Movie Review: Rancho Notorious (1952)

Genre: Western

Director: Fritz Lang

Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy, Mel Ferrer

Running Time: 89 minutes

Synopsis: After his fiancée Beth is murdered in a botched robbery, mild-mannered Wyoming rancher Vern Haskell (Arthur Kennedy) vows revenge and sets-off to track the killer. His pursuit to leads him to suave gunslinger Frenchy Fairmont (Mel Ferrer) and ex-saloon girl Altar Keane (Marlene Dietrich), who now runs the secluded Chuck-a-Luck ranch for fugitives near the Mexican border. Vern falls in love with Altar and melds in with a group of bandits at the ranch, believing one of them is his target.

What Works Well: This western is elevated above routine by a packed agenda and quality delivery. Writer Daniel Taradash opens with a fervent kiss, then augments traditional themes of loss, revenge, and a love triangle with flashbacks and a challenging crime-as-a-woman-owned-business sub-story. In vivid Technicolor, director Fritz Lang adds nervous energy to Vern's descent into a life of crime, and stages several scenes with theatrical panache. Marlene Dietrich (a woman with too much luggage), Arthur Kennedy (the rancher on an unwanted quest), and Mel Ferrer (the fast gun desperate for one constant in his life) create an effective lead trio.

What Does Not Work As Well: The Legend of Chuck-A-Luck sung by Bill Lee over the credits is truly awful, and some of the painted sets are of the obvious cardboard variety. The long line-up of suspects adds spice to Vern's search, but the men remain insufficiently differentiated.

Conclusion: Thoughtfully explores pitfalls along the red mist journey.



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Movie Review: No Highway In The Sky (1951)

A commercial aviation drama, No Highway In The Sky demonstrates respect for science but loses altitude in a languid third act.

At the Farnborough air base in England, newly arrived executive Dennis Scott (Jack Hawkins) meets one of the employees, American aeronautical scientist Theodore Honey (James Stewart). Honey is an absent-minded eccentric obsessed with testing metal fatigue caused by vibration on the tail section of the Reindeer, a modern aircraft recently entered into service. He is also raising his daughter Elspeth (Janette Scott) on his own, after losing his wife during the war. 

Honey 's calculations suggest the Reindeer's tail will fail without warning after about 1440 flight hours, although his lab tests are yet to prove the theory. He boards a flight to Canada to investigate a recent crash and is shocked to find himself on a Reindeer plane approaching the 1440 hour limit. He raises the alarm with the Captain as well as fellow passenger Monica Teasdale (Marlene Dietrich), a glamorous movie star, and flight attendant Marjorie (Glynis Johns). But his warnings to turn the plane back will not be immediately heeded.

After 1950's Harvey, director Henry Koster and star James Stewart re-team for another drama hinging on idiosyncrasies. No Highway In The Sky is an adaptation of a Nevil Shute novel and one of the earliest cinematic attempts to tackle the potential dangers of commercial flight. Despite plenty of (intentional) bafflegab extending to nuclear fission, the narrative focus is on science, engineering, mathematics, and rigorous testing.

What could have been dry subject matter is animated by the eccentricities of Theodore Honey. He is the prototypical absent-minded scientist who cannot remember his own home address, but can master complex mathematics and pass on his knowledge to his daughter through engaging games. Stewart overplays the role with exaggerated mannerisms, but his antics also inject a potent dose of likeability and humour.

Koster plays with various model and back-screen projection effects (some ok, others dreadful) to capture the flight scenes, while the roomy interior of the fictional Reindeer best resembles a hotel lobby. The film peaks in the middle third, the flight from England to Gander, Newfoundland introducing two women for Honey to fret about in Marlene Dietrich's movie star and Glynis Johns' stewardess. But first and foremost on the scientist's mind is the likelihood they will all die because the tail might fall off over the Atlantic. Koster keeps the drama finely poised between looming tragedy and warm character interactions shrouded in kindness.

Unfortunately all the events after that flight are grounded, and not in a good way. Energy seeps out quicker than jet fuel can be burned, as Honey struggles to prove his theory while the two women wonder if the scientist is worth the trouble of a love triangle. The ending is particularly flat, blurted news from elsewhere and an obvious scientific oversight colliding in a rushed wrap-up. No Highway In The Sky enjoys a brisk take-off and a good flight, but bungles the landing.



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Movie Review: The Spoilers (1942)

A western with an excellent cast and rich plot mixing business with romance, The Spoilers is an enjoyable story set in the madness of the Alaska gold rush.

