Please review and express your feelings about the Hollywood movies old and new ,that you have watched,liked & would recommend to the other members ......
I start off with an all time favourite film of my entire family....i have lost count of the number of times
i have watched this since the time.....
The Ten Commandments (1956)
It is one of the Greatest movies ever made in the history of World Cinema...
The film covers the life of Moses from his discovery in a basket floating on the Nile as a baby by
Bithiah, a childless young widow and daughter of the then-Pharaoh, Rameses I, to his eventual
departure from Israel in the wake of God's judgment that he not be allowed to enter the Promised
Land. In between, the film depicts the early adulthood of Moses as a beloved foster son of
Pharaoh Seti I (successor of Rameses I and brother of Bithiah) and general of his armies, his
romance with Throne Princess Nefertari and rivalry with the Pharaoh's own son,
Prince RamesesII.
Critics have argued that considerable liberties were taken with the Biblical story, affecting the film's
claim to authenticity, but this has had little effect on its popularity.....
Aside from winning the Academy Award for Best Effects, Special Effects, it was also nominated for
Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color, Best Cinematography, Color, Best Costume Design,
Color (Edith Head, Ralph Jester, John Jensen, Dorothy Jeakins and Arnold Friberg), Best Film Editing,
Best Picture and Best Sound, Recording
Cecil B DeMille’s swan song is a movie for the ages. At 75 the legendary director was at the
peak of his fame, his name a house-hold word and his voice recognized by millions. He probably
knew The Ten Commandments would be his last film it almost killed him. He certainly knew it
would be his most important.
Shot in widescreen Technicolor, The Ten Commandments remains the standard by which
Biblical epics -- and many epics in general -- are measured
When Moses turns his staff into a snake and back again, the effect is seamless. His turning of the Nile
into blood is an impressive camera trick, but his parting of the Red Sea is one of Hollywood's most
famous stunts. It's worth sitting through the 220 minutes of movie for this alone....
MAIN CAST
#Charlton Heston as Moses
# Yul Brynner as Pharaoh Rameses II
# Anne Baxter as Nefertari
# Edward G. Robinson as Dathan
# Yvonne De Carlo as Sephora
# Debra Paget as Lilia
# John Derek as Joshua
# Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Pharaoh Seti I
But the Ten Commandments isn’t about God alone.... It’s about a woman, Neferteri the beauty of
Egypt, and whom she marries will become Pharoe and rule the Earth...she prefers Moses who races
chariots and saves old women from being crushed under the monumental obilisk he is raising in honor
of Neferteri’s father — and helped by the fact he’s played by manly-man Charlton Heston who looks
great,She does not want Ramses, the delicious Yul Brenner who wants Neferteri because of the
wealth and power that comes with her.
Moses is banished and Neferteri is forced to marry Ramses instead.
History might know about Moses and Ramses, but DeMille knew about
scorned women.....
It remains one of the five most successful films of all time.It is Cecil B. DeMille’s last and arguably
greatest film.....Definitely worth watching....
My personal favorite:
THE SOUND OF MUSIC : 1965
===============
Julie Andrews ... Maria
Christopher Plummer ... Captain Georg von Trapp
Richard Haydn ... Max Detweiler
Peggy Wood ... Mother Abbess
Anna Lee ... Sister Margaretta
Portia Nelson ... Sister Berthe
Ben Wright ... Herr Zeller
Daniel Truhitte ... Rolfe
Norma Varden ... Frau Schmidt
Marni Nixon ... Sister Sophia
Gilchrist Stuart ... Franz (as Gil Stuart)
Evadne Baker ... Sister Bernice
Doris Lloyd ... Baroness Eberfeld
Charmian Carr ... Liesl von Trapp
Nicholas Hammond ... Friedrich von Trapp
Maria had longed to be a nun since she was a young girl, yet when she became old enough discovered that it wasn't at all what she thought. Often in trouble and doing the wrong things, Maria is sent to the house of a retired naval captain, named Captain Von Trapp, to care for his children. Von Trapp was widowed several years before and was left to care for seven 'rowdy' children. The children have run off countless governesses. Maria soon learns that all these children need is a little love to change their attitudes. Maria teaches the children to sing, and through her, music is brought back into the hearts and home of the Von Trapp family. Unknowingly, Maria and Captain Von Trapp are falling helplessly in love, except there are two problems, the Captain is engaged, and Maria is a postulant! Written by Katy Richardson
The Sound of Music is a magical, heart - warming story of a spirited young nun - Maria who gets sent to be the governess of Captain Von Trapp's 7 children as his wife died years back & goes away alot. The Children have drove all the over governesses away by playing tricks on them, to get their father's attention however with "fraulein" (young lady) Maria they take to her kindness, and she brings music & love back into the hearts of the children & the Captain, who although is engaged to the Baroness, is falling madly in love with Maria, & she is him, it is only when the Baroness tells Maria that the Captain loves her she panics & returns to the Abby, where the Rev. Mother tells her she has to look for her life, & so she returns to the home of the Captain & Children by which time Georg Von Trapp decides he can't marry the Baroness if he's in love with Maria, & calls off his engagement & tells Maria. The happy ending comes when Maria & Georg Marry, but have to leave Austria as he has to take a position in the Navy round the time the Nazis were in Power, The Sound of Music is based on a true story surrounding The Von Trapp's, & the 40th Anniversary DVD of this has many special features inc. a 50 min documentary on the real Von Trapp Family. This is one of the best films of all time & will always be a classic for all the family. Written by Katie
Baron Von Trapp, a widower, runs his home near Salzburg like the ship he once commanded. That changes when Maria arrives from the convent to be the new governess of his seven children. Their romps through the hills inspire all to sing and to find joy in the smallest things -- like raindrops on window panes. With a renewed zest for life, the baron hosts a party to introduce his new fiance. Maria knows then she does not want to be a nun. She marries the baron. The happy ever after part is threatened when Austria's new German rulers want the baron back in military service. Written by Dale O'Connor {daleoc@interaccess.com}
Maria is a failure as a nun. The Mother Superior sends her off in answer to a letter from a retired naval captain for a governess for his seven children. She goes to their house and finds that she is the latest in a long line of governesses run off by the children. She teaches the children to sing and that becomes their bonding force, of course leading her to fall in love with their father and marries him. As this is happening Austria votes to be assumed by Germany on the eve of World war II. Written by John Vogel {jlvogel@comcast.net}
Captain Baron von Trapp is a widowed ex-naval officer with seven children who serve only to remind him of his deceased wife. The Von Trapp home is thus turned into a gloomy place of order and discipline, until the arrival of a new governess: Frauline Marie who is from a nearby Salzburg abbey. Marie shows the Von Trapp children the miracle of the Sound of Music, and teaches them how to sing. Captain von Trapp's heart opens up to feelings he had forgotten and he and Marie fall in love. Marie and Georg von Trapp are married, only to have their world brought down around them by the 1938 Anschluss of Austria, where Nazi Germany takes control of the country and demands that Captain von Trapp assume a position in the German Navy.
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How cool was Yul Brynner I ask?? He goes: "I'm told that I can rely on you - rely on you to sell your own mother 4 a price"
Cleopatra (1963)
Director:Joseph L. Mankiewicz
more
Writers:Plutarch (histories) and
Suetonius (histories) ...
more
Release Date:31 July 1963 (UK) more
Genre:Biography / Drama / History / Romance more
Tagline:The motion picture the world has been waiting for!
Plot Outline:Historical epic. The triumphs and tragedy of the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra. more
Plot Synopsis:This plot synopsis is empty. Add a synopsis
Plot Keywords:Alexandria Egypt / Food Taster / Roman Empire / Father Son Relationship / Fire more
Awards:Won 4 Oscars. Another 3 wins & 11 nominations
Elizabeth Taylor ... Cleopatra
Richard Burton ... Marc Antony
Rex Harrison ... Julius Caesar
Pamela Brown ... High Priestess
George Cole ... Flavius
Hume Cronyn ... Sosigenes
Cesare Danova ... Apollodorus
Kenneth Haigh ... Brutus
Andrew Keir ... Agrippa
Martin Landau ... Rufio
Roddy McDowall ... Octavian - Caesar Augustus
Robert Stephens ... Germanicus
Francesca Annis ... Eiras, Cleopatra's handmaiden
Grégoire Aslan ... Pothinus (as Gregoire Aslan)
Martin Benson ... Ramos
I have always thought it was one of the most underrated Hollywood epics.First of all,it's only partially an epic:most of the scenes are intimate,generally two characters who are constantly tearing each other apart.Joseph L. Mankiewicz,one of the most intelligent director of his time,rewrote the dialogue during the shooting,night after night ,and the results are stunning,considering the difficulties he encountered with his budget and his stars.Cleopatra's dream is perfectly recreated,much better than in De Mille 's version -a good one,though-:It's Alexandre the great 's plan ,this Alexandre from whom she's descended,to make a huge empire,uniting the Orient and the Occident.One of the major scenes takes place near the great conqueror's grave .The second part has Shakespeareans accents:Cleopatra becomes some kind of Lady Macbeth,and Marc Anthony is left alone against the whole Roman army (the Shakespearian trees).The last lines (repeated twice) are some of the finest you can find in an epic movie.And look how Fellini has been influenced by Mankiewicz for the final of his "Satyricon":the photograph turning into a fresco. As for the epic scenes,they are here,of course but they are little over 20% of the movie.And to Cleo's awesome Rome entrance ,you can prefer Ceasar's epilepsy fit.The actors are not as uneven as it's often said.Elizabeth Taylor had already worked with Mankiewicz (the extraordinary "suddenly last Summer") and she learned a lot with him;she's now ready for the great roles of the sixties:"Virginia Woolf","Secret ceremony" "taming of the shrew".Richard Burton had been "Alexander the great" (coincidence!) in a rather academic movie,and here he portrays a clumsy,almost Don Quixotesque Marc Anthony with art.However,Rex Harrison steals the show in the first half.Supporting actors ,including Roddy MCDowall ,a puny but shrewd Octavious,and Richard O'Sullivan ,an effeminate Ptolemy. This visual poem,a feast for the eye and for the mind must be restored to favor.
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"So it shall be written & So it shall be done"
Good choice Dimple both 'Sound Of Music 'and 'Cleopatra' are classics...go on
with your choice of movies
Another favourite movie of mine,one never gets tired of watching this any number of times...
Mackenna's Gold (1969)
Mackenna's Gold a Western film released i the year 1969 ,directed by J. Lee Thompson, starring
Gregory Peck, Omar Sharif and Camilla Sparv. It tells the story of how the lure of gold corrupts a
diverse group of people.......
