Film_Fatale
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Dick Powell
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TCM is showing both versions of *The Merry Widow* this Wednesday (the first one, it seems, due to Ernst Lubitsch's birthday).
I don't recall if I've seen one or both versions, but for those who have: which one do you like best, and why?
*The Merry Widow* (1934)
A prince from a small kingdom courts a wealthy widow to keep her money in the country.
Cast: Maurice Chevalier, Jeanette MacDonald, Edward Everett Horton, Una Merkel Dir: Ernst Lubitsch BW-99 mins, TV-PG
*The Merry Widow* (1952)
A prince from a small kingdom courts a wealthy widow to keep her money in the country.
Cast: Lana Turner, Fernando Lamas, Una Merkel, Richard Haydn Dir: Curtis Bernhardt C-105 mins, TV-G
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LaMotta, Jake - Robert DeNiro in *Raging Bull*
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Maybe a little reverse psychology is in order.... Frank - take as long as you want to write that ramble. Really. _Take your time_. No rush.
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> {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote}
> (I don't want to offend anyone by writing about subversive motives or making a modern statement about a 50's movie, I am just having a bit of fun here. I hope no one gets too upset with my modern "spin". I am just a goofball who likes to analyze things too much)
I don't think anyone would be offended, Wendy. You do make a very good point about 50's morality turning her into a mess. One might also consider Jeff Stafford's argument that the movie is a result of both the 50's paranoia and the real-life split up of Gloria and Nicholas Ray. (No I'm not saying Ray was like Dix!)
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If this is the clip:
Then the movie is *Blue Skies* and you can find it at most online retailers.
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Are you currently accepting papers on anything other than *Mildred Pierce*, prof? B-)
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I think it was also used in *Lilith* and *The Cobweb*. But maybe I'm just blocking some bad memory of some other films that affected my subconscious in a way that I'm not ready to deal with.
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> {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote}
> Well, yeah. If you wanna boil it down into one sentence...... Why didn't I think of that?
Well, good writers sometimes appreciate being concise.
By the way, I don't know if anyone's posted this before, but I don't think I've heard anyone refer to it - it's the article on *In a Lonely Place* from tcmdb.com:
http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title.jsp?stid=224&category=Articles
*In a Lonely Place*
"I was born when she kissed me.
I died when she left me.
I lived a few weeks while she loved me."
As written by Hollywood screenwriter Dixon Steele (Humphrey Bogart), the above dialogue is not only a summation of a brief romance in Steele's new screenplay but also the short, sad tale of his own roller coaster affair with Laurel Gray (Gloria Grahame), a neighbor in his apartment complex. The couple meet under unusual circumstances. Laurel provides an alibi for Dixon when he is suspected of murdering a restaurant hat-check girl he invited to his apartment for a script reading (Laurel witnessed the woman leaving the apartment alone). Convinced of his innocence, Laurel soon falls deeply in love with Dixon and the two embark on a passionate relationship. But Dixon's volatile, highly paranoid nature begins to emerge through a series of disturbing incidents; during one, he physically attacks a movie producer in a restaurant; in another, he almost beats a man to death in a case of road rage. In the end, Steele's self-destructive behavior condemns him to a private hell of his own making.
Long acknowledged as one of Nicholas Ray's greatest films, In a Lonely Place (1950) features what is probably Gloria Grahame's finest performance (she was married to Ray at the time) and shows us a side of Humphrey Bogart that was rarely exploited on the screen - a man at the boiling point, unable to contain any longer the suppressed rage of a lifetime. According to Goeff Andrew, the author of The Films of Nicholas Ray, "In a Lonely Place is both a product of the years in which it was made (the paranoia, distrust and treachery that colour its portrait of Hollywood are surely linked to the mood prevailing in the United States during the anti-Red witch hunts), and a characteristic Ray study of the destruction of an idealistic romance between lonely outsiders, by the harsh realities of the world around them." Sadly enough, Ray and Grahame were in the middle of a martial breakup when they were filming In a Lonely Place but kept their problems private for fear that the studio would replace Ray with another director. As a result, it's quite possible that Dixon and Laurel's troubled relationship in the film was merely a mirror of Ray and Grahame's off-screen problems and one reason why the couple's doomed romance has the painful ring of truth.
Produced by Santana, Bogart's own production company, In a Lonely Place was based on Dorothy B. Hughes' novel about a serial sex murderer that told the story from the killer's viewpoint. In 1949, however, the Breen Office (Hollywood's self-censoring arm) would never consent to a film version of Hughes' book without some major revisions so screenwriter Andrew Solt set the story in Hollywood, gave Dixon Steele the occupation of screenwriter (he was only posing as a writer in the novel) and avoided the depiction of any on-screen murders with one exception. Still, Ray made further changes to the script, completely revamping the ending.
