Sweet Smell of Success Review!

Sweet Smell of Success is simply one of Burt Lancaster's greatest moments in a career filled with them....and oh yeah...Tony Curtis was also absolutely fabulous in this dark meditation on Celebrity and Entertainment journalism, along with the corruption inherent in absolute power. Lancaster plays J.J. Hunsecker, a powerful and influential entertainment/celebrity columnist for a New York newspaper that is the literal toast of the town with press agents like Sidney Falco, played by Tony Curtis, doing "favors" for Lancaster in order to win space in his column for the entertainers they represent. Curtis seems to have been a long time flunkie for Lancaster because it has been several days since Lancaster had mentioned any of Curtis' clients and so Curtis is upset and now ready to sink even lower to appease power mad Lancaster.

Eventually Curtis will stoop to placing false accusations and planting false evidence on an up and coming Jazz musician that has been dating Lancaster's sister. The soft side of Lancaster's character and perhaps the more darker side comes out in his almost incestuous relationship with his younger sister and his complete jealous rage at her dating someone beneath her. Very soon, both Lancaster and Curtis must face the consequences of their single minded pursuit of influence, power, and money.

This film is as dark as any detective noir thriller and uses its pacing and lighting to great affect. The film moves in an almost breakneck speed, never allowing the viewer to catch his breath before the next tragic consequence of Lancaster and Curtis' machinations come to light. I have also never heard better dialogue in a film...crisp and crackling like summer lightning and wickedly funny, spawning the wonderful Lancaster line, "Match me, Sidney" to Tony Curtis. On the one hand, this is a dismissal of Curtis as a mere henchman around only to light Lancaster's smokes, but also a challenge to beat Lancaster at the subtle game they are playing with people's lives and reputations.

Another film from Lancaster's own production company, Sweet Smell, was one of those films which signaled the end of the tightfisted control of the major Studios, at least artistically. Artists who wanted to do socially or politically relevant films often had to beg on hands and knees to Studios who were indifferent to such material, because of its difficulty to market and thus make their money back. Stars like James Cagney and Burt Lancaster were among the pioneers to break out of the studio system to make the films they wanted to make. Sweet Smell of Success helped usher in the modern age of the Independent Film and a new era of artistic freedom of comment.

TH Reviews rating: 5 stars out of 5....highly recommended!

Vera Cruz review!

Vera Cruz is not the greatest Western ever made, but it's sins are few to count and there are things here to enjoy. Vera Cruz is a pretty much by the numbers revisionist Western....and by revisionist I mean the white hats and the black hats are thrown out the window. Vera Cruz, like many of the Italian "Spaghetti Westerns" and the wonderful Anthony Mann Westerns, is a bit more complex with characters driven by something less inspiring than saving the pretty rancher's daughter or defending sod busters from ruthless cattle barons. Burt Lancaster and Gary Cooper are motivated by money, taking care of themselves first and foremost or at least, in the case of plantation owner Cooper, their own.

Cooper and Lancaster, an interesting odd couple to say the least, encounter one another as they are heading down Mexico way to sell their gun-fighting expertise to the highest bidder during the Mexican Revolution against Maximillian, the French puppet emperor. While this premise may sound familiar, director Robert Aldrich throws in for spice a marquise played engagingly by Cesar Romero. He also adds Ernest Borgnine, Charles Bronson, and Jack Elam as Lancaster's henchmen to keep the pot boiling. Things look pretty good on paper with this ragtag cowboy gang fresh from the just ended Civil War mixing it up with transplanted European nobility.

But then the characters open their mouths and you find yourself feeling a bit cheated. The dialogue which feels flat, forced, and deadly unoriginal, brings down what otherwise might have been a classic. The interactions between characters just wasn't that well conceived or delivered. This is a particular shame with Cooper and Lancaster, both fine actors representing two important eras of Hollywood....Cooper a living legend of the early studio days and Lancaster as the new young turk generation of the late forties who were forming their own production companies to stretch both their artistic chops and earning potential. What could have been an electric paring falls rather flat. Borgnine and Company are also shamefully little used....really little more than big bullies out for a good time.

Despite some good cinematography and interesting use of Aztec ruins, Vera Cruz just doesn't have much umpth in the end, when it seemed to have so much more potential. Lancaster's production company was a driving force for this film and it's hard to believe the same company would also helm classics like Sweet Smell of Success. TH Reviews rating: 3.5 out of five stars!

Review for The Shop Around the Corner

While I agree that James Stewart's most relevant period as an actor of depth and subtlety began after World War II, there is still much to love and esteem during his Hollywood salad days of the 1930's to the early 1940's. The Shop Around the Corner is just such a gem of a film that shows James Stewart at his best, even though it took the clout of his co-star Margaret Sullavan to get his foot in the door. Here is one of the early examples of Stewart's ability to cast himself as the Everyman Underdog and work his wonderful way into our hearts.

