Amateur Film Studies

I hope to see you there...

2011-12-25T15:15:00.002Z

Hi readers!

I have decided to stop blogging on Amateur Film Studies because my interest in media is wider than "just" film. I'm still very active on line, so I'd like to invite you to visit my new blogs:

Wasteland Observer is a blog about television, movies, and anything else that is often referred to as popular culture. The blog is generally academic in tone but never dry and, I hope, often entertaining (after all, the blog is about entertainment).

Dtelenovelas is a blog in Spanish where I explore telenovelas. I grew up watching Spanish-language serials and they are still a very important part of my media consumption, and the object of my research. If you're a fan of this wonderful television genre, or are intrigued by it, and you're able to read in Spanish, take a look around.

On James Cameron's 'Titanic'

2011-08-06T18:09:00.004+01:00

There could be no doubt that Titanic is of great importance to the economic film historian. This is because of two main reasons: its unprecedented high budget, and its (unexpected) success at the box office. The main concern of economic film history is not individual films like Titanic but, rather, the commercial enterprise involved in making and selling movies[1]. Titanic is a prime illustration of the blockbuster phenomenon of Hollywood movies in the 1990s. However, if film historians are to fully understand the significance of Titanic, and the reasons behind its success, they would do well to include in their analyses an array of approaches beyond the merely economic. I shall be looking at Titanic from four different perspectives: the economic, the social, the aesthetic and the technological in an attempt to show how they all would enrich the historian’s study. These approaches are particularly useful if taken in conjunction rather than in isolation.

Titanic was the first film to gross more than $1 billion at the box office[2]. Even when its number of paid admissions is adjusted for inflation, the film features in the list of the top twenty-five box-office hits in North America[3]. With a budget over $200 million, it is also one of the most expensive movies ever made[4]. In 1997, expensive Hollywood films were nothing new; one of the original moguls, David O. Selznick – best known as the producer of one of the most expensive and the most commercially successful film ever made, Gone With the Wind (1939) – is said to have believed that ‘only two kinds of movies make money – the very cheap and the very expensive.[5]’ Its big budget secures Titanic an important place in the history of Hollywood, among other extremely expensive films such as Foolish Wives (1922), which was the first picture to cost more than $1 million[6]; Ben-Hur (1925); The Ten Commandments (1923, 1956); Cleopatra (1963) or two films which James Cameron directed before Titanic, True Lies (1994) and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991). However, not all big-budget films are as successful as Titanic; logically big budgets make potential profits harder to achieve. Cleopatra only turned a profit in 1966, three years after its theatrical release, when Twentieth Century Fox sold the television rights to ABC for $5 million. Unlike Cleopatra, which eventually was successful, a more recent big-budget film, Heaven’s Gate (1980), notoriously flopped and its director, Michael Cimino, was castigated by both the industry and the media for his creative and budgetary excesses[7]. It is important to place Titanic in this historical context because while the film was still in production many commentators expected it to fail and were ready to blame James Cameron for this.

Titanic’s escalating costs meant that two major studios had to be involved in financing it. Twentieth Century Fox was responsible for providing much of the budget and it secured the international distribution rights while Paramount invested $65 million in the production, and a further $50 million to be spent on US marketing costs. Although, this kind of arrangement was not unique to Titanic, the exaggerated budget and the delays in production caused much concern to the American film industry[8].

Concerns that the film was likely to fail to recoup its massive investment were drown out by very aggressive international marketing campaigns (including a top-ranking song by Céline Dion) which created anticipation worldwide. Titanic was originally intended to open in the summer of 1997 but there were several delays for which James Cameron was largely held to be responsible. Following its international premiere in Tokyo, Titanic finally opened in the USA on 19 December 1997. Peter Kramer has explained how much of the film’s publicity centred on James Cameron’s involvement in the project and portrayed the director as a ‘crazy, dictatorial and supermacho guy obsessed with realism.[9]’ The film’s huge expense and delayed release were seen as testament to James Cameron’s perfectionism and tenaciousness. These claims are probably not of much use to economic film historians, but there will be important when we take an aesthetic approach to Titanic. They also suggest to whom the marketing campaigns intended this film to appeal.

Apart from the publicity focusing on Cameron’s ‘obsession’ with technology and faithful reproduction of the original ship sunk in 1912, much of the marketing strategy focused on the love story which develops in approximately the first 100 minutes of the film. Emphasising the romance between the lower-class Jack Dawson (played by the then teen idol, Leonardo DiCaprio) and well-heeled yet rebellious Rose DeWitt Bukater (played by the then lesser known actor Kate Winslet), proved an effective marketing technique to drive young heterosexual women to the cinema. These women were, as we will see, the key to Titanic box-office success.

These issues specific to Titanic, of no interest to economic film historians, are central to the analyses made by social film historians. Such historians would be interested, among other things, in the reception and interpretation of Titanic.

It is important to notice that Titanic was a ‘sleeper’ blockbuster. Week after week, it continued climbing in popularity until finally becoming the top grossing film in North America five weeks after its release[10]. In the USA, the majority of the audience was female (60%) and, among them, a sizable amount were under the age of 25 (63%). 45% of female spectators under 25 went to see the movie more than once.[11]. Positive reviews certainly contributed to the popularity of the film and its repeat viewing and the fandom generated suggest that this was a film which, despite its pretended historical setting, spoke to an audience that is more often than not neglected by Hollywood. It is part of the industry’s received wisdom that its main audience is young heterosexual men. As Richard Maltby has explained, this was not always the case. Indeed in Classical Hollywood (before the 1960s) women were the main target of the industry[12]. Titanic harks back to Classical Hollywood narratives addressed mainly at women. At least the first 100 minutes of the movie I alluded to before are concerned with the romance between the protagonists. This leaves us, however, with a remaining 94 minutes which have been described as ‘a self-contained, one-and-half hour action film.[13]’ In other words, what, by the 1990s, we had come to expect from a blockbuster.

All the considerations presented so far would be of no interest to aesthetic film historians who are solely concerned with the history of film as an art form[14]. They are, like social film historians, interested in individual films but for very different reasons. The aesthetic approach has more in common with art history than with any of the other approaches to film history. As such, its proponents have a narrow focus limited to a few exceptional films which, according to different aesthetic criteria, they consider works of art. If we study Titanic as a work of art, we would not be interested in why it was made, who watched it, how much money it cost or whether it was commercially successful. As a work of art, we would be interested in the artist who directed the film, who we would consider its author (or auteur). Also, we would find it useful to study the director’s other works in an attempt to better understand his oeuvre or even discover his worldview.

By the time he directed Titanic, James Cameron was already an established director in Hollywood. He was best known for making expensive and high grossing films. Aesthetic film historians would perhaps neglect to include the commercial success of Cameron’s films in their analyses, but they would not fail to notice that, before Titanic, he made action science-fiction films. Cursorily, Titanic appears to be a great departure for Cameron because it has a love story at its core. Also, while his previous films are set in a dystopian future or a version of the present most audiences would not recognise, Titanic, which is of course set in 1912, sticks out as a period film based on a real event.

A more in-depth look into Cameron’s films will reveal his choice in making Titanic is more congruous than its differing setting and central romance may suggest. Alexandra Keller argues that James Cameron’s films can be recognised by a certain ideology and its expression which is always consistent and which is not limited to any particular genre[15]. According to Keller, Cameron is a blockbuster auteur. The inclusion of a film as expensive and as commercially successful as Titanic into the Cameron canon is more than justifiable because, as indicated earlier, it contains the elements 1990s audiences associated with blockbusters. Another strong link between Titanic and many of Cameron’s previous pictures is the inclusion of an exceptionally strong (both physically and psychologically) and determined female character. Regardless of her period costumes, Rose is made of the same material as Ellen Ripley from Aliens or Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies. Not only does she rescue her lover, Jack, with an axe but she survives him after the sinking of the ship.

‘Technology-obsessed’ James Cameron often uses innovative special effects. In Titanic’s case, he innovated in the use of underwater filming, which he had explored in his earlier work The Abyss, and computer-generated imagery or CGI which he has continued to use to even more spectacular effect in his most recent venture Avatar (2009). There is an obvious link between Cameron’s films being both expensive and commercially successful, and the technology he uses in making them. Cameron’s films tend to be very expensive mainly because of the technology used in creating special effects, and they are commercially successful because audiences find those effects attractive. Although technology film history, like economic film history, does not tend to focus on individual films but on the significance of technology in the development of cinema[16], I would suggest that in talking about Cameron’s films there is a link as well with the aesthetic and social approaches. Richard Maltby’s concept of the ‘commercial aesthetic’ (contemporary Hollywood films’ aesthetic is mainly characterised by its necessity to appeal to the widest possible audience by providing them ‘with a range of aesthetic satisfactions’)[17] seems very apt here. Cameron, as a commercial auteur, created in Titanic a film of almost unprecedented appeal because of its masterful combination of expensive technology, a classic Hollywood romance, and the inclusion of elements belonging to the action and science-fiction genres.

Titanic is more than ‘an economic triumph’. Privileging a reading of Titanic based purely on economic terms indicates that the film itself has not artistic value or any social or technological interest. While the role of the film historian should not be to evaluate films, I have shown that studying Titanic as a work of art can be fruitful. In fact, each of the four approaches I have discussed is useful for the film historian. It is difficult, however, to arrive at a satisfactory analysis of Titanic’s importance in film history when we privilege a certain approach to the total exclusion of all others. The social film historian’s approach can yield very interesting results but only if, as I hope to have demonstrated, combined with aesthetic, economic and technological considerations.

Bibliography

Chapman, James, ‘Aesthetic film history’ in AA310 Book 1 Approaches to Film History, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002.

Chapman, James, ‘Economic film history’ in AA310 Book 1 Approaches to Film History, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002.

Coyne, Michael, ‘Technological film history’ in AA310 Book 1 Approaches to Film History, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002.

Keller, Alexandra, ‘Size does matter: Notes on Titanic and James Cameron as blockbuster auteur’ in Kevin S. Sandler and Gaylyn Studlar (ed.), Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1999.

Kramer, Peter, ‘Women first: Titanic (1997), action-adventure films and Hollywood’s female audience’ in AA310 Resource Book 1, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002.

Lubin, David M., Titanic, London, British Film Institute, 1999.

Maltby, Richard, Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction, 2^nd edn, Oxford, Blackwell, 2003.

Morden, Ethan, The Hollywood Studios: Their Unique Styles During the Golden Age of Movies, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1989.

Wyatt, Justin and Vlemas, Katherine, ‘The drama of recoupment in the mass media negotiation of Titanic’ in Kevin S. Sandler and Gaylyn Studlar (ed.), Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1999.

[1] James Chapman, ‘Economic film history’ in AA310 Book 1 Approaches to Film History, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002, p.63.

[2] Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema: An Introduction, 2^nd edn, Oxford, Blackwell, 2003, p.10.

[3] Quoted in Chapman, ‘Economic film history’, p.72.

[4] Peter Kramer, ‘Women first: Titanic (1997), action-adventure films and Hollywood’s female audience’ in AA310 Resource Book 1, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002, p.37.

[5] Ethan Morden, The Hollywood Studios: Their Unique Styles During the Golden Age of Movies, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1989, p.11.

[6] Justin Wyatt and Katherine Vlemas, ‘The drama of recoupment in the mass media negotiation of Titanic’ in Kevin S. Sandler and Gaylyn Studlar (ed.), Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1999, p.30.

[7] Wyatt and Vlemas, ‘The drama of recoupment...’, p.31.

[8] Wyatt and Vlemas, ‘The drama of recoupment...’, pp.32-33.

[9] Peter Kramer, ‘Women first...’, p.37.

[10] Peter Kramer, ‘Women first...’, p.33.

[11] Quoted in David M. Lubin, Titanic, London, British Film Institute, 1999, p.10.

[12] Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema..., p.20.

[13] Peter Kramer, ‘Women first...’, p.37.

[14] James Chapman, ‘Aesthetic film history’ in AA310 Book 1 Approaches to Film History, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002, p.3.

[15] Alexandra Keller, ‘Size does matter: Notes on Titanic and James Cameron as blockbuster auteur’ in Kevin S. Sandler and Gaylyn Studlar (ed.), Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster, New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1999, p.142.

[16] Michael Coyne, ‘Technological film history’ in AA310 Book 1 Approaches to Film History, Milton Keynes, The Open University, 2002, p.93.

[17] Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema..., p.14.

CMBA Blogathon - Movies of 1939: 'Dark Victory'

2011-05-15T11:36:00.002+01:00

Judith Traherne is a young socialite whose life involves horse racing and parties. Although she has been feeling unwell for a while she refuses to see a doctor until she has a horse riding accident and, shortly after, falls down the stairs. Specialist Dr. Frederick Steele suggests brain surgery. The operation is a failure and Judith will die in a matter of months. Dr. Steele decides to hide the truth from his patient but confides on her best friend, Ann King.

Like most Classical Hollywood melodramas, Dark Victory relies on narration that is unrestricted in range (Bordwell, 70). This means that we, the spectators, know everything there is to know, there is no mystery to resolve. We know that Judith is terminally ill and her death at the end of the film is expected almost from the very beginning. Our pleasure in watching this film resides in how the characters will react to the truth. We look forward to Ann's reaction to the news of her friend's fatal condition or, after Judith finds out she is not cured, we cannot wait for her to confront Dr. Steele. Although, of course, she does not find out until the film is very advanced. This further enhances our pleasure. In fact, "Viewer interest is maintained by retardation and carefully timed coincidences that produce surprise" (Bordwell, 70).

