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Edward Woodward

Lewis Fitz-Gerald, Bryan Brown, Edward Woodward, Jack Thompson in Breaker Morant

Edward Woodward, the star of the 1980s television series The Equalizer and of the film classics The Wicker Man (1973) and Breaker Morant (1980), died on Monday in Truro, Cornwall, England. Woodward had been suffering from heart problems and other ailments; the cause of death was pneumonia.
Born to working-class parents in Croydon, Surrey, south of London, on June 1, 1930, Woodward began his acting career onstage in 1946. As a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he played roles in, among others, Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing, in addition to starring in Cyrano de Bergerac on the West End and in Noel Coward’s Broadway musical [...]

The Auteurs World Cup

Charulata by Satyajit Ray (top); Moolaadé by Ousmane Sembene (middle); El Sur by Víctor Erice (bottom)

The Auteurs World Cup was launched yesterday, Nov. 16. David Hudson, formerly of The Daily and GreenCine Daily, describes the AWC thus:
"It’s a competitive game measuring up national and regional cinemas against each other[,] created and organized by the online community at The Auteurs. Like the World Cup in soccer, only with movies.
"Background: Kicked off in September with 32 teams, then separated into 8 groups of 4, from which the top 2 in each group have qualified for the last 16. The last 16 match line-ups are here. Each team has had a manager making the selections. In each match 3 films are [...]

Grace Kelly: GREEN FIRE, THE ROCKINGHAM TEA SET

Grace Kelly, Stewart Granger in Green Fire

Grace Kelly is once again the focal point of Turner Classic Movies‘ Thursday evening schedule. And as far as I’m concerned, next Thursday, Nov. 19, is going to be the most interesting of the Grace Kelly evenings this month.
The reason for that is simple: TCM will be showing the one Kelly feature I’ve yet to see — the Colombian-set adventure drama Green Fire (1954), co-starring Stewart Granger and Paul Douglas — and two of Kelly’s pre-stardom television vehicles that I’ve also yet to see — "The Rockingham Tea Set" (1950) and "The Kill" (1952), both made for the Studio One anthology series and both directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, best known [...]

TO EACH HIS OWN – Olivia de Havilland, John Lund

To Each His Own (1946)
Direction: Mitchell Leisen
Screenplay: Charles Brackett and Jacques Théry; from a story by Brackett
Cast: Olivia de Havilland, John Lund, Mary Anderson, Roland Culver, Phillip Terry, Bill Goodwin
 

Olivia de Havilland, John Lund in To Each His Own
 

Olivia de Havilland, who had starred in the 1941 melodrama Hold Back the Dawn, returns to the wartime milieu in To Each His Own (1946), once again under the direction of Mitchell Leisen, who guides the proceedings with his characteristic sincerity while cleverly skirting the Production Code’s restrictive guidelines. 
In To Each His Own, de Havilland plays Jody Norris, a small-town woman who falls quickly in love — much like her character in Hold Back the Dawn, but this time [...]

HOLD BACK THE DAWN – Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland, Paulette Goddard

Hold Back the Dawn (1941)
Direction: Mitchell Leisen
Screenplay: Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder; from Ketti Fring’s story
Cast: Charles Boyer, Olivia de Havilland, Paulette Goddard, Victor Francen, Walter Abel, Curt Bois, Rosemary DeCamp
 

Olivia de Havilland, Charles Boyer, Paulette Goddard in Hold Back the Dawn
 

Olivia de Havilland shines in Mitchell Leisen’s melodrama Hold Back the Dawn, a sort of opening bracket for the director’s World War II-era films.
Adapted by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett from Ketti Frings‘ semi-autobiographical story, Hold Back the Dawn stars Charles Boyer as George Iscovescu, a Romanian dancer unable to enter the U.S. from Mexico due to immigration quotas imposed at the onset of the European conflict.
Paulette Goddard is his scheming former partner, Anita, who marries an American to [...]

LYSISTRATA-Themed Screenings at the Getty Villa

Harriet Andersson, Bibi Andersson, Gunnel Lindblom in The Girls

Michael Patrick Kelly’s documentary Operation Lysistrata, Melvin James‘ A Miami Tail, and Mai Zetterling’s The Girls will be screened at the Getty Villa’s Auditorium on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 14-15. Admission is free, but a separate ticket is required for each film.
Having staged Aristophanes‘ Peace earlier this season, Los Angeles’ Getty Villa continues its celebration of "the father of comedy" with this three-film series based on the Athenian playwright’s best-known work, the anti-war satire Lysistrata, in which the women of Athens and neighboring cities go on a sex strike so as to force their male partners to reconsider their warring habits.
Of the three, Mai Zetterling’s The Girls (1968) is the one [...]

