Nothing particularly rare or unusual this month, just some good movies uncut, uninterrupted and in the proper aspect ratio.
June 1: Sam Wood's Our Town, 1940. recommended for William Cameron Menzies's production design.
June 2: Cy Enfield's Hell Drivers, 1958, critique of capitalism, made in England after Enfield was chased out of American by HUAC
June 3: Billy Wilder's corrosive Double Indemnity,1944, and Blake Edwards' bleak view of dipsomania Days of Wine and Roses,1962
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June 4: Anthony Mann's complex Western The Man from Laramie, 1955
June 5; Orson Welles' funhouse mirror The Lady from Shanghai. 1948
Also on June 5 two rigorous and austere works from Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer: Ordet, 1955, and Gertrud, 1964
June 8: Clash by Night, 1952, America as viewed by fatalistic German Fritz Lang.
June 9: Joseph H. Lewis's rich gangster film The Big Combo, 1955
June 10: two more cynical films from Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard, 1950, and Ace in the Hole, 1951.
June 11: Howard Hawks's powerful chamber Western, Rio Bravo, 1959, and Max Ophuls' elegant Earrings of Madame De... (especially for those of us who love tracking shots).
June 15: Buster Keaton's funny and somewhat sad The Cameraman, 1928
June 18: Robert Siodmak's exemplary film noir Criss-Cross,1949; I posted about it on Aug. 4, 2015.
June 19: two comedies of behavioral nuance from Vincente Minnelli: The Courtship of Eddie's Father,1963 and Father of the Bride,1950
June 20: Raoul Walsh's great Western about Custer, They Died with Their Boots On, 1941
June 21: Hitchcock's Lifeboat, 1944
June 23: an intelligent musical comedy from Minnelli, Bells Are Ringing, 1960
June 24: Billy Wilder's The Apartment, 1960
June 27: Robert Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest, 1951,adapted from Georges Bernanos's novel.
Sunday, May 29, 2016
Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream, N. Y. State Theatre, May 28,2016
George Balanchine's A Midsummer Night's Dream was choreographed in 1962 and has become for the Spring and Summer what The Nutcracker is for winter. It has beautiful choreography and enough of a story (it follows Shakespeare closely, though with music instead of words) for those who require it. The second act is abstract, however, and now can seem too short, after Balanchine trimmed the dances (in his symphonic style, including the use of Mendelssohn's Symphony Number 9 for Strings, rather than the divertissement style of The Nutcracker), presumably for the narrative-driven audience. The second act was danced with intensity and attack by Sterling Hyltin but I did not care for her partner, Amar Ramasar, who was technically okay but still lacks projection and personality. Still, the second act made clear the ascendance of love over stormy drama and discord.
The second act may be too much for those who don't like Balanchine's more abstract ballets (myself definitely not included!) but the first act is full of originality, Puck, and well-rehearsed children as elves and butterflies (supervised by Dena Abergel and Arch Higgins). No one has ever danced Oberon as well as the originator of the role, Edward Villela, though Daniel Ulbricht was effective without turning himself into a horizontal corkscrew as I have seen others, including Gen Horiuchi, do and Teresa Reichlen was able to efficiently switch gears from nobility and firmness to loose frivolity, as she falls in love with Bottom as a donkey. Megan LeCrone, as Hippolyta, did a wonderful job with her grand jetes.
Balanchine uses half-a-dozen different Mendelssohn pieces to augment the limited music Mendelssohn did for the play and integrates them beautifully with the choreography. I haven't seen this ballet for some time, as it became a little down-at-the-heels, but the costumes have been refurbished and the production has had much of its elegance restored. My four-year-old daughter, who takes a weekly ballet class, loved every moment of it.
The second act may be too much for those who don't like Balanchine's more abstract ballets (myself definitely not included!) but the first act is full of originality, Puck, and well-rehearsed children as elves and butterflies (supervised by Dena Abergel and Arch Higgins). No one has ever danced Oberon as well as the originator of the role, Edward Villela, though Daniel Ulbricht was effective without turning himself into a horizontal corkscrew as I have seen others, including Gen Horiuchi, do and Teresa Reichlen was able to efficiently switch gears from nobility and firmness to loose frivolity, as she falls in love with Bottom as a donkey. Megan LeCrone, as Hippolyta, did a wonderful job with her grand jetes.
Balanchine uses half-a-dozen different Mendelssohn pieces to augment the limited music Mendelssohn did for the play and integrates them beautifully with the choreography. I haven't seen this ballet for some time, as it became a little down-at-the-heels, but the costumes have been refurbished and the production has had much of its elegance restored. My four-year-old daughter, who takes a weekly ballet class, loved every moment of it.
Thursday, May 26, 2016
Winter by Christopher Nicholson
He hated these literary detectives, who failed to grasp the nature of art: that it was a shaping of reality, not reality itself.
