Film Forno

They ran an episode of The Men Who Made The Movies the other night on TCM. It was about William Wellman.

“Wild Bill” Wellman
The guy had an incredible career, winning the first Academy Award for Wings, making great films like Public Enemy with James Cagney, a film that ushered in the Gangster Era of moviemaking and is the bookend to White Heat in terms of Cagney’s career. Both are about tough characters with doting mothers. This would make a great double bill. He also made The Ox-Bow Incident and another great war film Battleground. But it’s G.I. Joe that I’m here to tell you about. It’s my favorite war movie of all time. I even like it better than Attack with Jack Palance. I was gratified to learn via The Men Who Made The Movies that it’s Welman’s favorite film of all! It is great. Written by Ernie Pyle, a war correspondent, ably portrayed by Burgess Meredith in the film.

Burgess Meredith and Ernie Pyle flank an Unknown guy

Pyle went into the thick of the action and wrote about the common man, his stories of the dog soldiers on the front lines carrying out orders in the face of intolerable conditions are what inspired Wellman to make the film. Wellman spent time with Pyle in New Mexico at Pyle’s place. Ernie came to visit the Wellman’s in Hollywood and while playing shoot em up with the kids uttered a line that stuck in Wellman’s head “A man falls dying only once.” It would prove prophetic. The film follows a unit of infantry led by Capt. Bill Walker(Robert Mitchum) as they struggle to take Monte Cassino. Wellman filmed in real bombed out towns in Italy, where snipers still abounded. He used real soldiers as extras, firing a Howitzer and performing other military tasks to add reality. A lot of the soldiers in the film never got to see it, they were killed in action shortly after filming.

Life In A Bunker

There are some amazing sequences, one soldier carries a recording his wife back in the states made of his baby boy’s first words. He carefully guards the disc like a treasure, looking for a phonograph so he can hear it. Finally he finds one in a burned out village but it doesn’t work. He struggles to fix it but he can’t get it to go. Then after it seemed it would never work, it does. He hears his son’s first words and he snaps, charging out of the cave he’s been living in to kill all the Germans. He has to be restrained, his mind is gone.

Wild Bill got his nickname as a WWI pilot

But it’s Robert Mitchum’s nuanced performance as the bone tired world weary Capt. Walker that steals the show. He has to write the letters to the next of kin. He has to order new, inexperienced men out to the front line where there life expectancy is two hours. He has to be sane, and responsible in the face of the insanity of war. He delivers in spades. This is the film that made Mitchum a star. The Story Of G.I. Joe is an anti-war movie. One of the best. Something we need to see today, maybe more than ever. And Ernie Pyle never got to see the movie either. He was killed by a Japanese sniper bullet in the South Pacific before the film was released. ” A man falls dying only once.”

December 7th was Eli Wallach’s 92nd birthday. Please members of the Academy give the guy a career Academy Award! He deserves it! He’s a National Treasure. His portrayal of Tuco in Sergio Leone’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly is one of the greatest in the History Of Cinema! He should have won back then. Let’s show the man how much we appreciate him while he’s still here! Who deserves it more than him? He’s never gotten one and it’s a disgrace to our film community. I’m starting the campaign now! Spread the word! Write your Congressman! Petition the Academy, Seize the Chinese Theater! Maybe the American Cinematheque can have a retrospective and generate publicity, any and all ideas welcome. Let’s honor this great artist! Clint jump on the bandwagon for your old buddy, don’t leave him hanging like at the end of GBU.

Take the shot, elevate him to the firmament of Super Stars!

I found an old ad for the wonderful Million Dollar Movie! During the 60’s M$M would run the same movie twice a day for a week! I guess the idea was based on movie theaters where the same movie would be shown several times a day for a week or two. This enabled you to watch a movie over and over and the ability to do that before VCR’s and home video got a lot of youngsters interested in filmmaking. George Romero, director of Night Of The Living Dead has said that watching Tales Of Hoffmann over and over on M$M inspired him to pursue a career in film. This is where I first saw films that got me interested in filmmaking. Lord Of The Flies, The Boy With The Green Hair, Robinson Crusoe, The Crawling Eye, King Kong, Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons, Two Women, La Dolce Vita, etc., etc. Someone was programming European Art Films from the 50’s as this ad demonstrates. So to the unknown programmer, wether living or up in Film Valhalla, a million thanks from all the incipient filmmakers you inspired.

