Local Hero is a fish-out-of-water comedy about an American oilman who travels to a tiny Scottish town and tries to do business with the locals. So far, so run-of-the-mill. But look again. Bill Forsyth’s film is also about the price we pay for progress, the emptiness lurking in seemingly full lives and the beauty of […]
FilmStruck – A Fond Farewell
There are disappointments in the life of a cinephile that cause her to sigh and shrug. Say the implosion of MoviePass and a film-a-day deal that always seemed too good to last. And then there are injustices so great they make her rail against the heavens like Howard Beale in Network: FilmStruck is shutting down […]
A Very English Haunting: ‘Blithe Spirit’ (1945)
This post is part of the David Lean blogathon, hosted by Maddy Loves Her Classic Films. See the other posts here. When the ouija board made its commercial debut in the 1890s it was marketed as a parlour game. Charles Condomine takes a similarly playful approach to the supernatural in Blithe Spirit and unleashes havoc. […]
The Good Fight: ‘Foreign Correspondent’ (1940)
The post is part of the Second Annual Alfred Hitchcock blogathon, hosted by Maddy Loves Her Classic Films. See the other posts here. When it was released in August 1940, Foreign Correspondent was the most topical film Alfred Hitchcock had ever made. British troops had evacuated Dunkirk in May and early June. France and Norway […]
Songs of Enchantment: ‘The Tales of Hoffmann’ (1951)
The Tales of Hoffmann exists in defiance of the commonplace. Steeped in magic, bright with beauty, it explodes like a flare, dazzling you with colour and sound. You emerge dazed and longing to see it all over again. Only Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger could have made it. In the 1940s and ‘50s Powell and […]
Something to Sing About: Classic Hollywood comes to FilmStruck
Classic film fans have a new reason to cheer: FilmStruck is teaming up with Warner Bros. Digital Networks to expand its library to include hundreds of films from Golden Age Hollywood. Beginning today, subscribers to Turner Broadcasting’s streaming service will have access to films from the Warner Bros. catalogue including Singin’ in the Rain, Casablanca, Citizen […]
Jeu d’esprit: ‘The Story of a Cheat’ (1936)
Imagine an act in which the magician pulls a rabbit from a hat, followed by a grand piano, the Eiffel Tower and an undiscovered Van Gogh. This is Sacha Guitry’s picaresque The Story of a Cheat. Guitry plays the eponymous Cheat (we never learn his name) who, well into disreputable middle age, settles down to […]
Light and Shadow: Ray Milland
When I was eight or nine, I wandered into the living room and found my mother watching a film I didn’t recognize. Grace Kelly was pleading with a man not to reveal their affair to her once distant, now much-reformed husband. Then, ‘Mr. Kelly’ arrived. He was charming, witty, impeccably dressed and secretly plotting to […]
A Shortlist of Films I Wish Were in the Criterion Collection
The biannual Barnes and Noble Criterion Collection sale is now on. Or as I like to think of it, Christmas in July. Founded in 1984 the Criterion Collection, as the back of each of its DVDs and Blu-rays will tell you, is “a continuing series of important classic and contemporary films.” It’s a bespoke label […]
Biography of a Hit: The Success of ‘My Man Godfrey’ (1936)
This essay was originally published on ArtsandCrit.com (now sadly defunct) and has been dusted off and spruced up for its Retro Movie Buff debut. In 1936, the Great Depression was in its fifth year, the average movie ticket cost $0.25 and a film review in trade magazine Variety made history by christening a new genre: […]