There's Sometimes a Buggy
466 episodes - English - Latest episode: 6 days ago - ★★★★ - 14 ratingsJoin Dave and Elise every week for a buggy-ride of cinematic exploration. A bilingual Montreal native and a Prairies hayseed gravitate to Toronto for the film culture, meet on OK Cupid, and spur on each other's movie-love, culminating in this podcast. Expect in-depth discussion of their old favourites (mostly studio-era Hollywood) and their latest frontiers (courtesy of the TIFF Cinematheque and various Toronto rep houses and festivals).
The podcast will be comprised of several potentially never-ending series:
- Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto: Our Perspectives on Choice Local Retrospectives
- Hollywood Studios – Year by Year: Deep-cut dishing on Paramount, MGM, Warner Brothers, RKO, Fox, and Universal items from 1930 to 1948.
- Acteurist oeuvre-views of worthy on-camera creatives, beginning with Jennifer Jones and Setsuko Hara.
- And a big parade of special subjects hand-chosen by whichever of your hosts happens to have a handle on this buggy that week
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Episodes
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 12: BUT NOT FOR ME (1959) and CONSPIRACY OF HEARTS (1960)
April 19, 2024 04:42 - 51 minutes - 29.7 MBOur examination of the film career of Lilli Palmer continues with a couple of excellent films that show us Palmer's range when playing "loveable": But Not for Me, in which she gives a comedic performance as the ex-wife of a Broadway producer played by Clark Gable, benevolently interfering in his budding relationship with young actress Carroll Baker; and Conspiracy of Hearts, in which Palmer plays an Italian Mother Superior who persuades her nuns to help Jewish children escape from a concen...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers – 1946: DEVOTION & NIGHT AND DAY
April 12, 2024 04:16 - 1 hour - 49.7 MBFor this Warner Bros. 1946 episode we watched two fantastical biopics, Devotion (directed by Curtis Bernhardt), starring Ida Lupino and Olivia de Havilland as Emily and Charlotte Brontë, and Night and Day (directed by Michael Curtiz), starring Cary Grant as Cole Porter and Monty Woolley as himself. We found them to be like night and day in terms of their quality, but you'll have to listen to find out which of the two we deemed redeemable. And then for something completely different: in a l...
Special Subject – Produced By Sam Goldwyn, The 1930s - THE DARK ANGEL (1935), DODSWORTH (1936), THESE THREE (1936) and WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939)
April 06, 2024 05:33 - 1 hour - 60.4 MBIn our April Special Subject, Part 1 of our look at the films of Samuel Goldwyn, we discuss Dark Angel (1935), These Three (1936), Dodsworth (1936), and Wuthering Heights (1939), a selection heavy on Dave favourites Merle Oberon, William Wyler, and Gregg Toland. We ask in what sense these are "quality" films, and in what ways they escape our expectations of that category, calling attention to the theme of psychological violence in These Three and Wuthering Heights and the role played by gen...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 11: LES AMANTS DE MONTPARNASSE (1958) and MADCHEN IN UNIFORM (1958)
March 29, 2024 05:30 - 1 hour - 41.5 MBFor this week's Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we watched Jacques Becker's The Lovers of Montparnasse (1958), in which Palmer, playing Modigliani's rejected lover Beatrice Hastings, perfects her persona of brittle dissociation; and Mädchen in Uniform, the 1958 remake of the famous Weimar-era film about a teenager at an all-girls' boarding school who falls in love with her teacher. Our viewings provoke topics from the relationship between art and capitalism to the relationship ...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1946: TWO SMART PEOPLE and A LETTER FOR EVIE
March 22, 2024 04:32 - 1 hour - 40.5 MBThis MGM 1946 Studios Year by Year episode is a Jules Dassin double feature that shows the range of the famed blacklistee even during his most constrained studio period: the noirish romantic drama Two Smart People, about two con artists (Lucille Ball and John Hodiak) and a cop who are all out to con each other; and the remarkable A Letter for Evie (starring Marsha Hunt and Hume Cronyn), a very postmodern (but also hilarious) deconstruction of gender conventions that's also a moving romance....