--Christopher Nicholson, Winter (Europa Editions 2014)
This novel takes place in the 1920's when Thomas Hardy was eighty-four. His part is in the third person, while his wife Florence and young actress Gertrude Bugler have sections in the first person. Novels about real people tend to be a dubious enterprise, though this one is better than most and is a rather satisfying guilty pleasure. Hardy has become mellow with age, his much-younger (second) wife is something of a complainer and valetudinarian. Gertrude is married to a butcher and has a young child, but has been promised a role as Tess in a London stage production which the jealous Florence convinces her to turn down. Nicholson throughout has a deep understanding of the west of England and the novels and poems of Hardy, though I would recommend Hardy's actual novels over this secondary endeavor.
--Christopher Nicholson, Winter (Europa Editions 2014)
This novel takes place in the 1920's when Thomas Hardy was eighty-four. His part is in the third person, while his wife Florence and young actress Gertrude Bugler have sections in the first person. Novels about real people tend to be a dubious enterprise, though this one is better than most and is a rather satisfying guilty pleasure. Hardy has become mellow with age, his much-younger (second) wife is something of a complainer and valetudinarian. Gertrude is married to a butcher and has a young child, but has been promised a role as Tess in a London stage production which the jealous Florence convinces her to turn down. Nicholson throughout has a deep understanding of the west of England and the novels and poems of Hardy, though I would recommend Hardy's actual novels over this secondary endeavor.
Fritz Lang's Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (1922)
Doktor Mabuse, der Spieler was held together by its fervent belief in a top-rotting society threatened by a dark, fantastical conspiracy with one of the cinema's most mesmeric figures at the core: Rudolf Klein-Rogge as Dr. Mabuse.
-- Patick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast (St. Martin's 1997)
There is no such thing as love -- there is only desire, and the will to possess what you most desire.
--Dr. Mabuse (script by Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang).
Lang's German silent films are shown too seldom and are probably not much watched or appreciated when they are. But Turner Classic Movies showed Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (the gambler) recently in a lovely print, properly projected. The film is also titled ein Bild der Zeit (a picture of the time) and quite effectively captures the complicated world of the Weimar era in Germany, where one is greeted at the door of a nightclub with "cards or cocaine?" Dr. Mabuse is a psychoanalyst with the power to control men's minds, even just by looking at the back of their heads! He kills very few, rather he convinces his enemies to kill themselves, persuading them they nicht mehr leben (must not live). He is an extreme example of many of the problems of pre-Nazi Germany, stealing government documents and accelerating inflation by manipulating the stock market and printing counterfeit money. Dr. Mabuse is pursued by prosecutor von Wenk and they are both in love with Countess Told, whom Mabuse abducts and whose husband he convinces to kill himself. Mabuse and von Wenk play a cat-and-mouse game similar to that of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty.
There is certainly an element of expressionism in Lang's film -- Count Told and Mabuse both see ghosts and place names appear in eerie form on the screen -- but much of Lang's four-hour film is quite "realistic," though in a stylized form that reminds one of Griffith, with an emphasis on cross-cutting and irising. The action scenes are particularly effective because of their slow and suspenseful build-up.
-- Patick McGilligan, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast (St. Martin's 1997)
There is no such thing as love -- there is only desire, and the will to possess what you most desire.
--Dr. Mabuse (script by Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang).
Lang's German silent films are shown too seldom and are probably not much watched or appreciated when they are. But Turner Classic Movies showed Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (the gambler) recently in a lovely print, properly projected. The film is also titled ein Bild der Zeit (a picture of the time) and quite effectively captures the complicated world of the Weimar era in Germany, where one is greeted at the door of a nightclub with "cards or cocaine?" Dr. Mabuse is a psychoanalyst with the power to control men's minds, even just by looking at the back of their heads! He kills very few, rather he convinces his enemies to kill themselves, persuading them they nicht mehr leben (must not live). He is an extreme example of many of the problems of pre-Nazi Germany, stealing government documents and accelerating inflation by manipulating the stock market and printing counterfeit money. Dr. Mabuse is pursued by prosecutor von Wenk and they are both in love with Countess Told, whom Mabuse abducts and whose husband he convinces to kill himself. Mabuse and von Wenk play a cat-and-mouse game similar to that of Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty.
There is certainly an element of expressionism in Lang's film -- Count Told and Mabuse both see ghosts and place names appear in eerie form on the screen -- but much of Lang's four-hour film is quite "realistic," though in a stylized form that reminds one of Griffith, with an emphasis on cross-cutting and irising. The action scenes are particularly effective because of their slow and suspenseful build-up.
