"1934"

“Orson Welles lists ‘Citizen Kane’ as his best film, Alfred Hitchcock opts for ‘Shadow of a Doubt’, and Sir Carol Reed chose ‘The Third Man’ - and I'm in all of them.” Those are the words of Joseph Cotten, perhaps the finest screen actor never to be nominated for an Oscar. The more time passes, the more it feels like a serious oversight.

Why were so many of our very best actors born in April? It’s an unanswerable question, of course, but intriguing nonetheless. And in the rarefied world of movie stardom, the concentration of April birthdays is pretty remarkable.

Thanks to a couple of stellar releases from the Criterion Collection, I’m being reminded of a big star from Hollywood’s golden age who risks being forgotten, but shouldn’t be. His name was Charles Boyer, and he was one of only two French actors to break through in Hollywood during the thirties (the other was singer Maurice Chevalier, who unlike Boyer, confined himself to musical comedies).