NFR Project: 'Lady and the Tramp' (1955)

 

NFR Project: “Lady and the Tramp”

Dir: Hamilton Luske, Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson

Scr: Erdman Penner, Joe Rinaldi, Ralph Wright, Don DaGraadi

Ed: Don Halliday

Premiere: June 22, 1955

76 min.

OK, those of you who read me consistently know that I hate Disney films, the center of my childhood trauma. This particular entry is less offensive than many of Disney’s products, with only a little trauma towards the end when THE RAT TRIES TO EAT THE BABY.

Yep. Nightmare fuel.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Man with the Golden Arm.

NFR Project: 'A Time Out of War' (1954)

 

NFR Project: “A Time Out of War”

Dir: Denis Sanders

Premiere: 1954

20 min.

This beautiful little film, barely 20 minutes long, helped to launch two brothers into the business and garnered an Oscar to boot.

Denis and Terry Sanders created this film to serve as Denis’ thesis at UCLA. It is a gentle, elegiac film. Two Union sharpshooters cover a river crossing sometime during the Civil War. A Confederate soldier holds the opposite bank.

The Rebel soldier calls out for an hour truce. The Yanks agree, and the two share the pleasures of the river, and even trade goods by hurling it across the river. One Yankee, determined to fish, finds a body – the remains of a Union cavalryman. The two men dig a grave and bury the body; all three soldiers fire their guns into the sky together in salute. The sun goes down.

The Sanders approach is simplicity itself. There are no directorial flourishes; the camera tells the tale as though it were true. The film’s black-and-white cinematography is stunning; it makes full use of the evening’s “golden hour.”

This low-key, assured short showed Hollywood that students ould craft excellent films as well – nd at that teaching cinema could lead to commercially viable careers for its students.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Lady and the Tramp.

NFR Project: 'A Star Is Born' (1954)

 

NFR Project: “A Star is Born”

Dir: George Cukor

Scr: Moss Hart

Pho: Sam Leavitt

Ed: Folmar Blangsted

Premiere: Sept. 12, 1954

182/154/178 min.

This film is all about the wonder that is Judy Garland.

The childhood star of The Wizard of Oz was afflicted with illness and substance abuse problems as her career progressed at MGM. She was universally popular, but she was manipulated and abused by those in charge of her career. Gradually, she became incapable of performing. In 1950, her contract with MGM was suspended.

After some rehab and a return to live performance, she and her then-husband and -manager Sid Luft came up with the idea to remake William Wellman’s 1937 melodrama A Star Is Born as a vehicle for her comeback.

This time, the plot of the movie was augmented with a number of musical performances by Garland. This hybrid of musical theater and melodrama proved to be a winner.

Garland plays Esther Blodgett, a struggling performer in L.A. trying to get noticed. She meets Norman Maine (James Mason), a matinee idol with a severe drinking problem. He falls for her and helps her break into the big time. She becomes a big star, with a new name, Vicki Lester – but at the same time, Norman’s career goes to hell in a handbasket. After an attempt at rehab, he finally gives up and kills himself, walking into the ocean. Vicky/Esther appears at a benefit immediately after, proudly identifying herself s “Mrs. Norman Maine.”

Garland suffers exquisitely throughout the film. She loves Norman, but his self-destructive behavior drives her to distraction. Judy does the best acting of her career in the offstage portions of the film, and dazzles during the musical sequences. (Her big number, the “Born In a Trunk” sequence, was filmed after Cukor left the production, and was inserted to beef up her screen time.)

The initial cut of the film was 182 minutes, but the studio cut it down by a half-hour in order to accommodate more showings in theaters. Decades later, much of the footage was restored, giving us a much better sense of story than the original commercial release.

Cukor’s ability to capture the feelings of women onscreen was unmatched, and his visual sense is impeccable. Working in Technicolor and CinemaScope for the first time, he makes it look easy. This is still the definitive version of this classic show-biz story.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: A Time Out of War.