The 1940s List: Discussion and Suggestions (Decade Project Vol. 4)

[domino harvey]

As far as I know, no one's made Letterboxd lists for any of our recent List Projects. If you're interested, go for it!

In case no one has done this yet, I went ahead and threw this together, though I still have more details to add and some things to figure out (not sure how to represent ties, etc). I’ve done a few other lists, too, and hope to eventually have all of them made.

I welcome any suggestions on what I can include/change to make this more useful for y’all!

Thanks for this but theflirtydozen already did the last couple decades including this one and posted here, but maybe you two could work out who could do some of the non-decade lists if you’re interested in doing more of these, as they are very helpful

[sir_luke]

As far as I know, no one's made Letterboxd lists for any of our recent List Projects. If you're interested, go for it!

In case no one has done this yet, I went ahead and threw this together, though I still have more details to add and some things to figure out (not sure how to represent ties, etc). I’ve done a few other lists, too, and hope to eventually have all of them made.

I welcome any suggestions on what I can include/change to make this more useful for y’all!

Thanks for this but theflirtydozen already did the last couple decades including this one and posted here, but maybe you two could work out who could do some of the non-decade lists if you’re interested in doing more of these, as they are very helpful

Whoops, don’t know how I missed that. Thanks, domino, and great work theflirtydozen! I love doing these, so I’m happy to help out however I can.

[nitin]

Didn’t make it in time for the list but finally got around to rewatching Whirlpool. It ultimately still wouldn’t have made my list but is definitely a very good film.

Firstly, I find it a little odd that Otto Preminger seems to be a bit of a forgotten director these days. His career is undoubtedly inconsistent and filled with frequent highs and lows, but any director of films such as Anatomy of a Murder, Laura, Advise and Consent, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Angel Face, Daisy Kenyon and Whirlpool, deserves more recognition.

Anyway, Whirlpool is a gloriously silly and hokey story played straight and made with an effortlessly high degree of skill while also imbuing its characterisations with a reasonably acute psychological awareness. The plot is basically a riff on The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari (minus the twist) and The Testament Of Dr Mabuse but Preminger does not go for german expressionist flourishes and instead opts for a similar style to his own Laura.

Gene Tierney is once again hypnotising in her beauty but also does a quite a credible job of portraying a woman that is mentally affected by being boxed in by a patriarchal society that has no interest in her needs or wants. Richard Conte is miscast as an upper society psychiatrist that is married to Tierney’s character (Conte basically comes across as he does in many other films of his where he plays working class tough guys) but his character has an unusually nuanced arc which he is able to still get across. Jose Ferrer gets the showiest role as the antagonist of the films and runs with it, pronouncing every consonant and vowel with mischievous glee and going along for the ride with the more ridiculous turns for his character’s role in the story.

This is included in the BFI’s Otto Preminger Collection. The BFI blu is sourced from an older Fox master that has a surprising amount of damage present and also has noticeable warping and frame instability issues. Otherwise the source is pretty sharp and detailed and with a good greyscale. The encoding is subpar but adequate. If you can afford it, I would recommend TT’s release of the film which is from the same Fox master but is much better encoded and also seems to have reduced the warping and instability (it is still there but not as noticeable as on the BFI’s disc).

[therewillbeblus]

Conte's casting is the piece of this film that's been most interesting to reflect upon over time. He initially appears to be miscast by playing the same old character, but I think Preminger is using his aloofness as a strength, to subtly pinpoint him as the perhaps most responsible participant to this patriarchal boxing you describe. The material is dense enough for Conte to present as a protagonist, in his wife's camp, and we even follow him as a surrogate; but his blindness to his own culpability allows us to remain unaware too if we don't take a step outside to the objective portrait Preminger is framing for us with a twisted smile. Conte exudes the exact kind of charm and innocence that casts a shadow over his harm through non-action (as an action) and the layers of systemic stress don't skip over him but in a sense start and end with him as the focal point of systemic oppression within the microsystem that is Tierney's domestic life. I used to think his casting was the one issue amongst the strength of the other performances, but now I think it might be the best choice because he is the perfect match for his character, and the fact that he's noticeably weak next to them provides that curious eye in his direction that can unload all of this (potential) insight.