The story goes.....An old legend talks about a fortune in gold hidden in the 'Canyon del Oro', guarded
by the Apache gods. A man named Adams found it, only to have the Indians capture and blind him and
kill all his companions. Years later, Marshal Mackenna (Gregory Peck) kills an Indian chief who
tried to bushwack him and comes into possession of a map that supposedly shows the way to the
treasure. Though sceptical, he memorizes the directions before burning the map.
Meanwhile, notorious Mexican outlaw Colorado (Omar Sharif) and his gang had been tracking the
old man for two weeks to get the map, all while being chased by the U.S. army. He takes shelter in
the house of the old judge of the town of Blaskburg, stealing horses, mules and food for his journey.
He kills the judge and kidnaps his daughter, Inga Bergmann (Camilla Sparv), as a hostage in
case the cavalry catches up with him.
When he finds that MacKenna has destroyed the map, he threatens Inga in order to force the lawman
into leading them to the canyon.On their trek, they are joined by a posse of townsmen who become
infected by gold fever, among them a newspaper editor, a storekeeper, a priest and old Adams
himself......
They are trailed by the cavalry, under the leadership of Sergeant Tibbs (Telly Savalas). Almost
everyone in the gang, (execpt for Mackenna, Colorado, Inga, Hesh-ke, and Hachita), are killed in
an ambush by the cavalary or by other Apaches, (who are trying to protect the gold from outsiders).
Tibbs periodically sends messengers back to his commanding officer, supposedly to keep him informed.
Eventually, the patrol is whittled down to just a couple of men. At that point, Tibbs kills them and joins
the outlaws.
Finally they reach the place specified in the map, where a tall rock tower, 'The Shaking Rock', stands.
As the sun rises on the specified day, the shadow of the pinnacle points to the hidden entrance to the
canyon. Seeing this, MacKenna, who had been skeptical until then, begins to believe in the legend.....
Directed by J. Lee Thompson
Produced by Carl Foreman,Dimitri Tiomkin
Written by Heck Allen (novel)Carl Foreman
[b]Starring
Gregory Peck
Omar Sharif
Camilla Sparv
Julie Newmar
Lee J. Cobb
Telly Savales
Music by Quincey Jones[/b]
Running time 128 min.
Reminds me of two of my favorites by Mankiewicz, All About Eve(1950) and Sleuth(1972). All About Eve is about a brilliant, magnetic, erratic and bitchy Broadway star, Margot Channing(Bettie Davis) who has already reached her peak and Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) who is her fan who wants to step into her shoes... all the way. The movie is studded with fascinating characters, sharply observed situations, and exhilaratingly witty dialogue. The film got numerous nominations for the Oscars and won the best director, best screenplay and best supporting actor (George Sanders in a superb performance as a cynical drama critic). The film is an absolute must see...
And ditto for Sleuth. Mind Game at its best by two masters of their trade, Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine and some superb dialogues. A treat.
Roger Ebert on Sleuth
SLEUTH, a totally engrossing entertainment, is funny and scary by turns, and always superbly theatrical. It's the kind of mystery we keep saying they don't make anymore, but sometimes they do, and the British seem to write them better than anyone. The movie is based on the long-running play by Anthony Shaffer, who also wrote Hitchcock's FRENZY. Both films have in common a nice flair for dialogue and a delicate counterpoint between the ironic and the gruesome.
What really makes the movie come alive--what makes it work better than the play, really--are the lead performances by Lord Laurence Olivier, Michael Caine, and Alec Cawthorne. Olivier plays the wealthy mystery writer Andrew Wyke as a true-blue British eccentric: His head, like his house, is cluttered with ornate artifacts largely without function. The hero of his detective stories, the wonderfully named St. John Lord Merridewe, is equally dotty. Olivier is clearly having fun in the role, and he throws in all kinds of accents, asides, and nutty pieces of business. Michael Caine, who might seem an unlikely candidate to play Milo Tindle, turns out to be a very good one. He manages somehow to seem smaller and less assured than Olivier (even while he towers over Olivier). And he is strangely touching as he dresses up in an absurd clown's costume to steal the jewels. Inspector Doppler, the kindly old investigator who suspects that Andrew has murdered Milo, is played by Alec Cawthorne, a veteran stage actor making his movie debut
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madhavi Thanks a lot for for reviewing 2 of the finest movies .........i am yet to see All about Eve ,but 've heard a lot about Bette Davis and this movie....definitely will look out for it.....
seen Sleuth and liked it a lot......... ......i have always liked Michael caine and his kind of restrained acting....Laurence Olivier is another great actor......
You are welcome Reeth, just found a wonderful clip of the movie on Youtube. Davis throwing a fit with aplomb, fighting with the whole world, her playright, her director and boyfriend and her producer.
And the trailer of Sleuth:
Here is another couple of favorite movies from the great director Billy Wilder. I like most of his movies and he made vastly different kinds of movies from film noir to screwball comedy. Let me begin with his two big hits with Marilyn Monroe in the fifties, The Seven Year Itch(1955) and Some Like it Hot(1959), two films that really defined the fascinating sexuality of Monroe.
The Seven Year Itch(1955) is a comedy about marital infidelity set in New York city. Richard Sherman (Eweing) is a typical businessman publisher who has sent his wife and son to Maine to escape the sweltering heat of New York in summer and plans to be good in their absence.His resolutions are completely forgotten when his tenant from upstairs drops her flowerpot on him and walks into his air-conditioned apartment and his imagination runs riot. Based on a risque Broadway play, Wilder with his scriptwriter had to really work on their lines and scenes in the film to get around the strict film censorship board of the fifties. The resulting film is brilliant for its interplay of the suggestive and the innocent and Monroe epitomises that to a T. It has the famous subway grate scene that has Monroe standing on the subway grate with her skirt flying up around her waist.
Here is a brief scene from the movie:
Some Like it Hot (1959) is a personal favorite about two musicians(Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis), in Chicago, who witness the Valentine Day's Massacre and are hotly pursued by the gangsters, to escape whom they dress in drag and join an all girl's band which has Monroe as the lead singer. (Reminds you of Rafoochakkar? Don't even go there, the hindi version just got the shell of the story...all the daring suggestiveness slyly introduced in the film by Wilder is completely lost in the Hindi version). The film has some superb repartees and one-liners, the best being the one with which the movie ends. The film is completely absurd with the typical underlying cynicism of Wilder, cushioned beautifully with some superb acting and sparkling wit. The comic timing of the duo is perfect and Marilyn sizzles in the movie. Marilyn was notorious for the number of takes she needed for the simplest of scenes and dialogues, but watch her on screen and she seems a natural.
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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (1966)
Yet another favourite of mine...........The best Spaghetti Western to date.....
Italian master Sergio Leone's "The Good, The Bad & the Ugly" is an epic Western of
mythic proportions. Most directors never come close to making a film this good. The amazing thing
about Leone is that he actually eclipsed this accomplishment two years later with "Once Upon a Time
in the West." "The Good, The Bad & the Ugly" was Leone's final film with Clint Eastwood. The three
Eastwood/Leone films have erroneously been called the "Dollars Trilogy" or "The Man With No Name
Trilogy." The fact is, Eastwood played three different characters in the films and each one had a
different name.
Leone's trilogy of spaghetti westerns (the first two were A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few DollarMore).
In this sweeping film, the characters form treacherous alliances in a ruthless quest for Confederate gold.
Leone's reinvention of the western reaches its epic apotheosis in a movie about the pursuit of gold lost
by the Confederates during the Civil War in the Texas theater. Clint Eastwood is the "good"
(slow to anger, but quick on the trigger), Lee Van Cleef is the bad (an elegant exemplar of
absolute evil) and Eli Wallach is the "ugly" (a menacingly funny, totally amoral bandido
whose relationship with the Eastwood character consists largely of betrayals). Leone's magnificent style is
all contrasts (huge panoramic shots alternating with tight close-ups, very slow build-ups to lightning-fast action)
This perfectly matches a narrative that encompasses sadistic brutality, wild humor and, yes, a tragic vision
of war and its consequences......
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY is one of the most enjoyable and fascinating films to ever
come out of the western genre- spaghetti or otherwise.........
Absolutely recommended.
Have always wanted to see a Sergio Leone film. Had to cultivate a taste for Westerns. So started watching them chronologically. Hence have not reached the Spagetti Western genre yet. Among the early Westerns(40s and 50s) check out John Wayne in Howard Hawks' Red River(1948) and Rio Bravo(1959) and John Ford's Searchers(1956). John Huston's The Treasure of Sierra Madre(1948) and John Stevens' Shane(1952).
My favorite is High Noon(1952) a low budget, stark short Western by Fred Zinneman, which is actually different from the usual lavish epic Westerns which foreground male camaraderie and action...Has Gary Cooper looking world weary and the gorgeous Grace Kelly as his quaker wife who are the only two people in the cowardly town to face the villain. Howard Hawks answer to the film was Rio Bravo(1959) where male bonding and aspects of heroism emerge from the unlikeliest quarters. Was very entertaining too...
Will provide the pics later, if someone else can please oblige.
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Film Noir
Here is some info on Film noir, a genre that I love... they were mostly B-grade movies made in Hollywood in the forties and fifties(classic film noir), on shoe-string budgets. They have gained a kind of cult status over the years and have now become a very respectable area of study. Though they cover a wide range of genres and issues, there are some typical stylistic elements of a film noir: It is situated mostly in cities, using the dramatic interplay of dark and light(very effective in black and white films) with plenty of cigarette smoke filling its spaces. It is a morally ambiguous universe inhabited by cynical detectives/cops/private agents, sexy femme fatales, and very often uses voiceovers and flashbacks, that underscore the pervasive sense of fatalism underlying the smart, suggestive, cynical conversation of the characters very often involved in a convoluted games of one upmanship.
A tribute to Film Noir
Wilder made two of the most fascinating films of this genre, Double Indemnity(1944) and Sunset Boulevard (1950). Both movies have stunning opening scenes that set the pace and mood of the films.
Double Indemnity for example begins with a man limping up to his office in the middle of the night and saying into a dictaphone : "Yes, I killed him. I did it for the money. And for a woman. And I didn't get the money. And I didn't get the woman. Pretty, isn't it?"
A trailer of Double Indemnity
In Sunset Boulevard the narrator is already dead, floating face down in a swimming pool when he starts narrating the story about how it all began...
A trailer of Sunset Boulevard
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A useful introduction to Film Noir:
Have cut and pasted from the link below:
http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue02/infocus/filmnoir.htm
Film Noir: An Introduction
Dark rooms with light slicing through venetian blinds, alleys cluttered with garbage, abandoned warehouses where dust hangs in the air, rain-slickened streets with water still running in the gutters, dark detective offices overlooking busy streets: this is the stuff of film noir--that most magnificent of film forms--a perfect blend of form and content, where the desperation and hopelessness of the situations is reflected in the visual style, which drenches the world in shadows and only occasional bursts of sunlight. Film noir, occasionally acerbic, usually cynical, and often enthralling, gave us characters trying to elude some mysterious past that continues to haunt them, hunting them down with a fatalism that taunts and teases before delivering the final, definitive blow.