Sunday, May 22, 2016
Exposure by Helen Dunmore
Simon sweats, pacing his cell. That's what you do, it turns out, when what was safely tucked away in books becomes real life. You're in a cell and sure enough you pace it. There's nothing else you can do. Nothing left.
--Helen Dunmore, Exposure (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2016)
Dunmore's novel is something of an oblique spy novel, with its poetic style and its emphasis on how children's lives are affected (Dunmore is a poet and author of children's books). The novel is told from several different points of view: Simon, his wife Lily, their three young children, Simon's former lover and current co-worker Giles (who is also a spy for the Soviets). Simon tends to do Giles' bidding, including hiding a file from the Admiralty, where they both work, and ends up taking the rap. The book takes place in England in 1960 when sodomy was still illegal and spies had deeply penetrated English intelligence. Most of the novel deals with Lily's struggle to pay the bills and the children's struggle with name-calling and ridicule from their peers. Lily and the children --Sally, Paul and Bridget -- stay loyal to Simon, even when Lily is told of Simon's earlier affair with Giles and he is threatened with exposure. It seems to have not been unusual for young men in England to have homosexual affairs (Evelyn Waugh's biographers mention his, for instance, though they are usually described as brief and temporary) but combine that knowledge with espionage and that could produce substantial prison time. Dunmore handles this all with intelligence and style, as well as a keen insight into family dynamics.
--Helen Dunmore, Exposure (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2016)
Dunmore's novel is something of an oblique spy novel, with its poetic style and its emphasis on how children's lives are affected (Dunmore is a poet and author of children's books). The novel is told from several different points of view: Simon, his wife Lily, their three young children, Simon's former lover and current co-worker Giles (who is also a spy for the Soviets). Simon tends to do Giles' bidding, including hiding a file from the Admiralty, where they both work, and ends up taking the rap. The book takes place in England in 1960 when sodomy was still illegal and spies had deeply penetrated English intelligence. Most of the novel deals with Lily's struggle to pay the bills and the children's struggle with name-calling and ridicule from their peers. Lily and the children --Sally, Paul and Bridget -- stay loyal to Simon, even when Lily is told of Simon's earlier affair with Giles and he is threatened with exposure. It seems to have not been unusual for young men in England to have homosexual affairs (Evelyn Waugh's biographers mention his, for instance, though they are usually described as brief and temporary) but combine that knowledge with espionage and that could produce substantial prison time. Dunmore handles this all with intelligence and style, as well as a keen insight into family dynamics.
Saturday, May 21, 2016
Eighth inning, Yankees v. Diamondbacks, YES network, May 17 2016
Watching the eighth inning of the Yankees/Diamondbacks game on May 17 one received an instructive lesson in what is wrong with televised baseball.
Brandon Drury hit a ball off the right-field wall and the camera stayed on Carlos Beltran as he fielded it; only after he fielded it and threw it in did the camera show Drury, who at that point was rounding second on his way to third; the throw caught him in-between second and third and he was tagged out. What we missed, of course, was seeing both the ball as Beltran tried to field it and Drury running. That tension between the batter and the fielder, a crucial part of the beauty of baseball, was entirely missing. In other words, the producers do not care about the immediacy that the contributes significantly to the beauty of the game. After all, they can always show additional angles on the replays, another proof that they do not care about the what's happening as it's happening. I refer you to my post of Oct. 30, 2013, in which Fox producer Pete Macteska said he missed a key moment in a World Series game because the game was too boring to show without plenty of cuts to the fans!
Another big problem with televised baseball is the announcers, especially when they lose interest in a one-sided game. In the eighth inning the Diamondbacks were leading 12-2 and announcer Michael Kay said the score wrong three times: the Yankees leading 12-2, the Diamondbacks leading 15-2 (they had fifteen hits) and the score in the middle of the eighth being 12-5!
My suggested solutions include showing the whole field much of the time (common when baseball was televised in the fifties), which would undoubtedly cause problems with the advertisers who advertise behind home plate, and only having one announcer, who should concentrate on the game and wouldn't have to indulge in boring chitchat with additional commentators who have nothing to say. I recommend listening to Vin Scully when the MLB Network broadcasts from Dodger Stadium; he knows that the game is still beautiful even when the score is lopsided.
Brandon Drury hit a ball off the right-field wall and the camera stayed on Carlos Beltran as he fielded it; only after he fielded it and threw it in did the camera show Drury, who at that point was rounding second on his way to third; the throw caught him in-between second and third and he was tagged out. What we missed, of course, was seeing both the ball as Beltran tried to field it and Drury running. That tension between the batter and the fielder, a crucial part of the beauty of baseball, was entirely missing. In other words, the producers do not care about the immediacy that the contributes significantly to the beauty of the game. After all, they can always show additional angles on the replays, another proof that they do not care about the what's happening as it's happening. I refer you to my post of Oct. 30, 2013, in which Fox producer Pete Macteska said he missed a key moment in a World Series game because the game was too boring to show without plenty of cuts to the fans!
