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Australia’s Imprint Films will release four limited edition Alfred Hitchcock Blu-ray collections — totaling 16 films plus a season of television — on August 27.

The Hitchcock Nine (1925-1929) collects the filmmaker’s nine surviving silent movies: The Pleasure Garden, The Lodger, The Ring, Downhill, The Farmer’s Wife, Easy Virtue, Champagne, The Manxman, and Blackmail.

Each film has been restored by the BFI National Archives. The feature documentary I Am Alfred Hitchcock is also included.

The 10-disc set is housed in hardbox packaging. Limited to 1,500, it costs $150.30.

Disc 1 – The Pleasure Garden (1925):

A selfish London chorus girl’s relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to a point where it nearly causes her death.

1080p High-definition presentation on Blu-ray Solo Piano Score by composer Neil Brand (new) Theater Organ Score by Lee Erwin Audio Commentary by editor of the Hitchcock Annual, Sidney Gottlieb (new) Introduction by film historian Charles Barr Interview with BFI silent film...

“When you see them come down those stairs,” Herbert Marshall says at a climactic moment in The Enchanted Cottage, “whatever they do, whatever they say, act along with them. They don’t know it. But they’re playing a part.”

John Cromwell’s 1945 romance tells the story of a disfigured war veteran who falls in love with a––to use the film’s terminology––“homely” young woman. What starts as a courtship for companionship blossoms into true love, and the magic of the cottage makes each more beautiful, if only to one another.

The theme of the festival this year was “Grand Illusions: Fantastic Worlds on Film.” The Enchanted Cottage, an expression of the beauty we all see in those we love, provides precisely a template through which to consider it. While “fantastic worlds” might suggest sci-fi and fantasy, so much of classic cinema engages with a level of obvious fantasy.

Short stories have always been prime real estate in the world of adaptations. Largely those are relegated to horror anthology TV shows like Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Tales From the Darkside, or the new Creepshow revival but that doesn’t mean exclusively. You can have things like Lawnmower Man, Eight O’Clock in the Morning, or Children of the Corn that are anywhere from 8 to 18 pages and make a whole movie, or in case of Children of the Corn an entire franchise, out of those pages. Today is all about a short story that probably had more legs than you realized. The Fly, written by George Langelaan and published in 1957 would go on to be part of 5 movies. While 3 of those are cash in sequels, one of them is a somewhat slept on late 50s classic while the other is listed at or near the top of any list discussing remakes.

Vanity Street.Broke and homeless, a young woman hurls a brick through the window of a drugstore, hoping to go to jail because at least “they feed you there.” Instead of arresting her, a kindly cop gets her a job as a showgirl at the theater next door; soon she’s wearing furs and fending off passes from top-hatted stage-door Johnnies. So it goes in lightning-paced B movies such as Vanity Street (1932), directed by Poverty Row maestro Nick Grinde. The plot may be flimsy, but Max Ophuls could have been proud of the long, breezy tracking shot that glides past the windows of the drugstore, packed with a motley crowd of chorus girls, costumed actors, and burlesque comedians. This casually terrific sequence is representative of the treasures that were to be found in the retrospective honoring the 2024 centenary of Columbia Pictures at this year’s Locarno Film Festival. Most of the films were short.

Westerns are populated with cowboys, gunslingers, bandits, Native American, horses, cows and buffalos. But the genre is much more complex than shoot-‘em-ups. In fact, the best Westerns are Shakespearean in nature exploring such universal subjects as love, hate, revenge, greed, power and good versus evil. One of the most popular sub-genres is the “ranch” Western where the patriarch or matriarch — remember Barbara Stanwyck in “The Big Valley”– governs with a strict and often violent hand. They act like they are above the law and often take legal matters into their own hand. They are often widowers or widows and have sons who run the spectrum from hero to villain.

Jane Campion’s highly acclaimed Netflix Oscar-contender “The Power of the Dog” falls into this sub-genre. Set in Montana in 1925, the story revolves around the charismatic but sadistic Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) who relishes being the master of a cattle rancher.

Amalia Ulman’s El Planeta, starring the director/screenwriter and her mother, Ale Ulman, is the perfect opening night selection for the 50th anniversary of New Directors/New Films, hosted by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. Shot by Carlos Rigo in beautiful black and white, co-edited smartly by Katie Mcquerrey and Anthony Valdez, El Planeta takes us back to the filmmaker’s former hometown, Gijon, Spain.

Cleverly used references to Martin Scorsese, Ernst Lubitsch, Milos Forman's Amadeus, David and Albert Maysles’ Grey Gardens, Katsuhito Ishii’s The Taste Of Tea, and Jean Renoir’s Rules Of The Game enter the picture.

Leo (Amalia Ulman) and her...

Amalia Ulman on the opening scene in El Planeta with Maria (Ale Ulman) in Gijon, Spain: “I really wanted to set the tone of the city. That’s the city where I grew up and one of the biggest challenges is the weather.