In an article in The Velvet Light Trap, Ray said that In a Lonely Place was "a very personal film; the place in which it was filmed was the first place I lived in Hollywood. It was my second film with Bogart, and, as some people pointed out, it was the kind of film that made it possible for him to go into The African Queen [1951]. I took the gun out of his hand for the first time in Knock On Any Door [1949], and he was more comfortable this time. The ending which Andrew Solt and I had written became one which I found I couldn't live with, but I had to shoot it. And I did exactly as we had written it, in which Bogart kills the girl, and, as he is writing on the typewriter the last few lines, his old pal from the Army comes in and arrests him and takes him to the police station. Well, if that's not wrapping it up with a nice pink ribbon, I don't know what is; and, as I came closer and closer to the end of it I said, 'Well, today is the day and I have to be ready.' And I kicked everyone off-stage except Bogart, Gloria Grahame, and Art Smith [he plays Dixon's agent]. Even the producer, and [Lauren] Bacall, who had come down to see Bogie work for Columbia for the first time since they were married. And we improvised the ending which is in the film - because romances and marriages always end tragically or with a family. A little avant-garde for its time..."
In a Lonely Place was well-received by most critics but was not a box office hit, though some studio executives at the time felt it might have been had Lauren Bacall been cast in the Gloria Grahame role. Of course, Ray's film is now lauded as a film noir masterpiece and a career highpoint for Bogart. As Robert Sklar wrote in City Boys: Cagney, Bogart, Garfield, "Bogart's performance as Dix Steele shares most of the characteristics of his classic performances except that the tie between the killer and the lover is laid bare, without the romanticism, the genre conventions, or the political ideology which underlay it in previous films....There are no moments for audiences to cheer as he pumps lead into a noxious villain - surely not when he extols the wonderful feeling of crushing a throat, or with his hands around one. In a Lonely Place is a radical demystification of the classic Bogart hero. The role of Dixon Steele is among the most interesting examples of a performer's critical reevaluation of his screen persona, and surely belongs on the list of Bogart's great performances."
Producer: Robert Lord
Director: Nicholas Ray
Screenplay: Edmund H. North, Andrew Solt; based on the novel by Dorothy B. Hughes
Art Direction: Robert Peterson
Cinematography: Burnett Guffey
Editing: Viola Lawrence
Music: George Antheil
Cast: Humphrey Bogart (Dixon Steele), Gloria Grahame (Laurel Gray), Frank Lovejoy (Brub Nicolai), Carl Benton Reid (Capt. Lochner), Robert Warwick (Charlie Waterman), Art Smith (Mel Lippman), Jeff Donnell (Sylvia Nicolai).
BW-94m.
By Jeff Stafford
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Variety has reviewed the new *Films of Michael Powell* DVD -
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117939415.html?categoryid=1023&cs=1
*The Films of Michael Powell*
By DAVID MERMELSTEIN
Cast: David Niven, Kim Hunter, Roger Livesey, Marius Goring, Raymond Massey; James Mason, Helen Mirren.
Of all Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's films, "A Matter of Life and Death" (1946) is the most rhapsodic, so three cheers and then some to see it bow on DVD in such a spectacular transfer. Yet it seems a false step to couple the pic with the vastly inferior "Age of Consent" (1969) as Sony does for "The Films of Michael Powell," its second collaboration with Martin Scorsese's Film Foundation.
Powell directed both movies but Pressburger wasn't involved in "Age of Consent," and that matters. So does "A Matter of Life and Death's" vintage because the 1940s were Powell and Pressburger's golden age, when they conjured landmark efforts such as "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp," "Black Narcissus" and "The Red Shoes," films that exude a unique ethos. Boldly colored, unapologetically romantic and fiercely English, they remain endlessly watchable even 60 years after their debuts.
"A Matter of Life and Death" (originally titled "Stairway to Heaven" in America) tells of a downed English Royal Air Force captain (David Niven) who is accidentally lost by an angel of death (Marius Goring). Once found, the flier refuses to be taken heavenward because he's found love on earth with an American gal (Kim Hunter) assisting the war effort in Blighty.
The magic comes as the film, lensed by the great Jack Cardiff, toggles between the earthly romance, in blazing Technicolor, and the somberness of Niven's heavenly trial, shot in gauzy b&w -- a cheeky upending to "The Wizard of Oz's" depiction of fantasy versus reality.
"Age of Consent," Powell's last feature, will interest only those wanting to follow the helmer's career to its disappointing end. It's an old man's film in the worst sense, an indulgent island romp in which a middle-age painter (James Mason) attempts to recapture lost vibrancy, a quality personified in the feral girl he enlists as a model (Helen Mirren, in her first film). It's beautifully, though not imaginatively, shot in vibrant color, with ample underwater shots of the Great Barrier Reef.