THE GODDESS – Kim Stanley – d: John Cromwell

The Goddess (1958)
Direction: John Cromwell
Screenplay: Paddy Chayefsky
Cast: Kim Stanley, Lloyd Bridges, Steven Hill, Betty Lou Holland, Joan Copeland, Gerald Hiken, Patty Duke
 

Kim Stanley in The Goddess
 

Paddy Chayefsky evokes a cynical Tennessee Williams in his screenplay for The Goddess, a Hollywood cautionary tale directed by veteran John Cromwell. Episodic in progression — the film is broken into three pulpy chapters — The Goddess serves as a spotlight for a daring Kim Stanley performance, playing within the middle-brow arena of melodrama even as it stages dark comedy and acute commentary.
In The Goddess, Stanley is Emily Ann Faulkner, a broken woman from rural hickdom who has been abandoned by her irresponsible mother. (The child is portrayed by [...]

Berlin 2010: Play it Again …! Series

Jean-Paul Belmondo, Jean Seberg in Breathless

As per The Hollywood Reporter, the Berlin International Film Festival will mark its 60th anniversary with the retrospective "Play it Again …!," featuring 40 films compiled by British film critic David Thomson from previous Berlin festivals.
Among them are Curzio Malaparte’s The Forbidden Christ, Alf Sjoberg’s Miss Julie, Akira Kurosawa’s To Live, Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless, Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter, Zhang Yimou’s Red Sorghum, Niels Arden Oplev’s We Shall Overcome, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia.
Also, Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses, which caused a furor in 1976. German authorities — who probably had better things to do (weren’t the Baader Meinhof running [...]

Charles Chaplin’s ZEPPED Found

In the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips reports that a long-thought lost Charles Chaplin film has been accidentally found after a film collector made an eBay bid on a nitrate film canister.
Phillips explains that "the footage turned out to be the obscure Chaplin short [Zepped], a World War I propaganda effort designed to buck up British morale, combining stop-motion animation and outtakes and unused alternate shots from films Chaplin made for both Keystone and Essanay studios.
"The hybrid, over which Chaplin apparently exercised no creative control, includes a shot or two from His New Job, the short film Chaplin made for the Chicago-based Essanay during his 23-day residency here in late 1914 and early 1915."

Jack Lemmon, Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier on TCM

Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier in A Raisin in the Sun

Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award winners Stan Laurel, Jack Lemmon, Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee, and Kirk Douglas will be celebrated by Turner Classic Movies with a four-film presentation beginning at 8 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 22, the night before TCM’s sister networks TNT and TBS present a live simulcast of the 2010 Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Of the four films — the short Tit for Tat, and the features The Out-of-Towners, A Raisin in the Sun, and Last Train from Gun Hill — I’ve only seen the moderately entertaining John Sturges Western Last Train from Gun Hill, whose most memorable feature is Carolyn Jones as the female lead [...]

Grace Kelly on TCM: REAR WINDOW, THE COUNTRY GIRL

James Stewart, Grace Kelly in Rear Window

Turner Classic Movies‘ Grace Kelly series continues this Thursday, Nov. 12, with three of Kelly’s biggest hits, all from 1954: Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and The Country Girl. Kelly, who died in 1982 following a car accident in Monaco, would have turned 80 on Nov. 12.
Some consider Dial M for Murder a minor Alfred Hitchcock effort. Personally, I find it more enjoyable than Hitchcock’s revered Rear Window. Part of the reason is a pair of deadly scissors found in the former but not in the latter; yet, I’d say that the chief reason is that neither one of Kelly’s leading men in Dial M for Murder is James Stewart. Instead, [...]

D.W. Griffith in California

Los Angeles Filmforum will present "D.W. Griffith in California," on Sunday, Nov. 15, at 7:30 pm. at the Echo Park Film Center. At the screening, film scholar Tom Gunning will discuss D. W. Griffith and his early Californian films.
Six of those Griffith productions will be screened: Man’s Genesis (1912, 17 min); The New Dress (1911, 17 min.); The Massacre (1914, 20 min); The Unchanging Sea  (below right, 1910, 14 min.); The Sands of Dee (1912, 17 min); and The Female of the Species (1912, 17 min).
All in 16mm, with live musical accompaniment by Cliff Retallick.
Among the early stars featured in those shorts are Blanche Sweet, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Arthur Johnson, Wilfred Lucas, and, [...]

