I was in Algiers only for a night, April?, and I slept on a parking lot
in a sleeping bag. There're lots of fabulous movies from c. 1932 with
Bette Davis that are unknown, ditto Spencer Tracy, and Me and My Gal is
also pretty obscure. Air Mail has shown up on cable tv; it was part of
AMC's Ford marathon a few years ago. (And I have a gorgeous 16mm.) Notes
on a recent BFI dvd of The iron horse refer to Air Mail as typical of
action genres," which seems to me to miss the movie. The people in Air
Mail are so alienated; still I think they manage to be about as
charismatic as one can be while simultaneously being miserable or obnoxious.
Robert Keser wrote:
>
>
> I've always believed that Air Mail would be much better
> known if it had starred actors with more enduring charisma
> than Ralph Bellamy, Pat O'Brien, and Gloria Stuart (although
> all three are perfectly decent). But if Spencer Tracy had
> played Bellamy's part, or maybe Bette Davis ...
<a href="http://ehrensteinland.com/htmls/g007/gloriastuart.html" target="_blank">Gloria Stuart</A> is seriously underrated. She was given a lot of shlock to do...
I was in Algiers only for a night, April?, and I slept on a parking lot in a sleeping bag. There're lots of fabulous movies from c. 1932 with Bette Davis that...
... lot ... I feel your pain! There're lots of fabulous movies from c. 1932 with ... Last year I had a chance to see the rather good Waterloo Bridge on the big...
1932 is rather a good year, isn't it. Here's a few that the IMDb lists for that year that I don't think have been mentioned so far.... I WAS BORN, BUT......
1932. If I had to keep only one, it would be Mater Dolorosa (Gance). Far beyond the silent version by himself. Horribly underrated. Back Street (Stahl) is a...
... Hmmm. I've seen only the silent version. ... Yes indeed. I'm hungry to revisit Stahl now, after having recently seen THE WALLS OF JERICHO and PARNELL. -...
The early 1930's are very rich. The best films I've been able to see: 1931 La Chienne (Jean Renoir) City Lights (Charlie Chaplin) Dishonored (Josef von...
... Only Yesterday is a quite remarkable film. I showed it in a class last year, to unanimously positive reactions. --Bob Keser [Non-text portions of this...
... Chances has eluded me so far, but I agree heartily about An American Tragedy, which keeps some of the backstory of the street-preacher mother as well as...
... Oh, she was a unique personality (and very beautiful) in those films (she's makes a really charming companion for Dick Powell in the "I'm Going Shopping...
Gloria Stuart shows up again in The Prisoner of Shark Island. She was interviewed on line re Titanic in 1997 by Cinemania: Gloria Stuart: The first picture I...
... he ... independently ... wasting] ... Not much of an auteurist, is she? Interviews with actors can be valuable (I liked Patrick McGilligan's interview of...
... Yeah, for me too. The courtroom scenes don't always sustain the amazing mood of the first part of the film, but the good stuff is so incredibly good that...
Haven't had a chance to see An American Tragedy in decades. Would love to see it again! The scene that sticks in memory is the factory. It showed Sternberg's...
... I tried to summarize his colleagues' opinions on this score at the end of my book. Consensus was there was no consensus, no method, no consistency. No,...
"Their excuse was that nobody knows who he is." That is so fucking disgusting I don't know where to begin. But burning their offices to the ground might be a ...
... Fascinating stuff, Tag, not least because I'm in the midst of planning a course for Facets called "Making Marlene Dietrich" which proposes studying the...
"I Was Born But..." is sublime. Marlene is thinking about Travis Banton. And of her own beauty. Always. Maximillian Schell's film makes that clear. ... ...
... His film is going to be the (somewhat grim!) finale of the course, but I prefer to think of it as an astringent ending, a kind of memento mori. --Bob Keser...
... Sounds good! I'm sorry I haven't seen the Dietrich expos in Berlin (or Berlin). ... Anatahan is narrated in retrospect and there are flashbacks at the...
I am in complete agreement that "Song of Songs" is terrible, but it's quiteunjust IMO to then say "And, finally, this is why Mamoulian is boring: because he ...
You're right to object. And I apologize. First, that was the second half of a one-paragraph entry (so I give you the whole thing now). Second, I was obliged to...
How do you solve a problem like Mamoulian? (Okay, not as good a pun as The People Against Oharu!) The factor that turns me against Mamoulian is his arbitrary...
And, of course, I'm the one who brought up the ... One reason LOVE ME TONIGHT works so well is that the various stylistic tricks (with sound, camera movement,...
I agree with everything Robert Keser writes about Mamoulian. I think we're saying much the same thing. I also like CITY STREETS. Thanks for the correction...
By all means, feel free to waddle (!) However, my comment was intended to correct your self-criticism that you were "simply (ab)using Mamoulian in order to...
... dislike ... Well, I think his approach works in that particular case. The point isn't the technical tricks themselves so much as the way they make the...
... I hope I succeeded... (It's easy to say why one doesn't like something. Damn difficult to say why one does.) ... Me too. It was his wife and son who said...
... and ... asked; ... That proves it: never ask!! (Did you interview them in person, or was it an exchange of letters?) I pointed out that usage is different...
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