here's my review of What a Woman, a trifle of a movie from a workmanlike director with a not incredibly memorable, but mostly fun cast (Ann Savage, the cruel fatale from Detour shows up and is an absolute knockout; I continue to find Brian Aherne a boring and bored presence).
If, in the 2010s, they made comedies for and about women like What a Woman, we would have a lot of eighty-five minute star vehicles for talented and brilliant comediennes…
The original F.W. Murnau Nosferatu was subtitled Eine Symphonie des Grauens - a symphony of horrors. That was an appropriate title for the first Dracula movie, the one that pre-dated the 1924 stage play that has come to define every Harker/Renfield-Goes-East-Dracula-Comes-West movie ever. There are choices made in these - Mina becomes Lucy, for instance, which always bugs me because new woman Lucy Westerna is my favorite character (Mina is a close second, largely because of her participation in Alan…
I really have nothing to contribute to the discourse about this film's greatness. Of the 7 and 1/2 leading up to you-know-what, I prefer Il Vitellone and Nights of Cabiria, but the ambition here is stunning. Life is an endless party, punctuated by meaning and beauty and tragedy, but sometimes it's best for Marcello to just keep going from one circle (I buy the Dante connection, and the other one at the end) to another in a garden of earthly…
I wrote about this here:
andytown.wordpress.com/2020/05/15/gregory-peck-in-i-walk-the-line/
The 1960s were a pretty good decade for Gregory Peck, at least the first part. As he entered his fifties, Peck was the rare youthful Adonis who aged gradually rather than dramatically into a mix of paternal roles and sophisticated action films. Other hunks of his period – Kirk Douglas and William Holden, for instance – withered into stately raisins, while Burt Lancaster and Robert Mitchum began to look grey and grandfatherly. But, sort…
