Love the wig.

This is fun! It’s very 70s. I’m not really that Don Siegel’s movies. I mean, I saw Dirty Harry on VHS as a teenager, and I think I saw Telefon? Oh, and the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

I wondered how they were going to make the bank robbers sympathetic — I mean, beyond having Matthau being one of them. I mean, they killed people and stuff? But then they just work around that problem by having their enemies being even worse: A ruthless, leering Chinese loan shark (soo eeevil), and a totes racist, psychopathic Joe Don Baker character. (And did he sort of quote Amiri Baraka!?)

Nice wigs!

Hey, it’s whatsisname.

The 70s basically had only 35 actors, and they were in every movie. At least that’s my impression!

Now that’s classy furniture.

I liked this movie just fine, but it didn’t really grip me. And for a heist movie, you need to be involved.

I wonder what the budget and the box office on this was. It’s a fairly small movie, really, and it doesn’t really seem to be the sort of movie that’d rake in the money? It’s just a bit odd — it doesn’t have the normal things that make a blockbuster (“it’s about fambly!”, traumatic childhood with a father who wasn’t there for him, etc). Instead it’s rather clinical… which I like.

Well, that’s Wikipedia for you:

Although critically very well received, the film underperformed at the box office but still turned out to be a modest hit.

Underperformed… But was a “modest hit”?! What does that even mean?

Charley Varrick. Don Siegel. 1973. ⚃

Oh, that’s Stepin Fetchit!?

Hey, it’s whatsername.

Yeah, OK, I can see why people are still angry at his roles.

The politics here seem rather… complicated? There’s a lot I’m not getting, because there was just a major dramatic thing when the guy with the banjo played one song, and they were ready to kill him, and then Stepin Fetchit steered him into another, and then they were all happy? And the latter one was apparently called “Dixie”, which sounds southern, so The former was probably a pro-northern song?

(Stepin Fetchit’s character is the one that seems to steer the Judge in most things, really…)

I’m just saying this movie seems to be tailored for an American audience in 1953 (or perhaps 1934, since this is a sort of remake of Ford’s Judge Priest movie), and doesn’t really try for anything else… So I’m not surprised at this:

Less than 2K votes? So this is a pretty obscure John Ford movie.

OK, so this is about Confederate veterans? Who are lovable? But the movie is poking fun at them.

And now they’re having a controversy with some “G. A. R.” people…

THIS MOVIE NEEDS ASTERISKS

Oh, that’s their counterparts:

The Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was a fraternal organization composed of veterans of the Union Army (United States Army), Union Navy (U.S. Navy), and the Marines who served in the American Civil War.

They aren’t as charming.

It’s just hard to concentrate on the movie because there’s so much… subtext? Like, what is this movie even? Is it an attempt to pander to southern audiences in 1953? If so, Ford is doing it in a pretty strange way, what with how he makes them seem ridiculous, and how he features Black actors in virtually every scene, which presumably wouldn’t be very popular in those states in 1953.

That’s the biggest rear projection I can remember seeing. Wouldn’t it have been easier to just send her out there and film her for ten seconds?

So is the judge going to have to confront southern racism?

Yup.

Oh, this was made before the Emmett Till case.

The bluray transfer is a bit odd. It’s from Eureka, and it’s been totally stabilised, and the contrast looks on point. But it’s got that “swarm of bees” over-sharpened grain look, and dust spots and the like haven’t been fixed at all. So it’s sort of “semi-restored”?

It’s an interesting movie — I think my viewing of it was disturbed by the sheer “er” of it all, but after finishing the movie, it all mostly makes sense. So I suspect if I were to see it again in a few years, I’d enjoy it more. I’d also be interested in watching the original version, which was apparently a box office success. (I haven’t found anything about whether this one was.)

The Sun Shines Bright. John Ford. 1953. ⚃