Bjørn Stærk's Max 256 Blog

Captain Kidd (1945, USA, Lee) – Charles Laughton commands a crew of pardoned pirates through the dangerous waters of the Madagascar.  There’s a mad gleam in his eyes that is especially unsettling because it’s not over the top, movie pirate style.  Unfortunately Laughton is the only good thing about this movie, and the end is disappointingly ordinary, with a lost heir, a silly romance, and a happy ending.  Kidd is so deliciously evil that he deserves to win, goddammit!  Watched it all.

Her Highness and the Bellboy (1945, USA, Thorpe) – An honest bellboy with an honest girlfriend tries to make an honest living in the big city, along with his retarded thug friend.  But temptations lurk everywhere.  Watched: 13 minutes.

A Walk in the Sun (1945, USA, Milestone) – I’m getting pretty tired of war movies, but this is one of the best ones yet, maybe even better than The Story of G. I. Joe.  Watched it all.  I have a theory about World War II movies: Despite the lack of blood, swearing, etc., they were at their most realistic when they were made by people who had actually been there.  Today you expect a WW2 movie to be epic, because Hitler was teh evil and all that.  There’s nothing epic about these contemporary movies.

Tonight and Every Night (1945, USA, Saville) – A music hall stays open every night during the London Blitz.  And no wonder, for what damage can bombs possibly do against such an abundance of vibrant technicolors and short skirts?  Watched: 13 minutes.

Le Retour (1945, France/USA, Cartier-Bresson) – The prisoners are coming home.  Millions of prisoners, by foot, by train, and by plane.  When some of them look into the camera, you see a small reflection of Hell in their eyes.  Others look so ordinary, like it was all a horrible misunderstanding.  I wonder what became of them.  Watched it all.

My Name is Julia Ross (1945, USA, Lewis) – A girl is kidnapped by evil Cornwallians, for use in a plot that is so complicated that it might take the whole movie to resolve.  Watched: 20 minutes.

The Corn is Green (1945, USA, Rapper) – Bette Davis moves to Hollywood Wales, and upsets the local Hollywood Welshmen.  Watched: 8 minutes.

Betrayal From the East (1945, USA, Berke) – The Japanese-American community is full of insidious fifth columnists.  And they all look alike, so I guess we should, I don’t know, lock them all up or something.  Watched: 14 minutes.

Objective Burma! (1945, USA, Walsh) – On principle, I never watch Errol Flynn movies.  The principle is that I hates him I hates him I hates him.  Watched: 9 seconds.

Brewster’s Millions (1945, USA, Dwan) – A soldier returns home to find that he has inherited a fortune.  What an incredible stroke of luck!  And there’s a Moral too!  Watched: 18 minutes.

Flame of Barbary Coast (1945, USA, Kane) – John Wayne wanders into the fun-loving world of gambling.  They let him win lots of money just because they like him, and he’ll probably get the girl too.  Watched: 20 minutes.

No subtitles.  No need, after 0:50.

Watch from 03:48 in clip 2.

Roughly Speaking (1945, USA, Curtiz) – Rosalind Russell is an ambitious proto-feminist who wants it all in early 20th century America: A personality of her own, a husband, children, and a career.  And she more or less gets it too.  She has her fair share of poor luck, but she always makes the best of it, always ready to start over again in a new direction.  She’s a stoic feminist hero, (the best kind).  Watched it all.

Johnny Angel (1945, USA, Marin) – A captain loses his father at sea under mysterious circumstances.  He goes looking for answers (I’m fairly sure it’s answers) among local prostitutes.  Watched it all.

Brief Encounter (1945, USA, Lean) – A brainy married couple are unhappy and listen to Rachmaninoff, while having internal monologues about how depressed they are.  Well, maybe they shouldn’t be listening to Rachmaninoff all the time then.  Watched: 16 minutes.  IMDB says this is the 207th best movie of all time, which means I’m an idiot, or possibly everyone else is.

Murder, He Says (1945, USA, Marshall) – The local sheriff claims he’s fearless, but he’s actually a coward.  See, that’s a whatchamacallit, a joke.  And there are more!  Watched: 3 minutes.

The Dolly Sisters (1945, USA, Cummings) – Life was jolly in ye jolly old times.  Watched: 10 minutes.

Anchors Aweigh (1945, USA, Sidney) – On leave from the Navy, Gene Kelly is cockblocked by Frank Sinatra.  I can never get over how different young Sinatra looks from how his voice sounds.  At 30, he still looks like an awkward teenage boy.  Watched: 39 minutes.

Things to watch for:

1) The four soldiers with top hats. For a few seconds, it feels like you’re right there.

2) The cheerful tone of the “A city dies!” segment, in which we see the city of Pforzheim – along with 17 000 civilians -  “being literally wiped out before your eyes.  Explosions and fires are sucking the oxygen out of the air.  Nothing can live in this inferno!”

3) The sudden switch from violence for real to violence for fun in the last segment.

