Blogging about Hollywood's golden-age films
A couple of posts back I wrote a critique of the 1959 film remake of The 39 Steps, in which I zeroed in on its star, Kenneth More, as being crucially miscast in the Richard Hannay role. And I’ve been musing on that post. Not that I’ve changed my mind—39/59 is, I maintain, a mediocre [ ]
There need to be more movies about rambunctious old ladies. In fact—there just need to be more rambunctious old ladies. Note, I wrote Ladies. We don’t need more rampaging elderly men; we have enough of them on our daily news scoop of insanity. No, it’s old ladies we now need; the rambunctiousier, the better. Because [ ]
Alfred Hitchcock sure was no fluke. His 1935 version of The 39 Steps really is a great film. I note this with utter, unabashed confidence after watching the film’s 1959 remake, which is so bad, I wish it could have been funny. It’s like watching someone fall down all those 39 steps, hitting each one [ ]
The title vampire of The Vampire’s Ghost is not your expected sanguinic movie predator. No tux, no tails, no slicked-down hair or Mittel-European drawl. Instead, as played by John Abbott, he’s restrained, well-mannered, very proper British; and, despite managing a grubby gin-and-gambling joint in a small African village, whose habitués haven’t come to terms with [ ]
It was on my second viewing of RKO s 1947 film noir They Won’t Believe Me that one scene stood out. A brief one, of the film’s protagonist, Larry Ballantine (Robert Young), waiting at a roadside stop for the bus bringing his girlfriend. It’s almost a throwaway; a setup for a squalid meeting between two [ ]
There s always been bad Emperors. Wait a minute, that’s redundant: Emperors are always bad. Period, full stop, end. That’s because Empering is an occupation uniquely suited to narcissists, sociopaths, scoundrels, and fools (or combinations thereof). Such Empiric excrescences occur, over-n-over, throughout history like a nasty cold; one which, every six months or so, will sneak [ ]
I know nothing about cars. Nix, Nada, Nought; not a thing. I don’t even drive one; and the iota of vehicular knowledge I do possess could fit into a mouse’s thimble. So, all I can say is that the Green Car chases the Black Car, and the Green Car wins. Not as in a race, [ ]
We open on the hands of Oscar Levant. At the piano, playing a Gershwin tune. An offscreen voice announces it’s “The Oscar Levant Show,” with Oscar Levant, June Levant (his wife), and “Oscar’s special guest,” Fred Astaire. As the camera pulls back, we see Oscar finish the piece, then rise from the piano bench as [ ]
I’m tossing out a suggestion (free of charge!) to the makers of FX’s Feud. You know, that TV anthology series about bitchy, dishy quarrels between rich, famous, and sometimes Beautiful People, which result in—disputes, disasters, and epic loss. My recommendation is just perfect for that kind of televised bitchfest. And that is: The Feud Between [ ]
“Imagine you’re on vacation,” says the anesthesiologist to me at the start of an anodyne, but embarrassingly intimate procedure about which I don’t care to elaborate, “imagine you’re in a place you want to visit, and you’re now there…”. “I’m in Paris,” I think to myself, “and I’m strolling down the Champs-Élysées with Buster Keaton…” [ ]