Another Kind Of Distance: A Time Travel, Twin Peaks, Film, Doom Patrol And Nostalgia Podcast

In this Special Subject episode, we try to get a handle on Andrei Tarkovsky by looking at a couple of our favourites, in which Tarkovsky tries to get a handle on his mother (and faith, and memory, and guilt, and nostalgia, and the nature of womanhood, and the possibility of human connection): Mirror (1975) and Nostalghia (1983). We talk Tarkovskyan dream and "reality"; the interweaving of autobiography and fiction, representations of your own death, different kinds of doubles, mystical dogs, and amazing hair.  Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:                  MIRROR (1975) [dir. Andrei Tarkovsky]              0h 59m 00s:                  NOSTALGHIA (1983) [dir. Andrei Tarkovsky]                                                    +++ * 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) * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy *And Read lots of Elise’s

In this week of our (slightly-out-of-order) Oeuvre-view of Clara Bow's career, The Saturday Night Kid (1929), directed by A. Edward Sutherland, is paired with True to the Navy (1930), directed by Frank Tuttle. We see two starkly contrasting Claras separated by just seven months: in Sutherland's working-class drama, she's heroic but bad-tempered, burdened with a flighty love interest, a manager who has it in for her (Edna May Oliver), and a snake of a sister (pre-stardom Jean Arthur interpreting realism as "shrill and whiney"). In Tuttle's comedy, she's a soda fountain girl who scams sailors with her boss, which leads to complications when she falls for a handsome gob played by Fredric March (who decides to introduce Method acting into this broad slapstick comedy for some reason). Elfin Clara gets involved in some satisfying brawls and tells off gangsters with a temerity that equally tiny Barbara Stanwyck would soon make her trademark. Obviously, this is what you had to do in Brooklyn. Also of note: a brief bu

MGM, 1936: the studio of stars, glamour, and conservatism. Or so goes our thesis, which we attempt to complicate by taking a close look at two movies that make romantic rivals of Jean Harlow and Myrna Loy: Clarence Brown's melodrama Wife vs.Secretary and Jack Conway's atypical screwball comedy Libeled Lady. Indubitably the protagonist of the former and top-billed in the latter's star-fest, Harlow plays class underdogs that lend a pointed populism to MGM's aspirational fantasies. We examine MGM's representation of options for career women in Wife vs. Secretary and find it open to a subversive reading.    Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:                  WIFE VS SECRETARY (dir. Clarence Brown) 0h 50m 00s:                  LIBELED LADY (dir. Jack Conway)                  Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames                                     +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s *Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Kell

In this week's Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we're finally there: Clara's first two sound films, both from 1929. First, we engage in an extensive analysis of Dorothy Arzner's The Wild Party, Clara's talkie debut. The star plays a college girl rebelling against the Victorian strictures on campus sexuality, but yearning for the loftier aims of her studious roommate and the handsome new anthropology professor (played by Fredric March). One of 1929's great films, The Wild Party is a winning mixture of Austenesque coming-of-age moral trajectory and polymorphously perverse sensuality that only Bow and Arzner could pull off. But then, we get something much odder: Lothar Mendes' Dangerous Curves takes two tendencies of the Bow persona, her active heroism and her comic pathos, to their logical extremes. The result this produces at the movie's climax has to be seen to be believed. (Hint: it involves risking death in a clown suit.) But is Mendes crazy enough to pull off this crazy plot? And can the leads form

We look at four noirish British films distributed in the United States by Eagle-Lion: Waterloo Road (1945, directed by Sidney Gilliat), I See a Dark Stranger (1946, directed by Frank Launder), The October Man (1947, directed by Roy Ward Baker), and The Blue Lamp (1950, directed by Basil Dearden). We explore the mental and physical landscape of wartime and postwar England and such subjects as militant Irish politics, English policing, and scapegoating as dramatic structure and social reality, and evaluate the performance of Dirk Bogarde's hair.    Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:                  Brief Eagle-Lion Preamble 0h 04m 56s:                  WATERLOO ROAD (1945) [dir. Sidney Gilliat]    0h 30m 46s:                  I SEE A DARK STRANGER (1946) [dir. Frank Launder] 0h 58m 20s:                  THE OCTOBER MAN (1947) [dir. Roy Ward Baker] 1h 22m 16s:                  THE BLUE LAMP (1950) [dir. Basil Dearden]                          +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2

