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

Our two Dorothy McGuire movies for this week are wildly different in tone: Samuel Goldwyn's I Want You (1951, directed by Mark Robson), about a family's reaction to the Korean War draft, and, for MGM, the Jamesian melodrama Invitation (1952, directed by Gottfried Reinhardt). Dave makes the case for I Want You as a complex leftist look at early Cold War America, and then we unpack the Jamesian tropes of Invitation, with its complicated flashback structure. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we share our first experience of the extraordinarily intense films of Hungarian auteur Márta Mészáros, discussing Nine Months (1976) and The Two of Them (1977). Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      I WANT YOU (1951) [dir. Mark Robson] 0h 37m 18s:      INVITATION (1952) [dir. Gottfried Reinhardt] 1h 07m 01s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Nine Months (1976) and The Two of Them (1977) by Marta Meszaros   +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at o

For our Paramount 1943 episode, just a couple of typical comedies, as far as John Douglas Eames is concerned: Preston Sturges' The Palm Beach Story, starring Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea, a comedy of remarriage in which the screwballs are no longer the central couple, and Mitchell Leisen's cross-class comedy with a number of twists, No Time For Love, with Colbert and Fred MacMurray. We try to figure out what these movies, coming at the end of the screwball comedy cycle, have to say about love, sex, class, wealth, and gender in America in the early 1940s. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment we discuss Merian C. Cooper's relentlessly vicious King Kong (1933) as a kind of unconsciously Verhoevian nightmare “family film”. Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      THE PALM BEACH STORY [dir. Preston Sturges] 0h 41m 21s:      NO TIME FOR LOVE [dir. Mitchell Leisen] 1h 07m 23s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto:  King Kong (1933) by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack   Studio Film Capsules provided

In the second part of our Joan Harrison: Producer Special Subject, we look at Harrison's Robert Montgomery years and her final films made before turning to television. which include both known and overlooked gems: Ride the Pink Horse (1947), Once More, My Darling (1949), Your Witness (1950), and Circle of Danger (1951). We identify the various themes and concerns that unite films within this group, with particular attention to the way Harrison makes political progressivism serve dramatic ends. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we take a quick look at two silent films written and directed by Mikio Naruse, Flunky, Work Hard! and Apart From You, that we will be watching for a dedicated episode later this year. Time Codes: 0h 0m 45s:        Preamble on the Harrison-Montgomery partnership 0h 7m 00s:        RIDE THE PINK HORSE (1947) [dir. Robert Montgomery] 0h 36m 06s:      ONCE MORE, MY DARLING (1949) [dir. Robert Montgomery] 0h 49m 54s:      YOUR WITNESS (1950) [dir. Robert Montgomery] 1h

For our Universal 1942 episode, a very odd pairing: The Mad Doctor of Market Street, a mad scientist/ocean liner comedy/island adventure movie directed by low-budget noir auteur Joseph H. Lewis, and Alfred Hitchcock's first fully American movie, Saboteur, a fugitive-on-the-run thriller. We dissect the depiction of the fictional islanders in The Mad Doctor of Market Street and the movie's deconstruction of the science/magic dichotomy, before moving on to Saboteur's leftist take on fascism in the United States. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we talk about Ozu's A Hen in the Wind and Curtiz's Angels with Dirty Faces, which have nothing in common but very emotional endings.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      THE MAD DOCTOR OF MARKET STREET [dir. Joseph H. Lewis] 0h 24m 05s:      SABOTEUR [dir. Alfred Hitchcock] 1h 03m 52s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto:  A Hen in the Wind (1948) by Yasujiro Ozu & Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) by Michael Curtiz   Studio Film Capsules provided by Th

For this week's Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we watched two romantic comedies (sort of), Mister 880 (1950) and Callaway Went Thataway (1951), in which Dorothy McGuire assumes a role we haven't seen from her before: the character through whom we register the pathos that the movies explore via the respective plights of Edmund Gwenn's elderly counterfeiter and Howard Keel's TV cowboy impersonator. We focus particularly on Mister 880, a very unusual comedic drama directed by the great Edmund Goulding, with a screenplay by Robert Riskin, that in certain ways anticipates Umberto D., and try to grasp the essence of its elusive moral. In just what way does Gwenn's character embody an admirable form of life?    Time Codes: 0h 0m 45s:        MISTER 880 (1950) [dir. Edmund Goulding] 0h 35m 50s:      CALLAWAY WENT THATAWAY (1951) [dirs. Melvin Frank & Norman Panama]   +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewi

