Film Forno

 

Hey I’m on a Norman Foster kick. I just heard about this film. The czar of noir Eddie Mueller showed it recently to an enthusiastic crowd, it has great San Francisco locations and a wonderful final scene at an amusement pier complete with laughing fat lady dummy and roller coaster. An amazing roller coaste sequence that has some almost abstract photography shot from the moving coaster. Very effective, I watched it on YouTube and the quality is not good. Hopefully someone will put a dvd out soon, I’ll buy it!

Plunk your Magic Twanger Froggy and watch Woman on The Run

I’ve been watching the Mr. Moto film series that was made at 20th Century Fox. They have all been digitally restored and released in a 2 volume dvd boxed set. Great Job by all involved, I really enjoy the special features, a short film about a person involved with the series.  The films are very well made, low budget productions shot on the left over sets from the high budget films. Because less money was at stake, and owing to the genre, the filmmakers were able to let their imaginations run wild and pull off some amazing content.

First of all you have Peter Lorre, arguably one of the greatest Cinema actors of all time, just watch Friz Lang’s M or Hitchcock’s  The Man Who Knew Too Much. Lorre had to flee Nazi Germany, he wound up in Hollywood. It’s tough to re-establish yourself in a new culture, many emigre’s didn’t make the switch but Lorre did. Mr. Moto is an interesting character, he’s kind of like Batman, rich, super intelligent, tough as nails, Moto is a Jiu Jitsu expert, and ruthless. He routinely kills his adversaries ( usually ones deserving such a fate) He is also a combination of Good and Evil. During Think Fast Mr. Moto you are not sure what side he’s on for a lot of the picture. This adds a lot of dimension to the character and with an actor like Lorre you are assured of a great ride at the Cinema.

Harvey Parry
The stunts and fights are top notch, there is an interview with veteran stunt man Harvey Parry on one of the discs that is wonderful. Parry was a diving champion and national boxing champion who doubled for Lorre or as he called him Pete. A superb athelete he flings himself on his adversaries with such abandon it exhilarates the heck out of you. There is an amusing anecdote told by Louise Brooks about William Wellman’s Wild Boys Of The Road that I think involves Parry, (I’ll have to find it again and make sure I’m right before I include it.)

Norman Foster
Finally we come to the amazing Norman Foster, an unsung hero of Hollywood. The Moto films that he co-wrote as well as directed (6 of the 8 ) are models of atmosphere, action, intrigue and efficiency. Usually starting with documentary footage from far off lands then plunging into action with Moto in one of his many disguises, they take off and don’t let up, the only dull spots are usually the romance angle between the two white leads. Moto doesn’t get to have a romance although their are some Asian women that work as his accomplices.

Foster directed Journey Into Fear for Orson Welles during Welles tenure at RKO, Welles loved what Foster did with the Moto films.

Sloan, Cotten, Welles, Mercurey Players

He also directed the My Friend Bonito, segment of Welles aborted It’s All True project. Later Foster wrote and directed the TV series Zorro for Walt Disney, The opening of Zorro is a tour de force of filmmaking. I heard Foster even wrote the Zorro theme song, which is memorable and features a great section with the word Zorro echoing at you from all angles, as if to say you never know where Zorro will strike next.

Foster, Disney, Zorro
He directed Davy Crockett for Disney as well and that series created a phenomenal cultural effect, selling coonskin caps to all the kids. Foster also directed episodes of the Batman series, another work of cultural iconographic significance. And another story of an underdog, a loner fighting for Justice, a theme Foster excelled at. Interestingly enough Orson Welles spoke of his interest in making a Batman film back in the 40’s when the character first appeared. Strange that Foster would work on it .

There should be a book written about this great artist. I get the feeling he was not a big self promoter, that he put all his efforts into creating excellent films that blasted their way into our consciousness through sheer power of image making and storytelling. A critical study of this man is long overdue, let’s hope it happens soon.

Here is a blast from the past. an interview with David Lynch from 1979. And it takes place at the location of Eraserhead, actually the early scenes of Henry wandering through an industrial waste land.

The interesting thing is it’s an old oil field where the Beverly Center now sits, I always thought it was shot in Philadelphia, PA. There is also some great footage of people leaving the theater after seeing Eraserhead and their reactions to the film. You can see all this here.

I was saddened to learn of the death of William Cartwright. I didn’t know him but every citizen of Los Angeles and really every human being owes him a debt of gratitude. Mr. Cartwright was a filmmaker and editor, cutting some impressive documentaries while working for early TV maven, David Wolper. His work on  1964 ‘s The Making Of the President won an Emmy. He also edited some feature films, produced and directed documentaries and had a long creative career. Bill was lucky enough to study at USC under the great Slavko Vorkapith, montage maker from the Golden Age of Hollywood and major Film Theoretician, a huge influence on American Avant Garde Films of the 50’s and 60’s.

