SHADOWLAND
The emotional otherworlds of classic cinema. Unspooling the ribbon of dreams every Sunday afternoon.
Films in this Series
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
139 MINUTES
In Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s devastatingly witty Hollywood classic ALL ABOUT EVE, backstage is where the real drama plays out. One night, Margo Channing (Bette Davis) entertains a surprise dressing-room visitor: her most adoring fan, the shy, wide-eyed Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter). But as Eve becomes a fixture in Margo’s life, the Broadway legend soon realizes that her supposed admirer intends to use her and everyone in her circle, including George Sanders’s acid-tongued critic, as stepping-stones to stardom. Featuring stiletto-sharp dialogue and direction by Mankiewicz, and an unforgettable Davis in the role that revived her career and came to define it, the multiple-Oscar-winning ALL ABOUT EVE is the most deliciously entertaining film ever made about the ruthlessness of show business.
"ALL ABOUT EVE is probably the wittiest, most devastating, motion picture ever made that had anything to do with the New York stage...a crackling, sparkling, brilliantly written and magnificently acted commentary on the legitimate theater." — New York Morning Telegraph
"ALL ABOUT EVE is probably the wittiest, most devastating, motion picture ever made that had anything to do with the New York stage...a crackling, sparkling, brilliantly written and magnificently acted commentary on the legitimate theater." — New York Morning Telegraph
Robert Aldrich
135 MINUTES
"The best time I ever had with Joan Crawford was when I pushed her down the stairs in WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?" — Bette Davis
A poison-pen letter to Tinseltown that makes SUNSET BOULEVARD look like a love note, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? locks viewers into the decrepit Hancock Park mansion with the Hudson sisters, former child actress Jane (Bette Davis) and her wheelchair-bound sister, Blanche (Joan Crawford), whose own stardom was cut short by a freak “accident.” Pungent Gothic atmospherics and the duet performances of two divas who violently detested one another make for a camp cult classic and one of Aldrich’s biggest hits.
A poison-pen letter to Tinseltown that makes SUNSET BOULEVARD look like a love note, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? locks viewers into the decrepit Hancock Park mansion with the Hudson sisters, former child actress Jane (Bette Davis) and her wheelchair-bound sister, Blanche (Joan Crawford), whose own stardom was cut short by a freak “accident.” Pungent Gothic atmospherics and the duet performances of two divas who violently detested one another make for a camp cult classic and one of Aldrich’s biggest hits.
John Cassavetes
144 minutes
While in the midst of rehearsals for her latest play, Broadway actor Myrtle Gordon (Gena Rowlands) witnesses the accidental death of an adoring young fan, after which she begins to confront the chaos of her own life. Headlined by a virtuoso performance by Rowlands, John Cassavetes’s OPENING NIGHT lays bare the drama of a performer who, at great personal cost, makes a part her own, and it functions as a metaphor for the director’s singular, wrenched-from-the-heart creative method.
Frank Capra
118 minutes
Frank Capra adapted a hit stage play for this marvelous screwball meeting of the madcap and the macabre, ARSENIC AND OLD LACE. On Halloween, newly married drama critic Mortimer Brewster (Cary Grant, cutting loose in a hilariously harried performance) returns home to Brooklyn, where his adorably dotty aunts (Josephine Hull and Jean Adair, who both starred in the Broadway production) greet him with love, sweetness . . . and a grisly surprise: the corpses buried in their cellar. A bugle-playing brother who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, a crazed criminal who’s a dead ringer for Boris Karloff, and a seriously slippery plastic surgeon are among the outré oddballs populating ARSENIC AND OLD LACE, a diabolical delight that only gets funnier as the body count rises.
