Nonureva Really Surprised!

Protraph Lack of good storyline.

SincereFinest disgusting, overrated, pointless

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

JohnHowardReid Director: John Farrow. Producer: Seton I. Miller. Copyright 21 February 1947 by Paramount Pictures Inc. New York opening at the Rivoli: 14 January 1947. U.S. release: 21 February 1947. U.K. release: 14 April 1947. Australian release: oddly no official release date despite the fact that this was one of Paramount's prestige releases of the year. Sydney opening at the Prince Edward: 18 April 1947 (ran four weeks). 8,758 feet. 97 minutes.SYNOPSIS: A former slave trader's plans to make California his own empire are thwarted by a moralistic army-deserter and an idealistic grape-grower.NOTES: Stanwyck's first color film. Filmed on locations (including Sedona) in Arizona.COMMENT: Much admired by many critics, including my colleague Barrie Pattison who swears that California is "one of the supreme achievements of mankind". I am of a lesser opinion. True, Farrow's direction is wonderfully fluid, with at least four or five extremely long, extremely elaborate and complicated one-takes. But their dramatic impact is often dissipated by a faulty script which lets Farrow down on a number of fronts: Firstly, the narrative construction is oddly episodic, with various segments separated by surrealistic chorales. Now I'm all in favor of experimentation in the cinema, but it doesn't gel here. All this extolling the virtues of California by an off-camera chorus ("Get my bible and banjo... It's California, or bust!"), doesn't always sit too well with a petty tale of a gambling hussy on the wagon train. (Of course not all the singing is done off-camera. The wagon folks themselves render "I Should Have Stood in Massachusetts", while saloon singer Stanwyck — wearing gorgeous gowns — is expertly dubbed for "Lily-I-Lily-I-Oh" and the haunting ballad, "Said I To My Heart, Said I"). The second problem with the script is that, despite its length, characterization is so sketchy, it's hard to get involved with the principals. Milland doesn't help much. Acquits himself well enough in the action spots, true, but otherwise just glumly rattles off his lines. Stanwyck plays with more fire in her spirit, and looks mighty fetching in Technicolor, but the script gives her such threadbare cloth to fashion, it's no surprise her performance makes little impression. Ditto Barry Fitzgerald. The one player who does come across strongly is George Coulouris who makes his Captain Coffin not only truly menacing, but even truly human. Yet even here the script tries to undermine the character (what a pity the haunting of naked feet pattering across the deck is only alluded to but once). Fortunately, such is Coulouris' skill he manages to force our interest interest upon the captain right through to his anticipated end. The other villains are distinctly minor by comparison, but Dekker and Muir manage them ably.The script's third vice is its overly verbose dialogue. Practically all of Fitzgerald's part could go with no loss of interest or continuity, and the scissors could likewise be taken to some of the principals' exchanges, plus three or four small but unnecessary scenes. Alas, in the print under review, Rennahan's once-lustrous color photography is now somewhat less than satisfying. Some superb images remain, however. The panning shot of all the furniture thrown from the wagons to facilitate the gold rush, for example. A flawed film, but still vastly entertaining. Superb sets, and unstintingly lavish production values help.

Robert J. Maxwell A massive gold rush takes diverse types of California, where they meet their destinies. Some find gold, most melt into the background, some run saloons, others gamble and win saloons from the others, some are pervicaciously greedy and deprive others of water, some wear sandals and lift weights on Muscle Beach, some organize a personal militia to fight against the statehood that would deprive them of their unethical power and their mountain of riches, some found loony religious cults.Everyone except Anthony Quinn is miscast. Ray Milland is a suave Englishman, not a wandering cowboy who needs a shave. George Coulouris isn't bad as the powerful heavy and gang leader, but Barry Fitzgerald does not belong in the small part of the grizzled side kick. That's Gabby Hayes' or Walter Brennan's role. Barbara Stanwyck is miscast too. She belongs in the city, not singing in Coulouris's gambling den and bar. She gets to sing (dubbed) two or three fully orchestrated 1947-era songs.There are a few unexpected objets trouvee in the script. Stanwyck's songs are dumb, but there is a pretty Mexican folk song, "Carmel, Carmela," sung by a tenor with a simple guitar accompaniment. And Coulouris gets a bit of sympathy from his personal background -- poverty and sadness -- during his apparently genuine proposal to Stanwyck that the ordinary bad guy is usually denied in these perfunctory scripts. I mean, after all, Coulouris was the captain of a slave ships. The horror, the horror.And, unexpectedly, the hero, Ray Milland, gets clobbered in two fist fights. True, he's outnumbered or outweighed, but that usually doesn't stop the hero from winning, even if, in the process, he winds up with a tiny and colorful trickle of blood from the corner of his lips. The viewer also acquires a bit of incidental learning regarding the history of the state of California in the lead-up to the Civil War.