Another big problem with televised baseball is the announcers, especially when they lose interest in a one-sided game. In the eighth inning the Diamondbacks were leading 12-2 and announcer Michael Kay said the score wrong three times: the Yankees leading 12-2, the Diamondbacks leading 15-2 (they had fifteen hits) and the score in the middle of the eighth being 12-5!
My suggested solutions include showing the whole field much of the time (common when baseball was televised in the fifties), which would undoubtedly cause problems with the advertisers who advertise behind home plate, and only having one announcer, who should concentrate on the game and wouldn't have to indulge in boring chitchat with additional commentators who have nothing to say. I recommend listening to Vin Scully when the MLB Network broadcasts from Dodger Stadium; he knows that the game is still beautiful even when the score is lopsided.
Thursday, May 19, 2016
Mitch Leisen's Suddenly It's Spring (1947)
It should not be too difficult to respond to the glorious amalgam of sets, costume, lighting and female beauty in Leisen's work.
--David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film (William Morrow, 1976).
Mitch Leisen is mostly remembered now as a director of superb scripts by Preston Sturges (Remember the Night, 1940 and Easy Living, 1937) and Billy Wilder (Hold Back the Dawn, 1941 and Midnight,1939). One of the reasons both Sturges and Wilder became directors themselves is because they did not like the changes Leisen had made to their scripts and his preference of style over substance. But I think also one thing that interested Leisen more than it interested Wilder and Sturges was gender roles and gender fluidity. This subject may have had something to do with the fact that Leisen himself was gay, an open secret in Hollywood.
Leisen's Suddenly It's Spring starts off with a strange written title: "Remember way, way back in 1945?" Leisen's film deals with Fred MacMurray trying to get Paulette Godard to sign divorce papers in 1945, a divorce they had agreed to in 1941, before she went off as a WAC to Europe and he was assigned to the Pacific. When Goddard arrives home MacMurray has a new shackjob, played by Arleen Whelan, to whom he is now engaged, and spends the film chasing Goddard all over America trying to get her to sign the papers, before they realize that they still do love each other; at the point they are dividing assets the camera shoots from inside their closet, allowing them to privately discover the layette and briefly discuss what happened to their plans to have a child.
MacMurray has help in the pursuit of Goddard's signature in the person of a client of his, played by Macdonald Carey. The atmosphere is of changing gender roles, with MacMurray in civilian clothes and Goddard in uniform, though she is also constantly changing into a black negligee when she expects MacMurray to show up. Carey is not only attracted to Goddard, he also seems to be attracted to Whelan and even to MacMurray himself, as Macdonald and Fred end up at one point in bed together; though nothing sexual is suggested between them there is no doubt that Leisen took some pleasure in showing two men together in bed when the production code would not even allow married couples to be shown in the same bed!
Another level of Leisen irony is that one of Goddard's job in the army had been to write an advice to the lovelorn column; she was known as Captain Lonely Hearts. At one point on the train with MacMurray pursuing her to sign the divorce papers she takes time out to counsel a WAC and her husband in which the husband, played with a certain effeteness by Frank Faylen, suggests that his wife had been fooling around in Europe and MacMurray and Goddard are offended so much by this that it seems to have struck home, though MacMurray claims his own unfaithfulness was okay because they had agreed to a divorce before they were both shipped off (it is unclear how long MacMurray has been home from the war, though he had certainly used his time well). Goddard insists on continuing to be called by the gender-neutral term "counselor" -- they were law partners as well as life partners -- and objects when MacMurray calls her "darling" when she gives him flamboyant pajamas she bought for him in Paris, which he ends up carrying with him as he chases Goddard.
Suddenly It's Spring, a title apparently intended to be ironic, reminds one of certain other films, including Howard Hawks's I Was a Male War Bride (1949) and Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937), but whether one finds it as funny as these films is subjective and somewhat irrelevant, as Suddenly It's Spring is ultimately about love triumphing over circumstances and the shifting roles of the sexes.
--David Thomson, A Biographical Dictionary of Film (William Morrow, 1976).
Mitch Leisen is mostly remembered now as a director of superb scripts by Preston Sturges (Remember the Night, 1940 and Easy Living, 1937) and Billy Wilder (Hold Back the Dawn, 1941 and Midnight,1939). One of the reasons both Sturges and Wilder became directors themselves is because they did not like the changes Leisen had made to their scripts and his preference of style over substance. But I think also one thing that interested Leisen more than it interested Wilder and Sturges was gender roles and gender fluidity. This subject may have had something to do with the fact that Leisen himself was gay, an open secret in Hollywood.