Amalia Ulman’s El Planeta, starring the director/screenwriter and her mother, Ale Ulman, is the perfect opening night selection for the 50th anniversary of New Directors/New Films, hosted by Film at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art. Shot by Carlos Rigo in beautiful black and white, co-edited smartly by Katie Mcquerrey and Anthony Valdez, El Planeta takes us back to the filmmaker’s former hometown, Gijon, Spain.

Amalia Ulman on New Directors/New Films: “I was very excited and happy to be opening this festival. Because of the great reputation it has for showing new works.”

Cleverly used references to Martin Scorsese, Ernst Lubitsch,...

The verdict is in. If you want to have success in awards’ season go to court. Over the decades, a caseload of legal movies have been judged to be Oscar worthy. And for good reason. The genre is rich with emotions, betrayals, manipulations, love, hate, violence and redemption. Who doesn’t remember Humphrey Bogart’s brilliant Oscar-nominated turn as Captain Queeg slowly losing his mind on the stand as he recounts his obsession with missing strawberries in 1954’s “The Caine Mutiny”?

“A Free Soul” (1931)

Lionel Barrymore won his only Academy Award for for his delicious over-the-top turn as a wily alcoholic attorney who gets a ruthless gangster (Clark Gable) off for murder in this juicy pre-code melodrama. Though his free-spirited daughter (Norma Shearer), who wears the slinkiest of gowns, has a boyfriend (a staid Leslie Howard), she soon realizes she loves bad boys and leaves Howard for Gable. It’s a big mistake.

Sam Mendes’ acclaimed World War I epic “1917” graphically shows how the Great War was indeed hell. And numerous actors and filmmakers were there on the front lines or bravely engaging in dogfights in the sky over France. Just as Mendes’ illustrates in “1917,” the combat took its toll on these soldiers who went on to fame in feature films. Numerous were wounded, gassed and even were POWs. Needless to say, the majority were never the same.

Here’s a look at 10 actors, who became stars during the Golden Age of Hollywood, who participated in World War I

Humphrey Bogart

Long before he uttered “Here’s looking at you kid” in 1942’s “Casablanca,” the Oscar-winning superstar was a teenager when he enlisted in the Navy in May of 1918 where he was assigned to the ship the Leviathan. And it was during this time, he suffered the injury that created the scar on...

Don Kaye Jan 2, 2020

The Fly remains one of sci-fi’s strangest and most iconic franchises.

The Fly -- the 1958 version or the 1986 remake, take your pick -- stands as one of the most memorable sci-fi/horror hybrids of its time. So it’s not surprising that Scream Factory recently released one of its now-standard deluxe boxed Blu-ray sets, containing all five films in the series and a truckload of special features, some ported over from the films’ separate DVD releases and others brand new.

What’s that, you say? All five films? Correct. For most people, the title The Fly brings up two iconic images: either David (Al) Hedison with a giant fly’s head on his shoulders or Jeff Goldblum in heavy prosthetics as he mutates into the monstrous amalgam known in the 1986 film as Brundlefly. Casual viewers may not be aware that the original film spawned two sequels,...

[This Halloween season, we're paying tribute to classic horror cinema by celebrating films released before 1970! Check back on Daily Dead this month for more retrospectives on classic horror films, and visit our online hub to catch up on all of our Halloween 2019 special features!]

As a child of the ’80s, my primary version of The Fly is the David Cronenberg body horror extravaganza. It’s a favorite of mine not only because of its timeless practical effects, but also because it’s one of the great tragedies of its day. So when I first visited Kurt Neumann’s version from 1958, I assumed I’d need to brace myself for a campier, creature feature sort of vibe. But I was surprised to discover a film that truly is a spiritual predecessor to its remake. Both films explore a man’s mental and physical deterioration and the tragic consequences for those around him, but Neumann takes a very different path to get there.

The broad strokes are the same: a scientist invents a teleportation machine, gets ahead of himself in the experimentation process, and accidentally merges with a fly when the unlucky insect joins him in...

It’s the formidable Bette Davis once again, in yet another superior William Wyler picture. The Somerset Maugham play is a classy vehicle for a star performance — the nagging legal ‘difficulty’ of plantation wife Leslie Crosbie is intertwined with colonial politics but remains entirely personal. Leslie isn’t exactly a poster girl for the feminist movement. Is she the victim of social pressures or just a petty, selfish monster? Screenwriter Howard Koch had to invent a twisted new ‘yellow peril’ finish to appease the Production Code … you know, the Code that some people say made Hollywood movies better.

The Letter

Blu-ray

The Warner Archive Collection

1940 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / Street Date September 24, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, James Stephenson, Frieda Inescort, Gale Sondergaard.

Cinematography: Tony Gaudio

Art Direction: Carl Jules Weyl

Film Editor: George Amy, Warren Low

Original Music: Max Steiner

Written by Howard...

