1940s – PopCult Reviews

Podcast Mini-Series Preview: Love at First Laugh Episode 1 – His Girl Friday

Ariana and Seth kick off their six episode podcast mini-series exploring romantic comedies. This first episode sees them sharing their thoughts on the genre (what they love, what they loathe) and talking about the classic Howard Hawks comedy His Girl Friday starring Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant. All upcoming episodes will be available exclusively to our Patreon subscribers.

Movie Review – Cluny Brown

Cluny Brown (1946)
Written by Samuel Hoffenstein and Elizabeth Reinhardt
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

During the Hays Code era, Lubitsch had his ups and downs. I think The Shop Around the Corner and To Be Or Not To Be are certainly highlights. I can’t say I was quite as fond of Ninotchka or Heaven Can Wait, though. His final completed film before his sudden death from a heart attack in 1947 was this rather underrated gem. I hadn’t seen Cluny Brown come up in any conversations about his work and I would argue it’s a reminder of how forward thinking the director could be given the right script. What we have is a movie that pushes back on gender norms as well as cynicism that seems to have taken root in a pretty awful way in contemporary media.

Movie Review – Heaven Can Wait

Heaven Can Wait (1943)
Written by Samson Raphaelson
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

I thought this was the film Warren Beatty’s 1978 Heaven Can Wait was based on. I was wrong. That film was a remake of 1941’s Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Why Beatty chose to title his movie after a well-known Ernst Lubitsch film while it was a remake of something else does not have an answer I could find. What makes it even more confounding is that both films have an element of fantasy & the afterlife. They play out in wildly different ways, but in the first fifteen minutes of this movie, I wondered when I’d start to see similarities with the ’70s film. Then, I checked Wikipedia and found my answer. I wish I could say I enjoyed Lubitsch’s Heaven Can Wait more, but it had some rough spots.

Movie Review – To Be Or Not To Be

To Be Or Not To Be (1942)
Written by Edwin Justus Mayer
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

When To Be Or Not To Be was released in theaters, the public wasn’t sure how to feel. It was a film about Europe under the control of the Nazis, but it was also a comedy. Beloved comedian Jack Benny was even dressed up as one as part of a complex plan to trick the Nazis. Benny’s father walked out of the theater in disgust, seeing his son wearing that uniform. Eventually, the actor’s father was convinced to return and ended up watching this film 46 times over its run in theaters. However, some critics found the film to be in bad taste, especially a scene where Benny shaves a dead Nazi to help keep the ruse going. They also felt the film’s setting, Warsaw, made light of the bombing of that city. Lubitsch would always emphasize that his goal was to mock the ideology of Nazis while poking fun at the often shallow nature of actors. I would argue he accomplishes both things exceptionally well.

PopCult Podcast – The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp/A Matter of Life and Death

It’s a World War II Powell & Pressburger double feature today. In one film we follow the storied life of a career soldier in the British Army as he watches the world change around him. In the other a British soldier gets a second chance a life that might be snatched away from him.

Movie Review – The Third Man

The Third Man (1949)
Written by Graham Greene
Directed by Carol Reed

The film noir was an international hit. In our last review, we saw how Akira Kurosawa interpreted the genre in Japan. This time around, we look at a British application of noir. After watching this movie, I had a question: are Cold War/spy films a subgenre of film noir? There is undoubtedly some shared DNA. Look at a book/film like John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, which has all the tropes of a film noir, most importantly, a doomed protagonist who faces the consequences of his past actions despite trying to do better. Over time, the spy novel/movie became its own thing, but it was born out of the noir.

Movie Review – Stray Dog

Stray Dog (1949)
Written by Akira Kurosawa & Ryūzō Kikushima
Directed by Akira Kurosawa

When we think about Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, we typically think of samurai films, his earlier work like Rashomon & the Yojimbo films, or his later epics like Ran or Throne of Blood. But Kurosawa was a far more diverse filmmaker than that. He directed four noir movies in the post-war era of Japan, and Stray Dog served as the way forward for the genre in Japan. Watching Stray Dog today, you can see its influence spread beyond Japan. Noir from China and South Korea show their roots in this earlier picture, its unique mixture of comedy and crime stories. Where American noir was restrained by the morals of the Hays Code, particularly that crime can’t pay and the police cannot be mocked, Japanese cinema had no such restraints. As a result, Stray Dog feels ahead of its time compared to the noir of the States in the 1940s.

Movie Review – Out of the Past

Out of the Past (1947)
Written by Daniel Mainwaring
Directed by Jacques Tourneur

RKO Pictures was once one of the big Hollywood studios, and now it’s gone. Radio businessman David Sarnoff and his company RCA merged with a theater chain and film booking company to form this all-in-one studio. They were always considered makers of low-budget fare, but that didn’t stop RKO from making its mark on cinema. Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers’ song and dance career bloomed at the studio, and Katharine Hepburn saw her first screen success at RKO. The studio was the home of Val Lewton’s innovative horror experiments like Cat People. RKO’s most well-known productions are still King Kong and Citizen Kane, pictures that have created ripples through world cinema today. They produced It’s A Wonderful Life and even much of Walt Disney’s early work. After a series of takeovers and buyouts, the company’s body of work lies mainly under the control of Warner Discovery. Out of the Past is a standout of their many influential pictures due to its perfect encapsulation of so much of the film noir tropes.

Movie Review – The Postman Always Rings Twice

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)
Written by Harry Ruskin and Niven Busch
Directed by Tay Garnett

The Postman Always Rings Twice is one of the great archetypal noir stories. It shares some elements with the equally iconic Double Indemnity. However, this film’s setting and the intentionally tortuous way it lets its characters double back on their decisions turns it into a knife that slowly drives its way between our ribs. Both were based on the novels of James M. Cain, who also wrote Mildred Pierce. He came from journalism and penned many editorials, which he would later explain were written as a character rather than himself. That first-person confessional style became a crucial part of his novels, the noir protagonist who has come to the end of his rope and reflects on the events that got him to this tragic point. The Postman Always Rings Twice serves as Cain’s grandest statement in the noir genre, pulling together all his strengths to deliver a harrowing story.

Movie Review – The Killers

The Killers (1946)
Written by Anthony Veiller, John Huston, and Richard Brooks
Directed by Robert Sidomak

Ernest Hemingway is not a name we often associate with noir & crime literature. The short story this film is based on isn’t necessarily a piece of noir fiction, either. That piece makes up only the opening sequence of this film, which expands significantly on the central character through extensive flashbacks. Up to this point, Hemingway had been vocal about how much he disliked Hollywood’s adaptations of his work. However, The Killers stood out as one that garnered his praise. Many people liked it, leading to four Oscar nominations, including Best Director and Best Film Editing. The film’s director was a German man who fled Hitler’s Nazi regime after propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels leveled an attack on one of the filmmaker’s pictures. The Killers is a film that is a tragic examination of masculinity, all coming from men who suffered extensively under the social expectations of what sort of men they could be.