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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 [...]

Miriam Hopkins on TCM

An early photo of Miriam Hopkins. Photos in this article: courtesy of Allan Ellenberger

Miriam Hopkins, one of the most underrated performers of the studio era, will have her "Summer Under the Stars" day on Thursday, Aug. 20.
Turner Classic Movies will present fourteen Miriam Hopkins films, including one TCM premiere — the Samuel Goldwyn production of Barbary Coast — and three of Hopkins’ saucy pre-Code vehicles made at Paramount.
Although there are no Hopkins rarities in the program — TCM must lease the Universal library, which contains both the Universal and Paramount classics — it’s great to have a day dedicated to an actress who, no matter how good, has been usually dismissed because of her (alleged) off-screen behavior.
As I’ve [...]

Greta Garbo’s NINOTCHKA Screening

Ernst Lubitsch’s delightful Ninotchka, starring Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas, will be screened as the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series "Hollywood’s Greatest Year: The Best Picture Nominees of 1939” on Monday, July 13, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The evening will begin at 7 p.m., with the ninth chapter of the 1939 serial Buck Rogers, starring Buster Crabbe and Constance Moore, and the animated short The Autograph Hound, featuring Donald Duck.

In Ninotchka, Garbo (above, with Lubitsch) plays a Russian agent out to retrieve three other agents who have been corrupted by the decadent lights of Paris. While in [...]

THE MERRY WIDOW d: Ernst Lubitsch

The Merry Widow (1934)
Direction: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Ernest Vajda and Samson Raphaelson; from Franz Lehár’s operetta
Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Edward Everett Horton, Una Merkel, George Barbier, Minna Gombell, Sterling Holloway
 

 
The Merry Widow is not one of Ernst Lubitsch’s most discussed films. Critics generally tend to focus on his early Paramount talkies, such as One Hour with You (co-directed by George Cukor) and Trouble in Paradise, and his later comedies Ninotchka and To Be or Not to Be.
Yet, The Merry Widow is a superior musical, boasting sumptuous sets (production design by Cedric Gibbons), exquisite cinematography (courtesy of Oliver T. Marsh), a magnificently staged ballroom-dancing sequence, witty lines and situations (by Lubitsch collaborators Samson Raphaelson and Ernest Vajda, from Franz Lehár’s operetta), [...]

Best Films – 1939

The Rules of the Game by Jean Renoir
FILM
Gone with the Wind
d: Victor Fleming; scr: Sidney Howard
Le Jour se lève / Daybreak
d: Marcel Carné; scr: Jacques Viot, Jacques Prévert
Midnight
d: Mitchell Leisen; scr: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
d: Frank Capra; scr: Sidney Buchman
Ninotchka
d: Ernst Lubitsch; scr: Billy Wilder, Charles Brackett, Walter Reisch
The Old Maid
d: Edmund Goulding; scr: Casey Robinson
The Rains Came
d: Clarence Brown; scr: Philip Dunne, Julien Josephson
La Règle du jeu / The Rules of the Game
d: Jean Renoir; scr: Jean Renoir, Carl Koch
The Roaring Twenties
d: Raoul Walsh; scr: Jerry Wald, Richard Macaulay, Robert Rossen
The Women
d: George Cukor; scr: Anita Loos, Jane Murfin
Wuthering Heights
d: William Wyler; scr: Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur
 
CHECK [...]

Best Films – 1938

Lionel Barrymore, James Stewart, Jean Arthur, Edward Arnold in You Can’t Take It with You
FILM
The Adventures of Robin Hood
d: Michael Curtiz, William Keighley; scr: Seton I. Miller, Norman Reilly Raine
Bringing Up Baby
d: Howard Hawks; scr: Dudley Nichols, Hagar Wilde
Dramatic School
d: Robert B. Sinclair; scr: Ernest Vajda, Mary McCall Jr.
L’Etrange Monsieur Victor
d: Jean Grémillon; scr: Albert Valentin, Charles Spaak, Marcel Achard
Four Daughters
d: Michael Curtiz; scr: Lenore J. Coffee, Julius J. Epstein
If I Were King
d: Frank Lloyd; scr: Preston Sturges
The Lady Vanishes
d: Alfred Hitchcock; scr: Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder
Marie Antoinette
d: W. S. Van Dyke; scr: Claudine West, Donald Ogden Stewart, Ernest Vajda
Vivacious Lady
d: George Stevens; scr: P. J. Wolfson, Ernest Pagano
You Can’t Take It with You
d: Frank Capra; scr: Robert Riskin
 

[...]

