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.

By Jason Apuzzo. • Today is Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday, and those of us here at LFM want to pay our respects today to our 40th President, a man who remains an icon to so many of us – a vibrant symbol of American optimism, and of our better selves.

Since many others today will be talking about Reagan’s legacy as a political figure – a legacy that only seems to grow with time – I wanted to talk a little about Reagan’s career as a movie star. In this context one of the more positive developments in recent years has been the belated recognition by critics and historians that Ronald Reagan was, indeed, a very fine movie star – a versatile and charismatic actor whose only ‘crime,’ so to speak, was that his career never quite reached the levels of other great Warner Brothers contract stars like Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn or James Cagney. Reagan was nonetheless a sparkling and compelling presence on-screen, who radiated a boyish charm as a young man in films like Santa Fe Trail (1940; co-starring Errol Flynn), Desperate Journey (1942; again co-starring Flynn) and the ‘Brass’ Bancroft serials; he was also an actor of brooding intensity and lightning wit in films like King’s Row (1942) and Knute Rockne, All American (1940) – who later made a convincing transition to playing craggy, weather-beaten heroes in films like Law & Order (1953) and Hellcats of the Navy (1957). I also happen to think Reagan’s credentials as a noir actor have been overlooked over the years; more on that subject below.

Reagan in Hollywood.

Two factors recently were vital in my own re-evaluation of Reagan as a star. First of all, Turner Classic Movies several years ago devoted an entire month to Reagan’s films – several of which only recently became available on DVD – and so I finally got the chance to record and watch a lot of them in an organized, sustained fashion. Also: in 2008 author Marc Eliot released a superb account of Reagan’s life and career in Hollywood, called Reagan: The Hollywood Years.  Put together, the picture that Eliot’s book and Reagan’s own films create is one of an engaging, sympathetic star whose career – ironically enough – might have reached much greater heights had he not been ‘distracted’ by politics, particularly in the form of Reagan’s involvement in Hollywood’s complex labor disputes in the 1940s. Indeed, one of the many ironies of Reagan’s career in Hollywood is that as an eight-term SAG president Reagan spent an inordinate amount fighting other people’s battles, when he perhaps should’ve instead been fighting Jack Warner in order to get better roles for himself – roles which Reagan manifestly deserved, in my opinion.

Nonetheless, Reagan was a major Hollywood player during his heyday of the early 1940s. How big was he? In 1942, right after the release of King’s Row, Reagan’s agent – the powerful Lew Wasserman – signed him to Hollywood’s first $1 million contract of the 1940s, and Reagan was soon under consideration for the lead in Casablanca. What happened afterward, however, was that America’s ongoing war effort created a cascading series of changes in Reagan’s career that led him, ultimately, to lose professional momentum – right as people like Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne and Gary Cooper were gaining it. Reagan nevertheless forged ahead, and still banged out some fine pictures all throughout the 1940s and early 1950s – even as political battles of the era increasingly consumed his time.

One of Reagan's best.

I’d like to point out a personal favorite of mine from this period: a brooding little noir romance called Night Unto Night (1949), directed by Don Siegel. The film stars Reagan as a terminally ill doctor suffering from epileptic seizures. He travels to the Florida coast to try to find some solace as his condition deteriorates, and there he falls in love with Viveca Lindfors (who was actually married to Siegel at the time) – who’s dealing with her own problems, having just lost her husband during the War, and yet still occasionally hearing her husband’s ghostly voice at night. Complicating matters further his Lindfors’ saucy, vixen sister, played by the strikingly attractive Osa Massen (sci-fi buffs will remember her from Rocketship X-M) who spends most of the film coming-on to Reagan like a cat in heat.

The film takes place mostly in a dark mansion along a storm-swept stretch of Florida’s coast, and has a kind of hypnotic quality to it – a dark romanticism of chiaroscuro lighting, subjective camera angles and sound design – with Reagan bringing a psychological intensity to his role that reminds one of his friend and contemporary William Holden, when Holden was at his peak in the 1950s. Reagan as the doctor is alternately stoic and terrified at his own fate, and deeply ambivalent about dragging Lindfors into his own personal tragedy so soon after she’d suffered one of her own. At the same time, he recognizes his own role in reviving her otherwise moribund spirits, and this makes his predicament all the more poignant.

Reagan’s performance in Night Unto Night is one of the better film noir performances of that period, fully of a piece with work by other noir stars like Glenn Ford or Dennis O’Keefe, and he should get more credit for it. Reagan and Lindfors (and, for that matter, Reagan and Osa Massen) make a genuinely smoldering couple – and I highly recommend this film to anyone still in doubt as to Reagan’s merits as a star.

Reagan in Don Siegel's "The Killers."

And, while we’re at it, I should mention the other film Reagan made with Don Siegel, which would actually be Reagan’s final acting performance – as gangster Jack Browning in 1964’s The Killers, based on the Hemingway short story. The Killers is the film that makes one speculate as to what an incredible career Reagan might’ve had if he’d turned to playing villains, because even in a film featuring stand-out performances by Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson, John Cassavetes and Clu Gulager, Reagan absolutely steals the show as a ruthless and sardonic mobster out to pull off a major truck heist. In The Killers Reagan shows the side of himself that I liked most as a teenager when he was President: his toughness, his merciless wit, and a certain old-fashioned professionalism. Plus, Reagan somehow became more handsome as he grew older – craggier, his age-lines giving his face a sharper, more pleasing definition. (Someone should’ve thought to cast Reagan as Dick Tracy during this period.) Reagan in The Killers is what a lot of villains in Tarantino movies are trying to be, but never fully are: cool, in command, and macho as hell. It’s another stand-out noir performance from Reagan which, in my opinion, deserves more credit than it’s gotten over the years.

I could go on, but you get the point: Reagan was a fine star, by no means a ‘failed actor’ as some would have it, and the best testimony to his abilities are his films. And, on this point, LFM readers should be aware that Warner Brothers recently released some rare Reagan classics on DVD, and you can read the estimable Lou Lumenick’s reviews of that new set and other Reagan rarities now available from the Warner Archive Collection (such as Night Unto Night) here.

