Calling all Classic Film Lovers!

Gigi, on the other hand, is a film I gladly watch whenever it comes on TCM, in spite of its problematic bits. I love the music, the performances and the costumes, and it has a sort of Wildean sensibility which appeals to me - an odd combination of worldliness and innocence.

Gigi managed to both glorify prostitution and have a not-all-that-subtle pedophilia message, all within the same movie. And the male lead is a character who sings about how being disgustingly filthy rich is boring.

Man. There was good work being done in the 1950s—Kubrick, Hitchcock, the French New Wave, the films being made in Russia under the Khrushchev Thaw—but Hollywood was pumping out a lot of crap.

The latest short film I've made a page for is Black and Tan (1929), which takes advantage of the new sound technology to show off Duke Ellington As Himself.

Working my way through The Caine Mutiny. May or may not make a separate page for the film, as the page we have now is standing for the film, the novel, and the play.

I watched two films with Ann Harding: Double Harness and When Ladies Meet. All pre-codes and all rather on the intellectual, chatty side. Well, more so for When Ladies Meet than Double Harness. Harding stars in the latter as an almost Old Maid seducing a playboy and tricking him into marriage where she can gain financial security. Problem is that she falls in love with him. When Ladies Meet is more of an ensemble piece with Robert Montgomery, Myrna Loy, Ann Harding, and Frank Morgan. This film basically discusses infidelity and marriage that only a pre-code could possibly allow. It's smart and funny. It's also, I think, the missing link where Myrna Loy is finally being phased out of her "exotic" roles.

Never even heard of those films. Well done!

I saw that Duke Ellington short film which was really cool. It's fascinating to see the short because it's like a music video with three songs. There's also some cool camera tricks in there that surprised me because it's from 1929 and things were getting pretty stiff camera-wise.

Just watched Rope and Stage Fright.

Personally, I enjoyed Rope, although I can certainly see why people wouldn't—the "one shot" attempt is certainly an interesting concept, but in practice ends up robbing the film of a lot of the interesting visual choices that are found in other Hitchcock films. Brandon is delightfully atrocious to watch, and the dialogue when the party begins that's just peppered with unsubtle murder puns is just awful to sit through (but, you know. in a fun way.) Of course, Jimmy Stewart's speech at the end really fell flat to me—obviously, murder is wrong, I won't dispute that, but you're claiming moral high ground because "well, of course I advocate for murder as means of raising the superior above the inferior, but, gee, I would never actually do it!"? Come on, man.

As for Stage Fright, I hadn't really heard anything about it before I watched it, and I really liked what I saw! Alastair Sim is wonderful, Marlene Dietrich does an excellently vampy job, and the bit near the end with Eve and Jonathan in the coach backstage is so suspenseful and creepy.

I've always liked Rope for evil James Stewart and the clever transitions, but not much else. It falls a bit flat for being so stagy, I guess, but I always thought it was an interesting experiment nevertheless.

I didn't like Rope because they were practically begging to be caught.

Finished The Caine Mutiny. Didn't make a separate page for the film because it seems like the page in hand has it covered. Bogart delivers one hell of a performance. Love that breakdown scene in the court. I remember reading the play about 30 years ago and being shocked by "The Reason You Suck" Speech at the end.

Latest short film I watched was Pull My Daisy, starring Jack Kerouac and The Beat Generation. I guess I'm getting old because Kerouac came across as an insufferable shit.

edited 21st Jul '17 8:33:16 AM by jamespolk

No, no, anyone who isn't a 15 year old boy finds the Beats aggressively irritating. Such pretentiousness it hurts.

Kerouac gets a righteous kicking in this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017grqt

Rich Hall's Continental Drifters. Get hold of a copy, it's highly recommended entertainment.

He basically gets called a fat, two-faced, mommies boy who sold out his pals and drank his fat ass to death. None of which I can dispute, from what little I've read about him.

edited 21st Jul '17 9:53:03 AM by TamH70

I'd seen this forum for a while and I didn't know when to join in, but now, I feel the time has come, even though I have a catalogue of classic films as long as my arm.

