Final installment of PANICS AND PANDEMICS
LES ORGUEILLEUX (title for American release The Proud and the Beautiful, also known as The Proud Ones)
MICHELE MORGAN
A French couple are stranded in a dreary black and white Mexican village struck by a typhus epidemic. Directed by Marc Allégret (from a novel by Jean-Paul Sartre), the picture stars the beautiful Michèle Morgan, who at one time divided her professional time between Hollywood and Paris, and giant French superstar Gérard Philip who, in a few years, would die of a heart attack at age 37. Carlos López Moctezuma plays the heroic doctor.
LES ORGUEILLEUX
GERARD PHILIPE
Marc Allégrett
1953
(imdb cites Rafael E. Portas as co-director)
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A DIFFERENT KIND OF PLAGUE, another sort of panic
INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS is the Hollywood classic about those pods left about everywhere, destined to burst into aliens who are look-alikes of the terrestrials nearby. This film holds up extraordinarily well and is a MUST if you have not seen it. (This was one time I was genuinely scared watching a movie.)
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The Grapes of Wrath
John Ford
1940
with Henry Fonda as Tom
Behold another type of crisis, its own kind of panic and epidemic. Victims of the Dust Bowl pack up and join the thousands on the road to California. Like most of the memorable Hollywood films, this is not an original work. It is an adaptation. But Ford turns Steinbeck’s novel into a visual feast. And what an unforgettable one it is, filled with heartbreakingly real sentiment. The great Hank, as Tom, was never better.
(I am indebted to collaborator BKG for addition of this title to the PANDEMICS list.)
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RECOMMENDED READING
“The Making of ‘The Mission'” by Jim McDermott in America 12/23/19. This enlightening, entertaining article focuses on 1) the editing necessary to unify Robert De Niro’s performance; 2) the significance to the film’s success of the musical score by Ennio Marconi; and 3) the surprising psychological and spiritual effect of the making of the film on its creators. The Mission directed by Roland Joffé, 1986.
NEXT FRIDAY POST May 22
Until then, WATCH A MOVIE
Rick
ricksflicks 