Topic: Classic Movies

[CF]

Every year during the holidays I especially watch the 1951 Aleister Sim version of 'A Christmas Carol'. My vote as the best incarnation of this classic Dickens story.

[Bricktown Bob]

Yeah, that's good.  Myself, I have a lasting fondness for the Mr. Magoo version.  Gave me nightmares, that one did.

[CF]

I watched Hitchcock's 'Rope' recently for the first time. They do not make movies this entertaining anymore. Check out details here at the IMDB page

 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040746/

[Mr.OMuck]

Every year during the holidays I especially watch the 1951 Aleister Sim version of 'A Christmas Carol'. My vote as the best incarnation of this classic Dickens story.

For sure the best.  Sim's performance is one for the ages. Perfect.
A number of those  Dicken's adaptations are great. Lean's Great Expectations is arguably THE greatest film adaptations of a work of literature. I can't think of any that equals it, not Huston's Moby Dick for example good as it is, although his Night of the Iguana is right up there, mostly because of Burton's stupendous work. Ava Gardner and the delicious Sue Lyons
Lolita) weren't bad either. But that did start as a play. There must be more I'm not thinking of. Come to think of it Lolita was pretty damn good, though pretty far from the book imo.

[Johnm]

Hi all,
Not that it is taken from a classic in the sense that "Great Expectations" is, but Peter Yates's early '70s film version of the George V. Higgins crime novel, "The Friends of Eddie Coyle", starring Robert Mitchum in the title role, with a stellar supporting cast, including Richard Jordan, Peter Boyle (great!), Steven Keats, Joe Santos and Alex Rocco, is spot on. 
Higgins was THE master of criminal dialogue.  I used to wonder how he could be so much better at it than anyone else, than realized he had worked for many years as an assistant D.A. in the Boston area, and undoubtedly had listened to thousands of hours of taped transcripts of interrogations:  thus, he really knew how the bad guys express themselves.  As an indicator of how good Higgins was, I once read a quote from Elmore Leonard, no slouch himself, to the effect that he had learned everything from George V. Higgins.

If you can find the movie, check it out.  Mitchum is superlative in his under-stated way.  You've got to love that imperceptible craft.

All best,
Johnm   

[Mr.OMuck]

Heard of it (you sure its Coyle and not Boyle?) but have never seen it. I dig Mitchum though. A perfect mug for noir-ish material. I will look it up. I miss video stores, not a single one left in my neighborhood.

[Stuart]

Another great noir flick is "The Killers" with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner. It's so noir that it is almost a caricature of itself. I don't think that it has been released on DVD as of yet, though.

[Mr.OMuck]

There's also a version with Lee Marvin. A Hemingway story I think.

[Johnm]

Hi all,
We recently watched "Intruder In The Dust", based on the Faulkner novel of the same name, from 1951, I believe, after renting it from our local library.  It is hard to find.  It gets into a lot of the same issues with regard to race relations in the South in the early twentieth century as "To Kill A Mockingbird", but in a much less ingenuous, and more subtle way.  It features the great actor Juano Hernandez as Lucas Beauchamp, a proud and independent black man who owns his own farm and refuses to kowtow to the local whites, and who is arrested for the murder of a local white man, and is at serious risk of being lynched.  The story is not notably  generous to the few liberals who come to Lucas' aid--they're similarly annoyed by his intransigence and refusal to be suitably "respectful".

The language used in the story is believable for the time and place, and I appreciated it not being cleaned up or euphemized.  The movie isn't perfect--Lucas's attorney, the uncle of the young white boy who comes to Lucas's aid, operates as a sort of Greek chorus, delivering moral homilies I would have preferred to do without.  But the supporting performances, extras and the faces of the people are worth the price of admission, and the denouement of the story is interestingly low-key and non-sensationalistic in a way that few Hollywood movies would dare to be nowadays.  And Juano Hernandez is terrific as Lucas.  He was usually the best aspect of the movies he appeared in, and should have appeared in many more than he did.  He was also in "The Pawnbroker" and the Faulkner-Based "The Reivers".  If you're interested in the social context that gave rise to the Blues, you may want to seek it out.
All best,
Johnm 

[Stuart]

Thanks for the recommendation, John. Seattle and King County libraries don't have it in their holding, but I might be able to get it through Inter-Library Loan.

While doing a search, I ran across this essay:

https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1240-_intruder-in-the-dust_-captures-the-chilling-reality-of-jim-crow