Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 1:07pm
Subject: Re: Wichita / on Tourneur
Gabe Klinger wrote:
> Unfortunately the print shown in Chicago (in 16mm) was a reduction
> print. And even then, it was more like 2.0 than 2.35.
That print would have been a 16mm IB Technicolor print, not anamorphic,
with black bars top and bottom, producing an image about 1.85 or less.
One loses the sides but, in 16mm, the image and color are better to 16mm
anamorphic.
> Joel McCrea's
> Wyatt is sort of the archetypical sheriff who exhorts unseemly
> cow-wranglers to the edge of Wichita and falls in love with the girl,
> but overall I found it pretty enjoyable.
Here's what I wrote about Tourneur (and WICHITA) a few years ago:
Jacques Tourneur (Paris. 1904-77) Son of Maurice Tourneur, one of the
finest silent filmmakers, Tourneur came to the US at ten and stayed,
except for six years in Europe in his twenties.
As a contract director who hardly ever refused an assignment, Tourneur
often had little control over his films. Way of a Gaucho (1952), for
instance, was produced and scripted by Philip Dunne, Henry King was set
to direct until three days beforehand, and Tourneur was obliged to
accept genteel Gene Tierney rather than feisty Jean Peters. Nonetheless
Way of a Gaucho is a Tourneur film visibly and, due to his accent, even
thematically.
Tourneu's accent is first on the way light falls on objects, on how
light bathes a scene in ways that recall nineteenth-century French
paintings rather than English, Italian, Spanish or American paintings.
There is almost a hint of sfumato in the way characters absorb
atmosphere around them: Kathy (Jane Greer) walking into the bar in Out
of the Past (1947); the magical materialization down the street of a
circus in Stars in My Crown (1949) or cattlemen in Wichita (1955); a
gaucho riding proud or a long column of tired cavalry in Way of a Gaucho.
Tourneur insisted on visible light sources in interiors and refused to
use fill lights on actors' faces in exteriors, with results both realist
(recalling Flaherty, Vidor and Renoir) and abstractly modern (recalling
Cézanne), because Tourneur.s natural lighting defeats the illusion of
reality and turns everything into flat geometric shapes.
With Tourneur, however, effects are rarely obvious or striking. His
style is deceptive, apparently matter-of-fact, underplayed, never
demanding that we take him seriously the way Renoir, Ford, Welles or
Rossellini demand that we take them seriously. Only Tourneur would
deliberately film a fashion show without a single fashion-style photo
(Nightfall, 1956), for example, and it is an example that defines him.
His art reveals itself only with contemplation. "Everything has to come
from the inside," he said. "You have to know how to paint with light,
and I must say that the pictorial culture I received from my childhood
has helped me a great deal....I hate weird angles [even though] it's
much more difficult to create a strange atmosphere while staying very
close to the actors and never using tricks." In Out of the Past, for
example, "The village you see is the one where I go to fish trout. I
knew everyone there and I knew exactly which parts of the landscape had
to be used."
Why "HAD to be used"? The views Tourneur selects, like Nightfall's
fashion show, are never postcards. But like Monet's waterlilies, they
become aesthetic the more one looks and feels Tourneur's emotions.
Eventually it is clear that everyone is speaking poetry and moving with
grace and that, even if it's a dumpy grace like Robert Mitchum's and
Jane Gree'.s in Out of the Past, Tourneur's pictures are always ballets.
Tourneur accented the delicate but also the epic in any project he was
assigned. The kiss Aldo Ray gives Anne Bancroft as she falls asleep in
his apartment (Nightfall) may be one of the most chaste kisses in
Hollywood cinema, but in its tenderness (and Tourneur's quick fade) it
is arguably the most erotic moment a Frenchman has filmed. Similarly
Wichita is both more straightforward and at least as mythological as any
western made by an American. Tourneur's Wyatt Earp is a superman hero,
who never hesitates or misses (even with a six-shooter from a galloping
horse), and who never indulges the tainted motives of Ford's Earp (My
Darling Clementine), the whining fear of Zinneman'.s marshall (Gary
Cooper, High Noon, 1952), or the sexual dawdling of Hawks's (John Wayne,
Rio Bravo). Nor, when it comes to Law and Order does Tourneur evince
even a glimmer of the requisite American Doubts. Neither his lawmen nor
his ministers (Stars in My Crown) nor Tourneur himself question their
righteous duty to impose justice; whereas Ford omits Earp's swearing-in
as marshall entirely, Tourneur gives the ceremony an almost sacerdotal
air. Tourneur truly believed in the supernatural. He is a Jansenist;
evil is excess; excess is always hubristic and licentious (the cattlemen
whose "free" frolicking in Wichita kills a five-year-old; the gaucho
whose "freedom" kills his friends). Tourneur's pictures continually
fashion dreamlike communities of peace and fellowship where a Blaise
Pascal would be content, but the communities he actually depicts are
lacerated with immoderation. The conflicts in Wichita and Way of a
Gaucho between freedom and constraint (or wilderness and civilization;
or wandering and settling), like all the many tremendous issues of the
coming Civil War in Great Day in the Morning (1956), are suppressed into
the one conflict, self-reflective at that, of immoderation. In Out of
the Past the succession of varied melodramas that transpire in a dozen
changes in location are only the external signs of the single real
drama, which is the purely internal drama of Mitchum dealing with the
kharma of his life's single hubristic act -- not his betrayal of his
employer but his unbridled passion for Kathy. Similary the zombie in I
Walked with a Zombie (1943) and the the Indians in Canyon Passage (1946)
materialize magically, supernaturally, dangerously, attractively. And
thus Tourneur's heroes generally spend their film trying to pass from
outcast alienation to communal integration. And should they achieve
this, we shall quickly withdraw, out the door and across the yard in
Stars in My Crown, outside watching the fire burning on the hearth of
the newly-raised cabin in Canyon Passage (1946). Tourneur's distance is
the respect he accords his people, for their space, their privacy, above
all their mystery, at the point in their lives when, willy nilly, wisdom
finds them. Perhaps this is why his colors and graytones remain in
memory as pastels. Watching Out of the Past we may think of the young
priest in Robert Bresson's Journal d'un curé de campagne who accepts his
fate, except that Mitchum never does accept his fate until, after his
death, his friend accepts it for him. No less remarkable is the
simplicity with which Vera Miles in Wichita tells Wyatt Earp, "I.m going
to go with you," and the look of wonder we barely glimpse on his face as
he turns around and leaves the frame with her. As Roger McNiven wrote,
Tourneur subverts stories into mysteries.
5302
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 3:20pm
Subject: Re: Wichita
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Gabe Klinger
> I know Kent Jones
> couldn't locate it for the series in New York, but those of us in
> Chicago are lucky if we have the chance to see the likes of STARS IN MY
> CROWN or EXPERIMENT PERILOUS, so this was really a treat.
The trouble with retrospectives is that, even if incomplete, they tend to "close the case," and the directors are seldom heard from in these parts again. Once, as Barry Gillam reminded me, if a series was missing a few films, other local institutions would sometimes fill in the blanks, but that seldom happens anymore. Why do I get the feeling that if a new 35mm print of WICHITA were to ride up to the Walter Reade tomorrow and knock on the door, they'd never show it, since they've already "done" Tourneur. Obviously, I hope I'm wrong.
5303
From: Jonathan Takagi
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 3:43pm
Subject: RE: Re: At Long Last!
> Peter I see no reason to rejoice in those necrophilic Academy
> events. Do you really give a damn about what/who the Academy decides
> to "honor"? It's all more likely to make me shed a tear, or puke...
Like when they gave one to Antonioni? It was upsetting, to
say the least. At least he wasn't on his death bed like
Kurosawa.
5304
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 3:45pm
Subject: Re: Good News
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
> Jake, thanks for the And Along Came a Spider tip. Has anyone seen
The
> Couch, a serial killer movie for tv that Blake Edwards wrote with
his
> daughter in the 80s? The imdb makes it sound like the Analyze This
of
> serial killer movies.
I haven't seen that version, but I did see the one directed by Owen
Crump, Edwards' uncle. It was adapted from a Robert Bloch short
story by Edwards and made for Warner Brothers and starred Grant
Williams. Crump had made television documentaries up to that time,
and the location work for THE COUCH has a gritty noirish realism.
Bloch novelized the screenplay for the film's release.
Richard
5305
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 4:07pm
Subject: Re: Wichita/Tourneur
I though Tag's piece was 100% gold. So refreshing to see something
that jettisons the cliches and talks abut the films.
5306
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 4:13pm
Subject: Re: At long last
Edwards is scarcely on his deathbed, although at the moment he's
recovering from that bad flu that's going around. He has been writing
steadily: two movies he wants to produce for Paramount (a new Peter
Gunn and a 10 remake set in England) and two plays for Broadway, a
Pink Panther musical and an original called Scapegoat, about Satan in
psychoanalysis with a female analyst. Sadly, John Ritter was supposed
to play Satan and won't now, but the Oscar should be a shot in the
arm to all these projects. Very timely.
I was misinformed by the imdb, I think - that Bloch project sounds
like the one they attribute to him, though how Jennifer Edwards got
in there as cowriter...
5307
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 5:11pm
Subject: Tourneur/sound
Great piece by Tag on Tourneur, and his final reference to Roger
MacNiven reminds me of Roger's great essay on Tourneur in "American
Directors".
Both emphasize Tourneur's use of light. A seldom mentioned
characteristic of T's style is his extraordinary use of sound -- low,
almost whispered voices, sparse sound effects, subdued use of music --
which would all make him hopelessly inadequate amid today's cult of
blaring sound tracks. This use of sound is particularly striking in
the Val Lewton films where it goes against the grain of the horror
genre. In "50 ans" Tavernier notes that T's use of speech "seems to
musically blend with the complex play of lights and shadows".
JPC
5308
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 5:41pm
Subject: Re: Tourneur/sound
Message NOT to the group:
It IS from Roger's essay on your volumes, but the footnotes got omitted
when I pasted the essay into the email.
jpcoursodon wrote:
> Great piece by Tag on Tourneur, and his final reference to Roger
> MacNiven reminds me of Roger's great essay on Tourneur in "American
> Directors".
>
> Both emphasize Tourneur's use of light. A seldom mentioned
> characteristic of T's style is his extraordinary use of sound -- low,
> almost whispered voices, sparse sound effects, subdued use of music --
> which would all make him hopelessly inadequate amid today's cult of
> blaring sound tracks. This use of sound is particularly striking in
> the Val Lewton films where it goes against the grain of the horror
> genre. In "50 ans" Tavernier notes that T's use of speech "seems to
> musically blend with the complex play of lights and shadows".
> JPC
>
5309
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 5:51pm
Subject: Re: Tourneur/sound
> Both emphasize Tourneur's use of light. A seldom mentioned
> characteristic of T's style is his extraordinary use of sound -- low,
> almost whispered voices, sparse sound effects, subdued use of music --
Yes, quietness is one of the things one most associates with Tourneur.
I've often noticed that Tourneur has a penchant for illuminated
backgrounds, creating a world that looks a little like a negative
black-and-white photograph. (Kubrick also likes illuminated
backgrounds, but he tends to emphasize the strain that that illumination
places on the photographic process, whereas Tourneur's images generally
are calm and contained.) - Dan
5310
From: hotlove666
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 6:15pm
Subject: Re: Wichita (On Tourneur)
That was Roger? Wow!!
Louis Skorecki did a good long think-piece on Tourneur in CdC
in the late 70s (where he made a point of Tourneur's preference
for striped ties for actors[!]), and of course Jean-Claude Biette's
"Re-Seeing Wichita" is a classic rejoinder to post-structuralism
from the same period. That's where he said that Tourneur treats
ideologies "as things."
5311
From: Bilge Ebiri
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 7:07pm
Subject: Retrospectives (WAS: Re: Wichita)
>
>
> The trouble with retrospectives is that, even if incomplete, they
> tend to "close the case," and the directors are seldom heard from
> in these parts again.
That's probably more the case with smaller cities with limited rep
houses and art theaters, and it is of course a shame. But one thing
I've noticed in NYC is that several venues now regularly pick up
retros a few months after they show elsewhere. Anthology, for
example, picked up a number of the Central Asian films several
months after they showed (at the WR?) BAM has turned reviving
recent retros from Manhattan into a virtual art form, taking things
that showed at MoMA and the WR and the Film Forum and Anthology and
re-showing them, from Fassbinder to Bresson to Wilder. And I just
heard yesterday that the Boris Barnet retro (from BAM) will be
coming to Anthology soon. This isn't meant to tease the non-NY'ers,
but just to note that, if you build it, they will come (to quote one
of the worst films ever made).
This sort of situation also becomes a problem if rep houses
exclusively do retros on directors. But a bit of diversification
produces some welcome overlap. After I saw THE PROFESSOR at the
Walter Reade's Valerio Zurlini retrospective several years ago, I
figured I'd never get chance to see it again. Lo and behold, this
year the WR did an Alain Delon retrospective, and there it was, with
a note in the program saying they had gotten numerous requests for
it to be reshown (which also shows that writing letters and sending
suggestions also helps). And heck, NY rep houses can't seem to be
able to *stop* showing those Matthew Barney films.
> if a
> series was missing a few films, other local institutions would
> sometimes fill in the blanks, but that seldom happens anymore.
That's probably true, and it probably has something to do with
increased competition and fewer resources, which is sad. The art
world, for all its pettiness, seems to often get this part right:
Gallerists and curators regularly show certain works to comment on,
complete, and/or enhance the works that are showing at another space
elsewhere.
-Bilge
5312
From:
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 8:35pm
Subject: Tourneur
Tag Gallagher's piece on Tourneur is very good!
The fashion show in Nightfall is one of Tourneur's most loveable scenes. This article really evokes it.
Dan Sallitt's comment on the illuminated background shots hits the mark, too. There are shots in "I Walked With a Zombie" where the background are the flat blinds in the house.
Completely different are the many perspective shots down corridors that run through Tourneur. These can be outdoors: the deep shots of Paris streets in "Berlin Express", the view of the city from the elevated walkway in "Nightfall". Or down country roads in "Stars in My Crown" or "Out of the Past". Or they can be indoors - shots deep through many rooms in the Karswell mansion in "Night of the Demon", or the porch corridors in "Zombie" or the bus station in "Nightfall". Or they can run through furniture, and be fairly close-up, such as the suspense passage at the end of "The Fear Makers" where Tourneur shoots along the floor between the desk and the wall. Tourneur always points his camera straight down the deepest perspective he can find, and shoots towards the point at infinity. It makes for spectacular and brilliantly composed shots.
Tourneur has a deep fondness for covered porches and walkways: areas that are not quite indoors or outdoors. The house in Zombie, the gas station and cantina corridor in "Out of the Past", the train stations with covered walkways in "Berlin Express" and "Night of the Demon". They are part of his signature visual style. The complex architecture of the well area surrounding the fashion show in "Nightfall" is also part of this.
Mike Grost
5313
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 9:33pm
Subject: Barnet info
I'm looking around for English-language writing on Boris Barnet. Can't
find much in my library: a short essay by John Gillett in Roud's CINEMA:
A CRITICAL DICTIONARY, an entry by Sadoul in his DICTIONARY OF
FILMMAKERS, Godard's review of THE WRESTLER AND THE CLOWN in GODARD ON
GODARD. Probably the best reference material I have is the anonymous
essay in WORLD FILM DIRECTORS VOL. I, which goes film by film through
Barnet's career. I just noticed that there's an in-print book called
INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY, edited by Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, that
contains some English-language writing on Barnet, though I haven't seen
it yet. Does anyone know about anything else that's reasonably
substantial or insightful? Did Gillett publish anything in conjunction
with the BFI retro in 1980? - Dan
5314
From: jess_l_amortell
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 9:48pm
Subject: Retrospectives (WAS: Re: Wichita)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Bilge Ebiri"
> But one thing
> I've noticed in NYC is that several venues now regularly pick up
> retros a few months after they show elsewhere.
