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PODCAST

There"s Sometimes a Buggy

Join Dave and Elise every week for a buggy-ride of cinematic exploration. A bilingual Montreal native and a Prairies hayseed gravitate to Toronto for the film culture, meet on OK Cupid, and spur on each other"s movie-love, culminating in this podcast. Expect in-depth discussion of their old favourites (mostly studio-era Hollywood) and their latest frontiers (courtesy of the TIFF Cinematheque and various Toronto rep houses and festivals). The podcast will be comprised of several potentially

tv & film philosophy

All Episodes

02:13:34

Special Subject – The Radical Renoir – LES BAS-FONDS...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/08/13

In this episode we cover three films from the period of Jean Renoir's flirtation (or fornication?) with Communism: The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936), The Lower Depths (1936), and La Marseillaise (1938). We discuss how Renoir's depiction of the French Revolution differs from the one familiar to the Anglo-American world, uncover the woman behind the Radical Renoir, and analyze the interaction of class, community, and virtuous violence in the films. And if that sounds heavy, just watch The Crime of

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01:27:49

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1936 –...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/08/06

In this Studios Year by Year episode, we witness the changing of the guard at Universal in 1936, in which James Whale's Show Boat brings down the Laemmle Era, and Deanna Durbin's first feature, Three Smart Girls, ushers in the Bankers Era. We find good things to say about both, but we're not gonna lie, most of the episode is devoted to Edna Ferber/Kern and Hammerstein/Whale's Show Boat and its combination of quiet radicalism, family melodrama, and musical entertainment. Musical entertainment is just

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02:08:39

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Season 4 - Margaret Sullavan...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/07/30

This week on the pod, we get started with our new Acteurist Oeuvre-View series: Margaret Sullavan. We were expecting solid entries from the selective Sullavan, but weren't fully prepared for John Stahl to match his Back Street achievement with Sullavan's screen debut, Only Yesterday (1933). We discuss its relationship to Opühls' Letter from an Unknown Woman, with which it shares a source, while concluding that it has more in common with Mervyn LeRoy's Random Harvest. We also posit Stahl-Sullavan as

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01:33:37

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – RKO – 1936: MAKE WAY...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/07/23

RKO, 1936: Anne Shirley and Katharine Hepburn have father trouble. In Make Way for a Lady (directed by David Burton), Shirley gets hysterical at the thought of indulgent 20th century dad Herbert Marshall developing a sex life; while in A Woman Rebels (directed by Mark Sandrich), Hepburn blames stern Victorian dad Donald Crisp for her sexual aberrance. We discuss the careers of the source novelists, Elizabeth Jordan and Netta Syrett, both born in 1865, in America and England respectively; find reason

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01:21:33

Acteur/Auteur Special Subject– Max Ophuls & Edwige...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/07/16

Dave's first Summer in France Special Subject is devoted to two lesser-known Max Ophüls movies starring Edwige Feuillère that were made just before the Nazis occupied France and Ophüls fled to Hollywood, Sans lendemain (1939) and De Mayerling à Sarajevo (1940). We consider the two films in light of those dire circumstances and Ophüls' oeuvre, arguing that they deserve more attention--especially the beautifully shot, noirish Sans lendemain (There's No Tomorrow), with its creatively suicidal heroine

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01:24:45

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Clara Bow – Part 12: CALL HER...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/07/09

Clara Bow gets a wonderful finale to her (unfortunately foreshortened) career in our final Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode devoted to her. Fox comes through with two excellent vehicles: Call Her Savage (1932), directed by John Francis Dillon and brilliantly shot by Lee Garmes, a delightfully lurid Pre-Code that nevertheless contains a critique of white supremacy; and Hoop-La (1933), a sweet-natured romantic comedy with a circus setting and a hard-boiled veneer. We review, one last time, why Clara Bow

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01:19:17

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – 20th Century Fox –...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/07/02

Our studio this week is 20th Century Fox, the year is 1936; two fascinating movies of dubious historicity (in the details, at least) by the ever-reliable Henry King, possibly Fox's most characteristic director. First up, Ramona, a sympathetic depiction of North American settler colonialism from the perspective of Native Americans (unfortunately, as ever, with white actors--Loretta Young and Don Ameche--playing the leads). Then, the surprisingly engrossing The Country Doctor, starring Jean Hersholt

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57:16

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Clara Bow – Part 11: LOVE...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/06/25

Two more Tuttles for our penultimate Clara Bow episode, a couple of odd genre experiments: "musical romance" Love Among the Millionaires (1930) combines a star-crossed-lovers melodrama with comedy bits featuring vaudeville and future Broadway child star Mitzi Green and a lot of random songs; while No Limit (1931) offers gambling dens, stickup men, pratfalls, redemptive romance, New York location shots, an automat scene, Thelma Todd, and everything else you could want in a movie, according to Dave

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01:15:33

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers –...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/06/18

For Warner Bros., 1936, we take a look at two stage-to-film adaptations: Three Men on a Horse, a Warners-style farce about gangsters, discontented suburbanites, and the power of greeting card poetry, and The Petrified Forest, a drama by Pulitzer Prize-winner Robert E. Sherwood about gangsters, disillusioned novelists, and the allure of French poetry. We discuss the studio's handling of suburban satire and Leslie Howard's handling of the role of thematic spokesman. It's an all-star episode, with the

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01:42:12

Special Subject – The Tarkovskyan Reflector – MIRROR...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/06/11

In this Special Subject episode, we try to get a handle on Andrei Tarkovsky by looking at a couple of our favourites, in which Tarkovsky tries to get a handle on his mother (and faith, and memory, and guilt, and nostalgia, and the nature of womanhood, and the possibility of human connection): Mirror (1975) and Nostalghia (1983). We talk Tarkovskyan dream and "reality"; the interweaving of autobiography and fiction, representations of your own death, different kinds of doubles, mystical dogs, and

