Raymond Massey ca. 1940. Raymond Massey movies: From Lincoln to Boris Karloff Though hardly remembered today, the Toronto-born Raymond Massey was a top supporting player – and sometime lead – in both British and American movies from the early '30s all the way to the early '60s. During that period, Massey was featured in nearly 50 films. Turner Classic Movies generally selects the same old MGM / Rko / Warner Bros. stars for its annual “Summer Under the Stars” series. For that reason, it's great to see someone like Raymond Massey – who was with Warners in the '40s – be the focus of a whole day: Sat., Aug. 8, '15. (See TCM's Raymond Massey movie schedule further below.) Admittedly, despite his prestige – his stage credits included the title role in the short-lived 1931 Broadway production of Hamlet – the quality of Massey's performances varied wildly. Sometimes he could be quite effective; most of the time, however, he was an unabashed scenery chewer,...
- 8/8/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Young & Innocent
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Starring Derrick De Marney, Nova Pilbeam, George Curzon
It is a matter of uncertain serendipity that my first film of the BFI’s Hitchcock season happened to be Young & Innocent, reputedly Hitch’s favourite of his British pictures, now widely considered as the first cohesion of style and substance that displays many of his subsequent iconic motifs and iconography - the incorrectly accused protagonist, the urgent romance, a dash of macabre humor, and of course the intangible plot driver or manipulative McGuffin. If you can parse Hitchcock’s long and exalted career into three core sections – the early silents as the art form’s grammar and genre definitions took shape, the British talkies where Hitch was on the vanguard on a new phase of cinema’s technological transition and the Hollywood era which from 1940 until his death in 1980 marks one of the longest, most...
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Starring Derrick De Marney, Nova Pilbeam, George Curzon
It is a matter of uncertain serendipity that my first film of the BFI’s Hitchcock season happened to be Young & Innocent, reputedly Hitch’s favourite of his British pictures, now widely considered as the first cohesion of style and substance that displays many of his subsequent iconic motifs and iconography - the incorrectly accused protagonist, the urgent romance, a dash of macabre humor, and of course the intangible plot driver or manipulative McGuffin. If you can parse Hitchcock’s long and exalted career into three core sections – the early silents as the art form’s grammar and genre definitions took shape, the British talkies where Hitch was on the vanguard on a new phase of cinema’s technological transition and the Hollywood era which from 1940 until his death in 1980 marks one of the longest, most...
- 8/18/2012
- by John
- SoundOnSight
British-born film star known for her roles in Great Expectations and Spartacus
Jean Simmons, who has died aged 80, had a bounteous moment, early in her career, when she seemed the likely casting for every exotic or magical female role. It passed, as she got out of her teens, but then for the best part of 15 years, in Britain and America, she was a valued actress whose generally proper, if not patrician, manner had an intriguing way of conflicting with her large, saucy eyes and a mouth that began to turn up at the corners as she imagined mischief – or more than her movies had in their scripts. Even in the age of Vivien Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor, she was an authentic beauty. And there were always hints that the lady might be very sexy. But nothing worked out smoothly, and it is somehow typical of Simmons that her most astonishing...
Jean Simmons, who has died aged 80, had a bounteous moment, early in her career, when she seemed the likely casting for every exotic or magical female role. It passed, as she got out of her teens, but then for the best part of 15 years, in Britain and America, she was a valued actress whose generally proper, if not patrician, manner had an intriguing way of conflicting with her large, saucy eyes and a mouth that began to turn up at the corners as she imagined mischief – or more than her movies had in their scripts. Even in the age of Vivien Leigh and Elizabeth Taylor, she was an authentic beauty. And there were always hints that the lady might be very sexy. But nothing worked out smoothly, and it is somehow typical of Simmons that her most astonishing...
- 1/24/2010
- by David Thomson
- The Guardian - Film News
Dame May Whitty, Margaret Lockwood, Michael Redgrave in The Lady Vanishes (top); Robert Donat in The 39 Steps (bottom) On Nov. 27-28, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art will present the last four films in its "Hitchcock: The British Thrillers" series. They are: The 39 Steps (1935), starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll; Number 17 (1932), featuring the now-forgotten John Stuart and Anne Grey; The Lady Vanishes (1938), starring Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood, Dame May Whitty, and a cast of first-rate supporting players, including future Oscar winner Paul Lukas; Young and Innocent (1937), with Nova Pilbeam and Derrick De Marney. The 39 Steps is the film that turned Alfred Hitchcock into an internationally acclaimed filmmaker. The film goes from one situation [...]...
- 11/27/2009
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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