I'm becoming convinced of her greatness, and I'm anxiously looking forward to checking out Rosita courtesy of Gagman66. I think Mary Pickford was a great actress, and My Best Girl is full of subtle touches which would have gone straight to the hearts (and funny bones) of her audience. When Buddy Ro...

Yes, Millions Like Us is about factory workers in WW2 - quite a familiar pattern for films of the time with characters from different social backgrounds uniting for the good of the war. Very good though - a young Gordon Jackson plays her boyfriend/husband. I'll keep an eye out for The Way to the Sta...

For me, even more distracting than the plucked and re-pencilled eyebrows in classic films are the absurdly long false eyelashes. The last time I watched The More the Merrier, I was very distracted by how ridiculously long Jean Arthur's eyelashes were in close-up. It's the same in Arizona. (And she i...

Hi Stuart I'm a fan of Contraband as well - I think Valerie Hobson and Conrad Veidt make a very effective romantic team. Have you seen their earlier pairing The Spy in Black from 1939? It's another Michael Powell-Emeric Pressburger film, and just as good. I've seen Valerie Hobson recently in Kind He...

Well, I'm not really a fan of Cary Grant as such. To me he has this kind of gleaming, slightly repellent quality that I find offputting. Which isn't to say that I don't recognize he's one of the all-time great comic actors, etc. I do - I'm just not sure that I ever really believe he connects with ot...

Well, everybody's heard of this film, I'm sure, and knows that Cary Grant has to dress up in drag in it; but I'd never seen it, and taped it the other day off the television. I think it's one of the best comedies I've seen for a long time. Ann Sheridan and Cary Grant have the most perfect chemistry ...

Thanks for the recommendation, MissGoddess. I've now watched this film on youtube, and was very impressed. It reminded me a little of Leave Her to Heaven in the way it centred on the damage done to a family by a manipulative and neurotic young woman. Anne Baxter was excellent, and the look in her ey...

Glad you liked it more the second time around, Alison. I'm still waiting for Ordet to come from lovefilm. Did you get the version of Vampyr with the documentary shot while he was filming Gertrud? That was interesting to me - to get an overview of Dreyer's career, since I don't know much about him.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched - via youtube - John Barrymore's version of Trilby, renamed Svengali - obviously - in recognition of his star power and general magnetism. I enjoyed it so much. The sets and lighting have a kind of German Expressionist look. Interesting to see Marian Marsh as Trilby,...

3. The contemporary story, as great as it is, didn't fit thematically I felt, as it's not really a story of intolerance in the same sense that the other 3 stories are. The other 3 deal explicitly with religious intolerance, while the modern one is mostly about the struggles of poverty. 4. My bigges...

I've thought of another one. The British war film, I Was Monty's Double, was based on real events where, on the instructions of MI5, a look-a-like actor impersonated General Montgomery, who was off in secret doing something else to aid the war effort (I forget the details, it's a long time since I'v...

I've recently been reading Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s (edited by Cari Beauchamp), and I'm sure it would interest any fans of Ronald Colman, especially his silent period. The letters were written by a New York woman, Valeria Belletti,...

I've now had a chance to see Hellzapoppin', and I laughed a fair bit, although my main reaction was wonderment at how radically popular tastes shift over the decades. I really liked the surrealist genre-busting tone of the piece - in a way, it anticipates Charlie Kaufmann's Adaptation, which is anot...

We REALLY need to shut this thread down. Period. Now all I'm thinking about is COLLECTING these blasted films merely on the basis of MULTIPLE ROLES. Good grief... Apologies, Ollie, to you and your bank manager, but I've thought of two more. From the sublime to the ridiculous (well, actually the oth...

Wow - this sounds absolutely fascinating, MLid. I'd never heard of this film. The idea that a film company would make a biopic of a serving British Prime Minister amazes me.

Presumably Lloyd George was then riding on the crest of popularity from victory in World War One.