Calling all Classic Film Lovers!

Every time I watch San Francisco I think Spencer Tracy desperately needs to drink a tall glass of Shut The Fuck Up. Really, where does he get off, sticking his nose in Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald's business?

The movie is worth watching for two things. The quake sequence, which, yeah, still looks pretty damn good 80 years later. And Jeanette's rendition of the title song, which really is spectacular, that whole number makes you want to jump up and sing. The rest of the film is meh, apparently Clark and Jeanette loathed each other and you can kind of see that onscreen sometimes.

The built up is just overly long. By the time they finally come the earthquake you have already spend ten minutes wondering when this movie will finally be over. Plus, Blackie is an a-hole. I really don't see why he even "gets the girl" so to speak in the end. I guess that is kind of my main problem with the movie, that it keeps treating her like some sort of trophy for the better man to win. I actually see no reason why she can't be a famous opera singer while showing both of those possessive idiots the middle finger. But if she has to choose, why not the rich guy who worships the ground she is walking on and is ready to support her career?

And yes, I know, it's the time, but if a movie spends so much time on a plot I really, really don't enjoy instead of focussing on the political issues they address for five minutes at the start of the movie.

This is actually a movie which screams for a remake. One which points out that the current San Francisco is even worse regulated than it was back then. The next big earthquake could easily level the city again.

Edited by Swanpride on Oct 9th 2018 at 3:25:07 AM

Oh, absolutely true, that was my take as well...Jeanette's all "Oh, I can't marry Clark Gable, he's bossy and he doesn't believe in Jesus and Spencer Tracy says I shouldn't...guess I have to marry the other guy." Never explains why she can't just be a famous opera singer for a while.

As for a remake, here is, what for my money, is one of the greatest What Could Have Been moments of all time. There was a movie by Pixar, yes, Pixar, called 1906. To be directed by....Brad Bird.

It got cancelled. Goddammit.

TCM’s Halloween schedule is turning out to be pretty good. The silent F.W. Murnau version of Faust is airing tonight at midnight (how wonderfully appropriate). I recorded it in advance.

I also recorded 1967’s The Fearless Vampire Killers, a film a friend of mine likes but apparently most other people don’t, and which just slides into our end date.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

The silent Faust is pretty trippy.

Emil Jannings as the demon = perfect casting.

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Oct 14th 2018 at 2:21:40 PM

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

Never seen a bad F.W. Murnau movie.

Indiscretion of an American Wife, with Jennifer Jones and Montgomery Clift.

Jones is the American wife, and Clift is the handsome Italian she's had an affair with in Italy. The whole movie takes place at the train statin where he's trying to stop her from going back home.

Unbearably dull and hammy. Jones and Clift somehow have no chemistry together despite both being very attractive. The surprising thing was that this hammy melodrama with two American pretty faces was directed by Vittorio De Sica. Of course I saw the American cut that David O. Selznick made as his career was going down the toilet; de Sica's cut is supposed to be better.

Besides all that the movie irritated me with the Double Standard. The affair of the married woman and the handsome Italian guy is supposed to be romantic and heart-stirring and tragic, you know. No one would ever make a Gender Flip story like that; if a middle-aged American husband was on the verge of leaving his wife for Gina Lollobrigida he'd be understood to be a bad guy.

Le Doulos, French New Wave crime drama. Recently released thief goes back to the criminal life, plans a home invasion robbery. But someone tips off the cops and it goes horribly awry. He blames his partner in crime, Jean-Paul Belmondo—but things get complicated.

Fun movie. Stylish, lots of people in trenchcoats and hats, tons of Chiaroscuro, betrayals, a good Plot Twist. Some folks may not like the scene where Belmondo's character ties a woman up and beats her to get information, but that turns out to be more complicated than it seems.

TIL that a Laurel and Hardy short called Double Whoopee featured an 18-year-old unknown named Jean Harlow. I'm gonna have to make a page.

EDIT: It was a fun little movie, probably not quite as good as their classic short Big Business but pretty fun. Stan and Ollie are incompetent staff at a fancy hotel. Harlow's part comes in when she gets out of a car and Stan slams the door shut on her skirt, leading to Clothing Damage. As it turns out Harlow appeared in three Stan and Ollie shorts before she hit it big with Hell's Angels.

Edited by jamespolk on Oct 17th 2018 at 8:17:23 AM

Totally at random I stumbled across a new deep dive essay on Twelve O'Clock High. I would have to agree that it's one of the best movies about the war made in America during the war and shortly after. Here it is.

