Quote:
A brilliant black comedy by Preston Sturges, developed from a script he had written as early as 1932 and tried in vain to get Fox, Universal and Paramount intrested in producing. The script’s early provinence must be the reason that it’s the only one of his four post-Paramount pictures to feature dialogue comparable to (and sometimes surpassing) that found in the eight great comedies he wrote and directed in 1940–44, as well as numerous comedies that he had scripted in 1930s. The studios’ reluctance to make the film at that time is indicative of why it became a critical and a box office failure: the morbid subject matter, combined with the recent suicide of actress Carole Landis (who was suspected of having an affair with Rex Harrison, who plays the lead here), simply drove audiences away from it and for decades gave it a reputation of a film maudit. The film has always had its defenders, though: Woody Allen praised it for its “wonderful dialogue”, Quentin Tarantino placed it 8th on the list of his 11 favorite films, and Pauline Kael called it “one of the best comedies ever made in this country”, beginning her capsule review with these words: “The hero is Rex Harrison in a sensational parody of Sir Thomas Beecham; he disposes of his wife (Linda Darnell) in three different ways, to the music of Rossini, Wagner, and Tchaikovsky. What more could one ask of a movie?”

Oddly enough, many critics are not quite content with that, and even many of Sturges’ admirers are closer to the stance expressed by Leslie Halliwell in the essay quoted below. The film does suffer from some imbalance in its neat three-act structure, with the first act relying heavily on dialogue, the third act consisting almost entirely of silent slapstick sequence that doesn’t quite hold up until the end (as Halliwell notes, “it would take a very full house to keep the laughter alive”), and the macabre second act sitting uneasily with both of them. The film is better in parts than as a whole, and some scenes – notably Harrison’s confronations with his brother-in-law, the house dick and the private detective, as well as the beautifully shot rehersal scene of Rossini’s Semiramide overture – rank with Sturges’ best achievements in his Paramount period. The film could certainly use William Demarest to accompany other familiar faces from Sturges’ stock company, but his lack is more than made up by veteran comic foil Edgar Kennedy, given a chance to shine just months before his death (on 9 November 1948, four days after the film’s premiere), in a bit part that includes one of the most famous lines Sturges ever wrote: “For me, there’s nobody handle Handel like you handle Handel! And your Delius – delirious!”

Unfaithfully.Yours.1948.576p.BDRip.x264.AAC.1.0-OLDFLiX-KG.mkv

General
Container: Matroska
Runtime: 1 h 45 min
Size: 2.63 GiB
Video
Codec: x264
Resolution: 766x576 
Aspect ratio: 4:3
Frame rate: 23.976 fps
Bit rate: 3 238 kb/s
BPP: 0.306
Audio
#1: English 1.0ch AAC LC @ 144 kb/s
#2: English 2.0ch AAC LC @ 185 kb/s (Commentary by Sturges scholars James Harvey, Diane Jacobs, and Brian Henderson)

https://nitro.download/view/5BB5F4414510B93/Unfaithfully.Yours.1948.576p.BDRip.x264.AAC.1.0-OLDFLiX-KG.mkv

https://fikper.com/4L2WVobK3v/Unfaithfully.Yours.1948.576p.BDRip.x264.AAC.1.0-OLDFLiX-KG.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English,English SDH Chinese,French

The post Preston Sturges – Unfaithfully Yours (1948) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

IMDB:
Major Thompson, an Englishman living in France, comments in his memoirs on the peculiarities of his French wife and friends.

798MB | 1h 20m | 640×480 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/BA2680D191DCD18/theFrench.avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Preston Sturges – Les carnets du Major Thompson AKA The French, They Are a Funny Race (1955) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Also known as Mad Wednesday, this collaboration between silent comedy star Harold Lloyd and screwball comedy genius Preston Sturges was meant to be a splashy comeback for both. Unfortunately, it sank at the box office.

The film starts with original footage from Lloyd’s 1925 classic The Freshman. Because of his success on the football field, Harold Diddlebock (Lloyd, who seems to have hardly changed in 22 years, – still sporting a straw hat, and horn rimmed glasses) is offered a job. Full of hope and promise, the former gridiron champ finds himself in a minor bookkeeping position, where he remains forgotten for the next 22 years, until he’s abruptly fired.

