ILX Film Club, The (1924-2019)

I'm trying hard to remember notorious. Tbh I misremembered it as spellbound. I'm sure I've seen it but don't remember it right now. I remember it was good though!

The one with Joan Fontaine and cary grant is only okay but I also really like Rebecca because I'm a teenage girl.

ooh is he *bad* idk I was not riveted

Spellbound is the one where Dollars cements his normie avant grift

but that one flash is sweet

39 steps is the hitch I watch the most. robert donat telling madeline carroll about what a dastardly murderer he is and getting to the bit about the "hare-lip" and mc laughing is just the best. it's also sexy as fuck.

Paradine Case truly is rubbish

Yep. And Spellbound.

Gregory Peck is the sexiest-dullest psychiatrist ever.

Maybe classic Hollywood's blandest leading man? Of those that retain a little name recognition anyway.

Really a block of wood pretty much every time I’ve seen him.

Like, say, Rock Hudson without the subtext.

He's fine in The Gunfighter, and that shows how his stiff moral rectitude should have been curdled into taciturn moral corruption more often - it seems sort of surprising that Hitch didn't find the same darkness as he did with Grant and Stewart. Perhaps the actor (or his agent) just didn't want to play ball and risk cracking an image.

Also quite effectively cast in Twelve O'Clock High.

i think he's good in roman holiday!

but he was only rarely ever in that manner of movie

in hollywood terms his "thing" was being an unusually outspoken "nice liberal" (spoke out against HUAC and vietnam, for example)

Notorious was good! Though felt like a great episode of a tv show rather than a great film. Act 3 was like 15 minutes in total, not enough. Cary Grant's plan was completely irresponsible and could have gotten her killed, he could have instead asked her to make an impression of the key in soap, make a copy of the key, break in at night, surely? not turn up at their party with a stolen key which happens to also be the place they are keeping the wine so he will definitely notice.

He had to humiliate her.

I did appreciate that he was just an insensitive prick and it didn't mean he was a villain, just that he was an insensitive prick.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/It%27s_a_Wonderful_Life_%281946_poster%29.jpeg

It's a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra, 1946
Morbsies #81
Sight & Sound Critics 133

Bit odd to watch this in November I know

Poster isn't notably Christmassy

Doesn't seem to be streamable online on youtube etc, the copyright status of the film is insane and unique, however britishers can fine it on the Channel 4 player & can't imagine it's hard to find elsewhere.

Wasn’t it out of copyright at some point which was partly why it was so ubiquitous?

I’m about to read the BFI monograph on that one, been saving it for after Thanksgiving

It is truly deserving of its status imo, just a great great film that tries to find comfort within quite a desperate worldview.

Opening scene p good experimental cinema too.

the copyright status, via wiki

A clerical error at NTA prevented the copyright from being renewed properly in 1974. Despite the lapsed copyright, television stations that aired it still had to pay royalties because—though the film's images had entered the public domain—the film's story was still restricted as a derivative work of the published story The Greatest Gift, whose copyright Philip Van Doren Stern had renewed in 1971...  in 1993, Republic Pictures, which was the successor to NTA, relied on the 1990 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Stewart v. Abend (which involved another Stewart film, Rear Window) to enforce its claim to the copyright. While the film's copyright had not been renewed, Republic still owned the film rights to The Greatest Gift; thus, the plaintiffs were able to argue its status as a derivative work of a work still under copyright.

the mr gower/young george scene is so incredibly harrowing.

The looks Reed gives Stewart while she's decorating the tree and knowing the bottom has truly fallen out are among the most heartwrenching depictions of marriage I've seen, and it's maybe all of 30 seconds of screen time

I've never seen it, I think the only Capra film I've ever seen that I enjoyed is the Clark gable/Claudette Colbert one. I always presumed this was one of the ones where someone makes a speech about the perseverance of the human spirit, I hate that. That said I haven't seen very much Capra, people say the silent ones are good?