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48:44

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Clara Bow – Part 10: THE...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/06/04

In this week of our (slightly-out-of-order) Oeuvre-view of Clara Bow's career, The Saturday Night Kid (1929), directed by A. Edward Sutherland, is paired with True to the Navy (1930), directed by Frank Tuttle. We see two starkly contrasting Claras separated by just seven months: in Sutherland's working-class drama, she's heroic but bad-tempered, burdened with a flighty love interest, a manager who has it in for her (Edna May Oliver), and a snake of a sister (pre-stardom Jean Arthur interpreting

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01:29:33

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – MGM – 1936: WIFE VS...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/05/28

MGM, 1936: the studio of stars, glamour, and conservatism. Or so goes our thesis, which we attempt to complicate by taking a close look at two movies that make romantic rivals of Jean Harlow and Myrna Loy: Clarence Brown's melodrama Wife vs.Secretary and Jack Conway's atypical screwball comedy Libeled Lady. Indubitably the protagonist of the former and top-billed in the latter's star-fest, Harlow plays class underdogs that lend a pointed populism to MGM's aspirational fantasies. We examine MGM's

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01:27:13

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Clara Bow – Part 9: THE WILD...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/05/21

In this week's Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, we're finally there: Clara's first two sound films, both from 1929. First, we engage in an extensive analysis of Dorothy Arzner's The Wild Party, Clara's talkie debut. The star plays a college girl rebelling against the Victorian strictures on campus sexuality, but yearning for the loftier aims of her studious roommate and the handsome new anthropology professor (played by Fredric March). One of 1929's great films, The Wild Party is a winning

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01:43:44

Special Subject – Distributed by Eagle-Lion -...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/05/14

We look at four noirish British films distributed in the United States by Eagle-Lion: Waterloo Road (1945, directed by Sidney Gilliat), I See a Dark Stranger (1946, directed by Frank Launder), The October Man (1947, directed by Roy Ward Baker), and The Blue Lamp (1950, directed by Basil Dearden). We explore the mental and physical landscape of wartime and postwar England and such subjects as militant Irish politics, English policing, and scapegoating as dramatic structure and social reality, and

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01:21:30

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Clara Bow – Part 8: HULA...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/05/07

In this week's Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view episode, two of Clara's best directors, Victor Fleming and Dorothy Arzner, present us with two very different versions of Clara that are both nevertheless logical developments of her persona. In Fleming's Hula (1927), Clara is a wild child of nature and a real loose cannon, pitted against "civilized" ladies who are far more destructive, with another (Hawaiian) colonial setting. In Arzner's Get Your Man (1927), a much more restrained Clara is an American

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01:26:06

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Paramount – 1936:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/04/30

In this Studios Year by Year episode, 1936 begins with Paramount, and we take a look at two movies about gun-running that star Gary Cooper, but have little else in common (despite using the same cinematographer). We don't find much to love about Cecil B. DeMille's tribute to Wild West mythology, The Plainsman, starring Gary Cooper as an insufficiently hirsute Wild Bill Hickock and Jean Arthur as a whip-happy Calamity Jane; but Dave waxes enthusiastic about Lewis Milestone's The General Died at Dawn,

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56:46

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Clara Bow – Part 7: CHILDREN...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/04/23

In this episode of our Clara Bow Acteurist Oeuvre-view, two films from 1927, the curious love triangle (quadrangle if you're generous) melodrama Children of Divorce, directed by Frank Lloyd (but maybe really Josef von Sternberg), and William A. Wellman's Andy-Hardy-Goes-to-War aerial spectacle, Wings. Elise says "Jamesian"! Dave says "Verhoevian"! (Shouldn't it be "Verhoevenian"?!) We contemplate Clara Bow as a precursor to Judy Garland (but with more nudity) and as a waifish Kate Croy crossed with

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02:43:57

Special Subject – Produced By Joan Harrison, Part 1 -...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/04/16

A four-film Special Subject episode, Joan Harrison, Producer, Part 1 looks at: Phantom Lady (1944), The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry (1945), Nocturne (1946), and They Won't Believe Me (1947). These idiosyncratic noirs and Jamesian melodramas by the former Hitchcock screenwriter and honorary family member interrogate gender roles, flip gendered tropes, and deconstruct male resentment of women in ways that faintly anticipate Elaine May's work. We also discuss the Negative Capability of George Raft,

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51:17

Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Universal – 1935:...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/04/09

Our Universal 1935 Studios Year by Year episode examines two movies about the shenanigans of the idle rich, but that's where the resemblance ends. James Whale's Remember Last Night? (1935) is a Thin Man parody heavy on the class satire and absurdism, while Lowell Sherman's swan song, Night Life of the Gods, is about a wealthy scientist who discovers how to turn his straitlaced family into statues and brings a museum's statues of Roman gods to life. Also, for no reason at all, his love interest is a

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01:12:05

Acteurist oeuvre-view – Clara Bow – Part 6: KID BOOTS...

There"s Sometimes a Buggy ·

2021/04/02

Our first Clara Bow movie of this episode, Kid Boots (1926) allows Bow to show off her slapstick skills again in a surprisingly compatible pairing with Eddie Cantor. Then we turn to the second masterpiece of the series so far, the famous-but-somehow-still-underrated It (1927), directed by Clarence G. Badger. We marvel at the full flowering of the Bow persona, including its feminist modernity, its subtle (most of the time) incorporation of androgyny, and, once again, its sexual subjectivity. Time

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