Letty Lynton

mia lee vicino4.0

ok so because of legal issues, the pre-Code movie about Joan Crawford wearing gorgeous gowns and poisoning a man was kept from us for 90 years. earliest example of she did that! cinema i have personally seen, though CLEARLY there are more out there that they won’t let us witness... there is another, more beautiful world in which Letty Lynton garnered the cultural capital she deserved and we have a Drag Race-winning queen named Lezzy Lick ‘Em (comments are open to better ideas).ps. at the TCM Film Fest Q&A, Joan Crawford’s grandson (!!!) said that this restoration would be released on Blu-ray in June. Happy Pride! #WomenBePoisoning

bkrewind4.0

Did Letty Lynton live up to the legend? I think so!! I left the theater obsessed with Clarence Brown’s direction. His work in the late 1920s/early 30s is generally underrated and this features plenty of new examples of the same super clever camera movement that you see in other films of his like The Flesh and the Devil, for example.But of course, this for me was all about Joan and thinking about what this film adds to our understanding of her. In virtually every biography or study of Joan Crawford, Letty Lynton is mentioned primarily in the context of the dress and the lawsuit, which makes sense given this film's inaccessibility. But one consequence of this, in my opinion, is that we have probably underestimated the degree to which this role shaped her persona in the 1930s. Her performance is good, and even exposed new facets of her skill we don’t commonly see. For instance, there’s one scene in particular where hisses out a line with a viciousness I don’t think I’d really seen from her before. But what interested me reading reviews of this film is the prevailing sense critics had that they were observing a metamorphosis in action, that it marked her “coming of age as an actress." I wrote all about it and the film's controversial history in my latest video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiOENhQIrXw

Jack Often4.0

This legally-limboed Crawford classic by Clarence Brown (National Velvet) eventually lives up to its reputation. Though Crawford's outrageous fashions are a delight throughout, the shooting at first is unremarkable and the first 2/3rds feel like a rehash of other plots. But when it finally starts cooking there is a lot to savor.Crawford's poor little rich girl runs away from South American lover Nils Asther and heads for home. On the boat she falls head over heels for Robert Montgomery and they decide to marry. But her former lover won't leave her alone and blackmails her into staying with him. She decides she would rather die than have to spend her life without her new love. It's almost impossible to discuss what makes the ending of the film so great without spoiling it. Pre-code titles often tell raw stories with subject matter that would later be censored for decades, but even in this brief window free of right-wing Catholic imposition, moralizing endings were often tacked on to racy films to evade local censorship. Savvy audiences of the day knew to disregard these. What makes Letty Lynton unique is that it offers no cowardly self-justification or rancid misogynist punishment for its female characters. It would make a magical double feature with Almodovar's Volver which I love for a very similar reason.Unrestored and notoriously difficult to see due to 90-year-old legal woes, I found my copy through this shady Fecebook link. Catch it while you can.