If there were ever a good week to just tune your TV to TCM and leave it there, it may be this week. Actually, that’s usually a good thing to do, but I digress. This week the Summer Under the Stars includes heavy hitters like Humphrey Bogart on Wednesday and Cary Grant on Sunday, with plenty of crime, adventure, romance, and comedy to go around. Plus silent monsters on Monday with Lon Chaney, dramas on Tuesday with Joanne Woodward, a taste of classic French cinema with Jean Gabin (including two Jean Renoir films) on Thursday, musicals and comedies on Friday with Debbie Reynolds, and more drama on Saturday with Montgomery Clift. The other channels have their usual repeats, and Sundance premiers Gaspar Noë’s headtrip Enter the Void on Thursday.

Monday, August 15

11:00am – TCM – He Who Gets Slapped
Lon Chaney in a non-horror role, but still a quite dark one, playing an inventor whose public humiliation drives him to become a circus clown, reliving that humiliation night after night. An early film for Norma Shearer.
1924 USA. Director: Victor Sj&ocuml;strom. Starring: Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Ruth King.
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12:15pm – MGM – Radio Days
This essentially plotless Woody Allen film consists of a series of nostalgic vignettes about a 1940s working class New York family. The title comes from their love for the radio, the center of pop culture at the time; the radio also provides the subplot following Mia Farrow as a wanna-be radio singer who gets mixed up with gangsters. It’s not particularly deep, but it’s also pretty enjoyable.
1987 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Julie Kavner, Mia Farrow, Seth Green, Dianne Wiest.

1:50pm – MGM – The Purple Rose of Cairo
A love letter to cinema, The Purple Rose of Cairo has Woody Allen at his most romantic. Unhappy housewife Cecilia (Mia Farrow) escapes to the cinema to see The Purple Rose of Cairo again and again, where she fantasizes over hunky character Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels). Much to her surprise (and the other characters’ consternation), Baxter steps off the screen to join her. It makes it even more complicated when Gil, the actor who played Baxter, turns up as well.
1985 USA. Director: Woody Allen. Starring: Mia Farrow, Jeff Daniels, Danny Aiello.
(repeats at 4:20am on the 18th)

2:30pm – Fox Movie – I Wake Up Screaming
Better known for bright and sunny musicals, Betty Grable took a turn for the noir in this crime film, playing the sister of a recently-murdered model with a rising career. It’s a slight noir, but fun nonetheless, especially for the chance to see Grable in a role unusual for her.
1942 USA. Director: H. Bruce Humberstone. Starring: Betty Grable, Victor Mature, Carole Landis.
(repeats at 6:00am on the 16th)

6:00pm – Fox Movie – Call Northside 777
One of Jimmy Stewart’s first films after spending the war as a fighter pilot; he plays a reporter compelled to reopen an eleven-year-old murder case, coming to believe the wrong man was sentenced to life in prison. A good combo of film noir and mystery.
1948 USA. Director: Henry Hathaway. Starring: James Stewart, Richard Conte, Lee J. Cobb.
(repeats at 9:30am on the 16th)

8:00pm – TCM – The Hunchback of Notre Dame
There have been a bunch of adaptations of Victor Hugo’s novel about the outcast Parisian hunchback, but this is one of the earliest and continues to be highly regarded, thanks in no small part to Lon “Man of a Thousand Faces” Chaney’s portrayal of Quasimodo.
1923 USA. Director: Wallace Worsley. Starring: Lon Chaney, Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry, Nigel De Bruller.

10:00pm – TCM – The Phantom of the Opera
Celebrated silent horror star Lon Chaney plays the titular phantom in this possibly best version of the oft-filmed story.
1924 USA. Director: Rupert Julian. Starring: Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry.

Tuesday, August 16

6:00pm – Sundance – The Piano
I often find Jane Campion films overly pretentious, but this one strikes the right chord, with Holly Hunter as a mute woman in an arranged marriage who finds love with one of her husbands’ hired hands – but stealing the show is her young daughter, an Oscar-winning performance by Anna Paquin.
1993 New Zealand. Director: Jane Campion. Starring: Holly Hunter, Harvey Keitel, Anna Paquin.

