Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – RKO – 1942: THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS & CAT PEOPLE

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Our 1942 RKO episode is a very special one, with films by two of the studio’s outstanding auteurs, writer-producer-director Orson Welles, and B-horror unit producer Val Lewton. First, we look at Orson Welles’ mutilated (some even say “emasculated”!) masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, exploring the movie’s extraordinary characters and performances and giving our opinion of the ending imposed by the studio. Then we turn to Val Lewton’s first production for RKO’s horror unit, Cat People, grappling with its metaphors and digging into its unusual love triangle. And then, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss an adjacent film, Bell, Book and Candle, in which Kim Novak’s slinky witch falls for normo Jimmy Stewart – but with a very different outcome. Join us as we look at some very lonely people who make some very bad decisions! 

 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      THE MAGINFICENT AMBERSONS [dir. Orson Welles]

0h 38m 57s:      CAT PEOPLE [dir. Jacques Tourneur]

1h 05m 28s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Bell, Book and Candle (1958) by Richard Quine

 

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

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

 

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Acteurist oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 4: GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT (1947) and MOTHER DIDN’T TELL ME (1950)

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In this Dorothy McGuire Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, a couple of disparate films: Elia Kazan’s anti-semitism exposé drama, Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), and a marital comedy about the hardships of being a doctor’s wife, Mother Didn’t Tell Me (1950). We discuss the qualities that McGuire brings to her most problematic character yet and that help make the character a possible audience identification figure for the audience. And then we discuss the “secret feminism” of Mother Didn’t Tell Me‘s portrayal of the life of a middle-class housewife who finds herself “abandoned” by her husband and unable to share his professional life. Elise expresses admiration of McGuire’s ability to whisper her way through a fight scene. From open didacticism to secret feminism: this episode has it all! 

 

Time Codes:

0h 0m 45s:        GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT (1947 [dir. Elia Kazan]

0h 31m 42s:      MOTHER DIDN’T TELL ME (1950) [dir. Claude Binyon]

 

+++

* 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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March Special Subject – March Minnelli Madness – THE LONG, LONG TRAILER (1954); THE COBWEB (1955); SOME CAME RUNNING (1958); and HOME FROM THE HILL (1960)

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It’s March Minnelli Madness as we watch three melodramas directed by Vincente Minelli, plus one nightmarish comedy: The Long, Long Trailer (1954), starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz; The Cobweb (1955), starring Richard Widmark and Lauren Bacall (among other big names); Some Came Running (1958), based on the novel by James Jones and starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Shirley MacLaine; and Home from the Hill (1960), starring Robert Mitchum as an ironic patriarch and a curiously radiant George Peppard as his illegitimate son. We talk about Minnelli as a scrutinizer of masculinity and sexual mores, about certain auteurist concerns that we discover on the fly, and about Minnelli’s version of 1950s consumer culture satire. Then, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss the Minnelli melodrama-adjacent From Here to Eternity (1953), based on James Jones’s first and less eccentric novel, with Frank Sinatra in a very different role. 

[We regret to report that the beginning of our conversation re: Home From the Hill somehow got permanently deleted by the cat, so you will note that it picks up in medias res – right after we had exulted in the casting coup of securing Robert Mitchum’s services as an ultra-ironized Big Daddy (“let’s just … let that pass…”) and marvelled at George Peppard’s uncommon facility for conveying unadorned goodness (“I got a wet pup here!”) Sorry about that, folks. I guess that just gives us another reason to revisit the film!] 

 

Time Codes:

0h 0m 45s:        THE LONG, LONG TRAILER (1954) [dir. Vincente Minnelli]

0h 26m 52s:      THE COBWEB (1955) [dir. Vincente Minnelli]

0h 41m 29s:      SOME CAME RUNNING (1958) [dir. Vincente Minnelli]

1h 17m 08s:      HOME FROM THE HILL (1960) [dir. Vincente Minnelli] (truncated by technical glitch)

1h 27m 47s:      Fear & Moviegoing In Toronto – FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953) by Fred Zinnemann

 

+++

* 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 – 20th Century Fox – 1942: FOOTLIGHT SERNADE and SPRINGTIME IN THE ROCKIES + Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto

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Our Fox 1942 episode explores two different modes of Betty Grable Fox musical (both choreographed by Astaire collaborator Hermes Pan) that draw on the Hollywood musical modes established in the 1930s:in black and white, the Warneresque backstager Footlight Serenade, shot by Lee Garmes; and the Technicolor farce Springtime in the Rockies, with comic support by Edward Everett Horton and Carmen Miranda, whose eccentric comedic styles confront one another and produce what might be chemistry.

Elise comes around a little on Betty Grable, whose persona we discuss, along with the covert feminism of Footlight Serenade‘s plot. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we Siskel and Ebert Claudia von Alemann’s feminist filmic essay Blind Spot (1981), but agree that the sandwich-eating and pickle-refusing scenes are great. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      FOOTLIGHT SERENADE [dir. Gregory Ratoff]

0h 48m 11s:      SPRINGTIME IN THE ROCKIES [dir. Irving Cummings]

1h 15m 19s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Blind Spot (1981) by Claudia von Alemann

 

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of Twentieth Century-Fox by Aubrey Solomon and Tony Thomas

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!

Read Full Post »

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 3: CLAUDIA AND DAVID (1946) and TILL THE END OF TIME (1946) + Fear & Moviegoing In Toronto

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In this week’s Acteurist Oeuvre-view, we look at two very different Dorothy McGuire movies from 1946 that share a striking adultness: Claudia and David (directed by Walter Lang), a marital comedy that’s surprisingly frank about infidelity, and Till the End of Time (directed by Edward Dmytryk), a “post-war readjustment” movie that’s surprisingly frank about sexuality in general, as well as American alienation and ennui. We make our first real stab at describing the essential qualities McGuire brings to daffy ingenue and jaded older woman roles alike. And speaking of alienation and ennui, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto we discuss another experimental narrative film by Hou Hsiao-hsien, Millennium Mambo (2001). 

 

Time Codes:

0h 0m 45s:        CLAUDIA AND DAVID (1946) [dir. Walter Lang]

0h 33m 33s:      TILL THE END OF TIME (1946) [dir. Edward Dmytryk]

1h 19m 00s:      Fear & Moviegoing In Toronto – MILLENNIUM MAMBO (2001) by Hou Hsiao-hsien

 

+++

* 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 »