Notizie

Alan Hale, Jr. became a performer as part of his family's legacy. His mother was actress Gretchen Hartman who appeared in dozens of films in the 1910s, while his father, Alan Hale (real name: Rufus Edward MacKahan) racked up hundreds of credits in the silent era, typically as a reliable sidekick to Errol Flynn. Hartman retired from acting in 1929, and Hale, Sr. continued to work until his death in 1950. Alan Hale, Jr. first appeared on the screen as an infant, "starring" opposite his mother. Hale made his Broadway debut in 1931, when he was only 10, appearing in a very, very short-lived show called "Caught Wet" (it opened and closed in the same month). In 1933, Hale played uncredited role in William Wellman's Depression-era drama "Wild Boys of the Road," and it may be the first movie a casual observer would recognize him in. 

Staring in 1941, Hale began his acting career in earnest,...

Man's Castle.“When you’re dead, you get a hunk of earth. When you’re alive, all you’ve got is that hunk of blue.” This is how Bill (Spencer Tracy), the restless hero of Frank Borzage’s Man’s Castle (1933), explains his insistence on sleeping under the open sky. Borzage’s films always cast their eyes heavenward with exalted sincerity; they offer no sop to modern irony or cynicism. No one should watch them who is not prepared to be enraptured.The essence of Borzage’s romanticism resides in the enchanted spaces his lovers create together: sometimes a semi-permanent home, like the Parisian garret in 7th Heaven (1927), at other times a fleeting idyll of shared fantasy, like the abandoned plantation mansion where the outcast couple in Moonrise (1948) waltz amid the shadows and cobwebs. These magical playhouses are spaces of care and refuge as much as dreamy eroticism; in Man’s Castle,...

Busby Berkeley’s musical comedy extravaganza not only gets away with a social message, it makes one of the best cultural statements ever about the Great Depression. Social upheaval suddenly being a real thing these days, we understand. The story is a romantic backstage musical but The Wolf at the Door is present in the dialogue, the lyrics, everywhere. This might be the sexiest of Berkeley’s musicals, with even star Joan Blondell teasing the nudity; but audiences were floored when the gala curtain number ‘Remember My Forgotten Man’ shouted out a cry for social justice. Warren William, Aline MacMahon, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell & Guy Kibbee star; and this is Ned Sparks’ best role, with additional gold-digging by pert ‘n’ perky Ginger Rogers.

Gold Diggers of 1933

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1933 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 96 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date February 8, 2022 / 21.99

Starring: Warren William, Joan Blondell, Aline MacMahon, Ruby Keeler, Dick Powell,...

Back in the early 1970s I was crazy about Depression-Era Warner Bros. movies, that weren’t being shown on TV or anywhere else. In that climate of deprivation, a documentary that used movie film clips from the period felt extremely fresh and new. Philippe Mora’s picture sees 1930s America through the movies, through music, and the evasions of official newsreels. Franklin Delano Roosevelt preaches prosperity while James Cagney slugs his way through the decade as a smart-tongued everyman — in a dozen different roles. This was a new kind of documentary info-tainment formula: applying old film footage to new purposes.

Brother Can You Spare a Dime

Blu-ray

The Sprocket Vault / Vci

1975 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 106 min.

Street Date October 1, 2019 / 24.95

Film Editor: Jeremy Thomas

Research by Michael Barlow, Jennifer E. Ryan, Susan Winslow

Produced by Sanford Lieberson, David Puttnam

Directed by Philippe Mora

Philippe Mora was an accomplished artist and documentary...

“Iconic” is a gassy word for a masterwork of unquestioned approval. But it also describes compositions that actually resemble icons in their form and function, “stiff” by inviolate standards embodied in, say, Howard Hawks characters moving fluidly in and out of the frame. Whenever I watch William A. Wellman’s 1933 talkie Wild Boys of the Road, these standards—themselves rigid and unhelpful to understanding—fall away. An entire canonical order based on naturalism withers. To summon reality vivid enough for the 1930s—during which 250,000 minors left home in hopeless pursuit of the job that wasn’t—Wellman inserts whispering quietude between explosions, cesuras that seem to last aeons. The film’s gestating silences dominate the rather intrusive New Deal evangelism imposed by executive order from the studio. Amid Warner Bros.’ ballyhooing of a freshly-minted American president, they were unconsciously embracing the wrecking-ball approach to a failed capitalist system. That is,...

William Wellman’s grueling depression-era film takes full advantage of its pre-code status. Starring Frankie Darrow as a high school dropout who hops a rail car to make ends meet, the 1933 movie fairly embraces dicey subjects like prostitution, rape and grisly death scenes. Based on a story by Daniel Ahearn with the far more appropriate title, “Desperate Youth”.

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