About six months ago I presented a film series which I called Genre Fluid . Sometimes "noir" comes from the Kitchen Sink. I argued at the time that we can very easily fall into a trap when trying to label things. Does it really matter whether a film fits the dictionary definition of a "Western" or a "Rom-Com" (said I, at the time) and anyway who gets to decide what those definitions are in the first place? If a film is of merit (said I, at the time, said I) it should stand on its own. Why should we waste time and energy trying to stuff it into a box marked Sci-Fi or Chick-Flick ; especially if it doesn't fit exactly? Are we so obsessed with with putting labels on everything that we can't enjoy something for what it is unless we can establish what it isn't ? In a nutshell: Not everything is about pronouns . All of this is what I said six months ago. I then of course proceeded to devote a whole new series of films to exploring (and perhaps... de...
In many ways, Singin' in the Rain and The Band Wagon are companion films. Released just one year apart, both films were produced by MGM's highly successful "Musical" department, run by Arthur Freed. Both films have witty, razor-sharp scripts by the writing team of Betty Comden & Adolph Green. Both films were explicitly built around an existing song catalogue: the songs of Arthur Freed & Nacio Herb Brown for Singin' in the Rain ; the songs of Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz for The Band Wagon . Both films were vehicles for MGM's biggest musical stars (Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, respectively) and both films are thinly-disguised fables about the trials and tribulations of producing musicals in real life. While Singin' in the Rain dealt with Hollywood's extremely bumpy transition from silent to sound, The Band Wagon tells the story of Tony Hunter, a veteran song-and-dance movie star whose career has hit something of a speed bump. When his ol...
Welcome back, everyone! We are back for a few more weeks of film nights after our brief recess. I am happy to announce that we are also back upstairs in the Main Hall (or "Screen One" as I like to call it) now that the essential repairs have been completed. A great big thank you to everyone for your patience and understanding while we showed films in our "temporary accommodations" downstairs in the basement ("Screen Two"!). I plan to show three more films in December before we break for the holiday season, and we will then resume on the 12th of January with a brand-new film series (more about that in due course, so stay tuned!). For our first December screening (on Thursday, the 1st of December) I want to draw a line under our recently concluded series of Ordinary Ladies with a film that is, effectively, the antithesis of Ordinary Ladies. The Stepford Wives (1975) is based on Ira Levin's 1972 novel, and plays out like Betty Friedan's darkest in...
Your typical "heist" movie or "crime caper" tends to have typical stock female characters: The Temptress. The Shady Lady. The Hussy... …who of course is No Better Than She Oughta Be. These are the Bad Girls; the Femme Fatales (Femmes Fatale?) who are there to seduce the men, and Lead Them Down The Wrong Path. It's practically a requirement of the genre; for every man (or group of men) planning a heist or any other criminal endeavour, there will be a woman on hand to destabilise things, lead them away from the straight and narrow, and just generally Cause Problems. When everything inevitably goes wrong at the end (remember, crime must always be punished) it's usually the Vixen's fault. Everyone (by which I mean "men") would have been much better off if they had just avoided her in the first place. Allow me to introduce Mrs. Wilberforce. In The Ladykillers , Alec Guinness leads a group of rogues and vagabonds in a daring Armoured Car Robbe...
If you have been following the films that I have shown thus far in this season of noir , you will probably have noticed that a few faces tend to turn up again and again. Claire Trevor was a Femme Fatale in multiple films... …and Joan Bennett likewise has lent her talents to many a noir (with more to come before Easter!). But it's not just the top-billed actors who get repeat engagements. Hollywood of the 1930s and 40s often felt more like a repertory company, and it's not unusual to see a lot of familiar faces in various supporting roles. Elisha Cook Jr. has turned up in quite a few of these films, usually playing a nebbish on the fringes of respectable society. Esther Howard's cantankerous old lady has turned up in three of the films we have seen thus far this season... as I'm sure everyone has noticed! But there is one actor we have (astonishingly) yet to encounter in any of the films I have shown thus far. I say "astonishingly" because he was, for a while...
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