Saturday, February 01, 2014
Maximilian Schell (1930-2014)
Schell received two other Oscar nominations in his film career as best actor: in 1975's The Man in the Glass Booth and as supporting actor in 1977's Julia. He also received two Emmy nominations for the TV films Stalin and Miss Rose White in the early '90s. He appeared on Broadway three times, the first time in 1958 in Interlock, the same year his first English-language film, The Young Lions, came out. His third appearance came in 2001 in a stage production of Judgment at Nuremberg, this time playing the role of Dr. Ernst Janning whom Burt Lancaster played in the 1961 film.
Shortly after his Oscar win, he joined the cast of thieves in Jules Dassin's 1964 Topkapi. The first exposure to Schell's work for many in my generation probably came from silly 1979 sci-fi flick The Black Hole. He also played the erstwhile villain opposite James Coburn in one of the lesser Sam Peckinpah effort, 1977's Cross of Iron. He appeared in many films and roles for television both in the U.S. and abroad, including a six-episode stint on Wiseguy.
He also directed, most notably the remarkable 1984 documentary Marlene, where Marlene Dietrich reflected on her life without ever letting herself be seen in her current state.
Of all Schell's roles though, I always maintain a soft spot in my heart for his role as eccentric chef Larry London in Andrew Bergman's great comedy The Freshman with Marlon Brando doing a pitch-perfect parody of his own Vito Corleone.
RIP Mr. Schell.
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Labels: Awards, Brando, Dassin, Documentary, James Coburn, Lancaster, Marlene, Obituary, Oscars, Peckinpah, Television, Theater
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Thursday, March 01, 2012
Hate, Murder and Revenge
By Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.
Mention director Fritz Lang’s name to a movie fan and more likely than not they’ll conjure up visions of the style that eventually became identified as “film noir.” Lang was one of the godfathers of noir, with elements present in films from his German expressionist period (Der Müde Tod, M) to his later American works (The Woman in the Window, The Big Heat). Crime dramas were Lang’s forte, though he worked in any number of genres (one of his best-known vehicles, 1927’s Metropolis, is considered by many to a science-fiction masterpiece) but they all share a common thematic bond…one that was described succinctly by critic Andrew Sarris as “the same bleak view of the universe where man grapples with his personal destiny and invariably loses.”
Lang even directed Westerns, a genre that seems at first a bit alien to his cinematic M.O. The first two oaters he helmed, The Return of Frank James (1940; also his first color film) and Western Union (1941), were assignments during his stint at 20th Century Fox, but he nevertheless accepted both projects with enthusiasm, once comparing the history of the Old West to the European saga of the Nibelungen (a subject he brought to celluloid in back-to-back films released in 1924). His third and last Western — released to theaters 60 years ago on this date — was Rancho Notorious (1952), a film that succeeds despite so many things being against it and that today remains the most intriguing and “noir” of his brief flirtation with the genre.
Vern Haskell’s (Arthur Kennedy) dream of marrying fiancée Beth Forbes (Gloria Henry) vanishes in smoke when the assayer’s office in which she works is robbed by two desperadoes and she ends up dead after being shot by one of them, a man named Kinch (Lloyd Gough). Kinch and his partner Whitey (John Doucette) race out of town with a posse hot on their tails, but when the sheriff announces that they’ve ridden out of his jurisdiction and the remaining members refuse to ride any further; it’s up to the grieved Vern to continue the hunt. Vern finally catches up to Whitey, who’s been shot and left for dead by the treacherous Kinch after an argument. Whitey’s enigmatic dying words are “Chuck-a-luck,” and Vern persists in his pursuit despite not knowing its meaning.
As he rides from town to town in the search for answers, he manages to cross paths with a wanted outlaw (Fred Graham) in a barbershop who gives him another mysterious name: “Altar Keane.” The outlaw, Ace McGuire, draws on Vern when he realizes Vern is just seeking information and Haskell is forced to kill Ace in self defense. Taken into custody, Vern is cleared and offered a reward for McGuire’s killing but all Haskell is interested is information on “Altar Keane”; fortunately, a deputy (Dick Wessel) is able to identify her as a former saloon gal (Marlene Dietrich) he once knew but can’t give Vern any more than that.
Vern finally gets more background on Altar in another small town — she once worked for saloon owner Baldy Gunder (William Frawley), who after firing her helplessly watched her clean up at his chuck-a-luck game under the watchful eye of gunslinger Frenchy Fairmont (Mel Ferrer). Learning that Fairmont is cooling his heels in jail in the nearby hamlet of Gunsight, Vern manages to get himself arrested and thrown into the same jail cell as Frenchy, and the two men are able to execute a successful jailbreak. On the lam, Frenchy takes Vern to his hideout: a horse ranch near the Mexican border dubbed “Chuck-a-Luck” and run by Altar…who is now Frenchy’s girlfriend. Since Fairmont vouches for Vern, Altar agrees to allow Haskell to stay (the rules are that he is to ask no questions and do his fair share of work around the ranch) and introduces him to the rest of the men also hiding out at Chuck-a-Luck Ranch, who have gained admittance by tithing 10% of their stolen swag to their hostess. Vern’s assignment is to find out which of the guests is responsible for killing his fiancée, without tipping his hand that he’s just masquerading as an outlaw.
As Vern’s stay at Chuck-a-Luck stretches longer and longer, Altar begins to develop feelings for him and Vern reciprocates…but only to achieve his mission of locating the murderer, accelerated by the discovery of a brooch he gave to Beth as a gift that now adorns an evening dress worn by Altar. Vern is racing against the clock because the man responsible for Beth’s death, Kinch, is among the outlaw contingent and he recognizes Vern after seeing Haskell mount a horse one afternoon. When Vern must help the men rob a nearby bank to continue his outlaw charade, Kinch takes a shot at him and misses. Vern finally learns Kinch’s identity after presenting Altar with her share of the proceeds from the robbery, and confronting Kinch in a saloon, he manages to reign in his instincts to kill the outlaw, allowing the law to take over and mete out justice. Kinch is rescued by his pals before he is locked up, and the band of outlaws rides out to the ranch, convinced that Altar sold them out. Altar, in the meantime, has decided to abandon her life at Chuck-a-Luck and attempts to explain to a jealous Frenchy that she’s also given up on Vern, who had earlier could barely conceal his disgust with her lifestyle. Altar and Frenchy are then ambushed by the outlaws, and in the resulting shoot-out Kinch is killed (putting an end to Vern’s quest) and Altar dies from a bullet she took for her Frenchy.
Vern Haskell, the protagonist of Rancho Notorious, shares a similarity with those heroes played by James Stewart in the '50s Westerns directed by Anthony Mann (such as Winchester ’73 and Bend of the River): a man obsessively driven to right a past wrong who finds himself compromising his morality in his pursuit to do so. Haskell is basically a decent guy (we don’t learn much about Vern, other than he’s a lovestruck cowpuncher) who must play the part of a bad man in order to achieve his goal of vengeance, and often at his own peril since he’s in the company of other individuals he can’t trust. While Stewart’s heroes also were ready to be welcomed back into the societal fold after finishing what they set out to do; in Notorious, once Vern achieves his revenge, it’s apparent his life is over and done with — the final frames of the film find him and Frenchy riding off for points unknown, with the narrator singing the final stanzas of a ballad hinting of their eventual demise.
Rancho Notorious’ ballad, “The Legend of Chuck-a-Luck,” was written by Ken Darby (a member of the vocal group The King’s Men, who were regulars on radio’s Fibber McGee & Molly for a time) and sung by William Lee, and it adds a note of Greek tragedy to Lang’s remarkable Western. (The ballad idea was later appropriated for High Noon.) The title of Darby’s composition was originally going to be shared as the title of the film until director Fritz Lang learned from one of Howard Hughes’ lackeys at RKO that the movie would instead be known as Rancho Notorious because “Mr. Hughes doesn’t think they would know what Chuck-a-Luck was in Europe.”
“But they would know what Rancho Notorious is?” Lang fired back as he took his leave of the company man's idiocy.
The production history of Rancho Notorious was troubled from the get-go — Hughes was only a small part of it (the film’s limited budget forced Lang to shoot the Western in the studio, which resulted in some none-too-convincing exterior scenes that hamper the movie’s credibility a tad). Star Marlene Dietrich and director Lang did not get along well at all (despite the two enjoying a brief affair during the making of the film) Lang originally designed Notorious with Marlene in mind, with the original plot centering on an aging saloon girl and an equally up-there outlaw who couldn’t quite cut the mustard anymore. The notoriously (sorry about that) vain Dietrich pooh-poohed that idea, and also bickered with cinematographer Hal Mohr (with whom she had worked on Destry Rides Again) when he was unable to maintain her eternal youth before the camera to her satisfaction. Despite all that foofrah, it’s a great showcase for Marlene; there are many parallels between this role and her portrayal of Frenchy (is it coincidental that both movies feature characters with that name?) in Destry and she also gets to sing a song, “Get Away Young Man.”