Unlike other forms of cinema, the film noir has no paraphernalia that it can truly call its own. Unlike the western, with cattle drives, lonely towns on the prairie, homesteading farmers, Winchester rifles, and Colt 45s, the film noir borrows its paraphernalia from other forms, usually from the crime and detective genres, but often overlapping into thrillers, horror, and even science fiction (as in the great "what's it" box from Kiss Me Deadly). The visual style echoes German expressionism, painting shafts of light that temporarily illuminate small chunks of an ominous and overbearing universe that limits a person's chances to slim and none. For as Paul Schrader said in his influential "Notes on Film Noir" essay, "No character can speak authoritatively from a space which is continually being cut into ribbons of light."
Out of the Past, for example, is one of the archetypal noirs, giving us a protagonist who has tried to escape his past (he betrayed a partner by running away with his girlfriend), but fate won't let him escape. He inhabits a world that constantly pulls people back into a morass of existence that is bound to suffocate them. Jeff (played by Robert Mitchum) is a seemingly good guy, but one bad turn has made his life a hell that he can never completely escape. Kirk Douglas plays the racketeer who needs to use Jeff and he does so by planting one of the great femmes fatales, Jane Greer, within Jeff's easy reach. And she consumes him.
The femme fatale would play a crucial role in the film noir, whether in the guise of Jane Greer in Out of the Past, Rita Hayworth in Lady From Shanghai, Veronica Lake in The Blue Dahlia, Joan Bennett in Scarlet Street, Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy, Gloria Grahame in Human Desire, Lizbeth Scott in Dead Reckoning, Ava Gardner in The Killers, or Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. These women were black widows who slowly drew in the heroes with come-hither looks and breathless voices. Communicating a danger of sex that is worthy of the '90s AIDS epidemic, the femme fatale knew how to use men to get whatever she wanted, whether it was just a little murder between lovers (as in Double Indemnity) or a wild, on-the-run lifestyle (as in Gun Crazy). The femme fatale was always there to help pull the hero down. And in the case of Mildred Pierce, we even get a femme fatale in the form of a daughter who threatens to destroy her mother's life.
Heroes in the film noir world would forever struggle to survive. Some of the heroes learned to play by the rules of film noir and survived by exposing corruption, such as Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep and Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet. But more often than not, they were the saps destroyed by love (Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity and Edward G. Robinson in Scarlet Street), a past transgression (Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past), or overly ambitious goals (Richard Widmark in Night and the City and Sterling Hayden in The Killing).
Titles like Pitfall, Nightmare, Kiss of Death, and Edge of Doom describe what you'll find in film noir. And titles like Night and the City, Side Street, Hell's Island and The Asphalt Jungle convey the terrain. But maybe it's titles such as The Big Heat and The Big Sleep that most simply convey the film noir essence--an overpowering force that can't be avoided.
Film noir first appeared in the early '40s in movies such as Stranger on the Third Floor (often cited as the first full-fledged noir) and This Gun For Hire. While soldiers went to war, film noir exposed a darker side of life, balancing the optimism of Hollywood musicals and comedies by supplying seedy, two-bit criminals and doom-laden atmospheres. While Hollywood strove to help keep public morale high, film noir gave us a peek into the alleys and backrooms of a world filled with corruption. And film noir remained an important form in Hollywood until the late '50s. Films such as Touch of Evil (1958) closed out the cycle. By then, the crime and detective genres were playing out their dramas in bright lights, with movies such as The Lineup containing noir elements but not the iconography of darkened streets and chiaroscuro lighting. (Post-'50s noirs such as Farewell, My Lovely and Body Heat are nostalgia first and noirs second.)
Two more noirs from another favorite director, Orson Welles, the enfant terrible of Hollywood. The production stories of each film of Welles are as sensational as the films themselves, and the mystery still continues to intrigue critics and buffs about what those films would be like if Welles had been allowed to make them the way he wanted to...
The Lady from Shanghai(1948): It had Rita Hayworth sporting a short cropped blonde style (Welles had made her crop her famous luxurious red hair for the movie) and Welles himself as the doomed Irish sailor(sporting a bad Irish accent) who falls for her. The plot is a complicated whodunit with many plots and sub plots, some believable some not, but watch the movie for its characters, details, the amazing photography and the superb last scene in the hall of mirrors. The film was as doomed as its theme, the chief of production and Welles could not see eye to eye, Welles and Hayworth filed for divorce before the release of the film, and though the film was complete in 1947, it was not not released till 1948 and that too was hacked by nearly an hour and filled in with explanatory scenes by the producer who insisted the audience would not be able to understand the film otherwise.
This is how the movie starts :
When I start out to make a fool of myself, there's very little can stop me. If I'd known where it would end, I'd never let anything start, if I'd been in my right mind, that is. But once I'd seen her, once I'd seen her, I was not in my right mind for quite some time...me, with plenty of time and nothing to do but get myself in trouble. Some people can smell danger, not me.
Here is just a little bit of the amazing last scene of the movie, it has spoilers though:
And there are stilll the missing forty minutes of the movie hacked by the producers that the fans hope to find some day...
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Ten years after being a pariah in Hollywood, Welles returned to make another sensational noir, A Touch of Evil(1958), at the behest of the hero (Charton Heston) who had the star power to insist that Welles, who was also acting in the movie, be allowed to direct it. This was the last film he made in Hollywood.
Once again the fascination of the film lies in the characters, the 300 pound Hank Quinlan (played by Welles in a self parodic mode), the settings (Welles takes the audience into seedy strip clubs and the dark alleys and brothels of the border town) and the show-stealing cameo of Marlene Dietrich as Han Quinlan's ex lover, now brothel madame, who gets some superb lines:
You're a mess, honey. You ought to lay off those candy bars.
Come on, read my future for me.
You haven't got any.
What do you mean?
Your future is all used up.
He was some kind of a man. What does it matter what you say about people.
The 93 mt. version of the movie that was released in 1958 had been badly hacked again by Universal, and Welles disowned the movie shooting off a 58 page memo to the producer about his vision of the movie. It is on the basis of this memo that recent attempts (I believe 4) have been made to reconstruct the movie in accordance with the director's original vision.
Here is an excerpt from a review of the movie:
Completely ignored by the Oscars, it was regarded as a rebellious, unorthodox, bizarre, and outrageously exaggerated film, affronting respectable 1950's sensibilities, with controversial themes including racism, betrayal of friends, sexual ambiguity, frameups, drugs, and police corruption of power. Its central character is an obsessed, driven, and bloated police captain ("a lousy cop") - a basically tragic figure who has a "touch of evil" in his enforcement of the law. Its other unusual and seedy characters include a nervous and sex-crazed motel manager, a blind shopkeeper, a drug smuggler, a sweaty drug dealer with a poorly-fitting wig, a terrorizing gang of juvenile delinquents, and an intense good cop - an international narcotics officer who is honeymooning (but ignores his wife), all in a sleazy border town (and a number of dark hotel rooms) within a twenty-four hour period.
The film opens with its most famous sequence. It's an audacious, incredible, breathtaking, three-minute, uninterrupted crane tracking shot under the credits (appearing superimposed on the left of the screen). The entire tracking shot covers four blocks from start to finish. In a close-up, hands set an explosive, timed device. A shadowy figure runs and places it in the trunk of a parked convertible. The pounding of bongo drums and blare of brass instruments are heard (Henry Mancini's score), accompanied by the ticking-tocking of the mechanism on the soundtrack. The camera pulls away sharply, identifying the car's location - it is parked on a street in a seedy Mexican border town. An unsuspecting, wealthy American man - Rudi Linnekar (the boss of the town) and his giggling, blonde floozy, mistress/girlfriend [later, we learn she is a striptease dancer named Zita] emerge out of the background darkness and get into the car, driving off through the streets toward the US-Mexican border about four blocks away.
From high above, the camera tracks the movement of the doomed pair in the shiny car through the squalid-looking town. It is a dark night as they drive through the town, the setting for the rest of the film. In the border town, there are flashing neon and electric signs, tawdry hotels and stripjoint nightclubs ("The Paradise"), crumbling arches, dark roofs, winding streets and twisting alleys with peeling posters on sides of walls and houses, heaps of trash, and vendors pushing carts. The black-and-white visuals emphasize the seedy atmosphere and the moral decadence, decay, and nightmarish dirtiness of the scene.
And here's that brilliant opening sequence of the movie
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Sorry Reeth, about the slightly out of context post. A brief reminder about Ingmar Bergman. Not Hollywood certainly, but enough of Hollywood (to its credit) has been influenced by him.
Finally the grand old man died...and that too on the same day as Antonioni. Had been dreading the day it would happen, having watched a number of his films, I have always been amazed at how personally a number of his films touched me, considering how distinctly different his lived experience was from mine.
One cannot help but mention his Seventh Seal in an occasion such as this. Heavily and ostentatiously symbolic, it is about a knight who comes back from the crusades and finds that his country has been ravaged by the plague. Death comes for him too, and in his desperation he challenges him to a game of chess. He knows the outcome but plays for time...
Here is the famous scene:
And Here is the trailer:
A film about faith and belief, Ingmar's knight opts for a wry, wavering, disappointing, and constantly questioned belief rather than accept the bleak alternative that there is no meaning in life. And that, btw is a terribly reductive reading of Bergman's richly layered film. And this is not even my favorite Bergman film (if you like Bergman, you will always have your treasured favorites among his repetoire of about fifty films...). For me, his most stunning films were Wild Strawberries and Persona, and a cherished light one is Smiles of a Summer Night.
And what can film noir be without Bogey...I promise not to impose any more noirs after these two:
The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Don't worry about the plot in The Maltese Falcon (actually that is true of most Noirs), note the style, the tough talking hero and the mood. The film made a legend out of Bogart. Consider this dialogue with which the hero sends the woman to the gallows after she pleads with him not to give her over to the law:
''I hope they don't hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. . . . The chances are you'll get off with life. That means if you're a good girl, you'll be out in 20 years. I'll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I'll always remember you.''
Here's an excerpt from Ebert:
Some film histories consider ''The Maltese Falcon'' the first film noir. It put down the foundations for that native American genre of mean streets, knife-edged heroes, dark shadows and tough dames.
Of course film noir was waiting to be born. It was already there in the novels of Dashiell Hammett, who wrote The Maltese Falcon, and the work of Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, John O'Hara and the other boys in the back room. ''Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean,'' wrote Chandler, and that was true of his hero Philip Marlowe (another Bogart character). But it wasn't true of Hammett's Sam Spade, who was mean, and who set the stage for a decade in which unsentimental heroes talked tough and cracked wise.
