood.

Jerry: Have I got things to tell you!
Joe: What happened?
Jerry: I'm engaged.
Joe: Congratulations. Who's the lucky girl?
Jerry: I am!
Joe: WHAT?!
Jerry: Osgood proposed to me! We're planning a June wedding.
Joe: What are you talking about? You can't marry Osgood.
Jerry: Why, you think he's too old for me?

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon have rarely been better and perfectly complement each other. Curtis as Joe is more cerebral, more adventurous and much more likely to get the pair into trouble, while Lemon as Jerry is more of a worrier but also more willing to follow along and complain about it. George Raft provides the counterbalance by playing it straight as mobster Spats, and Wilder again breaks ground by mixing comedy with brutal massacres and Tommy gun violence.

Some Like It Hot has fun at the expense of both genders and all ages. The film ends with a classic exasperated admission that while love can be hot and messy, no relationship and no one sex is perfect, which is exactly why there is so much fun to be had.

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Movie Review: The Seven Year Itch (1955)

A comedy about lust threatening marriage, The Seven Year Itch features a lustrous Marilyn Monroe but is otherwise stage bound and borderline monotonous.

With Manhattan suffering through a mid-summer heatwave, New York pulp book publisher Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) packs off his wife Helen (Evelyn Keyes) and insufferable young boy to the country. Left alone in his modest apartment, Richard does his best to behave himself and not succumb to the temptations of smoking, drinking and womanizing. But as soon as he sets his eyes on the unnamed girl (Monroe) house-sitting the unit above him, most of his self-control dissipates.

He tries to distract himself by locking away his cigarettes, talking to himself, and reading a manuscript about men's tendencies to stray seven years into their marriage. But then the girl accidentally drops a tomato plant onto his patio chair, setting off a series of interactions. She visits him for a drink, and Richard's wild imagination, fuelled by his career as an expert promoter of sex and violence for any book, combines with his lustful impulses and his insecurities to drive him in many different directions at once. The inconvenient interruptions of the building's janitor do not help.

Directed by Billy Wilder, who also co-wrote the screenplay with George Axelrod, The Seven Year Itch is an adaptation of Axelrod's play and never strays far from its stage origins. Mostly trapped in Richard's apartment, the film uses some imaginative sequences to try and break out of its confines, but barely avoids a sense of slow suffocation. The humour is mild, the social critique topical but also unsubstantively dealt with. This is a comedy about men struggling to control their most base urges and to accept the benefits of domesticity, and that point is made early and repeated often.

In the most brusque terms, with Richard literally talking to himself throughout the film, The Seven Year Itch explores the clash between men's primordial tendencies and modern expectations. Richard wants to believe that he will remain forever insanely desirable; he loves Helen but wonders if they take each other for granted; he wants to believe that she trusts him and yet works his way into the most uncompromising mess; all while his insecurities, jealousies and misguided belief that he is a suave lover play havoc with his psyche. The themes are interesting, but dealt with in literally theatrical terms, spilled out into the open with no room for any subtle contemplation.

Marilyn Monroe as the appropriately unnamed girl represents every man's fantasy fling, and Wilder gets the best out of his star, as she radiates with her unique brand of self-consciously innocent sexuality, desperately trying to cool herself by blowing air through as little clothing as possible, including the famous subway grate scene. Poured into a succession of stunning outfits Monroe effectively plays herself, complete with a history of risque fashion photography and Richard's character referring to the girl as "maybe she's Marilyn Monroe".

The vivid colour cinematography pops the film to life, while Richard's favourite piece of music, Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto, adds blustery grandeur to his Lothario imaginings (as it turns out, the girl is actually turned on by Chopsticks).

The weak supporting cast includes Sonny Tufts as a well-tanned potential rival for Helen's affections in the country, Robert Strauss as the building janitor, Victor Moore as a plumber who helps the girl unplug her toe from the bathtub faucet, Marguerite Chapman as Richard's assistant Miss Morris, and Oskar Homolka as Dr. Brubaker, the author of the manuscript Richard is trying to read. They each get a couple of scenes at most, and leave no impact.

