Turner Classic Movies Vintage Movies Top Picks Great Directors June 20-25, 2009 Review

Classic films by great directors all month long on cable channel TCM.   On Sunday June 20th it's the films of Vincent Minnelli,  father of Liza, ex-hubby of Judy Garland.   He worked under the studio system for most of career but managed to make unique movies, not like the usual studio fare.

Some of his best musicals  1944's Meet Me In St. Louis (5:00 A.M. PST) , The Band Wagon from 1953, (at 7:00 a.m.),  1951's An American in Paris (airing 9:00 a.m.) and 1958's Gigi (airing at 11:00 a.m.) show on TCM.   If you can watch only one,  Band Wagon is my pick.  Superb from start to finish.

5 of his best non-musicals air in the evening.  It starts light with the Spencer Tracy, Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Bennett, Don Taylor crowd pleasers, Farther of the Bride and Father's Little Dividend from 1950 and 1951.  Much better than the decent Steve Martin, Diane Keaton remakes,  good escapism from the 50s  from 5 p.m. to 8:15 on the West Coast. 

Things get cynical in the drama, The Bad and the Beautiful  which tells the story of a movie producer who will use everyone he knows to climb to the top of the movie biz.  Kirk Douglas was rarely better.  It  airs at 8:15 p.m.

Then it's a another excellent Kirk acting lesson as he plays Vincent Van Gogh in 1956's Lust for Life, which also starts Anthony Quinn and Pamela Brown.  Beautiful color movie. (airs at 10:15 p.m.)

Airing at 12:30 PST is Some Came Running.  In the literary world the book Some Came Running was author James Jones follow up to his From Here to Eternity.  In the movies of course, Frank Sinatra made a name for himself getting a supporting actor Oscar in the movie version.  Here he plays returning Veteran David Hirsch a struggling writer who returns to a small town and is immersed in family, and social conflicts.  Shirley MacLaine gets one of her best roles in this film and she won an Oscar nomination for it.    It's a dramatic film starring Sinatra, MacLaine, Dean Martin (proving his acting chops now that his partnership with Jerry Lewis was over),  Arthur Kennedy and Martha Hyer. 

Monday  during the day it's some films from director Edward Dmytrk.  He was responsible for the excellent 1954 film version of The Caine Mutiny  with Bogart and Jose Ferrer, Van Johnson and Fred MacMurray  which airs at 1 p.m.  AND a good John Wayne movie  1945's  Back to Bataan  where Wayne plays the army colonel who leads a guerilla raid against the Japanese in the Philippines.   It airs at 3:15 p.m. PST.

Skip the so-so  1966 Alvarez Kelly, but you might check out the rarely seen 1952 The Sniper  which is a disturbing film about an unhappy man who goes on a killing spree.  Arthur Franz plays the mentally disturbed Edward Miller who likes Jean Darr (great role for Marie Windsor) a little too much.  It's on at 4:15 a.m. very early Monday morning.

At night It's movies by director George Stevens.  A bit too bland perhaps as a director he made some excellent films like  Shane, A Place in the Sun, Gunga Din and even did an excellent  Astaire-Rogers Musical Swing Time (1936).    There's also a good documentary made by his son in 1984 that's being shown on George Stevens that airs at 5 p.m. PST.  Worth checking out.

Tuesday during the day it's the controversial censorship busting director Otto Preminger  who liked to break rules.  He made a few really awful films and several that didn't quite work, but he also made quite a few very much worth seeing like  1959's  Anatomy of a Murder with James Steward, Lee Remick  and Ben Gazzara which airs at 12:15 p.m.

One of his darkest films and one of my favorites is 1952's Angel Face  which stars jean Simmons as Diane Tremayne who looks and acts very sweet, but underneath is an out and out psychotic murderess.  It's got a freaky memorable ending too.  Co stars, Robert Mitchum, Mona Freeman and Barbara O'Neil and airs at 8:30 in the morning.

At night its' several movies from Ernst Lubitsch  including the classics  The Shop Around the Corner from 1940 with Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart (that they re-tooled and made into the Tom Hanks mediocrity known as You've Got Mail)  and  the Garbo classic  Ninotchka.   These air at 5 and 7 p.m. respectively with other Lubitsch touch movies worth seeing following including The  Merry Widow from 1934 starring Maurice Chevalier, and a rare screening of the 1927 silent movie  The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg  starring Ramon Novarro, Norma Shearer and Jean Hersholt. 

