FredCDobbs
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Posts posted by FredCDobbs
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Strangers on a Train
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Leave Her to Heaven:
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Shanghai Express:
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Strelnikov's train
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The General:
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General Yen's private car:
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I agree about Citizen Kane. From a technical standpoint, I do understand why it gets a lot of attention. Beautiful art direction,
in particular. But the movie is all technique and no "heart" to me.
It is worth watching if only for the "technique".
For example, Welles was the only Hollywood film maker who ever shot new and staged 1910 and 1939-era news film (like with Teddy Roosevelt and Adolph Hitler) and then he scratched the original film by running it through a projector many times, just to make it look like real old and scratched newsfilm rather than newly-photographed faked news film. This was a brilliant idea.
In the news shots of Kane as an old man being pushed in a wheelchair, he had the cameraman use a hand-held newsreel type camera, and the footage was jumpy and bushes blocked many of the scenes, which made it look like real hidden-camera newsfilm. Another brilliant idea.
The scene in the projection booth after the showing of the News on the March sequence, with all that cigarette smoke and the back-lighting and the actors in silhouette, that was brilliant. I've had my own 35mm newsfilm projected in an MGM and a Technicolor projection booth, and that's what they were really like, back in the days when everybody in Hollywood smoked cigarettes.
The scene at the opening of the Opera, where the camera crane moves upward high into the footwalks and scaffolding, and the two lighting technicians look at each other, an one hold his nose, meaning "This dame's singing stinks," was super brilliant.
Look at this! Some idiot, during the process of "restoring" the film, has REMOVED ALL THE SCRATCHES from the newsreel scenes, without realizing that the scratches ARE SUPPOSED TO BE THERE!
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Gort Revisits DC 60 Years After The Day the Earth Stood Still
http://turnmeondeadman.com/gort-revisits-dc-60-years-after-the-day-the-earth-stood-still/
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I also, going by the arial view, tried to find that park with the baseball diamonds where the spaceship landed. I noticed in a few shots that the WASHINGTON MONUMENT could be seen a bit in the distance from it, but if that location is still there, the baseball diamonds are long gone.
Sepiatone
The saucer landed here.... an area of the mall known as The Ellipse:
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It is misleading to look at Rapper’s “Director” list of films while disregarding his “Dialogue Director” list.
See this:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0710924/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
Hired as a "dialog director" (a position created by the film studios in the late 1920s with the advent of sound) by Warners in 1935, he practiced that craft until 1941, when he was promoted to director. While the position of dialog director no longer exists, in the first decades of the talkies, dialog directors worked with the actors on their lines readings and their interpretation of individual scenes. The position was particularly critical when the director was a foreigner who didn't understand English very well.
Rapper initially worked with Gernan émigré William Dieterle on The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936), The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and Juarez (1939). While Dieterle was focused on the technical aspects of filmmaking such as the lighting of the sets and the camera angles, Rapper concentrated on the actors' performances. He also served as a dialog director for Hungarian émigré Michael Curtiz, for whom he translated (and who, according to Rapper, spoke English even more poorly the longer he was in Hollywood) and French-born Anatole Litvak. In that position Rapper forged strong bonds with certain actors, who came to depend on him.
Rapper directed all the dialogue scenes in these famous films, and many of them received Academy Award nominations, as did many of their actors and actresses:
1941 High Sierra (dialogue director)
1940 City for Conquest (dialogue director)
1940 All This, and Heaven Too (dialogue director)
1940 Saturday's Children (dialogue director)
1940 Castle on the Hudson (dialogue director)
1940 Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (dialogue director)
1939 Invisible Stripes (dialogue director)
1939 Dust Be My Destiny (dialogue director)
1939 Daughters Courageous (dialogue director)
1939 Juarez (dialogue director)
1939 Dark Victory (dialogue director - uncredited)
1939 Off the Record (dialogue director)
1938 The Sisters (dialogue director)
1938 Four Daughters (dialogue director)
1938 Four's a Crowd (dialogue director)
1938 The Adventures of Robin Hood (dialogue director)
1938 Gold Is Where You Find It (dialogue director)
1937 The Life of Emile Zola (dialogue director)
1937 Kid Galahad (dialogue director)
1937 The Go Getter (dialogue director)
1937 Draegerman Courage (dialogue director - uncredited)
1937 Mountain Justice (dialogue director)
1937 The Great O'Malley (dialogue director)
1936 The Charge of the Light Brigade (dialogue director - uncredited)
1936 Stage Struck (dialogue director)
1936 Two Against the World (dialogue director)
1936 Murder by an Aristocrat (dialogue director)
1936 The Walking Dead (dialogue director)
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Regarding the director and NOW, VOYAGER:
Bette could play any kind of role, but in this film the director had to take her in and out of several different types of personalities to tell the full story in a realistic way. Bette, Paul, and Claude could not have directed themselves and each other through those complex scenes and the complex transition sequences.
