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Ginger Rogers

Yasojiro Ozu

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Tanned Legs (1929) **UPGRADE – Improved Print**

Directed by Marshall Neilan and starring Arthur Lake, June Clyde, Dorothy Revier and Ann Pennington, this film has a runtime oif 66 mins and the print quality is very good.

Plot: Peggy and Bill are high society lovebirds, but their marriage plans are put on hold while Peggy spends most of her summer straightening out her wayward parents and her unlucky-in-love sister Janet. Mama and Papa are set to rights fairly quickly, but Janet's the one with real problems. It seems she sent some compromising love letters to a worthless cad, and now the bounder wants to use the letters for blackmail. Peggy's friend Roger and his flapper sweetheart Tootie hatch an elaborate plan to retrieve the incriminating letters and salvage Janet's reputation.

Review: I almost screamed with delight for 66 minutes through this perfect 1920s flapper musical set in a seaside resort with lots of gorgeous girls and guys in their cossies waving their tanned legs about to music. What a delight! Made at RKO in may 1929 TANNED LEGS is simply beautiful to see, with a snazzy modern cast singing and dancing in the most fantastic modern 1929 clothes... and in sets that make any person in love with the era swoon with glee. Several very funny songs include "Jump In - The Water's Fine", "You're Responsible" (with terrific tap dancing reprise) and "Tanned Legs" itself with howling risqué exposure of many tanned legs and what is at the top of them. Arthur Lake in particular is a standout, he was about 24 at the time and is like a lovesick tousled tom cat, especially in his striped dressing gown on the porch. Very modern in tone and style and an utter delight TANNED LEGS is THE BOYFRIEND for real. The film veers off into some melodrama later and ends abruptly which might explain why there is an original running time 5 minutes more than this print of 66 minutes. It seems to have the end missing, which given the way the film starts, should also end with a musical number. However, for the 66 minutes I lapped up it was flapper and swimming cossie heaven. Sally Blaine, who was Loretta Young's sister is astonishingly as beautiful. The film is so early in the talkie era that it is clear the camera is trapped in a glass booth and you can hear the camera whirring. TANNED LEGS is simply gorgeous for every artistic musical and technical reason imaginable. I can't stop watching it. The film is similar to FOLLOW THRU made at Paramount and in color in 1930... and TANNED LEGS clearly needed Jack Haley as well.. there is even one comedian who is similar and only serves to remind us of him. The sound is excellent - photo-phone on film - and serves to explain why it instantly became the industry standard. TANNED LEGS is a complete delight even if the print is incomplete….£7.49

 

Tarzan the Tiger (1929)

Serial 265mins quality is only fair. After Tarzan's estate is destroyed by Arabs Jane is sold into slavery by a man posing as a friendly scientist. Tarzan develops amnesia after a blow to the head. When he recovers his memory (from a later blow) he defeats the villain, recovers the fabulous jewels of Opar, and rescues Jane.... £7.49

 

Tell England (1931)

Directed by Anthony Asquith and Geoffrey Barkas, and starring Fay Compton, Tony Bruce, Carl Harbord and Dennis Hoey, this is a very good print of the film with a runtime of 82 mins.

Review: It is really a companion piece to Journeys End..However this film contains many gripping battle scenes.The first few scenes are set before the war and show the friendship between the two leads.They both enlist and are sent to Gallipoli.The film follows similar lines to Journeys End.What comes through is the senseless slaughter.The performances are very stilted.There is some fluid camera-work.In some instances it sounds as if the actors have been recorded in a bathroom. As the film has co directors it has to be said that the film is slightly uneven but it is well worth viewing…..£7.49

 

Testament du Docteur Cordelier, Le aka Experiment in Evil (1959)

Directed by Jean Renoir and starring Jean-Louis Barrault, Teddy Bilis, Sylviane Margollé and Jean Bertho, this film has a runtime of 96 mins and the print quality is excellent. This is a French language film with hardcoded English subtitles.

Plot: When the lawyer Joly receives the testament of his friend and psychiatrist Dr. Cordelier, Joly realizes that he is giving all his fortune and assets to his unknown patient Opale. When Joly learns that Opale is an evil man, he believes his friend is being threatened or blackmailed by Opale. Soon Opale murders a man on the street and the psychiatrist Dr. Lucien Séverin, who has a beef with Dr. Cordelier due to his experiments. After a party at Dr. Cordelier's house, his butler Désiré summons Joly since Dr. Cordelier has locked himself in the laboratory and now he is screaming in pain. Joly and Dr. Cordelier's employees break in the laboratory and find Opale inside. He asks to everyone but Joly to leave the laboratory and gives a tape to the lawyer to learn what happened with Dr. Cordelier.

Review: This is a rather unusual but successful take on the famous Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde story, written by Robert Louis Stevenson, that was first published in 1886.
In this French take on the story the story and settings are changed to the more 'modern' France of the '50's. But don't worry, they didn't changed the main character much, only his name. As a matter of fact Opal is perhaps far more brutal and a bad guy than his predecessors from earlier Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movies.
The movie is more of a thriller and mystery movie than an horror. In that regard "Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier" already works as a surprising and effective movie. It provides the movie with some nice twists (especially obviously when you aren't yet familiar with the story of Jekyll & Hyde) and original moments. Yet the movie never truly manges to captivate the viewer with its story. It's too lacking in suspense for that.
Still "Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier" remains a far better than average movie. This is mainly due to its fine visual style which suits the movie well and the professional directing from acclaimed French movie-maker Jean Renoir.
Jean-Louis Barrault gives a fine performance as Dr. Cordelier/Opale, although he plays Opale a bit too much like a drunk. It doesn't however makes his performance any less powerful- or believable. Most of the other actors also give a fine performance, although however some of them are really below par.
Still all in all "Le Testament du Docteur Cordelier" remains a good and surprising enough movie to satisfy its viewers. Far from the best Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movie but a more than good and above all, original attempt, from Jean Renoir, nevertheless….£7.49

 

Testament of Dr Mabuse, The (1933)

Directed by Fritz Lang and starring Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Thomy Bourdelle, Gustav Diessl and Rudolf Schündler, this film has a runtime of 121 mins and the print quality is excellent. This is a German language film with English subtitles.

