Staring down his prey with sunken eyes and a sinister smile, Alastair Sim was the fiend Charles Addams never got around to drawing. Sim was a quick-change artist who didn’t need makeup to transform from a grasping monster into your favorite uncle – it’s why he remains the greatest interpreter of Ebenezer Scrooge. Whether playing a cold-blooded assassin in The Green Man or a kindly army chaplain in Folly to be Wise he understood as well as anyone why the masks of tragedy and comedy are intertwined.
Sim is one of those figures who’s been consigned to the history books for decades. But by releasing a Blu ray set of the great man’s comedies in 2020, Film Movement Classics, like Scrooge, hasn’t lost their senses – they’ve come to them.
Alastair Sim’s School for Laughter
Blu ray
Film Movement Classics
1954, ’60, ’51, ’47 / 1.67:1, 1.37:1 / 86, 97, 93, 82 min.
Starring Alastair Sim,...
Sim is one of those figures who’s been consigned to the history books for decades. But by releasing a Blu ray set of the great man’s comedies in 2020, Film Movement Classics, like Scrooge, hasn’t lost their senses – they’ve come to them.
Alastair Sim’s School for Laughter
Blu ray
Film Movement Classics
1954, ’60, ’51, ’47 / 1.67:1, 1.37:1 / 86, 97, 93, 82 min.
Starring Alastair Sim,...
- 4/25/2020
- by Charlie Largent
- Trailers from Hell
Could this be retitled “Dial ‘F’ for Fog?” Jean Simmon’s greedy maid blackmails her employer Stewart Granger with proof that he murdered his wife, kicking off a criminal ‘deadlock’ in a London household. The cold-fish schemer Granger ponders his next murderous move while Simmons enjoys playing the lady of the house — having dared to leapfrog two social classes, she hopes that her victim will respond with kindness, not homicide. This gothic domestic murder tale should be required reading for marriage counselors.
Footsteps in the Fog
Blu-ray
Powerhouse Indicator
1955 / Color / 1:75 widescreen / 90 min. / Street Date July 30, 2018 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £14.99
Starring: Stewart Granger, Jean Simmons, Bill Travers, Belinda Lee, Ronald Squire, Finlay Currie, William Hartnell, Percy Marmont, Margery Rhodes, Barry Keegan, Victor Maddern, Erik Chitty.
Cinematography: Christopher Challis
Film Editor: Alan Osbiston
Original Music: Benjamin Frankel
Written by Dorothy Reid, Lenore Coffee, adapted by Arthur Pierson from a short...
Footsteps in the Fog
Blu-ray
Powerhouse Indicator
1955 / Color / 1:75 widescreen / 90 min. / Street Date July 30, 2018 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £14.99
Starring: Stewart Granger, Jean Simmons, Bill Travers, Belinda Lee, Ronald Squire, Finlay Currie, William Hartnell, Percy Marmont, Margery Rhodes, Barry Keegan, Victor Maddern, Erik Chitty.
Cinematography: Christopher Challis
Film Editor: Alan Osbiston
Original Music: Benjamin Frankel
Written by Dorothy Reid, Lenore Coffee, adapted by Arthur Pierson from a short...
- 7/31/2018
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Handsome star of spaghetti westerns including A Pistol for Ringo
When the spaghetti western was born in the early 1960s, some of the Italian lead actors disguised their names under American-sounding ones (though nobody was fooled). Among those competing successfully with bona fide Yanks such as Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef were Terence Hill (born Mario Girotti), Bud Spencer (Carlo Pedersoli) and Montgomery Wood, a temporary pseudonym taken by Giuliano Gemma, who has died in a car accident aged 75.
The strikingly handsome Gemma was one of the brightest stars of the once deprecated, now revered, genre. After five years in sword-and-sandal epics (also known as peplum films), usually supporting muscle men, Gemma made a name for himself (even if, initially, it wasn't his own) in two westerns directed by Duccio Tessari: A Pistol for Ringo (1965) and The Return of Ringo (1965). Their big box-office success granted Gemma stardom and...
