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Post by london777 on Apr 21, 2017 0:33:27 GMT
This thread is about two topics:
1) Downloading Films
2) Films in the Public Domain
I am hoping that others will add their knowledge on either subject.
Having run out of money (again) I have been downloading and watching films in the Public Domain. The benefits are obviously limited by questions of intrinsic quality and also quality of the reproduction. A few good movies slipped through the copyright net because of industry politics or in error, but for the great majority there is a reason why no-one is staking a claim to royalties.
I picked this website at random:
free-classic-movies.com
Most of the movies offered are a long way from classics but I found a few that interested me.
They were all either in .mp4 file format or in .wmv file format.
.wmv
These I can burn to DVD discs and play in my DVD player (my preferred option).
.mp4
These I cannot burn to DVD so I watch them on my laptop. Most of the movies are on .mp4, so I am looking for a free or cheap piece of software to convert them to .wmv.
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Post by Richard Kimble on Apr 21, 2017 0:47:56 GMT
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Post by london777 on Apr 21, 2017 11:12:48 GMT
I ejaculated my post prematurely. I will move the comments on specific movies to separate posts to make responding easier. |
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Post by london777 on Apr 21, 2017 11:17:28 GMT
So far I have viewed:
Scarlet Street (1945) Fritz Lang
.mp4 very good quality copy
The Woman in the Window (1944) Fritz Lang
.mp4 good quality copy
Two major Film Noirs with many similarities and some interesting differences. I will not comment on them here as they deserve a thread on their own or, at least, Lang's American movies do.
This post is just to point out that we can all view these two gems for free. Anyone know why the copyright lapsed?
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Post by london777 on Apr 21, 2017 11:18:21 GMT
The Bigamist (1953) Ida Lupino
.mp4 good quality copy
A good drama from the only significant woman director working in Hollywood in the post-war decades. Joan Fontaine, Edmund O'Brien, Edmund Gwenn and Lupino herself star and, good as the first three are, it is Lupino who steals it, despite her modestly allowing the script to twice refer to her "mousey" looks in comparison to Fontaine's undoubted classical beauty.
1953 was the high noon of conservatism in the US, and Lupino was a known liberal, many of whose friends were hauled before HUAC. It must have been difficult to make a movie in which a bigamist was a sympathetic, almost noble, character, but Lupino managed it. Harry Graham loved both of his wives, and they both loved him, and apparently continued to do so even after the trial which concludes the movie. Nowadays there would be no problem. They could all live together as a threesome and no-one would bat an eyelid.
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Post by london777 on Apr 21, 2017 11:18:35 GMT
Cry Danger (1951) Robert Parrish
.mp4 good quality copy
Parrish had been an admired film editor, winning an Oscar for editing Body and Soul (1947) and nominated for All the King's Men (1949). Cry Danger was his first directorial effort and it was a great start. Unfortunately none of his subsequent 22 movies were as good, though the low-budget English sci-fi Doppelgänger (1969) has a deserved cult following.
Cry Danger gets off to a dramatic start as an express train ploughs through the landscape during the titles, accompanied by crashing film noir menacing chords, before arriving at Los Angeles station. This has nothing to do with the story but Parrish obviously felt it was too good to waste. Coming from a nation of train-spotters I have to agree.
The train is bringing Dick Powell, just released from prison, on a mission to find out who framed him. This is not so difficult as the cast is so small there are only two possible suspects, plus the lieutenant of police is rooting for him. Despite my apprehension that Powell could break into a tap-dance routine at some inappropriate moment I enjoyed this film a lot although it includes a trope I dislike, in which the hero is accompanied by an old service buddy who is an embarrassment, typically (as here) an alcoholic, and in the movie to provide comic relief. (John Wayne often had one, as did Bogart). At least no-one befriended a street-kid or adopted a dog. In one famous Film Noir the buddy turns out to be the villain and I suspected the same here. I was not convinced by William Conrad as the baddy. A night-club owner (aren't they always?), he looked more flabby than threatening and he was easily dealt with. Rhonda Fleming is the female lead. Recommended.
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Post by london777 on Apr 21, 2017 14:03:08 GMT
Woman on the Run (1950) Norman Foster
.mp4 good copy
OK, the standard of these freebies in my thread is already starting to drop. This is not a film I would pay money to watch, but it has some interesting aspects.