8 random things that happened on this day (November 23rd) in showbiz history

1923 Cecil B DeMille's The Ten Commandments premieres. He would of course remake it as the infinitely better-remembered 1956 camp? technicolor classic of the same name.

1934 Romantic drama The Painted Veil starring Greta Garbo and Herbert Marshall opens in movie theaters. It's later remade (quite well!) in 2006 with Naomi Watts and Edward Norton.

Delirious silver-screen glamour never disappoints! Marlene Dietrich’s six Paramount pictures for Josef von Sternberg arrive in a beautifully annotated disc set. The most creative director-muse relationship of the 1930s created an all-conquering German siren-goddess, a screen icon vom kopf bis fuss.

Dietrich & von Sternberg in Hollywood

Blu-ray

Morocco, Dishonored, Shanghai Express, Blonde Venus, The Scarlet Empress, The Devil is a Woman

The Criterion Collection 930

1930-1035 / B&W / 1:19 Movietone (2), 1:37 flat Academy (3) / 542 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 3, 2018 / 124.95

Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Gary Cooper, Victor McLaglen, Clive Brook, Herbert Marshall, Cary Grant, Sam Jaffe, Lionel Atwill, Cesar Romero.

Directed by Josef von Sternberg

Dietrich & von Sternberg in Hollywood assembles a package we’ve long desired, a quality set of the duo’s highly artistic Paramount pictures from the first half of the 1930s. The Scarlet Empress arrived in a sub-par Criterion disc early in 2001, and three more...

“Charming” is not often a word associated with horror films; it’s counterintuitive to what the genre usually stands for—you know, terror and tension, followed by release and a sense of ease, then repeat—but yet here we are with a romantic tale about a boy, a girl, a teleportation device, and the insect that comes between them. Welcome to the world of The Fly (1958), where the hosts are welcoming, the police polite, and the monster bug-eyed.

Released by Twentieth Century Fox in July, The Fly pulled in $7 million against its $300,000 budget, enticing audiences with a tale often told at the time—sold as another Atomic Age Monster Mash, The Fly instead uses a much smaller (and human) canvas to convey a message of obsession and the love that ultimately ends it. Having said that, you also get a man with a fly head and some neat-o transportation sequences,...

Barns are a-burning, Paul Newman is recommended to Joanne Woodward as ‘a big stud horse’ and Lee Remick oozes sexuality all over Martin Ritt’s CinemaScope screen. William Faulkner may be the literary source, but this tale of ambition in the family of yet another southern Big Daddy is given the faux Tennessee Williams treatment — it’s a grand soap opera with a fistful of great stars having a grand time.

The Long, Hot Summer

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1958 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 117 min. / Street Date August 14, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store 29.95

Starring: Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Anthony Franciosa, Orson Welles, Lee Remick, Angela Lansbury, Richard Anderson

Cinematography: Joseph Lashelle

Art Direction: Maurice Ransford, Lyle R. Wheeler

Film Editor: Louis R. Loeffler

Original Music: Alex North

Written by Irving Ravetch, Harriet Frank Jr. from stories and a novel by William Faulkner

Produced by Jerry Wald

Directed by Martin Ritt

Time...

David O. Selznick’s absurdly over-cooked western epic is a great picture, even if much of it induces a kind of hypnotic, mouth-hanging-open disbelief. Is this monument to the sex appeal of Jennifer Jones, Kitsch in terrible taste, or have Selznick and his army of Hollywood talents found a new level of hyped melodramatic harmony? It certainly has the star-power, beginning with Gregory Peck as a cowboy rapist who learned his bedside manners from Popeye’s Bluto. It’s all hugely enjoyable.

Duel in the Sun

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1946 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 144 min. / Special Edition / Street Date August 15, 2017 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck, Joseph Cotten, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish, Walter Huston, Butterfly McQueen, Charles Bickford, Tilly Losch.

Cinematography Lee Garmes, Ray Rennahan and Harold Rosson

Production Designer J. McMillan Johnson

Film Editor Hal C. Kern, John Saure and William H. Ziegler

Original Music Dimitri Tiomkin

Written by Niven Busch,...

Turner Classic Movies continues with its Gay Hollywood presentations tonight and tomorrow morning, June 8–9. Seven movies will be shown about, featuring, directed, or produced by the following: Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Farley Granger, John Dall, Edmund Goulding, W. Somerset Maughan, Clifton Webb, Montgomery Clift, Raymond Burr, Charles Walters, DeWitt Bodeen, and Harriet Parsons. (One assumes that it's a mere coincidence that gay rumor subjects Cary Grant and Tyrone Power are also featured.) Night and Day (1946), which could also be considered part of TCM's homage to birthday girl Alexis Smith, who would have turned 96 today, is a Cole Porter biopic starring Cary Grant as a posh, heterosexualized version of Porter. As the warning goes, any similaries to real-life people and/or events found in Night and Day are a mere coincidence. The same goes for Words and Music (1948), a highly fictionalized version of the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart musical partnership.