When the spaghetti western was born in the early 1960s, some of the Italian lead actors disguised their names under American-sounding ones (though nobody was fooled). Among those competing successfully with bona fide Yanks such as Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef were Terence Hill (born Mario Girotti), Bud Spencer (Carlo Pedersoli) and Montgomery Wood, a temporary pseudonym taken by Giuliano Gemma, who has died in a car accident aged 75.
The strikingly handsome Gemma was one of the brightest stars of the once deprecated, now revered, genre. After five years in sword-and-sandal epics (also known as peplum films), usually supporting muscle men, Gemma made a name for himself (even if, initially, it wasn't his own) in two westerns directed by Duccio Tessari: A Pistol for Ringo (1965) and The Return of Ringo (1965). Their big box-office success granted Gemma stardom and...
- 10/22/2013
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Brilliant photographer whose portraits were loved by international film stars
Cornel Lucas, who has died aged 92, was the doyen of still photography in the British film industry. Although his pictures were not destined for cinema screens, his artistry and technique were much respected by his film cameramen colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic.
During the 1940s, working at Denham Studios, in Buckinghamshire, Cornel became well known for his brilliant portraiture and as the master of a huge 12in x 10in plate camera, which gave a large negative area, capable of delivering unmatched image quality. When international superstars came to work on British productions, they were invariably photographed by Cornel to create the publicity stills.
When the film No Highway in the Sky was being made in 1948, a special session was arranged with Marlene Dietrich, resulting in a series of iconic photos. The success of the Dietrich work led to...
Cornel Lucas, who has died aged 92, was the doyen of still photography in the British film industry. Although his pictures were not destined for cinema screens, his artistry and technique were much respected by his film cameramen colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic.
During the 1940s, working at Denham Studios, in Buckinghamshire, Cornel became well known for his brilliant portraiture and as the master of a huge 12in x 10in plate camera, which gave a large negative area, capable of delivering unmatched image quality. When international superstars came to work on British productions, they were invariably photographed by Cornel to create the publicity stills.
When the film No Highway in the Sky was being made in 1948, a special session was arranged with Marlene Dietrich, resulting in a series of iconic photos. The success of the Dietrich work led to...
- 11/21/2012
- by Sydney Samuelson
- The Guardian - Film News
Italian artist at the forefront of popular illustration in the 1960s and 70s
The Italian artist Arnaldo Putzu, who has died aged 85, was one of the most distinctive illustrators of his generation, painting film posters – from Italian realist cinema to the Carry On series – and book and magazine covers. While his long career started and finished in Italy, his work in Britain encapsulated the whole look of popular illustration in the 1960s and 70s.
Putzu was born in Rome, the son of a senior Italian navy officer. At about the age of 10, he began painting seriously, studied art at the Rome Academy, and found a love of portraiture, which he practised by painting his relatives. While doing illustration work in Milan in 1948, he met the poster artist Enrico de Seta, who took him back to Rome to work at the heart of the booming Italian film industry.
After four years with De Seta,...
The Italian artist Arnaldo Putzu, who has died aged 85, was one of the most distinctive illustrators of his generation, painting film posters – from Italian realist cinema to the Carry On series – and book and magazine covers. While his long career started and finished in Italy, his work in Britain encapsulated the whole look of popular illustration in the 1960s and 70s.
Putzu was born in Rome, the son of a senior Italian navy officer. At about the age of 10, he began painting seriously, studied art at the Rome Academy, and found a love of portraiture, which he practised by painting his relatives. While doing illustration work in Milan in 1948, he met the poster artist Enrico de Seta, who took him back to Rome to work at the heart of the booming Italian film industry.
After four years with De Seta,...