Foster directed numerous Charlie Chan and Mr Moto flicks so I have no doubt he is a star in Salzmank's firmament. He had been the notional director of Journey Into Fear (1942) but nothing in his own movies suggests he was talented enough to tame Orson Welles, not to mention Joseph Cotton sticking his oar in, and the result is a muddled mess. In 1948 he directed an elusive Noir, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948). Anyone here seen it? Also Rachel and the Stranger, pairing Holden and Mitchum. According to bb15 this counts as a western, but not in my book. Whatever, it is Foster's best movie.
Woman on the Run is actually mis-titled. It is her husband who is on the run as he fears being rubbed out as the only witness to a killing. But the title reflects the fact this is a starring vehicle for Ann Sheridan, and very good she is too, with some pithy one-liners. It is notable as a rare Noir with a woman as the central character. There are a few which are hybrid melodrama/noirs or gothic/noirs but female leads in straight thriller noirs are unusual.
The other odd thing is that the identity of the killer is not only unnecessarily revealed two-thirds of the way through the film, but revealed in a very odd way. His name is blurted out, but this means nothing to the heroine, only to the audience. I might have missed the significance as I am notoriously bad with names, but was woken from my comatose state by loud and ominous chords. These would normally only be used to reflect the character's shock, not the audience's, so Foster was underlining the clue for us. Were this a Hitchcock film I am sure Salzmank would have a theory ready as to why this was a masterstroke of surprise v suspense, but here I think it was just a bungle.
The funfair finale too is weak, with tired cliches of big dipper screaming and hysterically laughing clowns. Saving the killer's identity to be revealed here might have pepped it up.
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Post by london777 on Apr 21, 2017 14:18:17 GMT
Railroaded! (1947) Anthony Mann
.mp4 good copy
I was attracted to try this one because of the director's name and because it stars John Ireland, who had a long career with 201 credits from 1945 to 1992. Most of them as a supporting actor, including in a few good films. As a lead, I think his best part was in the very first of that 201, A Walk in the Sun (1945). I always thought he was capable of more.
He is the best thing in this mediocre flick, but shares the lead with three others. Mann does nothing wrong, but has nothing to work with given a banal story and dialog and wooden actors other than Ireland. The film suffers from the same problem as Cry Danger, mentioned in an earlier post on this thread, as the villain loses his head as soon as pressured, so the resolution is quick and facile.
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Post by london777 on Apr 21, 2017 14:56:26 GMT
Silent Dust (1949) Lance Comfort.mp4 very good copyThis was a joy for me as it laid a ghost. As a child in the '40s and early '50s I was taken to the cinema two or three times a week as it was cheaper than arranging a baby-sitter and television was in its infancy. The usual format was a main feature and a B-movie. The latter were typically British quota quickies but a few impressed and stayed in the back of my mind. I never identified this one because I falsely remembered it as "Stranger in the Dust" which is, of course, a whole different animal. It is quite good, way above quota quicky standard, but I suspect was never a main feature. Nigel Patrick plays a different sort of role, with desperation and menace mixed into his usual debonair persona. All the other actors are good too. Michael Pertwee wrote the screenplay from his own theater play but it never feels too claustrophobic, maybe because my whole house would fit into this family's drawing room. They have survived the war stinking rich, though not immune to the food shortages of those years. It's a drama lightly dusted with Noir (like so many films in those years). I found the dialog and reactions of these privileged people very believable. Only defect was the ending which was unbelievably convenient and cliched, firing off Chekhov's gun. Better if that inadequately railed off balcony had not been emphasized at the start! But that was a rare defect. The rest was quietly classy, typically English.  Funny how children see things. I wrongly remembered this as a horror because of the authoritative blind character who was disliked and feared by the locals. In my old age I see him as dignified and stoical, as an English gentleman always should be. He was played by Stephen Murray, too young at 36 to be playing someone in their late fifties and his make-up was a bit crude. Maybe that is what scared me as a child?
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Post by london777 on Apr 21, 2017 18:30:21 GMT
A Window in London (1940) Herbert Mason
.mp4 good copy
I had never seen or heard of this one. It had done the rounds before I was old enough to be taken to the cinema. It is not so bad as to be good but it is odd enough to be worth a watch. Mason was known for lighter fare, and he does not seem to have grasped the thriller concept.
Any attention the movie gets now is because Michael Redgrave plays the lead. Ranking with Olivier, Richardson and Gielgud, Richardson was one of the great theater actors of the 20th century, and the most suited of the quartet to film work. Here he is a cockney crane driver, a piece of miscasting ranking with Dick Van Dyke's in Mary Poppins, although the Disney studio has more excuse for ignorance of the cockney accent. Redgrave and his workmates are busy constructing the replacement Waterloo Bridge, a structure dear to my heart as the British Film Theater, where I first watched many foreign language and silent classics, huddles under one of its arches, and for a decade I walked across it to the only job I ever enjoyed. It has the best views of London (from ground level, at least) and I was in love.
