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With the elections less than two months away and the highly anticipated debate between former President Donald Trump and current vice president Kamala Harris on Sept 10, it’s time to revisit classic political movies. TCM is currently presenting a nine-week series “Making Change: The Most Significant Political Films of All Time.” Political films run the gamut from thrillers, to dramas (“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”), to the historical, to satirical comedies.

Speaking of satires, Preston Sturges received his one and only Oscar for his screenplay for 1940’s “The Great McGinty,” his smart, funny comedy about a hobo (Brian Donlevy) who rises to governor only to lose it all. Sturges had originally written a piece “The Story of Man” in 1933 with Spencer Tracy in mind. Tracy had just starred in 1933’s “The Power and the Glory,” which marked Sturges’ first film script. He attempted to sell it to Universal which also turned the story down; so,...

The Criterion Channel has unveiled its streaming lineup for August 2024, which features an eclectic mix of independent films showcasing the work of auteurs from around the world.

The boutique service will become the exclusive streaming home of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2021 comedy “Licorice Pizza,” and will celebrate the occasion by adding four more of his films to the channel: “The Master,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Punch-Drunk Love,” and “Magnolia.” Anderson’s frequent collaborator Philip Seymour Hoffman will additionally be celebrated on the streaming service as part of a larger retrospective. Many of the late actor’s most iconic roles, including “Capote” and “Synecdoche, New York,” will be included, along with his sole directorial outing “Jack Goes Boating.”

The channel will also highlight several other prominent filmmakers including Preston Sturges, who helped pioneer the modern rom-com through films like “The Lady Eve” and “The Palm Beach Story,” and prolific Egyptian auteur Youssef Chahine.

The Criterion Channel’s August lineup pays tribute to auteurs of all kinds: directors, actors, and photographers, fictional or otherwise. In a notable act of preservation and advocacy, they’ll stream 20 titles by the Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine, here introduced by the great Richard Peña. More known (but fun all the same) is a five-title Paul Thomas Anderson series including the exclusive stream of Licorice Pizza, as well as a Philip Seymour Hoffman series that overlaps with Magnolia, Punch-Drunk Love (a Criterion Edition this month), and The Master, plus 25th Hour, Love Liza, and his own directing effort Jack Goes Boating. Preston Sturges gets five movies, with Sullivan’s Travels arriving in October.

Theme-wise, a photographer series includes Rear Window, Peeping Tom, Blow-up, Close-Up, and Clouzot’s La prisonnière; “Vacation Noir” features The Lady from Shanghai, Brighton Rock, Kansas City Confidential, Purple Noon, and La piscine. Alongside the aforementioned PTA and Antonioni pictures,...

Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray sizzled as the duplicitous lovers in Billy Wilder’s exceptional 1944 film noir “Double Indemnity.” But that classic based on James M. Cain’s novel wasn’t their first pairing. Four years earlier, they played very different lovers in “Remember the Night,” which was penned by the brilliant Preston Sturges and directed by Mitchell Leisen. The exquisite holiday film, ironically released in January of 1940, has become a Christmas favorite thanks to TCM, streaming services and DVDs.

MacMurray stars as Jack, a young New York City assistant district attorney. Stanwyck’s Lee has seen her share of bad breaks is on trial before Christmas for shoplifting a bracelet at a jewelry store. MacMurray decides to bail her out of jail for the holidays and ends up taking her back to his Indiana family farm where she is warmly welcomed by his mother and aunt. His mother (Beulah Bondi...

This year, all the Oscar-contending directors are nominated for original screenplay: the Daniels, Todd Field, Martin McDonagh, Ruben Östlund and Steven Spielberg (writing with Tony Kushner).

This is the first time it’s happened in AMPAS history.

The only year that came close was 2017, when all five helmers had written or co-written their scripts, though they didn’t all get writing noms.

So here’s Film History 101.

In Hollywood lore, Preston Sturges is often credited as the first scribe to become a hyphenate, as writer-director of the 1940 “The Great McGinty.” But as with all Hollywood “facts,” there is only an element of truth here.

