Criterion has released a true oddity: a French horror film from 1960 by director Georges Franju titled Eyes Without a Face. The B&W film was notable in its day for being a rare excursion into a genre that most New Wave French filmmakers had studiously avoided. The intriguing plot centers on Dr. Genessier (Pierre Brasseur), a notable plastic surgeon who is pioneering breakthrough methods of reconstructing the faces of people who have suffered grievous injuries and disfigurements. On the surface, Genessier follows the norms of traditional medical research: publishing papers and giving lectures relating to his findings. However, the painstaking process of getting formal acceptance and approval of new medical theories is not for him. He has an urgent need to pursue his theories outside of accepted medical practices. His daughter Christiana (Edit Scob) was severely injured in a car crash that he was responsible for. Wracked by guilt, Genessier has been practicing his controversial methods on his young female assistant Louise (Alida Valli), who had also required plastic surgery. The results have been successful and he has transformed her back into the beautiful woman she once was. The only fly in the ointment is that Genessier's methods require the kidnapping of other young, healthy women who he tortures brutally by literally removing their faces while they writhe in agony, awaiting certain death. Meanwhile, Christiana has been declared dead and no one- not even her fiancee who works as Genessier's protege- suspects otherwise. Genessier and Louise cater to Christina, who is kept in total isolation inside Genessier's country home that adjoins his clinic. Here, clad in a disturbing face mask that is devoid of any emotional features, she wanders the rooms and halls in loneliness and frustration, even as her doting father assures her that he will restore her natural beauty. To do so, he prepares for the operation by systematically planning more kidnappings so that he has a fresh supply of human flesh. When things go awry with one of his kidnapped victims, Genessier faces disaster at the very moment of his long-sought triumph.
While Eyes Without a Face wouldn't meet the definition of a contemporary horror film (it is leisurely paced and caters to sophisticated viewers), the film is dripping with atmosphere and director Franju engages the audience from the very first disturbing frames of Genessier and Louise en route to dispose of the body of yet another innocent female victim. As with many memorable movie villains, Genessier is a cultured man who is more misguided than evil. His crimes are committed only because of his overwhelming sense of guilt and they are a symptom of his obsession with righting a terrible wrong. Nevertheless, he gets carried away by his emotions and loses sight of the fact that, as a doctor committed to helping injured people, he is ensuring their demise.
Eyes Without a Face is a genuinely eerie cinematic experience and the fact that it was made in France gives the film an even more unique atmosphere. Still, this artfully crafted film was dumped on U.S. audiences in a dubbed version that was absurdly re-titled The Horror Chamber of Dr. Faustus, which also suffered severe edits. Criterion had released an impressive DVD version of the original French cut about ten years ago. The Blu-ray, which is up to the company's usual top-notch standards, carries over the original bonus extras and includes some new additions. They are:
Archival interviews with Georges Franju.
A new interview with actress Edith Scob.
A 1985 French documentary about the making of the film
Franju's controversial 1949 documentary Blood of the Beasts which was one of the first cinematic attempts to argue against animal cruelty. The still-powerful film depicts the horrendous conditions inside slaughterhouses and still packs an emotional wallop today.
A gallery of trailers including the American release
An informative illustrated booklet featuring essays by novelist Patrick McGrath and film historian David Kalat.
The movie is a mesmerizing experience with superb performances and direction and the Criterion Blu-ray finally does justice to this long-overlooked masterwork of the European horror genre.
Here's a real gem of a photo taken on the set of Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1963 chiller The Birds. Hitch was coming off a hot streak with North By Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960). The Birds would be his last hit until his late career comeback with Frenzy in 1972.
It was the oddest entry in the film career of esteemed director Arthur Penn. The 1969 film adaptation of folk singer Arlo Guthrie's Alice's Restaurant has endured as a popular cult hit. Writer Christopher Robinson provides an interesting analysis of the movie on the Rare Cult Cinema web site. Ironically, the movie is out of print on DVD. How about bringing out a special edition? Click here to read.
"More Than thea Rainbow" is director Dan Wechsler's homage to New York street photographer Matt Weber. What is a "street photographer"? He/she is someone who simply wanders around the city they reside in snapping photographs at a rapid-fire rate in the hopes of capturing some spontaneous bit of magic. Weber prowls the back streets and main drags of Manhattan, the beaches of Coney Island and anywhere else he might find everyday people engaging in interesting activities. These might include playing with children, having casual sex in an open area, frolicking at the seaside, sleeping on sidewalks or park benches or engaging in violence. Weber's photos tell the story of a city: the good, the bad and the ugly. Weber looks like an unmade bed and talks in machine-gun fire fashion to such an extent that it often becomes exhausting just listening to him. However, he has an interesting story to tell and his photographs, which are seen abundantly throughout the film, are indeed mesmerizing. Weber began driving a taxi cab during the 1970s when Scorese and De Niro immortalized the profession in their classic 1976 Taxi Driver. In those days, Gotham was a deteriorating behemoth, with crime and pollution out of control. Weber ultimately sold his cab (an action he still sometimes regrets) in order to take to it to the streets to photograph the most exciting city on the planet. He admits that he got a significant financial boost to his meager income when he accepted $500,000 to move from his apartment many years ago. (The developer ended up going bankrupt before he could renovate the building into a luxury complex.) With a degree of financial security, Weber shoots photos virtually non-stop, admitting that the most memorable photos come about unexpectedly. He asks no permission from his subjects and shoots their photos before most of them have time to react or object. He's strictly old school, shooting in B&W on 35mm film. He describes the wonders of using his darkroom equipment to see an image appear from a blank piece of paper before his eyes-- and the viewer ends up sharing in his enthusiasm. (He does acknowledge the expense and limitations of 35mm vs. digital and seems to be weakening in his refusal to work in the format.)
The movie, which is set to funky jazz music by Theolonius Monk and Keith Gurland, is a rich looking production, considering its a rather low-budget affair. Wechsler, like his subject, is also old school and has shot at least some of the film in 35mm. The movie is bit schizophrenic in terms of its content. Although Weber is clearly the main subject, Wechsler also interviews numerous colleagues of his who are also street photographers. The problem is that the film begins to treat them not only as people who comment on Weber's life and work, but also subject matters themselves. Thus, the movie often drifts from its original intention, which is to present Weber as the focus of the piece. The other photographers are an interesting lot, however. Some are likable and engaging, others are so pretentious they remind one of the types of pretentious snobs who are satirized in Woody Allen comedies. One of the photographers, Eric Kroll, seems a bit out of place here. He does offer some biting criticism of Weber's work, which is refreshing in an otherwise cinematic wet kiss to its subject, but Kroll is not a street photographer in the traditional sense. Rather, he specializes in elaborate, staged sexual fetishes and there are plenty of eye-popping examples of his work in the film. He is also inexplicably joined throughout the interview by a lovely, well-endowed young lady who is virtually silent and sits attired in a corset that presents her two main assets in an almost 3-D effect. But what is she, or Kroll for that matter, doing in the film? They seem placed there purely for purposes of titillation.
The movie is at its best when it sticks with Weber himself. He relates his transformation from taxi driver to photographer and along the way there are interviews with his wife (presumably ex-wife, as it is revealed they were in the process of getting a divorce during filming.) She is a rather unique character in her own way. She damns Weber with faint praise by listing his attributes while simultaneously telling viewers he's virtually impossible to live with. In a bizarre moment, she also assures the viewer that, not to worry, despite problems in the marriage, their sex life was satisfactory.
More Than the Rainbow's greatest attributes are Weber's photographs and director Wechsler wisely lets the pictures do the talking throughout most of the film. His cameras linger lovingly on some fascinating slice-of-life shots that are mini works of art. A homeless man with a resemblance to Van Gogh sleeps on the sidewalk under posters that promote an exhibition of the artist's works. The beginnings of a brutal fight between two men arguing in the street are caught on camera. Small children in Harlem stand outside a seedy bar in their Sunday finest on Easter. A group of young sailors give Weber a cautionary glance as they move past the porn palaces of old Times Square. Weber is clearly among those who extol the virtues of that era. Many don't. The past is always glamorized but, while the edginess and danger of New York in those days does have an appeal in retrospect and in Weber's photographs, for many of us the "new" New York, with its cleaner streets and low crime rates, is a far better place. Still, it's fun to revisit the bad old days through Weber's extraordinary photos.
More Than the Rainbow is an ambitious and highly entertaining film about a genuine New York "character" who is every bit as intriguing as the subjects he photographs.
The film opens in New York at the Quad Cinema on May 2 and in L.A. at the Arena Cinema on May 24.
Impulse Pictures continues their onslaught of releases of the retro erotic series Schoolgirl Report. The German films were all the rage in European cinemas back in the 1970s and this latest DVD edition (#12, "If Mom Only Knew...", for those who are counting) follows the standard formula. The 1978 film consists of numerous short stories linked by a thin plot device. In this case, the staff of a high school newspaper review letters written to them by fellow students outlining their sexual experiences. As each letter is read, the movie cuts to an enactment of the scenario. In the first episode, a young virgin is raised by her older brother, an airline pilot, after their parents pass away. She can barely control her sexual urges but, without a boyfriend, has no outlet for her passions. She develops an unhealthy crush on her brother, which he initially resists. ("Initially" is a key phrase in these types of movies.) Before long, she's casually walking around the house starkers and one night the unthinkable happens. The girl deludes herself into thinking she can actually establish a normal lifestyle with her brother as her lover...but she is in for a rude and tragic awakening. Another episode is a comedic one that follows the antics of a group of high school kids on a field trip to the forest with their stuffy teachers. After discovering a couple in the woods doin' what comes natural in the woods, the kids become uniformly aroused and run off to various remote locations to re-enact what they have just witnessed. As is usual in these flicks, the teachers are the victims of slapstick comedy. A grittier episode concerns a young girl who comes from a tragic background. Her brother died, her father committed suicide and her mother thinks nothing of having sex with strange men in her presence. She becomes sexually obsessed herself and is chronically pleasuring herself before moving on to becoming a drug addict and prostitute. The remaining two segments revert back to comedy. In one, a mother brings her young daughter to the family doctor for a checkup without realizing she has mixed up the dates. The doctor is out but a plumber who is doing work in the office pretends to be the physician and gives the young woman the kind of exam mom never dreamed possible. More slapstick occurs when the actual doctor returns to the office. In the final chapter, a German family agrees to take an exchange student into their home. They think it will be a girl who can act as a companion to their teenage daughter but it turns out to be a hunky male student from France...and we all know what hunky male French students like to do. In short order, despite dad's fevered attempts to keep them separated, not only is their daughter screaming "C'est magnifique!" but her friends end up sharing in the pleasure, as well.
As sordid as these scenarios sound, the Schoolgirl Report series is fairly tame by today's standards. The segments are all soft core but there is an abundance of full frontal nudity, both male and female. The films are impressive in one respect: some of the scenarios are well done and evoke some genuinely erotic images. Others, such as the comedic segments, tend to fall into the "guilty pleasure" category. The Impulse DVD features the film in original German language with optional English sub-titles, though it should be pointed out that they are entirely superfluous because the plots aren't very difficult to follow even if restricted to just the visuals. The transfers show a good degree of snap, crackle and pop from the master film source, but that only adds to the retro-based naughty fun. Click below to order:
We recently reviewed the popular 1972 TV movie The Dephi Bureau, which is the pilot for the short-lived espionage TV series starring Laurence Luckinbill. Some of our readers made us aware of the fact that the Warner Archive DVD release is actually an edited version of the broadcast version. We wrote to the Archive and received this prompt response from Matthew Patterson:
"Thanks for the heads up. It's actually good to know that this TV movie still has such fans. Unfortunately, this was a known issue going into the production process. All of the 35mm original negative and intermediate elements were all cut to the current (shorter) length. This was a very unusual case, and the only longer version we could track down that survived was in faded 16mm reference prints. Of course all this was done 40 yrs ago, and no one back then anticipated future distribution such as home video, so it was decided to go with the higher quality shorter cut for the DVD release. We're slowly trying to get the word out there as to why this was done. And as you know, we try and deliver the best possible elements for even the most obscure releases. So it is actually quite unfortunate that we were unable to track anything better down."
The cataclysmic prison riot near the end of The
Big House (1930) reaches such a fevered pitch that army tanks are called in to
combat the inmates. The tanks roll into the prison yard like armor-plated
creatures, and then, unexpectedly, start rolling towards
the screen, towards the viewer. What did movie audiences think in 1930 as these
shiny, black, menacing machines moved towards them? By the riot's end, a
single tank crashes through a wall, its main gun slowly swiveling, as sinister anything
in H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds.It’s
impressive even now, watching on an Acer laptop in 2014. What was it like in
one of the vaunted movie palaces of yesteryear? Did audiences cheer
because the army was going to save the day? Or was there some fear, too, fear
that the machines were coming not just for criminals, but for everybody…
The Big House, now available on DVD as part of the Warner Bros Archive
Collection, was a spectacular success for MGM, and ushered in the prison movie
as a viable genre. Films had been set in prisons before,
but it was The Big House that established the characters and themes that would
mark the genre forever (ie. the scared new guy, the crusty lifers, the
conniving weasel, the kindly old guard, the dour but ineffectual warden, the inevitable
jail break, etc.). The film was also a marked contrast to the slick
films made by MGM at the time, causing Chester B. Bahn of the Syracuse Herald
to write that this "stark tragedy" was "so horrible, so
devastating, that you don't want to think about it, don't want to talk about
it."