In this week's Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, two of Clara's best directors, Victor Fleming and Dorothy Arzner, present us with two very different versions of Clara that are both nevertheless logical developments of her persona. In Fleming's Hula (1927), Clara is a wild child of nature and a real loose cannon, pitted against "civilized" ladies who are far more destructive, with another (Hawaiian) colonial setting. In Arzner's Get Your Man (1927), a much more restrained Clara is an American heiress in France who finds herself romantically thwarted, not by British honour this time, but by European aristocratic codes. Neither are any match for her, of course. We discuss Clara's signature desiring gaze, Clive Brook's sweaty manliness, Buddy Rogers' sulky callowness, and cute dog scenes.    Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:                  HULA (1927) [dir. Victor Fleming] 0h 46m 41s:                 GET YOUR MAN (1927) [dir. Dorothy Arzner]                           +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous C

In this Studios Year by Year episode, 1936 begins with Paramount, and we take a look at two movies about gun-running that star Gary Cooper, but have little else in common (despite using the same cinematographer). We don't find much to love about Cecil B. DeMille's tribute to Wild West mythology, The Plainsman, starring Gary Cooper as an insufficiently hirsute Wild Bill Hickock and Jean Arthur as a whip-happy Calamity Jane; but Dave waxes enthusiastic about Lewis Milestone's The General Died at Dawn, an off-kilter Popular Front movie that's half-Hitchcock espionage romance, half-poetic realist manifesto. You know it’s wonderful, and we know you’re wonderful too. Time Codes:  0h 01m 00s:                  THE PLAINSMAN (dir. Cecil DeMille) 0h 40m 23s:                 THE GENERAL DIED AT DAWN (dir. Lewis Milestone)             Review paragraphs from – The Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames                                     +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020

In this episode of our Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view, two films from 1927, the curious love triangle (quadrangle if you're generous) melodrama Children of Divorce, directed by Frank Lloyd (but maybe really Josef von Sternberg), and William A. Wellman's Andy-Hardy-Goes-to-War aerial spectacle, Wings. Elise says "Jamesian"! Dave says "Verhoevian"! (Shouldn't it be "Verhoevenian"?!) We contemplate Clara Bow as a precursor to Judy Garland (but with more nudity) and as a waifish Kate Croy crossed with early Jerry Lewis. Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:                  CHILDREN OF DIVORCE (1927) [dirs. Frank Lloyd & Josef von Sternberg]   0h 36m 30s:                  WINGS (1927) [dir. William A. Wellman] +++ * 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) * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy *And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall

A four-film Special Subject episode, Joan Harrison, Producer, Part 1 looks at: Phantom Lady (1944), The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945), Nocturne (1946), and They Won't Believe Me (1947). These idiosyncratic noirs and Jamesian melodramas by the former Hitchcock screenwriter and honorary family member interrogate gender roles, flip gendered tropes, and deconstruct male resentment of women in ways that faintly anticipate Elaine May's work. We also discuss the Negative Capability of George Raft, the void-like charisma of Robert Young, the appealing androgyny of Ella Raines and very different vibe of Susan Hayward, Geraldine Fitzgerald's ability to be sexy and Victorian at the same time, and George Sanders' subtle way of showing us his soul dying inside of him. It's a big episode!  Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:                  Brief introduction to Joan Harrison 0h 19m 08s:                  PHANTOM LADY (1944) [dr. Robert Siodmak] 0h 48m 41s:                 NOCTURNE (1946) [dir. Edwin L. Marin] 1h 15m 08s:     

Our Universal 1935 Studios Year by Year episode examines two movies about the shenanigans of the idle rich, but that's where the resemblance ends. James Whale's Remember Last Night? (1935) is a Thin Man parody heavy on the class satire and absurdism, while Lowell Sherman's swan song, Night Life of the Gods, is about a wealthy scientist who discovers how to turn his straitlaced family into statues and brings a museum's statues of Roman gods to life.  Also, for no reason at all, his love interest is a 900-year-old fairy. And yet, somehow the funniest thing in the movie is a fish-slapping vaudeville set piece. They can't all be winners, but people getting hit always brings joy.    Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:                  REMEMBER LAST NIGHT? (dir. James Whale) 0h 35m 33s:                 NIGHT LIFE OF THE GODS (dir. Lowell Sherman)   Review paragraphs from – The Universal Story by Clive Hirschhorn                                     +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the