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 10: TEUFEL IN SEIDE (1956) and LA VIE À DEUX (1958)
March 15, 2024 04:08 - 1 hour - 49 MBFor this Lilli Palmer episode of our Acteurist Oeuvre-view series, we watched another West German movie, Devil in Silk (directed by Rolf Hansen), and Life Together (directed by Clément Duhour), a tribute to famed French playwright, screenwriter, and film director Sacha Guitry with an all-star cast. We analyze the surprisingly sophisticated structure of Duhour and Guitry's horned-up middlebrow French comedy (warning: one of the comedy sequences discussed is disturbingly racist), while Devil...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1946: MISS SUSIE SLAGLE’S and THE BLUE DAHLIA
March 08, 2024 05:33 - 1 hour - 39.6 MBIn this Paramount 1946 episode we look at two movies featuring Veronica Lake which otherwise could not be more dissimilar: Miss Susie Slagle's (directed by John Berry), about the trials of pre-WWI Johns Hopkins medical students living in a boarding house presided over by Lillian Gish; and famous Lake/Ladd noir outing, The Blue Dahlia (directed by George Marshall and written by Raymond Chandler). We discuss the potential influence of the leftists involved in making Miss Susie Slagle's on its...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1945: THE SUSPECT & LADY ON A TRAIN
March 01, 2024 04:48 - 49 minutes - 30.6 MBIn this Universal 1945 episode of The Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year, we look at a couple of noir-adjacent films, Robert Siodmak's The Suspect, starring Charles Laughton as an abused husband who looks for a way out of his miserable marriage when he meets sweet and lovely Ella Raines, and the comedy/crime film Lady on a Train, which stars Deanna Durbin as an exuberant and resourceful murder mystery addict who gets involved in a real investigation when she witnesses a murder from her train w...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 9: MAIN STREET TO BROADWAY (1953) and FEUERWERK (1954)
February 23, 2024 05:32 - 51 minutes - 34 MBIn this Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we discuss Tay Garnett's Main Street to Broadway (1953), a pleasant curiosity with an all-star New York theatre cast, including Palmer and Rex Harrison in a brief sandwich-themed couple cameo, but nearly stolen by Lynchian radio humourist Herb Shriner; and Fireworks (1954), Palmer's first German film, in which she plays a circus performer possessed by the guiding spirit of her clown father, as she expresses in the well-known song "O mein ...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – RKO – 1945: JOHNNY ANGEL & CORNERED
February 16, 2024 05:23 - 58 minutes - 38.1 MBFor this RKO 1945 episode, two beautifully filmed noirs (by Harry J. Wild), Edwin L. Marin's Johnny Angel, another noir with a femme fatale (Claire Trevor) who loves too much (and gets a very unexpected - and gory - redemption), and Edward Dmytryk's Cornered, in which Dick Powell learns why you shouldn't hunt down Nazis and kill them with your bare hands, but doesn't seem very interested. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss the 1982 documentary I Heard It Through the Grapevine...
Valentine’s Special Subject – MARNIE (1964) & LA CAPTIVE (2000)
February 09, 2024 05:17 - 1 hour - 52.3 MBFor our Valentine's 2024 episode we looked at two movies about obsession that interrogate the notion of romantic love: Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964) and Chantal Akerman's La Captive (2000). If you think an extensive discussion of sexual assault and of what it would mean to be "pressed to death" by your partner's love sounds like essential Valentine's Day content, this episode is for you. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, a very brief discussion of Douglas Sirk's Written on the W...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – 20th Century Fox – 1945: FALLEN ANGEL & LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN
February 02, 2024 05:59 - 1 hour - 44.9 MBOur Fox 1945 episode features two of the greatest and greatest-looking film noirs: Otto Preminger's Fallen Angel and John M. Stahl's Leave Her to Heaven. We unpack the movies' love triangles, in which two strong-willed women exert their influence over a passive man; their treatment of the topics of love and obsession; the unique cinematic qualities of Alice Faye's presence and Gene Tierney's face; how Gene Tierney and Linda Darnell differ from the stereotypical femme fatale - and much more....