Our 1942 RKO episode is a very special one, with films by two of the studio's outstanding auteurs, writer-producer-director Orson Welles, and B-horror unit producer Val Lewton. First, we look at Orson Welles' mutilated (some even say "emasculated"!) masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, exploring the movie's extraordinary characters and performances and giving our opinion of the ending imposed by the studio. Then we turn to Val Lewton's first production for RKO's horror unit, Cat People, grappling with its metaphors and digging into its unusual love triangle. And then, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss an adjacent film, Bell, Book and Candle, in which Kim Novak's slinky witch falls for normo Jimmy Stewart - but with a very different outcome. Join us as we look at some very lonely people who make some very bad decisions!    Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS [dir. Orson Welles] 0h 38m 57s:      CAT PEOPLE [dir. Jacques Tourneur] 1h 05m 28s:      Fear and Moviegoing in To

In this Dorothy McGuire Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, a couple of disparate films: Elia Kazan's anti-semitism exposé drama, Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and a marital comedy about the hardships of being a doctor's wife, Mother Didn't Tell Me (1950). We discuss the qualities that McGuire brings to her most problematic character yet and that help make the character a possible audience identification figure for the audience. And then we discuss the "secret feminism" of Mother Didn't Tell Me's portrayal of the life of a middle-class housewife who finds herself "abandoned" by her husband and unable to share his professional life. Elise expresses admiration of McGuire's ability to whisper her way through a fight scene. From open didacticism to secret feminism: this episode has it all!    Time Codes: 0h 0m 45s:        GENTLEMAN’S AGREEMENT (1947 [dir. Elia Kazan] 0h 31m 42s:      MOTHER DIDN’T TELL ME (1950) [dir. Claude Binyon]   +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of L

[[New Improved edition – with restored Home From the Hill content!]]   It's March Minnelli Madness as we watch three melodramas directed by Vincente Minelli, plus one nightmarish comedy: The Long, Long Trailer (1954), starring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz; The Cobweb (1955), starring Richard Widmark and Lauren Bacall (among other big names); Some Came Running (1958), based on the novel by James Jones and starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Shirley MacLaine; and Home from the Hill (1960), starring Robert Mitchum as an ironic patriarch and a curiously radiant George Peppard as his illegitimate son. We talk about Minnelli as a scrutinizer of masculinity and sexual mores, about certain auteurist concerns that we discover on the fly, and about Minnelli's version of 1950s consumer culture satire. Then, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss the Minnelli melodrama-adjacent From Here to Eternity (1953), based on James Jones's first and less eccentric novel, with Frank Sinatra in a very different role.   

Our Fox 1942 episode explores two different modes of Betty Grable Fox musical (both choreographed by Astaire collaborator Hermes Pan) that draw on the Hollywood musical modes established in the 1930s:in black and white, the Warneresque backstager Footlight Serenade, shot by Lee Garmes; and the Technicolor farce Springtime in the Rockies, with comic support by Edward Everett Horton and Carmen Miranda, whose eccentric comedic styles confront one another and produce what might be chemistry. Elise comes around a little on Betty Grable, whose persona we discuss, along with the covert feminism of Footlight Serenade's plot. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we Siskel and Ebert Claudia von Alemann's feminist filmic essay Blind Spot (1981), but agree that the sandwich-eating and pickle-refusing scenes are great.    Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      FOOTLIGHT SERENADE [dir. Gregory Ratoff] 0h 48m 11s:      SPRINGTIME IN THE ROCKIES [dir. Irving Cummings] 1h 15m 19s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Blind S

In this week's Acteurist Oeuvre-view, we look at two very different Dorothy McGuire movies from 1946 that share a striking adultness: Claudia and David (directed by Walter Lang), a marital comedy that's surprisingly frank about infidelity, and Till the End of Time (directed by Edward Dmytryk), a "post-war readjustment" movie that's surprisingly frank about sexuality in general, as well as American alienation and ennui. We make our first real stab at describing the essential qualities McGuire brings to daffy ingenue and jaded older woman roles alike. And speaking of alienation and ennui, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto we discuss another experimental narrative film by Hou Hsiao-hsien, Millennium Mambo (2001).    Time Codes: 0h 0m 45s:        CLAUDIA AND DAVID (1946) [dir. Walter Lang] 0h 33m 33s:      TILL THE END OF TIME (1946) [dir. Edward Dmytryk] 1h 19m 00s:      Fear & Moviegoing In Toronto – MILLENNIUM MAMBO (2001) by Hou Hsiao-hsien   +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Proje

