Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 1: CRIME UNLIMITED (1935), SECRET AGENT (1936), and THE GREAT BARRIER (1937)

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In our first Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we spend some time with Lilli in England and take in her screen debut, in the “Quota Quickie” Crime Unlimited (1935); her small role in Hitchcock’s eccentric Secret Agent (1936), in which she gets to play with an unhinged Peter Lorre; and a thankless role in a lyrical ode to Canadian nation-building a.k.a. labour exploitation, The Great Barrier (1937). Then, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we grapple with Angela Schanelec’s Music, the one 2023 TIFF festival movie we got out to see, and our first time seeing a Schanelec on a really big screen, which was the right way to see this visually stunning film. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:    Preliminary Words on Lilli Palmer   

0h 05m 12s:    CRIME UNLIMITED (1935) [dir. Ralph Ince]

0h 22m 51s:    SECRET AGENT (1936) [dir. Alfred Hitchcock]

0h 34m 47s:    THE GREAT BARRIER (1937) [dirs. Milton Rosmer and Geoffrey Barkas]

0h 47m 51s:    Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto – TIFF’s presentation of Angela Schanelec’s Music (2023)

 

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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

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Special Subject – Stanley Cavell’s Pursuits of Happiness + THE AWFUL TRUTH (1937), HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) & ADAM’S RIB (1949)

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This Special Subject is something extra-special: we discuss philosopher Stanley Cavell’s idiosyncratic classic of film criticism, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage and three classic comedies that are the subjects of essays in that book, Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth, Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday, and George Cukor’s Adam’s RIb. What is Cavell’s “comedy of remarriage,” and is it really a genre? What does “marriage” mean to Cavell, and what does it have to do with America and democracy? Why does divorce make marriage more romantic? Are the conversations we’re having about film in North America getting better or worse? Why should you take an interest in your experience? Join us as we take an interest in our experience of Stanley Cavell and work through these and more questions!

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:     Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage by Stanley Cavell (published in 1981)

0h 40m 31s:    THE AWFUL TRUTH (1937) [dir. Leo McCarey]

1h 06m 58s:    HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) [dir. Howard Hawks]

1h 23m 18s:    ADAM’S RIB (1949) [dir. George Cukor]

 

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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 – Warner Brothers – 1944: PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE & THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS

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This Warner Bros. 1944 episode makes good use of Warner Bros.’ A-list stars, A-list character actors, B-list stars, and B-list character actors. Casablanca and Maltese Falcon alumni converge in both Michael Curtiz’s Passage to Marseille, starring Humphrey Bogart as a morally compromised hero, with Claude Rains and Sydney Greenstreet as the patriotic and pro-fascist alternatives for occupied France; while in Jean Negulesco’s The Mask of Dimitrios, a Citizen Kane-like story of a self-made criminal without a Rosebud, Peter Lorre and Greenstreet form an unlikely friendship that reminds Elise more of Eric Blore and Edward Everett Horton than of Laurel and Hardy. We discuss the ways in which Curtiz finds the noir in his war movie and Negulesco finds the buddy comedy in his noir. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      Warner Brothers in 1944

0h 05m 26s:      PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE [dir. Michael Curtiz]      

0h 30m 10s:      THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS [dir. Jean Negulesco]

 

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn  

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 – Dorothy McGuire – Part 13: THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD (1965) and FLIGHT OF THE DOVES (1971)

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Warning: our final Dorothy McGuire episode contains very little Dorothy McGuire in our discussion of the films, although we also compare our Top 10 performances and give a final analysis of how her career was shaped by its cultural moment. However, we still find lots to talk about in the oddball final feature films in which she appeared, particularly George Stevens’ The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), a Diatessaron or harmonizing of the Christian New Testament Gospels. We discuss what Stevens chooses to emphasize and de-emphasize in the life of Jesus and the effectiveness or otherwise of his choice of actors. Then we turn our attention (briefly) to Flight of the Doves (1971), a British children’s movie showcasing a multicultural Ireland, notable for its ham actor villain, a curious ressentiment figure portrayed by Ron Moody.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:    THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD (1965) [dir. George Stevens]            

0h 33m 52s:    FLIGHT OF THE DOVES (1971) [dir. Ralph Nelson]

0h 43m 53s:    Requiem for Dorothy McGuire and Host Top Tens

 

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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 »