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In 1934, the inimitable Bette Davis appeared in a film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's "Of Human Bondage," a semi-autobiographical novel about the unfortunate loves of one Philip Carey. The 1934 film was directed by the prolific John Cromwell and starred Leslie Howard as Philip. Davis played Mildred Rogers, a tearoom waitress that Philip falls in love with, but who treats him with the utmost cruelty. It was a great role for Davis, who was only 26 at the time. 

An article in Collider points out that Davis was under contract with Warner Bros. at the time, but really, really wanted to play the part of Mildred, knowing that it was a juicy role. "Of Human Bondage" was being produced by Rko, and Davis would need WB's Jack Warner to loan her talents to Rko to work on the project. Davis...

The dust still hasn’t settled on the 96th annual Academy Award nominations due to the uproar over the “Barbie” snubs for Best Actress for Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig for Best Director. They still earned Oscar nominations for the cultural phenomena that was the No. 1 film of 2023 with an international box office of $1.4 billion. Robbie and Gerwig received noms as producer for the Best Picture nominee and Gerwig also was garnered a nomination for co-writing the adapted screenplay. But the film is about female empowerment, so it’s beyond ironic it was Ken (Ryan Gosling), not Barbie, who received Oscar recognition.

Gosling wasn’t happy: “Against all odds with nothing but a couple of soulless, scantily clad, and thankfully crotchless dolls, made us laugh, they broke our hearts, they pushed the culture and made history. Their work should be recognized along with the other very deserving nominees.”

America Ferrera,...

A Midsummer Night's Dream won Best Cinematography as a write-in at the 8th Academy Awards in 1936. Hal Mohr was honored by the Academy for his work in cinematography through a unique voting campaign. However, the Academy no longer allows write-in votes due to concerns about manipulations of the voting system.

It is considered an honor to win at the Oscars, but 88 years ago, one person managed to win the prestigious award without receiving a nomination. For a brief time during the early years of the award ceremony, the Academy initiated a new system of voting after receiving controversy for ignoring certain performances for nominations. One film involved in this unique voting system was the 1935 film, A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Adapted from the play by William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream looks at the adventures of four young lovers and a troupe of actors who find themselves in a forest inhabited by fairies.

For the vast majority of its 95-year history, the Academy Awards has banned write-in voting. In the modern era, fans and industry insiders alike occasionally propose write-in campaigns for movies and creators snubbed by the nomination process, despite the fact that it's outlawed in the official voting rules. But for a brief period from 1935 to 1936, the Academy did allow write-in votes, and one person actually won as a write-in. Cinematographer Hal Mohr took home an Oscar for A Midsummer Night's Dream in 1936 — and he has Bette Davis' 1935 snub to thank for it.

Good news for those who wish to know what their Twitter feed’s jacking off to: the Criterion Channel are launching an erotic thriller series that includes De Palma’s Dressed to Kill and Body Double, the Wachowskis’ Bound, and so many other movies to stir up that ceaseless, fruitless “why do movies have sex scenes?” discourse. (Better or worse than middle-age film critics implying they have a hard-on? I’m so indignant at being forced to choose.) Similarly lurid, if not a bit more frightening, is a David Lynch retro that includes the Criterion editions of Lost Highway and Inland Empire (about which I spoke to Lynch last year), a series of shorts, and a one-month-only engagement for Dune, a film that should be there in perpetuity.

Retrospectives of Harold Lloyd, Rohmer’s Tales of the Four Seasons, and shorts by Fanta Régina Nacro round out the big debuts,...

One of the many, many, many problems with the Academy Awards is that with only five nominees in each category — and even with 10 nominees for Best Picture — there's always at least one worthy artist or movie that doesn't get recognized.

In the industry we call these "snubs," and it's a somewhat loaded term that suggests the Oscar voters are deciding, intentionally, not to honor certain filmmakers and their films. While that's certainly a possibility, and there's no denying that the Academy members are human beings full of conscious and unconscious biases, it's also true that in a year full of great artistry in a variety of cinematic fields, at least one person who did amazing work was destined to get left off the ballot, and it's always a real downer for the artist and their fans.

But what if being left off the ballot wasn't the end of their story?...

We love this Fritz Lang western even though it’s not particularly good; only in hindsight do we realize that the brilliant director’s intentions may have been compromised. High-key lighting does Marlene Dietrich no favors, but she scores good scenes performing with Arthur Kennedy (revenged crazed cowpoke) and Mel Ferrer (tranquilized gunslinger). Lang fans will be impressed by the gaudy, over-bright restored Technicolor, and we can always blame Howard Hughes.

