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Very few filmmakers have the distinction of creating a classic on their first effort. But John Huston, one of the greatest screenwriters and directors of the 20th century, did just that in 1941 with “The Maltese Falcon” and went on to create many classics by inventing, reinventing and reinvigorating genres.

Huston was born on August 5, 1906, in Nevada, Missouri. His father was the great actor Walter Huston, and young John developed an interest in the stage at a young age watching his father perform in vaudeville. He was a sickly child with an enlarged heart and kidney ailments but eventually overcame that to drop out of school at the age of 14 to become a professional boxer.

As a young adult, Huston wrote and sold several short stories, and made his way to Hollywood when “talking pictures” created a demand for writers. He took a short hiatus from Hollywood after the car he...

This year’s races for Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress were over before they started. Robert Downey Jr. in “Oppenheimer” and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in “The Holdovers” took leads in the Gold Derby odds in their respective categories early in the season. They both went on to pick up Golden Globe, Critics Choice, BAFTA and SAG Awards. By the time the Oscars rolled around, there was a “near zero” chance of either of them losing.

In contrast, the lead acting contests provided considerably more suspense. Bradley Cooper in “Maestro,” Paul Giamatti in “The Holdovers” and Cillian Murphy in “Oppenheimer” were all looking strong at different point in the derby, before Murphy really exploded and ultimately won the Best Actor Oscar. And Lily Gladstone in “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Emma Stone in “Poor Things” kept trading the top spot in the Best Actress odds. Gladstone finally reclaimed...

Released soon after the end of the Great Depression and on the precipice of America’s entry into World War II, William Dieterle’s All That Money Can Buy is a peculiar and fascinating blend of the populist agitprop of the 1930s and the patriotic hokum that defined much of the war years.

In transposing the legend of Faust and his pact with the devil to a rousing bit of American folklore, the screenplay by Dan Totheroh and Stephen Vincent Benét presents greed as anathema to the American way of life, and in one of the few brief eras where that notion was anything short of risible. As such, rugged individualism is spurned in favor of collectivism, specifically in the exalting of the values of an agricultural grange—a communal safety net for small farmers like All That Money Can Buy’s protagonist, Jabez Stone (James Craig).

After a string of bad luck,...

Since the inception of the Academy Awards, the U.S.-based organization behind them has always strived to honor worldwide film achievements. Their extensive roster of competitive acting winners alone consists of artists from 30 unique countries, three of which first gained representation during the 2020s. The last full decade’s worth of triumphant performers hail from eight countries, while 42.1% of the individual actors nominated during that time originate from outside of America.

The academy’s history of recognizing acting talent on a global scale dates all the way back to the inaugural Oscars ceremony in 1929, when Swiss-born Emil Jannings (who was of German and American parentage) won Best Actor for his work in both “The Last Command” and “The Way of All Flesh.” Over the next three years, the Best Actress prize was exclusively awarded to Canadians: Mary Pickford (“Coquette”), Norma Shearer (“The Divorcee”), and Marie Dressler (“Min and Bill...

“That movie was the President’s idea, not mine, but it was a demand, not a suggestion.”

The speaker was Jack Warner in a 1947 foreshadowing of his Donald Trumpian style. I recalled his remarks this week as I drove onto the Warner Bros lot, the fabled arena where Warner long reigned.

In his heyday, Warner was a Trump pre-clone in terms of temperament and rhetoric – a man who boasted about his mental acuity yet, to Hollywood’s power players, seemed occasionally unhinged.

I was visiting Warner Bros this week to spend some time with David Zaslav, a figure who, in temperament and politics, is the mirror opposite of Warner but whose empire is nonetheless a product of Warner’s erratic vision. Some believe that Zaslav’s studio – Hollywood in general – might still glean some insight from its founder’s idiosyncrasies.

A career maverick, Warner promoted gangster movies like Public Enemy...

He’s your huckleberry and also apparently your guide. To mark the 30th anniversary of Tombstone, Val Kilmer, who played gunfighter/dentist/Wyatt Earp Bff in the 1993 western, posted behind-the-scenes footage he shot during the making of the film.

Stamped with “August 26th, 1993”, the footage shows trailers marked “Doc” and “Wyatt”, for lawman Earp as played by Kurt Russell. The footage then shows Russell outside of his trailer, with cameraman Kilmer assuring him, “You’ve arrived! You’re a pro!” Russell then shows photos of himself and the real Earp side by side, challenging the viewer to figure out who is who, even referencing an old Memorex ad just to further date the clip.

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The cast of Tombstone is a stacked one, with Sam Elliott and Michael Biehn in key roles, not to mention a slew of actors who have sadly passed since,...

Tyrannical and brilliant, director Michael Curtiz created film legends out of mere stars, and turned movies into myth. Here are some of his greatest films.

