CINEMAGRAPHE

Release Sept 18, 2018 from Criterion: My Man Godfrey

Screwball comedy in the 1930s rarely rose above the balance of humor and gentle pathos which is on display in My Mad Godfrey. Though ragged prints of the film have circulated on TV, VHS, DVDs and on the internet for decades, Criterion is releasing a "restoration" bluray which may be the best version of the film yet. The earlier Criterion DVD (2001) was rather dark, so we'll have to see how they have worked with the film for this 4K HD release. The 2001 DVD included an audio commentary by Bob GIlpin which is not listed with the new Bluray release, on the other hand several new items have been added as supplements. Here's the list:

New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
New program featuring jazz and film critic Gary Giddins
New interview with critic Nick Pinkerton on director Gregory La Cava
Outtakes
Lux Radio Theatre adaptation of the film from 1938
Newsreels depicting Great Depression class divides
Trailer
PLUS: An essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme
Packaging cover by Seth

AMAZON: Criterion My Man Godfrey [Blu-ray]

The Criterion page about the release: criterion.com/films/653-my-man-godfrey

Seeing Citizen Kane for the first time, and can Kane persist?

I began reading about film as a subject while in Greece, where I lived as a child. With only the local cinema (which generally showed movies out of doors on the theater roof, a large screen under the stars) and two Greek TV stations (Yened and ERT were the only channels that came in clearly in Athens) showed a revolving schedule of black and white American, French and Italian movies with Greek subtitles or dubbing. I had very few resources to read about films that were not the current crop of releases covered in magazines, but even then the name Citizen Kane appeared regularly as a legendary movie of superior Hollywood quality.

A few years later I was attending high school in the Washington DC suburbs, and during a lunch break I discovered an impromptu screening of Citizen Kane ...

More Citizen Kane

Poster art by Kudzu [above]

New Criterion Releases:

Heaven Can Wait [Blu-ray] - AMAZON

Virgin Spring [Blu-ray] - AMAZON

From Caligari to Hitler - Kino Lorber

Kino page - From Caligari to Hitler

From Caligari to Hitler

New Twilight Time releases

Merrily We Live (Blu-ray) - AMAZON

Don't Bother to Knock [Blu-ray] - AMAZON

Goliath and the Sins of Babylon - 1963

Goliath/Maciste is usually a simple fellow who uses his great strength, and depending upon the scriptwriter, his cunning, to outwit evildoers who are perennially victimizing beautiful women and a helpless peasantry.

More Goliath and the Sins of Babylon - 1963

Poster art by Kudzu [above]

Released from Twilight Times: The Complete Hal Roach Thelma Todd And Patsy Kelly Comedy Collection

3 DVD discs - 21 short films

AMAZON: The Complete Hal Roach Thelma Todd and Patsy Kelly Comedy Collection (ClassicFlix Silver Series - Twilight Time)

Three Bad Men - 1926

John Ford's silent western 3 Bad Men isn't Ford's cleaned up Three Godfathers from 1948, but there are quite a few similarities, along with Ford's particular brand of sentimental affection for tough scoundrels discovering a vein of golden morality within themselves when the pressure is on. Olive Borden is a suddenly orphaned young woman whose father is murdered in the middle of Ford's American west, and a trio of usually drunk petty crooks become her guardians (though she talks to them as if she thinks she is hiring them), primarily because the leader of the three (George O'Brian) can see that if left unattended, the local sheriff (Lou Tellegen) who sidelines as a quasi-pimp, will take her under his unappetizing wing. O'Brian's character of Dan O'Malley spends part of the film wondering where his sister is (Priscilla Bonner), only to discover she was taken in by the sheriff earlier and ended up in a brothel. When a scene of revelation about what has happened to his sister finally occurs, the brother will spend a segment of the film chasing the sheriff and literally taking down door after door with his bare hands, an inventive series of chasing and fighting that Ford worked into some of his other movies, a stylistic tic that Ford had refined so well that two decades later he could parody himself in the long (and funny) epic brawl of The Quiet Man.

