Quote: "Clearly these distinctions get muddy with certain films. Eyes Without a Face is clearly a Mad Physician film, but does the father have any job other than to work on his daughter? I forget (someone please remind me)" Yes, the movie has several scenes of Pierre Brasseur working in the hospita...

Seriously, a late silent Wuthering Heights by someone like Borzage could have been wonderful. Casting around for someone to play Catherine, I think Eleanor Boardman could have done a good job. Need someone to go from looking beautiful to mean and nasty in two seconds flat. A lot of older actresses c...

NOT as Heathcliff! .... But John Barrymore, now, that might work. Ohh Silent John Barrymore as Heathclliff, love the idea! For some reason the sound version with Olivier made him way too nice. I love that version of WH, but it really is Wuthering Heights lite. Everyone was too nice in it. Clara Bow...

Scoundrel wrote:Prof. Waldman states that " Frankenstein was dissatisfied with our bodies , so he left the University."

So, Henry is a Dr. in name only.

I guess 'Medical Student Frankenstein' didn't quite have the same ring to it.

But then again, perhaps some university gave him an honorary degree?

Frankenstein does not qualify as he is not a practicing physician, in fact he's not a doctor at all, since he never finished medical school. In the book, maybe, but do the movies know that? The Universal films probably don't care either way, but I don't remember Victor having a practice or having o...

Okay, I'll change the rules a bit...what film displayed the first 'mad scientist' role? That almost immediately separates into Melies and everyone else. Almost every film he did featured some kind of mad conjurer, but he seems to go more under the magician role than scientist. Still, he did feature ...

BenModel wrote:When the Clouds Roll By (1919), with Douglas Fairbanks?

Murderous intent, but is he 'mad'?

To further clarify, the Fu Manchu films don't qualify my list because although he has a medical degree from Johns Hopkins, in the film, it's clear he's not a practicing physician. Mad Love's Gogol does qualify, since he seems to be a practicing surgeon, with a few side interests. Frankenstein does n...

I'm coming up with a list of Mad Doctor films, starting with the sound era (I posted a separate thread in the silent section). To make a distinction, I'm interested in at mad physician stories as opposed to mad scientist films, with the understanding that this is often splitting hairs. The distincti...

I'm coming up with a list of Mad Doctor films, starting with silent films and stretching into the sound era. To make a distinction, I'm looking at mad physician vs. mad scientist films, with the understanding that this is often splitting hairs. The distinction I'm making is that in mad physician fil...

Notes for retirement viewing: ... jot ... jot ... jot .... Rome .... Reilly, Ace of Spies ... Public Eye ... nobody's mentioned Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy yet, which i also haven't seen .... greta Small caveat: Check out the comments on the Amazon.com DVD box set of Riley, it looks like a cheap tran...

Greta, the late 60s through the early 80s may end up being the 'classical period' of British limited run series. This decade or so was blessed with just-high enough production values so that things don't look chintzy, and more importantly, the pressure seemed more to 'get it right' in terms of aest...

, I don't think a series like Brideshead Revisited can be done in today's ADD culture because of the perceived need to condense scenes and storylines into a faster and slicker format. BR may end up being the best limited series the Brits ever do. Agreed. It wasn't long after that that they started ...

ears later, in a discussion with a coworker about the series, she said "I liked it but I got tired of the religious stuff." Which kind of flummoxed me, that's like liking Gone With the Wind , except for that pesky Civil War stuff. This seemed to be the attitude of the makers of the recent film adap...

OK. Maybe at some point in the future I'll try to watch it again. Maybe when Game of Thrones finishes. Maybe. Or not. Sometimes you have to watch stuff in the moment, ya know. Also, "Po-tay-to." If you decide to give it a try, go right to season 4 and start with the War years: Women Shall Not Weep,...

Oh. I didn't think it was disguised. However, I have nothing at all against soap opera, I quite enjoy it. I do have something against boring...which, btw, I found Upstairs, Downstairs , at least the three episodes I managed to drag myself through. Which 3 episodes, or part of which season, did you ...

Opening line: "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." Who was it that called that "the worst opening line in the history of novels"? Jim Yes, well, you see since John Dowell the narrator is so unreliable he ends up getting the whole story wrong. He doesn't understand, or deliberately misinte...

Instead of playing out a scene from beginning/middle/end, Downton chooses a soap opera approach... What I miss most about the Upstairs-Downton difference is that Downton has a People magazine approach to the social issues. . Precisely. It's soap disguised as highbrow. Oh. I didn't think it was disg...

Many wonderful BBC series appeared on PBS during the '80s (their likes, judging by Downton , never to be seen again),... Ah, at last...someone who shares my dismay at the popularity of Downton ....friggin....Abbey... I cannot believe that here in the UK this is looked upon as highbrow TV these days...

Wow, I think I'll have to hire an editor, spell checker and fact checker before I post anything on this list. Okay, I should have said: I'm on the side of the people who think that the burden of evidence should be on those who believe in the humorous intertitle. Now I'll go off and watch another mov...

I'm with Bob on this one. Until we find a primary source that says the credit was there, the burden of proof rests with the people who say the 'additional dialogue' was there, not the other way around.

Doug Sulpy wrote:Well, even Al eventually shared.

Boy, did he! I was at Pordenone the day he shared with us his copy of Frankenstein. He was dressed as Father Time!

Yes, the joke I was making was regarding the 'professional' comment, since Adele certainly had the years of service. All that time invested doesn't guarantee you'll be good, but it's an obvious start. And we'll never really know how good she was or how good she could have become if she'd kept at it ...

Blue Bird. With the right accompaniment it's a terrific film. But not the 1940 version, which is a perfect demonstration of why allegory and sound film don't mix so well. It can be done, but it has to be more subtle, like the 1930 film Outward Bound. One trick is to make the allegory only clear tow...

Blue Bird. With the right accompaniment it's a terrific film.

The answer is that it's a nice finesse move in the script. 'Making money flying cargo to the islands' is a generic statement that could apply almost anywhere except the states around and including Iowa. On the West coast of America, one would not necessarily think of Hawaii unless the speaker meant ...

Sorry. Marion Davies was NEVER EVER in Vaudeville. She had small parts in a series of Broadway shows (including shows for Ziegfeld) before going into films in 1917 before she ever met Hearst. Of course many other stars of the era were in Vaudeville before or after screen stardom, but Marion Davies ...

By 'professional' I was making a joke about having to pair up with Astaire, who probably never had a dance partner so well matched as his sister--I think for him it was all downhill with dance partners after that. And I was making a point about his later dance partners, who (I think) were either cla...

Ginger Rogers strikes me as a huge success of a 'generalist.' She's pretty, but not drop-dead gorgeous (something, sadly that became more important in the last few decades....how many Hollywood actresses these days have NOT have nose jobs or some kind of major plastics work), she's a very good dance...

Trying to keep this on the same thread, besides Jekyll and Hyde, can anyone think of the first silent 'mad doctor' role, and then the first 'mad scientist' part in the silent era? In particular the mad MD role, I agree that Mad Love's Gogol is the winner for that era in that he clearly is a surgeon ...