Abbott & Costello, Mickey Rooney & Judy Garland Screenings

Packard Campus’ November Series Intro
Schedule and film information from the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus website:

Thursday, November 05 (7:30 pm.)
THE MIRACLE WORKER (United Artists, 1962)
The story of Anne Sullivan’s struggle to teach the blind and deaf Helen Keller how to communicate.
Directed by Arthur Penn.
With Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke.
35 mm, black & white, 106 minutes. Copyright collection print.
 
Friday, November 06 (7:30 pm.)
CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY (Warner Bros., 1939)
An FBI agent risks his life to infiltrate Nazi sympathizers in the U.S.
Directed by Anatole Litvak.
With Edward G. Robinson and Francis Lederer.
35mm, black & white, 104 minutes. Print preserved by the Library of Congress.
 
Saturday, November 07 (7:30 pm.)
RIDE THE HIGH COUNTRY (MGM, 1962)
Two aging gunslingers sign on to [...]

Charles Chaplin’s THE CIRCUS, ALADDIN, EASY RIDER Screenings

Among the upcoming screenings in the November film series of the Library of Congress’ Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation in Culpeper, Va., are vehicles for just about everyone, from Charles Chaplin to Dennis Hopper; from Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland to Robin Williams‘ voice.
I’ve never seen Disney’s Aladdin, though I know it was a big hit when it came out. Robin Williams was particularly praised for his voice work as the Genie — some even went as far as to demand that the Academy come up with Oscars for best voice performance.
No one came up with that demand when Charles Chaplin’s The Circus was released, perhaps because the film has no audible dialogue. I’m not a big [...]

Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Clift: FROM HERE TO ETERNITY Screening

Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster make love in From Here to Eternity(top); Montgomery Clift and Frank Sinatra do a little (sorta) lovemaking of their own later on in the film (bottom)

Fred Zinnemann’s 1953 Academy Award-winning drama From Here to Eternity, starring Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, and Frank Sinatra, will be screened by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Wednesday, November 18, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The presentation will feature the premiere of a new digital restoration, as well as an onstage discussion with Ernest Borgnine, who has a supporting role in the film.
Adapted by Daniel Taradash from James Jones‘ bestselling [...]

Anselmo Duarte

Tônia Carrero, Anselmo Duarte in Tico-Tico no Fubá

Brazilian actor and filmmaker Anselmo Duarte, whose 1962 anti-religious intolerance drama Keeper of Promises remains the only Brazilian production to have won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, died yesterday, Nov. 7, at a hospital in the city of São Paulo. Duarte, who was 89, had suffered a massive stroke.
The São Paulo State native (born in the town of Salto, on April 21, 1920) began his film career as an actor in the 1940s. Although Orson Welles is supposed to have hired the newcomer to play a bit part as a dancer in his fictionalized "documentary" It’s All True in 1942, Duarte’s first important credits came out later in the decade, e.g., Edmond [...]

Grace Kelly: TO CATCH A THIEF, THE SWAN

Grace Kelly on TCM: Part I
Thanks to Kelly’s Oscar win, The Country Girl is interesting as a historical curiosity — it’s the sort of "gutsy" and "realistic" film adaptation of a respected stage play that was very popular among the filmgoing elite of the 1950s (e.g., Tea and Sympathy, A Hatful of Rain), but that I generally find both lame and artificial. Bing Crosby’s drunk is about as convincing as Kelly’s frumpish housewife (a role that should have gone to original choice Jennifer Jones), but that didn’t prevent a number of Academy members from making sure Crosby, director George Seaton, and the film itself received Academy Award nominations. Seaton, in fact, did win an Oscar for his [...]

Grace Kelly on TCM

Stating the obvious: most people take great pleasure in idealizing their idols — which is why idols are idols.
Whether we’re talking of gods, saints, prophets, or pop stars, the process is pretty much the same: flaws are expunged, deeds that never took place are turned into (at times miraculous) facts, the Pantheon of the Immortals becomes their abode following their earthly demise. (In some extreme cases — assorted gods, Elvis — the idol in question doesn’t die, period.)
Grace Kelly, Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month, is one of the lofty ones now dwelling in the aforementioned Pantheon. True, the flesh-and-bood Philadelphia-born (Nov. 12, 1929) woman (nee Grace Patricia Kelly) may have been quite different [...]

Shadows of Russia Schedule

Angela Lansbury, Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate

Below is the complete "Shadows of Russia" schedule on Turner Classic Movies:

Wednesday, Jan. 6
Part One: Twilight of the Tsars
8 p.m. The Scarlet Empress (1934) – starring Marlene Dietrich and John Lodge.
10 p.m. Rasputin and the Empress (1932) – starring John, Ethel and Lionel Barrymore.
Part Two: Red Romance
12:15 a.m. Red Danube (1949) – starring Walter Pidgeon and Ethel Barrymore.
2:30 a.m. Reds (1981) – starring Warren Beatty, Diane [...]

