You've given me another reason to check out Short Cut to Hell : it stars Georgann Johnson in the Veronica Lake role?? I remember her playing the good wife and mother on Somerset and can't imagine her ever playing a sexy part like Veronica. Speaking of Robert Pattinson: my partner's eighth-grade niec...

When TCM showed The Story of Temple Drake at the 2010 festival, it was only 90% restored, according to the expert who presented it, and you could tell the difference. Let's hope that by now there's a fully restored version. Miriam Hopkins at her best, and a number of posters here are fans of Jack La...

Will do, JF, but it will be next week as I'll be away from classic movies and the Internet for a few days. After seeing Barbara Rush at the festival, I've been seeking out some of her films on TCM. She's excellent in The Young Philadelphians , a 1959 soap I enjoyed. Her character could easily come o...

[quote="JackFavell"]Did anyone happen to catch Joseph Losey's King and Country last night? Kingrat - that probably means you. :D :D JF, you're so right. I've only watched the first half of King and Country . We're in complete agreement about Tom Courtenay and Dirk Bogarde. Courtenay is suc...

Tuesday night has the next installment of Jean Simmons films. I've written about both Trio and Adam and Evelyne higher up in the thread: Trio (1950). Somerset Maugham introduces three more of his stories about human foibles. D: Ken Annakin. The first story concerns what happens when an illiterate ma...

Movieman, Smiley's People was a sequel to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, so it probably didn't make much sense if you hadn't seen TTSS, which was great. Mel Martin was in that, too, along with Alec Guinness, Ian Richardson, Beryl Reid, and many other gifted folks.

I remember Love for Lydia and how good Mel Martin and Jeremy Irons were. All you've said about young love, JF, is too painfully true.

Beatrix Lehmann didn't do many films, but she is very good in the truly odd film Psyche 59 as the less than loving mother of Patricia Neal and Samantha Eggar.

Feaito, thanks for posting about The Perfect Gentleman, which sounds like great fun. I've only seen Cicely Courtneidge at the end of her career, in a supporting role as a retired music hall performer in The L-Shaped Room (1962), where she's very good.

JF, so glad you got to see Safe in Hell . I'm taping most of the other Wellman pre-Codes. I agree with your description of Wellman's directing. There's a figure of speech called a synecdoche, which is using the part to stand for the whole, like referring to "the crown" to mean the power of...

MissG, I was also astonished by the bitter tone at the end of Let Us Live . Not at all what I expected. More noir. Witness to Murder (1954, Roy Rowland): OK, the billing features Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Merrill, and George Sanders, but the real star of this movie is ChiO's main man John Alton, whose ...

Maven, saw your Fan Retrospective and love it. The camera loves you. Love your description of Jean Simmons. Spartacus is Kubrick's warmest film--maybe his only film with human warmth--and the main reason for that is Jean. Moira, thanks for the picture of Katina Paxinou. Didn't plan to, but watched t...

As a fan of John Brahm's The Locket , The Lodger , and Hangover Square , I wanted to see Let Us Live (1939) with Henry Fonda and Maureen O'Sullivan. Let's just call this film noir, 'cause if it looks like a duck, etc . . . . Henry Fonda warms up for his performance in The Wrong Man , only this time ...

As someone who seems to like the, ahem, eclectic, obscure, and bizarre, and encourages others to do the same, I'm glad Moira started this thread. I only saw the second half of the film and was pleasantly surprised, although Bette is in hard and brittle mode. Many nice directorial touches from Curtis...

Time to bump this thread, because the lovely Jean Simmons is Star of the Month for June 2011. Tuesday, June 7 features several early films, in most of which she played a small role. The quality of the films she made is remarkably high. For instance, here's the Tuesday night lineup: Great Expectation...

The topic reminds me of some Ripley's Believe It or Not actual double features. A drive-in in my hometown showed Antonioni's Blow-Up with Elvis Presley in Double Trouble . And in Manhattan, I saw Ingmar Bergman's Shame on the lower half of a double bill with Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell . Mamma mia!