Category Archives: Movies & TV

40’s movies marathon – part 46

Victory Through Air Power (1943, USA) – Not propaganda as such, but an argument made by Disney and an ex-Russian pilot, aimed in part at the Allied governments, about how air power should be used to win the war. It’s informative, awe-inducing, and quirky in that Disney way. Opens with a history of flight, and ends with scenes of the fiery hell Allied bombers will rain on Japan’s industrial areas once they learn how to overcome the great distances. Can you believe the magnificent arrogance of Walt Disney, to use his own army of animators to convince Roosevelt of some idea he’s just picked up from a book? Unbelievable. Fantastic. Watched it all.

The White Cliffs of Dover (1944, USA) – An American nurse waits for casualties to arrive from the front, and goes into flashback mode to tell us why she loves America’s dear cousins, the English. Watched: 13 minutes.

The Lodger (1944, USA) – I don’t see how Jack the Ripper could have escaped the police all that time if he’d seemed so shifty and shadowy as this lodger does. Watched: 12 minutes.

Double Exposure (1944, USA) – A magazine where photographers fake their pictures and the owner is a health freak hires a Woman Photographer, causing shock and confusion. I’m not sure what to make of the intro text: “New York – Where half the girls are working girls .. and the other half are working men.” What? Watched: 13 minutes.

40’s movies marathon – part 45

Le Corbeau (1943, France) – An anonymous letter writer spreads dark accusations in a small town. The town is so full of depraved people that practically everyone could be the culprit, or at least are so unlikeable that you don’t mind them being falsely accused of it. Watched it all.

Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943, USA) – By the undead eyebrows of Bela Lugosi, how many are there of these? Watched: 10 minutes.

Watch on the Rhine (1943, USA) – European exiles from both sides meet in the US. Pretty dull considering the screenplay is written by Dashiell Hammett. Watched: 32 minutes.

Lady of Burlesque (1943, USA) – Life at a burlesque theatre, with relatively little clothes for a ’43 movie, and a good sense of fun, including a fistfight between a room full of dancing girls and cops. Watched: 24 minutes.

Stormy Weather (1943, USA) – Jazz musical with an all-black cast. Is that progress or segregation? Watched the musical numbers, skipped everything between. One singer looked and sounded oddly familiar: Turns out he’s Cab Calloway, who I remembered from The Blues Brothers, 37 years later.

The Mysterious Doctor (1943, USA) – This isn’t The Doctor at all, just some medical doctor who wanders by accident into one of those isolated, evil villages England is so full of. Watched: 7 minutes.

Bataan (1943, USA) – Soldiers hold a bridge in the Philippines. Big explosions and men staring somberly out into the jungle follows. Watched: 28 minutes.

40’s movies marathon – part 44

Old Acquaintance (1943, USA) – Bette Davis writes thoughtful books that critics love but readers don’t. Miriam Hopkins writes romantic trash that sells well. They’re the greatest of friends, but you just know that a Bette Davis movie is going to turn out bitter, and so it does. Watched it all. Based on a play by John Van Druten, who apparently saw nothing odd in writing a play about a critically acclaimed playwright who happens to be a wonderful person, and her stupid friend who makes tons of money.

Ladies’ Day (1943, USA) – Meet a team of baseball players and their loud, nasally voiced dames. Watched: 14 minutes.

Ghost on the Loose (1943, USA) – The East Side Kids and Bela Lugosi have certainly fallen far since the 30’s. Watched: 4 minutes.

Millions Like Us (1943, UK) – An ordinary family in wartime London. Perhaps a little too ordinary. Watched: 19 minutes.

The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler (1943, USA) – Life in Nazi Austria, as imagined by someone who has vaguely heard about it in the news. Watched: 6 minutes, then fast forwarded to see the strange death, in which a Mel Brooks lookalike dressed as a Hitler double is shot.

Corvette K-225 (1943, USA) – Sailors on the Atlantic etc. No chance of seeing car chases, the Corvette in question is a ship. Watched: 5 minutes.

Tonight We Raid Calais (1943, USA) – Spy infiltrates France, after a miraculous escape from the laws of bullet physics. Watched: 6 minutes.

40’s movies marathon – part 43


Shadow of a Doubt (1943, USA) – Nice uncle Charlie comes to visit his small-town relatives. He brings large wads of cash, jewelry with other people’s names on it, and a nihilistic philosophy of life. Watched it all.

Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943, USA) – Self-congratulatory musical about Hollywood actors. Watched: 10 minutes, then fast-forwarded through the rest to see if it’s also a patriotic war musical. Doesn’t seem to be, but one can never be too sure.

Destination Tokyo (1943, USA) – Whenever I see Cary Grant I expect him to crack a joke and offer a drink. Which makes it hard to take him seriously as a submarine captain. Watched: 11 minutes.

Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943, UK) – Opens with a raven with a taste for blood. How cool is that? But the rest isn’t so impressive. Watched: 15 minutes.

Son of Dracula (1943, USA) – The 1943 idea of horror was to play ghostly music while a bat flies across the screen. Watched: 11 minutes.

Whistling in Brooklyn (1943, USA) – A serial killer story, the first in this marathon. I hate serial killer stories. Watched: 4 minutes.

