Podcasts TV There's Sometimes a Buggy Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year Paramount 1941: THE LADY EVE & REACHING FOR THE SUN + FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO: THE HUDUSCKER PROXY (1994) & FEMME FATALE (2002)

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year Paramount 1941: THE LADY EVE & REACHING FOR THE SUN + FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO: THE HUDUSCKER PROXY (1994) & FEMME FATALE (2002)

Published: Sept. 30, 2022, 6:49 a.m.

A tonally disparate pair of great films for Paramount 1941: Preston Sturges'\xa0The Lady Eve, starring Barbara Stanwyck and Henry Fonda, one of the greatest movies ever made, according to Elise; and a real rarity, William Wellman's\xa0Reaching for the Sun, starring some important Sturges actors: Joel McCrea, Ellen Drew, and Eddie Bracken. We interrogate the strange central relationship in\xa0The Lady Eve, examining its sadistic, maternal, narcissistic, you-name-it qualities, and Sturges\u2019 masterful blending of comedy tropes, melodrama structure, and painful personal psychology. Then we turn to the interesting mixture of "universal" (20th century Western) gender tropes and modern modifications of them in Wellman's tale of a man torn between urban opportunity and Thoreauvian freedom. Then, in our Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto segment, we briefly discuss the Coen brothers'\xa0The Hudsucker Proxy\xa0(1994) and its curious misunderstandings of Capra, and Brian De Palma's brilliant\xa0Femme Fatale\xa0and its channeling of Lynch and Verhoeven, but with De Palma's peculiar mixture of sweetness and satire.\xa0

Time Codes:

0h 01m 00s:\xa0 \xa0\xa0\xa0 THE LADY EVE [dir. Preston Sturges]

0h 46m 28s:\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0 REACHING FOR THE SUN [dir. WILLIAM A. WELLMAN]

1h 14m 35s:\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0\xa0 FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO: THE HUDUSCKER PROXY (1994) by Joel and Ethan Coen & FEMME FATALE (2002) by Brian DePalma

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Studio Film Capsules provided by The Paramount Story by John Douglas Eames

Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joel W. Finler

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* Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

* Intro Song: \u201cSunday\u201d by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of\xa0The Internet Archive)

* Read Elise\u2019s latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating.

* Check out Dave\u2019s new Robert Benchley blog \u2013 an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist\u2019s 2000+ pieces as he can locate \u2013 Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!\xa0

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