- FilmRadar Field Trip “Silents Under the Stars” w/Louise Brooks & Historic Tour
August 6, 2008 - Trailer for THE BROTHERS BLOOM
August 5, 2008 - Replacements for “At the Movies”
July 22, 2008 - An interview with Scott Prendergast, writer, director and star of KABLUEY
July 9, 2008
Written by 
The Three Stooges Festival
Today I went to the beautiful Alex Theatre in Glendale for the yearly Thanksgiving Weekend THREE STOOGES FESTIVAL. Believe it or not, I am one of the few females in the world who happens to LOVE the Three Stooges. This year’s theme was “Curly and Shemp Go Nutz.” The theme last year was “Stooge Coach” and featured all Stooge shorts set in the Wild West. Each year they pick a different angle or theme, which I think is a really great programming idea.
The first short film they showed was called BEER AND PRETZELS from 1933. This was one of the very first Stooge films and at the time they were still partnered with Ted Healy and were billed as “Ted Healy and His Stooges.” It was really interesting to see the Stooges this early in their careers. The short basically served to showcase several singing and dancing vaudville acts with the Stooges and Healy providing the comedy in between each act. Personally I found Healy to be annoying and not very interesting to watch. Even in the beginning, it is clear that the Stooges have an amazing knack for comedy and great chemistry as a team. They eclipse Healy at every turn.
They showed a particularly hilarious Stooge short entitled GRIPS GRUNTS AND GROANS from 1937. In this short, the Stooges duck into a gym (to hide out from the police of course) and they befriend a giant wrestler named “Bustoff.” He is about to wrestle in a very high stakes match with serious money being bet on him to win. Shortly before the match, he gets drunk and the Stooges try everything to sober him up. Curly accidentally knocks over a ton of steel barbels that hit him on the head and then a locker which crushes his body. Sufficed to say, “Bustoff” is not able to step into the ring. Larry and Moe insist that Curly take his place. At the start of the match, Curly is being clobbered by his opponent, but Larry and Moe remember that the scent of “Wild Hyacinth” perfumes sends Curly into a violent frenzy. They get the perfume and pour it all over Curly who proceeds to win the match and to beat everyone else in the entire stadium up as well. I like Shemp, but Curly has always been my favorite and this film really shows him at his best!
According to an article in the LA Times last week, seeing movies in a theatre on the big screen could very soon be a thing of the past. With all due respect, I strongly disagree. In spite of changes in the industry, I don’t think that experience will ever go away. There is something magic about sitting in a theatre filled with people and experiencing a movie on the big screen.
When I was growing up, the only way I could see The Stooges was at 6am every day on channel 11. I never got to experience them on the big screen until I was an adult. Having been to the Stooges Festival the past 2 years at the Alex, I can tell you first hand that it is a great experience! The people who attend are so filled with excitement and sheer enthusiasm. Everyone laughs, cheers and claps along with the Stooges theme music. There is a feeling in the air...a joy...that could never be captured on a home entertainment system, computer or PSP. It isn’t just the movie, it is the shared experience. There was a 5 year old little boy sitting next to me last year during the film. His eyes were wide with awe. I told him that he was very fortunate to discover these films for the first time on the big screen. He smiled and agreed with me.
Today there were a TON of kid and families at theatre. I like to think that these kids will grow up to love and appreciate film as much as I do. You never know, they might be the film historians, preservationists or filmmakers of the future. I’m sure I sound old fashioned, but today seeing the Stooges on the big screen with a room full of laughing people....THAT to me is what going to the movies is all about.
PLAYTIME
The Egyptian theatre has shown PLAYTIME on many occasions in the past, but each time I was always either out of town or unavailable for some reason. I’ve heard so many people tell me how brilliant this film is and that I MUST see it.
Tonight I finally got my chance. I saw PLAYTIME on 70mm at the Egyptian. You may be shocked to hear me say this.....but I didn’t like it. If you want to throw rotten cabbage at me, I will understand. The film just didn’t work for me. I loved the production design, the site gags and the costumes BUT there was NO STORY to tie it all together. The mise en scene alone is not enough to hold my interest for 2 hours! There was no story, no plot, no character development...NO NOTHING. This movie was all dressed up with no place to go.
Perhaps this is just a matter of personal taste, but I tend to dislike films that have no story. I hated 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. That film had no momentum and I thought watching it was pure torture. I also hated UMBERTO D for the same reason. Some people have argued with me that these films DID have stories, they were just told in a very visual and abstract sort of way. I see their point, but regardless I just didn’t care for these films.
