The Fabulous Forties #44: His Girl Friday (dir by Howard Hawks)

Posted on June 10, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 44th film in Mill Creek’s Fabulous Forties box set was the classic 1940 comedy, His Girl Friday.

Earlier this week, when I mentioned that Cary Grant’s Oscar-nominated work in Penny Serenade was not the equal of his work in comedies like The Awful Truth and The Philadelphia Story, quite a few people took the time to let me know that their favorite Cary Grant film remains His Girl Friday. And I can’t blame them. Not only does His Girl Friday feature Cary Grant at his best but it also features Rosalind Russell at her best too. Not only that but it’s also one of the best films to ever be directed by the great Howard Hawks. There are a lot of career bests to be found in His Girl Friday, and that’s not even counting a supporting cast that is full of some of the greatest character actors of the 1940s.

The film itself is a remake of The Front Page, that classic story of an editor trying to keep his star reporter from leaving the newspaper in order to get married. (Along the way, they not only manage to expose municipal corruption but also help to hide and exonerate a man who has escaped from death row.) The action moves fast, the dialogue is full of quips, and the whole thing is wonderfully cynical about … well, everything. The major difference between The Front Page and His Girl Friday is that the reporter is now a woman and she’s the ex-wife of the editor. When Cary Grant’s Walter Burns attempts to convince Rosalind Russell’s Hildy Johnson to cover just one last story, he’s not only trying to hold onto his star reporter. He’s also trying to keep the woman he loves from marrying the decent but boring Bruce Baldwin.

Bruce, incidentally, is played by Ralph Bellamy. Bellamy also played Grant’s romantic rival in The Awful Truth. To a certain extent, you really do have to feel bad for Ralph. He excelled at playing well-meaning but dull characters. As played by Bellamy, you can tell that Bruce would be a good husband in the most uninspiring of ways. That’s the problem. Hildy deserves more than just a life of boring conformity and Walter understands that. Not only do Walter and Hildy save the life of escaped convict Earl Williams but, in doing so, Hildy is also saved from a life of being conventional.

As we all know, it’s fashionable right now to attack the news media. Quite frankly, modern media often makes it very easy to do so. For that matter, so do a lot of a movies about the media. To take just two of the more acclaimed examples, there’s a smugness and a self-importance to both Good Night and Good Luck and Spotlight that becomes more and more obvious with each subsequent viewing. (Admittedly, Edward R. Murrow was prominent way before my time but, if he was anything like the pompous windbag who was played by David Strathairn, I’m surprised that television news survived.) Far too often, it seems like well-intentioned filmmakers, in their attempt to defend the media, end up making movies that only serve to remind people why the can’t stand the old media in the first place.

Those filmmakers would do well to watch and learn from a film like His Girl Friday. His Girl Friday is a cheerfully dark film that is full of cynical journalists who drink too much and have little use for the type of self-congratulation that permeates through a film like Spotlight. Ironically, you end up loving the journalists in His Girl Friday because the film never demands that you so much as even appreciate them. There are no long speeches about the importance of journalism or long laments about how non-journalists just aren’t smart enough to appreciate their local newspaper. Instead, these journalists are portrayed as hard workers and driven individuals who do a good job because deliberately doing anything else is inconceivable. They don’t have time to pat themselves on the back because they’re too busy doing their job and hopefully getting results.

If you want to see a film that will truly make you appreciate journalism and understand why freedom of the press is important, watch this unpretentious comedy from Howard Hawks.

In fact, you can watch it below!

The Fabulous Forties #16: Dr. Kildare’s Strange Case (dir by Harold S. Bucquet)

Posted on April 19, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 16th film in Mill Creek’s Fabulous Forties box set was 1940’s Dr. Kildare’s Strange Case. It’s about a doctor who investigates a medical case and wow, is it ever a strange case.

Apparently, there was a whole series of Dr. Kildare films that were released in the 30s and 40s. I guess the films were the cinematic equivalent of a TV show like Grey’s Anatomy or ER or Children’s Hospital or… well, every medical show that’s ever shown up on TV since the beginning of time. Dr. James Kildare (Lew Ayres) is a passionate young doctor who may break the rules but he gets results! His mentor is Dr. Gillipsie. Gillipsie is played by Lionel Barrymore and since the character is cranky and confined to a wheelchair, it was impossible for me to watch him without thinking about Mr. Potter from It’s A Wonderful Life. Whenever Kildare went to him for advise, I kept expecting Gillipsie to glare at him and say, “You once called me a warped old man…”

Anyway, Dr. Kildare works in a hospital and, when he’s not silently judging everyone else that he works with, he’s busy silently judging the wealthy Dr. Lane (Sheppard Strudwick), a brain surgeon whose patients keep dying. Kildare and Lane are also both in love with the same nurse, Mary Lamont (Laraine Day). Mary wants to marry Kildare but Kildare would rather be poor and single than compromise his medical principles. Lane, on the other hand, sends her a box full of silk stockings. Plus, he’s rich!

Seriously, how is this even a competition? Forget Kildare and marry Lane!

Except, as I mentioned earlier, all of Lane’s patients keep dying. Is Lane incompetent or, as Kildare suggests, is it possible that brain surgery is just really, really hard? I imagine it was even harder in 1940, when this movie was being made. While Kildare and Lane are operating on brains, Dr. Gillipsie is still using leeches to suck sickness out of the poorer patients.

