There's Sometimes a Buggy

This week's RKO 1944 episode brings a Hollywood slant to an English working-class perspective on the war. In her only first-billed feature film role, in Passport to Destiny, Elsa Lanchester plays an indomitable charwoman who embarks upon a self-appointed mission to assassinate Hitler after coming to believe that she's magically protected, while in None But the Lonely Heart, American playwright Clifford Odets' directorial debut, Cary Grant plays a Cockney dreamer who struggles with the reality of lower-class life during the Depression after trying to settle down and take care of his dying mother. We discuss the similarity in style and subject matter between None But the Lonely Heart and the poetic realist films of 1930s French cinema, and the curiosity of this underrated art movie being made by RKO so soon after its infamous entanglement with Orson Welles' similarly grim and poetic Magnificent Ambersons. If you've ever wanted to hear Dave start crying by recounting a crying scene, this is your chance.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: RKO in 1944

0h 05m 12s: PASSPORT TO DESTINY [dir. Ray McCarey]

0h 19m 22s: NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART [dir. Clifford Odets]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Vernon Harbin

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

Our second Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode sees the rising young star second-billed as the love interest in a couple of strange enterprises: Command Performance (1937), a vehicle for popular American tenor Arthur Tracy, and Crackerjack (1938), an unhinged crime comedy starring Aldwych farces alumnus Tom Walls as a criminal superhero. As Lilli tries to orient herself in film acting, Dave and Elise try to orient themselves in this unfamiliar territory of 30s British cinema and its popular figures.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: General Lilli Palmer talk + a little from Change Lobsters and Dance (Palmer's autobiography)

0h 04m 17s: COMMAND PERFORMANCE (1937) [dir. Sinclair Hill]

0h 25m 12s: CRACKERJACK (1938) [dir. Albert de Courville]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

Our Fox 1944 episode features a prestige production, The Eve of St. Mark, based on a Maxwell Anderson play and directed by John Stahl, and a modest marital drama, In the Meantime, Darling, directed by Otto Preminger just before he makes a name for himself in noir with Laura. Between the two, the problems facing the men at the front and the women who love them are covered, as well as the kinds of moral dilemmas each might face. We discuss Preminger's handling of Jeanne Craine's character, and Bosley Crowther (back to being Nemesis of the Pod) inadvertently describes John Stahl's distinctive style/outlook.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: THE EVE OF ST. MARK [dir. John M. Stahl]

0h 33m 04s: IN THE MEANTIME, DARLING [dir. Otto Preminger]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of 20th Century-Fox by Aubrey Solomon & Tony Thomas

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

In our first Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we spend some time with Lilli in England and take in her screen debut, in the "Quota Quickie" Crime Unlimited (1935); her small role in Hitchcock's eccentric Secret Agent (1936), in which she gets to play with an unhinged Peter Lorre; and a thankless role in a lyrical ode to Canadian nation-building a.k.a. labour exploitation, The Great Barrier (1937). Then, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we grapple with Angela Schanelec's Music, the one 2023 TIFF festival movie we got out to see, and our first time seeing a Schanelec on a really big screen, which was the right way to see this visually stunning film.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: Preliminary Words on Lilli Palmer

0h 05m 12s: CRIME UNLIMITED (1935) [dir. Ralph Ince]

0h 22m 51s: SECRET AGENT (1936) [dir. Alfred Hitchcock]

0h 34m 47s: THE GREAT BARRIER (1937) [dirs. Milton Rosmer and Geoffrey Barkas]

0h 47m 51s: Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto – TIFF's presentation of Angela Schanelec's Music (2023)

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

This Special Subject is something extra-special: we discuss philosopher Stanley Cavell's idiosyncratic classic of film criticism, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage and three classic comedies that are the subjects of essays in that book, Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth, Howard Hawks' His Girl Friday, and George Cukor's Adam's RIb. What is Cavell's "comedy of remarriage," and is it really a genre? What does "marriage" mean to Cavell, and what does it have to do with America and democracy? Why does divorce make marriage more romantic? Are the conversations we're having about film in North America getting better or worse? Why should you take an interest in your experience? Join us as we take an interest in our experience of Stanley Cavell and work through these and more questions!

