Fiddler on the Roof (1971) on the big screen

I had a chance to watch this movie on the big screen when it played at Chicago's Music Box Theater on Christmas day 2016.  It's rare for this film to be screened; usually it's seen as corny and sentimental, and usually not as highly regarded as some other musicals like Sound of Music.

But when it came out in 1971, it was the biggest box-office hit of  the year. It was probably "the last hit musical" to be released for years, since musicals started to go out of fashion by the 1970s.

I had forgotten that the story deals with traditional marriage arrangements, intergenerational differences, the coming Russian revolution and new political ideas, Jewish persecution in Russia, and immigration to other countries.

At the end of the movie, one character asks another, "What city in America are you moving to?" The other responds "Chicago", and that got a loud cheer from the audience, which was pretty cool to be a part of.

Directed by Norman Jewison (an Oscar-winner for 1967's "In the Heat of the Night"). The cinematography is beautiful, and the sets and costumes and impressive.

Read Dawn's post about this movie from her blog

Hester Street (1975)

Hester Street tells the tale of a young Jewish couple's migration to New York at the turn of the 20th century.

Carol Kane is very good as the young wife torn between her traditions and modern American culture. Doris Roberts, in an excellent supporting performance, plays a neighbor in the apartment building where the couple lives (if you've only seen her in her television roles then you haven't seen one of her best performances).

The immigrant husband is played by Steven Keats, an actor who sadly passed away at a young age several years ago.

The film, shot in black-and-white with much of the dialogue in the language of the immigrants, is so authentic in its recreation of this era - at times I felt I was watching a documentary.   The costumes, music, and set design are all impressive and deserve praise.

Available on DVD. Other reviews of the film:

The Movie Night's Group Guide to Classic Film

Cinema Fanatic

Vintage Everyday

Laura's Miscellaneous Musings 

Cecil B. DeMille's This Day and Age (1933)

The poster for This Day and Age calls it "The FIRST Great Spectacle of Modern Times", which is interesting because nowadays the film is largely forgotten. It wasn't nominated for any Academy Awards at the time either. But I think the film is one that a modern audience would really find compelling.

The film is about a group of civics-minded high-school students who take the law into their own hands when they track down a gangster nightclub owner named Garrett (played by Charles Bickford) after he kills several of their friends and gets away with it.

The students are played by actors I'm not very familiar with such as Richard Cromwell and Judith Allen. At times I got confused as to who's who due to all of the supporting characters that come and go throughout the film.

One character I remember well is the Jewish tailor Herman, who has a shop right across the street from the high school. He is really friendly and knows almost all the kids in the school. It's a shame when the character's shop is bombed and he becomes a target of Garrett's ruthless gang.

Highlights of the film:

There are a number of creative camera shots; one in particular is during a funeral sequence after a casket is lowered into the deep grave. We then see the lowered casket's point-of-view looking up at the diggers who are shoveling the dirt into the grave, and dirt falls right on the camera.

In one risque sequence reminding us of the pre-code era, one of the pretty female students has to pretend to seduce one of the gangsters in order to stall him, and one of the gangster's remarks is "I like my olives green".

I liked seeing the diverse high school; black students are seen with white students on the campus and walking the halls. A black student has an important role in the film when he helps the students kidnap Garrett at a shoe shine.

When Garrett is captured, he's taken to a secret hideout where hundreds of students put him at the center of a kangaroo court. The students lower him into a pit of rats to try to get him to confess to the murders he was responsible for. This is followed by a scene where the throng of students hail him off to the local judge, walking through the streets at night singing song such as "The Bear Went Over the Mountain" and "Glory Glory Hallelujah". This ending seemed to go on a little long.

Overall though, it is a film worth seeing, and I found it thought provoking. Directed by Cecil B. DeMille.

More photos and more info about this film can be found here at the blog Take 39 Steps and Knock

The Ten Commandments (1956)

Really should have been titled, "The Life of Moses", as it essentially is, from his very birth to his death.

It is a fine effort of Cecil B. Demille to remake his own silent film of Moses over 30 years earlier.

 The music score is memorable, and most of the scenes in the movie are filmed as if they are paintings.

 DeMille apparently disliked the Cinemascope/widescreen process, and never did a widescreen film.

The visual optical effects are impressive for the time: scenes of miracles such as the burning bush, staffs turning into snakes, and the parting of the sea earned the film an Oscar for Best Visual Effects.

Charlton Heston, in the role he is most remembered for, plays Moses as a young man and old who leads the Israelites out of captivity from Egypt and into the Promised Land of Israel.

The rest of the cast includes Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne De Carlo, Debra Paget, John Derek, Cedric Hardwicke, Nina Foch, Martha Scott, Judith Anderson, Vincent Price, John Carradine, Woody Strode.

Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989)

What It's About
A movie with two parallel stories, one starring director Woody Allen and the other starring Martin Landau, who is fantastic in his role. Allen plays a documentary filmmaker, and Landau plays an eye doctor; both of them are in marriages that are fizzling. Throughout the film we learn more about them and there's always something interesting that comes up.

The Landau character has problems with his mistress (Angelica Huston) and about halfway through the film, he contemplates killing her. Sam Waterson plays an understanding rabbi who tries to help Landau emotionally and spiritually.