Also, news arrived this week that Robert Forster will soon be playing Reagan in a new one-man stage show and film (see here), and new Reagan documentaries are also popping up everywhere. Make sure, however, not to watch Eugene Jarecki’s documentary on HBO; Jarecki should not be trusted with this material, after the hack job he did on America’s Cold War effort in Why We Fight (a shameless pilfering of the title from Capra’s far better, more honest film). Instead, take some time today if you can to simply watch Reagan in one of his own films – my personal favorites are the ones he made with Errol Flynn. The films are great fun, and are a wonderful testimony to Reagan’s talent – and to what might have been, had his career not turned in a very different direction …

• And now to Clint Eastwood. Clint gave an interesting interview last week to the Wall Street Journal on his forthcoming J. Edgar Hoover biopic, which will star Leonardo DiCaprio – and also, as of recently, Naomi Watts and Ken Howard. In this interview, Clint gives what is arguably the most complete statement of his political worldview in years. I found him to be sober and restrained – but also a bit all-over-the-map, difficult to pin down.

Clint is someone who has traditionally been pegged as a ‘Hollywood conservative,’ a Cold Warrior and lone Republican holdout in a liberal-dominated industry. Actually, though, there’s always been a good deal of what I could call Steinbeck-style, Depression-era liberalism to Clint that seems to have become more pronounced as the years go on.

Eastwood talks politics.

In this recent interview he comes across as relatively cool toward conflicts like the Iraq War and the Korean War, for example, particularly with respect to the burdens these wars put on the average fighting man. I understand that perspective, and it’s one that he brought to Flags of Our Fathers (although very different from what he did in Heartbreak Ridge), but it creates problems when it comes to America’s ongoing need to project force in dangerous parts of the world. Even Obama has come to recognize the necessity of fighting in Afghanistan, for example – an environment that puts extraordinary burdens on our fighting men. Clint seems to have forgotten that our current military is a volunteer force, not the conscripted force he was in while stationed up at Ford Ord in the Army back in the early 50s. And based on re-enlistment rates in the armed forces over the past decade, it seems that our fighting men believe in their current mission.

In any case, you might ask why any of this matters – Clint’s a filmmaker, after all, not (any longer, at least) a politician. Well, it very much does matter because he’s about to make a big-budget biopic of J. Edgar Hoover, a film spanning Hoover’s entire 40+ year career – a career that helped define the domestic profile of the entire Cold War era. And he’s making this film with arguably the biggest male star in the world, and a lot of people who are never going to read about Hoover or the Soviet-era threats he confronted are instead going to watch this movie and assume that what’s being depicted is at least semi-accurate.

So people need to keep a careful eye on this film, and on what its director is saying – even when it’s Eastwood saying it. I unfortunately don’t always have the sense lately that Clint’s minding the store in terms of what his films are saying – or perhaps maybe I’m worrying that he is the minding the store, and is in the process of shifting his worldview quite dramatically from what it was back during the 70s and 80s, before he was the darling of the Hollywood establishment – and people like Sean Penn and Paul Haggis and Tim Robbins became eager to work with him. In any case, I recommend that you read the interview and judge for yourself.

John Barry's album for "Thunderball."

• A lot is suddenly happening on the James Bond front. Rumors are now swirling that Javier Bardem may be signed as the new film’s villain, and Ralph Fiennes may get involved with the film, as well. Everyone is speculating that director Sam Mendes may be pushing the series in a more dramatic direction – which is fine, but I’m also hoping that Mendes understands that Bond movies should also be light on their feet and amusing, something Mendes’ films have never been (being, instead, ponderous and dull-witted). We’ll see. Oh, and Judi Dench has signed back on.

In classic 007 news, the wonderful Bond composer John Barry has passed away, and we wish his family our condolences. Barry was an essential ingredient in the Bond formula for decades, and leaves behind him a rich musical legacy; he will certainly be missed. Also: if you’re in the mood for classic Bond, watch this interesting recent interview with production designer Ken Adam, who did so many of the great sets from the Connery films, as well as the War Room set from Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove.

• This is so incredibly pathetic: Captain America: The First Avenger will apparently only be called The First Avenger in Russia and the Ukraine, as Marvel and Paramount have apparently caved. Way to go, Hollywood! Champions of free speech, as always. If the title Captain America: The First Avenger isn’t mellow enough for the Russians, maybe Paramount could re-title it Captain Redondo Beach: First in the Water. Just sayin’.

Vlad Putin: big movie fan.

Meanwhile, Putin apparently had copies of a new documentary critical of his regime (re: the Khordorkovsky case) actually stolen in Berlin – while he’s simultaneously demanding that the number of movie theaters in Russia be doubled. I guess you can never have enough empty theaters for Burnt by the Sun 2.

• … and speaking of Russia, scribe Steve Zallian (Mission: Impossible, Clear and Present Danger, Schindler’s List, The Falcon and the Snowman) has apparently been tapped to re-draft the Jack Ryan reboot (starring Star Trek’s Chris Pine), titled Moscow. Good choice. Maybe the young Jack Ryan can steal back the Khordorkovsky documentary.

• Not to miss a publicity opportunity, the ReelzChannel is now marketing the new Kennedys miniseries as featuring the Kennedy family’s “mob associations, the drugs and the women.” Hey! And here I thought this series was just going to show 8 hours of shaky home movies of beach football on Cape Cod! You mean the Kennedys actually had mob ties, and lots of sexy dames with beehive hairdos hanging around? I’m scandalized! How dare they show this on our public airwaves?!

January Jones of "X-Men: First Class."

• I wasn’t aware of exactly how 60s-Cold War inflected the new X-Men: First Class film was going to be. Here’s how the film’s director, Matthew Vaughn, describes it:

Calling it “X-Men meets Bond, with a little bit of Thirteen Days thrown in for good measure”, the film will follow the burgeoning relationship between a young Charles (Professor X) and Erik (Magneto) from 1942-1962, and it will all be done without flashbacks.

“In the beginning of the film, no one knows that mutants exist, and all the mutants don’t know that each other exist. They’re all in hiding. Kevin Bacon plays a very megalomaniac mutant [Sebastian Shaw] who decides that he can take over the world and that mutants are the future. Erik and Charles then meet each other and hook up with the CIA to try and prevent World War III. You find out everything about what went on between Erik and Charles” says Vaughn. So it appears the CIA are the ones who develop the X-Men’s technology.

Vaughn calls Michael Fassbender’s turn as Magneto very reminiscent of old school James Bond – “I basically molded a young Magneto on a young Sean Connery. He’s the ultimate spy — imagine Bond, but with superpowers. For me, Magneto is the good guy in the film, but he’s a sort of a good bad guy. He literally kicks off the movie, and Xavier goes along on the ride trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and trying to persuade Erik that you don’t have to kill everyone.”

So in the spirit of such retro-Cold War/60s nostalgia, X-Men: First Class‘ January Jones will be today’s pin-up. Isn’t this a great picture? Here’s the key to this picture, aside from the nicely plunging neckline: she’s not smiling, and she looks like a hard-case, sort of like what I imagine Dagny Taggart would look like. Women smile too much nowadays, and it makes them less sexy. Toughen up, ladies.

