In the spirit of Cinema Retro's quest to help make audiences aware of worthwhile independent films, columnist David Savage reports on the new short Sahaja Springs.

If precious few directors have exploited the inherent comedy of the ashram -- a retreat for meditation, yoga and enlightenment -- it may be because, like the fashion biz and network television, for example -- these realms do an awfully good job of satirizing themselves.

One director willing to take a stab at sending up the yoga lifestyle is emerging indie director Rebecca Conroy, a recent graduate of Columbia University's graduate film program. Her hilarious short, Sahaja Springs, recently screened at the IFC Center in Manhattan, and has both tickled and angered audiences, depending on whom you ask. (Men seem to be amused; women, not so much, according to Conroy.)

The film's multi-thread narrative follows a group of ashram residents as they struggle to find inner peace promised by an Upstate New York ashram run by a faux-Indian, fraudulent yogi. That the character is played by a real-life Indian yogi, 92 year-old Kumar Pallana -- the Indian character actor with a recurring role in many of Wes Anderson's films such as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Darjeeling Limited -- is a good example of the film’s layered comedy.

Meanwhile, a male ashram resident – a hunky, magnetic loner who speaks in mystical yet baffling headscratchers – seems to be driving all the females crazy with frustrated lust and confusion.

It’s a smart, deadpan jewel from a young director who knows whence she speaks: Conroy drew upon her own experiences as a yoga follower, ashram-crasher and daughter of a hippie mother.

I sat down recently for coffee with Conroy and discussed the idea behind her yoga satire and “The Great Kumar”’s surprising theatrical history.

A new documentary examining the tragic and influential life of Warhol Factory star Candy Darling, entitled Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Warhol Superstar had its US premiere at the New Directors/New Films Festival, last Friday, April 2nd, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The writer and director, James Rasin, was present with key members of his crew, most notably Jeremiah Newton, who executive produced and whose shared life with Darling provided the main focus
of this revelatory, intelligent documentary.

Framed by a present-day narrative involving close friend Jeremiah Newton's efforts to give Candy's funeral urn a final resting place (in tiny Cherry Valley, New York -- the significance of which is never explained), the documentary recounts in vivid detail the fast-burning life of Warhol's most legendary Superstar. (The only one of Warhol's Superstars, by the way, paid tribute by two Lou Reed-penned songs for The Velvet Underground.) The filmmaker and his crew weave together early video clips, film footage, recordings, photographs, period music and and original score to create a dense narrative fabric, making it one the most thorough and authoritative biopics of the Warhol clan.

By David Savage

It’s an angry time in America. Tea Partiers, Olbermann, Palin, Wall Street villains, an endless war in Afghanistan, mercenaries in Congress, flying terrorists, high unemployment and Twitter-addicted freaks.

So it’s either a perfect time to bring out a remake of George Romero’s 1973 horror classic The Crazies, or the timing is really curious, if this mainstream horror reboot’s aim is to encourage viewers to “enjoy some surprises and maybe forget their troubles for a couple hours,” says one of the producers, Rob Cowan.  The movie opens in North America today.

The dramatic irony floating over the film – in which a small, idyllic Midwestern town descends into violence and mayhem when a water-born toxin infects half the population – might be the question whether Americans even need the excuse of a crazy-making virus to descend into anarchy. Aren’t we on the tipping point already? 

I’ll leave that for viewers to discuss. Meanwhile, this remake from Overture Films features Timothy Olyphant (Live Free or Die Hard), Radha Mitchell (Silent Hill) and is directed by Breck Eisner (Sahara). The writers, Scott Kosar and Ray Wright, have reportedly updated Romero’s original concept from being told from the point of view of the townsfolk to the husband and wife team of David and Judy (Olyphant and Mitchell).

By David Savage

In Roland Emmerich's upcoming multi-billion-dollar boondoggle 2012 (a date from which Mayan scholars have already distanced themselves, unfortunately, since the whole plot hinges on a "Mayan prophecy" that the world will end in that year), the director decided to film a scene in which the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio is destroyed, citing his belief against “organized religion.”

Interestingly, though, he lost his nerve when it came time to follow through with filming the destruction of another sacred site of organized religion: the Kaaba -- that cube-shaped shrine that sits at the heart of Mecca. Explains Emmerich: “Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit. But my co-writer Harald said I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right. We have to all in the Western world think about this [sic]. You can actually let Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is. So it's just something which I kind of didn't [think] was [an] important element, anyway, in the film, so I kind of left it out.”

By David Savage

The Film Society of Lincoln Center, in association with Cinecittà Luce, and the Fondazione Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale in Rome, will present the most complete series on Italian Neorealism ever screened in New York: "Life Lessons: Italian Neorealism and the Birth of Modern Cinema", a month-long, 40-film series on the film movement from postwar Italy. The series screens at the Walter Reade Theater from Friday, October 30 through Wednesday, November 25.

This promises to be a landmark survey of a crucial period of cinema history and New York-area film-goers of any persuasion should try to see at least one in the series. Rossellini’s Open City is often cited as the first milestone in this movement, so it might be the go-to mother lode if you have to see just one film. Born from the war-torn landscapes of 1940s Italy, Neorealist films were both unique stylistically and thematically, according to the festival programmers. Shot on location, using available light, casting non-professional actors, these films were revolutionary also for their candid depictions of the working class. Not only would the movement elevate the art form from simple entertainment, but it opened a dialogue about the future of Italy as well as creating films of extraordinary power and humanity.

Emanating in radioactive waves of hilarity from its home at New World Stages on W. 50^th Street in Manhattan is The Toxic Avenger, The Musical, the not-exactly-anticipated musicalization of the 1984 cult movie. The show opened April 6^th. New York-area “Toxie” fans of the 1984 film and its numerous sequels will not want to miss this well-oiled, high-camp machine of a show, written by Joe DiPietro (“I Love you, You’re Perfect, Now Change”) with music and lyrics by Bon Jovi founding member David Bryan.

Expanding upon the plot of the film, the musical casts it net a bit wider, summoning the operatic, mock-horror of Phantom of the Opera, combined with the rock-opera structure of Phantom of The Paradise (1974), all in the spirit of Revenge of the Nerds. For non-inductees into the Cult of Toxie (of which I am one), the story concerns a certain Melvin Ferd III, a Tromaville, New Jersey nerd, who discovers documents in his local library (while he’s there trying to flirt with his unrequited love, the blind librarian Sarah) linking the town’s mayor to a company dumping toxic waste in a city landfill. When the mayor learns of Melvin’s discovery, she sics her two bullying goons on him, causing him to fall into a barrel of toxic goo. Emerging with superhero strength, one eyeball sliding down his cheek, his brain half-exposed and his entire body dripping with toxic green slime, “Toxie” is nonetheless ready to go after the bad guys and wreak bloody revenge for his horrible disfigurement. He’s also determined to win the heart of Sarah while he’s at it, since she thought his former self a bit too weasly.

According to New Jersey-native composer and lyricist David Bryan, the show is a fulfillment of a lifelong dream ever since he saw the 1984 movie in a midnight movie theater in Newark. “From that day on,” according to his notes on the musical’s website, “he dreamed of writing a musical about the first mutant superhero from his home state.” The musical was developed at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, and positively overflows with New Jersey references, given the Garden State-roots of both Bryan and the show’s book author, Joe DiPietro, who hails from Exit 166. (Bryan grew up off Exit 109). In New Jersey, if you didn’t know – and you’ll know by the end of this show – you don’t discuss what town you’re from, it’s what EXIT you’re from!

To its detriment, the show never rises to a comedic level above the cartoonish, comic book genre. Ecological disaster, global warming, political corruption, small-town hypocrisy, even rape – all subjects are given the same, frantically silly treatment. This is no doubt by design, in keeping with the tone of the movie. However, as a result, it never really elicits any range of emotion – just a broad, tickled smile from the start, to a more tired smile at finish, as the facial muscles begin failing.

But I still urge Cinema Retro’s readers to go see it, as the performances alone are worth the price of admission. There isn’t a weak one in the bunch – all are top-form, scary-talented Broadway pros.

“There is dignity in all work.” True enough, whoever penned that famous phrase, even if he never had to meet Perez Hilton. What would make an interesting addendum, though, is that finding that dignity is a story worth telling. Example: Whatever happened to the former high school cheerleading captain who dated the quarterback? You remember Rose? She’s now a single mom working as a housecleaner and having an affair with a married cop.

So is the jumping-off point for Sunshine Cleaning, a new dramatic comedy starring Amy Adams (Doubt, Junebug) as Rose Lorkowski and Emily Blunt (The Devil Wears Prada) as her sister Norah.

Rose tells herself the maid work is just a transitional phase while she gets her real estate license. Norah is still living at home with their father, Joe (Alan Arkin), a salesman with a long history of ill-fated get-rich schemes.

Desperate to get her troubled son into a better school, Rose persuades Norah to partner with her in the more lucrative niche market of crime scene clean-up. After passing the gag-test initiation rite of their first rookie job (a finger shot off in a domestic dispute case) the sisters find themselves elbow-deep in the gory aftermath of suicides, murders and other forensic horror-scenes.

Naming her new business Sunshine Cleaning and tackling it with the same, cheery zeal as her former cheerleader self, Rose quickly learns the rules and ropes of her unlikely new market. (For instance, there are products out there specially formulated for cleaning up a “decomp.”) Norah dutifully labors alongside her sister, not exactly grateful for the new job, but not exactly complaining either.