7:55pm – MGM – Blow Out
Sound man John Travolta is recording sound samples one night, and may have accidentally recorded a murder occurring. As he tries to investigate, he’s drawn into a dangerous conspiracy. Inspired to some degree by Antonioni’s photography-based Blow-Up, but this is definitely DePalma’s film all the way.
1981 USA. Director: Brian DePalma. Starring: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz.
(repeats at 9:55am on the 21st)

Wednesday, August 17

6:00am – IFC – Away from Her
A very strong directing debut film from actress Sarah Polley, about an older woman (Julie Christie) suffering from Alzheimer’s and her husband’s difficulty in dealing with essentially the loss of his wife as she has more and more difficulty remembering their life together. It’s a lovely, heartbreaking film, bolstered by great understated performances.
2006 Canada. Director: Sarah Polley. Starring: Julie Christie, Gordon Pinsent, Olympia Dukakis, Stacey LaBerge.

10:45am – IFC – The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
Julian Schnabel’s intensely moving retelling of the true story of Jean-Dominique Bauby, who was almost completely paralyzed in a car accident, able only to move his left eye. The impressionist storytelling lends an otherworldly beauty to the film, already solid due to the script and acting.
2007 France. Director: Julian Schnabel. Starring: Mathieu Amalric, Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Croze.
Must See
(repeats at 3:30pm)

11:00am – TCM – To Have and Have Not
It’s said that this film came about because Howard Hawks bet Earnest Hemingway that he (Hawks) could make a good film out of Hemingway’s worst book. Of course, to do that, Hawks ended up basically changing the story entirely, but hey. It’s the thought that counts. Mostly notable for being Lauren Bacall’s first film, the one where she met Humphrey Bogart, and the one that spawned the immortal “you know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve” bit of dialogue. That one scene? Worth the whole film.
1944 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Walter Brennan.

12:45pm – TCM – The Big Sleep
One of the greatest detective/mysteries/films noir ever made. Humphrey Bogart is the definite hard-boiled detective, Lauren Bacall is the potential love interest/femme fatale. Don’t try to follow the story; whodunit is far less important than crackling dialogue and dry humor. Watch out for future Oscar-winner Dorothy Malone (Written on the Wind) in the small but extremely memorable part of the bookshop girl.
1946 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Martha Vickers, Elisha Cook Jr., Dorothy Malone.
Must See

2:45pm – TCM – High Sierra
Bogart’s breakout role as an on-the-run con man who gets involved with the lame Joan Leslie. (No, I mean actually crippled.) He’d been bumming around for a few years as a Warner second lead or villain, but with 1941’s double punch of High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon, he unequivocally arrived.
1941 USA. Director: Raoul Walsh. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Joan Leslie, Ida Lupino.

4:30pm – TCM – They Drive By Night
Humphrey Bogart and George Raft play truck driver brothers, trying to get ahead before they get killed (who knew truck driving was so dangerous?), or, you know, framed into murder plots by Ida Lupino – their boss’s wife who has amorous designs on Raft, despite his much healthier relationship with a young Ann Sheridan. Not a great movie, but a solid example of Warner’s pre-noirish studio style.
1940 USA. Director: Raoul Walsh. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, George Raft, Ida Lupino, Ann Sheridan.

4:30pm – MGM – Fiddler on the Roof
A Tzarist-era Russian Jewish village doesn’t seem a particularly likely place to set a musical, but Fiddler on the Roof does a good job of it, exploring the clashing cultures as patriarch Tevye tries to marry his daughters off to good Jewish husbands with decreasing success.
1971 USA. Director: Norman Jewison. Starring: Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey, Rosalind Harris, Michele Marsh, Neva Small, Michael Glaser.

6:00pm – IFC – Thank You For Smoking
Jason Reitman’s breakout film was also one of my favorites of 2005 – sure, it’s a bit slight and isn’t perfect, but its story of a hotshot PR guy working for cigarette companies struck just the right note of cynical and absurd humor. The really high-quality cast doesn’t hurt either, with everybody, no matter how small their role, making a memorable impression.
2005 USA. Director: Jason Reitman. Starring: Aaron Eckhart, Katie Holmes, Rob Lowe, Maria Bello, David Koechner, J.K. Simmons, Adam Brody, Sam Elliott.