Although prison movies weren't churned out the way westerns and horror movies
were during the 1930s, the subject undoubtedly had legs. We still see
prison movies today, as well as TV shows (of both the scripted and “non-scripted”
variety). But every prison movie or show we see now has something of The Big
House in its DNA. The Big House did it first, and I’m not sure if any
modern prison movies have done it any better. More explicit, perhaps, but
not better.
For one thing, The Big House was unabashedly artsy. Directed by George Hill
with photography by Harold Wenstrom, the film is framed by rich, deep blacks
that gave the atmosphere a harder edge than most black and white films of the
day. A more accurate description of the film would be “black & grey,” for
there isn’t much white in it. Grey is the color of the prison uniform,
and grey is the color of the detainees’ pasty complexions. The prison is a
murky place, and when a con is being marched into the “dungeon” to serve some
time in solitary, it’s as if he’s being marched into the very wings of
Hell.
The opening scene follows a truck filled with new prisoners as it approaches
the monolithic, unnamed building. There’s something about the scene that
looks like an illustration come to life, especially when the prisoners step out
of the truck and appear incredibly tiny as they march into the prison. Kent
(Robert Montgomery) is a newbie, sentenced to 10 years for manslaughter after
killing a man in a car accident. He’s thrown into a cramped cell with two
legitimately bad men, Butch (Wallace Beery) and Morgan (Chester Morris).
One of the warden’s aids laments that a young kid doesn’t stand a chance in a
cell with such hard cases, to which the warden agrees that overcrowding and
idleness are the banes of the prison system. Kent’s journey through
prison life, though, is only part of the story. The film's
greatness comes from the interplay between Butch and Morgan, for they are
two hardened criminals who lean on each other to get through their dreary days.
Butch is downright sadistic, the sort of brute who harasses people only to back
off and say, “I was only kidding.” He’s allegedly murdered several people,
including a few of his past girlfriends, but one never knows if he’s serious or
not. He also lets his temperament get the best of him, even turning on his
buddy Morgan more than once during the film. Morgan, meanwhile, falls for
Kent’s sister (Leila Hyams) when he spots her during visiting hours.
Sheila Exteberria and Ed Ryan in Nathan Silver's new indie film Soft in the Head.
By Don L. Stradley
There is a
startling scene in Nathan Silver’s Soft
In The Head where Natalia, a reckless woman/child who causes trouble
wherever she goes, looks at her
reflection in a cracked compact mirror. The effect of the crack distorts
her face to where she looks like one of the garish women in a Willem De Kooning
painting.It’s jolting, for we’ve
suspected Natalia is a monster of sorts, the type of young woman who is
destined to be a skid row casualty, but is still young enough to manipulate a
few men here and there. In the cracked
reflection, we get a glimpse of Natalia’s true self, or at the very least, a
peek at her grotesque future.
When we first
see Natalia she’s being smacked around by her boyfriend. She leaves him, but
intends to go back at some point because she believes the reunion will be
passionate. Love and self-destruction seem abutted in her mind. After
showing up drunk at the family home of her friend Hannah, Natalia wanders into
the night, oblivious to the catcalls from street people who mock her. She
intends to spend the night on the sidewalk, until she meets Maury, a
well-meaning fellow who has turned his home into a sanctuary for derelicts. Maury invites Natalia over for dinner where
she sits among men seemingly plucked from a touring production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.
Natalia isn’t intimidated, though. She’s
in her element, letting a bunch of homeless men fawn over her.
Even at her
lowest, Natalia’s able to work her way into the hearts of vulnerable males,
including Hannah’s shy brother Nathan. He’s so smitten by her that he
steals one of his mother’s necklaces for her, which sets off a major row in his
very old-fashioned Jewish household. Nathan’s parents seem a bit thick – their
son can barely dress himself or hold a conversation (Natalia describes him at
one point as “mildly autistic…like a baby…”) but they spend an entire scene badgering
him to meet a nice girl and give them some grandchildren. When he
announces that Natalia has won his heart, their shock is off the charts.
Some observers
have already compared Soft In The Head
to the films of John Cassavetes, but the comparison works at only the most
superficial level. Cassavetes’ casts were headed by highly charismatic
Hollywood actors – Peter Falk, Gena Rowlands, Ben Gazzara, etc. Soft In The Head has no such glossy
veneer, being made up of unknown New York actors who often look like they’re
reaching, trying to be “real,” but also struggling to be amusing.
Silver, to his credit, allows his actors plenty of room for a kind of
realistic give and take, but his scenes can’t match one of Cassavetes’
high-wire acts. Also, Silver’s not aiming for the kind of philosophical
statements that gave Cassavetes’ films an ersatz profundity. Silver’s aiming at smaller targets, but even
so, his scenes feel self-conscience, as if he’s a bit too in love with the idea
of being a filmmaker. Silver lets the camera linger on
Natalia while she combs her hair out of her face, or sucks at her crooked teeth;
it’s rare in recent movies that a camera has so desperately adored a female
subject, as if Silver, too, is under Natalia’s spell. (Still, even with
shots that go on too long, Silver brings the movie in at a tight 75 minutes,
something Cassavetes could never do!)
Soft In The Head doesn’t remind me of Cassavetes as
much as it reminds me of certain films, novels and plays of the 1960s (i.e. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Dutchman, Tell
Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon). It was a genre with no name, but the
distinctive trait was a melting pot of disparate characters (usually one African-American,
a Jew, a war veteran, a hooker, a homosexual, an old man, and a hippie). They’d
be thrown together, usually during a power failure or a housing shortage, or they’d
be stuck in the same subway car. Tempers would flair. The stories usually ended with a murder or a
suicide, the remaining characters huddling together, waiting for the
police. Soft In The Head goes
that way, too, but not in the way you might imagine.
Silver ignores
the usual narrative pattern we’d expect in a film like this one. He’s less
interested in developing plots than in throwing some characters together to see
what transpires. You can feel his love for these people, but this technique doesn’t
allow the characters to take charge of the story. They have altercations that feel like acting
class exercises, but nothing moves the plot forward. The sense we get is that the story is
fidgeting, chasing its own tail. More, for instance, could have been done with
Maury and his band of idiots. Where
Silver really dropped the ball was in the storyline involving Natalia and
Nathan.
Natalia and
Nathan (their names even mirror each other) are two sides of the same person.
Both are painfully immature, unable to stake out a spot in the adult world: one
is homeless; the other still lives with
his parents. Both could be described as
soft in the head. Nathan is pure,
knowing nothing of the weird games that go on between males and females, while
Natalia, dense though she may be, has mastered those games. Nathan is horrified
by Natalia’s revelation that she actually enjoys being abused, but just when
that part of the story is gaining momentum, Silver lets it trail off…
Perhaps from a
youthful flaunting of the rules, Silver shuffles the deck on us and gives us an
ending that is unexpected, but also unengaging. He might have been better served if he’d
chosen one of his plot strings and followed it to a conclusion, rather than
floating from one plot to the next. Silver has some good instincts, though, and I’ll
look forward to the day when he acquaints himself with the nuts and bolts of
storytelling. As it is, Soft In The
Head is a strangely intriguing work. It’s flawed, but unique. No one but Silver could have made it.
Sheila Etxeberría
is believable as Natalia, bringing to the role a kind of ratty vulnerability.
There are some good turns by other actors, too, including Ed Ryan as
the enigmatic Maury, and Theodore
Bouloukos as David, the most volatile of
Maury’s guests. Carl Kranz, bless him,
has an almost thankless role as Nathan. Here’s
an isolated young guy who decorates his room with Woody Allen posters as
if he’s searching for the right nebbish to model himself after, but instead of
meeting Diane Keaton he meets Natalia. Something tells me he’ll soon tear
down Sleeper and replace it with The Blue Angel.
Two
new releases from The Criterion Collection spotlight low-budget filmmaking in
the 1950s—American and European—and couldn’t be more stylistically and
thematically diverse. And yet, there is a personal stamp on the pictures that
is very similar. Both films also tackle social problems with brutal frankness
and feature anti-heroes as protagonists.
Riot in Cell Block
11 was
produced by longtime Hollywood independent producer Walter Wanger (he was also responsible
for two earlier Criterion releases, Stagecoach
and Foreign Correspondent) as a
hard-hitting, gritty, realistic picture depicting the inequities and
maltreatment prisoners receive in American prisons. Wanger had a personal
reason to make a film like that. He had barely missed spending some time in
one. He’d caught his wife with another man, so Wanger shot the guy, seriously wounding him. A temporary insanity defense got him only four months at an “honor farm,” which
was hardly the same as the federal penitentiary, but he was nonetheless
inspired to tell the world how things really were. Enter Don Siegel, a macho, unconventional
craftsman who would later make such classics as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Dirty Harry. Since the picture was going to be made in Folsom State Prison and featuring real inmates as extras, Wanger needed
something of a tough guy to helm the thing. Siegel was his man.
Released
in 1954 and starring a bunch of B-movie character actors as leads (Neville
Brand, Emile Meyer, Leo Gordon, and others), Riot concerns a group of irate inmates that take over their block
and hold guards as hostages. Their demands are humane ones, and yet the
governor and the movie’s “bad guy,” the commissioner, are against giving the
cons anything and will use deadly force to stop the riot—even if it means
sacrificing the hostages. Meyer, as the prison warden, delivers a surprisingly
sympathetic performance as he sides with the convicts but still attempts to do
his job (Meyer would later appear in a small role as a priest in Stanley
Kubrick’s Paths of Glory). Brand and
Gordon (who apparently really was a scary guy on the set) run the show—and
there’s no shortage of beatings, arson, vandalism, and attempted murder (the
film was banned in the U.K. on its initial release). Interestingly, the
audience ends up rooting for the inmates, who normally should be the villains.
What’s
particularly striking is Siegel’s use of location. As in a documentary, the use
of the Folsom gives audiences a view of what it’s really like on the inside (at
the time). It’s the real thing. Siegel manages to illustrate the claustrophobic
desperation of the environment with great skill. But what’s even more profound
is that the depiction of the prison population in 1954 is very different from what
we envision the inhabitants of a prison might be today. For one thing, the
whites outnumber the blacks in Riot.
Was that realistic in 1954? It must have been, since all the extras in the
picture were indeed inmates. The place also doesn’t seem as frightening as the
gang-ridden institutions of the present. Nevertheless, Riot is honest and hard-hitting, another entry in a long line of
“social problem films” that proliferated after World War II (The Lost Weekend, Gentleman’s Agreement, All
the King’s Men, The Snake Pit,
etc.).
Criterion’s
new 2K digital restoration looks terrific. Since earlier home video versions in
the U.S. were either on VHS or bootleg DVDs, the new dual format release is a
welcome one. Film scholar Matthew H. Bernstein provides audio commentary. The
extras are a bit disappointing, though. Two audio pieces feature Siegel’s son,
Kristoffer Tabori, reading passages from his father’s autobiography and Stuart
Kaminsky’s book on the director. These are fine if one doesn’t mind being read
to for a half-hour. The other extra is all-audio as well—an excerpt from a 1953
NBC radio documentary series called The
Challenge of Our Prisons. The usual thick booklet contains an essay by
critic Chris Fujiwara, a 1954 article by Wanger, and a 1974 tribute to Siegel
by Sam Peckinpah.
Francois
Truffaut’s first feature film, The 400
Blows, released in 1959, was one of the opening salvos of the French New
Wave. Drawing on his own childhood experiences, Truffaut introduces us to his
alter-ego, Antoine Doinel, played beautifully by fourteen-year-old Jean-Pierre
Leaud, who would star as the same character in four more films, spanning two
decades—hence, we see Antoine grow up and enter adulthood before our eyes (see
Criterion’s box set The Adventures of
Antoine Doinel for the complete series).
The
debut Doinel chapter is the most serious of the saga—the rest are, by and
large, comedies. The 400 Blows paints
a grim portrait of a young boy who is misunderstood by his parents and
teachers, and is hence labeled a problem teen. Truffaut was particularly good
at working with children and he would continue to do so throughout his career.
The story follows Antoine’s troublesome day-to-day life until he is unfairly
expelled from school and sent to a juvenile facility. It sounds dreary, but
Truffaut manages to keep the film riveting from start to finish, and the final
freeze frame is one of cinema’s most iconic images.
This
seminal art film is a must-have in any serious collector’s library. With
Godard’s Breathless (reviewed here
previously), The 400 Blows exhibits
quintessential traits of the New Wave—low budget financing, hand-held cameras,
improvised action, and radical editing. It took neo-realism and made it arty.
Its legacy is without question, for it remains Truffaut’s most financially
successful picture in his native country.
Criterion
has released the title a few times. The first one went out of print and became
an expensive collector’s item on eBay until the company retrieved the rights
again and re-issued a DVD of the film alone, as well as the box set of the
complete Doinel pictures. Then there was the bargain-priced “Art House
Essentials” edition. Now, a dual Blu-ray and DVD, the contents of which match
the previous release, with the same supplements (two audio commentaries,
audition footage of the actors, newsreel footage from Cannes, and two vintage
Truffaut interviews). The only difference is the magnificent restored
high-definition digital film transfer. The
400 Blows never looked so good. What is disappointing, though, is that the
second Doinel film, a thirty-minute short entitled Antoine and Colette, was not included as a supplement. It’s on the 400 Blows DVD disc that’s in the Doinel
box set. Why couldn’t it have been a Blu-ray special feature? Or is an Antoine
Doinel Blu-ray box set in the works?