Hmmm, "preserverance of the human spirit" I dunno...it's about how community demands you sacrifice your dreams but maybe, just maybe, it will come through for you in exchange for that. Very bleak, which is part of why I love its x-mas film status.

finished this last night, though I've seen it at least four times before, still a genuinely touching piece of work - the part where they lose the $8000 really grabbed me in particular, that sense of panic at having lost something important is so real to me, been there so many times, nothing quite that important of course, but can't think of any other film that evokes that feeling so well.

the restoration really brings home how carefully shot it is, no really experimental shots after the first scene, bit just beautifully put together, giving you such a sense of place.

the politics of the film are a great capsule of the time. the focus on family and community, the moral that what you're really looking for at home, it's very much a socially conservative film, especially in the scenes of Pottersville, which is supposed to be hell on earth but actually looks very cool and exactly the place I'd want to hang out if I were transported back to 1946. Jazz and jitterbugging are bad, Frank? but then on the other hand the villain of the film is a personification of robber baron capitalism, and the moral is a repudiation of him and all he stands for. you would be astonished to find someone with this mix of politics in 2023, but having listened to political debates from the 1930s I see a lot that is familiar there.

I've never seen it, I think the only Capra film I've ever seen that I enjoyed is the Clark gable/Claudette Colbert one. I always presumed this was one of the ones where someone makes a speech about the perseverance of the human spirit, I hate that. That said I haven't seen very much Capra, people say the silent ones are good?

― plax (ico)

Give him a chance. Watch The Bitter Tea of General Yen, quite erotic.

i haven't watched IaWL since last year but on that last viewing i was thinking what a mature take on social relationships it has compared to most British films of that era. i definitely don't think of it as a schmalzfest

Bitter Tea is in some ways an atypical outlier but yeah.

Some of Capra's late '30s films are way kitschier and cornier than IAWL.

Mr Smith Goes to Washington is a complete cheesefest but on balance I still enjoy it.

One of the funniest movie montages ever, Jimmy was BEATING their asses pic.twitter.com/VzTl4sBKHn

— Ben Crew (@BenjaminCrew1) November 24, 2023

so much for the tolerant uh

mr deeds is the one that maxed out my tolerance but im honestly not claiming this as *superior insight* i just didn't enjoy some and haven't prioritised seeing more when there are so many other directors who im more interested in.

the focus on family and community, the moral that what you're really looking for at home

It's not like George ever gets the chance to explore the world - if he did, perhaps it wouldn't be to his liking as Pottersville isn't, but perhaps he'd love it, grow tons, end up a more rounded, satisfied person. He chooses to sacrifice all these possibilities, and his reward for this in the end is merely the knowledge that, in the event of total catastrophe, the community will rally around him. It is a remarkably austere pitch for his lifestyle, and yet not at all insincere - compare it to something like Sunrise, where the Goodness of the rural vs the urban is so much clearer.

you would be astonished to find someone with this mix of politics in 2023

regret to inform this cocktail is basically what the trad cath socialists on twitter are up to in 2023 afaict

The only trad cath socialists I know are members of my family, all of whom are in their 60s or older

anyway

https://i.imgur.com/oy2nS1D.jpg

Black Narcissus, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1947
Morbsies #106
Sight & Sound Critics #169

Sausages!

one of my top 3 Archers, i guess, as if that meant anything. suitably gothic too

Believe this was Jean Simmons’s follow-up role to Estella in Great Expectations. #onethread. What a one-two punch!

Guess something called Hungry Hill was in between.

I could not believe this film when I saw it first! So lurid! I love it! The absolute number one sex-mad nun movie imo.

I still find it slightly odd that people were shocked by peeping Tom after this

I'm literally shocked just thinking about the scene with the lipstick. Shocked!

And stunned as well, no doubt.

I still find it slightly odd that people were shocked by peeping Tom after this

― plax (ico), Saturday, 2 December 2023 bookmarkflaglink

Yes, it was there all along.