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Posts From the Internet Film Discussion Group, a_film_by
This group is dedicated to discussing film as art
from an auteurist perspective. The index to these files of posts can be found at http://www.fredcamper.com/afilmby/ The purpose of these files is to make our posts more accessible, for downloading and reading and to search engines.
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1
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Fri Jun 13, 2003 7:32pm
Subject: Auteurs
Has anyone compiled a list of reasonably serious Yahoo groups devoted to individual directors (e.g. "Rohmer-L" and "MacGuffin")?
2
From: Fred Camper
Date: Fri Jun 13, 2003 8:10pm
Subject: Late Wendkos?
I've long been an admirer of the features of Paul Wendkos, or at least
some of them. His first, "The Burglar," has a stunning Kane-related
opening, and is really quite good visually, as is "Angel Baby." His
best films are I think "Johnny Tiger" and "The Mephisto Waltz," whose
stunningly baroque imagery would seem overly mannered if it didn't
work so well, whatever that means ("works" is a lazy critic's word, I
know).
Some that aren't so great are the three Gidget films and the late
"Special Delivery," an example of a director who after he did get
better (leading up to "The Mephisto Waltz") then got worse.
But also, Wendkos started directing made for TV movies around 1970,
and a few of the early ones, "Fear No Evil" and "The Brotherhood of
the Bell" were terrific. "Fear No Evil" is actually about a mirror.
"Bell" is about the secret society that the Bushes and the other
"rulers" of the world presumably belong to. Some of the other made for
TV movies were very good, and I was busy trying to see all of them for
a while, but they started to get worse and worse, more and more banal,
and I stopped in about 1987.
So, if anyone has seen some late Wendkoses, let us know how they are.
And yes, while the message here is sincere, the choice of a
far-more-obscure-than-Edwards-or-Preminger director was definitely a
conscious one.
-Fred
3
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Fri Jun 13, 2003 8:36pm
Subject: Re: Late Wendkos?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Fred Camper" wrote
a timely message, since "The Burglar" is playing at MoMA/Gramercy tomorrow (preceded by a Brakhage program and followed by Melies and Ulmer).
4
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Sat Jun 14, 2003 0:53am
Subject: Re: Late Wendkos?
Fred:
> I've long been an admirer of the features of Paul Wendkos, or at
> least some of them. His first, "The Burglar," has a stunning Kane-
> related opening, and is really quite good visually, as is "Angel
> Baby." His best films are I think "Johnny Tiger" and "The Mephisto
> Waltz," whose stunningly baroque imagery would seem overly mannered
> if it didn't work so well, whatever that means ("works" is a lazy
> critic's word, I know).
How do you feel about TARAWA BEACHHEAD? I have that, as well as
MEPHISTO WALTZ, on video (quite possibly in the original aspect ratio
at least). I think most of us are familiar with your stance on
video, Fred, which I bet we all keep respectfully in mind when
discussing films with you which we've seen or are likely to see only
on video formats, by the way.
As far as obscure directors, what about one Charles Marquis Warren,
whose nice small film TENSION AT TABLE ROCK I had the pleasure of
watching several weeks ago. Manny Farber listed Warren's LITTLE BIG
HORN first in his "Best Films" of 1951 article, and many of the
virtues he cites there are transferable to TABLE ROCK.
--Zach
5
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Jun 14, 2003 1:05am
Subject: Re: Late Wendkos?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Zach Campbell" wrote:
> How do you feel about TARAWA BEACHHEAD?
Zach, I hope in this friendlier group I won't have to rant on and on
about video. I appreciate your acknowledgment of my views here, and
I'll try not to become a broken record. Others needn't apologize to me
every time that they've seen something on tape, but if we get into a
discussion about it then it might be relevant to mention the way we've
seen it, just as I would have to say while I've seen Hawks's "Trent's
Last Case" in 35mm, it was only on a Steenbeck, arguably no better
than video.
I saw "Tarawa Beachhead" in a movie theater more than 30 years ago,
only once. I have only a vague memory of it as a not too memorable war
movie with some interesting Wendkosian imagery that wasn't eneough to
elevate to a, um, "major Wendkos."
And let me stipulate for the record here that while everything I've
said in my two posts I believe, the phraseology is meant to outrage a
few of the people who were specifically outraged at Peter's late
auteurist queries on Cinemasters -- not that I actually want to
outrage them, just that I'm having fun with the weird margins of
auteurism. I mean, if you're interested in something that most peopole
think is ridiculous, you might as well have some fun with that rather
than crawling back under the bed.
Thanks for the tip about Warren, who I don't know.
Coming soon: late Gerd Oswald?
-Fred
6
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jun 14, 2003 1:21am
Subject: Re: Late Wendkos?
> just as I would have to say while I've seen Hawks's "Trent's
> Last Case" in 35mm, it was only on a Steenbeck, arguably no better
> than video.
That's interesting. Why do you think this? Is it because the image
is smaller? Really, if you sit close to the flatbed, the image
subtends about the same angle in your field of vision as if you sat in
the back of a big theater. In my experience, you get good image
quality, unless a bulb is dying.
TRENT'S LAST CASE is one of the least interesting Hawks films, I'd say.
I saw VERTIGO and REAR WINDOW for the first time on a Steenbeck.... - Dan
7
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Jun 14, 2003 2:03am
Subject: Re: Late Wendkos?
Dan Sallitt, citing my claim that the Steenbeck is "arguably no better
than video," wrote:
> That's interesting. Why do you think this? Is it because the image
> is smaller?
No, and I guess I think it is somewhat better, But the Steenbeck
renders the image very differently than film. It's even more
"interlaced" than video. It's almost impossible to look at a single
frame; you're usually seeing several superimposed, becasue of its
rotating prism. The result is that there's no flicker, which I suppose
they thought was a good thing, but this makes it very unfilmic, in my
view.
I agree with you about TRENT'S LAST CASE. Actually I think it's
worthless, and has nothing of Hawks in it. I don't think there's
another Hawks film I can say that about.
8
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jun 14, 2003 3:52am
Subject: Re: Late Wendkos?
> As far as obscure directors, what about one Charles Marquis Warren,
> whose nice small film TENSION AT TABLE ROCK I had the pleasure of
> watching several weeks ago. Manny Farber listed Warren's LITTLE BIG
> HORN first in his "Best Films" of 1951 article, and many of the
> virtues he cites there are transferable to TABLE ROCK.
I too know nothing about Warren, but I remember Sarris putting his
HELLGATE on his list of worthwhile 1952 films in THE AMERICAN CINEMA.
- Dan
9
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jun 14, 2003 4:09am
Subject: Re: Late Wendkos?
> So, if anyone has seen some late Wendkoses, let us know how they are.
I'm a little more mixed on Wendkos than you are. The only two
semi-late Wendkoses I've seen that you haven't mentioned are 1970's
CANNON FOR CORDOBA and the 1977 TV movie SECRETS. I really didn't
like the latter (though I can't remember why) and wasn't knocked out
by the former.
Lots of good directors are now working in TV movies, and I've been
pretty much out of touch with that world since 1990. Many good
directors - Lamont Johnson, Daniel Petrie, Joseph Sargent, John Korty,
William Hale - have done most or all of their good work on TV. Wish I
was still following those guys. - Dan
10
From:
Date: Sat Jun 14, 2003 0:17am
Subject: Posthumous-period Preminger?
Okay, I can't resist a little self-parody as a way to begin my tenure on the
new group.
How do people feel about posthumous-period Preminger? That is, his work
after "The Human Factor"? I hear it's hard to come by...
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
11
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sat Jun 14, 2003 6:20am
Subject: Re: Late Wendkos?
Dan:
> I'm a little more mixed on Wendkos than you are. The only two
> semi-late Wendkoses I've seen that you haven't mentioned are 1970's
> CANNON FOR CORDOBA and the 1977 TV movie SECRETS. I really didn't
> like the latter (though I can't remember why) and wasn't knocked out
> by the former.
Actually, these are both pretty weak. I struggled to see the Wendkos
in "Cannon for Cordoba" and remember liking some brief sequences, but
it was a stretch. "Secrets" I hardly remember, except that I remember
it as a kind of turning point where I started to think he was just
cranking out those TV movies.
What's great about the good ones is a kind of almost solipsistic
intensity to the style, as if the image was breaking up into fragments
(more true of the later ones), or was blocking itself out into
opposing areas (the earlier ones). Neither of these things could I see
in "Gidget Goes to Rome," though....
12
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jun 14, 2003 5:32pm
Subject: Early Hawks
> I agree with you about TRENT'S LAST CASE. Actually I think it's
> worthless, and has nothing of Hawks in it. I don't think there's
> another Hawks film I can say that about.
I can't see a lot of Hawks, or a lot of value, in FAZIL either, though
it has more defenders than TRENT'S LAST CASE.
I'm the world's biggest Hawks fan, but I also don't care a lot for THE
CRADLE SNATCHERS or even FIG LEAVES. The only silent Hawks that I
really care about are A GIRL IN EVERY PORT (which is of course a major
film) and the neglected PAID TO LOVE. Now if only someone would dig up
a print of THE AIR CIRCUS.... - Dan
13
From:
Date: Sat Jun 14, 2003 4:57pm
Subject: Re: Early Hawks
In a message dated 6/14/03 1:34:41 PM, sallitt@p... writes:
>I'm the world's biggest Hawks fan, but I also don't care a lot for THE
>CRADLE SNATCHERS or even FIG LEAVES. The only silent Hawks that I
>really care about are A GIRL IN EVERY PORT (which is of course a major
>film) and the neglected PAID TO LOVE.
"A Girl In Every Port" is actually the only silent Hawks I've seen so far and
it certainly seemed full of signature Hawksian themes and situations. If I
understand correctly, at the time of his death, Hawks was shopping around a
loose re-make of the film called "When It's Hot, Play It Cool." I've always
regretted that some small publishing house hasn't seen it fit to put the script
for that out (apparently there were several drafts by various writers).
I like "Rio Lobo" fine, but I wish he'd gone out with something he cared
about a bit more.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
14
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Jun 14, 2003 9:31pm
Subject: Re: Early Hawks
> I like "Rio Lobo" fine, but I wish he'd gone out with something he cared
> about a bit more.
Yeah. EL DORADO actually works pretty well as the summation film. - Dan
15
From: Fred Camper
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 1:51am
Subject: Re: Early Hawks
Dan,
Oops, I should have said "sound Hawks films." I agree with your
assessment of the silents. That peculiar ineffable quality in which
the tiniest of character gestures seem to fuse themselves with the
whole visual style is largely absent from the earlier silents, as far
as I can tell, with their odd silinesses and acceptances of silent
movie conventions. In "A Girl in Every Port," the characters come to
life in a way that infuses the whole style.
-Fred
16
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 2:42am
Subject: Re: Auteurs
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jess_l_amortell"
wrote:
> Has anyone compiled a list of reasonably serious Yahoo groups
devoted to individual directors (e.g. "Rohmer-L" and "MacGuffin")?
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lancelotdulac/
Jaime
p.s. Hey everybody. Hawks' THE CROWD ROARS is playing on Turner
Classic Movies (sorry Fred) on Monday afternoon. Check the TCM
website for the time. I'd really like to see it, the clip from the
Scorsese documentary was pretty enticing. Would make a nice side-by-
side with RED LINE 7000, no?
17
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 6:17am
Subject: Re: Re: Auteurs
> Would make a nice side-by-
> side with RED LINE 7000, no?
Absolutely. I'm really fond of THE CROWD ROARS - truth be told, I think
it's my favorite Hawks film of 1932, despite the formidable competition
of SCARFACE and TIGER SHARK. - Dan
18
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 5:02pm
Subject: The Fearmakers
I don't have tv, but Mick Farren mentions in the first issue of LA's
new alternative newspaper, City Beat, that it aired a few weeks ago
on TCM. The cast apart from Andrews was described as looking
like "supporting players in a Superman serial," but Farren led off a
column on tv coverage of Iraq with a description of the film because
he found its premise timely: ""A totalitarian conspiracy was
attempting to take over America with targeted advertising and
manipulation of opinion polls." Actually, my recollection is that the
film was considerably less political than the overtly leftwing novel,
which I recently found in a used book bin. Did anyone see TF on TCM?
Has it aged gracefully re: content? form? anything?
PS - Fans of Andy Klein can now find his reviews taking up a hefty
chunk of space in City Beat. Welcome back, Andy!
19
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 7:13pm
Subject: Re: The Fearmakers
> Did anyone see TF on TCM?
> Has it aged gracefully re: content? form? anything?
I saw it quite recently, at the Tourneur fest at Lincoln Center last
fall. I can't say it worked very well for me: a little too much of the
emotional dynamic was sneering bad guys vs. self-righteous heroes, with
one perspiring accountant (played very strangely by Mel Torme) in the
middle. In his book on Tourneur, Chris Fujiwara makes the point that
it's a film about a huge international conspiracy to shape public
opinion, but with the public completely removed from the movie, so that
all we see is a few weird guys in offices. Maybe it wanted to be MEET
JOHN DOE or something, but without the budget or Capra/Riskin's
rabblerousing instincts.
> PS - Fans of Andy Klein can now find his reviews taking up a hefty
> chunk of space in City Beat. Welcome back, Andy!
