The Illusion of Depth

 Some of you will probably recall that the inaugural film in our current series (Ordinary Ladies) was The Reckless Moment , a 1949 drama directed by Max Ophuls in which Joan Bennett plays a housewife who thinks (incorrectly) that her daughter has just murdered her deadbeat boyfriend (The daughter's boyfriend, that is; not Joan Bennett's boyfriend. Damn those misplaced modifiers!). In an effort to protect her daughter, she disposes of the body and hides any evidence of the death; and that's when the trouble really starts. As I say, that was the film that we showed back in June (if you would like to refresh your memory, please click here ). Our next film (on the 28th of July) is a remake of that film, released in 2001 and starring Tilda Swinton in the Joan Bennett role. The Deep End marks the first time I will be showing a film and its remake in the same series, but in this instance I feel that the two films compliment each other beautifully. (Also, if you want to be hyper-p...

Last week, I promised everyone a double-bill of "Blonde Bombshells", and true to my word, here is Bombshell #2. On the surface, Diana Dors might seem to be an odd choice for a series about "Ordinary Ladies". Like many bombshells of the era, her public image was very carefully constructed: the platinum blonde hair; the brutal corset; the weaponised underwear - all of which added up to a "performance" of womanhood that is only remotely plausible if you define "woman" as "Barbie Doll". It's no coincidence that Diana Dors was often described as "The English Marilyn". Like Marilyn Monroe, there was nothing natural or spontaneous about her appearance. Hours of work went into the presentation of her persona, and the end result was "woman" as "object". She was a thing , on display the visual pleasure of others, like so many sex objects before and since. All of which is what makes Yield to the Night so surprisi...

 When looking at iconic women in Hollywood, 1950 stands out as a year like no other. At the Academy Awards that year, there was much speculation about who was going to win those coveted little statues, and the Academy Committee was faced with an unenviable choice.  Because this was the year of All About Eve : a film that earned Oscar nominations for four of its female cast members (and also one male cast member, but that's not important right now). Bette Davis and Anne Baxter were both nominated for Best Actress, while Thelma Ritter and Celeste Holm were up for Best Supporting Actress. Since there could only be one winner in each category, it was inevitable that someone was going to be disappointed. But wait; there's more. 1950 was also the year of Sunset Boulevard, and Gloria Swanson was (quite correctly) nominated in the Best Actress category for her astonishing performance as Norma Desmond, the aging silent film actress who refuses to accept the extent to which the film in...

 I had originally planned for the next two films in our series to be a "Blonde Bombshell" double-bill (after all, blonde bombshells can be Ordinary Ladies too).  That will have to wait, however, because next week's film is going to be a last-minute addition to the line-up, and is included because Margaret Keane died this past Sunday at the age of 94. Anyone who has had any contact with mid-Century American popular culture will inevitably have encountered Keane's shockingly sentimental, unashamedly cloying paintings.  All those heart-rending waifs with their enormous eyes became emblematic of kitsch style (and weaponised consumerism) of the 60s and 70s; but anyone living through that period would have known the artist as Walter Keane, not Margaret. The frankly bizarre (and vaguely pathological) story of Margaret and her husband, who took credit for her paintings and presented them to the world as his own work, became the subject for Tim Burton's 2014 film Big Eyes ...