Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 6: CLOAK AND DAGGER (1946) and BODY AND SOUL (1947) + Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, Ernst Lubitsch at TIFF Cinémathèque, Part 3

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In this Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we discuss Palmer’s first two Hollywood films, Fritz Lang’s anti-fascist spy drama, Cloak and Dagger (1946), and Robert Rossen’s socially critical boxing noir, Body and Soul (1947). We dig into the social context of these films, asking why these progressive writers and directors wanted to tell these stories at this moment, and how their political sympathies shaped the stories. We also talk about the persona emerging from Lilli Palmer’s wartime British and American films, and her character in Body and Soul as representing the filmmakers’ perspective on John Garfield’s protagonist. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, our attendance of the Lubitsch retrospective at the TIFF Cinematheque continues with Trouble in Paradise and a Christmas Eve viewing of The Shop Around the Corner, which prompt us to a brief consideration of the underlying (and sometimes overt) social criticism of Lubitsch’s Depression-era films. 

 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      CLOAK AND DAGGER (1946) [dir. Fritz Lang]

0h 26m 45s:      BODY AND SOUL (1947) [dir. Robert Rossen]

0h 58m 51s:  Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise (1932) and The Shop Around the Corner (1939)  

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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 – Have Yourself a Monty Woolley Christmas – THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER (1942), LIFE BEGINS AT EIGHT-THIRTY (1942) and THE BISHOP’S WIFE (1947) + Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto

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For our December 2023 Special Subject, we’re having ourselves a Monty Woolley Christmas! We look at three Christmas-adjacent movies from the 1940s featuring the anti-Santa in roles big and small: The Man Who Came to Dinner, in which he stars as  waspish radio personality Sheridan Whiteside, who takes over the home of a bourgeois Middle American couple; Life Begins at Eight-Thirty, in which he plays a great actor who’s been broken by alcoholism; and The Bishop’s Wife, in which he adds some New York Bohemian intellectual colour to the holiday classic. We discuss the cultural and political implications of The Man Who Came to Dinner and the uncanniness of Cary Grant and debate the appeal of alcoholism. Then in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we briefly discuss Ernst Lubitsch’s Cluny Brown (fully discussed in our Jennifer Jones series) and a new release, a Christmas movie even darker than our Monty Woolleys, William Oldroyd’s Eileen, starring Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway (a rare spoiler-free exchange of impressions from us). And as a bonus, we become possessed by the spirit of Monty Woolley and rant about how much we hate contemporary movie trailers. (No analysis, just invective.)

Happy Holidays! 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      Extremely brief Introduction to Monty Woolley

0h 04m 38s:      THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER (1942) [William Keighley]

0h 31m 24s:      LIFE BEGINS AT EIGHT-THIRTY (1942) [Irving Pichel]

0h 42m 47s:      THE BISHOP’S WIFE (1947) [Henry Koster]

0h 54m 37s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Ernst Lubitsch’s Cluny Brown (1946) and William Oldroyd’s Eileen (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

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 – 1945: THE CLOCK & YOLANDA AND THE THIEF + FEAR AND MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO – Ernst Lubitsch retrospective at TIFF Cinémathèque, Part I

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In this week’s MGM 1945 episode, a Vincente Minnelli double feature: The Clock, a wartime romantic drama with two very intense stars, Judy Garland and Robert Walker, that doubles as a love poem to New York City; and a Technicolor musical fantasy about, in Dave’s words (more or less), “A woman who wants to bleep an angel,” starring Lucille Bremer as the woman and Fred Astaire as the angel. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, four Lubitsch movies over two weekends: To Be or Not to Be, The Love Parade, Heaven Can Wait, and Ninotchka. Play “Masterpiece or Meh?” with Elise with these six movies, and hear Dave defend two “mehs” as “masterpieces”! (Or “meh-sterpieces”?) (No, “masterpieces”!)

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      MGM/Hollywood Overview, 1945

0h 04m 27s:      THE CLOCK [dir. Vincente Minnelli]

0h 40m 20s:      YOLANDA & THE THIEF [dir. Vincente Minnelli]

0h 56m 00s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Ernst Lubitsch Retrospective at TIFF Cinémathèque, Part I: To Be Or Not To Be, The Love Parade, Heaven Can Wait, and Ninotchka

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 – Lilli Palmer – Part 5: THE RAKE’S PROGRESS (1945) and BEWARE OF PITY (1946)

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In this Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we take a look at a Lilli Palmer who’s (mostly) new to us, Lilli the victim: the victim of self-destructive womanizer Rex Harrison (Palmer’s real-life husband) in Launder and Gilliat’s enigmatic social satire The Rake’s Progress (1945), and the self-destructive paralysis victim of Beware of Pity (1946), based on the Stefan Zweig novel. Which of these adversaries is harder to contend with? Listen to find out! 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      THE RAKE’S PROGRESS (1945) [dir. Sidney Gilliat]

0h 42m 03s:      BEWARE OF PITY (1946) [dir. Maurice Elvey]

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Bibliography:

Babington, Bruce, Launder and Gilliat, Manchester University Press, 2013.  

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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 »