It took Hollywood a while to figure out just what do with Stewart who did not fit into the prototypical romantic leading man type....he was not Clark Gable, the big and ruggedly handsome hero man. Stewart was more of a Gary Cooper sort of guy....tall, slim, and sweet looking, the difference being that Stewart could say more than the occasional syllable. In the Frank Capra film, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, the persona of the little guy everyman is perfected for Stewart and it would see him through the years of a very successful and long lived career. The Shop Around the Corner picks up this type of character a year later and Stewart was off to the races.

Shop tells the now familiar story of two co-workers, Stewart and Sullivan, who hate each other while they work together in the shop by day, but are unknowing passionate lovers as they correspond as pen pals through the mail. Shop's basic premise would be worked over again and again over the years...most notably as a musical In the Good Old Summertime with Van Johnson and Judy Garland and most recently as You've Got Mail with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan corresponding over the Internet.

Ernst Lubitsch' s wonderful first version also has a dark side along with all the romantic comedy chemistry of Stewart and Sullavan. The shop's owner, played by wonderful character actor Frank Morgan, suspects that his wife is fooling around on him and he suspects his favored clerk Stewart of being part of the triangle. In a fit of jealous rage, Morgan fires Stewart right before Christmas, putting the success of his shop at risk. Eventually Morgan learns that Stewart is innocent and consequently has a nervous breakdown, trying unsuccessfully to commit suicide. Eventually and predictably, all is forgiven and Stewart finally wins back his job and his lady love, Sullavan.

Although predicable in some respects, Shop with the Morgan subplot and fine character acting cast is sweet with just a tad bit of the sour to make it relevant and memorable. Stewart and his great acting mentor Margaret Sullavan strike all the good chords for a very entertaining, Classic Hollywood good time! TH Reviews rating: 4 1/2 stars of Five!

Fort Apache Review!

Arguably the best of John Ford's Calvary Trilogy, Fort Apache is actually darker and in some ways deeper than She Wore a Yellow Ribbon or Rio Grande. The film covers not only the sense of honor and service within the military but also covers class distinctions and the barriers built between classes...so the world of Fort Apache becomes a microcosm of society in general. Also included in this film is John Ford's sometimes out and loud sympathy for the plight of Native Americans deprived of their ancestral lands and literally starved to death by greedy government contractors for support of the reservations.

This is not John Wayne's film necessarily, but feels more like Henry Fonda's, as the driven Colonel who unwillingly accepts a demotion and the assignment to Fort Apache out on the American frontier. He is proud and ego driven....a tragic figure on the order of a Shakespearean MacBeth or Richard III...driven to destroy himself in a need to prove himself to the powers that be in Washington. Along with Fonda....there are of course Victor McLaglen and Ward Bond who turn in their best redoubtable Irish personas to accentuate the class differences between themselves and Fonda's Colonel Thursday. John Agar and a surprisingly deep Shirley Temple provide romantic interludes to the heady mix.

And of course, whether black and white or in color, Ford's artistic sense of scene building, the balance of human figures within the shot tell a visual story that almost needs no sound or music to communicate intimately with the audience. Ford is at his best in this which hearkens back to his silent film days where he first developed his art and his craft...a heartfelt A+!

A response to Netflix changes.

I am not a vengeful or I hope...a rude person, but I have become increasingly dissatisfied with Netflix's community oriented services. For the past year or so it has become very difficult to use many of the features of note sending to other members, list making, and communication within the main Netflix site. As a sometime apologist for Netflix, I understand the huge popularity of sharing notes and reviews within the site may make it hard to manage and maintain a consistently working site and still maintain the bottom line....and let's face it, we all like to eat and maybe send our kids to college some day.

But Netflix has proven itself to be rather high handed in making major changes, taking away beloved perks on the site, and then remains silent in the face of such a public outcry throughout the community. Instead of cursing the darkness, I would rather light a candle...shifting my movie reviews, notes, and discussions to this blog....and encouraging others to do so as well. So if you have enjoyed discussing film or reading my reviews in the past, please join and engage me here on my film blog site: http://threviews.blogspot.com/.

And here's to our common love, Film!!!
TH Reviews
Tom Hehenberger

The Iconography of John Wayne

The genius of John Wayne is that no matter what you might think of the actor or the legend or the ideals that he stands for, at some point you have to consider him. You have to consider him because at some level, he represents some people's idea of what America might be like or the old West might be like, or what the American experience of War might be like, or at the last, what people's idea of true heroism might be like.

Say what you will, John Wayne matters even to those who despise what he stands for. John Wayne has been an heroic paradigm for me for a very long time. As I have grown older, however, I have become more picky about the films of John Wayne that I esteem. As with Clint Eastwood, I found that Wayne is much better in films where he must face himself and live with the vulnerabilities and doubts that reside within an otherwise strong and impervious exterior.

Perhaps my most favorite Wayne film would be The Searchers. The niece of stoic and abrasive John Wayne is kidnapped by Indians after her family is massacred. Wayne sets out to rescue her but quickly loses himself in a ride of revenge and racism against Indians, eventually turning his hatred on the very girl he wished to rescue when she becomes part of a local Comanche tribe. Wayne is forced to confront his own racism and thirst for revenge when he finally rescues his niece. But even at the end of this fine John Ford film, Wayne is still marginalised and cut off from the bosom of his family and community...sort of seen as an endangered stereotype that the world has left behind.

