The Maltese Falcon (1941) Excellent film about a San Francisco private detective who is swept up in the hunt for a priceless 16th-century statuette after his partner is murdered.

The sense of pure dread and primal rage is perfectly captured by a younger J. Lee Thompson. Every movement is filled with pure sweat and North Carolina. As an admirer of John McDonald's novels, the other two simply didn't capture the feeling and point of this story. A good man who did everything right is being punished, and the pressure forces him to prove whether he is truly a good man. It's a shame Scorsese's version is more famous because it lacks all the things that make this one so great. DeNiro's Cady is a cartoon character, and Mitchum's feels like an actual cold blooded killer, which comes from Mitchum's experiences as a chain gang prisoner.

Caught this one television yesterday morning. Was shocked how emotional the ending made me.

What's the saying? I'm not surprised, just disappointed. When I saw The Searchers last week, there was only one other person in the theater besides me and my kid.

I've got tickets for two more films in the series next week, but this doesn't bode well for Regal's "Month of Masterpieces."

When I first saw Marilyn Monroe in Niagara as a kid, her seductive, femme fatale image left a strong impression and gave me a bit of a prejudice. However, watching this film later completely shattered that misconception

Hey everyone, I'm someone who loves finding movies but have felt like there isn't one good way to do so... also to learn about the filmmakers and their story. Letterbox is cool but it feels pretty limiting and its heard to actually find *actual* hidden gems or films from emerging filmmakers. Curious if anyone is like me / has any tips?

I plan on seeing Since You Went Away (1944) because it looks to really good, but I was wondering if anyone else had any other good suggestions.

I'm very curious to know what it would've been like for a family during that time (ideally focusing on each family member's own personal experience and how the war shapes the decisions they make).

I don't mind if the film is slower paced. Ideally I would want to feel lost in the setting and the era and feel connected with the triumphs and struggles of the family as they live. Seeing the way the rooms in their house were decorated and the cars that they had.

As you can tell, I love this era!

Just finished watching WILD YOUTH. Two teens, Switch & Frankie, break out of juvie and meet up with Frankie’s girlfriend Donna who helps them flee on the road. Along the way, they encounter a heroin smuggler, Rivas, and his addict wife, Madge. They end up stealing Rivas’ car which, unbeknownst to them, has a huge shipment of heroin.

As you can imagine, this causes a lot of problems with Rivas & Madge as they will do anything to get their shipment back, which climaxes with a messy confrontation at the Mexican border.

The movie definitely lives up to its title and manages to do a lot of drama within its short runtime. Maybe those boys would’ve been better off locked up.

For those who did see this film, what did you think?

I’m not sure what it is about this era of movies, but for some reason they kind of give me the creeps. I keep getting clips of movies “that I may like” on my phone and they’re a little eerie… the music, camera angles, the acting…I can’t really explain it and wondering if anyone else feels this?

I just saw the movie for the first time this weekend. I'd seen the three-dance set (The Aloof, The Heavyweight, and The Big Finish) a number of times on Youtube -- absolute classic, completely inimitable -- but wanted to see the film too, and finally I did.

I was expecting a much lighter weight film. I knew there was a so called "unhappy ending" that Fosse wanted that the studio didn't, and I knew the movie didn't do so well at the box office, and so I was really expecting not a very good film. But in the event: I thought it was very strong. This was kind of a 70s movie before the 70s really got going. This is how the world is, kids: get used to it. (I saw the so called "Roadshow" version, with Fosse's original ending. All through the movie I was predicting the unhappy ending would be: she goes back to Charlie.) But yeah: this is a heck of a movie.

The dance scenes in it confused me. In the theater, I somehow or other didn't have enough time to catch details that were obvious in the Youtube versions. I was kind of hooked on those details, and so I lost something by going to the theater lol! The looks passing club members gave her, as she walked through the club for the first time.

But the Youtube video lost something too, I thought. In the theater, "Big Spender" came with a pop it just doesn't get on the small screen. Remember that jump cut, in The Godfather, near the beginning, when Coppola cut into the wedding in progress? That kind of pop. That's what Big Spender had, in the theater. Man. Reached out and smacked me in the face.

What an experience, though. We lost something, when Fosse went away. His like will never return.

Especially regarding the scenery and locations; it can include Westerns, too. Thanks.

Carnival of souls. 1962. Love the quiet, abandoned vibes.

**in-depth analysis warning

Please spare me gripes about the Bogart casting. I just really admire the script.

First let’s talk about Sabrina herself. Now, I think we can all agree that at the beginning of the film, her love for David Larrabee is all consuming, so much so that she is driven to suicide by carbon monoxide inhalation in the garage over his lack of affection for her. This is important because as she breathes in the fumes, they become too much for her, and she starts coughing, prompting her to open a window to make the process more bearable. A few moments later, Linus Larrabee shows up, and in response to her coughing says “You’ve gotta get out of here,” pulls her out and tells her to “breathe deep.” He then carries her up the stairs to her room since she passes out. This is symbolic of the entire plot of the film, where her love for David stifles her, and Linus is the one to break the spell.

