There's Sometimes a Buggy

Our examination of the film career of Lilli Palmer continues with a couple of excellent films that show us Palmer's range when playing "loveable": But Not for Me, in which she gives a comedic performance as the ex-wife of a Broadway producer played by Clark Gable, benevolently interfering in his budding relationship with young actress Carroll Baker; and Conspiracy of Hearts, in which Palmer plays an Italian Mother Superior who persuades her nuns to help Jewish children escape from a concentration camp. Penned by a couple of American blacklistees, Conspiracy of Hearts has a surprisingly complex view of religion, as But Not for Me does of age difference relationships, offering plenty of fodder for good movie talk! Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      BUT NOT FOR ME (1959) [dir. Walter Lang] 0h 24m 25s:      CONSPIRACY OF HEARTS (1960) [dir. Ralph Thomas] +++ * 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 piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

For this Warner Bros. 1946 episode we watched two fantastical biopics, Devotion (directed by Curtis Bernhardt), starring Ida Lupino and Olivia de Havilland as Emily and Charlotte Brontë, and Night and Day (directed by Michael Curtiz), starring Cary Grant as Cole Porter and Monty Woolley as himself. We found them to be like night and day in terms of their quality, but you'll have to listen to find out which of the two we deemed redeemable. And then for something completely different: in a long Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, tragic love, communism, colonialism, demons, and various approaches to deconstructing cinema dominate our discussion of the first half of TIFF Cinematheque's Marguerite Duras retrospective.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      DEVOTION [dir. Curtis Bernhardt] 0h 33m 42s:      NIGHT AND DAY [dir. Michael Curtiz] 0h 46m 48s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Détruire dit-elle (1969), La femme du Gange (1974), India Song (1975), Son nom de Venise dans Calcutta désert (1976) and Le camion (1977) by Marguerite Duras Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers 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 Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

In our April Special Subject, Part 1 of our look at the films of Samuel Goldwyn, we discuss Dark Angel (1935), These Three (1936), Dodsworth (1936), and Wuthering Heights (1939), a selection heavy on Dave favourites Merle Oberon, William Wyler, and Gregg Toland. We ask in what sense these are "quality" films, and in what ways they escape our expectations of that category, calling attention to the theme of psychological violence in These Three and Wuthering Heights and the role played by gender double standards in the tragedies of Dark Angel and Dodsworth. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto we discuss Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World (2001) and draw a surprising conclusion about it.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      Brief Introduction to Samual Goldwyn 0h 12m 18s:      THE DARK ANGEL (1935) [dir. Sidney Franklin] 0h 31m 44s:      THESE THREE (1936) [dir. William Wyler] 0h 54m 40s:      DODSWORTH (1936) [dir. William Wyler] 1h 09m 24s:      WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939) [dir. William Wyler] 1h 26m 12s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Ghost World (2001) by Terry Zwigoff +++ * 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 piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

For this week's Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we watched Jacques Becker's The Lovers of Montparnasse (1958), in which Palmer, playing Modigliani's rejected lover Beatrice Hastings, perfects her persona of brittle dissociation; and Mädchen in Uniform, the 1958 remake of the famous Weimar-era film about a teenager at an all-girls' boarding school who falls in love with her teacher. Our viewings provoke topics from the relationship between art and capitalism to the relationship between gender, sexuality, and militarism.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      LES AMANTS DE MONTPARNASSE (1958) [dir. Jacques Becker] 0h 34m 14s:       MADCHEN IN UNIFORM (1958) [dir. Giza Von Radvanyi] +++ * 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 piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

This MGM 1946 Studios Year by Year episode is a Jules Dassin double feature that shows the range of the famed blacklistee even during his most constrained studio period: the noirish romantic drama Two Smart People, about two con artists (Lucille Ball and John Hodiak) and a cop who are all out to con each other; and the remarkable A Letter for Evie (starring Marsha Hunt and Hume Cronyn), a very postmodern (but also hilarious) deconstruction of gender conventions that's also a moving romance.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      1946 at MGM and Hollywod (per John Douglas Eames) 0h 04m 22s:      TWO SMART PEOPLE [dir. Jules Dassin]            0h 26m 38s:      A LETTER FOR EVIE [dir. Jules Dassin] Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames 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 (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!   