It's 1900, and gold mining has transformed Nome, Alaska, into a bustling but lawless town. Cherry Malotte (Marlene Dietrich) runs the local saloon and presides over the town's social pulse. Her loyal assistant Bronco (Richard Barthelmess) harbours a hopeless crush on Cherry, but she is awaiting the return of her true love, mine owner Roy Glennister (John Wayne). The business of mining in Nome is in turmoil: claims and counterclaims to seize control of mines are causing rifts between miners and newcomers looking to make a quick profit. Recently arrived gold commissioner Alexander McNamara (Randolph Scott) appears to be at the centre of many of the dubious claims, while also casting an eye towards Cherry.

Roy arrives back in town but to Cherry's horror he is in the company of the attractive Helen Chester (Margaret Lindsay), the niece of newcomer Judge Horace Stillman (Samuel S. Hinds). Roy appears to want to enjoy the company of both Helen and Cherry, while Judge Stillman's arrival to bring some law and order is viewed with a mix of relief and suspicion. Roy clashes with his partner Al Dextry (Harry Carey) on whether to trust the legal process to determine the ownership of their mine, but there is a lot more going on than initially meets the eye.

Directed by Ray Enright, this was already the fourth film version of the Rex Beach novel, and one of two 1942 films to unite Dietrich, Scott and Wayne (the other was Philadelphia). With Scott sinking his teeth into a rare antagonist role as a corrupt businessman amidst a love, lust and gold story with Dietrich the centre of attention of three men, The Spoilers offers amplified versions of many traditional western elements: saloon brawls, corrupted attempts at frontier justice, and a mad rush in search of quick riches, spiced with multiple often hidden personal agendas.

The film thrives in an environment of frontier lawlessness where no one can fully claim the moral high ground. The characters start at grey and moves towards sinister. Even Cherry, conceivably the purest person in town, meddles with the paperwork at the gold claims office. Roy thinks nothing of two-timing the women in his life, while McNamara is superficially on the side of officialdom but actually seeking his own fortune. And these are just the main characters. Sidekick Bronco, ambitious Helen and Judge Stillman have their own motivations, and the film benefits by gradually establishing a reality that no one arrives in Nome seeking the greater good.

The trio of Wayne, Scott and Dietrich share the screen time equitably, and ensure a high calibre of dedicated talent in every scene. Dietrich doesn't get to sing but easily places Cherry at the heart of the film and elegantly wears several fetching dresses, while Wayne and Scott enjoy their time playing much less than perfect characters. Margaret Lindsay, Harry Carey and Richard Barthelmess offer capable and animated support.

The Spoilers suffers from a few of weaknesses. The comic elements are often overplayed, and tend to undermine what is a good drama. Many men are shot and killed in the film, the deaths are instantaneously dismissed as funny and the violence stepped over like inconveniently placed trash. An unfortunate blackface episode is also played for laughs but nevertheless confines the film to a very different era.

Enright does better in lovingly creating an engrossing aesthetic: Nome is presented as a ramshackle town heaving with activity in every corner, with a main street overrun by ankle-deep mud. Cherry's saloon is the gathering place where every seat is occupied, deals are struck, alliances are made, and disputes are settled with brawls. Fittingly, the film ends with a legendary and prolonged two-man fistfight, extending from the upper balcony of the saloon through the lower level and out to the street. Every piece of furniture and pane of glass is shattered in pursuit of barefisted justice, frontier style.

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Movie Review: A Foreign Affair (1948)

A stressed romantic comedy set in a dramatic post-war environment, A Foreign Affair creates an intriguing context but gets caught reaching for an unsuitable level of frivolity.

A bombed-out Berlin, just after the end of World War Two. A US congressional committee led by prim and proper Iowa congresswoman Phoebe Frost (Jean Arthur) arrives to investigate troop morale. She is soon exposed to soldiers fraternizing with local woman, and in particular gravitating to a popular cabaret where sultry singer Erika von Schlütow (Marlene Dietrich) performs. Erika has a dark past with strong connections to the highest echelons of the Nazi party, but is currently surviving by carrying on a secret affair with Captain John Pringle (John Lund), who is also from Iowa.

Phoebe insists on investigating Erika, not knowing that Pringle's commander, Colonel Plummer (Millard Mitchell), already has the singer under observation in the hopes of smoking out a high ranking Nazi still in hiding. Pringle worries that Phoebe's meddling will expose his affair, so he feigns a romantic interest in the congresswoman, melting her heart and creating a complex love triangle in the destroyed city.

Directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, A Foreign Affair is visually attractive, but otherwise more curious than successful. The grim setting of a Berlin in ruins hosting emotionally shattered locals and a bored occupying army creates fundamentals for a hefty drama. Instead Wilder half-heartedly steers towards comedy, and the playful elements are never at ease within the dour context.

The film's conflicted core is typified by the two women at the heart of the story. Erika rules at the smoky, rowdy cabaret, and Dietrich gets to perform three melancholy numbers inspired by a broken city and its demoralized people: Black Market, Illusions, and The Ruins of Berlin. Her character is world weary, dealing with a glorious but destroyed past and an uncertain future. In contrast Phoebe Frost is a cartoon figure, starting out in humourless headmistress mode and transforming into a puddle of goo melted by fake romance. It's no fault of Jean Arthur, who does well in the role, but Frost is a ludicrous character with no credibility, dropped into a grieving world.

John Lund in the role of Captain John Pringle does not help matters as all. Singularly lacking in charisma, it is difficult to imagine one woman even pretending to be attracted to him, let alone two at the same time. Buffoonish congressmen and the barely sketched side story of a Nazi coming out of hiding further erode enjoyment.

It is left to the prevailing mood and on-location cinematography to rescue the pleasures of the film, and Wilder and cinematographer Charles Lang do not disappoint. The mountains of debris on every street corner and the bombed-out buildings still serving as housing for shell-shocked Germans are captured in their destructive majesty, with plenty of crisp nighttime scenes making the most of the black, white and grey austerity.

A Foreign Affair is an uneven effort, a laughing-in-the-graveyard exercise where the fun falls flat but the prevailing aesthetics impress nonetheless.

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The Movies Of Marlene Dietrich

All movies starring Marlene Dietrich and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog are linked below:

Manpower (1941)

The Spoilers (1942)

A Foreign Affair (1948)

No Highway In The Sky (1951)

Rancho Notorious (1952)

Witness For The Prosecution (1957)

Touch Of Evil (1958)

Judgment At Nuremberg (1961)

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The Movie Star Index is here.

Movie Review: Manpower (1941)

A romantic triangle drama set in the rough and tumble world of electric power line crews, Manpower boasts a terrific cast and some gritty locations and cinematography. But the human conflicts at the centre of the film are often contrived and less than convincing.

In California, Hank McHenry (Edward G. Robinson) and Johnny Marshall (George Raft) are best friends on a power line installation and maintenance crew that includes fellow workers Jumbo (Alan Hale) and Omaha (Frank McHugh). Hank likes women but is hopelessly incompetent when it comes to romantically wooing them. When he suffers a serious leg injury and is no longer able to climb the towers, Hank is promoted to foreman.

Pop Duval is a popular member of Hank's crew, but dies in a accident involving iced power lines. Hank is immediately attracted to Pop's troubled daughter Faye (Marlene Dietrich). She has served time in prison for theft, and upon her release has defaulted to life as a trashy hostess at a sleazy clip joint. Johnny doesn't trust Faye's intentions, but Hank is undeterred and ignoring Johnny's advice, proposes marriage. Faye never professed to love Hank but anyway tries to make a go of their marriage, but an injury suffered by Johnny signals the start of trouble ahead.

A rather uneven mix of drama, comedy, romance and conflict, Manpower is good but leaves the impression that it could have been better. Certainly the trio of Robinson, Raft and Dietrich is potent, and the performers generate and maintain an admirable level of intensity and engagement. Director Raoul Walsh is less successful when it comes to the comic relief, with the continuous stream of humour supplied by the numerous sidekick characters sometimes threatening to take over the film.

Primarily this is a dramatic love triangle set in a unique context, and the background of the men as members of a power line maintenance crew provides an undercurrent of danger that is well-exploited by Walsh. Setting aside atrocious worker safety practices, there are some quite effective scenes portraying the men getting on with their work on the high towers in inclement weather conditions including severe rain storms, thick fog (near an airport with planes landing nearby), and grappling with iced wires.

Also good is the smoky, sordid atmosphere at the Midnight Club, the clip joint where Faye washes up after her stint behind bars. The club is filled with desperate women hoping for one last break in life but instead being taken advantage of by both the club's disreputable management and the scuzzy customers. If working on the power lines is dangerous for Hank, Johnny and their men, working at the Midnight Club is just as precarious for Faye and her friends.

