David Cairns
@dcairns.bsky.social
📤 1629
📥 1060
📝 1035
Film maker, film critic, film teacher, film lover, fool for film
Kay Francis in MANDALAY is not just a clothes-horse -- in fact, she proves she can act with no clothes at all.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/05/19/m...
1 day ago
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Mystery item No 12.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/05/15/n...
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No. 12 Van Heflin
Found in a Portobello charity shop. Unpriced. I asked, and they said 50p, so I said yes. Since I had to clear my 1000 postcards out of my office at work, I decided to decorate the Shadowplayhouse w…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/05/15/no-12-van-heflin/
5 days ago
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Cinematographer Mario Bava goes all film noir:
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/05/12/f...
8 days ago
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A short disquisition on tit-for-tat routines.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/05/10/b...
9 days ago
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This bloody country.
12 days ago
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Love Molly Haskell but her Laurel & Hardy diatribe seems bizarrely off-base to me.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/05/07/s...
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Stan and Molly
Molly Haskell is awesome, obviously, and the premise of her From Reverence to Rape is pretty unassailable. It’s also a product of the era before the internet and home video and the easy abili…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/05/07/stan-and-molly/
13 days ago
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Three nightmare visions of a female future.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/05/02/m...
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Misstopia
First, we have to start with Alice Guy’s THE CONSEQUENCES OF FEMINISM. I know, we’ve probably all seen it. But it remains fascinating. Alice Guy, pioneering female director, makes a com…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/05/02/misstopia/
18 days ago
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Censored scenes from Laurel & Hardy, first in a regular series.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/30/t...
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Thing One
Well, even if I have no time for blogging, I at least can now talk about the first of the things we’re working on. A video essay for Masters of Cinema’s 1929 Laurel & Hardy collecti…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/30/thing-one/
20 days ago
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I finally read Akutagawa's In the Grove and Rashomon. Great, a whole other contradictory version of what happened!
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/23/b...
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Beyond the Grove
“The body was lying flat on its back dressed in a bluish silk kimono and a wrinkled head-dress of the Kiyoto style. A single sword-stroke had pierced the breast. The fallen bamboo-blades arou…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/23/beyond-the-grove/
27 days ago
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You owe it to yourselves to see the most horrible, destructive and chaotic silent comedy ever:
dcairns.wordpress.com
about 1 month ago
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Given my love of Italian cinema and especially comedy, crazy it's taken me this long to see GUARDI I LADRI.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/17/t...
about 1 month ago
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Robert Heinlein made some predictions. How's he doing?
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/16/t...
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The Way the Future Wasn’t
I was looking in a second-hand paperback of The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein at his list of predictions for the future. This was published in 1966 I believe. RAH presages his predictions by claimin…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/16/the-way-the-future-wasnt/
about 1 month ago
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Catherine Spaak sexy and funny and near-psychopathically committed to her complicated love life in LA BUGIARDA.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/14/p...
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Pants on Fire
LA BUGIARDA — THE LIAR — is a Luigi Comencini comedy I hadn’t rushed to see despite my love for the great man. Maybe I wasn’t sure how an Italian movie of 1965 would handle …
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/14/pants-on-fire/
about 1 month ago
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"I was cured, all right."
about 1 month ago
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TORA TORA AND STILL MORE TORA!
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/13/t...
about 1 month ago
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Billy Bletcher, pursued by a giant lobster.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/11/l...
about 1 month ago
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David Melville Wingrove returns (eternally) with more Cinema de Papa: Cocteau! Delannoy! Marais!
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/08/p...
about 1 month ago
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tracing the Michael Powell-James Finlayson connection. If there is one.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/07/d...
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D’Oh!
Strange errors abound. In his 1986 episode of The South Bank Show, a kind of autobiographical study which can be viewed as a complimentary work to his two volumes of memoirs, Michael Powell speaks …
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/07/doh/
about 1 month ago
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The loud opinions of Tarantino collide with an unproduced script by the Coens.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/03/o...
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On Spec
The library had Quentin Tarantino’s book Cinema Speculation so I borrowed it. Very readable, but slightly overbearing, hectoring, in its tone. Some of QT’s observations are interesting,…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/03/on-spec/
about 2 months ago
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Proud and chuffed to have contributed a video essay to this beauty:
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/02/o...
