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If you want to learn about American insurance scams then this movie is a primer with excellent actors of yesteryear who excelled in 'doing' comedies ! I am referring to Jack Lemon as the patient, young Walter Matthau as his friendly neighborhood lawyer without much scruples and other actors who act as detectives ( hired by insurance company lawyers, ) planting bugs ('outdated' technology by today's standards) and monitoring the 'patient' with hidden camera from across the street !!
The story is that Jack Lemon has an accident while photographing a soccer game and is bandaged and placed in a hospital room and continues to be a patient at the advice of his lawyer ( even after he has apparently recovered ) so the lawyer can sue someone for a very large sum of money. Thankfully, Jack (who plays an honest man) towards the end gets frustrated with all the chicanery. He deliberately gives the insurance company detectives the opportunity to film him dancing around and hanging from a rod like a chimpanzee (inside the hospital room) in plain sight of their camera !! The movie is hilarious !!
[Unfortunately, if we look at the other side, some insurance company 'people' are not above doing some chicanery as well, when they create doubt about honest people who are really sick and need help, by using various excuses and technology tools so they can 'keep' the money to 'help' their own friends and family instead!! ]
This movie is a perennial favorite at Christmas time and I have watched it in B&W on TV reruns earlier. However, I did watch it again last night in color !! [I wanted to make a few sarcastic comments about the reality of modern life in US and this fable like story but will refrain from doing so!!]
The story is about the very honest and upfront young Mr. Bailey whose ever positive attitude overflows into the audience !! He decides to run a bank but is labeled an emotional fool by the conniving and villainous Mr. Potter who runs the town with his money and his goons. Mr. Bailey also falls in love with a pretty lady and is soon married after romancing her for a short while (about 15 minutes of screen time!). When a scare is created that the people who have deposited their money at the bank will loose all of it they rush to withdraw their funds as Bailey and his new wife are preparing to go for a honeymoon!! Generously, the couple decide to forgo their honeymoon and distribute their honeymoon funds to the bank's customers to save the bank's reputation!!
However, when $8000 of bank's money is stolen, Mr. Bailey cannot fathom how to replace the funds because he is poor. He bids goodbye to his family and attempts suicide on a cold winter snowy night. Just in time, an angel in the shape of an obese old man appears and saves his life. However, when the very depressed Mr. Bailey wishes that he had never been born, the angel turns the history of the town to the events that would have followed had Mr. Bailey not been born. Nobody recognizes Mr. Bailey as the angel and he walk thru the town - not even his wife who panics when he tries to hold her . Next he visits the cemetery where he finds the tombstone of his brother who had drowned at the age of seven - in real life Mr. Bailey had saved his young brother from drowning while sledding in winter and his brother was a rich business man. He is thrown out of the bar which he used to visit often when the bartender does not recognize him because Mr. Bailey was not born in the angel version. Also the town is now called Pottersville, instead of Bedford Place, after the shrewd Mr. Potter, I believe.
Scared and frustrated Mr. Bailey now realizes that his life did have importance for his family, friends and the history of his town - that he was not worthless!! He had provided the town an alternate bank to that run by greedy Potter and made the town more civil as well !! In tears, he prays that God restore his life back to the way it was before his wish came true and miraculously his prayer is answered. He cannot contain his joy at being alive and being recognized by his friends and neighbors once again. He runs to meet his family in the dark snowy streets glowing with Christmas lights and first on his way is Mr. Potter, whom he wishes "happy holidays" from outside his window. When he reaches his home his wife and kids are preparing for a Christmas party. The townspeople surprise him by donating their savings one by one and the dining table is soon buried in a pile of dollars!! That is how he will replace the missing $8000 !!
Mr. Bailey and the audience have learnt an important lesson that life is worth living joyfully because of the recognition and respect we get from our family and friends, in spite of some Potters that inhabit our neighborhood !!
The story is that of a young actress who dares to speak up against her parents and so is declared mentally sick by her mother, who is only too intent on her continuing with her profession even when the daughter does not want to and is therefore being punished. The fastidious 'dictatorial' behavior of the mother and the fake seriousness of the psychiatrists who are overly eager to announce their findings to the hungry media people make us sympathize withe the young actress !!
The torture that follows is educational and shocking for novices like me because not only is she locked up in a prison like room, with her hands tied together, inside a mental hospital but also given lobotomy surgery. Then she is shown in a roomful of naked bony ladies where she is raped by a person in uniform who is filled with glee at the opportunity to have sex with a Hollywood actress for only twenty bucks!! [This scene reminds one of medieval ages or even of Nazi Germany !!]
In between there are scenes of her affair with couple of men and I am confused as to how serious they are in their love for the actress and why she keeps showing interest in the reporter when she is already attached to a man!! Perhaps she is not as innocent as her lilting slow soft voice suggests and her eyes do suggest that she has mental/emotional issue.!!
'The Buddha' is a documentary narrated by the actor Richard Gere and Blair Brown. The story starts with the birth of prince Siddhartha to a king in Lumbini near Nepal. The story ends with his death by poisoning after he attained Nirvana in mature years.
Siddhartha was a prince who lived in a cocoon of luxury. His parents had kept him away from sickness and death and other miseries that are part of daily life until he got married and had a kid. On a tour of his kingdom he saw an old person, a person very sick with disease and a corpse. That was his first exposure to the vulnerability of life which ends with death. This upset the prince to such an extent that he left his family and became a renunciate looking for an answer to the mystery of life. The documentary explains, using simple animation and paintings how he put himself thru various stages of renunciation and suffering before he attained "Buddhahood" or Nirvana. After that he came to be known as 'The Buddha" (realized one). Buddha taught to his disciples the many principles of life which are the foundation of Buddhism. These teachings continue to enlighten his followers in many parts of the world centuries after his death.
Jack Lemon, the cop, gets fired - that is how the story begins. He is as innocent and as honest as me, you see. He does not know why the girls are standing on the sides of streets and so he walks into a neighborhood restaurant where he finally discovers that these girls are in the business of prostitution and the clients in that restaurant are their pimps. Our hero then decides to save the heroine (Shirley Mclaine looking quite pretty and quite slim). He will be her lover and take care of her. But how ? He dawns the makeup and accent of a British nobleman and visits her often to make her rich and keep her away from other clients. This scheme is concocted by the restaurant owner with whom he has developed a friendship and from whom he initially borrows $500 as seed money.
But what happens when he cannot afford to pay her anymore as the British nobleman without working long hours in the neighborhood butcher factory ? He decides to kill the identity of that British nobleman but can he ? This is a great comedy by the famous Billy Wilder (with a story similar to a Chaplin movie but a little more sophisticated ) with a ton of laughs. Jack L. and Shirley M. make a great team !!