Cold. Spade is cold and hard, like his name. When he gets the news that his partner has been murdered, he doesn't blink an eye. Didn't like the guy. Kisses his widow the moment they're alone together. Beats up Joel Cairo (Lorre) not just because he has to, but because he carries a perfumed handkerchief, and you know what that meant in a 1941 movie. Turns the rough stuff on and off. Loses patience with Greenstreet, throws his cigar into the fire, smashes his glass, barks out a threat, slams the door and then grins to himself in the hallway, amused by his own act.
If he didn't like his partner, Spade nevertheless observes a sort of code involving his death. ''When a man's partner is killed,'' he tells Brigid, ''he's supposed to do something about it.'' He doesn't like the cops, either; the only person he really seems to like is his secretary, Effie (Lee Patrick), who sits on his desk, lights his cigarettes, knows his sins and accepts them. How do Bogart and Huston get away with making such a dark guy the hero of a film? Because he does his job according to the rules he lives by, and because we sense (as we always would with Bogart after this role) that the toughness conceals old wounds and broken dreams.
Alas, the mood and the mode won't work today ...but the darkness inherent in human motivations tainting all and possibilities of desperate heroism still might find echoes in this age.
And then there is The Big Sleep(1946) which is credited with having one of the most confusing storylines in Hollywood film history. Based on the popular novel by Raymond Chandler that was published in 1939, it introduced the the first of the series of the Philip Marlowe novels. The plot, again, is the "McGuffin", to borrow Hitchcock's phrase, it does not matter. What matters is the on and off screen chemistry of the Bacall-Bogart pair, the double-edged dialogues and the atmosphere. And there is plenty of it in the film.
You're not very tall are you?
I try to be... says Bogie....
Check out this compilation by a buff who has titled it "The Babes of the Big Sleep" with the following comment: The biggest mystery in Howard Hawks's THE BIG SLEEP is why almost every beautiful woman finds Bogie irresistible
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Quo Vadis - (1951)
STARRING: Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Leo Genn, Peter Ustinov, Patricia Laffan
DIRECTOR: Mervyn LeRoy
STUDIO: MGM Studios
RATING: NR
GENRE: Drama
RELEASE DATE: February 23, 1951
Quo vadis is Latin for "Where are you going?"..........
Quo Vadis tells of a love that develops between a young Christian woman, Ligia (or Lygia), and Marcus Vinicius, a Roman patrician. It takes place in the city of Rome under the rule of emperor Nero around AD 64.....
It's the story of the growing pains of Christianity in a decadent Rome subject to the whims of the mad emperor Nero. The story concerns a Roman general who falls for a Christian slave girl and, later, for her religion, but even though that's what provides the film its focus, the real attraction is the spectacle.
The biggest part of that spectacle is Peter Ustinov, who cemented the public's conception of the madman who "fiddled while Rome burned" (actually, in this film it's a lyre, as the fiddle hadn't been invented yet, but no matter) with his over-the-top scenery chewing. He preens and screeches like a spoiled rock star, alternately begging and ordering his subordinates to confess their adoration of him and his god-awful songs. I don't think it necessarily counts as good acting, but it's unforgettable. And miraculously, he's paired onscreen with Leo Genn, who plays court poet Petronius (who wrote Satyricon, which Fellini made into a movie of the same name). Petronius is Nero's opposite in every way: he's quiet while Nero bellows, he's austere while Nero dresses like a clown, and he's subtle while Nero is... not. His job is to manipulate his boss into second-guessing his most obnoxious and horrifying instincts, and he does this with an understated charm. Both actors were nominated for Best Supporting Actor, and while one can't really say they deserved the award more than Karl Malden did, one can only wish they could have made a special award for Ustinov and Genn to share.
It's too bad the leads aren't nearly up to the standards those two set. Robert Taylor stumbles his way through the film as Marcus Vinicius, a Roman general who returns from three years on the battlefield to find his home city teetering on the brink of self-destruction, although it takes him a while to realize that. He's helped along his journey to understanding by Lygia (a particularly reptilian-looking Deborah Kerr), a slave who's been adopted into the family of a former general who secretly converted to Christianity, then just a marginal religious cult. At first Marcus tries to bully Lygia into giving in to him, calling in favors from his palace connections (Petronius is his uncle) to get her transferred to his custody. However, he relents when he realizes that she loves her savior, Jesus Christ, more than she does him. There aren't any sparks between Taylor and Kerr, likely because Taylor seems to lack any spark of his own. It makes his gradual conversion from savage soldier to proto-Christian difficult to accept, because he's incapable of showing us the grace that's supposed to be slowly suffusing him. Kerr is easier to accept, but she's weighed down by the banal script (it's no mistake that Writing wasn't among the film's Oscar nominations).
Meanwhile, we come to what attracted audiences in the first place....The Spectacle...
The water Quo Vadis dives into are excellent for any historical epic: you have persecutions and martyrdoms, the glory of ancient Rome reaching its apex, and a mad emperor who murdered his own mother. As with most historical movies of the time, the acting is geared less toward realism and more toward a hightened feel of D-R-A-M-A and ostentatious monologues, but, compared to many of the historical 'epics' of today, it has a strong emotional core and a passion for its subject. ....
Thank you Reeth, I remember being entranced by the drama, the spectacle and the sheer lavishness of the movie. Btw, it has another claim to fame... both Sophia Loren and Liz Taylor were in the movie as extras ...okay Liz had a cameo...
How about some Chaplin?
Here are some pics of Modern Times(1936). The film was defiantly made as a silent movie despite the fact that talkies had been introduced almost a decade ago. Chaplin effects a compromise of sorts by using dialogue selectively in the film by deliberately making dialogue emanate from machines and not humans. Chaplin famously also speaks for the first time in the film and again in a brilliant twist "speaks" complete gibberish.
The film is a satire on modern industrialization and the way it trivialized and dehumanized human beings. The movie boasts of several famous images, from the opening shot where a group of factory workers are juxtaposed against the image of a flock of sheep, to the tramp being literally swallowed by the machine, to the famous feeding machine that feeds the tramp and becomes maniacally uncontrolled. Set in post-depression America, the tramp and the waif(Paulette Goddard) remain endearing outcasts in the troubled, frightening landscape of economic deprivation and unrest, and the parallel emergence of an efficient mechanization in industry that was viewed by Chaplin with great distrust.
To make a comedy out of this, and that too a rollicking one, it required the genious of Chaplin.
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The famous opening scene of the movie:
The feeding machine:
The famous scene where he sings gibberish and yet makes perfect sense entertaining his audience
http://www.starpulse.com/Movies/Modern_Times/Summary/
Modern Times Summary:
This episodic satire of the Machine Age is considered Charles Chaplin's last "silent" film, although Chaplin uses sound, vocal, and musical effects throughout. Chaplin stars as an assembly-line worker driven insane by the monotony of his job. After a long spell in an asylum, he searches for work, only to be mistakenly arrested as a Red agitator. Released after foiling a prison break, Chaplin makes the acquaintance of orphaned gamine (Paulette Goddard) and becomes her friend and protector. He takes on several new jobs for her benefit, but every job ends with a quick dismissal and yet another jail term. During one of his incarcerations, she is hired to dance at a nightclub and arranges for him to be hired there as a singing waiter. He proves an enormous success, but they are both forced to flee their jobs when the orphanage officials show up to claim the girl. Dispirited, she moans, "What's the use of trying?" But the ever-resourceful Chaplin tells her to never say die, and our last image is of Chaplin and The Gamine strolling down a California highway towards new adventures. The plotline of Modern Times is as loosely constructed as any of Chaplin's pre-1915 short subjects, permitting ample space for several of the comedian's most memorable routines: the "automated feeding machine," a nocturnal roller-skating episode, and Chaplin's double-talk song rendition in the nightclub sequence. In addition to producing, directing, writing, and starring in Modern Times, Chaplin also composed its theme song, Smile, which would later be adopted as Jerry Lewis' signature tune. Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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The Great Dictator(1940)
Not the greatest of Chaplin's films, it has been criticized for its preachy ending which just does not gel with the genre of comedy. However, I cannot imagine Chaplin the director, without having this film in his repertoire. Chaplin had been told of his tramp's facial resemblance with Adolf Hitler. He later found out that they were both born within a week of each other and had a somewhat similar background of an early struggle with poverty before becoming extremely popular in their respective fields.
It is one of the rare films that deals with the Nazi regime through the genre of comedy. I can think of only two other films that have done that, To Be or Not to Be(1942) by the great master of genre, Ernst Lubitsch and, maybe, Life is Beautiful (iffy), which is not pure comedy anyway .
Chaplin plays a double role in the film, of an amnesiac German barber and the dictator Adenoid Hynkel. There is a superb scene in the movie where he gracefully dances with a globe balloon as Adenoid Hynkel. I also love his speech as Hynkel when the mike bends with the force of his gibberish. And then there is John Oakie as Mussollini romping loutishly as a superb foil to the crazed Hynkel.
Chaplin obstinately did not allow the last scene to be deleted, where he gives a six minute speech straight from the heart. While it is, admittedly, one of those scenes that do not fit in the frame of the movie, it remains a testament of Chaplin's deep concern for freedom and humanity.
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The globe scene
The voice of Hynkel: once again using gibberish as satire
The last speech
Review by Mark Bourne
How about some Chaplin?
Sure madhavi, Thanks a million for all this Great write up on his films. .....i love his incomparable films....
I want to see them all over again now after reading your reviews...
http://www.culturevulture.net/movies/AnnieHall.htm
"Life is full of loneliness, misery, suffering, and unhappiness - and it's all over much too quickly," says Woody Allen at the beginning of Annie Hall. This could be a statement of the ongoing theme of Allen's movies over a career that spans forty years and continues apace.
It is also the kind of line we expect from Allen - funny and observant, with that special New York twist. New Yorkers use irony more than other Americans. When New Yorkers make a statement, there are generally no fewer than two meanings contained at once and the listener is assumed to pick up on the multiple meanings. (Southerners, on the other hand, tend to say what they think you want to hear and hope you will not know what they are really thinking. Out here in sunny California, most people deal only in one meaning at a time, if there is meaning to start with.)
If Annie Hall is the best of this genre, it is because it is one of Allen's happier films. The suffering is kept light, the laughter is not heavily tainted with bitterness. The relationship of the hero, intellectual Jewish comedian Alvy Singer, with gentile, white bread, "neat" Annie Hall (Diane Keaton - very young and fresh and deliciously daffy here) allows for the amusement that arises out of the conflict of their cultures and the delight of the real romance they find in each other's differences.
