Last night we saw "The Gay Divorcee" (1934), or rather I did. Linda didn't feel like watching it to the end. Even though I saw Betty Grable's name in the credits, I didn't recognize her until I found Alan Vanneman's website, which explained that the 17-year-old Betty Grable was the partner of 47-year-old Edward Everett Horton in "Let's Knock Knees." Hey, she must have done something right if Wittgenstein liked her. So says Alan Vanneman, who also characterizes "The Gay Divorcee" as a chaste, frothy, big-screen musical symbolic of the thirties, set in "a never-never land where no one was unemployed (where, in fact, few people even had to work), where everyone worried obsessively about scandal, but no one ever did anything that was wrong."

Then today, we watched "Journal d'un cur� de campagne" (1950), of which someone at imdb claims Andrey Tarkovsky recommended as an example of how the film director should work. A little too spiritual for me. (Coincidentally, last week we saw Tarkovsky's "Solaris", which was also a little too spiritual by my lights. I'd seen it in the 70's and liked it much better then.) Yes, I appreciate Bresson's style, but the priest's character struck both of us as a little weak.

Speaking of weak men, yesterday we also saw "Monsieur Hire" (1989), which both of us liked better. About a Peeping Tom who gets caught up in his obsession with one woman. A little much of the Brahms Piano Quartet, Opus 25, perhaps.