In the 1930s Warner Brothers may have produced several hundred movies about someone who is framed for a crime he didn’t commit. By 1939, it’s understandable that there was nothing new to say. But the attempt was made. Unfortunately.
John Garfield has just won the lightweight boxing championship of the world. Everybody is rooting for him because he’s such a fine fellow. He dedicates his win to his dear old Ma and reminds everybody that he’s going home because he…
“Imitation of Life” has earned its place among the most important films ever made about race relations in the United States. That it appeared in 1934 makes its treatment of social issues all the more remarkable. That it dealt with them almost entirely without condescension or the unconscious racist views of the era is truly astonishing.
Based on a novel by Fannie Hurst, at that time a writer of great popularity as well as an outspoken social reformer, “Imitation of…
The 1950s were a golden age of theater. New plays by Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and William Inge appeared regularly to great acclaim. Rodgers & Hammerstein and Lerner & Loewe transformed the musical. And Hollywood limped along losing audience to television. Once in a while movie producers would raid tv to adapt teleplays for the movies and in some cases, they hit gold. One such was “Marty,” a 90-minute play Paddy Chayefsky wrote for television about a 34-year old bachelor who works…
Sluggish espionage from Fritz Lang that is caught in a historical time warp and unimaginative casting. Set in the closing days of World War II and released after the armistice and the use of the atomic bombs on Japan, “Cloak and Dagger” depicts the OSS struggling to find out how far along the Germans are in their knowledge of nuclear power. This is a familiar trope, but in 1945-46, a Hollywood film could plausibly claim that our knowledge of German…
