Raymond Massey

The Woman in the Window

by
Alice and the professor meet

Not to be confused with the 2021 movie of the same name, 1944’s The Woman in the Window is the second of three film noirs Fritz Lang made with Joan Bennett and the first of two he’d make with Edward G Robinson. It’s a queer beast – noir with a plot trick picked up from The Wizard of Oz, a trick used so brilliantly it rescues what looks like a film that’s gone weirdly off the rails. Robinson plays the tweedy psychology professor called Richard, Dick to his friends – Sigmund Freud bubbles around beneath the surface of this plot and that name is no accident – who, while admiring a portrait of a … Read more

Things to Come

by
HG Wells on set in Things to Come, with Margaretta Scott and Raymond Massey

A movie for every day of the year – a good one 20 July LĂĄszlĂł Moholy-Nagy, 1895 On this day in 1895, the painter, photographer and member of the Bauhaus school Moholy-Nagy was born in BĂĄcsborsĂłd, Hungary. Born LĂĄszlĂł Weisz, he changed his Jewish surname to a more Hungarian one after his Jewish father left the family, and took Nagy (pronounced Nodge), later adding Moholy after the town of Mohol, where he grew up. He studied law in Budapest before fighting in the First World War, during which time he became involved with progressive artists and the “Activists”. He studied art for a while after the war, in 1919, before heading to Berlin … Read more