When movie enthusiasts think of legendary director Michael Curtiz, the first thing that pops into their mind is Casablanca (1942), consistently named to, and occasionally topping, lists of the greatest films of all time. Although if we’re being honest, most people think of it as a Humphrey Bogart movie. The same could be said of Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). These are known for their stars, James Cagney, and Errol Flynn, the latter of whom Curtiz put on the map with Captain Blood (1935). In the director’s hands, actors and characters merged into a mythology which exceeded mere signature roles, becoming universal symbols.

Curtiz worked in the motion picture business from its infancy, but began in the theater, graduating Budapest’s...

Warner Bros. has already celebrated its centennial with a segment during the Academy Awards, the publication of a studio-supported book (Warner Bros.: 100 Years of Storytelling) and, most recently, a barrage of festivities emanating from Turner Classic Movies. TCM’s programming for all of April is being devoted to Warners films, and at the 14th annual TCM Classic Film Festival in Hollywood, running April 13-16, many studio masterpieces, some recently restored and remastered, will be shown on big screens around town. Here are 10 that this THR Hollywood history buff highly recommends.

Footlight Parade (1933)

Ninety years ago, during the depths of the Great Depression, Americans sought escape from their troubles with light movies like this backstage musical. Directed by Lloyd Bacon, starring James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler and highlighted by some of choreographer Busby Berkeley’s most kaleidoscopic dance numbers, it was a giant hit at the box office.

John Huston is one of the most celebrated directors and screenwriters in Hollywood. Born on August 5, 1906, in Nevadaville, Colorado, he was the son of actor Walter Huston and Rhea Gore. He began his career as a journalist and later worked as an amateur boxer before entering movies.

Huston’s movies were often morally ambiguous, with elements of both comedy and tragedy. He rose to fame for movies such as “The Maltese Falcon” (1941), which starred Humphrey Bogart, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre” (1948), starring Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston, and “The African Queen” (1951), starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. He also wrote many movies including “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950) and directed iconic movies such as “The Man Who Would Be King” (1975).

Huston was highly acclaimed by critics for his skillful direction in movies that explored complex themes such as greed and morality. Many of his movies featured actors who had trained under revered director Erich von Stroheim.

"The picture that couldn't be stopped!" trumpeted the tagline for "The Outlaw," Howard Hughes' fictional tale of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, with Doc Holliday and a little of Jane Russell's cleavage thrown in for good measure. The latter made the film one of the most controversial pictures of its day, and it would take the Hollywood mogul five years to secure the movie a wide release.

Producer and director Hughes had no qualms about using Russell's sex appeal to sell his movie; when it came to picking a young starlet to play her part from a nationwide casting call, Hughes chose Russell because her bust was the most to his liking. Much of the publicity was focused on the 19-year-old making her screen debut, resulting in one of the most famous and controversial images of '40s Hollywood: Jane Russell reclining in a haystack with a gun in her hand,...

Howard Hughes's deliriously ahistorical "The Outlaw" is probably best known for star Jane Russell's brassiere, which the director painstakingly designed to accentuate her 38Dd bosom. Never mind that Russell claimed she wore it all of a few minutes, loathed the fit, and padded her own bra the old-fashioned way; the undergarment is still on display in a Hollywood museum -- the, er, stuff of showbiz legend.

The film itself is an agreeably campy Western. Doc Holliday (Walter Huston) rides into Lincoln, New Mexico looking to recover his stolen horses. He tells his friend Pat Garrett (Thomas Mitchell) that Billy the Kid (Jack Buetel) is the thief, which sets up a not-terribly-understated homoerotic love triangle. It's a goofy movie that should be a lot more fun than it is, but its script by Jules Furthman boasts some nifty flourishes, one of which finds the sharp-shooting Holliday trying to goad...

The effort to restore neglected films doesn’t get more rewarding than this 4K rebirth of Lewis Milestone’s version of the acclaimed Somerset Maugham story. Loaned from MGM, Joan Crawford tries on the role of Sadie Thompson and holds her own opposite Walter Huston’s fire & brimstone preacher. It’s still a major achievement of the pre-Code era, an adult story that doesn’t water down its ‘dangerous’ themes: it’s exactly the kind of show that the censors didn’t want made.

Rain

Blu-ray

Mary Pickford Foundation / Vci

1932 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 94 + 76 min. / Street Date September 27, 2022 / Available from Mvd / 29.95

Starring: Joan Crawford, Walter Huston, Fred Howard, Ben Hendricks Jr., William Gargan, Mary Shaw, Guy Kibbee, Kendall Lee, Beulah Bondi, Matt Moore, Walter Catlett.

Cinematography: Oliver Marsh

Art Director: Richard Day

Film Editor: W. Duncan Mansfield

Original Music: Alfred Newman

Screen adaptation by Maxwell Anderson from the play by John Colton,...

The world was at war 80 years ago. The United States was grieving over the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 by the Japanese military and the defeat of our forces that month at Wake Island. And then the beloved Carole Lombard, her mother, servicemen and the crew perished in a plane crash west of Las Vegas on January 16, 1942. She was returning to Hollywood after raising 2 million in a war bond drive in Indianapolis.

