Renoir’s beautiful and devastating social satire was reviled when it was released in 1939 and embraced as a masterpiece when it was restored 1959. It placed in the number 13 spot in the 2022 Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films ever made.
Tag: 1939
‘Drums Along the Mohawk’ – John Ford’s Colonial America on Criterion Channel
John Ford made his Technicolor debut with Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), a stunning pre-western about young settlers in the rich forest lands of the Mohawk Valley during the Colonial era. Claudette Colbert takes top billing as the cultured wife and Henry Fonda is her salt-of-the-Earth husband who takes her out of the city and […]
Gary Cooper is ‘Beau Geste’ on Peacock
Golden-age Hollywood adventures don’t come more rousing than Beau Geste (1939). Gary Cooper, Ray Milland and Robert Preston are the boisterous Geste brothers, orphans raised by a society lady as gentlemen with a sense of playful camaraderie and undaunted chivalry. Their sense of honor and sacrifice inspires all three of them take the blame for […]
John Ford’s ‘Stagecoach’ on HBO Max
Stagecoach (1939) – John Ford’s classic western is a landmark of the genre for so many reasons: mature, classically constructed and superbly directed, it made a star of John Wayne, revitalized the western genre, and introduced Ford to the breathtaking landscape of Monument Valley, which would become the mythic backdrop of his west. It was […]
Black Film History Pioneers – The ‘Blood’ of Spencer Williams on Netflix and Criterion Channel
The legacy of films made by and for African-American audiences before Hollywood integrated its casts is largely unknown to even passionate films buffs. They were rarely seen by white audiences in their day and were rarely preserved with the same dedication given to the maverick films of Hollywood. Netflix and Criterion Channel present over 20 […]