Since its initial release fifty years ago, director Cy Endfield's British war epic Zulu has grown in stature. The film was understandably a hit in England but was deemed a boxoffice disappointment in the United States perhaps due to the fact that, like Khartoum (1966), the story relates to a historic battle that is well known by Brits by is virtually unknown to American audiences. What no one can dispute is that the film represents masterful movie making. Again, like Khartoum, it is a thinking man's war epic. The film relates the story of the Battle of Rorke's Drift, a tiny British outpost in southern Africa directly in the heart of the Zulu kingdom. A haunting pre-titles sequence shows the bloody aftermath of the Battle of Isandlwana, in which a British expeditionary force was massacred by Zulus in a sophisticated attack that stunned the government in London. Rorke's Drift is lightly defended by a relatively small group of British soldiers who know the Zulus are moving toward them. The officer is charge, Lt. John Chard (superbly played by Stanley Baker) is an engineer with no combat experience. His second in command is Lt. Bromhead (Michael Caine in a star-making performance) who doesn't inspire much confidence, either. He's a snobby dilettante who resents the fact that a sliver of military protocol has made Chard his superior officer. With the Zulu attack inevitable, Chard rises to the occasion and rallies his men by constructing crude fortifications and developing battle strategies. In the meantime, he must deal with a religious fanatic and his daughter (Jack Hawkins and Ula Jacobsson) who he must protect and a largely pessimistic company of soldiers who second-guess his ability to prevent them all from being slaughtered. The arrival of the Zulus is genuinely terrifying especially when Chard and his men realize how overwhelmingly they are outnumbered. Additionally, the Zulus have another unexpected edge: they have all the rifles and ammunition taken from the British soldiers they had defeated. Nevertheless, Chard manages to inspire his men and even Bromhead with his logic and courage. As with most war movies, the historical facts are considerably smudged in the interest of artistic license by that doesn't dilute the overall impact of the movie, which is thrilling.
Zulu deservedly ranks among the best British films of its era and it has lost none of its impact over the years. The battle sequences are impressively staged and, while the literate screenplay doesn't delve into the political reasons for the Zulu uprising (it was largely prompted by an arrogant English diplomat who broke treaties with the tribe), the film refreshingly doesn't present the natives as another case of "white man's burden". Instead, the Zulus and their chief are seen as noble figures who develop a mutual respect for the British, even as they are trying to kill them. The film features any number of wonderful supporting performances including Hawkins, Jacobbsson, Patrick Magee and Nigel Green and James Booth particularly impressive. Richard Burton provides the moving narration in the film's opening and closing sequences and John Barry provides what is undoubtedly one of his greatest film scores. As director, Endfield does a superb job, though he never got the acclaim he deserved. His long-delayed bu little-seen 1978 prequel to the film, Zulu Dawn, goes into much greater detail about the origins of the Zulu conflict and depicts the British defeat at Isandlwana, which rocked the entire British government.
The Twilight Time presentation is the best I've ever seen of this classic film and does full justice to the magnificent cinematography. An original trailer is included, an informative collector's booklet with notes by Julie Kirgo, an isolated track for John Barry's score and a very entertaining (and informative) commentary track by film historians Lem Dobbs and Nick Redman. There is still room for another deluxe collector's edition of Zulu (Cinema Retro's own Matthew Field produced an excellent documentary for the British release some years ago that one wishes was included on here), but for the moment, the Twilight Time Zulu is the edition of record.
The Blu-ray is region free and is limited to only 3,000 copies. We suggest you get a copy quickly as this is destined to be one of those titles you'll ultimately see on eBay selling for a small fortune.
(The latest issue of Cinema Retro, #28, features in-depth coverage of the making of the film by Sheldon Hall, author of the book "With Some Guts Behind It" which documents the production of Zulu.)
The Warner Archive has released the TV pilot film The Delphi Bureau: The Merchant of Death Assignment as a burn to order title. The 1972 film stars Laurence Luckinbill as Glenn Garth Gregory, a mild-mannered, bookish intellectual with a photographic memory who works for a mysterious organization known as The Delphi Bureau that secretly advises the President of the United States on matters of national security. Even Gregory doesn't know anything about the Bureau and says he doesn't know whether there are thousands of other operatives or if he is the sole agent. His only contact is his superior, Sybil Van Loween (Celeste Holm) , a perpetually chirpy Washington D.C. socialite who gives him his assignments but refuses to come to assistance whenever he gets in trouble. As an agent, Gregory is completely on his own. He is unarmed and must rely on his own wits to extract himself from deadly situations, which leads one to believe that the character of MacGyver might have been somewhat influenced by this scenario. In this pilot film, Gregory is assigned to investigate the wholesale theft of surplus military equipment including fighter jets. The trail leads to a gigantic farming complex in Kansas, headed by Matthew Keller (Dean Jagger), a respected elderly philanthropist who is using his resources for experimental of growing food in order to stamp out world hunger. Gregory finds that the complex is actually a cover for the arms smuggling operation and is being run by Stokely, Keller's right hand man. As played by Cameron Mitchell, Stokely drips with phony charm and friendliness that hides the fact that he is a cold-blooded killer intent on preventing Gregory from revealing his findings. The script makes it obvious that in the pre-cell phone era, it was much easier to present scenarios in which the protagonists are completely isolated simply by the fact that they can't get to a public pay phone.
This pilot film spawned a short-lived TV series and it was created by the estimable talents of Sam Rolfe, who had also developed The Man From U.N.C.L.E. a decade previously. There are some similarities to the classic Alexander the Greater Affair two-part episodes of that series especially in a scene in which Gregory is attacked on a farm by a villain driving a tractor- a fate that befell U.N.C.L.E's Illya Kuryakin. Also, actor David Sheiner, who played a bad guy in the episodes, also turns up in the Delphi Bureau pilot flick. There is a tendency to believe that Hollywood's obsession with conspiracy movies went into high gear in the aftermath of Watergate. In fact, there were such films years prior to the 1972 break-in that brought down the Nixon administration. For example, The Manchurian Candidate and Seven Days in May, both classic political thrillers, were produced in the early 1960s. The Delphi Bureau was in production before Watergate but aired during the same year, thus making its premise of untrustworthy government officials quite timely. The movie also bares a coincidental resemblance to director Michael Ritchie's feature film Prime Cut, also released in 1972, in that it presents a rather cynical view of the American heartland with friendly, small town characters being revealed as sadistic murderers. (A chase through a corn field appears both in The Dephi Bureau and Prime Cut).
I very much enjoyed The Dephi Bureau on many levels. The production values are quite opulent and Luckinbill is refreshing as a hero, playing an everyday guy who is rather out of his element in going up against professional killers. Not much is made out of his photographic memory angle but he does have to rely on his wits rather than gadgetry to avoid numerous death traps. The film boasts an impressive cast with Holm particularly amusing as the unlikely head of the Bureau and other deft turns provided by Bob Crane, Joanna Pettet, Bradford Dillman, Dub Taylor and Frank Marth. Given the qualities of the pilot episode, its surprising that the offspring TV series wasn't a hit. However, fans of spy movies of the era will find the DVD well worth adding to their collections.
Director Rob Reiner will receive the 41st annual Chaplin Award from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City on April 28. Among the Reiner colleagues expected to appear at the event are Steve Martin, Billy Crystal, Michael Douglas and Martin Scorsese. For ticket information click here
Curly and Shemp were long gone but even in the 1960s, the "new" Three Stooges continued to gain popularity with a younger generation. The slapstick kings "starred" in a series of cartoons and even inspired a long-running comic book series published by Gold Key. The web blog 1966 My Favorite Year presents a gallery of Stooges comics covers. Click here to view.
Cinema Retro has received the following press release:
Please join UCLA Film & Television Archive in celebrating actor/director/producer Norman Lloyd’s centennial with our presentation of “Stages: Norman Lloyd and American Television.”
Perhaps best known as the unforgettable villain of Alfred Hitchcock’s Saboteur (1942), this FREE series highlights Lloyd’s contribution to television history and includes rarities from the Archive’s collections. Mr. Lloyd will appear in person on Opening Night, April 18.
The series screens Friday, April 18 – Sunday, June 8 at the Billy Wilder Theater in Westwood Village. Full program details below. Click link:
With Charlton Heston being honored this week with a commemorative stamp from the U.S. Post Office, it seems appropriate that the Redford Theatre in Detroit will have big screen showings of Heston's Oscar-winning 1959 classic Ben-Hur on April 11-12. There is also a 30 minute old time Barton organ mini-concert preceding both shows. For more and ticket info click here
Author and Cinema Retro columnist Raymond Benson has collaborated with bestselling author Jeffery Deaver on "Ice Cold: Tales of Mystery and Intrigue From the Cold War", a new book that presents a topic both men know well: espionage. In addition to stories by Benson and Deaver, there are contributions from many other talented writers who specialize in thrillers. The book is winning rave advance reviews (click here). Both Deaver and Benson have won acclaim for writing original James Bond novels.
Benson and Deaver, along with other noted authors, will be in New York City for a book launch event at the famed Mysterious Bookshop on April 29 at 6:00 PM. The store is located at 58 Warren Street in Tribeca.
Cinema Retro Editor-in-Chief Lee Pfeiffer, who will be at the event, said, "We're very excited by Raymond's new project. He's been with Cinema Retro since our first issue ten years ago and his regular column in which he discusses the "Ten Best Films" of a specific year has become an integral part of our magazine. Additionally, his insightful, on-line DVD reviews have helped www.cinemaretro.com enjoy significant growth in readership over the years. Like all of his other admirers, I'm looking forward to delving into "Ice Cold" and I encourage all of our readers in the New York City area to attend the event, which should make for a fun-filled evening."
"Ice Cold" is available in many different formats from Amazon. Click below to order paperback and Kindle editions.
Everyone
in the west knows the name – Gaddafi.For over 40 years he was an international
riddle, visiting world capitals yet sleeping in a bulletproof tent; a statesman
who surrounded himself with female bodyguards and, of course, a pariah scorned
by the west for acts of international terror…
In
Mad Dog: Inside The Secret World of
Muammar Gaddafi , a remarkable Showtime documentary premiering April 11th,
director Christopher Olgiati and his team went deep inside the late despot’s
hidden world. The resulting portrait is
chilling, horrifying and impossible not to watch.
The
film’s Executive Producer, Roy Ackerman spoke with Cinema Retro about putting together
this daunting and dangerous project. “Chris (Olgiati) and I had worked together before… and he came to me
about doing a film on the Lockerbie Crash and we spent a lot of time developing
that but for various reasons we came to focus on Gaddafi.”
The
film took three years to research and shoot in ten countries around the globe –
from the United States to the Marshall Islands. (Try even finding them on a
map!) Along the way the dictator’s
finely honed image as a Nationalist Statesman completely unravels, revealing a
desperate and perverse man who preyed on his own people.
Making
any movie is all about challenges, but shooting inside Libya was in a whole
other league – “It was very, very dangerous.” Roy remembers, “we went in three times and there were bombs going off
and car bombs, one time we had to just leave because it was too unstable.”
The
Libyan footage they did get is apocalyptic and stunning – a Mad Max moonscape
of ruined buildings and burnt out interiors. They also interviewed several people who did business with the regime, including
international fugitive Frank Terpil who supplied Gaddafi’s military with
weapons. Another notable interview was
former CIA officer Valerie Plame who provides perspective on Gaddafi’s dramatic
hunt for nuclear weapons. The producers
left no biographical stone unturned, even interviewing Gaddafi’s plastic
surgeon who told a surreal tale of late night operations in an underground
bunker, the dictator refusing general anesthesia for fear of assassination.
Through
rare archival footage, we see a dashing young Gaddafi as an army officer with a
killer smile, eager to bring his country out of its Colonial past. Gradually he becomes corrupted by his immense
power and oil wealth (one billion dollars PER WEEK), which stripped away everything
but a desire to stay in power at any cost. Outwardly a “family man”, in reality he
indulged an array of dark and repulsive desires that the documentary illustrates
in haunting detail.
The
final chapter of Gaddafi’s tale is ironic and tragic – Western powers were
willing to turn the page on Gaddafi’s notorious past due to the great equalizer
- oil. Only the Arab Spring, which
ripped through many countries, including Libya prevented reengagement and
ultimately cost him his life. But the
film’s Roy Ackerman felt that if there’s any lesson to be learned from Gaddafi,
it’s proceed with caution – “You do deals with these people, they’re not
stupid, they’ll get a price for it.”
Mad Dog: Inside The
Secret World of Muammar Gaddafi premieres Friday, April 11 on Showtime.
American acting icon Charlton Heston will be honored by the United States Postal Service with a commemorative stamp. The unveiling, which will be attended by Heston's family, will take place at the famed Chinese Theatre in Hollywood as part of the Turner Classic Movies Film Festival on April 11. For more about the ceremony click here
Amazon is temporarily offering a special sale on the Universal Monsters Essential Collection Blu-ray boxed set that includes Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Phantom of the Opera, The Wolf Man, The Invisible Man, Bride of Frankenstein and Creature From the Black Lagoon. The set is loaded with 12 hours of bonus materials and includes a collector's book. Click below to order.
