Something New (This Week)
Old movies are good, new music is good, restored concert films are the best.
Two Criterion Channel Classics
Design for Living
My favorite example of the pop and sizzle that Hollywood movies were capable of before William Hays – a Republican politician, Postmaster General, and eventually the first head of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America – introduced the Motion Picture Production Code, a.k.a. The Hays Code, that stripped filmmakers ability to show anything risque starting in 1934, one year after Ernst Lubitsch’s Design for Living was released.
Originally a play, Design for Living is a comedy about two struggling artists, one a painter (Gary Cooper as George Curtis), one a playwright (Fredric March as Tom Chambers), who meet an artistically inclined woman (Miriam Hopkins as Gilda Farrell) and a love triangle forms, as well as a sexless three-way relationship in which Gilda helps both men rise to prominence. This thing has aged wonderfully, is surprisingly progressive, and is witty and charming and a great time. This would be a great entry for someone who “doesn’t like old movies”.
The Suspect
The second movie from a German that I watched and like this week, Robert Siodmak’s The Suspect follows Charles Laughton’s Philip, a genial shopkeeper who is married to a total jerk who threatens to ruin his entire livelihood, after also forcing their son out of the house with her “charm”. What is a man to do, but to murder his wife and stage it as an accident?
Co-starring Ella Raines as an eye-catching beauty, and love interest, The Suspect is a clean, crisp thriller of a film, with some anti-hero storytelling, moments of breath-holding filmmaking, and a great lead performance. Are you on Philip’s side? Does he get caught in the end, or does he escape to the alluring and enriching haven of the north (Canada)?
Algorithm Hits
Sometimes, Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist, which is automatically generated every Monday morning, just goes. This was one of those weeks. A great feature of these playlists is that you can share them, and follow them, which means I can, and do, subscribe to a couple of friends’ Discover Weekly’s, which lets me reach into someone else’s algorithmic delights. Please feel free to listen to, and/or follow, mine.
Tracks I particularly enjoyed:
blue bones (deathwish), by Billy Nomates
Bad Taste Blues, Pt. III, by Ball Park Music
One Stop Shop (For A Fading Revolution), by Twen
Friday Night, by Sobs
I Don’t Wanna Be Cool, Kate Fagan
BIG SUIT, BIG NEWS
Come see this with me on the biggest screen we can find.
I hope this week treated you well. The sun, and the 50’s, returned to Portland, which meant I was too busy running around in that to write a feature this week. The great thing about writing about art is that it’s not going anywhere, I’ll just do it next week!
What are you bumping in the car with the windows down? What are you baking for the weekend (we just got a stand mixer, please send recipes)? What are you winding down the work-week with tonight?
TTFN,
B