Latest movie seen? -- Part 2

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Latest movie seen? -- Part 2

1LolaWalser
Bewerkt: jan 10, 2022, 12:05 pm

First silent I saw this year was E. A. Dupont's Piccadilly. I had seen it years ago on big screen and, like for Dupont's Varieté, that's preferable when possible because the sense of great space is important for many crucial sequences--the throngs around the Piccadilly and in the Limehouse, and the dancing in the upscale restaurant.

Anna May Wong is fantastic as Shosho, the Chinese girl who goes from dishwasher to star:

2alaudacorax
jan 13, 2022, 6:21 am

>1 LolaWalser:

Reading up on Anna May Wong last night. It's heartbreaking that someone should have had such a frustrating professional life. It's completely understandable that she took to drinking too much. Yet what an achievement that she did what she did with the odds so stacked against her.

3alaudacorax
jan 13, 2022, 6:46 am

Rewatched King Kong (1933) last night, probably first time for a year or two.

It's crude and archaic, and probably anachronistic in these woke times; but I still regard it as one of my all-time favourites.

The thing is, I can't watch it without getting some sense (possibly false, but so what?) of the wonder those first audiences must have had on seeing it. It is difficult to explain it, but it is magic before one's eyes and I just don't get that from even the best of modern CGI. Perhaps the latter and myself are both products of a more cynical age and the two of us together are one too many. Does that make any kind of sense?

I even love the theatre stage look of some of the outdoor scenes (clearly set up in a studio by people who had come up through the stage). Perhaps it's something like literature, making the viewer/reader do some of the work whereas the Peter Jackson version, for example, spoonfeeds the viewer (stone me, that's seventeen years old already)?

4alaudacorax
jan 13, 2022, 7:04 am

>3 alaudacorax: - ... woke ...

A few days ago I rewatched Top Hat (1935) for the second time in just a couple of months—great fun—and it's occurred to me that it's a quite similar film in some ways.

I mean that they were pure escapism and you didn't have to feel worthy for watching them; life was crap and scary but you could pay down your few cents or pennies and escape into pure fantasy, if only for ninety minutes or so. 'Dream factory' indeed. And this was in days when you didn't have videos or round-the-clock telly. Then you had a bloody war to fix the worst of the economy and I suspect films never meant so much to people again.

5alaudacorax
jan 13, 2022, 7:05 am

>4 alaudacorax:

Sorry, feeling oddly ruminative this morning. Probably nothing at all new in >4 alaudacorax:.

6housefulofpaper
jan 13, 2022, 10:29 am

>5 alaudacorax:

All the same it's worth being reminded that the things from the past that can make us nostalgic for it were often fictions or short-lived events (a film, a rock festival) that were understood at the time to temporarily take people out of a humdrum (or worse) life.

7LolaWalser
Bewerkt: jan 13, 2022, 5:36 pm

>6 housefulofpaper:, >4 alaudacorax:

I feel like little has changed about that. Surely it's the most widespread and beloved form of escapism?

>3 alaudacorax:

Love the old King Kong. I think the effects were great.

>2 alaudacorax:

She must have been at least as determined and tenacious as Shosho to get to be a lead at that time. I don't know about the rules in Britain, but in the US there was this Chinese Exclusion Act that created all sorts of problems for Asians, until after the WWII.

I hope this isn't too much of a cheat, British b&w films of the fifties often feel as if belonging to some "older" era... even when dealing with contemporary problems. I saw The Blue Lamp, 1950, directed by Basil Dearden and featuring an impossibly young and skinny Dirk Bogarde as the baddie, a young thug who stupidly kills a policeman (Jack Warner, who would later on play identically named Sergeant Dixon for several decades).

And then a Frank Launder/Sidney Gilliat collaboration starring Alastair Sim as a career assassin with a fondness for bombs, The Green Man, 1956--not as good as their Green for danger but a delight nevertheless. Terry-Thomas makes an appearance. There's a sequence in a hotel where Sim entertains and is entertained by a trio of female musicians, that is worth as much as the whole story.



