Heartbreaking
A riveting remake of the 1930s film, These Three, both of which are derived from Lillian Hellman’s play. In the 30s, the Hays Code forced the film to dance around the lesbian subtext of the play. In this adaptation, the subtext was more directly addressed. William Wyler bravely tackles the subject with honesty and integrity. His cast does well in bringing the intense atmosphere to us.
The Children’s Hour, is a cruel and utterly heartbreaking story that shows how…
Genuine creepiness in glorious black and white
Based on Henry James novel, The Turn of the Screw, The Innocents is a thoroughly absorbing chiller. Director Jack Claytons masterpiece is a study of deepest dread. It still has the power to disturb some sixty years later. Filmed on location at Sheffield Park and Gardens, this lovely Gothic chiller does justice to its literate source. Clayton is fully aware that here, in and around the Gothic abode, it’s more often than not…
Out of a dream
This spellbinding movie from that spellbinding film-making team (Powell and Pressburger) is another entry in the long line of literary and film stories that revolve around British restraint and repression unraveling under the force of mysterious foreign cultures (usually Eastern and frequently Indian), and it's one of the best.
Powell and Pressburger are experts at using color. Instead of employing their Technicolor to simply make their film look pretty, the color almost becomes a character in…
The Lubitsch Touch
Ernst Lubitsch was on a roll in 1943; since 1938 he had made Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife, Ninotchka, The Shop Around the Corner, That Uncertain Feeling and To Be or Not to Be, five classics one after another. Although he would complete two more films and leave one unfinished, Heaven Can Wait was his last undisputed masterpiece.
Lubitsch was a man destined to take the play in which this film is based, to screen. The results are amazing.…
