Author: robertemmetsweeney

COLD CALCULATION AND SENSUALITY: GLORIA GRAHAME AND FRITZ LANG

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August 11, 2009

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On March 19th, 1953, Gloria Grahame was awarded the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for The Bad and the Beautiful (1953). Production on Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953) began two days earlier, according to TCMDB. Little did she know during this string of dizzying successes that a couple of French cineastes were busy defining her image in perpetuity. In 1955, Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton’s Panorama du film noir americain was published, a landmark study of a particular strain in American filmmaking that previous French critics had coined “film noir”. The term wouldn’t break into common parlance in the U.S. until the 1970s, but it would come to define Gloria Grahame’s career.

Borde and Chaumeton declared  her the ideal femme fatale, one who intimated “cold calculation and sensuality” in her performances (for more on this book’s impact, check out James Naremore’s More Than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts). She wielded her sly, cheshire-cat grin, nasal sing-song voice and girlish vanity as canny masks for her character’s various vices and insecurities. Her exuberant energy, almost anarchic at times, threatens to overwhelm the subtlety of her characterizations, and her unselfconscious sexuality made even the most sophisticated writer adopt the violent romanticism of a noir protagonist: Francois Truffaut wrote, “…as is the case of most of the Cahiers writers, the beautiful eyes of Gloria Grahame make you die of love….”, while academic Tom Gunning, in his magisterial Films of Fritz Lang, can’t help but add an aside that Grahame’s ability to make a fur coat swish “is one of the few arguments against animal rights activists.”

Along with Crossfire (1947) and In a Lonely Place (1950), The Big Heat is the defining film noir role of her career, and she delivers an astonishing performance. The Big Heat was based on a novel by William P. McGivern, originally serialized in the Saturday Evening Post. The script was written by Sydney Boehm before Lang was officially hired on to the project in mid-February of 1953. Lang biographer Patrick McGilligan notes that Boehm was a police reporter on the New York Evening Journal, and that “his specialty was crime…”. The script he delivered was a spare, unflinching tale of corruption, that which kills the wife of Detective Dave Bannion (Glenn Ford), and leads to his vigilante-like quest to take down Mike Lagana’s (Alexander Scourby) crime syndicate. Gloria Grahame plays Debby Marsh, the mistress to Lagana’s right-hand man, Vince Stone (a lip-trembling Lee Marvin).It’s a perfect scenario for Lang’s continued emphasis on systemic evils and unchangeable destiny (think Mabuse or You Only Live Once), and it results in one of his darkest, richest films (read the Gunning for an in-depth investigation of its formal and thematic strategies).

Lang’s perfectionist tendencies on set were notoriously difficult on actors, and there are very strong indications that he and Grahame did not get along. McGilligan says vaguely that there was “friction”, and in an interview with Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg about the film, Lang says, “…and there’s a whole story about Gloria Grahame and the picture I’d rather not discuss.” Which says all that needs to be said. Grahame was reputedly a “spitfire”, and Lang probably spat back. Regardless of their working relationship, their mutual genius is up there on the screen, and Grahame’s Debby Marsh is a marvelous creation, a girlish exterior hiding a sardonic sense of humor as well as a weary cynicism. When Bannion self-righteously asks her where her money comes from, Marsh replies, “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor – believe me, rich is better.” This depressing realist comes out later in the film.

Graham enters the story lolling on the couch, answering the phone for Stone with mock sincerity, telling him “His Highness” Lagana is on the line, before strolling over to the mirror to check on her makeup. She exudes teenage rebelliousness and vanity, except her wit has more sting than your normal brat. Her burlesque of Stone’s relationship with Lagana reaches an absurd pitch when she starts singing a little ditty comparing Lagana to a lion tamer as she shuffles off to mix cocktails, indicating how “whipped” Stone really is, despite all his bravado. Grahame’s perky subversiveness gives Marsh select moments of independence, even if Stone doesn’t always pay attention to her jokes: “When Vince talks business I get my legs waxed”. She takes refuge from her life in humor and her physical appearance, which is the only way she can gain power in this sexist society. It is only after Bannion stands up to Stone that Marsh dallies with escaping her kept lifestyle.

After following the scarily stoic Bannion to his hotel room, Marsh opens up about her transcendent unhappiness. Grahame’s sexual invitation, as she composes herself on the bed, all shaded eyes and perfect posture, is duly swatted away by the detective. It is this flirtatious crime that leads to the Marsh’s famous scarring – a close-up of a bubbling coffee pot and an off-screen scream is all it takes for that scene of improbable violence to be inflicted by Lee Marvin. As Gunning notes, after this scarring Marsh avoids mirrors and acts as Bannion’s id, committing the murder he’s unable to. Meeting up with the scheming widow who is extorting from Lagana, and who holds the evidence to the syndicate’s downfall, Grahame greets her with the wonderfully sarcastic line, “We’re sisters under the mink”, as they face each other in matching furs. Marsh’s decadence is now ironic, another punchline, but this time in service of her redemption – and she goes on to return the coffee (see right).

McGilligan notes that the box office returns were “average” and the reviews “fair”, but Columbia Pictures were satisfied enough with the result to sanction a re-teaming of Ford and Grahame in Human Desire the next year, an adaptation of Emile Zola’s La Bete Humaine (filmed by Jean Renoir in 1938 – Lang had already remade Renoir’s La Chienne (1931) as Scarlett Street (1945)). The Zola novel would have been rich material for Lang, with the central character a mentally unstable “sex killer” in a world self-destructing around him. This being 1953 Hollywood, however, this subject would never be approved for production. So, as Lang told Peter Bogdanovich:

“In an American movie, you cannot make the hero a sex killer. Impossible. So Glenn Ford has to play it, you know, like a Li’l Abner coming back from Korea-100 percent red-blooded American with very natural sex feelings-if such a thing exists.”

This project was totally a contract job, but Lang had held out hope that he could land Peter Lorre as the lead, and perhaps coax a darker performance out of the material. Unfortunately, Lorre declined, and Glenn Ford stepped in to an impossible task – to portray a straight-laced aw-shucks American in a story of sexual obsession and death. His performance is incongruous and jarring. Lang’s visual mastery is in full force, though, with a wordless opening consisting of the cold geometry of train tracks, indicating the web of fate he’ll soon be caught in. It’s a film to savor for it’s purely plastic virtues, as producer Jerry Wald drove the final stake into its narrative conception:

…one day he called us [Lang and Alfred Hayes] in and said, “You are both wrong.” I said, “What have we done this time, Jerry?” He said, “Look. This is called La Bete Humaine, the human beast. But everybody is bad in your picture. ” “Naturally, because Zola wanted to show that in every human being is a beast.” He said, “You both don’t understand it. The woman is the human beast.” What can you do against the producer?

Glenn Ford plays Jeff Warren, a clean-cut soldier returning from the Korean War. He’s seduced by Gloria Grahame’s Vicki, who is chained to her drunken, murderous husband Carl Buckley  (Broderick Crawford), who’s eager to pin a death on her. Vicki attempts to seduce Warren so he’ll knock off Buckley and end her virtual imprisonment.

Gloria Grahame does not add the electricity of her turn in The Big Heat, but opts for a more reserved and maudlin tone, emphasizing Vicki’s opacity and unreadability, perhaps in an attempt to undercut Wald’s misogynist reading of Zola’s book. She is an enigma to Warren and to the audience, her character’s perversity kept in check until the final reels, where her proof of love, and proof of sexual attraction, is to kill.

