MyFavoriteFilms
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That's a great post...thanks for sharing. Not everyone gets to meet Marion's daughter or be surrounded by parts of her home.
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And they go in cycles. When I was researching this topic, I found a mini-resurgence in the late 90s on through to the mid-2000s. Films like DEEP IMPACT and INDEPENDENCE DAY and VOLCANO took the genre into a more science-fiction type realm, but it's obviously still marketable. I think the disaster genre is here to stay.
While there are countless examples before AIRPORT, the formula seems to crystallize in the 1970s. They sort of combined the all-star epic with the disaster flick and created the all-star disaster movie.
And what's interesting is that these were not miniscule or 'safe' budgets...when a film like THE SWARM flopped (pulled after just two weeks in theatres) it cost the studio a bundle. The upside is that some of the failures became camp classics and did recoup some of the initial investment. THE SWARM is commercially available, is considered a cult favorite, and it even has an extended directors-cut version.
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The disaster film has been around a long time. Some silent films had disaster themes, such as 1926's *THE JOHNSTOWN FLOOD*. Succeeding decades have seen hugely popular films in this vein...but it seems to have really hit its peak in the 1970s.
*THE SWARM*...Richard Widmark, Olivia de Havilland, Fred MacMurray and others deal with a killer bee invasion in this disaster classic from '78.
*THE TOWERING INFERNO*...Fox & Warners co-produced this scorcher starring Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Fred Astaire and Jennifer Jones in her last on-screen role.
*EARTHQUAKE*...Universal's turn...Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner head a group that must deal with a cataclysmic temblor in southern California in 1974.
*CASSANDRA CROSSING*...A British disaster flick starring Ava Gardner, Richard Harris and Burt Lancaster about terrorists, a deadly bacterial plague and a high-speed train.
*CITY ON FIRE*...Ava was probably the queen of the disaster movie. Here, she makes her third appearance in the genre during the 1970s...this time, an entire Texas city is engulfed in flames when an oil refinery catches fire.
*END OF THE WORLD*...Lew Ayres, Sue Lyon and MacDonald Carey deal with aliens intent on wiping out planet Earth.
*HURRICANE*...Dino De Laurentiis produced yet another remake of the old 30s classic in 1979, this time starring Mia Farrow.
*AVALANCHE*...Mia Farrow joins Rock Hudson for this ski vacation-gone-awry in Colorado. Roger Corman produced.
*AIRPORT/AIRPORT '75/AIRPORT '77/THE CONCORDE AIRPORT '79*...probably the most successful franchise of disaster films in this decade. Big budgets, all-star casts, huge box office profits.
*THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE*...Gene Hackman and Ernest Borgnine head an all-star cast aboard a doomed ocean liner.
*FIRE!*...Ernest Borgnine is back for more death and destruction in a late-70s telefilm about a raging Oregon forest fire.
*THE HINDENBURG*...George C. Scott and Anne Bancroft star in Robert Wise's hit film about Nazis and a blimp.
*BLACK SUNDAY*...an American blimp pilot joins forces with a terrorist group to launch a suicide bombing on American soil. Directed by John Frankenheimer in 1977.
*THE CRAZIES*...1973...a military biological weapon is accidentally released on the residents of a small U.S. town.
*THE OMEGA MAN*...more biological warfare, a plague and a heroic doctor (Charlton Heston).
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> The latest trend is to gang up on D.W. Griffith and totally ignore or make excuses for all the blackface comedians and the people in Hollywood who made fun of black people in films during the next 50 years.
Let's say for a moment that is true...(though I disagree)...we still cannot use the excuses for blackface as a way to justify Griffith's deliberate pro-Aryan/anti-black views.
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> Kiss the Blood Off My Hands
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> I'll Never Forget What's 'is Name
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> How to Make a Monster
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> Let's Kill All the Lawyers
Great ones, clore.
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> *I Wake Up Screaming*
NIGHT OF THE HUNTER is another great title.