Talking of love, the play "Waterloo Bridge" and the three romantic films made from it all refer to the earlier bridge which Redgrave's handiwork was to replace. In our film some scenes of the work in progress, cut with documentary footage, are influenced by Russian movies. Redgrave's character seemed popular with his workmates, some of whom speak in Cockney too dense for my understanding. The fact that he had the enunciation of an angel did not seem to puzzle them at all.
Another oddity is that he is happily married yet engages in a flirtation with a music-hall hottie played by Sally Gray, also seen in Silent Dust (see my previous post). One expects them to fall in love and for him then to go back to his wife after anguished soul-searching. But there is none of that. It could be pre-Code insouciance about casual and adulterous affairs, but it does not seem like that. It is as if the film was made by eunuchs who were innocent of the immorality of being alone with another man's wife in a crane cab high above London in the small hours.
There is a boring prologue set in an apartment block switchboard where Redgrave's wife works which sets up an absurd resolution to one of the plot strands at the end but for most of the film she is forgotten about.
There are the music-hall couple whose scenes are knockabout farce and a nice early scene showing the suburban train service (I have confessed earlier to being a boyhood train-spotter) which gets the plot moving when Redgrave spots an apparent murder in a back window as his train passed at speed, gets off at the next station, finds a cop, returns to the very large building and somehow finds the right room to confront the presumed murderer, the music-hall illusionist. All highly improbable.
Other scenes show the "smart set" having a party in a scene clearly modeled on Hollywood movies and a long static-camera sequence showing very mediocre music-hall acts which betray Mason's earlier career as a theater manager. I am not sure if these scenes are supposed to be ridiculing the acts, but I fear Mason actually thinks they will entertain the movie-going public in the way that many Film Noirs interrupt the action for a complete song in a night-club.
There is a twist ending just when we think all ends happily, setting up the "murder" once again.
I cannot remember a film with such scattered themes and diverse styles. Nice location shots of pre-war London, though I am sure the streets were never that deserted. Presumably shot at first daylight.
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Post by teleadm on Apr 21, 2017 18:52:23 GMT
Brian Donlevy
for once a nice guy in Imapact 1949, a bit long but worth wathching "Impact"
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Post by Salzmank on Apr 21, 2017 19:05:49 GMT
Woman on the Run (1950) Norman Foster .mp4 good copyOK, the standard of these freebies in my thread is already starting to drop. This is not a film I would pay money to watch, but it has some interesting aspects. Foster directed numerous Charlie Chan and Mr Moto flicks so I have no doubt he is a star in Salzmank's firmament. He had been the notional director of Journey Into Fear (1942) but nothing in his own movies suggests he was talented enough to tame Orson Welles, not to mention Joseph Cotton sticking his oar in, and the result is a muddled mess. In 1948 he directed an elusive Noir, Kiss the Blood Off My Hands (1948). Anyone here seen it? Also Rachel and the Stranger, pairing Holden and Mitchum. According to bb15 this counts as a western, but not in my book. Whatever, it is Foster's best movie. Woman on the Run is actually mis-titled. It is her husband who is on the run as he fears being rubbed out as the only witness to a killing. But the title reflects the fact this is a starring vehicle for Ann Sheridan, and very good she is too, with some pithy one-liners. It is notable as a rare Noir with a woman as the central character. There are a few which are hybrid melodrama/noirs or gothic/noirs but female leads in straight thriller noirs are unusual. The other odd thing is that the identity of the killer is not only unnecessarily revealed two-thirds of the way through the film, but revealed in a very odd way. His name is blurted out, but this means nothing to the heroine, only to the audience. I might have missed the significance as I am notoriously bad with names, but was woken from my comatose state by loud and ominous chords. These would normally only be used to reflect the character's shock, not the audience's, so Foster was underlining the clue for us. Were this a Hitchcock film I am sure Salzmank would have a theory ready as to why this was a masterstroke of surprise v suspense, but here I think it was just a bungle. The funfair finale too is weak, with tired cliches of big dipper screaming and hysterically laughing clowns. Saving the killer's identity to be revealed here might have pepped it up. Not quite a star in my firmament—with the exception of Lang and the addition of Wilder, that category would contain for me the same directors Sarris chose in The American Cinema—but he did do some interesting work. Leaving that aside, London, have you ever considered that many people, myself included, may like the Chans and Motos for reasons other than the direction? I would