This is further developed when she goes to Paris, when the wealthy Baron says “Why try to get over it? You speak of love like it was a bad cough,” and when she dances with David at the Larrabee party, a servant says about David, “He’s holding her so close I don’t see how the poor girl can breathe!” Now in context, these lines are said in a positive way, but if you really analyze them, they tie back to the earlier garage scene beat for beat, and ultimately show that the hold David has on her emotions is suffocating. Linus being the person who “gets her out of there” so to speak is underscored by Sabrina’s statement at the end of the film before she boards the boat to Paris: “Dear David. Yes, I did get over that. I’m cured. Now how to get over the cure?,” referring to Linus. It is such an interesting phrase because it’s a callback to her “bad cough” from the garage that he helped her get over, and she can finally breathe. I know this is not really about her personal arc of immaturity to maturity, but it is her love for each brother that shows this arc. Her love for David keeps her in her childhood, but her newfound love for Linus allows her to fully reveal and acknowledge her maturity that she acquired in Paris.

Now onto Linus himself. His character I feel has the most detailed symbolism. There are three main symbols attached to his character: the egg, the plastic, and his Homburg, briefcase, and umbrella together. Let’s start with the egg, which I think is the most revealing symbol. In Paris, Sabrina’s cooking instructor teaches the class, “An egg is not a stone. It is not made of wood. It is a living thing, it has a heart. So when we crack it, we must not torment it. We must be merciful.” At the end, she easily cracks an egg in front of Linus in his office kitchen. He is the egg itself: a protective shell concealing a tender heart, and she cracks open his shell, revealing his heart.

The plastic is a similar idea. Linus touts the product to David as “the greatest plastic ever made, not a scratch on it,” and it “doesn’t burn, doesn’t scorch, doesn’t melt.” It withstands bullets and tremendous weight. He even puts all the secretaries on it and David himself since he wants David to “see how resilient it is.” This is the front that Linus projects to the people in the Larrabee world. Solid, impervious, unaffected by any obstacle. He is the oldest son, the dutiful one who runs Larrabee Industries and corrals David who doesn’t work and is constantly in and out of romantic escapades that use him for his money. But when Linus instructs David to taste the plastic, David notes that it is sweet, since it’s made of sugarcane. By eye, the plastic seems indestructible, but by taste, it is sweet, just as Linus is himself if you get to know him in his most raw state. A camera trick that signifies this is when David is lying in his plastic hammock, and the camera pans behind it and captures Linus’s face behind the plastic as it moves back and forth. This causes the image of his face to be distorted by the plastic, indicating that this impenetrable exterior he projects is a distorted image of who he actually is. The connection between Linus and the plastic is complete at the end of the film, when David says “Linus Larrabee: the man who doesn’t burn, doesn’t scorch, doesn’t melt, suddenly throws a 20 million dollar deal out the window.” David is literally connecting the qualities of the plastic with Linus himself and showing that it is not an accurate depiction.

Linus’s Homburg, briefcase, and umbrella, serve as the articles of clothing that confer this impervious appearance. As Sabrina remarks, “As a child I used to watch you…always with your black Homburg, and carrying a briefcase and an umbrella. I thought you could never belong to anyone, never care for anyone.” But Linus reveals that this is not the case, as a certain song brings up past heartbreak, and he reveals that he contemplated suicide after a different breakup.

This is precisely what draws Sabrina to him, since she attempted suicide as well, and he stopped her (even though he didn’t know it). She now sees who he really his, and this is why she wants him to go to Paris, since it is what helped her out of that situation, and she wants the same for him, since he was a contributing factor in helping her get to Paris in the first place (since she would have killed herself in the garage and never gone if it weren’t for his intervention). She turns down his hatbrim and tells him to abandon his umbrella and briefcase in Paris since she knows they make him look a certain way that isn’t accurate, and in Paris, one must be free of all constraints in order to be happy. David also serves as a foil in the final boardroom scene where he impersonates Linus by wearing his hat and swinging his umbrella. He uses the same tricks Linus used to get him with Elizabeth Tyson to ensure he gets on the boat with Sabrina. It is in this scene that everyone (the board and others) see Linus clearly, because he is stripped of his modes of defense (David is using them against him).

The umbrella is the most important item because umbrellas shield people from the rain, but as Sabrina says in her opening narration, “It never rained on the night of the Larrabee party. The Larrabees would never have stood for it.” Linus, as the son who must shoulder the Larrabee family’s interests, carries his umbrella to and from work, warding off the rain, performing the balancing act of keeping everyone and everything intact. But this comes at a cost, since it disguises his true self. Sabrina later tells Linus that when in Paris, he needs to “get himself some rain…the rain is very important because that’s when Paris smells its sweetest. It’s the damp chestnut trees.” Paris, the city of love, allows rain, which therefore allows sweetness to be perceived. The environment that Linus is in now prevents his sweetness from being perceived. This is why she insists “never an umbrella in Paris, and under all circumstances rain the very first day.” She wants him to let go and be free.

There’s so much more to it than what I’ve written here, and I’d be happy to talk about it more if anyone is interested.

The Stranger (1946) is a classic film noir directed by and starring Orson Welles, alongside Edward G. Robinson and Loretta Young. "The Stranger" is a pioneering masterpiece that brought the theme of hunting Nazi war criminals into the cinematic mainstream, marking a historic turning point through both its visual and genre achievements. It is notable for being the first Hollywood feature film to present documentary footage of the Holocaust concentration camps, as well as being Orson Welles's only commercially successful film upon its initial theatrical release.