Sep 25, 2020

Universal, 1933: Two little-known James Whale Pre-Codes that adopt divergent attitudes toward adulterous wives. First, treated as farce, in By Candlelight: Paul Lukas plays a butler who gets himself in trouble by masquerading as his playboy boss in order to have more refined erotic adventures. Then, treated as tragedy,...

Sep 18, 2020

This week we've got a big one for you: the five films that Frank Capra and Barbara Stanwyck made together. Starting with LADIES OF LEISURE (1930), we interpret the Stanwyck character as the Capra stand-in, which leads to some interesting results. MEET JOHN DOE (1941) becomes LADIES OF LEISURE inverted (Stanwyck as...

Sep 11, 2020

RKO 1933: We look at a movie starring one of the hottest female stars of the day, Constance Bennett, George Cukor's Our Betters, and a movie starring an up-and-coming (and down, and up, and down again) RKO star, Katharine Hepburn, Lowell Sherman's Morning Glory. Elise deems both Hepburn's frantically vulnerable...

Sep 4, 2020

A strange back-to-school episode for a strange back-to-school year: we look at Amy Heckerling's LOSER (2000) and Whit Stillman's DAMSELS IN DISTRESS (2011), two comedies with very different, but equally dark, visions of class and university life in America, neither of which fared well with audiences or critics at the...

Aug 28, 2020

This episode of our Acteurist Oeuvre-view of Setsuko Hara (with English subs) features our first Naruse, REPAST (1951), and the movie generally considered “Ozu's masterpiece” (as if there were only one), TOKYO STORY (1953). We debate whether REPAST is housewife propaganda or the STARSHIP TROOPERS of domestic reunion...