Greta Garbo in Mata Hari & Four Fabulous Faces

Some people share their birthday with Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn or Myrna Loy, I share mine with Mata Hari. I never really knew much about her other than she was a femme fatale spy.

Last night we watched the 1931 Mata Hari movie which stars Greta Garbo. This film is loosely based on Mata Hari's life. Garbo plays such a mesmerizing version of Mata Hari that you don't really care if it's accurate or not. This movie had me gasping with amazement at some of the lavish, decadent over the top outfits that Garbo was wearing including an outfit that involved intriguing gold lame leggings or tights (you can check out a film clip featuring the ensemble on You Tube, look closely at how sensuously she closes the curtains towards the end of the clip [Garbo's gowns were designed by Adrian]). Greta Garbo's beauty and talent shine in this movie.

Speaking of the beauty of Garbo, I was lucky enough to come across an incredible hardback book titled Four Fabulous Faces, which contains tons of photos of Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Gloria Swanson. I have only just begun ogling this weighty tome, and so far it proves to be fascinating.

For any Silver Screen and Old Hollywood fan I would most definitely recommend watching Mata Hari and reading Four Fabulous Faces.

The Plot Against Harry

Last night we watched 1969's The Plot Against Harry

The movie starts out suddenly with no intro other than the name of the movie on the screen. It's about Harry, a Jewish numbers racketeer, who gets out of jail and goes about trying to make good with his life. Other than reading the description on the back of the movie we knew nothing of it and were surprised by it's unusual cinematography. I was trying to remember what movie it reminded me of when Chris said it reminded him of 1984's Stranger Than Paradise, and that was the movie I was trying to think of- so, the cinematography style is Stranger Than Paradise with some of 2001's The Royal Tenenbaums thrown in for good measure.

Vintage Buster Keaton Movies

Chris and I have been watching quite a lot of Buster Keaton movies lately.
His movies are always guaranteed to make us laugh, and I find Buster to be so handsome in his old silent films!
Two fun ones that we watched recently were Seven Chances and Balloonatic.
The image at the top of this post is a scan of an Artist Trading Card that Chris made. The image of Buster Keaton is from old black and white movie wrapping paper that I have, Chris cut out the inner shirt area and collaged a vintage wine label underneath and then glued it onto a more modern background image.

The Pink Panther

As a kid I was always watching reruns of old movies on t.v. I really thought the Pink Panther series was funny- but, I don't think that I saw the original Pink Panther movie until I was in my twenties.

1963's The Pink Panther has everything you could want to help keep you entertained: the hilarious Peter Sellers, the dashing David Niven, a young Robert Wagner, the classical beauty Capucine, the pouty Claudia Cardinale, elegant costumes for Capucine and Claudia Cardinale by Yves Saint-Laurent, a catchy and entertaining musical performance by Fran Jeffries (who I think Lady Miss Kier of Deee-lite bears a strong resemblance to), and a costume party filled with over the top costumes!

Mon Oncle

The other night we were delighted by the movie Mon Oncle.
Jacques Tati portrays a man who lives a happy life in the perfectly imperfect traditional Paris which is juxtaposed against the imperfectly perfect modern Paris that his sister, brother-in-law and nephew live in.
The movie features many funny and amusing scenes, and also offers up an intriguing critique of traditional Parisian life compared to modern Parisian life.
Besides starring in Mon Oncle, Jacques Tati also was the movie's writer, director and producer!
The d.v.d that we rented also included the short Jacques Tati movie L'Ecole des Facteurs which also proved to be a delight.

A Christmas Carol

Christmas Carol is a true holiday classic that I grew up watching on t.v. during Christmas time.

My husband and I watched it the other night, and that was the first time I had seen it in a long time, perhaps the first time I had seen it in my adult life.

Alastair Sim's Scrooge is full of bah humbug until he is greeted in the middle of the night by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley who warns him to change his greedy selfish ways and informs Scrooge that he will receive visits from three ghosts during the middle of the night.

A fun treat for Avengers fans is Patrick Macnee's performance as the young Jacob Marley.

The copy of Christmas Carol that we rented also included an animated version of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer that was a fun little treat to watch.

Why Change Your Wife?

We recently watched 1920's Why Change Your Wife?
Why Change Your Wife stars Gloria Swanson as Beth Gordon.
Beth is a prim old fashioned sort of wife who nags her husband Robert Gordon (Thomas Meighan) about various different things.
Robert buys Beth a fabulous negligee in the hopes of making her into more of what he is interested in- and she refuses to wear it.
Robert then turns his affections towards the flapperish delights of Sally Clark (Bebe Daniels).
But, oh... how Beth gets her revenge!
The costumes are wonderful in this movie- especially the aforementioned negligee- which I would love to find a version of!

