David Cairns
@dcairns.bsky.social
📤 1598
📥 1045
📝 990
Film maker, film critic, film teacher, film lover, fool for film
More @HippFest!
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/22/b...
1 day 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/
3 days 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/
4 days ago
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In my memory (not what it was, admittedly) SPHERE and OUTBREAK are the same film. Am I correct?
6 days ago
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Victor Mature hangs up his socks to dry in TIMBUKTU.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/15/a...
9 days 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/
9 days 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/
11 days 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/
13 days 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/
15 days ago
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HAHAHA this guy.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/06/h...
17 days ago
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The saucy joys of Terry and the Pirates.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/05/t...
18 days 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...
19 days 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/
24 days ago
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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...
25 days ago
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The young Richard Barthelmess was quite the dreamboat.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/t...
29 days 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..
30 days 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...
about 1 month 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...
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
David Cairns
MidCenturyCinema
about 1 month ago
2/17/49: Max OphĂĽls' 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/
about 1 month ago
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reposted by
David Cairns
Alasdair Swanson
about 1 month 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/
about 1 month ago
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Robert Weide's Woody Allen documentary is excellent. But its complete silence about the Dylan Farrow allegations now looks... peculiar.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/10/t...
about 1 month ago
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Short one.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/09/f...
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Foy Down Below
Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/09/foy-down-below/
about 1 month ago
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Shadowy goings-on and rampant nitrate decomposition in DAS UNHEIMLICHE HAUS (1916).
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/09/t...
about 1 month ago
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Man continues to laugh at window.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/1...
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Man Continues to Laugh at Window
Welcome back to Shadowplay, the film blog where we discuss a man laughing at a window. I suddenly got a huge spike in my visitors here yesterday, which I have to assume is due to the fact that, for…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/06/104852/
about 1 month ago
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Man laughs at window.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/05/m...
about 2 months ago
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Hippodrome Silent Film Festival is back and silenter than ever!
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/04/a...
#HippFest
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A Stately Hippodrome
Hippodrome Silent Film Festival in Bo’ness just announced their exciting programme (18th – 22nd March). You can attend some of it virtually if you can’t be there physically. Aside…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/04/a-stately-hippodrome-2/
about 2 months ago
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So, John Barrymore's son has raised a zombie army to attack Rome? What else have I missed?
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/03/b...
about 2 months ago
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HELL'S KITCHEN may be the best juvenile detention ice hockey movie I've ever seen.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/31/1...
about 2 months ago
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Someone's lost his head on the witness stand...
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/m/
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Shadowy reflection on duckpond — a bad omen. Films about child murder are rare, thankfully — though not as thankfully rare as actual child murder. Truffaut’s suggestion that for a…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/30/m/
about 2 months ago
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Disappointed to find Rod Serling doing a plagiarism.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/29/w...
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Who’s on Faust?
My latest haul of second-hand stuff included THE BAREFOOT CONTESSA on DVD, DEATH OF A POET on Blu-ray, and two paperback collections of short stories by Henry Kuttner. One of the first stories I re…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/29/whos-on-faust/
about 2 months ago
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Five desperate men!
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/28/s...
about 2 months ago
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EA Dupont's KINDER DER FINSTERNIS reaches a dead stop.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/27/s...
about 2 months ago
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Kanye West has denied he's a Nazi, even though he said he was a Nazi. "I'm not a Nazi, but I *am* a liar," he's effectively saying. And are you lying now, Herr West?
about 2 months ago
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The auteur theory, revisited.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/26/k...
about 2 months ago
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You can sing "Jabberwocky" to the tune of "Across the Universe." And as in uffish thought he stood / The Jabberwock with eyes of fire / Came whiffling through the tulgey wood / And burbled as it came. What you do with the "Jai guru deva omm" bit is your own affair.
about 2 months ago
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The abode of Mr. Puffy.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/25/t...
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The Sunday Intertitle: Puffy!
I guess this is the second leg of my see-everything-by-Dupont phase. In my first, I appreciated VARIETE, PICCADILLY, THE SCARF, LADIES MUST LOVE, and MOULIN ROUGE, good films, as well as THE NEANDE…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/25/the-sunday-intertitle-puffy/
about 2 months ago
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Something I haven't heard for forty years but am still annoyed by is Ray Charles' cover of Eleanor Rigby. I like Ray Charles, obviously. But he interpolates things like "He turned to me and he said -" thereby making "All the lonely people" into something *Father McKenzie* is saying. Whereas [cont.]
about 2 months ago
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Hello!
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/23/g...
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Grunt Work
I briefly wrote about E.A. Dupont’s THE NEANDERTHAL MAN (1953) as part of my neverending quest to see every film depicted in Denis Gifford’s seminal Pictorial History of Horror Movies, …
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/23/grunt-work/
about 2 months ago
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Didn't recognise the leading man of THE ANCIENT LAW. Should've, though...
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/22/1...
about 2 months ago
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SAHARA!
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/20/n...
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Nothing but static and Heil Hitler
I picked up a DVD of Zoltan Korda’s SAHARA, having never had the interest before but here it was at 50p and I’d just heard that the tank in Spielberg’s 1941 is called Lulu Belle i…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/20/nothing-but-static-and-heil-hitler/
2 months ago
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Try this.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEmW...
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george harrison - baltimore oriole
YouTube video by 17k92k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEmW4PdB0so&list=RDtEmW4PdB0so&start_radio=1
2 months ago
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Do a version of Sympathy for the Devil but with Hugh Herbert doing the "woo woo"s.
2 months ago
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reposted by
David Cairns
MidCenturyCinema
2 months ago
HBD Richard Lester! Beatles films & much more [Seek out Petulia, w/Scott, Christie - Our take:
midcenturycinema.org/node/151
More:
@meheuck.bsky.social
:
thenewbev.com/blog/2016/07...
@dcairns.bsky.social
:
www.criterion.com/current/post...
@petersob13.bsky.social
:
www.rogerebert.com/features/kee...
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Keep Moving!: The Films of Richard Lester. | Features | Roger Ebert
An appreciation of Richard Lester as a retrospective of his work is about to unfold in New York City.
https://www.rogerebert.com/features/keep-moving-the-films-of-richard-lester
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Does Herzog's rejection of ideology just result in him becoming reactionary? I think maybe so. RESCUE DAWN.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/17/b...
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Bale Out
I finally caught up with Werner Herzog’s RESCUE DAWN, which I’d always been mildly curious about — the only instance of Herzog turning one of his documentaries into a dramatic fea…
https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/01/17/bale-out/
2 months ago
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reposted by
David Cairns
Devan Scott
2 months ago
Impeccable taste in special features, too. Featuring former Lubitsch podcast guests
@dcairns.bsky.social
and Scott Eyman.
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