The Seven Year Itch is undeniably dated and constrained, but also timeless thanks to the presence of one of the screen's eternal idols.

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Movie Review: All About Eve (1950)

The story of jealousy, backstabbing, ageing and the desperate climb to the top among Broadway's elite actresses, All About Eve is a breathlessly magnificent view of the raw human desire to succeed, often by knocking others out of the way.

The film starts with Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter), the latest sensational star of the theatre world, accepting the distinguished industry award for best actress under the watchful eye of caustic critic Addison DeWitt (George Sanders). In flashback, the story of Eve's remarkable rise to the top is revealed.

Just eight months previously, Margo Channing (Bette Davis) is the reigning queen of Broadway, although age is catching up with her. Margo is starring in the latest hit play produced by Max Fabian (Gregory Ratoff), written by celebrated playwright Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), and directed by Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill), who is romancing Margo. A dedicated fan, Eve attends the play every day to study Margo's performance.

Lloyd's wife Karen (Celeste Holm), who is also Margo's close friend, notices Eve outside the theatre and eventually brings her into the dressing room to meet Margo. Eve's story of humble Wisconsin origins, dedication to the theatre, and losing her husband to the war touches Margo, who takes Eve in as her dedicated assistant, although Margo's helper and confidant Birdie (Thelma Ritter) is skeptical.

Lloyd (about Eve): I like that girl, that quality of quiet graciousness.

Eve quickly proves herself extremely capable, organizes every detail of Margo's schedule, and becomes an indispensable and essential part of her life. But Eve's behaviour also borders on obsessive and controlling, and she does not hesitate to flirt with Bill, fanning the flames of jealousy within Margo. When Eve manipulates Karen to gain the part of Margo's understudy, the hostilities break out into the open, with Margo feeling deeply threatened while Bill, Lloyd and Karen are caught between loyalty to Margo and the sparkle of Eve's undoubted talent. The patiently observant Addison, meanwhile, tries to manage the situation to his advantage.

Addison: We all have abnormality in common. We're a breed apart from the rest of humanity, we theatre folk; we are the original displaced personalities.

Written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, All About Eve boasts a sharp wit, a spry pace, and a prickly attitude. The film drops in on a small group of characters and exposes the destruction caused when naked ambition collides with self-doubt. It's a breathtaking jaunt through the world of Broadway's elite, where the rarefied air only serves to heighten the tension between those seeking a way up and those clinging on with their fingernails to avoid sliding down.

Margo: Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night.

Mankiewicz's dialogue is filled with legendary zingers. Whether fuelled by alcohol, spite, or in the case of Addison DeWitt, a self-applied sense of supremacy, the characters are children of the theatre, and they don't hold back. Whether the insults are veiled or explicit, they are delivered with zeal. Only Karen, being the semi-outsider, resents Margo's frequent descent into verbal prickliness. Lloyd and Bill are not only used to it, they depend on it. In the cocktail party scene to celebrate Bill's return from a Hollywood trip, Mankiewicz creates a legendary piece of cinema, a prolonged battlefield where words are bullets, attitudes are fortifications, and visible emotions are deployed as chemical weapons.

Margo: Funny business, a woman's career. The things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you'll need them again when you get back to being a woman.

While there are at least three important male characters in the cast, the heart of the movie is all about women, as suggested by the title. Mankiewicz creates a triangle consisting of Margo the queen, Eve the plotter, and Karen the unwitting enabler. (The three do parallel Caesar, Cassius and Brutus). The film rides on the energy of three ladies fighting intertwining battles, Margo for survival, Eve for power and Karen for friendship. It's a fascinating conflict, and through it Mankiewicz comments on what really constitutes success, the sacrifices to stay at the top, the insecurities that come with professional ambition, and the price that has to be paid in stressed and ruined relationships.

