Classic Movies Online

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They were misfits, rebels and heroes. Oscar(r) winners* William Holden and Cliff Robertsontopline this riveting World War II saga based on the true story of the First Special Service Force.Capturing the drama of combat with “outstanding” cinematography and an “exceptionally strong cast” (The Hollywood Reporter), The Devil’s Brigade is a thrilling tribute to this renowned fighting unit. Lt. Col. Robert T. Frederick (Holden) takes on the daunting task of melding a renegade group of American and Canadian recruits into a crack team of commando warriors. Frederick’s superiors doubt the rookies until Frederick volunteers them for a perilous attack on a Nazi stronghold in the mountains. His men will be outnumbered and outgunned, but that’s a fair fight to “the devil’s brigade.”Amazon.com
Dismissed in 1968 as a plodding rip-off of The Dirty Dozen–without that 1967 film’s sardonic, antiestablishment satire–The Devil’s Brigade now plays like a nostalgic last gasp of the sentimental World War II action genre. Celebrating the 1st Special Service Force (a commando-like unit formed to fight in Norway but ultimately deployed in Italy), this typically broad Andrew V. McLaglen production recounts the teaming of some miscreant GIs with “the handpicked best of the best-trained army in the world”–the Canadians–under a U.S. officer (William Holden) who had never commanded men in combat. The first hour, heavy on machismo and low comedy, depicts the unit’s training at an abandoned base in Montana, with nonstop international rivalry until Yanks and Canadians bond in a lusty saloon brawl. After that, the Germans are easy meat. Holden is solid, as usual, and so is the widescreen work of veteran cameraman William H. Clothier, impeccably rendered on the DVD. –Richard T. Jameson

The Devil’s Brigade

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A rich virginia farmer stays out of the civil war then joins it to protect his family. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 03/28/2006 Starring: James Stewart Tom Simcox Run time: 105 minutes Rating: Nr Director: Andrew V. MclaglenAmazon.com
Shenandoah, a film well-liked in its day, recalls Friendly Persuasion and foreshadows The Patriot as it tells of an American clan traumatized by war on native soil. Virginia farmer James Stewart has never owned slaves, owes allegiance to no one beyond his own kin, and adamantly disregards the North-South strife rumbling just over the hill: “This war is not mine and I take no note of it.” That changes when youngest son Philip Alford (To Kill a Mockingbird’s Jem) is carried off by Yankees, and the family must ride out to reclaim him. Shenandoah has several affecting moments–notably a homefront atrocity–but much of it is lit and played like a television show. Script and direction are formulaic, Stewart falls back on cozy shtick, and the supporting cast is a collection of bland studio contract players. As the closing credit says: “filmed entirely at Universal City.” –Richard T. Jameson

Shenandoah

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Nominated* for nine Academy AwardsÂ(r), this heart-warming, soul-stirring (Variety) portrait of life on the homefront during World War II is a magnificent picture rich in humor and poignant with heartbreak (The Hollywood Reporter). Claudette Colbert heads an all-star cast,including Jennifer Jones, Joseph Cotten and Shirley Temple, in this beautifully produced picture that gets into your heart (Los Angeles Examiner). With her husband Tim off at war, Anne Hilton (Colbert) struggles to be a pillar of strength for her daughters Jane (Jones) and Bridget (Temple). During America’s darkest hours, she bravely steers her girls through heartbreak and hardships as she eagerly awaits news from overseas and wonders if life will ever be the same. *1944: Best Picture, Actress (Colbert), Supporting Actor (Monty Woolley), Supporting Actress (Jones), Cinematography (B&W), Art Direction (B&W), Editing, Music Score (won), Special EffectsAmazon.com
A three-hour weepy extraordinaire, this 1944 offering from producer David O. Selznick (who also wrote the screenplay) was a tribute to all the families who stayed behind while their men went off to fight in World War II. Claudette Colbert is the mother of daughters Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple; first seen coming home after dropping her war-bound husband at the train, she becomes the model of courage and strength on the homefront. The plot has a Saturday Evening Post feel today, as it follows the family’s day-to-day life and struggles, whether with a crotchety boarder (a delightfully starchy Monty Woolley) or oldest daughter Jones’s doomed romance with departing serviceman Robert Walker. They don’t make them like this anymore and it’s too bad. Nominated for a fistful of Oscars, it took only one, for its shadow-drenched black-and-white cinematography. –Marshall Fine