While the sisters realize a reparative bond is forming between them, they also realize that they are approaching this traditionally macho, are-you-tough-enough job in a radical new way: as women. Screenwriter Megan Holley (in her first produced screenplay) drives the point home in one touching scene in which the sisters are called to the home of an elderly woman whose husband has just committed suicide. Rose, sensing the newly widowed woman’s shock and confusion, sits with her on her front porch, silently holding her hand. She won’t allow herself to cry, even as the widow allows herself finally to break down.

Rose’s odd new life is building to a personal epiphany, and when it comes, it occurs in the one place she had hoped to redeem herself on the most superficial of levels – at a baby shower attended by her former high school classmates. It’s one of the film’s best scenes, and also shows off the impressive depth of understanding Amy Adams brings to her roles.

“I also really could identify with wanting to be more than you are,” said Adams of her role, “in a different place that you were born into, to sort of elevate your status in the world. That’s something I think a lot of people identify with.”

Set in the arid, chain store landscape of Albuquerque, (although the screenwriter originally placed the story in Baltimore), director Christine Jeffs makes the most of the Southwestern city’s locations, aided by cinematographer John Toon.

Aside from a few too many nakedly sentimental subplots cued with emotive, acoustic guitar (a tiresome indie convention) which, if cut, might have kept the story leaner and more on its true, emotional track, Sunshine Cleaning is a welcome take on a real, “purpose-driven life.”

Sunshine Cleaning opens in theaters on March 27^th.

-David Savage

 

 

The Killing of Sister George was the first “serious” film ever to earn an X rating - though many people erroneously believe that distinction was held by by Midnight Cowboy, which was released the following year.

A little-seen but oft-cited film in the queer canon, Sister George still packs a subversive punch 40 years after its release, not least for its still-unbested, two-minute lesbian sex scene. (Paradoxically I find it one of the least sexy “sex scenes” ever captured on film.) 

Beryl Reid (who won a Tony for the role she originated on Broadway) plays an aging, gin-soaked actress, June Buckridge who, in turn, plays a kindly country nun on a popular BBC soap opera, Applehurst – but not for long. The producers of the show have decided to kill off her character. Meanwhile, June’s live-in, blond bombshell girlfriend “Childie” (Susannah York) is getting restless. Enter Mrs. Mercy Croft (Coral Browne), one of Applehurst’s producers, who finds her first female attraction with Childie. The love triangle that ensues is still jaw-dropping 40 years later.

The screening on 2/28 will be introduced by former TimeOut New York film critic Melissa Anderson, who had this to say about Sister George:

“The Killing of Sister George, which was released in 1968, has always fascinated me as a depiction of pre-Stonewall lesbian culture. It was the first “serious” film to receive an X-rating, due to the notorious 119-second love scene between Coral Browne and Susannah York. Although that scene is completely ludicrous—if not downright offensive—I find that Robert Aldrich’s portrayal of George (played by the great Beryl Reid, reprising her role from the stage play) is quite compassionate. Though she’s certainly prone to atrocious behavior, George is the only one in the film who has not compromised herself or exploited others. And Aldrich’s decision to film the club scene at a real lesbian bar—the Gateways Club on Kings Road in London—using real patrons as extras gives the movie a certain level of authenticity.”

And let’s not leave out Robert Aldrich for praise. This was one versatile director. Although he’s best known for his endlessly quotable, taut-wire suspense thrillers such as Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) and Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), this was the same director who gave us Kiss Me Deadly (1955), The Dirty Dozen (1967) and the survival drama The Flight of the Phoenix (1965). We love versatility here at CinemaRetro, and we love under-appreciated cult classics coming in for their long-overdue due. Due due? Sorry. Don’t miss Sister George!

Special thanks to Melissa Anderson for her contribution to this article. Read her complete article on the film in the January/February ’09 issue of Film Comment or link to it here: http://www.filmlinc.com/fcm/jf09/sistergeogre.htm

 

-David Savage

 

 

Unlike the high school hellcats twenty years before them, tossing globes out of classroom windows and firing on police officers (see High School Confidential), Foxes (1980), is a portrait of teenage torpor at the dawn of the Eighties. These jaded teens, led by Jodie Foster, would rather pop a ‘lude and put on a Boston LP.

Examining the loosely woven friendship between four high school girls in the San Fernando Valley, each with typical problems of her age – and therefore seemingly insurmountable – Foxes looks at how each personality type copes with life, sex and parents, all of whom are divorced and too busy trying to find themselves rather than guide their children through the rockiest period of their lives.

Released between two movies that became classics of the L.A. High School genre, Rock ‘n Roll High School (1979) and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Foxes was more of a teen drama that dared to bum out its audience with issues of teen pregnancy, drug addiction and death. With murky cinematography, uneven performances and no happy ending, it was promptly forgotten after its release and sank like a stone, not even helped by its Giorgio Moroder music and title track sung by Donna Summer (“On the Radio” plays over the opening credits.) It didn’t help that the exploding punk scene that immediately followed gained ground quickly and influenced the look of scores of more high school movies to come, quickly dating Foxes’ sun-hazed ambience of the late ‘70s. It was thus forgotten and became a relic of its time, classed more with Skatetown U.S.A. than other frank, exploratory teenage dramas of the same year, like Little Darlings (1980) with Kristy McNichol and Tatum O’Neal, which is more of a true companion piece.

Jodie Foster never mentions it in interviews, nor is it ever mentioned in career surveys of her films. (Likewise her co-star, Scott Baio.)

But when MGM re-issued the film on home video/dvd a few years ago, a younger generation (born from the late ‘70s to the early ‘80s) discovered it and embraced it, creating a revival of interest in the film that far exceeded its reception upon its release. True to the “twenty-year loop” law, hipsters with an insatiable appetite for the look and sounds of the early ‘80s began referencing Foxes in a number of ways, from fashion design to music, graphic design and photography. (Cherie Currie of The Runaways, who plays ill-fated Annie, came in for special homage. She has a peroxided, doomed rocker-chick look that was revived by the style icon actress Chloë Sevigny.) It also started showing up in “best-of” lists by film columnists and in critical essays in alternative weeklies and film journals around the world.

Far from being a great movie, Foxes is an enjoyable period piece that is notable for its time for not being in hysterics about being a teenager. It’s still a “message movie” in the same way that High School Confidential was about the dangers of neglectful parents, except the message here is that the kids will probably survive in spite of them.

Apart from the principal cast of four or five young stars (Foster and Baio being the marquee names), Sally Kellerman is excellent as the archetypal divorcee mother of the ‘70s, complete with Toni perm and low-cut blouse. In one key scene, she breaks down in front of her daughter (Foster), railing at how she and her friends “make me hate my hips.”

Look for cameos by Randy Quaid, Lois Smith, Robert Romanus (Fast Times) and a pre-pubescent Laura Dern in coke-bottle eyeglasses.

 

-David Savage

As part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s showcase “Mavericks and Outsiders: Positif Celebrates American Cinema,” at the Walter Reade Theater, Jan. 30 – Feb. 5, I finally had the good fortune to see a film I had always heard people speak about in mixed tones of confusion, offense and admiration: Fingers (1978), written and directed by James Toback and starring Harvey Keitel. An added bonus was the appearance of Toback after the screening, who was welcomed onto the stage for a Q&A with noted French film critic Michel Ciment, the editor of the film journal Positif and one of the lone champions of the controversial film when it opened in theaters 31 years ago. (The twin heavyweights of film criticism at the time, Janet Maslin and Vincent Canby, both “piled on,” as Toback put it, with negative reviews that killed its box office word-of-mouth.)

Keitel plays Jimmy “Fingers” Angelelli, a virtuoso pianist who aspires to a life on the concert stage, rather than his day job of being a kneecap-breaker for his loan shark father (Michael Gazzo). When the movie begins he’s practicing a Bach toccata for a make-it-or-break-it audition with the head of Carnegie Hall. If he makes it, it could be his long-awaited exit out of a life of shaking down pizzeria owners for ten grand. In between practice sessions he’s driving a flashy red Cadillac convertible around town, wearing Botany 500 suits and a rakish scarf, and blaring ‘50s pop from his portable boombox. This is one dude who is a study in contradictions. Keitel interprets Jimmy so sympathetically -- the most obvious character tic being his fidgety hands that cannot be governed, hence his nickname – that you can’t help falling under his charm within the first few minutes of the movie.

Meanwhile, his father has one client that not only is refusing to pay up, but is mocking him behind his back: Riccamonza, a handsome, up-and-coming Mafioso. Jimmy’s father needs Riccamonza to be humbled – perhaps worse – to regain his respect, and he turns to his son as his only hope.

Adding to his stress load, Jimmy is crazy about an enigmatic girl (Tisa Farrow) who barely says a word, stares into space a lot and lives in a loft in Soho. (This was 1978, keep in mind.) It turns out she’s a prostitute working for a pimp played by Jim Brown – yes, that Jim Brown – the NFL Hall of Famer and ‘70s blaxploitation star. His role as “Dreems” is only one of a number of flavorful cameos in this strange, nervous, colorful and frenetic little picture.

The only film to have been financed by Fabergé Brut (Cary Grant was on their board of directors at the time and steered his fellow members to believe in Toback), it’s positively redolent with the drugstore after-shave, and pulses with a unapologetic sexual energy that the period was known for. Jimmy brazenly approaches women and talks to them in ways that would have him on NOW’s hit list, and other races come in for a bruising in language that would never pass the censors today. Still, the film has a moving, messy humanity and an urgency that makes it clear why it has enjoyed something of a renaissance in recent years.

The cinematographer, Michael Chapman, who also lensed Taxi Driver for Scorsese, gives Fingers a similar look: dark, gritty, but splashed with rich, violent color. 

