There are a number of films this November by Chaplin, Keaton, John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock, and King Vidor; I recommend everything by these directors, especially Chaplin's Limelight, Keaton's Sherlock Jr., John Ford's The Searchers, Hitchcock's Psycho and King Vidor's The Big Parade. Among other films I like:
Nov. 1. Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be, an elegant dark comedy about Nazi-occupied Poland.
Nov.3. D. W. Griffith's Way Down East. I recommend this to those who wonder what I mean when I say most current movies look at though D.W. Griffith never lived.
Nov. 4. Nicholas Ray's The Lusty Men, an intense melodrama about rodeo riders.
Nov. 7. Edgar Ulmer's Detour and Joseph H. Lewis's Gun Crazy, two of the best films noir.
Nov. 9. Mark Sandrich's Shall We Dance, my own favorite Rogers/Astaire film. It is quite funny and has marvelous dancing and music (by George and Ira Gershwin).
Nov. 12. Raoul Walsh's White Heat, an impressive gangster film with James Cagney at his craziest.
Nov.13. Leo McCarey's Love Affair, funny, passionate, lovely (McCarey later remade it As an Affair to Remember).
Nov. 14. Josef Von Sternberg's The Last Command, one of his most beautiful and moving movies, and F.W. Murnau's Sunrise, one of the greatest silent films.
Nov. 28. Preston Sturges's Sullivan's Travels, beautifully timed comedy and intelligent insight.
Nov. 30. Yasujiro Ozu's Ohayo (Good Morning). Ozu is still little known in this country; his films are exquisite portraits of Japanese family life. Ohayo (1959) came at the end of a career that began in 1927.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Thursday, October 30, 2014
King Vidor's The Stranger Returns
...its classical plotting is a pleasurable mechanism.
Raymond Durgnat and Scott Simon, King Vidor, American (University of California Press,1988)
The Stranger Returns (1933) is one of obscure director King Vidor's more obscure films, but its populism, classical style and low-key comedy are common elements of Vidor's work. Miriam Hopkins plays an urban woman similar to those she played in Lubitsch's films (Trouble in Paradise, 1932 and Design for Living,1933) while Lionel Barrymore plays a benign and crotchety old man (compared to the evil old man he plays in Vidor's Duel in the Sun,1946) and Beulah Bondi plays a parasitic version of the generous rural woman she played in Mitch Leisen's Remember the Night, 1940. During the depression Hopkins is separated from her husband in New York and comes to her grandfather's farm to live. She is beset by "little town" gossip when she falls in love with the equally educated Franchot Tone, who has also come home to his family farm but has a wife and child. Eventually Hopkins warms to the farm -- the cooking and the occasional dance-- and realizes, as her grandfather quotes Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard, that she could live there and enjoy the beauty of the country. Barrymore dies and leaves the farm to her, while Franchot Tone returns with his family to a teaching job at Cornell.
Vidor started making films in 1913, only five years after D.W. Griffith made his first films. Vidor, like many directors who started in silent films, knew how to tell a story visually, and with Griffith he shared a Jeffersonian faith in rural America, without turning a blind eye to its sometimes small-mindedness. Vidor could see the positive comforts as well as the boring conformity of rural religion (see my post on Hallelujah, July 23rd of this year); in The Stranger Returns even the dogs are put to sleep by the pompous sermons. Most importantly Vidor also understood and shared Griffith's passion for showing "the wind in the trees."
Raymond Durgnat and Scott Simon, King Vidor, American (University of California Press,1988)
The Stranger Returns (1933) is one of obscure director King Vidor's more obscure films, but its populism, classical style and low-key comedy are common elements of Vidor's work. Miriam Hopkins plays an urban woman similar to those she played in Lubitsch's films (Trouble in Paradise, 1932 and Design for Living,1933) while Lionel Barrymore plays a benign and crotchety old man (compared to the evil old man he plays in Vidor's Duel in the Sun,1946) and Beulah Bondi plays a parasitic version of the generous rural woman she played in Mitch Leisen's Remember the Night, 1940. During the depression Hopkins is separated from her husband in New York and comes to her grandfather's farm to live. She is beset by "little town" gossip when she falls in love with the equally educated Franchot Tone, who has also come home to his family farm but has a wife and child. Eventually Hopkins warms to the farm -- the cooking and the occasional dance-- and realizes, as her grandfather quotes Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard, that she could live there and enjoy the beauty of the country. Barrymore dies and leaves the farm to her, while Franchot Tone returns with his family to a teaching job at Cornell.
Vidor started making films in 1913, only five years after D.W. Griffith made his first films. Vidor, like many directors who started in silent films, knew how to tell a story visually, and with Griffith he shared a Jeffersonian faith in rural America, without turning a blind eye to its sometimes small-mindedness. Vidor could see the positive comforts as well as the boring conformity of rural religion (see my post on Hallelujah, July 23rd of this year); in The Stranger Returns even the dogs are put to sleep by the pompous sermons. Most importantly Vidor also understood and shared Griffith's passion for showing "the wind in the trees."
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Edgar G. Ulmer's Her Sister's Secret
Edgar G. Ulmer's Her Sister's Secret (1946) was one of Ulmer's bigger-budgeted films for poverty row studio PRC. It is, for Ulmer, an unusual soap opera, sometimes called a "weepie," a genre in which fellow émigré Douglas Sirk excelled. Sirk's films are filled with irony and low-key satire, while Ulmer's film is passionate and moving. In the beginning there is a beautifully photographed (by Fritz Planer, who also did Max Ophuls' Letter From an Unknown Woman,1948) Mardi Gras scene when Dick (played by Phillip Reed) and Toni (played by Nancy Coleman) first meet, are immediately attracted, and go for a ride. At midnight Dick removes Toni's mask, a scene more erotic than most of today's scenes of complete nudity, and the sky goes slowly from starlight to sunlight. They plan to meet six weeks later at the same café (a plot device originally used in Leo McCarey's Love Affair,1939) and Dick never shows up, his letter used for scrap paper in the café. Toni finds out she is pregnant and gives her son to her sister, promising not to see him for three years. But she can't stay away and almost kidnaps the boy at the same time Dick returns from the war, looking for her.