What's notable about this issue is that the pic's "risque" original title sequence has been restored, as has Peter Sculthorpe's beguiling original score -- both foolishly jettisoned by nervous Col execs prior to the film's debut.
As for the extras on this two-disc set, Scorsese's intro to "A Matter of Life and Death" is sweet but too personal. (It's not about you, Marty!) The full audio commentary by preeminent Powell and Pressburger scholar Ian Christie, though, couldn't be more authoritative and compellingly delivered. Fans of the Archers (as Powell and Pressburger called themselves) are certain to learn much.
The extras for "Age of Consent" are in some way more engrossing than the film itself. "Making 'Age of Consent'" features the director's son, Kevin Powell, who worked on the film, as well as editor Anthony Buckley and scorer Sculthorpe. In the 12-mintue "Helen Mirren: A Conversation With Cora," the Oscar-winning actress speaks endearingly of how intimidated she was by filmmaking generally and how touched she was by Mason's kindness and Powell's tender concern.
Running time: "A Matter of Life of Death" 104 MIN.; "Age of Consent" 106 MIN.
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Iago - Miche?l MacLiamm?ir in *The Tragedy of Othello: The Moor of Venice*
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Ustinov, Peter
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*Inn of the Sixth Happiness, The*
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Gillespie, Police Chief Bill - Rod Steiger in *In the Heat of the Night*
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OK. enough of this! My brain feels foggy just trying to make this all fit together! Oy vay. I forgot what I was trying to explain.....
I think it makes sense, Wendy. To some extent, I guess you're saying both of these male characters were rather self-absorbed, right?
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Awesome video, Fred. Who's your favourite femme fatale?
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I concur with you, ILRM! But I think there should be brownies for everyone in the class.
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Fred and Ginger never starred in a movie called that (although a movie of that title was made in 1930).
However if you've seen the number in a musical it's likely you watched either Clark Gable in *Idiot's Delight* (with Norma Shearer) or Fred Astaire in *Blue Skies*
For more info:
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"Stand by your man" is definitely one of the themes, but I was thinking in broader terms: marriage/commitment. Most people (again, male critics) overlook that theme with In a Lonely Place and High Noon, but it's something I tend to focus on. "Dixon Steele" and "Will Kane" are certainly front and center, but I feel it's "Laurel GRAY" and "Amy Kane" that are "secretly" driving the stories.Sounds to me like someone's getting in touch with his feminine side. That is always a good thing. Hopefully soon, he'll grow to appreciate and admire Coop.
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Burgess Meredith
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http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/01/27/books/AP-Obit-Updike.html?hp
January 27, 2009
*John Updike, Author, Dies at 76*
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:39 p.m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the postwar prime of the American empire, died Tuesday at age 76.
Updike, a resident of Beverly Farms, Mass., died of lung cancer, according to a statement from his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.
A literary writer who frequently appeared on best-seller lists, the tall, hawk-nosed Updike wrote novels, short stories, poems, criticism, the memoir "Self-Consciousness" and even a famous essay about baseball great Ted Williams. He was prolific, even compulsive, releasing more than 50 books in a career that started in the 1950s. Updike won virtually every literary prize, including two Pulitzers, for "Rabbit Is Rich" and "Rabbit at Rest," and two National Book Awards.
Although himself deprived of a Nobel, he did bestow it upon one of his fictional characters, Henry Bech, the womanizing, egotistical Jewish novelist who collected the literature prize in 1999.
His settings ranged from the court of "Hamlet" to postcolonial Africa, but his literary home was the American suburb. Born in 1932, Updike spoke for millions of Depression-era readers raised by "penny-pinching parents," united by "the patriotic cohesion of World War II" and blessed by a "disproportionate share of the world's resources," the postwar, suburban boom of "idealistic careers and early marriages."
He captured, and sometimes embodied, a generation's confusion over the civil rights and women's movements, and opposition to the Vietnam War. Updike was called a misogynist, a racist and an apologist for the establishment. On purely literary grounds, he was attacked by Norman Mailer as the kind of author appreciated by readers who knew nothing about writing.
But more often he was praised for his flowing, poetic writing style. Describing a man's interrupted quest to make love, Updike likened it "to a small angel to which all afternoon tiny lead weights are attached." Nothing was too great or too small for Updike to poeticize. He might rhapsodize over the film projector's "chuckling whir" or look to the stars and observe that "the universe is perfectly transparent: we exist as flaws in ancient glass."
