The year is 1910 and you work in a factory in the North West region of England where you are given a week off every year. So where do you take your vacation? During the Edwardian era, most working class people preferred to spend their leisure time at the seashore and Blackpool was one of the most popular resort towns for the working class. Frolicking in the surf, fairground rides, penny arcade amusements, live entertainment/musical revues, and the famous lights of Blackpool were all part of the attraction along with affordable lodgings and restaurants. It was only natural that such a popular destination would become the setting for one of the most famous British plays of the 20th century. Hindle Wakes, written by Stanley Houghton, was first performed on the stage in 1912 and would go on to enjoy numerous film and TV adaptations in the subsequent decades. Maurice Elvey would direct two silent versions (one in 1918, the other in 1927), a 1931 sound version was directed by Victor Saville and a remake entitled Holiday Week appeared in 1952 while TV versions premiered in 1947 (featuring Wendy Hiller as the heroine), 1950, 1957 and 1976 (co-directed by June Howson and Laurence Olivier). Of all the versions, however, most film critics and movie historians tend to favor Hindle Wakes aka Fanny Hawthorne, the 1927 adaptation spotlighting American actress Estelle Brody in possibly her most famous role.
Continue readingHow to Bungle a Heist

While some point to The Asphalt Jungle in 1950 as the film that really marked the emergence of the heist film, the genre had actually been in existence since the silent era with The Great Train Robbery (1903) a prime example on up through the forties with such influential efforts as High Sierra (1941). It is true, however, that the heist film became an international phenomenon in the fifties thanks to the worldwide success of Jules Dassin’s Rififi (1955) which set the standard for subsequent films such as Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956) and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Bob Le Flambeur (1956). It was inevitable that some filmmaker would eventually poke fun at the then-current craze but nobody expected it to come from Italy in what is now regarded as possibly the finest heist parody of all time – Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958). Directed by Mario Monicelli, the film was known in Italy as I Soliti Ignoti and was also released under the alternate title of Persons Unknown.
Continue readingPere Ubu Meets X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
I thought it was some kind of avant-garde prank when I first saw a poster advertising a special showing of Roger Corman’s X, The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963) accompanied by the legendary Cleveland, Ohio band Pere Ubu performing a live score. It sounded too good to be true but how would it work? Would the audio be turned off so that the movie would essentially be treated as a silent film with a new score? Would the band perform a spontaneous live remix of Les Baxter’s score while riding the volume levels? Would the film’s dialogue be heard at all in this presentation? All of my questions were answered on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at Atlanta’s Plaza Theater when I attended the Pere Ubu show.
*This is an archival reprint of an article that originally appeared on Movie Morlocks, the official blog of Turner Classic Movies (the blog was discontinued in the Fall of 2018 and is no longer available).
Continue readingI Married a Communist
Propaganda masquerading as popular entertainment has rarely fooled the ticket-buying public. And American audiences in particular have rarely turned out in large numbers for politically themed movies with the rare exception of a surprise hit such as Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Yet despite the dismal box office potential of most movies with a political agenda, that didn’t stop some studios or filmmakers from taking an ideological stand in the guise of a genre film. Take Howard Hughes for instance. When he assumed control of RKO studios in 1948, he was already a well-known eccentric with a paranoid fear of communist infiltrators in the industry. He immediately fired almost three-fourths of the RKO work force and had the remaining staff members investigated for their political affiliations. Some of the films produced under his reign also reflected his obsession with the “Red Menace” such as The Whip Hand (1951) and Jet Pilot (1957). The most notorious Hughes concoction, however, was The Woman on Pier 13 (1949) which was originally released as I Married a Communist, prior to Senator McCarthy’s investigation of communist activity within the U.S. army, and later, the entertainment industry.
Continue readingAlone on the Tundra
If you are a devoted cinephile with a keen interest in the constantly evolving state of international cinema, then you know that there are always new filmmakers and cultures to explore in the cinematic universe. One of my recent discoveries was the existence of Sakha cinema, which represents the Yakutia province of northwestern Siberia in Russia. This region, which is 5,000 miles from Moscow and is subject to the coldest temperatures on record in the northern hemisphere, is famous for its natural resources, mountain ranges and arctic conditions. More recently, it is attracting international attention for its booming film industry which emerged after 1992 when the president (at that time) Mikhail Nikolaev established a national film industry which is affectionally called Sakhawood (in a nod to India’s Bollywood film factory). Writer/director Stepan Burnashev, a native of Yakutia, is one of the more renowned filmmakers to emerge from Sakhawood and Khara Khaar (English title: Black Snow, 2020) was my first exposure to his work.
