Controversial Classics Collection (Advise and Consent / The Americanization of Emily / Bad Day at Black Rock / Blackboard Jungle / A Face in the Crowd / Fury / I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang)

I AM A FUGITIVE FROM A CHAIN GANG (1932) Controversy: The oldest movie in the controversial classics set, FUGITIVE also lays claim to the most unwieldy title. Chain gang prison labor is the controversial topic. Strengths: Paul Muni is absolutely riveting, and his final scene is one of the more memorable in movies. Weaknesses: The last chain gang prison system was outlawed in the 1940s. The oldest title is also the least relevant. Bottom Line: Inspiration for other classic movies like Cool Hand Luke and O Brother, Where Art Thou? Although severely dated, FUGITIVE still delivers as top-drawer entertainment.FURY (1936) Controversy: German director Fritz Lang's first American film is an exposé of lynching, mob violence, and the corrosive effects of living for revenge. Strengths: Spencer Tracy's transformation from good-natured innocent to bitter victim is breathtaking. Lang's depiction of the mob is still quite strong Weaknesses: The first and last act tends to stall out the story. The studio imposed ending is unsatisfying. Bottom Line: Although not quite as powerful as Lang's German film M, which it resembles, FURY still has a number of memorable moments, and Tracy's Jekyll and Hyde transformation works very well.BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK (1955) Controversy: Xenophobia during World War II and a small southwestern town with a big, ugly secret. Strengths: Spencer Tracy always adds value to a movie. Robert Ryan, as Tracy's chief nemesis, turns in a typically fine performance, too. Weaknesses: Anne Francis isn't anything more than a token female and doesn't really seem to fit in the story. A little too much attention paid to the secret keeping, and not enough on what was done that must remain hidden. Bottom Line: A good Decent Stranger Against the Mob movie that may have dealt a little more directly with the shameful incident everyone was trying to keep buried.BLACKBOARD JUNGLE (1955) Controversy: Rock `n roll infected juvenile delinquents are taking over the world. Strengths: Director Richard Brooks really wades into it, and doesn't pull his punches on some issues one simply didn't talk about in the 1950s - racial tensions, rape, middle class apathy and cynicism. Glenn Ford, Sidney Poitier and especially young Vic Morrow are very good. Weaknesses: Because it shows few if any female students, no parents and otherwise little of the students' lives away from school this one's a little exploitative. Bottom Line: Overall an excellent and honest look at urban troubled youth. Probably Glenn Ford's best film.A FACE IN THE CROWD (1957) Controversy: Director Elia Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg's warning about the pernicious encroachment of mass media, especially television, in American life. Strengths: They got it right, although they were about a decade ahead of the rest of us. Patricia Neal and Walter Matthau, as worried onlookers, are very good. Weaknesses: I may be a minority of one, but Andy Griffith in the lead role too often goes way over the top. Kazan may have wanted to portray him as an irresistible force of nature, but at times he's simply too loud, too out-sized, too outlandish. Bottom Line: Still fun and entertaining, especially to see how much of it Kazan on got right. After the 2004 elections, it was somewhat chilling to see a politician go geese hunting with the Griffith character in a bid to develop his `common man' credentials.ADVISE AND CONSENT (1962) Controversy: Director Otto Preminger's adaptation of best-selling novel and hit play deals with Washington in-fighting over a presidential cabinet nomination. Strengths: Charles Laughton and Walter Pidgeon as savvy senators give this one backbone and keep it interesting. Weaknesses: Episodic and ultimately more soap opera than exposé. Bottom Line: In my opinion this is the weakest entry in the set. AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY (1964) Controversy: The Navy needs a hero on D-Day and this movie not only questions hero worship, it pulls it apart and blows it up, bit by bit. Strengths: Paddy Chayefsky's script is perfect. James Garner and Julie Andrews are perfect as the mismatched lovers. Weaknesses: Addictive. Bottom Line: My favorite movie in the bunch, a perfect satire while treating with compassion those it satires. One of the great comedies of the twentieth century.

