Film Forno

Before there was The Matrix, before V for Vendetta, there was John Carpenter’s They Live. A super cool concept, alien mind control working through Television, Billboards, Newspapers, all media. The Aliens run everything and they keep the humans hopping like hamsters on a wheel. I watched some of Halloween last night and I started thinking about John Carpenter, I really like Starman my old pal Jack Nitzsche did the score for that movie and it’s very cool. Mark Boone Junior , star of One Night With You and prominently featured in the upcoming 30 Days Of Night is in Carpenter’s Vampires. He gets cut in two by a vampire when he answers the door and he slowly slides apart. I saw Carpenter once at Musso and Frank’s, the oldest restaurant in Hollywood. I had gone there with Boone to meet a producer when Carpenter called Boone to his table. His hair is white as snow, he wears jet black welders goggle type glasses and he can’t stand sunlight, kind of like a vampire from his film. I guess he got over exposed to ultra-violet radiation while making The Thing ( his masterpiece) and now he must stay covered like a Bedouin when outdoors.

Look Familiar?

But back to They Live, like I said a great idea, the film is crazy, there’s a fight scene between Rowdy Roddy Piper and Keith David that goes on for a very long time, I found it on Youtube so I’m including it and the trailer. Roddy finds some sunglasses that enable the wearer to see the aliens among us and see their mind control techniques in action. Also Roddy has one of the best action lines in action movies. ” Gentlemen, I’ve come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum!” A guilty pleasure.

Trailer

World’s Longest Fist Fight

Bridget Fossey

Once in a great while a film comes along that rocks you to your very roots. Forbidden Games is such a film. It is by the great Rene Clement. He created several master works like, Purple Noon (The original Talented Mr. Ripley), and Rider On The Rain with Charles Bronson but this one is my favorite . I first saw this film when I was a young lad, it played on The Million Dollar Movie back in New York on WOR Channel 9. I must offer thanks to the unknown programmer of that show. I saw Peter Brooks Lord Of The Flies, Bergman’s Virgin Spring, De Sica’s Two Women, Bunuel’s Robinson Crusoe, Losey’s Boy with The Green Hair, and Fellini’s La Dolce Vita all on The Million Dollar Movie and it made me a cinephile for life.

The Peasant and The Princess

Forbidden Games starts with a long line of people on a country road, they’re fleeing Paris as the Nazi’s approach. We meet a young couple with a beautiful daughter, the little girl has a puppy she cherishes. Suddenly a sound from the sky, a German Messerschmidt fighter plane, it strafes the refugees, killing the girls parents and the puppy. The girl wanders away in shock carrying the tiny dog. She’s found by a farm family and brought into the farm house. These rough hewn folk marvel at her finery and her beauty. The young son of the farmers immediately falls in love with this rare jewel that’s appeared like a vision in their midst. The little girl tries to cope with her parents demise in a strange way.She and the boy create a fantasy cemetery burying the puppy and any other deceased creatures they come across. The imagery is powerful, romantic, emotionally intoxicating. It’s like a fairy tale come to life.

A Fairy Tale Come To Life

Clement understands that by using children as protagonists, we (the audience) experience the film as children. We re-experiance the time of our innocence and our most vivid impressions of life. The music is by the wonderful guitarist Narcisco Yepes. I had the good fortune to see him play at Alice Tully Hall in New York and he was incredible. He played a 10 string classical guitar of his own design.

Check out his music, it’s great and check out this film it’s tragic beauty will touch your soul. Below is a clip from the film, sorry about the lack of subtitles.

A limping figure comes out of the fog

Wow! I just watched an incredible film! Act of Violence directed by Fred Zinnemann, superb cinematography by Robert Surtees, excellent music by Bronislau Kaper, and magnificent performances by Van Heflin, Robert Ryan, and Janet Leigh. This film falls into that sub genre, Screwed Up Veteran Noir. A guy who got his mind bent by WWII tries to fit into his home life back here in the States but he can’t! When we first see Robert Ryan he’s just a shuffling silhouette coming out of a pre dawn NY cityscape, we follow him into a crummy Brownstone and up the steps to his apartment. The camera tracks following him in and tilts down as he opens a dresser drawer revealing the 45 automatic he pulls out from under his undies. Then it tilts back up showing his face for the first time.

