A trio of rum-runners during prohibition in the 1930s engage in a menage-a-trois after business hours.

Lucky.Lady.1975.480p.DVDrip.H264-KG.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 57 min
Size: 	2.30 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	720x468 ~> 865x468
Aspect ratio:  	1.85:1
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 599 kb/s
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https://nitro.download/view/1F0DE6F9C553E8C/Lucky.Lady.1975.480p.DVDrip.H264-KG.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Stanley Donen – Lucky Lady (1975) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Like Carole Lombard, the glorious British comedienne Kay Kendall was one of those rare actresses who successfully combined high glamour and low comedy. By all accounts, Kendall, like Lombard, was daffy and boisterous in real life, a charming madcap. And, like Lombard, she died tragically young. Kendall’s last film, Once More, with Feeling! (1960) showcases her gift for knockabout physical comedy, as well as her sophisticated elegance in the story of the tempestuous relationship between an egocentric conductor and his common-law wife. Yul Brynner plays the maestro Victor Fabian, who’s caught in flagrante delicto with a worshipful fan by his harpist partner, Dolly (Kendall). After Dolly leaves him, his career suffers, and many professional and personal complications ensue before they realize they can’t live without each other.

The film was based on a play by Harry Kurnitz, which had opened on Broadway in late 1958, starring Arlene Francis and Joseph Cotten. Brynner, then one of the biggest movie stars in the world, was offered the part of the conductor in the film version. He agreed, if Stanley Donen could be persuaded to direct. By the late 1950s, Donen, who had directed some of MGM’s greatest musicals of the decade, had left the studio and had signed a four-film deal with Columbia. He had recently made the sophisticated comedy, Indiscreet (1958) in London, and Donen liked the city so much he decided to move there. Donen agreed to direct Once More, with Feeling!, and changed the film’s setting from Chicago to London, making plans to shoot there once again. Donen and playwright Kurnitz, who was adapting his own play, agreed to offer the female lead to Kendall, a close friend of Kurnitz’s. “I’ve never had a picture shape up so fast and smooth,” Donen later recalled. But production would be anything but smooth. Kendall, newly-married to Rex Harrison, refused to film in London for tax reasons, and Donen was forced to scrap his plans for location shooting in London. The film was shot in Paris instead, with a Paris theater standing in for London’s Festival Hall. Production began in Paris in April of 1959.

Kendall had been diagnosed with leukemia in early 1957 and given only two years to live, but as was the custom at the time, she was not told of her condition. Instead, her doctor gave the bad news to Harrison, who was then living with Kendall, but still married to actress Lilli Palmer. Harrison got a quick Mexican divorce, and he and Kendall were married in June. Although Kendall apparently didn’t know of her condition, Harrison confided the news to several friends, and her illness was something of an open secret. It’s unclear how Kendall managed to pass the insurance physical examinations for her next film, The Reluctant Debutante (1958), and for Once More, with Feeling!

By the time production began on Once More, with Feeling! Kendall no doubt had some inkling about how sick she was, but she carried on in her usual madcap manner. Kurnitz recalled a story conference in a noisy Paris restaurant, as Kendall talked on the phone to Harrison. “I’m being a very good girl, darling,” Kurnitz heard her say. “I’m in the Christian Science Reading Room with Harry.” But her role required a lot of physical comedy, and it was clear how difficult it was for her. “She was very brave,” Donen recalled, “but it was poignant to watch her. Everything was now an effort. You could see her fragility getting more and more pronounced as we screened each day’s set of rushes.” After a few weeks of shooting, Kendall collapsed and was hospitalized. Production shut down while the studio decided whether to replace her. Brynner reportedly told Columbia executives, “If she goes, I go.” Since the film was already two-thirds completed, Donen shot around her in Paris while Kendall recuperated in London. By this time, rumors of the severity of her illness had reached the media, and Harrison told the press she had a “lung infection,” complicated by “anemia,” but that she was “feeling enormously better.” Somehow, Kendall managed to rally enough to complete a final week of shooting. After the production wrapped, she and Harrison spent the summer at their home in Italy, but by the end of August, her condition was grave. They returned to London, and Kendall was immediately hospitalized. She died a few days later.

Once More, with Feeling! opened in March of 1960, and the reviews were, inevitably, elegiac. Time Magazine, after describing some of Kendall’s funniest bits in the film, noted her “delicious wit and berserk precision of gesture that only Bea Lillie…can match. Like Lillie, Kay Kendall was not really so much a comedienne as clown, and her last picture should leave no doubt in anybody’s mind that she was a clown with a touch of genius.”

