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Katharine Hepburn made her stunning screen debut as John Barrymore’s daughter in 1932’s A Bill of Divorcement. In Christopher Strong, Hepburn’s second film and first star vehicle, the intelligent, liberated and unconventionally beautiful actress chose to play an intelligent, liberated and unconventionally beautiful aviatrix who soars into a torrid affair (with Colin Clive as a fellow aristocrat)…and crashes into unendurable heartbreak. The melodramatic story is as much keen-edged steel as tears, thanks to Hepburn’s gutsy performance and to the taut direction of Dorothy Arzner, classic Hollywood’s only major female director. Among the film’s highlights: Hepburn simply astonishing in silvery lamé heading to a costume ball as the world’s most glamorous moth.

Description

Suffused with intoxicating romanticism, History Is Made at Night is a sublime paean to love from Frank Borzage, classic Hollywood’s supreme poet of carnal and spiritual desire. On the run through Europe from her wealthy, cruelly possessive husband, an American (Jean Arthur) is thrown together by fate with a suave stranger (Charles Boyer)—and soon the two are bound in a consuming, seemingly impossible affair that stretches across continents and brings them to the very edge of catastrophe. Lent a palpable erotic charge by the chemistry between its leads, this delirious vision of lovers beset by the world passes through a dizzying array of tonal shifts—from melodrama to romantic comedy to noir to disaster thriller—smoothly guided by Borzage’s unwavering allegiance to the power of love. Blu-ray Special Edition Features • New 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack • New conversation between author Hervé Dumont (Frank Borzage: The Life and Films of a Hollywood Romantic) and film historian Peter Cowie • Interview from 2019 with critic Farran Smith Nehme about director Frank Borzage’s obsession with romantic love • Audio excerpts of a 1958 interview with Borzage from the collection of the George Eastman Museum • Radio adaptation of the film from 1940, broadcast by The Screen Guild Theater and starring Charles Boyer • New program about the restoration • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing • PLUS: An essay by critic Dan Callahan

Description

In his American feature-film debut, Peter Lorre turns in one of his creepiest performances as a renowned plastic surgeon whose sadistic obsession with an actress drove him over the edge of sanity. Dr. Gogol (Lorre) is in love with his Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake), an actress whose appearance in a Grand Guignol-like horror theater has mesmerized him. She quits the theater to travel with her concert-pianist husband. Stephen (Colin Clive), enraging Gogol. But when Stephen's hands are crushed in a train accident, Yvonne turns to Gogol as a last resort. Motivated by sadistic intentions, Gogol secretly replaces Stephen's hands with those of a guillotined murderer, hoping that the operation will send Yvonne rushing into his arms as the murderer's hands take on a life of their own. Mad Love is one of the most chilling horror stories every put on screen, lending a macabre twist on themes of requited love and jealously.