Favorite Films (lists up to participating site members)

[Paddy Goose]

Random Harvest
Picnic
Bridge on the River Kwai
Vertigo
Psycho
From Russia with Love
Zulu
The Fugitive
Terminator II
Silence of the Lambs

I want to switch out Zulu and put in The Odd Couple instead if that's OK

Another change please, switch out Picnic for The Hustler

[Mayerling]

Critics Choice

There were two unsympies that I felt for (and one I cheered on) in two film classics.

1) Waldo Lydecker in "Laura" - I am a Clifton Webb fan, and his snide, intellectual critic impressed me (as it did audiences in the 1940s, propelling him to sudden Hollywood stardom). He's sympathetic to a point because he loves Laura (Gene Tierney) and is driven to homicidal rage due to her fancying strong looking men like Jacobi the painter he ruins, Shelby Carpenter (Vincent Price), Det. Mark MacPherson (Dana Andrews). At the end even Tierney runs over to the mortally wounded Waldo.

2) Addison DeWitt in "All About Eve" - The epitome of a theatre critic, who has a wonderful set of verbal barbs (witness his comments to "Miss Casswell of the Copacabana School of Acting" (Marilyn Monroe) - "You have a point. An idiotic one, but a point!" Addison is disliked because of his attacks on Margo (Bette Davis), but what most people fail to keep in mind is Addison does love the theatre and can see that while Margo may still have great parts in her future she can't keep playing young women, whereas the equally talented Eve (Anne Baxter) can. That Addison shows a sexual interest in Eve can't be denied, but he later admits that he thought they were two of the same type and would have eventually gotten to realize it.

Poor Addie. He's better than Eve, being not only talented but far more intelligent. He is the only one of the (as he puts it) "children" she's been playing tricks on who fights back and wins*. The scene in the hotel room in Hartford, Conn., is one of my all time favorite come-uppance scenes in movies, with me (and I suspect every movie audience) cheering George Sanders on as he pulverizes Baxter. He takes the trouble of double checking her story, and her life, and finding those well hidden lies. She can't win with him.

At the end, you sense Addie actually realizes she's hardly worth his efforts (although he probably is happy he helped get her performance on stage). She is shooting a movie (something he feels ruins good acting) despite him. At the end he encourages the young girl Phoebe to stay with Eve and learn about acting success. Addie still will have a final victory over Eve.

[*Actually, after thinking this over, Addison is not the only one who does not get taken in by Eve. Birdie (Thelma Ritter), Margo's maid and factotum, hears the heart wrenching story that Eve tells Margo, Bill, Lloyd, and Karen about the death of her husband in the war and the fascination she had (and comfort) watching Eve's performances on stage. Birdie, unlike the others who are saddened, makes a comment to the effect that the only thing not in the stories were a pair of dogs snapping at Eve's ass. Margo turns angrily on Birdie at this, so the latter remains quiet. But if you watch, she never trusts Eve. Nor does she have any reason to actually have to defeat Eve like Addison does (for his own self-esteem). I might add that when Eve makes a play for Bill (Gary Merrill), he rejects it quite forcefully, and after that Bill's relationship with Eve is only a business one about directing her.]

Jeff

[Mayerling]

Hi Stead

I'm afraid I haven't seen that one.

I don't know whether you'd agree with me, but I was perversely disappointed when Nigel Patrick was reduced to a pitiable state in The Pickwick Papers, and I was hoping to hear that he was up to his old tricks again abroad.

Hi Robert,

Blame it on Boz.

Jeff

[Robert]

Stead, shame on me too for getting stuck and not reading the whole book - however it is quite long.

Here is the film. Go from 3.00 to 4.55.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDIuvwPwu5A

[Steadmund Brand]

Hi Stead

I'm afraid I haven't seen that one.

I don't know whether you'd agree with me, but I was perversely disappointed when Nigel Patrick was reduced to a pitiable state in The Pickwick Papers, and I was hoping to hear that he was up to his old tricks again abroad.

This may be shocking... But I have never seen the Pickwick Papers (you are talking the 1952 version correct?) I have heard the Orson Wells Mercury Theatre On The Air version though... and I saw a few parts of the BBC miniseries (but was unimpressed by this). Plus.. I will admit that I have never read it either (Shame on me I know)

Steadmund Brand