That Uncertain Feeling (Ernst Lubitsch, 1941)

That Uncertain Feeling (Ernst Lubitsch, 1941)

Cast: Merle Oberon, Melvyn Douglas, Burgess Meredith, Harry Davenport, Eve Arden, Olive Blakeney, Alan Mowbray, Sig Ruman. Screenplay: Donald Ogden Stewart, Walter Reisch, based on a play by Victorien Sardou and Emile DeNajac. Cinematography: George Barnes. Film editing: William Shea. Music: Werner R. Heymann.

Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945)

Joan Crawford and Eve Arden in Mildred Pierce 

Mildred Pierce: Joan Crawford
Wally Fay: Jack Carson
Veda Pierce: Ann Blyth
Monte Beragon: Zachary Scott
Ida Corwin: Eve Arden
Bert Pierce: Bruce Bennett
Lottie: Butterfly McQueen
Mrs. Maggie Biederhof: Lee Patrick
Inspector Peterson: Moroni Olsen
Kay Pierce: Jo Ann Olsen

Director: Michael Curtiz
Screenplay: Ranald McDougal
Based on a novel by James M. Cain
Cinematography: Ernest Haller
Art direction: Anton Grot
Film editing: David Weisbart
Music: Max Steiner

Mildred Pierce provided Joan Crawford with her shining Oscar moment, even if she had to accept her statuette from her sickbed -- surrounded, to be sure, by press photographers. But I don't think it's her best performance. I prefer her as Crystal Allen in The Women (George Cukor, 1939), who, though she loses her sugar daddy still manages to kiss off the "respectable" women with a splendid curtain line. Or as Helen Wright, the consummate rich and predatory patroness in Humoresque (Jean Negulesco, 1946), treating the Fannie Hurst melodrama as if it were Ibsen, inhabiting every absurd moment with full conviction. Or even as Millicent Weatherby in Autumn Leaves (Robert Aldrich, 1956), in which she fights against the hardness into which her face was beginning to settle as she turned 50 by crafting an image of a younger, more vulnerable woman. There are things about Mildred Pierce that don't quite work,  particularly the shifts from film noir, shot with expressionist flair by Ernest Haller, to "woman's picture" opulence of setting. But it is still an indispensable film, as essential to defining Crawford's career -- and hence to an understanding of how Hollywood viewed women in the 1940s -- as Now, Voyager (Irving Rapper, 1942) was to Bette Davis's.

Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959)

Joseph N. Welch, Lee Remick, and George C. Scott in Anatomy of a Murder

Paul Biegler: James Stewart
Laura Manion: Lee Remick
Lt. Frederick Manion: Ben Gazzara
Parnell Emmett McCarthy: Arthur O'Connell
Maida Rutledge: Eve Arden
Mary Pilant: Kathryn Grant
Claude Dancer: George C. Scott
Judge Weaver: Joseph N. Welch

Director: Otto Preminger
Screenplay: Wendell Mayes
Based on a novel by John D. Voelker (as Robert Traver)
Cinematography: Sam Leavitt
Music: Duke Ellington

An exceptional film, far more deserving of the year's best picture Oscar than the bombastic Ben-Hur (William Wyler), Anatomy has a lot of great things going for it: the wonderful courtroom conflict between old Hollywood pro James Stewart and Method-trained newcomer George C. Scott; the tension and volatility of Ben Gazzara as the defendant; the presence of such scene-stealers as Arthur O'Connell and Eve Arden in the supporting cast, along with other character actor stalwarts like Murray Hamilton, John Qualen, Orson Bean, Howard McNear, and Jimmy Conlin. And even the "stunt casting" of non-actor Joseph N. Welch, famous for the integrity he showed in his confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Army-McCarthy hearings five years earlier, pays off handsomely, with Welch bringing both gravitas and humor to his role as the trial judge. The soundtrack by Duke Ellington also adds a touch of greatness to the movie, which  David Thomson calls "magnificent." Where I think it falls short of magnificence is in the treatment of the rape victim played by Lee Remick. There is, of course, some ambiguity remaining in the film as to whether she was in fact raped, but the part as written by Wendell Mayes and the performance as directed by Preminger turns the presumed victim into an air-headed sex kitten. It's possible that Hollywood, so long precluded by the Production Code from even treating the subject of sexual assault, hadn't yet developed a grammar and vocabulary for dealing with the subject. Remick was a fine actress, and she does manage to show moments of vulnerability in her performance, but the general impression of the character given by the film verges on the despicable "she was asking for it." Preminger had been taunting the Code since The Moon Is Blue (1954) and The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), challenging the strictures on language (the words "virgin" and "seduce") in the former and drug use in the latter. Anatomy continued the assault on prudishness, though few who watch it today will be shocked by its rather clinical discussion of whether Laura Mannion was indeed raped, or be inclined to sniff daintily, as Time magazine did in its review, that the film "seems less concerned with murder than with anatomy."