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage by Stanley Cavell (published in 1981)

0h 40m 31s: THE AWFUL TRUTH (1937) [dir. Leo McCarey]

1h 06m 58s: HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) [dir. Howard Hawks]

1h 23m 18s: ADAM'S RIB (1949) [dir. George Cukor]

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

This Warner Bros. 1944 episode makes good use of Warner Bros.' A-list stars, A-list character actors, B-list stars, and B-list character actors. Casablanca and Maltese Falcon alumni converge in both Michael Curtiz's Passage to Marseille, starring Humphrey Bogart as a morally compromised hero, with Claude Rains and Sydney Greenstreet as the patriotic and pro-fascist alternatives for occupied France; while in Jean Negulesco's The Mask of Dimitrios, a Citizen Kane-like story of a self-made criminal without a Rosebud, Peter Lorre and Greenstreet form an unlikely friendship that reminds Elise more of Eric Blore and Edward Everett Horton than of Laurel and Hardy. We discuss the ways in which Curtiz finds the noir in his war movie and Negulesco finds the buddy comedy in his noir.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: Warner Brothers in 1944

0h 05m 26s: PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE [dir. Michael Curtiz]

0h 30m 10s: THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS [dir. Jean Negulesco]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

Warning: our final Dorothy McGuire episode contains very little Dorothy McGuire in our discussion of the films, although we also compare our Top 10 performances and give a final analysis of how her career was shaped by its cultural moment. However, we still find lots to talk about in the oddball final feature films in which she appeared, particularly George Stevens' The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), a Diatessaron or harmonizing of the Christian New Testament Gospels. We discuss what Stevens chooses to emphasize and de-emphasize in the life of Jesus and the effectiveness or otherwise of his choice of actors. Then we turn our attention (briefly) to Flight of the Doves (1971), a British children's movie showcasing a multicultural Ireland, notable for its ham actor villain, a curious ressentiment figure portrayed by Ron Moody.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD (1965) [dir. George Stevens]

0h 33m 52s: FLIGHT OF THE DOVES (1971) [dir. Ralph Nelson]

0h 43m 53s: Requiem for Dorothy McGuire and Host Top Tens

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

MGM, 1944 is an odd one. First, MGM's effort to help the war, Song of Russia (directed by Gregory Ratoff), prompts us to ask the question, "What were all of these Communist writers doing working for Louis B. Mayer?" And then, William Dieterle's Kismet, starring Ronald Colman as an amoral magician with misguided plans for his daughter's future, proves to have more to recommend it than just the campy set-piece for which Marlene Dietrich painted her legs gold. Despite the box office failure of Kismet, lavish Technicolor fantasy will have more to do with the future of MGM than Popular Front romance, but in any case, the era of Mickey and Judy and family values is over.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: SONG OF RUSSIA [dir. Gregory Ratoff]

0h 39m 18s: KISMET [dir. William Dieterle]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

In our penultimate Dorothy McGuire Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, another pair of films in which only one of McGuire's "mother roles" affords her a dramatic opportunity. Find out which is which, between Delmer Daves' Susan Slade (1961) and Disney's Summer Magic (1963). We also discuss stealth soap opera radicalism, compare Disney and Vincente Minnelli's approaches to femininity as a construct, and argue for the surprising distinctiveness of early 60s kewpie doll blonde heroines. As a bonus, Dave comes to the end of his patience with Bosley Crowther. And in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we attend a sold-out screening of Scorsese's After Hours, which we analyze as the ultimate scapegoat movie.

P.S. We forgot to read the Leonard Maltin capsule reviews this time! Sorry, Leonard - we'll never do it again!

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: SUSAN SLADE (1961) [dir. Delmer Daves]

0h 43m 38s: SUMMER MAGIC (1963) [dir. James Neilson]

1h 03m 02s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Martin Scorsese's After Hours (1985) at The Revue Cinema (part of the acclaimed Neon Dreams series)

1h 13m 47s: Listener Letter from Simon!

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!

Our special subject this month is The Silent Naruse: four of the five extant silent films of Mikio Naruse, Flunky, Word Hard!, from 1931, No Blood Relation, from 1932, and Apart from You and Every-Night Dreams, from 1933. We discuss these juvenilia as early examples of Naruse's materialist melodrama, and how much "transcendence" that perspective permits. Then, switching moods drastically: two tickets for Barbie! In Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we let you know whether or not we regret returning to the AMC Cineplex for the first time in 4 years to see Greta Gerwig's pop juggernaut.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: Very brief introduction to Mikio Naruse

0h 04m 20s: FLUNKY! WORK HARD (1931) [dir Mikio Naruse]

0h 14m 48s: NO BLOOD RELATION (1932) [dir Mikio Naruse]

0h 29m 15s: EVERY-NIGHT DREAMS (1933) [dir Mikio Naruse]

0h 44m 02s: APART FROM YOU (1933) [dir Mikio Naruse]

0h 57m 23s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Greta Gerwig's Barbie (2023)

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise's piece on Gangs of New York – "Making America Strange Again"

* Check out Dave's Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!