A Flickchart Guide to TCM in November
FilmStruck is on its way out, but we have some solace for classic film buffs: Flickchart’s Guide to TCM feature is back from hiatus with a pared-down look at what Turner Classic Movies is airing in November! As always, you can see the full schedule at TCM.com, but hopefully we can point you toward not just the biggest must-sees of the month but some hidden gems as well. We’ll try out a new format and see how it goes. If there’s any specific feature or section from the previous format that you really miss, let us know and we’ll see if we can find a way to incorporate it.
Ten Don’t-Miss Films
The absolute must-see list is at the bottom of the post, and since it’s made up of well-known films that are in the Flickchart Global Top 1000, you already know that you need to watch those. Here are ten films that lie outside the Top 1000 but have more than 200 rankers, so they’re lesser-known but not particularly obscure (the Hidden Gems section features some truly obscure picks.) We recommend each and every one of these unequivocally.
I Walked With a Zombie – Nov 13, 2:00pm
1943 – directed by Jacques Tourneur – starring Frances Dee, Tom Conway, James Ellison – ranked #1011 by 713 users
Not very many producers are considered auteurs in the way that directors often are, but Val Lewton certainly qualifies. He produced a series of moody, mid-budget horror films at RKO in the early 1940s that are very definitely of a piece, though most of them have different directors. At this time, the horror films being produced in Hollywood were mostly the last vestiges of the various Universal Monster series begun in the 1930s, and those retain a gothic charm despite the format having largely run its course. Lewton had aspirations of prestige and highly literary films, but was tasked by RKO’s mogul with making horror films. So he basically went under the radar and made, well, very literary horror films. None more so than this one, which is basically a reimagining of Jane Eyre. Main character Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) is a nurse who takes a job for Wesley Rand in the Caribbean tropics looking after his wife Jessica, who has come down with some kind of unexplained illness. It’s extremely relevant that the film takes place in the Caribbean, where, in Jane Eyre, Mr. Rochester met and married his doomed wife (see also Jean Rhys’s novel Wide Sargasso Sea, written 33 years after this film was made.) In this case the illness turns out to be a form of zombification, which in this movie is the result of a voodoo curse. The film has a remarkable sense of mood and otherness, which makes it a perhaps surprisingly good text for discussing post-colonialism and race. All this to say that the film is a wonderful thing purely on a cinematic level — always intriguing, frequently gorgeous (as much as Lewton is the auteur here, the Lewton films directed by Jacques Tourneur do stand out on a cinematographic level), and quite thrilling. But it’s also got a lot of deeper things going on. Note that another Lewton film is playing this month, too: The Body Snatcher on Nov 29 at 3:30pm. This one is directed by Robert Wise, stars both Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, and has a fantastic story about grave robbing for medical research purposes, so check that one out, too.
The Bad and the Beautiful – Nov 28, 4:30pm
1952 – directed by Vincente Minnelli – starring Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Dick Powell, Gloria Grahame, Barry Sullivan, Walter Pidgeon – ranked #1065 by 516 users
Sunset Blvd, Singin’ in the Rain, The Player, The Artist… the “Hollywood-on-Hollywood” subgenre has produced some of the greatest films ever made, both cynical and celebratory. This one isn’t as well known as that quartet, but it ought to be. It falls squarely in the cynical pile, with three Hollywood celebrities (an actress, a director, and a screenwriter) recounting why they refuse to work with a certain producer who wants them all for a new project. The producer is played by Kirk Douglas in that charmingly smarmy way only he can pull off, the actress is Lana Turner, the screenwriter former crooning sensation Dick Powell (in his most notable dramatic role), and the director is Barry Sullivan. Also along for the ride is Gloria Grahame playing Powell’s wife, a role that won her an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress. All three characters have stories about how Douglas’s character ruined their lives. The complication is that all three are now highly successful in their respective careers, but at what cost to their personal lives and psyches? Most of the “cynical Hollywood” stories have some variation on the price of celebrity/success in Hollywood, and this is one of the most direct. Yet, of course, all films like this are complicit in the very thing they critique. Director Minnelli was actually drawn to this story not because he had a vendetta against Hollywood, but because he found Douglas’s character complex and relatable. With Douglas bringing him to life, that read rings pretty true.