And that’s how we close out this Extended Cold War Update! in honor of America’s Greatest Cold Warrior, and a very fine movie star: Ronald Reagan.

By David Ross. Aleksandr Sokurov’s Russian Ark (2002) is a marvel: a ninety-six-minute movie consisting of a single unbroken tracking shot. With a sensual fluidity unmatched except perhaps by Ophuls’ La Ronde, the camera follows two ghosts – one Russian, the other European, one earnest, the other ironic – as they stroll through the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.

The centuries swirl gracefully about them, the twentieth century suddenly giving way to the nineteenth, the eighteenth suddenly giving way to the twenty-first, as if time itself were a gently shifting breeze. The film is pregnant with a wonderful faith that time is not an erosion, but an accretion, that some great memory catches the falling drop of the individual moment, that all is somehow gathered to the breast. As they make their tour, the ghosts maintain a patter of wry commentary and affectionate observation, humanists mingling in the parade of humanity. They have no urgent message to deliver and nothing to teach, thankfully; their pleasure is the film’s essential communication, though there is also a clouding of elegy. Meanwhile the camera makes a tour of its own, lingering on the splendid details of the palace: molding, gilding, ironwork, marble-work, drapery, china, crystal. The camera provides an implicit object lesson in the tradition of disciplined form that has made the beauty of the West, and this aspect of the film can only seem a terrible if inadvertent reproach. In comparison to the door handle or to the lace of a tablecloth, calmly wrought for the eye of God, whose discernment is infinite, our contemporary masterpieces – a Jackson Pollack, say, or the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao – flail hysterically, as if the soul itself were abandoned and drowning.

To promote and honor the film – one of the greatest ever in my opinion – I have fully transcribed the dialogue and annotated some of the artistic and architectural detail. This task required perhaps fifteen hours of truly tedious labor. I drew upon and sometimes cribbed directly from Paintings in the Hermitage by Colin Eisler and The Hermitage Collections (2 vols.) by Oleg Yakovlevich Neverov, Dmitry Pavlovich Alexinsky, Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky (who possibly figures in the film; see here and here).

It is sometimes difficult to identify who speaks what words, and I can’t vouch for the accuracy of my transcription in every instance. I look forward to receiving corrections and additional annotations from our conscientious and knowledgeable readers. Please consider the script below a first attempt to map the fluid, elusive drama of the film. Hopefully somebody will find it useful in its present, rough form.

Continue reading »

By Joe Bendel. Like many contemporary Iranian filmmakers, the late great Franstišek Vláčil often focused on ostensibly apolitical subjects, like children and animals. Yet, as a filmmaker in the vanguard of the Czech New Wave, his work was still considered suspect by the Communist power structure. Though his career would be put on hold for six years following the 1968 Soviet invasion, the international acclaim greeting his 1960 feature film debut The White Dove promised great things at the time for the filmmaker, making it the perfect selection to launch Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Fantastic World of Franstišek Vláčil retrospective.

A group of doves is released in Belgium. On a small Baltic island, their handlers eagerly anticipate their return. However, young Susan’s bird has a late start due to a twinge of the wing. While detouring through Prague, the wheelchair-bound Miša’s pellet gun nearly proves fatal. Shamed by Martin, the artist in the next door apartment, he nurses the bird back to health, while Susan faithfully keeps watching the skies.

Franstišek Vláčil.

Dove is a deceptively simple story, involving several themes Vláčil would return to in later films, such as the bond between children and animals. Reportedly reluctant to overwhelm his youthful cast with extensive lines to memorize, Vláčil makes his points visually rather than verbally. Stark but sensitive, nearly every artful black-and-white frame lensed by cinematographer Jan Čuřík is suitable for framing. Indeed, it is an arresting film to behold, effectively contrasting the claustrophobic, urbanized Prague with the idyllic sun and sea of Susan’s Baltic isle. Adding further texture, composer Zdenek Liska’s spritely jazz interludes and more suggestive chamber music nicely underscore and reinforce the power of the film’s speechless moments.

Vláčil elicits some natural yet restrained performances from Karel Smyczek and Katerina Irmanovová, as the dove’s two youthful caretakers. He also captures the artistic impulse better in Dove than nearly any other film, raptly observing as Martin creates a series of works inspired by Miša and the injured dove (which are credited to Czech artists Theodor Pištěk and Jan Kablasa).

At times, Dove seems to suggest deeper allegorical significance, but Vláčil judiciously keeps it all rather obscure—though perhaps not obscure enough, in retrospect. (Whenever you have a cat named Satan hunting a peaceful white dove, it could be rather awkward explaining what each represents to the occupying commissar .)

Many have likened Vláčil’s films to poetry. Indeed, like a good poem (at least by Poe’s standards) Dove is relatively short at seventy-five minutes. Though it memorably evokes a child’s perspective, it is unquestionably high art cinema, better suited to the discerning connoisseur. A major work from a filmmaker under-exposed on the American film scene during his own lifetime, Dove kicked-off the FSLC’s welcome reappraisal of Vláčil’s films yesterday at the Walter Reade Theater.

Posted on February 3rd, 2011 at 12:17pm.

By Jennifer Baldwin. Quick, name five Jane Greer movies!

1.) Out of the Past
2.) The Big Steal
And… ???

Okay, I’ll play:
3.) The Company She Keeps
4.) Man of a Thousand Faces
And, in a small role…
5.) 1973’s The Outfit. More on that last one in a bit.
(Also, her stint on Twin Peaks was nothing to sneeze at and kinda noirish in that weird, Lynchian way.)

She might not have made many memorable movies, but all it took for Jane Greer to become the queen of film noir was one role: Kathie Moffat in Jacques Tourner’s film noir masterpiece, Out of the Past.

Yes, Stanwyck was the ultimate spider woman as Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity, and made more half-baked films noir than Greer made films total. And yes, Gloria Grahame was the epitome of B-girl badness in films like The Big Heat and Human Desire. And, of course, glamourpusses like Ava Gardner and Rita Hayworth both had signature roles in the dark den of Noir City.

But for me, Greer is the queen of noir because she was every dark dame wrapped into one. She was wicked temptress, misunderstood moll, glamour puss with a kiss of death, and also something even more off-kilter and sinister than her fellow femmes.  Out of the Past’s Kathie Moffat might just be more fatal than all of them because she isn’t just evil, she’s vulnerable too and that vulnerability – that quizzical beauty in her face, and pleading in her eyes – make her evil actions all the more horrible. We can tell that Stanwyck’s Phyllis – from the moment her anklet slithers across the screen – is definitely up to no good. We can tell she’s pure evil, even as Stanwyck imbues her with some small measure of humanity at the end. But Greer’s Kathie could have been good and that’s why she’s all the more terrifying. We want her to be good even as she lies, steals, and kills.