Joe Dante's Trailers From Hell presents the teaser trailer for Paint Your Wagon, the 1969 mega flop musical starring Lee Marvin, Clint Eastwood and Jean Seberg. This is yet another epic film that has judged by its boxoffice results instead of its artistic merits. Fortunately, Alan Spencer provides a good introduction and narration to the trailer and points out the film's attributes. The downside is that this teaser trailer itself runs only one minute but Spencer provides plenty of insightful facts into his commentary. Click here to view
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Sony:
For Immediate Release
“…one of the great shows of
television's Golden Age…”
-- The Huffington Post, Maureen Ryan
The Addictive, Emmy Award®-Winning TV Drama Starring Emmy Award®
Winners Bryan Cranston & Aaron Paul
BREAKING
BAD:
THE COMPLETE SERIES
Newly Created 16-Disc Blu-ray™ Box Set Available June 3
Featuring Hours of Bonus Content, Including the Two-Hour Documentary “No Half Measures: Creating the Final Season of Breaking Bad”
Also Available for the First Time Ever as
a 21-Disc Complete Series DVD Set
CULVER CITY, CALIF. (April 7, 2014) – The chemistry continues on June 3 when Sony Pictures Home
Entertainment releases one of the most critically acclaimed and award-winning
shows of all time, BREAKING BAD: THE
COMPLETE SERIES, available on Blu-ray™ with newly created packaging, and, for the first time ever, as a complete series set on DVD. Just in time for Father’s Day and graduation
gift giving, the explosive saga of high school chemistry teacher-turned-meth
kingpin Walter White is available in its entirety, including all 62
uncut, uncensored episodes. The 16-disc
Blu-ray set features more than 55 hours of bonus content, including the Blu-ray
exclusive “No Half Measures: Creating the Final Season of Breaking Bad”
documentary, chronicling the
making
of the final season, from filming the first table read to the very last day on
set and everything in between. The 21-disc DVD set features more than 50 hours
of bonus content.
Starring three-time Emmy® winner
Bryan Cranston (Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series) alongside two-time
Emmy winner Aaron Paul (Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series), Sony
Pictures Television’s groundbreaking series achieved record-breaking viewership
with more than 10 million viewers in its final season. BREAKING BAD was created
by Vince Gilligan (TV’s “The X-Files”), who also served as executive producer with Academy Award® winner Mark Johnson (1988,
Best Picture, Rain Man) and Michelle
MacLaren (TV’s “The X-Files”). The
series boasts an exceptional ensemble cast, including
Anna Gunn (TV’s “Deadwood”), Dean Norris (TV’s “Under the Dome”), Betsy Brandt
(TV’s “Michael J. Fox Show”), RJ Mitte (TV’s “Switched at Birth”), Bob Odenkirk
(The Spectacular Now), Giancarlo
Esposito (TV’s “Revolution”) and Jonathan Banks (TV’s “Community”).
Synopsis: The incredible saga of high school
chemistry teacher-turned-meth kingpin Walter White is here in its entirety: all
62 uncut, uncensored episodes! Emmy® winner Bryan Cranston portrays Walter
White, a family man who turns to crime after a lung cancer diagnosis unravels
his bland but simple life. Recruiting former student and small-time drug dealer
Jesse Pinkman (Emmy® winner Aaron Paul) to be his partner in crime, Walt rises
to the top of the meth trade, leaving a trail of bodies in his wake. But he
can’t keep his dogged DEA agent brother-in-law
Hank Schrader (Dean Norris) off his trail forever. Will Walt get away with it
all, or die trying? Re-live every moment of this groundbreaking original series
with riveting performances by Emmy® winner Anna Gunn, Giancarlo Esposito,
Jonathan Banks, Bob Odenkirk, Betsy Brandt, RJ Mitte and more. Breaking Bad was
executive produced by Vince Gilligan, Mark Johnson and Michelle MacLaren. The
complete box set is loaded with special features.
Blu-ray Exclusive Bonus
Features:
More than 55 hours of special features,
including:
· “No Half Measures:
Creating the Final Season of Breaking Bad,” an exclusive two-hour documentary that chronicles the filming of the
final eight episodes.
· Bad Memories – Bryan
Cranston and Aaron Paul talk about the show ending and some of their favorite
moments.
· Bryan Cranston: Director – Go
on set with Bryan Cranston as he directs the first episode of The Final Season,
entitled "Blood Money."
· Scene Envy – The cast
tell us which scene they wish they could have been in.
· Shocking Moments - The
stars reveal the moments that shocked them most.
· A Look Ahead to the Final Season – The cast gives their thoughts on what an amazing final season this
is going to be!
· From Walt to Heisenberg – From
high school teacher to deadly meth dealer, watch as Walter White quickly
transforms into Heisenberg.
· How Will It End? – At
the beginning of Season 5, the cast gives their thoughts on how they think the
show will end.
· Avenging Agent: Dean Norris as Hank Schrader – A look at the character Hank Schrader and the man who played him,
Dean Norris.
· Scene Stealer: Betsy Brandt as Marie Schrader – A look at the character Marie Schrader and the woman who played
her, Betsy Brandt.
· A Criminal Attorney: Bob Odenkirk as Saul Goodman – A look at the character Saul Goodman and the man who played
him, Bob Odenkirk.
· Jesse’s Journey: Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman – A look at the character Jesse Pinkman and the man who played
him, Aaron Paul.
· Skyler Breaks Bad: Anna Gunn on Season Four – Actress Anna Gunn and series creator Vince Gilligan explore
Skyler’s character evolution through the fourth season.
· Growing Up in the White House: RJ Mitte on Walter, Jr. – RJ Mitte, Anna Gunn, Bryan Cranston and series creator Vince
Gilligan discuss the extraordinary dynamics of the White family, and Walter,
Jr.’s unique role.
· The Ultimate Chess Match – Members
of the cast and crew discuss Walter White and Gus Fring’s extraordinary and
complicated battle of wits and their struggle for Jesse’s allegiance.
· Looking Back: A Season Four Retrospective - Season Four’s most surprising and memorable moments.
· Ted's Wipeout – In
Episode 411, “Crawl Space,” Ted Beneke suffers a head injury while trying to
escape from Saul’s goons. In this
featurette, Christopher Cousins (Ted) explains how this shocking stunt was
accomplished.
· The Truck Attack Storyboard Comparison – A side-by-side comparison of the Los Pollos Hermanos truck attack
and the brilliant shot-by-shot storyboards that were created for the episode
“Bullet Points.”
· Walt and the Challenger Storyboard Comparison – A side-by-side comparison of Walt’s joy ride in Walt Jr.’s new
Dodge Challenger and the storyboards that were developed for that sequence by
the writer and director, Peter Gould.
DVD Special Features:
More than 50 hours from Season 1
through the Final Season
Fabby, the star of the new sitcom Fabby Knows Best, introduces the creative teams from Stage 17.
The cast of Wallflowers.
By Lee Pfeiffer
Last week Cinema Retro was invited to attend a launch part at the Walter Reade Theatre at Lincoln Center in New York City to celebrate the on-line launch of production company Stage 17's first season of all original programming. The festivities kicked off with a fun VIP champagne party after which guests were escorted into the theater to see highlights of the programs on the big screen. The Stage 17 line-up includes an abundance of original comedy shows, reality programming and "Fan Fare", a show that is set at the world famous Sardi's restaurant that is devoted to the latest productions on Broadway.
Broadway star Kate Baldwin.
Actress Elizabeth Stanley
The festivities were attended by the network's creator David Stoller, who joined cast and production crews on stage to celebrate the launch. The ambitious venture is just another indication that industry types believe the future lies in on-demand programming that viewers can watch anytime, anywhere at their own convenience. In the early days of on-line programs, it was fairly apparent that production values were far below that of network shows. However, the Stage 17 productions are virtually indistinguishable from the big budget fare on the major networks. More importantly, the shows give exposure to talented young artists, some of whom may well become stars in the near future.
VIP kickoff party.
Fabby with David Stoller of Stage 17 productions.
To explore the lineup of Stage 17 programming, click here to visit the official web site and get ready for some binge viewing.
Ejiofor and girlfriend Sari Mercer snapped by Cinema Retro's Mark Mawston at this year's BAFTA awards in London.
We don't usually repeat rumors concerning forthcoming James Bond films because inevitably they turn out to be either inaccurate or completely untrue, at least in the very early stages. However, this one comes from a reputable source: Variety, which reports that Chiwetel Ejiofor, the Oscar-nominated leading man of "12 Years a Slave" is strongly being considered to play the villain in the next 007 flick, scheduled for release in November 2015 with Daniel Craig reprising as Bond and Skyfall director Sam Mendes also returning. Variety reports that producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson were so pleased with the response to Javier Bardem's performance as the baddie in Skyfall that they want to raise the caliber of Bond villains by approaching another red-hot actor who is a star in his own right. The strategy isn't entirely new: Christopher Walken, an Oscar winner for The Deer Hunter, had appeared as the villain in the 1985 Bond film A View to a Kill opposite Roger Moore. Click here for more
MGM and James Bond producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli feel they have their own license to kill--film projects, that is, that they allege violate their copyrights to the 007 character and series. MGM had warned Universal not to go forward with a spy movie titled Section 6 that purports to explore the fact-based origins of MI6 in the aftermath of WWI. The Bond producers and MGM stated their concerns that leaked elements of the screenplay showed plot devices that they allege are clearly inspired by the works of Ian Fleming including the fact that British agents have been assigned licenses to kill and that they carry "00" status. Both of those attributes are fictional and are directly linked to Fleming's creation. MGM has filed suit this week against Universal and screenwriter Aaron Berg alleging that Section 6 is clearly based on elements of the Bond books and films. The producers don't control the literary rights to the Bond novels but do have exclusive rights to any screen versions of 007's adventures.
The long-running Bond film series has been the subject of numerous legal battles over the decades. These include successful attempts to stop the airing of TV commercials which the producers allege violated their copyrights. There was also a long legal battle beginning in the mid-1970s to prevent producer Kevin McClory from bringing a remake of Thunderball to the big screen. (McClory had served as producer on the blockbuster 1965 version of the film). The late, legendary producer Albert R. Broccoli challenged McClory's rights for years but the film ultimately was made under the title of Never Say Never Again and released in 1983. McClory lost numerous other legal battles with Broccoli's production company, EON, however. These included launching other derivative films and TV series based on Thunderball, the one Bond novel that he had secured film rights to as the result of a legal settlement he made with Ian Fleming in the early 1960s that alleged Fleming used some of McClory's ideas to develop the novel upon which the film was based.
The Bond franchise is carefully guarded by EON for good reason. More than half a century since the first Bond film premiered, the series is more popular than ever. The latest entry, Skyfall, released in 2012, is not only the highest grossing film of the series but the top grossing British film of all time.
Our old pal Robert Vaughn is a smash in London. Vaughn is starring in the West End production of Twelve Angry Men (with Tom Conti now co-starring). The play's boxoffice results have been such a smash that the run has been extended through June. Meanwhile, in this 50th year of The Man From U.N.C.L.E., Vaughn still attracts fans who line up outside the Garrick Theatre to get his autograph. Let's hope the show makes it to Broadway. Click here to visit Soloholics, the official Robert Vaughn web site, run by Tammy Hayes.
James Glickenhaus's Vigilante Classic Survives
its Dark and Controversial Past
Arrow’s
commitment to releasing finely polished versions of cult greats appears to be
beyond question. I recently viewed their deluxe Blu-ray release of the 1980
grindhouse favourite The Exterminator. I
have some vivid memories of The Exterminator, a film that practically sucked me
from the high street and into the lobby of my local cinema some 34 years ago.
What a poster: an unidentifiable urban soldier wearing a black biker helmet and
using a flame thrower as his weapon of choice! Yep, it was an image that was always
going to get me to the box office for my ticket and of course, the latest copy
of Film Review magazine. The Exterminator was quite an extraordinary film; lame
of course by today’s standards – perhaps, but in 1980 is was really something
rather wild.
Director
James Glickenhaus wastes little time in his narrative style, a huge hilltop
explosion sees a soldier flying through the air. We are undoubtedly in the
middle of a war zone – the Vietnam War. The next cut reveals we are in an enemy
camp, and an interrogation of 3 bound U.S. soldiers. Two of the captive
soldiers, John Eastland (Robert Ginty) and Michael Jefferson (Steve James)
witness the slow decapitation of their fellow marine. Both Eastland and Jefferson
manage to escape before they are killed. They manage to reach a helicopter and
escape. We dissolve into a night
helicopter shot of New York – and the opening credits roll. It’s an amazing
pre-credit sequence that manages to pull you straight into the action and
you’re hooked. It is soon established that both men have simply escaped one
hell hole to arrive back home to another. Working together in the gritty city
of New York, Eastland learns that his buddy Jefferson has been the victim of a
gang attack which has left him paralysed. Unhappy with the police and the slow
progress in apprehending the attackers, Eastland sets out to avenge his friend
and track down the gang in a one-man revenge vendetta.
The
Exterminator turned up the heat considerably and set the bar for an altogether
new standard of ‘Death Wish’ -type vigilante thriller. Glickenhaus presented us
with a genuine urban ugliness – the likes of which we had never witnessed
before. While it was not considered a ‘big budget’ movie – in the general sense
of the words, you can certainly see where the money shots are. The incredibly
real throat cutting and decapitation sequence still stands out, even by today’s
standards – it remains a brilliantly created special effect by the legendary
Stan Winston. Yet there is nothing overly stylised here – the action, the
atmosphere and above all, the revenge killings – arguably border on bad taste.