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 8: THE LONG DARK HALL (1951) and THE FOUR POSTER (1952)
January 26, 2024 04:22 - 1 hour - 37.1 MBFor this week's Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we watched two films pairing acteur Lilli Palmer with then-husband Rex Harrison. We discuss the potential relationship of thriller/courtroom drama The Long Dark Hall (1951) to the scandal plaguing their marriage at the time and consider The Four Poster (1952) as a "marriage film," and what it has to say about that social and spiritual state. And in a packed Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we talk about five films from the TIFF Cinematheq...
Special Subject- Silent Ozu Sampler – TOKYO CHORUS (1931), I WAS BORN BUT… (1932), and PASSING FANCY (1933)
January 19, 2024 05:26 - 1 hour - 38.4 MBFor our January Special Subject, we look at three silent "family comedies" by Ozu, Tokyo Chorus (1931), I Was Born, But... (1932), and Passing Fancy (1933), although we argue that "comedy" doesn't entirely encompass the emotional range of these films. We argue that the melancholy of late Ozu is already discernible in these tales of father-son conflict and confrontation with life's disappointing nature, although Passing Fancy offers a different kind of father-son relationship and unique bra...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 7: MY GIRL TISA (1948), NO MINOR VICES (1948) and HANS LE MARIN (1949)
January 12, 2024 04:53 - 1 hour - 40.6 MBThis Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode tackles two more films made with leftist colleagues, Elliott Nugent's My Girl Tisa, a Popular Front-style tale of early 20th century immigrants and the American Dream, and Lewis Milestone’s quirky, stylistically inventive comedy No Minor Vices (written by Arnold Manoff). We also watched François Villiers' fascinating Hans le Marin (also known as Wicked City), a vehicle for Maria Montez co-starring and co-written by her husband, Jean-Pierre Au...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers – 1945: SARATOGA TRUNK & DANGER SIGNAL
January 05, 2024 05:36 - 59 minutes - 39.7 MBFor this round of Warner Bros. 1945, we take on a very successful movie with two very big stars and one very terrible reputation, Saratoga Trunk, with Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper, and a fascinating little B noir, Danger Signal, with Zachary Scott being his usual cheeky self and getting women upset. We discuss the stylistic risks of Saratoga Trunk, the genius of Ingrid Bergman, the subtleties of Gary Cooper, and Danger Signal's unusual feminist screenplay (from a novel by FOTP Phyllis Bot...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 6: CLOAK AND DAGGER (1946) and BODY AND SOUL (1947) + Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, Ernst Lubitsch at TIFF Cinémathèque, Part 3
December 29, 2023 06:14 - 1 hour - 45.4 MBIn this Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we discuss Palmer's first two Hollywood films, Fritz Lang's anti-fascist spy drama, Cloak and Dagger (1946), and Robert Rossen's socially critical boxing noir, Body and Soul (1947). We dig into the social context of these films, asking why these progressive writers and directors wanted to tell these stories at this moment, and how their political sympathies shaped the stories. We also talk about the persona emerging from Lilli Palmer's wa...
