#sara allgood

[citizenscreen]

Sara Allgood (October 30, 1880 – September 13, 1950)

[mooncustafer]

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[moviemosaics]

The Lodger

directed by John Brahm, 1944

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

Ivy

The credits for Sam Wood’s IVY (1947, Criterion Channel) play over an image of an urn containing flowers. At their end, the urn becomes a skull. That sets the tone for this gothic noir set in Edwardian England (the original novel by Marie Belloc Lowndes took place in the 1920s). It’s a visually scrumptious film, with producer William Cameron Menzies, a frequent Wood collaborator, supervising production design and even some of the camera set-ups. Joan Fontaine, often in white, looks the perfect young innocent. But she’s actually an ambitious schemer. Having run through husband Richard Ney’s fortune and tired of doctor lover Patric Knowles, she comes up with a plan to rid herself of both so she can seduce wealthy businessman Herbert Marshall. In the 1940s, her evil was so shocking it cost the film at the box office. Today, it seems like fitting revenge for saddling her with three such unmagnetic leading men. Charles Bennett’s screenplay starts with Fontaine presented as a Gothic victim. She’s covered in shadows when she visits a fortune teller (Una O’Connor) whose spooky presence seems to terrorize her.  But when O’Connor advises her to dump her lover because she’s about to meet a man who can solve her problems, Fontaine perks up, and you realize how amoral she is. The actress looks terrific and has some fascinating flirtation scenes, though when she’s being duplicitous, she strays into the Joan Crawford school of energetic overstatement. None of the men are a match for her, but the film has some intriguing character women who more than hold their own, including Lucille Watson as Knowles’ mother, Sara Allgood as his nurse and Rosalind Ivan as Fontaine’s maid, a woman who can find the laughs in a mourning scene. Russell Metty did the moody cinematography, Orry Kelly and Travis Banton created the costumes and composer Daniele Amfitheatrof pours on the harpsichord whenever Fontaine does something particularly evil.

[cladriteradio]

Here are 10 things you should know about Sara Allgood, born 142 years ago today (or thereabouts). The acclaimed character actress enjoyed success on the stage and screen.

[cinevisto32]

¡Qué verde era mi valle! (1941)

[cinemacentral666]

Juno and the Paycock (1930)

Movie #1,026 • TGI-HITCHCOCK!

EVERY OTHER FRIDAY I'M REVIEWING THE COMPLETE WORKS OF ALFRED HITCHCOCK IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

[Ed. Note: For the first dozen or so installments of his series, go to my previous website. Thx]

The guy who did the intro for whatever local station aired this that I found on youtube is rad...

You gotta grind to get this view folks...

The only way to watch movies (in your car on your Kindle fire parked on the grass outside of your daughter's gymnastics class).

So this is my first review on the new site. And if you haven't already guessed I'm keeping things all loosey-goosey like, ya dig? If I don't have anything to say about a movie, I'm not gonna post anything! And as far Alfred Hitchcock's second talkie is concerned, well I don't have a ton to say. Juno is the wife and Paycock is the husband. Juno has dubbed her husband "the Paycock" because she thinks him as useless and vain as a peacock. I don't really understand that portmanteau but nevertheless...

I appreciated their creepy one-armed son who's also an IRA snitch, a creepy rat. Look at this creepy rat boy...

Don't think I even finished it to be honest.

SCORE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️¾

PS: Yeah that's right I'm bringing back quarter and half stars!

[ulrichgebert]

Die ewige Irritation darüber, daß der Film mit dem Bester-Film-Oscar des Jahres 1941 nicht der gleiche ist, wie der im selben Jahr entstandene beste Film aller Zeiten, lenkt immer ein wenig davon ab, daß How Green Was My Valley ein ganz fabelhafter, ungewöhnlicher Film ist. Walisische Bergarbeiter haben es schwer, wären es aber trotz Bigotterie und Explosionen zufrieden, wenn die imperialistische, kapitalistische Welt da draußen nicht so ungerecht wäre. Gleich noch ein Film, wo der Pfarrer nichts ausrichten kann. Dafür singen sie sehr schön. Zeigt auch, daß John Ford vielseitiger war, als man spontan sagen würde.

[ruivieira1950]

[thewarmestplacetohide]

Dread by the Decade: The Lodger

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★★

Plot: As her career takes off, a young actress begins to fear she is lodging in the same home as Jack the Ripper.

Review: With the killer's identity all but announced within its first few minutes, this film lacks the mystery, as well as the edge, necessary to explore Jack the Ripper.

Source Material: The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes Year: 1944 Genre: Psychological Horror, Crime Thriller Country: United States Language: English Runtime: 1 hour 24 minutes

Director: John Brahm Writer: Barré Lyndon Cinematographer: Lucien Ballard Editor: J. Watson Webb, Jr. Composer: Hugo Friedhofer Cast: Merle Oberon, Laird Cregar, George Sanders, Cedric Hardwicke, Sara Allgood

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Story: 2/5 - Repetitive with distractingly ignorant characters, a weirdly chaste approach to serial murder, and virtually no mystery.

Performances: 3/5 - Everyone does fairly well save for Cregar, whose delivery veers too far into camp.

Cinematography: 4/5 - Striking lighting. The way doorways are sometimes incorporated into a shot's framing is nice.

Editing: 2/5 - Far too abrupt at points.

Music: 3/5 - Decent albeit a bit derivative.

Choreography & Stunts: 2.5/5 - The low energy dancing featured in what is meant to be an acclaimed show makes its success a bit unbelievable.

Effects & Props: 4/5 - The ever-present fog really enhances the atmosphere.