How would Hollywood and audiences respond to World War II? They certainly didn’t shy away from the war. If you look at the top 10 films of the year, there are some escapist films but also movies dealing with the global conflict.

In fact, the No. 1 film of the year William Wyler’s “Mrs. Miniver” broke records at Radio City Music Hall in New York playing 10 weeks. Production began on the stirring, sentimental drama about a British...

Gabe Polsky’s new acid Western “Butcher’s Crossing,” premiering at the Toronto Film Festival, takes place on the vast fertile plains of hubris, where if you stare far enough into the horizon, you can probably see your own uppance come.

Based on a novel by John Williams takes place in Kansas in 1874, where a young wide-eyed student named Will Andrews has abandoned his Ivy League education in favor of seeing the country and palling around with buffalo hunters. It’s a decision that old man McDonald, a fur trader and distant friend of the family, thinks is intensely ill-advised, so he warns him — in a tone so condescending it was practically guaranteed to have the opposite of its intended effect — that following this path will lead Will to soul-obliterating ruin.

Undeterred, Will proceeds to ally himself with the first semi-friendly person he meets, a hunter named Miller (Nicolas Cage), who...

Plenty of actors have played Abraham Lincoln well, but the actor still most associated with the role is Raymond Massey, who starred in Robert E. Sherwood’s Pulitzer Prizewinning play. The film version was not a hit, as Sherwood’s aim is to capture the melancholy, even the foreboding, of a man who was a natural for politics. In this reading Lincoln tries to resist his ‘call to greatness’ knowing he’s letting himself in for an unhappy life. The Warner Archive’s restoration retrieves the film from old 16mm prints, restoring James Wong Howe’s handsome cinematography.

Abe Lincoln in Illinois

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1940 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 110 min. / Spirit of the People / Available at Amazon.com / General site Wac-Amazon / Street Date , 2022 / 21.99

Starring:

Raymond Massey, Gene Lockhart, Ruth Gordon, Mary Howard, Minor Watson, Alan Baxter, Harvey Stephens, Howard da Silva, Dorothy Tree, Louis Jean Heydt, Clem Bevans, Herbert Rudley,...

It's perhaps no coincidence that John Huston's 1948 film "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" came out the same year that comic book publisher William Gaines took control of EC Comics and began to work the company away from its original moniker, Educational Comics, to a much more commercially viable model -- Entertaining Comics. Both "Treasure" and the books that came out of EC in the late-'40s had a lurid horror bent, exploring the darker recesses of the human soul. 

"Treasure" is about a trio of men who trek into a forbidding, hot wilderness to look for gold. As soon as gold is struck, each of the three men begins to eyeball each other suspiciously, instantly paranoid of being double-crossed. There will be multiple opportunities for each of the men to dispose of another and take a larger share of gold. It's a tale of the corrupting power of greed,...

John Huston's 1948 classic "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" boasts one of the all-time great Humphrey Bogart roles. The Hollywood icon stars as Fred C. Dobbs, a drifter who struggles to make ends meet in 1920s Mexico. With the aid of a fellow American named Bob Curtin (Tim Holt) and a crusty prospector who goes by Howard (Walter Huston), Fred strikes it rich looking for gold in the Sierra Madre mountains. But as the three men fill their bags with gold dust, greed and paranoia begin to overtake Fred, making him as much a danger to his crew as the...

The post For One Star, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre Was (Literally) Like Pulling Teeth appeared first on /Film.

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.” That Abraham Lincoln quote sums up the quiet, thoughtful dignity that actors have tried to portray on film for several generations now. And on screen, the 16th president has done everything from meeting Shirley Temple to fighting vampires. In honor of President’s Day, here are some of the actors who have played Honest Abe over the years.

Joseph Henabery – “The Birth of a Nation” (1915)

The racism in “The Birth of a Nation” aside, D.W. Griffith stages the assassination of Abraham Lincoln as a true national tragedy, and he does so in ravishing display, staging a scene everyone already knows but hadn’t yet visualized on film, using never before seen intercutting and sweeping wide shots as John Wilkes Booth dives from the balcony to provide ravishing tension and action.

Walter Huston – “Abraham Lincoln” (1930)

D.

Oscar certainly loves mothers. All five of this year’s Best Actress nominees — Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”), Olivia Colman (“The Lost Daughter”), Penelope Cruz (“Parallel Mothers”), Nicole Kidman (“Being the Ricardos”) and Kirsten Stewart (“Spencer”) — play mothers. Ditto four out of five supporting nominees: Jessie Buckley (“The Lost Daughter”), Judi Dench (“Belfast”), Kirsten Dunst (“The Power of the Dog”) and Aunjanue Ellis (“King Richard”); the fifth contender is Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”).

Actresses love getting maternal sinking their teeth-and sometimes claws-into mother roles whether they be good, bad, ugly or downright evil. Here’s a look at some early memorable mother performances that made Oscars history.

