TCM Schedule for Sunday, February 3 -- 31 DAYS OF OSCAR: 90'S

[Longhorn]

3:15am Mephisto (1982)
A stage actor in wartime Germany sells his soul to the Nazis.
Cast: Klaus Maria Brandauer, Krystyna Janda, Ildiko Bansagi. Dir: Istvan Szabo. C-138 mins, TV-MA

5:36am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Gay Parisian, The (1941)
C-20 mins

6:00am Anchors Aweigh (1945)
A pair of sailors on leave try to help a movie extra become a singing star.
Cast: Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Kathryn Grayson. Dir: George Sidney. C-139 mins, TV-G

8:30am Brigadoon (1954)
Two American hunters in Scotland discover a mystical village that only materializes once every century.
Cast: Gene Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Van Johnson. Dir: Vincente Minnelli. C-108 mins, TV-G

10:22am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Cat Concerto, The (1947)
C-7 mins

10:30am Harvey Girls, The (1946)
Straitlaced waitresses battle saloon girls to win the West for domesticity.
Cast: Judy Garland, John Hodiak, Angela Lansbury. Dir: George Sidney. C-101 mins, TV-G

12:15pm Band Wagon, The (1953)
A Broadway artiste turns a faded film star's comeback vehicle into an artsy flop.
Cast: Fred Astaire, Jack Buchanan, Cyd Charisse. Dir: Vincente Minnelli. C-112 mins, TV-G

2:15pm Seven Brides For Seven Brothers (1954)
When their older brother marries, six lumberjacks decide it's time to go courting for themselves.
Cast: Howard Keel, Jane Powell, Russ Tamblyn. Dir: Stanley Donen. C-102 mins, TV-G

4:00pm Gigi (1958)
A Parisian girl is raised to be a kept woman but dreams of love and marriage.
Cast: Leslie Caron, Maurice Chevalier, Louis Jourdan. Dir: Vincente Minnelli. C-116 mins, TV-G

6:00pm American in Paris, An (1951)
An American artist finds love in Paris but almost loses it to conflicting loyalties.
Cast: Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant. Dir: Vincente Minnelli. C-114 mins, TV-PG

What's On Tonight: 31 DAYS OF OSCAR: 90'S

8:00pm Sense and Sensibility (1995)
Jane Austen's classic tale of two sisters with different romantic notions.
Cast: Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet. Dir: Ang Lee. C-136 mins, TV-PG

10:30pm Quiz Show (1994)
A blue-blood academic gets swept up in the quiz show scandals of the '50s.
Cast: John Turturro, Rob Morrow, Ralph Fiennes. Dir: Robert Redford. C-133 mins, TV-MA

12:45am Kundun (1997)
The dalai lama fights Chinese oppression while trying to lead his flock.
Cast: Tenzin Thuthob Tsarong, Gyurme Tethong, Tulku Jamyang Kunga Tenzin. Dir: Martin Scorsese. C-134 mins, TV-MA

3:05am Short Film: One Reel Wonders: Merry Wives Of Windsor (1953)
The MGM Symphony Orchestra performs the Overture to the Merry Wives of Windsor.
C-9 mins

3:15am Wings of the Dove, The (1997)
An impoverished noblewoman matches her lover with a dying heiress.
Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Linus Roache, Alison Elliott. Dir: Iain Softley. C-102 mins, TV-MA

[Longhorn]

1. Mephisto (1982)

By his own estimation, Hendrik Hoefgen (Klaus Maria Brandauer) is a "provincial actor" with aspirations to greatness despite being consigned to the small town stage. In a bid for notoriety, the Leftist actor first tries his luck staging revolutionary theater, though the amateur acting and shoddy performances doom him yet again to obscurity.

Narcissistic and grasping, Hoefgen nevertheless finds his opportunity for escaping his nobody status for the bright lights of Berlin. As the Nazis rise to power, like the German literary figure of Faust who sells his soul to the devil, Mephistopheles, Hoefgen sells his soul to the National Socialist Party.

While his wife flees Germany and fights in France to undermine the Nazis and his friends are carted off to concentration camps, Hoefgen begins to perform Nazi propaganda plays to promote his own name. He operates in a state of denial about who his collaborators are and ingratiates himself to the cruel, authoritarian General (Rolf Hoppe), modeled on the Nazi second in command Hermann Goering. The film becomes a scathing critique of the countless Germans who also profited from their devil's bargain in supporting the Nazi regime.

The theme of Mephisto (1981), a joint German-Hungarian-Austrian production, is one of artists dealing with life in a totalitarian regime and it has been a reoccurring idea in the Hungarian director Istvan Szabo's work, including Taking Sides (2001), Colonel Redl (1985), Hanussen (1988) and Sunshine (1999). As Szabo told critic Marty Fairbairn, "Vanity is the artist's weakness; it enables seduction." Szabo teamed up again with Brandauer in Colonel Redl and Hanussen, the three films Szabo made with Brandauer becoming part of Szabo's trilogy on European history.

Szabo was born in 1938 and studied at the Budapest Academy of Film. His interest in the artist's responsibility and role was undoubtedly shaped by his own experiences in Hungary. During the country's state of political upheaval and dictatorship following World War II, millions of Hungarians were spied upon and some 200,000 were imprisoned after the Soviet suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution.

Based on a novel by the son of acclaimed Jewish German novelist Thomas Mann, Klaus Mann's 1936 book was based on the life of German actor Gustaf Gryndgens, married to his sister Erika. The Mann family fled Germany under the Nazis (with Klaus eventually serving in the U.S. Army during World War II) though Gryndgens remained in Germany. Gryndgens' career did incredibly well under the Nazis. When he was arrested by the Allies after the war he was finally released when it was disclosed that he had managed to save a number of his friends from persecution by the Nazis.

Gryndgens' adopted son eventually attempted to have the novel banned when it was finally published in West Germany in the early Sixties.

Mephisto writer Klaus Mann was reportedly so distraught over his inability to find a publisher for his novel, that he died of an overdose of sleeping pills in 1949.

By nearly every estimation, it was Austrian-born former stage actor Klaus Maria Brandauer's electric performance that made Mephisto such an international sensation. The film won him an actor award at Cannes along with its own Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film and Best Screenplay. The buzz around Brandauer increased his own actorly profile and led to a role as the villain Maximilian Largo in the James Bond film Never Say Never Again (1983). Brandauer was nominated for an Academy Award® for playing Meryl Streep's husband in Out of Africa (1985).

Director: Istvan Szabo
Producer: Manfred Durniok
Screenplay: Peter Dobai and Istvan Szabo based on a novel by Klaus Mann
Cinematography: Lajos Koltai
Production Design: Jozsef Romvari
Music: Zdenko Tamassy
Cast: Klaus Maria Brandauer (Hendrik Hoefgen), Krystyna Janda (Barbara Bruckner), Ildiko Bansagi (Nicoletta Von Niebuhr), Karin Boyd (Juliette Martens), Rolf Hoppe (The General), Christine Harbort (Lotte Lindenthal), Gyorgy Cserhalmi (Hans Miklas), Christian Grashof (Cesar Von Muck).
C-144m. Letterboxed.

by Felicia Feaster

[lavenderdiva]

2. The Wings Of The Dove-

One of my absolute favorites! I think the costuming in this movie should have won an award; it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Costume Design 1997. Its wonderful. Not to mention the movie itself!!