Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1942: WOMAN OF THE YEAR & TORTILLA FLAT + Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – 35th Anniversary Screening of Midnight Run (1988)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Release Date: 02/03/2023
Special Subject - The Archers in Technicolor – THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COL. BLIMP (1943), BLACK NARCISSUS (1947) and THE RED SHOES (1948)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
In this episode we revisit three Technicolor melodramas made by British cinema's great auteur duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, bursting with vibrant emotions and sensuality that exercise a dangerous allure over their protagonists: Clive Candy, the upper-class colonialist twerp played by Roger Livesey in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) who discovers the poetry in his soul thanks to the influence of three in-Kerr-nations of Deborah Kerr and the friendship of Anton Walbrook; Sister Clodagh (Kerr again) in Black Narcissus (1947), futilely pitting the...
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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year - Fox Film Corporation – 1933: ADORABLE & THE POWER AND THE GLORY
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
This week's 1933 Fox Film Studios Year by Year episode paradoxically digs into the Hollywood beginnings of a couple of Paramount powerhouses via William Dieterle's Adorable, a musical based on a German operetta co-written by Billy Wilder (who'd be writing for Fox directly by 1934), and William K. Howard's The Power and the Glory, with an innovative screenplay by Hollywood newcomer Preston Sturges. Important early 30s Fox stars Janet Gaynor (permitted to play against type as a saucy princess who wants to play with the plebs) and Spencer Tracy (as a self-made - with a little help from his...
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Acteurist Spotlight - Delphine Seyrig – Part 1: MURIEL (1963) & LA MUSICA (1967)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our Acteur Spotlight kicks off with six movies starring Delphine Seyrig, beginning this episode with Alain Resnais' Muriel (1963) and Marguerite Duras' debut as a feature film director, La Musica (1967) (co-directed with Paul Seban). We find that these two films about former couples discussing, debating, and negotiating how to live with their past make a good pairing for their existential contrasts as well as their thematic and structural similarities. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, a New Year's Eve viewing of Trading Places (1983), the Eddie Murphy/Dan...
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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers – 1933: 42nd STREET & GOLD DIGGERS OF 1933
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
This week's Warner Brothers 1933 Studios Year by Year episode brings the studio-as-auteur question back into focus with two highly distinctive Pre-Code musicals with a similarity of style and social outlook that can't be attributed to the directors, screenwriters, source material, or the presence of Hollywood's most idiosyncratic choreographer and stager of musical numbers, Busby Berkeley. We argue for the dramatic and comedic merits of 42nd Street (directed by Lloyd Bacon) and Gold Diggers of 1933 (directed by Mervyn LeRoy), without failing to grapple with the more...
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Special Subject: Christmas 2025 – S & X-Mas – EYES WIDE SHUT (1999) & ELLE (2016)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
Our S&xMas episode looks at two provocative, controversial, and not very sex-positive works made by aging auteurs after a long hiatus, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and Paul Verhoeven's Elle (2016). Join us as we trace Tom Cruise's all-American odyssey of sexual paranoia and Isabelle Huppert's very European journey away from sex with men, asking such important questions as "Is Paul Verhoeven the most masochistic male feminist director?" and "Is there a significance to Christmas in these movies beyond irony?" And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, just one...
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Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Gloria Grahame – Part 13: RIDE OUT FOR REVENGE (1957); ODDS AGAINST TOMORROW (1959) and RIDE BEYOND VENGEANCE (1966)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
It's our final Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, with which we also say goodbye to our comprehensive approach toward attaining a privileged vantage point on an actor's entire oeuvre. Of course, we cheated a little on this one and stopped short of Gloria's exploitation film era. Our oeuvre-view ends with two Westerns, Ride Out for Revenge (1957) and Ride Beyond Vengeance (1966), entirely unrelated despite their similar titles, which we liked for very different reasons, and a last Gloria Grahame left-wing film noir appearance in Robert Wise's Odds Against...
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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1933: FAST WORKERS & QUEEN CHRISTINA
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
For this 1933 MGM episode we focus on rehabilitating John Gilbert's sound-era reputation with a double feature of underrated gem Fast Workers, a construction worker love triangle melodrama directed by Tod Browning, and Gilbert's most famous sound movie, Rouben Mamoulian and Greta Garbo's very serious (but also very sensual) costume drama Queen Christina, about a woman whose ideals clash with her society. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss one of Dave's faves, Paul Thomas Anderson's morally enigmatic first feature, Hard Eight. Time Codes:...
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Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Gloria Grahame – Part 12: OKLAHOMA! (1955) and THE MAN WHO NEVER WAS (1956)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
In this week's episode of our Gloria Grahame Acteurist Oeuvre-view, we explore the unique casting of unmusical Gloria in Fred Zinnemann's film version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! (1955) and follow the thread that leads (through Jud Fry) from the supposedly "wholesome" musical to Charlie Kaufman's dark, experimental I'm Thinking of Ending Things. Then we switch over to British espionage curiosity The Man Who Never Was (1956), starring Gloria and Clifton Webb... although they never share a scene. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, another curious pairing:...
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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1933: ONE SUNDAY AFTERNOON & DUCK SOUP
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
This Paramount 1933 Studios Year by Year episode features two of the studio's defining stars of the era: the Marx Brothers, in their final, most famous, and (maybe) most nihilistic Paramount film, Duck Soup, directed by Leo McCarey, and Gary Cooper, miscast (or maybe not) in One Sunday Afternoon in the role that would go to James Cagney in the Warner Bros. remake, The Strawberry Blonde. We zero in on Groucho's authoritarian anti-authoritarianism and Cooper's embodiment of a charismatic man's class resentment. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we share our first...
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Special Subject - Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel Series – LES QUATRE CENTS COUPS (1959); ANTOINE ET COLETTE (1962); BAISERS VOLÉS (1968); DOMICILE CONJUGAL (1970) and L'AMOUR EN FUITE (1979)
There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film
For our November 2025 Special Subject we watched the Antoine Doinel films of François Truffaut: The 400 Blows (1959), Antoine et Colette (1962), Stolen Kisses (1968), Bed and Board (1970), and Love on the Run (1979). In addition to the charms of star/auteur avatar Jean-Pierre Léaud, we focus on the films' evolving style and increasing interest in the women in Doinel's life. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto section we discuss Paul Leni's horror comedy The Cat and the Canary (1927) and a Hitchcock...
info_outlineOur MGM 1942 episode is a problematic Spencer Tracy double feature in which we're treated to the full range of his persona, from smug saint to semi-demon: George Stevens' brilliant but flawed Woman of the Year, the first Hepburn-Tracy romantic comedy, and Victor Fleming's Tortilla Flat, in which Tracy co-stars with John Garfield, Akim Tamiroff, and Frank Morgan as John Steinbeck's idea of Monterey, California paisanos. We try to explain just how Woman of the Year's humanist critique of feminism ends up going so badly wrong, but defend its infamous ending, before moving on to Tortilla Flat's critique of the work ethic and property ownership. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we react to a 35th anniversary screening of Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin buddy pic Midnight Run.
Time Codes:
0h 00m 45s: WOMAN OF THE YEAR [dir. George Stevens]
0h 46m 58s: TORTILLA FLAT [dir. Victor Fleming]
1h 10m 55s: FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TOROTNTO – Midnight Run (1988)
Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames
Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler
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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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