I love great dialogue, great characters and a solid story. Maybe that’s why I love Billy Wilder films so much.
Feel free to argue with me if you like.
A HOUSE DIVIDED and THE UNHOLY THREE
Tonight I went to UCLA once again for their International Preservation Festival. The line up for tonight consisted of films from the early 30s.
The first one was called A HOUSE DIVIDED (1931) and was directed by William Wyler. The story is about a brutal, hard drinking fisherman (Walter Huston) who has just lost his wife and is trying to find a replacement for her. His gentle sensitive son (Kent Douglass) is suffering greatly from his mother’s death and is unable to deal with his father’s brutish ways. The father decides to send off for a hefty middle aged mail order bride thinking that she will be able to do all of the work around the house and help out with the fishing as well. When a young and delicately beautiful woman (Helen Chandler) shows up instead, trouble ensues when the son falls for her and the father finds out.
Walter Huston really carries this film and does an excellent job! He has a tremendous screen presence and it is impossible to pay attention to anything or anyone else when he is on screen. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for Helen Chandler. She is best remembered for playing “Mina” in DRACULA opposite Bela Lugosi. While she is very beautiful, she really can’t act....or at least if she can it just doesn’t translate on the screen. I’m still glad to have had the chance to see this film since it is a rare one. William Wyler was (and is) without question one of the all time great directors in Hollywood.
The next film in the double feature was THE UNHOLY THREE (1930) which stars the great Lon Chaney and is a remake of the 1925 silent version in which he also starred. I have seen the silent version, but this was the first time I had seen the talkie. When it began I realized that I had actually NEVER seen Lon Chaney talk! For some reason, it is always a shock to see silent stars talking. I always use the analogy of a ballerina who is dancing in Swan Lake and then all of the sudden comes to the edge of the stage and starts talking to the audience. It is like breaking a 4th wall of some kind. That said, Lon Chaney had an excellent voice. It is exactly what you’d expect it to be. The plot for THE UNHOLY THREE revolves around a strongman, a ventriloquist and a midget who create their own crime syndicate in order to pull off jewel robberies.
Chaney’s performance is great as you might expect. He plays the character with such menace and such perfection...it is heartbreaking that this was his last film. He had been diagnosed with throat cancer during filming and by the end of the shoot, he knew he was dying. I was looking for some sort of signs of this in the film, but they weren’t there. He looks and seems so strong and in command. He doesn’t show the slightest sign of illness. Ever since I saw THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA as a little girl, Lon Chaney has always been one of my most favorite actors. There weren’t limits on him. There was nothing he couldn’t do...no character he couldn’t play. These days people make such a big deal if an actor changes their looks for a role (think Nicole Kidman in THE HOURS or Charlize Theron in MONSTER) but for Chaney, that was just another day at the office. He transformed himself routinely. He gave even his most twisted characters a depth and an emotional core that elevated them and made them human. Had he lived, he would have been great in 30s melodramas, gangster films and of course the great Universal horror films. His death was a great loss to cinema and to his fans. I don’t think there has ever been or ever will be another actor that versatile again. Thanks to film preservation efforts, his brilliance will continue to live on.
IN THE MIDDLE OF A MOVIE at the Los Angeles Film Forum
Her travels included Helsinki (Finland), Hamburg (Germany), Los Angeles (USA), Seydisfjördur (Iceland), St. Petersburg (Russia) and Tallinn (Estonia).
In watching these, I noticed that apartments look pretty much the same no matter what corner of the world you are in. People are also interested in sex and violence pretty much everywhere. In one scene, Tellervo (the Finnish woman) smeared ketchup all over a guy who then acted out a violent suicide scene. In another scene people were walking around naked and acting like they were in a David Lynch movie. Another thing I thought about was the universality of human emotions. People may live on the other side of the world, but we ALL share many of the same hopes, dreams and fears.
I found myself doing a great deal of eyeball rolling during the scenes that were shot in Los Angeles. It seemed that EVERYONE had a film, band, art gallery or something they were trying to shamelessly promote. I love living here (honest) but sometimes people here can be SO shallow, self-serving and narcissistic that it drives me insane. The Los Angeles films were really hard to watch. I found the other ones far more interesting.
Overall I think that Tellervo Kalleinen captured some really interesting ideas through these people. I would definitely be interested in seeing more of her work in the future.