Our first Clara Bow movie of this episode, Kid Boots (1926) allows Bow to show off her slapstick skills again in a surprisingly compatible pairing with Eddie Cantor. Then we turn to the second masterpiece of the series so far, the famous-but-somehow-still-underrated It (1927), directed by Clarence G. Badger. We marvel at the full flowering of the Bow persona, including its feminist modernity, its subtle (most of the time) incorporation of androgyny, and, once again, its sexual subjectivity.  Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:                 KID BOOTS (1926) [dir. Frank Tuttle]  0h 28m 55s:                 IT (1927) [dir. Clarence G. Badger]                             +++ * 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) * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy *And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.* Fo

RKO 1935: we look at a couple of starring vehicles for two of the Queens of the Lot. First up is Anne Shirley in the deliberately slight and quietly charming Chasing Yesterday, paired with another father figure, O. P. Heggie (also her kindred spirit in the previous year's Anne of Green Gables, from which she took her screen name and which was also directed by George Nicholls Jr.). Then, the not-at-all-quiet Break of Hearts, directed by Philip Moeller (or Jane Loring?), in which Katharine Hepburn's dewy-idealed aspiring composer and Charles Boyer's jaded superstar conductor engage in psychosexual warfare. Dave goes to bat for this unloved Hepburn vehicle and its unique view of female artistry. Should Berman get the credit again?  Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:                  CHASING YESTERDAY (dir. George Nicholls Jr.) 0h 43m 17s:                 BREAK OF HEARTS (dir. Philip Moeller)                           +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s *Intro Song: “Sunday”

In Part 1 of our look at Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers' cinematic pairings (part 2 is penciled in for January 2023), we discuss Mark Sandrich's The Gay Divorcee and Top Hat, William A. Seiter's Roberta, and George Stevens' Swing Time. What formula does Sandrich set up for the stars, and how do the other films acknowledge and/or depart from it? What does RKO contribute to the 30s musical? Why is Ginger so paranoid? Is Fred really more like the romantic heroine? What makes Edward Everett Horton sexually irresistible? Expect these and other searching questions to be pondered.  Warning: in case anyone in the world doesn't know, Swing Time contains a blackface number. It's not minstrelsy, perhaps... but it might be something even worse.    For further information, we recommend: Arlene Croce’s The Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers Book The greatest studio documentary of them all: Hollywood – The Golden Years: The RKO Story (episode 2 is devoted to the Astaire/Rogers pictures)   Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:      Preamble

For our Fox 1935 episode of The Studios Year by Year, we look at two films about forming idyllic communities within a nightmare society: Henry King's One More Spring, Fox's version of a Depression movie (based on a novel by Portrait of Jennie author Robert Nathan); and John Ford's Steamboat Round the Bend, another Will Rogers satire of Southern mores. Plus Dave reports on the reaction in Southern newspapers to Ford's previous film with Rogers, Judge Priest, and some evidence about Black audience reception of the Rogers/Stepin Fetchit comic pairing in Atlanta.  Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:      One More Spring [dir. Henry King]          `                       0h 37m 21s:      Steamboat Round the Bend [dir. John Ford]       1h 21m 00s:      Brief Reports on Audience Reception – Judge Priest {1934)        +++ * 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) * Find Elise’s lates

This week's Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode sees our star's debut at Paramount, in a supporting role in Dancing Mothers, followed by a starring role in what is sometimes considered her best silent film, Victor Fleming's Mantrap (both 1926). Bow plays two versions of an amoral child-woman, one irritating and one dazzling. We contemplate the Flemingesque woman (so much better than the Hawksian woman, although admittedly, the latter sounds snappier), with comparisons to Sternberg and Bergman. Warning for insane amounts of colonial racism (with a Canadian setting in this case).    Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:                  Dancing Mothers (1926) [dir. Herbert Brenon] 0h 24m 05s:                  Mantrap (1926) [dir. Victor Fleming]               +++ * Check out our complete viewing schedule from here to December 2029! *Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy *And Re