Special Subject – Have Yourself a Monty Woolley Christmas – THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER (1942), LIFE BEGINS AT EIGHT-THIRTY (1942) and THE BISHOP’S WIFE (1947) + Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto
December 22, 2023 05:24 - 1 hour - 41.4 MBFor our December 2023 Special Subject, we're having ourselves a Monty Woolley Christmas! We look at three Christmas-adjacent movies from the 1940s featuring the anti-Santa in roles big and small: The Man Who Came to Dinner, in which he stars as waspish radio personality Sheridan Whiteside, who takes over the home of a bourgeois Middle American couple; Life Begins at Eight-Thirty, in which he plays a great actor who's been broken by alcoholism; and The Bishop's Wife, in which he adds some N...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1945: THE CLOCK & YOLANDA AND THE THIEF + FEAR AND MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO – Ernst Lubitsch retrospective at TIFF Cinémathèque, Part I
December 15, 2023 05:07 - 1 hour - 48.3 MBIn this week's MGM 1945 episode, a Vincente Minnelli double feature: The Clock, a wartime romantic drama with two very intense stars, Judy Garland and Robert Walker, that doubles as a love poem to New York City; and a Technicolor musical fantasy about, in Dave's words (more or less), "A woman who wants to bleep an angel," starring Lucille Bremer as the woman and Fred Astaire as the angel. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, four Lubitsch movies over two weekends: To Be or Not to Be, The...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 5: THE RAKE’S PROGRESS (1945) and BEWARE OF PITY (1946)
December 08, 2023 05:06 - 1 hour - 45.2 MBIn this Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we take a look at a Lilli Palmer who's (mostly) new to us, Lilli the victim: the victim of self-destructive womanizer Rex Harrison (Palmer's real-life husband) in Launder and Gilliat's enigmatic social satire The Rake's Progress (1945), and the self-destructive paralysis victim of Beware of Pity (1946), based on the Stefan Zweig novel. Which of these adversaries is harder to contend with? Listen to find out! Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s: ...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1945: THE MAN IN HALF MOON STREET & SALTY O’ROURKE
December 01, 2023 05:02 - 54 minutes - 33.1 MBFor this Paramount 1945 episode, we look at a couple of male melodramas: The Man in Half Moon Street, a Gothic B-movie starring Nils Asther, "the most beautiful man who ever lived," according to Elise, as a scientist who becomes unscrupulous in his pursuit of eternal youth, and Salty O'Rourke, a Raoul Walsh-directed hit starring Alan Ladd as a racetrack gambler who manipulates an unruly young jockey. The movies also boast fairly substantial love interest parts for Helen Walker as a socialite...
Special Subject - Silent Proto-Noirvember with Ozu – WALK CHEERFULLY (1930), THAT NIGHT’S WIFE (1930) and DRAGNET GIRL (1933) + Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto: KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (2023)
November 24, 2023 05:02 - 1 hour - 42.9 MBFor our Ozu Noir-vember Special Subject, we look at three silent films by Yasujirō Ozu, Walk Cheerfully (1930), That Night's Wife (1930), and Dragnet Girl (1933), that not only bear a fascinating relationship to each other but also seemingly inaugurate the gangster film in Japan and anticipate (we argue) American film noir more closely even than French poetic realism, as well as the Nouvelle Vague. Join us as we marvel at Ozu's rapid evolution as a stylist and storyteller in the space of ...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 4: THUNDER ROCK (1942), THE GENTLE SEX (1943) & ENGLISH WITHOUT TEARS (1944)
November 17, 2023 05:48 - 1 hour - 49.1 MBWe dig into some substantial British cinema offerings in a Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode that's heavy on wartime themes: Thunder Rock (1942), a philosophical examination of the disillusionment of a leftist; dramatically illustrated in a surprising way; The Gentle Sex (1943), Leslie Howard's eccentric and affecting semi-documentary about women in the British Army; and English Without Tears (1944), Terence Rattigan and Anatole de Grunwald's examination of the transformations tak...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1944: WEIRD WOMAN & COBRA WOMAN
November 10, 2023 07:01 - 1 hour - 39.4 MBWe weren't sure what to expect with our Universal 1944 "scary woman"-themed episode, but Cobra Woman, starring the riveting Maria Montez, delivered, and the completely unknown Weird Woman, starring the less-than-riveting Lon Chaney Jr., was a surprise gem that seems to be nodding to Val Lewton's work at RKO. This episode causes us to ask such questions as: what is acting? Can anyone in these movies "act"? Does it matter? When are B-movies inherently sophisticated, and when are they deliber...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 3: A GIRL MUST LIVE (1939) & THE DOOR WITH SEVEN LOCKS (1940)
November 03, 2023 05:14 - 44 minutes - 26.8 MBThis week's Acteurist-Oeuvre-view shows us two sides of Lilli Palmer: Bad Lilli in a comic supporting role, brawling with fellow chorus girl Renée Houston and competing with a demure Margaret Lockwood over wealthy patrons in Carol Reed's A Girl Must Live (1939); and Good Lilli assuming the lead in B-mystery The Door with Seven Locks (1940), seeking adventure with comic sidekick Gina Malo. It ain't Noël Coward, but we had fun. Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s: A GIRL MUST LIVE (1939) [dir....
