Welcome to another edition of Fedya’s “Movies to Tivo” Thread, for the week of November 29-December 5, 2021. A new month starts on Wednesday, which means we’re going to be getting a new Star of the Month. But there’s still interesting stuff on the other movie channels too. And with no real football to worry about this week, why not sit down with some good movies? As always, all times are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
If you want to see a movie that shows why some people think of foreign films as pretentious nonsense, try watching Hiroshima mon amour, at 2:00 AM Monday on TCM. Emmanuelle Riva plays an actress, who came of age in a small city in France during World War II and survived the Nazi occupation in part by taking one of the Nazis as her lover. Many years later, she’s in Hiroshima, making an international movie that’s supposed to be a powerful film against the presence of nuclear weapons. While in Hiroshima, she met an architect (Eiji Okada) who lost most of his family in the 1945 atomic bombing of his city; since then he’s gotten married. But the actress and the architect have an affair, which is evidenced by the fact that they’re in bed together relatively unclad. But for the most part, all they do is talk and talk about war to the point that you wonder what the hell the point of their relationship is. And there are a lot of people who consider stuff like this great, mostly because it’s not the way Hollywood did things. Watch for yourself and you be the judge.
TCM has a bunch of mysteries on Monday morning and afternoon, which gives me another chance to recommend Lured, airing at 12:45 PM Monday. Lucille Ball plays Sandra Carpenter, a taxi dancer living in London. There’s a serial killer out there getting his victims from the personal ads and writing poems that baffle the police. Sandra’s friend answers one of those personal ads and goes missing, so when Sandra goes to the police, Inspector Harley Temple (Charles Coburn) has an idea: have Sandra start answering personal ads, with the police staying one step behind her to keep her safe, until she can find the man who might be the killer. Sandra has some comic misadventures before meeting Robert Fleming (George Sanders), and even falling in love with him. But of course, she has a job to do, and if Robert really is the killer, Sandra has a pretty big problem on her hands. Lucille Ball gets to be non-zany here, and does a good job with it. Watch also for Boris Karloff as the subject of one of the ads who definitely isn’t the killer.
A movie that’s been part of the FXM rotation recently is The Horror of It All. It will be on again at 9:40 AM Tuesday. Pat Boone plays Jack Robinson, an American in England who has fallen in love with Cynthia Marley (Erica Rogers), and wants to mary her. But he wants permission from her family. Unfortunately, he finds that she’s got all sorts of wacky relatives, starting with Uncle Percival who creates all sorts of inventions years beyond their sell-by date; Uncle Cornwallis (Dennis Price), who seems closest to sane of all the relatives; a bedridden grandfather, another uncle, and a female cousin Natalia round out the family. They all live in one of those manor houses cut off from the rest of the world. And then relatives start dropping dead, and Jack gets the decided feeling that somebody is killing off the relatives. But who and why? This is supposed to be one of those comic horror movies, and gives Pat the chance to sing a song.
I’ve got a couple of Irene Dunne movies this week. First up is My Favorite Wife, at 4:30 AM Wednesday on TCM. Cary Grant plays Nick Arden, a lawyer who tragically lost his first wife Ellen in a shipwreck seven years ago. Ellen’s body was never found, and it takes seven years being missing to be declared legally dead, so Nick does the somber duty of getting Ellen’s death declared legal so that he can marry Bianca (Gail Patrick), with whom he’s fallen in love in the meantime. Nick and Bianca, however, come home from getting married to find… Ellen (that’s Irene Dunne). Ellen obviously did not die, but was shipwrecked on a deserted Pacific island. She was recently rescued, and for some reason Nick was never informed of this. But Ellen has returned home, possibly to resume married life with Nick. The other problem is that Ellen isn’t the only one who was shipwrecked; there was a man Stephen Burkett (Randolph Scott) on the island as well. Naturally, being the only two people together for seven years, they fell in love too. Nowadays, Nick and Ellen would get a no-fault divorce if need be, but that wasn’t a thing when the movie was made.
We’re into a new month, which means a new Star of the Month on TCM. For December 2021, that star is Ingrid Bergman, who is well remembered from movies like Casablanca (10:00 PM Wednesday). Her movies will be on TCM every Wednesday in prime time. For this first week of the tribute, however, the movies continue well into Thursday, as TCM has gotten several of the films Bergman made in her native Sweden before coming to Hollywood to make Intermezzo: A Love Story opposite Leslie Howard. The Swedish version of Intermezzo will be on at 12:45 PM Thursday, but unfortunately, the Hollywood remake is not part of the tribute.