Margo: Nice speech, Eve. But I wouldn't worry too much about your heart. You can always put that award where your heart ought to be.

The performances in All About Eve are mythical in their greatness. In her storied career, it is doubtful whether Bette Davis ever had a role as good as Margo Channing, and she bites into it with absolute relish. This was also likely Anne Baxter's finest moment, and she is simply chilling as the innocent-looking schemer, always about 10 steps ahead in a brutal game of chess, while disarming all around her with an innocuous attitude.

Celeste Holm, George Sanders, Hugh Marlowe and Gary Merrill also find career peaks in the jungle of the theatre world. Thelma Ritter plays her typical self, before surprisingly disappearing from the second half of the film. Marilyn Monroe gets her first significant role as wannabe actress Miss Casswell, hovering around the edges of the elite crowd, looking for a break.

Eve: If nothing else, there's applause... like waves of love pouring over the footlights and wrapping you up.

Shining with the timeless bright lights of Broadway, All About Eve is an absolute gem of an achievement.

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Movie Review: The Misfits (1961)

A long-winded contemporary western drama, The Misfits sadly proved to be the last film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. It is an almost insufferable exercise in navel gazing, a sorry story about lonely people looking for solace in all the wrong places.

In Reno, Nevada, Roslyn (Monroe) finalizes her divorce, with the emotional support of Isabelle (Thelma Ritter). They then meet truck driver Guido (Eli Wallach), and through him his friend Gay Langland (Gable), an old fashioned cowboy. Isabelle tries to get Guido's romantic attention, but he is immediately smitten by the beautiful Roslyn, who in turn is both fascinated and repulsed by Gay's blatant machismo.

Guido offers Roslyn his secluded desert home to de-stress from her divorce, after which Gay and Guido invite Roslyn to join them as they attempt to round up wild Mustang horses in the desert wilderness. On the way they meet Gay's old friend Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift), a penniless rodeo cowboy. As Roslyn finds herself attracting the attention of all three men, the group joins Perce as he competes at a local rodeo event, before heading to a dry lake to try and corral some horses.

Written by Arthur Miller (Monroe's soon to be ex-husband) and directed by John Huston (apparently hard on the bottle), The Misfits is a project that just did not work. Miller's script is talky, dreamy and exceedingly laborious. Roslyn, Guido, Gay and Perce are uninteresting and unintelligent, all the behaviour on display conveying boring people too quick to express shallow emotions and waves of anger. The attractions are inexplicable except as acts of desperation, never a good basis for attempted romance. And the love/hate attitude that Roslyn displays towards Gay is simply irrational. Either she enjoys his alpha male persona or she does not, and Miller can't decide what kind of man his leading lady craves.

Huston's directing is stale. Scenes go on for too long, the story never finds an arc to hold on to, and the climactic but endless Mustang chase in the desert is filled with cowboys-never-change hokum.

The film's many failures are quite the pity, because the acting talent is clearly abundant. Despite any end-of-life issues facing Gable and Monroe, they both effortlessly dominate the screen. Gable is his usual uncompromising presence, filling his scenes with larger than life male bravado and living proudly according to his code. Monroe is a wispy, breathy presence, displaying nothing but vulnerability in what is either a terrific acting performance or simply by placing herself on the screen. Wallach, Clift and Ritter lend plenty of talent in support, all three conveying lives bereft of purpose and drifting towards a great emptiness.

Gable died within two weeks of the end of filming after suffering a heart attack. Monroe died within 18 months, having never completed another film. The Misfits is unfortunately more of a final crooked memorial for two enduring legends, rather than a successful movie.

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Movie Review: The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

A gritty crime drama, The Asphalt Jungle is a brilliant story of greed and deception among a group of desperate men. Director John Huston elicits sympathy for deeply-flawed criminals, and finds the subtle shades of grey that separate the bad from the evil.