However, Ginty’s portrayal of a troubled survivor – an anti-hero of
circumstance rather than choice, never fails to keep the audience firmly on his
side. Whilst the moralistic side of your conscience will no doubt be screaming
out legitimate concerns, Ginty’s ‘everyman’ appeal will most certainly still
have you rooting for him by the time of the final reel.
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Warner Home Video.
Burbank, Calif., March 25, 2014 – The Harry
Potter™ Wizard’s Collection, released in 2012, sold more than 30,000
sets at $499.99 SRP and is now completely sold out. To continue offering fans
access to the most successful film franchise in history, a new collection will
be available April 29 -- the Harry Potter™ Hogwarts Collection.
The collectible box set is sure to please fans who want the world of Harry
Potter™ conveniently available in one place. Included in this set areall
eight Harry Potter™ films, plus a whopping 45+ hours of previously
released bonus material that contains the complete eight-part documentary
series, ”Creating the World of Harry Potter.”
The Harry Potter™ Hogwarts Collection will be offered at
the new lower price of $249.99 SRP.
Films Included in this Collection – All on Blu-ray,
DVD and Digital HD with UltraViolet*
·Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone™ Theatrical Version on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD with UltraViolet and
Extended Cut on Blu-ray
·Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets™ Theatrical Version on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD with UltraViolet and
Extended Cut on Blu-ray
·Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban™ on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD with UltraViolet
·Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix™ on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD with UltraViolet
·Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince™ on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD with UltraViolet
·Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows™ – Part 1 2D on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD with UltraViolet and 3D Version on
Blu-ray
·Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows™ – Part 2 2D on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD with UltraViolet and 3D Versions on
Blu-ray
Special Features for Hours of Entertainment – everything
previously released including the eight-part documentary “Creating the World of
Harry Potter” on Blu-ray:
Creating the World of Harry Potter - Part 1:
The Magic Begins
The magic
begins. The choices, the breakthroughs, the early decisions that impacted all
the films are explored here via rare footage, cast and crew reminiscences and
more. Learn about the extensive search by producer David Heyman and director
Chris Columbus for the perfect actors to portray Harry, Ron and Hermione and
see the earliest meeting of Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson.
Be on the
scene as imagination and know-how combine to create a look that's distinctly
wizardly. From details tiny (what about Hermione's buckteeth?) to huge
(Quidditch, anyone?), this is the fun and fascinating opening of a whole new
portal into Harry's world. Begin the magic.
Creating the World of Harry Potter - Part 2:
Characters
"We
really do look at the story and characters first," producer David Heyman
says. "That's the heart and that's the soul of the film." And that's
the heart and soul of this incisive, decade-spanning exploration of how the
series' actors bring the beloved Harry Potter characters to life.
Discover which parts of the J.K. Rowling books helped Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert
Grint, Emma Watson and more stars make their roles leap from page to screen.
See
screen tests, including Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood) and Jessie Cave (Lavender
Brown) working with the established stars. Learn why so many of Britain's
acting greats wanted to be part of Harry
Potter's world...and which ones became mentors to the young stars. Share
each director's vision as you watch Daniel, Rupert and Emma grow up with Harry,
Ron and Hermione. Your journey into Harry's world continues.
Creating the World of Harry Potter - Part 3:
Creatures
Soar on
the back of Buckbeak. Battle a Hungarian Horntail. Trace Voldemort's terrifying
transformation from grotesque infant-like creature to Dark Lord. Fascinating
footage lets you experience the Harry Potter world of creatures through
new eyes with this revealing look at a new group of wizards: the artists who
create the monsters and marvels. Roam the Harry
Potter Creature Effects workshop, where actors with a little FX magic are
turned into beasts and sketches turn into animatronic wonders. Join Daniel
Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as they share stories about acting
opposite everything from tiny computer-generated pixies to a four-ton
mechanical spider (guess which young star is really afraid of spiders).
New discoveries and new revelations all make your journeys into Harry's world
even more thrilling!
Creating the World of Harry Potter - Part 4:
Sound & Music
Can you
imagine the Yule Ball without the Potter Waltz? Quidditch without the whoooosh
of flying? Or any Harry Potter film without the iconic Hedwig's Theme?
Now, absorbing interviews and behind-the-scenes glimpses let you share the
vision of composers, sound experts and others who make the Harry Potter films
enchantment for the ears as well as the eyes. Experience sound and music that
magnify triumph and fear, joy and suspense while transporting viewers on an
emotional journey alongside the on-screen characters. Learn how specially
created musical motifs identify individual characters and places. Watch as
Foley artists use unusual techniques to replicate everyday sounds. Discover a
whole new way to look at – and listen to – Harry's world.
Creating the World of Harry Potter - Part 5:
Evolution
Deeper.
Bolder. Darker. As the eight Harry Potter films trace Harry's journey
from innocent schoolboy to selfless hero, the series undergoes a
transformation. Evolution – packed with exclusive content – takes you
along for every exciting step of the 10-year filmmaking odyssey. Join the four
directors and key members of the crew and cast, including Daniel Radcliffe,
Rupert Grint and Emma Watson, as they explore how the creative vision for the
films evolved to maintain the integrity and increasing intensity of J.K.
Rowling's expansive literary series. From the ever-changing architecture of
Hogwarts castle and growing landscape of the wizarding world, to the darkening
palette of each successive film, to the young actors maturing along with their
characters, it is a wondrous and spectacular adventure to experience.
Creating the World of Harry Potter - Part 6:
Magical Effects
In Harry
Potter's world, portraits come to life, potions transform, time reverses,
Quidditch players soar, dragons attack and magic is everywhere. Explore the
moviemaking magic that created the wizardry and wonder of the Harry Potter
film series. Now, fascinating insights, interviews and watch-it-happen footage
let you experience the triumphs of the technical wizards who conjured up an
awe-inspiring alternate reality. Share the fun as Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert
Grint and Emma Watson negotiate the moving stairs. Marvel as an oversized water
tank transforms into the depths of the black lake for the Triwizard Tournament.
Discover which amazing sequence was filmed entirely using computer-generated
imagery. Watch as blue- and green-screen backgrounds transform into towering
structures and endless landscapes. You don't know the magic until you've seen Magical
Effects.
Creating the World of Harry Potter - Part 7:
Story
Over the course of ten years, screenwriter Steve Kloves worked
tirelessly with author J.K. Rowling to develop her seven magical books into
eight magical films. From the beginning, Kloves had to decide what to keep,
what to change and what to cut while staying true to Rowling's vision,
initially without even knowing how the series ended! Learn the story behind the
stories and see how the two collaborated and developed a friendship based on
mutual trust and respect, as they sit down together for an intimate,
free-flowing conversation. Gain new insight into J.K. Rowling's own conceptions
of her beloved characters, and hear how Kloves was able to adapt them
faithfully for the screen while maintaining the fine balance between heart,
humor and heroism that exemplifies the series.
Creating the World of Harry Potter - Part 8:
Growing Up
They grew
up with the world watching them. By the time the final film wrapped, the young
stars of Harry Potter had spent nearly half their lives on set. In Growing
Up, new and vintage interviews featuring Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint,
Emma Watson and other cast and crew show how the actors have grown over the
course of the series, while behind-the-scenes footage gives an exclusive look
at their lives as actors and as children who've grown into young adults. From
early interviews shortly after being cast, to the poignant final day of filming,
watch how their ideas of acting, fame, their characters and themselves have
changed through four directors, eight films and ten years. Learn how the more
experienced actors took the younger ones under their wings and see the
friendships that only years of collaboration could create. Finally, say
farewell to the series with Daniel Radcliffe as he delivers an emotionally
charged speech to the cast and crew as the final film wraps.
·Harry Potter™ Hogwarts Collection Blu-ray Bonus Disc
More than 3 hours of features including:
§“The Harry Potters You Never Met” - Meet the stunt doubles for Daniel
Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson as they demonstrate how they balanced
major stunt work while seamlessly mimicking the actors they represented.
“Designing the World of Harry Potter” - Explore how production
designer Stuart Craig and his creative team brought J.K. Rowling's
imagination to life on the screen.
“When
Harry Left Hogwarts” (Extended Version) - Hear candid and emotional
stories about the final days on set in this extended behind-the-scenes
look.
§ “50 Greatest Harry Potter
Moments” (Definitive Version) - Take a look back with cast members who share
their on and off-screen memories.
§ “Secrets Revealed! Quidditch” –
At last, the secrets behind the special effects required for the breathtaking
Quidditch scenes are revealed.
§ “Secrets Revealed! Hagrid”- See
the camera tricks, towering stand-in and voluminous body suits behind the
beloved Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts.
Cinema Retro has received the following press release from Sony
CULVER CITY, CALIF. (March 31, 2014) –
George Clooney’s action thriller THE MONUMENTS MEN marches its way
onto Blu-ray Combo pack, DVD and
Digital* May 20 from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Based on the
non-fiction book of the same name by Robert M. Edsel with Bret Witter, the film
pays tribute to the real men and women who risked their lives to recover and
return thousands of cultural treasures stolen by the Nazis during World War II.
The
Blu-ray™ Combo Pack
is loaded with bonus materials, including two all-new featurettes that
highlight the making of the film. The first, “George Clooney’s Mission,”
features interviews with Clooney, as well as the rest of the cast, on the elements that went into completing THE MONUMENTS MEN. The second featurette, “Marshaling the Cast,”
features a cast discussion on the real men and women they brought to life on
screen. Exclusively available on the Blu-ray are two additional exclusive
featurettes. “In Their Own Words” is a unique piece that offers the most
comprehensive and direct insight into the hearts and minds of these heroes,
featuring an interview with Harry Ettlinger, one of the last surviving members
of the Monuments Men. “A Woman Amongst
the Monuments Men” features a discussion with
Cate Blanchett on the historic, wartime female character she plays in the film
(Claire Simone).
A Smokehouse production, THE
MONUMENTS MEN is
directed by Clooney, and written by Clooney and Grant Heslov. Starring in the film is an
exceptional ensemble cast, including two-time Academy Award® winner
Clooney (Argo, Best Motion Picture of
the Year, 2012), Academy Award® winner Matt Damon (Good Will Hunting, Best Writing,
Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, 1997), Bill Murray (The Grand Budapest Hotel), John Goodman
(Argo),Academy
Award® winner Jean Dujardin (The
Artist, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role, 2011), Bob Balaban (The Grand Budapest Hotel),
Hugh Bonneville (TV’s “Downton Abbey”) and Academy Award® winner
Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine, Best
Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role, 2013).
Synopsis:
Based
on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, THE
MONUMENTS MEN focuses on an unlikely
World War II platoon, whose job it was to rescue artistic masterpieces from
Nazi thieves so they could be returned to their rightful owners. In a
seemingly impossible mission, the Monuments Men, as they were called, find
themselves risking their lives in a race against time to avoid the destruction
of 1,000 years of culture.
About the Real
Monuments Men:
Hitler
had decreed that if he died and the war was lost, nearly 5 million pieces of
stolen art were to be destroyed. In an effort to thwart the Nazis’ intent, President Roosevelt, with the support
of General Eisenhower, created the MFAA (Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives)
unit in 1943, and tasked them with the job of rescuing and protecting Europe’s
art masterpieces. Ultimately, more than 300 men and women worked in the MFAA
between 1943 and 1951, returning thousands of cultural items that had been looted or displaced during
the war.
NOTE: This review pertains to the Region 2 UK release.
By Mark Mawston
There
are some films that stick with you- films that made a real impact but were
impossible to track down after that one fleeting TV screening in pre-DVD and
streaming days. Could they be as good as you remember or were they obscure for
a reason? This was my worry when I was given my review disc of Brian De Palma’sPhantom of The Paradise,a film I’d been wanting to revisit
for years.
I
remember watching this in my room after college one late Monday night and
thinking it was the epitome of the term “cult movie”. I simply loved it.
I was fully aware of the huge followingThe
Rocky Horror Picture Showhad
and was shocked that this film wasn’t as famous. For years I’d asked anyone who
mentioned Richard O’Brien’s cult classic if they felt the same aboutPhantom of The Paradiseand most of the time I was met
with “Phantom Of The What?” I thought I was in a minority who loved this film
but on watching Arrow’s superb transfer of the film and its stunning extras, I
see that the film has a healthy following amongst the great and the good of
movie cultdom, including Edgar Wright, Quentin Tarantino and especially
Guillermo del Toro.
Phantom
of The Paradiseis
now available from the Arrow Video label. The feature-packed disc is released
as both a Limited Edition Steel Book and deluxe Blu-ray featuring original and
newly commissioned artwork by The Red Dress. This exciting Blu-ray release also
includes an exclusive collector’s booklet featuring new writing about the film
by festival programmer Michael Blyth and an exploration of the film’s troubled
marketing history by Ari Kahan, curator of SwanArchives.org, illustrated with
original stills and promotional material.
The addictive retro-based web site Hill Place offers an extensive analysis and appreciation of John Ford's The Were Expendable, an homage to the heroic U.S. Navy men who manned the P.T. Boats in WWII. The flick starred Robert Montgomery and John Wayne and is today considered one of the best movies in the WWII genre. However, at the time of its release at the very end of the conflict, it was vastly under-appreciated by a war-weary public that just wanted to indulge in relatively lightweight fare. (The same fate befell Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, which was considered by many to be too downbeat for audiences that had just undergone years of personal suffering).
Click here to read the article about They Were Expendable and realize why it represents Ford at his best.
Cinema Retro has received the following announcement:
The Morning After was established in
February/March 1991 as the official The Persuaders!/ITC Appreciation Society by
the then copyright owners, the ITC Entertainment Group Ltd.
