The General

Tittle:  The General

Director: Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton

Release Year: 1926

Trivia: Buster Keaton said that this was his favorite movie.

Orson Welles stated that Keaton’s  The General  is “the greatest comedy ever made, the greatest Civil War film ever made, and perhaps the greatest film ever made

500 Oregon National Guardsmen play the 2 armies.

Premiere voted this movie as one of “The 50 Greatest Comedies Of All Time” in 2006.

In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #18 Greatest Movie of All Time. It was the first inclusion of this film on the list.

Runtime:

Review:

In terms of iconic silent stars there are two titan’s Charlie chaplain and buster Keaton . Nicknamed  The Great Stone Face I had seen many still’s from his movies and I have heard that Jackie Chan is a massive fan  but that was all I really knew that and he had amazing stunts in his film. But until this film came along I have never seen any of his work  until now. The film follow buster Keaton as Johnnie Gray  as he gets refused from enlisting in the army because he is a engineer. This leads to a misunderstanding between the love of his life Annabelle Lee played by Marion Mack who thinks he is a coward .Later in the film his train is taken and he goes on a one man crusade to  get it back he also along the way find his girlfriend that was taken as well as the train .He retrieves his train and takes it back to the southern lines. And helps to lead a counter attacks against a force from the south It is definitely a film that pales when you describe it  it sounds bit plain and boring .

But it could not be further from the truth. The film is a very ambitious it’s filed with action the sub plot with the love story between and the comedy is very subtle and in terms of slap stick this is a fine example. This film is a must see for fans of silent movie’s the film is filled with crazy stunts last minutes saves and split second shots. An interesting point for me as well was the villains in the film where northerners it is set during the civil war and the hero played by Buster Keaton is a southerner engineer .It is definitely a film that shows the south in a very positive light which is interesting and makes you think about why it was so  badly received  at the time in the north and the south.

. The acting is helped with the music and editing .But the star of the film is buster Keaton and his train the general he runs up down and around the train with apparent ease. There are derailment stunts moving platform stunts moving from platform to platform the stunts in this film are something to behold .Practical massive effects there is great action amazing death defying stunts. Early cinema did not have the problems with large camera or sounds recording

The cameras where much smaller and easier to move.Very early cinema in films like the last laugh which has lots of moving camera shots. The general is the same fantastic tracking shots along with the train very smooth. It reminded me of a personal favourite film of my own The Fall well worth a look and I would say the same for The General. But does Buster Keaton get his train back and will the south be victorious  well you will have to watch it  find out .The film is in the public domain and can be watched in full below.

Hidden fortress

Tittle:  Hidden fortress

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Release Year: 28 December 1958

Trivia: Akira Kurosawa made this commercial and accessible film as a way to repay Toho Studios for allowing him to make riskier, more artistic fare such as Rashomon. It was later one of the greatest inspirations for George Lucas’ first Star Wars film.

Armond White has said The Hidden Fortress “clearly influenced Hayao Miyazaki’s anime feature Princess Mononoke.

The film won the Berlin International Film Festival: Silver Bear for Best Director.

Runtime: 126 min

Review:

If you were to ask most people with any interest in films to name a Japanese’s directors. It is more than likely they will say Akira Kurosawa along with Ozu are both international star films directors. His samurai films are massively popular films like rashimon and seven samurai are classic. His adaptations of Shakespeare Throne of Blood an adaptation of Macbeth .And his more personal films like Ikiru show a true master at work.one interesting aspect of his films was the transfer by American and European   director and writers of his samurai films to western environment yogihmo became a fist full of dollars the first in the dollar trilogy seven samurai became the magnificent seven this leads us to today’s film  Hidden fortress adapted not so much  into a western but a space western which according to George Lucas was one of the inspirations for Star wars.

As far as the similarities between this film and the first star wars film .There are a few according to George Lucas the main similarity was the story telling element where the story was told from the perspective of two of the minor characters .In the star wars film it is c3po and r2d2 in this film it is the bumbling greedy peasants called Tahei and Matashichi . There is one or two story elements transposed as well the ending of both film  are very similar and some of the mains beats in the film the duel which takes place and the two peasant and the two robots in both films have some very similar scenes. But to be honest both films are stand alone .In reality star wars is most definitely its own film and is in no way a remake of hidden fortress. It is worth a looks for those die hard Star Wars fans though.