The mother of all mothers was Ruth Chatterton. Though she is not as well-remembered as other actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood, she was extremely popular in the late 1920s and early ‘30s. Though no nominations were officially announced for the second annual Oscars,...

Righteous propaganda fuels the patriotic fire: Lewis Milestone and Robert Rossen’s blood-soaked ode to Norwegian resistance goes way over the top. These Norsemen and Norsewomen take up arms to fight their Nazi occupiers tooth and nail. Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan star; some of Hollywood’s best partake of the rah-rah celebration of suicidal vengeance: Walter Huston, Nancy Coleman, Helmut Dantine, Judith Anderson, Ruth Gordon, John Beal, Morris Carnovsky, Charles Dingle, Roman Bohnen, Richard Fraser, Art Smith, and a very young Virginia Christine. We’re all anti-Fascist freedom fighters on this bus!

Edge of Darkness

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1943 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 119 min. / Available at Amazon.com / Street Date January 18, 2022 / 21.99

Starring: Errol Flynn, Ann Sheridan, Walter Huston, Nancy Coleman, Helmut Dantine, Judith Anderson, Ruth Gordon, John Beal, Morris Carnovsky, Charles Dingle, Roman Bohnen, Richard Fraser, Art Smith, Monte Blue, Henry Brandon, Virginia Christine, Tom Fadden, Kurt Katch, Kurt Kreuger,...

“These Facists will never drive Norwegians out of Norway!”

Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan in Edge Of Darkness (1943) will be available on Blu-ray February 22nd from Warner Archive. It can be purchased at the Warner Archive Amazon Store Here

In 1930, director Lewis Milestone won an Academy Award®* for his eloquent anti-war masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front. But with Edge of Darkness, made in 1943 during the dark days of the German blitzkrieg, Milestone displays no such pacifist sentiments. Indeed, this remarkable drama, set in a small Norwegian village, pays tribute to the heroic spirit of common people taking up arms against the Nazi invaders. Errol Flynn delivers a fine, understated performance as a common fisherman who leads the town’s resistance efforts, while Ann Sheridan’s strong character reflects the strength of all womankind. And featured in the superb ensemble cast are Walter Huston, Ruth Gordon, and Judith Anderson.

Westerns are populated with cowboys, gunslingers, bandits, Native American, horses, cows and buffalos. But the genre is much more complex than shoot-‘em-ups. In fact, the best Westerns are Shakespearean in nature exploring such universal subjects as love, hate, revenge, greed, power and good versus evil. One of the most popular sub-genres is the “ranch” Western where the patriarch or matriarch — remember Barbara Stanwyck in “The Big Valley”– governs with a strict and often violent hand. They act like they are above the law and often take legal matters into their own hand. They are often widowers or widows and have sons who run the spectrum from hero to villain.

Jane Campion’s highly acclaimed Netflix Oscar-contender “The Power of the Dog” falls into this sub-genre. Set in Montana in 1925, the story revolves around the charismatic but sadistic Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) who relishes being the master of a cattle rancher.

Although star Gregory Peck felt director John Huston should have played Ahab himself, Huston had hoped his father Walter Huston would live to take the role. This third film version of Melville’s classic is beautifully shot and produced, but Huston and writer Ray Bradbury had a rocky relationship, which Bradbury dramatized in his novel “Green Shadows, White Whale” and the short story “Banshee”.

The post Moby Dick appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Lewis Milestone’s 1932 film about a fun-loving hooker named Sadie Thompson and her clash with a two-faced missionary takes full advantage of its pre-code status. Supposedly set in the South Seas it was filmed on Santa Catalina Island in Los Angeles county. Walter Huston plays the conflicted reverend and Joan Crawford stars as the repentant prostitute Sadie. The part has attracted a number of actresses over the years from Gloria Swanson to Rita Hayworth.

The post Rain appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

When not making tons of money collaborating with James Stewart, Anthony Mann directed some really grim westerns. This mini-epic spells out the ugly real-life Code of The West: seizing land and establishing private empires. Walter Huston’s T.C. Jeffords maintains his sprawling fiefdom through economic tyranny (he prints his own money and expects banks to accept it) — and by simple violence, murdering the people that have lived on ‘his’ land for generations. Barbara Stanwyck is the feisty heir who wages generational war on her piratical father. It’s the darkest and most subversive of Huac-era ‘noir’ westerns.

The Furies

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 435

1950 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 109 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date April 20, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Wendell Corey, Walter Huston, Judith Anderson, Gilbert Roland, Thomas Gomez, Beulah Bondi, Albert Dekker, John Bromfield, Wallace Ford, Blanche Yurka.

Cinematography: Victor Milner

Film Editor: Archie Marshek

Original Music:...

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Keeping up with new Criterion releases can feel like a spectator sport for cinephiles checking the site each month. To make Blu-Ray shopping a little easier for your, IndieWire put together a roundup of new Criterion releases that you can pre-order now.

