Notorious

Title: Notorious
Year: 1946
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Writer: Ben Hecht
Starring: Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains
Music: Roy Webb
Distinctions: currently #118 on IMDb’s Top 250
Length: 101 minutes
Synopsis: a secret agent love triangle
How I saw it: on video (rented on DVD), yesterday
Subjective Rating: 5/10
Objective Rating: 7/10 (points off for pacing, music and subjective rating)

Yet another case of an inventive classic that’s not as good as other movies that have ripped it off.  Not a bad movie, but I was bored through much of it.  I have seen many Hitchcock films that I don’t like, but this is the first that felt long.

The Big Sleep

Title: The Big Sleep
Year: 1946
Director: Howard Hawks
Writers: William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett & Jules Furthman, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall
Music: Max Steiner
Distinctions: currently #122 on IMDb’s Top 250
Length: 114 minutes
Synopsis: a private detective on a blackmail case runs into some murders
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), yesterday
Subjective Rating: 4/10
Objective Rating: 5/10 (gets points for concept, dialog, special effects/design, acting and music)

Very disappointing. The plot is nearly incomprehensible, even though I’ve read the book. There’s a scene in the book, just when things get impossibly confusing, where they stop and explain what’s going on; that scene was cut from the movie. Besides the trouble with the story, it’s not a very entertaining movie. Every now and then there’ll be a fun bit of dialog that hints at how good the book is, but that (along with Steiner’s excellent score) is about all this has going for it.

The Best Years of Our Lives

Title: The Best Years of Our Lives
Year: 1946
Director: William Wyler
Writer: Robert E. Sherwood, based on the novel by MacKinlay Kantor
Starring: Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Harold Russell, Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright
Music: Hugo Friedhofer
Distinctions: Oscars for best picture, director, screenplay (non-original), actor (March), supporting actor (Russell), score and editing; currently #186 on IMDb’s Top 250
Synopsis: Word War II veterans come home
Length: 172 minutes
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), November 2008
Subjective Rating: 3/10
Objective Rating: 4/10 (gets points for characters, dialog, special effects/design and acting)

Very tedious. I guess we’re supposed to feel sorry for the guy with no education, skills or experience because he doesn’t love his stable, easy job? Or are we supposed to be sympathetic toward the cripple who deliberately alienates his loved ones? Or maybe we’re just supposed to take away the tidbits of Marxist propaganda they sneak in (not that I have anything against Marxism, but I really do not want to hear anything Hollywood has/had to say about politics).

Beauty and the Beast

Title: La belle et la bête
Year: 1946
Director: Jean Cocteau
Writer: Jean Cocteau, story by Cocteau & Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont
Starring: Jean Marais, Josette Day
Music: Georges Auric
Distinctions: formerly on IMDb’s Top 250
Synopsis: a girl is forced to live with a half-human monster
Length: 96 minutes
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), November 2008
Subjective Rating: 3/10
Objective Rating: 3/10 (gets points for concept, dialog and special effects/design)

There were maybe two scenes in the entire movie that had any entertainment value for me at all. The Beast was cheesy and theatrical (by modern standards), and the sets and costumes in general looked home-made, but the living furniture was too cool and creepy to not give a point for special effects/design. I was very surprised by how distant and unsympathetic the characters and story are; it’s very much a post-war art film, not a romance.

Great Expectations

Title: Great Expectations
Year: 1946
Director: David Lean
Writers: Anthony Havelock-Allan, David Lean, Cecil McGivern, Ronald Neame & Kay Walsh, based on the novel by Charles Dickens
Starring: John Mills, Tony Wager, Valerie Hobson, Jean Simmons, Bernard Miles, Francis L. Sullivan, Finlay Currie, Martita Hunt, Alec Guinness
Music: Walter Goehr
Distinctions: Oscars for best cinematography (black-and-white) and art direction/set decoration (black-and-white); currently #239 on IMDb’s Top 250
Synopsis: a boy is made rich by an anonymous benefactor
How I saw it: on video (rented from Netflix), July 2008
Subjective Rating: 5/10
Objective Rating: 3/10 (gets points for characters, pacing and acting)

Perfectly good movie for what it is, but not great. Maybe I’m the only person who thinks so, but Dickens just doesn’t seem to work well as movies. Typical 19th-Century speech does not play well read by actors. No one else will ever agree with me on that, will they… The music is the quintessential corny-ass romantic score.  Visually, a lot could have been done with atmosphere, but isn’t. As for the story, the whole “now I’m ill and will sleep through the climax” thing kind of bugs me. Is that in the book? Come on, Dickens, you can do better than that. Or was opening the drapes supposed to be the climax?