Quote:
They said it couldn’t be done, but they did it: Kathleen Winsor’s “notorious”, bestselling bodice-ripper Forever Amber actually made it to the screen in 1947 with full censorial approval. Of course, it was necessary to tone down the more erotic passages of Winsor’s novel, but the end result pleased fans of the book and bluenosed nonfans alike. A last-minute replacement for British import Peggy Cummins, Linda Darnell steps into the role of 17th century blonde bed-hopper Amber as though she’d been born to play it. Feeling suppressed by her Puritan upbringing, Amber heads to London, finding considerable success as a courtesan (that’s the polite word for it). The first real love of her life is dashing soldier Bruce Carlton, who leaves her pregnant and penniless when he marches off to war. Subsequent amours include the sadistic Earl of Radcliffe (a superbly loathsome performance by comic actor Richard Haydn), handsome highwayman Black Jack Mallard (John Russell) and privateer Captain Rex Morgan (Glenn Langan). Surviving the Plague and the Great London Fire with nary a hair out of place, Amber ends up in the arms of no less than King Charles II (wittily portrayed by George Sanders), but true love, as personified by Bruce Carlton, will always elude her.

Taking no chances, 20th Century-Fox sent out Forever Amber with a spoken prologue, heard over the opening credits, which explained that the film in no way endorsed its heroine’s libertine behavior, and that she would be amply punished for her sins before fadeout time (that prologue has thankfully been removed from current prints). A model of restraint by today’s standards, Forever Amber was sufficiently titillating in 1947 to post an enormous profit, far in excess of its $4 million budget.

Otto Preminger & John M. Stahl - (1947) Forever Amber.mkv

General
Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	2h 18mn
Size: 	2.24 GiB
Video
Codec: 	x264
Resolution: 	768x576 
Aspect ratio:  	4:3
Frame rate: 	23.976 fps
Bit rate: 	2 118 Kbps
BPP: 	0.200
Audio
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https://nitro.download/view/90699B8F3AF46A9/Otto_Preminger_&_John_M._Stahl_-_(1947)_Forever_Amber.mkv

Language(s):English, French, Italian
Subtitles:None

The post Otto Preminger & John M. Stahl – Forever Amber (1947) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

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.

A letter is addressed to three wives from their “best friend” Addie Ross, announcing that she is running away with one of their husbands–but she doesn’t say which one.

2.95GB | 1h 43m | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/ADBE1F9AE256851/A.Letter.To.Three.Wives.1949.576p.BluRay.AAC.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, Spanish, French, Japanese

The post Joseph L. Mankiewicz – A Letter to Three Wives (1949) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
Wyatt Earp and his brothers Morgan and Virgil ride into Tombstone and leave brother James in charge of their cattle herd. On their return they find their cattle stolen and James dead. Wyatt takes on the job of town marshal, making his brothers deputies, and vows to stay in Tombstone until James’ killers are found. He soon runs into the brooding, coughing, hard-drinking Doc Holliday as well as the sullen and vicious Clanton clan. Wyatt discovers the owner of a trinket stolen from James’ dead body and the stage is set for the Earps’ long-awaited revenge.

2.21GB | 1h 37m | 788×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/61FE11E341D9D0D/My_Darling_Clementine_(1946)__-_BluRay_576p.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, English (commentary), French, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German, Italian, Japanese

The post John Ford – My Darling Clementine (1946) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
The huge success of Laura may have done more ill than good to Otto Preminger’s career, not only for setting expectations high early in the game, but also for forcing a “noir mystery master” image onto an artist much more interested in asking questions than in answering them. Fallen Angel, the director’s follow-up to his 1944 classic, is often predictably looked down as a lesser genre venture, yet its subtle analysis of shadowy tropes proves both a continuation and a deepening of Preminger’s use of moral ambiguity as a tool of human insight. Linda Darnell, a provocative bombshell caught behind the counter of a small-town California roadside café, is the flame around which the picture’s male moths circle, though the titular fallen angel is later revealed to be tainted drifter Dana Andrews, who comes to town and becomes quickly smitten with her. He has to get in line, however, since every local male—including transplanted New York cop Charles Bickford, jukebox-operator Bruce Cabot, and café owner Percy Kilbride—seem to be equally keen in sampling her come-hither goods. Knowing that security is the way into Darnell’s tight uniform, Andrews turns on the somber charm and lassoes church organist Alice Faye into matrimony, hoping for a quick divorce and a piece of her inheritance.

As always with Preminger, no character can be summed up in a single word, their introductions offering shorthand traits (Andrews’s moodiness, Darnell’s dark whorishness, Faye’s blond nobility) which will be contradicted during the course of the film—Faye assures her new beau that “I have my little secrets, too,” while Darnell, asked by Andrews to ditch her partner on the dancing floor, whispers “I don’t cheat on a date.” Preminger’s refusal to draw easy conclusions—his pragmatic curiosity for people—is reflected in his remarkable visual fluidity, the surveying camera constantly moving, shifting dueling points-of-view in order to give them equal weight. Fallen Angel may not satisfy genre fans who like their noir with fewer gray zones, but the director’s take on obsession remains no less fascinating for trading suspense for multilayered lucidity. Angels fall and rise, and, as Faye ponders at one point, “Are we to judge?

1.59GB | 1s 37m | 768×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/3EBA0483A9B414C/Otto_Preminger_-_(1945)_Fallen_Angel.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:English

The post Otto Preminger – Fallen Angel (1945) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
A newspaper obit writer, impatient to move ahead at his job, wishes he could know the news before it happens. One night, Old Pop Benson grants him that power, in the form of the next day’s newspaper. At first it only gets him in trouble, but also brings him closer to the pretty girl in a fortune-telling routine. By the third tomorrow’s paper, he’s sure he’s got this whole future business in the bag — reporting advance scoops, picking sure winners at the race track — when he reads a very final headline: the news of his own death.

2.23GB | 1h 24m | 792×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/7130517A2D71772/It_Happened_Tomorrow_(1944)_576p-BDRip-AAC-trand.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English, Spanish

The post René Clair – It Happened Tomorrow (1944) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

After County Attorney Dave Connors helps Julian Norman with her shiftless father, Jefferson Norman, she leaves Jericho, Kansas to college to study for a law degree.A few years later, Algeria Wedge, the new bride of Dave’s best friend, Tucker Wedge, makes overtures and plays for Dave, much to the displeasure of Dave’s hard-drinking wife Belle. Angered by Dave’s rebuffs, Algeria induces the state political boss to back Tucker for a Congress race against Dave. Meanwhile, Julia has returned to Jericho, with her law degree, and she and Dave fall in love. But when Dave announces he won’t run for Congress, she feels she is the reason and she takes a job in Kansas City. Tucker wins the election and he and Algeria go to Washington. Later, Tucker announces a run for the Senate and Dave decides to run against him. When Marjorie Ransome kills a drunk in self-defense, Julia returns to Jericho to work with Dave, now in private practice,on Marjorie’s defense. The still-resentful Algeria moves to kill Dave’s senate bid when Tucker’s newspaper announces that Dave is being sued for divorce, with Julia named as correspondent.

1.74GB | 1h 45mn | 785×556 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/72189D1165FBB5E/The_Walls_of_Jericho_(1948)_–_John_M._Stahl.mkv

Language:English
Subtitles:English, Spanish, Russian (muxed)

The post John M. Stahl – The Walls of Jericho (1948) first appeared on Cinema of the World.