HarryLong

>>When Dryer was making this movie he accidentally exposed some of the film. When viewing the rushes, he thought that the damaged section gave a cloudy, dream-like quality that was missing in the movie, so he purposely exposed all of the film. I think the story goes that whgen viewing rushes it was discovered the camera had a light leak & Dryer liked the effect & using overexposue & (I think) shooting through veils duplicated the look for the rest of the film. The doctor's death was rewritten to "drowning" in flour to carry through the horror of whiteness theme the film was developing (& because Dryer chanced on a terrific location). Despite the onscreen credit, the film is not based on any one story in THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY but rather on an ongoing theme in that anthology of the tenuous division between reality & supernatural or waking & dreams. Dryer wanted to position his film on the threshold between the two & the film's look (& lack of any logical plot) is intended to evoke that.

Doesn't the professor also make a comment later that no matter how much of it he drinks he doesn't get intoxicated?

>>I think the real Harvey would qualify, since he doesn?t exist. Well, the audience is shown doors opening, indicating Harvey's movement through the doctor's waiting room (in the play, at any rate - not so sure about the movie). Harvey definitely exists; he's just not visible to everyone. Edited by: HarryLong on Mar 16, 2010 1:25 PM

>>There was no shortage on VHS was there? Yeah, but those came out, what? 15-20 years ago? The materials were in better shape then. And the technical requirements for VHS are more forgiving than DVD (and let's not even talk Blu-Ray...)

MURDERS IN THE ZOO is probably the only near-great film in the set (aside from the comic stylings of Charles Ruggles), true, but I think the surprisingly nasty (for its time) THE MAD GHOUL has its good points and I'm very fond of THE MYSTERY OF DR RX, though I'm aware that this is probably a minority opinion.

>>Screenings of Charlie Chan films have drawn objections before. In 2003, the Fox Movie Channel reached a compromise to show some of the films after it also agreed to broadcast a panel discussion on racial issues to accompany the movies. Interestingly I was reminded of this tsummis in ateapot a few weeks ago when I started watching the titles in the Sony box of Toho titles. In MOTHRA there's an island full of brown-skinned natives portrayed by Orientals. If memory serves the same is true of KING KONG MEETS GODZILLA. So where's the uproar over Japanese in brownface portraying the members of another culture?

Is it me or did they get the swastika reversed?

I did - about a week or so ago. I haven't had a chance yet to watch any of the films but the packaging is quite impressive. None of these double-sided discs with 2 films on each side crap like Universal has been so fond of, but a single disc for each film on little hinged holders in atri-fold case.

Oh dear no... NIGHTLIFE OF THE GODS is positively dreadful. I wish it could become a lost film again. THE MAN WHO RECLAIMED HIS HEAD ain't all that great either.

MONSTER ON THE GIRL also deserves a DVD release. It's very under-rated.

>>Menzies?s hand seems evident in almost every frame of ?Alice in Wonderland,? yet his only credit on the film is as the co-author, with Joseph L. Mankiewicz, of the screenplay. In those days credits were not union mandated<< Additionally the term Production Designer didn't even come into use until it was given to Menzies on GONE WITH THE WIND. Prior to that, any Art Director whose influence stretched beyond set design to the extent of determining camera angles & framing would be given a co-director credit (such as the one given Irving Pichel & Lansing Holden for the 1935 SHE).

Actually TCM has shown it at least once... During their W.C. Fields tribute a few years back.

>>I checked on Tracy's early movies and he had made a couple of films by 1932 so it's hard to think he was an extra, but the guy could have been his twin.<< All of Tracy's 1933 features are at Fox, so it seems unlikely he hopped back to WB for an uncredited bit of extra work.

ROCKY HORROR and PARADISE would be a great double bill. Oddly, when I saw PARADISE in the theater it was paired with (are you sitting down?) ZARDOZ...

I should have DVDRed it. Somehow missed it was on. I have a copy, supposedly from LD to DVD, but it doesn't look as sharp as other things I've seen copied from LDs. As to the quality of the elements, etc., I'm only reporting what I've read. Given how good the recent TCM collection of Paramount/Universals looks, maybe TCM should take on all of Universals horrors...