• Jewel Robbery: I saw this yesterday. I enjoyed it. The first I've seen with Kay Francis and the second with William Powell. He's got ot be one of my favourite classic movie actors, and Francis was adorable.
• Ball of Fire: One of my new favourite films. Stanwyck and Cooper together in their scenes made me feel warm and fuzzy, which is a rariety. And as for Stanwyck's voice... my new favourite sound in the world.
• Two-Faced Woman: My first Greta Garbo movie. I liked it, to the point of making it have a page. Tries to salvage the Greta Garbo/Melvyn Douglas team-up from their last comedy, but didn't do as great and most-likely killed Garbo's career. I did like the Fake Twin Gambit story-line. My only problem with this plot was a tragic waste of Constance Bennett's character, and you'll see what I mean when you watch it.
  • I did also hear that the plot got tinkered with because of the damn Hays Code, which angered the director too, but I do believe that how they changed it saved it, in a way.
• Thunder on the Hill: Like it so much, it needed a page on here, too. Ann Blyth and Claudette Colbert acting as people from East Anglia made me laugh and enjoy it ^note (mostly because that's where I'm from, depending on who you ask) more. Good mystery story with nuns and an execution (making me ask what time in British history is this supposed to be set that still has the death penalty? It probably existed still in the 1950s).
• Double Indemnity: A movie with a title that I misspell constantly. I enjoyed it. I definitely didn't see the ending coming.
• Mildred Pierce (1945): We watched this in Media Studies for our exam. It wasn't the subject, but it was to see how different it was to the miniseries that had Kate Winslet in Joan Crawford's role. I'll tell you how it was different... it was gripping. Film Noir is now my favourite classic movie genre.
• The Women (1939): I just neeeded to be reminded what good comedy was. Worth it. The message of it didn't bother me — it was a product of its time. I don't know why anyone wanted to remake it. Also, Paulette Goddard's voice is rivaling with Barbara Stanwyck's over which one can make me melt quicker.
• My Man Godfrey: Great. Funny. I loved it. I put it in the shower.

Welcome! It's always great to have another classic film fan with us.

As a new Film Noir fan, have you seen Laura? It's one of the greats, and I would highly recommend it.

edited 23rd Jul '17 6:41:06 AM by LongTallShorty64

Honestly, I'm slowly moving through classic films trying to see all that I can find. Thanks for the recommendation — I'll look into that.

Another noir I saw a few weeks ago was Gilda, my first Hayworth/Ford film. I loved it. Unfortunately, the video/DVD store doesn't sell it and neither do any of the online stores I use, so I'm just waiting for it to reappear on TV again, but that can take months.

I don't have TCM, but UK TCM seems to devote itself to showing any film after the New Hollywood era (It likes to put on The Hangover a lot, for some strange reason) and when it does go to the Golden Age, it's all the cliches (Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz) and they only come on during Christmas and Easter, so even if I had the channel, no thank you.

Film 4 is an improvement, but they (weirdly) enjoy putting on John Wayne films. I'll wait until I can find other films on the internet or when it comes out on DVD.

Double Indemnity is generally considered to be the best Film Noir of all time. I personally think Dial M for Murder (if it counts), The Postman Always Rings Twice (the 1946 version), and The Third Man are even better. If you haven't seen those, I heartily recommend them.

I'd also recommend Fury (1936), White Heat, Detour, Pickup on South Street, Odd Man Out, and Murder, My Sweet. I would've recommended Mildred Pierce if you hadn't watched it already.

I'm not personally a huge fan of In a Lonely Place as a movie, but there's no denying that Bogart is pretty damn great in it.

Thrilled to get another poster in this thread. We need as many as we can get.

"Best film noir of all time" is a tough one but I guess Double Indemnity would have to be on the short list.

Film noir is definitely not my bag, but I can never resist The Maltese Falcon. I'm not sure what makes it so compelling, but when it comes on, I just have to watch all the way through to the end.

I'm watching The Picture of Dorian Gray and thoroughly enjoying George Sanders's performance - he plays some of my favorite film villains. He and Anne Baxter are the things I love best in All About Eve.

Sanders was so great playing creepy villains that it's odd to see him not playing a villain. Slightly disorienting to see him as a good guy in, say, Foreign Correspondent.

Thanks for the recommendations. I'll look into them.

TCM showed both Cat People (1942) and Curse of the Cat People today. I really like both films, but it's rare that a sequel is so entirely different from the original - I can't figure out what they were thinking

Well, according to the other wiki, Val Lewton didn't want to make a Cat People sequel. RKO insisted on calling it Curse of the Cat People, but Lewton just made his own story anyway.

Gold Diggers of 1937: I'll make a page for this since it's part of the "Gold Diggers Series'' but, man, was it boring. These lost a lot of their pizzazz after the Hays Code crackdown. This one has Joan Blondell which is always a plus, but Ruby Keeler is replaced by some blonde tapdancing dude which is a shame. Keeler wasn't a great actress or anything, but there's a lot of Narm Charm about her, and I liked her a lot. The major Busby Berkeley number is pretty cool with Joan Blondell leading a squadron of women to battle because "all's fair in love and war", and there's some synchronized flag waving. I prefer Dick Powell when he's part of the b-plot with Ruby Keeler, not the major leading man.

I agree that 1937 is the low point in the series; it seems to mark the tail end of the great Busby Berkeley musicals. I never found their male leads very compelling, but as long as there's a wise-cracking dame, outrageous costumes and a huge musical number that would never fit on an actual stage, I'm good!

Tonight I get to watch Ronald Colman continue the not-very-proud tradition of white guys playing Othello. On the one hand, he'll probably be superb. On the other hand, blackface. Hrm.

Working my way through The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, interested to see if its as dark as the work page says it is.

Also, made a work page for The Perils of Pauline. I've watched the first two of nine grainy You Tube videos.