Favourite William A. Wellman films?

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Allaby's Avatar
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09-03-24
It seems to me that William A. Wellman is underrated and doesn't get talked about much today. Any Wellman fans here? What are you favourite of his films? My favourite William A. Wellman films:

Wings (1927)
The Ox-Bow Incident (1942)
The Public Enemy (1931)
Nothing Sacred (1937)
A Star Is Born (1937)



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09-03-24
The Ox-Bow Incident is my favorite so far. The Public Enemy was good, just not as good as the other Cagney classics like White Heat, The Roaring Twenties and Angels with Dirty Faces. Really enjoyed The High and the Mighty, it made my all time films on an airplane list. Watching Track of the Cat 1954 sometime this week..
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09-03-24
The Ox-Bow incident would be my first choice, then Yellow sky, another breathtaking western, and two pre-codes from 1931 I'm very very fond of, Night nurse and Safe in Hell. From that same year, The public enemy is also very good and The star witness is fine. The rest I've watched are Heroes for sale and Nothing sacred, both quite good.



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09-03-24
Wings (1927)
Beggars of Life (1928)
The Public Enemy (1931)
Night Nurse (1931)
Heroes for Sale (1933)
Wild Boys of the Road (1933)
The Ox-Bow Incident (1943)
Yellow Sky (1948)
Track of the Cat (1954)
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09-03-24
Watched Nothing Sacred yesterday actually! laughed my ass off.
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Trouble with a capital "T"
09-03-24
Wings
Other Men's Women
The Public Enemy
Night Nurse
The Purchase Price
Frisco Jenny
Wild Boys of the Road
Female
Tarzan Escapes
A Star is Born
Nothing Sacred
Beau Geste
Roxie Hart
The Ox-Bow Incident
Story of G.I. Joe
Yellow Sky
Battleground
Across the Wide Missouri
Westward the Women
Island in the Sky
The High and the Mighty
Track of the Cat
Blood Alley

I don't log my movies so there's a few I've probably forgotten.



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09-03-24
A few of my old reviews of Wellman's films.
Originally Posted by Citizen Rules

Across the Wide Missouri (1951)

Director: William A. Wellman
Casts: Clark Gable, Ricardo Montalban, John Hodiak
Genre: Adventure, Romance, Western
Length: 78 minutes

Across the Wide Missouri is a cut above many old westerns as it was filmed on location in stunning Technicolor. For it's time it was a progressive movie as it shows the lead, Clark Gable as a white mountain man who marries a Blackfoot princess, they even have a child together. That was bold for 1951.

We think of Clark Gable as a tough, roguish man in the movies, but here he's able to show real love and tenderness with his native American wife and child.



Directed by 'two fist', William A. Wellman. The film looks fantastic and Wellman balances action with drama well. A number of talented actors made this film a treat to watch. Besides Gable we get a young Ricardo Montalban before he got stuck on Fantasy Island... as well as John Hodiak and veteran actor Adolphe Menjou.


.
Originally Posted by Citizen Rules

Battleground
(William Wellman 1949)

I seen that this was directed by William Wellman and decided to give it a watch. The film is based on actual events from the Battle of the Bulge which was the huge German counter attack where they tried to breakout through the Allied lines towards the end of WWII. The battle took place in the dead of winter in the Arddenes forest where conditions were cold and foggy making enemy identification hard. It's a matter of historical record that the U.S. 101 Airborne was ordered to hold a strategic hill. They became encircled by the Germans and ran low on ammo, food and medical supplies as they desperately waited for relief to come in.

The film starts off semi light with the men joking with each other in a small town in France. But don't think this is a light comic movie because as soon as they get to the battle in the Ardennes forest the situation becomes grim and they begin to be killed. Some of the U.S. soldiers think about going AWOL. The film looks at the morale and psychological effects of being in such a tough situation. The Battle of the Bulge was one of the toughest battles that allied and axis soldiers faced.