This is the opening for Million Dollar Movie that was used during the 1970’s.

Once Upon A Time a producer type guy told me a funny story. It involved these two films, Mutiny In Outer Space and The Human Duplicators. This guy claimed he had been sent to Rome by the producer Bernard Woolner, best known for his el cheapo classic of Pop Iconography Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman.

Woolner had gotten a budget from an East Coast Supermarket magnate to make a SciFi Space Opera, Mutiny In Outer Space.
But Mr. W had a brainstorm, why not make two films at the same time and charge them both to Mr. Magnate! According to my source he had the sets built back to back on the same stage, in the morning they’d shoot one movie, after lunch they’d shoot the other. All the film went to the same lab and supposedly a lot of the same crew worked on both films.

The grips at Cinecitta knew what was up, they’d shrug and laugh when anyone asked what was going on. Dolores Faith was the female lead in both films. So they finished both films with Mr. Supermarkets footing the bill. When they were all done they turned his film over to him and they kept the other one, free of charge! Creative Film Financing 101! Both films were directed by the same guy, Hugo Grimaldi and both were written by the same guy Arthur C. Pierce, funny name for a Sci/Fi writer.
Is this story true? Who knows, I’m just repeating what I was told but it is suspicious.

I’m going to the SuperMarket!

TCM did it again. They showed a movie that got me thinking and then got me writing. The case in point, Orson Welles incredible directorial debut Citizen Kane.

Welles was a wunderkind, playing The Shadow and directing and starring in his Mercury Theater Radio dramas, a lot of which were adaptations of great literature. But it was The War Of The Worlds that really launched young Orson into the Stratosphere of Fame. It was a huge scandal with stories of panicked listeners drinking poison, committing suicide, going crazy. My father heard the broadcast as a youngster, he said the thing that really unnerved him was the use of real street names in the broadcast, “They’re attacking the Pulaski Skyway…”. I am reminded of the beginning of another Cinematic career that started with a scandal. Luis Bunuel andUn Chien Andalou. The slicing of the Eyeball vs. the Shattering of the Snow Globe.

Violated Optical Orbs
Due to his gigantic popularity Welles was offered carte blanche at RKO, an unprecedented amount of creative control. He began developing an adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness, the type of material he worked with on his Mercury Radio productions, but after a few months abandoned the idea due to budgetary limitations. Many years later another Cinematic Giant would struggle to bring his version of this story to the screen, I’m referring of course to Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Welles then switched gears and developed a screenplay with Herman Mankiewiscz, Kane. Another coincidence, I know Christopher Mankiewiscz, the nephew of Herman, he told me he was related to Joseph Conrad! Welles kept it in the family!

Orson Horsin’ around with the dancing girls, Kane rehearsal

Shooting Kane

Despite protestations to the contrary it certainly seemed that Kane was based on the life of William Randolph Hearst. Hearst’s fortune was based on a silver mine in Colorado, so was Kane’s, Hearst created the Spanish American War through his muckraking newspapers, so did Kane. Hearst obsessively collected Art in Europe and sent it back to his Xanadu (Hearst Castle) , the married Hearst carried on an affair with a blonde entertainer(Marion Davies) so did Charlie, and finally as legend has it, Rosebud was Hearst’s nickname for Marion Davies clitoris! That’s pretty wild! Probably the most well known, important word ever uttered in Cinema and it refers to a woman’s sex organ! Not only that but the shot where Kane utters his fateful last word is an extreme close up of his mouth, his lips fringed on top by a mustache mouthing “Rose..Bud, the image is undeniably sexual, vagina-like.

Rose…Buddd…
The snow globe drops, rolls from Kane’s paralyzed hand, loss of control, then bursts with a splash, ejaculation! What happens next? He dies, the orgasm is also known as the little death, another parallel to Un Chien Andalou.

