Preston Sturges: The PurPOLL one, with the pluuuuuuuuuuuumes at the hips.

OK its a clear top 3 with eve and it happened one night.

ya I know I've watched a gang of talkies lately gimme a break

i watched it happened one night again last summer, not having seen it since i was a teenaged capra fanatic (and not really getting it then, because it wasn't, y'know, idealistic and soppy), and it was just gangbusters.

is that a good thing?!

Yeah, I watched It Happened One Night a couple of times in the last two years and it was still good, but I tried rewatching Mr. Deeds Goes to Town a few months ago and its politics made me retch.

gangbusters def a good thing!

reluctant to watch deeds again for the same reason, though i caught the last 90 mins of Its A Wonderful Life at xmas and was still destroyed by it.

The Lady Eve under discussion at The Dissolve:

http://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/746-the-scorching-sensuality-and-style-of-the-lady-eve/

http://www.criterion.com/films/28103-the-palm-beach-story

http://www.criterionforum.org/caps/palmbeachblu00011.jpg

American...Sniper

Saw If I Were King (1938) as my only visit to the latest NYC Sturges series -- probably the most 'major' of his pre-directing writing jobs I'd never seen. It's real good! More high comedy than swashbuckler, Ronald Colman never wittier than as Francois Villon in an already oft-filmed story. (A Parisian peasant girl asks him as they share time in a dungeon, "An epitaph? What's that?" "Oh, usually something good about someone bad.") Pro direction by Frank (Mutiny on the Bounty) Lloyd. Basil Rathbone, cackling as Louis XI, reminded me weirdly of SCTV's Joe Flaherty.

It's a little like McGinty in 15th-century France, tho libertine virtue dominates corruption. Blotchy rendering on YT, don't watch that; otherwise hard to see cept on TCM i guess.

jealous

x2 :/

Missed the whole festival myself. Guess I will be handing in my Preston Sturges Fan Club Membership ID Card to Bruce G this Sunday at the FF Brunch.

ask him when they'll show The French They Are a Funny Race aka Carnets du Major Thompson.

Will do.

I have your answer

He showed it 1990, it is hard to get a hold of, it isn't very good.

well i did know 2/3 of that

but thx

There's a little more, sort of: Yesterday he showed a restored film of a vaudeville act featuring one of Sturges' stock company. I think he showed more such stuff at TCMfest about a month ago. He also told the crowd that the first film ever shown at current FF location was Sullivan's Travels

Finally saw Hail the Conquering Hero and good grief did I ever connect with it. Certainly would have given it a vote here. I guess I just assumed it was another schlocky WWII comedy, but train arrival scene is certainly next-level chaos choreography.

There Is Nothing Outside the Real: Preston Sturges on André Bazin (video)

http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/2015/07/29/there-nothing-outside-real-preston-sturges-andr-bazin

http://moviemorlocks.com/2015/09/26/preston-sturges-origin-story/#more-86954

Last night my wife and I watched a DVD of The Good Fairy, a film Sturges wrote, but it was directed by William Wyler so it didn't appear in this poll. Nevertheless, the script was pure Sturges, the pacing and acting was impeccable, and it had us both laughing aloud constantly. A real gem.

Margaret Sullavan was wonderfu.

wonderful too

Was pretty disappointed by The Palm Beach Story. McCrea and Colbert not onscreen together nearly enough, and the whole train sequence is both unfunny and unpleasant. I realize that lots of people love it, but I really don't find it to be anywhere near the equal of The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels or Unfaithfully Yours (I still need to see the others).

^^Banned from The Ale & Quail Club--4 Life!

Lol

McCrea plays peevish well (I still say "Convulse me" to students who insist a joke is hilarious).

Home movie footage shot by El Brendel on the set of Preston Sturges's BEAUTIFUL BLONDE FROM BASHFUL BEND (1949). Also seen are Sterling Holloway, Snub Pollard, Sturges (at 1'06" and 1'33" (on horseback)), Betty Grable, Hank Mann, Rudy Vallee, among others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZB_ld-Eh4JU&feature=youtu.be

Thanks!

^^Banned from The Ale & Quail Club--4 Life!

not sure i was at that one tbh

Sure you were. You invited donna rouge then we had five people, too many for one team, so you two were one team and In Orbit, dmr and I were Mr. Atoz's Bookmobile - "A Star Trek reference," as the host said.

c'est vrai! i don't remember what bar that was (magnetic field?) but i remember correctly answering a question about coin collecting

Wasn't Magnetic Field, but I did that one once with JBR/L and In Orbit and we came in second. It was in the Slope more or less, near Grand Army Plaza, place was called Shelley's maybe, something starting with an S.

Sharlene's

That's it I tell you! The Big S!

Finally saw Miracle Of Morgan's Creek this week. I enjoyed it so much - it literally never stopped being funny.

Good morning, darling! You look like the last grave over near the willow. Are you worried about something?

There's as fine a specimen of the sucker sapiens as I have ever seen.

Positively the same thread!

Remember The Night (Capra written) is quite good, certainly atypically romantic for Sturges, features probably the best Barbara Stanwyck performance of them all? Getting more and more into her, if I can handle John Wayne and Mitchum being shitty republicans I can handle her being so, too. Sturges got very angry at the changes to his script and demanded to direct - the extras in the Indicator release make a good case for director Mitchell Leisen as an interesting auteur unfairly forgotten due to Sturges' and Wilder's sour grapes, punctuated by more than a bit of homophobia.

All good, but Capra?

I don't know if it's her best, but whenever I watch a Stanwyck performance I often think THIS is the best one.

Even Christmas in Connecticut?

Sturges, sorry, James

No worries.

Actually she is good in Christmas in Connecticut. I can’t make up my mind about that one, can’t even ever remember the director’s name.

Agree about Mitchell Leisen and Remember the Night. Another Sturges/Leisen film is playing as well at the Film Forum this month, Easy Living with Jean Arthur, can’t remember having seen it.

As part of
https://filmforum.org/series/written-directed-by-preston-sturges

Maybe I should go see some of the Written Bys, like The Good Fairy and Beggars of Life.