Happy birthday, Kirk Douglas!

Kirk Douglas turned 102 today! My family watched 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea tonight to celebrate.  Hope he had a great day.

 

 

December 9th birthdays

December 9th has always been one of my favorite days of the year, because it is the day two of my favorite actors -- Kirk Douglas and John Cassavetes -- celebrate their birthdays.  Both actors were so influential on my early life.  And while we sadly lost John Cassavetes a long time ago, Kirk Douglas is still going strong.  Today marks his 100th birthday!  How amazingly awesome is that?  I've been listening to the Lonely are the Brave (Jerry Goldsmith) and The Dirty Dozen (Frank De Vol) scores to celebrate, although it's the theme from Saddle the Wind that keeps popping in my head today.

Happy 100th birthday, Mr. Douglas!

My Dear Secretary (1948)

This film's about a best-selling author, Owen Waterbury, whose secretaries usually become his mistresses.   He hires a new one, Stephanie "Steve"Gaylord, who thinks she's there to actually do secretarial work.  She finds out how wrong she is, but somehow gets sucked into Waterbury's life anyway and, as can only happen in movies, when she threatens to leave him, he marries her.  Steve's an aspiring writer herself, and both of them start married life working on new books. Hers turns out to be better than his, and their relationship disintegrates.  Hard times follow where they both hire new secretaries to get at each other, but of course, everything comes around eventually for a happy ending. 

I'm not particularly a comedy person, but I can be won over by a good light-hearted movie.  Alas, this one didn't work for me.  Which is too bad, as it might have worked with different casting.  Much as I adore Kirk Douglas, as fabulous as he is in movies like Lonely are the Brave, Paths of Glory, etc... this style of humor simply doesn't suit him.  Maybe he was too young to know how to play the role at the time, but the script doesn't do his character any favors either.  His character is an inconsiderate jerk taking advantage of any and everyone, and it's a wonder he managed to write a book with all his lazy playboy antics.  I've only seen Laraine Day in Foreign Correspondent (where I thought she was great), but I can't say she won me over here in comedy either.  I liked her best in her serious moments.  Neither actor seems to fit in this particular film.

However, if you leave the two leads out of it, the rest of the movie and cast is delightful.  Keenan Wynn was positively scene stealing.  Every time he was on screen, the movie came to life.  He made me laugh repeatedly with his smooth, charming, free-loading, bad cooking/ironing ways.  He was hilarious.  Irene Ryan as their maid and Florence Bates as their landlady were just as funny.  I also loved Helen Walker as Elsie, Waterbury's previous secretary/mistress.  Dump the leads and give the movie to these secondary characters, and it would have been a sparkling gem.  Everyone of them felt at home in this movie.  They turned silly situations and lines into genuine comedy, not forced humor.  It was just the leads who seemed like they were uncomfortable.

So, a mixed bag of a film. 

 

The War Wagon (1967)

Despite being a big John Wayne fan, and a bigger Kirk Douglas fan, this is a film I'd only seen once, back in high school.  I barely remembered anything about it, but a friend recently reminded me of it by quoting the famous line and rejoinder:

"Mine hit the ground first."
"Mine was taller."

And that put me in the mood to revisit this film.  I had to watch it twice, only because I didn't particularly like it on my first viewing, and so I wanted to see it a second time, see if it improved.  It did.

The war wagon of the film's title is a specially armored coach, completely with gatling gun and thirty guards, that ferries large quantities of gold between town and the railhead.   John Wayne recruits a few people to stop and rob that wagon.  That's essentially the plot.

The best parts of this movie for me are the cast, the snappy dialogue, and the Durango, Mexico scenery.  I'm not fond of the plot, but that's only a matter of personal taste.  Sure, there's a thirty-second exposition bit about how John Wayne's character, Taw Jackson (worst name ever), was framed and sent to jail so the bad guy, a smarmy Bruce Cabot as Pierce, could steal his ranch and the gold mine on his land, but watching Wayne on the wrong side of the law just doesn't sit well.  It also makes the movie both a wee bit of a revenge tale and a heist tale... neither of which I'm fond of.  (Clarification: I'm very fond of revenge tales when someone's avenging murdered family members, etc., but when wronged parties go after the person who wronged them, and it's solely about self, it never quite works for me... move on, already!)  And heist movies, with all their careful timing and experts in various fields working together against high odds to steal a lot of whatever... it's just not my thing.  So, plotwise... this movie does not push my buttons.