Oh that cellist! Lol, from the site where I filched the pic: "The glorious piano trio make amorous eyes at the gentlemanly knave Hawkins."

8Maura49
jan 14, 2022, 4:55 am

>7 LolaWalser: Ah, 'The Green Man' featuring that peerless comic actor Alistair Sim, one of those national treasures of British cinema. It is also worth looking at 'Laughter in Paradise'(1951) in which several people hope to inherit a fortune conditional on their carrying out some very odd tasks. Sim's efforts involve him getting into trouble in an upmarket shop- to say more would spoil a sequence of supreme comedy.

9alaudacorax
jan 14, 2022, 6:26 am

>7 LolaWalser: - Surely it's the most widespread and beloved form of escapism?

Ah, but imagine when sound cinema was still fairly new, cutting edge technology, and you were rationed to once or twice a week and, otherwise, radio or books. I'm old enough to remember having our first telly, but not really old enough to remember the thrill of going to 'the pictures' in pre-telly days. That must have been something; but doing the same thing back in the Great Depression, when sound was still cutting edge technology, and seeing stuff like King Kong and Top Hat on huge screens must have been something else again ... magic and wonder.

Perhaps I've got it all wrong, and audiences were quite blasé from growing up on Cecil B De Mille and that Griffiths chap with the initials ...

10Maura49
jan 14, 2022, 7:23 am

>9 alaudacorax: I'm old enough to remember the glamour of cinemas before multiplexes. I went to live in London in 1969 and got there just in time to enjoy the super cinemas with huge auditoriums, sweeping curtains and deep pile carpets. I saw Gone with the Wind on one of its numerous re-issues at the Odeon, Marble Arch and found the experience quite enthralling. Today the racial issues would disturb me I am sure but at a very young age it was the romance that swept me up.
Now i imagine what it must have been like to be at such cinemas in the 1920's when films were still a novelty and the aptly named picture palaces enhanced the amazing sights on the screen.

11EmmaStapley
jan 14, 2022, 7:25 am

Deze gebruiker is verwijderd als spam.

12robertajl
jan 14, 2022, 1:45 pm

I spent a happy weekend rewatching Louis Feuillade's Les Vampires, which was made in 1915-16. I have the Criterion edition, with English intertitles. I don't know if there's a version available with French intertitles. If there is, perhaps they make the story line a bit more coherent, but I kind of doubt it. Each episode is a plot fomented by Les Vampires that's usually foiled by the good guys. Despite the sometimes confusing action, it's really great fun.

I read that Edward Gorey was fond of Feuillade, and of this series in particular. Of course, almost all of Gorey's women resemble Irma Vep, the villainess of the film. He also seemed to love the decor, with its potted palms, ferns and ornate wallpaper. I wonder if you could look at some of his interiors and think, "Why, that wallpaper pattern was in Episode 6 of Les Vampires!"

13robertajl
jan 14, 2022, 2:50 pm

>8 Maura49: Alistair Sim is a great favorite of mine. His portrayal as Scrooge in the 1952 version of A Christmas Carol is well know but I think The Belles of St. Trinian's made in 1954, where he plays the schoolmistress Millicent Fritton, is also a great showcase for him. That was my introduction to him, and I've since tried to see every film he made.

14robertajl
jan 14, 2022, 2:55 pm

>3 alaudacorax: It's so hard for us to realize how powerful films were to earlier audiences. Someone I knew who was a child in 1931 said that he watched a large part of Dracula from under the seat. You could say that it would frighten most children, but, as he remembers it, the adults were terrified, too. He says they applauded when Dracula was killed.

