Frank Sinatra

  • Step Lively (1944)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) As a remake to the Marx-Brothers 1938 comedy Room Service, the 1944 Frank Sinatra vehicle Step Lively was not necessarily doomed to failure. Absent the Marxes, it’s clear that the remake will not be the same kind of comedy — and Sinatra’s ability to do verbal humour isn’t the same as Groucho Marx. (Ironically, those two would later co-star in Double Dynamite seven years later.)  Fortunately, the script was heavily retooled, largely reverting to its Broadway theatrical roots, absent the specific Marx flourishes. And it works rather well — the base story is something that can more effectively be told as a low-octane charming comedy rather than an out-and-out vaudeville special, and it’s in that vein that Step Lively can best exploit the talents of pre-icon Sinatra. There is a bit of a mismatch between young Sinatra and the world-weary fast-talking role he’s meant to play, but this is tempered by modern viewers’ knowledge that Sinatra would eventually become (as “Chairman of the Board”), the kind of character he was portraying here. Some of the supporting players (notably George Murphy, Wally Brown and Alan Carney) are meant to be funnier and usually are, leaving the straight man reacting and the straightforward singing to the lead. While Step Lively won’t rock anyone’s world (well, other than Sinatra fans), it’s a pleasant enough watch and an interesting point of comparison with the zaniness of Marx-style Room Service.

  • Some Came Running (1958)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) For a rather low-key drama, it’s interesting to see how often Some Came Running comes up in classic film discussions. The facts are that this is a film directed by Vincente Minelli and adapted from a doorstop best-selling novel, that it starred Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine, that good chunks of it were shot on location in a small middle-America town and that it was an example of widescreen colour cinematography at a time when Hollywood dramas usually went for black-and-white Academy ratio. That last factor does help explain the film’s longevity, as it remains more accessible on modern widescreen colour displays than many of its contemporaries. The story is small-potato stuff, as a writer-turned-veteran (Sinatra) returns to his hometown after a long absence, with a loose woman (MacLaine) in tow, and reunites with his brother (Arthur Kennedy), later befriending a likable gambler (Martin). While the original novel is reportedly 1,200 pages long, this stripped-down adaptation fits everything in slightly more than two hours and seems almost lackadaisical in its drive to the ending. But a host of reasons explain why the film stuck in the popular imagination. For one thing, it got five Academy Award nominations (including MacLaine’s first). It was the first screen pairing of Sinatra and Martin, prefiguring the Brat Pack series of movies they’d do together. Its location shooting comes complete with wild tales of fans mobbing Sinatra, wild nights of partying with Martin, and made such an impression that you can still tour Madison, Indiana to see the shooting locations. Minelli’s widescreen colour direction was much admired among fellow directors. None of this really improves the middle-of-the-road impression left by Some Came Running, but sometimes it’s instructive to realize why a film endures… especially if it doesn’t have to do with its quality.

  • Double Dynamite (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2021) Let’s skip to the essentials:  Jane Russell, Groucho Marx, and Frank Sinatra, together in the same film. No matter the results (and there’s a clear case to be made that Double Dynamite is far less explosive than its title), there’s an interesting clash of sensibilities right there. Of course, it would help if the three stars of the film actually played up to their personas. But part of the film’s problem is that it’s a comedy that thinks it can get mileage out of its stars acting off-persona. Why have Jane Russell, if she’s going to be this mousy character? Why have Sinatra as a meek bank teller? Marx is much closer to his established persona, but it’s worth noting that this was a film he did solo, in-between the end of the Marx Brothers’ film run and the career renaissance he experienced as a TV personality. As such, he is coasting on his specific charm without much of anything to back him up. (There’s something similar at play with Russell and Sinatra as well — Produced in 1948 and released in 1951, Double Dynamite slightly predates both stars’ fully-developed personas of their mid-1950s career peaks.)  I don’t want to suggest that Double Dynamite is a complete waste of time: it’s amiable enough, satisfying enough, happily-ending enough with two musical numbers with Sinatra and sufficient Groucho bon mots to make any viewer happy. But it’s nowhere nearly as good as you could expect.

