Classic Movie Picks: July 2017

by Lani

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.)

7/4, 4 AM - Miss Firecracker (1989)
This slice of Southern Americana is perfect programming for the Fourth of July, if you are in the mood for something slightly bittersweet and satirical. Holly Hunter stars as Carnelle, a young misfit obsessed with winning the annual beauty contest in her small town of Yazoo City, Mississippi. After seeing her elegant cousin Elain (Mary Steenburgen) win the pageant 10 years earlier, subsequently marry up, and become a local celebrity, Carnelle is sure that the title of Miss Firecracker will be her ticket to a new life outside her hometown. 
While not her first film, Miss Firecracker may be the first time I saw Holly Hunter on screen. Mild-mannered child that I was, Hunter's intensity and energy, not to mention her flame red hair, were a bit frightening; however, I did admire her determination and spirit. The highlight is the performance by Hunter, as well as a very strong supporting cast including Steenburgen, Alfre Woodard, and Tim Robbins. The film was adapted from an off-Broadway play, and while far from perfect, it - like Carnelle - is worth giving a chance. 



7/7: Hitchcock in the UK
8 PM - Number Seventeen (1932)
9:30 PM - The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
11 PM - The 39 Steps (1935)
12:45 AM - The Lady Vanishes (1938)
TCM is spotlighting filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock on Wednesdays and Fridays this month, moving chronologically from 1927's The Ring on July 5 to his final film, 1976's Family Plot, on July 28. You're sure to find something interesting on any evening devoted to Hitchcock's work, but I've chosen to focus on this batch of films from the 1930s. At the time Hitchcock was working in England making films with steadily bigger budgets and production value, and not only gaining acclaim in the UK, but in America with his first trans-Atlantic hit, The 39 Steps. 
The 39 Steps also made a film star of British stage actor Robert Donat (four years later Donat would win an Oscar for Goodbye, Mr. Chips). Donat plays that favorite Hitchcock character: an innocent man accused. After a spy is killed, and Donat blamed, he goes on the run across Scotland, all the while handcuffed to the woman who turned him in; together, they must discover the real killer and expose a spy ring. 
Among the other films tonight is the original version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, a big hit in Britain and the first English-language film for character actor Peter Lorre. Hitchcock liked this story about a vacationing family accidentally drawn into international espionage so much, he remade the film in 1956.
The low-budget thriller Number Seventeen is not one of Hitch's most celebrated works, but it is notable for possibly introducing the director's signature gimmick, the "Macguffin" - an object that drives the plot, but is basically irrelevant to the overall story. In this case, the Macguffin is a stolen necklace which draws the characters to a spooky old house where they encounter a string of mysteries, including a man's corpse.
1938's The Lady Vanishes was Hitchcock's biggest hit to date and helped him to secure a lucrative Hollywood contract. The plot - including a sudden disappearance, a plucky heroine, secret agents, and plenty of sly humor - is a treat for any Hitchcock fan.

7/25: Lili Damita Double Feature
10:45 AM - Friends and Lovers (1931)
12 PM - The Woman Between (1931)
French actress Lili Damita was one of the many foreign beauties brought to Hollywood during the silent era - including Pola Negri, Greta Garbo, and Marlene Dietrich - to play exotic temptresses. Cast for their ability to give meaningful glances rather than speak lines, not all the imports made a successful transition to talkies. However, Garbo, Dietrich, and, yes, Damita were among the few who did. Today she's remembered as Errol Flynn's first wife; although, when they married in 1935, Flynn was just a handsome newcomer and Damita was the star. An old-fashioned gal, Damita gave up her career after marrying Flynn...which may be why she's better known for the divorce which bankrupted Flynn than for her own movies, but that's a story for another day.
Today's double feature includes two films made in 1931 with director Victor Schertzinger for RKO Studios. In Friends and Lovers, Damita flirts her way through British society in India, blackmailing her conquests under the (monocled) eye of her unscrupulous husband, played by Erich von Stroheim. Adolphe Menjou and Laurence Olivier, in his first American film, star as young British officers ensnared by Damita's charms. 
In the second film, Damita is the titular Woman, this time unintentionally coming between a father and son. Happily married to a rich older man, Damita is shocked when her husband's son returns from WWI and it is revealed that her stepson is also her former lover. (Since we're all thinking it, I'll just say that I have found no evidence that this film was the inspiration for the classic 1997 TV-movie My Stepson, My Lover.) You may recognize O.P. Heggie, who plays Damita's husband, as the blind hermit from Bride of Frankenstein.