- 9/21/2012
- by Sim Branaghan
- The Guardian - Film News
British film star known for her roles in A Town Like Alice and The Spanish Gardener
Never having had the chance to justify her initial build-up as "the next Vivien Leigh", the svelte brunette Maureen Swanson, who has died of cancer aged 78, deserved much better than she was given in the 1950s by the Rank Organisation, to whom she was under contract. Although Swanson was not a graduate of the much-maligned Rank Charm School, she was, to her chagrin, often referred to as a "Rank starlet", which implied that she was merely on screen in order to look glamorous. But unlike Rank charmers such as Diana Dors, Joan Collins and Belinda Lee, Swanson was not a "naughty" sex symbol, but more of a "good girl".
She might have gone on to better parts had not her marriage in 1961 to William Ward, Viscount Ednam (later the 4th Earl of Dudley) terminated her acting career for good.
Never having had the chance to justify her initial build-up as "the next Vivien Leigh", the svelte brunette Maureen Swanson, who has died of cancer aged 78, deserved much better than she was given in the 1950s by the Rank Organisation, to whom she was under contract. Although Swanson was not a graduate of the much-maligned Rank Charm School, she was, to her chagrin, often referred to as a "Rank starlet", which implied that she was merely on screen in order to look glamorous. But unlike Rank charmers such as Diana Dors, Joan Collins and Belinda Lee, Swanson was not a "naughty" sex symbol, but more of a "good girl".
She might have gone on to better parts had not her marriage in 1961 to William Ward, Viscount Ednam (later the 4th Earl of Dudley) terminated her acting career for good.
- 1/1/2012
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Italian creator of the satirical film Mondo Cane and its 'shockumentary' successors
When the Italian film director Gualtiero Jacopetti, who has died at the age of 91, made Mondo Cane (A Dog's Life) in 1962, he tapped into people's curiosity and provided the strangest commercially successful film in the history of cinema. Audiences not yet accustomed to cheap air travel or the idea of globalisation were unprepared for its colourful National Geographic-style montages of "primitive" rites and "civilised" wrongs. The following year, they flocked to see the film's sequels, Mondo Pazzo (Mad World, or Mondo Cane No 2) and La Donna nel Mondo (Women of the World).
Mondo Cane was a film made out of a compilation of pithy sequences depicting strange rituals from around the globe. But while Jacopetti documented the peculiarities of what was then described as the third world, he also mocked the alleged superiority of western culture. The...
When the Italian film director Gualtiero Jacopetti, who has died at the age of 91, made Mondo Cane (A Dog's Life) in 1962, he tapped into people's curiosity and provided the strangest commercially successful film in the history of cinema. Audiences not yet accustomed to cheap air travel or the idea of globalisation were unprepared for its colourful National Geographic-style montages of "primitive" rites and "civilised" wrongs. The following year, they flocked to see the film's sequels, Mondo Pazzo (Mad World, or Mondo Cane No 2) and La Donna nel Mondo (Women of the World).
Mondo Cane was a film made out of a compilation of pithy sequences depicting strange rituals from around the globe. But while Jacopetti documented the peculiarities of what was then described as the third world, he also mocked the alleged superiority of western culture. The...
- 8/22/2011
- by Mark Goodall
- The Guardian - Film News
Kurt Kasznar, Charles Boyer, Bobby Driscoll, Marsha Hunt, Louis Jourdan, The Happy Time Louis Jourdan, Letter From An Unknown Woman on TCM While I’m at it, make sure to catch Richard Fleischer’s nostalgic 1952 comedy-drama The Happy Time, which stars Louis Jourdan, Charles Boyer, Bobby Driscoll, and Marsha Hunt, right at the time her film career was ruined by the anti-Red hysteria of the 1950s. Julie (1956), with Jourdan as a total psycho and Doris Day piloting a plane, is as entertaining as it sounds. (I guess that could go both ways.) I haven’t watched Dangerous Exile, but considering its cast — Jourdan, Belinda Lee, Keith Michell — it should be worth a look. Right after that there’s a non-Louis Jourdan [...]...
- 3/28/2010
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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