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Powerhouse Indicator moves forward to their fourth fancy box of noirs from the studio of Harry Cohn, six pictures stretching from the postwar boom to the end of the original classic noir era. This time around we have some notable directors, and a nice selection of stars — Dennis O’Keefe, George Murphy, Fred MacMurray, Kim Novak, Jean Simmons, Rory Calhoun and Richard Conte. Kim Novak makes her starring debut as a femme fatale; noir icon Richard Conte shines in a movie that marks a turn into a new kind of existential, paranoid thriller. And speaking of paranoid, we again get to lighten up with another selection of theme-appropriate Three Stooges shorts.

Columbia Noir #4

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1948-1957 / B&w + Color / 1:85 widescreen, 1:37 Academy / Street Date September 27, 2021 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / 49.99

Starring: Louis Hayward, Dennis O’Keefe; George Murphy; Fred MacMurray, Kim Novak; Jean Simmons, Rory Calhoun; Dennis O’Keefe,...

A solid mainstream hit for 1947, Loretta Young and Joseph Cotten’s political fairy tale maintains its charm despite the usual populist dodges — a spirited young woman finds both romance and The American Dream when she runs for Congress. But will the political system accept her?

The Farmer’s Daughter

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1947 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 97 min. / Street Date September 25, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Loretta Young, Joseph Cotten, Ethel Barrymore, Charles Bickford, Rhys Williams, Harry Davenport, Tom Powers, William Harrigan, Keith Andes, Harry Shannon, Lex Barker, Thurston Hall, Art Baker, Don Beddoe, James Arness, Anna Q. Nilsson, Charles McGraw, John Gallaudet, William B. Davidson, Cy Kendall, Frank Ferguson, William Bakewell, Charles Lane Forrest J. Ackerman, Robert Clarke.

Film Editor: Harry Marker

Original Music: Leigh Harline

Written by Allen Rivkin, Laura Kerr, from a play by Juhani Tervapää

Produced by Dore Schary

Directed by H.C. Potter

This year...

Stop! Don't touch that dial... if you like your atom-age propaganda straight up, MGM has the movie for you, an expensive 1946 docu-drama that became 'the official story' for the making of the bomb. The huge cast includes Brian Donlevy, Robert Walker, Tom Drake, Audrey Totter, Hume Cronyn, Hurd Hatfield, and Joseph Calleia. How trustworthy is the movie? It begins by showing footage of a time capsule being buried -- that supposedly contains the film we are watching. Think about that. Mom, Apple Pie, the Flag and God are enlisted to argume that we should stop worrying and love the fact that bombs are just peachy-keen dandy. The Beginning or the End DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1947 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 112 min. / Street Date September 22, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Brian Donlevy, Robert Walker, Tom Drake, Beverly Tyler, Audrey Totter, Hume Cronyn, Hurd Hatfield, Joseph Calleia, Godfrey Tearle, Victor Francen,...

Robert Walker: Actor in MGM films of the '40s. Robert Walker: Actor who conveyed boy-next-door charms, psychoses At least on screen, I've always found the underrated actor Robert Walker to be everything his fellow – and more famous – MGM contract player James Stewart only pretended to be: shy, amiable, naive. The one thing that made Walker look less like an idealized “Average Joe” than Stewart was that the former did not have a vacuous look. Walker's intelligence shone clearly through his bright (in black and white) grey eyes. As part of its “Summer Under the Stars” programming, Turner Classic Movies is dedicating today, Aug. 9, '15, to Robert Walker, who was featured in 20 films between 1943 and his untimely death at age 32 in 1951. Time Warner (via Ted Turner) owns the pre-1986 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer library (and almost got to buy the studio outright in 2009), so most of Walker's movies have...

'The Beginning or the End' 1947 with Robert Walker and Tom Drake. Hiroshima bombing 70th anniversary: Six movies dealing with the A-bomb terror Seventy years ago, on Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped the first atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima. Ultimately, anywhere between 70,000 and 140,000 people died – in addition to dogs, cats, horses, chickens, and most other living beings in that part of the world. Three days later, America dropped a second atomic bomb, this time over Nagasaki. Human deaths in this other city totaled anywhere between 40,000-80,000. For obvious reasons, the evisceration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been a quasi-taboo in American films. After all, in the last 75 years Hollywood's World War II movies, from John Farrow's Wake Island (1942) and Mervyn LeRoy's Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944) to Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998) and Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor (2001), almost invariably have presented a clear-cut vision...

Victory Through Air Power

Directed by Perce Pearce, James Algar, Clyde Geronimi, Jack Kinney, H.C. Potter

Written by Perce Pearce, T. Hee, Erdman Penner, William Cottrell, James Brodero, George Stallings, Jose Rodriguez

Starring Alexander P. de Seversky, Art Baker

Watching Victory Through Air Power in 2012 is akin to being given a glimpse into a parallel universe. Because of how protective the Walt Disney Company is of its history and legacy, and what people know of that history and legacy, the period in which they worked almost solely at creating propaganda of various types for the United States government isn’t as frequently discussed as their work on films like Bambi, Dumbo, or the package films of the 1940s. The very idea of propaganda is so different now than it was 70 years ago that being confronted by a more direct, adult, and dry version of patriotism is startling. Watching any film...