I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang – Nov 5, 9:30pm
1932 – directed by Mervyn LeRoy – starring Paul Muni, Glenda Farrell, Helen Vinson – ranked #1068 by 358 users
In the 1930s, Warner Bros developed a reputation for making films “ripped from the headlines,” somewhat sensationalized stories that dealt directly with societal issues (and, often, gangsters). I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang is the premiere example of that approach to storytelling, following a man who was unjustly accused of a crime and sentenced to a chain gang. The film brings together such social issues as the displacement of men returning from war (World War I in this case), the difficulty such men often had finding work, the desperation of poverty, unjustly harsh sentencing, blackmail, and the tendency of individuals to fall into a worse cycle of crime when society mistreats them. That’s a lot for a 90 minute film, and that’s really only half of what happens. The ending is deservedly famous, bringing this man’s heartbreaking story full circle. Of course, everyone’s own political biases are likely to affect how they see this particular story arc, but it’s pretty impossible not to be moved by the film because it’s rendered so effectively on screen. At the very least, it’s a sign of what studios could do in the Pre-Code era besides tell bawdy jokes and show freakish monsters.
Ride the High Country – Nov 6, 10:45am
1962 – directed by Sam Peckinpah – starring Joel McCrea, Randolph Scott – ranked #1494 by 313 users
One of my favorite Western subtypes is the Western set toward the end of the Old West era, as civilization is moving west and threatening the frontier way of life. Westerns in this mode take on almost an elegiac feel, usually in overall favor of the expansion of civilization, but with a wistful nostalgia for the era that is passing away, with its open ranges, its clear divide between good and evil, and its opportunities for individuals to create their own fortunes. 1962 gave us a couple of these, one from the ever-popular team of John Ford and John Wayne (with James Stewart thrown in for good measure) in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, but also this lesser known film about aging cowboys watching their world change. As with many of this subgenre, Ride the High Country complicates the traditional western’s moral certitude, while still ultimately upholding it; main character Steve Judd (Joel McCrea) is an upright former lawman hired to protect a gold transport, but Gil Westrum (Randolph Scott), the old friend he asks to help, turns out to have other plans for the gold. There’s also a subplot involving a girl and her fiancé, who has wretched plans for her as well. For classic film fans, watching McCrea and Scott in roles like this brings automatic understanding and nostalgia, as both had been staples in westerns both big and low-budget for some thirty years when this film was made. Many of Sam Peckinpah’s westerns are wholly revisionist, but this one straddles the line, offering some plot points (the fiancé’s treatment of the girl) that would never have flown in more strict Production Code days and suggesting that white hats weren’t always all that white, but still largely holding to traditional morality and honor. It’s a great transition into the era of revisionist westerns, even as it’s a great capper on the era of the traditional western. And it’s a damn good film, too.
Captains Courageous – Nov 22, 6:00am
1937 – directed by Victor Fleming – starring Freddie Bartholomew, Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore – ranked #1751 by 456 users
Based on a Rudyard Kipling story, you might expect this to be a rollicking adventure film, and it does have some of that in it, but the core of this story is the relationship between a spoiled young boy and the grizzled fisherman who becomes his father surrogate. The boy (Bartholomew) start off an absolute pain in the rear, an entitled little brat who does whatever he wants at school, sure that his wealthy father will get him out of it. Eventually the school has enough and expels him, hoping some time home with his father will actually do him good. Instead he falls off his father’s cruise ship. Oops. He’s picked up by a group of fisherman, who refuse to cater to his every whim. Spencer Tracy is the main mentor figure here, a Portuguese fisherman who takes the boy under his wing, simultaneously protecting him from the other fisherman and setting him straight. Yeah, we know, Tracy is not remotely Portuguese, but he sells the central relationship quite well and provides quite a few moments of comic relief. Speaking of comic relief, any movie that has Lionel Barrymore in it is a winner, and he steals every scene he’s in here as the fishing boat captain. Even when he’s doing fool things like racing other ships in dangerous conditions, he’s still maybe the best reason to watch the film.
