Queen Christina: Angst on the Silver Throne
Greta Garbo. Photo: MGM In January 1934, Greta Garbo’s latest picture had not yet opened in her native country. Queen Christina depicted a Swedish 17th-century queen who abdicated the throne,…
Anna Karenina
In 1870s Russia, the wife (Greta Garbo) of a prominent statesman (Basil Rathbone) begins a love affair with a military officer (Fredric March). A romantic adaptation of the Leo Tolstoy…
The Great Ziegfeld
In the 1890s, Florenz Ziegfeld (William Powell) goes to San Francisco, hoping to have a career in show business; later in New York, he comes up with an unbeatable concept.…
Mrs. Miniver: Idyll Interrupted
Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. Photo: MGM When Joseph Goebbels, minister of propaganda, saw this movie, he was probably both disturbed and impressed. He thought it was an ingenious piece…
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
During the London Blitz, three children are evacuated to a small village where they’re staying with the eccentric Eglantine Price (Angela Lansbury), a woman who turns out to be a…
Mary Poppins: Sorting Out the Bankses
Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews. Photo: Disney The story of how Walt Disney convinced the British-Australian author P.L. Travers to let him turn her books about Mary Poppins into…