Movie Review: The Big Trail
Year of Release: 1930
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Raoul Walsh
Cast: John Wayne, Marguerite Churchill, El Brendel, Tully Marshall, Tyrone Power Sr.
Plot outline: Breck leads a wagon train of pioneers through Indian attack, storms, deserts, swollen rivers, down cliffs and so on while looking for the murder of a trapper and falling in love with Ruth (IMDb).
The Big Trail is notable as John Wayne’s first starring role. While he radiates charisma, Wayne performance unfortunately feels wooden. His character talks too much and acts too little, a far cry from the laconic persona he would refine over the next nine years and bring to bear in the superior Stagecoach (1939). Still, Wayne’s performance in many ways mirrors the entire production, full of potential, but ultimately uneven. The Big Trail is a movie brimming with realism. The clothes, the equipment, everything is well researched. Throw in some jaw-dropping visuals, such as hundreds of settlers lowering their wagons by rope down the side of a cliff, or driving through a huge rushing river during a rain storm, and even Lawrence of Arabia (1962) can’t match its level of epic filmmaking. Unfortunately, the characters themselves seem to get lost amidst the spectacle. The cookie-cutter roles are almost universally forgettable, and the dialog comes across as awkward and stilted. While Wayne appears quite confident despite the size of the production and his relative inexperience, he’s not yet able to single-handedly carry a picture the way he could later in his career. (FML)
My judgement: *** out of 4 stars
Movie Review: Summertime
Year of Release: 1955
Country of Origin: UK, USA
Director: David Lean
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Rossano Brazzi
Plot outline: A schoolteacher is surprised to find love on a Venetian vacation (IMDb).
David Lean secured his place in movie history with such grand epics as Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago, and his earlier, much more modest Brief Encounter. Nestled in between is a gem of a romantic drama, Summertime. The story of how a visit to Venice touches one woman's life, it's an intimate and sensitive portrait which Lean later declared to be his favourite movie, starring his favourite actress. Hepburn plays Jane Hudson, a confident and eager tourist on a long-awaited trip to Venice, who goes in search of a "wonderful, mystical, magical, miracle!" and incessantly captures every moment on camera. But being alone in such a romantic setting soon takes its toll as Jane finds herself surrounded by couples and begins to yearn for some passion of her own. Rossano Brazzi is Renato de Rossi, the smooth antiques dealer who sweeps the nervous Jane off her feet with all the amorous flourishes of your typical Italian lover. Initially shocked by his frank sexuality, Jane soon succumbs to Renato, who over the course of the movie makes her realise that Venice is a real place with real faults and complexities, not just the idealistic setting for her daydreams. Hepburn made a career out of playing vibrant heroines with a vulnerable side and it's her portrayal of Jane's insecurity and loneliness that give the movie its substance. Based on Arthur Laurents' play The Time of the Cuckoo, the movie is thinly plotted to give Hepburn the space to act and Lean - shooting entirely on location for the first time - the space to capture images of Venice. Summertime proved to be a critical and commercial triumph for Lean. Its success enabled Lean to leave British cinema to garner more lucrative projects in Hollywood. The sophisticated visual and contextual foundations for those later epics are evident throughout Summertime in its blend of expansive scenery mixed with subtle and often wordless interactions. Lean would cultivate other exotic stories featuring additional isolated outsiders in his later work, but with Summertime the acclaimed British filmmaker crafted a touching evocation of loneliness and an emotional realism rarely evident in similar melodramas of the period. (LB, GC)
My judgement: *** out of 4 stars
Movie Review: Paris Blues
Year of Release: 1961
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Martin Ritt
Cast: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Sidney Poitier, Louis Armstrong, Diahann Carroll
Plot outline: Two jazz musicians deal with romantic problems in Paris (IMDb).