Another, perhaps even greater, pleasure is Bette Davis's performance. Dark Victory is a must-see for any fans of Davis and a good introduction to her unique style. Her hands and, more crucially, her eyes are central to Davis's performance. Her eyes are expressive as ever in this film and with good reason. Judith's first symptoms have to do with her eyes. "Do you use your eyes a lot?" asks her Dr. Steele during their first consultation. In the final scene, she goes blind (her blindness is a sign of her imminent death) but she successfully pretends to be able to see while Dr. Steele, who is now her husband, leaves for New York. Although she keeps up the pretence for her husband's sake, we, the spectators, are painfully aware that she cannot see. It is true that she verbalises this to Ann but we can also "see" it in her eyes.

Bette Davis was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress but 1939 was a difficult year to be nominated and Davis lost out to Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. Dark Victory was also nominated for Best Original Score (Max Steiner) and Best Picture, awards gone to The Wizard of Oz (Herbert Stothart) and Gone With the Wind (David O. Selznick) respectively.

Dark Victory is a film melodrama directed by Edmund Goulding for Warner Bros. The film stars Bette Davis, George Brent, Geraldine Fitzgerald, Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan.

References:

Bordwell, D. Narration in the Fiction Film, Routledge: New York, 1985.

The Classic Movies of 1939 Blogathon is coming

2011-04-23T12:10:00.000+01:00

As all classic movie fans know, 1939 is considered by many 'Hollywood's greatest year'. I have written about it here. The Classic Movie Blog Association will be holding a blogathon on May 15, 16 and 17. There will be posts about great movies like Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, and many others. You can check the full list with links on the Association's blog.

My own entry will be on Dark Victory, starring Bette Davies, and it will be published on Sunday, May 15. I hope you all will take some time to read this and the posts by my fellow classic movie bloggers!

A new breed of telenovela: La Reina del Sur

2011-03-19T12:46:00.004Z

Telenovelas are Spanish-language daily serials originally from Latin America but now popular around the world. Although the genre shares its origins with the American soap opera, it is unhelpful to think of telenovelas merely as "Spanish-language soaps". For one thing, while soap operas have always been daytime products created to last forever, most telenovelas are shown, at least on first-run in their respective countries of origin, on prime-time and are always made to last only for a number of months. Their length can vary from around 60 to over 200 episodes (sometimes, if they are exceptionally successful, they can have sequels). To put all of this into perspective, US soap As the World Turns, which ended in September 2010 after 54 years on CBS, had a whopping 13,858 episodes while hospital drama ER had 331 episodes. This would place the telenovela closer to series than soaps. More importantly than that, telenovelas have always had story arcs which are resolved in the final weeks in the same satisfying way that premium cable English-language series (and very few broadcast ones) can afford to.

I am not arguing that telenovelas are as good as HBO dramas. But what I would say is that, like any other television genre, there are good, not-so-good, so-so and terrible telenovelas. There are also massive differences between telenovelas made in different countries; Brazilian and Mexican telenovelas could not be more different, for example. Also there are many different sub-genres often aimed at very different audiences. Telenovelas continue to grow in popularity around the world and recently the USA is becoming one of the biggest markets for them.

One of the most recent successes has been the exceptional La Reina del Sur (Queen of the South) which tells the compelling story of a Mexican woman (played by Kate del Castillo) who raises to be a powerful drug lord following her husband's murder. This telenovela's complex narrative structure, superb acting and action-packed episodes have made it a ratings hit in America. Made by RTI for the NBC-owned Telemundo, this telenovela was the number one show on its slot (10 pm/9c) recently. This is enormous news as Telemundo not only beat the biggest Spanish-language network in the US, Univisión (which shows local news on that slot), but also CBS, ABC, NBC, FOX and the CW. Significantly, it attracted more viewers than the critically-acclaimed CBS legal drama The Good Wife.

Unlike its main competitor, Univisión, which sources its prime-time telenovelas from the Mexican Televisa, Telemundo invests heavily on their own productions which are normally the result of a very fruitful partnership with the Colombian company RTI. Telemundo's telenovelas are first shown in the USA and then exported to Latin America, Spain and other markets. Often, these telenovelas are set in the USA and offer an aspirational alternative to Latinos which they are regular denied on English-language television. La Reina del Sur is much grittier than most telenovelas and it boasts many international locations (Mexico, USA, Spain and Colombia). Telemundo has three telenovela prime-time slots: 8pm/7c, 9pm/8c and 10pm/9c. The last two slots are the most prestigious and tend to be the home of the best telenovelas. Because La Reina del Sur deals with adult themes, it is only suitable to the last slot of the evening. Also, like most Telemundo programming, it is close-captioned in both English and Spanish which makes it accessible to most Americans.

The series has also already premièred in Spain and it is about to be shown in Mexico. Interestingly, in Spain, where telenovelas (even Spanish ones) are traditionally daytime products, La Reina del Sur is being shown on weekly prime-time episodes every Wednesday at 10pm on Antena 3.

La Reina del Sur is exceptional for being the first Spanish-language TV show which has managed to beat mainstream English-language programming in the USA and the first telenovela to be shown on prime time by a major network in Spain. It is really that good.

If you like telenovelas, and can read Spanish, you might like my blog devoted to of the most popular TV genres in the world: Telenovelas USA.

'Black Swan', commercial success, aesthetic failure

2011-03-05T10:51:00.003Z

International movie poster for Black Swan

Few recent films have incited more visceral responses than Black Swan (2010). Amanda Klein has rightly pointed out that the film employs some of the cinematic conventions of art cinema, horror, melodrama, and pornography. She, unlike some of the critics she cites, seems to consider this film aesthetically successful. I would suggest that, whereas the mélange of generic conventions furnishes the film with enough wide appeal that even the most negative reviews could not stop it from being a commercial success, the specific use of these conventions affects the film's aesthetics negatively.

Paraphrasing David Bordwell, Klein says that 'art films define themselves against the classical Hollywood paradigm of linear cause and effect narratives, strong, logical character motivations, and conclusive endings'. All of which is true about Black Swan. Art films, however, do not tend to enjoy great commercial success -- they certainly do not achieve the top position that Black Swan holds at the time of writing. From this we can perhaps infer that the art film elements are not behind the film's success, but we need to look closely at how the film uses the different generic conventions Klein mentions before we come to a satisfactory answer. Richard Maltby has spoken of the 'commercial aesthetic' Hollywood movies attempt to achieve: 'Hollywood relies for much of its aesthetic effect on its affective qualities, on the emotional engagement of its audience with the text - on the tears, laughter, fear, and erotic arousal it provokes in its viewers' (54). For a number of viewers (Klein amongst them) Black Swan does all of these.

I want to move away from the unquestionable box office success and popular appeal that Black Swan enjoys to focus on how its hybrid-like use of genres does not work as well aesthetically as it does commercially. I shall do this by individually looking at each of the genres which inform the movie.

Let us start then with the art film. As its commercial success suggests, Black Swan cannot be fully considered an art film. Art film is just one of the genres its director, Aaron Aronofsky, draws on to create his film. I would argue that the use of art film conventions is what has most upset the critics who have reviewed it negatively. This has motivated some reviewers' claims about the film being 'high art trash'. However, for the general public (who, unlike film critics, do not watch many art films, if any) the art film elements in an otherwise, as we will see, very familiar and accessible movie, perhaps create the satisfying effect of having watched something 'intelligent' and 'worthy'. For the public this view is also validated by the awards garnered by the film.

A genre that continues to be popular, and familiar, to most cinema-goers is horror. Black Swan mixes both psychological and body horror. Nina's doppelgängers or her controlling mother are firmly rooted in psychological horror, whereas the stabbings, and bodily injuries, as the result of Nina's psychosis are both. For contemporary standards, the film's use of horror conventions is quite mild although in the context of the other genres informing it, they can become truly shocking.

I am less sure about the pertinence of the term melodrama when discussing Black Swan. This is partly because I think the melodrama is one of the hardest genres to define, and partly because I think it is too often used derisively. When applied to Black Swan I think Klein and others are referring to the film's emotional excesses. As such, the melodramatic elements are related to, or sometimes overlap with, the horror ones (e.g. Nina's mother). This is, rather, an attempt at conscious camp. The problem is that because the attempt is conscious, the film cannot truly be camp. In other words, there is nothing queer about Black Swan because the potentially camp elements (lesbian sex, ballet, overbearing mother, ageing diva, etc.) are consciously exploited as part of its 'commercial aesthetic'. The use of these elements is purely exploitative. For example, there is no narrative function for the lesbian sex scene. Its inclusion pushes the boundaries of mainstream cinema into the realm of pornography. It is true that the film's depiction of sex is never as graphic as its depiction of body horror. However, for an American film on general release, the film contains as much sex as is permissible. The film's depiction of lesbian sex is reminiscent of pornography aimed at heterosexual men. This is not necessarily surprising since Aronofsky is a heterosexual man, but disappointing in a film with such interesting themes as dealing psychologically with sex and ageing.

All the overlapping excesses affect the film's coherence negatively. Black Swan offers its viewers an easy to follow plot of a ballerina who, in order to play the main role in Swan Lake needs to inhabit both a white and a black swan. Her problem is that she is 100% white swan. The film charts her painful transformation into black swan which some of the horror conventions clearly aid. The melodramatic and pornographic elements, however, only detract from the film's narrative which is disrupted in a way reminiscent to art film but which, in reality, only add to the film's commercial appeal by exploiting tried and tested elements from 'lesser' genres.

Black Swan cannot properly be considered an art film because it is too commercially successful and accessible. The film's use of generic conventions (including the art film) are part of the film's 'commercial aesthetic' which makes it a box office triumph.

Sources:

- Klein, Amanda, "Black Swan, Cinematic Excesses and the Full Body Experience". Flow 11 February 2011. 28 February 2011.
http://flowtv.org/2011/02/black-swan/
- Maltby, Richard, Hollywood Cinema, 2nd Ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
- Segers, Frank, "Black Swan leads foreign box office for 3rd weekend". Reuters 28 February 2011. 1 March 2011.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/02/28/uk-boxoffice-overseas-idUKTRE71R0C920110228

All cats are grey at night: Rohmer's 'Full Moon in Paris'

2011-02-26T13:21:00.007Z

"Qui a deux femmes perd son âme, qui a deux maisons perd sa raison" (He who has two wives loses his soul, he who has two houses loses his mind).

Part of the "comedies et proverbes" series, the plot of Les nuits de la pleine lune (1984) takes place during three months (November, December and January) between Paris and the new town Marne-la-Vallée. Louise lives with her boyfriend Rémi in the suburbs but longs to spend her evenings in the city with her friend Octave (who is unreciprocatedly attracted to her).

This post is not a full analysis of the film; I will only try to draw your attention to some noteworthy elements of it.


Marne-la-Vallée

The first establishing shot shows us a deserted bluey/grey early morning Marne-la-Vallée. This contrasts with a later establishing shot of the Paris neighbourhood where Louise used to live and still has an apartment.

Paris

The colours are much warmer and the place is buzzing with human activity.

Going back to the first scene, Rémi and Louise argue because she wants to go out in Paris that evening but he doesn't like going out. Their livestyles are incompatible: he's a daytime person who enjoys playing tennis on Saturday morning while she prefers partying all night and sleeping all day. Louise prefers spending time in Paris, where she also works but Rémi is happy with his life in the new town.

Rémi and Louise often argue about their different needs

Fans of films by Éric Rohmer will be familiar with his interest in showing us the banal act of commuting. We follow Louise all the way to work. Firstly we watch her walking alone to the station which, as we will see, foreshadows the ending of the movie. Then she's on the train and, finally, walks to the design studio where she works.

Louise goes to work

By now, you'll have probably noticed the prevalence of the colour red. Louise's scarf, Rémi's towel, cars in Paris and the Mondrian print on the wall in Rémi's apartment. Costumes and sets are key in the mise-en-scene of any film by Rohmer was particularly careful about those elements and often personally decorated the sets (in this film, he let the actress who played Louise, Pascale Ogier, decorate "her" apartment). Les nuits, like most films by Rohmer, was filmed entirely on location. This makes the mise-en-scene, and particularly, Rohmer's intention of sticking to a particular colour scheme for each of his films (in this case blue/grey and red/orange) very challenging, specially with a limited budget. This is why, in this film, red or blue towels or sheets cover pieces of furniture.

A red towel covers a white door

This particular colour schemes makes sense for a film which most scenes take place in autumn and either early in the morning or at night.

Octave's blue scarf

Going back to the plot, a key scene is when Louise and Octave attend a party together. As soon as they enter the party, there is a POV shot of Louise's acquaintance Camille and her roomate, Marianne. Camille immediately comes to say hello to Louise and Octave. Octave is visibly underwhelmed by Camille and goes mingling while the two friends talk. While they're talking, Rémi turns up which, interestingly, we can only infer initially from the dialogue and the girls' body language. Camille looks pleased while Louise's face shows disappointment, even perhaps annoyance, and she recoils away from him. This is shot with a static camera in medium shot, so Louise's act of moving away allows enough space for Rémi to enter the frame. She then leaves Camille and Rémi alone as she moves to the dance floor.

