Film Forno

I got to thinking about The Last Metro, Truffaut and the creative process. Let’s face it all artists borrow from each other, nobody lives in a vacuum so we’re all influenced by everything we contact. Now it is a tried and true technique of film writing to base your screenplay on a film that you thunk powerful, effective, successful. This is what Francoise did, using Carola as his model. But like any true artist he had to inject the form with his personal virus, his obsession. Let me digress a moment, I think every writer, maybe every creative artist, is obsessed with something, it could be an illness, a phobia, a person, a traumatic event, something that causes an itch they can’t scratch except by writing or creating something about it. Now the object of the creator’s obsession may be disguised or hidden or it may be right out there in front of your face. Let me give some examples, Ed Wood, The World’s Worst Director wrote a lot of pulp and porn novels to supplement his income. They almost all had to do with transvestitism. That ,as anyone who’s seen Glen or Glenda knows was Wood’s obsession. It’s what fired his creative furnace. My friend’s father was a famous writer. Through overindulgence in drug use and other forms of self abuse he had a breakdown, from then on all his writing were infused with the idea that his deceased wife was a whore. This was not true but somehow in his delusional state he became obsessed with the idea and had to include it in every piece he wrote no matter what the subject matter. His kids became upset and told the father to cut it out so he became crafty and would only hint at in obscure ways the fact that his ex-wife was a whore. My friend gave me a piece of his father’s to read and after I finished it he told me about his father’s obsession. I had not noticed the reference to his ex- wife as a prostitute but my friend pointed out some cryptic passages that made reference to “plying her trade” and “world’s oldest profession”. I didn’t get it when I read it, I chalked it up to poetic license but when my friend ( who had been down this road many times before) pointed it out to me I got it. His father HAD to put that reference in everything he wrote. I think for a lot of creative people the amount of the personal obsession they put into a project can determine it’s success or failure both as an objet d’art and a commercial enterprise. Too much obscure reference can turn an audience off, it’s a delicate balance.

If you show me your obsession I’ll show you mine.

But back to The Last Metro. As I said Truffaut took Carola and injected his obsession into it. Truffaut’s discovery late in life who his father really was and the fact that his father was Jewish. This is where the character Steiner comes from. The director hidden in the basement of the theater ( in Carola it was a Resistance fighter they hid). Steiner even has a speech about being Jewish, what it means in French society, the pluses and minuses, how they get the hottest chicks, etc. This is Truffaut talking, he is Steiner, his Jewish roots, hidden like the director in the basement for years then brought up to an adoring public at the end of the film. This is the obsession Truffaut was dealing with and being a great artist, made into a film of universal appeal. As I said before the character of Steiner never quite rang true to me, I think that reflects Truffaut’s own confusion about his past,his identity, who he was, what it all meant.

I tracked down a copy of Jean Renoir’s Carola, This is a play written by Renoir that he was going to direct but ill health forced him to bow out and his good friend Norman LLoyd filled in. It’s a made for TV production done for KCET’s Hollywood Television Theater back in 1972, it stars Leslie Caron, Mel Ferrer, Anthony Zerbe, and Michael Sacks. An interesting take on the Nazi occupation, redolent with Renoir’s humanism,some of the Nazi’s are human beings not just robotic killing machines and the worst people in the play are the French members of the Gestapo. The story is set in wartime Paris in an old theater during the performance of a play.

Francoise, you ripped me off!

Leslie Caron is the star of the play and almost all of the action takes place in her dressing room during the intermission between acts and after the play. Leslie is beautiful in the part of an actress on the other side of ingenue-hood, caught up in an offstage drama revolving about her many lovers, there’s Gen. Von Clodius (Mel Ferrer) her first true love from years ago now an occupying General seeking an audience with his ex-lover, Anthony Zerbe (a terrific actor and one time Citroen owner) the director/owner of the theater and Carola’s current bedmate, and Henri Marceau(Michael Sacks) a naive young Freedom Fighter, who risks his life for an autograph from his favorite actress, the woman he’s loved from afar, Carola. The spirit of this piece is closely related to Renoir’s masterpieces Grand Illusion and Rules Of The Game, Illusion for it’s gentleman officer (Erich Von Stroheim) and Rules for it’s frank sexuality. Carola has had many lovers since her first affair with Von Clodius and Zerbe even says to her “If you won’t speak to anyone you’ve slept with you’ll be all alone” or words to that effect. The life of an actress in Paris of that time was a promiscuous one. This play is really about love, different shades of it, and what love means to all involved, innocent, jaded, idealistic,etc. The center of this malestrom of passion is Carola, desired by everyone, each for his own reason, even desired by the Gestapo colonel who appears late in the play and praises Carola for her “proof of Aryan supremacy”. The occupation provides only a background to these passions and it creates a situation where normal people are put to the test, where their core values are under pressure and they can cave in or pay with their lives. The surprise is which ones do just that.

