Some films are beautiful, and some films are strangely exotic. However, there are only a few films that are both beautiful and strangely exotic. Black Narcissus (1947) is one of those few. Quite simply, it’s one of the most beautiful films every made. It was once cited by the Technicolor company as the best example of what could be achieved with color in film.

Cinematographer Jack Cardiff pushed the envelope with color and shadow in this film, especially as it relates to placing the characters within or apart from their surroundings. Cardiff used outlines of color, often against contrasting hues, to strengthen the mood of the scene and to physically convey a sense of that character’s emotional state. You can see the influence of Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh in many of his shots.

As you take in the sweeping vistas, keep in mind that not a single frame of the film was shot on location. Much of the credit here goes to the movie’s production designer Alfred Junge, as well as to Peter Ellenshaw, who painted the mattes that evoke the distant mountains and castle.

Co-directors Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were equally daring in their experimentation. In one 12-minute sequence near the end, where the action quickly moves toward an inevitable climax, there’s no dialogue. In the sequence, the directors matched the visuals to the music, rather than the other way around. And while there’s more than enough plot to interest the audience, much of the dramatic tension comes from a heightened sense of space and its influence on the characters.

The story revolves around a group of nuns who attempt to establish a dispensary and school in the Himalayan mountains. The isolation takes its toll on the Sisters — emotionally, religiously, and sexually. One flashback scene, in which Sister Clodagh (played by Deborah Kerr) remembers her past love life, was cut from the U.S. release of the film so as not to offend the Catholic Legion of Decency.

Powell would keep pushing the envelope creatively until Peeping Tom (1960). That’s when many in Britain thought he had pushed too far. In addition to Black Narcissus, his other great films include The Thief of Bagdad (1940), 49th Parallel (1941), The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), A Matter of Life and Death a.k.a. Stairway to Heaven, The Red Shoes (1948), and The Small Back Room (1949). All are well worth watching.

Black Narcissus
(1947; directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger)
The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray and DVD)

Tuesday, February 13 at 12:30 a.m. eastern (late Mon. night) on Turner Classic Movies

While the screwball comedy is a byproduct of the Great Depression, not every screwball comedy reflects the era head-on. My Man Godfrey (1936) is both a spoof of — and a commentary on — the financial inequities at the time. The movie-going public was well aware the Depression was hitting the poor much harder than the wealthy, so poking fun at the idle rich was a staple of the genre. The prevailing attitude? We’re all in this together, so don’t get snooty or high-hat just because you’re well off.

Unlike the previous year’s Ruggles of Red Gap, where a real butler finds himself in the wild west, My Man Godfrey’s butler may not be what he appears to be. Both films poke fun at rich Americans who have plenty of dollars, but no sense. Godfrey is more direct in its satire, and like Sullivan’s Travels (1941), its message for social equality (in the midst of economic inequality) is front and center.

William Powell is perfectly cast as Godfrey the butler, who knows more about money and manners than his employers (echoing Charles Laughton’s role in Ruggles of Red Gap). Carole Lombard plays Irene, a spoiled heiress who is bored with her frivolous life — though she doesn’t know it yet. Here’s an example of the interplay between Powell and Lombard:

Godfrey: Do you mind telling me just what a scavenger hunt is?
Irene: Well, a scavenger hunt is exactly like a treasure hunt, except in a treasure hunt you try to find something you want, and in a scavenger hunt you try to find something that nobody wants.
Godfrey: Hmm, like a forgotten man?
Irene: That’s right, and the one who wins gets a prize, only there really isn’t a prize. It’s just the honor of winning, because all the money goes to charity, that is, if there is any money left over, but there never is.
Godfrey: Well, that clears the whole matter up beautifully.

This was the first film to be nominated for all four acting Oscars: Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. Coincidentally, it was the very first year for the two supporting awards. My Man Godfrey was also nominated for the writing and directing Oscars. To this day, it’s the only film to be nominated for all six awards and not be nominated for Best Picture. And to this day, it’s the only film to be nominated for all six awards and not win any of them.

My Man Godfrey
(1936; directed by Gregory La Cava)
The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray and DVD)

Sunday, February 11 at 1:00 p.m. eastern on Turner Classic Movies

The Importance of Being Earnest (1952) is not only the definitive Oscar Wilde adaptation, it’s the definitive comedy of manners. Often acknowledged to have the best cast ever assembled for the play — either on celluloid or on stage — this is one of the best film comedies of the 1950s.