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> Sophia Loren in OPERATION CROSSBOW is another to consider.
Good example. She has a delayed entrance (we see her in a film clip when Peppard is studying the life of the man whose identity he will assume). Then another half hour passes before she finally appears. Then, a half hour later, she's written out of the story. Clearly, the producer of the movie (her husband Carlo Ponti) put her in the project to secure financial backers. But it's really Peppard's movie. Loren is great as always, but she's not in it long enough to really matter.
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Speaking of Bette and Ann, they are both billed over Monty Woolley in THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER. But Woolley is in practically every scene. He's the lead, not them.
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Thanks for posting all that. Obviously, there are some directors who use more non-diegetic shots than others.
I would say that Robert Altman, Baz Luhrman and Quentin Tarantino are the masters of the non-diegetic shot, constantly referencing things outside their films and the world of their characters. Altman references political issues, while Luhrman and Tarantino reference popular culture.
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Isn't the acronym technically SOD (suspension of disbelief).
You gave a good example about LOVE AFFAIR. Something else that may agitate the viewer is the soundtrack, when we are cued to experience the melodrama using another one of our senses. If you already feel taxed by the narrative, that might drive you completely over the edge. LOL
Going back to A MILLIONAIRE FOR CHRISTY, one of the problems we have with Eleanor Parker's character Christobel is that we don't know her well enough in the beginning. Only ten minutes into the film and she's feigning all sorts of maladies to woo Fred MacMurray's character. The only thing we have to go on, and indeed the character herself has to go on at that point, is the soundtrack looping over the visuals. It plays in the form of a voice-over where her office mate Una Merkel gives her advice about snaring a wealthy man. It seems very absurd because we don't really know how desperate she is for a man, or if this is all just a ruse.
If there had been better character development, maybe with a montage, where we saw her go through a series of disastrous dates and it was all the more traumatic when she lost the mink coat, we might be able to buy into some of her predicament. But as it is, when she gets to California and looks up the MacMurray character and throws herself on him in such a lunatic way, we roll our eyes and start to look for the remote.
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> Peter Lorre in STRANGER ON THE THIRD FLOOR may get the top of the list for me. He has the titular role, but few scenes as he owed RKO two days on a contract. Nevertheless, he makes his presence felt.
I keep missing that film. I need to make a note about it the next time it is scheduled on TCM.
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I agree about Jimmy in ZIEGFELD GIRL. He is a supporting player in this chick flick.
They should've given him special billing...bill the ladies over the title, then get the second-tier actors like Tony Martin, Jackie Cooper and Ian Hunter...then at the end, 'and also starring James Stewart.'
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What the wiki definition fails to mention is that some elements on screen can be diegetic AND non-diegetic. An example of this would be product placement. When a character drinks a coke, that happens in the world of that character's story...but if the director and camera operator make sure we as viewers see the Coke label, then that occurs outside the narrative, because it concerns advertising to us, the viewers, in hopes we will imitate the characters and go out and get a coke.
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*Diegesis.*
From wiki:
Diegesis may concern elements, such as characters, events and things within the main or primary narrative.
"Diegetic," in the cinema, typically refers to the internal world created by the story that the characters themselves experience and encounter: the narrative "space" that includes all the parts of the story, both those that are and those that are not actually shown on the screen (such as events that have led up to the present action; people who are being talked about; or events that are presumed to have happened elsewhere). Thus, elements of a film can be "diegetic" or "non-diegetic."
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You're welcome, clore. However, I don't think everyone lets their DVR queue get filled up. My rule of thumb is to keep it at 40% or less. Lately I've been keeping it around 30%. If there are some titles I do not get to after two weeks' time, then on the weekend I usually start transferring them over to a temporary copy. I delete them off the DVR but I have them in a format where I can get to them later. And if it's a title that I just don't get around to watching, then it wasn't that important to me after all and should be deleted.