In the next few years, he was joined by some heavyweights: Orson Welles (“Citizen Kane”) and John Huston (“The Maltese Falcon”) in 1941; Leo McCarey (co-writer of “Going My Way”); Billy Wilder (writing with Raymond Chandler) for “Double Indemnity” in 1944; and Joseph L. Mankiewicz (“Dragonwyck”), 1946.

However, a writer-director wasn’t an innovation.

Auteur! Auteur! Four of this year’s Best Director Oscar nominees — Chloe Zhao (“Nomadland”), Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman”), Lee Isaac Chung (“Minari”) and Thomas Vinterberg (“Another Round”) — have a writing credit on their films. Zhao, Fennell and Chung reaped bids for their scripting efforts.

Over the past decade, the majority of the Oscar-winning directors were also nominated for their screenplays. Last year, Boon Joon-Ho won Best Director and shared in the Original Screenplay award with Han Jan for their work on the Best Picture champ “Parasite.”

Though writer/directors getting Oscar love is the norm these days, that wasn’t always the case. When nominations were announced for the first Academy Awards, Charlie Chaplin was cited for both Best Actor and Comedy Direction for his 1928 masterpiece “The Circus,” which he also wrote and produced. But the academy decided to withdraw his name from the competitive classes and decided “that...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Another Round (Thomas Vinterberg)

Superlatives are fatuous, but Mads Mikkelsen’s final dance in Another Round was possibly one of the finest scenes of the year. It is here that Thomas Vinterberg tips his hand: in turns devastating and rambunctious, his latest neither glorifies nor condemns the magic––and sorrows––of day-drinking, but conjures a surprisingly sober study of a midlife crisis, climaxing in this moment of blissful catharsis. As a character-defining moment, it’s up there with Denis Lavant’s pirouettes at the end of Claire Denis’ Beau Travail. – Leonardo G.

Where to Stream: Hulu

Audrey (Helena Coan)

Despite her status as one of the most iconic movie stars in history,...

The Criterion Channel has unveiled their March 2021 lineup, which includes no shortage of remarkable programming. Highlights from the slate include eight gems from Preston Sturges, Elaine May’s brilliant A New Leaf, a series featuring Black Westerns, Ann Hui’s Boat People, the new restoration of Ousmane Sembène’s Mandabi.

They will also add films from their Essential Fellini boxset, series on Dirk Bogarde and Nelly Kaplan, and Luchino Visconti’s The Damned and Death in Venice, and more. In terms of recent releases, there’s also Matthew Rankin’s The Twentieth Century and Claire Denis’ Let the Sunshine In.

Check out the lineup below, along with the teaser for the Black Westerns series. For weekly streaming updates across all services, bookmark this page.

The Adventurer, Charles Chaplin, 1917

Bandini, Bimal Roy, 1963

Behind the Screen, Charles Chaplin, 1916

Black Jack, Ken Loach, 1979

Black Rodeo, Jeff Kanew, 1972

Blood Simple, Joel and Ethan Coen,...

The director of Palmer helps us kick off our new season by walking us through some of his favorite movies.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Bloodhounds Of Broadway (1989)

Salvador (1986)

True Believer (1989)

Palmer (2021)

Wonder Wheel (2017)

A Face In The Crowd (1957)

On The Waterfront (1954)

No Time For Sergeants (1958)

The Confidence Man (2018)

Lolita (1962)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

The Ghost Of Peter Sellers (2018)

The Marrying Man (1991)

The Ruling Class (1972)

The Krays (1990)

Let Him Have It (1991)

The Changeling (1980)

On The Border (1998)

Murder By Decree (1979)

Bigger Than Life (1956)

The Night of the Iguana (1964)

Fat City (1972)

Angel (1984)

Animal House (1978)

My Science Project (1985)

Lucía (1968)

Paper Moon (1973)

Sullivan’s Travels (1941)

The Great McGinty (1940)

I Married A Witch (1942)

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Raging Bull (1980)

Once Upon A Time In America (1984)

The Rider (2017)

The Mustang (2019)

Nomadland (2020)

Murmur of the Heart (1971)

Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

The Conversation (1974)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part III (1990)

The Magnificent Ambersons...