SON OF THE SHEIK
I’ve always loved Rudolph Valentino. Four years ago I decided to take up the mantle of “Lady in Black.” I wasn’t doing it for attention or press or anything like that. My motives were simple. From the first time I saw his image flashing on the screen, I was somehow in love. Silly to fall in love with a man who died almost 50 years before I was even born, but there was just SOMETHING about him that grabbed a hold of me and never let go. Besides I love history with a passion and I saw being the “Lady in Black” as a way to keep Valentino and his film legacy alive for a whole new generation of people my age and younger.
So every year on August 23rd I show up at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery with my black vintage dress and roses and I speak at the memorial service about the women in black of the past. I’ve also introduced his films at the Silent Movie Theatre and the Old Town Music Hall.
Valentino was a unique screen personality that has never seen an equal. He was lightening in a bottle....a brief flash of something powerful and wildly unique. He was sexual, exotic, romantic, alluring and valiant all at the same time.
Sitting in the balacony of the Orpheum seeing his image flicker once again on the big screen transported me right back to the 20s. It was a place in time where silents were golden and as Norma Desmond / Gloria Swanson famously declared, “We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces. There just aren’t any faces like that anymore!”
Indeed.
James Dean Double Feature
EAST OF EDEN (1955)
The film is set around WWI and takes place in Salinas, California. Cal Trask (James Dean) feels angry and frustrated that in spite of his best efforts, his father loves his brother Aron much more....and makes that painfully clear. He tries to win his father’s favor, only to be thwarted at every turn.
James Dean is terrific! He seems to play the role of a wounded angry youth better than anyone else ever has before or since. Considering he had a broken relationship with his father in real life, this had to have fueled his performance. I’ve read that he also hated Raymond Massey (the actor who played the father.) Director Elia Kazan apparently encouraged their animosity knowing that it would serve them well on screen. He was right.
REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955)
Once again James Dean plays the troubled youth, only this time the setting is Los Angeles in the 1950s. James Dean plays “Jim Stark” whose parents keep moving around and he must constantly try to fit in. He is naturally angry, troubled and confused about his life and about how to be a man. His father (who is beaten down by the overbearing wife) is not much of an example. He befriends Judy (Natalie Wood) and Plato (Sal Mineo) and the three form a bond that they could never find elsewhere. Tragedy ensues as they are chased and threatened by the local thugs and then the police. While the film feels very much like a product of the 1950s, in other ways it feels timeless. Even though the clothing styles and cars have changed, the feelings of alienation, loneliness and teenage angst still ring true. Clad in blue jeans and a crimson red jacket, James Dean seems to come alive as a walking talking ICON. He was (and is) the personification of rebellious youth. Time has done nothing to diminish that.
Warner Home Video just released a James Dean box set with all three of his film and a documentary included. EAST OF EDEN had been unavailable for years, so if you missed it in the theatres, this is a great chance to see his work.
Silent Film Gala--Charlie Chaplin’s THE CIRCUS
This is my 3rd year running to attend the yearly Silent Film Gala and I wouldn’t miss it for the world! It is a lovely evening and a chance to see a silent film with an orchestra at UCLA’S Royce Hall.
THE CIRCUS (1928)
According to the program notes, this film was made during a very difficult and tumultuous time during Chaplin’s life. A storm had destoryed part of the set, his second wife was divorcing him and he was in trouble with the IRS. The film took two years to make during which time he suffered a nervous breakdown. Fortunately the strain doesn’t show on film and the comedy is excellent. Charlie Chaplin as “The Tramp” wonders into a traveling circus and inadvertently becomes the main attraction. He falls in love with a girl who is the abused daughter of the circus owner. Naturally chaos and comedy ensue...but so does heartbreak. In the end, Chaplin walks off into the sunset alone. This is a beautiful film and the orchestra sounded magnificent!
Chaplin is the only comedian I can think of who makes me laugh AND cry. When I first saw CITY LIGHTS I wept openly. Every time I see THE KID I cry. There is just something so touching and human and heart breaking behind Chaplin’s eyes. Many people use the word genius rather freely, but Chaplin is one of the few people the word sincerely describes.
If you haven’t picked up the Chaplin boxed sets on DVD, you should really check them out! Sure it is not the same as seeing it on a big screen with an orchestra and all, but it is still a great way to discover his work!
