There's Sometimes a Buggy Elise & Dave

This week's Fox 1946 Studios Year by Year episode features the strange bedfellows of Henry Hathaway's The Dark Corner, a curiously feminist film noir in which the tormented protagonist is saved by the persistence of a good woman (played by Lucille Ball), and Edmund Goulding's The Razor's Edge, based on a Somerset Maugham novel about spiritual enlightenment and bourgeois ennui, featuring Gene Tierney's best performance, although Anne Baxter won the Oscar. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, the TIFF Cinematheque Duras retrospective continues with Nathalie Granger, Baxter, Vera Baxter, Le Navire Night, and Les Enfants. We discuss comedy, mysticism, nihilism, recalcitrant children, and happy endings in Duras's films.
Time Codes:
0h 00m 35s:      THE DARK CORNER [dir. Henry Hathaway]
0h 25m 04s:      THE RAZOR’S EDGE [dir. Edmund Goulding]
0h 52m 22s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Nathalie Granger (1972), Baxter, Vera Baxter (1977), Le Navire Night (1979) and Les Enfants (1984) – all by Marguerite Duras
Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of 20th Century-Fox by Aubrey Solomon & Tony Thomas
Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler                                
+++
* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s
* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)
* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.
* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 
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Our examination of the film career of Lilli Palmer continues with a couple of excellent films that show us Palmer's range when playing "loveable": But Not for Me, in which she gives a comedic performance as the ex-wife of a Broadway producer played by Clark Gable, benevolently interfering in his budding relationship with young actress Carroll Baker; and Conspiracy of Hearts, in which Palmer plays an Italian Mother Superior who persuades her nuns to help Jewish children escape from a concentration camp. Penned by a couple of American blacklistees, Conspiracy of Hearts has a surprisingly complex view of religion, as But Not for Me does of age difference relationships, offering plenty of fodder for good movie talk!
Time Codes:
0h 00m 35s:      BUT NOT FOR ME (1959) [dir. Walter Lang]
0h 24m 25s:      CONSPIRACY OF HEARTS (1960) [dir. Ralph Thomas]
+++
* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring
* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s
* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)
* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”
* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 
Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy
Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com
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For this Warner Bros. 1946 episode we watched two fantastical biopics, Devotion (directed by Curtis Bernhardt), starring Ida Lupino and Olivia de Havilland as Emily and Charlotte Brontë, and Night and Day (directed by Michael Curtiz), starring Cary Grant as Cole Porter and Monty Woolley as himself. We found them to be like night and day in terms of their quality, but you'll have to listen to find out which of the two we deemed redeemable. And then for something completely different: in a long Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, tragic love, communism, colonialism, demons, and various approaches to deconstructing cinema dominate our discussion of the first half of TIFF Cinematheque's Marguerite Duras retrospective. 
Time Codes:
0h 00m 35s:      DEVOTION [dir. Curtis Bernhardt]
0h 33m 42s:      NIGHT AND DAY [dir. Michael Curtiz]
0h 46m 48s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Détruire dit-elle (1969), La femme du Gange (1974), India Song (1975), Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (1976) and Le camion (1977) by Marguerite Duras
Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn
Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler                               
+++
* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s
* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)
* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.
* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 
Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy
Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com
 
We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

In our April Special Subject, Part 1 of our look at the films of Samuel Goldwyn, we discuss Dark Angel (1935), These Three (1936), Dodsworth (1936), and Wuthering Heights (1939), a selection heavy on Dave favourites Merle Oberon, William Wyler, and Gregg Toland. We ask in what sense these are "quality" films, and in what ways they escape our expectations of that category, calling attention to the theme of psychological violence in These Three and Wuthering Heights and the role played by gender double standards in the tragedies of Dark Angel and Dodsworth. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto we discuss Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World (2001) and draw a surprising conclusion about it. 
Time Codes:
0h 00m 35s:      Brief Introduction to Samual Goldwyn
0h 12m 18s:      THE DARK ANGEL (1935) [dir. Sidney Franklin]
0h 31m 44s:      THESE THREE (1936) [dir. William Wyler]
0h 54m 40s:      DODSWORTH (1936) [dir. William Wyler]
1h 09m 24s:      WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939) [dir. William Wyler]
1h 26m 12s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Ghost World (2001) by Terry Zwigoff
+++
* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring
* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s
* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)
* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”
* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 
Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy
Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com
We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

For this week's Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we watched Jacques Becker's The Lovers of Montparnasse (1958), in which Palmer, playing Modigliani's rejected lover Beatrice Hastings, perfects her persona of brittle dissociation; and Mädchen in Uniform, the 1958 remake of the famous Weimar-era film about a teenager at an all-girls' boarding school who falls in love with her teacher. Our viewings provoke topics from the relationship between art and capitalism to the relationship between gender, sexuality, and militarism. 
Time Codes:
0h 00m 35s:      LES AMANTS DE MONTPARNASSE (1958) [dir. Jacques Becker]
0h 34m 14s:       MADCHEN IN UNIFORM (1958) [dir. Giza Von Radvanyi]
+++
* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring
* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s
* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)
* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”
* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 
Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy
Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com
We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

This MGM 1946 Studios Year by Year episode is a Jules Dassin double feature that shows the range of the famed blacklistee even during his most constrained studio period: the noirish romantic drama Two Smart People, about two con artists (Lucille Ball and John Hodiak) and a cop who are all out to con each other; and the remarkable A Letter for Evie (starring Marsha Hunt and Hume Cronyn), a very postmodern (but also hilarious) deconstruction of gender conventions that's also a moving romance. 
Time Codes:
0h 00m 35s:      1946 at MGM and Hollywod (per John Douglas Eames)
0h 04m 22s:      TWO SMART PEOPLE [dir. Jules Dassin]           
0h 26m 38s:      A LETTER FOR EVIE [dir. Jules Dassin]
Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames
Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler
                                   
+++
* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s
* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)
* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.
* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 
Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy
Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com
 
We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!