She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.—Flannery O’Connor The mist uncovers Japanese soldiers as well as the grim sight of severed heads by the side of the hot springs where Catholic priests are being tortured. A priest kneels down in horror, almost catatonic, unable to bring himself to believe in the evilness of these men, the men of the Inquisitor. Why are these priests, who came to this “swamp of Japan” to spread the Word of the Lord, suffering so immensely on the hands of these soldiers?To the modern, secular audience, the theme of Silence (2016) is of great irony: the all-powerful Catholic Church, the institution that spread terror across Europe for 700 years with her bonfires and witch hunts and enforcing an almost maddening outlook at faith and personal behavior, comes to an unconquerable land where...

'The Beast with a Million Eyes': Hardly truth in advertising as there's no million-eyed beast in Roger Corman's micro-budget sci-fi thriller. 'The Beast with a Million Eyes': Alien invasion movie predates Alfred Hitchcock classic Despite the confusing voice-over introduction, David Kramarsky's[1] The Beast with a Million Eyes a.k.a. The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes is one of my favorite 1950s alien invasion films. Set in an ugly, desolate landscape – shot “for wide screen in terror-scope” in Indio and California's Coachella Valley – the screenplay by future novelist Tom Filer (who also played Jack Nicholson's sidekick in the 1966 Western Ride in the Whirlwind) focuses on a dysfunctional family whose members become the first victims of a strange force from another galaxy after a spaceship lands nearby emitting sound vibrations that turn domestic animals into aggressive killers. Killer cow First, the lady-of-the-house is pecked by a flock of chickens and,...

Happy March, everyone! This month’s home entertainment offerings are starting off with the proverbial bang as there seems to be a little something for every genre fan arriving on Blu-ray and DVD this Tuesday. Scream Factory is releasing both The Boy and Narcopolis on both formats this week, and Kino Lorber is resurrecting a pair of cult classics in HD as well: Gog (3D) and Transformations. Grindhouse Releasing has assembled an incredible Blu set for their release of Pieces, and the recent home invasion thriller, Intruders, makes its way onto DVD on March 1st.

For those of you who have made the leap to 4K, both The Last Witch Hunter and Mad Max: Fury Road are getting a special 4K release on Tuesday and other notable titles making their way home this first week of March include Zoombies, The Sinful Dwarf, The Fear of Darkness, Scream at the Devil,...

Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The Little Foxes is playing on Mubi in the Us February 15 through March 15, 2016.William Wyler and Bette Davis had a good thing going by the time of The Little Foxes (1941). Wyler had three (of his eventually 12) Academy Award nominations and he had directed the star in two Oscar-worthy performances of her own: Jezebel (1938), for which she won, and The Letter (1940), for which she didn’t. Though it would grow increasingly contentious, their association was nonetheless mutually productive, and while Davis may have been reluctant to take on the role played to great acclaim by Tallulah Bankhead in Lillian Hellman’s stage version of The Little Foxes, the resulting feature film trumped the trepidation. Set in the indistinct though suitably decrepit “Deep South” circa 1900, the backdrop is just vague enough to be regionally collective but just specific enough to be wholly unique.

Now, after 62 years, viewable again in beautiful 3-D! Scientists are being murdered in a secret underground laboratory overseen by a super-computer and two robots, Gog and Magog. The restoration is a stunning achievement, covered thoroughly on the disc extras. The year is young, but this is an early favorite. Gog 3-D 3-D Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1954 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 85 min. / Street Date March 1, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 34.95 Starring Richard Egan, Constance Dowling, Herbert Marshall, John Wengraf, Philip Van Zandt, Michael Fox, William Schallert. Cinematography Lothrop B. Worth Film Editor Herbert L. Strock Original Music Harry Sukman Written by Tom Taggart, Richard G. Taylor, Ivan Tors Produced by Ivan Tors Directed by Herbert L. Strock

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Once viewable only at isolated special film festivals, vintage films on 3-D are enjoying a comeback thanks to a busy independent company. The 3-D Film Archive has done work for various studios and disc distributors,...

William Cameron Menzies. William Cameron Menzies movies on TCM: Murderous Joan Fontaine, deadly Nazi Communists Best known as an art director/production designer, William Cameron Menzies was a jack-of-all-trades. It seems like the only things Menzies didn't do was act and tap dance in front of the camera. He designed and/or wrote, directed, produced, etc., dozens of films – titles ranged from The Thief of Bagdad to Invaders from Mars – from the late 1910s all the way to the mid-1950s. Among Menzies' most notable efforts as an art director/production designer are: Ernst Lubitsch's first Hollywood movie, the Mary Pickford star vehicle Rosita (1923). Herbert Brenon's British-set father-son drama Sorrell and Son (1927). David O. Selznick's mammoth production of Gone with the Wind, which earned Menzies an Honorary Oscar. The Sam Wood movies Our Town (1940), Kings Row (1942), and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). H.C. Potter's Mr. Lucky...

