Dana Andrews movies: Film noir actor excelled in both major and minor crime dramas. Dana Andrews movies: First-rate film noir actor excelled in both classics & minor fare One of the best-looking and most underrated actors of the studio era, Dana Andrews was a first-rate film noir/crime thriller star. Oftentimes dismissed as no more than a “dependable” or “reliable” leading man, in truth Andrews brought to life complex characters that never quite fit into the mold of Hollywood's standardized heroes – or rather, antiheroes. Unlike the cynical, tough-talking, and (albeit at times self-delusionally) self-confident characters played by the likes of Alan Ladd, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and, however lazily, Robert Mitchum, Andrews created portrayals of tortured men at odds with their social standing, their sense of ethics, and even their romantic yearnings. Not infrequently, there was only a very fine line separating his (anti)heroes from most movie villains.
- 1/22/2017
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
'Saint Joan': Constance Cummings as the George Bernard Shaw heroine. Constance Cummings on stage: From sex-change farce and Emma Bovary to Juliet and 'Saint Joan' (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Frank Capra, Mae West and Columbia Lawsuit.”) In the mid-1930s, Constance Cummings landed the title roles in two of husband Benn W. Levy's stage adaptations: Levy and Hubert Griffith's Young Madame Conti (1936), starring Cummings as a demimondaine who falls in love with a villainous character. She ends up killing him – or does she? Adapted from Bruno Frank's German-language original, Young Madame Conti was presented on both sides of the Atlantic; on Broadway, it had a brief run in spring 1937 at the Music Box Theatre. Based on the Gustave Flaubert novel, the Theatre Guild-produced Madame Bovary (1937) was staged in late fall at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre. Referring to the London production of Young Madame Conti, The...
- 11/10/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Paul Henreid in ‘Casablanca’: Freedom Fighter on screen, Blacklisted ‘Subversive’ off screen Turner Classic Movies’ Star of the Month of July 2013, Paul Henreid, bids you farewell this evening. TCM left the most popular, if not exactly the best, for last: Casablanca, Michael Curtiz’s 1943 Best Picture Oscar-winning drama, is showing at 7 p.m. Pt tonight. (Photo: Paul Henreid sings "La Marseillaise" in Casablanca.) One of the best-remembered movies of the studio era, Casablanca — not set in a Spanish or Mexican White House — features Paul Henreid as Czechoslovakian underground leader Victor Laszlo, Ingrid Bergman’s husband but not her True Love. That’s Humphrey Bogart, owner of a cafe in the titular Moroccan city. Henreid’s anti-Nazi hero is generally considered one of least interesting elements in Casablanca, but Alt Film Guide contributor Dan Schneider thinks otherwise. In any case, Victor Laszlo feels like a character made to order for Paul Henreid,...
- 7/31/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Blu-ray & DVD Release Date: June 26, 2011
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll simply can't get away from each other in The 39 Steps.
The 1935 film The 39 Steps remains one of filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock’s (Psycho) great thrillers and a mystery filled with the kind of moments that truly defined Hitchcock as “The Master of Suspense.”
The classic movie follows Canadian traveler Richard Hannay (Robert Donat, The Count of Monte Cristo), who stumbles into a spy-filled conspiracy that thrusts him into a hectic chase across the Scottish moors — a chase in which he is both the pursuer and the pursued — as well as into an expected romance with the cool Pamela (Madeleine Carroll, Cafe Society).
Adapted from the 1915 novel by John Buchan, The 39 Steps is one of Hitchcock’s classic wrong-man thrillers, anticipating such later Hitchcock movies as North by Northwest (1959) and, of course, The Wrong Man (1956).
Criterion’s...
Price: DVD $29.95, Blu-ray $39.95
Studio: Criterion
Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll simply can't get away from each other in The 39 Steps.
The 1935 film The 39 Steps remains one of filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock’s (Psycho) great thrillers and a mystery filled with the kind of moments that truly defined Hitchcock as “The Master of Suspense.”
The classic movie follows Canadian traveler Richard Hannay (Robert Donat, The Count of Monte Cristo), who stumbles into a spy-filled conspiracy that thrusts him into a hectic chase across the Scottish moors — a chase in which he is both the pursuer and the pursued — as well as into an expected romance with the cool Pamela (Madeleine Carroll, Cafe Society).
Adapted from the 1915 novel by John Buchan, The 39 Steps is one of Hitchcock’s classic wrong-man thrillers, anticipating such later Hitchcock movies as North by Northwest (1959) and, of course, The Wrong Man (1956).
Criterion’s...
- 4/4/2012
- by Laurence
- Disc Dish
You have to be 18 or older to see You Killed Me First, which, according to the Kw Institute of Contemporary Art, is the first exhibition on the Cinema of Transgression. There'll be a talk with Nick Zedd on Tuesday evening, followed by another with Richard Kern on Wednesday. The exhibition's opened this weekend and will be on view through April 9.
Also in Berlin, and starting tomorrow, the Arsenal will be screening a selection of titles from the Forum program at this year's just-wrapped Berlinale. Eleven films over eleven evenings, beginning with the three films by Yuzo Kawashima, The Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate (1957), Suzaki Paradise: Red Light (1956) and Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1954), and ending with the two restorations of films by Shirley Clarke, Ornette: Made in America (1984) and The Connection (1961).
Next week, the Arsenal wraps its series of films by Ulrike Ottinger by screening her Berlin Trilogy...
Also in Berlin, and starting tomorrow, the Arsenal will be screening a selection of titles from the Forum program at this year's just-wrapped Berlinale. Eleven films over eleven evenings, beginning with the three films by Yuzo Kawashima, The Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate (1957), Suzaki Paradise: Red Light (1956) and Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1954), and ending with the two restorations of films by Shirley Clarke, Ornette: Made in America (1984) and The Connection (1961).
Next week, the Arsenal wraps its series of films by Ulrike Ottinger by screening her Berlin Trilogy...
- 2/19/2012
- MUBI
(1939, PG, Optimum)
This cult classic, a surprisingly literate work made when anglophilia was riding high in Hollywood, draws most of its cast from the Hollywood cricket club and brings together Universal's cycle of gothic horror movies with the 1930s swashbuckler for a decent exercise in 15th-century British history. Directed by the talented Rowland V. Lee (The Count of Monte Cristo, Son of Frankenstein), it stars Basil Rathbone at his most villainously suave as the Duke of Gloucester, and charts his way to becoming Richard III and his defeat at Bosworth. He's assisted from first to last by Boris Karloff (playing hairless, crippled executioner Mord), and among his victims is Vincent Price in his first evil role as the Duke of Clarence, famously drowned in a butt of malmsey. The trio were reunited 20 years later as members of Roger Corman's rep company. There are fascinating touches (eg, Richard charting his...
This cult classic, a surprisingly literate work made when anglophilia was riding high in Hollywood, draws most of its cast from the Hollywood cricket club and brings together Universal's cycle of gothic horror movies with the 1930s swashbuckler for a decent exercise in 15th-century British history. Directed by the talented Rowland V. Lee (The Count of Monte Cristo, Son of Frankenstein), it stars Basil Rathbone at his most villainously suave as the Duke of Gloucester, and charts his way to becoming Richard III and his defeat at Bosworth. He's assisted from first to last by Boris Karloff (playing hairless, crippled executioner Mord), and among his victims is Vincent Price in his first evil role as the Duke of Clarence, famously drowned in a butt of malmsey. The trio were reunited 20 years later as members of Roger Corman's rep company. There are fascinating touches (eg, Richard charting his...
- 4/24/2010
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
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