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When it comes to getting into noir films, it's always worth asking, "Where should I start?" After all, the genre is so time-specific -- it existed in its purest form only in the 1940s and early '50s -- and so full of familiar signifiers -- dame with a secret, jaded investigator, corrupt systems -- that it can sometimes be tough to tell noir titles apart. Start digging into the best the genre has to offer, though, and you'll discover that film noir encompasses much more than the striking style choices and cynicism that have become its cultural shorthand over the years.

Take the two highest-rated noir films on Rotten Tomatoes, for example. According to the aggregate site, only two film noirs have a 100% score on the website, meaning that every single critic included in the site's tally reviewed the movie positively. The first, "Shadow of a Doubt," is an early,...

FX’s “The Bear” has been the series equivalent of a three-star Michelin, James Beard Award-winning restaurant since its premiere in 2022. Created by writer/director/product Christopher Storer, the hit show revolves around Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), a chef from the fine dining world in New York, who returns to his home in Chicago to run the family’s sandwich shop after the suicide of his brother. The first season won 10 Emmys including best comedy series and actor in a comedy series for White. Besides earning a Peabody, “The Bear” also performed well at the SAG Awards and the Golden Globes. The second season is a strong Emmy contender and the third season which just dropped will probably follow suit in 2025.

Since the early days of TV, restaurants, nightclubs, coffee shops, bars and diners have played an important role in countless series including the beloved multi-Emmy Award-winning 1982-93 NBC sitcom “Cheers”. In fact,...

When Bernard Hill died recently, I wrote about the unique feeling accompanying the real-life death of an actor when that actor has been especially associated with a dramatic death scene onscreen. That feeling is only magnified when it’s been a very long time since the actor performed the demise in question. Juanita Moore, with her character’s funeral in 1959’s “Imitation of Life” being the grandest of any in the movies, only dying in real life in 2013 is an example.

One of the most extreme of these has just occurred, a death that also represents the severing of another critical link to Old Hollywood. Darryl Hickman died this past Wednesday, May 22, at the age of 92. He was a child actor in “The Prisoner of Zenda” and John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath” who, upon exiting his teenage years, decided he wanted to become a monk. He entered a...

The Hollywood Blacklist ruined dozens of lives. United States-based artists who were sympathetic to, or even curious about, communism were demonized as traitors to their country and, due to hysterical pressure from The House Committee on Un-American Activities (aka Huac), banned from working in the industry. Disgraced and unemployed, blacklisted individuals were forced to leave the country if they wanted to continue working or, if they could not afford to relocate, find a line of work where being an alleged communist wasn't frowned upon. This latter option was, of course, dismally unlikely. The mental and financial burden of being completely shunned from one's industry was so unbearable that it led actor Philip Loeb to die by suicide.

This put Hollywood at war against itself. Anyone suspected of having communist ties was pressured to come clean and, if they wanted to continue working, name names (a cowardly practice savaged by films...

Darryl Hickman, a child actor in Leave Her to Heaven and The Grapes of Wrath, died at 92 on Wednesday, May 22, his family said. No cause was given.

Hickman appeared in more than 40 films, having been a contract player at Paramount and MGM.

He portrayed the youngest member of the Joad family, Winfield, in John Ford’s 1940 adaptation of The Grapes of Wrath, as well as a role as the younger version of Van Heflin’s character in the 1946 noir, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers.

In 1945’s Leave Her to Heaven, Hickman played Danny, younger brother to Cornel Wilde’s Richard. Danny was disabled by polio and when he comes to live with Richard and his wife, Ellen (Gene Tierney). He drowns by Ellen’s hand in the middle of a lake due to jealousy of Richard’s affection for the boy.

In 1951, he briefly retired from acting to enter a monastery,...

Darryl Hickman, who appeared in such films as The Grapes of Wrath and Leave Her to Heaven as a youngster before becoming a CBS executive in charge of daytime drama and an actor once more, has died. He was 92.

Hickman, who lived in Montecito, died Wednesday, his family announced.

He was the older brother (by three years) of the late Dwayne Hickman, who starred on the 1959-63 CBS comedy The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. Darryl appeared with his brother in Captain Eddie (1945) — he played famed fighter pilot Eddie Rickenbacker as a boy — and on three first-season episodes of Dobie as older brother Davey, who came home from college.

In 1951, after appearances in more than 40 movies, Hickman — who had been a contract player at Paramount and MGM — became disillusioned with the business and entered a monastery, though he was back in show business before long.

Hickman had made his first...

Gene Tierney, though not an A-list name, had a filmography that rivals Hollywood stars of her time. Tierney excels in film noir roles such as in "Night and the City" and "Whirlpool," showcasing her talents. Tierney's performances in classics like "Where the Sidewalk Ends" and "Leave Her to Heaven" prove her underrated brilliance.