Once More with Feeling.1960.FRENCH.ENGLISH.HDTV.DD2.0.x264-QWERTZ.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 31 min
Size: 	3.14 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1248x688 
Aspect ratio:  	16:9
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	4 691 kb/s
BPP: 	0.228
Audio
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https://nitro.download/view/68443088D33382B/Once_More_with_Feeling.1960.FRENCH.ENGLISH.HDTV.DD2.0.x264-QWERTZ.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Stanley Donen – Once More, with Feeling! (1960) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Scripted by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, and directed by Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, It’s Always Fair Weather (1955) revisits On the Town (1949), but with a satirical, revisionist bite. In this send-up of musical and post-war optimism, the dreams of Army buddies Kelly, Dan Dailey, and Michael Kidd all fall apart, and their ten-year reunion is a “frost”; Dailey’s bitter song “Situation-wise” takes aim at the stultifying effect of the quintessentially 1950s life of an advertising executive. Even though the trio finally bonds over a disastrous TV appearance, Fair Weather takes further aim at television’s plastic insincerity and technical poverty. The film’s slightly anxious putdowns of television are underlined by its own imaginative, almost competitive use of CinemaScope, particularly in the trio’s energetic, un-pan-and-scannable trash can ballet, and the use of triple split screens and masking to visualize the friends’ alienation. Even the musical joy emanating from the garbage can number and Kelly’s impressive roller skate dance down a New York street cannot quite smooth over the underlying bitterness in It’s Always Fair Weather, turning it into one of the more intriguing productions from MGM’s storied Freed Unit. — Lucia Bozzola

1.57GB | 1h 41m | 1024×400 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/17D41C73419D2D7/Stanley_Donen_-_(1955)_It’s_Always_Fair_Weather.mkv
or
https://nitro.download/view/7D93705A037D5FE/Stanley_Donen_-_(1955)_It’s_Always_Fair_Weather.part1.rar
https://nitro.download/view/1592436E8411E7A/Stanley_Donen_-_(1955)_It’s_Always_Fair_Weather.part2.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly – It’s Always Fair Weather (1955) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

When the lead of the musical he’s putting on quits, Ted Sturgis (Gower Champion) searches for a new headliner. Newcomers Joanna Moss (Helen Wood) and Suzy Doolitle (Debbie Reynolds) do well at open auditions, and Madelyn Corlane (Marge Champion), Ted’s ex and a former starlet herself, is also in contention. As two of the women face personal dilemmas that threaten their participation in the musical, a final audition is held, and when each shines, the lead is chosen in an unorthodox way.

1.26GB | 1h 22m | 700×540 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/7A22A3A6FC7FA32/Give_a_Girl_a_Break_-_1953_-_Stanley_Donen.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:None

The post Stanley Donen – Give a Girl a Break (1953) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
Professor David Pollock is an expert in ancient Arabic hieroglyphics. A Middle Eastern Prime Minister convinces Pollock to infiltrate the organization of a man named Beshraavi, who is involved in a plot against the Prime Minister. The nature of the plot is believed to be found in a hieroglyphic code. Beshraavi’s mistress, Yasmin Azir is a beautiful mystery who becomes intertwined in the plot. Pollock needs her help, but she repeatedly double crosses him in one escapade after another, he can’t decide on who she is working for. Ultimately working together, Pollock and Yasmin decipher the message and set out to stop an assassination of the Prime Minister.

3.06GB | 1h 45mn | 1024×436 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/69BB3E41034518B/Arabesque.1966.576p.BDRip.x264.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:French (muxed)

The post Stanley Donen – Arabesque (1966) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Stanley Donen (April 13, 1924 – February 21, 2019)
RIP.

Quote:
Mark and Joanna Wallace (Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn) have the kind of marriage where barbs and insults mean more to them than all the endearments ever spoken. During a present day trip to the south of France, they remember other European jaunts they’ve made. On their journey, they experience anew the first glow of passion, the aching loneliness of being apart, the elation of cresting a hill at sunrise, the joy of making up after a fight, and ultimately, they establish what it means to be a couple.

1.90GB | 1 h 52 min | 1024×432 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/AABF28FEB4FCE78/Stanley_Donen_-_%281967%29_Two_for_the_Road.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Stanley Donen – Two for the Road (1967) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Review:
Stanley Donen’s Charade occupies a special place among sixties thrillers. In an era of spy films resplendent with macho-driven eroticism (the James Bond series), cynicism (Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer series), or farcical irreverence (Casino Royale; the Flint movies, with Charade costar James Coburn), it was the only successful take on the genre to place a woman at its center.

This concept, which boldly separated Charade from its rivals, is established in the opening minute of the movie. In place of a hero on the case, we are introduced to the innocent Regina Lampert (Audrey Hepburn), who suddenly, unexpectedly becomes involved with mur­derers, thieves, and spies. She is as bewildered as the audience by the mysterious and bizarre turns events take in the story, and in this sense Charade is almost the distaff answer to North by Northwest, in which Cary Grant portrays the innocent cast adrift from a safe, predictable life. Here, Grant is the not so innocent Peter Joshua, who is trying (or is he?) to help Regina navigate the unknown waters into which she has been thrust.