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Own Trumpet Dept.
Got my comp of TROUBLE IN PARADISE from Criterion (4K and Blu). Made a video essay for this one with editor Stephen C. Horne. Farran Smith Nehme wrote the booklet essay — all chums together! …
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/04/02/own-trumpet-dept/
about 2 months ago
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Two fantastic monologues by Charles Laughton, buoyed up by judicious use of reaction shots. What's the story? Edward Dmytryk has one he wants to sell you.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/31/l...
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Listeners
Had a very nice double bill of REMBRANDT and GOYA. More on Francisco Goya later. The Rembrandt Van Rijn bio was the 1936 Alexander Korda one with Charles Laughton, which prompted some thoughts. But…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/31/listeners/
about 2 months ago
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Claude Miller's GARDE A VUE very very fine. Creepy crime actorfest.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/28/t...
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Throw the bokeh at him
I was sick in bed with a cold and Claude Miller’s GARDE A VUE (1981) proved just the medicine. But I was getting a deja vu vibe which finally crystallized when I remembered PILE OU FACE (1980…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/28/throw-the-bokeh-at-him/
about 2 months ago
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reposted by
David Cairns
Ray Newman
about 2 months ago
“THE STRANGE AFFAIR (1968), directed by David Greene, is one I’d always been interested in... The idea of Michael York as a police constable (Peter Strange) in swinging London is an intriguing one...” (by
@dcairns.bsky.social
)
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/26/a...
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A Girl Called Fred
THE STRANGE AFFAIR (1968), directed by David Greene, is one I’d always been interested in– I like his SEBASTIAN and I START COUNTING a whole bunch. But this one seemed to have vanished.…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/26/a-girl-called-fred/
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THE STRANGE AFFAIR is strange all right, also problematic.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/26/a...
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A Girl Called Fred
THE STRANGE AFFAIR (1968), directed by David Greene, is one I’d always been interested in– I like his SEBASTIAN and I START COUNTING a whole bunch. But this one seemed to have vanished.…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/26/a-girl-called-fred/
about 2 months ago
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HippFest 2026 offered Anna May Wong at her VERY best, beyond anything I expected from her.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/25/s...
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Song Sung Blue
Richard Eichberg is an interesting case, a director who worked partway through the Nazi period on big movies, and seems to have had some trouble getting himself denazified, since he didn’t ma…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/25/song-sung-blue/
about 2 months ago
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More @HippFest!
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/22/b...
about 2 months ago
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Two Maurices (Elvey and Tourneur), two Alans (director Crosland and character Breck) and three Sherlocks, all in a single day @Hippfest
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/20/i...
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Ideal Holmes
Three silent Sherlock Holmeses at the Hippodrome on Thursday — Eile Norwood, endorsed by Conan Doyle himself, made an excellent intense detective. The first film (each was around half an hour…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/20/ideal-holmes/
2 months ago
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HippFest day 1! Grim but beautiful up north.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/19/o...
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Outlawed
Yesterday the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival (hereafter: Hippfest) got off to a grand start with a trio of northern European heavy dramas — much more fun tha I’m making it sound. Hopef…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/19/outlawed/
2 months ago
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In my memory (not what it was, admittedly) SPHERE and OUTBREAK are the same film. Am I correct?
2 months ago
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Victor Mature hangs up his socks to dry in TIMBUKTU.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/15/a...
2 months ago
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HOLD THAT BLONDE! seemed like it might be terrible but it was actually heaps o' fun.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/14/t...
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Theft in the Lurch
HOLD THAT BLONDE! stars Eddie Bracken and Veronica Lake (post-peekaboo curl) and is produced by the pixie-like Paul Jones, all three of them former Preston Sturges collaborators. So the film was al…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/14/theft-in-the-lurch/
2 months ago
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Guy Ritchie being weird about Hitler.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/12/r...
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Ritchie Hitler Thing
One of the extras on the DVD of Guy Ritchie’s REVOLVER is a curious deleted scene — a very long series of onscreen quotations from famous people, played over what at least look like cri…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/12/ritchie-hitler-thing/
2 months ago
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Once in a while, a very very very good film...
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/10/h...
