Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Wild River (1960)

Chuck: The most dangerous erosion is not to land 

- it's when your capacity for living gets eroded.

The great the legendary Montgomery Clift was born 105 years ago today. We love him because obviously we do -- gorgeous tortured homosexuals are our forte. Our kin! That said I have never seen this 1960 Elia Kazan picture -- have you? I like having a few Monty treats remaining for a rainy day.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Suddenly Last Summer (1959)

Dr. Cukrowicz : Nature is not made 

in the image of man's compassion.

Montgomery Clift was born 104 years ago today.

Good Morning, Gratuitous Gardner McKay II

Way back in 2012 I did my first "Gratuitous Gardner McKay" post and it was one of my faves -- you know, given the subject matter. Look at him! (PS I really recommend you look at that earlier post, it's substantial.) Anyway this beauty nevertheless never had much of an acting career -- he was more of a writer, a sculptor, a sailor... one of them types that makes you feel like a real puddle of shit, what-am-I-doing-with-my-life types ya know? Thanks, Gardner! Point being I still haven't seen any of his performances save presumably his role as "Bearded Soldier" in Raintree County, but you'll have to forgive me for not recalling the no doubt immense impact he had on that narrative. (Also on Montgomery Clift in his trailer, one hopes.) But I still have managed to come up with a dozen plus new photos of Gardner in the almost-decade since that last post all the same, so we'll share them today, on what would have been his 89th birthday.  (He died in 2001.) Hit the jump for it...

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1948

I'm just gonna say this right off the bat -- I have a terrible batting average with the year that Siri gave me for this week's edition of our "Siri Says" game. Just terrible. I've seen so little! It would make sense if we were talking about the early 1920s here, but today when I asked Siri for a number between 1 and 100 she gave me the number "48" and so we're talking about The Movies of 1948. I have no excuse for seeing so few movies from 1948. I suppose my indifference to Noir, which has come up before, is part of it, as we're in the thick of that genre in 1948. But some of my favorite movie stars are working -- Cary Grant, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck... 

... well okay I've seen both of Stanwyck's films from this year; I'm not a total sociopath. (They both made the "runner-up" list below.) But otherwise it's just a poor, poor showing on my part., so you'll all have to work overtime in the comments to tell me what I should prioritize. (Not that that's unique, exactly.) But first...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1948

The Red Shoes

(dir. Powell & Pressburger)

-- released on September 6th 1948 --

Rope

(dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

-- released on September 25th 1948 --

Red River

(dir. Howard Hawks)

-- released on September 17th 1948 --

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

(dir. John Huston)

-- released on January 24th 1948 --

Bicycle Thieves

(dir. Vittorio De Sica)

-- released on November 21st 1948 --

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Runners-up: The Big Clock (dir. John Farrow), The Search (dir. Fred Zinnemann), Key Largo (dir. Huston), They Live By Night (dir. Nicholas Ray), BF's Daughter (dir. Robert Z. Leonard), Sorry Wrong Number (dir. Anatole Litvak)

Never seen: The Snake Pit (dir. Litvak), Johnny Belinda (dir. Jean Negulesco), Joan of Arc (dir. Victor Fleming), I Remember Mama (dir. George Stevens), Drunken Angel (dir. Kurosawa), Moonrise (dir. Borzage), Hamlet (dir. Laurence Olivier)...

... La Terra Trema (dir. Visconti), The Naked City (dir. Jules Dassin), The Pirate (dir. Vincente Minnelli), A Foreign Affair (dir. Billy Wilder), Macbeth (dir. Welles), Letter From an Unknown Woman (dir. Max Ophüls), Oliver Twist (dir. David Lean)

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What are your favorites from 1948?

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1958

My "Siri Says" series always starts and comes and goes and stops in fits and starts, but after last week's enormous 2016-a-thon -- where I named my 25 favorite movies of that absolutely fabulous year in film -- I'm feeling like pushing the rock a little further down the hill, checking off one more year in the history of cinema. So I asked Siri today to give me a number between 1 and 100 and (after several answers that we'd already done) she gave me the number "58." Which means today I'll be talking The Movies of 1958!