Vintage Movie Love

My husband and I are total vintage movie fanatics!
A couple of years ago I asked for and received  Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide for Christmas. I have now read the entire book- all 686 pages of it!
I marked in the book any and all movies that I was interested in. I even started an alphabetized notebook of movies that we could take to the movie store and look at as a reference as to what to watch. Each entry I color coded to denote what genre it was. That way if we were in the mood for a Foreign movie or a Horror/Sci-Fi/B Movie we would be able to scan the page and find it.
Well, tonight is a perfect night to watch a Horror/Sci-Fi/B Movie!
My husband and I had originally planned on watching a movie that I had rented from the library titled Fiend Without A Face- but, instead we found out about a showing of Nosferatu, Voyage to the Moon and The Golden Bug all of which will feature live musical accompaniment- so, we are planning on heading out to watch those rather than staying in and watching our movie rental.
If you are feeling up for an entertaining and amusing movie rental for the evening check out...
1962's The Day of the Triffids
I must say, I'm an expert at making Triffid noises- which totally freaks my husband out!

Pictured above are two lobby cards for the Day of the Triffids.
There are eight lobby cards altogether up for auction over on eBay for the "Buy It Now" price of $239.99

Devil Music Enemble 2008 Tour

This past Saturday night my husband and I went to a screening of the 1929 silent Chinese Kung Fu movie Red Heroine with musical accompaniment by the Devil Music Ensemble.

This was our second time hearing the Devil Music Ensemble providing a soundtrack for a silent movie (the first time was back in 2005 when they were touring with their soundtrack for 1922's Nosferatu) and only one word can sum up the experience- EXHILARATING!!!

Nothing can match the cinematic experience of a live band accompanying a silent movie!

You must go and see the Devil Music Ensemble and Red Heroine, here is a list of their tour dates:

Sept. 23 Sacramento, CA; Sept. 24 Los Angeles, CA; Sept. 25 Pasadena, CA; Sept. 26 Santa Ana, CA; Sept. 28 Tucson, AZ; Sept. 29 Albuquerque, NM; Sept. 30 Santa Fe, NM; Oct. 1 Oklahoma City, OK; Oct.3 Shreveport, LA; Oct. 4 Montgomery, AL; Oct. 5 Atlanta, GA; Oct. 6 Athens, GA; Oct. 7 Charlotte, NC; Oct. 8 Washington D.C.; Oct. 10 Philadelphia, PA; Oct. 11 Phoenixville, PA; Oct. 17 Whitefield, NH; Oct. 24 North Andover, MA; Nov. 7 Dover-Foxcroft, ME; Nov. 8 Burlington, VT; Nov. 17 Fitchburg, MA

Bed and Sofa & Chess Fever

    I love to watch old movies and my favorite place to check them out is at the library.
    I'll head into the library not knowing if they will have any movies that I am interested in or not and most of the time I will find at least one movie that is of interest to me.
    Over the past month or so I have had great luck finding cinema classics!
    I recently checked out several vintage French movies, some American movies, a Greek movie and a Russian movie.
    Last night my husband and I watched the Russian movie Bed and Sofa (Tretya Meshchanskaya) which was released in 1927.

   
   
    Bed and Sofa is an interesting movie about a married couple who live in a basement apartment.   
    The husband Kolia is goofy and doesn't appreciate his wife Liuda and all the work she does around their apartment.
    One day the husband's friend Volodia comes for a visit, he sleeps on their couch and ends up getting a job as a printer at the local newspaper.
    Kolia goes out of town on a business trip and is gone for a week.
    While he is gone the handsome Volodia courts Liuda and wins her over.
    When Kolia comes home from his business trip guess where he ends up sleeping!?!
    Liuda eventually finds out she's pregnant- but, who is the father?
    This film deals with controversial issues, especially for the time when it was released.

    Along with the movie Bed and Sofa is a short film called Chess Fever (Shakhmatnaya Goryachka) which was released in 1925.
    Around the time Chess Fever was released there was a wave of chess mania sweeping Russia and this movie is a parody of that mania.
    Chess Fever features as the lead the same actor who played Volodia in Bed and Sofa.
    The main character is obsessed with chess.
    He neglects his fiancee, who is not at all interested in chess.
    Eventually he decides to give up chess for her only to find out that she has had a change of heart about chess.
    Chess Fever is an incredibly entertaining and amusing film!
    You can watch the entire movie over on Google