Constance Cummings in 'Night After Night.' Constance Cummings: Working with Frank Capra and Mae West (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Actress Went from Harold Lloyd to Eugene O'Neill.”) Back at Columbia, Harry Cohn didn't do a very good job at making Constance Cummings feel important. By the end of 1932, Columbia and its sweet ingenue found themselves in court, fighting bitterly over stipulations in her contract. According to the actress and lawyer's daughter, Columbia had failed to notify her that they were picking up her option. Therefore, she was a free agent, able to offer her services wherever she pleased. Harry Cohn felt otherwise, claiming that his contract player had waived such a notice. The battle would spill over into 1933. On the positive side, in addition to Movie Crazy 1932 provided Cummings with three other notable Hollywood movies: Washington Merry-Go-Round, American Madness, and Night After Night. 'Washington Merry-Go-Round...

Billy Wilder directed Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson and William Holden. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett movies Below is a list of movies on which Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder worked together as screenwriters, including efforts for which they did not receive screen credit. The Wilder-Brackett screenwriting partnership lasted from 1938 to 1949. During that time, they shared two Academy Awards for their work on The Lost Weekend (1945) and, with D.M. Marshman Jr., Sunset Blvd. (1950). More detailed information further below. Post-split years Billy Wilder would later join forces with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond in movies such as the classic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), the Best Picture Oscar winner The Apartment (1960), and One Two Three (1961), notable as James Cagney's last film (until a brief comeback in Milos Forman's Ragtime two decades later). Although some of these movies were quite well received, Wilder's later efforts – which also included The Seven Year Itch...

Greta Garbo movie 'The Kiss.' Greta Garbo movies on TCM Greta Garbo, a rarity among silent era movie stars, is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” performer today, Aug. 26, '15. Now, why would Garbo be considered a silent era rarity? Well, certainly not because she easily made the transition to sound, remaining a major star for another decade. Think Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, William Powell, Fay Wray, Marie Dressler, Wallace Beery, John Barrymore, Warner Baxter, Janet Gaynor, Constance Bennett, etc. And so much for all the stories about actors with foreign accents being unable to maintain their Hollywood stardom following the advent of sound motion pictures. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer star, Garbo was no major exception to the supposed rule. Mexican Ramon Novarro, another MGM star, also made an easy transition to sound, and so did fellow Mexicans Lupe Velez and Dolores del Rio, in addition to the very British...

Teresa Wright ca. 1945. Teresa Wright movies on TCM: 'The Little Foxes,' 'The Pride of the Yankees' Pretty, talented Teresa Wright made a relatively small number of movies: 28 in all, over the course of more than half a century. Most of her films have already been shown on Turner Classic Movies, so it's more than a little disappointing that TCM will not be presenting Teresa Wright rarities such as The Imperfect Lady and The Trouble with Women – two 1947 releases co-starring Ray Milland – on Aug. 4, '15, a "Summer Under the Stars" day dedicated to the only performer to date to have been shortlisted for Academy Awards for their first three film roles. TCM's Teresa Wright day would also have benefited from a presentation of The Search for Bridey Murphy (1956), an unusual entry – parapsychology, reincarnation – in the Wright movie canon and/or Roseland (1977), a little-remembered entry in James Ivory's canon.

'The Letter' 1940, with Bette Davis 'The Letter' 1940 movie: Bette Davis superb in masterful studio era production Directed by William Wyler and adapted by Howard Koch from W. Somerset Maugham's 1927 play, The Letter is one of the very best films made during the Golden Age of the Hollywood studios. Wyler's unsparing, tough-as-nails handling of the potentially melodramatic proceedings; Bette Davis' complex portrayal of a passionate woman who also happens to be a self-absorbed, calculating murderess; and Tony Gaudio's atmospheric black-and-white cinematography are only a few of the flawless elements found in this classic tale of deceit. 'The Letter': 'U' for 'Unfaithful' The Letter begins in the dark of night, as a series of gunshots are heard in a Malayan rubber plantation. Leslie Crosbie (Bette Davis) walks out the door of her house firing shots at (barely seen on camera) local playboy Jeff Hammond, who falls dead on the ground.

Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...

Teresa Wright-Samuel Goldwyn association comes to a nasty end (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt': Alfred Hitchcock Heroine in His Favorite Film.") Whether or not because she was aware that Enchantment wasn't going to be the hit she needed – or perhaps some other disagreement with Samuel Goldwyn or personal issue with husband Niven Busch – Teresa Wright, claiming illness, refused to go to New York City to promote the film. (Top image: Teresa Wright in a publicity shot for The Men.) Goldwyn had previously announced that Wright, whose contract still had another four and half years to run, was to star in a film version of J.D. Salinger's 1948 short story "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut." Instead, he unceremoniously – and quite publicly – fired her.[1] The Goldwyn organization issued a statement, explaining that besides refusing the assignment to travel to New York to help generate pre-opening publicity for Enchantment,...

