Man With A Movie List

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer Year: 1932 Run-time: 1 hr 13 min Source: Criterion Channel Streaming Notable for:  Despite (or perhaps because of) sharing a director with Passion of Joan of Arc , this horror film is something of a cult classic.  At heart, it's a vampire story, which unlike Nosferatu  hews closer to the modern mythos (this came out after Bela Lugosi's Dracula , so it's not really a forerunner in that regard).  But the main vampire herself only appears in a couple brief shots, and the film is really more a series of very unsettling and effective vignettes that star our rather clueless male protagonist.  The long, exquisite close-ups of Dreyer's most famous masterpiece are not here, but we do get his propensity for excellent set design. Verdict : This is the first horror film in the series where I really felt something - no jump scares here, but there are some genuine slow-building horrors, such as a bitten woman slowly turning towards the cam...

Director: Josef von Sternberg Year: 1932 Run-time: 1 hr 20 min Source: DVD Notable for : This is the second, and not the last collaboration between von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich to appear on the last.  It's also perhaps the most iconic, since it concisely captures the strengths of both actress and director.  Like in Morocco, the "exotic" actress is paired with a rich, international setting.  But here Gary Cooper's "what you see is what you get" machismo is traded in for the more complex reservedness of the British actor Clive Brook.  There's also a diverse (i.e. Americans in make-up) and cosmopolitan supporting cast. Verdict : Dietrich is in top form here as the seductress with many layers, a master of expressionism.  Von Sternberg knows how to capture all of her little revealing moments, and there's a lot of brilliant shots, most famously the moment where she hides from the leading man with a cigarette, her face lit in pure black and whi...