Cary Grant and Derring-Do Make a Natural Pair The 1930s was a time of great pioneering in aviation, and also one of its most dangerous. What seems routine today — flying in stormy weather or high over mountains — was routinely hazardous and terrifying on occasion. back then. In this 1939 movie classic directed by action specialist Howard Hawks (great last name, by the way), we’re given an...

A Movie About a Butler, Love, and Screwball Comedy In the 1936 movie classic My Man Godfrey, we find William Powell (of the Nick and Nora Charles Thin Man movies) and a radiant, yet slightly wacky, Carole Lombard magnificently complimenting each other’s considerable acting abilities. Believe me, it’s no easy thing to play ditsy and easily distracted, but Lombard does it with a genius that’s...

It’s Easy to Become Passionate About “The Passion of Joan of Arc” Once in a while, a film comes along which is so brilliant and insightful it needs no vocals — or even dialogue subtitling, on occasion — to get its message across. 1928’s The Passion of Joan of Arc is just such an example. Directed in newly-developed panchromatic black-and-white film stock by Carl Theodore...

An Essential and Stylish Movie Classic Made in 1954, director Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, starring Jimmy Stewart and the always beautiful Grace Kelly, set the standard for classic movie thrillers for decades to come. In fact its voyeur-who-witnesses-a-murder-and-isn’t-believed theme is an essential part of any movie that seeks to encourage a bit of paranoia and suspense. Alfred Hitchcock himself relied...

Classic Movies Don’t Come Much Better Filmed in black-and-white, 1939’s Stagecoach began a decades-long collaboration between classic movie star John Wayne and his most loyal director, John Ford. That it’s also the film that catapulted John Wayne to true stardom is an even better reason to like it. What’s also interesting is that his portrayal of The Ringo Kid is recognized by critics as moving the...

One of the Best Science Fiction Movies Ever Made Forbidden Planet, one of the best classic movies of the science fiction genre, is a film made in 1956 that pays direct homage to William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Starring Walter Pidgeon as Doctor Morbius (the Prospero character in Tempest) and Anne Francis as his daughter, Planet examines how a paradise-like existence on the distant planet Altair-4 may not...

A Recognized Movie Classic In 1956, when The Searchers was first released, nobody knew that it would today be a widely-hailed classic movie. Nowadays, it’s especially noted as one of the greatest Westerns of all-time. Starring John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles and a young Natalie Wood, among others, it was one of the first in the cowboy genre to examine issues of racism in the old West; especially that...

A Movie Classic Starring Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell In the 1940 classic movie that at heart is really an examination of the relationship between professionals who at one time were married — but still remain a boss-and-employee pair — we find both Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell giving virtuoso performances. Directed by Howard Hawks, “His Girl Friday,” is the story of Hildy Johnson (played...