Actress Miriam Hopkins had a long and successful movie career, appearing in many classics, including "Trouble in Paradise" and "Design for Living." However, it is as this film's titular heroine that she received her only Academy Award best-actress nomination. Based upon Thackeray's novel "Vanity Fair," "Becky" is the story of a socially ambitious woman and her destructive climb up the class system. "Becky Sharp" merits historical note as the first feature-length film to utilize the three-strip Technicolor process, which, even today, gives the film a shimmering visual appeal. The lengthy, complicated restoration process of "Becky Sharp" by the UCLA Film and Television Archive marked one of the earliest archival restorations to garner widespread public attention. Partners in this painstaking effort included the National Telefilm Associates Inc., Fondazione Scuola Nazionale di Cinema, Cineteca Nazionale (Rome), British Film Institute, The Film Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Paramount and YCM Laboratories. More information can be found at -sharp-restoration External.
Considered a seminal work of Asian-America cinema, director Wayne Wang's film is a tale of two San Francisco cab drivers hunting down the elusive Chan of the title who has absconded with $4,000 of their money. A wry comedy, the film is also a heart-felt travelogue of San Francisco's Chinatown and an important statement on the Asian-American experience far removed from the "Fu Manchu" and "Charlie Chan" stereotypes of motion pictures past.
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This ultra-cheap melodrama shot in six days by Edgar G. Ulmer has developed cult status as one of the most stylish B pictures ever produced. Hitchhiker Al Roberts (Tom Neal) gets mixed up with a femme fatale (Ann Savage) who "looked like she'd just been thrown off the crummiest freight train in the world." The story is told in narration addressed directly to the audience who hears not what happened, but what Al wants us to believe happened. Its hackneyed dialog, quick-and-dirty camera work, and shabby no-budget rear projection combine to create a bleak nightmare existence.Expanded essay by J. Hoberman (PDF, 525KB)
Director Erich von Stroheim's third feature, staged with costly and elaborate sets of Monte Carlo, tells the story of a criminal who passes himself off as a Russian count in order to seduce women of society and steal their money. This brilliant and, at the time, controversial film fully established von Stroheim's reputation within the industry as a challenging and difficult-to-manage creative genius. After six months in the editing room, Erich von Stroheim turned over his cut of the film to Universal Pictures. It was 32 reels (approximately six to eight hours long) which the studio cut down to just under two hours.Expanded essay by Daniel Eagan (PDF, 784KB)
Arguably the definitive Depression-era musical, rife with visually stunning Busby Berkeley productions, ranging from the escapist "We're in the Money," kaleidoscopic, neon-violin-playing chorines of "The Shadow Waltz" to the powerful social statement of "My Forgotten Man," a stirring paean to World War I veterans unemployed by the Depression. The usual backstage drama involves showgirls Joan Blondell, Ruby Keeler, and Aline McMahon who search for financial backing for producer Ned Sparks new show. Enter secretly well-heeled songwriter Dick Powell who offers to put up the money for the show, much to his brother's chagrin. Movie poster
Joan Micklin Silver's first feature-length film, "Hester Street," was an adaption of preeminent Yiddish author Abraham Cahan's 1896 well-received first novel "Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto." In the 1975 film, the writer-director brought to the screen a portrait of Eastern European Jewish life in America that historians have praised for its accuracy of detail and sensitivity to the challenges immigrants faced during their acculturation process. Shot in black-and-white and partly in Yiddish with English subtitles, the independent production, financed with money raised by the filmmaker's husband, was shunned by Hollywood until it established a reputation at the Cannes Film Festival and in European markets. "Hester Street" focuses on stresses that occur when a "greenhorn" wife, played by Carol Kane (nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal), and her young son arrive in New York to join her Americanized husband. Silver, one of the first women directors of American features to emerge during the women's liberation movement, shifted the story's emphasis from the husband, as in the novel, to the wife. Historian Joyce Antler has written admiringly, "In indicating the hardships experienced by women and their resiliency, as well as the deep strains assimilation posed to masculinity, 'Hester Street' touches on a fundamental cultural challenge confronting immigrants."Expanded essay by Eric A. Goldman (PDF, 375KB