That's true (and the Barnet second chance will be welcome), I was thinking more of our canonical auteurs e.g. the Vidor (going back quite a while to the Public Theater), Borzage, Tourneur series, each (no doubt necessarily) selective enough to merit at least an ad hoc Part II...
5315
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 10:49pm
Subject: Re: Tourneur
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
.
> Completely different are the many perspective shots down corridors
that run through Tourneur. These can be outdoors: the deep shots of
Paris streets in "Berlin Express", the view of the city from the
elevated walkway in "Nightfall". Or down country roads in "Stars in
My Crown" or "Out of the Past". Or they can be indoors - shots deep
through many rooms in the Karswell mansion in "Night of the Demon",
or the porch corridors in "Zombie" or the bus station in "Nightfall".
Or they can run through furniture, and be fairly close-up, such as
the suspense passage at the end of "The Fear Makers" where Tourneur
shoots along the floor between the desk and the wall. Tourneur always
points his camera straight down the deepest perspective he can find,
and shoots towards the point at infinity. It makes for spectacular
and brilliantly composed shots.
I think Tourneur's last, unrealized project was called something
like "Whispers Down a Distant Corridor"!
> JPC
Mike Grost
5316
From: Dave Garrett
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 11:03pm
Subject: Re: Barnet info
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt
> I'm looking around for English-language writing on Boris Barnet. Can't
> find much in my library: a short essay by John Gillett in Roud's CINEMA:
> A CRITICAL DICTIONARY, an entry by Sadoul in his DICTIONARY OF
> FILMMAKERS, Godard's review of THE WRESTLER AND THE CLOWN in GODARD ON
> GODARD. Probably the best reference material I have is the anonymous
> essay in WORLD FILM DIRECTORS VOL. I, which goes film by film through
> Barnet's career. I just noticed that there's an in-print book called
> INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY, edited by Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, that
> contains some English-language writing on Barnet, though I haven't seen
> it yet.
I have this book, and there's not a whole lot on Barnet in it; it contains
English translations of primary source documents on Russian and
Soviet cinema, and Barnet gets mentioned a few times in passing,
but there's nothing like a essay (or even a paragraph) devoted entirely
to him or his work. There are several stills from his films interspersed
throughout the book, and there's a brief filmography contained in an
appendix covering significant figures in Russian cinema, but that's about it.
Dave
5317
From: Michael Brooke
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 11:28pm
Subject: Retrospectives (WAS: Re: Wichita)
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "Bilge Ebiri"
> >
> This sort of situation also becomes a problem if rep houses
> exclusively do retros on directors. But a bit of diversification
> produces some welcome overlap. After I saw THE PROFESSOR at the
> Walter Reade's Valerio Zurlini retrospective several years ago, I
> figured I'd never get chance to see it again. Lo and behold, this
> year the WR did an Alain Delon retrospective, and there it was, with
> a note in the program saying they had gotten numerous requests for
> it to be reshown (which also shows that writing letters and sending
> suggestions also helps). And heck, NY rep houses can't seem to be
> able to *stop* showing those Matthew Barney films.
Speaking as a former rep cinema booker, I can confirm we certainly took req=
uests into
account, though with the proviso that at least 60-70% of them were hopeless=
ly
unattainable for copyright, print availability/condition or other reasons. =
But we'd
keep a very keen eye on the box office for individual programmes (we mostly=
showed
daily-changing double and triple bills), and if anything did better than ex=
pected we'd
certainly repeat it - we'd have been mad not to, given that we were 100% fu=
nded by
our customers!
It also helped that my then boss, Peter Howden, was one of the best in the =
business at
coming up with imaginative connections - double-billing 'The Battle of Algi=
ers' with
'Duck Soup', for instance - and he'd usually find some way of slotting in r=
equests in
such a way that it looked like a coherent and organic part of the programme=
.
> > if a
> > series was missing a few films, other local institutions would
> > sometimes fill in the blanks, but that seldom happens anymore.
>
> That's probably true, and it probably has something to do with
> increased competition and fewer resources, which is sad. The art
> world, for all its pettiness, seems to often get this part right:
> Gallerists and curators regularly show certain works to comment on,
> complete, and/or enhance the works that are showing at another space
> elsewhere.
>
I have very fond memories of jointly staging the first UK run of Jan Svankm=
ajer's
'Faust' in tandem with the ICA in autumn 1994 - and instead of the usual cu=
t-throat
competitive approach we got together beforehand, and we agreed that we'd ea=
ch run
a supporting season but we'd concentrate on different aspects of the main f=
eature -
so they focused on the surrealist/Eastern European/animation connection, wh=
ile we
tackled other explorations of the Faust legend and more general accounts of=
hell,
damnation and demonic possession.
And the results were fabulous: a two-cinema melting pot throwing in everyth=
ing from
the Brothers Quay to 'Mephisto' to 'Häxan' via things like a Max Von Sydow =
triple-bill
of 'The Seventh Seal', 'The Exorcist' and the then-new 'Needful Things' - a=
nd I really
wish this kind of thing happened more often. Sadly, this was nearly ten ye=
ars ago,
and repertory cinemas barely exist in London any more.
Michael
5318
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Fri Dec 12, 2003 11:39pm
Subject: Re: Re: Barnet info
>>I'm looking around for English-language writing on Boris Barnet. Can't
>>find much in my library: a short essay by John Gillett in Roud's CINEMA:
>>A CRITICAL DICTIONARY, an entry by Sadoul in his DICTIONARY OF
>>FILMMAKERS, Godard's review of THE WRESTLER AND THE CLOWN in GODARD ON
>>GODARD. Probably the best reference material I have is the anonymous
>>essay in WORLD FILM DIRECTORS VOL. I, which goes film by film through
>>Barnet's career. I just noticed that there's an in-print book called
>>INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY, edited by Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, that
>>contains some English-language writing on Barnet, though I haven't seen
>>it yet.
>
> I have this book, and there's not a whole lot on Barnet in it; it contains
> English translations of primary source documents on Russian and
> Soviet cinema, and Barnet gets mentioned a few times in passing,
> but there's nothing like a essay (or even a paragraph) devoted entirely
> to him or his work. There are several stills from his films interspersed
> throughout the book, and there's a brief filmography contained in an
> appendix covering significant figures in Russian cinema, but that's about it.
My understanding is that there are two books, both edited by Taylor and
Christie: one called THE FILM FACTORY, which contains the primary source
documents, and one called INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY, which contains
essays, including some on Barnet and Protazanov. - Dan
5319
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 1:15am
Subject: Re: Barnet
Bernard Eisenschitz has researched and written quite a bit on
Barnet...in French.
5320
From: Rick Segreda
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 4:32am
Subject: Romantic comedy: the black sheep genre? Or, what makes for greatness?
I just came out smiling from a screening of Nancy Meyer's "Something Gotta Give," with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson. I'd say it's the best American film I have seen all year, but though it might make a few top ten lists, I doubt Nancy Meyer will win any awards. Why? The genre: romantic comedy. Indeed, for that very reason, some film critics will just dismiss the film as "fluff" or worse. I recall some contributers to this forum have written off Woody Allen's two great romantic comedies, "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan" as something like "absolutely worthless." Ostensibly the judgements are about Woody, but in reality, I think his great crime has been flirting with a genre that embarrasses some for dealing with that most dicey of subjects: our need to be loved. It's much safer to bestow praise to noirish and violent (or even better, cold and cynical) movies
Just for the record, I also loved Clint Eastwood's noirish and violent "Mystic River," but I am going to give the edge to "Something's Gotta Give."
And just for the record, nothing in Nancy Meyer's screenwriting career; "Private Benjamin," "Baby Boom," or "What Woman Want," could have prepared me for how smart, sharp, and consistently laugh-out-loud funny this is. I was expecting strained jokes on the level your typical TV sitcom, but that wasn't the case.
---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Protect your identity with Yahoo! Mail AddressGuard
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
5321
From: Dave Garrett
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 6:07am
Subject: Re: Barnet info
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt
> >>I'm looking around for English-language writing on Boris Barnet. Can't
> >>find much in my library: a short essay by John Gillett in Roud's CINEMA:
> >>A CRITICAL DICTIONARY, an entry by Sadoul in his DICTIONARY OF
> >>FILMMAKERS, Godard's review of THE WRESTLER AND THE CLOWN in GODARD ON
> >>GODARD. Probably the best reference material I have is the anonymous
> >>essay in WORLD FILM DIRECTORS VOL. I, which goes film by film through
> >>Barnet's career. I just noticed that there's an in-print book called
> >>INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY, edited by Richard Taylor and Ian Christie, that
> >>contains some English-language writing on Barnet, though I haven't seen
> >>it yet.
> >
> > I have this book, and there's not a whole lot on Barnet in it; it contains
> > English translations of primary source documents on Russian and
> > Soviet cinema, and Barnet gets mentioned a few times in passing,
> > but there's nothing like a essay (or even a paragraph) devoted entirely
> > to him or his work. There are several stills from his films interspersed
> > throughout the book, and there's a brief filmography contained in an
> > appendix covering significant figures in Russian cinema, but that's about it.
>
> My understanding is that there are two books, both edited by Taylor and
> Christie: one called THE FILM FACTORY, which contains the primary source
> documents, and one called INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY, which contains
> essays, including some on Barnet and Protazanov. - Dan
Oops. After a quick visit to Amazon I see that you're absolutely correct.
I've never seen INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY, and since the editors were
the same, I assumed you were talking about the earlier book of source
documents. Mea culpa.
Dave
5322
From:
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 2:49am
Subject: Re: Re: Barnet info
Kristin Thompson wrote a bit about Barnet's Outskirts in her essay "Early
Sound Counterpoint" from a 1980 issue of Yale French Studies which includes a
still from the film. I have it as a pdf file and can email it to you if you'd
like.
Kevin
5323
From: Michael Brooke
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 8:39am
Subject: Re: Jack Valenti's Worst Nightmare
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
> --- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
> wrote:
> >
> > --- jpcoursodon
> > > David, personally I can live without watching
> > > Ewan's penis (no
> > > matter how impressive), just as I can live without
> > > watching any
> > > actress's vagina. Even if the plot absolutely
> > > requires it. I'm old-
> > > fashioned that way, I guess, although the penis
> > > scenes in ROMANCE
> > > didn't bother me.
> > > JPC
> >
> > What about Mark Rylance's penis in "Intimacy"?
> >
> > I'll be writing a FaBlog entry on this entire issue shortly.
> >
> > ____I didn't mind that either although I can't say I remember it
> (you know what I liked about the film -- we discussed it privately --
> and it has nothing to do with penisses). Are we making fetishes about
> body parts here? _Is this an auteurist issue? As a "censorship" issue
> I guess I can accept it. But I can't work up much enthusiasm for it.
Just out of curiosity, what happened to 'A Room with a View' in the US? In Europe it
got the equivalent of a PG just about everywhere - and rightly so - but given that
there's a scene with three penises consistently on view for something like two
minutes, how did the MPAA react? Or was it released unrated because of this?
Michael
5324
From:
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 4:43am
Subject: A Room With a View, Romantic Comedy
A Room With a View (James Ivory) was an enormous hit in the United States.
Here in Detroit, it played for almost a year at local art houses. It is still
James Ivory's best loved work with the general public here.
The music from the film, Kiri Te Kanawa's recording of Puccini's "Mio Babino
Caro", also became a best selling classical piece. The two are always linked
in my mind.
I share Rick Segreda's enthusiasm for romantic comedy. Such films tend to be
greatly underrated by some viewers. Over the last 30 years, the genre that
Hollywood has done best is comedy, IMHO. And British "heritage films" are also
underrated by some critics. A film like "Persuasion" (Roger Michell) is very
good.
Mike Grost
5325
From: Michael Brooke
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 11:50am
Subject: Re: A Room With a View, Romantic Comedy
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, MG4273@a... wrote:
> A Room With a View (James Ivory) was an enormous hit in the United States.
> Here in Detroit, it played for almost a year at local art houses. It is still
> James Ivory's best loved work with the general public here.
All of which I know - my specific question was: did it run into any difficulties with the
MPAA (indeed, was it shown uncut?). This would seem to be a perfect example of a
film that features prolonged but clearly totally non-sexual frontal male nudity - in
other words, precisely the kind of material that the MPAA seems to have problems
with but which is passed without a murmur by equivalent censorship boards in
Europe.
(I've just checked the IMDB, which claims it was unrated - which I suspect answers my
question! Indeed, did the distributors even bother submitting it to the MPAA in the
first place, knowing its attitude to this kind of material?)
Michael
5326
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 3:49pm
Subject: RE: Re: At Long Last!
There is one advantage to honoring these directors in the very public
venue of the Academy Awards: with the availability of dvd copies of
films, I suspect there will be a few people who will check out, if not
purchase the films of Edwards, Antonioni, Kurosawa, etc. if only on the
mention of their names at the AA ceremonies. I've met people 'in film'
who have never seen a Kurosawa movie and whatever advertisement is
available might help. Of course, it might all get lost in the hype of
everything else.
> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 07:43:29 -0800
> From: "Jonathan Takagi"
> Subject: RE: Re: At Long Last!
>
>
>> Peter I see no reason to rejoice in those necrophilic Academy
>> events. Do you really give a damn about what/who the Academy decides
>> to "honor"? It's all more likely to make me shed a tear, or puke...
>
> Like when they gave one to Antonioni? It was upsetting, to
> say the least. At least he wasn't on his death bed like
> Kurosawa.
>
5327
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 4:10pm
Subject: Something's Gotta Give
I liked the stairs at the beach scene and think more could have been
done with it.
Message: 19
> Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 20:32:33 -0800 (PST)
> From: Rick Segreda
> Subject: Romantic comedy: the black sheep genre? Or, what makes for
> greatness?
>
> I just came out smiling from a screening of Nancy Meyer's "Something
> Gotta Give," with Diane Keaton and Jack Nicholson. I'd say it's the
> best American film I have seen all year, but though it might make a
> few top ten lists, I doubt Nancy Meyer will win any awards. Why? The
> genre: romantic comedy. Indeed, for that very reason, some film
> critics will just dismiss the film as "fluff" or worse. I recall some
> contributers to this forum have written off Woody Allen's two great
> romantic comedies, "Annie Hall" and "Manhattan" as something like
> "absolutely worthless." Ostensibly the judgements are about Woody,
> but in reality, I think his great crime has been flirting with a genre
> that embarrasses some for dealing with that most dicey of subjects:
> our need to be loved. It's much safer to bestow praise to noirish and
> violent (or even better, cold and cynical) movies
>
> Just for the record, I also loved Clint Eastwood's noirish and violent
> "Mystic River," but I am going to give the edge to "Something's Gotta
> Give."
>
> And just for the record, nothing in Nancy Meyer's screenwriting
> career; "Private Benjamin," "Baby Boom," or "What Woman Want," could
> have prepared me for how smart, sharp, and consistently laugh-out-loud
> funny this is. I was expecting strained jokes on the level your
> typical TV sitcom, but that wasn't the case.
5328
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 4:15pm
Subject: Re: Barnet info
> Kristin Thompson wrote a bit about Barnet's Outskirts in her essay
"Early
> Sound Counterpoint" from a 1980 issue of Yale French Studies which
includes a
> still from the film. I have it as a pdf file and can email it to you
if you'd
> like.
I would appreciate that - thanks. Please send to sallitt at panix dot
com.
