Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.

November 2006 activity

Total Log Entries: 86

Total Comments: 48

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The Stars Look Down / U.K. / 1939

By all accounts, Carol Reed was none too keen on this early success of his, a very striking slice of British social realism. He certainly should have been more proud of it, as it works remarkably well: there’s the authenticity of shot-on-location scenes around the mine and of mining families (I assume a fair number of the extras are playing themselves), the romantic subplot is rather nicely very far from romantic (here, Michael Redgrave and Margaret Lockwood are a long way from the romantic couple of The Lady Vanishes), and the climactic mining disaster, equally surprisingly, ends — quite rightly — bleakly. The film’s final shots of heavenly clouds form a paean to — the nationalisation of the coal industry. Now, that really makes it a film from another age and another world.

by Ian Johnston | Source: Partner Entertainment DVD
08 Nov 2006 12:17 PM | Submit Comment

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