Gene Tierney was one of Hollywood's great leading ladies of the 1940s and 1950s and, though she may not have a name as well recognized as contemporaries like Katharine Hepburn or Ingrid Bergman, Tierney has a filmography that stands up against that of any vaunted actress. Tierney operates in an interesting zone where she is not quite a lesser-known Golden Age Hollywood actor, but she also is not one of the primary celebrities many think of from the era. But despite not being an A-list household name, Tierney is an accomplished actress in her own right.

Tierney...

The murder-mystery renaissance really is in full effect right now. The likes of Only Murders In The Building, Poker Face, and Apple TV’s The Afterparty have been making armchair detectives of us all on the telly side of things, but it’s the big screen sleuthing boom that’s had genre fans flocking to the multiplexes with their magnifying glasses and (presumably) deerstalkers most recently. With whodunnits as wildly varied as Park Chan-wook’s sensual Decision To Leave, the superbly silly See How They Run, Rian Johnson_ – which leans hard into the ‘D’ of DC Comics – on offer, it’s not exactly hard to see why, either.

Now, as we prepare to take enough champagne to fill the, erm, canals of Venice with us to see Kenneth Branagh_, we at Empire HQ have put our tan raincoats on and launched an investigation into the very best the genre has to offer.

“When was the last truly f*cking nasty, nasty, bad pop girl?” This is the question posed in the teaser trailer to HBO’s The Idol, which promises the kind of lurid, adrenaline-pumping pop-culture exposé you’d see if Paul Verhoeven was ever allowed to make a film like Showgirls again. Said trailer also features copious quantities of cocaine, champagne and seriously dirty dancing, suggesting a warts-and-all drama about a super-ambitious Madonna/Lady Gaga type who has recently hit the big time in the dog-eat-dog world of showbiz.

That, in itself, would be a risky role for any young actress, especially since The Idol has already been in the news for its turbulent production, overseen by director Sam Levinson, whose envelope-pushing series Euphoria was labelled “pointlessly gratuitous” by the hardly conservative Esquire magazine. Hats off, then, to Lily-Rose Depp — daughter of Johnny and French pop singer Vanessa Paradis, and goddaughter...

As discussed when thumbing through IndieWire’s favorite horror scores earlier this month, much of the work of horror filmmaking is about giving fear a shape. Horror movies imbue the world we know with a malevolent power, bringing out the threat of violence we suspect is always lurking just below the surface. The home is a particularly potent setting for such a transformation, and while there are a lot of different methods for making a moviegoer question the safety of their supposed haven, one of the most dependable is a good old fashioned haunting. Looking at horror movies from across the decades, we can see patterns of production design, composition and lighting, special effects, and sonic choices that give haunted houses their ghostly and/or ghastly strength. We’ve selected six essential films exhibiting the key building blocks the best filmmakers use to construct the sinister shadows and otherworldly presences...

The most popular Brazilian film for decades, this funny & steamy erotic ghost story took the world by storm and made a star of Sonia Braga. Bruno Barreto adapted a Jorge Amado ‘Bahía’ novel, one that celebrates the positive role that plain old-fashioned carnal lust can play in this world. The bereaved widow Dona Flor does Gene Tierney one better — her desire literally brings her love object back to life . . . but in bed. Rich music, earthy culture. . . Film Movement’s version is the uncut original, and has a new director commentary.

Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands

Blu-ray

Film Movement Classics

1976 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 118 min. / Street Date July 26, 2022 / Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos / Available from Film Movement / 39.95

Starring: Sonia Braga, José Wilker, Mauro Mendonça, Dinorah Brillanti.

Cinematography: Murilo Salles

Production Designer: Anisio Medeiros

Film Editor: Raimundo Higino

Original Music: Chico Buarque de Hollanda, Francis Hume

Written by Bruno Barreto, Eduardo Coutinho,...

Throughout the 1960s, several theatrical films from two decades prior were reworked into television series, the majority of which lasted a maximum of two seasons. One of these cases involved the 1947 fantasy film “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. The TV adaptation, which debuted in 1968 with Hope Lange and Edward Mulhare in the lead roles, did not fare particularly well and was cancelled by NBC after a single season. It was immediately picked up by ABC, but its tenure there was just as short.

The show did manage to garner six Emmy nominations during its short run, including one for Best Comedy Series. Lange also picked up a pair of Best Comedy Actress trophies, making her the second youngest champion in her category at the time. Over half a century later, she places behind a total of nine younger women, including three who triumphed in their 20s.

The Palm Springs area will live up to its reputation for seediness under the cover of never-ending nights — irony intended — as the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival returns to town for its 22nd annual marathon of vintage crime dramas this weekend. Leonard Maltin and TCM “Noir Alley” host Eddie Muller will be among the guest hosts joining festival curator Alan K. Rode for a four-day deep dive into the dark that kicks off Thursday night with the 1949 Nicholas Ray film whose title pretty much says it all about the genre being celebrated: “They Live by Night.”

That opening night will be preceded Wednesday by a fundraising performance by frequent festival guest Victoria Mature, daughter of Hollywood golden-age icon Victor Mature, dubbed “Victoria/Victor Mature Cabaret, an Evening of Memories and Music,” to be held, as with the festival proper, at the Palm Springs Cultural Center. Mature will also be on...