Ulmer, an outsider all his life, shows great sympathy for Toni and her dilemma, a dilemma not usually shown in films of this period. There are certain similarities to Preston Sturges's The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), though even in that film the mother was not unwed, she just could not find her husband or remember his name. Her Sister's Secret (nice title, since the sisters share the secret) is full of outsiders who are friends to Toni: her widower father, whose friends are his books; the maid Mathilda, for whom Toni is her only family; Pepe, the owner of the café where Toni and Dick met, and even the foreigner feeding pigeons in the park, who complains to Toni that the birds expect him to be punctual.
There is fatalism here, as there is in all of Ulmer's films, but there is less resignation than in Ulmer's bleaker films, such as Detour (1945); the attitude is closer to a short-lived post-war optimism. As Toni's father says, "There is nothing you should regret in life, except not having lived it."
Ulmer, an outsider all his life, shows great sympathy for Toni and her dilemma, a dilemma not usually shown in films of this period. There are certain similarities to Preston Sturges's The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), though even in that film the mother was not unwed, she just could not find her husband or remember his name. Her Sister's Secret (nice title, since the sisters share the secret) is full of outsiders who are friends to Toni: her widower father, whose friends are his books; the maid Mathilda, for whom Toni is her only family; Pepe, the owner of the café where Toni and Dick met, and even the foreigner feeding pigeons in the park, who complains to Toni that the birds expect him to be punctual.
There is fatalism here, as there is in all of Ulmer's films, but there is less resignation than in Ulmer's bleaker films, such as Detour (1945); the attitude is closer to a short-lived post-war optimism. As Toni's father says, "There is nothing you should regret in life, except not having lived it."
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Edgar Ulmer's Murder is My Beat
Parallel to this narrative confusion is a chaotic visual style that repeatedly changes the characters' positions in space by viewing them first from one angle, then from another totally different one.
John Belton, Howard Hawks, Frank Borzage, Edgar G. Ulmer (The Tantivy Press, 1974).
I wonder what those who had never heard of Ulmer thought of his low-budget Murder is My Beat (1955), shown recently on Turner Classic Movies: something of a film noir, something of a murder mystery, something of a series of shaggy dog stories. It starts with a man driving to a motel and getting into a fistfight, only then do we realize that it is one cop looking for another. Ray was taking Eden Lane to prison when he took a bite of the apple, jumping out of the train with her when he believes her story of seeing her murder victim on a train platform. He had found her in a mountain cabin, walking many miles through the snow because he wanted to bring a murderer to justice, "I hate the wanton destruction of human life; I had seen too much of it in the Pacific." But when he is on her own with her he realizes how much he had depended on the support system of the police department. He becomes rather like Ulmer himself, who never had the support of the craftsmen of a major studio, making his films all over the world, often with miniscule budgets. Ray is running out of time when he realizes that the older neighbor lady (who introduces herself as "spinster") had seen the man who supposedly had been murdered by Eden and he brings her to town just in time to identify him.
I think of Ulmer as a very modern director; his style and his plots reflect the discontinuity and darkness of the universe, as well as a class consciousness. Ulmer plays fair with the audience in the way many directors of murder mysteries do not: we find out things only as the detectives do, their irrationality and desperation mirroring that of modern society. Like many of Ulmer's films Murder is My Beat has a narrative discontinuity common to many of his films, a discontinuity due to Ulmer's low-budget view of the universe. The "happy" ending is not to be taking literally, but rather as symbolic of waking from a bad dream.
Signs of the Times: Deconstruction and the Fall of Paul de Man by David Lehman
David Lehman's book is an excellent companion to Evelyn Barish's biography of Paul de Man (see my post of Sept. 2). It intelligently analyzes deconstruction and the responses to the revelations of de Man's pro-Nazi journalism. Lehman's book was published in 1992 (Simon and Schuster) and his prediction has already come to pass: "It is only a matter of time before deconstruction is routinely used -- as its older cousin existentialism has steadily been used -- as the squiggle of fancy French mustard on the hot dog of a banal observation."
Lehman cuts through the jargon of deconstruction and lists ten of its propositions:
Between the signifier and the signified falls the shadow.
Writing precedes speech.
Words speak us.
All the world's a text.
The author is dead.
Presence is absence.
History is bunk.
Goodbye to aesthetics.
Language, not knowledge, is power.
What you see is never what you get.
Lehman's provides details and examples for those of us who have not read much of Derrida, de Man, et al.
In my opinion deconstruction has produced some useful analysis and criticism (see my January post about the Cahiers du Cinema article on Young Mr. Lincoln), before it became a prisoner of its own theories and jargon.
I think my own interest in de Man was piqued by his ability to re-invent himself, something many of us have tried to do, though with less success and less to atone for. Lehman writes, "In the debate precipitated by the sudden rash of disclosures about de Man's early life, one can see the truth in the old adage that the ferocity of academic politics varies inversely with the material stakes involved." (remember the journal Lingua Franca?) In this debate the deconstructionists did not distinguish themselves, Derrida and others going out of their way to exonerate de Man and ridicule his critics. Lehman fascinatingly finds three "unconscious treatments of Paul de Man's predicament in America":
1. Orson Welles's 1946 movie, The Stranger, in which Welles plays a Nazi war criminal who becomes a teacher in Connecticut.
2. Conrad's Heart of Darkness, where Lehman identifies de Man with Marlow, for whom all of Europe went into his making.
3. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, whose eponymous character, like de Man, "sprang from his Platonic conception of himself."
Deconstruction still has holdouts in academia, but reached a dead end sooner than it may have otherwise, with the exposure of de Man's past. We have moved on to "gender" and "ethnic" studies, which analyze texts on the basis of patriarchy and power.
ci
Lehman cuts through the jargon of deconstruction and lists ten of its propositions:
Between the signifier and the signified falls the shadow.
Writing precedes speech.
Words speak us.
All the world's a text.
The author is dead.
Presence is absence.
History is bunk.
Goodbye to aesthetics.
Language, not knowledge, is power.
What you see is never what you get.
Lehman's provides details and examples for those of us who have not read much of Derrida, de Man, et al.
In my opinion deconstruction has produced some useful analysis and criticism (see my January post about the Cahiers du Cinema article on Young Mr. Lincoln), before it became a prisoner of its own theories and jargon.
I think my own interest in de Man was piqued by his ability to re-invent himself, something many of us have tried to do, though with less success and less to atone for. Lehman writes, "In the debate precipitated by the sudden rash of disclosures about de Man's early life, one can see the truth in the old adage that the ferocity of academic politics varies inversely with the material stakes involved." (remember the journal Lingua Franca?) In this debate the deconstructionists did not distinguish themselves, Derrida and others going out of their way to exonerate de Man and ridicule his critics. Lehman fascinatingly finds three "unconscious treatments of Paul de Man's predicament in America":
1. Orson Welles's 1946 movie, The Stranger, in which Welles plays a Nazi war criminal who becomes a teacher in Connecticut.