All of the films listed below are available on Amazon, which means that Prime members will get free two-day shipping. In addition to shipping perks, an Amazon Prime membership (which costs $12.99 a month) gives you streaming access to Amazon’s massive library of film and TV shows. So even if you binge all of your new Criterion Blu-Rays in a single weekend, you won’t be left without something to watch.

Howard Hawks’ early sound picture is a worthy prison drama — with top performances from Walter Huston and Boris Karloff, both just as their film careers began to take off. Huston shows the screen how a stage actor can take command: his Da-turned warden character is corrupt yet retains his air of authority. Karloff’s convict seethes with raw menace, and Hawks uses him better than anyone except James Whale. That ‘other’ Code, the Production Code, found this show to be unbearably tense — even though all the brutality happens off-screen, violence is soaked into every scene.

The Criminal Code

Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1930 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 97 min. / Street Date March 22, 2021 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Walter Huston, Phillips Holmes, Constance Cummings, Boris Karloff, DeWitt Jennings, Mary Doran, Ethel Wales, Clark Marshall, Arthur Hoyt, John St. Polis, Paul Porcasi, Andy Devine.

Cinematography: James Wong Howe, Ted Tetzlaff

Film Editor: Edward Curtis...

After my recent article presenting “Five Reason Why Carey Mulligan Will Win the Best Actress Oscar for ‘Promising Young Woman,’” I was asked about my current prediction for Best Supporting Actor. To be more specific, I was asked how confident I am – and if I can provide similar analysis to make my case. Well, I’ve never been one to shy away from a Gold Derby challenge. And I’ll concede that I am far from 100% certain on this one. Many academy elitists may be reluctant to vote for someone better known for playful pranks than distinguished dramatics. Still, there’s a trajectory which could help him pull off the ultimate stunt this April. (And that’s no April Fool’s joke.)

Here are five reasons why Sacha Baron Cohen can win the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for “The Trial of the Chicago 7.”

1. He delivers the classic scene-stealing featured performance.

Recently, short Best Actor-nominated performances have been scarce at the Oscars. The average screen time of the past decade’s nominees is over 80 minutes, and only a handful of them have not reached one hour. Still, performances that fall under 60 minutes make up nearly one third of the category’s nominees, with plenty boasting much less time. Here is a look at the 10 shortest of all (and here are the 10 shortest winners):

10. Humphrey Bogart (“The Caine Mutiny”)

28 minutes, 22 seconds (22.79% of the film)

Bogart’s third and final Best Actor nomination came in 1955 for his portrayal of tyrannical Naval commander Philip Queeg. Though he is absent from the first quarter of the film and appears on screen for less than 30 minutes, he was classified as a lead. In the decades since, several actors have also been placed in the lead category for relatively short villainous roles, including Michael Douglas (“Wall Street...

6 random things that happened on this day, January 15th, in showbiz history

1948 This date is iffy (the internet can't seem to agree) but some say John Huston's classic The Treasure of Sierra Madre had its premiere in Los Angeles. At any rate, factually, it came out in sometime in January. A year later it will be up for four Oscars including Best Picture and win Best Supporting Actor for Walter Huston, the director's father. Later Huston will direct his daughter Anjelica to an Oscar win for Prizzi's Honor making him the only person in Oscar history to direct two family members to Oscars. The Hustons were the first three-generation Oscar winning family. The Coppolas followed later...

It is certainly not unusual for a long performance to win a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. The average screen time among winners in the category is 33 minutes and 45 seconds, and several even longer ones have been victorious in the past decade. However, awarding longer supporting male performances is not a recent trend. Here is a look at the 10 longest winners of all time. (And here’s the list of the 10 shortest winning performances for Best Supporting Actor.)

10. Walter Huston (“The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”)

55 minutes, 3 seconds (43.68% of the film)

On his fourth and final nomination in 1949, Walter Huston won his only Oscar for playing a wise, old prospector simply known as Howard. He broke the record for longest Best Supporting Actor-winning performance and held it for 16 years. His other nominated supporting role in “Yankee Doodle Dandy” is notably shorter, as is his Best Actor-nominated performance in “The Devil and Daniel Webster...

The producers and funding bodies behind “The Furnace” took quite a chance when they agreed to back Roderick MacKay in his debut feature, yet clearly the young writer-director knows how to sell his vision just as well as he knows how to make a movie. Set in the deserts of Western Australia in the late 19th century, this ambitious, ethnically diverse and visually dramatic Western about an Afghani camel driver and a hard-bitten gold thief in the outback is a classic oater on every level, reminiscent of the more sensitive Westerns of the 1970s in which natives are accorded dignity and depth and moral quandaries aren’t black and white. Premiering in the Horizons section at Venice, the film combines racial sensitivity with good old-fashioned storytelling, which should be a winning competition on big screens at home but also abroad.

It opens in 1897, when a title explains that Western Australia...