Best Films – 1934

Norma Shearer in The Barretts of Wimpole Street
FILM
The Barretts of Wimpole Street
d: Sidney Franklin; scr: Ernest Vajda, Claudine West, Donald Ogden Stewart
The Count of Monte Cristo
d: Rowland V. Lee; scr: Philip Dunne, Dan Totheroh, Rowland V. Lee
The Gay Divorcee
d: Mark Sandrich; scr: George Marion Jr., Dorothy Yost, Edward Kaufman
Hide-out
d: W. S. Van Dyke; scr: Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich
The Merry Widow
d: Ernst Lubitsch; scr: Samson Raphaelson, Ernest Vajda
 

Fredric March, Evelyn Venable in Death Takes a Holiday
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Broadway Bill
d: Frank Capra; scr: Robert Riskin
Death Takes a Holiday
d: Mitchell Leisen; scr: Maxwell Anderson, Gladys Lehman
Gold
d: Karl Hartl; scr: Rolf E. Vanloo
Here Comes the Navy
d: Lloyd Bacon; scr: Earl Baldwin, Ben Markson
Maskerade / Masquerade in Vienna
d: Willi Forst; scr: [...]

Best Films – 1932

Boris Karloff, Gloria Stuart in The Old Dark House
FILM
Beauty and the Boss
d: Roy del Ruth; scr: Joseph Jackson
Blessed Event
d: Roy del Ruth; scr: Howard J. Green
Jewel Robbery
d: William Dieterle; scr: Erwin S. Gelsey
The Most Dangerous Game / The Hounds of Zaroff
d: Ernest B. Schoedsack, Irving Pichel; scr: James Ashmore Creelman
The Old Dark House
d: James Whale; scr: Ben W. Levy, R.C. Sheriff
One Way Passage
d: Tay Garnett; scr: Wilson Mizner, Joseph Jackson
 

Tod Browning and cast on the Freaks set
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The Animal Kingdom
d: Edward H. Griffith; scr: Horace Jackson
Freaks
d: Tod Browning; scr: Al Boasberg, Willis Goldbeck, Leon Gordon, Edgar Allan Woolf
Rain
d: Lewis Milestone; scr: Maxwell Anderson
The Hatchet Man
d: William A. Wellman; scr: J. Grubb Alexander
Trouble in Paradise
d: Ernst Lubitsch; [...]

Best Films – 1931

Willi Fritsch and Lilian Harvey in Congress Dances
FILM
À nous la liberté / Liberty for Us
d, scr: René Clair
City Streets
d: Rouben Mamoulian; scr: Max Marcin, Oliver H. P. Garrett, Dashiell Hammett
Daybreak
d: Jacques Feyder; scr: Ruth Cummings, Cyril Hume, Zelda Sears
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
d: Rouben Mamoulian; scr: Samuel Hoffenstein, Percy Heath
Five Star Final
d: Mervyn LeRoy; scr: Robert Lord, Byron Morgan
Der Kongreß tanzt / Congress Dances
d: Erik Charell; scr: Norbert Falk, Robert Liebmann
The Maltese Falcon / Dangerous Female
d: Roy del Ruth; scr: Maude Fulton, Lucien Hubbard, Brown Holmes
The New Adventures of Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford
d: Sam Wood; scr: Charles MacArthur
The Public Enemy
d: William A. Wellman; scr: Kubec F. Glasmon, [...]

