Pete Kelly's Blues (1955)

Pete Kelly's Blues is a gangster movie musical where all the songs are diegetic and most of them are great – including numbers by Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee. But this movie is awfully directed, and honestly I am still not really sure I understand what the film's conflict was or how it resolved. Edmond O'Brien plays a gangster and the most wooden Jack Webb (who also directed) plays the cornet-player Pete Kelly. O'Brien is taking most of the band's money, ok... I get that. But I think somehow this is supposed to be Kelly's fault. In any case everyone seems to resent him.

In any case, whatever this was it didn't work.

Not as a Stranger (1955)

Meh. Stanley Kramer's melodrama Not as a Stranger (based on a bestselling novel) is not that great. 

In the first place, the main character is mostly a terrible human being. It's an excellent lesson in how being convinced that you're right is dangerous. 

In the second place, Robert Mitchum, who is looking very, very handsome in Not as a Stranger, is giving a wooden, weird performance that doesn't let the audience in at all. 

The rest of the cast is mostly good – especially Broderick Crawford and Charles Bickford. And I'm always happy to see Frank Sinatra and Lee Marvin.

However, I just do not care about Olivia De Havilland, and I don't care how many Oscars they give her or how many pieces I have to read about how great Melanie in Gone with the Wind is. None of that can make me like her milquetoast personality.

It's Always Fair Weather

It's Always Fair Weather doesn't have many memorable songs, but it has several memorable numbers. Dolores Gray has a great number, Cyd Charisse, of course, has an exquisite boxing number, and Gene Kelly tap-dances on roller skates. This one, especially, is just inspired. Oh! And the opening number, with Kelly, Dan Dailey, and Michael Kidd, is also just so excellent. This is filled with action-comic choreography and great dancing. I enjoyed this immensely.

Strategic Air Command (1955)

I don't understand Anthony Mann's career. He made several really excellent films, numerous good westerns, a couple of giant, bloated epics like The Fall of the Roman Empire and Le Cid, and he also made a bunch of garbage with Jimmy Stewart in the 1950s. What was he doing? 

Strategic Air Command is almost not a movie at all. It's a two-hour-long commercial for the Air Force. It's trying to get young men to join the Air Force, and it's trying to justify the U.S. government's funding of the Air Force. I don't know if this worked in 1955, but it didn't work for me.

In this film, there is no war. It's a film about the Air Force that doesn't involve shooting at anything. Talk about low stakes! This thing is really baffling.

June Allyson is pleasant, but Jimmy Stewart in the 1950s really and truly was not for me. This sort of grandfatherly character he plays in these movies just baffles me. He really wasn't so old when this came out – 48 or so – but he looks a great deal older for some reason, and the idea that he's supposed to be a baseball player for the St. Louis Cardinals just seems preposterous.

Also, synopses of this film say things like baseball and the air force meet in this film. No. This film doesn't have anything to do with baseball. As I say, it's a long, drawn-out commercial for the air force, complete with unnecessary marching music when, like, random planes take off to go nowhere.

Queen Bee (1955)

Damn, Joan Crawford is a bitch in this. Queen Bee, though, isn't anything other than a bitchy melodrama set in the American South, and the director and screenwriter don't even make anything interesting out of the Southern setting. Worse yet, there are no parties at all, no big sequences with even more than six actors in a room. This is a smallish film with high drama. 

I've never paid much attention to Barry Sullivan before, but I loved him in this. 

The costumes, by Jean Louis, are exquisite. Crawford's outfits look incredible in every single sequence.

The Violent Men (1955)

The Violent Men is very violent, especially for 1955. Its message, however, purports to be... non-violence? It doesn't sell the latter very well. This is great while it is about revenge and violence, but it takes some melodramatic turns and is way more focused on a subplot between Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson than it needs to be. Glenn Ford is perfect. (Isn't he always?) And Max Steiner's score is gorgeous! But the film doesn't quite work. The photography, too, is very cool, but Cinemascope always looks very weird on a home television, and it looks weird here too. I do wish there was a way to transfer cinemascope for home viewing that worked.