One book I left out of my roundup of English-language writing on
Barnet is Jay Leyda's famous text on Soviet film, KINO, which I don't
have around the house. Leyda isn't a big Barnet fan. There's another
book on Soviet film that seems to talk about Barnet, though I don't
know how much: Alexander Birkos' SOVIET CINEMA: DIRECTORS AND FILMS.
Does anyone recommend this book?
A bibliography in WORLD FILM DIRECTORS (a reference book that I use
all the time and recommend highly, by the way) lists the following
periodicals in English with Barnet content: Film Comment Fall 1968,
Film Culture Fall 1965, and Film Dope March 1973. And then a spate of
British periodicals around the time of the 1980 BFI retro: Morning
Star, 8 Jul 80; Sight and Sound Autumn 1980; Time Out, 11-17 Jul 80.
For those of you with deep libraries.
To Michael Brooke or anyone else: is there any way to find out a)
which films were in the 1980 BFI Barnet retro, and b) whether they had
English subtitles, or were translated in some other way?
I'm not currently receiving mail from Yahoo groups and have to use the
web interface, so my response time might be poor for a while. - Dan
5329
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 4:21pm
Subject: Oscars
I'm neither fiend [sic] nor foe when it comes to the Oscars, and I
certainly plan to watch Mr. Edwards, as I did Stanley Donen in 1997.
Since a fair number here still see current films and have passes to
see them before release - something I am still struggling to achieve
with my paltry 400,000 U.S. readers at The Economist - I wonder how
those in the group who care are handicapping this year's race,
specifically re: Best Director. Minghella and Eastwood are sure to
get nominations, and I have faint hopes for Van Sant and Burton,
despite Sony's cluelessness when it comes to Oscar campaigns (and a
backlash by some critics against both). Not having seen the Weir, I
wonder if Miramax will spend equally for The Master and The Mountain,
always an issue within pr departments. (Susan Pile quit her job at
Fox because Diller sandbagged her on her wish to treat Brooks and
Stone equally the year of Broadcast News and Wall Street - Stone, of
course, wanted more.) But I haven't seen Samurai or Rings 3 or the
two Loves (I'll catch them with the family), and I'm a child when it
comes to these matters, so I defer to those who know - if they don't
think it inappropriate to speak in this forum.
5330
From: hotlove666
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 4:26pm
Subject: Re: Barnet info
Dan, Do you have access to a library that can download the FIAF
files? They give a very good listing of English- and some other-
language film periodical literature indexed by director and title,
among other things. I looked up Bunuel at UCLA yesterday, and there
were 493 articles listed under his name.
5331
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 7:41pm
Subject: Re: Barnet info
Dan--You may know this already but a translated Eisenschitz essay on
Barnet is in that INSIDE THE FILM FACTORY, if you ever lay your hands
on a copy of it.
Also, the essay by Iosseliani on Barnet that Elliott Stein was
reading excerpts from last week and said was in a Gilbert Adair
anthology is also available in that special POSITIF issue of
PROJECTIONS: PROJECTIONS 4 1/2, which you may already have. Elliott
left out some of the more questionable things Iosseliani states in
the piece such as the claim that Eisenstein was "ideologically empty,
believing that art existed merely as form." I'm not sure that in our
rush to acclaim Barnet we need to do so at the expense of other major
Soviet directors. There's lots of room here for everybody (although
given Iosseliani's concerns, his claim about Eisenstein is not all
that surprising).
Finally, I do have that issue of SIGHT AND SOUND which has a piece by
John Gillett on the Barnet series at the NFT. It's only about 2/3 of
a page but I could copy it and give it to you on Monday at BAM.
Joe
5332
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 9:39pm
Subject: Request for Tag
Could you please post your Sternberg essay from Cahiers? I've read the
French, but don't have it with me at the moment in NYC, and I want to
read the original American anyway.
Thanks!
Patrick
5333
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 9:59pm
Subject: Re: A Room With a View, Romantic Comedy
> All of which I know - my specific question was: did it run into any
>difficulties with the MPAA (indeed, was it shown uncut?). This
>would seem to be a perfect example of a film that features prolonged
>but clearly totally non-sexual frontal male nudity - in other
>words, precisely the kind of material that the MPAA seems to have
>problems with but which is passed without a murmur by equivalent
>censorship boards in Europe.
I don't know whether Merchant/Ivory had MPAA problems with the film
or not but the full-frontal male nudity in ROOM in the States was
(uh) uncut. Also, the film was very well handled in terms of where it
was initially exhibited (in New York, it played for months
exclusively at the Paris, a theater so refined that they don't sell
snacks) so that everything in the film and surrounding its
presentation seemed to be in the best possible taste.
Also, I don't believe that Blockbuster video (such a major name in
all of this agonizing over NC-17 ratings) has problems in stocking
films which don't receive an MPAA rating at all. I'm sure that most
of them stock A ROOM WITH A VIEW and the local Blockbuster in my
neighborhood in Brooklyn even carries Patrice Chereau's L'HOMME
BLESSE, which has lots and lots of male nudity with mercifully none
of it in good taste.
5334
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sat Dec 13, 2003 10:55pm
Subject: Re: Re: A Room With a View, Romantic Comedy
--- joe_mcelhaney
> Also, I don't believe that Blockbuster video (such a
> major name in
> all of this agonizing over NC-17 ratings) has
> problems in stocking
> films which don't receive an MPAA rating at all.
> I'm sure that most
> of them stock A ROOM WITH A VIEW and the local
> Blockbuster in my
> neighborhood in Brooklyn even carries Patrice
> Chereau's L'HOMME
> BLESSE, which has lots and lots of male nudity with
> mercifully none
> of it in good taste.
Mai oui!
But just try scoring a copy of "The Last Temptation of
Christ."
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/
5335
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 3:27am
Subject: Re: Request for Tag
Patrick Ciccone wrote:
> Could you please post your Sternberg essay from Cahiers? I've read the
> French, but don't have it with me at the moment in NYC, and I want to
> read the original American anyway.
>
>
It's a bit long to post here. You can find it online:
von Sternberg: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/19/sternberg.html
(If you have problems, I can send it to you as an attached Word document.)
And don't forget:
Dreyer: http://www.filmint.nu/eng.html
Ferrara:
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr0600/tgfr10d.htm
Fuller: www.filmint.nu/eng.html
Hitchcock: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/24/hitch_machines.html
Short manifesto about cinema & academia:
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr0301/tgbfr12a.htm
Mankiewicz as producer:
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/28/joseph_mankiewicz.html
McCarey:
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr1201/tgfr13a.htm
Mizoguchi:
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr1201/tgfr13b.htm
Ophuls: http://www.filmint.nu/eng.html or
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/02/22/ophuls.html
Preminger: www.filmint.nu/eng.html (January 2004 or sooner)
Rossellini's Joan of Arc:
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr0300/tgfr09a.htm
Ulmer:
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr0301/tgafr12a.htm
Vidor, Hawks, Ford ("American Tryptych"): http://www.filmint.nu/eng.html
Ford's Bucking Broadway:
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/03/26/john_ford_rises.html
Walsh: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/walsh.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
5336
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 5:00am
Subject: Tag/Sternberg
Thanks, Tag. Did the Cahiers version have a sidebar about how von
Sternberg's dream project was to follow a human from conception on, or
something like that? I hope I'm not dreaming this detail, as it makes
for one of the best never made masterwork ideas floating around
(Bresson's Genesis, Dreyer's Jesus, e.g.)
Patrick
Tag's essay is really great--I underscore this part:
Thus the urge, in von Sternberg's movies, to break through masks, to
deflate the brutality of Romantic obsession, to find the identity
within – a search that becomes an unattainable ideal. The image itself
– Marlene's face, eyes, body, staring into the camera without a veil –
becomes the obstacle to knowing the person inside, as well as the
revelation of that person.
It is not that von Sternberg hides the person from us. Quite the
contrary. Nothing is hidden, least of all the imponderables. Every
emotion is displayed openly, but in a jumble of conflicting emotions,
desires, passions and physical gestures over which the person may not
have control. The result is provocative, seductive. "The more you
cheat, the more you lie, the more exciting you become, X-27," exclaims
Victor McLaglen to Dietrich, a female spy, in Dishonored. Von
Sternberg's characters live on a purely emotional level, not on logic,
and their emotions become actions: they are their emotions, their
actions. Their emotions fill the screen in pure action, resonating in
illuminated water, mist, smoke, and chiaroscuro, achieving, in von
Sternberg's words, "an emotionalized background that would transfer
itself into my foreground": and thought is photographed.
5337
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 5:28am
Subject: Re: Tag/Sternberg
Patrick Ciccone wrote:
> Did the Cahiers version have a sidebar about how von
> Sternberg's dream project was to follow a human from conception on, or
> something like that? I hope I'm not dreaming this detail, as it makes
> for one of the best never made masterwork ideas floating around
> (Bresson's Genesis, Dreyer's Jesus, e.g.)
The side bars included some extracts from unpublished interviews by
Philip Jenkinson with von Sternberg and Clive Brooks. Here they are in
English. (Also some stuff from Ray Manzarek.) I don't recall reading
about a project to follow a human from conception: how would it have
meshed well with JvS's working methods?
"" Clive Brook,1970:
[During Shanghai Express] I remember very clearly "Von" telling us we
were on a train, and he said that people on a train always talked in
rhythm with the wheels. I was dashed if I could really see what he was
drving at, but I do remember very well him bringing a metronome on the
set, and saying 'Now, that.'s the rhythm of the wheels. Talk in time
with that.' Darn difficult, you know.
He'd do into great details over something very slight, like stubbing out
a cigarette, and he'd show you exactly the way he wanted you to do it.
But if you asked him what you were supposed to be feeling, he.d say
something like, 'Oh, let me take care of that.' I well recall some of
the artists saying how ill-at-ease they felt, because he hardly ever
gave what we used to call 'mood' direction.
Von's reputation was earned....Nobody could ever accuse him of being
"jumped up" or one of those posturing middle-Europeans that for a while
came to Hollywood and wore monacles, and capes, or carried riding crops
and wore jodhpurs. No, Von was one hundred percent what we call a "pro,"
and believe me, there weren't too many of them around.
"" Josef von Sternberg, 1971:
I never really know what people mean when they talk about the
documentary as opposed to the fiction, the make-believe. All cinema is
fiction because it has been contrived, and if it has been contrived,
then it can't be natural. You see something with your eyes; that is
natural. That is real. But a camera records only artifice. Selection,
organization and choice have taken place... It becomes a fiction.
I used foregrounds, middleground and backgrounds. I built depth into my
sets, I used depth in my lighting -- you know, shadows, pools of light,
darkness, ten maybe something glowing away at the back. And I tried to
use depth in my groupings....There was depth even in close-ups, and I
could get exactly the effect I wanted by moving a light maybe three
inches to the left, or changing the focus by a mere touch to the
lens....To begin with, I might take an hour, two or occasionally three
to get something I wanted, but then it wouldn't be discarded. I might
use that set-up many times during one scene. No I wouldn't say I was slow.
If actors don't understand something, they get very suspicious and
frightened....If I had stopped to explain my every move to the actors we
would never have finished a single picture. I found it better to tell
them as little as possible, keep them in a kind of suspense. This way,
when their time came before the camera, they were very eager to try
different methods, to take different approaches. If I had stopped each
time to tell them exactly what was going on, the mystery would have
disappeared....I wanted always a slight element of surprise, as if
they'd only just thought of their next line, or their next move.
When Miss Dietrich was curious about something, she might say, "Why am I
doing this, or why do I say that?" That could sometimes be
tiresome....It is quite impossible for a director to become an actor's
Svengali. You might just as well work with puppets. There seems to be
some notion that I acted as Miss Dietrich's Svengali. This is totally
untrue. When we made successful scenes or pictures togetheer it was
beause there was complete understanding. If we failed, and that's up to
the adience and critics to judge, then it would only be because there
had been a lack of understanding in what we were trying to do.
""
Cahiers didn't print these:
"" Josef von Sternberg: from Fun in a Chinese Laundry:
Actually Mr. [Theodore] Dreiser's attorneys made a mistake in not
calling on me to be a witness for Mr. Dreiser, for I would have agreed
with him [that the movie American Tragedy was a complete
misrepresentation of Dreiser.s book]. Literature cannot be transferred
to the screen without a loss to its values; the visual elements
completely revalue the written word.
p. 259 ).
There is a curious notion afloat the the actor and the story have much
to do with the ultimate quality of a motion picture, and this erroneous
doctrine is not only widespread but part of the credo of some very
illustrious critics. p. 108
&the average human being lives behind an impenetrable veil and will
disclose his deep emotions only in a crisis which robs him of control. A
crisis does not need a great reason. 56
Acting is not the memorizing of a text while wearing a disguise, nor the
facility to stimulate anything at a moment's notice, but the
reconstruction of motives that re the cause of action and words. This is
not easy& p. 93
"""
Here is the Manzarek excerpt (MUCH abridged by me):
Josef von Sternberg taught our directing class, and it changed my
life.&He opened my mind to the possibility of making movies that were
deeply passionate, mysterious, and psychological. Perhaps even slightly
kinky, who knows? I know he had a profound effect on The Doors' music. A
music that was slightly kinky and slightly Germanic. After all, The
Doors did do Brecht and Weill's "Alabama Song"&
Jim Morrison took the very same class.&The two guys who would
eventually, inevitably create The Doors were worshiping at the feet of
the same teacher.&
Von Sternberg took us into bungalow 3K7, the screening room where all
the films were shown, and said, "Boys and giris. Students....Watch and
learn. In particular, watch the lighting. If anything with my films, l'm
most pleased with the lighting. I.ll show you how I lit Dietrich when we
go to the soundstage. I call it the butterfly light. High up, straight
overhead. It casts the shadow of a butterfly under the nose. Of course
the cheek-bones must be perfect."...
She exuded an aura unlike anything I had ever seen on the screen before.
An aura of knowledge, sensuality, wisdom, and vulnerability. She had
been hurt by love, wounded by love, but she was still a romantic. A
person who believed in the awesome, terrible power of love; the
overwhelming torce of love....
And Anna May Wong....So cool, so beautiful, so dangerous. Her look could
freeze you to the bone. And her words . . . slice, you're bleeding.
These were the two sexiest women I had ever seen in my lite. And I
thought, I want to be married to both of these women....And if I may say
so, Dorothy Fujikawa comes as close to putting those two women together
as any woman l've ever met. Perhaps that's why we're stili married, and
certainly why she was the star of my student movies.
And what Dietrich did to me she did to Jim in spades. He was in love
with her. Mad for her. That's where Elke, The German blonde in the black
négligée on top of The TV set in Jim's student movie, comes from. An
homage to la Dietrich. I sometimes think Jim even adapted a bit of her
smolder for his own stage aura.
And of course von Sternberg's mise en scène was discussed endlessiy. We
talked about his lighting, his sets, his filling of the negative space
in front of the camera, his stories of men as fools for a blonde
goddess, his Orientalism, his exoticism, his languid pace fraught with
psychological tension. Just like, as I later came to realize, Doors'
songs, Doors' concerts. We didn't know it then in our pot-induced
musings, but we were preparing for our art form of the future. For The
Doors.
de: Ray Manzarek: Light My Fire: My Life with the Doors. New York:
Putnam.s, 1998; pp. 63-66.
>
>
>
5338
From: Patrick Ciccone
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 3:36pm
Subject: Re: Tag/Sternberg
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Tag Gallagher
I don't recall reading
> about a project to follow a human from conception: how would it have
> meshed well with JvS's working methods?
I don't either, but I think I remember this about some director (who?)
who I thought was von Sternberg? Anybody?
Patrick
5339
From: Tag Gallagher
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 4:42pm
Subject: Re: Re: Tag/Sternberg
Rossellini wanted to zoom from a single cell to the whole universe...
