The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

Nick Smith (Cecil Kellaway), the middle-aged proprietor of a roadside restaurant, hires drifter Frank Chambers (John Garfield) as a handyman. Frank eventually begins an affair with Nick's beautiful wife Cora (Lana Turner), who talks Frank into helping her kill Nick, by "accident." But the best laid plans...cause hilarity to ensue.

Trivia: This caused a stir amongst 1940s audiences who were shocked when it seemed clear to them that John Garfield uses his tongue in one of his kissing scenes with Lana Turner. Lana Turner said that her turn as Cora Smith was "the role I liked best". It took 12 years to adapt the explicit material (by 1940 standards) of the novel into a screenplay tame enough to comply with the Production Code prevalent at the time.

Umm...What the heck does the title of this movie have to do with the actual movie? I mean, there is no postman, and the word postman is never even said, you have to wait till the last two minutes of the movie to figure it out and then it was still kind of "Huh?" Is this a generational thing? My postperson (got to be politically correct nowadays) would never even come to the door, if I have to sign for something, they just leave a note for me to come to the post office. Okay, I know it has to do with having to pay for your sins (What goes around comes around, you have to pay the piper, and all those other cliches). Okay, now for Lana Turner and those dresses. Everything she wears is white (except one notable exception where she wears black and thinks about killing Nick) but besides that, all white. I had heard that Lana Turner was really evil in this movie, or rather that she gained her bad girl reputation from this movie (she is known for her bad girl roles, but she only played the bad girl a few times) and I really started to wonder why, but she got worse (in a good way) as time went on and then I thought that one of the main reasons people gave her this reputation was that Nick, her husband was probably the nicest person every shown on film, this guy was a saint and they very casually plan to whack him.

Top 250 Challenge: 237

Du Rififi Chez Les Hommes(1957)
Number 208 on IMDb's Top 250

Tony le Stephanois has just been released from prison. His friends Jo le Suedois and Mario Ferrati proposition him with the daylight robbery of a jewellery store. Tony declines the offer but following an encounter with his ex-girlfriend, Mado, he reconsiders but decides they should break in and take the entire contents of the safe instead. They enlist the help of Cesar le Milanais. The heist is executed perfectly by the men, with one exception; Cesar takes a ring to give to a singer. Pierre, the singer's boss connects the group to the robbery and goes after them for the jewels. Cesar tells Pierre where Mario lives but Mario refuses to tell Pierre where the jewels are so Pierre kills him then kidnaps Jo's son Tonio. Tony kills Cesar for his betrayal then goes to find Tonio. Jo, against Tony's advice, takes the money the group received for selling the jewels to exchange for Tonio. Tony has already gotten Tonio back from Pierre. Pierre kills Jo and Tony kills Pierre but only after being fatally wounded. It is then a race against time for Tony to return Tonio to his mother before he dies. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: Mexican authorities pulled the movie from theaters after multiple burglaries were committed employing methods similar to those shown. The argot French slang word, "Rififi" is defined loosely as trouble/violent conflict/a brutal show of force, usually in reference to chest puffing and macho tough guy posturing by thugs and criminal element of Paris. The much imitated heist sequence is over 32 minutes long and contains not a single line of dialogue or music. The production crew and composer Georges Auric thought it would be a disaster to have such a long sequence sans dialogue. Auric insisted that he allow him to write a grand piece of music for the scene and he eventually did on his own. Later Jules Dassin, the director, played the part for Auric twice, once with the score, once without. Auric turned to him and admitted, "Without the music". Dassin claims his reasoning for the lengthy silence was realism. He explains that this also reinforces their astonishing teamwork under stress and that these men can, and carry these tasks out with no need for words. They work in a state of complete silence where any sound (like Jo bumping the piano) was their mortal enemy. Note that Cesar wears ballet slippers during the heist.