**Originally released February 26, 2021**   A Warners, 1935 Borzage/Kay Francis/George Brent double feature: Stranded, in which Francis plays a sort of socialite social worker who's romanced by Brent's conservative he-man construction boss; and Living on Velvet, in which Francis is determined to overcome Brent's insouciant death-wish. As usual, Borzage delivers romance with a difference. We discuss Depression-era Liberal Republicanism, argue about whether Living on Velvet's ennui is adequately dramatized, and argue for Julius Epstein as a screenwriting auteur. But what does a Welsh clown have to do with anything? Listen to find out! Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:                            Stranded [dir. Frank Borzage]                0h 54m 10s:                            Living on Velvet [dir. Frank Borzage]          +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Schedule - now projected to the end of our Lilli Palmer series in 2024 *Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The

This week, we get closer to Clara Bow's Mature Period with her first big hit, the college movie The Plastic Age (1925). But first, another 1925 pairing with the stalwart Donald Keith. My Lady of Whims. The two films show the flexibility of the flapper archetype, with Clara as a socialite-turned-bohemian in the first and as a hard-partying college girl in the second. Frustratingly, Keith is our protagonist, but the two films give Bow a chance to show off her comedic and dramatic skills, respectively, and pave the way for more complex versions of similar plots in future vehicles.   Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:                  My Lady of Whims (1925) [dir: Dallas M. Fitzgerald] 0h 28m 41s:                  The Plastic Age (1925) [dir. Wesley Ruggles] +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Schedule - now projected to the end of our Lilli Palmer series in 2024 *Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and

Our Valentine's 2021 episode has something for everyone, couples and singles. Something to make everyone feel deeply unsettled, that is. The subject of these two John Cassavetes movies, Minnie and Moskowitz (1971) and Love Streams (1984), is the difficulty of making any kind of meaningful human connection. Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes' wife and frequent collaborator, plays a woman who's having trouble feeling in the first, and a woman who feels more than is good for her in the second. We try to describe the experience of watching Cassavetes' visceral, emotional, frightening, and frequently very funny films. But who is that naked man?    Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:      Cassavetes preamble 0h 09m 31s:      MINNIE & MOSKOWITZ (1971)  1h 01m 01s:      LOVE STREAMS (1984)                 +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Schedule - now projected to the end of our Lilli Palmer series in 2024 *Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Find Elise’s

MGM, 1935, and two David O. Selznick Dickens adaptations: George Cukor's David Copperfield and Jack Conway's A Tale of Two Cities. Hollywood invents a cinematic language for Dickens, using a mixture of American and British actors, and miraculously pulls it off, in what Dave considers Selznick's finest hour as a producer. (We know he means with the exception of Portrait of Jennie.) We discuss the complex psychology of Copperfield and the simplistic history of Tale of Two Cities. Also discussed in the episode: Kate Corbelay, head of the story department at MGM.   Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:      David Copperfield [dir. George Cukor]                          1h 00m 015s:    A Tale of Two Cities [dir. Jack Conway] 1h 49m 08s:      Listener correspondence from Adam           +++ * Check out our Complete Upcoming Schedule - now projected to the end of our Lilli Palmer series in 2024 *Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Find Elise’s latest film p

In this Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, two crime films from 1925: The Primrose Path, directed by Harry O. Hoyt and produced by Hunt Stromberg for Arrow Film Corporation (which folded the following year); and Free to Love, another Schulberg production, directed by Frank O’Connor. The Primrose Path, a bizarre mishmash of Griffith and gangsters, gives us Clara as a showgirl with a heart of gold, but with very little to do. The more interesting Free to Love finally allows Clara to be the hero of the movie. As an orphan and wrongly convicted ex-con who wants to devote herself to helping other unfortunates, she finds herself thwarted by a sort of minor Batman villain who happens to be the father of her betrothed. Clara’s emotions shine through even the dopey plot and wretched print.   Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:                            The Primrose Path  (1925) [dir. Harry O. Hoyt]    0h 21m 01s:                            Free to Love (1925) [dir. Frank O’Connor]                 +++ * Check out our Compl