Leave it to a German to make a ‘Great American Movie’. William Dieterle’s first self-produced movie: an adaptation of Stephen Vincent Benét’s vivid 1936 American Gothic short story “The Devil and Daniel Webster,” retitled to avoid confusion with RKO’s The Devil and Miss Jones. Benét’s story sanctifies nineteenth-century lawyer Webster as a supernatural force against Satan’s influence in U.S. history. Skipping settler colonialism and slavery, he only shows up to free a white farmer from the dark-dressed stranger. Webster opposed…
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Legally Blonde 2001
Watched to celebrate my mum's birthday and to celebrate my acceptance to Harvard's Philosophy PhD programme. Still one of the great movies and, in my cantankerous contrarianism, the only movie made in my lifetime that I love like it's a classic. I first saw it nine years ago. At that time, I barely thought it was possible, but it gave me a sense of hope in a way no other work of art ever had: "What if you're trying to be something you are?" After nine years of hard work, and a lucky scrunchie, I'm going.
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What Happened on Twenty-Third Street, New York City 1901
A woman's skirt shoots up when she walks under the gushing air of a sidewalk grate, fifty-four years before Marilyn's iconic performance in The Seven Year Itch. Only today have I learned the historical significance of this film's title. Why does it happen on Twenty-Third Street? The answer can be found by pairing this film with the 1903 actuality At the Foot of the Flatiron, in which pedestrians clutch their hats and skirts on a windy day on the corner…
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I Love Melvin 1953
One of the 50 best films in the history of cinema. Starstruck gal Debbie Reynolds wants to be on the cover of Look magazine — paging Dr. Laura Mulvey? — and apprentice photographer Donald O'Connor promises he'll help. Perfectly trifling, then, but what's remarkable here isn't the what but the how. Its wide-eyed stars direct off Singin' in the Rain (which O'Connor knowingly references with a lamppost leap), the dance numbers here rank among the most creative ever made for…