Okay, everybody got it? It is a rather convoluted plot and a little hard to follow. The jewel of the film was the heist itself and the famed 32 minutes of silence. It happened in the middle of the film. What was amazing was that the few times that there is a sound, like bumping the piano, that sounds is jarring and you cringe a little. Good film.

Next Up: Wings of Desire, A German film with Peter Falk as himself (who only talks in English). If any of you saw City of Angels, with Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan, you know the basic plot, although there are plenty of differences.

Top 250 Challenge: 235

Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
Number 223 on IMDb's Top 250

J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), the most powerful newspaper columnist in New York, is determined to prevent his sister from marrying Steve Dallas (the guy from Bloom County, just kidding, really it is the guy from Adam 12 [on the left]), a jazz musician. He therefore covertly employs Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), a sleazy and unscrupulous press agent, to break up the affair by any means possible. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: The character of J.J. Hunsecker is based on famed New York columnist Walter Winchell. This film's shoot was filled with macho tensions and at one point, the temperamental Burt Lancaster threatened to punch the film's writer, Ernest Lehman. The witty scribe replied, "Go ahead, I need the money."

What is that horrible stench? It is the Sweet Smell of Success. This movie was just absolutely awful. There is only one character in this whole freaking movie that is even close to having me give a darn about, Steve Dallas, and he gets set-up on drug charges, and beat-up and put into the hospital by the police, seemingly on orders from Curtis, acting on behalf for Lancaster. Lancaster plays a powerful society columnist that verbally abuses sources, manipulates stories, and grants favors by putting people in his column. Curtis is a press agent who is not above doing anything to get his clients into Hunsecker's column, destoying, blackmailing, and even prostituting (in a sense) his semi-girlfriend to the guy who played Dick York's boss Larry Tate in "Bewitched!" Even Lancaster's sister, who is in love with Steve Dallas, which makes Lancaster go after him, even she is mousy and cringes anytime Lancaster looks at her. Ugghh!

Next Up (speaking of Dick York): Inherit the Wind, It's all about the monkey trial that rocked America.

Top 250 Challenge: 220

Out Of The Past (1947)
Number 187 on IMDb's Top 250

Jeff Bailey, small-town gas pumper, has his mysterious past catch up with him one day when he's ordered to meet with gambler Whit Sterling. En route to the meeting, he tells girlfriend Ann his story. Flashback: Once, Jeff was a private eye hired by Sterling to find his mistress Kathie who shot Whit and absconded with $40,000. He traces her to Acapulco...where the delectable Kathie makes Jeff forget all about Sterling... Back in the present, Whit's new job for Jeff is clearly a trap, but Jeff's precautions only leave him more tightly enmeshed...hilarity ensues.

Trivia: The film has been deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. Gee, That's all the trivia I could find on this movie.

This movie has everything you would ever want in a Film Noir: The femme fatale that flips sides more then an Olympic gymnast, the private detective with a trench coat on and a cigarette struck in his mouth, the nosy cafe owner who talks too much, guns, dames, fist fights, murder, frame-ups, death by bullet, death by fishing lure, fadoras, snappy dialog, flashbacks, double crossed partners, the guy that has been in love with the hero's girlfriend since gradeschool who takes an opportunity to kill the hero but has a change of heart because he is actually a good guy, a Mexican bar, and a "deaf and dumb" boy who may be the smartest guy of the bunch. Did I miss anything? If I did, I guess you will have to see it to find out.

