Constance Cummings: Stage and film actress ca. early 1940s. Constance Cummings on stage: From Sacha Guitry to Clifford Odets (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Flawless 'Blithe Spirit,' Supporter of Political Refugees.”) In the post-World War II years, Constance Cummings' stage reputation continued to grow on the English stage, in plays as diverse as: Stephen Powys (pseudonym for P.G. Wodehouse) and Guy Bolton's English-language adaptation of Sacha Guitry's Don't Listen, Ladies! (1948), with Cummings as one of shop clerk Denholm Elliott's mistresses (the other one was Betty Marsden). “Miss Cummings and Miss Marsden act as fetchingly as they look,” commented The Spectator. Rodney Ackland's Before the Party (1949), delivering “a superb performance of controlled hysteria” according to theater director and Michael Redgrave biographer Alan Strachan, writing for The Independent at the time of Cummings' death. Clifford Odets' Winter Journey / The Country Girl (1952), as...
- 11/10/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
This is probably a sign that I am a little older than the target audience for HBO’s new series: I get that horribly sexist, totally fun Motley Crue song stuck in my head every time I hear Girls mentioned. It can almost drown out the deafening applause I hear from all the people who got advance screeners of the show. The consensus seems to be that it’s great, mostly because of the honest, gritty way it depicts the experience of young Millenial women trying to make it in the big, bad, Recession-ravaged city. I’m not so old that my memories of being 25 in New York are faded. But they are far enough behind me that I do get just a tiny bit nostalgic as I read 50 Shades of Grey — nostalgic for the naivete of Anastasia (Ok, I think most of us were like that when we were...
- 4/13/2012
- by Sabrina Rojas Weiss
- TheFabLife - Movies
The always-fascinating blog Letters of Note has another gem up today -- a letter that deepens the battle of wits between two old greats, Raymond Chandler And Alfred Hitchcock.
"The Big Sleep" author and film noir influencer was hired to work on the screenplay for Hitchcock's 1951 thriller, "Strangers on a Train," a favorite here at HuffPost Culture. The story goes that Chandler had no patience for the script conferences ("god-awful jabber sessions," according to Chandler) Hitchcock called for, which cramped his style. Chandler didn't agree with the director's approach, which he claimed prioritized aesthetic appeal over character development -- Hitchcock envisioned a fantasy narrative, and Chandler demanded narrative logic. Relations continued to deteriorate between the two, and matters weren't helped when Chandler called Hitchcock a "fat bastard." Eventually, Hitchcock dismissed Chandler from the project, and while he's still credited, the script was largely re-written by Czenzi Ormonde.
All this is just backstory,...
"The Big Sleep" author and film noir influencer was hired to work on the screenplay for Hitchcock's 1951 thriller, "Strangers on a Train," a favorite here at HuffPost Culture. The story goes that Chandler had no patience for the script conferences ("god-awful jabber sessions," according to Chandler) Hitchcock called for, which cramped his style. Chandler didn't agree with the director's approach, which he claimed prioritized aesthetic appeal over character development -- Hitchcock envisioned a fantasy narrative, and Chandler demanded narrative logic. Relations continued to deteriorate between the two, and matters weren't helped when Chandler called Hitchcock a "fat bastard." Eventually, Hitchcock dismissed Chandler from the project, and while he's still credited, the script was largely re-written by Czenzi Ormonde.
All this is just backstory,...
- 1/11/2012
- by Gazelle Emami
- Huffington Post
New York's Film Forum is screening Otto Preminger's Laura (1944) through Thursday. "What's worth noting is how precarious the film's path to existence was," writes the New Yorker's Richard Brody, "and on what a fine yet obviously amazingly strong thread Preminger's career was dangling." J Hoberman in the Voice: "Elevated by studio boss Darryl Zanuck from 'B' picture status, Laura opened at the Roxy, became a critical and popular hit, was nominated for five Oscars (winning for cinematography), and launched Preminger's directorial career. Still, alternately sprightly and turgid, if abetted by its haunting, ubiquitous score, it's far from a great movie — most beloved by second-generation surrealists who appreciate it for its time-liquidating dream narrative of l'amour fou. See that movie if you can; for me, Laura is a flavorsome but flawed anticipation of two far more delirious psychosexual cine-obsessions: Vertigo and Blue Velvet."
The New Yorker's Anthony Lane suggests that...
The New Yorker's Anthony Lane suggests that...
- 1/2/2012
- MUBI
Woody Allen is back on sparkling form as Owen Wilson finds himself on the expat literary scene of 20s Paris
Few directors have given me more pleasure over the past 40 years than Woody Allen, so it is a great relief to see him emerge after a fallow period of disappointments and disasters with his best film since Everyone Says I Love You in 1996. Midnight in Paris is a cinematic soufflé that rises to perfection, a wry, funny, touching picture, pursuing some of his favourite tropes and themes but with sufficient asperity to give a sting to the nostalgia it embraces. Standing in for Allen himself and dressed similarly in plaid shirt and khaki trousers, Owen Wilson plays Gil, a youngish Hollywood screenwriter and would-be novelist best known for his skills at rewrites, a diffident, humorous man with a great respect for high culture and a love of popular art but...
Few directors have given me more pleasure over the past 40 years than Woody Allen, so it is a great relief to see him emerge after a fallow period of disappointments and disasters with his best film since Everyone Says I Love You in 1996. Midnight in Paris is a cinematic soufflé that rises to perfection, a wry, funny, touching picture, pursuing some of his favourite tropes and themes but with sufficient asperity to give a sting to the nostalgia it embraces. Standing in for Allen himself and dressed similarly in plaid shirt and khaki trousers, Owen Wilson plays Gil, a youngish Hollywood screenwriter and would-be novelist best known for his skills at rewrites, a diffident, humorous man with a great respect for high culture and a love of popular art but...
- 10/8/2011
- by Philip French
- The Guardian - Film News
Versatile actor and writer often called upon to play toffs and bumbling clerics
The actor Jonathan Cecil, who has died of pneumonia aged 72 after suffering from emphysema, spent much of his career playing upper-class characters. That is hardly surprising since his father was Lord David Cecil, Goldsmiths' professor of English literature at Oxford University, and Jonathan's grandfather was the 4th Marquess of Salisbury. Although often typecast as a comic blueblood, there was infinitely more to Jonathan than that. He excelled in Chekhov and Shakespeare, and four times played Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, always investing the character with a silvery pathos. In 1998 he had an outstanding season at Shakespeare's Globe, where he appeared in As You Like It and Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, in which he played Sir Bounteous Progress – "gazing benignly", as John Gross wrote, "on almost everything, even his own undoing".
I...
The actor Jonathan Cecil, who has died of pneumonia aged 72 after suffering from emphysema, spent much of his career playing upper-class characters. That is hardly surprising since his father was Lord David Cecil, Goldsmiths' professor of English literature at Oxford University, and Jonathan's grandfather was the 4th Marquess of Salisbury. Although often typecast as a comic blueblood, there was infinitely more to Jonathan than that. He excelled in Chekhov and Shakespeare, and four times played Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, always investing the character with a silvery pathos. In 1998 he had an outstanding season at Shakespeare's Globe, where he appeared in As You Like It and Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, in which he played Sir Bounteous Progress – "gazing benignly", as John Gross wrote, "on almost everything, even his own undoing".
I...
- 9/25/2011
- by Michael Billington
- The Guardian - Film News
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