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
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Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	788x576 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
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#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
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#1:  	English 2.0ch E-AC-3 @ 224 kb/s

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Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

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

After WW2, an American skipper returns to Singapore to retrieve his hidden stash of pearls and finds his lost fiancee who now has amnesia.

Letterboxd review
★★★½ Watched by Adam Lounsbery 13 Aug 2011

Note to aspiring makers of B movies — if you’re going to blatantly rip off Casablanca (1942), take a page from director John Brahm’s book. Don’t just change the characters’ names and tack on a happy ending. Do it with real panache and also change the hero’s occupation to “pearl smuggler” and spice up the love triangle by giving the heroine a case of amnesia.

Singapore.1947.576p.BluRay.AC3.x264.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 19 min
Size: 	2.04 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	792x576 
Aspect ratio:  	1.375
Frame rate: 	24.000 fps
Bit rate: 	3 209 kb/s
BPP: 	0.293
Audio
#1:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 256 kb/s
#2:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s (Commentary by Film Historian Kat Ellinger and Author/Film Historian Lee Gambin)

https://nitro.download/view/6D33730D38317AF/Singapore.1947.576p.BluRay.AC3.x264.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post John Brahm – Singapore (1947) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A man tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.

Quote:
Immediately following the success of Some Like It Hot, Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond wished to make another film with Jack Lemmon. Wilder had originally planned to cast Paul Douglas as Jeff Sheldrake; however, after he died unexpectedly, Fred MacMurray was cast.

The initial concept for the film came from Brief Encounter by Noël Coward, in which Celia Johnson has an affair with Trevor Howard in his friend’s apartment. However, due to the Hays Production Code, Wilder was unable to make a film about adultery in the 1940s. Wilder and Diamond also based the film partially on a Hollywood scandal in which high-powered agent Jennings Lang was shot by producer Walter Wanger for having an affair with Wanger’s wife, actress Joan Bennett. During the affair, Lang used a low-level employee’s apartment. Another element of the plot was based on the experience of one of Diamond’s friends, who returned home after breaking up with his girlfriend to find that she had committed suicide in his bed.

Although Wilder generally required his actors to adhere exactly to the script, he allowed Jack Lemmon to improvise in two scenes: in one scene he squirted a bottle of nose drops across the room, and in another he sang while making a meal of spaghetti (which he strains through the grid of a tennis racket). In another scene, where Lemmon was supposed to mime being punched, he failed to move correctly and was accidentally knocked down. Wilder chose to use the shot of the genuine punch in the film. Lemmon also caught a cold when one scene on a park bench was filmed in sub-zero weather.

Art director Alexandre Trauner used forced perspective to create the set of a large insurance company office. The set appeared to be a very long room full of desks and workers; however, successively smaller people and desks were placed to the back of the room ending up with children. He designed the set of Baxter’s apartment to appear smaller and shabbier than the spacious apartments that usually appeared in films of the day. He used items from thrift stores and even some of Wilder’s own furniture for the set.

The.Apartment.1960.576p.Bluray.x264.DD.5.1-1R0N.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2 h 4 min
Size: 	3.56 GiB
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Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	1024x436 
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#2:  	English 2.0ch AC-3 @ 192 kb/s (Stereo - Commentary)

https://nitro.download/view/91BB726CBE9B6D3/The.Apartment.1960.576p.Bluray.x264.DD.5.1-1R0N.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Billy Wilder – The Apartment (1960) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Has dialogue ever been more perfectly hard-boiled? Has a femme fatale ever been as deliciously wicked as Barbara Stanwyck? And has 1940s Los Angeles ever looked so seductively sordid? Working with cowriter Raymond Chandler, director Billy Wilder launched himself onto the Hollywood A-list with this epitome of film-noir fatalism from James M. Cain’s pulp novel. When slick salesman Walter Neff (Fred MacMurray) walks into the swank home of dissatisfied housewife Phyllis Dietrichson (Stanwyck), he intends to sell insurance, but he winds up becoming entangled with her in a far more sinister way. Featuring scene-stealing supporting work from Edward G. Robinson and the chiaroscuro of cinematographer John F. Seitz, Double Indemnity is one of the most entertainingly perverse stories ever told and the standard by which all noir must be measured.

2.64GB | 1h 47m | 790×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/D2A9A774646B0B9/Double.Indemnity.1944.BDRIP.Criterion.4K.576p.x264.AC3.KJNU.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:English

The post Billy Wilder – Double Indemnity [Criterion 4K] (1944) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
If you believe all-American Fred MacMurray as an Oxford don, you’ll probably swallow the rest of Above Suspicion. Newly married to Joan Crawford, MacMurray goes on a honeymoon in prewar Germany. Actually it’s more business than pleasure: they are secret agents for the British, attempting to smuggle back information about a new superweapon being developed by the Nazis. Evil, mean, cruel and also wicked German officer Basil Rathbone imprisons and tortures Crawford (though she still looks like a million bucks), but McMurray comes to the rescue, paving the way for a suspenseful race-to-the-border climax. The tenor of Above Suspicion can be summed up in a scene in which, after being confronted by a monolingual stormtrooper, Fred MacMurray says in English “Nuts to you, dope!,” whereupon the Nazi scratches his head and wonders aloud, “Vass iss das ‘dope’?” ~ Hal Erickson

1.25GB | 1h 30mn | 640×480 | avi

https://nitro.download/view/C2000A97DE1C1A3/Above_Suspicion.1943.Richard_Thorpe.avi

Language(s):English, French, German, Arabic
Subtitles:None

The post Richard Thorpe – Above Suspicion (1943) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
In the 1800s, American inventor Robert Fulton (Richard Greene) travels from Europe to New York intent on building a steamboat that will revolutionize river travel between waterfront boroughs, but instead gets a rude welcome from a vicious shipyard boss at a local tavern owned by salty beauty Pat O’Day (Alice Faye). Pat takes a shine to Fulton and offers to help him out, but her jealous boyfriend — sailor Charles Brownne (Fred MacMurray) — fears the new vessel will put him out of work.

1.42GB | 1 h 40 min | 706×529 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/1C397ED1C0872E2/Little.Old.New.York.1940.DVDRip.x264.part1.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/A80297B16BF52F8/Little.Old.New.York.1940.DVDRip.x264.part2.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Henry King – Little Old New York (1940) first appeared on Cinema of the World.