Rancho Notorious

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1952 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 89 min. / Available at Amazon.com / General site Wac-Amazon / Street Date January 10, 2023 / 21.99

Starring: Marlene Dietrich, Arthur Kennedy, Mel Ferrer, Lloyd Gough, William Frawley, Jack Elam, George Reeves, Frank Ferguson, Dan Seymour, John Doucette, Dick Elliott, Russell Johnson, Charlita.

Cinematography: Hal Mohr

Production Designer: Wiard Ihnen

Dietrich’s wardrobe designed by: Don Loper

Editorial Supervisor: Otto Ludwig

Original Music: Emil Newman

Written by Daniel Taradash, Silvia Richards

Produced by Howard Welsch

Directed...

Kino’s Noir boxes offer interesting noir-adjacent crime and mystery pix. This seventh return to the well of darkness brings up the organized crime ‘meller’ Chicago Confidential with Brian Keith and the more ambitious The Boss, starring John Payne and written by Dalton Trumbo. The third show The Fearmakers is a real oddity. Starring Dana Andrews and directed by Jacques Tourneur, it’s a political conspiracy tale about manipulating opinions with fraudulent polls. It sounds a lot like the fractured state of modern America, 65 years later. With commentaries by Jason A. Ney and Alan K. Rode.

Film Noir the Dark Side of Cinema VII

The Boss, Chicago Confidential, The Fearmakers

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1956-1958 / B&w / Street Date June 7, 2022 / 249 min. / available through Kino Lorber / 49.95

Starring: John Payne, Gloria McGehee, Brian Keith, Beverly Garland, Dana Andrews, Marilee Earle.

Directed by Byron Haskin, Sidney Salkow, Jacques Tourneur

Kino treads the dark...

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It would be very difficult to love movies without appreciating great cinematography. Few things are more thrilling than watching a breathtaking shot on the big screen. Great directors of photography can use images to elicit emotions that the written word could never reach. But how much do you actually know about the craft? “The cinematography was incredible” has to be one of the most common phrases to overhear as you exit a movie theater, but oftentimes the discussion ends there. We might know what an incredible shot looks like, but an understanding of the artistry that goes into it often evades us. Cinematography is an extremely complex subject, but fortunately there are many...

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By John M. Whalen

There’s an old axiom often quoted by writers that once you find a winning formula for putting stories together, stick with it. That certainly must have been the case back in the 1940s when the films collected together by Kino Lorber for its “Western Classics I” three disc box set were made. “When the Daltons Rode” (1940), “The Virginian” (1946), and “Whispering Smith” (1948) are all different movies, made by different writers and directors, with different settings, characters and plots, but when all is said and done they all basically tell the same story. Two guys who are pals have their friendship strained when they both fall in love with the same woman. It’s obviously a formula that worked.

In “When the Dalton’s Rode,” Tod Jackson (Randolph Scott) is a lawyer who comes west to set up his practice in Oklahoma,...

Destry Rides Again

Blu ray

Criterion

1939 / 1.33:1/ 95 min.

Starring Marlene Dietrich, James Stewart

Cinematography by Hal Mohr

Directed by George Marshall

America’s favorite boy next door meets the Weimar Republic’s preeminent vamp in George Marshall’s Destry Rides Again. James Stewart plays Tom Destry, the self-effacing straight-shooter who cleans up a lawless backwater burg without firing a shot – almost. Marlene Dietrich is Frenchy, a world-weary chanteuse who rules the roost at the town’s only waterhole, the Last Chance saloon. Their relationship is more heated than the volatile town itself but after the final punch is thrown their bond is deeper than any typical Hollywood romance.

Marshall’s comic horse opera was released by Universal in 1939 and like so many of that studio’s horror films of the era, it opens with a slow pan over a moonlit graveyard with more than its fair share of tombstones. Instead...

Mill Creek and Kit Parker have raided the Columbia vault once again in search of Noir Gold from the ‘fifties. Their selection this time around has a couple of prime gems, several straight crime thrillers and domestic jeopardy tales, and also a couple of interesting Brit imports. They aren’t really ‘Noir’ either, but they’re still unexpected and different. The top title is Don Siegel’s incomparable The Lineup, but also on board is a snappy anti-commie epic by André De Toth. Get set for a lineup of impressive leading ladies: Diana Dors, Arlene Dahl, Anita Ekberg — and the great Colleen Dewhurst as a card-carrying Red!