What is the Hidden Fortress about well it follow two peasants Minoru Chiaki as Tahei and Kamatari Fujiwara as Matashichi who meet up with a defeated general played by Toshirô Mifune as General Rokurota Makabe who is guarding the princess of a destroyed clan played by Misa Uehara as Princess Yuki .The film is an action romp which follows their adventures in trying to get to the safety of a kingdom they have amnesty in. And to transport the massive fortune of gold which they will use to rebuild their clan.

Even now the film is still very funny in parts. The action is fantastic sword duel on horseback and a very action packed duel between two general with long spears are both action highlight but there are many other. The acting is solid although with Japanese films I give the actors some license   to be slightly over the top which seems to be the style in these films. The music is used sparingly and does not over power the films. For me one element I was surprised with was how the film really moves along nicely it is fast paced and a joy to watch.

The peasant’s after a while began to grate me they seem to be out for themselves totally and they also bicker constantly they are not very like able. I would consider myself a fan of Kurosawa and this is really a classic .I am most familiar with Kurosawa’s samurai films and this is definitely a classic with a great story acting action and very interesting characters that make you really care about them. But the real question is what the hidden fortress is? And will princess yuki make it to safety well you will have to check it out to find out.

THX 1138

Tittle:  THX 1138

Director: George Lucas

Release Year: 11 March 1971

Trivia: The underground chase near the end was shot in a not-yet-completed segment of the BART subway system in San Francisco

George Lucas has worked the title of this film, or parts of it, in some of his other films. In American Graffiti, the license plate of one car is “THX 138”. In Star Wars, a reference is made to “prison cell 1138”. The cinema sound certification his company developed is called “THX”

This film was made as a result of George Lucas’s student film short project at USC, Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138 4EB.

Runtime: 86 min

Review:

This film is pretty well known but one of those films a lot of people have not seen .To clarify which version I am watching I viewed the recent directors cut special addition version. This version has very poorly implemented CGI with the very effective original practical effects. But I will go into more detail about that later the main difference between the version saw and the original is about three minutes if new footage and slight changes to the dialogue. The film is set in a grim future society a sedated future where consumerism is the religion of the masses. It follows the fortunes of Thx played by Robert Duvall as he attempts to find his partner called Lut played by Maggie McOmie. They are separated after they go off their meds and a wonderful Donald Pleasence as Sen. Of course Donald Pleasence is probably best known for playing Dr. Sam Loomis in the Halloween film. Also plays a part in there separation playing in the film a creepy overseer .The acting through out the film is superb and it would be difficult to find fault in. Also the original vision of the designer and the creation of the future  is amazing and in terms of art direction is a master class in creating a familiar but also unfamiliar future. The score and sound design again are a stand out feature well-crafted music and fantastic sound design over all make it a very interesting watch.

But where the film falls a little flat I would say has to be in the script it feels disjointed and at times seems to stumble from place to place. There is some plot convenience and a few moment s where the suspension of disbelief is stretched to the very limit. Now onto the effects the practical original effects are fantastic. The new CGI effects stick out like a sour thumb poorly implemented and lacking and relation to eh scene .At times it felt like they just wanted to clutter up the frame with more CGI. There is an added scene completely created inn CGI where the robot police are getting dressed in a locker room. A idea if you think about is absolutely stupid .Why are robot dressing and undressing do they have of time or is this a robot police officer gym do they go home to their robot wife’s and picks up there robot kids .A pointless scene and one that showcases hoe poor CGI looks in comparison to a person in a mask. There are some moments where the original effects are very clever they have a normal guy play a hologram no need for any other effects. It’s a normal human who says he is a hologram who left the mainframe because he was bored an interesting idea in itself and done well.

