Lillian Roth.
By Jennifer Baldwin. A few weeks ago I watched my new Warner Archive DVD of Madam Satan, a 1930s Pre-Code oddity extravaganza that was Cecil B. DeMille’s first and only musical. It’s famous (infamous?) for the wild costumes, Art Deco sets, bizarre musical numbers, and a spectacular finale that includes a zeppelin crash and the sight of parachuting party-goers landing in trees, Turkish baths, and the lion cage at the Central Park Zoo.
But what I really loved about the movie was that it introduced me to Lillian Roth. I didn’t even realize as I was watching it that the sexy, saucy Trixie was played by Lillian Roth of I’ll Cry Tomorrow fame. I knew that Susan Hayward played a woman named “Lillian Roth” in that 1955 biopic, but since I’d never actually seen it, I knew nothing about the real Roth. She must have been someone famous or else they wouldn’t have made a movie about her, but what exactly she was famous for I had no idea.
Well, now I know. The minute Trixie appears on screen in Madam Satan, the film starts to pop. If you want to know what I mean GO HERE TO SEE.
As the indispensable Self-Styled Siren puts it in her review of the film: “When she flings off her rumpled satin robe and twitches her pelvis to the Low Down number, the vaudeville energy of this rather plump, frowsy jazz baby ignites the entire movie.” AND HOW! I remember thinking that Lillian Roth’s Trixie was a million times sexier and spunkier than Kay Johnson’s “Madam,” the supposed “star” of the film.
So, of course, dutiful obsessive that I am, I started scouring YouTube for videos of Lillian Roth’s performances, just to see what else this sassy dame had to offer. Her voice has got the power and verve of Ethel Merman, but with a warmer tone and a bluesier, sexier bend. And she’s got charisma. Whatever that might be defined as, it shows whenever she’s on screen: she lights it up.
Which makes her brief movie career all the more tragic. This is a woman who should have been a bigger movie star, someone who could have been in the sexy/sassy comedienne ranks with Ginger Rogers and Jean Harlow. While her honest and unflinching autobiography is justly credited with raising public awareness about alcoholism and Alcoholics Anonymous, it’s really too bad that she’s more famous for beating her addiction (and having Susan Hayward portray her) than for her talent.
Madam Satan has kicked off a Pre-Code spurt in my movie watching these days (as I write this, Night Nurse, Ladies They Talk About, Two Seconds, and The Divorcee are on my desk waiting to be devoured), so I’m excited to see that Turner Classic Movies is featuring Pre-Code goddesses Ann Dvorak and Joan Blondell in their Summer Under the Stars tributes on August 9th and August 24th, respectively.
On Ann Dvorak day, Scarface and Three on a Match are must-sees, of course, both two of the defining films of the Pre-Code era. Three on a Match, in fact, is still quite shocking, and Dvorak’s performance as a drug addicted woman is stunning and unshakable. I’m also excited for The Crowd Roars (1932), a Howard Hawks film I’ve never seen before, starring Dvorak and Jimmy Cagney as a fearless race car driver. Continue reading »
By Jennifer Baldwin. I’ve been thinking lately about how art is often more “real” to me than real life. As Truffaut said: “I have always preferred the reflection of life to life itself.” One of the reasons I spend so much time watching movies, in fact, is because after I’ve watched a good movie I feel renewed. Beautiful art has that ability to renew and enliven the spirit. Highbrow, lowbrow, middlebrow – to me it really doesn’t matter as long as I get that kick of delirious pleasure.
An American in Paris gives me that kick. It’s everything that’s great about mid-century American popular culture, fusing elements of high art with low art to create a joyful, exuberant experience. American pop art at its best is confident, playful, eclectic, improvisational, and spontaneous. It has energy and rhythm, a freewheeling delight in its own creativity. An American in Paris, at its heart, is about our relationship to art, about our desire to be renewed and enlivened by it. Continue reading »
By Jennifer Baldwin. When featuring an intriguing star, TCM’s Star of the Month tribute is an overdose of straight-up, hardcore, pure pleasure. For one night each week, the month is turned over to a movie star and we witness, with relentless intensity, every curve and turn and height of the star’s career – until the month ends and we feel indecent over how much we’ve come to know this person.