Patrick Ciccone wrote:
> project to follow a human from conception
>
5340
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 5:20pm
Subject: Re: Sternberg
You're right, Patrick. One of Sternberg's unmade projects was a film
about the idea that the first seven years of human life determine the
person's "destiny," or perhaps it was "character."
5341
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 5:41pm
Subject: Re: Good News
Richard, you're right. I just started watching The Couch, which is
scripted by Edwards and directed by Owen Crump. Looks pretty good.
So, it turns out, is Panhandle, Edwards' first writing-producing
venture (1948!), in which a character named Crump is shot off-screen
during a card game. We see the body, which is slumped over the table,
and Reed Hadley orders his men to take it out and dump it, but they
decide to finish the game first...with a fresh deck. (Crump's hand -
a full house - has bullet holes in it.)
The film has a rare wit for a B western, to say the least. This is
particularly effective in the opening scenes, when the Rod Cameron
character is preparing to ride off and get the man who killed his
brother. When the actual plot gets going, the sheer rhetorical
overkill gets in the way every now and then, - many more jibes and
witicisms are exchanged than gunshots - but is still a delight.
There's a funny scene where Cameron tells a shaggy dog story to
Edwards, playing an admiring young gun who becomes his enemy just on
the strength of having been stung by the twice-told tale. (It's the
one that ends with the narrator saying: "He killed me.") There's a
lot of later Edwards in Panhandle, which has some of the qualities of
a Burt Kennedy script.
I also just rewatched Mister Cory for the first time in ages, and one
tends to forget what a superb writer Edwards is. That one is
certainly well-directed, but it's most memorable for the script:
Godard compared the Tony Curtis character to a character out of
Stendahl, the Kathy Grant character (the bratty sister of the titular
heroine, played by Martha Hyer) is an original, and there's one
classic scene where Hyer's rich boyfriend offers to step aside out of
love and Curtis tells him, snarling, that he's weak. Pure Nietzsche!
The film already looks "Edwardian" which suggests to me that early
Edwards (at least The Pink Panther) was influenced by the way things
tended to look at Universal. (Russell Metty shot it.)
5342
From: Maxime
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 8:28pm
Subject: Stranger on Horsback
[NFA color print]
I thought that only Dwan could achieve a 12 days western with so
much elegance...
Heard that Tourneur was quite dissatisfied with the Ansocolor
process. Can't say I agree, this "grisaille" suits perfectly to the
movie, the nights are beautiful.
Struck by the implacable logic of the story. McCrea does his part...
If it had to be compared to Wichita, I'd say it lacks a bit
respiration. Those moments between McCrea and Miles could not exist
here. Driven by the ineluctable progression of the story, the movie
lets few moments for uncertainty. It goes on the straight line, like
McCrea riding away in the end, when everybody seems to let him down.
5343
From: Maxime
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 8:32pm
Subject: Re: Barnet info
Sorry, I have no other English sources, but, to any French reader, I
recommend the excellent "Boris Barnet" book published for the 85
Locarno Festival.
5344
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 9:10pm
Subject: Re: Stranger on Horsback
> Struck by the implacable logic of the story. McCrea does his part...
I liked the film, but I wasn't so sure about McCrea's logic in pursuing
the bad guys in the way that he did. Seemed to me that luck was very
much on his side.
I loved that sleeping cat! How do you get a cat to fall asleep on a
movie set? - Dan
5345
From: jaloysius56
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 9:32pm
Subject: Re: Stranger on Horsback
> I liked the film, but I wasn't so sure about McCrea's logic in
pursuing
> the bad guys in the way that he did. Seemed to me that luck was
very
> much on his side.
The logic being: "I know what is "good" and what is not. I know what
I have to do. And I'll do it up to the end"
> I loved that sleeping cat! How do you get a cat to fall asleep on
a movie set? - Dan
It reminds me this funny scene with the cat on the set of "la Nuit
américaine" (Bernard Menez being as funny as the cat)
5346
From:
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 4:59pm
Subject: Re: Re: At Long Last!
Jean-Pierre Coursodon wrote:
> Peter I see no reason to rejoice in those necrophilic Academy
>events. Do you really give a damn about what/who the Academy decides
>to "honor"?
Of course, I don't need the Academy (or anybody else) to validate my love for
great films or filmmakers, but I must admit that it's always nice - for me -
to see someone whose work I'm an admirer of "win." For no other reason, it
does tend to make that person's next project a little easier to finance -
provided that they aren't retired (or in forced retirement) and the way Bill makes
it sound, Edwards is far from retired.
I am glad Orson snubbed them though.
Peter
5347
From:
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 5:13pm
Subject: The Great Race and Edwards M.I.A.s
Jake Wilson wrote:
>THE GREAT RACE is sublime. I spent a year studying it with a view to
>writing a never-completed Honours thesis, but I could go on watching
>it forever.
If I'm not mistaken, this is Dan Sallitt's favorite Edwards film as well? I
think it's remarkable too and one of Edwards' greatest. I'd love to see your
essay on it, Jake.
On the M.I.A. front, I wonder if anyone has seen either Edwards' 1989 TV
remake of "Peter Gunn" or the episodic television he directed in the early '90s?
I believe the latter was a starring vehicle for Julie Andrews called "Julie."
Both are, alas, unavailable on video.
Peter
5348
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 10:20pm
Subject: Re: The Great Race and Edwards M.I.A.s
--- ptonguette@a... wrote:
> Jake Wilson wrote:
>
> >THE GREAT RACE is sublime. I spent a year studying
> it with a view to
> >writing a never-completed Honours thesis, but I
> could go on watching
> >it forever.
>
> If I'm not mistaken, this is Dan Sallitt's favorite
> Edwards film as well? I
> think it's remarkable too and one of Edwards'
> greatest. I'd love to see your
> essay on it, Jake.
>
"The Great race" is indeed a remakrable film. I saw it
when it opened at radio City and was laughing
helplessly at the last shot in particular.
Just finished reading Gvin Lmbert's "Natalie Wood: A
Life." She did NOT have a good time making the film,
partially due to Edwards, and partially ude to
Donfeld.
I'm going to be reviewing it for "The Advocate,"and I
hope to have a long sit-down interview with gavin for
someone or other in the very near future.
He knows where all the bodies are buried.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/
5349
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 10:30pm
Subject: Re: The Great Race and Edwards M.I.A.s
> If I'm not mistaken, this is Dan Sallitt's favorite Edwards film as well?
I'm a big fan of it, but my favorites are probably MISTER CORY (which
I've never seen on a big screen) and THE TAMARIND SEED. I like THE
PARTY too.
I must admit that I start to have problems with Edwards in the early
80s. It's not a matter of losing talent, but more a question of his
personality starting to assert itself in ways that I didn't find
appealing. - Dan
5350
From:
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 5:31pm
Subject: Tag's Walsh essay
Tag Gallagher wrote:
>Walsh: http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/walsh.html
Re-reading this - and being in the midst of seeing a lot of Walsh films for
the very first time - it struck me how on-the-nose Tag's observations are in
this piece. Having just seen the amazing "The Strawberry Blonde," I thought the
discussion of the use of space in that film was great - and the frame
enlargements very helpful.
Has anyone here read the novel by Walsh which Tag references in the
bibliography? It was published in France in 1972 under the title "La Colère des
justes." The original English title was "Come Hell or High Water," but it was never
published in English.
Peter
5351
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 10:55pm
Subject: Re: The Great Race and Edwards M.I.A.s
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Dan Sallitt
> > If I'm not mistaken, this is Dan Sallitt's favorite Edwards film
as well?
>
> I'm a big fan of it, but my favorites are probably MISTER CORY
(which
> I've never seen on a big screen) and THE TAMARIND SEED. I like THE
> PARTY too.
>
> I must admit that I start to have problems with Edwards in the
early
> 80s. It's not a matter of losing talent, but more a question of
his
> personality starting to assert itself in ways that I didn't find
> appealing. - Dan
I think that started with the weirdly semi-autobiographical
slapstick Hollwood satire "S.O.B." in which a depressed film director
keeps trying to kill himself in the beginning and gets killed by
police in the end (after trying to steal back his own film's reels)
and his friends steal his body from the funeral parlor to give him a
Viking burial. Very strange and upsetting throughout. A comedy
obsessed with death (it opens with an old man's dead body on the
beach).
JPC
5352
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 11:12pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Great Race and Edwards M.I.A.s
>>I must admit that I start to have problems with Edwards in the
> early
>>80s. It's not a matter of losing talent, but more a question of
> his
>>personality starting to assert itself in ways that I didn't find
>>appealing. - Dan
>
> I think that started with the weirdly semi-autobiographical
> slapstick Hollwood satire "S.O.B." in which a depressed film director
> keeps trying to kill himself in the beginning and gets killed by
> police in the end (after trying to steal back his own film's reels)
> and his friends steal his body from the funeral parlor to give him a
> Viking burial. Very strange and upsetting throughout. A comedy
> obsessed with death (it opens with an old man's dead body on the
> beach).
Yeah, my problems with Edwards seem to start sometime around S.O.B. -
the first half-hour of that film is the last thing by Edwards that I
really like. - Dan
5353
From: joe_mcelhaney
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 11:36pm
Subject: Re: The Great Race and Edwards M.I.A.s
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, ptonguette@a... wrote:
>>
> On the M.I.A. front, I wonder if anyone has seen either Edwards'
>1989 TV remake of "Peter Gunn" or the episodic television he
>directed in the early '90s? I believe the latter was a starring
>vehicle for Julie Andrews called "Julie." Both are, alas,
>unavailable on video.
I saw both of them, Peter, but like an idiot I didn't bother to tape
them. The Julie pilot, as I remember, was pretty formulaic -- shot
with multiple cameras in front of a live audience, I think. I'm sure
that an e-bay search would eventually turn up a copy of it as Andrews
does have her hardcore fans who preserve everything. Didn't Edwards
also direct some episodes of her variety series in the '70s? The
PETER GUNN was more stylish and more typical of Edwards but it's been
so long now that the film is just a blur.
I'm absolutely fascinated that THE GREAT RACE has such a following
among you. I was more interested in Edwards in the '70s and '80s
than I am now and when I first moved to New York in 1978 I became
friends with George Morris, who was (and remains to this day) the
biggest Blake Edwards fan I ever knew. He was positively smitten.
But he was not a huge fan of that film, as I recall, and I also don't
have particularly fond memories of it. It seemed spotty, at best.
But as with so much Edwards, it's been a while since I've seen it and
I need another look. For me (and for George and others) DARLING LILI
was really central and for George (and I think Stuart Byron as well)
it was Edwards's masterpiece. And yet I don't think anyone here has
even mentioned it. I watched my tape of MISTER CORY this morning and
it has a good script (as Bill noted) and performances but visually it
seemed a bit flat to me in comparison with his later work as well as
in comparison with his friend and frequent collaborator Richard
Quine's work from the same mid to late '50s period. In fact, I kept
wishing Quine had directed it.
As for Dan's problems with some of the later films, my own personal
uneasiness with many of them has to do with an awkward didacticism in
the scripts, all these characters preaching about male/female
relations. It happens time and again in things like 10,
VICTOR/VICTORIA, SWITCH, THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN. I have nothing
against a didactic cinema, per se. But in Edwards, the "message"
never seemes to get beyond, at best, a cozy liberalism about the
issues it is addressing (VICTOR/VICTORIA)or, at worst, an extreme
conservatism (SWITCH). But again, I need to go back and look at a
lot of these films again. I owe it to George's memory, if nothing
else. In fact, I just started looking at the first 30 minutes of
DARLING LILI again and so far it's quite beautiful.
5354
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 11:41pm
Subject: Re: The Great Race and Edwards MIAs
The Peter Gunn tv movie was available on video at one point. I
haven't seen it.
I like Victor/Victoria, That's Life! and Switch, and I love Skin Deep
inordinately. There are things I like about all the late Edwards
films that I've seen. (That omits the two tv'ers, which I haven't
seen.) What's not to like? Personal filmmaking? Certain critics and
local buffs making an excessively big deal about personal filmmaking
at the time?
My favorites: Mister Cory, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Days of Wine and
Roses, The Pink Panther, The Great Race, The Party, Wild Rovers
(what's left of it), Skin Deep. That's the absolute masterpiece
category. There are more that I like quite a bit, and I was crazy
about the two tv series as a kid - especially Mr. Lucky, of which
Jack Arnold directed quite a bit.
I just saw two early Columbia musicals cowritten by Edwards and
Richard Quine, directed by Quine. Rainbow 'Round My Shoulder is weak,
except for the glimpses of the studio at the beginning and one good
musical number, but Cruising Down the River is a little gem. Has
anyone seen the two musicals Edwards directed at the beginning -
Bring Your Smile Along and He Laughed Last? They sound intriguing,
particularly the second one. It's obvious just in comparing Rainbow
to River that as he and Quine acquired more clout, they could display
more of the wit and imagination that were already evident in
Panhandle (which was directed by Lesley Selander, BTW). Has anyone
seen Stampede, the second Edwards co-written and -produced B western?
5355
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 11:48pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Great Race and Edwards M.I.A.s
--- joe_mcelhaney
> I'm absolutely fascinated that THE GREAT RACE has
> such a following
> among you. I was more interested in Edwards in the
> '70s and '80s
> than I am now and when I first moved to New York in
> 1978 I became
> friends with George Morris, who was (and remains to
> this day) the
> biggest Blake Edwards fan I ever knew. He was
> positively smitten.
> But he was not a huge fan of that film, as I recall,
> and I also don't
> have particularly fond memories of it. It seemed
> spotty, at best.
It's out on DVD. Get it. Much of its look is
comparable to the best of Edward Gorey -- particularly
the Profesor Fate material.
> But as with so much Edwards, it's been a while since
> I've seen it and
> I need another look. For me (and for George and
> others) DARLING LILI
> was really central and for George (and I think
> Stuart Byron as well)
> it was Edwards's masterpiece. And yet I don't think
> anyone here has
> even mentioned it.
OK, here goes. It's OK. "Whistling in the Dark" is a
lovely song. Stuart as indeed potty about it. He wrote
an essya for "December" on Edwards -- "Dalring Lili"
in particular. Aspects of it are like "Lola Montes."
But I find it a bit too sober-sided to work
completely.
"Victor/Victoria" is in many ways a "correction" to
"Darling Lili."
"Darling Lili's" troubled post-production is the
Ur-text of "S.O.B." -- a late Edwards I adore.
> As for Dan's problems with some of the later films,
> my own personal
> uneasiness with many of them has to do with an
> awkward didacticism in
> the scripts, all these characters preaching about
> male/female
> relations.
That's because Edwards' own ideas about male/femla
relations weren't fully worked out. He's a man of the
late 19th Century who never fully adjusted to the
20th.
BTW, "That's Life" is marvelous. Scarcely"rated" much
less "underrated." Lemmon is teriffic in it.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/
5356
From: hotlove666
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 11:58pm
Subject: Re: At Long Last!
It was basically obscene that the Academy gave Satyajit Ray an Oscar
on his death-bed, but the fact that they got it in under the wire
meant that Michael Friend was able to restore a number of Ray's films
as part of his brief to restore Oscar winners at the Academy
Archives - a brief he ignored except insofar as it applied to good
films. He was fired before he got around to Days and Nights in the
Forest, but if you want to see something even Oscar at his worst did
right, compare the tape and print of Days and Nights that are
currently available (the Harvard print) to the series of Rays
beginning with Panther Panchali that are now out on video. An
absolutely crucial part of our heritage is now available in good-to-
excellent copies thanks to Michael, and I guess thanks to Ray hanging
on long enough to make his delightful hospital-room acceptance
speech, after a truly gorgeous clip reel.
