Everything That Dies, Some Day Comes Back

This 1956 film features an older woman who has a relationship with a younger man, who turns out to have some mental health issues.   On the face of it this sounds like a classic "woman's picture", the sort directed typically by a Douglas Sirk or a George Cukor. In fact it was directed by Robert Aldrich, whose films (according to AI) have "a consistent theme of compromised masculinity and individual integrity tested in a hostile world".  So not an obvious choice for this type of drama it would seem.   Except that the film stars Joan Crawford, surely the most masculine of female movie stars, what with her strong jawline, intense eyebrows, shoulder pads and the like.  And indeed her character's integrity is tested, so maybe it's not that surprising that Aldrich is able to turn the soapy storyline into something that packs quite a punch. Crawford plays Millie, a middle-aged woman who fears that life is passing her by.  W hen she meets Burt (Cliff Robertson...

This 1954 offering from director Nicholas Ray has to be the strangest Western from that period. For a start, notwithstanding the title it is two female characters who totally dominate, with the male characters taking a back seat for the most part. I was aware coming into this film that Joan Crawford has a lead role.   She plays Vienna, a woman with a dodgy past (probably prostitution, don’t ask) who has somehow managed to build a saloon bar/casino.   It's in the middle of nowhere for now but Vienna knows that a railroad depot is going to be built there any day soon. Vienna just wants to be left alone to make money but there's no hope of that whilst the other female character, Emma, is around.   The entire plot of the film is driven by Emma's attempts to destroy Vienna, such is the intensity of her hatred for her.   Emma is played by an actress new to me, Mercedes McCambridge, who gives an extraordinary performance as a seething ball of anger. I w...

This 1932 commercial hit also won the Best Picture Oscar but nevertheless I was fearful that after all this time it would be creaky and generally old-timey. Not a bit of it. For a start the main five characters are surprisingly relatable, even if they are staying at a luxury hotel (in Berlin), due to them being recognisably human beings rather than caricatures. Perhaps most of the credit for this should go to Vicki Baum, the Austrian writer who wrote the novel (with the prosaic title of ‘People in the Hotel’) which was first adapted into a play and which then became this glossy star-studded vehicle. Well that description might be over-egging it a little.  I doubt that Lionel Barrymore and Wallace Beery were the George Clooney and Brad Pitt of their day - they come across here more as talented character actors.  And certainly at this point in her career Joan Crawford hadn’t reached full stardom.  No, the real stars here are Greta Garbo and John Barrymore.   Garbo play...