In 1940 the screwball comedy was on its way out. There was war in Europe and Americans knew it was only a matter of time before it reached their doorsteps as well. People were nervous. By the end of the war the breezy screwball comedy would be all but dead. It’s best actresses and actors [...]

I’d always heard of Swing Time. My mother taught me a love of Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers films at an early age. She preferred their early work. The breezy B-couple of Flying Down to Rio and their huge Rio-inspired dance number towards the end of Top Hat. As I slowly enveloped their entire collective filmography I found [...]

There are few characters as alluring and fascinating in classic cinema as the Femme Fatale. Their dark eyes and their curvy hips. The way they crawl into the hero’s skin. They way they give men something to fear and something to be aroused by and the way they make women envious but represent freedom and [...]

Ask someone what they think of when you mention the actress Barbara Stanwyck. My mom, a baby boomer, thinks of the westerns Stanwyck did later in her career. For some reason folks my age tend to think of those over the top melodramas she made for a while. Many cinephiles immediately think of her fantastic [...]

Contrary to popular belief the United States has always been a bit more conservative than its peers of modern western civilization. When those Puritans toddled over to escape King James’s religious persecution they brought with them a few boat loads of social hangups that have managed to persist in American culture well into the modern [...]

As I’m still a little obsessed with Lois Weber I thought I’d go ahead and point out one of her better short films available on YouTube. For those not in the know, Weber was a writer, director and actor with similar output to D.W. Wright. Among film historians they share the title of Hollywood’s first [...]

Act of Vengeance (aka Rape Squad) is such an astoundingly obvious example of the time. It’s this movie that desperately wants to be a fun exploitation flick and a call to action for women. At one point the five victims of a serial rapist gather to plan a rape counseling service and anti-rape squad. Awesome [...]

The Help hit theaters on Wednesday and I thought it’d be fun to feature a film for For Your Consideration that was about the civil rights movie and was told from a black woman’s perspective. A nice counterpoint to a film that’s proving quite controversial (imagine a film about the suffragette movement told entirely from [...]

Queen Christina of Sweden, like Greta Garbo, was a woman who did what she want when she wanted. She didn’t care about social contrivances or niceties. If she wanted to wear pants she wore pants. If she wanted to cuddle in bed with her best friend Ebba then she cuddled in bed. If she wanted [...]

Silence of the Lambs is a movie I can come back to time and time again. I’ve no doubt my love for it is rooted in my adolescent obsession with The X-Files. The show borrowed heavily from Silence of the Lambs to the point that Clarice Starling and Dana Scully often seem to merge into [...]