Reviews (20)

Sinatra - The Actor
Firstly I'll presume your a Sinatra fan or you would'nt be looking at this Dvd.

Secondly I will further presume you hav'nt heard much about this film, maybe never even heard of it before, am I right.

.....Well relax and get this film, its one of those rare films in which Sinatra showed all the disbelievers he could act. A gritty drama, probably better because it was shot in black and white and O.K, its not as good a quality print as some of todays films would be but this genuinely adds to the feel of the movie.

As anyone who has seen the laserdisc will testify this is a very good watch and a must for all real Frank Sinatra fans.

"Suddenly" is a great Sinatra Film!
This 1954 film is one of my favorite films. It is a Film Noir and it stars Frank Sinatra! What a great combination. Sinatra plays the bad guy and he does agood job at it, too! His acting is authentic and very smooth. "Suddenly" is about an assassination attempt on the President. A picture is worth a thousand words, so watch the picture, you won't regret it. At least I didn't!

THIS IS THE WAY "SUDDENLY" WAS MEANT TO BE SEEN!!!
Unknown, strange companies crawling out of the woodwork have been, up till now, foisting ill-wind versions of Frand Sinatra in his early surprise hit, SUDDENLY!, a film packed with excitement but the sole purveyors of this excellently high-quality master created from the original 35mm master and, with the quality so high, all one has to do is pay attention and by the second reel--you're hooked. It's short, taught, and guaranteed to impress the riff-raff. Even the old Groaner would love this one. And this is the ORIGINAL version which means great visual field and, most imnportantly---NO "LETTERBOXED" VERSIONS!! This film was shot in a flat, square format, and there it shall stay. Buy the Hal Roach Studios version and avoid the phoney letterbox but receive the best possible show for your trouble. And, that's a promise!! Remember, it was Hal Roach Studios that Colorized "Suddenly" which could only be done from really fine underlying black and white materials and that's what's being offerted here, so enjoy. And, unlike the first try at the color version, "Old Brown Eyes is NOT back"--we made them change them to blue!! Highly recommended

An early psychodrama, but not very convincing
*Suddenly* is an intriguing little film about a plot to assassinate the POTUS (President of the United States). The premise is groundbreaking, considering the period it was made in, the "I Like Ike" years.

Frank Sinatra is pretty good as the wack job hired by some unknown plotters for the job of whacking the Prez. There's some decent acting from a few of the supporting players, especially the one who plays the old retired Secret Service agent. Sterling Hayden, whom I really like in *Asphalt Jungle* and *The Godfather*, doesn't shine for me in this one. I'll bet he was bored.

The trouble with *Suddenly* is that it's a low-budget thriller that set its sights too high. You simply can't believe that a big-buck-backed assassination plot could really transpire like this. It's just too hokey. At the same time I give the film credit for making the old college try. 'Cause that's what *Suddenly* feels like--a film-college noir, strong on bold concepts but weak in the pocketbook and experience. Having a gang of desperados headed by a maniac impersonate a team of FBI agents so as to knock off the president was a brilliant idea for a film of '54, but this idea, great as it was, is stillborn in *Suddenly.* If it had been about a train heist or a small town bank robbery, it could have worked a lot better.

I'm a personal friend of Alan Wexler, son of the late Paul Wexler who played the deputy sherrif, Slim. He gets shot (but not killed) when trying to arrest one of the gang. Al has a lot of cool stories about growing up in Hollywood during the '50's and 60's. He was just a little runt when *Suddenly* was made so he doesn't remember much about that one. Still, it's a part of his life, and as his good buddy, it's a part of mine too. Get *Suddenly* and get nostalgic.

The Gambler
Just two years before he made Suddenly, Frank Sinatra thought he was finished. His vocal cords hemorrhaged, and 'The Voice' almost fell silent. Movie producers lost interest in making musical comedies starring the Kid from Hoboken, and no one took him seriously as a dramatic actor, a field where he had no track record. And he could feel the love of his life, Ava Gardner, slipping out of his grasp. (Although Sinatra and Gardner had just married in 1951, following his divorce from first wife, Nancy, the affair had been going on for years, and the wedding was anti-climactic.)

Well, Sinatra got his vocal chords fixed. And after a manic lobbying campaign, he got the role of a lifetime, as the heroic but ill-fated, "Pvt. Angelo Maggio," in 1953's From Here to Eternity. With Sinatra's help, the movie won eight Oscars, including his own, richly deserved one for best supporting actor.

For the next 12 or so years (through Von Ryan's Express), until one of the longest midlife crises in world history took over, Frank Sinatra was among the world's greatest movie actors. Unfortunately, the third part of his life could not be saved. By 1955, he and Ava Gardner had split up, though as she wrote in her autobiography, Ava, they would have occasional 'reunions' in hotels around the world, over the next 30-odd years, until her death in 1990.