The Last Metro was released in 1980, 8 years after Carola. It too takes place in a theater during the occupation of Paris by the Nazi’s. There are some striking similarities, Catherine Deneuve is the star of the plays put on at the theater, she is desired by Nazi’s and idealistic Freedom fighters( Gerard Depardieu), the war is once again a kind of backdrop for the lives, passions, both real and petty, of the actors and personnel of the theater. Almost as if the war didn’t exist outside of the difficulties it created for the players, food, electricity, threat of being shut down by censors. Anthony Zerbe has a wonderful speech in Carola where he describes all life outside the theater as being less real to Carola than the parts she’s playing onstage, a real insight into both films. The main difference is the character of Steiner in Metro. He is Deneuve’s Jewish husband, director and owner of the theater. He is hiding in the basement of the theater, listening to the performances(and perhaps his wife’s infidelities) through an air vent.

Kiss me louder so my husband can hear!

For some reason I never bought into this character, something seemed false to me about him, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Only later when I read a biography of Truffaut did I get an understanding. Truffaut was a bastard, I mean he was born out of wedlock, his mother married soon after but the man she married was not his father. Years later when Truffaut was preparing a film he worked with a private detective on some research, then he asked the detective to find his real father. The man did so and Truffaut found out his real father was a Jewish dentist living in a nearby town. The sudden revelation of his own Jewish roots struck Truffaut like a thunderbolt. He was conflicted, he had an identity crisis and I think this is why the character of Steiner is so unsatisfying. Truffaut even hired a Jewish writer to work on Steiner’s part in the script, to assure him of it’s “Jewishness”. And to top it off the actor he hired to play Steiner (Heinz Bennent) wasn’t Jewish!

Catherine, do it more like Leslie Caron.

Truffaut took Carola opened it up in a more filmic manner (scenes outside the theater) transplanted his personal conflict about being Jewish into it and made a film. A very successful film, I might add, a real crowd pleaser, happy ending (unlike Carola) less realistic depiction of the sex lives of it’s protagonists, a bunch of cute eccentric characters. As a matter of fact several times in Carola one of the characters refers to the fact that due to delays, that night’s performance of the play will run longer, causing the audience members to be late, miss the last metro ( subway) and violate curfew. Truffaut even got his title from the text of Carola! The final scene of Metro reminds me of Zerbe’s speech where the play and reality are purposely confused, which is more real to the actor? A final note, Leslie Caron, a friend of Truffaut and Renoir was so incensed that Truffaut gave no credit or even mentioned Carola and Renoir in regard to Metro that she never spoke to him again.

Trailer for The Last Metro

Norman Lloyd speaks on Carola

They’re screening a rare early Michelangelo Antonioni film Friday night at LACMA. Le Amiche (The Girlfriends) was never released here in the US of A back when it was made in 1955. It’s screening in a new restored 35mm print in glorious Italian B&W so if you can make it, hightail it over to the Bing theater at 7:30 or 9:30. LAMA was threatening to close down their film series until Martin Scorsese and others stepped in so we need to support this venue. I’ve seen some excellent films there including Melville’s Leon Morin- Pretre and Pasolini’s The Gospel According To Saint Matthew. I was lucky enough to sit behind the legendary cinematographer Tonino Delle Colle at that one. So go already, support Films as Art, edify yourself with some popular entertainment.

Here’s a link to an article featuring some great photos taken on the sets of many Orson Welles films. It was originally published by the Director’s Guild and I found it on the wonderful Wellesnet.com, a terrific guide to all things Orsonian.

Here’s a film that got made in France under Nazi occupation and was a veiled attack on fascism. Nevertheless it got it’s director, Henri-Georges Clouzot in hot water. Critics wanted him arrested for collaboration, banned from filmmaking, executed! He was judged by a panel of “experts” that never even saw his film. The affair Clouzot was a scandal and many notable French filmmakers came to Clouzot’s defense including Jean Renoir and Jean Pierre Melville. Clouzout was vindicated and directed many classic films after the war but I think Le Corbeau is his best film. Made under extremely difficult circumstances and by all accounts an unpleasant experience for all who worked on it, it emerges from the troubled waters of creation a masterpiece like Venus rising from the foam of a tempest tossed sea. If you look carefully at the Marquee in Inglorious Basterds you will see Le Corbeau is showing at the Parisian theater the heroine runs.

