Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1941: THE LADY EVE & REACHING FOR THE SUN + FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO: THE HUDUSCKER PROXY (1994) & FEMME FATALE (2002)

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A tonally disparate pair of great films for Paramount 1941: Preston Sturges’ The Lady Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, one of the greatest movies ever made, according to Elise; and a real rarity, William Wellman’s Reaching for the Sun, starring some important Sturges actors: Joel McCrea, Ellen Drew, and Eddie Bracken. We interrogate the strange central relationship in The Lady Eve, examining its sadistic, maternal, narcissistic, you-name-it qualities, and Sturges’ masterful blending of comedy tropes, melodrama structure, and painful personal psychology. Then we turn to the interesting mixture of “universal” (20th century Western) gender tropes and modern modifications of them in Wellman’s tale of a man torn between urban opportunity and Thoreauvian freedom. Then, in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we briefly discuss the Coen brothers’ The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) and its curious misunderstandings of Capra, and Brian De Palma’s brilliant Femme Fatale and its channeling of Lynch and Verhoeven, but with De Palma’s peculiar mixture of sweetness and satire. 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:      THE LADY EVE [dir. Preston Sturges]

0h 46m 28s:      REACHING FOR THE SUN [dir. WILLIAM A. WELLMAN]

1h 14m 35s:      FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO: THE HUDUSCKER PROXY (1994) by Joel and Ethan Coen & FEMME FATALE (2002) by Brian DePalma

 

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

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

                                   

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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! 

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 – Jean Arthur – Part 6: MORE THAN A SECRETARY (1936) and HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT (1937)

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In this week’s entry in our Jean Arthur Acteurist Oeuvre-view series, we look at Alfred E. Green’s comedy More Than A Secretary (1936) and Frank Borzage’s genre-defying screwball melodrama History Is Made at Night (1937), pairing Arthur with up-and-coming romantic lead Charles Boyer. We compare More Than A Secretary with Green’s better-known film about sexual politics in patriarchal office culture, Baby Face, and the possibly influential blending of genres and the lovers’ achievement of Borzagean transcendence in History Is Made at Night, which gave Arthur her most glamourous role up to that point. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s:      MORE THAN A SECRETARY (1936) [dir. Alfred E. Green]

0h 36m 37s:    HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT (1937) [dir. Frank Borzage]

 

+++

* 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!

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September Special Subject – German Sirk Sampler – Part 2 – THE FINAL CHORD (1936) & CHEATED BY THE WIND (1937) + Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto: MARNIE (1964)

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In Part 2 of our look at The German Sirk, the director discovers “cinematic values” with two unhinged melodramas that place a strong emphasis on music, Schlußakkord (Final Chord/Final Accord), from 1936, and La Habanera, from 1937. We dig into a couple of Sirk’s complicated “villains” in these movies about extra-marital love triangles, and discuss La Habanera‘s Nazi propaganda overtones and the ways in which the film possibly subverts them. Then, in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we give our impressions of Alfred Hitchcock’s deeply personal, disturbing, and bonkers Marnie, an old favourite of Elise’s and new favourite of Dave’s. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s:      THE FINAL CHORD (1936) aka THE FINAL ACCORD

0h 32m 51s:    CHEATED BY THE WIND (1937) aka LA HABANERA

0h 51m 49s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964)

 

+++

* 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!

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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1940: THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES and THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS

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For this Universal 1940 Studios Year by Year episode, we look at a Vincent Price double feature that also features the same director (Joe May), cinematographer (Milton Krasner), and key screenwriter (Lester Cole, who will become one of the Hollywood Ten): The House of the Seven Gables, an adaptation of the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel, and The Invisible Man Returns, the first sequel to James Whale’s adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel. We talk non-naturalistic acting, the genius of Vincent Price, and the progressive moment of 1940, when anti-fascism gives courage to Hollywood’s leftists. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:      THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES [dir. Joe May]

0h 45m 28s:      THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS [dir. Joe May]

 

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal 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!

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Acteurist oeuvre-view – Jean Arthur – Part 5: MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN (1936), THE EX-MRS. BRADFORD (1936) & ADVENTURE IN MANHATTAN (1936) + Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto

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In this week’s Jean Arthur Acteurist Oeuvre-view cast, we revisit Frank Capra’s Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) for thoughts old and (hopefully) new, and then look at two minor screwball comedy variations on genre films from 1936, the RKO murder mystery The Ex-Mrs. Bradford, co-starring William Powell, and a weird little riff on Mr. Deeds combined with a crime thriller, Adventure in Manhattan, co-starring Joel McCrea. Join us as we discuss Gary Cooper’s complex performance and creepy sexlessnes and Arthur’s wholesome lack of naivety and self-lovemaking in Mr. Deeds, a deeply romantically and politically confused movie, and the reasons why Arthur doesn’t (and shouldn’t) give screwball performances in her most famous roles. 

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s:      MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN (1936) [dir. Frank Capra]

0h 31m 59s:    THE EX-MRS. BRADFORD (1936) [dir. Stephen Roberts]

0h 41m 54s:    ADVENTURE IN MANHATTAN (1936) [dir. Edward Ludwig]

0h 56m 03s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – CELINE ET JULIE VONT EN BATEAU (1972)

+++

* 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!

Read Full Post »