Cecil B. DeMille on the set of Four Frightened People. Image via Doctor Macro.Classical Hollywood director Cecil B. DeMille, subject of a recent retrospective at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, is charged in pages upon pages of film history and criticism with codifying modern Hollywood spectacle, often through the lens of Old Testament biblical narrative. However, bookended by his prolific (and oft revered) silent work, and his late career showmanship are a string of virtually un-regarded films that push the director’s ideology into something bordering Naturalism. Specifically, This Day and Age (1933), Four Frightened People (1934), and Reap the Wild Wind (1942) are wholly uninterested in the Christian mythology that defines his more canonical work (The Ten Commandments, 1923 and 1956, King of Kings [1927], Sign on the Cross [1932], etc.); instead they exploit DeMille's scale and sense of melodrama in order to attempt the rather lofty task of explaining the role of man in...

Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt': Alfred Hitchcock heroine (image: Joseph Cotten about to strangle Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt') (See preceding article: "Teresa Wright Movies: Actress Made Oscar History.") After scoring with The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver, and The Pride of the Yankees, Teresa Wright was loaned to Universal – once initial choices Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland became unavailable – to play the small-town heroine in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. (Check out video below: Teresa Wright reminiscing about the making of Shadow of a Doubt.) Co-written by Thornton Wilder, whose Our Town had provided Wright with her first chance on Broadway and who had suggested her to Hitchcock; Meet Me in St. Louis and Junior Miss author Sally Benson; and Hitchcock's wife, Alma Reville, Shadow of a Doubt was based on "Uncle Charlie," a story outline by Gordon McDonell – itself based on actual events.

Teresa Wright movies: Actress made Oscar history Teresa Wright, best remembered for her Oscar-winning performance in the World War II melodrama Mrs. Miniver and for her deceptively fragile, small-town heroine in Alfred Hitchcock's mystery-drama Shadow of a Doubt, died at age 86 ten years ago – on March 6, 2005. Throughout her nearly six-decade show business career, Wright was featured in nearly 30 films, dozens of television series and made-for-tv movies, and a whole array of stage productions. On the big screen, she played opposite some of the most important stars of the '40s and '50s. It's a long list, including Bette Davis, Greer Garson, Gary Cooper, Myrna Loy, Ray Milland, Fredric March, Jean Simmons, Marlon Brando, Dana Andrews, Lew Ayres, Cornel Wilde, Robert Mitchum, Spencer Tracy, Joseph Cotten, and David Niven. Also of note, Teresa Wright made Oscar history in the early '40s, when she was nominated for each of her first three movie roles.

Simone Simon: Remembering the 'Cat People' and 'La Bête Humaine' star (photo: Simone Simon 'Cat People' publicity) Pert, pretty, pouty, and fiery-tempered Simone Simon – who died at age 94 ten years ago, on Feb. 22, 2005 – is best known for her starring role in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie classic Cat People (1942). Those aware of the existence of film industries outside Hollywood will also remember Simon for her button-nosed femme fatale in Jean Renoir's French film noir La Bête Humaine (1938).[1] In fact, long before Brigitte Bardot, Annette Stroyberg, Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, Ann-Margret, and Barbarella's Jane Fonda became known as cinema's Sex Kittens, Simone Simon exuded feline charm – with a tad of puppy dog wistfulness – in a film career that spanned two continents and a quarter of a century. From the early '30s to the mid-'50s, she seduced men young and old on both...

'Cat People' 1942 actress Simone Simon Remembered: Starred in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie classic (photo: Simone Simon in 'Cat People') Pert, pouty, pretty Simone Simon is best remembered for her starring roles in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie Cat People (1942) and in Jean Renoir's French film noir La Bête Humaine (1938). Long before Brigitte Bardot, Mamie Van Doren, Ann-Margret, and (for a few years) Jane Fonda became known as cinema's Sex Kittens, Simone Simon exuded feline charm in a film career that spanned a quarter of a century. From the early '30s to the mid-'50s, she seduced men young and old on both sides of the Atlantic – at times, with fatal results. During that period, Simon was featured in nearly 40 movies in France, Italy, Germany, Britain, and Hollywood. Besides Jean Renoir, in her native country she worked for the likes of Jacqueline Audry...

Till I Can Get My Satisfaction: Kurosawa’s Striking Psychosexual Marathon

Past traumas hopelessly infecting the present factor significantly in Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s monolithic psychosexual thriller, Penance, a five part made-for-television miniseries that premiered back in 2012 for North American audiences at the Toronto Film Festival, now receiving a limited theatrical release. Like many of Kurosawa’s best known works, he explores the ripple effects of tragic circumstances and their continually endless warping effects, perhaps sometimes seen as a metaphor for cultural tendencies at large. His latest plays like a tangential murder mystery of crossed paths, finally looping back to a finale that leads to more complicated depths, not unlike something David Lynch would do in this similar format of impressively orchestrated subplots and characterizations that makes for viewing in one sitting a head spinning ordeal.

