1941-1950

from Film Society of Lincoln Center:
Money, sex, and football: the three cornerstones of American life spell doom in Tourneur’s tough, subversive anti-marriage melodrama. Victor Mature is a star quarterback with a fatal heart condition who’s willing to risk death on the field to give his power-hungry wife (Lizabeth Scott) the life she wants, even as she pursues a sordid affair with a Wall Street sugar daddy. Co-starring Lucille Ball—who delivers some of the film’s most memorable moments as a hard-nosed working girl spouting world-weary cynicisms—Easy Living is a Sirkian sports movie with a dark noir undercurrent.Read More »

Synopsis:
General Dennis of the US Force in England in World War II finds that he must order his planes deeper and deeper into Germany to prevent the production of military jet planes that will turn the tide of battle to the Germans. He must fight congressmen, and his own chain of command to win the political battle before he can send his planes out. His problem is complicated by a very narrow window of good weather necessary to allow his effort to be successful. Adapted from a stage play, it attempts to look at the challenges of command in the political arena.Read More »

The noir city in all its desperate foreboding: a dancing sign flashes in an angel’s face. An angel innocent and afraid yet ventures into the seething labyrinth with a stranger, her husband, running from capture into the city of entrapment.

You trust no-one, fear the worst, and blunder from one dead-end into another. Dark faces and sharp dressers in sinister doorways. Share a cab with a bawling waif, a dying woman on borrowed time, and a suspicious driver. Stop! Get out! Onto dark streets, smoke-filled dives, cafés on the edge of purgatory, and hellish rooms for rent. A young girl in pig-tails as likely to betray you as the mother with arms folded in menace then her cold hand out for payment in advance. Nowhere left to run. The rented room a cell you can’t leave.

Documentary limning the life of Paris and its citizens during “La Belle Epoque,” the years between 1900 and 1914. Beginning with the Paris Exposition of 1900 and the completion of the Eiffel Tower, the film progresses through cultural, technological, and social changes, from peaceful and sometimes näive times to the rumbling foreshadowing of the war that would disrupt France and Europe for years to come.Read More »

Quote:
Daniele Delorme is a turn-of-the-century teenage courtesan-in-training in the French romantic comedy Gigi (1948). Instructed by her beloved grandmother Yvonne de Bray (Mamita) and glamorous courtesan aunt Gaby Morlay (Alicia) in the art of using her feminine wiles, 16-year-old Gigi learns how to select a man’s cigar, determine the value of the various jewels she will be given by her rich lovers, chew her meat while continuing to carry on a conversation and other priceless tidbits in the feminine arsenal of seduction.Read More »

Synopsis:
Former World War II flying ace Matt Brennan (Humphrey Bogart) takes a position as a test pilot for a commercial aircraft corporation and bumps into his old girlfriend, Jo Holloway (Eleanor Parker), who now works as a receptionist for the company. As daredevil Matt tries to rekindle his once passionate romance with Jo, he courageously takes the most dangerous assignment of his career when he consents to use an unorthodox, unproven ejector seat while flying at death-defying speeds.Read More »

An unjustly neglected, extremely funny jab at the media empire and the world of big business. Beauregard Bottomley (Ronald Colman) is an unemployed genius who holds a Ph.D., skims the encyclopedia for enjoyment and never forgets a thing he’s read. He applies for work at a soap company owned by Burbridge Waters (Vincent Price) but is rebuffed by the suds magnate. Beauregard is so annoyed by the treatment he receives at Waters’s hands that he decides to bankrupt the company by becoming a contestant on the popular radio quiz show. Read More »

Casanova Brown is about to marry for the second time. The first just didn’t have the stars aligned up properly, or something like that. But old flames are rekindled in unexpected ways…Read More »

Quote:
Karl Zimmermann plays piano at the Café Rigoletto because he needs the money, but actually his whole passion is classical music, and work on his own opera is in progress. Then he meets the pop singer and song writer Anni Pichler, whom he wants to convert to “serious” music, but even the private lessons at his bachelor pad cannot convince her. Despite everything, the two find each other appealing, and they marry after a short time.
Professionally now everyone goes his/her own way, but at home things don’t go well. Money’s always scarce, and Anni complains he could earn more if he’d write music people like. And when Karl’s opera bombs, he hits rock bottom and they break up.Read More »