It’s the type of performance for which the word “enigma” was invented. The intoxicating allure of Kathie Moffat is summed up when she pleadingly tells Robert Mitchum that she’s not a thief. His response: “Baby, I don’t care.” She could be good, she could be bad, but in the end it doesn’t matter: she’s irresistible. And that is what makes la femme so fatal.

Greer’s teenage bout with Bell’s palsy is part of the mystique. It left half of her face paralyzed and it was only through tireless muscle exercises that she was able to recover movement in her face. But it also left Greer with a permanent, slightly lopsided smile. This lilt in her lips gives her face a certain mystery, as if we’re never quite sure what she’s thinking.

Jane Greer in "Out of the Past."

One of the best places to find out what the real Jane Greer was thinking is Eddie Muller’s delicious book, Dark City Dames: The Wicked Women of Film Noir. It compiles Muller’s interviews with Greer, as well as noirish dames Audrey Totter, Marie Windsor, Evelyn Keyes, Ann Savage, and Coleen Gray. If you are a fan of film noir, this book is a must-read. For one thing, we learn that Jane Greer was married to Rudy Vallee (a man twice her age!) when she was in her early twenties, and that he was a fetishistic creep with a bad porn habit who made Greer dye her hair an unflattering raven-black to suit his own predilections.

Greer was pursued by no less than Howard Hughes himself, but she ultimately rejected him and he in turn pretty much stalled her career at RKO just as she was coming off that career-making performance in Out of the Past.

So we can thank Howard Hughes and his wounded, paranoid heart for hampering the career of Jane Greer, queen of noir.

Jane Greer with Robert Mitchum in "Out of the Past."

But even though she never made another film noir as brilliant as Out of the Past, she never completely abandoned the dark streets of the crime drama. Enter The Outfit, a 1970s second-wave color noir that has enough cameos of old stars and character actors to make any classic movie fan point and cheer: Robert Ryan, Elisha Cook Jr., Marie Windsor, Timothy Carey, and of course … Jane Greer.

It’s a small part, but she still captivates. In fact, all of the old timers captivate, whether it’s the brief appearance of world weary Marie Windsor, pouring drinks behind a bar; or Elisha Cook, Jr. getting bossed around by the heavies (as usual); or Robert Ryan and Timothy Carey playing poker and planning hits.

The film stars Robert Duvall and Joe Don Baker as two gunmen who go after a powerful crime syndicate for money and revenge. It’s combination heist flick, revenge story, and gritty crime noir. Written and directed by the underrated John Flynn, and based on a story by Donald Westlake, The Outfit is a solid example of the violent second-wave noir of the 1970s. It’s bloodier than an old school noir, and even more amoral. Duvall’s criminal, Earl Macklin, is not a good man. He’s not even a “misunderstood” criminal. He’s a bad guy who kills with ruthless ease. Even his cause – revenge for the murder of his brother – is tainted by the fact that his brother was murdered precisely because he and Duvall robbed a syndicate bank.

Jane Greer in "The Outfit."

Jane Greer plays Alma, the widow of the murdered brother, and for a change of pace she’s not a femme fatale or a dangerous woman. She’s simply a woman beaten down by the despair and death of the criminal world. There’s a certain tiredness to Alma’s character, and to Greer’s performance, that puts the lie to all of that noir cool we usually see in these types of films. Yeah, okay, Duvall and Baker embody charismatic criminal cool as they attempt to take down the Outfit. But that earlier scene with Alma is still hanging around the edges, reminding us that it all ends up tired and empty in the end. And who better to deliver that message than the former Kathie Moffat?

The Outfit is now newly remastered and available on DVD through the Warner Archive Vault Collection.

Speaking of Noir, there’s a fundraising blogathon coming up in February called “For the Love of Film (Noir)” — a sequel to last year’s hugely successful silent film preservation fundraiser, “For the Love of Film,” sponsored by Marilyn Ferdinand of Ferdy on Films and Farran Smith Nehme of Self-Styled Siren. Ferdinand and Nehme are at it again, this time with a blogathon running from February 14 to 21, focusing on film noir and benefiting the Film Noir Foundation.

I’ll be contributing a couple of posts, both here at Libertas and at my own blog, and I would encourage everyone who loves movies and film noir to contribute what they can to the fundraiser. The last time, “For the Love of Film” raised $30,000 for the National Film Preservation Foundation, and that money went towards the preservation of two early short films. Hopefully we can equal or surpass that amount this time. As I’ve written before, film preservation is a naturally conservative cause, so mark your calendars for February 14 and check out “For the Love of Film (Noir).”

Posted on January 27th, 2011 at 10:30am.

By Jason Apuzzo. “Well, the time has come to ask, is ‘dehumanization’ such a bad thing? Because good or bad, that’s what’s so. The whole world is becoming humanoid, creatures that look human but aren’t. The whole world, not just us. We’re just the most advanced country, so we’re getting there first. The whole world’s people are becoming mass-produced, programmed, numbered, insensate things useful only to produce and consume other mass-produced things, all of them unnecessary and useless as we are …” - Howard Beale, from Paddy Chayefsky’s Network (1976).

“What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is only related to objects, and not to individuals, or to life.” – Michel Foucault.

I thought I would take a little time out today from the usual run of events here at Libertas to review a favorite film of mine that for various reasons I’ve been thinking a lot about lately: George Lucas’ THX: 1138 from 1971. There is an excellent, new Blu-ray edition of the film available out there for you collectors right now, and I recommend it highly.

Future shock: from George Lucas' "THX: 1138."

THX: 1138 is probably best known as the film that started – and almost ended – George Lucas’ directing career. The film was based on a student short Lucas did at the USC Cinema School called “Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138:4EB” (the “EB” standing for “Earth Born”; THX-1138 was actually Lucas’ phone number at the time). That student short, incidentally, happens to be included in the Blu-ray edition, and is definitely worth watching. Around USC Cinema circles the short is something of a legend – in large part because it does everything a short is supposed to do: tell a powerful story quickly, visually, by ‘cutting to the chase’ as fast as possible. In fact, the original “Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138:4EB” is nothing but a chase, involving a lone future-worker’s escape from a totalitarian society.