For example, that first night on board the ship, when Bette was alone on the deck with Paul, we have a very strong self-assured movie actress playing a frightened and scared girl with a nervous breakdown, who is pretending to be sophisticated. So, we have a strong personality (Bette) pretending to be a weak personality who is pretending to be strong personality, and who suddenly falls apart, then pulls herself back together again.
That is a complicated set of personalities and emotions and changes all throughout the film, and a good hands-on director was needed to pull all that off. The director probably felt he had to micro-manage Bette while filming complex sequences like that and he had to explain to her what he wanted and needed... not what Bette wanted. That’s one reason why the film is great and memorable.
Keep in mind that Bette played basically only one personality in ALL THIS AND HEAVEN TOO. She didn’t require much direction in that film.
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Ashley's honor speech. Why he treated Scarlett like a sister:
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To me the story hints that they had some type of physical relationship when they were in South America. How far they went isn't the point. Only that it was more than what a brother and sister would do!
Jerry FORCED himself to have a brother-sister relationship with Charlotte because he was ALREADY MARRIED, and HAD CHILDREN, and HE WAS HONORABLE.
Is there no more honor in this modern society? Have people forgotten what honor is?
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Why would he want to marry someone who "felt more like a sister" to him ?
I had a strong physical desire for some of the women who I treated like "sisters", and that treatment was to keep myself honorable, such as if the lady was already married. Jerry treated Charlotte like a sister because he was already married and had children he didn't want to disappoint. He didn' want be a cad.
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Their little chat the following morning is his suggesting they have one behavior during the day -- and implying they are together during the night.
Their midnight meetup on the adjoining balconies that night is their affair being carried off; she's looks just great in that classy robe and silky jammies. But true to the Code, the next scene is a few days later, at the sea-airport, saying goodbye.
I never thought of their relationship that way. I've known plenty of close women friends that I haven't been to bed with, and plenty who I wouldn't even try to kiss because they felt more like sisters to me. That's the way I've been interpreting Jerry's relationship with Charlotte.
So, now I see that others on this thread think they were carrying on a torrid affair all along, while I've been thinking of them being completely honorable with each other.
How could he be totally "devoted" to his wife while carrying on an affair with Charlette? I think some people are jumping to incorrect conclusions.
That might be why I don't like the film's ending, while other people do. I see Jerry as wanting to marry her at the end, if he can get a divorce, while others seem to think he wanted to continue carry on a long affair.
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She also takes offense to his assumption that she is taking care of his child out of pity where she should really be looking for a man.
It was Charlotte herself who was whining during the first half of the movie about being afraid of becoming an "Old Maid". That's why Jerry mentioned it.
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Just wait until Tina comes of age to date boys.
The Charlotte of the ending of this film will manipulate Tina by withholding money from her, just like Charlotte's own mother did.
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See 1:30 into this clip... TO CATCH A THIEF, fireworks scene....
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Jerry is the one that wasn't willing to get a divorce.
That was earlier in the film, when Tina was still living at home.
This is fiction, and this film has an unsatisfying ending because Jerry is dumped, even though he had been so kind to Charlotte and so helpful to her recovery. Charlotte gets all the money in the end, and then she begins manipulating people like her mother did to her. Jerry loses his daughter and his girlfriend, and he winds up being stuck alone with his bad wife.
And Jerry had to pay for all those cigarettes.
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Good one, Fred, exterior shots of thunderstorms are used a lot to indicate interior hanky panky. That Out of the Past scene is a great example.
And yeah, come to think of it, so is the old "curtain / door/ shutter being closed" thing, too.
I just remembered that they used the big thunderstorm scene in KINGS ROW when Parris does it with Cassandra.
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Many films, even into the 1940s, used a thunderstorm with outdoor scenes of a lot of lightening and thunder, while two lovers are inside sitting on a sofa., then a fade out. This was used in OUT OF THE PAST during the scene in Jane Greer's Mexican apartment.
In THE DIVORCEE, just an outdoor shot of an apartment curtain being closed was used.
Not much of a clue in THE HELLS ANGELS, when one of the brothers was with Jean Harlow. She "slips into something more comfortable", and they sit on a sofa together. Then there is a cut-away of the other brother (Jean's boyfriend) in bed alone at the military barracks, and then a cut back to the sofa. At that time the brother she was with looked very depressed and sad, and he said something about feeling guilty. So we know with they did.
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She really bonded with the little girl and I think saw herself as being a positive influence in this little girl's life.
She really bonded with Jerry during 3/4 of the movie, he probably paid for all their meals, side trips in Brazil, drinks, etc., then she dumps him out in the cold at the end.
The key is, she finally inherited all the family money, and after that she began to dominate people like her mother had dominated her. Everything for Charlotte, nothing for Jerry after she got the money, when she didn't need him to pay for her food, drinks, and vacations anymore.
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Time to go pick up the kiddies but just wondering if films play that big of a role in most participants lives here?
How and in what way are they essential or not?
I find it hard to believe how seriously some folks take films and just consider them for myself a sideline luxury.
Oh yeah? You just wait until Fagin and Bill Sykes kidnap your children and turn them into pickpockets. Then you'll be coming to us crying for help.
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All Aboard - Trains in Movies
in General Discussions
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