15LolaWalser
jan 14, 2022, 6:02 pm

Me three on the Alastair Sim wagon! I've been waiting to come across a good edition of London Belongs To Me since forever (that's the one where Sim plays a character who inspired Alec Guinness' own performance in The Ladykillers--one might say he channeled Sim there).

>12 robertajl:

Ha, absolutely! Oh my, just remembered--I finally saw Olivier Assayas' Irma Vep recently, but I must say it was a letdown, speaking as someone who expected much more from the Feuillade/Les Vampires link. Maggie Cheung is great, it's just that the whole film is a limp navel-gazing exercise with no story.

>10 Maura49:, >9 alaudacorax:

I miss real cinemas. I was lucky enough to be able to go to the movies in some sumptuous places in my teens and twenties at least, and really nothing compares to that. It breaks my heart that such simple, affordable public options for "heightened experiences" have been lost.

16Maura49
jan 15, 2022, 4:33 am

>15 LolaWalser: following my reminiscences of cinema I felt that I should mention a great one still in business. It is the Tuchinski in Amsterdam -only sorry I can't provide a picture. Although multi-screen these days it has all of its original art deco features including low lighting, gorgeous patterned carpets, a glorious mishmash of ornaments from different parts of the world and oodles of atmosphere. Here is a link that will tell you more. I hope it works; I am not great with IT.
http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/2314

17alaudacorax
jan 15, 2022, 6:20 am

>16 Maura49:

Wow! A 'picture palace' indeed. Particularly loved the photo in the 'Laurel and Hardy' section of the series with the moustachioed old chap sitting at bottom right in his fez.

18alaudacorax
jan 15, 2022, 6:42 am

>15 LolaWalser: - ... one might say he channeled Sim there).

So odd; I was always quite aware of Guiness channeling Sim there; but, reading up on London Belongs to Me, I'm sure I've never come across it. I must look out for that one. Having said that, I was always a fan of Alastair Sim but really not of Richard Attenborough, so that might explain it.

19alaudacorax
jan 15, 2022, 7:00 am

>18 alaudacorax:

... and I can't find a decent copy of it without actually buying the DVD. Hmm ...

20defaults
Bewerkt: jan 22, 2022, 12:26 pm

>1 LolaWalser: I've yet to see Piccadilly but I was several kinds of smitten when I got to see Shanghai Express in November. The staging, the cinematography, the wonderfully casual multilinguality, but above all Anna May Wong who practically walked away with the film.

21thorold
jan 22, 2022, 12:57 pm

I feel I ought to post something here, but Mubi has been spoiling me lately with endless Eric Rohmer, Jacques Tati (almost counts as silent, perhaps?) and Kieslowski. Hard to get back to early cinema with all that distraction. (Plus my recent tendency to be knee-deep in glue and book-cloth most evenings…)

22LolaWalser
jan 24, 2022, 2:42 pm

>21 thorold:

Synchronicity again--I watched Trafic two nights ago... I have "Tati's shorts" from the Criterion box left to peruse.

>20 defaults:

I sort of remember that; now I want to watch it again. I remember her fondly also in The daughter of the dragon, although that's the type of role she despised. Truly a tragedy that she was thwarted in making the sort of movies she wanted.

>18 alaudacorax:

Attenborough's very young in it. In any case, Sim and Joyce Carey run away with the picture. Too bad there's only the blurry copies left on YT, I lucked out years ago with a better version but as you know, those aren't up for long...

>16 Maura49:

Gorgeous!

23LolaWalser
jan 24, 2022, 2:58 pm

I had forgotten to mention Brass Monkey, 1948, a trifle with quite a cast--Carole Landis, Herbert Lom, Ernest Thesiger, Terry-Thomas, Edward Underdown and probably lots of British once-household names I'm not familiar with. It was particularly interesting as I had seen the Carry On films last year, with their emphasis on actors who crossed from radio to film (or moved between), and this featured a lengthy scene in a radio studio together with live audience and a large orchestra. Terry-Thomas performed under his own name, as did some other vaudeville artists.

