Quick Picks on Flicks

Carl Schaefer, son of Jack Schaefer, author of "Shane," revealed in a recent letter to the Times Literary Supplement that his father's first choice for the movie role was Montgomery Clift. Alan Ladd's performance was memorable, but with Clift we might have had a very different film.

The Writer's Almanac noted that today would have been the 108th birthday of Clifford Odets, probably New York's hottest playwright in the 1930s and possibly the inspiration for the Coen brothers' "Barton Fink." Among the Odets plays later made into films: "The Big Knife" and "The Country Girl." "The Big Knife," the dark side of Hollywood, was recently re-staged on Broadway with Bobby Cannavale in the role Jack Palance played on screen. Odets also wrote a number of original screenplays, including "The Sweet Smell of Success."

The new Woody Allen film is "Magic in the Moonlight," with Colin Firth as an illusionist and Emma Stone as a psychic and seance leader who may or may not be a fraud. Knowing Allen to be a longtime admirer of Ingmar Bergman, this corner has a hunch that the seed for this may have been Bergman's brilliant puzzle of logic and faith, "The Magician."

Just a guess. See you at the movies.