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.)
4/2, 8 PM - Shane (1953)
This classic Western directed by George Stevens was an iconic film for a generation, but now as Westerns have faded from popularity, younger audiences no longer know Shane. I think it's worth rediscovering. Alan Ladd plays the title character, a "reformed" gunfighter, who befriends the Starret family, homesteaders in Wyoming, played by Van Heflin, Jean Arthur, and young Brandon De Wilde. When a rancher hires a gunslinger (Jack Palance) to scare the Starrets and other farmers off their land, tensions escalate until it seems inevitable that Shane must fall back on his old ways to come to their defense. The film was nominated for multiple Academy Awards - Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Palance), and Best Picture; however, its only win was for Best Cinematography. Though Ladd did not receive an Oscar nomination, this was a career-defining role for him. His Shane is complex - dignified and decent, yet clearly suppressing his natural impulses to violence. As he rides off into the sunset (with little Brandon De Wilde famously crying, "Shane, come back!"), you know he's destined to repeat this episode again.
Starring Mabel Normand
4/10, 12:30 AM - The Extra Girl (1923)
4/10, 1:45 AM - Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914)
This pair of films showcases Mabel Normand, a popular actress and director of the silent era. Her famous partnership with filmmaker Mack Sennet made Normand the top comedienne of her day; however, their off screen partnership was less successful. The couple even inspired a Broadway musical in 1974, Mack and Mabel, which starred Robert Preston and Bernadette Peters. Unfortunately, Mabel's life in Hollywood was marked with tragedy -- drug addiction and the unsolved murder of her best friend, director William Desmond Taylor -- and she died of tuberculosis in 1930 at age 38. (Normand features prominently in Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood by William J. Mann, an excellent true crime novel which posits a solution to Taylor's murder.)
In The Extra Girl, written and produced by Sennet, Normand stars as a small town girl who, through a series of mix-ups, lands a contract with a Hollywood studio. The story sounds familiar, but at this point in cinema history "movies about movies" were relatively uncommon and the film offers a rare glimpse at the early film industry.
Tillie's Punctured Romance stars Marie Dressler, in her first film role, and Charlie Chaplin with Normand playing a smaller role. Directed by Sennet, the film is notable as the first feature-length comedy ever produced.
German Cinema in the Weimar Era
This special programming series focuses on the German film industry during that country's transitional period between the World Wars, also known as the Weimar Republic, roughly 1919-1933. Though typically created for the mass market, these films pushed the development of film as an art form, reflecting movements in contemporary visual art and theatre. The series includes 16 feature films and a documentary. I would suggest checking out any of the scheduled films (I've recommended a few in the past), but here are the ones I'm hoping to catch this time around.
4/13, 9:30 PM - From Caligari to Hitler: German Cinema in the Age of the Masses (2014)
Based on a 1947 book by German film critic Siegfried Kracauer, this doc explores how societal changes in German culture affected the types of stories told on screen - from the Roaring Twenties to the rise of the Nazi party.
4/13 - Innovators
8 PM - The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) dir. by Robert Wiene
11:30 PM - Nosferatu (1922) dir. by F.W. Murnau
1:15 AM - Faust (1926) dir. by F.W. Murnau
3:15 AM - The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1927) dir. by Lotte Reiniger
4:30 AM - The Blue Angel (1930) dir. by Josef Von Sternberg
The films of this period are noted for being visually striking, light and shadow creating highly stylized, expressionistic images -- this style is at it's height in Caligari, a spooky tale of a sleepwalking murderer. Reiniger's Achmed is an animated film which uses an unusual technique of intricate shadow puppets. Also of note - the Blue Angel introduced the world to Marlene Dietrich.
4/20 - Films of Fritz Lang
8 PM - Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (1922)
12:45 AM - The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)
Lang's films center on master criminal Mabuse and his plots to rule the Berlin underworld and create an empire of crime through fear and manipulation. In the second film, Mabuse's tactics deliberately references the rise of the Nazi party; Lang was one of the few German filmmakers who dared to comment on the Nazis (he soon emigrated and went on to a successful career in Hollywood.)
4/27 - Films of G.W. Pabst
8 PM - Pandora's Box (1929)
10:30 PM - Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)
1:45 AM - The Threepenny Opera (1931)
Director Pabst made two films with American actress Louise Brooks, but those two made her an icon of the flapper era. In both Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl, Brooks plays a woman whose potent sexuality dooms her to a tragic fate at the hands of men. Threepenny Opera is an adaptation of a Bertolt Brecht play, with music by Kurt Weill, which tells the story of London criminal Mack the Knife (yes, the one from the song). In a bizarre bit of performance art, Brecht sued the filmmakers for violating his artistic intent, while they accused him of the exact same thing -- and the producers won. Regardless of who truly authored the film, it's still fun to watch.