Allen cleverly uses a variety of film techniques, enhancing his consistently witty dialogue as he makes his points. He steps out of character to share a thought directly with the audience. He takes us on a visit to his childhood home, where the contemporary figures dialogue with the historical ones. He uses split screens to allow interaction between characters who would not be interacting in a realistic treatment, but whose verbal interplay provides still another method to explore meaning by playing off of differences. It is a tour de force that only the most skilled writer/filmmaker/comedian could pull off. There may be others who can do it, but none with the viewpoint, the wit, and the insight that Allen brings to it with seeming effortlessness, and, surely in the case of Annie Hall, great joy.
Arthur Lazere
From the Wiki:
In 1977, Keaton starred with Allen in the romantic comedy Annie Hall, in which she played one of her most famous roles. Annie Hall was written and directed by Allen, her paramour at the time, and the film was believed to be autobiographical of his relationship with Keaton. Allen based the character of Annie Hall loosely on Keaton ("Annie" is a nickname of hers, and "Hall" is her original surname). Many of Keaton's mannerisms and her self-deprecating sense of humor were added into the role by Allen. (Director Nancy Meyers has claimed "Diane's the most self-deprecating person alive".[15]) Keaton has also said that Allen wrote the character as an "idealized version" of herself.[16] The two starred as a frequently on-again, off-again couple living in New York City. Her acting was later summed up by CNN as "awkward, self-deprecating, speaking in endearing little whirlwinds of semi-logic",[17] and by Allen as a "nervous breakdown in slow motion."[18] The film was both a major financial and critical success, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Keaton's performance also won the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 2006, Premiere magazine ranked Keaton in Annie Hall as 60th on their list of the "100 Greatest Performances of All Time":
“ It's hard to play ditzy. ... The genius of Annie is that despite her loopy backhand, awful driving, and nervous tics, she's also a complicated, intelligent woman. Keaton brilliantly displays this dichotomy of her character...
Now for some youtube clips:
The opening scene:
Lining up to see a movie, Woody is annoyed with the person standing behind him going on and on about Fellini and is vindicated by cheating and breaking the dramtic illusion I love this scene...boy if life were only like this!
Some scenes from Annie Hall:
Wow, I am a big movie buff too...
Phir der kis baat ki... Please do tell us about the movies you enjoyed watching, SF.
I really dont go for popular movies. I search for those which have a distinct human drama with all failings, yet looking on bright side. Off hand, if i have to say some names...for war films....Operation daybreak * timothy bottoms.. The Great escape * Richard Attenborough.. there is Papillon....Human dramas ( almost mono acting) of emma thompson in Wit ....one flew over the cuckoos' nest, anatomy of murder, it is a wonderful life...comedies... Getting away with murder, quick change, all chaplin movies..city lights is very special.. Yes, i will sit down and write up. You are doing great job Madhavi...Thanks a lot..
Ah, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"... Jack Nicholson is one of my all time favorites. Would love to discuss some of his films too...after the Allen round though...
And talking of war films...check out some of Stanley Kubrick's masterpieces:
Paths of Glory (1957): Straight war film, sparse and tense..
Dr. Strangelove or How I Stopped worrying and Learnt to Love the Bomb (1964): Exaggerated satire with Peter Sellers in a brilliant performance.
Full Metal Jacket (1987): Dealing with the Vietnam War.
Deconstructing Harry (1997)
Deconstructing Harry was released in 1997, when plenty of dirty linen was washed in public as regards Woody and his private life. It is the story of a quite insufferable writer, Harry Block, who is suffering from a writer's block and Woody plays the character in his typical fashion as insecure and self-absorbed. Neurotic and often cruel, he uses all the characters and relationships in his life as material for his stories, without their happy consent ofc. and as is typical in Woody's films, the plot is hardly linear with plenty of asides and fissures in dramatic illusion.
The movie treads the thin line between self-pity and self-disgust made palatable by the superb comic timing of Allen. An overdose of this is definitely not recommended...
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Some clips of Woody shuttling between domestic and non-domestic brawls :
Hell Scene:
A random review to give you an idea of the plot:
DECONSTRUCTING HARRY
Starring Woody Allen, Judy Davis, Billy Crystal and Robin Williams
Directed by Woody Allen
Rated R, with strong, frequent profanity
Running time 95 minutes
Jack gives this film a rating of 10 out of 10
By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle
(Jan. 2, 1998) -- "I'm no good at life but I write well." So says writer Harry Block, the morally bankrupt philanderer at the center of Deconstructing Harry.
And since Harry is played by Woody Allen -- who also wrote and directed the film -- it's easy the way the blend of Allen's checkered personal life and superb artistry have fueled this brilliant film.
Deconstructing Harry is a devastatingly honest, hysterically funny film. While his work is always known for its self-analytical bent, this is the filmmaker's first movie in several years to put his own public persona centerstage. It's easily one of his finest films yet, and one of the best movies of 1997.
Allen reportedly thought of titling the movie The Worst Man in the World; certainly, he's never been so hard on himself before. After all, he's been devilish before, but in this film he literally goes to hell.
Harry Block is a successful Manhattan novelist whose tales have been built around the author's foibles, endless sexual exploits and a path through life littered with betrayed friends and lovers.
"You take everyone's suffering and turn it into gold," says Lucy, his roaringly angry sister-in-law (Judy Davis), after she comes to his apartment, bent on revenge. "I want to kill the black magician."
Lucy will have to wait in line. There are plenty other companions and former lovers and wives who'd love to turn him into chopped liver.
Of course, Harry doesn't see why everyone's so upset with him. He's a master of rationalization. For example, when he's accused of creating a life of nihilism, sarcasm and orgasm, he retorts, "In France, I could run on that ticket and win."
To deconstruct Harry, filmmaker Allen cuts back and forth between dual realities -- Harry's real misguided adventures and the reflections of that life through the characters of his books (brought to life on film).
And to populate both worlds, Allen has assembled one of his most entertaining and diverse casts. Besides the fabulous Davis, there are Kirstie Alley, Richard Benjamin, Eric Bogosian, Demi Moore, Mariel Hemingway, Amy Irving, Elisabeth Shue, Stanley Tucci, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Billy Crystal as the devil.
If that's not enough, Robin Williams contributes a cameo in the film's most original and hilarious aside; he plays a movie actor who is shocked to discover he's always out of focus. (The bit has to be seen to be understood -- and laughed at.)
Allen also experiments here with rougher language than he's ever used before on film. Nonetheless, the profanity seems part and parcel to a guy like Harry, so it's tough to argue with his decision.
Like Harry, of course, Allen has demonstrated a remarkable ability to achieve superb artistry, even during his very public 1990s crisis with Mia Farrow, their children and new bride Soon-Yi Previn. But Allen has seldom been as technically assured as he is with Deconstructing Harry.
The film opens, for example, with quick, jerky repeated cuts of Judy Davis, as Lucy, getting out of a cab to confront Harry. Though we're initially confused, we eventually realize Allen has discovered a visual way to depict the out-of-control rage in Lucy -- the scene is a visual equivalent of sputtering with anger.
It's just one of the many elements in "Deconstructing Harry " that display Allen's continued mastery as a filmmaker. Like Harry, Allen's life is a mess, but he's a heck of an artist.
And that's what should matter to his audience.
Thanks a lot Madhavi ....
Another Great Movie/romance that i have loved watching over and over again....
Love Story - (1970)
Director: Arthur Hiller
Writer: Erich Segal
Cast : Ali Mcgraw, Ryan o' Neal, john Marley,Ray milland....
Tagline: Love means never having to say you're sorry....
Absolutely the greatest romance film ever made, "Love Story", broke all kinds of records at the box office becoming the biggest movie ever made to date in 1970. Its stars, Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal, became mega-stars overnight. Unlike most films of its genre, it paints a much more realistic portrait of life rather than glorifying romantic superstition and fate......
Love Story (1970) is a sentimental, romantic tearjerker film from director Arthur Hiller about a tragic couple.
The film's tagline, "Love means never having to say you're sorry," appeared slightly differently in Segal's novelization: "Love means not ever having to say you're sorry."
Told as a flashback, this is an uncomplicated love story between two star-crossed lovers-students, Harvard pre-law hockey player Oliver Barrett IV (Ryan O'Neal) and Radcliffe music student Jenny Cavilleri (Ali MacGraw). Oliver narrates the opening line of the film, looking back:
What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful and brilliant? That she loved Mozart and Bach, the Beatles, and me?
Their love triumphs over different economic-class backgrounds (he is a "preppie millionaire," she a smart-mouthed "social zero" from a blue-collar Italian/American family). Their main obstacle to romance is that his rich, powerful and snobbish father, Oliver Barrett III (Ray Milland) objects and threatens to cut off funding...The two young lovers marry anyway and first move into a small apartment in Cambridge before Oliver is hired by a New York law firm and they move to the city.
After meeting many obstacles and making sacrifices, she is diagnosed as terminally ill when she is tested for pregnancy, and dies in his arms at the hospital in a tear-inducing closing. She makes a last request of him: "You, after all - you're going to be a merry widower." "I won't be merry," he responds. She replies: "Yes, you will be. I want you to be merry. You'll be merry, okay?"...
In the final scene, Oliver quotes his late wife, when speaking to his father about their past misunderstandings. After his father tells him he's sorry that she has died, Oliver responds in the last memorable line of the film, quoting an earlier remark of Jenny's:
Love means never having to say you're sorry.
I have dvd of Love Story 1970.Its a wonderful movie.It has lovely humor and fantastic script.One of the best movies under Romance Genre.
The tragic end makes it very emotional to its viewers.If I ever have time I would like to read the book.
The Most Magnificent Picture Ever..... is often considered the most beloved, enduring and
popular film of all time
TITLE : Gone With The Wind
YEAR OF RELEASE : 1939
CLASSIFICATION : PG
DIRECTOR : Victor Fleming
PRODUCER : David O. Selznick
STARRING : Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Leslie Howard, Olivia de Havilland, Thomas Mitchell,
Barbara O'Neil, Evelyn Keyes, Ann Rutherford, George Reeves, Fred Crane, Hattie McDaniel,
Oscar Polk.
TAGLINE :
* The most magnificent picture ever!
Adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, this dazzling epic stars Vivien Leigh as the tempestuous Scarlett O'Hara and Clark Gable as the dashing Rhett Butler. Forever linked by passion and separated by pride and self-delusion, these unforgettable screen lovers bring Mitchell's immortal saga vividly to life, set against the stunning backdrop of a time and place forever Gone With the Wind.
BEST PICTURE WINNERS
Adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, this dazzling epic stars Vivien Leigh as
the tempestuous Scarlett O'Hara and Clark Gable as the dashing Rhett Butler. Forever linked by
passion and separated by pride and self-delusion, these unforgettable screen lovers bring Mitchell's i
mmortal saga vividly to life, set against the stunning backdrop of a time and place forever
Gone With the Wind.
