Classic films on TV

Comanche Station
Fri 29 at 12:40am, Encore Westerns
Dir. Budd Boetticher. 1960. 74mins. Randolph Scott, Nancy Gates, Claude Akins.
Together, Boetticher and Scott made four great, gritty Westerns known as the Ranown films (after their production company), all awash in a weird mix of heroic ideals and bleak pessimism. In this outing, Scott is a loner, as usual, who buys the freedom of a white woman from the Comanche, then has to protect her both from the Indians and from a band of outlaws led by brutish Akins. It is gorgeous and grim, and makes Ford's The Searchers look arty and pretentious by comparison.

The Hot Rock
Sat 30 at 5:20am, Encore Mystery; Sat 30 at 7pm, Fox Movie Channel
Dir. Peter Yates. 1972. 105mins. Robert Redford, George Segal, Ron Leibman, Zero Mostel.
The cast is a trivia lover's delight—Redford, Segal, Leibman and Mostel all in a movie together. Redford plays Dortmunder, a brilliant criminal cursed with horrible bad luck. Dortmunder's efforts to steal an enormous diamond are hampered by his oddball conspirators and by just about everything in his path. It's strictly popcorn fare, but think of it as gourmet popcorn.

The Leopard
Sat 30 at 1pm and Sun 31 at 3am, Fox Movie Channel
Dir. Luchino Visconti. 1963. 163mins. Burt Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, Alain Delon.
Visconti was an odd mix: a dedicated Marxist who was fascinated by the aristocracy. That contradiction is all over this huge elegiac saga of the decline of a wealthy 19th-century Sicilian family. Lancaster watches with lordly sorrow as the old order gives way to a more democratic ideal. Yeah, there's a critique of the wealthy, but Visconti makes it all look so damn gorgeous.

The Merry Widow
Sat 30 at 7pm, TCM
Dir. Ernst Lubitsch. 1934. 99mins. Jeanette MacDonald, Maurice Chevalier, Edward Everett Horton.
It's the exemplar of the frilly operetta, but the talent involved makes frilly look good. The tiny duchy of Marshovia is thrown into crisis when wealthy heiress and principal tax-revenue source MacDonald announces her impending wedding to a foreigner. Charmer Chevalier is sent to change her mind. Lubitsch delivers his usual wry, slightly risque wit, but it's Chevalier's rakish charms that really do the trick.

Sullivan's Travels
Wed 3 at 10:30pm, TCM
Dir. Preston Sturges. 1941. 90mins. Joel McCrea, Veronica Lake, William Demarest.
A Hollywood hack (McCrea) sick of making light fare decides he wants to make a serious picture called O Brother, Where Art Thou? (this is where the Coens got that title). To do research, he sets out on the road incognito to find America. What he finds is that life as a hobo ain't all it's cracked up to be. He also finds Lake (va-va-va-voom!). As always, Sturges pushes screwball into new realms of wonderful strangeness.—Hank Sartin