Movie Review: Love in the Afternoon (**1/2 out of 4 stars)
Year of Release: 1957
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Billy Wilder
Cast: Gary Cooper, Audrey Hepburn, Maurice Chevalier
Plot outline: A comedy about a middle-aged playboy who's fascinated by the daughter of a private detective who has been hired to entrap him with the wife of a client (IMDb).
The story (**1/2)
How the story unfolds (** flat, loose in the middle, implausible ending)
The characters (**)
The acting (**1/2)
Overall rating **1/2 out of 4 stars
Movie Review: For Whom the Bell Tolls
Year of Release: 1943
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Sam Wood
Cast: Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Akim Tamiroff, Arturo de Córdova, Vladimir Sokoloff
Plot outline: A U.S. mercenary, Robert Jordan, and an army of peasants fight for Spanish Republic in the 1930s civil war (IMDb).
With such fidelity to the original that practically nothing was left out except all of the unmentionable language and the more intimate romantic scenes, Ernest Hemingway's wonderful novel of the Spanish civil war, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," is brought to the screen in all its richness of color and character. In spite of its almost interminable and physically exhausting length - it takes two hours and fifty minutes to cover less than four days in a group of people's lives - and in spite of some basic detruncations of the novel's two leading characters, the movie vibrates throughout with vitality and is topped off with a climax that's a whiz. The emphasis is primarily upon the conflict within the band of loyalist Spanish guerrillas to whom Robert Jordan goes for aid in his perilous mission to blow up an enemy bridge. And the study of character among those Spaniards, the definition of the braves and the cowards, is the matter of absorbing interest for at least two-thirds of the movie. The rest is the tingling action-business of the calculated blowing of the bridge, which is as tense and vivid melodrama as anyone could normally stand. In their fidelity to the novel, the script and the direction were overzealous, if anything, and lingered too long over matters which might have been profitably compressed. The script caught the flavor and the spirit of the novel handsomely, and the direction gained an intimacy with the characters through constant close-ups which is well-nigh unique. The quality of their work is flawless. However, the superb characterizations are the outstanding merit of the movie. Gary Cooper as Robert Jordan and Ingrid Bergman as Maria are fine, though limited in their opportunities. Bergman is perhaps a shade too gay. But Katina Paxinou as Pilar, the rugged Spanish woman who is the tower of strength, is a marvel of tenderness and violence, the Spanish peasant character in fluid mass. And Akim Tamiroff as Pablo is a masterpiece of dark and devious moods, as fine an expression of animal treachery and human pride as has ever been put on the screen. Likewise, Vladimir Sokoloff as Anselmo, the aged man of iron; Joseph Calleia as El Sordo, the invincible; Mikhail Rasumny as Rafael, the gypsy clown; Fortunio Bonanova as Fernando, the realist, and many more perform excellently. (NYT)
My judgement: *** out of 4 stars
Movie Review: Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
Year of Release: 1936
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Frank Capra
Cast: Gary Cooper, Jean Arthur
Plot outline: Longfellow Deeds, a simple-hearted tuba player, inherits a fortune and has to contend with opportunist city slickers (IMDb).
The directing-writing combination which functioned so successfully in It Happened One Night has spiced this light-hearted story with wit, novelty, and ingenuity. Longfellow Deeds is the hero of the occasion and he becomes one of our favorite characters under the attentive handling of Gary Cooper. Mr. Deeds is the poet laureate of Mandrake Falls, Vermont. He writes greeting-day verses, and plays the tuba in the town band. Then an uncle dies, leaving his $20,000,000 estate to him, and he - slightly dazed but unimpressed by his sudden riches - is tossed willy-nilly into scheming New York. Crooked lawyers beset him, the board of the opera elects him chairman, a girl reporter gains his confidence and then headlines him as the "Cinderella Man". Crushed, derided, deceived, and disillusioned, the lean Mr. Deeds prepares to share the wealth by establishing a collective farm colony and then, cruelest jest of all, he is hauled before a lunacy commission and only by the narrowest of margins and the love of Jean Arthur, the repentant sob sister, escapes being adjudged a manic depressive. If this is the story in outline, it does not attempt to capture the gay, harebrained, but entirely ingratiating quality of the picture. To appreciate that, you will have to watch Mr. Cooper struggling with the tuba, Mr. Stander fighting off apoplexy, Raymond Walburn (that most perfect gentleman's gentleman) raising his voice against an echo, and, ultimately, the scene of the lunacy commission's hearing which is as perfect a spoof of alienists and expert testimony as the screen has presented. It is on this rousingly comic note that the movie ends, and the memory of it should be enough to erase the vague impression we got that the movie had bogged down for a time in mid-career. (NYT)
My judgement: ***1/2 out of 4 stars
Movie Review: Sergeant York
Year of Release: 1941
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Howard Hawks
Cast: Gary Cooper, Walter Brennan, Joan Leslie, Margaret Wycherly
Plot outline: A hillbilly sharpshooter becomes one of the most celebrated American heroes of WWI when he single-handedly attacks and captures a German position using the same strategy as in turkey shoot (IMDb).
Based on the true story of WWI hero, Alvin York, and released during WWII, even if it were for propaganda, Sergeant York is a classic and moving war movie. Gary Cooper is convincing as the title role who goes through transformation from a drunken good-for-nothing country bumpkin to a solid man of values and ideals. His performance in expressing his character's confusion and emotions throughout the changes - naive but intelligent - is incredible. For this, Cooper got his first Oscar for Best Actor. Cooper's performance is backed up with a fine supporting cast; two you will remember are: Walter Brennan who brilliantly juggles three roles as a preacher, a postmaster and a shopkeeper (he earned an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor) and Margaret Wycherly who inspirationally brings a matriarch's knowing instincts to the part of Mother York (she got an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress). Director Howard Hawks beautifully weaves the story's many threads together and cleverly adds good humour in it.
My judgement: *** out of 4 stars
Year of Release: 1957
