Only Angels Have Wings
Blu-ray | DVD
Directed by Howard Hawks
Starring: Cary Grant, Jean Arthur, Rita Hayworth, and Richard Barthelmess
Criterion Collection Release Date: April 12, 2016

The treacherous landscape of a South American village is where our adventure takes off. Nothing new here. Chameleonic director Howard Hawks has an unmatched affinity with environments that have such an immediate influence on his characters. Sometimes rendering them helpless and other times it influences his characters to rise to the occasion. Think of the ruthless wild west evidenced in Rio Bravo, the unforgiving terrains in Red River, the extraordinarily corrupt neighborhood in The Big Sleep, or the abundance of violence running amuck everywhere in Scarface. All of his films are completely disparate when it comes to genres and themes. The one commonality all of them abide by is the ferociousness of their landscape. 1939’s Only Angels Have Wings is no different.

North By Northwest
Available now on Blu-ray
Written by Ernest Lehman
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
Starring Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, James Mason, Jessie Royce Landis, Leo G. Carroll, Martin Landau
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)
Runtime: 136 minutes
Release date: July 28th, 1959

The Master of Suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, is one the greatest filmmakers of all time. One of his classics is the 1959 mystery thriller North By Northwest starring Cary Grant, James Mason, and Oscar winner Eva Marie Saint. The film ranked 55th on the American Film Institute’s 100 years, 100 movies list as well 4th in their list of 100 Thrilling American Films. Debuting in theaters a year after Hitchcock’s classic Vertigo, and a year before he changed the game of horror with Psycho, North By Northwest in unique in the sense, the three years before James Bond burst onto the scene in Dr. No, North By Northwest created the template for the famed spy-hero. Now, thanks to Turner Classic Movies and Fathom Events, North By Northwest is in theaters for one more day as part of TCM’s Big Screen Classics series.