Next Up: The Lady Vanishes

Top 250 Challenge: 208

The Night Of The Hunter (1955)
Number 147 on IMDb's Top 250

Ben Harper has committed murder for $10,000. He hides the money and makes daughter Pearl and son John promise not to tell anyone where it is hidden, not even their mother Willa. In prison and awaiting hanging, Ben meets his cellmate, the Preacher (Robert Mitchum), who tries unsuccessfully to get Ben to reveal where he stashed the money. When Preacher is released from prison he heads for the Harper home, intent on finding the money. Preacher charms Willa and wins her hand in marriage, only to kill her when she learns what he is really like. With only Pearl and John separating him from a small fortune, the Preacher unleashes the full force of his true, evil self. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: Charles Laughton had no great love for children and so despised directing them in this film that Robert Mitchum found himself directing the children in several scenes. Robert Mitchum was very eager for the part of the preacher. When he auditioned, a moment that particularly impressed Charles Laughton was when Laughton described the character as "a diabolical shit." Mitchum promptly answered, "Present!" The sequence purportedly showing the preacher riding a horse in the distance was filmed in false perspective and was actually a midget astride a pony.

This was a pretty good movie. Mitchum was good as the evil Preacher. There are two famous scenes in this movie, Shelley Winters dead in the seat of a model T at the bottom of the river with her hair flowing in the current and Robert Mitchum's knuckles (as you can see in the cover art above). Preacher Harry Powell had H-A-T-E tattooed on him left hand and L-O-V-E tattooed on him right hand. This has been copied in a lot of different places including the Simpsons, but since the Simpsons characters only have three fingers, Side Show Bob had "L-U-V" and "H-A-T" with a macron over the middle 'A,' to get that 'long a' sound.

Top 250 Challenge: 206

Shadow Of A Doubt (1943)
Number 141 on IMDb's Top 250

Young Charlie Newton not only shares a name with her favorite uncle, but a special bond. At times she feels the charming man is the only one who understands her need to be extraodinary and that she is better than the tiny town she lives in. So, when life is too dull she calls on him to visit. However the arrival of two detectives, one of whom becomes very close to young Charlie, and a series of unusal clues concerning the mysterious 'Merry Widow Murderer', causes her Uncle Charlie's behavor to begin to change. Young Charlie starts to suspect that the man she once idiolized is not what he seems and as her world shatters, she realizes that her life may be in danger. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: Alfred Hitchcock often said that this was his favorite film. The name of the waltz that is referred to throughout the film is "The Merry Widow Waltz". Since the two main characters were named Charlie, the name Charlie is spoken approximately 170 times.

Once again the Master of Suspense delivers. It is very evident why Hitchcock has so many of his films in the top 250. He is able to sustain the suspense in this movie even though the plot could be described in a ten word sentence ("A girl finds out that her uncle is a murderer"). Great movie.

Top 250 Challenge: 186

Notorious (1946)
Number 97 on IMDb's Top 250

Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), the American daughter of a convicted Nazi spy, is recruited by government agent T. R. Devlin (Cary Grant) to infiltrate a group of Germans who have relocated to Brazil after World War II. During her training, Alicia falls in love with Devlin; his feelings for her are tempered by his knowledge of her past. When Devlin is ordered to convince her to marry Sebastian (Claude Rains), one of her father's friends and a member of the group, to find out what he's plotting, he agonizes before choosing duty over love. Bitter at his betrayal, Alicia does wed Sebastian. Alicia accidentally and unknowingly stumbles upon the plot, but in the process leaves a clue that her husband traces back to her. Now Sebastian has a problem: he must silence Alicia, but cannot expose her without falling under suspicion with his fellow Nazis. He discusses the situation with his mother, who suggests that Alicia "die slowly", gradually by poisoning. The poison is mixed into Alicia's coffee and she quickly falls ill. Devlin becomes suspicious when she meets him and tells him that she merely has a hangover and yet shows signs of grave illness. He becomes further suspicious when she fails to report to their next meeting. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: Alfred Hitchcock claimed that the FBI had him under surveillance for three months because the film dealt with uranium. Both Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman found the famous kissing scene quite problematic, according to Alfred Hitchcock, because of the complicated blocking that needed to be remembered in the several long takes that it took to shoot it. The legendary on-again, off-again kiss between Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman was intended to flaunt then-current film code regulations that restricted the length of kisses to only a couple of seconds each.