Get out your handkerchiefs, director Joseph Mankiewicz’ 1947 fantasy has been known to inspire tears in even the hardest-hearted moviegoer. This ectoplasmic romance between Gene Tierney (as the most beautiful spinster ever to don a shawl and wire-rim glasses) and Rex Harrison as the sea-faring ghost who loves her is a match not made in heaven but certainly headed there. Bernard Herrmann’s wistful score is the finishing touch on one of the greatest date-night movies ever.

The post The Ghost and Mrs. Muir appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Exclusive: Producer Sam Okun and his Sam Okun Productions banner have optioned worldwide film and TV remake and sequel rights to a pair of classic films directed and produced by three-time Oscar nominee Otto Preminger: 1959’s Anatomy of a Murder and 1962’s Advise & Consent.

The former courtroom drama based on Michigan Supreme Court Justice John D. Voelker’s novel watched as an upstate Michigan lawyer defended a soldier who claimed he killed an innkeeper due to temporary insanity after the victim raped his wife. The drama starring James Stewart, Lee Remick and Ben Gazzara landed seven Academy Award nominations upon its release, including Best Picture, Screenplay and Actor.

Advise & Consent was a political thriller based on Allen Drury’s 1959 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, in which the polarizing search for a new Secretary of State had far-reaching consequences. Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Don Murray, Walter Pidgeon, Peter Lawford,...

Horror icon Barbara Crampton discusses a few of her favorite movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes:

Movies Referenced In This Episode

Re-Animator (1985)

Body Double (1984)

Jakob’s Wife (2021)

The Court Jester (1955) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairings

The Adventures Of Robin Hood (1938)

The Three Musketeers (1974) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary

The Matrix (1999)

Bound (1996)

Eyes Without A Face (1962) – Sam Hamm’s trailer commentary, Dennis Cozzalio’s review, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Halloween (1978) Adam Rifkin’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairing, Alex Kirschenbaum’s film power rankings, Alex Kirschenbaum’s timeline power rankings

All About Eve (1950)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Alien (1979) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairings

Relic (2020)

Anything For Jackson (2020)

The Haunting (1963) – Dan Ireland’s trailer commentary

Strait-Jacket (1964) – David DeCoteau’s trailer commentary

The Silence Of The Lambs (1991) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary,...

Throughout the 1960s, several theatrical films from two decades prior were reworked into television series, the majority of which lasted a maximum of two seasons. One of these cases involved the 1947 fantasy film “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir,” starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. The TV adaptation, which debuted in 1968 with Hope Lange and Edward Mulhare in the lead roles, did not fare particularly well and was cancelled by NBC after a single season. It was immediately picked up by ABC, but its tenure there was just as short.

The show did manage to garner six Emmy nominations during its short run, including one for Best Comedy Series. Lange also picked up a pair of Best Comedy Actress trophies, making her the second youngest champion in her category at the time. Over half a century later, she places behind a total of nine younger women, including three who triumphed in their 20s.

Since 1984, Leos Carax has only made five features, and all but one of them have premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, usually to feverish anticipation. This year, festivalgoers will be looking to see how the 60-year-old French maverick—aka Alex Christophe Dupont—will top his intoxicatingly strange 2012 competition entry Holy Motors, which featured talking limos, chimpanzees and Kylie Minogue. They’ll get their answer when Cannes raises the curtain tonight on this year’s opener Annette, a thematically dark, visually kaleidoscopic rock opera he co-wrote with U.S. pop duo Sparks, and which stars Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard.

Deadline: What is your strongest memory of Cannes? Do you associate it with good times or bad times?

Leos Carax: What makes the Cannes experience special is the mix of good and bad— taste, faith, luck, etcetera.

The only time I stayed during the screening of one my films here was...

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on the images for magnified detail)

This week marks the 75th anniversary of Leave Her to Heaven, a technicolor noir blockbuster with set decoration so opulent, you will find yourself shouting at the upholstery.

It has other virtues, of course: Gene Tierney’s wickedly genre-shifting performance, Leon Shamroy’s shadow-wielding cinematography, Vincent Price’s height, etc. But the last time I watched it, I couldn’t take my eyes off the sets. The film takes place in a fever-dream of post-war prosperity before the fact, an endless parade of over-decorated vacation homes.

Frankly, it should have won the Oscar for Best Art Direction - Interior Decoration, Color...

Hi readers. I know I got lost in the weeds a bit in November. It's that damn International Feature Oscar race. It really brings out my Ocd qualities with those Oscar history overviews so I skimped on other stuff. Anyway, here are some of key posts of November in case you missed any. There's one day left but it's the holiday weekend so we're doing the wrap up early ;)

Highlights from the Month That Was

• Ethan Hawke at 50 -an appreciation. The definitive Gen X actor?

• Home for the Holidays -deserves to be a better remembered!

• "Gay Best Friend" -a delightful new series kicked off with My Best Friend's Wedding and Under the Tuscan Sun

• Netflix has too many Oscar contenders - considering the possibilities

• Nicole Kidman in The Undoing -giving us eyeball acting!

