Lifeboat - Alfred Hitchcock - 1944

★★★★★ - Not the usual Hitchcock fair. I still absolutely loved it. Overall, it has a parable or allegory feel. Hitchcock obviously hates himself some Nazis. The only good ones are dead ones. This is a lesson that plays out throughout the film and is still applicable today.

Made during WWII. Written by John Steinbeck. The film follows a group of Merchant Marines on a lifeboat after their ship is sunk by a Nazi U-boat. One of the survivors pulled out of the water, however, ends up being a Nazi that they struggle to keep in check. This guy is a gaslighting mother fucker you want to see get his almost immediately.

The best stretch of the film comes early when the group has to deal with a survivor suffering from gangrene. They realize that they are going to have to amputate his injured leg. He's a real trooper, but it's obvious that this is really going to suck. They use the little bit of rum they have to get him drunk and knock him out so they can perform the procedure. The nurse among them, who has never done anything like this, has to rely on the German who claims to have been a surgeon in civilian life. No one likes this but it has to be done. The scene goes on forever, building up over minutes. It's excruciating.

Some real trigger warning in this film, though there isn't any cannibalism. Just a dead baby, some suicide, and beating a guy to death.

The film stars a bunch of familiar faces. Among them Mary Anderson (whom I recognize from Gone with the Wind), Heather Angel, Tallulah Bankhead, who is awesome, William Bendix (whom is basically the same guy he played in The Blue Dahlia), Hume Cronyn (always great, he was married to Jessica Tandy and was introduced to me as one of the old guys in Cocoon), John Hodiak (mostly know him from Somewhere in the Night), Henry Hull (who steals the show), Canada Lee (the black guy on the ship, his character isn't too offensive for the time), and Walter Slezak as the Nazi. This film also has one of my favorite Hitchcock cameos. With so few people in the movie, he shows up in an advertisement in the only newspaper they have on the boat. Pretty slick.

Gonna wrap it up with a little bit on Tallulah Bankhead's awesomeness. Known for her sexual exploits, she is the one who gave the world “dahling”. She was only in around a dozen movies but looms large. Born into a political family, her grandfather and uncle were U.S. Senators and her dad (William B. Bankhead) was Speaker of the House from 1937-1940. While they were considered liberal in their day, Tallulah was way left of the fam. She hung out with Zelda Fitzgerald and was Tennessee Williams inspiration for Blanche DuBois for A Streetcar Named Desire. She employed gay men to care for her when she was in the throws of addiction, calling them her “caddies”. She was a fan of Alfred Kinnsey and found his research to confirm her already advanced views on sexuality. She did interviews in the 1930s where she talked about wanting to get fucked and had many affairs with both men and women. Some of the women included Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Hattie McDaniel, and Billie Holiday. She referred to herself as “ambisextrous”. She was also an extremely heavy drinker and drug user that smoked 120 cigarettes a day (hence the husky voice). Her last words were “codeine... bourbon.” My kind of chick.

Destry Rides Again is the greatest movie of all time

Destry Rides Again. Great flick. Audited a class at IU on the year 1939 in cinema, in the professor's informed opinion, the great year in film. This was my favorite of the films that we discussed. Western that is super fun and funny with iconic performers yucking it the fuck up. Also has two incredible scenes and has Marlene Dietrich as Frenchy, belting out some inspired tunes in her role as the saloon singer. The film is the obvious inspiration for Blazing Saddles with Frenchy as basically the same character as Lili von Shtüpp in that much more well known flick.

I fucking love Marlene Dietrich in this movie and she easily wins the movie. She was a fucking rocking chick. There is a podcast I listen to that goes into Dietrich during the WWII years that I highly recommend called You Must Remember This, which is just phenomenal. From Germany, she defected in the 1930s after the Nazi's came to power. She was a huge star by that point and after a few years of American films under her belt, Nazi Party approached her with an offer of becoming the top German film star of the Third Reich if she came back to Germany but she refused and applied for U.S. citizenship in 1937, eventually working to raise money with Austria-Hungary born Jewish filmmaker Billy Wilder (among others) to help Jews escape from Germany and did a couple of USO tours during the war. In her late 30s when this film was made, Dietrich bragged about all the younger Hollywood dudes she banged going into her 70s. Among the men she boned were Yul Brynner, Kirk Douglas, Errol Flynn, Joe Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, George Bernard Shaw, Frank Sinatra, and John Wayne, among many others. Also Jimmy Stewart who seems like sort of a dick. He knocked her up whilst filming this movie. She told him and he said something like, "well, golly, what are you going to do?" She said something about "we" can do this or that and he replied, "well, what are you going to do?" Dickhead. And she was bisexual and sort of a leader in the gay Hollywood scene and frequented the legendary drag balls of Berlin in the 1920s. She called her underground, closeted lesbian clan her "sewing circle." She knew how to live, this one.

In Destry, Dietrich beats the literal pants off a guy and then when his wife shows up, played by the actress Una Merkel, the two get into a tussle that is just fucking incredible. After minutes of cat-fighting, Destry, Stewart, the new deputy cleaning up the town, dumps soapy water on the pair which enrages her more and turns her wrath toward Destry. He tries to wait on her to tire herself out after minutes of throwing shit at him, but she just keeps on going, chasing everyone out of the saloon.

Movie has one of the best setups I can recall. The outlaw saloon owner Kent, played by one Brian Donlevy, kills the sheriff and then has the mayor in his pocket appoint the town drunk, Washington Dimsdale who is played by a guy named Charles Winninger, as the new sheriff. Everyone laughs their fucking asses off when he says he is going to quit drinking and clean up the town but he does what he says he'll do, wasted as he seems to be at that moment in time, bringing in Stewart's character, the son of legendary law man Destry.

Can't say enough about this flick. All around great with a fantastic and epic ending with all the women in the town taking up garden tools and kitchen utensils, marching down to the saloon, and kicking ass all over the place. It is phenomenal.