Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

This 1941 film directed by John Ford was very much what I expected (or feared): a sentimental tale about a Welsh mining community where people break into song at regular intervals.  It is an adaptation of a best selling novel with the same title, from 1939. The focus of the story is the Morgan household, comprising Mr and Mrs Morgan who are in late middle-age, and seven children.  There are five grownup sons, Ivor, Ianto, Davy, Owen and Gwilym.  None of them have much of a personality, so that as far as I was concerned they were anonymous and interchangeable characters.  Ivor gets married and moves out, but the other four live with their parents and don't seem to have any interest in the opposite sex.   There is a sixth son, Huw, played by a 12-year-old Roddy McDowall.  The events of the film are narrated by adult Huw, looking back nostalgically on his childhood. It was unclear to me how long a period is covered by the film, but it can't be many years ...

This 1940 film is an adaptation of the best selling novel by AJ Cronin about a mining community.  As a work of social realism centred on the working class it was ahead of its time in that we had to wait another twenty years or so before the wave of British kitchen sink dramas such as ' Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' and 'Th is Sporting Life' started appearing.  This is also the film that confirmed the director Carol Reed as a major talent. Cronin was involved in the process of adapting his long novel (over 700 pages) which necessarily meant some streamlining. For example World War I features prominently in the novel but is not present in the film, which I took to be set in the 1930s. The lead protagonist in the film is Davey Fenwick a bright young man, the son of a coal miner, who passionately believes in the need to nationalise coal mining. He is very well played by Michael Redgrave even if he is, at 32 years of age, too old for the part. A few years earlier Redgra...

  As the title suggests, this 1940 Western directed by Fritz Lang and starring Henry Fonda, is about the older brother of Jesse James.  Frank is returning in the sense that Henry Fonda played him the previous year in 'Jesse James', which was a sufficiently big hit to cause the studio to reunite many members of the cast for this sequel.  It starts where the earlier film finished, with the murder of Jesse James in 1882 by R obert Ford (played in both films by John Carradine).  In truth Frank's life after the death of his brother  doesn't sound very dramatic: after a few months he gave himself up to the authorities, was tried for robbery and murder, was acquitted, and went on thereafter to live a surprisingly long and uneventful life. So hats off to the screenwriters for creating a moderately entertaining story, built around his trial and acquittal, which takes up the second half of the film. Before we get to Frank handing himself in the film has him going after Fo...

This excellent 1954 Western is a good example of what happens when you hand over a good story to a competent director (Edward Dmytryk) and a decent cast, headed up by  Spencer Tracy as Matt Devereaux, the domineering owner of a ranching empire and father of four sons — Ben (Richard Widmark), Mike, Denny and Joe (Robert Wagner). T he first three were born to a white wife who died long ago, whilst Joe is the son of an Indian woman (Katy Jurado) who Matt married.  The locals disapprove but given Matt's wealth and importance he can afford to ignore it. But, as we learn, all is not well in th e Devereaux family.  All the sons, especially Ben, resent the fact that Matt treats them as little better than hired hands.  Ben also envies Joe because he is Matt's favourite. The film has an interesting structure, starting with Joe being released from prison after serving a three year sentence.  Matt is dead, and Ben as head of the family tries to get Joe to start a new life e...

Joel McCrea always brings a sense of decency to any of his roles, in a way that even in the days of the Wild West (as in this 1957 Western) must have seemed a mite old fashioned. He always wants to do the right thing - here he’s trying to stop a lot of killing but he sure has his work cut out.   On one side is his bull-headed half-brother Bishop who owns more land than he knows what to do with but who's determined to protect it at any cost. On the other side is a devious piece of work, Harper, who wants to get his hands on Bishop’s cattle.  He has a cunning plan to do so, involving a bunch of innocent settlers who he has brought to Bishop's land, so that there will be a battle between them and Bishop's men.  In addition Harper has employed the services of a criminal, Zarata, and his men.  It's an intriguing setup which held my attention throughout.  Admittedly the settlers are largely a forgettable bunch, other than an eye-catching widow, Ellen, played by Virgin...

This Wes Craven film gave the horror genre a shot in the arm by introducing a meta element, by having the teenage protagonists aware of slasher movie tropes.  This is at its most obvious when a movie buff informs his fellow students of the three rules which films of the type we are watching must follow.  The first of these is that you are safe if you are a virgin which is amusing given that at this precise moment our main character Sidney is losing her virginity to her boyfriend Billy. Sidney has been having a bad time of it: we’re just coming up to the anniversary of the horrific rape and murder of her mother, her father has abandoned her for a business conference, and she has been attacked by a killer who at one point she suspects might be Billy himself. To add insult to injury her fellow students aren’t very sympathetic but then again they are a remarkably unpleasant bunch.  The film starts off with the brutal murder of a couple of students, but no one the next day sho...