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Post by kijii on Apr 1, 2018 16:41:04 GMT
Inspired by (and modeled after) spiderwort's threads
What are some movies featuring people from the wrong side of the tracks, shanty town, down-and-outters, etc.
These people are often good people who just can't rise (they people may be from any country, ethnic group --or from foreign films)
Movies like:
Primrose Path (1940)
Kings Row (1942)
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Post by bravomailer on Apr 1, 2018 18:10:24 GMT
Dana Andrews was from that part of Boone City in The Best years of Our Lives.
The Man with the Golden Arm
Somebody Up There Likes Me
Rocky
There are glimpses of working-class London in A Hard Day's Night
Fat City
Do the Right Thing
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Post by BATouttaheck on Apr 1, 2018 19:12:39 GMT
Tortilla Flat (1942)Danny, a poor northern Californian Mexican-American, inherits two houses from his grandfather and is quickly taken advantage of by his vagabond friends.  
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Post by mattgarth on Apr 1, 2018 19:36:03 GMT
Oliver Barrett's dad doesn't approve of his choice of baker's daughter Jenny in LOVE STORY.
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Post by kijii on Apr 1, 2018 19:37:22 GMT
Great topic, kijii. These kinds of films are often among the best. Three of my favorites: Man's Castle (1933) - Spencer Tracy and Loretta Young in their shantytown home  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945) - Peggy Garner coming of age in an early 1900s Brooklyn tenement  The Lower Depths (1957) - Akira Kurosawa's film about people living in a Japanese slum  Thanks Spider-- I did come up with this thread idea based on yours. Sometimes, I get King's Row mixed up with Kitty Foyle and I didn't realize that Sam Wood directed them both. Sam Wood's stock keeps rising in my book. I also ID with Ginger Rogers with this type movie. She was in both Kitty Foyle and Primrose Path. |
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Post by BATouttaheck on Apr 1, 2018 19:45:15 GMT
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Post by mattgarth on Apr 1, 2018 19:46:35 GMT
Sam Wood had a pretty good run of films there for awhile -- GOODBYE MR. CHIPS, OUR TOWN, KITTY FOYLE, KINGS ROW, THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS. He directed three Oscar winners there (Robert Donat, Ginger Rogers, Katina Paxinou) and seven other nominated performers there as well.
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Post by kijii on Apr 1, 2018 20:33:18 GMT
Sam Wood had a pretty good run of films there for awhile -- GOODBYE MR. CHIPS, OUR TOWN, KITTY FOYLE, KINGS ROW, THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES, FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS. He directed three Oscar winners there (Robert Donat, Ginger Rogers, Katina Paxinou) and seven other nominated performers there as well. You know how I just recently discovered Sam Wood's talent, don't you? While going through my Gary Cooper phase....... Cooper also did 4 with DeMille. IMO, Cooper was NOT well suited to Ernst Lubitsch though...I didn't like either of those movies. |
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Post by mattgarth on Apr 1, 2018 20:40:14 GMT
Sam's other directorial accomplishments -- twice working with Jimmy Stewart ... once early in the actor's career for NAVY BLUE AND GOLD (the film that made Frank Capra sit up and take notice of Jim) and Sam's final film in THE STRATTON STORY.
Poor Sam also had to put up with the Brothers Marx shenanigans in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA.
In exasperation after several attempts to have Groucho read one of his lines in the manner the director had requested, Wood exclaimed, "I guess you just can't make an actor out of clay." Marx instantly responded, "Nor a director out of Wood."