Continue readingCB Mania
Does anyone remember the CB radio craze of the 1970s? It now looks like some strange cultural aberration in hindsight but it lasted for about eight years and was at the height of its popularity between 1974 to 1977. The CB radio lifestyle and its terminology infiltrated pop culture and was celebrated in top forty songs like C.W. McCall’s “Convoy” (1975) and Jerry Reed’s “East Bound and Down” (1977) and in TV series such as Movin’ On (1974-1976) and B.J. and the Bear (1979-1981). The craze was also a ubiquitous presence in movies, often driving the narrative in such drive-in fare as C.B. Hustlers (1976) and High-Ballin’ (1978) as well as Smokey and the Bandit, the number four box office hit of 1977. Yet, strangely enough, 1977’s Citizens Band (which stands for CB) was almost completely ignored by moviegoers even though it is one of the most entertaining and perceptive portraits of CB culture. It was also the first major studio film for director Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs), who was working with a screenplay penned by Paul Brickman (the writer and director of 1983’s Risky Business).
Continue readingDigging Up the Past
It is always a welcome surprise to come across a film that somehow slipped under my radar but proves to be a completely absorbing and thought provoking experience. Rose Plays Julie (2019) from the filmmaking team of Joe Lawlor and Christine Molloy might be a small scale independent film from Ireland but it is much more immersive and emotionally complex than just about any contemporary movie I’ve seen from a major Hollywood studio. It draws you in almost immediately with its depiction of Rose (Ann Skelly), a young veterinarian student, who is conducting her own private investigation into her birth origins. Although she was adopted at an early age, Rose is now determined to track down her birth mother Ellen (Orla Brady), even though the latter wanted to remain anonymous after giving birth, severing all future contact with her daughter. What begins as a psychological drama about a young woman with identity issues slowly transitions into a mystery thriller before veering off into something much more shocking and unexpected.
Continue readingUp, Up and Away!
Think about the sky and how it could serve as a canvas for an artist. This is something that becomes obvious if you have ever witnessed a hot air balloon festival where vibrant colors, designs and shapes become a moving art installation far above your head. It is not only visually dazzling but a pop culture phenomenon that has become increasingly popular in the U.S. since 1972 when the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta was officially established. Since then, many other annual events like this have become major attractions such as the Red Rock Balloon Rally in Gallup, New Mexico and the Great Reno Balloon Race in Nevada. None of these, however, are quite as fantastical or as wildly original as the secretive balloon events which are staged in Brazil, especially among the “baloeiros” (balloonists) who operate out of the favellas (working class neighborhoods) of Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. Balomania, a 2024 feature length documentary from Danish artist Sissel Morell Dargis, explores this renegade culture in a highly personal manner.
Continue readingCollective Guilt
Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary supplies the following definitions of the word guilt: 1) the fact of having committed a breach of conduct esp. violating law and involving a penalty; broadly: guilty conduct 2a: the state of one who has committed an offense esp. consciously b: feelings of culpability esp. for imagined offenses or from a sense of inadequacy: self-reproach. What the definitions don’t address is the festering psychological fallout from this condition that can result in a loss of self-esteem and possibly derail more than one person’s life. You couldn’t find a better illustration of this than Bedoone Tarikh, Bedoone Emza (English title: No Date, No Signature, 2017), an award-winning drama from Iranian director Vahid Jalilvand.
Crossing the Color Line

“The only Hollywood movie of its era that even suggested the existence of such a thing as a race problem in America, the film set off sparks within the black community. Black ministers preached sermons about it while black intellectuals wrote about the film as well. And the movie acquired a legend of its own that still lives today.” – Donald Bogle on Imitation of Life (1934) in Blacks in American Films and Television: An Illustrated Encyclopedia
Less well known than the 1959 Douglas Sirk remake starring Lana Turner and Juanita Moore, the first film version of Imitation of Life, directed by John M. Stahl, is actually more faithful to the Fannie Hurst novel (except for the ending) and in many ways presents a much more socially progressive viewpoint than the Sirk version as noted in the below article.
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