Noir Archive 9-Film Collection Volume 3

The Shadow on the Window, The Long Haul, Pickup Alley, The Tijuana Story, She Played with Fire, The Case Against Brooklyn, The Lineup, The Crimson Kimono, Man on a String

Blu-ray

Mill Creek / Kit Parker

1957 -1960 / B&w...

Sam Fuller turns the crime film inside-out with this tale of on infiltrator taking down the syndicate. Vengeful Cliff Robertson uses both the mob and the cops to wipe out the hoods that killed his dad, with the help of two women, one of them a hooker with a heart of gold. The show feels like a ’30s throwback with a precociously violent streak, spiked with a healthy helping of what the critics would call Fuller’s ‘Cinema Fist.’

Underworld U.S.A.

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1961 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 98 min. / Street Date March 20, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Cliff Robertson, Dolores Dorn, Beatrice Kay, Paul Dubov, Robert Emhardt, Larry Gates, Richard Rust, Gerald Milton, Neyle Morrow, Peter Brocco, Bernie Hamilton.

Cinematography: Hal Mohr

Film Editor: Jerome Thoms

Original Music: Harry Sukman

Written, Produced and Directed by Samuel Fuller

Samuel Fuller’s successes with distributor-producer Robert Lippert...

Make room for a genuine rarity, come back from the cinema graveyard in excellent condition: a lavish color musical extravaganza from 1930 that’s been effectively Mia for generations. Universal undertook a daunting restoration of this ‘revue-‘ style spectacle, which includes a full presentation of George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in its original orchestration.

King of Jazz

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 915

1930 / Color / 1:33 flat full frame / 98 105 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 27, 2018 / 39.95

Starring: Paul Whiteman, John Boles, Bing Crosby (unbilled),

Laura La Plante, Jeanette Loff, Glenn Tryon, Wiliam Kent, Slim Summerville, The Rhythm Boys, Kathryn Crawford, Beth Laemmle, Stanley Smith, Charles Irwin, George Chiles, Jack White, Frank Leslie, Walter Brennan, Churchill Ross, Johnson Arledge, Al Norman, Jacques Cartier, Paul Howard, Nell O’Day, The Tommy Atkins Sextette, Marion Stadler, Don Rose, The Russell Markert Girls.

Cinematography: Hal Mohr, Jerry Ash, Ray Rennahan

Film Editor: Maurice Pivar, Robert Carlisle...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: This past weekend saw the release of “Mute” and “Annihilation,” two original science-fiction movies that were made on studio budgets (an increasingly rare breed). With that in mind, what is the best sci-fi movie that most people haven’t seen?

Candice Frederick (@ReelTalker), Freelance for Vice, /Film, Thrillist, and more

“Advantageous.” Jennifer Phang directed this amazing sci-fi drama that centers Gwen, an Asian-American mother (Jacqueline Kim, who’s also the co-writer of the film) who has to come to terms with her “advanced” age in a youth-obsessed society. She has to resort to drastic and untraditional measures in order to ensure that her young daughter...

This past weekend, the American Society of Cinematographers awarded Greig Fraser for his contribution to Lion as last year’s greatest accomplishment in the field. Of course, his achievement was just a small sampling of the fantastic work from directors of photography, but it did give us a stronger hint at what may be the winner on Oscar night. Ahead of the ceremony, we have a new video compilation that honors all the past winners in the category at the Academy Awards

Created by Burger Fiction, it spans the stunning silent landmark Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans all the way up to the end of Emmanuel Lubezki‘s three-peat win for The Revenant. Aside from the advancements in color and aspect ration, it’s a thrill to see some of cinema’s most iconic shots side-by-side. However, the best way to experience the evolution of the craft is by...

The restoration of a newly rediscovered director’s cut of the 1931 The Front Page prompts this two-feature comedy disc — Lewis Milestone’s early talkie plus the sublime Howard Hawks remake, which plays a major gender switch on the main characters of Hecht & MacArthur’s original play.

His Girl Friday / The Front Page

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 849

Available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date January 10, 2017 / 39.96

His Girl Friday:

1940 / B&W /1:37 flat Academy / 92 min.

Starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell, Ralph Bellamy, Gene Lockhart, Porter Hall, Ernest Truex, Cliff Edwards, Clarence Kolb, Roscoe Karns, Frank Jenks, Regis Toomey, Abner Biberman, Frank Orth, John Qualen, Helen Mack, Alma Kruger, Billy Gilbert, Marion Martin.

Cinematography Joseph Walker

Film Editor Gene Havelick

Original Music Sidney Cutner, Felix Mills

Written by Charles Lederer from the play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur

Produced and Directed by Howard Hawks

The Front Page:...