In this very special Warners 1942 episode we discuss two Dave faves, both starring (and romantically pairing) Ann Sheridan and Ronald Reagan, that push against the restrictions of the Production Code: Sam Wood's Peyton Place/Twin Peaks forerunner, Kings Row, and Curtis Bernhardt's noirish agrarian socialist drama, Juke Girl. We dive deep into Kings Rows' Freud-and-Emerson-steeped advocacy of a less repressed and hypocritical society and Juke GIrl's utopic/dystopic vision of humanity. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we have a very disparate group of films this week: Flowers of Shanghai (1998), One False Move (1992), and Brief Encounter (1945), which Elise compares to Jeanne Dielman (although - spoilers - Brief Encounter does have a happier ending).  Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      KINGS ROW [dir. Sam Wood] 0h 55m 28s:      JUKE GIRL [dir. Curtis Bernhardt] 1h 31m 31s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Flowers of Shanghai (1998) by Hou Hsiao-hsien; One False Move (1991) by Carl Franklin & Brief

In this week’s Dorothy McGuire Acteurist Oeuvre-view, two very different roles for our subject: in Elia Kazan's first film, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), an imperfect mother in a difficult relationship with her protagonist-daughter; and in Robert Siodmak's Gothic noir, The Spiral Staircase, (1946) a mute girl targeted by a eugenicist killer. We discuss the unique qualities McGuire brings to what could be an unsympathetic role in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and the intricacies of that movie's family relationships. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we look at Set It Off, F. Gary Gray's 1996 heist movie about four women who start robbing banks together, starring Jada Pinkett and Queen Latifah.  Time Codes: 0h 0m 45s:        A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN (1945) [dir. Elia Kazan] 0h 46m 31s:      THE SPIRAL STAIRCASE (1946) [dir. Robert Siodmak] 1h 07m 36s:      FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO – Perpetratin’ Realism series at TIFF Lightbox – SET IT OFF (1996) directed by F. Gary Gray   +++ * Listen to our g

Our Valentine's Day 2023 episode is all about loves from the past who have inconveniently returned. In My Favorite Wife (1940), Irene Dunne is newly remarried Cary Grant's presumed dead wife, while in Kiss Me Goodbye (1982), James Caan is Sally Field's actually dead, or undead, husband, interfering with her engagement to the (ostensibly) less charismatic Jeff Bridges. We apply Stanley Cavell's concept of the "comedy of remarriage" to these movies and conclude that the comedy of My Favorite Wife really has nothing to do with its premise, whereas Kiss Me Goodbye does perform some interesting twists on comedy of remarriage tropes. In Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, two more movies about love pick up these themes: Stanley Kwan's Rouge (1987) and Dorothy Arzner's Merrily We Go to Hell (1932). Happy Haunted Valentine's Day! Time Codes: 0h 0m 45s:        MY FAVORITE WIFE (1940) [dir. Garson Kanin] 0h 29m 59s:      KISS ME GOODBYE (1982) [dir. Robert Mulligan] 0h 49m 58s:      FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO – R

Our MGM 1942 episode is a problematic Spencer Tracy double feature in which we're treated to the full range of his persona, from smug saint to semi-demon: George Stevens' brilliant but flawed Woman of the Year, the first Hepburn-Tracy romantic comedy, and Victor Fleming's Tortilla Flat, in which Tracy co-stars with John Garfield, Akim Tamiroff, and Frank Morgan as John Steinbeck's idea of Monterey, California paisanos. We try to explain just how Woman of the Year's humanist critique of feminism ends up going so badly wrong, but defend its infamous ending, before moving on to Tortilla Flat's critique of the work ethic and property ownership. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we react to a 35th anniversary screening of Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin buddy pic Midnight Run.   Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      WOMAN OF THE YEAR [dir. George Stevens] 0h 46m 58s:      TORTILLA FLAT [dir. Victor Fleming] 1h 10m 55s:      FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TOROTNTO – Midnight Run (1988)   Studio Film Capsules provided by Th

Our Dorothy McGuire Acteurist Oeuvre-view begins with Claudia (1943) and The Enchanted Cottage (1945), in both of which she's paired with Robert Young. We talk about the qualities McGuire imported to the screen from the stage role she made famous, in the 1941 play Claudia, by Rose Franken, David O. Selznick's marketing of them, and the career vicissitudes that possibly negated this nascent persona. After diving deep into the complex psychology of Claudia, we discuss John Cromwell's great romantic fantasy, The Enchanted Cottage, and the metaphorical implications of its fairy tale. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, the Delphine Seyrig retrospective continues with Alain Resnais' Muriel and Jacques Demy's Donkey Skin.  Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:        Introduction to Dorothy McGuire 0h 15m 45s:      CLAUDIA (1943) [dir. Edmund Goulding] 0h 45m 23s:      THE ENCHANTED COTTAGE (1945) [dir. John Cromwell] 1h 14m 57s:      FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO – MURIEL (1962) by Alain Resnais & PEAU D’ANE (1970) by