Review:   Lang's last film in Germany before he hurriedly left the country (the director claimed that he had lately been offered a key position in the Nazi-controlled film industry), The Testament Of Dr Mabuse (aka: Das Testament des Dr Mabuse) is best seen as a warning by a departing talent, as well as a continuation of many of the themes of the director's previous work. Dr Mabuse, The Gambler (1922) had been a great success, and his new film, his second made in sound, capitalises on the reputation both of the earlier film and the grand social malevolence of its central character. Mabuse is another of Lang's evil, all-controlling masterminds - he was to reappear again in the director's last film, The 1,000 Eyes Of Dr Mabuse (1960) - the representation of whose hypnotic presence and malign influence was to find disfavour with the followers of Hitler. The Nazis gained power during the post-production period of the film and, while recognising the great director's talent; Testament was promptly banned by Goebbels who found the political portrait implicit in Mabuse too close to home. In later years Lang was to suggest that the film was intended as a political parable, although this might have been exaggerated.
As the present film opens, Inspector Lohmann (a splendidly grouchy Otto Wernicke) receives a message from a former criminal associate who has stumbled onto a massive criminal conspiracy. Before the details can be spelt out, the crook is hunted down and killed. Investigating his disappearance Lohmann discovers the name Mabuse scratched on a windowpane (a clue echoed in Lang's M, in which Lohmann also appears.) Mabuse is discovered in an asylum in the charge of Dr Baum (Oscar Beregi). The criminal genius, insane but with his remaining magnetic attraction intact, is feverishly writing detailed notes on prospective crimes. When Mabuse dies, a visiting Dr Kramm finds the brilliant criminal notes of Dr Mabuse on the floor, compares a news report of a jewellery robbery to what he is now reading and tells Baum that he is going to report it to the police. He is promptly killed by Mabuse's elite Section 2B hitmen on orders from the unseen leader - a scene set in traffic that found an echo over 30 years later in The Ipcress File (1965). Meanwhile a romance develops between Kent (Gustav Diessel), one of the henchmen of Mabuse's gang, still apparently controlled by remote control instructions, and the woman Lilly (Vera Liessem) who helped him when he was down and out. Mabuse's 'testament' thus lies in both the meticulously planned crimes, which make up his posthumous papers as well as his hypnotic and malign influence on those who are controlled by him.
Critics have compared the visual style of this film with those of others from the same period, notably Spione (aka: Spies, 1928), Lang's most recent comparable social thriller. Testament is far more cluttered, its visual confusion suggesting moral complexity as well as the closing in of threatening events - both as far as the characters are concerned and, as it unfortunately turned out, for German society in general. In M, evil was detected in the presence of a murderous outsider, one eventually brought to book by a benign conspiracy of the underworld. Here there is a web of criminal activity and corruption from which no one is entirely immune, and in which many are driven by a murderous compulsion to obey an evil power. At the same time, Lang is happy enough to introduce into this world of social corruption elements of thrills and suspense, which spring from a much simpler world of serials and adventure stories. The near documentary feel of a lot of the film is interspersed with explosions, floods, chases and close escapes. In this way the sombre, far reaching criminalities of Mabuse's schemes, rooted in current socio-political unrest are counter-pointed with time honoured pleasures brought by crime melodrama. Lang had a weakness for this sort of drama: The Spiders Part II: The Diamond Ship (1920) contains a somewhat similar but much shorter, scene, where the hero is also trapped in a water filling room from which he escapes. It has been noted just how much of the action of Testament plays out like a dream, and in this sense it anticipates the disorientating mood which would characterise much of noir cinema of a few years later - of which the newly Americanised Lang would be a major exponent. Certainly the arch criminal mastermind of Mabuse has something in common with such later characters as, say Mike Lagana in The Big Heat (1953) although such figures in Lang's American period are far less omniscient. Once Hitler was out of the way, Lang increasingly saw the manipulation of human life as the province of fate rather than men, a view that had made its first ongoing appearance as far back as Der Müde Tod (Destiny, 1923). In Testament, some indeed appear pre-doomed by a nemesis stalking them, although this is largely placed in the human realm. Events play out like an unstoppable nightmare - a feeling reinforced by Mabuse's somnambulistic appearance as he constructs evil from his bed, the presence of ghosts, the unreality of the mysterious drama which unfolds and such scenes as the weird opening, its surreal use of factory sound anticipating the dark sound-scapes of Eraserhead (1978). By the end of Lang's film there is a sense that all have been involved in some grand combine of evil, and that the disorder and social chaos it presages has only just been forestalled - not by justice, but madness.
Modern viewers coming to Lang's film will find much to enjoy, even if some of the incidental elements have necessarily become a little dated. The editing and camerawork are excellent, and Rudolf Klein-Rogge's piercingly intense Mabuse is a memorable creation. Lohmann and the supporting cast are memorable characters, although the romantic interest between Kent and Lilly looks a little faded after all these years. It's a film in which special effects go hand in hand with suspense and the staging is still impressive. Amongst the most memorable scenes are those are the end with the destruction of the chemical factory and the expressionistic car chase back to the asylum. Most importantly, while the morally debilitating effects of the post-war German depression as well as the impending rise of adulatory Nazism have now passed into history, Lang's dramatisation of cause and effect remains as electric as ever in one of the finest films of his early sound career.

 

That Certain Age (1938)

Directed by Edward Ludwig and starring Deanna Durbin, Melvyn Douglas, Jackie Cooper, Irene Rich, Nancy Carroll and John Halliday, this film has a runtime of 101 mins and the print quality is very good.

Plot: Dashing reporter Vincent Bullit has just returned from covering the Spanish Civil War. His boss, newspaper magnate Fullerton, has more plans to send him off to China. However, first Fullerton invites Bullit to the peace and quiet of his own home to write a series of European affair articles. When Fullerton's adolescent daughter Alice develops a crush on Bullit, her suitor, boyscout Ken Warren, doesn't seem to stand a chance. Mr. and Mrs. Fullerton, Ken Warren, and even Vincent Bullit himself do their best to sway young Alice's feelings away from the older man. It's a difficult task though, as she is at 'that certain age.'

