Streamline: The Official Blog of FilmStruck
Jill Blake
Freelance researcher and writer
Streamline: The Official Blog of FilmStruck
To view Stella Dallas click here. Children rarely understand the sacrifices their parents make for them. Nor should they. The difficult decisions and problems that parents often have to deal with aren't ones that should be the concerns of a child. In my own life, my parents made sacrifices that I didn't fully realize or [...]
To view The Westerner click here. In 1940, immediately following his adaptation of Wuthering Heights (1939), William Wyler directed his first major full-length Western, The Westerner, starring Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan. Although he hadn't yet made any Westerns for producer Samuel Goldwyn, this wasn't Wyler's first time working in the popular genre.
To view Wuthering Heights click here. Following the success of Dead End (written about here) in 1937, director William Wyler headed over to Warner Bros. to direct Jezebel (1938), a romantic drama set in the antebellum South, starring Bette Davis and Henry Fonda. The film was a critical and commercial success, and earned Davis her [...]
To view These Three click here. In 1934, Lillian Hellman's play The Children's Hour debuted on Broadway. Starring Anne Revere, Katherine Emery and Robert Keith, the production was a huge critical and commercial success, running for almost two years. But Hellman's story almost didn't make it to the stage because of its then-controversial subject matter.
To view Dead End click here. Following the success of These Three and the film adaptation of Sinclair Lewis's Dodsworth (written about here and here), both released in 1936, William Wyler brought another popular Broadway play to the screen: Sidney Kingsley's Dead End. Kingsley's play tells the story of a group of young boys growing [...]
To view the films available with the "Directed by William Wyler" theme, click here. In reflecting on the history of Hollywood filmmaking, William Wyler undoubtedly remains one of the greatest and most influential directors of his time. Twelve Academy Award nominations for Best Director (the record for most nominations of a director), winning three times [...]
To view Lured click here. Writer and director Douglas Sirk is mainly known today for his exquisite technicolor melodramas, such as Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955), Written on the Wind (1956) and Imitation of Life (1959), his last feature-length film. His work throughout the 1950s, and specifically these four films, are not [...]
To view The Apartment click here. Sometimes the saddest stories are the most beautiful. Life is never easy or clear cut, and we all know that there's often sorrow found on the road to happiness. In The Apartment (1960), director Billy Wilder takes two decent, lonely, broken people looking for real love, and cultivates their developing [...]
To view The In-Laws click here. Weddings can be stressful. The planning of the actual event, along with facing the responsibilities surrounding a life-long commitment to another person, creates both an exciting and terrifying experience for the couple involved. But all of the wedding nonsense can't compare to the stress of the couple's parents meeting [...]
To view This is Spinal Tap click here. I can't quite remember exactly when I first saw This is Spinal Tap (1984), but I do know it was sometime in the late 80's. It was in fairly heavy rotation on cable in various edited forms, and the first few times I only saw bits and pieces-usually [...]