The next sequence is of Lousie dancing with Octave among other revellers. If you look at the next illustration, you will see a few characters which at this point are unknown, or only vaguely familiar, to us (and to Louise). They all serve an important function in the film. The girl in the white dress - crucially - in the middle of the frame is Camille's friend, Marianne; the girl to our left has already distracted Octave (who's now out of the frame) so that Louise can dance with Bastien (the only man in the frame), with whom Louise will eventually be unfaithful to Rémi much later in the film.

They don't know each other yet: Louise, Marianne and Bastien

What happens next in the scene is also very telling. Camille introduces Marienne to Rémi. First Camille talks to him about her friend (Marianne, like Rémi plays tennis and she and Camille live in the new town too) and, although he seems uninterested at first, his face lights up when Marianne comes over to say hello.

Louise by herself

Louise achieves her goal of having a pied-à-terre in Paris where she can crash when she's in town. This gives her the freedom to go out in Paris at night without worrying about getting back to the suburbs. Her first night in Paris turns out to be a lonely one because she can't find anyone to go out with. Far from being disappointed by this, she seems to really enjoy being by herself. In the dialogue (and by the way both Rémi and Octave treat her) it is apparent that men have always loved her too intensely and she tends to go from one relationship to the next. She's never had the chance to be truly alone.

Later in the film, as mentioned, Louise cheats on Rémi with Bastien, whom she meets again at another party. It's not really a spur-of-the moment fling since they go on a date the day after the party. Their date is conveyed by a montage set to the title song. That sequence sticks out because it is the only example of the use of non-diegetic music and montage in the film (Rohmer's use of such techniques is extremely rare in his filmography).

Louise and Bastien

Watching this film several times is very rewarding because of the mise-en-scene elements that contribute to its coherence but which could be hard to spot the first time around. I have indicated only a few here but there are many more. Restricted knowledge, as when Louise first encounters Bastien and Marianne at the first party, is key. Louise is the only character who is present in every scene whereas Rémi is largely absent. What he's been up to for almost three months becomes clear only in the final scene. Louise winds up alone because Rémi has fallen in love with Marianne. Before we get there, and because we share Louise's point of view, we are bound to make some wrong turns. However, all the elements are there all along so the ending makes perfect sense.

All I Desire (1953)

2011-02-21T18:08:00.003Z

Let me just say off the bat that I am a big fan of Douglas Sirk's films. I have written about his Imitation of Life and All That Heaven Allows. All I Desire (1953) is different from those two films because of its historical setting (1910) and its black and white cinematography. It shares with them (and other Sirk films) that it is what used to be dismissively known as a "woman's film" and what critics now refer to as a melodrama. To this genre belong films that mainly appealed to female viewers, like the Hollywood family sagas of the 1950s. Melodramas tended to promote domesticity and the "traditional" family as an ideal for American women.

Superficially, All I Desire seems to do exactly that. It tells the story of Naomi Murdoch (Barbara Stanwyck) who one day leaves her small town (Riverside, Wisconsin) abandoning her family (husband Henry, daughters Lily and Joyce, and son Ted) to pursue an acting career. She returns to see her daughter Lily at a school play and ends up staying after reconciling with her husband. It is suggested throughout the film that Naomi left town to avoid a scandal and gradually we find out that this involved an illicit liaison with a man called Dutch Heinemann. Naomi's youngest child Ted uncannily resembles Dutch and loves spending time with him. The possibility that Ted is Dutch's son is never directly addressed in the plot but there is a parallelism that strongly suggests this to be the case. Lily, the aspiring blonde actress, is just like her mother (at some point, she even says "I'm like her"). We first see her hanging out in the kitchen with the cook Lena. Later, when Naomi arrives, she also seems more at ease in the kitchen with Lena than anywhere else in the house; Joyce is like the female version of her father. They look alike and display the same behaviours. In fact, they always react in the exact same way to the same situations throughout the movie. Following that pattern, Ted would have to look and behave like one of his parents. I think he is fashioned after his father Dutch.

Naomi is an absent mother and wife for years. Her career hasn't amounted to much; she tried "legit" theatre but ended up being a mediocre vaudevillian. If she doesn't go back to Riverside with the idea of reconciling with her family and staying, very soon she must realise that this is preferable that returning to a life of cheap motels and provincial vaudeville theatres. When her erstwhile lover Dutch tries to reignite their relationship she rejects him by (accidentally) shooting him. She also confesses that she was never a successful actress, which earns her scorn from Lily but sympathy from Joyce and her husband. We are given a "happy ending" of conjugal reconciliation which reinforces the message of domesticity I mentioned earlier.

However, we need to ask ourselves how "happy" this ending really is and, also perhaps, how much of an ending it is. We leave Dutch hurt, but recovering, in hospital. Are we to believe that he will leave Naomi alone? Naomi seems happy to stay with her husband but how much of this has to do with love and how much with her failed attempt at an acting career. How about Lily who adored her mother, or rather the idea that she was a successful actress, but now hates her? How about Ted who never seemed to care much about her mother's return and spends all his time with (his real father) Dutch? In asking these questions we realise that the "close" ending is in fact very much "open". Sirk was an expert film maker. Was he subverting one of the most conservative genres in Hollywood at the time?

The Continuing Story of 'Peyton Place'

2011-01-29T19:18:00.002Z

US television’s first prime-time soap opera was Peyton Place (1964-1969). Until its debut, the soap opera in America had been daytime television entertainment for busy housewives. Encouraged by the success of Coronation Street (1960- ) in Britain, television producer and writer Paul Monash created what he called a “television novel” offered in two weekly instalments. Scheduling a primetime series twice a week had never been done on American television before, but it seemed to work for British network ITV, with Coronation Street. ABC was right to risk trying this new approach in television scheduling; Peyton Place was so successful that it brought the fledging network to the number one spot in the ratings, overcoming the all-powerful CBS and NBC networks for the first time in its history.

Initially, Monash considered showing Coronation Street in the US but, afraid that American audiences might struggle to understand northern English accents, he decided to buy the rights of a bestselling novel by Grace Metalious set in a fictitious town in Massachusetts. Metalious’s book had been adapted as a film by director Mark Robson in 1957. Like the novel, the movie had been a hit. So by the time Peyton Place premiered on ABC on 15 September 1964, it already enjoyed a certain status in American popular culture.

To meet the requirements of network television, the series changed many elements of the plot of the novel and the movie (for example, there is no incest in the series). The cast is also completely different. The character of Constance Mackenzie, played by Lana Turner in the film, was portrayed by Dorothy Malone on television. Malone was a familiar presence for fans of 1950s melodrama because she had starred in two of the best films by Douglas Sirk: Written on the Wind (1956) and The Tarnished Angles (1957). The series also launched the careers of two then unknown young actors: Mia Farrow and Ryan O’Neil. Farrow left the show in 1966 to marry Frank Sinatra and, after many successful years, the ratings suffered and the series was never quite the hit it used to be, although it continued to be popular for a number of seasons.

The initial success of the show meant that, from June 1965, ABC increased the number of weekly episodes from two to three. In September 1966, because of declining ratings caused by Farrow’s departure, the airings decreased to two episodes a week. The show’s final season, between February and June 1969, was aired with a single weekly episode. After 514 episodes the series ended. In the 1970s ABC rehashed the show as a daytime serial for two years, and in 1985 some of the original cast members were reunited in a made-for-TV movie called Peyton Place: The Next Generation.

Peyton Place occupies an important position in the history of US television for several reasons: its bold scheduling, its role in turning ABC into a successful network capable of competing in the ratings with CBS and NBC, and for paving the way for the big prime-time soaps Dallas (1978-91), Dynasty (1981-89), Falcon Crest (1981-1990) and Knots Landing (1979-1993).

CMBA Hitchcock blogathon: Why 'Rear Window' is my favourite Hitchcock film

2011-01-17T07:52:00.005Z

Alfred Hitchcock withdrew his 1954 film Rear Window from circulation during the 1960s. His contract with Paramount gave him control over the films he made at the studio, including also To Catch a Thief (1955), The Trouble with Harry (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956) and Vertigo (1958). Rear Window was finally re-released in 1983, to new critical acclaim. No doubt, the years of unavailability contributed to the film’s increased appeal because it was never out of critical discourse during those decades.

Of course, I came to it much later when it had long been available for domestic viewing. I don’t remember when I first saw it, but it was, no doubt, on television. I keep going back to it and not only because, possibly, Rear Window, Psycho (1960) and reruns of his TV show Alfred Hitchcock Presents were my introduction to the director’s work. I have now seen most of his films and I admire and enjoy many of them; Rear Window continues to be my favourite Hitchcock movie.

There is a distinction between recognising that a film is good and 'liking' it (we all like to watch bad films from time to time). For me, Rear Window is one of those films, which is truly great but also hugely enjoyable. I’m going to try to summarise some of the reasons why I like it so much:

First of all, there’s Hitchcock’s signature visual narrative style, or the camera as narrator. An example of this is how Hitchcock establishes that L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart) is a photojournalist who broke his leg in car crash and is, therefore, confined to his small Manhattan apartment visually without having to rely on dialogue or voice over. Other Hitchcock films with the action restricted to small physical spaces, such as Rope (1948) and Dial ‘M’ for Murder (1954), good as they are, do use more dialogue to indicate to the viewer ‘what is going on’ than Rear Window had to.

Then, and related to my previous point, is the tension and suspense that Hitchcock creates so successfully. I’m not going to go into how he does it as that could be the subject of a whole book but, for me, Rear Window is one of the most tense films I’ve ever seen. It is testament to Hitchcock’s talent that the tension doesn’t decrease with repeat viewing.

Not to say that there is no humour in the movie; there is plenty and mostly courtesy of the great character actress Thelma Ritter who plays Jeffries’s nurse, Stella. In a world inhabited by journalists and models, and where Grace Kelly in evening gowns represents femininity, Ritter’s character and her no nonsense approach to life are welcome additions.

The whole cast is just perfect for the movie, from the main stars and Ritter to Raymond Burr who plays the killer Lars Thorwald. Burr’s resemblance to the producer who ‘brought’ Hitchcock to Hollywood, David O. Selznick, opens the field for very amusing speculations on the director’s intentions in casting him as the villain.

And, talking of speculation, the final reason why I enjoy Rear Window is that it is open to many different and interesting interpretations. I am familiar with many of them but don’t have a favourite one; every new viewing brings out new and exciting possibilities so why spoil the fun?

Of course, all the things I’ve mentioned could be applied, at least individually, to almost any film by Hitchcock but, to my mind, Rear Window perfectly showcases all of them (and many more I don’t have space for). The main thing, though, is that the film is really great fun to watch. So, enjoy!

Classic movie review: 'Splendor in the Grass' (1961)

2011-01-08T20:03:00.002Z

Premarital sex could ruin a girl’s chances of marriage. Or, it could actually precipitate marriage if the girl finds herself ‘in trouble’. In 1928 rural Kansas, both contradictory messages still had currency. Wilma Dean ‘Deanie’ Loomis (Natalie Wood) and Bud Stamper (Warren Beatty) are high school sweethearts whose romance is mired by both sexual repression and oppression.

Deanie’s mother, Mrs. Loomis (Audrey Christie), advises her daughter not to give in to Bud’s advances because, according to her, ‘boys don’t respect girls who go all the way with them’. Mrs. Loomis believes she’s raising a nice girl who one day will marry Bud Stamper. Bud’s a catch because his father, Ace Stamper (Pat Hingle), is in the oil business. If Deanie’s mother is the dominant parent at the Loomis household (her husband Del, played by Fred Stewart, has hardly any lines in the film), Bud’s father never listens to what anybody else has to say and has clear plans for his son. These don’t include his marrying Deanie, at least not yet. Both parents advise their children against having sex for the different reasons I’ve highlighted.

It is not just Deanie’s mother who thinks that she should stay celibate. At school she is taught that it is desirable that women be ‘put on a pedestal’. Ace Stamper’s anxieties about his son’s sex life lie elsewhere. He believes that there are only two kinds of girls. Bud is encouraged to have fun with girls belonging to one kind, as long as he eventually marries one of the other kind. The two kinds are represented in the film by Deanie and Bud’s sister Ginny (Barbara Loden), respectively.

Bud, whether for love or lust, appears almost desperate to marry Deanie. Of course, they never get married. Their paths diverge when he has a stint at Yale and marries someone else, while she is institutionalised following a nervous breakdown and suicide attempt.

Apart from sex, religion and death are the other main themes of Splendor in the Grass. Deanie is portrayed as a genuinely straight laced girl, the kind who doesn’t go to bed without first saying her prayers. There is also something of a religious fervour in her love for Bud. She worships him and keeps almost too many photographs of him in her bedroom. She also tells Bud several times that she would do anything for him. There are quite a few deaths in the movie, mostly suicides which is not surprising considering the action is set against the backdrop of the ‘Great Depression’.