Scholarly criminal mastermind "Doc" Erwin Riedenschneider (Sam Jaffe) is released from prison, and immediately sets about meticulously planning a daring heist, which involves breaking into a jewelry store through a sewer tunnel wall. Doc approaches small-time criminal financier Cobby (Marc Lawrence), who in turn brings into the plot respected lawyer Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern) to help provide financing and fencing services. Doc hires Louie (Anthony Caruso) as the safecracker, Gus (James Whitmore), the owner of a local diner, as the getaway driver, and Gus' friend Dix (Sterling Hayden) as the muscle. Dix is a down-on-his-luck dreamer with a gambling addiction, although he is trying to reassemble his life with the help of somewhat girlfriend Doll (Jean Hagen).

Unbeknown to the others, Emmerich is actually in deep financial trouble. He is living beyond his means, partly because he maintains an apartment for his expensive mistress Angela (Marilyn Monroe). With the help of private detective Bob Brannom (Brad Dexter), Emmerich plots to double-cross the others and keep the jewels for himself. The robbery is mostly successful, although one of the men is shot and the police are in pursuit sooner than expected. When Doc and Dix meet with Emmerich to give him the jewels and collect their money, they realize that Emmerich and Brannom have other plans, and the band of thieves turn on each other. With Police Commissioner Hardy (John McIntire) on their tail, imperfect execution and Emmerich's deceit turn a slick plan into a debacle.

Grim and unforgiving, The Asphalt Jungle is a hard-hitting criminals' view of the world. Working from a script he co-wrote with Ben Maddow (an adaptation of the W.R. Burnett novel), Huston delves in the grimy world where gangsters have to simultaneously cooperate with and guard against each other in a perpetual dance of mistrust. Huston places Doc, Dix and Emmerich and Cobby in the middle of the story, and unapologetically makes them real people striving to score big.

Cobby is trying to keep his money-lending business afloat despite the unwelcome attention of corrupt cop Ditrich (Barry Kelley) and customers like Dix who don't pay back their debts. Dix's family was victimized by the Great Depression, and he dreams of making enough money to buy back the horse farm his dad had to sell. But his uncontrollable appetite for betting on horses means he is unlikely to ever get close to fulfilling his fantasy.

Doc and Emmerich are both elder statesmen of the underworld, but polar opposites. Doc takes pride in his detail-oriented work, is smart, careful and thoughtful, and within the context of the crime world, exceedingly open and honest. Emmerich is deceitful and greedy, a man who has over-stretched his resources to buy the company of women like Angela. Emmerich seemingly has everything that Doc, Dix and Cobby strive for, and yet is in the most amount of trouble.

The absence of any stars in the cast allows each of the four to step forward and reveal their personalities and flaws. Jaffe, Lawrence, Calhern and Hayden exude strained confidence undermined by a deep well of apprehension, contributing to the sense of impending doom that electrifies the film.

The jungle is the domain of male survivors, and the two women in the cast are used primarily to sharpen the definition of Dix and Emmerich. Jean Hagen's Doll is a sounding board for Dix, providing a sympathetic ear as he outlines a future that could revive his past. Marilyn Monroe, in her first major movie role as Angela, goes a long way towards justifying Emmerich's excessive spending habits.

Stylistically The Asphalt Jungle is awash in worry, Huston's black and white images filled with harsh contrasts as the men contemplate futures that are either much better or significantly worse than the present. Huston's cameras are restless, always shifting towards edgy angles as in less than two hours the characters are introduced, the heist planned, the crime committed and the aftermath spirals towards disaster. And in The Asphalt Jungle, there are no soft landing spots.

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The Movies Of Marilyn Monroe

All movies starring Marilyn Monroe and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

All About Eve (1950)

Home Town Story (1951)

Clash By Night (1952)

Monkey Business (1952)

Niagara (1953)

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

How To Marry A Millionaire (1953)

River Of No Return (1954)

The Seven Year Itch (1955)

Bus Stop (1956)

The Prince And The Showgirl (1957)

Some Like It Hot (1959)

The Misfits (1961)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Home Town Story (1951)

Somewhere between laughable corporate propaganda and outright embarrassment, Home Town Story survives as a curiosity piece thanks to the appearance of a young Marilyn Monroe in one of her pre-fame roles.