I've probably admitted this before in one of my other posts about the end of the 1950s but this period in movies, save a couple of bright spots, isn't especially my bag. It's all Rat Pack and technicolor Movie Musicals and bloated war epics, blah blah blah. Most of the mainstream respectable shit reduces me to groans. (Except Paul Newman, who reduces me to... different groans.) But on the sidelines there's some fun sci-fi / horror happening, and I've been known to enjoy me a sword-and-sandal picture now and again. This year introduced both Steve Reeves as Hercules and Christopher Lee as Dracula! Neither of those make my top five though...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1958

Vertigo

(dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

-- released on May 28th 1958 --

Invention For Destruction

(dir. Karel Zeman)

-- released on August 1958 --

The 7th Voyage of Sinbad

(dir. Nathan Juran)

-- released on December 23rd 1958 --

Mon Oncle

(dir. Jacques Tati)

-- released on November 3rd 1958 --

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

(dir. Richard Brooks)

-- released on August 29th 1958 --

------------------------------------------------

Runners-up: The Fly (dir. Kurt Neumann), I Want To Live! (dir. Robert Wise), Touch of Evil (dir. Welles), Bell Book and Candle (dir. Richard Quine), The Blob (dir. Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr.), Hercules (dir. Pietro Francisci), Dracula (dir. Terence Fisher), Elevator to the Gallows (dir. Luois Malle), Terror in a Texas Town (dir.Joseph H. Lewis), The Long Hot Summer (dir. Martin Ritt), A Time To Love and A Time To Die (dir. Douglas Sirk)

Never seen: South Pacific (dir. Joshua Logan), The Hidden Fortress (dir. Kurosawa), The Left Handed Gun (dir. Arthur Penn), Indiscreet (dir. Stanley Donen), The Defiant Ones (dir. Stanley Kramer), Separate Tables (dir. Delbert Mann), Damn Yankees (dir. Abbott / Donen), The Young Lions (dir. Edward Dmytryk), Bonjour Tritesse (dir. Preminger), Lonelyhearts (dir. Donehue), Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (dir. Juran), The Magician (dir. Bergman)

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What are your favorite movies of 1958?

Get On Your Knees For Monty

You know that part in Clueless where Cher and Dionne, in the middle of their set-up, look at Mr. Hall & Miss Geist drinking coffee on a bench outside school  and Cher says, "Would you look at that body language? Legs crossed towards each other. That is an unequivocal sex invite." Well the above photo of Alfred Hitchcock and Montgomery Clift on the set of their 1953 film I, Confess is the exact opposite of that. The two really didn't mesh, but I still think I, Confess is a fascinating movie, both because of that friction and because it has Montgomery Clift walking around in a priest costume, let's be real. 

Everybody stares! Anyway for The Film Experience's currently ongoing centennial celebration of the actor I have written up some thoughts on this movie -- click on over to read 'em. Well go on. And just to set the record straight don't act like you wouldn't break your marriage vows in a split second if you got trapped in a gazebo overnight with a sopping wet Montgomery Clift in an army uniform... 

Good Monty, World

You're probably going to see a lot of Montgomery Clift around these parts over the next couple of weeks since it's the centennial of his birth on October 17th -- hence this week's banner and hence this morning's beachside shot for a wake-us-up. I don't know if you've already been following along but The Film Experience is going to be taking stock of all seventeen films in Monty's filmography every day up until then, click on over to see what's the haps so far -- all good stuff. Indeed I'll have more on that later. For now enjoy that photo up top, which is off of the excellent Monty doc Making Montgomery Clift, which I recommend. (I reviewed it right here.) I know I sure am. Enjoying the photo, I mean. (Indeed I'd click on it to make it bigger.) (That's what he said.)

Great Moments In Movie Staches

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If you'd have been in the room as I watched The Heiress for the first time this past weekend -- of course in honor of the passing of Olivia De Havilland, who won an Oscar for the 1949 film -- there's a chance you might have been lifted off the floor and swooped violently straight into my gullet as I gasped so loudly when Montgomery Clift showed up with a mustache at one point late in the film that atmospheric conditions around the globe were momentarily altered. The dew-point dropped precipitously! 

In all seriousness it's a delightful stache reveal for what it represents -- Monty's character Morris woos Olivia's almost-old-maid sans stache at the start of the movie, and she believes his heart to be good and true, but he's revealed to be a money-grubbing cad who's only out for her inheritance, and the next time we see him, many years have passed and in their place a mustache has grown. You know the joke about how somebody's Evil Twin is always played by the same actor just with a mustache? That's how this Stache Reveal feels...

... like now that we know the dark truth of what a shit Morris is his true, stached self can present itself. He looks now like he might tie Olivia down to the train-tracks at any moment! Mind you, this is not a complaint -- Monty with a mustache could tie me down to the train-tracks any ol' time he wanted to. I just think it's funny, how blatant this "immorality of the mustache" is played out across The Heiress. Still I must ask...

bike trails

PS I also recommend you read our pal Dan Walber's piece on

The Heiress at The Film Experience this week; good stuff!