The story of how “Electronic Labyrinth THX 1138:4EB” got translated into a feature is a long and complex one; suffice it to say the crucial players were Francis Coppola and his newly formed American Zoetrope Studios, plus the cabal of USC Cinema friends Lucas dragged up to the Bay Area with him (most notably Walter Murch), plus a few key executives at Warner Brothers like John Calley – who would later stab Lucas and Coppola in the back once the film was completed. And actually the fascinating, behind-the-scenes story of THX: 1138’s creation is essentially the story of American Zoetrope itself – the fledgling dream of Francis Coppola to found a Bay Area filmmaking colony of independent artists, set up in opposition to the factory-mentality of Hollywood. Appropriately, the Blu-ray features a great documentary on the founding of American Zoetrope, and the role THX: 1138 played in that company’s rise and fall … and rise again.

Bad day at the office: Robert Duvall in "THX: 1138."

So what, then, is THX: 1138 about? The film focuses on a worker in a futuristic, dystopian, police-state underworld who begins to have a crisis of conscience about his meaningless life and the oppressive, stultifying world he lives in. He rebels – awkwardly at first (he stops taking his tranquilizers, makes illicit love to his roommate, etc.) – and then finally decides to escape.

And that’s really it – the entire film in a nutshell.

What makes THX: 1138 worthwhile and interesting as a film is the striking world Lucas creates out of what was a very modest budget at the time – exactly $777,777, to be precise (executive producer Coppola was superstitious about numbers). The key to the film’s arresting, futuristic ‘look’ – a look that now seems prescient – is what might be described as a Japanese minimalism, combined with a similarly Japanese emphasis on bold, static compositions and a simple color palette.

Lucas initially wanted to film THX: 1138 in Japan, for two reasons. First, Japan seemed at the time to be the most futuristic of countries with respect to its integration of technology into the normal flow of living. (It still seems to be that today.) Secondly, Lucas and Walter Murch (who edited and co-wrote the film) were into Japanese movies at the time – particularly those of Kurosawa and Ozu. They were fascinated by the ‘alien,’ non-Western quality of Japanese rituals – and the degree to which Japanese filmmakers made no effort to explain these rituals for non-Japanese audiences. This ‘alien’ quality was exactly what Lucas and Murch were looking for in order to depict a futuristic society in which individual identity was put in jeopardy.

One is tempted to think here of Marshall McLuhan, who around the time of THX was proposing that the whole world was becoming “orientalized,” and that in the future none of us would be able to retain his or her cultural identity – “not even the Orientals.”

Static compositions, featuring static people.

We begin the film with THX (played with subdued intensity by Robert Duvall) at work on an assembly line, helping to put together what basically look like droids. He’s having a tough time of it, though, not able to maintain his concentration or focus. Is he having psychological problems? We don’t yet know. In THX’s world, all emotions are suppressed through the compulsory use of drugs – drugs that resemble “soma” from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.

An early crisis comes in the film when THX’s female roommate ‘LUH 3417′ (Maggie McOmie) stops taking her drugs, and secretly substitutes a placebo for THX’s normal tranquilizer. As THX’s sedative wears off, he finds himself experiencing emotions, doubts, even sexual desire. Chief among these emotions is anxiety, and his work at this point definitely begins to be affected.

Nothing he tries helps. THX goes home, for example, to watch TV – actually holograms. TV in the future, however, has basically been reduced to three different sorts of programming: 1) mindless, sadistic violence; 2) porn; 3) glib, meaningless ‘talk shows.’ Sound familiar?

Everything in THX’s world, incidentally, is impersonal and automated. For example, looking for solace, poor THX visits a kind of high-tech confessional booth which features a generic religious icon (known as “Ohm”) who mutters impersonal, pre-recorded platitudes. “My time is your time … blessings of the State, blessings of the Masses … work hard, and be happy.” THX vomits in one of the confessionals, so disgusted is he by what he hears. He goes home to masturbate (off-screen) – although he’s only able to do so with help of an automated machine. In Lucas’ future, all forms of private experience have been automated, regulated, rendered ‘technological.’

THX is eventually incarcerated for his ‘bad behavior,’ and dragged off to a white limbo prison – where he encounters a group of maladjusted freaks similar to the crowd Jack Nicholson encounters in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. My favorite in this group is Donald Pleasence playing ‘SEN 5241′ – a cliché-spouting, bureaucratic functionary. Pleasence’s dialogue in this portion of the film is really delicious, filled with ridiculous platitudes and non-sequiturs. It’s actually some of the funniest stuff Lucas has ever written.

The ‘prison’ in this portion of the film has a Waiting for Godot/existentialist quality to it, in so far as there are no walls of any kind. In fact, THX’s big decision to ‘escape’ the prison consists merely in Duvall’s deciding to walk away into the unseen distance. That’s it. Lucas’ point here could not be clearer: most of the walls we experience in life are illusory, and self-created. Sometimes all we need do is walk away from what’s holding us back.

And, interestingly, most of the prisoners in THX’s white limbo prison are afraid to escape – even though nothing is physically holding them back. Eventually THX and SEN make their way out into limbo on their own, where they encounter ‘SRT’ (Don Pedro Colley), who is actually a hologram who’s managed to escape the underground world’s computer network. SRT reminds one here of the Tin Man from Wizard of Oz, or of C-3PO from Lucas’ later Star Wars. Even robots apparently need a little freedom, too.

A future in which love is forbidden.

THX eventually discovers LUH’s tragic fate, which has a little bit of a ‘Lot’s wife’ feel to it, and then an extended escape sequence begins through the city’s vast underground road network. THX is chased here by android police on motorcycles, and to this day I’ve never understood how Lucas got guys to drive that fast on motorcycles with faceplates on. Weird.

The robot police pursue THX up toward the surface, but – and this is one of the film’s more arch, ironic touches – the budget expenditure allotted to capture THX becomes too great, so the computers tell the robot cops to stand down! Beautiful. Those future dystopias are always running out of money, aren’t they?

We finish the film with an incredible shot that is best appreciated on Blu-ray. After spending the entire film underground, in artificial lighting, THX emerges onto the surface of the Earth in front of an enormous, orange, blazing sun – photographed with what must have been a 1000mm lens. It’s a striking scene that is repeated in 1977’s Star Wars, when Luke Skywalker gazes out on the twin setting suns of Tatooine, contemplating a future of adventure and freedom he doesn’t believe he’ll ever have. In THX’s case, he certainly does achieve his freedom – although the exact nature of that freedom, and of his future, remains unclear.

Thus ends THX: 1138. And now comes the $64 million question: on the whole, is the world of THX relevant to the world of today?

I think the answer must be: yes.

