Stream Leading Men of a Certain Era at a Certain Age
Ronald Coleman – Lost Horizon 1937 Based on the fantasy novel by James Hilton. Directed by Frank Capra. While evacuating refuges from China, the aircraft of writer, soldier, diplomat (about to be Foreign Secretary), Robert Conway (Ronald Coleman) is hijacked, crashing into the snowy Himalayas. Survivors are rescued and taken to idyllic Shangri-La, a peaceful community watched over by its wise, ancient Lama (Sam Jaffe).
A ring of mountains keeps weather temperate, earth is fertile, everyone seems robustly healthy; in fact, no one dies unless they leave the enclave. While some passengers are determined to leave, others find productive, satisfying roles and decide to settle. Conway meets and is taken with Sondra (Jane Wyatt) who was born in Shangri-La.
In a meeting with the Lama, Conway learns his arrival was no accident. Hundreds of years old, the leader wants him to take over so he can die. The settlement was founded as a utopia and has much to offer the outside world in the way of law and learning. Assumption is that so called civilization is on the verge of destroying itself at which point…
Coleman is splendid and no spring chicken. Listening to that voice is worth the film, but it’s otherwise enjoyable and rather timely. The initial cut was six hours long. Capra managed to trim the running time to 3½ hours for the first preview. Oh, to see the lost footage! With Edward Everett Horton, John Howard, Thomas Mitchell. Rent on Amazon Prime.
Jean Gabin – Port of Shadows (Le Quai des brumes) 1937 In French with English subtitles. Based on a novel by Pierre Mac Orlan. Identified as the first to be called “film noir.” Army deserter, Jean (Jean Gabin), lands in Le Havre in hopes of starting over. He meets 17 year-old Nelly (Michèle Morgan) who’s run away from her godfather, Zabel with whom she lives. They ease into a relationship.
The couple is often intruded upon both by Zabel and a gangster who’s looking for Nelly’s ex-boyfriend. When she discovers Zabel murdered her boyfriend out of jealousy, Nelly blackmails him to protect Jean. Nothing turns out well. Gabin is not classically handsome but extremely masculine and compelling. With Michel Simon. Free with Amazon Prime.
Clark Gable – The Misfits 1961 Written by playwright Arthur Miller. Directed by John Huston. If this one got by you, rent immediately. Acting, script, direction, cinematography are superb. Gable has never been more magnetic. After Roslyn Tabor’s (Marilyn (Monroe) Reno divorce, wise-cracking landlady Isabelle (Thelma Ritter) takes her to Harrah’s for a drink. There they meet aging cowboy, Gaylord ‘Gay’ Langland (Clark Gable) and his friend Guido (Eli Wallach).
In a short time, Gay offers the women his unfinished house near the desert, something they’ll all four fix up, ostensibly without strings. Both men are, of course attracted to soft, sexy, extra sensitive Roslyn, but acting like gentlemen. To earn some money, Gay suggests rounding up mustangs. In exchange for a rodeo entrance fee, Perce Howland (Montgomery Clift), a cowboy friend of Gay’s, will join the effort. Naïve Roslyn goes along for the experience.
Gay, Guido, and Perce capture a stallion and four mares. Only now does Roslyn find out the horses will be sold for dog food. She screams at Gay that she didn’t know she was falling in love with a killer and demands he release them. Offers are made, advances implied, integrity and conscience examined. Every moment feels real. Things sort themselves out.
It was, to say the least, a troublesome shoot. At 59, Gable insisted on doing some of his own stunts. Monroe was breaking up with Miller, drinking, using drugs, often late or absent. Huston drank and gambled – some of his extensive loses were covered by the studio. The Nevada temperature was often 110. This was the last completed film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Rent on Amazon Prime.
William Holden – Network 1976 Written by Paddy Chayevsky. Directed by Sidney Lumet. Four Academy Awards. Politics, knife-in-the-back power struggles, obsession with ratings and a free for all attitude towards amoral programming.
Forced out of the anchor job, Howard Beale (Peter Finch), declares he’ll commit on-air suicide his last day. He rails about corruption of the news with division president/friend Max Schumacher (William Holden). Programming head Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), who literally finds viewer statistics an aphrodisiac (remember the deli scene in When Harry Met Sally?), convinces the head of the network to re-slot news under entertainment.
Diana begins a steamy affair with long married Schumacher who doesn’t fully see what’s coming. Howard Beale is now “The made prophet of the airwaves.” His vaudeville-like show offers real terrorists, an evangelist and a soothsayer. Incendiary editorializing is encouraged. Sound familiar?
Schumacher quits. “You are television incarnate, Diana,” he tells her, “indifferent to suffering, insensitive to joy.” Ratings soar until Beale discovers the network is clandestinely controlled by a Saudi Arabian conglomerate. A meeting with Chairman Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty) is as horrifying as anything in Citizen Kane and much closer to current truth. Beale’s message starts to make his audience uncomfortable. He must be eliminated.
