I viewed three classic movies today - Murder, My Sweet (1944), Spellbound (1945) and East of Eden (1955). It's a Monday October 6, 2025 and I expect to catch a full moon later this evening. All three movies were recorded from Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and added to the momentum of my viewing yesterday to Lord of the Flies (1963).
Murder, My Sweet (released
as Farewell, My Lovely in the United Kingdom) is a 1944
American film noir, directed by Edward
Dmytryk and starring Dick
Powell, Claire Trevor and Anne Shirley (in her final film before
retirement).[4] The
film is based on Raymond Chandler's 1940 novel Farewell, My Lovely. It was the first
film to feature Chandler's primary character, the hard-boiled private
detective Philip Marlowe.[5]
Murder, My Sweet is,
along with Double Indemnity (released five months
prior), one of the first noir films, and a key influence in the development of
the genre.[5]
Spellbound is
a 1945 American psychological thriller film directed
by Alfred Hitchcock, and starring Ingrid
Bergman, Gregory Peck, and Michael
Chekhov. It follows a psychoanalyst who falls in love with the new head of
the Vermont hospital
in which she works, only to find that he is an imposter suffering dissociative amnesia, and potentially, a
murderer. Although the film is based on the 1927 novel The House of Dr. Edwardes by Hilary Saint George Saunders and John Palmer, the plots are dramatically
different.
East of Eden is a 1955 American epic period
drama film directed by Elia Kazan and
written by Paul Osborn, adapted from the fourth and final part
of John Steinbeck's epic 1952 novel.
It stars James Dean as
a wayward young man who, while seeking his own identity, vies for the affection
of his deeply religious father against his favored brother, thus retelling the
story of Cain and Abel. Appearing in supporting roles
are Julie Harris, Raymond
Massey, Burl Ives, Richard
Davalos, and Jo Van Fleet.
Although set in early 20th century Monterey, California, much of the film was
actually shot on location in Mendocino, California. Some scenes were
filmed in the Salinas Valley. Of the three films in which James
Dean played the lead, this is the only one to have been released during his
lifetime.[2]
Lord of the Flies is
a 1963 British survival drama film written and directed
by Peter
Brook, adapted from William
Golding's 1954 novel about 30 schoolboys who are
marooned on an island where the behaviour of the majority degenerates into
savagery.
The film was in production for
much of 1961, though the film did not premiere until 1963, and was not released
in the United Kingdom until 1964. Golding himself supported the film.
When Kenneth Tynan was a script editor for Ealing
Studios he commissioned a script of Lord of the Flies from Nigel
Kneale, but Ealing Studios closed in 1959 before it could be produced.
The film premiered at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, where it was
nominated for a Palme d'Or. It was released in the UK by British Lion Films on July 23, 1964, and
received positive reviews from critics. It was the first film adaptation of the
novel, followed by a 1975 Filipino film and a 1990 American film.