Vivien Leigh is coquettish Southern belle Scarlett O'Hara, Clark Gable is gambler-rogue Rhett Butler,
in one of the best-loved films of all time. Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard and Hattie McDaniel co-star
in this epic of love and loyalty in the Civil War South. Winner of 10 Academy Awards, including Best
Picture, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress....
Sidney Howard's script was derived from Margaret Mitchell's first and only published, best-selling Civil
War and Reconstruction Period novel of 1,037 pages that first appeared in 1936, but was mostly
written in the late 1920s. Producer David O. Selznick had acquired the film rights to Mitchell's novel in
July, 1936 for $50,000 - a record amount at the time to an unknown author for her first novel, causing
some to label the film "Selznick's Folly." At the time of the film's release, the fictional book had
surpassed 1.5 million copies sold. More records were set when the film was first aired on television
in two parts in late 1976, and controversy arose when it was restored and released theatrically in
1998.
The famous film, shot in three-strip Technicolor, is cinema's greatest, star-studded, historical epic film of the Old South during wartime that boasts an immortal cast in a timeless, classic tale of a love-hate romance. The indomitable heroine, Scarlett O'Hara, struggles to find love during the chaotic Civil War years and afterwards, and ultimately must seek refuge for herself and her family back at the beloved plantation Tara. There, she takes charge, defends it against Union soldiers, carpetbaggers, and starvation itself. She finally marries her worldly admirer Rhett Butler, but her apathy toward him in their marriage dooms their battling relationship, and she again returns to Tara to find consolation - indomitable.
Authenticity is enhanced by the costuming, sets, and variations on Stephen Foster songs and other excerpts from Civil War martial airs. Its opening, only a few months after WWII began in Europe, helped American audiences to identify with the war story and its theme of survival...
With three years advance publicity and Hollywood myth-making, three and one-half hours running time
(with one intermission), a gala premiere in Atlanta on December 15, 1939, highest-grossing film status
(eventually reaching $200 million), and Max Steiner's sweeping musical score, the
exquisitely-photographed, Technicolor film was a blockbuster in its own time. A budgeted investment
of over $4 million in production costs was required - an enormous, record-breaking sum. The film
(originally rough-cut at 6 hours in length) was challenging in its making, due to its controversial
subject matter (including rape, drunkenness, moral dissipation and adultery) and its epic qualities,
with more than 50 speaking roles and 2,400 extras.....
A nationwide casting search for an actress to play the Southern belle Scarlett resulted in the hiring of
young British actress Vivien Leigh, although over 30 other actresses (some well-known, and some
amateurs) had been tested or considered including: Katharine Hepburn, Miriam Hopkins,
Susan Hayward, Loretta Young, Paulette Goddard, Margaret Sullavan, Barbara Stanwyck,
Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, Lana Turner, Joan Bennett, Mae West, Tallulah Bankhead,
Jean Arthur, and Lucille Ball. Although MGM star Clark Gable was expected to play the role of
the dashing war profiteer Rhett Butler, Errol Flynn, Ronald Colman, and Gary Cooper were also
considered for the part. Author Margaret Mitchell told a reporter she favored Basil Rathbone for the
male lead. The four principal stars were billed in this order: Clark Gable, followed by Leslie Howard
and Olivia de Havilland, and then Vivien Leigh last with "...and presenting" -- that is, until she won t
he Oscar and it was changed to "starring."....
The landmark film received tremendous accolades, more than any previous films to date: thirteen
nominations and eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director (Victor Fleming - the
only credited director), Best Actress (Vivien Leigh), a posthumous Best Screenplay (Sidney Howard,
along with collaborative assistance from Edwin Justin Mayer, John Van Druten, Ben Hecht, F. Scott
Fitzgerald, and Jo Swerling) - the first post-humous winner of its kind, Best Color Cinematography,
Best Interior Decoration, Best Film Editing, and Best Supporting Actress (Hattie McDaniel - the first
time an African-American had been nominated and honored) and two honorary plaques, one for
production designer William Cameron Menzies for the "use of color for the enhancement of dramatic
mood," and the other a technical production award for Don Musgrave for "pioneering in the use
of coordinated equipment."
What an epic film
David O Selznick, the producer of the film was the same guy who Hitchcock really hated, btw. He was also involved in the production of Rebecca(1940) at the same time. He was a dominating personality and the film went through four directors (some say six), George Cukor, Victor Fleming and Sam Wood. (cannot remember the fourth one). George Cukor was fired because he was called a "woman's director" and Clark Gable, then a big star, did not want the movie to tilt in Vivien Leigh's direction. As Hollywood lore has it, Victor Fleming who took over from Cukor, faked a "nervous breakdown" after finding it impossible to deal with Selznick's micro-manangement. Sam Wood took over and then etc. etc...
What is interesting is that the two other great movies that were released in 1939, which Gone With the Wind had to compete with, during the Oscars, were The Wizard of Oz(1939) directed by Victor Fleming, and Goodbye Mr. Chips(1939) directed by Sam Wood.
Another interesting tidbit: The film's famous line by Gable "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn", is slightly different from the book where Rhett Butler says, "My dear, I don't give a damn." How's that for hair-splitting?
You are welcome Reeth. You choose some of the most wonderful films that one can go back to and watch again and again.
It is an epic movie literally. Historically, one can have issues with the movie, which are ofcourse part of the criticism of the book too, as it presents a rather romantic, southern version of the Civil war. Mitchell was a southern belle just like Scarlett O'Hara and her sympathies are quite obvious in that the scars on Scarlett's delicate hands receive more sympathy than the cruelties wrought on the slaves in the deep South, but she certainly brought the culture of the south alive along with a vivid picture of the devastation the war brought on the South and the Reconstruction. Selznick got the pulse of the book and translated it wonderfully in the movie. Amazing, that he realised the potential of the book (it was published in 1936), and agreed to pay a great deal of money to an absolute newcomer for the filming rights of this novel.
Vivien Leigh had a troubled life and suffered from manic depression and was always a difficult person to work with, she made friends with Clark Gable and his wife Carole Lombard but there was a great deal of tension between her and Leslie Howard (who she is supposed be in love with throughout the movie!)
Her romance with Laurence Olivier was in its initial stages during the filming of GWTW, and Olivier(who had won great renown on the British stage), had been offered the part of Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights(1939) which made a Hollywood star out of him. He was also the lead for Selznick's Rebecca(1940). Leigh did not get the lead roles in either of the movies opposite him as she had wanted.
Twelve years later, in 1951 she played the Southern belle again, this time an ageing one, winning great critical acclaim, in Elia Kazan's film version of Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire.
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I have been seeing a lot of movies in ungodly hours , the whole week.
Came across this gem of a film....forgotten film of Stanley Kubrick.. " The Killing ".
It is a through and through director's film. No stars and big names. Just a story that winds you up like a clock...an edge of the seat thriller...83 minutes of pure bliss.
A simple race course heist...involving a man Johnny clay who always had raw deal in life who decides to have one last fling with his fate and settle down with his beautiful fiance....a race course bar tender with an ailing wife...a race course teller with a greedy wayward wife..a cop who sidles with the gang...a bouncer who had long association with Johnny...a sharp shooter who is running a shooting range...A meticulously planned robbery goes haywire, when unexpected things do happen.. a la stanley kubrick's way..
Who said Crime is despicable...? Our heart goes out for Johnny..and his lady, till the last second ..
It is guaranteed that the viewer will be glued to the chair..and his eyes on the tube..for sure.
And to think that Stanley kubrick was only 27 years when he did this..and the film is so entertaining even after fifty two years ...is something unbelievable. I love the language and the diction of those times..it was proper.
Now..Reeth !! Amazing.
I love the meticulous way you go around things. I am sure that it will take you to greatest heights possible. this is not a wish, but a knowledge acquired over years....Somehow, i could never adhere to these ways... How i wish !!
I know Reeth will not mind my posting a French Film Review in his Hollywood thread. Wonder what happened to him...
Les Enfants du Paradis (1945)
One of the movies recommended by Faraaj. Elaborate, complex and very rewarding. It is the kind of movie one has to watch at least one more time, to get all the stuff you are sure you missed the first time around. It is so richly layered, you simply cannot get all of it at one time... the elaborate sets and the amazing details of its production, the dialoges, witty and philosophical, the complex characters and their complex relationships.
What fascinated me was the myriad forms of theatre and mime shown in the film and how they reflected upon the characters. At the heart of the story is Garance, who is loved by at least four important characters in the movie. The setting is the Boulevard of Crime, in early 19th Century Paris. It is a place of entertainment, all forms of entertainment, where the rich and the poor might rub shoulders, it is brimming with life, crime, passion, art and the struggle for survival. Two actors, each excelling in their own field fall in love with Garance, a young mime named Baptiste(Jean Louis Barrault) who is shy and a young actor named Lemaitre( Pierre Brasseur) who is charming and brash.
The production details of the film are as fantastic as the film. It was made during the Nazi occupation of Paris, and the cast has people from the resistance as well as the collaborators, amongst the extras. On the edge of starvation, many times they stole the food off the sets, even before they were filmed. One can go on and on about the almost impossible constraints under which the film was made. These have been documented in various commentaries.
The title of the film, refers to the high balcony seats (colloquially called paradis), which seated the "commoners" the poor folk, who came in hordes, (there are many shots of the audience hanging from the balconies), appreciated or booed the actors enthusiastically and were the the makers and breakers of "star" actors. It is to this "rude"(in the Shakespearean sense) audience that the actors perform, not just the gentry sitting in their boxed seats.
The characters are wonderfully tailored to their roles... Baptiste, the silent lover, is a mime... he comes alive on the stage powerfully emoting tender love, comedy, cruelty... and all somehow seem linked to his muse...Garance. Barrrault, who loves Shakespeare, moves away from mime and becomes a famous star in the theatre...one of the scenes is incredible where tired of the inflated and banal tragedies he is required to play, he intervenes in the action and turns it into a witty, self-reflexive farce... But he feels he cannot really reach the heights of his profession as he cannot enact jealousy...he has achieved fame on a smooth track because of his flair and passion for acting, but the high point of his career comes when Garance, who he has loved and who left him, comes back and he realises that she loves Baptiste. Then he plays Othello, with passion and jealousy...once again the performance is linked to Garance... And then there is the ruthless and bitter criminal (cannot remember his name) who loves Garance (the only woman, according to him who he does not despise), who believes that all tragedy could easily turn to farce...except that he writes failed farces but it is his action that brings about the climax in the film...And in the middle of it all Garance, enigmatic, beautiful, their muse and audience and the central actor... Just wonderful, I thouroughly enjoyed the self-reflexiveness of it all... very exhilarating...
