Bette Davis’ DARK VICTORY Screening

The Bette Davis vehicle and 1939 Best Picture nominee Dark Victory 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, June 15, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
Beginning at 7 p.m., the feature will be preceded by the fifth chapter of the 1939 serial Buck Rogers, starring Buster Crabbe and Constance Moore, and the Warner Bros. cartoon Dangerous Dan McFoo, directed by Tex Avery.
Adapted by Casey Robinson from a play by George Emerson Brewer Jr. and Bertram Bloch, Dark Victory is one of Bette Davis’ [...]

CASABLANCA Vs. EVERYBODY COMES TO RICK’S

Worth checking out:
Martin N. Kriegl’s brief 2004 essay on the differences (in html) between Murray Burnett and Joan Alison’s "Everybody Comes to Rick’s," the unproduced play that was the basis for Casablanca, and the film’s screenplay credited to Philip G. Epstein, Julius J. Epstein, and Howard Koch.
Here are a couple of snippets from Kriegl’s text:
"Upon first reading both stage play and screenplay, one is tempted to jump to the conclusion that Casablanca is one of the rare occasions where a story, through adaptation from one medium to another, is elevated from a mediocre (if promising) source material to a gem of rare beauty. …
"The character Rick, a former rebel with apparently inviolable values and principles, who has lost [...]

CASABLANCA III – Humphrey Bogart

CASABLANCA II – Paul Henreid
Now, contrast Henreid’s Victor with Bogart’s Rick. Rick is rather one-dimensional despite the character’s early evocations of depth. His attraction to Ilsa seems quite superficial; after all, in the flashback scenes in Paris and even those in Casablanca, does he ever speak of higher purpose? No, Rick is wholly selfish, through and through. Bogart’s Rick is also a far showier role than Henreid’s Laszlo. But does Bogart do anything more with it?
Despite some wittier lines and the nice scene where Rick lets a Romanian refugee couple win at roulette to pay for their visas out of Casablanca, is Rick Blaine sufficiently different from the Sam Spade Bogart [...]

CASABLANCA

Casablanca (1942)
Direction: Michael Curtiz
Screenplay: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch; from Murray Burnett and Joan Alison’s unproduced play "Everybody Comes to Rick’s"
Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Paul Henreid, Claude Rains, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Conrad Veidt, S. Z. Sakall, Dooley Wilson, Joy Page
 

Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca
 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
About three years ago, I finally gave in to watch It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) for the first time. I had hesitated because of the five- and ten-minute snippets of the film I had seen, and for its reputation as a hokey Christmas story ‘chestnut.’ Well, was I wrong, for It’s a Wonderful Life is a truly great film — arguably the best [...]

Best Films – 1946

Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford in Gilda
FILM
Anna and the King of Siam
d: John Cromwell; scr: Talbot Jennings, Sally Benson
The Best Years of Our Lives
d: William Wyler; scr: Robert E. Sherwood
Cloak and Dagger
d: Fritz Lang; scr: Albert Maltz, Ring Lardner Jr.
From This Day Forward
d: John Berry; scr: Hugo Butler, Garson Kanin
Gilda
d: Charles Vidor; scr: Marion Parsonnet
Margie
d: Henry King; scr: F. Hugh Herbert
A Night in Casablanca
d: Archie Mayo; scr: Joseph Fields, Roland Kibbee, Frank Tashlin
Le Père tranquille / Mr. Orchid
d: René Clément; scr: Noël-Noël
Sciuscià / Shoeshine
d: Vittorio De Sica; scr: Cesare Zavattini, Sergio Amidei, Adolfo Franci, Cesare Giulio Viola
The Spiral Staircase
d: Robert Siodmak; scr: Mel Dinelli
 
CHECK THESE OUT
My Darling Clementine
d: John Ford; scr: [...]

Best Films – 1942

FILM
Bambi
d: David Hand; scr: Larry Morey and others
The Black Swan
d: Henry King; scr: Ben Hecht, Seton I. Miller
Casablanca
d: Michael Curtiz; scr: Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch
Johnny Eager
d: Mervyn LeRoy; scr: John Lee Mahin, James Edward Grant
The Magnificent Ambersons
d, scr: Orson Welles
The Major and the Minor
d: Billy Wilder; scr: Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder
Once Upon a Honeymoon
d: Leo McCarey; scr: Sheridan Gibney
Random Harvest
d: Mervyn LeRoy; scr: Claudine West, George Froeschel, Arthur Wimperis
Tales of Manhattan
d: Julien Duvivier; scr: Ben Hecht, Ferenc Molnar, Donald Ogden Stewart, Samuel Hoffenstein, Alan Campbell, Ladislas Fodor, Laslo Vadnay, Laszlo Gorog, Lamar Trotti, Henry Blankfort
The Talk of the Town
d: George Stevens; scr: Irwin Shaw, Sidney Buchman
 

Carole Lombard, [...]