The Lodger (John Brahm, 1944)

Merle Oberon and Laird Cregar in The Lodger

Cast: Laird Cregar, Merle Oberon, George Sanders, Cedric Hardwicke, Sara Allgood, Aubrey Mather, Queenie Leonard, Doris Lloyd, David Clyde, Helena Pickard. Screenplay: Barré Lyndon, based on a novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes. Cinematography: Lucien Ballard. Art direction: James Basevi, John Ewing. Film editing: J. Watson Webb Jr. Music: Hugo Friedhofer.

Laird Cregar's great gift as the heaviest of heavies was to elicit a kind of sympathy for the bad guys he played. Which is no easy task when you're playing the most infamous of serial killers, Jack the Ripper. Marie Belloc Lowndes's novel was only "based on" the notorious murderer of ladies of the night -- it wasn't explicit that the character was Jack (whoever that was) -- and the earlier filmings, particularly Alfred Hitchcock's 1927 silent version, The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog, followed her lead, perhaps because Hitchcock's lodger was played by matinee idol Ivor Novello, which led to a twist in which the character turned out not to be the killer after all. But screenwriter Barré Lyndon and director John Brahm were perfectly happy to capitalize on the Ripper's perennial notoriety. This is a good, atmospheric version of the story, with effective shadowy, expressionistic camerawork by Lucien Ballard, and a solid cast.

Topper Takes a Trip (Norman Z. McLeod, 1938)

Topper Takes a Trip (Norman Z. McLeod, 1938)

Cast: Roland Young, Constance Bennett, Billie Burke, Alan Mowbray, Verree Teasdale, Franklin Pangborn, Alexander D'Arcy. Screenplay: Jack Jevne, Eddie Moran, Corey Ford, based on a novel by Thorne Smith. Cinematography: Norbert Brodine. Art direction: Charles D. Hall. Film editing: William H. Terhune. Music: Hugo Friedhofer, Edward B. Powell.

A Song Is Born (Howard Hawks, 1948)

Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo in A Song Is Born

Prof. Hobart Frisbee: Danny Kaye
Honey Swanson: Virginia Mayo
Prof. Magenbruch: Benny Goodman
Prof. Twingle: Hugh Herbert
Tony Crow: Steve Cochran
Dr. Elfini: J. Edward Bromberg
Prof. Gerkikoff: Felix Bressart
Prof. Traumer: Ludwig Stössel
Prof. Oddly: O.Z. Whitehead
Miss Bragg: Esther Dale
Miss Totten: Mary Field
Buck: Ford Washington Lee
Bubbles: John William Sublett

Director: Howard Hawks
Screenplay: Harry Tugend, Helen McSweeney
Based on a story and screenplay by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Thomas Monroe
Cinematography: Gregg Toland
Art direction: Perry Ferguson, George Jenkins
Film editing: Daniel Mandell
Music: Hugo Friedhofer, Emil Newman

If you've seen Howard Hawks's Ball of Fire (1941), there's really only one reason to see Hawks's A Song Is Born, a musical version of the earlier film that retains its rather silly plot and a large part of the dialogue. But that one reason is a good one: the music is provided by the likes of Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Barnet, and a host of other stars of the big band swing era. Otherwise, Hawks's direction is mostly a carbon copy of the first film, except that instead of Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck, he's working with Danny Kaye and Virginia Mayo, neither of whom Hawks liked. I happen to like Mayo, but I have a low tolerance for Kaye's shtick, his mugging and his patter songs. Fortunately, he's more subdued than usual in A Song Is Born, reportedly because he was going through marital problems and was under heavy psychoanalysis. Still, to hear Kaye repeating some of the dialogue carried over word for word from A Song Is Born makes me appreciate how good Cooper was in screwball comedy. The chief switch in the plot is that the encyclopedia Kaye's Prof. Frisbee is working on with six other professors has become a musical one, so that instead of rushing to compile a volume on slang, as Cooper's Prof. Potts was tasked to do, Prof. Frisbee has to cobble up a volume on jazz -- of which he has somehow remained ignorant. There is less emphasis on the other cute little professors in A Song Is Born than there is in Ball of Fire, which was inspired in part by Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). One of them, however, is played rather amusingly by Benny Goodman, who is invited by the other musicians to join in a jam session and of course distinguishes himself. The gangster plot, featuring Steve Cochran in the role played by Dana Andrews in the earlier film, is also trimmed down. Mayo's singing voice was dubbed by Jeri Sullavan.

The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)

Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Harold Russell, and Cathy O'Donnell in The Best Years of Our Lives

Al Stephenson: Fredric March
Milly Stephenson: Myrna Loy
Peggy Stephenson: Teresa Wright
Fred Derry: Dana Andrews
Marie Derry: Virginia Mayo
Homer Parrish: Harold Russell
Wilma Cameron: Cathy O'Donnell
Butch Engle: Hoagy Carmichael
Hortense Derry: Gladys George
Pat Derry: Roman Bohnen
Mr. MiltonI: Ray Collins
Cliff: Steve Cochran

Director: William Wyler
Screenplay: Robert E. Sherwood
Based on a novel by MacKinlay Kantor
Cinematography: Gregg Toland
Film editing: Daniel Mandell
Music: Hugo Friedhofer

