The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
Since its original publication, Louisa May Alcott's Little Women has been one of the most beloved works of American Literature. Even beyond the US, Alcott's semiautobiographical novel has had a great impact, becoming many a young girl's beloved book for over a century. Considering such success, it's no wonder that the story of the four March sisters was quick to jump from the page to the big screen. The first cinematic adaptations way back in the silent era in 1917 and 1918.
Unfortunately, those two features have been lost, though we still have four widely available talkies based on the novel. Let's look at those four features after the jump...
I think we're getting ahead of ourselves, it's just a screen test.
We’ll wrap up our coverage of Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood very soon. Before I turn it over to Claudio for a wrap on the last three episodes, let’s do our Good/Bad/Ugly look at Episodes 3 and "Outlaws" and four "(Screen) Tests" after the jump...
"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber, is our weekly series on Production Design. You can click on the images to see them in magnified detail.
This week I’d like to talk about gas lighting. That’s in addition to gaslighting, which is obviously related. Basically, I’d like to talk about the way that Gaslight (1944) uses gas lighting to distill the concept of gaslighting. It was so effective that “gaslighting” stuck, and has remained a popularly understood concept nearly 75 years after the film debuted.
Of course, these days the term has been almost completely divorced from memory of the original play or its various adaptations. The 1944 version is mostly remembered for winning Ingrid Bergman her first Oscar, and deservedly so. Her performance is astonishing, newly powerful with each successive viewing.
However, the film did win a second Oscar. Not for director George Cukor, who wasn’t even nominated. Nor for cinematographer Joseph Ruttenberg, who lost to Joseph LaShelle’s work on Laura...
When Judy Garland and George Cukor made A Star Is Born for Warner Bros, both Judy and the industry were changing. The Paramount Case and The De Havilland ruling had weakened the paternalistic power of the studio system by forcing studios to sell their theaters and release their stars, while widescreen technology changed the shape of the movies. Similarly, Judy's previously squeaky-clean MGM image had transformed. In the early 1950s, she divorced Vincente Minnelli, married Sidney Luft, survived a suicide attempt and rehab and launched a successful concert series and an even more successful concert album. It was no coincidence that in the middle of this maelstrom Judy Garland's comeback vehicle was a remake of a 1937 Technicolor classic.
The Movie: A Star is Born (Warner Bros 1954) The Songwriter: Harold Arlen (music), Ira Gershwin (lyrics) The Players: Judy Garland, James Mason, Jack Carson, Charles Bickford, directed by George Cukor
I'm breaking with tradition slightly, but today I want to show you three versions of Judy's famous version of "The Man That Got Away."
In the first, the restaurant is too brightly lit with too many patrons, though the number more closely resembles the MGM Judy Garland numbers that inspired it.
In the second clip, colors and lighting are more muted, but Judy blends in to the background and the band in her brown dress.
The final version is the one used in the film - Judy stands almost alone in the spotlight, belting a mournful song and somehow rejoicing in it.
It's easy to read into the success of A Star Is Born in tapping into Judy Garland's star persona. With her private life so publically on display, the story of Judy Garland lays neatly on top of the story of Vicky Lester as a meta text: when Vicky battles Norman's alcoholism, Judy could be fighting her own demons externalized. However, these three alternate takes show how carefully this image is constructed from well-placed lights, new staging, and one incredible performance.
No matter how iconic the scene was, as a movie A Star is Born was not the comeback vehicle Judy had hoped. Warner Bros heavily edited the film for runtime, and ultimately the movie didn't make much of a profit. At the 1955 Academy Awards, Judy Garland lost the Oscar to Grace Kelly. Judy would stay away from movies for another 5 years after that, but her career was about to get much more interesting.
Jason from MNPP here with this week's episode of "Beauty vs Beast" for your fun-time entertainment -- while it's certainly not as important numerically as the approaching 100 year anniversary of Ingrid Bergman (which we're celebrating with great enthusiasm here at TFE) I think it's a happy enough happenstance that today marks the 113th anniversary of the birth of the terrific actress Norma Shearer and we should likewise celebrate her. And what better way than with that grand dame of cinematic cattiness, George Cukor's 1939 classic The Women? Shearer plays the betrayed society wife Mary, whose husband can't resist the shopgirl charms of (one two three - hiss!) Miss Crystal Allen, played by a totally game Joan Crawford. There's no way to play if you don't enter the kennel...
PREVIOUSLY Last week we also took on a "good wife" trampled by some dark-haired hussy, facing down Joan Allen and Sigourney Weaver in The Ice Storm. And the hussy won! The hussy always wins. (As we'll probably find out in another week when this Women poll's results come in.) Said Joe:
"Both women were brilliant in this. This is my favorite Ang Lee film. I'd give the edge to Sigourney. Outside of the Alien films, this is her best work. It's SHOCKING that she was not nominated for an Oscar that year. I mean, Minnie Driver??"
Sunday, May 31, 2020 at 9:05PM 
1919
2019
