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It turns out that another Bogart movie is heading for a Blu-Ray release: Beat the Devil is slated for the High Definition platform. This is particularly interesting since Beat the Devil has always looked terrible on DVD. As an independent production it eventually fell into the public domain. This resulted in poorly produced DVDs from terrible prints. A motley crew of international thieves get together for a complex scheme, and the ramshackle nature of the plot makes the film quite difficult to follow. Featuring such John Huston regulars such as Peter Lorre and Robert Morley, this was one of six collaborations between Huston and Bogart. While the film often struggles to make sense there are some striking close-ups of Bogart’s particularly haggard face and thinning hair.
I’d be surprised if the film has been remastered but if it ever did receive a full restoration, it could indeed turn out to be a revelation?
Have you ever wondered how Hollywood studios made so many movies and you never saw the same set twice? Well it’s just a case of looking closely. Check out this scene from All Through the Night, produced by Warner Bros. and featuring Humphrey Bogart. It was release on 2nd December 1941.
Now compare the set to another film starring Humphrey Bogart, this time released only a couple of months earlier on 18th October 1941. Also produced by Warner Bros. and again starring Humphrey Bogart, a little film known as The Maltese Falcon.
Same lift, same hallway, same room. You’re going to have to do more than move the furniture around to fool me…
If you know of any other examples of this, drop me a line at classicfilmshow@gmail.com.
Turn on TCM right now! For the entire month of August, Turner Classic Movies (U.S.) hosts its annual Summer Under the Stars festival. Summer Under the Stars is a month long event that celebrates the most legendary names in film by dedicating 24-hours each to their films, meaning at least 12 of their films each day in August. Days are dedicated to stars such as Claude Rains, Greta Garbo, Richard Widmark, Peter Lorre, Kim Novak, Fred Astaire, Edward G. Robinson, Barbara Stanwyk, Spencer Tracey and even Marie Dressler. And that’s just for starters. Perhaps the most imaginative, ambitious and exciting classic film programming possible, this is a massive slice of Hollywood history in a single month, containing very rare films. The volume of it makes it a classic film lover’s dream but also pretty much impossible to record all of them! Charlie Chaplin is on today! A great selection of shorts followed by every single feature film he made. You could be a Chaplin expert in a mere 24 hours. Stop reading this now. Go, go, go!
Charlie Chaplin, August 2
6:00am The Knockout
6:30am The Rounders
6:45am A Dog’s Life
7:30am Shoulder Arms
8:15am Sunnyside
8:45am A Day’s Pleasure
9:15am The Kid
10:15am The Idle Class
11:00am Pay Day
11:30am The Pilgrim
12:15pm A Woman of Paris
1:45pm The Gold Rush
3:00pm The Circus
4:15pm City Lights
5:45pm Charlie: The Life and Art of Charles Chaplin
8:00pm Modern Times
9:30pm The Great Dictator
11:45pm Monsieur Verdoux
2:00am Limelight
4:15am A King In New York
Find more info about the Summer Under the Stars season.
Today I visited the Vanity Fair Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, a fascinating collection of photographs ranging firstly from the 1910s-30s and then from the 1980s to the present day.
The magazine folded in 1936 only to be revived in 1983 but began remarkably early. In 1913 Condé Nast brought out the first issue of what was then known as Dress and Vanity Fair and those early issues published portraits of personalities such as a young Irving Berlin and an old Thomas Hardy.
Through to the twenties images of movie stars become a staple of the Hollywood magazine: Fred and Adele Astaire, Joan Crawford, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., W.C. Fields, Garbo, Lillian and Dorothy Gish, Gloria Swanson, Charlie Chaplin, Fairbanks & Pickford, Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, Paul Robeson, Charles Laughton and Peter Lorre.
It also published portraits of writers: H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce, as well as dancers, composers, scientists and high-profile directors: Nureyev & Pavlova, Stravinsky, Einstein & Eisenstein, and Ernst Lubitsch.
Vanity Fair, then, became a great portrait of the age during which it was published. Three parts fan, fashion and Hollywood magazine it both revelled in and further circulated the image of Hollywood and its stars as perfect and ethereal.
However these photographs seem to do two things at once: on the one hand provide a stylised image of its subject, and on the other capture a candid, revealing portrait of them. The formal composition, pose and lighting creates a barrier between the image and the viewer while the connection with its subject pulls that barrier back down.
Photographers of the original Vanity Fair included Baron de Meyer and the versatile Edward Steichen, who took the enigmatic and powerful shot of a veiled Gloria Swanson (above). The revived Vanity Fair included such famed photographers as Herb Ritts and Annie Liebowitz, and during the past 25 years has continued to publish many of the iconic photographs of movie stars during that recent era.
The exhibition continues until 26 May 2008 so if you happen to be in town, make sure you take a look. Below is a snap I took on exiting: Jean Harlow looking over London.
The Classic Film Show 