The Silver Screen Oasis

Swithin wrote: ↑April 3rd, 2024, 9:19 am MOMA's schedule of Frank Borzage's films has been posted. Here's the description of the "Rebuilding Man's Castle" program.

"Columbia Pictures reissued Man’s Castle in 1938 to take advantage of Spencer Tracy’s two consecutive Best Actor Oscars (for Captains Courageous in 1937 and Boys Town in 1938). But major adjustments had to be made for this quintessential pre-Code film, with its depictions of premarital sex, casual prostitution, joyful sensuality, and even a flash of male nudity. Entire scenes, mostly involving the licentious nightclub entertainer played by Glenda Farrell, were deleted, a marriage ceremony was moved from the end of the film to an early reel to “legitimize” Tracy and Young’s relationship, and many individual shots were squelched. Because those edits were made to the camera negative, it was thought the original version had been definitively lost until Rita Belda, VP of asset management, film restoration, and digital mastering at Sony Pictures Entertainment, got on the case and located most of the missing material. In this presentation, she’ll lead us through her process of tracking down prints and comparing versions in an effort to best recreate Borzage’s original vision."

https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5676

LostHorizons wrote: ↑April 8th, 2024, 3:37 pm Okay, so this probably explains why the Circle was on yesterday. I didn’t notice if it were a restoration or anything.

Swithin wrote: ↑April 8th, 2024, 4:14 pm Here's the schedule for the Frank Borzage films at MOMA. Of course it's nice that TCM is showing a few of his films, but there's no substitution for seeing them on the big screen (if you're in the neighbourhood).

Man's Castle: April 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25

Bad Girl: April 18, 22

Moonrise: April 19, 24

Rebuilding Man's Castle: April 20

No Greater Glory: April 20, 25

History Is Made at Night: April 21

txfilmfan wrote: ↑April 8th, 2024, 6:35 pm

Swithin wrote: ↑April 8th, 2024, 4:14 pm Here's the schedule for the Frank Borzage films at MOMA. Of course it's nice that TCM is showing a few of his films, but there's no substitution for seeing them on the big screen (if you're in the neighbourhood).

Man's Castle: April 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25

Bad Girl: April 18, 22

Moonrise: April 19, 24

Rebuilding Man's Castle: April 20

No Greater Glory: April 20, 25

History Is Made at Night: April 21

One of his Screen Directors Playhouse episodes was on TCM at some point in the last few weeks. My DVR picked it up. This was a 1950s anthology show that was the TV version of an old radio program. I looked up the show and he's credited with 3 episodes.

The radio show adapted films for its programming (especially the one hour episodes), but the TV series was largely made up of original scripts with occasional adaptations from literature (mostly short stories), as they ran just 30 minutes in length.