But then there's the cast, and they almost make up for it.  John Wayne is his normal solid self, wearing a famous outfit that I had on a poster.  Never knew what movie that poster's pic was from!  Now I do. :-D  He's great in this movie and his dialogue is perfect John Wayne dialogue.  His character is highly entertaining, despite the lousy name.

Howard Keel shows up as Levi Walking Bear, and he amuses me no end in the role, particularly his entrance, all tied up and being shot at for getting caught cheating at poker (which he feels is perfectly justified). Cracks me up.  He gets some very funny lines as well.

Robert Walker Jr. is around as their drunk explosives expert, and his presence always makes me uneasy. I'm so used to him playing psycho characters that I have the hardest time trusting him.  I keep expecting him to go off the deep end at any moment.  Poor guy!  Talk about being typecast.  And he's fine in this role too, as a non-pyscho, which is why the second viewing helped.  I could stop worrying about him flipping out.

Bonus points for Emilio Fernandez, who has a small part as bandit leader, Calita, and who I instantly recognized from The Wild Bunch, where he plays corrupt General Mapache.

But the main thing I like about this movie is Kirk Douglas.

He plays gunfighter Lomax, who has some unpleasant history with Jackson, but they put that aside for the sake of stealing all that gold.  He is sassy, smirky, confident, and all tons of smooth, physical grace.  Seriously, I could watch this movie just to watch him leap across other horses to mount his own, or climb cliff faces, or generally show  off his high level of fitness.  I also just really enjoy his interactions with Wayne.  The two actors play very well off each other, and they get the best dialogue.

Favorite moments:

• Jackson and Lomax's rescue of Levi.  
• The spectacular barroom brawl, cuz barroom brawls in Westerns never get old, and this one is a doozy.  I love Jackson's "Oh no!" as he gets jumped by multiple cowboys at once, and I love Lomax leaning against the bar watching the whole thing.
• Nitro glycerin, because TNT is great fun, but nitro is just plain cool.  Watching everyone get jumpy around it makes me grin.
• Any time Kirk Douglas gets up or down off his horse.

It's not a movie I need to own, but after the second viewing made me appreciate it more, I definitely won't be waiting another thirty years before I see it again.

Lonely are the Brave (1962)

This review is part of Legends of Western Cinema week.

This Western has been part of my life since I was young.  It is a powerful movie, and one I love deeply... but I can't watch it very often because it breaks my heart.

**SPOILERS FOLLOW**

This is a modern Western, set in the year it was filmed, but still very much a Western, even with cars and helicopters.

The basic plot:  Jack Burns (Kirk Douglas), rides into a New Mexico town to try to help his best friend, Paul (Michael Kane), who's been jailed for helping illegal immigrants and faces two years in prison.  Burns may live in current day, but he's an old-fashioned cowboy, doesn't have a home, doesn't have ID or a driver's license.  He's a simple man of the Old West, out of his time, out of his place.  The world has gone and changed, and is full of fences and laws and cars and airplanes and chaos masquerading as civilized order.

He gets deliberately arrested to join his friend in jail, to convince him to then break jail with him.  But Paul has changed and accepted the modern world, and he intends to serve out his two-year sentence.  He has a wife and a son, and if he breaks out of jail, they'll all be on the run, forever.  He doesn't want that.  So Burns breaks out alone and busts for the Mexico border on his horse, Whiskey, with the New Mexico law in hot pursuit.

I'm a sucker for movies about characters lost and outdated as time, progress, and civilization steamroll right over them and their ways.  Maybe because that's how I've always felt.  Some of my favorite Westerns are all set in the early 1900's, and incorporate this theme:  Big Jake, The Professionals, The Wild Bunch.  And Lonely are the Brave.

This movie is quiet, introspective, but still has plenty of action.  It's Jack Burns' movie.  Well, Jack Burns and his horse, because the young and skittish, beautiful, flaxen-maned Whisky is a main character herself, and as important as Jack.  He talks constantly to her, she acts up in return and has more personality than quite a few actors I can think of.  This is Kirk Douglas at his finest.  He's always made a great cowboy, and how he brings Jack Burns alive is the center of this tale.  It's my favorite role of his.

