RSS
 

Archive for the ‘Henry Hull’ Category

Objective, Burma!

06 May

Objective, Burma! – directed by Raoul Walsh. Action/Adventure World War II Drama. A company of soldiers after completing its demolition mission must walk two hundred miles through the Burmese jungle while tracked by Japanese intent on killing them. 142 minutes Black and White 1945.

★★★★★

Nominated for three Oscars, George Amy for editing, Alvah Bessie for writing, and Franz Waxman for the score, any one of them deserved it, but, apart from Raoul Walsh, the key genius in all this is James Wong Howe who filmed it. One of the great film artists, he brings a raw look to every shot, and every shot tells. Particularly in light of the fact that we always believe we are in a jungle in Burma, when, in fact, it was shot at the arboretum in Los Angeles and at a California ranch. The uniforms and equipment are authentic, not props and costumes, and the combat footage is actual footage from the China-Burma-India Theatre. So we get real parachute jumps and actual glider landing operations of that period, with tanks and trucks and troops pouring out of them in Burma, and takeoffs, too, which Howe’s footage and Amy’s editing match perfectly. Again Errol Flynn is Walsh’s star, and, with all the guns going off, and the peril of the jungle, the sweat, the hunger, the polluted water, he plays the leader of the slogging men quietly, modestly. The subtle shift in his eyes as he sees the dismembered bodies of his men is so great a film moment that we never have to see the bodies at all. Of course, while the other men grow beards during the long arduous trek, Flynn’s jaw remains shaved – but at least it is dirty, sweaty, and drawn. Walsh made many war films, and this is one of the most commanding World War II films by anyone. His supporting cast is admirable, with George Tobias as the company clown, Mark Stevens as the rescue pilot who cannot rescue them, Richard Erdman aged 19 playing a 19 year old, Warner Anderson as the young Colonel who must abandon them to their fate, James Brown as a doughty sergeant, William Prince in his first film, Frank Tang marvelous as the translator, and Henry Hull who speechifies his lines grandiosely, alas. (“All right, boys, no Hamlets in the jungle,” Walsh told them, but Hull didn’t listen. He was always that way, though; after all, he’d acted with Barrymore.) If you like action/adventure films, Walsh was the top director in his day of them. This is one of his best.

 

 
Comments Off on Objective, Burma!

Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, ACTION ADVENTURE, DIRECTED BY Raoul Walsh, EDITED BY George Amy, ENSEMBLE DRAMA, Errol Flynn, ESCAPE DRAMA, George Tobias, Henry Hull, HISTORICAL DRAMA, HOLLYWOOD HEYDAY 1930 - 1950, Mark Stevens, MILITARY, MUSICAL SCORE BY Franz Waxman, PERIOD: WWI, SURVIVAL DRAMA, War Story

 

Boys Town and Men Of Boys Town

11 Nov

Boys Town and Men Of Boys Town — Directed by Norman Taurog. A Catholic priest in establishing a boarding school for delinquents in the middle of Nebraska comes up against his financial and personal nemeses. 96 minutes Black and White 1938.

* * * * *

The male movie stars of the 1930s were more beautiful than the female stars, and also more homely, and there is a good reason for it: the Great Depression.  Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney wore Common Man faces and had the common touch. The very plebian Irish mug of Spencer Tracey was Metros answer to the trend, and one wonders what Boys Town would have been like made at its obvious place, Warner Brothers, home of the gangster film. For Boys town is about proto-gangsters whom a well meaning Catholic Priest Father Flanagan took under his wing and for them established a series of farms cum schools which prosper and protect young males to this day, irrespective of race, religion, or ancestry. Warners had some tough crooks, but here the JDs are turned into gutter roses by a shoulder pat. They are played by group of Hollywood child actors so vicious in their technique that they can burst into tears at the drop of clapper. Never have so many cried so much for so few reels. They should have put glycerin on the camera lens and have done with it. Perfectly cast as a solid priest, Spencer Tracy won his second Oscar in a row, and you can see why. Tracy never oversteps the mark by emotionalizing his ideals or sentimentalizing the trites he has to utter.  Fascinating to watch, he is an actor who has carefully compartmentalized himself and gives everything short of the mawkish. His authority derives from the fact that his body is well grounded, and his performance depends upon his responsiveness, rather than his aggressiveness, such that we somehow believe it when others get their Irish up and all he has to do is repeat a request three times in a row for opponents to flutter to the ground as wild leaves before the mighty blast of October. Both movies are on one disc and both were made on the campus of Boys Town and both are worth seeing. Not least for the performance of Mickey Rooney as his enemy in the first and his ally in the second. Rooney has two qualities, one, confidence, and two, a quality so rare that few great artists possess it – Eddie Murphy, Bugs Bunny, Johann Sebastian Bach – drive. So potent is Rooney as a screen presence that for the second film his role of brat gangster must be divided in two. The older he got and the more his status as a star diminished, the greater the actor Rooney became.  He and Olivia de Havilland are the only surviving movie stars of the 1930s, she the ideal Hermia in Max Reinhardt’s A Mid Summer Nights’ Dream, and he, “Oh what fools these mortals be!” naked in a tree, the Puck of Pucks.