Special Subject – Heavy Metalious Hallowe’en – Peyton Place (Novel), PEYTON PLACE (1957) & PEYTON PLACE TV series
October 27, 2023 04:20 - 1 hour - 50 MBFor our Halloween 2023 episode, we take you on a tour of Peyton Place—the 1956 novel by Grace Metalious, 1957 Fox movie starring Lana Turner, and the mid-late-60s TV series starring Dorothy Malone and Mia Farrow (among many others) that reinvented television. We discuss the strange journey of Metalious's scabrous and scathing vision from satire to soap opera, in the course of which the story of shack-dweller Selena Cross's violation by her stepfather becomes the story of lower-middle-class ...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – RKO – 1944: PASSPORT TO DESTINY & NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART
October 20, 2023 02:52 - 45 minutes - 27.6 MBThis week's RKO 1944 episode brings a Hollywood slant to an English working-class perspective on the war. In her only first-billed feature film role, in Passport to Destiny, Elsa Lanchester plays an indomitable charwoman who embarks upon a self-appointed mission to assassinate Hitler after coming to believe that she's magically protected, while in None But the Lonely Heart, American playwright Clifford Odets' directorial debut, Cary Grant plays a Cockney dreamer who struggles with the real...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 2: COMMAND PERFORMANCE (1937) & CRACKERJACK (1938)
October 13, 2023 04:51 - 46 minutes - 29.3 MBOur second Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode sees the rising young star second-billed as the love interest in a couple of strange enterprises: Command Performance (1937), a vehicle for popular American tenor Arthur Tracy, and Crackerjack (1938), an unhinged crime comedy starring Aldwych farces alumnus Tom Walls as a criminal superhero. As Lilli tries to orient herself in film acting, Dave and Elise try to orient themselves in this unfamiliar territory of 30s British cinema and its ...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – 20th Century Fox – 1944: THE EVE OF ST. MARK & IN THE MEANTIME, DARLING
October 06, 2023 05:10 - 1 hour - 36.4 MBOur Fox 1944 episode features a prestige production, The Eve of St. Mark, based on a Maxwell Anderson play and directed by John Stahl, and a modest marital drama, In the Meantime, Darling, directed by Otto Preminger just before he makes a name for himself in noir with Laura. Between the two, the problems facing the men at the front and the women who love them are covered, as well as the kinds of moral dilemmas each might face. We discuss Preminger's handling of Jeanne Craine's character, an...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 1: CRIME UNLIMITED (1935), SECRET AGENT (1936), and THE GREAT BARRIER (1937)
September 29, 2023 04:34 - 55 minutes - 34.8 MBIn our first Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we spend some time with Lilli in England and take in her screen debut, in the "Quota Quickie" Crime Unlimited (1935); her small role in Hitchcock's eccentric Secret Agent (1936), in which she gets to play with an unhinged Peter Lorre; and a thankless role in a lyrical ode to Canadian nation-building a.k.a. labour exploitation, The Great Barrier (1937). Then, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we grapple with Angela Schanelec's Music, ...
