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Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1943: THE STRANGE DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER & SON OF DRACULA

There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film

Release Date: 07/26/2023

Special Subject – The Wartime Mizoguchi – THE STORY OF THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM (1939) & THE 47 RONIN (1941)

There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film

For our June Special Subject we revisit the work of Kenji Mizoguchi, looking at two films from earlier than his best-known (in the West) period: The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums (1939), about cross-class lovers and what it takes to become a great artist, and The 47 Ronin (1941), based on a true story that became emblematic of samurai values. Topics discussed include King Vidor parallels, feminism, Marxism, revenge tragedy, and propaganda and its subversion. Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s: Brief Mizoguchi briefing 0h 08m...

Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 15: SEBASTIAN (1968) & OEDIPUS THE KING (1968)

There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film

This week's Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view sees Lilli in two small but crucial roles: Sebastian (1968), starring Dirk Bogarde as a Cold War cryptanalyst of divided political loyalties, and Oedipus Rex (1968), starring Christopher Plummer as Freud's favourite plaything of the gods. We discuss Cold War politics, the Swinging Sixties New Woman, free will, and the perils of adapting ancient Greek tragedy. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we briefly discuss the final Powell Pressburgers of TIFF cinematheque's retrospective, A Matter of Life and...

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1946: THE CAT CREEPS & SHE-WOLF OF LONDON

There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film

For this Universal 1946 episode, we chose a B-movie double bill, The Cat Creeps (directed by Erle C. Kenton, best known for Island of Lost Souls) and She-Wolf of London (directed by Jean Yarbrough, Abbott and Costello specialist), hoping for hidden gems. But did we find any? And in the Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, our Powell and Pressburger retrospective viewing continues with Black Narcissus and Michael Powell's notorious investigation of cinema, voyeurism, and violence, Peeping Tom. Time Codes: 0h 00m...

Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 14: MIRACLE OF THE WHITE STALLIONS (1963) and OPERATION CROSSBOW (1965)

There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film

In this week's Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we encounter more Nazis in a couple of movies very loosely based on real WWII incidents: Disney's Miracle of the White Stallions (1963), based on Operation Cowboy (but with the equine eugenics shoved into the subtext), and Operation Crossbow (1965), about the attempt by British Intelligence to stop the threat of Nazi rockets. Sophia Loren shares a great scene with Lilli Palmer in the latter, but to say more would be spoilers. In Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss our viewings of two more Powell...

Special Subject – Produced By Sam Goldwyn, The 1940s: THE LITTLE FOXES (1941), THE PRIDE OF THE YANKEES (1942), THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES (1946), and MY FOOLISH HEART (1949)

There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film

This week we have a whopping big episode for you: Part 2 of our look at Samuel Goldwyn Productions, dealing with the 1940s; and, in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, brief discussions of three Powell and Pressburgers, kicking off TIFF's May retrospective. For this episode we watched The Little Foxes (directed by William Wyler), The Pride of the Yankees (directed by Sam Wood), The Best Years of Our Lives (Wyler again), and My Foolish Heart (directed by Mark Robson). From scheming capitalists to heroic baseball stars to casting a critical eye on...

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – RKO – 1946: STEP BY STEP & CRACK-UP

There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film

In this RKO 1946 episode we discuss Crack-Up (directed by Irving Reis), an eerie noir with a couple of great Expressionist set pieces. Pat O'Brien oozes vulnerability as a WWII vet and populist art critic who has to find out who's trying to make him look, or go, insane; Claire Trevor plays the love interest who's trying to help him (or is she?). Oh yeah, and we also watched Step By Step (directed by Phil Rosen), a goofy spy drama in which Lawrence Tierney gets to play a nice guy for once. Remember this episode when we watch Tierney and Trevor at their nastiest in Born to...

Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 13: THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY (1961) & THE COUNTERFEIT TRAITOR (1962)

There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film

This week's Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode is a George Seaton double feature that once again gives us Lilli the sophisticate and Lilli the saint: in The Pleasure of His Company (1961), she plays the ex-wife of Fred Astaire, an absentee father whose plan to recapture his youth by seducing their daughter into becoming his travelling companion she sets out to foil; while in The Counterfeit Traitor, she's a member of the German anti-Nazi resistance who imparts a conscience to William Holden's reluctant spy. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto we cover our final...

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – 20th Century-Fox – 1946: THE DARK CORNER & THE RAZOR’S EDGE

There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film

This week's Fox 1946 Studios Year by Year episode features the strange bedfellows of Henry Hathaway's The Dark Corner, a curiously feminist film noir in which the tormented protagonist is saved by the persistence of a good woman (played by Lucille Ball), and Edmund Goulding's The Razor's Edge, based on a Somerset Maugham novel about spiritual enlightenment and bourgeois ennui, featuring Gene Tierney's best performance, although Anne Baxter won the Oscar. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, the TIFF Cinematheque Duras retrospective continues with Nathalie Granger, Baxter, Vera Baxter,...

Acteurist Oeuvre-view – Lilli Palmer – Part 12: BUT NOT FOR ME (1959) and CONSPIRACY OF HEARTS (1960)

There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film

Our examination of the film career of Lilli Palmer continues with a couple of excellent films that show us Palmer's range when playing "loveable": But Not for Me, in which she gives a comedic performance as the ex-wife of a Broadway producer played by Clark Gable, benevolently interfering in his budding relationship with young actress Carroll Baker; and Conspiracy of Hearts, in which Palmer plays an Italian Mother Superior who persuades her nuns to help Jewish children escape from a concentration camp. Penned by a couple of American blacklistees, Conspiracy of Hearts has a...

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers – 1946: DEVOTION & NIGHT AND DAY

There's Sometimes a Buggy: Irresponsible Opinions About Classic Film

For this Warner Bros. 1946 episode we watched two fantastical biopics, Devotion (directed by Curtis Bernhardt), starring Ida Lupino and Olivia de Havilland as Emily and Charlotte Brontë, and Night and Day (directed by Michael Curtiz), starring Cary Grant as Cole Porter and Monty Woolley as himself. We found them to be like night and day in terms of their quality, but you'll have to listen to find out which of the two we deemed redeemable. And then for something completely different: in a long Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, tragic love, communism,...

More Episodes

Universal 1943 is a strange one, starting with The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler, starring Ludwig Donath as a reluctant Nazi collaborator who's forced to impersonate Hitler, and continuing with Robert Siodmak's Son of Dracula, with Lon Chaney Jr. as a hapless Dracula who falls victim to femme fatale Louise Allbritton. We discuss WWII AU scenarios, the Twilight Zone scenario of being a soul trapped in Hitler's body, and the comedy team of Frank Craven and J. Edward Bromberg as a down-to-earth doctor and sub-Van Helsing forced to confront supernatural shenanigans and, worse, a wayward woman with a plan.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: THE STRANGE DEATH OF ADOLF HITLER [dir. James P. Hogan]

0h 29m 59s: SON OF DRACULA [dir. Robert Siodmak]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal Story by Clive Hirschhorn

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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