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Films on US television this week

Sunday, March 29

1:35 a.m. (TNT)— East of Eden (1955)—Elia Kazan’s treatment of the John Steinbeck novel about a young man, after World War I, who finds his mother runs a brothel. With James Dean.

3:50 a.m. (TCM)— You Can’t Take It With You (1938)—Frank Capra’s version of the George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart comedy. Starring James Stewart and Jean Arthur.

7:00 a.m. (A&E)— Beat the Devil (1954)— Humphrey Bogart, Robert Morley and Peter Lorre team up in this cynical John Huston film about a group of lowlifes planning to acquire land rich in uranium deposits. (Also 4:00 am, Monday, March 30)

8:00 a.m. (TCM)— Little Women (1933)—George Cukor’s film version of the Louisa May Alcott classic, perhaps the best of the lot. Four sisters growing up in Civil War America, with Katharine Hepburn and Joan Bennett.

10:00 a.m. (TCM)— My Man Godfrey (1936)—A millionaire invites a tramp (William Powell) to be his butler in this Gregory LaCava screwball comedy. Carole Lombard is the millionaire’s daughter.

10:30 a.m. (AMC)— The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)—James Stewart, a little long in the tooth, plays Charles Lindbergh in this Billy Wilder film about the first trans-Atlantic flight in 1927.

12:00 p.m. (TCM)— Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)—Michael Curtiz directed this story of gangsters and slum kids. James Cagney is the gangster who pretends to be a coward on his way to the electric chair to scuttle his reputation with the kids. (Also, 2:30 a.m., April 3)

2:30 p.m. (AMC)— Laura (1944)—A murder mystery about a woman believed to be dead who suddenly makes an appearance. Otto Preminger directed an extraordinary cast, including Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Vincent Price and Clifton Webb.

3:00 p.m. (Fam)— Blazing Saddles (1974)—Mel Brooks’s western parody, with Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder and Madeline Kahn.

4:05 p.m. (TBS)— The Dirty Dozen (1967)—Twelve convicts, serving life sentences, are recruited for a suicidal commando raid in Robert Aldrich’s film.

6:00 p.m. (TCM)— Blowup (1966)—Vanesse Redgrave and David Hemmings in Michelangelo Antonioni’s film about art, artists and truth. A photographer spots a killing in one of his shots, but the picture disappears.

8:00 p.m. (TCM)— Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)—John Huston’s adaptation of B. Traven’s story about three prospectors who come to grief through greed. Humphrey Bogart and Walter Huston, the director’s father.

10:30 p.m. (TCM)— A Place in the Sun (1951)—A George Stevens film based on Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy. Not very faithful to the book, but valuable in its own right. Elizabeth Taylor is extraordinary as Montgomery Clift’s dream girl.

11:35 p.m. (AMC)— Spellbound (1945)—Psychiatrist Ingrid Bergman attempts to unravel patient Gregory Peck’s dilemmas. Has he committed a murder. Alfred Hitchcock directed.

Monday, March 30

12:30 a.m. (TNT)— Barry Lyndon (1975)—An intelligent adaptation of William Thackeray’s novel about an eighteenth century scoundrel, directed by Stanley Kubrick.

1:00 a.m. (TCM)— The Quiet Man (1952)—John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara star in this John Ford film about an Irish-American boxer who goes back to his native country.

6:00 a.m. (TCM)— Little Caesar (1930)—Mervyn LeRoy directed Edward G. Robinson as a smalltime hood who rises to the top of the crime world. From the novel by W.R. Burnett. (Also, 11:30 p.m., April 2)

1:30 p.m. (TCM)— The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936)—Historically distorted, but surprisingly moving account of British soldiers in colonial India and Crimean War. With Errol Flynn and Olivia de Haviland, directed by Michael Curtiz.

4:30 p.m. (AMC)— The Crimson Pirate (1952)—A swashbuckling adventure, with Burt Lancaster at his most athletic. The German emigré Robert Siodmak directed.

8:00 p.m. (TCM)— Casablanca (1942)—The Michael Curtiz classic about life and love in wartime Morocco, with Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

Tuesday, March 31

12:00 a.m. (TCM)— The Life of Emile Zola (1937)—A stolid and not particularly accurate version of the life of the French writer (Paul Muni). The final speech, in Zola’s own words, is moving. Directed by William Dieterle.

4:00 a.m. (TCM)— The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936)—Paul Muni again, William Dieterle directing again, in this biopic about the great French scientist.

9:45 a.m. (AMC)— The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1943)—One of Preston Sturges’s wonderful comic looks at American morals and manners. Eddie Bracken, Betty Hutton and William Demarest.

11:30 a.m. (AMC)— Murder, My Sweet (1944)—Worthy, hardboiled adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely, with Dick Powell as Philip Marlowe. Directed by Edward Dmytryk.

2:00 p.m. (TCM)— The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) -Stylishly done version of romance between Queen of England (Bette Davis) and Earl of Essex (Errol Flynn). Directed by Michael Curtiz, from play by Maxwell Anderson.