The tension that emerges in the relationships between Hank, Faye and Johnny is adequate without properly resonating. Only Robinson as Hank has enough character material to play with, and his naive, generally pleasant but easily combustible personality rings true. George Raft as Johnny has less of an arc and hides behind a cogent if ultimately predictable wise-cracking stoic persona. Faye is almost too easy for Dietrich, as she gets the shortest of scenes to reveal some background but otherwise plays the jaundiced victim of fate with barely any effort. The cast also includes Eve Arden and Ward Bond in small roles.

The film is famous in Hollywood lore for a couple of incidental reasons. Apparently Raft and Robinson came to blows on the set. Some sources attribute the tension between the men to arguments about Dietrich, while others mention Raft resenting Robinson's late addition to the cast, which diminished Raft's profile. Manpower is also known as the film Raft elected to appear in rather than The Maltese Falcon, which proved to be a classic and Humphrey Bogart's biggest career break.

Regardless of the background stories, Manpower is a decent effort. It never fully lights up, but does occasionally sparkle.

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Movie Review: Witness For The Prosecution (1957)

A masterful adaptation of Agatha Christie's play, Witness For The Prosecution is a playful and taut courtroom drama, filled with compelling characters, sharply defined twists and turns, and a memorable Charles Laughton performance.

Celebrated defence lawyer Sir Wilfrid Robarts (Laughton) has just returned to his practice after a spell in hospital due to ill health. Although hassled by his nurse Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lanchester) and advised to not accept any difficult files, Sir Wilfrid cannot resist. He agrees to take on the case of Leonard Vole (Tyrone Power), who is accused of murdering an old rich widow, Mrs. Emily French (Norma Varden). She had a crush on Leonard, and he was the main benefactor in her will, inheriting a large sum of money upon her death.

Chief Inspector Hearne (Philip Tonge) arrests Leonard based on circumstantial evidence, but Leonard insists he is innocent and that his wife Christine (Marlene Dietrich) will support his alibi. Meanwhile, Emily's housekeeper Janet McKenzie (Una O'Connor) never liked Leonard and has damaging testimony that he was arguing with the victim the night of the murder. The trial starts, and Sir Wilfrid appears to be making good progress in casting doubt on the case made by the Crown prosecutor Mr. Myers (Torin Thatcher). But suddenly the case is transformed when the prosecution calls a surprise witness, and Sir Wilfrid will need to be at his best to counteract devastating testimony.

Directed and co-written by Billy Wilder, Witness For The Prosecution is a delight. A courtroom drama filled with personality, humour and an undercurrent of unease that something is just not quite right in the case against Leonard Vole, the film contains plenty of surprises to maintain interest and easily sustains the two hours of running time. Crisp black and white photography, fluid camera movements within the courtroom and stark shadows and contrasts infuse the film with a restive dynamic.

At the middle of it all is Sir Wilfrid, a man born to question authority, question his own clients and question adversarial witnesses, usually as he strolls to an easy courtroom triumph. A large part of the film's appeal comes from Sir Wilfrid suddenly realizing that this case is much more of a challenge than even he realized. When the astonishing witness is followed by startling new evidence, even Sir Wilfrid struggles to map out the endgame, and his uncertainty heightens the carefully cultivated sense that in this case, anything can happen and the truth will be incredibly difficult to tease out. Charles Laughton has a blast with the role, creating in Sir Wilfrid the genius buffoon huffing his way past medical advise to occupy his zone of comfort in the middle of an arduous court battle.

Christie and Wilder provide the three central characters with plenty of colourful context and interest that seeps into the courtroom. Sir Wilfrid heads-up an entourage of assistants, but it is his running mental battle with his dogged nurse Miss Plimsoll that most taxes his abilities. Meanwhile, there is obvious tension between Leonard and his wife Christine, perhaps partially attributable to her German origins, and maybe because Christine resented Leonard's liaison with the now deceased Mrs. French. But as the trial progresses, the relationship between the accused and his spouse emerges as a tight knot, convoluted in construction, intent and implications.

In his last completed role and just a year before his death at age 44, Tyrone Power gives Leonard Vole persuasiveness hampered by a selective recollection of the truth. Marlene Dietrich is a dark and spectral figure, adept at saying one thing while her body language hints at quite another.

Witness For The Prosecution is an exquisite film, dominating the courtroom with commanding arguments to easily win its status as a classic.

