The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

Director: Michael Curtiz, William Keighley

Cast: Errol Flynn, Olivia de Haviland, Basil Rathbone, Claude Rains

Have I Seen it Before: I’m horrified beyond my normal capacity for horror that I haven’t.

Did I Like It: There’s a bit of a problem with Robin of Locksley (Flynn) as we venture further into the deeply cynical waters of the twenty-first century. We’re obsessed, pretty much from the first script meeting for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), with making Robin Hood some semi-real figure in British history*, and making that history reflect our own. Kevin Costner needed to be the spoiled rich kid who’s childishness is obliterated by the insanity of Vietnam**… er, the Crusades, while Russell Crowe was a world-weary soldier that…

When did Robin Hood become a monolithic commentary on the the horrors of the world after the Kennedy assassination? Even Cary Elwes is content to sit and be content to comment on the unravelling of the English myth. Why can’t a Robin Hood film just be about a guy in a cap and with green tights*** who laughs in the face of danger and is prepared with equal parts of archery and swordsmanship to entertain us for at least 90 minutes?

Perhaps it can no longer be such because Errol Flynn mastered that image of England’s greatest archer so thoroughly, that we don’t even need to debate if there’s any point in doing a traditional interpretation of the hero anymore. Anything that follows this perfectly crafter adventure film would have to be content with dwelling in the arena of post-modern droning bores or parody.

*Accent optional.

**I might even be one of the few people who kind of like Prince of Thieves, and even my appreciation for that humdrum actioner is diminished when I realize for all of its straining attempts to bring Robin and his Merry Men into something relevant for a modern movie audience, it is stealing large chunks out of the plot this film created out of the legend.

***All right, Mel Brooks may have managed to cut through the sudden self-seriousness of the character, but the point still remains.

The Breaking Point (1950)

Director: Michael Curtiz

Cast: John Garfield, Patricia Neal, Phyllis Thaxter, Juano Hernandez

Have I Seen It Before: No. It more than a little bugs me that this is definitely the first 35mm projection I've seen this year, and it even more bugs me that I can't honestly remember the last film I took in an analog format. That really must change, or 2025 will really get the best of me. I wonder if these truly are the twilight days for the format outside of big markets.

Then Christopher Nolan will release something and the whole debate will be restarted anew.

Did I Like It: As a film noir, all the elements are here. The thing moves along at a nice clip. There's just a little bit of tension as to who will get away with what, and who might unfairly suffer in their wake. What's more, the eventual resolutions of those plot lines manages to find answers that aren't as pat as one might think when they see the age of the film. It ends on a slightly unfair, melancholy note that raises it to be more memorable than standard examples of the genre.

As a Hemingway tale, I wonder if it is a little lacking. There's a fisherman (more than a few of them, in point of actual fact) in the mix, so if one squinted at the affair from a fair distance, the specter of Papa might flit through your mind. Beyond that, there's no elemental perspective on man as a creature of the 20th century. Harry Morgan is not contemplative of his relationship with a fish, or how that fish threatens to unravel him as he desperately searches for his own courage. No, he's just looking for an ever-increasing pile of money. Maybe To Have and Have Not (1944) got it closer.

White Christmas (1954)

Director: Michael Curtiz

Cast: Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. I’m sure I have. It is one of my mother’s favorite movies, if not the absolute favorite. I have the strongest memory of a VHS copy sitting on a shelf as a kid, along with all of the other grown up movies. I’m sure I had to watch it at some point.

Did I Like It: As much as I love Singin’ in the Rain (1952), the “Broadway Melody” feels as awkwardly forced into the movie as it would have in The Dancing Cavalier.

It’s a reality of the genre, also on display here* that things eventually have to devolve into a musical number. Fortunately, here, as all concerned are also just putting on a show, the numbers feel less tacked on**.

But this should really be less about Singin’ in the Rain and more about the film in question.