Private SNAFU (1943-45, USA) – A series of educational cartoons for soldiers, made by Frank Capra, Dr. Seuss, Fritz Freleng, Chuck Jones – and Mel Blanc. Which means they’re also hilarious. Here’s my favorite, which explains that even if you are a super-awesome super-soldier with super-powers, you still maybe ought to read the field manual. “The Americans are on our side, you know.”

I am not a number, I am a free man

This is one of my favorite TV intros, from The Prisoner (1967):

Music by Ron Grainer, who also wrote the theme for Dr. Who.

There’s now a remake of The Prisoner, which began airing this weekend.


I’m not convinced by it. It’s certainly different from the original. It’s okay that it’s different, of course. James Caviezel shouldn’t be the same Number Six as Patrick McGoohan any more than Daniel Craig should be the same James Bond as Sean Connery. You have to change, or there’s no point in a remake. But so far I don’t like it.

Here’s one way in which it’s different: The premise of both series is that a man is imprisoned in a surreal environment, an isolated village, where someone tries to break his mind. But Caviezel’s Number Six is a victim. McGoohan never was. McGoohan was always in charge. Caviezel plays Number Six like a character from Lost. McGoohan played him like free will incarnated. Someone who doesn’t bend. Who falls when he’s struck, but always gets back up again.

Caviezel’s Number Six is someone you can feel sorry for, sympathize with. McGoohan’s Number Six is someone you can admire, be inspired by.

I’ll try to watch the new series on its own terms. But if you haven’t seen the original, that’s the place to start. Despite the .. weird second half of the series.

Andrew Marr’s history of modern Britain

I’ve been enjoying Andrew Marr’s BBC documentary series about the history of 20th century Britain. First The History of Modern Britain (2007), about the second half of the century, and now the ongoing The Making of Modern Britain, about the first half.

Marr focuses on social history. He looks at how people saw the world and their place in it, and how this changed over time. He portrays the rise of mass politics, and shifting power networks. It’s not primarily about telling “what happened”, cramming as many big events as possible into the story, but about how people perceived things at the time.

The central events of the story are events that changed those perceptions, or illustrates them. I like history that allows the past to speak in its own voice, and Andrew Marr does that well here. He digs up these gems that seem to capture a mood or a turning point. Little facts and events, or just a short piece of footage, that force you to broaden your view of a period.

But he’s also opinionated, in the same evenhanded way that I liked in Rick Perlstein’s book Nixonland.

It all breaks down as he approaches the present, of course, with platitudes and odd priorities, but all history at that level does. It’s hard to understand change you’re right in the middle of. But the rest of the series gives an idea of the kind of insights historians will one day provide about our own time. I can’t wait.

40’s movies marathon – part 42

Ossessione (1943, Italy) – A hobo arrives at a café, and starts seducing the wife of the owner. He succeeds, and now there’s a fat, opera-loving husband to get rid off. Based on The Postman Always Rings Twice. Watched it all.

The More the Merrier (1943, USA) – The Odd Couple, wartime edition, with Jean Arthur as Jack Lemmon, Charles Coburn as Walter Matthau, and Washington D.C. as New York. Also starring Joel McCrea as Sir Destined-to-hook-up-with-Jean-Arthur. Not bad, but the farce gets a little too goofy. Watched: 34 minutes.

Our Enemy the Japanese (1943, USA) – It turns out that Japan isn’t awesome after all. They’re fanatical murderers, whose minds are completely alien to a Westerner. Watched it all.

Hangmen Also Die (1943, USA) – Reinhard Heydrich, a cartoonish Nazi villain, wants the Czechs to respect his authoritah. Watched: 6 minutes.

Phantom of the Opera (1943, USA) – A Romantically disfigured violinist spreads terror and music at the opera house. Not a great movie, but the music is good, and it’s not by Andrew Llllloyd Webber. Somewhat different from the original by Terry Pratchett. Watched it all. The opening credits say Fritz Leiber has a role, and throughout the movie I tried to guess who he was. Turns out he’s playing Franz Liszt as an old man, and that the Leiber in question is Leiber Sr., the actor, not his son Leiber Jr., the author. Makes sense.

40’s movies marathon – part 41

The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943, UK) – Follows the life of an English soldier, a veteran of the Boer war. As the decades pass, he grows more and more out of touch with his country, until, at the time of the Second World War, he’s seen as a stuffy remnant of the past. His old German friend explains why: He’s a gentleman, but “this isn’t a gentleman’s war”. There’s no room for fair play when you’re fighting for your existence. Bittersweet comedy that sees both sides: Britain has learned a lesson, and has become bolder and quicker on its feet, but it has also lost something. Watched it all.

Submarine Alert (1943, USA) – All expenses were spared: The Japanese voices are made by running the audio track backwards. Watched: 7 minutes.

Crazy House (1943, USA) – Olsen and Johnson wants to make a followup to Hellzapoppin, their nonsensical 1941 comedy. And that’s the plot of their followup, which is just as nonsensical, and pretty funny. The real star here is Cass Daley, pictured above. Watched it all.

Around the World (1943, USA) – A patriotic war musical. I hate patriotic war musicals. Watched: 6 minutes.

The Ox Bow Incident (1943, USA) – A real western, at last: A dark tale from the borderland between law and anarchy. A man is murdered, and a lynch mob is formed. It starts roaming around the countryside in the middle of the night, looking for someone to hang. Watched it all.