Splendor in the Grass was Warren Beatty’s first screen appearance and it rebounded Natalie Wood’s career as her first major adult role (she is a high school senior at the start of the film but quickly progresses into adulthood). Elia Kazan made the film in New York with cinematographer Boris Kaufman who shot it in Technicolor. Kazan and Kaufman had previously collaborated in, for example, 12 Angry Men (1956), and On the Waterfront (1953) but before moving to Hollywood Kaufman had to his credits several French films including L’Atalante (1933) or Zéro de conduit (1933) under the direction of Jean Vigo. The script of this fraught melodrama was written by William Inge, earning him an Academy Award. Inge was a gay playwright and novelist from the Midwest who, no doubt, had some personal experience in sexual repression and impossible relationships.

Although ultimately not a tragedy, I hope that the impossible love between Bud and Deanie will ring less true to us now that it would have done upon its original release.

Hitchcock in VistaVision: 'To Catch a Thief' (1955)

2011-01-02T12:59:00.004Z

Making the most of wide-screen even before the film starts. Notice how the titles are aligned with the travel shop window.

Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief (1955) sees American expatriate and former resistance hero, John Robie (Cary Grant), fall in love with the impossibly beautiful Jessie Stevens (Grace Kelly) in the French Riviera. Robie is a reformed burglar who is being suspected of a new wave of jewellery thefts in the South of France.

Both Grant and Kelly manage to fit into the frame despite the distance between them.

In the 1950s, film executives saw their revenues being threatened by television’s growing popularity. Increasingly, more Americans were choosing to stay at home rather than visit their local movie theatre. Films simply had to become more spectacular. There is an increase in colour films at the time (although colour had been a feature since the 1930s) but, more importantly, the studios started using different versions of wide-screen. While some studios went in for more radical departures such as Cinerama or CinemaScope, the makers of To Catch a Thief, Paramount, decided to adopt a system which was seen as more flexible and, also, compatible with more traditional modes of production and exhibition: VistaVision.

To Catch a Thief was made using VistaVision and, originally, its aspect ratio would have been 1.85:1. Hitchcock embraced the possibilities of wide-screen with panoramic aerial shots of the French Riviera or with the mise-en-scène, for example having the actors lounge across the full width of the frame.

The other wide-screen systems used by Paramount’s competitors also enabled film makers to create similar kinds of compositions. VistaVision, however, had a smaller width than CinemaScope but more height. Hitchcock and other directors who worked with VistaVision often showed their actors standing up so that their whole bodies were visible within the frame, something that couldn't be achieved to the same effect with the other wide-screen systems.

At an uncertain time following the end of the Hollywood Studio System and the advent of television, wide-screen, in its many different guises, revitalised cinema for a time until it became the industry’s standard and, therefore, stopped being an added production value. Now, even television has adopted wide-screen formats. The new perceived ‘threat’ to cinema is possibly piracy and internet downloads (legal and illegal). The industry’s way of dealing with this is to promote another 1950s technical development: 3D.

Watching 'Oz' on the big screen

2010-12-29T21:42:00.006Z

Recently, I had the opportunity to watch The Wizard of Oz at my local cinema, The Duke of York’s in Brighton, England. Of course, I’d seen the film many times but never before on the big screen. I know that some people will find it unusual to go to a movie theatre to watch something that not only is readily available on DVD but also regularly shown on television. I, for one, don’t go to the cinema very often and watch most films on DVD. There are two main reasons for this: 1) I can’t abide multiplexes and 2) I am generally, let’s say, underwhelmed by most contemporary cinematic fare.

When I found out that The Wizard of Oz was playing at one of the oldest cinemas in the world (opened in September 1910) and the most charming one I’ve ever attended, I had really no excuse. I also had another pretty powerful reason to go: my boyfriend. He is, without exaggeration, one of the biggest fans of the movie and is currently working on making awesome replicas of Dorothy’s ruby slippers (you can follow his progress on his blog The Ruby Slippers Project). He grew up watching The Wizard of Oz but, like most of us, only on television. Even though he’s seen it more times than I have, he admitted that, by watching it on the cinema screen, he noticed things that had previously passed him by. We both had a great time enjoying one of our all-time favourite movies as US and UK audiences would have done in 1939/1940. What a treat!

This experience left me wanting to see more classic films at the cinema.

Citizen Kane and the masterpiece tradition

2010-12-18T17:16:00.004Z

There are certain films which are almost universally praised by critics. Sometimes, even people who haven’t seen them would consider these films masterpieces. Although still a comparatively very young art form, cinema has already produced scores of films considered canonical by some and, generally, accepted as so by most people. This is what is sometimes called the masterpiece tradition because its proponents are mainly preoccupied with creating a canon of films that are worth seeing and studying.

How this canon is arrived at is not without controversy. Generally, critics and film historians (professional and amateur) will base this on the artistic merits of individual films. The central question that must be answered is “which films are art?” Authors who favour a 'formative' approach appreciate sophisticated filming and editing techniques, such as montage, which can convey subjectivity. These critics tend to admire the work of Soviet directors from the 1920s and 30s or the German expressionists. Others tend to prefer long takes and static cameras; we call this aesthetic approach 'realist'.

Undoubtedly, at least for Western critics, Citizen Kane (USA, Welles, 1941) heads the cinematic masterpiece canon. This is obvious to anyone who consults the lists compiled by the AFI, the BFI or any of the many “must-see-movies” book guides. Because this film contains aesthetic elements admired by both the approaches I’ve described, it is not surprising that it has been hailed as a masterpiece since the 1950s. Some even consider it the greatest movie ever made.

As a result, many people who are not critics or film historians may feel inadequate if they watch it and they don’t like it. I suspect that some viewers might avoid it altogether because they probably regard movies as merely entertainment, and would be put off by all this critical and academic attention (in a manner similar to those readers who avoid any novel labelled as a “classic”). Indeed, Citizen Kane is not the most entertaining movie ever made (I’ve never heard, or read, anybody claiming that) and, depending on taste (or mood), viewers may choose to spend their time watching, say, a gangster movie, a western or a “weepie”, instead.

One of the reasons Citizen Kane is revered: Greg Toland's masterful cinematography

The main shortcoming to this approach to film history is that is neglects most movies but focusing only on a few masterpieces. Films can be interesting for many different reasons but I don't see any cause for privileging aesthetic considerations above all else.

I write about films that interest me and about which I feel I have something to say. Looking back on the films I've written about on this blog, I think I have managed to include a good variety of films and to discuss them from different perspectives. I don't get particularly bogged down on which films can be considered art. I referred to the medium as an art form at the beginning of this post so this is my a priori assumption whenever I watch (and write about) movies; whatever their age, nationality, genre, etc. Aesthetic considerations are important and interesting but so are social, economic and technological concerns.

What chance did poor Shelley Winters stand?

2010-12-04T18:53:00.005Z

In A Place in the Sun (George Stevens, 1951), George Eastman (Montgomery Clift), schemes to kill his pregnant girlfriend, Alice Tipp (Shelley Winters), so that he can marry socialite Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor). At the time when the movie was released, Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters were both 31 while Elizabeth Taylor was only 18.

When George arrives in town, he finds employment in his uncle's factory. Initially, George is attracted to fellow factory worker Alice and they date for a while. Shortly after Alice becomes pregnant, George's wealthy relatives invite him to a party where he meets Angela; his social ascendency and his gradual distancing from Alice begin then. It does not take long for George and Angela to fall in love and for tragedy to ensue.

George/Montgomery and Angela/Elizabeth are a sexy couple. Notice in the screen capture (left) how she holds the bottle and how he looks at it with his lips parted.

If Montgomery/George and Elizabeth/Angela represent sex in its more carefree and fun incarnation, Shelly/Alice is the one suffering the consequences by becoming pregnant.

When he is with Alice/Shelley, George/Montgomery looks almost just as pedestrian as she does (almost, because he is still Monty Clift!).

Shelley Winters could do sexy, too, but only in a voluptuously vulgar way. This may appeal to some but we get none of that in A Place in the Sun.

Elizabeth Taylor could be sultry but always with class.

Hollywood movies have always had the same tendency to make things as obvious to their audience as possible. Of course, George is going to choose Angela over poor dowdy Alice. There is just no competition!

When he is with Alice, George is almost always confined to the factory, the tiny room she rents or the movie theatre; George and Angela, however, that pair of healthy kids, go to parties and enjoy the Great American Outdoors. Alice brings George down and reminds him too much of where he comes from; Angela rejuvenates him and helps him dream of where he'd like to get to. George and Alice are tragic characters, both destined to die: he on the electric chair accused of the murder he had planned to carry out, and she (always a pathetic figure) accidentally falling off a boat. Who knows what future awaits the beautiful Angela? Will her life be ruined by all this? Somehow, I think she'll be fine.

Five reasons why I love Warner Bros.

2010-11-27T14:04:00.002Z

It has been said that, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, Warner Bros. was a major studio which was run like one of the minors: its honcho, Jack L. Warner, believed in making movies as cheaply as possible.

Warner Bros. might have not had Paramount's Continental sophistication or MGM's glamour and lavishness and, yet, its artistic and commercial achievements are, if not sometimes higher, at least on a par with the other majors'.

Here is the list of the five reasons why I love this studio:

1. Bette Davis:

Unquestionably the Queen of the Warner Bros. backlot, the studio did not find any suitable vehicles for the star until she made Of Human Bondage ('34) at RKO, while on loan. Back at her home studio she starred in classics such as Marked Woman (1937), Jezebel ('39), Dark Victory ('39), The Old Maid ('39), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex ('39), Juarez ('39), All This and Heaven Too ('40) or The Letter ('40).

Although she tried to leave Warner Bros. as early as in 1936, I, for one, am happy she didn't actually go at that time. In fairness, two of her best performances (to my mind, at least) were in films she made at other studios: The Little Foxes ('41) at Samuel Goldwyn and All About Eve ('50) and 20th Century Fox.

Her star persona, in contrast with other stars of her time, was based on her ability to act. That is not to say that she was necessarily a better actress than, say, Joan Crawford or Barbara Stanwyck. While other Hollywood star personae were constructed around glamour, or being the girl next door, Bette Davis's appeal as a star was that the audience could watch her "act": those eyes, the hand gestures, the smoking,.. She seems to have been particularly popular with women, who, perhaps, aspired to be like her; and gay men, who lacking any openly gay male stars to follow, saw in her a toughness and independence they wished they could have.

2. Depression-era musicals:

Films like: 42nd Street ('33), Footlight Parade ('33), Gold Diggers of 1933 ('33) are good examples that not all musicals have to be cheesy. With the Great Depression as their backdrop, these musicals are as energetic and fun to watch as they are an interesting social commentary of their time. Without a doubt, some of the "authenticity" we get is to do with their pre-dating the enforcement of the Production Code but dealing with social issues in a frank manner is one of the main characteristics of Warner Bros. movies of the Golden Age before and after July 1934 (when the Code started to be observed by the studios).

3. Swashbucklers with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland:

Without a doubt Flynn and de Havilland are one of Hollywood's hottest screen couples of all time - I'm sure it helped that they were actually friends. If Jack L. Warner was tight-fisted, certainly Flynn-de Havilland swashbucklers look everything but cheap! The couple starred in eight films together: Captain Blood ('35), The Charge of the Light Brigade ('36), The Adventures of Robin Hood and Four's a Crowd ('38), Dodge City and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex ('39), Santa Fe Trail ('40) and They Died with Their Boots On ('41).

4. Gangsters:

For many people the name Warner Bros. evokes gangster movies. As my list shows, the studio's output was varied but if there is one genre they excelled at is the gangster movie. They are all gritty but hugely enjoyable. Among the best: Little Caesar ('30), The Public Enemy ('31), and Scarface: The Shame of a Nation ('32).

5. Their many wonderful films:

Of course some of my favourite movies do not fit in any of the previous categories. Relatively low budgets don't necessarily mean poor quality as these films demonstrate: I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang ('32), The Maltese Falcon ('41), Sergeant York ('41), High Sierra ('41), Yankee Doodle Dandy ('42), Casablanca ('42), Mildred Pierce ('45), The Treasure of Sierra Madre ('48), A Star is Born ('54), Rebel Without a Cause ('55).

Queens of the MGM backlot

2010-11-18T20:47:00.004Z

In the 1930s and early 40s Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had many stars. In fact, “more stars than there are in heaven”, if we are to believe the studio’s own publicity. Their biggest stars were female, sometimes earning MGM the unofficial tag of “the women’s studio”.

If Warner Bros. had Bette Davis and Paramount Gloria Swanson (at least in silent movies) as queens of their backlots, MGM, of course, didn’t have one but three queens during the Golden Age.

Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer and Joan Crawford were all very different stars and each of them brought something unique to the films they made at the studio. Garbo was often a tragic heroine with Continental appeal; Shearer the glamorous housewife; and Crawford the most alluring shop girl in America, with a very tough interior.

