1940s

This very short film offers a brief consideration of the major works of Bertel Thorvaldsen (ca. 1770-1884), one of the most famous of all Danish artists and arguably the greatest sculptor between Bernini and Rodin. Resting squarely within the Neoclassical tradition, Thorvaldsen’s great talent was his ability to perfectly balance his sculptures, giving them a sense of weightlessness. (Of course, the sculptures are also extremely beautiful, but in our post-WWII era there’s something disquieting about admiring a northern European artist’s conception of ideal physical beauty. I suppose that’s unavoidable, but Thorvaldsen’s reputation has happily escaped associations with Nazi ideology.)Read More »

Synopsis:
Amelie is a Cocotte (=a tart); she trades on her charms,abetted by her father who plays a role generally delegated to mothers (Gremillon’s “Gueule d’amour” or Allegret’s “Maneges” ). She is wooed by every Tom, Dick and Harry passing by. She’s currently supported by a military man, courted by a foreign prince – who gives the equivalent of the French Legion d’honneur to dad, – and, besides, she is to marry a young lad who covets his wealthy uncle’s heritage: the necessary and sufficient condition for getting the dough is getting married.Read More »

Jenny Blake (Blondell) is the beautiful owner of a riverboat casino, but she aspires to a life in high society. Jack Morgan (Wayne) is her business partner and influential political boss – the two are in love, but Jenny decides to leave him and the business so she could marry socialite Alan Alderson (Ray Middleton) for prestige and in return she forgives Alan’s gambling debts and pays off the back taxes of his family’s once-grand mansion and plantation. Her new in-laws are infuriated by this marriage of convenience, and do everything in their power to ruin Jenny in the eyes of society.Read More »

A government funded documentary warning those about the danger of cancer.Read More »

A soundtrack plays folk rock as a woman prepares, at noon, to take her Borzois for a walk. She goes through her dresses, all 1920’s style flapper gowns, holding them one at a time, shaking them as if they are dancing. She picks one – in puce. She puts it on, delighted, adds perfume, languishes on a chaise for a few minutes, then goes for her walk. It all has a 20’s feel.

Puce Moment was to be called Puce Women, but only this 6 minute fragment was finished. Situated in the 1920’s, it depicts a lady, Yvonne Marquis, selecting a dress to go out with her dogs. Puce is a colour, a hue of violet, popular in those times.Read More »

Synopsis:
Captain Henri Rochard is a French officer assigned to work with Lieut. Catherine Gates. Through a wacky series of misadventures, they fall in love and marry. When the war ends, Capt. Rochard tries to return to America with the other female war brides. Zany gender-confusing antics followRead More »

Chicago Film Society writes:
Tasked with heading up RKO’s horror unit from 1942 to 1946, producer and screenwriter Val Lewton was responsible for one of the most extraordinary runs of films to ever come out of classic Hollywood. Given modest budgets, lurid titles, and a running-time cap of 75 minutes by his superiors, Lewton, along with up-and-coming directors Mark Robson, Jacques Tourneur, and Robert Wise, produced a string of bewitching, ethereal masterpieces and developed a house style defined by expressive shadows, pervasive melancholy, somnambulism, and ambient dread. One of Lewton’s crowning achievements, The Seventh Victim broke from horror conventions of its time and found darkness lurking not in the vampires and monsters of the old world but in good ol’ American sham psychoanalytics and success-centered occultism.Read More »

UCLA Film & Television Archive writes:
Right from the opening sequence in which a seemingly possessed young heiress (Gail Russell) throws herself desperately in front of a moving train, this haunted noir comes packed with “highly-charged atmosphere” (Variety). At the center of all the doom is Edward G. Robinson as John Triton, a stage mentalist who suddenly discovers he can actually see the future and becomes overwhelmed by grim, fatalistic visions. Jerome Cowan plays his partner who exploits Triton’s powers for profit until Triton disappears. Ironically enough, this saga of man tormented by the future unfolds largely in flashback as the young woman’s boyfriend (John Lund) searches for the reason behind her suicide attempt. Director John Farrow keeps this adaptation of a Cornell Woolrich novel moving at a brisk thriller’s pace through deepening shadows.Read More »

Synopsis:
In Edinburgh in 1831, Dr. Wolfe MacFarlane runs a medical school where Donald Fettes is a student. Fettes is interested in helping a young girl who has lost the use of her legs. He is certain that MacFarlane’s surgical skills could be put to great use but he is reluctant to do so. The good Dr. MacFarlane has a secret that soon becomes all too obvious to young Fettes, who has only recently been promoted as his assistant: he has been paying a local cabbie, John Gray, to supply him with dead bodies for anatomical research. Gray constantly harasses MacFarlane and clearly has a hold over him dating to a famous trial many years before where Gray refused to identify the man for whom he was robbing graves. Fettes isn’t aware of any of this but soon realizes exactly how Gray obtains the bodies they use in their anatomy classes.Read More »