Anagramsci

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We dig into some substantial British cinema offerings in a Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode that’s heavy on wartime themes: Thunder Rock (1942), a philosophical examination of the disillusionment of a leftist; dramatically illustrated in a surprising way; The Gentle Sex (1943), Leslie Howard’s eccentric and affecting semi-documentary about women in the British Army; and English Without Tears (1944), Terence Rattigan and Anatole de Grunwald’s examination of the transformations taking place in British society as the result of the war in the form of a romantic comedy with a slightly kinky outlook (but don’t tell Aunt Edna). Lilli Palmer contributes her comedic and dramatic talents and the gravitas of her personal history to these wonderful ensemble casts. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      THUNDER ROCK (1942) [dirs. Roy & John Boulting]

0h 46m 08s:      THE GENTLE SEX (1943) [dir. Leslie Howard]

0h 59m 38s:       ENGLISH WITHOUT TEARS (1944) [dir. Harold French]

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Reading on THUNDER ROCK from Halliwell’s Harvest by Leslie Halliwell

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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We weren’t sure what to expect with our Universal 1944 “scary woman”-themed episode, but Cobra Woman, starring the riveting Maria Montez, delivered, and the completely unknown Weird Woman, starring the less-than-riveting Lon Chaney Jr., was a surprise gem that seems to be nodding to Val Lewton’s work at RKO. This episode causes us to ask such questions as: what is acting? Can anyone in these movies “act”? Does it matter? When are B-movies inherently sophisticated, and when are they deliberately sophisticated? Does that difference matter? To hear the answers to these questions (or, let’s face it, probably just more questions), just press play and enter the Inner Sanctum of our pulsating flesh! (Our mind, what did you think I meant?)

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      WEIRD WOMAN [dir. Reginald Le Borg]

0h 40m 20s:      COBRA WOMAN [dir. Robert Siodmark] 

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Universal Story by Clive Hirschhorn

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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This week’s Acteurist-Oeuvre-view shows us two sides of Lilli Palmer: Bad Lilli in a comic supporting role, brawling with fellow chorus girl Renée Houston and competing with a demure Margaret Lockwood over wealthy patrons in Carol Reed’s A Girl Must Live (1939); and Good Lilli assuming the lead in B-mystery The Door with Seven Locks (1940), seeking adventure with comic sidekick Gina Malo. It ain’t Noël Coward, but we had fun. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      A GIRL MUST LIVE (1939) [dir. Carol Reed]

0h 24m 30s:     THE DOOR WITH SEVEN LOCKS (1940) [dir. Norman Lee]

0h 42m 57s:      Listener mail from Richard

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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For our Halloween 2023 episode, we take you on a tour of Peyton Place—the 1956 novel by Grace Metalious, 1957 Fox movie starring Lana Turner, and the mid-late-60s TV series starring Dorothy Malone and Mia Farrow (among many others) that reinvented television. We discuss the strange journey of Metalious’s scabrous and scathing vision from satire to soap opera, in the course of which the story of shack-dweller Selena Cross’s violation by her stepfather becomes the story of lower-middle-class Betty Anderson’s resentful ambition, while ostensible protagonist Allison MacKenzie goes from being a bit of a jerk to being a nightmare of willfulness. But which versions of the story influenced David Lynch the most? We give our surmises. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:    Peyton Place by Grace Metalious

0h 42 m 52s:   PEYTON PLACE (1957) [dir. Mark Robson]

1h 02m 26s:    PEYTON PLACE – TV SERIES (1964 to 1969)

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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This week’s RKO 1944 episode brings a Hollywood slant to an English working-class perspective on the war. In her only first-billed feature film role, in Passport to Destiny, Elsa Lanchester plays an indomitable charwoman who embarks upon a self-appointed mission to assassinate Hitler after coming to believe that she’s magically protected, while in None But the Lonely Heart, American playwright Clifford Odets’ directorial debut, Cary Grant plays a Cockney dreamer who struggles with the reality of lower-class life during the Depression after trying to settle down and take care of his dying mother. We discuss the similarity in style and subject matter between None But the Lonely Heart and the poetic realist films of 1930s French cinema, and the curiosity of this underrated art movie being made by RKO so soon after its infamous entanglement with Orson Welles’ similarly grim and poetic Magnificent Ambersons. If you’ve ever wanted to hear Dave start crying by recounting a crying scene, this is your chance. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      RKO in 1944

0h 05m 12s:      PASSPORT TO DESTINY [dir. Ray McCarey]

0h 19m 22s:      NONE BUT THE LONELY HEART [dir. Clifford Odets]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The RKO Story by Richard B. Jewell & Vernon Harbin

