With a war going on, I’d be more worried if the movies were exceptional. With the world mobilizing to war, it’s just not the best year for moviemaking, sadly.
A great book made into an ok, but gigantic film. Ingrid Bergman and Garry Cooper do their best to do Ernest Hemingway justice. And at least this movie looks great, trying to recreate the Spanish Civil War.
It would get a Warren Beatty remake later, but Ernst Lubitsch’s original has a lot of charm as well. Don Ameche stars as a man who’s recently died, and confronts a jovial Satan about his “sinning” ways. It’s weird, but it’s delightful nonetheless.
Roger Livesey plays Clive Candy, a young impassioned solider who, so pissed at German propaganda, goes to Germany to solve the problem. Instead, what transpires is a questions of British customs and a friendship across lines of battle, pretty bold during wartime.
Carl Dreyer’s story about Danish history and female sexuality. Lisbeth Movin plays a minister’s wife, frustrated by her husband’s insistence on purity eg abstinence. By philandering around, she gets accused of witchcraft, which, while awful, is freeing for the protagonist, who loses her fear.
During a scary wartime for everyone, sometimes you just want to watch a dog get home to his owner. Lassie, the bravest, smartest dog, let alone collie, that ever lived, gets cruelly separated from her boy, leading her on an epic quest back home, through beautiful, sometimes dangerous, Americana.
A preview of things to come, Alfred Hitchcock slipped in this gem during the war, supposedly his favorite film. Joseph Cotten plays Uncle Charlie, who wanders back into the life of his niece Teresa Wright and the rest of the family. However, strange men keep following him around, and Charlie’s behavior grows stranger and creepier, forcing poor Teresa to figure out what the hell is going on…before something horrible happens to her or worse, her family.
