The Furniture: Suddenly, Last Summer and the Dawn of Creation

As a special side dish to our ongoing Montgomery Clift Centennial celebration, The Furniture (our series on Production Design) is looking at one of his most fascinating pictures...

by Daniel Walber

Saint Sebastian had to be martyred twice. Violet Venable (Katherine Hepburn) tells his story with a certain vicious pride, lending her own Sebastian a supernatural authority. The saint was shot full of arrows but survived, miracuously, only to be beaten to death with cudgels. The first death has been depicted by countless artists, a hauntingly beautiful and frequently homoerotic image. The second, meanwhile, is unspeakably violent and ugly. It’s almost forgotten, a brutal footnote to a transcendent aesthetic.

Mrs. Venable’s Sebastian, however, gets it in reverse. As is revealed at the end of Suddenly, Last Summer, he was torn limb from limb under the white hot sun of Cabeza de Lobo. And for what crime? In accordance with the aging Hays Code, it appears to be his homosexuality. But beneath this ultra-thin surface lingers something much darker...

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Over & Overs: Bringing Up Baby (1938)

by Cláudio Alves

Part of loving cinema is wanting to share its wonder with others. That's why the communal experience of watching a movie with an audience can be so rewarding, for it makes one feel as if they're not alone in their relationship with a work of art and entertainment. Perhaps because of that, I often feel compelled to watch my most beloved movies with the most beloved people in my life, sharing with them this wonderful thing that has brought me such happiness. Not every cinematic passion is easy to share with others, obviously, and more avant-garde possibilities tend to be less well-received. The same can happen with older pictures, though I've found that there are some classics whose appeal can usually transcend whatever taste barriers there are between a casual movie-goer and the cinema of the past.

In other words, I love showing people Bringing Up Baby and watching them delight in a movie that, when times are hard, always manages to cheer me up…

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1938: Doris Nolan in "Holiday"

Before each Smackdown, Nick Taylor highlights alternates to the Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress... 

I’ve written about a lot of movies for this series that have meant a great deal to me, both because I love them and because they are very, very good. With only three events left in this current Smackdown season, I think I can safely guess that I will not be writing about a film that has touched me quite as dearly as Holiday has. Along with being an indisputable peak in classical Hollywood filmmaking, in the romantic comedy genre, in the careers of its directors and its leading couple, the film is also a deceptively sharp ensemble feature. To say any performer matches the heights Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant reach would be hard to argue, but to call Doris Nolan's savvy, multifaceted supporting turn as the character who kicks the whole plot into motion a sterling achievement all its own is a claim I'd be very happy to make...

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Jo March across time

by Cláudio Alves

19192019

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...

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Adrian, God of Glamour

by Cláudio Alves

Born Adrian Adolph Greenberg, the designer best known as Adrian was one of the most influential costumers in Hollywood history. After working in his family business of millinery, Adrian went on to study costume design in New York and Paris and later found work dressing the starlets of Broadway. His talents soon took him to Hollywood, where he found a home from the mid-1920s to the 1940s, designing the costumes for many an MGM classic. Throughout his tenure in Tinsel Town, Adrian perfected the on and offscreen looks of such great divas as Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, Vivien Leigh, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, and others. Among them, his most essential collaborator and muse was the one and only Joan Crawford…

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