The society mainly concentrated on The Persuaders! in
the club magazine, The Morning After but some issues were 'specials' dedicated
to other ITC action-adventure series made in the 1960s and 70s such as The
Champions, Man In A Suitcase, Department S and The Baron.
This book reproduces the first 10 issues of The
Morning After in their entirety. These issues have long been out of print and
were printed in very small quantities. Original copies rarely turn up and now
sell on auction sites for anything between £15 – £20 per issue.
Director William Friedkin will appear at a screening of a restored version of his 1977 film Sorcerer, a reinterpretation of the classic French adventure movie The Wages of Fear. The film was a boxoffice flop during its initial release but has grown in stature over the ensuing years. Friedkin, who considers this his greatest work, had to take legal action to establish who owned the film and Warner Home Video recently oversaw the restoration of the movie, which had only been available on DVD in a pan-and-scan format. The event will be sponsored by the Cine Family classic movie group in L.A. on April 16. Click here for details and to view the trailer.
(Cinema Retro editor-in-chief Lee Pfeiffer just conducted an exclusive interview with William Friedkin about the making of Sorcerer. It will appear in our next issue (#29).)
Son Terry (left) watches his Father Dickie, dance with lead vocalist Kerry Schultz and guitarist David D'Andrade (far right) during the band's performance of The Man With the Golden Gun.
By Dave Worrall
Last weekend (Saturday 22nd March) I had
the pleasure of being invited to Jean and Dickie Bamber's Diamond Wedding
anniversary celebrations held at Heatherden Hall, Pinewood Studios. Dickie has
worked in the film industry for over 50 years on productions such as Genevieve, The Ipcress File, Thunderball,
Battle of Britain, A Bridge Too Far and many of the Carry On comedies, to name but a few. Their
son Terry, himself a veteran of the industry, and who I first met on the set of
the James Bond film GoldenEye, did
his parent's proud. Following a champagne reception we dined in the Pinewood
house restaurant (remember the scene in Who
Dares Wins where the hostages are held around a dining table in the US
Ambassador's residence? Well, we were in the same room.)
The evening's cabaret
was provided by the 14-piece band 'Q the Music' who specialize in performing
music from the James Bond films. From Dr.
No to Skyfall, this
mini-orchestra performed some of the best cover versions I have ever heard.
They were brilliant. Bond fans themselves, their renditions of even the
instrumentals such as 'Bond 77' from The
Spy Who Loved Me and 'Runaway' from For
Your Eyes Only, were spot on. Kit Mlynar on saxaphone, and David D'Andrade
on guitar, were excellent, as was lead vocalist Kerry Schultz. Wow, what a
voice. This was professionalism at its best.
Lead vocalist Kerry Schultz belts out a Bond hit song.
If you are a James Bond fan, or
simply like to hear movie music live, I highly recommend this band. In fact,
they are at The Lincoln Drill Hall on April 18/19, and in Wycombe on May 11th.
Check out their web site for further details and treat yourself to a fabulous
night out. www.QTheMusicShow.com
American
Hustle, one of the
best Martin Scorsese films not directed by Martin Scorsese (James Toback’s Fingers (1978) is another film that
falls into this camp), opens with an amusing sequence in a hotel room wherein
con artist Irving Rosenfeld (a nearly unrecognizable Christian Bale) is
attempting to hide his male pattern baldness. It is April 1978 and confederates Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), who is
presenting herself as an English aristocrat named Lady Edith Greensly and Richard
DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) are in the midst of trying to sting Carmen Polito
(Jeremy Renner), the Mayor of Camden, NJ. Irving has to get it together and be
convincing (what we don’t know at this point of the film is how conflicted he
is about what he is doing regarding the mayor). He comes to blows with Richard, who eggs him on and ruffles his hair in
a hilarious moment of awkwardness and discomfort, and we wonder if Irving will
blow a gasket and go Joe Pesci on Richard or if he will simply attend to his
ridiculous comb-over. The question of
why they want to sting the mayor is eventually revealed as the story flashes
back to when Irving and Sydney first meet and bond over their love and
admiration of Duke Ellington. They
realize they are kindred souls and their attraction to one another intensifies. As we come to learn, however, nothing is
quite as it seems because as David Mamet showed us in both House of Games (1987) and The
Spanish Prisoner (1997), everyone is potentially a mark and each mark is
played for someone else’s gain. Irving is
married and has a son but like professional thief Neil Mccauley (Robert De Niro)
in Michael Mann’s Heat (1995) he is
good at what he does, and in this case he knows how to not only conduct loan
scams but forge fake paintings even when hiding behind a legitimate business of
being a dry cleaner for tax purposes. Unfortunately, he and Sydney attempt to con Richard,
who turns out to be an FBI agent who cuts them a deal: he forces them into aiding
him entrap some other targets and promises that if their help results in four
good arrests, they will both end up with tabula
rasas, effectively avoiding jail time.
American
Hustle, which opened
theatrically in December 2013, is set within the framework of the Abscam scandal
of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, which also provided the backdrop for the
Al Pacino/Johnny Depp vehicle Donnie
Brasco (1997). It was the first time
in history that undercover FBI agents videotaped the taking of bribes by
politicians. This factors into the film, which was directed by David O. Russell
who also directed Flirting with Disaster
(1996), I Heart Huckabees (2004), and
Silver Linings Playbook (2012). Mr. Russell has meticulously recreated the
1970s to such a degree that you cannot help but marvel at all of the details,
looking carefully to try and spot any obvious anachronisms. Amy Adams stars opposite Mr. Bale (who
followed in Mr. De Niro’s thespian footsteps and gained some 40 pounds to play
the role) and she gives a multi-layered performance as Sydney, impersonating a
refined British woman. It becomes a game
between Irving and Richard trying to tell which person they are talking to, Sydney
or Lady Greensly. Jennifer Lawrence
portrays Irving’s wife, Rosalyn, and proves why she is one of the best
actresses working today. Rosalyn is a
loose cannon. Like Sharon Stone’s impetuous
Ginger McKenna in Casino, she has a
big mouth and messes with dangerous people when she isn’t starting fires by microwaving
metal or vacuuming her house while belting out the famous songs of the day. She hates Sydney and lets her know it, and
underneath the hardened and tough veneer is a woman who is hurt by her
husband’s betrayal.
Goodfellas (1990) and Casino (1995) are obvious stylistic influences here, ranging from
effective use of period music to the inclusion of an uncredited Robert De Niro
as a mobster, Victor Tellegio, who actually speaks Arabic! The scene where he attempt to communicate
with a supposedly wealthy Arab sheikh (in reality a fraud who speaks Spanish
and English) is both tense and funny. Jeremy
Renner is his usual brilliant self as the Mayor of Camden, based upon Angelo J.
Errichetti who in reality served three years in prison for his role in the
Abscam scandal (in the film, which is highly fictionalized, he serves 18
months). Mr. Errichetti passed away
seven months prior to the release of American
Hustle at the age of 84.
The use of voiceover is also effective,
a device that Mr. Scorsese also employed to great effect in his aforementioned
gangster epics. The film runs a quick 138
minutes, but I have seen 90-minute movies much longer than this.
The Blu-ray is the way to go for this
release as it comes with a DVD and digital copy. The extras are slim, which is unfortunate
considering the high number of Oscar nominations and accolades the film
received. They consist of a behind-the-scenes
look at the making of the film which runs 16 minutes, and an extended deleted
scenes section that runs 22 minutes. The
requisite theatrical trailer is also included. I would have loved a running commentary from the director as the film
was obviously a labor of love. That
being said, its exclusion should not detract from your enjoyment of watching
this highly watchable recreation of a specific moment in time in New York and
New Jersey’s history.
The Warner Archive has made us aware of a great film festival that is now going on at The Egyptian Theatre in L.A. Here is the announcement:
American Cinematheque and the Film Noir Foundation present the 16th annual Noir City: Hollywood - an astounding line-up of jaded gumshoes, femmes fatale and menacing heavies in gloriously gritty black and white running March 21 - April 6. Of note to Warner Archive Fans:
WHAT: Southside 1-1000 (1950) (with the Foundation's new 35mm print) and Roadblock (1951) Double down on your Noir with these two re-discoveries!
INDEPENDENCE DAY |
STARGATE | TOMORROW NEVER DIES | THE WORLD IS NOT ENOUGH | CASINO ROYALE |
SHERLOCK |
LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC
GAMES
GRAMMY
AWARD WINNING
DAVID
ARNOLD
ROYAL
FESTIVAL HALL LONDON
JULY
6th 2014
(Photo by Mark Mawston. All rights reserved.)
David Arnold, multiple nominee and winner of
Grammy, Ivor Novello, BMI, Saturn, World Soundtrack and BAFTA awards and one of
the UK's leading Film and TV composers and songwriters is to make his
London concert debut on July 6th at the Royal Festival Hall as part
of the Songbook Series at London’s Festival Hall which also includes concerts
with Tim Rice, Tony Hatch and Burt Bacharach.
David
Arnold – A Life In Song – will take the audience on a journey, with new and
reworked performances of his best-known work. Following the inaugural Song Book
series concert last year with Don Black, David performed a special version of
the 1999 theme tune to the 19th Bond movie, The World Is Not Enough.
David
Arnold comments, “After 20 years of writing for film it seemed like
the right time to present some of my favourite work in a concert setting. Its
odd that I’m effectively making my debut after all this time, but if it goes
down well, I might do another one ( in another 20 years )”
Highlighting songs, scores and themes from his
broad and varied career, including Independence Day, Stargate, The James Bond
films (Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino
Royale, Quantum Of Solace) alongside his work from the London 2012 Olympic
Games as well as his best known TV compositions including Sherlock, David will
talk about his work, tell the stories behind the music and perform on the night
alongside the orchestra and band.
BIGGEST SELLING ORCHESTRAL SOUNDTRACK OF ALL TIME PRESENTED LIVE FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME BY OSCAR AND GRAMMY AWARD WINNING COMPOSER JAMES HORNER.
TITANIC LIVE- WORLD PREMIERE
ROYAL ALBERT HALL
27 APRIL 2015
TICKETS ON SALE NOW!
London, 21 March; Avex Classics International and the Royal Albert Hall today announce one of the major music events of 2015, the world premiere presentation of Titanic Live at the iconic London venue on 27th April 2015.
James Horner’s epic score will be brought to life like never before, with the composer himself conducting a 90-piece orchestra, choir and Celtic musicians whilst the film is projected on a vast HD screen. Titanic Live promises to be the live cinematic event of the year, re-creating the uniquely familiar soundtrack which will forever be a part of cinematic history.Horner has composed for over 100 motion pictures, frequently collaborating with directors such as James Cameron and Ron Howard. Other scores include Avatar (the only film to surpass Titanic in box office sales), Braveheart, Aliens, Apollo 13, Star Trek II and more recently, The Amazing Spiderman.
The 1997 blockbuster Titanic, written and produced by James Cameron, became one of the most prolific movies of all time, grossing over $2 billion at the box office and winning 11 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director and more importantly, Best Original Song and Dramatic Score.Audiences worldwide echoed Hollywood’s appreciation of Horner’s musical score as the CD release became the best-selling orchestral soundtrack in history. Moreover, its lead single, “My Heart Will Go On” performed by Celine Dion was the biggest selling single of 1998, winning Record Of The Year at the 1999 Grammy ® Awards.
James Horner commented: “I am very flattered, and delighted to have been invited to perform the score of Titanic live with orchestra. Usually, putting the music into a film is a highly technical process that the audience never gets a chance to see. By performing the music live with the film, you, the audience, will experience the magic of seeing the live musicians, literally playing the music score as the film runs.”
“There are so many wonderfully talented people that perform the music of film scores, so it is a great honour for me to have the opportunity to share the experience, the musicians’ performances, all the ‘behind the scenes’ magic, with an audience."
Maggie O’Herlihy, Head of Europe and the Americas, Avex Classics International commented: “We are thrilled to announce the world premiere of Titanic Live at the Royal Albert Hall. When Titanic’s epic score takes centre stage, audiences will be able to immerse themselves in the hauntingly beautiful sound-world James Horner crafted like never before.”
Jasper Hope, Chief Operating Officer at the venue, said: “The Royal Albert Hall’s unique connection to the Titanic continues with the world premiere of Titanic Live.
“It was on this stage that the Titanic Band Memorial Concert took place in 1912, held to commemorate the eight heroic musicians who played on as the doomed ocean liner went down. A century later, the Royal Albert Hall was the venue for the world premiere of Titanic 3D. On that unforgettable evening, James Horner took the baton to conduct a 20-minute suite from his score – the most popular orchestral soundtrack of all time – the emotion and romance of the music sending shivers down the spine of everyone in the auditorium.We are delighted that James will now return to conduct the world premiere performance of Titanic Live, with his incredible score performed live and in full for the first time to accompany a high definition screening of the blockbuster film.”
Presented by the Royal Albert Hall and Avex Classics International, a branch of Japan’s leading entertainment business, the Avex Group, Titanic Live marks the start of a series of bespoke live events offering new and innovative ways to experience classical music.
Further worldwide dates for Titanic Live will also be announced shortly.
Production Code Basics – For Movie Still Collectors is the first reference book written on how to use movie still production codes to help identify unknown movie stills and costumes.
Production codes came into use around 1912 as the United States became the major international supplier of films and movie studios were driven to increase their production due to increased demand. By 1920 production codes were used by every major film studio and became an indispensable tool utilized in almost every department. Some studios even used production codes to mark their costumes and props.
