PodBill Just what I expected

Micransix Crappy film

Lightdeossk Captivating movie !

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

dougdoepke The movie's a wildcard in Grant's otherwise debonair career. Here he's an aimless London slum-dweller, who thinks futility is just the way the world is. So why should he, Ernie Mott (Grant), try for anything better when the world's rigged for defeat. Still, Ernie's got an indulgent, if fatally ill, mother, along with two adoring girlfriends. They might help if he weren't so casual about their affections. The movie's heart is in the right place, as lefty screenwriter-director Odets links the ease of crime with slum conditions. The trouble is it's hard to take Grant (age 40) as either youthful or poverty stricken (couldn't they have dirtied him up a bit). Maybe I've seen too many of his slick light comedies, but I just couldn't forget that this is the great smoothy playing against type. No doubt, he was trying to expand his range, but the choice of vehicles was unfortunate as he himself admitted. The movie itself is about as dingy as any I've seen. The murky b&w is tediously unrelenting. Naturally, that emphasizes the slum-like conditions, but also serves a more practical purpose. Namely, the dimness masks the many studio-bound streets and sets that are about as cheaply done as any of Grant's many films. Frankly, between the unrelenting talk and bleak visuals, my attention wandered. Still, Jane Wyatt is fetching, Barrymore doesn't over-act, Fitzgerald is not too cuddly, while Grant tries his manful best. Too bad, the results aren't better— the 113-minutes could easily have profited by shaving off 20 of those. Anyway, the movie remains more a bleakly done oddity than anything else in Grant's fabulous career.

l_rawjalaurence Based on the novel by Richard Llewellyn, with a script by Clifford Odets (who also directed it), NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART is a socially conscious film, readily recognizable as the work of the author of WAITING FOR LEFTY (a classic social drama of the mid-Thirties), Ernie Mott (Cary Grant) lives in the back-streets of London, trying to eke out an existence while living with his mother (Ethel Barrymore). The two of them fight like cat and dog, but once Ernie discovers that his mother is terminally ill, he vows to stay with her no matter what the consequences. Short of money, Ernie resorts to a life of crime, working for local mobster Jim Mordinoy (George Colouris), and is eventually arraigned by the police after a car-chase (more reminiscent of the streets of Depression-era Chicago than London). Released on bail by a friendly pawnbroker (Konstantin Shayne), Ernie discovers to his horror that his mother, while pretending to lead a respectable life in her own pawn-shop, has also been involved in a life of crime. The two of them are reconciled on her death-bed, but Ernie has to face the future on his own. Although the settings are somewhat stagy, the sincerity of this drama is not in doubt: Odets has a gift for creating memorable sequences, with a clever use of light and shade suggesting Ernie's imprisonment. Although not actually in jail, he cannot escape his existence: the desperate search for money to live on will never end. Nonetheless he resolves to face the future with equanimity - in a time of war, it's important for everyone to forget their individual grievances and pull together. This is suggested in a memorable exchange at the end with Henry Twite (Barry Fitzgerald), as the two of them look down at the River Thames flowing beneath them, and walk to the river- side down a flight of stairs. As Ernie, Grant gets the chance to demonstrate his virtuosity as an actor; normally associated with light comedy, he rarely had the chance to grapple with meatier, tragic roles. The scene where he suddenly discovers the seamier side of life, as he watches the pawnbroker being beaten up by Mordinoy's gang is particularly memorable: Odets repeatedly cuts to reaction-shots of his facial expression gradually changing, and then cuts back to a medium shot as Grant/Ernie fells one of the gang-members who is about to hit a defenseless old man. While NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART is a propaganda peace, released in the penultimate year of World War II, it nonetheless has a social message that can be understood by everyone about the necessity to eliminate poverty by caring for others around us.

secondtake None but the Lonely Heart (1944)An odd but actually really interesting American movie set in London (and made on a huge soundstage built for the filming in California). At first you might twitch at Cary Grant's slightly affected accent—except that he grew up in working class London, though with a different neighborhood accent than this. His mother, played by Ethel Barrymore, doesn't even pretend at an accent, which is fine. She's tough as nails and she fights for her son's dignity with maternal hardness. "A breath of homeless wind," she calls him. This makes sense in context—the movie is from the big turning point and gruesome zone of World War II. It seems the Germans are losing ground at last, and Britain, a short Channel away from enemy soldiers, is desperate to keep morale up. A final scene has some badly done shadows of planes falling on a third major character, as he and Grant look up at the sky.There are a hundred great moments here, many of them in the clever, homey script (which is filled with old school aphorisms like, "They milk the cow that stands still"). And then there's the moment when Grant appears at the bottom of the stairs in a new striped suit. What a sight!Underneath all this is a tender, sad, triumphant story amidst the ruins of this mother and son family. You can read it two ways. The first is simple: a gadabout young man hasn't paid much attention to his aging, widowed mother and the two have to find ways of getting to know each other again. Both of the leads are terrific actors, and though they might seem mismatched in style, they are decent enough to pull of this seesaw of emotions.The other story is a social message about young men with skills coming to the aid of those who need them. In the bigger picture this means Great Britain in its fight against the Nazis. As the personal ups and downs fly around us while we watch (there is tumult of romantic and criminal activity), the bigger truth is developing—Grant's troubled character has to find some inner stability to make him a useful, happy human being. It's not about being a homeless wind after all.Overall there is a stage-like stiffness to part of the film (Odets was a playwright above all), but it's so moving at times, and so well written at others, I recommend it anyway. A classic? No. But it helps fill in some gaps in Grant's career (he just finished filming "Arsenic and Old Lace") and it does satisfy some dramatic impulse in me. An example of a great tidbit? Midway, Grant is making advances on the leading lady, and she rebuffs him flat. "Rolled a nice cold pickle jar down my back, you did," he says. A little later she says, "There's about twenty good kisses left in me but you'll never get one." Where the heck does this kind of great, old-fashioned, writing come from? The writer of the movie, of course, Clifford Odets, who also is directing. This is one of two movies the great writer directed. And this, in the end, is why to see it. He's not a terrific director, but he knows how to respect a good writer when it's himself. And there is so much that works here amidst the slightly awkward direction it's worth seeing. For those who love old movies, that is. And for anyone trying to get a grip on the effect of WWII on England, and London, and regular folk.

edwagreen Am one of the very few who found this to be a dull, moody piece. The somber tone reflected here is just overbearing.Ethel Barrymore gave finer performances than this Oscar-winning performance. How did a woman dying of cancer get involved with pick-pockets to begin with? Is it because of Mrs. Mott's illness that son, Ernie, played by Cary Grant, is forced to stay home and resort to crime?Grant's acting is good here. There is no question about that. He could never have won the Oscar with Alexander Knox in the same category in "Wilson." Knox's loss to Bing Crosby in the best actor category was a disgrace of monumental proportions.What exactly is Clifford Odets trying to show here? The downtrodden. Perhaps, if Ernie Mott had broken into a song, we would have had a better film. The dark dreary scenes were often very difficult to view.What was the purpose of Jane Wyatt's appearance in the film? She loved Ernie deeply but it appeared that she could never capture his heart. Barrymore enters the film in a brutish way. She slaps her son's (Ernie's) face and claimed she was too busy to love his father. What a ludicrous line that was.As far as this film being one of Communist propaganda, what a joke that is. Even the Communists would be thoroughly bored and annoyed with this. They would view the Mott's as extreme capitalists and the jail-hospital, where Mrs. Mott resided, as a bourgeois place by comparison.