• Joan Crawford -Criterion's curated collection

• Cher in 1987 -how she ruled the world that year

• Gene Tierney -...

by Cláudio Alves

In fiction, love is more powerful and heartfelt when it's impossible. Be it the doomed lovers in Shakespeare's tragedies or Keira Knightley and James McAvoy separated by war and a child's lies in Atonement, we, as spectators, are predisposed to find beauty in the loves that cannot be. Death is a common way to enshrine romance in the perfection of upended passion. Like flowers plucked and dried, kept in the pages of a book, the love that's cut short by the Grim Reaper's blade can preserve its appearance. If it weren't for that, such amorous glories would do like their floral brethren, rotting away with time until dropping into the earth, a mushy decaying mess.

In 1947's The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, starring Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney, this dynamic between love and premature demise is both perpetuated and upended. Death facilitates and limits passion, making it...

by Jason Adams

The surface of the lake is calm -- almost, but not quite, like a mirror. It's a clinical aquamarine color, not much different from Gene Tierney's own eyes. Not that we can see her eyes -- she's just put on her sunglasses. They too act as mirrors -- dark mirrors, reflecting darkness. Ellen Berent Harland (Tierney) watches as the annoying little "cripple" Danny (Darryl Hickman) breaks the sheen of the lake's surface, as if slipping through into some unseen Wonderland -- they say repeatedly the water is warm, so warm, so very warm, but it looks to us cold, ice cold, and indeed the actor Hickman got pneumonia from the filming of this, Leave Her to Heaven's most infamous scene.

But then that's a sense that suffuses all of John M. Stahl's 1945 technicolor Noir masterpiece -- the feeling that something that sounds warm and...

by Nathaniel R

Dear reader, we had such fun doing the Montgomery Clift Centennial that we want to do more of them. Of course not every movie star inspires the same passion in cinephiles, nor has a cooperatively small enough filmography to be completist about. For instance I put out the feelers on Gene Tierney, who made 37 films in her career, and received only 2 volunteers. And herewith a confession: I, myself, despite my love of Old Hollywood, was unfamiliar. I had seen only two of her movies and so long ago that I had next to no recollection. So I queued up her most famous picture, Laura (1944), which I'd somehow never seen even when I was a uncool kid in the horrific "colorizing" days of pop culture who relished seeing old black and white movies... ...

Tomorrow is Halloween which means October is nearly gone. Happy Devil's Night! Apart from the madhouse of virtual festivals (which all decided to happen at once!) and finally getting all Oscar charts up for this strange season we spent most of October celebrating Montgomery Clift's Centennial. We're so proud of that 18 episode series and the fine insights of our writers so we sincerely hope you got something out of it and were spurred on to discover at least a couple of his pictures that you hadn't seen before. If you did, please let us know in the comments so we know we reached people. Highlights from October follow...

12 Highlights You Might Have Missed

• To Die For -Chris revisits for the 25th anniversary of Kidman's breakout

• Damon Identity - Patrick's thinkpiece about Matt Damon's persona

• Bram Stoker's Dracula - Michael's hilarious first screening (!) of this visual orgy

• Smackdown...

Born in St. Louis on May 27, 1911, iconic actor Vincent Price retained a special fondness for his place of origin, and that love was reciprocated with Vincentennial, a celebration of his 100th birthday in his hometown back in May of 2011 (for summary of all the Vincentennial activities go Here).

In 2011, we asked Vincent Price’s daughter, Victoria Price, to write a testimonial about her famous father toasting him on the centennial of his birth, and here’s what she wrote:

When I was a little girl, I believed that to come from St. Louis made you a member of a very desirable club.

I got this impression because whenever my dad met someone from his hometown, he greeted him or her as though he had just found a long-lost friend. Immediately they would discuss where they had “gone to school,” which I later learned did not mean college, as it did everywhere else in America,...

The writer/director of The Love Witch talks about her favorite classic women’s pictures.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Love Witch (2016)

Baby Face (1933)

Stromboli (1950)

Europa ’51 (1951)

Fear (1951)

Duel In The Sun (1946)

The Scarlet Empress (1934)

Blonde Venus (1932)

Nora Prentiss (1947)

Woman On The Run (1950)

Wait Until Dark (1967)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Imitation of Life (1969)

Little Women (2019)

Emma (2020)

My Cousin Rachel (2017)

Sex and the City (2008)

Mamma Mia! (2008)

Mildred Pierce (1945)

The Reckless Moment (1949)

Sudden Fear (1952)

Torch Song (1953)

Captain Marvel (2019)

Other Notable Items

The Captain Trips virus in Stephen King’s novel The Stand (1978)

Marlene Dietrich

Mae West

Jennifer Jones

Joan Crawford

Joan Bennett

Gene Tierney

Barbara Stanwyck

The Hays Code

Cary Grant

Marilyn Monroe

Ingrid Bergman

Roberto Rossellini

The Academy Awards

Bette Davis

Jennifer Jones

Gregory Peck

Joseph Cotten

Travis Banton

Josef von Sternberg

Catherine the Great

The Criterion Collection

Kent Smith

Dan Duryea

Douglas Sirk

Jane Austen

Mildred Pierce TV miniseries...

