Actors
Everything You Need To Know About Anouk Aimée: Exquisite French Actress and Muse
For me and legendary French actress Anouk Aimée, it was love at first sight. Distinctly one-sided, mind you, since we never actually met. Yet precisely which of her films made me fall, suddenly and hard, I can’t recall.
Actors
All About Anne Baxter, The Actress Who Played “Eve”
Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “All About Eve” is often cited as the best film ever made about the theater, and I believe it earns that distinction. It also stands one of the most literate dramas ever to come out of Hollywood, a caustic, cautionary tale about how the dark side of our natures can emerge in the pursuit of bright lights and fame.
Directors
Why Jean Gabin Is Still France’s Greatest Film Export
As most of you know, I spend my life being picky about movies. There are just a few actors I’ll watch in almost anything. Jean Gabin makes that very short list. Some reading this may have forgotten him, or never even heard of him. His heyday, after all, was nearly eighty years ago, and he’s been gone for over forty. Yet in his prime, no one could touch him.
Drama
12 Recent Films Streaming on Amazon That Prove Drama Is Not Dead
If you look around at what’s coming out in movie theaters today, you’ll notice a lot of fantasy titles, superhero installments, high-tech animation, over-the-top action films and a few broad (usually very broad) comedies. Whatever happened to serious drama?
Actors
Chaplin: Why the Little Tramp Remains Such a Big Deal
In 1910, the prestigious Fred Karno theatrical troupe in England got the chance to tour America. Its star attraction, a twenty-one-year-old performer named Charles Chaplin, was on-board that first ship crossing the Atlantic.
Actors
Dancing like a Man: The Masculine Moves of Gene Kelly
It always irked Gene Kelly that dancing was considered an effeminate activity for men. When his mother first enrolled him and his brother in dance classes when Gene was still a boy, he had to endure taunts from his classmates which he promptly settled with his fists.
Directors
Why George Cukor Was a “Woman’s Director,” and So Much More
It’s sad but true that the bygone film directors we tend to remember are those associated with specific types of films (think Hitchcock for suspense and John Ford for Westerns), while the more versatile players somehow get lost in the fog.
Actors
Golden Boy — The Dramatic Ups and Downs of Actor William Holden
It was Hollywood in early 1950, and legendary director Billy Wilder had a big problem. In two weeks, shooting would start on his next film, “Sunset Boulevard,” and his mercurial young star, Montgomery Clift, had just backed out of playing the lead.
Actors
7 Stunning Shots of the Fiery, Fantastic Maureen O’Hara
Back in the day when this was considered fairly uncommon, Maureen O’Hara was the woman who could stand up to John Wayne. Or any other big man who got in her way.