Leisen's Suddenly It's Spring starts off with a strange written title: "Remember way, way back in 1945?" Leisen's film deals with Fred MacMurray trying to get Paulette Godard to sign divorce papers in 1945, a divorce they had agreed to in 1941, before she went off as a WAC to Europe and he was assigned to the Pacific. When Goddard arrives home MacMurray has a new shackjob, played by Arleen Whelan, to whom he is now engaged, and spends the film chasing Goddard all over America trying to get her to sign the papers, before they realize that they still do love each other; at the point they are dividing assets the camera shoots from inside their closet, allowing them to privately discover the layette and briefly discuss what happened to their plans to have a child.
MacMurray has help in the pursuit of Goddard's signature in the person of a client of his, played by Macdonald Carey. The atmosphere is of changing gender roles, with MacMurray in civilian clothes and Goddard in uniform, though she is also constantly changing into a black negligee when she expects MacMurray to show up. Carey is not only attracted to Goddard, he also seems to be attracted to Whelan and even to MacMurray himself, as Macdonald and Fred end up at one point in bed together; though nothing sexual is suggested between them there is no doubt that Leisen took some pleasure in showing two men together in bed when the production code would not even allow married couples to be shown in the same bed!
Another level of Leisen irony is that one of Goddard's job in the army had been to write an advice to the lovelorn column; she was known as Captain Lonely Hearts. At one point on the train with MacMurray pursuing her to sign the divorce papers she takes time out to counsel a WAC and her husband in which the husband, played with a certain effeteness by Frank Faylen, suggests that his wife had been fooling around in Europe and MacMurray and Goddard are offended so much by this that it seems to have struck home, though MacMurray claims his own unfaithfulness was okay because they had agreed to a divorce before they were both shipped off (it is unclear how long MacMurray has been home from the war, though he had certainly used his time well). Goddard insists on continuing to be called by the gender-neutral term "counselor" -- they were law partners as well as life partners -- and objects when MacMurray calls her "darling" when she gives him flamboyant pajamas she bought for him in Paris, which he ends up carrying with him as he chases Goddard.
Suddenly It's Spring, a title apparently intended to be ironic, reminds one of certain other films, including Howard Hawks's I Was a Male War Bride (1949) and Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937), but whether one finds it as funny as these films is subjective and somewhat irrelevant, as Suddenly It's Spring is ultimately about love triumphing over circumstances and the shifting roles of the sexes.
Monday, May 16, 2016
John Collier's Fancies and Goodnights
It will be seen that a situation had developed in which almost anything that either of them did would be certain to offend the other.
-- John Collier, Youth From Vienna
I hadn't thought much about John Collier recently -- though I did read the extraordinary His Monkey Wife (1930) some years ago and had been rather impressed with it. I was reading the third volume of Simon Callow's biography of Orson Welles recently (I wrote about it on May 8) and there was a reference to a TV film that Welles did for Desilu in 1958 based on Collier's short story Youth From Vienna; it was a pilot for an anthology series that never happened, the network considered Welles too much of a risk. It is a film that I hope to see one day, but meanwhile we have the extraordinary story that is collected in Collier's Fancies and Goodnights (Doubleday, 1951). I want to mention first of all that Collier has a very precise vocabulary, unafraid to use words or even foreign expressions, such as meretricious, valetudinarian, raison d'etre that are correct and appropriate; he also has a very mordant sensibility that combines elements of horror with those of personal and political conflict.
In Youth From Vienna a scientist comes back from studying in Europe for three years to find that his girlfriend is to marry another man. He gives them his blessing and as a present gives them a vial of a liquid he developed that will allow a person to live for two-hundred years. But there's only enough for one more person (he and his teacher have both taken it) and it's up to them how they want to use it. Things never quite turn out how one might expect, however, in a John Collier story. The other story that Welles had hoped to use in his cancelled series was Collier's Green Thoughts, a story about a man-eating orchid that some consider the basis for Roger Corman's The Little Shop of Horrors, 1960, though it is much wittier than Corman's low-budget and poetic film.
-- John Collier, Youth From Vienna
I hadn't thought much about John Collier recently -- though I did read the extraordinary His Monkey Wife (1930) some years ago and had been rather impressed with it. I was reading the third volume of Simon Callow's biography of Orson Welles recently (I wrote about it on May 8) and there was a reference to a TV film that Welles did for Desilu in 1958 based on Collier's short story Youth From Vienna; it was a pilot for an anthology series that never happened, the network considered Welles too much of a risk. It is a film that I hope to see one day, but meanwhile we have the extraordinary story that is collected in Collier's Fancies and Goodnights (Doubleday, 1951). I want to mention first of all that Collier has a very precise vocabulary, unafraid to use words or even foreign expressions, such as meretricious, valetudinarian, raison d'etre that are correct and appropriate; he also has a very mordant sensibility that combines elements of horror with those of personal and political conflict.