2. Conrad's Heart of Darkness, where Lehman identifies de Man with Marlow, for whom all of Europe went into his making.
3. F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, whose eponymous character, like de Man, "sprang from his Platonic conception of himself."
Deconstruction still has holdouts in academia, but reached a dead end sooner than it may have otherwise, with the exposure of de Man's past. We have moved on to "gender" and "ethnic" studies, which analyze texts on the basis of patriarchy and power.
ci
The World Series
Much is being made of the decline in TV viewers for the World Series, from 34 million viewers in 1973 to 15 million in 2013. This supposedly represents a diminishing interest in baseball and that may even be true, but we can't eliminate the greed of the TV networks and the baseball owners from the equation. For one thing, games now start late and, on the East Coast at least, often don't end until after midnight. Not that long ago games were played during the day, when everyone -- young and old alike -- could watch or listen, but the last game played during the day was game six in 1987; television money demands night games and as little competition with football as possible.
The World Series has also diminished in importance with the increasing number of teams in the play-offs, from four to eight and now, ten. Baseball is a game played every day, a game of quotidian pleasures where a team used to earn its way into the World Series by playing well for more than a hundred and fifty games. The constant emphasis in our culture of having more and more "winners" has detracted considerably from the pure beauty of the game and made the World Series a much less important event.
The popularity of baseball has waxed and waned with changes in our society, especially as we have become more urban. Some consider baseball a part of our more rural past, for better or worse. There have certainly been a number of (usually) misguided attempts to make it more "relevant" to the modern viewer, including the introduction of astroturf (the purpose of which I never understood, except for saving money on groundskeeping), now mostly abandoned, and the designated hitter, a violation of the lovely balance between fielding and hitting, now unfortunately ensconced in the American League, where the pitcher is never removed for a pinch hitter. Part of the problem is certainly that the glut of steroid-fueled home runs in recent years brought in more fans than ever who knew little and cared less about the nuances of the game.
It also should be kept in mind that TV does a terrible job with baseball, the executives admitting that they find baseball boring (see my posts from October 2013) and have to try to make it interesting to the casual fan, with endless replays, close-ups of the dugouts and the fans, and interviews even while the game is going on! One can't be sure, of course, that this has a negative impact on the number of viewers who watch games, but I can't help but think that one of the reasons people say they find baseball "boring" is that TV shows it as if it were nothing but a battle between pitcher and batter, one of many important elements in a complex game. Undoubtedly many who once tuned in for the game are now turned off by the ignorant babble of the announcers and the constant close-ups of players spitting.
The World Series has also diminished in importance with the increasing number of teams in the play-offs, from four to eight and now, ten. Baseball is a game played every day, a game of quotidian pleasures where a team used to earn its way into the World Series by playing well for more than a hundred and fifty games. The constant emphasis in our culture of having more and more "winners" has detracted considerably from the pure beauty of the game and made the World Series a much less important event.
The popularity of baseball has waxed and waned with changes in our society, especially as we have become more urban. Some consider baseball a part of our more rural past, for better or worse. There have certainly been a number of (usually) misguided attempts to make it more "relevant" to the modern viewer, including the introduction of astroturf (the purpose of which I never understood, except for saving money on groundskeeping), now mostly abandoned, and the designated hitter, a violation of the lovely balance between fielding and hitting, now unfortunately ensconced in the American League, where the pitcher is never removed for a pinch hitter. Part of the problem is certainly that the glut of steroid-fueled home runs in recent years brought in more fans than ever who knew little and cared less about the nuances of the game.
It also should be kept in mind that TV does a terrible job with baseball, the executives admitting that they find baseball boring (see my posts from October 2013) and have to try to make it interesting to the casual fan, with endless replays, close-ups of the dugouts and the fans, and interviews even while the game is going on! One can't be sure, of course, that this has a negative impact on the number of viewers who watch games, but I can't help but think that one of the reasons people say they find baseball "boring" is that TV shows it as if it were nothing but a battle between pitcher and batter, one of many important elements in a complex game. Undoubtedly many who once tuned in for the game are now turned off by the ignorant babble of the announcers and the constant close-ups of players spitting.
Tuesday, October 21, 2014
New York City Ballet: Oct. 18, 2014
Square Dance was originally done in 1957 and changed considerably in 1976. In the original version the musicians were on stage in shirt sleeves, playing Corelli and Vivaldi while a caller, Elisha C. Keeler, called out the steps: "Gents go out, come right back, make your feet go wickety-wack." I was fortunate enough to see this version done by the Joffrey in 1976, using the original caller. The original was quite wonderful in its way, but Balanchine always tended to pare things down to their essentials, and the current version has the orchestra in the pit and no caller. As Arlene Croce wrote in The New Yorker (Nov. 15, 1976); The ballet contains twin sets of superimpositions: traditional country dancing, American style, superimposed on classical ballet steps and set to seventeenth-century string music that, in its turn, superimposed the elegance of a courtly style on ancient folk dances. I find it one of Balanchine's most beautiful ballets, with its moods of light and dark that reflect both the seventeenth century and current America. There is delight from the moment Abi Stafford comes in, posed for a moment in B+ position (a starting position that Balanchine invented, with the foot in back pointed) to her ever-shifting steps, as a tour jete turns into an assemble. There is also a part now for the male lead dancing alone on stage, as though he wandered off from the group to think about things. This part, done to the Corelli Sarabande and danced beautifully on Saturday by Taylor Stanley, is in a somewhat different style from the exuberant other parts of the ballet, the solo dependent mostly on movements of the torso. As I have said before about Balanchine, this ballet shows how groups, couples and individuals can all flourish in their own way: there are even separate sections for just women and just the men. Square Dance has some of Balanchine's loveliest choreography for men and was one of the ballets that inspired me to start taking ballet classes.
Also on the program was Le Tombeau de Couperin, originally done for the Ravel festival in 1975, based on eighteenth-century court dances. This unusual ballet uses two sets of four couples each, no lead dancers, and has some similarities to Square Dance. But the mood of this Ravel piece is very somber, constantly going through ritual changes, and retains a very complex and courtly air. This was followed by The Steadfast Tin Soldier, a minor piece by Balanchine to Bizet music that does not follow very closely the Hans Christian Andersen story about the love between a tin soldier and a doll (in Andersen's story they are both burned up in the fireplace, in the ballet it's just the doll). The only time I've seen effective pathos and humor in this ballet was when Baryshnikov and Patricia McBride danced it in 1979.
