Quote:
Hotel manicurist Regi Allen is a cynical gold-digger who meets her match in Theodore ‘Ted’ Drew III, the penniless scion of a once-wealthy family who is himself about to marry for money. After a date with Ted, she lets him sleep on her couch when he’s too drunk to get any further. But what is she to think when he wants to extend the arrangement?

A sparky, spunky gem from the underrated Mitchell Leisen featuring a young and more than competent Fred MacMurray alongside the peerless Carole Lombard. Released in 1935 just after the Hays Code came into full force, it somehow smuggled a very pre-code sensibility past the moral enforcers.

This is an ever-so-slightly bittersweet comedy that’s heavily influenced by the screwball style rather than fully representative of it (the imprint of Paramount’s recently-appointed production manager Ernst Lubitsch is unmistakable). It’s often overlooked in discussions of notable 30s comedies, unfairly in my opinion. Hands Across the Table outshines many more celebrated films from the era (Howard Hawks’ Twentieth Century and Gregory La Cava’s My Man Godfrey come to mind).

Hands.Across.the.Table.1935.576p.BluRay.AAC1.0.x264-KnK.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 20 min
Size: 	2.37 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	788x576 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	3 998 kb/s
BPP: 	0.367
Audio
#1:  	English 1.0ch AAC @ 105 kb/s
#2:  	English 2.0ch AAC @ 122 kb/s (Commentary by filmmakers Allan Arkush & Daniel Kremer)

https://nitro.download/view/756C147D9528CB4/Hands.Across.the.Table.1935.576p.BluRay.AAC1.0.x264-KnK.mkv

Language(s):English, mono AAC (main audio); English, stereo AAC (commentary)
Subtitles:English srt

The post Mitchell Leisen – Hands Across the Table (1935) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Frank S. Nugent wrote:
THE SCREEN; At the Paramount

Carole Lombard and Fred MacMurray skip through the formular devices of “Swing High, Swing Low” (née “Burlesque”) with their usual ease at the Paramount, raising a routine story to a routine-plus picture. The plus is extremely small, sometimes being almost invisible. We recall being impressed by the photography of the Panama locks, by a shot of Mr. MacMurray with a beard, by Charles Butterworth’s tropical wardrobe of overcoat and muffler. The rest is so much surplusage: a thin excuse for a film that requires an hour and thirty-five minutes to trace the rise, the fall and the potential ascendancy of a trumpet king.

Mr. MacMurray is the trumpet king. When Miss Lombard finds him he is just an ex-soldier in the Canal Zone. She leads him to Murphy’s café, gets him a chance to express himself, marries him and induces him to accept an offer to appear in New York’s Club El Greco. Does Mr. MacMurray let success go to his head? Does he forget the little woman, hit the skids, wind up with an impressive growth of whisker and the shakes on the night when an important radio sponsor is listening in? Does Miss Lombard steady his tremolo, nestle under his shaking arm and sing “When the trumpet blows, it thrills me, to the marrow of my bones it chills me?”

Your questions embarrass me, and they should embarrass the script writers. “Burlesque” was old hat when George M. Watters and Arthur Hopkins gave it to Broadway ten years ago and when the cinema restated it under another title several seasons back. Camouflaging its hero under a beard and a muted trumpet (which may have been played by Mr. MacMurray but sounds more like Louis Armstrong) does not effectively disguise its antiquity. “Swing High, Swing Low,” like most Ferris wheels, doesn’t go anywhere—at least, nowhere that you have not been. Its players really are worthy of better treatment.
At the ParamountSWING HIGH, SWING LOW, an adaptation of the George M. Watters-Arthur Hopkins play “Burlesque”; screen play by Virginia Van Upp and Oscar Hammerstein 2d; music and lyrics by Sam Coslow and Al Siegel, Ralph Freed and Charley Kisco, Leo Robin and Ralph Rainger, Mr. Freed and Burton Lane; directed by Mitchell Leisen; produced for Paramount by Arthur Hornblow. At the Paramount.

Maggie King . . . . . Carole Lombard
Skid Johnson . . . . . Fred MacMurray
Harry . . . . . Charles Butterworth
Eila . . . . . Jean Dixon
Anita Alvarez . . . . . Dorothy Lamour
Harvey Howell . . . . . Harvey Stephens
Tony . . . . . Charles Judles
Murphy . . . . . Cecil Cunningham
Georgie . . . . . Charles Arnt
Henri . . . . . Franklyn Pangborn

	
Swing.High.Swing.Low.1937.480p.Amazon.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.x264-Antifa.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 36 min
Size: 	1.29 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	640x480 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 688 kb/s
BPP: 	0.229
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch E-AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/238BEC2086E2D56/Swing.High.Swing.Low.1937.480p.Amazon.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.x264-Antifa.mkv
https://nitro.download/view/B92BA3BDEE1665B/Swing.High.Swing.Low.1937.480p.Amazon.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.x264-Antifa_(1).srt

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Mitchell Leisen – Swing High, Swing Low (1937) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

When an imaginative girl has fantasies that her mother is having an affair, her visions almost ruin her parents domestic life. Based on the play “Alice Sit By The Fire” by James M. Barrie.