This film is  also a famous flop it was the first in a planned series of films for a co-production with MGM and  American Zoetrope the company founded by Francis Ford Coppola. When they showed this film to MGM they cancelled there seven picture deal and demanded the money back for the script development .Over all it is a fascinating film very ambitious showing  the audience a sterile inorganic future with some wonderful acting. But does Thx find his love Lut? Well you will have to watch it to find out.

Don’t Look Now

I approached this film with some trepidation, as I had frequently heard it described as a horror film, and as a result I had visions of Omen-like terror looming over me. Don’t Look Now, in fact, turned out to be what I would describe as a tense psychological thriller, horrifying in the way it reminds us of the fragility of the human mental state, so easily manipulated by grief, need and desire. While the principal characters, John and Laura Baxter as played by Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, attempt to piece their lives back together after the tragic death of their little girl (something which, if you delve into the generous use of symbolism throughout this film, could be seen in Baxter’s piecing together of age-old mosaics), a chance meeting with two old ladies in Venice propels them further into extreme forms of contentment (Laura) and unease (John), when one of them claims to have ‘seen’ their daughter in spirit. It is, however, just the beginning of a string of events which determine the fate of Jack himself, and despite the ladies’ warning to leave Venice, Jack cannot seem to tear himself away from the city.

The most recognisable image from Don’t Look Now, taken from the opening act.

Venice is like a character in itself-and one that is going through troubled times at that. From the ‘Venice in Peril’ sign which hangs outside the church that Jack is helping to restore, to the remote streets described by the psychic lady as a ‘dinner party where all the guests are dead and gone’, Venice is a city closing in on itself, not in the least inviting, yet seeming to trap those already within its walls. I loved the foreboding shots of dank damp alleyways and moss-covered statues, the dizzying POV depictions of buildings taken from the canals below, and the rolling fog creating a noirish feel that lasts to the end. Only once did I notice Venice in a good light and that was when Laura has just left for England, midway through the film, leaving Jack to cross the large open plaza in the early morning light back into a city where open spaces are seemingly far and few between.

As the story develops, we learn that Baxter has psychic powers of his own, even if he is largely unaware of these. He continues to be haunted by visions of his daughter skipping along in her bright red mac-a device well used in a city where almost everything else seems black and white, (you cannot help but think of Schindler’s List and the little girl in the red dress), and yet, these particular visions stem not from a psychic ability but an ironic reality which reveals itself in the final scenes. If you are unaware of this twist, all I can say is, please don’t google the movie title under google images! Without giving too much away, I do believe that the more recent movie, The Others, may have been inspired by this twist (think of the little girl dressed up in her Communion outfit..), but whereas this trickery worked fine in a passable ghost story, Don’t Look Now is a fine film marred slightly by its sudden somewhat out-of-place ending. An ending, which, I felt, did not sit well within the film as a whole. What does truly merit it a viewing , however, is the terrific pacing, editing and overall style of this film (and that includes Julie Christie’s smart dress sense!)

I’m glad I’ve faced the unnecessary fear and watched this..another one off the list of shame. It’s certainly worth the watch, although, as a friend mentioned to me earlier, possibly not with your parents. Really…there definitely is a whole ten minutes where you wouldn’t know where to look.

-Gemma

Godzilla, King of the Monsters!

Tittle:  Godzilla King of the monsters

Director: Ishirô Honda, Terry O. Morse

Release Year: 27 April 1956

Trivia: Godzilla’s roar was made by dragging a resin-coated leather glove up and down a contrabass and having the subsequent recording slowed down significantly. The echoing sound came from playing the sound in an empty toilet tank and recording it.

In the American version, Godzilla’s size was increased from 150 feet to nearly 400 feet

The Japanese version of the film received a Japanese Academy Award nomination for Best Picture but lost to Seven Samurai. It did, however, win the award for Best Special Effects.

Runtime: 80 min

Review:

Godzilla king of the monsters Toho’s studio’s most famous creation by far. My first exposure to the monster was in 1998 the American adaptation with Matthew Broderick as the star. Although later I read that Toho had disowned that particular instalment and said that the monster in that film was a different Godzilla and not “the Godzilla” While researching the film for list of shame I read the tittle of the extensive list of films and enemy .He has taken on King Kong, mecha Godzilla ,mothra ,Gamera  and King Ghidorah a massive three headed dragon similar to the hydra in Greece mythology. Who is Godzilla Fighter, ladies man, giant monster Godzilla seems to have it all.

