Rock Hudson

  • Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964)

    Man’s Favorite Sport? (1964)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, December 2020) Any movie that claims to be directly inspired by Bringing Up Baby gets a fast-track to my affection, and Man’s Favorite Sport has a much stronger claim than others at that distinction, having been directed by Howard Hawks – who apparently tried to get Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn to reprise their roles. He obviously wasn’t able to do so, but getting Rock Hudson and Paula Prentiss instead is really not a bad substitute. The story has to do with a fishing expert having never fished (Hudson) and the woman (Prentiss) who discovers his secret on the eve of a major competition. But the plot is really a driver for a neo-screwball comedy featuring Howard’s typical fast pace running roughshod over absurd comic situations. The film can be especially funny to those with some outdoors experience, as much of it is seeing a befuddled Hudson trying his best at becoming an outdoorsman. Prentiss is cute and vivacious enough, while Hudson is perhaps a bit uncomfortable in a zanier comic persona that was asked of him in earlier romantic comedies. (I have a hunch that Hudson was never able to completely surrender his persona to the ridiculousness of the comedy beats.) There’s a sense that the film wasn’t quite able to get the lightning pace of previous Hawks screwball comedies, but it’s not for lack of trying and the result is that Man’s Favourite Sport is merely funny rather than hilarious – which is still a success.

  • Written on the Wind (1956)

    Written on the Wind (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, October 2020) I have, in past reviews, used “melodrama” as a bit of an epithet, complaining about overwrought drama as if it was a bad thing by definition. But Douglas Sirk’s Written on the Wind has shown me the error of my ways, as its overblown, overwrought, overdriven plotting is a spectacular demonstration of the joys of melodrama when it simply stops caring about being plausible. From the first few minutes (even discounting the very dramatic framing device that gets us to murder in less than sixty seconds), it’s obvious that this isn’t a script that plays in subtleties, as characters get married on a whim and are soon enjoying line-by-line verbal jousting. Robert Stack and Lauren Bacall play bickering couples like few others, and both amazingly tear into their dialogue without cracking up at the absurdity of it all. Things get much better (or worse) once a scheming sister (Dorothy Malone, shattering her mousy persona with a brassy blonde hairdo) and a longtime friend (Rock Hudson, in a straight—ahem: sedate—performance that became rich in subtext when his homosexuality was revealed decades later) enter the picture and also start making trouble. The love square is inherently unstable, and it becomes even wilder once infertility, money, alcoholism, lust and plain old death enter the picture. The fifth character here is heard rather than seen—the orchestral score is exceptionally aggressive here, not underscoring the action as much as overscoring it—there’s a scene with a boy riding a mechanical horse outside a restaurant that has to be heard to be believed. It’s all very broad and outrageously in-your-face, so much so that the film flips into satirical territory by pure brute force. The kicker is that there really isn’t much of a difference between Written on the Wind and later soap operas, even glorified ones such as Dallas and Dynasty—Sirk was clearly ahead of his time here, or simply repurposing pulp fiction to the big screen with a ferociousness that would set a precedent. No matter why or how, Written on the Wind remains a striking movie today, going for madcap blatant melodrama and leaving a much stronger impression than many so-called serious dramas of the time.

  • Pillow Talk (1959)

    Pillow Talk (1959)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2020) Doris Day may now be known better for her late-career chaste and demure roles, but she was a feminist icon in many of her earlier movies—independent, feisty, with a good job, and not willing to compromise on her choices of romantic partners. Pillow Talk is somewhere between those poles, but closer to the female-empowerment side. Naughty then but almost wholesome now, it’s the story of a Manhattan career girl who falls in love with a fellow user of a telephone party line—an early precursor to the gentle sex comedies of the early 1960s. (If you liked Mad Men, there’s a bit of this in here.) The technological limitations of a party line clearly date this, but the Oscar-winning script remains compelling, with plenty of well-used voiceovers reinforcing the comedy of the plot. Pillow Talk’s biggest assets remain its lead actors, with Doris Day and Rock Hudson sharing the screen for the first of three times (you’ll understand why the fuss after watching the film), and supported by notables such as Thelma Ritter (nominated for an Academy Award) and Tony Randall in a very Tony Randallish role. Perry Blackwell is also a bit of a highlight as a sassy lounge singer. Pillow Talk also works well as a glorious Eastmancolor time capsule through comfortable-class late-1950s Manhattan apartments, with three-way split screens to further enliven things. There’s some uncomfortable irony in having Hudson’s character insinuate (with malice) that someone else is gay. Other than this slip-up, Pillow Talk is quite entertaining and its familiarity with various tropes certainly helps spruce things up. Meanwhile, Day gets a bit of a glow-up over previous roles and makes it work to her advantage.

