The Online Photographer

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic, anything-goes Editorial Page of TOP. I've written a lot of off-topic posts lately. Too many. And I'm not a great movie reviewer—I don't have much in the way of pithy insight, nor am I very good at articulating why I like the movies I like. To be honest, I wasn't a very good book reviewer in school either. I'd rather think my own thoughts than rehearse, report, or pick apart the thoughts of others. But maybe I'm a good movie recommender; that could be a useful service to you, since good movies are rare and we're all on the lookout for the good ones.

And even if we don't agree, reviewers can be good negative barometers as well. If you learn that your taste differs consistently from mine, then you'll learn to stay away from films I like. Some of the most important critics in my life were ones I decided I consistently disagreed with.

Without further ado....]

[UPDATE added at the end of the post. —Ed.]

I've really been enjoying the free movies on YouTube Premium lately. I try to watch one on Saturday nights. I gather there are a few commercials you have to sit through if you don't subscribe to YouTube Premium.

Double Indemnity
Like good books, it's tough to find good movies. I already wrote about David Lean's early masterpiece Brief Encounter, which is a wonderful find. In recent weeks I also finally caught up with the famous film noir standout Double Indemnity (1944), directed by Billy Wilder. (Warning: spoilers ahead about this one.) I watched it after seeing Wilder's Sunset Boulevard for the third time, a movie I like better the more I learn about it. It gave me the idea that I really ought to watch all of Billy Wilder's movies. I took a pass on Double Indemnity when I was young and in my "movie-watching years" (ages 12–25 maybe? Give or take) because I didn't think I could get behind a movie in which the main protagonist was the milquetoast Dad from the inane TV show My Three Sons. But the TV show has faded to almost nothing in my memory now and I could finally accept Fred McMurray as the hardboiled but conned insurance agent on a collision course with fate. Double Indemnity is better than I thought it would be and I liked it more than I thought I would.

The only plot twist I didn't particularly care for, that little thorn in my side, is that the evil dame gets it in the end. Even though her death is perfunctory, not very important in the story, and almost a toss-off onscreen. That plot-point expresses 1950s movie morality: audiences didn't approve of "bad women" and liked it better when they got their comeuppance in no uncertain terms (two shots, not one, so you know she's dead). And she learns her feelings were actually sincere all along after she shoots him once? So she's not actually a narcissistic manipulating psychopath after all? C'mon now. That's that audience-mollifying morality again. It would have been fine to leave her fate hanging, knowing she'd get hers because of the tape-recorded confession; the protagonist had already killed the husband, so we know he's done for.

It's a small gripe. The movie is a fine noir with most of the wonderful qualities of that genre. Especially, in this case, the rapid-fire dialogue, which gets in your head. Did people just talk better back then? And superb performances, especially from Edward G. Robinson, who I've learned to appreciate only in recent years. Robinson (born Emanuel Goldenberg in Bucharest, Kingdom of Romania, in the 1890s) was before my time, an "old" movie star from before I was born. But, come to find out, he's fantastic. I first saw him in the noir film Scarlet Street, and then an odd period piece called The Red House. Actually I probably saw him first in Little Caesar many years ago, but I have kind of a fraught relationship to old gangster films. And to shoot-'em-ups in general. Watching people kill people with guns doesn't appeal. I only recently watched Goodfellas for the first time because my editor at The New Yorker wanted me to. (And I admit, it was great.)

Sorry, I'm free associating. The black-and-white cinematography of Double Indemnity is also highly enjoyable if you ask me, but maybe that's just me.

A Beautful Mind (a plug for the book)
I already mentioned that I watched A Beautiful Mind (2001) directed by Ron Howard. It's quite good and very skillful at translating difficult material to the screen. Honestly, though, if you're going to invest in this story, the book by Sylvia Nasar (1998) is better by a good stretch. A terrific biography. While it also necessarily simplifies the story of John Nash, translating impermeable material (it has to imply the mathematical life to non-mathematicians and also portray the experience of schizophrenia, both of which are a big challenge to get across to normal lay people), it's able to go much deeper than the movie. The movie is excellent for what it is but the material isn't a natural fit for the medium. The best thing about the movie—you read this again and again in viewer's comments on social media—is probably that audiences were fooled into thinking the increasingly bizarre plot of his descent into madness is real, and then enjoyed the reveal. But I already knew the story.

My little thorn-in-the-side with this movie is the fact that the real Mrs. Nash was Hispanic. Don't get me wrong, I'd watch Jennifer Connelly cook pork chops—she's entrancingly beautiful, and I get a little hypnotized—but casting her in this role is an example of "whitewashing," one that's not called for for any dramatic reason. Alicia Nash (née Lardé Lopez-Harrison), a Salvadorean physicist, was a fascinating figure in her own right, and gets a little too much swept under the rug here. The movie elides too much of the depth and subtlety of her role and journey in Nash's life. Look to the book.

Quiz Show
A real gem, and a surprise, one I didn't expect to love, is Quiz Show (1994) directed by the actor and all-'round movie maven Robert Redford, whose Sundance Film Festival is almost as big an accomplishment in the field as his long list of starring roles. While the premise lands with a thud when you hear about it, which is probably what caused the film's tepid performance at the box office (that and the fact that it came out in the same year as Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, and Forrest Gump), the movie itself is top drawer from first to last. A great story, skillfully and effortlessly told. No nagging flaws, even, although the real-life timeline is streamlined. And, speaking of Goodfellas, Martin Scorcese himself plays a minor role.

