Midnight Oil:Movies and More

This week's pick from recent movies on TVOntario's Saturday Night at the Movies

Catch the TVO video trailer for "The Snake Pit" (1948)

“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.

<<Back to Midnight Oil main journal

>>On to "Who's Directing Your Life?"

Compulsion (1959) - INDb is an interesting twist on the infamous thrill killing "Crime of the Century" by Leopold and Loeb. Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman play the rich young  degenerates who engage in the most shocking of crimes while Orson Welles plays the Clarence Darrow figure who is responsible for helping them to avoid the hangman's noose.   The award winning performances  lead  one through a thorough workout for  the moral faculties on issues of captial punishment. 

Catch the video trailer from TVO for Compulsion

Cheyenne Autumn (1964) IMDb , billed as John Ford’s final Western masterpiece, is a film that pricks the conscience of North Americans about “the Indian problem”. Richard Widmark plays the conflicted Captain Archer in charge of retrieving the “delinquent” Cheyenne band who has escaped their deathtrap Indian reservation in the desert. Carroll Baker plays his love interest, a Quaker woman caught between the native culture and the whites. While Sal Mineo, Ricardo Montalban and Dolores Del Rio might not be entirely convincing as Cheyenne tribes people, they get the job done in portraying the plight of the native Americans in a sympathetic light.

Gene Tierney’s breathtaking beauty in the title role adds to the performance of the ensemble cast accompanied by the memorable score composed by David Raksin. It all goes together to make this unforgettable classy film noir classic.

TVOntario’s Interviews, (Aug.18,’07) include contributions from the leading man, Dana Andrews and director, Otto Preminger. The Interviews contain revelations into the evolution of this wonderful film that are almost as enjoyable as the plot reversals contained in the film itself .

. . . In the opening scene of the film, we first meet Laura through taking a virtual walking tour of her home. In the days before “video visits” in online real estate listings, it must have been something of a novelty to inspect the interior of another person’s home in their absence through the camera lens – a kind of early video voyeurism . . .

<< Back to the entire archive for "Laura" (entitled "Picture Perfect") from the Main Midnight Oil journal.

>>On to "Who's Directing Your Life?" 

View the Video Trailer for "Laura" from TVO

Catch the video trailer here.