  • Never so Few (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2021) The 1950s were a victory lap when it came to Hollywood movies and World War II. Even absent the propagandist imperative of the war years, studios kept revisiting the conflict in generally heroic tones, praising the American soldier and considering the war as a series of adventures. You can see that tone at work in Never so Few, which explores an understudied facets of war (the Burmese theatre) in a way that evolves from slight comedy to revenge thriller. It is, at the very least, heavy on stars with Frank Sinatra and Gina Lollobrigida in the lead roles, and notables such as Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson and Paul Heinred in supporting roles. In an attempt to throw everything in its expansive two-hour running length, there’s a depiction of troops in wartime and a mission behind enemy lines, but also a shoehorned romance and a travelogue as well. It works, but just — Never so Few isn’t some kind of forgotten classic or anything: it’s worth a look if you like the cast, or if you want another illustration of another corner of WW2, but it’s not always as compelling nor as consistent as similar films from the era.

  • Ship Ahoy (1942)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2021) The combination of Eleanor Powell’s tap-dancing talents and Red Skelton’s rubber-faced comedy must have been an irresistible commercial prospect in the early 1940s, and Ship Ahoy mostly delivers on that promise, with a few extras on top. The best of those, to me, has to be Virginia O’Brien in a strong supporting comic role, her deadpan singing being limited to one sequence. (But what a sequence: A romantic ditty first performed straight by a young Frank Sinatra, reprised with heartfelt romantic humour by Skelton, and then mercilessly skewed by O’Brien’s usual flat singing and sarcastic interjections: “Wow!”)  Surprisingly enough, Skelton keeps a lid on his worst tendencies, even conforming to the demands of a romantic lead role (as a hypochondriac writer) rather than overindulge in comic showboating. The plot itself gets ingenious at times, with Powell’s character being duped into taking a piece of high technology out of the mainland states to the benefit of foreigners, being kidnapped, then alerting US agents by tap-dancing Morse code. One more highlight is a substantial performance by legendary big-band leader Tommy Dorsey and his orchestra as the source of many of the film’s musical numbers. While I’ll agree with those who point out that Ship Ahoy is a lesser effort than the second Powell/Skelton collaboration I Dood It (a Skelton catchphrase that you can hear as a line of dialogue here), there are enough bits and pieces here and there to make it great fun to watch—I never get enough of O’Brien anyway, and this film does let her do more than just a novelty song.

  • The Kissing Bandit (1948)

    The Kissing Bandit (1948)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2020) Movie history is not kind to The Kissing Bandit: It’s recognized by Wikipedia as “one of the least successful musicals in MGM history,” and “an acknowledged low-point in the careers of Frank Sinatra and Kathryn Grayson.” Is it such a terrible film, though? Of course not. While almost obscure these days, it’s quite entertaining to watch if you’re a fan of Technicolor MGM musical. Gorgeously shot against California mountains with very colourful costumes, the film clearly doesn’t take itself too seriously. The premise alone does a lot of mileage out of blending Robin Hood with Zorro as a Boston-educated young man comes back to 19th-century California to take over his father’s inn, only to discover that he’s expected to step into his father’s true occupation: leader of a masked gang, otherwise known as “the Kissing Bandit” for his habit of, well, kissing female victims. That premise wouldn’t fly today for obvious reasons, but even then—the film seems determined to minimize any unpleasant connotations this may have: our hero spends nearly all of the film shying away from any kissing, and the film spares no means (opening titles joke, comic sound effects, overacting) to let us know that this is a big broad comedy and nothing bad is ever going to happen. A young Sinatra with relatively long hair does well in the lead role, while Grayson is simply lovely as the governor’s daughter. Still, I’m burying the lead here because the single best reason to watch the film as far as I’m concerned is a single number toward the end of the film that has two of my biggest MGM crushes, Ann Miller and Cyd Charisse, in billowing dresses dancing a number with none other than Ricardo Montalban—whew! Let’s not argue that The Kissing Bandit is a great film—it has trouble with tone, and the rather promising opening act somehow doesn’t quite lead to a satisfying middle before the film picks up again toward the end. But it’s fun, funny and offers some great Hollywood stars doing some singing and dancing. Its relative obscurity may even mean that even fans of the era haven’t seen it yet.

