Oct 19 2025

1944 – Arsenic and Old Lace

It’s a dark screwball comedy directed by Frank Capra and starring mainly Cary Grant as Mortimer Brewster. It’s based on a play with the same name by Joseph Kesselring, which was very successful, so it was stipulated that the film would not be released until its Broadway run ended. I rented in on YouTube, since both Apple and Amazon only had the German version here for sale.

The leaves have been falling like crazy these last few days here in Berlin. Fall is here and with it pumpkins (soups, pies, lattes, jack-o-lanterns, …), corn mazes (though there aren’t as many as in the past…) and Halloween stuff! Also movies; from marathons the streaming services releasing a bunch of horror movies to the over the air TV channels issuing their Halloween night schedule (apparently it’s actual Halloween marathon this year). So this movie fit right into the season, its whole plot unfolding over Halloween night. Plus, it’s not scary, but a macabre, black comedy.

As to what makes it dark – well it’s two extremely sweet, old ladies murdering lonely older gentlemen (they just bagged their 12th victim in the windowsill) out of pity. It’s wrong, but when you look at them, how they prance around the hall with their arsenic infused wine, you can’t help but laugh. They’re pleasant, give toys to the poor, are in good standing with the police and clergy, how can you not love them? And in their sweetness, they don’t feel remorse either. In fact, there’s quite some commentary over how some people do some truly horrible things in the name of pity, going over the heads of the victims, but present themselves as honorable citizens.

But the movie doesn’t linger on this too long. It’s more on the desperation of their nephew to save his aunts from the police by trying to pin it on his delusional younger brother “Teddy”, who things he’s the actual Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy has buried the bodies in the basement (no, that’s not a metaphor) thinking it’s Panama and they were victims of yellow fever. Getting him interned in an insane asylum is a way to bury… ahem… to keep the skeletons in the closet.

But then hilarity ensues when Mortimer’s other estranged brother Jonathan shows up with his sidekick Dr. Einstein (Peter Lorre is really becoming my favorite actor in this blog, he again is a reason why the whole plot doesn’t fall apart). He’s become quite a killer, I mean criminal on his own also claiming a dozen murders on his side of the ledger. Can Mortimer remain sane with all things crashing upon his once very simple world? The murderous aunts, the crazy brothers, one evil, one naive, his new wive, the police, the director of the asylum, the taxi driver in front of his house, etc., etc., Yes, at a certain point it becomes slapstick and the conclusion is also quite rushed, but in the middle it is quite funny, being punctuated by Cary Grant’s excellent over-the-top acting. His “deer in the headlights” look is especially great and we feel for him when he mumbles to himself trying to hatch a scheme to get out of the newest comeuppance driving a dent into the old plan.

It is quite clear that the movie was born out of a play. The whole thing takes place in the main room of the aunts’ house, with some elements on the outside or the stairs, but which can fit the stage quite comfortably. It’s a plus and minus an some points. Plus, because it keeps everything contained and there are no long excursions into a distraction to the main plot, but minus, because it retains too much of the play character. It’s not like filming the play of Hamilton and calling it a movie and there are some cinematic elements (close-ups, the shot from the stairs, the music, …), but overall the movie made me even curiouser about the play. There was even a line where the brother Jonathan grows incensed because the plastic surgery has made him look like Frankenstein’s monster. Everybody says: “He looks like Boris Karloff!”, which makes him angry. Well, in the Broadway play, he was played by the actual Boris Karloff.

So, final verdict. I laughed in quite a few places, so yes, very successful in that, but don’t go around looking for the heart we see just 2 years later in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. It never leaves its screwball roots and as such is a good time and some very good, funny lines, but not much more behind it. Hey, it’s Halloween in 1944, sometimes you just want amusement!

Oct 5 2025

1943 – The life and death of Colonel Blimp

It’s an english epic biography of an english soldier, with elements of war, romance and friendship. It was produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. It stars Roger Livesey as Clive Candy, Anton Walbrook as Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff and a very young Deborah Kerr in 3 pivotal roles in Candy’s life. This movie also, thankfully was on YouTube.

We have now reached 1943 and while on the outside World War II is raging, also the number of movies being produced are certainly going down; there were only a third of many movies being made that year than in 1939. Also the themes are changing to include the raging war, but just as last year’s movie, one has to be careful not to fall into outright propaganda movies.

So, this one fit the bill, which was a quite critical of the English mindset of the beginning of the 20th century, with its colonialism, its supposed noblesse oblige, but all through the eyes of a quite naive English soldier stuck in the 19th century with allusions to honor and a carefully smoothed over history (for example, making light of the Boer concentration camps). One aspect I liked, is that that the movie didn’t tell you about it, you’re like two thirds of the way in and it dawns on you, “oh, that’s why it doesn’t sit right, it’s a critique of the old chap, not a celebration!”.