Michael Redgrave (as Jack Worthing), Joan Greenwood (as Gwendolen Fairfax), Michael Denison (as Algernon Moncrieff), and Dorothy Tutin (as Cecily Cardew) are perfectly matched as the couples who have to overcome real and imagined obstacles to attain true love. Yet it’s the performances by Edith Evans as Lady Augusta Bracknell and Margaret Rutherford as Miss Letitia Prism that steal the show. Pity the poor actress who has to play Lady Bracknell to an audience that remembers Evans’ outraged voice from this unforgettable movie.

Of course, here the play’s the thing. Wilde’s comedic farce is revisited time and time again because inspired writing never grows old. Here is some of the dialogue from the movie:

Jack: I have lost both my parents.
Lady Bracknell: To lose one parent, Mr. Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

Gwendolen: Even before I met you I was far from indifferent to you. [Jack looks at her in amazement.] We live, as I hope you know, Mr. Worthing, in an age of ideals. The fact is constantly mentioned in the more expensive monthly magazines, and has reached the provincial pulpits, I am told; and my ideal has always been to love someone of the name of Ernest. There is something in that name that inspires absolute confidence. The moment Algernon first mentioned to me that he had a friend called Ernest, I knew I was destined to love you.

Algernon: I really don’t see anything romantic in proposing. It’s very romantic to be in love but there’s nothing romantic about a definite proposal. Why, one might be accepted. One usually is I believe. Then the whole excitement is over. The very essence of romance is uncertainty.

Lady Bracknell: To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. And I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to? As for the particular locality in which the hand-bag was found, a cloak-room at a railway station might serve to conceal a social indiscretion — has probably, indeed, been used for that purpose before now — but it could hardly be regarded as an assured basis for a recognized position in good society.

The film’s director, Anthony Asquith, was fully in his element when poking fun at British upper-class manners. His father was Herbert Asquith, first Earl of Oxford and Prime Minister of England from 1908 to 1915. Ironically, it was Herbert Asquith, who as British Home Secretary had ordered Wilde’s arrest in 1895 for immoral behavior. Perhaps Anthony Asquith saw his direction of this sumptuous Technicolor production as a form of restitution.

Whatever the motivation, Asquith was an excellent choice. His other films include A Cottage on Dartmoor (1929), Pygmalion (1938), The Way to the Stars (1945), The Winslow Boy (1948), and The Browning Version (1951).

The Importance of Being Earnest
(1952; directed by Anthony Asquith)
The Criterion Collection (DVD)

Monday, February 5 at 4:30 p.m. eastern on Turner Classic Movies

Fritz Lang’s first American film after fleeing the Hitler regime in Germany, Fury (1936) is a terrifying look at how good people can go bad when swayed by the darker instincts of a crowd. The incredible scenes where the mob tries to lynch an innocent man recall the workers frantically fleeing the city in Metropolis and the angry calls for justice against the child murderer in M.

David O. Selznick brought Lang to MGM in 1934. He languished at the studio for months and was nearly fired. Given one last chance, Lang was handed a four-page outline titled Mob Rule. MGM told Lang and writer Barlett Cormack they would need to develop it into a script for Lang to direct.

Lang didn’t speak English very well at the time, so he looked around for inspiration. He found that inspiration in the form of newspaper clippings, as he explains in a 1965 interview with Peter Bogdanovich:

I followed a habit I had in Europe (and still have) of collecting newspaper clippings — I have used them for a lot of my pictures. We found a lynching case that had happened in San Jose, California, a few years before I made the film, and we used many newspaper clippings for the script.

Spencer Tracy turns in a gripping performance as Joe Wheeler, a man jailed for a crime he didn’t commit. Sylvia Sidney portrays his loyal girlfriend. The film also provides early roles for long-time character actors Walter Brennan and Ward Bond.

While it would be easy to dismiss Fury as a transitional film where Lang is learning how to deal with the restrictions of the Hollywood studio system, I find it has an unusual rawness and intensity. Lang must have seen something in it. Fury was his favorite film among the ones he directed in the U.S.