There are so many scenes that are amazing.  The opening, where we see a open-aired camp, Burns lying on his bedroll, sipping coffee, Whisky in the background... when he hears engines and looks up in the sky to see three jets leaving contrails over the New Mexico sky.  His look as he watches their intrusion says it all.  The movie is full of those contrasts: Burns and his horse and open country against highways and jail and the modern world.

There's some dialogue in the first half of this movie I always liked, that always sums up the difference between Burns cowboy perspective, and the modern world taking over:

Burns: "A Westerner likes open country. That means he's got to hate fences, and the more fences there are, the more he hates them.  D'you ever notice how many fences there're getting to be? And the signs they got on them: no hunting, no hiking, no admission, no trespass, private property, closed area, start moving, go away, get lost, drop dead!  And they got those fences that say this side's jail, or that side's a street, or here's Arizona and that's Nevada, or this is us, that's Mexico.  The one between here and Mexico is the fence that got Paul into trouble.  He just naturally didn't see the use of it, so he acted as if it wasn't there. So when people sneaked across it, he just felt they were still people so he helped them."
Jerri:  "Jack, I'm going to tell you something. The world that you and Paul live in doesn't exist.  Maybe it never did. Out there is the real world.  And it's got real borders and real fences, real laws and real trouble. And either you go by the rules, or you lose.  You lose everything."
Burns:  "You always keep something."

The scene when he looks in on Paul's sleeping son, marvels at him, at what he will never have.  Not a word spoken, just watching Burns react to the young boy, to family life.

Every scene between him and Jerri (Gena Rowlands) is outstanding.  They sparkle and shine when they're together.  I love how obvious their history is in how they act towards each other.  How they take care of each other, how they talk about Paul and life, how they can really talk with each other.  And their goodbye scene...  it nearly makes me cry every time.  It's so sweet, so poignant, so perfect.  (That cue on the album has the same effect on me as the scene in the movie).

I love how amazed and rather proud Burns is when he finally realizes that Paul won't be breaking out of jail with him, how he accepts that his friend has changed and moved into the modern world.  And how he can grin about it, even as he is now alone, a last cowboy.

My favorite scene in the movie is when Burns has a chance to escape clean... if he leaves Whiskey behind.  He starts to go, pauses and looks back at her, and she's watching him.  He starts to leave again... and he can't do it.  He can't abandon her.  He just can't, even if it means his freedom, even if he gets killed.  That makes me cry too, cuz I so get that.  I wouldn't have been able to leave her either.  Their subsequent climb up the steep mountainside not meant to be climbed by anything but a mountain goat is always harrowing.

The rest of the cast is outstanding as well, with Walter Matthau as the sheriff hunting Burns, and George Kennedy playing a nasty bully of a police officer who gets his kicks beating up prisoners.  Carroll O'Connor plays a trunk driver.

The script by Dalton Trumbo is so well done.  Perfect example of how to set up your end in the beginning, how to say so much with so few words, how to convey even more without a single word spoken.  Those contrasts between modern and old worlds, the way the police can't believe Burns has no ID, nothing.  I admire the writing so much in this film.  The black and white cinematography is perfect.  This is not a movie that would work in color.

But I also admit, I usually stop the movie five minutes from the end.  The minute it starts raining... I hit the off button.  The ending is brilliant, but hard, one of the hardest in any movie I know of.  I bawl buckets when I do decide to watch it. Rough rough rough.

And Jerry Goldsmith's score... it's in my top five scores of all time.  It is amazing by itself, and it could not be more perfect and suited in the actual movie.  Jack Burns' theme, often played on solo trumpet, is so beautiful, and so lonely and sad, and so goose-bumpy.  The beautiful variations of that theme, particularly when Burns and Whiskey sneak along trails in the mountains.  And my favorite cue, "Run for It," so tense as his options dwindle, so soaring as he and Whiskey race for the forest.

(this is the only selection of music from this film I could find)

Last thoughts:  I'm 46, same age Kirk Douglas was when he made this movie.  There's some lines he says to Jerri, about why she's lucky to be with Paul, and not him, that really resonate with me personally:

"You know what a loner is? He's a born cripple. He's a cripple because the only person he can live with is himself. It's his life, the way he wants to live. It's all for him. A guy like that, he'd kill a woman like you. Because he couldn't love you, not the way you are loved."