In the course of the movie, we understand the heavy drinking and tough talking "3 bad men" of the title have hearts of gold, but Ford's story* makes them prove it, which means they won't make it out of the movie alive. However tragic and outrageous Ford's story is, though, he ladles in a lot of comic humour which helps to disguise the fact he is reaching under disguise to pull on the audiences heart-strings. Like with his version of Three Godfathers which reduces the dilemma of a young woman and her helpless infant put into the hands of outlaws, Ford succeeds where so many other film makers would just end up with a maudlin hash.

* Story is from Herman Whitaker's novel "Over the Border" with an adaptation by John Stone with titles by Ralph Spence and Malcolm Stuart Boylan.

Alive, or Preferably, Dead - 1969

Giuliano Gemma and Nino Benvenuti are brothers Monty and Ted in this Italian comedy-western movie which also features Sydne Rome. Gemma and Rome are fine (Benvenuti is better known as a professional boxer with three middleweight championships) but the film has a hard time accomplishing its goal of laughter. Stunts are over-the-top and this adds real humor to the story of train-robbing and kidnapping, and as long as bullets are flying and horses* are running the movie seems like it's on the verge of improving to a level to match it's production budget, but then the dialogue reasserts the dopey sense of pure artifice and you can see why the dubbed release resorted to such an incredibly exploitative title in it's American release as "Sundance Cassidy and Butch the Kid." Gemma has made other well known westerns (such as Day of Anger) so the incongruity of Alive, or Preferably, Dead seems to reside with it's lackluster writing. Director Duccio Tessari shows off the Italian "west" well and visually generates more funny with his camera than the script does with its words.

*Horse and rider stunts are at times so extreme that after they tumble I was wondering if either would be able to get up again without assistance.

New Kino Lorber release

The Big Country (1958) 60th Anniversary HD Blu-Ray - Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Jean Simmons and Burl Ives in a visually epic western tale which diminishes in size once the story hones in onto the home life of Ives' character (Rufus Hannassey) and his relationship with his rattlesnake son Buck (Chuck Conners). Large scale cinematography all around. Story is mostly concerned with what Westerns (when not devoted to gunfire), are about, that is, land ownership (especially over a place called "the Big Muddy") and that peculiar 1950s obsession, sons' relationships with their fathers. Peck is a "fish out of water" sea captain who gives up the salt for the affections of the spoiled Patricia Terrill (Carroll Baker) and has to make adjustments when he sees how goofy her relationship is with her father (Charles Bickford as Major Henry Terrill). Chuck doesn't have a Dad in this film to worry about, but he does have to sort out why he instantly dislikes Peck's grounded sailor. Jean Simmons calmly steals a lot of the scenes she is in. AMAZON: The Big Country (60th Anniversary Special Edition) (2 Discs)

From the Amazon description:

SPECIAL FEATURES:
-Audio Commentary by Noted Cultural Historian Sir Christopher Frayling
-Directed by William Wyler - 60 Minute Documentary
-Wyler Doc Outtakes with Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston and Billy Wilder
-Interviews with Cecilia Peck, Carey Peck and Tony Peck
-Interview with Fraser Heston
-Interview with Catherine Wyler
-Fun in the Country - Featurette
-Larry Cohen on Chuck Connors
-Original Theatrical Trailer
-TV Spot
-Two Animated Image Galleries

New releases from Twilight Time

Jane Russell's THE REVOLT OF MAMIE STOVER (1956) is coming on limited edition blu-ray on July 17th, 2018 by Twilight Time Movies. There will only be 3000 copies made.

