Lady in the Dark (Leisen, 1941): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 6.10pm
This 35mm presentation (also screening on November 11th) is part of the Joanna Hogg: Influences season at BFI Southbank. Details here.
Time Out review: A gorgeously garish adaptation of the Moss Hart musical, with songs by Kurt Weill and Ira Gershwin, in which a high-powered fashion magazine editor (Ginger Rogers) turns to psychoanalysis to resolve her inability to choose between three loves: a middle-aged backer (Warner Baxter), an attractive but independent-minded employee (Ray Milland), and a hunky movie star (Jon Hall). It doesn't bear too close examination, since Hollywood got cold feet about the lady's Electra complex, leaving only hints of her competition with mommy for daddy's love, and completing the bowdlerisation by removing the haunting key song 'My Ship'. What's left is a cardboard charade, but one given a dynamic charge by Leisen's witty visual styling. The three dream sequences, in particular, are superb, with the first two coolly designed, respectively in shades of blue and gold, the third - the circus sequence in which Jenny finds herself on trial for emotional delinquency - bursting into full colour. Tom Milne
Here (and above) is an extract.
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