Eddie (Henry Fonda) and Joan (Sylvia Sidney) on honeymoon, frogs just outside of vision Dear Friends, A couple of nights ago I watched a film I can best characterize as filled with a gripping lunacy: Fitz Lang’s 1937 You Only Live Once , screenplay Gene Towne and C. Graham Baker, a United Artists production by [...]
Archive for November, 2009
Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once: Gripping Lunacy
Posted in film studies, Movies, tagged classic movies, fritz lang, henry fonda on November 29, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Streetcar Named Desire: Blanche’s play versus the inane snarkiness of Pirate Radio
Posted in 20th century culture, feminism, Theater on November 26, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Blanche and Mitch Dear Friends, Last week (Tuesday night, November 17th to be exact), we (Jim, Izzy and I) had a real treat. We saw Cate Blanchett as Blanche in Live Ullmann’s production of Williams’s Streetcar Named Desire at the Kennedy Center. This is a Sydney Theatre production: many of the people were from Australia; [...]
Pallisers 12:24: Almost there (for our heroes & heroines too); the next generation
Posted in 19th century novels, Costume drama, Film adaptations, political novels/films, Trollope, tagged film studies, Jeremy Irons, kate nicholls, mini-series, pallisers on November 25, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Our heroines whose names at this point are: Glencora, Duchess of Omnium (Susan Hampshire) and Mrs Marie Finn (Barbara Murray) Dear Friends, I’ve put on this blog a summary of the episodes of this part (An Elegiac Culmination), prefaced by situating it in the whole series, and containing several transcripts of key scenes, quotations from [...]
Pallisers 12:24: An Elegiac Culmination: Life has not many things better than this …. and Sudeley Castle
Posted in 19th century novels, Film adaptations, Trollope, tagged Jeremy Irons on November 21, 2009 | 7 Comments »
In the afternoon, as we were driven rapidly along in the post chaise, he said to me, “Life has not many things better than this” (Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Thursday, 21 March 1776) Lady Mary (Kate Nicholls) drawing outside the Matching Priory ruins Dear Readers and Movie-Lovers, This is another of the great parts of [...]
Costume drama movies ca 1960s to 80s: Daisy Miller and The Europeans (with comments on Maurice, Jefferson in Paris, and the 2009 Emma)
Posted in Costume drama, Film adaptations, henry james, Movies, womens' films, tagged cranford, jefferson in paris, maurice, merchant-ivory-jhabvala on November 15, 2009 | 15 Comments »
Gertrude Wentworth (Lisa Eichhorn) in landscape with gazebo, 1979 Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala Europeans Daisy (Cybill Shepherd) and Winterbourne (Barry Brown) watch a Punch and Judy show, 1974 Bogdanovich Daisy Miller Dear Friends, I’ve been thinking about a specific period of costume drama that is not done sufficient justice to, partly because it’s not recognized as a period [...]
EC/ASECS, Bethlehem, how far did the Enlightenment reach: women slaves, gambling, Zurich, Blake and his publisher, Joseph Johnson
Posted in 18th century, conference report, tagged book illustrations, emily kempin-spyri, eveline hasler, samuel gessner on November 12, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937), The Banjo Lesson (1893) Dear Friends, This is my last conference report of the East Central Meeting of ASECS in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I’ve treated of women writers, novelists (and marriage and family), the gothic (motherhood, Catholicism, and lesser known), not to omit Fanny Burney as an older woman. What I have [...]
EC/ASECS, Bethlehem: papers on women poets, novelists, diarists, playwrights
Posted in 18th century, 19th century novels, conference report, Fanny Burney, novels of sensibility, Regency Romantic literature, women's memoirs, women's novels, women's art, tagged Anne Finch, Hester Lynch Piozzi, Joanna Baillie, Mary Brunton on November 7, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Angelica Kauffman (171401807), The Muse of Composition Dear Friends, This is my fifth report on the smallish conference of 18th century scholars held at Bethelehem, Pennsylvania. It consists of reports on papers from three panels: on Saturday, “Bibliography, Textual Studies and Book History, Part I” (8:30-10:00 am), “Foreign Intelligences” (2:00-3:30 pm), and “Late 18th century [...]
EC/ASECS, Bethlehem: Marriage and family; another look at the rise of the novel
Posted in 18th century, conference report, feminism, Samuel Richardson, women's novels, tagged education, Fanny Burney, Mary Wollstonecraft, May Hays, Monk Lewis on November 1, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Louis-Leopold Boilly (1761-1845), Painter in Her Studio (1796): beautiful, luminous and witty, it’s a family portrait Dear Friends, Yet another conference report of the Eastern Region 18th century panels. There were four papers in the panel on Marriage and the Family (Friday, 2:45-4:15), but since I was not able to understand all four (one on [...]