I don’t like to emphasize the ghoulish backstory of Grahame’s life, but at this point in her career  her obsession with plastic surgery started to affect her performances. Her upper lip, the subject of multiple rumored procedures, looks almost paralyzed, and it alters her speech. She still receives a grand introduction, though, lazing about the premises, and then showing off her new stockings to a preoccupied Crawford. Despite her physical incapacity and the limits of the material, Grahame delivers moments of subtle beauty, including her final, incantatory pitch for true love (which she equals with Crawford’s death). Even when Lang and Grahame are working with subpar material, their intelligence finds it’s way on-screen. It was received rapturously by Cahiers (which Lang was always surprised by), and it inspired one of Andrew Sarris’ finest pieces of writing:

Where Renoir’s The Human Beast is the tragedy of a doomed man caught up in the flow of life, Lang’s remake, Human Desire, is the nightmare of an innocent man enmeshed in the tangled strands of fate. What we remember in Renoir are the faces of Gabin, Simon, and Ledoux. What we remember in Lang are the geometrical patterns of trains, tracks and fateful camera angles. If Renoir is humanism, Lang is determinism. if Renor is concerned with the plight of his characters, Lang is obsessed with the structure of the trap.

In any case, viva Gloria Grahame, quintessential noir actress and so much more, an artist of whirring energy and sensuality, who was able to transform her girlish charm into characters dangerous, wounded, and majestically alive.

MOVIES ON HULU: AN INVESTIGATION

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August 4, 2009

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The fabulously popular streaming video site Hulu is useful for keeping abreast of contemporary pop-culture effluvia, sure, but if one peeks into their dusty old movies section, there’s an eclectic collection of auteur rarities, 50′s horror, Poverty Row Westerns, and public domain slapstick comedies to be unearthed. With only 3.77% of the titles listed on TCMDB available on home video, dutiful cinephiles need to devour repertory screenings, lobby intractable studios, and pluck the desirable titles out of what is available, and so Hulu is another prime portal to chip away at our film-historical ignorance. I had used it primarily to catch up with TV series I had fallen behind on (like the ubiquitous 30 Rock), but in researching my piece on Bruce Surtees last week, I discovered that Don Siegel’s The Beguiled was streaming for free on the site. Delving into their archives produced a fascinating hodgepodge of titles, some of which are quite hard to see otherwise. Below the fold is a list of titles ready to view on Hulu that I’m eager get to know, and others with which I’m already in committed relationships (with selected commentary, and each title links to its page on Hulu).

Blackmail, 1929

The 39 Steps, 1935

Secret Agent, 1936

Sabotage, 1937

The Lady Vanishes, 1938

Five Hitchcocks. No explanation necessary.

Anne of the Indies, 1951

This is a pirate swashbuckler starring Louis Jourdan and Jean Peters from director Jacques Tourneur, and rated highly by Chris Fujiwara in his definitive study of the director, Jacques Tourneur: The Cinema of Nightfall. This is not on DVD, but occasionally pops up on the Fox Movie Channel, where it’s still sitting on my DVR. Fujiwara says that “Anne of the Indies often gives the impression of a perpetual-motion machine: characters appear and disappear in flurries of back-and-forth activity. [snip] Through these hesitations and shifts, the film suggests the avoidance of something inexpressible, acknowledging that the narrative is based on a lack that can be filled only be fantasy.” Intrigued? Yes. Yes you are.

Bachelor Flat, 1961

No less a personage than Andrew Sarris claimed that this CinemaScope comedy is Frank Tashlin’s best film. Better than Artists and Models and Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Is that even possible? Apparently, yes, led by Tuesday Weld’s impossibly moon-shaped face and a wily dachsund’s dinosaur bone obsession.

The Beguiled, 1971

I briefly discussed Don Siegel’s libidinous masterpiece last week, but I’m eager to recommend it again. An autumnal American gothic set at a boarding school for girls during the Civil War, it unleashes the violent power of adolescent sexuality, against which Clint Eastwood has little hope.

Bigger Than Life, 1956

James Mason imprisoned in 1950s America, gets hooked on cortisone and becomes a macho gargoyle. A major work from Nicholas Ray.

Breezy, 1973

Underrated Eastwood. With his second feature, Clint detours into light comedy with dark undercurrents. William Holden’s decadent playboy falls for the whims of an 18 year old hippie (Kay Lenz). Holden’s cratered face and Lenz’ airy chatter fill the screen.

Cul-de-Sac, 1966

Roman Polanski’s black comedy follow-up to Repulsion.

Fixed Bayonets, 1951

Early Sam Fuller (right before the great Park Row (1952)), and his second Korean War film, after The Steel Helmet (1951). This one is set in the snowy climes of Heartbreak Ridge, and is highlighted by the pearls of sweat accumulating on the soldier’s faces as they cross an iced minefield. Extreme close-ups for extreme times.

His Girl Friday, 1940

Everything is at an angle, from Rosalind Russel’s wide-brimmed hats to Cary Grant’s smirk that almost tumbles to the floor. The dialogue burns through their defenses, until love is in the air. One of Howard Hawks’ greatest films, and so one of the greatest ever.

The Knack…and how to get it, 1965

Richard Lester perfects the mod film.

The Last Man on Earth, 1964

Vincent Price perfects the Richard Matheson story “I Am Legend”. Sorry Will Smith!

The Stranger, 1946

Mr. Arkadin, 1962

Two samplings of Orson Welles, the first his stab at commercial relevancy, the second a European co-production with echoes of Citizen Kane. Both suffering from studio/producer interference. I prefer the latter’s fake noses and tipsy cinematography to the former’s expressionist flourishes, but I won’t hold it against you if you disagree.

Night of the Living Dead, 1968

The series that won’t die. George Romero will debut his latest zombie-fest, Survival of the Dead, at this year’s Toronto Film Festival. See what all the fuss is about.

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, 1970

Before subjecting yourself to Guy Ritchie’s roided up version of the Holmes legend, sample Billy Wilder’s mellow, melancholy take on the natty inspector.

Rings on Her Fingers, 1942

In an attempt to cash in on the success of The Lady Eve, Fox tried their own con-artist romantic comedy, and signed on Henry Fonda to re-create the magic. Rouben Mamoulian was no Preston Sturges at this point in his career, although the results are sure to be diverting.

The Spikes Gang, 1974

Richard Fleischer’s light-hearted bank robbing movie finds fatherly outlaw Lee Marvin taking on three young kids (including Ron Howard) to form the least intimidating gang in the Wild West.

The Taking of Pelham, 1 2 3, 1974

White Lightning, 1973

Or, the curious case of Joseph Sargent. Sargent, a TV lifer, took some time out in the 70s to crank out a couple of genre whitelightningclassics. Then he moseyed on back to the small screen. White Lightning is a rousingly entertaining Southern revenge drama, starring Burt Reynolds at his aw shucks peak. Taking of Pelham is a no-nonsense police procedural recently remade by Tony Scott. His unfussy direction and his talent for working class argot shines in both features, with White Lightning taking the crown because of a stronger emotional pull, especially in an extraordinarily surreal sequence in an unwed mothers home. Also because of Ned Beatty, whose laid-back menace slithers out of every sweat-oozing pore.

Thunder Birds, 1942

A William Wellman pilot melodrama, with Gene Tierney. That’s enough for me.

Time Limit, 1957

The only film Karl Malden directed. Rest in peace.

The Train, 1965

John Frankenheimer’s sturdy actioner starring Burt Lancaster. He has to transport some fine art under the noses of Nazi scum. Frankenheimer knows how to handle pace and Lancaster’s torso.

Vigilante Force, 1976

Another Southern good-ole-boy action film, this one a cheap knockoff of Phil Karlson’s Walking Tall (1973), directed by George Armitage, who later went on to film Grosse Point Blank 20 odd years later. Instead of Joe Don Baker in Walking Tall though, the lead vigilante is Jan Michael Vincent. Not a good trade-off, although Kris Kristofferson is around to add some shirtless, mellow menace, a young Bernadette Peters belts out a few numbers on the periphery, and there is some jaw-dropping stunt falls in the final (ridiculous) shootout. It also musters a handful of memorable lines. The town in CA just opened an oil field, and two government employees talk shop: “Thank God for the energy crisis! Thank Allah!” And another on the influx of wildcatter oilmen: “If I wanted to live with degenerates I’d move to L.A.” Truer words have never been spoken.