Elia Kazan's America America
Only in the last 5 minutes of America, America is there any action actually filmed in America. The prelude to that - a good 2 hrs 40 minutes - is about one young man's struggle against the odds to reach America: the land of opportunity. This, director Elia Kazan's most personal project and favorite film, is partly biographical based as it is on the experiences of his eldest uncle Stavros.
Elia Kazan's name generates mixed feelings. According to some e.g. Stanley Kubrick, he was the greatest American director. Most others are unable to get past his "naming names" to the HUAC in the 50's. Be that as it may, his works need to be judged on their professional merit, and certainly no other film captures the immigrant experience in the early part of the 20th century like America, America.
The only negative to the film is the lengthy running time and the slow pace for the first hour. Some have criticized the acting of the central character who occupies center stage for virtually the entire film. He's certainly no Brando, Clift, Dean or DeNiro. However, his accent and looks are much more Greek and that adds to the documentary like feel of the film.
Instead of filming in Hollywood studio sets, Kazan and DP Haskell Wexler (who won a well-deserved Oscar) opted for locations in Turkey and Greece - the action being set in Central Anatolia and Constantinople. This gives the film a rougher, more realistic look absent from other Kazan films of the late 50s-60s. The tragedies and injustices meted out to minorities under Ottoman rule and the harshness of life are what really stays with you after the film is over. There are several emotional moments such as when Stavros gets engaged and his fiancée pleads to him, or when he finally lands in America and sends a letter home.
Madhavi..thanks for your review on "Les Enfants du Paradis "..will look out for that.
It is as usual, very interesting to read your reviews..
Faraaj...now, you say it so beautifully.." America America " ...will be on my lookout too..
Since we are on french films, just wanted to say a few words about a couple of films...actually one is sequel to another, which touched me...very deep. Thanks to a real film buff who impressed on me that i should watch the films, i had an experience of a life time.
The film am talking about is....." Jean De Florette" directed by Claude Berri.
Since am not that well versed with credentials of directors and actors..i mostly rely on reviews. but this started as a favorite of mine, as it starred Gerard Depardieu...( Green Card, Bogus..) and he doesnt disappoint either.
The film story is simple...
It is about quest of Water....as old as life on this planet. Still this quest continues, as no one is able to satiate the insatiable human race.
In rural france, an ex-service man returns with a lucrative idea of growing roses on his land..but he comes to know that there is no good water resource in his plot...where as the adjoining plot is endowed with a spring which is always flowing..So the man gets an idea to knock away the land of the adjoining owner. The owner happens to be a lady who is on death bed..and she bequeaths the land to his niece..and her husband.. Jean. Now, Jean is an amicable and simple person...who has his plans to cultivate the land to the maximum extent..and get rich. he has his own plans..which consists of his wife and daughter and music..and peace and love.
The Ex-service man along with his uncle plug the water spring..and watch the neighbour sink...shrink..and get sick.. Nothing is on their conscience except the spring that is going to be theirs soon...
the climax is one of the heart rending ones i have seen... Dont miss it.
Now, the sequel .."Manon Des Sources"...is a beautiful sequel. We seldom see any sequel which can equal the first part in content and consistency. This one stands out that way...Watch this back to back with the first one...and i promise you will be glad and euphoric.
Faraaj...this is becoming a wonderful experience for me...fantastic to read your reviews...yes, i heard about Cyrano..I like Gerard because he is so unconventional in looks and acting..Ofcourse, being the sucker i am for romantic films...I enjoyed him in Green Card immensely...
Will wait for more...
Bruno
I was familiar Baron Sacha Cohen's Ali G character years before 2006's Borat. But, I became a serious fan of Cohen only after Borat. Sure the film has some slow moments, irrelevant subplots and some potty humor that was uncalled for. But there were many moments of such sheer comedic brilliance that I was blown up. I was very keen to see Bruno knowing it was Cohen's next project and also set in America. The ad for the film also made it look great.
Having just seen it, I confess to being disappointed. Sure my expectations were high, but most of the jokes in Bruno just did not work. There was a mean-spiritedness to the whole exercise. Where in Borat, he baited the humor coach, car salesman or feminists for laughs, here he actually offends. What he did with Ron Paul or the TV pilot previewers was just simply cheap behavior. Any normal, civilized person would behave the way they did - there is nothing homophobic about their reaction. The last moments were actually quite dangerous and he should've had better sense.
The admirable thing about Bruno is that Cohen retains his courage and audacity, which means there is hope for the future. And yes, it is good for one viewing because the handful of laughs in the movie are genuinely inventive comedy. I especially found his germanic-speak hilarious. But, while I remain a fan of Cohen I'm not a fan of Bruno the movie.
Faraaj...thanks for the pointers in the mine field..
Have you seen Seven pounds...starring Will smith?? it has been highly recommended.and am waiting for DVD..
Inglourious Basterds
I still remember the rush I got when seeing Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction for the first time. I ended up seeing both multiple times and took something new away from each viewing. The media hype around Tarantino, which I believed at the time, was that he could do no wrong. It really seemed in '94 that he was not only the greatest director in the world, but would change cinema forever. Unfortunately his produce since Pulp Fiction was neither prolific nor impressive. The primary weakness with Tarantino's three works post Pulp Fiction and pre Inglourious Basterds was his constantly parroting or paying tribute to other works he had admired instead of going out and doing his own thing, creating something original. An excess of verbosity slowed the pace as well. Viewing the trailer and reading initial reviews of Inglourious Basterds led me to believe it suffered the same shortcomings. To be honest, the trailer for Inglourious does not sell the film I saw. And Tarantino's frequent arrogance and more recent track record have opened him up to a lot of criticism - much of it unjustified in the case of this film.
Anyone who has read any review of Inglourious would know that the villain is a sinister Col. Hans Landa and that the opening sequence is one for the ages. He is a unique movie villain like Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men or Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. He doesn't speak, he interrogates and interviews in a eerily calm manner. It requires nerves of steel to maintain your composure with him around! His audacity in the last 20 minutes is breathtaking. The opening sequence was worthy of Sergio Leone, whose Once Upon a Time in the West and Lee Van Cleef in The Good The Bad and The Ugly no doubt influenced Tarantino's handling of the entire sequence.
I actually liked the criticized bar sequence even more than the opening. Long yes, but it slowly builds up to a brilliantly directed climax. The twists and turns, the playful banter which turns into something deadly are among the memorable sequences of cinema history. MĂ©lanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus has given a performance that is almost on par with Christopher Waltz's Col. Landa. If his performance is Oscar worthy (not that that should be the yardstick!), his interview of her and her reaction when he exits is also equally worthy. I should mention here that the name star of the film, Brad Pitt, is really only one part of a great ensemble cast. His performance is superb and not the caricature that the trailer implies. A sequence where his hick officer is forced to act 'Spanish' is just brilliant comedy. He has the accent of a southerner down pat. I only wish he'd been given more time. I hope the director's cut adds something to his role.
In closing, I'll add that Tarantino's knowledge of cinema was never in doubt. His camera-work and understanding of the mechanics of film-making were always good, but he has exceeded himself in this film. There is something classical about the photography (beautiful long takes) and cinematography, which almost no director can emulate. As a former fan and later critic of Tarantino, I'm blown away by Inglourious and despite his cheek, I do think he may just have made his masterpiece!
Wonderful, wonderful review, Faraaj. Thank you. Tarantino, Nazis, cruelty and comedy breaks... I am very curious to see the color he gives to the mix, the mood of a Tarantino movie is very difficult to capture in a review. I do agree with you about Tarantino's excessively intricate directorial nods to his favorite B and cult movies, (I feel that the Coen brothers are also guilty of that) and ditto for the arrogance bit too... . Still, I plead guilty to enjoying...no wrong word... a fascinated viewing of Kill Bill. Have not seen anything after that. Will write more on the film after seeing it.
The Long Goodbye (1973)
No mixed feelings about this one....worked for me
It's true. You can't have mixed feelings about The Long Good-bye; you'll either love it or hate it. I started the movie with what I pretended was an open mind, but a secret hope that I'd be fully justified in hating it. In my defense, The Maltese Falcon is my favorite movie and Bogie is my favorite actor. Noir is my favorite film genre and I love Howard Hawk's The Big Sleep wihich had Bogart as the definitive Marlowe.
Altman's take on Chandler's other book with private eye Marlowe, The Long Good-bye, updates the action to the 1970's. He introduces a very 70's theme song and finds as different an actor as he can from Bogart for the role of Marlowe. From the opening frame, Elliot Gould plays Marlowe like a push-over. He's a man who constantly mutters to himself, suffers nervous tics, can't even fool his cat, is afraid of dog's and seems to be the only man not attracted to his sexy hippie neighbors despite their friendliness towards him and obvious promiscuousness.
However, Gould really creates a unique persona with the way he walks, talks, wise-cracks and operates. He becomes a believable person - which is why the uncharacteristic ending is so impacting. The photography, especially the night scenes, are beautifully filmed. The theme music plays everywhere - a Mexican funeral, a doorbell, a car radio etc and with different singers. There are other layers of flesh added to the telling that really work - like the compound security guards impressions of James Stewart, Barbara Stanwyck, Cary Grant and best of all Walter Brennan aka Stumpy from Rio Bravo.
This movie worked great for me and the plot, intricate though it was, was understandable. I will not compare this Marlowe to Bogart's, but do find it admirable that Altman just stuck to the goal of making a good movie without trying to ape or make obvious references to the noir genre.
Yojimbo (1961)
Kurosawa's most entertaining film
Yojimbo, based on noir writer Dashiel Hammett's Red Harvest is a magnificently entertaining film. Toshiro Mifune stars as the nobody who calls himself Sanjuro (thirty but closer to forty). He enters a town destroyed by warring factions and plays a double-game to pit one faction against the other thus destroying the criminal element.
Yojimbo (aka The Bodyguard) is one of the coolest and most stylish films ever made. Starring Toshiro Mifune, Kurosawa's favorite actor, as the scruffy looking Samurai, Yojimbo has all of Kurosawa's qualities and none of the flaws. The music score is an essential element of the plot and strikingly good, but admittedly bettered by the Ennio Morricone version in the Spaghetti Western remake Fistful of Dollars. The visuals are great, from the samurai swordplay, to the desolate streets, the town crier announcing its 3 a.m. to the brutal torture scene.
One of the unique things about Yojimbo is the central character. He is an anti-hero. We see him initially as a killer and a man greedy for money. But then, he saves a family by re-uniting mother and child and giving them all the money he was advanced. Mifune has never been cooler than in this film and Eastwood could only aspire to equal such a performance.