Lewis Milestone’s 1932 film about a fun-loving hooker named Sadie Thompson and her clash with a two-faced missionary takes full advantage of its pre-code status. Supposedly set in the South Seas it was filmed on Santa Catalina Island in Los Angeles county. Walter Huston plays the conflicted reverend and Joan Crawford stars as the repentant prostitute Sadie. The part has attracted a number of actresses over the years from Gloria Swanson to Rita Hayworth.

The post Rain appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.And now they've quietly disappeared William Fox's name from the company: guilty by association with Rupert Murdoch, even though he never associated with him.***Jean Renoir's first Hollywood film, Swamp Water (1941) is available on home video from Twilight Time if you have the means, and is well worth buying, again if you have the means. Most of us don't, which is why capitalism sucks. The sentence "Swamp Water is not currently streaming" has a redundant air.The "celebrated megaphonist," as Fox publicity hailed him began work on Dudley Nichols' script, from Vereen Bell's novel, with a mixture of trepidation and hope. Renoir regarded American filmmaking as somewhat stultified,...

Walter Huston and May Astor in Dodsworth is currently available on Blu-ray From Warner Archive. Ordering information can be found Here

” Love has got to stop some place short of suicide. “

Based on the best-selling novel by Sinclair Lewis, this “handsome, intelligent film” (Los Angeles Times) garnered seven Academy Award ® nominations, winning one*, and is “one of the authentic masterpieces of the 1930s” (Filmex Guide). Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston) is a small-town rags-to-riches millionaire who finds that his money cannot bring him happiness. His unsatisfied wife, Fran (Ruth Chatterton), seeking glamour and sophistication, persuades him to take her on a grand tour of Europe, where she promptly deserts him for a romantic but penniless baron. Brokenhearted, Sam meets Edith (Mary Astor), an understanding widow who arouses passions he never thought he had and sets him on a collision course with his wife, unleashing a torrent of desire, betrayal and shocking revelations.

It’s ‘Marriage Story’ circa 1936. Talk about older shows that still pack a dramatic wallop… William Wyler’s most celebrated ’30s film is this Sinclair Lewis adaptation. The Production Code frowned on disrespecting the institution of marriage, but Wyler & writer Sidney Howard keep the divorce theme intact — their well-off couple learn more about each other and simply grow apart. Industrialist Walter Huston gets pushed a little too far. His social-climbing wife Ruth Chatterton doesn’t appreciate what she’s got, while luscious Mary Astor is the Depression equivalent of a Malibu Earth Mother.

Dodsworth

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1936 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 101 min. / Street Date March 24, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, Paul Lukas, Mary Astor, David Niven, Gregory Gaye, Maria Ouspenskaya.

Cinematography: Rudolph Maté

Film Editor: Daniel Mandell

Original Music: Alfred Newman

Written by Sidney Howard from his play of the novel by Sinclair Lewis...

Once upon a time, MGM launched a big spectacle Western remake with the top star Glenn Ford and the bright import Maria Schell — and then second-guessed the whole production, cutting back on everything so severely that director Anthony Mann ankled the set for Spain and El Cid. The storytelling is a mess — after starting big, the show soon falls into pieces. But many of individual scenes and set pieces are exemplary, especially Mann’s re-run of the Oklahoma Land Rush, staged in Arizona and augmented by classy special effects. The large cast rounds up some big talent — Mercedes McCambridge, Russ Tamblyn — to tell Edna Ferber’s multi-generational story about ambition, intolerance and dreams of glory on the frontier.

Cimarron (1960)

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1960 / Color / 2:35 anamorphic widescreen / 147 min. / Street Date January 21, 2020 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Glenn Ford, Maria Schell, Anne Baxter, Arthur O’Connell, Russ Tamblyn, Mercedes McCambridge, Vic Morrow,...

Above: Italian 4-foglio for Dodsworth; illustrated by Anselmo Ballester.William Wyler’s 1936 masterpiece of mid-life crises and European travel, Dodsworth, will play in all its glory at Alice Tully Hall in a brand new restoration at this year’s New York Film Festival. To be introduced by playwright and director Kenneth Lonergan and Wyler’s daughters Catherine and Melanie, it will be a tony affair, as befitting this classiest of productions. Based on Nobel Prize-winning author Sinclair Lewis’ 1929 novel—which had already been adapted very successfully for the stage by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Sidney Howard—about a wealthy midwestern industrialist, Sam Dodsworth (Walter Huston), who retires and takes his restless wife (Ruth Chatterton) on a grand tour of Europe, produced by Samuel Goldwyn, and shot by Rudolph Maté, who had previously shot Dreyer’s Vampyr and The Passion of Joan of Arc, Dodsworth was a prestige production par excellence. And...

Very few filmmakers have the distinction of creating a classic on their first effort. But John Huston, one of the greatest screenwriters and directors of the 20th century, did just that in 1941 with “The Maltese Falcon” and went on to create many classics by inventing, reinventing and reinvigorating genres.

