. . . muttered the ogre

What have I watched lately …

The Lives of Others (2006). Liked it.

The Philadelphia Story (1940). Didn’t like it as much the second time.

Second Chorus (1940) – Astaire without Rogers. Forgettable.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). Good.

Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (2009). So-so. Had I not seen Blade Runner recently it would have whizzed over my head.

King Kong (1933). Good.

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). Bette Davis, as Elizabeth Tudor, has the most peculiar body language; I wonder whether it’s intended to convey old age.

Strange Cargo (1940) is a thrilling escape from Devil’s Island. But wait, contrived circumstances have put a woman among the escapees, so it’s a romance. But wait, one of them is Jesus Christ in plainclothes. The result is a muddle.

The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Good.

The Great Dictator (1940). Good, though the climactic speech is a bit ironic to a libertarian:

You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power. Let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill that promise. They never will!

The false god of statism goes by many names, and one of them is Democracy. We have a better chance of making this life free and beautiful if we refrain from uniting or fighting (or sacrificing, don’t forget sacrificing) behind the next charismatic opportunist. —By the way, why does a Jewish barber spontaneously quote from “the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke”?

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941), Hitchcock’s only screwball comedy. The script has its due quota of gags, and there’s nothing wrong with the cast, yet I find the result less funny than some of his thrillers. The rhythm is somehow off.