We don’t really “know” them, of course. We only see their performances. But film is funny in its deceptive intimacy, and saying farewell to the Star of the Month is like saying farewell to a summer camp best friend or a wartime romance: “It was wonderful, darling. I’ll never forget the good times we had. We’ll always have that April on TCM!” The star is in your life, in your living room, for a whole month and then, suddenly, the star gets snatched away. The light goes out.
Of course, some months I’m just not interested in the chosen one. Singing Cowboys in July? Don’t fence me in, baby, I’d rather be out playing beach volleyball at the park. But just this past month of June, Jean Simmons had me glued. I hadn’t realized it until she passed away last year, but Jean Simmons was around a lot in my teenage years. I really identified with her, with the intelligence, strength, and vulnerability she brought to the screen. Young Bess at fifteen; Guys and Dolls at sixteen; Elmer Gantry at seventeen. I must have watched these movies on an endless loop when I was in high school.
When I finally got around to Angel Face in college, it bothered me for weeks. I told friends and family and random people on the street about this movie, about this character — Diane Treymayne — and how I just couldn’t shake her. She creeped me out, and I just couldn’t shake her. She was a murderer, a psychopath, but I just couldn’t let her go. I SYMPATHIZED with her. It was disturbing.
You’re not supposed to sympathize with the Spider Woman. Sure, you can understand her motivations, even get some perverse pleasure out of her power and wicked determination, but you’re not supposed to feel bad for her. But there I was — and here I am — feeling sorry for Simmons’ Diane Treymayne.
And that ending! That last, stomach-shocking scene, throwing all my emotions for a fireball crashing loop. Every time I watch the finale in Angel Face I go, “Oh my God! What the hell?!” Every time. Every single time. And I’ve seen it at least a dozen times. Continue reading »
By David Ross. I first heard Bach’s choral prelude Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (“I call to you, Lord Jesus Christ”) in Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972). It seems to me one of the world’s most beautiful compositions, and Tarkovsky’s scene, in which the piece harmonizes with the camera as it plays over Brueghel’s Hunters in the Snow (1565), seems to me one of the most solemnly lovely scenes in cinema. The camera scrutinizes the details of Brueghel’s painting, at first coldly (as Kris must see it), but then with a certain wistful sorrow, as if in recognition of our hopeless estrangement from the natural life of the old village. The mournful precision of the piece by Bach (see here for Vladimir Horowitz’ transcendently lovely interpretation) underscores that there is only the beautiful sadness of our estrangement and longing. Kris stirs with new humility and humanity, and he and Hari begin to float, ostensibly in a state of zero gravitation, but actually in a state of grace.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder's "The Hunters in the Snow" (1565).
People often speak of Falconetti’s ecstatic expression in Dreyer’s La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928) as film’s most inspired synecdoche of the religious experience, but Tarkovsky, in my opinion, exceeds Dreyer artistically and spiritually. Tarkovsky seems engaged not in a pastiche of an archaic faith, but in the genuine struggle of modern faith, and his dense, intricately coded scene seems to compress everything integral to Western culture in its modern self-bewilderment and tentative hope.
In a 1986 interview, Laurence Cossé asked Tarkovsky whether he considered his films “acts of love towards the Creator.” Tarkovsky responded “I would like to think so. I’m working in it, in any case. The ideal for would be to make this constant gift, this gift that Bach alone, truly, was able to offer God.”
Posted on June 2nd, 2011 at 2:42pm.
Watching "Gaslight" (1944) inside the Chinese Theatre during the TCM Classic Film Festival.
By Jennifer Baldwin. A funny thing happened on the opening night of the TCM Classic Film Festival: I fell in love with an old movie. That shouldn’t be so funny, really, since I fall in love with old movies all the time. It’s just what I do. It’s my thing. I watch a random old movie on TV one night and next thing you know I’m in love. No, what’s funny about that first night of the TCM film fest is that I fell in love with an old movie I already loved.