THE PRINCE OF DARKNESS: BRUCE SURTEES

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Originally published at Movie Morlocks, the official blog of Turner Classic Movies

July 28, 2009

I remember one thing I wanted to do is get a shot in darkness illuminated by a single candle. The old way to get a picture of someone walking with a candle was to set up a complicated series of controlled lights, dimmers clicking on, synchronized to the step of the person with the candle. […] I didn’t want that kind of thing again. So I picked young Bruce Surtees, and said, “You’ve got to do it without dimmers.” If I’d said that to an old-timer, he would have said goodbye. But Bruce would try to find a way to do anything I asked him. For that candle scene, he put a little bulb in the base of the candleholder and we shot. It took guts. We realized we might get nothing, and we knew we would have to intensify it, send it through a special lab. When we saw the film, most of the screen was black except for a circle of light showing the girl’s face. We didn’t care that it was black, that it wouldn’t show up on a television screen when the studio sold the picture to some network in a couple of years. Screw them. We liked it. It was exciting.’ –Don Siegel on The Beguiled [From ‘Don Siegel: Director’ by Stuart M. Kaminsky, 1974.]

This “young” cinematographer Bruce Surtees turned 72 yesterday, and it’s time to celebrate his remarkable career. He’s been on my mind lately, as for much of the last year I’ve been familiarizing myself with the early directorial efforts of Clint Eastwood.  Surtees was his go-to cinematographer from Play Misty For Me (1971) to Pale Rider (1985, see top image from DVD Beaver), where the Malpaso (Eastwood’s production company) house style was established: location shooting draped in deep chiaroscuro blacks paired with hard, desaturated light (plus lots of back-lighting, and no fill lights). It was during this period he was dubbed “The Prince of Darkness.” [Suzi points out that Gordon Willis had the same nickname, but both are worthy!] He did great work with other directors, with Arthur Penn on Night Moves, Bob Fosse on Lenny (which earned him an Oscar nomination) and Sam Fuller on White Dog, but his Clint work is what he’ll forever be associated with.

If Bruce was the Prince of Darkness, then his dad Robert would be one of the Kings of Golden Age Color. He had a dizzying career, acting as an assistant to Gregg Toland before lensing Vicente Minnelli’s operatic satire The Bad and the Beautiful as well the popping colors of Oklahoma! and George Cukor’s Les Girls . He made his name on these latter stunners, later winning an Oscar for Ben-Hur in 1959. He shifted gears in his late period, opting for more intimate dramas and subdued palettes like The Graduate (1967), the 70s dramas of Robert Mulligan (from Summer of ’42 (1971) through Same Time, Next Year (1978)), and the supple B&W of The Last Picture Show (1971).

For his gig on Mark Robson’s Lost Command (1966), Robert hired Bruce as one of his camera operators. Foot firmly in the door, Bruce was then hired on in the same position for Don Siegel, where he worked on Coogan’s Bluff (1968, he’s operating the camera during the motorcycle chase near the Cloisters) and Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970). Eastwood told Michael Henry that on the latter shoot, there were some communication problems with the legendary Mexican DP Gabriel Figueroa, and that Surtees was an invaluable interlocutor. Eastwood and Siegel agreed they would elevate him to DP as soon as they could.

It didn’t take long, and with Siegel’s The Beguiled in 1971, Surtees was hired as director of photography. The opening quote refers to Surtees’ inventive work on this Civil War American gothic. Leeched of color, aside from fetid greens and browns, the palette is close to the sepia tone of Matthew Brady’s photographs, and is loaded with examples of low-key lighting, including the one Siegel emphasizes. It is a tale of barely repressed sexual hysteria, as a Southern female boarding school nurses Clint’s Yank back to health. It looks like Surtees used the candle trick that Siegel discusses multiple times, as various girls sneak into Clint’s room with that one pinprick of light. They are soon enveloped by the deep blacks in Surtees’ photography, subsumed in their awakening sexual desires.

Even early on, Surtees was adept at matching lighting to the emotional tenor of the scene, as his protege (and future Eastwood DP) Jack Green (Unforgiven) can attest. Green was recently profiled in American Cinematographer magazine:

He recalls cinematographer Bruce Surtees (Pale Rider, Tightrope) “standing on a set and giving instructions to the gaffer using his hand as if it were a paintbrush. You would swear there was paint coming out of his fingers! Bruce was a lighting minimalist. If he walked onto a set and saw four lights burning, he’d tell the gaffer to turn one off. I realized the fewer lights you had, the fewer complications there were. It was fascinating to see how Bruce expressed himself to his gaffer and electricians. To this day, I try to duplicate that as best I can.” Green listened to how Surtees and Eastwood would describe lighting in emotional terms. “In Pale Rider, Clint was talking about the scene where the bad guys are standing in the mayor’s house at a fireplace, planning what they’re going to do. He described them as ‘the devil’s advocates,’ and he wanted them surrounded by this boiling firelight. I learned from him and Bruce how to think about lighting in an emotional way.”

He painted with light, as John Alton so poetically phrased it. After crystallizing the hard blue light of Dirty Harry, Surtees would elaborate his gothically dark approach further on Eastwood’s directorial debut, Play Misty For Me. That film, pitched at a similar level of sexual hysteria, etches the phenomenally unhinged performance by Jessica Walter out of backlit shadows and unnaturally hard California light. In ’73, with High Plains Drifter, Surtees shot the landscape with unusually wide apertures, so that, as Ric Gentry puts it in the collected Clint Eastwood Interviews, “everything in the town appears visually scorched by the light, almost flaming.” Appropriate for a town that Eastwood’s ghost rennames HELL.

The Malpaso image doesn’t fully cohere until Outlaw Josey Wales, in 1976. There, with a few more infernal notes, would be the palette Eastwood and his collaborators painted with the rest of their career. Eastwood told Ric Gentry some of the tricks from that film’s particular vision:

“Bruce came up with a suggestion that i thought was very innovative,” Eastwood recalls. “At that time they were going to stop manufacturing a certain film stock, a much slower stock than is used presently. We were scheduled to begin shooting in the fall of the year, which is a great time to shoot a Western because the sun stays low in the sky, though you do run the risk of an early winter setting in. But Bruce said, ‘Why don’t we use this slow stock? We’ll have to use a little more light for certain scenes, but for outdoors it gets richer blacks. The only trouble is they’re running out of it.’

Now, I love rich blacks in a film. I can’t stand it when the blacks go grey and come out milky. In fact, I worked with one cinematographer who wanted to force everything, but I didn’t have the patience for the way the blacks would curdle and go milky. But Bruce doesn’t do that. He has a hard light effect and I wanted to backlight the whole movie. He knew what I liked, the blacks and the contrast, and he wanted to use this stock.”

Eastwood goes on to say that they shot sunsets for sunrises, to “get that very heavy cross light”, and which adds heightened sense of decay in this story of a man haunted and hunted by violence. By the time Pale Rider came around in 1985, Surtees had played around with the dark gleaming surfaces of the surprisingly existential thriller mechanics of Firefox (1982, the sullen physicality of this movie could be called Bressonian), the dusty penumbras of Honkytonk Man (1982), and the moody nightscapes of the severely underrated Dirty Harry vehicle, Sudden Impact (1983, would you believe me if I said it was his Vertigo?). This is without even mentioning his work with other directors, including the epochal fogged Chicago in Risky Business (1983). But with Pale Rider Surtees reached the limit of his style with Eastwood. A self-conscious homage to the Westerns of Boetticher and Leone, it’s perhaps Eastwood’s most stylized work (see the lineup of duster jackets). It has the feel of a summing up, and for Surtees, it was to be his final collaboration with the director. His assistant, Jack Green, would take over up through Space Cowboys in 2000, after which Tom Stern took the helm. There’s an amazing continuity to Eastwood’s production team over the years.

