CineSage_jr
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Posts posted by CineSage_jr
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"Road-show" versions of films are those that opened in the big reserved-seat theatres in major cities, where they were treated much like Broadway plays, with the prestige of the presentation foremost in the studios' minds (or nearly so). The films were often (though not always) longer than what would later play in neighborhood houses (where the studios made most of their money, and tried to maximize it by shortening films to play more times per day). The concept of the road-show pretty much ended in the mid-1970s when the unprecedented success of JAWS forced studios to reassess their decades-old releasing policies; they came to believe that much more money was to be made by opening films "wide," meaning on several thousand screens nationwide on the same day. In the case of certain films thought to need time "finding" audiences, the studios "platformed" them, which was opening in a few key markets to get good reviews and build word-of-mouth, and then increasing the number of screens week by week, but this is a far cry from the "road-shows" of yore.
Paramount once even went so far as to pen longer versions of several films in the 1940s, including THE HEIRESS and A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT only at Radio City Music Hall, and nowhere else. Unfortunately, the footage cut to create the abbreviated general-release prints probably no longer exists, a particular tragedy when it comes to a masterpiece like THE HEIRESS..
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Ella Fitzgerald was briefly engaged to Darth Vader, but called it off when she realized her name would be Ella Vader........I'm sorry
Ella was also warned by a travelling fortune-teller never to wear pink tights.
And I'm not sorry.
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The picture and sound elements for the road-show version are not in the best of condition. That said, I'd prefer that they showed the road-show verion, too, in spite of the elements' failings.
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EL CID and 55 DAYS AT PEKING, though I'd expect The Weinstein Company to strike a deal, probably wiith TCM, sometime after their DVDs of each film have been in the marketplace long enough.
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The shot in Vidor's film was deliberately copied by Billy Wilder in his opening to THE APARTMENT.
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What a grouch you are, Mr. Potter.
Careful, or I'll foreclose on your mortgage, and then run over your toes with my wheelchair..
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I do agree it may be one of his best performances. Too bad they didn't have it available for the tribute.
I don't think WILL PENNY's unavailable to TCM (they've shown it before); I think that they're just ignoring it in favor of his higher-profile films.
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Hola Carcosa---thank you so much for sharing those words from Richard Dreyfuss. I was never a fan of his, but as a person he strikes me as mighty fine and perceptive and like him, I only wish I could evince such "grace under fire" Mr Heston did. Thanks again.
I think the only reason the arch-conservative National Review printed Dreyfuss's piece is because it has a soft spot in its collective heart for the reactionary Senator Rumson, the character Dreyfuss played in THE AMERICAN PRESIDENT.
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I think they've already set a new television standard. Osborne and McGowan are the Osborne and McGowan of classic film hosting.
Frankly, that's not saying much, largely because the two are given so little time to develop their thoughts and dig into the subject matter that they end up saying little or nothing of value.
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Heston didn't consider WILL PENNY his best film, he thought it contained what was possibly his best performance -- quite a different thing.
In fact, he read the screenplay, which he loved, and tried to buy it from the writer, Tom Gries who, up till then had been a moderately successful TV writer and director; it was Heston's intention to get William Wyler or George Stevens to direct the film, but Gries wouldn't budge on his central demand: either he got to direct the film, or he wouldn't sell at ay price.
As good as the film is (and I think that its first thirty minutes or so is the most accurate depiction in all of cinema of what it was really like to be a cowboy: utterly unglamorous, cold, dirty, dangerous and poorly-rewarded; its during the film's latter ninety minutes that it veers into more conventional melodrama -- still engaging, but less worthy than what came before it), it would've been much better still had Heston gotten his way and been able to land Wyler or Stevens, either of whom would've elevated the film to the level of undisputed classic.
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It's a couple of miles down the road from THE ISLAND OF DR MOREAU and THE ISLAND OF LOST SOULS (which are actually the same place).
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Okay, it's
Bardot
and you mean
bellissima
though
che bella!
is closer to the mark.
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I caught just the tail end of the intro to The Great Escape on Saturday but was really impressed with Ms. McGowan's mentioning of the music score in the film. She pointed out that scenes featuring the Nazis used only certain instruments of the orchestra (string section, I believe) while the scenes of Allies were scored using completely different instrumental accompaniment (Woodwinds and brass). I never noticed that before.
That you never noticed it before is likely because it really isn't true. Though it is -- or was -- common for a composer to apply different orchestral pallettes to a film's various characters, in addition to the specific themes assigned to them (at least in the great old days of film-scoring, when composers knew the dramatic value of assigning leitmotivs to characters, and still had the training and talent to carry it out), the idea that Elmer Bernstein wrote a string-only motiv for the Germans is absurd, especially since it frequently (though not always) employs percussion to emphasize the martial aspects of the Gestapo and Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht troops.
