Warning: Super Long Movie Post Ahead

I watched three more Best Picture winners over the last week! I'm speeding through this list, which is good, but I'm kind of sad, because it won't be long before I'll be done with this! It's been a lot of fun watching all of these movies, it really has.

Anyway, on to the movies I've seen lately!

We'll go in the order I watched them. First up:
Gentleman's Agreement
1947
Gregory Peck
Dorothy McGuire

It was kind of odd watching this movie, because I don't think the subject matter is all that relevant today. Maybe I'm wrong, and if I am, you can tell me (I tend to live in my own little world sometimes, and my world doesn't always resemble the real world much). This movie is about a reporter (played by Gregory Peck) who goes undercover in New York City as a Jew, to blow the lid off anti-semitism.

Is that still relevant? It would never occur to me that people were still anti-semitic, but I also know how horrible people can be, so maybe they are, and I just don't know.

Anyway, he tells everyone he is Jewish, and feels the effects of it. His kid gets beaten up, he is denied jobs and apartments based on it, and is basically just made way more away of how horrible people can be. And this includes his fiance, who is in on the story, but who still manages to say and do things that come off as bigoted. Throughout the movie, I actually thought he was with the wrong woman - why marry the woman who has to tell herself to be open and not go along with everyone else on this issue, when there is a beautiful woman at the magazine he is working for, who is NOT in on the secret, and couldn't care less that he's supposedly Jewish? But no, he sticks with the other woman instead. It's his fiance who explains the title of the movie - a "Gentleman's Agreement," in which people who don't agree with the anti-semitism just stand back, go along and ignore it, instead of speaking up about it.

It was a good movie - I enjoyed it. I gave it 4 stars out of 5. It made you think, and made me hope that this problem really is in the past.

Up next:
The Greatest Show on Earth
1952
Charlton Heston
Betty Hutton
Jimmy Stewart
Dorothy Lamour
Cornel Wilde

This was a really entertaining movie. It followed the Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey circus as it traveled the country putting on shows for the masses. Brad (Charlton Heston) is the manager of the circus, Holly (Betty Hutton) is a trapeze artist who is in a relationship with Brad (but he's more in love with the show than he is with her), The Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde) is a famous trapeze artist who swoops in and takes the center ring away from Betty's character, and lots of other characters fill out the cast.

The main story lines in this little drama are a love triangle between Brad, Holly and Sebastian, and oh yeah - Jimmy Stewart plays a clown named Buttons, who never takes off his face paint. Why? Because he's a doctor who is on the run from the law - he's wanted for murder.

Along the way, Brad puts an end to a cheating scheme put on by one of the midway booths, which puts him under fire by the thug behind the crooked guy. This leads to a hold-up of the train carrying the take from the shows, and also leads to a train wreck.

All in all, this was a very entertaining movie, but it could have been a lot shorter - if you took the scenes that just showed the circus acts out of the movie, it would be probably an hour shorter.

Oh, and probably no one reading this has ever watched a Road movie (Road to Singapore, for example), but those movies starred Dorothy Lamour (a secondary character in this movie), Bing Crosby and Bob Hope. They must have shot them at about the same time as this movie, because in one scene where Dorothy is singing, they scan the crowd to show Bing and Bob sitting there eating popcorn and watching her sing. Ha! I think that was my favorite part of the whole movie. I love the Road movies.

I gave this one 4 out of 5 stars.

Last but not least is my favorite of the three:
Marty
1955
Ernest Borgnine
Betsy Blair

I LOVED this movie. And why wouldn't I? It's a romance! Ernest Borgnine plays the title character, a 34 year old Italian man who still lives at home with his mother. His younger siblings have all married and are having kids of their own, and Marty is still single and taking all kinds of heat from the women in the neighborhood because of it.

But he doesn't want to be single! He wants to find love! But he has been shot down and had his feelings hurt so many times that he's given up hope.

Enter a Saturday night, which he plans on spending at home alone, until his Mother convinces him to go out to a dance club. She wants him to find a woman, too! So out he goes, with his single friend.

They get to the club, and they're just standing around watching people dance. Marty asks one woman to dance, but gets shot down. But then it starts to get interesting. A woman comes in with her sister and two men. Her name is Clara. She's a 29 year old school teacher, who is single and has been set up on a date with her sister's husband's friend. One problem - the friend is a sleaze.

Unhappy with the "dog" he had been set up with, this friends proceeds to approach Marty and offer him $5 if he'll take this dog off his hands and escort her home, leaving the sleaze free to go off with some other woman he's seen there. Oy. Marty, being a gentleman, is offended by this man's offer, and tells him no. But his interest is piqued, and he watches as this guy approaches another man, who accepts the $5. But Clara rejects the invitation to have a strange man take her home, and is left alone.

And what do you know, Marty approaches Clara and starts to talk to her, and they actually hit it off! They bond over being dogs and rejected so many times throughout their lives. They're having a great time, and spend hours together that night, and leave promising to see each other the next day.

These plans start to be derailed by Marty's friends and family, and I was really afraid that he was going to do the wrong thing, but he came through in the end. I'm a sap, I know this, but I love romantic movies, and this one was great. I want to own it on DVD someday.

I gave this movie 5 out of 5 stars.

There, I'm all done with movie posts for the day. Aren't you happy? And the length of this surely makes up for me not posting yesterday, right? :) Thanks for reading! (And go rent Marty, you'll love it.)