The way his obsession for a woman is manifested in him falling for the same type over and over again – heh, Deborah Kerr playing three roles in three important phases of Clive’s life. Creepy, but sweet at the same time. Thankfully, they’re all three quite independent women, the one in the middle marrying him to go off to see the world.

Another eye-rolling aspect is the “wall of trophies” he has in his own and which serves as a plot device to mark the passage of time. It is quite ridiculous how he accumulates these taxidermy mounts, the most cringe worthy being a whole elephant head. He even puts up a picture of his dead wife prominently in that room. We feel the uncomfortableness that Theo displays when he is shown the room.

But the most poignant point of the movie comes in the form of a speech comes right at the end. Clive is still steeped in his old ways of fighting right until the start of the Second World War. It reminded me of some aspects of Hillary Clinton’s campaign: Michelle Obama’s “When they go low, we go high” or her bringing up the dead Syrian toddler on the beach breaking he heart. It was a dirty fight and to a dirty fight you don’t bring appeals to honor or dignity. The movie explicitly has a speech about it from Theo:

“i don’t think you won it. we lost it — but you lost something, too. you forgot to learn the moral. because victory was yours, you failed to learn your lesson twenty years ago: this is not a gentleman’s war. this time you’re fighting for your very existence against the most devilish idea ever created by a human brain: nazism. and if you lose, there won’t be a return match next year… perhaps not even for a hundred years.”

And he’s like that the whole movie, surprised that the Germans would torture the English to get the location of a bridge, while his own soldiers do the same as soon as he leaves. When he greets Theo in a sea of Germans in the English POW camp like he was running into a friend at the movie theater and is surprised that his counterpart is quiet and reserved.

It’s Theo that ends up being the most fascinating protagonist of the movie. Even when he doesn’t appear through large parts of the movie, his presence is there on Clive throughout. And when he does come back to plead to be accepted by the English we learn how his whole world (view) has been slowly, but surely been destroyed. The sadness of eyes, when he says he lost his two sons… they’re now good Nazis.

I saw “One Battle After Another” last weekend, excellent movie, highly recommend it! And it told the themes of fighting for justice, how sometimes you have to fight dirty or perhaps to go against “the rules” to do right, precisely because the rules are often done by evil people. Also here, in the end, the Colonel sees the need to fight for what’s right, not for the ceremonial rules.

Lastly, some more technical aspects that need to be mentioned, but I’d rather let Scorsese introduce them for me. For a movie about someone’s life, the movie is actually very sparse in telling the most traditional aspects of it – battles won, marriages, deaths – they all get hinted at in newspaper clippings, but never shown. Rather, it is more a collections of meetings which at first don’t seem to mean much, but will define him for the rest of his life. Even the significant duel between Theo and Clive has a ceremonial and ritualistic preparation aspect that goes on for many, many minutes, but when the duel starts, the camera cuts away to the snow. It isn’t important, the build-up is, because it tells us about the type of battle and consequences that it will have.

The other aspect, is the behind the scenes stuff. Clive was supposed to be played by Laurence Olivier, but this was opposed to by Winston Churchill. Roger Livesey brings an amazing performance – this typical english speech, where they don’t even unclench their jaw – so authentic, but so jarring it made me like the movie less. The movie in general was opposed by the war department for the sympathetic depiction of a German soldier and its English critiques detailed above. In a recollection from Powell, he says that he had an interview with the war minister and he had to bluntly ask him if they were going to forbid them outright to make the film. He said something like: “Oh my dear fellow, we can’t possibly forbid you. That wouldn’t do at all. But don’t make it or you’ll never get a knighthood.” So they made it and Powell never got his supposed knighthood. Very on the nose, that one. Ha!

Aug 10 2025

1939 – The Wizard of Oz

It’s an american fantasy musical produced by Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. The movie is based on 1900 kids book “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by Frank Baum with illustrations by W.W. Denslow. It was “mainly” produced by Victor Fleming and stars Judy Garland in her breakout and most famous role as Dorothy. I rented it on Apple for 3,99 Eur.

Some movies are so influential that you tend to know them by osmosis. I have watched exactly one half Avengers movie (the 2012 one, did not finish, don’t like Marvel movies), yet I know of Thanos and the snap. I have not and don’t plan to watch any of the Avatar movies, yet I know it’s blue Pocahontas. And so we come to 1939, where I am embarrassed to say that I haven’t seen the two most famous movies of that year: Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz. Or at least not consciously – I have seen hundreds of clips of both movies, know of the controversies, the significance of both. I have read the Margaret Mitchell’s really well written book of the former (and the unrealistic, kitchy, but very entertaining sequel Scarlett) when I was like 13-14, it opened this whole new world for me – surviving as a woman in the 19th century. So with the Wicked and Wicked: For Good movies being in the conversation, I thought I should go with the latter of the two movies.