A young girl, Emili, is murdered at school, the killer leading her off in front...

Hedy Lamarr: 'Invention' and inventor on Turner Classic Movies (photo: Hedy Lamarr publicity shot ca. early '40s) Two Hedy Lamarr movies released during her heyday in the early '40s — Victor Fleming's Tortilla Flat (1942), co-starring Spencer Tracy and John Garfield, and King Vidor's H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941), co-starring Robert Young and Ruth Hussey — will be broadcast on Turner Classic Movies on Wednesday, November 12, 2014, at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Pt, respectively. Best known as a glamorous Hollywood star (Ziegfeld Girl, White Cargo, Samson and Delilah), the Viennese-born Lamarr (née Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler), who would have turned 100 on November 9, was also an inventor: she co-developed and patented with composer George Antheil the concept of frequency hopping, currently known as spread-spectrum communications (or "spread-spectrum broadcasting"), which ultimately led to the evolution of wireless technology. (More on the George Antheil and Hedy Lamarr invention further below.) Somewhat ironically,...

Angel

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Written by Samson Raphaelson

USA, 1937

Angel is a 1937 feature directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Marlene Dietrich. It’s not the greatest film of either one of their careers, however, it is a film deserving of attention, at the very least because it’s a film directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Marlene Dietrich. And now, it’s also available for the first time on an American-issued DVD, by way of Universal’s Vault Series collection.

Dietrich is Maria Barker, but we first see her as “Mrs. Brown,” the false name she registers under when arriving in France. She’s “in Paris but not in Paris,” there to meet an old acquaintance, the Russian émigré, Grand Duchess Anna Dmitrievna (Laura Hope Crews). At the same time, Anthony Halton (Melvyn Douglas) drops by the duchess’ “salon,” at the suggestion of a friend who sent him there for an “amusing time.

Foreign Correspondent

Written by Charles Bennett and Joan Harrison

Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

USA, 1940

As if his British films weren’t evidence enough of his talent, Alfred Hitchcock made quite the impression when he came to Hollywood in 1940. His first picture in the states, Rebecca, was nominated for Best Picture at the 1941 Academy Awards. So was his second, Foreign Correspondent, also released in 1940. While Rebecca would ultimately win, many – then and now – consider the achievement as belonging more to producer David O. Selznick than to the director. This is not without some justification. Though Rebecca bears more than a few notably Hitchcockian touches, between the two features, Foreign Correspondent looks and feels more appropriately like Hitchcock’s previous and later works. The Criterion Collection, recently very kind to Hitchcock on Blu-ray, now gives this latter feature a suitably well-rounded treatment, with a documentary on the film’s visual effects, an...

Criterion adds another illustrious Alfred Hitchcock title to the collection this month with Foreign Correspondent, which followed hot on the heels of Rebecca in 1940, the beginning of the director’s American period. Though not a perfect film, it does register as one of his most unfairly overlooked films, even as it shows various signs of outside tampering as a film belonging very much to the period in which it was made. Though suffering from the effect of too many cooks in the writing kitchen, it’s a title as filled with plot twists as it is wit, as well as Hitchcock’s signature elaborate set pieces.

Opening with a dedication to the bravery of those foreign correspondents and others that risk their lives in war time, we enter into the realm of a Us newsroom where frustration is running high at the lack of actual coverage worthy news filtering in from the correspondents.

Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent is exactly the kind of film that benefits from a Criterion Collection release. I don't consider this to be one of Hitch's "best", but at the same time it's got the elements that make his films fascinating, and, most importantly, entertaining. And Criterion always does a great job bringing a focus to some of Hitchcock's less discussed gems. Add to that, Foreign Correspondent carries an additional weight as a result of its place in history as a propaganda film, emphasized most in Joel McCrea's speech at the end of the film amid the bombing of London, warning those back in the U.S. just what exactly Germany was up to. The scene was added after filming had already wrapped, just over a month before the film would actually hit theaters. Following Rebecca, Foreign Correspondent was Hitchcock's second American feature. Both would be nominated for...

Cinema history has a few great double-up years: 12-month periods in which a classic filmmaker had not one but two great films. Mel Brooks may be the most notorious, releasing two of the best comedies of all time in 1974 (“Blazing Saddles” & “Young Frankenstein”) and Steven Spielberg has arguably done it a few times, inarguably in 1993 (“Jurassic Park” & “Schindler’s List”) and he would double-up again in 2002 (“Minority Report” & “Catch Me If You Can”) and 2011 (“Tintin” & “War Horse”).