Our January Special Subject is Part 2 of our look at the films of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, for which we watched Follow the Fleet (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), Carefree (1938), and The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939). Fred and Ginger's popularity was on the decline in his period, but these movies include some of Dave's favourites. We discuss the ways in which these films adhere to and depart from the formula established in their earlier films, for better and worse, then turn our attention to Carefree's curious portrayal of the insanity of psychiatry and Vernon and Irene Castle's unusual romanticization of marital love and its basis in shared work. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, the TIFF Lightbox Delphine Seyrig festival continues with cult horror movie Daughters of Darkness, the greatest movie of all time, Jeanne Dielman 23 Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles, and two feminist activist videos co-directed by Seyrig, S.C.U.M. Manifesto (in which Seyrig reads an excerpt from Valeria Solanas' b

For our Paramount 1942 episode, we hit the road with a comedy with a lot on its mind, Preston Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, and a comedy without any mind, the Hope/Crosby road movie Road to Morocco. We debate just how much deep thinking a comedy should do and consider what kind of thinking comedy itself can do without any help from an auteur. We also isolate some of the unusual features of the Hope/Crosby double act that lend Road to Morocco an invigorating unpleasantness. And then, in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we start off the TIFF Cinematheque Delphine Seyrig retrospective with a feminist documentary directed by the actress, Be Pretty and Shut Up!, and a couple of mind-bending European art films about the leisure class, Marguerite Duras' India Song and Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad.  Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:      SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS [dir. Preston Sturges] 0h 35m 39s:      ROAD TO MOROCCO [dir. David Butler] 0h 55m 34s:      FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO – Delphine Seyrig series at

There's Sometimes a Buggy says hello to 2023 and goodbye to Acteur Jean Arthur with three movies by three auteurs (Virginia Van Upp, Billy Wilder, and George Stevens): The Impatient Years (1944), A Foreign Affair (1948), and Shane (1953). Elise decides in real time that The Impatient Years, a sour mid-40s comedy of remarriage, is a great comedy because it's not very funny (using another Shakespeare reference to get there). We discuss the geopolitical context of Wilder's remarkable A Foreign Affair, agreeing that Arthur's persona in it has nothing to do with Capra; and George Stevens' leftist de-bunking of certain myths of the Western genre in Shane. And speaking of Shakespeare, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto we revisit a Gen X classic that neither of us had seen in about 20 years, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juilet, which prompts Elise to perceive the resemblance between Leonardo DiCaprio and Joan Crawford.  Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:        THE IMPATIENT YEARS (1944) [dir. Irving Cummings] 0h 26m 45s:      A FOREI

For our Universal 1941 Studios Year by Year episode we looked at two films about love and sex by a couple of master filmmakers, Rene Clair's The Flame of New Orleans, a terrific Bruce Cabot vehicle (Marlene Dietrich is also in it), and Gregory La Cava's Unfinished Business, a sexually daring romantic drama (with some screwball elements) starring Irene Dunne that manages to seem like a Pre-Code despite the year in which it was made. We dig into the presentation of Theresa Harris's scheming maid in The Flame of New Orleans, whose aims are much clearer than the ostensible heroine's; and into the painful adult emotions of the brilliant and constantly surprising Unfinished Business, which get into areas that most people don't want to discuss in real life, let alone see in movies.  Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:      THE FLAME OF NEW ORLEANS [dir Rene Clair] 0h 33m 08s:      UNFINISHED BUSINESS [dir. Gregory LaCava]   Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal Story by Clive Hirschhorn Additional studio information fr

The movies we discussed for our 2022 Christmas Special Subject are a little on the dark side, as all great Christmas movies are, but these one perhaps more obviously than ever. We paired Mitchell Leisen's Remember the Night (1940), with a screenplay by Preston Sturges, with William Dieterle's I'll Be Seeing You (1944), two movies about women who've fallen afoul of the law, and whose experience of falling out of step with society is contrasted with the comforts that bourgeois family life can offer. We zero in on the complexity of Barbara Stanwyck's relationship with her own morality in Remember the Night and the relationship that develops between Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotten's traumatized soldier, who struggles with a different kind of alienation, in I'll Be Seeing You. We also discuss the way that the two movies associate the holiday season and spirit with the material and emotional comforts of bourgeois family life even while showing that the empathy fostered by the latter has limitations.  Time Codes: 0h