Boy, I wasn’t wrong about the osmosis. And it’s not the “Yellow Brick Road” or “Somewhere over the Rainbow”, those I could understand. It’s knowing the lyrics to “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead”, even though I didn’t know the context of the song. It’s knowing “I’m melting, oh what a world” from Who Framed Roger Rabbit and realizing I never questioned its origin. It’s my friend from high school often saying: “Are you a good bitch or a bad bitch?” and now getting she was quoting Glinda (with “w” and “b” changed). And I do think, I have seen this movie running in the background when I was a kid at my best friend’s place, but I think I never made it to the Emerald City, I stopped at the lion joining the gang. Or maybe I am confusing it with Alice in Wonderland, which I also saw at her place (guys, I was like 6 or 7)?

So, how can I rate this? I mean, if I see it with kids eyes, just like 2 weeks ago Robin Hood, then the transition from the black and white Kansas to the bright Technicolor Fantasyland of Oz, must have been absolutely breathtaking (I found it almost blindingly so). The musical was not as entrenched as it would become one or two decades later and having musical numbers for kids must have been quite something. I saw that movie somewhat tired before falling into bed and I had quite psychedelic dreams that night trying to escape Oz, so the movie stays with you, heh!

The story is easy to understand and the movie has an easy to grasp message: “There is no place like home!”, a comfort after the devastating years of the Great Depression and the World War looming over the horizon. Even though the poverty is clear in Aunt Em’s farm in Kansas, it’s family that we long to get back to.

But that message? I don’t like it very much – it’s not quite the meanness that comes out in this article from The Guardian, in that Americans fall for a charlatan like Oz. It’s more that every journey away from home changes you and Dorothy has not resolved one single of her problems at home. For example, Toto will still be impounded (unless perhaps Miss Gulch really was killed in the tornado?). In 2001, Hayao Miyazaki released Spirited Away in which Chihiro undergoes her own journey in a fantasy world. Even though in principle she returns to her normal life with her parents, she is a changed girl, has matured immensely and us with her, through her work in the washhouse and especially that train ride. And it’s exactly those moments of calm that stand in contrast to the frenzy of hopping from one thing to the next in the Wizard of Oz. It’s relentless and never stops and in the end it turned out to be a hoax, all she had to do was to tap her heels.

But I have spent already so much thinking about this movie, its message and its impact, that I do understand it to be one of the “great movies”. One can understand the cultural value of something, even though it’s not your value. Sometimes, it’s better the movie evokes a reaction of anger out of you instead of indifference. I am glad I saw this.

P.S.: I know, I just glossed over the troubled production this movie had, the everlasting bad effects it had on its cast, chief among them Judy Garland being propped up by a cocktail of drugs (amphetamines, barbiturates and other diet pills) which eventually resulted in her death. I can only recommend Be Kind Rewind’s video on the making of the movie.

Jul 27 2025

1938 – The Adventures of Robin Hood

An American swashbuckling epic directed by Michael Curtiz and Willian Keighley. It stars Errol Flynn in the titular Robin Hood role and Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marian. It’s the first Technicolor picture on my movie list. This, plus the extensive settings, fight scenes, costumes, etc. made for a budget well over $2 million; it was Warner Brother’s most expensive picture made at that time, but made it back comfortably as one of the highest grossing movies of that year. I rented it at Apple+ for $3.99 Eur.

Adventure movies are quite difficult to describe, discuss and rate; especially the old ones. For one, it’s the exact reason you go to the movies for: have a good time, watch the good guys win, with a little excitement, some fighting, some escaping dangerous situations. For me growing up, it was the Indiana Jones movies, with The Last Crusade being my favorite one. But come on, when you think about it, some of it is a bit dumb (like the X in the library – haha), it is only the genius that is Steven Spielberg that lets you turn off your brain, enjoy the movie and even get your heart rate going. Today’s adventure movies are Comic Book movies, something I never got into, but there were probably a lot of people that didn’t get the 80s adventure craze either.

Another adventure movie that was quite big when I was growing up was Kevin Costner’s Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Nowadays, it’s widely panned, perhaps even being the worst ones of the bunch, but then little 12 year old me was smitten by everything the Hollywood machinery conjured: the cheesy soundtrack (fun trivia fact, the original 1991 music video seems to have disappeared), the constant bombardment of merchandising (I distinctly remember how I prized my Christian Slater – Will Scarlet sticker), the perfect villain (long before Snape, Alan Rickman was an amazing Sheriff of Nottingham). But yes, I see now how flawed that movie was, even though I loved it as a tween.