Is Andy the first-string critic? - Dan
20
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 8:49pm
Subject: Andy Klein
It's still interesting how many of Tourneur's film have technically
progressive plots - "technically" in the sense that they are not
effectively progressive, because distant revolutions (the subject of
most of the adventure films) were also fodder for De Mille, and
always welcomed by American audiences if the distance was great
enough.
Andy Klein is indeed the first-string critic of Los Angeles City
Beat - a welcome return after the blessed collapse of New Times,
where he was the film-buff in residence, as F. X. Feeney still is at
the LA Weekly.
I always found the positions occupied by those two writers emblematic
of an interesting fact: that the sensibility represented by them -
and I assume by this chat group - is in fact a very specific one,
overlapping but not really shared by the majority of people who write
about films.
The history of how that sensibility was launched in the US by Andrew
Sarris, became very influential for a moment (because its proponents
actually knew film history, and had the New Wave at their backs),
then dwindled to an embattled minority position, is one that should
be written someday. No Manicheism intended (for the moment), but
Pauline Kael, who is the real mother of most alternative-press
criticism I've been exposed to, seems in retrospect to be central to
that history. (Incidentally, there is a discernible trend in present-
day Cahiers du cinema against classical auteurism - a very self-
conscious trend, of course.)
For that reason, it's great to have Andy back in a first-string slot,
with his own group of young critics (all unknown to me) playing
backup, like Rosenbaum at the Chicago Reader. Incidentally, Andy also
seems to be using Dave Kehr's old capsules to fill in the short
listings, properly attributed to DK.
21
From:
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 5:07pm
Subject: Re: Andy Klein
In a message dated 6/15/03 4:51:28 PM, hotlove666@y... writes:
>Incidentally, Andy also
>seems to be using Dave Kehr's old capsules to fill in the short
>listings, properly attributed to DK.
That's great to hear. I find those Kehr capsules incredibly useful and
valuable. (I write this as someone temperamentally incapable of writing an
effective capsule review; I always go on too long and end up writing a full-length
piece.) Is it safe to say that Kehr stands as one of the last "mainstream"
critics with an auteurist bent? That's one reason I find it particularly
regrettable that he's been relegated to essentially a "fourth-stringer" position at
the Times. Wouldn't it be something of a bona fide auteurist was the lead
critic over there?
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
22
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 9:10pm
Subject: Re: Andy Klein
> For that reason, it's great to have Andy back in a first-string slot,
> with his own group of young critics (all unknown to me) playing
> backup, like Rosenbaum at the Chicago Reader. Incidentally, Andy also
> seems to be using Dave Kehr's old capsules to fill in the short
> listings, properly attributed to DK.
Does that mean that City Beat has rights to the Chicago Reader's blurb
catalog? Is there any relationship between City Beat and the Reader?
I remember when that catalog (including a few of my blurbs) turned up in
Stephen Scheuer's TV MOVIES book back in the early 80s, much to the
Reader's chagrin. I think Myron Meisel claimed he sold the blurbs by
mistake.
I haven't read Andy's work lately, but back in the 80s he did not claim
to be an auteurist. I remember him telling me how odd it was to take
over the L. A. Reader critic slot in 1985 and find blurbs from four or
five different regimes with eccentric auteurist biases: he was
especially amused by what he called the "John Huston doesn't know which
way to point a camera" theme in the blurb catalog. - Dan
23
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 9:19pm
Subject: Re: Andy Klein
> Is it safe to say that Kehr stands as one of the last "mainstream"
> critics with an auteurist bent? That's one reason I find it particularly
> regrettable that he's been relegated to essentially a "fourth-stringer" position at
> the Times. Wouldn't it be something of a bona fide auteurist was the lead
> critic over there?
One of the early American auteurists, the estimable Roger Greenspun, was
also a third or fourth stringer for the Times back in the sixties and
seventies. It would probably be hard for an auteurist to be the lead
critic for a big organization like the Times: as Bill points out,
auteurism wasn't ever that broad-based. Still, if anyone had a shot,
you'd think it would be Dave Kehr. He has to be, by far, the auteurist
critic with the broadest support - or am I forgetting someone? - Dan
24
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 9:29pm
Subject: Re: Andy Klein
> One of the early American auteurists, the estimable Roger Greenspun, was
> also a third or fourth stringer for the Times back in the sixties and
> seventies.
He was the second stringer -- under Canby. He wrote a piece about it afterwards in Film Comment...
25
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 9:41pm
Subject: Re: Andy Klein
> He was the second stringer -- under Canby.
Actually it was Eugene Archer, earlier, who was the third or fourth (probably fourth) stringer, right? Was Archer (who influenced Sarris) the first American auteurist? Though I'm not sure if he had much chance to play that role (auteurist) at the Times.
26
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 9:54pm
Subject: Re: Re: Andy Klein
>> He was the second stringer -- under Canby.
>
> Actually it was Eugene Archer, earlier, who was the third or fourth
> (probably fourth) stringer, right? Was Archer (who influenced
> Sarris) the first American auteurist? Though I'm not sure if he had
> much chance to play that role (auteurist) at the Times.
Yeah, I think that's where my number confusion came from.
Sarris always credited Archer for turning him on to the politique. I
think Patrick Bauchau might have been part of that early American auteur
crowd also. - Dan
27
From:
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 5:58pm
Subject: Re: Andy Klein
In a message dated 6/15/03 5:20:26 PM, sallitt@p... writes:
>Still, if anyone had a shot,
>you'd think it would be Dave Kehr. He has to be, by far, the auteurist
>critic with the broadest support - or am I forgetting someone?
I think Kehr is about it. I suppose his auteurist background didn't help him
at all in landing Janet Maslin's slot at the Times after she resigned. Kehr
does good work within the boundaries he has to work with at the Times (and he
still has the occasional great essay in Film Comment), but the guy deserves a
lead position somewhere. It really surprised me when the Times essentially
divided the first-stringer position among three other critics, yet relegated the
more well known and experienced critic to fourth-stringer status.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
28
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 0:10am
Subject: Re: Andy Klein
I keep meaning to arrange an extensive interview with Sarris to figure out the
origins of American auteurism, which I was sort of researching last year--but I
was curious that the auteurism's first and continuing bastion appears to be
New York City. Is this just because more film lovers tend to be found in New
York, or because the sheer volume of film encourages an auteurist
perspective, or neither? It's not really answerable, I guess, but I was curious
on thoughts...
And I say this on my first day back in New York City (though in fact crashing in
Jersey until Friday) after a few weeks in the hinterlands, propititously timed for
all this Lubitsch.
Patrick
-- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> >> He was the second stringer -- under Canby.
> >
> > Actually it was Eugene Archer, earlier, who was the third or fourth
> > (probably fourth) stringer, right? Was Archer (who influenced
> > Sarris) the first American auteurist? Though I'm not sure if he had
> > much chance to play that role (auteurist) at the Times.
>
> Yeah, I think that's where my number confusion came from.
>
> Sarris always credited Archer for turning him on to the politique. I
> think Patrick Bauchau might have been part of that early American auteur
> crowd also. - Dan
29
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 0:55am
Subject: Re: Auteurism's origins (was: Andy Klein)
Patrick Ciccone wrote:
>... I was curious that the auteurism's first and continuing bastion appears to be New York City....
>
Well, New York is more than twice as large as any U.S. city (or at
least, was back then), and it was always the U.S.'s cultural capital. It
has more film screenings because of both of those factors. MoMA was
there early. At the time of their 1964 (I think) Griffith retrospective,
which I attended, such a thing was not imaginable in other cities, and
they sponsored early Bogdanovich series on Hawks and Hitchcock at a time
when no, or almost no, other American city would have.
As the cultural captial, it's also a place where people gravitate to.
That's why so much new art has emerged there. That's why so many
cultural avant-gardes were centered there.
Another factor, of couse, was that Sarris wrote for the VILLAGE VOICE, a
quintessentialy Manhattan newspaper, and one which was a genuine
alternative back then (as opposed to today).
By 1965, when I started running a college film society, there were
already other film societies with an auteurist bent (or at least, soon
after that there were) in different parts of the country. Dave Kehr was
chair of Doc Films at the University of Chicago at some point in the
60s, for example. My friend who went to Yale in 1964 found an auteurist,
or at least a semi-auteurist, running the film society there.
- Fred
30
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 1:00am
Subject: Re: Posthumous-period Preminger?
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> Okay, I can't resist a little self-parody as a way to begin my tenure on the
> new group.
>
> How do people feel about posthumous-period Preminger? That is, his work
> after "The Human Factor"? I hear it's hard to come by...
It's not exactly posthumous Preminger (and it considerably precedes THE HUMAN FACTOR), but it's Preminger that I never knew existed, while he was alive: A few years ago the Museum of Television and Radio screened a kinescope of a live TV show he directed in the early '50s: a trio of playlets by Noel (BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING) Coward, called I think "Tonight at 8:30," all starring Ginger Rogers in a stylistic tour de force (one play features her in a comic music hall performance, another is the source of BRIEF ENCOUNTER). I didn't succeed in seeing it as particularly Premingerian (in a listing I found via Google, a co-director is credited), though certainly effective (it must have been all they could handle just to get these things on and off air on time) but the point is that it exists, and is presumably in the museum's viewing collections in New York and LA. Did he do any others? One of these days I'll find my copy of that Pratley book...
31
From:
Date: Sun Jun 15, 2003 9:25pm
Subject: Re: Re: Posthumous-period Preminger?
In a message dated 6/15/03 9:02:06 PM, monterone@e... writes:
>few years ago the Museum of Television and Radio screened a kinescope of
>a live TV show he directed in the early '50s: a trio of playlets by Noel
>(BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING) Coward, called I think "Tonight at 8:30," all
starring
>Ginger Rogers in a stylistic tour de force (one play features her in a
>comic music hall performance, another is the source of BRIEF ENCOUNTER).
I hadn't a clue about the existence of these - thanks for the information.
The only other "unknown" Preminger (though it isn't really; I just mean that I
don't believe too many have seen it in the States) that I can think of is the
German version of "The Moon Is Blue," with a completely different cast. I saw
some clips in the documentary "Preminger: Anatomy of a Filmmaker." The
American and German versions were shot simultaneously, so I would imagine that they
are virtual replicas of themselves apart from the actors and, obviously,
language.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
32
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 10:19am
Subject: brief Hawks note
From today's TV schedule: due to the unfortunate and recent passing
of Gregory Peck, Turner Classic Movies has cancelled Hawks'
(relatively) rare THE CROWD ROARS in favor of a day-long tribute to
Peck. While I don't wish to speak ill of a respectful programming
decision, the thought crossed my mind that, since most of the Gregory
Peck vehicles showing today are very easy to find on videotape and
DVD (while CROWD is, sadly, not), it might have been nice to hold the
Peck retrospective-on-TV on a different day.
That said, two of those films are really, really good: PORK CHOP
HILL and THE YEARLING; I haven't seen DESIGNING WOMEN (Minnelli) or
THE PARADINE CASE (Hitchcock), so I'm going to record those.
A strange thing, in the short time I've been in New York City -
getting close to two years - I don't think I can remember more than a
single Hawks movie playing at any of the city's various repertory
houses. The one exception, and it's among the very peaks of my NYC
filmgoing experiences, was when a fine 35mm print of RED RIVER was
shown at Symphony Space. I can hardly imagine many film societies or
programmers having something against Hawks; perhaps I'm just
impatient? Or is he too obvious a director to base a series on?
Here's hoping that the upcoming CinemaScope series at Lincoln Center
includes LAND OF THE PHARAOHS - that would be pretty sweet.
Jaime
33
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 1:55pm
Subject: Re: brief Hawks note
> That said, two of those films are really, really good: PORK CHOP
> HILL and THE YEARLING
I've never seen THE YEARLING. But I like PORK CHOP HILL. I've been
waiting for many years for the auteurist community, what's left of it,
to reevaluate Milestone, whom I've always thought was a very worthy
director, and more of a termite than a white elephant. But his
reputation still languishes, as far as I can tell.
In the 80s and 90s auteurists started reevaluating a lot of the
directors in Sarris' Less than Meets the Eye category. Almost everyone
in this category can be considered a personal voice or something close
to it, but there are only two there that I ever really wanted to save
from the fire: Kazan and Milestone. I could never really get with the
rehabilitation programs for Huston, Mamoulian, Wellman, Wilder, Wyler.
> I can hardly imagine many film societies or
> programmers having something against Hawks; perhaps I'm just
> impatient? Or is he too obvious a director to base a series on?
There was a Hawks retro at AMMI not too many years ago, but probably
before you arrived. I imagine it's just a Hawks lull, and not a
programming trend. - Dan
34
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 2:01pm
Subject: Re: Auteurism's origins (was: Andy Klein)
> Well, New York is more than twice as large as any U.S. city (or at
> least, was back then), and it was always the U.S.'s cultural capital. It
> has more film screenings because of both of those factors.
One of the aspects of auteurism that I always liked was its emphasis on
seeing a lot of films. The ethos of auteurism was basically that you
should see everything if you had enough time, and try to find bits of
personal expression whereever they occur. It gets harder as you get
older, but it's a nice idea, and NYC is a good place to implement it.