(You don’t actually see it happen in the movie but Gillipsie comes across as being a leech man.)

Anyway, eventually, Kildare has to cure a schizophrenic and it turns out that he can do this by putting the man into an insulin coma. As is explained in great detail, forcibly putting a patient in a coma will cause that patient’s mind to go back to a reset point. It’s kind of like how Windows sets up a restore point before doing a major update.

And that therapy sounds so crazy that you just know it had to be based in an actual practice. I checked with Wikipedia and I was not shocked to discover that apparently Insulin Shock Therapy used to be a thing!

Anyway, Kildare’s gets into a lot of trouble for putting his patient into a coma and attempting to erase a huge part of his mind. Will Kildare’s results vindicate his methods or will Gillipsie have to use leeches to suck the crazy out of the patient’s brain?

Watch the film to find out! Or don’t. Dr. Kildare’s Strange Case was directed by Harold S. Bucquet, who did a pretty good job with The Adventures of Tartu. His direction here is flat and uninspired, which only serves to make this entire film feel like an old TV show. I’m tempted to recommend the movie just because of the scene where it’s explained that insulin shock therapy causes patients to devolve so that they can re-evolve but otherwise, Dr. Kildare’s Strange Case is forgettable.

If you want to see it, you can watch it below!

Or you can just watch this classic episode of Children’s Hospital!

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Winner: The Lost Weekend (dir by Billy Wilder)

Posted on February 27, 2016 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I’m currently stuck at home on this beautiful day, dealing with a really bad cold. (Even as I sit here typing this up, I am currently in a feverish haze.) It’s frustrating but, fortunately, I’ve got a lot of movies to watch. After all, TCM is wrapping up their 31 Days of Oscars and my DVR is currently full of nominated films waiting to be reviewed.

For instance, I just watched the 1945 best picture winner, The Lost Weekend. The Lost Weekend was directed by Billy Wilder, a director who is most often associated with sad-eyed comedies like Some Like It Hot, The Apartment, and The Seven Year Itch. However, The Lost Weekend is most definitely not a comedy. Instead, it’s an incredibly harrowing and rather depressing portrait of addiction and lost promise.

Don Birnan (Ray Milland) is a struggling writer. When we first meet him, he’s packing for a weekend trip with his brother, Wick (Philip Terry). The conversation between Don and Wick at first sounds friendly but soon, we start to hear hints of suspicion in Wick’s voice. Wick seems incredibly concerned about what exactly Don is packing and Don starts to get defensive. Don says that it’s been ten days since he had a drink and that there is no more liquor in the apartment. However, whenever Wick turns his back, Don starts to search for the bottles that he’s hidden around his bedroom. (He’s even got a bottle of whiskey hanging on a rope outside the window.) It gets to the point that, whenever Wick isn’t looking, Don is holding a bottle.

And while that may sound potentially humorous, there’s nothing funny about the scene. Don’s desperation is too real. As someone who grew up having to deal with an alcoholic father, I recognized Don and his addiction immediately. Everything about him — from his fast smile to his continual assurances that he’s cleaned himself up — is a facade, designed to help him survive until he can get his next drink.

The main thing about alcoholics is that they’re extremely clever. Don knows that Wick wants to get him away for the weekend so that he can’t drink. When Don’s girlfriend, Helen (Jane Wyman), mentions that she has two tickets for a concert, Don convinces Wick to go to the show with her. Once Wick is out of the apartment, Don can sneak down to the neighborhood bar. When it comes time to leave for that dry weekend vacation, Don manages to accidentally on purpose miss the train.

Left alone for the weekend, Don can now do what he wants. He tries to write about his life as an alcoholic but discovers that his brain is too muddled for him to think straight. So, instead, he drinks. Unfortunately, Wick hasn’t left him any money and has also ordered all the local bars and liquor stores to not allow his brother to run up a tab. As a result, Don finds himself scrounging for money.

In perhaps the film’s most famous scene, Don carries his typewriter down to the local pawnshop so that he can get money to buy a drink. However, the pawnshop is closed for Yom Kippur. The camera follows Don as he staggers around New York City, looking for an open pawnshop. Wilder shot this scene on the streets of New York City, using a hidden camera. The people who we see reacting to Don are not Hollywood extras but instead are actual New Yorkers who had no idea that the pathetic drunk they were gawking at was actually film star Ray Milland.

As the weekend plays out, Don transforms. He goes from being smooth and outwardly confident to being unshaven and desperate. Eventually, Don ends up in a sanitarium, where he’s taunted by a sadistic nurse. (The nurse is played by Frank Faylen, who played Ernie the cab driver in It’s A Wonderful Life.) Even when Don manages to get back to his apartment, he finds himself screaming as he hallucinates a bat eating a mouse. Blood runs down the walls.

Does the film, at least, have a happy ending? It depends. The local bartender, Nat (Howard Da Silva), returns Don’s typewriter to him. Helen convinces Don to write about his lost weekend. Don says that he’s never going to drink again but, at the same time, we can’t help but remember that the movie started with Don saying the same thing…

As directed by Billy Wilder, The Lost Weekend plays out like a noir thriller, full of menacing shadows. The score, composed by Miklos Rozsa, uses a theremin to let us hear the addiction-fueled chaos within Don’s head. Best of all, Ray Milland totally loses himself in the role of Don Birnan, with the vanity of film stardom soon replaced with the pathos of addiction. Even watching the film today, it’s easy to understand how The Lost Weekend won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1945.