A genius at portraying the dark and twisted

Zinnemann has defined this character with two elements , his limp and his gun, before showing us his face, Brilliant! Let me take a second to talk about Robert Ryan. He looks like a grown up Howdy Doody but grown up twisted, dark. American as apple pie but the apples are rotten, there’s a worm eating at the heart of them. Ryan portrayed racists, psycho veterans, Anti- Semites, Gay bashers, and he did it in a way that allowed you to see his humanity, he wasn’t ever a stereotype, he was always real. This was at a time when very few films took on these controversial subject matters. Not only did it take guts for Ryan to play these parts it also took a hell of a lot of talent! He exposed the dark underbelly of the American psyche, when everybody was blowing the happy horns of victory after the war, Ryan and some dedicated filmmakers(like Zinnemann ,Wyler, Dymtrk) dared to talk about the problems the returning Vets faced. And dared to portray some Vets as something less than heroes. Here he’s an obsessed veteran charged with a holy mission, to avenge his comrades savagely cut down in a P.O.W. camp during an escape attempt. He is like Ahab stalking the white whale Van Heflin, relentlessly pursuing him, the sound of his dragging foot striking fear into the hearts of those who hear it and realize it’s significance.

The Hero with a Terrible Secret

We first see Van Heflin at an awards ceremony, this brings to mind the scene in Rolling Thunder where William Devane, a returning POW is honored in his small town. Van is married to the delicious Janet Leigh, they have a darling tow headed son, they live in a Craftsman house in a picturesque small town.

The Beautiful Dream of the Returned Veteran

They’ve got it all until Ryan shows up , an evil reminder of a dark deed , a mortal sin Van committed in a POW camp.

Once Upon A Time they were Friends

The issues in this film are so real it elevates the story from the genre to a lofty psychological plane. Once it starts I dare you to try and stop watching it! Noir was a B genre, they were made fast, a lot of the conventions of noir , the stylish shots were partly created to save time as for example when you have two characters talking to each other but both facing the camera, this saves the time of doing reverses, moving the camera, relighting, etc. There is an incredible shot early in the film. Robert Ryan has just arrived in California, he gets off the bus and starts to cross the street, a cop stops him because a Veterans parade is coming by, he waits but cuts through when there’s an opening, the camera pans with him revealing that it was in a hotel lobby shooting through the picture window, it catches Ryan coming through the entrance and tracks back with him to the desk where he checks in. This is all in one amazing shot! Yet done in such a natural way that you might not notice it. Check it out!

All One Shot

Zinnemann is an actors director. 16 vastly different performers got Academy Award nominations for their roles in his films. Van Heflin is great in this film, the best work I’ve ever seen him do. I think Gregory Peck is excellent in Zinnemann’s Behold A Pale Horse , the list goes on and on. Another interesting aspect of Film Noir, for that matter any B genre film. Due to the lower budget, their was less risk for the studio. The filmmakers could try things they wouldn’t dare on A pictures, like the subject matter of this film. It’s only by taking chances that you reach the stratospheric heights. Compared to Act Of Violence Zinnemann’s From Here To Eternity is a soap opera. Don’t get me wrong it is a very good film but the studio is making a huge investment in that project, they can’t take chances, they have to make it appeal to as many people as possible.

Taking Chances on a Noir Track

The locations are great, at one point Van flees to Los Angeles to escape Ryan. Ryan tracks him and almost gets him, Van runs into the streets and passes the touchstone of great LA noir, Angel’s Flight! I didn’t know this was in there, what a great surprise!

The Quintessential Noir Landmark, The Train To Nowhere

Later Van is running from himself, he enters the 2nd street tunnel. He’s flashing back to his men in the POW camp trying to escape through a tunnel they dug. The entire flashback is executed with voices ringing in Van’s head as he runs, stumbles through the tunnel. It works amazingly well! Another noir budget cutting device, a creative solution to the flashback needed at this point in the film, it’s better than showing the Stalag, the dead men, the SS officer! It’s great! Also pay attention to the editing, jump cuts bringing us closer and closer to Van as he cracks apart, forced to face what he’s kept hidden inside. This is 1948 years before the French New Wave.

Flashback in a tunnel

The 2nd Street Tunnel

By the way I used this same tunnel as a location in my film One Night With You. Van goes down the mean streets of LA stumbling into a bar where he meets Mary Astor, an aging hooker, looking for kicks. She is incredible, the real deal, a woman pushing 40, not an ingenue with a wig. She’s terrific!

Mary Astor, once she chased the Maltese Falcon

The end of the film is sort of played out like a noir Western, with a shootout at the train station, it’s very good , maybe not up to the incredible heights of the rest of the film but very well done. The train station location if I’m not mistaken is the Glendale station dressed to be Santa Lisa, the fictional small town of our story. That station still exists, it’s a beauty, used in many films, even a silent Buster Keaton opus.

Next Stop, Glendale!

So please check this film out. I love stories about problems from out of the past showing up and haunting guys, about the problems of returned Veterans, about obsessed, relentless pursuers, about people trying to run away from themselves on the dark streets of a dirty noir city.

