Tuesday, August 3, 2010

A Tuesday Movie Post

GR&DF thank you for your kind comments. They do make the morning so much nicer!!

I think today I'll talk three flicks from the weekend -

Starting off with "Ann Vickers" - 1933 - starring Irene Dunn, Walter Houston and Edna Mae Oliver. This story is taken from a Sinclair Lewis book and adapted for the screen. With everything going on in the film you can tell that lots has been left out or "amended" for the movie going public and to adhere to the "code" at the time. Dunne plays a strong career minded woman who continually falls for the wrong type of guy - usually the one that will leave the quickest. Eventually finding love and stability when the corrupt Judge she is in love with gets out of jail. As Dunne's mentor in the film the great Oliver disappears about 3/4's of the way through the film without explanation. An obscure film that is shown on TCM - worth a look just for the subtle job Dunne does making virtuous a fallen women.

The second film is "Bitter Sweet" - 1940 - starring Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, George Sanders and Sig Ruman. A lavish colour spectacle of a Noel Coward play. The story has MacDonald playing an English girl trying to get away from an arranged marriage - Eddy is her music teacher - they are in love so they run away to his home town - Vienna. There they are married and are starving musicians. Enter evil Baron von Tranisch, played by Sanders. He is in lust for MacDonald and gets them a job at a popular Cafe run by Ruman. The story is a bit weak but the music is nice - the story unfolds with a tragedy and a triumph. This was the second to last film that MacDonald and Eddy did together it is also one of two they did in colour. Not the strongest of their work but a nice film. Here is a nice clip of a song from "Bitter Sweet" -



The last film is "Affectionately Yours" - 1941 - starring Merle Oberon, Dennis Morgan, Rita Hayworth, Ralph Bellamy and Hattie McDaniel. With the cast as top notch as this I would have expected a really great film - after it was all over I felt the film was not as good as it could have been. The story is a bit on the trite side and predictable - the highlight of the film is Hayworth who gets some of the best lines. The story is of a philandering husband who works for a newspaper and travels all over the world getting story's and chatting up various females. His long suffering wife - played by Oberon - eventually has had enough and divorces him. Morgan, the divorced husband, returns to NY to find Oberon is on the brink of another marriage - this time to the more stable Bellamy. The film toggles back and forth between the four main characters eventually having a happy ending.

There you go sports fans - that about wraps up Tuesday. Thanks again for stopping by. Do come again!!

Tale care,
edgar

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