Author Archive
Monday, April 9th, 2012
Archetypal Western
Greatest Western of all time? Most influential Western? Archetypal Western? Stagecoach (1939) may be all three, depending on your point of view. John Ford hadn’t made a Western since 3 Bad Men (1926) and was eager to make another. Stagecoach was originally slated to be shot in Technicolor with David O. Selznick as the producer. [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable, DVD, and Blu-ray by DavidE
Thursday, March 29th, 2012
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
Monday, March 19th, 2012
The Same Only Different
The Awful Truth (1937) is one of the least appreciated of the top screwball comedies, in part because director Leo McCarey isn’t as well known as directors Frank Capra, George Cukor, Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges, or even Howard Hawks. His best comedies include Let’s Go Native (1930), Duck Soup (1933), Six of a Kind (1934), [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Monday, March 19th, 2012
Best Film Ever Made?
If you’re going to write about classic films, you have to stick your neck out — and take the chance others will stick their tongues out in response. OK, here goes. As much as I love Citizen Kane (1941), I think Sunrise (1927) is the better film. In fact, it may be the best film [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable, DVD, and Blu-ray by DavidE
Monday, March 19th, 2012
Emotionally Satisfying
No matter how many classic films you’ve seen, there will always be films that escape your notice. They may no longer exist (most silent films, for example). There may be rights issues (the long version of Abel Gance’s Napoleon, for example). Or you didn’t know enough about them to actively seek them out (hence this [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Monday, March 19th, 2012
Watch the Skies
Just who was responsible for The Thing from Another World (1951)? If you look at the credits, you can see it was directed by Christian Nyby. But if you ask any Howard Hawks fan, you’ll probably be told it’s pure Hawks. The promotional materials of the time have Hawks’ name in big letters above the [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Monday, March 19th, 2012
Give ‘em the Dickens
The novels of Charles Dickens should be ripe for film adaptation. The plucky heroes, sentimental plots, and rich background characters would be instantly recognizable if translated to the screen properly. That’s the problem. What film could possibly live up to the novels, which often run a thousand pages or more? (Dickens was usually paid according [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Monday, March 5th, 2012
No Fighting in the War Room
It’s hard to write about Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) without resorting to superlatives. It’s the best comedy of the 1960s. It’s the best black comedy ever. It has the longest title of any Oscar-nominated film. Just as Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Cable, DVD, and Blu-ray by DavidE
Monday, March 5th, 2012
A Most Unusual Day
Roger Thornhill should have known he was in trouble when he walked through the lobby, and the hotel’s music system played “It’s a Most Unusual Day.” Of rather, we should have known. He may not know it, but we do — he lives inside a Hitchcock film, so we can expect a healthy dose of [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable, DVD, and Blu-ray by DavidE
Monday, March 5th, 2012
The Forgotten Man
While the screwball comedy is a byproduct of the Great Depression, not every screwball comedy reflects the era head-on. My Man Godfrey (1936) is both a spoof of — and a commentary on — the financial inequities at the time. The movie-going public was well aware the Depression was hitting the poor much harder than [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Monday, March 5th, 2012
Better Than Kane?
Is Ambersons better than Kane? If you’re talking about the first part of the film, then the answer is yes. The problem with The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), which Orson Welles directed just a year after Citizen Kane, is it was re-edited and given a happier ending. In his book Orson Welles, Joseph McBride quotes Welles [...]
1 Comment » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
Who Cares Whodunit
What if someone created a murder mystery so entertaining you didn’t care who did the murder? That’s the case with The Big Sleep (1946). Based on Raymond Chandler’s first novel, the story draws private detective Philip Marlowe (Humphrey Bogart) into an ever expanding circle of corruption and conspiracy. Eight deaths are woven throughout the book [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
Living on the Edge
Only Angels Have Wings (1939) is one of Howard Hawks’ best and most personal films. Hawks was a master of taking on the conventions of a genre and adding deeper meaning to its clichéd elements. At the same time, he was able to reinvigorate the entertainment aspects of the genre, so the end result is [...]
No Comments » - Posted in Cable and DVD by DavidE
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
Fragmentary Images
When I think of classic short films, I usually recall the silent comedies of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, or Harold Lloyd. Or I might remember my favorite cartoons from Walt Disney, Dave Fleischer, or Chuck Jones. Of course, there are many other fine short films that span the decades. One of the best shorts from [...]