The Black Swan (1942)

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1. 

   dombrewer

   Agreed - a blockbuster from its time, but a great movie. It's marvellously cheesy, and it knows it - the screenplay is by Ben Hecht on typically witty form and the whole thing is marvellously un-PC. Tyrone Power is suitably dashing, swishing around in his black and red cape when he's not sword fighting with his shirt off or trying to win over Maureen O'Hara mainly by abusing her or tying her up. She's playing a very familiar role of angry, beautiful and eventually won over and does it excellently, and there's a great supporting cast including an unrecognisable red-bearded George Sanders and eye-patched Anthony Quinn as bad pirates (as opposed to our heroic less-bad pirates). The 40s style is out in full force: the Technicolour cinematography is lovely (and Oscar winning) of obvious studio sets with back projection, as well as the dinky cannon firing models of the fighting ships... it's fake, but it's totally charming. Great fun. 11 years 7 months ago
2. 

   silver1881

   Would have been fantastic if it hadn't been so rapey. The Technicolor is beautiful, Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara are wonderful, and the pirate story is great fun--but the relationship between the two leads mostly consists of him hitting, kidnapping, or sexually harassing her until she's overcome by his uncompromising masculinity. What a letdown. 10 years 7 months ago
3. 

   Harmonica

   A word on the cinematography of this film, which is quite unusual, as it looks like it was photographed in a way many black in white films, and even more accurately film noir type films at the time were made - with heavy contrast and lots of darkness with only chosen bits of the image lighted. It's very striking, and I'm not surprised the academy award for best cinematography award given to it. 8 months 3 weeks ago

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