Film_Fatale

*Greed*

To celebrate Ernst Lubitsch's birthday on _Wednesday, Jan. 28_, TCM will be showing THREE Lubitsch films: *That Uncertain Feeling* (1941) A happily married woman sees a psychoanalyst and develops doubts about her husband. Cast: Merle Oberon, Melvyn Douglas, Burgess Meredith, Alan Mowbray Dir: Ernst Lubitsch BW-84 mins, TV-G *The Shop Around The Corner* (1940) Feuding co-workers don't realize they're secret romantic pen pals. Cast: Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut Dir: Ernst Lubitsch BW-99 mins, TV-G *The Merry Widow* (1934) A prince from a small kingdom courts a wealthy widow to keep her money in the country. Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Edward Everett Horton, Una Merkel Dir: Ernst Lubitsch BW-99 mins, TV-PG

> {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote} > I will keep an eye open for it, but won't let my hopes get too high.... In case you're ever interested, I started an *Oh, Rosalinda..!!* thread in the Musicals forum: http://forums.tcm.com/jive/tcm/thread.jspa?threadID=133705

Great GG photo, molo! Don't be shy about posting more. Hope your mom is doing well and continues recovering. It might not be too early to start thinking of a really special present for Mother's Day this year. Is anyone here a Troy Donahue fan? This week's DVD column in the New York Times is dedicated to the WHV Romance collection, which apparently features only movies with Donahue in them: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/movies/homevideo/27dvds.html January 27, 2009 Critic?s Choice *New DVDs: Romance Classics* By DAVE KEHR _WARNER BROTHERS ROMANCE CLASSICS_ This is a curiously bland title for a fascinating boxed set of four films that functions at once as a tribute to a forgotten star, a treatise on an overlooked director and a study of American sexual mores on the threshold of change. The four films in the collection ? ?Parrish? (1961), ?Susan Slade? (1961), ?Rome Adventure? (1962) and ?Palm Springs Weekend? (1963) ? all feature Troy Donahue, a sandy-haired heartthrob whom most audiences remember only indistinctly today. (He?s the one who?s not Tab Hunter.) But for a few years, between the release of the hugely successful ?Summer Place? in 1959 and the disastrous ?My Blood Runs Cold? in 1965, Donahue?s broad-shouldered, self-serious presence dominated the fan magazines and the dreams of countless American teenage girls. If Elvis had a rival, it was in the unlikely form of this somber, slow-moving young man, whose blond forelock and clear blue eyes represented the nice-boy alternative to Presley?s aggressive sexuality. ?A Summer Place,? like three of the four films in this set, was directed by Delmer Daves, a Hollywood veteran who had already established a reputation for morally complex war films (the excellent ?Pride of the Marines,? 1945) and socially progressive westerns. (His 1950 ?Broken Arrow? helped to introduce the issue of racism in postwar American movies, in what was widely if inaccurately regarded as the first ?pro-Indian? film.) The only clues in Daves?s filmography to his latent talent as a melodramatist lie among his credits as a screenwriter: four scripts for Frank Borzage, including the outstanding ?Stranded? (1935), as well as a contribution to Leo McCarey?s sublime ?Love Affair? (1939), which McCarey himself remade as ?An Affair to Remember? in 1957. The success of ?A Summer Place? shifted Daves?s career from the Howard Hawks-John Ford realm of the masculine action movie to the Douglas Sirk-Vincente Minnelli axis of the so-called ?women?s picture? ? a transformation with few parallels in film history. (Daves?s son, Michael Daves, has said that the shift was precipitated partly by health problems: his father had a heart attack in 1958 and, on his doctors? advice, decided to limit himself to less strenuous, studio-based projects.) The virtues of Daves?s late romances are essentially the same as those of his adventure films: characters composed with the utmost integrity and respect; a gift for creating a detailed and convincing social background; and a strong, clear narrative style that allowed him to manage a large cast of characters and several simultaneous levels of dramatic events. In their influential book ?50 Ans de Cin?ma Am?ricain? (available only in French) Bertrand Tavernier and Jean-Pierre Coursodon, perhaps Daves?s most passionate critical supporters, described his commitment to his increasingly soap-operatic subjects as ?suicidally conscientious.? And Daves certainly does take risks by treating material like ?Susan Slade? seriously, where Douglas Sirk would have signaled his superiority to the material with his crafty distancing devices. There is no apparent distancing in ?A Summer Place,? a full-throttle melodrama that compares and contrasts two love affairs: an innocent first romance played out between young people (Sandra Dee and Donahue) and a guilty, adulterous affair between the girl?s father (Richard Egan) and the boy?s mother (Dorothy McGuire). ?Broken Arrow? may have brought down some barriers, but ?A Summer Place? (which Warner released on DVD in 2007) helped to redefine the way sex was portrayed in American movies. Daves not only suggested actual physical relations between the lovers, but also went to the scandalous length of condemning the sexual hypocrisy of the older generation while suggesting that teenage sex was natural and healthy (if still likely to lead to consequences). More so than Mark Robson?s lurid and moralistic ?Peyton Place? (1957), Daves?s film opened the way to ?adult? themes in Hollywood films, just as the sexual revolution was breaking in popular novels and magazines. The formula was too effective not to be repeated, and Daves elaborated the basic themes over three more films. Connie Stevens stepped in for Dee in the ambitious ?Parrish,? set against the unusual and vividly rendered background of tobacco farming in Connecticut, and joined Donahue again for the least satisfying film in the series, the contrived and uneven ?Susan Slade.? Daves ended his Donahue period with perhaps the best film of the bunch, ?Rome Adventure,? with Suzanne Pleshette (in her first leading role) as a New England schoolteacher who travels to Europe in search of experience ? and finds it with Donohue, as an earnest architecture student. To an America that needed to believe that ?nice girls don?t,? Daves?s melodramas responded, ?Nice girls do? ? or did at least sometimes, when the appropriate distinctions had been made between lust and love, predatory older males and sincere young men, casual encounters and lifetime commitments. The sobriety and sensitivity of Daves?s work is underlined by the fourth film in the Warner set, ?Palm Springs Weekend,? a slapstick sex farce broadly directed by the old comedy hand Norman Taurog, taking a break from his Elvis vehicles (?Girls! Girls! Girls!,? etc.). Amid the juvenile high jinks of ?Palm Springs Weekend,? Donahue already looks dissipated and disaffected, and, indeed, he was sliding into an alcoholic depression. His teenage fans were moving on (and about to discover four new dreamboats from Liverpool), and he failed to establish a more adult appeal, in spite of credible work in what would prove to be Raoul Walsh?s last film, ?A Distant Trumpet? (1964). His career slipped into exploitation films, and by the time Francis Ford Coppola lifted him from obscurity for a brief role in ?The Godfather: Part II? (he appears as Connie?s fianc?, Merle Johnson ? which was Donahue?s real name), he seemed like a page out of ?Hollywood Babylon,? the walking embodiment of damaged celebrity. In 2001 he died of a heart attack at 65. Daves made one more melodrama in this strain, the interesting ?Youngblood Hawke? (1964), with James Franciscus in a role that might have been conceived for Donahue: an intense young novelist from Kentucky making his way among the predators of Manhattan. After a final, minor effort, ?The Battle of the Villa Fiorita? (1965), Daves retired, and died in 1977 at 73. With several other highly accomplished films to his credit ? among them ?The Red House? (1947), ?Dark Passage? (1947), ?3:10 to Yuma? (1957) and ?The Hanging Tree? (1959), Daves remains among the most unfairly neglected of American filmmakers; this fine small collection, produced with the care we?ve come to expect from Warner Brothers, represents a blow for justice. (Warner Home Video, $39.92, not rated)