Yep.

The Vikings (1958)

Sometimes, I just have to go back to the tried and true. Sometimes, I get sick of seeing movies new-to-me, and I want something comforting and familiar. So, I re-watched The Vikings last night, for the umpteenth time. This film is one of those films on which I grew up. Although, I do actually remember a time before I saw it. When we were young and there weren’t VCRs or DVDs yet, we’d have to wait for the network stations to decide to air something, and we could wait months to see something. My mom would intrigue us by telling us how cool certain movies were and what we had to look forward to when it finally did air. For The Vikings, she would always tell us about her favorite part, when Kirk Douglas climbs up the tower in the end battle and swings feet-first right through the stained glass window at the top.


This movie is directed by Richard Fleisher, who directs my number one movie of all time, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Harper Goff, who designed the Nautilus in 20,000 worked with Fleisher again on The Vikings to help recreate the Viking ships, villages, etc. and, once again, he does a spectacular job. There’s a lovely little retrospective extra on the DVD of Fleisher talking about his memories of making this movie, of the two years it took, the research they did, the location work, his funny memories, and a lot of great still photos of the actors during the shoot. Wish there were more DVD extras like this, to add that cool insight and bits of trivia! Here's two of my favorite pics from the retrospective.


Anyway, I love this movie for a jillion and one reasons. This is the type of movie I grew up. Westerns, war movies, and period action adventures. There’s a lot of violence in this movie, but except for one scene, you don’t actually see much blood at all. I love that about older films. You don’t need the gore to get the point across. I absolutely cringe at one point in this movie even though you don’t see a thing. You don’t need to! When will modern filmmakers get it back in their heads that letting your audience fill in the blanks themselves is a hundred times more effective then showing it outright. Even still, this is undeniably a violent and movie and so definitely not for everybody. But then, hello, Vikings! Not the most peace-loving of people. Life was short, harsh, brutal, but also full of passion and beauty.

This is my favorite Tony Curtis movie, and my favorite Tony Curtis look. I love him with his beard. He’s an amazingly good-looking man anyway, but I just love him like this, less pretty and more straight handsome, all edgy and full of raw anger. He and Kirk Douglas play off each other so well, and I love their sword fight at the end, particularly as it takes place at the top of this tower, partly on these very steep steps. I've seen this movie how many times? And I still worry every single time that one of them is going to slip and fall.


This is also my second favorite Kirk Douglas film, right behind 20,000. His character isn't a nice man at all, but he fits right into the world the movie depicts and provides the perfect antagonist and foil for Tony Curtis. And The Vikings is also my favorite Ernest Borgnine role. He just makes a perfect Viking leader, with that great boisterous laugh of his. I love Janet Leigh in this movie as well and wanted to be her when I was little. She is so pretty as Morgana!


This is also the film in which I fell in love with James Donald. He’s one of those stalwart British actors who slips into good movies and makes them better. This was the first film I saw him in, and I quite fancied him. His character of Lord Egbert is intriguing. He allies with the Vikings, which technically makes him a traitor to England, but he does it only because King Aella is such a ratfink. He looks out for himself, but he’s not a coward either. He looks for ways to come out ahead personally, but at the same time, he’s got broader scope. I’m also an absolute sucker (probably since the first time I saw Mario sing “Vittoria!” in Tosca) for patriotic characters who quite loudly, noblely, and very inadvisedly, seal their guilt by decrying the evil of their captors in front of their captors. Good way to get yourself killed. Also a good way to make me love you forever. Egbert gets in such a moment when he’s hauled off to the dungeons: “Lies will not sustain a tyrant!” Mwah-hah-hah. He has some of my other favorite moments in the movie, such as when Ragnar (Ernest Borgnine) gives him a friendly clap on the back and nearly sends him flying. Egbert’s expression is priceless. I also love the casual, confused way he says, “Oh, I see,” when Ragnar explains a Viking custom to him. Makes me laugh every time. My only complaint is that I don’t know what happens to his character in the final battle! Does he live? Does he die? Alas, no such answers are forthcoming. I like to assume he made it, of course, and gave his devious, but faithful support to the new, true king.