The jazz is hot, the romance is not so hot. The middlebrow drama never has a sense of where it's going and what it wants to say about music, racism or love relationships. Ram Bowen (Paul Newman) is a trombone player and Eddie Cook (Sidney Poitier) a tenor man in the same jazz band. Ram is studying music and aspiring to be a "serious" composer, while Eddie escapes American racism to be in a city that respects the love he has for his kind of music. American tourists Lillian Corning (Joanne Woodward) and Connie Lampson (Diahann Carroll) are on a two-week holiday in Paris and begin a casual romantic fling with the two jazz men that turns more serious as the days go by. It becomes a question if Ram will leave his music to return home to be with Lillian and will Eddie also return home because his love for Connie is so great. On the plus side there's the wonderful score by Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong's amazing rendition of "Battle Royal." Otherwise it's dross. The movie never gets around to probing America's racism that caused many blacks to seek shelter in the much friendlier confines of the City of Lights, as it instead focuses around the white Newman character's uninteresting problem if he's good enough to be a serious musician and still cut it as a jazz man. (DS)
My judgement: **1/2 out of 4 stars
Movie Review: The Proud Rebel
Year of Release: 1958
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Alan Ladd, Olivia de Havilland
Plot outline: A young boy becomes mute after seeing his mother killed in the Civil War and his father decides to take him and their dog on a trek to find a cure for his condition, but the road ahead is full of evil sheepherders and hard-to-find money (IMDb).
Although it nominally falls into the Western or outdoor-adventure categories, The Proud Rebel, which is not without gunplay, is more concerned with exposing character than mayhem. Director Michael Curtiz, except for a few lapses, has derived fine performances from his principals. Alan Ladd, who is not noted for explosive portrayals, is restrained but exceptionally expressive as the father, whose anxiety and devotion prove more powerful than pride. Although he has but one or two lines of dialogue, Mr. Ladd's 11-year-old son, David Ladd, contributes an astonishingly professional and sympathetic stint as his son. The tow-headed youngster, who is making his movie debut, is not only extremely likable but also projects movingly and with surprising naturalness and fidelity the helplessness of the mute. Olivia de Havilland, as the farm owner whose attachment to this family ripens into love, is the picture of hardy womanhood. Although she is not a couturier's dream, the warmth, affection and sturdiness needed in the role come across to an observer with telling effect. Dean Jagger, as the dastardly, scheming sheep raiser, is, on a few occasions, a mite too blackhearted, as are Dean Stanton and Thomas Pittman, as his churlish, cowardly sons. It was filmed in Utah with enough sweep, breathtaking vistas of rolling farmland and forests and streams to make one head for the hills instantly. It is a fitting background for the honestly heartwarming drama. (AHW)
My judgement: **1/2 out of 4 stars
Movie Review: There Will Be Blood
Year of Release: 2007
Country of Origin: USA
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Dillon Freasier
Plot outline: A story about family, greed, religion, and oil, centered around a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business (IMDb).
There Will Be Blood strives to be an epic, a masterpiece of cinema, unfortunately it falls short of that goal thanks to its imperfections: in its unbending characters, its lack of women or any reflection of ordinary society, its ending, its relentlessness - I see its reach exceeding its grasp. There Will Be Blood could easily be called great, but it is no Citizen Kane. Daniel Plainview lacks a "Rosebud." He regrets nothing, misses nothing, pities nothing, I am not sure of its greatness. For two thirds it is a brilliantly played and structured take on ambition and capitalism. The final act turns the movie into a mano-a-mano showdown between two characters in which ambition is no longer the issue but rather one man’s god versus another man’s god. Daniel Day-Lewis is very powerful as Plainview, and while he maintains some of that power in the final act he resorts to a level of insanity that doesn’t fit with the rest of the movie or with the path his character was on. There Will Be Blood ends up a good, bordering on very good, movie that gets lost in its own desires to be a sweeping melodrama. (BME, RE)
My judgement: *** out of 4 stars
Year of Release: 1930