6:00 p.m. (TCM)— The Strawberry Blonde (1941)—Evocative film about turn-of-the-century New York, with James Cagney as a dentist who loves Rita Hayworth, and married Olivia de Haviland. Raoul Walsh directed.

8:30 p.m. (AMC)— All That Heaven Allows (1955)—Extraordinarily perceptive view of postwar America. Jane Wyman plays a rich woman in love with a gardener. Her children and friends do everything to disrupt the relationship. The scene in which her children give her a television as a present is a classic. Directed by Douglas Sirk, the basis for R.W. Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul.

10:30 p.m. (TCM)— Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)—Exuberant James Cagney in a lively biography of showman George M. Cohan. Directed by Michael Curtiz. (Also, 9:30 a.m., April 1)

11:00 p.m. (AMC)— The Getaway (1972)—Steve McQueen as a convict who gets out of jail and immediately takes part in a bank robbery. With Ali McGraw. Directed by Sam Peckinpah, from the novel by Jim Thompson.

Wednesday, April 1

2:30 a.m. (TCM)— Mildred Pierce (1945)—Powerful melodrama, directed by Michael Curtiz, about a woman (Joan Crawford) who goes from rags to riches and her ungrateful daughter.

6:30 a.m. (AMC)— Phantom Lady (1944)—Unsettling film noir, perhaps emblematic of the genre, about a man convicted of a murder and the search for an elusive witness. With Franchot Tone, directed by Robert Siodmak.

9:30 a.m. (AMC)— The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)—William Wyler’s occasionally affecting drama about ex-servicemen in postwar America. With Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Myrna Loy, Virginia Mayo and Teresa Wright.

10:00 p.m. (TCM)—42nd Street (1933)—Classic 30s musical, with Warner Baxter as ailing director and Ruby Keeler as the newcomer who is called on at the last moment when the star injures her ankle. With Dick Powell, directed by Lloyd Bacon.

Thursday, April 2

12:15 a.m. (AMC)— Brute Force (1947)—Jules Dassin’s prison drama with Burt Lancaster, Charles Bickford, Yvonne DeCarlo and Hume Cronyn as brutal prison official. Scripted by Richard Brooks.

2:00 p.m. (TCM)— The Roaring Twenties (1939)—James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart as rival crime bosses in this Raoul Walsh classic. Script is cliched, but action and finale are not.

3:30pm (Bravo)— Charlie Bubbles (1968)—(Also 11:05 p.m.) British actor Albert Finney’s directing debut, about a married and unhappy writer who begins an affair with Liza Minnelli, as his secretary. It has moving moments.

4:15 p.m. (AMC)— Monkey Business (1952)—Cary Grant and Ginger Rogers in a Howard Hawks comedy about a chemistry professor who comes up with youth serum. Marilyn Monroe and Charles Coburn co-star.

6:00 p.m. (TCM)— White Heat (1949)—Not-to-be-missed crime drama about a criminal with a serious mother complex. James Cagney is unforgettable in Raoul Walsh’s film.

8:00 p.m. (TCM)— I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932)—Heavy-handed, but powerful exposé of conditions on prison farms. Mervyn LeRoy directed Paul Muni as the innocent man framed up by the justice system.

Friday, April 3

3:00 a.m. (TNT)— Sergeant Rutledge (1960)—Woody Strode played black US cavalry officer charged with rape and murder in post-Civil War America. John Ford directed.

10:30 a.m. (TCM)— The Beggar’s Opera (1953)—Laurence Olivier in something of an oddity, John Gay’s eighteenth century work, brought to the screen by famed theater director Peter Brook ( Marat/Sade et al). Play which inspired Brecht/Weill’s Threepenny Opera.

12:30 p.m. (AMC)— Mister Cory (1957)—Tony Curtis is excellent as poor boy turned rich gambler in this Blake Edwards drama.

2:00 p.m. (TNT)— Three Godfathers (1948)—John Ford/John Wayne western about three outlaws who adopt an baby born in the desert, after the mother dies.

8:00 p.m. (Bravo)— Breaker Morant (1979)—Australian film, directed by Bruce Beresford, about three soldiers in Boer War court-martialed for murdering prisoners. With Edward Woodward and Bryan Brown.

8:00 p.m. (TCM)— A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)—Elia Kazan’s version of the Tennessee Williams drama about the strong and the weak in a New Orleans tenement. Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh, Kim Hunter and Karl Malden.

8:00 p.m. (USA)— The Age of Innocence (1993)—Martin Scorsese’s disappointingly flat, unironic filming of Edith Wharton’s extraordinary novel about New York society in the 1870s. Worth seeing, however.

8:00 p.m. (WGN)— Play Misty for Me (1971)—Clint Eastwood directed this crime melodrama about a woman dangerously obsessed with a jazz disk jockey. With Jessica Walters.

10:30 (TCM)— Rebel Without a Cause (1955)—Nicholas Ray’s portrait of disaffected youth, with James Dean, Natalie Wood, Sal Mineo.

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