Episode 39: 1944 with Justin Chang
A podcast about the great movie years.
Justin Chang is one of the genuine greats of contemporary film criticism - chief critic for the Los Angeles Times and NPR’s “Fresh Air,” a title he previously held at Variety. He joins us to talk about the films of 1944, and to explain how he became so enamored of crime fiction, hard-boiled movies, and film noir at such an impressionable age.
He is also, as we mention, the author of the book FilmCraft: Editing, which you can snag here, and if you’re still on Twitter or X or whatever the fuck it’s called now, he is an essential follow.
Oh, and here’s a picture of Justin just chillin’ with Juliette Binoche and Angela Merkel at Berlinale 2019 (where he was on the jury):
They weren’t doing the annual Screen World guides yet in 1944, but the industry itself was putting out its annual “Film Daily Yearbook of Motion Pictures,” which we recently (delightfully) discovered you can find on Archive.org. They give you a full rundown of everything released in that year, plus award winners and ads and all sorts of fascinating stuff. Here’s the one for 1944.
Meet Me in St. Louis is available for digital rental or purchase. Same goes for Hail the Conquering Hero. Same with Laura! And guess what, same goes for To Have and Have Not. It’s almost like the subscription streaming services don’t really value movies from this era!
Double Indemnity is a similar digital rental or purchase situation, but there’s also a dynamite Criterion 4K of that one, so there you go.
This week’s episode was sponsored by our friends at the New York Film Festival; here’s the site we direct you to in the ad, if you’d like to grab a pass to September’s NYFF (and you should.)
As always, if you’d like to log and review these yourself, head on over to our list page on Letterboxd.
Oh, and hey, have you upgraded to a paid subscription yet? You can do that right here, and here’s Mike and I telling you what it’ll get you (spoiler: bonus episodes, bonus posts, and our undying love).