The William Wyler Film Poll

i keep forgetting you ppl don't give a shit abt anything but Best Years (which i saw again tonight)

I screened How To Steal A Million the other week. So much fun.

(xpost) Roman Holiday is my favourite romantic comedy from the '50s.

i keep forgetting you ppl don't give a shit abt anything but Best Years (which i saw again tonight)

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius)

who are you growling at now?

whoever's around

the solipsist quadrille

i just read a James Baldwin essay where he casually calls Best Years a "fantasy." I essentially agree, and it's why i consider it a pretty good film rather than a great one. (JB had no use for "socially concerned" liberal art in general.)

did you finally read The Devil Finds Work?

no, i have it though; soon. That mention (along w/ his evisceration of Carmen Jones) is in Notes of a Native Son.

It's been ages since I've seen it, but is Best Years "socially concerned" liberal art? The whole thing felt like a distinctly conservative melodrama to me, what with its vilifying of the anti-war guy and all.

I'm not a huge fan of the film, by the way. Some affecting moments--almost all of them courtesy of Harold Russell--but for a piece of socially concerned art of whatever affiliation, making light of March's alcoholism always struck me as quite powerfully dickish.

putting any hint of Our Boys' suffering/trauma in a '46 Hollywood film counts as a lib move, yes

My favorite Wyler films

Is The Big Sleep on that list too?

I saw Detective Story a lot on TV in my teens, rewatched this morning. Like Dead End it's based on a Sidney Kingsley 'social realism' play (and just those two plays of his are remembered, for Wyler's movie versions). It's sort of a proto-Barney Miller as a tragedy, set in a NYPD detectives' room in one day, with Kirk Douglas as a Dirty Harry with a father complex at the center. Some clumsy speechifying for sure, but Wyler and the cinematographer Lee Garmes make it dynamic and dirty, and the ensemble cast has a lot of good and/or showy players -- Lee Grant as a shoplifter, Horace McMahon, William Bendix, and Joseph Wiseman as a psychotic burglar (he and his crony were gay in the Broadway version). Douglas melts down 2 or 3 times in the third act, and it's effective even if you chuckle at some of his over-the-top lines. With George Macready as an abortionist Kirk likes to beat up on.

is Mrs. Miniver really that bad? i watched The Little Foxes tonight and it was a boring mess, i have Mrs. Miniver because i'm trying to watch everything teresa wright was in.

hard to say, i liked TLF more; i mean Davis is more compelling than bleedin' Greer Garson

I'm not a huge fan of the film, by the way. Some affecting moments--almost all of them courtesy of Harold Russell--but for a piece of socially concerned art of whatever affiliation, making light of March's alcoholism always struck me as quite powerfully dickish.

― The New Gay Sadness (cryptosicko

eek, not otm. I agree with this: https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2017/07/the-best-years-of-our-lives/

Wuthering Heights playing in town tmrw, any good?
Saw Toland shot it

as long as you don't expect... the entire story

The Westerner is among the best, best-looking (dp Gregg Toland) and funniest of the classic Gary Cooper westerns. His bromance with Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan) starts off with them waking up entangled in bed the morning after, and ends with a gunfight in an empty auditorium meant for a Lily Langtry touring show. Cooper has a S/M fistfight with Forrest Tucker that anticipates The Big Country.

Fun that it was made the same year as The Letter.

Think that’s about to expire from Criterion

must be better than The Big Country, two and a half hour bore from the mid-50s with nothing going on, as if he has no idea what to do in the west

The Westerner is a crisp 100m

Watched and loved that one right after it showed on the channel.

The Heiress on Criterion Channel, and, boy, is it as masterful as ever. Use of deep focus, the unerring interior design, de Havilland's never coming across as gauche -- wow. And I still can't believe a Hollywood film from the late '40s allowed the park bench scene ("Too late, Mariah...").

one of his best

We watched The Little Foxes on TCM last night and thought it was pretty good. Always funny seeing such an evil, old movie.

The shot of Davis illuminated by the lamp in front of the window near the beginning was awesome. Apparently the cinematographer was the same as Citizen Kane.

The scene where (SPOILERS) Davis attempts to cause her husband's death by not helping him get his medication as he struggles up the stairs is really good.