7/27: Star of the Month Ronald Colman
8 PM - A Double Life (1947)
10 PM - Random Harvest (1942)
12:15 AM - The Talk of the Town (1942)
The suave British actor Ronald Colman is TCM's Star of the Month with his films scheduled in primetime each Thursday in July. Colman was a top leading man from the silent era through the 1940s, equally popular with men and women for his dashing manner and handsome good looks. I plan on watching several of his movies this month, including early hits like Bulldog Drummond (1929) and Raffles (1930), but I am recommending three of his most popular films from the 40s.
In the politically-tinged comedy The Talk of the Town Colman shares leading man duties with Cary Grant. Grant plays an accused arsonist on the lam who hides out in the home of schoolteacher Jean Arthur. He enlists Arthur's help to convince Colman, a respected law professor, of his innocence. Of course both men develop romantic feelings for the lovely Ms. Arthur and the film leaves you guessing until the end as to which man she will choose. This may be the only instance in which a love triangle involving Cary Grant felt equally weighted. Apparently alternate endings were filmed, one in which Arthur chose Grant and one in which she chose Colman; see if you agree with the final outcome. 
The Talk of the Town was Oscar-nominated for Best Picture and breathed new life into Colman's career and he followed it with another hit, the romantic drama Random Harvest. The plot is a bit convoluted, but basically it involves Colman getting amnesia - twice! - and forgetting the love of his life, played by Greer Garson. Director Meryn LeRoy quipped that "the English language was never spoken more beautifully on film." The film received seven Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Director, and Best Actor. However, most of the awards that year went to Garson's other hit, Mrs. Miniver; Colman lost out to James Cagney in Yankee Doodle Dandy.
For Colman, fourth time was the charm when he finally won the Best Actor Oscar for A Double Life playing an actor in a production of Othello opposite his own wife who finds his character's jealousy seeping into his own psyche. Married writing team Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin originally wanted Laurence Olivier for the lead role, but jumped after Colman when their first choice was unavailable. It was Colman who wasn't sure if he was right for the role; despite a stage background, he had never been a Shakesperean actor. However, the Kanins got Colman to sign on by promising him that the role would earn him that elusive Oscar - and they were right! 

Classic Movie Picks: September 2013

by Lani

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.

9/24, 9 PM - L'Atalante (1934)
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.

Classic Movie Picks: February

Each month, I scour the Turner Classic Movies Now Playing guide 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.)

This month TCM begins their annual "31 Days of Oscar" programming in honor of the Academy Awards. If you enjoy the Academy Awards and their history, as I do, this is a fun time of year. All the films scheduled for the next 31 days will be Oscar winners or nominees. This year, as an added twist, the schedule also incorporates a variation on "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" by linking each film through a common performer. So, the first film of the month is Only When I Laugh with Bacon and James Coco, followed by Man of La Mancha featuring Coco and Harry Andrews, followed by the Harry Andrews film 55 Days at Peking, and so on...ending March 3 with Diner starring Kevin Bacon. No connections or films will be repeated throughout the entire month!
Obviously, each film during 31 Days of Oscar has something to recommend it, whether it be a lead performance, score, or costume design. So, to narrow down the field I've selected films which feature some of my favorite leading ladies.

2/7, 5:30 AM: The Actress (1953)
This is a biopic starring the lovely Jean Simmons as Ruth Gordon - yes, the Ruth Gordon. Though she's probably best known today as the kooky old lady from Harold and Maude, her career as an actress began decades earlier. The screenplay for The Actress was adapted by Gordon from her autobiographical play and it covers her early career in the theater. Spencer Tracy and Teresa Wright (such a favorite actress of mine, I made her my profile picture on this site!) lead an impressive cast as Gordon's parents; however, I must admit my real interest lies in Gordon's story. She began acting on the stage in 1915; fifty-three years later, at the age of 74, she won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role in Rosemary's Baby. Her acceptance speech began, "I can't tell you how encouragin' this is..." In between those milestones she and her husband, writer-director Garson Kanin, collaborated on the screenplays for the Katharine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy classics Adam's Rib and Pat and Mike. In fact, the onscreen relationship between Hepburn and Tracy was modeled on the Kanin marriage. Unfortunately, The Actress only deals with a small portion of Gordon's interesting life, but I am eager to see it just the same.

2/14: A Jean Arthur Triple Feature!
10 AM - A Foreign Affair (1948)
12 PM - The More the Merrier (1943)
2 PM - The Devil and Miss Jones (1941)
One of Hollywood's most unique leading ladies of the 30s and 40s, Jean Arthur was particularly adept at screwball comedy whether she was playing the baby-faced innocent or the worldly wiseacre. In a nod to the quality of Ms. Arthur's films, TCM is playing at least four more throughout this month of award winners: 2/8, 9:15 AM - Mr. Smith Goes to Washington; 2/9, 8:45 AM - Too Many Husbands; 2/9, 2 PM - The Talk of the Town; 2/28, 10:15 AM - You Can't Take it With You.

2/26, 8 PM: Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967)
Julie Andrews has to be one of the most likeable screen presences there is. I've never seen her be anything less than delightful on film and her turn here as Millie is no exception. In my opinion, this film would be worth a watch just for Julie; however, Thoroughly Modern Millie happens to be one of the funniest movie musicals ever made, blending elements of slapstick and farce with plenty of memorable tunes. This film was recently adapted into a popular Broadway musical, so it's not inconceivable that it could be remade into a film in the not-too-distant-future. Watch the original now! Then, when the new version comes out you can act superior and say you've long been a fan and, in all honesty, prefer the original. (Isn't that the secret delight of all classic movie geeks?)

Of course, these aren't the only films I'll be watching! With 31 days of award-winning cinema to take in, I'm afraid I'll barely be leaving the couch!