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Post by BATouttaheck on Apr 1, 2018 20:56:24 GMT
A Pampered Lady learns about life on the other side of the tracks in |
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Post by manfromplanetx on Apr 1, 2018 21:47:09 GMT
Kiku to Isamu (1959) Tadashi Imai Tadashi Imai known for his left-wing social realist filmmaking boldly portrays in the first film in Japan to highlight, Blasians (mixed-race children) . In recent history & directly linked to the American occupation of Japan following the end of World War II, African-Japanese children were born from unions between American GIs and Japanese women, many were conceived through prostitution, some through interracial marriages. As they aged the biracial children born from these liaisons faced severe public discrimination and suffered marginalization. Due in part to the re-emergence of nationalism in Japan, but universally, the base human traits of bigotry and ignorance come into play. This wonderful film explores the difficulty faced daily in the lives of two such children, sister & brother, Kiku and Isamu. Orphaned siblings they live with their grandmother, each has a different black GI father. Disadvantaged from the start, born into the world on the "wrong side of the tracks", the future holds confronting social challenges for coming of age Kiku and her brother Isamu. The touching multi faceted drama has a positive tone, never dwelling or held back in the negative, progressive & forward thinking, Kiku to Isamu is a humanist drama of exceptional quality and depth. Highly Recommended. Winner Best Film: Kinema Junpo Award 1960 , Blue Ribbon Awards 1959 , Mainichi Film Award 1959 Blue Ribbon, Best Actress: Tanie Kitabayashi Best Screenplay Youko Mizuki 
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Post by Doghouse6 on Apr 1, 2018 22:57:05 GMT
The "wrong side of the tracks" was never more literal than in A Letter To Three Wives (1949)...  ...in which the tracks were just outside that kitchen window, causing the entire Finney apartment to jump and bounce like a 4.0 on a thrust fault each time a train went by. L to R: Connie Gilchrist, Thelma Ritter, Linda Darnell (here embodying the savvy girl-with-a-plan who intends "marrying up" to escape her circumstances, and knows just how to do it). Ritter provided her own charming take on the trope in The Mating Season (1951)...  ...as the foreclosed hamburger stand owner and mother of yuppie John Lund who presents herself to his socialite bride Gene Tierney and, mistaken for a maid hired for a dinner party, makes herself so indispensable that she secures steady employment and remains incognito, navigating the couple through marital difficulties (among which is in-law Miriam Hopkins) with only her son any the wiser. Barbara Stanwyck played her share of "girls with a plan" who rise from impoverished origins; perhaps the quintessential example of which was Baby Face (1933)...  ...along with variations in such films as Ladies Of Leisure (1930), Ten Cents A Dance (1931), Shopworn (1932), Gambling Lady (1934) and Stella Dallas (1937). 1953's Titanic gave us a look at how "marrying up" can turn out 20 years on as she and social register husband Clifton Webb do battle in the best of taste:  Concurrent with Stanwyck, Joan Crawford was rags-to-rich-ing it in Possessed (1931), Dancing Lady (1933) and Sadie McKee (1934)...  ...with Franchot Tone, Akim Tamiroff and Edward Arnold, and was still at it 15 years later in 1949's Flamingo Road... ...as a travelling carney dancer who runs afoul of corrupt sheriff Sidney Greenstreet when his political protege Zachary Scott falls for her. Another quintessential was Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, done in 1931 under its original title with Phillips Holmes...  ...and in 1951 as A Place In the Sun with Montgomery Clift:  |
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Post by kijii on Apr 1, 2018 23:03:15 GMT
Sam's other directorial accomplishments -- twice working with Jimmy Stewart ... once early in the actor's career for NAVY BLUE AND GOLD (the film that made Frank Capra sit up and take notice of Jim) and Sam's final film in THE STRATTON STORY.
Poor Sam also had to put up with the Brothers Marx shenanigans in A NIGHT AT THE OPERA.
In exasperation after several attempts to have Groucho read one of his lines in the manner the director had requested, Wood exclaimed, "I guess you just can't make an actor out of clay." Marx instantly responded, "Nor a director out of Wood." I meant to comment on Navy Blue and Gold during Jimmy Stewart month. That movie was a new one for me, and I found it a surprisingly good movie. In fact, if Annapolis had such a thing as an Official Movie, this would have been a good candidate. It contained a lot of the Naval Academy's traditions and was a good football story to boot. I liked the way three different men came into the Academy and how they each conveyed a different aspect to "the team." Lionel Barrymore's character added yet another dimension to the movie. www.capitalgazette.com/news/naval_academy/ac-cn-blue-and-gold-1201-story.html |
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Post by snsurone on Apr 1, 2018 23:05:33 GMT
I have to add ALICE ADAMS, where Katharine Hepburn played a small-town girl eager to rise above her humble circumstances.
