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Author Topic: Once Upon a March in the West - 2018  (Read 20380 times)

1SO

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Re: Once Upon a March in the West - 2018
« Reply #10 on: March 01, 2018, 08:27:16 AM »
It is a film where if you think about how it played back then there's more to admire. However, Buster Keaton's The General was released the same year and those stunts still wow today.

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Re: Once Upon a March in the West - 2018
« Reply #11 on: March 01, 2018, 11:46:34 PM »

Oh, Susanna! (1936)

Quote from: BFI Screen Guide
"Addresses the perennial appeal of the Western, exploring its 19th century popular culture, and its relationship to the economic structure of Hollywood. This work considers the defining features of the Western and traces its main cycles, from the epic Westerns of the 1920s and singing cowboys of the 1930s to the Spaghetti Westerns of the 1960s."

I guess the singing cowboy deserves representation, but I'm starting to doubt there will ever be one for me, which is surprising considering I love Musicals almost as much as I love Westerns. These films are just so damn silly and flimsy they dare you to call them a movie at all. Susanna doesn't even last an hour, a good chunk of which is given to a concert. I laughed when I saw the size of the the plot on the film's Wikipedia page. That's not a summary, it's the complete novelization.

By strict definition, the only singing cowboy films I've seen are this and Don't Fence Me In, which are about equally difficult to watch. Looking for a list, the only ones I like are films that parody the type: Rustlers' Rhapsody, Cowboy From Brooklyn and of course, ¡Three Amigos! This isn't even listed as Autrey's finest hour - Melody Ranch or Riders in the Sky - so I don't get why it was chosen to represent this niche.

Best thing about the film, discovering there was a band called Light Crust Doughboys.
Rating: ★ ★

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Re: Once Upon a March in the West - 2018
« Reply #12 on: March 03, 2018, 02:14:07 PM »

Circus World (1964)

Given my wife's love for John Wayne - especially older Wayne - it came as little surprise that her first selection for this month would star him. What she didn't know is that the film also stars house favorites Lloyd Nolan and Richard Conte. For me, there's Claudia Cardinale, though she's playing a teenager and hasn't yet learned to command the screen with the imposing femininity she brings to Once Upon a Time in the West. (She's also still struggling with the English language.) The film also stars Rita Hayworth, but more on that in a moment.

This is one of those Circus Westerns that don't fit a strict genre definition. Like Annie Get Your Gun or Calamity Jane, it's more of a show with people playing cowboy. This one has a European flair, with Wayne attempting to put on a Wild West show through Italy and Spain, and I couldn't ignore the modern context of an American Circus consisting of lots of guns being fired off.


This was a troubled production and it shows in a lot of ways, though it's only half as bad as Best Picture Winner The Greatest Show on Earth. The best scenes involve Wayne's befuddled father coming to realize his little girl has grown up. It's a side of him rarely seen, and he's damn funny without any of his usual macho posturing. I've read that Rita Hayworth was having trouble remembering her lines by this point, and she was given little sympathy for delays she caused on set. I'm usually tough on Hayworth, but she's really good here. Whatever trouble she might've been having with the words are made up for with an emotional honesty I've always found lacking.
Rating: ★ ★
« Last Edit: March 03, 2018, 03:01:31 PM by 1SO »

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Re: Once Upon a March in the West - 2018
« Reply #13 on: March 04, 2018, 01:34:47 AM »
Across the Wide Missouri (1951)
Rating: ★ ★
Praised mostly as a good late-period Clark Gable performance and perhaps if I was a bigger fan of Gable I would see this glass as half full, like John Wayne in Circus World. Instead, the disjointed narrative - severely edited down to 78 minutes with narration by Howard Keel - plays like fragments of an incomplete movie. This is typical of director William A. Wellman


Apache (1954)
Rating: ★ ½
Racial drama stumbles right out of the gate by casting Burt Lancaster as the Indian scorned by white men. Simple-minded script with direction by Robert Aldrich blames a couple of one-dimensional white racists for most of the problems. Making things worse is the appalling treatment of women, often abused by the savage Indian apache, belittled as the weaker sex for comic relief and blamed for killing the warrior's spirit when pregnant.



My search for a Western discovery continues.

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Re: Once Upon a March in the West - 2018
« Reply #14 on: March 04, 2018, 01:43:34 PM »

Rachel and the Stranger (1948)

Looking to replace his dead wife and find a new mother to help raise and educate his son, William Holden buys a woman out of servitude (Loretta Young), but things get complicated when best friend Robert Mitchum shows up with love on his mind. Despite the three powerful leads, this took a while for me to truly enjoy because the premise and expected complications fall into routine gender patterns. However, once it becomes a rivalry, Young makes her move and turns herself from the prize to be won to the one who gets to make a choice, even if it is a choice between two men who don't know the first thing about being a husband.

I like the title. You assume the Stranger is going to be Mitchum, but it also refers to Holden who must marry her the day they meet in order for it to be proper to take her back to his cabin in the woods. This isn't something taken for granted, but repeatedly referred to as a way of undercutting the whole institution of marriage being used for moral convenience. Young plays timid in the beginning, but it's really a deception, waiting for the right moment to make everyone realize she's holding all the cards. Her transition isn't done in a heavy-handed manner, but with the smoothness of good acting. All three actors are good, as is the boy. It just takes a while for the script to earn such performances.
Rating: ★ ★ ½

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Re: Once Upon a March in the West - 2018
« Reply #15 on: March 04, 2018, 08:40:08 PM »

The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin (1967)

A butler as an unlikely western hero is a premise I've seen before with Ruggles of Red Gap (1935). It's a good idea, but I have yet to see it make for a good movie. Roddy McDowall has all the fussiness to do the part right, but he ditches everything but his umbrella to play Griffin as an everyman caught up with extraordinary and colorful characters. His butler training rarely comes in handy, making him more of a city slicker who manages to avoid getting beaten to death.