The Fly – Nov 3, 1:45pm
1958 – directed by Kurt Neumann – starring David Hedison, Patricia Owens, Vincent Price – ranked #1900 by 1382 users
In a rare case of a remake supplanting the original, the 1986 version of The Fly directed by David Cronenberg has almost completely eclipsed this earlier version for all but the most die-hard of classic film and sci-fi fans, but this one really deserves to be seen as well. The story concerns a scientist trying to create a teleportation device — basically a way to break down matter into atoms, transport them to another location, and rebuild them. He decides to test it on himself but doesn’t notice a fly in the chamber with him until it’s too late. On the other side, he emerges with a fly’s head instead of his own. Much of the movie is then taken up with what to do about this phenomenon. His wife is obviously very affected, but when they bring in Vincent Price to consult, you know you’re in classic sci-fi/horror territory. The whole thing is great, especially if you love classic-era scientific lab/equipment art direction, which… who doesn’t? The final shot, which we won’t spoil, is one of the most chilling moments in cinema.
Shanghai Express – Nov 16, 8:30am
1932 – directed by Josef von Sternberg – starring Marlene Dietrich, Clive Brook, Anna May Wong – ranked #2568 by 213 users
One of the most justly celebrated director-actress teams in cinema is Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, from Der Blau Angel in Germany through several films in Hollywood. Dietrich’s exotic androgyny and von Sterberg’s sophisticated visual style complemented each other perfectly. Sometimes that style could feel a bit cold, but it hit absolute perfect in this espionage-on-a-train movie made in the midst of the Pre-Code era. This thing has everything: loose women, compromised men, exotic locales, espionage, murder, assassination attempts, and Anna May Wong (an actress Hollywood rarely knew what to do with in one of her best roles.) Dietrich has never been more compelling or luminous, and von Sternberg doesn’t go quite off the rails into stylistic stasis the way he does in some of their other films together. That said, you should definitely check out their other films together, and TCM has you covered, because several of them are playing on Nov 16, not just this one. So make sure you see this one, but you know, let your DVR run a little to catch the others.
They Were Expendable – Nov 10 5:45am
1945 – directed by John Ford – starring John Wayne, Robert Montgomery, Donna Reed – ranked #2758 by 334 users
We often think of John Ford and John Wayne in terms of the westerns they made together, but they collaborated on several war films as well, and this is one that really gets overlooked far more than it ought. It’s set in the Pacific theater, and Robert Montgomery and John Wayne are Lieutenants in charge of a PT boat squadron in the Philippines. No one thinks the small PT boats are much military use, and even after Japan enters the war, they’re reduced to messenger duty even though Montgomery thinks they’re capable of much more. The film itself is kind of a meandering hang-out film, surprisingly; much of it is taken up with episodic scenes of messages being taken back and forth and a lengthy section where Wayne is in a military hospital and romances a nurse (Donna Reed). Though it does come to a climax toward the end, I actually appreciated this more laid-back view of what might go in in a military unit, even during a war, that’s not quite in the thick of action all the time. It’s kind of refreshing to watch.
Robin and Marian – Nov 23 6:00pm
1976 – directed by Richard Lester – starring Sean Connery, Audrey Hepburn – ranked #3364 by 453 users
I originally had this film under the “Hidden Gems” section because my perception was that it was not well-known. Surprisingly, it has almost 500 rankers, which is more than a lot of films in this post! Even so, it’s still underseen and has such a deliciously strange take on the Robin Hood story that I have to promote it whenever I can. Basically, Robin has been away on the Crusades and other wars with Richard I for years. When he returns to England after Richard’s (somewhat inauspicious) death, he reunites with some of his old Sherwood Forest gang and discovers quite the legend has built up around him, and that Maid Marian has become an abbess. In a way, it’s everything you expect from a Robin Hood film — a halting romance with Marian, the antics of the Merrie Men, a nemesis battle with the Sheriff of Nottingham — but everything strikes a different, awkward, and wistful note. Richard Lester is perhaps best known for the Beatles film A Hard Day’s Night and the 1970s two-film adaptation of The Three Musketeers, both of which are a bit madcap. Robin and Marian isn’t madcap, but it does have some of his trademark goofy humor (ironically one of the humorous moments is the actually quite realistic broadsword fight) and askance take on period stories. If you’re a fan of the Robin Hood legend, this is a unique version of it that you won’t want to miss.