I love the on location scenery in this film. The fjords are gorgeous, and I really do love ships… if it floats and is elegant and dangerous, I’m probably in love with it. My breath catches and my heart soars whenever I see a beautiful ship, and I absolutely adore these sleek dragon-headed Viking ships. I think if the movie was nothing but shots of the ships sailing around, I'd probably be quite happy. Yeah, I think I really did want to run away to sea all my life and just never fully realized it.


My favorite part of this film is the running of the oars scene. As the successful Viking ship comes in to dock, the rowers hold their oars out and the rest of the crew run along them. The scene makes me grin and grin.

Listy things -- Kirk Douglas

My favorite Kirk Douglas films:

1. 20000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954)
2. Lonely Are the Brave (1962)
3. The Vikings (1958)
4. The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)
5. Tough Guys (1986)
6. Seven Days in May (1964)
7. Paths of Glory (1957)
8. Out of the Past (1947)
9. Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957)
10. Heroes of Telemark (1965)

Kirk Douglas is one of those actors I tend to take for granted and forget how much I really love him. He stars in my favorite movie of all-time, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and The Vikings is, if not in my top 10, then my top 15 movies. If you had asked me who my favorite actor was when I was a kid, I would have told you it was Kirk Douglas.

I have to rank Lonely Are the Brave at the top because I absolutely love him in that movie (might actually be my favorite Kirk Douglas performance), but as I've said before, I have a hard time actually watching the film. I have two tough-to-watch films on this list. Lonely and Paths of Glory. Those go along with The Ox-Bow Incident, on my list of very painful movies to watch, but all three are also so good.

And why is Tough Guys not out on DVD??? I love this movie. I went and saw it a bunch of times in the theater when it came out, and I'm not sure I've seen it since! I think I saw it on video once, but that's it. This was such a good, underrated movie. Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas and Eli Wallach were so great in this movie. Man, I'd dearly love to see it again.

I had the pleasure of meeting Kirk Douglas at a book signing, oh man, twenty years ago now (where is the time going??). When I told him 20,000 was my favorite movie, he sang part of "A Whale of a Tale" for me. It's one of my fondest memories.


(Tomorrow... Ralph Meeker)

Day 4- A film that makes you sad

Before 1970: Lonely are the Brave (1962). Gah! I love love love this movie -- until the last five minutes. Then I hate it, because my heart aches and breaks, and I'm sad for days afterwards. But Kirk Douglas, that absolutely gorgeous horse, Whiskey, and one of my all-time favorite Jerry Goldsmith scores make this movie awesome despite the fact that the ending kills me even when I know it's coming.


Post 1970: Er... I can't seem to think of one. I can think of plenty of movies with sad moments, but none of them leave me feeling sad afterwards. They ultimately end happy. I can think of several downright depressing movies, but that's not the same as sad. I'm sure I'm overlooking one, but after thinking on this for a few days, I still can't come up with one. Hm.

Day 02 → Your favourite movie

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. (1954)


It's been my favorite since I was a wee thing. Other movies have come close, but nothing has ever displaced it from that top slot. I've seen it more times in the theater than a lot of newer movies. I never tire of this film. Everything about it captivates my imagination. The story. The music by Paul Smith. The characters and the actors who bring them to life. James Mason, Kirk Douglas, Paul Lukas, and Peter Lorre. The giant squid, Esmeralda the sea lion, the organ, cannibal island, Vulcania.... The movie has the most amazing underwater footage, the most exquisite matte paintings from Peter Ellenshaw.


20,000 is also quite dark for a Disney movie, despite the adventurous overtones. Murder, vengeance, suicide pacts, cannibals, atomic energy, much death and destruction... and yet it is also filled with the most amazing sense of wonder and beauty and hope. Without the latter, this movie would be nothing. It's the mix of dark themes with the hope and beauty that makes it so satisfying. I know this movie shaped who I became, particularly as a writer. Between it and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea television series, I developed a lifelong obsession with submarines and would be in the Navy right now commanding one, if women had been allowed to serve on subs back then. I had my application to Annapolis all ready to go.

This is an absolutely gorgeous movie. The submarine interior sets are sumptuous, rich and elegant, and technicolor just makes them look even more lovely. Captain Nemo does "do right well for himself," as Ned Land observes. Seeing this in the revival theaters growing up, I always wanted the shots of the salon, in particular, to linger and linger so I could just drink in the beauty of it. I covet that submarine!


