Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1937: SWING HIGH, SWING LOW & TRUE CONFESSION

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For our Paramount 1937 episode, we look at two movies starring Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray: Mitchell Leisen’s comedy/melodrama Swing High, Swing Low and Wesley Ruggles’ screwball comedy True Confession. Topics include our surprise at Leisen’s go-for-broke portrayal of male abjection and MacMurray’s risk-taking in Swing High, Swing Low; the quiet virtues of Paramount’s leading men; the moment when John Barrymore became Late Al Pacino; and Lombard’s adorable sociopath in True Confession as a precursor to Elizabeth Montgomery in Bewitched. “She’s going to FRY!”

 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:                  SWING HIGH, SWING LOW [dir. Mitchell Leisen]       

0h 40m 00s:                  TRUE CONFESSION [dir. Wesley Ruggles]

1h 20m 26s:                  Listener mail on La Marseillaise with Adam

           

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

                                   

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* 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! 

*And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

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Acteurist oeuvre-view – Margaret Sullavan – Part 2: SO RED THE ROSE (1935) & THE GOOD FAIRY (1935)

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Our second Margaret Sullavan Acteurist Oeuvre-view entry delivers emotional whiplash as we move from King Vidor’s Civil War drama So Red the Rose (1935), in which Sullavan plays a southern belle who’s forced to mature when the world she knows collapses around her ears, to William Wyler’s comedy The Good Fairy (1935), with a screenplay by Preston Sturges, in which she plays a naive orphan who causes complications when she stumbles on an opportunity to do a good deed. We discuss the relationship of So Red the Rose to the Southern Agrarian movement, debate how progressive the film is attempting to be, and make the inevitable comparisons to Gone With the Wind and Wyler’s Jezebel. Then we analyze The Good Fairy as a Preston Sturges comedy, only lacking an American setting to be fully recognized.  

 

0h 1m 00s:                     SO RED THE ROSE (1935) [dir. King Vidor]

0h 36m 32s:                   THE GOOD FAIRY (1935) [dir. William Wyler]

1h 28m 12s:                   Letter from Listener Adam

                            

+++

* 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! 

*And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

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Special Subject – The Radical Renoir – LES BAS-FONDS (1936), LE CRIME DE MONSIEUR LANGE (1936), & LA MARSEILLAISE (1938)

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In this episode we cover three films from the period of Jean Renoir’s flirtation (or fornication?) with Communism: The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936), The Lower Depths (1936), and La Marseillaise (1938). We discuss how Renoir’s depiction of the French Revolution differs from the one familiar to the Anglo-American world, uncover the woman behind the Radical Renoir, and analyze the interaction of class, community, and virtuous violence in the films. And if that sounds heavy, just watch The Crime of Monsieur Lange, we promise you’ll have fun. Dark fun. But fun. 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:                  Brief Preamble on Renoir and French Political History    

0h 16m 50s:                  LA MARSEILLAISE (1938) [dir. Jean Renoir]

0h 51m 40s:                  LES BAS-FONDS aka THE LOWER DEPTHS (1936) [dir. Jean Renoir]

1h 20m 03s:                  LE CRIME DE MONSIEUR LANGE aka THE CRIME OF MONSIEUR LANGE (1936) [dir. Jean Renoir]

                                      

+++

* 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! 

*And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

Check out this episode!

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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1936 – SHOW BOAT & THREE SMART GIRLS

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In this Studios Year by Year episode, we witness the changing of the guard at Universal in 1936, in which James Whale’s Show Boat brings down the Laemmle Era, and Deanne Durbin’s first feature, Three Smart Girls, ushers in the Bankers Era. We find good things to say about both, but we’re not gonna lie, most of the episode is devoted to Edna Ferber/Kern and Hammerstein/Whale’s Show Boat and its combination of quiet radicalism, family melodrama, and musical entertainment. Musical entertainment is just about the only link between the two films. Dave and Elise marvel at 14-year-old Durbin’s terrifying energy and confidence, and Elise is very happy to see 29-year-old Ray Milland, even if he probably shouldn’t be quite so happy to see 18-year-old Barbara Read. 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:                  SHOW BOAT [dir. James Whale]           

0h 55m 15s:                  THREE SMART GIRLS [dir. Henry Koster]     

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal Story by Clive Hirschhorn

                                   

+++

* 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! 

*And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

 

Check out this episode!

Read Full Post »