TCM Film Festival: Day Three - Bogey in Africa and Musicals Galore

Christopher James continues his coverage of the 2023 TCM Film Festival. Check in for daily...

If the first two days of the TCM festival were dominated by bad boys fighting the establishment, day 3 was all about the movie musical. Out of the four films I screened today, three were musicals from different eras. It was a fantastic example of the breadth and depth the genre has to offer.

Today was also the day of big stars. For the first screening, Shari Belafonte had a discussion with TCM host and Academy Museum programmer Jacqueline Stewart. Later on in the  same room, Ann-Margret arrived and blew out a birthday cake inspired by her legs. Then, right before a screening of Carmen Jones, legendary film historian Donald Bogle was awarded the Robert Osborne award for achievement in classic film preservation... 

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1946: Martha Vickers in "The Big Sleep"

Each month before the Smackdown event, suggested options for an alternate ballot in Best Supporting Actress... 

by Nick Taylor

How is it I've ended up watching three Bogie & Bacall collaborations in reverse chronological order while celebrating the Smackdown years? At least this means that their pairings have only grown more rewarding, rather than less. I’d probably rank To Have and Have Not ever so slightly above The Big Sleep, but boy is it a twisty, entertaining film, making real cinema out of Raymond Chandler’s novel without sanding away his cynical wit and venom (This write-up is based on the 1946 version of the film, rather than the substantially reorganized and shorter 1945 cut). The Big Sleep also boasts the only real instance in any of these films of a supporting performer truly overshadowing the star couple for sheer charisma and watchability. That actress is Martha Vickers, in the role of Lauren Bacall’s drug-addicted, nymphomaniac sister Carmen Sternwood. If it’s one thing for Moorehead to walk away with a barely-there film like Dark Passage, it’s an entirely different feat to watch Vickers’ intense, dangerous, but visibly curtailed supporting turn swipe the whole movie out from under Bogie and Bacall at very nearly the top of their game. 

Before getting into Vickers’ performance, it’s worth sharing a bit of Hollywood history that explains why Vickers is in less of the film than one might be expecting...

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Beauty Break: Born on Christmas

MERRY CHRISTMAS. Listen, we can't do an "on this day in showbiz history" post for Christmas because approximately a trillion movies have opened on Christmas day over the years. It's traditionally the biggest moviegoing day of any year... or at least it was before COVID made movie theaters unavailable or scary. But what we can do is celebrate movie and tv stars who were gifts to their parents on Christmas day because there aren't too many of them. We were only going to highlight 5 legends but we ended up including 20 showbiz people because we are insane. Please enjoy the pretty people after the jump...

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The bruised authenticity of "In a Lonely Place"

by Cláudio Alves

There's something deeply unsettling about finding yourself scared of someone you love. Part of it is the admittance of personal failure to oneself for the frightened person is the one that let themselves become vulnerable. To love is to let defenses fall and lay splayed at the mercy of another, believing our beloved will never abuse the gift of openness they have been given. We hope against hope that this trust is well-founded but sometimes it isn't. To realize you're scared may lead you to accept loneliness as a companion or else learn to live with fear. Like a toxic cocktail of arsenic and vinegar, that second option is a difficult thing to swallow and can be deadly. It often is. 

Such nightmares of heartbreak and panic have rarely been better captured in celluloid than in Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place…

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Best of the "Whodunnit?" Genre (Part Two)

by Eurocheese

If you missed part one, we're celebreating the whodunnit subgenre since Knives Out is out soon. Last time we listed rules of the genre (not all mystery and investigation films are whodunnits) and sang the praises of Gosford Park and The Thin Man. Now let's continue the list,

6. The Big Sleep
Bogie was bound to show up on this list (spoiler: he will again), and what better way to do it than next to his leading lady Lauren Bacall in her (arguable) career-best role...

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