There are two major sides to the film noir coin, as I see it – the psychological and the practical. Now, the practical noir is fairly straightforward; maybe a detective has to solve a crime, or someone gets themselves in over their head with some scheme gone wrong. There’s a problem to be solved, and the protagonist either overcomes or becomes consumed by it. Double Indemnity, Where the Sidewalk Ends, Night and the City, The Killing, and The Maltese Falcon fit into this section rather well. The psychological noir uses genre tropes to investigate someone’s soul, usually stemming from their nearness to sin and death. Scarlet Street, Laura, Female on the Beach, The Chase, Sunset Boulevard, and Kiss Me Deadly fit the bill. Obviously films in each use elements of the other to shade the characters or move the story along, but the texture and flavor is notably distinct,...

What in the world -- an A + top-rank film noir gem hiding under the radar, and rescued (most literally) by the Film Noir Foundation. Ann Sheridan and Dennis O'Keefe trade dialogue as good as any in a film from 1950 -- it's a thriller with a cynical worldview yet a sentimental personal outlook. Woman on the Run Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley / FIlm Noir Foundation 1950 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 79 min. / Street Date May 17, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Ann Sheridan, Dennis O'Keefe, Robert Keith, John Qualen, Frank Jenks, Ross Elliott, Jane Liddell, Joan Fulton, J. Farrell MacDonald, Steven Geray, Victor Sen Yung, Reiko Sato. Cinematography Hal Mohr Art Direction Boris Leven Film Editor Otto Ludwig Original Music Arthur Lange, Emil Newman Written by Alan Campbell, Norman Foster, Sylvia Tate Produced by Howard Welsch, Ann Sheridan Directed by Norman Foster

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Amazing! Just when one thinks one won't see another top-rank film noir, the...

By winning the Best Cinematography Oscar for a second year in a row, "Birdman" director of photography Emmanuel Lubezki has joined a truly elite club whose ranks haven't been breached in nearly two decades. Only four other cinematographers have won the prize in two consecutive years. The last time it happened was in 1994 and 1995, when John Toll won for Edward Zwick's "Legends of the Fall" and Mel Gibson's "Braveheart" respectively. Before that you have to go all the way back to the late '40s, when Winton Hoch won in 1948 (Victor Fleming's "Joan of Arc" with Ingrid Bergman) and 1949 (John Ford's western "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon"). Both victories came in the color category, as the Academy awarded prizes separately for black-and-white and color photography from 1939 to 1956. Leon Shamroy also won back-to-back color cinematography Oscars, for Henry King's 1944 Woodrow Wilson biopic "Wilson" and John M. Stahl...

Today on Trailers from Hell, Josh Olson takes a look at Don Siegel's savage 1958 thriller "The Lineup," the big screen adaptation of the 1950s TV series starring Warner Anderson. Warner Anderson, star of the long-running early fifties TV show "The Lineup," repeated his role in 1958's big screen version but the real stars of director Don Siegel's brutal thriller were Eli Wallach and Robert Keith as a pair of sociopathic crooks and, of course, Siegel himself who masterminded several lethal set pieces including the hair-raising climax (involving a chase on an unfinished freeway). Seasoned TV writer Stirling Silliphant ("Route 66," "Naked City") was responsible for the screenplay and cinematographer Hal Mohr ("The Wild One," "Destry Rides Again") lensed the appropriately gritty black and white San Francisco landscapes.

Warner Anderson, star of the long-running early fifties TV show The Lineup, repeated his role in 1958's big screen version but the real stars of director Don Siegel's brutal thriller were Eli Wallach and Robert Keith as a pair of sociopathic crooks and, of course, Siegel himself who masterminded several lethal set pieces including the hair-raising climax (involving a chase on an unfinished freeway). Seasoned TV writer Stirling Silliphant (Route 66, Naked City) was responsible for the screenplay and cinematographer Hal Mohr (The Wild One, Destry Rides Again) lensed the appropriately gritty black and white San Francisco landscapes.

The post The Lineup appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

David Robb contributed to this story. Second in a series. Related: The Death Of Sarah Jones: Safety Concerns Raised Over ‘Midnight Rider’ Crew’s Previous Film In Georgia There seems to be a fear among crew members in the industry about refusing to take part when they feel something is unsafe on a set, or speaking out after an accident lest they will be seen as a problem and lose future work, ostracized from the industry they love. But that is not always the case. It has been done in the past and a few courageous individuals are doing it today in hopes of getting the conversation started in the film and TV industries for the sake of all of their brethren. Legendary cinematographer Haskell Wexler, longtime location manager/scout Billy Fox and assistant location manager Brianne Brozey (in Local 399) who was injured on a set in March 2011 are...