The Phantom Tollbooth – Nov 22 8:15am
1970 – directed by Chuck Jones – starring Butch Patrick, Hans Conried, Mel Blanc – ranked #4419 by 331 users
Based on a classic of children’s fantasy literature by Norman Juster, this feature film was one of famed animation director Chuck Jones’s only feature films after a long and illustrious career making animated shorts for Warner Brothers. It was also the last film from MGM’s animation division before it closed down in the early 1970s. Animation was in kind of a slump at this time; even most of the Disney films of this era are not hugely well-thought of, often made up of retreads of earlier stories and reuses of earlier animation, and the cost-cutting techniques used to minimalist stylistic effect by UPA had become cheap-looking. The Phantom Tollbooth is not immune from these issues, and author Juster is said to have hated it as an adaptation of his book. THAT SAID, any film by Chuck Jones is worth a look, and this one does have its charms. The story starts in live-action with bored young boy receiving a mysterious package containing a tollbooth, and when he goes through it he finds himself in an enchanted animated world.
Ten Hidden Gems
For these films, I looked for films that I love or personally really want to see that have been ranked by fewer than 200 people on Flickchart. These films need our love, and the ones I’ve seen greatly deserve it. If you’re looking for a bit more variety, a bit of flair in your TCM viewing, check out some of these.
Journey to Italy – Nov 15 2:00pm
1954 – directed by Roberto Rossellini – starring Ingrid Bergman, George Sanders – ranked #2939 by 185 users
After an illustrious career in Hollywood, Ingrid Bergman’s affair with Roberto Rossellini made her persona non grata in her adopted home and she went with him to Italy and made several fine films with him there. As a side note, it’s still amazing that this was such a career-threatening scandal when you look back it from today’s world. Anyway, Rossellini’s earlier career was pretty strictly neorealistic with Rome Open City and the two films following it about Europe during and post-WWII, but he had a decidedly spiritual bent to him as well and that comes out very strongly in his films with Bergman. In Europa ‘51, a family crisis leads Bergman’s character to throw herself into helping the poor and becoming almost a Christ figure. In this one, the familiar notes of a failing marriage become transformed through visits to the ancient site of Pompeii and a Roman Catholic celebration. It’s not always entirely clear what Rossellini is trying to SAY about spirituality and religion, but the mood and emotion of the films, often brought about by the contrast between Bergman’s poignant expressiveness and Rossellini’s camera’s stoicness, is undeniable.
Footlight Parade – Nov 17 6:00am
1933 – directed by Lloyd Bacon – starring James Cagney, Joan Blondell, Dick Powell, Ruby Keeler – ranked #2975 by 184 users
Every classic film fan worth their salt knows 42nd Street, the Warner Bros/Busby Berkeley-choreographed musical that saved musicals from an early death after a glut of not-very-good ones at the dawn of the sound era. Many are also fans of Gold Diggers of 1933, with its Pig Latin and Forgotten Men. Somehow this entry in the Warner/Berkeley cycle seems to get lost in the shuffle, though, and that’s really a shame. All of the films Berkeley choreographed at Warner in the Pre-Code era have elements in common: a backstage showbiz story, usually Warren/Dubin songs, often Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler, and always Berkeley’s ground-breaking kaleidoscopic choreography. This one has all that PLUS James Cagney. Most know Cagney as a quintessential gangster, but Cagney was also a very talented song-and-dance man, making his living as a hoofer long before he became a star as The Public Enemy. You can see this clearly in his Oscar-winning performance as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy, but no less here in this vigorous and economical musical comedy, which also stars the ubiquitous Powell and Keeler, not to mention Joan Blondell, who is an absolute treasure always.
The More the Merrier – Nov 4 11:45am
1943 – directed by George Stevens – starring Joel McCrea, Jean Arthur, Charles Coburn – ranked #4002 by 96 users
Due to wartime housing shortages, Jean Arthur sublets her apartment to Charles Coburn (secretly a millionaire waiting for his hotel suites to be prepared), who then meets Joel McCrea, a sergeant waiting to be shipped out, and sublets him half of his half. If this were made in the Pre-Code era, this premise would be the start of a rollicking good time, but in the early 1940s it’s a sweet and romantic comedy of errors that doesn’t skirt the awkwardness and potential indiscretion of the arrangement but makes sure it’s subdued in the service of other fine and gentle character work. I originally had this one in the upper section, as it’s a fairly well-regarded film in classic film circles, but it surprised me greatly to see it has fewer than 100 rankers on Flickchart! Apparently its reputation has not spread beyond the die-hard TCM crowd, and that’s a shame. This is a lovely little romance, including one of the most beautiful segments featuring two people falling in love: a walk home with dozens of little kisses spread over several minutes, a bit of a thumbed nose at the Hays Code, which would only allow individual kisses to last three seconds max.