BABY FACE Uncensored and TWO SECONDS
The era of Pre-Code films ran from 1930 to 1934. During that time women portrayed in films were modern, defiant and complicated. They ditched cheating husbands, had lovers, had careers and were independent and unapologetic. Prior to this time, many women’s roles either depicted the woman as good or bad--the sinner or saint--the virgin or whore. In other words, prior depictions of women were simple stereotypes that allowed no room for shades of gray.
I first discovered Pre-Code in college and I remember being shocked (yet thrilled) at how bold and brazen it was. Until then I had only been exposed to Classic Hollywood films that were Westerns, Musicals, Comedies, Horror and pretty pure stuff overall. Pre-Code was vastly different and proved to be a complete revelation. These films tackled adult issues and really brought complex morality and mature thought to the screen. They also offered incredible roles for women that were sexually charged which was something I had never expected to see in an old movie. When the Production Code came into effect and cracked down on Hollywood these films became extinct. It is a shame...but at least for a brief few years these films got made and were able to create an impact that can still be seen and felt to this day.
BABY FACE (1933) I read the NY Times article a few months ago that some additional (and very racy) censored footage had been discovered for BABY FACE and it would be put back in the film! I was thrilled! UCLA showed BABY FACE-Uncensored to a sold out audience. Before the film they explained to us where the additional footage was so we could look for it. If you haven’t seen it....BABY FACE tales the gin soaked story of Lily Powers (Barbara Stanwyck) who is forced to work as a waitress and prostitute in her father’s grimy speakeasy. After his sudden death in an explosion, Lily sets out for New York with her maid to seek a better life. She gets a job in a New York bank where she literally sleeps her way to the top floor by floor. Barbara Stanwyck is excellent! She exudes more sexuality with a mere glance than most women do with their entire bodies. She is fierce, tough and unstoppable. It amazed me how much the uncensored footage changed the entire course of the film!
Posted below is the NY Times article which can summarize far better than I could:
A WANTON WOMAN’S WAYS REVEALED, 71 YEARS LATER
January 9, 2005
By DAVE KEHR
STARRING a slinky young Barbara Stanwyck as a bootlegger’s daughter who sleeps her way to the top of a New York financial empire, “Baby Face” is one of the most notorious films from the pre-Code era - that period of much relaxed censorship that Hollywood enjoyed from 1930 to 1934.
Last summer, Michael Mashon, a curator of the motion picture division at the Library of Congress, received a request for a print of “Baby Face” from the organizers of the London Film Festival, who wanted to show the film as part of its annual tribute to pre-Code rambunctiousness. The library’s collection, Mr. Mashon discovered, contained two negatives of “Baby Face.” One was the original camera negative; the other, identified as a duplicate negative, looked slightly longer.
What he saw was a revelation. “It was a moment that archivists live for,” Mr. Mashon recalled. “I knew in the first five minutes that this version was different. I can’t begin to describe the sheer joy of discovery, the feeling that I may have been the first person since 1933 to see ‘Baby Face’ uncut.”
What Mr. Mashon had unearthed was, indeed, “Baby Face” in its raw - very raw - state, much as it had been submitted to the Motion Picture Division of the State of New York Education Department, otherwise known as the New York State censorship board. The board’s decision, received by Warner Brothers on April 28, 1933, consisted of one word: REJECTED.
The board did not give any reasons, perhaps because they seemed obvious enough. “Baby Face,” directed by Alfred E. Green from an original story by Darryl F. Zanuck (who was then in charge of production at Warner), remains one of the most stunningly sordid films ever made, a standout even among the wave of risqué entertainments that filled American screens in the early years of the Depression. Even the cut version is a jaw-dropper; with its five full minutes of sleaze restored, it has to be seen to be not quite believed.
The heroine of “Baby Face,” Lily Powers (Ms. Stanwyck), was raised in her father’s second-story speakeasy in a working-class neighborhood of Erie. Pa. Dad (Robert Barrat), apparently, has been offering her services to the local steelworkers (one describes her as “the sweetheart of the night shift"), but when he sells her in a whispered conversation with a corrupt politician (we see a greasy wad of bills passing between them), Lily has had enough. The pol tries to touch her thigh, and she dumps a cup of hot coffee on his hand; obviously a slow learner, he comes up from behind to grab her breasts, and Lily smashes a beer bottle against his forehead and knocks him cold.
