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TM2YC's 1001 Movies (Chronological up to page 25/post 481)

TM2YC

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75 years ago...

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Obsession (1943)
Director: Luchino Visconti
Country: Italy
Length: 140 minutes
Type: Drama, Crime

'Obsession' ('Ossessione') is a fairly faithful but unauthorised adaptation of 'The Postman Always Rings Twice', made under the last year of Italy's Fascist Government. Luchino Visconti's first film is far from his lavish later films, it's more an early entry in the gritty Neorealist style. A frank film about the sexual obsession between a bored wife and a roguish drifter, who plot to murder her husband did not please the Vatican, or the Fascists. It was banned and destroyed in Italy but Visconti luckily kept a copy for himself. The immediate lust between the two lead actors Clara Calamai and Massimo Girotti in their first scene is electric. Despite many other powerful scenes, at 2-hours and 20-minutes, it felt longer than it needed to be.


The first film in the list by Vincente Minnelli next.
 

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Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Country: United States
Length: 113 minutes
Type: Musical, Comedy

'Meet Me in St. Louis' is a light Musical-Comedy about a middle-class family in a suburb of St. Louis, during the months leading up to the 1904 World's Fair. It's a jolly Technicolor confection but the way the seasonal cross-fades were done, made me wonder if Director Vincente Minnelli (father of Liza) was partly inspired by the more dour 'The Magnificent Ambersons'. Nothing of any real consequence happens in the first 90-minutes, the family are blighted by problems as serious as dinner being served and hour earlier than usual and the prospect that a telephone call may be missed. Consternation is finally caused by the father of the family announcing that they are all moving to New York (IMO it should have happened in the first act). Then the final quarter is about the family realising that they dearly love St. Louis and it morphs into the kind of full-on Christmas-Genre movie we know today.


There are so many classic songs that have lasted the test of time (unlike other period Musicals). Judy Garland singing 'The Trolley Song' is a camp classic but 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' is the most famous composition. The old "Separated by a common language" quip came to mind during my watch :D . I kept having to look things up on Wikipedia because apparently, a trolley is a tram (not a shopping cart), corned-beef is salt-beef (not canned minced-beef) and an exposition is an exhibition (not an explanation).


Lauren Bacall's film debut is next.
 

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73 years ago...

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To Have and Have Not (1944)
Director: Howard Hawks
Country: United States
Length: 100 minutes
Type: Drama, Noir

'To Have and Have Not' is a blatant attempt to repeat the success of 'Casablanca' by replicating all the same plot ingredients. Humphrey Bogart plays a similar 'rogue with a heart of gold' to Rick but this time he's a shady fishing-boat Captain. The Location is switched from Morocco, to the French Colony of Martinique, but it's a similar nest of corrupt Vichy officials and Free-French Resistance fighters. For me this has always topped 'Casablanca', it's seedier, raunchier, more disreputable, more realistic and with Howard Hawks in the Director's chair, it looks better too. Even Dooley Wilson pretending to be a piano player, is upgraded to the actual Hoagy Carmichael himself. Lauren Bacall in her first ever screen appearance is "smokin' hot" as Bogart's love interest, maybe that phrase was made for her as she is constantly wreathed in seductive smoke, obliging men to give her lights and letting a cigarette dangle causally from her lips. Bogart was more than twice her age but it doesn't matter on screen, or off it, their chemistry is so strong. Can smoking look any sexier than this? :

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Bacall flirting with Bogart and her suggestive dialogue is what really makes this movie a classic and why I've watched it several times. Bacall's delivery of lines like "I'm hard to get, Steve. All you have to do is ask me" and "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow" leave little to the imagination.


The first film on the list by the renowned Otto Preminger next.
 

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Laura (1944)
Director: Otto Preminger
Country: United States
Length: 88 minutes
Type: Drama, Film-Noir, Mystery

The first half of 'Laura' has all the hallmarks of the emerging Film Noir Genre, with the requisite moody atmosphere provided by Director Otto Preminger. A poker-faced New York Detective investigates the brutal murder of the eponymous "Laura", a high-flying Advertising Executive. One-by-one he quizzes her circle of friends, family and lovers, sifting through their lies and half-truths. The film then switches to more of an Agatha Christie style, including the "assemble all the suspects in the drawing room" trope. The best of these characters is Clifton Webb's delightfully waspish Manhattan dandy, a mixture of Noël Coward and Dalton Trumbo. The script is a brilliantly designed mystery, doing that always impressive trick of showing you seemingly irrefutable evidence that one person must surely be 100% guilty, then later handing you one more tiny clue that exonerates them totally. An slightly underdeveloped and unearned romantic subplot is the only thing spoiling this otherwise perfect thriller.