The Great McGinty – Nov 21 8:00pm
1940 – directed by Preston Sturges – starring Brian Donlevy, Murial Angelus, Akim Tamiroff – ranked #4625 by 116 users
These days writer-directors are common, especially on independent films, but in classic Hollywood writer and director were usually two very separate jobs. Preston Sturges changed that, becoming the first major screenwriter to start directing his own films (Billy Wilder would soon follow in his footsteps). The Great McGinty was his first film as writer-director, and like many of his other films, it’s a political satire, but a bit more on the nose than most of his later satires. McGinty tells his life story from his current vantage point of bartender in a banana republic: he was an enforcer for a mob boss, then a political puppet, aiding in city-wide corruption, until his more idealistic wife starts to have an effect on him. This is actually one of the few Sturges films I haven’t seen myself. In the past it’s been a bit difficult to see, though I see now that Netflix has it on DVD, so TCM is a good chance to check it out.
The Mystery of the Wax Museum – Nov 5 11:15pm
1933 – directed by Michael Curtiz – starring Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell – ranked #5119 by 146 users
It’s the same story as House of Wax (1953; the 2005 film has a similar idea but isn’t quite the same), which enjoys a bit of a boost because Vincent Price is in it, but this original version has my heart. The story is a lurid bit of B-level horror, with a mad artist committed to making the best, most realistic wax sculptures he can, which leads in a murderous direction. Fay Wray is the damsel in distress here, and she gets to utter her famous scream, but the real draw as far as I’m concerned is Glenda Farrell as her best friend who smells a rat and pursues it with an ever-ready wisecrack. The other thing that I find really interesting and cool about this film is it was made in two-color Technicolor. The Technicolor we’re most familiar with, exemplified by Gone with the Wind and The Adventures of Robin Hood is three-strip Technicolor, which was able to layer red, green, and blue into the film strip to faithfully reproduce every color. Before three-strip Technicolor was perfected, a two-strip version was used that captured shades of red and green, but not blue. The Mystery of the Wax Museum is shot in this process, which lends it a moody red/green color palette that works perfectly for the story at hand. There are other films from the late silent era into the early sound era that use two-color Technicolor, and I’m strangely obsessed with them. This is one that transcends that technical interest, though, and is actually a whole lot of fun in and of itself.
Lady for a Day – Nov 26 8:00pm
1933 – directed by Frank Capra – starring May Robson, Warren William, Guy Kibbee, Glenda Farrell – ranked #5129 by 121 users
Today Frank Capra is known for one thing – his idealistic, often patriotic films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. There’s another side of Capra known for his more subversive Pre-Codes, often starring Barbara Stanwyck as a woman pushing the bounds of decency (films like Forbidden, Ladies of Leisure, and The Bitter Tea of General Yen.) Lady for a Day falls smack dab in the middle. It is a Pre-Code, and it has elements that fit right in with other early 30s cinema, like the foregrounding of the Depression juxtaposed with the life of the elite, but it also uses that juxtaposition to make statements about class and virtue that foreshadow Capra’s later films. The titular lady is a Apple Annie (May Robson), a poor apple seller whose daughter, raised in a Spanish convent, is coming to visit her without knowing that she’s poverty-stricken, since Annie’s letters to her daughter have led her to believe that Annie is a society matron. The underworld comes together to set Annie up as a rich woman for a day so as not to reveal the truth to her daughter. This is an elaborate and incredible setup, but somehow given the simply fantastic group of character actors working to pull this off, it all works. Besides Robson, there’s Warren William (usually a smarmy heel, here he’s a smarmy heel with a heart of gold), Guy Kibbee, Ned Sparks, and Glenda Farrell. If you love 1930s movies, this has everything you’ll want in one. It’s criminally overlooked, and really deserves to be considered among Capra’s finest films. Note that Glenda Farrell, among the most memorable parts of both this and The Mystery of the Wax Museum, is Star of the Month this month, so check out many many more of her films every Friday in November.