Darling, How Could You! (1951).mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 35 min
Size: 	1.08 GiB
Video
Codec: 	h264
Resolution: 	632x478 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	1 524 kb/s
BPP: 	0.210
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 96.0 kb/s

https://nitro.download/view/15D18C67984A432/Darling,_How_Could_You!_(1951).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Mitchell Leisen – Darling, How Could You! (1951) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Plot:
Adapted from Norman Krasna’s Broadway hit A Small Miracle, Four Hours to Kill is a multi-plotted effort that can best be described as “Grand Hotel goes to the theater.” Richard Barthelmess stars as Tony, a condemned murderer, who is handcuffed to Detective Taft (Charles Wilson) while en route to the death house. Tony breaks loose and heads for the theater, where the man who squealed on him is attending a play. As the killer prepares to rub out the stoolie, the action cuts away to the romance between a hatcheck boy (Joe Morrison) and his girlfriend (Helen Mack), which is complicated by the clerk’s allegedly pregnant former love (Dorothy Tree). Another subplot involves unfaithful wife Gertrude Michael and her lover Ray Milland. All the various plotlines are knitted together in the climax, wherein Tony closes in on his intended victim.

700MB | 1h 09m | 720×544 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/323F9FFF93F1B3F/Four_Hours_to_Kill.avi

Language:English
Subtitles:French hardcoded

The post Mitchell Leisen – Four Hours to Kill! (1935) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Frank S. Nugent wrote:
‘Midnight,’ With Don Ameche and Claudette Colbert, Strikes a Seasonal High in Comedy at the Paramount

The ice went out of the river at the Paramount yesterday, and Spring came laughing in with “Midnight,” one of the liveliest, gayest, wittiest and naughtiest comedies of a long hard season. Its direction, by Mitchell Leisen, is strikingly reminiscent of that of the old Lubitsch. Its cast, led by Claudette Colbert, Don Ameche, John Barrymore and Francis Lederer, is in the best of spirits. Its script, by too many authors to mention, is a model of deft phrasing and glib narrative joinery; and its production, while handsome, never has been permitted to bulk larger than its players. The call is for three cheers and a tiger: the Paramount is back on Broadway again.

The “Midnight” of the title is the fatal hour that strikes for every Cinderella, the moment when the coach will change back into a pumpkin, the ballroom dress will fall into rags and the prince charming discover the smudge of soot, or fried egg, on the changeling’s cheek. But the clock doesn’t strike when the film’s midnight comes; out, instead, pops a cuckoo with a clarion call to humor. Things go hilariously to smash, but not Cinderella. Even the fairy godmother—in this case, John Barrymore—blinks amazedly at his protégé’s carryings-on. When Miss Colbert plays Cinderella she doesn’t depend on a magic wand; a slapstick and a bludgeon are handier, and funnier.

It begins with the arrival in Paris on a rainy night of a young woman with one evening gown to her back, and not too much of it to it. In a matter of moments she has met a cab-driver named Czerny, crashed a society musicale and has been “set up”—to use the Park Avenue phrase—in the Ritz by a prankish, yet practical, millionaire with instructions to break up, by intervention, the affair between his wife and an irrepressibly romantic man about town. Miss Colbert’s “Baroness Czerny”—a title by courtesy of the cabby—is beautiful bait, and everything goes smoothly until midnight and even more smoothly, in a comic sense, thereafter.

Usually these things fall apart of their own complications; this one has the marvelous air of being bolstered by them. There is the business of the cab-drivers’ posse; there is the business of Cinderella being baffled by the godmother’s magic wand; there is the business of Cabby Czerny’s heroic attempts to expose the fraud and being considered a lunatic; there is the bit in which Mr. Barrymore impersonates a 3-year-old; there is the complication attending the discovery that the non-wed Czernys will have to be divorced.

We could mention other zany bits, but it wouldn’t help. It is really too daffy to be synopsized. You’ll have to take our word for it that it’s fun. Most of the credit, of course, belongs to Miss Colbert. She has superb command of the comic style, can turn a line or toss a vase with equal precision. Mr. Barrymore, the Gehrig of eye-brow batting, rolls his phrases with his usual richly humorous effect, and Mr. Ameche and Mr. Lederer were quite as helpful. All of them have made it a happy occasion. Pictures like “Midnight” should strike more often.

