Loretta Young

  • Cause for Alarm! (1951)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, July 2021) You have to have some appreciation for films that have the guts to pick a title like Cause for Alarm! complete with an exclamation point. A plot summary is almost useless: who can resist finding out what kind of title this is? Well, it turns out that the film is a bit like the title — unusual, flashy and a bit nonsensical in its hyperactivity. Often hailed as a film noir, it nonetheless features a narrative that takes place over the course of one beautiful sunny day in suburban Southern California. There’s a catch, obviously:  A death, and a survivor frantically trying to absolve herself. The twisted tale gets going when the heroine’s bedridden husband writes a fanciful incriminating tale and gets her to mail it before inconveniently dropping dead from a heart attack. What follows is a suburban race against time, as she frantically tries to get the letter back (the postman won’t have any of it — sacred duty to the mail, etc.) while her crazy deceased husband starts decomposing in the bedroom. It’s a bit silly (which the comic punchline of the film highlights), a bit timid (hinting but not delivering what, in a modern film, would be a consummated adultery subplot) and a bit too short to surprise at a mere 74 minutes. Reportedly shot quickly and efficiently in an attempt to rival the then-ascendant TV drama format, Cause for Alarm does, at times, feel like a TV episode writ large, with subplots distracting from a rather efficient suburban suspense premise. But it still works, and much of that effectiveness can be traced back to Loretta Young in the lead role. She looks amazingly beautiful here in long dark curly hair (a classic case of an actress aging gracefully if you compare it to earlier roles), and there’s a fascinating blend of repressed panic at play here, as she tries to keep up appearances even as there’s a dead husband elsewhere in the house and she must stop that letter from being sent. The sunny suburban setting does project an ironic counterpoint to the mounting darkness of the story, making the film still distinctive even today. Cause for Alarm may not be among the first choices for classic film noir, but it’s still an intriguing thriller that is sufficiently off-the-wall to remain interesting.

  • The Stranger (1946)

    The Stranger (1946)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2019) In Orson Welles’s filmography, The Stranger is often regarded as one of his least remarkable efforts. An early film noir set in a small town where a Nazi-hunter comes to investigate, it was (at the time) an attempt by the disgraced Welles to prove that he could be counted upon as a dependable actor/director, free from the drama that punctuated the first few years of his career. We all know how Welles’s career eventually turned out when driven away from Hollywood, but he was successful in turning out a competent and profitable result with The Stranger. Alas, this work-for-hire means that the film has far fewer of the distinctive touches we associate with Welles at his best: while highly watchable, the result seems rote. The action moves efficiently through stock characters, and Welles even at his most commercial is still a cut above most directors of the time. The dialogue has some great moments (such as the magnificent speech about the nature of Germans, as horribly stereotyped as it may feel now) but the film’s biggest distinction is how closely it engages with the immediate aftermath of WW2: Never mind the film’s interest in escaped Nazis living in the States: it also features then-new graphic footage of concentration camps … including a pile of bodies. Just to make it clear what this is about. You can certainly see in The Stranger a transition film in between the domestic thrillers of the early-1940s and the more fully realized noir aesthetics of the end of the decade. The result is still worth a look, not least for the compelling performances of Welles, Loretta Young and Edward G. Robinson. It’s a striking illustration of what happens when a great artist is given familiar material.

  • The Bishop’s Wife (1947)

    The Bishop’s Wife (1947)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, April 2019) There have been many charming Christmas movies, but The Bishop’s Wife has the undeniable advantage of featuring Cary Grant as an impossibly suave angel come down to Earth to resolve a bishop’s problems. Complications ensue when the bishop’s wife proves irresistible to him—although, this being a 1940s movie, it’s all handled tastefully. Grant couldn’t be better as the angel and completely steals the movie, whereas David Niven is good in the ungrateful role of the bishop (he was originally supposed to play the angel, but Grant was the better choice) and Loretta Young is luminous as the bishop’s wife. A few interesting special effects reaffirm that this isn’t a realistic Christmas movie. Easy to watch and imbued with a decent amount of Christmas spirit, The Bishop’s Wife is still worth a look today.