Blake Washburn (Jeffrey Lynn) is a defeated and quick-tempered ex-United States senator, returning to his small home town to take over as editor of the local newspaper. Bitter about his defeat and intent on fighting the next election, Washburn uses the newspaper as a mouthpiece and looks for controversial issues to make a name for himself. He soon sets his sights on large corporate profits as an easy target to whip up populist frenzy. Slim Haskins (Alan Hale, Jr.) is a reporter at the paper and also Blake's friend, but becomes increasingly uncomfortable with Washburn's zealous anti-corporate stance.

Meanwhile Janice Hunt (Marjorie Reynolds) is the girlfriend beginning to question whether Blake is the man for her, while Blake's much younger and quite annoying sister Kate is excited about an upcoming school trip. Local corporate magnate John MacFarland (Donald Crisp) tries to explain to Blake the benefits of large corporations to no avail. But when things go drastically wrong during Kate's school trip, Blake gets an eyeful of all the resources that companies with deep pockets can deploy for the greater good.

Backed by the likes of General Motors and directed by Arthur Pierson under the MGM banner, Home Town Story started life as a commercial and ended up as a one hour movie blatantly trumpeting the benefits of corporate economic muscle. The ham-fisted approach to delivering the message would make the propaganda machine of any dictator proud, while the mundane performances and wooden characters add charm to the astounding artistic carnage on display. Only Alan Hale Jr. emerges with any credit, his turn as reporter Slim Haskins the one character who comes close to escaping the rampant awkwardness.

Marilyn Monroe has perhaps three minutes of screen time and five lines of dialogue as the secretary at the newspaper, bearing the brunt of Slim's boorish advances. And despite the fleeting presence, her charisma is by far the best thing going on in Home Town Story, an otherwise utterly forgettable and amateurish attempt at brainwashing.

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Movie Review: How To Marry A Millionaire (1953)

With three beautiful but broke women desperate to snag ultra rich husbands, How To Marry A Millionaire finds all the right kinds of comedic trouble. Betty Grable, Marilyn Monroe and Lauren Bacall are the devious but frantic instigators of the husband hunting game, and ultimately face the farcical consequences when the best laid plans go awry.

Schatze (Bacall) is a fashion model, Pola (Monroe) is a stunning blonde but blind as a bat without her glasses, and Loco (Grable) is true to her name and just a little nutty. Together they are close to penniless, but nevertheless they rent a swanky furnished New York apartment, pretending to be wealthy to attract rich men. The apartment actually belongs to Freddie (David Wayne), who is apparently on the run to avoid tax evasion charges. The three women survive by gradually selling off the apartment furniture, but the days pass without any of them finding suitably rich husbands. Schatze repeatedly fends off the advances of the persistent Tom Brookman (Cameron Mitchell) because she believes him to be a gas jockey.

But the ladies finally strike it lucky when they are invited to a cocktail party for out-of-town oil tycoons. Schatze is soon enjoying the company of the gentlemanly but much older J.D. Hanley (William Powell), Loco is accompanying a two-timing businessman to a lodge in Maine where she contracts the measles but also meets the hunky Eben (Rory Calhoun), and Pola falls for a one-eyed man who may be only pretending to be extremely wealthy. Although everything looks promising, nothing will proceed as anticipated on the way to finding the right match.

A mix of comedy, romance, and some farce, How To Marry A Millionaire is bright, cheerful, colourful and breezy. The trio of Bacall, Monroe, and Grable keep the screen filled with a bubbly froth of men-seeking hormones, and the three actresses quickly establish memorable and distinct characters.

Bacall's Schatze holds the group together and appears the most mature, but she is catastrophically error-prone in her assessment of men's qualities. Monroe goes to town as Pola in a role full of understated comedy. Pola refuses to wear her glasses, believing they make her ugly, and as a result Monroe gets to walk slowly into walls and carries on conversations with people she does not recognize. Monroe demonstrates excellent timing and self-control, Pola fighting against herself to place beauty ahead of elegance and basic functionality.