When I was little, Ned Land was my favorite character. But as I've aged, Captain Nemo has become my favorite. There's so much complexity in him. I never tire of watching the little things James Mason does, of how he delivers his lines, the emotion, both hidden and apparent. There's also much unspoken complexity going on underneath the surface. His irritability with Ned Land vs. the way he lights up when he gets to talk about the ocean with Arronax. There are also many tiny visual things that are never explained. Such as his relationship with his first mate (played by the wonderful Robert J. Wilke). The first mate is the only one Nemo allows to touch him physically, the only one he truly trusts, even though any of the rest of his crew will give their lives for him. It's subtle and very interesting.


I also never fully appreciated Professor Aronnax or Paul Lukas when I was young. Now, I love his character, his optimism and hope, his enthusiasm to make the world a better place. And Peter Lorre, of course, is always wonderful.


This is a movie I never wanted to know how it was made. I never wanted the magic of it lessened by the reality of movie-making. Though I would give anything to go back in time and walk through the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea exhibit at Disneyland. They had the sets, etc. My mom tells wonderful stories of hanging out in the exhibit. One of my fondest memories is of meeting Kirk Douglas, telling him how much I loved this movie, and having him sing part of A Whale of a Tale to me!

There are no happy endings in WWI movies

It's been WWI movie week over here, with "The Trench" and "Paths of Glory." The former is a modern film (1999), with Daniel Craig, and was mostly a character study watching the young British soldiers on the eve of what we know from history will be a battle of devastating loss. You know from the get-go no one's going to cross the end credits alive, though that didn't stop me from hoping and hoping and hoping. The lead character Billy, (played by Paul Nicholls) and Beckwith (Anthony Strachan) were particularly fantastic, not that Daniel Craig isn't, it's just that he's a known quantity, and it was fun to have unknown actors to root for. DC makes a particularly fine don't-mess-with-him but caring sergeant. Loved his strawberry jam scene and trying to get whiskey from the lieutenant.

This DVD had an excellent special feature on WWI narrated by Robert Ryan and filled with footage. It made me cry at several points, just the sheer wasteful loss of life endured on all sides. I didn't realize that it was in WWI that the Germans introduced flame throwers, I assumed that was later. Just one more nastiness in a war of bloody nastiness. I learned a lot more about trenches and trench warfare than I had known, and more about the whys and wherefores of Verdun.

I've seen "Paths of Glory" before, once back in my teenage years. I remember my family watched it because of Kirk Douglas, and I remember being bored because it was not a battle/adventure war movie and, consequently, I wrote it off. Well, there's a prime indicator of silly youth for you. I watched it this morning, and this movie is great; however it was also as stomach-wrenchingly hard to watch as "Ox-Bow Incident," and for similar reasons. Three innocent men there, three innocent men here. Gah! Dana Andrews there, Ralph Meeker here. No more! I'm through! I can't watch any more of my men go through false charges/sham trials, lynching/executions/death again! At least in this one, instead of too-little, too-late Henry Fonda for defense, we've got Kirk Douglas and he is wonderful and awesome here. He's got some fabulous scenes with great dialog. Love love LOVE his scene giving the true cowardly lieutenant the firing squad duty. Pure love! But ultimately, Kirk can't do anything either, and I came *this* close to stopping the movie before it ended. Damn it. Damn damn damn. I'm going to be wrecked the rest of the day now.

But Ralph Meeker was great in all his scenes. He hit it all just right, emotionally, from bravery through bravado to fear and back again. Sigh. (And I got Bert Freed as a sergeant for extra cast bonus!)

Tough cops

"Detective Story" shares some similarities with "Where the Sidewalk Ends." Detectives haunted by their fathers, obsessive in their pursuit of justice because of it, both chasing criminals they're told to lay off, both violent in their methods. Kirk Douglas in one, Dana Andrews in the other. I find "Sidewalk" a very satisfying film. "Detective Story" disappointed me. Maybe because the first moves and shifts constantly, with the hero getting himself into deeper and deeper trouble, and in "Detective Story," the hero reacts to situations and circumstances, he doesn't cause them. There's nothing wrong with that, and "Detective Story" is a good movie. Kirk Douglas is awesome as usual. It just isn't a repeat viewer like "Sidewalk" is.

