Daily Archives: June 16, 2017

Cinematheque Live, Film Collector's Club, Home, Pre Code Films

Parole Girl (1933)

Leave a comment

Pre Code Logo 1

Pre Code Hollywood Season: FD Cinematheque

Parole Girl (1933)

Parole Girl 2

Parole Girl 3

Parole Girl 4

Director: Edward F Cline

Cast: Mae Clarke, Ralph Bellamy, Marie Prevost, Hale Hamilton, Ferdinand Gottschalk, Ernest Wood, Sam Godfrey, Lucille Browne, Frank Fanning, Raul Freeman

67 min

Parole Girl 6

Parole Girl is a 1933 American Pre-Code romantic drama film directed by Edward Cline. The film stars Mae Clarke and Ralph Bellamy.

Plot

Parole Girl 10

When Sylvia Day (Mae Clarke) is caught trying to pull a scam on the Taylor Department Store in New York City, she pleads with the store manager to let her go, but his boss, Joe Smith (Ralph Bellamy), insists on following store policy, and she is handed over to the police, convicted and sentenced to a year in prison. Sylvia is consumed with the idea of getting revenge on Joe.

She becomes friends with chatty fellow inmate Jeanie Vance (Marie Prevost), who offers to team up with her (and commit more crimes) once they have served their time. When Sylvia learns that Jeanie has a surprising connection to Joe, she decides to get out early. She sets a fire, then passes out from the smoke while trying to put it out. For her “heroism”, she is granted parole.

Parole Girl 8

Tony Gratton (Hale Hamilton), her partner in the failed con, tries to talk her into marrying him and going to Chicago to continue their life of crime, but she is determined to avenge herself. Besides, she knows that Tony is already married.

Sylvia stalks Joe, learning all she can about him. Then, she pretends to be an old acquaintance at a nightclub where Joe is celebrating his promotion to general manager by getting drunk. The next morning, Joe discovers her in his apartment. She informs him that they have gotten married. Joe laughs, then tells her that he already has a wife. She tells him she knows (it is Jeanie), then reveals her motives. Tony shows up, masquerading as the person who married them; he gives Joe the marriage license the couple supposedly left behind. Threatened with a charge of bigamy, Joe reluctantly agrees to support Sylvia for a year, the length of her parole.

Parole Girl 7

Tony tries again to get Sylvia to be his partner in crime. When she refuses, he slips a counterfeit $20 bill in her purse. Sylvia goes on a shopping spree and pays for some of her purchases with the bill. It is traced back to her, but when a policeman shows up to take her back to jail, Joe pretends that she took the money out of his pants pocket. As a store manager, he deals with counterfeit money all the time. The ploy works, and Jeanie sends back her extravagant purchases.

Later, Joe calls her from the office and asks her for a favor. Mr. Taylor (Ferdinand Gottschalk), the store’s somewhat eccentric owner, has found out that Joe is married, so he is coming to dinner at their apartment. While Sylvia is cooking, Jeanie shows up. Her friend has been released early and intends to blackmail her husband (whom she married long ago while he was in college and then lost track of), once she can locate him, before heading to Florida with Sylvia. Sylvia gets her to leave before Joe and Mr. Taylor show up (early) by promising to give her a decision the next day. Taylor insists on doing the cooking; he is fed up with being waited on by servants. He becomes very fond of the couple and hints at a promotion to vice president if they were to have a baby.

Parole Girl 9

The next day, Sylvia persuades Jeanie that it is too dangerous to try blackmail in New York because of her record and agrees to go with her to Florida. Sylvia leaves a letter for Joe explaining everything, ending with the admission “I love you”. On the train, however, Jeanie reveals that she divorced Joe without his knowledge. Sylvia gets off and rushes back to the apartment; Joe has already read the letter and takes her in his arms.

Cast

“The Players” as listed in the opening credits of Parole Girl:[1]

Parole Girl 11

Cast notes

  • Mae Clarke is the same actress who two years before the release of Parole Girl had a grapefruit shoved into her face by James Cagney in the film The Public Enemy. That same year, in 1931, she also appeared in Universal Studios‘ horror classic Frankenstein, portraying the fiancee of the monster’s creator.