Since it first opened, "King Kong" has been an audience favorite, initially giving the troubled RKO much needed money to finance future projects. It has come to epitomize one of Hollywood's best attempts at horror fantasy. Layered with obvious moralizing, the story has taken on the significance of a modern folk tale. Adventurer and movie director Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) takes an unknowing crew and newly found star, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) on a mysterious voyage to the lush prehistoric jungles of Skull Island where giant creatures lurk, including the gargantuan ape, Kong. Captivated by Ann, he carries her off, the crew scrambling after them, until he's finally subdued and taken to New York for exhibition. Directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack use Willis O'Brien's spectacular stop-motion effects to develop a series of tumultuous action scenes, both on the island and in Manhattan, culminating with Kong's famous ascent of the Empire State Building.Expanded essay by Michael Price (PDF, 448KB)Additional image
On the Bowery" is Lionel Rogosin's acclaimed, unrelenting docudrama about the infamous New York City zone known as the Bowery. The film focuses on three of its alcoholic skid row denizens and their marginal existence amid the gin mills, missions and flop houses. Bosley Crowther in The New York Times wrote that "this is a dismal exposition to be charging people money to see." Rogosin and his small crew spent months on the Bowery observing and talking with residents. They crafted the film as a "synthesis" of Bowery life, and it remains a wrenching portrait of hopelessness, despair and broken dreams. The film's writer, Mark Sufrin, wrote in an issue of Sight and Sound magazine: "Very few, once they hit the Bowery, ever leave, are reclaimed, or rehabilitated...I had escaped that frightening place. They still remain."
Released at the height of cold-war hysteria, producer George Pal's lavishly-designed take on H. G. Wells' 1898 novel of alien invasion was provocatively transplanted from Victorian England to a mid-20th-century Southern California small town in this 1953 film version. Capitalizing on the apocalyptic paranoia of the atomic age, Barré Lyndon's screenplay wryly replaces Wells' original commentary on the British class system with religious metaphor. Directed by Byron Haskin, formerly a special effects cameraman, the critically and commercially successful film chronicles an apparent meteor crash discovered by a local scientist (Gene Barry) that turns out to be a Martian spacecraft. Gordon Jennings, who died shortly before the film's release, avoided stereotypical flying saucer-style creations in his Academy Award-winning special effects described by reviewers as soul-chilling, hackle-raising and not for the faint of heart.
Produced, directed, written by, and starring Erich von Stroheim, "The Wedding March" tells the story of poor Austrian aristocrat Nicholas Ehrhart Hans Karl Maria, Prince von Wildeliebe-Rauffenburg (von Stroheim), whose parents are determined he marry for money to increase their family wealth. However, when the prince falls in love with Mitzi (Fay Wray), the daughter of an innkeeper, his plans are put in jeopardy. As was often the case with von Stroheim productions, "The Wedding March" went significantly over schedule and over budget due to the filmmaker's perfectionism. When von Stroheim's initial cut was deemed too long, Paramount took control of the editing process and the film was edited down to the version known today.Expanded essay by Crystal Kui (PDF, 335KB)
Now, Madoff made off with all the money.And his clients are down to skunk weed.Repeat after me, it's so easy to seeWe're only talking simple greed.And those Somalian pirates are counting all their gold.While Bush and Cheney ain't aroundand all the good lookers seem to be Russian hookersfrom Key West to London town.
Work, work, work Big pile of it and the boss is a jerk Just want to disappear Wishin' I was somewhere other than here Livin' for the weekend Jump right off the deep end With just enough money to buy
A license to chill And I believe I will Let the rat race run roll around In the sun until Trouble turns funny and songs get sung With a little bit of money the night's still young Leave me alone I 've got a license License to chill
For a license to chill And I believe I will Let the rat race run roll around In the sun until Trouble turns funny and songs get sung With a little bit of money the night's still young Leave me alone I 've got a license License to chill
You know I could have worked the rigs when the money was big Or hopped a freighter south to Trinidad And when they tried to draft me I earned a college degree Buyin' time till things were not so bad But when I got a guitar found a job in a bar, playin' acid rock til I was numb Tell me where are the flashbacks they all warned us would come.
(Bridge) And oh, it gets so damn lonely When you're on the plane all alone And if I had the money, Honey I'd strap you in beside me And never ever leave you Leave you at home all alone and crying. 2ff7e9595c
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