Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – RKO – 1946: STEP BY STEP & CRACK-UP

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In this RKO 1946 episode we discuss Crack-Up (directed by Irving Reis), an eerie noir with a couple of great Expressionist set pieces. Pat O’Brien oozes vulnerability as a WWII vet and populist art critic who has to find out who’s trying to make him look, or go, insane; Claire Trevor plays the love interest who’s trying to help him (or is she?). Oh yeah, and we also watched Step By Step (directed by Phil Rosen), a goofy spy drama in which Lawrence Tierney gets to play a nice guy for once. Remember this episode when we watch Tierney and Trevor at their nastiest in Born to Kill, coming soon!

 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      STEP BY STEP [dir. Phil Rosen]

0h 17m 09s:      CRACK-UP [dir. Irving Reis]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Vernon Harbin

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler                                

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

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Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 13: THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY (1961) & THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR (1962)

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This week’s Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode is a George Seaton double feature that once again gives us Lilli the sophisticate and Lilli the saint: in The Pleasure of His Company (1961), she plays the ex-wife of Fred Astaire, an absentee father whose plan to recapture his youth by seducing their daughter into becoming his travelling companion she sets out to foil; while in The Counterfeit Traitor, she’s a member of the German anti-Nazi resistance who imparts a conscience to William Holden’s reluctant spy. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto we cover our final Marguerite Duras viewings: her first film, La Musica, and two from near the end of her filmography, Agatha et les lectures illimitées and the formally radical L’homme atlantique. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY (1961) [dir. George Seaton]

0h 24m 25s:      THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR (1962) [dir. George Seaton]

0h 45m 10s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: La Musica (1967), L’homme atlantique (1981) and Agatha et les lectures illimitées  (1981) – all by Marguerite Duras

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – 20th Century-Fox – 1946: THE DARK CORNER & THE RAZOR’S EDGE

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This week’s Fox 1946 Studios Year by Year episode features the strange bedfellows of Henry Hathaway’s The Dark Corner, a curiously feminist film noir in which the tormented protagonist is saved by the persistence of a good woman (played by Lucille Ball), and Edmund Goulding’s The Razor’s Edge, based on a Somerset Maugham novel about spiritual enlightenment and bourgeois ennui, featuring Gene Tierney’s best performance, although Anne Baxter won the Oscar. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, the TIFF Cinematheque Duras retrospective continues with Nathalie Granger, Baxter, Vera Baxter, Le Navire Night, and Les Enfants. We discuss comedy, mysticism, nihilism, recalcitrant children, and happy endings in Duras’s films.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      THE DARK CORNER [dir. Henry Hathaway]

0h 25m 04s:      THE RAZOR’S EDGE [dir. Edmund Goulding]

0h 52m 22s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Nathalie Granger (1972), Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977), Le Navire Night (1979) and Les Enfants (1984) – all by Marguerite Duras

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of 20^th Century-Fox by Aubrey Solomon & Tony Thomas

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler                                

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

 

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

 

 

 

 

 

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Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 12: BUT NOT FOR ME (1959) and CONSPIRACY OF HEARTS (1960)

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Our examination of the film career of Lilli Palmer continues with a couple of excellent films that show us Palmer’s range when playing “loveable”: But Not for Me, in which she gives a comedic performance as the ex-wife of a Broadway producer played by Clark Gable, benevolently interfering in his budding relationship with young actress Carroll Baker; and Conspiracy of Hearts, in which Palmer plays an Italian Mother Superior who persuades her nuns to help Jewish children escape from a concentration camp. Penned by a couple of American blacklistees, Conspiracy of Hearts has a surprisingly complex view of religion, as But Not for Me does of age difference relationships, offering plenty of fodder for good movie talk!

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      BUT NOT FOR ME (1959) [dir. Walter Lang]

0h 24m 25s:      CONSPIRACY OF HEARTS (1960) [dir. Ralph Thomas]

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers – 1946: DEVOTION & NIGHT AND DAY

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For this Warner Bros. 1946 episode we watched two fantastical biopics, Devotion (directed by Curtis Bernhardt), starring Ida Lupino and Olivia de Havilland as Emily and Charlotte Brontë, and Night and Day (directed by Michael Curtiz), starring Cary Grant as Cole Porter and Monty Woolley as himself. We found them to be like night and day in terms of their quality, but you’ll have to listen to find out which of the two we deemed redeemable. And then for something completely different: in a long Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, tragic love, communism, colonialism, demons, and various approaches to deconstructing cinema dominate our discussion of the first half of TIFF Cinematheque’s Marguerite Duras retrospective. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      DEVOTION [dir. Curtis Bernhardt]

0h 33m 42s:      NIGHT AND DAY [dir. Michael Curtiz]

0h 46m 48s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Détruire dit-elle (1969), La femme du Gange (1974), India Song (1975), Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (1976) and Le camion (1977) by Marguerite Duras