Vorkapich at work
But the (to me) most incredible thing Mr. Cartwright accomplished began back in 1958. He was going to visit a relative and he got lost driving around South Central Los Angeles, he turned a corner and lo and behold, a shimmering surreal vision appeared in the midst of a borderline urban tract, the Watts Towers!

He was amazed and wanted to know more, soon he was buying the Towers from their owner, not the man that built them, Simon Rodia, but a neighbor that Rodia gave them to.

Once purchased, he learned they were to be torn down so he conducted a stress test to prove to the City they could withstand an eartquake. They are still here thanks to this man’s efforts! ( and a lot of others he recruited to help) What a wonderful gift to the future citizens! If you haven’t been there, GO! They are a marvel, a testament tpo the Creative Spirit of One Man and the determination to preserve them of another.

Finally! I have been waiting for a good copy of this film for a Loooong time. Masters Of Cinema has put out a beautiful presentation of this great film, Fuller’s personal favorite. I love newspaper movies and this is one of the finest examples of the genre. Right up there with Deadline U.S.A. another masterpiece. Fuller spent his own money to make this film and I for one am glad he did, he survived and the resulting work of art is immortal. I really admire artists, especially filmmakers who pay for their own projects and make something great! Francis Ford Coppola has been doing this for his past few films and I say “Bravo”. Fuller was a maverick when they’re weren’t any maverick’s, maybe Jean Pierre Melville but he was in France. He wanted to make this film and Darrel Zanuck said OK, in Technicolor, a musical comedy. “No” screamed Fuller. “The paper is grey, the ink is black, it has to be B&W!” “It won’t make a dime.” Zanuck sneered. Well maybe DZ was right but at least Fuller got to make his film his way and we get to enjoy it, thanks to Masters Of Cinema! There are some amazing tracking shots in this film, and long takes where the camera follows actors from one building, down the street to another building and the scene continues, really cool Orson Welles kind of stuff. It also reminds me of some of the classic Playhouse 90s, long takes , great scripts, great actors. Not an easy way to make a film, it takes vision and preparedness. But you should see it for yourself, Fuller grew up working on newspapers in NYC, they shaped him, this film is his love letter to the newspaper business that took a kid in off the street and turned him into a great storyteller. It’s especially poignant right now, with the state of the Press today, we need to cherish and protect our free press, the barrier between us and Fascism.

Once I borrowed a VHS of this film from Quentin Tarantinio, I watched it but it suddenly stopped before the film was over! I checked the tape, it was a 60 minute VHS ! The movies 84 minutes! Thanks a lot! So now I have my own copy , he can borrow it from me if he wants.

What a cool, crazy film. As the saying goes after you make a hit, you can make anything you want. Antonioni scored with BLOW UP so he got to make this non-commercial meditation on America, Death, Existence, Time, Humanity. The opening scne is a campus meeting of Radical Students and representatives of Black Power, talking about shutting down the campus, a common occurrence back in 1969.

The way the people talk and dress is so real, they’re not actors, Antonioni used real people that he felt were right for the part. Amazing Imagery, amazing music, Pink Floyd, Jerry Garcia jamming out to images of a Love In in the desert. Roy Orbison singing about Zabriskie Point.

The desert imagery was definetly an influence on Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill, where The Bride goes out to Bud’s trailer and where she walks through the desert, even the music of that sequence seems influenced by Zabriskie Point. Here’s the Bootleg Trailer I cut with Quentin for Kill Bill , the opening music is the music I’m talking about.

Another thing, ZP ends with a big explosion, a similar ending , actually a very similar ending occurs in Robert Downey Sr.s GREASERS PALACE, a huge explosion and a very long shot of a sunset. In Zabriskie, Antonioni is playing with persistence of vision, the shot of the sunset is on the screen unchanging for a long time, then it suddenly cuts to black, this creates an afterimage on your retina, very cool, very painterly, kind of a Rothko type trick. Super Cool. Check it out for yourself. It’s a comment on how the message is getting through to us, Persistence of Vision is how movie work, or rather why they work.

Anyway I’m going to drive out to Zabriskie Point one of these days and check it out for myself.

