Caesar and Cleopatra (1945)

Caesar and Cleopatra is honestly terrible. It’s Shaw, so it’s talk talk talk and not much else. Obviously the costumes are gorgeous—it’s ancient Egypt in the Roman period—but there’s just nothing to this. It’s allegedly a kind of adventure-intrigue sort of thing about Caesar and Cleopatra but it’s not the least bit interesting.

Kitty (1945)

Kitty is a riff on the Pygmalion story, but it's so brilliantly done, with such a cracklingly witty script, that I fell for it and fell hard. Paulette Goddard is fabulous in this, and Ray Milland is, of course, delightful. The supporting cast is excellent too, especially Constance Collier and Cecil Kellaway. There are some absolutely hilarious moments in this script, and the gowns and the hair and makeup are superb. Kitty was nominated for production design, but this was two years before the costume design category was created. This is a sumptuously made movie and it's gorgeously designed - Mitchell Leisen was, in fact, a designer before he was a director. But the direction is also brilliant. Leisen has this relaxed, casual way in his films that seems to defy the morality of the day with a beautiful ease. Kitty is really a spectacular - and spectacularly underrated – film, but I'm certainly glad we are all beginning to reassess Leisen's wonderful career.

I watched this as part of a series of Leisen films on the Criterion Channel. I've only seen a few, but I'm a new admirer.

Irving Berlin's Blue Skies

I thought Blue Skies was a bit of a bust. It's a juke with a bunch of Irving Berlin songs. Fine. And some of the numbers are good. I really liked "Heat Wave", for example, and how can you not be in love with Astaire dancing "Puttin' on the Ritz"? But the plot is such a downer.  A love triangle where Bing can't settle down and Astaire is not interesting but Joan Caulfield can't settle for boring and stable and only loves the restless one. The Berlin numbers are shoehorned into this dumb plot in ways that don't seem very creative. I dunno. This whole thing just felt sorta phoned in.

The Blue Dahlia (1946)

The Blue Dahlia is a tight, exciting crime movie. It's not a film noir, but the script is superb, and Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake are just so excellent.

Humoresque (1946)

Humoresque is a truly overwrought mid-century melodrama. It's so overwrought that it ends with a long sequence set to the Liebestod from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde. Crawford is glamorous and lovely and spends most of the film being very drunk. John Garfield, on the other hand, is relentlessly stern and sullen. He's completely unlikable from start to finish. Worse yet, the supporting players are no better. Oscar Levant keeps up a steady stream of unfunny jokes, and Ruth Nelson, who starts off as a sweet mother with a tear in her eye, turns into a sternly moral maker of misery. What does this movie think it's about? I couldn't tell you, honestly. Maybe its only function is to give a bunch of actors something to do. No thanks.

This was the last of the Joan Crawford movies I caught before they got kicked off the Criterion Channel. I think I'll be taking a bit of a break from Joan.

Gilda

This is iconic. Obviously Rita Hayworth is the best thing about Gilda. She's incredible, unexpected, unpredictable, sexy as all hell, compelling, gorgeous, and nearly every other adjective you can throw at her. It's extraordinary that she went from singing and tapping with Fred Astaire in 1941 and '42 to playing this role in a Columbia noir with Glenn Ford. Extraordinary. But the picture itself is also exquisitely written. I had no idea what was going to happen for most of the movie, and most of the Gilda is terrifyingly menacing. It's shot beautifully in a noir style, and I loved it from start to finish.

To Each His Own (1946)

No thanks. 

Olivia DeHavilland moons her way through the typical Oscar bait narrative in which a woman sacrifices her son (it's always a son, isn't it?) for the good of another woman and for the good of the child himself. This is so tiresome.

I must say I was a bit surprised that DeHavilland's goody-two-shoes reputation allowed her to play a woman who had a child without being married, but of course she doesn't even kiss the man onscreen so I guess she got away with it that way. What an eye-roll this whole business is. I can't believe I sat through it.

Funnily enough, I had actually been looking forward to this movie a lot. It's one of the few Best Actress winners I hadn't seen (La Ciociara and Anastasia are now the only two), and so when the film became available on the Cave of Forgotten Films website I jumped at the chance to see it. Alas, this film ought perhaps to have stayed forgotten.

Song of the South

Song of the South (1946) is pretty adorable with some great songs.

It is, of course, also a minstrel show, and as always with those, Song of the South reimagines slavery as a happy affair with everyone in his happy place – or laughing place, as this film would have it.