One of Alfred Hitchcock’s so-called lesser films bounces back in an immaculate restoration. Say goodbye to dismal, indecipherable Public Domain versions — now we can fairly evaluate this amusing early talkie. An odd cross-section of underworld characters gathers amid the staircases and dark shadows of an abandoned house and proceeds to play games of identity and coercion. What happened to the body that was on the third floor landing? Who is the mysterious mastermind whose note warns about a cop, and promises a diamond necklace? Who is the mysterious woman who cannot hear or speak? And is our hero a random passerby who followed his hat blown by the wind? Kino’s deluxe disc features audio excerpts from Hitchcock and a longform French documentary about his early sound career.
Number Seventeen
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1932 / B&w / 1:20 flat / 63 min. / Street Date December 7, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Leon M. Lion,...
Number Seventeen
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1932 / B&w / 1:20 flat / 63 min. / Street Date December 7, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95
Starring: Leon M. Lion,...
- 11/23/2021
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
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“Card Tricks”
By Raymond Benson
This British gem was considered a lost film until a print was somehow discovered a little over ten years ago and re-released in art houses and on home video. The Queen of Spades, from 1949, was one of only nine pictures helmed by Thorold Dickinson, a Norwegian director who worked mostly in the UK but also in Europe and Africa. He was perhaps most known for directing the original British version of Gaslight (1940), which George Cukor and MGM suppressed when they remade it as a Hollywood movie in 1944 (with Ingrid Bergman). There are some who believe Dickinson’s Gaslight is the better of the two.
Dickinson has been re-appraised in recent years by the likes of filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson, and by critics with a taste for genuine style and substance in their movies. The Queen of Spades...
“Card Tricks”
By Raymond Benson
This British gem was considered a lost film until a print was somehow discovered a little over ten years ago and re-released in art houses and on home video. The Queen of Spades, from 1949, was one of only nine pictures helmed by Thorold Dickinson, a Norwegian director who worked mostly in the UK but also in Europe and Africa. He was perhaps most known for directing the original British version of Gaslight (1940), which George Cukor and MGM suppressed when they remade it as a Hollywood movie in 1944 (with Ingrid Bergman). There are some who believe Dickinson’s Gaslight is the better of the two.
Dickinson has been re-appraised in recent years by the likes of filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson, and by critics with a taste for genuine style and substance in their movies. The Queen of Spades...
- 7/29/2020
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Constance Cummings: Stage and film actress ca. early 1940s. Constance Cummings on stage: From Sacha Guitry to Clifford Odets (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Flawless 'Blithe Spirit,' Supporter of Political Refugees.”) In the post-World War II years, Constance Cummings' stage reputation continued to grow on the English stage, in plays as diverse as: Stephen Powys (pseudonym for P.G. Wodehouse) and Guy Bolton's English-language adaptation of Sacha Guitry's Don't Listen, Ladies! (1948), with Cummings as one of shop clerk Denholm Elliott's mistresses (the other one was Betty Marsden). “Miss Cummings and Miss Marsden act as fetchingly as they look,” commented The Spectator. Rodney Ackland's Before the Party (1949), delivering “a superb performance of controlled hysteria” according to theater director and Michael Redgrave biographer Alan Strachan, writing for The Independent at the time of Cummings' death. Clifford Odets' Winter Journey / The Country Girl (1952), as...
- 11/10/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
This is a tale of chance encounters.1) René Clair is in London, making The Ghost Goes West (1935). Something of a flaneur, he has strolled down to the East End, and his noctivagation leads him to a Limehouse pub which strikes him with an intense but mysterious feeling of déjà vu."Of course!" he suddenly thinks. "D.W. Griffith: Broken Blossoms!" The pub is the very image of Griffith's Hollywood recreation of Victorian London from his 1919 film.And there, at the bar, sits D.W. Griffith himself. Clair approaches this mirage and learns that Griffith is in London to direct a remake of Broken Blossoms at Twickenham Studios. Drink is taken.2) All this comes from screenwriter Rodney Ackland's bittersweet memoir of his work in British cinema, The Celluloid Mistress, co-written with Elspeth Grant. He further explains that his idolisation of Griffith prompted him to volunteer his services in any capacity as...