Possessed – Nov 13 12:00am
1947 – directed by Curtis Bernhardt – starring Joan Crawford, Van Heflin – ranked #6951 by 74 users
No one played psychotic quite like Joan Crawford, and she get several layers of psychotic in this film noir melodrama. The opening grabs you right away, with a wide-eyed Crawford wandering the streets of Los Angeles repeating the name “David.” The rest of the film is a series of flashbacks as she recounts her life story, and it is a doozy, mostly hinging on her work as a nurse taking care of an invalid wife and her consuming obsession with David, who lives next door (played by Van Heflin). This is arguably a rare case of a film noir having an homme fatale, a gender bend on the traditional femme fatale, but really, this is a pretty toxic relationship all around. Having it be from the woman’s point of view rather than the man’s does give it a different feel, though. As in all her films, Crawford is almost a force of nature here, and holds this thing together even when it seems like it would fall right off the rails.
Theodora Goes Wild – Nov 9 8:00pm
1936 – directed by Richard Boleslawski – starring Irene Dunne, Melvyn Douglas, Thomas Mitchell – ranked #8376 by 45 users
This could just as easily be titled “Irene Dunne Goes Wild” as it marked the first comedy for the actress better known for dramatic roles — sort of a “Garbo Laughs” situation, but three years earlier — and what a comedy it is! Theodora is a small-town girl, prim and proper and respected by everyone in town, who spend their time trying to convince the newspaper in town to stop printing a salacious serialized novel. Little do they know that the author is none other than their own Theodora under a pseudonym! You might imagine how things escalate, and escalate they do. This is firmly at the height of the 1930s screwball comedy, with madcap characters, over-the-top situations, and the inevitable battle of the sexes. In a refrain you’re hearing often in this post, this one isn’t as well known as others in the cycle, like It Happened One Night, The Awful Truth (also starring Dunne), or Bringing Up Baby, but it deserves a much wider audience.
Four Daughters – Nov 14 9:00am
1938 – directed by Michael Curtiz – starring Priscilla Lane, John Garfield, Claude Rains – ranked #9542 by 40 users
This is a vastly underrated film, and maybe it’s easy to see why. The story of a family of musicians, a father and four daughters, whose happy and carefree lives are interrupted by the arrival of a cynical young composer, doesn’t seem all that exciting in a logline, and you know, maybe it’s not all that exciting. It has a lot of the qualities you’d associate with a family film, but it also has a dark edge that sets it apart from the saccharine nature of a lot of family films from this era. The relationship between the sisters is very natural, and that’s for good reason: three of the four of them actually ARE sisters. Of these three, Priscilla Lane is the only one who would go on to have a memorable career (especially thanks to Arsenic and Old Lace), but they’re all winning here. In its time, the film was popular enough to spawn a series: Four Wives and Four Mothers, a sort-of remake Daughters Courageous, and a musical remake Young at Heart (featuring Doris Day and Frank Sinatra, plus the popular title tune, that one is likely the most well-known in the bunch.) The original is definitely worth a rediscovery today.
Outrage – Nov 7 2:45pm
1950 – directed by Ida Lupino – starring Mala Powers, Tod Andrews, Robert Clarke – ranked #19188 by 10 users
There’s a lot of talk about women directors today, and with good reason. As much as we appreciate and enjoy the classic era around here (and I can talk at length about how in some ways classic film often has better roles for actresses than films nowadays, but I won’t do that right now), it was not a good time for women directors. From 1895 to 1960 you can just about count the active women directors on one hand. Within the Hollywood studio system, there are really only two, and Ida Lupino is one of them. She started off as an actress (and continued acting after she started directing), but found eventually that she could do a better job directing than some of the men she was working under, and took over one of her films uncredited. With two films in 1950, this one and Never Fear, she became a credited director, and she did not pull any punches — Outrage is about the aftermath for a woman who is raped. That’s not a subject most films would touch openly under the Production Code, but Lupino went there. This film is very underseen, only 10 users on Flickchart. I haven’t even seen it. Let’s rectify that this month and push those numbers up a bit. Note that I mentioned she was one of two women directors during the studio system era; the other is Dorothy Arzner, whose film Christopher Strong (starring Katharine Hepburn) is playing this month as well, on Nov 7 at 8:15am. And one of TCM’s themes this month is pioneer women directors, focusing on very early films by women like Alice Guy, Lois Weber, and Mabel Normand, so check those out in prime-time on Nov 1 and 8.