A number of gem-like cameos are studded throughout: Stage actress Marian Seldes as Jimmy’s asylum-dwelling mother; Danny Aiello as one half of the two-member bodyguard detail surrounding arch-villain Riccamonza, the other half being Ed Marinaro; Tanya Roberts, in a bikini which slips off easily, as Riccamonza’s girlfriend; Lenny Montana (The Godfather) as the pizzeria owner (filmed at John’s Pizzeria on Bleecker Street), and – are you ready for this? – GOP fundraiser heavy Georgette Mosbacher as Jimmy’s father’s cheap and tawdry girlfriend, Anita. (Checking it out, it makes sense, she was then married to the producer, George Barrie.)

Toback had many a hilarious anecdote to tell host Ciment about the making of the film, his first directorial effort, and perhaps most memorable was concerning the shocking scene in which Dreems (Jim Brown) knocks together the heads of his two call girls, one of whom was Tisa Farrow. As Toback remembers, he approached Brown after the first, all-too-real take that left Farrow with real blood dribbling down her knotted forehead. Toback told Brown that they wouldn’t be doing another take, it was simply too painful for the actresses. Brown appeared to not be listening. “He was staring off into space, not even reacting,” said Toback. Finally Brown, in a voice barely above a whisper and in language that is unprintable, asked Toback why he hadn’t hired a more “delicate” actor like Sidney Poiter to do the scene so they could fake the head-butting. Farrow complained (and in today’s litigious environment who knows what an actress would have done) and later, as penance, Toback smacked himself on the head repeatedly with the butt of a pistol during the sound recording in post-production. He, too, had blood pouring down his face, but he didn’t want to ask his actors to suffer something he himself wasn’t willing to endure. “So whenever you’re going through the sound catalogue of heads being butted together,” Toback told the audience, “that is me hitting my head with the butt of a pistol.”

Another anecdote involved Francois Truffaut, who, during the year of its release, named it as one of his favorite from an American director in years. Shortly afterwards while at The Beverly Hills Hotel, Toback spotted the famous French auteur poolside, who was in town during the making of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Instead of approaching him directly to thank him and risk putting Truffaut on the spot, opted to page him on a house telephone, as was the fashion of the day. When he picked up the phone – Toback watching from inside the hotel – he graciously thanked Truffaut for his support, only to be met with a long silence. Getting flustered, he suggested that he would love to meet Truffaut for a drink while he was in town. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” replied Truffaut. “Why is that?” asked Toback. “I think we should just continue communicating to each other through our films.”

 

-David Savage

 

 

 

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By David Savage

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If the phrase Barbara, please! means something special to you and you live in New York, most likely you’ve attended at least once the weekly Clearview Classics series at Chelsea’s Clearview Cinemas, hosted by New York’s own, reigning “Queen of Green,” drag performer and comic chanteuse Hedda Lettuce. If not, you have no excuse. Mark your calendars now. Screening twice on Thursday nights and once on Saturdays, and attended by a congregation of fanatical members who can recite every word of Mommie Dearest, Torch Song, Airport ’75, Earthquake, or Xanadu at will, Clearview Classics has been the main home of “Lettuce” for eight years now. Every week she packs in a crowd for her hilarious pre-movie show in which she warms up the crowd (not that they need it) with songs (which she sings herself), key scene re-enactments with audience members, special guests and, if you should be so unfortunate, identification of “virgins” – mousy first-timers who have never seen Valley of the Dolls or its ilk and are dragged mercilessly into the spotlight. 

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For the current schedule of Clearview Classics, its address and directions, go to: www.clearviewcinemas.com/classics. 

For more on Hedda Lettuce, visit The Queen of Green’s website at: www.heddalettuce.com

Cinema Retro columnist David Savage takes a look at Hollywood's most dubious career achievement.

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Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls: the film that inspired Whoopi Goldberg to say she hadn't seen this many poles abused since WWII.

In the run-up to this year’s Razzie nominations, to be announced Wednesday, January 21^st for 2008’s “honorees” for the worst achievements in moviemaking, the longlist buzz is already getting press. If it’s any indication, 2008 must have been a stink-bomb banner year for movies as it’s rare for the press to report on the worst movies of the year just-passed, before the nominations are even announced.

Among the films emerging as leading contenders for 2008’s gold-plated raspberry statuette -- always bestowed on the eve of the “other” gold-plated statuette ceremony -- are: The Love Guru, Mike Myers’ laughless Bollywood debacle; Speed Racer, Disaster Movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still (the 2009 “reimagining”), High School Musical 3, The Hottie & The Nottie (starring Paris Hilton in a brave, human-like performance) Postal (director Uwe Boll’s “best film to date”), The Happening and Meet Dave, starring Eddie Murphy as Eddie Murphy.

My personal favorite for Worst Movie of 2008 is the unbearably PC remake of The Women (which I wrote about last March), Diane English’s 12-years-in-the-making update to the 1939 ensemble classic. Think of it as WE network’s answer to the furs-and-cigarettes 1930s. Yoga mats replace chaise lounges, chai lattes replace gin-and-tonics, and self-empowerment bromides replace catty ripostes. Comic actresses with genius timing like Candice Bergen, Cloris Leachman and Debra Messing all went to waste in this ill-conceived mess.

But since the Razzies were created in 1980, the award itself has gained the patina of respect over the last two decades. Earning a golden raspberry has become its own singular honor, so delicious is the “bad”  publicity created by being part of a B-movie which, if the participants are lucky enough, will pass from critics’ wrath to (hopefully) ripen over time to the esteemed “so bad it’s good” Hall of Shame.  Witness Showgirls, Mommie Dearest, Battlefield Earth, Howard the Duck, et al. Elizabeth Berkley of Showgirls thought she may have committed career suicide after the 1995 movie opened to incredulous laughter, but now is firmly enthroned as B-movie royalty, in the tradition of Valley of the Dolls’ Patty Duke.

But perhaps most importantly, the award winners who show enough self-lampooning humor to show up at the ceremonies to hold the “fruit of their labors” are usually rewarded with more affection and respect by the public and press for being so game.

The best example was Halle Berry’s hilarious acceptance speech at 2005’s Razzies for her performance in Catwoman. (“I want to thank the writers…thank you for thinking this was a good idea…”)

I wonder, though: Has any actor or filmmaker ever won a Razzie on Oscar Eve and then won an Academy Award the next night for the same film? I asked the founder of The Razzies, John Wilson.

“No one's ever won both awards in a single weekend for the exact same

achievement,” said Wilson, “but we have had five instances of some overlap:

 

For 1980, James Coco was BOTH an Oscar and a Razzie nominee for his

supporting performance in Only When I Laugh.

For 1983, Amy Irving was BOTH an Oscar and a Razzie nominee for her

supporting performance (as Barbra Streisand’s “wife”) in Yentl. 

For 1988, Tom Cruise starred in both that year’s Worst Picture “winner”

(Cocktail) and that year’s Best Picture winner (Rain Man).

For 1992, Alan Mencken “won” both a WORST Song Razzie (for a song

from Newsies) and a Best Song Oscar (for a song from Aladdin) in one weekend. 

For 1997, screenwriter Brian Helgeland “won” both a WORST Screenplay Razzie

(for Kevin Costner’s Postman) and a BEST Screenplay Oscar (for L.A. 

Confidential) in one weekend. 

 

For all things Razzie, go to www.razzies.com. Special thanks to John Wilson, head RazzBerry for his contribution to this article.

 

 

 

An over-capacity crowd packed the Academy Theater in New York last night for AMPAS’s popular “Monday Nights with Oscar” program, this time featuring a special treat: “Hollywood Home Movies: Treasures from the Academy Film Archive.” The program, curated by Academy archivist Lynne Kirstee and accompanied by pianist Donald Sosin, afforded a rare glimpse into the intimate scenes of family life of Hollywood’s legendary directors, producers and actors, and were at once fascinating and strangely familiar.

We saw Alfred Hitchcock playing with his baby daughter Patricia on their English estate; Bogart and Bacall sailing their beloved Santana out of the Newport Beach marina (she’s making dreary sandwiches down in the hull while he dashingly masters the riggings up on deck, an ever-present cigarette dangling from his lips); Cedric Gibbons and his wife Dolores del Rio entertaining guests poolside at their home in Santa Monica; and other peeks at the off-hours of Hollywood’s Golden Age royalty. Interestingly, just when the scenes began to look overly familiar in that “every family has an over-eating aunt” way, out of left field comes a sophisticated camera trick (Hitchcock eating a banana backwards, for example) that reminds one that these people literally had technical magic at their fingertips.

Or, for example, watching Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland playing in a charity tennis match in 1939 (part of the Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Collection) gives the viewer the sensation of being in a communal living room and watching home movies of everyone’s relatives. Or something bizarre like that.

The program also included revealing commentary from the likes of Gary Cooper’s daughter, Maria Cooper Janis; Steve McQueen’s wife, Neile Adams; and the last wife of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Vera Shelton, among others. As Shelton recounted in an amusing anecdote, she met Fairbanks by chance at a crowded bar when she turned to the man next to her and asked his help in getting her a drink. For some, brushes with fame remain just that. For others, they turn into relationships, affairs or marriages that last decades.

One revelation I found fascinating was the availability of color film to the home movie camera user as early as the mid-1930s. In the Hitchcock segment, the clip was in a dreamy “lenticular color” which is registered on a specialized film through thousands of minute “lenses” embedded into the emulsion, and then usually projected through a tri-color banded filter (these details courtesy of Wikipedia). Also holding up astonishingly well were the Kodachrome film clips featuring Esther Williams at home (circa 1949-55) and the beautiful saturated color footage of Marlon Brando shooting On the Waterfront (c. 1953-54), courtesy of the Charles Rossi Collection.