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Monty Doesn't Like To Watch

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One of my favorite celeb-related photo-shoots ever created is the one by J.R. Eyerman for LIFE Magazine in 1949, of Montgomery Clift sitting in a movie theater and watching himself act on-screen in William Wyler's film The Heiress -- the two you see here get across how hilariously uncomfortable the experience was for him, but there are even more at this link. (I'm especially particular to this one but I couldn't find it without the watermark.) I also like how porny they feel, like him and that mustachioed dude are about to go at it, but that's just bonus. Anyway The Heiress is today's subject du jour for our "Beauty vs Beast" poll at The Film Experience so click on over, as it's his co-star Olivia de Havilland's 103rd birthday, wowza!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Red River (1948)

Cherry: There are only two things more beautiful
than a good gun: a Swiss watch or a woman
from anywhere. Ever had a good... Swiss watch?

You give me an opportunity to reference the gayest scene of all time -- that'd be John Ireland (more of him here) and Montgomery Clift comparing their pistols in Red River, obviously -- and I'm gonna reference that shit. (See also here.) Today's excuse is the 123rd anniversary of the birth of the film director Howard Hawks, who like a true gentleman gave us this gem. 

I had a lot of Hawks Films I could've chose to highlight today, but thanks to this scene Red River's always the first one I think of. And right after that comes Ball of Fire and Bringing Up Baby and His Girl Friday and on and on...

So what's your favorite Howard Hawks film?

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Misfits (1961)

Roslyn: If I'm going to be alone,
I want to be by myself.

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So Who Plays Rock Hudson?

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Love Simon director Greg Berlanti has just optioned the rights to the Rock Hudson biography titled All That Heaven Allows, and plans on directing the film. (Set this alongside the Anthony Perkins & Tab Hunter Movie, and the Scotty Bowers Movie, and that's a hell of a Mid-century Hollywood Closet-case triumvirate.) Anyway the Rock Hudson book hasn't come out yet, it comes out in a few weeks, so you can pick up your copy here and together we can figure out what's new that needed to be said that hasn't been said in all the other Rock Hudson books. Here what THR says:

"Hudson’s story has been written about before, not just by the actor himself but in books by a former lover and a former publicist, each with his own agenda. There was even a biography about his manipulative agent. Griffin’s book was praised for its balanced and thoughtful look at the man’s life."

Okay, sure, but let's not belittle the book about Hudson's agent Henry Willson, which is a helluva page-turner filled to the collarbones with queer. Anyway a Rock Hudson movie seems to me easier to get made than a Montgomery Clift one, for a lot of reasons -- Rock is better known now and, to be blunt about it, straighter seeming -- and Berlanti is enough of a name to maybe get this off the ground, so maybe this will happen, unlike all those ever delayed Monty ones. But who the hell could play Rock Hudson? Give up your suggestions in the comments! What I'm most curious about is if they're gonna feel the heat to cast an openly gay actor at this point - the drum-beat on that's gotten louder each year.

NewFest Review: Making Montgomery Clift

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Montgomery Clift didn't make a movie until he was nearly thirty years old. It wasn't that he wasn't acting before that - he debuted on the stage at the tender age of fifteen. It was just that he was picky - Monty wanted to be wanted, and he wanted to be in control of it. The transfixing new documentary Making Montgomery Clift (directed by Clift's nephew Robert and closing NewFest tonight) argues that those were the primary forces in his life - not the misery of the closet and not his alcoholism, but his strong sense of self-determination and his boundless love for his work. 

The film seeks to shove aside all of the agendas that've been piled on top of the star, the legend, the symbol of so many sad stories, and discover the man, the artist, underneath. Which is exactly what kept Monty out of Hollywood all those early years - he didn't want to play that game, or be the thing they wanted him to be. He didn't want to romance some random starlet or secretary, forced by a studio-head into an arranged spectacle of flirtatious bullshit. He wanted to do his work on his time, under his own set of rules.

He wished to be the maker of his own Monty - Hollywood and eventually the public would have their own way with him of course, and over the years the biographies about him have whittled his complicated personhood down into an easily digestible, and useful, tale. The self-hating mama's boy swallowed up and spat out by his own narcissism. Poisoned by the closet and self-imposed loneliness, too demanding of himself and others, disgusted by what he saw in the mirror...