Special Subject - Stanley Cavell’s Pursuits of Happiness + THE AWFUL TRUTH (1937), HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) & ADAM'S RIB (1949)
September 22, 2023 04:09 - 1 hour - 68.4 MBThis Special Subject is something extra-special: we discuss philosopher Stanley Cavell's idiosyncratic classic of film criticism, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage and three classic comedies that are the subjects of essays in that book, Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth, Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday, and George Cukor's Adam's RIb. What is Cavell's "comedy of remarriage," and is it really a genre? What does "marriage" mean to Cavell, and what does it have to do with Amer...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers – 1944: PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE & THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS
September 15, 2023 05:20 - 55 minutes - 35.5 MBThis Warner Bros. 1944 episode makes good use of Warner Bros.' A-list stars, A-list character actors, B-list stars, and B-list character actors. Casablanca and Maltese Falcon alumni converge in both Michael Curtiz's Passage to Marseille, starring Humphrey Bogart as a morally compromised hero, with Claude Rains and Sydney Greenstreet as the patriotic and pro-fascist alternatives for occupied France; while in Jean Negulesco's The Mask of Dimitrios, a Citizen Kane-like story of a self-made cri...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 13: THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD (1965) and FLIGHT OF THE DOVES (1971)
September 08, 2023 04:44 - 54 minutes - 34.4 MBWarning: our final Dorothy McGuire episode contains very little Dorothy McGuire in our discussion of the films, although we also compare our Top 10 performances and give a final analysis of how her career was shaped by its cultural moment. However, we still find lots to talk about in the oddball final feature films in which she appeared, particularly George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), a Diatessaron or harmonizing of the Christian New Testament Gospels. We discuss what Stev...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1944: SONG OF RUSSIA & KISMET
September 01, 2023 05:35 - 1 hour - 39.6 MBMGM, 1944 is an odd one. First, MGM's effort to help the war, Song of Russia (directed by Gregory Ratoff), prompts us to ask the question, "What were all of these Communist writers doing working for Louis B. Mayer?" And then, William Dieterle's Kismet, starring Ronald Colman as an amoral magician with misguided plans for his daughter's future, proves to have more to recommend it than just the campy set-piece for which Marlene Dietrich painted her legs gold. Despite the box office failure of...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 12: SUSAN SLADE (1961) & SUMMER MAGIC (1963)
August 25, 2023 05:44 - 1 hour - 48.9 MBIn our penultimate Dorothy McGuire Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, another pair of films in which only one of McGuire's "mother roles" affords her a dramatic opportunity. Find out which is which, between Delmer Daves' Susan Slade (1961) and Disney's Summer Magic (1963). We also discuss stealth soap opera radicalism, compare Disney and Vincente Minnelli's approaches to femininity as a construct, and argue for the surprising distinctiveness of early 60s kewpie doll blonde heroines. As a bonus,...
Special Subject – Silent Naruse – FLUNKY! WORK HARD (1931), NO BLOOD RELATION (1932), APART FROM YOU (1933), EVERY-NIGHT DREAMS (1933)
August 18, 2023 05:00 - 1 hour - 47.1 MBOur special subject this month is The Silent Naruse: four of the five extant silent films of Mikio Naruse, Flunky, Word Hard!, from 1931, No Blood Relation, from 1932, and Apart from You and Every-Night Dreams, from 1933. We discuss these juvenilia as early examples of Naruse's materialist melodrama, and how much "transcendence" that perspective permits. Then, switching moods drastically: two tickets for Barbie! In Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we let you know whether or not we regret ret...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1944: LADY IN THE DARK & AND NOW TOMORROW
August 11, 2023 04:23 - 55 minutes - 34.8 MBThis week's Paramount 1944 films take the studio's talent of this period in unexpected directions: Mitchell Leisen's Lady in the Dark makes a Technicolor extravaganza of the fantasy sequences in this psychoanalytical tale of a woman's (Ginger Rogers') ambivalence about glamour, based on a hit Broadway musical; and Alan Ladd and Raymond Chandler (as star and screenwriter) bring a hardboiled note to a soapy plot about a socialite (Loretta Young) seeking a cure for her deafness in And Now Tomo...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 11: THE DARK AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRS (1960) & SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON (1960)
