So in August, I watched I total of 65 films total…in September I watched 60. But a good chunk of that was re-watches, mostly due to starting an impromptu retrospective on Disney’s animated films. I watched the PBS documentary on Walt Disney and just wanted to revisit the movies I grew up on soon after watching it. So far I’ve re-watched 12 movies chronologically (from 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Drawfs to 1950s Cinderella), and I plan on watching more in October. And I may or may not make some sort of post about it towards the end of the year, we’ll see. I also watched all the movies featured in TCM’s spotlight Five Came Back this month, which highlighted the propaganda films and war documentaries that Frank Capra, John Huston, John Ford, William Wyler, and George Stevens made during WWII. A lot of those were under an hour so that upped the movie count this past month, and as you’ll see the 1940s was easily my most-watched decade as a result.

New-to-Me: 43

Re-Watched: 17

New-to-Me Films by Decade:

• 1920s – 1
• 1930s – 3
• 1940s – 25
• 1950s – 7
• 1960s – 2
• 1970s – 3
• 1980s – 0
• 1990s – 1
• 2000s – 1
• 2010s – 0

List of New-to-Me Films:

1. Friendly Persuasion (1956)
2. Sabrina (1995)
3. The Kiss (1929)
4. Night and Day (1946)
5. Petulia (1968)
6. The Poseidon Adventure (1972)
7. They Won’t Believe Me (1947)
8. Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947)
9. A Woman’s Face (1941)
10. Prelude to War (1942)
11. The Battle of Russia (1943)
12. The Negro Soldier (1944)
13. Tunisian Victory (1944)
14. The Battle of Britain (1943)
15. Know Your Ally: Britain (1944)
16. War Comes to America (1945)
17. Fiesta (1947)
18. Holiday in Mexico (1946)
19. It’s a Gift (1934)
20. The Bank Dick (1940)
21. David Copperfield (1935)
22. Berlin Express (1948)
23. Billy Wilder Speaks (2006)
24. Report from the Aleutians (1943)
25. San Pietro (1945)
26. Let There Be Light (1946)
27. The Red Badge of Courage (1951)
28. The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
29. A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935)
30. I’ll Cry Tomorrow (1955)
31. I Want to Live! (1958)
32. How to Operate Behind Enemy Lines (1943)
33. December 7th (1943)
34. Westworld (1973)
35. They Were Expendable (1945)
36. A Woman Is a Woman (1961)
37. Tokyo Story (1953)
38. The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress (1944)
39. Thunderbolt (1947)
40. The Fighting Lady (1944)
41. The Miniver Story (1950)
42. The Nazi Plan (1945)
43. Tea and Sympathy (1956)

Monthly Tallies

• Best Picture Nominees Watched: 3
• Movies Watched from The Criterion Collection: 3
• Movies Watched via the Watch TCM app: 40
• Movies Watched on TCM: 3
• Movies Watched on Hulu: 0
• Movies Watched in theaters: 1

Trends and Notes

• Watched 4 films starring Susan Hayward, as she was TCM’s Star of the Month for September.
• After watching The Miniver Story, I’ve now seen all the movies Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon co-starred in together. They’re definitely one of my favorite screen teams of the era; they made such a lovely couple in the movies!

A Few Favorite Discoveries:

The Man Who Would Be King (1975), directed by John Huston

This film was part of the Five Came Back spotlight on TCM, though it was a movie John Huston made a couple of decades after WWII, and he of course made some other great movies prior to this one. Anyway, I wasn’t expecting to enjoy The Man Who Would Be King as much as I did, but it’s a fun adventure film, and Sean Connery and Michael Caine obviously had a good time making it. Connery himself has said this is his favorite film role. The film also works as a good companion piece to Huston’s 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, as it deals with the consequences of pursuing riches.

A Woman Is a Woman (1961), directed by Jean-Luc Godard

Anna Karina’s film debut is proof of why she became one of the big stars of the French New Wave. She oozes charm in A Woman Is a Woman, and she’s simply magnetic in all her scenes. Jean-Paul Belmondo, one of my favorite French actors of the era, is also good in this and plays a character that’s quite different from his famous one in Breathless. Here he plays almost a dorky type of character who’s infatuated with Karina. The film itself is a wonderful watch; I especially enjoyed it as someone who loves musicals, as this film has a few nice musical cues and references.

Tokyo Story (1953), directed by Yasujirō Ozu

I posted another entry for my 2015 Blind Spots series a few days ago, where I covered Tokyo Story, another great film I saw in September. My thoughts on the film can be found here.