Otto Preminger had a thing for saintly blondes. The best known of Preminger’s saintly – and hauntingly beautiful – blondes was Jean Seberg whom Preminger discovered and cast as the lead in his version of Saint Joan (1957), but the archetype appears in his movies as far back as Alice Faye’s performance in Fallen Angel (1945 – the year ... read more »

A Royal Scandal (1945) is an Ernst Lubitsch production directed through – rather than by – Otto Preminger. It stars Tallulah Bankhead as Empress Catherine of Russia, aka Catherine the Great. It is not, however, a work of history. It is a sex comedy – one in which sex is never mentioned, much less shown. ... read more »

If you’re a fan of the films of Otto Preminger, Roger Corman, or Mario Bava – or, like me, all three – you will be saddened to learn of the death earlier this week of John Phillip Law, who was an iconic presence in the films of all three directors. For Preminger, he played a ... read more »

In film noir, the anima (a female projection of the male unconscious) often takes the form of a femme fatale, a figure that lures the male protagonist to his doom. But as Bright Lights correspondent Eugenia points out, “There is another type of femme who figures there—a guardian angel type.” Just as the femme fatale ... read more »

One post leads to another. At GreenCine Daily today, D.W. Hudson posted a link to “Bhob Stewart’s terrific piece on the title (and titles) of North by Northwest.” I concur. It’s a terrific piece and should be read anyone who likes Hitchcock or the genius who designed his most memorable title sequences, Saul Bass. Stewart’s ... read more »

In my last blog post, I apologized for not locating any shots of cinematic waterboarding. Since then I managed to find one – from The Good Shepherd DVD. (Thanks to Wikipedia for the hint.) Produced by Francis Coppola (among others) and directed by Robert De Niro, The Good Shepherd is an epic history of the ... read more »

Eugenia from Los Angeles writes: I just watched Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944) and didn’t find it to be all that noir! The heroine was too clean-cut, and the movie was more of a regular murder mystery to me than a noir, by my understanding of that term. I think of noirs as dealing with the ... read more »

The ‘30s M (Lang) Two Seconds (LeRoy) Scarface (Hawks) Fury (Lang) You Only Live Once (Lang) Sabotage (Hitchcock) The ‘40s Stranger on the Third Floor (Ingster) The Seventh Victim (Lewton/Robson) Shadow of a Doubt (Hitchcock) Laura (Preminger) Phantom Lady (Siodmak) Fallen Angel (Preminger) The Woman in the Window (Lang) The Killers (Siodmak) Scarlet Street (Lang) ... read more »