This article contains Hollywood spoilers. You can find our easter egg guide for the previous episode here.

A lighter episode for inside baseball winks and nudges, the fourth hour of Hollywood still crucially introduces us to the concept of Avis being friends with Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as the prospect of turning “Peg” into “Meg.” So like Ace’s blood pressure, let’s get cracking.

Hollywood Episode 4

-As far as I’m aware, there is no Gene Tierney movie in which she plays a fake nun who seduces William Holden, nor is there a movie where Humphrey Bogart plays Indian-slaughterer William Henry Harrison, but I totally buy they’d make those movies in 1947! Apparently they did at Ace Pictures. Also Ace just came up with the plot of Old Yeller (1957) when he pitched making a movie about a boy and his dog where the boy has to kill the dog at the end.

When does a silent classic really become a classic? When we can see a reconstituted full original version, which in this case meant decades spent waiting. G.W. Pabst’s celebrated 1927 jeopardy-soap has romance, treachery, murder, a revolutionary war and a score of terrific characters embodied by Brigitte Helm, Sig Arno, Vladimir Sokoloff and the weird Fritz Rasp. But our hearts are stolen by the wistful lady in the title role, Édith Jéhanne, whose natural performance resonates with innocence and devotion. The rambling narrative barely holds together, but this romantic winner is graced with some of the best-directed scenes from silent cinema.

The Love of Jeanne Ney

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1927 / B&w / 1:33 Silent Ap / 106 min. / Street Date April 21, 2020 /

Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Édith Jéhanne, Uno Henning, Fritz Rasp, Brigitte Helm, Adolf E. Licho, Eugen Jensen, Hans Jaray, Siegfried Arno, Hertha von Walther, Vladimir Sokoloff,...

This episode includes Hollywood spoilers. You can find our easter egg guide for the first episode here.

Ah, the episode of Hollywood introduces us to Anna May Wong and the 1940s studio caste system. There’s a lot to unpack in this hour, which may give you nightmares about how a studio cafeteria is apparently not that different from a high school… except, you know, with racism.

Hollywood Episode 2

-When Ernie bails Jack out of prison, Jack laments he cannot have a record. “Yeah you can,” Ernie answers, “Ever heard of Frank Sinatra?” Ol’ Blue Eyes was arrested in 1938 in New Jersey after being charged by an ex-girlfriend with “adultery and seduction.” That is to say, he could be and was charged back then with promising marriage and then ghosting her the morning after.

-We then hear Johnny Mercer and Paul Eston’s rendition of “Button Up Your Overcoat.”

-Avis...

Helping you stay sane while staying safe… featuring Leonard Maltin, Dave Anthony, Miguel Arteta, John Landis, and Blaire Bercy from the Hollywood Food Coalition.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Plague (1979)

Target Earth (1954)

The Left Hand of God (1955)

A Lost Lady (1934)

Enough Said (2013)

Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941)

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington (1939)

Heaven Can Wait (1978)

Down to Earth (2001)

Down To Earth (1947)

The Commitments (1991)

Once (2007)

Election (1999)

About Schmidt (2002)

Sideways (2004)

Nebraska (2013)

The Man in the Moon (1991)

The 39 Steps (1935)

Casablanca (1942)

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

The Night Walker (1964)

Chuck and Buck (2000)

Cedar Rapids (2011)

Beatriz at Dinner (2017)

Duck Butter (2018)

The Good Girl (2002)

The Big Heat (1953)

Human Desire (1954)

Slightly French (1949)

Week-End with Father (1951)

Experiment In Terror (1962)

They Shoot Horses Don’t They? (1969)

Ray’s Male Heterosexual Dance Hall (1987)

Airport (1970)

Earthquake (1974)

Drive a Crooked Road (1954)

Pushover (1954)

Waves (2019)

Krisha (2015)

The Oblong Box (1969)

80,000 Suspects (1963)

Panic In The Streets (1950)

It Comes At Night (2017)

Children of Men (2006)

The Road (2009)

You Were Never Really Here...

“I’ll never let you go,” Gene Tierney’s Ellen Berent coos to her husband/victim in the 1945 melodrama film-noir Leave Her to Heaven. It’s a sentiment first uttered at an intimate juncture where such words still seem somewhat innocent from her increasingly toxic personality. Indeed, at least in cinematic terms, she’s a character who hasn’t let go, an exotically charged Technicolor femme fatale whose deadly beauty is merely one part of a dangerous trifecta, as equally bad as her bark and her bite.

Directed by John M. Stahl, who would pass away only five years later at the age of 63, with several of his previous titles (such as ‘women’s pictures’ Magnificent Obsession and Imitation of Life) remade in the 1950s by Douglas Sirk, it remains both Stahl and Tierney’s vibrant stranglehold on iconicity, the power of which can never be usurped.…

Continue reading.