This was a Mrs. 1SO selection because it comes from Walt Disney Studios, something that would be obvious with the credit "Songs by Richard M. Sherman and Robert Sherman." (They contribute a bouncy ditty that links some sequences together, commenting on the action in a funny way.) There are also a surprisingly large number of familiar western actors who drop in for a scene or two. A couple of the most prominent are Arthur Hunnicutt (El Dorado) as a referee and Mike Mazurki (pictured above) as a mountain man who can throw people large distances. Disney's animation department sprinkles in a few brief scenes and silly effects. It's all pretty silly... and not brief enough.
Rating: ★ ★

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Re: Once Upon a March in the West - 2018
« Reply #16 on: March 05, 2018, 01:47:53 PM »
I've some reviews on deck in the coming days hopefully. Just trying to clear out the time sensitive reviews on current releases first.

I'll start catching you yet 1SO!
"Time is the speed at which the past decays."

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Re: Once Upon a March in the West - 2018
« Reply #17 on: March 05, 2018, 03:15:53 PM »
I’m trying to keep these Marathons all-inclusive, but with Mrs. 1SO making selections and those 12 I really want to get to, it’s had not to look dominant. This is why I watched my Ron Howard films yesterday.

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Re: Once Upon a March in the West - 2018
« Reply #18 on: March 06, 2018, 08:18:55 AM »
Station West (Sidney Lanfield, 1948)

Evident by the list of films for this Westerns marathon, the sheer volume of films made chronicling cowboys and indians, outlaws and lawmen is impressive. Especially during the period of time I am now entering, the late 40s and into the 50s, saw a huge spike in Western productions. So it should stand to reason that there would be more than a few impressive, epic classics, more than a few small, B-movie types, and more than a few middle of the road productions. I expect we'll be getting a little bit of everything in the coming films. I bring all this up because this film, Station West, very much feels like a small B-movie type production, for better or worse.

After two US calvarymen turn up robbed and dead while transporting gold, Haven (Dick Powell), an undercover Army investigator is dispatched to a small mining town to find the killers. After checking into the hotel, whose desk is manned by a serenading clerk (Burl Ives), Haven makes his way to Charlie's Saloon, ready to make trouble and start finding out who is naughty and who is nice in this town. Haven meets with Mrs. Caslon (Agnes Moorehead), who owns the gold mine that was robbed, confronts Charlie's (Jane Greer) bouncer (Guinn Williams), suspects Charlie's lawyer (Raymond Burr) since he is in debt to Charlie, and ruffles Prince's (Gordon Oliver) feathers by getting closer to Charlie. With so many suspects, who really committed the crime?

After sitting on this film for a few days, I can easily see the draw of this film to its fans. Station West is not a monumental moment in western history, but it's a very sharply written screenplay. There are elements here which touch the quintessentials of the genre. A singing hotel clerk, a female saloon owner, an undercover lawman solving a murder, double-crosses. There is a lot to chew on here from a screenplay perspective, and it should be applauded for that. Dick Powell in the lead role is a confident leading man who is unafraid to take control of the screen. Unfortunately, he seems to be about the only one up to the task.

The rest of the film feels very like an extended television episode. And while we're currently in a golden era of television, that's not the type of TV being made in 1948. It feels small, and it feels far less polished than a lot of the other films in this marathon. The production values are lower, the tone of the film is a little sillier and over-the-top than a story like this ought to be. In many ways it just feels more amateurish than I was expecting, especially given the premise. And the ensemble, again apart from Powell and even Ives, whose singing hotel clerk is a happy escape within the film, feel second rate as well, giving forced and very delivered performances.

They mystery whodunit style western is a cool take on the genre, and a great setting for a murder mystery, and for that reason, Station West is notable. However, I just wish the film would have had a larger budget, a more capable team of filmmakers, a sharper cast, anything else that might have elevated the material as opposed to holding it back. For what it is, Station West is fine, enjoyable. But I couldn't help but see the rough edges, and the potential for it to be something even greater, which is something that always manages to leave a sour taste in my mouth.

★★ 1/2 - Average
"Time is the speed at which the past decays."

1SO

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Re: Once Upon a March in the West - 2018
« Reply #19 on: March 06, 2018, 09:01:09 AM »
This one came from me, and I was more confident after Tall in the Saddle. Maybe that film feels more cinematic because it has John Wayne, but I would argue that the production values are quite similar. Maybe you're also more forgiving of low budget westerns from earlier in the era, and now that we're entering the dawn of television you connect to that in a more negative way.

You do hit upon what I like about the film, a smart script that transports the Noir Mystery into the West. (A much better mystery than Tall in the Saddle.) I wondered if your relative inexperience with Noir would be a negative, and maybe it is in terms of the eccentric b-movie characters and femme fatales like Jane Greer, who made the Noir classic Out of the Past the previous year. The low budget look creates typical Noir creativity and while you saw it as flat I thought it was gritty. We agree on Dick Powell, who made an unusual transition out of musicals into detective work. He's really good here and even better in Anthony Mann's The Tall Target (which wasn't Western enough for me to recommend.)