Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

Elizabeth Lane (Barbara Stanwyck) is a food writer for a best-selling women's magazine. In her articles, she provides fantastic recipes and waxes poetic about the joys of living on her Connecticut farm and taking care of her husband and baby. When the magazine's owner, Alexander Yardley (Sidney Greenstreet), decides that a Elizabeth should host a real-life war hero at her farm for Christmas, the trouble begins. You see, Elizabeth doesn't really live on a farm in Connecticut, she isn't married, she doesn't have a baby, and - worst of all - she can't even cook. For years, she's been getting all of her recipes from her old friend Felix (S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall - how can you not love someone named Cuddles?). Felix is a refugee from Czechoslovakia, who set up a restaurant in New York City with help from Elizabeth. Now, Felix cooks meals for her so she won't starve and provides her with her award-winning recipes. She bases all the stuff about the farm on one owned by her friend and would-be suitor John Sloan (Reginald Gardner). When Sloan hears about her predicament, he sees a way to finally coerce Elizabeth to the alter. He'll let her use his farm to entertain Yardley and the war hero if she'll agree to marry him. Felix and her editor, Dudley Beecham (Robert Shayne), try their best to dissuade Elizabeth - after all, she doesn't love Sloan - but she feels she has no other choice. It's take Sloan up on his offer or lose her job.

The real fun begins when the war hero, Jefferson Jones (Dennis Morgan), shows up at the farm house. Elizabeth is instantly smitten. Yup! It's love at first sight. Only problem is that Elizabeth is supposedly already married to Sloan, and she supposedly has a baby. Jones caring for her baby and later singing to her clinches the deal. What's a girl to do? Well, keep putting off the ever-persistent Sloan while flirting shamelessly with Jefferson Jones. The animals help her out quite a bit with this. A cow that wanders into the kitchen one evening provides an excuse for her and Jones to walk that cow back to the barn and be alone together. This leads to them canoodling in a snow bank. Go figure. Later, when they decide to sit in a one-horse open sleigh, the horse wanders off with them in tow, giving our love-struck couple yet another opportunity for some serious flirtation. Yardley sees them together, and he's furious. He fires Elizabeth, but Felix changes his mind by bribing him with food. Smart man, Felix is.

Christmas in Connecticut is a funny movie, in more ways than one. Yeah, it has a lot of funny moments and funny lines, like when Felix, upon seeing Elizabeth's new mink coat, comments that, "Nobody needs a mink coat but the mink." But this movie is funny in other ways too. Yes, it's a Christmas movie (or maybe I should say a holiday movie) but the opening scene is of a German u-boat sinking an American destroyer. And the first 20 minutes of the film revolve around the survivors of that attack - Jones and Seaman Sinkewicz (Frank Jenks). And while Jefferson and Elizabeth never get around to actually kissing, this was still heady stuff for 1945. Jones doesn't know that Elizabeth isn't married, so this is about as close as you can get to adultery in 1945 without actually committing it. The film also explores some real gender-bender issues like the career woman who can't cook or care for children, and the men who can obviously do both. But all in all, this is a great little movie that's really a lot of fun. Stanwyck is utterly radiant as Elizabeth Lane, and Sydney Greenstreet - always a favorite of mine - is great as her bellicose boss. Cuddles Sakall is charming as the wise and kindly Felix, who feeds people's hearts as well as their stomachs.

Christmas in Connecticut was directed by Peter Godfrey, and it's rated G. It's filmed in glorious black-and-white and has a runtime of 102 minutes.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

The McGuffin* is a bird. A statue of a falcon. About a foot tall. Made of gold and encrusted with jewels, covered all over with a coating of black enamel. It's value? Priceless. A thing that people kill for. The stuff that dreams are made of. So says Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) at the close of John Huston's The Maltese Falcon. Huston's film was the third screen adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's book. It was first filmed in 1931 with Bebe Daniels and Ricardo Cortez, then again in 1936 with Bette Davis and Warren Williams. But who remembers those films? Huston shot his film almost word for word, scene for scene, from Hammett's novel. It was a smart move. It created a masterpiece. And Humphrey Bogart has become everyone's vision of who Sam Spade is, even though Bogie doesn't look anything like the character described in the book. Who cares? It's Bogart.