Fury
(1936; directed by Fritz Lang)
Warner Home Video (DVD)

Sunday, January 21 at 4:30 a.m. eastern (late Sat. night) on Turner Classic Movies

Though the two films are worlds part, Paths of Glory (1957) has a lot in common with Dr. Strangelove (1964). Both were directed by Stanley Kubrick, both are hard-hitting anti-war films, and both attack the folly of those who send others off to die. Yet Paths of Glory is the stronger anti-war film. Where Strangelove is played for laughs, this one is deadly serious.

Based on Humphrey Cobb’s controversial 1935 novel, it was turned down by every major studio in Hollywood. Kubrick was just 28 years old when he offered the leading role to Kirk Douglas, who was already an established star. In his autobiography The Ragman’s Son, Douglas wrote that he said to Kubrick, “Stanley, I don’t think this picture will ever make a nickel, but we have to make it.” Douglas had recently signed with United Artists to star in The Vikings (1958). He used his influence to convince the studio to finance the film, which was produced by Douglas’ own company, Bryna Productions.

Douglas was correct. Paths of Glory didn’t turn a profit during its initial release. Fearing it might not be received well in Europe, Kubrick asked composer Gerald Fried to create two title themes for the film. The first was based on the French national anthem, the “Marseillaise.” Because the film is sharply critical of the French military authorities, a second theme that didn’t use the national anthem was used for France and several other European countries. Despite the attempt to soften the blow, Paths of Glory was banned in France until 1975.

Don’t be put off by the fact that Kubrick was 28 years old when he directed the film. This is one of his best, and it’s no less intelligent or less polished than his later, more celebrated films. Kubrick was an obsessive perfectionist — even then. For example, he shot 68 takes of the scene where the soldiers are offered a last meal. They were supposed to be eating during the scene, so a new roast duck had to be prepared for almost every one of the takes.

Paths of Glory
(1957; directed by Stanley Kubrick)
The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray and DVD)

Friday, January 19 at 12:15 a.m. eastern (late Thu. night) on Turner Classic Movies

How can a film be loathed at the time of its release, yet be recognized as great many years later? The answer varies according to each film. In the case of Jean Renoir’s The Rules of the Game (1939), it could have been the unfortunate timing (the eve of war), themes that struck too close to home for its audience (especially the jabs at social hypocrisy), and a too subtle approach that was decades ahead of its time.

In his autobiography, titled My Life and My Films, Renoir describes the audience reaction that caused him to edit down the film from 113 minutes to just 85 minutes:

I was utterly dumbfounded when it become apparent that the film, which I wanted to be a pleasant one, rubbed most people up the wrong way. It was a resounding flop, to which the reaction was a kind of loathing. Despite a few favorable notices, the public as a whole regarded it as a personal insult. There was no question of contrivance; my enemies had nothing to do with its failure. At every session I attended I could feel the unanimous disapproval of the audience. I tried to save the film by shortening it, and to start with I cut the scenes in which I myself played too large a part, as though I were ashamed, after this rebuff, of showing myself on the screen. But it was useless. The film was dropped, having been judged to be ‘too demoralizing.’

Now flash ahead to 1959 when Jean Gaborit and Jacques Marechal’s reconstructed version of the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Just a few minutes shy of its original length, it was hailed as a masterpiece. By 1972, it rose to the number two spot (just after Citizen Kane) in Sight and Sound’s International Critic’s Poll of the best films ever made.

Why such a wide divergence of opinion over just a 20-year period? By 1959, audiences were more receptive to Renoir’s layered approach. Film was taken more seriously by the late 1950s, and other directors had adopted a similar multi-tiered style. In The Rules of the Game, Renoir sets in motion rich dramatic, moral, and character-revealing substructures that resonate and intensify as the story unfolds.

In his book Jean Renoir, André Bazin describes why this complex structure provides such a rewarding experience:

To grasp the subtle organization of The Rules of the Game we have to go from the general to the specific, from the action to the plot and from the plot to the scene. To grasp the scheme of the film, we must see the music boxes, the bearskin which gives Octave so much trouble, the agony of the little rabbit, and the game of hide-and-seek in the corridors of the château as the essential realities of the film from which unroll the dramatic spirals of each particular scene. This accounts for the integrity and independence of each scene relative to the scenario as a whole. But it also explains the unique quality and orientation of these scenes, which develop cinematically in concentric layers, much like the grain of sand within an oyster gradually growing into a pearl.