Un Petit Morte
It’s fitting, it captures the whole phenomenon of Film, a creative endeavor capable of flights of the most amazing beauty, of the loftiest intellectual speculation, rumination operating through our emotions, our sex drive, our blood lust.

There is a man, A certain Man…Good Old Charley Kane!

Watching Kane again I was struck by it’s tone. It’s emotional tone is unique in Cinema, kind of a melancholy, removed storytelling. You’re never involved in Kane in a normal identifying way. You don’t sit there and think ” Come on Charlie, don’t fire Jed Leland! or Don’t leave your wife for that floozy!”. You watch fascinated, I think Welles chose not to manipulate the audience through conventional emotional storytelling. It’s got an icy cold grip on your mind. Maybe this is why I didn’t love Citizen Kane as a kid watching it on TV. I watched it mesmerized but I enjoyed King Kong more. Kane succeeds where Radio succeeds. Radio conjures worlds of fantasy in your mind through dialog, acting, sound effects, music. Kane through it’s incredible technique does the same thing. The Freedom of Creativity expressed by it’s images, it’s brilliant , light years ahead of it’s time. The scene where the investigating reporter reads Mr. Thatcher’s manuscript for example. The perfect Victorian handwriting, obviously done with a quill, the whiteness of the paper gradually giving way to a young Charles Foster Kane playing in the Colorado snow. The low angles in the Kane household, Agness Morehead’s beautiful performance as The Mother who wanted to give her boy a better life.

Deep Focus- Let Me Know If You Find The Snow Globe

Someone told me they saw the snow globe somewhere in this scene, where Agness is signing the papers to give control of her fortune and her son to Mr. Thatcher, but I can never see it! Maybe I get so caught up in this scene every time I watch it that it eludes me. You look for it and see if you can find it. The amazing scene outside the Kane house where Mr. and Mrs. K introduce young Charlie to Mr. Thatcher.

Just listen to this scene, the perfect timing and this is with a child actor! It’s like a Radio Play, brilliant.

Sloppy Joe’s, Watchamacallit,Xanadu
Maybe because it’s all about remembrance, the past. Old people talking about their youth. Does anyone in this movie love Charles Foster Kane? Even his mother? She sent him away. What a strange story for a young Orson Welles to tell. A story of the ultimate “primitive accumulator” trying to fill his empty life with things.

Yeah! Ford has built a 40th anniversary Limited Edition Bullitt Mustang based on the car from the Steve McQueen movie! It looks pretty cool, the closest thing to a 60’s muscle car combined with 21st Century technology to ever come out of Detroit. The chief engineer tells how he and his cohorts spent a long time listening to the sounds of the car in the movie and then tuning the exhaust of the new Bullitt Mustang to sound just like it! Now that’s my kind of R&D!

This movie just keeps on gaining in popularity, I saw part of it recently on TV and it looks super cool, those 60’s colors, Steve McQueen, Mr. CobraHead, looking cool and tough but always under control. And maybe the greatest car chase in the history of Cinema, no wonder it keeps getting under people’s skin. I had the good fortune to work with Peter Yates, the director of Bullitt and Pablo Ferro, the title designer. Pablo told me that Steve saw Yates’s The Great Train Robbery and hired him for Bullitt based on that. Also Pablo did the titles and multi- screen montages for The Thomas Crown Affair, McQueen was impressed and insisted Pablo do the title sequence for Bullitt.It is SuperCool. Anyway, This movie has become such a cultural icon, the proof is in the pudding, Detroit is listening to the pulse of the car buying/movie loving public! Tell you what, want to make a good investment? Buy a 2008 Bullitt Mustang. Fill the engine with Marvel Mystery Oil, park it in a hermetically sealed garage for 30 years and then take it out and sell it! Better yet buy two, one to drive and one to preserve. Here’s a video of the car in action and a link to an interview with the chief engineer.