Since You Went Away

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The adventure of a lifetime occurs not in the outer reaches of space, but inside the human body. An elite team of medical and scientific specialists race to save a top government scientist who is suffering from a blood clot on the brain. Their mission: be reduced along with their submarine-like craft to microscopic size, enter the bloodstream of the ailing scientist, and journey to the brain to perform an emergency procedure. With only sixty minutes to complete their mission, the scientist find themselves fighting off an attack by white corpuscles, caught in a tornado-like storm in the lungs, and struggling to survive sabotage from one of their own.Amazon.com
2001: A Space Odyssey took the world on a mind-bending trip to outer space, but Fantastic Voyage is the original psychedelic inner-space adventure. When a brilliant scientist falls into a coma with an inoperable blood clot in the brain, a surgical team embarks on a top-secret journey to the center of the mind in a high-tech military submarine shrunk to microbial dimensions. Stephen Boyd stars as a colorless commander sent to keep an eye on things (though his eyes stay mostly on shapely medical assistant Raquel Welch), while Donald Pleasance is suitably twitchy as the claustrophobic medical consultant. The science is shaky at best, but the imaginative spectacle is marvelous: scuba-diving surgeons battle white blood cells, tap the lungs to replenish the oxygen supply, and shoot the aorta like daredevil surfers. The film took home a well-deserved Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Director Richard Fleischer, who turned Disney’s 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea into one of the most riveting submarine adventures of all time, creates a picture so taut with cold-war tensions and cloak-and-dagger secrecy that niggling scientific contradictions (such as, how do miniaturized humans breathe full-sized air molecules?) seem moot. –Sean Axmaker

Fantastic Voyage

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From the classic Daniel Keyes novel Flowers for Algernon comes this “moving” (Boxoffice) and unforgettable adaptation. Featuring an Academy AwardÂ(r)-winning* performance by Cliff Robertson and a “shrewd, talented” score (Variety) by Ravi Shankar, this timeless tearjerker is “definitely one to see” (Cue). When a mentally retarded man named Charly (Robertson) undergoes experimental brain surgery, he is miraculously freed from the prison of his own mind. As his IQ soars to genius proportions, Charly’s eyes are opened to a world he’s never truly seen. But when the effects of his operation inexplicably begin to fade, Charly must find a way to halt his regression before his own mind destroys his life, his newfound romance and the man he’s become. *1968: ActorAmazon.com
Adapted from Daniel Keyes’s novel Flowers for Algernon, Charly must be viewed as a soap opera of and for its zeitgeist–the halcyon ’60s, when “natural” was nirvana, the air hummed with the mantra “Everybody’s beautiful,” and all ills stemmed from institutional monoliths such as Science, Government, Education, Religion. Accordingly, Charly (Cliff Robertson) is a 30-year-old retardate whose doofus sweetness makes him superior to most able-minded folk, whether they’re the bigoted dolts he sweeps floors for or the ambitious scientists who see him as the human equivalent of Algernon, a mouse they’ve surgically (but impermanently) smartened up. Naturally, post-op Charly, sporting a genius IQ, “sees things as they are.” Trotted out as the neurosurgeons’ poster boy, he stands up to the “learned” audience–shot as faceless, inhuman interrogators. He’s every ’60s flower child, berating his “elders” for blighting their brave new world.

The one gift Charly gets out of becoming Brainiac is sex. In a lengthy montage resembling a retro TV commercial, he and his special-ed teacher (Claire Bloom, madonna with eternal Mona Lisa smile) romp through an Edenic outdoors, their embraces hallowed by sunlight glinting through leaves, moonlight glinting on water, and sappy Ravi Shankar music. (Stylistic clichés also include embarrassing outbreaks of split screens and multiple small screens within the frame, notably when rebellious Charly turns biker.) Robertson’s performance is well-meaning but hokey. Still, in the penultimate moments when Charly begins to slide back into retardation, the actor achieves a genuine tragic gravity, and he became a surprise Oscar winner for his pains. –Kathleen Murphy

Charly

• EXCITING EXTRAS!Commentaries by Paul Newman, Robert Wise, Martin Scorsese, Robert Loggia and Richard Schickel on SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME; Screenwriter William Goldman on Harper and Directors Arthur Penn on THE LEFT HANDED GUN and Vincent Sherman on THE YOUNG PHILADELPHIANS. Also includes vintage featurettes on other titles.SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME His breakthrough film! Newman slugs his way o

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Includes: Harper (1966), Drowning Pool (1975), The Left Handed Gun (1958), Pocket Money (1972), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), and The Young Philadelphians (1959).Amazon.com
Paul Newman’s career slipped onto an unstoppable track with Somebody Up There Likes Me, his 1956 biopic about boxer Rocky Graziano. Of course that was his second picture, the first being the oft-joked-about bungle The Silver Chalice. Newman’s Method-y intensity and dazzling good looks brought him stardom, and his intelligence and uncommon seriousness as an actor kept his movies interesting, especially as he tackled some of the best roles of the “antihero” era–an era he helped create.