Sony Classics’ “The Father” is an act of daring; it could have gone wrong in so many ways, but it works like gangbusters.

The film marks the movie debut of writer-director Florian Zeller, whose background is as a novelist and playwright; in many cases, that would send warning signals.

What’s more, it all takes place in one location, the apartment of Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), so it might have turned out to be a photographed stage play. Third, it toys with the audience, keeping them off-balance about what is real and what’s not.

Those are potential danger areas, but the film is so good that it defies all logic.

Movie adaptations of plays, from Eugene O’Neill to Neil Simon, usually look like filmed theater, and that’s Ok; they’re still enjoyable. But it’s magic when a filmmaker can set his movie in one space, yet it seems like pure cinema.

The Lady Eve

Blu ray

Criterion

1941/ 94 min.

Starring Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, William Demarest

Cinematography by Victor Milner

Directed by Preston Sturges

In The Lady Eve a wealthy ophiologist named Charlie Pike and a sexy card shark named Jean Harrington fall in love. It’s a rapid-fire romance fueled by equal portions of love and lust and when the affair crashes and burns, director Preston Sturges simply restarts the movie: Jean reintroduces herself to Charlie as a British socialite named Eve and la affaire d’amour begins anew. The brazenness of her charade is part and parcel of Sturges’s own impudent take on the Human Comedy – the result is a screwball work of art.

Henry Fonda is Charlie and Barbara Stanwyck plays Jean – they meet aboard a cruise ship where Jean’s father, an avuncular but remorseless con man played by Charles Coburn, has pigeonholed Charlie as a sucker par excellence.

The saga continues, featuring Adam Rifkin, Robert D. Krzykowski, John Sayles, Maggie Renzi, Mick Garris and Larry Wilmore with special guest star Blaire Bercy from the Hollywood Food Coalition.

Please support the Hollywood Food Coalition. Text “Give” to 323.402.5704 or visit https://hofoco.org/donate!

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Key Largo (1948)

I Don’t Want to Talk About It (1993)

Camila (1984)

I, the Worst of All (1990)

The Wages of Fear (1953)

Le Corbeau (1943)

Diabolique (1955)

Red Beard (1965)

Seven Samurai (1954)

Ikiru (1952)

General Della Rovere (1959)

The Gold of Naples (1959)

Bitter Rice (1949)

Pickup On South Street (1953)

My Darling Clementine (1946)

Viva Zapata! (1952)

Panic In The Streets (1950)

Yellow Sky (1948)

Ace In The Hole (1951)

Wall Street (1987)

Women’s Prison (1955)

True Love (1989)

Mean Streets (1973)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

The Abyss (1989)

The China Syndrome (1979)

Big (1988)

Splash (1984)

The ’Burbs (1989)

Long Strange Trip (2017)

Little Women (2019)

Learning To Skateboard In A War Zone (If You’re A Girl) (2019)

The Guns of Navarone...

The Great McGinty

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1940/ 1:33:1 / 82 min.

Starring Brian Donlevy, Akim Tamiroff

Cinematography by William C. Mellor

Written and Directed by Preston Sturges

If the story of a unscrupulous crook who rises to great political power hits a little too close to home these days, consider that in 1940’s The Great McGinty the mobster in question is a fundamentally decent gent who sacrifices his career to do the right thing. When the jig is up he high-tails it to the border, penniless but with a clean conscience. Current events require that Preston Sturges’ bittersweet political satire be filed under Fairy Tales.

The movie opens in a rowdy little dive in South America where the once and future lowlife Dan McGinty has made his new home, lording over the bar while dispensing equal amounts booze and wisdom. One poor fellow wanders in who could use a little of both.

“It’S The Bunk!”