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Well, a lot of the folks that pushed for the code in the late 20s/early 30s were religious leaders and womens groups. And they were basically trying to regulate movies seen not just by children, but by all patrons, especially adults who may be corrupted by evils on the screen. LOL
The ratings system seems like an eventual compromise, but I do not think the ratings system would've been approved in the 40s or 50s...it would've seemed too scary and threatening to these group leaders that originally advocated for the code and were probably still in power.
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Loy is billed correctly, though, in CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN (second, after Clifton Webb). And in the sequel BELLES ON THEIR TOES, she is not promoted to the top position when Webb vacates the cast (his character died at the end of the first movie). Instead, Jeanne Crain leap-frogs over Loy to claim star billing. But considering the fact that Loy is missing for a good twenty minute chunk near the beginning of TOES, I would agree that Fox did it right by billing Loy second again.
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Good point about the lobby cards and posters. I touched on that in another post when I mentioned advertising.
And sometimes an actor that is billed first is not the highest paid.
When I was on the set of Designing Women, it was the beginning of the sixth season. Delta had just been fired and Dixie Carter was now listed first in the opening credits, a position she held for the show's final two seasons. However, second-billed Annie Potts was earning more per episode because in the pecking order of Hollywood, she had extensive film credits and Dixie did not. So Annie's agent was able to command a higher salary although most people thought that Dixie was now the "star."
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Hi clore,
Usually I really dig your posts. But this recent one of yours I have to kindly refute on several key points.
First, in this day and age it does not matter if you get a graveyard time slot or the morning rush hour. Most everyone has DVRs or at least VCRs and these programs can be watched at one's convenience whenever the viewer desires.
Segundo: I think a young face will help entice a young viewer to sample. Of course, if after the introductory host comments, the first five or ten minutes fails to hold the young viewers' attention, that is reflective of the film's power to entertain and captivate. But I do think a young host or a host in a certain demographic (not necessarily related to age, but perhaps to race or gender) can guide the novice classic viewer, and there will be more receptivity to stick with a film and wait for the closing remarks.
Troisieme: We do have to factor in variance. I am sure that Ben appeals to the nursing home crowd and that Robert Osborne has some fans in kindergarten. So this is an imprecise science.
But the issue is that the hosting needs to reflect more diversity. The fact that more than half the guest programmers (a perfect opportunity to get some much needed diversity) are white males is problematic to me. I rejoiced, literally r-e-j-o-i-c-e-d when Raquel Welch was on...she attracts a very different audience and that is what this channel needs on occasion.
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I think they need to go back and do it again, Kyle. Lithgow is not working for me. Quite frankly, I find him nice and intelligent, but a disengaging bore.
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Well, some of these things need to be said. I know it seems like we're splashing vinegar on the thread. But there's a bit of sugar, too. For instance, I never stated that Osborne should be replaced.
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Sometimes the opening credits and the end credits are in a slightly different order. This may be because a new opening was added later. Or because contractually, two stars that had equal power took turns being listed first.
It's interesting to look at how billing relates to advertising. A lot of Marilyn Monroe's early supporting roles are advertised to seem as if they are lead roles in the special Marilyn Collection issued by Fox. I can only imagine what the stars who are still alive think, or the relatives of the actual leads who have since passed away.
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I didn't mean to suggest Maltin was ancient. But he definitely attracts the over 45 demographic. They need some younger blood...like a child actor (Dakota Fanning?) doing the Essentials Jr. Or someone in their 20s doing alternative cinema...or even the foreign films (how about Daisy Fuentes?). They have too many older white men. Time for some diversity.
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Thanks kinokima, I will have to check it out. Were they all three listed over the title at the beginning? Then, Gene was third-billed at the end? How did they do it?
Gene was third-billed in DUBARRY WAS A LADY, after Red Skelton (first) and Lucille Ball (second).
That 70's Disaster Era
in General Discussions
Posted
Yes, EARTHQUAKE had Sensurround.
Universal developed it to produce low frequency, high-power sound waves which 'shake' the theatre.
It was used in three other releases: MIDWAY, ROLLERCOASTER and BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.