The Programme

The network's weekly, and its reading room: the evenings worth planning for, a long note on one film, and two films that talk to each other. Beside every film named, when it next screens.

The issues

No issue has gone out yet. The first is in the press; once it is sent, it is kept here.

Threads

Two films on the network, and what one says to the other. Watch them a night apart.

Metropolis (1927) and Scarlet Street (1945)

Fritz Lang, twice: the city as a machine that consumes its workers, then the city as a set of small rooms that do the same job more quietly. The architecture shrank; the trap didn't.
Detour (1945) and D.O.A. (1950)

Two men narrating their own autopsies. Noir's boldest structural idea — the voice that already knows how this ends — done first on poverty row, then with a studio's polish.
Detour (1945) and The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

The fatal ride, from both sides: Ulmer's drifter accepts one, Lupino's killer is one. Between the two films, the American road stops being freedom.
The General (1926) and Metropolis (1927)

The machine as co-star, 1926 and 1927: Keaton loves his locomotive like a person; Lang fears his Machine like a god. Between those two feelings sits the whole century's argument with technology.
Dementia 13 (1963) and The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

Two graduates of the Corman factory: a 24-year-old Coppola given a castle and a schedule, and a two-day comedy that hands Jack Nicholson his first unforgettable scene. The B-movie as film school, tuition paid in speed.
His Girl Friday (1940) and Meet John Doe (1941)

Two newsrooms a year apart, both running on a story that is not quite true. Hawks plays the manufactured scoop for speed and lets nobody pay for it; Capra follows his until it fills a ballpark in the rain, and then sends the bill.
Animal Crackers (1930) and Holiday (1930)

The same summer, the same class: in 1930 the Setons of Fifth Avenue and Mrs. Rittenhouse of Long Island both throw a party to show what money looks like. Barry’s hero wants out of the house; the Marx Brothers want in, and leave with the silverware up their sleeves.
The Cat and the Canary (1927) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Universal’s two silent nights of 1925–27, both made under Carl Laemmle before Dracula. Leni builds his dread out of a house and Julian builds his out of a face, and the studio’s horror of the 1930s needed both.
The Cocoanuts (1929) and Animal Crackers (1930)

The Marx Brothers’ first two pictures, both Broadway hits by Kaufman photographed at Astoria with the camera nailed down. Watch Margaret Dumont in each: a year apart, she has already decided that the way to play opposite Groucho is never to notice he is joking.
Detour (1945) and Quicksand (1950)

Two pictures in which a few dollars are the whole of fate. Detour gets there by bad luck on the road, Quicksand by a bad choice at the till. Both end up nowhere near where they meant to go, and neither can find the way back to where they began.
The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) and The Terror (1963)

Corman’s speed as a style, three years apart. Little Shop was shot in two days on a set built for another film; The Terror was begun on The Raven’s castle before it came down. Jack Nicholson is in both, first as a dental patient who loves the drill, then as the leading man.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Two ways to make a monster with a face. Barrymore shows the change happening in front of us before the make-up arrives; Chaney hides his work under a mask until the moment it is torn off. One horror is becoming, the other is being seen.
The Hitch-Hiker (1953) and The Bigamist (1953)

The same year, the same company, the same star. Lupino made both for The Filmakers in 1953 with Edmond O'Brien: one a road with two hostages and no women, the other two kitchens and no gun. Her two ways of trapping a man.
The Hoodlum (1951) and Kansas City Confidential (1952)

An armoured car at a bank, a year apart. The Hoodlum plans the job from a gas station across the street; Karlson's crew from behind masks. One film is about the man who cannot stop, the other about the man who has to finish it.
Tol'able David (1921) and Way Down East (1920)

Richard Barthelmess, a year apart, as the farm boy who does the decent thing. For Griffith he is the son who crosses the ice for a fallen woman; for Henry King, the son who carries the mail through a family of killers. Two pastorals, and in both the country is where the violence lives.
Sherlock Jr. (1924) and Show People (1928)