Once again, Hitchcock makes the list. Seven of the top 100 belong to Hitchcock. In order they are: 13. Rear Window, 22. Psycho, 25. North By Northwest, 35. Vertigo, 76. Rebecca, 84. Strangers On A Train, and 97. Notorious. This one stands up just as well as the others. In fact, this movie has the most famous example of one of Hitchcock's MacGuffins. (What is a MacGuffin? Come back next week for my vocabulary lesson). Good Movie, Bergman was beautiful and Grant was debonair.

Top 250 Challenge: 182

Strangers On A Train (1961)
Number 84 on IMDb's Top 250

Psychotic mother's boy Bruno Anthony meets famous tennis professional Guy Haines on a train. Guy wants to move into a career in politics and has been dating a senator's daughter (Ann Morton) while awaiting a divorce from his wife. Bruno wants to kill his father, but knows he will be caught because he has a motive. Bruno dreams up a crazy scheme whereby he and Guy exchange murders. Guy takes this as a joke, but Bruno is serious and takes things into his own hands. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: Alfred Hitchcock bought the rights to the original novel anonymously to keep the price down, and got them for just $7,500. The stunt where the man crawled under the runaway carousel was not done with trick photography. Alfred Hitchcock claimed that this was the most dangerous stunt ever performed under his direction, and would never allow it to be done again.

Well, Hitchcock's work is very well represented in the Top 250 list. This is a very good thriller of a movie. Robert Walker was very creepy as the psychotic murderer. Just a good solid Hitchcock movie.

Top 250 Challenge: 176

The Big Sleep (1946)
Number 101 on IMDb's Top 250

Private-eye Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) is hired to keep an eye on General Sternwood's youngest daughter, Carmen, who has fallen into bad company and is likely to do some damage to herself and her family before long. He soon finds himself falling in love with her older sister, Vivien, who initially takes a deep dislike to Mr Marlowe. However, the plot thickens when murder follows murder...Hilarity ensues...

Trivia: The scene where Bogart and Lauren Bacall make suggestive talk about horses was added almost a year after filming was otherwise complete, in an attempt to inject the film with the kind of risqué innuendos that had made To Have And Have Not (1944), and Bacall, so popular a few years earlier. Director Howard Hawks and star Humphrey Bogart got into an argument as to whether one of the characters was murdered or committed suicide. They sent a wire to author Raymond Chandler asking him to settle the issue, but he replied that he didn't know either. The question is left unresolved in the original novel by Chandler.

The cover says it all...Bogart and Bacall. Only Tracy and Hepburn could even compare in the world of hollyworld.

Top 250 Challenge: 173

M (1931)
Number 59 on IMDb's Top 250

A psychotic child murderer stalks a city, and despite an exhaustive investigation fueled by public hysteria and outcry, the police have been unable to find him. TBut the police crackdown does have one side-affect, it makes it nearly impossible for the organized criminal underground to operate. So they decide that the only way to get the police off their backs is to catch the murderer themselves. Besides, he is giving them a bad name. The beggers union starts watching all the children in the town for any suspicious characters until a blind man recognises a familiar whistle that he heard just before the last child disappeared. The criminals spring into action and one is able to "mark" the target to make him easier to follow. That mark? The letter "M" for murderer. Hilarity ensues. Will the criminals be able to exact their revenge? Or will the police find the murdere in time?

Trivia: The tune that Peter Lorre's character whistles is "In the Hall of the Mountain King," from the "Peer Gynt" suite, by Edvard Grieg. Peter Lorre was Jewish and fled Germany in fear of Nazi persecution shortly after the movie's release. Fritz Lang, who was half Jewish, fled two years later. Peter Lorre's climactic speech was appropriated by Joseph Goebbels for the Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew, a Holocaust apologist film that blames Jews for devaluing German culture with degenerate art. Because Lorre was Jewish, the film uses his final speech as "proof" that Jews exemplify innate criminality, and refuse to take responsibility for their wrongdoings. (Ed. Note: Leave it to the Nazis to subvert everything the touched.)

