TCM Look-Ahead - June 19
A weekly feature here on Big Heads that looks forward to the week ahead on the mighty Turner Classic Movies. For your viewing and recording pleasure.
Friday, June 19
08:00 p.m. PDT Zouzou (1934). Here is your chance to see the great Josephine Baker in her glory. This French film is a bit of a potboiler, but you watch Baker and wonder what if.
Saturday, June 20
05:15 a.m. PDT The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959). Riveting end-of-the-world drama that manages to weave in sexual and racial politics. Like Ms. Baker, Harry Belafonte shows himself completely capable of carrying a film after being written off as a pretty calypso singer. The scenes of desolate, post-nuke New York are stunning.
Monday, June 22
Midnight PDT Downhill (1927). A Hitchcock film that has no particular reputation at all, so I am, of course, all in. With Hitchock regular Ivor Novello. It is a riches to rag story that does not seem to have any thriller elements at all, perhaps explaining its lack of reputation.
Wednesday, June 24
King Vidor day on TCM! Some of these are pretty obscure, which I love TCM for, and having not seen them I cannot recommend them without hesitation. However, besides having the coolest name ever for a director, Vidor rarely misses. So, in order of confidence:
12:30 p.m. PDT Northwest Passage (1940). I feel like I must have seen this one as a kid and loved it as it is a rollicking tale of frontier discovery with Spencer Tracy and Walter Brennan!!
06:30 p.m. PDT Street Scene (1931) 24 Hours in a Hell's Kitchen neighborhood during the Great Depression. With Sylvia Sydney and her heartbreaking eyes. This made quite a stir in the day as a realistic film about the working class, a rarity but a Vidor specialty (see The Crowd).
04:30 p.m. PDT The Citadel (1938) 4 Oscar nominations (Picture, Actor for Robert Donat, director for The King, and Screenplay) for this now largely forgotten story of an idealistic doctor.
03:00 p.m. PDT Comrade X (1940) Very early Cold War tale with Clark Gable inevitably as a reporter, trying to smuggle commie Hedy Lamarr out of Russia because who wouldn't?
06:30 a.m. PDT Lightning Strikes Twice (1951) Described as a "Fish out of Water Noir", this is from Vidor's Ruby Gentry period, so it is bound to be weird and hysterical. Your guess is as good as mine. Gawd I love TCM.
08:15 a.m. PDT An American Romance (1944) Brian Donlevy as a destitute immigrant who becomes a captain of industry. We have riches to rags and a rags to riches this week!
10:30 a.m. PDT H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1941) About a millionaire looking back on his life and regretting not pulling the trigger on Hedy Lamarr. As regret one must.
This is liable to add up to an undeniable experience of Cinema. Smash that record button.
Thursday June 25
05:15 a.m. PDT The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959) An encore screening of this in case you missed it on Saturday. It's also pretty rewatchable.
11:00 a.m. PDT All Ashore (1953) I am attracted to this by the signature of underrated auteur Richard Quine (Strangers When We Meet, Pushover). Sounds almost like a remake of On the Town, but with Mickey Rooney in the Gene Kelly role. On leave sailors raise toe-tapping hell in Manhattan. Let's give it a shot, shall we? What are we if not cinematic adventurers?
Followed by 4 surf-themed films, the most interesting of which is:
02:15 p.m. PDT Big Wednesday (1978) John Milius' heartfelt, if not entirely successful, paean to surfing and his youth. Great surfing sequences, and a chance to see Gary Busey when he was buff.
Friday, June 26
12:30 a.m. PDT Christine (1983) A nerd (Keith Gordon) becomes strangely drawn to a rusted-out 1958 Plymouth Fury, nurses it to health, then finds his life turning around, not always for the better. Based on the Stephen King novel, this is on of the best King adaptations, by the great John Carpenter.
10:15 a.m. PDT Mad Love (1935) Visually arresting directorial debut from the great German cinematographer Karl Freund. A cue-ball-headed Peter Lorre as an insane surgeon (what, you were expecting otherwise?) who fuses a murderer's hands onto a concert pianist and.....anyway, just trust me. This is an expressionistic masterpiece.