Let’s look at their MGM careers individually:

Garbo

After a few successful films in Sweden and a major hit in Germany, Garbo was hired by Louis B. Mayer who bought her to Hollywood where she had a relatively short but intense career. She became a star immediately and remained very popular, particularly in the lucrative Western European market. She was one of the few stars to make an effortless transition from silent movies to “talkies”, always at MGM. Here’s a list of her movies:

Silent films:

The Torrent (1926)

The Temptress (1926)

Flesh and the Devil (1926)

Love (1927)

The Divine Woman (1928)

The Mysterious Lady (1928)

Wild Orchids (1929)

The Single Standard (1929)

The Kiss (1929)

Sound films:

Anna Christie (1930)

Romance (1931)

Anna Christie (in German) (1931)

Inspiration (1931)

Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise) (1931)

Mata Hari (1931)

Grand Hotel (1932)

As You Desire Me (1932)

Queen Christina (1933)

The Painted Veil (1934)

Anna Karenina (1935)

Camille (1936)

Conquest (1937)

Ninotchka (1939)

Two-Faced Woman (1941)

Shearer

She was already a star at Metro when she married Irving Thalberg, who was the greatest creative force in the studio until his death in 1936. Here’s the list of her credited appearances in MGM movies:

Silent films:

Broken Barriers (1924)

Married Flirts (1924)

He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

The Snob (1924)

Excuse Me (1925)

Lady of the Night (1925)

Pretty Ladies (1925)

A Slave of Fashion (1925)

The Tower of Lies (1925)

The Devil’s Circus (1926)

The Waning Sex (1926)

Upstage (1926)

The Demi-Bride (1927)

The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927)

The Latest from Paris (1928)

The Actress (1929)

A Lady of Chance (1929)

Sound films:

The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929)

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1929)

The Divorcee (1930)

Let Us Be Gay (1930)

Strangers May Kiss (1931)

A Free Soul (1931)

Private Lives (1931)

Smilin’ Through (1932)

Strange Interlude (1932)

Riptide (1934)

The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934)

Romeo and Juliet (1936)

Marie Antoinette (1938)

Idiot’s Delight (1939)

The Women (1939)

Escape (1940)

We Were Dancing (1942)

Her Cardboard Lover (1942)

Crawford

Her real name was Lucille Fay LeSueur. Her last name sounded too much like “le sewer” so it had to be changed to something less off-putting. She became a star at Metro but in her last few years chez L.B. Mayer her career went into decline.

When her contract with MGM was terminated by mutual consent in 1943, she moved over to Warner Bros. where she starred in one of her best films (and one of my all-time favourites) Mildred Pierce (1945). After her brief tenure at Warner Bros. she made many more films up to 1970 as an independent star with all major studios (including MGM and Warner Bros. - again) and some of the minors too, including Johnny Guitar (1954) and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane (1962) with Bette Davis.

Here’s the list of her credited appearances in MGM movies when she was under contract with them:

Silent films:

Sally, Irene and Mary (1925)

The Boob (1926)

Paris (1926)

Winners of the Wilderness (1927)

The Taxi Dancer (1927)

The Understanding Heart (1927)

The Unknown (1927)

Twelve Miles Out (1927)

Spring Fever (1927)

West Point (1928)

The Law of the Range (1928)

Rose-Marie (1928)

Across to Singapore (1928)

Four Walls (1928)

Our Dancing Daughters (1928)

Dream of Love (1928)

The Duke Steps Out (1929)

Our Modern Maidens (1929)

Sound films:

Untamed (1929)

Montana Moon (1930)

Our Blushing Brides (1930)

Paid (1930)

Dance, Fools, Dance (1931)

Complete Surrender (1931)

Laughing Sinners (1931)

This Modern Age (1931)

Possessed (1931)

Grand Hotel (1932)

Letty Lynton (1932)

Today We Live (1933)

Dancing Lady (1933)

Sadie McKee (1934)

Chained (1934)

Forsaking All Others (1934)

No More Ladies (1935)

I live My Life (1935)

The Gorgeous Hussy (1936)

Love on the Run (1936)

The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937)

The Bride Wore Red (1937)

Mannequin (1938)

The Shining Hour (1938)

Ice Follies of 1939 (1939)

The Women (1939)

Strange Cargo (1940)

Susan and God (1940)

A Woman’s Face (1941)

When Ladies Meet (1941)

Reunion in France (1942)

Above Suspicion (1943)

Of course, I haven’t seen most of these movies. I suspect that many of them are probably rather bad but I’m still curious to watch them, if possible. Out of this fascinating trio, only Crawford seems to have enjoyed a lasting career beyond MGM. So, perhaps, I could substitute some of the weaker films of her tenure at Metro for her better post 1943 films on my list of films to watch.

Between men: 'Spartacus' (1960)

2010-11-14T10:32:00.005Z

Stanley Kubrick's film Spartacus (1960) was restored in 1991 by Robert A. Harris to include some violent battle scenes and a homoerotic bath scene which had been previously cut (including its 1962 rerelease). The bath scene is between Roman general Crassus (Laurence Olivier) and his slave Antoninus (Tony Curtis). Using a "snails and oysters" metaphor, Crassus admits he is bisexual and tries to find out if Antoninus is open to the idea of sex with another man. At the time of the restoration the original dialogue had been lost so the scene had to be dubbed. Tony Curtis rerecorded his lines but, because Laurence Olivier was already dead, Anthony Hopkins had to stand in by mimicking Olivier's voice.

Here's the dialogue from that scene:

Crassus: Do you steal?

Antoninus: No, master.

Crassus: Do you lie?

Antoninus: Not if I can avoid it.

Crassus: Have you... ever dishonored the gods?

Antoninus: No, master.

Crassus': Do you refrain from these vices out of respect for moral virtues?

Antoninus: Yes, master.

Crassus: Do you eat oysters?

Antoninus: When I have them, master.

Crassus: Do you eat snails?

Antoninus: No, master.

Crassus: Do you consider the eating of oysters to be moral, and the eating of snails to be immoral?

Antoninus: No, master.

Crassus: Of course not. It is all a matter of taste, isn't it?

Antoninus: Yes, master.

Crassus: And taste is not the same as appetite, and therefore not a question of morals, hmm?

Antoninus: It could be argued so, master.

Crassus: My robe, Antoninus. My taste includes both snails and oysters. [approaches a balcony] Antoninus, look, across the river. There is something you must see. [looking toward Rome, as the garrison sets out] There, boy, is Rome. The might, the majesty, the terror of Rome. There is the power that bestrides the known world like a colossus. No man can withstand Rome. No nation can withstand her. How much less... a boy! Hmm? [chuckles] There is one way to deal with Rome, Antoninus. You must serve her. You must abase yourself before her. You must grovel at her feet. You must... love her. Isn't that so, Antoninus? [turns around, and sees Antoninus gone] Antoninus? Antoninus?

Arena: The Private Dirk Bogarde, Part 2 (BBC, 2001)

2010-11-13T21:07:00.005Z

This is part two of two of the BBC 2001 documentary The Private Dirk Bogarde. To watch part one, click here.

Arena: The Private Dirk Bogarde, Part 1 (BBC, 2001)

2010-11-13T21:07:00.004Z

This is part one of two of the BBC 2001 documentary The Private Dirk Bogarde. To watch part two, click here.

Falling in love again: 'The Blue Angel' (1931)

2010-11-09T20:58:00.004Z

The Blue Angel (1930) is the simultaneously-made English version of the first German "talkie", Der blaue Engel. Josef von Sternberg directed Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich in this film which charts the downfall of a man from upstanding professor to cabaret clown. Professor Rath (Jannings) starts frequenting the notorious club The Blue Angel after hearing about it from his male students. Soon he is mesmerised by showgirl Lola Lola (Dietrich). After a short love affair he asks her to marry him to which she revealingly responds by laughing. Despite Lola Lola’s reaction, they do get married. Rath quits teaching and, after his savings run out, he becomes a clown at The Blue Angel. The once dignified intellectual is now a pathetic figure to be laughed at. Only that the movie’s audience is most likely to pity him. I know I did. I find Rath’s downfall heartbreaking. This is a tragic story about the risk of letting us be consumed by unhealthy relationships which may even lead us to forget who we are.

The Blue Angel was the first in a very fruitful and interesting series of Hollywood films starring Dietrich under von Sternberg’s direction: Morocco (1930), Shanghai Express (1932), Blonde Venus (1932), etc. Von Sternberg established Dietrich as a vixen, the kind of woman over whom heterosexual men would lose their heads.

Movies for grown-ups: pre-Code Hollywood

2010-10-28T22:19:00.004+01:00

Recently, I have been primarily watching films from the 1930s. That decade is key in the history of American cinema for finally establishing sound movies or ‘talkies’, which had started in the late 1920s. That decade also saw the introduction of the Motion Picture Production Code or Hays Code, which provided censorship guidelines to films. I identify two main reasons for the introduction and enforcement of the code: firstly, in sound movies, dialogue had the potential to make them more explicit than before; and, secondly, the changes American society went through during the Depression years encouraged the studios to produce racier pictures.

The Production Code, which had been written by a Jesuit priest, was adopted by the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association in 1930; but it wasn’t enforced by the studios until 1934, following growing pressure from Christian groups. In doing so, Hollywood accepted to self-regulate (or censor itself) to being censored by federal, state or local government while also seeking to avoid boycots by conservative groups. Many of the films released before July 1934, would not have been made exactly as intended after that date because of the Code. In fact, films re-released afterwards had to be re-edited. Luckily, some have been restored to their original versions for our enjoyment. Pre-Code films of any genre can seem to us more modern and mature than anything produced between 1934 and 1968.

Some pre-Code movies I’ve recently watched and would recommend are The Public Enemy (1931), which had some of its violence edited out for re-release but which we can now enjoy in its full glory; the musical comedy Love Me Tonight (1932) with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, for which, sadly, no original prints exist; Marlene Dietrich’s American debut in Morocco (1930) and Shanghai Express (1932) both beautifully directed by Josef von Sternberg; She Done Him Wrong (1933) with naughty Mae West and a very young Cary Grant; the wonderful Warner Bros. Depression musicals 42nd Street, Footlight Parade and Gold Diggers of 1933 all of which Busby Berkeley choreographed in 1933; the early Capra movie starring Barbara Stanwyck The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933) and featuring an interracial romance; also starring Barbara Stanwyck is Baby Face (1933) about a woman who uses sex to manipulate men. These are all movies that do not seek to patronise or ‘protect’ their audience. In its history it has been very unusual for Hollywood to treat the public as adults (the current trend is to treat us like teenagers). What is now known as the pre-Code period is one of the rare instances when movies were truly made for adults.

The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933)

2010-10-20T20:51:00.007+01:00

Director Frank Capra is best remembered for his Americana: films like It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town 91936) Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Although these have their merits and remain relatively popular to this day, at present I want to write about an earlier, perhaps lesser-known, but really interesting movie he made before his career-long, patriotic idealised celebration of America. In 1933, his film The Bitter Tea of General Yen was the first ever movie to play at the Radio City Music Hall. Audiences largely stayed away and, instead of the programmed two-week run, the film closed on its eighth night. Reviews had been positive, however: The New York Times reviewer called it ‘a handsomely mounted affair’ although he also noticed that the story was ‘scarcely plausible but […] ha[d] the saving grace of being fairly entertaining’.

Capra’s early film is set in civil war torn China where a New England missionary, Megan Davis (Barbary Stanwyck) falls in love with the eponymous Chinese general (played by white actor Nils Asther). The Production Code, which forbade portrayals of miscegenation (inter-racial marriage and procreation), had not been enforced yet but public opinion in America was largely against these unions. The censorship guidelines in the Production Code, in the main, reflected the existing cultural and social anxieties present in America. This movie's portrayal of a white missionary’s increasing sexual attraction towards a Chinese man was intolerable to many viewers. This attraction is first revealed in a wonderful dream sequence in which both characters end up in bed (unthinkable in post Code movies, even with couples belonging to the same ethic group!).

If the film did poorly in the USA because of the portrayal of miscegenation, it was banned in many foreign markets for the same reason. The movie was never re-released, as other pre-Code films were, because no amount of editing could remove references to this taboo. It is an unusual work in Capra’s filmography which will surprise both those who can’t abide his later conformist movies and those who love them.

Sources:
The New York Times
The Guardian

I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932)

2010-10-17T11:17:00.017+01:00

Before the Production Code was enforced in 1934, Hollywood had the freedom to approach certain subjects which would later be barred, and to do so in a rather explicit way. Stories depicting crime were particularly affected by limitations imposed by the code. A great movie from the pre-code period is Warner‘s I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932) produced by Hal B. Wallis. It was one of the films directed by Mervyn LeRoy before his move to MGM as head of production in 1938 and it stars Paul Muni in a truly magnificent performance.

This controversial film criticises certain aspects of the United States legal system, particularly the harsh conditions chain gang prisoners had to endure. Former World War I soldier James Allen (Paul Muni) is sentenced to a Southern chain gang after being caught up in a small robbery. Eventually he manages to escape and go to Chicago where he develops an ascending career in the construction business. Unhappiness returns to his life when his lover, Marie Woods (Glenda Farrell), discovers he is a fugitive and blackmails him into marrying her. He doesn’t love his wife and when he asks her for a divorce, she refuses and turns him in. His return to the chain gang is even more sombre than before. When he escapes for the second time, he is forced into a life in the shadows with crime as his only option for surviving; the unjust legal system ruins Allen’s life, making a decent man into a criminal. No Hollywood happy ending.

Warner Bros. had a reputation for gritty and relatively dark movies. If this is true of their later movies, early 1930s products like I Am Fugitive could not have been as powerful once the Code was in place.