Peter Lorre plays one of the first serial killers ever portrayed on film. The child murderer is one of the first characters ever to be associated with a leitmotif, in this case the character whistles "In The Hall Of The Mountain King." Later in the film, the mere sound of the song lets the audience know that he must be nearby, just offscreen. Cool Beans! I got to use the word leitmotif!

Top 250 Challenge: 167

Touch Of Evil (1958)
Number 78 on IMDb's Top 250

An automobile is blown up as it crosses the Mexican border into the United States. Mike Vargas (Charlton Heston), a high ranking Mexican narcotics official on honeymoon with his bride Susie (Janet Leigh) is drawn into the investigation because a Mexican national has been accused of the crime. The figurative and physical presence of Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) as the 330 pound sheriff looms all over. Quinlan is a fanatic where "justice" is concerned, even if obtaining it involves planting evidence. Quinlan's reputation for law and order enables him to bend the law without question until Vargas confronts him. From that point on hilarity ensues, and it's a battle of wits between the two that, with an accelerating pace, rushes to a thrilling climax.

Trivia: Alfred Hitchcock reportedly reworked Dennis Weaver's quirky motel clerk character in this one for Psycho (1960). Orson Welles was originally hired only to act in the film, but due to a misunderstanding, Charlton Heston understood that Welles was to be the director. To keep Heston happy, producer Albert Zugsmith allowed Welles to direct. Welles made major changes to the already-completed script, including changing Heston's character from a white district attorney to a Mexican narcotics agent, changing Janet Leigh's character from Mexican to American, and changing the setting of the movie from a small California town to a Mexican-American border town.

Okay, finally I see a stinker in this top 250 list. I didn't like this movie. Orson Wells was in his Fat Elvis phase at 330 pounds and it is just uncomfortable to watch him. Charlton Heston as a Mexican Official...right...okay. Heston is so concerned with his newlywed wife that after the explosion in the beginning of the movie he tells her to walk back to the hotel herself. She gets rerouted by people who don't like Heston and is threatened. Naturally, she wants to leave the Mexican hotel and stay in one on the American side of the border. So Heston says something like she doesn't believe he can take care of her and then drives her across the border (at the beginning of the movie, the border was in the middle of the town. Now Heston drives through miles and miles of empty plains). Half way to the new hotel, they are stopped by the police who pick up Heston, and leave behind a subordinate cop to take Ms. Heston the rest of the way to a deserted hotel...and then leaves her there. Heston, still concerned about his new wife that he calls her once and doesn't show up at the hotel until dark (she was left at the hotel at 7 a.m.) but by that time she had been harassed by the bad guys, drugged, dragged back across the border and framed for the murder of a gang leader. Did I mention Charlton Heston is a Mexican Official? He even sports a bad pencil thin mustache. I think I would have trouble putting this in the top 250, much less in the 70s as it is. I just don't see it. I think this movie lives on reputation, that of Orson Wells.

Top 250 Challenge: 164

The Killing (1956)
Number 124 on IMDb's Top 250

Ex-convict Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) tells his girl friend, Fay (Coleen Gray), he has plans for making money, and indeed he has. He rounds up a gang and brings them in on a seemingly fool-proof scheme to rob a race track of $200,000. The first thread unravels when Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor), wife of gang-member George Peatty (Elisha Cook, Jr.), tells her boyfriend Val Cannon (Vince Edwards) about the plan, and he cuts himself in on that action also. The robbery is completed and the gang goes to the hideout where Johnny will join them later. Val sticks up the robbers, a shot is fired, and all hands are soon dispatched. Johnny, with the money in a suitcase, joins Fay at the airport. Hilarity ensues and the fat lady still hasn't sung.

Trivia: Initial test screenings were poor, citing the non-linear structure as the main problem. Stanley Kubrick was forced to go back and edit the film in a linear fashion, actually making the film even more confusing. In the end, it was released in its original form, and is often cited as being a huge influence on other non-linear films like Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994).

