Here’s a little behind the scenes footage that demonstrates how we did our poorman’s process shot in my film One Night With You. Joe Montgomery met a couple of old time Hollywood Cameramen and learned a lot of the techniques perfected during the film noir days. This is one of them. You get to see the set up and then the final scene. Check it out!
My old pal Michael Sullivan, the MadMan of Manhattan, animator , filmmaker, actor par excellance ( check out his performance as Lamy Homo in Bob Downey’s blasphemous epic Greaser’s Palace) But now after years of secret Alchemical work in his dusty attic somewhere on 29th street, in the shadow of the Empire State building, he has brought forth his epic creation, The Sex Life Of Robots! Here’s an article he sent me about it. More to come in the future!
If you want to read the article and see hi-rez images go here: TRIX ROSEN, download a zip file and check it out.
I just got word from the great Spaghetti Western Database that MGM is finally releasing Sergio Corbucci’s masterpiece Navajo Joe. This is an early vehicle for Burt Reynolds, he plays the title character , an Indian who doesn’t take any guff from anybody. He also does all his own stunts and is very impressive in that department. Also the score by Morricone is incredible, featuring the vocal talents of Alessandro Alessandroni’s amazing choir, I Cantori Moderni, and Gianna Spagnulo’s wild, earthy solos in particular. Also of note is Alessandroni’s incredible baritone electric guitar playing. Parts of this score were used to great effect in Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, for example when Uma kills Bill with the 5 point palm exploding heart technique and Bill staggers off to die. Here it is courtesy of YouTube:
But back to Navajo Joe, it has an incredible ending, you’ll have to check it out for yourself, kind of abstract but incredibly moving. Here’s the trailer.
Tomorrow, Friday May 2nd Sergio Leone’s epic masterpiece Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo will screen at the NuArt Theater in Los Angeles. They will show the uncut version with 20 minutes of deleted footage. The original cut of the film was 3 hours long. Chris Mankiewicz told me that he was a VP for United Artists at the time and it was his job to cut the movie down for an American release. He went to Leone and gave him the bad news. Leone grudgingly gave his OK but only on the condition that Chris use Nino Baragli, the film’s original editor. Chris agreed and made the cuts with Nino. Leone approved and that’s the version we all grew up with.
The Circle Of Death
Cut to a few years ago, John Kirk head of restoration for MGM contacted Triage Motion Picture Services, it seems an original uncut print of GBU had turned up at a Customs House in Italy. A print of a film had to be submitted to a government office to get a stamp of approval so it could be distributed. So using this as a guide I was called in by Triage to recreate as closely as possible to the original a new version of the film, using the best elements available and putting it in synch. Also rescoring one scene with a cue from an LP of the soundtrack. It was a real puzzle but I got it put back together with John Kirk, Tony Munroe, and Paul Rutan Jr. of Triage. That’s the version screening at the NuArt tomorrow. So go check it out and look for my name in the end credits!
The Soundtrack LP
What a pleasure to see this great film projected in glorious 35mm B&W! One of the most beautiful noirs of all time splashed across the silver screen, Richard Widmark running like a cornered rat in a checkered suit through the alleys and back streets, under the bridges, along the waterfront, through the dives, the clip joints, the crooked nooks and crannies of London’s underbelly. Beautiful! Some of the coolest locations, so atmospheric, fog, magic hour photography, this film is a textbook of urban atmosphere.
Julie Dassin- Master of Cinematic Atmosphere
The noir guy (Alan K. Rode) gave a spiel at the beginning of the show, he spoke about Dassin’s uneasy relationship with Hollywood and how he formed a love/hate alliance with Darryl Zanuck. This film was produced by 20th Century Fox under Zanuck’s aegis. Mr. Z shipped Dassin off to London to escape the Commie witchhunts then igniting in Hollywood. Darryl also persuaded Dassin to put Gene Tierney in the film so she could get away from an exploding marriage and have something to do to occupy her mind. Zanuck told Dassin to write her into the script and he did, it’s pretty obvious, after a stellar opening of Widmark being chased through the seamy streets of London, he makes it home to a long dialouge scene with Tierney, not a great 2nd scene, obviously inserted to give Tierney a part.
Widmark and Tierney- tacked on love interest
I’m sure in the original script Widmark’s love interest was the fat club owner’s chick Helen, who he screws royally.
Widmark and Googie Withers aka Helen- original love object?