One of the most-often forgotten double-up years was Alfred Hitchcock’s first year as an American filmmaker — 1940, which saw the premiere of “Rebecca” in April and “Foreign Correspondent” in August. The former has been a Criterion inductee for years and the latter joins the most important club in Blu-ray/DVD history this week in a finely-transferred and wonderfully accompanied release.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

“Rebecca” has the higher historical pedigree, largely because it’s less dry...

Hitchcock’s War Face

By Raymond Benson

Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film Foreign Correspondent is often underrated or forgotten when it comes to lists of the director’s “best” films. In fact, it was nominated for an Oscar Best Picture the same year as Rebecca (which won), and, personally, I think it’s the better movie. It’s certainly more of a “Hitchcock film” than Rebecca, as it is one of those cross-country espionage adventure-thrillers along the lines of The 39 Steps, Saboteur, and North by Northwest.

It was the director’s second Hollywood movie. Although Hitchcock was contracted to David O. Selznick (who produced Rebecca), Hitch’s deal allowed Selznick to “farm out” the director to other studios and producers, for a piece of Hitchcock’s salary, of course. In this case, Foreign Correspondent was produced by Walter Wanger (who had also produced John Ford’s Stagecoach). It’s interesting that...

Pre-Code Hollywood studios spent millions transitioning their medium to sound and other new technologies that brought about major advances in photography, lighting, and set design. But there were still five million unemployed people in the United States and many more just getting by. The studios were losing money, many of them going bankrupt.

By 1930 the breadlines were longer than the ticket lines and people were slow to give up their hard earned money. They wanted to be entertained, they wanted to laugh and forget their troubles for just a while. Comedies, adventure, and musicals quickly became the most popular film genres of the time.

I. Pre-Code Action, Adventure, and Drama

Hollywood took their stories to the far corners of the earth as places like Africa, the South Pacific, and the Far East became exotic settings for movies. An island kingdom somewhere in the Pacific with strange creatures, even stranger natives,...

After 40 years, the British-born actress who conquered Hollywood and starred in TV's Murder, She Wrote is back on the West End stage. As she approaches her 90s, she's in her theatrical prime

In the play Blithe Spirit, the wildly eccentric and chaotic clairvoyant Madame Arcati, Noël Coward's most colourful creation, announces that "time is the reef upon which all our frail mystic ships are wrecked".

No aphorism has ever applied less than this does to the actress now about to don the headscarves and bangles to play Arcati in the West End at the age of 88. Dame Angela Lansbury, ennobled earlier this month, has defied the laws of nature by becoming more theatrically prolific as her years have advanced. In 2007, she was Tony award-nominated for her role in a new Terrence McNally play, Deuce, on Broadway; in 2010, she was nominated again for a revival of Sondheim's A Little Night Music; and then,...

British actress Sarah Marshall, a Tony-nominated veteran who later appeared in memorable episodes of TV’s Star Trek and The Twilight Zone, has died. She was 80. Marshall died Saturday in Los Angeles following a long battle with cancer, her daughter-in-law, Trixie Flynn, said. Marshall was the daughter of noted British actors Herbert Marshall (The Letter, Foreign Correspondent) and Edna Best (The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir). She made her feature film debut opposite Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in the adaptation of William Faulkner’s The Long, Hot Summer (1958), but her most

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Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2013—in theaters or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2013 to create a unique double feature.

All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2013 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch in that perfect world we know doesn't exist but can keep dreaming of every time we go to the movies.

How...

The following is an essay featured in the anthology George Cukor - On/Off Hollywood (Capricci, Paris, 2013), for sale at www.capricci.fr.

The Film Society of Lincoln Center will be running a complete retrospective on the director, "The Discreet Charm of George Cukor," in New York December 13, 2013 - January 7, 2014. Many thanks to David Phelps, Fernando Ganzo, and Camille Pollas for their generous permission.

The Second-hand Illusion:

Notes on Cukor

Above: The Chapman Report (1962), A Life of Her Own (1950)

“There’s always something about them that you don’t know that you’d like to know. Spencer Tracy had that. In fact, they do all have that – all the big ones have it. You feel very close to them but there is the ultimate thing withheld from you – and you want to find out.” —George Cukor1

“Can you tell what a woman’s like by just looking at her?” —The Chapman Report...

While growing up, I among the last generation that got to watch classic black and white and early color horror films day and night. Before talk and game shows became cheap fare, New York stations would run movies before dinner and throughout the evening. Some were cheesy, even to my pre-adolescent eyes, but others were just downright scary. Among the latter was the effectively creepy The Fly. 20th Century Home Entertainment has just released this beloved classic on Blu-ray and it has been nicely transferred to enthrall a new generation.

Of course, many of the readers here probably only know the fun and weird remake by David Cronenberg, which does nicely stand on its own, but the original is well worth a loo, too.

Released in 1958, it was one of Fox’s truly great horror/sci-fi offerings after decades of inferior efforts. The film is based on the forgotten George Langelaan...