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Paterson (2016): Poetry in Everyday Rhythms

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 19, 2021

“Awesome. A bus driver who likes Emily Dickinson.” This sincere pronouncement comes from a young girl — a fellow poet — as she leaves to go off with her mother and sister. She leaves behind Paterson (Adam Driver), a pensive bus driver, sitting on the brick wall, having gifte read more

Till We Meet Again (1944): Directed by Frank Borzage

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 18, 2021

This is my entry in the CMBA’s Hidden Classics Blogathon! The movie is built out of the opening juxtaposition. A youthful nun with an angelic countenance (Barbara Britton) lifts up supplications to her triune God asking for prayers on their behalf — herself and the host of children and read more

6 Decades Blogathon for National Classic Movie Day

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 16, 2021

Thank you to Classic Film and TV Cafe for hosting this year’s 6 Films — 6 Decades Blogathon for National Classic Movie Day! It’s been a perennial enjoyment the last few years to hear the topic and then go to work curating a personal list. In keeping with the impetus of the occasion read more

Magnificent Obsession (1935): Stahl Vs. Sirk Again

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 13, 2021

As I continue my mini odyssey considering the differences between the melodrama of John M. Stahl and Douglas Sirk, one of the finest exhibit pieces is an early scene in Magnificent Obsession. The beloved Dr. Hudson has died because the life-saving pulmotor he needed was being used on someone else. read more

Imitation of Life (1934): Stahl Vs. Sirk

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 11, 2021

The opening shot of Imitation of Life is memorable for its sheer novelty and the very simplicity of the space. It’s not an establishing shot of a place or a person. Instead, it’s of a rubber duck bobbing in the bathwater as a little girl whines about wanting her “Quack Quack” read more

Waterloo Bridge (1931): Pre-Code Edition

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 8, 2021

Many might best remember Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor in the 1940 version of Waterloo Bridge. It’s immediately obvious this movie has a very different flavor from the outset. It’s an earthier more boisterous version of Waterloo Bridge before the Production Codes took their axes to the read more

Johnny Eager (1941): Taylor and Turner Spark Dynamite

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 6, 2021

“Are you thinking of allowing her to play Roxanne to your Cyrano?” – Van Hefflin to Robert Taylor Pretty faces don’t always add up to a quality movie and if you want to find where the faults lie, you might look between the players and the script then split the difference. Jo read more

Waterloo Bridge (1940) and The Farewell Waltz

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on May 4, 2021

If you’re like me, Waterloo conjures up a limited array of mental images. Napoleon and The Battle of Waterloo. The Kinks and Waterloo Sunset. That’s about the extent of it. Now I can add Vivien Leigh, Robert Taylor, and Waterloo Bridge to the list. Fittingly, our opening prologue begins read more

Unfinished Business (1941) for Irene Dunne

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Apr 29, 2021

Unfinished Business commences with a wedding ceremony we’re trying to place. Because it is not Irene Dunne getting married, although she stretches her famed vocal cords in lieu of a wedding march. It is her baby sister — the girl she’s mothered her entire life up to this point. No read more

Theodora Goes Wild (1936): Irene Dunne The Comedienne

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Apr 27, 2021

The Lynfield Bugle, led by their fearless leader Jed Waterbury (Thomas Mitchell), keeps their nose to the proverbial grindstone printing the news as it happens in “The Biggest Little Town in Connecticut.” Their latest act of rebellion constitutes printing a spread from the latest lurid read more

The Silver Cord (1933): Loving Joel McCrea is a Battlefield

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Apr 22, 2021

“Surely I can be a good son and a good husband.” Whether it means to or not, the opening interlude of The Silver Cord plays like a comic inversion of typical Hollywood. It opens in Heidelberg, and they make us blink; they’re actually speaking German and Irene Dunne is one of them! read more

Back Street (1932): Irene Dunne and Director John Stahl

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Apr 20, 2021

“There’s not one woman in a million who has ever found happiness in the back streets of any man’s life.” John M. Stahl is a bit of a neglected craftsman, even by me. Like others, I became aware of him solely for Leave Her to Heaven, a noirish technicolor melodrama positively read more

Three Comrades (1938) in Body and Soul

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Apr 15, 2021

“Germany’s a pretty rough sea if you’re drifting.” – Breuer “But I’m not alone anymore. There are so many drifters!” – Patricia Hollmann Erich Maria Remarque is of course most famous for his work All Quiet on The Western Front, which was adapted read more

The Shopworn Angel (1938): Remembering Margaret Sullavan

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Apr 13, 2021

“Dreaming’s alright if it’s all you got but if you find the real thing you’re just not satisfied with it anymore.” – Jimmy Stewart as Bill It’s 1917: the eve of the U.S. entry in WWI. The nation is yet to feel the jadedness of everyone else in mainland Euro read more

Little Man, What Now? (1934): Borzage Vs. The Depression

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Apr 8, 2021

Little Man, What Now? is a curious title although Carl Laemmle seems to believe in the tale even giving it a public service announcement to make the point very clearly. This is a story for every man even as it seeks to document the daily problems of the world. From the opening vignette, the movie p read more

Only Yesterday (1933): Margaret Sullavan Shines

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Apr 6, 2021

In the opening designs of Only Yesterday, the New York Stock Exchange is encapsulated by its usual hubbub only to hit the skids of pandemonium when the market crashes. We’re talking about the Big Crash of 1929. It plays as the backdrop to our story, very much functioning as current events. Th read more

Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud (1995): The Opposite of Loneliness

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Apr 1, 2021

Claude Sautet’s Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud positions itself as a certain type of film. There are no thrills about it. We come to notice the normal rhythms of shot-reverse-shot along the 180-degree line. This comes because the movie is so invested in conversation. Unlike his earlier Max and The read more

Max and the Junkmen (1971): Un Flic With a French Connection

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Mar 30, 2021

I couldn’t help being reminded of Melville’s Un Flic catching the opening of Claude Sautet’s movie. There’s a policeman, 80 grand missing, and two dead after a heist. It’s not the events that are the same, but the initial sensibilities, the palette, even the world they read more

La Visita (1963): Commedia all’italiana and The Human Heart

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Mar 25, 2021

The premise of The Visitor is born in a rapid succession of images and shots. It’s a meet-cute correspondence so-to-speak as an attractive young woman venturing into her 30s looks to find an eligible man to invite into her home on some kind of ill-defined get-to-know-you basis. It would not b read more

Adua and Her Friends (1960): Starring Simone Signoret

4 Star Films Posted by 4 Star Film Fan on Mar 23, 2021

It’s movies like Adua and Her Friends from director Antonio Pietrangeli that remind me of the elemental joys of watching movies you’ve never heard of before. It’s a humbling experience to acknowledge how much of cinema there still is to explore and how names like his sometimes arb read more
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