Another Ingrid Bergman film next.
 

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74 years ago...

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Gaslight (1944)
Director: George Cukor
Country: United States
Length: 114 minutes
Type: Drama

George Cukor's 'Gaslight' is a Hollywood remake of a 1940 British film of the same name. It seems to have been standard practice at the time to burn all copies of the original, when purchasing the remake rights but thankfully MGM were unsuccessful. Why this later remake is in the 1001 list and not the original is odd given that the critical consensus seems to be that the remake is marginally inferior. Still, I haven't yet seen the original to compare and the remake is damn good, so I judged it on it's own merits.

Ingrid Bergman plays the niece of a famous Opera singer who was murdered. She hastily marries Charles Boyer's character and they move into her aunt's old house, where he slowly and subtlety begins to psychologically torture her. It occurred to me that such "controlling or coercive behaviour" has only recently been made an offense in the UK. The always wonderful Joseph Cotten plays a Detective who has his suspicions about what is happening within the house and tries to help. I was delighted by the Sherlock-ian elements of this film, not just the foggy Victorian London setting but the nature of the mystery too. Precious Jewels missing, murder, Society scandals and bizarre events that have simple explanations. There is even a scene of Cotten's detective taking breakfast in a silk smoking-jacket, in what looks very much like a Baker St. flat.

(I might add this to my imaginary Sherlock "cinematic universe" by deciding Cotten is playing one of the various Scotland Yard coppers who studied under Holmes ;) )


Laurence Olivier's Directing debut next.
 

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Henry V (1944)
Director: Laurence Olivier
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 136 minutes
Type: War, Historical

I much prefer Kenneth Branagh's 1989 film in almost every way but Laurence Olivier's film is very memorable for several reasons. It was one of the first widely seen and respected full-length screen adaptations of Shakespeare. Olivier opens the film during a meticulously recreated performance of 'Henry V' at The Globe theatre in Tudor times, complete with boys dressed as girls, rain coming through the roof and a boisterous crowd. The Globe was rebuilt in 1997, 50-years after Olivier's film and it's remarkable how close his filmed version was. Before then, this movie must have been a rare glimpse into what seeing a play at The Globe was like. After the opening he cleverly and seamlessly transitions from the stage play, into the world of the film (and back out at the end). The Technicolor cinematography is a close recreation of paintings of the Medieval period. So vibrant primary colours are used for the costumes and the warped perspective of Pre-Renaissance art, is deliberately exaggerated in the set designs.

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Lastly, the film is noteworthy because of when and why it was made. Made after Britain had recently survived alone against Nazi Germany during The Blitz, I'm sure contemporary audiences would have been struck by the parallels with Henry's victory at Agincourt. Henry's inspiring speech to his frightened and (on-paper) hopelessly outnumbered troops, is similar in theme to Churchill's own "We shall fight on the beaches" address. Released just after the liberation of Paris, the film's happy ending with England and France united by marriage and the war over, must have felt appropriate but the Allies still had to move on to Berlin... "Once more unto the breech, dear friends, once more!".


Next, Eisenstein also comments on contemporary politics using a King from the past.
 

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Ivan the Terrible: Parts 1 and 2 (1944)
Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Country: Russia
Length: 187 minutes
Type: Epic, Historical

'Ivan the Terrible' ('Ivan Grozniy') is a 3-hour Historical Epic about the life of Tsar Ivan IV, commissioned by Stalin himself. Part 1 was released in 1944 to Stalin's approval but he hated 1946's Part 2, so it was banned and not seen until 1958. The production of Part 3 was also cancelled and what had been shot was later seized and destroyed. Sergei Eisenstein was clearly now on the wrong-side of the despotic regime he'd help to promote in his earlier Soviet propaganda films. 'Ivan the Terrible' would be his last. Strictly speaking, only Part 1 is a 1944 film but the book lists both, so I also watched Part 2 (finished in 1946) as well.

I can see why Stalin would react the way he did. Part 1 tweaks historical events to present Ivan as a hero of the workers, fighting for them against the powerful nobility. It's a heroic depiction of the rise of a benevolent Dictator as he remolds Russia into a super-state. Part 2 focuses on turmoil in the Russian government, the setting up of a feared secret-police, political assassinations and growing despotism. Part 1 was how Stalin liked to see himself, Part 2 was how he actually was. I also think Part 1 is just a better film because it's more driven by plot and more varied in location and theme. For example, Part 1 has a huge siege battle that is a precursor to later Hollywood siege films like Ridley Scott's 'Kingdom of Heaven', Part 2 never ventures beyond a few rooms.

