Welcome to another edition of Fedya's "Movies to Tivo" thread, for the week of October 12-18, 2015. The foliage is turning and with that the weather is getting colder, which means spending a little more time inside. So why not spend that time watching some good movies? As always, I've got a quality selections of films for you to help keep you all from bickering at each other or at me. Times given are in Eastern, unless otherwise mentioned.
We'll start off this week over on FXM Retro with a movie I don't know that I've ever mentioned before: The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, at 3:00 AM Monday and repeated at 12:20 PM. This is based on the true story of Gladys Aylward (played here by Ingrid Bergman), a British servant who believed that her true calling in life was to go to China and become a missionary. The missionary organizations rejected her because she didn't have an adequate education, but off she went anyhow. She had an address of an old missionary who needed a young assistant, went there, and winds up running the whole mission. However, this was the turbulent years of the early Chinese republic, followed in 1931 by the Japanese invasion. Curt Jurgens(!) plays a Chinese colonel woh tries to get Gladys to leave for safety, and along the way he falls in love with her. Eventually Gladys does have to leave for safety, but has to take 100 orphans with her, making the task much more difficult.
David Niven returns for another night as Star of the Month Monday, including The First of the Few, at midnight Tuesday (ie. 11:00 PM Monday LFT, or just after Monday Night Football). Niven isn't the star here; that honor goes to Leslie Howard, who also directed. Howard plays Reginald Mitchell, who in the 1920s worked for a company making seaplanes. However, Mitchell had ideas for monoplanes and tested those out in the air races that were popular in the early decades of evolution, with the help of test pilot Geoffrey (David Niven). However, in the mid-1930s Mitchell visited German aviation companies, which is when he realized the Nazis were planning to make warplanes that could attack Britain. Britain was going to have to be ready with a plane of its own. So Mitchell tried to convince the Ministry of Defense to produce what would eventually become the Spitfire. Unfortunately, Mitchell's health was failing, and he didn't live to see the Spitfire win the Battle of Britain for the UK. A very well-made movie for aviation buffs.
The women directors series continues on Tuesday night. They must have been desperate to come up with directors to put in the spotlight, because this week includes Look Who's Talking at 10:00 PM. Mollie (Kirstie Alley) is a New York accountant having an affair with married Albert (George Segal), who knocks her up. However, he decides not to leave his wife, leaving her to face motherhood alone, which is when she meets James (John Travolta), the cabbie who drives her to the hospital when she goes into labor early. He's mistaken for the father and as so often happens in these romantic comedies, complications ensue. This one, however, has a twist: much of the action is related through the thoughts of the baby, Mikey (voiced by Bruce Willis). Mikey knows that James would be better for Mom than Albert, but since he's just a baby, there's no way Mom can understand what he's thinking.
Wednesday is the birth anniversary of actress Lillian Gish, who would be 122 years young if she were still alive. TCM is marking the occasion with several of Gish's silent pictures. One that I don't think I've mentioned before is La Boheme, at 9:30 AM. Gish plays Mimi, the seamstress who lives in a tenement across the way from a group of starving artists. Among them is Rodolphe (John Gilbert), a writer who is scratching out a living by writing for a magazine but would really rather write a play. Mimi has a count pursuing her which could be her meal ticket out of this grinding poverty, except that she and Rodolphe fall in love with each other. And then Mimi works on getting the count to produce Rodolphe's play, except that Rodolphe misinterpets Mimi's meetings with the count and thinks that she's being unfaithful to him. And then she tragically falls ill which could doom Rodolphe's dreams. Watch for a young Edward Everett Horton as one of John Gilbert's roommates. You may know the Puccini opera, but that and this movie were based on an earlier novel. (Obviously Gish couldn't sing opera in this since it was a silent movie.)
In among all those Lillian Gish silents are two sound shorts. When Warner Bros. released Don Juan in 1926, it was the first movie with a synchronized soundtrack and sound effects, although it didn't have any talking dialog. At the same time, they released a series of shorts that did have sound and talking or singing in some cases. One of these is His Pastimes, at 12:50 PM. This one has a man named Roy Smeck who was billed as "The Wizard of the String" playing slide guitar and ukulele in a rendition of a song that was popular back in the day.