> By 1965, when I started running a college film society, there were
> already other film societies with an auteurist bent (or at least, soon
> after that there were) in different parts of the country. Dave Kehr was
> chair of Doc Films at the University of Chicago at some point in the
> 60s, for example. My friend who went to Yale in 1964 found an auteurist,
> or at least a semi-auteurist, running the film society there.
So it sounds as if the impact of Sarris' FILM CULTURE guide in 1963 was
pretty much immediate, eh? I remember Rick Thompson telling me once
that he and his friends never got used to THE AMERICAN CINEMA book,
because they'd already memorized the page numbers that went with the
director's writeups in the FILM CULTURE issue. - Dan
35
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 3:00pm
Subject: Re: brief Hawks note
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Jaime N. Christley" wrote:
> A strange thing, in the short time I've been in New York City -
> getting close to two years - I don't think I can remember more than a
> single Hawks movie playing at any of the city's various repertory
> houses.
I guess there hasn't been much, but I saw the memorable BALL OF FIRE in the Film Forum's comedy series last year, and there were a few others in the series.
http://www.filmforum.com/comedy.html
36
From: Fred Camper
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 3:38pm
Subject: Re: Auteurism's origins (was: Andy Klein)
Dan:
"So it sounds as if the impact of Sarris' FILM CULTURE guide in 1963 was
pretty much immediate..."
Pretty much. I know when I bought it it was a "back issue" -- but only
by a year, in 1964. We nicknamed it the "Bible," and I think that was
its intent. Annoyed with how right he was, for me, about most of the
directors in his first two categories, I somehow put off Borzage for a
couple of years, only to find Sarris was right about him too.
Shortly after getting the issue, I saw Sarris introduce two films by a
director I had never seen anything of before, Samuel Fuller. They were
"Forty Guns" and "Shock Corridor." I was 16. "Forty Guns" didn't
register that much at the time, but I *loved* "Shock Corridor," at the
same time also recognizing how outrageously junky it would considered by
the mainstream film culture at the time. In fact, the friend I saw it
with hated it, thought it was utter junk, et cetera (he later came
around). I could have imagined back then inviting an English professor
with an interest in film who would have admired Bergman and Fellini to
see it as an example of the true "film art" -- and how totally appalled
he would have been. I mean, among other things, it's not exactly a
socially sensitive treatment or responsibly nuanced treatment of the
problems of the mentally ill, eh? As Tom Gunning said recently, part of
auteurism in the early years was "being able to shock people at
parties." That was never a motivation for me -- I loved "Shock Corridor"
as cinema, as I know he did -- because I didn't even go to parties, but
the point is that auteurists had to know how far out of the mainstream,
and how absurd, their tastes would seem to most people. A few years
later I found two auteurist friends had virtually memorized its script,
and I'd guess its outrageousness was part of what they loved, as do I
("Nymphos!" "Such as sour note, John." "I like the rain."). Because this
was in the period before outrageously bad or "transgressive" films were
thought of as legitimate categories, something like "Shock Corridor" or
"The Naked Kiss" were good ways to separate auteurists from the rest --
it was kind of hard to like them for the "wrong reasons."
Sarris's introduction to those films, by the way, was very helpful to me
at the time. He talked about how Fuller talked and gestured about
putting his camera "here...and here," and gestured with his hands to
show the blunt directness of Fuller's approach, an insight perhaps most
amazingly realized in the opening shot of "Fixed Bayonets."
When the "American Cinema" book came out I was very disappointed. It
seemed to me that every change he made, in the writing and in the
rankings, was a change for the worse. So I still recommend the original
issue over the book.
There's a really excellent appraisal of and appreciation of Sarris, and
of his writing in that issue, by our group member Patrick Ciccone, at
http://www.columbiaspectator.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/04/06/3c74090d79501?in_archive=1
-Fred
37
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 6:38pm
Subject: Re: brief Hawks note
Hawks titles that are available through repertory channels are few
these days. I once struggled to find a non-archival 16mm of SCARFACE
(finally found it). It's been a while, but RIO BRAVO was only one
serviceable print, kinda beat-up. I never looked for THE BIG SKY, but I
can only assume that's a rare one. Of course you compare Hawks' rep
status with even Anthony Mann or Robert Aldrich and you can't really
complain...
Gabe
38
From:
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 3:41pm
Subject: Re: brief Hawks note
In a message dated 6/16/03 2:39:23 PM, cklinger@e... writes:
>I never looked for THE BIG SKY, but I
>can only assume that's a rare one.
I believe "The Big Sky" played as part of a Jim Jarmusch retrospective at the
Wexner Center in 2001 (the film is one of Jarmusch's favorites.)
Unfortunately, I missed it, so I can't comment about what kind of condition the print was
in.
How frequently does "Bringing Up Baby" show up? I caught it about four years
ago and considered myself fairly lucky (even more so since it was my very
first viewing of the film.)
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
39
From: markp43081
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 7:52pm
Subject: Re: brief Hawks note
THE ROAD TO GLORY (1936) played at the Wexner Center in Columbus last
year. It was part of the Guy Maddin retrospective and was paired
with ARCHANGEL at the director's choosing, I believe.
Mark
40
From:
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 5:27pm
Subject: Vidor
I hope that some of you were able to catch the King Vidor mini-"marathon"
that TCM aired late last night. They kicked it off with "The Crowd," followed by
"The Champ" and "Street Scene." (I recorded the last of those, since it was
on so late and since I've never seen it before; I'm not sure what kind of
reputation it has, but I hope to watch it some time this week.)
They also re-aired a wonderful hour-long interview with Vidor, done in the
early '70s as part of Richard Schickel's "The Men Who Made the Movies" series.
Though the documentary itself erroneously names "Solomon and Sheeba" as
Vidor's last movie, TCM's on-air "host" made note afterwards of the avant-garde
films Vidor did late in life, long after he'd retired from Hollywood filmmaking.
Kudos to TCM for getting the facts right.
Jaime, I've found that TCM tends to reschedule films they cancel. I remember
I was a little annoyed when they canceled a letterboxed showing of George
Cukor's "Travels With My Aunt" to make room for a day-long tribute to Stanley
Kramer. But I believe "Travels" showed up again the next month. I'd keep my
eyes peeled for "The Crowd Roars."
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
41
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 9:59pm
Subject: Re: brief Hawks note
Gabe:
> serviceable print, kinda beat-up. I never looked for THE BIG SKY,
but I
> can only assume that's a rare one.
On the Mobius board, last October, someone says that's one of
Scorsese's major restoration projects:
"A blurb in Daily Variety about 3 years ago said that Martin Scorsese
had secured funding to restore 3 features - BAREFOOT CONTESSA, THE
BIG SKY, and a third I forget." [turned out it was FAIR WIND TO JAVA
(1953), an adventure movie starring Fred MacMurray]
Jaime
42
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 10:03pm
Subject: Re: Vidor
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> I hope that some of you were able to catch the King Vidor mini-
"marathon"
> that TCM aired late last night. They kicked it off with "The
Crowd," followed by
> "The Champ" and "Street Scene." (I recorded the last of those,
since it was
> on so late and since I've never seen it before; I'm not sure what
kind of
> reputation it has, but I hope to watch it some time this week.)
(I hope Fred doesn't get irritated with all this talk of classic
films being shown on TV.)
It's funny you mention this, I caught a glimpse of STREET SCENE, late
in the movie (I'd meant to tape it but did not), and I thought it
looked pretty amazing, for reasons other than the fast cutting and
expressive close-ups (although they certainly contributed to my awe),
and I planned to ask about it on the board. Has anyone seen it?
Jaime
43
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 10:09pm
Subject: Re: Re: Vidor
> It's funny you mention this, I caught a glimpse of STREET SCENE, late
> in the movie (I'd meant to tape it but did not), and I thought it
> looked pretty amazing, for reasons other than the fast cutting and
> expressive close-ups (although they certainly contributed to my awe),
> and I planned to ask about it on the board. Has anyone seen it?
Yeah. I found it interesting, but there was something pointed about the
subject matter that felt a little artificial to me. Vidor is an
excellent director, but my experience is that if I find the subject
matter too schematic, Vidor is unlikely to make it less so.
Someone recently told me that Rice's play was a loose adaptation of
Gorky's THE LOWER DEPTHS.
THE CHAMP is definitely my favorite of the three Vidor films that just
played. - Dan
44
From:
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 10:48pm
Subject: Re: Auteurism's Origins
Dan wrote:
> Yeah, I think that's where my number confusion came from.
>
> Sarris always credited Archer for turning him on to the
politique. I
> think Patrick Bauchau might have been part of that early American
auteur
> crowd also.
Wollen's piece "Who the Hell Is Howard Hawks?" has some worthwhile
information regarding this, though still too vague to count as an
actual history of a critical community. Below are some passages
from the section where he traces the trajectory of Hawks' critical
rejuvenation.
- Paul
P.S. So who the hell is "hotlove666"? Does he have a name?
***********************
Outside France, however, there was still a very long way to go. In
his book, _You Ain't Heard Nothing Yet_, the American cinephile
Andrew Sarris -- also author of _Confessions of a Cultist_ --
describes how he received a letter from his friend and mentor
Eugene Archer, asking plaintively, "Who the Hell Is Howard Hawks?"
Archer was a reviewer for the _New York Times_, now in Paris on a
Fulbright scholarship and spending much of his time studying the
new _Cahiers du cinema_ and queuing up for screenings at the
Cinematheque, which had now moved on to larger premises, in the Rue
d'Ulm on the Left Bank. Sarris writes:
"In the Paris of 1957, Archer had been shocked to discover that the
Cahiers critics were unimpressed by Ford, Huston, Kazan, Stevens,
Wyler, and Zinneman, up against their sacred cows, Hoawrd Hawks and
Alfred Hitchcock. Archer and I thought we knew all about
Hitchcock. He was supposed to be fun, but not entirely serious.
But Hawks? Who was he? And why were the French taking him
seriously?"
The progressive internationalization of the cult of Howard Hawks
now began, with Archer and Sarris's search for an answer to that
question.
...
The underlying problem, for a fledgling auteurist, was that Hawks's
films were largely unavailable. The ageing prints that Manny
Farber had seen at the old "Lyric-Pix-Victory' theatres and written
about in "Underground Films" were dropping out of circulation --
films for the thirties and early forties from SCARFACE to THE BIG
SLEEP. It was not until 1961 that Archer (now back in New York),
Sarris and Peter Bogdanovich drew up a list of Hawks films they
especially wanted to see (or re-see) and took it to Dan Talbot, who
ran the New Yorker theatre, persuading him to launch a "Forgotten
Film" season, screening twenty-eight classics, eleven of them by
Hawks. "I saw all the Hawks films and was blown away," Bogdanovich
later reminisced. "One Saturday we showed THE BIG SLEEP and TO
HAVE AND HAVE NOT, and we had lines round the block." Hawksianism
was on the road at last.
..
As a result of Eugene Archer's Fulbright, Hawks had become the
rallying-point for a new generation of cultists turned critics...
..
Following the success of the New Yorker's Hawks screenings,
Bogdanovich suggested to the Musuem of Modern Art that they should
now put on a full-scale retrospective. As it turned out, Hawks was
then releasing his new film HATARI, and Richard Griffith, at the
Museum, agreed to hold a retrospective if Bogdanovich could get
Paramount to pay for it as part of their launch campaign.
Bogdanovich proved persuasive and the retrospective took place in
1962, with a monograph prepared by Bogdanovich. It then travelled
across the Atlantic to both Paris and London, where it stimulated a
special issue of _Cahiers du cinema_ and a Hawks issue of _Movie_
magazine, containing a crucial article by Robin Wood to which Lee
Russell subsequently responded in _New Left Review_. [I have no
idea why Wollen doesn't acknowledge what everyone knows: Russell
was Wollen's pseudonym.] My own Hawks-based attempt to turn
the "auteur theory" into a genuine theory followed in 1968 when
_Signs and Meaning in the Cinema_ was published. In fact, my own
interest in Hawks stemmed originally from Paris, through my friend
Patrick Bauchau, who knew both Archer and Sarris well and formed a
crucial link between cinephiles in Paris, New York and London.
(For those interested, he appears with Eugene Archer in Eric
Rohmer's film LA COLLECTIONEUSE.) It was under their influence
that I frequented the Cinematheque in the Rue d'Ulm after leaving
university, and began to develop from cultist to critic to theorist.
*****************
45
From:
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 10:01pm
Subject: Re: Re: Auteurism's Origins
In a message dated 6/16/03 6:50:29 PM, pwf2006@c... writes:
>P.S. So who the hell is "hotlove666"? Does he have a name?
I hope Bill doesn't mind that I say this is Bill Krohn. Bill, why don'tchya
introduce yourself to our little auteurist collective? :)
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
46
From:
Date: Mon Jun 16, 2003 11:00pm
Subject: Re: Re: Vidor
In a message dated 6/16/03 6:11:12 PM, sallitt@p... writes:
>THE CHAMP is definitely my favorite of the three Vidor films that just
>played.