One day, Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor) shows up at the office of Sam Spade and his partner Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) with a cock-n-bull story about a missing sister and her evil abductor. She flashes money at them. They take the case. As private detectives, Archer and Spade are mostly honest, mostly ethical, but not afraid to bend a law, or a person, to the breaking point for a hundred bucks. Archer is killed that night. Brigid disappears. Spade finds her, grills her, is unsatisfied with her new story. Then Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre) shows up, wearing a fancy suit and smelling like a rose garden. Wants to know if Sam has the bird. Is willing to pay for it. Next on the scene is Casper Gutman (Sydney Greenstreet) and Wilmer (Elisha Cook, Jr.). They want the bird too. During their first meeting, they ask nicely. During their second meeting, they take their gloves off. The Falcon is delivered to Sam's office late one night by a dying man. Captain of a tramp freighter. Case of lead poisoning. Now Sam's got a bargaining chip.

Sam calls a meeting at his apartment. All of the interested parties attend. They talk figures. They need a fall guy. Sam says Wilmer is made to order. They agree to stitch him up, much to Wilmer's dismay. Sam sends for the bird. When it arrives, Gutman eagerly unwraps it. His excitement is palpable. He starts to scratch the black enamel off the Falcon, only to discover that the bird underneath is not made of gold but of common lead. But Gutman knows who made the switch, and he and Cairo head off in search of the real Falcon. Wilmer takes it on the lamb. Sam has other plan's for Brigid, and they don't include a honeymoon cottage. After all, Sam may not be entirely honest, or entirely ethical, but he does live by a code of honor. It says when someone kills your partner, they have to pay. Brigid will pay.

The Maltese Falcon is one of those Hollywood films, like Casablanca, that wasn't a big or an important movie while it was being made. But once it was finished, they knew they had a gem. The movie takes place on a human scale. No grand vistas here. Huston filmed most of the exterior scenes on city streets, at night, with lots of fog and rain. Interior scenes are filmed in cramped apartments, offices, hotel rooms. Lots of shadows. Lots of atmosphere. This is the beginning of film noir. Interestingly, this was also the screen debut of Sydney Greenstreet. He'd been a stage actor for years, when Huston cast him as Casper Gutman, aka the Fat Man. Another bit of trivia - when Sam calls Wilmer a "gunsel," he doesn't mean that Wilmer is a hired gun; he's hinting at Wilmer's sexual orientation. According to the IMDb, "The Yiddish term 'gunsel', literally "little goose", may be a vulgarism for homosexual." Who knew?

The Maltese Falcon is a fun movie that keeps you guessing right up until the end. Who killed Miles? Who killed the captain of the steam ship? Is there really a Maltese Falcon? We aren't given the answers until the concluding scenes. It's a satisfying conclusion too.

The Maltese Falcon is rated G and is filmed in deliciously moody black and white.

*McGuffin was Alfred Hitchcock's term for whatever the object or idea is that spurs the characters to action and moves the plot along.

Between Two Worlds (1944)

