Category Archive: Classic Film
The Worst Movie of All Time
L takes no prisoners
Peter’s admirable list of anaesthetic films is frightening, truly scarey. To think that I have sat through all that rubbish. However, it lacks one thing – mention of the worst film of all time. That most tendentious, over-rated, over-blown, self-adoring snore-inducing piece of celluloid-poo of all time, starring the worst actor of all time. Yes, that’s it. Of course I mean LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. You know that scene in Donnie Darko in the cinema? You thought that Donnie, Gretchen and Frank were watching The Evil Dead with some distorted clock faces and stuff? Wrong. Obviously they are watching Lawrence of Arabia. Consider. One of them has…
Continue Reading →The Heart is a lonely Hunter
(Carson McCullers) Not as completely ghastly as a Flannery O’Connor but up there in the southern Gothic oh-my-gawd stakes. The ultimately empty, Christ-like Singer and the yearning tomboy Mick are stock characters perhaps but they live and breathe in this story of poverty, hopelessness and waste. Ian Hunter’s “Cambreau” from Strange Cargo and Conrad Veidt’s “Stranger” from The Passing of the Third Floor Back meet Scout Finch in a boarding house, a café and a ditch.
Continue Reading →What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?
(Dir. Robert Aldrich) (1962) I’ve written a letter to Bobby, With grotesques he was deeply in love, “Bob, which of Joan or dear Bette Was easiest for you to shove?” On piano, you drafted big Victor The Warners said “Buono, he’ll do”, I’ve written a letter to Bobby Saying “What a stew”; I’ve drafted a notice to Bobby Telling him he’s through. [TVC note: for all the Grand Guignol of her later performances, TVC considers Bette Davis an authentic star and pretty good actress to boot – e.g. All About Eve, Dark Victory, Of Human Bondage, Now Voyager, The Little…
Continue Reading →The Night of the Hunter
(Dir. Charles Laughton) (1955) Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel on the Ohio River, as 2 cute kids take to a skiff with stolen cash to escape their brand new stepfather (Robert Mitcham, in a sensational performance as the ‘preacher’ with “love” and “hate” tattooed on his knuckles). Lillian Gish also terrific as his adversary and Shelley Winters again assumes the role of tragic victim in this surreal pasquinade. Pure Black Magic: put this link into a search engine to watch a key scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akyxPomqAZc https://youtu.be/akyxPomqAZc?t=4
Continue Reading →Bicycle Thieves
(Dir. Vittorio De Sica) (1948) To glue posters to walls around ration-bound post-war Rome, a man needs a bike. When that bike, obtained with pawnbroker money, is stolen, the man is driven to desperate measures. A simple lesson in how adverse circumstances can break anyone, filmed and played naturally and without sentimentality. A classic.
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