Click the link below to hear Mr. Engineer and watch the Bullitt Car Burn Rubber.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1287043167/bctid1294526637

Slavko Vorkapich

Bob Downey
Whoever watched my FilmNut interview heard me babbling about the late great film theorist, montage maker and teacher Slavko Vorkapich. I first heard about Slavko from Bob Downey (Senior that is), a prince. Bob worked at an ad agency in the 60’s making “experimental” commercials. One had a woman in Chainatown turn to the camera and say ” With Preparation H I can kiss my hemorrhoids goodbye”. Anyway Slavko was working at the agency teaching his ideas on film, Bob was very impressed and always tried to utilize what he got from Slavko. So here without further ado is a famous montage Slavko did for a Hollywood movie many moons ago.

Thanks to Flickhead for turning me on to this clip!http://flickhead.blogspot.com/

Another gem from The Film Noir Collection, Vol.4, Mystery Street by John Sturges, who also directed Bad Day At Black Rock and The Great Escape. Mystery Street intrigues me for several reasons. First and foremost it’s a good film. Excellent Cinematography by that master of Noir, John Alton. Also great Editing by Ferris Webster,my friend Pablo Ferro knew Ferris and really liked him. He edited a lot of great films. The Great Escape, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot etc., etc.

Crackerjack performances by such greats as Ricardo Montalban and Elsa Lanchester. Killer Boston locations from 1950. A lot of forensic detail since this story involves a skeleton found in the dunes of Cape Cod and a pathologist at the Harvard Medical School helps solve the case. Actually there are a lot of lurid details in this movie. It’s almost like a 50’s tabloid newspaper come to life. Several details reminded me of the Black Dahlia case which took place 3 years before this film came out. A woman’s body is found, through some sleuthing they find the guy she was last seen driving away with. Sure he spent some time with her but he didn’t kill her. He’s recently married and doesn’t want his wife to find out. Just like Red Manley, the first suspect in the Dahlia case. Manley was let off the hook but it eventually destroyed his marriage and he committed suicide.

Red Manley. Dahlia Suspect,Family Man, Suicide Victim Gets Frisked

The newspapermen hounded Manley and his wife and they do the same here with Henry and Grace Shanway. The girl,Vivian Heldon, was a rent-a-date type who was impregnated by a rich, upper crust clown. She tried to shake down the elitist snob James Joshua Harkley, who knocked her up, and she got killed by him instead. A similar scenario to the one proposed by Donald H. Wolfe in his book The Black Dahlia Files. He claimed Betty was snuffed by Bugsy Siegal because a rich Norman Chandler had gotten Betty pregnant and she wouldn’t have an abortion. So watching this movie is kind of like looking back in time at a similar murder investigation, much more interesting than watching Brian De Palma’s film.

Vivian Heldon, Pregnant Murder Victim, I told you this Film Was Lurid

Ricardo Montalban is excellent and it’s really cool to see a Latino lead in a movie from that time. Especially since he’s not playing Zorro or a Mexican Spitfire or some other stereotype. Montalban is a detective, hard nosed, dedicated, an asshole at times as he digs for the truth. He’s even convinced the wrong guy did it, an accurate portrayal, cops think everybody’s guilty. I guess that comes from spending so much time with criminals. The fact that the woman was murdered on Cape Cod and her remains discovered in the dunes reminded me of another real life case. The Lady in The Dunes, a famous unsolved case from 1974. An unknown woman’s body was discovered, her head was smashed in and almost severed. They couldn’t ID her from fingerprints because her hands had been chopped off and were never found.

Reconstructed Face of The Lady In The Dunes
The psycho that did this was never found. He or She could still be around today, it’s highly unlikely that whoever did the Dahlia is still kicking. I guess it’s possible but they’d have to be around 80 or 90. If you’d like more info on The Lady In The Dunes click the link below.
http://www.doenetwork.org/

Two more luminaries have dimmed. Reg Park, muscle man, peplum star, bodybuilder, amigo & mentor to Arnold Schwartzennegar died Nov. 22.

Fernando Fernan Gomez actor, director, writer shuffled off this mortal coil as well. Reg played Hercules, Ursus and Maciste, the big three Italian Peplum characters. My favorite of course is Ercole al centro della terra ( Hercules at the Center Of The Earth or Hercules in the Haunted World) by the sublime Mario Bava.

