Columnists
Entries from February 2019
BY ADRIAN SMITH
The
first question you are probably asking is “Do we need another book about Hammer
films?†Speaking as someone whose Hammer shelf is already groaning with the
weight of so many volumes on the company, the answer, as far as Hammer Complete
is concerned, is “Absolutely.†This book, coming in at nearly 1000 pages, is a
lifetime achievement for journalist Howard Maxford, and one that deserves
immense praise. Unlike other books which might focus specifically on the horror
films, or the posters, or the ups and downs of the company itself, here Maxford
has attempted to provide a complete encyclopedia of everything and everyone
connected to Hammer. From Temple Abady (who appeared in Never Look Back in
1952) and The Abominable Snowman (1957) to Murial Zillah (Danger List, 1957)
and Marc Zuber (The Satanic Rites of Dracula, 1974), no Hammer stone has been
left unturned or contributor ignored.
Unlike
many books of this type which are little more than a collection of facts
cribbed from Wikipedia and the Internet Movie Database, Maxford has conducted
many interviews over the years with Hammer stars including Christopher Lee
himself, which means there is plenty of new and insightful material here
alongside his primary research and original reviews of the films themselves.
The entry on Lee is spread over six pages, where his career is discussed at
length including his well-known frustration with the decline in quality of the
Dracula films; of Scars of Dracula (1970) he complained, “I was a pantomime
villain. Everything was over the top, especially the giant bat whose
electrically motored wings flapped with slow deliberation as if it were doing
morning exercises.†Likewise, his frequent co-star Peter Cushing gets a
similarly lengthy entry, as do many of the other key players such as regular
character actor Michael Ripper, director Terence Fisher, producer James
Carreras, writer-director Jimmy Sangster and script supervisor Renee Glynne,
who first worked for the company in 1947 and was still present when they went to
Hong Kong to make The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires and Shatter (both 1974).
Maxford
is fair in his assessment of the films themselves, discussing at length those
which have become legendary - the triumvirate of The Curse of
Frankenstein (1957) Dracula (1958) and The Mummy (1959) in particular - as well
as being fair to those films often derided or ignored, including my personal
favourite; Slave Girls (also known as Prehistoric Women, 1968), made primarily
to reuse all those fur bikinis left over from One Million Years B.C. (1966).
It
may have a high price tag, but Hammer Complete is a huge, well-researched
reference book that no Hammer aficionado should be without.
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BY TODD GARBARINI
Film historian Douglas Dunning has informed Cinema Retro that Laemmle’s
Playhouse 7 and Ahrya Fine Arts will be presenting the 50th
anniversary screening of Sam Peckinpah’s influential 1969 film The Wild Bunch and special guests are
scheduled to appear at both locations. The film stars William Holden, Ernest
Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmund O’Brien, Warren Oates, L.Q. Jones, Jaime Sanchez,
Bo Hopkins, Strother Martin, Albert Decker, Emilio Fernandez, and Alfonso Arau
and runs 145 minutes.
PLEASE NOTE:
Screening #1 is on February 26th at the
Playhouse 7 at 7:00 pm, and at press time W.K.
Stratton, the author of a new book, The
Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film, will participate in a discussion after
the screening. He will also sign copies of his book at the theater.
Screening #2 is at
the Ahrya Fine Arts on March 2nd at 7:30 pm. Mr. Stratton is also
scheduled to be on hand. In addition, screenwriter Walon Green is scheduled to
appear. He won an Academy Award in 1971 for directing the documentary, The Hellstrom Chronicle. He went on to
write such films as Sorcerer and The Brinks Job for director William
Friedkin and The Border for Tony
Richardson.
Actor L.Q. Jones is
on the list, too. He worked on several other Peckinpah movies, beginning with Ride the High Country, along with Major Dundee, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, and Pat
Garrett and Billy the Kid. He co-starred in Hang ‘Em High, Hell Is For Heroes, and Martin Scorsese’s Casino.
Actor Bo Hopkins is
also scheduled to appear. He co-starred in Peckinpah’s The Getaway and The Killer
Elite, and he also appeared in such films as The Day of the Locust, American
Graffiti, Midnight Express, and The Newton Boys.
From the press
release:
The Wild Bunch
Part
of our Anniversary Classics series. For details, visit: laemmle.com/ac.