[nitin]

I must admit I thought a lot about Caught while viewing this and kept thinking what someone like Robert Ryan could have done with the role.

I do think the character (and the arc) is interesting enough that ultimately it still works with Conte in the role but I am not sure I thought he was the protagonist at any stage, the guy’s response to being told about the murder and his wife’s possible role and her alleged infidelity is “It was a very nice marriage”!!

[therewillbeblus]

Yeah I’d take Ryan over Conte any day but that would’ve likely made the ‘husband as unconscious role of prison warden’ more aggressive and less believably subliminal. Preminger certainly lets us in on all three main characters as surrogates, but Conte is presented as the seemingly “objective” role of detective at a certain point, jokingly appointed by Preminger especially since on the one hand he fits the role as the one most oblivious to the going-ons, but also ridiculous since it’s actually he who needs to consider his own role in this entire plot- and he’s looking externally when he should be looking at the internal system of his marriage, most importantly himself! It’s an intelligent complicated and dark doubling gag, and is pulled off with intentional ambiguity because of how lowkey Conte plays things and how even if we catch those troubling remarks he suavely slips under the radar more than a Ryan or any louder, better, and discernible actor that demands more attention be paid to them through ambient presence.

[domino harvey]

Preminger has only recently been the beneficiary of critical reappraisal. For several decades after his heyday he was a go-to punching bag for critics, and you can still see the residue of this in some older critics’ more recent takes (see any of the commentaries by older critics on the old Fox and WB DVDs for his films to see how old habits die hard). I still remember pulling resources in the library in college and stumbling upon the casual Preminger hate in unrelated film reviews in the 70s and 80s, it was and is very bizarre— perhaps the notorious tyrannical approach of Preminger didn’t gel with either the New Hollywood lovers or those embracing the backlash?

[nitin]

He wouldn’t be the only tyrannical director from the studio Hollywood period though would he?

And his contribution to the noir cannon is immense but you are right as he doesn’t really get a lot of credit in that space either.

[therewillbeblus]

Lady on a Train (I’m posting this here instead of the holiday thread because it feels more appropriate to me to categorize it as a 40s genre hybrid than a Christmas movie)

This year I discovered the *other* Deanna Durbin Christmas movie, Lady on a Train (1945). It’s a bit of mess, but as much fun as you’d expect from a screwball comedy whodunnit musical.

I thought this was excellent, and Deanna Durbin didn’t ruin anything for me because her obtuse nature was a perfect fit for a heroine who isn’t taken seriously by anyone in the film, not even the viewer. Part of the fun here is that instead of feeling allied with the protagonist I felt divorced from all parties watching her with just as curious a sideways perspective as anyone else. Without that tactic I doubt I would’ve liked this nearly as much, but by treating Durbin as another side character and removing myself to the position of the self-assured voyeur, the separation freed me from any responsibility to empathize with the players, and with the only objective to be entertained this film never failed to deliver. Through all its self-aware genre playing there was an even further dilution of the filmgoer experience that fit right at home with the distance a musical might.

Speaking of genre, the screwball comedy elements embedded in the noirish mystery worked oddly enough without a consistent sparring partner, because each person or situation Durbin encountered showed her naïveté, ill-equipped persona, and absence of skills. It felt like she was trapped in the wrong movie, which was actually perfect for how things would likely play out if a Joe or Jane Smith decided to meddle where they didn’t belong (also, I could totally believe that she had nothing better to do, nor personal goals to attend to, that gave credence to playing detective- emphasis on “playing”). The self-reflexivity was a lot more intelligent than I expected, up to and including Durbin’s casting. Even just watching her staring off into space next to Bellamy as she infiltrates the will reading is hysterical, and something that a more talented or personable actress wouldn’t be able to pull off. I don’t think her random breakout into song with Silent Night on the phone or her song in the ballroom were intended to be funny, but I laughed. I realize I’m selling this pretty hard, and it isn’t the great movie I’m painting it as (it’s a total mess, as reaky suggests) but it’s the exact kind of mess I adore, precisely because of the ways those flaws can be interpreted to create new ideas and thus new admiration for these recontenxtualizations, regardless of whether the exact intentions of the filmmakers are in step with these impressions all the way down the line.