The program was also punctuated with early home movies of New York Harbor in 1927, a beauty contest parade in Atlantic City from 1935, and the neon wonderland of Times Square in the mid-1950s, providing a national context to the celebrity home movie clips through the decades.

Bravo to AMPAS for this entertaining and revealing evening!

The Academy Theater is located at 111 East 59^th Street in Manhattan. Please note Monday Nights with Oscar is going on hiatus for the month of September for administrative needs. For reservations to any event in this monthly film series, call (888) 778-7575.

-DAVID SAVAGE

Cinema Retro columnist David Savage continues his coverage of the Tribeca Film Festival with a report on a surprise appearance by Dennis Hopper at a screening of one of his earliest films.

The newly restored 35mm print of Night Tide (1961), USA

Last year saw the passing of Curtis Harrington (1926-2007), the director of a slew of delicious psycho-thrillers from the '60s and '70s, including Who Slew Auntie Roo? (1971) and What's the Matter with Helen? (1971), both with Shelly Winters, as well as the critical favorite The Killing Kind (1973) with John Savage. So it was a fitting tribute to the director that Tribeca Film Festival screened two newly restored prints of Harrington's at Pace University last Sunday, April 29^th -- his 1948 experimental short, Picnic, and his rarely seen, first feature film, Night Tide (1961) with Dennis Hopper. Both prints were fresh out of the Academy Film Archive labs in Los Angeles. Adding to the insider-thrill of the occasion was a surprise visit by Hopper himself, who drove in from Queens where he was on location shooting a new movie. Hopper said he hadn't seen the film -- his first, full-length starring role -- in several years, so it was interesting to watch the 25-year-old actor on the screen, then steal furtive glances over at him in his seat watching himself, some 47 years earlier.

Night Tide tells the tale of a young sailor, Johnny Drake (Hopper) on leave in the then-derelict area of Venice, California, who becomes smitten with a mysterious, dark-haired girl, Mora (Linda Lawson) who portrays a mermaid in a carnival sideshow on the pier. They meet in a beatnik grotto-bar complete with jazz combo and snapping, turtlenecked patrons, and from there embark on an enigmatic, moody love affair that spells trouble from the get-go. Her handler and sideshow boss, Captain Murdock (Gavin Muir), warns Johnny that her previous boyfriends were both found drowned, and hints broadly that the fishtail she wears in the sideshow may not be a put-on. Other troubling signs include her serving fish for breakfast, and on one date, she succumbs to the incantatory rhythms of a beach bongo-duo and draws a crowd as she writhes expressionistically to their performance. Johnny won't listen to locals who also try to warn him off the mysterious Mona, until it's nearly too late.

Highly atmospheric and evocative of Los Angeles' beatnik art scene in the late '50s-early '60s (of which Hopper was a member), Night Tide is a odd delight, full of eccentric bit players, stilted dialogue and the lurid backdrop of a seedy amusement pier. It also sets the tone for Harrington's later pictures, most of which are campy thrillers involving a mentally fragile woman in a setting of decayed glamour, in the same genre as Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).

But digging a bit deeper, it hints at Harrington's involvement in the occult. Harrington, according to Dennis Hopper, was a friend of notorious occult filmmaker Kenneth Anger, with whom he went to school and collaborated on Anger's and his own first experimental films -- many of which deal in mythical and pagan topics. Their mutual friend was an artist in the L.A. art scene of the time known simply as 'Cameron,' and who plays the role of The Water Witch in Night Tide. In the film (credited as Marjorie Cameron) she appears elusively as a witchy woman in black, usually accompanied on the soundtrack by ringing bells. Her appearance throughout Night Tide is never explained, but it casts doubt on the true provenance of the character of Mona, and whether they are mother and daughter, or something more sinister. Interestingly, Marjorie Cameron was married to Jack Parsons, a pioneering genius in rocketry and occult enthusiast, and together they were friends of L. Ron Hubbard and other science fiction writers. According to a short bio on the Internet Movie Database, in 1946 she, Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard undertook the famous "Babylon Working," a complex ritual spell attempting to create a "magical child." In the early '50s she lived in a house in Pasadena reputed to be a hive of occult and sexually transgressive behavior. In 1954 she appeared in Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (along with Harrington) and was a friend of Satanist Aleister Crowley, Dennis Hopper and actor Dean Stockwell. How well Hopper knew Cameron was unclear by his comments, but it was intriguing information, providing a glimpse into his early days as an actor in L.A. and the cast of characters that populated art galleries, living rooms and underground film sets of the time.

Hopper went on to comment that Night Tide was "one of the first independent films," made for $28,000 and listed on Time Magazine's 10 Best Films of that year, although it was never released in theatres, owing to a dispute with labor unions. "Making independent films back then was nearly impossible," he told the audience from the stage. "It was virtually unheard of to work outside the studio system." Harrington, Hopper revealed, was Twentieth Century Fox head Jerry Wald's assistant and got his start in movies the old fashioned way – by serving as a gofer and working his way up from there. Still flinty and ornery as hell at 72, Hopper makes a compelling case for career longevity and still does not suffer fools easily, as evidenced by his sarcastic answers to many questions posed from audience members. When he mentioned his authorship of Easy Rider (1969), vigorously disputed by Terry Southern and others, I was going to raise my hand. Then I thought, hmm…better not go there. This dark man of indie cinema just turned a shade more sinister.

To watch the original trailer of Night Tide, cut and paste this URL into your browser: http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2275213593/

-David Savage

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE NIGHT TIDE DVD DISCOUNTED FROM AMAZON

CINEMA RETRO COLUMNIST DAVID SAVAGE'S COVERAGE OF THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL CONTINUES WITH HIS REVIEW OF THE NEW AUSTRALIAN FILM, NEWCASTLE

Speaking of surf movies (see my fellow Cinema Retro columnist Tom Lisanti's appreciation of Ride the Wild Wave by clicking here), I have proof that the genre is not a relic of the past. Newcastle, from indie American director Dan Castle, is an exhilirating new film making its debut at Tribeca Film Festival that breathes new life into one of the most formulaic conventions in the movies. Set in the Australian blue collar beach town of the film's title, up the coast from Sydney, Newcastle is as anti-idyllic surf movie as you're ever likely to see. Instead of picturesque sunsets reminiscent of Endless Summer, coal barges line the ocean horizon of this seaside town. It may be populated by golden-skinned surf gods and babes, but they are without illusions. Life is hard and surfing offers the only wave out of this dead-end town.

After placing third in tryouts for the approaching Junior Pro Surf Championship, a competition that has the power to make or break young surfers' dreams, Jesse is down but not yet out. He's determined not to end up like his brother Victor, a promising former surfer who ended his career in injury and now works on the dry docks with his father, unloading coal. He struggles to cope. His hormones are raging. His twin brother, Fergus, is likely gay (pale and with newly purple hair) and the source of constant embarrassment. When the temptation arises of a weekend away at Stockton Dunes (a remote beach) with his surf buddies, Jesse leaps at the opportunity, even if it means Fergus has to go along. Two local girls join them and the weekend holds the promise of nothing but blissful abandon on the waves and a possible "first time" with one of the girls. As they move through the weekend trip, Fergus learns to surf and thus gains acceptance by his mates, but a tragedy unfolds when Victor shows up to challenge his younger brother on the waves.

Remarkably, the film never hits a false note, even while working squarely within two classic genres: the surf movie and the teen, coming-of-age film. In the former category, Castle gives the film a sense of heightened realism by hiring an ensemble of strong actors as well as seasoned surfers, all of whom demonstrate an effortless athleticism as they carve and cut out of the waves, ride crests and "shoot the curl" in take after incredible take. Castle's team of ocean cameramen are second to none, shooting with fearless energy and great skill both above and below the waves, using natural light and mostly a handheld technique so that the viewer feels thrust right out in the action of the crashing surf. The land-based photography (Richard Michalak, ACS), by contrast, is dark and claustrophobic, filmed in French New Wave-style handheld and with little dolly action, underscoring the cramped and volatile nature of Jesse's home life.

Within the confines of the coming-of-age genre, Castle resists the cliché typecasting of teen ensemble films, and it's to his credit that he makes each character seem distinct and fully drawn, even when many of these teen boys are not fully aware of who they are themselves. There is no gross-out humor, sexual gags or other pranks typical of teen movies, but there is plenty of content which rings true to anyone who remembers grappling with the anxieties of sexuality, peer pressure, ambition and sibling violence at that fragile age.

The adult actors, most prominent among them being the award-winning Australian actor Barry Otto (Oscar and Lucinda), round out a teen cast who demonstrate a maturity and dedication to their craft that seems refreshing when compared with the Ken-doll plasticity of their American counterparts found on shows like "The O.C.," for example.

I spoke with the director and screenwriter Dan Castle at the festival and he owned up to weaving a lot of his own life into the script, which took him eight months to write once he got down to business for real after thinking about the project for a year. Bizarrely, he hails from another Newcastle: New Castle, Delaware. But it was a visit in 2001 to the Newcastle Down Under that inspired the idea for the film, even before he had any characters in mind. "As I drove through the streets during my first visit to Newcastle in October 2001," Castle said, " I knew I was in a very special place. The town, the beaches, the seaside pools, the community of surfers and the nearby Stockton Dunes all resonated with me."