Wednesday the 24th during the day it's director W.S. Van Dyke  who directed Johnny Weissmuller in the original 1932 Tarzan the Ape Man,  directed Mickey Rooney in Andy Hardy gets Spring Fever in 1939, the memorable dramatasization of the San Francisco Earthquake with Clark Gable, Jeanetter MacConald and Spencer Tracy (which airs at 11 a.m.)  and he directed William Powell and Myrna Loy into movie history as Nick and Nora Charles in 1934's The Thin Man and the sequel  After the Thin Man in 1936.  These air back to back starting at 1 p.m.  and are still a blast to watch.

At night it's a Kubrick it's a long worthwhile Kubrick documentary from 2001  airing at 5 p..m..  One his h masterpieces,  airs at 7:30 p.m. PST  1963's black comedy  Dr. Strangelove  followed by the controversial filming of Nabokov's novel about an aging intellectual in love and lust with a teenager  aka  1962's  Lolita  that airs at 9:15 p.m.

Thursday  during the day TCM does a mini-retrospective on director Budd Boetticher who began his career driving B movies for  places like Monogram studios as Oscar Boetticher.  Boetticher is best remembered for making some of Randolph Scott's best movils like  1957's The Tall T and 1959's Ride Lonesome, but he made many good action-adventure movies and Western in the 40's and 50s.

You can see a couple of the early cheap  B movies he made like 1945's Escape in the Fog which airs at 4:15 in the morning and  the 1944  One Mysterious Night which was one of the best of the 14 Boston Blackie Movies starring Chester Morris.and was Boetticher's directorial debut! It airs at 3:00 A.m.

The documentary  A Man Can Do That is quite good,  as is   Ride Lonesome  and the restored version of Bullfighter and the Lady.  Airing at 2:30 p.m.

If you can only record and/or watch one...  The Killer is Loose is a revelation featuring an excellent performance by Joseph Cotton and a superb one by Wendell Corey who plays bad guy Leon Poole in such a quiet and subtle way, you'll have sympathy for him even though the character is a nasty vengeful one.  The plot?  Robbers take over a bank and Detective Sam Wagner (Joseph Cotton) in on the job,  discovering  Leon Poole is the inside man for the robbery.   When he tries to arrest Poole, Wagner accidently shoot Poole's wife and Poole swears revenge on the detective.  When he breaks out of prison, Poole plans on murdering the detective's wife!!!   It's a well done movie most aren't familiar with.  It airs at  7:00 a.m. PST.

Thursday June 25 at night,  4 memorable Fellini films are screened on TCM beginning at 5 p.m. with 1954's La Strada staring Anthony Quinn as the circust strong man who winds up buying himself a peasant girl to be his wife (she is played by Fellini's wife  Guiletta Masina, with Richard Basehart and Aldo Silvani.  A Masterpiece.

1965's Juliet of the Spirits was Fllini's first color film and has fantasy and dream sequences, odd characters like the androgynous Hindu sage Bhishma.   Juliet  (Guilietta) an Italian housewife believes her husband is unfaithful but prefers to escape reality through day-dreams and exploring  séances and and the mystic life.  Fellini's interest in Jungian psychotherapy is also part of the film, making it  difficult for some to understand, though visually very interesting.   It airs at 7:00 p.m.

Fellini Satryicon is a unique episodic  darkly perverse vision of ancient Rome during Nero's rule that is full of incredible and surreal imagery.  It's fascinating, disturbing and utterly unforgettable.  Definitely an R rated film.  It's loose plot and episodic structure may be confusing to some.   It airs at 9:30 p.m.

Fellini Roma is a bit too loose , episodic and sloppy for me to completely embrace and recommend but it is full of remarkable images and some wonderful sequences as Fellini pays tribute to the city he loved more than any other.   Massive traffic jams,  time shifts that take us from prostitutes turning tricks at the ancient ruins to hippies on the streets, to Church interiors and religious artifacts back to a rag-tag film crew trying to capture the ecclesiastical fashion show with roller skating priests, modeling nuns and a huge plastic pope.  It's a mish-mash mess of a film, but you won't forget it.  It airs at 11:45 a.m.  Thursday June 25th.