By Raymond Benson

In the year 1940, Hollywood screenwriter Preston Sturges elevated his career to become one of the first writer/director double threats since the silent days of Chaplin and Keaton. For a brief five years in the early 40s, his flame burned brightly as he churned out sophisticated screwball comedies that had great wit, intelligence, and a stock company of iconic supporting comic actors—the guys you always recognize but never know their names.

After winning an Oscar for writing The Great McGinty (1940), Sturges presented superb material through 1945. Short, smart, and hilarious, Christmas in July was his second directorial effort from a script based on his own unproduced stage play. Like most of Sturges’ works, the story concerns the Everyman who wants nothing more than to better himself—and if he must challenge authority and make some waves while he does it, then so be it.

At least the title Sounds Christmas-themed! Preston Sturges’ sweet trifle is as simple as a sit-com mix-up, but the charm is in the lovable characters (the core of Sturges’ formidable stock company) and the sincerity of all concerned. Ellen Drew is the most deserving fiancé ever to pine for a wedding ring, and Dick Powell an oh-so-earnest Dagwood Bumstead type who banks his future on a goofball coffee slogan contest — just try and figure out the meaning of his winning slogan. In his second film Sturges confirmed himself as Hollywood’s newest comedy genius writer-director — although William Demarest’s perpetually flustered character is so well written and played, we’d think that the actor was simply living the part.

Christmas in July

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1940 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 67 min. / Street Date November 26, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Dick Powell, Ellen Drew, Raymond Walburn, Alexander Carr, William Demarest,...

Why so serious? While some filmmakers get their start making cheaply made B-movies or horror films, there’s a new crop of directors emerging who previously cut their teeth making classic comedies. And while most haven’t abandoned their sense of humor entirely, they’ve finally been recognized at both the box office and awards circuit by veering into prestige pictures. The latest example is Todd Phillips, the director of “Joker,” which as the darkly disturbed origin story of the iconic Batman villain is no laughing matter. Here are some other directors who have re-emerged as more than just funny men.

Preston Sturges – Comedy Classic: “The Lady Eve”/Dramatic Turn: “Sullivan’s Travels”

Preston Sturges, one of the signature directors of Old Hollywood, would likely still be admired today based solely on the success of his screwball comedies like “The Great McGinty” and “The Lady Eve.” But he took a...

Really, I mean Preston Sturges' Hotel Haywire, because nobody's too interested in George Archainbaud, a Paramount contract director who had been directing for 20 years without helming a really memorable film (Thirteen Women, an uncomfortably racist pre-Code with Myrna Loy, is as exciting as it gets, and even that one is remembered chiefly for featuring the girl who threw herself off the Hollywood sign), He would continue for another 20, moving from B-westerns into TV westerns, without making anything else of particular note.Sturges wrote the script as part of his plan to get a long-term contract at Paramount. To particularly appeal to the suits there, he filled the story with roles for Paramount stars such as Mary Boland, Charles Ruggles, Fred MacMurray and Burns & Allen, none of whom were necessarily famous enough to carry a movie, but whose combined star-power might make an attractive investment for studio or future ticket-buyers.

Apparently there’s an election happening somewhere at the moment. So what better time to test your knowledge of these campaign themed films.

Mr Smith Goes to Washington

The Best Man

Citizen Kane

Seven Days in May

Swing Vote

Bulworth

Bob Roberts

Election

The Manchurian Candidate

Dr Strangelove

Seven Days in May

Advise & Consent

The Candidate

The Campaign

The Contender

The Conquest

Meet John Doe

State of the Union

All the King's Men

The Great McGinty

Silver City

W.

The Ides of March

The American President

Three Days of the Condor

Taxi Driver

The Parallax View

The Candidate

Our Brand Is Crisis

State of Play

No

The Motorcycle Diaries

The Great McGinty

The Grapes of Wrath

Torchy Runs for Mayor

The Last Hurrah

Man of the Year

Napoleon Dynamite

Wag the Dog

Head of State

Continue reading...

Sturges’s screwball comedies play with big ideas and serious themes. So what makes them some of the funniest films ever made?

