Author Archives: Danny

Belgian director Harry Kumel’s most accessible film is a measured, erotic Euro horror about “The Blood Countess” Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian serial killer who legendarily tortured hundreds of young girls and bathed in virgins’ blood to stay eternally young. The Dietrich-like Delphine Seyrig channels her performance in Last Year at Marienbad in the similarly dreamlike setting of the Grand Hotel des Thermes. The memorable music score is by Robert Enrico regular Francois de Roubaix.

Alexander Mackendrick’s final film for Britain’s Ealing Studios is one of its most celebrated comedies as well as a pivotal film for an embryonic Peter Sellers, thrilled to be working with his idol Alec Guinness. Sellers later emulated Guinness by taking on numerous multi-character assignments. The macabrely witty (Oscar-nominated) script is a virtual catalog of post-war English manners and traditions, yet it was penned by an American, William Rose (it’s a Mad, etc. World). Sellers and costar Herbert Lom later teamed for the Pink Panther series. Remade in 2004 with the locale switched from London to Biloxi, Mississippi.

Jack Benny’s greatest movie role, and no wonder–it was written especially for him by Ernst Lubitsch! Carole Lombard’s swan song earned her some of her finest reviews posthumously, but the film itself, daringly dark for the time, was generally regarded as an insensitive and even troubling satire of wartime issues. The title refers not only to Shakespeare but the questionable existence of Poland. It has since been recognized as one of the director’s finest efforts and a brilliantly cast comedy classic. Remade in 1983 with Mel Brooks and Anne Bancroft in the leads.

Tracy and Hepburn define the word “chemistry” as husband and wife lawyers battling each each other at home and in a divorce case allegedly inspired by the amicable divorce of Raymond Massey and his wife (so amicable that the married lawyers happily divorced each other and tied the knot with their clients).  Rooted in the screwball comedy tradition, Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon’s script introduced an early feminist slant that took hold in the coming decade. Tracy insisted as usual on top billing, and when asked if he’d ever heard of “ladies first” he replied, “This is a movie, not a lifeboat”. An Adam’s Rib tv spinoff with Ken Howard and Blythe Danner lasted 11 episodes on ABC in 1973.

Although filmed in 1982, James Bridges’ film maudit did not see the light of a projector until 1984, and even then in very limited release. In the meantime the writer-director’s version of the death of a drug dealer went under the studio knife and saw its non-linear storytelling conventionalized into a standard narrative. The result joins the likes of The Red Badge of Courage and The Magnificent Ambersons as compromised but still compelling mutant movies that have yet to be reconstructed.