Friday, January 4, 2008

"Have You Ever Been Carried Across the Threshold?" "Not When I Was Sober, Darling."


It's crappy weather and I don't feel like writing, so what do I do? Spend all my time at the Otto Preminger Festival at Film Forum. One thing I love about Film Forum is discovering the other half of the double bill. Last night, I trundled down to Houston Street to see "Laura" - one of the most perverse movies ever - and caught "Daisy Kenyon," with Joan Crawford, Henry Fonda and Dana Andrews. "Daisy Kenyon" is like a lot of Preminger - a genre film, in this case, a 'woman's film' with something unsettling and weird beneath the surface.

Crawford gives possibly the least self-conscious performance I've ever seen her give. You can tell the lady was a star. She can take pedestrian material about a professional woman torn between her married lover and soldier boy husband and make you care. Was she a great actress? I don't think so. But she knew everything about movies.

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