The score for the film was composed by none other than Sergei Prokofiev. The acting is still rooted in the silent era mime style but is good nonetheless. Particular attention is paid to composition within the frame, costume and makeup design, the casting of shadows and character movement. Part 2 concludes with a 10-20 minute two-strip colour section. I'm not sure if the sickly red hue is supposed to represent a decent into hell or something but I just found it off putting to be inter-cutting colour and B&W in the same scene, when I'd been watching a purely B&W film for the preceding 3-hours. Overall I found Eisenstein's film to be dramatically captivating and historically interesting. The 187-minute run-time zipped by.


The first film from the book by the genius that was Billy Wilder.

Additional: Due to the length and it being in Russian I wanted to make sure I had a good copy, so I bought the DVD set from the Eureka! video label (Home of the fantastic 'Masters of Cinema' blu-rays) but I couldn't believe my eyes when it was an extremely poorly encoded VHS rip, with illegible white-on-white hard-coded subtitles. It serves me right for trying to pay to see the film, when it turns out it's available to watch for free on youtube in pristine 1080p with English subtitles (From the official studio I think?).
 

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Double Indemnity (1944)
Director: Billy Wilder
Country: United States
Length: 107 minutes
Type: Film-Noir, Crime

I got hooked on Billy Wilder some years back, so I've already seen lots of his best movies but it'll be a pleasure to have an excuse to revisit them again. 'Double Indemnity' kicks off Wilder's 15-year-plus "purple patch" where he produced almost nothing but brilliance. Some reckon this is the first true entry in what would later be called the "Film Noir" genre. Although it doesn't have a private-eye at the center, it does have drink, sex, murder, criminal scheming, a femme-fatale, a moody voiceover and looming shadows so deep characters disappear right into them. The always terrific Barbara Stanwyck plays a wife who draws an insurance salesman (Fred MacMurray) into a plot to bump off her husband. Edward G. Robinson plays an obsessive insurance investigator who turns the screws on the couple. A total classic in every way.


Another Noir next.
 

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Murder, My Sweet (1944)
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Country: United States
Length: 95 minutes
Type: Film-Noir

With 'Murder, My Sweet' (aka 'Farewell, My Lovely') we are again in full-on hard-boiled Detective, femme-fatale, Film Noir territory. Dick Powell, the smooth singing/dancing matinee-idol of earlier Busby Berkeley movies, is almost unrecognisable as hard-drinking, tough-talking, cynical private eye Philip Marlowe. The convoluted mystery plot is a challenge to follow at times but who killed who isn't as import as the general shadowy, threatening atmosphere created by the cinematography. The standout scene is a drug-induced hallucination, using trippy FX to represent a delirious half-reality.


A WW2 documentary next.
 

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The Battle of San Pietro (1945)
Director: John Huston
Country: United States
Length: 32 minutes
Type: Documentary, War

'The Battle of San Pietro' is a US Army Documentary short about the fight to take a small Italian town from the Axis forces. Director John Huston and Producer Frank Capra (who were both Majors in the US Army film-unit. See Netflix's superb 'Five Came Back' series) rapidly cut together documentary footage from the heat of the conflict, as if we are seeing a live news report of the battle being fought. There seems to be some controversy about Huston "faking" parts of the Documentary but I don't see why, as he placed a very clear disclaimer at the end saying that parts had to be recreated for continuity. Apparently reaction to the film was mixed from the Army top brass, some thinking that showing the horrors of combat would be bad for recruitment but some thinking that the unvarnished truth is exactly what nervous recruits needed to see.


Another Hitchcock film next.
 

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Spellbound (1945)
Director: Alfred Hitchcock
Country: United States
Length: 111 minutes
Type: Mystery, Romance

Measured against the high-standard of Alfred Hitchcock films, 'Spellbound' is a mixed bag. Ingrid Bergman's assured, talented and diligent female Psychoanalyst, is offset by laughably sexist dialogue like "The mind of a woman in love is operating on the lowest level of the intellect" that she doesn't challenge. Although perhaps we are just being shown the male-dominated world she works in. After all, a lot of the men in the film are shown to act inappropriately or irrationally (driven by murderous and sexual desires) and she outsmarts them all. A new Director arrives at the mental hospital where she works (played by a startlingly young looking Gregory Peck, in only his fourth role) and they instantly fall in love but all is not as it seems. In my opinion, we needed an extra opening scene where the two lovers meet before getting to the asylum. Them meeting at the asylum means there is a ticking clock until the truth is discovered, making the romance very rushed by necessity. Miklós Rózsa's score is overbearing, which is often a result of having to force us feel for the rushed love story.

