Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1944: SONG OF RUSSIA & KISMET

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MGM, 1944 is an odd one. First, MGM’s effort to help the war, Song of Russia (directed by Gregory Ratoff), prompts us to ask the question, “What were all of these Communist writers doing working for Louis B. Mayer?” And then, William Dieterle’s Kismet, starring Ronald Colman as an amoral magician with misguided plans for his daughter’s future, proves to have more to recommend it than just the campy set-piece for which Marlene Dietrich painted her legs gold. Despite the box office failure of Kismet, lavish Technicolor fantasy will have more to do with the future of MGM than Popular Front romance, but in any case, the era of Mickey and Judy and family values is over. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      SONG OF RUSSIA [dir. Gregory Ratoff]

0h 39m 18s:      KISMET [dir. William Dieterle]

 

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

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! 

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Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 12: SUSAN SLADE (1961) & SUMMER MAGIC (1963)

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In our penultimate Dorothy McGuire Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, another pair of films in which only one of McGuire’s “mother roles” affords her a dramatic opportunity. Find out which is which, between Delmer Daves’ Susan Slade (1961) and Disney’s Summer Magic (1963). We also discuss stealth soap opera radicalism, compare Disney and Vincente Minnelli’s approaches to femininity as a construct, and argue for the surprising distinctiveness of early 60s kewpie doll blonde heroines. As a bonus, Dave comes to the end of his patience with Bosley Crowther. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we attend a sold-out screening of Scorsese’s After Hours, which we analyze as the ultimate scapegoat movie. 

P.S. We forgot to read the Leonard Maltin capsule reviews this time! Sorry, Leonard – we’ll never do it again! 

 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:    SUSAN SLADE (1961) [dir. Delmer Daves]

0h 43m 38s:    SUMMER MAGIC (1963) [dir. James Neilson]

1h 03m 02s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985) at The Revue Cinema (part of the acclaimed Neon Dreams series)

1h 13m 47s:    Listener Letter from Simon!

 

+++

* 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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Special Subject – Silent Naruse – FLUNKY! WORK HARD (1931), NO BLOOD RELATION (1932), APART FROM YOU (1933), EVERY-NIGHT DREAMS (1933)

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Our special subject this month is The Silent Naruse: four of the five extant silent films of Mikio Naruse, Flunky, Word Hard!, from 1931, No Blood Relation, from 1932, and Apart from You and Every-Night Dreams, from 1933. We discuss these juvenilia as early examples of Naruse’s materialist melodrama, and how much “transcendence” that perspective permits. Then, switching moods drastically: two tickets for Barbie! In Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we let you know whether or not we regret returning to the AMC Cineplex for the first time in 4 years to see Greta Gerwig’s pop juggernaut. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:    Very brief introduction to Mikio Naruse

0h 04m 20s:    FLUNKY! WORK HARD (1931) [dir Mikio Naruse]

0h 14m 48s:    NO BLOOD RELATION (1932) [dir Mikio Naruse]

0h 29m 15s:    EVERY-NIGHT DREAMS (1933) [dir Mikio Naruse]

0h 44m 02s:    APART FROM YOU (1933) [dir Mikio Naruse]

0h 57m 23s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023)

 

+++

* 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 – Paramount – 1944: LADY IN THE DARK & AND NOW TOMORROW

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This week’s Paramount 1944 films take the studio’s talent of this period in unexpected directions: Mitchell Leisen’s Lady in the Dark makes a Technicolor extravaganza of the fantasy sequences in this psychoanalytical tale of a woman’s (Ginger Rogers’) ambivalence about glamour, based on a hit Broadway musical; and Alan Ladd and Raymond Chandler (as star and screenwriter) bring a hardboiled note to a soapy plot about a socialite (Loretta Young) seeking a cure for her deafness in And Now Tomorrow, a woman’s picture/noir hybrid with more interest in class issues than that genre usually shows. Bouncing off of Martin Scorsese, we discuss the “psychological disturbance” in relationships between men and women in Hollywood musicals and just what Lady in the Dark has to say about the possibility of an equal relationship between a woman and a man. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      LADY IN THE DARK [dir. Mitchell Leisen]

0h 31m 58s:       AND NOW TOMORROW [dir. Irving Pichel]

0h 52m 35s:        Letter from Listener Gregory

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

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 – Dorothy McGuire – Part 11: THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS (1960) & SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON (1960)

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In this Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, Dorothy McGuire’s string of interesting wife roles gets tangled up by two of the most sexist films Elise has ever seen in her life, Delbert Mann’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (based on the play by William Inge) and Disney’s The Swiss Family Robinson. The Dark at the Top of the Stairs nevertheless gives us a lot to discuss in terms of psychiatric concepts and ideas about gender roles in 1950s America, as well as providing McGuire with one of the better acting opportunities of this part of her career. Also, we decide that Swiss Family Robinson should be cancelled. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:    THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS (1960) [dir. Delbert Mann]

0h 38m 29s:    SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON (1960) [dir. Ken Annakin]

0h 51m 15s:    THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS (1960) [dir. Delbert Mann] – final thoughts

+++

* 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 »