Two comedies about the movies from inside them. Keaton's projectionist dreams himself through the screen into the picture; Davies's Peggy Pepper walks through the studio gate and finds the picture is a factory. Both know that the joke and the trick are the same thing.
The Divorcee (1930) and Ladies of Leisure (1930)

1930, before the Code: two women whose pasts are the plot, in films that decline to punish them for it. MGM gives Norma Shearer the gowns and the speech; Columbia gives Stanwyck a studio couch and lets her keep quiet.
A Bucket of Blood (1959) and The Little Shop of Horrors (1960)

The same writer, the same director and the same joke, a year apart: an underdog who becomes a success by feeding the customers something terrible. Dick Miller is the busboy-sculptor in the first and the flower-eating customer in the second.
Strange Illusion (1945) and Detour (1945)

Ulmer at PRC in 1945, twice in one year on almost nothing. Detour lets fate win in a motel room; Strange Illusion lets a dream save the boy. Same fog, same cheap sets, opposite verdicts.
The Big House (1930) and The Bat Whispers (1930)

Chester Morris made both in 1930: the convict at the centre of The Big House and the detective at the centre of The Bat Whispers. Same jaw, same clipped voice, and on opposite sides of the law.
The Cat and the Canary (1927) and The Bat Whispers (1930)

Two Broadway mysteries that Universal and United Artists turned into old dark house pictures. Leni's camera drifts down corridors of blowing curtains, and West's swoops through a city of miniatures to reach the house. In both, the house is the star.
The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

Lon Chaney at Universal, two years apart and both times in Paris: a disfigured man who loves a woman from a height, an opera house roof or a bell tower, and a mob coming for him at the end.
Intolerance (1916) and Orphans of the Storm (1921)

Griffith's two histories with a lesson printed at the front: tolerance in 1916, a warning against Bolshevism in 1921. Both end on rescues cut to the second, and both put Lillian Gish at the centre of an age she cannot change.
The Front Page (1931) and His Girl Friday (1940)

The same play twice in nine years: Milestone’s Hildy is a man trying to get married, Hawks’s is a woman trying to stay divorced. The escaped prisoner, the roll-top desk and Walter Burns’s conscience survive the trip unchanged.
The Divorcee (1930) and Let Us Be Gay (1930)

Norma Shearer and Robert Z. Leonard twice in 1930, both times on the morning after a marriage. In one she pays for leaving; in the other she comes back three years later better dressed and holding all the cards.
He Who Gets Slapped (1924) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Lon Chaney in consecutive years as a man an audience laughs at or runs from, each time in love with a performer who knows him only in costume. The Phantom hides behind a face he built; the clown wears greasepaint over a face the film lets you see.
Romance (1930) and Ladies of Leisure (1930)

Two 1930 love stories in which a rich New York family sets its face against a woman with a past. Capra lets the boy defy them; Sheldon's bishop spends sixty years wishing he had.
The Big Pond (1930) and The Love Parade (1929)

Chevalier a year apart as a European charmer who marries above himself, and then has to prove he is more than decoration. Lubitsch makes him a queen's consort with nothing to do; Sturges sends him to the factory floor.
The Unholy Three (1925) and The Thirteenth Chair (1929)

Tod Browning four years apart, both times staging a performance for an audience that does not know it is being fooled: Echo throwing his voice into a parrot, Madame La Grange calling the dead into a dark room. The first time the trick is the crime; the second time it is how the crime is solved.
The Unholy Three (1930) and The Unholy Three (1925)

The same novel, the same star, five years apart. In the silent Echo throws his voice and the titles have to tell you; in the talkie you hear the grandmother, the dummy and the parrot, all of them Chaney. The story hardly changes. What it is about does: a man whose trick is a voice, in the year pictures got one.
Invisible Ghost (1941) and The Thirteenth Chair (1929)

Bela Lugosi twelve years apart in a house where somebody keeps dying. In 1929 he is the inspector who sits in the dark and waits for the killer to give himself away; in 1941 he is the killer, and has no idea. Same accent, same patience, the other side of the table.
Young Man of Manhattan (1930) and The Front Page (1931)