Sets: 3.5/5

Costumes, Hair, & Make-Up: 4/5 - While not necessarily historically accurate, the costumes are quite diverse and lovely.

Trigger Warnings:

Extremely mild violence (almost exclusively offscreen)

Misogyny and violence against women (criticized by film)

Classist portrayals of working class people in Victorian England

[citizenscreen]

Sara Allgood as Mrs. Cadogan-Lyon in Alexander Korda’s THAT HAMILTON WOMAN (1941)

[nitrateglow]

Halloween 2023 marathon: 5

The Lodger (dir. John Brahm, 1944)

In 1880s London, Jack the Ripper is terrorizing the populace with a series of sordid murders. All the victims are former actresses and their bodies are all brutally maimed. During this turmoil, Mr. and Mrs. Bonting (Cedric Hardwicke and Sara Allgood) take in a lodger, the mysterious scientist Mr. Slade (Laird Cregar). He's antisocial, secretive, hates actresses, regularly makes creepy comments, and gets visibly agitated around the Bontings' beautiful dance hall performer niece Kitty (Merle Oberon). The Bontings have fears that their niece might come to harm. Kitty sees Slade as a lonely misfit. Scotland Yard detective John Warwick (George Sanders) is also on the hunt, working with Kitty and the Bontings to discover the truth. But will they be able to nab the Ripper before Kitty herself becomes a victim?

Here's one I have not watched in a few years: the 1944 version of The Lodger, starring Merle Oberon, Laird Cregar, and George Sanders. It's a part of what I call "Forties Gothic," that cycle of 1940s horrors, thrillers, and melodramas shot in moody black-and-white. Think Gaslight, Rebecca, The Spiral Staircase, and Val Lewton's chillers.

The Lodger is a fine addition to that group. Though about a police investigation, it's not much of a mystery-- it's pretty plain that Slade is the culprit, but the suspense comes from wondering when the other characters will sniff him out in time. The other characters regard Slade with a blend of wariness and pity-- is he just a lonely man or the killer? Kitty is a particularly compassionate person towards outcasts, so she often dismisses weird things Slade says as signs of awkwardness rather than.... well, the weird, creepy statements they are, all of which suggest Slade is more than just a murderer. This is one of those films that makes you wonder HOW it got past the Breen Office. Slade's comments about beautiful women becoming lovelier in death are suggestive of necrophilia.

The performances are all strong, but Cregar's Slade is the standout. He's truly menacing while also being pitiable. Anytime he was alone with Kitty, I was tensed up.

The movie's direction reminds me a lot of the following year's The Spiral Staircase. We have a killer POV shot, which I always assumed first appeared in The Spiral Staircase. The terror scenes are also very effective, drawing out the tension beautifully. Honestly, these two films could be a great double feature. They're fantastic 40s horror movies that still pack a wallop.

[erstwhile-punk-guerito]

[stellabystarlight12]

Actress Sara Allgood (1880-1950) played the mother of just about every Irish actor in Hollywood at the time.

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

The Lodger and "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper"

The middle film of a trio of Gothic horrors John Brahm directed for 20th Century-Fox in the 1940s, THE LODGER (1944, YouTube) improves on the first, THE UNDYING MONSTER (1942), but can’t hold a candle to the third, HANGOVER SQUARE (1945). Brahm and cinematographer Lucien Ballard copy some compositions from Fritz Lang’s great M (1932) with good reason. Both films are about the effect of s serial killer’s rampage on the city he ravages. Where the Lang focused on a child killer (Peter Lorre) whose compulsions are part of the film’s despondent world view, however, Brahm’s picture seeks to explain away Jack the Ripper (Laird Cregar) by having him kill former actresses because his beloved brother drank himself to death after an actress betrayed him. That’s all too pat to be believable in any but Hollywood terms, which manages to diminish the horror while also suggesting repressed homosexuality as the killer’s deeper motive. Which angers him more — that his brother died or that his brother preferred the actress’ company to his? Cregar is very good as the killer, wisely underplaying a lot of his early scenes, and Brahm shoots him to great effect. He looms over the other actors. Ballard fills the screen with shadows that heighten the sense of ambiguity about his character. And there are two good performances from Sara Allgood and Cedric Hardwicke as the couple renting rooms to Cregar. The real problem here is the casting of Merle Oberon as their niece, a music hall star who captures his fancy and incites his ire. She’s a competent actress and can be quite good in the right material. But her two musical numbers (dubbed) are limp noodles. She doesn’t have a dancer’s grace. It’s obvious the chorus girls are doing all the heavy lifting in what amounts to Mae West choreography (they dance, she moves in front of them), and her most strenuous moves are done in long shot and look doubled. Nor does she have the kind of charisma to suggest she could have been a musical star. Hell, she couldn’t even open for Luise Rainer in THE GREAT ZIEGFELD (1936).

My friend and I followed this with an appropriate THRILLER episode, “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” (1961, YouTube), well-directed by Ray Milland from a script by Barre Lyndon, who also adapted THE LODGER, this time drawing on a Robert Bloch story. Here Jack is haunting a modern American city, performing ritual murders to keep himself young. The focus is on British expert John Williams, who’s been tracking Jack’s Satanic murders for 30 years, but the real fun is in the supporting cast. Gloria Blondell (Joan’s sister) is a victim’s neighbor more concerned about the newspapers’ getting her name right than with her friend’s demise (sounds like a Wits End Players sketch), while Adam Roarke and Ottola Nesmith play eccentric artists in a salon run by police psychiatrist Donald Woods. The piece has some ridiculous moments, with Williams’ cigarette standing at attention as he watches stripper Beverly Hills, but it also has a great early score by Jerry Goldsmith.