For this Lilli Palmer episode of our Acteurist Oeuvre-view series, we watched another West German movie, Devil in Silk (directed by Rolf Hansen), and Life Together (directed by Clément Duhour), a tribute to famed French playwright, screenwriter, and film director Sacha Guitry with an all-star cast. We analyze the surprisingly sophisticated structure of Duhour and Guitry's horned-up middlebrow French comedy (warning: one of the comedy sequences discussed is disturbingly racist), while Devil in Silk answers a question it never occurred to us to ask: what would Leave Her to Heaven be like if Lilli Palmer played the Gene Tierney part?  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      TEUFEL IN SEIDE (1956) [dir. Rolf Hansen] 0h 44m 04s:       LA VIE À DEUX (1958) [dir. Clément Duhour] +++ * 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 piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

In this Paramount 1946 episode we look at two movies featuring Veronica Lake which otherwise could not be more dissimilar: Miss Susie Slagle's (directed by John Berry), about the trials of pre-WWI Johns Hopkins medical students living in a boarding house presided over by Lillian Gish; and famous Lake/Ladd noir outing, The Blue Dahlia (directed by George Marshall and written by Raymond Chandler). We discuss the potential influence of the leftists involved in making Miss Susie Slagle's on its portrayal of race and gender and debate the amount of damage done to The Blue Dahlia by the studio-mandated change to the plot. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we take a brief look at three very different movies: Tarkovsky's Nostalghia (stolen by a German Shepherd), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives (stolen by Linda Darnell), and Douglas Sirk's All I Desire (starring Barbara Stanwyck).  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      MISS SUSIE SLAGLE’S [dir. John Berry] 0h 27m 06s:      THE BLUE DAHLIA [dir. George Marshall] 0h 48m 13s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Nostalghia (1983) by Andrei Tarkovsky; A Letter to Three Wives (1948) by Joseph L. Mankiewicz; and All I Desire (1953) by Douglas Sirk Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames 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 (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

In this Universal 1945 episode of The  Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year, we look at a couple of noir-adjacent films, Robert Siodmak's The Suspect, starring Charles Laughton as an abused husband who looks for a way out of his miserable marriage when he meets sweet and lovely Ella Raines, and the comedy/crime film Lady on a Train, which stars Deanna Durbin as an exuberant and resourceful murder mystery addict who gets involved in a real investigation when she witnesses a murder from her train window. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss three short documentaries about James Baldwin, along with another Douglas Sirk masterpiece, There's Always Tomorrow (1956).  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      THE SUSPECT [dir. Robert Siodmak] 0h 27m 39s:      LADY ON A TRAIN [dir. Charles David] 0h 38m 11s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – TIFF Cinémathèque – There’s Always Tomorrow (1956) by Douglas Sirk and three short documentaries about James Baldwin 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 Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

In this Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we discuss Tay Garnett's Main Street to Broadway (1953), a pleasant curiosity with an all-star New York theatre cast, including Palmer and Rex Harrison in a brief sandwich-themed couple cameo, but nearly stolen by Lynchian radio humourist Herb Shriner; and Fireworks (1954), Palmer's first German film, in which she plays a circus performer possessed by the guiding spirit of her clown father, as she expresses in the well-known song "O mein Papa." And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss Douglas Sirk's outlandish yet subdued mystical melodrama Magnificent Obsession and the depressive side of soap opera. Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      MAIN STREET TO BROADWAY (1953) [dir. Tay Garnett] 0h 24m 49s:      FEUERWERK (1954) [dir. Kurt Hoffman] 0h 43m 57s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – TIFF Cinémathèque – Magnificent Obsession  (1954) by 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) * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

For this RKO 1945 episode, two beautifully filmed noirs (by Harry J. Wild), Edwin L. Marin's Johnny Angel, another noir with a femme fatale (Claire Trevor) who loves too much (and gets a very unexpected - and gory - redemption), and Edward Dmytryk's Cornered, in which Dick Powell learns why you shouldn't hunt down Nazis and kill them with your bare hands, but doesn't seem very interested. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss the 1982 documentary I Heard It Through the Grapevine, in which James Baldwin talks to the people who were there about the failures of the civil rights movement and what they say about America.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      JOHNNY ANGEL [dir. Edwin L. Marin] 0h 29m 15s:      CORNERED [dir. Edward Dmytrk] 0h 46m 40s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – TIFF Cinémathèque – I Heard it Through the Grapevine (1982) by Dick Fontaine & Pat Hartley 0h 53m 22s:      Listener mail with Simon!   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 (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!         