Review: Deanna Durbin is excellent as bright and talented rich girl Alice Fullerton. She and her pal Ken (Jackie Cooper) put on musical plays in the guest house of her parents' estate. Alice's newspaper mogul father invites journalist Vincent Bullitt (Melvyn Douglas) to stay and work in said guest house—and Alice is quickly distracted from her friends by the romantic and dashing Mr. Bullitt.
Jackie Cooper gives a superior performance as the best friend who loves Alice and has to watch her chase after the older, successful and glamorous man of the world. Melvyn Douglas is good as Vincent Bullitt but his character is slightly bland, at least for someone who's supposed to be such an adventurer.
The plot is okay if not especially surprising; it's a sympathetic look at young love that tries to represent the viewpoints of both the kids involved and the parents and other grownups around them. It doesn't entirely work—this is one of those pictures where all the adults are so darn wise and well-meaning it's just kind of irritating. The kids—Durbin, Cooper, even little Juanita Quigley as the pesty little sister—come across as much more genuine.
Deanna sings a few songs—a couple of operatic numbers that are fine as well as a handful of new songs that are pleasant but no classics. Durbin's acting performance, however, is superb—she is totally convincing, as is Jackie Cooper, himself an old pro at age 16. Durbin and Cooper certainly leave the grown up actors in the dust.
Definitely worthwhile for fans of these young stars.
Research question: Did everybody really know Morse code in the 1930s, or was it just kids in the movies?...£7.49

 

There Goes the Bride (1932)

Starring Jessie Matthews (in only her second sound film) and Owen Nares…..£7.49

 

Things Are Looking Up (1935)

British comedy starring Cicely Courtneidge and Max Miller. Bertha Fytte is a serious and strict schoolmistress, and not well liked by the schoolgirls. Her sister Cicely runs a nearby circus, more or less successfully, and Bertha heartily disapproves. But spinster Bertha suddenly elopes, and Cicely is induced to take her place ... only for one day. Cicely scrapes by teaching advanced geometry and finds an ally in van Gaard, the romantic American music teacher, who discloses to her that his qualifications are not 100% genuine. The school headmistress is retiring and Bertha is on the short list to get her job. Will Cicely try to succeed for her sister, and if she tries can she put on a good enough show to pull it off?....£7.49

 

Thirty Nine Steps (1935)

Starring Robert Donat and directed by Alfred Hitchcock, still the best version. Richard Hannay is a Canadian visitor to London. At the end of "Mr Memory"'s show in a music hall, he meets Annabella Smith who is running away from secret agents. He accepts to hide her in his flat, but in the night she is murdered. Fearing he could be accused on the girl's murder, Hannay goes on the run to break the spy ring....£7.49

 

Three Faces East (1930)

Directed by Roy del Ruth and starring Constance Bennett, Erich Von Stroheim, Anthony Bushell, William Holden, William Coutenay and Charlotte Walker, this film has a runtime of 71 mins and the print quality is excellent.

Plot: During World War I, English woman Frances Hawtree, a German spy known as "ZI," is sent to the estate of Sir Winston Chamberlain, first Lord of the Admiralty, to uncover information that will alert the German navy about the Atlantic crossing of the First American Division. Posing as a nurse, Frances pretends that she is returning the belongings of the Chamberlain's eldest son, who was killed in combat. Also at the estate is Chamberlain's other son, Arthur, who comes home on leave and falls in love with Frances. Unknown to the family, their seemingly humble butler, Valdar, also is a German spy and the person who masterminded Frances' mission. Valdar is charmed by Frances, but suspicious of her, and eventually realizes that she is a double agent, whose true loyalties are to the British government. When Valdar finds her sending a radiogram that will thwart the Germans' plan to sink the American ship, she momentarily hesitates, then kills him.

Review: Adapted from a successful play, "Three Faces East" is a clever spy thriller set during WWI. Constance Bennett plays the role of Frances Hawtree aka Agent Z-1, undercover spy for the German Intelligence Service. She is assigned to infiltrate the estate of Sir Winston Chamberlain--First Lord of the Admiralty--and meet with her contact there, where her mission will be explained.
The mansion is populated with a butler of ambiguous intentions named Valdar (Erich von Stroheim), two maids, Lady Chamberlain, their son Arthur, and two members of Chamberlain's staff.
I found the very beginning of the film to be overly dramatic, but the story quickly becomes more believable, and more interesting, when Frances arrives at the Chamberlain estate. What follows is a cat and mouse game, with twists and turns to keep the viewer guessing. The contents of Lord Chamberlain's safe may hold the key to victory in Europe. Try to guess the truth as alliances change and the lines between romance and duty become blurred.
The acting is fine and Erich von Stroheim is delightful. The script is tightly written, moving along at a brisk pace….£7.49

 

Three For Bedroom C (1952)

Directed by Milton H.Bren and starring Gloria Swanson, James Warren, Fred Clark, Hans Conried and Margaret Dumont, this film has a runtime of 74 mins and the print quality is good to very good, due to the colour being quite faded. This was Gloria Swanson's one and only feature film following the popularity (i.e. comeback) of Sunset Boulevard. Most of the scripts she was offered were for characters like Norma Desmond. Instead she chose a lighthearted comedy. In both films, she plays a famous actress. Although here she's not a has-been from the silent era.

Plot: A film star and her young daughter stow away on a cross-country train to California. The compartment they invade belongs to a celebrated biology professor; romance blossoms. The star's manager turns up; complications ensue.