Star Arthur Kennedy effortlessly shifts back-and-forth between hero and rotter, and never loses the audience’s sympathy from the start (granted, that would be difficult to do since his girl was raped and murdered by a remorseless dirtbag) despite his later descent into the dark side. He demonstrates a nice rapport with Dietrich’s Altar (so named because she’s worshipped?) even though it’s all show on his
Critics weren’t particularly kind to Rancho Notorious at the time of its release, but with the passage of time the movie has developed a cult following and a reputation as an offbeat but enjoyable Western; it’s an early example of what could be called a feminist Western (with its themes of violation and rape, not to mention the Dietrich character as a strong, fascinating character more than capable of holding her own in “a man’s world”) and much of its titillating sexual content was “liberated” by Nicholas Ray for his film Johnny Guitar, released two years afterward (equating stealing from a woman’s safe as rape, for starters). Scripted by Daniel Taradash (based on a story written by Lang associate Silvia Richards), Notorious manages to overcome its budget limitations and occasional seams-showing to become a film not too easily forgotten — as a critic for Time Out Film Guide once observed: “The fateful moral, the complete avoidance of naturalism, and the integration of an ongoing ballad into the plot, all make the movie quintessential Lang; add an overt political stance and it would be quintessentially Brechtian too.”
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Labels: 50s, Anthony Mann, blacklist, Howard Hughes, J. Stewart, Lang, Marlene, Movie Tributes, N. Ray
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Tuesday, January 03, 2012
Men swarm around me like moths to a flame and if their wings get singed, I can't be blamed
By Edward Copeland
It has been a long journey for me to be able to watch and write about Josef von Sternberg's 1930 classic The Blue Angel, and I refer to the version made in German, not in English. I had tried to rent it several times on DVD through different services but the region-free disc always flaked out at the same spot. I finally watched it on Netflix streaming (as I was ending that option before I switched to DVD only and Netflix customers know that happened in September) and was able to see the entire film. Then it was just a matter of finding the time to write about it, but other projects kept getting in the way and The Blue Angel deserves more than a quickie. It's sat around about half done for months, but with a new year, I thought I should get this out of the way, especially when I noticed that the English version got wide release in the U.S. 81 years ago today. Figured that had to be a sign.
My journey to see The Blue Angel proved difficult, but it actually ended up being a breeze compared to what happened to both versions of the landmark film over the many decades since both premiered in 1930, albeit in separate parts of the world.
Why The Blue Angel gained its status as a pivotal point in film history can be attributed to several reasons, such as:
The differences in the two versions of The Blue Angel extend beyond just the language the actors in which the actors speak. When it premiered in Germany on the night of March 31, 1930, it ran 106 minutes. The raves (in addition to being able to see the as-yet-unreleased English-language version) prompted the U.S. studio Paramount to lure both von Sternberg and Dietrich, who by then were lovers, to the U.S. They made and released Morocco, which earned Dietrich the only Oscar nomination of her career for best actress, before The Blue Angel had its U.S. debut. When the English version was released in December 1930, it only ran 99 minutes, as filmed. The German version didn't play in the U.S. until 1947 and to emphasize Dietrich at the expense of Jannings' lead character (and the story itself), the film was cut to 90 minutes. It wasn't until 2001 that a new German language print, made from original negative material, restored it to 106 minutes and was re-released. Ironically, for many decades, the English-language version became considered lost until a print was discovered in a German film archive, restored and shown in 2009.
With that brief primer on the movie's history out of the way, now I can dive in to talking about the film itself which I'm glad to say stands up very well given that it's nearly 82 years old. Granted, The Blue Angel definitely shows signs of belonging to that awkward phase where silent filmmakers and performers adjusted techniques to the new sound era, but for the most part the movie and its cast clears that hurdle rather easily. Jannings stars as Professor Immanuel Rath, a strict disciplinarian as an English teacher at a boarding school in his small German town. His students mock him mercilessly (a favorite nickname is Professor Unrath, ratshit in English) but he holds a stellar reputation in the port city. (I love how in foreign
Backstage at The Blue Angel that night, several of Rath's pupils flirt hopelessly with Lola Lola, who plays with them until her turn comes to perform. She immediately commands the stage as well as the establishment, singing to the enthralled, lascivious men in the audience, "Guys, tonight I'm going to pick someone/I'm fed up with the young ones." As Rath stumbles his way inside The Blue Angel, he's so nervous that he gets himself caught in the mesh curtains that separate the main room of the club from its entrance. Rath might have convinced himself that he came to lecture her on moral failings, but it's Lola herself that's enticed Rath on this journey, and as she struts around the stage in stockings and garters, that isn't what's on Rath's mind. He remains enraptured as she croons "Naughty Lola," with lyrics such as "If any of you guys get too near/I'll kick you in the ribs/And punch you in the ear." The students spot their professor and flee backstage, but not before Rath spots one of them. Rath begins searching the rooms backstage trying to find the pupils, encountering a
While it's easy to see the allure of Dietrich and how her star was born out of this film, Jannings proved he could be just as powerful with words as he was in his silent classics, even if some of his emoting continued to play as large as it did in those days when they
The lowest point comes when after five years on the road, all of them get booked to play The Blue Angel again, which to Rath's objection, they promote as the professor's return to the town. Not surprisingly, it attracts a sellout crowd. Rath barely seems human anymore. The professor who once taught Shakespeare, now is just a fool, and not even Lear's. When he takes the stage with the magician, he gets hung up in curtains, mirroring his initial entrance to The Blue Angel. When he tries to speak, intelligible words no longer come out. Kiepert makes a mockery of Rath on stage until a group of men, including Lola's lover, rescue him. Later, Kiepert promises that he will make it up to him. It leads to a quiet and sad dénouement. The influence of the German expressionists shine throughout von Sternberg's direction, though he makes great use of the addition of sound as well. For instance, when Rath makes his return down the alley to the club, he adds the unmistakable sound of a cat in heat. While Dietrich definitely makes a magnetic debut (even if it came out second), Jannings brings the heart and magic to The Blue Angel (at least the German version).
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Labels: 30s, Emil Jannings, Foreign, Marlene, Murnau, Netflix, Oscars, Ray Top 100, Shakespeare, von Sternberg
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Centennial Tributes: James Stewart
By Josh R
Jimmy Stewart created the impression of being the most self-effacing of movie stars. Skinny and gawky in his youth, and given to stammer with slack-jawed embarrassment when flustered, his charmingly abashed quality immediately endeared him to audiences of the 1930s — in black and white, you could still see him blushing.
Never a fantasy figure like Cary Grant or Gary Cooper, he quickly established himself as America’s boy-next-door, the kind for whom pronouncements like “I didn’t knew they grew them that way anymore” were presumably intended; even decked out in a white tie and tails, the bottom of his shoes were still caked with the soil of the heartland, roots he never tried to shake off no matter how many tremors he produced in the gilt-edged, glittering cocktail shaker of Hollywood. He retained his sense of modesty in the face of uncommon success, and never gave way to pretension; he was, in terms of both his approach to acting and his philosophy of life, a man of the people.
It would be easy to write him off as being too lovable for words, if not for the unexpected, frequently harrowing shades of anger, bitterness and genuine madness that informed his performances for Alfred Hitchcock, Anthony Mann and, on one glorious occasion, the director with whose work he is most closely identified, Frank Capra. For if Stewart’s early persona never conveyed as much of a whiff of danger, his career is one with a decisive turning point. Patriotic to a fault, both onscreen and off, he was among the first Hollywood stars to enlist for active duty in WWII, and served in the air force with great distinction. What effect the war experience had on Stewart the man is not entirely clear — just as he was not given to boastfulness, nor was he particularly inclined to discuss his inner demons — but in terms of his work, it had a clearly felt impact. Beginning with It’s a Wonderful Life, audiences were treated to intriguing glimpses of the dark undercurrents of anxiety and despair that can prey on such unassuming, wholesome specimens of non-threatening All-American manhood; the sense of internal conflict barely hinted at in the pre-war years was suddenly made explicit.
Tellingly born in the town of Indiana in the state of Pennsylvania — even with his Keystone State stubbornness, there was always an air of corn-fed Midwestern sincerity about him — he grew up in the idyllic, small town America of picket fences, porch swings and potted geraniums. His father owned the local hardware store; when Jimmy won his Oscar, he sent it home to Pop to proudly display in the storefront window. He might easily have traveled the same path as his alter ego, George Bailey — the younger Stewart was likewise expected to assume responsibility for the family business when he came of age. Circumstances were kinder to Jimmy than they would proove to be for George; rather than toe the line and settle into a life of diminished expectations among the white steeples and striped awnings of Main Street, he set out for Princeton, with the aim of becoming an architect. After falling in with The University Players, a collection of Ivy Leaguers with theatrical aspirations, his set his sights on the New York stage. Some very modest success on Broadway led to interest on the part of Hollywood talent scouts; encouraged by his friend Henry Fonda to make a screen test, he was signed to a seven year contract by MGM.