  For our Valentine's 2024 episode we looked at two movies about obsession that interrogate the notion of romantic love: Alfred Hitchcock's Marnie (1964) and Chantal Akerman's La Captive (2000). If you think an extensive discussion of sexual assault and of what it would mean to be "pressed to death" by your partner's love sounds like essential Valentine's Day content, this episode is for you. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, a very brief discussion of Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind, focusing on the wild performances of Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      MARNIE (1964) [dir. Alfred Hitchcock] 0h 55m 47s:      LA CAPTIVE (2000) [dir. Chantal Akerman] 1h 20m 42s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – TIFF Cinémathèque – Written on the Wind (1956) by 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) * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

Our Fox 1945 episode features two of the greatest and greatest-looking film noirs: Otto Preminger's Fallen Angel and John M. Stahl's Leave Her to Heaven. We unpack the movies' love triangles, in which two strong-willed women exert their influence over a passive man; their treatment of the topics of love and obsession; the unique cinematic qualities of Alice Faye's presence and Gene Tierney's face; how Gene Tierney and Linda Darnell differ from the stereotypical femme fatale - and much more.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      FALLEN ANGEL [dir. Otto Preminger] 0h 36m 39s:      LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN [dir. John M. Stahl]    Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of 20th Century-Fox by Aubrey Solomon and Tony Thomas 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 (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

For this week's Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we watched two films pairing acteur Lilli Palmer with then-husband Rex Harrison. We discuss the potential relationship of thriller/courtroom drama The Long Dark Hall (1951) to the scandal plaguing their marriage at the time and consider The Four Poster (1952) as a "marriage film," and what it has to say about that social and spiritual state. And in a packed Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we talk about five films from the TIFF Cinematheque's “Alone in the Arena” series: Rounders (1998), When We Were Kings (1996), He Got Game (1998), Any Given Sunday (1999), and The Color of Money (1986). Elise reveals that one of these movies finally made her understand what it feels like to care about a sport.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      THE LONG DARK HALL (1951) [dir. Anthony Bushell & Reginald Beck] 0h 20m 06s:      THE FOUR POSTER (1952) [dir. Irving Reis] 0h 37m 37s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – TIFF Cinémathèque’s “Alone in the Arena” series – Rounders (1998) by John Dahl, When We Were Kings (1996) by Leon Gast, He Got Game (1998) by Spike Lee, Any Given Sunday (1999) by Oliver Stone & The Color of Money (1986) by Martin Scorsese +++ * 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 piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

For our January Special Subject, we look at three silent "family comedies" by Ozu, Tokyo Chorus (1931), I Was Born, But... (1932), and Passing Fancy (1933), although we argue that "comedy" doesn't entirely encompass the emotional range of these films. We argue that the melancholy of late Ozu is already discernible in these tales of father-son conflict and confrontation with life's disappointing nature, although Passing Fancy offers a different kind of father-son relationship and unique brand of comedy. Then in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss Robert Rossen's The Hustler as a blacklisting allegory and the cinematic pyrotechnics of Brian De Palma's Snake Eyes.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      TOKYO CHORUS (1931) [dir. Yasujiro Ozu] 0h 26m 53s:      I WAS BORN, BUT… (1932) [dir. Yasujiro Ozu] 0h 38m 36s:      PASSING FANCY (1933) [dir. Yasujiro Ozu] 0h 57m 41s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – The Hustler (1961) directed by Robert Rossen & Snake Eyes (1998) directed by Brian De Palma +++ * 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 piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

This Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode tackles two more films made with leftist colleagues, Elliott Nugent's My Girl Tisa, a Popular Front-style tale of early 20th century immigrants and the American Dream, and Lewis Milestone’s quirky, stylistically inventive comedy No Minor Vices (written by Arnold Manoff). We also watched François Villiers' fascinating Hans le Marin (also known as Wicked City), a vehicle for Maria Montez co-starring and co-written by her husband, Jean-Pierre Aumont, which Elise considers the Frenchest movie she's ever seen; Palmer co-stars as the Romani rival to Aumont's obsession. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we talk about Kira Muratova's The Long Farewell (1971), a saga of the tormenting love between a mother and her teenage son, told in a distinctive style that did not find favour with the Soviet authorities during the Brezhnev era.  Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      MY GIRL TISA (1948) [dir. Elliott Nugent] 0h 25m 40s:      NO MINOR VICES (1948) [dir. Lewis Milestone] 0h 41m 02s:      HANS LE MARIN aka THE WICKED CITY (1949) [dir. François Villiers] 0h 57m 41s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – The Long Farewell (1971) directed by Kira Muratova +++ * 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 piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

For this round of Warner Bros. 1945, we take on a very successful movie with two very big stars and one very terrible reputation, Saratoga Trunk, with Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper, and a fascinating little B noir, Danger Signal, with Zachary Scott being his usual cheeky self and getting women upset. We discuss the stylistic risks of Saratoga Trunk, the genius of Ingrid Bergman, the subtleties of Gary Cooper, and Danger Signal's unusual feminist screenplay (from a novel by FOTP Phyllis Bottome). And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we deliver a quick verdict on the final entry in TIFF Cinematheque's Lubitsch series, Design for Living.    Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      Warner Brothers Overview, 1945 0h 03m 59s:      SARATOGA TRUNK (1945) [dir. Sam Wood] 0h 35m 05s:      DANGER SIGNAL (1945) [dir. Robert Florey] 0h 55m 38s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Ernst Lubitsch Retrospective at TIFF Cinémathèque: Design For Living (1933)   Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers 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 Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