Very cool article. The intersection between reality and fiction has always been an interesting topic. Cool photos there, too.

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I've watched some new films!

• Of Human Bondage : I think sympathy for Leslie Howard's character was seriously entrenched in 1930s thinking. Don't get me wrong, Bette Davis' character is a manipulative and terrible person. But he stalks her and doesn't take no for an answer, so really, it was his fault.
• Mary Steven's M.D.: I'm going to make a page for this. Kay Francis and her male friend become doctors. She experiences sexism while he wants to get rich and not work very hard. Very Good Doc, Bad Doc sort of stuff. There's babies out of wedlock, death, and cheaters! Yup, it's a Precode.

Edited by LongTallShorty64 on Oct 18th 2018 at 2:32:30 PM

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

Objective, Burma!.

Errol Flynn movie about an American commando unit operating behind Japanese lines in Burma. Probably most famous as a notorious example of America Won World War II. It was based on a Real Life American commando unit in Burma, but approximately 99.9% of the Allied forces in Burma were from Britain, India, or elsewhere in the Commonwealth. Apparently Winston Churchill himself got mad about this movie.

Anyway, it's pretty good. Surprisingly melancholy in the second half as the Americans wind up basically stranded in Japanese territory and Dwindling Party starts to kick in. This is the second Errol Flynn movie I've watched recently that convinced me there was a really great actor inside Errol Flynn struggling to get out, Too Much, Too Soon being the first. He also has some great moments in They Died with Their Boots On, towards the end when he knowingly rides to his doom.

Basically, Errol Flynn wasn't all about being dashing and handsome.

Edited by jamespolk on Oct 19th 2018 at 3:20:52 AM

I made that page for Mary Stevens, M.D.. I forgot that the film had the tragic Thelma Todd in it.

"It's true that we had a gentleman's agreement, but unfortunately, I am no gentleman."

The Murder Man, a 1935 Spencer Tracy programmer that is best remembered as the film debut of James Stewart. Nifty little murder mystery with a twist ending, although in all honesty the twist isn't very hard to guess. Tracy plays a newspaper reporter specializing in the murder beat. Stewart is one of his co-workers at the paper.

Watched Days of Glory. It's one of that handful of pro-Soviet films made in Hollywood in that little 1942-45 window where we and the Russians were buddies. I searched around after I watched the movie and the critical consensus ranges from mixed to negative but I liked it. It's propaganda, brave ordinary Russian peasants fighting as guerillas behind the German lines, sacrificing all to free their country from the Nazis, but it's well-made propaganda.

It helped that the lead actor is Gregory Peck in his film debut.

Given that we’re nearing October 31st, should we start getting more into the spirit of the season in this thread?

I have to admit, I’m a little annoyed that the only one of the Frankenstein films TCM is running this year is Son Of Frankenstein. (I have no idea who’s running Bride of Frankenstein this year.)

But at least on Halloween night they’re showing the Roger Corman Poe films. (And the day before that, Doctor X and The Return of Doctor X. In one of these, I assume, he builds a creature.)

Edited by Aldo930 on Oct 22nd 2018 at 3:30:37 AM

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

I wonder...has anyone ever seen a truly good version of Nosferatu? What I mean is that it is already hard to get your hands on the properly colourized version, and if you find one, they seem to pick the worst music possible for it.

I really would like to get a version with a new score specifically written for it.

Kino put out a blu ray of Nosferatu.

I'm trying to think of what is the scariest movie of the classic era. Psycho? That doesn't seem fair, really, Psycho was a harbinger of the future.

Les Diaboliques, maybe.

Honestly, the question is always going to have a different answer depending on who you ask.

I can think of a few movies from the classic era that have bits that seem like they should be in a modern horror film, though.

Edited by Aldo930 on Oct 22nd 2018 at 4:32:15 AM

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

Maybe The Mummy. "HE WENT FOR A LITTLE WALK!!" is definitely the most unsettling moment I've ever seen from a classic era movie.

Dracula has its moments, like when bug-eyed Renfield is crawling over the floor or Dracula gets off the dock at London and eats a flower girl.

Oh wait, that reminds me, probably the real answer to this question: Freaks. That movie is fucking disturbing.

Edited by jamespolk on Oct 22nd 2018 at 5:07:23 AM

Yeah, probably Freaks.

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."

GOBBLE GOBBLE WE ACCEPT HER

There was apparently more disturbing stuff in the original cut that was lost when the film was censored before its release.

Now for another question - what is the most un-scary horror film of the classic era?

"They say I'm old fashioned, and live in the past, but sometimes I think progress progresses too fast."