Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 7: MAKE HASTE TO LIVE (1954) and THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN (1954)

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Our Dorothy McGuire movies this week occupy two ends of the mid-50s Hollywood spectrum: a low-budget black-and-white noirish crime thriller for Republic, Make Haste to Live (1954), and a vibrantly colorful Cinemascope travelogue romance for Fox, Three Coins in the Fountain (1954). We find plenty to recommend in both, from Make Haste to Live’s stylish cinematography (by John L. Russell of Moonrise and Psycho fame) and palpable nastiness to McGuire’s odd comedic chemistry with Clifton Webb in Three Coins. As McGuire seriously settles into the “mother and spinster roles” part of her career, we consider what kind of scope individual roles of this kind gave her, and so far they’re looking as eccentric as any “love interest” roles she had in the past, which is good news. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      MAKE HASTE TO LIVE (1954) [dir. William A. Seiter]

0h 35m 50s:      THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN (1954) [dir. Jean Negulesco]

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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! 

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Special Subject – Jacqueline Audry Sampler – GIGI (1949), OLIVIA (1951), HUIS CLOS (1954) and LES PETITS MATINS (1962)

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Our Special Subject this month is the films of Jacqueline Audry, a fairly recently rediscovered postwar French director. We watched all of the films we could find with English subtitles: Gigi (1949), Olivia (1951), Huis clos/No Exit (1954), and Les petits matins/Hitch-Hike (1962). From literary adaptations of some strong and scandalous material to an unusually gentle New Wave comedy, these films reveal a director who tackles the erotic frankly but not uncritically. We also have a Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment this week, in which we share our wildly divergent opinions on the Bob Fosse musical Sweet Charity. Can Shirley MacLaine do what Daniel Day-Lewis could not and save this unnecessary musical adaptation of a Fellini movie?

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      Introducing Jacqueline Audry & Colette

0h 15m 49s:      GIGI (1949) [dir. Jacqueline Audry]

0h 31m 28s:      OLIVIA (1951) [dir. Jacqueline Audry]

0h 53m 14s:      HUIS CLOS (1954) [dir. Jacqueline Audry]

1h 03m 43s:      LES PETITS MATINS  (1962) [dir. Jacqueline Audry]     

1h 07m 01s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Sweet Charity (1969) by Bob Fosse

 

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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

Check out this episode!

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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1943: THE HUMAN COMEDY & LASSIE COME HOME

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For our MGM 1943 episode, we look at two films that are highly representative of the Mayer ethos, The Human Comedy (directed by Clarence Brown), a portrait of WWII-era American small-town life infused with the beatific sensibility of William Saroyan (who provided the story), with Mickey Rooney in a coming-of-age story that’s equal parts Andy Hardy and David Lynch; and the children’s classic Lassie Come Home (directed by Fred M. Wilcox), which we compare to Mizoguchi’s Sansho the Bailiff as a sold-into-slavery story but find wanting in its social analysis despite its Communist screenwriter. We try to tease the strangeness out of the sentiment—which doesn’t really take much doing. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      THE HUMAN COMEDY [Dir. Clarence Brown]

0h 43m 59s:      LASSIE COME HOME [Dir. Fred M. Wilcox]

 

Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story Paramount Story 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 – Dorothy McGuire – Part 6: I WANT YOU (1951) and INVITATION (1952)

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Our two Dorothy McGuire movies for this week are wildly different in tone: Samuel Goldwyn’s I Want You (1951, directed by Mark Robson), about a family’s reaction to the Korean War draft, and, for MGM, the Jamesian melodrama Invitation (1952, directed by Gottfried Reinhardt). Dave makes the case for I Want You as a complex leftist look at early Cold War America, and then we unpack the Jamesian tropes of Invitation, with its complicated flashback structure. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we share our first experience of the extraordinarily intense films of Hungarian auteur Márta Mészáros, discussing Nine Months (1976) and The Two of Them (1977).

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      I WANT YOU (1951) [dir. Mark Robson]

0h 37m 18s:      INVITATION (1952) [dir. Gottfried Reinhardt]

1h 07m 01s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Nine Months (1976) and The Two of Them (1977) by Marta Meszaros

 

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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 »