Here is Germany (1945, USA, Capra) – Those Germans look like ordinary folks on the surface, like people we can understand.  “Or can we?!?!!(?!!)”  Seems Nazi Germany was just the logical conclusion of centuries of German militarism.  Their culture is all screwed up, and now it’s time to fix it.  Watched it all.  Interestingly, despite showing pictures from German extermination camps and gas chambers, this movie does not refer to Jews or anti-semitism directly.  At all.

Counter-Attack (1945, UK, Korda) – I don’t mind watching a bit of pro-Soviet war propaganda, but I’d prefer if it was made by the Soviet Union itself, not Britain.  Watched: 12 minutes.

The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945, USA, Walsh) – A bad musician dreams he’s gone to Heaven, which is all cutesy with white robes and angel choirs and ha-ha-funny parodies of earthly bureaucracies.  Watched: 12 minutes.

Mildred Pierce (1945, USA, Curtiz) – Mildred Pierce murders her husband and frames some poor schmuck, but the police arrests her former husband instead, so now nobody’s happy, etc. etc.  And then we go into flashback mode, and then I’m not happy.  Watched: 20 minutes.

And Then There Were None (1945, USA, Clair) – A bunch of people on an island get killed off, one by one, by the butler.  This is the earliest Agatha Christie filmatization I’ve seen, but it’s not a good one.  Watched: 26 minutes.  Despite the noise sometimes made about politically correct changes to classic novels, I’m glad nobody’s using the original title of this one any more.

There were some really good American war cartoons made during World War II, such as Donald Duck ..

.. and the more educational Private SNAFU, made by a dream team of cartoon artists:

Was World War II the last time one side of a war had all the funniest people in the world on their side?

Other cartoons were less successful.  The Hook cartoons were just thinly veiled lectures about not forgetting to buy your war bonds:

.. and then there’s Cap’n Cub, the absolute bottom of war cartoons:

Watch it to the end, where the cute little bear takes on a squadron of stoopid Jap monkeys.

The Story of G.I. Joe (1945, USA, Wellman) – Journalist Ernie Pyle embeds with the troops in North Africa, and gets to see how they live.  Despite the title, this is a down to earth and realistic movie that has a lot in common with Generation Kill.  There’s little plot, just infantry soldiers marching and fighting and marching, through desert and mud and hills, losing friends and becoming veterans along the way.  Best line: “You know, when this war is over I’m gonna find me a map and find out where I’ve been.”  Watched it all.

The Valley of Decision (1945, USA, Garnett) – The poor Irish immigrant workers at a Pittsburgh steel factory are surprisingly sympathetic to the principles of capitalism, all except that one angry guy who rants about “unions”.  Watched: 6 minutes.

House of Dracula (1945, USA, Kenton) – Count Dracula asks a doctor for help to cure his vampirism, which turns out to be caused by midichlorians in the bloodstream.  Watched: 10 minutes.

Pillow to Post (1945, USA, Sherman) – An oil tycoon loses all his salesmen to the military, and his spoiled daughter gets the preposterous idea that maybe a woman might just possibly attempt to do the job.  It doesn’t start well, and I expect she’ll end up with a husband instead.  Watched: 8 minutes.

She Wouldn’t Say Yes (1945, USA, Hall) – A bit of shell shock is no match for a few encouraging words from psychiatrist Rosalind Russell.  Watched: 7 minutes.

The Way to the Stars (1945, UK, Asquith) – RAF pilots are cheerful, dashing fellows with stiff upper lips, and American pilots are allright too.  Yet more proof that the best war movies were British.  Watched it all.

The Vampire’s Ghost (1945, USA, Selander) – “Africa, the dark land where voodoo drums beat in the night.  Africa, where men have not forgotten the evil they learned in the dawn of time.”  A vampire is loose in deepest, darkest Africa.  Luckily there are some white people around.  Watched: 5 minutes.

Divorce (1945, USA, Nigh) – Divorce is a terrible, terrible thing, but can usually be avoided with a few stern words from a wise old divorce judge.  Watched: 11 minutes.

The Lost Weekend (1945, USA, Wilder) – A cultured alcoholic tries hard to avoid having to stop drinking, despite the best efforts of his friends.  A bit didactic, but it’s nice to see alcoholism presented as a problem for once, not an amusing hobby, as in the Thin Man movies.  Also, the Miklos Rosza soundtrack contains one of the earliest uses of a theremin in a Hollywood movie, (woohoo!)  Watched it all.

The Spider (1945, USA, Webb) – Plots within plots, private detectives who use words like “dollface”, and comical, subservient black people.  And no giant man-eating spider.  Watched: 10 minutes.

The Bells of St. Mary (1945, USA, McCarey) – How many Father O’Malley’s are there in Hollywood?  Always ready to arrive as the fresh new face with new ideas and a gentle disposition.  I’m pretty sure there was one last year too.  Watched: 12 minutes.