Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

Anyone who found ‘A House of Dynamite’ tense and scary should really check out this 1964 precursor. It had the misfortune to come out a few months after ‘Dr Strangelove’ and as a result suffered at the box office, but in its own way it is very impressive.   As the result of a freak accident, in which some new Soviet jamming technology plays a part, a group of US bombers are ordered to invade Soviet airspace and drop their nuclear bombs on Moscow.   That’s bad enough of course, but the real problem is that the Russians will inevitably launch an all-out retaliatory strike, leading to total nuclear Armageddon.   Cue frantic efforts to stop the bombers by any means, and to convince the Russian Premier that it’s all an accident.  But there's a relentless inevitability about the fact that whatever desperate measures are used, including the US military giving their opposite numbers help in trying to shoot down the bombers, one plane will get through. At that point...

This 1964 film is about one of my favourite subjects, US politics.   It is an adaptation by Gore Vidal of his own play, set in a party convention which has to choose the man who will contest the Presidential election.  It seems to be everyone's assumption that whoever is the successful nominee will win that election, so there's a lot at stake. The two front-runners represent two strands of US politics, elitism and populism. In the elitist corner is William Russell, played by Henry Fonda in his most principled mode.  He's rich, clever, never short of a literary quote, but has a fragile marriage possibly due to some past affairs of his.   His mental health might also be fragile given that we learn during the film that he once had a nervous breakdown so bad that it hospitalised him for a while.  Vidal based him on the Democrat politician Adlai Stevenson, who lost two Presidential elections. In the populist corner is Joe Cantwell, played by Cliff Robertson...

This 1957 Western has a great pedigree: Anthony Mann directed it, Dudley Nichols wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay, Elmer Bernstein wrote the score, and Henry Fonda stars.  Intriguingly Anthony Perkins co-stars, in one of his earliest roles. As with 'High Noon' the sheriff here (Ben, played by Perkins) can't rely on his local townspeople in a crisis.  Unlike Gary Cooper, Ben is new to the job and young and inexperienced, and the crisis takes some time arriving.  The film starts with a bounty hunter, Morgan (Fonda) coming into town to claim his reward, having killed a wanted man.  Everyone is a bit snooty about it, they wanted the bad guy brought in alive so that they could try him - which is ironic given where the film ends. Anyway Morgan has to hang around to collect his reward, and finds lodging with a local widow who is a bit of an outcast owing to her husband being an Indian, and her having a mixed race son, Kip.  Racism is an undercurrent throughout, which...

Of all the great Preston Sturges film comedies this is my favourite by some distance.  It's simply perfect, and any list of great romantic comedies without this at or at least near the top is not worth your time.  Henry Fonda is perfectly cast as the unworldly and bookish Charles Pike, son of a wealthy beer baron, ably supported by a stellar supporting cast.   We have Charles Coburn as the conman "Colonel" Harrington, Melville Cooper as his aide Gerald, William Demarest as Charles' minder Muggsy, Eugene Pallette as Charles' father, and best of all Eric Blore as a conman pretending to b e an English aristocrat, Sir Alfred McGlennan Keith. But the person who lifts this film to classic status is the great Barbara Stanwyck as Jean Harrington, daughter of the Colonel.   She is totally convincing as the con artist who can twist Charles around her little finger whilst also falling for him, as he does for her.   The scene when he rejects her after discove...

By rights this star-studded epic should make for painful viewing - 146 minutes of white people congratulating themselves for overcoming adversity in order to create the paradise on earth that is modern day America. Slavery doesn't get a mention despite the Civil War featuring slam bang in the middle of the period covered, roughly the 1830s to the 1870s. And although it is acknowledged that the Native Americans might have just the teensy weeniest grounds for complaint, the view of the film, as voiced by one of the more unpleasant characters, seems to be that they were at fault for not learning to adapt. Three different directors contribute different sections of the film, but none of them manage to stamp any individual style on the material, so you don't notice the joins. But if you can put these issues, along with the rather bland voice-over commentary, to the back of your mind there are some pleasures to be had, and the commercial success of the film is not completely unwarrant...

This is the first of John Ford's 'cavalry trilogy' and I can't wait to see if 'She Wore A Yellow Ribbon' and 'Rio Grande' maintain the same very high standard. Although John Wayne (as Captain York) effortlessly dominates every scene he is in, the central character is the fascinating one of Lieutenant Colonel Thursday.   Expertly portrayed by Henry Fonda, he is an arrogant and snobbish stickler for military regulations who resents being posted to a backwater (as he sees it) and therefore yearns to make his mark. I could have done with spending rather less time with the non-commissioned officers and rather more time exploring Thursday's history.  His past relationship with Captain Collingwood could have been fleshed out more, for example. Why the animosity between them? The observant viewer will notice during the opening credits that the film is based on a short story entitled 'Massacre' and so need not worry that for the first 45 minutes nothi...