The two characters finally meet at the end of the film.

My Take
I thought this was a very thought provoking film, and one of the best of Allen's I've ever seen. In a great sequence, Landau's character finds himself back at a passover seder when he was a young boy, and sees his family talk about God and issues of life. The murder angle can get a bit dark at times, but I liked how the characters - in particular Landau's - question the morality of what they are doing. His wife is played by Claire Bloom. All through the movie I was wondering what would happen if/when she finds out about Landau's affair, mistress, and/or murder.

I liked the scenes where Allen dates Mia Farrow, his divorced assistant. On one of their dates they go to see see a classic movie. On another date, they watch Singin' in the Rain at home.

The Allen character also takes his young niece to the movies a few times, and they enjoy such classics as Mr. & Mrs Smith, This Gun for Hire, The Last Gangster, and a Betty Hutton musical. Scenes from each of these movies is shown.

Update 3/12/11:

I asked Gerald of Laszlo's on Lex about the retro theater featured in this film, and inquired if he had ever been there. Gerald said that the name of the theater was the Bleecker Street Cinema in the West Village, and that over the years he did attend with some regularity, as he lived nearby at the time.

Unfortunately, the theater is now gone.

More information here from the Cinema Treasures website:

http://cinematreasures.org/theater/6016/

Thanks Gerald for the information on the Bleecker.

Retro Alert:
There's a scene where Farrow's character uses a huge cell phone the size of a brick. Another scene shows Allen using a pay phone to check his messages. And this was only 21 years ago!

With Alan Alda, Darryl Hannah, Jerry Orbach. Written and Directed by Woody Allen.

My Final Grade: A-

The Angel Levine (1970) with Harry Belofonte

Directed by Ján Kadár. Starring Zero Mostel and Harry Belofonte, who plays Al, an angel "on probation", which means (I suppose) that he can't get to heaven until he performs a certain final deed on earth. Or so he claims. He's "sent" to help (supposedly) Mr. Morris Mishkin (Mostel), a kind, unemployed Jewish man whose wife is sick and near death. How exactly the angel is supposed to help them is never explained. The gravely ill wife is played by the wonderful actress Ida Kaminsky, who previously worked with the film's director Ján Kadár on The Shop on Main Street (1966). She plays he role well, perhaps too seriously for this quirky film.

In the beginning, down-on-his-luck Morris is so depressed that he asks God why he is in the situation he is in. Then suddenly, Belofonte appears in his New York apartment. There is some funny banter between the two leads, especially when the angel claims to be Jewish and Mostel asks the angel if he is circumcised (Mostel's suspicions about Al being Jewish are later confirmed when he visits Al's predominantly African American synagogue). I thought the angel character would bring more lightheartedness to the situation Morris and his wife are in, but the film just gets more dark and depressing, and there's an eerie, ghostly sounding musical theme played throughout the film. It turns out that the angel is filled with less hope than Morris, and without giving away too much, the last scenes in the film felt somewhat bleak, certainly not Capra-esque.

I'd say it's worth seeing, but it's a tad bit bizarre. Good scenes of New York streets from the late 60s/ early 70s, and a terrific opening credit sequence. The great character actor Eli Wallach (who is to receive an Honorary Oscar this weekend) appears film for literally one second as a deli clerk in the beginning; if you blink you miss him (his wife Anne Jackson also appears in the deli; she's robbed by Al before he is killed and becomes an angel, we presume) For more about this film, here's a good review here at DVD Savant.

The Poseidon Adventure (1972) Capsule Review

Seen as campy today by some, this exciting 1972 film is one of my favorites, an inspiring story of courage and survival. If you haven't seen it before, all you really need to know is that once the ship capsizes, the "adventure" begins. Actually, its more of a quest for survival than an "adventure", I'd say. Unlike some so-called "disaster" films from this era such as the inferior Aiport sequels from this same era, this film - 1972's biggest box office hit after The Godfather - has brave characters you actually care about, such as Gene Hackman's Rev. Scott and Shelly Winters' Mrs Rosen, both sacrificing their lives for the others in the small group of survivors.



Not long ago, I watched this movie on the big screen in its entirety for the first time, and on a big screen - the way it was meant to be seen. Nothing like it. I broke down during Ms Winter's final scenes in the movie; she's so wonderful in this. Jack Albertson and Winters are so memorably endearing as Mr. and Mrs. Rosen. You can easily fall in love with their characters, and even feel like they are part of your own family. Ernest Borgnine is great as the impatient cop skeptical of Rev. Scott throughout - until the end. What happens to his wife, played by Stella Stevens, I did not expect. This is one of Gene Hackman's greatest performances. It really is thrilling. Don't miss it!

BONUS #1

On his blog, Mr. Jeffery posted a photo of a Mrs. Rosen action figure that came out in the 70s! I had no idea they came out with this line of figures back then. Pretty cool!

BONUS #2

I love this clip! Someone edited together the capsizing scene with Fred Astaire in Royal Wedding. A version of this was shown on the Oscars a number of years back, right before they gave out the Best Film Editing award. Check this out!

Movie Reviews 557 – The Poseidon Adventure (1972) | Lazarus' Lair (wordpress.com)