> {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote} > > {quote:title=Film_Fatale wrote:}{quote} > > So did you get a chance to watch *The Big Heat* on Saturday morning? > > No, Saturday is our busy day - gymnastics, and playdates and all......I wish I had been paying attention, I would have taped it.... I don't know a lot about the 50's films, especially the noir genre, and so it's almost as if I can't see them on the schedule..... Well, the good thing is both *The Big Heat* and *In a Lonely Place* - are available on DVD so most folks can probably get those fairly easily any time...

> {quote:title=lzcutter wrote:}{quote} > If we regulars start breaking the CofC it makes it harder to enforce all the way around. Well said, Lynn! It would be especially important for the TCM forum members who were chosen to be TCM Guest Programmers to set a good example for all.

Zachary Scott

> {quote:title=coopsgirl wrote:}{quote} > Thank you both for the compliments! I'm very proud of them and they are just so much fun to do. Here's another one I just finished. > > OMG! That is totally, totally awesome, Angie! It was so well edited and the music is just lovely. By the way I don't think I knew that song before watching your video, but I'm already in love with it. I'm going to add it to the TCM fansite, hope you won't mind. B-)

Thanks to those links, I found a video of one of my favourite actors together with one of my favourite muppets:

Mmmm. Fresh cuppa coffee. Sure seems tempting.

Great list, Chip! I love that you included *RHPS* B-)

> {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote} > There is nothing I can add here, except that I got a nice copy of Wagon Master the other day and I am psyched! > Not only that, you've got some great screencaps there, too! I would love to post some *Wagon Master* caps, too, and may get around to that later in the week - so stay posted.

> {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote} > Anyway, I am always a day late around here and a dollar short! I would love to get in on these discussions when they are actually happening..... Hey, you're not the only one

Anyone watch/record this one Monday night? *The Last Command* (1955) Texas hero Jim Bowie defends against Mexican general Santa Ana. Cast: Sterling Hayden, Anna Maria Alberghetti, Richard Carlson, Arthur Hunnicutt Dir: Frank Lloyd BW-110 mins, TV-PG

> {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote} > I LOVE One of Our Aircraft is Missing..... and I have never seen Oh, Rosalinda....... Well, I assure you *Oh, Rosalinda...!!* has a mildly enthusiastic recommendation from me... Seriously, it's not the best of Powell & Pressburger's movies, but it does have some very entertaining moments and a good cast.

Van Johnson

I concur with Wendy, Ang - those videos you put together are simply astonishing, as good or better than any editor in Hollywood can do. B-)

That's pretty funny, molo. And why would anyone think you've been drinking?

> {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote} > Andrew says we still have the VCR (surprise) and I will call the library and see if they have Two Rode Together. I am actually getting excited to see it, even with all the lukewarm recommendations! I don't know if I'd describe my recommendation as lukewarm, myself. It might not be the best of Ford's westerns, but it is eminently watchable, and it sure has a great cast. To be that's a mildly enthusiastic recommendation!

Hey, no problem. I hope you'll enjoy it!

Well, redriver, *I Know Where I'm Going!* is also one of my favourite Powell & Pressburger movies, I have loved it since I first watched it in college and I keep revisiting every few years. It's a great thing that there's a Criterion DVD of it. In fact, with the US DVD release of *A Matter of Life and Death*, there's probably never been so many P&P movies so easily available. Now, if someone could just release *One of Our Aircraft is Missing...* and *Oh, Rosalinda!!* on DVD...

Tom Santschi

What about this guy? He?s pretty homely and I bet he?d make good practice . LOL

Romy Schneider

Wendy, Kathy is quite correct. *Two Rode Together* did get a VHS release and there are still copies of that around in libraries and the few video stores that still have a decent selection of movies on VHS.