As  a lot of you have heard Deanna Durbin has left this plane of existence. I’ve been reading several of her obits and they all put down Christmas Holiday. A great film she made with the brilliant director Robert Siodmak. In the film she plays a prostitute and Gene Kelly a dissolute killer that she falls in love with. I think this was too much for the audiences and the critics of that era. But why do contemporary journalists repeat this wrong headed opinion? Because the movie didn’t make a lot of money when it first came out? The same could be said of Charles Laughton’s Night Of The Hunter, which is now recognized as one of the greatest films of all time. Maybe critics should re-evaluate Christmas Holiday and give Deanna and Siodmak their due. Here is a link to my piece on Christmas Holiday.

What a cool movie! I just saw it on YouTube. A great story that unfolds like a mystery, simple, compelling, intriguing. Geraldine Chaplin is wonderful as a crazy, obsessed waif who can kill you. Nobody messes with this tiny beauty and gets away with it. Ans as you watch the film you realize she is sort of a female Charlie Chaplin, she looks a lot like him, she is such a wonderful actress, in this film and the Carlos Saura films she did, I am a true fan of her talent.

Anthony Perkins is excellent too, so is Moses Gunn and a super skinny nerdy Jeff Goldblum. The way Geraldine plays all these people is amazing, it’s like she’s a ghost that can just walk into their lives, they don’t see her unless she wants them to. She actually is a kind of ghost from Tony Perkin’s past, and the way she causes Moses Gunn to fall for her is wonderful, a tough manager of an L.A. flophouse, he’s heard it all and seen it all. Nobody can break through his hard exterior except her, Emily. She has the guy loaning her money and doing chores for her in no time flat. And she is beautiful with her hair tied up in a classic style, transformed by buying a nice dress at a classy shop. this movie is kind of a paen to dedication, single minded attacking a problem, not letting anything stop you, and what a person can accomplish.

Another interesting highlight is the score, which consists of songs by the great Alberta Hunter, she was recently (when this film was made) re-discovered and made some amazing music in her later days. Another factor you’d never see in a movie today.And the movie was produced by the late great Robert Altman, a real American maverick. I had the distinct pleasure of meeting him once at an early screening of The Player. I had an idea for a cut so I told Altman’s publicist, and lo and behold he liked it and implemented it. It’s fitting that he produced this film,  Alan Rudolph worked with Altman on some of his films as Assistant Director, Nahville, California Split, and The Long Goodbye.

Alan Rudolph- Super Genius
This film falls into one of Quentin Tarantino’s favorite genres, female revenge movies. It is one of the most powerful types of film story out there, so compelling by it’s essence.  To me this film is the true extension of Film Noir, like Altman’s Long Goodbye, PostModern Film Noir. Future filmmakers, be inspired by this film! It shows you what a great story, excellent acting, and great storytelling technique can do, make an entertaining, thought provoking film, without special effects or zombies. Check this out.

Here’s a quick follow up to my posting about The Chase, I just remembered another connection to an infamous serial killer! Peter Lorre’s daughter Catherine was driving along one night back in 1977 when she was pulled over by who she thought were the police, it turns out it was Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi better known as The Hillside Stranglers. When the killers discovered who they had pulled over and who her famous father was, they let her go, afraid a famous victim would put too much heat on the case. Supposedly Angelo and Kenneth saw this picture in Catherine’s purse and recognized her father.

The Picture That Saved Catherine’s Life

What a cool movie! Dripping with atmosphere and featuring some powerful performances especially from Steve Cochran and Peter Lorre.

Lorre is one of my favorite all time film actors, check out Friz Lang’s M if you haven’t seen it. Cochran has one of the most distinct physical presences in films, his nastiness  just shoots off the screen in a way like no other actor. He’s just a bad dude.

Bob Cummings is the perfect American everyman, sort of innocent, shocked by what he saw in WWII, messed up but a good egg. He brings to mind a comment Quentin Tarantino made to me about Joseph Cotten, “I love Joseph Cotten, he’s so weak.” Cummings is kind of in that category, but Cotten always had that down at his heels ex-Southern gentleman thing going on, Cummings is just from small town nowheresville.

This film is a kind of confluence of many strange and wonderful things. Based on a book by noir maestro Cornell Woolrich called The Black Path Of Fear, (I ordered a copy) it’s film noir pedigree could not be higher, I believe Woolrich had more novels made into film noirs than anyone else,( I include Val Lewtons The Leopard Man, and Truffaut’s Bride wore Black and Mississippi Mermaid).

The Producer Seymour Nebenzal produced Lang’s M, which Lorre starred in, the director , Arthur Ripley,was an old hand that got started in the silent days and would go on to direct Robert Mitchum’s Thunder Road and found the UCLA film school. Michele Morgan, the blond femme fatale, is still alive and living in France. A friend of mine (Duke Haney)reminded me that she was having her home built while this movie was being made,  A kind of French Chalet that would go down in infamy some years later, 10050 Cielo Drive, scene of the grisly Manson murders of Sharon Tate, Abigail Folger, Voychek Frykowski, Jay Sebring and Steven Parent.

