Special Theme: Directors’ Final Films
TCM, Beginning at 11 a.m.
Starting this afternoon and running well into tomorrow morning, Turner Classic Movies continues its look at final feature films from noted directors, with a nine-movie lineup. The titles are Tod Browning’s 1939 mystery Miracles for Sale (pictured), starring Robert Young and Florence Rice; Max Ophuls’ historical romance Lola Montes (1955); the TCM premiere of Fred Zinnemann’s Five Days One Summer (1982), a romantic drama led by Sean Con
nery and Betsy Brantley; Francois Truffaut’s Confidentially Yours (1983), a French comedy/mystery featuring Hitchcockian themes as a tribute from Truffaut to his favorite director; David Lean’s A Passage to India (1984), which earned Lean Oscar nominations for directing, his screenplay adaptation of E.M. Forster’s novel and the film’s editing; Tony Richardson’s Blue Sky (1994), a drama that was released three years after the director’s passing, with Jessica Lange in a Best Actress Oscar-winning performance alongside Tommy Lee Jones; Anthony Mann’s spy thriller A Dandy in Aspic (1968), whose direction was completed by star
Laurence Harvey after Mann passed away before completing the film; Ernst Lubitsch’s
Betty Grable-led musical That Lady in Ermine
(1948), which was completed by Otto Preminger after Lubitsch died eight days into production; and, finally, Preminger’s thriller The Human Factor (1979), starring a powerhouse lineup of British actors including Richard Attenborough, Derek Jacobi, John Gielgud and Nicol Williamson.