Today I will be taking a look at the original film in the series Godzilla king of the monster. The version of the film I watched was the American dub which is quite poor in execution. It follows the fortunes of an American reporter as he follows the case. Starting with the destruction of numerous boats in fire to the reveal of Godzilla and his subsequent attack on Tokyo and his possible destruction. This framing device would work a lot better if it was filmed years apart with the reporter played by Raymond Burr as Steve Martin standing in the corner of numerous scenes with a translator .This really does not help the film stand in with their backs to camera are dubbed in conversation with the main reporter. And even though he is the narrator and the film is based on his personal experience we are given scene he could not possibly know about in detail.

The film paints a very broad picture of the characters and their relationship in exposition over dubbing. This is very clunky when he details a love triangle between a few key players in the Japanese cast. I might be slightly prejudiced against dubbing as I normally try to avoid it and if I ever get the opportunity I will watch the original Japanese version which I imagine is much better although Godzilla has a few good moments. The reason I avoid dubbing is that it usually in my experience very badly done a perfect example would be in the film hard boiled I watched the dubbed and the subtitled version. The subtitled version was much richer in story even having a running subtext with two of the main characters completely dropped from the dubbed version. But enough of my personal vendetta against dubbing what about the star of the piece the king of the monsters Godzilla

The unnatural roar of Godzilla greets the opening credits Godzilla king of the monsters In the story it is implied that nuclear test has awoken Godzilla to wreak havoc and Godzilla attacks has many  obvious reference to nuclear attacks and the imagines used are very similar to documentary footage of Hiroshima and Nagasaki .  The suit and miniatures I felt where very well  done and as the monster attacks the  city it has some very good moments Godzilla as he roams the streets seems to hate clock towers as he smashes it up with particular venom that and flash photography as he attacks another observation tower when some people are taking picture of him .A moment that had me scratching my head was when during the attacks some army officers are standing around kind of relaxing and Godzilla manages to sneak up on the them .And they turn and run in shock as Godzilla rains down radioactive fire Godzilla is a giant radioactive monster and somehow he can sneak up on them . The film has some very entertaining moment and the story is solid as well. It has Godzilla a plus in any film mad scientist and a love triangle what more could you want? .

This is a film that is hard to take by itself it really does make you want to see how it will evolve in a later film he has a son. No sign of mother Godzilla maybe he can produce offspring asexually I am sure there is plenty of fan fiction online about the subject. And in later Godzilla films to use the terms of professional wrestling goes from a heal (a bad guy) to a face (good guy) or maybe he was jealous of the other monsters wrecking the city before he got a chance to. Even with my complaints about the American dub version it is worth a looks if you can find it the Godzilla in a rubber suit is much better than the poor CGI version the world was given in 1998 .And over 50 years later Godzilla’s roar as he runs rampant on the city streets is still fresh and interesting But what can they do to stop Godzilla’s rampage well you will have to watch it to find out .

The 39 Steps

Tittle:  39 steps

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Release Year: 1935

Trivia: Before filming the scene where Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll run through the countryside, Alfred Hitchcock handcuffed them together and pretended for several hours to have lost the key in order to put them in the right frame of mind for such a situation.

Remade under the same title in 1959

According to one of his sons, John Buchan (upon whose 1915 novel the film was based) was impressed with the film, despite its departures from his original plot.

Runtime: 86 min

Review:

Very few if any other directors have had the impact as Alfred Hitchcock. His shadow looms over most film directors. His auteur vision masterful storytelling and an attention to every aspect of the film make his films a cut above the rest. Of course he was not alone he worked with the great composer Bernard Herrmann and costume designer Edith Head         and he had fantastic cast Gary grant and James Stewart a personal favourite of mine. Who in my opinion was the perfect everyman and an amazing actor. I have seen all of Hitchcock’s American films my personal favourites are  Shadow Of A Doubt with Joseph Cotton and Strangers On A train both truly classic  films which sometimes get overlooked with other classics like Psycho  and Vertigo. But one area of Hitchcock’s back catalogue I have yet to see are his early black and white films before his move to America. His works on films like the lodger and 39 steps I have seen in Hitchcock documentary’s but have never got around to watching until now.

