The Film Experience™ was created by Nathaniel R. All material herein is written by our team. (This site is not for profit but for an expression of love for cinema & adjacent artforms.)
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Friday, February 5, 2021 at 9:25AM 8 random things that happened on this day, February 5th, in showbiz history
1919 United Artists is formed with four of the most iconic silent film powerhouses Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and Director DW Griffith joining forces...
Wednesday, November 18, 2020 at 10:40AM "The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on the images for magnified detail)
Once upon a time, the Oscars were in November! Well, thrice upon a time. The 3rd, 4th and 5th Academy Awards were held in the fall - the last of them on November 18th, 1932. Nathaniel covreed the biggest piece of trivia from that night earlier this morning. But there were also a few firsts, including the debut of the short film categories and the first-ever foreign-language nominee. René Clair’s À nous la liberté was nominated for Best Art Direction, an award it lost to a cruise ship comedy called Transatlantic.
But it’s Clair and art director Lazare Meerson who have the last laugh, as their losing film is now largely regarded as a classic and Transatlantic barely has a Wikipedia page. A nous la liberte is a charming little oddity, a musical comedy about the alienation inherent in modern industry. It opens in a prison, where cellmates Émile (Henri Marchand) and Louis (Raymond Cordy) are at work hand-carving toy horses. The cavernous space evokes the ominous architecture of the modern prison, its high balconies a reminder of constant surveillance...