Schumacher represents “old fashioned” integrity. Think Dan Rather, Edward R. Murrow. He is, as apparently Holden was in real life, solid and principled. Also incidentally middle-aged and charismatic for the right reasons. Network arrived two years after the first on-screen suicide in television history by reporter, Christine Chubbock, but presciently Chayevsky started writing the film years before. “Television will do anything for a rating … anything!” he said. With Robert Duvall. Rent on Amazon Prime.
Marcello Mastroianni – Dark Eyes 1987 Based on several short stories by Anton Chekhov. Directed by Nikita Mikhalkov. With Yelena Safonova, Marthe Keller. Two gentlemen find themselves alone in the dining room of a steamer, Italian Romano (Mastroianni) and Russian Pavel (Vsevoled Larinov). They drink together and Romano shares a tale of lost love.
Married too well, then a young architect, he gave up his work to be a man of leisure. Wife Elisa (Sylvana Mangano) was calm and serious, Romano bored, playful, often clown-like. When Elisa inherited her father’s banking business and took over, she didn’t want Romano’s help. The family lived beautifully. Every year he’d take the waters at an elegant spa where he met one or another mistress.
On the occasion in question, he meets a young, Russian woman trapped in marriage with a much older domineering man in order to save her family from poverty. She’s demure, reticent, just the kind of challenge Romano enjoys. He brings her into light and pleasure. She knows she’s fallen in love and leaves a confessional letter – in Russian. He’s less aware of his own feelings until returning home and having the billet doux translated.
While Elisa tries to save the family business, Romano leaves for Russia under wonderfully screwball circumstances. (The kind of situation in which Danny Kaye might find himself.) He finds Anna and promises to return, but arriving back in Rome…Though you know the ending, the trip is marvelous. At the start, the film makes Mastroianni look awful, but flashbacks find him middle aged (the actor was in his 60s), handsome and seductive. Free with Amazon Prime.
Gregory Peck – Old Gringo 1989 Based on the novel by Carlos Fuentes. Directed by Luis Puenzo. Emotionally suffocating at home in Boston, naïve schoolteacher Harriet Winslow (Jane Fonda), accepts a governess job with a wealthy family in Mexico. As her mother has hidden the offer many months, she arrives in the middle of the Mexican revolution. Harriet is escorted to the hacienda by men she assumes were sent by her employers. They are, in fact, General Tomas Arroyo (Jimmy Smits) and soldiers of Pancho Villa who use her to get access to the compound.
Battle erupts. Harriet discovers the Miranda family has long fled and finds herself stranded. She witnesses mass killing and firing squads. Meanwhile, fed up with society, writer/journalist Ambrose Bierce (Gregory Peck, 73 at the time) arrived in Mexico for one last meaningful stand before he dies. Though turned away by Arroyo, he sticks, proving himself brave and helpful. Harriet gravitates to the only other “gringo” (white person) without knowing who he is. (She’s read all his books.) He offers wisdom, comfort, and admiration.
A community rises. Both white people find their places. Harriet literally lets her hair down, gives away her corset, and changes radically. A virgin, she experiences first love, Bierce, his last. (No, they’re not lovers.) Troops stay away from war much too long as Arroyo tries to make peace with a past that ties him to the place. Bierce feels paternal towards the general. Provoking Arrayo to move on – for his and the army’s good – he takes a risk and loses.
Visually grand if politically sketchy. Peck is simply wonderful, showing nuance we may never have seen before. While Smits is beautiful, Peck is grand and very much the leading man. In 1913, Bierce traveled to Mexico, to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution. He disappeared and was rumored to be traveling with rebel troops. The writer was never seen again. Rent on Amazon Prime.
William Powell – My Man Godfrey 1936 Based on 1101 Park Avenue, a novel by Eric S. Hatch. Directed by Gregory LaCava. A screwball comedy, this delightful film finds apparent bum, Godfrey “Smith” Parke (Powell) conscripted by socialite Irene Bullock (Carole Lombard) to be her “forgotten man” in a scavenger hunt. Godfrey expresses disdain for the crowd’s oblivious attitude toward suffering during The Depression. Irene offers him a job as the family butler. He accepts.
The protagonist is, in fact, not down and out, just miserable. His job offers usefulness and distraction. In the course of the story, he deftly adjusts the Bullocks’ superficial outlook, rescues Mr. Bullock’s business, plans a new start, and unintentionally garners Irene’s love. All this despite Irene’s older sister Cornelia’s underhanded attempts to seduce or get rid of him. Middle aged Powell, who had been married to Lombard, is eminently attractive. Charm lives. And yes, I know he’s acting. Free with Amazon Prime.
In 1953’s How to Marry a Millionaire, the actor is 16 years older and still thoroughly appealing. Rent on Amazon Prime.
NOTES: Cary Grant merits his own collection.
Burt Lancaster has his own, former list.
Tyrone Power never did it for me.
It’s been pointed out I forgot Gary Cooper. Mea Culpa! Absolutely a candidate.
Top photo: Bigstock