Review: Two years after her phenomenal success in SUNSET BOULEVARD, Gloria Swanson returned to the screen in this low-budget but very charming comedy.
Swanson plays Ann Haven, a runaway actress who stows away on a train headed for the West Coast. She and her daughter (Janine Perreau) barge into the compartment and life of a famous scientist (James Warren) who gets embroiled in their crazy Hollywood life because Swanson's manager and publicist are also on the train.
Furious that she has been passed over for the role of Cleopatra, Swanson is headed west to have it out with her studio. Her yes men (Fred Clark and Hans Conried) try everything to dissuade her from quitting the studio. In the meantime, she has a fling with the professor. Others onboard include a ditzy socialite (Margaret Dumont), a drunk (Percy Helton), a Brandoesque actor (Steve Brodie), and an accommodating steward (Ernest Anderson).
Swanson, who looks terrific out of her severe Norma Desmond drag, is the whole show here as the temperamental actress why finds love. She has a nice breezy comedy style, and after nearly 40 years in front of the cameras (she made her film debut in 1914), she knows every trick of the trade. Warren, stuck with the dumb- cluck professor role, doesn't get much of a chance to do anything. The rest of the cast is solid.
Not the funniest film you'll ever see, but worth a look to see the legendary Gloria Swanson in action. Despite the "B" status of this film, Swanson was determined to not play more Norma Desmond parts, which is what she was offered after the huge comeback she made in SUNSET BOULEVARD. At age 52 (or so) parts were rare. Although this film was a box-office bomb and did nothing to cement her comeback, she probably made a wise choice in trying a comedy.

 

Three Smart Girls (1936)

Directed by Henry Koster and starring Deanna Durbin, Binnie Barnes, Charles Winninger, Alice Brady, Ray Milland and Mischa Auer, this film has a runtime of 84 mins and the print quality is very good.

Plot: The three Craig sisters, in Switzerland with their ten-years-divorced mother, run away to New York to prevent their father from marrying calculating socialite Donna Lyons. The overpowering vivacity of the Smart Girls (nominal ages 14-20) sweeps all before it, but a romantic complication between middle sister Kay and their accidental ally, Lord Michael Stuart, threatens shipwreck to their schemes...

Review: Deanna Durbin, Nan Grey and Barbara Read are "Three Smart Girls" in this Universal film from 1936, which introduces Deanna Durbin to film audiences. It also stars Ray Milland, Mischa Auer, Charles Winninger, John King, Binnie Barnes and Alice Brady. It's a sweet story about three young women, now living in Switzerland with their divorced mother, who hear their father (Winninger) is marrying again. Not having seen him in 10 years and knowing their mother still loves him, they board a ship to America, with the help of the housekeeper/nanny, determined to stop the wedding. Realizing that the intended, called "Precious" (Barnes) is nothing but a gold-digger aided and abetted by her mother (Brady), they arrange for her to be introduced to a wealthy Count. This is arranged by their father's accountant (King). The man he chooses is a full-time drunk (Auer), but the girls mistake him for an actual wealthy count (Milland). What a mess.
This is a delightful film, not cloying or overly sugary at all, with some nice performances, particularly by Auer, Milland, Barnes and Brady. The young women are pretty and all do good work. The emphasis, of course, is on young Durbin, who is a natural actress and a beautifully-trained singer. In fact, her voice as a youngster is much more even than it would be as an adult - she has no trouble with the high notes, as she did later on because she put too much weight in the middle voice. She sings a delightful "Il Bacio" in a police station.
One of the nicest things about the film is to see the father, played by Charles Winninger, not want his children around - until he sees them and gets to know them. Barnes as the gold-digger isn't all that young, but the girls' mother looks way up there, so the inference probably was the older man seeking his youth with a younger, more glamorous woman. In fact, he finds the youth he was seeking in his daughters.
Universal gives Durbin the big star buildup here - she has the final shot in the movie. Ray Milland at this point was still paying his dues, and it will probably be a surprise even to film fans how young and attractive he is.
Very entertaining and of course, this led to a sequel and big stardom for Deanna….£7.49

 

Tiger Makes Out, The (1967)

Directed by Arthur Hiller and starring Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Bob Dishy and John Harkins, this film has a runtime of 94 mins and the print quality is very good.

Plot: Ben Harris, an embittered, middle-aged New York City postal worker living in a Greenwich Village basement, becomes obsessed with the idea of kidnapping and enslaving the first beautiful young woman he can get his hands on. When he tries to carry out his plan, he doesn't count on suburban homemaker Gloria getting in the way.

Review: THE TIGER MAKES OUT is an urban black comedy by Murray Schisgal that stars Eli Wallach as an alienated US mailman who life is in the toilet. He tries to kidnap a young woman to get back at an uncaring society but snags instead, a "middle-aged" suburban housewife (Anne Jackson), who has come into the city to try to finish her baccalaureate degree. In his basement apartment, they find they have much in common and suffer from the same urban malaise and dislike of modern society.
Sterling performances by Wallach and Jackson and many funny bits make this a neurotic delight. There's also a terrific supporting cast of familiar "New York" actors (and others) like Rae Allen, Sudie Bond, Bob Dishy, Charles Nelson Reilly, Dustin Hoffman (film debut), Ruth White, Jack Fletcher, Elizabeth Wilson, Frances Sternhagen, Bibi Osterwalkd, Judith Lowry, etc.
I'm not sure we as a society have improved much in the 50-odd years since this film was made….£7.49

 

To Joy aka Till Glädje (1950)

Directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Maj-Brit Nilsson, Stig Olin, Birger Malmsten, Victor Sjöström, John Ekman and Margit Carlqvist, this film has a runtime of 95 mins and the print quality is excellent. This is a Swedish language film with hardcoded English subtitles.

Plot: Stig, a visiting soloist to a small Swedish orchestra, marries fellow musician Martha, but the inner torment and sense of failure in Stig leads to an extra-marital affair and a tragic ending.

