Friday at the Movies...

From www.imdb.com

Today's my day off and while doing a few other things around the house, I managed to watch most of two old movies I hadn't seen before.  Turner Classic Movies has been honoring Elia Kazan because today's his birthday.  I knew some of the big stuff he'd done, of course, On The Waterfront, Streetcar Named Desire, East of Eden* and so on.  A couple years ago Lori and I stayed up late and watched Sea of Grass with Tracy and Hepburn - decent enough movie, but miscast I thought.

Anyway, this morning started with a movie called Boomerang! a "based on a true event" story about a murder of an episcopal priest and the subsequent investigation into the murder.  The State Attorney General has some doubts about the state's case against the man they arrest, there's politics (and dirt, too - shocking, I know) and an interesting glimpse into late 40s police procedures (fictionalized, of course).  It's a message story, of course, about justice and political power and expediency.  A character asks something like "Isn't the betterment of society worth the life of one man?"** An interesting question, though... Isn't order worth the life of one innocent man? Hmmm, sounds like a question the Sanhedrin might have asked...

The second movie I watched most of was Pinky. I went off and did other stuff when I saw the title, because, really, how good can a movie called Pinky really be? What an insipid title. Pinky is a movie, from 1949, about racism and segregation and the difficulties of race relations in the South in the late 40s. It's stylized racism, of course, because the violence is minimized and the hatred is whitewashed a lot... I don't pretend to know what 40s were like *** for race relations. OR what it's really like in the South even today, let alone 65 years ago. Still, the message of the movie is one of hope for our nation - one that's easy to watch today - easy to kind of even cringe at a bit today. Having a white woman play a "very light skinned black woman" seems... hard to swallow in 2012 but I get it in 1949. Here's the thing. It's a message movie - but you have to get people into the seats to hear the message, right? Compromises had to be made. That was a reality.

Both of these are message movies - about justice and right and are a hopeful look toward the future of America looking at some difficult issues. I mean, political corruption and racism weren't going to go away anytime soon****.

These "lesser" movies came in between A Tree Grows In Brooklyn and A Streetcar Named Desire - the former in 1945, the latter 1951 - with Sea of Grass, Gentleman's Agreement,***** Panic In The Streets also in that paltry 7 year period.  I mean today it takes three years to MAKE a movie, Kazan directed 7 in that 7 year span (three came out in 1947...).










*Yeah, you can probably find links for those movies if you really want to track them down... :)
**That's not the actual question, I wish I had paid better attention, but that was the intent...
***Or the 50s or 60s - heck, I BARELY remember what racism in the 70s was like... I didn't really come to much of any awareness until the 80s...
****Of course, that's not to imply that either is gone today but in '47 & '49? Are you kidding me?
*****Talk about another message movie. Not sure if I've seen it before - sounds familiar, though, so I probably have...