Each month, I scour the Turner Classic Movies schedule for upcoming films that I can't miss. The highlights are posted here for your reading and viewing pleasure! (All listed times are Eastern Standard, check your local listings or TCM.com for actual air times in your area. Each day's schedule begins at 6:00 a.m.; if a film airs between midnight and 6 a.m. it is listed on the previous day's programming schedule.)
The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011)
This 15-episode documentary, directed and narrated by Mark Cousins and adapted from his 2004 book, was originally broadcast as a TV series in the UK and (as far as I know) this is its U.S. broadcast premiere. The series takes a comprehensive overview of the history and art of motion pictures, spanning over 100 hundred years and focusing not just on Hollywood, but on cinema from around the world. Monday nights in September we'll get the first five installments of the series, which will continue through December. Tuesdays in primetime will feature films which are related to that week's "chapter."
9/2, 4:15 PM - Pitfall (1948)
Insurance investigator Dick Powell and crooked private eye Raymond Burr clash as they both investigate an embezzler -- and fall for the man's girlfriend, played by Lizabeth Scott. Straight-arrow Powell should know better than to fall for a femme fatale, but when has that ever stopped a noir hero? This film just become available on DVD, due to exposure received at the Telluride Film Festival in a retrospective of films of director Andre de Toth. Today, it's being shown as part of TCM's annual tribute to the festival.
BONUS: 9/2, 8 AM - History is Made at Night (1937)
Charles Boyer and Jean Arthur star in this lush romance which is also part of the Telluride tribute. He's a suave and chivalrous waiter, she's a society lady with a maniacally jealous husband -- together, can they find true love and happiness?
9/14, 8 PM and 9/22, 11:30 AM - Lifeboat (1944)
Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 film Lifeboat is showing twice this month, once as an installment of "The Essentials" on 9/18, and again on 9/22 as part of TCM's month-long "Sundays with Hitch" programming. When thinking about Hitchcock's best films, Lifeboat is generally not the first, or even tenth, film to come to mind. However, it is one film from Hitch's "golden age" of the 40s and 50s that I have not seen, and the premise is very intriguing. After their ship is sunk by a Nazi U-boat, a group of passengers aboard a lifeboat must survive each other and the sea. The technical constraints of this story require the hand of a master to make the film work -- so I can't wait to see what Hitchcock was able to do.
This is the only full-length film by French director Jean Vigo who died in 1934 at the age of 29 of tuberculosis. He died thinking he was a failure, but history has named him a master poetic realism. In L'Atalante, Luminous Dita Parlo plays a new bride who finds that life aboard her husband's barge is not the adventure she hoped for and they nearly lose everything when she sneaks off to experience Paris nightlife. The film has gone through many restorations over the years because of editing done by the original distributor. The final missing piece was found in an Italian vault in 1990 and since then the film has been receiving accolades along the lines of "greatest film ever made."
Friday Night Spotlight - Future Shock!
Film critic Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune hosts this month's Friday night series presenting visions of the future on film. The films include Fritz Lang's early classic Metropolis, as well as more recent sci-fi fare like Steven Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence and Minority Report. Sometimes the best part of watching a film set in the future is being able to compare its vision to what actually happened. My favorite film in the line-up is Escape from New York (1981); director John Carpenter creates a wonderfully spooky atmosphere and Kurt Russell is simply iconic as the tough anti-hero Snake Plisskin. Luckily by 1997, when Escape is set, New York City had not been converted into a maximum security prison, so that film's depiction of the future remains, thankfully, fictional. On the other hand, Total Recall (1990), another film in the Future Shock series, was eerily accurate in its depiction of some of the aspects of future life -- video phones, full body security X-rays, TV ads on the subway...one character even plays tennis with a device similar to the Nintendo Wii. (Check out our From the Vault review of Total Recall for more of that film's predictions of the future.) If you are looking for a more kid-friendly movie from this series, try The Time Machine (1960), a well-made adventure starring Rod Taylor as the time traveler.
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