The 1946 The Strange Loves of Martha Ivers is melodrama—tragic melodrama. Lewis Milestone did efficient work in directing it, and such actors as Van Heflin and Kirk Douglas are solid. Barbara Stanwyck is a bit less interesting and persuasive than they are, but the fetching feminine presence here subsists in Lizabeth Scott.

‘Tis Stanwyck who is the lead, even so, in this tale of a rebellious girl who gets away with murder before growing up to live the high life. Unfortunately, she is married to a childhood friend (Douglas) who drinks and whom she does not love. The man she does love, another childhood friend (Heflin), shows up for some legal assistance from the sottish husband (a lawyer), but is shortly roughed up by the man’s hired goons. Douglas wants Heflin’s eyes off his wife—Stanwyck’s Martha Ivers—but all Heflin wants is to be in the driver’s seat in the present circumstances.

This is another nasty-but-nice Old Hollywood flick which is heavily dependent on both violence and a positive ending. In a screenplay by Robert Rossen, it has intelligent dialogue and no humor (it’s grave). Incidents in the film don’t exactly leave a character smiling. I’d say, though, that Ivers in toto left me smiling.

Directed and co-scripted by Jean-Jacques Annaud, Enemy at the Gates (2001) contains the spot-on visuals that a movie about the Battle of Stalingrad ought to have. All the same, the film has been accused of desecrating the memory of those who fought and died in Stalingrad during the Forties. I agree with this, except that the history of this battle will be known (in Russia and elsewhere) long after Annaud’s movie is justly forgotten.

Enemy is well-made but unsophisticated. That’s the problem. Even an entertainment film needs more than two Russian men in the midst of war getting jubilant because, owing to the sharpshooting skill of one of them, both men will be “famous.” It needs more than a Russian mother seeming to readily accept that her very young son, Sacha, has forsaken the Soviet Union and gone to the other side. Too, there is a deplorable love story. Jude Law‘s Vassili and Rachel Weisz‘s Tania engage in odd, laughable sex, and it’s a real pity they don’t—can’t—use protection.

I like much of the cast, though, notwithstanding Bob Hoskins rants embarrassingly as military officer Nikita Khrushchev. I don’t know; maybe the Russian filmmaker Sergei Bodrov could have done something with Khrushchev. But Enemy at the Gates is not Bodrov, who directed Prisoner of the Mountains and Mongol. Those are the pictures to see.

Wow, what costumes!  When we first see Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe in 1953’s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, those glittering tomato red dresses they’re wearing assault the eye (in a good way).  And these are just the women to wear them!—so we are compelled to think.

Howard Hawks’s film is savory, one of the drollest and most attention-grabbing musicals of the ’50s.  In terms of personality and appeal Russell gives as good as she gets from Monroe, and Marilyn is more focused-on than in Niagara, also from ’53.  Though far from brilliantly sung, the songs are dandy.  “When Love Goes Wrong” is a ballad both bluesy and friendly.  “Bye Bye Baby” is a catchy pleasure.

A kiss on the hand might be quite Continental (as the movie’s song “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend” puts it) but Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, with its setting abroad, isn’t Continental, really.  Rather it seems all-American.

Cover of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) is partly a love story and partly science fantasy about the decisions of Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clementine (Kate Winslet) to technologically erase the memories of each other from the lover’s troubled mind after a breakup.

The phrase “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind” in the Alexander Pope poem Eloise to Abelard refers to the blessed state of an undefiled mind, not the state of a mind free of painful memories, as in this film. Yet screenwriter Charlie Kaufman deliberately assigns this particular meaning to the phrase and has it quoted by a character (played by Kirsten Dunst) who seems to value the removal of memories even if ignorant that she herself once had some memories erased. There may be something else here, however: Bad behavior takes place in the film, which could carry the implication that things would be better—in our love affairs, for example—if the human mind was undefiled.

What’s more, I feel inspired to say that after the Kirsten Dunst character utters “Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!” she quotes Pope’s follow-up words, “Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d.” All these words together, I think, suggest that she and the other people in the movie are creatures of hope. They live on hope, looking for at least some of their wishes (the most important ones) to be resigned.

The plot of Eternal Sunshine is flawed but highly interesting—more so than the aesthetic experience the film hopes to offer. Michel Gondry directed painstakingly, and he has a savvy cinematographer in Ellen Kuras. The film would be nothing without Valdis Oskardottir’s editing and, well, close to nothing without Winslet’s engrossing performance and Tom Wilkinson‘s master touch. It is a fine, and quite literate, motion picture.

Strongly does the Western Calvary Charge (formerly titled The Last Outpost, 1951) create the impression that politics means war, literal war, not just between North and South in the American Civil War but also between 19th-century whites and Indians. Also conveyed is what Clausewitz propounded: that war is the continuation of politics by other means.

Men in this film are usually soldiers—Ronald Reagan has the lead role as Capt. Vance Britten (a Rebel)—but, too, they are men of politics. For example, because of a deal he has made with the Apaches, Britten opposes a government official’s desire to keep a small group of Indians locked up in a cell. Releasing them would obviate an Apache attack on both Northerners and Southerners.

Directed by Lewis Foster, Calvary Charge is more than a B movie but certainly less than a great Western. It is pretty rich, though, for a 90-minute film. Reagan doesn’t project enough personality even though, like co-star Rhonda Fleming, he is likable. Fleming is largely successful in her role. She and Technicolor seem to go together seamlessly. (This movie is available on tubitv.com)