THE WILD BUNCH (1969)
Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary
Classics Series celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the iconic and groundbreaking
movies of the '60s, Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. This graphically violent
and poetic film exploded the very concept of the traditional Western by
focusing on a brutal group of outlaws trying to survive at the dawn of the 20th
century. Featuring four Oscar-winning actors—William Holden, Ernest Borgnine,
Ben Johnson, and Edmond O’Brien—along with a startling supporting cast, the
film clearly established Peckinpah as one of the top directors of the era.
The director’s classic 1962 Western Ride
the High Country had demonstrated his talent, but he ran into conflicts with
producers on subsequent projects in the '60s. The Wild Bunch marked his
triumphant return to filmmaking. He wrote the Oscar-nominated screenplay with
Walon Green, from a story by Green and Roy N. Sickner. It is set in 1913, on
the eve of World War I and in the midst of the Mexican Revolution. A botched
robbery in the opening sequence leads the outlaws to seek refuge in Mexico,
where they continue to be pursued by a group of bounty hunters hired by the
railroad company they have robbed. Robert Ryan, cast as a former friend of
Holden’s character, leads the pursuers.
The supporting cast includes Warren Oates, L.Q. Jones, Jaime Sanchez, Bo
Hopkins, Strother Martin, Albert Decker, Emilio Fernandez, and Alfonso Arau.
Lucien Ballard provided the rich cinematography, and Jerry Fielding wrote the
Oscar-nominated score. But perhaps the most crucial creative collaborator was
editor Lou Lombardo, who worked closely with the director to perfect an
innovative editing style that incorporated quick, almost subliminal cuts
masterfully interspersed with slow motion shots.
The film’s violence was shocking to
many viewers at the time, and some critics denounced the film. Others, however,
saw the violence as reflecting the disruptions in American society, along with
the chaos of the Vietnam War. Life magazine’s Richard Schickel called the film
“one of the most important records of the mood of our times and one of the most
important American films of the era.†The New York Times’ Vincent Canby hailed
the film as “very beautiful and the first truly interesting American-made Westerns
in years.†When cuts that had been made shortly after the film’s release were
finally restored for a 1995 reissue, critics were even more ecstatic. Writing
in The Baltimore Sun, Michael Sragow declared, “What Citizen Kane was to movie
lovers in 1941, The Wild Bunch was to cineastes in 1969.†The film was added to
the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 1999.
The
Playhouse 7 is at 673 E Colorado Blvd, Pasadena, CA 91101.l
The phone number is (310) 478 – 3836.
The
Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre is located at 8556 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA
90211. The phone number is (310) 478 – 3836.
Click
here
for tickets.
“EXPRESSIONISTIC RELICSâ€
By Raymond Benson
F.
W. Murnau was one of the leading filmmakers of the German Expressionist
movement of the 1920s, most well-known for the first adaptation of Bram
Stoker’s Dracula—Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (1922). He also spent a little time
in Hollywood in the late silent era, responsible for one of Tinsel Town’s great
silent pictures, Sunrise: A Song of Two
Humans (1927), which won the only Academy Award ever given for “Unique and
Artistic Picture.â€
German
Expressionism is mostly defined by a stylized visual conceit that distorts
reality for an emotional effect. Highly-contrasted light and shadow play large
roles in the mode, as well as sharp, angular lines of design. The works of,
say, Tim Burton, could be said to be influenced by the school of German Expressionism.
Most of the films noir made in
Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s also harked back to the movement.
Kino
Video has released a double feature Blu-ray containing two lesser-known
pictures made by Murnau in Germany—The
Haunted Castle from 1921, which is more of a whodunnit melodrama than
anything resembling the paranormal or supernatural, and The Finances of the Grand Duke from 1924, a light comedy with some
espionage mixed in. The first concerns a revenge tale with some secret
identities and guilt-ridden angst. The second contains a plot that might be too
complicated for its own good, dealing with a likable dictator who wants to save
a tiny country from its creditors.
Neither
film is anything to write home about—they are both rather staid, slow, and,
frankly, dull.
What
is astonishing, though, is Kino Video’s miraculous restoration in 1920x1080p,
which presents the movies in such a pristine and gorgeous transfer that it’s
difficult to believe these pictures were made nearly a hundred years ago. Unfortunately,
there are no supplements or audio commentaries on the disk.
Nevertheless,
silent film and Murnau enthusiasts may very well find something here to savor. Studying
old movies embodies a little bit of time travel. There are good lessons
contained within that inform us of the manners, social sensibilities, and artistic
trends of the day. So little of this period’s work survives, and Kino should be
applauded for making it available.