I’ve found that over the years The Rules of the Game grows in stature with each viewing. It’s a lively film that’s warm-spirited and light-hearted, despite its sometimes weighty concerns. It plays as both farce and tragedy, and uses a broad brush to conjure a range of emotions. This truly is one of the finest films ever made.

The Rules of the Game
(1939; directed by Jean Renoir)
The Criterion Collection (Blu-ray and DVD)

Monday, January 15 at 4:00 p.m. eastern on Turner Classic Movies

With so many fine films to his credit, it’s a challenge to pin down Hitchcock’s best film. For my money, the best one is Vertigo. That’s especially evident in the restored print that’s available on Blu-ray and DVD.

Perhaps the most rarefied of Hitchcock’s films, Vertigo is difficult to talk about without giving away important plot elements. If you haven’t seen it, don’t read too much about it. Just watch it, and then watch it again to see how carefully the film is constructed. Just as he does in Psycho, Hitchcock leaves a trail of bread crumbs so repeat viewers can enjoy the story with a renewed sense of awareness.

Vertigo is unusual in its use of associative color. In a 1962 interview with Françoise Truffaut, Hitchcock explained how the color green signals the main character’s state of mind:

At the beginning of the picture, when James Stewart follows Madeleine to the cemetery, we gave her a dreamlike, mysterious quality by shooting through a fog filter. That gave us a green effect, like fog over the bright sunshine. Then, later on, when Stewart first meets Judy, I decided to make her live at the Empire Hotel in Post Street because it has a green neon sign flashing continually outside the window. So when the girl emerges from the bathroom, that green light gives her the same subtle, ghostlike quality. After focusing on Stewart, who’s staring at her, we go back to the girl, but now we slip that soft effect away to indicate that Stewart’s come back to reality.

Pay close attention to Bernard Herrmann’s music. Though not as groundbreaking (or influential) as his score for Psycho, the Vertigo score reinforces the dreamlike and ghostlike qualities Hitchcock referred to in his interview with Truffaut. As in Psycho, the music makes even a simple drive down the highway rich with emotional meaning.

Vertigo
(1958; directed by Alfred Hitchcock)
Universal Studios (Blu-ray and DVD)

Monday, December 25 at 8:00 p.m. eastern on Turner Classic Movies

Some stories are so good, they’re worth telling over and over again. Take, for example, The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Ernst Lubitsch’s romantic comedy starring Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart. It was remade in 1949 as In the Good Old Summertime, with Judy Garland and Van Johnson. In 1963, it was converted into a Broadway musical, titled She Loves Me. And more recently, it was remade as yet another movie, You’ve Got Mail (1998) with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.

At its core, the story is quite simple, which is why it’s so easily adapted. A man and woman, who dislike each other intensely in person, have each found love anonymously in a correspondence with a stranger. What they don’t know – and we do – is that they’re corresponding with each other.

The plot wasn’t entirely original to Lubitsch. Screenwriter Samson Raphaelson adapted it from a Hungarian play. Even though Lubitsch isn’t credited with the screenplay, he and Raphaelson worked closely to write the dialogue on all their collaborations. Here’s an example of the dialogue from the film:

Marton: Remember the girl I was corresponding with?
Pirovitch: Ah, yes . . . about those cultural subjects.
Marton: Well, after a while, we came to the subject of love, naturally, but on a very cultural level.
Pirovitch: What else can you do in a letter?
Marton: Pirovitch, she’s the most marvelous girl in the world . . .
Pirovitch: Is she pretty?
Marton: She has such ideals, such a point of view on things . . . She’s so far above the girls you meet today, there’s simply no comparison.
Pirovitch: So she’s not so very pretty.

In a letter to Herman G. Weinberg (written on July 10, 1947 — just months before his death), Lubitsch suggested his three best films were Trouble in Paradise (1932), Ninotchka (1939), and The Shop Around the Corner. Lubitsch cited The Shop Around the Corner as his best “human comedy.” He wrote, “Never did I make a picture in which the atmosphere and the characters were truer than in this picture.” He chose Trouble in Paradise for its style and Ninotchka for its satire.

While Lubitsch is the master of the sophisticated comedy, you don’t always identify with his characters in the same way you identify with the characters in the comedies of Frank Capra and Leo McCarey. That’s certainly not the case with this film. With its sparkling dialogue, winning performances, and measured pacing, it’s one of the best comedies of the 1940s.

