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Corn Is Green (1945)
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Rebecca
: essential video:Rebecca is an ageless, timeless adult movie about a woman who marries a widower but fears she lives in the shadow of her predecessor. This was Hitchcock's first American feature, and it garnered the Best Picture statue at the 1941 Academy Awards. In today's films, most twists and surprises are ridiculous or just gratuitous, so it's sobering to look back on this film where every revelation not only shocks, but makes organic sense with the story line. Laurence Olivier is dashing and weak, fierce and cowed. Joan Fontaine is strong yet ...
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Trail of the Lonesome Pine
: :Landmark films never lose the ozone-snap excitement of their special historic moment. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was the first feature shot outdoors in three-strip Technicolor, and its exhilaration in forest and lake, mountain and cloud remains as fresh and privileged today as it must have been in 1936. Director Henry Hathaway, already a seasoned veteran, had a fine pictorial eye along with sturdy storytelling instincts; he knew just how to place his cast in dynamic settings without getting fussy about it (a talent still going strong 33 years later in True ...
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Chocolate Soldier
: :Landmark films never lose the ozone-snap excitement of their special historic moment. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was the first feature shot outdoors in three-strip Technicolor, and its exhilaration in forest and lake, mountain and cloud remains as fresh and privileged today as it must have been in 1936. Director Henry Hathaway, already a seasoned veteran, had a fine pictorial eye along with sturdy storytelling instincts; he knew just how to place his cast in dynamic settings without getting fussy about it (a talent still going strong 33 years later in True ...
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Journey for Margaret
: :Landmark films never lose the ozone-snap excitement of their special historic moment. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was the first feature shot outdoors in three-strip Technicolor, and its exhilaration in forest and lake, mountain and cloud remains as fresh and privileged today as it must have been in 1936. Director Henry Hathaway, already a seasoned veteran, had a fine pictorial eye along with sturdy storytelling instincts; he knew just how to place his cast in dynamic settings without getting fussy about it (a talent still going strong 33 years later in True ...
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Sherlock Holmes: The Spider Woman
: :Here is another strong entry (beautifully restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive) from the peak of Basil Rathbone's prolific, seven-year run as a definitive Sherlock Holmes for the big screen. The Spider Woman (1944) employs details of Holmes's apparent death and resurrection between 'The Final Problem' and its follow-up, 'The Adventure of the Empty House.' But the movie takes a different direction when a bizarre series of late-night 'pajama suicides' finds Holmes probing the involvement of a femme fatale. Of the quartet of features in this set (all produced and directed ...
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Charge of the Light Brigade
: essential video:Why is The Charge of the Light Brigade so rarely even mentioned among Errol Flynn's swashbucklers? It's a terrific movie, something like the peak of spectacular Hollywood action filmmaking and the bravura style of Michael Curtiz. The setting--till the Crimean War climax--is the Indian frontier (impersonated, as so often, by rocky Lone Pine, California), where the 27th Bengal Lancers run afoul of an Oxford-educated slime named Surat Khan (C. Henry Gordon). Flynn and Olivia de Havilland bring real tenderness to two-thirds of a romantic triangle (the other corner is the hero's ...
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Sherlock Holmes: The Scarlet Claw
: :Here is another strong entry (beautifully restored by the UCLA Film and Television Archive) from the peak of Basil Rathbone's prolific, seven-year run as a definitive Sherlock Holmes for the big screen. The Scarlet Claw (1944) is an original screenplay with elements loosely inspired by Doyle's 'The Adventure of the Dancing Men.' A skeptical Holmes and Watson (Nigel Bruce) attend a meeting of the Royal Canadian Occult Society in Canada, but are soon looking into a killing spree attributed to a fanciful marsh monster. Fantastic events are soon supplanted by an even stranger ...
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The Hound of the Baskervilles
: :Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce star in this 1939 adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's frequently filmed novel, and the result is one of the most atmospheric and purely enjoyable versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Except for minor changes, the script is true to Doyle's enthralling mystery about a centuries-long curse against heirs to the Baskerville estate, situated within the haunting and deadly Dartmoor in the southwest of England. With the arrival of a new master, Canadian Henry Baskerville (Richard Greene), Sherlock Holmes (Rathbone) and Dr. Watson (Bruce) are called upon ...
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Sherlock Holmes Faces Death
: :Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce star in this 1939 adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's frequently filmed novel, and the result is one of the most atmospheric and purely enjoyable versions of The Hound of the Baskervilles. Except for minor changes, the script is true to Doyle's enthralling mystery about a centuries-long curse against heirs to the Baskerville estate, situated within the haunting and deadly Dartmoor in the southwest of England. With the arrival of a new master, Canadian Henry Baskerville (Richard Greene), Sherlock Holmes (Rathbone) and Dr. Watson (Bruce) are called upon ...
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