Best Films – 1929

Alexandra Schmidt in Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness
FILM
Eternal Love
d: Ernst Lubitsch; scr: Hans Kräly; titles: H. H. Caldwell, Katherine Hilliker
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney
d: Sidney Franklin; scr: Hans Kräly, Claudine West
The Love Parade
d: Ernst Lubitsch; scr: Ernest Vajda, Guy Bolton
Lucky Star
d: Frank Borzage; scr: Sonya Levien; dialogue: John Hunter Booth; titles: H. H. Caldwell, Katherine Hilliker
Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück / Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness
d: Piel Jutzi; scr: Willy Döll, Jan Fethke
On With the Show
d: Alan Crosland; scr: Robert Lord
The Pagan
d: W. S. Van Dyke; scr: Dorothy Farnum; titles: John Howard Lawson
The River
d: Frank Borzage; scr: Philip Klein, Dwight Cummings
The Thirteenth Chair
d: Tod Browning; scr: Elliott Clawson
 
CHECK THESE OUT
The Divine Lady
d: Frank Lloyd; scr: Forrest Halsey, Agnes [...]

Best Films – 1927

Ramon Novarro, Norma Shearer in The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
FILM
Breakfast at Sunrise
d: Malcolm St. Clair; scr: Fred De Gresac, Gladys Unger
The Enemy
d: Fred Niblo; scr: Willis Goldbeck, Agnes Christine Johnston; titles: John Colton
The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg
d: Ernst Lubitsch; scr: Hans Kräly; titles: Marion Ainslee, Ruth Cummings
The Unknown
d: Tod Browning; scr: Waldemar Young; titles: Joseph W. Farnham
The Valley of the Giants
d: Charles Brabin; scr: Gordon Rigby
 

George O’Brien, Janet Gaynor in Sunrise
CHECK THESE OUT
The Cat and the Canary
d: Paul Leni; scr: Alfred A. Cohn, Robert F. Hill; titles: Walter Anthony
Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney / The Love of Jeanne Ney
d: G. W. Pabst; scr: [...]

Best Films – 1925

Ramon Novarro and May McAvoy in Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ
 
FILM
Ben-Hur
d: Fred Niblo (assisted by Christy Cabanne, Alfred L. Raboch, B. Reeves Eason); scr: Carey Wilson, Bess Meredyth, June Mathis; titles: Katherine Hilliker, H. H. Caldwell
The Big Parade
d: King Vidor; scr: Laurence Stallings, Harry Behn; titles: Joseph W. Farnham
Her Sister from Paris
d: Sidney Franklin; scr: Hans Kräly
Lady Windermere’s Fan
d: Ernst Lubitsch; scr: Julien Josephson; titles: Maude Fulton, Erik Yorke
The Merry Widow
d: Erich von Stroheim; scr: Benjamin Glazer, Erich von Stroheim; titles: Marian Ainslee
 

Battleship Potemkin
CHECK THESE OUT
Bronenosets Potyomkin / Battleship Potemkin
d: Sergei Eisenstein; scr: Nina Agadzhanova, Sergei Eisenstein; titles: Nikolai Aseyev, Sergei Tretyakov
 

Renée Adorée, John Gilbert in The Big Parade
ACTOR
John Gilbert
The Big Parade
 

Constance Talmadge, Ronald [...]

LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN – Ronald Colman – d: Ernst Lubitsch

Lady Windermere’s Fan (1925)
Direction: Ernst Lubitsch
Screenplay: Julien Josephson; titles: Maude Fulton and Erik Yorke; from Oscar Wilde’s play
Cast: Ronald Colman, May McAvoy, Bert Lytell, Irene Rich, Edward Martindel

 
Bert Lytell is the nice husband, May McAvoy the jealous wife, Ronald Colman the other man, and Irene Rich (above) the scene stealer in Ernst Lubitsch’s delightful film version of Oscar Wilde’s play Lady Windermere’s Fan.
In the film, Rich plays Mrs. Erlynne, a woman of the world in search of a lordly husband. McAvoy is her clueless daughter, Lady Windermere: she doesn’t know her mother’s identity and mistakenly believes that Mrs. Erlynne has set her sights on handsome Lord Windermere (Lytell).
Petulant child that she is, Lady Windermere goes after eligible [...]

