What’s New in Old Movies: February 2025
Don Stradley
Jessica Lange’s performance in Frances (1982) revealed the talent lurking below her glamorous façade. In it, she portrayed the ill-fated actress, Frances Farmer, whose nervous breakdown and combative personality led to her being institutionalized in the 1940s. What better way to show range than to play a tortured woman fighting against the male Hollywood hierarchy, the police, the courts, a petulant mother and a dozen other enemies? Lange, 31 at the time of filming, was just about perfect as Farmer, a broken woman who was still strong enough to fight back, but not strong enough to win.
Unfortunately, much of the film’s source material has since been discredited, which means the movie isn’t the truth, but a heightened version of real events. For instance, the film shows doctors giving Farmer a lobotomy, which never happened. There’s also a character in the movie named Harry York (Sam Shepard) who seems to be Farmer’s friend or lover, though no such man existed in real life. It is as if the filmmakers felt the men in Farmer’s story were so despicable that at least one good guy had to be created. Regardless, Lange is such a dead ringer for Farmer, and her performance so powerful, that Frances works as a strong slice of psychodrama. For her portrayal of the highly strung and self-destructive Farmer, Lange earned an Academy Award nomination that year for Best Actress. She lost out to Meryl Streep but won a Best Supporting Oscar for her role in that year’s comedy hit, Tootsie. Kim Stanley, who played Farmer’s mother, was also nominated for several awards. Still, this was Lange’s movie, her chance to prove she was not just another model turned actress.
“Playing Frances, every day for months I had to work myself up into an all-day rage,” Lange told Hollywood columnist Bart Mills in 1982. “I began to realize how much rage I had stored up within me. My reasons were the same as Frances’: Outrage at others’ dishonesty. She wasn’t just this loony woman. She had every right to be angry – at her family, the studio, her hometown.” Speaking of dishonesty, Lange and Shepard fell in love during filming but kept it hush-hush. He was married at the time, you see, and she’d just had a child with Mikhail Baryshnikov. When a photographer caught the secretive pair coming out of a restaurant in West Hollywood, Shepard hurled his jacket at him. The result was a photograph seen around the world, invariably announcing a new Tinseltown romance, one that was volcanic enough to rival anything in Frances.
Director Graeme Clifford went on to be an accomplished television director, most notably of the Emmy-nominated CBS mini-series, The Last Don. Prior to directing, he’d been an acclaimed film editor, working with the likes of Robert Altman and Bob Rafelson. The new Frances Blu-ray from Kino Lorber includes archival commentary from Clifford, a new audio commentary by film historians David Del Valle and Dan Marino, and a half-hour featurette called A Hollywood Life: Remembering Frances. (Single disc Blu-ray, available February 18.)
Robert Altman spent much of the 1970s putting new spins on old movie styles. MASH was Altman’s take on the war film. The Long Goodbye was his skewed version of the detective film. McCabe and Mrs. Miller, his version of a western. Thieves Like Us (1974) coming out soon on Blu-ray from Cinematographe, was his way of portraying the old Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow saga, stripped of all glamor. A mere seven years after Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway had given us those two lovers on the run as a pair of beautiful losers, Altman gave us Keith Carradine and Shelley Duvall as a simple country couple during the Great Depression, with all the mud and grime such a story would entail. Carradine and Duvall seem far more realistic than the preening pair in Bonnie and Clyde, but Thieves Like Us came and went without a trace. Still, The New Yorker’s Pauline Kael called it “a masterpiece,” as did some other critics.
The film was based on a novel by Edward Anderson, a long-forgotten author who at one time was being compared to Hemingway and Faulkner. (The book was first used as the basis of the 1949 thriller, They Live By Night.) Focusing on the two misfits falling in love, Altman created a touching, elegiac film. Unfortunately, United Artists failed to promote it. When Thieves Like Us was released in 1974 it appeared only briefly in a few cities before vanishing. This was, after all, the era of The Poseidon Adventure and The Exorcist. A quiet film about an Ozarks bank robber and his skinny girlfriend was doomed to disappear.
