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. ⚃

It’s Captain Picard!

See!?

That’s… that’s… he looks very familiar.

So this is about a young naive prisoner (who’s also somehow the prison sub-administrator?) and everybody’s telling him to be more corrupt, but he refuses.

I’m guessing he’s gonna have a bad time.

FAT CAT SPOTTED

My problem with this movie is that there’s really no tension — we know that these fat cats are horrible, horrible people, so things are going to be horrible and depressing for 127 minutes, and then this is going to be over. I mean, even in 1973, in the UK, that couldn’t have been a surprise?

I mean, it’s not Ibsen, ey?

This is quite well made. I like it on a scene by scene basis, really, it’s just hard to stay interested…

So judgemental!

The Love-Girl and the Innocent (Russian: Олень и шалашовка; also translated The Tenderfoot and the Tart, and The Greenhorn and the Tramp)

I think “The Nerd and The Woman” would be a better title, really. The Nerd character seems like a Mary Sue?

Well, I can tell from this movie that British people were pretty depressed for 127 minutes on Sunday, September 16, 1973. But in a kinda puzzled way: “So, er, this play was about how Stalin’s prison camps in 1945 were kinda naff? I mean, we didn’t really wonder about that; we already assumed they were, so I’m not sure we needed these 127 minutes to tell us that, but you do you, BBC! What’s for tea?”

I feel like I’m obviously a better writer than Solzhenitsyn, really.

The Love-Girl and the Innocent. Alan Clarke. 1973. ⚁

I’m not sure why I bought this, really:

Because that doesn’t sound very positive!

And I didn’t know there was a city in the US called that, too. Very edumacational I’m sure.

This is kinda high concept: A judge married five couples before the date he was authorised, so they were never actually legally married. The attorney discovers this two years later and send them all a letter informing them. How will each couple react!

So this is kind of an anthology movie? With five shorter stories around the same set-up? I think that sounds like it could be fun. It’s a short movie, though — 82 minutes — and they’ve spent 13 minutes getting things set up. So that’s 14 minutes per couple.

That’s kinda like a solid joke.

I like these two. (That’s the judge and his wife.)

Hey! The Monroe/Wayne bit was fun. It had a kind of O. Henry ending, but happy.

Yeah, Hazel Flagg was correct, of course. This is not a good movie. But I almost want to give it a ⚂ just because it has a lot of actors I like, but no. While there’s some entertaining scenes, it’s a quite boring movie, and not really worth watching.

We’re Not Married. Edmund Goulding. 1952. ⚁