Top Hat (1935)

2010-10-13T18:07:00.008+01:00

Top Hat (RKO, 1935) is one of the most popular musicals (some say the best one) starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In the 1930s they made nine films together at RKO: Flying Down to Rio (1933), The Gay Divorcee (1934), Top Hat (1935), Roberta (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939). After ten years of separate careers, they were reunited by Arthur Freed at MGM for The Barkleys of Broadway (1949).

By 1935 musicals had become very sophisticated products and RKO had in Astaire and Rogers two of the most bankable musical stars imaginable. Top Hat is a very good example of the popularity of these two stars and the genre in which they excelled. Because their star personae by then had been entrenched in the popular imagination, the movie introduces the stars with a shot of their dancing feet rather than of their faces.

This movie was incredibly successful at the box office: it made $1,782,000 in the USA alone, making it the second biggest earner in 1935 after MGM’s Mutiny on the Bounty with Charles Laughton and Clark Gable. Critics also garnered Top Hat and its stars with praise; Andre Sennwald from The New York Times, who had been unconvinced by Ginger Roger as the most suitable dancing partner for Fred Astaire, declared ‘Miss Rogers, improving magnificently from picture to picture, collaborates perfectly with Mr. Astaire in Top Hat and is entitled to keep the job for life.’

Although the plot of this comedy of errors is fairly unremarkable and it is based on the hardly original premise of a mistaken identity, there are a few genuinely funny moments in the film. Undoubtedly, what makes this movie great are its musical numbers. This is hardly surprising when the music and the lyrics were composed by Irving Berlin; the film was produced by Pandro S. Berman and directed by Mark Sandrich.

Unlike later popular films of its genre, Top Hat is neither a backstage nor a barn yard musical but a sophisticated urban movie. Musicals, even more so than other kinds of films, are supposed to be fantasies. This one is set in an Art Deco version of Europe (London and Venice) of marbled floors and impossibly spacious rooms. In this cinematic world people swim in canals among sailing gondolas and, when they are not swimming, all men wear tuxedos and women stylish evening gowns. This is European elegance made in Hollywood, USA.

Top Hat is an absolute delight.

Cape Fear (1962, 1991)

2010-09-26T12:29:00.014+01:00

There are almost thirty years between the release of the original Cape Fear and its remake: the first film was released in 1962 and the second in 1991. Although, some details are different, the plot is essentially the same: an ex-convict seeks revenge from the man who sent him to jail. In the original Gregory Peck plays lawyer Sam Bowden, a man who would go to almost any length to defend his family. I say ‘almost’ because, in the end, he does not kill the man who has been harassing him and his family, Max Cady (Robert Mitchum), but, instead, sends him back to jail. Cady’s veiled threats to rape Bowden’s teenage daughter Nancy (Lori Martin) make the film at times, and even today, very uncomfortable to watch. The word ‘rape’ itself was removed from the script but the film was still deemed only suitable for adults by critics: The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called Cape Fear an ‘ordeal’ to watch and advised parents not to take their children.

Gregory Peck’s other major film role, also at Universal, in 1962 was as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Peck plays both characters almost identically in their virtuosity. Like with Finch, the audience is sympathetic towards Bowden and both characters are unequivocally to be read as ‘good’. The Bowdens are the ‘perfect’ family and we dread that anything horrible should happen to them.

In the remake, the members of the Bowden family are more coloured. Sam is played by Nick Nolte as rather edgy, and his chain-smoking wife, Leigh, is played by Jessica Lange. The couple are shown arguing and Sam, over all, comes across as temperamental, if not violent, a far cry from Peck’s portrayal. Their daughter, who is called Danielle in this version, and played by Juliette Lewis, is also very different from the Nancy of the original film. In the 1991 version, she actually meets Cady (Robert De Niro) and shares with him an overlong and ambiguous seduction scene at her high school, culminating in a kiss. While that scene is very uncomfortable to watch, I find its counterpart in the original far scarier: when Nancy sees Cady outside her school, as she is waiting for her mother, she panics and, after trying to hide in the school, gets startled by a janitor and runs back outside and is hit by a car.

Both films use some of the horror movie conventions popular at the time: the 1962 film is most obviously influenced by Hitchcock while the 1991 version is gory and violent enough to satisfy its (mostly young male) audience. The remake is also more morally complex. Reviewing the later film for The New York Times, critic Janet Maslin called the original ‘a one-note one between good and evil’ and comments that ‘Mr. Scorsese (the remake’s director), not being prone to such oversimplifications, has done his best to muddy the waters,’ ‘he has invested the Bowdens with a history of marital infidelity, turned their daughter into a rebellious nymphet, altered the circumstances of the rape trial and given Max’s vengeance a biblical dimension’. I would add that, crucially, all these elements present in the Scorsese version could not possibly have been present in the original. Where the word ‘rape’ was taken out from the original to obtain the censors’ approval, the most recent film not only uses the word but actually graphically depicts Cady raping Sam’s friend, Lori Davis (Illeana Douglas). Adult scenes, bad language and drug use are responsible for the movie being rated R by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America).

Some critics condemned the remake’s violence; Hal Hinson from The Washington Post considered it ‘far from Scorsese at his best; in fact, it’s our most interesting filmmaker’s least interesting work’. This reaction is not dissimilar to Crowther’s own to the original movie: ‘this is really one of those shockers that provokes disgust and regret. There seems to be no reason for it but to agitate anguish and a violent, vengeful urge that is offered some animal satisfaction by that murderous fight at the end’. Undoubtedly both versions, different as they are, did not fail to shock their respective audiences. The insinuations of the original and the graphic violence of the remake both met with similar critical reaction.

Sources:
- Crowther, Bosley, 'Screen: Pitiless. Shocker: Mitchum stalks Peck in Cape Fear , New York Times, 19 April 1962.
- Hinson, Hal, 'Cape Fear', Washington Post, 15 November 1991.
- Maslin, Janet, 'Martin Scorsese Ventures Back to Cape Fear, New York Times, 10 November, 1991.
- Thain, Gerald J., "Cape Fear": Two Versions and Two Visions Separated by Thirty Years, Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 28, No. 1, Law and Film (Mar., 2001), pp. 40-4.

Why I blog

2010-09-21T18:51:00.013+01:00

I started this blog in June this year as a place where I could explore the history of film and television. At the time, I was writing an MA dissertation in English literature (I was writing about the eighteenth-century novel Tristram Shandy, if you’re interested) while working fulltime as a technical writer, so the little free time I had I mostly employed in watching movies. Writing about some of the movies I was watching at the time only added to my pleasure. Now that I have completed my dissertation and my literary studies are over (at least, for now), I have far more spare time which I would like to use to explore my other passion: films and, to a lesser extent, television. Will I spend more time watching movies and shows? Probably not (I already spend enough time doing that) but I will be reading and writing about them a lot more.

I’m interested in film and television academically; so much of my reading is of theorists and academics of those two media. I’m also interested in what fans think and have to say about movies and TV shows because their insights can be so valuable (see some of the blogs I follow).

Why Hollywood?

Everybody knows that “Hollywood” is really shorthand for mainstream American cinema (and television) and not a specific geographic location in Southern California. Film and television are products of the 20th century (which continues to prosper into the 21st century), an era marked by the dominance of the USA on the world stage. America has the largest and most important film (and television) industry in the world and, therefore, well worth studying. We should not forget that this American entertainment industry was largely founded by European émigrés and some of its greatest artists and technicians were born (and sometimes even grew up and learned their “trade”) elsewhere. The enduring worldwide popularity of Hollywood products and the industry’s reliance on its very lucrative overseas markets, in my opinion, make American cinema more deserving of the label “world cinema” than any other.

I don’t think, however, that this makes Hollywood pictures necessarily better than, say, French, Japanese or Brazilian ones. Far from it! There are many films I love which are not American (see my favourite movies page) and any national cinema is worth studying. Because of its sheer influence, though, I believe that I must start my study of film by looking at Hollywood. I will, from time to time, write about non-American films. I have in the pipeline projects about British and other European cinemas, for example.

Why old films?

When it comes to American films, I tend to prefer products of what is known as Classical Hollywood (this is purely a matter of personal taste). Sometimes, when it is relevant, more recent films crop up in my discussion of older ones (see my post on All That Heaven Allows). I am not very good with keeping up to date with the latest film releases but if there is any recent movie I feel I have something to say about, it’ll end up here.

And how about TV?

So far I haven’t written much about TV and, I suspect (once more, this has to do with my personal taste), TV shows will be secondary to film both on my viewing schedule and when it comes to my writing. I think that television is worthy of study and I have enjoyed (and still do) shows that many people have written about like Twin Peaks or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example. I also like old American shows like I Love Lucy (see my post on Lucille Ball) or The Mary Tyler Moore Show. So, I am sure TV will find its way in at some point.

I will try to make my future posts both informative and entertaining. I hope people enjoy reading them and are encouraged to make comments.

Johnny Guitar (1954)

2010-09-12T17:58:00.014+01:00

Johnny Guitar was originally promoted as Joan Crawford's 'greatest triumph' and it is amongst her most celebrated performances. It belongs to the star's later career when she had left the studio system behind: first she had been with MGM from 1924 until 1943, and then with Warner Bros. until 1952. The film was produced and distributed by the independent studio Republic Pictures, which mainly specialised in Westerns and B movies. La Crawford, who was then over 50, plays saloon owner Vienna; somebody described as 'a woman who is more of a man and sometimes makes you forget you're one'. After five years apart, Vienna sends for her former lover Johnny Logan, now known as Johnny Guitar (Sterling Hayden). Vienna is anticipating the arrival of the rail road and has plans to build a town with the help of Johnny. Vienna's nemesis, Emma Small (Mercedes McCambridge), is ferociously opposed to those plans and hell bent on destroying them and Vienna.

Mercedes McCambridge as Emma Small.

In many ways Vienna and Emma represent opposite values: town versus country, tradition versus progress. Vienna may wear pants but she possesses a sexual femininity of which Emma seems incapable. The leader of the local gang, Dancin' Kid (Scott Brady), makes Emma 'feel like a woman, and that scares her'. Perhaps she despises Vienna because she is what she cannot be (a straight woman?). Emma rallies all the farmers against Vienna for the threat she represents to their way of life. However, Emma is beyond self-preservation. She is gleefully destructive: destroying Vienna gives her immense pleasure. In the end, however, it is Vienna who kills Emma and there is a happy ending for her and Johnny.

On the Town (1949)

2010-09-04T23:06:00.012+01:00

The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called the MGM musical On The Town 'a delightful entertainment for all ages, sexes and seasonal moods' where 'six very spirited young people have great fun'. I would suggest that the epithet 'spirited' should be changed to 'horny' but, of course, a Times reviewer writing in 1949 would not have been able to use that word. On the Town charts the one-day shore leave of three sailors in New York City. Chip (Frank Sinatra) wants to go sightseeing but his two buddies Gabey (Gene Kelly) and Ozzy (Jules Munshin) are more interested in meeting girls. Amusngly Chip is the first one to meet a girl who immediately likes him (cab driver Brunhilda played by Betty Garrett). Eventually, the other two sailors also find girls: Claire (Ann Miller) falls for Ozzy at a museum and Ivy (Vera-Ellen) is seduced by Gabey's admiration for her (he erroneously thinks she's a celebrity) and his small town charm (in fact, but unbeknown to Gabey, both he and Ivy come from the fictional Meadowview, Indiana). The men have only 24 hours in the city and the women they meet know this; nobody is after anything remotely serious or lasting. The movie is about a group of young people's search for casual sex. The characters casualness is full of joie de vivre which is reflected on the highly energetic music numbers.

This movie is based on a 1944 Broadway musical of the same title but only three songs of the original show were used on the movie: I Feel Like I'm Not Out of Bed Yet; New York, New York; and Miss Turnstiles Ballet (instrumental). The ones added for the film were: Prehistoric Man; When You Walk Down Mainstreet with Me; You're Awful; On the Town, Count on Me; and A Day in New York (instrumental).

The movie ends with the three sailors going back on board at 6.00 am. the following morning while three others get off their boat and reprise the song New York, New York: the search for a good time starts again.

Source: The New York Times.

Hollywood's Greatest Year

2010-08-28T19:06:00.069+01:00

1939 is known as 'Hollywood's greatest year'. Here are the reasons why:

Number of people working in the movie industry in the USA: 177,420

Number of people specifically working in movie production in the USA: 33,687

Amount of money spent on producing movies: $187 million

Average weekly attendance in the USA: 85 million

Number of pictures produced by the majors: 388

Top female star: Bette Davis

Movies starring Better Davis: The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, The Old Maid, and Dark Victory.

Here is the list of the main Hollywood pictures of 1939 with some facts:

Confessions of a Nazi Spy

1. A Warner Bros. / First National Pictures movie directed by Anatole Litvak.
2. It was written by Milton Krims and John Wexley upon the book Nazi Spies in America (1938) by Leon G. Turrou.
3. It stars Edward G. Robinson, Francis Lederer, George Sanders and Paul Lukas.
4. It had an estimated budget of $1,500,000.
5. It won the National Board of Review Award for Best Film.

Drums Along the Mohawk

1. A Twentieth Century Fox picture directed by John Ford.
2. It was written by Lamar Trotti and Sonya Levien based on the novel by Walter D. Edmonds.
3. It stars Claudette Colbert and Henry Fonda.
4. It was nominated for two Oscars but won none.

