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

Our penultimate Jean Arthur Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode features a couple of sexy romantic comedies, George Stevens' The More the Merrier and William A. Seiter's The Lady Takes a Chance (both 1943), that Arthur made at the height of her stardom and glamour, when she was in her early 40s - at which point she retired from movies. (Though not quite yet, or permanently, as we'll see in the final episode.) We discuss the different ways Arthur smolders with co-stars Joe McCrea and John Wayne; George Stevens' way with smutty comedy; the effect of the Production Code on onscreen eroticism; and Arthur's particular brand of comedic sex appeal. How did we end up talking about sex so much in a Jean Arthur episode, after establishing that she's "not that kind" of star? That's one of the mysteries of her persona!  Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:        THE MORE THE MERRIER (1943) [dir. George Stevens] 0h 53m 33s:      A LADY TAKES A CHANCE (1943) [dir. William A. Seiter] +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project

Our RKO 1941 episode turns out to be well-timed, giving us an opportunity to weigh in on the 2022 Sight & Sound Critics' Poll, canon formation, and the uses (if any) of canons. From there we segue into a discussion of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane and its place in the cinematic canon, and then into a discussion of the film itself, and especially Kane's relationship with Susan Alexander Kane. Our second film, another unique work of art from the brief period when RKO's motto was Genius Over Showmanship, is William Dieterle's The Devil and Daniel Webster. We talk about it as a Popular Front movie, and how it may succeed and fail in that regard, as well as about the way it presents human nature and the concept of evil.  Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:      2022 Sight and Sound Poll  0h 23m 13s:      CITIZEN KANE [dir. Orson Welles] 1h 08m 49s:      THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER [dir. William Dieterle]   Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Vernon Harbin   Additional studio information

This episode of our Jean Arthur Acteurist Oeuvre-view provides us with two examples of Hollywood leftism to discuss: a Norman Krasna department store comedy directed by Sam Wood, The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), and a comedy of ideas directed by George Stevens, The Talk of the Town (1942). We discuss the way The Devil and Miss Jones portrays political radicalism and the difficulty of labor organizing within the framework of a Hollywood fairy tale; and the marriage of moral and intellectual debate to an unconventional, utopic household arrangement in The Talk of the Town.  Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:        THE DEVIL AND MISS JONES (1941) [dir. Sam Wood] 0h 43m 27s:      THE TALK OF THE TOWN (1942) [dir. George Stevens]     +++ * 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

Our November Special Subject is Sirk Noir-vember: four noir or noir-adjacent movies directed by Douglas Sirk in the late 1940s/early 50s: Lured (1947), Sleep, My Love (1948), Shockproof (1949), and Thunder on the Hill (1951). We discuss to what extent these films can be considered "auteur" works and in what ways they qualify as noirs; Sirk's use of actor personas and his own "acteur" theory; the relative merits of Sam Fuller's and Harry Cohn's ideas about how to end a movie; nun movie tropes; and much more.  Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:        Sirk in Hollywood 0h 6m 34s:        LURED (1947) [dir. Douglas Sirk] 0h 31m 54s:      SLEEP, MY LOVE (1948) [dir. Douglas Sirk] 0h 45m 02s:      SHOCKPROOF (1949) [dir. Douglas Sirk] 0h 57m 39s:      THUNDER ON THE HILL (1951) [dir. Douglas Sirk]   +++ * 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

American involvement in WWII is imminent at the time of these 20th Century Fox selections from late 1941 for this Studios Year by Year episode, producing what may be the first "true" noir, I Wake Up Screaming (directed by H. Bruce Humberstone), and a plea for American solidarity with England, war correspondent movie Confirm or Deny (directed by Archie Mayo, from a story co-written by Samuel Fuller). We talk about what it might mean to be a "true" noir and what might differentiate the Fox noir from the noirs of other studios, about the very special screen presence of Joan Bennett (entering her noir phase), and about cozy war films. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment we briefly discuss three movies: Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (directed by Richard Brooks), Preston Strurges' The Palm Beach Story, and Bodil Ipsen's Melody of Murder.    Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:      I WAKE UP SCREAMING (dir. H. Bruce Humberstone) 0h 42m 23s:      CONFIRM OR DENY (dir. Archie Mayo) 1h 04m 12s:      FEAR