- 4/16/2015
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Stage and screen actor known for playing battle-axe aunts, village gossips and servants
When Mel Brooks visited the film set of Up at the Villa (2000), in which his wife, Anne Bancroft, was starring, he proclaimed Barbara Hicks, who has died aged 89, the funniest woman he had ever met. This stalwart character actor, always lodged some way down any cast list as if to prove the truth of Stanislavski's dictum that there are no small parts, only small actors, was a fund of stories, many of them unprintable. And Hicks, though slight of build, with a long face and asymmetrical features, was certainly not a small actor.
As another admirer, Alan Bennett, once told her wistfully: "When you go, Barbara, there'll be a terrible hole in Spotlight." And so there is, for since first appearing on television in 1962 playing Miss Print, a comedy sidekick to Richard Hearne's popular Mr Pastry,...
When Mel Brooks visited the film set of Up at the Villa (2000), in which his wife, Anne Bancroft, was starring, he proclaimed Barbara Hicks, who has died aged 89, the funniest woman he had ever met. This stalwart character actor, always lodged some way down any cast list as if to prove the truth of Stanislavski's dictum that there are no small parts, only small actors, was a fund of stories, many of them unprintable. And Hicks, though slight of build, with a long face and asymmetrical features, was certainly not a small actor.
As another admirer, Alan Bennett, once told her wistfully: "When you go, Barbara, there'll be a terrible hole in Spotlight." And so there is, for since first appearing on television in 1962 playing Miss Print, a comedy sidekick to Richard Hearne's popular Mr Pastry,...
- 11/7/2013
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
A striking stage presence for more than 60 years and a familiar face on TV
Sheila Burrell, who has died aged 89 after a long illness, was a cousin of Laurence Olivier, and a similarly distinctive and fiery actor with a broad, open face, high cheekbones and expressive eyes. She stood at only 5ft 5ins but could fill the widest stage and hold the largest audience. Her voice was a mezzo marvel, kittenish or growling and, in later life, acquired the viscosity and vintage of an old ruby port, matured after years of experience.
In a career spanning more than 60 years, she made her name as a wild, red-headed Barbara Allen (subject of the famous ballad) in Peter Brook's 1949 production of Dark of the Moon (Ambassadors theatre), an American pot-boiler about the seduction of a lusty girl by a witch boy and the hysterical reaction of her local community.
The role remained one of her favourites,...
Sheila Burrell, who has died aged 89 after a long illness, was a cousin of Laurence Olivier, and a similarly distinctive and fiery actor with a broad, open face, high cheekbones and expressive eyes. She stood at only 5ft 5ins but could fill the widest stage and hold the largest audience. Her voice was a mezzo marvel, kittenish or growling and, in later life, acquired the viscosity and vintage of an old ruby port, matured after years of experience.
In a career spanning more than 60 years, she made her name as a wild, red-headed Barbara Allen (subject of the famous ballad) in Peter Brook's 1949 production of Dark of the Moon (Ambassadors theatre), an American pot-boiler about the seduction of a lusty girl by a witch boy and the hysterical reaction of her local community.
The role remained one of her favourites,...
- 7/27/2011
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
Hatter’s Castle (1942) Direction: Lance Comfort Screenplay: Rodney Ackland; from A.J. Cronin’s novel Cast: Robert Newton, Deborah Kerr, James Mason, Emlyn Williams, Henry Oscar, Enid Stamp-Taylor James Mason, Deborah Kerr Hatter’s Castle A 1942 adaptation of A.J. Cronin’s first novel, Hatter’s Castle, strips away multiple characters and subplots, thus streamlining the film into melodrama. The material, however, is still ripe for social commentary: James Brodie (Robert Newton) is a successful hatter, but a tyrant; a man who alienates family and villagers on the Firth of Clyde. He creates a small empire tolerated solely because of his financial success; he allows locals to infer the aristocratic pedigree that he projects from his recently constructed castle. When Brodie’s business ventures crumble, his vicious behavior leads to [...]...
- 4/7/2010
- by Doug Johnson
- Alt Film Guide
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