The Silver Screen Oasis

The September Schedule for TCM can be seen here:

http://www.tcm.com/schedule/september2012.html

September Highlights include Lauren Bacall as The Star of the Month on Wednesdays, a day of Garbo and Garfield, Paul Gieruicki’s Mack Sennett restorations every Thursday night (and early Friday mornings), the sound films of Laurel & Hardy, the restoration of Greed, Michael Powell's early British "quota" films, documentaries on Jack Cardiff and Kevin Brownlow's The Tramp and the Dictator, a day of director Vittorio de Sica movies with Sophia Loren, a slew of Elia Kazan films on 9/7, and a day of Edward Dmytryk movies on 9/4.

There's also a day of psychiatry in the movies on the 5th of September.

Hi Madame Finnie. Thanxx so much for posting the schedule here.

BACALL. Yippeeee! ( She really ought to do the TCM film fest, don'cha think? )

September 5th??? Whoa...you and King Rat must have a direct pipeline into the brain of Charlie Tabesch. Yay! Wish more of your choices were picked though.

Ha! Queen Christy's birthday bash on GG day!

oooooo, Cary Grant is helping celebrate my birthday!!!! yowsa!!!!!

Vittorio De Sica and Sophia Loren, a potent combination.

TCM's Star of the Month, Lauren Bacall, will be featured on Wednesdays in September. I have a friend who is in his mid-thirties. One day recently he was flipping the channels on his day off. Brought up short by a startling image that flickered on the screen, he later asked me: "Who was that woman in To Have and Have Not?" Needless to say, he has many more chances to catch sight of this familiar yet enigmatic beauty and alluring presence on screen this month. It's pretty cool that someone who had never seen a classic movie finds himself haunted by that face in black and white at this late date!

In addition to the movies listed below, the documentaries Bacall on Bogart, Bogart: The Untold Story (with her son Stephen Bogart), and the Private Screenings: Lauren Bacall with Robert Osborne will also be shown. While most people reading this are very familiar with her films, the little-known The Gift of Love (1957), directed by Jean Negulesco and featuring Robert Stack is a sentimental favorite of mine. Maybe others will enjoy Bacall's affecting performance in this story too.

Please see the TCM SoTM page on their website for more details.

Featured Films

To Have and Have Not
The Big Sleep (1946)
Dark Passage
Key Largo
Confidential Agent
Young Man With a Horn
Bright Leaf
How to Marry a Millionaire
The Cobweb
Blood Alley
Written on the Wind
Designing Woman
The Gift of Love
Sex and the Single Girl
Harper
Murder on the Orient Express

Below you can see the new spot created for Bacall and narrated by Kelsey Grammar (I'd forgotten how wonderful his speaking voice could be):
[youtube][/youtube]

Keep the Sunday Night schedule of films on TCM "handy," mes amis. Hope you'll chime in with your evaluations of these hand-crafted films.


Above: Peter Lorre and "friend" in The Beast With Five Fingers (1946).

The evening of 9/2 focuses on the many films that exploited the horror (and inadvertent humor) in Maurice Renard's 1920 novel, Les Mains d'Orlac about a pianist who loses his hands in an accident, only to receive new mitts in experimental surgery...though don't ask where they came from.

I've never seen Hands of a Stranger, though it sounds as though it might be campy enough to enjoy for a few moments. The Beast With Five Fingers and Mad Love are favorites of many viewers, in part because of Peter Lorre's presence in both, but also because of the sheer weirdness of the storytelling. (I've always been particularly impressed by Colin Clive's hysteria in Mad Love. His troubling presence in the film lifts it out of the horror category for me, at least. One bit of casting that I've always found pretty funny in this bizarre movie: Edward Brophy as a French murderer). Conrad Veidt is quite good in the German silent on tap that night, The Hands of Orlac (1925), though I found the heaping ladles of German Expressionism in the film got in the way of the actors, particularly the great Veidt and wonderful Fritz Kortner (as a mad but gifted doctor). Sadly, Oliver Stone's brilliantly bad The Hand (1981) seems to be one of the few films in this sub-genre that the programmers missed snagging.

Here are the films scheduled for this hand-wringing evening:

8:00 PM
Hands of a Stranger (1962)
An experimental hand transplant leaves a pianist driven to kill.
Dir: Newt Arnold Cast: Paul Lukather , Joan Harvey , James Stapleton .
BW-86 mins, TV-PG,

9:45 PM
The Beast With Five Fingers(1946)
After a famous pianist's murder, his hand returns to wreak vengeance.
Dir: Robert Florey Cast: Robert Alda , Andrea King , Peter Lorre .
BW-89 mins, TV-PG, CC,

11:30 PM
Mad Love (1935)
A mad doctor grafts the hands of a murderer on to a concert pianist's wrists.
Dir: Karl Freund Cast: Peter Lorre , Frances Drake, Colin Clive .
BW-68 mins, TV-PG, CC,

12:45 AM
The Hands of Orlac (1925)
An experimental graft gives an injured concert pianist the hands of a murderer.
Conrad Veidt, Fritz Kortner
BW-113 mins, TV-14,

I'm glad that they scheduled Hands of a Strangler...um,I mean Stranger for the eight o'clock slot since I've never seen it. Mad Love for me is the best. It's worth watching Veidt and Kortner in Hands of Orlac, but the movie is slow going and wastes a lot of time getting to the point. Great programming!

I've got to hand it to you, Moira...that was some review! Makes me wring my hands in anticipation, just waiting for tomorrow. I'll be watching the hands on the clock, slowly ticking toward show time.

Seven Gegory LaCavas on the 18th is a real treat. Gabriel Over the White House was his favorite, but I'll take Smart Woman, The Half Naked Truth, and Bed of Roses!

This is the first time I wasn't thoroughly bowled over by a promo of TCM's. The very first time in eighteen years... The music was too loud and I had a difficult time hearing Grammer's narration. Still edited wonderfully ( the TCM editors are The Best in the business, for my money ) the jazz trumpets blaring obscured the vocals and I had to replay it several times to get it all. Once I was able to hear his whole schpiel...heaven. ( Yes, Kelsey's got a great voice. )

That being said, even though I've seen her many of her films repeatedly, I'll be glued to TCM on Wednesday nites. But first...

the "hands" have it, tonight.

Don't forget Spirits of the Dead (1969) also coming on tonight. Fellini's Toby Dammit (the third short story in this movie) is perhaps the directors only foray into horror, but it can stand alongside any Bava, Fulci, or Argento work. Proof that if you are a master, genre does not matter. I have a thread somewhere around here, but cannot find it.

Lots of other great stuff coming on this month, too much to mention here (and I don't have the time a usual), but for this week I highly recommend the following:

The Tramp and the Dictator (2002)
My Life To Live (1962)
My Brilliant Career (1979)
Shadows in Paradise (1986)
My Name Is Ivan (1962)
Orlando (1992)
Seven Miles From Alcatraz (1942)
Tender Comrade (1943)
The Juggler (1953)
Where Love Has Gone (1964)
Anzio (1968)
The River (1951)
Convicts Four (1962)
The Legend of Hell House (1973)

Lots of other cool stuff with all the Mack Senett and don't forget The Whistler films will be showing every Saturday morning.

Another outstanding month of programming on TCM. My DVR is going to be awfully busy this month.

"Ivan's Childhood" or "My Name Is Ivan" is a terrific Soviet war movie. It is probably the most accessible film Andrei Tarkovsky ever made.

All geared up for tonight. Leave it to TCM to feature an evening of disembodied hands.