This week's Jean Arthur Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode is a directed-by-Wesley Ruggles double feature of disparate genres: the bigamy farce Too Many Husbands and the epic Western Arizona (both 1940). Although the films, both with screenplays by Ruggles' frequent collaborator Claude Binyon, interrogate marriage and gender respectively, one ends with the reassertion of patriarchal authority, while the other... fails to stick to its (or her) guns. We talk about Ruggles' special version of the romantic comedy triangle, Jean Arthur's erotic face journeys, and the limits of Hollywood's tolerance for gender nonconformity in female stars.  Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:        TOO MANY HUSBANDS [dir. Wesley Ruggles] 0h 25m 48s:      ARIZONA [dir. Wesley Ruggles]   +++ * 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 Int

For our Warner Bros. 1941 episode we watched two Raoul Walsh love triangle movies: Manpower, in which Edward G. Robinson pines for Marlene Dietrich, who pines for George Raft; and one of Dave's all-time faves, The Strawberry Blonde, in which Olivia de Havilland pines for James Cagney, who pines for Rita Hayworth. We discuss Walsh's treatment of women as desiring subjects; the productive tension between acteur and studi-auteur in the pairing of Dietrich and Warner Bros.; Walsh's unHawksian take on male dynamics in dangerous workplaces, and more. But what makes these uniquely Warner Bros. pictures? You'll have to listen to the episode to find out.  Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:      THE STRAWBERRY BLONDE [dir. Raoul Walsh] 0h 44m 26s:      MANPOWER [dir. Raoul Walsh]   Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by John Douglas Eames Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler                                     +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewin

Our Halloween 2022 subject is "The Haunted Mizoguchi," for which we looked at two films made by Kenji Mizoguchi toward the end of his life: the supernatural fantasy Ugetsu (1953) and a film we agree is a candidate for best movie ever made, Sansho the Bailiff (1954). We use Mizoguchi's explicit treatment of ghostly themes in Ugetsu as a springboard for discussing the haunting qualities of Sansho the Bailiff and the relationship between nature, the transcendent, and the miraculous in the film. We also consider the question of whether the film argues for political action or resignation as the best way of dealing with the systemic injustice from which we can't seem to escape and the threat of hopelessness.    Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:        UGETSU (1953) [dir. Kenji Mizoguchi] 0h 34m 32s:      SANSHO THE BAILIFF (1954) [dir. Kenji Mizoguchi] 1h 20m 29s:      Listener Mail with Daves and Elise – on Capra, Comics & Noir City      +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late S

In this week's Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we arrive at arguably Jean Arthur's biggest year of stardom, 1939, with her appearance opposite Cary Grant in Only Angels Have Wings, Howard Hawks' ode to male professionalism, and her iconic performance in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, opposite Jimmy Stewart. We do our best to get at the essences of Hawks and Capra and consider whether Arthur can embody both the Hawksian and the Capra woman. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we discuss Jacques Rivette's Love on the Ground (1984) as a kind of inversion of his surrealist classic Celine and Julie Go Boating.    Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:        ONLY ANGELS HAVE WINGS (1939) [dir. Howard Hawks] 0h 42m 44s:      MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON (1939) [dir. Frank Capra] 1h 26m 57s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – L’amour par terre  AKA Love on the Ground (1984)  by Jacques Rivette   +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridi

For this MGM 1941 episode, we again pair a classic with a rarity: Cukor's A Woman's Face, starring Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, and Conrad Veidt, and The Trial of Mary Dugan, directed by Norman Z. McLeod and starring Laraine Day, Robert Young, and Tom Conway (aka "The Nice George Sanders"). We discuss A Woman's Face as a proto-Warner Bros. Crawford noir, the persona of Robert Young, the uses of no-subtext acting, and the starkly different construction of these two women-on-trial movies. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we take a brief look at Buck and the Preacher, directed by and starring Sidney Poitier (and co-starring future acteurist spotlight subject Ruby Dee, although she doesn’t get a lot of screen time in this one).    Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:      A WOMAN’S FACE [dir. George Cukor] 0h 50m 59s:      THE TRIAL OF MARY DUGAN [dir. Norman Z. McLeod] 1h 21m 53s:      FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO:  Sidney Poitier’s Buck and the Preacher  (1972)   Studio Film Capsules provided by The