In the richest detail, his books recorded the extremes of earthly desire and spiritual zealotry, whether the comic philandering of the preacher in "A Month of Sundays" or the steady rage of the young Muslim in "Terrorist." Raised in the Protestant community of Shillington, Pa., where the Lord's Prayer was recited daily at school, Updike was a lifelong churchgoer influenced by his faith, but not immune to doubts.
"I remember the times when I was wrestling with these issues that I would feel crushed. I was crushed by the purely materialistic, atheistic account of the universe," Updike told The Associated Press during a 2006 interview.
"I am very prone to accept all that the scientists tell us, the truth of it, the authority of the efforts of all the men and woman spent trying to understand more about atoms and molecules. But I can't quite make the leap of unfaith, as it were, and say, 'This is it. Carpe diem (seize the day), and tough luck."'
He received his greatest acclaim for the "Rabbit" series, a quartet of novels published over a 30-year span that featured ex-high school basketball star Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom and his restless adjustment to adulthood and the constraints of work and family. To the very end, Harry was in motion, an innocent in his belief that any door could be opened, a believer in God even as he bedded women other than his wife.
"The tetralogy to me is the tale of a life, a life led an American citizen who shares the national passion for youth, freedom, and sex, the national openness and willingness to learn, the national habit of improvisation," Updike would later write. "He is furthermore a Protestant, haunted by a God whose manifestations are elusive, yet all-important."
Other notable books included "Couples," a sexually explicit tale of suburban mating that sold millions of copies; "In the Beauty of the Lilies," an epic of American faith and fantasy; and "Too Far to Go, which followed the courtship, marriage and divorce of the Maples, a suburban couple with parallels to Updike's own first marriage.
Plagued from an early age by asthma, psoriasis and a stammer, he found creative outlets in drawing and writing. Updike was born in Reading, Pa., his mother a department store worker who longed to write, his father a high school teacher remembered with sadness and affection in "The Centaur," a novel published in 1964. The author brooded over his father's low pay and mocking students, but also wrote of a childhood of "warm and action-packed houses that accommodated the presence of a stranger, my strange ambition to be glamorous."
For Updike, the high life meant books, such as the volumes of P.G. Wodehouse and Robert Benchley he borrowed from the library as a child, or, as he later recalled, the "chastely severe, time-honored classics" he read in his dorm room at Harvard University, leaning back in his "wooden Harvard chair," cigarette in hand.
While studying on full scholarship at Harvard, he headed the staff of the Harvard Lampoon and met the woman who became his first wife, Mary Entwistle Pennington, whom he married in June 1953, a year before he earned his A.B. degree summa **** laude. (Updike divorced Pennington in 1975 and was remarried two years later, to Martha Bernhard).
After graduating, he accepted a one-year fellowship to study painting at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Arts at Oxford University. During his stay in England, a literary idol, E.B. White, offered him a position at The New Yorker, where he served briefly as foreign books reviewer. Many of Updike's reviews and short stories were published in The New Yorker, often edited by White's stepson, Roger Angell.
By the end of the 1950s, Updike had published a story collection, a book of poetry and his first novel, "The Poorhouse Fair," soon followed by the first of the Rabbit books, "Rabbit, Run." Praise came so early and so often that New York Times critic Arthur Mizener worried that Updike's "natural talent" was exposing him "from an early age to a great deal of head-turning praise."
Updike learned to write about everyday life by, in part, living it. In 1957, he left New York, with its "cultural hassle" and melting pot of "agents and wisenheimers," and settled with his first wife and four kids in Ipswich, Mass, a "rather out-of-the-way town" about 30 miles north of Boston.
"The real America seemed to me 'out there,' too heterogeneous and electrified by now to pose much threat of the provinciality that people used to come to New York to escape," Updike later wrote.
"There were also practical attractions: free parking for my car, public education for my children, a beach to tan my skin on, a church to attend without seeming too strange."
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> {quote:title=JackFavell wrote:}{quote}
> Hey, FF. Thanks!
>
> I haven't quite got my ideas together on the subject. In fact, my brain feels sort of like this today:
Sorry to hear that - I'm sure it will pass!
"Stand by your man" is definitely one of the themes, but I was thinking in broader terms: marriage/commitment. Most people (again, male critics) overlook that theme with In a Lonely Place and High Noon, but it's something I tend to focus on. "Dixon Steele" and "Will Kane" are certainly front and center, but I feel it's "Laurel GRAY" and "Amy Kane" that are "secretly" driving the stories.
Who else likes Lana?
in Your Favorites
Posted
Don't miss *The Merry Widow* - Wednesday at 6pm ET!
*The Merry Widow* (1952)
A prince from a small kingdom courts a wealthy widow to keep her money in the country.
Cast: Lana Turner, Fernando Lamas, Una Merkel, Richard Haydn Dir: Curtis Bernhardt C-105 mins, TV-G