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler                               

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

 

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

Special Subject – Produced By Sam Goldwyn, The 1930s – THE DARK ANGEL (1935), DODSWORTH (1936), THESE THREE (1936) and WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939)

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In our April Special Subject, Part 1 of our look at the films of Samuel Goldwyn, we discuss Dark Angel (1935), These Three (1936), Dodsworth (1936), and Wuthering Heights (1939), a selection heavy on Dave favourites Merle Oberon, William Wyler, and Gregg Toland. We ask in what sense these are “quality” films, and in what ways they escape our expectations of that category, calling attention to the theme of psychological violence in These Three and Wuthering Heights and the role played by gender double standards in the tragedies of Dark Angel and Dodsworth. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto we discuss Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World (2001) and draw a surprising conclusion about it. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      Brief Introduction to Samual Goldwyn

0h 12m 18s:      THE DARK ANGEL (1935) [dir. Sidney Franklin]

0h 31m 44s:      THESE THREE (1936) [dir. William Wyler]

0h 54m 40s:      DODSWORTH (1936) [dir. William Wyler]

1h 09m 24s:      WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939) [dir. William Wyler]

1h 26m 12s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Ghost World (2001) by Terry Zwigoff

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 11: LES AMANTS DE MONTPARNASSE (1958) and MADCHEN IN UNIFORM (1958)

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For this week’s Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we watched Jacques Becker’s The Lovers of Montparnasse (1958), in which Palmer, playing Modigliani’s rejected lover Beatrice Hastings, perfects her persona of brittle dissociation; and Mädchen in Uniform, the 1958 remake of the famous Weimar-era film about a teenager at an all-girls’ boarding school who falls in love with her teacher. Our viewings provoke topics from the relationship between art and capitalism to the relationship between gender, sexuality, and militarism. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      LES AMANTS DE MONTPARNASSE (1958) [dir. Jacques Becker]

0h 34m 14s:       MADCHEN IN UNIFORM (1958) [dir. Giza Von Radvanyi]

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1946: TWO SMART PEOPLE and A LETTER FOR EVIE

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This MGM 1946 Studios Year by Year episode is a Jules Dassin double feature that shows the range of the famed blacklistee even during his most constrained studio period: the noirish romantic drama Two Smart People, about two con artists (Lucille Ball and John Hodiak) and a cop who are all out to con each other; and the remarkable A Letter for Evie (starring Marsha Hunt and Hume Cronyn), a very postmodern (but also hilarious) deconstruction of gender conventions that’s also a moving romance. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      1946 at MGM and Hollywod (per John Douglas Eames)

0h 04m 22s:      TWO SMART PEOPLE [dir. Jules Dassin]           

0h 26m 38s:      A LETTER FOR EVIE [dir. Jules Dassin]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

                                   

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

 

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

 

Check out this episode!

Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 10: TEUFEL IN SEIDE (1956) and LA VIE À DEUX (1958)

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For this Lilli Palmer episode of our Acteurist Oeuvre-view series, we watched another West German movie, Devil in Silk (directed by Rolf Hansen), and Life Together (directed by Clément Duhour), a tribute to famed French playwright, screenwriter, and film director Sacha Guitry with an all-star cast. We analyze the surprisingly sophisticated structure of Duhour and Guitry’s horned-up middlebrow French comedy (warning: one of the comedy sequences discussed is disturbingly racist), while Devil in Silk answers a question it never occurred to us to ask: what would Leave Her to Heaven be like if Lilli Palmer played the Gene Tierney part? 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      TEUFEL IN SEIDE (1956) [dir. Rolf Hansen]

0h 44m 04s:       LA VIE À DEUX (1958) [dir. Clément Duhour]

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1946: MISS SUSIE SLAGLE’S and THE BLUE DAHLIA

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In this Paramount 1946 episode we look at two movies featuring Veronica Lake which otherwise could not be more dissimilar: Miss Susie Slagle’s (directed by John Berry), about the trials of pre-WWI Johns Hopkins medical students living in a boarding house presided over by Lillian Gish; and famous Lake/Ladd noir outing, The Blue Dahlia (directed by George Marshall and written by Raymond Chandler). We discuss the potential influence of the leftists involved in making Miss Susie Slagle’s on its portrayal of race and gender and debate the amount of damage done to The Blue Dahlia by the studio-mandated change to the plot. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we take a brief look at three very different movies: Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia (stolen by a German Shepherd), Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s A Letter to Three Wives (stolen by Linda Darnell), and Douglas Sirk’s All I Desire (starring Barbara Stanwyck). 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      MISS SUSIE SLAGLE’S [dir. John Berry]

0h 27m 06s:      THE BLUE DAHLIA [dir. George Marshall]

0h 48m 13s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Nostalghia (1983) by Andrei Tarkovsky; A Letter to Three Wives (1948) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz; and All I Desire (1953) by Douglas Sirk

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

                                   

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

 

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!