[therewillbeblus]

I thought both Gran Casino and El Gran Calavera were strong films from Bunuel's transition into more coherent narrative features, especially the latter which I found absolutely hysterical. The father figure was just incredible and the gags that result from the crumbling of their system functioning are inspired, with one of the great suicidal gags of the era (what is it with this period succeeding in making such a dire concept funny? My favorite is hands-down Walter Connolly's line in Twentieth Century which may be the best in the whole film for me). Bunuel's socioeconomic vulnerabilities and ideological classist expectations are touched upon both seriously and in jest, while the film follows a pretty standard execution, though even the ending - as expected as it is - comes abruptly with a surge of humor due to the long-gestated drawing out of tension for maybe 30 seconds too long forcing a jarring timing of the objection. Recommended.

[senseabove]

The Razor's Edge (Goulding, 1946) At one point, Gene Tierney lays out the entire plot of this movie in a single glance, and if we ranked pieced out moments rather than whole movies, at first blush, I could imagine a list where it's the pinnacle of the 1940s. Unfortunately, sadly, after a brilliant first act with some jaw-dropping blocking and camera work, we're saddled with an atrocious sojourn to India that produces a blandly enlightened main character—though Tyrone Power does an admirable job making the best of it. Luckily, there are still more brilliant moments scattered throughout to make it entirely worthwhile. The others that jump immediately to mind are a minute-long dolly shot, when Isabel and her mother arrive in Paris, that moves in and out of crowds, traffic, and cars; and the scene when Anne Baxter returns to the story—Baxter in general is excellent, with another greatly moving moment late in her arc that plays all of the phases of her character we've seen against each other in an instant. The thing is far too flawed as a whole to be considered a masterpiece, but about a third of this is some of the best studio movie-making of the era.

[therewillbeblus]

Portrait of Jennie

The initial meeting between Cotton and Jones is one of the eeriest scenes I've witnessed in some time- it's not overtly horror but there's an unsettling disarray and labile moodiness as Jones' disorientation persists, mutually exclusive from Cotton's own confusion. We are watching two characters occupy the same physical space, but not in sync within the same fantasy logic; they are psychologically ungrounded in totally different directions- hers foreign to us and his more subjectively identified with the spectator's vantage point. While they eventually magnetize together during brief pockets of intimacy, they rarely coexist on harmonic wavelengths for any comfortable length of time. The fantasy element is constantly destabilized into a sense of dread, or at least it was for me. There's little I find more frightening than the threat of pervasive 'disorientation,' and this film solidifies why- for even if we can find solace in our subjective reality, the presence of another- or even the idea of another- disrupts any false security that comes from that introverted safe haven.

Dieterle refuses to sell this as anything but disturbing, and the existential acuity of Cotton's inability to acclimate to the rushed stages of his relationship with Jones - in part due to her agile movement through human development, but also because of how their shared experiences of bliss are persistently unbinding from cathartic affinity- is horribly alienating for several reasons: the narrative a) exacerbates the fear of a sudden rush of abnormal perception, disoriented to time, place, and person, b) establishes a deafening metaphor for our powerlessness to hold onto moments, c) exploits a raw truth that often times the moments we sugar-coat in memory are actually less serene or digestibly euphoric at the time, d) temporally-manipulates the progression of one person's life cycle next to another's, demonstrating just how helpless we are to fulfill our desires within unions, when we are almost never growing parallel to the person we connected to at a certain junction- instead professing that this 'meeting' is like a fleeting speck of accord on an otherwise divergent set of isolated journeys.