Advice And ConsentOne could argue that only a director of Otto Preminger's status and an all star cast that presciently, lacks an all star lead actor, could take on the twin taboos of American culture: communism and homosexuality. There is another bold step. The action of the film doesn't take place in a forlorn urban backwater, but in the seat of national power, Washington, D.C.It is interesting to compare and contrast this 1962 film with its 1961 across-the-pond- equivalent  Victim , staring Dirk Bogart and directed by the redoubtable Basil Dearden, known for his poignant socially aware pictures. Dirk Bogart, who in real life was gay, plays a member of the British judiciary a stone's throw from the ultimate power of his profession who is blackmailed due to his sexual orientation. He goes to the police and fights back, asking his wife to do so as well and in the film he is able to pick up the pieces and regroup. His career also continued; he made several notable pictures afterward including The Servant, and the Luchino Visconte adaptation of the Thomas Mann classic, Death In Venice.Presented with the same moral predicament, Preminger's film and the Senator Brigham Anderson character played by Don Murray insist on evasion and denial. The consequences are devastating. Even in real life, Murray's film career was basically over.Advice And Consent is still relevant, still reverberates, especially in light of news recently come to light that Lyndon Johnson blackmailed Washington politicos he believed were in the closet, using Bill Meyers, an LBJ staffer at the time, as the administration's point man on the exercise.Although Advice And Consent is a bold and brazen film, I disagree with the Peter Bogdanovich assessment that it is "by far the best political movie ever made in this country." I would certainly rank it in the top five alongside the 1949 classic  All the King's Men , All the President's Men  and the Robert Redford thriller,  Three Days of the Condor . I also give it a place at the table with the last word in political movies,  Z .Bad Day At Black RockIn the only color film in this set, Spencer Tracey was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award for his role as a World War II veteran coming to a small western town to bestow a medal to the family of another veteran killed in action. There is a secret however, regarding the dead veteran's family; the entire town conspires to suppress it. A monument to inbred small town complicity, narrow-mindedness, and xenophobia, the movie makes a universal statement about the power of being underestimated.In the hallowed and semi sacred corridors of Fortune 500 America, the film's title became an anthem for failure; as in "Well, C.J, how'd the numbers come out." "Ah, um, bad day at black rock, A.J."Distinctly applicable to our current plight, bullies everywhere will hate this movie, resent its premise, and the improvisational power of its has beens and washed ups who breathe fresh life into their tired routines and corrupt syllogisms.The Americanization Of EmilyI never thought that James Garner was this good. He's the real star of the picture although James Coburn makes a failed bid to steal the show. A simple war time love story at first that morphs into a panoramic depiction of an armed services netherworld of competing egos that bid to put together the greatest invasion force in human history. We should have been on our guard early, as it is clear Garner understood this script when he delivers a blistering soliloquy that indicts Europe for 2,000 years of misinformed and misdirected alliances he believes lead to the D Day invasion. When an admiral's psychotic ramblings are accepted as direct orders, Garner is pushed, goaded and ultimately coerced into the role of the first man to give his life on the beaches of Normandy, and the film becomes a continuation of Major Clipton's "madness, madness" summation in  The Bridge on the River Kwai , as well as a prelude to Yosarian's insanity in  Catch-22 . Throw in  Apocalypse Now , and you would have the mother, father and grandparents of all war movie packages.A Face In The CrowdAndy Griffith spent the rest of his career playing against the boorish loudmouth Lonesome Rhodes character he created in Elia Kazan's A Face In The Crowd. Academy Award winner Patricia Neal (Hud) introduces Lonesome to radio audiences and only belatedly realizes that although the sly homespun on air persona he projects can make her wealthy, it is false to the core and she has created a monster. She is foolish enough to mix love with business and lives to regret it when Lee Remick makes her brilliant film debut as a super saccharine baton tossing cheerleader who Lonesome seduces then marries on a jaunt to Mexico. Bigger audiences await in New York, where Lonesome succeeds not only in pushing product, but parlaying his sales and marketing acumen into the packaging of political candidates. Writer Mel Miller (Walter Matthau)has landed a book contract exposing Lonesome, even the backstage television crew is in on his contempt for audiences, and it falls to Patricia Neal to hot mike one of his performances to allow the audience in on the charade.It is no wonder at all this film is, for all intents and purposes, unknown. With the Andy Griffith show as well known and popular as it is, it wouldn't surprise anyone if studio executives were found to purposefully keep this film under wraps.Blackboard JungleSamuel Goldwyn once said famously: "If you have a message, bring it to Western Union." In his mind, the motion picture industry existed solely to entertain. By 1955 when MGM made Blackboard Jungle, Mr. Goldwyn's vision had apparently run its course because Blackboard Jungle, although not strictly a "message" film, is certainly the kind of "problem film" that MGM's competitor Warner Brothers specialized in making. If you can't beat'em, join'em.Glenn Ford (The Big Heat) plays a former Navy boxer turned teacher. Early on, its apparent that city teenagers have picked the wrong teacher to mess with. Ford's character Dadier has the combination of integrity and personal courage to withstand their assaults, especially those of Vic Morrow who is lethal as a knife wielding punk whose greatest moments consist of preying on Dadier's wife (Ann Francis). Like Paul Newman who at age 34 played a 22 year old college student, Sidney Portier is technically old for the part of a high school student but he pulls it off because his face is smooth opposite craggy faced Ford, and he exudes maximum cool knowing the school system next to the greenhorn Ford, who doesn't. Fifty five years later, this film's unyielding script gives the picture bite and authority.I Am A Fugitive From A Chain GangPaul Muni stars in a film that exposed the brutal conditions of the chain gang prison system in which people were treated worse than animals. Based on true story in which the governor of New Jersey refused to extradite an escaped convict from the state of Georgia due to what he believed was Georgia's sub-human prison system. One of the films of social conscience that came out of the Warner Brothers studio system in the 1930's, the picture is often cited as an influence on the Paul Newman classic  Cool Hand Luke . A box office sensation at the time of its release in 1932, the film sparked a nationwide movement for prison reform and is still powerful and haunting.FuryDirector Fritz Lang turned down an offer from Nazi Director of Propaganda Josef Goebbels to head Germany's film industry, and came to the United States instead. Fury was released in 1936 to critical acclaim for its depiction for mob violence, although it was a box office failure. It's anti-lynching theme didn't sit well with audiences where lynching violence played a prominent part in Depression era justice. A unique film for MGM, and as Peter Bogdanovich explains in his excellent commentary, and probably its most socially conscious film ever. The picture is full of unique angle shots borrowed from German expressionism but rarely seen in American film. Spencer Tracey gives a powerful performance as a man imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit then through rumor mongering, is convicted without a trial and burned alive by a lynch mob attacking the county jail. A beautifully restored print with perfect contrast.