An American in Paris may not be regarded as the best musical film of all time (most would say Singing in the Rain), but I’ve always had a soft spot for it in my heart. The Gershwin songs, the wild Technicolor, the audaciousness of that twenty-minute dance finale – it may not have the most riveting storyline in the world (few musicals do, really), but it more than makes up for it in terms of musical and visual pizzazz.
A special occasion for classic movie lovers.
I always end up watching the “I Got Rhythm” and “’S Wonderful” sequences with a huge grin on my face – and then there’s the “Our Love is Here to Stay” number, and the “American in Paris” ballet -and suddenly my heart is aching and I’m all swept up in the passion of the love story. It’s funny, and romantic, and colorful (boy, is it colorful!), and what more is there to ask of a musical? I’d seen the movie many times before, so why was the screening at the TCM festival such a revelation?
It’s an obvious answer, but nevertheless, it came as a shock to me: the movie was a revelation because I was watching it in a theater. Gorgeous Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, to be exact. With a packed house. And all the energy and excitement of the night went crackling and sparkling through the theater as I sat there watching, falling in love. We applauded the credits; we applauded Leslie Caron and Gene Kelly; we applauded after the musical numbers. I’ve watched old movies on a big screen before, in an auditorium, for my film classes. Nobody in those classes ever applauded. Nobody ever cheered. There was no energy or magic.
But that opening night premiere of a new 60th anniversary digital print of An American in Paris was magical. It helped having Leslie Caron on hand to talk about the film and her days at MGM, in a lovely conversation with Robert Osborne before the start of the movie. It was like a mutual love fest: Ms. Caron, coming out to an adoring audience, proclaiming, “This is awesome!” (with a beautiful smile on her face, and a spring in her step), while we gave her a standing ovation. It wasn’t just a movie, it was an event, a communal celebration of classic film. Continue reading »
By Jason Apuzzo. The imagination sometimes wanders in unexpected directions. Govindini’s recent post on The Demise of bin Laden and The Cinematic Legacy of 9/11 put me in the frame of mind to revisit a favorite film of mine from years ago, a classic Hollywood action spectacle with eerie and unsettling echoes in the September 11th attacks: Irwin Allen’s The Towering Inferno, from 1974.
The Towering Inferno is, in my opinion, a genuinely great Hollywood adventure film – likely one of the best the industry has ever produced. It was certainly recognized as such in its day; the film was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture (it won 3 Oscars – for Cinematography, Editing and Best Song). What’s more, the film was a gigantic hit at the domestic box office – taking in around $116 million. What this means is that adjusted for inflation, the film would’ve grossed around $482 million today. (By comparison, the top film at the domestic box office in 2010, Toy Story 3, made $415 million.) Today the film is largely remembered for being the greatest of the 1970s era ‘disaster’ epics, but that probably puts the film in too narrow a box. There really are very few action films of its scale, energy or dramatic impact. The film also has the distinction of being the last great action film made by either Steve McQueen or Paul Newman, who co-starred in the film – and so for that reason alone, The Towering Inferno has a special place in cinema history.
Around 1973, just after the smash success of producer Irwin Allen’s The Poseidon Adventure, a bidding war erupted between Fox and Warner Brothers for a forthcoming novel called The Tower, which told the harrowing tale of a fire that breaks out in the world’s tallest building just as celebrities and dignitaries gather for its opening. The Tower, which I’ve read, is basically a morality tale set in a spectacular setting – in which we get to see how different types of people behave in the midst of a terrifying crisis.
Allen wanted to adapt the novel for Fox, but Warner Brothers outbid him for the novel. As luck would have it, a similar novel called The Glass Inferno – telling almost the same story – would also soon be coming out on the market, so Allen acquired the rights to that one. Allen then pulled one of the great producing maneuvers in Hollywood history: he called a summit between Fox and Warner Brothers, and got both sides to co-operate on an expensive joint project marrying the two novels into one film: The Towering Inferno, with a screenplay – a superb one, by the way – to be written by Stirling Silliphant. Thus was born the first major joint studio project in history. (As an interesting aside, years later James Cameron’s similarly expensive disaster epic Titanic would be another such joint venture, this time between Fox and Paramount.)