Do people find this film romantic? I have a hard time viewing it as anything other than an anti-romance; or more aptly, a philosophical horror movie about our defenselessness against the neutral tides preventing romance, a fantasy film that desperately wants to let God or some spiritual energy in, when those cold, Godless forces are keeping that enigmatic passion out. Even at the finale, the sage end-of-life wisdom Jones offers Cotton is not reciprocated, for she has matured past his stage of psychological evolution into unclouded acceptance. Rather than locating and meditating on a passive synthesis of peace between lovers, Dieterle boldly deprives Cotton of even that small token, keeping him framed unbalanced and fatalistically too slow to catch up until she's gone. Jones' insights aren't revelations, she just talks right past him, and it's over so quickly we feel sick to our stomachs- incredibly appropriate considering the psyche of Cotton in that instant. What could be worse than your greatest love speaking to you in knowing calmness as if she feels connected right with you about her stated philosophy, while you cannot access that repose. Nothing could be a more debilitating reminder that you are on a different frequency than the person you feel closest to- I feel so incredibly small, alone, and impotent right now just imagining it.

I can't figure out if the film's actual ending is sincere or not. Barrymoore proclaims the ethereal advice towards gratitude that we expect hindsight to offer, "At least you saw her again," while Cotton- again on a different plane as his scene partner- only finds comfort that she believes him. Then comes the thesis as the young girls overstate the ethos looking at his painting: that the power of subjective reality is all that matters. The problem is, as we've clearly seen, it doesn't. Whatever comfort Cotton finally achieved in self-actualization after-the-fact, we are blind to- and with only an inanimate picture, immortalized in time, to inform us of this alteration in his perspective; it's a non-answer. This object signifies no evidenced meaning, but implicitly declares two poles (1. the painting is an empowered symbol of affirming his affection for Jennie given his subjective tranquility with life as it is; 2. the painting is a painful symbol of the inescapable tragedy of attempting to suspend love in a fixed state where it can be truly appreciated and considered 'in its present', born from the trauma of never realising this desperate need) with a spectrum of possibilities in between, any of which could be where Cotton currently is, as far as surrendering to his 'reality' with any semblance of consolation.

So yeah, I loved this gothic fantasy existential antiromance horror movie, but I wonder if it's for any of the reasons others do- perhaps the opposite! But why would I be preoccupied with what others think... am I Cotton in bed at the end only finding relief in social validation of my perceptions? Shouldn't I be satisfied with my subjective reality of what this film is doing? Is this a low-stakes example of this process being Easier Said Than Done? If I can have a mini-existential crisis about not 'getting' a film, how can we believe that Cotton resigned his trauma-stained notion of loss and sublimated his agony into the life of an emancipated artist, at least full-tilt as these young students assume? Is their naivete the punchline- that it's not so easy, dare I say impossible, to embrace the simplified worldview of "I should be happy because I choose to believe what was once important to me, within a vacuum away from external reminders of this unsupported falsehood"? Is this self-ostracizing stance actually a tragedy in disguise as self-actualization?

[senseabove]

I think it's for pretty similar reasons. While I, probably predictably, love the movie's emotional surfeit and aesthetic extremity despite/because its seemingly contradictory intents, I think you've gotten close to why I love that in that second to last paragraph: it simultaneously emphasizes the timeliness and the timelessness of art (and, well, people, too), that it can achieve something magnificent and do absolutely nothing—at the same time, at different times, for different people at the same time, for the same person at different times—and it does so by leaning heavily into the irreality of cinematic language. It does not succeed by building a world that contemporary viewers would treat as within the shifting, contemporary bounds of verisimilitude, but by actively thrashing at those limits: with the barrage of the quotes and prologue at the start, the use of scrims on the lens to imitate oil on canvas at several times, and most notably, in the climax, when

SpoilerShow

Dieterle and August use silent film tropes—color tinting and special effects whose aim is effect, no attempt at mimesis—

to throw Cotton fully beyond consensus reality into the particularities of his emotions. Happy to hear you liked it, twbb.

Worth noting that, for its original screenings in LA and NYC, the screen opened up beyond the standard AR for the stormy climax. The Nitrate Film Festival had planned to show it last year with the AR change, and will do so when they screen it next year in the delayed program. They held a webinar on the film's technical peculiarities last year after the festival was delayed.