Down these mean streets…

Obsessee, obsessor

I worked on restoring Fritz Lang’s Woman In The Window a few years ago with my friends over at Triage Motion Picture Services. For some reason or another ( probably an idiotic executive decision) the original negative had been destroyed. “Abernathy, what are all these old cans taking up all this valuable space at our studio?” “Those are the original negatives of the films the studio produced in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, sir” ” Get rid of that trash!” Anyway in the case of Woman In The Window all that was left was a Fine Grain made in the early 60’s and a nitrate release print from the original 1944 run. I compared the two elements and picked whatever shot was best to create a new negative.

Joanie B. and Eddie G.

Edward G. Robinson is a college professor who sees a portrait of a woman in the window of a store next to the club where he hangs out with his buddies.

Fritz Lang in a publicity still from Le Mepris, that’s Godard working the clapper

The woman in the window is the lovely Joan Bennett, she was married to producer Walter Wanger, but I guess he wasn’t wanging her enough so she had an affair with her agent, Jennings Lang. Wanger found out about it and waylaid the two, waiting for them outside their trysting place, Marlon Brando’s Beverly Hills apartment! Walter blasted the agent with two bullets one of which nicked Jennings nutsack. Wanger later said he was aiming for JL’s gonads, he wanted to make him a castrato!

Herr Lang, Joan Bennett, Walter Wanger

But enough digressions. Woman In The Window is an excellent film, it’s beautifully made and the scene in Joan Bennett’s apartment where Eddie G. kills Bennett’s older jealous sugar daddy is a tour de force, powerful as a nightmare from which you can’t wake up. I’ve often wondered if this scene is so strong because Fritz Lang has been accused by one of his biographers of murdering his first wife in an apartment in Berlin. Is he wrestling with his own demons? His own guilt?

Then the ultra slimy ( and I mean that as a compliment) Dan Duryea shows up and begins blackmailing Bennett. These scenes are great as well, the beautiful, sexy Joan B. forced to be nice, to pretend she’s attracted to a man she hates, it’s cheap, degrading, sleazy. You’ll love it! The only thing that hasn’t stood the test of time is the ending, I don’t want to give it away but all it needs is a trombone going “Wahhh Wahhh” to really make it bad. In defense of Lang I guess it was a new, novel idea in 1944 and the technique used in the transitional shot is amazing. Without giving it away totally , Edward G. is sitting in a big overstuffed chair in an apartment, the camera tracks in to a tight close up of his face, then it tracks back revealling him in an entirely different location. There’s no dissolve so you know the crew was flying walls in and out, changing furniture, replacing props, all in a few seconds. Really a great effect.

The Magic Close Up

Back in the mid 70’s I was in LA, I went to UCLA to see a program of Fritz Lang’s American films. It was hosted by the distinguished film critic Charles Champlin. Introducing The Big Heat he made a comment that Lang’s American films were his best work. I took exception to that, Metropolis, M, these are towering giants of world film, among the greatest films ever made! I like Lang’s American stuff but come on! How could this clown say such a thing! Was it American chauvinism or what. So I spoke up and told him what I thought, he tried to dismiss my comments in a rude “you don’t know what you’re talking about” way. Well, Mr. Champlin you were wrong and you’re still wrong.

I’ll kill you, Charles Champlin

Katelbach!

Enemy soldiers forget War when confronted with The Saragossa Manuscript

Calling all DeadHeads! This was Jerry Garcia’s favorite movie! As a matter of fact he and Martin Scorcese paid for it’s restoration! I saw it at a revival theater a few years back and it is very cool.

What’s for Dessert?

The Saragossa Manuscript was originally a strange, mystical book written in 1847 by Jan Potocki. it’s full of occult symbolism, picaresque adventures, plots within plots within plots and was reportedly a favorite among Surrealists. (Luis Bunuel cites it in his autobiography, My Last Sigh). The film version was made in 1965 by Wojciech Has.

Didn’t we meet in a haunted cave?

I think it’s very difficult to pull off the story within a story trick, but this film manages to do it over and over again. A character meets another, the new man begins telling a story, within that story a new character appears and he begins a story, then somehow we’re whisked back to our original character either in bed with two beautiful haunting princesses or waking up next to a hanging corpse! It’s out there!

Zbyszek Cybulski is Alphonse

Great production value, stunning Black and White Cinematography by Mieczyslaw Jahoda (before Polish DP’s were all the rage). An excellent score by the master of atonal serious horror movie music Krzysztof Penderecki. You should check out this movie, it’s like a mystery wrapped in an enigma shrouded in Illusion and hidden behind a gravestone at Midnight. There is something about it that’s difficult to put into words, mystical I guess, it comes from the Book but somehow through all the years and various translations it is distilled into the movie in a rare and alchemical way.

