James Stewart @ 100.

Salutes in the German papers: Gerhard Midding (Frankfurter Rundschau) and Bert Rebahndl (Berliner Zeitung).

Updated through 5/22.

Updates, 5/21: "As someone with a serious critical interest in film the Siren knows her obligations. She's supposed to prefer late-period Stewart to early.... But, to quote Woody Allen's most infamous line, the heart wants what it wants and what the Siren wants is The Shop Around the Corner. After that she wants The Philadelphia Story, Vivacious Lady, Made for Each Other, The Mortal Storm and The Shopworn Angel. In short, she wants Stewart the romantic and ideally she wants Margaret Sullavan in there somewhere too."

"1939 is often cited as the greatest year in the history of motion pictures, producing a bumper crop of classics," writes Josh R at Edward Copeland on Film. "Certainly, no actor reaped more of the benefit of that yield than Stewart - he appeared in no less than five films, two of which would proove to be among his very best."

"James Stewart probably came closest to playing the classic American better than anyone," writes moirafinnie6 at Movie Morlocks.

Update, 5/22: "He was, as one writer then put it, 'unusually usual,'" writes Dennis Harvey at SF360. "[T]he lingering impression will always be of the small-town blunderbuss who, as Stewart put it himself, was "the inarticulate man who tries. I don’t really have all the answers, but for some reason, somehow, I make it.... I suppose people can relate to being me, while they dream about being John Wayne." Well, maybe in a shootout - but in everyday life, probably most folks would rather the gent next door be Jimmy Stewart."

Posted by dwhudson at May 20, 2008 4:09 PM