Other Twilight Time recent Blu-Ray releases:

Birth of a Nation
Five Steps to Danger
Geronimo: An American Legend
Hilda Crane
My Sister Eileen
Next Stop, Greenwich Village
The Man Who Watched Trains Go By AKA The Paris Express
My Gal Sal

https://www.twilighttimemovies.com/

Fast Reviews

The Thin Man - 1934 - Dir. Director: W.S. Van Dyke - - It's hard to say whether this was meant to be a straight-up who-done-it film or not, yet it certainly contains all the plot mechanics of such, but with Powell and Loy cracking each other up onscreen it has a feel of a comedy without the intentional screwball spin. Scientist turns up missing and his daughter (Maureen O'Sullivan) frantically pressures the retired detective Nick Charles (Powell) into service to sort it out. Along for the sleuthing is Mrs. Charles (Loy) who matches Mr. Charles' unconventional methods drink for drink (this film portrays them extinguishing one bottle after another and I've never seen two more effective - - and charming - - Hollywood alcoholics). A roster of possible suspects gets piled up but Nick Charles cuts through the circumstantial evidence with wit, timing, cleverness and a martini. This was the first of six Thin Man movies, and while the later films have their merits and often superior writing, none are as fresh and spontaneous as this one. Incidentally, the "Thin Man' of the title isn't Nick Charles, but the murder victim, but like the transference of the name "Frankenstein" from the mad inventer onto his monster, Wm. Powell's detective character was saddled with the moniker.

Baal - 1970 - Dir. Director: Volker Schlondorff - - German language film about a self-destructive poet who offers rhyme as dialogue amid scenes in which he prosecutes an anti-human crusade against anyone foolish enough to take up with him (for example, Margarethe von Trotta as Sophie who is made pregnant and thereafter shortly abandoned on the roadside) or Ekart (Sigi Graue) who becomes a long term companion but is brutalized and worse by the end of his relationship with Baal (though at first he seems like a competitor or a tempter). Rainer Werner Fassbinder as Baal dominates almost all the scenes (they're numbered for us right on the screen) and he is almost always in view, often maniacally walking as if he were a very serious toddler fed bottles of Mexican cane-sugar Coca-Cola. The poet as monster is the (possibly not intended) main thrust here with the companion Ekart as a kinder poetical force which seems like a sort of alter-ego amid the occasional murders and general rampage. Director Schlondorff shows the act of observation and the love of untamed nature as a formless religion though no detriment toward getting people to control themselves. There is also the question if Baal is a superior being, on account of his poetical gifts... but, "there are limits even for genius" says one disgruntled would-be fan. It's as if 18th century romanticism was channeled through a 1970s poet/bar thug. The film contains some intended (and unintended) humor. Upsetting the bourgeois seems part of the project, with Baal in the first scene welcomed into refined society which is delighted to hear his elevated wordsmanship (but they wish he'd take a bath), but after he insults and roughs them up, they turn to a (hilariously) quite critical tone about the value of his poetry.

Pride and Prejudice with Zombies - 2016 - Dir. Burr Steers - - The Bennett girls have the same problems here as in the Jane Austen original story, that is, they must maneuver through the stringent social demands of their class and the pressure to marry well. One difference with Austen's original is that they must also battle zombies which threaten to completely overrun Merre Englande. As a parody of Austen's frequently filmed 1813 story Pride and Prejudice with Zombies best excels, with whole scenes from the more famous 1995 TV miniseries directly lampooned by director and writer Steers. As a zombie apocalypse movie, it is swamped with CGI effects and the standard tics of the genre, though happily restrained by a PG-13 rating. Costume and art direction is well done, though souped-up a bit to meet, I guess, the attenuated expectations of a hybrid story line with the word Zombie in the title. The zombie-battles get a bit wearisome by the time the credits roll, but the film does contain some very fine moments of humor and parody.