He too is a surfer ("not a good one," he swears) and he too lost his virginity in a tent alongside his best friend, who was busy losing his. Even as he surfed with his buddies as a teen, he realized he was gay. From that aspect of himself the character of Fergus was born; from other aspects of himself, and no doubt from other members of his group, other characters were created. "They were at the peak of their beauty," he remembers, "and yet at the time don't realize that it's all pretty much downhill from there." The artful shots of the surfers swimming nude underwater, almost mythical in feel, or the close ups on golden-downed skin or ocean-blue eyes convey Castle's appreciation, even reverence, for that fleeting beauty.

Although Dan didn't go to film school (he did go to NYU, but majored in Business), he started out as an actor and moved to Los Angeles to pursue his career (he studied at The Actors Studio and with Shelly Winters, whom he met by chance in a coffee shop on Fairfax). It proved to be too passive, he explained, as he tired of waiting for someone to tell him "yes." So he instead took a friend's advice and began concentrating on his writing, which led to directing. His last film, a short entitled The Visitor (also with Barry Otto), garnered an Australian Film Institute (AFI) nomination for Best Short Fiction Film in 2003, and he says he's working on three new projects, one of which is a comedy entitled Surf Mom. It sounds like Dan might be a new surf movie auteur with lots of material yet to explore. (Now…where's that shark.)- David Savage

57,000 Kilometers Between Us (France)

Among the more experimental entries representing France at Tribeca this year is video artist and fashion photographer Delphine Kreuter's confident debut feature 57,000 Kilometers Between Us (57000 km entre nous), a disturbing and truthful look at how technology is the great atomizer of society. The characters in this tale, all connected in random ways made possible only on the internet, mediate their daily lives through the filter of webcams, multi-character gaming, online chats, blogs and camcorders. They record, stare and chat, but never connect.

'Nat,' a 14-year-old girl at the center of the story, is struggling to connect to someone, anyone, given that her mother is caught up in a deeply dysfunctional new marriage with a man who records every waking second of his family's life on his camcorder for his blog on marital bliss, but becomes an uncommunicative zombie once offline. Her real father is a transsexual, who watches her via remote from her new home, where she is not welcome. Her only two "friends" consist of a married man online with a baby fetish (he dons diapers and sucks a baby bottle via webcam) and a teen boy, Adrien, dying of leukemia in a hospital intensive care ward. It's with this last friend she is able to find some form of simpatico, as they portray fantasy characters in an alternate-reality game, acting out thinly veiled games of heroic battle and rescue. His mother will not visit him even as he lay dying, preferring instead to hold brief chats with him via webcam. The characters' lives all intersect in some way that underscores the paradox of connectivity without connection, until Nat breaks the cycle and decides to act on her feelings for Adrien the only way she knows how. It's a moving and heartbreaking ending, if enigmatic.

Filmed in a jarring, hand-held style and alternating between digital video and film, Kreuter creates the look of a distopic future squarely within the present, which is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the entire film and which gives it a quasi-documentary feel. It's that rarity of an experimental film that manages to tell a story with clarity yet remain true to its form. While it's doubtful this feature will get picked up by an American theatrical distributor, if it shows up on Netflix, by all means grab it -- it's well worth the 82 minutes of intensity.

-David Savage

Cinema Retro columnist David Savage reports on preliminary screenings of new films leading up to the Tribeca Film Festival. Here, he takes a look at Mister Lonely, which manages to incorporate Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Michael Jackson, Queen Elizabeth and Abe Lincoln!

What happens when Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, the Pope, Madonna, Queen Elizabeth, Little Red Riding Hood, Sammy Davis, Jr., Abe Lincoln and James Dean all find themselves living together in a castle commune in the Highlands of Scotland? Unfortunately, not much in the hands of Harmony Korine, whose new film Mister Lonely, takes this brilliant premise and squanders it for 113 listless, melancholy minutes. It’s a crying shame, really, as spontaneous eruptions of brilliant! usually followed when fellow journalists heard the plot synopsis. Instead, loud, irritable sighs were erupting around the theater as press attendees realized an hour in that nothing much was going to pay-off the brilliant set-up.

When a struggling Michael Jackson impersonator, played by Mexican actor Diego Luna (Y Tu Mama Tambien), meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) on the streets of Paris, he accepts her invitation to join her at a remote castle compound in the Scottish Highlands where she lives with her husband, “Charlie Chaplin” and a motley assortment of aforementioned impersonators in communal isolation, sort of like the Island of Misfit Toys from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. There he can find acceptance, she promises, and join them as they prepare their “greatest show ever” for their local community.

Meanwhile, in a Catholic mission deep inside the Panamanian jungle, a group of nuns discover a miracle: One of them has survived a fall from an airplane flying at several thousand feet and, asking for God’s protection on her fall back to earth, walks away unscathed. The other nuns follow suit and become addicted to their new-found, extreme-faith sport. Their leader is a priest played by Werner Herzog, who appears to be improvising his lines (The two plot lines never intersect, except for allegorically, but it’s this latter plot that provides the more interesting of the film’s two stories.)

A goldmine of material, one would think, but Korine gives his characters little to do and nothing to say. For example, we never hear anything from the James Dean impersonator, likewise Sammy Davis Jr., nor Madonna (!) nor the Queen of England. James Fox as The Pope sinks his teeth into what little script he’s given, and we never learn that he and the Queen are husband and wife until nearly the end of the film when we see them in bed together (she lighting a fag and he making small talk). Now there’s a proposition! But Korine doesn’t explore it, nor does he take much interest in the fireworks that might result from such a volatile and rich clash of people, who are themselves imprisoned in personas of their own choosing. I began to feel sorry for the actors more than the characters, all dressed up and nowhere to go.

The film is not without its merits. Samantha Morton imbues her Monroe with the same sense of tragic fragility as the real-life Marilyn, and Korine manages to convey the governing idea of “the purity of dreams” in both plot lines. The mysteries of faith and the willful suspension of disbelief as one “becomes” somebody else might just be two sides of the same coin. – David Savage

Beginning with this column, Cinema Retro's David Savage will be reporting from the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. In his first review, he critiques a new film about the cult of Che Guevara - and the irony of how a revolutionary who represented a brutal, totalitarian regime has somehow become a symbol of freedom and independence.

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2008

Strike a Pose: Hasta La Chevolution

No one hates a sourpuss at a party more than me, so I regret to file my inaugural report from the Tribeca Film Festival (technically a pre-festival screening) on such a cheerless note and with windless sails. Maybe I chose poorly from the films on offer before the festival gets underway on April 23^rd, but if what I saw last night, Chevolution, is evidence of what it takes to get a documentary into one of the most high-profile film festivals in the world, then all I can say is that the bar has been lowered so far that one need only step over it.

Piquing my interest was the following synopsis: How did the iconic image of Che Guevara end up on beer bottles and bikinis? This inquiry into the ethics and aesthetics of appropriation investigates how the enduring symbol of Cuba's revolution skyrocketed to fame and was ultimately devoured by its own worst enemy: capitalism. Great! Sounds provocative and timely. I was all ready to see a well argued thesis against branding and the banalization of once-meaningful symbols, and even, I hoped, a useful corrective against the radical-chic cult of the Marxist assassin and Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara. No such luck.

What starts out to be a fairly absorbing investigation into the history one of the most reproduced images in the history of photography -- that being Cuban photographer Alberto Korda's black and white capture of the young guerilla warrior at a funeral for the victims of the ship explosion in Havana's harbor in 1960 -- instead turns into a dreadfully shallow homage to the guerilla warrior himself, leaving countless stones unturned, a parade of talking heads unchallenged, and a litany of problematic statements floated over our heads like methane-filled balloons. Co-director Trisha Ziff even sees fit to interview herself at one point with this helpful amplification: "He's a superstar, and a superstar with a message," she explains to her own camera. What message that is, exactly, she never explains, which serves as a telling bookend to this entire, pointless film.

On the surface, the directors, Ziff and Luis Lopez, invite our indignation over how an honest portrait of a communist revolutionary ended up becoming a global brand at the service of capitalism. Fine. Irony noted. But another layer of irony left unexplored, like much in this documentary, is how the portrait of Guevara, Castro's collaborator (and expendable pawn) in creating the most repressive, blood-soaked, totalitarian regime in the Western Hemisphere came to be the symbol of freedom and revolt against oppression. Whom did he set free, exactly? Care to take that up with the Cuban expatriates in Miami? (They don't, except for one. See below.)

Cinema Retro's David Savage recently spoke to the cast of Sleepwalking, a new independent film starring and produced by Charlize Theron, also with Nick Stahl, AnnaSophia Robb and Dennis Hopper.

In Sleepwalking (opening March 14^th in the US) Charlize Theron again demonstrates why her Oscar for Monster (2003) was no fluke. She repeatedly earns it back with every new film, disappearing into characters that we as a society find unlovable, unredeemable and worthy of every hard knock they earn, and instead creates genuine empathy for them. She finds what propels them forward (“hope” she says), what has nearly killed them and then makes them wholly credible, crude and compelling.

In Sleepwalking, Theron plays Jolene, a working class single mother who leaves her 11-year-old daughter Tara (played brilliantly by AnnaSophia Robb) with her brother James (Nick Stahl) a timid, loner 30-year-old who is himself on the verge of a nervous breakdown. After become his niece’s guardian and father-by-default, he takes off with his niece in search of a new life, but all roads lead home, as more than one movie has revealed. In James’ case it’s the family ranch, which his mean, abusive father (played in almost gleeful menace by Dennis Hopper) still runs. What was supposed to be a healing homecoming instead turns into a fatal confrontation with the man who is responsible for his broken soul.

