There's Sometimes a Buggy

Our Warner Brothers 1943 episode is a very special one, a Popular Front anti-Nazi double feature, the Stalinist propaganda film Mission to Moscow (directed by Michael Curtiz) and Lewis Milestone's drama about Norwegian resistance to the Nazi occupation, Edge of Darkness. We attempt (as complete non-experts!) to lay out the stakes involved in the case made by Mission to Moscow and discuss the circumstances of the film's production and the impact it made on Hollywood. Then we move on to Milestone and screenwriter Robert Rossen's depiction of what it takes to form a successful resistance movement—in this case led by a subdued Errol Flynn and a steely Ann Sheridan. Come to find out how Dave and Elise would have felt about living through Stalin's Five-Year Plans, stay to find out whether or not they would have been quislings.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: MISSION TO MOSCOW [dir. Michael Curtiz]

0h 45m 43s: EDGE OF DARKNESS [dir. Lewis Milestone]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story Clive Hirschhorn

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 Dorothy McGuire movies this week occupy two ends of the mid-50s Hollywood spectrum: a low-budget black-and-white noirish crime thriller for Republic, Make Haste to Live (1954), and a vibrantly colorful Cinemascope travelogue romance for Fox, Three Coins in the Fountain (1954). We find plenty to recommend in both, from Make Haste to Live's stylish cinematography (by John L. Russell of Moonrise and Psycho fame) and palpable nastiness to McGuire's odd comedic chemistry with Clifton Webb in Three Coins. As McGuire seriously settles into the "mother and spinster roles" part of her career, we consider what kind of scope individual roles of this kind gave her, and so far they're looking as eccentric as any "love interest" roles she had in the past, which is good news.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: MAKE HASTE TO LIVE (1954) [dir. William A. Seiter]

0h 35m 50s: THREE COINS IN THE FOUNTAIN (1954) [dir. Jean Negulesco]

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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 Special Subject this month is the films of Jacqueline Audry, a fairly recently rediscovered postwar French director. We watched all of the films we could find with English subtitles: Gigi (1949), Olivia (1951), Huis clos/No Exit (1954), and Les petits matins/Hitch-Hike (1962). From literary adaptations of some strong and scandalous material to an unusually gentle New Wave comedy, these films reveal a director who tackles the erotic frankly but not uncritically. We also have a Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment this week, in which we share our wildly divergent opinions on the Bob Fosse musical Sweet Charity. Can Shirley MacLaine do what Daniel Day-Lewis could not and save this unnecessary musical adaptation of a Fellini movie?

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: Introducing Jacqueline Audry & Colette

0h 15m 49s: GIGI (1949) [dir. Jacqueline Audry]

0h 31m 28s: OLIVIA (1951) [dir. Jacqueline Audry]

0h 53m 14s: HUIS CLOS (1954) [dir. Jacqueline Audry]

1h 03m 43s: LES PETITS MATINS (1962) [dir. Jacqueline Audry]

1h 07m 01s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Sweet Charity (1969) by Bob Fosse

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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]

For our MGM 1943 episode, we look at two films that are highly representative of the Mayer ethos, The Human Comedy (directed by Clarence Brown), a portrait of WWII-era American small-town life infused with the beatific sensibility of William Saroyan (who provided the story), with Mickey Rooney in a coming-of-age story that's equal parts Andy Hardy and David Lynch; and the children's classic Lassie Come Home (directed by Fred M. Wilcox), which we compare to Mizoguchi's Sansho the Bailiff as a sold-into-slavery story but find wanting in its social analysis despite its Communist screenwriter. We try to tease the strangeness out of the sentiment—which doesn't really take much doing.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: THE HUMAN COMEDY [Dir. Clarence Brown]

0h 43m 59s: LASSIE COME HOME [Dir. Fred M. Wilcox]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The MGM Story 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!

Our two Dorothy McGuire movies for this week are wildly different in tone: Samuel Goldwyn's I Want You (1951, directed by Mark Robson), about a family's reaction to the Korean War draft, and, for MGM, the Jamesian melodrama Invitation (1952, directed by Gottfried Reinhardt). Dave makes the case for I Want You as a complex leftist look at early Cold War America, and then we unpack the Jamesian tropes of Invitation, with its complicated flashback structure. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we share our first experience of the extraordinarily intense films of Hungarian auteur Márta Mészáros, discussing Nine Months (1976) and The Two of Them (1977).

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: I WANT YOU (1951) [dir. Mark Robson]

0h 37m 18s: INVITATION (1952) [dir. Gottfried Reinhardt]

1h 07m 01s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Nine Months (1976) and The Two of Them (1977) by Marta Meszaros

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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!