The film is a spy film which follows the fortunes of Robert Donat as Hannay who is informed of a plot to steal state secrets and wrongly accused of murder. The female lead is Madeleine Carroll as Pamela she appears later in the film and is handcuffed to the male lead. The 39 Steps feels to me to be the first draft of Saboteur. A film Hitchcock did for universal in 1942. The later Hitchcock film having stronger visual a very similar story if not almost identical in its structure. But The 39 Steps it has some very entertaining twist some genuinely funny humour  but with some very obvious plot convenience thrown in as well over all it is still a very interesting film well shot and acted there are some issues with the sound from time to time but overall it is audible. The film is now in the public domain and can be viewed in full on YouTube so there is nothing stopping you checking it out. A perfect film for fans of Hitchcock and early cinema to see the all the elements of classic Hitchcock are there  the female blonde lead, Innocent man wrongly accused, MacGuffin and the Hitchcock cameo who appears at about seven minutes in, tossing some litter as Richard and Annabella run from the music hall. The real question is what are the 39 steps and can Hanney save the day and keep the spy’s from revealing the secret? Well you will have to watch it to find out.

Duck Soup

Tittle: DUCK SOUP

Director: Leo McCarey

Release Year: 1933

Trivia: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini banned the film from Italy because he thought it was a direct attack on him.  When news of this reached The Marx Brothers, they were reportedly ecstatic.

Shortly before this film premiered, the city of Fredonia, New York, complained about the use of its name with an additional “e”. The Marx Brothers’ response was, “Change the name of your town, it’s hurting our picture.”

In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #60 Greatest Movie of All Time.

Runtime: 68 min

Review:

In term of confession this is a serious one I have never ever seen a Marx brother films or seen their shorts .I had seen small snippets of dialogue and quotes from Groucho Marx like” I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members”. But my only experience with the Marx brothers was the massive amount of parody’s and references .They seem to have had a huge impact on modern American comedy writers from The Simpsons to Annie Hall they cast a large shadow.I also had this idea that there comedy was slapping each other or elaborate tricks to be able to hit each other. But the truth about the Marx brother’s film duck soup is that there is all manner of comedy and not just slapstick. There are very witty one liners delivered perfectly by grouch Marx musical parody songs and even the slapstick is done very well with great running gags that have fantastic ay offs. The film duck soup revolves around crouch Marx as Rufus T. Firefly taking over a mismanaged country and the plot by the slimy Trentino to oust him which eventually leads to war.  Considered one of the best Marx brother’s films. It is easy to see why the films fly’s along at a great pace with quick gags and a story that helps tie it all together

Even after all these years the film is still fresh with gags that all audience can enjoy. At the time of its release the film was a flop and maybe like Chaplin’s The Great Dictator it was ahead of its time and maybe in comedy people did not want to be reminded of world war one or as was the case the upcoming war in Europe. Duck soup was the last film for paramount and there next films would be made with MGM where they created some of their most popular film A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races under the aegis of the legendary Irving Thalberg .Seeing this comedy decades removed form when it was released is a perfect example of a timeless classic. The humour in some of the gags could easily be from  Monty pythons flying circus and is not straight laced or boring. The political satire if it was aimed at Mussolini is slit throat mocking the crackdown in Italy. A must see for fans of comedy if just to see where all those parodies and references mean.

THEM!

Tittle:  Them!

Director: Gordon Douglas

Release Year: 19 June 1954

Trivia: When this movie was first released in Sweden, it was strangely named “Spindlarna” (which translates as ‘The Spiders’)

This was Warner Bros.’ highest grossing film of 1954.

Leonard Nimoy (Spock in Star Trek) is the soldier who reads the wire copy story about the pilot being held in a mental hospital in Texas.