Watching Andy Griffith in 'A Face in the Crowd' was worth it all. The others were not so powerful, but good. I can't believe Mayberry's good man was this good at being bad. He never did another like it, and this was his first. Something very strange about that. I don't think you have to figure on it very long why this movie disappeared. It exposed a lot of things that 'the man' didn't want exposed. TV was yet an understood power. Andy Griffith's 'Lonesome Rhodes' was the first to figure it out. This just might be the greatest movie never seen.

What a wonderful treat this collection is....at first I was skeptic because I am a big Film Noir fan...and did not think that this collection would suffice...how wrong I was. The commentaries are crisp, clean and full of information...the movies are some of the Best Produced...Bad Day At Black Rock...starring Tracy as in Spencer...and Ryan. Then there is The Americanization of Emily with a script by one of the best writers: Paddy C......and one of my favorite movies starring Julie Andrews fresh from Mary Poppins..thank God...and James Garner...both of them a treat. A face in the Crowd should be one of the 10 BEST Movies Ever Produced...Andy Griffith is just magnificent along with Patricia Neal...Watch This Movie! I am a Fugituve from a Chain Gang...a must see of what happened in the disgrace of the American Judicial System...Advise and Consent I really did not care for but it was worth watching just to listen to the commentary....and finally Blackboard Jungle which still pulls no punches with a very young Glenn Ford...with funny commentary by the teen-agers (I am not going to tell you who) that were in the movie.Get this collection and give yourself a Treat that is seldom if ever seen in the Movies now days....

Ce coffret remet en perspective beaucoup d'idées préconçues et même au XX° siècle !!! Alors laissez vous entrainer dans tout ce que vous n'imaginiez pas de notre Société... et appréciez le ton de ces films, quelle fraîcheur !!!