Top 5 Top 5 Lists Related To, But Not Including, Laura

Top 5 Gene Tierney Movies:

1. The Shanghai Gesture (Josef von Sternberg, 1941)
2. Leave Her to Heaven (John Stahl, 1945)
3. The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947)
4. Advise & Consent (Otto Preminger, 1962)
5. Heaven Can Wait (Ernst Lubitsch, 1943)



Top 5 Dana Andrews Movies:

1. The Best Years of Our Lives (William Wyler, 1946)
2. The Ox-Bow Incident (William Wellman, 1943)
3. Where the Sidewalk Ends (Otto Preminger, 1950)
4. Ball of Fire (Howard Hawks, 1941)
5. A Walk in the Sun (Lewis Milestone, 1945)



Top 5 Vincent Price Movies:

1. The Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman, 1964)
2. Leave Her to Heaven (John Stahl, 1945)
3. His Kind of Woman (John Farrow, 1951)
4. The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956)
5. Edward Scissorhands (Tim Burton, 1990)



Top 5 Otto Preminger Movies:

1. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
2. Advise & Consent (1962)
3. Bonjour tristesse (1958)
4. Bunny Lake is Missing (1965)
5. Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)



Top 5 Films of 1944:

1. A Canterbury Tale (Powell & Pressburger)
2. Ivan the Terrible Part 1 (Sergei Eisenstein)
3. To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks)
4. Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder)
5. Going My Way (Leo McCarey)

"Laura" of the Day

The Duke Ellington Orchestra:

Coming Attractions: Laura

Wednesday, August 10th at 7 and 9:10 pm.

Tonight!

At 6:45 & 9:10 P.M.

Rock-down Classix Name Explosion #1: Julia

Over the last 18 days we have been counting down great songs with single names in the title, in anticipation of our imminent new series.

Today we wrap up the musical extravaganza the only way we can, with the Beatles and the song "Julia" off of the album The Beatles.

Rock-down Classix Name Explosion #2: Suzanne

In anticipation of our next 18 weeks of films, we present a daily countdown of great songs with a single name in the title.

Today's selection: "Suzanne" by Leonard Cohen, off of the album Songs of Leonard Cohen.

Links: Rebecca

Critic and screenwriter Frank S. Nugent (The Searchers, The Quiet Man) reviewed Rebecca for the New York Times on the film's release in March of 1940.  He wonders if, in making his first American film, Hitchcock's "peculiarly British, yet peculiarly personal, style could survive Hollywood, the David O. Selznick of Gone with the Wind, the tropio palms, the minimum requirements of the Screen Writers Guild and the fact that a good steak is hard to come by in Hollywood."  The answer is a resolute "yes" as he finds that Hitchcock and the system worked together perfectly to create "an altogether brilliant film, haunting, suspenseful, handsome and handsomely played."  He also has high praise for Joan Fontaine's performance, and also her shoulders:

"Miss du Maurier never really convinced me any one could behave quite as the second Mrs. de Winter behaved and still be sweet, modest, attractive and alive. But Miss Fontaine does it—and does it not simply with her eyes, her mouth, her hands and her words, but with her spine. Possibly it's unethical to criticize performance anatomically. Still we insist Miss Fontaine has the most expressive spine—and shoulders!—we've bothered to notice this season."



I won't disagree with that, she has a great spine.



Writing 30ish years later, Dave Kehr in the Chicago Reader packs an impressive-even-for-him number of ideas into his capsule review.  He auteuristically hints that the film isn't as great as could be because of Selznick's strong presence, that the film is an allegory of adolescence and its incompatibility with the family, and that it and Hitch's other Fontaine film Suspicion are female-centered versions of his later masterpieces Vertigo and Marnie.



Hooked on Houses focuses on the unbilled star of the film, the mansion Manderley, where Laurence Olivier whisks Joan Fontaine away and she encounters the homoerotic tyranny of Judith Anderson.  There's dozen of great shots of the building (all shot in California and on soundstages, naturally) and a bunch of Rebecca trivia.