Old-school cast photo for "The Towering Inferno."
The film that resulted from this collaboration between these two major studios lived up to expectations – and to some extent surpassed them. A project that could easily have flopped, or spun out of control in a maelstrom of budget overruns, dangerous stunts and FX work – or out-of-control star egos – was put together by Irwin Allen in an atmosphere of crisp, military precision and professionalism.
The first big thing Allen did was assemble the film’s extraordinary cast, beginning with the improbable, blockbuster pairing of Steve McQueen and Paul Newman. More on that pairing below. Take a look at the rest of the cast, though, for Towering Inferno: Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Fred Astaire, Jennifer Jones, Richard Chamberlain, Robert Vaughn, Robert Wagner … and, of course, O.J. Simpson (he’s actually pretty good in his few scenes). Can you imagine a cast of this caliber appearing in a special effects picture today? It’s unimaginable. Continue reading »
By Jennifer Baldwin. From my earliest days as an old movie obsessive (circa, age fourteen), I’ve been obsessed with finding out how young people fall in love with old movies.
For my grandma’s generation, the love is easy to explain: These aren’t “old movies,” these are just THE movies, the ones they spent their lives seeing in the theaters.
For my mom’s generation, these old movies weren’t exactly contemporaries, but they weren’t so old and distant either. When my mom was a kid in the 1960s, the old movie stars were still around and the old movies must have still felt familiar, if a bit musty. It’s a lot like my own generation’s relationship to the movies of the 1980s. My Saturdays were filled with a never-ending supply of popular ‘80s movies on cable TV, just as my mom’s youth was filled with Rita Bell and “Bill Kennedy at the Movies.”
But how do people born in the ‘70s, ‘80s, and ‘90s become old movie buffs? How do Generations X, Y, and Z get into watching movies made in the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s?
I know how my own old-movie odyssey went, all of the influences and the inspirations. I know I owe a lot to the years 1988 to 1992, when it seemed like every summer another movie came out that was set in a 1940s Never Land – whether it was Who Framed Roger Rabbit? or The Rocketeer or A League of Their Own – and each of these new movies whetted my imagination for the old ones.
I know I owe a lot to my grandparents and their love of jazz, and how that love was transferred to me, so that for three solid years I spent my summers at the Elkhart jazz festival and never at a New Kids on the Block concert. Being a fan of swing jazz and Dixieland made it easier to love other old things, like movies.
I know I owe a lot to my grandmother and my mom, who invited me to watch these strange old movies with them, folding laundry on the couch and falling in love with Cary Grant and Clark Gable, thus beginning my own long, intoxicating affair with old Hollywood.
But how do other people of my age and generation get into the old stuff? What are their paths to classic cinema ecstasy?
I have a feeling that no matter our divergent and differing paths, we have one thing in common: Turner Classic Movies. Continue reading »
By Jennifer Baldwin. “About her face there was no distinction whatever. She was what is described as ‘nice-looking,’ rather than pretty; her own appraisal she sometimes gave in the phrase, ‘pass in a crowd.’ But this didn’t quite do her justice. Into her eyes, if she were provoked, or made fun of, or puzzled, there came a squint that was anything but alluring, that betrayed a rather appalling literal-mindedness, or matter-of-factness, or whatever it might be called, but that hinted, nevertheless, at something more than complete vacuity inside. It was the squint, Bert confessed afterwards, that first caught his fancy, and convinced him there was ‘something to her.’” – James M. Cain, Mildred Pierce (1941).