I really like that one a lot too. In the Schickel documentary, Vidor (who I
found to be an extremely thoughtful and eloquent speaker here) commented that
he was relieved to have the backbone of a strong, surefire story in "The
Champ" so that he could spend time on little touches and detail work. For example,
the scene where Jackie Cooper climbs on to the rooftop was "improvised,"
something thought up by Vidor on the spot.
The Vidor I'm most interested in seeing right now is "Our Daily Bread." The
clips excerpted in the documentary look phenomenal.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
47
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Tue Jun 17, 2003 4:25am
Subject: Re: Auteurism's Origins
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, pwf2006@c... wrote:
>
> Wollen's piece "Who the Hell Is Howard Hawks?" has some worthwhile
> information regarding this, though still too vague to count as an
> actual history of a critical community. Below are some passages
> from the section where he traces the trajectory of Hawks' critical
> rejuvenation.
> ***********************
>
> Sarris writes:
>
> "In the Paris of 1957, Archer had been shocked to discover that the
> Cahiers critics were unimpressed by Ford, Huston, Kazan, Stevens,
> Wyler, and Zinneman, up against their sacred cows, Hoawrd Hawks and
> Alfred Hitchcock. Archer and I thought we knew all about
> Hitchcock. He was supposed to be fun, but not entirely serious.
> But Hawks? Who was he? And why were the French taking him
> seriously?"
>
> The progressive internationalization of the cult of Howard Hawks
> now began, with Archer and Sarris's search for an answer to that
> question.
>
> ...
>
> The underlying problem, for a fledgling auteurist, was that Hawks's
> films were largely unavailable.
All this might seem to suggest that Sarris had never seen or heard of Hawks. In fact Sarris explains, a bit ambiguously, after the sentences quoted by Wollen: "I had seen most of Hawks's films up to that time, mostly as revivals, but these were favorite film revivals, not Howard Hawks revivals, at least not until Dan Talbot's pioneering Hawks series in 1961."
Looking for this Wollen article on the Web, I found instead an interview with him at
http://www.belkin-gallery.ubc.ca/lastcall/current/page1.html
in which he actually goes so far as to refer to "Andrew Sarris and Eugene Archer's special issue of Film Culture"!
48
From:
Date: Tue Jun 17, 2003 1:21am
Subject: Re: Re: Auteurism's Origins
In a message dated 6/17/03 12:26:48 AM, monterone@e... writes:
>Looking for this Wollen article on the Web, I found instead an interview
>with him at
>http://www.belkin-gallery.ubc.ca/lastcall/current/page1.html
>in which he actually goes so far as to refer to "Andrew Sarris and Eugene
>Archer's special issue of Film Culture"!
In "Who the Devil Made It," Bogdanovich talks about how, while Sarris wrote
and signed the Film Culture issue alone, "Archer's input was understood." He
goes on to write about all the notoriety and fame the issue brought Sarris,
while Archer kind of faded into obscurity - despite all the work he'd done for
the cause.
If a definitive history of auteurism in America is ever written, I'm sure
that Eugene Archer will emerge as a major figure.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
49
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Tue Jun 17, 2003 1:34pm
Subject: Preminger's wife...
will appear at the NYC Alliance Francaise screening of Saint Joan on June
24th, according to their programmer.
PWC
50
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Jun 17, 2003 3:28pm
Subject:
Two quick points of information -
UCLA has restored the director's cut* of BIG SKY. It can alo be seen
(in what I assume is not as good a print) on Cahiers du cinema's DVD
(distributed by Montparnasse Video), for those who can play that
zone. Scorsese's print, which has dupe-y added scenes, played on TCM
a while back.
Also, members planning to see/resee Paradine Case now that it's being
screened re: Peck (I saw it mentioned in one post) may want to check
out my Guest Editor entries on the recutting of the film by Selznick
at the MacGuffin web site. I like the film we have, but the evidence
shows that the film Selznick ruined could have been wonderful.
*Yes, it is the director's cut, not a trash-bin "resurrection" - the
film was recut after Variety reviewed it and suggested removing 20
minutes, something it sometimes did in those days. (They also
suggested it for Objective: Burma, after a rave review!) Hawks
disavowed the recut version. In his book Todd McCarthy missed the
significance of the restored scenes when they played on TCM - they
are important, particularly re: Hunnicutt's character. Also,
the "firefight" in the woods, a muted love scene between Douglas and
Threatt, and the initial bonding of Douglas and Martin, which is very
nice (turns out that's a corpse Douglas is transporting).
Bill Krohn (aka hotlove666)
51
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jun 17, 2003 4:39pm
Subject: Re: Re: Vidor
> The Vidor I'm most interested in seeing right now is "Our Daily Bread." The
> clips excerpted in the documentary look phenomenal.
My favorite Vidor is actually the little-known THE WEDDING NIGHT, a very
nice drama from around the same time as OUR DAILY BREAD. The latter
film definitely has good things in it...to me, the social significance
of the project gets in the way a little bit. - Dan
52
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Jun 17, 2003 4:47pm
Subject: Re: (unknown)
> *Yes, it is the director's cut, not a trash-bin "resurrection" - the
> film was recut after Variety reviewed it and suggested removing 20
> minutes, something it sometimes did in those days.
Hawks used to like to tell the story of how the distributors insisted on
the cuts so they could squeeze in an extra show per day, and that the
cuts killed the film's commercial appeal. Some have questioned the
accuracy of that story.
> Hawks
> disavowed the recut version.
He was also unhappy with the casting: he says that Kirk Douglas was a
great heavy but didn't work as a hero.
THE BIG SKY seems to divide Hawks fans, but I love it and think it is a
successful attempt to execute some variations on the Hawks story while
keeping much of his characteristic tone. If I were taking my top ten
Hawks films to a desert island, as David Thomson fantasized, THE BIG SKY
would definitely make the cut. It's hard for me to tell how much
difference the restored scenes make, because I so admire the original.
I do remember thinking the beginning played out better in the long
version. - Dan
53
From: markp43081
Date: Tue Jun 17, 2003 5:47pm
Subject: European cut of "Family Plot"?
I've been catching up on late Hitchcock recently and watched FAMILY
PLOT for the first time. While perusing Truffaut's seminal book
about the master, I noticed his claim that the European cut was
longer by twenty minutes. In the Laurent Bouzereau doc on the DVD,
Bruce Dern even mentions the film being two hours and twenty minutes
long.
So am I to assume that Universal's DVD is the American cut of the
film? If so, is the longer version available anywhere? I don't see
why Universal couldn't have included both versions as Warner Bros.
did for the STRANGERS ON A TRAIN disc.
Mark
54
From:
Date: Tue Jun 17, 2003 11:57pm
Subject: Clara's Heart
I recently had the chance to view Mulligan's "Clara's Heart" again. I know
it's one of Fred's favorite pictures - and that Mulligan has something of a
following among the people contributing here - so I thought I'd post some random
impressions. (I reveal a few plot details, so those who haven't seen the film
yet may want to skip this.)
In terms of the film's mise en scene, I don't know if Mulligan has ever been
better. Two shots stick in my mind as emblematic of the film's visual
sophistication. There's a long take of David's parents arguing, talking to each
other from two different rooms, which Mulligan shoots from such a perspective so
that there is literally a wall dividing them. This shot is heartbreaking in
the way that it plants the seeds for the dissolution of their marriage; the fact
that it's done in a single take emphasizes the uncomfortable pauses and
silences in their arguing. There's also a whip pan (I think), done on a long lens,
which pans between David's house and a bouy out in the lake; the long lens
gives the impression that each is equally far apart, unattainable, in a sense.
This is the stuff of a master, I think.
The film is very moving, yet also restrained and dignified, never treacly.
As we know from "To Kill a Mockingbird," "Summer of '42," "The Man in the
Moon," etc., Mulligan is incredibly skilled with actors and here he finesses great
work out of all involved. I think "The Man in the Moon" remains my favorite
Mulligan, but I thank Fred for turning me onto this relatively ignored late
work. I certainly want to see it again soon.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
55
From:
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 0:26am
Subject: Re: (unknown)
In a message dated 6/17/03 12:51:32 PM, sallitt@p... writes:
>Hawks used to like to tell the story of how the distributors insisted on
>the cuts so they could squeeze in an extra show per day, and that the
>cuts killed the film's commercial appeal. Some have questioned the
>accuracy of that story.
Has anyone ever determined the veracity of Hawks' claims that Universal cut
somewhere around 30 minutes out of "Man's Favorite Sport" after test
screenings? I don't have Todd McCarthy's bio handy (perhaps he addresses this), but
I've always found it very hard to believe given how leisurely paced the film is
in its current incarnation.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
56
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 4:33am
Subject: BIG SKY follow-up
So I first saw this around five years ago on TCM then last year at the Action
Christine theater in Paris--in both cases, I believe the runtime was 2h20
minutes, so is this the director's cut?
And that shot of the carcass catapulted into the water, man...
PWC
57
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 5:09am
Subject: Re: (unknown)
> Has anyone ever determined the veracity of Hawks' claims that Universal cut
> somewhere around 30 minutes out of "Man's Favorite Sport" after test
> screenings? I don't have Todd McCarthy's bio handy (perhaps he addresses this), but
> I've always found it very hard to believe given how leisurely paced the film is
> in its current incarnation.
McCarthy did the research and found that 25 minutes were cut from the
film in two stages. (Hawks apparently claimed that as much as 40
minutes had been cut.) McCarthy does raise the possibility that Hawks
might not have minded the cuts as much at the time as he did later: one
participant claims that Hawks was still enthusiastic about the film
after the first round of cuts. - Dan
58
From: Fred Camper
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 5:15am
Subject: Re: Auteurism
Sorry, guys, I've been too busy arguing with the Philistines over at CM
(joke, joke) to post the more interesting things here, but I intend to
trot out my own favorite Vidor and other things soon.
Meanwhile those of you interested in auteurism in general might want to
read my recent exchange with Bilge, CM 28115 and 28119: his post
allowed me to make some points about the kinds of abuse auteurists and
auteurism have virtually always had to suffer.
- Fred
59
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 5:15am
Subject: Re: BIG SKY follow-up
> So I first saw this around five years ago on TCM then last year at the Action
> Christine theater in Paris--in both cases, I believe the runtime was 2h20
> minutes, so is this the director's cut?
The long cut is 138 minutes, the short one 122. - Dan
60
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 7:13am
Subject: Natalka Poltavka
The East Coast premiere of this recently recovered* Ukrainian
operetta co-directed by Ulmer and Vasily Avramenko (the first of
Ulmer's ethnic films) was as well attended as the same event would
have been at Roger and Howard's in the old days - but we were a bit
lost in the vast auditorium of the Egyptian Theatre (aka The American
Cinematheque). I found the film astonishing - much better than
Cossacks in Exile. It taught me a lesson about Ulmer: The early PRCs
are minor because he didn't have power at the studio yet, not because
of budget. Here he had very little money, but total control of the
mise en scene (VA directed the dancers, singers and actors, but Ulmer
rewrote the script to conform to his own visual plan), and it's a
major film. In other words, he didn't need means; all he needed was a
free hand.
PS - I believe Lee Sanders and Joe Kaufman agreed with me about the
film. The Ukrainians in the audience definitely loved it.
PPS - Arianne hopes it will be shown on TCM next year during the EGU
100th birthday festival.
*by Michael Friend, former head of the Academy Archives.
61
From: Rick Curnutte
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 2:15pm
Subject: Re: Clara's Heart
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
> This is the stuff of a master, I think.
>
> The film is very moving, yet also restrained and dignified, never
treacly.
Really? I've always kind of thought it was a bit treacly, and that
Whoopi's big revelation conflicted with the rest of the film. I
still liked it a bit, but felt it was a bit uneven.
I, too, feel that THE MAN IN THE MOON is Mulligan's best film. TO
KILL A MOCKINGBIRD broke some serious ground, but TMITM is more
perfectly realized.
Rick
62
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 2:21pm
Subject: Re: Natalka Poltavka
Bill Krohn wrote:
> The East Coast premiere of this recently recovered* Ukrainian
> operetta co-directed by Ulmer and Vasily Avramenko (the first of
> Ulmer's ethnic films) was as well attended as the same event would
> have been at Roger and Howard's in the old days - but we were a bit
> lost in the vast auditorium of the Egyptian Theatre (aka The
American
> Cinematheque).
I'm confused - was this a different print from the one they showed in
New York at the Ulmer symposium last October? I saw it there and,
sadly, was unimpressed, though I'd be willing to give it another shot
with this kind of praise in mind, should the film ever resurface
around me again. What does Ulmer specifically do that's exciting or
intriguing? The scenes generally felt of one piece, but I couldn't
pick up on much of interest.
--Zach
63
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 2:37pm
Subject: Re: Natalka Poltavka
> In other words, he didn't need means; all he needed was a
> free hand.
Wasn't GREEN FIELDS shot for next to nothing? I would certainly call
that one of Ulmer's best. I remember hearing that that film was shot at
an amazing 1.25:1 film stock ratio, which, if true, basically means that
Ulmer cut the slates off and otherwise used every bit of footage he shot.
Bill - did you mean "West Coast" premiere instead of "East Coast"? - Dan
64
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 4:13pm
Subject: NP
Yes, Dan, we haven't moved the Cinematheque. I think Green Fields was
made for a little more than Natalka. In any case, I don't see a lot
of shimmer from the reflectors in GF, which was still happening in NP
(and not, as I recall, in Thunder Over Texas). But the shot from
behind of the guy in the wagon wouldn't have been technically
possible when he was doing NP, for example.