6:15pm – TCM – In a Lonely Place
Simply a brilliant film from director Nicholas Ray – Humphrey Bogart gives probably his best performance as washed-up screenwriter Dixon Steele, who’s trying to make a comeback with a new adaptation. When a coatcheck girl gets murdered after he was the last to see her, he naturally comes under suspicion, but his neighbor Laurel (Gloria Grahame) gives him an alibi and soon the two begin a relationship which just might save Dix from more than a murder charge – or might not. There’s a raw intensity here that few films have ever matched.
1951 USA. Director: Nicholas Ray. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Gloria Grahame.
Must See

8:00pm – TCM – The Maltese Falcon
Humphrey Bogart inhabits the role of Dashiell Hammett’s private eye Sam Spade, creating one of the definitive on-screen hard-boiled detective (vying only with Bogart’s Philip Marlowe in The Big Sleep, really). Not mention setting the early benchmark for noir films.
1941 USA. Director: John Huston. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, Elisha Cook Jr, Walter Huston.
Must See

2:00am (18th) – TCM – The Caine Mutiny
Humphrey Bogart’s Captain Queeg is a piece of work, and by that I mean some of the best work Bogart has on film. He’s neurotic, paranoid, and generally mentally unstable. Or is he? That’s the question after first officer Van Johnson relieves him of duty as being unfit to serve and faces charges of mutiny.
1954 USA. Director: Edward Dmytryk. Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Van Johnson, Fred MacMurray, Jose Ferrer.

2:00am (18th) – IFC – Requiem for a Dream
Darren Aronofsky’s breakthrough film (Pi remains a cult favorite) follows a quartet of people as their lives spiral out of control due to drug addiction.
2000 USA. Director: Darren Aronofsky. Starring: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlon Wayans.

Thursday, August 18

7:45am – Sundance – Encounters at the End of the World
Werner Herzog has made the savage beauty of nature one of his themes throughout most of his fiction films, so perhaps it’s only natural that he has moved onto explicitly non-fiction explorations of some of nature’s most remote locales, in this case, Antarctica.2007 USA. Director: Werner Herzog.
(repeats at 4:30pm, and 4:20am on the 19th)

9:30am – IFC – The New World
Terrence Malick may not make many films, but the ones he does make, wow. Superficially the story of John Smith and Pocahontas, The New World is really something that transcends mere narrative – this is poetry on film. Every scene, every shot has a rhythm and an ethereal that belies the familiarity of the story we know. I expected to dislike this film when I saw it, quite honestly. It ended up moving me in ways I didn’t know cinema could.
2005 USA. Director: Terrence Malick. Starring: Colin Farrell, Q’orianka Kilcher, Christian Bale, Christopher Plummer.
Must See
(repeats at 5:00pm)

5:25pm – MGM – Carrie
There aren’t that many movies that you can say are equally loved by horror fans and feminist academics, but Carrie is one of them – Carrie’s physical coming-of-age sparks telekinetic abilities, allowing her to take bloody revenge on the schoolkids who mistreated her. And who can’t relate to that, really?
1976 USA. Director: Brian DePalma. Starring: Sissy Spacek, Piper Laurie, Amy Irving.

10:00pm – TCM – Grand Illusion
One of the greatest POW films ever made, with two French soldiers in WWI captured and put in a seemingly impenetrable German prison camp. The escape planning parts are really well put-together, but I was extremely intrigued by the depiction of class solidarity and difference, as the German commander (played impeccably by Erich von Stroheim), a nobleman, identified strongly with the captured French aristocrats – a factor of WWI, the last war of “gentlemen”, that’s often overlooked.
1937 France. Director: Jean Renoir. Starring: Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, Erich von Stroheim, Dita Parlo.
Must See

11:45pm – Sundance – Enter the Void
One of the most unusual films to come out over the past several years, I’ll grant you that. Gaspar Noë’s first-person erotic dreamscape is sure to polarize. It’s got some staunch supporters in the Third Row, though I myself am still hesitant to form an opinion on it.
2009 France. Director: Gaspar Noë. Starring: Paz de la Huerta, Nathaniel Brown, Cyril Roy, Olly Alexander, Masato Tanno.
Newly Featured!

Friday, August 19

7:55am – Sundance – A Town Called Panic
One of the most delightful films I saw in 2009, a whacked out stop-motion film from Belgium that follows Horse, Cowboy, and Indian throughout a series of adventures, mostly focused on trying to rebuild their house which keeps getting stolen every night. This is mile-a-minute absurdity with more inventiveness in 75 minutes than I usually see all year.
2009 Belium. Directors: Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar. Starring: Stéphane Aubier, Jeanne Balibar, Bruce Ellison, Vincent Pater.
(repeats at 12:20pm and 4:45pm)

10:00pm – Sundance – The Royal Tenenbaums
My favorite of all of Wes Anderson’s films (and indeed, one of my favorites of the whole decade), a web of fine characterizations surrounding Royal Tenenbaum, an eccentric old man whose imminent mortality forces a reunion with his family. But its morbidity is tempered by absurd humor and quirk.
2001 USA. Director: Wes Anderson. Starring: Gene Hackman, Anjelica Huston, Gwyneth Paltrow, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson, Ben Stiller, Bill Murray.
Must See

11:30pm – IFC – Evil Dead 2
The sequel/remake to Sam Raimi’s wonderfully over-the-top demon book film, set in the same creepy wood-bound cabin, with even more copious amounts of blood and a lot more intentional humor. I’m still not sure which I like best, but either one will do when you need some good schlock. (I still haven’t seen Army of Darkness, I’m shamed to admit.)
1987 USA. Director: Sam Raimi. Starring: Bruce Campbell, Sarah Berry, Dan Hicks.