Parole Girl 19

  • By the time of Parole Girl’s release in 1933, Ralph Bellamy had become a busy actor and a very popular one among American movie audiences. Bellamy appeared in eleven other films released that same year, including the Picture Snatcher, an action film in which he plays second-lead to James Cagney.[2]

Parole Girl 17

  • Sam Godfrey, who plays “Walsh” in Parole Girl, rarely received an on-screen credit like the one he has in this film. Godfrey’s career as a peripheral or supporting character lasted only a few years, from 1932 until his death at the age of forty-three in 1935. He managed, however, during that brief period to appear in forty-one films. Of that total he received a screen credit in only seven of those productions.[3]

References

Parole Girl 20

  1. Jump up^ A full copy (1:51) of Parole Girl is available for viewing on YouTube. Search by film title on YouTube’s homepage. Retrieved March 14, 2017.
  2. Jump up^ “Ralph Bellamy,” Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Retrieved March 14, 2017.
  3. Jump up^ “Sam Godfrey,” IMDb. Retrieved March 14, 2017.

Parole Girl 18

Parole Girl 5

Parole Girl 15

Film Collectors Corner

This film has not been released on Blu Ray and DVD as yet

Film Collector's Club, Film Trailers, Home

Dillinger Is Dead Trailer (1969) – The Criterion Collection

Leave a comment

Dillinger is Dead 14

Dillinger is Dead 1

Dillinger is Dead 2

Dillinger is Dead 3

Dillinger Is Dead (Italian: Dillinger è morto) is a 1969 Italian drama directed by Marco Ferreri. It stars Michel Piccoli, Anita Pallenberg and Annie Girardot. The story is a darkly satiric blend of fantasy and reality. It follows a bored, alienated man over the course of one night in his home. The title comes from a newspaper headline featured in the film which proclaims the death of the real life American gangster John Dillinger.

The film proved controversial on its initial release for its subject matter and violence but is now generally regarded as Ferreri’s masterpiece. It was acclaimed by the influential French film magazine Cahiers du cinéma and afterwards Ferreri worked and lived in Paris for many years. Since the mid-1980s the film has been screened only very rarely.

Dillinger is Dead 4

Plot

Dillinger is Dead 5

Glauco, a middle-aged industrial designer of gas masks, is growing tired of his occupation. Having discussed alienation with a colleague at the factory, he returns home. His wife is in bed with a headache but has left him dinner, which has become cold. He is dissatisfied with the food and begins preparing himself a gourmet meal.

While collecting ingredients he discovers an old revolver wrapped in a 1934 newspaper with the headline “Dillinger is dead” and an account of the famous American gangster’s death. Glauco cleans and restores the gun while continuing to cook his dinner, then paints it red with white polka dots.

He also eats his meal, watches some television and projected home movies, listens to music and seduces their maid. With the gun he enacts suicide a number of times. At dawn he shoots his wife thrice in the head as she sleeps. Then he drives to the seaside where he gets a job as a chef on a yacht bound for Tahiti.

Themes

Dillinger is Dead 11

The film, and especially its surreal finale in which the character Glauco leaves home and finds a job on a yacht, has been interpreted variously. Author Fabio Vighi approached it from a psychoanalytical standpoint, suggesting the uxoricide is an attempt to “kill” something inside himself. Glauco repeatedly stages his own suicide throughout the film. The final murder, then, is a means to escape his life by eliminating the primary link to his bourgeois lifestyle, which he would otherwise be unable to leave.[1]

Writer Mira Liehm posits director Marco Ferreri followed in the style of the Theatre of the Absurd and did not apply psychology or logic to his characters but then placed his absurdist creations in a real world context. The home with its many luxuries, such as the gourmet dining and film projector, as well as the cleaning and decoration of the gun, are meaningless diversions which trap Glauco in a metaphorical prison and suffocate him. His isolation leads to death or an “illusionary escape.”[2] As Italian film historian Paolo Bertetto explained, “The escape to Tahiti means a total closure of all horizons, the paralysis of all possibilities; we are brought down to zero, stripped of all perspectives, and restored to the original nothingness.”[2]

Dillinger is Dead 9

Cast

  • Michel Piccoli as Glauco: a middle-age designer of protective masks which allow people to breathe under inhospitable conditions. Isolated, ennuyed and insomniac, he searches his house for diversion. Piccoli viewed the role as that of an “eternal child or this childlike rebirth of ‘mature’ man, between despair, suicide, simple insomnia, dream.”[3]
  • Anita Pallenberg as the wife
  • Annie Girardot as the maid

Dillinger is Dead 12

Production

Director Marco Ferreri first met leading man Michel Piccoli when he visited the actor on the set of Alain Cavalier‘s La Chamade (1968).

