Local Night Life: Noir City at the Castro and the San Francisco Symphony's Film Series

The 2016 film noir season was officially launched with San Francisco's Noir City XIV, January 22 - 31, at the city's Castro Theatre. The 10-day festival, presented by the Film Noir Foundation, is traditionally the first in a series of Noir City events to follow in Hollywood, Austin, Portland (Oregon), Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Kansas City.

In Remembrance: Leatrice Joy Gilbert Fountain, 1924 - 2015

Leatrice as a baby, left, and in her later years

One night in January 2010 Turner Classic Movies aired Rediscovering John Gilbert, a 45-minute documentary about the great star of the late silent era. I was aware of Gilbert and recalled that he had failed the transition to talkies because, it was said, his voice was too high and too thin. In the course of watching the documentary, which prominently featured the actor's daughter and biographer, Leatrice Gilbert Fountain, I learned that the causes of Gilbert's demise and early death were more complex than that. By the time the short film ended my curiosity was aroused and I decided to get my hands on a copy of Fountain's biography of her father, Dark Star, so jumped online and searched. I soon found and ordered one from Amazon, but I'd also noticed that the search had turned up information on the author; she was on Facebook. So I sent her a message...and she replied.

Frank Sinatra in 1965: It Was a Very Good Year

It was the age of "Yeah, yeah, yeah," Carnaby Street couture and "Bond, James Bond." The Beatles ruled the world of popular music, having launched the "British Invasion" with their performances on The Ed Sullivan Show early in 1964. A year later that takeover was in full force, and yet for Frank Sinatra, on the verge of turning 50, 1965 would be a very good year.

"100 Years of Harold Lloyd" Comes to iTunes This Month

Many a press release finds its way into Lady Eve's inbox. All are read, but most are quickly deleted. Random Media's recent announcement of the release of 100 Years of Harold Lloyd on iTunes this month is important, I think, and of interest to classic film fans, and so...

La Ronde (1950), a film by Max Ophuls

 

 For the Criterion Blogathon

With the release of one of 2014's most unique films, Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel, came an avalanche of publicity. The influences on Anderson's much acclaimed and awarded bittersweet romp through a fictional between-the-wars Old Europe were widely scrutinized in the mainstream press for a time. Among them were German writer Stefan Zweig, whose autobiography The World of Yesterday was a core inspiration; German-born filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch, who made a string of enchanting films of great charm and sophistication through the '30s and '40s; and Max Ophuls, another German-born filmmaker, whose elegant works were marked by deep wit, a cosmopolitan world view and an affinity for Old Europe which he depicted on screen with great style and tendresse many times. His Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948) is arguably the greatest film adaptation of Stefan Zweig's work and, more directly linking Ophuls to The Grand Budapest Hotel, the name of Tilda Swinton's character, "Madame D," is a nod to his masterpiece, The Earrings of Madame de... (1953), the film Wes Anderson named first on his "top ten" list of Criterion Collection titles.

Paris, je t'aime

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade (1963)

Thinking of Paris and all of France today, and of films that evoke my own deep affection for that great city and beautiful country.

 

"Bonjour, Paris," Fred Astaire, Audrey Hepburn and Kay Thompson in Funny Face (1957)

 

 

Margo Martindale in Alexander Payne's charming vignette from Paris, je t'aime (2006)

at Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca (1942)

...and closing with scenes of Paris and its people accompanied by Sidney Bechet's "Si Tu Vois Ma Mere," the the main theme from Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2010).

 

THE ICE CREAM BLONDE by Michelle Morgan

 

The Whirlwind Life and Mysterious Death of Screwball Comedienne Thelma Todd

 

  AN INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR AND A BOOK GIVEAWAY

 
Nearly 80 years ago, comedienne Thelma Todd, co-star to the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy, and a former Miss Massachusetts (1925), was found dead at age 29 in her car inside the Pacific Palisades garage where she kept it. While there was never any question that Todd died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning, there has been, ever since, much speculation on how and why she ended up in her car in a garage with its doors firmly shut.

PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES: FRANK CAPRA'S "LOST HORIZON"

Frank Capra's wistful 1937 fantasy, Lost Horizon, begins dramatically with a chaotic mob scene at an airfield in war-torn Baskul, China, highlighted by a spectacular explosion and fire. In the midst of the fray, British diplomat Robert Conway (Ronald Colman) is managing the evacuation of 90 Westerners from the melee. But time is running out; he and a disparate party of five barely escape on the last plane to take flight. Struggling to board and flee with Conway are his younger brother, George (John Howard), Lovett (Edward Everett Horton), a paleontologist, Barnard (Thomas Mitchell), a businessman, and Gloria (Isabel Jewell), a floozy. Unbeknownst to the passengers, their European pilot, a crony of Conway's, was forcibly removed from the cockpit just before take-off and replaced by an Asian flyer.

GOING (to) PSYCHO AGAIN

50 years ago, I saw Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho for the first time. It was 1965 and though the film was originally released in 1960, its immense popularity led to a re-issue five years later. Thankfully, by 1965 my parents considered me old enough, and so one spring evening I ventured with friends to the Ritz Theatre in Escondido, California, to see it. Odd as it may sound, somehow I wasn't aware of every twist and turn in the plot or the shocking finale by then. Which must be why, after barely getting through Marion Crane's brutal demise, I let out a spontaneous, ear-splitting scream when "Mrs. Bates," knife in hand, ambushed Mr. Arbogast on the staircase. Later on, like so many others, I left the movie house completely unnerved and with a newly acquired skittishness about taking showers...