My point was that I consider early PRCs (My Son the Hero, Girls in
Chains)to be minor (even though intensely personal) Ulmers and
expected the same with NP.* My surprise at its moments of stunning
originality (especially the chase scene at the end, which erases the
memory of many longeurs at the beginning) then provoked me to remark
that, after all, even something like Moon Over Harlem, where he had
3000 and short ends, is better than, say, Genevieve de Brabant, where
he had more money than all the ethnic films "put together," but
didn't get to edit it.
*PS That doesn't include Tomorrow We Live, which was a negative
pickup for PRC.
65
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 4:16pm
Subject:
Yes, it's the print that was shown at the symposium. See my previous
posting for a bit of my defense. If you don't know the ethnic films
pretty well, they take some getting used to. This one is way less
slick than the Yiddish ones, if it's not an oxymoron to use "slick"
in this context.
66
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 8:17pm
Subject: Family Plot
To the best of my knowledge there is nothing to the "longer cut"
story.
Bill Krohn (hotlove666)
67
From: Bjorn Olson
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 8:20pm
Subject: Genre Auteurs
Hey Auteurist buds,
I'm wondering what the general group feeling is over genre auteurs.
Basically I think we can split them up into two groups; those
working in the mainstream, and those not.
My auteuism, when it shows up is usually related to genre stuff.
Cronenberg and Verhoeven are two of my favourite directors, and I
think I appreciate what some consider their weaker works (EXISTENZ
and HOLLOW MAN are two good examples) because of how they fit into
their body of work.
I've always been interested in genre films, and their badass
quality, but I haven't seen any discussion of genre auteurs in here
thusfar, nor have they popped up much in Cinemasters.
So what do you guys think of filmakers like Ferarra, Raimi, Burton,
Verhoeven, Cronenberg, DePalma and others working in the mainstream,
but injecting a definte sense of personality into even their "hired
gun" projects? What about earlier exploitation filmmakers like
Meyer, Corman, Franco, and to a lesser extent, people like HG Lewis,
Doris Wishman and Andy Milligan? Are they respected as auteurs at
all? What about people like Tobe Hooper and George Romero who
started with revolutionary works, and then (supposedly) descended
into utter dreck?
Though I'd post something of slight substance before I go back into
lurk mode.
--Bjorn.
68
From: hotlove666
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 8:43pm
Subject: Genre auteurs
Two answers - you pick which meaning of "genre" you intended:
1. In the broadest sense, genres include westerns and war
movies as well as horror movies and kung fu flicks: any set of
story conventions that pull in an audience that loves them. In that
sense, I think the very word "auteur" is dependent on the concept
of genre to some extent, because one of the first things that
helps you spot Nick Ray's name, say, is the huge difference
between Johnny Guitar and Shane. Some of the classical
directors actually had their own genres they called home: Ford
made a lot of westerns, Hitchcock, almost nothing but suspense
films. Someone like Hawks went the other way, by "being
Hawks" whether he was making a western, a detective story, a
scifi film, a comedy, etc. In each of these cases the genre is part
of what the director's "signature" appears against. In the special
cases like Hitchcock, an auteur's influence can reciprocally
shape the genre.
If that's what you mean by "genre auteur," yes in spades to all
your questions.: It's part of what "auteur" means.
2. "Genre" has also become a synonym for horror-scifi-martial
arts: the films covered in Video Watchdog. There is no question
that these genres have their own "Fords" and "Hitchcocks," and
that anyone with an eye can tell a Bava from a Franco. So again,
yes.
My question is: Has the relationship between auteurs and
genres evolved since the classical period, or has it basically
stayed the same? What about directors that don't "do" genres, or
can't? Has that breed also been with us from the start? Is it
LESS propitious for producing auteurs than the genre system?
Genres were originally an extension of the studio system, and
asking about whether genres and auteurs still function together
in the same way they once did leads to the bigger question of
whether the Hollywood studio system is still propitious to the
production of auteurs, as it was until the 60s. Is the
mushrooming of "genre auteurs" who make exclusively horror
and scifi a compensation for the loss of the framework that
made auteurism possible? A lot of these directors are indies,
and The Genre, for them, seems to have replaced The Studio in
some ways - as a source of production funding ("genres" sell to
a reliable audience), but also as an esthetic constraint and
framework for the expression of an artistic vision.
69
From: Rick Curnutte
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 8:46pm
Subject: Re: Genre Auteurs
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Bjorn Olson"
wrote:
> Hey Auteurist buds,
>
> I'm wondering what the general group feeling is over genre
auteurs.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I've always been a big fan of
John Carpenter's. He's had some duds, for sure (GHOSTS OF MARS,
ESCAPE FROM L.A., MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN), but more often than
not, he captivates and thrills me.
My favorites are HALLOWEEN, ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, THE THING, IN
THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, but I also feel pretty favorable about THE
FOG, ESCAPE FROM N.Y., BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, THEY LIVE, and
even parts of VAMPIRES.
To me, he represents a prime example of how someone can work in the
genre field, but still play around a bit with form (excitable in BIG
TROUBLE and THEY LIVE, somber in IN THE MOUTH and HALLOWEEN).
So when it comes to genre stuff, he's one of the best IMO.
I also value Hooper, Romero, Cronenberg, Burton, and many of the
others you mentioned.
Rick
70
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 9:25pm
Subject: Re: Genre Auteurs
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Rick Curnutte"
wrote:
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Bjorn Olson"
> wrote:
> > Hey Auteurist buds,
> >
> > I'm wondering what the general group feeling is over genre
> auteurs.
>
>
> I'm probably in the minority here, but I've always been a big fan
of
> John Carpenter's. He's had some duds, for sure (GHOSTS OF MARS,
> ESCAPE FROM L.A., MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN), but more often than
> not, he captivates and thrills me.
>
> My favorites are HALLOWEEN, ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13, THE THING, IN
> THE MOUTH OF MADNESS, but I also feel pretty favorable about THE
> FOG, ESCAPE FROM N.Y., BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA, THEY LIVE, and
> even parts of VAMPIRES.
I'm writing a long post right now on something else, but I'm a huge
Carpenter partisan. He's got the turkeys you mentioned (although I
like GHOSTS), but my favorites beyond the obvious are PRINCE OF
DARKNESS and CHRISTINE, the latter was especially surprising since it
seems to have no rep at all except as a late-night/Saturday-morning-
TV horror flick - hell, even PRINCE played at Lincoln Center last
year. For a director who's often praised for his work with 2.35:1
anamorphic widescreen, CHRISTINE has some of his most striking
imagery.
I'm kind of on the fence w/HALLOWEEN, it's certainly his most
efficient work, formally, but even as I forgive the wretched acting,
its message seems vague and vaguely troublesome: Dave Kehr went so
far as to read it as a Puritanical statement on sexuality and death
(or something). It's easy to read it that way - SCREAM does, with
the "heroine lives because she abstains, the others die" theory, and
you've got the knife as the phallus (yawn), but something about the
neatness of that theory, coupled with the brutal dispassion in the
way Michael Myers murders each of the teens (there doesn't seem to be
any charge or meaningful or sexual anger about the murders), doesn't
sit right with me. I'll have to think about it some more...
THEY LIVE is very good, a little hurried in the last half hour but
the Reagen-era satire is beautiful: clear, simple, and pissed off.
I always have to chuckle a little bit when I consider how (pro
wrestler) Roddy Piper gives one of the warmest and most subtle
performances in a Carpenter movie, even after he turns into an action
figure. His first few scenes, with that bitter (but optimistic)
smile of his, are great.
Jaime
71
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 9:38pm
Subject: Re: Genre Auteurs
Bjorn, I was actually toying with a topic similar to your post.
> My auteuism, when it shows up is usually related to genre stuff.
> Cronenberg and Verhoeven are two of my favourite directors, and I
> think I appreciate what some consider their weaker works (EXISTENZ
> and HOLLOW MAN are two good examples) because of how they fit into
> their body of work.
I like both Verhoeven and Cronenberg, and think EXISTENZ and HOLLOW
MAN are both very fine films. Disclaimer - I have not yet seen some
key works by these guys, including Verhoeven's Dutch work and NAKED
LUNCH by Cronenberg.
Verhoeven without a doubt has a personality that, slowly, is gaining
more respect. A mean-spirited satirist who reflects on his own (and
sometimes his presumed audience's) misanthropy, SHOWGIRLS and
STARSHIP TROOPERS are to me bright spots in Nineties Hollywood cinema
that suggest a commercial universe that takes itself seriously enough
only to arrive at an autocritique.
Cronenberg is probably a bit deeper and more sophisticated than
Verhoeven (VIDEODROME is my particular favorite, though he's
definitely made other worthwhile films). He's due for a few
screenings by me soon, though - I think it's been quite a while since
I've seen something new by him.
> So what do you guys think of filmakers like Ferarra, Raimi,
Burton,
> Verhoeven, Cronenberg, DePalma and others working in the
mainstream,
> but injecting a definte sense of personality into even their "hired
> gun" projects?
Fun! Ferrara & De Palma are two of the finest working American
filmmakers for my money. Ferrara's apparent total lack of discipline
would probably fall to pieces with other filmmakers, but he's so good
at drawing out powerful performances that his films often feel as
though he's destroying the genre type and revivifying it as a non-
genre film.
I came around to De Palma last year with one film or another (MISSION
TO MARS I think), and became convinced that he was a major presence
when I saw CARLITO'S WAY. Though much more thoroughly pop-centric, I
believe that De Palma does with classical American cinema what Godard
did in the Sixties. He's concerned with looking as both a sexual and
a political act, he's always got himself working on a bunch of
imbricated layers. (Somewhat vague spoliers for FEMME FATALE ahead!)
FEMME FATALE struck me as very fun and very interesting all the way
through, but the moment it really seemed truly great to me was once I
realized that its shock twist (in conjunction with the dominant moods
and tones before, during, and after the segments) filtered everything
through the consciousness of Laure Ash, and thus gave her the
psychological-sexual trait of (chiefly) masochism - and consequently
transferred us into the consciousness of one of cinema's most opaque
archetypes, without us initially knowing it.
(The coolest examination of femme fatale psychology before this, to
my knowledge, was John Brahm's amazing film THE LOCKET, from 1946.)
I'm more mixed on Burton & Raimi; I admire a lot of things in Burton
but don't know that he's made a great film. I probably like ED WOOD
the most. Raimi is also quite talented but his appeal on more than a
polite level escapes me. I change my mind about his films usually
whenever I might revisit one, but at the moment I'd say his strongest
is A SIMPLE PLAN.
Here are a few other genre filmmakers who've made at least one really
interesting genre film - John McTiernan (very competent guy, not
exactly an artist but a workman with an interesting coherence to the
way his body of work plays), Renny Harlin (DRIVEN is such a nice film
to watch), and perhaps especially John Milius (a reactionary, sure,
but an illuminating one - CONAN THE BARBARIAN is a truly excellent
film for instance).
And as Rick and Jaime have pointed out, John Carpenter is clearly
worth mentioning. GHOSTS OF MARS was a neglected favorite of 2001,
as well. Kent Jones has a highly intriguing write-up on the
filmmaker available here -
http://www.theofficialjohncarpenter.com/pages/press/filmcomment0199.ht
ml
And though he's not exactly disreputable, but for the people here who
don't know this already, I do think that Clint Eastwood is
Hollywood's best filmmaker of the last 20-30 years.
> What about earlier exploitation filmmakers like
> Meyer, Corman, Franco, and to a lesser extent, people like HG
> Lewis, Doris Wishman and Andy Milligan? Are they respected as
> auteurs at all?
I think that this area of interest rarely coincides with the tastes
of self-identifying auteurists - it's more squarely "cult" - but I
don't think auteurists begrudge others the serious consideration of
names like these. The art-erotica movement is pretty interesting to
me, though. My very limited experience with Russ Meyer isn't
positive, but my very limited experience with (for example) Radley
Metzger is very enthusiastic - I think THE LICKERISH QUARTET is a
masterpiece. I'm not joking and would be willing to write on it in a
little more detail if anyone wanted. I'm also intrigued by Tinto
Brass though I've never seen his films, and CALIGULA's reputation
aside.
> What about people like Tobe Hooper and George Romero who
> started with revolutionary works, and then (supposedly) descended
> into utter dreck?
Hooper has his fans, though to my knowledge even they generally
register some kind of decline in his work since TEXAS CHAINSAW
MASSACRE. But Romero - are you kidding, this guy is fuel for the
fire! I think he's one of the most respected post-classical genre
filmmakers in the auteurist community. KNIGHTRIDERS appears to be
the auteurist favorite that doesn't have a big following elsewhere,
though it's not always easy to see. (The video version I rented once
proved unwatchable.)
Bill raises a lot of interesting points about, and though I don't
have satisfactory responses for his questions, I think it's
interesting to note that the number of filmmakers whose personalities
move across genre, rather than suit a dominant genre, are now
scarce. Romero & Carpenter et al. do horror (and particular kinds of
horror no less), Milius does sweeping action-epics, McTiernan does
action-suspense, etc.