Dust Be My Destiny

1. A Warner Bros. picture directed by Lewis Seiler.
2. It was written by Robert Rossen, based upon the novel by Jerome Odlum.
3. It stars John Garfield and Priscilla Lane.

Gone with the Wind

1. This epic movie was made by Selznick International Pictures in association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
2. It was directed by Victor Fleming, George Cukor (uncredited) and Sam Wood (uncredited).
3. It was written by Sidney Howard, based upon the novel by Margaret Mitchell.
4. It stars Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland.
5. It won eight Oscars: Best Actress in a Leading Role (Vivien Leigh); Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Hattie McDaniel); Best Art Direction (Lyle R. Wheeler); Best Cinematography, Color (Ernest Haller and Ray Rennahan); Best Director (Victor Fleming); Best Film Editing (Hal C. Kern and James E. Newcom); Best Picture; Best Writing, Screenplay (Sidney Howard); Technical Achievement Award (R.D. Musgrave) and nominated for a further five. It also won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress (Vivien Leigh).

Jesse James

1. A Twentieth Century Fox picture directed by Henry King.
2. It was written by Nunnally Johnson.

3. It stars Tyrone Power, Henry Fonda and Nancy Kelly.
4. It had an estimated budget of $1,600,000.

Juárez

1. A movie by Warner Bros. / First National Pictures directed by William Dieterle.
2. It was written by John Huston, based upon the novel by Bertita Harding and the novel by Franz Werfel.
3. It stars Paul Muni, Bette Davis, Brian Aherne, Claude Rains and John Garfield.
4. It was nominated for two Oscars but won none.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

1. A Columbia picture directed by Frank Capra.
2. It was written by Sidney Buchman, based upon a story by Lewis R. Foster.
3. It stars Jean Arthur, James Stewart and Claude Rains.
4. It won the Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story (Lewis R. Foster) and was nominated for a further ten. It also won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor (James Stewart).

Ninotchka

1. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture directed by Ernst Lubitsch.
2. It was written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch.
3. It stars Greta Garbo (in a rare comic role 'Garbo laughs'), Melvyn Douglas, Ina Claire and Bela Lugosi.
4. It was nominated for four Oscars but won none.

Only Angels Have Wings

1. A Columbia Picture directed by Howard Hawks.
2. It was written by Jules Furthman.
3. It stars Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess and Rita Hayworth.
4. It was nominated for two Oscars but won none.

The Rains Came

1. A Twentieth Century Fox production directed by Clarence Brown.
2. It was written by Philip Dunne and Julien Josephson, based upon the novel by Louis Bromfield.

3. It stars Myna Loy, Tyrone Power and George Brent.
4. It won the Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects (Fred Sersen and Edmund H. Hansen) and was nominated for a further five.

The Roaring Twenties

1. A Warner Bros. picture directed by Raoul Walsh.
2. It was written by Jerry Wald, Richard Macaulay and Robert Rossen.
3. It stars James Cagney, Priscilla Lane, Humphrey Bogart, Gladys George and Jeffrey Lynn.

Stagecoach

1. A picture by Walter Wanger Productions directed by John Ford.
2. It was written by Dudley Nichols upon the story by Ernest Haycox.
3. It stars Claire Trevor, John Wayne, Andy Devine, John Carradine and George Bancroft.
4. It won two Oscars: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Thomas Mitchell) and Best Music, Scoring and nominated for a further five. It also won the New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Director (John Ford).

The Story of Alexander Graham Bell

1. A Cosmopolitan Productions movie for Twentieth Century Fox directed by Irving Cummings.
2. It is also known as The Modern Miracle.
3. It was written by Lamar Trotti upon a story by Ray Harris.
4. It stars Don Ameche, Loretta Young, Henry Fonda, Charles Coburn and Gene Lockhart.
5. It cost an estimated $1,500,000.

The Wizard of Oz

1. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture, produced by Mervyn LeRoy and Arthur Freed (uncredited) and directed by Victor Fleming, George Cukor (uncredited), Mervyn LeRoy (uncredited) and, for the Kansas scenes, King Vidor (uncredited).
2. It was written by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson. Edgar Allan Woolf (and many other uncredited contributing writers), based upon the book by L. Frank Baum.
3. It stars Judy Garland, Frank Margon, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Harley, Billie Burke and Margaret Hamilton.
4. It had an estimated budget of $2,777,000.

Young Mr. Lincoln

1. A Cosmopolitan Productions picture for Twentieth Century Fox, directed by John Ford.
2. It was written by Lamar Trotti.
3. It stars Henry Fonda, Alice Brady, Marjorie Weaver and Arleen Whelan.
4. It had an estimated budget of $1,500,000.
5. It was nominated for an Oscar.

Sources:

Richard Maltby, Hollywood Cinema (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008).
IMDb.com

Tarzan and His Mate (1934)

2010-08-17T23:09:00.009+01:00

This MGM adventure movie is the second in the Tarzan series starring Johnny Weissmuller. It was released before the Production Code was enforced; this affects the picture in different ways, some of which I'd like to point out. For example, although Jane (played by Maureen O'Sullivan) refers to herself as Tarzan's 'wife' earlier on in the picture, she does it only after it is very obviously implied that they have had sex.

There is also some partial (and not so partial) nudity. The eroticism in this movie (I do think the movie is erotically charged) is derived not so much from the lack of clothing but by the contrast between the fully-clothed 'civilised' Harry Holt (Neil Hamilton) and Martin Arlington (Paul Cavanagh) and the loincloth-clad Tarzan and Jane. Holt tries to seduce Jane by offering her gifts such as clothes (interestingly including underwear) and perfume, to which she has no longer access since she's lived in the jungle with Tarzan.

Another element that adds to the eroticism in the movie resides in its action; all physical activity by its protagonists seems to hint at a very active sex life between them. Their youth, strength, and beauty plus their defiance to common Western rules of behaviour (including their already mentioned shedding of clothes) make both Tarzan and Jane sexual rebels. We may not see them having intercourse (even in Pre-Code days that was unthinkable) but we see them doing a lot of running and swinging from trees. They clearly love each other: Jane does not succumb to, nor is she even tempted by, Holt advances; and Tarzan risks his life to save her. Their love is intensely passionate and we know they do not spend much time talking (Tarzan barely mumbles a few phrases although 'I love you' to Jane is one of them).

Tarzan and His Mate endures not only as an example of Pre-Code Hollywood but as a highly entertaining movie which adults can enjoy as much as children (or perhaps even more!).

The Fly (1958)

2010-08-03T18:21:00.006+01:00

In The Fly (1958) scientist André Delambre (Al Hedison) is found dead with his head and one of his arms crushed in a hydraulic press. His wife Helene (Patricia Owens), who is in the scene of the crime, confesses to have killed him. She secludes herself in her bedroom and displays a very strange obsession with flies, particularly about one with white hair. André's brother, François (Vincent Price), wants to find out the truth of what happened. He lies to Helene saying that he has caught the white-haired fly to prompt her to confess. Soon after Helene begins to tell her story the movie starts to show us what happened in a flashback, thus cutting out her narration of the events. The flashback's narrative is framed by Helene's confession, which is resumed at the moment when we are shown the killing of André. We can, therefore, divide the movie into three acts:

- First act: we are introduced to the fictional universe of the picture in medias res. All major characters (André, François, Helene and inspector Charas) are established; although André is off-screen (he's, well, dead) we learn about him, for example, that he was a scientist, was married to Helene and had a child. At this point it is François who provides much of the information the audience needs to sustain attention: thanks to him we know that Helene loved her husband; otherwise we might assume that she is simple deranged. The initial confusion leads us to one question: why would a devoted wife kill her husband? Her love for her husband makes us intrigued about her motivations in killing him. André's brother is also instrumental in moving the story along: Helene confesses only because François lies to her about having caught the white-haired fly.

- Second act: Helene's confession leads to a flashback: we are shown what happened. In this act we learn that the Delambres were a very happy and 'traditional' family. André is conducting experiments with a matter transporting device which keeps him isolated in his basement laboratory for days on end. The experiment goes wrong when André tries to transport himself and a fly gets caught in the booth with him. Fly and man mixed their atoms; now André has the head and arm (or rather, leg) of a fly, and a fly has his miniature head. André needs to find the (white-haired) fly to reverse the process. We find this out at the same time as Helene does in the flashback. However, we have access to actions which she would have found out about later: for example, André experimenting with the family's cat. We are shown this experiment as it happens, before André tells his wife about it. Unable to find the white-haired fly, André destroys all evidence of his experiments and asks his wife to destroy his head and arm using the hydraulic press. She carries out his instructions but is found out immediately after.

- Third act: the flashback ends. François believes her but inspector Charas (Herbert Marshall), unable to find any evidence that supports her wild confession, arranges her interment. At the last minute, François finds the white-haired fly caught in a spider's web in the garden. Both he and the inspector take a close look at the fly only to see that it has André's miniature head and is screaming 'help me!' They immediately kill the fly and stop Helene from being taken away. The final scene is one of familial harmony with Helene, her son and François in the garden. She is now dressed in black for the first time in the movie. Not merely a conventional sign of mourning, for the viewer her dress marks resolution; the picture can now end.

Race as entertainment in Imitation of Life (1959)

2010-07-26T18:22:00.010+01:00

There are perhaps very few subjects that Hollywood movies find more difficult to deal with than race. If we understand Hollywood movies as primarily entertainment products (and I do), we will conclude that it must be very tricky for the industry to produce pictures which deal with serious topics and still manage to be 'entertaining'. There have always been, of course, many movies that implicitly or explicitly deal with race in an American context (sometimes, American anxieties around this issue are transported to other cultural settings). Arguably, any film featuring black people (or any other ethnic group) can be seen as dealing with the issue of race. Black people are the most important group because of its size and its visibility in 'real' America (other groups are much smaller or can potentially assimilate more easily). African Americans largely remain under or misrepresented in Hollywood.

Juanita Moore as Annie

The Universal picture Imitation of Life (1959) produced by Ross Hunter, directed by Douglas Sirk, and starring Lana Turner, Juanita Moore, John Gavin, Susan Kohner and Sandra Dee is an interesting example of Hollywood's treatment of the issue of race in America. This film is a remake of an earlier one made in 1934 and starring Claudette Colbert and based on a novel of the same title by Fannie Hurst. My commentary, though, is only about the 1959 version. In this later film, Lora Meredith (Turner) is a widow struggling to find work as an actress while raising her daughter Suzie (played as a child by Terry Burnham). The movie opens in Coney Island where Lora, who has lost Suzie, finds her being looked after by Annie (Moore). Suzie is playing with Annie's daughter Sarah Jane (played as a child by Karin Dicker). Because Annie is black and Sarah Jane is light-skinned, initially Lora (like possibly most of the audience) wrongly assumes that Annie is her nanny and not her mother. The misunderstanding, though, is soon cleared: Annie explains that Sarah Jane's father was a light-skinned black man who left Annie before their child was born. Lorna decides to let both Annie and Sarah Jane live with her and Suzie in her cold-water apartment in Brooklyn. Rather than as a friend, Annie acts as Lorna's loyal maid for the remainder of the film. Initially Lorna does not pay Annie but gives her only bed and board. However, even when Lorna's economic situation improves, it is never made explicit whether she pays her at all.

Early on it becomes very apparent that Sarah Jane rejects her ethnicity and resents her mother: she refuses to play with a black doll and, at school, lies about her origins. Lorna's acting career takes off but the quartet continues to live together (now in much nicer surroundings). As a young woman, Sarah Jane (played by Susan Kohner) continues to try to pass for white: first with the goal of finding love and marrying her way out of 'being black'; although her white boyfriend beats her up as soon as he finds out that she really is black. After this episode, she finds work as a cabaret performer at a New York City club but, once her mother shows up one night and Sarah Jane is 'outed' as black, she decides to move to California alone. Mother and daughter are reunited only once before Annie's death when she tracks down Sarah Jane. In a scene fraught with emotion, Annie agrees to never bother her daughter again with the only condition that she be allowed to hug her one last time. A poignant moment is when, at the end of their reunion and in front of her new friend, Sarah Jane pretends that Annie is her old nanny and her mother goes along with this; with tear-filled eyes, Sarah Jane mouths the word 'mommy' after saying goodbye. Viewers can see Sarah Jane mouthing the word thanks to the close-up she is afforded at that moment but we also know that neither her friend nor her mother can see this gesture as she is not facing them but us.

Susan Kohner

It could be derived from my summary that this movie offers a sensitive account of both the mother and and daughter relationship and the issue of race. And it does, but only partially. Or rather, so much more happens on the screen that we could easily ignore what I have just described and still enjoy the film. For example, we are given a long and highly 'entertaining' account of how Lora makes it in the theatrical world, her love life and relationship with her own daughter Suzie (played as a young woman by Sandra Dee). Lana Turner is the star of the movie and she fulfils her glamorous role by, among other things, wearing clothes with an estimated total cost of over $1 million.

Lana Turner

Sarah Jane is also a stage performer although unlike Lora, who is a serious actress, she is shown as a scantly dressed chorus girl on two occasions. An interesting fact is that, instead of using light-skinned African American actresses, Sarah Jane was played by two actresses of Jewish decent (Susan Kohner's parents were Jewish Czech and Mexican). Having a non-black actress playing the part of a light-skinned African American, if anything, emphasises the absurdity of racism, whether this was the intention behind the casting decision or not.