Christopher Wheeldon's This Bitter Earth was an intense pas de deux for the retiring Wendy Whelan, who danced with Tyler Angle. Wheeldon once had promise that he has never quite lived up to and Whelan has never been a favorite of mine, though it's not her fault she joined the company after Balanchine's death, so none of his ballets could be changed to accommodate her angular qualities. I enjoyed her in the Stravinsky ballets and she was a favorite of later choreographers, whose ballets did not often live up to her talents.
The final piece on Saturday's program was The Concert, a truly nasty piece of work choreographed by Jerome Robbins in 1956. Some find this misogynistic, misanthropic ballet, choreographed to Chopin, amusing. Even if one cared for anarchic humor, which I don't, this piece about the manipulation of women and the offensiveness of men is too nasty to be funny. Fueled by Robbins's own confused sexual identity, its idea of humor is men and women getting stabbed, men being henpecked and women obsessed with their vanity. I have always preferred the beautifully structured comedies of Lubitsch to the anarchy of the Marx brothers.
One additional benefit of going to the ballet is that I find, when I go to ballet class, as I did yesterday, I have absorbed much of what I have seen: I'm more turned out, my tendus are more precise, my port de bras better placed. I can even imagine that I am part of the male corps in Square Dance.
Also on the program was Le Tombeau de Couperin, originally done for the Ravel festival in 1975, based on eighteenth-century court dances. This unusual ballet uses two sets of four couples each, no lead dancers, and has some similarities to Square Dance. But the mood of this Ravel piece is very somber, constantly going through ritual changes, and retains a very complex and courtly air. This was followed by The Steadfast Tin Soldier, a minor piece by Balanchine to Bizet music that does not follow very closely the Hans Christian Andersen story about the love between a tin soldier and a doll (in Andersen's story they are both burned up in the fireplace, in the ballet it's just the doll). The only time I've seen effective pathos and humor in this ballet was when Baryshnikov and Patricia McBride danced it in 1979.
Christopher Wheeldon's This Bitter Earth was an intense pas de deux for the retiring Wendy Whelan, who danced with Tyler Angle. Wheeldon once had promise that he has never quite lived up to and Whelan has never been a favorite of mine, though it's not her fault she joined the company after Balanchine's death, so none of his ballets could be changed to accommodate her angular qualities. I enjoyed her in the Stravinsky ballets and she was a favorite of later choreographers, whose ballets did not often live up to her talents.
The final piece on Saturday's program was The Concert, a truly nasty piece of work choreographed by Jerome Robbins in 1956. Some find this misogynistic, misanthropic ballet, choreographed to Chopin, amusing. Even if one cared for anarchic humor, which I don't, this piece about the manipulation of women and the offensiveness of men is too nasty to be funny. Fueled by Robbins's own confused sexual identity, its idea of humor is men and women getting stabbed, men being henpecked and women obsessed with their vanity. I have always preferred the beautifully structured comedies of Lubitsch to the anarchy of the Marx brothers.
One additional benefit of going to the ballet is that I find, when I go to ballet class, as I did yesterday, I have absorbed much of what I have seen: I'm more turned out, my tendus are more precise, my port de bras better placed. I can even imagine that I am part of the male corps in Square Dance.
Friday, October 17, 2014
Man Wanted and Pete Kelly's Blues
William Dieterle's Man Wanted (1932) and Jack Webb's Pete Kelly's Blues (1956), both recently screened on Turner Classic Movies, would seem to have little in common, but watching them both recently I found some similarities.
1. Andy Devine is in both films. Devine was an actor I was fond of in the 50's, when he played Jingles, Guy Madison's sidekick, in the TV show Wild Bill Hickok. He was rather rotund and often used as comic relief, but is quite effective in the Jack Webb film as a lawman, while in the Dieterle he plays a sweet roommate, with homoerotic overtones, and ends up with the girl his friend rejects. Devine was particularly good in his John Ford roles, especially Stagecoach (1939) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1965), in which he plays a sheriff who doesn't want to lock up Liberty Valance because "the lock on the jail cell is broken and, besides, I sleep there."
2. Both films have elegant cinematography: Man Wanted is photographed in beautiful black-and-white with a characteristic mobile camera by Gregg Toland, who later photographed Citizen Kane (1941), while Pete Kelly's Blues has lovely wide-screen color cinematography with a special emphasis on yellows and oranges, by Hal Rosson, who did Singing in the Rain (1952).
3. Pete Kelly's Blues stars Webb himself and Man Wanted stars Kay Francis, both stars in their time who are barely remembered today, though Webb may be, to a certain extent, for the TV show Dragnet. Webb's film employs his "staccato metaphor" style first used effectively in his radio shows Pat Novak, For Hire (1946) and Johnny Modero, Pier 23 (1947), both written by Richard Breen, who wrote Pete Kelly's Blues: "the street was as deserted as a warm bottle of beer." I always thought Webb's style more suited to radio than TV, where its effectiveness was diminished by low-budgets and minimal sets. Pete Kelly's Blues does demonstrate Webb's love of jazz and there is some terrific music, especially with Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee. Kay Francis was a lisping beauty eventually done in by poor scripts and mediocre directors, though she soared in Lubitsch's stylish Trouble in Paradise (1932), where she wasn't burdened by a starring role.
1. Andy Devine is in both films. Devine was an actor I was fond of in the 50's, when he played Jingles, Guy Madison's sidekick, in the TV show Wild Bill Hickok. He was rather rotund and often used as comic relief, but is quite effective in the Jack Webb film as a lawman, while in the Dieterle he plays a sweet roommate, with homoerotic overtones, and ends up with the girl his friend rejects. Devine was particularly good in his John Ford roles, especially Stagecoach (1939) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1965), in which he plays a sheriff who doesn't want to lock up Liberty Valance because "the lock on the jail cell is broken and, besides, I sleep there."
2. Both films have elegant cinematography: Man Wanted is photographed in beautiful black-and-white with a characteristic mobile camera by Gregg Toland, who later photographed Citizen Kane (1941), while Pete Kelly's Blues has lovely wide-screen color cinematography with a special emphasis on yellows and oranges, by Hal Rosson, who did Singing in the Rain (1952).