Far from typical Hollywood star-vehicle product, the film is almost unrelieved in its bleakness, and unfolds against the grim, winter landscapes of small industrial towns in the northern Plains states -- cheap motels, diners on the interstate, and farms fallen on hard times. It’s the kind of environment where hope and self-actualization would seem only like nice theories. As a consequence, most likely it will not find a large audience to appreciate its best merits: strong performances from the principals and a storyline that champions the primacy of family and personal responsibility. As Theron puts it: “Just because we have the same blood flowing in our veins, we don’t have to make the same mistakes.” As Jolene, Theron is to be commended for taking on such unglamorous fare. She served as the film’s main producer, and was responsible for hiring on the other talent that got it off the ground.

The climax at the end, between James and his father (Stahl and Hopper, respectively) feels too late in the game to pack the emotional wallop the filmmakers had hoped for, but nonetheless, for a sophomore effort screenplay (Zac Stafford, of The Chumscrubber) and a first directorial effort (William Maher), it’s nice to see an independent film built on ideas and backed up by strong, hard-hitting performances.

I asked Theron if she might have an affinity for playing women with tough backgrounds, based on her roles in Monster and North Country, as well as her own hard background as a child growing up poor in South Africa. “I think the connection between these women is resilience. They have faced tough lives and had to make tough decisions and what keeps them going is hope. It’s the only thing that fuels their lives,” she said, adding that she doesn’t, on the other hand, want to pigeonhole herself into such roles, lest they dry up as fast as they have appeared.

As a native South African, how does she create women who are such specific American types, recognizable to us by accent, gesture and demeanor, but surely not so easily to a transplant such as herself? “I am a keen student of human psychology. I study people all the time. Human behavior fascinates me. In any walk of life, these types of women are pretty much the same. Jolene is a passionate woman, but she’s also reckless. I wanted to show this quality in her, the humanity of it, but also the carelessness of her.”

Also turning in a remarkable performance in her first “adult” film is 14-year-old Annasophia Robb, who recalls Jodie Foster at the same age: precocious, wounded and possessed of an adult’s perspective too soon in life. In her scenes with a very scary Dennis Hopper, she is able to carry her own as an actress of stunning depth and in full possession of her character. It’s the kind of performance that will surely earn her larger roles very soon, if not award mentions at the end of this year. -David Savage

Cinema Retro columnist David Savages tells us why some twice-told tales should have only been told once.

Like Norman Bates perhaps, in my head there is always an argument raging. One is the Voice of Reason, of disinterested analysis: It’s always best to reserve judgment until one sees the finished product. The other is the Voice of Combat, emotional, and defensive: What the hell? I can see them now, a couple of twentysomething, backward-cap-wearing Starbucks rats tapping out the ‘remake’ on their laptops. If they jettison the batty old bird expert in the diner I’m going to track them down and kill them!

Hm, maybe I care a little bit too much. Even Hitchcock would probably be shrugging at this point, lighting a cigar. I allow the Voice of Reason to prevail: This might be interesting. Naomi Watts is an interesting actress. Let’s see what she can do with the role of icy, poised Melanie Daniels.

But just when my pulse returns to normal, my eyes fall on this item: “Forthcoming remake of The Women…with a script by Diane English, creator of Murphy Brown…starring Meg Ryan…and Eva Mendes. Eva Mendes? Yup, it’s true folks. From what I can gather, the forthcoming remake of The Women, the legendary, all-female, cats-in-a-cage comedy originally directed by George Cukor, has been 12 years in the making and features a veritable tonnage of award-winning talent, from old vets like Bette Midler, Annette Bening, Carrie Fisher and Cloris Leachman, to a younger generation of comic actresses like Debra Messing (Will & Grace), Jada Pinkett Smith and Eva Mendes. This doesn’t look good. For starters, let’s compare the original’s tagline with the remake’s:

(1939): The Female of the Species…when the men aren’t watching!

(2008): The Women is about friends and mothers and daughters. It’s about breaking up and finding your way back. It’s about reinventing yourself. It’s about walking through fire for what you believe in. It’s about Women.

I guess the cats have been declawed, shorn of their furs, and made to mouth post-feminist-self-empowerment-pink-ribboned-Vagina-Monologues-era bromides instead.

Instead of icy martinis, we’re being served steaming mugs of Celestial Seasoning tea.

Apparently the original Anita Loos screenplay (which was based on Clare Booth Luce’s stage play) has been thrown out. This version will positively ooze Contemporary Relevance. No more of the mink-draped Countess De Lave, that would offend animal rights activists. No more tiaras, that’s objectifying to women. This will be about Living, Loving, and Learning. Sounds hilarious doesn’t it?

We’ll see how Diane English’s version fares at the box office and with the critics. I guess remakes serve a larger purpose in our culture. They introduce new generations to old stories, told in new ways. They break in young, ambitious directors. They employ young, rising stars and aging character actors (who were in the original’s principal roles). They give critics the chance to bloviate on the originals’ superior merits. They keep the machinery going. Besides, championing a ‘hands-off’ policy toward classic films risks entombing them. Given the success rate of most remakes (poor to middling), it only underscores why the originals are considered classics in the first place. You see, everyone wins!- David Savage

Cinema Retro's David Savage reports on an exciting evening for film buffs as Keir Dullea appeared at a New York screening of Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake is Missing.

An SRO crowd jammed Film Forum last Thursday night, January 10th for a screening of a gorgeously restored new 35mm print of BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING (1965), perhaps the most keenly anticipated film in the cinema's Otto Preminger Festival (January 2-17). The 7:30pm screening was the one not to miss as the film's male lead, Keir Dullea, was waiting in the wings to speak afterwards with Preminger scholar and biographer Foster Hirsch, author of OTTO PREMINGER: THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING (Knopf).

The anticipation was palpable in the crowd as it quickly filled up the theater to standing room only. Film critics jostled for room alongside Mod-devotees (lured no doubt by the film's Swinging London setting and cameo performance by The Zombies) while NYU film students squeezed in next to graphic designers ("the Saul Bass title sequence is to die for.") Everyone, it seemed, was there was some particular element this special film held for them.

The luminous new 35mm print showed off the brilliant chiaroscuro of Denys Coop's cinematography to a startling degree, echoing the overall duality of the plot: truth vs. lie, existence vs. fantasy, etc. And heightening the film's atmosphere was Paul Glass's score, which begins the film with a plaintive flute, suggesting childhood innocence and melancholy, then building towards the end to tension-inflected, spindly harpsichord as the famous hide-and-seek game appears to be headed to a horrible conclusion.

Preminger took 10 years to complete the screenplay, working with John and Penelope Mortimer, and although he changed a key plot element from Evelyn Piper's novel for his screen adaptation, his tenacious work shines through sparkling dialogue full of wit, characters with depth and ambiguity, and pacing that builds imperceptibly from a simple head-scratcher to a taut thriller. Were today's laptop screenplays this intelligent and well-wrought.

But as brilliant a director Preminger was, I think he shows off his knack for pitch-perfect casting here even more impressively, from the leads to the supporting players.

Not only does a very young Carol Lynley do an admirable job of shouldering the bulk of the film on her 23 year-old shoulders (Columbia urged Preminger to cast Ann Margret, revealed Keir Dullea), she does so with an inscrutable facial expression that does not give away the central mystery: whether her daughter is a delusion of her mind or is in fact real – and missing.

Laurence Olivier's Superintendent Newhouse, the detective of the Metropolitan Police assigned to the case, is a study in brilliant under-acting, which Preminger championed. At the time of filming, he was performing in Othello at the Old Vic and filmed his BUNNY LAKE scenes at night after the stage performances, which makes it all the more impressive. His Newhouse is unflappable, seasoned, and elegant in his manner -- a London cop nearing retirement that seems wholly credible. But he conveys a key lesson as a detective, one that everyone should adopt: Never show your hand, lest they know what you're thinking.

Also leaving this viewer wanting more was the character actress Martita Hunt as Ada Ford, the batty old founder of the children's school who spends her days in a garret atop the school working on a book of children's nightmares. Her scenes crackle with Olivier, and afterwards, Dullea revealed why: She was Olivier's mentor as a young actor at the Old Vic, and he later credited much of his most valuable dramatic expertise to her.

After the screening during a Q&A session with Foster Hirsch, Keir Dullea spoke bitterly about Preminger's abusive treatment of him and others in the cast during the filming, and lapsed into a cartoonish Nazi accent to mimick him. It did nothing to add levity to the anecdotes. The audience seemed stunned by the venom in Dullea's accounts.

"As I watched myself in the final ten minutes of the film," Dullea said, "I see how tense I was, and my performance seems very black and white, and missing nuance . . . I owe that to Preminger's treatment of me, which made me extremely nervous and self-conscious." Emotional deliverance came in the person of director Irvin Kershner, Dullea revealed, as he happened to be in London during the final weeks of filming. Kershner had directed him in HOODLUM PRIEST (1961) and director and actor had become close during the filming. When Dullea asked Kershner how to deal with the beastly Preminger, Kersh advised: "You can't leave this project feeling whipped. It will take an emotional toll on you that could affect your work in the future. You're never going to out-Preminger Preminger. You've got to find a way to out-Dullea him, as only you can do." It was just the right advice and Dullea said it gave him the fortitude to stand up to the director in an ego-saving face-off near the end of the filming. But Dullea wouldn't go into details, instead urging the audience to buy Hirsch's book to read the full account.

Curiously, the film was ill-received by American critics when it was released in 1965, but had the opposite effect on British critics, who, besides lauding the actors, appreciated its grotty, off-the-tourist-track London locations.

