Satan met a lady

William Dieterle did a version of The Maltese Falcon (wuth Bette Davis). I found it quite terrible, mostly because the acting is not very good. Interesting how from the same story two directors came with something so different.

The Maltese Falcon

Huston adapts Hammett with a great cast. Bogart is great as a tough and cold Sam Spade, the supporting cast is also stellar, Greenstreet as the fat man desperate for his black bird, Lorre is weird, Elisha Cook Jr, semi psychotic, only Mary Astor is not to my liking. It talks a bit too much, with many indoor scenes.

The man who came to dinner

Bette Davis plays the secretary of a witty but fairly mean famous writer/radio star who comes to dinner in Ohio, and stays for days because of a bad fall and creates havoc by taking over the household. Very funny, with lots of odd characters, penguins, an octopus, etc. Could gave been a bit shorter.

OSS 117, Le Caire Nid d'Espions

OSS 117 is an idiot and is a closet homo. A lazy script, and not particularly funny, midly entertaining and nice art direction, but not much more.

The return of Doctor X

Directed by Vincent Sherman, it is very different from the original Doctor X. Bogart plays a great looking X, brought back from the dead and chasing Group 1 blood. Short and fun.

Jezebel

Bette Davis won an Oscar for this story of this woman defying conventions in the South before the Secession War, losing Henry Fonda to another woman and ending up accompanying him to an island as he suffers from yellow fever. Nice sets etc, but not my style.

Rocco and his brothers

A great story of 5 brothers and their mother coming from the south to live in Milan. Delon is great as the good one and Renato Salvatore even greater as the bad one, who ends up killing Girardot who was pretty then, that murder scene mixed with Delon in a big boxing fight is wonderfully dark and tragic.

What ever happened to Baby Jane?

Crazy and brave performances from Crawford and Davis, showing ugly faces, litteraly and metaphorically, but a bit long and hard to believe.

Doctor X

Filmed in murky 2-strip technicolor by Michael Curtis, but disapoointing, mostly because it drags on a bit, even if it's only 76 minutes long and the acting not very good. A bit disappointing compared to the other horror films in this Warner box.

Old acquaintance

Classic woman's movie from the early 40s, directed by Vincent Sherman, with Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkings as the two friends going through ups and downs but remain friends at the end. Classic but not special.

Capote

Hoffman obviously pulls a good performance as Truman Capote, but I fell asleep. If found the style (music, editing) very annoying.

Dillinger e morto

Piccoli designs gas masks, goes home, his wife (Pallenberg) has a migraine, left him a bad dinner, he cooks, finds a gun (wrap in an old newspaper about Dillinger), cleans it and paints it in red with white dots, watches TV, frolicks with the maid (Girardot), warches home movies and shoots his wife. It is quite a crazy film with a great soundtrack, and although there is not much dialogue, very dense, and a post-mepris film about men and women, and probably an influence on Fassbinder.

Seinfeld Season 5 ep 1, 2, 4

The mango, the glasses and the sniffing accountant, all funny ones.

Jammin the blues

Awesome short on the Passage to Marseille disc, a jazz band playing masterfully directed by Gjon Mili and photographed by Robert Burks.

The devil doll

Another gem from the vaults of MGM, written and directed by Tod Browning, Lionel Barrymore escape prison wirh a buddy who shrinks dogs and horses, and soon humans. The buddy dies of a heart attack and Barrymore (an ex-top banker conned by 3 associates) goes to Paris with the widow, dresses as an old woman and seeks revenge with dolls and redeems himself in the eyes of his daughter. Awesome.

Mad Love

Bad on Les Mains d'Orloff, another great little kind of horror film film from MGM, with Peter Lorre as the crazy Dr Gogol in love with yvonne and wanting to destroy her pianist husband and replace his hands by those of a murderer.

The mask of Fu Manchu

Awesome film with quite grand sets from MGM, with Boris Karloff playing the mean doctor against some English explorators in the desrt of Gobi looking for the mask and sword of Genghis Khan. Very entertaining with some nice special effect in Fu Manchu's lab and torture machines.

Lady in the lake

The last film from the film noir boxset vol 3 from Warner, is this very unusual film from Robert Montgomery, playing Philp Marlow and using a subjective camera to present the whole story from Marlow's point of view. It gets tedious after a while though, there are long takes that drags on, the acting is odd, and this doesn't help digest a fat plot.

Gueule d'amour

Fantastic film and what an introduction to Gremillon. It starts as a stylish and glamourous film, inspired by US films, then goes into darker French style of the time (Renoir). Gabin is the gorgeous soldier who leaves the army and goes to Paris to follow a beautiful woman of leisure met in Cannes. It ends up as a drama, dark and beautiful.

His kind of woman

A Hughes/RKO production with Mitchum (who is in trouble) and Jane Russel (who is sexy and sings well), in a classy Mexican resort. Vincent Price provides the comedy as the actor who wants to be a hero in real life too and a great cast. A bit long, again showing that Hughes was a far less great producer than Zanuck was.

Red Desert

Antonioni's first film in colour, set in the grey industrial landscape of Ravenna, with a stunning use of colours to depict Vitti's neurosis. For once I didn't feel asleep (I tried to watch the film on VHS 3 times before and never passed the first 15 minutes), I liked it, but it's not my favourite Antonioni.

The right stuff

Obviously a great story, filmed in a very classsical way, with pompous music and good actors. Made in 1983, it is full of America is so great moment, fitting with the Reagan era, which is a bit much now, even tough it is slightly critical of the media, who poor Chuck Yeager being a hero alone in the Californian desert.

Deer woman

From John Landis, whom I wouldn't really call a master of horror. Quite amusing, but utterly ridiculous. Brian Beben from dream On, plays a failed cop specialising in animals, and fight the deer woman, yes really.

Meanwhile

An Argentinean film, which didn't really encourage me to go to Buenos Aires, it was a bit grim, some funny bits, but the stories interlacing are a bit over-worked, some funny bits but not great.

I don't want to sleep alone

Typical Tsai Ming Liang, with his usual actor, but longer than his last 3 films and with possibly less dialogue. A homeless Taiwanese gets beaten up in KL, rescued by some dude(s) from Bangladesh who carry a mattress, kind of meet a woman who is looking after someone looking very ill, end finishes in what looks an abandonned building with lots of water.