There is lots to enjoy too. A dream about a murder is set within a 3D Salvador Dalí painting, a series of opening doors powerfully represents emotional emancipation, and two red frames (in an other wise entirely B&W movie) are used to illustrate a suicide. Michael Chekhov does a brilliant turn as a twinkle-eyed old Psychoanalyst, who is Sigmund Freud in all but name. The best sections of the movie are the parts exploring the inner workings of the mind, the man-on-the-run element was unnecessary and underdeveloped. The film would have perhaps been more effective if they'd never left the Hospital.


Another Michael Curtiz film next.
 

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TM2YC said:
...two red frames (in an other wise entirely B&W movie) are used to illustrate a suicide. 

I completely missed that when I watched it, but you're right.

Really enjoying your reviews, BTW.
 

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Garp said:
TM2YC said:
...two red frames (in an other wise entirely B&W movie) are used to illustrate a suicide. 

I completely missed that when I watched it, but you're right.

Really enjoying your reviews, BTW.

Thanks, your reviews make good reading too. I only just caught those frames myself and had to rewind to check I hadn't imagined it. They look like this:

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Gave Within Our Gates (1920) a watch, yesterday. Incredible film, I loved the scene where the black reverend has to play the Griffin-esque fool for the white men. And that lynching scene was so incredibly well shot and edited that it was hard to watch, yet I couldn't look away.

However, I have to say, I really didn't like how it ended. With the Doctor basically telling Sylvia that she should love her country, because of African-American involvement in US imperialism. It felt weird and gaslighty, and kinda subverted the message of the film up til that point.
 

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^ I'd be interested to see it again if I ever got the blu-ray (http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film5/blu-ray_reviews_73/pioneers_of_african-american_cinema_blu-ray.htm).





72 years ago...

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Mildred Pierce (1945)
Director: Michael Curtiz
Country: United States
Length: 111 minutes
Type: Film-Noir

I'd heard nothing about 'Mildred Pierce' going in but what a masterpiece it turned out to be. Kind of a twisted Film Noir inversion of 1937's 'Stella Dallas'. A mother's relentless pursuit of the "Mom's Apple Pie / American Dream" results in everything in her life being destroyed. Joan Crawford plays a housewife who will do anything to get her daughter the finer things in life. We watch as she doggedly works her way up from a waitress, to the owner of a string of successful restaurants. No matter how hard she works, or how much she makes, it's never enough to satisfy the vain and selfish desires of her spoiled-bitch child. Mildred is always selfless and kind but to a point where you suspect some kind of suppressed self-destructive impulse. The film explores suicide, obsession, murder and Lolita elements. At a certain point, I could see where the story was going but that only made it harder to watch, as you can see Mildred's doom approaching but she can't. Every shot is lit to perfection and drenched in shadows and every opportunity is taken to shoot from unique angles. Superb work from Cinematographer Ernest Haller and Director Michael Curtiz.


The first film out of liberated Paris next.
 

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The Children of the Gods (1945)
Director: Marcel Carné
Country: France
Length: 190 minutes
Type: Romance, Drama

'Les Enfants du Paradis' is commonly known as 'Children of Paradise' in English but that's a terrible mis-translation. It's set in the theatre world of 19th century Paris, so the title refers to the cheap-seats (The "Gods"), therefore I think 'The Children of the Gods' is much more appropriate. The story occupies roughly the same Parisian time period that people will be familiar with from 'Les Misérables'. There is a large cast of characters but we focus mainly on four men (all real historical people), a lovelorn mime artist, a gregarious actor, an assertive count and a dangerous criminal dandy, who all love the same woman 'Garance'. I'm sorry to sound shallow but actress 'Arletty' looks too old at 46 to play Garance. These men all fall obsessively in love with her at a mere glance, for no other reason than her dazzling, earth-shattering beauty... but it's a movie, so you just go with it.

The epic 3-hour runtime is crammed with narrative action, poetic dialogue and dramatic characters so the pace never flags. My sympathies for the four men as they compete for Garance's attention varied from scene to scene. The plays they act in, cleverly mirror the ups and downs of their own fortunes. A French viewer more familiar with the tropes of Commedia dell'arte would no doubt appreciate this symbolism more, as three of the characters represent the stock roles: Pierrot, Columbine and the Harlequin.

