Midnight Oil:Movies and More

"Went the Day Well?" (1942) , from a short story by Graham Greene, is a wartime propaganda film with some surprises up its sleeve. The film, set in a sleepy English village, depicts the responses of ordinary folk to the extraordinary situation of having some German paratroopers land in their backyard posing as a British engineering detail. Watch out for dithering sweet little old ladies who serve tea and crumpets while secretly wielding an axe against unsuspecting German servicemen!

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Catch the video trailer of "Went the Day Well?"

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“Panic in the Streets” (1950) starring Richard Widmark and Jack Palance as directed by Elia Kazan, makes for a scary combination. I’m not sure which one you should take your chances on; the menace of the totally deadly pneumonic plague (a form of the Black Plague) or the totally creepy Jack Palance as the villain. The hero, Richard Widmark, as Lieutenant Commander Clint Reed, runs around New Orleans with his syringe, prepared to do battle with either culprit. (Apparently, it is true that the totally deadly effects of pneumonic plague can be forestalled with a dose of antibiotics within 24 hours.) This highly potent concoction of gangsters, bioterrorism, post-war anxieties with a bit of romance thrown in, thanks to Barbara Bel Geddes as the good doctor’s wife, makes it a highly watchable film more than 50 years later. It may not be Elia Kazan’s best film ever, but it’s worth a look. And it’s so comforting in this crazy post-SARS world of ours to think that there is some nice, upstanding medical man out there who has everything under control with his syringe, if he could just get all those nasty miscreants rounded up.

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Are you ready to "roll up your sleeve"? See the video excerpt from "Panic in the Streets" (1950)

“Kiss of Death” (1947)INDb starring Victor Mature with Karl Malden is overshadowed by the Tommy Udo character played by Richard Widmark. Widmark is unforgettable as the sneering psychopath who inhabits this film. The movie is constructed so that we’re supposed to cheer for the ex-con, Nick Bianco (Mature) and his new love (Coleen Gray) as they try to make a new life for their family far away from the criminal past. Suspense builds as Tommy Udo swears revenge on Nick Bianco for turning him in to the policeand then goes on the hunt for his family. It ends up that it’s Widmark who makes an indelible impression on people’s minds and on film history, and not the “good guy” who gets the girl and the happy ending.

See the SNAM blog authored by Thom Ernst on a dedication to the recently passed Richard Widmark.

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Paul Newman is “Nobody’s Fool” (1994) . Robert Benton’s delicately drawn portrait of aging also stars Jessica Tandy, Melanie Griffith and Bruce Willis. Newman plays Sully, a rascally character living in small town America who decides that it’s never too late after all to join the human race. Sully’s worked hard all his life to avoid facing up to inevitable realities. We’d all like to believe that people can get better and not just “older”, in spite of all the examples we see to the contrary. Newman is such a wonderful actor and Benton is such a masterful storyteller in this film that we’ll just have to become believers.

See the “Never Too Late” video interview preview for Nobody’s Fool from SNAM here.

Don't miss the entire TVO SNAM interviews for the "Never Too Late" episode. Includes a discussion of "Nobody's Fool" and "The Late Show" in the discussion of Hollywood films and the subject of aging.

Read Thom Ernst’s blog entry on the ageless Paul Newman .

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Catch the video trailer for Nobody’s Fool here.

“I Confess” (1953) with Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, and Karl Malden makes for a rather melodramatic situation where the real murderer uses the silence of the confessional as the perfect cover-up for his crime. Alfred Hitchcock’s direction on site in Quebec City gives this film a bit of a different perspective. Once you realize that the setting is supposed to be Quebec City during the 1950’s in the pre-Vatican II Duplessis era, it all starts to make a little more sense – the film, that is, not the murder mystery plot. The murder, cover-up, romance, blackmail and dénouement are all very predictable. What else can we expect when two excruciatingly beautiful people such as Anne Baxter and Montgomery Clift are caught up in a thoroughly impossible situation? It is all completely incomprehensible and implausible in today’s world until you remember that this is supposed to be Quebec in the 1950’s. The prominent landmarks and buildings seen in the film are still there today. (Our family visits quite regularly.) The social and religious landscapes that make this film believable are not. C’est quoi encore le dicton en anglais? “Much Ado About Nothing”?

>>More to see: Looking for more out of life?

See the film trailer for "I Confess" (1953).