And that’s only the first reel. Urged on by a not-so-kindly old cobbler (Alphonse Ethier), who recommends that Lily read Nietzsche - and “Be strong! Defiant! Use men to get the things you want!” - Lily hops a freight train to New York. A favor performed behind closed doors for a tubby office boy at the Gotham Trust Company gets her a job as a file clerk; with similarly persuasive techniques, she wriggles her way up the corporate ladder, ducking through a door marked “Ladies Rest Room” for a squalid encounter with one supervisor (Douglas Dumbrille) and deliberately destroying the impending marriage of another (Donald Cook). Finally, she agrees to be kept in an uptown apartment by the bank’s elderly vice president (Henry Kolker). Lily musses his hair and calls him “Fuzzy-Wuzzy.”
These all can be seen in the new print of “Baby Face,” which Mr. Mashon showed at the London festival last month, and which will have its American premiere in New York at Film Forum on Jan. 24. (A DVD will be released next year.) But in the version of “Baby Face” that has been known for the last 71 years, most of those moments were either compromised or eliminated. In the censored version, the politician’s first look at Lily is no longer a leering panning shot that begins with Stanwyck’s legs and rises slowly, almost reluctantly, to her face; money no longer changes hands between her father and the politician; she’s now the “sweetheart of the night (blip!)”; and the incident with the beer bottle has been dropped entirely.
But still missing from the new print, unfortunately, is a scene in which Lily (accompanied by her best friend, a young black woman played by Theresa Harris) negotiates the fare to New York with a willing brakeman (James Murray). “Scene ends with brakeman’s glove falling beside lantern and his hand turning the lantern out,” reads the description in a Warner Brothers censorship file.
Warner Brothers voluntarily made these cuts, along with quite a few others, in response to the New York board’s blunt rejection. They worked: on June 17, 1933, the board passed the revised version, and the film opened soon after, to good reviews and good business.
Though many of the changes were crudely applied, others were more subtle and made with some skill. Instead of “Ed propositioned me at the funeral,” Lily says, “Ed made me a proposition at the funeral” - a shift in tone that made all the difference to the New York censors.
In an attempt to give the film a moral voice, the Nietzschean cobbler was transformed into Lily’s Jiminy Cricket. In the uncut film, he sends Lily a congratulatory copy of Nietzsche’s “Thoughts Out of Season,” urging her to: “Face life as you find it, defiantly and unafraid! Waste no energy yearning for the moon! Crush out all sentiment!”
In the revised scene, the title of the book has been obscured, and the cobbler writes to her: “You have chosen the wrong way. You are still a coward. I send you this book hoping that you will allow it to guide you right.” These “compensating moral values,” as the Production Code office called them, did much to make “Baby Face” acceptable.
“‘Baby Face’ was certainly one of the top 10 films that caused the Production Code to be enforced,” said Mark. A. Vieira, author of an illustrated study of the period, “Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood” (1999). “We all assumed that we would never see those scenes. Now, through an archival miracle, we have them.”
The next film in the Pre-Code double feature was TWO SECONDS (1932) starring Edward G. Robinson. It is about an honest construction worker whose life is brought down by an evil scheming dance hall girl. He is sitting in the electric chair and it told that it will take two seconds for him to die. In those seconds, he flashes back to the circumstances that led to his ruin. The final moments of the film are hair-raising. Edward G. Robinson totally owns the screen. He is riveting and unforgettable.
The theatre at UCLA was packed and the audience seemed to LOVE the movies! Thanks to the efforts of archivists and film preservationists, these Pre-Code gems will live forever and continue to shock and thrill audiences!
Silent Movie night at the Echo Park Film Center
Tonight I ventured down to the Echo Park Film Center for their first “Silent Movie Night” which was being hosted and programmed by my friend Tom. I LOVE the Echo Park Film Center and would highly encourage people to go there. It has such a “shabby chic” grungy guerilla film feel to it. They have screenings, classes, seminars, a tape and film library and much more.
The first thing we watched was a collection of silent era peep shows. The featured a series of women in corsets and women showing their ankles! My how times have changed! The second film we saw was an excellent short film called TEDDY AT THE THROTTLE. It was the story of a girl (a very young Gloria Swanson) who is kidnapped and tied to the railroad tracks by an evil greedy man (Wallace Berry) out to make a financial killing off her demise. A dog winds up coming to the rescue, and not just any dog mind you...but the most amazingly fast, intelligent and skilled dog in canine history. The dog grabs a telegram, jumps onto a train, jumps off the train and unties Gloria in record time. The film had a campy comic tone to it and was hilarious to watch. It seemed to be making fun of the standard silent movie cliches and having a great time doing so. Then we watched a silent short called FATE’S TURNING. It is about a wealthy man who cheats on his bride to be with a waitress and gets her pregnant. The waitress is forced to quit her job and has no way to make a living. She tracks him down and shows up (with the baby no less) to his wedding. This was scandalous stuff for 1914 or so when it was made.