3. Pete Kelly's Blues stars Webb himself and Man Wanted stars Kay Francis, both stars in their time who are barely remembered today, though Webb may be, to a certain extent, for the TV show Dragnet. Webb's film employs his "staccato metaphor" style first used effectively in his radio shows Pat Novak, For Hire (1946) and Johnny Modero, Pier 23 (1947), both written by Richard Breen, who wrote Pete Kelly's Blues: "the street was as deserted as a warm bottle of beer." I always thought Webb's style more suited to radio than TV, where its effectiveness was diminished by low-budgets and minimal sets. Pete Kelly's Blues does demonstrate Webb's love of jazz and there is some terrific music, especially with Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee. Kay Francis was a lisping beauty eventually done in by poor scripts and mediocre directors, though she soared in Lubitsch's stylish Trouble in Paradise (1932), where she wasn't burdened by a starring role.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Val Lewton's Please Believe Me.
Lewton's fragmented mosaic story-telling is, obviously, not well suited to comedy, where pace must be built and maintained.
Joel Siegel, Val Lewton: The Reality of Terror (Viking Press,1973)
One of the many pleasures of the estimable Turner Classic Movies is the rare and unusual films that show up there, including Lewton's penultimate film, Please Believe Me (1950). I don't know if there are still many people who believe, as writer Gore Vidal did, that movies are the vision of the producer rather than the director, but Please Believe Me had possibilities that were never realized, mainly because of the poor direction of Norman Taurog, a totally undistinguished director who directed nine Elvis Presley movies. For his low-budget horror films Cat People (1941), I Walked With a Zombie (1942), and The Leopard Man (1943) Lewton used director Jacques Tourneur, who shared his subtle touch with the fears just below the surface of everyday life. When RKO promoted Tourneur to A movies Lewton used first-time director Mark Robson to direct the elegant and scary The Seventh Victim (1943), maintaining strict control of the script. There are themes in Please Believe Me which obviously interested Lewton -- deception, an individual's identity, conflicts between England and America -- and I think they could have been brought out in an amusing way by the right director, with Lewton's supervision. He tailored the script for the delightful Deborah Kerr and was able to keep her as the star, but Taurog was unable to bring out her charm or adopt Lewton's vision.
Joel Siegel, Val Lewton: The Reality of Terror (Viking Press,1973)
One of the many pleasures of the estimable Turner Classic Movies is the rare and unusual films that show up there, including Lewton's penultimate film, Please Believe Me (1950). I don't know if there are still many people who believe, as writer Gore Vidal did, that movies are the vision of the producer rather than the director, but Please Believe Me had possibilities that were never realized, mainly because of the poor direction of Norman Taurog, a totally undistinguished director who directed nine Elvis Presley movies. For his low-budget horror films Cat People (1941), I Walked With a Zombie (1942), and The Leopard Man (1943) Lewton used director Jacques Tourneur, who shared his subtle touch with the fears just below the surface of everyday life. When RKO promoted Tourneur to A movies Lewton used first-time director Mark Robson to direct the elegant and scary The Seventh Victim (1943), maintaining strict control of the script. There are themes in Please Believe Me which obviously interested Lewton -- deception, an individual's identity, conflicts between England and America -- and I think they could have been brought out in an amusing way by the right director, with Lewton's supervision. He tailored the script for the delightful Deborah Kerr and was able to keep her as the star, but Taurog was unable to bring out her charm or adopt Lewton's vision.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Are Baseball Games Too Long?
When people complain that baseball games are too long I am reminded of the story about the woman who was diagnosed with a fatal disease and told by her doctor that she only had a year to live.
"Is there nothing I can do?" she asked the doctor.
"Well," the doctor said, "you could marry an economist and move to Iowa."
"Would that make me live longer?"
"No," the doctor said, "but it will seem longer."
People who go to ball games in person usually do not think the game is too long; there is just too much to look at on the field, with nine players, two coaches and four umpires all moving around. And even when they are not moving there is much beauty in the quiet anticipatory moments between pitches, rather like the moment between steps in a Balanchine ballet or between notes in a Mozart concerto. But when games are shown on TV they seem much longer because there is so little to look at, basically the pitcher and the catcher and the ads behind them, shot with a distorting telephoto lens. The games also seem longer because they start late, especially in the post-season, and therefore end long after one has gone, or should have gone, to bed. In addition there are incessant ads between innings and during pitching changes, adding an hour or more to the games, and constant delays by the pitcher and the batter. Let the umpires at least enforce the rules: twelve seconds between pitches and no stepping out of the batter's box "without a good reason" (not including adjusting batting gloves!).
Announcers are also a problem. Instead of telling you what you are already looking at -- what's going on between the pitcher and the batter -- they could tell you what is going on that you can't see, with the base runners, the umpires and the fielders. Howie Rose and Josh Lewin, the radio announcers for the Mets, do an excellent job of describing what is going on, and one can "see" more of a Mets game on the radio than on TV.
"Is there nothing I can do?" she asked the doctor.
"Well," the doctor said, "you could marry an economist and move to Iowa."
"Would that make me live longer?"
"No," the doctor said, "but it will seem longer."
People who go to ball games in person usually do not think the game is too long; there is just too much to look at on the field, with nine players, two coaches and four umpires all moving around. And even when they are not moving there is much beauty in the quiet anticipatory moments between pitches, rather like the moment between steps in a Balanchine ballet or between notes in a Mozart concerto. But when games are shown on TV they seem much longer because there is so little to look at, basically the pitcher and the catcher and the ads behind them, shot with a distorting telephoto lens. The games also seem longer because they start late, especially in the post-season, and therefore end long after one has gone, or should have gone, to bed. In addition there are incessant ads between innings and during pitching changes, adding an hour or more to the games, and constant delays by the pitcher and the batter. Let the umpires at least enforce the rules: twelve seconds between pitches and no stepping out of the batter's box "without a good reason" (not including adjusting batting gloves!).
Announcers are also a problem. Instead of telling you what you are already looking at -- what's going on between the pitcher and the batter -- they could tell you what is going on that you can't see, with the base runners, the umpires and the fielders. Howie Rose and Josh Lewin, the radio announcers for the Mets, do an excellent job of describing what is going on, and one can "see" more of a Mets game on the radio than on TV.
Lee Child's Personal
The martial type of character can be bred without war. Strenuous honor and disinterestedness abound everywhere.