Murder. Neglect. Jealousy. Oppression. Obsession. These themes collide in Leave Her to Heaven, the oddly sunny drama-turned-film noir directed by John M. Stahl from the book by Ben Ames Williams. I say "oddly sunny" because it's a deceptive opening: the leads, Gene Tierney as society goddess Ellen and Cornel Wilde as author Richard, meet on a train. She's reading his novel and they met there, then become more acquainted after a mutual lawyer friend introduces them at the same station --- and final ranch destination --- to which they travel.  The film is a romance, until it's not. Soon after meeting, Ellen decides to break off her engagement to the very sharp attorney Russell (an excellent Vincent Price, who returns in a small but meaningful...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

This article contains major spoilers for the Westworld Season 3 premiere.

Even though it was given away in trailers, it is still weird seeing our first introduction to “Warworld.” Yet there it is in the post-credits scene of the Westworld Season 3 premiere: Nazi flags hanging from every occupied building; Thandie Newton’s Maeve finally being introduced, and with a Gene Tierney haircut no less (think Ghost of Mrs. Muir); and German dialects as far as the ear can hear. Welcome to the future of Delos!

Simply a tease of what’s come next week, showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan obviously kept their cards played pretty close to the chest about why (and perhaps when) Maeve’s World War II sojourn began. Nevertheless, there were hints tonight about what “Warworld” is and how it could possibly exist after the events of Westworld Season 2.

Earlier in the night, we were reintroduced to...

Freddie Mercury sang that Love Kills, and that’s apparently where Gene Tierney’s coming from in this bizarre domestic noir. Dream wife Tierney is cultured, rich, and drop-dead gorgeous, but hubby Cornell Wilde should have read the small print about her manic possessiveness. Beautiful people, beautiful scenery and Technicolor so bright that even Alfred Newman’s music score seems to be in color; John M. Stahl’s thriller stretches the definition of Film Noir.

Leave Her to Heaven

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1020

1945 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 110 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 24, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde, Jeanne Crain, Vincent Price, Mary Philips, Ray Collins, Darryl Hickman.

Cinematography: Leon Shamroy

Film Editor: James B. Clark

Original Music: Alfred Newman

Written by Jo Swerling from the novel by Ben Ames Williams

Produced by William A. Bacher, Darryl F. Zanuck

Directed by John M. Stahl

How can a glossy...

Otto Preminger and Gene Tierney’s return to the noir fold plays better now than it once did — the performances are impressive and the villain’s diabolical murder scheme is as good as anything that Fantomas or Moriarty ever came up with. Tierney’s pampered wife is the perfect patsy for a con-man with hypnosis skills — a fraud who decides to cover up an earlier crime by mesmerizing a new victim to frame herself for murder. The focus is on third-billed José Ferrer… who puts an oily menace into his character that few actors could provide.

Whirlpool

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1949 / B&w / 1:37 academy / 97 min. / Street Date September 17, 2019 / Available from Twilight Time Movies / 29.95

Starring: Gene Tierney, Richard Conte, José Ferrer, Charles Bickford, Barbara O’Neil, Eduard Franz, Constance Collier, Fortunio Bonanova.

Cinematography: Arthur Miller

Original Music: David Raksin

Written by Ben Hecht, Andrew Solt from the novel Methinks The Lady...

“The Haunting of Hill House” star Carla Gugino worked with costume designer Lynn Falconer on portraying her matriarch character’s mental decline. “The flowing gowns were a big part of revealing that she was losing her sense of the outside world,” says Gugino, who personally loves a chic tuxedo as much as an elaborate dress. “I don’t tend to gravitate to what’s trendy. It’s much more about what makes me feel good in my skin.”

2011

“The little girl in me will never tire [of], nor take for granted, getting to play dress up professionally,” says Gugino, who received a SAG ensemble nom for 2007’s “American Gangster” and has been a part of hit shows including “Californication” and “Entourage.” She was enamored with the dusty rose Douglas Hannant gown she wore this Globes night. “This look was really an homage to the golden days of Hollywood: Elizabeth Taylor, Gene Tierney,...

Born in St. Louis on May 27, 1911, iconic actor Vincent Price retained a special fondness for his place of origin, and that love was reciprocated with Vincentennial, a celebration of his 100th birthday in his hometown back in May of 2011 (for summary of all the Vincentennial activities go Here).

In 2011, we asked Vincent Price’s daughter, Victoria Price, to write a testimonial about her famous father toasting him on the centennial of his birth, and here’s what she wrote:

When I was a little girl, I believed that to come from St. Louis made you a member of a very desirable club.

I got this impression because whenever my dad met someone from his hometown, he greeted him or her as though he had just found a long-lost friend. Immediately they would discuss where they had “gone to school,” which I later learned did not mean college, as it did everywhere else in America,...

