Defiant Success

Well, this year started off promising...and then coronavirus happened. But I try to stay positive in light of such situations; for instance,...

Nan Cooley (Sylvia Sidney) of Rouben Mamoulian's City Streets  leads a charmed life. Her racketeer father ensures a comfortable life for...

The tone of William Dieterle's Love Letters  is established in its first scene as Alan Quinton (Joseph Cotten) writes a letter for his f...

The narration from Pat Regan (Claire Trevor) in Anthony Mann's Raw Deal  shows an undying loyalty to Joe Sullivan (Dennis O'Keefe) a...

Frank Borzage's The Mortal Storm  begins innocuously enough. The family and students of professor Viktor Roth (Frank Morgan) celebrate h...

The titular character (Nina Foch) of Joseph H. Lewis' My Name Is Julia Ross  starts the film searching for a job in London. She finds a ...

When heiress Joan Prentice (Sylvia Sidney) first meets reporter Jerry Corbett (Fredric March) at the start of Dorothy Arzner's Merrily W...

We've all seen the standard trope: girl hopes to be a big name, gets a lucky break, and then is confronted with the pitfalls of fame soo...

Fred Zinnemann's Act of Violence  opens with a man limping to his apartment and retrieving a gun. He gets on a bus to Santa Lisa, checks...

The opening moments of Fritz Lang's You and Me  shows the employees of a department store interacting with their customers. The behavior...