There's Sometimes a Buggy

It's time for an epic retrospective episode, sparked by TIFF's Call Me Jimmy: The Films of James Stewart, which was unfortunately interrupted by COVID-19. Nevertheless, we watched the remaining films at home, plus a few that weren't scheduled. Here we substantially discuss Clarence Brown's OF HUMAN HEARTS (1938), Frank Capra's MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939), and Anthony Mann's THE NAKED SPUR...

Get excited about this one! In our MGM 1932 episode of The Studios Year by Year, the Culver City colossus hits its stride and proves that you don't need auteurs when you have scripts, directors, and stars. It's a Jean Harlow double feature, playing two wildly different characters in RED DUST (dir. Victor Fleming) and RED-HEADED WOMAN (dir. Jack Conway). In addition to Harlow, we discuss '30s scree...

It's a bittersweet episode as we bid farewell to our Jennifer Jones series with first viewings of her final two starring-role films, Henry King's TENDER IS THE NIGHT (1962) and Daniel Petrie's THE IDOL (1966). We find our heroine once again playing characters embroiled in dark Freudian psychodramas, and consider how King's film alters F. Scott Fitzgerald's alternate universe roman à clef, and whet...

This time on The Studios Year by Year it's a rather unfair pairing of Lubitsch's (or Cukor's?) ONE HOUR WITH YOU with Mamoulian's LOVE ME TONIGHT. They have less in common than you'd think for both being operettas starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald made by Paramount in 1932. Looking for something to lift your mood while you're waiting for quarantine to lift? We confirm with this vie...

In our penultimate Jennifer Jones episode, we consider whether Selznick's final production, A FAREWELL TO ARMS (1957), is Hemingway's vision of war or Selznick's, and contemplate Selznick as Auteur. Then we turn to THE BARRETTS OF WIMPOLE STREET (1957), which is not exactly the staid literary costume drama Elise was expecting. The Jones oeuvre continues to intrigue! Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:        ...

For our first COVID-19-era Lightbox retrospective episode, we look at the enigmatic cinema of Angela Schanelec. We focus on her two most recent films, THE DREAMED PATH (2016) and I WAS AT HOME, BUT... (2019). Then, in our final, presciently-named Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment for "the duration", it's the last Bressons of TIFF's anniversary retrospective that we were able to see (LANCELOT...

Universal, 1931: we discuss one of the greatest movies of the 30s, James Whale's WATERLOO BRIDGE, and William Wyler's Oedipal horror movie, A HOUSE DIVIDED. And in our Moviegoing in Toronto section: erotic pedagogy in Jacqueline Audry's OLIVIA (1951), Christian anarchism in Frank Capra's YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU (1938), and more Bresson. Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:          A House Divided (dir: Wil...

In this week's Jennifer Jones episode, we view our heroine in two new lights: as wife (in Nunnally Johnson's 1956 social problem epic, THE MAN IN THE GRAY FLANNEL SUIT) and spinster (in Henry Koster's GOOD MORNING, MISS DOVE 1955). Then, in our Moviegoing Section, we discuss Joseph Mankiewicz's THE GHOST & MRS. MUIR (1947) as the Hollywood Gertrud, along with Bresson and the pleasure of asceticism...

LONELY WIVES (dir. Russell Mack) meet KEPT HUSBANDS (dir. Lloyd Bacon) in our RKO 1931 episode of The Studios Year-by-Year. Edward Everett Horton sex farce or battle-of-the-sexes melodrama-played-for-farce—this one has got it all. And in our Moviegoing in Toronto section, a Mary Pickford and Clara Bow double feature has us thinking about feisty Victorian maidens and heroic modern gals. Time Codes:...

This time on our Jennifer Jones 'cast it's two movies based on novels by Communists, bafflingly made during the early Cold War era, one a failure and one a hit. We start with the failure, the original Dirtbag Left hang-out movie, John Huston's BEAT THE DEVIL (1953). It was based on a novel by Claud Cockburn (one-time Stalin apologist), with script contributions from Cockburn and a hot young noveli...

What better befits a Valentine's episode than a couple of films about star-crossed lovers. First, it's punk (Nicholas Cage, in his first starring role) meets prep in Martha Coolidge's low-key, surprisingly affecting teensploitation cult classic VALLEY GIRL (1983). Then, John Travolta in his sex symbol prime drifts up on the beach of middle-aged one percenter Lily Tomlin in MOMENT BY MOMENT (1978),...

Back to Borzage for Fox 1931 with the inaptly-titled BAD GIRL, plus Raoul Walsh's THE YELLOW TICKET. Deconstructed masculinity in Depression-era New York! Sex worker registries in czarist Russia! Boxing ring cuddles! Nude bathing in women's prisons! Lionel Barrymore chewing the scenery, James Dunn having male hysterics! This episode has got it all. And then Elise tries to suss out connections betw...

