Screen Test of Time, Ep. 14: The Front Page

Screen Test of Time is a podcast where Suzan Eraslan and David Daw set out to watch every movie ever nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, in order, from the first awards season to, eventually, the present day. Each week, they watch and review a different movie, and when they've watched everything nominated in a particular year, they tell you whether the Oscar went to the right one! 

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Despite being extremely resourceful, your intrepid hosts did not manage to find a copy of East Lynne this week, as there’s apparently only one extent copy that sits in a vault at the UCLA film archives. As Suzan is in New York and didn’t want David to attempt a Mission Impossible style break-in without her, they’ve skipped ahead to the next movie, The Front Page. Ostensibly a fast paced story about muckraking journalists hiding an escaped anarchist condemned to execution, The Front Page has aged into an incomprehensible adaptation of a play that might have been a screwball comedy onstage but is a dark, misogynist, and mean spirited hundred minutes of film. 

SHOW NOTES: 

Year eligible: 1930/1931

Music: "Who's Sorry Now" by the Memphis Five, available at freemusicarchive.org