Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers – 1947: POSSESSED & DARK PASSAGE

There's Sometimes a Buggy

This Warner Bros. 1947 Studios Year by Year episode features two gems that put their own particular slant on noir's familiar theme of murderous conflict between women and men: Curtis Bernhardt's Possessed, starring a more-than-usually deranged Joan Crawford, with Van Heflin as the rakish object of her obsession, and Delmer Daves' Dark Passage, starring an unusually passive Humphrey Bogart as a man convicted of killing his wife, with Lauren Bacall as an eccentric socialite who decides to help him. And in our Fear and Moviegoing segment, a real clash of moods: Ridley Scott's terrifying sci-fi/horror classic Alien and Wong Kar-wai's whimsical romantic comedy (of a sort) Chungking Express. Though admittedly it also has its terrifying aspects. (If only Van Heflin had been charmed by Crawford's fixation, how differently it could have gone!)

Time Codes:

0h 00m 35s: POSSESSED [dir. Curtis Bernhardt]

0h 41m 53s: DARK PASSAGE [dir. Delmer Daves]

1h 11m 24s: Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Alien (1979) by Ridley Scott at the TIFF Lightbox and Chungking Express (1994) by Wong Kar-wai at the Revue Cinema

Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn

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

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

* Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

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

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

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