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5:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
The Long Night (1947 USA): Henry Fonda plays Joe Adams, a World War II vet caught up in a web of deeply unfortunate circumstances in this excellent Anatole Litvak suspenser. As the film opens, Joe has apparently gone off the deep end and murdered semi-pro magician Maximilian (Vincent Price, clearly enjoying himself), and is now holed up by the police in his one-room apartment. Did Joe really commit murder — or were there extenuating circumstances? All is revealed in extensive flashbacks, which detail Joe's love affairs with Jo Ann (Barbara Bel Geddes) and Charlene (Ann Dvorak), who also happens to be employed by Maximilian as his very own lovely and charming assistant. A remake of Marcel Carne's masterful Le Jour se Leve, The Long Night's awkwardly structured flashbacks don't always gel, but first rate cinematography by Sol Polito and another fine Fonda performance make this a must-see.

Saturday 03/21/09

1:15 AM Turner Classic Movies
The Pace That Thrills (1952 USA): Here's an RKO programmer I've never seen, but with characters named Dusty, Rocket, Blackie, and Sour Puss, it's surely irresistible. Night of the Zombies' Bill Williams stars as play-dirty motorcycle racer Dusty; Frank McHugh is roommate and engineer Rocket; Robert Mitchum's brother John plays Blackie; and Perry White himself, John Hamilton, is Sour Puss! If those four aren't sufficient reason to watch The Pace That Thrills, factor in the presence of King Kong star Robert Armstrong as sickle manufacturer J. C. Barton.

Sunday 03/22/09

5:00 AM IFC
Fireman's Ball (1967 CZE): This was the last film Milos Forman made before fleeing Czechoslovakia after the 1968 revolution. Frothy and lightweight, with a tinge of political satire for seasoning, The Firemen's Ball reflects the more liberal atmosphere that briefly prevailed in Dubcek's Czechoslovakia. Forman's greatest work was awaiting him in the United States, but this early precursor of his talents is well worth watching.

7:00 AM Turner Classic Movies
Nicholas Nickleby (1947 GB): Forever overshadowed by David Lean's 1946 Dickens adaptation, Great Expectations, this Alberto Cavalcanti feature surely deserves its own moment in the sun. Derek Bond stars as the title character, a typically Dickensian poor but honest sort thrust into adversity by the cruel hand fate has dealt him and his family. After his father dies, Nicholas, his mother (Mary Merrall), and sister Kate (Sally Ann Howes) find themselves placed in care of Uncle Ralph (Cedric Hardwicke), a mean-spirited old sod who also has less than honorable intentions for Nicholas' sibling. Scripted by John Dighton, Cavalcanti's film does a reasonable job of boiling down a very long novel into a reasonably proportioned 108 minutes, and though Bond is a less than magnetic screen personality, Hardwicke is deliciously malicious. Look for a youngish James Hayter as sunny chum Ned Cheeryble.

11:00 PM Turner Classic Movies
Mamma Roma (1962 ITA): Mama mia, papa pia, TCM's gotta Mamma Roma! Anna Magnani stars as a retired prostitute in this once controversial feature from bad boy director Pier Paolo Pasolini. Mamma is determined to keep teenage son Ettore (Ettore Garofolo) from making the same mistakes she made — but after moving to the city, he takes up with a gang of ruffians and is deflowered by Bruna (Silvana Corsini), a young lady of considerable disrepute. Cue lashings of Catholic guilt, Marxist ideology, and oedipal overtones. This was only Pasolini's second film, but censors were already sharpening their scissors for what they considered to be obscene material. Compared to the director's Salo (The 120 Days of Sodom), however, Mamma Roma looks like an afterschool special. Well, perhaps an afterschool special for gay Catholic Communists.

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