In our first break from format we’re following up last week’s movie - The Mikado (1939) - with a film exploring the men behind that comic opera: Gilbert and Sullivan. At first, Mike Leigh’s historical drama does some work to explain the circumstances that led to setting The Mikado in imperial Japan, and the second seeks to humanize that choice my exploring the efforts and daily dramas of the entire production leading up to its premiere in 1885. Does Topsy-Turvy justify The Mikado for a post-modern audience or does it lay bare the problematic choices of a culture incapable of finding issue in the infantilization of an entire civilization? Don’t worry, we totally figured it out. 

If you’d like to watch ahead for next week’s film, we will be reviewing and discussing Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945).