The Best Years of Our Lives is a very good movie, rich in characters and provocative incidents. It's not a great movie, but it's such a satisfying work of popular moviemaking that I'm surprised in this age of sequels and reboots, especially after the recent enthusiasm for the "Greatest Generation," no one has attempted a follow-up on the lives of its characters, taking them into the era of the Korean War, the nuclear buildup of the Soviet Union, the Cold War, McCarthyism, the civil rights struggle, and so on. Because there is something unfinished about the stories of Al, Fred, and Homer, not to mention Milly, Peggy, Marie, and Wilma, that perhaps director William Wyler and screenwriter Robert E. Sherwood couldn't possibly have foreseen in 1946. On the other hand, that's what makes The Best Years of Our Lives such a fascinating and useful document of its times. It's anything but an antiwar film -- although Homer Parrish has been mutilated, Fred Derry suffers PTSD nightmares, and Al Stephenson is well on his way to alcoholism, the film makes no effort to suggest that the war that inflicted these injuries on them was anything but just. The one naysayer, the "America Firster" who tangles with Homer and Fred in the drugstore, gets his just deserts, even if it costs Fred his job. What wins us over most is the performances: Fredric March overacts just a touch, but it won him the best actor Oscar. Harold Russell, the non-actor who received both a supporting actor Oscar and a special award, is engagingly real. And Dana Andrews proves once again that he was one of the best of the forgotten stars of the 1950s, carrying the film through from the beginning in which he seeks a ride home to the end in which he pays a nostalgic visit to the kind of plane from which he used to drop bombs. Neither Andrews nor Myrna Loy ever received an Oscar nomination, but their work in the film exhibits the kind of acting depth that makes showier award-winners look a little silly. Loy makes the most of her part as the wryly patient spouse, Teresa Wright manages to make a role somewhat handicapped by Production Code squeamishness about extramarital affairs convincing, and Virginia Mayo once again demonstrates her skill in "bad-girl" roles.  Wyler was a director much celebrated by the industry, with a record-setting total of 12 nominations, including three wins: for this film, Mrs. Miniver (1942), and Ben-Hur (1959). He's not so much admired by those of us who cling to the idea that a director should provide a central consciousness in his films, being regarded as an impersonal technician. But Best Years is a deeply personal film for Wyler, who had just spent the war serving in the army air force, flying dangerous missions over Germany to make documentary films, during which he suffered serious hearing loss that threatened his postwar directing career. His experiences inform the film, especially the character of Fred Derry. In addition to the best picture Oscar and the ones for Wyler, March, and Russell, Best Years also won for Sherwood's screenplay, Daniel Mandell's film editing, and for Hugo Friedhofer's score. The last, I think, is questionable: Friedhofer seems determined to make sure we don't miss the emotional content of any scene, almost "mickey-mousing" the feelings of the characters with his music. It feels intrusive in some of the film's best moments, such as the beautifully staged reunion of Al and Milly, or the scene in which Homer, fearful that the hooks that replace his hands have destroyed his engagement to Wilma, invites her up to his room to help him get ready for bed, demonstrating the harness that holds his prostheses in place. It's a moment with an oddly erotic tension that doesn't need Friedhofer's strings to tell us what the characters are feeling.

Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951)

Jan Sterling and Kirk Douglas in Ace in the Hole

Chuck Tatum: Kirk Douglas
Lorraine Minosa: Jan Sterling
Herbie Cook: Robert Arthur
Jacob Q. Boot: Porter Hall
Al Federber: Frank Cady
Leo Minosa: Richard Benedict
Sheriff Gus Kretzer: Ray Teal

Director: Billy Wilder
Screenplay: Billy Wilder, Lesser Samuels, Walter Newman
Cinematography: Charles Lang
Music: Hugo Friedhofer

Ace in the Hole has a reputation as one of Billy Wilder's most bitter and cynical films. But today, when media manipulation is such a commonplace topic of discourse, it seems a little shy of the mark: After all, the manipulation in the movie seems to be the work of one man, Chuck Tatum, who milks the story of a man trapped in a cave-in to rehabilitate his own career. Other media types, including the editor and publisher of the small Albuquerque paper Tatum uses to springboard back into the big time, seem more conscientious about telling the truth. As we've seen time and again, it's the audience (the ratings, the ad dollars) that drives the news, with the journalists often reluctantly following. Wilder's screenplay, written with Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman, certainly blames them (or us) for the magnitude of Tatum's manipulation, but the focus on one unscrupulous reporter makes the media the primary evil. Maybe it's just because I've been following the Trump campaign this summer, and just watched the stunning eight-hour documentary about O.J. Simpson on ESPN, O.J.: Made in America, that I'm inclined to blame the great imbalance in what gets covered as news on the audience at least as much as on the reporters and editors who cater to their tastes. That said, Ace in the Hole is pretty effective movie-making -- so much so that it's surprising to learn that it was one of Wilder's biggest flops. It has some terrific lines, like the one from Lorraine, the trampy wife of the cave-in victim: When told by Tatum that she should go to church to keep up the appearance that she's still in love with her husband, she retorts, "I don't go to church. Kneeling bags my nylons." Porter Hall, one of Hollywood's great character actors, is wonderfully wry as the editor forced by Tatum into hiring him, and Robert Arthur, one of Hollywood's perennial juveniles, does good work as Herbie, the young reporter corrupted by Tatum's ambition. Sterling spent her long career typecast as a floozy, but that's probably because she did such a good job of it. Douglas is, as usual, intense, which has always made me feel a little ambivalent about him as an actor; I wish he would unclench occasionally, but I admire his willingness to take on such an unlikable role and make the character ... well, unlikable. He's the right actor for Wilder, who seems to be on the verge of trying to give Tatum a measure of redemption, but can't quite let himself do it.