Runtime: 94 min

Review:

The original and some would say best of the creature features that plays on out fears of what effect radiation would have on the environment and on us. It was slightly more optimistic that we would gain powers like the hulk or become giant instead of cancer and skin burns. My first experience with radiation making creatures super-sized was slightly less serious than giant ants. It was in a film I would have vague memories for years something to do with giant rabbits. I would find out the title of the film recently was Night of the Lepus .In term of cheese factor if in the middle of a cheese factory there was a house made of chesses and inside that cheese house there was a cheese of fridge and inside that fridge there was a block of cheese this would still be far cheesier. The rabbit are poorly implemented into the shot and are as menacing as cotton candy or a pile of puppies a dreadful film that falls for me into the category of film so absurd that it would fit in with one of Troy McClure fake films in The Simpsons.

But today’s review centers around the acclaimed film Them! The plot centers around  the discovery of giant mutated ants in the New Mexico desert we follow the small central cast as they seek to end the ant menance .The cast is made up of James Whitmore as Police Sgt. Ben Peterson the original investigator of the murders. And playing an excellent scientist the actor Edmund Gwenn as Dr. Harold Medford he really does a superb job of delivering very stoic lines and reinforcing for the audience how grave a situation we are in .He even invokes biblical prophecy at one time in the film predicts it could be the end of man’s reign on earth heavy stuff indeed. The FBI agent played by James Arness as Robert Graham and his love interest and a main character in her own right was the actress Joan Weldon playing Dr. Patricia ‘Pat’ Medford. She plays a very strong female character who commands as much respect as her father and for the time is a very progressive character.

The film looks fantastic great score and  the effects are well done. It is hard to make something as bad as a giant fake ant look good but with the right use of light and puppetry they do a good job. The opening for me was a high point it opens almost like a murder mystery before the reveal of the monsters about half way through the film .We manage to keep a very small cast through most of the film under the explanation it is a top secret mission and the less people that know the better. So we can follow the story with the cast of characters I have already mentioned through the whole film. For me personally I felt the film dragged a little in the middle when they are searching for more ants. But this if off set with an excellent climax that is moody and well-paced. I would recommend this film to any fans of 1950’s cinema or any fans of classic horror in general .The real question is do they get all the ants or is man doomed you will have to watch it to find out.

The classic sound effect the Wilhelm scream can also be heard in the film  on multiple occasions and is the famous scream sound effect used in over a hundred film .And in almost all George Lucas ‘s film. If you are a fan of films in any way shape or form you have heard this scream. The film Them! Was originally going to be in 3D this would have been fantastic. There are some of the 3D set up shots still in the film a flamethrower fired at the camera the monster ants darting toward one of the stars and a few others. I hate 3D film in general and I hate remakes just as much. But a gimmicky 3D remake of Them! Full of flamethrowers giant ants and a few other obvious nods to 3D could be an entertaining B movie

Rosemary’s Baby

There is a theological discussion that never came up in Religion class but I feel should be answered:  why does the Devil make so many lousy horror films? For years, this never made any sense to me. There is such a rich background and hey, what is scarier than the beast who runs Hell and dishes out endless punishements? Yet, for every Exorcist, we have dozens “End of Days”, multitudes of “Bless this Child” and scores of “The Devil Inside”.  Watching today’s entry, the brilliant Rosemary’s Baby, reminded me what one of the main issue is: The Great Satan is pretty silly looking.

Adapted from the bestselling book by Ira Levin, Rosemary’s Baby is about a pregnant young Mia Farrow who becomes convinced that her neighbours and general support network are Satanists and they are going to steal her child for nefarious reasons, a premise that cannily plays what I assume is a common worry for expectant mothers.

Directed by Roman Polanski, Rosemary’s Baby is appropriately creepy and tension filled, but what surprised me was how funny it was, often acting more as a dark comedy than a horror. An apartment building filled with middle aged, wealthy devil worshippers is a goofy concept, but by emphasising their normality and generally annoying nature, it makes the threat more plausible, you never know what is behind the smiles or in that bowl of sugar.