August 04, 2023 04:01 - 53 minutes - 33.1 MBIn this Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, Dorothy McGuire's string of interesting wife roles gets tangled up by two of the most sexist films Elise has ever seen in her life, Delbert Mann's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs (based on the play by William Inge) and Disney's The Swiss Family Robinson. The Dark at the Top of the Stairs nevertheless gives us a lot to discuss in terms of psychiatric concepts and ideas about gender roles in 1950s America, as well as providing McGuire with one of the ...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1943: THE STRANGE DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER & SON OF DRACULA
July 28, 2023 04:02 - 46 minutes - 29.3 MBUniversal 1943 is a strange one, starting with The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler, starring Ludwig Donath as a reluctant Nazi collaborator who's forced to impersonate Hitler, and continuing with Robert Siodmak's Son of Dracula, with Lon Chaney Jr. as a hapless Dracula who falls victim to femme fatale Louise Allbritton. We discuss WWII AU scenarios, the Twilight Zone scenario of being a soul trapped in Hitler's body, and the comedy team of Frank Craven and J. Edward Bromberg as a down-to-earth...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1943: THE STRANGE DEATH OF ADOLPH HITLER & SON OF DRACULA
July 28, 2023 04:02 - 46 minutes - 29.3 MBUniversal 1943 is a strange one, starting with The Strange Death of Adolph Hitler, starring Ludwig Donath as a reluctant Nazi collaborator who's forced to impersonate Hitler, and continuing with Robert Siodmak's Son of Dracula, with Lon Chaney Jr. as a hapless Dracula who falls victim to femme fatale Louise Allbritton. We discuss WWII AU scenarios, the Twilight Zone scenario of being a soul trapped in Hitler's body, and the comedy team of Frank Craven and J. Edward Bromberg as a down-to-eart...
Special Subject: Film Noirlsons by Phil Karlson – KANSAS CITY CONFIDENTIAL (1952), 99 RIVER STREET (1953), FIVE AGAINST THE HOUSE (1955) and THE PHENIX CITY STORY (1955)
July 21, 2023 05:31 - 1 hour - 65.3 MBJuly's special subject is a sampler of noirs by 1950s noir auteur Phil Karlson: Kansas City Confidential (1952), 99 River Street (1953), 5 Against the House (1955), and The Phenix City Story (1955). We discuss one-time Fox musicals leading man John Payne's transformation into the ideal shlubby, haunted noir protagonist, Karlson's take on the hysterical male trope, his use of violence, his delineation of the ideal woman, the progressive and reactionary tendencies in his movies, and the lies ...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 10: THIS EARTH IS MINE (1959) and A SUMMER PLACE (1959)
July 14, 2023 05:44 - 1 hour - 42.9 MBThis week's Dorothy McGuire episode continues the trend of unusual wife and mother roles with two family melodramas from 1959, Henry King's tale of an economically and psychologically troubled viticulture dynasty, This Earth Is Mine, and Delmer Daves' frank, sex-positive look at sexual mores among the respectable middle classes during the late 1950s, A Summer Place, which had contemporary reviewers reaching for the smelling salts. Whether playing a sympathetic adulteress who has to deal wi...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – RKO – 1943: THE FALLEN SPARROW & THE SEVENTH VICTIM + FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO
July 07, 2023 04:02 - 1 hour - 50.7 MBFor our RKO 1943 episode, we look at two films that exemplify the nascent RKO noir style: Richard Wallace's The Fallen Sparrow, starring John Garfield as a traumatized Spanish Civil War veteran hunted by Nazis and the Val Lewton production The Seventh Victim, starring Kim Hunter as a sheltered young woman who wants to find out about the sorrows of the world and does not want to be told to drink her milk. Featuring cinematography by Nicholas Musuraca and scores by Roy Webb, these films embrac...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 9: OLD YELLER (1957) and THE REMARKABLE MR. PENNYPACKER (1959)
June 30, 2023 06:02 - 1 hour - 39.9 MBOur Dorothy McGuire episode this week is guaranteed to give you mood whiplash. We begin with Disney classic and Boomer phenomenon Old Yeller (1957), the most hellish depiction of the war of all against all in nature we've seen since King Kong, with a moving central performance by Tommy Kirk as a boy ungracefully slouching toward manhood with the indispensable assistance of a good dog and a seraphic mother (McGuire). After imbibing its gnostic wisdom, we turn to the very different problems ...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – 20th Century Fox – 1943: STORMY WEATHER & THE GANG’S ALL HERE
June 23, 2023 06:31 - 1 hour - 56.1 MBIn this extra-special 20th Century Fox 1943 episode, we stare agog at a couple of dazzling musicals: Stormy Weather, whose all-Black cast is headlined by Bill Robinson and Lena Horne and boasts an embarrassment of geniuses; and Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here, a Technicolor psychedelic extravaganza that's the pinnacle of Fox's signature variety-style musical. We try to sketch out some of the complex representational issues attending Stormy Weather, and our reasons for thinking that th...
