Here’s a great little documentary about the soundtrack to Nic Roeg’s The Man Who Fell To Earth starring David Bowie in his greatest role. I always really liked this soundtrack, John Phillips came through big time.
Video Essay: The Man Who Fell to Earth from Film Comment on Vimeo.
I love Raymond Chandler’s writing. It was one of the things that made me want to move to Los Angeles. Here’s a movie based on Chandler’s novel Farewell My Lovely. They changed the name to Murder, My Sweet because it was Dick Powell’s first non-singing, dancing role and they didn’t want the public to think this was a musical. I always liked this movie, it’s Studio filmmaking at it’s crazy noir best.
Some excellent montages credited to Douglas Travers, classic stuff, the sequence with the ever smaller doors influenced the opening of The Twilight Zone and there are some great opticals, whenever Marlow gets slugged he falls into an optically printed pool of inky blackness spreading out by his feet.
There’s also double exposed frozen smoke over a section of the film, that image was taken right out of the book and it works nicely.
Also Moose Malloy (Mike Mazurki) is revealled reflected in the window glass of Marlow’s office by the blinking of an sign on the exterior of the building. A nice touch.
The set-ups can feel a bit hackneyed but I still enjoy the hell out of this flick. The sequence at the fake sanatarium is priceless and oft repeated in other films. it is interesting to compare this film with D.O.A., both are bookeneded by the protagonist telling his story to a police detective at the station house. Murder is a studio production, RKO to be exact, D.O.A. is an independant film made mainly on location, with a lot of on the street photography, kind of proto New Wave. Anyway if you haven’t seen it you’re in for a fun time. It’s a classic tale, Chinatown rips it off, every L.A. detective movie was influenced by it. The one change I didn’t like was making Florian’s bar a white joint. It’s on Central Avenue and is a Black owned bar in the book. It makes the scene of Marlow and Malloy trying to get info on Velma even better, more tense. I’m sure the Black actors could have used the work!
This is a classic movie, iconic L.A. locations, a twisted noir plot, amazing San Francisco street footage, a crazy bebop Jazz sequence and Neville Brand. Where to begin? Well I had a friend in town visiting frome Rome, Italy that is, Trevi Fountain, Cinecitta. Anyway I wanted to show him around downtown L.A. and one of our stops was the amazing Bradbury building. Most people recognize it as the location in Blade Runner, where Harrison Ford fights Rutger Hauer but I think equally as important a use for this location was in D.O.A.
I recommended to my Italian friend that he watch D.O.A. and see how the building we just visited was used in that film. I wound up watching it again and I realized that Russel Rouse was one of the writers and Harry Popkin was the producer.
These guys were responsible for some of the hippest 50’s noir to hit the silver screen of your local drive in. I did not know they were part of the D.O.A. team. Popkin and Rouse worked on The Well, a searing indictment of racism, ahead of it’s time and The Thief. Rouse made Wicked Woman, a film I recently wrote about. So that got me re-interested in D.O.A. , Let me just vsay it right out front I am not a big fan of Edmund O’Brien, but his scene chewing style works pretty well at times in this film and he runs like no one in Cinema! His frenzied run for your life performance on the streets of San Francisco, crashing into innocent bystanders is a highlight of the film.
Other wonderful elements include an incredible sequence aboard a city bus, where the gangsters that want to kill O’Brien are following the bus he’s on and you can see them out the window of the bus at night as they stalk him. A beautiful nightmarish sequence. Actually the nighttime photography of downtown L.A. is particularly great, Neville Brand taking O’Brien for a ride especially.
There is a great wild man jazz sequence that has frenetic performances of Black Jazz musicians that is outstanding. I love musical sequences and this one is a doozy.
I think it would be educational to compare this sequence to some that Robert Siodmak did, like the crazy jazz jam session in Phantom Lady or the dance scene in Criss Cross. The D.O.A. scene is really great performances, great shots and great editing, Siodmak’s reveal a planned out sequence that works beautifully, it was created in the director’s mind while the D.O.A. scene was put together in the editing room.
Rudolph Mate’ the director of D.O.A. started as a camerman in Europe, shooting such masterpieces as Dreyer’s The Passion Of Joan Of Arc, this is the movie that Anna Karina watches in Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie. Mate’ also directed a film that was a location on another stop of my downtown tour, Union Station, a noir that takes place at perhaps the most iconic downtown L.A. location.
Rudy at the camera films Dietrich
Mate’ was director of photography on many, many classic Hollywood films, Pride Of The Yankees, Dante’s Inferno, Foriegn Correspondent, Stella Dallas, Sahara, Gilda and The Lady From Shanghai, to name just a few. He delivers a fast paced ( 83 minute) gem that never let’s up and has many especially well directed scenes, take for example the final confrontation, at The Bradbury Building. It is shot just like a classic shootout from a Western, incredible.