Are we currently living in a world in which the government is intruding into too many aspects of our daily lives – and using advanced technologies to pry into our privacy … even beneath our clothing? Of course we are. And why do we allow this? Because we’ve been brainwashed into believing that it’s necessary, and that a benevolent state apparatus has our best interests in mind.

I’m reminded here, among so many other things, of what is currently going on at our nation’s airports. All of us are now being scanned, X-rayed and disrobed at our airports if we commit the crime of wanting to fly. Book a flight to New York, for example, and you’re likely to find yourself stripped in public – or having your naked form recorded onto a government hard drive. (“Don’t worry – we’ll make sure it gets erased!”) And so a commercial flight can now turn into an exercise in exhibitionism, an opportunity to get scoped-out and humiliated by a government official – all for the crime of traveling.

But that’s not all. New devices are now being marketed that conduct psychometric exams of airline passengers, who are required to answer a battery of questions (to a computer) to determine whether they fit a pre-defined psychological ‘profile’ of someone wanting to blow-up an airplane. Our own Homeland Defense officials are apparently very interested in this technology. And why wouldn’t they be? (After all, perhaps they could even determine if someone might attend a Tea Party rally.)

As citizens and as customers, why do we put up with this? We do so because we’ve been brainwashed, made docile (and literally, in many cases, sedated with drugs), and ultimately because we want to put up with it. Because we’ve been sold the politically correct bill-of-goods that all ‘humanoids’ – whether they be Gramma Betsy from Kenosha, or 18-year old Ahmed from Lahore – are just as likely to blow up a plane as anyone else. Why? Because bureaucratically we’re all the same – just numbers in a system. And if you happen stand up and protest this madness, if you complain about ‘the system’ and its obvious inadequacies and dangers – you can expect to be accused of being a bad person. You’re not with the program! You’re ‘off your meds,’ ‘hateful,’ ‘paranoid’ and a danger to public safety.

This is the world we live in, and this is the world of THX. Indeed it’s altogether amazing – and unnerving – how almost everything about Lucas’ film seems appropriate today.

The experience of freedom.

A few final words about the Blu-ray itself: the image on this film is fantastic; also, Walter Murch did some of the most striking sound design work of his career on this film, and there are superb documentaries (”Master Sessions”) on the Blu-ray that cover that subject for the cinephiles out there.

One quibble I have with the film is its portrayal of sex in the future: namely, there is none. Lucas decided to go the Orwell/1984 route and predict a ’sexless’ future in which children are created primarily in test tubes. Needless to say, I don’t think a sexless future is on our horizon – at least here in the West. Sex is omnipresent and omnipotent today, so Lucas probably would’ve been shrewder to go with Aldous Huxley and Brave New World, or with Yevgeny Zamyatin and We, and predict an orgiastic/promiscuous future in which monogamy is forbidden and children are collectively raised ‘by a village.’ (Lucas otherwise seems to have borrowed the shaved heads and number-names from Zamyatin, or perhaps from Ayn Rand’s Anthem?) This orgiastic/group-sex/collective consciousness future seems much closer to where we’re headed, and the subject of sexual relations is the only area where THX: 1138 seems off-kilter.

THX: 1138 is a great experimental film, however, with a lively and sardonic sense of humor about our world. Underneath that humor, of course, is an authentic social critique of our society – as we march happily toward a future of conformism, sedation, docility and political correctness.

Work hard, and be happy.

Posted on January 17th, 2011 at 1:28pm.

By Jennifer Baldwin. Watching old movies has been a spotty pastime for me these last few months. Working full-time as a high school English teacher leaves me with less free time than I’d like to work on my “Classic Cinema Obsession” articles, so that’s why I’ve been pretty much absent from Libertas since Mad Men ended.

But even though I’ve had to cut back on the old movie obsessiveness for the time being, that doesn’t mean that I’ve gone completely cold turkey. Last month I managed to watch the new Criterion DVD of the Japanese cult horror headtrip House, and I’ve also been keeping up with TCM’s ambitious new seven-part documentary series, Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood . I also watched The Fighting Sullivans on Veterans Day, and Dragonwyck on Halloween. And in perhaps the happiest moment of my young life, I finally bought my pass for the 2011 Turner Classic Movies Film Festival in Hollywood, California. I wanted to go the TCM Fest last year, but simply couldn’t afford it. This year I’ve got the dough, though, and there ain’t nothing that’s gonna stop me from heading to Hollywood.

I also began writing for a new film website called Fandor, an amazing new site that allows subscribers to watch a wide variety of classic, foreign, and indie films directly on their computers. No downloads, everything is streamed on the site. And first-time subscribers get a one-month free trial, which is a great incentive to join.

Along with the films, Fandor also provides written commentary and informative essays about the films and filmmakers, including articles by yours truly. My first article for Fandor was on Tarkovsky’s haunting dream film The Mirror, while my second article was on the Josef Von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich classic, The Blue Angel. I’m also a participant in Fandor’s syndication program, which allows me to embed their films directly on my own personal blog, Dereliction Row. You can watch any of the films anytime you want if you’re a subscriber, or you can watch an individual film for a small rental fee. I’d encourage anyone who is interested in great cinema to check out Fandor.

So even though I have been overly busy with my day job as a teacher, I haven’t completely neglected my passion for classic films. And that’s what this “Classic Movie Journal” is all about. It’s my way to keep writing about old movies for Libertas, but in a more informal, less time intensive manner. Consider these my unvarnished, rambling, and passionate musings on all things old movies. Emphasis on the unvarnished and rambling, please.

So what’s rattling round in my brain this week? Well, as I mentioned above, I have been watching the new TCM documentary series about the history of Hollywood, and I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed. Normally I fall down at the feet of everything TCM does, but this time I’m not feeling it.

I don’t know if my expectations were too high, but the series has not lived up to them. I just finished watching episode four, “Brother Can You Spare a Dream,” which focused on the years 1929 to 1941, and I’ve found that the show doesn’t seem able to get to the essence of its topic each week. This week’s episode was all about Hollywood during the Depression, and how sound technology revolutionized the industry – and yet it never really delved into the cultural impact of the Talkies or the way the movies affected Depression audiences. It gave a little lip service to these topics, but I never felt the grand sweep, the overall impact that the movies had during these years. Through four episodes so far, there’s been nothing epic about this series.

From "The Great Train Robbery," (1903).