I read on another board that LOST SOULS is not in good shape anymore. Someone saw a restoration at a screening a few months ago & reported that it was very contrasty with the whiter areas really blown out. On the other hand it looks fine on the laser disc, so I don't know why they don't just port that over...

Interesting article about Hodkinson here: >http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/hodkinson_system.htm It looks like any Famous Players or Lasky or Paramount production would fit the bill ... and that means that Barrymore DR JEKLYLL & MR HYDE was probably one of the films. That's an easy title to track down

>or I recorded it and forgot that I had. I do that sometimes. My memory is not what it once was. It's god's way of telling you that you have too damn many films ... I should know ...

My first awareness of Bergman was an article in the pages of CASTLE OF FRANKENSTEIN back when I was in high school. Couldn't get to see it until I went off to college, though & instantly fell in love with it. Marvelous film, so bleak and yet not without its humorous momnents (one character climbs a tree to escape Death, who promptly begins sawing down the tree). WILD STRAWBERRIES is also wonderful. And if you've never seen his delightful film of THE MAGIC FLUTE, I urge you to do do.

>Welles was not around to fight for the film. Despite attempts by wire and telephone by Robert Wise and others involved in the film, Welles did not respond. I though I read somewhere that Welles did respond by telegram with editing instructions ... Of course with him working from memory rather than being where he could watch the film, his directions apparently weren't always that easy to figure out. And I'm pretty certain, too, that Welles went to Mexico when RKO sent him rather than "choosing" to leave at the time he did. The studio - whose new head didn't much like Welles - may have been looking for a way to take AMBERSONS out of his hands ... in fact the whole thing looks suspiciously like a set-up to me.

>would you be willing to lock yourself up at home and do nothing but watch TCM all day long? One does what one must. (And prays it's not the day the celebrate El Brendel's birthday ... )

>The biggest problem with the 60?s whiz-kids of the British movie industry, including those that HollywoodGolightly mentions, is that they thought movies were about ?ART?. ... Ken Russell, Tony Richardson et al. may be intellectually stimulating (or depressing), but the ?Carry On?s? made more money. The British film industry never quite learned what the folks in Hollywood knew from the beginning, the bottom-of-the-barrel is lined with gold. But your argument falls apart when you consider that the films HollywoodGolightly listed were all quite big hits ... internationally. And the Hammer films and Carry On films became impossible to find financing for ... and that is the real reason why the Brit film industry fell apart after the 1960s: Financing dried up. On top of that the former Rank and Korda studios (now run by corporations arther than movie producers) found it more profitable to rent out to US productions (STAR WARS, for instance) than to promote their own countries' film production.

I thought it odd, too, that Boland wasn't mentioned even though she is ins everal of the films being shown. Oh, well, they ignore Maude Eburne in RUGGLES, too...

I might pick a few more than just WALL-E (which I haven't even seen as yet) from that list. But whence came the list of 1939 films? If it isn't picked by the same criteria as the Netflix list *(i.e.: What were the most popular films in 1939?) it's not a fair comparison, is it? As I recall SON OF FRANKENSTEIN was an immensely popular film in 1939 (saved The New Universal from bankruptcy, I believe), but I didn't spot it on your list. Seventy years from now, I predict, someone will wail about the lack of great movies & come up with a list of great ones from 2008 that inlcudes almost none of the films on that Netflix list. But it will include MILK and SYNECDOCHE, NY and TROPIC THUNDER and BURN AFTER READING and (maybe) IRON MAN and BE KIND REWIND and THE READER and IN BRUGES and LEATHERHEADS and HELLBOY II and BRIDESHEAD REVISITED and THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES and W and CHANGELING and AUSTRALIA and FROST/NIXON and CHE and DOUBT and THE WRESTLER and ...

Well, it's very easy to think past years produced more great films than current years. We're not living through past years' releases film by film the way we are today's films. I notice that your list for 1939 is curiously missing ... oh ... say any of Monogram or Republic's features. Kinda skews the list, doesn't it, unless we make one of every single film from that year? The lowliest films there are a coupla Saint flicks. Additionally I don't necessarily think every film of that 1939 list is necessarily great. But that's mostly a matter of taste. And so, I should think, is one's assessment of current fare.