The theatre district was one huge set, so big that you'd easily mistake it for a location. Amazing considering this was shot before, after and during the war. Deliberately delayed so it could be released after the liberation of Paris, Marcel Carné's film premiered just a few weeks before new elections were held and then ran for a whole year. France was back and so was it's film industry "Vive la liberté!". 'The Children of the Gods' has been voted the greatest French film ever, I'm not sure that's true but it might be in the running. Only the ending spoiled it for me because a couple of plot threads are left unresolved.


The first film in the list by Roberto Rossellini next.
 

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Rome, Open City (1945)
Director: Roberto Rossellini
Country: Italy
Length: 105 minutes
Type: Drama, War

'Rome, Open City' ('Roma Città Aperta') portrays the Italian Resistance's struggle to evade capture during the Nazi occupation of Rome. Roberto Rossellini started work on the film just two months after the Allies had driven the Nazi forces out of the city. We are shown many levels of the Resistance network but the main focus is on a Catholic Priest Don Pietro Pellegrini (based on a real person, played sensitively by Aldo Fabrizi) who uses his position to help. Rossellini shoots in a gritty, Documentary style among the still bomb damaged buildings. There is no Hollywood happy ending and some of the torture scenes towards the end would be considered "strong" even today. It's a film about martyrs, rather than heroes and Don Pietro's fate has obvious parallels with that of Jesus.



Another Billy Wilder film next.
 

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The Lost Weekend (1945)
Director: Billy Wilder
Country: United States
Length: 99 minutes
Type: Drama, Horror

This was my second viewing of Billy Wilder's 'The Lost Weekend' and I was still unprepared for how uncompromisingly raw it is for a Hollywood film of the mid 40s. Ray Milland puts in a tour de force performance as Don, an alcoholic who was once a writer. Interestingly, the story begins years after he went off the deep end, when almost everyone he knows, everyone who cared for him, or loved him, has long since given up hope of him recovering, or has begun to despise him. Wilder plays it like a Noirish Psychological-Horror movie, the Theremin score underling this aspect. The shots of spiral staircases and extreme closeups of crazed eyeballs, feel very Hitchcock.

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The most unforgettable scene has Don hallucinating a mouse crawling out of the wall, then a bat circles, swoops down and bites the mouse's head off, blood running down the wall. Inducing Milland to scream and rave in a way that is genuinely disturbing. There are definite similarities to the withdrawal scene from 1996's 'Trainspotting'.

This period trailer is amusing for attempting to market a film that is 100% about alcoholism... while avoiding ever mentioning alcoholism :D :


Another Film Noir next.
 

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Detour (1945)
Director: Edgar G. Ulmer
Country: United States
Length: 68 minutes
Type: Film Noir

'Detour' is a short B-Picture Noir, shot for a tenth of what major-studio Hollywood was working with. The budget limitations and lack of polished stars actually work in it's favour. A low-rent Piano player (Tom Neal) hitchhikes from New York to Los Angeles to be with his girl. Along the way he meets a man and a woman who turn out to be a couple of borderline psychos and without really doing anything bad on purpose, he gets mixed up in murder, theft and fraud. The grubby cheapness of everything on screen perfectly captures a world of paint-peeling motels and rough road-side diners, which an A-picture might have been tempted to glamourise. Actor Tom Neal went on to get mixed up in crime and murder in real life. 'Detour' lapsed into public-domain so can be found on youtube quite easily:


Another film from The Archers next, hurray!
 

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I Know Where I'm Going (1945)
Director: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
Country: United Kingdom
Length: 88 minutes
Type: Romance

'I Know Where I'm Going' is like a love letter to Scotland from The Archers (Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger). Wendy Hiller plays a young headstrong Englishwoman who always "knows where she is going". She travels to Scotland to marry her much older wealthy fiancee who is staying on the remote Isle of Kiloran. Except bad weather prevents her from making the crossing, forcing her to stop and smell the proverbial roses heather. The longer she is stuck, the more she falls in love with the windswept Scottish countryside, the local people and their simple way of life, the folk music and of course Roger Livesey, who turns out to be the ancestral Laird of Kiloran.

The weather cleverly works in sympathy with Hiller's emotions, as her feelings for Livesey increase (endangering her pre-planned nuptials) the land is wracked by storms. When she finally realises that she loves him, the sea is becalmed. The closer she gets to Kiloran (The man), the further she gets from reaching Kiloran (The island). It's stuff like this that make the script so perfectly written and conceived. We get a lot of Romantic-Comedies these days but I don't think we get so many genuine heart-felt, crowd-pleasing Romances like this one. Every time I watch 'I Know Where I'm Going', I get more impressed with it's subtle brilliance.


Another William Wyler film next.
 
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