Part of the problem is that the show is divided in its attentions right from the start. It’s “Moguls and Movie Stars,” so the focus must be split between the businessmen and the artists. This is a pretty standard approach as far as an appraisal of Hollywood history goes, but the writing of the show has been muddled because of it. It keeps jumping back and forth between the machinations of the moguls and the rise and fall of various stars, but there’s no “through line” that connects everything to something larger. I was expecting a sort of myth-building history of America, as told through the history of Hollywood (something along the lines of Ken Burns’ Baseball documentary). Instead, it’s just a very rote, very surface documentary that breezes through its topic like a Cliffs Notes version of history.

Maybe each episode isn’t long enough? Maybe it was a mistake to break down each episode by decade? I know I would have liked more than an hour to cover the tumultuous and groundbreaking 1920s. I’m not sure how to fix the problem, but I’ve found that each episode is highly disposable and I haven’t learned anything I didn’t already know from my Film Studies 101 class. What’s even more annoying is that I was expecting these earlier episodes to be the strongest of the series, since they would be dealing with the earliest years of Hollywood in which I know very little in comparison to the more popular decades of the ‘30s, ’40, and ‘50s.

Ginger Rogers in "Gold Diggers of 1933."

In last week’s episode, Shirley Temple was given about three minutes of screen time at most. Fred Astaire got maybe a minute. The few clips that we got were brief and usually did not include much dialogue. I mean, this is the 1930s, when dialogue was everything – and snappy, quintessentially American dialogue was the great innovation of the age. Instead, everything was pretty much thrown at the viewer in a helter skelter manner, the only guiding framework being chronology. This series needs more clever montages and filmmaking chops. As it is, it’s kinda boring.

Maybe I’m being too hard. The series is certainly professionally produced and the interviews with the relatives and descendants of the moguls at least provide some new, unique perspectives. Occasionally the documentary will delve into some little known area, such as the career of female director Alice Guy, or the pioneering work of African American filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. But overall, it’s familiar stuff. And it’s not even presented in a thrilling or heart-swelling way. If a documentary like this can’t even get a classic movie obsessed gal like me to swoon, then there’s something wrong. A series like this should get me all psyched up to go watch the movies that get mentioned in each episode. Instead, I find myself relieved when the episodes are over and not really in the mood to watch any of the movies discussed.

Maybe the final three episodes will surprise me. I haven’t watched the newest one that just aired on November 29, so there’s still time for redemption. As it stands now, though, this series has been a disappointment. Normally I worship at the altar of TCM, but not this time.

Posted on December 2nd, 2010 at 10:10am.

By Jason Apuzzo. A special reminder to our readers: Turner Classic Movies will be showing the newly restored, ‘complete’ version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis tonight, Sunday, November 7th at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific – along with a documentary associated with the restoration process. Make sure to catch this important piece of cinematic history – I assure you, you won’t regret it. To read more about this special screening, visit the TCM website.

Incidentally, you can read LFM Contributor Jennifer Baldwin’s review of the newly restored, ‘complete’ Metropolis here, and you can also read my long-ago review of the ‘original’ cut of Metropolis here.

SPECIAL NOTE: DON’T FORGET TO SET YOUR CLOCKS BACK AN HOUR TODAY.

Posted on November 7th, 2010 at 7:14am.

By Jason Apuzzo. With a little help from Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, we wanted to wish our Libertas readers a Happy Halloween!

I searched the web to find something classic to show everybody on Halloween, and discovered to my pleasant surprise that an old favorite of mine from the 1950s – The Hideous Sun Demon – was available in its entirety over at YouTube. The Hideous Sun Demon (1959) is an atom age cult classic that was written, produced, and directed by Robert Clarke – who also stars in the film (you can see him below, more or less, wearing the rubber ’sun demon’ mask).

In good Roger Corman style, Clarke shot The Hideous Sun Demon for under $50,000 – which included the $500 he spent on the rubberized lizard suit. The movie was shot exclusively on weekends (12 of them, to be exact) so Clarke could get two days’ use of rental equipment for only one day’s fee! If you’ve ever been a low-budget filmmaker, you know exactly what that type of experience is like. [I know because I used the same trick on Kalifornistan.]

The Hideous Sun Demon stalks Nan Peterson.

As an actor Robert Clarke was a staple figure in 1950s science fiction films, and some of his best work includes The Man from Planet X (1951), The Incredible Petrified World (1957) and The Astounding She-Monster (1957). He would later do a lot of TV work, appearing on such big-time shows as: The Lone Ranger, Dragnet, Perry Mason, Sea Hunt, General Hospital, Marcus Welby, M.D., Adam-12, Baa Baa Black Sheep, Hawaii Five-O, Fantasy Island, Dallas, Knight Rider, Murder She Wrote, Falcon Crest and Dynasty. So all in all he had a pretty good career, given that he started it wearing a rubber lizard suit.

*** SPOILERS BELOW***

The premise of The Hideous Sun Demon is cool: research scientist Dr. Gilbert McKenna (Clarke) falls unconscious after accidentally being exposed to radiation during an experiment with a new radioactive isotope. Later, while recuperating in a nearby hospital, ‘Gil’ is taken to a solarium to receive the sun’s healing rays … but while he naps, he metamorphoses into a hideous, lizard-like creature! Fortunately, when out of the sunlight, Gil reverts back to his normal human form.

We eventually learn that Gil has actually experienced an evolutionary ‘regression’ back through the chain of mankind’s ancestors (primitive mammals, reptiles and amphibians) triggered by his exposure to the sun’s radiation. In order to control this regression, Gil has to stay out of the sunlight – and effectively live a completely nocturnal existence.

So what would any swinging 50s bachelor do, under such awkward circumstances? Why, Dr. Gil hits the bar scene – and becomes, in effect, a nocturnal ‘lounge lizard’! Haunting the nighttime bars, Gil drifts away from his repressed, brunette lab assistant, played by Patricia Manning – who loves him from afar, but can’t bring herself to express it – and takes up with a busty, atom age blonde bombshell played by Nan Peterson. The decidedly unrepressed Nan brings out the animal in Dr. Gil, you might say, in a way that the poor drab lab assistant can’t.

The morning after: Nan Peterson after a date gone horribly wrong!

Peterson, for her part, plays a torch-song lounge singer who finds Gil dark and dangerous – of course, she has no idea how dangerous – and eventually she spends a many-splendored night with Gil on the beach … before he has to run off just as the sun comes up (aren’t men always like that?). Gil, you see, doesn’t want her to glimpse his ‘lizard’ side. Whew! The problems couples had back in those days! [And you thought things were complicated on Mad Men!]

