Jan. 30, 2013 - Issue #902: Come cry with Daniel Romano

EFS Winter Series

'Damsels in distress" is an irony-rich phrase now—it's the title of Whit Stillman's recent comedy comeback—but imperiled ladies once laid down helplessly before the stampeding success of silent film. The Perils of Pauline (1914), The Exploits of Elaine (1914), and The Hazards of Helen (1914 – 17) were among the longest-running big-screen serials, with women accosted by alliterative titles, menaced by nefarious villains and sometimes dauntlessly dogging the bad guys themselves. (The first movie-version of a scene made famous in 1860s plays, that of a tressed temptress tied to the tracks by a dastardly do-no-gooder, was likely in The Perils of Pauline. But at least half-a-dozen Americans were killed that way between 1870 and 1910.)

The "Women in Danger" in the Edmonton Film Society's Winter Series hail from an era when women were of service in wartime before, come the '50s, retreating to fight for matrimony or face off against horrible husbands on the homefront. Nazis move in on a French barmaid (Michele Morgan) and five British airmen in 1942's Joan of Paris (March 25). Ingmar Bergman tries to infiltrate a Rio ring of ex-Nazis in Hitchcock's 1946 classic Notorious (April 8).

But No Man of Her Own (1950; March 11) sees pregnant Helen Ferguson (Barbara Stanwyck) spurned by her lover, then take advantage of a train tragedy to marry into money. 1951's Westward the Women (March 18) troops after would-be wives hitting the road a century earlier, continuing along the California Trail to future husbands after most of their male guides abandon them.

In the noir-ish Sudden Fear (1952; February 11), Joan Crawford plays Myra, a successful playwright who marries Lester (Jack Palance), who plots to murder her on a train once he discovers her wealth. Similarly, Elaine May's debut A New Leaf (1970; Feb 25), has Walter Matthau as a broke, misanthropic playboy looking to permanently prune a botanist for her money; the studio trimmed it down to two hours, much sunnier than May wanted. Flashing back, Love Me or Leave Me (1955; Mar 4) features Doris Day as '20s crooner Rosa Etting, trying to get free of her manager.

The series starts Feb 4 with Stanley Donen's Hitchcockian twister Charade (1963), where Audrey Hepburn is a sudden widow thrown even more suddenly into a spy-plot involving charmer Peter Joshua (Cary Grant).

Mondays (8 pm), Feb 4 – Apr 8
Edmonton Film Society Winter Series "Women in Danger"
Royal Alberta Museum, $6
royalalbertamuseum.ca/events/
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