In our Jean Arthur Acteurist Oeuvre-view this week, we look at two of Arthur's best-known comedies, Easy Living (1937), directed by Mitchell Leisen, with a screenplay by Preston Sturges, and You Can't Take It With You (1938), directed by Frank Capra. Dave explains why Jean Arthur's performance in Easy Living is his all-time favourite comedy performance by an actress. (Hint: it involves a pig called "Wafford.") We ponder Arthur's transformation into a glamorous romantic lead, even as she retains her (slightly off-kilter) ordinary person qualities, and the contrasting comic visions of Sturges and Capra. Then, in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we discuss our second double feature of Tod Browning's Dracula and Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula, the subject of our 2019 Halloween episode. This time around we find a lot to say about Coppola's Dracula as a Dionysian Christ figure who can lead Winona Ryder out of the death-in-life of civilization.  Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:        EASY LIVING (193

A tonally disparate pair of great films for Paramount 1941: Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, one of the greatest movies ever made, according to Elise; and a real rarity, William Wellman's Reaching for the Sun, starring some important Sturges actors: Joel McCrea, Ellen Drew, and Eddie Bracken. We interrogate the strange central relationship in The Lady Eve, examining its sadistic, maternal, narcissistic, you-name-it qualities, and Sturges’ masterful blending of comedy tropes, melodrama structure, and painful personal psychology. Then we turn to the interesting mixture of "universal" (20th century Western) gender tropes and modern modifications of them in Wellman's tale of a man torn between urban opportunity and Thoreauvian freedom. Then, in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we briefly discuss the Coen brothers' The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) and its curious misunderstandings of Capra, and Brian De Palma's brilliant Femme Fatale and its channeling of Lynch and Ver

In this week's entry in our Jean Arthur Acteurist Oeuvre-view series, we look at Alfred E. Green's comedy More Than A Secretary (1936) and Frank Borzage's genre-defying screwball melodrama History Is Made at Night (1937), pairing Arthur with up-and-coming romantic lead Charles Boyer. We compare More Than A Secretary with Green's better-known film about sexual politics in patriarchal office culture, Baby Face, and the possibly influential blending of genres and the lovers' achievement of Borzagean transcendence in History Is Made at Night, which gave Arthur her most glamourous role up to that point.    Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:      MORE THAN A SECRETARY (1936) [dir. Alfred E. Green] 0h 36m 37s:    HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT (1937) [dir. Frank Borzage]   +++ * 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 In

In Part 2 of our look at The German Sirk, the director discovers "cinematic values" with two unhinged melodramas that place a strong emphasis on music, Schlußakkord (Final Chord/Final Accord), from 1936, and La Habanera, from 1937. We dig into a couple of Sirk's complicated "villains" in these movies about extra-marital love triangles, and discuss La Habanera's Nazi propaganda overtones and the ways in which the film possibly subverts them. Then, in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we give our impressions of Alfred Hitchcock's deeply personal, disturbing, and bonkers Marnie, an old favourite of Elise's and new favourite of Dave's.    Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:      THE FINAL CHORD (1936) aka THE FINAL ACCORD 0h 32m 51s:    CHEATED BY THE WIND (1937) aka LA HABANERA 0h 51m 49s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964)   +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule

For this Universal 1940 Studios Year by Year episode, we look at a Vincent Price double feature that also features the same director (Joe May), cinematographer (Milton Krasner), and key screenwriter (Lester Cole, who will become one of the Hollywood Ten): The House of the Seven Gables, an adaptation of the Nathaniel Hawthorne novel, and The Invisible Man Returns, the first sequel to James Whale's adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel. We talk non-naturalistic acting, the genius of Vincent Price, and the progressive moment of 1940, when anti-fascism gives courage to Hollywood's leftists.    Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:      THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES [dir. Joe May] 0h 45m 28s:      THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS [dir. Joe May]   Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal 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 Jea