Huston was born on August 5, 1906, in Nevada, Missouri. His father was the great actor Walter Huston, and young John developed an interest in the stage at a young age watching his father perform in vaudeville. He was a sickly child with an enlarged heart and kidney ailments but eventually overcame that to drop out of school at the age of 14 to become a professional boxer.

SEEOscar Best Director Gallery: Every Winner In Academy Award History

As a young adult, Huston wrote and sold several short stories, and made his way to Hollywood when “talking pictures” created a demand for writers. He...

Tony Sokol Jul 30, 2019

Western movies, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, wouldn't have been the same without the infamous ranch owned by George Spahn.

Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood attempts to take back stolen potential via the kind of fantasy fulfillment that's made only possible on celluloid. As with the Beatles' song "Helter Skelter," Sharon Tate, and the peace and love generation as a whole, the icons of hope in the 1960s were all tainted by mere association with Charles Manson. None of these needed to be linked to the murderous narcissist. Tate, magnificently captured Margot Robbie in the film, would have continued the rising trajectory of her film and modeling career; "Helter Skelter" would be remembered as the song that invented heavy metal, when it was just Paul McCartney trying to make as much noise on vinyl as possible; peace and Love would...

Veteran William Wellman directed this pre-Code thriller that puts an average New York family at odds with a pack of ruthless gangsters. It’s a 1931 tale of drive-by shootings, witness intimidation and child kidnapping — just one year later, movies about child kidnappings were banned, after the tragedy of the Lindbergh baby. Walter Huston is the rather ruthless District Attorney, and the ex-vaudeville funny man Chic Sale plays an old codger that shows his family what Good Americanism really means — the show could serve as a surly critique of what passes for law and order and good citizenship now.

The Star Witness

DVD

The Warner Archive Collection

1931 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 68 min. / Street Date March 12, 2019 / available through the WBshop / 19.99

Starring: Walter Huston, Charles ‘Chic’ Sale, Frances Starr, Grant Mitchell, Sally Blane, Edward J. Nugent, Dickie Moore, Nat Pendleton, George Ernest, Russell Hopton, Allan Lane.

Cinematography: James Van Trees

Film Editor:...

Great news for fans of Walter Huston! The Star Witness (1931) is currently available on DVD From Warner Archives. Ordering information can be found Here

The Star Witness is a gripping crime thriller by way of courtroom drama in this early talkie directed by cinema titan “Wild Bill” William A. Wellman. The Leeds family have just sat down for dinner with Abby’s father, Civil War veteran Grandpa Summerill (Charles `Chic’ Sale) when shots are fired outside, down the street. Gangster Maxey Campo has gunned down two men in cold blood and he makes his getaway through the Leeds’ family house, assaulting feisty Grandpa along the way. Crusading District Attorney Whitlock (Walter Huston) is elated at first, having an entire family of witnesses ready to do their civic duty and testify against the racketeers running rampant in the city. Maxey, however, isn’t finished with the Leeds and unleashes his forces...

The first 15 years of the Academy Awards were banquet held at various swanky hotels in Los Angeles from the Blossom Room at the Hollywood Roosevelt, the Cocoanut Grove and Fiesta Room at the Ambassador and the Sala D’Doro and the Biltmore Bowl at the Biltmore.

Because the ceremony had grown in attendance and importance, the Oscars finally graduated its 16thyear on March 2, 1944 moving to the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, which then had a capacity of 2,258.

When the ranks of academy members grew two-fold, the Oscars moved to the Shrine Auditorium for the 19thand 20thceremonies. The Shrine was so big-it holds 6,700 seats-the general public was even invited to buy tickets.

But everything changed with the 21stceremony which took place on March 24, 1949. The studio decided to withdraw financial support for the Academy Awards “in order to remove rumors that they had been trying to exert their influence on votes,” explained Robert...

Which actors are the most "Presidential"? To find out, we assembled this exclusive list of actors who have portrayed the President of the United States more than once.

Getting the opportunity to portray a Us President in film is rare. It can be a dignified role, and many times the actor has to be able to exhibit certain qualities we would traditionally associate with the Us head of state. Us Presidents are also depicted in film in a variety of ways. Some of them are the main characters for their respective films, where others are simply bit parts designed to represent the figurehead. Other roles may be satires, caricatures, or played for comedic effect. Regardless of the purpose or the depth of the role, there have been a limited number of Us President roles in the last century+ of motion picture projection.

Of course, some actors are more Presidential than others.

The Oscars often like to keep it in the family. Consider two-time nominee Laura Dern, the daughter of Oscar nominees Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern; Oscar winner Angelina Jolie, the daughter of fellow champ Jon Voight; and those multi-generational Oscar winning Hustons, Fondas and Coppolas. But this year could bring an unusual twist to that story of awards inheritance: John David Washington (“BlacKkKlansman”) could earn a Best Actor nomination 26 years after his dad Denzel Washington was nominated in the same category for “Malcolm X” (1992) — both from the same director, Spike Lee.