William James, The Moral Equivalent of War, 1910
I don't forgive and I don't forget.
Jack Reacher, Personal (Lee Child, Delacorte, 2014)
It was one of my father's regrets, that neither of his sons served in the armed forces, the army during WWII having been the highlight of his own life. Occasionally I could see the appeal --when I watched Sgt. Bilko or listened to Jean Shepherd's wonderful army stories -- but I was lucky enough to get number 350 in the Shirley-Jackson-lottery of people's lives during the Vietnam war. No doubt we are better off without the George-Orwell-like "selective service" but the all-volunteer army has been at quite a price for those without other choices in their lives. In rejecting the involuntary servitude of the draft, however, are we neglecting certain positive attitudes? Lee Child thinks so, and his character Jack Reacher, formerly an MP, has been shown (in nineteen books) to have many positive attributes, particularly morality and austerity. Reacher travels somewhat randomly around the country, carrying little more than a toothbrush but always ready to lend a helping, and often violent, hand. In Personal he is in Paris and London in an attempt to thwart an assassination by a violent sniper who is out of prison, having been put there by Reacher 15 years before. The plot is complicated but Reacher uses his usual combination of physical and mental strength to solve the problem and the Army general behind it. He doesn't sleep with his female assistant and leaves quietly on the next bus, rather like a Western hero, always aware, as he says, "You can leave the army but the army doesn't leave you. Not always. Not completely."
William James, The Moral Equivalent of War, 1910
I don't forgive and I don't forget.
Jack Reacher, Personal (Lee Child, Delacorte, 2014)
It was one of my father's regrets, that neither of his sons served in the armed forces, the army during WWII having been the highlight of his own life. Occasionally I could see the appeal --when I watched Sgt. Bilko or listened to Jean Shepherd's wonderful army stories -- but I was lucky enough to get number 350 in the Shirley-Jackson-lottery of people's lives during the Vietnam war. No doubt we are better off without the George-Orwell-like "selective service" but the all-volunteer army has been at quite a price for those without other choices in their lives. In rejecting the involuntary servitude of the draft, however, are we neglecting certain positive attitudes? Lee Child thinks so, and his character Jack Reacher, formerly an MP, has been shown (in nineteen books) to have many positive attributes, particularly morality and austerity. Reacher travels somewhat randomly around the country, carrying little more than a toothbrush but always ready to lend a helping, and often violent, hand. In Personal he is in Paris and London in an attempt to thwart an assassination by a violent sniper who is out of prison, having been put there by Reacher 15 years before. The plot is complicated but Reacher uses his usual combination of physical and mental strength to solve the problem and the Army general behind it. He doesn't sleep with his female assistant and leaves quietly on the next bus, rather like a Western hero, always aware, as he says, "You can leave the army but the army doesn't leave you. Not always. Not completely."
Thursday, October 9, 2014
Baseball Playoffs 2014
The first round of the playoffs is over; the next round, for the league pennants, starts tomorrow, with the Orioles vs. the Royals and the Cardinals vs. the Giants. I do think having 10 teams in the playoffs dilutes the daily pleasures of the season and ends up making the World Series often rather anti-climatic and tedious; the beauty of the game is getting lost in the shuffle of who wins and who loses.
About the playoffs:
1. The games start and finish too late and go on too long, most of the games ending at one or two in the morning. The various networks are simply too busy avoiding conflicts with football to give baseball the care and attention it deserves. At least, one would think, week-end games could be played during the day and commercials and promos could be limited, though of course that would mean limiting revenue. My radical suggestion is to start football, hockey and basketball only after the baseball season is completed.
2. The networks have stated repeatedly that showing too much of the game on the field is boring. So we see endless shots of the crowds, the executives, the dugouts, as well as conversations with the players and the managers while the game is going on! They at least could show the whole field occasionally, though showing just the distorted images of the pitcher and the batter through telephoto lenses maximizes revenue, with advertising images shown behind them.
3. What is the function of the mushmouths and illiterates hired for both TV and radio? When they are not mangling the English language and being as comatose as Cal Ripken (who was repeatedly asked about his career by Ron Darling and usually replied "I don't remember.") they have little to add. Their inability to give the score or the count or tell us who is on base has necessitated little boxes on the screen, so they are free to do what? Tell us statistics even they don't understand and can't usually explain? The radio announcers could do the kind of job Vin Scully but few others do: paint a picture and evoke a feeling. But the radio announcers don't even do the minimum -- such as tell us whether a player is batting right-handed or left-handed -- to allow us to visualize what is happening
About the playoffs:
1. The games start and finish too late and go on too long, most of the games ending at one or two in the morning. The various networks are simply too busy avoiding conflicts with football to give baseball the care and attention it deserves. At least, one would think, week-end games could be played during the day and commercials and promos could be limited, though of course that would mean limiting revenue. My radical suggestion is to start football, hockey and basketball only after the baseball season is completed.
2. The networks have stated repeatedly that showing too much of the game on the field is boring. So we see endless shots of the crowds, the executives, the dugouts, as well as conversations with the players and the managers while the game is going on! They at least could show the whole field occasionally, though showing just the distorted images of the pitcher and the batter through telephoto lenses maximizes revenue, with advertising images shown behind them.
3. What is the function of the mushmouths and illiterates hired for both TV and radio? When they are not mangling the English language and being as comatose as Cal Ripken (who was repeatedly asked about his career by Ron Darling and usually replied "I don't remember.") they have little to add. Their inability to give the score or the count or tell us who is on base has necessitated little boxes on the screen, so they are free to do what? Tell us statistics even they don't understand and can't usually explain? The radio announcers could do the kind of job Vin Scully but few others do: paint a picture and evoke a feeling. But the radio announcers don't even do the minimum -- such as tell us whether a player is batting right-handed or left-handed -- to allow us to visualize what is happening
John Buchan's The Thirty-Nine Steps
"It was one of those days," a friend said, "when the only thing to do is read John Buchan."
John Keegan, introduction to The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (Penguin, 1915).
Does anyone read John Buchan today? He was once well-regarded (Raymond Chandler was an admirer) but I think he does not date well. The Thirty-Nine Steps is certainly paranoid enough for our time, with conspirators everywhere on the eve of WWI, but the book is mostly about Richard Hannay hiding in Scotland and being helped by all its eccentric inhabitants (chapters include "The Adventure of the Radical Candidate," "The Dry-Fly Fisherman," etc.). The book is full of delightful descriptions of the landscape (Buchan was Scottish) -- I first saw the pale blue sky through a net of heather, than a big shoulder of hill, and then my own boots place neatly in a blaeberry [blueberry] bush-- but otherwise too contrived even for the "thriller" genre.