These "entertainments of the days past" fascinate me...

24housefulofpaper
jan 25, 2022, 7:36 pm

>23 LolaWalser:
This sounds a little like Death at Broadcasting House (1934). It stars Val Gielgud (Sir John's brother, and an important figure in BBC radio, as well as co-author of the mystery novel the film is based on). The radio personalities who appear as themselves were all unknown to me though, apart from singer Elizabeth Welch.

25LolaWalser
feb 18, 2022, 4:30 pm

Just a quick heads-up that Filmarchiv Austria has again put up FREE "Café Elektric" with Marlene Dietrich, at this link:

https://www.filmarchiv.at/kanal/faszination-verbrechen-2/

I wrote about it previously here (with screencaps):

https://www.librarything.com/topic/320697#7389111

26thorold
mrt 6, 2022, 4:49 pm

Mubi has a few films by Austrian experimental film-maker Peter Tscherkassy at the moment: I’ve just been watching one called Train tracks (2021) — because there were trains, obviously.
Not really my kind of thing, more like video art than cinema, really, but he used a lot of interesting-looking clips of trains from early films, as well as some more recent stuff (I thought I spotted bits of La bête humaine) and a modern Austrian train coming out of a tunnel.

27LolaWalser
mrt 8, 2022, 5:01 pm

My latest silent was the stunning three-part serial Miss Mend, 1926, restored by Flicker Alley (available on Kanopy). Boris Barnet, whom I knew as a (great) director, here also co-stars. Hectic action takes place in the US and then Leningrad.

Interesting review from The New York Times (2009, so should be available to all):

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/movies/homevideo/13dvds.html

... Drawn more to lighter subjects, Barnet survived Stalin’s crackdowns by flying under the radar, and was able to create two genuine masterpieces in the ’30s, “Outskirts” (1933, available on an Image DVD with his silent comedy “The Girl With the Hatbox”) and the transcendently beautiful “By the Bluest of Seas” (1936, unavailable in the United States although a budget disc is out in France). He continued to work regularly (though seldom at the height of his talent) through the early ’60s, when he put an end to decades of disappointment by hanging himself in a hotel room.

For both men “Miss Mend” represented a moment of youthful exuberance and creative freedom that they would never experience again. Its characters may be American, but the joy that shines through it is that of the infant Soviet state, still toddling through its Utopian period when everything was new, and a world was waiting to be made. It was a moment that couldn’t and didn’t last long; thanks to “Miss Mend” we can still share it.


I saw “By the Bluest of Seas” in a Barnet retrospective here and it's currently available on Kanopy (for us Canadians anyway).

28LolaWalser
mrt 11, 2022, 9:11 pm

Another long-time wish fulfilled -- I have now seen the restored Algol (1920), although it doesn't seem to be available commercially yet. It's like a strange cross of Metropolis and Caligari. The main theme would be energy (still a super-modern concern), industrialisation, globalisation, and corporatism... fodder for a left-wing criticism but hardly in evidence here, where the mystical/occultist/science-fiction side confuses the issue.

Algol is both a planet and the name of an alien played by John Gottowt. Gottowt was the Devil in Paul Wegener's 1913 The Student of Prague, and here plays a similarly diabolical role, although it's never clear why or how what he does is evil. He teaches a miner, Robert Herne (played by Emil Jannings), how to generate power using the radiation from Algol, thus bringing an end to the coal industry. Herne becomes "the master" of the whole planet by virtue of controlling the energy source. The one neighbouring country that still clings to the old ways of fossil fuel burning and ploughing eventually falls to Herne's might as well. But as Herne ages, he refuses to share the secret with his unworthy son (there's a purple-tinted sequence where this heavily made-up layabout is entertained by a male dancer in drag) and yet neither can he be persuaded to give the secret to all of humanity. The son finally loses patience and forces his hand, so the old Herne destroys everything.