Draw, Motherfucker!
Whenever a director can put another subtext or layer of meaning onto a scene and it is harmonius with the action not obtrusive, it’s a wonderful thing. Watch it for yourself, a film class in 2 minutes. Then there’s Neville Brand, so over the top as Chester the thug or maybe goon is better, Sadistic, simple minded, evil but with a lot of personality.
Chester doesn’t like Bigelow. He’s soft in the belly!
I like Neville Brand, check him out in the underrated Eaten Alive by Tobe Hooper. And as Quentin Tarantino once told me, the second most decorated soldier of WWII after Audie Murphy. So check out D.O.A. then go down and visit the Bradbury building, you can park across the street at the Grand Central Market and have lunch.
P.S. Here it is on YouTube.
Here is an interesting movie, Angel’s Flight. Shot in L.A. right before the destruction of Bunker Hill, the characters even discuss the immanent annihillation of the neighborhood, one character, a bartender, wishes he could write so he he could immortalize this vanishing part of L.A., the alky writer he’s talking to finally fullfill’s his dream, penning the pulp noir story of Angel’s Flight.
Bunker Hill, Pre-Razing in all it’s seedy glory!
The same motivation the filmmakers had, capturing the sleazey leftovers of Victorian splendor, Bunker Hill. Once home to the rich and powerful, now Manses cut up into rooming houses, the last stop on the trolley of life.
Filmmakers loved this area, check out Kiss Me Deadly, Criss Cross, The Exiles, Little Shop Of Horrors,The Indestructible Man,Act Of Violence, all shot here. This film reminds me of Touch Of Evil, the grimy bars, strippers, juke boxes,gritty streets at dusk, poetry in the trash heap.
Gimme that old time religion!
There’s even an uptight landlady that is reminiscent of Dennis Weaver’s motel manager from Welle’s classic noir. The story? Beautiful blonde kiler, she was raped as a teen, now she obsesively paints the face of her rapist over and over. She’s a stripper to make ends meet and also to meet men, whom she then dispatches with a straight razor, revenge against the sex of the asshole that raped her. Here comes the Marlboro man, (the writer actually was the first model to represent the Marlboro Man) . He’s a wino, depressed over the death of his wife, he witnesses a murder but was too drunk to know if it really happened.
One of my favorite shots in the movie!
The girl is all mixed up, religious, she goes to church and to a Skid Row Ministry, but anytime a guy puts the moves on her, ZZZZT out comes the razor, kind of like GoGo in Kill Bill.
I’ll cut your ass!
Writer falls for beautiful killer but it’s too late baby. Great idiotic ending on Angel’s Flight. Guess what happens.
Tracks Of Death!
There’s a killing in the 3rd street tunnel, a beautiful spot you can still visit and a lot of crummy Bunker Hill rooming houses right next to Angel’s Flight, maybe where John Fante lived and wrote Ask The Dust.
What can I say, I love movies that are shot in places that no longer exist, the stuff that dreams are made of,here’s a chance to time travel.
Here is a very informative documentary about early German Cinema in general and Metropolis in particular. Fritz Lang said he never paid any attention to the critics, maybe he had something there, Metropolis was panned when it came out. I read somewhere that Lang was still editing the last reels of Metropolis while the first reels were being projected at the Premier, a motorcycle messenger would race with the reels to the theater as Lang finished them! This outdoes Michael Mann for editorial craziness and gives credence to the old saying “Films aren’t finished they’re abandoned”. Anyway if you are interested in the great Expressionist heritage of German Cinema check it out.
Here is a great documentary about German film director F.W. Murnau and the making of his early masterpiece, Nosferatu. Recently Murnau’s grave was broken into and his head was taken, authorities reported finding melted wax at the location and a possible “occult” connection was made.
Could a group of Satanists or Magick practitioners have made off with Murnau’s head? and why? Probably because he is the man that created Nosferatu, those indelible images of the bald, animalistic vampire.
In this great documentary an expert on the occult, Wolfgang Kistermann testifies that the producer of Nosferatu and founder of Prana films, Albin Grau, was a leader in German occult societies and had dealings with the O.T.O. , the group led by Aliester Crowley.
Albin Grau
Perhaps this secret society is still active in Germany? Perhaps they are responsible for the violation of Murnau’s grave and the theft of his kopf? I read an interview with Murnau’s brother, he travelled to Tahiti, where Murnau had made his last film, Tabu. The Tahitians told him Murnau had offended their Gods by building a mansion on a tabu site, a place the Tahitians shunned, and the Gods had caused his untimely death in an automobile accident.