So here’s to you, Prince of Darkness. Happy Birthday.

VACATION TIPS FROM ORSON WELLES

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July 21, 2009

If anyone can still afford to go on vacation, it would be worthwhile to pop in the DVD of Around the World with Orson Welles (or stream on Netflix) before the journey. You’ll learn important tips about expatriate American bohemians and the beauties of Basque sports. A seven part documentary series he filmed for British TV in 1955, it takes him to Basque country (2 episodes worth), almshouses in England, bullfights in Spain, and the St. Germain-des-pres section of Paris. Two parts are absent from the disc:  The Third Man in Vienna is sadly missing, and  The Tragedy of Lurs , which considers the case of a convicted murderer of a British tourist family, Gaston Dominici, was never completed. Joseph McBride, in Whatever Happened to Orson Welles?, relates that it was “partially restored for French television in 2000, and released with a new documentary written and directed by Christophe Cognet, The Dominici Affair.” These travel essays, veritable home movies, are an immensely enjoyable tour through eccentric pockets of Europe.

Welles, fresh off his globe-hopping thriller Mr. Arkadin, is in a chipper mood throughout, likely happy to be far away from the producers who would cut his films to ribbons (as happened with Arkadin). Peeking his cherubic face into loosely styled interviews with chatty locals, the series is a fascinating glimpse into Welles’ off-camera personality. All the anecdotes about his gregarious camaraderie and booming laugh ring throughout each episode. It’s not completely off-the-cuff, however, as Welles continually comes around to ideas regarding independence, individuality, and the question of dignity in aging.

There is a grab bag of styles throughout the show, with the St. Germain section funneling Welles’ observations through Art Buchwald’s typewriter. Framed as a piece he’s writing about the neighborhood, with Welles as his subject, it opens with an overheated nightclub montage, whip-pans settling under the nose of a clarinet player intercut with furious lindy hoppers. These sensationalistic elements are far afield from Welles’ concerns here, and McBride says that some shots (of Paris intellectuals Jean Cocteau, Simone de Beauvoir, and others) were added by producers after shooting. Even on quickie TV shoots Welles couldn’t get away from studio meddling!

Anyhow, his main subject here is expatriate American eccentric Raymond Duncan, who makes everything he needs, and who says, you should “not need what you cannot make”. Clad in a homemade tunic and sandals, this proto-Beatnik discusses independence, (Duncan: “The greatest thing in the world.” Welles” I say, Here Here!”), the decline of the west as a result of the rise of the pantaloon, and American’s creeping tendency toward conformism. The exchange is lengthy and detailed, and one senses Welles’ sympathies fade only when Duncan mentions that he doesn’t allow women to wear pants at the theater he runs. Welles raises an eyebrow, prods him about the women’s independence, and pivots into the influence of Puritanism on Duncan’s brand of radical freedom.

The section entitled “London” concerns itself with question of aging. The first half of the film finds Welles conversing with a gaggle of giggling old widows, residents of a local almshouse that cares for them. He interrogates them about their politics (they’re all Tories), the length of their stay, and their dining habits. He draws out that none of them invite the others over for dinner, and jovially chides them for their rudeness. This loose dialogue is immensely charming, illuminating the dignity of these poor old women and their curiosity regarding this portly stranger. McBride draws a parallel between this and the following segment with the lost ending of The Magnificent Ambersons. He quotes Welles describing the sequence in a decrepit rooming house as being about “the deterioration of personality, the way people diminish with age, and particularly with impecunious old age.” Contrast this to the statement he makes about the almshouse:

“To be old and indigent is not just an economic problem, it can be a tragedy in human terms, a tragedy of loneliness, a loss of dignity, a loss of the sense of individuality. And that’s why I admire, and I think British people should be so proud of, institutions like this almshouse.”

The second half of the episode talks with three retired soldiers living at the Royal Hospital in Chelsea. Welles draws them out about the details of their uniforms, old war stories, and the everyday details of their life, which they discuss with relish. Their lion in winter bearing, as McBride notes, bears a strong resemblance to Richard Bennett’s Major Amberson. They watch as the world passes them by, but maintain their dignity throughout, regardless of their reduced circumstances. Things loosen up even more when they hit the local pub in full regalia, and Welles queries them about their living quarters, concerned that they never have time to themselves. The oldest of the group, at 85, strongly states they have their own small rooms, enough to shut the door and read a book if need be. Stating that those over 90 need additional assistance in the ward, Welles wisely notes that this elderly bull seems like he could live fully for at least another decade. In emphasizing their virility, the man notes that they are enjoying the “evening of life in independent retirement”, repeating the phrase with his two friends, proud of their station in life. Welles quotes it again at the close of the show, as the gentleman stride back to their military home. It’s a beautiful segment, and the high point of the series.

I have yet to mention the delightful Basque section, with its uncanny images of pigeon hunting (and the firecracker bull!), or even the  bullfighting show dryly hosted by Kenneth Tynan and his wife Elaine Dundy, but there’s nothing that can top those old Chelsea warriors, so I won’t even deign to try.

BASTILLE DAY CINEMA: REIGN OF TERROR (1949)

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July 14, 2009

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What better way to celebrate Bastille Day than to honor the greatest French Revolution film noir of all time on its 60th anniversary?  None, I say! The baroque madness of Reign of Terror is shared by three great Hollywood artisans: director Anthony Mann, cinematographer John Alton, and production designer William Cameron Menzies. Mann and Alton cranked out  T-Men for the Eagle-Lion studio in 1948, which became a minor hit, earning $1.6 million on an investment of $424,000. Eager to cash in, the studio had the duo squeeze out the magnificent Raw Deal later that same year.

Looking to class up their operation, Eagle-Lion entered a distribution deal with independent producer  Walter Wanger to churn out some serious minded historical spectacles. Having worked on the John Ford-Gregg Toland collaboration The Long Voyage Home and Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, among others, he was supposed to bring respect to this neighbor to Poverty Row. He was given seven figure budgets for two films: Tulsa (1949, a Susan Heyward Western), and The Bastille.

It soon became clear that Eagle-Lion had overextended itself, and The Bastille was downgraded from an ‘A’ picture to a programmer (the budget was supposedly hacked to around $750,000). Working quickly to change the film from a big-budget spectacle to a historical potboiler, Mann handed Aeneas MacKenzie‘s heavily researched script to Philip Yordan. MacKenzie specialized in period piece paegantry, having written Michael Curtiz’s The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939) and who later went on to write the script for The Ten Commandments. Yordan went in for more pulpy fare, and became a trusted scribe for Mann, working with him all the way through The Fall of the Roman Empire in 1964. It’s usually an impossible task to assign authorship to scripts that have gone through multiple rewrites, but in this case I think it’s safe to say that Yordan’s fingerprints are all over this. The tongue-in-cheek humor (Robespierre: “Don’t call me Max!”…note that Yordan also wrote Johnny Guitar (1954)) and noir machinations seem to be miles away from the stodgy reconstruction of Ten Commandments.

Perhaps I should briefly note the plot…an emissary of the Marquis de Lafayette, one Charles D’Aubigny (Robert Cummings) has been tasked to go undercover and filter information from Robespierre back to the leader of the opposition, Barras (Richard Hart). His contact is an old flame, Madelon (Arlene Dahl). Standing in his path are Robespierre himself (Richard Basehart) as well as his lieutenants, Fouche (an unforgettably obsequious Arnold Moss) and Sant-Just (Jess Barker). Without the period trappings, it’s a police procedural, with a climactic chase and all the rest.