2:15am (20th) – TCM – Singin’ in the Rain
Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly team up for what is now usually considered one of the greatest musicals of all time. Inspired by songs written by MGM producer Arthur Freed at the beginning the sound era, Singin’ in the Rain takes that seismic shift in film history for its setting, focusing on heartthrob screen couple Don Lockwood (Kelly) and Lina Lamont (the hilarious Jean Hagen) as the transition into sound – problem being that Lamont’s voice, like many actual silent screen stars, doesn’t fit her onscreen persona. Hollywood’s often best when it turns on its own foibles, and this is no exception.
1952 USA. Directors: Stanley Donen & Gene Kelly. Starring: Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Donald O’Connor, Jean Hagen.
Must See

Saturday, August 20

6:35am – MGM – The Party
It may not be quite politically correct to cast Peter Sellers as an Indian movie extra who accidentally gets invited to a big Hollywood party instead of being fired for bunglling a major stunt, but the movie certainly is hilarious, largely made up of a series of sight gags as Sellers bumbles his way around a swinging ’60s party.
1968 USA. Director: Blake Edwards. Starring: Peter Sellers, Claudine Longet, Natalie Borisova, Jean Carson, Marge Champion.

1:00pm – TCM – Red River
Howard Hawks’ brilliant transposition of Mutiny on the Bounty into the Old West has John Wayne as a tyrannical cattle drive leader and Montgomery Clift (in one of his earliest roles) as his adopted son who soon defies him.
1948 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: John Wayne, Montgomery Clift, Joanne Dru.
Must See

3:30pm – TCM – From Here to Eternity
There’s the famous part, yes, where Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr make love on the beach among the crashing waves. But there’s also a solid ensemble war tale, involving young officer Montgomery Clift and his naive wife Donna Reed, and embittered soldiers Frank Sinatra and Lee J. Cobb.
1953 USA. Director: Fred Zinnemann. Starring: Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Frank Sinatra, Donna Reed, Montgomery Clift, Lee J. Cobb.

5:45pm – TCM – The Misfits
John Huston directs and Arthur Miller writes this final film for both Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe. Though the film is remembered for that tragic fact, it’s also a pretty solid film on its own, about a divorcee caught between two rough and ready men of the west (Gable and Montgomery Clift), then opposing them when she discovers their plans for the wild horses in the area. And of course, with Miller behind it, there’s far more going on than just that.
1961 USA. Director: John Huston. Starring: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter, Eli Wallach.

8:00pm – TCM – A Place in the Sun
Drawn from Theodore Dreiser’s play An American Tragedy, this acclaimed film follows a young man working his way up in his uncle’s company and romancing a beautiful socialite; when his early involvement with a working-class girl turns out to have unintended consequences, things turn, well…tragic.
1951 USA. Director: George Stevens. Starring: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Anne Revere, Fred Clark, Raymond Burr.
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10:15pm – TCM – The Heiress
Olivia de Havilland won her second Oscar for her role as the title character in this adaptation of Henry James’ Washington Square, a woman forbidden from love with a young suitor because her controlling father fears the suitor is only a fortune hunter.
1949 USA. Director: William Wyler. Starring: Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, Ralph Richardson, Miriam Hopkins.

2:15am (21st) – TCM – I Confess
The most obvious example of Hitchcock’s usually subdued theme of Catholic guilt has priest Montgomery Clift refusing to reveal a murderer’s confession due to the sanctity of the the confessional.
1953 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter, Karl Malden, Brian Aherne.

Sunday, August 21

6:00am – TCM – This is the Night
In Cary Grant’s first on-screen appearance, he is fifth-billed as a cocky Olympian javelin-thrower whose wife is stepping out with Roland Young. Sounds a bit implausible, but the film is surprisingly spry and witty, with some great comedy bits between Young and Charles Ruggles, and though Grant is green, he lights up the screen when he’s on it.
1932 USA. Director: Frank Tuttle. Starring: Roland Young, Lily Damita, Charles Ruggles, Thelma Todd, Cary Grant.

