Halloween 2022 Special Subject – The Haunted Mizoguchi – UGETSU (1953) and SANSHO THE BAILIFF (1954)

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Our Halloween 2022 subject is “The Haunted Mizoguchi,” for which we looked at two films made by Kenji Mizoguchi toward the end of his life: the supernatural fantasy Ugetsu (1953) and a film we agree is a candidate for best movie ever made, Sansho the Bailiff (1954). We use Mizoguchi’s explicit treatment of ghostly themes in Ugetsu as a springboard for discussing the haunting qualities of Sansho the Bailiff and the relationship between nature, the transcendent, and the miraculous in the film. We also consider the question of whether the film argues for political action or resignation as the best way of dealing with the systemic injustice from which we can’t seem to escape and the threat of hopelessness. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s:        UGETSU (1953) [dir. Kenji Mizoguchi]

0h 34m 32s:      SANSHO THE BAILIFF (1954) [dir. Kenji Mizoguchi]

1h 20m 29s:      Listener Mail with Daves and Elise – on Capra, Comics & Noir City   

 

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* 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! 

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Acteurist oeuvre-view – Jean Arthur – Part 8: ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (1939) and MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939) + Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto – L’amour par terre (1984)

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In this week’s Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we arrive at arguably Jean Arthur’s biggest year of stardom, 1939, with her appearance opposite Cary Grant in Only Angels Have Wings, Howard Hawks’ ode to male professionalism, and her iconic performance in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, opposite Jimmy Stewart. We do our best to get at the essences of Hawks and Capra and consider whether Arthur can embody both the Hawksian and the Capra woman. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we discuss Jacques Rivette’s Love on the Ground (1984) as a kind of inversion of his surrealist classic Celine and Julie Go Boating. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s:        ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (1939) [dir. Howard Hawks]

0h 42m 44s:      MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939) [dir. Frank Capra]

1h 26m 57s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – L’amour par terre  AKA Love on the Ground (1984)  by Jacques Rivette

 

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* 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 – MGM – 1941: A WOMAN’S FACE and THE TRIAL OF MARY DUGAN + FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO: BUCK AND THE PREACHER (1972)

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For this MGM 1941 episode, we again pair a classic with a rarity: Cukor’s A Woman’s Face, starring Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, and Conrad Veidt, and The Trial of Mary Dugan, directed by Norman Z. McLeod and starring Laraine Day, Robert Young, and Tom Conway (aka “The Nice George Sanders”). We discuss A Woman’s Face as a proto-Warner Bros. Crawford noir, the persona of Robert Young, the uses of no-subtext acting, and the starkly different construction of these two women-on-trial movies. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we take a brief look at Buck and the Preacher, directed by and starring Sidney Poitier (and co-starring future acteurist spotlight subject Ruby Dee, although she doesn’t get a lot of screen time in this one). 

 

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:      A WOMAN’S FACE [dir. George Cukor]

0h 50m 59s:      THE TRIAL OF MARY DUGAN [dir. Norman Z. McLeod]

1h 21m 53s:      FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO:  Sidney Poitier’s Buck and the Preacher  (1972)

 

Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM 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! 

Check out this episode!

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Acteurist oeuvre-view – Jean Arthur – Part 7: EASY LIVING (1937) and YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938) + Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto – DRACULA (1931) & BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992)

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In our Jean Arthur Acteurist Oeuvre-view this week, we look at two of Arthur’s best-known comedies, Easy Living (1937), directed by Mitchell Leisen, with a screenplay by Preston Sturges, and You Can’t Take It With You (1938), directed by Frank Capra. Dave explains why Jean Arthur’s performance in Easy Living is his all-time favourite comedy performance by an actress. (Hint: it involves a pig called “Wafford.”) We ponder Arthur’s transformation into a glamorous romantic lead, even as she retains her (slightly off-kilter) ordinary person qualities, and the contrasting comic visions of Sturges and Capra. Then, in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we discuss our second double feature of Tod Browning’s Dracula and Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the subject of our 2019 Halloween episode. This time around we find a lot to say about Coppola’s Dracula as a Dionysian Christ figure who can lead Winona Ryder out of the death-in-life of civilization. 

Time Codes:

0h 1m 00s:        EASY LIVING (1937) [dir. Mitchell Leisen]

0h 49m 27s:      Jean Arthur v. Harry Cohn – 1937/1938 (from John Oller’s Jean Arthur: The Actress Nobody Knew)

0h 54m 19s:      YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938) [dir. Frank Capra]  

1h 22m 35s:      Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto – DRACULA (1931) by Tod Browning & BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA (1992) by Francis Ford Coppola

 

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* 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 »