Gene Tierney @ 100: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

by Cláudio Alves

In fiction, love is more powerful and heartfelt when it's impossible. Be it the doomed lovers in Shakespeare's tragedies or Keira Knightley and James McAvoy separated by war and a child's lies in Atonement, we, as spectators, are predisposed to find beauty in the loves that cannot be. Death is a common way to enshrine romance in the perfection of upended passion. Like flowers plucked and dried, kept in the pages of a book, the love that's cut short by the Grim Reaper's blade can preserve its appearance. If it weren't for that, such amorous glories would do like their floral brethren, rotting away with time until dropping into the earth, a mushy decaying mess.

In 1947's The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, starring Rex Harrison and Gene Tierney, this dynamic between love and premature demise is both perpetuated and upended. Death facilitates and limits passion, making it harder to consummate but also more eternal than mundane existence. In Joseph L. Mankiewicz's movie, the transience of life is no obstacle for romance, quite the contrary…

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Gene Tierney @ 100: "Laura"

by Nathaniel R

Dear reader, we had such fun doing the Montgomery Clift Centennial that we want to do more of them. Of course not every movie star inspires the same passion in cinephiles, nor has a cooperatively small enough filmography to be completist about. For instance I put out the feelers on Gene Tierney, who made 37 films in her career, and received only 2 volunteers. And herewith a confession: I, myself, despite my love of Old Hollywood, was unfamiliar. I had seen only two of her movies and so long ago that I had next to no recollection. So I queued up her most famous picture, Laura (1944), which I'd somehow never seen even when I was a uncool kid in the horrific "colorizing" days of pop culture who relished seeing old black and white movies... 

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Joan Crawford on Criterion

Please welcome guest contributor David Rush...

Our Dancing Daughters

If an actress is to remain a star for six decades, she must expect some fluctuations in her career trajectory. This was most certainly the case for Joan Crawford, whose cinematic legacy – rather overshadowed in the years after her death for reasons we are all more than aware of – is currently showcased on The Criterion Channel.

The first two decades of Crawford’s stardom saw her go from strength to strength: her breakthrough role opposite Lon Chaney in The Unknown (1927); a series of flapper delights in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), Our Modern Maidens (1929) and Our Blushing Brides (1930); a key supporting role in Best Picture winner Grand Hotel (1932); her numerous popular collaborations with Clark Gable; and most importantly, the rags-to-riches vehicles that held particular appeal for aspirant young women during the Great Depression...

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The Furniture: Finding the Fear in "The Picture of Dorian Gray"

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on the images for magnified detail)

Watching The Picture of Dorian Gray as a horror film in this, its 75th anniversary year, is a bit of a puzzle. It’s almost unrecognizable within the genre, though director Albert Lewin does treat the revelation of the deformed painting itself as something of a jump scare. But the overall vibe is more akin to a period drama or a film noir than anything we would consider spooky today.

That is, until you think about it a little more closely.

 The Picture of Dorian Gray is an atmospheric horror film about things that don’t necessarily scare us nearly as much anymore: arrogance, beauty and the simple fact of sexuality. In this way it does actually resemble the great horror films of its time, monster movies that make much out of giant laboratories and cavernous castles, unnerving the audience through the use of production design. Dorian Gray’s home is of a piece with Dracula’s castle and the Mummy’s tomb...

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Clift @100: Monty arrives in "The Search"

by Eric Blume

We’re celebrating actor Montgomery Clift’s centennial here at TFE with a staff-wide observance of every single one of his films.  I’m the lucky bastard who gets to launch this exciting series with his first released film, 1948’s The Search.  

Director Fred Zinnemann crafted a film that holds up surprisingly well at age 72.  Sure, you have to muddle through some stilted expository voice-over and some now-dated narrative conventions, but this film’s emotional power still taps primal feelings and has an incredible payoff.  It’s a Hollywood film through and through, but Zinnemann shows extraordinary restraint and intelligence, keeping his focus on his young actor, and the American cheerleading to a minimum...

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