‘Midnight Madness’ movie lacks both ‘midnight’ and ‘madness’ (photo: Clive Brook and Jacqueline Logan in ‘Midnight Madness’) Screened at the 2014 San Francisco Silent Film Festival, Midnight Madness has a very curious title: there is no "midnight" or "madness" to be found in the film. The story’s original name, The Lion Trap, from a play by Daniel Nathan Rubin, would have been a much more appropriate title. Norma (Jacqueline Logan, best known as Mary Magdalene in Cecil B. DeMille’s The King of Kings) lives in a squalid apartment behind a shooting gallery, with her good-for-nothing father (James Bradbury). She goes to work each day as a secretary at a Diamond Broker Company, looking forward to romantic trysts with her boss, Childers (Walter McGrail). Norma takes the relationship seriously, but Childers is a schemer. When wealthy client Richard Bream (Clive Brook, best known for the Best Picture Academy Award winner...
- 8/11/2014
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
Jim Knipfel Jul 3, 2019
Happy 4th of July! You know how "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel?" These movies may seem patriotic, but have darker messages.
Patriotism is a funny animal, if only because no one can ever agree on what it means, exactly. Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin felt those citizens who questioned and rebeled against an intrusive government were the truest of patriots, while only a few years later John Adams outlawed badmouthing the government. Was Joe McCarthy a patriot for trying to defend the democracy against subversive encroaching communism, or a sweaty, paranoid, power-mad psychotic? Is Edward Snowden a patriot for letting the American people know what their government was up to, or history’s greatest traitor for revealing Us intelligence secrets to the whole world?
Well, you get the idea.
Still, for filmmakers patriotism has always been an easy card to play, and a sure-fire crowd pleaser.
Happy 4th of July! You know how "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel?" These movies may seem patriotic, but have darker messages.
Patriotism is a funny animal, if only because no one can ever agree on what it means, exactly. Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin felt those citizens who questioned and rebeled against an intrusive government were the truest of patriots, while only a few years later John Adams outlawed badmouthing the government. Was Joe McCarthy a patriot for trying to defend the democracy against subversive encroaching communism, or a sweaty, paranoid, power-mad psychotic? Is Edward Snowden a patriot for letting the American people know what their government was up to, or history’s greatest traitor for revealing Us intelligence secrets to the whole world?
Well, you get the idea.
Still, for filmmakers patriotism has always been an easy card to play, and a sure-fire crowd pleaser.
- 6/30/2014
- Den of Geek
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