The squint in her eye is Mildred’s defining detail in James M. Cain’s novel, but in Todd Haynes’s (dir. Far From Heaven) beautifully detailed new adaptation, it’s the one detail that’s been left out. Meticulously rendered, obsessively detailed, HBO’s new five-part miniseries Mildred Pierce is a gorgeous and intoxicating recreation of Depression-era southern California. And Kate Winslet throws herself full-throttle into the part of Mildred, a recently divorced housewife and mother who does what she must in order to provide for her children, especially her snobbish, cruel elder daughter, Veda (Morgan Turner, Evan Rachel Wood). Winslet gives a naturalistic performance and her sobs and flashes of anger are neither histrionic nor mechanical, but instead subtle and filled with an inner intensity. She puts as much life into Mildred as she can and you can see Winslet’s skill at work in every frame (and she’s in almost every frame of the show). Unfortunately, seeing is not feeling, and I was left strangely cold by Winslet’s performance, despite being hypnotically sucked in by the luridness of the story and the sumptuousness of the set design. Continue reading »
By Jason Apuzzo. The new Ten Commandments Blu-ray comes out this Tuesday, March 29th (see the trailer for the Blu-ray at the bottom of this post). Paramount will be releasing a 2-disc Blu-ray set of the classic film, and also a Limited Edition 6-disc DVD/Blu-ray Combo set, that features both Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 and 1923 versions of the film – and a host of goodies, including a handsome archival booklet that may be worth the price of the set on its own.
The Ten Commandments is a special favorite of mine. Not only is the film one of Hollywood’s greatest epics of the 1950s, the film is also a timeless and enduring ode to human freedom – and one which seems to grow only more timely and urgent as the years go by. The Ten Commandments is a film that will always remain powerful and ‘relevant’ so long as there are souls yearning for freedom – even, as we’ve seen recently, in contemporary Egypt and North Africa where so much of The Ten Commandments was filmed.
We had the pleasure of showing what was then the best existing print of The Ten Commandments at our first Liberty Film Festival in 2004, when we invited cast member Lisa Mitchell to talk about her recollections of Mr. DeMille – and how influential he was in her life. Several years later Govindini and I spent time with Cecilia DeMille Presley, granddaughter of Cecil DeMille and a caretaker of his legacy – who shared some wonderful memories of her grandfather with us. Most special, however, was the opportunity Govindini and I had years ago to meet Charlton Heston himself at The Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, when he introduced a special screening of The Ten Commandments. (We actually sat right behind him during the screening – and watched his reactions to the film, which he still seemed to take great delight in so many years later.) It was an extraordinary thrill to meet him; even late in life, he was still handsome and rugged, with a biting wit – but also a warm and generous spirit. He was the consummate gentleman.
Charlton Heston in "The Ten Commandments."
The Ten Commandments is without a doubt one of the best films Hollywood has ever produced, and a carrier of important ideas about freedom, so I thought we’d take a little look back at it today. It also happens to be a magnificent showpiece for the Blu-ray medium – with the film’s rich, saturated colors, beautiful costumes and production design, endless desert vistas, and iconic visual effects sequences. To put it mildly, The Ten Commandments is not only an emotional spectacle of the heart … it’s also an eyeful.
Interestingly,The Ten Commandments happens to be the fifth highest-grossing film of all time, adjusted for inflation. When the film was released in 1956, theater tickets cost about 50 cents – and the film still grossed over $65 million. What this means is that at today’s ticket prices, The Ten Commandments would have grossed over $1 billion at the domestic box office. In the history of American moviemaking, only Gone With the Wind, Star Wars, The Sound of Music and E.T. have fared better at the box office than did DeMille’s extraordinary film.
I don’t mention The Ten Commandments‘ box office success because that denotes anything in particular about the film’s merits – success at the box office can always be misleading – but to suggest the kind of powerful bond this film has with the public. The Ten Commandments is, as it turns out, a beautifully written, directed, acted, photographed and scored film – a majestic and emotional voyage into one of the primary myths of Western religious life. It’s also the crowning achievement of one of America’s greatest moviemakers. At the same time, The Ten Commandments is something else: it’s a part of American popular mythology, as important to America’s filmic conversation about freedom and individual dignity as Casablanca, Gone With the Wind or On the Waterfront. Continue reading »
By Jennifer Baldwin. This is about Film Noir, so here’s a flashback …
I went through a bit of a Glenn Ford/Gloria Grahame/THE BIG HEAT phase several years ago. I became obsessed with the movie and those two actors. I was like a junky, watching the movie over and over, memorizing lines, musing over the themes, showing the famous boiling coffee scene to anyone who would watch.
