Spirit Week: The living and the so-called dead

THE DEVIL COMMANDS

1941

Directed by Edward Dmytryk

Written by William Sloane, Robert Hardy Andrew, and Milton Gunzberg (based on the novel The Edge of Running Water by William Sloane)

Spoilers: moderate

To conscript a thief

THEY MET IN BOMBAY

1941

Directed by Clarence Brown

Written by John H. Kafka and Edwin Justus Mayer

Spoilers: moderate

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

COME LIVE WITH ME

1941

Directed by Clarence Brown

Written by Virginia Van Upp and Patterson McNutt

Spoilers: moderate

You killed Charlotte! You bastards!

BLOSSOMS IN THE DUST

1941

Directed by Mervyn LeRoy

Written by Anita Loos and Ralph Wainwright

Spoiler alert: inapplicable? though Edna Gladney is not, I daresay, actually well-known, plus they make up a whole lot of stuff, so "moderate"

And some, you'd assume, were good people

HOLD BACK THE DAWN

1941

Directed by Mitchell Leisen

Written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder, Richard Maibaum, and Manuel Reachi (based on the novel by Ketti Frings)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Listen, honey, being a Ziegfeld girl is swell, but at most it's only a few years out of a lifetime

ZIEGFELD GIRL

1941

Directed by Robert Z. Leonard

Written by William Anthony McGuire, Marguerite Roberts, Sonya Levien, and Annalee Whitmore

Spoiler alert: it's easier to predict the ending than in the actual Ziegfeld biopic, but I'll keep it to "moderate"

20 years ago, we took over their land, their cotton, and their daughter

THE LITTLE FOXES

1941

Directed by William Wyler

Written by Lillian Hellman, Arthur Kober, Dorothy Parker, and Alan Campbell (based on the play by Lillian Hellman)

Spoiler alert: moderate

Walt Disney, part V: How would you like being left out alone, in a cold, cruel, heartless world?

DUMBO

It's sentiment, cheaply, but Walt passes the savings on to you.

1941

Directed by Ben Sharpsteen

With Edward Brophy (Timothy Q. Mouse), Verna Felton (Mrs. Jumbo and the Elephant Matriarch), Cliff Edwards (Jim Crow) (yeesh), and Herman Bing (the Ringmaster)

Spoiler alert: an elephant flies

Walt Disney, part IV: The happiest place on Earth

THE RELUCTANT DRAGON

An odd little prepackaged voyage through Walt's then-new studio in Burbank, The Reluctant Dragon doesn't accomplish much, though I certainly don't begrudge its existence.  At least, not as a bonus feature on the Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad blu-ray.  As a theatrical feature film, on the other hand...

1941

Directed by Alfred Werker and Hamilton Luske

With Robert Benchley (Robert Benchley), Nana Bryant (Mrs. Benchley), Frances Gifford (Doris), Buddy Pepper (Humphrey), Clarence Nash (Clarence Nash and Donald Duck), Florence Gill (Florence Gill and Clara Cluck), various other Disney employees and, for some reason, Alan Ladd (various Disney employees), and Walt Disney (Walt Disney), plus Billy Lee (the Boy in "The Reluctant Dragon"), Claud Allister (Sir Giles in "The Reluctant Dragon"), and Barnett Parker (the Dragon in "The Reluctant Dragon")

Spoiler alert: moderate, and not really applicable

Reviews from gulag: First, the news in brief

While I was away, I had the opportunity to watch what I suppose one might as well call a "few" movies.  Here's some of them, in bite-sized form.  Or maybe two or three bites, because if there's one thing even moving to Pittsburgh can't beat out of me, it's my awful long-windedness.  Today's subjects: Citizen Kane, His Girl Friday, Network, and Good Night, and Good Luck.

CITIZEN KANE (1941)
Charles Foster Kane (Orson Welles) dies, and a newshound (William Alland) seeks the story of his final words.  He never solves the mystery of Kane for himself—although we are privy to more than he—but he learns through conversations with the great man's friends that he was human like the rest of us, even if he didn't know it.

Orson Welles' Citizen Kane is very likely the single most overrated film made in the sound era.  But that says more about the overreaching critical reevaluation of it—the reevaluation that eventually snowballed into its acclamation as the long-running Best Film Ever on just about any critics' poll you'd care to look at—than it could ever possibly say about the quality of the actual film itself... which is, of course, simply deliriously high.  Yes, fewer pictures have been more talked-about than this one, and Kane has been just about talked to death: its spectacularly well-appointed deep focus compositions; its beautiful lighting schemes; its monumental art direction; its bitterly humorous satire, so viciously on point it might have been slanderous were everything bad not based at least in part on something true; and, of course, its extraordinary lead performance by Welles, taking William Randolf Hearst only as the starting point for his creation of the saddest man in the world—the man who thought he could buy happiness.  So, no, maybe it wasn't particularly close to the best movie ever made, not even back in 1941.  But Goddamned if it isn't still absolutely Great—even after all those decades it spent, condemned to be The Greatest.  Maybe now that Vertigo is the Best Film Ever (an even worse choice, but never mind), we can enjoy Kane for what it is and always was: entertaining, moving, human, and expertly-crafted, too.

Score:  9/10