In Youth From Vienna a scientist comes back from studying in Europe for three years to find that his girlfriend is to marry another man. He gives them his blessing and as a present gives them a vial of a liquid he developed that will allow a person to live for two-hundred years. But there's only enough for one more person (he and his teacher have both taken it) and it's up to them how they want to use it. Things never quite turn out how one might expect, however, in a John Collier story. The other story that Welles had hoped to use in his cancelled series was Collier's Green Thoughts, a story about a man-eating orchid that some consider the basis for Roger Corman's The Little Shop of Horrors, 1960, though it is much wittier than Corman's low-budget and poetic film.
Friday, May 13, 2016
Roger Corman's X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963)
As the film progresses, Xavier has moved through an entire cycle of time, from The Golden Age of innocence through evergrowing experience and back again to innocence.
--Paul Willemen, Roger Corman (Edinburgh Film Festival, 1970).
Dr. Xavier invents a formula to see through things, an invention not intended to make him powerful but to help people by making more accurate diagnoses of their problems -- the first thing he does is to save the life of a child by stopping an operation that might have killed her. But he fights with the medical establishment and becomes a sideshow attraction and then a faith healer and tries to raise money for more research by using his powers in Las Vegas to win at blackjack. Gradually his powers overwhelm him until he can only see the center of the universe and, at the instigation of an itinerant preach, plucks out his eyes.
This imaginative film reminds me not only of other "mad scientist" films -- such as James Whale's The Invisible Man (1933) -- but also of Robert Silverberg's book Dying Inside, where the ability to read minds becomes a curse as it gets more and more out of control; Silverberg's book came out in 1972 and Silverberg might even have seen Corman's film. Dr. Xavier gets to see women under their clothes -- doing effectively what devices advertised in the backs of comic books could not do -- but only briefly, until he begins to see through their skin. When Dr. Xavier says to a colleague that soon he will be able to see everything the colleague replies that only the Gods see everything; Xavier replies that he "is closing in on the Gods." Interesting to note here the use of God in the plural, indicative of Corman's classical interests (see, especially, Atlas, 1960).
Corman's use of color in this film is impressive, both in the mundane daily colors and the psychedelic colors seen by Xavier (played with impressive intensity by Ray Milland); X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes is something of a precursor to Corman's The Trip,(1967), where the insights of acid are more benign that Xavier's formula. One of the reasons Corman could be so prolific (four films in 1962, three in 1963) was because of his continuing use of casts and crew, especially cinematographer Floyd Crosby and art director Daniel Haller.
--Paul Willemen, Roger Corman (Edinburgh Film Festival, 1970).
Dr. Xavier invents a formula to see through things, an invention not intended to make him powerful but to help people by making more accurate diagnoses of their problems -- the first thing he does is to save the life of a child by stopping an operation that might have killed her. But he fights with the medical establishment and becomes a sideshow attraction and then a faith healer and tries to raise money for more research by using his powers in Las Vegas to win at blackjack. Gradually his powers overwhelm him until he can only see the center of the universe and, at the instigation of an itinerant preach, plucks out his eyes.
This imaginative film reminds me not only of other "mad scientist" films -- such as James Whale's The Invisible Man (1933) -- but also of Robert Silverberg's book Dying Inside, where the ability to read minds becomes a curse as it gets more and more out of control; Silverberg's book came out in 1972 and Silverberg might even have seen Corman's film. Dr. Xavier gets to see women under their clothes -- doing effectively what devices advertised in the backs of comic books could not do -- but only briefly, until he begins to see through their skin. When Dr. Xavier says to a colleague that soon he will be able to see everything the colleague replies that only the Gods see everything; Xavier replies that he "is closing in on the Gods." Interesting to note here the use of God in the plural, indicative of Corman's classical interests (see, especially, Atlas, 1960).
Corman's use of color in this film is impressive, both in the mundane daily colors and the psychedelic colors seen by Xavier (played with impressive intensity by Ray Milland); X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes is something of a precursor to Corman's The Trip,(1967), where the insights of acid are more benign that Xavier's formula. One of the reasons Corman could be so prolific (four films in 1962, three in 1963) was because of his continuing use of casts and crew, especially cinematographer Floyd Crosby and art director Daniel Haller.
Sunday, May 8, 2016
Orson Welles, Volume 3, One-Man Band by Simon Callow
We must distinguish between realism and reality. People who talk about the neo-realism of my films must be joking.... Eisenstein and I are children of the same father -- Griffith. But we've taken different paths and are no longer related -- except insofar as we've both turned our backs on realism. Realism has no existence for me, it doesn't interest me at all."