Going for the role of Maggio was a huge gamble for a man who had no history of straight dramatic acting. But then, Sinatra was nothing, if not a gambler. Existentialism was then a popular philosophy, but unlike pretentious types in French cafes, who knew only the words, he knew the music. From his thirties through his mid-forties, Sinatra lived a life of continual high drama, subsisting off tempestuous passions and guile, with little room left for prudence. (But unlike professional existentialists, Sinatra was no nihilist.)

And so in 1954, he starred in the kind of insane movie that could have ended his fledgling, dramatic movie career. Suddenly (what a lousy title!) is the name of a California hamlet, where the President of the United States will happen to pass through, for about the time it takes to smoke a cigarette. Only the Secret Service knows this ' and a small group of assassins posing as Secret Service agents, led by 'Johnny Baron' (Sinatra).

Johnny is a homicidal sociopath who has no qualms about doing what was then 'the unthinkable.' 'Sure, I like choppin'' (shooting). He has a $500,000 contract to kill the President, and so kill him, he will.

(Sinatra would go on, in 1962, to co-star in yet another movie about a plot to assassinate the president, The Manchurian Candidate. Directed by the late John Frankenheimer from Richard Condon's classic political thriller, in Candidate, Sinatra gave a now hilarious, now moving performance as insomniac Capt. Bennett Marco. But the following year, his friend, President John F. Kennedy, would be assassinated, and so for the next 30 years, Sinatra would get Suddenly and The Manchurian Candidate pulled out of distribution.)

The era of the anti-hero had just begun, with Marlon Brando's 1953 performance as motorcycle gang leader Johnny Strabler, in The Wild One. But not even the young Brando had guts like Sinatra. No one had shot a president since William 'Big Bill' McKinley in '01, and no one made movies about assassins.

But Sinatra did. Working almost entirely on one set, on a shoestring budget, and squaring off against dramatic (and physical) heavyweight Sterling Hayden (as 'Sheriff Tod Shaw'), he gave a towering performance.

Johnny and his accomplices take the Benson family hostage; their home has a clear shot at the spot where the President will get off his train. 'Pop Benson' (James Gleason) is a retired Secret Service agent, whose widowed, pacifist daughter-in-law, 'Ellen' (Nancy Gates) has been rebuffing Tod Shaw's attempts at courtship. Ellen Benson holds all who wield weapons equally in contempt.

Johnny likes to talk, and he has a captive audience. Literally. The set-piece around which the picture revolves, is the spellbinding soliloquy Johnny delivers, on his failed life as a civilian prior to World War II, as a lost soul, wandering about an anonymous, non-descript, unnamed metropolis.

'Before, I drifted and drifted and ran, always lost in a great, big crowd. I hated that crowd, used to dream about the crowd, once in a while. I used to see all those faces, scratchin' and shovin' and bitin.' And then the mist would clear, and somehow all the faces would be me. All me, and nothin.'

This is not the spirit of America on the eve of World War II, but of a different time and place altogether. It is the spirit of Hitler's Vienna on the eve of World War I, the spirit of fascism.

Now, I realize that logically, this doesn't jibe. After all, Johnny doesn't work in a collective, the way the fascists and Nazis, or the anti-Semitic socialists of pre-WWI Vienna did; he's more of a freelancer. And spoken abstractly, overlaying a 1910s, European mentality doesn't work for a story set in America in the mid-1950s. And yet, it does work, gloriously.

Here's the background: During and after the war, with the help of Soviet communist propaganda ' to paper over the Soviets' 1939 alliance with Nazi Germany -- many leftwing artists, academics, and journalists mindlessly pushed the notion that "fascism" was merely political gangsterism. This attitude was perpetuated most dramatically by communist playwright Bertolt Brecht's entertaining play, written in 1941 in Finnish exile, The Resistable Rise of Arturo Ui.

But Suddenly doesn't owe its power to the propaganda of Bert Brecht, or of leftwing academics or journalists. Give credit, instead, to screenwriter Richard Sale, director Lewis Allen, and to ' The Gambler.

A Different Drummer, February 6, 2004. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

two good sinatra films, good price, poor quality dvd.
suddenly is a pretty good movie and woth a look to see Sinatra playing a sleazy villian. The man with the golden arm features one of sinatra's best performances (playing a junkie), and features a good performance by kim novak. The bad news is that the picture and sound quality are pretty poor. If you want to see these movies, I guess it's worth a purchase. Hopefully better editions of these movies will be released in the future. ... Read more