Raimi has a lot of generic range, though. Schlocky horror to cheap
western to socio-psychological suspense film to Kevin Costner
baseball movie to comic book adaptation, and there's still some kind
of personality people find and identify as "Sam Raimi."
--Zach
72
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 9:47pm
Subject: Jerry Lewis
Sort of as a matter of coincidence, a local friend of mine is in the
process of writing a large essay/commentary on Jerry Lewis (as a film
artist, not as a celebrity or a Tonight Show punchline), while at the
same time I've been seeing quite a few of his movies, not only the
ones he directed but a few of the ones he made with Frank Tashlin;
the other day I watched ROCK-A-BYE BABY, which is really sweet and
earnest and funny, even if Jerry's presence as a performer isn't
foregrounded as much as it is in one of his own films.
(Boy, that flickering AllPosters.com ad is irritating.)
I wanted to get a dialogue going, on the subject of Jerry Lewis
and his films, how his personal style (as a performer and as a
director) may or may not be seen as a vision, to quote Dan from a
recent CM post. A few observations: Fred has Lewis (have to resist
calling him Jerry or The Jer) listed among his "A" filmmakers, and
told me that he thinks all of his movies are pretty wonderful, and
that THE LADIES' MAN is his greatest. I haven't talked with Dan
Sallitt about Lewis, but the only Lewises on his "favorite films"
list are Milestone and Joseph H. and the only Jerry is Schatzberg (no
Tashlin, either). Gabe, fascinatingly, has HARDLY WORKING on his
list of favorite films, and there's Jonathan Rosenbaum's passionate
defense of HW in a 1981 "Soho News" article. There's Godard,
whose "Jerry Lewis is the only American director who has made
progressive films" comment is quoted everywhere but without
attribution (I haven't been able to find the source or context), and
of course "the French love Jerry Lewis," the old, bad joke that is
never challenged or elaborated on. Ah, the French.
I agree with Fred that THE LADIES' MAN is the Jerry's greatest work
(so far; I've still got quite a few to go), although THE PATSY and
THE NUTTY PROFESSOR are both really great, with more than their share
of amazing scenes and small bits & pieces; for instance, the really
uncomfortable scene in THE PATSY where Stanley isn't sure how to tip
the restaurant staff. This is clearly a recurring theme for Lewis:
minor or major processes of social etiquette and "normal-ness" are
shown to be right on the knife-edge of collapsing and flying apart -
hardly new comedy film territory after the Marx brothers, W.C.
Fields, Laurel & Hardy, et al., except for how Lewis positions
himself in relation to the gags, hopping between or playing in
combination: inciter, aggravator, and target (similar to Tati and
others), how he articulates himself through his Jewishness, his
unique man-boy-retard act (in various stages of degradation: Stanley
in THE PATSY is a dweeb but not a freak or an incompetent, Morty in
THE ERRAND BOY is almost a monkey before his transformation), and his
robust, slick, often arrogant, almost a sixth member of the Rat Pack,
showbiz persona*, as seen in THE BELLBOY, THE NUTTY PROFESSOR, and
other places. And I haven't even begun to think about his direction,
in terms of what he inherited from Tashlin, the liberating, free-
wheeling nature of his narratives (THE BIG MOUTH, a stunning piece of
work, mutates and cripples the comic narrative to such a degree that
it flies past directorial incompetence and goes straight into
abstract art - in other words, I think it's fab), how illuminating
THE TOTAL FILM-MAKER is as a how-to guide for reading a Jerry Lewis
movie (very illuminating, as it turns out), and so on.
* I know this is partly a send-up of the Rat Pack image, with a focus
on Dean Martin.
Speaking for myself, part of the reason why I think Lewis is great is
the one reason I can't really explain: he cracks me up, I'm
helpless. Even in small doses, such as a TV clip where Jerry is
trying to light this gangster's cigarette, and he gets it caught in
the Zippo, I giggle like a little girl. I'm laughing as I type
this. I don't even have to watch the movie/scene/gag in question,
someone could just describe it to me: I still get a chuckle from
when someone TOLD me about the squeaky-shoes gag in NUTTY PROFESSOR,
and just a few minutes ago I got a big laugh when an IMDb reviewer
(who didn't like the movie) quoted a line from THE PATSY: "I'd
introduce myself, but I don't know me either."
Jaime
73
From:
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 8:26pm
Subject: Re: Re: Genre Auteurs
In a message dated 6/18/03 5:40:09 PM, rashomon82@y... writes:
>Here are a few other genre filmmakers who've made at least one really
>interesting genre film - John McTiernan (very competent guy, not
>exactly an artist but a workman with an interesting coherence to the
>way his body of work plays)
I'll put in a plug for his "Die Hard: With a Vengeance." This always struck
me as such a lean, confident piece of machinery, though as far as I know it's
not a fave even among auteurist followers of McTiernan.
>Renny Harlin (DRIVEN is such a nice film
>to watch)
Is this the one some have described as his "Red Line 7000"? (It must be, as
I can't recall any other Harlin picture about auto racing.) But I remember
reading that it had a bunch of Hawksian elements, which must make it a lot of
fun.
>But Romero - are you kidding, this guy is fuel for the
>fire! I think he's one of the most respected post-classical genre
>filmmakers in the auteurist community. KNIGHTRIDERS appears to be
>the auteurist favorite that doesn't have a big following elsewhere,
>though it's not always easy to see. (The video version I rented once
>proved unwatchable.)
There's a really wonderful DVD of "Knightriders" available. It has one of
the most enjoyable commentary tracks I've ever listened to, Romero and his team
clearly having a wonderful time revisiting this film which meant so much to
them.
The thing I like so much about "Knightriders" is how it must have been
confirmation for GAR's fans at the time of just how serious a social critic he was.
Take away the zombies and this is "Dawn of the Dead": another film about a
group of people trying to survive with their integrity intact in a world slowly
being consumed by commercialism. I'm exaggerating terribly, of course, but
the connections can very easily be drawn. I know Dave Kehr found the film
almost too personal for its own good, but it serves as such a handy testament to
Romero's own stubborn independence that I find it irresistible.
A big second to Jaime's comments about Carpenter. My own favorite is the
incredibly atmospheric (how could it not be with a title like this?) "The Fog."
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
74
From:
Date: Wed Jun 18, 2003 8:48pm
Subject: Re: Jerry Lewis
In a message dated 6/18/03 5:53:05 PM, j_christley@y... writes:
>Gabe, fascinatingly, has HARDLY WORKING on his
>list of favorite films, and there's Jonathan Rosenbaum's passionate
>defense of HW in a 1981 "Soho News" article.
I know this is just too, too the party line for me to be interested in a
reviled late work, but, Gabe, you gotta elaborate on this. I read Rosenbaum's
(excellent) piece on the film and came away more with the sense that he felt it
was very problematic, but interesting and perhaps unintentionally revealing
about the state of the country at the time it was released. I'd say that's
basically my own assessment too (though I haven't seen it in ages). "Cracking Up"
is my favorite late Lewis (I think Martin Scorsese loves it too).
I'll try to return to some of your other points, Jaime, a bit later. Great
post.
Peter
http://hometown.aol.com/ptonguette/index.html
75
top
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 1:10am
Subject: Re: Films on Video (not, not my usual rant)
Back "home" from the foreign wars, not too bloodied, the enemy
vanquished even if they don't realize it&
Now I'll try to get caught up here.
First of all, I've noticed a few times people apologizing to me for
mentioning seeing films on video. I appreciate the gesture, and Peter
and I do have dictatorial authority over this board, but really, it's
fine. And back in the 60s when I was trying to see every film by every
auteur as fast as possible, I watched a number of things on TV myself.
In fact, I bought a decent black and white TV (on the theory that black
and white movies look much better on black and white monitors, and I
didn't want to try to watch color movies on TV anyway, a theory I think
is still legit) and spent a lot of money at the time on a rotating
antenna for my roof so that I could get stations in places like
Providence, R. I. (I lived in Boston) which occasionally showed rare
things. And some of my friends would sometimes visit too. And if it was
a pre-1953 black and white film with images of less than Wellesian
complexity, it often came through reasonably well. My rule there was
that if it was by a director whose work I already liked and I got a good
feel for the style that I knew from it, then I was probably "getting
it," at least somewhat; if not, then I was much less sure if I'd seen it.
Two silly stories about early auteurism and TV: I once traveled from
Boston to New York only to see a film on TV. It was Rossellini's "Fear."
It couldn't be seen any other way, and at the time I'd only been able to
see two of his five films with Bergman. And I wasn't the only one; on
the bus with me (a trip of a bit over four hours) were my friend Tim
Hunter (today a director of low budget films and TV shows) and his
girlfriend. We converged at his parents' place where our mutual friend
Robert showed up. It was going to be on at 2 AM or something. And since
we didn't know anything about it, someone got out a TV listing to see
what it was about. The description was a one-liner: "poor blackmail
move." We cracked up. And the film was, of course, great. This gives a
bit of the flavor of the kind of thing auteurists faced, I think: you
would go to great lengths to seek out rare films in the unlikely places
that were the only ways you could see them; they would turn out to be
sublime, while finding that the few others who had even seen them
considered them to be junk.
Not long after that, there was an even rarer film, I can't remember
what, that was going to be on TV in Providence, and for some reason I
couldn.t get the station -- maybe my antenna was on the fritz, or maybe
I hadn't gotten it yet. Anyway, there were four of us who wanted to see
it, three males and one female, all college age. And we figured what we
could do is drive to Providence and check into a motel for a few hours
and then check out. This produced much hilarity on the part of all of us
as to what the desk clerk might make of this, but as it turned out we
didn't go.
Nonetheless this story was getting retold years later as being true,
because I heard about it a decade or more later.
As I think I already wrote in a post somewhere, I saw the sublime "Day
of the Outlaw" for the first time on TV, at 1 AM, with a friend who came
over to see it, and after we'd gotten word that it was an order of
magnitude above later de Toths. It was, and we were overwhelmed.
So, feel free to talk about tube-seen films without apology. I *do*
think it's good to specify TV, but notice I did not put that in our
group's "rules," OK? The only point is I may "call" someone in a debate
on a film that they've seen only on TV, especially if it's a work I
favor and they have failed to properly swoon over its trascnedent
essence. Then I can just say, "see a print when you can."
- Frednbsp; top
76
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 1:32am
Subject: Re: Re: Vidor
"Street Scene" is great. It is a bit schematic, per Dan, but I also
remember the relationship between the editing and the use of sound as
pretty amazing. Don't ask me to quote specifics though. "Our Daily
Bread" is great (there's a little Soviet montage in there, I think), and
I like "Wedding Night" a lot.
I'm an enormous fan of the late experimental film, "Truth and Illusion:
An Introduction to Metaphysics," but I'm not sure I'd want to try
compare it to the Hollywood films. It's presumably unseeable today, yes?
So, of the Hollywood films, here's a director whose very late work is
far from his best. This happened to a few directors in the late 50s (for
Vidor) and early 60s (Ray, Minnelli, and there are some bad late Walshes
too though the last is great). I think as they ran into the necessity of
doing blockbuster spectacles or something. "Solomon and Sheba" is, as I
remember it, terrible, and "War and Peace," while really good, didn't
overwhelm me.
My favorite Vidor in terms of overall greatness and evenness is "Ruby
Gentry," a tremendously powerful western.
What I love about Vidor is a certain instability in the images and
space, a kind energy that seems to subtly destabilize everything. Most
of the great films have that. "The Fountainhead" does, especially in the
amazing ending. There's a great scene near the end of "The Citadel," a
courtroom scene, the kind of thing that often makes for one of the
duller parts of a great movie, that's tremendous; if my memory isn't
off, a lawyer may be making an argument in a very long uninterrupted
take, but in any case the shots of him have the powerful intensity of an
individual existing in isolation from his surroundings, an example of
the subjectivity I'm talking about.
I actually talked to Vidor on the phone a bit circa 1970. The reason was
that I was trying to rent "Truth and Illusion" to show at the M.I.T.
Film Society. He agreed, which is how I saw it. (Unfortunately the
thought of trying to purchase a print didn't occur to me at the time.)
At the time he said it was about "solipsism" (which it was, in a way),
and that solipsism characterized all his work. I'm not sure if
"solipsism" is exactly right, but there's an amazing scene of a
character's hallucinatory vision in the very early "The Jack-Knife Man"
(great too, by the way) that connects right up with the subjectivity of
the later films and the "solipsism" of "Truth and Illusion."
All that said, there's one Vidor film that I in some ways prefer to all
the others. It is one of those rare masterpieces that almost make my
eyes tear when thinking about them. "Rare" only in percentage terms, I
guess, because the list is long -- among them are "The 47 Ronin,"
"Sansho Dayu," "Au Hasard, Balthazar," "Tabu," "The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valence," "Seven Women," "Rio Bravo," "Vertigo," "The Tarnished Angels,"
"Kiss Me Deadly," "Touch of Evil," "Some Came Running," "The Mortal
Storm," "Smilin' Through" -- well, you get the idea, I hope.
And that Vidor is almost impossible to see, I believe, and it's actually
very very uneven; there are many scenes that are very week,
And, it is...
"An American Romance."
