Ben Hecht

A thick fog envelops London. A mysterious killer strangles several men in the shadowy streets. We learn the killer is targeting officers in a particular WWI unit. The setting shifts to a manor house. Roland Young delivers a charming, wry performance as the story settles into a closed-circle mystery. Then Dorothy Sebastian and Boris Karloff burst in. Sebastian over-emotes and struggles to maintain her ludicrous accent. Karloff struggles with his own invented accent and looks lost. The tonal shift proves fatal as the film limps along to an elaborate climax with a cheat ending. Great title, poor execution. The archive.org print—sourced from TCM—is passable.

William Powell plays John Marsden, a bond broker who makes his money as “Natural” Davis, New York City’s premier gambler. The story sees him try to exit the gambling life and reconcile with his estranged wife, played by Kay Francis. Conflict arises when Powell’s kid brother arrives from San Francisco, eager to take on the legendary “Natural” Davis, unaware Davis and Marsden are the same man.

Paul Muni plays Tony Camonte, a low-level mafia hood who explains, “In this business there’s only one law you gotta follow to keep out of trouble: Do it first, do it yourself, and keep on doing it.” The “it” in question is murder, and Tony does plenty as he shoots his way to the top of Chicago’s underworld.

A manic director (John Barrymore) makes a star out of an actress (Carole Lombard) who deserts him for Hollywood, taking success with her.

In the South Pacific, a colonial governor’s (Raymond Massey) hard-nosed stance complicates the lives of a native couple (Dorothy Lamour and Jon Hall) much to the dismay of his wife (Mary Astor) and physician (Thomas Mitchell).

Once childhood friends, a gangster (James Cagney) and a priest (Pat O’Brien) now vie for control of a gang of kids.

Gunga Din is an entertaining adventure picture.

John Ford’s Stagecoach reinvented the western genre and marked the debut of the “John Wayne” persona that the legendary actor refined over the next 40 years.

His Girl Friday stands as the gold standard for dialog-driven movies.

An American reporter (Joel McCrea) stationed in Europe uncovers a conspiracy on the eve of World War II.

During World War II, several American and British survivors of a torpedoed passenger ship find themselves adrift in a lifeboat with a German prisoner.

A psychiatrist (Ingrid Bergman) goes on the run with her amnesiac patient (Gregory Peck) after he’s accused of murder.

A Government agent (Cary Grant) recruits a traitor’s daughter (Ingrid Bergman) to spy on a Nazi (Claude Rains) in Rio de Janeiro.

A married barrister (Gregory Peck) defends a beautiful woman on trial for killing her rich husband.

Two well-off young men (John Dall and Farley Granger) kill an acquaintance for the thrill, then throw a party and serve drinks off the trunk containing the corpse.

In 1933 Cuba, after her brother is killed by the secret police, a woman (Jennifer Jones) joins an underground plot hatched by an American expatriate (John Garfield).

A group of scientists and Air Force servicemen find themselves targeted by a vampiric alien organism at a remote Arctic outpost.

A tennis star (Farley Granger) meets a man (Robert Walker) on a train who innocuously proposes that they could each murder someone the other would like to have out of the way.

Cary Grant plays a scientist who discovers a formula that makes him and his wife, played by Ginger Rogers, act like teenagers.

Ah, Guys and Dolls, the movie with many great songs, but only one great singer.

A recovering heroin addict (Frank Sinatra) with an attention-hungry, bed-ridden wife struggles to break free of his former life as a back-room card dealer.

In Timbuktu, an American (John Wayne) reluctantly guides a pious explorer (Rossano Brazzi) and a prostitute (Sophia Loren) into the Sahara desert in search of a lost city.

A circus owner (John Wayne) embarks on a disastrous tour of Europe in the hopes of finding his lost love (Rita Hayworth).

An older James Bond comes out of retirement to defeat SMERSH.

The Front Page is yet another adaptation of the play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, the most famous of which was probably Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday. This Billy Wilder-directed adaptation features Walter Matthau in the Cary Grant role and Jack Lemmon in the Rosalind Russell role.

Most remakes disappoint. Scarface proves an exception. It reimagines Howard Hawks’ 1932 gangster picture as a contemporary psycho-sexual thriller with terrific results.