My taste in movies is so specific and my standards so prickly, and I'm so fundamentally impatient with video, that most movies are a waste of time for me. I get a sense almost of gratitude when I manage to find another movie that engages me all the way through like this one did. Recommended, if you missed it.

Quiz Show actually led me directly to the movie I watched last night. The jilted quiz show champion forced to take a dive for the handsome, impeccably connected Charles Van Doren—Ralph Fiennes playing yet another villain, albeit one of a different sort—was Herb Stempel, a geeky Jewish everyman with a genius for trivia portrayed adroitly by John Turturro (the two even look a lot alike). Herb Stempel doesn't want to give up his place on the pedestal, and he's particularly galled by the fact that the question he's supposed to miss is "What won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1955?" Against his objections, Stempel is forced to answer On the Waterfront when he knows full well the answer is Marty. Not only would anyone know the correct answer, he says, but Marty is a personal favorite of his, a movie he'd seen three times.

Marty
Taking the cue, last night I watched Marty (1955), directed by first-time movie director Delbert Mann and starring Ernest Borgnine playing against type. It's the shortest movie ever to win Best Picture, 91 minutes, and one of the few great movies to be adapted from a television show rather than the other way around. It was an episode of a show called "The Philco Television Playhouse." The bones (writing and story) are impeccable, with a screenplay by the great Paddy Chayefsky from his own teleplay. Chayefsky said, "I set out in Marty to write...the most ordinary love story in the world. I didn't want my hero to be handsome, and I didn't want the girl to be pretty. I wanted to write a love story the way it would literally have happened to the kind of people I know."

He succeeded. Marty might be somewhat slight, but it's utterly charming, and it is, for what it is, perfect in every way. You know the old expression "they don't make 'em like they used to"? I think it was movie critic James Berardinelli who called Marty the poster child for that. A naturalistic, sparingly written, beautifully photographed, well-directed, superbly acted, character-driven drama about real life. The action takes place in little more than 24 hours, the people are believable, it reads true from a psychological perspective, and it has one of the best endings I've seen: understated and swift yet warmly satisfying, releasing in a deft, brief, minor, perfectly natural act all of the tensions that had been building throughout the afternoon (for the characters) and for many minutes on end (for the audience).

Mike's verdict? Essence of "movie." Yeah, it's a heart-warmer and a crowd-pleaser, and might be too plain for those of you addicted to fantasy or gunplay or high art, but if I could find a lot more movies like Marty I'd count myself lucky. And no guns driving any of the action in this one, thank you Lord.

You owe it to yourself to see Marty if you've missed it, or if it came out before you were born. And hey, it's free.

Mike

[UPDATE: The Kino Lorber DVD and Blu-Ray of Marty features the five-minute scene of Clara talking to her parents after the date which is, for unexplained reasons, omitted from some other versions including the free streaming version on YouTube. The missing scene can be seen separately on YouTube. —Ed.]

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

David B.: "Re '...in this case, the rapid-fire dialogue [of Double Indemnity], which gets in your head. Did people just talk better back then?' The dialogue was written by Billy Wilder, James M. Cain, and Raymond Chandler (who, incidentally, is briefly seen sitting outside the insurance office.) Which is why it bounces back and forth like a championship tennis rally."

bob palmieri: "Addressing just the aspect of B&W stage setting, lighting and cinematography, sheesh...have you watched Ripley? I honestly think I could teach a year long course in B&W craft just running that and pausing every 20 seconds or so."

Mike replies: Search and ye shall find.

Bear.: "Would Marty have been made by any Hollywood studio today? All excellent movies."

Mike replies: Well, I'm sure a more connected, knowledgeable movie person critic type could write an excellent essay on the extent to which the movie business has contorted the "product" these days compared to then, but I can't. Today's Hollywood movies are more the descendants of the 1959 William Wyler epic Ben-Hur than they are of Marty: spend lavishly, advertise heavily to insure immediate interest and return (note how movie news always breathlessly reports how much the opening weekend take was, like any moviegoer with an interest in the art of film could care), saturate the product with the Hollywood equivalent of salt-sugar-fat, meaning sex, violence, gore, gunplay, fantasy, special effects and excess, make sure "stars" from celebrity culture are present, then spend yet more money campaigning to get Oscars, and you've got your formula for today's blockbusters. It's a business much more than an art, although the art part still survives here and there, battered and bloody.

But that's for "Hollywood" ("a shorthand term for the American film and television industry, particularly focusing on the major studios based in Los Angeles and the surrounding area" —AI overview) and for an asterisked value of "today," because COVID-19 dealt a body-blow to the Hollywood norms that prevailed six years ago that hasn't shaken out yet. I'm even less qualified to write about that. But small, low-budget, character-driven dramas taken from real life, with real photography of live action shot on location and dependent on good writing, acting, and direction? Yeah, that exists, but about like two-seater sports cars or new film cameras still exist.

I know how I sound, but just because I sound like a crusty cynical old codger doesn't mean I'm wrong. :-)