Confronted with a sudden lack of funds, Mann’s team had to improvise, and they did it brilliantly. There are a few visual motifs that Mann sets up with Alton, including a simple one involving mirrors, denoting duplicity and vanity, and generally marking the characters for doom. In the first image, Robespierre’s ally is snuffed out after admiring his visage. In the second and third, Madelon is shunted into the background as a trembling ghost – as she has yet to fully gain D’aubigny’s trust. The last shows Robespierre’s face in full plumage before it gets blasted off.

William Cameron Menzies had to whip up a crowd of thousands with a cast of hundreds. Leger Grindon’s book, Shadows of the Past, from which I’m drawing the production history, notes that in filming the National Convention:

The designer squeezed a hundred extras onto a small rising gallery of benches, flooded the set with irregular shafts of light, and then photographed and enlarged the scale of the image. These shots were integrated through rear projection with the foreground of the Convention. The crowd fills the flat space of the background and spills, limitless, over the edges of the image.

His inventive use of rear-projection in conjunction with his other tricks truly pulls off a sense of dizzying magnitude. In its uncanny vastness, Menzies’ tricks adds to the feeling of vertigo that the characters are trapped in, and which might possibly would have been lost in the higher budgeted version.

Alton’s cinematography is all claustrophobic menace, with an unusual amount of distorting extreme close-ups that emphasize the caricatured nature of the whole enterprise (while also obviating the need for elaborate sets). The grotesque figures that Alton frames lend the film a comic book sensibility, pulled straight from the pages of Classic Comix. One could draw a line straight from Frank Miller’s oeuvure to this film, for better or worse, right down to it’s darker than dark palette and shocking violence (a gunshot to Robespierre’s mouth is excised in some prints of the film. There is also kitty kicking, torture, and various other thwacks to the head).

 

According to Grindon, Reign of Terror opened in 1949 during the week of Bastille Day in Los Angeles. It performed modestly, pulling in under $40,000 before closing after 11 days. Before releasing the film in NYC, Eagle-Lion completely changed the marketing for the film, emphasizing the action elements while barely mentioning the French Revolution backdrop. The title was changed to The Black Book when it was released that autumn in New York (it’s been released under both titles on home video, although Reign of Terror has become the standard, as evidenced by the recent VCI release, which is supposed to display the best image quality currently available). Despite another middling box office showing, it eventually turned a profit after two years of bookings.

TCM is screening the film on September 7th at 1PM, so there’s no excuse. Rent the DVD or settle in with TCM, but by all means watch this sterling example of creativity seeking ingenious ways around a lack of cash.

THE INVISIBLE AMERICAN GENRE DIRECTORS

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July 7, 2009

Steven Soderbergh’s baseball statistics movie Moneyball was shelved by Sony a few weeks back, mere days before shooting was to begin. Budgeted at $57 million and with Brad Pitt slated as the lead, its abandonment seemed to signal that mid-range, artistically ambitious projects will suffer the most in the current financial crisis. As ace Variety blogger Anne Thompson has noted, “Hollywood is moving in two simultaneous directions: behemoth event pics, and smaller personal films — with little middle ground.” One would expect that along with Soderbergh, Michael Mann and David Fincher will find it increasingly difficult to get their visions onto the screen. This is lamentable, regardless of your opinion of the filmmakers (I’m partial to Fincher, but an admirer of all), who each bring an ambitious pop sensibility to the screen. But what of the genre directors? These mid to low-budgeted spectacles (the Transporters, House Bunnies, and Hangovers) will always be cranked out, and will generally be profitable. If nothing else, the espousers of the auteur theory taught us to ignore the boundary between “high” and “low” art, to scavenge in every nook and cranny of the American cinema for possible artistry.

The Independent’s Kaleem Aftab expands Thompson’s reasoned analysis into a confusing screed about the lack of “great American directors”, and he ignores genre films as well. Below the fold I offer a list of my favorite contemporary genre operators, a group of under-the-radar auteurs and purveyors of quality pulp. First though, I have to take Aftab to task. Aside from the fact that he lists 20 or so “great” directors in his own piece, he clearly has no idea what an “auteur” is. His definition: “a director whose films had to be watched no matter what they were about or who was in them.” He goes on to say that after the auteur theory hit, “Suddenly, it was the director rather than the producer, the studio or the lead actor who became the star.” Aside from the fact that this is blatantly false (only Hitchcock could be considered a “star”, everyone else the New Wavers or Sarris championed were anonymous genre operators: Howard Hawks, Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller), it never discusses the films themselves, only their popularity.

He equates auteur status with box-office success, and so he has little interest in Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, or Wes Anderson, because “none are household names, and none command guaranteed box-office.” The ignorance of this line is breathtaking – a studio head couldn’t have encapsulated the triumph of commerce over art better.  Nothing tops the line in his discussion of Judd Apatow though….witness: “It’s unusual for a comedy director to gain auteur status…”. Yes, if you ignore Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jerry Lewis, George Cukor, Ernst Lubitsch, Blake Edwards, Preston Sturges….

That’s enough negativity for one post. Let’s think pretty thoughts – ones involving bodily fluids, but pretty nonetheless. This list is not supposed to act as a counterweight to Hollywood doomsaying. I agree that the majority of Hollywood’s output has suffered terribly since the studio days, and that kind of effortless craft is probably never to return. Consider this an addendum to Sarris’ chapter in THE AMERICAN CINEMA on “Subjects for Further Research”, a hodgepodge of encouraging voices from the disreputable realms of the action, comedy, and horror realms, and in no way tracking any trends. Just a few names I’ve gained plenty of pleasure from on the lower end of the Rotten Tomatoes rankings, and those that will continue to reside in-between the “behemoth event pics and smaller personal films”. These guys (and girl) make up the ignored middle ground.

1. Adam McKay (Anchorman (2004), Talladega Nights (2006), Step Brothers (2008)):

Adam McKay has a clear directorial personality and style: he places emphases on group improvisation and the psychoses of men in arrested development. His comedy skews anarchic and prefers digression to clean narrative lines. He’s the only true inheritor of the Marx Brothers’ manically performative aesthetic, even their relatively lax visual style. Absurdities build up until they burst out in insane setpieces (the anchorman street fight, the Mountain Dew-sponsored dinner, the Catalina Wine Mixer). Step Brothers is the purest distillation of his aesthetic thus far. Directed best episode (#5) of Eastbound and Down. Curious to see how a film without Will Ferrell would turn out…

2. Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor (Crank (2006); Crank: High Voltage (2009)):

The cleverest action-film fanboys on the screen (apologies to Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino). The two Crank films are marketed as action films but end up as comedies about the action genre. The plot in both concerns Chev Chelios’ heart failure. In the first he needs shots of adrenaline to stay alive, in the second, shocks of electricity. Both reflect on the audience’s need for constant titillation, and do so in resourceful ways. Jason Statham proves to be a deft deliverer of wisecracks and pratfalls, as he shimmies to “Achy Breaky Heart” or tumbles onto a horse track. Sequel is funnier, less moving than the original. Next up for them is Gamer (2009).

3. Peyton Reed (Bring it On (2000), Down With Love (2003), The Break-Up (2006), Yes Man (2008)):

By far the most successful director on this list, he’s possibly the most unknown. The only director who could resurrect the romantic comedy as a viable genre. Had the gall to end The Break-Up with an actual break up, as well as filming arguments with bite and verve. Handles female performers well: see Kirsten Dunst’s exuberant performance in Bring it On and Renee Zellwegger’s last charming turn in Down With Love (including a bravado 3 minute or so monlogue). Shows a talent for brisk pacing and actual witty dialogue. Have yet to see Yes Man.