Victor Sjöström
107 minutes
The last person to die on New Year’s Eve before the clock strikes twelve is doomed to take the reins of Death’s chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year. So says the legend that drives THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE, directed by the father of Swedish cinema, Victor Sjöström. The story, based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, concerns an alcoholic, abusive ne’er-do-well (Sjöström himself) who is shown the error of his ways, and the pure-of-heart Salvation Army sister who believes in his redemption. This extraordinarily rich and innovative silent classic (which inspired Ingmar Bergman to make movies) is a Dickensian ghost story and a deeply moving morality tale, as well as a showcase for groundbreaking special effects.
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
104 minutes
“Of all the arts, cinema is the most oneiric, they say. But in THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR, oneirism is the element.” - Rita Azevedo
Mankiewicz's enchanting first masterpiece tells the tale of a young widow who boldly defies social conventions by abandoning turn-of-the-century London to live in a remote coastal cottage haunted by a dashing and embittered ghost. A rich evocation of mourning and melancholia, THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR echoes Virginia Woolf with its embrace of death as a tender life-giving force, its fascination with the ocean and its focus on a woman struggling to find her voice. Overlooked as a milestone feminist film, THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR combines its poetic exploration of female authorship and imagination with a gently comic satire of rigid patriarchy. The film's romantic strains resonate in Bernard Herrmann's lovely score and Rex Harrison's poignant and understated performance as the phantom sea captain.
Mankiewicz's enchanting first masterpiece tells the tale of a young widow who boldly defies social conventions by abandoning turn-of-the-century London to live in a remote coastal cottage haunted by a dashing and embittered ghost. A rich evocation of mourning and melancholia, THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR echoes Virginia Woolf with its embrace of death as a tender life-giving force, its fascination with the ocean and its focus on a woman struggling to find her voice. Overlooked as a milestone feminist film, THE GHOST AND MRS. MUIR combines its poetic exploration of female authorship and imagination with a gently comic satire of rigid patriarchy. The film's romantic strains resonate in Bernard Herrmann's lovely score and Rex Harrison's poignant and understated performance as the phantom sea captain.
James Whale
70 minutes
Carl Laemmle Jr., appointed head of production at Universal by his father in 1928, had ambitious plans to upgrade feature output and compete for the prestige market. By 1931, consigned to smaller budgets, but having scored a surprise hit with the sensationally popular (and economically-produced) DRACULA, “Junior” began preparing FRANKENSTEIN as a follow-up.
Screenwriters Garrett Fort and Francis Edward Faragoh adapted Peggy Webling’s British stage version of Mary Shelley’s story but managed to crystallize the novel’s essential themes and emotions. From their economical narrative, director James Whale, new to horror, summoned an exquisitely pitched story to quicken the blood. From its chilling opening images of grave-robbing to its hyper-electrified creation scene (still a jarring spectacle of design and theatrics) to the climactic confrontation between the monster and his maker, FRANKENSTEIN peddled passion: that of a scientific genius longing to play god, and of his unfortunate, synthetic creation, reaching out for beauty, tenderness and ultimately, revenge. As portrayed by fiery Colin Clive and icy Karloff, these passions prove so much more interesting than the moral hand-wringing of Frankenstein's fiancée (Mae Clarke), best friend (John Boles) and teacher (Edward Van Sloan), it is hard not to sympathize with both genius and monster.
Nay-sayers at Universal worried that audiences might recoil from the macabre story of a man created from cadavers; the film actually opens with a spoken prologue by character actor Van Sloan, inviting audiences to think twice before subjecting their nerves to “such a strain.” Audiences, however, responded with the same enthusiasm that met DRACULA the season before, vindicating “Junior” Laemmle, creating a permanent icon in the misshapen monster and a star of Boris Karloff, as well as solidifying Universal’s predominance in, and commitment to, the horror genre. —Shannon Kelley
Screenwriters Garrett Fort and Francis Edward Faragoh adapted Peggy Webling’s British stage version of Mary Shelley’s story but managed to crystallize the novel’s essential themes and emotions. From their economical narrative, director James Whale, new to horror, summoned an exquisitely pitched story to quicken the blood. From its chilling opening images of grave-robbing to its hyper-electrified creation scene (still a jarring spectacle of design and theatrics) to the climactic confrontation between the monster and his maker, FRANKENSTEIN peddled passion: that of a scientific genius longing to play god, and of his unfortunate, synthetic creation, reaching out for beauty, tenderness and ultimately, revenge. As portrayed by fiery Colin Clive and icy Karloff, these passions prove so much more interesting than the moral hand-wringing of Frankenstein's fiancée (Mae Clarke), best friend (John Boles) and teacher (Edward Van Sloan), it is hard not to sympathize with both genius and monster.