Ferreri had Piccoli read a few pages from Dillinger Is Dead and hired him immediately. Piccoli has said Ferreri did not direct his performance and only gave simple blocking instructions. He played the character as solitary and volatile, comparing it to his role in Agnès Varda‘s The Creatures (1966).

Dillinger is Dead 8

Release and reception

The film was entered into the 1969 Cannes Film Festival.[4] Dillinger Is Dead was the subject of controversy on its release for its violence and depiction of the parvenu set.[3] Critics have also called it director Marco Ferreri’s masterpiece.[2]

The influential French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma praised the film, interviewed the director and translated two of his previous interviews from the Italian magazine Cinema & Film. The acclaim opened the resources of Paris to Ferreri and he spent much of the next 15 years living there.

During that time he made his internationally best known films, including The Last Woman (1976) and Bye Bye Monkey (1978). Ferreri and Michel Piccoli became fast friends and worked together subsequently on films such as The Last Woman and La Grande Bouffe (1973).[5]

According to critic Viano Maurizio, by the mid-1980s Reaganomics‘ effect on the film market resulted in Dillinger’s near disappearance and it has been rarely seen since.[5] It appeared in the 2006 Marco Ferreri Retrospective in London.[6][7] A new print was provided by The Criterion Collection for the 2007 Telluride Film Festival.[8] It premiered on Turner Classic Movies in America on June 26, 2016.[9]

Dillinger is Dead 13

References

  1. Jump up^ Vighi, Fabio (2006). “Enjoying the Real: unconscious strategies of subversion”. Traumatic Encounters in Italian Film: Locating the Cinematic Unconscious. Intellect Books. p. 67. ISBN 978-1-84150-140-6.
  2. ^ Jump up to:a b c Liehm, Mira (March 1986). “The Glorious Sixties (1961 – 1969)”. Passion and Defiance: Italian Film from 1942 to the Present. University of California Press. pp. 206–207. ISBN 0-520-05744-9.
  3. ^ Jump up to:a b Béghin, Cyril (November 2005). “The Actor and the Secret: Interview with Michel Piccoli”. Sally Shafto (trans). Cahiers du cinéma. Retrieved 2007-09-09.
  4. Jump up^ “Festival de Cannes: Dillinger Is Dead”. festival-cannes.com. Archived from the original on 2012-03-08. Retrieved 2009-04-05.
  5. ^ Jump up to:a b Viano, Maurizio (2004). “La Grande Abbuffata / La Grande Bouffe”. In Giorgio Bertellini. The Cinema of Italy. Wallflower Press. p. 195. ISBN 1-903364-98-1.
  6. Jump up^ “Marco Ferreri Retrospective” (PDF). Ciné Lumière. November 2006. Retrieved 2007-09-08.[permanent dead link]
  7. Jump up^ “Marco Ferreri”. Vertigo Magazine. 2006. Retrieved 2007-09-08.
  8. Jump up^ Kramer, Edith (2007). “32: Dillinger Is Dead” (PDF). 34th Telluride Film Festival. Telluride Film Festival. p. 20. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2007-10-09. Retrieved 2007-09-08.
  9. Jump up^ TCM Forum, Accessed July 6, 2016

Dillinger is Dead 10

Dillinger is Dead 7

Dillinger is Dead 6

Film Collectors Corner

Watch Dillinger Is Dead Now – Instant Video 

Presently Not Available

 

Blu-Ray Copy

Presently Not Available

 

DVD Copy

Criterion Collection

Cinematheque Live, Home, Silent Films

Country Doctor, The (1909)

Leave a comment

Mary Pickford 1

Mary Pickford Season: FD Cinematheque

The Country Doctor (1909)

Director: D W Griffith

Cast: Mary Pickford, Kate Bruce, Adele DeGarde, Gladys Egan, Rose King, Florence Lawrence, Frank Powell, 

14 min

DW Griffith 2

D W Griffith

Country Doctor The 1

The Country Doctor is a 1909 American short silent drama film written and directed by D. W. Griffith. Currently in the public domain, prints of The Country Doctor are preserved at the film archives of the Museum of Modern Art and the Library of Congress.[1]

Plot

A doctor (Frank Powell) leaves his sick daughter (Adele DeGarde) to assist a neighbor that is gravely ill, and ignores his wife’s requests to come home and take care of his own daughter who is getting worse.