4. Jessica Bendinger (Stick It (2006)):

She’s only directed one film, but it shows a flair for Busby Berkeley-esque montages of bodies in motion as well as other offhanded bits of visual wit, like when the lead gymnast blocks out her annoying competitor in the background by blotting her out with her sneaker in extreme close-up. Not to mention the exuberant performances by a slew of unknown teen girls in Jeff Bridges’ struggling gymnast camp. And to further not mention the strikingly visualized theme of girls taking power over their own bodies in the beautifully anti-climactic finale. Bendinger primarily made her mark as a screenwriter and script doctor, having her hands in Bring it On (her debut), Mean Girls, Sex and the City, Freaky Friday, Hitch, among others.  Stick It is superior to all of her written work, despite its modest box office returns, and I dearly hope she’s allowed to make another mid-range teen film soon. Her first book will be published in November, a paranormal romance called The Seven Rays.

5. Ti West (The Roost (2005), Trigger Man (2007), The House of the Devil (2009)):

In thrall to 80s horror without devolving into camp, Ti West makes solidly unpretentious scare films that actually take the time to build tension. Trigger Mancreates suspense out of a few guys in the Delaware woods, the sound of gunshots, and gallons of fake blood. Impressive scenes of wandering, small talk, getting to know you stuff. The kind of laid back character work needed to lay the hammer down later (Full disclosure: I work for Kino, the company that put this out on DVD). James Whale knew this, John Carpenter knew this, and now apparently, this indie director knows it too. The House of the Devil (image left) was picked up by Magnet Releasing (a subsidiary of Magnolia), a satan-worshipper film that bewtiches for its set design and performances as much for its gore. The long delayed sequel to Cabin Feveris still in post-production, and here’s hoping he won’t have to cut his films to ribbons upon his entree to Hollywood.

FRINGE BENEFITS FROM THE DECLINE OF DVD

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June 30, 2009

KillZone

According to a recent report from the research group Screen Digest, DVD sales declined by 4.7% in 2008, and that Blu-Ray “barely made a dent in the missing revenue”. They conclude that the new format won’t spur “minimal sector growth” until 2010. It’s rapidly becoming clear that VOD (video on demand) will eventually become the dominant form of home entertainment. In a Wall Street Journal article about Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, it claims he is “is quickly trying to shift Netflix’s business — seeking to make more videos available online and cutting deals with electronics makers so consumers can play those movies on television sets.” Hastings sees the DVD by mail business to start declining in four years, and hence his deals to stream movies on the XBox and other set-top devices, like the Roku. Packaged discs will not disappear entirely, but will likely lose a large percentage of their market share.

The benefit to consumers in the short term…sales! I recently talked about my cherry-picking of Battleground from the demise of the Virgin Megastores in NYC, but this new downer of a report spurred me to check out what was left of DVD retailers in Manhattan. I waltzed into a small reseller on 14th Street, which was having a massive sale where you could purchase 2 discs for 10 dollars. I ended up with Wilson Yip’s Kill Zone (aka SPL), John Woo’s Hard Boiled, The Buster Keaton Collection from Columbia, and Gremlins 2 (a personal favorite)…all for a total of $20.

In a bit of serendipity, I had just seen HK action guru Wilson Yip’s latest film, Ip Man (2008) at the New York Asian Festival, always one of the highlights of the year (I also recommend Breathless and Crush and Blush). Viewing Kill Zone(2005) and Ip Man back to back was an education in action choreography. Yip can be crushingly conventional in terms of exposition and character development, but when the gloves come off he’s a real virtuoso. Utilizing the same fast-cutting, restlessly mobile camera techniques of recent Hollywood fare (two aspects of what David Bordwell calls “intensified continuity” (click on the link for more detail)), Yip manages to stage fight scenes of greater spatial coherence and physical impact than Hollywood counterparts like Paul Greengrass or J.J. Abrams. The stunning finale of the entertainingly overwrought policier Kill Zone, a much ballyhooed showdown between Sammo Hung and star Donnie Yen, takes place in an empty night club, and the fight literally takes center stage.

Maintaining the quick editing pace, Yip still utlizes the classical setup of a long establishing shot (the two combatants face each other), a medium over-the-shoulder shot-countershot (exchanging blows), and then close-ups to emphasize emotional peaks (or in this case, kicks to the solarplexus). The key to this scene is that Yip does not cut in the middle of a gesture – every blow is landed and registered, and his adherence to the classical style keeps their movements oriented in the space. The stage setting alludes to their battle as a dance, as if Hung and Yen were Rogers and Astaire. I suppose they’re fighting it out to see who will lead the next dance.

 

 

 

Astaire’s routines were always filmed in long shot, with his whole body in the frame, and Yip nods to this technique, added with the camera movement required by the more amped up standards of intensified continuity. After the classically edited setup, Yip cuts to an extreme long shot that slowly tracks in to the flailing players as they toss each other to the floor, the dust kicking up like chalk. He also finds a clever way to make Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (based on ground submissions) look exciting. Yen flings the hefty Hung leftward to the ground, battling for the guard position. Yip, in a strikingly low angle at eye-level to the mat, tracks slowly with the duo as Yen eventually wins out and lands a series of rights. The sequence continues, and ramps up appreciably with small-scale wire work and a dramatic conclusion that wraps up one of the dramatic subplots (Hung’s nascent fatherhood). It’s a tour-de-force.

One excuse given as to why films like Taken or the Bourne series don’t have this same kind of coherence is that the actors aren’t as physically trained as martial arts pros like Hung and Yen, and necessarily need stunt doubles, necessitating even faster cuts and less spatial coherence. However, American action films don’t necessarily have to have nuanced fighting styles – just watch the series of haymakers Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston unload on each other in The Big Country (which can be seen in the video slideshow of Dennis Lim’s excellent history of fight choreography at Slate). It’s a stylistic choice, and right now Hollywood filmmakers are making the wrong one. I was initially thrilled by the Bourne series’ propulsive energy, but the more time that passes, the more its fractured editing seems like a dodge.

Ip Man continues Yip’s pattern. This more ambitious title, an bio-pic about Grandmaster Ip Man, who trained Bruce Lee and popularized the Wing Chun style of martial arts (interestingly enough, Wong Kar-Wai’s next project is also a bio-pic about the Grandmaster). The film focuses on his life during the Occupation of China during the Second Sino-Japanese war. Grandmaster Ip Man (Donnie Yen) lives a quiet life with his family before the Japanese Imperialists destroy his small town and reduce his pals to coal miners. Ip Man then commences to beat the holy hell out of evey Japanese person in sight. Yip is not big on subtletly, and one of Japanese Genral Miura’s obsequious assistants tips over into racist stereotypes (big teeth, round glasses, into torture, etc.).

However, once more Yip brings the goods in the action sequences: crisp, elegant, and coherently orchestrated bouts of mayhem. Yen also exhibits a wider emotional range here, his stoic laid-backness tinged with regret and anger. He won’t win any awards, but it’s a solid, nuanced performance. In any case, these two works will have me work backwards into Yip’s career. Next up is Flash Point, the middleman between Kill Zone and Ip, and it promises more fluid Donnie Yen bone-breaking. Ah, the neverending riches of cinema.

ROBOTS!

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June 23, 2009

With Industrial Light & Magic’s Hasbro commercial set to dominate movie screens over the next few weeks, I thought I’d recommend some humble robotic counterprogramming. Michael Bay’s curated set of boffo explosions and finely tailored cutoff jeans offers the not unwelcome pleasures of a 2 1/2 hour lobotomy, but the following, more handcrafted metallic killers have a charm that the Transformers brand will never be able to match. So, below the fold, a few lesser-known robots worth a few minutes of your couch time.

First on this (brief) survey possibly contains the earliest surviving footage of the robotic menace on screen: the Harry Houdini serial The Master Mystery(1920). Released last year as part of the box set, Harry Houdini: The Movie Star, it’s a 4 hour extravaganza of hair’s breadth escapes from the noose, hydrochloric acid, a torture wheel, the dreaded MADAGASCAR MADNESS and innumerable other death-doling contraptions. The most disturbing, is, of course, THE AUTOMATON, a kind eyed behemoth that wobbles like a weeble but has murder on its mind (mainly through its eye lasers that are scratched into the film emulsion). I must confess, however, that I work for Kino International, which released the DVD, and had a (very) small hand in the production of the Houdini set (most of the kudos should be directed Bret Wood’s way). So take my enthusiasm with a grain of salt, although it’s entirely sincere.