--Orson Welles, interviewed by Jean Desternes, 1950
Orson Welles, One-Man Band (Viking, 2015) is the third volume of Callow's detailed and fascinating biography, One-Man Band starting in 1947 when Welles left America for Europe and ending with his last completed film, Chimes at Midnight, in 1965 (which I wrote about on June 22,2015) and is an appropriate companion book to Patrick McGilligan's Young Orson (which I wrote about on Feb. 18 of this year). Most of the period covered by Callow's third volume Welles spent in the theatre in Europe and as an actor in the films of other directors in order to raise money for his own films: Othello(1952), Mr. Arkadin(1955), The Trial (1962) and Chimes at Midnight, as well as his brief return to America for Touch of Evil (1958). Callow is a stage and film actor who shows a detailed knowledge of Welles's stage work, right through to the end, directing Olivier in Ionesco's Rhinoceros in 1960.
Callow demonstrates clearly how Welles's biggest problem in filmmaking was his inability to conceive a work in his head; he had to be inspired by what was in front of him and then largely created the film in the editing. After Citizen Kane no one was willing to pick up the tab for this kind of essentially non-commercial filmmaking. Fortunately Welles was able to keep going, more or less, by acting in the films of other directors, the less-talented the better so he could direct and write his own parts. A notable exception was Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) where Reed put his foot down and kept Welles's part limited, though Reed and writer Graham Greene did let Welles write some of his own dialogue, including the famous cuckoo clock speech.
Welles was driven by many things, including his appetite and his insecurities. When he directed he usually had stand-ins for his parts and then rehearsed or filmed himself later and, often, alone. He was fortunate that many people stayed devoted to him, even when he behaved badly (as he often did), because he offered them opportunities not available elsewhere to do their best work and not have to descend to the meretricious.
--Orson Welles, interviewed by Jean Desternes, 1950
Orson Welles, One-Man Band (Viking, 2015) is the third volume of Callow's detailed and fascinating biography, One-Man Band starting in 1947 when Welles left America for Europe and ending with his last completed film, Chimes at Midnight, in 1965 (which I wrote about on June 22,2015) and is an appropriate companion book to Patrick McGilligan's Young Orson (which I wrote about on Feb. 18 of this year). Most of the period covered by Callow's third volume Welles spent in the theatre in Europe and as an actor in the films of other directors in order to raise money for his own films: Othello(1952), Mr. Arkadin(1955), The Trial (1962) and Chimes at Midnight, as well as his brief return to America for Touch of Evil (1958). Callow is a stage and film actor who shows a detailed knowledge of Welles's stage work, right through to the end, directing Olivier in Ionesco's Rhinoceros in 1960.
Callow demonstrates clearly how Welles's biggest problem in filmmaking was his inability to conceive a work in his head; he had to be inspired by what was in front of him and then largely created the film in the editing. After Citizen Kane no one was willing to pick up the tab for this kind of essentially non-commercial filmmaking. Fortunately Welles was able to keep going, more or less, by acting in the films of other directors, the less-talented the better so he could direct and write his own parts. A notable exception was Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) where Reed put his foot down and kept Welles's part limited, though Reed and writer Graham Greene did let Welles write some of his own dialogue, including the famous cuckoo clock speech.
Welles was driven by many things, including his appetite and his insecurities. When he directed he usually had stand-ins for his parts and then rehearsed or filmed himself later and, often, alone. He was fortunate that many people stayed devoted to him, even when he behaved badly (as he often did), because he offered them opportunities not available elsewhere to do their best work and not have to descend to the meretricious.
Friday, May 6, 2016
Roger Corman's Bucket of Blood (1959)
They commissioned him to make a commercially viable piece of popular entertainment: he wanted to make a work of art.
--Simon Callow, Orson Welles: One-Man Band , Viking (2015)
In America artistic movies are usually not made that way intentionally. Welles always tried to make works of art and always ran into problems; Blake Edwards would always make commercial films, such as the Inspector Closeau films, in order to make more personal works and, of course, there are a few true artists --John Ford, Charlie Chaplin -- who produce popular entertainment with true artistry. Roger Corman made works of art simply by not trying to, hiring skilled writers, such as Charles Griffith, who tapped unintentionally into the unconscious zeitgeist in the always commercially successful horror genre. Bucket of Blood , 1959, stars Corman stalwart Dick Miller as a busboy in a beatnik café, complete with poetry readings and folk songs, who accidentally kills a cat and then gets the brilliant idea to cover it with clay and present it as a sculpture. Soon he starts killing people. covering them with clay, and exhibiting them with titles such as "murdered man." He is soon discovered by critics, who acclaim his impressive return to realism as compared to the current murky abstractions of modern poetry and painting.
Corman says that he and his writer and crew were part of the beatnik scene themselves, the satire of which in Bucket of Blood is affectionate, with the coffee house (The Yellow Door) containing almost as many undercover narcotic detectives as beatniks. The movie is an effective satire on the American desire of success at any price and a poignant tale of a search for love by those who will do anything to find it.
