Although very far from the zenith of the genre of the comical Western, Destry Rides Again (George Marshall, 1939) starring Marlene Dietrich and Jimmy Stewart, Blazing Saddles ends up making a positive impression. The film, which is set initially in 1874, includes a plethora of anachronisms, many of them film references; the payoff comes when […]

With Constantinople and Paris still ahead, I have just watched the first half of Aleksandr Alov and Vladimir Naumov’s 3¼-hour Flight, based on “works by Mikhail Bulgakov,” including the play with which it shares its title. Because of Bulgakov’s tsarist sympathies, Stalin’s regime prevented the 1928 play from being produced. Stalin, at least in a […]