The feature for the evening was called TRAFFIC IN SOULS and was about the white slavery trade going on in turn of the century New York. It was really interesting and tragic, but it ran a little too long. I wish it had been about 15 mintues shorter or so. Otherwise, it was still very interesting.
What I liked about Tom’s selections for the evening was that they were all very unusual and they all dispelled commonly held beliefs about silent films being all innocent and sweetly simplistic. These films were daring and innovative. Most importantly (at least to me) they act as a sort of cultural mirror as to what the world was like at that time....how people dressed, thought, felt and acted. The feature was shot on location in New York and it was amazing to see shots of the city from so long ago.
The evening was a cinematic time capsule....and let me add that it was time well spent!
Double Bill - THE SIN OF NORA MORAN & THE POWER AND THE GLORY
If you haven’t attended the Wednesday night Film Preservation series at UCLA--you MUST! It is an excellent evening and always provides great insight into the process (both creative and technical) of restoring a film. They also tend to show really rare hard to find gems which makes it all the more worthy.
This particular evening, the screened a double feature of 2 recently restored prints.
THE POWER AND THE GLORY (1933)
First up was THE POWER AND THE GLORY which is the film that launched Spencer Tracy into full blown stardom. Before the film UCLA’s Robert Gitt explained that the film was actually the forerunner of CITIZEN KANE in terms of its storytelling style. He said that the film was so influential that countless writers and directors screened it for years and considered it a great inspiration. The film was written by the great Preston Sturges and is not just good--it was GREAT! The story chronicles the rise and fall of a railroad executive named Tom Garner (Spencer Tracy) and is told through a series of flashbacks. The characters are complicated, flawed and incredibly interesting. Silent star Colleen Moore plays his long suffering wife in the film and she is excellent! She is really the heart of the film and it is because of her encouragement and strength that the Spencer Tracy character succeeds. Unfortunately he finds out that his success comes at a price. The power and status he has achieved slowly start to destroy his life and the lives of those around him.
The dialogue crackles and this film is simply electrifying. It has such a tremendous amount of energy and momentum behind it. The fact that the film is still around is something of a minor miracle. Robert Gitt explained that the original negative was destroyed in a fire and they had to call upon multiple sources to restore and preserve the film. The main and end titles had to be recreated as well as parts of the score.
Fortunately due to these efforts, the film is alive and well. I really hope this gets a DVD release. We are so spoiled living here in Los Angeles to get to see rare films like this on the big screen, but there are so many film lovers who aren’t so fortunate. This film is incredible and really deserves to be available to film lovers in every corner of the world.
THE SIN OF NORA MORAN (1933)
Based on the title alone, I was VERY interested in seeing this film. This film is told in flashbacks, flashforwards and flash backs within flashbacks. The narrative goes far off the rails, but it didn’t matter much because I was so enraptured with the film that I was willing to go along for the freefalling ride. The UCLA Program notes described this film as, “Haunting, hallucinatory, artistic, exploitive—THE SIN OF NORA MORAN may be the best B-picture of the ‘30s.” I complete agree. This is without question the most avant garde narrative film I have ever seen. Being a low budget B-movie, it makes incredible use of stock footage! When Nora Moran is walking down the street you see this barrage of city skyscrapers, a woman’s feet walking, cigarette smoke and images of dingy nightclubs and jazz musicians. That montage alone explained so much about the gritty, seemy, yet strangely seductive world that Nora Moran was inhabiting. Zita Johann played the title role and she was really excellent. She played Nora Moran not as a heartless vixen, but with a great deal of sympathy. She was best known for co-starring with Boris Karloff in THE MUMMY, but she would only make one more film in 1934 before retiring. That is a real shame because she clearly had talent and could have had a long career.
As far as this film being a Pre-Code, well ALL the proper elements are there. The film contains rape, murder, lying, cheating, scandal, the electric chair and death row!
Yes, this film is a real pot boiler and is well worth checking out...which you CAN. It is available on DVD!