never, ever denigrate good direction, but good plotting and characterization are virtues in their own rights. Heaven help us, london777, you seem to be raring to criticize my opinions. Calm down, old boy--sniping is not necessary. There are more people on this earth to criticize than me, but I'm gratified that you've read so many of my postings on here as to guess at my thought processes. Not every director, by the way, sets up a suspense vs. surprise dichotomy as Hitchcock does--as you praise your analytical abilities of film so often, I'm sure you understand this relatively simple concept, London. Hitchcock did set up such a dichotomy, and preferred the former, as deducible from his interviews and from his films. Thus the one or the other takes on a significance in his films that it may not elsewhere. So I have no theory as to how the clue in Woman on the Run was a masterstroke of suspense or surprise, especially as I've never seen the picture, but I would suppose that Foster didn't mean it either way. Like most directors, he wasn't a hack, but he was no great master either, and he was probably just shooting the script. I think that's fairly simple. |
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Post by Richard Kimble on Apr 21, 2017 20:59:32 GMT
Anyone know why the copyright lapsed? The usual explanation when this happens is the production company went out of business and no one assumed ownership of its inventory Charade (1063) went into PD b/c Universal did not put a copyright notice on the film itself. Some other movie (can't recall the title) went into PD b/c the studio insisted on using Roman numerals in the copyright notice and screwed it up, listing 1960 as MLMXI or something like that. |
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Post by Richard Kimble on Apr 21, 2017 21:02:39 GMT
Also Rachel and the Stranger, pairing Holden and Mitchum. According to bb15 this counts as a western, but not in my book. Whatever, it is Foster's best movie. Came here to mention RATS but since you already did I won't bother. Pardon the interruption. |
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Post by Richard Kimble on Apr 21, 2017 21:03:54 GMT
Did he end up in '70s porn? |
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Post by london777 on Apr 21, 2017 21:39:03 GMT
Anyone know why the copyright lapsed? Some other movie ... went into PD b/c the studio insisted on using Roman numerals in the copyright notice and screwed it up, listing 1960 as MLMXI or something like that. It has taken 52 years, but I have finally learned the benefit of an English Grammar School education. Learn Latin and protect your copyrights. |
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Post by london777 on Apr 26, 2017 5:45:57 GMT
The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945) Robert Siodmak
.mp4 very good copy
Siodmak is best known for his definitive film noirs like Phantom Lady (1944), The Suspect (1944), The Spiral Staircase (1946), The Killers (1946), The Dark Mirror (1946), Criss Cross (1949), and The File on Thelma Jordon (1950).
The present film falls in the midst of that burst of activity and is not really a noir. It might have qualified had it stuck to Thomas Job's play and not added a happy ending at the insistence of the censors. The obvious comparison is with The Woman in the Window, Fritz Lang's movie of the previous year, which the makers, or the censors, must have had in mind. In both cases some fans have valiantly tried to defend the endings we have now, but for me they are cop-outs. In the present movie the ending is so out of left-field as to appear surrealistic and comical.
What we have instead is a psychological drama, then a gear-change to melodrama, set in a small town which can be seen as either cosy or claustrophobic and poisonous. The nature of the town features strongly in many remarks, so it is a good candidate for spiderwort's "small town" thread. Unlike your typical Noir, the musical interlude consisted not of a sultry torch-singer in a nightclub, but of a barber-shop quintet of middle-aged men in the drug-store. I suppose that turns them on in Middle America.
George Sanders plays an unusual role for him, a humble milquetoast, and I think he does it well, while our frustrated expectations that he will be as authoritative, even sinister, as usual help the last third to work better.
But the stand-out performance is from Geraldine Fitzgerald as his (would-be incestuous?) sister.
The good girl is Ella Raines, who had appeared in two of Siodmak's Noirs. In the sunnier earlier scenes she reminded me of Lauren Bacall, with her confident "independent woman" approach but, when the going got tougher, she resembled Lizbeth Scott, whose defiantly protruding lower-lip mannerism she copied. We first see her as an invalid confined to her hot-room of tropical plants, like General Sternwood in The Big Sleep (1946).
There is some sharp and subtle dialog, possibly from the original play. Two lines I liked were "People who love dogs should not own them" and "Home is where you go and they have to let you in" (the latter borrowed from Robert Frost, though Sanders' version is snappier).
Despite the lame title (and the re-issue title Guilty of Murder? is even worse), a good watch, available for free download.