But Charade has a different feel from other thrillers of the time beyond its unconventional female focus. The Bond films were distinctly new creations in the early 1960s, built around newcomer Sean Connery’s fiercely sexual persona and his buxom, mostly unknown female counterparts. In Charade, the glamour of an earlier era of Hollywood shines through, particularly with the presence of its two leads. Grant had been a major star for more than twenty-five years when he and Donen decided to collaborate on what would be the last of four movies together. He was one of the few genuine matinee idols whose appeal wasn’t merely nostalgic by the early sixties. Similarly, Hepburn was one of the last female screen stars to emerge from Hollywood with a recognizably glamorous style, and one of the few whose allure was undiminished. Their pairing gives Charade an elegance almost more akin to that of a fifties romance than a sixties thriller. (Indeed, even if Reggie weren’t running for her life through half the movie, one might well want to watch it just to see these two hauntingly beautiful people interact amid the splendor of Paris—a pleasure that Donen does not deny us.)

The film’s morality is also rooted more in the fifties than the sixties. When Charade appeared in 1963, the range of “acceptable” behavior for movie heroes and heroines was changing. In the two Bond movies released to that point, Connery had already bedded more women with­out benefit of marriage (or, in some cases, knowledge of first names) than Grant had in thirty years of screen exploits. In this relatively permissive environment, Charade had a gentle sexual agenda that seems sweetly nostalgic four decades on, involving romance and, in its denouement, matrimony. In fact, it may well be the most successful non-Hitchcock picture ever made to mix murder, mayhem, romance, and marriage in one screenplay. The mystery at the center of its action is diverting enough, and executed in an entertaining fashion, but the real mystery for the viewer is how the twisting, turning plot will allow Regina Lampert and Peter Joshua to get together.

The on-screen coupling of Grant and Hepburn allows the film to cleverly comment on and play off of their screen personae. Grant’s had been formed in the thirties, when he worked with such actresses as Sylvia Sidney, Loretta Young, and Mae West, mostly portraying sophisticated, self-actualized men, often with a strong independent streak. Hepburn (born in 1929) was, of course, young enough to be the daughter of such leading ladies, and of Grant (born in 1904). She’d made her name in the fifties, playing romantically distressed child-women in the company of older leading men, such as Humphrey Bogart, Gregory Peck, and Fred Astaire. By the time Hepburn appeared in Charade, she was thirty-four but still quite youthful—audiences would reflexively think of her as a half decade or more younger than Grant—and once their characters become romantically interested in each other, there’s hardly a scene in the film that doesn’t include some reference to the difference in their ages.

But all of that is mere attachment to the core of the movie, which resides in Hepburn and her character. From the first scene, in which she laments the unhappy state of her marriage—not knowing that events have already been set in motion that will make that issue academic—Reggie is the focus of the narrative and the film’s emotional drive. The sequence where she arrives at the apartment she and her husband have called home to find it stripped of its contents, down to the bare walls, overflows with grief, panic, and confusion, all radiating from her. And through all the action, mystery, and comedy of the scenes that follow, she maintains this hold on the audience.

Another important aspect of Charade’s appeal is the fun it has at the expense of the thriller genre. Beginning with the opening close-up of a gun (quickly revealed to be a water pistol) aimed at Regina, we know we’re seeing a film about deception, the layers of which multiply as the plot evolves. Charade is laced with a dark sense of irony throughout: “I already know an awful lot of people. Until one of them dies, I couldn’t possibly meet anyone else,” she says early in the film, brushing off Peter Joshua in a wicked moment of foreshadowing.

Charade was Grant’s last film as a romantic lead, and his third to last movie before retiring in 1965. In turn, it signaled the beginning of the end of Hepburn’s gamine phase. For Donen, Charade was one of the high points in over a decade of successes, when he reigned as a top producer-director with such films as Singin’ in the Rain (1952), Funny Face (1957, also starring Hepburn), and Indiscreet (1958, with Grant), and it was his biggest box-office hit. (Looking at Charade in the context of Donen’s earlier work, you find echoes of one of his least-known films, the 1952 Love Is Better Than Ever, another genre bender of a picture—a Damon Runyon comedy with a heavy dose of estrogen—starring Elizabeth Taylor and Larry Parks.) Its plot caught the public’s taste for espionage thrillers at just the right moment, but its quirky humor, irony, and casting have attracted new fans over the decades. Charade continues to resonate and reveal new bits of wit and sophistication with each viewing.

2.37GB | 1h 53mn | 1024×560 | mkv
https://nitro.download/view/FCF5A8F46FADEA3/Stanley_Donen_-_(1963)_Charade.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Stanley Donen – Charade (1963) first appeared on Cinema of the World.