She who dies with the longest watchlist wins?
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The Fuller Gush Man 1934
A young woman does not want to wed Walter Catlett, and asks her family to not consent to their marriage. Her family more than rises to the occasion.
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The Scarlet Empress 1934
A fever dream of sex, violence, and grotesqueness. An impressionist sketch of infinite riches in a squalid little room.
If some Lubitsch comedies are operettas minus the singing, The Scarlet Empress is unsung grand opera: a vestigial plot and a purely nominal basis in history, serving as a pretext for a series of star turns of the highest order. It's demented, and as in the operatic world, I intend that as the highest praise possible. If I knew more about 20th century music, I would lament that someone didn't collaborate with von Sternberg to give this work the musical setting it deserves.
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Male and Female 1919
The desert island sequences are underpinned by BDSM in Victorian fancy dress, seasoned with a touch of blasphemy. And then of course in the last reel de Mille pivots to upholding middle-class middle American virtues.
