My father, who worked as an usher in a Detroit movie theater in the 1930s, loved Laurel and Hardy. And, perhaps, so did your father or grandfather, or even your brother, who may have had their poster hanging in his college dorm. Famous or not, mostly male but some female, Laurel and Hardy fans are … [Read more...] about The Real Stan & Ollie
Policeman
During the course of more than twenty-five years exploring the history and influence of film noir, I’ve encountered two wonderful and related surprises: First is the realization that the seeds of noir often were sown in places far afield from what’s been circumscribed in academic orthodoxy. Which … [Read more...] about Policeman
People on Sunday
I always remind people culture is like a tree,” writer Curt Siodmak told an interviewer in Gerald Koll’s Weekend am Wannsee (2000). “It always blooms one last time before it dies.” “Berlin was like that.” When Siodmak said this, he was looking back at the city from more than a half-century’s … [Read more...] about People on Sunday
Ozu’s Costumed City
This feature was published in conjunction with the screening of An Inn in Tokyo at SFSFF 2018 Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo is more than a setting. Like many actors in his films, it appears again and again, adopting different guises, enriching the story on screen. This is evident in his other earliest … [Read more...] about Ozu’s Costumed City
The Other Woman’s Story
Almost a century after her brief career and scandalous marriage, Helen Lee Worthing’s name means nothing. Yet in our own woke era, she deserves remembrance. Here was a woman persecuted, prosecuted, and pronounced insane because of who she chose to love. The Other Woman’s Story—her most substantial … [Read more...] about The Other Woman’s Story
No Man’s Gold
Tom Mix, the first true cowboy star, was at the height of his popularity when No Man’s Gold was released in August 1926. Unlike his major western film predecessors—the genially lunkish “Broncho Billy” Anderson (who seldom rode a horse) or the unsmiling former stage actor William S. Hart (age fifty … [Read more...] about No Man’s Gold
The Musical Mind of Guenter Buchwald
In 2018, Guenter Buchwald celebrates his fortieth anniversary as a film accompanist. Since 1978, this acclaimed composer, conductor, musical director, and multi-instrumentalist has played for some three thousand films, making him both a pioneer and a veteran. He has performed as a solo artist, as … [Read more...] about The Musical Mind of Guenter Buchwald
Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness
Tired of the “detective stories, royal dramas, Indian hunts, and Oriental fables” glutting German movie houses in the early 1920s, writer Bela Balázs called to replace them with the “heroic legends” of revolutionary struggle “whose tempestuous movement, monumental visuals, surprising entanglements … … [Read more...] about Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness