FredCDobbs
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Posts posted by FredCDobbs
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MORE SPOILERS.........
Here is what New York Times reviewer, BOSLEY CROWTHER, wrote about it in 1952:
“For Miss du Maurier's story, which has been masterfully mounted and staged by Producer Nunnally Johnson, Director Henry Koster and Twentieth Century-Fox, is perforce a dubious quantity, so far as its ultimate effect is concerned, it being in essence a mystery that is never remotely solved.”
This is exactly correct. The film has no ending, no solid ending, a mystery that is never solved and it is designed that way, that is, to have no ending. And this is not very satisfying. It would be like ending REBECCA when the new Mrs. DeWinter faints at the public hearing, with no conclusion to the film.
Crowther also said this:
This impulse of ambiguity, which runs all the way through the film and endows it with constant fascination and uninhibited suspense, considerably obliterates the effect when it crashes against the stone wall of the author's deliberate admission of inconclusiveness. And as one searches back through the complex of personality revelations and clues, one finds that the story is little but a package of deceptions and tricks.
Hey! That’s exactly what I said in my first post..... “flip-flop tricks” is the term I used.
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SPOILERS.....................
I've been waiting for years to see this whole film, and I saw it today on YouTube. I think TCM has shown it before, but I've always missed it.
Anyway, I don't like this film at all.
What could have been a very good romantic mystery was merely a series of flip-flop tricks of the screenwriter and director, designed to confuse the audience and change the whole "plot" of the film every 15 minutes, right up until the very end, and beyond the end.
I'll never watch it again.
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I found this. Several of our people have posted information about these leaning boards, which were used by actresses who could not sit down in their tight dresses:
http://misslindsaylane.blogspot.com/2013/03/how-hollywood-inspired-1930s-fashion.html
For the screen, clothing above all, had to be photogenic. There was little concern for comfort and practicality. The dresses were too tight for the actresses to sit in. This meant that between the takes, it required them to recline on leaning boards.
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Nah, a dress like this isn't just designed -- it's engineered to look the way it does on her. The skirt is fuller in the back, and anyways she's actually wearing it for attracting attention - not running for a streetcar.
LOL-- sorry I couldn't help myself with the streetcar reference; I think May West used that one some time ago.
Thanks. That's what I thought.
I guess it wouldn't work for AlisonB (in her original post) to make a copy of the dress for herself to wear, unless she planned to just stand around in it and not walk.
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Colonel Effingham's Raid (1946)
IMDB keyword search term:
TOWN SQUARE
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Another clue please.
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Since I have done my share of sewing, maybe I can be of help.
The images of the dress, in black velvet, was a pieced bodice with skirt attached. It was made for the movie camera (which is why Edith Head was a genius at this).
Can a lady walk normally in this type of dress? It seems too tight at the knees for the legs to swing freely. She doesn't walk much in this entire segment.
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The book documents several points during the riots where Walker acted to inflame the mob rather than to try to calm it. It also lays out in exhaustive detail the extent to which Walker had the support of the Dallas power structure of the time, until even they became embarrassed by his incoherent rantings As I said earlier, that Dallas 1963 book is an eye opener to anyone who wasn't around at the time,
sounds accurate to me.
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For those who simply cannot get their fill of the 'N' word
This prank is so danged funny!!!!
These are real people on the street.
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Of course Hollywood would probably figure out a way to botch it by miscasting and/or factual distortion, but the week that Ole Miss was integrated would make for one hell of an interesting movie. You had the involvement of not just Meredith himself along with the Kennedy brothers, but the entire lineup of armed racist extremist groups that were openly encouraged by not just Gen. Walker, but the entire state government of Mississippi.
Were you there that week? How about the riot? Were you there the night of the riot?
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I love Claudette Colbert! While I do need to see more of her films, I do love her. Very versatile.
I love her too. She was so beautiful and desirable in so many of her early films, and then still beautiful and desirable in many of her middle-aged films too.
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I would guess they did something so that the n word would not be heard.
They have been thinking about making a remake for a number of years,
but haven't quite got around to it yet. The dog might be renamed Digger,
definitely not n*****.
The Wiki article said that some copies of the film for TV had the word "Trigger" dubbed in with someone else's voice.
I don't know how they could make a movie today and use the original word. Seems like the original word would strongly distract from the basic story of the film and the airmen would no longer be heroes.
How about making a modern movie and changing Everyone's name, including changing the true names of the military people? That is often done in some history movies.
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Vautrin and Andy,
I've enjoyed your discussion. You two seem to know a lot of factual information about the case, which I have studied in some detail myself.
I was living in the deep south at that time as a young freelance photographer, and I saw people from both groups, the killer K-KK people and the Communist Party people who were working with the Civil Rights movement.
It was a weird, hot, dangerous time in the South in those days (the 1960s), especially with crackpots like Oswald (on one side) and Walker (on the other side) stirring up people for their own personal egotistical crackpot reasons. And then a 3rd major crackpot, Jack Ruby, thrusting himself right into the middle of the situation fairly quickly.
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Red Planet Mars 1952
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Well, I only called it "gold" because that is how it has been referred as here. In my first post, I called it washed out, the same as your ,,,desaturated, which was the original release. That is also the version TCM shows.
I never saw the original desaturated version, and I'm trying to remember an article I read about 45 years ago.
"Desaturated" meant ALL the colors were washed out, including yellow and gold. The article said the ONLY color visible as a strong solid color was red. I remember the article fairly well, since I was a documentary film cameraman at the time and I thought the "desatuated" idea, with red only being visible as a strong primary color, was a silly idea. I don't recall any mention of the film being bright yellow or gold.
TCM's gold version is NOT "desaturated", it is gold toned, probably with a gold filter during printing, or more likely now, toned gold during electronic dubbing from film to electronic video.
"Desaturated" would be like when you turn your TV's "color" adjustment almost all the way off. That is "desaturated". And that was difficult to do with film only and no electronics involved. Also, it was difficult to keep red only and desaturate everything else, without the entire film looking redish or pink. The article said they had to a lot of lab, printing, and filter manipulation to get the desaturated (nearly colorless) effect, yet while retaining bright reds.
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I remember watching The Dam Busters as a kid on Million Dollar Movie, but I haven't
seen it since and I don't remember the dog named n*****. Maybe that was bleeped out
when it was shown on TV.
I think it was. I read somewhere that TV distribution copies in the past did have that word either bleeped out or some other word recorded and dubbed in over it.
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My understanding is that.the gold.version was the original release, as John Huston had wanted.it. I think the studio later had the full color version in general release, hoping the film.would at least make back it's expenses.
I don't remember the article saying the desaturated copy was "gold". I recall saying it resembled black and white with very weak colors except for bright red.
I also think this version was released first, but not accepted by audiences, so the full color version was released for general release, and that is what most people saw. But it doesn't seem to be available now.
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Reading about The Dam Busters; since the film was based on a true story and a book about said true story, maybe that was the name of the dog in the book. Since I like historical films to be as true as possible I'm glad they didn't name the dog Toto.
I think I read somewhere that it was the real name of the dog and also the real name of the secret operation, the code name.
Back in the 1940s, this wasn't intended as an insulting word by the British. It was more like their term Fuzzie Wuzzies, which I think referred to some of the dark skinned people in some of their South Pacific or African colonies who wore large Afro type hair styles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy-Wuzzy
I've experienced in Latin America being called a gring-o, which is usually an insulting term if said near the northern border, but the further South I traveled, the more it was just a slang term meaning "tourist from the US" and in Central America it's not intended as being insulting at all.
So, "they" have their own slang names for us white Americans, with some terms being insulting and others not, such as "Yankee Go Home!", which is insulting if said or shouted in Latin America, and "Yank" or "Yankee" as said by a British person during WW II or now, which is not insulting.
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I read on the wiki page for the movie that not only does a full color version exist, but also maybe a version that is made with one object in each scene in standard color in contrast to the golden hue.
The only version I can find is the golden one. Is anyone else as interested in finding the other versions as I am? Especially the version with one particular color item in each scene.
I read an American Cinematographer article about it shortly after the film was first released.
It said that one version was in normal full color, but a second version was in an experimental "desaturated" color, except fo red objects. "desaturated" essentially means something like "black and white". It was NOT gold colored. It was pretty much black and white except for the color red.
The gold version is a modern 3rd version that we see on TCM.
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I know there are other guessers out there..... I can hear them breathing.
But since they are not making themselves known at this time, I will ask you to post another photo, please.
What do you think of "My Cousin Rachel (1952)"?
in Films and Filmmakers
Posted
Hi James,
Rachael had no reason to hide the laburnum seeds in an envelope in a locked drawer of her room, except to use as poison to kill Philip. Since there were laburnum trees growing on the estate, and also growing on her estate in Italy, she had no reason to hide the seeds in her room except to kill Philip.
Another plot flaw as that Philip signed over his entire estate to her, before she agreed to marry him and before they had time to get married. Nobody does this except a crazy guy. The laburnum doses were making him crazy just like they had made Ambrose crazy.
In a more realistic situation, she should have married him and then poisoned him, and the entire estate would have been hers.
She kept making him think she was in love with him, until after he had turned over the estate to her, and then she no longer needed him and didn't need to poison him.
There was no mystery at the end of the film, except for the one the author tried to push off on us in a fraudulent manner.
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PS This film should have had a more solid ending, such as REBECCA did. It should have made it absolutely clear that Rebeca did try to poison Philip, and that he realized it at the end, and that he was sorry she died, but he was more sorry she had tried to kill him, since he loved her so much.