I’ve often said that each year I have—at best—48 hours of Christmas cheer per year. Never mind that the larger world would be more than content to exhaust it sometime in early November. There’s a possibility I may have to strictly budget that cheer over the coming weeks, because this movie might be demanding just a bit more out of me before everything is said and done.

Or maybe I’ll have to find some deeper levels of cheer. The movies just might be worth it.

*That genre being the “1950s film where two rapscallion show folk fellas get into some shenanigans and at least the leading man (read: less funny of the two) meets and wins over the girl of his dreams.” See Singin’ and Some Like It Hot (1959) for examples.

**Maybe if we watched the sequence play out in the middle of an exhibition The Dancing Cavalier and not the pitching of those added scenes.

The Scarlet Hour (1956)

Director: Michael Curtiz

Cast: Carol Ohmart, Tom Tryon, Jody Lawrance, Elaine Stritch

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: There are so many forgotten films noir (film noirs?) I’ve seen lately, where the plot is so simple that I think not only could I create a similar story, but I could do so without even trying all that hard.

Here, though, the story on display feels like it is actually three noir staples working in contrast with one another, and ultimately syncing up together to become one cohesive crime story. There is the plot about the “easy crime gone wrong,” where several wise guys of varying stature and skill are trying to pilfer valuable jewels from a well-to-do couple away on vacation. There’s the femme fatale trying to play her new beau off her domineering husband. Then there’s also the story of the put upon secretary who’s unrequited love for the corporate heir apparent forces her to go to the lengths of putting herself in the sights of a dragon lady and implicating herself in the larger criminal plot.

The tension created by the mashup of these disparate plots leaves the tension in a far more potent position than it might have otherwise been able to achieve. Just as I thought things were becoming predictable, one of the other subplots took the film in another direction. Maybe everything settles into a predictable framework by the time the film wraps up, but the journey to gether there was at least more enjoyable than it certainly could have been.

Another highlight of the film is the cast. Not so much the main characters, who are peopled by an array of forgettable journeymen performers who could have filled any number of archetypes in any number of other similar films. The supporting cast is the surprise strength, with E.G. Marshall bringing the gravitaas he brought throughout a long career to an early role, and Elaine Stritch emerging on the feature film screen fully formed as the Elaine Stritch persona.

Casablanca (1942)

Director: Michael Curtiz

Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains

Have I Seen it Before: Yes. Although my most immersive experience with the film was a casual dining restaurant that existed in Oklahoma City several years ago that tried to incorporate the film as its theme, but in reality, just played the movie over and over again on numerous TV screens while you ate. It was… odd. I want to say the place was called Rick’s Café American, but I could be wrong, and Google is decidedly unhelpful on the subject. The restaurant is gone now.

Did I Like It: How do you even begin to criticize a film that is so sewn into the identity of American film? It’s review-proof, right? 

And that is strange because, objectively, there’s nothing particularly special about the filmmaking craft on display. It is a well-constructed melodrama in its writing, but still melodrama. It doesn’t have the complex plotting and characterization of Citizen Kane (1941), or the visual splendor of The Wizard of Oz (1939) or Gone with the Wind (1939). It is a little bit of a mystery why the film rose from the pack of other Hollywood films of the era and has become one of the most well-regarded films of all time, to the point where people try to make ill-advised theme restaurants out of it.

It’s got to be in the star power of Bergman and Bogart. This film may be the most potent dose of screen star as personality ever made. They have perfect chemistry together, and each has a screen persona that is effortless and perfectly formed. It seems like every leading actor over the next eighty years, from Harrison Ford to (ick) Woody Allen has at time tried to channel Bogart, and while there is thankfully a little more variety in the arena of leading ladies, I have a hard time imagining that any woman who has had her name above a title would blanche at the idea of summoning their inner Bergman. That’s why what the film is most strongly remembered not for its story of Nazi tinged Morocco, or even the music that is infused into the Warner Bros. vanity card to this day, but Rick and Ilsa’s goodbye at the end of that film.

Come to think of it, that might be the only scene they might have actually been playing at that strange restaurant long ago. It was certainly the only part for which I looked up from my burger.