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Movie Review: Judgment At Nuremberg (1961)

A powerful drama examining the culpability of German society in enabling the extremism of Hitler's Nazis, Judgment At Nuremberg is thought-provoking filmmaking at its best. A star-studded cast glows as a courtroom confrontation sheds light on the insidious rise of evil.

It's 1948, and Judge Dan Haywood (Spencer Tracy) has been recruited out of retirement in the state of Maine to preside over an American-administered post-war trial in Nuremberg, Germany. The defendants are four German civilian judges accused of crimes against the population before and during the war. By not taking a stand against the Nazi laws discriminating according to race and mental competency, the judges are accused of enabling suffering, sterilization, and death.

The most prominent of the defendants is Dr. Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster), an internationally renowned intellectual and published author on the topic of justice, with an impeccable pre-war reputation. Janning refuses to acknowledge the authority of the court and maintains a stony silence as the trial starts, not wanting to legitimize a trial of German citizens presided over by Americans on German soil. The other defendants are less prestigious, and perhaps more susceptible due to less than pristine pasts.

The American prosecutor Colonel Tad Lawson (Richard Widmark) is committed and confrontational. A veteran of the war and several prior court cases, he mounts an aggressive attack on the acquiescence of the judges. By applying and upholding the Nazi laws, the judges normalized state brutality, and Lawson draws a direct link to the resultant mass atrocities at the death camps.

In addition to presenting stacks of documents as evidence, Lawson humanizes the victims and calls to the witness stand two civilian casualties of the Nazi laws: Rudolph Peterson (Montgomery Clift) was accused of being mentally incompetent and suffered accordingly, while in an infamous case, Irene Wallner (Judy Garland) was accused of having sexual relations with a Jew named Feldenstein.

Tasked with the unenviable duty of mounting a defence is young German lawyer Hans Rolfe (Maximilian Schell). He adopts the stance that society as a whole cannot be found guilty of following the laws imposed by fanatical rulers. Rolfe holds his ground against Lawson's ferocious legal arguments, deflecting a succession of accusations and emphasizing that the defendants were fulfilling their civic duties in applying the laws of the land.

With the courtroom frequently the scene of heated exchanges between Lawson and Rolfe, Judge Haywood struggles to determine how justice can best be served. With the Berlin blockade revealing the belligerent Soviets as much more of a relevant threat than the defeated Germans, Haywood's task is not made any easier when he meets and starts to socialize with Frau Bertholt (Marlene Dietrich), the widow of a German military commander.

Inspired by actual post-war trials, Judgment At Nuremberg is a rollercoaster ride through the evolution of societal forces. Written by Abby Mann, the script maintains an exquisite balancing act as the prosecution and defence take turns to make their case, every thrust parried with a counter-thrust, the moral pendulum swinging from one side to the other.

With Tracy providing sage oversight, Widmark and Schell are well matched and both demonstrate vehement intensity as the legal battle unfolds. But Schell adds a sublime layer of fragile humanity to the role of Hans Rolfe, an intelligent man fully aware that he is representing losers in the courtroom of the victors, yet determined that the German people not be uniformly indicted for the actions of their leaders. Unexpectedly rising to the top of a stellar cast, Schell won the Best Actor Academy Award.

Montgomery Clift and Judy Garland, in her first major film role since 1954's A Star Is Born, add a large curiosity factor. Both battling personal substance abuse demons and barely able to perform, they nevertheless pull out affecting performances as tormented and damaged victims coming back to confront the men who judged them. They both deservedly received Supporting Actor nominations.

Director Stanley Kramer's cameras find plenty of energy in the grand Nuremberg courtroom. Frequently the cameras maintain fluid motion centred on the witness chair, and end their movement by unexpectedly capturing witness and defendant in the same frame, the accuser and accused caught within the same box. Kramer also elegantly resolves the obstacle of simultaneous courtroom translation without ignoring its reality.

Outside the court, Nuremberg is a dichotomy of destruction and rebirth, entire city blocks reduced to rubble by Allied bombing, but some neighbourhoods, markets and restaurants now thriving again mostly on American money. Judge Haywood finds the locals mostly differential to their American vanquishers, and struggling with deep feelings of humiliation and confusion over a dream of restoring nationalistic self-belief turned into a nightmare of devastation.

Dr. Janning finally breaks his silence and eloquently yet emotionally outlines how individual responsibility can be subjugated by the rising tide of immense pride fuelled by intoxicating power. Judgment At Nuremberg asks all the difficult questions, offers no easy answers, and delivers poignant commentary on the dilemmas inherent in a society drifting towards extremism in the name of national reawakening.



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