But eventually, no matter how much I loved THE BIG HEAT, it couldn’t withstand the over-obsession. I needed a new drug. I needed something else to give me that Glenn and Gloria fix.
Then I read about HUMAN DESIRE. It was made after THE BIG HEAT, starring Ford and Grahame, another scalding-hot 1950s noir directed by Fritz Lang. As soon as I found out about it, I had to have it. Only problem: it wasn’t on DVD. You couldn’t buy it in the store. It was as good as gone for someone like me out in the Michigan suburbs, with not a repertoire theater in sight.
I went into the shadows. I spent many a midnight hour searching the internet for a copy of the movie. I was bleary-eyed and half crazed with want. And then I found it. One of those online trading post/auction sites. Eight bucks plus shipping and handling and HUMAN DESIRE could be mine. It was someone’s homemade DVD copy, complete with fuzzy picture and bad sound, but buying it made me feel like I was the protagonist in my own film noir, swapping cash with some anonymous stranger on the black market for a “treasure” that was worn out and almost worthless.
But it was worth everything to me. I watched HUMAN DESIRE and loved it more than I had loved THE BIG HEAT. I don’t know if I loved it so much because it took all that effort to finally get a copy, or if I genuinely loved the movie more, but HUMAN DESIRE became one of my secret movie treasures.
Now it’s out on DVD, an official release from Columbia Pictures, with pristine picture and remastered sound, and I still think that it’s tops. I think it’s Gloria Grahame’s masterpiece. I think it’s misunderstood. I think Glenn Ford’s character is the real villain and that far from having a “happy” ending, it has one of the bleakest, most cynical endings in all of noir.
The misinterpretation of the film stems from the assumption that Grahame’s character is a traditional “femme fatale” evil woman type. She’s Gloria Grahame, after all, and she wants Glenn Ford to commit murder for her. But I couldn’t just slot her into the femme fatale role that easily. She might have murder in her heart, but it didn’t come there lightly. Continue reading »
By Jennifer Baldwin. Before photography (and then Photoshop) took over the movie poster business, illustrators and artists ruled. Billboards, lobby cards, one sheets — these were the domain of the movie art masters, the geniuses who plastered our imaginations with color and drama and a parade of disembodied heads all in various states of emotion. Nowhere, it seems, were the old movie poster artists more unbridled than in their posters for film noir. Violence and sex are everywhere, and the artwork is always fun. Sometimes the posters are lush and romantic, other times chaotic and carnal. But always interesting, always worth looking at. Whether the movies turn out to be good or bad, the posters always manage to sell them.
In fact, sometimes in the case of the old film noirs, the foreign artwork is better than the American. These foreign posters seem to get to the thematic heart of the stories because the artists weren’t as hampered by the studios to make sure a certain actor was featured or a movie star actress looked glamorous. And because foreign artists often had different sensibilities than their American counterparts, some of the best posters have a distinct strangeness to them that make the artwork even more compelling. These are my Top 6 picks for best film noir movie posters from foreign countries:
#6: Belgian poster for Criss Cross (Dir. Robert Siodmak, 1949)
Bold, violent, unrelenting — the red crisscross that dominates the center of the poster might be a bit crude and obvious for a movie titled “Criss Cross,” but it fits this nihilistic, underrated classic perfectly. With Yvonne De Carlo’s gorgeous face looming enigmatically above it, the “X” threatens to cross out both Duryea and Lancaster, two men who are both on a road to annihilation thanks to their lust for Yvonne’s intoxicating femme. What’s even more disturbing than those crisscrossed streaks of blood, though, is the look of cool, indifferent “who cares” on De Carlo’s face. That “who cares” look, as blood rains down, is the essence of the film noir “dangerous woman.”
#5: Italian poster for T-Men (Dir. Anthony Mann, 1948)
The artwork for this poster is flawless. One of the great things about old movie poster art is the way it tells a story. It’s not just one thing — one face, one situation, one image. These old posters take us into the story of the film, almost like the sequential art of a comic book, where we move from character to character, situation to situation, image to image. This T-Men poster gives us pieces of the story, while leaving us hungry for more. The death of a beautiful woman; a bag full of money; a brutal interrogation; a shootout at the pier; and at the center of it all, a heroic Dennis O’Keefe, trying to stand up for what’s right, but surrounded by crime on all sides. Film noir is a black and white genre, yet an eye-popping poster like this one reveals all of the intense, explosive emotions roiling beneath the silver-dark black and white sheen.