7:32am – Fox Movie – Unfaithfully Yours
Preston Sturges’s last great film is a pitch-black comedy with Rex Harrison as a jealous conductor who fantasizes ways to deal with his wife’s supposed infidelity as he conducts a symphony. The combination of bombastic music and his by turns morbid and farcical fantasies makes for one of the more unusual memorable films of the 1940s.
1948 USA. Director: Preston Sturges. Starring: Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Rudy Vallee.

9:00am – TCM – My Favorite Wife
After being shipwrecked and believed dead for seven years, Irene Dunne returns home to her husband Cary Grant on the eve of his marriage to another woman. Oh, and she brought Randolph Scott, her fellow shipwreckee, with her. Hijinks ensue. Not quite as strong a screwball comedy as the earlier Grant-Dunne opus The Awful Truth, but still fun for fans of the genre.
1940 USA. Director: Garson Kanin. Starring: Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott, Gail Patrick.

10:30am – TCM – The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer
In this slight but charming comedy, a nearly-grown-up Shirley Temple is the bobby-soxer crushing on Cary Grant’s bachelor, but he’s more interested in Temple’s sister Myrna Loy, a no-nonsense judge who’s caught Grant up on disorderly behavior more than once. There are a lot of great bits in here, including Grant’s attempt at the “man with the voodoo” patter.
1947 USA. Director: Irving Reis. Starring: Cary Grant, Myrna Loy, Shirley Temple, Rudy Vallee.

11:30am – Fox Movie – Anna and the King of Siam
The earlier/non-musical version of The King and I stars Irene Dunne in one of her last films and Rex Harrison in one of his earliest American ones. Both do a fine job.
1946 USA. Director: John Cromwell. Starring: Irene Dunne, Rex Harrison, Linda Darnell, Gale Sondergaard.

3:30pm – TCM – The Philadelphia Story
Katharine Hepburn is Tracy Lord, a spoiled socialite about to marry Ralph Bellamy when ex-husband Cary Grant turns up. Throw in newspaper columnist James Stewart and his photographer Ruth Hussey, along with a bunch of great character actors filling out the cast, and you have both rollicking wedding preparations and one of the best films ever made.
1940 USA. Director: George Cukor. Starring: Katharaine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey, Ralph Bellamy, Virginia Weidler.
Must See

5:30pm – TCM – North by Northwest
Roger O. Thornhill (Cary Grant) gets mistaken for George Kaplan and pulled into an elaborate web of espionage in one of Hitchcock’s most enjoyable and funniest thrillers. So many great scenes it’s impossible to list them all.
1959 USA. Director: Alfred Hitchcock. Starring: Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Martin Landau.
Must See

8:30pm – IFC – Zodiac
One of David Fincher’s most acclaimed films, and deservedly so, tracing the obsession of one journalist (Jake Gyllenhaal) with the Zodiac serial killer. Years of following the case and the clues left by the Zodiac bring investigators no closer to success, but Gyllenhaal can’t let go – the story is much more a character study of him than a mystery of the killer, and it’s among the best of the genre.
2007 USA. Director: David Fincher. Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Edwards, Robert Downey Jr., Brian Cox.

8:00pm – TCM – Gunga Din
Three British soldiers and an Indian water bearer join forces against an Indian cult gearing up for a murderous rampage. A classic adventure story, and one I should rewatch at some point.
1939 USA. Director: George Stevens. Starring: Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Sam Jaffe.

10:15pm – TCM – Only Angels Have Wings
I’ve never gotten into Only Angels Have Wings as much as I have into other Howard Hawks films – why I don’t know. It has elements I like – Cary Grant as a daring pilot making dangerous cargo runs in exotic locales, Jean Arthur in an uncharacteristically dramatic turn, and a sighting of a young Rita Hayworth. Just doesn’t seem to come together in a memorable whole for me.
1939 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Richard Barthelmess, Rita Hayworth, Thomas Mitchell.

4:15am (22nd) – TCM – Bringing Up Baby
Poor Cary Grant just can’t get away from delightfully ditzy Katharine Hepburn, especially after her dog steals his museum’s priceless dinosaur bone. Oh, and after her pet leopard escapes (and a dangerous zoo leopard escapes at the same time). Incredible situation follows incredible situation in this zaniest of all screwball comedies.
1938 USA. Director: Howard Hawks. Starring: Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, May Robson, Barry Fitzgerald.
Must See