London, during the German Blitz. A group of passengers is waiting to board a liner to America and away from the horrors of Total War. Tom (John Garfield), a jaded reporter; Maxine (Faye Emerson), Tom's former girlfriend; Mr. Lingley (George Coulouris), a greedy tycoon; Pete (George Tobias), a sailor on his way home to see his new son for the first time; Mrs. Midget (Sara Allgood), a poor Irish woman; Reverend Duke (Denis King), a meek man of the cloth; Mrs. Cliveden-Banks (Isobel Elsom), a class-conscious social climber; and Mr. Cliveden-Banks (Gilbert Emery), her long-suffering husband. As they are heading to the dock, their car is struck by a bomb , and they are all killed. Later, though, they find themselves on a luxury liner, unaware that they are dead. The only other people on the ship are the steward, Scrubby (Edmund Gwenn) and a couple who committed suicide together - Henry and Ann Bergner (Paul Henreid and Eleanor Parker). As the ship sails on and the passengers attempt to amuse themselves, the characters' lives unfold as we expect they will - after all, they are all stereotypes, albeit comfortable ones. One by one, they become aware of their state, and fear and denial are replaced by resignation as the ship nears its final destination and the passengers prepare to meet the Examiner (Sydney Greenstreet). Each will be judged for how they lived their lives and assigned their just deserts, all of which are imaginative and satisfying.

I first saw Between Two Worlds when I was a kid, and it has stuck with me down through the years. I love everything about this film, with the possible exception of the denouement, which I have always felt robbed the story of its impact. But the rest of the film is wonderfully moving - at times funny, at other times poignant, as the characters come to terms with the fact that their mortal lives have ended. I especially enjoy the eternal reward granted to the snooty Mrs. Cliveden-Banks, and the frank dismissal of the grasping, evil Mr. Lingley. If you're feeling the need to be reassured that the wicked are ultimately punished for their crimes, then Between Two Worlds is the feel-good film for you.

Between Two Worlds is rated G and is available in glorious black and white.

Casablanca (1942)

Casablanca. It's hard to know exactly what to say about what is arguably the greatest movie ever produced. It's right up there with Citizen Kane. I mean, they don't come any better than this. Casablanca. Even the title conjures up images in our minds - the hot sun, the stuccoed buildings, the lazily-turning ceiling fan, the crowded market place, the furtive glances, the shadowy figure standing just out of sight, the blood running between the cobblestones in the street. And yet, most people I know have never even seen the movie. And then there's that quote. You know the one. Most people get it wrong. Still, it's part of American culture.

Casablanca follows the adventures of American ex-pat Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart), his one-time love Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) and her husband Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). Blaine is an idealist who fought for the Loyalists in the Spanish Civil War, ran guns for the Ethiopians, and edits a newspaper in Paris, where he meets and falls in love with Ilsa. When the Nazis invade Paris, Ilsa and Rick decide to escape on the last train out, but Ilsa never shows up. Standing on the platform in the pouring rain, Rick reads Ilsa'a "Dear John" letter. As the rain washes her words off the paper, Rick's piano-playing friend Sam (Dooley Wilson) drags him onto the train. The embittered Rick ends up in Casablanca, in French Morocco, where he opens Rick's Café Américaine, a bar where all of the hapless foreigners show up to gamble, to plot their escape, to steal or simply to drink their troubles away.

All of this is shown in a superb flashback that occurs about a third of the way through the movie. When Ilsa shows up at Rick's with Laszlo - one of the heroes of the French underground - we don't know why Rick looks like he's about to toss his breakfast, but Sam does. Laszlo needs to get to America or England. The Nazis want to stop him. The French Chief of Police, Louis Renault (Claude Reins), worries that his corrupt, albeit comfortable, life is about to be seriously disrupted. Rick has letters of transit that will get two people out of Casablanca, but he refuses to sell them to Laszlo. Rick wants to hurt Ilsa as much as she hurt him, not seeing - at least not at first - that she's already hurting just as badly. She's married to Laszlo, who loves her dearly, but she's in love with Rick, who loves her even more. The final scene at the airport is one of the greatest in all of motion picture history.

Director Michael Curtiz makes the most of Julius and Philip Epstein's screenplay, and the score by Max Steiner is one of the best ever produced. Notice how he weaves the pop standard "As Time Goes By" and "La Marseillaise" throughout the score. If you've never watched Casablanca, rent it soon. Find out what all the fuss is about. Discover for yourself why Rick wants Sam to play it again. My guess is you'll want to do the same.

Casablanca is rated G and is available in glorious black and white.