Too sensitive and awkward for a traditional leading man, and too delicately handsome to fit into the mold of a character actor, his first two years in Hollywood were something of mishmash. He played a disturbed youth in Rose Marie and a baddie in After the Thin Man — neither assignment fit him comfortably — before settling into the role of the sensitive, sentimental male ingénue, the masculine equivalent of the delicate flowers suffering so nobly in three-hankie weepies. His first good lead came in Next Time We Love opposite Margaret Sullavan, with whom he shared a chemistry remarkable for its artless delicacy. The two had reportedly carried a torch for one another going back to their University Players years; The Shopworn Angel and The Mortal Storm provided further evidence of the extent to which the flame endured. Bolstered by his successful outings with Sullavan, his progress was swift, if incremental. 1938 revealed his aptitude for comedy, with a highly enjoyable pairing with Ginger Rogers in Vivacious Lady and the first of his three collaborations with Capra, You Can’t Take It With You. Through comedy, he grew in confidence, and seemed more distinctive a presence as a result (truth be told, he could seem a bit one-note playing delicate and doomed). The true breakthrough came in so spectacular a fashion that it seemed right off the pages of a Hollywood script.
1939 is often cited as the greatest year in the history of motion pictures, producing a bumper crop of classics. Certainly, no actor reaped more of the benefit of that yield than Stewart — he appeared in no less than five films, two of which would proove to be among his very best. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington was Capra at his corniest, but such was the conviction the actor brought to his portrayal of a naïve scoutmaster thrown into the shark-invested waters of professional politics that the corn actually managed to pop in the midst of so much soggy high-mindedness, wrapped as it was in a tear-stained blanket of red, white and blue. For doing the seemingly impossible — namely bringing a sense of dramatic fire to a character intended as the living embodiment of wide-eyed idealism — he received the first of his five Academy Award nominations. It’s a Wonderful World and Made for Each Other were pleasant outings with Claudette Colbert and Carole Lombard, but George Marshall’s Destry Rides Again revealed qualities that Capra and others hadn’t been canny enough to recognize. There was no earthly reason why he and Marlene Dietrich should have complemented each other to the extent that they did — on paper, it made about as much sense as casting Mickey Rooney opposite Garbo. The wholesomely appealing Stewart had registered with female moviegoers as the kind of man they’d like to marry, as opposed to one they fantasized about going to bed with; attractive though he was, it had been said that he lacked something in terms of virility. Being trapped in close quarters with the heavy-lidded Teutonic siren rectified the situation — Dietrich’s decadent sensuality worked on Stewart’s libido like a tonic, just as his laconic charm chipped away at her smirking self-containment and coaxed warmth and vulnerability out of its manicured shell. As the deputy spouting folksy truisms while trying to maintain the peace in a rambunctious western town, he was as nice as ever, but sexy too; in the scene where he backs Marlene’s naughty saloon floozy into a corner and wipes the make-up off her face, the heat generated by the two actors practically burned holes through the celluloid. In the era when Gable was king, Destry was one of the few films to acknowledge that while shady ladies may initially be drawn to the tough-talking manly men, it’s the sensitive types with quiet assurance who can really get them hot and bothered.
1940 was another banner year for Stewart — within a two-year period, he had participated in four classic films. The Oscar he received as a tabloid reporter covering a society wedding in The Philadelphia Story was really a compensatory gesture for his having lost the year before for Mr. Smith — nevertheless, he did outstanding work for George Cukor, and played well opposite Katharine Hepburn, even if their romantic chemistry was never entirely convincing (both seemed much more at home in their scenes with Cary Grant). More importantly, The Philadelphia Story was the first film to give him a character with a bit of an edge. The part of the cynical, smart-allecky Macauley Connor, a frustrated fiction writer with a chip on his shoulder, allowed Stewart to distance himself from the “aw shucks” bashfulness and diffident naiveté that had been his stock in trade, and showed that he was willing and able to take on roles with more complexity. Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner, while not really a step forward toward that end, was a romantic comedy with an old-world charm and a glorious reunion with Margaret Sullavan. Both actors gave much more spirited performances than they had when working within the constraints of melodrama, and as a result, their chemistry seemed more potent than ever. As if to proove he could be fallible, no amount of diligent effort could save No Time for Comedy, adapted from a stage hit about a conflicted playwright and his actress muse. Since 1940 was such a good year for Stewart and co-star Rosalind Russell otherwise, both emerged from the wreckage unscathed.
The 1940s might have proceeded along much the same lines — an innocuous string of romantic comedies, pausing for the occasional instance of inspirational flag-waving — if not for a little dust-up in the Pacific Ocean involving the bombing of an American naval base. The war put the film career on hold for half a decade, and the James Stewart to emerge in the aftermath was an older, sadder and wiser figure, comprehending of the darkness lurking just beneath the surface of the homespun American Dream perpetuated by Norman Rockwell Saturday Evening Post covers and Hollywood fictions. The charm was still there, to be sure, but coupled with a hard-earned awareness — not just of mortality, but a feeling that good and evil existed in closer proximity than the callow youth of the 1930s might have been given to suppose. It’s a Wonderful Life is frequently mistaken for a misty-eyed yuletide classic, with about as much bite to it as the average cup of eggnog. In truth, Capra’s definitive work is spiked with stronger stuff than cinnamon and nutmeg; there’s a bitter aftertaste that comes with the tacit admission that in every hometown hero lives a frustrated, disappointed loner trapped in a life of quiet desperation. Stewart’s George Bailey is an American everyman, immediately identifiable and admirable to a fault, but with a dark streak of resentment over the compromises he’s had to make, and a stinging contempt for the circumscribed, small-town life that a lifetime of selfless, conscientious behavior has seemingly condemned him to. This being Capra, George’s journey ends on an uplifting note, but the scenes that linger in memory the longest are the ones in which the character’s pain and anger are brought into sharp focus. Consider the moment when George takes out his frustration on his wife and children, followed by the look of remorse and self-loathing that flickers across his stricken features once he sees their frightened eyes peering back at him — it may be the bravest single piece of acting Stewart ever attempted, and ultimately, all the more heart-wrenching for its startling lack of sentimentality.
The postwar Stewart took a more intrepid approach to his career; he was a free agent now, pursuing projects that challenged his established persona and spoke directly to his affinity for characters faced with tough moral choices. There would be occasional returns to folksy, homespun sincerity — in Harvey, he was just credulous enough to make you believe there actually was an eight-foot white rabbit hovering in the margins of the frame — but for the most part, he seemed increasingly content working in a darker vein. Winchester ’73, Bend of the River, The Naked Spur, The Far Country and The Man from Laramie — five fine, tough-minded westerns for Anthony Mann — contemplated the degree of self-imposed isolation that comes with the territory of rugged individualism. In each of those films, Stewart seemed to be a man searching, not only for outlaws on the run or wayward herds of cattle, but for deliverance from the suspicion that mankind was fundamentally corrupt and cruel. Darker still were his exercises for Hitchcock, which veered even further away from the norm into the realm of genuine disturbance. Stewart didn’t shy away from acting out Hitch’s perversions — in Rear Window, he indulged in voyeurism, while in Vertigo, he was obsessed with Kim Novak and more than a little bit crazy. More than any other project he’d ever worked on, Vertigo allowed Stewart to bring his darker impulses to the forefront — as if George Bailey’s paranoia had finally caught up to him. As a reflection of how unwilling audiences were to conceive of anything base or impure in their All-American boy, The Glenn Miller Story was his most commercially successful film of the period — Stewart could still do bland nobility as well as anyone, but he was much more interesting when traveling a different course.
After Vertigo, the quality of the films went downward. Anatomy of a Murder was considered rather shocking at the time, but looks fairly quaint from a modern standpoint. Nevertheless, it had some enjoyably tacky Otto Preminger flourishes, and allowed the actor the chance to hint at some undercurrents of depravity. The younger Stewart would have stared in bug-eyed, wholesome disbelief at the vulpine Lee Remick as if he’d just been struck by cupid’s arrow; the worldly veteran appreciatively took in her supple proportions as if he’d secretly imagined what it would be like to violate her in the manner of her supposed attacker. The Man who Shot Liberty Valance was an acceptable entry from John Ford, while the sprawling mediocrity of How the West Was Won could find no better use for him than a very unconvincing courtship of Carroll Baker, an actress meant for more lurid things than a little house on the prairie. The Flight of the Pheonix was fine if formulaic, while a succession of increasingly dull westerns rounded out what had, at its best, been an unusually unpredictable career. He did a bit of TV work in the '80s, but seemed mainly content to make occasional appearances on talk shows or The Oscars, charming viewers with his well-rehearsed stammering fits and misty recollections of the old days.
Few stars, male or female, have ever inspired as affectionate a response as that accorded Jimmy Stewart. In a way, he represented the best of our selves — an idealized version of the good, moral American boy trying his best to make the world a better place. At the same time, he never shied away from revealing the extent to which the pressures of living up to that image of decency and goodness can unnerve a man and breed self-doubt; perhaps Stewart himself felt that pressure more keenly than most. Whether or not that was the case, as an actor, he never lost sight of his characters’ humanity, or felt the need to portray them on anything other than a human scale — it’s part of the reason audiences identified with him so strongly. Movie stars can often feel like a separate breed, a world apart from mere mortals. Jimmy Stewart was one of us.
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Labels: Anthony Mann, Capra, Cary, Cooper, Cukor, Garbo, Ginger Rogers, H. Fonda, Hitchcock, J. Stewart, John Ford, K. Hepburn, Lombard, Lubitsch, Marlene, Preminger, Roz Russell
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Monday, May 07, 2007
Where's Mack the Knife when you need him?
By Josh R
On paper, it looked like a slam dunk.
The concept: A musical based on the correspondence of wunderkind composer Kurt Weill, co-creator of The Threepenny Opera, and his muse and mate, the incomparable singer-actress Lotte Lenya. The material: selections taken directly from the Weill canon, framed within a libretto penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Oscar-winning screenwriter Alfred Uhry. The talent: two of contemporary musical theater’s brightest stars, Tony winners Michael Cerveris and Donna Murphy, under the direction of the legendary Harold Prince, the man responsible for many of the most critically lauded productions of the last 40-odd years.
Sounds like a recipe for success, doesn’t it? Manhattan Theater Club, the highly esteemed not-for-profit company which produces shows both on and off-Broadway, couldn’t have put together a more tantalizing list of ingredients for their last offering of season — what they surely hoped might serve as their pièce de résistance. The failure of these elements to coalesce into a satisfying evening of theater has less to do with the merits of the creative team than with the basic manner in which the show has been conceived; which is to say that if the soufflé falls flat, it’s not something that can be attributed to any lack of effort — or ability — on the part of the kitchen staff. For all the obvious thought and care that has gone into the creation of LoveMusik, the strange, ambivalent new show currently in previews at The Biltmore Theater, the whole is ultimately much less than the sum of its parts.
The problem doesn’t stem from the subject matter, for the tempestuous history of Weill and Lenya can’t be charged with any dearth of dramatic possibility. The two luminaries didn’t always see eye to eye, in life or in love, but they complemented each other as artists — somewhat implausibly, given the fact that their unlikely union represented a striking clash in temperaments. There was nothing in the respective characters of Weill — an unprepossessing introvert whose halting, insecure manner reflected his status as a Jew in a hostile socio-political climate — and Lenya — a reformed child prostitute reinventing herself as flamboyant sensualist with a taste for the limelight — that would have logically rendered them ideally suited as companions.
Drawing from more than 20 years of correspondence, LoveMusik begins with an awkward (and awkwardly staged) sexual encounter in a rowboat, and chronicles the couple’s progress through years of struggle,
triumph, misunderstanding and reconciliation. Lenya’s insistence on an open marriage is initially met with resigned acceptance by her prospective husband, but erodes the trust they share as their respective jealousies repeatedly threaten to capsize their tenuous domestic arrangement. The second act deals with the turbulent aftermath of their early success, as the couple immigrates to America to escape the rise of fascism. Weill goes on to achieve celebrity status as a composer of Broadway shows and film scores, while Lenya — considered the equal (and chief rival) of Marlene Dietrich in her native land — has difficulty adjusting to her diminished position in country where her talents remain largely unheralded. While they lead increasingly separate lives — he devotes more of his energies to film work and his Californian mistress, while she experiences eventual career rebirth as a cabaret singer — their marriage endures until the composer’s death in 1950.
There’s a good show to be fashioned from the fabric of this stormy romance, but in the context of LoveMusik, it never quite materializes. You only realize how far it falls short when you consider the inherent theatricality of what the material has to offer — namely, the iconic presence of Lenya, the thorny brilliance of Weill’s music, and the environment in which their talents took root. Weimar-era Germany, a peculiar hybrid of decadence and decay that emerged from the ashes of the First World War, was a fascinating historical anomaly — fatalistic in defeat, steeped in self-mocking debauchery, and yet not without a kind of somber, bittersweet beauty. It provided the backdrop for at least one landmark work of musical theater — it was, in fact, Harold Prince who staged the original production of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s seminal masterpiece, Cabaret, which not coincidentally featured the real Lotte Lenya in her last major career triumph. If anyone would seem to be ideally qualified to bring the life stories of these two artists, each in their own way emblematic of the cultural landscape of the Weimar Republic, to the stage, it would be Prince — something which makes his irresolute and occasionally wrong-headed approach that much more puzzling.
Prince arguably is the most venerated musical theater director of the past half-century — his reputation is based, in part, on concise interpretation and a firm hand with unwieldy material. LoveMusik, however, never settles on a clear tone, making for an erratic presentation that veers uncertainly from poker-faced biography to musical numbers that feel either like overblown Broadway pastiche or baroque exercises in Brechtian alienation technique. A smattering of these work — particularly a blistering send-up of Hitler’s rise to power using shadow puppets — but most of them are indifferently conceived and executed. The book doesn’t function on a particularly high level; like the script for a standard-issue Hollywood biopic, Alfred Uhry’s libretto serves up a tidy compendium of major events without providing any revealing insight into the personalities involved. Compounding the problem is the creators have chosen songs that don’t necessarily correspond to the action in the scenes. A conscious effort has been made to avoid many of Weill’s better-known standards — consequently, many of the songs, in addition to being of questionable relevance to the narrative, are of rather inferior quality (this is one original cast album musical aficionados would be well advised to take a pass on). And don’t even get me started on the accents.
OK, get me started. The most critical misjudgment Prince has made — and boy, is it a whopper — is to have everyone speaking (sorry, shpeaking) with German (or rather, Cherman) accents that make the Nazi villains in black-and-white films from the 1940s sound like models of phonetic forbearance. The pronunciation is over-the-top to the point that it ceases to be logical — has anyone ever met an English-speaking German who sounded like this (and wasn't a stroke victim)? The approach would have been more suitable to an enterprise which entailed some form of wild ethnic caricature — say, the kind of show which featured the likes of Nazi Franz Liebkind, the maniacal author of “Springtime for Hitler” in The Producers — but in a work that asks us to take its characters seriously, its presence is as baffling as it is jarring. Every "and" becomes an "und", every "this" becomes a "zees" and the song “Waiting for Our Wooden Wedding” becomes “Vaiting for our Vooden… You get the picture. It’s the Teutonic touch taken to the point of utter ridiculousness, and it’s hard not to find it distracting when Lenya is talking of her fondness for cake-tus (that’s cactus), her many lah-fuhsss (that lovers), und zees, zat, und zee uzzah. You expect at a certain point that your ear will adjust to this nonsense, but it never happens.
The two leads manage heroically under the circumstances, despite being saddled with accents that make them sound like relatives of Colonel Klink. An unrecognizable Michael Cerveris gives a subtle, well-modulated performance as Weill, suggesting both the burning creative ambition which drives his work and the tender, helpless sense of yearning that feeds his love for Lenya. Donna Murphy talks like Carol Kane and sings like Betty Boop, which makes for a overly stylized, yet oddly compelling piece of characterization. Very few performers can match Ms. Murphy’s aptitude for musical phrasing; her mesmerizing, delicately nuanced rendition of the torchy “Surabaya Johnny,” delivered in a shimmering blue gown against a sequined backdrop, reveals a natural affinity for the style of the period and an intuitive grasp of how to convey depths of feeling without resorting to histrionics. It’s the one moment in the show that generates any kind of electricity. If the actress relies too heavily on exaggerated mannerism during the acting portions of her performance, it stems more from the way she's been directed than from any faulty impulse on her part. The remainder of the cast tends to fade into the scenery (of which there is a lot), although David Pittu makes more of an impression playing Bertolt Brecht as a swaggering sleazeball and skulking his way through Threepenny's “Tango Ballad.”
It isn’t entirely fair to come down hard on a show when it’s still in the early stages of previews — from all reports, there’s a lot of furious re-tinkering going on behind the scenes, mainly in an effort to pare down what is a somewhat unruly running time. Perhaps the changes will make for a tighter, more cohesive presentation — but based on the looks of things, it's unlikely that any amount of last-minute surgery will get LoveMusik back up on its feet. While Kurt Weill's music has the ability to transport, the show fashioned around it remains stubbornly immobile.
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On paper, it looked like a slam dunk.
The concept: A musical based on the correspondence of wunderkind composer Kurt Weill, co-creator of The Threepenny Opera, and his muse and mate, the incomparable singer-actress Lotte Lenya. The material: selections taken directly from the Weill canon, framed within a libretto penned by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Oscar-winning screenwriter Alfred Uhry. The talent: two of contemporary musical theater’s brightest stars, Tony winners Michael Cerveris and Donna Murphy, under the direction of the legendary Harold Prince, the man responsible for many of the most critically lauded productions of the last 40-odd years.
Sounds like a recipe for success, doesn’t it? Manhattan Theater Club, the highly esteemed not-for-profit company which produces shows both on and off-Broadway, couldn’t have put together a more tantalizing list of ingredients for their last offering of season — what they surely hoped might serve as their pièce de résistance. The failure of these elements to coalesce into a satisfying evening of theater has less to do with the merits of the creative team than with the basic manner in which the show has been conceived; which is to say that if the soufflé falls flat, it’s not something that can be attributed to any lack of effort — or ability — on the part of the kitchen staff. For all the obvious thought and care that has gone into the creation of LoveMusik, the strange, ambivalent new show currently in previews at The Biltmore Theater, the whole is ultimately much less than the sum of its parts.