Though Gil is able to hide his animalistic side from Nan and the police for a while, his life spins out of control as his ‘lizard’ side eventually takes over – with things leading to an explosive climax after Gil goes on a murderous rampage one day in broad daylight. And we learn, after all the mayhem subsides, that not only is mankind’s tampering with nature a very dangerous thing – but those Marilyn Monroe-style blondes can sometimes bring out the worst in a man …

***END OF SPOILERS***

The Hideous Sun Demon is a lot of fun; it’s campy, sexy, and is probably best enjoyed with a few adult beverages on hand – yet the film has an interesting subtext that makes it almost (if not quite) on a par with similar sci-fi classics from its era, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Creature from the Black Lagoon. It’s a pity the movie wasn’t done in 3D, although Ms. Peterson certainly provides her own version of a third dimension. This version of The Hideous Sun Demon on YouTube lacks the Elvira opening, but you can probably imagine what the Mistress of the Dark would say about the film – and in particular what she might say about the plenteous Ms. Peterson …

We hope you enjoy the film in its entirety, and a Happy Halloween to everybody!

Posted on October 31st, 2010 at 4:01pm.

[Note:This article contains SPOILERS. I love Leave Her to Heaven, but I was spoiled for one of its biggest scenes. Ideally you should watch it first, then come back and we’ll peel the face off the Technicolor mask.]

By Jennifer Baldwin. Is there a better movie about romantic obsession than Leave Her to Heaven? Is there another movie as disturbing and unflinching in its portrayal of a woman obsessed as this film, this nightmare vision in Technicolor? To see the film only once is to remember it forever. It’s no wonder, then, that I’ve been obsessed with Leave Her to Heaven for over a decade. It’s a movie not only about obsession, but one that invites obsession on the part of the audience. We are invited to obsess over the colors, the beauty, the horribly evil acts committed by Gene Tierney’s Elle Berent. That Ellen is a deadly enigma only makes it more fascinating to obsess over her.

I blame Martin Scorsese. One night, many years ago, I stumbled onto his documentary A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies playing on TCM. Three movie clips from the documentary stayed with me long past that night, haunting me, nagging at my mind: clips from Cat People, Scarlet Street, and Leave Her to Heaven. As time went by, it became a kind of quest to track these movies down. First came Cat People and I was spooked by the shadows and the dreaded suggestion of horror. Next came Scarlett Street and I was shocked by the brutal violence and even more brutal cynicism.

When I finally saw Leave Her to Heaven it was almost too overwhelming to describe. The colors, the murders, the pounding tympani, Gene Tierney’s eyes – all the lurid perversity of it burned forever into my brain. I loved it. It was the most delirious melodrama I had ever seen. It still is. It’s woman’s melodrama with a black soul. It pulls the mask back on the notion of romantic, all-consuming love and gives us the horror underneath. And yet, it is achingly beautiful to look at, the beauty and the horror intertwined so that it becomes more than just the story of a monstrous, murderous woman – it becomes a tragedy. Fitting that the title should be a line from Hamlet.

Leave Her to Heaven is essentially two things: Leon Shamroy’s color cinematography and Gene Tierney’s lead performance. Bringing these two essentials together, of course, is the underrated director, John M. Stahl. It is Stahl, in an act of alchemical wizardry, who is able to fuse Tierney’s subtle, disturbing performance with Shamroy’s wild, unrestrained use of Technicolor (all with a handy assist from the set design, art department, and costuming).

Stahl’s film is popular art at its best, a finely balanced creation that melds melodramatic, expressionist visuals with naturalistic, subdued, almost mannequin-like acting styles, so that the effect is a kind of hallucinatory hyper-reality that nevertheless remains remote and mysterious. We never quite know what to make of Ellen’s character.

Why does Ellen act the way she does? Why is her love so ruinously obsessive? Is she evil? Is she merely insane? Is it possible to feel sympathy for her even as she scares the hell out of us? What about her love? Was her love completely rotten and selfish to the core or was there some small piece of it that was true and human and only later became twisted?

Gene Tierney doesn’t get enough credit either as an actress or as a movie star. As far as Leave Her to Heaven is concerned, she is the whole movie. The film loses something – some spark, some energy – when her character dies and Tierney has left the screen. Only Vincent Price’s theatrical courtroom shouting saves the last quarter of the film from collapsing into anticlimax.

And lest anyone doubt Tierney’s performance or her star quality, answer this:  what was 20th Century Fox’s highest grossing movie of the 1940s? Leave Her to Heaven. You don’t deliver the studio’s highest grossing picture of the decade if you’re not a star. And who was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar in 1945? Gene Tierney. It’s a shame that she is not more well known today.

Leon Shamroy’s cinematography won the Oscar that year, deservedly so. But it really should have been a double win for Shamroy and Tierney at the Academy Awards of 1945, because Shamroy’s cinematography is merely an extension of Tierney’s performance and vice versa. No one can fault the Academy for giving Joan Crawford an Oscar for Mildred Pierce, but I think in a perfect world it would have been Tierney.

I’m fascinated by the decision to shoot the film in color. Most color films in the mid 1940s were musicals or big budget Westerns. A melodrama like Leave Her to Heaven would ordinarily be a black and white affair. Except Leave Her to Heaven was based on a bestselling novel by Ben Ames Williams – a novel that was wildly popular with audiences, resulting in one of the most highly anticipated film adaptations of the day. It was the kind of prestige picture – and potential moneymaker – that could justify the extra cost to shoot in Technicolor.

What Stahl and Shamroy did with that color is nothing short of breathtaking – not just in the look of the color, but in the way color was used. I’m hard-pressed to think of another movie that depends so much on the use of color to affect mood, theme, and character. It’s been said that the color cinematography in Leave Her to Heaven is so powerful that it’s almost a character in its own right. I think a better way to put it is that the color cinematography isn’t a separate character so much as an extension of one character, the central character of the story: Gene Tierney’s Ellen Berent.

Gene Tierney was one of Hollywood’s greatest beauties, but one thing I’ve heard is that the camera didn’t quite capture how beautiful she was. Part of this had to do with the fact that she made a lot of black and white films and those films weren’t able to display one of her greatest features: her blue-green eyes.

No such problem in Leave Her to Heaven. In fact, the color scheme of the film – dominated by blues, greens, reds, and pinks (along with an eerie amber glow that hovers over most of the film) – is primarily dictated by Tierney’s appearance. Her blue-green eyes and striking red lipstick are used as a template to color almost every frame of the picture. Everywhere there is blue, green, and red. Just as Ellen promises Richard (Cornel Wilde) that she’ll never let him go, so too do Ellen’s “colors” never let the film go– they dominate to such a degree that her presence is felt in almost every frame, even when she’s not there. Continue reading »