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“
"ALTMAN’S DOWNTON
UPSTAIRS ABBEY DOWNSTAIRSâ€
By Raymond Benson
The
magnificent Robert Altman whodunnit (or, as Altman and team called it, “who
cares whodunnit?â€), Gosford Park, has
received a top-class Blu-ray restoration and re-issue from Arrow Academy, and
it is a gem.
Originally
released in 2001, Gosford Park took
its cue from the immensely popular BBC television series, Upstairs, Downstairs—about the dramas that exist in a stately
British manor between the “upstairs†folk—the wealthy upper-class family that
owns the property, and the “downstairs†people—the servants and staff who run the household. Throw in a dash of
Agatha Christie, and a heaping helping of Robert Altman’s ensemble improvisatory
magic, and you have the director’s only full-fledged British production.
Interestingly, the screenwriter, Julian Fellowes (who won the Oscar for Original
Screenplay) went on to create and write the next immensely popular BBC television
series, Downton Abbey, which
resembles Gosford Park in many ways.
Film
historians will certainly recognize the homage Altman makes in his direction of
the piece to Jean Renoir’s 1939 masterpiece, The Rules of the Game, a similar masters/servants ensemble work
that Altman was known to admire. The tone and broad canvas with many characters
and their subtle ribald and clandestine liaisons was surely a blueprint on how
to do Gosford.
The
work began when actor/writer/producer Bob Balaban suggested a collaboration on
a film, and the idea to do an Agatha Christie-style murder mystery became the
desired goal (Balaban co-produced the picture and has a prominent role as one
of two Americans in the nearly all-British cast). And while the murder mystery
is at the core of the film, it’s really not that important. After all, this is
an Altman film. It’s more about the characters, the relationships, and the
exploration of what the British class system was like in the early 1930s when
the U.K. was holding on to centuries-old mores and values that would soon slip
away.
The
story concerns wealthy businessman Sir William (Michael Gambon), who is married
to younger Sylvia (Kristin Scott Thomas), whose sisters are married to men
struggling to stay in or begin business with Sir William. One weekend, all the
relations and a few guests are invited to have a “hunting party†(much like in The Rules of the Game), so the house if
full of people and the servants are very busy. But nobody likes Sir William. After all, he has a history of
impregnating servant girls and forcing them to either give up their babies to
orphanages or leave their employment. (The picture has an added layer of
meaning in today’s #MeToo climate!) So, when he’s found dead—apparently stabbed
with a kitchen knife—no one is very surprised. In the last act of the story, we
learn the secrets and lies of several characters, and how these all played into
the scheme.
The
cast is impressive. Maggie Smith (as a wickedly opinionated older relation who
depends on an allowance from Sir William) was nominated for Supporting Actress,
as was Helen Mirren (who plays the head housekeeper). Also on hand are Alan
Bates, Emily Watson, Charles Dance, Clive Owen, Tom Hollander, Ryan Phillippe,
Eileen Atkins, Derek Jacobi, Richard E. Grant, and many other familiar faces of
British TV and film. Jeremy Northam portrays the real silent-film actor Ivor
Novello, and Stephen Fry appears as a bumbling police inspector.
The
brilliant cast and wonderful script aside, Gosford
Park is assuredly Altman’s film. His style of overlapping dialogue, moving
cameras throughout the house and picking up bits of business and dialogue here
and there, and presenting a tapestry of words and images in which the viewer
must piece together, is in full force. It works beautifully. In fact, Gosford was Altman’s second-highest
grossing picture (after M*A*S*H), and
it was nominated for the Oscar Best Picture and Director.
Arrow’s
brand new 2K restoration from a 4K scan, approved by director of photography
Andrew Dunn, looks marvelous. There are three audio commentaries—one with
Altman, production designer Stephen Altman, and producer David Levy, and a
second one with writer Fellowes. A third one is new to the release, featuring
critics Geoff Andrew and David Thompson. Supplements include a new introduction
to the film by Geoff Andrew, brand new cast and crew interviews, and port-overs
from the previous DVD release: featurettes on the making of the film, deleted
scenes with Altman commentary, and more. The package comes with a reversible
sleeve containing the original poster art backed with new artwork by Matthew
Griffin. In the first pressing of the product only, a collector’s booklet
featuring new writing on the film by critic Sheila O’Malley and an archival
interview with Altman is included.
Gosford Park was perhaps Altman’s
last great picture, one that stands proudly alongside his other classics like M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville,
The Player, and Short Cuts. Pick it up!
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