Legs legs legs and then some! While Miss Bitc… err Rich (Claire Dodd) chats with Nan's boss Chester Kent (James Cagney), Nan (Joan #Blondell) absent-mindedly puts on two #stockings on one (lovely) leg, removes it, then slips it onto the other.

“Meow!”

A brawl over a woman. That's what breaks The Great Phroso. After recovery, a year later, he finds himself a #paraplegic and his stolen wife dead in a church with an infant next to her. To Africa he takes the child – it's the other man's, the ivory trader's – and carefully, vengefully raises her.

“How did God ever put a thing like you on this earth?”

– Maizie

Phroso, now known as Dead-Legs and White Voodoo to the tribe he resides over, uses his magician's skills to rule over his own little jungle empire. We see the gestation of Kurtz, oddly too an ivory trader in that other White Hell, Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad, 1899).

 

Despite attempts to tone it down on request of censors, West of Zanzibar is one of Tod Browning's meanest. Lon Chaney is fantastic, of course. His Phroso, torn by love and #revenge, one of the early and rare depictions of male frailty in western cinema.

Rathbarney is a typical small Irish town inhabited with a bunch of eccentrics, including a few leprechauns and a ghost, who all live in general harmony with each other, mostly at the local pub. (via IMDb)

“I've not lived long enough in Ireland to appreciate the logic of that remark.”

– Jasper O'Leary

A strange man arrives at neurosurgeon Dr Max Holst's #hospital one day. So strange in fact that he's promptly send to the psychiatric ward. This man, a Mr Steinmetz, insists on the doctor's help. He can materialise things – look see here's a cigar – but living things is what he wants. This bird, it died. Can the doctor help? No no, not the bird, the brain! Steinmetz has set up a theatre in his home, it can be done there. While the doctor, however tempted, refuses, Steinmetz evolves.

“We are now entering the century of the soul!”

– Steinmetz

Manden der tænkte ting intrigues in its clinical monotonous settings, its pale late-60s stock, and precise composition. Early Cronenberg – Stereo (Tile 3B of a CAEE Educational Mosaic) (1969) and Crimes of the Future (1970) – comes to mind and, of course Lars von Trier's majestic Riget [The Kingdom] (1994 – 2022). But only Jens Ravn mastered this strangling lightness. Slowly, while you count backwards. Now you no longer feel the straps. 10… 9… …

Pretty boy Lonnie gets what he wants. And he wants to be out of where he came from, and he wants to be wanted and rich. And he's got the looks and the voice and the ego. So he gets it, the getting out and the love and the money. And then some. And then some. And then.

“It's not my fault that opportunity came my way.”

– Lonnie

Rat Fink is not your pop-idol-turned-movie-star vehicle. Something's off, no good vibrations here. It's dark – not in the least thanks to cinematographer Vilmos “The Deer Hunter” Zsigmond's doings – and gritty – real-world pop singer Schuyler Hayden doesn't hold back in his portrayal of egomaniacal pretty boy Lonnie.

 

If it hadn't been lost for half a century you may be fooled to believe that it spawned a certain, fictional 80s investment banker.

Expecting an uneventful night at the Seattle Crisis Clinic, volunteering psychology student Alan Newell is left to his own devices. Alan takes his books to study, it is quiet after all. Then a call, a woman. We learn she's called Inga (Anne Bancroft). She's drowsy. She has taken barbiturates and wants to talk while slipping away. While Alan fights to keep the woman on the line, attempts are made to trace the call.

“Do you think that not getting caught in a lie is the same as telling the truth?”

– Mark Dyson

The Slender Thread is an excellent example of picturing the invisible. The two leads never meet, both bound to their setting. The call tracing scene, a very technical affair, bears echos of Soviet Montage. The warm #jazz soundtrack by Seattle's own Quincy Jones tones down the mechanics, making the human aspect even more harrowing, almost physical.

A goodnight #kiss on the lips was all it takes for 14-year old Manuela to fall for her teacher, Fräulein Von Bernburg. Then, while celebrating her rousing performance as the male lead in the play Don Carlos, Manuela gaily blurts out that yes, she indeed is in love with her teacher! This lack of discipline can't go unpunished, with devastating results.

“What you call sin, I call the great spirit of love, which takes a thousand forms.”

– Fräulein Von Bernburg

Mädchen in Uniform with its all-female cast was, no… is!, a daring sapphic romantic drama based on a wildly popular play by Christa Winsloe. After multiple well attended screenings the film got banned in Germany because of its anti-authoritarian undertones, and almost banned in the US because of its lesbianism. Thankfully one of the picture's admirers – Eleanor Roosevelt – stepped in, resulting in a limited release.

They say, the house always wins. In You the Better, the House is an unseen character. The other character – a constantly changing team of athletes wearing blue uniforms and caps and coached by artist Ashley Bickerton – play a baffling hybrid of craps, dodgeball, and roulette while arcade game noises and Brooke Halpin's catchy chants accompany the players. While You the Better suggests repetitiveness, a theme of winning, losing, and competitiveness reveals itself.

“HANDS UP PUT YOUR HANDS UP GIMME MORE GIMME GIMME MORE BETTER GIMME MORE”

– recurring chant

You the Better is part of Beckman's The Super-8 Trilogy, a multimedia art project that explores play in Western society.

In a strange other #England – in the village of Chillingbourne to be precise – a train pulls into the station. On board are several people on their way to #Canterbury.

“You're not dreaming.”

– Thomas Colpeper, JP

When Alison disembarks, believing she arrived at the pilgrim's town, a stranger pours #glue in her hair. She's the eleventh, the policeman said. It's the glue man, the townsfolk know. Like the pilgrims of #Chaucer's poem, Alison and her fellow stranded travellers journey towards the closure of this mystifying case.

At a poolside #CocktailParty, the swimmer appears. He notes that the houses in between his hosts' and his are connected by a “river” of #pools and decides to swim home, from one pool to the other, superficially meeting people, crashing suburban pool parties, in an increasingly irrational state.

“And the water up there. Remember? That transparent, light green water. It felt different. God, what a beautiful feeling. We could've swum around the world in those days.”

– Ned Merrill