Lost Horizon. 1937 Columbia Pictures.
Starring: Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, John Howard, Sam Jaffe
Director: Frank Capra
Buy Lost Horizon at Amazon.
Robert Conway (Colman) is England's new Foreign Secretary, having spent time before this as a writer, soldier, and diplomat. In 1935 China, he has one last task: rescuing 90 westerners from the city of Baskul, which is under siege from armed revolutionaries. Conway flies out on the last plane, which unknown to him, has been hijacked. After a long flight to seemingly nowhere, the plane runs out of fuel and crashes in the Himalayas, killing the hijacker.
Chang (H.B. Warner) rescues Conway and his companions and takes them to Shangri-La, a valley paradise sheltered from the cold, and led by the High Lama (Jaffe). The High Lama is dying, and has selected Conway after reading his writings to keep the place going. Conway himself grows to love Shangri-La, as do most of his crew, but his younger brother George (Howard) is determined to leave no matter what. Eventually, George talks him into leaving, but Robert soon makes his way back to the paradise, returning to Sondra (Wyatt), who he had been smitten with prior to departure.
Lost Horizon is noted for introducing the name "Shangri-La", which obviously has become a household word. It was also the subject of an elaborate restoration process, after several reels of the original negative detetiorated during the late 1960s. Following World War II, subsequent prints were released to theaters and to television, downplaying the sympathy shown for the Chinese, as well as reducing any supposed Communist themes out of the film. With help from the UCLA Film and Television Archive, Columbia restored the film the best they could, having found the complete 132 minute soundtrack. Seven minutes of the movie, here replaced by still pictures of the actors in costume while the soundtrack played, were either lost, or deemed in too poor condition to use. Robert Osborne of Turner Classic Movies has also said that the first two reels of the movie were burned by Frank Capra after a terrible preview of the movie, and that footage has never been restored. There is also a lengthy disclaimer before the film begins explaining the restoration process for those unaware. My opinion was, the use of still pictures did not distract me, or cheapen the viewing experience.
Highly recommended.
Showing posts with label frank capra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label frank capra. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Arsenic and Old Lace
Arsenic and Old Lace. 1944 Warner Bros. Pictures/Turner Entertainment [filmed in 1941].
Starring: Cary Grant, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Priscilla Lane, John Alexander
Director: Frank Capra
Available at Amazon.
Mortimer Brewster is a lifelong bachelor and drama critic who has written several books where he describes marriage as an old fashioned superstition. Despite what he has written, he falls in love and married Elaine Harper (Lane), who grew up next door to his old family home in Brooklyn. After the wedding (on Halloween!), Mort goes to visit his bizarre relatives still living there: two elderly aunts Abby and Martha (Hull & Adair), and his brother Teddy (Alexander), who thinks he's Theodore Roosevelt, and yells "Charge!" before running upstairs when he isn't digging "the Panama Canal" in the basement of the house. After Mortimer finds a corpse hidden in a window seat, he tells his aunts that Teddy needs to be institutionalized, since he's killed someone.
Teddy "Roosevelt" isn't the one responsible, and Mortimer's aunts cheerfully explain that it's their doing, calling it a "charity". Mortimer considers their activities of ending the lives of presumed suffering of lonely old bachelors by serving them poisoned elderberry wine spiked with arsenic a "very bad habit". The corpses are buried downstairs by Teddy, who thinks he's digging locks for the Panama Canal and only burying yellow fever victims.
As if that wasn't bad enough, Mortimer's brother Jonathan (Massey) shows up with his alcoholic accomplice, plastic surgeon Dr. Herman Einstein (Lorre). Jonathan is a psychotic gangster trying to get away from the cops and looking for a place to dump his latest victim, whose face was altered by Dr. Einstein while inebriated. After Jonathan finds out what his aunts are doing, he decides to bury his victim in the basement, to their objection, and decides Mort will be his next victim.
Can Mortimer really be related to this group of nutcases?
This is a very funny and dark movie. Even though Cary Grant hated his performance here, it really makes the movie that more enjoyable. Highly recommended.
Starring: Cary Grant, Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, Raymond Massey, Peter Lorre, Priscilla Lane, John Alexander
Director: Frank Capra
Available at Amazon.
Mortimer Brewster is a lifelong bachelor and drama critic who has written several books where he describes marriage as an old fashioned superstition. Despite what he has written, he falls in love and married Elaine Harper (Lane), who grew up next door to his old family home in Brooklyn. After the wedding (on Halloween!), Mort goes to visit his bizarre relatives still living there: two elderly aunts Abby and Martha (Hull & Adair), and his brother Teddy (Alexander), who thinks he's Theodore Roosevelt, and yells "Charge!" before running upstairs when he isn't digging "the Panama Canal" in the basement of the house. After Mortimer finds a corpse hidden in a window seat, he tells his aunts that Teddy needs to be institutionalized, since he's killed someone.
