For the Love of Film

Greta Garbo in The Kiss (1929. dir. Jacques Feyder)

Garbo still belongs to that moment in cinema when capturing the human face still plunged audiences into the deepest ecstasy, when one literally lost oneself in a human image as one would in a philtre, when the face represented a kind of absolute state of the flesh, which could be neither reached nor renounced.

-Roland Barthes, “The Face of Garbo”, Mythologies (1957)

“I loved acting, which was never about money, the fame. It was about a search for meaning. It was painful.”

-Kim Novak (via reelclassics)

Dorothea Wieck & Hertha Thiele in Mädchen in Uniform (1931, dir. Leontine Sagan)

“What you call sins, I call the great spirit of love, in all its forms.”

Mädchen in Uniform is considered one of the first films ever to depict lesbian love. Not surprisingly, it has a long and controversial history. The original movie poster in Germany was forthright about the film’s rather racy subject matter, featuring the film’s teacher and schoolgirl locked in an embrace. The American version of the poster depicted the girl alone, offering no clues that the central romantic tension lay between protagonists not only of different generations but of the same gender.

…Besides portraying forbidden love, the movie functions as a commentary on the misguided ideals and rising nationalism of the time…[the schoolgirl] Manuela and [her teacher] von Bernburg threaten the notion of sacrifice for a nobler cause, and for that reason alone, the claim that the Nazis tried to burn every copy of the film seems very plausible. (via)

Lauren Bacall in publicity still for The Big Sleep (1946, dir. Howard Hawks)

She was worth a stare. She was trouble.

She was tall and rangy and strong-looking. She had a good mouth and a good chin. There was a sulky droop to her lips and the lower lip was full. She had a drink. She took a swallow from it and gave me a cool level stare over the rim of the glass.

-Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)

“I hope there’s a tinge of disgrace about me. Hopefully, there’s one good scandal left in me yet.”

-Diana Rigg (1967, via corbis)

Robert Walker & Farley Granger in Strangers on a Train (1951, dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

“You do my murder, I do yours…for example, your wife, my father. Crisscross.”

Gratuitous Cheesecake: Cary Grant edition (via mptv)

“I never thought I’d land in pictures with a face like mine.”

-Audrey Hepburn (via corbis)

William Powell (aka Carole Lombard’s first husband ) in The Thin Man (1934, dir. Woody Van Dyke) (via brightlightsfilm.com)

“The murderer is right in this room. Sitting at this table. You may serve the fish.”

Carole Lombard aka Ma (to Gable’s Pa) (via amana images)

“We called her ‘The Profane Angel’ because she looked like an angel but she swore like a sailor.”

-Mitchell Leisen