So scoop yourself some Cherry Garcia ice cream, load the bong with Panama Red and take a magic carpet ride deep into the brain of Captain Trips.

Read Me!

Today I’m writing about a great , but not that well known director, Robert Siodmak. I am posting a scan of a sort of self interview he did for Sight and Sound magazine from 1959. Siodmak to me is above all else, a master of cinematic atmosphere. His films always convey that elusive feeling of place, not just a physical place but a psychological place. Something that makes your skin crawl , or causes you to feel a little sweaty , suddenly the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and it isn’t from the action taking place on the screen , it’s something that oozes out of the background and gets under your skin. Check it out for yourself.

Watch the magnificent Criss Cross starring Siodmak stalwart Burt Lancaster and Lily Munster Yvonne De Carlo and super slimy Dan Duryea. A great movie!

Would you believe Lily Munster! A young Yvonne DeCarlo

Dan “scumbag” Duryea & B. Lancaster

The excellent armoured car robbery from Criss Cross, a study in efficiency and creepiness.Also one of our favorite noir locations, Angel’s Flight is prominently featured.

I tried to find this location from Criss Cross, then I realized it was Bunker Hill. It had been destroyed.

Albert Dekker plays Dr. Cyclops , only not in this film

Lazy Eye poster boy Jack Elam is here, he’s one of the gunslingers laying for Charles Bronson at the begining of Once Upon A Time In The West.

He started in the movies as an accountant

Strother Martin , the Southern Gothic slimy wierdo who had a failure to communicate with Paul Newman shows up here.

Strother, Baby

Great Los Angeles 1950’s locations ( I think this movie was one of the reasons I wanted to move here ), It even features Angel’s Flight , the super cool little funicular railway that went up Bunker Hill! This groovy trolley is in several excellent noirs , like Criss Cross for example.

A sure sign of a cool LA noir

This movie was shot by B-movie maven Robert Aldritch in 3 weeks! Due in no small part to the excellent screenplay by the legendary A.I. Bezzerides ( there’s a documentary about A. I. out , check it out).

Buzz Bezzerides at 90
The movie’s MacGuffin is a mysterious box that emits a blinding light and Banshee scream when opened, a direct antecedent to the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.

Aldrich directs Gaby Rodgers

Kiss Me Deadly, the chicks are hot, the gansters grotesque, the hero’s handsome, the cars Cool, and the locations are outstanding. So please, if you haven’t seen it, rent or buy or borrow a copy and check it out. Then stroll down to your nearest dive bar, drop a quater in the jukebox , play a Sinatra tune , order a whiskey and think about Velma.

Atom Age Pandora

Is this the end of Mike Hammer?

Great, grungy locations, nihilistic, vicious characters, ultra-violence, groovy 60’s ambience, stellar Michael Caine performance, all add up to make Get Carter probably The seminal English gangster flick of all time. There are just so many great things in this movie I don’t know where to begin. But I’ll try. OK let’s start with Michael Caine, never before or since has he been this ruthless, hot-headed, just plain tough. He’s on a quest, who killed his brother and why. So this hard core criminal has a moral imperative, maybe for the first time in his life, his head busting talents are fueled by something other than a paycheck. This is brilliantly expressed by Caine, if you watch the trailer you’ll see a scene where Caine/Carter is interrogating a guy and the guy falls to his knees, then just as Caine/Carter stabs him , cut. In the film Caine stabs the guy over and over as he speaks, punctuating each word with a stab! Like “Don’t” stab “You” stab “Lie” stab “To” stab “Me” stab etc. Brutal, but in the context of the film, perfect!

This could very well be Caine’s greatest role and a lot of credit must go to the director Mike Hodges.

Mike Hodges, A Man With A Movie Camera

I had lunch with Mike a few years back. We were discussing restoring Mike’s film “A Prayer For The Dying“. It seems the film had been recut by the producer without Mike’s input. Mike had delivered a finished film, scored, mixed, done and then back in the U.S.A. they tore it apart. This had not sat well with Mike and he burned with desire to put the film back in it’s original form. I wanted to help. We spent a whole day going from one cavernous film vault to another searching for elements, unfortunately we couldn’t find what we needed. The final chapter has not been written on this project though, there is still some hope that it may one day be resurrected. Mike is a great guy and a super talent, he discovered Clive Owen and cast him in his wonderful “Croupier“. But I think it safe to say “Get Carter” is his masterpiece.