The Awful Truth (1937) ****

  Cary Grant and Irene Dunne were a match made in screwball heaven. Her impeccable comedic timing and his gift for physical comedy made them an irresistible pair. While The Lady Eve (1941) is my all-time favorite screwball comedy, The Awful Truth (1937) comes in as a close second. Perhaps there aren’t any spectacular cinematographic shots or jaw-dropping dramatic performances, but to pull off a comedy filled with such sophisticated wit and engaging...

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I Walked with a Zombie (1943) **

Producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur made three low-budget ‘horror’ films together for RKO: Cat People (1942), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), and The Leopard Man (1943).  For me, they are slightly amusing looks at the supernatural with a heavy dose of eerie cheese on the side.  The acting is always less than stellar and the set productions are minimal, but the stories are always oddly entertaining and told in a highly unusual...

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Gaslight (1944) ***

(There may be spoilers in this post.) What man would choose jewels over Ingrid Bergman? Liberace does not count… Director George Cukor’s Gaslight (1944) is a taut drama filled with suspense and anxiety.  Blessed by a spectacular cast of Hollywood heavyweights, Cukor, with the help of MGM’s suppression team, totally eclipsed the 1940 British film version of Patrick Hamilton’s play Gas Light, which was called Angel Street on Broadway. Nominated...

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Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) ***

Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) holds a special place in my heart, as it was the first film my mother ever took me to see.  Mind you, I saw it in re-issue, and only after I was so frightened by the newspaper advertisement for Charlotte’s Web (1973, also in re-issue) that I refused to see a film with a menacing-looking spider. In retrospect, I now know that I saw the more frightening of the two.  As a child it was easy...

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The Third Man (1949) ***

(There possibly could be spoilers contained within this post.) If anyone ever deserved an Oscar for Best Cinematography it was Robert Krasker for his outstanding work on The Third Man (1949). Yes, the story is intriguing and the actors are engaging, but it’s the cinematogrphy that makes this film the preeminent film noir.  Director Carol Reed was a visual genius and a great handler of enormous egos.  His bold use of off-angle shots and...

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The Life of Emile Zola (1937) **1/2

For me, director William Dieterle’s The Life of Emile Zola (1937) is one of those films that I admire but don’t really want to watch over and over again. As a former history teacher it provided a nice tool to visually educate my students about the Dreyfuss Affair, but that’s really it. Yes, it won a Best Picture Oscar, but that had more to do with Heinz Herald, Geza Herczeg, and Norman Reilly Raine’s Oscar-winning screenplay about one of the most...

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Throne of Blood (Kumonosu Jo) 1957 **

Long before Tony Montana went down in a blaze of bullets in Scarface (1983), Taketoki Washizu (Toshiro Mifune) went out in a flurry of arrows in Throne of Blood (1957). There are memorable death scenes, and then there are extraordinary comeuppances that fell insane Japanese feudal lords.  Of course, famed director Akira Kurosawa was quite adept at staging furious and glorious battle scenes, but for me Washizu’s timely end is unforgettable....

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