In this Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we discuss Palmer's first two Hollywood films, Fritz Lang's anti-fascist spy drama, Cloak and Dagger (1946), and Robert Rossen's socially critical boxing noir, Body and Soul (1947). We dig into the social context of these films, asking why these progressive writers and directors wanted to tell these stories at this moment, and how their political sympathies shaped the stories. We also talk about the persona emerging from Lilli Palmer's wartime British and American films, and her character in Body and Soul as representing the filmmakers' perspective on John Garfield's protagonist. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, our attendance of the Lubitsch retrospective at the TIFF Cinematheque continues with Trouble in Paradise and a Christmas Eve viewing of The Shop Around the Corner, which prompt us to a brief consideration of the underlying (and sometimes overt) social criticism of Lubitsch's Depression-era films.    Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      CLOAK AND DAGGER (1946) [dir. Fritz Lang] 0h 26m 45s:      BODY AND SOUL (1947) [dir. Robert Rossen] 0h 58m 51s:  Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Ernst Lubitsch’s Trouble in Paradise (1932) and The Shop Around the Corner (1939)   +++ * 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 piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

For our December 2023 Special Subject, we're having ourselves a Monty Woolley Christmas! We look at three Christmas-adjacent movies from the 1940s featuring the anti-Santa in roles big and small: The Man Who Came to Dinner, in which he stars as  waspish radio personality Sheridan Whiteside, who takes over the home of a bourgeois Middle American couple; Life Begins at Eight-Thirty, in which he plays a great actor who's been broken by alcoholism; and The Bishop's Wife, in which he adds some New York Bohemian intellectual colour to the holiday classic. We discuss the cultural and political implications of The Man Who Came to Dinner and the uncanniness of Cary Grant and debate the appeal of alcoholism. Then in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we briefly discuss Ernst Lubitsch's Cluny Brown (fully discussed in our Jennifer Jones series) and a new release, a Christmas movie even darker than our Monty Woolleys, William Oldroyd's Eileen, starring Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway (a rare spoiler-free exchange of impressions from us). And as a bonus, we become possessed by the spirit of Monty Woolley and rant about how much we hate contemporary movie trailers. (No analysis, just invective.) Happy Holidays!  Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      Extremely brief Introduction to Monty Woolley 0h 04m 38s:      THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER (1942) [William Keighley] 0h 31m 24s:      LIFE BEGINS AT EIGHT-THIRTY (1942) [Irving Pichel] 0h 42m 47s:      THE BISHOP’S WIFE (1947) [Henry Koster] 0h 54m 37s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Ernst Lubitsch’s Cluny Brown (1946) and William Oldroyd’s Eileen (2023)   +++ * 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 piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

In this week's MGM 1945 episode, a Vincente Minnelli double feature: The Clock, a wartime romantic drama with two very intense stars, Judy Garland and Robert Walker, that doubles as a love poem to New York City; and a Technicolor musical fantasy about, in Dave's words (more or less), "A woman who wants to bleep an angel," starring Lucille Bremer as the woman and Fred Astaire as the angel. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, four Lubitsch movies over two weekends: To Be or Not to Be, The Love Parade, Heaven Can Wait, and Ninotchka. Play "Masterpiece or Meh?" with Elise with these six movies, and hear Dave defend two "mehs" as "masterpieces"! (Or "meh-sterpieces"?) (No, "masterpieces"!) Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      MGM/Hollywood Overview, 1945 0h 04m 27s:      THE CLOCK [dir. Vincente Minnelli] 0h 40m 20s:      YOLANDA & THE THIEF [dir. Vincente Minnelli] 0h 56m 00s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Ernst Lubitsch Retrospective at TIFF Cinémathèque, Part I: To Be Or Not To Be, The Love Parade, Heaven Can Wait, and Ninotchka Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames 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 (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join! 

In this Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we take a look at a Lilli Palmer who's (mostly) new to us, Lilli the victim: the victim of self-destructive womanizer Rex Harrison (Palmer's real-life husband) in Launder and Gilliat's enigmatic social satire The Rake's Progress (1945), and the self-destructive paralysis victim of Beware of Pity (1946), based on the Stefan Zweig novel. Which of these adversaries is harder to contend with? Listen to find out!  Time Codes: 0h 00m 45s:      THE RAKE’S PROGRESS (1945) [dir. Sidney Gilliat] 0h 42m 03s:      BEWARE OF PITY (1946) [dir. Maurice Elvey] +++ Bibliography: Babington, Bruce, Launder and Gilliat, Manchester University Press, 2013.   +++ * 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 piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again” * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!