The Movie Journal

  Shane (1953) George Stevens, the film auteur behind Giant and A Place in the Sun , revolutionized the ‘Western” genre in his 1953 feature, Shane . Like many westerns, it follows the tropes which gives it a level of predictability at times. However, the film was different in other ways. Do you think you would get the graphic violence from Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch without this film? I think not. Stevens came up with ways to show how horrid violence can be from gunshots, so the intensity factor increased. Also, he developed the main character in a unique way. Shane is not your typical, masochist leader. He is a more mysterious, feminine type which of course goes against Western mythology. All of the changes allowed for changes to be made in a dying genre.   At the time of release, the movie was the most expensive Western ever produced. A miniscule budget by today’s standards, but it did carry a hefty three-million-dollar price tag which it did eventually recoup at the...

From Here to Eternity (1953) Before watching From Here to Eternity , I thought I was getting an action film set in Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. Instead, I got a romance drama with the aforementioned event in the backdrop. Despite that “disappointment,” Fred Zinnemann’s wartime epic is a well-acted film which also has one of the most famous love scenes of all time. Maybe the script does not hold up very well and the dialogue is quite cringy, but this is still one picture worth watching. It was nominated for thirteen Academy Awards and won eight of them including Best Picture. This film is based off a controversial novel written by James Jones. Jones’s novel was very provocative, especially for the time period it was published. In order for Daniel Taradash’s script to be approved by the censors and the Army, it had to undergo some major changes. For example, the book has venereal diseases as an issue for bad marriage. You might recall the scenes between Maggio an...

Mogambo(1953) John Ford’s 1953 feature Mogambo is a fun adventure movie, but nothing more than that. This adventure film is far from being Ford’s best movies, but it happens to be one of his most fun movies. I loved Ford’s spirit of adventure and this movie is somewhat of a detour for him as he mainly focuses on westerns or dramas. The movie is a remake of the 1932 feature Red Dust which starred Clark Gable (also from Gone with the Wind fame) and Jean Harlow. Twenty years later, Clark Gable returns and is joined by two of classic Hollywood’s hottest ladies, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly. The 1932 version was more somber in tone, so Ford want to inject a sense of fun and adventure in this movie, which is one of the reasons why he decided to shoot the movie in Africa. He did keep the heart of the story, the love triangle between the three aforementioned actors attached, however. During this time period, movies that featured any depiction of Africa tended to be exaggerated. I...