Country Doctor The 3

Cast

Country Doctor The 4

See also

Country Doctor The 5

References

  1. Jump up^ “Progressive Silent Film List: The Country Doctor”. Silent Era. Retrieved July 16, 2008.

Country Doctor The 6

Country Doctor The 7

Country Doctor The 8

Country Doctor The 9

Country Doctor The 10

Cinematheque Live, Home, Silent Films

Broken Locket, The (1909)

Leave a comment

Mary Pickford 1

Mary Pickford Season: FD Cinematheque

The Broken Locket (1909)

Director: D W Griffith

Cast: Mary Pickford, Frank Powell, Kate Bruce, Robert Harron, Dell Henderson, Arthur V Johnson, James Kirkwood, Marion Leonard, Owen Moore, Lottie Pickford, Mack Sennett

11 min

DW Griffith 2

 D W Griffith

The Broken Locket is a short silent film written and directed by David W. Griffith in 1909. Produced and distributed by the Biograph Company , the film was released September 16, 1909.

Broken Locket The 4

Plot 

Broken Locket The 3

George Peabody has a drinking habit. Ruth, his friend from childhood loves him, brings him back to the right path and makes him abandon the bad companions who contributed to his downfall. George decides to mend the tatters of his life. Sets out for the West; and before leaving, greets his beloved Ruth, then realising that he truly loved her. She, then, as a token of love, gives him one half of her precious medallion. He will bring together the two pieces when he comes back to her.

In the West, George follows a new life, achieving success in his work. But, one day, ends up succumbing to the desire for a nightcap. This will be the beginning of his end. He falls into the arms of a Mexican girl who pretends to love him, and then his descent becomes unstoppable. His mistress, to completely remove the memory of Ruth, writes a letter in which she says that George is dead.

Without a penny, now reduced to a filthy, tattered exisitence, George returns. One day in front of the girl who still loves him and who is still waiting to reassemble their medallion.

She, who is now blind, cannot see it. George ashamed of everything he did, escapes from her. The medallion will remain broken forever.

Production 

Broken Locket The 2

The film was produced by the Biograph Company and was shot in Edgewater, New Jersey.

Distribution 

Distributed by the Biograph Company, the film  – was released in US cinemas on September 13, 1909. In the projections, was programmed with the split reel system, merged into a single coil with another short film produced by the Biograph and directed by Griffith,

It was screened with another short film produced by the Biograph and directed by Griffith, The Children’s Friend [1] .

In August 2006, the Grapevine has included this film in an anthology on DVD titled DW Griffith, Director, Volume 4 (1909) , containing eleven Griffith films  [2] .

Notes 

  1. ^ Silent was
  2. ^ Silent was DVD

See also 

Broken Locket The 1

 

Cinematheque Live, Home, Silent Films

The Gibson Goddess (1909)

Leave a comment

Mary Pickford 1

Mary Pickford Season: FD Cinematheque

The Gibson Goddess (1909)

Director: D W Griffith

Cast: Mary Pickford, Marion Leonard, Kate Bruce, Frank Evans, Arthur V Johnson, James Kirkwood, George Nichols, Anthony O’Sullivan, Billy Quirk, Mack Sennett, Dorothy West

6 min

DW Griffith 2

D W Griffith

Gibson Goddess The 1

 

The Gibson Goddess is a 1909 short comedy film directed by D. W. Griffith. It stars Marion Leonard.[1][2]

Cast

Gibson Goddess The 2

References

  1. Jump up^ The Gibson Goddess at silentera.com
  2. Jump up^ The AFI Catalog of Feature Films: The Gibson Goddess

Gibson Goddess The 3