March 14th 2013. Pick Of The Day.

The Godard confoundery concludes today as Film Forum's weeklong love affair with the Frogteur's LE PETIT SOLDAT comes to a close. I will play American Without Tears in its honor. Not my Pick.

Wajda's ASHES AND DIAMONDS screens for the second of its three day residency at MOMA as part of that hallowed institute's Auteurist History of Film series. A compelling postwar drama and prime example of the influence of Italy's neo-realist movement on world cinema. Also not my Pick.

BAM's two week trib to the bella faccia that is Isabelle Adjani offers this day her Cesar winning perf in Jean Becker's psychological suspenser ONE DEADLY SUMMER. I'll be plain; I'd watch this unique thespian is just about anything, but today I gotta pick against her.

No I said thespian. THESPIAN! Mind outta the gutter oh forget it why do I bother?!? Swine.

However if a gaggle of Hollywood's finest actresses rubbing each other the wrong way on screen is your kinda thing, then my Pick today won't disappoint. Read on.

While other studios defined themselves by the behind the camera talent they nurtured or flat-out stole from competitors at home and abroad, names like Ernst Lubitsch, Michael Curtiz and Erich Von Stroheim, Louis B's Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer devoted itself to creating the grandest stable of movie stars the studio era ever knew. Their motto was "More stars than there are in Heaven". And they proved it. Gable, Lombard, Garbo, Powell, Crawford, Chaney, Powell, Keaton, Beery, Harlow, Tracy, and Norma Shearer, wife of the studio's wunderkind head of production Irving G.Thalberg, who has an Oscar named after him. And you don't. Thalberg invented the station of studio production head while working for Carl Laemmle at Universal, and was shocked when he was then hired for the gig. Mayer stole him away from Laemmle and the Boy Genius went on to concoct many of the industry's standards both artistic and commercial. One of his innovations was the All-Star cast, bringing together the top onscreen talent the studio held under conract rather than parsing them out as individual draws during the depressed 30's. The resulting film, GRAND HOTEL, paid off huge at the box office and won that year's Oscar for Best Pic. So the formula waa repeated, as was its success. Then Thalberg died tragically of pneumonia at the young age of 37. Not only did his legacy live on and continue to aid the fortunes of the Hollywood studios and MGM in particular, but his widow would appear in a variation on his All-Star innovation, one insanely popular and influential. For the first of far too few times MGM's top female talent would round out the cast of stars. ONLY the female talent, led by Norma Shearer, joined by Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Joan Fontaine and Paulette Goddard, and reinforced by Ruth Hussey, Marjorie Main, Butterfly McQueen and even Hedda Hopper in a brief role. Of course they do nothing but discuss men. Because it's 1939. Did I mention this was groundbreaking for the time?

Its director is rarely, to these ears anyhoo, discussed when the auteur theory is applied to studio era helmers, and that's just a drag no pun intended. George Cukor made how many great flicks? I've lost count? But he was chosen time and time again for his touch with the "women's pictures". And time and time again he delivered, from LITTLE WOMEN with Katherine Hepburn to Hepburn's tussle with Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY through the Hepburn/Tracy flicks to look I guess what I'm saying is any director who could make the New England fussbudget so appealing REALLY got women. Y'know? Without him how few remaining filmmakers would have focused their lens on the fairer sex back in the day. And with today's flick he not only got to make perhaps his quintessential offering but one that bore a title that now serves as career definer. So here's to the day when we stop discussing Cukor ONLY as a gay director of ladies' pictures and simply appreciate an auteur whose influence and expertise spanned four decades. Tonight would be a good place to start.

THE WOMEN screens tonight at 7pm and 10pm at the Clearview Chelsea Cinemas. I don't see this screened too often so I'm advising you to catch this on the big screen while ya got the opportunity! I just typed a variation on the word screen three times in two sentences. It's late.

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Be safe and sound and make sure the next guy is too, Stockahz! See ya in 24 with tomorrow's Pick! C'mon Knicks!!!!

-Joe Walsh