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I find it telling that no pro gun fanatics denegrated Richard Widmark because of his anti-gun stance and this is as it should be.
When 30,000 people in the U.S. die, year-in and year-out, due to a lack of guns, maybe those fanatics will.
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THE WARLORD is one of my very favorite Heston films, and sadly was only available on DVD for a short time when Universal licensed some titles for release to Goodtimes Home Video. It's a pretty goodt transfer in widescreen to boot. I wish Universal would restore the film's exised scenes and release it again, like the sort-of "Director's Cut" of TOUCH OF EVIL....
They are selling on eBay in $50-60 dollar range and will probably go up now....
It should be pointed out that the DVD is in a widescreen ration, but it's not anamorphic, meaning it won't fill up a 16: 9 HD TV unless it's blown up (which will make it fuzzy). Universal needs to reissue this with a new transfer. Sadly, Heston's death may be just what it takes to create a demand for it.
As for a longer version, Heston noted in his published journals that director Franklin Schaffner's cut came in at about 2 1/2 hours, though I have my doubts that that assembly still exists in Universal's vaults, though it is possible that the negative for the additional material is still in storage.
The film certainly does need a re-working because, while it's always been an interesting one, it never quite knew what it wanted to be (historical epic? Period romance? Fantasy?); there're a lot of half-realized elements to the film that need either to be fleshed-out or dropped.
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To begin to understand the film, one must understand Godard's choice of title. "Contempt" refers not only to the characters' general feeling for one another, but for what Godard wished to provoke in his audience -- he literally (I kid you not) wished to drive his very patrons out of the theater, seeing the film as a kind of what is now called "performance art," in which the audience's extreme reaction is an integral part of the cinematic statement (honest).
Bob Osborne's post-film "explanation" that Godard wanted to go back to doing more intimate projects over which he had more control is a kind of smoke-screen: obviously, a director who deliberately sabotages the boxoffice potential of his films (now there's an idea for a movie!) is of no use to producers like Ponti and Levine. I seriously doubt that, after CONTEMPT, Godard received many offers from well-financed producers to direct much of anything).
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Or, just imagine what the dialogue in ENSIGN PULVER, the ill-conceived "sequel" to MISTER ROBERTS, with Robert Walker, jr and Burl Ives, might have been like when the former spoke about the captain's (Ives) being shot in his BYEW-tocks.
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Or Ma and Pa Kettle, for that matter.
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Boggles the mind that some think this is the place to make mean-spirited remarks related to Mr Heston's stand on guns. sigh
Roughly 30,000 people killed by guns in the U.S. preceded Heston into the grave, in the past twelve months alone, the public's access to firearms greased by the Gun Lobby of which Heston had been a conspicuous part (of his own choosing).
The really sad fact is that an eighty-four-year-old man's dying of natural causes has evinced far more grief on these pages than the thirty-two mostly young people at Virginia Tech who died from bullets ripping their bodies to shreds at the hand of exactly the sort of "law-abiding citizen" the NRA says has every right to own a gun -- law-abiding until the day he decided it was time to go killing.
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I just saw some of TCM's airing of Godard's CONTEMPT, and the transfer was even worse than I feared. I really recommend any and all interested parties to rent or buy the Criterion DVD to see how the film is really supposed to look and sound. Not only was the telecast of a seriously overscanned, fuzzy, washed-out pan-and-scan transfer, but it had the English-ubbed soundtrack in which one doesn't even get to hear Fritz Lang speak in his own voice (mostly in English), as one does on the subtitled original French-language track (both tracks are available on the DVD.
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That's not just any Frenchwoman, but Darryl Zanuck's mistress du jour, thoroughly atrocious excuse for an actress, the notorious Bella Darvi (and really Polish by birth; real name: Bayla Wegier)!
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I hope this link works. A graceful article praising CH by Richard Dreyfus:
www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-dreyfus082002.asp
Your link doesn't work.
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At the risk of repeating myself (from another thread), Osborne and McGowan are the John Steed & Mrs. Peel of classic film hosting.
If they're at it long enough, they may become the Nick and Nora Charles.
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Lipstick applied beyond the lipline to re-shape a mouth...yuk.
Juggernaut
in General Discussions
Posted
No, no, this is an independently-produced 1974 British thriller with Richard Harris as a bomb-disposal expert brought in to defuse a set of large bombs planted aboard an ocean liner at sea.
I hadn't seen it since it was first released, and while it has its flaws, compared to modern junk like SPEED 2, it's a work of genius.