Movies references in music, part 3

Part 3 is here! It’s been a while!

I love movie references in songs. I’ve done two other posts about this, and they were really popular, so I thought I’d do a third one. Hope you guys like it, and do check out the songs!

 

The Damned Don’t Cry by Visage – An awesome New Wave song named after the 1950 movie of the same name. I love Visage.

Robert DeNiro’s Waiting by Bananarama – I love this song. Wonderful melody. Bananarama were adorable!

Spellbound by Siouxsie and the Banshees – So cool. Named after the Hitchcock movie.

E=MC2 by Big Audio Dynamite – A great tribute to Nicolas Roeg’s movies.

Where do you go to my lovely? by Peter Sarstedt – ‘You talk like Marlene Dietrich’ RIP Peter Sarstedt.

Robert Mitchum by Julian Cope – An absolutely adorable tribute, a lot like Judy Garland’s tribute to Clark Gable

Rock on by Davis Essex – ‘Jimmy Dean…. James Dean’. Such a sexy song! David Essex was amazing!

If you want to check out the other lists, click here and here.

Have a great week, guys! ❤

 

Quiz

 

Ok, what movie does this remind you of? I can’t be the only one.

Easy Living (1937)

Screwball comedies are good for you. In fact, you should probably watch one every day when you wake up. Wouldn’t that be nice? Go on, write that down. Make it your resolution for 2017. And if you want my advice, I think you should start with Mitchell Leisen’s Easy Living (1937).

After finding out that his wife Jenny (Mary Nash) has bought yet another expensive coat, millionaire banker J.B. Ball, played by the adorably grumpy Edward Arnold, gets fed up and decides to throw it over the balcony. It lands on working girl Mary Smith (Jean Arthur) and when she tries to return it, he tells her to keep it. This leads to an array of gossip and misunderstandings – well, of course, it’s a screwball comedy -, made worse by the fact that Mary ends up falling in love with J.B.’s son, John (Ray Milland), and vice-versa.  

Written by the mighty Preston Sturges, based on the novel by Vera Caspary (who also wrote Laura), Easy Living is one of the great screwball comedies. For me personally, I’ve always found that screwball comedies have the ability to make me laugh and calm me down at the same time and this one is no exception. I think it has to do with the balance between the slapstick moments (which, as you can imagine, are hilarious) and the relationship between Mary and John, which is just the cutest thing ever. Although, I have to say that, if I had to pick a favorite thing about this film, it would probably be Mr Louis (Luis Alberni)’s lines, which – and I wish I was kidding – I have written down to use at some point in my life. But I can’t pick a favorite, really. There are so many great things about this movie. Jean Arthur and Edward Arnold are comedy geniuses, and their scenes together are fantastic, namely the one in the taxi right at the beginning of the film. That scene is probably the second best taxi scene ever, after On the Waterfront (1954).

In short, Easy Living is fabulous. And you need it in your life.

Twentieth Century (1934)

The absolutely wonderful Carole Lombard is the subject of the much-anticipated blogathon hosted by Crystal from In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood, and since I’m a gigantic fan, I immediately signed up for it. I decided to go for a movie that is just ridiculously hilarious and criminally underrated: Howard Hawks’ Twentieth Century (1934).

Oscar Jaffe (John Barrymore) is a Broadway empresario who is ever so slightly insane. He casts Lily Garland (Carole Lombard) in his newest production, and she becomes an overnight sensation. Together, the two of them rule Broadway, producing hit after hit, even if they drive each other crazy behind the scenes. After a while, Lily decides to go to Hollywood. She becomes a movie star and Jaffe is lost without her. He decides that he needs to get on the 20^th Century train to Hollywood and bring her back. What he doesn’t know is that she is on the same train… And thus begins the wackiest train journey you’ll ever see in a movie. Trust me on this.

Twentieth Century is the craziest screwball comedy of all – arguably, I mean, look at the competition! -, and that’s mostly due to the performances of Carole Lombard and John Barrymore. The two of them make one heck of a duo! John Barrymore gives one of the best performances of his career (I still can’t believe he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar), and Carole Lombard…. Well, Carole Lombard is just a comedy genius. Inviable comic timing, flawless delivery and the best facial expressions. Not to mention, the funniest crier! She was so naturally funny, you kind of go like ‘just HOW does she do it?’. She was, without a doubt, one of the greatest comediennes who ever lived and quite possibly my all-time favorite. I mean, is it even possible not to love her?

If you want to read the other entries on the blogathon, click here and have fun!

The Chase (1946)

I’ll be honest with you, when I read that Phillip Yordan wrote the screenplay, I was there like a shot. I mean, he did write The Big Combo (1955), after all! So obviously, I had big expectations for The Chase (1946) and I can safely say, it absolutely lived up to them!

Robert Cummings (come for Phillip Yordan, stay for Bob Cummings, I say) plays Chuck Scott, a WWII veteran who, after finding a wallet, decides he should return it to its owner, a gangster called Eddie Roman (Steve Cochran). Roman realizes that Scott doesn’t have a job, so he hires him as his chauffeur. Scott – or Scotty, as Roman calls him – soon finds himself drawn to Roman’s wife Lorna, played by the recently departed Michele Morgan, and when the two of them run away together to Cuba, Roman and his right-hand man Gino (Peter Lorre) begin their chase…

Based on the novel The Black Path of Fear by Cornell Woolrich and directed by Arthur Ripley, The Chase is satisfyingly bizarre and delightfully unusual. It’s one of those films that will make you go ‘whaa…?’ every now and again, trying to baffle you as much as it can and then giving you an explanation for every twist that is even more baffling than the twist itself. And you thought The Big Sleep (1946) was confusing!

With a cast that also includes Nina Koshetz, Jack Holt, James Westerfield and Lloyd Corrigan, The Chase will draw you in from the first second and it won’t let you go until the very end. In fact, probably not even then.

Trouble in Paradise (1932)

If you’re as obsessed with Billy Wilder as I am, you’ll know that he had a sign on his wall that read ‘How would Lubitsch do it?’. If you watch Trouble in Paradise (1932), you’ll understand why.

A thief, Gaston Monescu (Herbert Marshall) and a pickpocket, Lily Vautier (Miriam Hopkins), fall in love and decide to team up and con the owner of a perfume company, Mariette Colet (Kay Francis). However, things don’t go as planned and Monescu falls in love with Mariette.

Dripping with sexual innuendo and sophistication, Trouble in Paradise has ‘the Lubitsch touch’ written all over it. You can’t really explain what ‘the Lubitsch touch’ is, you can only watch it and nod to yourself amusingly when it hits you. It’s as subtle and witty as they come and everybody in Hollywood knew it. In fact, Trouble in Paradise is so influential that almost every type of comedy can be traced back to it: screwball comedy, sophisticated comedy, romantic comedy, comedy of errors, you name it. They’re all there.

With a supporting cast that includes Edward Everett Horton, Charles Ruggles and C. Aubrey Smith, Trouble in Paradise is arguably Ernst Lubitsch’s masterpiece. And that’s saying something when you’re talking about a man who hardly ever made a bad film.