ECSTASY (1933, CZECHOSLOVOKIA), SAMSON AND DELILAH (1948), BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY (2017)

Hedy Kielser naked and afraid
 in Ecstasy

The Czech film Ecstasy is a somewhat puzzling film to watch. It is about a bride named Eva who is on her honeymoon with her older husband named Emil and suddenly realizes she doesn't love him and leaves him to go back to the comfort of her family. While swimming and chasing a horse before she is able to get her clothes on she meets a builder who eventually becomes her lover. Emil eventually comes back to try to reconcile with Eva and complications ensue.

Ecstasy director Gustav Machaty and his cinematographer definitely have some cinematic skill with their often offbeat camera angles and slow pacing. The film itself often plays like a silent, with minutes between dialogue even though sound had been around for several years when this film was shot! It's not a bad film now that I think about it, but there's really only one reason it's remembered today.

Heddy Lamar: Eva is played by Austrian Hedy Kiesler, who later became famous in America under the name of Heddy Lamar. Her scene when she is running after her horse in the nude was considered quite scandalous at the time, but it did give her some attention which later led to her emigration to the United States and becoming a star for MGM studios in the 40's.

Heddy Lamar using her body 

in Sampson and Delilah

Samson and Delilah was one of the biggest hits MGM and director Cecil B. Demille had during the 1940's.

Heddy Lamar played the seductive temptress Delilah and she did indeed have looks to kill for...or at least get your haircut for. I actually liked this film more than I thought I would (I think I'm just growing soft for old movies). The final destruction of the temple as well as other action scenes (such as Samson kicking ass with the jawbone of an ass) makes for a pretty good spectacle and Lamar's co-star Victor Mature is able as the mighty Samson. We also have on hand a young Angela Lansbury as Delilah's sister and the always wonderful (to me) George Sanders as the Saran.

 

Heddy Lamar using her brain
in Bombshell: The Heddy Lamar Story

The last film of my Heddy Lamar triple feature is the documentary Bombshell: The Heddy Lamar Story. This film shows Heddy's rise from a Czech ingenue to a major Hollywood star, her many marriages and the many peaks and valleys of her career before becoming a recluse later in life. 

One of the noted aspects of this documentary is showing Heddy's...brain. She is credited (or maybe not credited enough) with the development of "frequency hopping"to prevent enemy subs and such for picking up on messages delivered to allies during World War II. She and George Antheil were awarded a patent on this in 1942 and was used as a valuable tool in keeping transmissions secret in subsequent years (and wars.)

THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH (1952)

THE FINAL FOUR BEST PICTURE WINNERS
THAT I HAVE (ALMOST) NEVER SEEN BEFORE
#4 The Greatest Show on Earth

Charlton Heston and James Stewart in
The Greatest Show on Earth

"To Everyone's astonishment (including presenter Mary Pickford), the winner was The Greatest Show on Earth. Back in New York, the audience at the Century could not even applaud and a voice asked, "Who decides these things, anyway?"-Inside Oscar: The Unofficial History of the Academy Awards by Mason Wiley and Damien Bona

"I thought High Noon or The Quiet Man would get it," Cecil B. DeMille said backstage.

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I had to qualify the never seen before tag on this one, as I did see it on TV in the late 70's, so I may have to change the heading on this to "Haven't seen in the last forty years."

Anyway,  The Greatest Show on Earth isn't really a choice that has aged well. DeMille was right, High Noon or The Quiet Man (or Singin' in the Rain) would have been better choices. I think at the time the Academy was trying to give an award to a film directed by DeMille, probably the greatest living filmmaking pioneer at the time. The movie itself is a big color extravaganza of the circus featuring an all-star cast (Yes, Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde were major stars at one time) that reminds me a little bit of 1970's disaster films in having the name cast in a somewhat soapy melodrama, though we aren't waiting to see who will die or not like in those films. That being said, the film does end with a massive train wreck of the Barnum and Bailey circus train that was pretty spectacular for the time, but doesn't particularly date that well either, though I still kind of like the train scene, anyway.

Worth seeing, though I'd argue with you if you call this the Best Picture of the Year.

Star that comes off best: Easily the best story under the big top is Jimmy Stewart as a clown named Buttons that is secretly an on the lamb doctor accused of murder. He wears his make-up throughout the film. I honesty wish the film had been centered more around his character.

Star that comes off the worst: Dorothy Lamour. Not that she is particularly bad, but the film gives her very little to do. She just pops up every twenty minutes or so to remind us that Dorothy Lamour is indeed in this picture!

Rising star: Demille cast Charlton Heston as the head of the circus in what was easily his biggest role to date. Demille and Heston would team up a few years later to in what was possibly the most iconic film for both of them, The Ten Commandments.

1952 Best Picture Nominees:

The Greatest Show on Earth

High Noon

Ivanhoe

Moulin Rouge

The Quiet Man

John Ford did win Best Director for The Quiet Man over Demille.

The Greatest Show on Earth's elaborate costume design by Edith Head lost out on that award to Moulin Rogue. Ms. Head  did win the costume design award eight other years.

The Greatest Show on Earth's only other Oscar went to Frederic Frank, Theodore St. John and Frank Cavett for their screenplay.

Cornel Wilde, Betty Hutton and Charlton Heston

under the big top

in The Greatest Show on Earth

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (1956)

HOLLYWOOD'S GOLDEN AGE

(Post 12 of 50)

In the beginning...there was Cecil B. Demille! At the beginning of narrative cinema, that is. DeMille's films date all the way back to 1914 and The Squaw Man! Known for such silent epics as the original Ten Commandments and King of Kings, Demille not only made a successful transition to sound movies (unlike his contemporary D. W. Griffith), he became one of the biggest directors of the golden age of Hollywood with epics like Cleopatra and Samson and Delilah. His most famous (as well as his last) film is his 1956 remake of his own silent movie, which is an unabashedly unapologetic biblical epic. Great sets, great detail, great cast led by Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner and you still gotta like the special effect of the parting of the Red Sea. Demille is certainly not remembered as a directorial auteur, in fact The Ten Commandments is the only Demille movie in the 1001 Films You Must See Before You Die book. His biographer Katherine Orrison calls the film "an anti-film noir"-what you see if what you get. But I do agree that if you're going to see just one Demille film, this would be the one to see. 

And the Elisha Cook Jr. supporting player award goes to…Edward G. Robinson. The unfortunate thing about Robinson in this movie is Billy Crystal's lampooning of Edward's performance in a comedy routine where Crystal speaks in an exaggerated gangster voice, "Moses? Moses? Where's your Moses now?" It's pretty funny and Demille biographer Katherine Orrison even mentions Crystal's routine on The Ten Commandments commentary track! But if you can overlook the fact that Eddie G played Little Caesar and a lot of other gangsters, he actually does a pretty good job as the scheming and opportunistic Dathan in The Ten Commandments.