The problem doesn’t stem from the subject matter, for the tempestuous history of Weill and Lenya can’t be charged with any dearth of dramatic possibility. The two luminaries didn’t always see eye to eye, in life or in love, but they complemented each other as artists — somewhat implausibly, given the fact that their unlikely union represented a striking clash in temperaments. There was nothing in the respective characters of Weill — an unprepossessing introvert whose halting, insecure manner reflected his status as a Jew in a hostile socio-political climate — and Lenya — a reformed child prostitute reinventing herself as flamboyant sensualist with a taste for the limelight — that would have logically rendered them ideally suited as companions.
Drawing from more than 20 years of correspondence, LoveMusik begins with an awkward (and awkwardly staged) sexual encounter in a rowboat, and chronicles the couple’s progress through years of struggle,
There’s a good show to be fashioned from the fabric of this stormy romance, but in the context of LoveMusik, it never quite materializes. You only realize how far it falls short when you consider the inherent theatricality of what the material has to offer — namely, the iconic presence of Lenya, the thorny brilliance of Weill’s music, and the environment in which their talents took root. Weimar-era Germany, a peculiar hybrid of decadence and decay that emerged from the ashes of the First World War, was a fascinating historical anomaly — fatalistic in defeat, steeped in self-mocking debauchery, and yet not without a kind of somber, bittersweet beauty. It provided the backdrop for at least one landmark work of musical theater — it was, in fact, Harold Prince who staged the original production of John Kander and Fred Ebb’s seminal masterpiece, Cabaret, which not coincidentally featured the real Lotte Lenya in her last major career triumph. If anyone would seem to be ideally qualified to bring the life stories of these two artists, each in their own way emblematic of the cultural landscape of the Weimar Republic, to the stage, it would be Prince — something which makes his irresolute and occasionally wrong-headed approach that much more puzzling.
Prince arguably is the most venerated musical theater director of the past half-century — his reputation is based, in part, on concise interpretation and a firm hand with unwieldy material. LoveMusik, however, never settles on a clear tone, making for an erratic presentation that veers uncertainly from poker-faced biography to musical numbers that feel either like overblown Broadway pastiche or baroque exercises in Brechtian alienation technique. A smattering of these work — particularly a blistering send-up of Hitler’s rise to power using shadow puppets — but most of them are indifferently conceived and executed. The book doesn’t function on a particularly high level; like the script for a standard-issue Hollywood biopic, Alfred Uhry’s libretto serves up a tidy compendium of major events without providing any revealing insight into the personalities involved. Compounding the problem is the creators have chosen songs that don’t necessarily correspond to the action in the scenes. A conscious effort has been made to avoid many of Weill’s better-known standards — consequently, many of the songs, in addition to being of questionable relevance to the narrative, are of rather inferior quality (this is one original cast album musical aficionados would be well advised to take a pass on). And don’t even get me started on the accents.
OK, get me started. The most critical misjudgment Prince has made — and boy, is it a whopper — is to have everyone speaking (sorry, shpeaking) with German (or rather, Cherman) accents that make the Nazi villains in black-and-white films from the 1940s sound like models of phonetic forbearance. The pronunciation is over-the-top to the point that it ceases to be logical — has anyone ever met an English-speaking German who sounded like this (and wasn't a stroke victim)? The approach would have been more suitable to an enterprise which entailed some form of wild ethnic caricature — say, the kind of show which featured the likes of Nazi Franz Liebkind, the maniacal author of “Springtime for Hitler” in The Producers — but in a work that asks us to take its characters seriously, its presence is as baffling as it is jarring. Every "and" becomes an "und", every "this" becomes a "zees" and the song “Waiting for Our Wooden Wedding” becomes “Vaiting for our Vooden… You get the picture. It’s the Teutonic touch taken to the point of utter ridiculousness, and it’s hard not to find it distracting when Lenya is talking of her fondness for cake-tus (that’s cactus), her many lah-fuhsss (that lovers), und zees, zat, und zee uzzah. You expect at a certain point that your ear will adjust to this nonsense, but it never happens.
The two leads manage heroically under the circumstances, despite being saddled with accents that make them sound like relatives of Colonel Klink. An unrecognizable Michael Cerveris gives a subtle, well-modulated performance as Weill, suggesting both the burning creative ambition which drives his work and the tender, helpless sense of yearning that feeds his love for Lenya. Donna Murphy talks like Carol Kane and sings like Betty Boop, which makes for a overly stylized, yet oddly compelling piece of characterization. Very few performers can match Ms. Murphy’s aptitude for musical phrasing; her mesmerizing, delicately nuanced rendition of the torchy “Surabaya Johnny,” delivered in a shimmering blue gown against a sequined backdrop, reveals a natural affinity for the style of the period and an intuitive grasp of how to convey depths of feeling without resorting to histrionics. It’s the one moment in the show that generates any kind of electricity. If the actress relies too heavily on exaggerated mannerism during the acting portions of her performance, it stems more from the way she's been directed than from any faulty impulse on her part. The remainder of the cast tends to fade into the scenery (of which there is a lot), although David Pittu makes more of an impression playing Bertolt Brecht as a swaggering sleazeball and skulking his way through Threepenny's “Tango Ballad.”
It isn’t entirely fair to come down hard on a show when it’s still in the early stages of previews — from all reports, there’s a lot of furious re-tinkering going on behind the scenes, mainly in an effort to pare down what is a somewhat unruly running time. Perhaps the changes will make for a tighter, more cohesive presentation — but based on the looks of things, it's unlikely that any amount of last-minute surgery will get LoveMusik back up on its feet. While Kurt Weill's music has the ability to transport, the show fashioned around it remains stubbornly immobile.
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Labels: Ebb, H. Prince, Kander, M. Cerveris, Marlene, Musicals, Theater
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Thursday, March 01, 2007
What did Wilder do?
By Edward Copeland
I thought I'd go through all of Billy Wilder's films as either writer and/or director that I've seen, omitting the titles being explored in greater detail elsewhere on this site today. Forgive our indulgence, but we love Billy and relished the opportunity to go overboard about him.
Mauvaise graine (1934)
This film made in France was Wilder's first directing effort (actually, he co-directed with Alexander Esway) and is a fascinating artifact for any Wilder fan to check out. The only film he made in France after fleeing Germany following Hitler's election as chancellor, Mauvaise graine (translation: Bad seed) was based on a short story by Wilder. It tells the story of Henri (Pierre Mingand), a son of privilege cut off by his physician father (Paul Escoffier), who has tired of his son's playboy ways. Henri falls in with a colorful band of car thieves once he's forced to sell his own vehicle to cover debts. Though the film has a mostly light tone, it's hard not to see the path Wilder's life is to take as in the end, Henri flees Paris for parts unknown, just as Wilder did for Hollywood where he worked as a screenwriter, not directing another film for eight years.
Ninotchka (1939)
Billy Wilder famously had a framed quote hanging on his office wall which read, "What would Lubitsch do?" and he got a chance to see his inspiration and mentor at work when he co-wrote the great Greta Garbo vehicle Ninotchka. Garbo is joyous to watch as a committed Russian communist sent to Paris to investigate the delay in the sale of some crown jewels by her emissaries only to discover that they've been seduced by capitalism, something she soon falls prey to as well in the form of the delightful Melvyn Douglas. This sparkling comedy is as witty today as I imagine it was in its original release. It could have been the role that finally got Garbo an Oscar, but the movie had the misfortune of being released in the same year as Gone With the Wind and nothing was gonna keep that Oscar away from Vivien Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara.
Ball of Fire (1941)
Has there ever been a more propitious alignment of talents than those that came together for Ball of Fire? Wilder and his co-writer Charles Brackett, after getting to work with the great Lubitsch on Ninotchka, not only get to see the great Howard Hawks in action but Wilder also gets to see the great Barbara Stanwyck up close and personal before she gets to work with Wilder in one of his greatest film achievements. I don't know whose inspiration it was to take a twist on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and transform it into a comedy where Snow White is anything but (a saucy moll in fact) and the dwarfs are a collection of eccentric professors working to compile a dictionary of American slang. What a year Stanwyck had in 1941 — this film, Capra's Meet John Doe and Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve. Stanwyck got her best actress nomination for Ball of Fire (the right choice of the three, I believe) but how she could lose to Joan Fontaine in Suspicion is downright criminal. How Stanwyck never won an Oscar period is unbelievable. If it were up to me, Stanwyck would have ended up with four Oscars in her lifetime instead of a mere honorary one.