It’s not exactly the Bonnie and Clyde story, but there are similarities. Carradine plays Bowie, the youngest member of a crime gang. He’s a rangy dude with a kind of goofy charisma, the sort of lanky hayseed who looked in the mirror and saw Gary Cooper staring back. Bowie was robbing banks because it seemed like a logical thing to do. But meeting Keechie, a willowy girl who likes him despite his troubled past, has him thinking otherwise. When they have a quiet moment together, we see his face soften, and can almost hear him thinking, ‘Maybe this is what life could be like.’ The vibrant but vulnerable Keechie, as played by Duvall, is perfect for Bowie. They’ve both lived sheltered lives: he’s spent his time in the company of criminals; she just doesn’t get out much and has never had “a fella.” When they’re sitting on a porch, sipping cokes, the clumsiness of their conversation can’t hide how they feel about each other. These two kids in adult bodies can barely keep from smiling. They belong together.
Not enough attention was paid to Duvall’s passing in 2024. She was a unique, under-appreciated performer. In Thieves Like Us, which was one of many films she did with Altman, she’s quirky as an exotic bird, but as earthy as a pack of cigarettes. She should’ve been in more movies. Carradine, too, is one of our most under-appreciated actors. Thieves like Us is a showcase for both. The new double disc release includes archival interviews with Altman and Carradine, plus a new interview with screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury. (4K Ultra HD plus Blu-ray, available February 25)
Joseph Cotton was the star, but Orson Welles steals The Third Man (1949) as few actors have ever stolen a movie. Cotton plays a pulp novelist in post war Vienna investigating the mysterious death of an old friend. Welles plays the old friend, who happens to be very much alive and involved in some shady dealings. He’s a bad man, and as played by Welles, he’s among Hollywood’s most detestable villains. Gliding through the war-torn city like a gigantic and well-fed rat, Welle’s Harry Lime is the embodiment of decadence and disdain.
Robert Kasker won an Oscar for his black and white cinematography, while director Carol Reed and editor Oswald Hafenrichter received nominations for their work. The Third Man also won the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, earned praised from U.S. critics, and, though it was merely a modest financial hit in America, became Britain’s most popular film of the year. It is still regarded as a classic. When people say, “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore,” this is the sort of film they’re talking about.
A limited edition SteelBook from Lionsgate Films will be available February 25. Along with a 4K restoration of the movie, there are enough extras to keep you busy through the Spring. The package will include a 56-page booklet featuring on-set photos and essays describing the cinematic impact of The Third Man (Hey, someone’s not bothered by the price of paper and ink!) a collector's poster, a set of art cards, audio commentary with Guy Hamilton, Simon Callow, and Angela Allen, plus The Third Man Interactive Tour, a segment on The Third Man on the radio, an interview and zither performance by Cornelia Mayer, and a behind-the-scenes still gallery. Special to this Lionsgate edition is Joseph Cotten's alternate opening voiceover narration, plus a quartet of mini-features: Saving The Third Man, The Third Man – A Filmmaker's Influence, Restoring The Third Man, and Shadowing The Third Man. There’s also a 75th-anniversary trailer, and some handsome SteelBook art by William Walker. Learn more here.
For the reading room: If Frances Farmer whets your appetite for troubled film stars, you might consider Where Madness Lies: The Double Life of Vivienne Lee. Author Lyndsy Spence gives us a thorough depiction of Leigh’s later years, which included plenty of turmoil and heartache. You can’t get any more iconic than Vivienne Leigh, and her late life struggles are the stuff of a tragic, Hollywood weeper. The villain of the piece, no doubt, is Leigh’s philandering husband, Laurence Olivier. With access to some of Leigh’s private correspondence, a historian’s attention to detail, and a novelist’s sense of how to tell a good story, Spence presents, as The Times Literary Supplement put it, “A fiery and powerful read.” (Pegasus Books, hardcover, 256 pages, available now)
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