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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Our second Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode sees the rising young star second-billed as the love interest in a couple of strange enterprises: Command Performance (1937), a vehicle for popular American tenor Arthur Tracy, and Crackerjack (1938), an unhinged crime comedy starring Aldwych farces alumnus Tom Walls as a criminal superhero. As Lilli tries to orient herself in film acting, Dave and Elise try to orient themselves in this unfamiliar territory of 30s British cinema and its popular figures. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:    General Lilli Palmer talk + a little from Change Lobsters and Dance (Palmer’s autobiography)

0h 04m 17s:    COMMAND PERFORMANCE (1937) [dir. Sinclair Hill]

0h 25m 12s:    CRACKERJACK (1938) [dir. Albert de Courville]

+++

* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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Our Fox 1944 episode features a prestige production, The Eve of St. Mark, based on a Maxwell Anderson play and directed by John Stahl, and a modest marital drama, In the Meantime, Darling, directed by Otto Preminger just before he makes a name for himself in noir with Laura. Between the two, the problems facing the men at the front and the women who love them are covered, as well as the kinds of moral dilemmas each might face. We discuss Preminger’s handling of Jeanne Craine’s character, and Bosley Crowther (back to being Nemesis of the Pod) inadvertently describes John Stahl’s distinctive style/outlook.

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      THE EVE OF ST. MARK [dir. John M. Stahl]

0h 33m 04s:      IN THE MEANTIME, DARLING [dir. Otto Preminger]      

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Films of 20^th Century-Fox by Aubrey Solomon & Tony Thomas  

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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In our first Lilli Palmer Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we spend some time with Lilli in England and take in her screen debut, in the “Quota Quickie” Crime Unlimited (1935); her small role in Hitchcock’s eccentric Secret Agent (1936), in which she gets to play with an unhinged Peter Lorre; and a thankless role in a lyrical ode to Canadian nation-building a.k.a. labour exploitation, The Great Barrier (1937). Then, in Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto, we grapple with Angela Schanelec’s Music, the one 2023 TIFF festival movie we got out to see, and our first time seeing a Schanelec on a really big screen, which was the right way to see this visually stunning film. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:    Preliminary Words on Lilli Palmer   

0h 05m 12s:    CRIME UNLIMITED (1935) [dir. Ralph Ince]

0h 22m 51s:    SECRET AGENT (1936) [dir. Alfred Hitchcock]

0h 34m 47s:    THE GREAT BARRIER (1937) [dirs. Milton Rosmer and Geoffrey Barkas]

0h 47m 51s:    Fear & Moviegoing in Toronto – TIFF’s presentation of Angela Schanelec’s Music (2023)

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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This Special Subject is something extra-special: we discuss philosopher Stanley Cavell’s idiosyncratic classic of film criticism, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage and three classic comedies that are the subjects of essays in that book, Leo McCarey’s The Awful Truth, Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday, and George Cukor’s Adam’s RIb. What is Cavell’s “comedy of remarriage,” and is it really a genre? What does “marriage” mean to Cavell, and what does it have to do with America and democracy? Why does divorce make marriage more romantic? Are the conversations we’re having about film in North America getting better or worse? Why should you take an interest in your experience? Join us as we take an interest in our experience of Stanley Cavell and work through these and more questions!

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:     Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage by Stanley Cavell (published in 1981)

0h 40m 31s:    THE AWFUL TRUTH (1937) [dir. Leo McCarey]

1h 06m 58s:    HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) [dir. Howard Hawks]

1h 23m 18s:    ADAM’S RIB (1949) [dir. George Cukor]

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* Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

* Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!

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This Warner Bros. 1944 episode makes good use of Warner Bros.’ A-list stars, A-list character actors, B-list stars, and B-list character actors. Casablanca and Maltese Falcon alumni converge in both Michael Curtiz’s Passage to Marseille, starring Humphrey Bogart as a morally compromised hero, with Claude Rains and Sydney Greenstreet as the patriotic and pro-fascist alternatives for occupied France; while in Jean Negulesco’s The Mask of Dimitrios, a Citizen Kane-like story of a self-made criminal without a Rosebud, Peter Lorre and Greenstreet form an unlikely friendship that reminds Elise more of Eric Blore and Edward Everett Horton than of Laurel and Hardy. We discuss the ways in which Curtiz finds the noir in his war movie and Negulesco finds the buddy comedy in his noir. 

Time Codes:

0h 00m 45s:      Warner Brothers in 1944

0h 05m 26s:      PASSAGE TO MARSEILLE [dir. Michael Curtiz]      

0h 30m 10s:      THE MASK OF DIMITRIOS [dir. Jean Negulesco]

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn  

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

+++

* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise’s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave’s new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project! 

Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy

Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

We now have a Discord server – just drop us a line if you’d like to join! 

Check out this episode!