News

"Jacques Tourneur, Fearmaker" runs from December 14 – January 3, 2019 at New York's Film Society of Lincoln Center.A man twists and contorts himself to fire his tommy gun from the front seat of a prop plane, strafing an escaping yacht in Jacques Tourneur’s Nick Carter, Master Detective (1939). The action scenes of the first (of only two) of MGM’s detective programmers starring Walter Pidgeon as a blasé, blowhard private dick go a long way to set thrilling standards of danger and energy in a prescient pre-war mystery of aviation espionage and sabotage. The opening scene in the desert of a foiled aircraft hijacking is already that Christopher Nolan-style of concept, grandeur and stark visuals, but the boat-gunning climax, created through great, swooning back projection and Carter’s nearly absurd violent technique, lends great character to an otherwise unpromising crime series.A gang leader huddled among anonymous criminals on a prison boat as “the Rock,...

A Skin So SoftIt's 95 degrees in the shade here in the Swiss city of Locarno, where, nestled between lake and mountain, the 70th edition of the Locarno Festival is beckoning with the promise of several international competitions, a retrospective of B-Hollywood auteur Jacques Tourneur, screenings in the open-air, 8,000-person capacity Piazza Grande, special prizes for Jean-Marie Straub and Todd Haynes, and that quintessential lure of the cinematic experience: air-conditioned theatres.With so much to choose from there is no correct schedule or pathway through such a bounty; one can't see everything, and the delight of discovery must mingle with the pang of missing something unexpected—or, more likely, a movie impossible to fit into a day’s schedule already jammed with five to seven different screenings.Already the films have run together in my mind, the effect most definitely of the withering heat at once baking and steaming the hillside city,...

Behind Green Lights

Written by Charles G. Booth

Directed by Otto Brower

U.S.A., 1946

*This film is in the public domain and can be viewed legally and for free online. However, the version currently circulating has a small continuity glitch early in the film at about the 1-minute mark. The movie will suddenly play about 5 seconds of a scene that chronologically comes a couple of minutes later. It is the only technical issue with the print however. The rest of the movie plays out perfectly fine.

On what began as an ordinary night at the police station, Lt. Sam Carson (William Gargan) is notified of a vehicle parked on the sidewalk just in front of the building. Within the vehicle is the body of the late Walter Bard (Bernard Nedell), a private detective recently engaged in some rather politically relevant cases. Among the suspects possibly involved in man’s...

Joan Crawford Movie Star Joan Crawford movies on TCM: Underrated actress, top star in several of her greatest roles If there was ever a professional who was utterly, completely, wholeheartedly dedicated to her work, Joan Crawford was it. Ambitious, driven, talented, smart, obsessive, calculating, she had whatever it took – and more – to reach the top and stay there. Nearly four decades after her death, Crawford, the star to end all stars, remains one of the iconic performers of the 20th century. Deservedly so, once you choose to bypass the Mommie Dearest inanity and focus on her film work. From the get-go, she was a capable actress; look for the hard-to-find silents The Understanding Heart (1927) and The Taxi Dancer (1927), and check her out in the more easily accessible The Unknown (1927) and Our Dancing Daughters (1928). By the early '30s, Joan Crawford had become a first-rate film actress, far more naturalistic than...