Of the two remakes, I liked Fistful of Dollars for starting the Spaghetti Western genre, although Yojimbo is a far more superior and stylish film. The gangster version, Last Man Standing, was not very good and Bruce Willis made for a poor substitute to Yojimbo. This film looks fresh and undated even today - watch it!
Show Boat (1936)
Show Boat has virtually slipped into oblivion and any recognition of it would be as a splashy 1950's Technicolor big-budget production. This film version, a true American treasure even if its not recognized as such, is based on Edna Ferber's epic novel of 1926. Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein turned it into a musical which was filmed first as a mostly silent version in 1929. Show Boat, as presented at Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies, revolutionized the musical. In fact, the starting point of the modern Broadway musical is Show Boat. The epic story spanning 47 years covers the lives and loves of three generations of a showboat family. The play was a very frank depiction of race relations at the time and included an important sub-plot (entirely omitted in the 1951 film version) around miscegenation (white-black marriages).
This film version has many of the original stage actors reprising their original roles and apart from not compromising on the themes explored in the original and controversial production, it does not compromise of the authenticity of either the show boat or the look of the Mississippi towns through which the show boat passes. Charles Winninger, a forgotten little actor, is sensational as Capn Andy, the father of little Magnolia. He is the moral epicenter of the film and gives a fine comic turn. Little Noli is played by Irene Dunne and she is lovely and carries the bulk of the film. Her little dance in Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man is celluloid magic. I've rewound and watched that song a dozen times in the past 24 hours!!! The tragic Helen Morgan, a front-runner to Judy Garland, died a few short years after this film which was to be her comeback vehicle. She had cleaned up her alcoholism to get this role and she is a lovely singer and true entertainer. There is a tragic beauty to her that is quite haunting.
Finally, there is Joe, played by Paul Robeson. Almost no Robeson films are available and he spent many years outside the US so his film roles were limited. Like The Manchurian Candidate, many of his films were suppressed deliberately because he was 'undesirable'. In fact, his passport was canceled and he wasn't allowed to leave the US for several years. Exceptionally handsome and educated, Robeson was a true scholar (scholarship to Rutgers University as the third African-American to be accepted, Columbia Law graduate, student at SOAS in London), a noted athlete, fluent in 12 languages, a recipient of the Stalin Peace Prize and a leading civil-rights activist. A front-runner to Martin Luther King and Sidney Poitier, he had it tougher and fought harder. Its because of the barriers that he brought down that Sidney Poitier even had a chance at being a leading man and Denzel Washington is a star today. Under surveillance for over two decades because he openly supported the Soviet Union for giving him full dignity regardless of his skin color, his passport was revoked because of "his frequent criticism of the treatment of blacks in the United States should not be aired in foreign countries" — it was a "family affair." Till after his death, his recordings and films were simply withdrawn from circulation which makes his small role here all the more valuable.
The songs in this musical, while not to the standard of a My Fair Lady or King and I, are uniformly lovely. The two stand-outs for me were Ol' Man River (Jerome Kern's finest moment) and Can't Help Lovin Dat Man. Ol' Man is performed by Robeson in the beginning of the film and its enough to hook you till the end. Can't Help, a lovely tune, is performed by Helen Morgan with some support from Hattie MacDaniel and Paul Robeson and a lovely dance from the enchanting Irene Dunne.
Its funny how this ground-breaking musical is today criticized for being racist! The argument is that the depiction of blacks and the way they speak is inaccurate. Show Boat had a pivotal role to play in the early years of the civil rights movement and its sad to see how some people have forgotten that. Some of the criticism just doesn't make sense to me. For example, in Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man, Queenie sings:
My man is shiftless, An' good for nothing', too. He's my man just the same. He's never 'round here When there is work to do, He's never 'round here when there's workin' to do.
That's apparently unacceptable since 1966 and has been replaced with:
My man's a dreamer, He don't have much to say He's my man just the same Instead o' workin, He sits and dreams all day, Instead o' workin', he'll be dreamin' all day.
I appreciate some aspects of political correctness, but others don't make sense. True, Show Boat is dated, but this is the only case I know where being dated works to the films advantage. We do get a true perspective on an era instead of a glossy, modern-day interpretation. A cinematic treasure, Show Boat is one for the discerning viewer.
Out of the Past (1947)
Required viewing
Jeff Bailey (in an early starring role by Robert Mitchum) is a man hiding under an assumed name and trying to start a new and quiet life. There is something in his past - a woman and a betrayal that he ran away from. But he is a courageous man who when confronted with the past does try to do his best to come clean.
Whit Sterling (a charmingly scruple-less Kirk Douglas) has been double-crossed by Jeff in the past but has the gall to call him up for another favour in order to clear the past.
Kathie Moffat is a selfish woman who both man love(d) and who can double cross anybody. Jeff puts it best "you're like a leaf that the wind blows one from gutter to another".
Whether for noir fans or for fans of 40's Hollywood movies, Out of the Past is required viewing. There are a number of factors that go into making this a perfect movie. The most striking is the dialogue. There are countless quotable lines. Less than half of them have made it onto IMDb. The plot is very intricate and yet all the characters are developed fully. The entire cast is uniformly excellent and believable. The direction by Jacques Tourneur is just as good and atmospheric as in his horror classic Cat People. There are several moments that will have your heartbeat racing and you are constantly amazed at the witty dialogue.
My favourite scene was when Jeff has breakfast with Whit at Lake Tahoe. Kirk deserved an Oscar just for that 5 minute scene alone - he is so cool and shameless. For me this is very high on the list of all time great movies! Needs to be seen several times.....
Les enfants du paradis (1945)
Definitely a contender for greatest film
As a film buff for well over 20 years I've seen pretty much all of the acclaimed classics of cinema. So, the odds of adding another classic to my top 10 or 20 or 50 all-time favorite list are slim. I had completed little more than an hour of Les Enfants last weekend when I knew that even if the rest of the film went downhill (which it didn't!!!) it would be in my ratings alongside other favorites like Lawrence of Arabia, Double Indemnity, another great French film Le Salaire de la Peur, The Seventh Seal and a handful of other classics.
There is nothing I can criticize about the film. If the length of three hour sounds excessive, I would say that the three hour flew by. This is a marvelously entertaining film with varied art forms - the theatrical, the mime, poetry - seamlessly combined to make a complete story. It alternates from love story to tragedy to comedy and at each moment the mood it captures is never false. Only superlatives apply in describing the acting. I had heard the name Arletty before. Now I'll never forget it. And she was the third best actor in the film. For me the actors playing Baptiste and Lemaitre (both based on real historic characters of the 1840's) gave among the greatest performances in cinema history. I could appreciate the magic of Baptiste's mime and Lemaitre's theatrics even though I can't speak french and had to rely on subtitles (not for Baptiste though!).
There are many magical moments in the film. The first mime by Baptiste reenacting to the police and the crowd is great cinema. Lemaitre first seeing and flirting with Garance is another. Oh, there are too many. I've just mentioned two from the first 20 minutes of the film! The entire film is a joy from beginning to end...
Faraaj..now you piqued my interest. I still remember with awe the three hours which flew by..when we watched Lido Show in Paris...so many art forms coming off one after another was breathtaking ! We couldnt even wink comfortably with a thought that we might something precious...
Now, got to acquire this Disc...ASAP.
Shutter Island (2010)
As usual, I am embarrassingly behind times as far as new releases are concerned. Just saw Shutter Island. It is about two federal agents who come to a remote island that hosts insane criminals to investigate the disappearance of a woman who is charged with drowning her three children.
Leonardo is a war veteran, now a federal agent, who had witnessed the release of the prisoners of Dachau, and is traumatized by that experience and seems to be battling with the private tragedy of his wife’s death. He is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery of the woman’s disappearance and is struggling alongside to exorcise his private ghosts. Gloomy and atmospheric, the film, set in the 50s is redolent with the miasma of fear and distrust of the red scare, the post war trauma of the war veterans and transposes it effectively into the genres of the noir and horror.
Scorsese is as capable of playing with a genre as the Coen brothers and Tarantino, but there is an intensity in his use of the genre that is different from the self-consciousness with which Tarantino or the Coens use it. (My apologies for lumping them so summarily together …for the purpose of this review only!) The film is campy at times, the surprise ending is sort of hinted throughout the movie, but Scorsese gets into the mood of the film…into this tale of horror, guilt, confusion and terror are woven his usual themes of guilt and confession/revelation.
It is a haunting film and it leaves some questions unanswered, the power of the film does not lie in the final revelation but in the sense of nightmarish reality that the film creates… that the film compels the audience participate in.
Faraaj, just read your post on Out of the Past... while making Shutter Island, Scorsese had insisted to his crew that reviewing Out of the Past and Vertigo were crucial to understanding the mood of Shutter Island.
Here's my take on Shutter Island.
Scorcese has often been called America's greatest living director. Certainly with classics like Mean Streets, Taxidriver and Raging Bull to his credit decades ago, and others like Goodfellas and Gangs of New York in the intervening year, there is much weight in holding him in such high esteem, along with the expectations that come with it. My first impression with each new film since Goodfellas has been that its lesser Scorcese. He appears to have fallen from the lofty standards he set early in his career. The themes of the film do not have the gravitas one expects of a Scorcese film etc. On first viewing, I felt that way about both Gangs of New York and The Departed. Second and third viewings changed my opinion and I now know both films to be classics and the Scorcese magic is self evident.
Shutter Island, which is a big move away from the broad range that Scorcese normally works within, is a horror-thriller film - well, more thriller than horror and thus more mainstream than his usual fare. The only other mainstream Scorcese film that comes to mind is Cape Fear. While I was never impressed with Cape Fear, the original B&W noir classic being far superior, I readily admit to loving Shutter Island from the first frame.
People forget that Scorcese is the original film nerd and his understanding of cinema and the great masters is unparalleled. In this visually enchanting masterpiece, I saw clear shades of King Kong, the Val Lewton films of the 40s e.g. Isle of the Dead, Hitchcock's Vertigo and North by Northwest and of course the expressionist classic The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. However, it was all of a piece with a clear visual style that gelled and worked. There are remarkable set-pieces littered throughout the film - too many to mention. The performances are uniformly great. While, De Caprio, Ben Kingsley and Emily Watson are all acclaimed, Mark Ruffalo is less well known and shines in this, his best role since Zodiac.
I won't go into the plot details but given that this is a thriller, suffice to say that there is at least one major plot twist. I've seen several reviewers commenting on and emphasizing the big twist. Many saw it coming and disliked the film, others couldn't see the twist coming and loved the film as a result. I think that basing your opinion on the plot twist misses the point. With the large number of thrillers that Hollywood churns out each year, I don't think is a plot twist out there that hasn't been covered threadbare by multiple films. What is important to me is the visual sense and style, which is present in Shutter Island in bucket-loads!
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