The list goes on and on, but it's not the person the doc presents - from the family archives we see footage of a happy man swimming in the surf, and we hear audio tapes of a genuine goofball. Nephew Robert's father fancied himself the keeper of True Monty, saving rooms full of memorabilia and photos, scrapbooks of several billion microseconds, and the film really does feel like a proper rebuilding up of a human being. Not a symbol, but a brother, a son, and some guy with a real nice face who liked to play-act and hey, he turned out to be real good at it.

Making Montgomery Clift is now the foremost resource on the star, and everything that comes next is going to have to reckon with it. Everyone who wants to reckon with Clift will have to view him through the lens put forth by this film. There's a moment late in it where the prospective bio-pics of the actor, of which there have been dozens over the years, are brought up, and they suddenly by that point seem not like a treat but more like a threat - to whittle Monty down to a self-immolating closet-case again would now seem unjust after spending time with the curious and funny man presented here. It would end up akin to what Bohemian Rhapsody, that blasphemy, just did with Freddie Mercury - sour something special by imposing extraneous narratives to suit outside agendas. Let's start doing our stars justice and, like Making Montgomery Clift does, just treat them as people. And who knows, perhaps the empathy could spread.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

From Here to Eternity (1953)

 Alma: No, thanks, I don't drink. I think it's a weakness.
Angelo: I grant ya that.
Alma: You don't like weakness do you?
Prewitt: No, I don't like weakness...
but I like to drink!

Montgomery Clift was born on this day, this day right here, in the year 1920. There's really no good reason he isn't still around - 98 is a perfectly respectable age, just ask his Heiress co-star Olivia De Havilland. Looking at his filmography this morning it struck me how little he made - 18 movies over the course of a 27 year career in front of a camera, with only a single television credit (his first film, a TV movie called Hay Fever that he did at the tender age of 19); most actors have dozens and dozens of stabs in the dark, trying to make something stick, but if asked off the top of my head I could probably rattle off 80% of his credits without blinking. 

There's a lot about his choosiness in the forthcoming doc I've told you about, the one called Making Montgomery Clift that's screening at NewFest at the end of the month (speaking of I just posted some images of Monty via the film on the Tumblr yesterday) Monty was perfectly content with his work on the stage and insisted he would find the right projects to transition to the movies. Still that's our loss, here in the future - just think of all the impossibly gorgeous young Monty that's been lost to time not captured on film...

Monty Takes Manhattan

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The line-up for New York's annual LGBT film festival NewFest has been revealed today and it seems especially, well, girthful this year - over the course of a week, October 24th through 30th, they're screening over ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY FILMS. Granted some of those are Shorts, but still. It's still insane. We heard last week that their opening night film was the upcoming AIDS drama called 1985 (we shared the trailer here) but today's announcement brings word (among many many words) that their Centerpiece Film is Joel Edgerton's Oscar hopeful Boy Erased starring Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe and Lucas Hedges, and their Closing Night film...

... is the documentary Making Montgomery Clift, which will contain tons of never-before-seen home footage since it was directed by Monty's nephew Robert Clift. It's apparently a stab at rehabilitating Clift's sad legacy of drunkenness and closet-trapped misery - Clift Jr. wants us to see the uncle his family knew, which is apparently not the mess he's been painted as by history. I welcome this!

But speaking of stabbing here's something - y'all know that gay gallic giallo Knife + Heart that I've been telling you about? The one that is screening as part of the Brooklyn Horror Fest in mid-October? Well NewFest is screening it too so you've got multiple (dare I, dare I) stabs (I dare, I dare) at seeing the film, at least here in New York. Thrillingly NewFest is doing an entire sidebar of horror films this year, including the a Brooklyn-set slasher called Killer Unicorn and a lesbian vampire flick called The Carmilla Movie. Viva October. Oh and then there's an Isabelle Huppert movie...

That one is called Reinventing Marvin.

And they're screening Mario, the Gay Swiss Soccer Players 

movie that's got a trailer I have, uh, enjoyed once or twice.

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I don't know whether this Swiss Gay Soccer Players Movie called Mario will be any good or not but I've watched the trailer like 20 times https://t.co/LHhQISPFoe pic.twitter.com/XJB7XInoMC

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) June 5, 2018

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And then they're screening the Mapplethorpe movie starring Matt Smith that I ended up missing to my chagrin when it screened at Tribeca. This is exciting! I am excited! Tickets are on sale for Pass Holders now and they go on sale for everybody else on September 28th. To see the entire line-up of films head over to Deadline, where they've done what I am way too lazy to do aka write down all 140 films that are screening. In summation here's a photo of the actor Janne Puustinen in the Finnish love story A Moment in the Reeds, also part of the fest...