Miriam Hopkins: Q&A with Allan Ellenberger, Part II

Miriam Hopkins: Allan Ellenberger Interview Part I
I understand that Miriam Hopkins turned down a large number of parts. Could you name a few of those? And was there anything she felt sorry she missed out on — any part she rejected but then came to regret her decision, or any part she wanted to play but lost out to someone else?
[Photo: One role Miriam Hopkins accepted: the schoolteacher in These Three, opposite Merle Oberon.]
During her career, Hopkins was scheduled to appear in countless films that were never made, or the parts were given to another actress. Of course, it was a combination of her changing her mind about projects and in some cases the studio changing theirs. Some [...]

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 [...]

Rouben Mamoulian Retrospective at Film Forum

"Mamoulian," a complete retrospective of Hollywood director Rouben Mamoulian (1897-1987), one of cinema’s greatest stylists and innovators, will run at the Film Forum from Friday, September 7 through Tuesday, September 18.
As per the Film Forum’s press release, Mamoulian was born in Tbilisi, Georgia, to an Armenian family. He worked at the Moscow Art Theater while attending university, and, following a chance meeting with industrialist/philanthropist George Eastman (founder of the Kodak film company) he moved to Rochester, New York, to direct plays.
Shortly thereafter he was on Broadway, directing Dorothy and Dubose Heyward’s Porgy, which became the basis for George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, a musical that Mamoulian would also direct. [See Porgy and Bess screening in New York.]
That initial [...]

Miriam Hopkins Biography in the Works

Though relatively forgotten and, when remembered, usually dismissed as a second-rate talent (quite possibly by those who have never seen her on film), Miriam Hopkins was actually a highly capable performer who worked with some of the most renowned directors in Hollywood history — Rouben Mamoulian, Ernst Lubitsch, and William Wyler, among them.
Hopkins was also a household name in the 1930s, a time when she co-reigned, at least for a brief while early in the decade, as one of the Queens of Paramount.
Apart from the fact that time tends to dim memories, that most early Paramount films are shamefully unavailable (thanks to thoughtless executives at Universal, the studio that now owns most of the Paramount classics), and that most U.S. [...]

San Sebastián 2006: Ernst Lubitsch Retrospective

One of the highlights of this year’s San Sebastián International Film Festival is a mouth-wateringly thorough Ernst Lubitsch Retrospective.
Besides the obligatory titles, such as the witty 1939 comedy of bright lights and Communism, Ninotchka, and the delightful 1934 version of The Merry Widow, the retrospective is also showcasing a large number of Lubitsch rarities (including a few fragments of mostly lost films), ranging from his earliest work in Germany — among them several Pola Negri vehicles and the gender-bending 1918 comedy Ich möchte kein Mann sein / I Don’t Want to Be a Man, starring the German Mary Pickford, Ossi Oswalda — to some of his little seen Hollywood films, such as the 1931 psychological drama Broken Lullaby / [...]

Best Films – 1943

Set in a 17th-century Danish village, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s masterful Vredens dag / Day of Wrath is a stark, but deeply felt indictment against religious fanaticism and intolerance. Moving performances by ingénue Lisbeth Modin and accused witch Anna Svierkier add a touch of humanity to the horrors shown on screen. It is not a coincidence that Vredens Dag was made in 1943, a time when Denmark was under Nazi occupation. The parallels — and the interconnectedness — between political and religious control are made quite clear in this harrowing masterwork.
 
FILM
Northern Pursuit
d: Raoul Walsh; scr: Frank Gruber, Alvah Bessie
This Land Is Mine
d: Jean Renoir; scr: Dudley Nichols
Vredens dag / Day of Wrath
d: Carl Theodor Dreyer; scr: Carl Dreyer, [...]

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