Archive for December, 2011
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
Artistic Spirit
A great film depends on everything coming together into an unlikely alignment. If a director, actor, screenwriter, cinematographer, composer, or other essential component is lacking, you may end up with only an interesting film that shows promise. With The Red Shoes (1948), so many things that could have gone wrong, didn’t. Michael Powell could have [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable, DVD, and Blu-ray by DavidE
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
War Starts at Midnight!
Don’t be put off by the title. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) is one of the finest British films ever made. Based on the popular Colonel Blimp political cartoon that satirized Britain’s military establishment, Winston Churchill was so worried the film would send the wrong wartime message to British and American audiences [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
Fiercely Original
For many years, I considered The Gold Rush (1925) to be my favorite Chaplin film. It has everything you would want in a great comedy: thrills (sliding off the edge of a cliff), romance (Georgia Hale is strikingly beautiful), imagination (a pretend dance using forks and potatoes), pathos (the tramp waiting for Georgia to attend [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
Whatever It Takes
You could go around in circles trying to decide who is better: Chaplin or Keaton? Setting aside personal preferences, they’re close enough to call it a tie. Chaplin taps directly into your emotions, while Keaton’s work is more cerebral. Two of Chaplin’s feature-length films tug at the heart strings more than the others. They are [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
Eighth Wonder of the World
When a film (or its star) rises to the status of cultural icon, it’s easy to forget why it became a part of the social fabric. We may forget Fay Wray’s scream is almost primal in its intensity. We may forget the feverish pace at which the story unfolds once Kong appears. What we don’t [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable, DVD, and Blu-ray by DavidE
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011
Classic Comedy Dialogue
Marx Brothers fans usually fall into two camps: those who think Duck Soup (1933) is their best film, and those who think A Night at the Opera (1935) is their best film. The strongest argument in favor of A Night at the Opera is the stateroom scene. It’s the funniest sequence the Marx Brothers ever [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
As Perverse as a Nightmare
Touch of Evil (1958) became a great film because of a misunderstanding. Charlton Heston had agreed to appear in a police drama for Universal Pictures, but only because he thought Welles was signed to direct it. Welles, in fact, had agreed only to act in the film. In a 1965 interview with the French magazine [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
Thin Is In
The Thin Man (1934) is the first of six comic detective films featuring William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles. There have been many recurring romantic pairings over the years (Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, for example), though this may be the most successful pairing involving the same set of characters. In [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
Word Play
Ask any Howard Hawks fan to name Hawks’ best comedies, and you’ll likely be stuck in a twenty-minute conversation. Almost everyone agrees Bringing Up Baby (1938) and His Girl Friday (1940) are top notch, but after that, the choices begin to differ. I would place Twentieth Century (1934) right up there, as well as Ball [...]