[Boosmahn]

I rewatched Bambi for the first time in... 13 years? My memories of it turned out to be quite different.

There's no question the animation and visuals are spectacular and are still better than a sizable chunk of those in modern features. However, a solid story just isn't there. The first two-thirds are composed of what are basically vignettes -- Bambi's birth, the April Shower musical number, the first snow -- but even the ending forest fire sequence does not push the film forward. As much as I understand this is on my expectations (and the film seems to be more interested in providing a "snapshot" of the forest), I'm still frustrated by it.

Also, everything post-tragedy feels removed from what came before. The transition from Bambi's mother dying to the new spring is plain jarring; this could be saying that death is a natural, unavoidable part of life ("Bambi, your mother can't be with you anymore."), although this explanation does not fully excuse the shift in tone. I'll go through the bonus material included on the Blu-ray I have, which will hopefully let me appreciate how incredible the visuals are, but I don't think I'll change my mind on the plot anytime soon.

[domino harvey]

So it turns out John Carradine was a really cool dude:



How can you not love Carradine saying a phrase like "It is a base canard" in real life? How perfect! Also, he once pulled the emergency brake on a freighter train he was riding because his Homburg hat flew off his head, and they angrily kicked him off in the middle of nowhere because doing so cost the line $500 in lost productivity. I want a John Carradine biopic, and I want it now

From John Carradine: the Films, Joe Dante on Carradine's time spent shooting the Howling:

One night he came to work with a big bag of Chips Ahoy cookies. I said, "What are those, John?" and he said, "These are my Chips Ahoy." I said, "John, all you have to do is ask. If you want Chips Ahoy, we'll have them put out on the craft service table." He said, "Really?"

Allow me to repeat myself: I WANT A JOHN CARRADINE BIOPIC, AND I WANT IT NOW

[Red Screamer]

I was really taken with William Cameron Menzies’ work in Address Unknown (1944). It’s a 75 minute anti-Nazi propaganda film with a letter writing structure that both lays out the plot at breakneck speed and adds to the story’s nightmarish feeling of things spinning out of control. But the real interest comes in Menzies’ direction and Rudolph Maté’s cinematography. They cut loose with stylized sets, as you’d hope, as well as with the expressionistic lighting and exaggerated camera angles of film noir. But what’s more impressive is that even the film’s smallest moments show a precise and intelligent visual imagination. Scenes are full of dynamic compositions, sometimes every shot, even, is carefully designed to build on the one before it, i.e. the focal point of one shot fills the same part of the frame that was negative space in the shot before. Based on the evidence of this film, Menzies is a storyboard director if there ever was one. The first half-dozen shots of this movie might be the fastest my interest in a director has gone from 0 to 60. This is how you take a low budget and a standard-issue script and make a great movie. I’m glad I stumbled upon David Bordwell’s lengthy appreciation of Menzies’ style while writing this post. I've got more exploring to do.

[Never Cursed]

Hellzapoppin’: I was going to start this post with a specific utterance, logged on to write it, and found that another user had already said the exact same words in the exact same context:

How have I never heard of this? I believe this may be the wackiest thing I’ve ever seen.

