Jun 26, 2020
In this week's edition of The Studios Year-by-Year, it's Universal 1932, and we have two horror movies with wildly divergent styles. First, it's Robert Florey's Murders in the Rue Morgue, perhaps the sickest and most sadistic of the 30s Universal horror classics (surpassing even The Black Cat) and a probable influence...
Jun 19, 2020
For June's Special Subject, we look at three films by Bengali filmmaker Ritwik Ghatak about the aftermath of the Partition of India: Meghe Dhaka Tara/The Cloud-Capped Star (1960), Komal Gandhar/E-flat (1961), and Subarnarekha/Golden Lining (1962). Refugee life, classism, intersectional analysis, melodrama, the confusion...
Jun 12, 2020
RKO, 1932: Selznick has come in as production chief and fired everyone but Pandro S. Berman. We look at the result of this new regime in the form of two La Cava-helmed pictures. First, the white elephant, Symphony of Six Million, based on a short story by Fannie Hurst, shows us how RKO does the Lower East Side. Then,...
Jun 5, 2020
In our final episode of “unknown” Setsuko Haras before we get into the Ozus and Naruses, we cover another tonally dissonant double feature, Kôzaburô Yoshimura's TEMPTATION/YUWAKU (1948) and Keisuke Kinoshita's HERE'S TO THE YOUNG LADY/OJOSAN KANPAI (1949). We discuss the way these films—a love triangle melodrama...