Screen Test of Time

The basis for the much more widely seen remake starring Cary Grant, Love Affair starring Irene Dunne and Charles Boyer was a difficult one for our hosts to grade. Moments of brilliance abound, but they are so disconnected from an unbelievable overall story, that it’s hard to know what is important is in this melodramatic romance.

On this week’s episode, David and Suzan discuss the structure of Gothic storytelling, the perils of adapting a too long book into a too short movie, the merits of War and Peace and 10 Things I Hate About You to 1939’s Wuthering Heights.

After nearly 2 years of counting down the weeks to film’s most legendary year, 1939 is off with a bang… and some surprising controversy! For the first time in a long time, our hosts find they deeply disagree. Will David and Suzan come to a compromise, or will Stagecoach be the rare SToT movie with a split score?

At last, 1938 is over! Our hosts have finally completed the last year of nominees before Hollywood’s “Best Year” with this week’s movie, The Citadel , and the good news is David doesn’t regret using the Bengal Lancer card earlier. But which flick deserved the Oscar for 1938?

This week on Screen Test of Time, the 1938 film adaptation of Pygmalion starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller takes Suzan utterly by surprise because… she kind of likes most of it? Luckily, David assuages her conflicted feelings over enjoying a movie with such a misogynist foundational narrative, by pointing out the movie’s one huge, self-annihilating flaw.

Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney don’t have the greatest track record here on Screen Test of Time, and they co-star in Boys Town , a biopic about a priest who started a literal incorporated town for homeless boys cum bad-kid-goes-good fairytale.

Ahhh… at last, our hosts can breathe a sigh of relief before hitting play on this week’s movie, You Can’t Take It with You . With the Screen Test of Time proven Frank Capra at the helm, and Jimmy Stewart, Lionel Barrymore, and Jean Arthur in front of the camera, what could possibly go wrong?

This movie should be called Four Daughters (and an Embarrassment of Baxters) . Four pretty, almost indistinguishable adult women with some level of musical talent, their music professor dad (played by Claude Raines), and their spitfire spinster aunt basically make life miserable for a bunch of men in this disjointed soap opera.

Tyrone Power and Alice Faye are back in Alexander’s Ragtime Band , and better than ever… which isn’t saying much. The musical numbers may swing, but the plot will rock you to sleep.

When asked what 2 movies he would take with him on the ark, Orson Welles replied that La Grande Illusion would be one of them (and couldn’t name the other). Our hosts are happy to report that they don’t question his decision. A war movie with no battles, a film that is not about racism and anti-semitism but addresses them better than any film they’ve watched so far, and a clear inspiration for cou...

Errol Flynn and Olivia Havilland return to the podcast in the ur-Robin Hood movie from 1938. The second Oscar nominated movie fully in Technicolor, it’s David’s grandfather’s favorite movie ever. Suzan, however, makes a case for the Disney animated version and, yes, even the much maligned Kevin Costner adaptation as improvements over the classic. Still, it’s a fun romp through Sherwood Forest, cho...

An extraordinary film-- not in the sense that it's excellent-- but that it constantly teeters on the precipice of disaster, held only together by the strength of Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, and Clark Gable. On paper, Test Pilot is a frankly ludicrous story about an ace test pilot, the woman he meets after he crash lands on a farm and then marries the next day, and his best friend, who end up in an u...

1938 is off to a rough start-- one movie in, and our hosts have already broken the glass on the Bengal Lancer Clause*… sort of. Suzan does sum up the entire movie in one sentence, but mostly our hosts talk about how great 2015 was for movies that weren’t even nominated for Best Picture. Spoiler warnings for The Wire , The Man from U.N.C.L.E., and Magic Mike XXL. * For those who haven’t heard Ep. 4...

TRIGGER WARNING: This episode contains a lot of references to sexual assault that takes place in the movie. Another in the “musical drama disaster film” genre of San Francisco, this week’s movie is a fictional telling of the family of Mrs. O’Leary, whose cow, for at least a century, was held responsible for starting the Chicago Fire. Starring Tyrone Power, Alice Brady, and Alice Faye, In Old Chica...

Another in the weird 1930s trend of "hilarious" comedies about divorce, The Awful Truth , starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, is the film equivalent of a bottle of champagne that's been left open for three days.

Just in time for Pride month, the undeniably queer Stage Door is not not an odd couple romantic comedy. A terrific movie where the Powerful Lesbian Energy fan service is only barely subtextual— Katherine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers play two up and coming Broadway actresses thrown together by circumstance who pretty obviously fall in love with each other. While it takes a hard left turn at the very e...

Deanna Durbin is back in this bizarre Depression Era concert movie cum Cinderella story, and our hosts are genuinely concerned for the wellbeing of our young heroine. One hundred men and not one of them can get the girl to school or tell her to stay out of bars?

Dead End welcomes the legendary Humphrey Bogart to the podcast for the first, but not the last time! An excellent ensemble cast, a class warfare theme, and a handful of impressive bits of cinematography result in David having to reel in a very jetlagged Suzan from way over rating this movie.

Our hosts aren’t sure that anything could make them forgive Paul Muni for The Good Earth, but the lackluster biopic and incomprehensible 1937 Best Picture Winner, The Life of Emile Zola isn’t it.

David and Suzan take you on a giddy, punch drunk voyage of fish bonding, bad Portuguese (question mark?) accents, and entirely unbelievable rich dads in this week’s episode reviewing Captains Courageous . Freddie Bartholomew, Spencer Tracy, and a young Mickey Rooney return to the podcast, but this time they’re not panned! Lionel Barrymore and an unreasonably handsome John Carradine co-star.

The original A Star is Born (and only other Best Picture nominee besides the Lady Gaga one), is a good movie with the bones of a great movie, and the first nominee entirely in color! Screen Test of Time favorites Frederic March, Janet Gaynor, and Alfred Anjou turn in excellent performances… just not necessarily in the same film. All the same, it’s still, unquestionably, a movie… which isn’t always...

The first Frank Capra movie we haven't been immediately sure should have won the year, Lost Horizon is never the less still leading the pack for 1937. (Of course, that’s not saying much, since the only other nominee our hosts have seen so far is the dreadful Good Earth. ) Ronald Coleman gives a great performance in the original Shangri-La story, though it’s not as tight or profound as Mr. Deeds Go...

1937 is not off to a good start with The Good Earth . A cast led by Paul Muni and Luise Rainer, white actors in yellow face hair and makeup, portraying rural Chinese peasants at the turn of the 20th century, this may be the most infuriating movie Suzan and David have seen so far.

The 1936 nominees wrap up this week with Three Smart Girls , a sort of musical that’s basically a proto- Parent Trap… but are there three smart girls in it? There are three daughters of indeterminate age, true, but are they girls? And if so, why are we supposed to be rooting for two of them to date clearly adult men? Our hosts also wrap up their assessment of the 1936 Academy’s choice— spoiler, Da...

Start with It Happened One Night as the foundation, add William Powell and Myrna Loy back on their witty repartee from The Thin Man , and top with Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow, and you seemingly have a recipe for success, right? Libeled Lady has all the ingredients to make a tasty romantic comedy, but the different elements never quite gel, with a bizarre twist ending that makes for a deeply unsa...