Delivered to the viewer at a speed and with a eyebrow-wiggling rakishness that makes the manic parts of Detention feel like Lav Diaz in comparison, this freakish and unbelievably funny film is a master-class in adaptation, channeling the source material's freewheeling parody of Broadway revues into a no-holds-barred satire of Hollywood melodrama and the construction thereof. The "narrative" as usually presented in a studio Hollywood exists at a prosaic level here (rich man/poor man/rich lady musical love triangle), but the real story, and the one that justifies the film's approach to its internal reality, is that of the interloping vaudevillian leads, literally sent into a film as themselves by studio executives to ensure that the plot of a sanitized prestige romantic drama occurs. The problem is that our heroes have no real desire to comport with this goal (and every intention of imparting the spirit of their own stage work onto the film), and so they do all they can to sabotage the film, both from within and outside of it (think a much goofier and more ill-intentioned infiltration of the house at 7 bis, rue du Nadir-aux-Pommes). The bulk of the film's content is a truly relentless avalanche of sight, physicality, and meta gags, paced as though you were in the writer's room and aimed with a Tati-ish eye at the social or artistic function of the characters and the disruptions to those functions they face. Such an abundance of broad yet wickedly pointed material is perfectly suited for the film's main players, like Mischa Auer (introduced, to give an example of the film's humor, when he first appears as a character in the film-within-a-film, whereupon one of the vaudevillians responds, "no wait, that's just Mischa Auer!"), and the result is a joyous cascading existential crisis of "real" and archetypal characters dealing with the increasing incoherence of the world. Auer's character's arc is an excellent example of this: his character, clearly set up to be the mysterious male half of the second-fiddle romance, is redirected by the vaudevillians away from his intended romantic target and towards Martha Raye's loudmouth dancer. This leads to one gonzo musical number where Raye's attempts to communicate her "incorrect" love for Auer end up injuring him over and over, as well as another, even more audacious, scene where Raye takes upon more masculine roles in the courtship and attempts a violent unwanted coupling with Auer, sarcastically filmed through softly-lit bedroom curtains in the same manner as a stereotypical romantic seduction. The film is packed to the gills with jokes that are as funny or insane as these, and even if you find less of them funny than I did, there's so much left still that a feeling of stunned entertainment is all but guaranteed. A strange masterpiece, and a lock for any future lists I might submit where this film is eligible.

[Never Cursed]

Crazy House: Never has a film needed a direct narrative sequel less than Hellzapoppin’, but stars Olson and Johnson provide one through the only escalation of terms possible following that film: Universal hates Hellzapoppin’, breaks their contract, and gives them the boot, forcing the two to make the follow-up independently. Of course, I mean all this in the world of the film, as Crazy House has the secondary function of serving as a parade of Universal character actors and contract players, complete with extended non-sequitur songs (as in, not musical numbers) that reek of the glad hand. The film's main issue is that Olson and Johnson have come up with at most 55 minutes of material to fill an 80 minute running time, and so every single musical act contracted to Universal in 1943 is given a few minutes to perform something, which makes the film overall too leisurely to work on the same level as its predecessor (though the interruptions only get outright bad during an early interminable nightclub scene). To the film's credit, though, Olson and Johnson remain great presences, even if they veer more in the direction of stereotypical radio wordplay instead of the high octane inventiveness that characterized their previous outing, and the movie retains the cheeky awareness of Hollywood filmmaking and spins it into new jokes, some of which are surprisingly daring for the period (including gags about the arbitrary studio bestowal of stage names, the often shady sources of film financing, and even nods to the casting couch!). To describe what works best about the film is to ruin its most interesting jokes, which I will do in a spoiler-box:

SpoilerShow

The opening credits gently mock most of the cameo-ing Universal contract players by claiming to "introduce" them, which leads to the ludicrous spectacle of some ignorant film websites claiming that this was, among others, Andy Devine's first feature (when he had at this point been in upwards of 100 films).

Olson and Johnson are introduced as essentially Poochie antecedents, leading a parade to the Universal lot that is turned away by gunfire from the assorted cowboys and Keystone Cops on the lot. There are some brutal jokes made at the expense of the two during this segment, most of which do not make sense if the viewer has not seen Hellzapoppin’.

Probably the most (accidentally) formally ambitious scene occurs midway through, where a series of complications results in the substitution of a highly competent performer for an incompetent one that Olson and Johnson are hoping to drop from their film without violating her contract. Unaware of the switch, Olson and Johnson tell the director to take the film out of their camera, whereupon the replacement actress surprises cast and crew with her virtuoso performance. The interesting element of this scene is that it, like all the film-in-a-film scenes, is shot without cheats from the perspective of the in-scene camera, which is in this scene not loaded and not recording anything, and so the audience gets a record of something impressive that is performatively denied to the characters of a film about this process of capture.

And the final gag is great too: after the day and film are saved, the participants in the central romance rush onscreen and embrace, whereupon... Johnson draws a tommy gun from nowhere and mows down both of the lovers. Olsen asks how he could do such a thing, to which Johnson replies, "This is gonna be one movie without a happy ending!" Roll credits.

