Reel Classics - Where Black Meets White

What do you get when you combine the elevated emotions of a melodrama and the seedy, back-stabbing beats and visuals of a noir? This concoction is the exact recipe for Michael Curtiz’s delectably dark Mildred Pierce starring the incomparable Joan Crawford as the iconic title character ...

Can a movie that is a mess also be considered genius? Well, that is the perpetual debate about Orson Welles’ The Lady from Shanghai. Based on the novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King, this film takes all of the noir essentials and twists them in such an entertainingly strange  ...

On again, off again. In love, out of love. Going back to school, starting a new job. Everything is fluid and everything is changing in the whimsical and lustful drama from French director Jacques Audiard. Capturing the residential district of Les Olympiades in beautiful black and white photography ...

I must admit, this one has me conflicted. Based on Sidney Kingsley’s Broadway play of the same name, William’s Wyler’s adaptation of Detective Story deals with a handful of rather outdated themes that are explored in the most melodramatic fashion that makes modern-day eyes roll. But on the ...

“But I am in love with her, Your Highness! I feel terrible.” Ah, yes! A classic case of the lonely heart butler being mistaken for a prince by a beautiful, young countess. What could go wrong? ...

There’s really no way around it. Arsenic and Old Lace, directed by Frank Capra, is a certified REEL CLASSIC as the crazy situations get cranked up on one Halloween in Brooklyn, New York. With Cary Grant leading a wildly talented cast - which includes ...

“The ink that made blood flow.” How this film was able to be made is still a bit of a mystery to me. Made in a Germany-occupied France during World War II and produced by a German production company, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau was somehow able to disguise its anti-informant  ...

Rabies is the least thing you need to worry about when The Bat flies into your town! Prepare for the camp to hit the ceiling in this forgotten cult classic, newly restored for its debut on blu-ray. The Film Detective, in association with Cinedigm, have unearthed a rare whodunnit gem which should  ...

“At-mos-phè-re! At-mos-phè-re! Do I look like an at-mos-phè-re?” Atmosphere is precisely what Marcel Carné’s Hôtel du Nord is all about. Arletty’s character of Raymonde (a prostitute) shouts these words at Edmond (Louis Jouvet) – her pimp/protector – when he claims that he needs a change of atmosphere – a change from  ...

Out of all of the films that director David Lean made during his legendary career, he admits himself that Summertime is his favorite. Not Dr. Zhivago. Not The Bridge on the River Kwai. Not Lawrence of Arabia. But Summertime, starring fellow film legend Katharine Hepburn, is the film  ...