--Simon Callow, Orson Welles: One-Man Band , Viking (2015)
In America artistic movies are usually not made that way intentionally. Welles always tried to make works of art and always ran into problems; Blake Edwards would always make commercial films, such as the Inspector Closeau films, in order to make more personal works and, of course, there are a few true artists --John Ford, Charlie Chaplin -- who produce popular entertainment with true artistry. Roger Corman made works of art simply by not trying to, hiring skilled writers, such as Charles Griffith, who tapped unintentionally into the unconscious zeitgeist in the always commercially successful horror genre. Bucket of Blood , 1959, stars Corman stalwart Dick Miller as a busboy in a beatnik café, complete with poetry readings and folk songs, who accidentally kills a cat and then gets the brilliant idea to cover it with clay and present it as a sculpture. Soon he starts killing people. covering them with clay, and exhibiting them with titles such as "murdered man." He is soon discovered by critics, who acclaim his impressive return to realism as compared to the current murky abstractions of modern poetry and painting.
Corman says that he and his writer and crew were part of the beatnik scene themselves, the satire of which in Bucket of Blood is affectionate, with the coffee house (The Yellow Door) containing almost as many undercover narcotic detectives as beatniks. The movie is an effective satire on the American desire of success at any price and a poignant tale of a search for love by those who will do anything to find it.
Tuesday, May 3, 2016
One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway.
Was he mad or was he a political terrorist?
Asne Seierstad, One of Us (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015, translated by Sarah Death).
I read biographies to see how people accomplish so much in spite of their neuroses (or it is because of them?) and there are no simple or easy answers. Similarly, there are no simple answers as to why some people commit crimes and others, from the same sort of background, do not. In 2011 Anders Breivik killed eight people with a bomb outside the prime minister's office in Oslo and then proceeded to a youth camp on a nearby island and killed sixty-nine more people, most of them teenage members of the governing Labour Party. Seierstad examines Breivik's life in detail and all the clues missed by Breivik's mother (his father was out of the picture) and the authorities, who acted like the Keystone Cops in their futile attempts to stop the massacre. Breivik failed at everything he tried to do --from graffiti to selling fake diplomas -- and always blamed others, eventually moving home and devoting himself full-time to computer games, especially World of Warcraft.
Breivik gradually shifted from computer games to anti-Muslim websites, saying to his friends, "The Labour Party has ruined our country. It's feminized the state and made it into a matriarchy. And more than anything, it's made it a place where it's impossible to get rich. The Labour Party's let the Muslims occupy .." at which point he would start to repeat himself and his friends would tune him out. He wrote an unpublished book about the Muslims taking over Norway and rented a farm where he could organize his attacks.
Seierstad does an excellent job of detailing the lives of many of the victims, such as Simon and Bano, who came to Norway to escape the turmoil of the Middle East and became more Norwegian than many of those born in Norway. It is indeed a question whether anyone could have done anything to prevent the massacre. Seierstad wisely gives us all the details and lets us draw our own conclusions, including how what happened in Norway relates to the current political situation in America.
Asne Seierstad, One of Us (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015, translated by Sarah Death).
I read biographies to see how people accomplish so much in spite of their neuroses (or it is because of them?) and there are no simple or easy answers. Similarly, there are no simple answers as to why some people commit crimes and others, from the same sort of background, do not. In 2011 Anders Breivik killed eight people with a bomb outside the prime minister's office in Oslo and then proceeded to a youth camp on a nearby island and killed sixty-nine more people, most of them teenage members of the governing Labour Party. Seierstad examines Breivik's life in detail and all the clues missed by Breivik's mother (his father was out of the picture) and the authorities, who acted like the Keystone Cops in their futile attempts to stop the massacre. Breivik failed at everything he tried to do --from graffiti to selling fake diplomas -- and always blamed others, eventually moving home and devoting himself full-time to computer games, especially World of Warcraft.
Breivik gradually shifted from computer games to anti-Muslim websites, saying to his friends, "The Labour Party has ruined our country. It's feminized the state and made it into a matriarchy. And more than anything, it's made it a place where it's impossible to get rich. The Labour Party's let the Muslims occupy .." at which point he would start to repeat himself and his friends would tune him out. He wrote an unpublished book about the Muslims taking over Norway and rented a farm where he could organize his attacks.
Seierstad does an excellent job of detailing the lives of many of the victims, such as Simon and Bano, who came to Norway to escape the turmoil of the Middle East and became more Norwegian than many of those born in Norway. It is indeed a question whether anyone could have done anything to prevent the massacre. Seierstad wisely gives us all the details and lets us draw our own conclusions, including how what happened in Norway relates to the current political situation in America.
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