Recommended if you liked the previous film and can stomach some lamer jokes and uninteresting non-sequiturs. If you're the type of person whose day could be made by watching Andy Devine in full cowboy attire putter around on a comically small scooter, see this post-haste.

[nitin]

Because I want to see Scorsese's New New York York in the next few weeks, I threw in my Warner Archive DVD of his primary influence on that film. And boy had I seen this earlier, Raoul Walsh's The Man I Love would have absolutely made the top half of my list! Doesn't seem to be a forum favourite but I thought it was a precursor to some of the more psychological cinema of Nicholas Ray that was to come in the next decade and with an all timer of a performance from Ida Lupino.

[Red Screamer]

nitin, I’ve been working through Walsh’s filmography recently and I just caught up with The Man I Love last night. I loved it too. I haven’t seen many other dramas that have this level of appreciation for and sensitivity to music and the act of listening to music. The opening number alone is an all-timer, with Walsh giving us a lovely crescendo from the relaxed collaboration of the band to Lupino’s thrilling introduction, as she drags a cigarette and sips a burboun in counterpoint to her singing, using every small interval for something new, her restless energy pointing outward in every direction but ultimately reined in, intensely focused by her song. (Richard Brody’s short video on the film starts with a clip of this moment but unfortunately without sound and cut off early). Like you said, this role is a great showcase for Lupino. She gets to be the resilient, problem-solving, and obsessive Walsh hero, always in motion, while mixing in traces of Stanwyck’s nonconformists (ie All I Desire) and even Bogart in Casablanca in addition to playing off of an unusual, detached screen partner with poignant results. The script isn’t top-notch (an undefined creep for a villain has limited returns, among other things), but Walsh wrings everything he can out of it. His characteristic use of a deep cast of minor players loosens up the film's structure with interludes and thematic variations while keeping to a careful pace. It also creates an expanded sense of milieu which shifts the film’s emphasis, spinning its melancholy romance into a portrait of an entire post-war urban community of wounded people and their emotional limitations. The main impression that the film left me with was one of an incredible tenderness.

[DarkImbecile]

Washington Post summary of the Third Reich’s Titanic propaganda project which ended up nearly as expensive in relative terms as Cameron’s version, got its director killed, was banned in Germany by Goebbels but featured in the USSR as anti-capitalist entertainment, and used a stand-in ship that was ultimately involved in a tragedy far worse than the one featured in the film.

[therewillbeblus]

This is totally random but I just watched The Feminine Touch and, as much as I enjoyed it, I spent just as much of the runtime marveling at how well Brad Pitt and Leo DiCaprio could ape Don Ameche and Van Heflin in a remake

I’m just glad someone finally watched this after me beating the drum for it all these years! Who could ever fill the shoes of Rosalind Russell though?

I just watched and loved this too. As pronounced as Van Heflin's excellent performance is, Rosalind Russell is the MVP. She may not play the louder part, but so much of the antics live or die based on her pivotal role, where she's called upon to exercise a spectrum of comic wit, responding to both key polarized players with temperamental versatility. If this were getting remade with Pitt and DiCaprio, I'd love to see Emma Stone take her part, or maybe Rachel McAdams

[Maltic]

So it turns out John Carradine was a really cool dude:



How can you not love Carradine saying a phrase like "It is a base canard" in real life? How perfect! Also, he once pulled the emergency brake on a freighter train he was riding because his Homburg hat flew off his head, and they angrily kicked him off in the middle of nowhere because doing so cost the line $500 in lost productivity. I want a John Carradine biopic, and I want it now

From John Carradine: the Films, Joe Dante on Carradine's time spent shooting the Howling:

One night he came to work with a big bag of Chips Ahoy cookies. I said, "What are those, John?" and he said, "These are my Chips Ahoy." I said, "John, all you have to do is ask. If you want Chips Ahoy, we'll have them put out on the craft service table." He said, "Really?"

Allow me to repeat myself: I WANT A JOHN CARRADINE BIOPIC, AND I WANT IT NOW

He turned down Frankenstein