Orion Pictures

While they may claim to honour the very best of the year in film, the Oscars definitely have a type of picture that they like and it’s a type they tend to stick to. Serious, issues-based dramas are in and genre films are very much out. It should come as no surprise, then, that there has been little love from the Academy for the horror genre over the years.

Every so often, though, a horror picture does manage to defy this preconceived genre prejudice to win one of the big prizes. Whether it’s by dressing themselves as one of horror’s more credible sub-genres – a “psychological thriller” or a “dark fantasy, perhaps – or by adapting a prestigious Victorian literary horror or by just being too good to ignore, these 10 films managed what few horror movies ever could and successfully won themselves an Oscar or two comes award time…...

The history of write-in votes -- which is to say, votes for a name not on the official list of nominees -- at the Academy Awards is a short but interesting one. In 1934, the fuss over Bette Davis's omission from the Best Actress lineup (for "Of Human Bondage") was enough to land her in third place on write-in votes; the next year, unnominated cinematographer Hal Mohr actually won for "A Midsummer Night's Dream." "Write-in voting has been banned almost ever since," notes Scott Feinberg. "It would require not only a signoff by the Academy’s board of governors, but also a...

Despite recent wins at the Critics' Choice Awards and Golden Globes, Ben Affleck won't take home the Best Director trophy on Oscar night. Or will he?

No, he will not: Affleck isn't even nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards, despite his lauded work on the film "Argo." Not that Affleck's snub stopped THR awards experts Scott Feinberg and Stephen Galloway from speculating that Affleck could win Best Director with help from a write-in vote. The only problem? The Academy Awards haven't allowed write-in candidates since 1930s.

Here's Feinberg and Galloway:

There is a precedent: When Bette Davis failed to land a nomination as best actress for Of Human Bondage (1934), the outcry led to a write-in. (In the final tally, at a time when the Academy made the votes public, she finished third.) The following year, cinematographer Hal Mohr became the first and only person to win an...

By Allen Gardner

Quadrophenia (Criterion) Franc Roddam’s 1979 film based on The Who’s classic rock opera tells the story of working class lad Jimmy (Phil Daniels) struggling to find his identity in a rapidly changing Britain, circa 1965. Jimmy is a “mod,” a youth movement dedicated to wearing snappy suits, driving Vespa motor scooters bedecked with side mirrors, popping amphetamines and obsessed with the new sound of bands like The Who and The Kinks. Their other pastime is engaging in bloody brawls with “rockers,” throwbacks to the 1950s, who listen to Elvis and Gene Vincent, wear leather biker gear, grease in their hair and drive massive motorcycles a la Marlon Brando in “The Wild One.” Often cited as a worthy successor to “Rebel Without a Cause” as the greatest angry youth picture ever made, it is that and more, including a first cousin to the “kitchen sink” dramas of scribes John Osborne,...

Oscar-nominated cinematographer who worked on Lenny, Dirty Harry and The Beguiled

The American cinematographer Bruce Surtees, who has died aged 74, became known as "the prince of darkness" for his muted and often lugubrious style of lighting. However, while Surtees was well-suited to the nocturnal street scenes of Dirty Harry (1971), the Rembrandt-esque arrangements of The Beguiled (1971) and the claustrophobic interiors of Escape from Alcatraz (1979), all directed by Don Siegel, he was also at home with the wide open spaces of the western Joe Kidd (1972) and the surfing movie Big Wednesday (1978).

His deceptively simple black-and-white scheme for Lenny (1974), Bob Fosse's semi-documentary biopic of the comedian Lenny Bruce, earned Surtees an Oscar nomination. The film's compelling stand-up sequences owe almost as much to the expert lighting of the nightclub as they do to Dustin Hoffman's performance. As Hoffman paces the stage, chased by his own shadow, the light captures wisps of...

Batman Lives?! After The Dark Knight was shut out of the Best Picture race yesterday, we emailed an Academy voter for reaction. "The fact it and Chris Nolan weren't nominated is a shame," the voter replied. "And I plan on casting a write-in vote for it on the final ballot." Write-In?! In the early days of the Oscars, write-in campaigns were common, the Academy's Teni Melidonian tells E! News. In 1936, a successful write-in campaign brought an award to the unnominated Hal Mohr for his cinematography on A Midsummer's Night Dream. So, Maybe There's a Chance for The Dark Knight, After All?! Yes. In one of the eight categories it drew a nomination. Best Picture, however, is a lost...