Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. —Henry Fielding

13 December 2020

The Brave One (1956)


The Brave One
is very sweet, and I liked it a great deal more than I probably should have. The thing is, Michel Ray, even though he's not a great actor, is nevertheless compelling, and the plot itself is moving and lovely. The whole thing really shouldn't work, but it does. I think this is due more to the superb score (by Victor Young) and excellent photography (by Jack Cardiff) than it is to the script (by Dalton Trumbo), but obviously this film is most famous for the fact that Trumbo – a blacklisted writer in 1956 – won an Oscar under a pseudonym for writing this film.

Either way I'm not sure what the "From the human heart / ...for the human heart!" tagline is about. Like, is this because it's a film about a bull? Like they thought we would all be thinking from the bovine heart for the human heart? It's weird, right? I don't get it.

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