Best part of "Detective Story" was that Bert Freed was in it (coincidentally, he's in "Sidewalk" too). I love Bert Freed. I'd watch him in anything. It's interesting, isn't it? It isn't always the good-looking hero we want to bring home.

All for a story

Whew. Watched Billy Wilder's 1951 "Ace in the Hole." Movie's almost as hard to sit through as "The Ox-Bow Incident." Egads. A kick-in-the-gut movie. In the same way, you know it's going to end badly for innocent people, and you keep desperately hoping someone's going to do the right thing, and then when they finally try, it's far far too late. In some ways, this one is actually worse than Ox-Bow. At least in Ox-Bow, the lynch mob thought they had the right reasons. In this one... Kirk Douglas's character's motives are strictly self-serving as he toys with a man's life. He's great to watch in this one, so smug, so confident, and then so desperate and wrecked.

This movie is perfectly cast, and the script is tight and vicious. One rather big thing I kind of had to suspend disbelief on, but they made it work. A great movie, but not one I can watch again any time soon. It hurts too much.

Seven Days in May

Continuing with catching John Frankenheimer movies, I watched "Seven Days in May." I like this one better than "Manchurian Candidate" too, but probably not as much as "The Train." What a cast this movie has! And everyone in this movie is perfect for their role. And Frederic March as President... he's even more perfect. I think he has officially taken over the number one spot as my favorite screen President. The man is amazing. And Edmund O'Brien! I watched him not too long ago in "D.O.A." and couldn't believe this was the same person. He was awesome here, my favorite character in the movie, and he had my favorite moment in the movie to boot. He plays a Senator you want to discount, because he drinks heavily and seems like he might be slow... but he's not at all. His character is extremely smart under the exterior, and I just dug it. And the script was by Rod Serling. And the score was by Jerry Goldsmith. What, were they making this movie just for me to like?

It was odd, because I knew what the movie was about, and, as a writer, I immediately had the story plotted out the way I thought it would go. Woops. Not even close. I thought it would be more secretive, with Kirk Douglas running around uncovering the plot, when in fact, everything's brought out in the open early on. This is not remotely an action movie, which I'd been sort of anticipating, but it was never boring, never slow, because the people and the dialog and the tension of the way it was filmed kept it moving. Fascinating.

I watched it a second time with the director's commentary, and that was great. Some things I took for granted, seeing if for the first time in 2006, forgetting it came out in 1964. Like not realizing the movie was supposed to be set in the future, and that they sci-fi'd up the technology. They created video-conferencing and several other things, which didn't actually exist at that time. The cars they chose were mostly European vehicles so they wouldn't look familiar to audiences of the time. Now, they just look like 1960's cars, and I couldn't have told you what model and make they were. Never occurred to me I wasn't supposed to recognize them. Kind of spins the movie differently when you switch the context back to when it was made. Not to mention the movie's very premise, which in 1964 with the Cold War going on, would have been all too real for the audience, who would have brought their own tension and fears into the theater.

And he told a fabulous little tale that all writers will appreciate. The movie takes place, as the title says, in seven days. The novel on which it was based started on a Sunday and ended on Saturday. Frankenheimer shifted it a day, so it began on Monday, and would therefore have to end on Sunday. Which gave him a problem. See, the story hinges on the last day coinciding with the Preakness race, which is always run on a Saturday. His last day was now Sunday, and he was completely screwed as far as the horse race was concerned. He spent a couple of sleepless nights, debated how to get around this, was completely stuck.

He played tennis frequently with a writer friend of his (dang it, I've forgotten the name!) and they would bet their time instead of money. So, apparently, his writer friend owed him twelve hours of writing time. So unable to resolve the problem, Frankenheimer called him up to avail himself of the twelve hours. His friend said, so, if it only takes me an hour or two, is the debt clear? Frankenheimer said, absolutely. And the guy promptly said the solution was easy: you simply have a shot or two showing a poster advertising the Preakness and stating clearly "First Sunday Running of the Preakness!" Problem solved, in five minutes. And that's what Frankenheimer ended up doing. And he said no one ever questioned it or critiqued it, they just accepted it. Hee-hee!