Tag: Elizabeth Taylor

Rapid Response: National Velvet

 

Let’s call a spade a spade and acknowledge that for how much I’ve said these Old Hollywood movies from the late ’30s and ’40s up through the ’50s comprise just about the best time period for movies, there are quite a few that have aged terribly.

“National Velvet” is a fine example of a super corny, campy, hokey, dopey, feel good, family movie that would make a number of modern audiences wretch. Yet it’s survived based on its pedigree. Mickey Rooney was an insurmountably huge movie star when this movie came out in 1944, and at the age of 12, it was just about the first big role for the recently late Elizabeth Taylor, whose own movie stardom needs no further editorializing. It even has a small part for Angela Lansbury, who was nominated for an Oscar for a different film and lost to one of her “National Velvet” costars for Best Supporting Actress.

But the film could not be more cut and dry. A girl with dreams and ambitions to own a horse that she loves and cares for deeply ends up winning the horse of her dreams in a raffle, discovers the horse’s potential to race and jump and enters it to race in the Grand National race in 1920s England. She goes as far as racing the horse herself and winning, despite being disqualified for being an underage girl. Continue reading “Rapid Response: National Velvet”

Rapid Response: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

I chose to watch “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” because of Elizabeth Taylor’s recent death, but I probably would have given any reason to watch a Paul Newman movie. Newman is one of my favorite actors, and he along with Taylor give some of the first great performances of their career in this adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s play.

The story follows the Pollitt family throughout the one day of Big Daddy Pollitt’s (Burl Ives) birthday party. He’s arriving home on his 65th birthday from the doctor, who did tests to find if Big Daddy has cancer. The doctor lied and told him he would be fine, but he confides in secret to Big Daddy’s son Brick (Newman) that he will in fact die, and soon. Brick has become an alcoholic and he’s fallen out of love with his wife Maggie (Taylor) following the death of his best friend. Brick’s brother and sister-in-law have five annoying children, who Maggie constantly refers to as “No-Neck Monsters,” and they are trying to secure their proper inheritance.

The film is a stirring family drama that considers from each character their love of the others. Brick has grown annoyed with Maggie, Big Daddy seems to have never loved anyone, and the sister-in-law Mae seems only interested in earning her family fortune. The news of Big Daddy’s illness shakes this family from head to toe, and we truly see these characters grow and change over the course of the day.

The dialogue feels authentic and the performances are rich throughout. Only Newman and Taylor were nominated for Oscars, but the entire supporting cast is just as strong. The film was also nominated for best color cinematography, and while it’s not exactly a visually striking film, there’s something about the way the color camera can reveal Liz Taylor’s remarkable beauty.