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Decision Before Dawn (1951)
Oscar Werner as young traitor
Spoiler alert. While searching youtube for flix, I came across Richard basehart's voice, narrating an execution. And the camera was extremely mobile. Basehart, riding in a jeep comes across two Germans, one is Oscar werner, who I recognize, but his name eludes me. I thought of tin drum but did not do Oskar oskar. So Merrill the tough no nonsense commander lets Basehart know that recruiting German spies from the pow's is the game plan and werner volunteers. Seems to be a propaganda film asserting that the Germans are just scared and some good some bad, in 51 the alliance with west Germany needed to be sold and the earnest youngster Oskar werner was the salesman. Most poignant moments when he is recognized by a lady on a tram, who calls him by his real name and tells him where his father is now working. He calls his father, but only hears his voice like a crank caller and then he hangs up. His heart is pure and his disloyalty to his father troubles him. Basehart and the other traitor who is in it for the money are very believable, yet certainly unplumbed. It is Oskar and his comfort and discomfort with Germans- a soldier on a train, a dance hall girl, a gestapo agent, a general who needs a syringe of medicine to survive, a little boy who gets too scared to finger Basehart in a bombed out building at a fateful moment. Movie gave impression that Germany in 1950 was still in ruins.
This Above All (1942)
tyrone power as deserter
Just watched oskar werner as German traitor, a couple days ago I watched tyrone power proletariat fall in love with slumming joan Fontaine, she of the upper class, father a doctor who could have gotten her a better post, but she wants to sign up with the masses. On double date she meets tyrone in the dark and then a daytime date and they fall in love. They go to an inn and stay chastely in adjacent rooms and then he talks in his sleep: war terrors. Tom Mitchell shows up trying to convince him to turn himself in. Joan senses his mental turmoil without knowing its cause. A conversation with a kind one armed priest convinces him to turn himself in. He calls joan. Lets meet before i turn myself in. But the mp's catch him first. But a kind officer allows him a few hours to go meet joan, but German aerial attack and his helping hand and a falling wall puts him in the hospital. Joan goes to father and doctor dad operates on tyrone's brain. Will he live? We can only pray. But he marries her in his hospital bed. This was propaganda to convince the working class to join in the war against the Germans despite the system being corrupt. Quite explicit in pushing this message. The title is one of the worst ever.
High Society (1956)
mediocre remake of a great movie
The Philadelphia Story with Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant and Kate Hepburn was made in 1940 and this remake replaced those superstars with the minor lights of Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly. Of the three Grace is the best, but that's not saying much, for Sinatra and Crosby are totally insufficient to the roles assigned to them. Music in the form of songs and the presence of Louis Armstrong and jazz is added to little affect except as a distraction to the pale imitation of a great original.