Early talking films are invaluable relics of a dead civilization–namely the 1920s. The acting, pacing, diction, style and behavior are as incomprehensible and different from anything we now consider normal as sitting around a cave might be with its cro-magnin inhabitants. The movies aren’t really useful anymore to us in
Here’s the rather original first trailer of ‘The Thin Man’ (1934) starring…well, if you read this blog I’m pretty sure you know who played Nick and Nora Charles. It uses a rather striking ‘book-end’ gimmick–William Powell doubles himself and Nick Charles in a split screen in which Nick stands within
Continuing this week’s Leopold and Loeb theme, here’s a clip of Alfred Hitchcock on The Dick Cavett Show’ discussing, among other things, the long-take method of the movie that I described in yesterday’s post. Far from the forbidding figure we sometimes think of him as, Hitch is amusing, droll and
Filmmakers appear to be at their best when being interviewed by Europeans. Yesterday I offered up Orson Welles on Michael Parkinson’s show. Today, dig this one-hour doc made for French television titled ‘Billy Wilder; Portrait Of A 60% Perfect Man’. Ciment, a noted French cineaste, shot this material in Los