The Academy was formed by the studios as a toothless trade union for
writers, actors and directors in a failed attempt to keep them from
forming their own unions. It is still an extension of the studios in
just about every way, but it pays for the Herrick Library, which is
my second home, and the Academy Archives, which continue to be of
some value even since Michael's departure. The Awards are mild fun or
nauseating, depending on your taste. Personally I wish they'd let
people make long speeches, which are the only interesting part, but
that's television - the root of all evil, and a considerably bigger
evil than the studios (and by extension, the Academy), even though
television has produced good things, too. It's just that at this
point television - here and abroad - has become one of the greatest
enemies of human life on the planet...
Oh, don't get me started!
5357
From: Craig Keller
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 0:20am
Subject: greetings
Hi everyone --
I'm new here. Just thought I'd give an introductory hello; -- I'm
looking forward to all the great conversation to come!
best,
Craig Keller.
5358
From:
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 7:18pm
Subject: Late Period Edwards
If we say that Edwards' "late period" begins with "10" (a major turning point
in his career - for better or worse), I think I like just about all of them
with the exception of "Son of the Pink Panther." That one struck me as a
little tired, which is a reaction I'd never had before (and haven't had since) to
an Edwards film. But in fairness, I've never seen it letterboxed and I know of
at least one auteurist - our own Mike Grost - who likes it.
I'm with Bill on "Skin Deep." It's the film Edwards had been building
towards since "10" - and I like it even more than "10." For me, the other highlight
of Edwards during the '80s is "The Man Who Loved Women," which I know is
Fred's favorite and which I actually much prefer to the Truffaut original. A
remarkable film with an incredible sense of space.
So far we've mostly talked about Edwards' explicitly personal films during
this period (and he is perhaps more explicitly personal here than during any
other phase of his career), so I'd like to give a shout-out to the amazing "Blind
Date," not an autobiographical film at all, just a masterful movie. I've
always thought of it as a kind of companion piece to "The Party" (perhaps, now
that I think of it, my favorite Edwards film). Both films track a placid
evening's descent into chaos and darkness at the hands of a character (Sellers in
"The Party"; Basinger - when she starts drinking - in "Blind Date"). I seem to
remember someone once comparing it to Scorsese's "After Hours" too; I think
that makes sense, though I prefer Edwards' film. Best judge character since
"What's Up, Doc?"
But, again, I want to emphasize that I like most all of his films from this
period except for the one with Roberto.
Going back in time to some early and mid period Edwards films:
"Breakfast at Tiffany's" is a major, major, major work (and Damien Bona's
favorite film). I think the mise-en-scene is all about isolation: Peppard and
Buddy Ebsen alone in the park with that sea of empty benches; Hepburn and
Peppard dwarfed by skyscrapers in one shot late in the film; and so on.
Extraordinary use of space; the final series of shots in the rain is amazing. "What Did
You Do In The War, Daddy?" is super. And, per Dan, "The Tamarind Seed" is a
great film and an argument for Edwards applying his style to non-personal or
non-autobiographical material.
Bill, a "director's cut" (or something very close to one) of "Wild Rovers"
appeared on TCM this year. I have a copy. It's quite amazing.
I'm really glad to see this important filmmaker being discussed here!
Peter
5359
From:
Date: Sun Dec 14, 2003 7:44pm
Subject: Re: The Great Race and Edwards M.I.A.s
"The Great Race", despite being an early Edwards film (1965), is full of
discussions of gender and women's lib. Many of its characters are suffragettes and
protestors for women's equality. In fact, it is perhaps the mainstream
Hollywood movie with the most to say about the whole suffragette movement.
Women's Lib was already underway in 1965. There is a lot of commentary in
"The Sandpiper" (Vincente Minnelli, 1965), too.
"The Great Race" also strikes me as funny and endlessly imaginative. Be sure
to see it letterboxed - the widescreen composition is important.
Tastes in humor vary widely from person to person. And there are other
phenomena - I much prefer comedies that are FILMS - that have characters, events and
stories - whereas many people seem to like stand-up comedy - someone standing
there telling jokes. (By FILMS I include TV shows that are fictional, too)
Although Henny Youngman, Phyllis Diller (the pioneer female stand-up), Norm
Crosby and Rodney Dangerfield always break me up.
Edwards is pre-eminent in creating FILM comedy - comedy that is part of a
complex story, with real characters, mise-en-scene, political issues, visual
beauty.
"Bring Your Smile Along" (1955), Edwards' first as a director, was shown once
on the late show on Milwaukee TV around 1980. It is simple and small scale as
a production. But it seemed absolutely delightful at the time - a real ray of
sunshine. It is a sweet little musical. Why it is never shown is a mystery.
I saw "Justin Case" and "Peter Gunn" the TV remake when they were first
broadcast - but they are now a blur. Wish I'd taped them. Shame!
"Son of the Pink Panther" is a delightful piece of slapstick.
Jean-Pierre Coursodon is right - SOB is very dark. But it is so full of
imagination. I love the complex ensemble pieces here. And Julie Andrews spellbinds.
Mike Grost
5360
From: Zach Campbell
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 0:48am
Subject: Edwards
Blake Edwards is not someone whose work I'm as up on as I should be,
I have to admit shamefully, but I thought that I would plug OPERATION
PETTICOAT. (I don't recall anyone mentioning it; sorry if I
overlooked some previous comments.) I think this is an extremely
strong film, a major work in one of Hollywood's peak years. I'd like
to revisit the film; I think that its commentary on gender politics,
sexual desire, and family is deeply ingrained into the very formal
and tonal fabric. If only all films with hearts in the right place
were as aesthetically accomplished as this one.
--Zach
5361
From: jaketwilson
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 1:14am
Subject: Re: The Great Race and Edwards M.I.A.s
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "jpcoursodon"
wrote:
think that started with the weirdly semi-autobiographical
> slapstick Hollwood satire "S.O.B." in which a depressed film
director
> keeps trying to kill himself in the beginning and gets killed by
> police in the end (after trying to steal back his own film's reels)
> and his friends steal his body from the funeral parlor to give him
a
> Viking burial. Very strange and upsetting throughout.
"Strange and upsetting" for me describes most of Edwards' best work,
starting with DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES, where Lemmon destroying the
greenhouse is a nightmare correlative to all the violence and
destruction in the supposedly "light" films.
Mike is right about gender roles in THE GREAT RACE -- it's a central
preoccupation for Edwards from the outset. Among much else RACE is a
great example of what Dan has talked about in Hawks, the disjuncture
between foreground and background: part of the thrill is watching the
cartoonish storytelling parameters established at the outset
gradually break down (see especially the central scene in the
Arctic). I'd urge anyone interested to check out the Serge Daney
piece on THE GREAT RACE posted in English on Steve Erickson's site,
the best thing I've read on the subject, albeit couched as a negative
review. Incidentally, I can well believe Natalie Wood had a bad time
on the set: she not only gives a strained performance but Edwards
films her in a semi-prurient way that seems designed to make viewers
uncomfortable -- a very typical effect for him.
With apologies to Peter, Damien and others, I have to confess that
despite good memories, when I looked at BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S a few
months ago it didn't work for me at all. Too coy, too imbued with
period mythology about "free spirits", and Hepburn, dare I say it,
seems miscast: full of practiced charm, conscious of gracing the film
with her presence and lacking the persuasive coarseness or bitterness
that might make the role half-believable. Most Edwards films are self-
consciously corrupted fairy-tales -- again DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES
lays this out very explicitly -- but while this gives him an affinity
with the Capote novel, to me the material seems unworkable in this
bowdlerised form.
I've had problems getting to see many of the films between the mid-
1960s and the early '70s, though it sounds like one of his strongest
periods. (Of course, Scope framing means so much in Edwards that
watching non-letterboxed tapes is an almost fruitless exercise.)
Two I'm longing to see are DARLING LILI and WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE
WAR, DADDY? -- I know Rick Thompson, whom I talked to a few times
about the thesis, rates them both especially highly.
JTW
PS: One that hasn't been mentioned from the late period -- what do
group members make of SUNSET, and particularly the Chaplin figure?
Talk about killing the father!
5362
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 1:47am
Subject: That's Life!
A key entry in the late-Edwards's bountiful output is this other
somewhat autobiographical "comedy" about self-doubt, self-loathing,
the hatred of aging (the protagonist has just reached sixty and
doesn't like it), the fear of dying and the fundamental loneliness of
the individual. The official title was "Blake Edwards's That's
Life!" -- telling us in no uncertain terms that this is a "statement"
on "life" by the auteur. Everybody in it is totally self-centered and
obsessed with personal problems that are either imaginary or absurdly
overinflated (in other words they are like you and me, except with
more money) and they keep talking and talking about their problems --
monologues no one wants to listen to, except for "professionals" --
an alcoholic and fuzzy-thinking priest our hero "confesses" to (he
wanted to cheat on his wife and couldn't get it up -- a twofold
embarrassment).( Lemmon as another Edwards surrogate is totally
convincing in one of his best performances). The happy end is about
as convincing as the one in Rossellini's "FEAR/ANGST/LA PEUR".
A very very fine late B.E. is Blind Date. French title: "Boire et
deboires" which for once was clever.
JPC
5363
From: filipefurtado
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 2:22am
Subject: Re: Late Edwards
I like late Edwards as much as Like the early one. 10,
Victor/Victoria and Skin Deep are great films. Most of the
others like S.O.B., Blind Date (Peter you're right about The
Party comparision) or Sunset are very good, he did made a few
less interesting works at the period (The Man Who Loved
Women, Thats Life!, Son of Pink Panther), but even those have
their moments. I have no problem with all the talk and
speechs in these films, because there's other elemnts in them
as counterpoint, and they do speak about Edwards confusion
about them (the reason why he continue to comeback to them
over and over).
Filipe
---
Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
http://antipopup.uol.com.br
5364
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 2:37am
Subject: Re: Late Edwards
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "filipefurtado"
> I like late Edwards as much as Like the early one. 10,
> Victor/Victoria and Skin Deep are great films. Most of the
> others like S.O.B., Blind Date (Peter you're right about The
> Party comparision) or Sunset are very good, he did made a few
> less interesting works at the period (The Man Who Loved
> Women, Thats Life!, Son of Pink Panther), >
> Filipe
>
> That's Life" is "less interesting"? Why? JPC
> ---
> Acabe com aquelas janelinhas que pulam na sua tela.
> AntiPop-up UOL - É grátis!
> http://antipopup.uol.com.br
5365
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 2:47am
Subject: Edwards' scope
Some posters have mentioned it but it cannot be stressed enough. DO
see Edwards wide-screen films in the correct aspect ratio. For one
thing, so many gags happen on the far left (or more often far right)
edge of the screen.
JPC
5366
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 2:59am
Subject: Re: The Great Race and Edwards MIAs
Jake, I resaw Breakfast recently, too, and despite the misty look,
it's a very tough, clear-eyed film. Peppard's denunciation of Holly
at the end is Edwards' one real change in the script - which Capote
fought - apart from the party and other comedy bits that were all
improvised. It's typical of Edwards, who says that being moral is
what always got him in trouble with the brass: they wanted a happy
ending for Days of Wine and Roses, for example.
I'd like to see that TCM print of Wild Rovers, Peter, but if it's the
one shown at the American Cinematheque, its provenance is unknown,
and BE is doubtful that it's his cut. I have to investigate a bit.
5367
From: Craig Keller
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 4:52am
Subject: Kiarostami on TCM
At 1:00am EST tonight, following the channel's broadcast of Chaplin's
'The Kid,' TCM will air the half-hour special 'Chaplin Today: 'The
Kid',' directed by Alain Bergala, in which, according to the DirectTV
program description, "Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami shares his
impressions of Charlie Chaplin's classic." -- the same program that
appears on Disc 2 of the MK2 release. Very interesting indeed for TCM
to be airing this...
craig.
5368
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 4:52am
Subject: Chicken PS
If it's not too late to come back to the subject of chickens on film,
I just watched Claude Berri's quite charming "UNE FEMME DE MENAGE" in
which a character raises chickens and does paintings of them ("I'm a
Sunday painter who paints all week"). He paints only chickens. He
cooks chicken for his friends and after the meal points to one
painting and says "You just ate him."
JPC
5369
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 4:55am
Subject: Re: Kiarostami on TCM
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Craig Keller
wrote:
>
> At 1:00am EST tonight, following the channel's broadcast of
Chaplin's
> 'The Kid,' TCM will air the half-hour special 'Chaplin Today: 'The
> Kid',' directed by Alain Bergala, in which, according to the
DirectTV
> program description, "Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami shares his
> impressions of Charlie Chaplin's classic." -- the same program that
> appears on Disc 2 of the MK2 release. Very interesting indeed for
TCM
> to be airing this...
>
> craig.
Actually it's a TCM re-run. I taped it a couple of months ago...
5370
From: Dave Garrett
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 5:19am
Subject: Re: The Great Race and Edwards M.I.A.s
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
>
> --- joe_mcelhaney
> > I'm absolutely fascinated that THE GREAT RACE has
> > such a following
> > among you. I was more interested in Edwards in the
> > '70s and '80s
> > than I am now and when I first moved to New York in
> > 1978 I became
> > friends with George Morris, who was (and remains to
> > this day) the
> > biggest Blake Edwards fan I ever knew. He was
> > positively smitten.
> > But he was not a huge fan of that film, as I recall,
> > and I also don't
> > have particularly fond memories of it. It seemed
> > spotty, at best.
>
> It's out on DVD. Get it. Much of its look is
> comparable to the best of Edward Gorey -- particularly
> the Profesor Fate material.
Unfortunately, the original mono soundtrack was remixed for
5.1 surround for the DVD, and in the process they managed
to seriously screw up the magic lantern slideshow character
introductions at the beginning of the film. When Professor
Fate's slide appears, instead of the booing and hissing that
should accompany it, there's cheering on the soundtrack. The
sync problems continue with other inappropriate effects
mismatched with what's on screen. There are similar sync
problems in the starting line sequence as well. None of these
flaws are present on the older widescreen laserdisc.
Dave
5371
From: Richard Modiano
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 5:53am
Subject: Re: The Great Race and Edwards MIAs
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "hotlove666"
wrote:
"I'd like to see that TCM print of Wild Rovers, Peter, but if it's
the one shown at the American Cinematheque, its provenance is
unknown, and BE is doubtful that it's his cut. I have to investigate
a bit."
WILD ROVERS was released on laser disc as the "restored edition," but
whether or not it was Edwards' cut I can't say. It was probably the
same version shown on TCM. A restored edition of THE CAREY TREATMENT
on laser disc was announced but I don't think it was ever released.
If you have a laser disc player you can probably find WILD ROVERS at
a reasonable price.
Richard
5372
From: George Robinson
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 5:56am
Subject: Re: Re: Late Edwards
I think The Man Who Loved Women is one of Edwards's best films. Its intense
emotional ambivalence is very striking. I also think Skin Deep is very
underrated.
On the other hand, if he never did another Pink Panther film again, it would
be a very good thing.
g
Never play a guy at his own game; nobody
makes up a game in order to get beat at it.
--Charlie Goldman
----- Original Message -----
From: "filipefurtado"
To:
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2003 9:22 PM
Subject: Re:[a_film_by] Late Edwards
I like late Edwards as much as Like the early one. 10,
Victor/Victoria and Skin Deep are great films. Most of the
others like S.O.B., Blind Date (Peter you're right about The
Party comparision) or Sunset are very good, he did made a few
less interesting works at the period (The Man Who Loved
Women, Thats Life!, Son of Pink Panther), but even those have
their moments. I have no problem with all the talk and
speechs in these films, because there's other elemnts in them
as counterpoint, and they do speak about Edwards confusion
about them (the reason why he continue to comeback to them
over and over).