It was a sprint worthy of his greatest farces: between 1937 and 1944, Preston Sturges made some of the funniest films Hollywood ever produced, including The Great McGinty, The Lady Eve, Sullivan’s Travels, The Palm Beach Story, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, and Hail the Conquering Hero. Then suddenly, as if his frantic, frenzied comedies had exhausted not only himself but his form, Sturges ran out of steam. Blending the comical and serious, farcical and cerebral, high and low, Sturges found catalytic energy in mixing formulas like a madcap scientist; as if he had released actual kinetic energy, he went ricocheting through Hollywood cinema, until he fell to earth with a thud. Happily, the BFI season celebrating Sturges offers audiences the chance to rediscover golden-era Hollywood’s minister of misrule.

Let All The Children Boogie | Unfaithfully Yours: The Comedies Of Preston Surges

Few directors wrote their own material in the 1940s, but Preston Sturges was an exception in every way. He sold his script for The Great McGinty for $10 in exchange for the chance to direct it, and he clearly knew what he wanted, which is about the same things audiences today want: polished repartee, energetic screwball comedy, cheese-free romance and sharp social satire. This season showcases his work, from his masterpiece, Sullivan’s Travels – as fine a film about film-making as has ever been made – to those that tested the boundaries of the era audaciously. In The Miracle Of Morgan’s Creek, a woman can’t remember who she’s married (and she’s pregnant). In The Palm Beach Story, a woman marries someone richer in order to bankroll her first husband; and in McGinty itself, a homeless...

When we think about the “writer/director” we often think about the works of Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, Paul Thomas Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard or Lars Von Trier. The auteurs who charge into the uphill battle of putting their own story to film. It’s more than a credit, it’s a type of filmmaker – one that more often than not starts outside of the studio system, one that more often than not considers themselves a writer first and a director second, one that falls in love with their own dialog. It’s very common now but it didn’t used to be.

75 years ago this week a film was released with the first “Written and Directed by” credit, making official something that had been going on in movie making since the evolution of narrative filmmaking and giving birth to the modern day writer/director. The first credited writer/director: playwright Preston Sturges,...

Sullivan’s Travels

Written and directed by Preston Sturges

USA, 1941

At the start of Sullivan’s Travels, movie director John L. Sullivan (Joel McCrea) has been screening his latest effort. The picture within the picture concludes with an intense rooftop fight aboard a train. It’s almost absurd in its inflated action and Sullivan is not at all pleased with his creation. This type of escapist entertainment may be all right for some, but it’s social commentary he now seeks. These are troubling times, he argues, with war in Europe and strikes on the home front, and the ambitious, idealistic filmmaker wants something beyond mere cinematic frivolity. Apparently, so did the director of Sullivan’s Travels, the great Preston Sturges. At least that’s what he ended up with anyway.

Sullivan’s Travels, “By” Preston Sturges, as the opening credit proclaims, lending the filmic fable something of a storybook...

Alex Garland, screenwriter of “28 Days Later,” “Sunshine” and “Never Let Me Go,” makes an impressive directorial debut with cerebral sci-fi thriller “Ex Machina” (in theaters today), but Garland waves off the achievement of leaping to directing as “just next in a continuum.” “The truth was that there was no epiphany moment about directing, because I just don’t dignify the directing role the way we’re supposed to,” the British filmmaker told The Dissolve. “There are a few people — like Woody Allen, he’s an auteur, and I’m cool with that. But for me, directing is about collaboration.” Whether directing is a logical next step or a hard-sought achievement for screenwriters, it’s often done by telling studios, “Hey, here’s my next screenplay. You can have it as long as I get to direct.” Preston Sturges — at the time the highest paid screenwriter in Hollywood — is noted for...