Stunned, Diddlebock finds a friendly barman with a wicked talent for mixing drinks (Edgar Kennedy). When he awakes two days later, he has no idea what he’s spent the last 48 hours doing. It turns out he’s bought a circus and… well, you get the idea. Every scene is its own little gem of delirium, including one in which an artistic bartender invents the drink that launches Diddlebock into his drunken spree.

Lloyd isn’t always adept with Sturges’s madcap dialogue, but the sterling supporting cast of character actors makes that language spin like a top.

Players: Harold Lloyd, Raymond Walburn, Franklin Panghorn, Margaret Hamilton, Edgar Kennedy (as the Barman), Rudy Vallee, and Jackie the Lion.

700MB | 1h 29m | 512×384 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/492F357EBBA85A7/The_Sin_of_Harold_Diddlebock_(1947).avi

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Preston Sturges – The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A workplace practical joke goes awry when an office clerk (Dick Powell), believing he has won a $25,000 prize, takes his girlfriend (Ellen Drew) on an extravagant Christmas shopping spree…in the middle of July! When the truth comes out, he’s not prepared for the consequences.

1.92GB | 1h 07mn | 786×576 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/CC4A710832BA570/Christmas_in_July__1940__576p_BluRay-HJ-KG.mkv

Language(s):English+commentary
Subtitles:English

The post Preston Sturges – Christmas in July (1940) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Criterion wrote:
Barbara Stanwyck sizzles, Henry Fonda bumbles, and Preston Sturges runs riot in one of the all-time great screwballs, a pitch-perfect blend of comic zing and swoonworthy romance. Aboard a cruise liner sailing up the coast of South America, Stanwyck’s conniving card sharp sets her sights on Fonda’s nerdy snake researcher, who happens to be the heir to a brewery fortune. But when the con artist falls for her mark, her grift becomes a game of hearts—and she is determined to win it all. One in a string of matchless comedic marvels that Sturges wrote, directed, and produced as part of a dazzling 1940s run, this gender-flipped battle-of-wits farce is perhaps his most emotionally satisfying work, tempering its sparkling wit with a streak of tender poignancy supplied by the sensational Stanwyck at her peak.

2.45GB | 1h 34mn | 790×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/D53849C7D31D333/The.Lady.Eve.1941.Hybrid.576p.Bluray.AAC.x264-SaL.mkv https://nitro.download/view/9A6C46EC168E0C2/The.Lady.Eve.1941.Criterion.Extras.576p.Bluray.AC3.x264-SaL.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English SDH

The post Preston Sturges – The Lady Eve [+Extras] (1941) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Plot:
One of Paramount’s funniest films of the forties is this Preston Sturges screwball classic staring Betty Hutton (The Greatest Show on Earth) and Eddie Bracken (Hail the Conquering Hero.) Hutton is Trudy Kockenlocker, a small-town gal who feels it is her patriotic duty to dance the night away with soldiers who are headed oversees.

But after too many glasses of “victory lemonade,” Trudy jitterbugs right into a chandelier – and awakens the next morning to find a mysterious wedding ring on her finger, and no recollection of her new “husband”! That’s when she decides to find a quick, surrogate spouse and sets her sights on her lovelorn, childhood friend, Norval Jones (Bracken). This frantic, audacious comedy hit landed Sturges a 1944 Academy Award® nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

1.28GB | 1 h 38 min | 720×540 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/F71BEC5ABEA93C5/The.Miracle.of.Morgans.Creek.1944.DVDRip.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:English, Russian

The post Preston Sturges – The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1944) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

In the winter of 1868, Eben Frost (William Demarest) goes to a Boston pawnshop and redeems a silver medal, inscribed to “Dr. W.T.G. Morton, the Benefactor of Mankind, with the Gratitude of Humanity.” Frost drives to a country farmhouse and gives the medal to Morton’s widow, Elizabeth Morton (Betty Field) who explains to her daughter, Betty (Donivee Lee), that Frost was the first person given anesthesia by her father, Boston dentist Dr. W.T.G. Morton (Joel McCrea.)

http://nitroflare.com/view/4D4F20B947001A5/The_Great_Moment_(1944).mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Preston Sturges – The Great Moment (1944) first appeared on Cinema of the World.