This is a great restoration of a seminal film. Masters Of Cinema has done it again. They release high quality material. The Cabinet Of Dr. Calgari went through a rigorous restoration by the F.W. Murnau Siftung. The original camera negative was used whenever possible, I believe for most of the film except the first reel. You can see so many details that were lost, like the chalk lines on Cesare the somnambulist’s black outfit and the painted sets, costumes, and characters faces have never looked so good, so full of expression.
Ceasare, the sensative somnambulist
It is fascinating to watch a film that takes place in such an unrealistic setting, almost all scenes were photographed in front of painted backgrounds and yet is so effective. A miraculous achievement. This film was a huge commercial hit as well. Perhaps owing to it’s unorthodox “You Must Become Calgari” ad campaign.
It brings to mind Hitchcock’s “The Birds is Coming” campaign years later.
Hitchcock did spend some time as a young man at Ufa Studios in Germany, maybe he was influenced by Calgari.
A still from The Blackguard, a film Hitcock worked on at Ufa in Berlin in 1925
Tony Perkins does resemble Cesare, Cesare (Conrad Veidt) later played Maj. Strasser in Casablanca, the Nazi Bogey shoots at the airport. He was also in The Thief Of Baghdad with Sabu.
Cesare in Hollywood, transformed into evil Nazi Maj. Strasser
There’s a story that Fritz Lang wanted to direct Calgari but wasn’t able to do so because of other commitments, I believe it, Lang later went on to direct the DR. Mabuse films and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse shares a similar theme with Calgari, the head of an insane asylum is an evil maniac, spreading mayhem and murder.Lang was not above borrowing from his peers, in Murnau’s Faust, a fantasy sequence shows rising rings of energy surrounding the transforming Faust, this same imagery was used by Lang in Metropolis during the creation of the robot Maria.
Such an incredibly rich period of German Filmmaking! They really set the stage for fantastic, dark, atmospheric, dreamlike Cinema. Then they fled Hitler came to the USA and created Film Noir, a great legacy.
UPDATE: I recently read that Murnau’s grave had been broken into and his head was stolen. They found melted wax at the scene from candles, suggesting an occult angle. Satanists wanted the skull of the man that made Nosferatu and Faust?
Here is a TV show that starred the great Lee Marvin! Wow , a treasure trove of unwatched pieces of Lee Marvin, how cool is that! You can watch episodes on the internet or buy a 16 dvd set of the entire series. I leave that up to you, how big a fan of Lee Marvin are you? Here’s a litmus test. Anyway it looks like they shot some second unit in Chicago, Lee’s big Ford barrelling around the city, so he could do some voice over, then cut to a process shot of him driving in front of projected footage of Chicago streets while he continued his expository VO.
Then onto the sets of Revue, a Hollywood TV production company, where Lee would slug it out with some gangsters and then to satisfy his fan base’s bloodlust blast someone with his 38 police special.
I guess Revue later became Universal Television, where Leee Marvin would star in the first 2 hour movie made for Television, Ernest Hemingway’s The Killers, you can read about that here in a previous post. That’s probably what got me on this Lee Marvin kick in the first place.
Here’s a tasty noir treat from 1953, Wicked Woman. Written by filmmaking team Russel Rouse and Clarence Greene, directed by Rouse, produced by Greene on a shoestring, the movie works despite of our maybe partly due to it’s limitations.
Here’s a lesson to low budget filmmakers, keep your locations to a minimum. Wicked Woman basically has two, a bar and a cheap rooming house. The sets are pretty bad but that’s what makes them good, at one point Billie (the Wiced Woman) throws her sleazy neighbor out and slams the door, the wall of the set shakes, but I think that’s cool, it’s like Fellini said the magician must show the audience he has a card up his sleeve so when he does trick them it’s even more astonishing. This movie works on an iconic level, the Blonde Bombshell travelling from town to town leaving a trail of decimated men and women.
Percy Helton plays the slimy neighbor that has the hots for the Wicked Woman, this guy was in everything including Kiss Me Deadly, the coolest Late Noir of all time.
The Main Title Theme is sung by Herb Jeffries, The Bronze Buckaroo, a black singing cowboy star. Beverly Michaels is great as the Wicked Woman, too bad she retired after only a few more films, maybe she was too real, too ahead of her time to be appreciated. I think she’s great. Russel Rouse must have thought so too, he married her. They had a son Christopher Rouse, he’s a film editor that’s won an Academy Award.
What a great package! You get Robert Siodmak’s 1946 version, the one that introduced the world to Burt Lancaster, that smiling acrobat and great actor.
The beautiful Ava Gardner never looked better.
The filmmaking is top notch, beautful images , great lighting, great sets. The wonderfully evil Dr. Cyclops, Albert Dekker.( I’ve got some great stories about him but I’ll save them for a later post) William Conrad and Charles McGraw are the amoral Killers of the title and they are bad news.