The polyphonically, unfairly talented and fiendishly busy actress Karen Black (who’s also my good friend and upcoming interviewee in the print edition of Cinema Retro) recently premiered her own one-woman show, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Sing the Song” in Washington, DC, to rave reviews. She received three standing ovations and by her own admission, “I almost couldn’t stand there and accept that much acknowledgment!” In the show Karen recounts her life through musical interludes and anecdotes, beginning as a struggling actress in New York in the early 60s (where she famously said “no thanks” to Lee Strasberg after he invited her to join The Actors Studio), through her move to hippie-era Hollywood and her steady rise to fame as one of the leading actresses of the 70s. Karen treats the audience to absorbing first-hand accounts of her work on such legendary films as Easy Rider (1969), her Oscar-nominated performance in Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Day of the Locust (1975), Nashville (1975), Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982) and more.

If you’re surprised to learn Karen Black is also a singer, don’t be. She can absolutely floor you with her voice. If you remember the scene in Nashville, in which she plays country star Connie White, the song she performs in front of the Grand Ole Opry she not only composed herself but made it sound like a viable country hit from that period. Karen grew up in a musical family in suburban Chicago and her grandfather was the esteemed classical musician Arthur Ziegler, who was the first violinist for the Chicago Symphony. Another film in which she sings is Henry Jaglom’s quirky comedy Can She Bake A Cherry Pie? (1983) and the more recent Firecracker (2004) in which she plays a carnival chanteuse and really shows off her range. Henry Jaglom, Karen’s long-time friend from Actors Studio days back in New York, cast Karen in his runaway indie hit Hollywood Dreams (2006) as a vainglorious actress of a certain age who is having a secret tryst with an A-list “gay” actor with a secret: he’s straight. Between rendez-vous with Karen’s character Luna, he toys with the idea of “coming out” against the advice of his managers.

She also appears in Jaglom’s upcoming Irene in Time (2007) and this year’s Suffering Man’s Charity (2007), directed by Alan Cumming. I’m eager for everyone to read the interview with Karen in the next issue. Her career is a revelation to those who pigeonhole her as a fixture of 70s disaster or horror flicks, even if she did important work in both of those genres as well.

Cinema Retro columnist David Savage gives us his top two DVD picks for the month: two worthy films that were largely overlooked during their theatrical runs in the 1970s.

The Other (1972) dir. Robert Mulligan. This Late Show creeper from the early 70s from the same director as Summer of ’42 (1971) seems like it was made for TV, but research seems to indicate it did have a theatrical release (does anyone out there remember seeing it at the theater?) In fact most people remember it from its annual broadcast on television during that decade, after which it seemed to disappear altogether and become something of a bad dream remembered by a handful of night owls. A few years ago it was released on DVD and it's well worth a revisit. Based on Thomas Tryon's taut, psychological novel, the story examines the lives of a pair of twins -- one boldly evil, the other sweet but a follower – who are part of a large farm family in Depression-era Connecticut. They run rampant around the farm with assorted cousins and neighbor kids, inventing games and pulling mean pranks. Their loving grandmother, Ada (played by Uta Hagen, here in Method overdrive) teaches them something called 'the game' as a way to escape the mental pain caused by their bedridden mother's condition. Horrible accidents start to befall neighbors and family members (look for a very young John Ritter), all of which seem to result from the twins' actions, prompting Ada to intervene in a final mortal decision. Even if it weren't for a few dreadful scenes involving live rats, pitchforks in the haystack and drowned babies, the film would still be disturbing in that it suggests something far more troubling: can a child be born evil? The sunny, horror-in-broad-daylight cinematography of Robert Surtees (Ben Hur, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Graduate) adds to the atmosphere. Identical twins Chris and Martin Udvarnoky, here in their only film, play the roles of the twins Niles and Holland Perry.

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Smile (1975), dir. Michael Ritchie. This largely forgotten mid-70s slice-of-life from Michael Ritchie, who had a respectable run in the Seventies with Downhill Racer, The Candidate, and The Bad News Bears (sadly dying in 2001 at the young age of 62) is a deadpan delight in the tradition of Nashville. Indeed, Ritchie's style is often called "Altman-esque" for its flat gaze upon the ridiculous at the center of everyday life. Here, the context is a teen beauty pageant in a small California town, which Ritchie appears to simply let unfold in all its folly and sad hilarity, proving that there are some things in life which are so intrinsically comic that its better to just watch rather than direct. There is not so much a plot as several intersecting storylines, giving the impression of a camera catching a thousand mini-tragedies and humiliations with each random turn. There are the inauspicious rehearsals, a local salesman in mid-life crisis, horny, ogling teens (led by Eric Shea of The Poseidon Adventure), and a hilarious "pre-pageant interview" sequence before the judges. And this being the mid-70s, the hair, clothing and interior décor are reason enough to watch, mouth agape. With Bruce Dern and Barbara Feldon (Get Smart) in lead roles, supported by a smashing Annette O'Toole as the most seasoned of all the pageant's contestants. Also look for an older and foxier Denise Nickerson of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory whom I would love it interview one day, and a very young Melanie Griffith in one of her first roles.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Gobble gobble!

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(Look for an interview with David Picker, the producer of Smile in an upcoming issue of Cinema Retro)

Cinema Retro columnist David Savage brings us up to date on the movie event scene in New York City.

It's nearly Thanksgiving and as the holiday season breaks into full gallop, the film calendar is already bursting here in New York. Is it possible not to overcommit oneself? A major Pasolini festival gets underway November 28^th at the Film Society of Lincoln Center (see below), followed by the 16^th edition of Spanish Cinema Now, also at FSLC, beginning December 7^th. Newly restored 35mm prints of Pietro Germi's classic Divorce Italian Style (1961) and Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon (1956) are playing at Film Forum (filmforum.org) through November 22^nd, not to mention the roster of foreign and indie features rolling out weekly for the press, and the seductive eye candy of newly remastered and special edition DVD box sets from Warner Bros., Universal, Criterion, etc. winking on the shelves – how is a film reporter supposed to keep on top of this all and keep a steady job at the same time?

Thanksgiving doesn't bring to mind many great movies, but rather a few memorable movie moments. One I’d like to offer up is the scene in Annie Hall (1977) when Woody Allen's character Alvy Singer is invited by Annie (Diane Keaton) to Thanksgiving dinner at her parents' house. Allen correctly identifies Thanksgiving as the WASP-iest of all holidays, given its Pilgrim roots, and turns it into one of the funniest Jewish-Among-WASPs moments in movie history. In the sequence Allen recreates Norman Rockwell's famous painting of a New England family at Thanksgiving dinner and inserts himself into the tableau vivant. As the struggling comic Alvy tries out joke after joke on Annie's family, presided over by a frosty Colleen Dewhurst as Annie's mother, all of them fall with a thud in confused silence. Eventually we see him transform into a rabbi at the table. It's one of those scenes that showcased Allen's loose brilliance as a director during the period, and also reminds me how few young directors today are willing to mine the WASP/Jewish culture clash for comedy. There was the original The Heartbreak Kid (1972) with Charles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd, written by Elaine May, and Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara have perhaps made the most of their comic culture clash of a marriage of all entertainers. But since then? A few recent exceptions are Meet the Fockers (2004) and Meet the Parents (2000), both written by Jim Herzfeld, and this year’s Knocked Up (2007) from Judd Apatow. While the story doesn’t address the topic explicitly, Apatow makes the most of the contrast between the Jewish central character, Ben Stone and the tall blonde shiksa Alison Scott, whom he unwittingly knocks up after a fateful meeting in a nightclub. The screenplays that treat this subject usually come from a Jewish writer, suggesting that the satirical perspective (following conventional wisdom) comes from the cultural outsider, as was the norm for the last half century. But now that WASPS are rapidly dying off as a demographic in the U.S., and more importantly as a cultural force, it will be interesting to see if a comedy comes along from a WASP’s perspective. It might be controversial, if said writer is so fortunate. If I’m missing any obvious examples other than the above-mentioned, do let me know.

Director David Cronenberg built a loyal fan base in the 1970s and 1980s with popular, off-beat cult films such as Scanners and Videodrome. Since then, he has gone mainstream - but has he lost the creative touches that originally endeared him to his fans? Cinema Retro's David Savage takes a look at Cronenberg's latest effort.

In Eastern Promises, David Cronenberg's new crime thriller set in London's East End, Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen) stubs out a cigarette on his tongue just before "operating" on a recent mob victim to prep him for disposal into the Thames – snipping off the ends of his fingers with surgical clippers, bloodless and frozen solid after spending a few days in a meat freezer. It seems to set the requisite Cronenbergian tone: fixing a cold, unblinking gaze on bodily mutilation and violence. There are a few more signature Cronenberg moments that punctuate Eastern Promises, a thoughtfully paced, gloomy tale of honor and betrayal in a Russian organized crime family, just enough to make the viewer aware that this otherwise conventional tale is in the hands of Canada's most provocative director. But the fun stops there. Working from another director's script (Steve Knight, Academy Award-nomination for Dirty Pretty Things), Cronenberg is merely lending his own signature treatment to a familiar-feeling genre piece with a Hollywood-style happy ending, ill-suited to a story set in criminality, betrayal and violence. I'll be the last person to force a director to be a one-trick pony, but this film, while well done, engaging and credibly acted, could have been directed by any of a dozen directors of Cronenberg's stature. It just doesn't seem worthy of his perverse and brilliant talent.