Acting is uniformly fantastic. Mia Farrow equips herself in probably her best role outside of a Woody Allen film, John Cassavetes makes another compelling argument why you never marry characters played by John Cassavetes and Ruth Gordon leads the pack of bizarre apartment dwellers. Not everyone’s role has aged well. The few discrete shots of Beelzebub make the surprising revelation that he is a distant relation to the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Fortunately he doesn’t appear too often to break the strange spell the film casts.

Rosemary’s Baby is frighteningly relevant. The lack of power a woman has over her own body and child is as a contentious point today as it was 45 years ago. Incidentally, Ira Levin later wrote the novel The Stepford Wives, which has a similarly silly premise with chilling results, so the man clearly had a knack for Feminist Horror stories (This is harder than you may think. My attempt at one “CEILING!” about a giant glass ceiling that prevents woman from getting higher than the 3rd floor of any building is having third act problems).

It would be remiss of me not to mention the ending, which is an amazing combination of a tedious get-together and bone chiller. So yes, go watch it! Satan compels you!

Sunset Boulevard

Tittle:  SUNSET BLVD

Director: Billy Wilder

Release Year: 1950

Trivia: The “Desmond mansion” was located not on Sunset Blvd, but on Wilshire at S. Irving Blvd. It was built in 1924 by William Jenkins, at a cost of $250,000.

The writers feared that Hollywood would react unfavorably to such a damning portrait of the film industry, and so the film was code named ‘A Can of Beans’ while in production

In 2007, the American Film Institute ranked this as the #16 Greatest Movie of All Time.

Runtime: 110 minutes

Review:

In terms of legendary Hollywood films they don’t come much more legendary than sunset Blvd. before watching the film I had a vague idea about the plot I knew that it contained the often parodied lines “I am ready for my close up Mr DeMille” and of course the other line everyone knows from the film .”You used to be big”” I am still big it’s the movies that got small” a back and forth exchange between the script writer Joe Gillis  and Norma Desmond the movie star. The film follows the events leading up to a murder on sunset Blvd. The film is very self-aware of the industry it has a feel of almost a satire of the industry speaking about the nuts and bolt about the film production with a look inside the façade of Hollywood glammer  .It also makes reference to the oft repeated line today that movies used to be about the art and not about the money.  Maybe  the lumiere brothers where saying the same thing when people stared to make films .The film is exactly structured with a great pace the pays off to a classic climaxes with unsettling undertones. The dialogue is a high point it crackles with life. The dialogue has a natural flow like all good dialogue and like good dialogue it is also as witty and as well said as we wish we could be in everyday life .The voice over provided by the writer has some great prose in  it and not the standard fare of expedition dumps.

Visually the film has great use of the frame the images feels full without being cluttered the background action and framing is excellent throughout and as the camera moves in to get a close the audience strains to see what it is seeing .The characters speak about other film stars and movies saying that a dead chimp could be a relative of king Kong and during a party scene one character jokes about the writer being a suspect in the black Dalia case. That use of real references adds to the realism of the piece and make it feel like everyday dialogue .The female lead named  Norma Desmond played by Gloria Swansonn a fantastic role is a once in a lifetime role .And a very brave role for her as it follows the last chapter of an aging film star well past her sell by date. She plays the female lead in a very over the top .A great line from Cecil B. DeMille  playing himself when he walks over to her he says to one of the gaffers who has seen her and shone a light on her drawing the attention of the crew and cast .He says “turn that light back where it belongs” in the context of the film it makes perfect sense but in the spirit of the film of an aged star unable to let go of the lime light it works perfectly. The narrator the screen writer named Joe Gillis played by  William Holden gives a impressive performance as well as the German butler  Max Von Mayerling played by Erich von Stroheim .The score for the film is also a high point it has driving pulsing score at time and also subtle and well placed as the story demands . No matter how much about the film you have heard or if you think you know the score Sunset BLVD is still a classic film with great execution throughout. The film has to many scene of great dialogue or camera work and acting to really do it justice for me this is a must watch for fans of cinema and one that could make you fall in love with classic movies all over again