Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 11: LES AMANTS DE MONTPARNASSE (1958) and MADCHEN IN UNIFORM (1958)

[iframe style=”border:none” src=”//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/30592088/height/100/width//thumbnail/no/render-playlist/no/theme/standard/tdest_id/2333198″ height=”100″ width=”” scrolling=”no” allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen]

For this week’s Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we watched Jacques Becker’s The Lovers of Montparnasse (1958), in which Palmer, playing Modigliani’s rejected lover Beatrice Hastings, perfects her persona of brittle dissociation; and Mädchen in Uniform, the 1958 remake of the famous Weimar-era film about a teenager at an all-girls’ boarding school who falls in love with her teacher. Our viewings provoke topics from the relationship between art and capitalism to the relationship between gender, sexuality, and militarism. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      LES AMANTS DE MONTPARNASSE (1958) [dir. Jacques Becker]

0h 34m 14s:       MADCHEN IN UNIFORM (1958) [dir. Giza Von Radvanyi]

+++

* 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 »

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1946: TWO SMART PEOPLE and A LETTER FOR EVIE

[iframe style=”border:none” src=”//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/30492638/height/100/width//thumbnail/no/render-playlist/no/theme/standard/tdest_id/2333198″ height=”100″ width=”” scrolling=”no” allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen]

This MGM 1946 Studios Year by Year episode is a Jules Dassin double feature that shows the range of the famed blacklistee even during his most constrained studio period: the noirish romantic drama Two Smart People, about two con artists (Lucille Ball and John Hodiak) and a cop who are all out to con each other; and the remarkable A Letter for Evie (starring Marsha Hunt and Hume Cronyn), a very postmodern (but also hilarious) deconstruction of gender conventions that’s also a moving romance. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      1946 at MGM and Hollywod (per John Douglas Eames)

0h 04m 22s:      TWO SMART PEOPLE [dir. Jules Dassin]           

0h 26m 38s:      A LETTER FOR EVIE [dir. Jules Dassin]

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! 

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 – Lilli Palmer – Part 10: TEUFEL IN SEIDE (1956) and LA VIE À DEUX (1958)

[iframe style=”border:none” src=”//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/30383898/height/100/width//thumbnail/no/render-playlist/no/theme/standard/tdest_id/2333198″ height=”100″ width=”” scrolling=”no” allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen]

For this Lilli Palmer episode of our Acteurist Oeuvre-view series, we watched another West German movie, Devil in Silk (directed by Rolf Hansen), and Life Together (directed by Clément Duhour), a tribute to famed French playwright, screenwriter, and film director Sacha Guitry with an all-star cast. We analyze the surprisingly sophisticated structure of Duhour and Guitry’s horned-up middlebrow French comedy (warning: one of the comedy sequences discussed is disturbingly racist), while Devil in Silk answers a question it never occurred to us to ask: what would Leave Her to Heaven be like if Lilli Palmer played the Gene Tierney part? 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      TEUFEL IN SEIDE (1956) [dir. Rolf Hansen]

0h 44m 04s:       LA VIE À DEUX (1958) [dir. Clément Duhour]

+++

* 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 »

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1946: MISS SUSIE SLAGLE’S and THE BLUE DAHLIA

[iframe style=”border:none” src=”//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/30285743/height/100/width//thumbnail/no/render-playlist/no/theme/standard/tdest_id/2333198″ height=”100″ width=”” scrolling=”no” allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen]

In this Paramount 1946 episode we look at two movies featuring Veronica Lake which otherwise could not be more dissimilar: Miss Susie Slagle’s (directed by John Berry), about the trials of pre-WWI Johns Hopkins medical students living in a boarding house presided over by Lillian Gish; and famous Lake/Ladd noir outing, The Blue Dahlia (directed by George Marshall and written by Raymond Chandler). We discuss the potential influence of the leftists involved in making Miss Susie Slagle’s on its portrayal of race and gender and debate the amount of damage done to The Blue Dahlia by the studio-mandated change to the plot. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we take a brief look at three very different movies: Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia (stolen by a German Shepherd), Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s A Letter to Three Wives (stolen by Linda Darnell), and Douglas Sirk’s All I Desire (starring Barbara Stanwyck). 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s:      MISS SUSIE SLAGLE’S [dir. John Berry]

0h 27m 06s:      THE BLUE DAHLIA [dir. George Marshall]

0h 48m 13s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Nostalghia (1983) by Andrei Tarkovsky; A Letter to Three Wives (1948) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz; and All I Desire (1953) by Douglas Sirk

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!

Read Full Post »