There's Sometimes a Buggy

In the inaugural episode of our Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view series, we discuss the general outline of Bow's life and career, consider her two first major film roles, and venture a few working hypotheses. She's easily the best thing in Down to the Sea in Ships (1922), the film that introduced her to the public, as a playful tomboy. Directed by D. W. Griffith alumnus Elmer Clifton, it starts the trend of contrasting Bow with a more antiquated form of womanhood as film, and culture in general, struggles to emerge from the Victorian era. Black Oxen (1923), directed by Frank Lloyd, takes a sci fi approach to this theme, and plants the "flapper" label on Bow—which, we decide, is incorrect.

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s: Brief Bow Intro

0h 18m 44s: Down to the Sea in Ships (1922) [dir: Elmer Clifton]

0h 36m 03s: Black Oxen (1923) [dir: Frank Lloyd]

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* Find Elise's latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy

*And Read lots of Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

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Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

This episode's Studios Year by Year: Fox, 1934. A Kern and Hammerstein musical with only one song and a Will Rogers comedy with many: Joe May's Music in the Air sees the beginning of Billie Wilder's Hollywood career and the end, for a while, of Gloria Swanson's (they will come together again). For Judge Priest, Dave goes long on Civil War history and Confederate imagery. We're not sure whether this John Ford/Rogers collaboration is Verhoeven/Sturgesque satire or Popular Front-style propaganda for progressive values in a Southern context, but we're pretty sure it's subversive. Trigger warning for those who aren't interested in watching a celebration of the Confederacy no matter what it's trying to smuggle in.

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s: Music in the Air (Dir: Joe May)

0h 15m 57s: Judge Priest (Dir: John Ford)

1h 03m 43s: Listener Letter from Adam

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* Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule (now projected into 2023)

* Find Elise's latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy

*And Read lots of Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

In a curious finale to our Setsuko Hara Acteurist Oeuvre-view, we briefly examine a couple of epics by Hiroshi Inagaki surrounding Hara cameos: The Three Treasures, a.k.a. The Birth of Japan (1959), based on the Yamato Takeru legend, in which Hara plays a Shinto goddess, and Chūshingura: Hana no Maki, Yuki no Maki (1962), based on the frequently dramatized historical incident of the forty-seven rōnin, in which she plays the long-suffering (although not long on screen) wife of a samurai. Between these films and Wikipedia, we get a crash course in Japanese culture that we deliver, in summary, to you, and also manage to come away with a few further thoughts about Setsuko Hara's dramatic gifts.

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s: The Three Treasures Aka The Birth of Japan (1959) [dir: Hiroshi Inagaki]

0h 26m 44s: 47 Ronin (1962) [dir: Hiroshi Inagaki]

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* Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule (now projected into 2023)

* Find Elise's latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy

*And Read lots of Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

A proleptic episode in which we anticipate our future Acteurist Oeuvre-view of the career of (retired) Greatest Living Actor, Sir Daniel Day-Lewis. The foretaste comes in the form of two films in which Day-Lewis plays men willing to do anything to preserve a vision that ultimately comes down to taste, and inspires homicidal impulses in the women who love him: Phantom Thread (2017), written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, and The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005), written and directed by Lady Day-Lewis, otherwise known as Rebecca Miller. We conclude that these films offer good examples of some of the things only Day-Lewis can do; and speculate about the mother-shaped figure in Anderson's carpet.

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s: Flash Forward to Late 2021 – Acteurist Oeuvre-view - Season 5: Daniel Day-Lewis

0h 05n 48s: Phantom Thread (2017; dir: Paul Thomas Anderson)

1h 02s 26s: The Ballad of Jack and Rose (2005; dir: Rebecca Miller)

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* Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule

* Find Elise's latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy

*And Read lots of Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

Just in time for the six week festive season!

Brew yourself a hot beverage and revisit a pre-quarantine period when Elise & Dave had far less excuse for holing up in their apartment to record 4 hour podcast episodes.

This cup of chiaroscuro cheer should put you right in the mood for our 2020 Noir Noël (THE LADY IN THE LAKE [1947] + D.O.A. [1988]), coming to your feed on December 25th itself. 

