Drawing upon trial records, the defendant’s letters and the deceased’s memorandum book, David Lean’s Madeleine stars wife Ann Todd as Madeleine Smith, who was tried in 1857 for the murder of her lover in Glasgow. Emile L’Angelier considers himself engaged to Madeleine, who nevertheless keeps postponing introducing him to her well-to-do family. Meanwhile, Madeleine’s father […]
Daily Archives: September 13, 2008
Fritz Lang’s futuristic Frau im Mond, about humankind’s first lunar expedition, follows Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon by seventeen years. Ironically, the spacecraft’s name is Friede, literally, Peace; but Wolf Helius and Hans Windegger, his chief engineer, are both in love with astronomer Friede Velten, who is also onboard. (Friede is engaged to […]
Hollywood has always found Hollywood a fascinating subject, but the possibility of scandal, even lawsuits (as unlikely as these were in studio days), have sometimes made it necessary to treat its home stories at a remove, or at a number of removes. When this occurred, Hollywood found itself in a funny bind, because at the […]
Dennis Grunes 