Filipe
5373
From: George Robinson
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 6:06am
Subject: Fw: Miramax Hates You!
I'm forwarding this very important webpage from my friend Ira Hozinsky, of whom you have heard both Damien and I write/speak many times.
Of course, this is about more than Miramax hating us -- it's about Harvey Weinstein hating film, hating anything but the almighty dollar.
George Robinson
Never play a guy at his own game; nobody
makes up a game in order to get beat at it.
--Charlie Goldman
----- Original Message -----
From: HOZEE@a...
To: grcomm@g...
Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2003 7:46 AM
Subject: Miramax Hates You!
And we hate 'em back!
http://www.cinemaeye.com/more/386_0_10_0_C/
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
5374
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 7:05am
Subject: Re: Re: The Great Race and Edwards MIAs
> There are things I like about all the late Edwards
> films that I've seen. (That omits the two tv'ers, which I haven't
> seen.) What's not to like? Personal filmmaking? Certain critics and
> local buffs making an excessively big deal about personal filmmaking
> at the time?
Well, here's an excerpt from something I wrote about THE MAN WHO LOVED
WOMEN in 1983, which syncs up pretty well with Joe's objections to the
late films. It reads a little harsh to me now, but on the other hand
the films were much fresher in my mind then.
---------
Why did Edwards impose this analysis plot so emphatically on this story?
I think it is revealing of his personality that he could never have
made the film without this conspicuous obeisance to Deeper Meaning.
Despite his undeniable visual flair, Edwards exhibits the instincts of
an essayist rather than an artist in his choice of material. Given the
subject of a womanizer and his lifestyle, he automatically looks for the
philosophical significance of the subject and finds it in the
psychological explication of Don Juanism....
The sentimentality that leads Edwards to make such a thoroughgoing
victim of his protagonist finds further expression in the form of the
film. Not since the heyday of Andy Warhol has an American film let its
scenes drag on so long with so little to sustain them. Edwards is no
minimalist, however, despite his efforts to empty these scenes of all
irrelevant actions and sounds. He clearly believes that each dramatic
scene is so important that no amount of time devoted to it is wasted.
The cinema is strewn with the wreckage of films whose creators loved
them too much. (It is interesting that the film's comic scenes often
make use of the random background noises that are barred from the
dramatic scenes. For Edwards, comedy requires the counterpoint and
complexity that he is less and less willing to permit in dramatic moments.)
The character of Marianna (the therapist played by Julie Andrews in
TMWLW) adds a whole new dimension of problems to the film - not,
perhaps, its most damaging problems, but certainly the ones most typical
of Edwards' recent work. Serving little other function than to inform
us (at great length) how to think and feel about the events on screen,
Marianna is the most bothersome but by no means the first Edwards
character to speak ex cathedra with the voice of the filmmaker. This
practice is more than an act of arrogance: it abuses the fictional
process by making it a cover for a direct discourse. The last five
years have seen Edwards adopt the worst practices of the Joseph
Mankiewicz-Richard Brooks school of writer-directors, and blend these
traits with the uncritical sentimentality that always lurked beneath the
surface of his dramatic work. Not all his films have been so thoroughly
vitiated by these bad habits as is THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN, but even the
best of them - 10, probably - shows Edwards all too willing to use
characters as vehicles for middlebrow didacticism.
---------
> Has
> anyone seen the two musicals Edwards directed at the beginning -
> Bring Your Smile Along and He Laughed Last?
I've seen them both, but can barely remember them.... - Dan
5375
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 9:01am
Subject: Re: miramAXE
I have been a fan of "Shaolin Soccer" since it came out originally. It
is one of the most refreshing and inventive kung fu films ever to come
out of Hong Kong. I first encounted the cut version in August and
instantly reported how it was mutilated. I know its a strong word for
something, but the film has been cut 22 minuts (from 102 to 80) for no
real reason at all, removing two important events and plot points.
I still wont believe that they ever would cut either "Hero" or
"Zatoichi", but even of the record Miramax wont comment it. If they
touch either, I'll go Hulk on Weinstein.
Concerning the horror comment
" As a result, you (as an American or Canadian resident) are not
allowed to have Hero or Shaolin Soccer shipped to you or carried into
the U.S. and Canada."
I have two comments: 1) DMR fascism is getting out of hand 2) It is
still legal for privates to buy films online and get the shipped into
the US.
Henrik
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, "George Robinson"
wrote:
> I'm forwarding this very important webpage from my friend Ira
Hozinsky, of whom you have heard both Damien and I write/speak many
times.
>
> Of course, this is about more than Miramax hating us -- it's about
Harvey Weinstein hating film, hating anything but the almighty dollar.
>
> George Robinson
>
>
> Never play a guy at his own game; nobody
> makes up a game in order to get beat at it.
> --Charlie Goldman
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: HOZEE@a...
> To: grcomm@g...
> Sent: Sunday, December 14, 2003 7:46 AM
> Subject: Miramax Hates You!
>
>
> And we hate 'em back!
>
> http://www.cinemaeye.com/more/386_0_10_0_C/
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
5376
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 9:05am
Subject: Miramax and Zatoichi
While I am on the subject of Miramax, they will release Takeshi
Kitano's "Zatoichi" on general release in June 2004 (no date set yet)
and later in 2004 (I expect September) on DVD.
But to those who can't wait, Emotion will release a 2 disc SE the 11th
March 2004 (Japan R2 NTSC) with english subtitles for a handsome Yen
3800 ($35).
Henrik
5377
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 9:08am
Subject: Re: The Great Race and Edwards MIAs
Dan, His analyst was involved in writing the script of The Man Who
Loved Women - which could certainly confirm your critique. But what
do you think about the earthquake/mirror business? How does it fit
with the didacticism?
And how would you compare it to the Truffaut film? Truffait's is
certainly a more elegant piece of filmmaking, but it's one I have
gone back and forth from hating to liking and back again. Another
case of too personal, maybe, or of revealing an aspect of Truffaut
that I don't like. In its favor: Denner is truly peculiar.
Incidentally, while I could probably come up with a defense of The
Man Who Loved Women, I'm no fan of 10. It seemed to me at the time to
be a congealed version of the morality expressed in Breakfast at
Tiffany's. (Whereas I'm not at all sure what someone meant by
referring matter-of-factly to Switch as "a conservative film." What's
conservative about it?)
The whole period of intense self-examination that began with 10 -
during much of which Edwards was in analysis and group therapy after
a suicide attempt that left him paraplegic for 48 hours, apparently -
might be compared to Woody Allen's work after Annie Hall. I'd
certainly give Allen the edge at the outset, but over the long haul
Edwards was more honest and more interesting. And when someone is
making a couple of films a year like that, I'm inclined to see it as
a process and judge it by the product: Victor Victoria, That's Life!,
Switch and above all Skin Deep, which is a film (to borrow a Luc
Moullet line) "made from the point of view of Sirius" (although I'm
told that it was planned as 10 II, and should have followed it not
long after - if so it would have been a 180 degree reversal of its
predecessor).
Not to mention the side dishes - the non-autobiographical films spun
off during the same period, which some people have mentioned, like
Blind Date or even very minor fare like Curse of the Pink Panther.
Believe it or not, he is anything but middle-brow or stupid in
person, for what that's worth. Far, far from it. As for the films, I
would only pin that tail on The Carey Treatment and 10 - and that's
based on what I felt at the time, in the heat of idelogical warfare
going on all around, which tended to make anyone except a few cutting-
edge filmmakers like Godard or Straub or Robert Kramer look stupid
when they tried to comment on it, as Edwards was doing in those two
films.
5378
From: Adrian Martin
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 0:22pm
Subject: Edwards
Who needs the Oscars, indeed? It's quite clear from recent postings that,
collectively, the 'Film-By' members could start a Blake Edwards revival!!
I was crazy about Edwards all through the 80s, and I like almost every film
he made in that rich decade of his career. MICKI AND MAUDE has un(der)rated
qualities, just like MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN. VICTOR/VICTORIA is a flat-out
Edwardian masterpiece. THAT'S LIFE! is fabulous, and belongs to that strange
category of films we sometimes evoke in this group: films made by directors
in their own homes, about their own lives, with their family members,
co-written with their psychoanalyst ...
Actually, I think Edwards is a TRULY auteurist passion, by which I mean:
it's ONLY when you start to see the curious obsessions, repetitions, 'hidden
scenarios' (especially relating to sexuality) and whatnot - and many quite
sophisticated filmgoers can't see any of this on first, second, third
encounters with his oeuvre - that his work becomes fascinating and in fact
almost unbearably moving, even at its zaniest.
For the best writing on Edwards, POSITIF is the go. I immediately remember
an especially intense appreciation of THAT'S LIFE titled 'An Act of Love" by
Gérard Legrand which ended: "The filmmaker seems to say: it is up to the
spectator to be attentive if he wants to be truly, profoundly touched". A
fine Edwardian slogan! (I see in my Edwards folder about half a dozen pieces
by Legrand.)
I myself wrote an essay on Edwards, especially SWITCH, in my book PHANTASMS
(1994).
BTW, Edwards' telemovie JUSTIN CASE from the late 80s is really worth
seeking out, a lighthearted ghost-tale gem.
Adrian
5379
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 3:05pm
Subject: Re: Fw: Miramax Hates You!
--- George Robinson
> I'm forwarding this very important webpage from my
> friend Ira Hozinsky, of whom you have heard both
> Damien and I write/speak many times.
>
> Of course, this is about more than Miramax hating us
> -- it's about Harvey Weinstein hating film, hating
> anything but the almighty dollar.
>
Actually there's nothing particularly new about this.
As Jonathan Rosenbaum revealed a number of years ago
(and comments on in his invaluable "Movie Wars")
Miramax has long been in the practice of buying up
films it had no real interest in distributing. In fact
they often bought up certain films to keep them off
the U.S. market the better to exploit films they
preferred. Kirostami's "Through the Olive Trees" is
one such Miramax buy-up. Likewise they have the color
version of Tati's "Jour de Fete" locked up tight.
Harvey Weinstein is a cheap thug. I would imagine this
is why marty finds it soeasy to deal with him. He's
from"the old neighborhood," if you get my drift.
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/
5380
From: jpcoursodon
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 3:44pm
Subject: Edwards/POSITIF/Legrand
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, Adrian Martin
>
> For the best writing on Edwards, POSITIF is the go. I immediately
remember
> an especially intense appreciation of THAT'S LIFE titled 'An Act of
Love" by
> Gérard Legrand which ended: "The filmmaker seems to say: it is up
to the
> spectator to be attentive if he wants to be truly, profoundly
touched". A
> fine Edwardian slogan! (I see in my Edwards folder about half a
dozen pieces
> by Legrand.)
>
> I myself wrote an essay on Edwards, especially SWITCH, in my book
PHANTASMS
> (1994).
>
> Adrian
I'm glad someone is mentioning POSITIF for a change. Edwards has
been a favorite of the mag from way back, and part of the May 1992
(#375-6) issue was devoted to him. Legrand, one of our best critics,
had joined POSITIF in 1962. A philosopher and poet he had been an
active member of the Surrealist group from the late forties (Legrand
was born in 1927)into the sixties, collaborating with Breton on at
least one book ("L'Art magique", 1957), and writing for the
wonderful, short-lived surrealist-oriented film magazine "L'Age du
Cinema" in 1950-51. He loved Edwards and reviewed many of his films
starting with the first "Pink Panther". Legrand's contribution to
POSITIF has been enormous. He died in December 1999 and is sorely
missed.
I wrote a long entry on Edwards'post-1980 period in "50 ans de
cinema americain" (the balance of the piece being co-authored by
Tavernier).
JPC
5381
From: Henrik Sylow
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 3:50pm
Subject: Re: Miramax Hates You!
--- In a_film_by@yahoogroups.com, David Ehrenstein
wrote:
> Actually there's nothing particularly new about this.
> As Jonathan Rosenbaum revealed a number of years ago
> (and comments on in his invaluable "Movie Wars")
> Miramax has long been in the practice of buying up
> films it had no real interest in distributing. In fact
> they often bought up certain films to keep them off
> the U.S. market the better to exploit films they
> preferred. Kirostami's "Through the Olive Trees" is
> one such Miramax buy-up. Likewise they have the color
> version of Tati's "Jour de Fete" locked up tight.
>
> Harvey Weinstein is a cheap thug. I would imagine this
> is why marty finds it soeasy to deal with him. He's
> from"the old neighborhood," if you get my drift.
I have an anecdote and a personal experience about Miramax.
One of my friends knows a girl who used to work in the publicity
department of Miramax and one day, as she went thru the files, she
discovered that Miramax owned "Sonatine". She totally freaked out and
asked when they were going to release it, and to her surprise no one
knew what she was talking about. They simply had no idea about neither
what film it was or if it was to be released. Eventually Tarantino
picked it up from Miramax thru his company Rolling Thunder, released
it with a patchwork of a poster using the image from "Violent Cop" and
the tagline from "Slaughter's Big Rip-Off".
This fall Miramax then announced that they would release "Sonatine" on
DVD, first in December, then postponing it until 13th January. The
very minut I heard of it, I contacted Sarah Levinson at Miramax. After
telling her in detail what film it was, she knew what it was, but to
this day, I have been unable to get anyone at Miramax to tell me what
is on the DVD. As late as today I contacted Matthew Hiltzik's office
and when presenting myself and asking the question, I got the reply "I
have no idea what film you are talking about".
Do the people who work for Miramax even watch film outside
Blockbuster?
5382
From: Tosh
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 4:12pm
Subject: Re: Fw: Miramax Hates You and Tati!
>With respect to 'Jour de Fete,' Criterion on their website announced
>that they are releasing this title (along with the re-release of
>Playtime, M. Hulot's Holiday and Mon Oncle.)
Will Criterion be releasing the color version of Jour de Fete? And
what is the purpose of Miramax locking up the color version?
--
Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
http://www.tamtambooks.com
5383
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 4:12pm
Subject: Re: Re: The Great Race and Edwards MIAs
> But what
> do you think about the earthquake/mirror business? How does it fit
> with the didacticism?
I'm afraid I remember neither earthquake nor mirror.... But I left out
the parts of the piece where I mentioned things in the film that
interested me. I seemed to like the Reynolds-Marilu Henner scenes - but
I don't remember those either.
> And how would you compare it to the Truffaut film? Truffait's is
> certainly a more elegant piece of filmmaking, but it's one I have
> gone back and forth from hating to liking and back again. Another
> case of too personal, maybe, or of revealing an aspect of Truffaut
> that I don't like. In its favor: Denner is truly peculiar.
I've gone back and forth too. Here are a few excepts from the same
piece (published 20 years ago tomorrow), including a few sarcastic
phrases that I don't feel comfortable with today:
----------
Edwards' decision to remake Francois Truffaut's THE MAN WHO LOVED WOMEN
a mere six years after its release strikes me as ironic, as the loss of
perspective that afflicts Edwards lately is similar in some ways to the
creeping insularity that has laid waste to the last ten years of
Truffaut's career....
Truffaut, more aware of the nature of his medium, can feel comfortable
remaining resolutely outside his eccentric protagonist, presenting us
with a coherent perspective without treading on Psych 101 territory.
----------
I also wrote that I considered TMWLW "easily Truffaut's best recent
effort." When I eventually saw the film again, some aspects of it made
me uncomfortable (the same things that make me uncomfortable with
Truffaut's other late work), though I still liked it.
> Believe it or not, he is anything but middle-brow or stupid in
> person, for what that's worth.
I believe it. He had such bad luck with the studios in 1968-74 - I
think he came away from that period very, very determined to find ways
to appeal to audiences. To my mind, 10 is one of those turning-point,
"it's okay to be me" successes that marks, and even creates, a subtle
but significant change in the filmmaker's attitude. - Dan
5384
From: hotlove666
Date: Mon Dec 15, 2003 10:40pm
Subject: Fw: Miramax Hates You!
