Hollywood Studios Year-by-Year – Warner Brothers – 1947: POSSESSED & DARK PASSAGE

This Warner Bros. 1947 Studios Year by Year episode features two gems that put their own particular slant on noir's familiar theme of murderous conflict between women and men: Curtis Bernhardt's Possessed, starring a more-than-usually deranged Joan Crawford, with Van Heflin as the rakish object of her obsession, and Delmer Daves' Dark Passage, starring an unusually passive Humphrey Bogart as a man convicted of killing his wife, with Lauren Bacall as an eccentric socialite who decides to help him. And in our Fear and Moviegoing segment, a real clash of moods: Ridley Scott's terrifying sci-fi/horror classic Alien and Wong Kar-wai's whimsical romantic comedy (of a sort) Chungking Express. Though admittedly it also has its terrifying aspects. (If only Van Heflin had been charmed by Crawford's fixation, how differently it could have gone!)  Time Codes: 0h 00m 35s:      POSSESSED [dir. Curtis Bernhardt] 0h 41m 53s:      DARK PASSAGE [dir. Delmer Daves] 1h 11m 24s:      Fear and Moviegoing in Toronto – Alien (1979) by Ridley Scott at the TIFF Lightbox and Chungking Express (1994) by Wong Kar-wai at the Revue Cinema  Studio Film Capsules provided by The Warner Brothers Story by Clive Hirschhorn Additional studio information from: The Hollywood Story by Joe W. Finler                                 +++ * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s * Intro Song: "Sunday" by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive) * Read Elise's latest film piece on Preston Sturges, Unfaithfully Yours, and the Narrative role of comedic scapegoating. * Check out Dave's new Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist's 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!  Follow us on Twitter at @therebuggy Write to us at [email protected]   We now have a Discord server - just drop us a line if you'd like to join!