Somebody Up There Likes Me is included in The Paul Newman Collection, a bulging seven-DVD package that shakes out thusly: three late-1950s titles from the beginning of his career, one mid-sixties hit, and three lesser films of the early 1970s. It’s by no means a “best of” compilation, being limited to Warners and MGM titles, but it gives a flavor of Newman in his prime time. He got the Graziano role after James Dean died, and his performance is a very busy, post-Brando jumble of tics and mumbles. The movie holds up nicely as a boxing picture, and the location NYC shooting won an Oscar for cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg (you can see why director Robert Wise got hired to do West Side Story after this). Sal Mineo and Steve McQueen are in the cast as Newman’s fellow j.d.s.

The Left-Handed Gun (1958), based on a teleplay by Gore Vidal, is a truly weird, compulsively watchable artifact from the psychological-Western genre. Newman plays Billy the Kid, glowering and grimacing like a rebel without a cause. It’s one of those films that has much more to do with the time it was made than the time it is set; also notable as the big-screen debut for stage and TV director Arthur Penn. The Young Philadelphians (1959) is more conventional, an entertaining soap opera about a young lawyer (Newman) with an old-money Philly name but no money, who gets burned by love and decides to connive his way to the top. Young Robert Vaughn snagged an Oscar nomination for a showy turn as an alcoholic society lad.

Harper (1966) is chockfull of kooky mid-Sixties design and Rat Pack patter (courtesy screenwriter William Goldman). But it must be said that Newman is miscast as the melancholic private eye of Ross Macdonald’s literary world, here re-imagined as a wisecracking hepcat who mugs his way through a missing-persons investigation. The supporting cast is a weird over-the-hill gang including Lauren Bacall, Janet Leigh, and Shelley Winters. That film’s hero, Lew Harper (renamed from Macdonald’s “Archer”), returned in 1976’s The Drowning Pool, a more bearable if somewhat humdrum whodunit set in New Orleans. Newman’s wife, Joanne Woodward, has a supporting part, but the picture is most notable for an early Melanie Griffith nymphet role.

Pocket Money (1972) is one of those only-in-the-seventies movies that pairs Newman with Lee Marvin in a drowsy, nearly plotless comedy. Both actors give elaborate performances: Newman plays a numbskull two-bit cattle broker who takes absolutely everything literally, and Marvin is his buddy in Mexico who signs on for an ill-considered cattle-buying job. One of the credited screenwriters is Terrence Malick, and the movie has a highly eccentric feel for language. Finally, The Mackintosh Man (1973) is one of the periodic duds that director John Huston would crank out in his otherwise starry career, with Newman as a spy on an incomprehensible case in England. The first half is a red herring, and Dominique Sanda (more recently of The Conformist) is out of depth with the English language. It’s a bleak film with a kind of grinding fascination, and the Maurice Jarre score is catchy but fatally overused. –Robert Horton

The Paul Newman Collection

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When Chicago musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) accidentally witness a gangland shooting, they quickly board a southbound train to Florida, disguised as Josephine and Daphne, the twonewestand homeliestmembers of an all-girl jazz band. Their cover is perfect…until a lovelorn singer (Marilyn Monroe) falls for Josephine, an ancient playboy (Joe E. Brown) falls for Daphne, and a mob boss (George Raft) refuses to fall for their hoax! Nominated* for 6 Academy AwardsÂ(r), Some Like It Hot is the quintessential madcap farce and one of the greatest of all film comedies (The Motion Picture Guide). *1959: Director, Actor (Lemmon), Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography (B&W), Art Direction (B&W), Costume Design (B&W, winner)Amazon.com essential video
Maybe “nobody’s perfect,” as one character in this masterpiece suggests. But some movies are perfect, and Some Like It Hot is one of them. In Chicago, during the Prohibition era, two skirt-chasing musicians, Joe and Jerry (Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon), inadvertently witness the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. In order to escape the wrath of gangland chief Spats Colombo (George Raft), the boys, in drag, join an all-woman band headed for Florida. They vie for the attention of the lead singer, Sugar Kane (Marilyn Monroe), a much-disappointed songbird who warbles “I’m Through with Love” but remains vulnerable to yet another unreliable saxophone player. (When Curtis courts her without his dress, he adopts the voice of Cary Grant–a spot-on impersonation.) The script by director Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond is beautifully measured; everything works, like a flawless clock. Aspiring screenwriters would be well advised to throw away the how-to books and simply study this film. The bulk of the slapstick is handled by an unhinged Lemmon and the razor-sharp Joe E. Brown, who plays a horny retiree smitten by Jerry’s feminine charms. For all the gags, the film is also wonderfully romantic, as Wilder indulges in just the right amounts of moonlight and the lilting melody of “Park Avenue Fantasy.” Some Like It Hot is so delightfully fizzy, it’s hard to believe the shooting of the film was a headache, with an unhappy Monroe on her worst behavior. The results, however, are sublime. –Robert Horton