Shadows of Russia: Communism on TCM

Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka (top); Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford in The Way We Were (bottom)

From the Romanovs’ last stand to Warren Beatty’s first solo directorial effort: On every Wednesday in January 2010, Turner Classic Movies will present the 20-film festival "Shadows of Russia," a showcase of Hollywood movies portraying Russia (and/or the Soviet Union) and the sociopolitical reverberations of Communism throughout the 20th century.
Among the scheduled films are classics such as Ninotchka, The Manchurian Candidate, and Reds, in addition to lesser-known fare like Counter-Attack, I Was a Communist for the FBI, and The Strawberry Statement. Get ready for some laughs and a few tears — mostly laughs. And mostly of the unintended kind.
I must red-facedly [...]

THE WAR GAME Review II

THE WAR GAME Review: Part I

Given the spate of nuclear Armageddon films made in the 1960s (e.g., Fail Safe, Planet of the Apes) and up through the early 1980s television production The Day After, it’s remarkable how such a low-budget effort like The War Game retains its effectiveness when almost all other films on the topic seem corny. It’s likely that the timeless effectiveness of Watkins’ film is the very reason it was banned for nearly two decades. Scenes of British police shooting civilians were probably deemed too disturbing. Worse yet, the film’s realistic feel and unflinching look at the total inability of the U.K. government to protect its citizens from a nuclear [...]

THE WAR GAME d: Peter Watkins

The War Game (1965)
Direction and Screenplay: Peter Watkins
Narration: Michael Aspel and Peter Graham
 

 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
For anyone who thinks that those 50-pack mega-DVD sets of public domain films put out by several different video companies are worthless, I would argue that the amount of films you get for the money is worth it, even if all were mediocre, and that the truth is: each DVD package will come with at least 8-10 enjoyable films, a few true classics like Carnival of Souls or Night of the Living Dead, and every so often a great little film will pop up that makes the package a total steal.
One such 50-pack I [...]

RICH MAN’S FOLLY – George Bancroft, Frances Dee

Rich Man’s Folly (1931)
Direction: John Cromwell
Screenplay: Grover Jones and Edward E. Paramore Jr.; from Charles Dickens’ novel Dombey and Son
Cast: George Bancroft, Frances Dee, Robert Ames, David Durand, Juliette Compton, Dorothy Peterson
 

Directed by the respected John Cromwell and based on Charles Dickens‘ Dombey and Son, Rich Man’s Folly features George Bancroft as a ruthless, egotistical shipping tycoon whose only concern is his work, all the while grooming his young son so he’ll one day take over the family business. In the meantime, the rest of family is completely ignored.
That is the kind of role Bancroft did best: Larger-than life, driven, and arrogant men who usually meet a towering, humbling defeat in the final reel. Also in the [...]

THE PONY EXPRESS – Betty Compson, Ricardo Cortez

The Pony Express (1925)
Direction: James Cruze
Screenplay: Walter Woods; from Woods and Henry James Forman’s story
Cast: Betty Compson, Ricardo Cortez, George Bancroft, Ernest Torrence, Wallace Beery, Al Hart
 

The Pony Express is a rousing James Cruze Western depicting the founding of the Pony Express with a backdrop of political ambitions concerning a senator’s plans to get California to secede from the United States so he can build his own empire.
A great cast and Cruze’s direction keep this one interesting — even though Ricardo Cortez in a period film seems woefully out of place and pretty Betty Compson’s role is more or less that of an ingenue, merely requiring her to look good while reacting to the things going [...]

THE APARTMENT ABOVE d: Leon Trystan

Pietro Wyzej / The Apartment Above (1937)
Direction: Leon Trystan
Screenplay: Emanuel Schlechter, Ludwik Starski, Eugeniusz Bodo
Cast: Eugeniusz Bodo, Helena Grossówna, Józef Orwid
 

 

Leon Trystan’s Pietro Wyzej (alternately known in the US as The Apartment Above, Neighbors, and The Neighbor from the Next Floor) is a delightful Polish comedy about two men — one older (Józef Orwid), the other younger (Eugeniusz Bodo) — who happen to have the same name.
The two live on opposite floors of the same apartment building and have an acrimonious relationship. The younger man is a radio announcer and the leader of a swing orchestra; the older man is a classical musician. A string of zany misunderstandings and mistaken identities ensues when the older man’s niece [...]

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