This movie besides being beautifully made by a master craftsman at the height of his powers is a very influential film. The Killers terrorizing ordinary citizens in a lunch box diner, a scene we have seen many times since , the guy from the Past recognizing his prey at an out of the way gas station, a lot like Out Of The Past. The intricate flashback structure, effortlessly pulled off.Miklos Rosza’s score, introducing the theme from Dragnet.
A seminal film! One of the first Film Noirs! Then we get Don Siegel’s The Killers with John Cassavettes, Angie Dickinson, The amazing Lee Marvin, Clu Gulager and in his last role Ronnie Reagen! As a bad guy no less, wow!
This was the first 2 hour movie made for TV except NBC wouldn’t buy it when it was done, too violent! It is good mainly for Lee Marvin as the older Killer, Clu is his young healthnut sidekick.
The sets are pretty amazingly fake looking, especially in BluRay, you can see the blown up photograph backgrounds and rear screen projection a mile away. But in spite of that the movie works, a tribute to good acting and directing. Reagen is great as an evil prick, he even takes part in a heist! I had never seen this gem before and I’m glad I did. I am a big fan of Siegel. This movie is a bit wack but it doesn’t disappoint.
We also get as an adeded bonus, Andrei Tarkovsky’s student film version of The Killers and it’s great. It’s great to hear this dialog in Russian! Super Noir american gangster speak in Russian, how cool is that. They throw in a radio play version acted by Burt, Shelly Winters, and I think William Conrad, it’s cool but the coolest thing is to here Robert Siodmak speak! He’s on the show nd they’re trying to spin that he was born in Memphis Tennessee, a bull story to make him American and not a German! WWII was just over. He sounds very funny! The guy was a genius, he got his US directing break by amusing Preston Sturges and making him laugh. Also we get a recorded interview with Siegel, man can he talk fast! All in all, alot of bang for your buck. Get one today!
I went down to the New Beverly to check out The Sand Pebbles, a 1966 film starring Steve McQueen, Richard Attenborogh, Candace Bergen, Richard Crenna, Mako, and featuring my pal James Hong.
The print was striped with 4 track magnetic sound, and it did sound great, a lot of dynamics, and an extended frequency range. The score sounded incredible, (Jerry Goldsmith) and there was a lot of music in this film. The print was pretty faded so it was kind of like watching a Black and White film with pink overtones, every once in a while a bit of color would appear but after a minute back to pinkville.
The Great James Hong as Shu
I had never seen the film before and this 3 hour and 15 minute version (complete with intermission) is longer than the regular release. A Road Show Print was usually longer or had mag tracks or maybe was struck from the original negative. These were screened at big venues, NYC, Chicago, LA. before the film went into wide release. Now I am not sure what scenes were included in this version that were left out of the regular release but I have a feeling that there was more engine room footage in this long version. Why? Because there is a 20 minute sequence of Steve McQueen lovingly working on the steam powered ship’s engine and it is great!
McQueen was a motor nut, racing cars, motorcycles and amassing a huge collection of both. I think he really identified with Jake Holman, the character he’s portraying. One of the best scenes in the movie is a tense sequence of repairing the massive engine, a tour de force of suspense. McQueen’s company, Solar Productions co-produced the film and I think he had a lot of say as to what went into the final product. It feels like a personal film for McQueen. Maybe the fascination with machines, with the mechanics of things says something about McQueen’s world view.
There is also a great battle scene as the ship (The San Pablo) runs a barricade in the Yangtze River. Great stuff.
I relly liked a scene in a chapel where Richard Attenborogh marries his Chinese girlfriend Maily while McQueen and Candace Bergen look on. Something about that scene, the way it’s staged, it just feels like a movie scene from another era, but in a good classical way.
Robert Wise does a great job directing this film. He directed classics in so many genres, a great filmmaker. William Reynolds, a super editor cut it. I met him once at Genghis Cohen, an L.A. Chinese restaurant, having lunch with his crew. A good friend of mine, another great editor Bud Smith, worked with McQueen on the television show Wanted:Dead or Alive. He and McQueen bonded, both were avid motorcyclists and car racers. They spent time riding in the SoCal desert. And if you ever find yourself at Casa Bianca, waiting for a tomato pie, look on the wall. There amidst the many celebrity 8X10’s is a picture of Steve McQueen from Wanted:Dead or Alive. I guess he was a fan of their pizza too.
I am going to this show, it looks amazing. Tickets are still available. Check it out.
This reminds me of a scene in a cool Italian film Grazie Zia, check that out too.Read all about it here. It also reminds me of a play I saw at the Public Theater in NYC. The Mabou Mines production of a Samuel Beckett Radio Play The Lost Ones. Man it was cool, more about that later.