One Two More Old Movie(s)

I finished that last movie post earlier than usual Sunday evening, and my wife and I decided, after determining that no interesting Masterpiece was showing on PBS, to watch another of the 100+ (yes, really)  movies and other programs saved on the DVR. As it was almost 9, we really didn't want to sit there for two hours, so I looked for something that we might be content to stop watching halfway through. Scrolling through the list, rejecting one thing after another because it just didn't look like what one or the other of us felt like watching, or because it looked like something we wouldn't be able to stop once started, I ended up back in mid-2011, with a movie I'd recorded on a whim from TCM on the basis of a one-sentence synopsis: "An Austrian couple fleeing from the Nazis commits suicide and awakens on a mysterious ship along with several people killed in a London air raid." It was made in 1944 and was called Between Two Worlds. (Maybe the title had been part of the reason I'd recorded it, too.)

It turned out to be a really fine movie. I would say it's an overlooked gem except that maybe it's not–just because I'd never heard of it doesn't mean nobody else has. I found out afterwards that it's based on a very successful 1923 play called Outward Bound, and I really wonder whether C.S. Lewis knew the play, because its treatment of death, judgment, heaven, and hell bears strong similarity to that in The Great Divorce. I think the movie's theology is a bit shaky in places, but the essential idea that we are even now making ourselves into people of heaven or of hell, and that in the end it is our choice, is very much like Lewis's.

The acting is almost uniformly top-notch, the cinematography is good, the quality of the print is excellent (not always the case with these older movies), and although I wasn't paying close attention to it I think the score by Korngold has some passages that would stand alone. (I thought Paul Henreid who plays the suicide was not exactly suited to play a character who is constantly referred to as a young man, because he looks to be in his late thirties at least, but there was nothing wrong with his acting. I kept thinking he looked familiar–it's because he played Victor Laszlo in Casablanca.)

So much for getting to bed on time. We hardly budged from the couch for the full two hours.

Someone has posted the whole thing on YouTube, but I don't recommend watching it there, as the video quality is so poor. I've looked around for information on the playwright, Sutton Vane, but haven't found much more than what is available in the Wikipedia entry.

**

Also, I remembered a movie that should have been in the Sunday night list: Mrs. Miniver. This is another English World War II story, which I think was recommended to me here by Rob G. It's a story of the impact of the beginning of the war on an upper-middle class English family and is quite powerful, and very well done. I thought it was a bit heavy-handed toward the end in its exhortations for courage and tenacity in the war, but considering that it was made early in the war when the outcome was certainly not assured, I think that can be forgiven.


14 responses to “One Two More Old Movie(s)”

  1. Mac, it wasn’t me who recommended Mrs. Miniver — I’ve not seen it. Both of these sound like they’re worth a look though.
    Haven’t watched many movies lately, although I will highly recommend The Browning Version, a British drama from 1951 starring Michael Redgrave as a teacher in a boys’ school who is bitter, seeing himself as a failure. I rewatched this a couple months back and liked it even better the 2nd time I saw it. Redgrave is just brilliant. I’ve put it on my Xmas list.
    http://www.criterion.com/films/873-the-browning-version
    There is a later version from the 90’s starring Albert Finney but I’ve not seen it.

  2. Also worth tracking down, if you can find it, is the same director’s film of The Winslow Boy, from 1948. Nigel Hawthorne is great as the boy’s father, but Robert Donat, as the attorney hired by Hawthorne to defend his son, is the real scene stealer. He plays a very different character than the one he’s best known for — Mr. Chips.

  3. Hmm, wonder who it was…I distinctly remember that somebody recommended it to me, but maybe it wasn’t even here.

  4. I watched The Winslow Boy and I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I recommended it. There is a movie on Netflix called Between Two Worlds but it’s about Sri Lanka. Too bad.
    Did you ever see Another Earth?
    AMDG

  5. That’s too bad. It is available for purchase on dvd, so presumably there’s no reason why Netflix couldn’t offer it. No, haven’t see Another Earth. Is it the one on Netflix (2011, “After a strange Earth-like planet is discovered, astrophysics student Rhoda accidentally slams her car into the vehicle of John, killing his family.”)

  6. I’ve seen The Browning Version and liked it a lot, though my memory of it is pretty hazy now (it was all of 4 years ago). Haven’t seen The Winslow Boy, and the only one available on Netflix appears to be a 1999 remake.

  7. Yes, that’s it–Another Earth.
    AMDG

  8. Pay no attention to the description. I mean, it’s accurate, but doesn’t give you any idea of what the movie is like.
    AMDG

  9. Marianne

    I think that was Cedric Hardwicke as the boy’s father in the 1948 version of The Winslow Boy. Nigel Hawthorne played the father in the 1999 version.
    Another very good British movie from that same period is The Fallen Idol, with Ralph Richardson, and screenplay by Graham Greene. All about a little boy who idolizes his family’s butler and slowly comes to realize the fellow’s not all that good a guy.

  10. yes, you’re right Marianne — Hardwicke, not Hawthorne.
    And you’re right about ‘Fallen Idol’ too — excellent film. Directed by Carol Reed, who also did ‘The Third Man’ and ‘Odd Man Out.’

  11. Well, you weren’t the only one to like the title, Maclin. I’ve been trying to see if they have the film at the library and while they don’t, they sure have a lot of stuff with that title.
    AMDG

  12. You get a whole lot of matches if you Google the title without adding ‘movie’. Fallen Idol sounds like it could be slightly creepy. I’d like to see The Third Man again.

  13. “Fallen Idol sounds like it could be slightly creepy”
    Maybe a little. It’s more Hitchcockian, I’d say — but in a slightly gentler mode.

  14. Marianne

    It’s been a really long time (30 years?) since I’ve seen Fallen Idol, but I don’t remember it being creepy. Maybe because the butler does truly care for the little boy.

Leave a comment