The Shop Around the Corner
(1940; directed by Ernst Lubitsch)
Warner Home Video (Blu-ray and DVD)

Tuesday, December 19 at 6:15 p.m. eastern on Turner Classic Movies

Captain Blood (1935) is the first of three exceptional swashbuckling films from an unlikely trio: director Michael Curtiz, composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and actor Errol Flynn. While the other two films — The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and The Sea Hawk (1940) — are better known, Captain Blood is in many ways the superior film because the trio hadn’t yet settled comfortably into the format.

Known to be hard working, but temperamental, Curtiz was an odd choice to direct a pirate movie. The genre hadn’t been popular since the Douglas Fairbanks films of the 1920s, though it experienced a sudden resurgence in 1935 with the release of both Captain Blood and Mutiny on the Bounty. This was Korngold’s first original film score, and it forever associated his name with classic action-adventure films. The three films just wouldn’t be the same without Korngold’s rousing scores. And 26-year-old Flynn wasn’t supposed to play the title role that propelled him to fame almost overnight. Robert Donat had been the first choice based on his success the previous year in The Count of Monte Cristo. He turned down the part because of poor health.

The studio wasn’t able to spend a lot of money on this project. If you look closely, you’ll notice the ships in the battle scenes aren’t full size. Instead, Curtiz and cinematographer Hal Mohr used miniatures, process photography, and clips from the 1924 silent version of The Sea Hawk.

Though clearly a product of Hollywood, this film has an international pedigree. Curtiz had fled his native Hungary in 1918 when the communist regime nationalized the film industry. Korngold, the son of a well-known music critic, had emigrated from Vienna earlier in 1935. Flynn grew up on the Australian island state of Tasmania. And co-star Olivia de Havilland was born in Tokyo, though her parents were British.

Captain Blood
(1935; directed by Michael Curtiz)
Warner Home Video (DVD)

Tuesday, December 14 at 4:00 p.m. eastern on Turner Classic Movies

How do you top the untoppable? That was the problem facing Busby Berkeley and the Warner Bros. Studio back in 1933. Following the success that same year of 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933, how could they make the script funnier, the pacing faster, and — most importantly — the spectacular musical numbers even more spectacular? The answer was Footlight Parade (1933), which is funnier, faster, and more spectacular than its two predecessors.

Footlight Parade may surprise you if you haven’t seen many classic films. You may be aware of Busby Berkeley’s campy musical numbers, but you may not realize how strong the comedic elements are in the earlier (and superior) Berkeley films. Just as Top Hat (1935) is just as good a romantic comedy as it is showcase for great dancing, the first two-thirds of Footlight Parade holds its own against most comedies. The last third of the movie consists almost entirely of the three musical numbers — each one bigger (and more improbable) than the last.

If you haven’t watched Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), you may also be surprised to see James Cagney dance in this film. In fact, he started out as a dancer and was cast as a gangster in The Public Enemy (1931) only after switching roles.

And if you haven’t seen many pre-code Hollywood films from the early 1930s, you may be amazed by how modern they feel, especially in their verbal and sexual frankness. It isn’t anything you couldn’t hear on network television today, but it may be a shock to hear this coming from your grandmother’s or great-grandmother’s generation. One of the musical numbers revolves around a honeymoon hotel where all the guests go by the name of Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

Here are a few highlights from the movie’s dialogue, which have a refreshing depression-era we’re all in this together attitude:

Chester Kent: Hello, Vivian. This is Miss Rich. My secretary, Miss Prescott.
Nan Prescott: I know Miss Bi….. Rich, if you remember.

Nan Prescott: [to Vivian] As long as there are sidewalks, you’ve got a job.

Charlie Bowers: Is there anything I can do?
Chester Kent: Yeah. See that window over there?
Charlie Bowers: Yeah.
Chester Kent: Take a running jump and I think you can make it.

In my college days, we used to run Footlight Parade regularly during final exams. Just as depression-era audiences craved an escape from their daily trials and tribulations, the exam-weary students responded positively to the film’s snappy comebacks, flawless comic timing, and — yes — glorious excesses contained in the musical numbers. Granted, it’s all a bit silly, but who doesn’t need a bit of silly every now and then?

Footlight Parade
(1933; directed by Lloyd Bacon, musical numbers by Busby Berkeley)
Warner Home Video (Blu-ray and DVD)

Wednesday, November 29 at 9:00 a.m. eastern on Turner Classic Movies