And this is one of those films that will make non-auteurists who have
seen it just roll their eyes in either befuddlement or disgust. It's
extremely sappy; the melodrama scenes are often weak the characters are
kind of cardboard; the acting I think may be not too good. I've only
seen it twice, and a long time ago. It's a World War II film, the third
in his "war, wheat, and steel" trilogy, he called it. ("The Big Parade"
and "Our Daily Bread" are the first two.) But the sequences of steel
making, and the ending, showing a production line producing planes and
then a sky filled with planes, are just astoundingly great. I'm not even
sure I can explain why, certainly not without seeing it again, but they
have a raw visual power, a kind of force and intensity, that for me
defines the limits of what great cinema can do, right along with the
last two scenes of "Some Came Running," the opening take of
"Satantango," and other moments too numerous to mention.
And, if you see it and hate those sequences, you'll just call them
stupid documentary-like scenes that aren't very well integrated into the
rest of the movie (and you'd be right there; they aren't), and I may not
be able to help in explaining why they're more.
And, as I've sort of indicated, the film as a whole is a kind of a mess,
almost like it's one film struggling to get itself out from under the
thumb of another (the main story or drama), a description which for many
would just about automatically make the film a failure. But that
"struggle," and the fact that Vidor's heart doesn't seem to be in some
of the drama sequences, helps illuminate the great parts, just as I have
argued that a bad film by a director can often illuminate the great
work. And for these reasons the film actually looks forward toward his
experimental film, I think.
"An American Romance" is a great film for me to make my own brand of the
auteurist case, because it fails on certain obvious levels, and I myself
think it's uneven, but the great stuff is so great that I don't mind
sitting through the weaker moments. And it's worth remarking that this
is a point of view that most film types would be highly unsympathetic
to. The restaurant meal metaphor for a movie often surfaces, as it did
not that long ago on Cinemasters, and it's a metaphor I really hate.
Sure, a lousy course tastes lousy and detracts; weak scenes amid great
ones are different, as you can just wait through them for the great
stuff. A film is not a consumable object, it's an expression of
consciousness.
- Fred
77
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 2:13am
Subject: Re: Re: Clara's Heart
And, speaking of shat-upon masterpieces, ah, "Clara's Heart."
Peter, I'm really glad you took my recommendation and really liked it.
I've seen it four times (on film), and I've only seen "The Man in the
Moon" once, so maybe I'll revise my opinion of the latter upward if I
can see it again (it's clearly masterpiece, one of Mulligan's best, but
it's just that I prefer "Clara's Heart").
One thing that's great about Mulligan is the way his backgrounds often
exercise an intrusive power as metaphors for character emotions, though
not so much specific emotions as the idea of an emotionalization of
space. The scene early in "Clara's Heart" in the hotel with the sea in
the background is a great example. There are many other such examples
across his career.
Peter mentions one of my favorite scenes, the divided composition, and
one that I chose to discuss when I lectured on the film once, but he
doesn't mention my two favorite moments. Assuming you have a tape of
this, Peter, maybe you could look into these, if you missed them, and
tell us what you think?
The first is in the "revelation" scene, and it's a tiny cut: Mulligan
cuts from a close shot to a longer shot of the two characters sitting
together at a table, just at the moment that the boy puts his hand on
Clara's to comfort her. A related cut to a long shot occurs at the time
of an embrace next to a truck in "The Man in the Moon." These moments
are related to some in Ford, actually, a couple in "How Green Was My
Valley" and a great shot near the end of "The Last Hurrah," when the
priest gestures out of respect to the politician while standing in a
doorway in the background. The idea I think is to avoid having faces
telegraph emotions in close-up, but instead let the viewer provide more
of the feeling. I understood those moments in Ford in part from seeing
the terrible "Young Cassidy," which I went to thinking that it might be
partly Ford, and maybe it is, but there are scenes in which the camera
moves in on faces within a shot that seem manipulative and pornographic,
in the same way that a happened in a tiny bit of a TV version of "How
Green Was My Valley" that I saw: in the scene where the sons stand up at
the dinner table preparing to leave, the director of this atrocity
dollied in on their faces, presumably to emphasize the power of the
moment, a banality that made Ford's treatment of the same moment seem
rather, well, Homeric by contrast.
The other favorite thing about Clara's heart for me is the way (you may
want to stop reading here because this is better discovered for
yourself, but it has nothing to do with giving away the plot) is the way
the opening shot (the boy looking out into space) is echoed by the very
last shot (Clara doing the same). The effect, for me, is to connect
these two characters across the entire space, time, and narrative of the
film, a time in which they have both grown and changed, as has their
relationship. It provides the cinematic version of Clara's final words
to the boy, translating their commonplace sentiments into something
profoundly moving.
I'm going to have to take a day or two to do some work before I get into
newer topics such as Jerry Lewis. Indeed, if our group grows in size and
becomes a real success, I doubt I'll be able to participate fully. But
I'll be here as much as I can.
- Fred
78
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 4:07am
Subject: Re: Genre auteurs
> Genres were originally an extension of the studio system, and
> asking about whether genres and auteurs still function together
> in the same way they once did leads to the bigger question of
> whether the Hollywood studio system is still propitious to the
> production of auteurs, as it was until the 60s. Is the
> mushrooming of "genre auteurs" who make exclusively horror
> and scifi a compensation for the loss of the framework that
> made auteurism possible? A lot of these directors are indies,
> and The Genre, for them, seems to have replaced The Studio in
> some ways - as a source of production funding ("genres" sell to
> a reliable audience), but also as an esthetic constraint and
> framework for the expression of an artistic vision.
De facto, "genre" means just about the same thing as "commercial" in the
film industry. That's one thing that never seems to change. The films
with the broadest appeal always seem to be the ones that appear to give
audiences a familiar structure and set of tropes.
So, to my mind, it's not so much that genre has replaced the studio, as
it is that indie filmmakers can only achieve commerciality by following
genre rules, because there's no one above them who might in some rare
case make decisions based on some other consideration.
To me, the reason Hollywood has lost much of its ability to make
challenging genre films is, at least partly, that films no longer have a
routine audience, the kind that says, "Let's go to see a Western,"
without even knowing what they were getting. Meeting a few broad genre
requirements seemed to be all that that audience needed. The routine
audience has moved to TV (which somehow didn't give as many artistic
options, seems to me), and now every film has to be a special event,
something that won't make the audience say, "That might have been okay
as a rental." That changes the stakes. - Dan
79
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 4:11am
Subject: Jerry & too much on the table
When I was writing the Jerry Lewis post, I had a nagging feeling that
maybe the board was already a bit crowded with discussion for me to
start a new one. I should have acted on that hunch and saved my post
to a file for later use. Surely he's worthy of discussion, and
several members like him a lot. I'll bring him up at a later date
(perhaps inspired by seeing one of his movies or something) and we'll
worry about him then.
Jaime
80
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 4:14am
Subject: Re: Re: Genre Auteurs
> Dave Kehr went so
> far as to read it as a Puritanical statement on sexuality and death
> (or something). It's easy to read it that way - SCREAM does, with
> the "heroine lives because she abstains, the others die" theory, and
> you've got the knife as the phallus (yawn), but something about the
> neatness of that theory, coupled with the brutal dispassion in the
> way Michael Myers murders each of the teens (there doesn't seem to be
> any charge or meaningful or sexual anger about the murders), doesn't
> sit right with me. I'll have to think about it some more...
I never really bought this theory either, but it seems to be universally
accepted - it fits people's preconceptions of the way society works.
Here's my alternate theory. The reason that murders in slasher films
often follow sex is that the film can therefore give us something
softcore, followed by something hardcore. Try to imagine a hardcore sex
film, in which you see genitals and squirting things, followed by a
slasher murder. The image feels...redundant! The explicitness with
which our culture allows us to depict violence provides a psychic
loophole in our prohibitions against explicit depictions of sex.
Am I right or am I right? - Dan
81
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 4:17am
Subject: Metzger
> My very limited experience with Russ Meyer isn't
> positive, but my very limited experience with (for example) Radley
> Metzger is very enthusiastic - I think THE LICKERISH QUARTET is a
> masterpiece. I'm not joking and would be willing to write on it in a
> little more detail if anyone wanted.
I'm a Metzger fan too, though my favorites so far are SCORE and THERESE
AND ISABELLE. He's a truly fascinating, one-of-a-kind guy: not too many
people have found such an ingenious way to blend art and commerce. - Dan
82
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 4:19am
Subject: Tim Hunter
> And I wasn't the only one; on
> the bus with me (a trip of a bit over four hours) were my friend Tim
> Hunter (today a director of low budget films and TV shows) and his
> girlfriend.
Do you know how Tim feels about his career trajectory? I think TEX and
RIVER'S EDGE are two of the best American films of the eighties, but I
had the feeling he was having a harder time finding cooperative material
as the 90s kicked in, and now I've lost track of his work. - Dan
83
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 4:22am
Subject: Re: Re: Vidor
> "Solomon and Sheba" is, as I
> remember it, terrible, and "War and Peace," while really good, didn't
> overwhelm me.
I'm actually a big fan of WAR AND PEACE. I don't believe that any movie
will ever render battle scenes with such dynamic clarity.
> "An American Romance."
The other person I know of who's a big fan of this film is David
Thomson. I saw it once on TV and missed most of the qualities you guys
talk about, but I really want to see it again. - Dan
85
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 5:10am
Subject: Speaking of redundant...
Zizeck suggests imagining a version of Out of Africa with hardcore
shots inserted whenever the characters have sex. It's a big question.
So is what all those knives are about. Technically, gore shots are
not hardcore the way "money shots" are.
86
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 5:21am
Subject: Re: Speaking of redundant...
> Technically, gore shots are
> not hardcore the way "money shots" are.
Technically, maybe, but all you have to do is show a body cut open and
you have some of the same elements in place: 1) transgression; 2) bodily
fluids, membranes, the business end of the organism. - Dan
87
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 5:22am
Subject: Omitted SK masterpiece
A Chronicle of Corpses.
88
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 5:24am
Subject: "Money shots"
Actually Tinto Brass - whose WORST film is Caligula - uses rubber
phalluses the same way slashers use rubber knives.
89
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 5:27am
Subject: Re: Lewis, Vidor, genre
> I have a tape of Truth and Illusion and can make a dupe, once I
> recover from the financial devastation of jury duty and can afford
> postage. I also have Metaphor, his last film, which I like even
> better - once I get it back from the person I lent it to.
This would be cool.
> While I certainly don't dismiss the genre - that's partly what I'll
> be writing about, and am herewith inviting the young folks to comment
> on - I find the best films are the more marginal, uncodified ones:
I notice you didn't mention PSYCHO in your slasher-film rundown. Too
obvious, or doesn't it make your cut?
> When a Stranger Calls Back (Fred Walton, about whom I was
> tipped off by Claude Chabrol)
Hmmm. I saw the original WHEN A STRANGER CALLS and wasn't wowed at the
time, but I didn't know there was a sequel until now. Is the sequel
supposed to be the better film, or is Walton's entire career of interest?
Fascinating post on serial killers and slashers. - Dan
90
From: Fred Camper
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 5:32am
Subject: Re: Tim Hunter
Dan Sallitt wrote:
>Do you know how Tim feels about his career trajectory?
>
Hmmm, this is getting dangerous. I was the one insistent on having this
stuff on the Web, but I don't think I want to start trying to publicly
account for the feelings of an old friend (we met at age 12).
Instead, here's a fact: he has planned projects based on his own story
ideas and scripts he has been so far unable to realize, as, I suppose,
have many other directors.
By the way, in "Tex," in the high school basketball game, I'm the guy in
the stands in about two shots who looks like I don't even know where to
look. I also appear as a homeless man in Hunter's "The Saint of Fort
Washington," and briefly in films by Warren Sonbert and Jonas Mekas --
that's my acting career, not yet worthy of a page on my Web site. With
"Tex," Hunter's first film, I actually visited for four days when it was
being shot in Oklahoma, in 1981. I'd observed Hollywood shoots before,
but never for more than a few hours; this was pretty interesting, as
were the hundreds of teenage girls trying to pass notes to the
17-year-old Matt Dillon whenever they were shooting outdoors. What I was
most interested was to see in the flesh what I'd already known in
theory: that each shot is an elaborately manufactured construct. planned
in a variety of ways. Had I been a Brakhage (or Marker, or Leacock)
lover who hated Hollywood films and thought they could never be art,
everything I saw there would have confirmed this. Fortunately, I has
seen "The Searchers" pretty early, at around age 16...