Jannings (l) and Gottowt (r) as the miner Herne and the alien Algol, discussing alternative energy sources:



Perhaps you recall that one curiosity of the film was the presence of the dancer Sebastian Droste, Anita Berber's partner. He does a number during the son's celebration of the corporate takeover. It's rather short but it's easy to see why people thought Berber and Droste telegraphed "decadence":

 

29LolaWalser
aug 22, 2022, 5:42 pm

Been a while, so I won't be listing the dozens I've seen since last, but have to mention the sheer joy that was Maurice Tourneur's 1941 adaptation of Volpone, with HARRY BAUR (the greatest actor that ever actored!, she hyperventilated), Louis Jouvet and Charles Dullin. Someone posted the 4K restoration on YT...

Dullin (L), Baur (R)



30alaudacorax
Bewerkt: sep 4, 2022, 7:21 am

Do you ever see a film that you quite enjoy but don't quite know what to make of. Watched Michael Powell's The Phantom Light (1935) last night. It was basically a riff on the familiar story of the lighthouse where keepers mysteriously disappear and others go mad. But whether it was a thriller or comedy or adventure story I struggle to say. Looking at the poster on IMDb is interesting. Top billing is shared by Binnie Hale as the Mayfair-accented plucky heroine and Gordon Harker as the older, working-class, new lighthouse keeper. Ian Hunter as the clean-cut, derring-do, typical English hero and possible love-interest of said heroine doesn't actually make it onto the poster. In fact, it was Gordon Harker's film rather more than anyone else's, I think. Hunter was stereotypical as heroic/romantic lead and Binnie Hale was plucky in places but very much in the cute and fluffy bracket (well, it was '35), but most of the heavy lifting was done by Harker. He was funny but, in places, heroic too and I felt the film rather challenged social expectations for the genre. Anyway, it was good fun.

Okay, back to Binnie Hale. I've been laughing at myself for how I arrived at the film and just busting to bore someone with it:

  1. I've watched Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy a couple of times lately—one of the better contemporary films I've seen lately, hence watching it twice.
  2. Which got me thinking of John le Carre's books; which of course, were based on or inspired by the Philby, Burgess and Mclean business.
  3. Which got me remembering An Englishman Abroad (1983) which was based on the actress Coral Brown's chance meeting in Moscow with Guy Burgess.
  4. I only remember bits of An Englishman Abroad but one thing that really tickled my fancy and has stuck in my mind ever since was Burgess's favourite record, which he irritated Ms Browne by insisting on playing over and over, Jack Buchanan and Binnie Hale's Who?
  5. I was vaguely aware of Jack Buchanan as a big star back in the day, but had never heard of Binnie Hale. I was intrigued to find that she'd been a big star herself back in the '20s and '30s (in the UK), so I've been curious about her. My parents would no doubt have been well aware of her in their younger days, had they still been around to ask.
  6. So, thirty-nine years after seeing An Englishman Abroad, it finally occurred to me to look up Binnie Hale on IMDb, see if she was on screen anywhere.
  7. ... and hence The Phantom Light!

See? I do get round to things in time ...

Edited to add: I've just discovered that Coral Browne herself co-starred on stage with Jack Buchanan several times. Wonder what kind of impression he made if she was irritated by the record?

31housefulofpaper
sep 4, 2022, 1:48 pm

>30 alaudacorax:

I've just discovered that Coral Browne herself co-starred on stage with Jack Buchanan several times. Wonder what kind of impression he made if she was irritated by the record?
Ha! I've just had a look at Jack Buchanan's Wikipedia page.

32LolaWalser
sep 4, 2022, 2:00 pm

I haven't seen The Phantom Light, but I did catch An Englishman abroad ages ago on YT and have been unsuccessfully tracking it ever since.

Speaking of Coral Browne... Vincent Price's third (and last) wife, who would've seen that coming?