For our Paramount 1943 episode, just a couple of typical comedies, as far as John Douglas Eames is concerned: Preston Sturges' The Palm Beach Story, starring Claudette Colbert and Joel McCrea, a comedy of remarriage in which the screwballs are no longer the central couple, and Mitchell Leisen's cross-class comedy with a number of twists, No Time For Love, with Colbert and Fred MacMurray. We try to figure out what these movies, coming at the end of the screwball comedy cycle, have to say about love, sex, class, wealth, and gender in America in the early 1940s. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment we discuss Merian C. Cooper's relentlessly vicious King Kong (1933) as a kind of unconsciously Verhoevian nightmare "family film".

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: THE PALM BEACH STORY [dir. Preston Sturges]

0h 41m 21s: NO TIME FOR LOVE [dir. Mitchell Leisen]

1h 07m 23s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: King Kong (1933) by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story Paramount Story 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 the second part of our Joan Harrison: Producer Special Subject, we look at Harrison's Robert Montgomery years and her final films made before turning to television. which include both known and overlooked gems: Ride the Pink Horse (1947), Once More, My Darling (1949), Your Witness (1950), and Circle of Danger (1951). We identify the various themes and concerns that unite films within this group, with particular attention to the way Harrison makes political progressivism serve dramatic ends. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we take a quick look at two silent films written and directed by Mikio Naruse, Flunky, Work Hard! and Apart From You, that we will be watching for a dedicated episode later this year.

Time Codes:

0h 0m 45s: Preamble on the Harrison-Montgomery partnership

0h 7m 00s: RIDE THE PINK HORSE (1947) [dir. Robert Montgomery]

0h 36m 06s: ONCE MORE, MY DARLING (1949) [dir. Robert Montgomery]

0h 49m 54s: YOUR WITNESS (1950) [dir. Robert Montgomery]

1h 04m 08s: CIRCLE OF DANGER (1951) [dir. Jacques Tourneur]

1h 29m 24s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Mikio Naruse's Flunky! Work Hard (1931) and Apart from You (1933)

1h 33m 51s: 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!

For our Universal 1942 episode, a very odd pairing: The Mad Doctor of Market Street, a mad scientist/ocean liner comedy/island adventure movie directed by low-budget noir auteur Joseph H. Lewis, and Alfred Hitchcock's first fully American movie, Saboteur, a fugitive-on-the-run thriller. We dissect the depiction of the fictional islanders in The Mad Doctor of Market Street and the movie's deconstruction of the science/magic dichotomy, before moving on to Saboteur's leftist take on fascism in the United States. And in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we talk about Ozu's A Hen in the Wind and Curtiz's Angels with Dirty Faces, which have nothing in common but very emotional endings.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: THE MAD DOCTOR OF MARKET STREET [dir. Joseph H. Lewis]

0h 24m 05s: SABOTEUR [dir. Alfred Hitchcock]

1h 03m 52s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: A Hen in the Wind (1948) by Yasujiro Ozu & Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) by Michael Curtiz

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal 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!

For this week's Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode we watched two romantic comedies (sort of), Mister 880 (1950) and Callaway Went Thataway (1951), in which Dorothy McGuire assumes a role we haven't seen from her before: the character through whom we register the pathos that the movies explore via the respective plights of Edmund Gwenn's elderly counterfeiter and Howard Keel's TV cowboy impersonator. We focus particularly on Mister 880, a very unusual comedic drama directed by the great Edmund Goulding, with a screenplay by Robert Riskin, that in certain ways anticipates Umberto D., and try to grasp the essence of its elusive moral. In just what way does Gwenn's character embody an admirable form of life?

Time Codes:

0h 0m 45s: MISTER 880 (1950) [dir. Edmund Goulding]

0h 35m 50s: CALLAWAY WENT THATAWAY (1951) [dirs. Melvin Frank & Norman Panama]

+++

* 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 1942 RKO episode is a very special one, with films by two of the studio's outstanding auteurs, writer-producer-director Orson Welles, and B-horror unit producer Val Lewton. First, we look at Orson Welles' mutilated (some even say "emasculated"!) masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons, exploring the movie's extraordinary characters and performances and giving our opinion of the ending imposed by the studio. Then we turn to Val Lewton's first production for RKO's horror unit, Cat People, grappling with its metaphors and digging into its unusual love triangle. And then, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we discuss an adjacent film, Bell, Book and Candle, in which Kim Novak's slinky witch falls for normo Jimmy Stewart - but with a very different outcome. Join us as we look at some very lonely people who make some very bad decisions!

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s: THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS [dir. Orson Welles]

0h 38m 57s: CAT PEOPLE [dir. Jacques Tourneur]

1h 05m 28s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto: Bell, Book and Candle (1958) by Richard Quine

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

+++

* 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!