Review: Ingmar Bergman's seventh film, To Joy, is actually a fairly bitter film, more often than not, in looking at the destructiveness of a marriage between two people who somehow got stuck with each other to fall in love. And yet there are some moments that are quite joyful, or at least in the terms that Bergman will allow from time to time, and they help ring this as less a total work of despair than an examination of 'average' people who can't stand not having more. Stig (Stig Olin) and Marta (Maj-Britt Nilsson) meet as they're both musicians in an orchestra conducted by Sönderby (Victor Sjostrom).
She's the only woman in the orchestra, but it's not exactly that they have love at first sight in the slightest. Their connection grows following a party where Stig gets drunk and makes a depressing grandstanding fool of himself in front of friends, and somehow his downbeat manner is charming to Marta. Soon they grow closer, even fall in love perhaps, though their future marriage is complicated by Marta becoming pregnant. This scene, when she reveals it three months on to Stig, is the first real crack in the relationship. It only cracks more, with the occasional patch-up, and the question stands more or less- as Stig is looking back on the relationship following his wife and one of his child's deaths- is what could have come from all of this?
Bergman deals with his characters, at this stage in his career, in trying to just find the simple and really not very simple truths of what Stig and Marta are together and separate. For the first half it almost looks like Stig is a bit too two-dimensional, particularly for a Bergman film (and Olin doesn't play him extremely well, even if he does deliver the beats fairly well, perhaps in line with his own character's inadequacies). He can't seem to enjoy anything that he does because he always wants more, to be a supreme soloist, than to have what he already has gotten. Marta, on the other hand, after having several potential men before going with Stig, tries her best to cope with having two kids that she probably wasn't totally thrilled to have in the first place.
There's a great little scene where Sanderby recounts walking in on Stig and Marta after having some kind of odd tender moment (as well as later on after having a quarrel), without them noticing Sanderby walk in, and the expression still underneath their faces when he formally walks in. In typical Bergman fashion we see the disintegration of a relationship (quite a brutal argument in bed really, more of emotional violence than physical), even if the sort of 'patching-up' period towards the end is a little weaker than what's come before.
So on the one hand there is this aspect, the drama of two people having a constant push-and-pull tie that binds them through Stig's delusions of grandeur and self-pity and fear manifesting in other forms (notably into the arms of another woman) and Marta's own semi-helplessness, which is very good, if imperfect, as classic Bergman storytelling. On the other hand it's also one of the best examples of classical music being used as incidental music: there's not exact musical score like if we hear music accompanying the characters giving the emotional cues during an argument scene or when Sanderby offers advice or gets irritated at Stig, but rather the music of Sanderby's orchestra (and Sjostrom, I might add, is pitch-perfect in the role of the weathered and brilliant second-banana conductor) fills in the spaces at times of the emotional context.
Probably the most successful, and joyful, scene is when Stig finds out Marta has the baby, by running out quick during a rehearsal, the music going along as he's on the phone, then continuing as he sits back down, and as Sanderby asks quietly of one musician who asks another to another to Stig what happened, as the music plays on. This, plus the second greatest cinematic interpretation of Beethoven's 9th symphony 4th movement in a climax (the first being Clockwork Orange), make To Joy worth seeing all by itself, if only for Beethoven fans.
As one of the several films included on the recently released Eclipse DVD series, To Joy will appeal to fans of Bergman's knack at telling of characters in shattered, honest romance, and to those looking for some classical music bliss and have seen The Magic Flute or Autumn Sonata too many times….£7.49

 

Toni (1935)

Directed by Jean Renoir and starring Charles Blavette, Celia Montalvan, Edouard Delmont, Man Dalban and Jenny Helia, this film has a runtime of 81 mins and the print quality is Very Good to Excellent.

Plot: In the 1920s, the Provence is a magnet for immigrants seeking work in the quarries or in agriculture. Many mingle with locals and settle down permanently - like Toni, an Italian who has moved in with Marie, a Frenchwoman. Even a well-ordered existence is not immune from boredom, friendship, love, or enmity, and Toni gets entangled in a web of increasingly passionate relationships. For there is his best pal Fernand, but also Albert, his overbearing foreman; there is Sebastian, a steady Spanish peasant, but also Gabi, his young rogue relative; there is Marie, but there is also Josefa.

Review: Unrequited love is the theme, but in a twist, or from an angle that's decidedly French. A man marries even when he knows his true love is getting wed to another at the same time and place (a double wedding saves money). As he will come to admit later, the fault is all his because he didn't love enough to make a play for his amour when she was still available. At any rate, his love for her stays true even as she takes up with yet another lover in addition to her husband. Yet there's no judgmental tone as we observe her actions, just a woman doing what she wants, or at times, must. Our eponymous hero, Toni, finally gets to prove his love through sacrifice for the woman and his godchild, fulfilling the norms of the Latin melting pot that Provence was at this time. The movie sets up the story wonderfully; indeed, the best part of the film is the efficient and sly way the story is put in motion when all we think is happening is an introduction of characters. The slower ensuing pace, lack of music, stagy scenes and silent film-like shots all date the movie; it's not a timeless classic. But it's still an enjoyable, efficient testament to universal themes told through a decidedly un-American prism….£7.49

 

Tonight or Never (1930)

Early talkie starring the delightful Gloria Swanson. A young opera singer finds her career stalled because of her cold and passionless performances, until she finds romance with a handsome admirer.... £7.49

 

Torment aka Hets (1944)

Written by Ingmar Bergman, directed by Alf Sjoberg and starring Stig Järrel,Alf Kjellin, Mai Zetterling and Olof Winnerstrand, this film has a runtime of 97 mins and the print quality is excellent. This is a Swedish language film with English subtitles.

Plot: Jan-Erik Widgren is a high-school senior. His Latin teacher Caligula is feared by everybody, both teachers and students. Widgren falls in love with Berta, who works in a tobacco store. She tells him that she is harassed by a mean, sadistic man, but does not tell him that it is Caligula himself.

