Die drei Portiermädel (The Three Daughters of the Janitor)

In his excellent biography of Jacques Tourneur, The Cinema of Nightfall, Chris Fujiwara lists Les filles de la concierge as Tourneur's best French film. Yet even him does not seem to know that, unlike what is implied by the credits on the main title of the film, it is not an original story.The story is supposedly by Georges de la Fouchardière and Jean-Georges Auriol. Fujiwara also tells us that 30 years after his film was released, Tourneur had considered...

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Woman to Woman

Last year saw the re-release of The White Shadow, a 1924 film directed by Graham Cutts which had been thought lost for almost 90 years. Only half the film has been recovered (Three reels out of 6), but it got immediate attention nonetheless, mainly because of Alfred Hitchcock's association with the film.At the time, the famous director was neither famous nor even a director. He was a learning the trade by getting experience in every aspect of the...

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