Here is an incredible scene from Alain Robbe-Grillet’s first and best film L’Immortelle. It features some of the most mysterious, mesmerizing belly dancing ever captured on celluloid. I wrote about this film after seeing it Here.
Please watch and enjoy!

UPDATE! I’ve been thinking about it and I believe this is a different version of the scene than what I saw in the theater. I distinctly remember Close Ups of the dancer. Very Strange!

Here’s some experimental footage shot by Henri-Georges Clouzout from his abandoned film Inferno. Romy Schnieder is beautiful and the visuals are stunning. A documentary about this lost film is being released right now, it’s playing in New York and will open soon in Los Angeles.

Prepare to be Mesmerized.

And here’s the trailer for the Documentary, in French.

Damn, I wish I could go see this film tonight but I’m working! Duke Mitchell’s lost film,Gone With The Pope,finally finished by Bob Murawski will unspool at the super cool New Beverly Cinema tonight July 13th at 7:30 pm. The story goes that Murawski tracked down Duke’s son and was given 10 boxes of film, some notes and a VHS copy. He began working on it in his spare time and now it’s ready. Hats off to Bob for dedication and perseverence and honoring the work of a deceased filmmaker. A Great Accomplishment! Duke Mitchell had an act in the 50’s with Sammy Petrillo, they were like Dean Martin,& Jerry Lewis clones, they made one film Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla before a lawsuit put an end to their act. So thanks to Murawski and his partner Sage Stallone for resuscitating this lost gem and their Grindhouse Releasing for getting it out.

Here are some scenes from Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, the likes of which we’ll never see again, Mastroianni, Ekberg, Fellini, Nino Rota’s music, B&W Scope. The shots of Ekberg in the fountain, her blonde hair cascading down her back like the water behind her, some of the greatest in Cinema! And the mysterious ending, dialog no one can hear, looks , gestures on an existential beach with all the sound added later, so atmospheric, so lovely and sad. Enjoy!

Gloria, Bogey and Nick Ray confer on the set

Here for your viewing pleasure is Nick Ray’s In A Lonley Place. Produced by Bogart’s Santana Production Company, the film took a while to get underway due to the studio not approving Gloria Grahame, Nick Ray’s wife at the time. When the film finally got underway Nick and Gloria were splitsville. A few years later Gloria married Nick’s son. Oedipus in tinseltown. The characters are all fucked up which is what makes the film good.

Are These The Hands Of A Killer?

The music sucks but what can you do, this film was made during a transitional period, in old Hollywood films there was music under dialog scenes commenting on everything in an obvious way, this film still has a lot of that. Although there is an appearance by the amazing Hadda Brooks, tinkling the ivories and vocalizing at a piano bar while Bogey and Grahame look on. Gloria Grahame is at her sexiest in this film, she’s incredible. Bogey is great too, weird but great. Louise Brooks said this film captured the real Humphrey Bogart more than any other. It’s interesting how the patented Bogey dialog doesn’t quite work here, you know like the lines from To Have And Have Not with Betty Bacall , “You have a touch of class but you don’t like to be rated…” I think it’s because it was made during a transitional time, getting away from the conventions of Old Hollywood, Bogey getting older, vulnerable, screwed up. Mortality taking it’s toll. Watch it for yourself and decide.

Harry Bromley Davenport, an independent filmmaker and friend wrote in with an idea, a post about the Wilhelm scream. The infamous sound effect used in countless movies as sort of an in-joke among sound editors. Harry forwarded me a link to an article that claims to identify the famous but till now unidentified screamer. The article names Sheb Wooley as the Wilhelm screamer! A Western type cowboy actor and author of the big hit song Flying Purple Eater.

Here’s the very first use of the Wilhelm scream. From a movie called Charge At Feather River.

And here’s a compilation of many Wilhelm’s.

Was it Sheb Wooley? Who knows for sure, maybe it’s destined to be an eternal mystery like who really killed the Black Dahlia.

The restored,longer version of Fritz Lang’s super mega masterpiece,METROPOLIS is being shown in theaters starting today Friday, May 14, 2010! GO! Do not miss it! This film is like the wellsping, the source from which all sci-fi sprang! New Footage! 20 minutes worth and the original orchestral score not throbbing disco. Check it out. I once heard Lang was editing the last reels as it was being premiered, so he had guys on motorcycles rushing the reels as he finished cutting them to the theater! Crazy! I went to see Black Monn last night and it was SOLD OUT! (I got in) But what an amazing occurence, a sold out Thursday night screening of an obscure Art Film! Down with corporate Art! Don’t go see the Hollywood crap go see METROPOLIS!

Lang directs Metropolis!