The plot of this thrill machine is beside the point, but I’ll make a brief attempt anyway. Houdini is a Justice Department investigator working undercover in the office of a patents company. One of the two partners who runs the joint buys up ideas and shoves them in his basement, never to see the light of day. He then cuts deals with the businesses these inventions would otherwise destroy. It’s a clever way to get crazy Rube Goldberg devices into the plot, but evil patent deals don’t really make the blood boil, do they? THE AUTOMATON is also lurking in the cellar, though, ready to wreak havoc on anyone getting close to unraveling the devious plot. He’s an awkward looking fellow, with his bug-eyes and stainless-steel love-handles, but he gets the job done, i.e. scaring the pants off of people.

***

“GENE AUTRY MUST BE CAPTURED!” -Queen Tika of The Scientific City of Murania

The next item is the 1935 Mascot serial, The Phantom Empire. Tell me if you’ve heard this one before: A singing cowboy’s (Gene Autry – in his first leading role) “Radio Ranch” is located on land with a large supply of radium, which a trio of evil scientists is eager to pry away. But thousands of feet below the earth lies the secret city of Murania, whose Queen is eager to rid her life of the “surface people” who cause them so much grief. Essentially: everyone is out to kill Gene Autry. All he has on his side are two remarkably resourceful kids (child star Frankie Darro and “World Champion Trick Rider” Betsy King Ross).

The amiable looking fellow to the left is all business (note the fedora). They do the dirty work in Murania, cranking open secret entrances, chaining up prisoners, and serving the quixotic needs of their Queen (a bitchy Dorothy Christy). They’re nice, hardworking chaps at heart, although they happen to be working for a insane despot. Such is the life of an automaton.

An impossible clash of genres, this western-sci-fi-musical jumps from Autry’s ingratiating barnyard tunes to Tika’s and the scientist’s plotting of Radio Ranch’s destruction. Back and forth between knockabout humor and meldromatic sci-fi, you’re liable to get (pleasurable) whiplash. Half of the cliffhangers have to do with Autry returning to the Ranch in time to do his show, when there’s an entire city arming for his demise under his feet. Marketing his hugely popular radio program trumps even the world’s destruction. Because if he misses one broadcast, the Ranch will get shut down! These contractual cliffhangers are spiced up with literal ones, as Gene, cars, and kids all tumble down a ravine at one inopportune moment after another.

Autry’s laid back performance holds the whole ridiculous contraption together, and it’s impossible to keep your eyes off it, from the ingenious technology (GPS, surveillance footage) to the continually insane plot twists. Luckily, the whole thing is available to view on YouTube, although in less than ideal quality (it degenerates into digital mush if you try to watch it full screen). Since the title has fallen into the public domain, there’s a slew of DVD releases available, none of them likely to be of stellar quality. In any case, I’d much rather see a restoration of Phantom Empire than a briefcase-sized box set of the new Michael Bay headslapper. I’d sign that petition.

***

Subjects for further research:

Undersea Kingdom (1936): Lt. Crash Corrigan crashes the city of Atlantis and an army of trash-can robots, the Volkites, reign unholy laser-aided terror. A Republic Serial.

The Phantom Creeps (1939): In this Universal serial Bela Lugosi tries to take over the world with his golem-looking robot giant.

And Metropolis, of course. But you knew that already.

ANDREW SARRIS, FREELANCER

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June 16, 2009

andrew-sarris-920x517-c-default

Early last week, news broke that the NY Observer were cutting a third of their editorial staff, and that Andrew Sarris would be among those let go. Dave Kehr later posted that Sarris was indeed laid off from his staff position, but would continue contributing as a freelancer. This was unsurprising news, considering the state of the newspaper business and film critic gigs in particular, but it’s still the end of an era.

It’s unlikely that a writer starting up today will ever have a perch like the Village Voice or the Observer to build an audience for over 50 years like Sarris has done – film criticism today is more of a part-time job or hobby, for better (a diversity of voices, Movie Morlocks) and worse (you know, not getting paid). Collating all of one’s stories from different outlets on Twitter and Facebook might one day serve the same function, but…..not quite yet. It’ll be interesting to see where else Sarris decides to publish, and I’m counting down the days until he fires up a Twitter feed (although, note the typewriter above).

In any case, Sarris abides, and it’s past the time that I engaged more with his work. Any U.S. critic who has approached a film and detected the style and themes of a director, whether it’s stating that Todd Phillips is obsessed with frat-boy humor or noticing the affectless performances in Bresson, has been influenced by his writing. So that’s everyone. In adapting Cahiers du Cinema’s politique des auteurs to American audiences, Sarris opened up the possibility of investigating a film’s style, not just it’s plot mechanics and themes, which the more literary minded critics of the time were focused on. Nobody seemed to notice that these were moving images before Sarris took up the cudgel (there were others, of course, but no-one was as vocal about making a big deal of it. Manny Farber had already done stylistic analyses of directors, but hadn’t stuck a name to it. So, rhetorical license, and all that).

For a deeper, and more personal analysis of Sarris’ influence, read Kent Jones’ excellent 2005 encomium in Film Comment. Not only was Jones of the first generation affected by Sarris’ work, he was a friend. His key (and closing) line: “He gave me, and many, many others, a framework, a way of seeing and understanding an art form that was and still is culturally disreputable. I owe him a lot, and so does anyone else writing about cinema.”

 

I was morose enough after the Sarris news to tour a few Manhattan bookstores to see what Sarris-iana I could pick up. Perhaps still enthralled with film literature from our mini blogathon here at Morlock central, I wanted to dig further into his writing. I was mainly searching for a copy of The American Cinema, which I had sped through a few years ago when I borrowed it from the library.  After trips to four fine retailers (two used) and some clipped dialogue with their fine information desk personnel (“Sarris, American Cinema, No?, OK”)I could find no trace of the American Cinema. It’s been in and out of print, but I thought any legit re-seller would have one on hand. Not a trace.

It’s readily available online, but I’m not concerned about myself buying it. I’m more concerned about the younger me wandering around a suburban Barnes & Noble, seeking affirmation for his cinephilic addiction. David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary is readily available, on which I already gave my thoughts – but let’s just say it’s limited in scope and doesn’t offer much of a stylistic basis for viewing the art. So I worry that there are a gaggle of younger mes running around with Thomson as their only guide…and I shudder. These kids need to hear the following, from the first page of the preface of The American Cinema:

A serious approach to old movies is particularly indispensable at a time when the very existence of old movies is jeopardized by the shocking negligence of the so-called film industry, and at a time when the appreciation of old movies is hindered by the pernicious frivolities of pop, camp, and trivia. The enemies of cinema have found their new battle cry in the condescending cackle one hears in so-called art houses. This book is intended for those perennial ciniphiles, the solitary moviegoers.

If I had read this at 16, I would have felt a chill in my spine and become a Sarris acolyte. Instead I came to the same conclusions on my own (a few jackals laughing at a screening at The Umbrellas of Cherbourg will do much to disillusion a man), but I wish I had his intellectual firepower on my side. As with most topics, let’s place our faith in the power of the internet (it’s available on Kindle!) and hope for the best.