This theme of the modern world of law and order leaving behind the rugged frontier hero is no more apparent than in "True Grit" with John Wayne's shoot 'em up heroism being viewed as embrassing and illegal by the establishment that Wayne as Rooster Cogburn has served all his adult life. The image of him fat, drunk, and sick...laying on a smelly bed in the back of a Chinese laundry is still haunting, but his resurrection to see justice done in his one man charge against Robert Duvall and company still inspires and thrills.

And finally, Wayne in Red River, Howard Hawk's fine revisonist Western may show Wayne at the height of his powers in a tragic story that approaches King Lear in its scope and depth of human relationships. Wayne adopts Montgomery Clift and the two cowboys decide to drive a superherd of cattle to market. What happens is much like the Mutiny on the Bounty, where Wayne mercilessly drives his drovers into a mutiny against him. Even Clift is driven to this final betrayal and the look on Wayne's weathered face is enough to chill the soul.

Yes, Wayne did make a lot of bad pictures, particulary in the late sixties and early seventies which were mere shadows of films like She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence. But Wayne, with all his faults, remains what he is...the best and also the worst of us and his performances still have the power to captivate me today!

The Case for Clint Eastwood

Perhaps its not such a great idea for me to state a case for Clint Eastwood, for Eastwood has long been a favorite of mine, practically all of my life. I am biased, you see. Critics and movie watchers alike will probably disagree with me on just what part of Eastwood's career to laud and where to identify a certain amount of genius film making. There are moments, in my opinion, throughout Eastwood's career that I would defend as great, if not genius. Eastwood has always been pretty much about high quality with only a few missteps here and there.


Eastwood has been both actor and director throughout his stellar career, but his acting, especially in the early years, could be spotty at times. The most important character Eastwood created in the late sixties, with the help of Sergio Leone, was the "Man With No Name", an antihero gunfighter who usually starts out the film as a mercenary, but turns out heroic by the end of the film. Eastwood was usually gruff and stoic as the "Man" which was perfect for the western genre, largely being a visual storytelling genre and perfect for Leone who was a master director of largely visual westerns. The poncho, sweaty slouch hat, stovepipe jeans, and of course, the gnarly cigar stump, created a perfect counter culture answer to the heroic pose of the 1950's John Wayne.


Interestingly enough, the "Man With No Name" actually did have names in all the Leone Westerns. In "A Fistful of Dollars", he was called Joe. In "For a Few Dollars More", he was called Manco. In "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", he was called Blondie.


What has always been compelling for me with this character and also the Dirty Harry character which Eastwood began in the late sixties, was this sense of a hero that is always in control, even in the worst of situations. This was gratifying for me as a kid who spent most of his time in daydreams and in books, never fully sure of anything in a largely introverted life. I could be like Eastwood, or like my dad in my dreams, seemingly never questioning myself, always in control. This afforded me some emotional security regardless of how starry eyed I was.


As I grew up, I began to revise this opinion, or at the least begin to see heroes of another stripe, courage of another, more subtle kind. The hero who moves forward to confront evil or injustice, despite his questioning himself, became more of a hero for me as I encountered these situations in real life. While still nostalgic about the hero in control, it did not speak to me as profoundly as before. But the great thing about Eastwood was that he grew up as an actor and director, just as I was growing up.

Thus, the "Man With No Name" very intentionally received a name and a soul, a hero for a new age of reflection about what truly makes a hero. Eastwood did this in 1976's "The Outlaw Josey Wales". The "Man" was now Josey Wales and here was an antihero who questioned his own motives, longed for a different way of life, whose motivations were more subtle and complex than any Western or Action hero Eastwood had ever portrayed before. Wales was a complex character who begins his adventures in a revenge quest, certainly a recognizable western theme. But by the end of the film, Wales has drawn a community of misfits and loners to himself, who long for a better, more peaceful life. Wales begins life as a prototypical Western hero, but gains a soul in becoming a greater hero fighting for more life giving causes.

As good as Josey Wales was, an even better western was waiting for Eastwood to direct and to star in the mid-1990's. Unforgiven would take the elements of Josey Wales and tell a more human story of Eastwood as a gunfighter turned poor dirt farmer who decides to kill a man for money to turn his no-where life around. Eastwood had moved beyond the classic ideal of what heroes could be to what heroes often are...normal everyday people thrust into extraordinary circumstances and asked to make decisons of life transforming importance. Unforgiven may have been Eastwood's ultimate western swan song, and if it is, I would be happy with that.

And actually, Unforgiven would pave the way for one of Eastwood's very best, regardless of genre, Million Dollar Baby. Eastwood's hero questions himself and his motives constantly as he is called upon to decide the end of life process for a young woman he has come to love as a daughter. Million Dollar Baby is a film I would have never expected from Eastwood back in the 1970's or 80's. Eastwood's artistic edge has grown considerably as he has grown older, and this is why he has retained his significance and relevance in an industry he has dominated at different times for over fifty years. This film nut thanks him!