Paris, Texas - 1984 - Dir. Wim Wenders - Bare desert, distant cityscape and automobiles are for the first 2/3rds of the film the primary locations for Wender's movie about two brothers (Harry Dean Stanton and Dean Stockwell) who are brought together again after one (Stanton) had disappeared into the desert for four years, leaving a young son behind that is being raised by the other sibling (Stockwell) and his wife. Aurore Clement is the surrogate mother, and is anguished when the reunited father and son leave California to search for their missing mother and ex-wife (they find her working in a peep-show in Texas). A lot of carefully placed camerawork in this film, sometimes telling us (visually) that people can be treated as consumer objects, or that their humanity is in danger of being lost amid a sea of coarse advertising and expectations based on pop culture and advertising, or just simply that technology is debilitating (when the young boy yells to his mother, she cannot hear, she has music playing through earphones blocking the sound; or the young boy and his father talk through a walkie talkie though they are near each other; or the father records onto tape a message he can't face his son to tell him in person). Maddening alienation is a theme here, with a scene of a street preacher ranting from an overpass to an expressway full of small cars speeding away below him, "don't say I didn't warn you!" he yells at their departing shapes. Paris, Texas contains the same distortions and storytelling tricks as any other motion picture so it is, in a way, part of the fog of entertainment that it seems intent upon criticizing, and by the end (the last 1/3rd of the film is packed with dialogue, a complete change from the first two thirds of mute visualizing) when Stanton goes on alone, the finale is not much different from John Ford's The Searchers. Wender's camera work is first rate throughout and is occupied at times with just looking at nicely lit shots (a lot of sunsets in this film) and that's okay, it all adds up to a unique tale expertly paced. Nastassja Kinski is the missing mother, and when she and Stanton have to carry a long, long section of film in which they chat with each other through the glass of the peep show booth, it seems like Wender's clever way of mirroring a movie audience to the performers, but without any moment when, like Buster Keaton in Sherlock Jr., the performer can walk out of the screen and join the ticket holders.

McQ - 1974 - Dir. John Sturges - - One of John Wayne's last films, and at least technologically speaking, a huge update from his cowboy tales, with Wayne tearing around Seattle in a black Trans Am (a couple of years before Burt Reynold's trek across America in the same car in Smoky and the Bandit) the difference here being McQ is toting a machine gun. McQ is a police detective who comes across department corruption after the murder of his longtime partner, and a hunt ensues for who and why what has happened, happened. Julie Adams appears as the ex-wife who misses the big Irish/Scot cop, Colleen Dewhurst as a junkie quasi-girlfriend who knows more than she is telling, and Eddie Albert as the cantankerous police boss who may or may not be a part of what's going on. The McQ advertising tags Wayne's character as "the cop no one can stop, not even the cops," which is true in this movie but of course not in real life, Wayne was just a couple years off from death via lung cancer. Director Sturges' has fun placing Wayne into scenes that have slightly surreal undertones and funny ironies, but the bulk of the film is a hunt for truth with carnage and surprises along the way, just as could be found in other 1970s movies like Dirty Harry, Serpico, The French Connection, etc. "The Duke" continued in this vein a year later with Brannigan.

New Criterion releases coming:

Heaven Can Wait, 1943 - Dir. Ernst Lubitsch - Criterion Web Site Page - Aug 21, 2018

Memories of Underdevelopment, 1968 - Dir. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea -Criterion website page - Aug 28, 2018

Smithereens, 1982 - Dir. Susan Seidelman - Criterion Web Page - Aug 21, 2018

Riffraff - 1936

Una Merkel and Jean Harlow 1936 Riff Raff

Riffraff - Released Jan 3, 1936. Dir. J. Walter Ruben

Riff Raff steers into screwball comedy and into drama without really finding away to make it balance. Overwrought performances make the tale even more out of kilter.

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Joseph Calleia in riffraff

The Eagle Has Landed

The Eagle Has Landed - released April 2, 1977 (NYC). Directed by John Sturges

Michael Caine plays a frequently admirable German paratrooper (which is an unusual Hollywood conceit) who is sent on a near impossible mission to personally ambush Winston Churchill. The Eagle has Landed is concerned with what goes wrong as nazi-colloborators and patriots reveal themselves in a small village where the German team lands.

More The Eagle has Landed - 1977

Stranded - 1935

Stranded - Released June 29, 1935. Directed by Frank Borzage

Kay Francis (as Lynn Palmer) is tough, and George Brent (as Mack Hale) is tough, too, in this drama set in San Francisco. Both of their positions require it: she runs the Travelers' Aid desk at a train terminal in San Francisco where people in distress regularly show up, and he is the foreman on a bridge construction job on the Bay where racketeers, crooked union officials, and drunkenness in the crews threatens lives and the building deadline he is struggling to achieve.

More Stranded