Eastern Promises examines what happens when an interloper on a moral crusade steps into a wholly amoral world with its own perverse codes of honor. Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), a midwife at a North London hospital, oversees the birth of a baby whose mother, a 15-year old heroin addict and Russian immigrant, dies in labor. The teenager has left a diary, and within its pages Anna discovers the slavery and forced prostitution to which the young mother had been subjected at the hands of one of London's most notorious organized crime families, the Vory V Zakone, headed by Semyon (a dead-eyed and threatening Armin Mueller-Stahl). His surface charm and grandfatherly warmth as the proprietor of a private Russian dining club masks a brutal and vindictive core as the patriarch of his crime family. His new driver, Nikolai (Mortensen) and violent son (Vincent Cassel) will go to any lengths to protect the family's honor and privacy. When the diary leads Anna to the restaurant to seek information as to the girl's family and the baby's rightful inheritors, she unwittingly entangles herself in a mortal struggle involving several lives, including her own.

Unlike Cronenberg's own films which he wrote and directed (The Brood, Videodrome, Dead Ringers, Crash , eXistenZ to name a few), Eastern Promises, like A History of Violence (2005) and Spider (2002) before it, is disappointingly bereft of the familiar themes of transgression and "body horror" on a visceral level his fans have come to expect. Mortensen may be the director's new muse, as both seem on a mutually fruitful collaboration as they explore psyche, physicality and identity here and in A History of Violence. And as in many of Cronenberg's previous films, director of photography Peter Suschitzky suffuses the film with a highly atmospheric, elegant gloom, full of wine reds and deep shadows. But is it a worthwhile Cronenberg outing if it doesn't provoke an argument over dinner, or no one flees the theater in disgust? I dare say no.

With the exception of Naomi Watts, whose character evokes the sort of role Jenny Agutter might have played thirty years ago (and actually made me pine for), the cast is first rate. Mortensen creates a thoroughly credible Russian thug, due to intensive research before filming, involving traveling alone to Russia and immersing himself in locales frequented by the thugs of Russia's crime families; Vincent Cassel, likewise, is wholly believable as the volatile and conflicted son of Semyon. As Mortensen said in a press interview and I agree with him, Cassel is able to begin the film as an appalling thug and end the film by making the viewer care about his abused soul.

-David Savage

In May of 1999, I flew to Los Angeles, armed with a tape recorder and a stack of blank cassettes to do a string of interviews with a motley assortment of characters that could be pigeonholed in any one of these unflattering categories: Hollywood's Unjustly Forgotten; The Overlooked Career Of…; or Aging Horribly and No One Cares. Some worked out and others didn't. Among them was Forrest J. Ackerman, founder of Famous Monsters Magazine and godfather to a generation of horror film directors. He welcomed me into his Hollywood Hills mansion, cackling cinematically through a loudspeaker when I rang the bell, then later insisted on answering all my questions in Esperanto; Mr. Blackwell, the acid-tongued fashion critic and one of the original Dead End Kids in Hollywood in the 1930s; and Pat Ast.

I may have been the last journalist to interview actress Pat Ast, Warhol Superstar and best known for her role in Paul Morrissey's Heat (1972), before she died in October of 2001. I had just spoken to her a few months before she died. I was back home in New York watching TV when to my amazement, I spotted her jazzing it up in the background of Donna Summer's 1980 video "Bad Girls," of all things, as one of three backup singers. There was Pat – all 200-plus pounds of her in a floral mumu with flower behind the ear, flanked by two black vocalists, punctuating the song with the crucial refrain Ahhh….toot-toot – yeah -- beep-beep! Without knowing why exactly, I called her up and told her what I was watching. She sounded like she wasn't sure who it was, but gamely played along.

When I visited her in '99, she was living with her Australian shepherd Winnie in a small cottage overgrown with bougainvillea and wisteria vines in deepest Hollywood. It was one of those bungalows in a garden court hidden from the street, evocative of the days of blacklisted screenwriters like Dalton Trumbo, or Nathaniel West smoking and writing Day of the Locust.

Looking for a chill during the dog days of summer? Check out the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s delicious quartet of Roman Polanski thrillers: Summer Chills: Four by Roman Polanski. Screening Monday, July 30, and Wednesday, Aug. 1, at the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center in New York. The series features the acclaimed director’s cult favorite The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) and all three classics in what some commentators have labeled the Apartment Trilogy: Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and The Tenant (1976).

Given the horrors contained in the Apartment Trilogy, what would our favorite Polish director have made of today’s rental market? A first-time viewer of Rosemary’s Baby might take away this central message: You’ll need no less a connection than SATAN to land a three-bedroom apartment in the Dakota when you’re a newly married, out-of-work actor and have no visible means of income.

The Tenant, a harrowing tale of urban isolation and paranoia, is instead a single renter’s nightmare: Not only have you (Roman Polanski) just moved into the apartment of a suicide victim, your landlord (Melvyn Douglas) hates you. The more you attempt to keep out of everyone’s way, the more things keep going terribly wrong. Like finding the former tenant’s tooth in the wall. Or the nightmarish visions none of your fellow tenants believe—even the one of the mummy-woman in the bathroom window across the courtyard who stares at you as you attempt to pee. The message: Living alone, while initially liberating and bohemian, usually ends in your becoming That Weird Guy Down the Hall Who Does Creepy Drag. The only solution is to throw yourself out the window.

If you fail the first time, repeat.

Repulsion, conversely, is more of a cautionary tale about what your anti-social roommate does when you go on vacation. So desperate is she for company, hands will reach out of the walls. Figures will appear in mirrors. She will pull your food out of the fridge, then not eat it. Psycho-sexual frustration will lead to her crawling around on all fours and delusions of rape. The message: Roommates, like pets, are high maintenance, especially when left alone. Either take them with you on vacation, or while you’re away, call your answering machine and make soothing sounds into the phone.

Back to Rosemary’s Baby, I can’t resist. Oft-cited as one of the “scariest films of all time,” I think of it as more of a touchstone of inspired casting – maybe the most inspired works of casting ever. Stuffed to the rafters with everyone from 1930’s contract players (Patsy Kelly, Ralph Bellamy); robust, British thespians (Maurice Evans, in a role that fits him like an old houseshoe); vaudevillians (Phil Leeds, Elisha Cook), Broadway actors (Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer) and a winking cameo by William Castle, the film’s co-producer (Robert Evans would not let him direct as part of the deal at Paramount) – it’s hard to imagine a better ensemble. But according to IMDB.COM and other sources, the leads and supporting roles were the result of weeks of negotiations, turn-downs and second choices. Polanski wanted Tuesday Weld for the lead, and Castle wanted Mia Farrow. Jane Fonda was made an offer for the lead, but turned it down so she could make Barbarella (1968). Both director and producer wanted Robert Redford for the role of Guy Woodhouse, Rosemary's husband, but negotiations broke down when Paramount's lawyers served the actor a subpoena over a contractual dispute involving Silvio Narizzano’s film Blue (1968). Other actors considered for the role of Guy were contemporary leading men: Richard Chamberlain, Robert Wagner and James Fox. Legend has it that even Laurence Harvey campaigned for it, and Polanski tried to convince Warren Beatty to do it before offering it to John Cassavetes, who in 1968 was more known as a TV actor. Perhaps most intriguing to imagine, for the roles of witch coven leaders Minnie and Roman Castevet, Polanski suggested Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne (!) the renowned husband and wife Broadway acting duo. Might they have given their roles more of a Noel Coward drawing room feel, consistent with their theatrical careers? I guess we’ll never know. Hard to imagine Minnie Castevet as anyone other than Ruth Gordon, in her Oscar-winning performance.

Two other well-cast bit parts are by Emmaline Henry, who played Dr. Bellow’s wife on I Dream of Jeannie (Rosemary and Guy’s party scene) and Victoria Vetri, 1968’s Playmate of the Year, who plays the ill-fated, adopted runaway Terry Gionoffrio. When Rosemary meets her in the laundry room and asks “Aren’t you Victoria Vetri?” she replies no, “but everyone says I look like her.” It is,of course, Victoria Vetri, all 36-21-35” of her! – David Savage

READER COMMENT:

Wende Wagner also appeared in "Rosemary's Baby," a film that used the Dakota but wasn't supposed to be set there...Robert Redford in "Blue"? It's bad enough with Terence Stamp, but Redford? The mind boggles!- Rory Monteith

Cinema Retro writer David Savage revisits a key film from Britain's golden age of movie-making.

Leading The Charge: Woodfall Film Productions and the Revolution in ‘60’s British Cinema, July 13-26, 2007. Walter Reade Theater, Lincoln Center, New York

Celebrating one of the most influential studios in the development of cinema and bringing back to the big screen an era’s most important films, the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York is presenting a two-week showcase of the key films of Woodfall Film Productions, formed in 1956 by Tony Richardson, John Osborne (Look Back in Anger) and American producer Harry Saltzman.

Taking audiences out of the studio and into the streets, where the real stories were, Richardson and his partners favored realism above all: young, fresh actors, location shooting, and narratives featuring controversial subjects such as interracial dating and sex, homosexuality and class. Clumsily over-reaching in some parts, deeply moving in others, but true to their founding spirit, the lasting legacies of Woodfall were the exciting new generation of British actors it introduced to Sixties audiences: Lynn Redgrave, Albert Finney, Tom Courtenay and Rita Tushingham; as well as the example set for succeeding generations of British filmmakers to examine these subjects with an uncompromising honesty.

A Taste of Honey (1961), directed by Tony Richardson, is a key example in this cinema of the Angry Young Men, as it was alternately called. Although time may have blunted the impact of its taboo-busting issues, 46 years on, it’s no less flavorful for its powerful performances, most notably Rita Tushingham in her breakout role as Jo, through whose wide, expressive eyes we see a grim world of mean expectations.