Tag: Frank Capra
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Platinum Blonde: The Unattainable Ideal
A most fascinating, most worthwhile viewing. In this one, Harlow is about as objectified as they come, as the title more than indicates. Early shots in the film (presumably before the director and co. realized just how useful she was) shoot Harlow from the back, on one hand an oddity but on the other all…
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Arsenic and Old Lace: Morbidly Queer, Symbolically Odd
One has only to browse through comedies on Netflix with Cary Grant to see how overused is the term “screwball comedy.” (It seems that there, every film must fit into at least three genres.) While a legitimate sub-genre in which many said Grant comedies comfortably fit, a film like Arsenic and Old Lace is one…
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Quickies, Vol. XII
Unfaithfully Yours (dir. Preston Sturges, 1948) – Another Stanford Theatre gem. Sturges tops the So-Embarrassed-I-Don’t-Know-Their-Stuff List. This was a fortuitous screening, since after viewing The Hudsucker Proxy, with all its Capra influences, I was reminded that Capra is dwarfed in the Coens’ oeuvre by the influence of Sturges, who is far more grotesque, straight-up morbid.…
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It Happened One Night
It would be very easy to see It Happened One Night only through the spectacles of conventional gender theory (yawn). This kind of interpretation would blab about male superiority, female submission, male power, and female sexuality. Interpretations of this sort, it must be admitted, have been done here. Unfortunately, one such boring reading was applied…
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It’s A Wonderful Life
This will being with the shameless (but borderline ashamed) admission that the author viewed Frank Capra’s unsurpassed It’s A Wonderful Life in its new digital colorization. I went into it kicking and screaming and quickly settled into a more vibrant Bedford Falls, replete with a color scheme that somehow did justice to the film’s classic…
Precious Bodily Fluids 