Review: Torment, one of the first winners of the grand jury prize at Cannes, brings forth Ingmar Bergman's first screenplay to fruition (he was only in his mid twenties when he wrote it). Although it might not be apparent, as it is an early work and it would be another dozen or so years before his true cinematic high-watermark, it is the work of an already gifted writer, in tune with what drives drama. It's sometimes hard to make moving drama out of school-life, but Bergman gets it right in that he focuses it on three characters (with the occasional stern but really good-hearted older professor character). Our protagonist, filled with enough inner conflict and aimlessness, is Vindgren played with great ambivalence, fear, and subdued passion by Alf Kjellen. He gets mixed up in a romantic affair with a woman, Bertha (Mai Zetterling, seductive even as being vulnerable) who feels abused and need some compassion from him. But, as it goes with such a practically bleak and (dare I say) naturalistic story, things are not good for either one.
Bergman and the wonderful director Alf Sjoberg, get a terrifying performance (albeit if it is sometimes two-dimensional, or maybe not) by Stig Jarrell, who plays Vindgren's manipulative, "old-school" tormenting teacher, who also happens to be attached, so to speak, with Bertha. The link drives Vindregn into the kind of despair that makes the film, in the end, really work. There's also something very curious about how the script is so precise, so dark and occasionally shocking for a film from 1944 sometimes in the guise of a romantic melodrama. Bergman knows these characters, so much so that what occurs at the least stays true to what is known to be their characters. Change occurs slowly, if at all, and with the professor especially there is a great kind of push and pull that Jarrell does- at times he's like a little puppy trying to get sympathy for 'being sick', but it's all just a guise.
Torment, in the end, is an excellent, near-great film about what it's like for the "rotten apple" of the bunch. Vindgren isn't a bad kid, but the pressures from schoolwork (nearing graduation no less) on top of his seeming love-affair with a woman more scrambled up by her relationship with the professor, things boil over. The last twenty minutes are at times totally heart-wrenching, reaching the depths that Bergman would plunge even further to with his masterpieces in the 60's and 70's. But Sjoberg goes just at the limit, which is a plus and minus, as he tries to make it appealing for the period (with Hidling Rosenberg's musical score quite fitting at times), with some interesting, expressionistic lighting techniques that add that fine coat onto the subject matter. That Bergman/Sjoberg also make the regular school-scenes believable, and even put in some interesting bits with supporting characters (the nerdy kid has a couple of good scenes, though the scene stealer is the teacher-to-teacher talk where the good tries his best to face down the bad), is of equal merit.
In short, Torment, what first set off the little spark for Bergman's career (and likely provided Sjoberg with one of his best films) is worth looking for, if at the least for Bergman fans wanting to check out all of his films, but one may find it to be one of Bergman's most searing early works….£7.49

 

 

The Trail Beyond (1934)

Starring John Wayne. Early John Wayne actioner showcasing very well the Republic Studios style at its most unbuttoned and endearing. In less than an hour there are more thrills than in many a later picture two or three times its length. Of course it is all terribly naive by modern standards, but watching it may give you a vague longing for a simpler time. The one really laughable thing is the unconvincing fisticuffs, with blows often quite obviously wide of their mark-but the villain always drops to the ground regardless! Good clean fun like we don't have anymore....£7.49

 

Transatlantic Tunnel (1935)

Starring Richard Dix and Leslie Banks. A team of international scientists and engineers attempts to build a tunnel under the ocean.... £7.49

 

Travelling Players, The aka O Thiasos (1975)

Directed by Theo Angelopoulos and starring Eva Kotamanidou, Vangelis Kazan, Aliki Georgouli and Kiriakos Katrivanos, this film has a runtime of 222 mins and the print quality is very good to excellent.

Plot: A group of traveling players peregrinates through Greece attempting to perform the popular erotic drama Golfo The Shepherdess. In a first level the film focuses on the historical events between 1939 and 1952 as they are experienced by the traveling players and as they affect the villages which they visit: The last year of Metaxas' fascist dictatorship, the war against the Italians, the Nazi occupation, the liberation, the civil war between left and right wingers, the British and American interventionism in the Greek politics. In a second level the characters live their own drama of jealousy and betrayal, with its roots in the ancient myth of the House of Atreus. Agamemnon, a Greek refugee from Minor Asia, goes to war against the Italians in 1940, joins the resistance against the Germans, and is executed by them after being betrayed by Clytemnestra and Aegisthos. Aegisthos, Clytemnestra's lover, is an informer and collaborator working with the German occupiers. Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, fights on the side of the leftists, avenges his father's death by killing his mother and Aegisthos. He is arrested in 1949 for his guerrilla activities and is executed in prison in 1951. Electra, his sister, helps the leftists and aids her brother in avenging the treachery of their mother and Aegisthos. After the death of Orestes she continues the work of the troupe and her relationship with Pylades. Chrysotheme, Electra's younger sister, collaborates with the Germans, prostitutes herself during the occupation, sides with the British during liberation, and later marries an American. Pylades, close friend of Orestes, is a Communist who is exiled by the Metaxas regime, joins the guerrillas and is arrested and exiled again. Finally he is forced to sign a written denunciation of the left after torture by the right wing and he is released from prison in 1950.

Review: We watch movies to forget the true banality of life. Movies are packed with witty, non-stop dialogue, head-spinning action which takes place in a short period of time, and, of course, beautiful, drop-dead gorgeous women. We are so conditioned by contemporary movies, we forget or want to forget ordinarily life.
The Traveling Players by Angelopoulos has none of this. The dialogue is ordinary, spoken by ordinary people, by ordinary men and women. When they speak it is not rapid-fire, non-stop delivery, but ordinary speech most times separated by long periods of silence.
The beauty of The Traveling Players - or any film by Angelopoulos - the ordinary is beautiful. The sweeping, long scenes in this movie are stunning. We quickly identify with one or more of the traveling players. In the dialogue we can hear words spoken by a close friend or acquaintance. When the film ends nearly four hours later, you will want to see more.
This movie should not be missed….£7.49

 

Trial (1955)

Directed by Mark Robson and starring Glenn Ford, Dorothy McGuire, Arthur Kennedy and John Hodiak this film has a runtime of 109 mins and the print quality is very good.

Storyline: The story of a murder trial where a Mexican boy is accused of the death of a Caucasian girl. The two-faced attorney (Arthur Kennedy) who takes the boy's case is only interested in defending him so he can exploit his Communist-backed organization for their own underhanded purposes. He and his organization bring in an idealistic law professor (Glenn Ford) who agrees to represent the boy in court.