Also Hugh Marlow was tacked on as Gene Tierney’s other love interest, the patient good guy neighbor, waiting for Widmark to dump her so he can be there in the wings, rush out and pull her off the railroad tracks or whatever. His character Really does not belong in this movie. But forget all this fol de rol, this is a great movie! The wrestler Gregorius and Mike Mazurki have an epic battle that is unique in all of Cinema! It’s terrific!
Battle Royale- Gregorious (Stanislaus Zbyszko) Vs. Mike Mazurki!
And you can feel the noose inexorably tightening about Widmark’s neck, no matter what mad desperate genius scheme he comes up with, and he comes up with some brilliant twists and turns to avoid destruction. Probably one of the best hustlers ever to hit the screen! He makes Sidney Falco look like a chump! There is a montage of the word spreading across London ” Get Widmark! Big Reward!” that is pure cinematic bliss, locations, action, characters, genius. Like something out of Dickens or a scene from Fritz Lang’s “M”. Beautiful! Watching this film I was reminded of Mike Hodges “Get Carter” an English noir from 1971. I wonder if Mr. Hodges is a fan of Night and The City? Hats Off to The American Cinematheque for showing this masterpiece in all it’s silver nitrate glory! There was a big crowd on another Thursday night in Hollywood, the Center Of The Noir Universe!
They recently released Some Came Running on DVD. Vincente Minelli’s icy hot movie with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Shirley McClain.
It was based on a novel by James Jones and it has become an iconic movie, mainly for me because of Dean Martin. Check it out and see what being cool in Technicolor in 1957 was all about.
Minelli
Godard/Coutard
Jean Luc Godard that genius, recognized Dino’s ultra coolness. He didn’t buy into the Sinatra legend, he made up his mind for himself and he went with Dean.
He has Michel Piccoli reading James Jones’s novel in the bathtub in Le Mepris and telling Brigitte Bardot that he’s wearing a hat “to be like Dean Martin in Some Came Running”.
A Treasure For The Ages- Brigitte Bardot’s Ass
I think Godard has another character reference this movie in another film, but I can’t remember if it’s Jean Paul Belmondo in Pierrot Le Fou or in Une femme est une femme. I’ll check but if one of you eagle eyed film brains out there knows, write in! Maybe you’ll win a delectable, hard to come by prize!
A Still From Highway 301, the 2nd half of the double bill
Scarlett O’Hara uttered this line in GWTW. It doesn’t have anything to do with this movie. Thank God. This noir gem starts out with brooding tough guy Steve Cochran being released from prison after an 18 year stretch. The kicker is he went in when he was 13 for killing his old man, Oedipus baby. The story zigs and zags with more turns than an anaconda doing the twist. He gets befriended by a guy in a greasy spoon, the guy buys him some pie, takes him to where he can get a job, then writes an expose about “the youngest killer in state history getting out of jail” complete with recent picture. Steve Cochran kicks the slimy reporter’s ass then he’s off to NYC for a 10 cent rendevous with destiny. He slides into a rent-a-date dance parlour and falls for the hardest chippie in the joint, Ruth Roman.
Ruth Roman, Va Va Voom!
He pursues her like a hound dog in the swamp and in spite of her acid edged personality, he makes progress. She invites him up to her pad where Bingo! An older dude is waiting, this angry cat tells Steve to blow and begins slapping the shit out of R.R. so Steve being a red blooded American convict starts slugging Mr. A-hole. The guy pulls a gun but Ruthie breaks a dish on his hand and Steve gloms the heater. He’s got grandpa covered but he has a flashback to when he plugged his old man and freezes up. The older guy slugs S.C. knocking him cold. R.R. grabs the rod and when hot head comes at her it goes off accidentally. The cool thing is when the guy gets up you can see a bullet hole in his back, the exit wound! Now this is a similar scenario to Fritz Lang’s Woman in The Window with Edward G. Robinson and Joan Bennett, but in that earlier film you don’t see any blood or wounds at all. Anyway it turns out Mr. Bad was a cop, a detective. So Steve tracks down Ruth, Steve doesn’t remember what happened so Ruth blames him! She says he did it!
More Ruth Roman, Can You Ever Get Enough!