Boogie Nights is going to be on a couple of times this week, including 11:00 PM Wednesday on Showtime Showcase. Mark Wahlberg plays Eddie, a kid from a lower-class part of Los Angeles in 1977 who works as a busboy in a swanky disco on the other side of town. There, he meets Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), who is a director of adult films who has heard about Eddie’s endowment. This leads to Eddie getting invited to join the adult film industry himself, taking the name Dirk Diggler. There, he finds a bunch of other troubled people, from his new best friend Reed (John C. Reilly) to divorced mom Amber Waves (Julianne Moore); and Buck (Don Cheadle), who wants to own his own electronics store; and more. Dirk quickly becomes successful, but he lets success go to his head, and as the 1980s come so does the free-flowing cocaine which, combined with Dirk’s growing ego, threatens to destroy his career. (There’s no mention of AIDS, however.) Watch also for a young Philip Seymour Hoffman as the sound man who’s gay and falls in love with Dirk.
Several years before Clark Gable married Carole Lombard, the two were stars together in a movie called No Man of Her Own. That movie will be on TCM at 8:00 PM Thursday. Gable plays Jerry Stewart, a professional gambler from the days when that mean somebody who wasn’t on the up-and-up. He has to flee the big city in part to get away from the cops, but also to get away from a fomer in Kay (Dorothy MacKaill) who he thinks will spill the beans on him. He flees to a small town, where he meets librarian Connie (that’s Lombard). The two wind up wagering on a coin flip over whether they should get married, and the result of it is that they do, Jerry thinking that there’s no way marriage can get in the way of his gambling and cons. Sure enough, it does get in the way, and when Connie finds out what Jerry is really up to in the big city, she’d rather that he quit and go in for something honest. How will Jerry handle it?
According to a search of the site, it’s been 3½ years since I’ve mentioned River of No Return. It’s on again this week, at 12:19 AM Friday (that’s still Thursday evening LFT) on StarzEncore Westerns. Robert Mitchum plays Matt Calder, a man with a past trying to start life anew on a remote farm with his son Mark (Tommy Rettig). Into his life comes Harry Weston (Rory Calhoun), a professional gambler who has won a mining claim in a poker game and who wants to get to town to file that claim before anybody else can. Harry also has a trophy wife in Kay (Marilyn Monroe). Matt won’t let Harry borrow his horse to get to town, so Harry takes it, along with Matt’s gun. This is a problem since the area still has Indians who are willing to attack. The only way out is down the river on a raft, so guess what Matt, Mark, and Kay are going to do? In the climax, Mark finally gets to understand why his father has the past he does.
I know you all like Joel McCrea, so let me mention one of his movies that’s rarely on the schedule: The Silver Cord. It will be on TCM at 3:30 AM Friday. McCrea plays David Phelps, an American architect in Europe who meets biology researcher Christine (Irene Dunne) who, like David, is an American abroad. The two fall in love and get married, and get job offers in New York, so the return to America, but plan on meeting David’s widowed mother (Laura Hope Crews) first. Big mistake. She’s a nasty, selfish woman who only wants her sons for herself, and is stunned that Christine is going to work and take David to the big city. Worse, David has a brother Robert (Eric Linden) who is engaged to Hester (Frances Dee, who would become the real-life Mrs. Joel McCrea). Mom actively tries to break up that relationship, and even gets Robert to tell Hester she’s not right for him. When Christine takes Hester’s side, and David has some sympathy, Mom starts going to work on breaking up all the other relationships.
Now that we’re into December, it’s time for Christmas movies to start showing up. (Unless, of course, you’re Goldie and have been watching the Hallmark Channel instead of the Packers.) A lesser-known movie that I’ve recommended several Christmases in the past is It Happened on Fifth Avenue, airing at 5:45 PM Saturday on TCM. Victor Moore plays Aloysius McKeever, a homeless man with an odd living arrangement. He knows that the incredibly wealthy Michael O’Connor (Charlie Ruggles) migrates south in the autumn and back north in the spring, so Aloysius moves into the New York mansion to spend the winter and the place down in Florida for the summer. This year, however, McKeever runs into Jim Bullock (Don DeFore), a veteran of recently-ended World War II who isn’t able to find a place to live because of the housing crunch. Aloysius lets him stay even though it’s not his house to make the decision. Things get really complicated when O’Connor’s daughter Trudy (Gale Storm) runs away from her boarding school and shows up at the house looking for some things. She, having run away, is followed by her estranged parents (Ann Harding plays Mom), all of whom show up at the house with the homeless guy who isn’t supposed to be there.
Finally, if you want an 80s comedy, try Funny Farm, at 8:49 AM Sunday on StarzEncore Classics. Chevy Chase plays Andy Farmer, a sportswriter in New York married to teacher Elizabeth (Madolyn Smith). Andy dreams of dropping out of the rat race so that he can write the Great American Novel, while Elizabeth would also enjoy the chance of living in a smaller town. Together, the two find a farmhouse outside a small Vermont town and fall in love with it. That is, until they actually move in and find out what life there is like. The townsfolk are all the standard tropes you get in a Hollywood movie about small towns, while the house itself isn’t all that it was cracked up to be. Things only get worse when Elizabeth decides she’s going to try her hand at writing a book – a children’s book in her case – and it looks like she might have more success at it that Andy is having.