Some Like It Hot

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In THE NAKED JUNGLE, Charlton Heston plays the powerful, brooding owner of a plantation in the wild and treacherous South American jungle, while Eleanor Parker plays his charming American mail order bride. He is wary of this beautiful and talented woman, and wonders why she would leave America for the rigors of jungle life. But with the advance of relentless killer ants making their way across the jungle, the two find their relationship changing as they fight to save the jungle.

The Naked Jungle

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On their third identical voyage from London to the Riviera, Joanna Wallace (Audrey Hepburn) and husband Mark (Albert Finney) explore their 12-year marriage in a series of wry and illuminating flashbacks. They reminisce about the glorious beginning of their love affair, the early years of marriage and the events that led to their subsequent infidelities. As they try to understand their relationship, they must accept how they have changed if they are to rekindle their original love.Amazon.com
Best known for light, entertaining musicals such as Singin’ in the Rain, director Stanley Donen grew more adventurous (and less successful) in the latter stages of his career, but this edgy romantic comedy from 1967 has proven to be one of Donen’s best, most enduring films. Jumping back in forth in time, the film chronicles the marital ups and downs of a stylish British couple (Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn) as they travel on various vacations over the course of their 12-year marriage. The separate vignettes combine to form a collage of joys and pains as the young couple struggles to maintain their fading marital bliss. In this regard, the film is refreshingly sophisticated in its treatment of the difficulties of long-term commitment, and with Hepburn and Finney in the leads, great performances are drawn from the acerbic wit of Frederick Raphael’s screenplay. Fashion mavens will also marvel at Hepburn’s astonishing wardrobe of late-’60s fashion–she’s a showcase for summer couture, looking fantastic in everything from candy-striped bellbottoms to hip sunglasses and outrageously stylish hats. Some of the melodrama clashes with forced comedy (such as tiresome running gags or a cartoonish portrayal of crass American tourists), but that doesn’t stop Two for the Road from being timelessly appealing and truthful to the challenge of lasting love. –Jeff Shannon

Two for the Road

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When ex-con Johnny Clay (Sterling Hayden) says he has a plan to make a killing, everybody wants to be in on the action. Especially when the plan is to steal $2 million in a racetrack robbery scheme in which “no one will get hurt.” But despite all their careful plotting, Clay and his men have overlooked one thing: Sherry Peatty (Marie Windsor), a money-hungry, double-crossing dame who’s planning to make a financial killing of her own…even if she has to wipe out Clay’s entire gang to do it! Directed in a revolutionary story-telling technique by the legendary Stanley Kubrick, The Killing is tough, taut, tense and one of the greatest crime thrillers ever made!Amazon.com essential video
Stanley Kubrick’s third feature, and first screen classic, is one of the great crime films of the 1950s. The Killing was written in collaboration with Jim Thompson, who penned pulp novels like The Grifters, The Killer Inside Me, and Pop. 1280, all of which were made into classic films. This time writing directly for the screen, Thompson joined with Kubrick to concoct a story about a desperate gang of lowlifes led by a grim, determined Sterling Hayden. Together they devise and execute a complex racetrack robbery, but inner tensions and the iron fist of fate work against them. The cast is uniformly superb, with Hayden, Jay C. Flippen, Timothy Carey, Marie Windsor, and Elisha Cook Jr. fleshing out characters torn between grandiose ambition and petty desire. Cinematographer Lucian Ballard fashions distorted, starkly lit interiors that reflect the psychological tensions of the characters. He and Kubrick also create one of the most memorably ironic final sequences in film history.

The Killing is a perfect introduction to the art and joys of film noir, and its bizarre narrative structure has been copied many times since. For a terrific double feature, see it with John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle, another noir masterpiece featuring Hayden; or Paths of Glory, Kubrick’s next picture, again cowritten with Thompson; or even Jackie Brown, in which Quentin Tarantino pays homage to the ways this film leaps around in time. More commercial than some of Kubrick’s later work, The Killing remains a tour de force by one of the world’s finest filmmakers. –Raphael Shargel

The Killing