#4: French poster for F.B.I. Girl (Dir. William Berke, 1951)
I’ve never seen F.B.I. Girl. From what I’ve read on the internet, it doesn’t appear to be a very good movie, despite the presence of one of the all-time noir pros, Audrey Totter. But damn, if this poster isn’t the coolest thing ever! Coolness, of course, is one of the attractions of the genre. In fact, some might even argue that film noir isn’t a real genre at all, just a style. And style is about aesthetics, about the “look” of something. In the case of F.B.I. Girl, the movie itself is irrelevant. This poster — the look, the attitude, the style of it — is all we need. There’s a sexiness, a romantic sensibility, to the artwork that seems appropriate for the French. The pinkish red coloring; the playful elegance of the woman in the foreground; the hint of sexual violence between the man and woman in the background — all of it adds up to a retro modern design that is still absolutely fresh. I would kill to have this poster framed and hanging on my wall.
#3: French poster for Notorious (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1946)
Symbolic, highly stylized, and unlike anything that would have been done in America, this is Hitchcock’s Notorious as only the French can render it. There’s the romantic passion of Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman’s love affair, which dominates the poster and hangs over every frame of the film; the wine cellar key that is at the center of Bergman’s espionage and the symbol for her duplicity; and a very stylized version of Claude Rains within the key itself, uniting Bergman’s two acts of deception and betrayal, the betrayal of her husband’s work and his heart. The blue coloring gives the poster a sad romanticism, like the farewell of lovers on a rainy train platform; while the gold works as both the golden hues of warm sunlight (Bergman’s character wants to live in the light) and as the menacing gold of the cellar key. Interestingly, Rains’ face is half gold, half black, perhaps as a symbol for how his character is an evil yet weak man, not so much a villain to be hated but one to be pitied. More than just an advertisement for a movie, this poster works as a compelling piece of art.
#2: Italian poster for Force of Evil (Dir. Abraham Polonsky, 1948)
This poster just IS noir. One of the few from the era to be almost entirely in black and white, it captures the essential paradox of the genre. The menace of the gun; the threat of violence from a heavy bathed in shadow; the trapped look on the face of illustrated John Garfield — all of the doom and psychological terror of these films, and yet, amidst the crime and despair, there’s a stark beauty to the image. This is the tension at the heart of the noir style: beauty within the darkness. These are dark films, with dark themes. Murder, blackmail, exploitation, cruelty, selfishness, greed. But the artists who create these films, the painters of shadow and light, the directors and cinematographers — they create something beautiful to look at out of stories filled with evil. The illustration for this poster looks like it could be a still photograph from the movie itself. Filled with fear and violence and menace, and gorgeous.
#1: German poster for Double Indemnity (Dir. Billy Wilder, 1944)
This is number one simply because it looks like the face of Barbara Stanwyck is emerging from Hellfire, her seductive wickedness consuming MacMurray and Robinson in an inferno of murder and lies. If that doesn’t sum up Double Indemnity, I don’t know what does. Stanwyck is all heat in this one, a ball of fire of the deadly variety. MacMurray and Robinson, in their monotone hues, look almost like ghosts, like men reduced to mere shadows by the power of Stanwyck’s evilness. The real relationship in the movie is between the two men, of course. When their friendship is destroyed because of Phyllis Dietrichson, it is that destruction that pains us in the end. She is the devil who comes between them, bringing everything to ruin. This illustration, more than any other, captures these themes. And even more than that, it’s just an electrifying visual design. Everything about this poster just makes me want to watch the movie again right now. It gives new life to a movie I’ve seen dozens of times. And that is the mark of great movie poster.
This article is a contribution to the For the Love of Film (Noir) Blogathon, hosted by Ferdy on Films and The Self-Styled Siren. Check out the Facebook page HERE and consider supporting the cause of film preservation with a donation.