 

 

 
2 Comments

Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, FAMILY FILM, Henry Hull, Lee J. Cobb, MELODRAMA, Mickey Rooney: ACTING GOD, PERSONAL DRAMA, Spencer Tracy

 

Portrait Of Jennie

16 Sep

Portrait Of Jennie – Directed by William Dieterle. Ghost Story. A bum artist becomes a genius through visitations from a long-dead girl. 86 minutes Black and White 1948.

* * *

An actress of minute talent, Jennifer Jones loomed large in the films of the 40s, and my tendency is to dismiss her, as it is to dismiss Gene Tierney, as an actress without content, and it’s not fair to what talent they do possess. I always felt Jones was rather dopey, and yet she’s pretty good here and perfectly cast for two reasons, because the girl, after all, is a ghost and has no content, and because the picture was produced by Jones’ husband David O. Selznick. Selznick was a producer, but he was actually an auteur. He was a man of robust energy, great charm, appeal, generosity, honesty, experience, fun, and skill, but once a picture was in train he became a horror of intrusiveness.  Interfering, writing, rewriting, reshooting, redirecting, memoing up the wazoo, riding his people like a slave driver, with no consideration for anyone – what was he up to? In every case what he was up to, without knowing it, was making the picture about himself. He did not want to make a picture, he wanted to be the picture. His most famous example of this is Gone With The Wind: Scarlet O’Hara is exactly like Selznick himself – charming, ruthless, sexually without morals, ambitious, overwhelming, fun, attractive, in love with the wrong person, and so deserving you can deny nothing to him. Scarlett’s story is Selznick. Each of his films was like this, and Portrait Of Jennie is another one still, although by the time it is made Selznick had come to the frayed end of his stories. Each human being has more than one story in him, and this one is the story of a man who creates an ideal girl and how she in turn makes him creative. This is what he had done in his actual life. Moreover, Selznick casts as the girl the woman he had stolen from her husband and made his magical mistress and muse and movie star, Jennifer Jones. Here he even sets her up with a story with her very own name, Jennie. Jones has to travel in a year from age 12 to age 25, and she does it well right up to the clumsy finale. She uses the trick of keeping her mouth open to suggest ingénue appeal, but she does it good. A supporting cast of astounding strength is asked to atlas-up this edifice of a feather: Ethel Barrymore with her voice of pained patience, huge eyes, and old amusement, the greatly lively Cecil Kellaway as the art dealer, David Wayne as a bright mick, Lillian Gish as a nun, Florence Bates as a heartless landlady, Henry Hull and Felix Bressart. They’re all just fine. Selznick often used Joseph Cotton in his films, an actor of deeply suburban genius and no rival sex appeal whatever. He is most carefully miscast as the artist.

[ad#300×250]

 

 

 
1 Comment

Posted in ACTING STYLE: HOLLYWOOD CRISP, Cecil Kellaway, Ethel Barrymore, Felix Bressart, Ghost Story, Henry Hull, Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotton, Lillian Gish, ROMANTIC DRAMA

 
 
Rss Feed Tweeter button Facebook button Technorati button Reddit button Myspace button Linkedin button Webonews button Delicious button Digg button Flickr button Stumbleupon button Newsvine button