Fredric March and Sylvia Sidney both give brilliant performances in Merrily We Go to Hell, a “modern” marital drama sparklingly, poignantly directed by Dorothy Arzner. March plays Jerry Corbett, a hard-drinking Chicago newspaperman, then New York playwright, while Sidney, famous for playing proletarians, with absolute conviction plays Joan, an heiress whose father objects to her […]
Daily Archives: April 7, 2009
Alternating between color and black-and-white, although conjuring the appearance at times that shots provide foreground color and background black and white, Rotterdam Europoort finds Joris Ivens returning (by invitation) to the scene of De brug (1927), but with a world war in between. It is the globe-trotting Dutch documentarian’s version of the legend of the […]
In time for Passover, last night PBS aired this documentary that had been made under its auspices. Of late I have been immersing myself in the brilliant, irreplaceable films of Dutch documentarian Joris Ivens. I have never had much patience for “television documentaries” that aim at being informative and little else, that double up on […]
Dennis Grunes 