Dad's Movies: "The Black Swan" and "The Buccaneer"

Double header!

Next up:  2 "historical" Hollywood entertainments.

The Black Swan (1942) is another Tyrone Power film (hmm, they all seem to be at the beginning of the alphabet!) and was apparently very successful in its day. The movie is fine, as far as it goes, but seems to be trying to outdo the classic film The Sea Hawk (1940) in the pirates and swashbuckling game. The main issue is that Power just doesn't quite have the charm of Errol Flynn and that makes it harder to buy Power's character inspiring loyalty from his fellow privateers or being able to win over Maureen O'Hara. It doesn't help that the first scene between them has overtones or threats of rape - yeah, that goes over well with the ladies!

On the other hand, there are times when Power's character verges on an anti-hero mode which is occasionally interesting but isn't always right for the rest of the film. The rough character mode works better when the scenes are including the boss, Captain Morgan (played by Laird Cregar, one of the standouts in the cast) and fellow pirate, Captain Leech who is played by Fox regular George Sanders, wearing a thick red beard.

The photography is rich and the action scenes are decent for an old film that is mostly shot on sets using water tanks and model ships. The sword fights aren't amazing though, and seem to rely on under-cranking the cameras to get the action to move "faster".

The musical score is really over-the-top and also seems to be trying to imitate the classic score from The Sea Hawk.

The other film is The Buccaneer (1958).

This creaky "epic" probably seemed old-fashioned in 1958; it's a remake of an older DeMille movie and despite being directed by his son in-law, Anthony Quinn has DeMille's trademark stuffiness all over it (complete with an "introduction" by CB himself that makes the film seem like a movie suitable for teaching American History). Yul Brynner does his best as the world's most boring pirate but looks silly wearing a toupee.

Charlton Heston is especially stiff as Andrew Jackson who looks like a spitting image of the $20 bill. He mostly wanders around giving speeches and is stalked by a Daniel Boone look-alike who seems very concerned that Jackson hasn't drank his milk. Seriously, he mentions it in every scene the two have together.

Oh yeah, and Lorne Greene gets a couple of opportunities to do some uncharacteristic overacting.

The other aspect of the film that bothers me is that even though the film was shot in VistaVision and color, the whole thing looks cheap as it's almost entirely shot on stages made to look like the bayous of Louisiana. This was a normal practice ten years earlier but by the late 1950s, at least some location work was being done, especially on large budget movies. The sharp picture really makes this stand out (and the Blu Ray is very well done).

This is one of those movies I wish I could ask Dad about - why did he buy it? Maybe there was something he remembered liking about it back then but who knows...

Dad's Movies: "Blood and Sand"

Next up:  Blood and Sand (1941).

I found Tyrone Power better in this one than the last film (Black Rose) I watched. From what I can tell, this is one Power's better films.

The cast is all really quite good and the Spanish bullfighting epic makes for a compelling character study with a story with something to say. I figured going in that the film would glamorize Bullfighting but it actually comes down pretty hard on the subject without being dismissive or condescending (well, at least not for a Hollywood movie of the 1940s) of the society in Spain where it was a large part of the culture.

Like most old movies that portray people of other countries, there is a certain amount of disbelief that is needed to swallow Rita Hayworth being a Spanish woman but this film does better with it than most. You soon forget all the American actors being there playing Spaniards. The one exception might be John Carradine who is almost playing a variation on his role in John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath (not to dismiss that; his performance in that movie is fantastic).

The old Technicolor photography looks great and the musical score suits the film well. I'm looking forward to seeing more of the Power movies for sure.

Dad's Movies: "The Blue Max" (1966)

There's gonna be a lot of war on this viewing project!

I may have actually seen The Blue Max (1966) before but I don't really remember it so it was a good excuse to give it a look.

This is one of the best films I've watched on the list so far. It reminded me a little of "Battle of Britain" in that it was made around the same time and has a lot of impressive air battle scenes using real planes. The big difference is that this film is way ahead in that it uses its cast well with a good script with interesting characters.

George Peppard is as good in this film as anything I can recall. I am not a fan of "Breakfast At Tiffany's" where, among other issues, I find Peppard's performance uninteresting (maybe miscast?) but here he's very good as the medal-obsessed flying ace. His foil, another pilot, is played by Jeremy Kemp who also played Picard's brother in Star Trek: TNG, is great as well.

The rest of the cast is excellent and is a very good drama set in World War I which was definitely an interesting setting that is often underrepresented in Hollywood films.

I will be revisiting this one for sure, hopefully with an HD copy - this was from a DVD version which is just so-so in the image quality department.

Dad's Movies: "The Battle of Britain" (1969)

Still plugging away at this long list of old movies.

This time I watched The Battle of Britain (1969).

It's easy to see why my Dad enjoyed this one. This is one of those big-budget spectacles with a lot of star power. Check the link; it's an impressive cast, even if some of the actors have little to do.

The production was made by the same people behind the James Bond movies (and directed by Guy Hamilton who did Goldfinger). The production definitely puts its money into the effects (I'm sure the cast didn't come cheap either) as there are a ton of vintage WW2 aircraft in the film.

And that is the main reason to watch this movie:  the battle scenes are impressive. It's just plain fun to see all of that hardware being used in a film. There are some models and other "cheats" but a lot of it is real. The characters are rather thinly developed and the one subplot involving an romantic relationship could have been dropped with little consequence,

Dad surely liked seeing the planes (he worked at a P-51 factory during the war) and, well, so did I. If that aspect doesn't appeal to you, I'd give this one a pass.