It’s not unprecedented for the same filmmaker to direct Oscar nominated performances from the same family. Dern and her mom Ladd actually earned nominations for the same film, “Rambling Rose” (1991) by Martha Coolidge. And the Hustons kept it all in the family: filmmaker John Huston directed his dad Walter Huston to a Best Supporting Actor Oscar win for...

These wartime docu-propaganda films are fascinating, but critic Joseph McBride’s critical accompaniment is even better, nailing the meaning of five groundbreaking works of ‘indoctrination’ and giving us a refreshing revisionist take on one of America’s more revered film directors.

Mr. Capra Goes to War: Frank Capra’s World War II Documentaries

Blu-ray

Prelude to War, The Battle of Russia (1&2), The Negro Soldier, Tunisian Victory, Your Job in Germany

Olive Films

1942-1945 / B&W / 2:35 1:85 widescreen / 1:37 flat Academy / 310 min. / Street Date November 6, 2018 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring: Walter Huston (frequent Narrator).

Introduction and lecture: Joseph McBride

Executive-produced by Frank Capra

I just realized that this is a big year for the film scholar, biographer and critic Joseph McBride. Not only has he an important new book on the shelves, he plays a significant role in front of and behind the scenes in the finally-finished Orson Welles...

10 random things that happened on this day in history as it relates to showbiz (Aug 14th)

1040 King Duncan is killed in battle by an army led by his cousin Macbeth, which will all later be rewritten by William Shakespeare as altogethier plottier and magically damning. Macbeth hasn't been transferred to cinema as much of some other Shakespearean tragedies which is Totally fine because no one will ever top Kurosawa's Throne of Blood anyway.

1851 Outlaw Doc Holliday born in Georgia. The gambler / dentist / gunfighter / tuberculosis-victim has made for quite a scenery-chewing role for famous actors over the years, including Cesar Romero, Walter Huston, Kirk Douglas, Arhtur Kennedy, Adam West, Martin Landau, Jason Robards, Stacy Keach, Willie Nelson, Dennis Quaid, and Val Kilmer.

1928 Lina Wertmuller born in Rome. She'll become the first woman ever nominated for a directing Oscar when she's 48 years old for the masterpiece Seven Beauties. 

1939 Oscar's first Best Actress,...

Before Vincent Price haunted houses, he chalked up plenty of experience as a Broadway star and a versatile character actor. This superb Joseph L. Mankiewicz gothic romance assigns him major leading man duty as a ‘dark and troubled’ soul — the kind that intimidates cowering leading ladies. With typical good humor, Price called it the first of his ‘dead wife’ movies!

Dragonwyck

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1946 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 103 min. / Street Date , 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, Vincent Price, Glenn Langan, Anne Revere, Spring Byington, Connie Marshall, Harry Morgan, Vivienne Osborne, Jessica Tandy, Trudy Marshall, Reinhold Schünzel, Grady Sutton.

Cinematography: Arthur C. Miller

Film Editor: Dorothy Spencer

Original Music: Alfred Newman

From the novel by Anya Seton

Produced by Ernst Lubitsch, Darryl F. Zanuck

Written for the screen and Directed by Joseph H. Mankiewicz

You’d have to say that Vincent Price’s film...

Louise Brooks once said that the movies were invented to enable rich men to own desirable women. The Outlaw is the stuff of legend less for itself than for Howard Hughes’ creation of the sex star Jane Russell, and his battle with the censors and Hollywood itself. We’ve always gotten the impression that nobody has told the full story behind Hughes, Russell and this ultra-hyped notorious western.

The Outlaw

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1943 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 116 min. / Street Date February 27, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Jack Buetel, Jane Russell, Walter Huston, Thomas Mitchell, Mimi Aguglia, Joe Sawyer, Ben Johnson, Emory Parnell.

Cinematography: Gregg Toland

Film Editor: Wallace Grissell

Original Music: Victor Young

Written by Jules Furthman

Produced by Howard Hughes

Directed by Howard Hughes, Howard Hawks

“How’d you like to tussle with Russell?”

The most notorious film title in the censor debate of the 1940s is Howard Hughes’ The Outlaw,...

“I think I’ll go to sleep and dream about piles of gold getting bigger and bigger and bigger.”

There are few pleasures greater for a movie fan than seeing classic movies in a theater and on the big screen, where they belong — and in 2018, Fathom Events and Turner Classic Movies are presenting 13 cinematic greats in theaters nationwide in the 2018 TCM Big Screen Classics Series.

The corrosive power of greed mixes with high adventure in the explosive movie classic The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which will thrill movie lovers when it kicks off the 2018 TCM Big Screen Classics series on Sunday, January 14, and Tuesday, January 16.

From Fathom Events and Turner Classic Movies, the series presents 13 extraordinary cinema milestones throughout 2018, each playing in hundreds of theaters across the country. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, celebrating its 70th anniversary, launches the series. Director John Huston’s unforgettable drama follows desperate prospectors (Humphrey Bogart,...