No big surprises this month but a number of excellent films.
April 1 has Mark Sandrich's excellent Rogers/Astaire film Follow the Fleet, songs by Irving Berlin.
On April 2 is John Ford's impressive Mogambo , April 4 had Orson Welles's underrated The Trial and John Huston's meditation on the Western The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.
On April 5 is Zoltan Korda's The Macomber Affair, based on a Hemingway story. Frank Borzage's romantic A Farewell to Arms is on April 6 and a third Hemingway story, Howard Hawks's To Have and Have Not is on April 10.
Also on April 5 is Vincente Minnelli's Designing Women, a comedic examination of gender roles, and Raoul Walsh's Captain Horatio Hornblower, about the conflicts between love and work.
On the 7th are four films directed by Ida Lupino, intelligent films with low budgets that Lupino makes the most of. Also on the 7th is Blake Edwards's The Party, with an elegant performance by Peter Sellers.
April 8th has Robert Siodmak's stylish film noir Phantom Lady from a novel by Cornell Woolrich and on the 9th is Buster Keaton's lovely Seven Chances.
On the 10th is Rouben Mamoulian's Queen Christina, with one of the few times Greta Garbo had a good director, and Hitchcock's Lifeboat, which takes place entirely in a lifeboat.
On the 11th are two excellent Westerns, each very different (in case there are any people left who think all Westerns are the same!): Fritz Lang's Rancho Notorious and Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo.
On the 13th are a number of musicals by Stanley Donen; my own favorite is the low-key Give a Girl a Break. Also on the 13th are unusual musicals The Blue Angel, directed by Josef Von Sternberg and Young Girls of Rochefort, directed by Jacques Demy.
On the 16th is Roman Polanski's The Fearless Vampire Killers, a strange and often amusing take on the vampire film
On the 18th are several low-budget horror films produced by Val Lewton for RKO; my favorites of this group are Mark Robson's The Seventh Victim and Jacques Tourneur oneiric I Walked With a Zombie.
On the 19th is Orson Welles's Mr. Arkadin and four films by Fritz Lang, including the Dr. Mabuse films.
On the 21st is Otto Preminger's fascinating The Cardinal and on the 24th are two stylish comedies: Ernst Lubitsch's The Love Parade and Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth.
The 25th has seven films by the great John Ford, including Stagecoach and The Searchers and the 30th has Andre DeToth's economical Passport to Suez and King Vidor's H.M. Pulham, Esq., from a John P. Marquand novel.
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