The Buchan book is very much in the shadow of Hitchcock's film version, made in 1935. As Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer say in their excellent book on Hitchcock(Hitchcock: the First Forty-Four Films, translated by Stanley Hochman, Frederick Ungar, 1979): "Numerous changes were made and they were all good ones," including a female character to whom Hannay is handcuffed while trying to avoid the police and the conspirators. Fritz Lang's Man Hunt (1941) is closer to Buchan's book than Hitchcock's film is, though it is based on Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male.
John Keegan, introduction to The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (Penguin, 1915).
Does anyone read John Buchan today? He was once well-regarded (Raymond Chandler was an admirer) but I think he does not date well. The Thirty-Nine Steps is certainly paranoid enough for our time, with conspirators everywhere on the eve of WWI, but the book is mostly about Richard Hannay hiding in Scotland and being helped by all its eccentric inhabitants (chapters include "The Adventure of the Radical Candidate," "The Dry-Fly Fisherman," etc.). The book is full of delightful descriptions of the landscape (Buchan was Scottish) -- I first saw the pale blue sky through a net of heather, than a big shoulder of hill, and then my own boots place neatly in a blaeberry [blueberry] bush-- but otherwise too contrived even for the "thriller" genre.
The Buchan book is very much in the shadow of Hitchcock's film version, made in 1935. As Claude Chabrol and Eric Rohmer say in their excellent book on Hitchcock(Hitchcock: the First Forty-Four Films, translated by Stanley Hochman, Frederick Ungar, 1979): "Numerous changes were made and they were all good ones," including a female character to whom Hannay is handcuffed while trying to avoid the police and the conspirators. Fritz Lang's Man Hunt (1941) is closer to Buchan's book than Hitchcock's film is, though it is based on Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male.
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Turner Classic Movies in October
I wrote yesterday about Edgar Ulmer and his theme of the outsider this month on TCM. There are a number of other excellent movies this month about outsiders, those who struggle to fit in, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing.
George B. Seitz's The Vanishing American (1925) is about the dilemma of the Native American, whether to fight to keep his heritage or become a part of the society that has, in some ways, rejected him.
John Ford's The Searchers (1956). John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, who struggles to find a place in a society that has changed immensely while he was off fighting in the Civil War.
Fritz Lang's Moonfleet (1955). An orphan tries to find a place in 18th C, society.
Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950). About the self-destructiveness of a screenwriter who can't sell a screenplay.
Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow (1937). A moving and beautiful film about what to do with one's parents when they get old.
Gordon Douglas's I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951). Loyalty to one's country or to one's comrades; each choice has a price.
Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not To Be (1942). A bleakly funny comedy about a Polish theatre troupe fighting back against the Nazis.
George B. Seitz's The Vanishing American (1925) is about the dilemma of the Native American, whether to fight to keep his heritage or become a part of the society that has, in some ways, rejected him.
John Ford's The Searchers (1956). John Wayne plays Ethan Edwards, who struggles to find a place in a society that has changed immensely while he was off fighting in the Civil War.
Fritz Lang's Moonfleet (1955). An orphan tries to find a place in 18th C, society.
Nicholas Ray's In a Lonely Place (1950). About the self-destructiveness of a screenwriter who can't sell a screenplay.
Leo McCarey's Make Way for Tomorrow (1937). A moving and beautiful film about what to do with one's parents when they get old.
Gordon Douglas's I Was a Communist for the FBI (1951). Loyalty to one's country or to one's comrades; each choice has a price.
Ernst Lubitsch's To Be or Not To Be (1942). A bleakly funny comedy about a Polish theatre troupe fighting back against the Nazis.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
New York City Ballet, Sept. 28, 2014
I am happy to report that Peter Martins is currently keeping the Balanchine repertory in pretty good shape, which has not always been the case. Perhaps Martins has come to realize that the artistic failure of most post-Balanchine works has made it necessary to keep the Balanchine ballets at a high artistic level, if only to keep an audience while we wait for the next great choreographer, who is not likely to be Martins or Wheeldon or Ratmansky. Sunday's performance of four Balanchine works was a delight, even if I have a slight quibble with an all-Tchaikovsky program, with too many predictable tours jetes and chaine turns.
The sisterhood of the corps in Serenade, which has expanded through the years as Balanchine expanded the choreography, is in its anonymity one of the most moving images we have in all ballet.
Arlene Croce
Serenade, originally done in 1935, looks as fresh and modern as ever. Balanchine reversed the order of the last two movements, making an emotionally complex work, the narrative of which lies elusively just beyond reach (true of many Balanchine ballets). The roles for men are relatively simple, but elegant, and one can identify with their emotional intensity.
Mozartiana is a world in a bubble....But it will always be Suzanne Farrell's ballet.
Arlene Croce.
Maria Kowroski was wonderful in Mozartiana and it certainly not her fault that she is not Suzanne Farrell. Those of us who were fortunate enough to see Farrell in this last major work that Balanchine did for her will never forget it, especially the audacious off-balance turns that were a Farrell specialty. As I have mentioned before, no doubt Balanchine would have adapted the choreography for different dancers, as he often did.
Tchaikovsky's melancholy is always accounted for, not only as the pervasive mood of his Andantes and Elegies but as a persistent aura edging even his brightest moments.
Arlene Croce.
This is an appropriate insight into Tchaikovsky Suite # 3, where life (both Tchaikovsky's and Balanchine's) are transferred into art. The melancholy of the first three movements may be about the women in Tchaikovsky's life -- his mother, who died when he was young; his sister and her two children, his disastrous marriage to Antonia Milyukova -- but also about the four women Balanchine married and the one, Suzanne Farrell, who he did not wed. But as the scrim is removed from the stage and Theme and Variations starts it is clear we are out of the realm of fantasy and ghosts and into a thrilling ballroom of love and partners that can, at least temporarily, overcome melancholy. When Joaquin De Luz does his tours en l'air, followed by multiple pirouettes, happiness reigns.
.
Sunday's performance also included Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, a short piece to an original part of the Swan Lake score, which demonstrates how Balanchine saw men and women: as equal partners who can thrive together and individually. The entire day's performance was conducted by Clotilde Otranto, who had the orchestra sounding quite lovely.