- Fred
91
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 5:35am
Subject: Re: Genre auteurs
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt wrote:
> To me, the reason Hollywood has lost much of its ability to make
> challenging genre films is, at least partly, that films no longer
have a
> routine audience, the kind that says, "Let's go to see a Western,"
> without even knowing what they were getting. Meeting a few broad
genre
> requirements seemed to be all that that audience needed. The
routine
> audience has moved to TV (which somehow didn't give as many
artistic
> options, seems to me), and now every film has to be a special
event,
> something that won't make the audience say, "That might have been
okay
> as a rental." That changes the stakes. - Dan
The industry seems to have reached a kind of equilibrium where they
don't mind making something that is essentially a TV-scale movie
(just look at THE IN-LAWS; I could also mention the TV-
inspired "movies" like RUGRATS or JUSTIN & KELLY but there are other
forces at work there), even if it loses a lot of money at the box
office. This is for a number of reasons, chiefly [1] our TV outlets
for fiction are a bit broader than they were a few years ago, thanks
to "movie-ish" cable networks like HBO and Showtime, with their
original product that could easily stand in for CONFIDENCE or
IDENTITY or THE IN-LAWS or other movies like that (flashy but light
on CGI and action sequences, second-tier or fading stars, if Adam
Sandler's star was on the wane we might have expected ANGER
MANAGEMENT to be a Showtime Original Movie, etc.), and [2] the more
obvious reason, with direct formal consequences, that many films are
shot *with television in mind*. There was a long but worthwhile post
on Mobius a few weeks back that complained about the industry's
addiction to Super 35, because it allows directors to make "big
screen" (2.35:1) movies that can be cropped for TV without any
significant loss (last year's RED DRAGON is a major example of this,
especially given the reputation of its director as a proudly
impersonal hack) in visual information or (ding ding, irony) visual
artistry. From the post, written by Gary Palmer:
"Super 35 is a flexible process which allows for a range of aspect
ratios - everything from 1.33:1 to 2.35:1 - across various mediums,
without the need for pan-scanning on TV. Many DP's prefer the format
because the cameras are lighter and because the spherical lenses
allow a greater depth of field than regular anamorphic photography,
though release prints tend to be grainier because the theatrical
frame is optically extracted from the 1.33:1 negative and then
squeezed anamorphically onto the finished print."
I'm guessing the a_film_by types don't need any lecturing on this
topic. The Mobius thread is here:
http://www.mhvf.net/forum/general/posts/124240326.html
There seems to be some routine moviegoing taking place these days,
albeit in a different form than what you describe. There seems to be
a genre-like set of films made pretty much specifically for black
audiences - I'm thinking of THE WOOD, THE BEST MAN, BROWN SUGAR, THE
BROTHERS, DELIVER US FROM EVA and a bunch of others that I'm
forgetting. These all seem to be movies that have dependable, I dare
say 'fixed' audiences that are drawn by something other than a heavy
advertising campaign, Julia Roberts or Tom Hanks or even Denzel
Washington, and the budgets seem pretty consisten. Audiences aren't
saying to their friends, Let's go see a black film, because the
dynamics of moviegoing no longer "permits" us to forget the name (as
well as its related images, taglines, and merchandise), but anyway I
think this set-up has more in common with genre-driven moviegoing
than maybe even I'm seeing.
And then there are those weird Christian movies like THE OMEGA CODE,
with an easily quanitfiable "fixed" audience representing a ready
source of revenue. This seems to be heavier on the straight-to-video
front but it's nothing to sneeze at - I would trace this
splinter "genre" back to A THIEF IN THE NIGHT, the weird, zero-budget
Revelations-based apocalypse movie from 1972. (Has anyone seen it?
I watched a clip in a J. Hoberman-taught class last summer and it
look like a bunch of crap.)
Genre-based moviegoing seems to exist in kind of a mutated form these
days. The "basic western" is no longer possible, thanks to the
reasons you mentioned, but the rare western that we see these days is
going to either transcend or attempt to transcend the stock western
mold of the classical period. You wouldn't call UNFORGIVEN
an "oater", and any recent western gets tagged "revisionist" if it
deserves the label or not (see AMERICAN OUTLAW; SOUTH OF HEAVEN, WEST
OF HELL, which is pretty neat by the way; the two YOUNG GUNS
movies). Which brings me to my (hopefully) wrap-up observation, that
I feel that moviegoers tend to be attracted by genre over anything
else, but only when genre is qualified by a minor premise of stars,
heavy budget, "coolness" factor, the Academy Awards, and so on. Like
people might say, Let's go see that romance (that happens to star
Luke Wilson and Kate Hudson), or Let's go see that action movie (that
happens to be part of a franchise that pretends to cult status), or
Let's go see that musical that's based on a Broadway smash (that's
being sold like the new crack; this was long before the Oscar
triumph). People seem to stay away from Eddie Murphy movies like the
plague, so put him in a children's movie: DADDY DAY CARE has made
almost $100 million. Also stripped-down, starless horror movies seem
to be on the rise in recent years - spurred by BLAIR WITCH?
Jaime
92
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 5:46am
Subject: Fred Walton
All Hitchcocks make the cut, but that one was such a huge hit that I
omitted it to focus on the really off-the-chart work.
Re-see When a Stranger Calls, Dan - it's a great film, although I
missed it on the first pass, too. All Waltons are worth a look. The
best are the two Strangers and his remake of I Saw What You Did, but
if you find you're acquiring the taste, don't overlook The Courtyard,
Dead Air, Homewrecker, April Fool's Day (a cult favorite), The
Stepford Husbands, The Rosary Murders, Trapped and his wrasslin'
picture, Hadley's Rebellion. All but the latter are built around
disembodied voices. Michel Chion's "The Voice in Cinema"
or "Audiovision" are good theoretical backup, although When a
Stranger Calls predates both and is not mentioned in either. Most of
the films on the list are made-for-tv, including the Stranger sequel.
Dimension commissioned When a Stranger Calls Back Again, thinking it
could be another franchise, but passed on it when Walton's script
turned out to be, in his words, "even more poetic than the second
one." Kevin Williamson brings up Stranger in the DVD commentary on
Scream and Wes Craven testily cuts him off. He's part of my "four
aces of neo-horror" with Carpenter, Romero and...yes...Craven.
Chabrol brought up Walton as I gropingly pursued a conversation about
one of his old discoveries, Gerd Oswald. He said, "I have a new
guilty pleasure," and leaned forward confidentially: "Fred Walton." I
didn't know who he was talking about!
93
From: hotlove666
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 5:52am
Subject: Westerns
I know one director who "just wants to make westerns," for tv - with
a horror twist, whenever he gets the chance: P. J. Pesce.
94
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 6:15am
Subject: Re: Re: Genre Auteurs
Dan wrote:
>Here's my alternate theory. The reason that murders in slasher films
>often follow sex is that the film can therefore give us something
>softcore, followed by something hardcore.
I hesitate to try to speak for John Carpenter, but I think that his
take was that the theme is repression, that Michael Myers is the
ultimate case of repression and that the Jamie Lee Curtis character
Laurie also is repressed, hence her link (expanded on in the later
films) to Michael Myers. The link also allows her to be the one to
escape the killer.
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
95
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 6:26am
Subject: Re: Re: Genre Auteurs
>>Here's my alternate theory. The reason that murders in slasher films
>>often follow sex is that the film can therefore give us something
>>softcore, followed by something hardcore.
>
> I hesitate to try to speak for John Carpenter, but I think that his
> take was that the theme is repression, that Michael Myers is the
> ultimate case of repression and that the Jamie Lee Curtis character
> Laurie also is repressed, hence her link (expanded on in the later
> films) to Michael Myers. The link also allows her to be the one to
> escape the killer.
Howdy, Joe. I don't mean to imply that my little idea has to do with
the thematic structure of any horror film, much less all of them. I do
think that it has to do with why the convention caught on, and why
audiences seem to enjoy it. Given that, a filmmaker can layer on top of
that baseline pleasure in any number of ways.
I imagine, though, that Michael Myers' repressed sexuality is supposed
to find perverted outlet in his killing. So that's not too incompatible
with what I was saying. - Dan
96
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 6:33am
Subject: Hardly Working
What I want to know is who licensed the footage from THE DAY THE CLOWN
CRIED to Lifetime for their Lewis special? Where did that shit come
from and where can I get some more.
I think HARDLY WORKING is more interesting than anything Lewis did
in-between FAMILY JEWELS and WHICH WAY TO THE FRONT because it was
conceived as an attempt (the first in a decade) to reengage the
audience he had lost in the late 60s and and 70s. What makes the
experience of watching HARDLY WORKING strange and fascinating for me is
that it fails on just about every level that Lewis probably intended
but has many interesting set pieces and collaborations from actors that
Lewis had either previously worked with (Buddy Lester for example) or
had selected from poverty row casting agencies or real life (as some
accounts go). Also there is what seems an inexplicable contrast between
very sad moments (Lewis removing his clown make-up after getting fired
from the circus) and ridiculous gags (Lewis getting his teeth knocked
out when he moves in with his sister), or Lewis acting like The Jer
("Would you like me to check under the hood, m'am?") and then
transforming himself into Uncle Jerry (tucking his sister's kid into
bed, "Goodnight sweetie, you need your beauty rest" etc.) Then for
example he parodies SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER but interestingly, he tries to
mimic the steady-cam tricks (and spinning shots) of the previous film
when he approaches a chick on the dance floor, bad disco-music booming.
Everything but the kitchen sink seems to be at play here (Jerry dressed
up as elderly tennis-playing Jewish woman: "You fool around?") which is
taken to the extreme in the next last filim of his. And then there is
the character's talks with his brother-in-law ("I used to be satisfied
with three squares a day and a pillow under my head, but that's
changed" etc) and Lewis' gold jewelry appearing in the most absurd
shots like when he's a sushi chef or gas attendant, which is hilarious
because it should really be in the blooper reel, but also inadvertently
shows us a reality about the actor, his class, etc... When Lewis is
fired from all his other jobs and arrives at the post office, you think
the film has really ended at this point, but there is a lot more in
store, the parade with the clowns and the music is absurd but makes
sense when you think about -- it's a very happy scene, very human.
HARDLY WORKING is nothing I would make my girlfriend sit through but I
would recommend it to any of you motherfuckers.
Favorite Jerry moment: the freeze frame in DISORDERLY ORDERLY when
Lewis bumps a patient's broken leg into the wall.
Gabe
97
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 6:50am
Subject: Re: Hardly Working
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Gabe Klinger wrote:
> What I want to know is who licensed the footage from THE DAY THE
CLOWN
> CRIED to Lifetime for their Lewis special? Where did that shit come
> from and where can I get some more.
What was the name of the program? If it comes on again I'd like to
tape it. Was it the same one that just aired on E! ? Probably not,
since there were so few movie clips, mostly TV and interview stuff.
I was just thinking how cool it would have been for Jerry to have
starred in THE SHINING, Kubrick allowing him to improvise, etc.
Jaime
98
From: Gabe Klinger
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 6:54am
Subject: westerns at chicago film center
Sorry that this is Chicago-centric but series like these are rare
nowadays and I thought it would be worth mentioning: Marty Rubin at
Chicago's Film Center has organized a sequel to his "The Good, The
Rare, and The Offbeat" program from last year, which includes BEND OF
THE RIVER and MAN FROM LARAMIE, FORTY GUNS & RUN OF THE ARROW, RIO
BRAVO, TWO RODE TOGETHER, several others. Also included are two Wylers
(HELL'S HEROES, THE WESTERNER) which I won't include in my schedule
unless I hear a strong endorsement from one of y'all. UCLA's
restoration of SEVEN MEN FROM NOW is back for another run if you missed
it. WINCHESTER '73 was high on Marty's list though when I talked to him
about it there were no prints.
Saw WAGOMASTER a few days ago and having just recently driven through
the Utah desert, I couldn't believe how personally infused with love
for this country every single shot of this film is. I fell in love
again...
Gabe
99
From: Joseph Kaufman
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 6:58am
Subject: Re: Re: Genre Auteurs
>Howdy, Joe. I don't mean to imply that my little idea has to do with
>the thematic structure of any horror film, much less all of them. I do
>think that it has to do with why the convention caught on, and why
>audiences seem to enjoy it. Given that, a filmmaker can layer on top of
>that baseline pleasure in any number of ways.
>
>I imagine, though, that Michael Myers' repressed sexuality is supposed
>to find perverted outlet in his killing. So that's not too incompatible
>with what I was saying. - Dan
Perhaps for this group we ought to distinguish between an auterist's
approach - John Carpenter (I think most people here would classify
him as one) and a non-auteurist's approach - Sean Cunningham in
FRIDAY THE 13TH as an example. In the latter the approach does not
extend beyond the (hopefully effective and clever) evoking of raw
sensation.
--
- Joe Kaufman
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
100
From: Jaime N. Christley
Date: Thu Jun 19, 2003 7:01am
Subject: Re: Genre Auteurs
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Joseph Kaufman wrote:
> Perhaps for this group we ought to distinguish between an
auterist's
> approach - John Carpenter (I think most people here would classify
> him as one) and a non-auteurist's approach - Sean Cunningham in
> FRIDAY THE 13TH as an example. In the latter the approach does not
> extend beyond the (hopefully effective and clever) evoking of raw
> sensation.
One of my big problems with HALLOWEEN is that, unlike the other
Carpenter stuff I like/love, I don't feel the director has anything
else on his agenda *other than* evoking a raw sensation. But I don't
see this as exclusively the territory of the FRIDAY 13TH directors -
I move that we call them the Ratners, just to give them a name
(calling them hacks will just open us up to be on the "wrong" side of
a future re-evaluation of Sean Cunningham, heaven forbid). With the
Ratners, the approach might be to evoke raw sensation, but the
clearest approximation of their message to the audience, as I see it,
is "Give me your money. Goodbye."
Jaime
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