Man, that’s a lot of shirt. Like 2x the fabric of shirts these days. But practical! No plumbers’ butt.

Libeled Lady. Jack Conway. 1936. ⚄

I’m waiting on Stalker for the main movie blog (I forgot to buy it on bluray), so I’m watching stuff that’s not Officially The Best while I’m waiting.

Which reminded me that I bought a whole bunch of screwball comedies last year, and I haven’t seen a single one of them.

*rolls dvd*

Oh my Emacs! It has everybody! *gasp*

[fifteen minutes pass]

Oh, this is just delightful. I haven’t laughed out loud a lot, but the snappy repartee and the preposterous plot it just perfect!

I think I may have seen this before, though, without that diminishing the thrill of seeing this a bit.

[an hour passes]

This has a bunch of genius scenes, but it’s not perfect. It’s a bit flabby — some of the scenes could have been more snappy and more screwy.

I really, really enjoy this (except the er slight misogyny; but even Jean Harlow’s character gets say in the end), but I have to admit that it’s not perfect.

Aventure Malgache. Alfred Hitchcock. 1944. ⚀

This is another French-language propaganda short that Hitchcock did after completing Lifeboat.

The first one was … really bad. I had kinda hoped that this would show more scope (it’s ten minutes longer and allegedly set in Madagascar), but…

It’s basically the same thing: There’s an abundance of script pages to get through, and Hitchcock basically points the camera toward the actors and have them go through all the lines as fast as possible.

Again, it looks superficially professional: The lighting is good, and… well… that’s it.

If this was created to help keep the spirit of the non-Vichy French up, then… I’m not really convinced this helped much?

Wouldn’t something a bit more entertaining have been better?

Oh, that Hitchcock.

Bon Voyage. Alfred Hitchcock. 1944. ⚀

This is a French-language propaganda short by Hitchcock made just after Lifeboat (and included on the Eureka blu-ray edition).

Even as propaganda movies go, this isn’t very good. It’s super-static and filmed as if they had a certain number of script pages to get through (way too many pages) and Hitch just planted the camera there and made them go through it as fast as possible.

Well, OK, that’s not totally fair — the lighting is good, and there’s some camera movement, and… OK, that’s as far as the positives go.

There’s really no reason to watch this, even if you’re a Hitchcock fan and you’re very, very bored one day and have absolutely nothing else to do.