The 1948 Musketeers

George Sidney's 1948 adaptation of The Three Musketeers is the best one I've seen. It packs the novel's whole plot (including the second half, I mean) into it's 125-minute running time while still managing to pack in lots of farcical comedy with the four musketeers. This does, of course, mean that Queen Anne (Angela Lansbury) doesn't appear in the movie very much, but it means instead that Milady de Winter (Lana Turner) becomes the real focus. And what a focus!! I think Lana Turner looks more gorgeous than anyone I've ever seen in this movie. She appears in the most expensive outfits with her hair covered in jewels. She looks absolutely exquisite. Gene Kelly is way too old to be playing D'Artagnan, but who cares, honestly. His particular style of dance makes his fight scenes even more delightful. Anyway, this is the one. It makes full use of its gorgeous Technicolor photography, has great performances (including a brilliant Van Heflin and a charming Frank Morgan), and a breathtaking Lana Turner.

Bye Bye Birdie (1963)

Bye Bye Birdie is truly painful. This started out sort of cute, but it became completely insipid. The only character of any interest is the Chita Rivera character (played by Janet Leigh in a faux Latina performance). Leigh is billed first here, which is odd because she has two duets and no songs of her own. Jesse Pearson, who played Birdie on tour, plays him here, and his appeal is... inexplicable. He's strangely wooden and unattractive, and one cannot understand why any young girls or grown women would be passing out because of how sexy he is. Ann-Margret can sing, of course, and Dick Van Dyke is his usual silly self, but no one else really can even sing. Oh! and Maureen Stapleton is cast as Dick Van Dyke's mother. They were the same age! It's outrageous.

Annie Get Your Gun (1950)

I understand casting a comedienne in the title role of Annie Get Your Gun, especially after the production lost Judy Garland. But... Betty Hutton cannot sing. Howard Keel, obviously, sings beautifully, and all of the proper theatrical stuff that is supposed to be (and may very well have been) the actual Wild Bill show is great. But there is lots in this film that did not work for me. Mostly it's just the weird, quirky, folksy-jokey thing that is supposed to be charming Annie Oakley behavior. I was not charmed. 

And then there is all the redface. Like... a lot of redface. Betty Hutton even has a song called "I'm an Indian Too". It's extraordinarily cringe-worthy.

Pal Joey

Pal Joey is actually really good despite Kim Novak's terrible acting. The gowns by Jean Louis are incredible: imaginative, gorgeous, novel. There are a couple of good tunes in here, too – and Rita Hayworth gets two great numbers.

But this film is at its high point when Sinatra blows the roof off with "The Lady Is a Tramp".

Train Movies: Part 3

Oh yes there is a part three of this business (and I'm pretty sure there will be a fourth).

Also, I understand my selection of train movies is arbitrary and rather absurd, but I am kind of enjoying the silliness of this selection. It makes me watch these movies slightly differently, too: like, I am watching for the trains – the way they are powered, the steam they let off, the way the filmmaker shoots the train – it's fun.

Night Train to Munich is a Carol Reed movie (he of The Fallen Idol and The Third Man – both must-see films noir.) I have been wanting to see Night Train since it was recently released by the Criterion Collection. Night Train is a kind of spy movie about World War II made in 1941. Like, this is some seriously current filmmaking.

But, well, Night Train doesn't quite work, really. There is cool stuff in it. Actually, there is quite a lot of cool stuff in it. The film stars a very young Rex Harrison and the soon-to-become-a-matinee-idol Paul Henried. And there is a plot twist early on in the film that I did not see coming at all: I literally gasped when it happened. In truth, the adventure part of the film is sort of fun once we are on the eponymous night train headed for Munich.

But Night Train is a sort of spy comedy: one of those pictures that has lengthy sequences with comedic characters who – it will turn out in the end – are integral to the plot, but make the film rather silly instead of action-packed or thrilling. This is part of Night Train's charms, or is supposed to be, but I wasn't having it. I wanted train action and intrigue. Instead, this movie has a wisecracking comedian foil the Nazis. And, well, the Nazis had a lot of problems, but I don't think they could have exactly been foiled by a string of good jokes. (This is an ethical question for the filmmaker, too, but I will leave that to the side.)

My other train film was the MGM musical from 1946, The Harvey Girls, which was more of a train movie than I thought it was going to be. The film stars Judy Garland, Angela Lansbury, and John Hodiak. The big number for the movie is called "On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe" and much of the film takes place on the trains between Ohio and Arizona or somewhere out west. Actually I have already forgotten.

The Harvey Girls is not exactly a great MGM musical. It's not terrible by any means, but I had a lot of trouble figuring out who was who in the actual plot. The side characters are all introduced awkwardly and (this is the most awkward part) the girls all look exactly alike. I couldn't tell them apart, honestly. I felt like my friend Wahima when she says that white people all look the same. These girls really do all look the same. And I guess this makes a sort of sense; they are all "Harvey Girls" after all. It is a type.

Actually, the real trouble with The Harvey Girls is the songs. "On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe" won an Academy Award, and it is memorable, certainly, but most of the songs in this film are totally forgettable. Others may disagree, but I felt myself rather bored by the musical sections in the film, whereas I sort of found the plot and the acting delightful. Part of this has to do with the inimitable Angela Lansbury as a kind of Mae West character in flamboyant showgirl drag (although it sounded to me like they dubbed her singing voice for some reason.) Anyway, if you like old movie musicals you've actually probably already seen this one, and if you don't like movie musicals, I can recommend about 20 others that you should rent before you get to The Harvey Girls.

Judy Garland – it needs to be said – was obviously fabulous in the movie.