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Ham Radio
I’ve seen everything Henri-Georges Clouzot directed, and I’m a fan. Only MIQUETTE ET SA MERE is basically worthless, the rest are all very much worth seeing, whatever their reputation. …
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/10/ham-radio/
2 months ago
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The true story of the Nazi conquest of Britain.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/08/t...
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The Sunday Intertitle: Visiting District Nazi
I picked up the BFI’s dual edition Blu-ray-DVD of Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s IT HAPPENED HERE a while back, and since I’ve been working on my fourth Whitsuntide novel, Keep…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/08/the-sunday-intertitle-visiting-district-nazi/
2 months ago
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HAHAHA this guy.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/06/h...
3 months ago
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The saucy joys of Terry and the Pirates.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/05/t...
3 months ago
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The truly spectacular GEHEIMNISSE DES ORIENTS is hobbled by a single casting blunder, but still... wowsers are in order.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/04/a...
3 months ago
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Having a hard day? Try watching Tarzan wrestle a stuffed lioness under the surprised gaze of two stock-footage parrots. And wait till you hear his OFF-MODEL YODEL!
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/28/o...
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Off-model yodel
I picked up TARZAN AND THE GREEN GODDESS (1937) for £1.50, because I was curious. Like Tarzan himself, faced with a herd of stampeding rhinoceroses, I was grossly overcharged. The big swizz started…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/28/off-model-yodel/
3 months ago
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reposted by
David Cairns
Corey Atad
3 months ago
sometimes you have a thing in your head for a long time, and then you make it happen, and then people respond ecstatically, and it's literally the best, most validating feeling in the world thank you to everyone who's been reading and sharing this
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Even Tony Kushner Warned Steven Spielberg About Making ‘Munich’
Kushner—who cowrote the screenplay for Spielberg’s controversial, eerily prescient film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—recalls telling the director, “You do understand that we’re going to get ...
https://www.gq.com/story/tony-kushner-warned-steven-spielberg-about-making-munich
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GOOD LUCK HAVE FUN DON'T DIE (no commas on the poster or in the film's main title card) is excellent. The kind of fantasy cinema I'd like to be mainstream.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/26/v...
3 months ago
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The young Richard Barthelmess was quite the dreamboat.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/t...
3 months ago
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How bad does an actor's hair have to be in a role before it effectively neutralizes him?
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/21/1..
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Hugh Bris
I recall a review of THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY maybe in Sight & Sound where the pained critic remarked that the Farrelly brothers have a talent for or obsession with rendering their le…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/21/1..
3 months ago
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There is, just possibly, a right way to do true crime. DEVIL IN DISGUISE.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/20/d...
3 months ago
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Sometimes a man hits the ground so hard everything turns upside down. 20,000 YEARS IN SING SING.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/19/h...
3 months ago
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reposted by
David Cairns
MidCenturyCinema
3 months ago
2/17/49: Max Ophüls' Caught w/Mr. James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Ryan (channeling Howard Hughes) Godard: "Max's best American film" More:
@jhoberman.bsky.social
:
www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/m...
@dcairns.bsky.social
:
dcairns.wordpress.com/2017/10/25/c...
ASC:
theasc.com/articles/cau...
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Caught: A Lost Noir Classic
Legendary director Max Ophuls and accomplished cinematographer Lee Garmes, ASC lent their skills to a widely-scorned 1949 picture that has proven its…
https://theasc.com/articles/caught-a-lost-noir-classic
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Learned a few fun facts researching CASABLANCA.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/17/t...
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Time Goes By
I really enjoyed talking about CASABLANCA and related matters in Glasgow on Saturday. Whereas my series of blog posts on the film concentrated on the evidence up there on the screen, for which all …
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/17/time-goes-by/
3 months ago
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reposted by
David Cairns
Alasdair Swanson
3 months ago
Some happiness for Tuesday morning, here's
@dcairns.bsky.social
on how Jacques Tati makes the most of what could have been a one-shot gag.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ape...
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PLAYTIME: How Jacques Tati Develops a Single Gag
YouTube video by CRITERION
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0apeMNoM1XE
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Wyler's WUTHERING HEIGHTS has some really impressive feats of cinema in it.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/12/b...
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Best Thunderclap
William Wyler’s version of WUTHERING HEIGHTS has possibly the best thunder and lightning in movies — a real coup de cinema. Unlike most films — POLTERGEIST excepted — they h…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/12/best-thunderclap/
3 months ago
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