TCM Schedule for Thursday, September 27, 2018 -- AAFCA Presents: The Black Experience On Film

[Staph]

In the daylight hours, TCM is focusing on cheating, conniving, scheming spouses. Sounds enlightening! In the evening hours, TCM finishes their theme of the Black Experience on Film. From the TCM website:

Since Hollywood's earliest beginnings, images of minorities on screen were often presented through a filtered lens of stereotypes and one-dimensional characters. This representation rarely showcased the nuanced differences in experience among racial groups in America, or the connective similarities. African-Americans in particular were largely seen as service workers and background characters with few lines and little complexity.

However, that's not the whole of Hollywood's history of depicting black characters and themes. During cinema's first century, films were made that highlighted the diversity of African-American lives. TCM has partnered with the African American Film Critics Association (AAFCA) to present a month-long study of these movies. On each night of our Spotlight, 13 different members of the collective will sit in pairs to discuss a variety of films and their attempts to portray the Black Experience.

...

(Tonight's theme -- ) Black Stories from Around the World include Cry, the Beloved Country (1951), a British drama based on Alan Paton's novel about two South African ministers (Canada Lee and Sidney Poitier) who struggle to help individuals damaged by their country's policies of apartheid. Zoltan Korda produced and directed. Walkabout (1971) is a British-Australian drama based on the novel by James Vance Marshall and directed by Nicolas Roeg. The story concerns two white students (Jenny Agutter and Luc Roeg, the director's son) who find themselves adrift in the Australian outback and must rely on aid from an Aboriginal boy (David Gulpilil) to survive.

by Roger Fristoe

Enjoy!



7:30 AM -- THE DIVORCEE (1930)
The double standard destroys a liberal couple's marriage.
Dir: Robert Z. Leonard
Cast: Norma Shearer, Chester Morris, Conrad Nagel
BW-82 mins, CC,

Winner of an Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Norma Shearer

Nominee for Oscars for Best Director -- Robert Z. Leonard, Best Writing, Achievement -- John Meehan, and Best Picture

Prior to this film, Norma Shearer had primarily played very "proper," ladylike roles. She was eager to change her image and do parts that were more sensuous, so she launched a campaign to get the part of Jerry. MGM producers were skeptical - none more so than Irving Thalberg, who was also Shearer's husband. To convince him that she could handle a more "sexy" role, Shearer did a photo shoot with her posing provocatively in lingerie, and after seeing the pictures, Thalberg agreed to cast her. The decision paid off, as Shearer won Best Actress at the Academy Awards that year.


9:00 AM -- MADAME SATAN (1930)
A socialite masquerades as a notorious femme fatale to win back her straying husband.
Dir: Cecil B. DeMille
Cast: Kay Johnson, Reginald Denny, Lillian Roth
BW-116 mins, CC,

During the Ballet Mécanique, when a masked person adorned in lightning bolts appears, Morse code is heard. It seems to be intended to repeat the word 'POWER' although the first time it says 'WOWEL' - apparently due to a misplaced 'dot' in the coded message.


11:01 AM -- DUCK HUNTERS' PARADISE (1932)
This short film follows two duck hunters in the Sacramento River Valley.
Dir: Harold Austin
BW-8 mins,


11:15 AM -- CHRISTOPHER STRONG (1933)
An aviatrix's affair with a married man could cost her her career.
Dir: Dorothy Arzner
Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Colin Clive, Billie Burke
BW-78 mins, CC,

When this movie was made, Colin Clive was 33; Billie Burke, who played his wife, was 49; and Helen Chandler, who played their daughter, was 27.


12:30 PM -- ILLICIT (1931)
Young free-thinkers turn conventionally jealous when they marry.
Dir: Archie Mayo
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, James Rennie, Charles Butterworth
BW-79 mins, CC,

The play that's referred to, "Fifty Million Frenchmen" was a musical comedy written by Cole Porter and opened on Broadway in 1929.


2:00 PM -- WHAT PRICE HOLLYWOOD? (1932)
A drunken director whose career is fading helps a waitress become a Hollywood star.
Dir: George Cukor
Cast: Constance Bennett, Lowell Sherman, Neil Hamilton
BW-88 mins, CC,

Nominee for an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- Adela Rogers St. Johns and Jane Murfin

George Cukor, who directed this film, was offered the chance to direct it's "partial remake," A Star Is Born (1937), but turned it down, claiming the two films were too similar. Interestingly, Cukor would later direct the 1954 Judy Garland/James Mason musical remake of that film, often cited as the best version of this material.


3:30 PM -- BABY FACE (1933)
A beautiful schemer sleeps her way to the top of a banking empire.
Dir: Alfred E. Green
Cast: Barbara Stanwyck, George Brent, Donald Cook
BW-76 mins, CC,

In spring of 1933 this film was submitted to the New York State Board of Censors, who rejected it, demanding a number of cuts and changes. Warner Brothers made these changes prior to the film's release in July 1933. In 2004, a "dupe negative" copy of the film as it existed prior to being censored was located at the Library of Congress. This uncensored version received its public premiere at the London Film Festival in November 2004, more than 70 years after it was made. (I hope the uncensored version is the one that TCM will show!)


