One of the things I was looking forward to most this year was getting back into the swing of watching old movies again. Classic film is probably one of my earliest if not the earliest passion in my life, but with so much quality television shows on the air right now (Mad Men, Game of Thrones, The Americans, etc) it has been really hard to fit movies into all of that. What can I say, I am always going to be a Cinema Studies student at heart. :)
So in January, I accepted the challenge to watch 10 classic I haven't seen before. So far, I have watched three of the ten films and I can't wait to get through the list. It has definitely reignited my love for classic film!
Having little expectations for it, I started with The Grass is Greener (Cary Grant was really the only draw for me). The premise sounded pretty funny and I was immediately even more interested after seeing Christian Dior's name on the credits for supplying Jean Simmon's wardrobe.
It was a delight to see many of Dior's early 60s designs modeled on the beautiful Simmons and really made the film worth watching, if only for the amazing fashion. However, I think the best part of the film is during the above scene, when a split screen Grant and Mitchum are both on the phone. Grant has such great comedic timing and this scene certainly highlights that.
LV Rating: ***
See it for the clothes and Cary Grant is always dreamy!
This semester, one of my professors got me hooked on this amazing website. Archive.org is a site that has public domain films and other media available to view and download. Today, I was looking at some of the movies they have and I must say there are a lot of rare classic films available; many with lesser know stars and directors. Just from my short search, there looks to be a lot of films from the late 30's and '40s. Definitely a great source for vintage fashion inspiration.
I just wanted to share my new discovery with my blogging friends!!
Yesterday in one of my film classes, I was reminded of one of my favorite short films of all time. I knew it could be found on YouTube so I wanted to share it with you all.
This short film, "Anna Belle Serpentine Dance" was done by Thomas Edison in 1895 and is one of the first known color films. Most people think that "Gone with the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz" are among the first color films, but color films date back to the birth of the cinema. This short film was colored by the hand coloring technique. This is where each frame is hand painted. This process took a very long time and was very expensive. During this time there were a few other methods of coloring films that were popular. Toning was a process done during the exposure process, tinting or dipping, was done by dipping a section of the film into a bath of dye, and stenciling was done by making a stencil of the sections to be colored and then coloring them. Sometime more than one of these techniques were used to color films. One of the major forerunners in the stenciling movement were Pathe brothers, who were French and employed mostly women. These women worked mostly on the stenciling process because they had small hands. This was the first opening for women in the film industry.
The short film showed above is based off of Loie Fuller, a dancer that was famous for her style of dance. I just love how her dress drapes and she looks so graceful while the fabric swirls. I also really love how she is colored. Yellow is my favorite color and it shows up a lot in this film.
One more note on early colored films; most films that are colored from this time period are of women, which I find really interesting. Many think that it is because color and women are normally associated together, which would make sense why women were employed to color the films as well as star in them.
Let me know what you think of this film. Do you love it or hate it?? I am really interested to know how others feel about it!!
I may have mentioned before that I am a film history major. One of my main reasons for my love of film comes from my love for vintage. I love that you can watch these old movies and view another time in history. We often talk in class about how many of these films reflect life outside of the movie. I totally agree and find these old films to be a great source for inspiration for fashion, hairstyles, decorating, and more.
Well, while surfing through some blogs, I came across one (which I cannot remember which one at this time, so if someone does, leave me a comment and I will give that blog credit!) which had a post about Lana Turner's daughter selling a lot of her personal items on eBay. I was so excited when I saw the post, I just had to check out eBay. I found the seller and fell in love with this bracelet. I wear a lot of black and this is perfect!! Lana Turner stars in one of my favorite classic films, The Postman Always Rings Twice. I love film noir and Miss Turner has some great outfits in this film. I found out today that I won the bracelet and I cannot wait until it comes in the mail. I can't tell you how excited I am to own a part of film history!!! I think it is so awesome that Lana's daughter is selling some of her items on eBay rather than going to Christie's. Many of the items are priced well, at least I thought so. And it seems there are items for every budget. :)
If you are interested, HERE is the link to Cheryl Crane's eBay store.
So if I haven't stated this before, I am a film major and am completely in love with old Classical Hollywood. While this is a super fun topic to study, it's also hard to get a lot of the movies on DVD, let alone even see them. Well, today I stumbled upon this website that said that Warner Bros. was going to open up their archived films and sell them for home video use. I was so excited, so I checked it out to see if it was in fact real. Well...... it WAS!!!!!!!
I looked over the 155 movies they have listed so far and there are at least 4 or 5 Cary Grant films that I have been having the hardest time locating. (Cary Grant is one of my top three favor actors, I LOVE him).
I thought I would pass this information on to my blogging friends, in case your love of vintage flows over into films. Click HERE to visit the page.