The Major and the Minor (1942)
Wilder got his chance to get back in the director's chair for the first time following his move to Hollywood with this charming but lightweight comedy starring Ginger Rogers who disguises herself as a 12-year-old to get a cut-rate train ticket home only to become embroiled with an Army major (Ray Milland), eager to get back into active service anticipating the war clouds on the horizon. Wilder and Charles Brackett's trademark wit certainly makes itself known (look for a great sight gag involving the students from an all-girls school that visit the military academy Milland works at for a dance). Rogers is fun and Rita Johnson makes a nice villain as Milland's fiancee. There also is a nice turn from the forgotten Diana Lynn as Johnson's little sister, though it's nothing compared to the great role she'd get in Preston Sturges' The Miracle of Morgan's Creek two years later.
Double Indemnity (1944)
This wasn't Wilder's first film as a director, but this is the one that put him on the map and one of the films that practically define film noir. Teaming again with the magnificent Stanwyck, a never-better Fred MacMurray (this is the kindly dad from My Three Sons and The Absent-Minded Professor?) and the great Edward G. Robinson. Stanwyck lost again, this time to Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight, who was at least worthy, even if she wasn't better that Stanwyck's indelible Phyllis Dietrichson. The bigger Oscar crimes this year were that Double Indemnity and Wilder lost to Going My Way and Leo McCarey and that MacMurray and Robinson didn't even earn nominations. Someone should swing from a star (or at least be pushed from a moving train) for those Oscar travesties. Sidenote for Twin Peaks fans: Another fun reference the series threw in in the first season happened when Catherine Martell (Piper Laurie) discovered that an insurance policy had been taken out on her life without her knowledge, thanks to an insurance agent whose last name just happened to be Neff, giving Laurie the chance to utter those famous words, "Are you an ambitious man, Mr. Neff?"
The Lost Weekend (1945)
This at-the-time landmark portrayal of alcoholism won Billy Wilder his first two Oscars and while I'm happy he won Oscars, I've always felt this film was very dated and not one of his best. Ray Milland is fine and Howard da Silva as a bartender is even better, but this one has never really grabbed me. Of course, leave it to the Academy to honor a talent as deserving as Wilder for a lesser work. At least the next two years when he won Oscars were for two of his greatest films instead of something as creaky as this one.
A Foreign Affair (1948)
This small gem is really one of Wilder's lesser-known efforts, but it shouldn't be, containing great work from Jean Arthur as a member of Congress investigating a singer (Marlene Dietrich) suspected of being a former Nazi. Complicating matters is an Army captain (John Lund) who is infatuated with both women. Like his later One, Two, Three, which also found ample comedy in post-war Berlin, and Stalag 17, which proved it's better to mock the Nazis than to fear them years before Mel Brooks practically made a career out of ridiculing the Third Reich, A Foreign Affair also finds a great deal of pathos in Dietrich's character, who is determined to go on despite the fact that the city she loves is still practically in ruins.
Ace in the Hole (1951)
Raised expectations are a dangerous thing and that proved to be the case when, after years of lusting, I finally got to see Ace in the Hole aka The Big Carnival. Billy Wilder making a sharp satire about the media and in 1951 no less? Sign me up. However, once I did get to see the movie, I was disappointed. Perhaps it was inevitable. Perhaps it was the multitude of better movies that were made later that I'd already seen that made this feel like old hat. Certainly, it must have been groundbreaking and edgy in its time, but viewed now, many films have tackled the subject so much better. Admittedly, any film that Wilder made immediately after the incomparable Sunset Blvd. was going to be a letdown, but Ace in the Hole left me cold.
Stalag 17 (1953)
Wilder's next one was far from a disappointment and won William Holden his only Oscar. It also not only inspired TV's Hogan's Heroes but a lawsuit over them poaching from Stalag 17 to boot (Hell, one of the Germans running the camp is even named Sgt. Schulz, did they think no one would notice?). While set in a German POW camp, it certainly has its harrowing moments and death thanks to a mole within the prisoners' ranks, as one would expect from Wilder, it's also got plenty of laughs to offer, many from Robert Strauss in his Oscar-nominated performance.
Sabrina (1954)
When you have Audrey Hepburn, especially so early in her career, charm will turn out to be the operative word for the film and such is the case with Sabrina. Wilder worked with Holden yet again but also got Humphrey Bogart to appear in a rare romantic comedy, showing a different side to him late in Bogie's career. While Sabrina is certainly enjoyable, it's always seemed like a bit of an aberration in the Wilder canon. Then again, what is the Wilder canon? Like Howard Hawks, Wilder would take a shot at just about any genre. Let's just forget about the ill-advised remake that happened in the 1990s with Julia "Where is she now?" Ormond, Harrison Ford and Greg Kinnear.
The Seven Year Itch (1955)
This comedy, more famous for a subway grate blowing up Marilyn Monroe's skirt than anything else, was adapted from a stage play and its theatrical origins are glaringly obvious. Sure, Tom Ewell has some good moments, as does Monroe, but for the most part, this is a botch and not worthy of being part of the Billy Wilder filmography.
The Spirit of St. Louis (1957)
Billy sure was a busy boy in 1957, with three features coming out in the 12-month period, though the third was by far the best one. As for this biography of Charles Lindbergh, this may be the most un-Wilder movie that Wilder ever made. James Stewart seems to be sleepwalking through his role as the famed aviator and some of the ways they try to open the film up (I mean, can you really make a feature film about one man alone in a plane flying over the ocean when you know he's going to land safely?). There are flashbacks a-plenty, lots of internal monologues and, in foreshadowing of Tom Hanks' later conversations with a soccer ball in Cast Away, an extended one-way conversation with a fly. It's not bad, but it's not Wilder.
Love in the Afternoon (1957)
The second time working with Audrey Hepburn was not the charm as far as Wilder was concerned in this tale of an over-the-hill playboy (Gary Cooper, who if the part didn't call for an over-the-hill playboy, was certainly too old for Hepburn) targeted for death by the jealous husband of one of his many conquests. Hepburn plays the daughter of the detective hired by the angry spouse and she sets out to intervene by faking her own list of romantic liaisons and, of course, falling in love with Cooper herself. One of Wilder's most forgettable efforts.
Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
As I alluded to earlier, Wilder saved the best of his 1957 films for last with this adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel. Sparked by the great interplay between real-life spouses Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester and another great performance under Wilder's direction from Marlene Dietrich, Witness for the Prosecution proves to be a true joy. It's not really a straight-forward whodunit as most of Christie's books were, but instead is a courtroom drama, and a riveting one at that. It was another genre that Wilder hadn't attempted before and with this film, he passed the test with flying colors.
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Nobody may be perfect, but this film damn near is. This is the first film in a three-film streak that may be Wilder's best one, two, three punch ever (I explore the third film, One, Two, Three, in more detail elsewhere). He gets a good performance out of Marilyn Monroe and great ones out of Tony Curtis, dressing in drag and channeling Cary Grant. and Jack Lemmon. More than just a drag comedy, Some Like It Hot simply is one of the most entertaining films ever made.
The Apartment (1960)
I love Alfred Hitchcock and I know there are many out there who still are distressed that The Apartment beat Psycho for best picture (Actually, Psycho wasn't even nominated for picture, though Wilder did beat Hitch for director), but I think the best film won. A perfect blend of sophisticated comedy, some slapstick and ample pathos, The Apartment simply is sublime. Again, Wilder recognizes that Fred MacMurray can do wonders as a heel (though he almost didn't take the part since Disney had sunk its claws into him by now). Lemmon is note perfect and Shirley MacLaine really gets her first truly great role. For those who still harbor ill thoughts about Psycho's loss, shut up and deal with it.
Irma la Douce (1963)
It's rough sledding for the great Billy Wilder from here forward. Sure, there is one butchered classic to come, but for the most part, One, Two, Three marked the last high watermark of the great man's career. This comedy, and I use the term loosely, reunites Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine and not to good effort, with Lemmon miscast as a Parisian cop who accidentally becomes pimp to MacLaine's sweet streetwalker. Of course, love is inevitable, slapstick is plentiful but unfortunately, wit and laughs are few and far between.
Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)
As Maxwell Smart used to say, "Missed it by that much" and that's certainly what I felt when I saw Kiss Me, Stupid. This film had so much potential, but somehow ended up missing the mark on multiple counts. Dean Martin, basically playing himself, finds himself stranded in a small Nevada town where he encounters a budding composer (Ray Walston) with a jealous streak concerning his wife Zelda (Felicia Farr) so he and his songwriting partner (Cliff Osmond) try to substitute the town's gorgeous hooker (Kim Novak) to satiate the perpetually horny Dino and protect Zelda's honor. Needless to say, hijinks and misunderstandings ensue but somehow the movie as a whole never clicks, despite Martin and Walston's great performances.
The Fortune Cookie (1966)
Of all the many accomplishments that Billy Wilder achieved in his long career, another he'll be remembered for is being the first to pair Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau (for better and worse). The Fortune Cookie isn't a bad movie, but if it didn't contain Matthau's Oscar-winning performance as an ambulance-chasing lawyer, it'd be pretty forgettable. Matthau runs away with this movie (and some would argue that he shouldn't have been relegated to supporting actor when he's really a co-lead, but it's doubtful he would have topped Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons).