5:00 PM -- THE LITTLE FOXES (1941)
An ambitious woman takes on her corrupt brothers and honest husband in her drive for wealth.
Dir: William Wyler
Cast: Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, Teresa Wright
BW-116 mins, CC,

Nominee for Oscars for Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Bette Davis, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Patricia Collinge, Best Actress in a Supporting Role -- Teresa Wright, Best Director -- William Wyler, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Lillian Hellman, Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White -- Stephen Goosson and Howard Bristol, Best Film Editing -- Daniel Mandell, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture -- Meredith Willson, and Best Picture

Bette Davis and William Wyler fought a great deal during filming. Disagreements ranged from Davis's interpretation of the character (Wyler thought she should be more sympathetic) to the appearance of the house (Davis thought it was far too opulent for a family struggling financially), to her appearance (Wyler thought her white makeup made her look like a Kabuki performer.) Davis eventually walked out of production, but returned when she heard rumors she was going to be replaced by Katharine Hepburn or Miriam Hopkins.



TCM PRIMETIME - WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: TCM SPOTLIGHT: AAFCA PRESENTS: THE BLACK EXPERIENCE ON FILM



8:00 PM -- BLACK GIRL (1966)
A girl from Senegal becomes disillusioned with her life as a servant in France.
Dir: Ousmane Sembene
Cast: Mbissine Thérèse Diop, Anne-Marie Jelinck, Momar Nar Sene
BW-60 mins,

This is believed to be the first feature film made by a black African in sub-Saharan Africa.


9:15 PM -- CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY (1952)
A South African minister travels to Johannesburg to find his missing son.
Dir: Zoltan Korda
Cast: Canada Lee, Sidney Poitier, Charles Carson
BW-108 mins, CC,

The film was shot in South Africa. Since the country was ruled by strict apartheid (enforced racial separation) laws, Sidney Poitier and Canada Lee and Producer and Director Zoltan Korda cooked up a scheme where they told the South African immigration authorities that Poitier and Lee were not actors, but were Korda's indentured servants; otherwise, the two black actors and the white Director would not have been allowed to associate with each other while they were in the country.


11:15 PM -- BLACK ORPHEUS (1959)
A streetcar conductor loses his true love during Brazil's carnival season.
Dir: Marcel Camus
Cast: Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn, Adhemar Dasilva
C-108 mins,

Winner of an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film -- France

Barack Obama notes in his memoir Dreams from My Father (1995) that it was his mother's favourite film. Obama, however, didn't share his mother's preferences upon first watching the film during his first years at Columbia University: "I suddenly realized that the depiction of the childlike blacks I was now seeing on the screen, the reverse image of Conrad's dark savages, was what my mother had carried with her to Hawaii all those years before, a reflection of the simple fantasies that had been forbidden to a white, middle-class girl from Kansas, the promise of another life: warm, sensual, exotic, different."


1:15 AM -- WALKABOUT (1971)
Two children are stranded in the Australian outback and are forced to cope on their own.
Dir: Nicolas Roeg
Cast: Jenny Agutter, Lucien John, David Gumpilil
C-100 mins, CC,

Jenny Agutter was embarrassed when doing the scene of her swimming naked in the lake, so as many as possible of the crew were sent away. When shooting was done they returned, stripped naked, and went for a swim. (For fans of Call the Midwife -- that's Sister Julienne!)


3:00 AM -- THE LAST WAVE (1977)
A Sydney lawyer defends five Aborigines in a ritualized murder and in the process learns disquieting things about himself.
Dir: Peter Weir
Cast: Richard Chamberlain, Olivia Hamnett, David Gulpilil
C-106 mins, CC,

Prior to the casting of Richard Chamberlain in the lead role, two Australian actors were considered. One was rejected and the other wasn't available. A short-list was made of six actors who had international recognition. Chamberlain was sent the script which he thought interesting but was at first cautious about making a film in a foreign country and with a director he was unfamiliar with. Peter Weir visited Chamberlain at the Broadway Theatre where he was starring in 'Night of the Iguana' and the two clicked. Chamberlain was then screened Weir's previous film Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) where the film had yet to be shown at all in the USA. Chamberlain liked this film and at some time soon after this, Chamberlain was signed. This was Chamberlain's only Australian feature film, though he did later star in the television mini-series The Thorn Birds (1983) and its sequel, The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years (1996).


5:00 AM -- THE PLUMBER (1979)
The arrival of a mysterious plumber upsets a doctor's wife.
Dir: Peter Weir
Cast: Judy Morris, Ivar Kants, Robert Coleby
C-78 mins, CC,

The disease, Kuru, that Brian Cowper is investigating is a real disease. It is a form of spongiform encephalopathy, like 'mad cow disease". It is only found in Papua New Guinea and is caused by the habit of eating the remains of deceased ancestors, particularly the brains. The disease is incurable and affects the nervous system, leading the sufferers to lose control of their voluntary muscles. It is believed to have died out, with the last known sufferer dying in 2005.