The murky crimes of sordid characters come to the fore in the wide-open Nevada spaces… producer Hal Wallis’ Technicolor noir concentrates on the possessive and perverse competition for Lizabeth Scott’s luscious blonde — the mother that wants to corral her, the gangster who thinks she’s an escape and the local hunk who wears a badge. Robert Rossen’s edgy screenplay depicts its violent action on a psychological level.

Desert Fury

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1947 / Color / 1:37 flat Academy / 96 min. / Street Date Feb 26, 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Lizabeth Scott, John Hodiak, Wendell Corey, Mary Astor, Kristine Miller, William Harrigan, James Flavin, Anna Camargo, Ray Teal.

Cinematography: Edward Cronjager, Charles Lang

Film Editor: Warren Low

Original Music: Miklos Rosza

Written by Robert Rossen from the novel by Ramona Stewart

Produced by Hal B. Wallis

Directed by Lewis Allen

As he was under contract to Hal Wallis, Burt Lancaster...

Fox touted Black Widow as the first murder mystery in CinemaScope. Ace writer / tyro director Nunnally Johnson tries an ‘All About Eve’ dissection of Broadway swells but in a mystery context, with beaucoup flashbacks. The result is something akin to Rope, with scenes all taking place in apartments with views of Central Park. Nobody complained about the big marquee names Ginger Rogers, Van Heflin, Gene Tierney and George Raft, but I re-watch to marvel over the dreamy, interesting Virginia Leith. Raymond Durgnat encouraged us to indulge our screen fantasies!

Black Widow

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1954 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date October 16, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring Ginger Rogers, Van Heflin, Gene Tierney, George Raft, Peggy Ann Garner, Reginald Gardiner, Virginia Leith, Otto Kruger, Cathleen Nesbitt, Skip Homeier

Cinematography Charles G. Clarke

Art Direction Maurice Ransford, Lyle R. Wheeler

Film Editor Dorothy Spencer

Original Music Leigh Harline

Written...

When one thinks of Cornel Wilde, a veritable Hollywood everyman who was peppered across a variety of noir and studio productions throughout the 1940s and 50s, he potentially conjures nostalgic memories from his leading man days. But the potential Olympian, who would forego a promising athletic career to pursue acting, was perhaps more a prototype for the similar trajectory of someone like a John Cassavetes, another actor who would eventually spend his later career fashioning an impressive directorial resume.…...

Old Hollywood has its pitfalls, but it sure made some excellent, even downright delightful films. Case in point, Heaven Can Wait, from director Ernst Lubitsch. Lubitsch was born in 1892 and began making films in the early 1900s. He worked with movie stars from Hollywood's Golden Age, like Greta Garbo, Carole Lombard, Gary Cooper, Claudette Colbert, Burgess Meredith, Melvyn Douglas, and many more. Starring a young Don Ameche (Mortimer in Trading Places!) as playboy Henry Van Cleve and the extraordinarily beautiful Gene Tierney, the film opens with Van Cleve meeting with Satan, who has a large basement office with fake painted books on the walls (Hell indeed). Before Van Cleve can be admitted to Hell, he must recount his...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

This may be the year for new cinephile converts to the cult of appreciation for the great Ernst Lubitsch. One of his last pictures but his first in color is this Production Code-defying tale of a serial philanderer and his relationship with the woman of his dreams, his wife. It’s stylized as a series of birthdays, and our hero is judged not by St. Peter but at the gates of Hades, by the fallen angel himself.

Heaven Can Wait

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 291

1943 / Color / 1:37 flat full frame / 112 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 21, 2018 / 39.95

Starring Gene Tierney, Don Ameche, Charles Coburn, Marjorie Main, Laird Cregar, Spring Byington, Allyn Joslyn, Eugene Pallette, Signe Hasso, Louis Calhern

Cinematography Edward Cronjager

Art Direction James Basevi, Leland Fuller

Film Editor Dorothy Spencer

Original Music Alfred Newman

Written by Samson Raphaelson from a play by Leslie Bush-Fekete

Produced and Directed by Ernst Lubitsch

Wait one second,...

Before Vincent Price haunted houses, he chalked up plenty of experience as a Broadway star and a versatile character actor. This superb Joseph L. Mankiewicz gothic romance assigns him major leading man duty as a ‘dark and troubled’ soul — the kind that intimidates cowering leading ladies. With typical good humor, Price called it the first of his ‘dead wife’ movies!

Dragonwyck

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1946 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 103 min. / Street Date , 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, Vincent Price, Glenn Langan, Anne Revere, Spring Byington, Connie Marshall, Harry Morgan, Vivienne Osborne, Jessica Tandy, Trudy Marshall, Reinhold Schünzel, Grady Sutton.

Cinematography: Arthur C. Miller

Film Editor: Dorothy Spencer

Original Music: Alfred Newman

From the novel by Anya Seton

Produced by Ernst Lubitsch, Darryl F. Zanuck

Written for the screen and Directed by Joseph H. Mankiewicz

You’d have to say that Vincent Price’s film...