Michele Morgan at her Cielo Drive home

The camerman was the amazing Franz Planer, a Vienese transplant who emigrated to escape the Nazis. Planer also shot the beautiful, atmospheric noir Criss Cross for Robert Siodmak. His photography is nothing short of amazing. There is a wonderful sequence of a black limousine racing a locomotive at night , it’s a tour de force of miniatures, rear projection, great low angle shots of Lorre driving, shot through the steering wheel.

The film is in the public domain now, you can watch it on Youtube, but I just learned it was restored by UCLA and screened recently, unfortunately I missed it. Hopefully they will screen it again soon or at a noir festival.

Finally thanks to Youtube I had a chance to see Youth Runs Wild, the Val Lewton produced RKO film that’s eluded me for a long time. Was it worth the wait? Well, yes and no. An interesting premiss, youngsters running wild due to lack of parental supervision, owing to the fact that most parents were either overseas or working in WWII related industries.

A LOOK Magazine story about a teenaged girl that started a Youth Club was the impetus for this project but once Lewton got involved he transformed it from a puff piece about wholesome Timmy and Jennie playing skittles in the church basement to a searing indictment of child neglect, abuse, and exploitation. This didn’t sit well with the brass at RKO, the State Department or even LOOK magazine so drastic re-editing was called for and Lewton disgusted at the end result asked that his name be taken off the project.  What remains holds clues to what might have been, Lawrence Tierney’s performance as a corrupter of youth, garage owner. Fencing stolen tires, in big demand due to War rationing. Tierney claimed in an interview that his character sold drugs to kids as well in the original version.

Dickie Moore in Out Of The Past
Dickie Moore, one time Little Rascal and the deaf mute sidekick to Robert Mitchum in Out Of The Past appears and is often complaining about the treatment he gets from his father, in Lewton’s cut little Dickie offs his abusing psycho padre with a rifle.

Dickie with chicks in Youth Runs Wild
The ending really comes from out of nowhere, hacked on by a studio hatchet man, a bizarre montage about the teenaged girl that started her Youth Club, trying to shuck and grin the film back to pure propaganda niceness.  A few other noteworthy items, John Fante is credited as screenwriter, the author of the wonderous Ask The Dust, one of Bukowski’s (and mine) favorite L.A. novels. Fante knew his way around abusive, alcoholic parents, check out some of his other novels.  YRW was directed by Mark Robson, Lewton’s pet director, elevated from the editing room to the director’s chair by Lewton on The Seventh Victim after cutting several films for Lewton including Cat P_eople, The Leopard Man, and the incomparable I walked With A Zombie. Robson later repaid Lewton for his help by cutting him out of an independent production company deal and having his agent deliver the bad news.  Vanessa Brown plays an overworked, abused teenager lured into prostitution by an older wiser babe and in one scene she sports a flowery coif that I am pretty sure inspired Beth Short, the Black Dahlia to imitate.

Vanessa Brown with RKO stalwart Kent Smith

Life Imitates Art

 Short probably related to the character Brown played. Brunette, sexy beyond her young years, struggling to make ends meet, hustling drinks in Hollywood Wartime nightclubs. Fascinating stuff. But anyway you too can watch via Youtube and judge for yourself. Too bad no copy of Lewton’s original cut remains. The trims and outs were probably burned to reclaim the 20 cents worth of silver in the emulsion, just like the missing parts of Orson Wells Magnificent Ambersons.

WatchYouth Runs Wild  for yourself  on Youtube!

What a Cool Double Bill!

This is a supercool mashup of a movie. First it’s kind of an airplane drama, a group of characters on a doomed flight, a genre I like. Then it switches gears to an Alien UFO scifi story,including Alien Blob creature that speaks! Then it morphs into a Vampire/Zombie situation.

This culminates in a depressing end of the world Nihilist tale. There’s something unique about films that show the end of life on Earth, like 5, On The Beach, The World, The Flesh and the Devil, The Noah, even Target Earth and in a way the end of The Incredible Shrinking Man. A depressing spin on the mortality of humanity, something they don’t deal with in films anymore. Anyway Goke is pretty out there, the model plane work was inspirational to Quentin Tarantino and he referenced it in Kill Bill, a plane flying against a red sky. We even had some cockpit scenes just like Goke but they got cut out of the film.

Check this one out, you can see it on Hulu Plus, and Criterion has released it as part of a Japanese Horror Box Set.