oldblackandwhite This is a case where I feel like other reviewers have watched a different movie called "California" than the one I saw. The picture I enjoyed was a top-notch "A" western with an excellent cast, gorgeous Technicolor cinematography, spectacular California scenery, lively action, good pacing, and an intelligent, adult story.At the top of the cast Ray Milland, Barbara Stanwyck, and Barry Fitzgerald, were at the peak of their careers. All three had garnered Academy Award honors within the past few years before "California's" early 1947 release. Milland was coming off his best actor award for Lost Weekend (1945), while Fitzgerald won best supporting actor for Going My Way (1944) and also got a best actor nomination for the same role! Stanwyck, a perennial bridesmaid of the Academy had received best actress nominations for Ball Of Fire (1941) and Double Indemnity (1944). "California" is a good showcase for their talents, each doing what he or she did best -- Ray the mild-mannered but hard-edged tough guy, Barry the lovable Irishman, and Barbara the hard broad who may or may not be hiding a heart of gold. Good support and stalwart villainy is provided by George Coulouris and Albert Dekker with a large cast of other supporting players and extras.Some people can't picture Ray Milland as an appropriate western lead because of his British accent, even though it had became slight by the late 1940's when he had be living in the United States for two decades. But lots of people in the West would have had British and other foreign accents. Remember, we were and still are a nation of immigrants. Besides which Ray was imminently qualified to play westerns by his real life experiences. Having served several years in a crack British cavalry regiment in the 1920's, he was an expert horseman, and it shows by the way he sits a steed in "California". And he certainly knew which end of a gun the bullets came out of. A crack marksman, he helped his regiment win several prestigious shooting matches in his army days. Interestingly, he actually plays a professional trick shot artist in another western, Copper Canyon (see my review).John Farrow's usual efficient direction and Eda Waren's editing keep the story moving along at a sharp pace. The script by Frank Butler and Theodore Strauss provides an intelligent, adult story with literate dialog. It gives an accurate, compelling picture of the California gold rush and the gold fever gripping immigrants to the Pacific Coast, as well as the movement for California statehood, a plot by the baddies for an armed overthrow of the government, and a torrid love triangle. As the intense, dark melodramas now known as film noir were at the height of their popularity when this western was filmed, the script endows the principles of the love triangle, Milland, Stanwyck, and Coulouris, with shady pasts. Milland's character, it turns out has deserted the Army. Stanwyck has been thrown out of every town she ever parked in for being -- shall we say charitably -- a floozy. Coulouris, villain enough as it is, has an even darker past as a slave ship captain. And he is now going slowly off his nut remembering the cries of the chained slaves and his fears they would rise up and get him. Dekker, occasionally a leading man or second lead, but more often a polished villain, is wasted here as Coulouris's former first mate and brutish henchman. Since Coulouris is always a bit over the top, perhaps "California" would have been better served if Dekker had had his role.The script and Farrow's direction gives us just the right blend of dramatics and action. A rousing, old-time, full-bodied score by Victor Young helps move it along. Unlike other reviewers, I found the frequent outbursts of singing by both on-screen characters and an unseen chorus an asset to the picture, adding life and color and even historical accuracy. Some in this history challenged generation may not realize that in the days before people had television, computers, radio, movies, or even phonographs, they had to entertain themselves. They sang all the time, walking down the street, in their yards, in barber shops, at socials, around campfires (as in "California"), and in saloons. Even the meanest of saloons could usually scratch up some kind of band.The costumes, sets, firearms, gun leather, lamps and other accouterments in "Callifornia" show an unusual degree of historical accuracy for a western of this era. No one has a repeating rifle, all muzzle loaders or crude breech loaders. Cap and ball revolvers are used in the closeups at least -- never mind they were not the exact models for 1849. You other gun nuts: in how many other movies have you seen a Hall breech loader? Good effort in this department.Ray Rennahan, who did the camera work, gets credit for the unusually fine color cinematography, but with Natalie Kalmus on board as the Techniclor consultant, superb color was insured. The Technicolor Corporation required a consultant on every movie using their patented process, and Mrs. Kalmus, ex-wife of the inventor of Technicolor, was usually it. She was known around the studios as a bossy, irritating old dame, who interfered in set designs, camera set-ups, costume color and materials, prop selection, and virtually every other aspect of a color filming. She must, nevertheless, have known what she was doing. Every picture with her name on it will have muted, perfectly co-ordinated, precisely lighted, and generally superior color. After all, the studio technicians of the 1940's, as skilled as they were in black and white filming, had little experience with color. They actually needed a Natilie Kalmus, like it or not."California" in an A-1 Technicolor western, a visual treat and smooth, exciting entertainment from Hollywood's finest era.

JoeytheBrit A film that starts out as camp as this – apple-pie and syrup homilies to the great state voiced over saturated colour shots of its natural landmarks – can only get better, and thankfully it does. Despite the improvement California never really reaches the big budget quality heights to which it aspires though. The colour looks good, and some of the cinematography is terrific, and John Farrow's direction is as reliable as it always was, but the plot is a little stale to say the least.Ray Milland struggles to convince in a role more suited to the likes of Robert Taylor, but he gives it his best shot and is merely unmemorable rather than annoying in the role of principled cavalry deserter and wagon leader Jonathan Trumbo, who spends most of the film fighting his desire for saloon girl Lily Bishop (Barbara Stanwyck, opposite whom Milland seems to become invisible every time they share a scene) before inevitably melting into her arms in the final scene. This being a colour film, Lily often wears red, just to let us know the colour of her past and the passions lurking beneath her frosty exterior. If George Coulouris were half as colourful as his character's name – Pharaoh Coffin – an ex-slave trader intent on making California his own little kingdom, instead of an oddly insipid nonentity he might have provided a little more zip to the proceedings, but most of the bad guy antics are left to the ever-reliable Albert Dekker. The film also features a young Anthony Quinn, impossibly handsome in a latino way, who sadly has little to do other than dance, get drunk and die. Barry Fitgerald rounds out the cast as Fabian, a wine grower on Trumbo's wagon trail who allows himself to be talked into running for governor of California so that Johnny can hammer a nail into Pharaoh's, ahem, coffin.This is old-style major studio entertainment so you pretty much know what you're going to get. Good, solid production values, some not insubstantial star power – and a story that is almost as lightweight as tiny Mr. Fitzgerald.