Special Subject – Silent Vidor Sampler – THE SKY PILOT (1921), PEG O’ MY HEART (1922), WILD ORANGES (1924), and LA BOHEME (1926)
June 16, 2023 05:59 - 1 hour - 51.8 MBOur June Special Subject samples the surviving silent cinema of Dave's favorite director (now revealed!), King Vidor. We tease Vidor's auteur preoccupations out of these four early films—The Sky Pilot (1921), Peg o' My Heart (1922), Wild Oranges (1924), and La Bohème (1926)—and find a common focus on the successful, frustrated, or warped self-realization of his heroines. We explore the way Vidor articulates this theme through sometimes eccentric versions of a variety of genres: Western, com...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 8: TRIAL (1955) and FRIENDLY PERSUASION (1956)
June 09, 2023 04:49 - 52 minutes - 32.6 MBWe continue last week's theme of Hollywood's attitude toward the Soviet Union as our Dorothy McGuire Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode takes us beyond not only the Popular Front era but just a shade beyond the heyday of McCarthyism. We also find that we spoke too soon about McGuire entering her mom-roles era, as in this episode's movies she embodies an unmarried professional woman with a liberal attitude toward sex and a shady political past in Trial (1955, directed by Mark Robson, based on the...
Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers – 1943: MISSION TO MOSCOW & EDGE OF DARKNESS
June 02, 2023 05:33 - 1 hour - 48.2 MBOur Warner Brothers 1943 episode is a very special one, a Popular Front anti-Nazi double feature, the Stalinist propaganda film Mission to Moscow (directed by Michael Curtiz) and Lewis Milestone's drama about Norwegian resistance to the Nazi occupation, Edge of Darkness. We attempt (as complete non-experts!) to lay out the stakes involved in the case made by Mission to Moscow and discuss the circumstances of the film's production and the impact it made on Hollywood. Then we move on to Miles...
Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Dorothy McGuire – Part 7: MAKE HASTE TO LIVE (1954) and THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN (1954)
May 26, 2023 05:38 - 1 hour - 43 MBOur Dorothy McGuire movies this week occupy two ends of the mid-50s Hollywood spectrum: a low-budget black-and-white noirish crime thriller for Republic, Make Haste to Live (1954), and a vibrantly colorful Cinemascope travelogue romance for Fox, Three Coins in the Fountain (1954). We find plenty to recommend in both, from Make Haste to Live's stylish cinematography (by John L. Russell of Moonrise and Psycho fame) and palpable nastiness to McGuire's odd comedic chemistry with Clifton Webb in...
Special Subject – Jacqueline Audry Sampler – GIGI (1949), OLIVIA (1951), HUIS CLOS (1954) and LES PETITS MATINS (1962)
May 19, 2023 05:05 - 1 hour - 55.6 MBOur Special Subject this month is the films of Jacqueline Audry, a fairly recently rediscovered postwar French director. We watched all of the films we could find with English subtitles: Gigi (1949), Olivia (1951), Huis clos/No Exit (1954), and Les petits matins/Hitch-Hike (1962). From literary adaptations of some strong and scandalous material to an unusually gentle New Wave comedy, these films reveal a director who tackles the erotic frankly but not uncritically. We also have a Fear and M...