  • The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

    The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2020) From the first moments of The Man with the Golden Arm, as we see Saul Bass’s opening titles and director Otto Preminger’s name, we’re reminded of the later Anatomy of a Murder and promised a serious taboo-breaking black-and-white drama. The film does not disappoint. It features Frank Sinatra as an ex-convict who’s struggling with not relapsing into drug addiction. That’s unusual enough as a topic matter for 1955, but what sets the film apart, even today, if that it treats addiction like a disease, and the addict as a victim. The humanization of the protagonist is made easier through Sinatra’s sympathetic screen persona, in a role that wouldn’t have been the same with any other actor. (Also notable: Kim Novak, and Arnold Stang’s great performance as a friend of the protagonist.) While it does take some time to get going, The Man with the Golden Arm does offer a fascinating atmosphere of low-down mid-1950s Chicago, with smoke-filled card joints, strip clubs (sort of) and seedy apartments. What the film does better than many others, then or since, is showing how difficult it can be to break out of a bad past, transforming the story from a crime thriller to a social drama. Sure, Sinatra and/or Preminger’s name will draw viewers in, but the story itself is quite engrossing once you give it a chance to put all of its pieces in place.

  • Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)

    Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, March 2020) Part of the fun of watching Hollywood history is seeing talented performers getting paired up even when the match isn’t quite harmonious. Frank Sinatra—brilliant singer. Gene Kelly—terrific dancer. Both of them together? Well, you have to see Take Me Out to the Ball Game how they play together… and having Esther Williams as the female lead doesn’t hurt either. A prestige song-and-dance show from MGM (in Technicolour!), it blends its leads’ skills with America’s sport and the usual trappings of musical comedies. The highlight is the theme song, but there are a few good moments elsewhere too: Esther Williams inevitably dips into a pool at some point, and while director Busby Berkeley’s imprint on the film is faint (he only shot a small portion of it, and the rest was reportedly completed by Kelly and Stanley Donen), there are still traces of it in the finished product. On the other hand, there’s some weird stuff as well: the references to suicide and pedophilia in the middle of an upbeat wolf-whistling song are a bit off-putting to say the least. Also not quite as controlled for twenty-first century viewers: double standards in how a determined woman is portrayed compared to the equally persistent male characters. Ah well—this is from the late 1940s, after all. Still, a muddled average and no high peaks means that Take Me Out to the Ball Game suffers in comparison to other Sinatra/Kelly vehicles like On the Town and Anchors Aweigh. They can’t all be perfect. In this case, it still means we get Sinatra singing and Kelly dancing.

  • Ava Gardner, la gitane d’Hollywood: les années espagnoles de la Comtesse aux Pieds Nus [Ava Gardner: The Gypsy of Hollywood] (2018)

    Ava Gardner, la gitane d’Hollywood: les années espagnoles de la Comtesse aux Pieds Nus [Ava Gardner: The Gypsy of Hollywood] (2018)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2018) Made-in-France TV documentary Ava Gardner, la gitane d’Hollywood: les années espagnoles de la Comtesse aux Pieds Nus has both a breathless title and a somewhat tight focus on Gardner’s years in Spain during Franco’s dictatorial regime. While there’s clearly some affection for Gardner here (expressed either through interviewees who met her over there, or star-struck commentators), she does get excoriated for her indifference to the authoritarian regime that welcomed her, and her lack of awareness for the role she played in realpolitik between the United States and the Spanish government at the time. A secondary axis of focus for the film is in describing how Gardner was possessed of a beauty that outstripped her ability to deal with it. Coming from modest rural origins, she was celebrated as a world-class beauty but it was a life-long struggle for Gardner to come to grip with what it meant and not being exploited for it. A third area of interest consists in her tumultuous marriage with Frank Sinatra, although there’s a lot left out of that segment. The rest of Gardner’s life and career gets perfunctory but disappointing mention—her apprenticeship in the studio system prior to The Killers, her stardom years, her twilight decades before her 1990 death in London all get comparatively short thrift here compared to the Spanish years. It’s not uninteresting (especially as an occasion to learn more about Gardner), but the film ends up being unsatisfying: It’s focused on too narrow a period in her life when there’s an incredibly rich career barely mentioned. I suspect that much of Ava Gardner, la gitane d’Hollywood’s shortcomings come from its origins as a time-limited TV documentary and ready access to Europe-based sources more familiar with Gardner’s Spanish years—but there’s a lot of material left untouched if anyone else wants to make a better Gardner biopic.