The non-linear style of this movie really makes it interesting, the time jumps back and forth so you can see what everybody is doing at any given time. It really adds to the heist because it brings in the point of everything having to happen so precisely to work. Good little film.

Top 250 Challenge: 154

Sunset Blvd. (1950)
Number 31 on IMDb's Top 250

Joe Gillis (William Holden), an unsuccessful screenplay writer, escapes the finance men who are trying to reclaim his car by driving into the garage of an old mansion on Sunset Boulevard. Assumed to be someone else, he is led by Max the butler to the mansion's owner, silent film star Norma Desmond (Glory Swanson). Wishing to make a comeback, she hires him to rewrite her "Salome" script, then falls in love with him. Joe moves into the mansion as a kept man. Secretly, Joe is collaborating with a pretty young screenplay editor, Betty Schaefer, on another idea. Though she is engaged to his best friend, Artie Green, an assistant director, Betty falls in love with Joe. When Betty finds out about Norma, she asks him to leave Norma for her, but Joe can't unsettle her life, too. He decides, instead, to leave Hollywood. As he is leaving, a crazed Norma tries to stop him anyway she can...hilarity ensues.

Trivia: The "Desmond mansion" had been built by a William Jenkins in 1924 at a cost of $250,000. Its second owner was Jean Paul Getty, who purchased it for his second wife. Mrs. Getty divorced her millionaire husband and received custody of the house; it was she who rented it to Paramount for the filming. The movie that Cecil B. DeMille is shooting (in this movie and in real life) was Samson and Delilah (1949), being made at the same time as this film. As a final dig at Hollywood, the tragic ending music (by Franz Waxman) as Norma vanishes into the lens of a camera, segues into a full-blown orchestra version of the Paramount News Shorts' theme. As a practical joke, during the scene where William Holden and Nancy Olson kiss for the first time, Billy Wilder let them carry on for minutes without yelling cut (he'd already gotten the shot he needed on the first take). Eventually it wasn't Wilder who shouted "Cut!" but Holden's wife, who happened to be onset that day.

I have watched a few William Holden movies now (Stalag 17, The Bridge On The River Kwai, Network, Sabrina) and I have liked all of them. The same can be said for Billy Wilder movies (Double Indemnity, The Lost Weekend, Stalag 17, Sabrina, Some Like It Hot, The Apartment). So having both in the same movie was golden.

Top 250 Challenge: 151

The Third Man(1949)
Number 46 on IMDb's Top 250

An out of work pulp fiction novelist, Holly Martins, arrives in a post war Vienna divided into sectors by the victorious allies, and where a shortage of supplies has lead to a flourishing black market. He arrives at the invitation of an ex-school friend, Harry Lime, who has offered him a job, only to discover that Lime has recently died in a peculiar traffic accident. From talking to Lime's friends and associates Martins soon notices that some of the stories are inconsistent, and that all the witnesses were Lime's friends, including the driver of the truck who ran over Lime, and Martins determines to discover what really happened to Harry Lime. Hilarity ensues.

Trivia: Although David O. Selznick theoretically produced, the rest of the crew hated him and his ideas (he suggested once to Graham Greene that the film be called "Night Time in Vienna"). He had wanted to make the film "American friendly" with either Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart as Holly, and Robert Mitchum as Harry. However, one of the main reasons that he had been chosen to co-produce in the first place was simply so that it would be possible to have Orson Welles as Harry, as he was working for O. Selznick at the time.

This movie could have been called "Who killed Harry Lime?" This is clasic noir with it's use of shadows, amazing visuals, camera angles, dialog and acting. Joseph Cotton and Alida Valli sizzle as the down and out writer and the girl with a past who start to fall in love with each other while they search for the elusive truth of the third man. Orson Wells is also pretty good a Harry.