33alaudacorax
Bewerkt: jan 25, 2023, 8:49 am

>32 LolaWalser:

An Englishman Abroad is on the Alan Bennett at the BBC box set.

Edited because I somehow left that 'An Englishman Abroad' link leading to a documentary on David Beckham. Sod that ...

34alaudacorax
sep 4, 2022, 6:36 pm

>31 housefulofpaper:

Ah. Interesting. I hadn't spotted that.

35LolaWalser
sep 4, 2022, 8:13 pm

>33 alaudacorax:

And... sooold! Thanks so much. I don't know anything about the rest of the box and never read Bennett but An Englishman abroad is more than worth the price.

36LolaWalser
mrt 18, 2023, 4:40 am

Haven't been watching much of anything since the year's start; mostly some serial TV and comfort-reviewing of Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Homes movies. But I did see recently, for the first time, The Bill of divorcement (1932), with John Barrymore and Katharine Hepburn. George Cukor directed.

I'm a Barrymore groupie but this one isn't something I'd care to revisit much... a rather mawkish melodrama about a man who spent the last twenty years in a mental institution and got cured just in time to witness his ex-wife's wedding. Hepburn plays the daughter whose own wedding is brought into question when she suspects she'd inherited the illness. Lots of tears and hand-wringing all around.

Enjoyed more some noirs, Sudden fear (1952), which offers the priceless sequence of Jack Palance trying to mow down Joan Crawford in a chase across San Francisco (Gloria Grahame plays his girlfriend), and The Devil thumbs a ride (1947), in which a drunk salaryman makes the mistake of picking up a shadowy hitchhiker, and compounds it with other mistakes until there's a dead girl in the water.

And a moderately enthusiastic nod for Gale Sondegaard and Rondo Hatton in 1946's Spider Woman strikes back, the unflattering end to Universal's legendary horror production.

37LolaWalser
jul 25, 2023, 2:11 pm

Goodness, how could it have been so long? Apparently I imagine posting more than I post!

Last silent seen was The Trap from 1922, featuring Lon Chaney for the first time in a leading role. He plays Gaspard, a poor French Canadian trapper in love with a girl who marries the rich guy. Gaspard swears revenge and seems to be getting it, as the rich guy falls on bad times, the wife dies, and finally Gaspard manipulates events that land the ex-rich guy in prison. The little boy ends in Gaspard's care although he has every intention to slowly kill the child. Instead, he grows to love the boy.

Unusually for Chaney, his character is thus overall positive and the film ends on a happy note.

The melodrama is less interesting than Chaney's "dark" movies but I was also drawn to get it for the appearance of Dagmar Godowska (or Godowsky), daughter of the virtuoso pianist and composer Leopold Godowsky. Many years ago it was reading Dagmar's vivacious, endearingly self-aggrandizing memoirs that set me off on an important relationship so when I saw her name I just couldn't resist. She mugs for the camera adequately, looking no different than any dozen silent-era actresses and sufficiently made-up that it is hard to tell whether she really was a "legendary" beauty or not.

38LolaWalser
Bewerkt: sep 30, 2023, 8:48 pm

I've seen the restored version of White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929, Fanck and Pabst) and, as unpleasant as the associations that Leni Riefenstahl brings are, there's no denying the power and sheer vitality of this picture.

I loved watching British Film Institute's edition of the 1931 first German version of Emil and the Detectives, which also includes the British shot-by-shot remake from 1935. The accompanying notes mention an interesting contrast in the reception of the two all-but-identical movies, relating to the fact that there is something ineffably "berlinisch" about the original that just didn't translate in the English'd version... and I can sort of see it, the whole way children interacted (and interact) in the streets of European cities, less burdened by class (most noticeable in the absence of a separate "posh" language), doesn't seem to have had a counterpart in London. As the notes have it, children that would have been running around in the streets in London would be low class rabble, "Artful Dodger" type, incipient delinquents, whereas the German kids belong to all the strata and play in the street as an extension of their homes, not to mention the bourgeois code of honour they openly follow.