  • Guys and Dolls (1955)

    Guys and Dolls (1955)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, August 2019) I remain amazed at how some movies can produce some consistent reactions for decades. If you look at contemporary accounts of Guys and Dolls prior to its release, the themes are similar: “What? Joseph L. Mankiewicz directs a musical featuring Jean Simmons and Marlon Brando? What craziness is this?!”  Considering that neither Mankiewicz, Simmons nor Brando ever went back to musicals after this one-off, you can get the exact same reaction well into the twenty-first century. Of course, we now have fairly entertaining stories of rivalry on the set between Brando and co-star Frank Sinatra, the latter of which was not impressed by Brando’s mumbling or singing deficiencies. (I’ll agree with Sinatra on this one.)  Guys and Dolls, seen from today’s perspective, is not entirely as slick as other musicals of the era—and Brando has the double disadvantages of not being in his element either as a singer or a comedian, his mumbling quickly becoming annoying. Sinatra is far more comfortable in going from song to jokes. The cabaret numbers are fun: I enjoyed the “Pet me Papa” cat-girl number a bit too much. Mankiewicz does relatively well in helming the production: The introduction is great, the conclusion makes good use of its impressive Times Square stage and the dice gambling scene is not bad either. The result is a bit too long at 150 minutes, but Guys and Dolls did scratch my itch for a lavish musical … and I look forward to future generations of cinephiles also asking themselves what Brando was doing in a musical.

  • Anchors Aweigh (1945)

    Anchors Aweigh (1945)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, January 2019) I’m probably showing the shallowness of my pool of reference, but Anchors Aweigh certainly struck me as a dry run for the more successful On the Town four years later. After all, both movies star Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra as sailors on shore leave, reaching for the same kind of audience-friendly mixture of comedy and music. It’s as if both sprang from the same starting point, with On the Town improving upon its predecessor by featuring more couples and swapping Los Angeles for New York. Still, Anchors Aweigh is far more than a prototype—it’s a perfectly enjoyable film in its own right. The plot is serviceable as a way to showcase what its leads do best. Sinatra is great while singing a quiet number at a piano, while Gene Kelly dances as well as ever—famously with an animated Jerry the Mouse, but also in a market sequence, and then again in a dream Spanish adventure sequence. The colourful look at 1945 movie studios pleasantly blurs the line between fiction and memorializing then-reality. George Sidney’s direction is slickly professional (especially during the Hollywood Bowl piano sequence), and female lead Kathryn Grayson is very, very cute. While comparisons with On the Town do Anchors Aweigh no favour, it’s a very enjoyable musical, and it’s doubly worth seeing by classical Hollywood fans by virtue of showing us what MGM studios looked like at the close of WW2.

  • Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)

    Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, November 2018) Now Robin and the 7 Hoods is an interesting curio: A gangster musical, featuring Bing Crosby and the Rat Pack. Adding even more interest to the proceedings, the story is a retelling of Robin Hood in Prohibition-era Chicago. With a premise and cast like this, you can almost be forgiven for thinking that whatever is on-screen is a let-down from whatever idealized movie you could imagine. Depending on your taste, the film is either too talky, too long, not witty enough to fully capitalize on its potential, or to make good use of its long list of performers. Barbara Rush isn’t as good a Marian as she could have been, while we can quibble about the number of songs given to this or that actor/singer. All of this is true—Robin and the 7 Hoods is never mentioned as a major musical, and there’s a feeling that the material could be done quite a bit better. And yet … there are some really good moment in here. The highlight has to be the “Bang! Bang!” number featuring Sammy Davis, Jr. as a gun-crazy gangster shooting up the place. Another great sequence has a speakeasy transforming itself into a religious mission complete with gospel singers. Edward G. Robinson shows up briefly as an elderly gangster, while Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin (a bit wasted) and Bing Crosby (showing up too late) get to croon a few numbers. The colourful portrait of 1920s Chicago is a straight-up cliché, justifiably so in a silly musical comedy. I do wish Robin and the 7 Hoods would have been just a bit better, but I still had quite a good time watching it all. Just the thrill of discovery does account for much of it.

