Recent Comments
rlwdrama on Returning to the Scene rlwdrama on “People on Sunday”… rlwdrama on A Forgotten Play Yields T… Richard Warren on New York Through Kids’ Ey… Kim DiJulio on From “Crime in the Stree…
Category Archives: movies
“People on Sunday”–a film of pre-Nazi Berlin
Have started reading Joseph McBride’s new book, Billy Wilder: Dancing on the Edge, which naturally led to my watching People on Sunday, a silent film co-directed by Robert Siodmak and Edgar Ulmer (with assists from Curt Siodmak, Fred Zinnemann and … Continue reading
Posted in Berlin, movies
Tagged Babylon Berlin, Curt Siodmak, Edgar Ulmer, Fred Winnemann, Joseph McBride, Nazis, People on Sunday, pre-WWII, Robert Siodmak
1 Comment
Men in White, Sidney Kingsley, and Ancillary Thoughts
I recently read Sidney Kingsley’s play, Men in White (1933), and last night I watched the 1934 film adaptation directed by Richard Boleslawski. (Interesting that Boleslawski directed the film version of a work that had been directed on Broadway by … Continue reading
From “Crime in the Streets” to “West Side Story”
Watched a clumsy but fascinating film called Crime in the Streets. It started as a 1955 live TV play by Reginald Rose presented by the Elgin Hour, directed by Sidney Lumet. A young John Cassavetes starred as Frankie, a member … Continue reading
Posted in 1950s TV Drama, Broadway, film adaptation, Golden Age of Television, movies, New York
Tagged 12 Angry Men, Crime in the Streets, David Winters, Dead End, Don Siegel, James Whimore, Jon Cassavetes, Mark Rydell, Reginald Rose, Robert Preston, Sidney Lumet, Street Scene, The Defenders, West Side Story
3 Comments
Encountering Rose Franken
Continuing to wander through obscure corners of American playwriting, I have stumbled across a forgotten phenomenon. A writer named Rose Franken created a character who appeared first in a series of stories for Redbook, then in a series of eight … Continue reading
Wandering Through History
Sometimes I think of the past as a huge black box, and any time you read a book of history or a biography or a historical novel it’s like shining a concentrated beam of light through that darkness, briefly bringing … Continue reading
Posted in film adaptation, movies
Tagged A World to Win, Alan Brinkley, Amazon streaming, Babylon Berlin, Berlin, Beyond the Fringe, Father Coughlin, FDR, Henry Ford, Hotel Adlon, Huey Long, John le Carre, John Osborne, Labour, Lanny Budd, Meyer Levin, Nazis, Netflix, postwar England, the Beatles, the depression, The Old Bunch, Tory, Traitors, Upton Sinclair, Voices of Protest, WWII
Leave a comment
“Mockingbird” — Stage and Screen
Kristine and I just watched the film version of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird a few days after seeing the play. The differences between the film and the stage play are instructive. In the film, the Finches’ housekeeper, Calpurnia, has maybe … Continue reading
Posted in Broadway, drama, film adaptation, movies, playwriting, Uncategorized
Tagged 1930s, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Aaoron Sorkin, Alabama, Betty Smith, Calpurnia, Elia Kazan, Gavin Stevens, Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee, Intruder in the Dust, Lucas Beauchamp, Oxford Mississippi, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tom Robinson, William Faulkner
Leave a comment
Ramblings about “The Sea Gull” (or “The Seagull”)
I finally got around to seeing Michael Mayer’s film adaptation of The Seagull. The best reason to catch it is for Annette Bening’s performance as Arkadina. Arkadina is an actress who can’t stop performing when she’s offstage, and Bening nails … Continue reading
Posted in Chekhov, drama, film adaptation, movies, playwriting, The Sea Gull, theater
Tagged actors, movies, playwriting
Leave a comment
