Film Forno

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 The Big Sleep 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!

Two super cool films will screen in glorious 35mm at the CineFamily this Thursday night. Starting at 8 o’clock Louis Malle’s Fairy Tale for Adults , Black Moon will be projected. This is a unique, disturbing, highly creative film and chances to see it in a theater with other humans are rare as hen’s teeth.

The same can be said of Jaromil Jires Valerie And Her Week Of Wonders. This epic of surreal magic unspools at 10. Click HERE for details. I’ll be there how about YOU!

Lewis Allen
An excellent film in all respects but Film Noir? I don’t know, they billed it as Gothic Noir but it’s like Merchant Ivory noir. Ray Milland is excellent as a talented cad, painter/thief no goodnik.He seduces the virginal widow of a missionary, Ann Todd,  gets her to commit unspeakable acts and thanks to the writing and Miss Todd’s acting you totally believe it.Art Direction and Cinematography are top notch, all the acting in the movie is good. Look for Leo G. Carroll as a tenacious detective. Lewis Allen does an excellent job directing.He was around New York when I lived there but he was producing films in his later years. I met with his representative, a sleepy gent whose name escapes me, about a script I had written but Mr. Allen said no thanks. Allen produced the successful adaptaion of William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies directed by Peter Brook, he also produced Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451. He directed Suddenly starring Frank Sinatra as an assassin out to hit the President, Sinatra pulled the film from circulation after he heard Lee Harvey Oswald had watched it a few days before the Kennedy assassination. Now that I’ve seen So Evil My Love I’ve got to say Bravo to his work as a director.

Here thanks to You Tube you can watch Siodmak’e File On Thelma Jordan featuring a great performance by Barbara Stanwyck. Wendell Corey is perfectly cast as well. Another Siodmak study of domestic tribulation in the Land Of Noir.

One of the things that strikes you about Siodmak’s great film Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers is the storytelling. It’s brilliant. Fracturing a narrative and reassembling it is much more interesting then just relating events in a linear flow, at least to me. The film I’m reminded of most by Siodmak’s approach is Orson Welles Citizen Kane which was released 5 years earlier in 1941. Kane had a tremendous effect on the filmmaking community, it was like a bomb of creative freedom, influencing generations of filmmakers. I’m sure it blew Siodmak’s head off and he shows it’s influence in several ways. First off both films start with the death of their main character. In The Killers this opening scene is all that’s based on Hemingway’s short story. The rest of the narrative was invented by the screenwriters. (Including an uncredited John Huston according to an interview with Siodmak). This was Hemingway’s favorite film adaption of any of his works and he would screen the film at the drop of a hat for guests down in Cuba.

Cold Open

The opening is sensational, no credits, no fade in, just cut wham! to a POV driving down a rural road at night. What a way to start a film, Dynamic! Then we get the credit sequence as we see the two killers (William Conrad and Charles McGraw) walking up to a little diner.

The Killers

An innocent American small town, like a Norman Rockwell painting and two cold as ice killers cruising it’s quiet streets. Talk about a study in contrast, a very Hitchcockian element, showing pure evil in the midst of picture postcard setting.

Small Town Mayhem

Then we get another Kane simile, the story is taken over by an insurance investigator. In Kane it’s an investigative reporter that leads us from one story to another.

Who’s That Knocking At My Door?

It’s Death!

The cast is excellent, Burt Lancaster’s first starring role and an early outing for Ava Gardner. They both never looked better and the sexual tension smoulders between them like molten lava. But Burt falls in love and that’s his undoing. There’s a two shot of Burt and Ava with a light burning between them, Siodmak is shining the love light on our star crossed lovers.

This Little Light Of Mine, I’m gonna Let It Shine

This reminded me of a similar shot in Christmas Holiday showing the love of Deanna Durbin and Gene Kelly. Actually there is another parallel with Christmas Holiday, when Burt is in jail, his cellmate gives an astronomy lecture, they look out their cell window and what do they see but the exact same glass painted clouds parting reveling a star on high that was used at the end of Christmas Holiday! Check it out it’s the same.

The Same Glass Painting From Christmas Holiday

It has an emotional effect on Burt, he starts thinking about his lost love Ava and asks his cellie to look her up when he gets out. Burt is put in harm’s way by a chance meeting, very similar to what happened to Robert Mitchum in 1947’s Out Of The Past. In both films our protagonists wishing to hide out and start a new life are working at out of the way gas stations when Fate steps in and has a figure from their respective murky pasts show up at the station and recognize them.

Burt AKA The Swede is Spotted

Check The Oil!

Albert “Dr Cyclops” Dekker. He died under very Mysterious Circumstances

It’s a study in extending tension here in The Killers. Albert Dekker ( he of the bald dome and thick glasses in Dr. Cyclops) shows up at the bucolic service station and seems to relish torturing subservient attendant Burt, making him check the oil and wash the windshield all the while giving him the fisheye. Another tour de force sequence is the robbery of the hat factory, all done in one take and brilliantly so. The camera tracks and cranes in a virtuoso series of moves that conveys tension, excitement and execution wonderfully. I noticed that you can see the cameraman on the crane reflected in the window of a departing truck but you barely notice it because the film is working so well. I bring this up to make a point as Fellini said the magician must show the card up his sleeve to make the illusion more complete.

Presto! Crane in The Window

There is a great boxing scene in the film that’s as good as any boxing sequence, it’s like a Whitman’s sampler of Cinematic treats.

A Great Fight Sequence!

Another Kane connection occurs when Edmund O’Brien is hiding out in the rooming house Burt was killed in. O’Brien is laying in wait for one of the gang, Dum Dum, he listen’s through the door as Dum Dum rents the room and then begins tearing it apart looking for a clue to the whereabouts of the missing heist money. We only see O’Brien listenening but the scene is fraught with tension. It plays just like a radio play, unseen just heard.

Edmund (D.O.A.) O’Brien listens to a scene played out on the other side of the door

This was a technique Welles excelled in, a natural extension of his years spent in radio. Check out the amazing scene in Touch Of Evil in the suspect’s love nest apartment when Welles and Heston argue as Joseph Calleia searches for and fids evidence off screen. Sheer Genius. The final note of the Kane symphony is the similarity of Ava Gardner’s and Albert Dekker’s palatial mansion to Kane’s Xanadu. The magnificent staircase is the hallmark of both locations.

Xanadu II

The Killers is a masterpiece, a great work of Art diguised as a piece of genre entertainment. True Creativity expresses itself no matter what the subject or format.