In this week's Jean Arthur Acteurist Oeuvre-view cast, we revisit Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) for thoughts old and (hopefully) new, and then look at two minor screwball comedy variations on genre films from 1936, the RKO murder mystery The Ex-Mrs. Bradford, co-starring William Powell, and a weird little riff on Mr. Deeds combined with a crime thriller, Adventure in Manhattan, co-starring Joel McCrea. Join us as we discuss Gary Cooper's complex performance and creepy sexlessnes and Arthur's wholesome lack of naivety and self-lovemaking in Mr. Deeds, a deeply romantically and politically confused movie, and the reasons why Arthur doesn't (and shouldn't) give screwball performances in her most famous roles.  Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:      MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN (1936) [dir. Frank Capra] 0h 31m 59s:    THE EX-MRS. BRADFORD (1936) [dir. Stephen Roberts] 0h 41m 54s:    ADVENTURE IN MANHATTAN (1936) [dir. Edward Ludwig] 0h 56m 03s:    Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – CELINE ET JULIE VONT EN BATEAU (1972

This week's studio is RKO, 1940, and we have two great movies: Vigil in the Night, starring Carole Lombard as a saintly nurse and Anne Shirley as her flawed sister in George Stevens' noirish medical drama; and Abe Lincoln in Illinois, based on Robert E. Sherwood's play, with Raymond Massey reprising his stage role of Abraham Lincoln. We discuss the latter as an anti-fascist film and argue for both films as examples of RKO's particular brand of progressivism, which continues even after the departure of Pandro S. Berman.    Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:      VIGIL IN THE NIGHT [dir. George Stevens] 0h 47m 01s:      ABE LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS [dir. John Cromwell]   Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Vernon Harbin 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 (co

Our Special Subject for August is also our first look at German filmmaking under the Nazis, with two mid-1930s films by left-wing director and future Hollywood auteur Douglas Sirk: The Girl from the Marsh Croft, based on the novel by Selma Lagerlöf, and Pillars of Society, based on the play by Henrik Ibsen. We consider the question of how it was possible to make liberal films under these circumstances and find early evidence of Sirk's interest in "split characters" and unconventional protagonists.    Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:        Introductory discussion on Sirk at UFA during the 1933 to 1937 period 0h 13m 15s:      THE GIRL FROM THE MARSH CROFT (1935) [dir. Douglas Sirk] 0h 38m 15s:      PILLARS OF SOCIETY (1936) [dir. Douglas Sirk]   +++ * 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

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Jean Arthur – Part 4: THE DEFENSE RESTS (1934), THE PUBLIC MENACE (1935) & IF YOU COULD ONLY COOK (1935) In this week's Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we look at 3 Jean Arthur movies: The Defense Rests (1934), an excellent corrupt lawyer drama that we were previously unable to find; and from 1935, two very different romantic comedies featuring real or pretend marriages of convenience, The Public Menace and If You Could Only Cook. The simultaneously idealistic and pragmatic young lawyer, screwball liar, and Depression comedy heroine she plays in each of these films respectively give us several aspects of Arthur's emerging screen persona to discuss in this last moment before she finds true fame.    Time Codes: 0h 1m 00s:      THE DEFENSE RESTS (1934) [dir. Lambert Hillyer] 0h 35m 56s:    THE PUBLIC MENACE (1935) [dir. Erle C. Kenton] 0h 46m 09s:    IF YOU COULD ONLT COOK (1935) [dir. William A. Seiter] +++ * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late

For this Fox 1940 episode, we look at a couple of films with the same director (Henry Hathaway), same cinematographer (Arthur Miller), and same nominal star (Tyrone Power), but radically different stories. Brigham Young tells the story of the persecution of the Mormons and their journey westward from Illinois to the Great Salt Lake, recasting this American epic as an implicit anti-Nazi tale with progressive values. Then we shift from Fox's traditional sophisticated "rural" storytelling to their new urban focus with the crime drama Johnny Apollo, which casts a cool eye on the American system in this moment of transition from Great Depression to WWII.  Time Codes: 0h 01m 00s:      BRIGHAM YOUNG [dir. Henry Hathaway] 0h 42m 50s:      JOHNNY APOLLO [dir. Henry Hathaway]   Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of 20th Century Fox by Tony Thomas & Aubrey Solomon Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler                                     +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ri