MAKSQUIBS CINEMATHEQUE: THE WALLS OF JERICHO (1948)

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Friday, October 15, 2021

THE WALLS OF JERICHO (1948)

Best guess is 20th/Fox spent too much on the novel to call it off, throwing on an A-Team in hopes of saving face & getting their investment back. Director John M. Stahl, just the guy for a meller of unrequited passion & revenge that winds up in a courtroom murder trial (see LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN/’45); studio fave Lamar Trotti to write/produce; top composer Alfred Newman & lenser Arthur Miller. The whole gang stuck in a tidy Kansas town where surface charm & Valorem Americanus hide loveless marriages, dipsomania, rape, murder, common-law coupling, political & journalistic backstabbing, point-blank pistol practice and piggyback lovin’ (unrequited-sacred vs. rejected-profane). It’s 19-‘teen's Peyton Place! Cornel Wilde, too understanding for his own good, is the D.A. with political ambitions & a soused wife (Ann Dvorak); a repressed yen for gal-lawyer Anne Baxter; no malice for turncoat pal Kirk Douglas & his slandering newspaper; and even less interest in the roving eye of Kirk’s disdainful wife Linda Darnell, a revenge-minded transplant you refuse at your own peril. Remarkably bad casting up and down the line on his one, Darnell’s villainy especially transparent, though fun to see Douglas in an early role playing at his actual height.

WATCH THIS, NOT THAT/LINK: The Fox films mentioned above: LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN; PEYTON PLACE/’57. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2011/10/leave-her-to-heaven-1945.html

OR: See Warners get a grip on this sort of thing in KING’S ROW/’44. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2016/03/kings-row-1940.html

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Friday, October 15, 2021

THE WALLS OF JERICHO (1948)

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