CRASH
In my effort to mix up my film-going, I went to see the new film CRASH written and directed by Paul Haggis. I must admit my expectations were very high given that I loved MILLION DOLLAR BABY (which he wrote) and I really like the cast. The film was very well made and Haggis seems to have a great understanding of desperate working class people in Los Angeles. The problem I had with the film is that it didn’t dig deep enough into the characters and flesh them out in a more 3 dimensional way. In watching this film it is obviously in the similiar vain of MAGNOLIA, for but some reason I found that MAGNOLIA packed much more of a punch. It had more of a jagged, eccentric edge and it showed you a clearer portrait of the characters and their inner workings before it cut to the quick.
The story that seemed to be the most effective was the one with Matt Dillion as the racist cop. At first we see what a horrible vile person he is and then later in the film we find out why and where his hatred and attitude stems from. Dillion is great in the role and you really get a sense of his frustration, rage and desperation. I also really admired the work of Don Cheadle. He just makes every movie he is in better by his presence. I’d honestly pay $12 to watch him read the phone book. He is equally effective in the film, but again I wish I would have seen more of his character and learned more about his character’s perspective. Sandra Bullock does well in her role, but she is given little to do. We never find out much about her or what is driving her to feel the way she does.
There were also some character twists that bothered me. It seems that almost every character in the film is extremely racist, yet for some of the characters that doesn’t seem to fit. For example the cop played by Jennifer Esposito gets outraged and makes racist comments towards an Asian woman who collides with her in a car accident, YET later on when Don Cheadle’s character makes a racist remark about her being Mexican she takes such great offense. Her character seems to have the attitude that racism is ok as long as it is not about her. That just didn’t ring true in the scipt or to her character.
Overall, CRASH is an interesting portrait of racism in Los Angeles and it is worth seeing...but at the end of the day I’m still harboring mixed emotions because I felt it just didn’t dig deep enough to get to the core of what causes it in the first place.
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW (1929)
Tonight I went to the excellent UCLA series “Out of the Past: Film Preservation Today” to see the 1929 version of TAMING OF THE SHREW. I was very curious to see this film for a variety of reasons. Firstly because it is very rarely shown and secondly because it led to the ruin of stars Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and director Sam Taylor. I kept wondering how a film could be so awful that it destroyed 3 careers! I had to see it and find out why. I went into the film with very low expectations. I was ready for a train wreck. Surprisingly, it didn’t pan out that way. The film is actually not too bad. At a running time of 63 minutes, it didn’t exactly stay faithful to the play, but in many ways that didn’t matter. The UCLA preservation person spoke before the film and told us that only 20% of the film was actually taken from the play. Apparently in 1929 they made a silent version of this as well since many theatres around the world were still not equipped for sound. In 1966 someone decided to restore the film and re-release it to dovetail the upcoming Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton version. In doing so in 1966, this person edited the film down, laid in new music and really bad sound effects. What we saw was this 1966 version.
At any rate, back to the film itself.....it’s actually NOT half bad. Douglas Fairbanks really seems to be having fun with is character and is actually quite good. Mary Pickford seems a bit ill at ease in certain aspects of the role, but overall she manages to hold her own. Watching these 2 world famous silent film stars act for the first time together, their chemistry is clearly apparent. At the time this film was made they were having problems in their marriage, but you seen any evidence of that in this film. The direction is not too bad either. The camera moves around quite a bit considering this is an early talkie. They had a top notch A-list crew including cinematographer Hal Rosson and set designer William Cameron Menzies.
No, this film was not a disaster AT ALL, which made me wonder why it has such a bad reputation and why it has been blamed for the collapse of 3 careers.
In my opinion, I don’t blame the film....just the timing. Pickford and Fairbanks were both having great career difficulties before this film was made. Their images and popularity was so directly tied to silent cinema that when talkies began it was clear that the public was ready for new stars in what was essentially a new medium. Buster Keaton, Clara Bow, John Gilbert, Lillian Gish, Louise Brooks, and countless other talented stars met a similiar fate. Ensuing decades have proven their talent to be timeless, but right then....right there...they were simply relics of the 20s. They were sort of frozen in a certain era that the rest of the world was soon to leave behind for a new one.
I was honestly surprised to find THE TAMING OF THE SHREW was not at all what I was expecting. I love it when I my expectations are overturned. That is one of the things that makes movie-going interesting.