And so with a 1938 hat on, the Adventures of Robin Hood has got to be amazing. Well choreographed stunts and battles, a heartthrob leading man with his real-life “on again off again” partner, an epic incorporation of the score, a story that captured the spirit of the times and a studio that was willing to put a lot of money behind this adventure. That one single man could get away from so many enemies and do it with a smile on his face was totally new. And the final boss battle with Sir Guy of Gisbourne packed some real stakes and even worry that Robin wasn’t going to be able to overcome him. It’s a perfect encapsulation of what made the ballads of the medieval times great, the legend being larger than what probably happened.

But when you look at it from a 2025 lens on, then the movie suffers. it starts at the ridiculous costumes, so aptly made fun of in Robin Hood: Men in Tights – I now understand even more references of that parody movie, heh! It goes on with clunky dialogue and fights (yes, great for 1938, but it looks wooden and so staged for 2025). Even the scenery trying to get every drop of color to showcase the marvel that was Technicolor back in 1938, just underscores the fakeness of it all. It’s probably good for the Disney version (super underrated, highly recommend to watch it with your kids!), but not for the real life one. And don’t get me started on that ridiculous laugh and hairdo that Robin Hood sports, I laughed at it myself.

In short – adventure movies are amazing – but see them in the period that were made. Spend some amazing hours forgetting the world around you. Revisit them for nostalgia, if you are revisiting your childhood. But don’t expect them to hold up to modern scrutiny. It’s nice that I saw this as a piece of lore in Hollywood, but there are way better adventure movies nowadays.

Jun 29 2025

1936 – Modern Times

Part silent, part talkie movie written, directed and starred in by Charlie Chaplin in his last performance as The Tramp. It also starts Paulette Goddard as Gamin, his potential love interest. I saw it for free on YouTube. It is a largely a scathing critique of modern technology in the name of capitalism during the Great Depression, apparently spurred by a conversation he had with Mahatma Ghandi.

Critique of capitalism is “in” these last few years in film – from The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, Glass Onion, Saltburn to the masterpiece that is Parasite, even the recent Mickey 17. And yet, none of these “eat the rich” dramedies did it with so much heart and and had me laughing in stitches like this Charlie Chaplin movie. The Tramp’s character tries and tries to catch a break to start to make a living in a house with his love Gamin among the height of the Great Depression in America. From demeaning work in a factory, literally being reduced to a cog in a machine that needs to function ever faster, to a security guard in a fancy department department store needing to keep his old friends and colleagues out of simply getting a meal. It does says a lot about society, when the main character is happier in prison than out in the workforce.

The Great Depression was no laughing matter. I already alluded to the poverty being ever present in American movies of that time in “It happened one night” and here the desperation is everywhere. Workers showing up in masses when there is a hint of work at a new or re-opened factory, people resorting to stealing food in their desperation, even some clinging to communists ideals and starting marches, strikes and other rebellions to fight back at the capitalists. Within that, the ever optimist figure of The Tramp works perfectly.

It is in this movie that the song Smile, later popularized by Nat King Cole or even bastardized in Joker (Todd Phillips would probably say it was a homage, but I hated that movie) first appears and it is to give us optimism that it will work out somehow – the true essence of The Tramp. Even though he always finds himself in desperate situations, he approaches them with an optimism that somehow it will get better for him. It is this optimism that I always admire in Americans, somehow ingrained in their culture and it shows this culture trait plenty in this movie. And yes, I did turn off the TV at the end of the movie with a smile on my face – it would somehow, someday resolve well for The Tramp, he would be ok!

I do have one point that sat badly with me throughout the whole movie and that is Gamin’s relationship with The Tramp. How old is she supposed to be, anyways? At one point, she runs away from family services that supposedly were shipping her off to an orphanage and in the next few scenes The Tramp services himself as her literal sugar daddy (giving her cake and sweets and later a fancy coat). It’s all played quite fanciful and the music always swells to make you feel ok, but it still gave me the creeps that this young girl attached her future to a much older vagrant, just because he gave her some food and money once. There is an alternative ending in which Gamin takes on vows and The Tramp leaves alone, but Chaplin changed his mind after wanting to make his real life lover and third wife Paulette Goddard famous and give the real her hope that she could succeed.

Ah, well, nonetheless, I do recommend this movie, finally a Charlie Chaplin one in these 100 Movies, the comedy is really strong here and the social critique is also well done. It even has a coherent plot from start to finish, even though you can always show the individual vignettes separately and have a good time (and I even see them some of the now on TikTok).

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