Synopsis:
George Cukor’s seldom seen adaptation of David Belasco’s Zaza, this one features Claudette Colbert in the lead role of Zaza a famous singer who falls for a married man played by Herbert Marshall. This one gets little attention in the careers of Colbert and Cukor, but it’s a solid if uneven film, and certainly worth a peak.Read More »
Synopsis:
The adventures of three disparate cadets at the US Naval Academy–one the son of a Navy enlisted man, the other the scion of a wealthy family, the third decent but somewhat slow-witted–and their struggles with the rigors of the academy, women, and each other.Read More »
Quote:
My Apprenticeship (V lyudyakh) was the second entry in Russian director Mark Donskoy’s “Maxim Gorky” trilogy. Picking up where 1938’s My Childhood left off, the story covers the years in Gorky’s life when the future writer (Alexei Lyarsky) was on his own, looking for a purpose and place in life. Before he can make up his own mind, Gorky is trapped into serfdom by a wealthy family. As he grows from his teen years to full manhood, Gorky fights his way towards freedom of thought and body. Based on Gorky’s autobiography, the film was followed in 1940 by My Universities. My Apprenticeship has also been released as On His Own and Among People. (Hollywood.com)Read More »
A burglar slips inside a middle-class apartment. Believing he could work quietly, he’s surprised by a couple in evening dress.
An expressionist comedy greatly influenced by German Expressionism set in a bohemian enclave of northern Paris, which Clouzot made shortly before he served as assistant director to Anatole Litvak and E.A. Dupont and began scripting French versions of German films at Berlin’s UFA studios.Read More »
A society novelist brings a brash young chorus girl home in order to study her for inspiration for his new novel. His family is distraught, but soon her behavior has forever altered their snobbish ways.Read More »
Full Synopsis: from TCM
Johnny “Slick” Rawley flees the police and, after lying low with his partners John “Gloves” Baker and his moll Peggy Russell, goes into hiding at the Baldwin Medical College. There he hears Dr. Clifford L. Schuyler give a lecture. Schuyler has successfully performed brain surgery on violent animals, changing them into docile creatures, and wants to try the operation on a human. Slick volunteers, stipulating that his ghastly facial scars be corrected at the same time.Read More »
Olsen and Johnson on the loose in France.
50 Million Frenchmen is the film adaptation of the hit Broadway play with all of Cole Porter’s music eliminated, with the exception of “You Do Something To Me”, which is used as background music. The songs were omitted because box office receipts for musicals were down and Warner Brothers apparently didn’t want to risk a flop. The movie was originally filmed in 2-color Technicolor, but all that remains is this black and white version.Read More »
This underrated feature stars Ralph Bellamy as Dr. Paul Hallet, working in the jungles of Sumatra with associate Jack Murray (William Gargan), experimenting on monkeys in search of a cure for red fever. Enter a much younger doctor, Phillip Saunders (John “Dusty” King), whose arrival is met with disapproval by the much older Hallet, who consigns the newcomer to a life of cleaning test tubes. Accidentally stumbling on a possible cure, Saunders tries to share his discovery with the unresponsive Hallet, then decides to conduct his own private research without the others knowledge. When Hallet arrives at his own solution, the eager Saunders inoculates himself with red fever, trusting that Hallet’s cure will save him, but it fails. Read More »
Synopsis:
Having just reached adulthood, Clyde Griffiths has always lamented his lot in life, he the only son of poor missionaries. He has gotten a peripheral view of society life, to which he aspires, in his work as a bellhop at an upscale hotel. If being truthful to himself, he would admit that he lacks moral strength, he often taking the easiest but perhaps not the most ethical path to protect himself. Forced to move from place to place out of circumstance, he ends up in Lycurgus, New York working at the Samuel Griffiths Collar and Shirt factory, Samuel Griffiths his paternal uncle. Not knowing his uncle or his family, Clyde only wants a chance to get ahead, not expecting anything else from his wealthy relations. After an apprenticeship, Clyde ends up as the foreman in the stamping department. Read More »