Like other movies by Douglas Sirk, Imitation of Life was commercially successful but critically dismissed as a 'soap opera' at the time of its original release.

All That Heaven Allows (1955)

2010-07-24T23:36:00.006+01:00

All That Heaven Allows (1955) is a romance movie produced by Ross Hunter, directed by Douglas Sirk and distributed by Universal. It stars Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson.

The movie is set in a quiet New England town in the 1950s

The love story between an upper-middle class widow, Cary Scott (Wyman), and her younger gardener, Ron Kirby (Hudson), and the disapproval it is met with by her grown-up children and friends have been reworked and imitated in recent years: most notable examples are perhaps Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), Todd Hayne's Far From Heaven (2002) and François Ozon's 8 Femmes (2002). Fassbinder's is a sensitive film about racist prejudice in Western Germany while Ozon only takes certain visual elements (the deer, the snowy-winter setting, some of the dresses and hairstyles, the round window in the bedroom), and inserted them in his amusing musical comedy murder-mystery movie which, otherwise, bears no resemblance to Sirk's drama. I don't have much to say about Hayne's effort because I find it quite uninspiring.

8 Femmes

Now, going back to the 1950s original, it is possible (if misguided) to dismiss this picture as melodramatic nonsense. It is interesting to note that the film largely received bad reviews when it was first released. I believe, though, that there are many aspects worth studying about this movie. I will only point out some of those I find most interesting.

Cary has just fallen in love with Ron

Theorist Richard Maltby in his book Hollywood Cinema has written about the difference between point of view and viewpoint. To put it simply, the spectator's viewpoint is wherever the camera is pointing, whereas characters in a picture might have different points of view on what is happening. In All That Heaven Allows our point of view as spectators must coincide with that of Cary because from the start of the film she is in (almost) every scene, and Ron is first seen only in the background while she is talking to her friend Sarah Warren (Agnes Moorhead).

Cary dressed in red indicates a 'readiness' for romantic love

Objects like the Wedgewood teapot Ron restores for Cary, which she'll drop and break to pieces, or nature: the branch of the 'Golden Rain' tree that he gives her or the deer that can be seen through his window in the last scene, are all charged with symbolism. Although this symbolism may perhaps seem obvious, it is very effective in telling the story. There are many examples of this throughout the movie.

Cary's world before she meets Ron is 'for members exclusively'

The use of colour is also interesting. For example, when Cary's daughter Kay (Gloria Talbott) violently disapproves of her mother's relationship with Ron, the multicoloured light coming through the round window and projecting on their faces only emphasises that their discussion is fraught with drama.

Jacqueline De Wit plays the gossiping Mona Plash

The final aspect deserving attention that I'd like to mention is the possibility of studying this movie as a commentary on women's lives in the 1950s in America. The question of whether the film is a critique of what some may see as 1950s conformism is an interesting one because Cary's character ultimately does not conform. It is true, however, that she only overcomes her fears once she realises that she has nothing to be fearful about: her best friend Sarah always backed her; her son Ned (William Reynolds) is off to France for a year; and her daughter Kay, after announcing that she is engaged to be married, begs her forgiveness for having disapproved of the relationship.

Cary's children give her a television set for Christmas so she doesn't have to 'feel lonely'.

Cary is tellingly framed by the television set

Cary is finally back 'home' to Ron

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)

2010-07-22T18:10:00.004+01:00

The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) is a Warner Bros. action-filled movie. The studio contract players Errol Flynn (as Robin Hood) and Olivia de Havilland (as Lady Marian) were reunited for yet another successful swashbuckler to be directed by Michael Curtiz. Both stars remain magnetically attractive throughout the movie: de Havilland's beauty is captured in many carefully photographed close-ups, while Flynn manages to look masculine despite his outfit (tights and sequins, really?).

Olivia de Havilland and Errol Flynn in Technicolor glory.

Much of the joy in watching this film, however, comes from the actors in supporting roles. I'm thinking specifically about Claude Rains (as King John) and Una O'Connor (as Bess, Lady Marian's nurse). Both artists, and not the men in tights, are responsible for adding welcome camp to the picture.

Una O'Connor

Claude Rains

This 'American' movie based on an English legend was made by a studio owned by immigrant Polish Jews (Warner Bros.); directed by a Hungarian Jew who had been head-hunted by the studio in London: Manó Kertész Kaminer from Budapest, Hungary (then Austria-Hungary) who, having started his directorial career in his native country as Mihály Kertész, became Michael Curtiz in the USA (although he always maintained a very poor grasp of the English language); and starred by an Australian from Tasmania (Flynn) and a Japanese-born American-raised Briton (de Havilland). This mishmash of nationalities is fairly typical of 1930s and 1940s Hollywood.

The movie was justifiably filmed in Technicolor which was then mostly reserved for spectacular products, chiefly musicals. Sherwood Forest was never so sunny or colourful. The sets are very impressive; the acrobatics, the archery, and the many sword fights are truly spectacular. This film still has the power to capture viewers' imaginations.

It Happened One Night (1934)

2010-07-20T21:54:00.003+01:00

As MGM did not have a movie project for Clark Gable, he was loaned to Columbia to make picture with the raising starlet Claudette Colbert. Frank Capra directed this hit movie which, to this day, remains one of the best romantic comedies ever made.

The 'Walls of Jericho' prevent any sexual encounter between Peter Warne (Gable) and Ellie Andrews (Colbert).

Hitch-hiking to New York City.

Colbert's traffic-stopping leg: a 'golden moment' in the history of cinema.

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

2010-07-18T20:04:00.007+01:00

Title: The Bad and the Beautiful
Director(s): Vincente Minnelli
Producer(s): John Houseman
Writer(s): Charles Schnee, George Bradshaw (story)
Cast: Lana Turner (Georgia Lorrison), Kirk Douglas (Jonathan Shields), Walter Pidgeon (Harry Pebbel), Dick Powell (James Lee Bartlow), Barry Sullivan (Fred Amiel), Gloria Grahame (Rosemary Bartlow), Gilbert Roland (Victor 'Gaucho' Ribera)
Music: David Raksin
Editor: Conrad A. Nervig
Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date (s): December 1952
Running time: 118 minute
Country: United States of America
Language: English

To Be or Not To Be (1942)

2010-07-18T20:01:00.004+01:00

Title: To Be or Not to Be
Director(s): Ernst Lubitsch
Producer(s): Ernst Lubitsch
Writer(s): Melchior Lengyel, Edwin Justus Mayer
Cast: Carol Lombard (Maria Tura), Jack Benny (Joseph Tura), Robert Stack (Liet. Stanislav Sobinski), Felix Bressart (Greenberg), Sig Ruman (Col. Ehrhardt).
Cinematographer(s): Rudolph Maté
Music: Werner R. Heyman, Miklós Rózsa (uncredited)
Editor: Dorothy Spencer
Distributor: United Artists
Release date (s): March 6, 1942
Running time: 99 minutes
Country: United States of America
Language: English

The Lady Eve (1941)

2010-07-18T19:59:00.005+01:00

Title: The Lady Eve
Director(s): Preston Sturges
Producer(s): Paul Jones, Buddy G. DeSylva (uncredited)
Writer(s): Preston Sturges, Monckton Hoffe (story)
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck (Jean), Henry Fonda (Charles), Charles Coburn ('Colonel' Harrington), Eugene Pallette (Mr. Pike), William Demarest (Muggsy)
Cinematographer(s): Victor Milner
Music: Phil Boutelje, Charles Bradshaw, Gil Grau, Sigmund Krumgold, John Leipold, Leo Shuken (all uncredited)
Editor: Stuart Gilmore
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Release date (s): February 25, 1941 (New York City), March 21 (general)
Running time: 94 minutes
Country: United States of America
Language: English

Wuthering Heights (1939)

2010-07-18T19:58:00.004+01:00

Title: Wuthering Heights
Director(s): William Wyler
Producer(s): Samuel Goldwyn
Writer(s): Charles MacArthur, Ben Hecht, Emily Bronte (novel)
Cast: Merle Oberon (Cathy), Laurence Olivier (Heathcliff), David Niven (Edgar), Donald Crisp (Dr. Kenneth), Geraldine Fitzgerald (Isabella), Hugh Williams (Hindley)
Cinematographer(s): Gregg Toland
Music: Alfred Newman
Editor: Daniel Mandell
Distributor: United Artists
Release date (s): April 13, 1939
Running time: 103 minutes
Country: United States of America
Language: English

Dodsworth (1936)

2010-07-18T19:44:00.003+01:00

Title: Dodsworth
Director(s): William Wyler
Producer(s): Samuel Goldwyn, Merrit Hulburd
Writer(s): Sidney Howard (play), Sinclair Lewis (novel)
Cast: Walter Huston (Sam Dodsworth), Ruth Chatterton (Fran Dodsworth), David Nevin (Captain Clyde Lockert) Paul Lukas (Arnold Iselin), Mary Astor (Mrs. Edith Cortright)
Cinematographer(s): Rudolph Newman
Music: Alfred Newman
Editor: Daniel Mandell
Distributor: United Artists
Release date (s): September 23, 1936
Running time: 101 minutes
Country: United States of America
Language: English

A middle-age wealthy American couple go on a lifetime trip to Europe and as soon as they set forth, their marriage starts falling apart. A remarkable movie about Americans in Europe and the pursuit of happiness.

Mary Astor as Edith Cortright

Camille (1936)

2010-06-26T18:28:00.005+01:00

Title: Camille
Director(s): George Cuckor
Producer(s): Irving Thalberg and Bernard H. Hyman
Writer(s): James Hilton, Zoe Akins, Frances Marion, Alexandre Dumas, fils (novel)
Cast: Greta Garbo (Marguerite Gautier, Robert Taylor (Armand Duval), Lionel Barrymore (Monsieur Duval), Jessie Ralph (Nanine), Henry Daniell (Baron de Varville), Leonore Ulric (Olympe), Laura Hope Crews (Prudence Duvernoy), Rex O'Malley (Gaston)
Cinematographer(s): William H. Daniels, KarlFreund
Music: Herbert Stothart, Edward Ward
Editor: Margaret Booth
Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date (s): December 12, 1939
Running time: 109 minutes
Country: United States of America
Language: English

This 1936 MGM romantic film is based upon the 1852 French novel La Dame aux Camélias by Alexandre Dumas, fils. Its budget was $1,486,000 and it had a worldwide gross revenue of $2,842,000. The more recent movie Moulin Rouge! (2001) directed by Baz Luhrmann borrows heavily from Camille's plot.

She Done Him Wrong (1933)

2010-06-26T18:10:00.005+01:00

Title: She Done Him Wrong
Director(s): Lowell Sherman
Producer(s): William LeBaron
Writer(s): Mae West (play Diamond Lil), Harvey F. Thew and John Bright
Cast: Mae West (Lady Lou), Cary Grant (Capt. Cummings), Owen Moore (Chick Clark), Gilbert Roland (Serge Stanieff), Noah Beery, Sr. (Gus Jordan), David Landau (Dan Flynn), Rafaela Ottiano (Russian Rita), Dewey Robinson (Spider Kane) and Rochelle Hudson (Sally)
Cinematographer: Charles Lang
Music: John Leipold (uncredited)
Editor: Alexander Hall
Distributor: Paramount Pictures
Release date(s): January 27, 1933
Running time: 66 minutes
Country: United States of America
Language: English

This 1933 comedy by Paramount precedes the Motion Picture Code (popularly known as the Hays code) which imposed censorship guidelines for Hollywood movies from 1934 until 1968. Although the code had been adopted in 1968. Although the code had been adopted in 1930, it wasn't enforced until 1934; She Done Him Wrong is an example of a picture which largely ignored it.

The most important legacy of this movie is Mae West's much-imitated style of dialogue which is plagued by innuendo and double entendres. West and a young Cary Grant clearly managed to seduce American audiences, turning a $200,000 budget movie into a $2,000,000 grossing success.

Grand Hotel (1932)

2010-06-21T16:39:00.006+01:00

Title: Grand Hotel
Director(s): Edmund Goulding
Producer(s): Irving Thalberg
Writer(s): William A. Drake, Béla Balázs, Vicki Baum (novel)
Cast: Greta Garbo (Grusinskaya), John Barrymore (Baron Felix von Geigern), Joan Crawford (Faemmchen), Wallace Beery (General Director Preysing) and Lionel Barrymore (Otton Kringlein)
Cinematographer: Williams H. Daniels
Music: William Axt, Charles Maxwell
Editor: Blanche Sewell
Distributor: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s): September 11, 1932
Running time: 112 minutes
Country: United States of America
Language: English

With a budget of $700,000 this MGM production has an all-star cast. Set at a luxury hotel in Berlin, it is possibly the first portmanteau movie in which the lives of different unrelated characters interact in a big and bustling locale. The lobby of the hotel is a really impressive set in both its sheer size and technical complexity. A clever lighting effect gives the impression of moving elevators and the reception desk gives the audience a sense of a three hundred and sixty degrees' view which was unique at the time. Unsurprinsingly, when we consider its technical and artistic achievement and its star appeal, the film won Best Picture at the Academy Awards.