pauleskridge

Seven stars. Because it's too episodic for me. I realize that's the point, but it didn't work for me. I couldn't get carried into any of the stories, because none of them went very deep. They couldn't, because none of them had enough screen time to do so. That's a weird comment for a film that's almost three hours long, but there you have it. That out of the way, there are a LOT of plusses here. The cinematography (b/w) is excellent. And the film does a splendid job of not demonizing the Germans. A lot of them are shown as dedicated, patriotic men. Pretty surprizing for a 60s-era Hollywood film about WW2. The cast is HUGE. The performances that really struck me were Hans Blech (Pluskat, the German pilot), Richard Burton (one of the dangling threads), Red Buttons (the guy on the church), Henry Fonda (TR Jr), Paul Hartmann (von Rundstedt), Jeff Hunter (Omaha engineer), and Wolfgang Preiss (Gen. Pemsel). There were a LOT of other famous names on top of that. Wayne gets emphasized, but he was just doing the usual Duke thing (I'm a fan, but he really was playing to type here). Connery is good as comic relief -- I know that sound peculiar, but this WAS pre-Bond. And the level of historical accuracy is pretty high for a Hollywood movie. I must have seen this on TV when I was a kid. I had a clear visual memory of the parachute drop scenes, for instance. But I had pretty much forgotten it. I queued it up to see the cast. And I did like it. I would have liked it more if it had a better through-narrative. But, again, that's just me. 30 June 2020.

Five stars. I watched this because I'm a big Altman fan, and this was his first film. The only other audience that might think it worth watching are people who are interested in the minutia of the changes in football rules over the last 75 years.

This is part product-placement ad (Wheaties, Wilson sporting goods. . . ), part instructional video, and part rah-rah boosterism. About half the footage in this 26 minute film is devoted to the details of the rules of basic football play, with narration going from black-boad sketches to voice over of staged practice plays. A bunch of the rest is the aforementioned product placement -- a mom telling her teen-aged son that he grew up eating Wheaties, an equipment manager extolling the quality of Wilson football cleats (the same ones that Charley Trippi and Johnny Lujack use!). The rest is dream-footage of the glories of being a football hero.

Prior to this, the earliest stuff by Altman that I'd seen was some of his TV work from the mid-60s, after more than a decade of learning his craft. By the time he was shooting episodes of Combat and Bonanza, he was already turning into the director he would become. But even here, as a guy in his early 20s, with his first directing job, he was already thinking of cool, and very idiosyncratic ways, of visual storytelling. The blink-cuts flipping back and forth between eligible and ineligible receivers is one good example, But my favorite was the shot of a kick-off, where the ball filled two thirds of the frame, and we got to watch the kicker run up, and plant his foot in the ball.

This is a cool bit of the historical record in the development of a really singular director. If you're a fan of Altman's, it's worth watching.

Otherwise, you aren't missing anything special if you give it a pass. 15 December 2025.

Nine stars. A strong nine, but not enough to round up. Why not? Two reasons.

First, yeah, the coat was cool and all, but being a washroom attendant just doesn't strike me as a huge come-down from being a doorman. Second (and this is really the important one), why did his own family treat him so shabbily?

Cruel neighbors I can believe. But his own daughter? Enough quibbles. Emil Jannings was superb! His physical transformation was some of the most brilliant body acting I've ever seen. And Murnau, once again, showed that no one before or since has understood light and shadow as well as he did. Every time I watch another one of his films, I get to learn that all over again. The dawn-on-the-tenement shot left me slack-jawed. So did the shadow-shot of Jannings returning to the neighborhood. And the special effects work (the drunk/hungover walk, the laughing neighbors, the day-dream) was just brilliant for a film from the 1920s. A lot of Murnau's films have been lost, and that's a terrible shame. Because all the ones I've seen are visual masterpieces. The Last Laugh very much included. 4 August 2020.