Here's one I forgot to include in my list above.
Originally Posted by Citizen Rules

Good-bye, My Lady(1956)
Director: William A. Wellman
Stars: Walter Brennan, Phil Harris, Brandon De Wilde
Genre: Family Drama
Length: 1h 34min

"An old man and a young boy who live in the southeastern Mississippi swamps are brought together by the love of a dog."

I'd never heard of this one until I stumbled upon it at the library. I seen it was a 1950s films, so thought it was worth watching for the upcoming 1950s Top 100 Countdown.

A charming yet realistic look at Cajun life in the bayous. The scenes between the boy (Brandon De Wilde) and his grandfather Walter Brennan were special. I really enjoyed this one.

Originally Posted by Citizen Rules

Track of the Cat

(William Wellman 1954)

Legendary director William Wellman made what he called: 'a color black & white film.' I won't explain that. If you watch it just pay close attention to color.

One of the film's highlights is the first act with one helluva dysfunctional family. There's lots of psychologically damaging barbs being thrown around between the disgruntled family members, who are bottled up in a mountain top cabin. Into that mix comes an aged Native American who believes the ways of white men is like the supernatural black panther of Indian legends. One of the brothers believes the old Indian is a spiritual being and even carves little statutes of the black panther to keep it at bay. The oldest brother Robert Mitchum thinks the old Indian and his brother are full of mysticism crap. He doesn't want to honor the spirit of the black panther, he wants to kill it!

The youngest brother Tab Hunter doesn't have a backbone and can't stand up to his strong willed family, especially his mother Beulah Bondi. Mom has nothing but loathing for his fiance. Then there's a spinster sister Teresa Wright who's let her mother beat her into submission. And finally a drunken fool of a dad. What a family! To me that's the best part.

The other cool thing is the on location shooting at Mt Rainer where I live close by. Mitchum later said that shooting in the snow at such high elevation was the hardest acting work he's done.

This isn't a typical western that fills in the blanks for you. There's a lot of subterfuge and underlying themes. It might be uneven at times but the sum of it's parts are well worth watching the movie for.
+
Originally Posted by Citizen Rules

Nothing Sacred (1937)

Director: William Wellman
Writer: Ben Hecht
Cast: Carole Lombard, Fredric March, Charles Winninger
Genre: Comedy Romance

'An eccentric woman learns she is not dying of radium poisoning as earlier assumed, but when she meets a reporter looking for a story, she feigns sickness again for her own profit.'

I love Carole Lombard in this, she was one of the biggest stars in the 1930s and a skilled comedian too.

What really impressed me about Nothing Sacred is the film's historical importance. It's a very early 3 Strip Technicolor film from 1937. That's two years earlier than the celebrated The Wizard of Oz. To me an old film is like a time machine back to the past, and with Nothing Sacred we get to see the streets of New York City and also see it from the air, and it's all in color! Think about that for a moment, the director William Wellman (Wings 1927) actually used full color aerial footage. I'm sure that was the first time for a feature length film.

This is the first and only time Miss Lombard was filmed in color. They dyed her hair red from her normal light blonde trusses. I thought she looked great, especially in the blue evening gown at the restaurant/club scene. Ahh, those were the days when women road horses onto the stage and people were decked to the nines as they dined and danced in a posh New York City club. Which is much more colorful than my last meal at Denny's

That's the thing about 1930s comedies: America was under the grips of the great depression and audiences went regularly to the movies as a form of escape...And what they escaped into was often the glitzy world of the rich and well-to-do. For a hour or two the poor could image what it would be like not to have to save every crumb of food just to keep from starving.

At the heart of Nothing Sacred is a story of a simple woman from a small rural town who uses her supposed radium poisoning condition to get to live the 'good life' for a short time in NYC. And it's a story about skepticism and mistrust in the newspapers, which is another common theme for 1930s films. But what I really thought was a sophisticated story element was the condemnation of the hoopla that resulted from the media coverage in NYC. We see the people poured their hearts out for the poor dying girl, putting on one helluva show, when really what they wanted was just to feel good about themselves.

Like a lot of screwball comedies of the 30s, Nothing Sacred has a much deeper meaning than the surface shenanigans.