Both casts are excellent, though, and there is a huge interest in the captured scenery especially of Berlin, but also of the village in Kent that in the original is a small town.

39thorold
feb 15, 9:32 am

Slightly off topic, but this passage from Jonathan Coe’s What a carve up seems apt:

Over the last few years I'd accumulated a pile of unwatched videos, and it had been my hope that this time I'd find the stamina to get through at least one of them.
But it seemed that optimism had got the better of me again. I watched the first half of Cocteau's Orphée, the first thirty minutes of Ray's Pather Panchali, the first ten minutes of Mizoguchi's Ugetsu Monogatari, the opening credits of Tarkovsky's Solaris and the trailers at the beginning of Wenders' The American Friend. After that I gave up, and sat in front of a silent screen, steadily making my way down a bottle of supermarket wine.

40LolaWalser
feb 15, 8:54 pm

the opening credits of Tarkovsky's Solaris

lol

Tarkovsky would approve of that pace.

My latest-seen is a 1937 shocker with felicitously named Tod Slaughter, king of Victorian murder melodramas: The Ticket of Leave Man . (Warning: presence of antisemitic stereotype character.) I knew the name, and recently noticed a box set of Slaughter's movies from Indicator, so this satisfied a curiosity. Overall, quite a fun watch.

41alaudacorax
mrt 5, 7:22 am

Watched Salomé (1922) last night.

Forgive me if I've mentioned this one previously—searching doesn't show anything but I feel I've seen it before, especially Mitchell Lewis's performance as Herod. Anyway, I found it quite fun, though that sounds vaguely disrespectful, given the subject matter.

Talking of Mitchell Lewis, I've never seen anything so exaggeratedly lecherous; he looked at Salomé like some sort of totally debauched spaniel and contorted his mouth in ways that would make the masks of comedy and tragedy look stoic. He managed to convey drooling without actually doing so. I could hardly take my eyes off him when he was in shot.

It's difficult to find the words for Alla Nazimova as Salomé. Her body language was so mannered and exaggerated, but it worked. I think I subconsciously came to regard her whole performance as a dance. At least, I think that is probably the best way to look at it. Forget about 'Salomé's dance': that was boring and it was much more fun watching her main performance. She is also down on IMDb as the producer and one of the writers and one of the directors (and I'm getting a real sense of déjà vu writing that ...)

Then there was a really weird contrast between those two and Rose Dione's performance as Salomé's mother. Her performance wouldn't have been out of place in a film made decades later. Don't really know what to think of her. Could one regard her as a foil to the other two? I'm not sure that was meant. She seemed to be coming from a quite different tradition.

There is a lot of other stuff I could mention. I need to watch this one again ... and read the text of Wilde's play ...

42robertajl
mrt 5, 4:49 pm

This may be a bit off topic, but my lovely neighborhood theater had a noir film festival and on the merch table was a book called Scoundrels & Spitballers by Philippe Garnier. It's a history of Hollywood writers in the early 30s, but it's not about the hotshots. It's about the substrata beneath them, people like Achmed Abdullah and Marguerite Roberts, and the world they lived in, the watering holes, the bookstores, the restaurants, even the jailhouses. It's a lot of fun. I think it's only available from the publisher, Black Pool Productions (Blackpoolproductions.com/home.html).

43alaudacorax
mrt 6, 5:09 am

>42 robertajl:

Strange it should have such a restricted sale considering the enthusiastic reviews to be found online. It sounds really tempting and I'm sure it would sell a lot better if it was easier and cheaper to get hold of. It would cost me $50/£39-odd total to ship one to the UK. Bit steep for a softcover.

44LolaWalser
mrt 6, 3:41 pm

>41 alaudacorax:

Sounds good. I have yet to see something with Nazimova.

>42 robertajl:

Those were the times...