The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970)
Every great filmmaker seems to have at least one case where a film he's worked long and hard on has fallen victim to others' butcher knives, making a negative reaction to the dismembered product inevitable. For Wilder, that came with The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Thanks to home video, at least one of the missing sequences have been found and restored and what remains is quite good and make Wilder fans (and movie buffs in general) salivate over what could have been. Robert Stephens is great as Holmes, as are Colin Blakely as Watson and Christopher Lee as Sherlock's brother Mycroft. The story doesn't revolve around your usual Holmes-style mysteries, but explores Sherlock's fleeting thoughts about having a child, espionage and even the Loch Ness monster. In a way, it's Wilder's Magnificent Ambersons — not what he intended, but great nonetheless.
Avanti! (1972)
Avanti! holds a unique place in Billy Wilder's filmography for me, at least of the ones I've seen. It's the only film of his that I gave up trying to finish. I got through an hour (and if Wilder's name hadn't been attached, I doubt I would have made it that far) but with nearly another hour and a half to go, I decided I'd seen enough to know that I didn't want to see anymore. Say what you will about Buddy Buddy, at least I finished that one. Jack Lemmon stars as an American businessman who flies to Italy to retrieve his father's body after he dies in a car crash while on vacation there. He soon discovers that his father had an Italian lover whom he met there frequently and who also died in the wreck. This brings him in contact with a woman (Juliet Mills) who happens to be the daughter of the late mistress. I'm guessing that some sort of romance develops between Lemmon and Mills but I didn't stick around to find out.
The Front Page (1974)
When I was a very young lad, I actually saw this movie in a theater. I didn't know who Billy Wilder was, let alone that the movie had been made before with Adolphe Menjou or as the incomparable His Girl Friday. I enjoyed it. Later, when I did see its predecessors, I realized that it ranked third of the three, but it seemed that some stories are strong enough to survive reintepretations (a theory destroyed once they tried to remake it again in the cable news era as Switching Channels with Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner). Once again, Matthau proves to be the biggest asset here, doing a more-than-respectable Walter Burns even when you put him up against Menjou and Cary Grant (though Grant will always be at the very top). Lemmon? Well, he's no Rosalind Russell (or Pat O'Brien for that matter). Most of the other casting in the 1973 version also pales alongside the other films and even at my young age I recognized that Carol Burnett was miscast and over-the-top as Mollie Malloy. It's pleasant enough, but there's nothing here that should make you see it over His Girl Friday or the original.
Buddy Buddy (1981)
Wilder's final feature was far from one of his best, but it did team him once again with Lemmon and Matthau and once again, Matthau got the best of it. Matthau plays a hit man out to do a job when he encounters Lemmon (as yet another suicidally depressed man whose wife has left him) and finds himself distracted trying to save the man from doing himself in. Matthau gives it his best shot (no pun intended) but the gags are forced and tired. It's another American movie remade from a script by Francis Veber (while his script for La Cage Aux Folles turned into the acceptable Birdcage and a Broadway musical, he also led Hollywood to make such duds such as The Toy, The Man With One Red Shoe, Three Fugitives, Pure Luck and My Father the Hero. It's sad that a giant like Wilder had to end with this one, but what can you do? He still produced far more great movies than misfires.
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I thought I'd go through all of Billy Wilder's films as either writer and/or director that I've seen, omitting the titles being explored in greater detail elsewhere on this site today. Forgive our indulgence, but we love Billy and relished the opportunity to go overboard about him.
This film made in France was Wilder's first directing effort (actually, he co-directed with Alexander Esway) and is a fascinating artifact for any Wilder fan to check out. The only film he made in France after fleeing Germany following Hitler's election as chancellor, Mauvaise graine (translation: Bad seed) was based on a short story by Wilder. It tells the story of Henri (Pierre Mingand), a son of privilege cut off by his physician father (Paul Escoffier), who has tired of his son's playboy ways. Henri falls in with a colorful band of car thieves once he's forced to sell his own vehicle to cover debts. Though the film has a mostly light tone, it's hard not to see the path Wilder's life is to take as in the end, Henri flees Paris for parts unknown, just as Wilder did for Hollywood where he worked as a screenwriter, not directing another film for eight years.
Billy Wilder famously had a framed quote hanging on his office wall which read, "What would Lubitsch do?" and he got a chance to see his inspiration and mentor at work when he co-wrote the great Greta Garbo vehicle Ninotchka. Garbo is joyous to watch as a committed Russian communist sent to Paris to investigate the delay in the sale of some crown jewels by her emissaries only to discover that they've been seduced by capitalism, something she soon falls prey to as well in the form of the delightful Melvyn Douglas. This sparkling comedy is as witty today as I imagine it was in its original release. It could have been the role that finally got Garbo an Oscar, but the movie had the misfortune of being released in the same year as Gone With the Wind and nothing was gonna keep that Oscar away from Vivien Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara.
Has there ever been a more propitious alignment of talents than those that came together for Ball of Fire? Wilder and his co-writer Charles Brackett, after getting to work with the great Lubitsch on Ninotchka, not only get to see the great Howard Hawks in action but Wilder also gets to see the great Barbara Stanwyck up close and personal before she gets to work with Wilder in one of his greatest film achievements. I don't know whose inspiration it was to take a twist on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and transform it into a comedy where Snow White is anything but (a saucy moll in fact) and the dwarfs are a collection of eccentric professors working to compile a dictionary of American slang. What a year Stanwyck had in 1941 — this film, Capra's Meet John Doe and Preston Sturges' The Lady Eve. Stanwyck got her best actress nomination for Ball of Fire (the right choice of the three, I believe) but how she could lose to Joan Fontaine in Suspicion is downright criminal. How Stanwyck never won an Oscar period is unbelievable. If it were up to me, Stanwyck would have ended up with four Oscars in her lifetime instead of a mere honorary one.
Wilder got his chance to get back in the director's chair for the first time following his move to Hollywood with this charming but lightweight comedy starring Ginger Rogers who disguises herself as a 12-year-old to get a cut-rate train ticket home only to become embroiled with an Army major (Ray Milland), eager to get back into active service anticipating the war clouds on the horizon. Wilder and Charles Brackett's trademark wit certainly makes itself known (look for a great sight gag involving the students from an all-girls school that visit the military academy Milland works at for a dance). Rogers is fun and Rita Johnson makes a nice villain as Milland's fiancee. There also is a nice turn from the forgotten Diana Lynn as Johnson's little sister, though it's nothing compared to the great role she'd get in Preston Sturges' The Miracle of Morgan's Creek two years later.
This wasn't Wilder's first film as a director, but this is the one that put him on the map and one of the films that practically define film noir. Teaming again with the magnificent Stanwyck, a never-better Fred MacMurray (this is the kindly dad from My Three Sons and The Absent-Minded Professor?) and the great Edward G. Robinson. Stanwyck lost again, this time to Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight, who was at least worthy, even if she wasn't better that Stanwyck's indelible Phyllis Dietrichson. The bigger Oscar crimes this year were that Double Indemnity and Wilder lost to Going My Way and Leo McCarey and that MacMurray and Robinson didn't even earn nominations. Someone should swing from a star (or at least be pushed from a moving train) for those Oscar travesties. Sidenote for Twin Peaks fans: Another fun reference the series threw in in the first season happened when Catherine Martell (Piper Laurie) discovered that an insurance policy had been taken out on her life without her knowledge, thanks to an insurance agent whose last name just happened to be Neff, giving Laurie the chance to utter those famous words, "Are you an ambitious man, Mr. Neff?"
This at-the-time landmark portrayal of alcoholism won Billy Wilder his first two Oscars and while I'm happy he won Oscars, I've always felt this film was very dated and not one of his best. Ray Milland is fine and Howard da Silva as a bartender is even better, but this one has never really grabbed me. Of course, leave it to the Academy to honor a talent as deserving as Wilder for a lesser work. At least the next two years when he won Oscars were for two of his greatest films instead of something as creaky as this one.
This small gem is really one of Wilder's lesser-known efforts, but it shouldn't be, containing great work from Jean Arthur as a member of Congress investigating a singer (Marlene Dietrich) suspected of being a former Nazi. Complicating matters is an Army captain (John Lund) who is infatuated with both women. Like his later One, Two, Three, which also found ample comedy in post-war Berlin, and Stalag 17, which proved it's better to mock the Nazis than to fear them years before Mel Brooks practically made a career out of ridiculing the Third Reich, A Foreign Affair also finds a great deal of pathos in Dietrich's character, who is determined to go on despite the fact that the city she loves is still practically in ruins.
Raised expectations are a dangerous thing and that proved to be the case when, after years of lusting, I finally got to see Ace in the Hole aka The Big Carnival. Billy Wilder making a sharp satire about the media and in 1951 no less? Sign me up. However, once I did get to see the movie, I was disappointed. Perhaps it was inevitable. Perhaps it was the multitude of better movies that were made later that I'd already seen that made this feel like old hat. Certainly, it must have been groundbreaking and edgy in its time, but viewed now, many films have tackled the subject so much better. Admittedly, any film that Wilder made immediately after the incomparable Sunset Blvd. was going to be a letdown, but Ace in the Hole left me cold.
