David Cairns

Well, I mean West of Zanzibar has some uncomfortable aspects... it's sensational stuff, but while we're on the topic of racism I wouldn't let it off completely...

Oh, I've seen that one! Want to see more Hart, only done a couple.

He Who Gets Slapped is my favourite film full stop.

What are some good 1910s Gothic Westerns? They sound great!

Keaton was guilty of that very common squeamishness about portraying the losing side as the baddies. It's understandable because everyone seemed to share that squeamishness but it's the reason the horrible Confederate myths still endure.

It's driving me crazy!

What book? I feel like I saw this recently but can't remember where.

In the case of the Leo McCarey anecdote, he steals it from an interview he stole from someone else (McCarey was too ill to talk much, but somehow produced verbatim the words he'd given to a French interviewer some years before).

Nickelodeon steals mainly from the interviews he did with old-timey directors.

What's Up Doc does assemble some bits of other films. Targets, Last Picture Show and Paper Moon don't, really.

I think he had to keep coming up with answers to the very tiresome "Why is your film in b&w?"

The Sunday Intertitle: Visiting District Nazi I picked up the BFI’s dual edition Blu-ray-DVD of Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s IT HAPPENED HERE a while back, and since I’ve been working on my fourth Whitsuntide novel, Keep…

The true story of the Nazi conquest of Britain. dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/08/t...

HAHAHA this guy. dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/06/h...

The saucy joys of Terry and the Pirates.
dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/05/t...

The truly spectacular GEHEIMNISSE DES ORIENTS is hobbled by a single casting blunder, but still... wowsers are in order. dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/03/04/a...

Off-model yodel I picked up TARZAN AND THE GREEN GODDESS (1937) for £1.50, because I was curious. Like Tarzan himself, faced with a herd of stampeding rhinoceroses, I was grossly overcharged. The big swizz started…

Having a hard day? Try watching Tarzan wrestle a stuffed lioness under the surprised gaze of two stock-footage parrots. And wait till you hear his OFF-MODEL YODEL! dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/28/o...

mmm maybe earlier. They had one of the editor's experimental films on with it, in which he played with an outtake from MOE.

I may have been at that same screening!

Even Tony Kushner Warned Steven Spielberg About Making ‘Munich’ Kushner—who cowrote the screenplay for Spielberg’s controversial, eerily prescient film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—recalls telling the director, “You do understand that we’re going to get ...

sometimes you have a thing in your head for a long time, and then you make it happen, and then people respond ecstatically, and it's literally the best, most validating feeling in the world

thank you to everyone who's been reading and sharing this

GOOD LUCK HAVE FUN DON'T DIE (no commas on the poster or in the film's main title card) is excellent. The kind of fantasy cinema I'd like to be mainstream. dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/26/v...

One year after Gertie the Dinosaur did it.

Also, Welles to Moreau: "You've DESTROYED my nose!"

The young Richard Barthelmess was quite the dreamboat. dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/22/t...

Hugh Bris I recall a review of THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY maybe in Sight & Sound where the pained critic remarked that the Farrelly brothers have a talent for or obsession with rendering their le…

How bad does an actor's hair have to be in a role before it effectively neutralizes him? dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/21/1...

There is, just possibly, a right way to do true crime. DEVIL IN DISGUISE. dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/20/d...

Sometimes a man hits the ground so hard everything turns upside down. 20,000 YEARS IN SING SING. dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/19/h...

And Dave's nephew!

Caught: A Lost Noir Classic Legendary director Max Ophuls and accomplished cinematographer Lee Garmes, ASC lent their skills to a widely-scorned 1949 picture that has proven its…

2/17/49: Max Ophüls' Caught
w/Mr. James Mason, Barbara Bel Geddes, Robert Ryan (channeling Howard Hughes)
Godard: "Max's best American film"
More:
@jhoberman.bsky.social: www.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/m...
@dcairns.bsky.social: dcairns.wordpress.com/2017/10/25/c...
ASC: theasc.com/articles/cau...

Time Goes By I really enjoyed talking about CASABLANCA and related matters in Glasgow on Saturday. Whereas my series of blog posts on the film concentrated on the evidence up there on the screen, for which all …

Learned a few fun facts researching CASABLANCA. dcairns.wordpress.com/2026/02/17/t...