A transitional Jennifer Jones episode: from another summary of the Jones persona, King Vidor's RUBY GENTRY (1952), to a new era of filmmaking and a new kind of role in De Sica's TERMINAL STATION (1953). We give our verdict on the director's cut of the latter, the first time either of us has seen it. And in Moviegoing, Elise holds forth on PSYCHO and the Art of Hitchcock, and we briefly discuss Par...

The alpha & omega of Josef von Sternberg's oeuvre, 1925's The SALVATION HUNTERS and 1953's ANATAHAN, prompt us to consider whether the stormy marriage of auteur and system can sometimes be more conducive to artistic accomplishment than creative independence. Then, prompted by recent moviegoing, we announce upcoming episodes/series on Ritwik Ghatak and Margaret Sullavan. Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:    ...

This week, for Warners Bros. 1931: THE MALTESE FALCON (dir. Roy Del Ruth) and THE LAST FLIGHT (dir. William Dieterle). Warners is an early adopter of Dashiell Hammett, but is his least political novel a good fit for the most political studio, or not? And Dieterle, in his first English-language film, turns Warners into Paramount and tackles the Lost Generation, introducing themes that he'll continu...

The masterpieces keep coming in our Jennifer Jones series. This week it's Powell and Pressburger's Gone to Earth (1950), a meta melodrama that clearly gave Kate Bush some ideas, and William Wyler's Carrie (1952), a noirish costume drama about the precariousness of the American middle class. Then we say farewell to TIFF's Scorsese retrospective with our Top 10s and discussion of MEAN STREETS and AF...

In our first MGM 1931 episode, we look at two very different fallen woman movies, POSSESSED (dir. Clarence Brown), starring Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, and SUSAN LENOX (HER FALL AND RISE) (dir. Robert Z. Leonard), with Gable supporting (in the technical sense only) Greta Garbo. POSSESSED, taking cognizance of the Depression, leans as far left as MGM will ever get, while SUSAN LENOX shows us how...

In the first There's Sometimes a Buggy Christmas episode, we discuss two studio-era Hollywood movies that you never knew were Christmas movies: Michael Curtiz's FOUR DAUGHTERS (1938) and Preston Sturges's THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN'S CREEK (1944). Hear us explain how Four Daughters anticipates both Casablanca and Blue Velvet, and learn why Christianity is the ultimate comedy. Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:   ...

In our 2nd episode devoted to a TIFF retrospective, we cover News From Home: The Films of Chantal Akerman and share with you our excitement about a new favourite director. Topics that come up in the course of discussing Akerman's obsessional-yet-variegated filmography include Freud, mothers, the historico-geographic basis of identity, the nature of desire, passivity, projection, politics, Hitchcoc...

On to 1931 and back to Paramount for a Sylvia Sidney double feature: a genre exercise from Mamoulian (CITY STREETS) and a finger exercise from Sternberg (AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY). We debate whether Sternberg's version serves or travesties Dreiser's novel, and whether it matters. Then, the return of Scorsese Corner to discuss TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL, and (Dave's favourite Scorsese movie) NEW YORK, NEW...

Jennifer Jones exhibits a new level of craft in two very different roles in two 1949 movies, WE WERE STRANGERS (dir. John Huston) and MADAME BOVARY (dir. Vincente Minnelli). Elise and Dave ponder how these movies, respectively daring for their revolutionary politics and gender politics, ever got made. Dave identifies the greatest scene in any movie ever. Elise tries to explain Flaubert's relations...

Our first Universal 1930 episode veers from racial insanity, courtesy of John Murray Anderson's two-strip Technicolor musical KING OF JAZZ (spoiler: the King is a White Man), to grisly Christian sentimentality, via William Wyler's HELL'S HEROES (aka Several Corpses and a Baby), which also makes this an accidental Christmas episode. If that's not enough, we also bring Big Discussion of Scorsese and...

We have a conversion experience with DUEL IN THE SUN (King Vidor, 1946) and return to PORTRAIT OF JENNIE (William Dieterle, 1948). Are these the two definitive Jennifer Jones movies? The best movies she made? The best movies that Selznick produced? We consider these questions as we continue to ponder the unfolding of Jones's persona. We also set up our Scorsese Corner and begin our floating discus...

We look at the first three films of Li Yu, FISH AND ELEPHANT (2001), DAM STREET (2005), and LOST IN BEIJING (2007), the latter seen by us at the TIFF Cinematheque retrospective Seeing the Unseen: Re-Encountering Chinese Cinema, which focused on films by Sixth Generation directors that had trouble with government censorship in China. It's not difficult to see how the Verhoeven-meets-Renoir-esque LO...

This week sees Elise fully convert to the studi-auteur theory, thanks to two more-or-less randomly chosen RKO features from 1930 by a couple of Georges, MIDNIGHT MYSTERY (B. Seitz, later of Andy Hardy movie fame) and THE SILVER HORDE (Archainbaud, who went on to direct the other Some Like It Hot... with Bob Hope), which illustrates the expanded romantic plot possibilities of the Pre-Code era. Also...