Posted on February 14th, 2011 at 11:05am.
A behind-the-scenes photo of Tura in "FPKK."
By Jason Apuzzo. The great Tura Satana passed away this past Friday. Our condolences to her family, many friends and fans. She will be greatly missed. (Read the NY Times obit here, and classic film blogger Kimberly Lindbergs’ fine 2007 piece “Tura Satana: An American Icon”).
Govindini and I met Tura about two years ago at an event. I’m a great fan of Russ Meyer’s films, and of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! in particular, so I approached Tura to express my enthusiasm for her work. What I expected to be a brief exchange turned into an hour-long conversation, and I soon found myself snapping pictures of Tura with Govindini (they got on like a house on fire) and with the other Pussycat girls Haji and Lori Williams, and having a fantastic time. I talked with Tura about her incredible life – her hard upbringing, her Japanese family’s stint in the Manzanar internment camp, her romance with Elvis. In particular I remember her telling me how some of Elvis’ signature dance moves were actually lifted from her burlesque act.
She also talked a lot about her love of America, and the opportunities it had given her. Tura was intensely patriotic, and was not shy about expressing it. It was amazing to see that coming from someone who’d had such a difficult upbringing – a young life filled with violence, betrayal and a lot of pain. (More horror stories, more abuse and hard luck than I care to recount here.) Nonetheless, the impression I had of Tura that day was of a survivor with a very tough exterior – who had nonetheless preserved a tender heart, and a robust love of life.
For those of you who may not be familiar with her, Tura delivered what is in my opinion – and in the opinion of many others – the iconic performance of cult cinema, playing Varla in Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!. And for some bizarre reason, it’s the only really large role that Tura was ever given. This is a bit like not wanting the young Wilt Chamberlain on your basketball team. I’ve heard many explanations for her disappearance from the film scene after Faster, Pussycat – but none of them has ever made any sense to me. She seems so impossible to ignore.
Images of Tura Satana from "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"
The biggest tragedy of Tura’s career, one which Russ Meyer himself acknowledged, was that he and Tura didn’t continue to make films together. The mind reels to think of what those two could have accomplished, had they kept that partnership going.
In the very least, however, we have Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!.
And on that subject, 1965’s Faster, Pussycat is easily the greatest cult film ever made – and the competition is not even close. Certainly one of the major reasons for the film’s success is Tura’s performance as Varla – and how does one describe her in that film? She’s like a force of nature – a category 5 hurricane – something primal, unstoppable, a torrent of violence, lust, desire, and mocking humor rolled into one. Imagine a Japanese Venus of Willendorf with bangs, dressed like Marlon Brando in The Wild One, puffing on a cheroot, bellowing quips into the desert air that seem like something out of a long-forgotten Bogart film. And then come the karate chops, the kicks and knives! Not exactly Bruce Lee stuff, but deadly nonetheless.
Publicity still for "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!"
The image of Tura Satana (has there ever been a name like that?) – dressed in black, leaning against her car in the high Mojave desert – has become one of those iconic images that end up on the dorm room walls of young guys in college … and increasingly young girls, as well. It’s a great American image, one of cool independence, not unlike the image that Steve McQueen or Clint Eastwood projected during that same period. It’s an image of what we all want to be, or should want to be – tough, self-reliant, skeptical, at home in the wild.
We don’t do ‘cool’ here in America very well, any more. I’m told by experts that we have a President who’s ‘cool,’ for example, but I don’t quite believe it. Cool people don’t get everything in life handed to them, and nobody handed anything to Tura Satana – except maybe Russ Meyer, who gave her that one role of a lifetime.
Since we still have that film, Tura will still be with us, reminding us of how cool all of us can be.
Somewhere in the afterlife, God and the Devil are probably fighting over credit for creating Tura Satana. God will win that one.
Footnote: Tura was a fan of Libertas Contributor Steve Greaves‘ music. Plus: I’ve embedded below the first 6 minutes of Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! There’s never been anything quite like it.
Posted on February 9th, 2011 at 11:49am.