Guys and Dolls (1955)

Am I drunk or did I actually enjoy this as much as I think I did? I wasn't expecting Guys and Dolls to be as fun as it is, but all the principals are excellent, and Vivian Blaine is truly a standout among great performers. There are some really brilliant numbers in this – "Luck Be a Lady" might be the most famous, but "Don't Rock the Boat", "For Some Doll", and (especially) "A Person Could Develop a Cold" are lyrically brilliant. And Michael Kidd!! This was a blast.

The Harder They Fall (1955)

The Harder They Fall is the second Bogart movie I've watched this week, and I'm just so impressed. Obviously I've seen dozens of Bogart movies in my life, but I guess I just hadn't thought much about what good choices this man made as a filmmaker and also how well he can hold a picture together and bring the audience along with whatever his character is thinking.  

The Harder They Fall is not a great movie, but it has some excellent acting – Rod Steiger chews the scenery beautifully and gives a superb performance, and former boxers Jersey Joe Walcott, Max Baer, and Pat Comiskey make appearances... as older boxers, of course.

The script is not bad, but the whole thing just doesn't hang together very well, and it lags in the middle. I hate to say this as a lover of Columbia noir, but I think it needed just a little more heart – which is something Somebody Up There Likes Me (another movie about pugilism from the same year with Paul Newman) has. While we're on boxing movies, Mark Robson directed one of my favorites – also about corruption in the ring – Champion, from 1949 with Kirk Douglas.

God Grant Me the Serenity...

For reasons that defy all logic, I watched two movies by Daniel Mann about alcoholism in a row. Come Back, Little Sheba and I'll Cry Tomorrow were released in 1952 and 1955, respectively, and both were also released on December 25th of their respective years.

I was honestly stunned by how good the mid-century play-cum-film Come Back, Little Sheba is. William Inge wrote the original play, and I have always made fun of William Inge's particular brand of Americana (I have been particularly derisive about Bus Stop, if I'm honest, and I take none of it back.) But Come Back, Little Sheba is good; it is a stunning portrait of small-town terror caused by prejudices and mistakes and awful suburban malaise.

Furthermore, Shirley Booth is extraordinary in this film. Burt Lancaster is, of course, excellent as well, but Booth's performance, which won the Oscar in 1953, is a powerhouse of Method work. It's just fantastic.

I got lucky and came across this film the night before it rotated off of the Criterion Channel, and I was blown away. It would deserve to be watched if only for Booth's brilliant performance, but it's also just a really great script.

And then the next night I somehow came across I'll Cry Tomorrow and watched it. (Apparently Susan Hayward, once she was hired to play the main part, hired Daniel Mann to direct. I'll Cry Tomorrow is good.

This story was filmed on location... – this film promises – inside a woman's soul! Dear lord.

This is a preachy film, of course (it is about alcoholism in 1955, of course), but it is well made. And Susan Hayward is at her absolute best. Otherwise I'll Cry Tomorrow is a typical sort of thing. Susan Hayward can sing, though! It's crazy because she was dubbed for so many movies, and yet her voice is really lovely. Jo Van Vleet is really good in this too. I am very surprised she wasn't nominated for supporting actress for this movie. (She won a year later for East of Eden, so I guess it's water under the bridge, but still!)

The Rains of Ranchipur (1955)

The Rains of Ranchipur is fairly terrible. The script has a few excellent one-liners, but mostly this is a terrible melodrama, with a (typical) magical Indian character who teaches a young, selfish white woman how to (it's this bad) love herself. I mostly disliked this whole thing, but the special effects are really excellent, and I suppose it is notable that Richard Burton plays an Indian man in this without as far as I can tell (and despite what the poster seems to show) donning brown makeup.