Turner Classic Movies continues with its Gay Hollywood presentations tonight and tomorrow morning, June 8–9. Seven movies will be shown about, featuring, directed, or produced by the following: Cole Porter, Lorenz Hart, Farley Granger, John Dall, Edmund Goulding, W. Somerset Maughan, Clifton Webb, Montgomery Clift, Raymond Burr, Charles Walters, DeWitt Bodeen, and Harriet Parsons. (One assumes that it's a mere coincidence that gay rumor subjects Cary Grant and Tyrone Power are also featured.) Night and Day (1946), which could also be considered part of TCM's homage to birthday girl Alexis Smith, who would have turned 96 today, is a Cole Porter biopic starring Cary Grant as a posh, heterosexualized version of Porter. As the warning goes, any similaries to real-life people and/or events found in Night and Day are a mere coincidence. The same goes for Words and Music (1948), a highly fictionalized version of the Richard Rodgers-Lorenz Hart musical partnership.

Legendary actor Kirk Douglas has been candid about his extramarital affairs in the past, and his wife of more than 60 years says she accepted his infidelity — and willfully turned a blind eye to his lovers.

“Kirk never tried to hide his dalliances from me,” Anne Douglas, 98, writes in Kirk and Anne: Letters of Love, Laughter and a Lifetime in Hollywood, a new book out Tuesday that reveals intimate letters between the longtime couple. “As a European, I understood it was unrealistic to expect total fidelity in a marriage.”

This “European” attitude toward love created the space for their unconventional romance to bloom.

In the first part of Hollywood’s Golden Era when classic beauties such as Gene Tierney, Greta Garbo, Jean Harlow, Marlene Dietrich and Merle Oberon ruled the screen, Heddy Lamarr was the fairest of them all. In fact, her face became the inspiration for Walt Disney’s animators when they created the Snow White figure. By any measure except critical acclaim, Lamarr had a successful career. She starred in blockbusters like Cecile B DeMille’s Samson and Delilah and the steamy White Cargo (that had her impersonating a woman of color). And given the chance, she did hold her own against some of...read more...

“It’s the most wonderful time/Of the year…” – Andy Williams

Well, yes and no. There is, after all, still about a week and a half to go before we can put the long national, annual nightmare of the tax season behind us. But it’s also film festival season, which for me specifically means the onset of the 2017 TCM Classic Film Festival, the eighth iteration of what has become a perennial moviegoing event. More and more people flock to Hollywood Boulevard each year from all reaches of the country, and from other countries, to revel in the history of Hollywood and international filmmaking, celebrate their favorite stars (including, this year, beloved TCM host Robert Osborne, who died earlier this year and whose presence has been missed at the festival for the past two sessions) and enjoy a long-weekend-sized bout of nostalgia for the movie culture being referred to when...

On this day in showbiz history

The Story of Miss Lonelyheart from Péter Lichter on Vimeo.

1913/1914 Did you know that Detective Doyle (Wendell Corey) and Miss Lonelyhearts (Judith Evelyn) from Rear Window shared a birthday? Now you do! (Uff, I love Rear Window so much)

1942 Rings on Her Finger, a screwball comedy starring Henry Fonda and Gene Tierney opens in theaters

1948 Gentleman's Agreement wins Best Picture at the 1947 Oscars but the enduring statues from that year are surely Edmund Gwenn's Supporting Actor win as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street and the Cinematography and Art Direction wins for the astounding Black Narcissus. What a picture! 

1952 Vivien Leigh wins her second Best Actress prize at the 1951 Oscars for A Streetcar Named Desire. Absent from the ceremony, Greer Garson accepts for Vivien...

New York City – Robert Osborne, one of the great film advocates and historians of our era, who hosted on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) with passionate skill from 1994 until recently, has passed away on March 6th, 2017, in New York City. The way that Mr. Osborne inspired film lovers everywhere was deep and influential. He was 84.

I was lucky enough to meet the man, naturally at a Chicago movie theater, back in 2005. Five years later, as I became a film reporter myself, I got to interview Ro via phone. He was the type of film man that you could spend a month with and never come to the end of his knowledge, and the way he shared it as the host on TCM was as if the finest uncle was giving us life lessons. Next to Roger Ebert, Robert Osborne is another reporter legend who galvanized my love for film.

King of the Classics: Robert Osborne,...

Dana Andrews movies: Film noir actor excelled in both major and minor crime dramas. Dana Andrews movies: First-rate film noir actor excelled in both classics & minor fare One of the best-looking and most underrated actors of the studio era, Dana Andrews was a first-rate film noir/crime thriller star. Oftentimes dismissed as no more than a “dependable” or “reliable” leading man, in truth Andrews brought to life complex characters that never quite fit into the mold of Hollywood's standardized heroes – or rather, antiheroes. Unlike the cynical, tough-talking, and (albeit at times self-delusionally) self-confident characters played by the likes of Alan Ladd, Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, and, however lazily, Robert Mitchum, Andrews created portrayals of tortured men at odds with their social standing, their sense of ethics, and even their romantic yearnings. Not infrequently, there was only a very fine line separating his (anti)heroes from most movie villains.