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Celebrate the Golden Age of the Silver Screen!
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JANUARY 3
THE WOMENHide the husbands! Here comes sexy Joan Crawford, man-hungry and ruthless. Norma Shearer, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, and Joan Fontaine realize that no marriage has a chance with Joan around, and ladylike behavior is for suckers. But all's fair in love and war. Even hair-pulling. "Ode to wisecracking cattiness... It's a kicking, screaming low comedy."--Pauline Kael. 1939 "There’s a name for you ladies, but it isn’t used in high society – outside of a kennel."--Joan Crawford's Crystal getting pretty risque
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Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, and Rosalind Russell take time out from battling each other for their men
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FYI
The casting of Norma Shearer as wifely heroine is ironic. The movie audience in the late 1930s knew her not only from her dignified roles such as Elizabeth Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street and Shakespeare’s Juliet, but as the sexy, flirtatious vixen in pre-code movies like The Divorcee and A Free Soul. But here, she plays the noble housewife, up against Joan Crawford in exactly the kind of role Joan had played for years: the shopgirl struggling to better herself in the only way she knew how.
“In the best Crawford films,” says David Thomson in The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, ”she has the eye of aspiration and of a sweet hope that clothes, makeup, and position will mask all compromises made on the way.”
George Cukor is perfect as the director. He knew how to handle women, knew how to make them look good, and both skills were necessary in this movie, which boasted that it was all about “135 women with men on their minds!”
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FEBRUARY 7
DODSWORTHCan the Dodsworths' marriage survive middle age? Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton thought they understood each other. But when he retires and they travel to Europe, they begin to see themselves in different lights -- with different people. Also starring Mary Astor, David Niven, Paul Lukas, and Maria Ouspenskaya. "Superb... intelligently written, beautifully filmed, extremely well acted... unusually mature Hollywood film, not to be missed."-Leonard Maltin. 1936 "You've got to let me have my fling now! Because you're simply rushing at old age, Sam, and I'm not ready for that yet."--Ruth Chatterton's Fran Dodsworth, making one of her many mistakes
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The Dodsworths -- Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton -- see different views when they look forward together
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FYI William Wyler directed from a screenplay taken from a novel by Nobel laureate Sinclair Lewis. Walter Huston had starred in the Broadway play of the same name that ran 315 performances. This movie couldn’t miss. It’s remarkably mature, seriously focusing on two people who suddenly can’t understand one another after years of living together.
Huston (you know him as the crusty, old-time miner in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, directed by his son, John) received his first of four Academy Award nominations in this movie. Receiving an Oscar for Best Art Direction, the movie also was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Picture, Best Sound Recording, and Best Screenplay.
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MARCH 7
CITY LIGHTS
Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp loves a blind flower girl. Hoping to raise money for an operation to restore her sight, he stumbles into friendship with a drunk millionaire, and bumbles after a boxing championship. Sound effects and music, but no dialogue. "Great comic sequences... Chaplin was a master of the small touch... truly magical."--Roger Ebert. 1931
"Be careful how you're driving."
"Am I driving?" -- The Little Tramp riding with the drunken millionaire... who is, of course, behind the wheel
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The flower girl touches him in a way he never expected
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FYI
“Oh well,” said Mack Sennett of his former employee, “he’s just the greatest artist that ever lived.”
W.C. Fields had different words for this astonishing talent: “The SOB is a ballet dancer!”
Starting his movie career in 1914, Chaplin shot to fame almost instantly. “The finest pantomime, the deepest emotion, the richest and most poignant poetry were in Chaplin’s work,” said James Agee in Life magazine in 1949. “Of all comedians, he worked most deeply and most shrewdly within a realization of what a human being is, and is up against.”
He was 25 when he started, 38 when sound came in, which gave him only 13 years to amuse and astonish early 20th-century audiences with (only) 68 continually entertaining silent pictures. Sound, of course, destroyed him, but he refused to acknowledge it at first. This movie has sound but no dialogue, and the same is true for the movie he made five years later, Modern Times.
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APRIL 4
THE KILLERS
Burt Lancaster -- the Swede -- knows there's a contract out on him, but he refuses to run when the killers show up. His murder investigation turns up a connection to the local crime boss and dazzling Ava Gardner, who double-crossed the dead man. Suspense and tension roil in this film noir yarn, from the Ernest Hemingway story. "Elaborate tale of cross and double-cross, stunningly executed."--Leslie Halliwell. 1946 "I'm poison, Swede, to myself and everybody around me! I'd be afraid to go with anyone I love for the harm I do to them!"--Ava Gardner giving Burt Lancaster fair warning
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She's warned him, but Burt Lancaster can't keep his hands off Ava Gardner
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FYI
Typically in film noir, according to critic James Damico, “a man whose experience of life has left him sanguine and often bitter meets a not-innocent woman of similar outlook to whom he is sexually and fatally attracted.” We can guess the result: murder or attempted murder; betrayal of the man by the woman, the woman by the man, or both; and destruction of everyone involved.
This was Burt Lancaster’s first movie. He and director Robert Siodmak made two others: Criss Cross (another noir yarn of double-crossers) and The Crimson Pirate (definitely NOT a noir).
This is early in Ava Gardner’s starring roles. She had made 22 movies in five years, in roles that went uncredited or ignored. Then the public and the front office took notice, and she became the Other Woman, the Femme Fatale, and her fate was sealed.
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