THE DOORS DID IT!
CASE CLOSED!
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MovieChat Forums > They Drive by Night (1940) Discussion > THE DOORS DID IT!
That scene almost blows the whole film. She needed a Queeg-like crack-up, not going nuts as soon as she takes the stand.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
Yup. It plays even worse in the theater.. The final breaking the fourth wall scene in the garage, typical of Warners at the time, was excruciating. They had such a good thing going in They Drive By Part, the first two thirds of which is great commercial film-making, writing and acting, with even Raft far better than usual. Then they blew it at the end. Maybe the killing of good guy contract player Alan Hake was just too much for everybody. The movie never recovered from that.
shareThey sure boxed themselves into a corner, but there was still a better way to present it. Rather than have it play out as it did, why not have John Hamilton break her down? There was zero tension in the courtroom - no purpose for the scene at all. Instead, they should have tightened the screws on Raft for a while, then put Lupino through the ringer.
Why do I get the feeling that they ran out of money, or had to meet a deadline?
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
Maybe it was money or maybe it was Warners building up of Ida Lupino as the next Bette Davis. They wanted to give her a big scene. She was terrible in it. Ida could play hysterical, didn't have BD's charisma. It was a sub-B way to end an A level film, unworthy of director Walsh. At least he, Lupino and Bogart got it right a few months later with the subline High Sierra.
shareIf you've seen Women's Prison, then you know this wasn't the only time Ida went gaga. I saw it today. Nice cast, stock situations, no surprises.
I just saw Ladies in Retirement tonight for the first time - her performance was a lot more layered. I wish they had a better print in order to appreciate the settings and cinematography. I've seen Columbia "B" films of the same vintage that looked much better.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
Aren't there copyright issues with Ladies In Retirement? I've read great things about it, never seen it listed. Columbia's B's do tend to look first rate; heck, they're short subjects look terrific. Their low budgeters aren't as famous as Universal's from the WW2 era, yet their production values tend to be superior. Of the Uni B's only the Sherlock Holmes flicks work well with me. I don't count Siodmak's Son Of Dracula as a true B, nor The Wolf Man. Cabanne's The Mummy's Hand is fine but a one off. The rest of their stuff looks mediocre to awful. We should probably thank God for Val Lewton having been hired on at RKO, where they knew how to make a B looks classy. Univeral had a hard time making their A's look classy!
shareThe film came on with the Columbia logo - usually those are stripped if it goes into public domain. Cohn wasn't big on preservation, I was told by someone when I worked there that they only kept one master in their archives whereas the majors usually kept two. It Happened One Night had to go through a major overhaul a few years ago for digital video and the current version is pieced from various sources, some of which was so bad that they could only do so much to "improve" it. This was their entry into the big time, and this was how it was treated?
The Universal stuff I tend to consider B+ or A- films, with some exceptions. The Inner Sanctums look poor as does She Wolf of London, but some of their weakest entries such as House of Horrors or Night Monster do look decent. Before noir took hold, the Universal basement output did tend to utilize lighting and fog effectively to hide the shortcomings.
It ain't easy being green, or anything else, other than to be me
I've never watched It Happened One Night in its entirety. Gee, I thought it was my fault! It's not an attractive film, especially compared to the next few Capras from Columbia, which look superb today. Odd how they neglected their first film to win any Oscars, best picture no less, plus a bunch of others, while the Stooges shorts from the same period look just fine.
As to the Uni B's, some of them are okay, such as the 1939 House Of Fear, with William Gargan. Their 1940-41 horrors look good. The Doctor Of Market Street is one I recall as rather as being well designed. I think they really started to cut costs on their B's post-Pearl Harbor (not that they were spending a bundle beforehand). The Kharis series just isn't up to par, while the Inner Sanctums are almost painful to watch, with the best thing about them being their intros with the little man in the crystal ball (Raymond?).
How things changed when International came in! That cheap look was gone by 1947. They returned to making programmers later, usually in color, though, with even the black and whites having a nice sheen to them, with none of them resembling their wartime output. That Uni was dead and gone. When they put a Nader or a Keith into a lesser film it was usually at the very least nice looking, with their lighting especially impressive.
Where did they break the fourth wall in the garage? You talking about the winking at the camera? (If so, they were winking at Ann Sheridan, not us.)
shareNo, it didn't. She was already going crazy when Ann Sheridan visited here in jail. The matron had to drag her out of the room. She had time to go even crazier before the courtroom scene.
sharethis was a rehash of 2 other previous films.. I thought the ending was fine. Its not as if she just went crazy at the end and roll credits.. We see her role many times with a look of despair greed and anger.. I thought Raft was excellent, Sheridan provided a nice light love story, Bogart was average (hardly in the last half..) , but Lupino stole the film.
The film worked. Nothing spectacular, but fine acting all the way around that made it a hit earning 10x its production cost.
-- 'I dont mind a reasonable amount of trouble.' Humphrey Bogart, The Maltese Falcon
I completely disagree with the sentiment of most of the posters in this thread. I thought her performance was marvelous.
And it's not "the doors did it"....
http://tinyurl.com/cjsy86c
Yeah, blame it on Jim Morrison.....
shareTHE DOORS MADE ME DO IT!!!! Agreed. Listening to The Doors can send one into a psychotic frenzy. "L.A. Woman" has been my trigger on a number of occasions. 🤪
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