Films You Must See Before You Die
If you’re working on completing the Flickchart Top 1000, here’s how TCM can help you this month. As I mentioned above, I am not going to write up all of these because, frankly, who needs my 50 words on Casablanca and Citizen Kane. This is a great set of films and any of them would be well worth your time to knock off your watchlist.
Casablanca (1942; ranked #16 by 44612 users) – Nov 6 8:00pm
Citizen Kane (1941; ranked #28 by 36994 users) – Nov 2 4:00pm
Double Indemnity (1944; ranked #32 by 6814 users) – Nov 2 12:15pm
Rashomon (1950; ranked #38 by 6188 users) – Nov 2 6:45am
12 Angry Men (1957; ranked #46 by 29580 users) – Nov 29 10:15pm
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968; ranked #85 by 62464 users) – Nov 1 9:30am
His Girl Friday (1940; ranked #108 by 2966 users) – Nov 25 1:15pm
All About Eve (1950; ranked #116 by 4975 users) – Nov 24 8:00pm
The Killing (1956; ranked #146 by 2736 users) – Nov 25 12:45am and Nov 25 10:00am
The Graduate (1967; ranked #157 by 36106 users) – Nov 28 12:15am
The Great Escape (1963; ranked #162 by 17520 users) – Nov 10 1:45pm
Charade (1963; ranked #172 by 2962 users) – Nov 29 8:00pm
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946; ranked #179 by 1981 users) – Nov 6 10:00pm
The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957; ranked #193 by 15554 users) – Nov 10 5:00pm and Nov 14 3:00am
Brief Encounter (1945; ranked #198 by 1088 users) – Nov 2 2:15pm
Some Like It Hot (1959; ranked #206 by 20524 users) – Nov 25 3:00pm
The Shop Around the Corner (1940; ranked #245 by 1120 users) – Nov 5 8:00am
The Last Picture Show (1971; ranked #247 by 2316 users) – Nov 28 2:15am
Mean Streets (1973; ranked #251 by 5485 users) – Nov 21 12:15am
A Streetcar Named Desire (1951; ranked #303 by 6089 users) – Nov 13 8:00pm
Red River (1948; ranked #332 by 1181 users) – Nov 2 8:00pm
The Dirty Dozen (1967; ranked #352 by 4196 users) – Nov 24 3:15pm
Z (1969; ranked #408 by 667 users) – Nov 30 4:00am
La jetée (1962; ranked #423 by 1045 users) – Nov 2 6:15am
The Big Heat (1953; ranked #483 by 775 users) – Nov 29 12:15am
Trouble in Paradise (1932; ranked #501 by 513 users) – Nov 30 6:30pm
Gaslight (1944; ranked #525 by 842 users) – Nov 7 1:15am
Marty (1955; ranked #534 by 897 users) – Nov 13 10:30pm
MASH (1970; ranked #587 by 7971 users) – Nov 27 10:00pm
Foreign Correspondent (1940; ranked #603 by 877 users) – Nov 6 2:30pm
You Can’t Take It With You (1938; ranked #613 by 796 users) – Nov 22 10:15pm
The Player (1992; ranked #682 by 4202 users) – Nov 24 10:30pm
Fail-Safe (1964; ranked #696 by 549 users) – Nov 2 9:45pm
Breaking Away (1979; ranked #700 by 1285 users) – Nov 11 3:15pm
Swing Time (1936; ranked #741 by 667 users) – Nov 25 8:00am
Jeremiah Johnson (ranked #832 by 963 users) – Nov 30 10:00pm
Broadway Danny Rose (1984; ranked #919 by 1172 users) – Nov 20 8:00pm
The Longest Day (1962; ranked #984 by 887 users) – Nov 11 8:00pm
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