I hold no brief for Miramax, but distribution is the choke point of
the 7th Art and it's a very complicated subject. Take Through the
Olive Trees. It was produced by CB2000 (pronounced the same
as DeMille's name in French), a company where Pierre Rissient
- macmahonian, positifian, friend of Walsh and Lang, gray
eminence behind the distribution of many classics in France
during the heyday of cionephilic discovery - was a production
executive. He got The Piano madee, winning Miramax beaucoup
awards, and as payback they picked up the Kiarostami and a
couple of other films that CB was in the red on. People who
finance films have to get there money back or go out of business
- which CB did eventually anyway.
I have a vague impression that Olive Trees was eventually
released on tape, like Sonatine, which I have. Maybe not. But
that's the reason for the purchase. It may also have been the
reason behind Miramax acquiring and/or financing Charles
Burnett's The Glass Shield, which Pierre produced and which
they dId release, barely - after forcing Charles to shoot a new
ending that completely ruined the film. (Pierre was very much
complicit in that.) So which is worse - money to keep the
producer solvent plus a quickie video release, or an actual
release by a company known for second-guessing directors?
Me, I'd take the cassette release. I don't know what the story is on
Jour de fete.
Lastly, ALL video divisions are dumb as cows. NO video division
knows what it has or gives a shit, except for some small, truly
indie companies. Miramax is probably no worse or better than
the others. If I were a young person, I'd be worming my way into
some studio's ancillary department and building power to
eventually dazzle the world with intelligent video distribution. I
would be the only game in town.
5385
From: hotlove666
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 7:28am
Subject: Re: Edwards
Dan, What you're saying in that old article is not aberrant - it's a
very lucid statement of what many felt when they saw the film. It's
rather for the unconditional Edwardians to make their (our) case, at
least for TMWLW. Truffaut, as one of the (re)inventors of the
politique des auteurs, is a trickier proposition, but the comparison
to Edwards may be helpful for understanding him. Certainly the issue
seems to be "personality," as you have pinpointed - in both cases.
5386
From: Michael Lieberman
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 3:55pm
Subject: Re: Fw: Miramax Hates You and Tati!
I bought a crappy VHS copy of Jour de Fete, and instantly fell in love. Miramax also did this with Les Amants du Pont Neuf and Through the Olive Trees, though Trees wasn't
given much of a film release and ignored for video.
Why buy up great foreign features and leave them locked up indefinitely? Miramax has the clout to, unfortunately, and their film releases pander to the Sundance and Oscar
audiences. I hate them, hate them, hate them!
They also bought Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse, never released it, and allowed Wes Craven to remake it without so much as a single screening in this country. That's what Miramax
is really about, though I doubt they'd remake Kiarostami or Tati.
Mike
----- Original Message -----
From: Tosh
Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 08:12:41 -0800
To: a_film_by@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [a_film_by] Fw: Miramax Hates You and Tati!
>With respect to 'Jour de Fete,' Criterion on their website announced
>that they are releasing this title (along with the re-release of
>Playtime, M. Hulot's Holiday and Mon Oncle.)
Will Criterion be releasing the color version of Jour de Fete? And
what is the purpose of Miramax locking up the color version?
--
Tosh Berman
TamTam Books
http://www.tamtambooks.com">http://www.tamtambooks.com">http://www.tamtambooks.com
| Yahoo! Groups Sponsor |
| http://rd.yahoo.com/SIG=12cn6gm1d/M=259395.3614674.4902533.1261774/D=egroupweb/S=1705021019:HM/EXP=1071590986/A= 1524963/R=0/*">http://hits.411web.com/cgi-bin/autoredir?camp=556&lineid=3614674&prop=egroupweb&pos=HM"> sleep_300x250.gif" alt="" width="300" height="250" border="0"> |
To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
a_film_by-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo!">http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/">Yahoo! Terms of Service.
--
___________________________________________________________
Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
5387
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 4:46pm
Subject: Re: Fw: Miramax Hates You and Tati!
A crappy VHS of "Jour de Fete" in color? I have the
crappy "Les Amants du Pont Neuf." It isn't even
letterboxed.
--- Michael Lieberman
> I bought a crappy VHS copy of Jour de Fete, and
> instantly fell in love. Miramax also did this with
> Les Amants du Pont Neuf and Through the Olive Trees,
> though Trees wasn't
> given much of a film release and ignored for video.
>
> Why buy up great foreign features and leave them
> locked up indefinitely? Miramax has the clout to,
> unfortunately, and their film releases pander to the
> Sundance and Oscar
> audiences. I hate them, hate them, hate them!
>
> They also bought Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse, never
> released it, and allowed Wes Craven to remake it
> without so much as a single screening in this
> country. That's what Miramax
> is really about, though I doubt they'd remake
> Kiarostami or Tati.
>
> Mike
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Tosh
> Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 08:12:41 -0800
> To: a_film_by@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: Re: [a_film_by] Fw: Miramax Hates You and
> Tati!
>
>
>
>
>
> >With respect to 'Jour de Fete,' Criterion on their
> website announced
> >that they are releasing this title (along with the
> re-release of
> >Playtime, M. Hulot's Holiday and Mon Oncle.)
>
>
> Will Criterion be releasing the color version of
> Jour de Fete? And
> what is the purpose of Miramax locking up the color
> version?
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Tosh Berman
> TamTam Books
>
href="http://www.tamtambooks.com">http://www.tamtambooks.com">http://www.tamtambooks.com
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
|
> color=#003399>Yahoo! Groups > Sponsor |
href="http://rd.yahoo.com/SIG=12cn6gm1d/M=259395.3614674.4902533.1261774/D=egroupweb/S=1705021019:HM/EXP=1071590986/A= > 1524963/R=0/*">http://hits.411web.com/cgi-bin/autoredir?camp=556&lineid=3614674&prop=egroupweb&pos=HM"> src="http://us.a1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/a/sl/sleepangel/ > sleep_300x250.gif" alt="" width="300" height="250" > border="0"> |
src="">http://us.adserver.yahoo.com/l?M=259395.3614674.4902533.1261774/D=egroupmail/S=:HM/A=1524963/rand=511820364"> |
> tr>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email
> to:
> a_film_by-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com
>
>
>
>
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the
> Terms of Service.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
___________________________________________________________
> Sign-up for Ads Free at Mail.com
> http://promo.mail.com/adsfreejump.htm
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/
5388
From: Elizabeth Nolan
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 5:36pm
Subject: Stroheim's QUEEN KELLY
http://www.movieflix.com
is a movie viewing site (I have no connection with it) that I found
yesterday.
It has some free movies, including QUEEN KELLY
http://www.movieflix.com/movie_info.mfx?movie_id=1891
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/click/movie-1016975/
reviews.php?critic=all&sortby=default&page=2&rid=1182152
is the site for that the partial following article
Paradise Regained: Queen Kelly
and the Lure of the ‘Lost’ Film by Darragh O’Donoghue
Darragh O’Donoghue failed to complete his PhD in French Crime Films
and Literature. He now works in a Dublin public library.
...
There are six basic types of lost film:
1. The irretrievably lost film, of which no print exists, and whose
survival depends on a handful of stills, listings in studio records
etc. King Vidor's Bardelys the Magnificent (1926) is a famous example
among the reservoir of silent films now vanished.
2. A film that exists only in fragments of (often highly degraded)
footage, such as Fatty Arbuckle's Moonshine (1918).
3. The film that never was: productions shut down for various reasons –
financial difficulties, cast illnesses/death etc. These films live on
in the form of rushes (which often illuminate the artistic practice of
film-making more successfully than any finished work could ever do) and
hearsay, and can make excellent documentaries dramatising the conflict
between art, commerce and fate. Famous example: Sternberg's I, Claudius
(1937).
4. The long cherished, much discussed project that, for whatever
reason, never got off the ground, surviving in biographies or unfilmed
screenplays – Kubrick's Napoleon film; Losey and Pinter's version of
Proust. Nabokov's fantastic, unfilmable screenplay for Kubrick's Lolita
(1962) might fit into this category.
5. The film that was re-edited after previews, but of which the edited
footage no longer exists, precluding the relatively modern phenomenon
of the director's cut, e.g. Lang's Metropolis (1927).
6. The most famous/celebrated/reviled example of the lost film: the
movie that is taken out of its genius director's hands and re-edited by
commercially-minded philistines. The patron saint of such ruins is the
man I now intend to discuss, Erich von Stroheim.
·
It is fitting that the unfinished Queen Kelly should have achieved an
ironic afterlife as a fragment. It is the footage demented silent
starlet Norma Desmond screens for her reluctant protégé Joe Gillis in
Sunset Blvd. (Billy Wilder, 1950). Desmond was played by Kelly's star
Gloria Swanson who in the earlier film was nearing the end of her
heyday as Hollywood's most successful actress; the role of her
projectionist, manservant, ex-husband and ex-director is silently
suffered by Erich Von Stroheim, whose last major production as a
director Kelly was. This casting and its echoes are all part of the
in-joke torture chamber that is Wilder's film, even if Kelly is
funnier, more scabrous and psychologically probing than anything in
that Gothic cartoon. The pay-off of this particular in-joke is that
producer Gloria Swanson sacked director Erich Von Stroheim on Kelly,
supposedly for his legendary extravagances. I shall suggest later that
perhaps Swanson's piqued vanity may have had something to do with it.
Because Queen Kelly was a vanity project, a prestige product for an
actress who'd recently become an independent producer; it was financed
by her lover Joseph Kennedy, bootlegger, father of JFK, and the man who
saved the company that would become RKO, even if he didn't know the
first thing about movies.
Kelly was to have been an actress's tour-de-force, in which Swanson
would have to master all styles from comedy to tragedy, all emotions
from love to degradation. Kennedy had been warned off Stroheim by
almost every Hollywood money man who'd had dealings with the Austrian –
with his monomaniacal obsession with detail, his relentless
accumulation of footage and his taste for 'sordid' subject matter. But
Kennedy was canny and insecure enough to intuit that immortality was
more likely to be bestowed by association with a wayward genius than
mere money-making ephemera. So, Stroheim's treatment, unpromisingly
entitled The Swamp, was given the go-ahead, with two producers hired to
make sure the Von stayed reasonable. To Swanson's recorded dismay, they
failed to protest as endless and seemingly undifferentiable retakes
began eating up the budget, already high after the erection of
elaborate sets recreating a turn-of-the-century Ruritanian kingdom (she
also feared that Stroheim's increasingly bold sexual frankness might
not escape censorship). It didn't help that Kennedy had suggested the
film, which went into production in 1928, be shot silent, despite the
increasing hoopla over sound pictures. At the rate Stroheim was
shooting, the film threatened to be obsolete before it was even
released. Stroheim, at the mercy of his domineering star/producer just
as his weak-willed hero must submit to a power-crazed, luxury-bloated
Queen, was summarily dismissed. A journeyman director, Richard
Boleslavsky, was brought in to take over, but even Swanson had to admit
that this hack couldn't begin to approach the mercurial majesty of
Stroheim's rushes, and the plug was finally pulled in 1929. Swanson, by
this stage deserted by her gangster consort, released her version in
1931, abridging further the available footage so that her heroine could
chastely commit suicide, thus avoiding the gleefully sordid
humiliations of the brothel section. Stroheim released his own version
in the 1960s, and a more thorough reconstruction, based on the original
screenplay, and featuring an 'epilogue' of stills and intertitles, was
put together in 1985, which is the one available on the recently
released American DVD.
Originally intended to last 30 reels or five hours, roughly a third of
Kelly was shot. In spite of its abruptly curtailed state, however,
Kelly is in some ways a more satisfying viewing experience than more
acclaimed Stroheim masterpieces such as Foolish Wives (1921) or Greed
(1925). Those films had been completed by Stroheim, were taken away and
insensitively re-edited, destroying their meticulous visual and
narrative design. The first section of Kelly, at least, is mostly
intact, and is as close to 'pure,' mature Stroheim as we're likely to
get.
Queen Kelly The plot of Queen Kelly combines the Faberge spectacle
of costume dramas like Foolish Wives or The Wedding March (1928) with
the inexorable squalor of a Greed. The three sections as we have them
offer the experience of watching three different kinds of lost film –
part one is virtually complete, suddenly abbreviated at the end; part
two survives as a long fragment; part three is synopsised by stills and
titles. Part one is set in Kronberg, capital of an ancient Middle
European kingdom, ruled by the 'mad' Regina V (Seena Owen), said to
share the blood mania of her decadent line. This is a woman who has
refused her appetite nothing in the way of sex, power, luxury or
spectacle, and the surfeit has gone to her head, accounting for the
dazed look with which she sleepwalks through the film. We first see her
awakened on her large, lavish bed smothered with pillows, surrounded by
the detritus of her debauchery (Boccaccio's Decameron, Veronal) her
modesty protected by a cat that is both a comically obvious figure for
her preening sexuality and a forewarning of future events when, in
richly pouffed robe, she prowls the castle in search of her fiancé.
This is her cousin Prince Wolfram (Walter Byron), known as "Wild
Wolfie." He too is introduced as captive to a decadent sexuality as he
drunkenly and suggestively rides a tightly reined horse for the
stimulation of a carriageful of ladies. But whereas the Queen's
sexuality is passive, indoors, sapped of energy, the result of appetite
too freely indulged, Wolfram's is active, outdoors, natural, the result
of thwarted energy diverted. The Queen, mocked by the revellers and
affronted by Wolfram's apparent freedom, brings the wedding date
forward to the following day, and punishes her relative to early
morning manoeuvres with the horse guards. This rustic exercise
coincides with the daily walk of the local convent orphans, and as the
admiring Prince passes the girls he is particularly struck by Patricia
Kelly (Swanson), the spirited daughter of a wandering Irish artist.
When her panties fall down as she curtseys, the Prince is amused, and
she hurls them at him in a rage, too naïve, perhaps, to understand how
welcome such an insult might be; and, indeed, the Prince, bayonet
erect, holds them near his nose. As the nuns mutter in outrage, and the
soldiers begins stalking the girls, the Prince and Patricia build up a
kind of bantering relationship, purely through facial expression,
resulting in both making a wish on sods of newly mown hay. Similar
chastisements await both when they arrive 'home': the Prince is
informed of his impending wedding; Patricia is grounded for a month,
and refused that evening's supper. She prays to the Virgin and Child to
send her the Prince, and, sure enough, depressed at his doom, Wolfram
decides to have one last bachelor fling. With the help of a friend he
abducts Patricia by faking a fire in the convent, wines and dines her,
finds, perhaps, that his feelings are more profound then he'd realised,
but still plans to deflower her (fortunately, the 30-year-old Swanson
looks her age by this point), only to be interrupted by the frothing
Queen who horsewhips them both, driving Patricia to attempt suicide.
She is rescued by a guard, and, on return to the nunnery, finds a
telegram calling her back to a dying aunt in German East Africa.
Wolfram is meanwhile put in solitary for his refusal to renounce the
schoolgirl.
The perversions of the first section are stripped of their high-class
trimmings in an African sequence reeking of death, disease, deformity
and depravity. On her deathbed, Patricia's aunt, madam of a squalid
brothel, orders her niece to marry her crippled right-hand man, Jan
(Tully Marshall), who has been waiting for the crone to croak so he can
take over. In a deliciously grotesque sequence, trumping the famous
wedding/funeral set-piece in Greed, extreme unction is succeeded by a
wedding performed over the deathbed climaxing with the aunt's demise,
Patricia's sinking acknowledgment of her debasement and Jan's hobbled
rising to power.
