• Special Subject – Stanning for Anna Sten: NANA (1934), WE LIVE AGAIN (1934), THE WEDDING NIGHT (1935), & LET’S LIVE A LITTLE (1948)

  • Mar 21 2025
  • Length: 1 hr and 58 mins
  • Podcast

Special Subject – Stanning for Anna Sten: NANA (1934), WE LIVE AGAIN (1934), THE WEDDING NIGHT (1935), & LET’S LIVE A LITTLE (1948)

  • Summary

  • We've got a big one for you this week: four main movies plus four Fear and Moviegoing viewings. Our main feature is Stanning for Sten: Anna Sten's three movies for Samuel Goldwyn, Nana (1934), based on (more like inspired by) the Zola novel, We Live Again (1934), with a Tolstoy source, and The Wedding Night (1935), plus a glimpse at one of her later supporting roles in Let's Live a Little (1948), a Robert Cummings comedy vehicle. Goldwyn infamously brought Sten to Hollywood with the intention of creating his own Dietrich-Garbo hybrid and lavished the most prestigious Hollywood talent (Arzner, Mamoulian, Vidor, Gregg Toland, and co-stars like Frederic March and Gary Cooper) and literary source material on her, only to have the public reject her; but we argue that Goldwyn's care didn't go to waste. And in Fear and Moviegoing, we look at the career of actress/director Mai Zetterling, discussing two movies directed by her, and two early films in which she appears (one directed by Ingmar Bergman, the other written by him).

    Time Codes:

    0h 00m 25s: A Few Words About Sten and Goldwyn

    0h 08m 02s: NANA (1934) [dir. Dorothy Arzner]

    0h 28m 11s: WE LIVE AGAIN (1934) [dir. Rouben Mamoulian]

    0h 58m 08s: THE WEDDING NIGHT (1935) [dir. King Vidor]

    1h 27m 28s: LET’S LIVE A LITTLE (1948) [dir. Richard Wallace]

    1h 39m 20s: FEAR & MOVIEGOING IN TORONTO: Mai Zetterling’s Loving Couples (1964) & Scrubbers (1982); Ingmar Bergman’s Music in Darkness (1948); Alf Sjoberg’s Torment (1944)

    +++

    * Listen to our guest episode on The Criterion Project – a discussion of Late Spring

    * Marvel at our meticulously ridiculous Complete Viewing Schedule for the 2020s

    * Intro Song: “Sunday” by Jean Goldkette Orchestra with the Keller Sisters (courtesy of The Internet Archive)

    * Read Elise’s piece on Gangs of New York – “Making America Strange Again”

    * Check out Dave’s Robert Benchley blog – an attempt to annotate and reflect upon as many of the master humorist’s 2000+ pieces as he can locate – Benchley Data: A Wayward Annotation Project!

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    Write to us at therebuggy@gmail.com

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