Cinema Revival: ‘The Letter’ in Columbus, Ohio

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The first big-screen adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s The Letter is showing in a new 35mm restoration – from the sole surviving nitrate print – at 2:30 pm tomorrow, March 2, at the Wexner Centre for the Arts at Ohio State University in Columbus, as part of this year’s Cinema Revival. Continue reading

Gone Ladies: Marilyn and Pauline Boty

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At left, Marilyn Monroe by Richard Avedon, 1959; and at right, Pauline Boty by John Aston, 1962

Pauline Boty was an English pop artist who created three paintings of Marilyn before her death from cancer, aged 28, in 1966. Although neglected for many years, Boty’s work is now being rediscovered – and in March, one of her Marilyn portraits will go under the hammer at Christie’s, as Joe Dziemianowicz reports for Barron’s Magazine. Continue reading

Darryl F. Zanuck: The Gentleman Preferred Blondes

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Bernard F. Dick, a professor of English and communication at Fairleigh-Dickson University in New Jersey, has published many titles on the classical era of Hollywood film-making, covering a wide range of figures like producers Harry Cohn and Hal B. Wallis; directors Joseph L. Mankiewicz and Billy Wilder; actresses Claudette Colbert and Rosalind Russell; and the blacklisted Hollywood Ten. In his 2018 book, That Was Entertainment, Dick hailed the MGM musical as the genre’s ‘Gold Standard,’ reeling off a list of the studio’s all-time greats from The Wizard of Oz to Singin’ in the Rain. Continue reading

‘Man, Woman and Sin’ at MoMA

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Jeanne Eagels with John Gilbert and Marc McDermott in Man, Woman and Sin

Jeanne Eagels’ last silent movie – and her only Hollywood shoot – Man, Woman and Sin (1927) is showing in a restored print as part of To Save and Project, the 20th annual film preservation festival at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) next Saturday, January 13th, at 1:30 pm. Continue reading

2023: A Year in Film

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Adapted from David Grann’s history of the Osage murders, Killers of the Flower Moon was – for me at least – the cinematic event of 2023. With authoritative performances from Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and a luminous Lily Gladstone, plus the painterly cinematography of Jack Fisk and a subtly insistent final score from the late Robbie Robertson, Killers channels the spirit of the first revisionist Westerns. While perhaps lacking the flash of this year’s Oscar rivals (Oppenheimer, Poor Things), this is a masterclass in neo-classical filmmaking from Martin Scorsese – and a tough-minded reckoning with America’s brutal origins. Continue reading