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Gabriel Over the White House (1933)
Please let it be Gabriel and not Lucifer
This is downright scary %$#@ in light of the results of the 2016 Presidential Election. It lurched around, swinging left and right, and it ended up so far right it fell over.
Franchot Tone is charming here; you can see why the ladies were fighting over him. Karen Morley is lovely and effective, and Walter Huston is presidential and makes a good transition from intellectual lightweight to wise savior of the world. High production standards, too. It's pre-code, but lots of 1930s hokiness here, too.
I still have the shakes after the election results, and I probably should have watched some lightweight distraction rather than this.
Apur Sansar (1959)
Wake Up Already!
I just got finished watching this, the finale to the "Apu Trilogy." I loved the cinematography and some of the music, but seriously, the same conflict over and over, death of a loved one. Don't bathe in and drink from the Ganges already! And have you ever seen anyone have as much trouble waking up as this dude? In movie #1 his mother and sister have to pound on him every morning, in movie #2 it's mostly his mother, and in #3 his wife, but at least she's smart enough to get an alarm clock. In "World of Apu," at the end where he goes to wake up his estranged son and get to know him, the kid wakes up right away when he touches him. I thought there was going to be some kind of joke there--that the kid was going to be sluggish about waking up and Apu was going to be all "That's my boy!" But the kid must have taken after his mother, because he popped right up.
The best thing about this trilogy was the old lady (the Auntie) in the first movie. Her role was poignant, and she nailed it. Her song was transcendent. The child actors, both Apu and his sister, were charming. The grown-up Apus, less so. Start there, with Pather Panchali; you can finish there too and not miss much.
Ugetsu monogatari (1953)
Finally I get to see the ending...
I started watching Ugetsu Monogatari on PBS late one night in the 1980s while my husband was on a business trip, before we even had a VCR. I just kind of left the TV on even though I was dead tired. Before I knew it, I was swept up in the story, but I just couldn't keep my eyes open, and obviously I couldn't tape it. I yielded to sleep just as the potter arrived at the manor and realized Lady Wakasa's intentions. I have always been haunted by the memory of Miyagi and Genichi waving good-bye to Genjuro, and I always wondered what became of them--if he made it back to them. Thanks to Netflix, I just watched the film in its entirety (plus all the commentaries on the Critereon edition). It was worth waiting for. If half a movie could hold a spot in my heart for that long, it must be powerful indeed. The movie as a whole did not disappoint. It is wholly Japanese, but universally accessible. Mizoguchi was known for his painstaking detail, and the beautifully framed images (including my good-bye scene) burn into your memory.
The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
Douglas Fairbanks Sr. may have invented film swashbuckling, but Junior makes it his own in this one!
One of my all-time favorites. I watched it again a few nights ago. Fairbanks is a marvel. Princess Flavia's dilemma at the end always reminds me a little bit of Elsa Laslo's dilemma in "Casablanca." (Although Madeleine Carroll's acting seems highly stylized today.) The best part of that scene is the scenery--the lighting and the window's arch as it frames the two lovers. It's achingly beautiful. If I had a room like that I would never leave it. But the film as a whole is not a three-hanky affair--it's got swashbuckling, snappy dialog and lots of old movie conventions. (C. Aubrey Smith is an old movie convention in himself.) I definitely keep coming back to it to watch Fairbanks as Rupert of Hentzau.