So, no American Cinema, but I did manage to pick up a dustier bit of print in the Sarris library: a volume of interviews he edited in 1967, Hollywood Voices. The centerpiece (at least by my standards) is an elegiac piece by Sarris on his never-published interview with Preston Sturges in 1957, upon the release of his final film, Les Carnets du Major Thompson (1955). In this wide-ranging piece, Sarris discusses his ambivalence regarding interviews (“The link between artistry and psychology is a tenuous one for me…”, and he adds a joshing, “Note: Sturges was not interested in baseball. Does that make his work less American?”) and an investigation of Sturges’ apparent decline (“Although clowns supposedly yearn to play Hamlet, they usually end up playing Lear.”) It is a very strange document, an anecdote of a forgotten interview for a forgotten film, but Sarris turns it into lingering series of questions about the nature of the critc-filmmaker realationship and the bruised dignity of one comedic genius. Just another example of why we should be grateful to still have his thoughts to kick around.

BOOKS ON FILM: A LIST

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June 9, 2009

The problem of the young cinephile: what to see next? Growing up in movie-thin Buffalo, I had to consult the oracles: movie critics in bigger cities. Then there was the winnowing process – who to trust and who to ignore? Once I locked in on a kindred spirit, I followed in lockstep with their viewing and reading recommendations. Soon a whole network of informed writers radiated from my admiration of one critic, and opened up whole new vistas of learning. For me, that critic was Jonathan Rosenbaum, formerly of the Chicago Reader. Sure, I also gobbled up the words of J. Hoberman at the Village Voice, but Rosenbaum had a combative skepticism that suited my own tastes of the time, and I eagerly anticipated his work every week. His enthusiasms also led me to the work of Manny Farber, Joe Dante, Jacques Rivette, and a whole host of others.

Why the reminiscing? Well, the enigmatically named MovieMan0283 of The Dancing Image started a meme on his site, listing the ten film books that left the greatest impression on him. He encouraged other film bloggers to do the same, and it’s been all over the internet this past week. I noticed it first at Glenn Kenny’s Some Came Running. Below the fold is my contribution, all of them determining factors towards my questionable taste.

1. The Chicago Reader‘s Brief Reviews Archive: Admittedly, this is cheating, but ever since I discovered this vast trove of critical nuggets from Rosenbaum and Dave Kehr, I’ve considered it my go-to reference book, despite its mere virtual existence. With the click of my sweaty fingers, I could read the concise and informed opinion of my two favorite writers on just about any cinematic subject at hand. Need a recommendation for an upcoming pre-code series? Hmm…Me and My Gal was Manny Farber’s favorite Raoul Walsh, sez Rosenbaum, and that it’s “A small picture, but an ecstatic one.” Sold!  I’ve consulted the site more than anything bound in pulp, and I daresay I’m the better for it.

2. Negative Space, by Manny Farber (1971, 1999): See, film critics can be great writers! Just read Negative Space, the only published collection of Farber’s work. His dense, allusive prose takes as much time to unpack as some of the films he adores (Scarface, Me and My Gal, Wavelength), and goshdarnit if he doesn’t have a cantakerously careening essay on Howard Hawks. On Scarface, and also not a bad description of his writing: “The image seems unique because of its moody energy: it is a movie of quick-moving actions, inner tension, and more angularity per inch of screen than any street film in history.”  (and is Amazon lying to me or is this out of print? A tragedy, if so, despite its Kindle availability)

 

3. Howard Hawks, by Robin Wood (1981, 2006):  Of all the words I’ve consumed about Howard Hawks, these were the first and the most influential. His introduction to the 1981 edition told me that “the distinction between ‘art’ and ‘entertainment’ was too rigid”, and that Mozart worked for an audience as much as Hawks. His thematic breakdown of the work still holds up, as does his enthusiasm (also see his excellent recent monograph on Rio Bravo). I’ll also always agree with him on this point: “If I were asked to chose a film that would justify the existence of Hollywood, I think it would be Rio Bravo.”

4. A Biographical Dictionary of Film, by David Thomson (1975-2002): If I could rewrite history, I would have told my youthful self to purchase Andrew Sarris’ The American Cinema instead of this tome, but I can’t, so here we are. I’ve grown weary of Mr. Thomson and his inability to engage with contemporary cinema (see his lazy entries on Abbas Kiaorstami and Wes Anderson, for instance), but his elegant phrasing and embrace of Hawks (sensing a theme?) were definitely valuable, and it’s impossible to discount this book’s importance in shaping my young mind. The only thing that sticks with me from that book is his epic ode to Johnny Carson, both moving and mystifying for this Letterman-aged viewer.

5. This is Orson Welles, by Orson Welles & Peter Bogdanovich (1992, 1998): Before Hawks, Welles was my favorite – and where Hawks was tight-lipped, Welles was expansive. An incredibly entertaining romp through Welles’ astonishing career, with the added benefit of an exhaustive career chronology, an appendix of the scenes cut from The Magnificent Ambersons, and the memo Welles sent Universal with his suggested revisions to Touch of Evil. A treasure trove of research material to please any budding Wellesian. Also plenty to throw back at those who say Welles declined after Citizen Kane, or similarly ill-informed gobbledygook.

6. Movie Mutations, by Jonathan Rosenbaum, Adrian Martin, et. al. (2003): My most obscure choice introduced me to a number of young cinephiles, and clued me in to the vibrant journals Senses of Cinema , Rouge, and Cinema Scope. It lent me a sense that I belonged to a community, not just a darkened living room. First published as a series of letters in the French magazine Trafic, it brought together Rosenbaum, Martin, Kent Jones, Alexander Horwath, Nicole Brenez and Raymond Bellour. These epistles were added together with a few essays on transnational cinematic exchanges: Jones on Tsai Ming-liang, Shigehiko Hasumi on Hawks (!), and an excellent tete-a-tete between Martin and James Naremore on academic film study (which I was about to enter). This volume was very prescient in regards to the bourgeoning online film community, and in a sense paved the way for my own modest entry into the online film conversation.

7. Who the Devil Made It, by Peter Bogdanovich (1997): Another superb book of interviews from Bogdanovich, this time chatting with a gaggle of the greatest talents from Hollywood’s Golden Age, from Aldrich to Walsh (Hawks is included, of course). Rich with production minutae and backstage anecodotes, it’s an invaluable resource, and I find myself always coming back to it. My recent infatuation with Leo McCarey led me to it recently, and his reticence at discussing one of his masterpieces, Make Way for Tomorrow, is palpable and moving: “It was the saddest story I ever shot; at the same time very funny. It’s difficult for me to talk about, but I think it was very beautiful.”

 

8. Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema, by David Bordwell (1988): This is available for free as a PDF at the link provided, so download it now. Got it? OK, this is the most in-depth auteur study I’ve ever read, exhaustively covering Ozu’s style (his 360 degree use of space, low-angle camera, etc.) as well as the culture he came out of. Definitive in every sense, and essential for an understanding of one of the greats. I came to it while writing a forgotten paper on An Autumn Afternoon, and its erudition, depth, and breadth are staggering. Read his blog, too!

9. Objects of Desire: Conversations with Luis Bunuel, by Jose de la Colina & Tomas Perez Turrent (1986, 1992): Bunuel’s autiobiography, My Last Sigh, is phenomenal (I’ve never forgotten his poetic description of his lost sex drive), but the offhanded charm of this collection of interviews was too hard to resist. Full of important lessons, like, “Let’s put a little rum in our coffee like they do in Spanish country towns. It gives coffee a nice smell.”

10. Fun in a Chinese Laundry, by Josef von Sternberg (1965) & A Third Face, by Sam Fuller (2002): I cheated at the beginning, so it’s only appropriate I do so at the close. These cooly enigmatic (Sternberg) and riotously entertaining (Fuller) autobiographies are fascinating reflections of these directors respective artistic personalities. Von Sternberg is dry, ironic, and withholding: “The system of films can be a severe shock to anyone whose mind has made progress since childhood.” Fuller is blunt and hilarious: “If a story doesn’t give you a hard-on in the first couple of scenes, throw it in the goddamned garbage.” Both revelatory in their own way.