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Post by london777 on Apr 26, 2017 18:46:06 GMT
Cottage to Let (1941) Anthony Asquith
.mp4 adequate copy: some minor defects
I was not going to comment on this effort as it is little more than a historical curiosity. Maybe of more interest to non-Brits as it shows some of the quirks of living in wartime Britain. But we have at least one poster who likes this sort of pre-war "fun" thriller. I say "pre-war", despite its release date, because it is still in that style, where the Nazis are rotten bounders and cowards and can be sorted out by a straight right to the jaw. Nazi spies were never the amateurish, middle-class incompetents shown here, although that trope continued in the US during the Red Scare of the 1950s (think the ladies' gardening club in The Manchurian Candidate of 1962).
Various characters share a cottage and country house where a "nutty professor" is trying to perfect his bombsight. We have to guess which of them are Nazi spies. The "twist" at the end seems highly predictable today, but caused a scandal when the film was released with calls for it to be withdrawn or revised.
Mainly notable for George Cole's film debut as the boy detective. He was sixteen but played a younger child. It is an irritating role but he does well. His mentor and patron, Alastair Sim, was on hand to see him through it and has a leading role himself.
Only four years later Asquith made one of the best ever war movies, The Way to the Stars (1945).
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Post by Salzmank on Apr 27, 2017 16:41:55 GMT
Y'know, by this point I don't know if london777 is deliberately baiting me or referring to someone else. I can't tell, because, after my post, he has made his implied criticisms of "at least one other poster" so opaque. If it is indeed I to whom you're referring, London, I'm touched, really touched. Nice to know that I've made such an impression on you. Heck, by the time this is over I'll have made such an impression that you'll be praising the puzzle plot... I do like Cottage to Let, by the way.  |
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Post by london777 on Apr 29, 2017 21:22:49 GMT
The Small Back Room (1949) Powell and Pressburger
.mp4 very good copy
I had seen this film a couple of times. The first time when too young to appreciate its mature themes and the second time when, having been bowled over by Powell and Pressburger's celebrated technicolor masterpieces like The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), A Matter of Life and Death (1946), Black Narcissus (1947), and The Red Shoes (1948), I sought out their other films, only to find they paled in comparison. But what movies would not, alongside that starburst quartet? Later I came to value the weird and wonderful A Canterbury Tale (1944) as much as any of them, but I had help there as I was living in that area at the time.
So last night I returned to The Small Back Room for the first time in nearly fifty years to find I had forgotten all of it except the dramatic penultimate scenes. One of the few advantages of being senile is that you can enjoy good films for the first time again (... and again). What I found was a love story and a new appreciation of Kathleen Byron. She had a long, mainly undistinguished career. (Her last movie role was as Private Ryan's mother). Always remembered as the crazy nun in Black Narcissus, and not being attractive enough to land leading lady roles whether in Hollywood or England. I used to confuse her with Kay Walsh. They both prolonged their career by playing unpleasant ladies, cruel governesses or step-mothers, snobs or sneaks. And they had something else in common, being lovers of England's two greatest directors (Byron with Powell, and Walsh with David Lean, to whom she was married for nine years). A tough assignment for both ladies!
But here Byron was just the opposite. With love (sometimes tough love) and fine judgement she keeps alcoholic and desparing bomb disposal expert David Farrar in a job and focussed on winning the war. It is a supremely affecting performance and I wonder if she drew on her difficult relationship with Powell for the part. It is Farrar's finest performance too.
The other interest of the film is in its portrayal of war-time Britain. It is often forgotten, especially by Americans, that Prime Minister Churchill, that staunch aristocrat and imperialist, was only voted into office with Labour Party support, against the wishes of most of the Conservative Party, and that in order to win the war he established the most socialist system Britain had ever seen, arbitrary seizure of private property, enforced sharing and rationing, direction of labor resources and an extensive bureaucracy. When the Labour Party formed the next government they carried on these measures to salvage Britain's shattered economy. By 1949, when this film appeared, most people were sick of all these restrictions and red tape and Powell, who came from a privileged background, probably felt the same way.
Much of the film is occupied by the infighting between various parts of the bureaucracy and backstabbing by ambitious men. Jack Hawkins, normally so stoic and upright, is untypically cast as a scheming lothario. I just learned from another thread here that he had been a child actor. (I always thought he was born middle-aged because he would have been too ugly as a baby). Robert Morley gets a cameo, credited only as "Guest", as an imbecilic minister targeted for replacement. Unusually, the military are the good guys here, humane, brave and practical. I think the politically conservative Powell is actually projecting his sentiments about post-war socialist bureaucracy onto the war-time situation.
Oscar-nominated screenwriter/writer/actor Bryan Forbes (a name omitted from that thread?) gets his first screen role as a dying soldier.
If you have not seen it, download it for free. It's very good.
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