The other short is Behind the Lines at 2:40 PM, which was actually released along with The Better Ole a few months after Don Juan. This short has Elise Janis!, a popular vaudevillean of the day, in a World War I setting performing a couple of songs for what are supposed to be American soldiers in France.
For those of you who like more recent movies, you could always try Two of a Kind, at 3:30 AM Thursday on MovieMax. God (voiced by Gene Hackman but not seen) is tired of his creation on Earth, so he threatens to blow up the place. Four angels (Charles Durning, Beatrice Straight, Scatman Crothers, and Richard Bright) plead with God to let them give a chance to show the innate goodness of mankind, and he relents: if they can get a pair of people to act well enough for God's liking, he'll keep Earth going. Unfortunately, they pick Zack (John Travolta), a struggling inventor in hock to a loan shark, who is planning to rob a bank to get the money he owes! The teller he plans to rob from, Debbie (Olivia Newton-John), is a struggling actress who, needing the money, winds up taking it herself! All of this has to please the Devil's man (Oliver Reed). Unfortunately, Travolta and Newton-John don't have the chemistry they did in Grease, but the fight between good versus evil with the character actors playing there is what shines, and ultimately saves this one. Well, some of you may like the 80s music too.
Thursday's look at women directors looks at women who made documentaries. Among them is Barbara Kopple, who made her directorial dÉbut with Harlan County, USA, airing at 9:30 PM Thursday. Back in the early 1970s, Kopple was planning to make a documentary about a struugle within the United Mine Workers to elect a new president, which led to a murder. But along the way, a funny thing happened: one of the locals at a Kentucky coal mine went on strike, and that story proved to be even more interesting than the struggle within the union. The company running the mine is presented as preternatuarlly evil, with the poor put-upon mine workers as virtuous victims. It's easy to do that, however, when your victims still don't have indoor plumbing and it's the 1970s.
Friday night's horror theme on TCM is movies involving children in important roles. The night kicks off at 8:00 PM with The Nanny. Bette Davis plays a nanny for a London family whose son Joey (William Dix) has just returned from a stay at a facility for disturbed children. That's because he killed his kid sister. Or, at least, that's what all the adults believe. Joey insists that it is in fact the nanny who drowned the girl in the bathtub, and nobody will believe him. Not only that, but he's insisting that given the chance, she'd kill him too! The nanny is the one person who seems to treat him well, but is she trying to hide something? Eventually, the kid escapes out his bedroom window and visits the teenage girl (Pamela Franklin) in the flat above theirs, telling her his stories about the nanny. She may just believe him. But if he really is in danger, can she save him from the nanny? Bette Davis is nowhere near as campy here as she was in other 60s movies, and that works well for the movie, which isn't horror in the traditional sense, but is definitely creepy.
Those of you who like family-friendly movies could do worse than to watch Andy Hardy's Private Secretary, at 6:00 AM Sunday on TCM. Mickey Rooney returns as Andy Hardy, who in this one is finally about to graduate high school after Rooney had been playing Hardy for four years already. That is, he'll graduate high school if he can pass all his final exams, which presents a problem. The other problem is that Andy has met a nice young girl, opera-singing Kathryn Land (real-life opera singer Kathryn Grayson), who comes from a family that's down on its luck. So Andy hires her as a private secretary, and even writes her a big check that he can't cash, except that his dad can. Where did Andy Hardy think he was getting that kind of money from in 1941? Meanwhile, getting back to matters academic, Kathryn and Andy's longtime girlfriend next door Polly (Ann Rutherford) help him study to retake the English exam, so that he can pass and graduate. You'd think Polly would have dumped him for the succession of girlfriends he had in these movies.
Back over on FXM Retro, you've got a chance to catch A Farewell to Arms, at 8:00 AM Sunday. This is based on the book by Ernest Hemingway. In World War I, Frederick (Rock Hudson) is an American. He goes to Italy to become an ambulance driver. He gets injured, and is nursed back to health by British nurse Catherine (Jennifer Jones). The two fall in love. He knocks her up. Then he deserts and leaves Italy for Switzerland, which was of course neutral. Catherine follows him to Switzerland to have the child. Tragedy ensues. I've never been a big fan of the writing of Ernest Hemingway, so I have to admit to having trouble getting into a movie like this. However, it's filmed in lovely Cinemascope, and the Italian Alps provide some nice background scenery.
Original Post