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Post by kijii on Apr 1, 2018 23:14:58 GMT
The "wrong side of the tracks" was never more literal than in A Letter To Three Wives (1949)... ...in which the tracks were just outside that kitchen window, causing the entire Finney apartment to jump and bounce like a 4.0 on a thrust fault each time a train went by. L to R: Connie Gilchrist, Thelma Ritter, Linda Darnell (here embodying the savvy girl-with-a-plan who intends "marrying up" to escape her circumstances, and knows just how to do it). Ritter provided her own charming take on the trope in The Mating Season (1951)... ...as the foreclosed hamburger stand owner and mother of yuppie John Lund who presents herself to his socialite bride Gene Tierney and, mistaken for a maid hired for a dinner party, makes herself so indispensable that she secures steady employment and remains incognito, navigating the couple through marital difficulties (among which is in-law Miriam Hopkins) with only her son any the wiser. Barbara Stanwyck played her share of "girls with a plan" who rise from impoverished origins; perhaps the quintessential example of which was Baby Face (1933)... ...along with variations in such films as Ladies Of Leisure (1930), Ten Cents A Dance (1931), Shopworn (1932), Gambling Lady (1934) and Stella Dallas (1937). 1953's Titanic gave us a look at how "marrying up" can turn out 20 years on as she and social register husband Clifton Webb do battle in the best of taste: Concurrent with Stanwyck, Joan Crawford was rags-to-rich-ing it in Possessed (1931), Dancing Lady (1933) and Sadie McKee (1934)... ...with Franchot Tone, Akim Tamiroff and Edward Arnold, and was still at it 15 years later in 1949's Flamingo Road......as a travelling carney dancer who runs afoul of corrupt sheriff Sidney Greenstreet when his political protege Zachary Scott falls for her. Another quintessential was Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, done in 1931 under its original title with Phillips Holmes... ...and in 1951 as A Place In the Sun with Montgomery Clift: Wow Doghouse6-- These movies are some I had in mind when I started the thread. I was thinking how Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy--I was thinking about A Place in the Sun-- was about a young man who rose from poverty into potential wealth. Another movie like this is Life at the Top (1965). Here, Joe Lampton gets an opportunity much like George Eastman got in A Place in the Sun (1951). In both cases, they had to sacrifice their first loves to get there. In Flamingo Road, Sidney Greenstreet plays one of his most evil roles: that of a totally narcissistic--politician. Boy, I'm sure glad we don't have anyone like him around anymore...  |
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Post by Doghouse6 on Apr 1, 2018 23:40:03 GMT
In Flamingo Road, Sidney Greenstreet plays one of his most evil roles: that of a totally narcissistic--politician. Boy, I'm sure glad we don't have anyone like him around anymore... I saw it for the first time only last night, and that was my very reaction; it's probably the most rotten-to-the-core role I've ever seen him play. While a derivative potboiler (and with Crawford getting a little long in the tooth for it), it provided sufficient twists, turns and unpredictability to make it more enjoyable than I expected it to be, and zipped right along. |
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Post by BATouttaheck on Apr 1, 2018 23:54:32 GMT
Some of the boys in Stand By Me are from across those tracks.
"Billy's Mother" (Cara Williams) in The Defiant Ones and the Ewells in To Kill A Mockingbird seem to be even poorer than the other poor people.
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Post by Doghouse6 on Apr 2, 2018 1:44:28 GMT
While the aforementioned Stanwyck and Crawford were doing the same, Jean Harlow appeared as several ladies of the lower classes. In 1932, the amoral Red Headed Woman schemed to snag well-to-do Chester Morris by any pre-code means:  After the 1934 advent of the PCA, The Girl From Missouri resolved to land a wealthy husband while retaining her virtue...  ...but wasn't above a dirty trick or two in a pinch to derail Lionel Barrymore's objections to son Franchot Tone's attractions to her. In 1932's Red Dust, she competed for the affections of Clark Gable with the more refined Mary Astor...  ...and did so again with the veddy uppah crust Rosalind Russell in 1935's China Seas:  1933 gave us two Harlow iterations of having made good after modest upbringings, the effects of which still linger: Dinner At Eight, in which hubby Wallace Beery threatens to throw her "back into the gutter" whence she came...  ...and Bombshell, as a successful film actress who finally rebels against the "pack of leeches" - her shady brother Ted Healy and father Frank Morgan, unscrupulous press agent Lee Tracy and various hangers-on - incessantly scuttling her aspirations to social respectability:  |
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Post by kijii on Apr 2, 2018 6:14:16 GMT
In The Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008) the son of a Nazi prison camp guard makes friends with a Jewish boy in a the concentration camp - on the other side of the fence.  |
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Post by koskiewicz on Apr 2, 2018 15:07:38 GMT
"A Bronx Tale"
"The Wanderers"
"Dead End"
"Lords of Flatbush"
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