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Jan 31, 2020

A transitional Jennifer Jones episode: from another summary of the Jones persona, King Vidor's RUBY GENTRY (1952), to a new era of filmmaking and a new kind of role in De Sica's TERMINAL STATION (1953). We give our verdict on the director's cut of the latter, the first time either of us has seen it. And in Moviegoing,...


Jan 23, 2020

The alpha & omega of Josef von Sternberg's oeuvre, 1925's The SALVATION HUNTERS and 1953's ANATAHAN, prompt us to consider whether the stormy marriage of auteur and system can sometimes be more conducive to artistic accomplishment than creative independence. Then, prompted by recent moviegoing, we announce upcoming...


Jan 17, 2020

This week, for Warners Bros. 1931: THE MALTESE FALCON (dir. Roy Del Ruth) and THE LAST FLIGHT (dir. William Dieterle). Warners is an early adopter of Dashiell Hammett, but is his least political novel a good fit for the most political studio, or not? And Dieterle, in his first English-language film, turns Warners...


Jan 10, 2020

The masterpieces keep coming in our Jennifer Jones series. This week it's Powell and Pressburger's Gone to Earth (1950), a meta melodrama that clearly gave Kate Bush some ideas, and William Wyler's Carrie (1952), a noirish costume drama about the precariousness of the American middle class. Then we say farewell to...


Jan 3, 2020

In our first MGM 1931 episode, we look at two very different fallen woman movies, POSSESSED (dir. Clarence Brown), starring Joan Crawford and Clark Gable, and SUSAN LENOX (HER FALL AND RISE) (dir. Robert Z. Leonard), with Gable supporting (in the technical sense only) Greta Garbo. POSSESSED, taking cognizance of the...