  • Ice Station Zebra (1968)

    Ice Station Zebra (1968)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, September 2019) Some movies pass into legend solely based on their fandom, and so one of the most interesting facts about Ice Station Zebra is how it was billionaire Howard Hugues’s favourite movie when he was in his reclusive phase—so much so that he took advantage of owning a local TV station by calling them to request that the film be shown in a loop all night long. (Later, he set himself up a private movie theatre and reportedly ran the film 150 times in the final months before his death.) Crazily enough, you can see in the film some of what may have attracted him to it. Adapted from an Alistair MacLean novel, Ice Station Zebra could justifiably be called a forerunner of the modern techno-thriller genre: Predicated on a high-tech plot device (a top-secret capsule from a satellite having crash-landed in the Arctic) and bolstered by good old-fashioned cold-war thriller elements (Americans vs. the Soviets, racing in submarines to retrieve the capsule), it blends the environmental hazards of polar conditions with human traitors and time-ticking suspense. It’s a high-octane thriller even by modern standards, and having a cast of big names (Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine and Patrick McGoohan) as headliners only helps. Shot in luscious 70 mm with then-terrific special effects, there’s a crispness to the cinematography (even on TV!) that does betray is studio-bound production. It’s hard to avoid thinking that if Howard Hugues had stayed in the movie business without going crazy, he probably would have gravitated to engineering-heavy big-thrill films such as Ice Station Zebra. Would an elderly Hugues have enjoyed things like The Hunt for Red October? Almost certainly. And while the movie will never attract as famous a fan again, you can have a look and see what the fuss was about.

  • Giant (1956)

    Giant (1956)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, May 2018) As a swan song for James Dean, Giant is a fitting statement. A vast family generational drama set in the vast expanses of oil-rich Texas, Giant begins as our newlywed heroine (the ever-captivating Elizabeth Taylor) moves from the East Coast to arid Texas, and befriends a ranch hand (Dean). One semi-accidental death later, the ranch hand inherits some land that proves to be soaked with oil. Over the next few decades, he develops an empire, leading to a climactic confrontation at the opening of his grand hotel where long-held feuds are detonated. Dean manages to play both a young cowboy and an aging industrialist, holding his own not only against Taylor, but also Rock Hudson as the ranch owner who ends up butting heads with his ex-employee. If Giant has a flaw, it’s that it’s a really, really long movie at three hours and twenty-one minutes. I don’t mind the multi-decade scope as much as the length of each individual scene—time and time again, the film takes forever to make a point that could have been made far more efficiently. Surprisingly enough, I don’t quite dislike Dean’s performance—he’s mopey in the film’s first half, but rural mopey rather than urban mopey or suburban mopey such as in his other two films and as such sidesteps his caricatures that have emerged since then. In the film’s last half, he effectively becomes a drunken unhappy industrialist and actually sells the role rather well despite playing decades older than he was at the time. My other issue with Giant is how it doesn’t reach a climax as much as it blows up over a lengthy period at the hotel, then moves to a roadside diner for a moral climax that actually makes the film’s conclusion feel far smaller. That’s what you get from working from a novel as source material, though—whether you have the guts to change what doesn’t make sense on the screen, or you get criticized for it. The film has endured rather well—its anti-racism streak is still surprisingly relevant, and its anti-sexism message also comes across. The film also shows with a decent amount of detail the transition from Texas’ ranching heritage to its more modern oil extraction boom. I may not like Giant all that much, but I respect it a lot, and I frankly find it disappointing that it got beaten by as frothy a spectacle as Around the World in 80 Days for the Best Picture Oscar.