MIDNIGHT, screen play by Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, from a story by Edwin Justus Mayer and Franz Schulz; directed by Mitchell Leisen; produced for Paramount by Arthur Hornblow Jr. At the Paramount.

Eve Peabody . . . . . Claudette Colbert
Tibor Czerny . . . . . Don Ameche
Georges Flammarion . . . . . John Barrymore
Jacques Picot . . . . . Francis Lederer
Helene Flammarion . . . . . Mary Astor
Simone . . . . . Elaine Barrie
Stephanie . . . . . Hedda Hopper
Marcel . . . . . Rex O’Malley
Judge . . . . . Monty Woolley
Lebon . . . . . Armand Kaliz
Edouart . . . . . Lionel Pape
Major Domos . . . . . Ferdinand Munier, Gennaro Curci

Midnight.1939.576p.BluRay.AAC1.0.x264-Slope.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 34 min
Size: 	3.12 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	776x576 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	4 567 kb/s
BPP: 	0.426
Audio
#1:  	English 1.0ch AAC LC @ 92.3 kb/s
#2:  	English 1.0ch AAC LC @ 66.2 kb/s (Commentary by film writer and author Michael Koresky (2025))

https://nitro.download/view/08307100396E5A2/Midnight.1939.576p.BluRay.AAC1.0.x264-Slope.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, English [SDH], French

The post Mitchell Leisen – Midnight (1939) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Plot:
In this dark drama, a young American is on his way to take his final vows as a priest when he encounters a troubled nightclub singer with a checkered past. He honestly wants to help her and soon falls for her and finds himself tempted by her seductive ways.

1.22GB | 1h 25m | 656×256 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/EF47CC23BFDD4F6/Bedevilled_(1955)_WAC_DVDRip_BBM__CG_.avi
https://nitro.download/view/11863BF8C8E2761/Bedevilled_(1955)_WAC_DVDRip_BBM__CG__English.srt

Language:English
Subtitles:English

The post Mitchell Leisen & Richard Thorpe – Bedevilled (1955) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
This superior melodrama with a darkly comic tinge came out at a time when Mitchell Leisen’s career was running hot after a series of successes including films like Easy Living, Midnight, and Remember the Night. It was also the last film Billy Wilder (in partnership with Charles Brackett) was content with just writing the screenplay for. He was supposedly so annoyed by the way Leisen took liberties with his script that he resolved never to cede directorial control again.

Despite Wilder’s dissatisfaction, Leisen did a fine job with a theme that resonates just as strongly for viewers in today’s world. In a post-modern touch, the film opens with George Iscovescu (Charles Boyer) desperately trying to sell his story to a Paramount director played by Leisen himself in an effort to earn money quickly.

In the form of a long flashback, George is revealed as a gigolo originally from Romania who has fled Nazi-occupied Europe and arrived at a dusty Mexican border town aiming to enter the United States. Immigration officials there advise him that the quota for Romanians is full and he’s looking at a wait of up to eight years before he can get a visa.

After six months holed up at the border he’s broke and in despair when he bumps into Anita (Paulette Goddard), an old flame and fellow operator from Europe. She tells George how she found a loophole in the immigration system by marrying a gullible American, gaining entry to the States, and then divorcing the husband.

George resolves to try the same scheme, and after one failed attempt, finds the perfect target in Emmy Brown (Olivia de Havilland), a naive teacher in Mexico for a day trip with her class whose bus has been in a minor accident and is being repaired.

After forcing a convenient delay in the repairs by making a part go missing, George turns all his charms on Emmy, sweeps her off her feet, and within 24 hours succeeds in marrying her.

Emmy has to return to her school, and George is happy to wait at the border until his immigration is approved, at which time he plans to dump her. Anita for her part intends to team up with George again once he’s inside the U.S.

But after a few days Emmy returns unexpectedly, and when an immigration inspector on the hunt for fraudulent visa applicants also appears, George takes her off on a road trip through Mexico. In the course of their journey together, he finds himself falling in love with her. The marriage of convenience has turned into a true romance.

This development incenses the jealous Anita. She proceeds to fill Emmy in on her husband’s less-than-pristine past and his original scheme for her. But Emmy’s reaction takes everyone by surprise…

2.87GB | 1 h 55 min | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/9C53725B6E97BA2/Mitchell_Leisen_-_(1941)_Hold_Back_the_Dawn.mkv

Language(s):English+commentary
Subtitles:English

The post Mitchell Leisen – Hold Back the Dawn (1941) first appeared on Cinema of the World.