The most atmospheric of all Hercules movies ( although Bava was the special effects cameraman on the popular Steve Reeves Hercules Unchained), the trip to Hades is very cool and the Oracle scenes are outstanding. Reg had to do battle with a Vampiric Christopher Lee and rescue his babe Princess Deianira, the luscious Leonora Ruffo.

If you’re a fan of this genre and haven’t seen this one, do yourself a favor and check it out. Or if you’re an aspiring fantasy filmmaker with a small budget, sit at the feet of Maestro Bava and be amazed at what he did with almost nothing in the bygone pre-digital days.

Spain and the rest of the world have lost a gigantic talent with the passing of Fernando Fernan Gomez.

He’s probably best remembered by Americans as the worldly father in the excellent Belle Epoque. He plays the delectable Penolpe Cruz’s father and host to the deserter Jorge Sanz ( who looks just like Robert Downey, Jr.). A great movie!

He also starred in an incredible film about childhood. El Espíritu de la colmena ( The Spirit Of The Beehive). Please see this film! It’s about a very young girl in a rural Spanish village and her reaction to seeing the film Frankenstein projected in the town square by an itinerant film shower. It’s an incredible film!

Senor Gomez appeared in over 200 films! He directed 30 films! Plus he wrote and directed many plays! What a great career! I’m an ardent admirer of the picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes . Gomez wrote and directed a film version in 2001. I will have to track this down and post on it in the future.

So Bon Voyage to a giant (physical) of the Silver Screen and a creative force that whirled around Spain and world Cinema for many years.

Since I’m reminiscing about Horror TV shows of my youth, here’s the opening toChiller Theater WPIX Channel 11.

Here’s the intro to a horror movie show I liked watching as a young East Coast movie nut. It’s from WOR-TV, home of the incredible Million Dollar Movie. WOR radio was the home of storyteller par excel-lance Jean Shepherd.

I watched The Asphalt Jungle again after not seeing it for a long time. It’s an influential movie. Especially to Jean Pierre Melville. It might even be his favorite film.

A Street Out Of Melville

The DVD was part of a film noir collection and include some interesting extras, first was an introduction by the man himself, John Huston. It must have been filmed right after the film was made, it’s in B+W and Huston looks like he’s in his late 40’s. He says the movie is all about the characters, summing up with something like ” you might not like them but I think you’ll find them fascinating”. Now that’s my kind of movie!

The City=Hell
And the movie really is all about the characters, the way it’s filmed, the action, the details, it all serves to illuminate these beings, their strengths and their weaknesses or “Vice”. From the opening frames, the MGM logo with the roaring lion, the music creates a sense of foreboding, dread. The score is by Miklos Rozsa, it sets the mood and then there’s almost no score until the end. But it works very well. Melville did not use much music in his crime dramas, perhaps influenced by this. The first scenes are shot early on a foggy morning in what looks like Bunker Hill. “Crook Town” according to Raymond Chandler. A patrol car prowls the streets like a rouge shark hunting for the scent of blood. A figure ducks behind a pillar, it’s Dix, the magnificent Sterling Hayden in what I believe is his greatest role.

He’s One Intimidating Fellow

He’s pulled in by the cops and put in a line up. But he intimidates the eyewitness, staring him down with murder in his eye, and the corrupt cop can’t out intimidate the guy so Dix walks. We are introduced to a group of criminals, an underworld association of safe crackers, wheelmen, hooligans, brains, bookies, and a high priced mouthpiece.

Lon The Mouthpiece and Cobby The Bookie

Also a rough police commissioner, he tears up the corrupt Lt. Ditrich’s ass in an early meeting. I can’t help compare this angry top cop to the Inspector in Melville’s Le Circle Rouge. But the Inspector is more cynical, sure everyone is corrupt while the american is still believing in some, still naive in a way that feels distinctly american. Dix to me is the hero of this piece. He is the post war, traumatized American male. He dreams of the Kentucky horse farm he grew up on. How great it was, his only goal in life is to get enough money to buy it back and to do that he must struggle in the dirty city, the asphalt jungle.