Loco is perhaps none too bight but has an uncanny talent to pick up men while shopping, getting them to pay for whatever she was buying, and then bringing them home for a look-over by Schatze and Pola. Grable mixes adorable naivete with a lust for riches, a combination that misfires with a spectacular bang when she meets Eben and his trees in the wilderness of a Maine park.

How To Marry A Millionaire was the first film shot in CinemaScope. Director Jean Negulesco demonstrates the breadth of all that the technology has to offer, the movie opening with wide-screen shots of the 20th Century Fox Orchestra performing Street Scene, followed by a sparkling montage of New York landmarks. Negulesco then keeps his ladies bathed in glamour regardless of their declining financial fortunes. The Nunnally Johnson script even finds its way to a private fashion show scene with Schatze, Pola and Loco among a bevy of beauties modelling for Tom Brookman as he insists on a private showing of the latest fashions simply to get close to Schatze.

How To Marry A Millionaire is of course useless as a how-to guide, but rather than helping to find millionaire husbands, the film offers priceless fun.

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Movie Review: Monkey Business (1952)

A science farce trying to recreate the vibe of Bringing Up Baby (1938), Monkey Business finds Cary Grant reunited with Howard Hawks but neither the script nor the execution are sharp enough. Some good laughs are scattered in the story about a monkey-made concoction that reverses ageing, but also quite a few clunky and awkward moments.

Research scientist Dr. Barnaby Fulton (Grant) is struggling to come up with a formula that reverses the ageing process. Barnaby is happily married to the supportive Edwina (Ginger Rogers), who tolerates with good humour her husband's absent-mindedness. Working with monkeys at the laboratory of a pharmaceutical company owned by industrialist Oliver Oxley (Charles Coburn), Barnaby's latest formulation is going nowhere, but an escaped monkey randomly mixes the right ingredients, producing a powerful formula that rejuvenates youth. The monkey promptly dumps the mix into the lab's drinking water tank.

Barnaby is the first to unwittingly drink from the monkey's formula and temporarily reverts to the behaviour of a teenager, setting out on a wild adventure with Oxley's curvaceous secretary Lois (Marilyn Monroe). With Oxley dreaming of the riches that the formula will bring to his company but unable to have a rational conversation with the bewildered Barnaby, Edwina gets her turn to unexpectedly become young at heart, and her stint as a juvenile stresses the marriage to Barnaby as she revives memories of old boyfriend Hank Entwhistle (Hugh Marlowe).

With a monkey replacing a leopard, Hawks and Grant must have hoped that the mix of science, animals, and comedy that worked so well in Bringing Up Baby would click again. But the Monkey Business script, by Ben Hecht, Charles Lederer, and I.A.L. Diamond, is lacking the necessary cutting edge. While the start of the movie sets up the premise with assurance, the story development sinks into general predictability as the cast members take turns acting like younger versions of themselves.

But it's in the final third that Monkey Business stumbles badly. An attempt to descend into farce spirals clumsily into cringe-inducing incompetence, as Edwina incomprehensibly mistakes a baby for Barnaby, while the real Barnaby is busy tying Hank to a tree and attempting to scalp him. It's as awful as it sounds, an embarrassing stretch of intended comedy veering wildly off target.

Thankfully, the rest of the movie is better. Grant's early scenes as the easily distracted scientist demonstrate his quirky charisma to good effect, and Rogers is excellent as the loving wife who understands and celebrates her husband's uniqueness. A pre-stardom Monroe as the secretary with no secretarial skills other than killer curves is unfortunately underutilized, but her scenes cavorting with a rejuvenated Barnaby hint at her irresistible screen presence and subtle comic timing.

Monkey Business proves true to its title animal: sometimes funny, but unfortunately also over-the-top and prone to causing unintended embarrassment.

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