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* Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule

* Find Elise’s latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy

*And Read lots of Elise’s Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

For our Warner Bros. 1934 episode, two tragicomic movies in which Aline MacMahon plays a lovable small business owner with man problems: Side Streets, directed by Alfred E. Green, and Heat Lightning, directed by Mervyn LeRoy. The latter in particular, we conclude, could only have been made by Warner Bros., and gives us the best and the worst of that studio on gender. Bonus: it's also an Ann Dvorak double-feature.

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s: Side Streets (dir: Alfred E. Green)

0h 41m 06s: Heat Lightning (dir: Mervyn Leroy)

1h 11m 10s: Letter from Adam

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* Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule

* Find Elise's latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy

*And Read lots of Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

Our penultimate Setsuko Hara Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode sees us examining Ozu's antepenultimate and penultimate films, Late Autumn (1960) and The End of Summer (1961), in both of which she plays a character named Akiko. We then launch into an extended consideration of the meaning of her Noriko/Akiko character in Ozu's films, including a discussion of the effect of Hara's absence on Ozu's final film, An Autumn Afternoon (1962), an "alternate universe" reprise of Late Spring. We revisit the most enigmatic Noriko, the Noriko of Tokyo Story, which leads us to consider the theme of loneliness and the difficulty of connecting in Ozu's postwar films.

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s: Late Autumn (1960; dir: Yasujiro Ozu)

0h 45m 43s: The End of Summer (1961; dir: Yasujiro Ozu)

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* Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule

* Find Elise's latest film piece on Billy Wilder and 1930s Romantic Comedy

*And Read lots of Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

We went long for our Hallowe'en Special Subject for 2020: Ominous Omnibi, featuring two eerie anthology films of the 1940s, Universal's star-studded Flesh and Fantasy, directed by Julien Duvivier during his WWII Hollywood sojourn, and Ealing Studios' Dead of Night, best remembered for its crowning tale, The Ventriloquist's Dummy, starring Michael Redgrave as a man in an agitated relationship with a prop. After warming up with some Robert Benchley and Oscar Wilde talk, we dig into Dead of Night and the uncanniness of male anxiety. Elise asks Dave to ponder the intrinsic horror of the double act. Prepare for many David Lynch comparisons and Twilight Zone episode recommendations. Happy Hallowe'en!

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s: Flesh and Fantasy (1943) [dir: Julien Duvivier]

0h 43m 14s: Dead of Night (1945) [dirs: Cavalcanti, Robert Hamer, Basil Dearden & Charles Crichton]

1h 55m 55s: Listener email from Barry

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* Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule

* Find Elise's latest film piece on Depression era film romance

*And Read lots of Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

MGM, 1934, and our most mismatched pair of films yet: Sidney Franklin's tale of overheated Victorian repression, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, and Lubitsch's lavish, Hollywood-transposed Austro-Hungarian operetta, The Merry Widow. We discuss Laughton vs. Gielgud, Lubitsch vs. Mamoulian, innuendo in the Year of the Code, and more.

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s: The Barretts of Wimpole Street (dir: Sidney Franklin)

0h 38m 00s: The Merry Widow (dir: Ernst Lubitsch)

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* Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule

* Find Elise's latest film piece on Depression era film romance

*And Read lots of Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre

On this Acteurist Oeuvre-view Setsuko Hara episode: a tight, noirish family melodrama by Ozu, Tokyo Twilight (1957), paired with a loose, sprawling family melodrama by Naruse, Daughters, Wives and a Mother (1960). The first gives us the bitterest Hara we've seen since The Idiot, while the second challenges her persona in subtler ways. Vacuum cleaners have never been sexier, nor peeing dogs more tragic.

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s: Tokyo Twilight (dir: Yasujiro Ozu)

0h 48m 20s: Daughters, Wives and a Mother (dir: Mikio Naruse)

+++

* Check out our Complete Upcoming Episode Schedule

* Find Elise's latest film piece on Depression era film romance

*And Read lots of Elise's Writing at Bright Wall/Dark Room, Cléo, and Bright Lights.*

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at [email protected]

Theme Music:

"What's Yr Take on Cassavetes?" – Le Tigre