 

Last year Brad listed his list of Top Ten Christmas Movies and in 2007 David listed the ten films he considered the Top Ten Deranged Christmas Flicks. Well, I had to throw my hat in the ring with a completely different list... a list for the holiday softies. So light the fire, warm the coco and grab a blanket... What follows is my list of the twelve best Christmas/Holiday movies to warm your heart. When you compare the twelve films that follow to the two lists I just mentioned, three of them can be found on Brad's top ten and two on David's list of Deranged Christmas Flicks, but perhaps the most interesting fact of them all is that all three lists share the exact same film in the #1 slot. Weird... right? So browse through these three pages where I say a few words about each film, offer up some clips and trailers and,...

Terrence Malick's first film wowed audiences; his second, Days of Heaven, set a rapturous new standard in cinema aesthetics. David Thomson shines a light on its legacy

Terrence Malick's 1978 movie Days of Heaven was never a huge hit, but it was such a departure and so deliberate an attempt to have the audience stirred by beauty that it felt calming and inspiring. Without shame or caution it was trying to address the pre-modern era of American history, the natural conflict between landowners and newcomers. But it was just as interested in the vanity of men and women trying to tame and organise the wild parts of the country. Beyond that, was this perhaps the most beautiful picture ever made? Second films are famously hard, but with Days of Heaven, Malick was announcing that he would do things his way.

By common consent, his first film, Badlands (1973), was one...

In 1973, I did an Esquire column about screenwriters, focusing largely on the first writer-director of the talking era, the mercurial Mr. Preston Sturges, who got so fed up with seeing his scripts mangled by inferior directors that he made an unprecedented deal with Paramount: he would direct his own screenplay for one dollar. The superb result was the brilliantly satirical political comedy, The Great McGinty, which won him an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. This was followed by seven more comedies over the next four years, each one of similar vintage quality (except for The Great Moment, which was somewhat wrecked by studio interference in the cutting), an amazing outburst of creativity that remains unchallenged to this day; six further masterpieces that have stood the test of time and changing tastes: Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek, Hail the Conquering Hero, The Palm Beach Story,...

In 1973, I did an Esquire column about screenwriters, focusing largely on the first writer-director of the talking era, the mercurial Mr. Preston Sturges, who got so fed up with seeing his scripts mangled by inferior directors that he made an unprecedented deal with Paramount: he would direct his own screenplay for one dollar. The superb result was the brilliantly satirical political comedy, The Great McGinty, which won him an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. This was followed by seven more comedies over the next four years, each one of similar vintage quality (except for The Great Moment, which was…...

It's Election Day, and U.S. citizens are heading to the polls! In celebration of our blessed freedom, "Extra" has put together a list of some of the best political movie quotes. Check em' out! And get out there and vote!

Top 20 Political Movie Quotes'Man of the Year' (2004)

"Politicians are a lot like diapers. They should be changed frequently, and for the same reasons." —Tom Dobbs (Robin Williams)

'Swing Vote' (2008)

"All the world's...

Life is political. Hollywood is political. And yesterday in the U.S., the state elections were very political in the broad sense of the term, since many pundits kept arguing that they served as a referendum on President Obama and his policies.

We make no such claims. We're not here to talk U.S. politics specifically, but with all this political fever in play, what better time than to reflect back on what we believe are the ten best movies about American politics?

There are some terrific contenders here; not surprisingly some from decades gone by. But in most, the themes of power and corruption going hand-in-hand is front and center. It's material that's inherently rife with conflict, making for some of the best drama to be found anywhere.

So have a look at the following pages and our selections for the best movies about American politics. And when you're finished,...

On the heels of a politically motivated film festival that wrapped Saturday in Dallas, a couple more are on the way, including a bipartisan effort from directors Barry Levinson and John Sayles and one that, like the Dallas effort, leans to the right. From Levinson and Sayles comes the Political Comedy Festival, a function of Levinson's alma mater, the American University School of Communication. The festival opens Thursday in Washington with the new Sayles satire Silver City and also includes the feature films Wag the Dog, Primary Colors, Election, Bob Roberts and the Preston Sturges classic The Great McGinty. Scheduled speakers include Levinson and Primary Colors anonymous author Joe Klein, as well as speechwriters for former Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton and Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry.