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| Author | Topic: Bernadette Movie Marathon |
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 moljul
Registered User
Registered:
4/2/2001
From:
New York
Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Fav. BP Song: Dublin Lady
| posted: 3/3/2007 at 7:33:04 PM ET
I don't know if anyone else caught it today on HBO but I was flipping through the channels and came across Silent Movie. When I finished watching that I saw that Pink Cadillac was about to begin on another HBO channel and then 30 minutes later Anastasia would start on yet another HBO channel. I decided to stick with Pink Cadillac. While neither PC or Silent Movie are my favorite movie, it was a fun afternoon spent belately celebrating Bernadette's birthday.
"I'm one star away from Dolly Parton ... and Raymond Massey is between us. I hope we don't suffocate him." Bernadette Peters receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, April 24, 1987
| Karen
Registered User
Registered:
5/3/2002 | posted: 3/3/2007 at 8:06:36 PM ET
That's great that HBO did that. I wish TCM would have a Bernadette Peters day. They could show maybe six of her own best films and then have her serve as guest programmer where she could get to select and introduce four or five of her favorite old films. I'd love to see her choices. When Sondheim did it, he picked really interesting ones.
| moljul
Registered User
Registered:
4/2/2001
From:
New York
Fav. BP CD: I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
Fav. BP Song: Dublin Lady
| posted: 3/3/2007 at 8:10:48 PM ET
Well I don't think it was on purpose or anything but it was fun. I agree a TCM day would be great.
"I'm one star away from Dolly Parton ... and Raymond Massey is between us. I hope we don't suffocate him." Bernadette Peters receiving her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, April 24, 1987
| Scottie
Registered User
Registered:
3/6/2006
From:
Edinburgh, Scotland | posted: 3/4/2007 at 3:24:15 PM ET
Karen, do you recall the names of the films Sondheim picked? I would love to know his choices.
This side of the pond the only ever Bernadette screening on TCM is Pennies From Heaven. From time to time some other BP films will show up on terrestrial channels. Last week we had a rare screening of The Longest Yard. I watched it for the first time and have to admit that the most interesting thing about it was Bernadette's hairstyle.
as Bernadette says....just keep moving on.....
| Karen
Registered User
Registered:
5/3/2002 | posted: 3/4/2007 at 3:50:29 PM ET
Sondheim selected three fairly well-known films and three fairly obscure ones. The well-known ones were Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), the 1937 thriller Night Must Fall with Robert Montgomery and Rosalind Russell, and Minnelli's wartime romance The Clock (1945) with Judy Garland and Robert Walker. The lesser-known ones were all vintage Warner Brothers: The Mind Reader (1933) with Warren William and Constance Cummings, Torchy Blane in Chinatown (193"eight") with Glenda Farrell, and Out of the Fog (1941) with John Garfield and Ida Lupino. Great stuff. He's obviously a huge movie buff. He also was a guest programmer at the Telluride Film Festival a few years ago.
Edit: It's so inconvenient not to be able to use the numeral which symbolizes the number eight. Getting an emoticon instead is very annoying.
| Scottie
Registered User
Registered:
3/6/2006
From:
Edinburgh, Scotland | posted: 3/4/2007 at 4:40:53 PM ET
Thank you for that information, fascinating stuff too. Of the lesser-known Sondheim film choices the only one I know is the beautiful "Out Of The Fog" with Garfield and Lupino. I am very lucky to live in an old theatrical area of London that has many Ida Lupino memories. She was born here and her family (notably father, Stanley, and uncle, Lupino Lane,) played all the local theatres and drank in the local pubs way back in the early days of the Music Hall.
Strange too, because I always have thought that Bernadette's acting style is very reminiscent of Ida Lupino's. It's all in the eyes.
Take a look, if you can, at some of Ida's early British films before she went to America and then look at Bernadette in Pennies From Heaven.
as Bernadette says....just keep moving on.....
| Karen
Registered User
Registered:
5/3/2002 | posted: 3/4/2007 at 7:34:15 PM ET
Interesting. That's something new I'll have to keep my eyes open for. I haven't seen very many Lupino movies. The only ones that really stand out in my mind are High Sierra, They Drive By Night and Road House. I've also seen a couple of the films she directed: The Hitch-Hiker (excellent noirish thriller) and Not Wanted which was very interesting because it was considered shocking subject matter in the late forties--an unmarried woman who becomes pregnant. Would definitely like to see more of her work, expecially the early British films you mentioned.
| Scottie
Registered User
Registered:
3/6/2006
From:
Edinburgh, Scotland | posted: 3/5/2007 at 8:56:34 AM ET
I'm grateful to the person here who emailed me an interesting article on Ida Lupino by Charles Nafus. This opening paragraph sums up entirely what I meant about Bernadette's acting style being similar to Lupino's and explains precisely what I meant when I said it's all in the eyes......
Large, luminous, and widely set apart, Ida Lupino's eyes were her greatest asset in creating screen personas. In many films her eyes reveal abrupt shifts in thought and emotion. For instance, in They Drive by Night (1940), she sits with her besotted husband in an idling car inside their garage. She wants his money but not him. As she hesitates to turn off the ignition, we see murder born behind her eyes. She leaves her husband to die of carbon monoxide poisoning. There would be many such moments of superb nonverbal acting in Lupino's Hollywood films in the Forties, but England is where her career began.
I've always been of the opinion that Ida Lupino is a master of such "eye acting". It's not the over-exagerated eye-popping style that came out of the Silent Movie era -- but rather something very subtle and perhaps even spiritual. With that in mind I watched "Pennies From Heaven" last night and was again struck by Bernadette's similar ability to convey "many such moments of superb nonverbal acting" ......
I think this ability in Bernadette is all the more interesting and clever when you consider that we are talking about someone who (being such a great singer) is used to communicating so perfectly and instinctively with her voice.
Oops, sorry to ramble on at such length!
as Bernadette says....just keep moving on.....
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