Review: Trial is one of the best films of the Fifties and a personal favorite of mine in the credits of a favorite actor of mine, Glenn Ford. Made at the end of what is loosely described as the 'McCarthy Era', Trial bravely tackles the evils of right and leftwing extremism and shows that people of good will can make a difference in defeating them. It's a subject I'm surprised Frank Capra didn't consider as a project.
Communist attorney Arthur Kennedy has latched on to a case involving the death of a teenage caucasian girl in which a young Mexican boy stands accused of her murder. In fact we see the events as they transpire at the beginning of the film. The boy, very winningly played by Rafael Campos has some very dubious culpability in the matter.
But in this California town, prejudice against Mexican-Americans runs pretty high. Rafael is arrested and the Communist party looks to jump in. For window dressing they latch on to law professor Glenn Ford who agrees to go to court with the young man, partly to prove the falsity of that old adage about those who can't, teach.
Ford does pretty good for a while, but Kennedy who's more interested in a martyr and the stirring up of race prejudice, gets the mother played by Katy Jurado to have Rafael take the stand. District Attorney John Hodiak in a devastating cross examination blows the defense wide open.
Arthur Kennedy's bravura performance as Communist attorney Barney Castle won him an Oscar nomination, but he lost out to Jack Lemmon for Mister Roberts. But my personal favorite in this film is the Judge played with strength and dignity by Juano Hernandez. Judge Hernandez shows as Shakespeare put it that the quality of mercy is indeed not strained.
I can't think of another film in that time that showed some of the problems that scar America's soul, but also show that the cure offered might indeed be worse.
Unseen is a state investigating committee against subversives where Ford's been subpoened to appear. That's not modeled after McCarthy, the reference is to a California State Senator named Jack Tenney who in that era attempted to be a state version of McCarthy. And like McCarthy generated a lot of heat, but very little light.
Glenn and the cast can be very proud of the work they did on this film….£7.49

 

Trouble in Paradise (1932)

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch and starring Miriam Hopkins, Kay Francis, Herbert Marshall, Charles Ruggles, Edward Everett Horton and C.Aubrey Smith, this film has a runtime of 82 mins and the print quality is excellent.

Plot: High class European thief Gaston Monescu meets his soul mate Lily, a pickpocket masquerading as a countess. The two join forces and come under the employ of Mme. Colet, the beautiful owner of the Colet perfume company. Gaston works as Mme. Colet's personal secretary under the alias Monsieur La Valle. Rumors start to fly as 'M. La Valle' steals Mme. Colet away from her other suitors. When the secret of his true identity catches up to him, Gaston is caught between the two beautiful women.

Review: An utterly beautiful film. I watched this for at least the umpteenth time last night - maybe once a year every year since I taped it off TV in 1987. Did it let me down? It hasn't yet and I don't think it ever will: I was as captivated by it as I was the first time, and yet it portrays a world, its people and their actions I'll never know, and probably wouldn't want to know either. Some people I know can't watch any film or TV programme a second time and are puzzled when I can - but then could listen with pleasure to a piece of music for a thousandth time.
Lubitsch's peerless masterpiece about two crooks (Gaston and Lily) moving amongst high society, falling in love with each other, with high society and with high society in the attractive shape of rich businesswoman Madame Colet falling in love with Gaston is a witty, charming, sophisticated, erudite, relentless, sparkling etc comedy that by the finish has had the effect of defragmenting my mind and deleting the real world for a short while - no mean feat! Every second of every scene carries it's witticisms, not a moment is wasted from the dignified opening with the title song fading into the rubbish boat on the Grand Canal in Venice to the swift orgasmic climax in the taxi in Paris. At the beginning when the stricken Monsieur Philiba rises and falls to the floor of his hotel room again and the Neapolitan music lulls you across a cheesy model set to where the smoking Gaston is urbanely discussing cocktails with a waiter you should know you are in for something special. Ultra demure Kay Francis gets to says Divine twice in a row! Even looking at nothing but a clock for a minute carries a soundtrack bulging with wit and innuendo. Something as unimportant as Herbert Marshall apparently running up and down Kay Francis's stairs (on camera, in mirrors or in sound only) turns out to be an in-joke - he had only one leg. Other running gags make you smile after the film has long finished, such as Positively Tonsils and No Potatoes. And to think about this film even years later it's always with the lilting, insistent, mocking romantic background music! But I could go on and on, there's enough in this for 10 films of today to borrow if they could make them like this any more. "Frasier" on TV has been the closest in sophisticated comedy in recent times, but even so it couldn't match TIP's compact inventiveness. Out of the 97 million movies I've watched this is definitely in my top 5 favourites.
It's a pity that so many people can so easily be put off by black and white photography and bygone stars who they've never heard of; in this case what they're missing out on is near perfection, and again another film that will still be available when all of the undisciplined uncensored in-your-face films of today are forgotten….£7.49

 

Truce, The aka La Tregua (1974)

Directed by Sergio Renán and starring Héctor Alterio, Luis Brandoni, Ana María Picchio and Marilina Ross, this film has a runtime of 102 mins and the print quality is very good to excellent. This is an Argentine production in Spanish with hardcoded English subtitles. This is the first Argentine film nominated for an Academy Award for 'Best Foreign Language Film' in 1975.

Plot: A man has to come to terms with his wasted youth, estranged family and grim prospects for the future.

Review: The Truce" by the Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti is one of the few novels that can be qualified as "perfect"; no part is superfluous, nothing is lacking, the story is gray and low key but deeply moving. To make a film of a work of this quality is especially challenging; changes and omissions are necessary if only to fit the usual length of a movie. The script by Aída Bortnik and the director Sergio Renán rises to the challenge (the action has been transposed from Montevideo to Buenos Aires, a minor point). Watch the film, then read the book (if possible in the original Spanish).
What makes this movie memorable is the acting (Renan's direction of course has to do with this). Hector Alterio "is" Martin Santomé; after watching him you will find it difficult to imagine the character in any other way (Alterio went on to become a top actor both in Argentina and in Spain). The rest of the cast is equally excellent, especially Ana María Piccio as Laura Avellaneda. The veterans Lautaro Murúa and Norma Aleandro make the most of their small (but essential) parts. The music by Julián Plaza is just right. Very good cinematography by Juan Carlos Desanzo who later directed some celebrated Argentine movies, such as "Eva Perón: The True Story" (1996) and "El Polaquito" (2003)….£7.49

 

True Confession (1937)

Directed by Wesley Ruggles and starring Carole Lombard, Fred MacMurray, John Barrymore, Una Merkel and Edgar Kennedy, the film has a runtime of 84 mins and the print quality is very good to excellent.