The epilogue recounts the substance of the remaining, unfilmed
two-thirds – Kelly becomes the new madam, the Prince released from
prison goes searching for her, Jan is killed in a brawl, the Queen is
assassinated, the Prince takes Kelly home to rule in Kronberg.
It is tempting to read the broken state of Kelly as a response to its
own themes – like Touch of Evil, another famously tampered-with
masterpiece, its narrative proceeds from a coitus interruptus, when
Kelly and Wolfram in the Prince's bed are intruded on by the Queen.
Where Welles' film heals the initial rupture, however, the unfinished
Kelly cannot, thus frustrating the close links noted by Foucault
between narrative and sexual closure. The narrative as filmed begins to
break down at the moment of greatest emotional trauma for its
characters, as if attempting to accommodate this disintegration in the
very form of the film itself. The maimed African sequence is peopled by
characters dying or wasting away, their bodies (and souls) broken
beyond repair. But this is to gloss over the irreparable damage done
Kelly, and to overlook the coherence of Stroheim's design as evidenced
in the first section.
Firstly, there are a number of image or motif systems whose ultimate
interaction we can only dimly guess at, but whose often unexpected
evolutions provide much of the first section's momentum. The most
blatant is the motif of fire, especially as channelled by candle, which
as both dripping erectile object and a more spiritual means of
illumination, conflates the twin themes of sexual and religious
passion, initiated when Patricia, inspired by a naked Christ (the
'King'), lights a candle in the convent chapel praying to see the
Prince once more. Next, masses of candelabra illuminate the
announcement of the Prince's unwanted marriage to the Queen. The
lighting of a cigar by candlelight leads Wolfram's friend to the hay
which spurs the Prince to his plan, and, fittingly driven by amour fou,
Stroheim appropriates the Surrealist method of making the symbolic
concrete: it is by fire that Wolfram diverts the nuns and kidnaps
Patricia. Increasingly suggestive candelabra frame the supper scene as
the Prince contrives to seduce Kelly, with the fire raging behind her
encouraging her to strip, eventually leading to the bedroom, the
Queen's wrath and the major narrative plot point. This motif also
contributes to an ironic contrast between light and darkness in the
film, elaborated in the chessboard floor of the Queen's palace, and
culminating in the racial tension of the wedding scene, as the depraved
colonialist is married to an Irish convent girl by an African priest,
with black and white prostitutes-as-bridesmaids sneering at the sides.
With this sequence curtailed as it is, we cannot know how this fraught
subject matter might have developed. Other image- and thematic systems
which interact in counterpoint include animals, costumes (especially
dressing, undressing and cross-dressing), fairy tales, literal rising
and falling, and mirrors, all of which are used to explore a contrast
between the rigid roles imposed by society, and the freedom of multiple
identities available through sex.
Queen Kelly This Utopian reading, however, is qualified by
Stroheim's use of mirroring as a structuring device in Kelly. Patricia
may eventually yield to the Prince, but this is the result of an
elaborate trap that begins with abduction and utilises all the
resources of 'culture' – the dazzling décor (including pointedly erotic
paintings) in Wolfram's rooms that so overwhelms Patricia she has to
open the door for air and enter a grove that is cunningly contrived to
suggest the 'natural' in contrast to the artifice within, thus
furthering Wolfram's aims. To get to this point, just as he and his
soldiers stalked the convent girls, so the Prince relentlessly
pressures Patricia, plying her with alcohol, extracting her sexual
fantasies, hiding her outdoor clothes, dogging her around the room.
This matches Wolfram's depressed decadence earlier, and if the Prince
does become genuinely touched by feeling, we shouldn't let the poncy
costumes and elaborate furnishings blind us to the fact that Wolfram's
predatory antics are mirrored by the hideously lecherous, lizard-like
Jan in the African sequences (both are heavy drinkers; both are
ambitious men bridling in female-centred establishments; both are aided
in forcing Patricia to submit by the pressured editing of the
director). Stroheim, of course, knew the snob in all of us would be
blinded by finery, which makes the African sequence such a slap in the
face, one that certainly bruised Swanson , who didn't seem to mind
being debauched in costume, but drew the line at gibbering cripples.
Kelly herself makes the connection between the two worlds when,
cracking under the emotional pressure of the ghastly wedding ceremony,
she replaces in hallucination the priest with the supplicating Wolfram,
again opening up extraordinary thematic possibilities never to be
explored. Symmetry creates the most unexpected connections throughout
the film, from the pair of forced marriages, to the links through
ceremony and uniform between the convent and the army, to the many
reflections and patterned contrasts between the Queen and Queen Kelly
and their alternating rise-and-fall/fall-and-rise narratives.
These two sequences and their internal architecture give some
indication of how a 'complete' Queen Kelly might have evolved, although
Stroheim as a director always enjoyed mixing an illusion of narrative
inevitability with play on an audience's expectations. But Kelly as we
have it is not Stroheim's film, but Gloria Swanson's. Her decision to
stop production may have been the result of socio-economic and
historical forces, but it was also a reading of the film that
supplanted the coherence and generosity of Stroheim's vision. Even if
we reject Swanson's released version – surprisingly conventional,
Victorian, melodramatic and anti-feminist, with the suffering heroine
killed off rather than struggling (no matter how ironically Stroheim
may have intended such a narrative) to achieve status and economic
independence – the butchered remainder in no way matches the totality
of Stroheim's original conception (obviously). Because his works were
continually interfered with, Stroheim was forced against his
temperament to become a modern (his surviving films are decentred,
disjunctive, fragmentary, incomplete, open), when he probably yearned
to be the cinematic equivalent of a great 19th century novelist
(omniscient, totalising, exhaustive, in complete command of his medium
and material, closed). Kelly not only killed off Stroheim's career as
an auteur, but confirmed that Stroheim could never really be considered
an auteur in the purest sense. The original politique des auteurs
praised those directors who adapted their artistry to the studio
system, achieving from within the control Stroheim craved. The great
films of Hitchcock, Hawks, Lang, Sirk and Mann exist as their makers
intended, whole and free; Stroheim's only in the ideal, imagined sense.
Already, as those others grow in reputation, Stroheim begins to fade,
no longer ranking in 'Best Of' lists. The films left us today are not
signed by him, but by the corporate professionals who fancied that
their vision, because aimed at an imagined mass audience, was broader.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
© Darragh O'Donoghue, July 2003
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bibliography
Gilbert Adair, Flickers: An Illustrated Celebration of 100 Years of
Cinema, Faber and Faber, London, 1995.
Seth Bookey, "Queen Kelly (1929)" (www.reviews.com/Reviews/229/22964)
Serge Bromberg, "Les restaurations du Monde perdu (1925)",
cinémathèque, Autumn 2001, pp. 25-35.
Kevin Brownlow, "Silent Films: What Was the Right Speed?", Sight and
Sound, Summer 1980, pp. 164-167
(www.cinemaweb.com/silentfilm/bookshelf/18_kb_2.htm)
Ivan Butler, Silent Magic: Rediscovering the silent film era, Columbus
Books, London, 1987.
Sandrine Fillipetti, "La restauration des 'courts métrages' de Buster
Keaton", cinémathèque, Automne 2001, pp. 5-24.
Gavin Lambert, "Stroheim Revisited: The Missing Third in American
Cinema", Sight and Sound, April/June 1953
(www.bfi.org.uk/showing/nft/featurearchive/stroheim/lambert.html).
Jack Lodge, John Russell Taylor, Adrian Turner, Douglas Jarvis and
David Castell, Hollywood: 50 Great Years, Prion, London, 1989.
Peter Noble, "Stroheim – His Work and Influence", Sight and Sound,
Winter 1947/8
(www.bfi.org.uk/showing/nft/featurearchive/stroheim/noble.html).
Harvey O'Brien, "Queen Kelly (1929)" (http://indigo.ie/~obrienh/qk.htm)
Liam O'Leary, The silent cinema, Dutton Vista, London, 1965.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, BFI Classics: Greed, British Film Institute,
London, 1993.
Christopher Silvester (ed.), The Penguin Book Of Hollywood, Viking,
London, 1998.
Gloria Swanson, Swanson on Swanson, Michael Joseph, London, 1981.
David Thomson, Rosebud: The Story Of Orson Welles, Little, Brown,
London, 1996.
Parker Tyler, Classics of the Foreign Film: A Pictorial Treasury, The
Citadel Press, New York, 1962.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Main Page | Editorial | Contents | Links | Search
Great Directors | Top Tens | Film Festivals
News | Archive | Upcoming Screenings
Contact the editor | Subscribe
© Senses of Cinema 1999-2003
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
5389
From:
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 5:50pm
Subject: Narrative cinema
Does narrative cinema include films which have musical numbers?
This might be a stupid question, I just want it clarified.
5390
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 6:22pm
Subject: Re: Narrative cinema
Of course. The musical numbers are key elements of the
narrative -- song and dance going where speech can't.
--- madlyangelicgirl@y... wrote:
> Does narrative cinema include films which have
> musical numbers?
>
> This might be a stupid question, I just want it
> clarified.
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/
5391
From:
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 7:24pm
Subject: Re: Edwards and Quine
Reseeing The Notorious Landlady was a shock. Larry Gelbart
co-scripted, and there was no trace of Edwards in it except for
the final slapstick chase. (Of course, it could always have been
someone else's idea...) Quine's mise-en-scene is lovely, but I
frankly prefer Cruisin' Down the River. Novak designed her own
clothes, which are very odd.
Project Madball doesn't exactly hold up, either - I guess Quine
didn't do well with plays. My fondest Quine memories - which are
very fond - are of Sex and the Single Girl and Strangers When We
Meet.
5392
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 7:29pm
Subject: Quine
> My fondest Quine memories - which are
> very fond - are of Sex and the Single Girl and Strangers When We
> Meet.
Mine would be DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD, which I think is a masterpiece, and
STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET. I've never seen SEX AND THE SINGLE GIRL - I'll
have to keep an eye out for it. When Quine was good, he was really,
really good - and when he wasn't, he looked kind of ordinary. - Dan
5393
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 7:32pm
Subject: Re: Re: Edwards
> Dan, What you're saying in that old article is not aberrant - it's a
> very lucid statement of what many felt when they saw the film.
I was trying to walk a line between the Edwards fans and his detractors,
believe it or not. After 10, Edwards was widely considered the ultimate
exploitative, commercial filmmaker by intelligent non-auteurists -
people were shocked when I told them he was an auteurist darling. - Dan
5394
From:
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 7:46pm
Subject: Re: Quine
Haven't seen DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD - Quine and Edwards
co-scripted.
5395
From:
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 7:47pm
Subject: Re: Edwards
Sarris was a defender, wasn't he?
5396
From: Dan Sallitt
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 7:53pm
Subject: Re: Re: Edwards
> Sarris was a defender, wasn't he?
He ten-bested 10, S.O.B., and VICTOR/VICTORIA. I can't remember how he
stood on the films after that - I don't see any on his year-end lists. - Dan
5397
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 8:33pm
Subject: Re: Quine
Raymond Durgnat was quite fond of "Strangers When We
Meet." I quite like "Bell Book and Candle," "My Sister
Eileen," and his George Axelrod comedy "How to Murder
Your Wife." Jack Lemmon is marvelous in it, as is
Virna Lisi -- latetly unforgettable as Catherine de
Medici in Chereau's "Queen Margot."
Quine is to my mind in many ways comparable to
Mitchell Leisen.
--- Dan Sallitt
> > My fondest Quine memories - which are
> > very fond - are of Sex and the Single Girl and
> Strangers When We
> > Meet.
>
> Mine would be DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD, which I think is
> a masterpiece, and
> STRANGERS WHEN WE MEET. I've never seen SEX AND THE
> SINGLE GIRL - I'll
> have to keep an eye out for it. When Quine was
> good, he was really,
> really good - and when he wasn't, he looked kind of
> ordinary. - Dan
>
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/
5398
From: David Ehrenstein
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 8:37pm
Subject: Re: Re: Edwards and Quine
Another film that Edwards wrote but did not direct is
"Soldier in the Rain." Ralph Nelson, of all people,
helmed that one. It contains three of the best
performances its stars -- Jackie Gleason, Steve
McQueen and Tuesday Weld -- ever gave. And as a
romantic comedy cum "male weepie" -- it's finale left
me in a puddle. Truly one of the most beautiful
endings in American cinema.
--- hotlove666@y... wrote:
> Reseeing The Notorious Landlady was a shock. Larry
> Gelbart
> co-scripted, and there was no trace of Edwards in it
> except for
> the final slapstick chase. (Of course, it could
> always have been
> someone else's idea...) Quine's mise-en-scene is
> lovely, but I
> frankly prefer Cruisin' Down the River. Novak
> designed her own
> clothes, which are very odd.
>
> Project Madball doesn't exactly hold up, either - I
> guess Quine
> didn't do well with plays. My fondest Quine memories
> - which are
> very fond - are of Sex and the Single Girl and
> Strangers When We
> Meet.
>
>
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/
5399
From: J. Mabe
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 9:42pm
Subject: Films Selected to the National Film Registry, Library of Congress - 2003
I saw this info posted on every other list I'm on, so
I figured just in case someone here hasn't seen it
yet.
http://lcweb.loc.gov/film/nfr2003.html
1) Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman (1974)
2) Atlantic City (1980)
3) Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
4) The Chechahcos (1924)
5) Dickson Experimental Sound Film (1894-5)
6) Film Portrait (1970)
7) Fox Movietone News: Jenkins Orphanage Band (1928)
8) Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933)
9) The Hunters [Kalahari Desert tribeanthropological
film] (1957)
10) Matrimony's Speed Limit (1913)
11) Medium Cool (1969)
12) National Velvet (1944)
13) Naughty Marietta (1935)
14) Nostalgia (1971)
15) One Froggy Evening (1956)
16) Patton (1970)
17) Princess Nicotine; or The Smoke Fairy (1909)
18) Show People (1928)
19) The Son of the Sheik (1926)
20) Tarzan and His Mate (1934)
21) Tin Toy (1988)
22) The Wedding March (1928)
23) White Heat (1949)
24) Young Frankenstein (1974)
25) Young Mr. Lincoln (1939)
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
New Yahoo! Photos - easier uploading and sharing.
http://photos.yahoo.com/
5400
From:
Date: Tue Dec 16, 2003 10:04pm
Subject: Re: Edwards and Quine
Glad to see some posts on Quine. David's comparison to Leisen seems
apt in many ways although I think that, at his best, Quine has a more
interesting sense of space than Leisen. Spaces "breathe" in Quine (if
that makes any sense) through an unobtrusively mobile frame and a
wonderful responsiveness to architecture (the subject matter, of
course, of STRANGERS) and to the layout of the spaces he is shooting
in. Edwards, to my eyes, has a somewhat different sense of space and
is more interested in the theatrical and constructed quality of his
sets -- rather like Minnelli in this regard. I wonder if Quine (even
though he wrote or co-wrote a number of his scripts) is an excellent
example of a metteur-en-scene in the way that Biette defines this
term.
In addition to the Quine titles already mentioned, I also want to put
in a positive word for IT HAPPENED TO JANE which has all the
qualities I mentioned above as well as a wonderful use of location
and sense of the outdoors (something else you find in a number of
Quines, including the early DRIVE A CROOKED ROAD) and some terrific
work by Doris Day, Jack Lemmon, Mary Wickes and Ernie Kovacs. I have
a tape here of OPERATION MAD BALL but I have not looked at it in
years. I believe Kubrick was a fan of it. And I am surprised that
no one mentioned the Godard favorite, PUSHOVER.
If anyone is interested (probably no one!) I did make it all the way
through DARLING LILI and I still love it. But I should not bore you
with the details of my enthusiasm, especially since my sense is that
many of you have never seen it or not seen it in a long time.
Home Film Art Other: (Travel, Rants, Obits) Links About Contact