Movies for the Day, Friday, March 24, 2017

Today's movies feature a magician, POW escape, and a police detective.



Today is the birthday of the great magician
Harry Houdini, born in 1874.  I honor his
birthday with the selection of The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari (1919), a classic silent German
horror film about a magician who abuses his
hypnotic power.





The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari





The Great Escape (1963) is based on an
actual Allied POW escape during World
War II which occurred March 24 to March
25, 1944.  The movie is also based on
Paul Brickhill's 1950 book of the same name,
a non-fiction first-hand account of the
mass escape from the German POW camp,
Stalag Luft III, in Poland.




The Great Escape




Bullitt (1968) stars Steve McQueen, born this date
in 1930, as a no nonsense San Francisco police
detective.  This thriller features a classic car chase.
It is listed on the National Film Registry and won
an Oscar for Film Editing.  McQueen also starred
in The Great Escape, also featured for today (see
above).



Bullitt