Acteurist oeuvre-view – Daniel Day-Lewis – Part 2: NANOU (1986) & THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Release Date: 01/28/2022
Special Subject - Supported By Oscar Levant – the 1950s – AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (1951); THE I DON’T CARE GIRL (1953) & THE BAND WAGON (1953)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our final Oscar Levant Special Subject episode covers his contribution to two of the greatest MGM musicals, Vincente Minnelli's An American in Paris (1951) and The Band Wagon (1953), plus a 20th Century Fox curiosity, The I Don't Care Girl (1953) in which Mitzi Gaynor supposedly plays early 20th century vaudeville wild woman Eva Tanguay. Levant reaches new heights as a cinematic presence in An American in Paris, a film that, we argue, forms part of an "art life" Levant trilogy with Rhapsody in Blue and Humoresque, then flaunts some virtuoso...
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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – RKO – 1931: CIMARRON (dir. Wesley Ruggles) and TRAVELING HUSBANDS (dir. Paul Sloane)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
The movies we viewed for this RKO 1931 Studios Year by Year episode couldn't be more different: the sprawling Cimarron (starring Richard Dix as America's psychotic inner conflict) prompts us to speculate about Edna Ferber as a source auteur and the intertwining of her vision of America with Hollywood across three decades; while the tight, play-like Traveling Husbands (starring Evelyn Brent as a bitter sex worker with noble impulses), demonstrates the pressures capitalism exerts on men and therefore on women. But together, these movies show that the Pre-Code is good for a lot...
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Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Gloria Grahame – Part 4: A WOMAN’S SECRET (1948) and ROUGHSHOD (1949)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view continues with A Woman's Secret (1949), an oddball psychological drama with a screenplay by Citizen Kane writer Herman J. Mankiewicz and directed by Grahame's new husband Nicholas Ray; and Roughshod (1949), a consciously feminist Western written by a bunch of leftists. Proving her versatility-within-typecasting yet again, Grahame moves easily from the unlikely comic centre of a noirish vortex to a sympathetic sex worker in a fallen woman melodrama that uses the Western genre to deconstruct masculinity. (And if that makes it...
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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Fox Film Corporation – 1931: A CONNECTICUT YANKEE and SURRENDER
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
A curious pairing for this Fox 1931 Studios Year by Year episode: an unsung WWI drama, but as good as any, William K. Howard's Surrender, starring Warner Baxter, Leila Hyams, and an almost unrecognizable (both his appearance and his performance) Ralph Bellamy; and the Will Rogers version of A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, which mainly seems to exist so that Rogers can lasso a lance from a knight in a joust. Spoiler: modernity proves to be more than either King Arthur's Court or Ralph Bellamy want to handle, and we dig into their discontents. Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s:...
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Special Subject - Farrow vs. Allen – Part 4: ALICE (1990); SHADOWS AND FOG (1991) & HUSBANDS AND WIVES (1992)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
We say farewell to Farrow and Allen (for now, although we'll probably encounter them individually on the podcast again) with this final episode on their cinematic collaboration, covering Alice (1990), Shadows and Fog (1991), and one of their very best, the ill-fated Husbands and Wives (1992). In the first two, two more Allen characters struggle to live the good life in what couldn't be more different settings, and then we join Allen in meditating on all of the different ways that romantic relationships attempting to function at a high level can go wrong. Then,...
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Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Gloria Grahame – Part 3: SONG OF THE THIN MAN (1947) and MERTON OF THE MOVIES (1947)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
In this Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we get to see more of what MGM was (not) doing with our acteur's career. Underused in Song of the Thin Man (1947), in which she brings the only real noir energy to the final Thin Man film, she gets a similarly brief but memorable role in the Red Skelton vehicle Merton of the Movies (1947), playing the most innocent nymphomaniac in cinematic history. We uncover the legacy of Harry Leon Wilson's 1922 Merton of the Movies novel and surprise ourselves with our appreciation of Red Skelton's acting. Time Codes: 0h 00m...
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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers - 1931: NIGHT NURSE & BLONDE CRAZY
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
This round of Warner Bros. 1931 brings us two gems by a couple of Pre-Code masters, Roy Del Ruth's Blonde Crazy and William A. Wellman's Night Nurse, showing off the early star charisma of Jimmy Cagney (oozing vulnerability) and Barbara Stanwyck (spitting fire), ably supported by Joan Blondell in both cases. Bonus: Young Clark Gable shows up for another, even nastier 1931 turn. Dave makes the case for Blonde Crazy as a proto-screwball comedy (Warner Bros. does Trouble in Paradise?). And in another Fear and Moviegoing discussion of Now, Voyager, we discuss the...
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Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Gloria Grahame – Part 2: IT HAPPENED IN BROOKLYN (1947) and CROSSFIRE (1947)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our second Gloria Grahame Acteur-Oeuvre-view episode includes a curious under-use of our acteur in the all-around baffling musical comedy It Happened in Brooklyn (nevertheless memorable for the chemistry between Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Durante), and a judicious use of her by RKO in Edward Dmytryk's anti-fascist noir Crossfire (also 1947). We try to work out just what Grahame's ongoing avant-garde skit with Paul Kelly (as "The Man") brings to Dmytryk's portrait of a dysfunctional post-war America. One thing's for sure: she sure hates him! Time Codes: 0h 00m...
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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1931: THE EASIEST WAY & THE CHAMP
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
For this MGM 1931 episode we watched The Easiest Way, a feminist subversion of melodrama tropes by director Jack Conway and screenwriter Edith Ellis, starring Constance Bennett as the fallen woman and a young Clark Gable, verging on stardom, as her judgemental brother-in-law; and possibly the most sentimental movie ever made, King Vidor's The Champ, starring Wallace Beery as a ne'er-do-well ex-boxing champ dad and Jackie Cooper as his passionately devoted son. MGM delivers again in this new round of 1931! Time Codes: 0h 00m 25s: The Easiest Way (1931) [dir. Jack Conway] 0h 43m 55s:...
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Special Subject - Farrow vs. Allen – Part 3: SEPTEMBER (1987); ANOTHER WOMAN (1988) NEW YORK STORIES (1989) & CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS (1989)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our Farrow v Allen series continues with four more collaborations: September (1987), Another Woman (1988), Oedipus Wrecks (1989, part of the anthology movie New York Stories), and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). We count the ways in which Allen mashes up his favourite playwrights, filmmakers, and Russian novelists, trace the development of Allen's "survivor" theme through these movies, and discuss the different flavours of invisible that Farrow brings to them. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, Charles Burnett, in town to present De...
info_outlineOur second Daniel Day-Lewis Acteurist Oeuvre-view introduces us to the little-known, but very worthy, Nanou (1986), Conny Templeman's first and seemingly only feature, which we liked enough to discuss it in detail even though Day-Lewis's part is very minor. We draw comparisons between the film and Joanna Hogg's The Souvenir, and between Day-Lewis's part in it and Ben Stiller's in Reality Bites. Then we move on to Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) – in which Day-Lewis plays a cool and detached womanizer – and try to articulate the various ways in which the main characters (the others played by Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin) reflect and differ from each other in their attitudes to sex, aesthetics, and love.
Time Codes:
0h 01m 00s: Nanou (1986) [dir. Conny Templeman]
0h 21m 33s: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) [dir. Philip Kaufman]
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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s
* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)
* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.
* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!
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