The sisterhood of the corps in Serenade, which has expanded through the years as Balanchine expanded the choreography, is in its anonymity one of the most moving images we have in all ballet.
Arlene Croce
Serenade, originally done in 1935, looks as fresh and modern as ever. Balanchine reversed the order of the last two movements, making an emotionally complex work, the narrative of which lies elusively just beyond reach (true of many Balanchine ballets). The roles for men are relatively simple, but elegant, and one can identify with their emotional intensity.
Mozartiana is a world in a bubble....But it will always be Suzanne Farrell's ballet.
Arlene Croce.
Maria Kowroski was wonderful in Mozartiana and it certainly not her fault that she is not Suzanne Farrell. Those of us who were fortunate enough to see Farrell in this last major work that Balanchine did for her will never forget it, especially the audacious off-balance turns that were a Farrell specialty. As I have mentioned before, no doubt Balanchine would have adapted the choreography for different dancers, as he often did.
Tchaikovsky's melancholy is always accounted for, not only as the pervasive mood of his Andantes and Elegies but as a persistent aura edging even his brightest moments.
Arlene Croce.
This is an appropriate insight into Tchaikovsky Suite # 3, where life (both Tchaikovsky's and Balanchine's) are transferred into art. The melancholy of the first three movements may be about the women in Tchaikovsky's life -- his mother, who died when he was young; his sister and her two children, his disastrous marriage to Antonia Milyukova -- but also about the four women Balanchine married and the one, Suzanne Farrell, who he did not wed. But as the scrim is removed from the stage and Theme and Variations starts it is clear we are out of the realm of fantasy and ghosts and into a thrilling ballroom of love and partners that can, at least temporarily, overcome melancholy. When Joaquin De Luz does his tours en l'air, followed by multiple pirouettes, happiness reigns.
.
Sunday's performance also included Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux, a short piece to an original part of the Swan Lake score, which demonstrates how Balanchine saw men and women: as equal partners who can thrive together and individually. The entire day's performance was conducted by Clotilde Otranto, who had the orchestra sounding quite lovely.
Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins by Noah Isenberg
This month Turner Classic Movies is showing five films by Edgar Ulmer and Noah Isenberg's book (University of California Press, 2014) is a useful companion. Ulmer was born in Vienna in 1904 and was always an outsider, making Yiddish and African-American films and spending most his career at Poverty-Row studio PRC (Producers Releasing Company), followed (after the demise of the B-picture) by years of wandering and exile. For those of us who care relatively little about production values and so-called "star" actors Ulmer is an impressive and passionate director who made bleak films under difficult circumstances and produced an impressive body of personal work, often about those on the margins of society. The films on Turner are:
Her Sister's Secret (1946). Isenberg quotes Jan-Christopher Horak, in a survey of German exile cinema: For a B-picture the film demonstrated an unusual sensitivity for the complexity of human emotions, for the giddiness of great love affairs, for the difficulty of motherhood and for the barely repressed jealousy of siblings. The film is beautiful and moving.
Carnegie Hall (1947). Isenberg writes: Ulmer captured not merely the spirit of the hall and its evocative grandeur but the international spirit of American musical culture of the late 19th and early 20th century. There are 18 performers in the film, of which only two were born in the U.S., and there are wonderful performances by Rise Stevens and Jascha Heifetz, among many others. One might consider the framing story corny (it is, somewhat) but the music is glorious.
Murder is My Beat (1955). Isenberg says, about this film (and it could also be said about a number of other Ulmer films): The film exudes an air of rawness, its players and settings notably gruff and downtrodden, a relatively accurate reflection of the bargain-basement production.
Detour (1945). This is simply one of the great films noir. It was made for PRC with basically two actors and some back projection and captures the mood of America when the war ends, as well as Ulmer's fatalistic views. As Isenberg says: Indeed, the tawdry confined nature of the film is reflected in the characterization of its protagonists.
The Amazing Transparent Man (1960). Isenberg writes: Underpinning the larger drama that ensues in the act of becoming invisible -- and the break-in at a local power plant made possible only because of the invisibility -- is the gathering threat of nuclear disaster.
My other favorite Ulmer films, which I hope TCM will show soon, include Ruthless (1948) a low-budget answer to Citizen Kane, and Naked Dawn (1955), a bizarre and beautiful Western. One can read more about Ulmer in John Belton's Howard Hawks, Frank Borzage, Edgar Ulmer (The Tantivy Press, 1974), and Peter Bogdanovitch's Who the Devil Made It (Knopf,1997) includes a long and fascinating interview with Ulmer.
Her Sister's Secret (1946). Isenberg quotes Jan-Christopher Horak, in a survey of German exile cinema: For a B-picture the film demonstrated an unusual sensitivity for the complexity of human emotions, for the giddiness of great love affairs, for the difficulty of motherhood and for the barely repressed jealousy of siblings. The film is beautiful and moving.
Carnegie Hall (1947). Isenberg writes: Ulmer captured not merely the spirit of the hall and its evocative grandeur but the international spirit of American musical culture of the late 19th and early 20th century. There are 18 performers in the film, of which only two were born in the U.S., and there are wonderful performances by Rise Stevens and Jascha Heifetz, among many others. One might consider the framing story corny (it is, somewhat) but the music is glorious.
Murder is My Beat (1955). Isenberg says, about this film (and it could also be said about a number of other Ulmer films): The film exudes an air of rawness, its players and settings notably gruff and downtrodden, a relatively accurate reflection of the bargain-basement production.
Detour (1945). This is simply one of the great films noir. It was made for PRC with basically two actors and some back projection and captures the mood of America when the war ends, as well as Ulmer's fatalistic views. As Isenberg says: Indeed, the tawdry confined nature of the film is reflected in the characterization of its protagonists.
The Amazing Transparent Man (1960). Isenberg writes: Underpinning the larger drama that ensues in the act of becoming invisible -- and the break-in at a local power plant made possible only because of the invisibility -- is the gathering threat of nuclear disaster.
My other favorite Ulmer films, which I hope TCM will show soon, include Ruthless (1948) a low-budget answer to Citizen Kane, and Naked Dawn (1955), a bizarre and beautiful Western. One can read more about Ulmer in John Belton's Howard Hawks, Frank Borzage, Edgar Ulmer (The Tantivy Press, 1974), and Peter Bogdanovitch's Who the Devil Made It (Knopf,1997) includes a long and fascinating interview with Ulmer.
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