Doll loves Dix, The Only Guy Who Treated her Square

He tells Doll, his taxi dancing girlfriend, of his life back in Kentucky, of a particular Black Colt, the best horse they ever raised, and how everything went bad one year, the corn crop failed, the colt broke his leg and had to be shot, and his father died whereby they lost the farm. He is every American, naive, not understanding the horror that can overtake them at any moment. I’m referring to WWII and the devastating effect it had on our collective psyches. Dix just wants to get back home but as Doc Riedenschneider and Thomas Wolfe would tell him, you can’t go home again. Home to Dix is innocence, clean water, air, 30 acres of blue grass, heaven.

Doc, The Big Brain

Anyway this is a caper movie , a brilliant plan by the “Doc” (Sam Jaffe). Interestingly played as a German complete with accent. A mastermind, he’s figured out this heist down to the smallest detail. Unfortunately when you add violence to the mix, things can go wrong and they do. Huston keeps the action simple and real. I love his fight scenes. My favorite is the bar fight in The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, when Bogie and Tim Holt take on Barton MacLane. You feel the struggle, the brutality just like a real fight, it ain’t pretty.

Dix Slugs The Watchman, His Gun Hits The Floor and Goes Off. The Safecracker with a New Baby catches it in the Gut. Just Unlucky, I guess.

The Doc’s vice is chicks, young, beautiful babes. Huston sets this up with a revealing detail. Doc can’t help scope a girly calendar when left alone in the bookie joint.

Doc’s Vice

James Whitmore plays Gus, the hunchback wheelman. He likes Dix, going out of his way to pay Dix’s gambling debt, to keep Dix from pulling another heist.

Gus The Hunch Loves Cats

Louis Calhern is Uncle Lon, the crooked lawyer that lives beyond his means and Marilyn Monroe is Angela, Uncle Lon’s plaything. Man is she sexy, just the way she shifts around on a divan makes your temperature rise.

Marilyn Sleeps On Uncle Lon’s Couch

The movie is shot beautifully. A lot of low angle two shots with one character in the foreground that show the ceiling of the room, creating a claustrophobic sense of everyone being trapped in little boxes, Dix’s room, the bookie joint, Gus’s luncheonette. Greg Toland and Orson Welles shocked the film world by showing ceilings in Citizen Kane. Sets were usually built without ceilings, a throwback to silent days when light came from glass roofed studios. Huston took that idea and ran with it. Maybe the ceiling represents the city, especially to Dix who grew up on a farm, outdoors with the sky for a roof. Harold Rossen did a great job, so atmospheric. It’s true Noir camerawork, with characters facing the camera as another speaks behind them. Rossen was nominated for an Oscar for Cinematography but lost out toThe Third Man! Gee, were movies better then?

Classic Noir Composition

And as the film progresses and the only characters still on the loose are Dix and Doll, Huston moves into Close Ups.

Huston moves in closer

Now that he’s got the audience invested in these people he shoves them in your face. It works like gangbusters.

And Closer

Another thing, watch the heist carefully. Where another director would focus on the drill bits and tools, Huston keeps us on the faces, the heist is portrayed purely through character.

The Heist Plays Out In Faces

There are a lot of little details about everybody that creates more 3 dimensional beings out of them. The fact that the safe cracker just had a baby, that Gus loves cats, that Lon has a sick wife. Backstory for everyone. The sets are great too, bare lightbulbs, pints of whiskey, dirty glasses. It gets under your skin. There’s a street at the begining that looks exactly like one in Melville’s Le Samourai. This nighttime world of people knocking on each other’s doors at 3AM, Melville’s milieu. Also, horses play a big part in Huston’s films. Reflections In A Golden Eye and The Misfits come to mind immediately. Towards the end of Le Doulous Belmondo stops off at a barn and checks out his horse before heading up to the main house where his killer is awaiting him. Is this an homage to Huston’s horse obsession? Quentin Tarantino has said that Melville did for the Crime Film what Leone did for the Western. I guess so, took elements from the Hollywood films they admired, stylized the heck out of them and revitalized a genre. This is one of Huston’s top two films, the other being The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre. In the end Dix makes it back to his farm, he gets to lie in the green grass under the beautiful sky surrounded by the horses he loved.

He Loved Horses More Than Anything

But he had to pay a high price, the price we all have to pay to get to Heaven.

Heaven