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Based on Herman Bang’s 1902 novel of the same name, Dreyer’s film is a fascinating fin-de-siècle study of a “decadent” elderly artist (Benjamin Christensen) driven to despair by his relationship with his young protégé and former model, Michael (Walter Slezak). With suffocatingly sumptuous production design by renowned architect Hugo Häring (his only film work), this Kammerspiel, or “intimate theatre”, foreshadows Dreyer’s magnificent final film Gertrud, by forty years with its “Now I may die content, for I have seen great love” epigraph.Read More »
Walter Slezak
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Carl Theodor Dreyer – Mikaël (1924)
1921-1930Carl Theodor DreyerDramaGermanyQueer Cinema(s)Romance -
Alfred Hitchcock – Lifeboat (1944)
1941-1950Alfred HitchcockDramaThrillerUSASeveral survivors of a torpedoed ship find themselves in the same boat with one of the men who sunk it.
In the Atlantic during WWII, a ship and a German U-boat are involved in a battle and both are sunk. The survivors from the ship gather in one of the boats. They are from a variety of backgrounds: an international journalist, a rich businessman, the radio operator, a nurse, a steward, a sailor and an engineer with communist tendencies. Trouble starts when they pull a man out of the water who turns out to be from the U-boat.Read More » -
Leo McCarey – Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942)
USA1941-1950ComedyLeo McCareyScrewball ComedyAt the start of WWII, Katie O’Hara, an American burlesque girl intent on social climbing, marries Austrian Baron Von Luber. Pat O’Toole, an American radio reporter, sees this as a chance to investigate Von Luber, who is suspected of having Nazi ties. As country after country falls to the Nazis, O’Tool follows O’Hara across Europe. At first he is after a story, but he gradually falls in love with her. When she learns that her husband is indeed a Nazi, O’Hara fakes her death and runs off with O’Toole. In Paris, she is recruited to spy for the allies; he uses a radio broadcast to make Von Luber and the Nazis look like fools.Read More »
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Frederick De Cordova – Bedtime for Bonzo (1951)
1951-1960ComedyFrederick De CordovaUSASynopsis:
Professor Peter Boyd’s engagement to the Dean’s daughter is upset by the revelation that his father was a habitual convict. To prove the Dean’s genetic theory of inherited traits as wrong, Boyd starts a ‘secret’ experiment. He borrows the science department’s chimpanzee with the goal of showing that it is one’s environment that affects your reaction to right and wrong.Read More » -
Richard Wallace – The Fallen Sparrow (1943)
1941-1950ClassicsFilm NoirRichard WallaceUSASynopsis:
A former Spanish Civil War prisoner, John McKittrick arrives in New York to find the truth behind the death of his friend Louie Lepetino. He finds himself being chased by Nazi agents who want an item he has brought back from Spain and cannot give up. When another of his friends is murdered, McKittrick realizes that he cannot trust anyone around him – not anyone.— Jim Beaver (IMDb)Read More »