  • Von Ryan’s Express (1965)

    Von Ryan’s Express (1965)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, October 2018) The 1960s were a strange time for war movies, as they (influenced by the Vietnam debacle) steadily evolved from the war-is-an-adventure tone of the 1950s to the war-is-hell tone of the 1970s. Von Ryan’s Express is an unsatisfying mid-way point along that evolution: While it does present itself largely as an adventure in which WW2 Allied POWs escape the clutches of the Nazis thanks to complex train-bound shenanigans, it also features a rather depressing ending that cuts short any willingness to cheer all the way to the ending credits. This ending (reportedly motivated by star Frank Sinatra’s desire to avoid sequels) is all the more maddening because it’s not quite tonally consistent with the rest of the film, which is a good old-fashioned outwit-the-Nazis romp on rails in the closing days of the war. Sinatra is dependably charismatic in the lead role, with a decent ensemble of supporting character actors. The production values are high and so is the verisimilitude of the results. The tension runs high, and Von Ryan’s Express does, up until its last few moments, seem aimed to become a sure crowd-pleaser. But then there’s the ending … which I’ve already discussed.

  • High Society (1956)

    High Society (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2018) Considering the high esteem with which I hold The Philadelphia Story (Hepburn! Grant! Stewart!), you may think that I wouldn’t be so happy about its musical remake High Society. But that’s not the case! I like musicals, and High Society is a great musical, justifying its existence by doing things that the original film couldn’t do. The fun starts early as the film features Louis Armstrong and His Band introducing the setting in song before turning to the audience and winking, “End of song, beginning of story.”  I like my musicals self-aware, and the tone thus having been settled, we’re off to the races as Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra end up forming the triangle at the centre of the story. Kelly plays her princess-like role well enough—not up to Katharine Hepburn’s level, but the irony level is off the chart considering that this would be her last film before becoming a member of the real Monaco royalty. Crosby and Sinatra are effortlessly charming as usual—“Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” is sensational, and “Now You Has Jazz” has Armstrong taking centre stage for a welcome encore. The film is at its weakest when running through the motions of repeating its inspiration, and at its strongest when it goes off in song and dance numbers. I really enjoyed it—especially as a musical.

  • From Here to Eternity (1953)

    From Here to Eternity (1953)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2018) For all of the continued acclaim of From Here to Eternity as a classic piece of Hollywood Cinema, the film itself is often a disappointment. From its descriptions, you could maybe expect a sweeping drama set in pre-Pearl Harbor Hawaii, with high romance being interrupted by the beginning of the war. Alas, that’s just you going from the iconic beach scene and hazy memories of Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor—the reality of From Here to Eternity has more to do with it being an adaptation of a gritty dramatic novel in which nobody gets a happy ending. On the menu: a sordid affair (one of many) between a traumatized housewife and an indecisive soldier; physical abuse in the military; a character falling for a high-end prostitute (oh, OK, “hostess”); and the Japanese on their way to ruin the melodrama right before the end. Also on the menu; terrifying dumb decisions from the characters to ensure that they will not get what they want (often dying in the process). As a period piece, From Here to Eternity is not that successful—until the Japanese attack, the film feels far too intimate to reflect the reality of living on a military base and the way it spends nearly all of its time in small sets does undercuts its bigger ambitions. The image of the beach romance suggested by the film’s reputation is far worse in context: Not only is the beach frolicking limited to a few seconds, it’s in support of an adulterous relationship that’s not particularly admirable, and it leads straight to a soliloquy of intense personal grief. Frame the picture of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr smooching if you want, but don’t expect the film to heighten the fantasy. This being said, much of this reaction is a reaction to the film’s sterling reputation—taken on its own, From Here to Eternity does remain a good dramatic piece, anchored by able performances by Lancaster, Montgomery Clift and (especially) Frank Sinatra, with Kerr and Donna Reed on the distaff side. Still, reading about the film (and the changes from the original novel) is often more interesting than the film itself. Overinflated expectations or under-delivering period piece—I can’t decide for now (and I suspect that watching three WW2 movies in a row due to Memorial weekend doesn’t help), although I am glad to have seen it to complete that bit of Hollywood History.