A couple of things…
…which appeared during The Late Show Blogathon, which I decided to hold off on telling you about —
One is a little limerick I wrote for Limerwrecks. Subject: Robert Siodmak’s CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY.
The other is an appreciation of Ann Dvorak, written for The Chiseler.
Enjoy!
shadowplay 
December 20, 2010 at 5:54 pm
And don’t forget her amazing turn at the start of Cukor’s A Life of Her Own (“Well it’s not The Birth of a Natio, but Lana is a great camp” he wrote to a freind about the project.) Dvorak defenistrates herself and takes the movie with her.
Just caught up with I Can Get It For You Wholesale which was made around the same time. Lana’s adventures as the world’s most petite fashion model make for quite a contrast with Susan haywar’d voracious “career woman” in the Polonsky-Gordon.
December 20, 2010 at 6:17 pm
Seconding David E re: her astonishing turn for Cukor at the end of her film career. It’s amazing how young she was in SCARFACE (18 or 19), and yet she was in total command of the role’s perversity.
December 20, 2010 at 6:44 pm
What makes SCARFACE so fascinating is that the incest is the least perverse thing about it and Ann Dvorak has a lot to do with that. The undertones of that in the finale is what sends the rather laid-back comic-serious treatment of gangster life into tragic heights, the only successful time in Hawks’ movies. Her close-up as she stands on the balcony and spies George Raft is a delight. She’s entirely innocent but both the men she loves end up dying, making her the most complex of the Hawks women characters who challenge male friendships.
Hawks and Hecht modeled the story on the alleged real life incest between Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia in the Renaissance. Only one of the more daring things in this groundbreaking film.
December 20, 2010 at 7:17 pm
Hawks (not the most reliable narrator) claims that Hecht needed persuading, since he felt the gangster genre was played out in 1929 (well, he’d helped spark the the ’20s gangster wave with Underground, which was much copied) and Hawks sold it to him by suggesting the Borgias link.
I suspect it might well have happened the other way around, but I haven’t read Hecht on the subject.
Have seen a few Borgia movies lately and what’s striking is how so often the writers try to exonerate Lucrezia, whereas surely having her be bad is more fun? Dvorak is probably the most successful of all these “innocent sinners”.
Gotta seek out those movies, David E!
December 20, 2010 at 8:17 pm
The main thing which SCARFACE contributed to the gangster genre was the sound, it’s one thing to show gunfights but SCARFACE makes it clear that the real world of gangster life is their speech, their dialects and the way they use it to establish their notions of their power. I saw the film again recently and fell in love with it again. The use of dialogue is precisely why Hawks is so central to the film which was his favorite of his films but which Hawksians have generally found an exception from his other films. Boris Karloff was also very striking even if he smartly makes no decision to hide his accent.
Exonerating Lucrezia depends on whether people see incest as necessarily sinful and deviant or a pre-Fall return to innocence. In the romantic age, where the Lucrezia Borgia stor cast a spell, brother-sister incest became filled with tragic virtues. Byron’s MANFRED for instance and in America, Melville’s Pierre.
December 20, 2010 at 8:50 pm
I was recently impressed by Dvorak’s performance in The Long Night (Anatole Litvak 1947), an American noir with an unusually European feel, mainly because it was based – in some scenes almost shot for shot – on Marcel Carné’s and Jacques Prevert’s Le Jour se lève. The Americanized Prevert screenplay provided more complex, adult (and perverse) roles for Ann Dvorak and Vincent Price than they were used to getting, and the two actors really sunk their teeth into them.
December 20, 2010 at 9:33 pm
It is all the more sad that the two films she made in England alongside Eric Portman – SQUADRON LEADER X (1942) and ESCAPE TO DANGER (1943) are now lost. In contrast to the usual problem, we know who owns the rights but the films have disappeared. Dvorak made those films when she was in England with her husband helping the wear effort.
December 20, 2010 at 11:35 pm
Wow, tell me more! I guess this is all doumented in the BFI’s Most Wanted list?
December 21, 2010 at 2:58 am
Yes, especially SQUADRON LEADER X. Kevin MacDonald owns the rights and I’m sure he would have no objection to putting the film back into circulation is anyone ever finds a copy.
December 21, 2010 at 5:19 am
Not to break up the Dvorak fan club meeting, but I want to hear more about CHRISTMAS HOLIDAY, which is unfamiliar to me. Sounds… unique!
December 21, 2010 at 7:21 am
MPW, try here: https://dcairns.wordpress.com/2008/09/29/a-kitten-isnt-just-for-christmas/
C. Jerry, I’ve been meaning to watch The Long Night, but a certain resistance to these Hollywood remakes has been holding me back. I should get over it!
December 21, 2010 at 9:42 pm
DC, I only saw THE LONG NIGHT once on UK TV years ago long before I saw the Gabin version. Fonda is no Gabin nor Dvorak Arletty but from what I remember her performance is really good and this remake is worth a look.
December 21, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Just watched half of A Life of Her Own — terrific while Ann’s onscreen, and then it sinks into a soporific mire as soon as she exits via the window.