Production Code Basics – For Movie Still Collectors covers every phase from the initial creation and why they were needed and then, moves through the filming process to show the use of stills through each department. Also included is a breakdown of major studios and different variations each studio used. Explanations are included on the process outside of the major studios and cover such area as states rights, exports, independent studios, distribution, multiple markings and much more.
Production Code Basics – For Movie Still Collectors is the reference companion book to the authors popular Movie Still Identification Book that features over 45,000 production codes and is the only book of its kind as well. Ed and Susan Poole are film accessory researchers that have been in the industry for over 35 years. This is their 15th industry related reference book. The Pooles are on a quest to make sure that film accessories such as posters, stills, and pressbooks are not lost through neglect as silent films have been. To purchase this book directly from the publisher click here
Advance Sale
Production Code Basics is scheduled for release AT CINEVENT (May 22-25). Anyone who buys the new PC Basics can either pick up their copy at Cinevent or we will start shipping immediate upon our return from Cinevent
Regular Price - $19.95
Pre- release Sale at $15.00 and includes U.S. shipping ORDER YOURS NOW!
Much
has already been written about Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 head-scratcher, Persona—it’s been analyzed, dissected,
reconstructed, and debated, and it still remains a cinematic enigma, and a
brilliant one at that. Of all of the Swedish master’s challenging works, Persona is undoubtedly the most complex,
audacious, radical, and experimental film Bergman ever made. It’s also been
widely parodied and imitated. Its influence on other filmmakers, and on pop
culture itself, cannot be taken lightly.
Persona, which means
“mask” in Latin, is all about artifice. Bergman makes no pretentions that what
the audience is viewing is make-believe—it is an invented drama about
personalities hiding behind “masks,” if you will, performed for a camera that
translates the images onto celluloid. In fact, Bergman begins Persona with an extraordinary prologue
consisting of the arc lights igniting inside a projector and the film starting
to move through the sprockets. An extra on this new Criterion Collection
release is Bergman scholar Peter Cowie’s analysis and visual essay on this
first several minutes of the picture—and
it is enlightening for those of us who have studied and pondered over the
meanings behind the seemingly haphazard images (including an erect penis!) that
assault the viewer at the start of the film. It’s interesting to note that
Bergman’s original working title on his script was Cinematography.
Once
the story starts proper, we find ourselves in the sphere of two women. One, a
nurse (Bibi Andersson), is taking care of an actress (Liv Ullmann) who has lost
her ability—or will—to speak. They are alone on an island off the coast of
Sweden (it was actually filmed on Fårö, where many of Bergman’s pictures from the period were
made, and where the director lived and died), and go through a series of
emotional soul-searching moments together. That’s putting it simplistically. By
the end of the short film (83 minutes), the two women have exchanged selves. Or
traded masks. Or become one. Or maybe the characters were two sides of the same
person all along. Or... something. In other words, Persona is totally open to interpretation, and it demands multiple
viewings to fully appreciate. It helps that the film is immensely entertaining.
You can’t keep your eyes off these two incredible actresses who are giving
their all to us.
While Andersson had worked with Bergman
many times prior to Persona, this was
the first picture featuring Ullmann, who would also become a regular member of
the director’s “stock company” as well as his lover. Another extra in the
package is a feature-length documentary, Liv
& Ingmar, directed by Dheeraj Akolkar, which examines the remarkable
forty year relationship between the two. It’s certainly one of those great
cinematic behind-the-scenes love stories, like Burton and Taylor or Tracy and
Hepburn. Ullmann is breathtakingly beautiful in Persona, and, since her character is silent, her acting is
displayed entirely in the expressions on her face. On the other hand, the film
is a tour de force for the also-gorgeous Andersson, who talks non-stop. It’s
certainly the best thing Andersson ever did, and her performance was worthy of
Academy Award consideration (she did win other awards for the film around the
world).
What everyone takes away from Persona, though, is the magnificent
black and white cinematography by Sven Nykvist. His manipulation of light and
shadow is nothing short of magical. And the close-ups!
The tale is all in the up-close and personal examination of these women’s
faces. We’ve all seen the iconic stills of Andersson and Ullmann together, looking
directly at the audience... or the even more startling image of their two faces
merged. There have been many tight director-cinematographer relationships over
the years, but the partnership between Bergman and Nykvist was one of the most
profound.
And thank goodness for The Criterion
Collection’s new 2K digital restoration! The Blu-ray looks far better than the
MGM/UA edition that was released several years ago. Along with the
above-mentioned extras, the package includes a dual Blu-ray/DVD format; new
interviews with Liv Ullmann and filmmaker Paul Schrader; archival interviews
with Bergman, Ullmann, and Andersson; on-set footage with audio commentary by
Bergman historian Birgitta Steene; and the usual slick booklet jam-packed with
more photos, essays, and interviews.
Can you unravel the mystery that is Persona? Consider it a challenge, as
well as an opportunity to experience a cinematic wonder.
Cinema Retro has received the following press release:
Dear Bond fan,
If you haven't already ordered your
copy of MI6 Confidential issue #24 or (better yet!) a 2014 subscription,
here's a little taste of what you've been missing:
Purvis & Wade on ‘Die Another Day’ being too far-fetched: "We asked if ithe invisible car could be
turned down a bit, so that something more was visible, but it’s up to
Lee Tamahori in the end, the way he wanted to do it. We could talk about
kite surfing as well... but maybe we should leave that one alone. It’s
difficult for us to talk about because we don’t want to criticize... but
it did get a bit over the top. We were busy pretty much throughout the
production because at the 11th hour, just before we started shooting,
there was a change of the whole of the third act. We had a heck of a lot
of work to do to try and make that all fit. So, it wasn’t ideal.”
Pierce Brosnan on his off-screen relationship with Teri Hatcher in ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’:
Brosnan explained, “She was late to the set because she was newly
pregnant. I didn’t know that until the end of the day. I was vexed
because I had a call time of six or seven A.M., and we didn’t do any
work until three or four in the afternoon. I got very upset with her -
she was always keeping me waiting for hours. When we finally got her in
front of the cameras, it was great. Getting her there was the problem. I
must admit I let slip a few words, which weren’t very nice. No one told
me her situation until afterward. By that time I’d already shot my
mouth off and cussed and moaned and groaned.”
Director John Glen on filming during a war: “The Argentinean War was taking place at the
time of Octopussy. We went down to Northolt airfield and Peter Lamont,
the production designer, very cleverly made palm trees out of plaster to
double for a generic South American nation that 007 single-handedly
invades.” Whilst Glen was shooting at Northolt, a member of his crew
overheard a curious conversation in a local pub: “They were discussing
why there were palm trees at Northolt Airport and someone said, ‘It’s to
make the Argentinean prisoners of war feel at home!’ They were quite
serious in the pub."
If you have not subscribed yet, you can still pre-order 5 issues for the price of 4: subscribe or renew for 2014.
Use
of the term "cult film" has been around for some time now, but it
still seems difficult to ascertain a true definition. Cult, it would seem, is
in the eye of the beholder; it is not easily described, but you know a cult
film when you see it. This series of slim volumes (around 100 pages each) from
Wallflower Press sees a variety of writers and academics wrestle their own
personal cult film demons as they give analysis, behind-the-scenes tidbits and
biographical details of all the major players concerned.
Two
of their latest books are on Frankenstein (1931) and Faster,
Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965). Robert Horton successfully argues that
although the original Frankenstein was such a mainstream hit that one
may not consider that it qualifies as part of a cult series, it has become a
cult in the manner of a religion, through its hundreds of sequels and the
iconography that has arisen. The face of Frankenstein's monster, as played by
Boris Karloff, is one of the most recognisable images of the twentieth century.
From model kits to sweets dispensers, thanks to endless sequels and the repeats
of Universal horrors on TV throughout the fifties and sixties, Frankenstein
provided the monster that kids most empathised with. Boris Karloff became an
elder statesman of horror and was hugely loved and respected in the sixties,
because despite his many other roles over the years, it was the monster
stitched from reclaimed corpses that people remembered with the most fondness.
Horton
manages to avoid this book simply being a rehash of the same old material we
have read elsewhere, and he points out in great detail Frankenstein's
ability to still shock today, thanks not only to Karloff's performance but also
to James Whale's inventive and mischievous direction. The film may be over
eighty years old but this does not mean it cannot still be frightening.
Whereas
Horton is tackling a series of films, and as he argues, a "cult" in
itself, Dean De Fino is taking on what could initially seem an easier task: one
single film by noted smut-peddler Russ Meyer. However Faster Pussycat! Kill!
Kill! is no ordinary film. Made relatively early in Meyer's career, it
marks his move away from "nudie-cuties" and "roughies" into
something new. Although the film borrows freely from other genres (beach party,
biker flick, drag race, juvenile delinquent), he seems to create something
entirely different. From the jazz-infused opening sequence to the improbably
large bosoms of his female cast, Meyer's film is a fever dream that grind-house
fans and art-house enthusiasts can both appreciate.
The
book is again a mixture of biographical information, behind-the-scenes gossip
and analysis, and each element is equally fascinating to read. Using such
sources as Russ Meyer's own autobiography and other reminiscences the story
behind the making of the scene makes for as entertaining a tale as what ended
up on the screen. He allegedly allowed for no fraternisation between cast and
crew members in order to ensure that all the sexual tension was up on screen (this
was later used as a plot device in Meyer-fan John Waters' Cecil B. DeMented
(2000)). Russ Meyer allegedly allowed this rule to be broken only once in his
entire career, and that was to allow Tura Satana secret trysts with a crew
member. Even he could not say no to her. Satana plays Varla, the leader of a
vicious gang of go-go dancers, and her performance is terrifying. Men are not
safe when she is around. Tura Satana's own history is incredible, and sadly her
recent death has left her memoirs so far unpublished. According to De Fino she
was gang-raped and sent to reform school at 10 and married off to a 17-year old
at 13. She ran away and was posing nude for Harold Lloyd and working as a
stripper by the age of 15, and by 25 she was teaching Shirley MacLaine
burlesque and had slept with Elvis. And then she met Russ Meyer. If ever two
people were destined to work together and form a life-long friendship, it was
them.
De
Fino makes connections from the film to the cultural and political unrest in
1965. He posits that Meyer was playing out issues from the civil rights and
sexual revolution right there in the dust Mojave Desert. This interpretation
backs up the argument that Meyer infused his films with political relevance,
and explains why his films have survived to be hailed as worthy of serious
attention whilst many of his erotic contemporaries have been forgotten.
With
books on other cult titles such as This is Spinal Tap (1984), Bring
Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) and Quadraphenia (1979), the
Cultographies series is an excellent way to become conversant in the cult film
of your choice.
Amphibious Lotus Esprit seen in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977)
This model helicopter used in Skyfall (2012) is on display in the foyer.
The Cougar driven by Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969)
Cinema Retro London reporter Matthew Field admires the art gallery section of the exhibition.
Cinema Retro's Dave Worrall with Ken Adam's early sketches of the legendary Aston Martin DB5 that was first seen in Goldfinger (1964).
Blofeld's Bath-O-Sub, as seen in Diamonds Are Forever (1971)
Speedboat driven by Roger Moore in his first Bond film, Live and Let Die (1973)
Dave and Matt get to ham it up with some "real" Bond girls: some of the ladies from Eon Productions. This souvenir photo puts attendees inside the legendary gun barrel and will be available at the Bond in Motion exhibition.
Entrance to the exhibition at the London Film Museum.
On Tuesday 18th
March Cinema Retro was invited to the opening of Bond In Motion at the
London Film Museum
in Covent Garden. The exhibition, which is the largest collection of
official James Bond vehicles ever assembled, had previously been on
display at Beaulieu Motor Museum. The cars looked fabulous in their new
home and the design of the exhibits allows visitors to
get closer to the vehicles than ever before. Iconic cars that have featured in the high octane, all action Bond films on display, include the underwater Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me, the Rolls-Royce Phantom III from Goldfinger, and the Aston Martin DB5 from GoldenEye, to name but a few.Additionally a mezzanine
level showcases an array of storyboards, sketches and production design
drawings on display to the public for the first time. New to the
exhibition is a 1/3 scale model of an Agusta Westland
AW101 helicopter used in Skyfall. Museum founder Jonathan Sands and Meg
Simmonds of Eon Productions welcomed VIPs to the champagne reception.To visit the London Film Museum web site click here.
Bond in Motion opens to the public on Friday March 21st at the London Film Museum, 45 Wellington Street, London WC2E 7BN. Tel: 020 7202 7043. The exhibition is open seven days a week from 10am to 8pm. (last entry 5pm). Advance tickets available from Ticketmaster, www.ticketmaster.co.uk
(All photos copyright Cinema Retro. All rights reserved.)