He buys it and they’re off, a killer sequence has them hiding in a sedan on the back of a big car transporting rig. They head out cross country and the movie switches gears in a super cool way, up till now it’s been a typical 40’s type noir, all urban night, smoke, gunshots, hard dames that’ll get you strapped in the electric chair on the first date, the usual, now as the two star crossed lovers cross the big old USA it transforms into a 50’s movie, like a socially conscious teen angst James Dean type thing. They switch from double breasted suits and strapless chiffon numbers to blue jeans, leather jackets, Ruth even dyes her hair brunette, her real color. They’re like beatnik dharma bums living in a migrant farm workers camp picking lettuce and falling in love for the first time, Steve because he spent his entire adolescence in jail and Ruth because she had to fight off every guy that got within two feet of her. Things are looking good when the devil’s bargain rears it’s ugly head.
Steve looking like the Cat that swallowed the Canary
I won’t reveal what goes down but it’s a good predicament that ensnares the innocent as well as the guilty. Felix Feist did a great job with this epic. It’s got some excellent performances, a whole lot of story and several scenes that work like gangbusters. I didn’t like the end that much but other than that it’s pretty damn good. Check it out if you can, by the way the theater was pretty full, old Steve Cochran can still get people in off the street, even on a Thursday night in Hollywood!
Ciao Baby!
There’s a great article by Richard Brody in the New Yorker about the relationship and feud of these two superstars of the New Wave.Check it out if you can. I recently watched Contempt on TCM. It was pan and scan and not a great copy but the stunning power of the film rang through clear as a bell. Godard plays with so many ideas in such a unique way. Fritz Lang is filming The Odyssey for American producer Jack Palance, Michel Piccoli is hired to write the script and they argue about re writing Homer. The purity and immediacy of The Odyssey, the experiential purity is at stake. The American wants to change it, Lang resists, Piccoli tries to talk him into it so he can earn enough to buy an apartment for his wife, Bridgitte Bardot, until he loses her to the American. Then he agrees with Lang. The emotions of the characters in this film are so true, so reminiscent of that first big breakup, your first adult breakup, it’s as if it were written by a modern Homer, a cinematic Homer, Godard.
The magical prism of Cinema, free of the restraints of Time, takes us back to Capri, 1964 and at the same moment the Hellenic Greece of Odysseus
Here’s an interview with Jean Luc from the time of Contempt.
And here’s a recent quote from Mr. Godard in the New Yorker article “Today I feel rather like an exile in my own land. The land of Cinema.”
The Great Alberto Sordi takes aim in Il Mafioso
This is an incredible film, it languished in obscurity until the geniuses at Rialto brought it back from the dead, just like they did with Jean Pierre Melville’s Army Of Shadows. All I can say about this film is that it accomplishes something that is very hard to do and does it better than any other film I can think of. It changes from a comedy to a tragedy in the blink of an eye and it works perfectly, seamlessly, in an exciting effortless way. Maybe because the comedy is understated, not stupid, real situations that reveal something about human beings, in this case the Sicilian clan of our main character, Nino. Sordi is a great actor, compare Nino with the Sordi’s portrayal of The White Sheik in Fellini’s film of the same name, they seem like two entirely different people. Speaking of Fellini, it was Lattuada who gave Federico his directing break, sharing credit on Variety Lights. The end of Il Mafioso is incredible as well, an off the cuff remark that teeters you on the edge of the Abyss. The incredible music is by the Genius Pierro Piccone, you can hear some of it in the trailer I’ve linked to. It’s magnificent.
My recent post on Night Of The Hunter and some correspondence about it got me thinking, here’s a Confidential Magazine piece about the star, Robert Mitchum and the producer, Paul Gregory and the director, Charles Laughton. Mitchum sued the scandal sheet and won. Thanks to Larry Harnisch and his DailyMirror Blog for the article.
p.s. click on the scans to make them bigger.
Jules Dassin as the Informer Cesaer in his masterpice “Rififi”
The great filmmaker Jules Dassin has dies at age 96. I grew up watching Brute Force , a masterful prison drama with Burt Lancaster and a fascistic warden, Hume Croynin,
and The Naked City on WOR’s Million Dollar Movie. The Naked City is a groundbreaking film, shot on location in NYC, it’s gritty, real,and a genre creating film. It spawned a TV show of the same name and countless cop shows and films.
Angry Mob Of Convicts in Brute Force
But it’s Dassin’s two foreign noirs that really get me. Rififi, the classic heist film shot in Paris. It’s a model for all caper movies and it’s 30 minute wordless burglary sequence has never been equalled.Economy, style, pace, drama, musical editing and use of natural sound make it a timeless heist gem that will be studied as long as people watch film.
