The Projector #75: Three Quarters (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

This is the 75th edition of The Projector, the official Next Picture Show™ newsletter (unless I miscounted at some point, which is quite possible). To commemorate, I asked my co-hosts to write a little bit about their favorite movie from 75 years ago. That would be 1946. Genevieve asked for a pass, not because she doesn’t have strong opinions about the films from 1946, but because she’s busy, which is fine. A peek behind the curtain: Genevieve is the one in charge of post-production at the podcast which takes up a lot of time. So I’ll just choose one for her: It’s a Wonderful Life. Who doesn’t love that one?

Crap. Now I have to find a different film to write about. In the meantime, here are Tasha and Scott’s picks:

Tasha Robinson

When I went through a big Hitchcock catchup phase umpty million years ago, I got to the point where I kind of thought I had a handle on his tastes and interests and tricks… and then I collided with 1946's Notorious. It's a remarkable movie that feels not just like a departure from Hitch's normal obsessions, but also from the entire era. Ingrid Bergman stars as the daughter of a convicted Nazi spy; Cary Grant is the American agent who recruits her to infiltrate a Nazi group, knowing that it's going to require her to seduce a Nazi (Claude Rains) who was once in love with her. More than any other 1940s movie I can recall seeing, this film is frank about the weaponizing of sex. Grant's character loves Bergman's, but he also wants to use her sexuality for his benefit, and he openly judges her for being capable of doing so, and he's angry that she's not the blushing virgin of his dreams. And she understands all of that, and does her duty by her country anyway. It honestly reads a bit like modern fanfic or a romance novel — "they love each other but they hate each other but oops, circumstances are forcing them to kiss" — which is pretty funny, in its way. But this is also a spectacularly complicated, ambitious film about the double standards women still face over sexual experience, and about the hypocrisies that drive those standards. I love how deep down the rabbit hole of emotion, judgment, and inner conflict this movie goes.

Scott Tobias

The extremely lazy writer in me wants to pick A Matter of Life and Death, which we just covered on the podcast, and excerpt the Keynote I wrote for it. But I owe it to you, our loyal Patreon subscribers, to think of something else. So I wanted to draw your attention to Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan, the middle film in a neo-realist war trilogy that started with Rome: Open City and ended with the shattering Germany Year Zero. Paisan is an anthology of sorts, with six different segments that take place in various spots of the Allied forces’ advancement through Italy from the south in World War II. The major theme that connects them all is communication, whether it’s a misunderstanding that leads soldiers to mistake a helpful Italian girl for a turncoat or the touching effort of people of different cultures and languages seeking to find common ground.

I’m happy to second all of the above to point out that 1946 is loaded with great movies. I mean, take your pick: The Postman Always Rings Twice, My Darling Clementine, Gilda, The Best Years of Our Lives, Green For Danger, Duel in the Sun, She-Wolf of London (actually, that one stinks). But I’ll go with The Big Sleep, a film that brings out the best in Howard Hawks, Raymond Chandler, Humphrey Bogart, and Lauren Bacall. (The bookstore scene with Dorothy Malone also probably ruined me for women who don’t wear glasses, but that’s probably another story.) It’s a quintessential Hollywood mystery, at least in part because its loose ends and hard-to-follow plot emphasize how the actual mystery itself isn’t the reason we show up for such movie.

So thanks for sticking with us, whether you’ve been here from the first newsletter or just joined last week. And check out some movies from 75 years ago. It’s probably preaching to the converted to say that movies from long ago are a treasure waiting to be explored and not a forbidding land with an impenetrable language (as someone recently argued on Twitter), but I’ll mention that anyway.

Not forbidding at all: our latest episode, which finds your hosts brutally divided over Lost in America and Albert Brooks in general. There is a right opinion here. Please don’t hesitate to write in and share it.

In the meantime, if you want to do a little reading, here are a few links of note.

• Here’s a must-read: Our pal and occasional guest host Alison Willmore’s profile of Nomadland director Chloe Zhao for Vulture.

• It’s the 30th anniversary of Silence of the Lambs. Here’s a Guardian appreciation by our own Scott Tobias and Vanity Fair’s Tracy Moore on its history and complicated legacy.

• For Harper’s Martin Scorsese (I’ve heard of him) writes an appreciation of Fellini and of movies in general.

• For Vulture, Brandy Gerber writes about the evolving depiction of autism in media film.

• Also for Vulture, and relevant to a recent episode, Rebecca Alter talks to Ross Stewart and Tomm Moore about the historical context of Wolfwalkers.

• At ScreenCrush, Matt Singer considers the 35th anniversary of Howard the Duck, the first Marvel movie.