Nay-sayers at Universal worried that audiences might recoil from the macabre story of a man created from cadavers; the film actually opens with a spoken prologue by character actor Van Sloan, inviting audiences to think twice before subjecting their nerves to “such a strain.” Audiences, however, responded with the same enthusiasm that met DRACULA the season before, vindicating “Junior” Laemmle, creating a permanent icon in the misshapen monster and a star of Boris Karloff, as well as solidifying Universal’s predominance in, and commitment to, the horror genre. —Shannon Kelley
Alfred Hitchcock
129 MINUTES
Hitchcock’s grand enigma VERTIGO is a tantalizing spiral into the abyss. The film follows Scottie Ferguson, an ex-police detective in forced retirement after his last case ended in a tragic death, as he is enlisted as a private investigator to keep an eye on an old friend’s wife. Following Madeline, he is drawn into a sprawling riddle of love and death, from which he may never emerge. This is Hitchcock’s most profound and troubling exploration of his persistent themes: doppelgängers and duality, obsession, women trapped by deceit and the inexorable destructiveness of male desire. A cinematic masterpiece, VERTIGO retains its power as a perplexing and harrowing nightmare.
“One of the landmarks—not merely of the movies, but of 20th-century art. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film extends the theme of REAR WINDOW—the relationship of creator and creation—into the realm of love and sexuality. The famous motif of the fall becomes not a satanic fall from grace, but a modernist fall into the image, into the artwork—a total absorption of the creator by his creation, which in the end is shown as synonymous with death. But a thematic analysis can only scratch the surface of this extraordinarily dense and commanding film, perhaps the most intensely personal movie to emerge from the Hollywood cinema.” – Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
“One of the landmarks—not merely of the movies, but of 20th-century art. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film extends the theme of REAR WINDOW—the relationship of creator and creation—into the realm of love and sexuality. The famous motif of the fall becomes not a satanic fall from grace, but a modernist fall into the image, into the artwork—a total absorption of the creator by his creation, which in the end is shown as synonymous with death. But a thematic analysis can only scratch the surface of this extraordinarily dense and commanding film, perhaps the most intensely personal movie to emerge from the Hollywood cinema.” – Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader
Leo McCarey
68 minutes
The greatest of all the Marx Brothers’ films, DUCK SOUP masks its trenchant satire on fascism and war in a cloak of hilarious sight gags and clever repartee. Set in the tiny country of Freedonia (Land of the Spree and Home of the Knave), the film brings together Groucho as newly appointed president Rufus T. Firefly, Harpo and Chico as enemy spies, and Zeppo as a tenor.
Director Leo McCarey's experience working with all manner of comedian and his comfort with improvisation both served him well when it came to directing the anarchic brothers. Patriotism, religion, diplomacy, courtroom justice, and general matters of state are incisively ridiculed in one of the funniest movies ever to emerge from the studio system. YOU WILL LAUGH.
- Tom Huddleston, Time Out
Director Leo McCarey's experience working with all manner of comedian and his comfort with improvisation both served him well when it came to directing the anarchic brothers. Patriotism, religion, diplomacy, courtroom justice, and general matters of state are incisively ridiculed in one of the funniest movies ever to emerge from the studio system. YOU WILL LAUGH.