Jean Pierre Melville was pissed off that he didn’t get to make Rififi and his response was the sublime Le Circle Rouge. Dassin wound up in Paris after an auspicious Hollywood beginning, he was apprenticed to Alfred Hitchcock and Garson Kanin, and he directed several studio pictures before he was blacklisted as a Communist. It took 5 years of scuffling in Paris to get Rififi, he was dead broke, he hated the book it was based on but he needed a job. He took it, wrote the script in a week (based on a small episode in the book) and made the film. At the last moment an Italian actor cancelled so Dassin played the part of Cesaer (under the psuedonym Perlo Vita), an interesting choice as Ceaser informs on his fellow conspirators and is murdered in retribution. Edward Dymytrk and Frank Tuttle named Dassin a Communist at their trials.
The other great noir Dassin directed abroad is the fantastic Night and The City set in London and starring the recently deceased Richard Widmark.
One of the most beautiful Noirs ever made. All Dassins films and his noirs in particular are incredibly photographed. He would wait for the right light, an overcast day, he took the time to make it right and it shows.
Night and the City will screen at the American Cinematheque as part of their up coming film noir series. There’s an interview with Dassin on the Criterion dvd of Rififi, he tells of going to Cannes with the film. He was absolutely flat broke and he asked the producer of the film to give him some money so he could enjoy himself a little. The producer forked over a small sum. Dassin and his wife went to the roulette table and put all the dough on a number, the wheel spun, their number came up! They had some money to enjoy themselves and the film won the Palm d’Or!
A while back I was working at a trailer company in NYC, a place where we made Previews Of Coming Attractions for films. I was talking to a fellow editor named Nick Meyers and I mentioned Jules Dassin. At the time I thought he was French so I pronounced his name Francophonically “Jhooles Dahsan”. Nick says “Who?” I repeated it. ” Oh, you mean Julie Dassin, he’s from the Bronx.” Nick’s dad Sidney Meyers was an old pal of Julie Dassin from NY theater and a fellow Lefty. Sidney went on to be a founding member of NY’s Editor’s Guild. So Fare Thee Well Jules Dassin, your films will be watched till the end of time.
Have you ever seen The Night Of The Hunter? The film directed by Charles Laughton, starring Robert Mitchum and featuring Lilian Gish and Shelly Winters? It’s a great film, considered by many critics to be one of the top 50 films of all time. It is a beautiful, poetic, unique creation. There are sequences unlike any other in Cinema. For example when the children are traveling by rowboat, just floating down the river at night and there are all these shots of animals, frogs, owls, rabbits, spiders, in the foreground and the skiff with the children floating by in the background, accompanied by a beautiful voice singing a melancholy folk/ nursery rhyme motif.
It’s a gorgeous, deep sequence that transports you to a magical place, sort of a glancing back at the mystery of childhood, the psychic spaces we inhabit as children when we are closer to the elemental , to nature, to animals, to magic. We accept the arcane without questioning.
And the acting is great too. Mitchum said Laughton was his favorite director because he loved everything he did and he would tell him so.
Robert Mitchum as the Murderous Preacher, Harry Powell, with LOVE and HATE tattooed on his fingers
Shelly Winters is great as well, it’s funny here she is playing a mother who is married by a man whose real target is her children, a role she would repeat in Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita.
She studied Acting in Charles Laughton’s class
Lillian Gish is superb and it’s wonderful that she appears in this film. A lot of the imagery seems to come directly out of silent film, a kind of stark poetic imagery, powerful visuals that remind you of Murnau, or Lang or even Caligari. She spoke of the making of the film in a reverential manner. “I have to go back as far as DW Griffith,” wrote Gish, “to find a set so infused with purpose and harmony. There was not ever a moment’s doubt as to what we were doing or how we were doing it. To please Charles Laughton was our aim. We believed in and respected him. Totally.”
The film was shot by the great Stanley Cortez, camerman for Orson Welles on his follow up to Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons ( Another Cautionary Tale in a future post). The thing is this, when Night Of The Hunter was released, it flopped, didn’t make money, although the critics were respectful, if somewhat baffled.
This devastated Laughton. It’s obvious the man poured his heart and soul into this film and when no one liked it he was shattered. ” I’ll never direct another film.” he said and he never did. He died six years later without knowing his film would one day be called a masterpiece. So here’s to you Charles Laughton, up there in Film Heaven. Captain Bligh, Quasimodo, Dr. Moreau,Gracchus Galileo. We on planet Earth Salute You!
Cheerio