Calling all Classic Film Lovers!

I think Citizen Kane holds up quite nicely. Great dialogue, justly famous cinematography, the usually hammy Orson Welles giving the most effective performance of his career.

"Everything you hate." What a great line.

Orson Welles would have made a great Nero Wolfe. Interestingly, Marlene Dietrich once wrote a letter to Rex Stout (creator of Nero Wolfe) suggesting that Welles would make a great Nero Wolfe, and that she should play his assistant, Archie Goodwin (whether repurposed as a woman or in drag, she didn't say).

Interestingly, Welles once played Hercule Poirot...on radio, rather than in a film.

edited 5th Apr '17 10:58:48 AM by Robbery

Yup, Welles did The Murder of Roger Ackroyd for his Campbell Playhouse radio series.

Finished Julius Caesar. Here are all the Shakespeare films from the period I've seen.

• A Midsummer Night's Dream (Cagney and de Havilland, 1935)
• Romeo and Juliet (Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard, 1936)
• Henry V (Laurence Olivier, 1945)
• Hamlet (Olivier, 1948)
• Macbeth (Orson Welles, 1948)
• Othello (Welles, early 1950s, I forget what year)
• Julius Caesar (Brando, Mason, 1953)
• Chimes at Midnight (Welles, IIRC right under the wire in 1966)

Thoughts?

Wow, I've seen none of these. Is the Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer one any good? Or the Cagney/DeHavilland one?

edited 6th Apr '17 4:32:06 PM by LongTallShorty64

I've seen that version of Midsummer Night's Dream. It's quite entertaining, actually. Mickey Rooney is surprisingly effective as Puck.

I got to see a filmed version of an Orson Welles (as director) stage production of Macbeth from the early 40's that was set in Haiti, and had an all African-American cast. It was quite excellent, too. I saw it years ago as part of a class in college, and I have no idea where my instructor got the film, unfortunately.

edited 7th Apr '17 7:21:07 AM by Robbery

There's a surviving film of the "voodoo" Macbeth? Neato.

I thought A Midsummer Night's Dream was pretty good and the Shearer-Howard Romeo and Juliet was pretty terrible, although that might be my great like of Olivia de Havilland and my great dislike of that colorless milquetoast, Leslie Howard. The comedy troupe scenes in A Midsummer Night's Dream are somewhat weaker IMHO because Joe E. Brown just is not funny.

Olivia de Havilland got her movie career served on a silver platter, btw. She was thinking about going to college and becoming a teacher when she tried out for Reinhardt's traveling production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and boom, she got it. Then Warner Brothers decided to make a movie out of it and boom, she got a film contract.

The Welles movies are all good-to-great ranging up to Chimes at Midnight which is tremendous.

Oh, and Brando knocks that "Friends, Romans, countrymen" speech right out of the park, down to the little smirk on his face when he turns away and leaves after he's done while the mob is wrecking shit.

I'm watching The Longest Day. I do admire that the French and Germans actually speak in their native languages (though I am aware that they filmed a version where they all speak English).

edited 7th Apr '17 12:04:11 PM by DS9guy

What's particularly uncommon about that movie is the use of subtitles. Back in the day either they used Translation Convention or the dialogue was presented unsubtitled but in a manner that the viewer could follow along. Actually I can't think at the moment of a talking film made before The Longest Day that uses subtitles in that way.

The Longest Day is an intriguing movie in general. The way it's assembled around D-Day itself rather than a set of characters, so it leaps between some 20 or 30 different perspectives of the event from scene by scene. Most characters only get one or two scenes because of the sheer amount of characters in the film, and they are all so memorable, somehow.

It's a structure you don't see all that often.

Finally got to watch Knute Rockne, All American.

It is godawful. Hacky, hammy, cliched. Pat O'Brien with the worst rat-a-tat-tat dialogue delivery. Bad. How did this film get on the National Film Registry? Lots of Republicans on the committee?

Isn't Pat O'Brien the poor man's James Cagney? There's a lot of pre-codes out there that wanted him to be the next Cagney and he's just... not. I never found him all that interesting, but I guess comparing him to Cagney is kind of harsh.

Yes he is, and apparently Cagney wanted this part, and the film probably would have been much better. I liked Pat O'Brien in The Front Page, aka the only good film nominated for Best Picture the year Cimarron won, but he's terrible in this. It really is awful. And it's on the Registry! I'm bewildered.

I'm going through yesterday's TCM National Film Board of Canada marathon, and I will be making work pages for every short film that got a nomination for Live Action Short or Animated Short. I've made work pages for two live-action shorts so far:

• A Chairy Tale

• Very Nice, Very Nice

Most of the NFB animated shorts I've seen are past the thread's time limit, but I wonder if you'll alert us here.

(Did they show The Big Snit or The Cat Came Back?)

There's an awesome one called The Great Toy Robbery. Pretty sure it's past our time line, but it's awesome.

EDIT: It is in our time line: 1963, but it's an animated short.

edited 10th Apr '17 2:12:23 PM by LongTallShorty64

There's also another great one called "The Sweater" which is based on a book about a man who grew up in rural Quebec and he's a big fan of the Montreal Canadiens and needs a new sweater, but he gets a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater by mistake. It's the most Canadian story that ever Canadian'd.

I don't know yet but I'm barely a half hour into a four-hour show.

Does anyone say "eh" or eat poutine in it or tell anyone to "take off, ya hoser"? Then it's not Canadian enough.

Haha. If only. This is an old story that mentions hockey greats like Maurice "The Rocket" Richard, and the hockey rivalry between the Leafs and Canadiens. So, you know, the other half of hockey nut stereotypes Canadians endure.

Edit: I know this is not in our time line but I'm contractually obligated as a Canadian to mention Strange Brew as super Canadian as well.

edited 10th Apr '17 3:31:33 PM by LongTallShorty64

Hockey is, admittedly, plenty Canadian. Still, no "eh"?

Well, to be fair, that was based off of SCTV, one of the few great things that Canada has given us.

edited 10th Apr '17 3:34:42 PM by Aldo930

No "eh", unfortunately.

I drove the Alaska Highway once and I got all the way to the Yukon before I broke down and ordered poutine off a diner menu just to find out what the hell it was.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch....

Watching a Fatty Arbuckle film called "Leap Year". Not only is it not as knockabout slapstick as his stuff usually was, I was shocked by how long it was. Turns out that it was a feature that never got released after Arbuckle's life was ruined. Now I wish I'd made a work page.

Crazy how the media turned a sad story and destroyed the innocent Arbuckle in the process.