Penélope Cruz, Bernardo Bertolucci, Gael García Bernal Sign Polanski Petition

Actor Gael García Bernal, Academy Award-winning actress Penélope Cruz, veteran director Mario Monicelli, veteran screenwriter Lorenzo Semple Jr, and Academy Award-winning filmmakers Bernardo Bertolucci and Ethan Coen are a few of the latest additions to the list of signatories demanding freedom for filmmaker Roman Polanski, currently being held by Swiss authorities.
Among the other new signatories of the petition organized by France’s Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques (SACD) are:
Author Ariel Dorfman; actor-screenwriter Buck Henry; composer Vangelis; actors Sylvia Kristel and Anne Consigny; filmmakers Fatih Akin, Juan Antonio Bayona, Djamel Bennecib, Giuseppe Bertolucci, Alain Berliner, Guillermo del Toro, Michel Deville, Sam Gabarski, Diane Kurys, Tonie Marshall, Brett Ratner, and Jerry Schatzberg; World Cinema Foundation director Kent [...]

Best Films – 1940

Henry Fonda in The Grapes of Wrath
FILM
The Blue Bird
d: Walter Lang; scr: Ernest Pascal
The Grapes of Wrath
d: John Ford; scr: Nunnally Johnson
Kitty Foyle
d: Sam Wood; scr: Dalton Trumbo
The Letter
d: William Wyler; scr: Howard Koch
The Mark of Zorro
d: Rouben Mamoulian; scr: John Tainton Foote, Garrett Fort, Bess Meredyth
Pinocchio
d: Hamilton Luske, Ben Sharpsteen; scr: Ted Sears, Otto Englander and others
Pride and Prejudice
d: Robert Z. Leonard; scr: Aldous Huxley, Jane Murfin
Rebecca
d: Alfred Hitchcock; scr: Robert E. Sherwood, Joan Harrison
Waterloo Bridge
d: Mervyn LeRoy; scr: S.N. Behrman, Hans Rameau, George Froeschel
 

Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday
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Busman’s Honeymoon / Haunted Honeymoon
d: Arthur B. Woods; scr: Monckton Hoffe, Angus MacPhail, Harold Goldman
His Girl Friday
d: Howard Hawks; scr: Charles Lederer
The Long Voyage Home
d: John [...]

Best Films – 1936

Sacha Guitry in The Story of a Cheat
FILM
Follow the Fleet
d: Mark Sandrich; scr: Dwight Taylor
Fury
d: Fritz Lang; scr: Bartlett Cormack, Fritz Lang
Libeled Lady
d: Jack Conway; scr: Maurine Watkins, Howard Emmett Rogers, George Oppenheimer
Mr. Deeds Goes to Town
d: Frank Capra; scr: Robert Riskin
My Man Godfrey
d: Gregory La Cava; scr: Morrie Ryskind, Eric Hatch
Le Roman d’un tricheur / The Story of a Cheat
d, scr: Sacha Guitry
Show Boat
d: James Whale; scr: Oscar Hammerstein II
Theodora Goes Wild
d: Richard Boleslawsky; scr: Sidney Buchman
These Three
d: William Wyler; scr: Lillian Hellman
 

Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton in Dodsworth
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César
d, scr: Marcel Pagnol
Club de femmes
d, scr: Jacques Deval
Desire
d: Frank Borzage; scr: Edwin Justus Mayer, Waldemar Young, Samuel Hoffenstein
Dodsworth
d: William [...]

Best Films – 1923

I must admit that I’m not a fan of Charles Chaplin’s comedies. Heresies aside, I did very much enjoy Chaplin’s dramatic A Woman of Paris, an attempt to turn his frequent leading lady Edna Purviance into a star. The film was a box-office success (despite rumors to the contrary), but Purviance’s career never took off. That is unfortunate, as she gives a moving performance in this tale of lost love and single motherhood. She is with Carl Miller in the photo. Things are obviously not going very well for the couple, but Purviance is surely suffering in style.
 
FILM
Cameo Kirby
d: John Ford; scr: Robert N. Lee
Scaramouche
d: Rex Ingram; scr: Willis Goldbeck
The White Rose
d, scr: D. W. Griffith
A Woman of Paris
d, scr: [...]

Lost Pola Negri Film Found

The News/Polskie Radio reports that an early (and thus far unnamed) Pola Negri vehicle has been discovered at Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia by the husband-and-wife team of Marek and Malgorzata Hendrykowski from Poznan University. Dating from the 1910s, the Polish production is a detective story set in Warsaw. The print has Italian subtitles and is said to be in good condition.
Born (Barbara) Apolonia Chalupiec in 1894 in Lipno, central Poland, Pola Negri began her show business career dancing with the Imperial Ballet in Warsaw, later enrolling in Poland’s Academy of Dramatic Arts. Following her stage debut in 1913, Negri rapidly ascended to the top of her profession, and by the late 1910s she had become a [...]

Best Films – 1947

Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron, David Farrar in Black Narcissus
FILM
Black Narcissus
d, scr: Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
Cheyenne
d: Raoul Walsh; scr: Alan Le May, Thames Williamson
Crossfire
d: Edward Dmytryk; scr: John Paxton
Down to Earth
d: Alexander Hall; scr: Edwin Blum, Don Hartman
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
d: Joseph L. Mankiewicz; scr: Philip Dunne
Life with Father
d: Michael Curtiz; scr: Donald Ogden Stewart
Miracle on 34th Street
d, scr: George Seaton
Monsieur Vincent
d: Maurice Cloche; scr: Jean Bernard Luc, Jean Anouilh
Mourning Becomes Electra
d, scr: Dudley Nichols
Nicholas Nickleby
d: Alberto Cavalcanti; scr: John Dighton
The Perils of Pauline
d: George Marshall; scr: P. J. Wolfson, Frank Butler
 
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Body and Soul
d: Robert Rossen; scr: Abraham Polonsky
A Double Life
d: George Cukor; [...]