Wilder's next one was far from a disappointment and won William Holden his only Oscar. It also not only inspired TV's Hogan's Heroes but a lawsuit over them poaching from Stalag 17 to boot (Hell, one of the Germans running the camp is even named Sgt. Schulz, did they think no one would notice?). While set in a German POW camp, it certainly has its harrowing moments and death thanks to a mole within the prisoners' ranks, as one would expect from Wilder, it's also got plenty of laughs to offer, many from Robert Strauss in his Oscar-nominated performance.
When you have Audrey Hepburn, especially so early in her career, charm will turn out to be the operative word for the film and such is the case with Sabrina. Wilder worked with Holden yet again but also got Humphrey Bogart to appear in a rare romantic comedy, showing a different side to him late in Bogie's career. While Sabrina is certainly enjoyable, it's always seemed like a bit of an aberration in the Wilder canon. Then again, what is the Wilder canon? Like Howard Hawks, Wilder would take a shot at just about any genre. Let's just forget about the ill-advised remake that happened in the 1990s with Julia "Where is she now?" Ormond, Harrison Ford and Greg Kinnear.
This comedy, more famous for a subway grate blowing up Marilyn Monroe's skirt than anything else, was adapted from a stage play and its theatrical origins are glaringly obvious. Sure, Tom Ewell has some good moments, as does Monroe, but for the most part, this is a botch and not worthy of being part of the Billy Wilder filmography.
Billy sure was a busy boy in 1957, with three features coming out in the 12-month period, though the third was by far the best one. As for this biography of Charles Lindbergh, this may be the most un-Wilder movie that Wilder ever made. James Stewart seems to be sleepwalking through his role as the famed aviator and some of the ways they try to open the film up (I mean, can you really make a feature film about one man alone in a plane flying over the ocean when you know he's going to land safely?). There are flashbacks a-plenty, lots of internal monologues and, in foreshadowing of Tom Hanks' later conversations with a soccer ball in Cast Away, an extended one-way conversation with a fly. It's not bad, but it's not Wilder.
The second time working with Audrey Hepburn was not the charm as far as Wilder was concerned in this tale of an over-the-hill playboy (Gary Cooper, who if the part didn't call for an over-the-hill playboy, was certainly too old for Hepburn) targeted for death by the jealous husband of one of his many conquests. Hepburn plays the daughter of the detective hired by the angry spouse and she sets out to intervene by faking her own list of romantic liaisons and, of course, falling in love with Cooper herself. One of Wilder's most forgettable efforts.
As I alluded to earlier, Wilder saved the best of his 1957 films for last with this adaptation of Agatha Christie's novel. Sparked by the great interplay between real-life spouses Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester and another great performance under Wilder's direction from Marlene Dietrich, Witness for the Prosecution proves to be a true joy. It's not really a straight-forward whodunit as most of Christie's books were, but instead is a courtroom drama, and a riveting one at that. It was another genre that Wilder hadn't attempted before and with this film, he passed the test with flying colors.
Nobody may be perfect, but this film damn near is. This is the first film in a three-film streak that may be Wilder's best one, two, three punch ever (I explore the third film, One, Two, Three, in more detail elsewhere). He gets a good performance out of Marilyn Monroe and great ones out of Tony Curtis, dressing in drag and channeling Cary Grant. and Jack Lemmon. More than just a drag comedy, Some Like It Hot simply is one of the most entertaining films ever made.
I love Alfred Hitchcock and I know there are many out there who still are distressed that The Apartment beat Psycho for best picture (Actually, Psycho wasn't even nominated for picture, though Wilder did beat Hitch for director), but I think the best film won. A perfect blend of sophisticated comedy, some slapstick and ample pathos, The Apartment simply is sublime. Again, Wilder recognizes that Fred MacMurray can do wonders as a heel (though he almost didn't take the part since Disney had sunk its claws into him by now). Lemmon is note perfect and Shirley MacLaine really gets her first truly great role. For those who still harbor ill thoughts about Psycho's loss, shut up and deal with it.
It's rough sledding for the great Billy Wilder from here forward. Sure, there is one butchered classic to come, but for the most part, One, Two, Three marked the last high watermark of the great man's career. This comedy, and I use the term loosely, reunites Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine and not to good effort, with Lemmon miscast as a Parisian cop who accidentally becomes pimp to MacLaine's sweet streetwalker. Of course, love is inevitable, slapstick is plentiful but unfortunately, wit and laughs are few and far between.
As Maxwell Smart used to say, "Missed it by that much" and that's certainly what I felt when I saw Kiss Me, Stupid. This film had so much potential, but somehow ended up missing the mark on multiple counts. Dean Martin, basically playing himself, finds himself stranded in a small Nevada town where he encounters a budding composer (Ray Walston) with a jealous streak concerning his wife Zelda (Felicia Farr) so he and his songwriting partner (Cliff Osmond) try to substitute the town's gorgeous hooker (Kim Novak) to satiate the perpetually horny Dino and protect Zelda's honor. Needless to say, hijinks and misunderstandings ensue but somehow the movie as a whole never clicks, despite Martin and Walston's great performances.
Of all the many accomplishments that Billy Wilder achieved in his long career, another he'll be remembered for is being the first to pair Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau (for better and worse). The Fortune Cookie isn't a bad movie, but if it didn't contain Matthau's Oscar-winning performance as an ambulance-chasing lawyer, it'd be pretty forgettable. Matthau runs away with this movie (and some would argue that he shouldn't have been relegated to supporting actor when he's really a co-lead, but it's doubtful he would have topped Paul Scofield in A Man for All Seasons).
Every great filmmaker seems to have at least one case where a film he's worked long and hard on has fallen victim to others' butcher knives, making a negative reaction to the dismembered product inevitable. For Wilder, that came with The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Thanks to home video, at least one of the missing sequences have been found and restored and what remains is quite good and make Wilder fans (and movie buffs in general) salivate over what could have been. Robert Stephens is great as Holmes, as are Colin Blakely as Watson and Christopher Lee as Sherlock's brother Mycroft. The story doesn't revolve around your usual Holmes-style mysteries, but explores Sherlock's fleeting thoughts about having a child, espionage and even the Loch Ness monster. In a way, it's Wilder's Magnificent Ambersons — not what he intended, but great nonetheless.
Avanti! holds a unique place in Billy Wilder's filmography for me, at least of the ones I've seen. It's the only film of his that I gave up trying to finish. I got through an hour (and if Wilder's name hadn't been attached, I doubt I would have made it that far) but with nearly another hour and a half to go, I decided I'd seen enough to know that I didn't want to see anymore. Say what you will about Buddy Buddy, at least I finished that one. Jack Lemmon stars as an American businessman who flies to Italy to retrieve his father's body after he dies in a car crash while on vacation there. He soon discovers that his father had an Italian lover whom he met there frequently and who also died in the wreck. This brings him in contact with a woman (Juliet Mills) who happens to be the daughter of the late mistress. I'm guessing that some sort of romance develops between Lemmon and Mills but I didn't stick around to find out.
When I was a very young lad, I actually saw this movie in a theater. I didn't know who Billy Wilder was, let alone that the movie had been made before with Adolphe Menjou or as the incomparable His Girl Friday. I enjoyed it. Later, when I did see its predecessors, I realized that it ranked third of the three, but it seemed that some stories are strong enough to survive reintepretations (a theory destroyed once they tried to remake it again in the cable news era as Switching Channels with Burt Reynolds and Kathleen Turner). Once again, Matthau proves to be the biggest asset here, doing a more-than-respectable Walter Burns even when you put him up against Menjou and Cary Grant (though Grant will always be at the very top). Lemmon? Well, he's no Rosalind Russell (or Pat O'Brien for that matter). Most of the other casting in the 1973 version also pales alongside the other films and even at my young age I recognized that Carol Burnett was miscast and over-the-top as Mollie Malloy. It's pleasant enough, but there's nothing here that should make you see it over His Girl Friday or the original.
Wilder's final feature was far from one of his best, but it did team him once again with Lemmon and Matthau and once again, Matthau got the best of it. Matthau plays a hit man out to do a job when he encounters Lemmon (as yet another suicidally depressed man whose wife has left him) and finds himself distracted trying to save the man from doing himself in. Matthau gives it his best shot (no pun intended) but the gags are forced and tired. It's another American movie remade from a script by Francis Veber (while his script for La Cage Aux Folles turned into the acceptable Birdcage and a Broadway musical, he also led Hollywood to make such duds such as The Toy, The Man With One Red Shoe, Three Fugitives, Pure Luck and My Father the Hero. It's sad that a giant like Wilder had to end with this one, but what can you do? He still produced far more great movies than misfires.
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Labels: A. Hepburn, Bogart, Cary, Cooper, Dean Martin, Edward G., Garbo, Ginger Rogers, Holden, J. Stewart, Laughton, Lemmon, Lubitsch, MacLaine, MacMurray, Marilyn, Marlene, Matthau, Menjou, Tony Curtis
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