Review: A witty, original black comedy made at the height of the screwball comedy era of the 1930's. Carole Lombard's role originates the wacky wife that became a staple in films and television. Her efforts to make her husband (Fred MacMurray)a successful lawyer offer a still-relevant critique of what Americans tolerates of people "making it" and "getting ahead" in American society, in addition to sharp, witty comments on the meaning of celebrity in American society. The playing of MacMurray and Lombard as husband and wife is vibrant, sexy, wholly believable. They radiate a sense of joy playing off each other. The teaming of MacMurray, Lombard, and John Barrymore makes for one of the most memorable screen teamings ever. Una Merkel is sharp as Lombard's best friend. Beautiful, sunny, often noirish photography enhances the beauty of the stars and the black aspects of the plot…..£7.49

 

True to the Navy (1930)

Early talkie starring Clara Bow and Fredric March. Review: I saw a pristine print of this at Bay City, and was so blown away by Clara Bow that I just had to find a copy for myself. There was only one thing standing in my way, no one had one.... £7.49

 

Twentieth Century (1934)

Directed by Howard Hawks and starring John Barrymore, Carole Lombard and Walter Connolly this film has a runtime of 91 mins and the print quality is very good.

Review: Howard Hawks' early foray into screwball comedy pits the wonderful pairing of John Barrymore and Carole Lombard against each other. She is Lily Garland, a Broadway actress about to break in Hollywood; he's her theatrical producer and on-off beau, desperate for her to stay. Around half of the film is taken up with them screeching at each other, leaving the supporting actors with very little to do.

There is a lot of sparkle here, great performances from the two leads, who work together just fine, and a screenplay which moves almost as fast as the train which gives the movie its title. Ten years after this was made, both Barrymore and Lombard were dead, but this stands as a fine epitaph for them together….£7.49

 

Twenty Four Eyes aka Nijûshi No Hitomi (1954)

Directed by Keisuke Kinoshita and starring Hideki Gôko, Itsuo Watanabe, Makoto Miyagawa and Takeo Terashita, this film has a runtime of 156 mins and the print quality is very good to excellent. This Japanese language film has English subtitles.

Plot: Schoolteacher Hisako Oishi struggles to imbue her students with a positive view of the world and their place in it, despite the fact that she knows full well that most of them will die in the war.

Review: Mostly unknown and frequently dismissed in the West, this film is often considered by the Japanese to be one of their very best films, if not their best. I concur with the Japanese. I can understand the issues people have with it, namely that it is overly sentimental, but I think it mostly earns the tears that are shed over it. It's a film in the classic teacher genre, like Goodbye Mr. Chips. Hideko Takamine plays Hisako Oishi, a young woman who begins the movie as a first grade teacher on a small island in 1928. Being a small population, she ends up staying with the same students for several years. The film ends in the 1950s, so you kind of know what will probably happen to her male students, and what she and her female students will have to experience. It may be somewhat predictable, but it's incredibly heartbreaking. The film is beautifully made, and filled with Japanese folk songs (strangely, the score of the film is made up of a bunch of Western music, including "Bonnie Annie Laurie" and "There's No Place Like Home"; it's definitely a flaw). Takamine, who starred in several Mikio Naruse films around the same time, is exceptional….£7.49

 

Two-Faced Woman (1941)

Directed by George Cukor and starring Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas, Constance Bennett, Roland Young, Robert Sterling and Ruth Gordon, this film has a runtime of 90 mins and the print quality is excellent.

Plot: Despite their differences, New York magazine editor Larry Blake and Ski Lodge, Idaho ski instructor Karin Borg fall in love and get married within hours of meeting. Those differences are Larry being urban to the core and having no desire to learn to ski until he sees Karin, an outdoors girl to the core, her life all about healthy living. In the sober light of day, Karin learns that Larry's vow to lead a healthy outdoor life in Ski Lodge and hating his life and job in New York was just pillow talk: not only has he no intention of giving up that life, but he also demands that she move to New York with him--his life is more important than hers. While this impasse seems on the surface to be the end of their marriage before it even begins, they still love each other. So while Larry vows to make it back to Ski Lodge to be with her as he returns to New York to resume his work, one issue after another postpones his return, so Karin decides to surprise him by flying out to New York and adorning herself in New York finery. But when Karin catches Larry back in the embrace of a former girlfriend, playwright Griselda Vaughn, who knew Larry was married but didn't care, Larry's personal secretary Miss Ellis comes up with the idea that Karin should pose as her morally-depraved, urban-chic twin sister Katherine Borg, to allow Karin to keep an eye on Larry clandestinely while in New York. Complications ensue when Larry believes he has conclusive evidence that Karin and Katherine are the same and plans to expose it.

Review: Every time someone mentions this film, they say something bad about it. It wasn't the best movie but I enjoyed it thoroughly. She had my attention through the whole film. I thought Garbo was way more interesting in this film than both Constance Bennett & Melvyn Douglas. Good film. I wish I still owned it and I would watch it right now!!! I love how radical she becomes when she pretends to be her "twin" sister. Melvyn Douglas was an alright character and so too Bennett, but I thought Garbo's last performance was great and I would like for this movie to get more credit. If anyone enjoys Garbo they should enjoy this film or you are just simply not that big of a Garbo fan. That's how i see it. The mysterious lady treats us with a few funny laughs. Like when she gets drunk. Not as funny as she was in Ninotchka though. Long Live Garbo!...£7.49

 

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