Although Hammer Films is best known for its lineup of horror movies, the British studio routinely produced a diverse line of product ranging from adventure movies to crime melodramas. As the popularity of the horror flicks soared in the mid-1960s, Hammer began to concentrate almost exclusively on that genre. One of the better non-horror films was The Scarlet Blade, produced in 1964. The film was inexplicably retitled as The Crimson Blade for U.S. audiences, thus rendering meaningless the tie-in to the titular character, a swashbuckling do-gooder who rallies country folk in support of the king during the English Civil War of the 17th century. The film opens with King Charles I (Robert Rietty) on the run from the forces of Cromwell, who want to arrest him and execute him after a show trial. The king is being protected by a small band of royalists but is nevertheless captured. With the countryside terrorized by the arrival of Cromwell's local governor, Col. Judd (Lionel Jeffries), a plot is nonetheless is hatched by a group of rebels to rescue the king when he is being transported to the Tower of London. The man who is orchestrating this is Edward Beverly (Jack Hedley), who is has the secret alter ego of The Scarlet Blade. In that role, he is a constant thorn in the side of Judd. The Scarlet Blade and his small group of derring-doers raid Judd's compounds, attack his forces and inspire the locals to resist Cromwell's reign. Thus, Judd becomes obsessed with his capture and execution. Unbeknownst to Judd, his own daughter Clair (June Thorburn) is secretly assisting the rebels. Judd can barely stand the the fact that she has openly loyalist sentiments but doesn't suspect she is actually in collusion with The Scarlet Blade. Clair is being wooed by Judd's right hand man, Capt. Tom Sylvester (Oliver Reed), an arrogant egotist who learns that she is in league with the rebels. He offers to keep her secret and quietly assist her activities but only if she pledges her love for him. Clair is initially resistant to Tom's boorish personality but agrees to his offer. Tom is as good as his word and meets with the Scarlet Blade and his men and offers genuine assistance. However, when Clair tells him she actually has fallen in love with Edward Beverly, Tom's loyalties change once more.
The Crimson Blade is a fun, rousing and intelligently scripted story that has the hallmarks of Hammer productions of the period (i.e modest budget but rich production values, crisp color cinematography and a first-rate cast). It's a pleasure to see Lionel Jeffries playing an outright villain instead of a lovable old eccentric and he delivers an excellent performance in a role that seemed to have been envisioned for Christopher Lee. Oliver Reed is equally impressive in this early career role and June Thorburn is fetching as the requisite damsel in distress. The action sequences are frequent and very well-staged and as the Scarlet Blade, Jack Hedley has plenty of swash in his buckle and makes a fine action hero.
The film boasts an excellent transfer and is now available as a Sony burn-to-order title. There are no bonus extras.
Ossie Morris signs a copy of his 2006 autobiography 'Houston, We Have a Problem' for Matthew Field in February of this year.
Oscar-winning
British cinematographer Oswald Morris passed away Monday evening at his home in
Dorset, England. He was 98 years old.
A founding
member and former president of the BSC (the British Society of
Cinematographers), 'Ossie', as he was known to all in the business, won an
Academy Award in 1971 for the musical Fiddler
on the Roof and four Baftas, including one for The Hill (1965) starring Sean Connery. His early career included
working on David Lean's Oliver Twist
and John Huston's Moulin Rouge. Ossie
worked on over 40 major productions in his life, including Oliver!,The Wiz, The Guns of Navarone, Equus, The Man Who Would be King, and many, many more.
Retro's
Matthew Field met the great man at his home just a few weeks ago, in what has
now turned out to be his last interview. The September issue of Cinema Retro
will feature part of Matt's interview in our tribute to this legendary man.
Cinema Retro has received the following press release:
The
2014 Tribeca Film Festival (TFF), presented by AT&T, today announced
the lineup of panels and
conversations that will take place during the 2014 Tribeca Film
Festival. The panels and conversations are made up of two strands:
Tribeca Talks which will include discussions with
Kevin Spacey, Ron Howard, Michael Douglas and Shep Gordon, Lee Daniels, and
Thelma Schoonmaker; and Future of Film, a group of conversations which are part of the new Tribeca Innovation Week featuring conversations with
Bryan Cranston, Aaron Sorkin, Terrence Winter, David Simon, and others.
TFF is also announcing new films that will screen as part of the
"Tribeca Talks: After the Movie" series. TFF will take place April 16 – 27 in New York City. For full details click here
RETRO-ACTIVE: THE BEST ARTICLES FROM CINEMA RETRO'S ARCHIVES
By Lee Pfeiffer
Last year, the Harris Poll reported that John Wayne ranked among America's top ten favorite actors. This may seem like an incredible feat for a man who's been six-feet under since 1979, but the Duke's popularity continues to grow as evidenced by the tidal wave of DVD titles and tributes afforded him this year on what would have been his 100th birthday. Unlike many actors of the past, Wayne is not being rediscovered by a new generation. In fact, he's never been out of style. While younger generations have to be educated about the work of legends such as Bogart and Cagney, it seems people become acquainted with Wayne's image while still in the womb. Warner Brothers and Paramount have teamed up for a major Wayne DVD promotion that will put a dent in any collector's wallet if they hope to acquire all the latest releases and it's bound to evoke mixed emotions in many fans. (Henny Youngman once defined "mixed emotions" as having your mother-in-law drive off a cliff in your new Mercedes.) On the one hand, all of the new releases are "must-haves" for serious collectors. On the other hand, there are so many titles being released simultaneously that not only your eyeballs but your wallet will be overtaxed if you try to absorb them all at once. Tops on the list is WB's "Ultimate Collector's Edition" of Howard Hawks' 1959 classic Rio Bravo. The film is available in several different scaled-down versions, but we'll pretend those don't exist. If you like the movie, there is only one choice and it's the Ultimate Edition.
The web site Do You Remember? pays tribute to the great James Cagney and his Irish roots through some terrific film clips on this St. Patrick's Day. Click here to view
Nicholas Ray’s Knock on Any Door was released on DVD
last summer as part of Sony Pictures’ Choice Collection. The 1949 film starred
Humphrey Bogart and a very young John Derek as a defense attorney and his
street punk of a client.It's not high
on the list of Bogart classics, and it's not even one of Ray's best (It was his
second film, made after the far superior They
Live By Night). Ray never particularly praised it, saying only that he
wished it could've been grimmer. Ray once pointed to Luis Bunuel’s LosOlvidados,
a film about Mexican slum kids that came out in 1950, as an example of the sort
of film KnockOn Any Door could've been.If Bunuel's film had come out first, Ray said, the inspiration would've
been there to make a more penetrating, realistic work. "I would have made
a hell of a lot better movie," Ray said.
Knock
On Any Door is usually labeled as
film noir, but nothing in the story has the subversive taint found in the best
noir films, and there’s none of the sleek, European ex-pat styling, unless one
counts the expressionistic lighting that cuts across the prison floor in a
scene where a convicted killer makes his long walk to the death house. KnockOn Any Door is more in line with the crime dramas turned out by
Warner Bros during the 1930s, which makes sense when one considers Bogart got
his start in those Warner Bros crime flicks, and it was Bogart’s film company,
Santana Productions, that produced Knock
On Any Door for Columbia Pictures.
While it wasn’t a
blockbuster, it performed well enough at the box office to establish Bogart’s
group as a serious production unit. It also gave us the quote, “Live fast, die
young, and have a good looking corpse,” a quote so nice it’s given to us twice
by the angry Nick Romano, played by Derek with all the seething anger he could
muster beneath his impossibly long eyelashes. According to Bogart biographer
Stefan Kanfer, Bogie tried to boost Derek's performance by pointing out that
most of the day's top actors, from James Cagney, to Edward G. Robinson, to
Bogart himself, had started out in crime movies, and that a good performance as
a heel is always eye catching. Not surprisingly, Derek goes for broke in the
film, to the point where he appears to be auditioning for a role in ReeferMadness. Lookat me! he seems to say in every scene, Look at my perfect profile, my quivering
lips; look at how twitchy I am when I play angry! I'm a real actor, damn it!
Derek was just a young,
inexperienced actor fresh out of the paratroopers when he was cast as
"Pretty Boy" Nick Romano, "the Skid Row Romeo.”Romano, like so many Hollywood hoodlums, is a
good boy shoved down the wrong path in life after losing his father at a young
age, and then growing up in poverty. Attorney Andrew Morgan (Bogart) has known
Romano for years and has watched him struggle. When Romano is accused of
killing a cop, Morgan hesitates to help. For one thing, the partners at his law
firm don't want the negative attention such a trial could bring. Morgan also
isn't sure if he believes Romano is innocent.
Knock
On Any Door is actually two films woven together. We
see Romano's tale in flashback, as he goes from being a mama’s boy, to a
typical slum rat and petty thief, to a beleaguered family man who drinks too
much and can't hold down a job. We also see Morgan's crisis of conscious as he
works up the enthusiasm to help him. Morgan, a former slum kid himself,
believes people should help themselves. Gradually, though, he sees Romano as a
kid worth saving. By the film's end, Morgan vows to spend the rest of his life
helping kids like Nick Romano.
The Nick Romano character
was a bit ahead of the times. He looks and carries himself like a character
from a mid-50s juvenile delinquent movie, perhaps The Wild One, or Blackboard
Jungle, or even Ray's own RebelWithout A Cause. There were even rumors,
possibly apocryphal, that Marlon Brando was interested in the Romano role. Hot
off his stage success in A Streetcar
Named Desire, Brando would've been an interesting Romano, and with his
realistic acting, might have booted this movie into something close to a
classic. According to different sources, Bogart was originally planning to make
the film under the direction of Mark Hellinger, with Brando as Romano. When
Hellinger died in Dec. 1947, the project was temporarily put aside until Bogart
started Santana Productions. Brando, who had wanted to work with Hellinger,
allegedly turned down Bogie’s offers, paving the way for Derek. (I find it a
little hard to believe that Bogart was, as some biographers claim, pursuing
Brando to any great degree, considering Bogart was notoriously disdainful of
the self-indulgent method actor types emerging out of New York. The thought of
Brando and Bogart together is fascinating, but just the fact that Bogart
eventually chose Derek, who was light years away from the brooding Brando,
makes me think the whole Brando rumor was nothing but a PR flack's pipe dream.)
Derek, with his greasy mop
of thick black hair, looks the part of a dashing street hood, but his acting is
too melodramatic and hasn't aged well. At the time, though, Derek made quite a
splash, inspiring Hollywood gossip columnist Luella Parsons to write, "I
predict John Derek will be one of the big screen stars of 1949."Stardom didn't quite find Derek, although he
acted regularly for many years, appearing in everything from westerns to bible
epics.He's probably best known to baby
boomers as the husband/mentor and sometime director of Bo Derek.Even when Derek died in 1998, most of the obits
focused on the couple's May/December romance, which was fodder for gossip rags
during Bo's brief run at movie stardom.
Bogart is Bogart, and not
much more needs to be said. There's an excellent scene where, suspecting Romano
has stolen 100-dollars from him, Bogart as Morgan lures Romano into an alley
and wrestles him to the ground, pinning him in the dirt with some sort of
commando hold and then rifling through Romano's pocket to get back his money.
"You're a two-bit punk, and that's all you'll ever be,” Bogart snarls,
spraying saliva everywhere.Always a
sprayer and a drooler, Bogart’s lips and chin practically shine with spittle in
this movie, especially during the courtroom scenes where he has long speeches
and no one around to wipe his mouth. Bogart’s forehead also perspires like crazy in
the court scenes, until he looks like he's performing on the bow of a ship
during a storm. He's great, though, and his closing speech to the jury is among
the better scenes of his late '40s period.Heavy-handed? Sure, but Bogart could always make these scenes
compelling, whereas if another actor tried it, the bit would come off as
grandstanding.
"Knock OnAny Door is a
picture I'm kind of proud of, and I'll tell you why," Bogart the producer
said in a press release trumpeting the film. "It's a very challenging
story; different; off the beaten path. The novel (by Willard Motley) was
brutally honest. We've tried to be just as direct, just as forceful, in the
picture. I think you'll like it better that way. "
Although Variety
proclaimed Knock On Any Door "a
hard-hitting, tight melodrama," the film's Feb. 1949 release was greeted
by mixed reviews. The notion that criminals were not always responsible for
their actions was a relatively new and unpopular concept. The film was
occasionally praised for its direct look at life in the slums, but Bosley Crowther
of ‘The New York Times’ wasn't impressed. "Not only,” wrote Crowther, “are
the justifications for the boy's delinquencies inept and superficial...but the
nature and aspect of the hoodlum are outrageously heroized." Crowther, who
may have invented the word ‘heroized,’ added that the film was riddled with
"inconsistencies and flip-flops," and that "The whole thing
appears to be fashioned for sheer romantic effect, which its gets from its
'pretty-boy' killer, victim of society and blazing guns."
Actually, the film
could've used some more blazing guns. The opening sequence is a stunner, with a
cop being gunned down on a dark street, and a sudden swarming of the
neighborhood by cops rousting every local man with a criminal record. The scene
is a mere tease, though, for the film settles down into a talky courtroom drama
and doesn't quite live up to its opening blast. But give Bogie and his Santana
crew credit for choosing this project as their debut voyage. They jumped on the
juvenile delinquent bandwagon before it had really taken off, predating the
screwed-up teenager craze by five or six years. In a way, Derek’s Nick Romano was
a forerunner of James Dean, Elvis, Sal Mineo, and every other greasy hoodlum
with puppy dog eyes that would populate the movie screens of the 1950s.
The Choice Collection DVD offers no extra
features, but the transfer is crisp and clear, all the better to see Bogart
sweat.
The addictive pop culture blog Hill Place presents an impassioned defense of Tina Louise as Ginger over Dawn Wells as Mary Ann on the Gilligan's Island TV sitcom. Retro TV lovers have long been debating who was the hottest chick on the isle: sweet but sexy "good girl Mary Ann or "bad girl" diva Ginger. It's amazing how compelling this article actually is, as it delves into the behind-the-scenes rivalry between the two actresses. Click here to read