Teddy "Roosevelt" isn't the one responsible, and Mortimer's aunts cheerfully explain that it's their doing, calling it a "charity". Mortimer considers their activities of ending the lives of presumed suffering of lonely old bachelors by serving them poisoned elderberry wine spiked with arsenic a "very bad habit". The corpses are buried downstairs by Teddy, who thinks he's digging locks for the Panama Canal and only burying yellow fever victims.
As if that wasn't bad enough, Mortimer's brother Jonathan (Massey) shows up with his alcoholic accomplice, plastic surgeon Dr. Herman Einstein (Lorre). Jonathan is a psychotic gangster trying to get away from the cops and looking for a place to dump his latest victim, whose face was altered by Dr. Einstein while inebriated. After Jonathan finds out what his aunts are doing, he decides to bury his victim in the basement, to their objection, and decides Mort will be his next victim.
Can Mortimer really be related to this group of nutcases?
This is a very funny and dark movie. Even though Cary Grant hated his performance here, it really makes the movie that more enjoyable. Highly recommended.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. 1939 Columbia Pictures.
Starring: James Steward, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Edward Arnold, Guy Kibbee, Thomas Mitchell, Eugene Pallette, Harry Carey
Director: Frank Capra
Available at Amazon.
Another true American classic film.
Hubert "Happy" Hopper (Kibbee) is the governor of an unnamed state (as of 1939, you had 48 to choose from, so pick your favorite), who finds himself having to pick a replacement for the recently deceased Senator Sam Foley. Hopper's corrupt political boss Jim Taylor (Arnold) makes it no secret that he wants Hopper to choose his handpicked candidate, and the popular committees want a reformer. The governor's children want him to select the head of the Boy Rangers, Jefferson Smith (Stewart). An indecisive Hopper flips a coin, and it lands on its side, right next to a newspaper story about Smith, he decides on him, thinking he would be easy to manipulate while pleasing the public at the same time. Smith is taken under the wing by the popular, but secretly crooked Senator Joseph Paine (Rains), a friend of Jeff's father.
When the unforgiving Washington press labels Smith a bumpkin and suggests he has no business being a senator, Paine suggests that Smith propose a bill, which he does, and that's legislation authorizing a government loan to buy land in his home state for a national boys' camp, which would be paid back by kids across America. As the donations immediately flood in, we learn the proposed camp site is already part of a dam-building graft scheme that's part of a Public Works bill endorsed by Taylor's camp and supported by Paine. Paine finds himself unwilling to betray Smith, and tells Taylor he wants out. He is reminded that Paine is only in power largely due to Taylor's influence, so he reluctantly suggests that Smith is trying to profit from his bill by producing fake evidence that Smith owns the land in question. Smith tries to leave, but his secretary Clarissa Saunders (Arthur), who has come to believe in him, suggests that he launch his now famous filibuster to postpone the Works bill and prove his innocence before the Senate votes to expel him.
Smith talks himself into exhaustion, and ultimately faints, even as Taylor manipulates the home town media into turning against him. Finally, a remorseful Paine tells the Senate that he is to blame, and Smith is totally innocent.
Highly, highly recommended.
Starring: James Steward, Jean Arthur, Claude Rains, Edward Arnold, Guy Kibbee, Thomas Mitchell, Eugene Pallette, Harry Carey
Director: Frank Capra
Available at Amazon.
Another true American classic film.
Hubert "Happy" Hopper (Kibbee) is the governor of an unnamed state (as of 1939, you had 48 to choose from, so pick your favorite), who finds himself having to pick a replacement for the recently deceased Senator Sam Foley. Hopper's corrupt political boss Jim Taylor (Arnold) makes it no secret that he wants Hopper to choose his handpicked candidate, and the popular committees want a reformer. The governor's children want him to select the head of the Boy Rangers, Jefferson Smith (Stewart). An indecisive Hopper flips a coin, and it lands on its side, right next to a newspaper story about Smith, he decides on him, thinking he would be easy to manipulate while pleasing the public at the same time. Smith is taken under the wing by the popular, but secretly crooked Senator Joseph Paine (Rains), a friend of Jeff's father.
When the unforgiving Washington press labels Smith a bumpkin and suggests he has no business being a senator, Paine suggests that Smith propose a bill, which he does, and that's legislation authorizing a government loan to buy land in his home state for a national boys' camp, which would be paid back by kids across America. As the donations immediately flood in, we learn the proposed camp site is already part of a dam-building graft scheme that's part of a Public Works bill endorsed by Taylor's camp and supported by Paine. Paine finds himself unwilling to betray Smith, and tells Taylor he wants out. He is reminded that Paine is only in power largely due to Taylor's influence, so he reluctantly suggests that Smith is trying to profit from his bill by producing fake evidence that Smith owns the land in question. Smith tries to leave, but his secretary Clarissa Saunders (Arthur), who has come to believe in him, suggests that he launch his now famous filibuster to postpone the Works bill and prove his innocence before the Senate votes to expel him.
Smith talks himself into exhaustion, and ultimately faints, even as Taylor manipulates the home town media into turning against him. Finally, a remorseful Paine tells the Senate that he is to blame, and Smith is totally innocent.
Highly, highly recommended.
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