Two newsrooms a year apart. In one the reporters are married to each other and the paper comes between them; in the other the paper is the marriage, and Hildy Johnson cannot get out of it.
Free and Easy (1930) and Show People (1928)

Two years apart, MGM sends a hopeful from the sticks to Hollywood and lets its own stars play themselves. In Show People Marion Davies becomes a star; in Free and Easy Keaton becomes a joke, and the cameo stars line up to watch.
The Second Woman (1950) and Quicksand (1950)

Robert Smith wrote both for independents releasing through United Artists in 1950: one man ruined by small sums, another by small accidents. In each the trouble arrives in instalments, and the suspense is in counting them.
The Most Dangerous Game (1932) and The Vampire Bat (1933)

Fay Wray, four months apart: hunted through RKO's jungle at night in one, menaced in a rented Universal village in the other. The big studio shot its thriller on sets built for King Kong; the small one borrowed somebody else's Europe. Both run about an hour and waste none of it.
Anna Christie (1930) and Min and Bill (1930)

Marie Dressler steals Anna Christie from Garbo in a supporting part, and before the year was out MGM gave her a waterfront picture of her own. The same fog, the same bottle, a different woman at the centre.
Outward Bound (1930) and Carnival of Souls (1962)

Thirty-two years apart, two films about people nobody has told they are dead: a liner of well-mannered passengers in a studio fog, and a church organist driving west to Utah. Both let the audience guess a little before the dead do, and neither raises its voice.
Madam Satan (1930) and The Divorcee (1930)

MGM, 1930, the same question twice: what does a wife do when her husband strays? Norma Shearer answers it in kind and calls it equality; Kay Johnson answers it in costume and calls it Madam Satan. Both films side with the wife, and neither quite lets her off.
Sherlock Jr. (1924) and The Navigator (1924)

Keaton's two pictures of 1924, months apart, both about a man swallowed by a machine too big for him: a cinema screen, then an ocean liner. Watch how calmly he lives inside each.
The Racketeer (1929) and Paid (1930)

Robert Armstrong as the gentleman crook twice in a year: here he runs the racket himself, in Paid he goes partners with Joan Crawford. The same manners, a different senior partner.
Born Reckless (1930) and The Doorway to Hell (1930)

Two gang men of 1930 who try to walk away, one to a nightclub of his own, one to Florida and his memoirs. Neither film believes it can be done.
Half Shot at Sunrise (1930) and Hook, Line and Sinker (1930)

Wheeler and Woolsey twice in 1930, both with Dorothy Lee: first in borrowed uniforms in Paris, then in borrowed rooms in a hotel nobody should own. The same double act, finding its pace.
Dead Men Walk (1943) and The Mad Monster (1942)

George Zucco at PRC, a year apart, from the same director and the same writer: once as the scientist who makes the monster, once as the doctor whose brother is one. The studio could afford him, and built both pictures round him.
Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927) and Street Angel (1928)

Janet Gaynor at Fox in consecutive seasons; the first Academy Award for actress was given for both, and for Seventh Heaven besides. Murnau gives her a city to be lost in; Borzage gives her a fog to hide in.
The Mark of Zorro (1920) and Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925)

Fairbanks five years apart, as the man in the mask and as the son who inherits it. The sword becomes a whip and California becomes Madrid; in the last reel the father rides in, and Fairbanks plays them both.
The Big Parade (1925) and Wings (1927)

The war from the mud and the war from the clouds, two years apart, both written by men who had been in it: Stallings walked into Belleau Wood, Saunders taught flying. Each sends a boy from a quiet American town to France, and each saves its battle for after the love story has had its hour.
The Plastic Age (1925) and Wings (1927)

Clara Bow two years apart, on the way up. In The Plastic Age she is the girl the college warns its sons about; in Wings she is the girl next door who follows one of them to France. Both films put a young American man between a race he means to win and a girl he did not plan on.