© Max Vergara Poeti-Marentini

Academy Awards® Winners for Writing (Best Adapted Screenplay)

noreply@blogger.com (Massimo Vergara Poeti-Marentini) — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:30:00 +0000

Ben Hecht: (6 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: Underworld (1927/28), The Scoundrel (1935)
Nominations: Viva Villa! (1934), Wuthering Heights (1939), Angels Over Broadway (1940), Notorious (1946)
Carl Foreman: (6 Nominations, 1 Win)
Oscar win: The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
Nominations: Champion (1949), The Men (1950), High Noon (1952), The Guns of Navarone (1961), Young Winston (1972)
Oliver Stone: (6 Nominations, 1 Win)
Oscar win: Midnight Express (1978)
Nominations: Platoon (1986), Salvador (1986), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), JFK (1991), Nixon (1995)
Robert Benton: (5 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), Places in the Heart (1984)
Nominations: Bonnie and Clyde (1967), The Late Show (1977), Nobody's Fool (1994)
Joseph L. Mankiewicz: (5 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: A Letter to Three Wives (1949), All About Eve (1950)
Nominations: Skippy (1930/31), No Way Out (1950), The Barefoot Contessa (1954)
Michael Wilson: (5 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: A Place in the Sun (1951), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) +
Nominations: 5 Fingers (1952), Friendly Persuasion (1956), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) +
(+ Wilson was posthumously given his Oscar nominated credit - and in the case of The Bridge of the River Kwai (1957), his Oscar (in 1985) - due to his blacklisting and working on each screenplay anonymously. The credited and awarded screenwriter, Pierre Boule, could not speak or write English.)
George Seaton: (4 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: Miracle on 34th Street (1947), The Country Girl (1954)
Nominations: The Song of Bernadette (1943), Airport (1970)
Stanley Shapiro: (4 Nominations, 1 Win)
Oscar wins: Pillow Talk (1959)
Nominations: Operation Petticoat (1959), Lover Come Back (1961), That Touch of Mink (1962)
Melvin Frank: (4 Nominations, 0 Wins)
Nominations: The Road to Utopia (1946), Knock on Wood (1954), The Facts of Life (1960), A Touch of Class (1973)
Edward Anhalt: (3 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: Panic in the Streets (1950), Becket (1964)
Nominations: The Sniper (1952)
Dalton Trumbo: (3 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: Roman Holiday (1953), The Brave One (1956)+
Nominations: Kitty Foyle (1940)
(+ Trumbo wrote The Brave One (1956) under the pseudonym Robert Rich due to blacklisting, and received his award shortly before his death in 1976.)
Frances Marion: (3 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: The Big House (1929/30), The Champ (1931/32)
Nominations: The Prizefighter and the Lady (1932/33)
Waldo Salt: (3 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: Midnight Cowboy (1969), Coming Home (1978)
Nominations: Serpico (1973)
Alvin Sargent: (3 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: Julia (1977), Ordinary People (1980)
Nominations: Paper Moon (1973)
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala: (3 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: A Room with a View (1985), Howards End (1992)
Nominations: The Remains of the Day (1993)
Alan Jay Lerner: (3 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: An American in Paris (1951), Gigi (1958)
Nominations: My Fair Lady (1964)
Robert Bolt: (3 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: Doctor Zhivago (1965), A Man for All Seasons (1966)
Nominations: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Frank Cavett: (3 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: Going My Way (1944), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)
Nominations: Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947)
Horton Foote: (3 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), Tender Mercies (1983)
Nominations: The Trip to Bountiful (1985)
Bo Goldman: (3 Nominations, 2 Wins)
Oscar wins: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Melvin and Howard (1980)
Nominations: Scent of a Woman (1992)

Writers with Triple Wins for the Same Film:
A few writers/directors have accomplished the 'hat trick' of triple Oscar wins as producer-director-writer:

Leo McCarey for Going My Way (1944)
Billy Wilder for The Apartment (1960)
Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather, Part 2 (1974)
James L. Brooks for Terms of Endearment (1983)
Peter Jackson for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

The World of "Howards End" (1992)

noreply@blogger.com (Massimo Vergara Poeti-Marentini) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:49:00 +0000

Howards End (1992) was a landmark achievement for the celebrated team of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, all of whom earned Academy Award nominations for their elegant, eloquent adaptation of E.M. Forster's marvelous 1910 novel. The film was in the running for nine Oscars®, including Best Picture, and three of the contenders - Jhabvala's screenplay, Emma Thompson's lead performance, and the art direction and set decoration by Luciana Arrighi and Ian Whittaker - won well-deserved victories when the envelopes were opened. Audiences loved the movie too, and its luster hasn't dimmed in subsequent years.

Like the novel that inspired it, the film revolves around an issue that affects every aspect of English society, and a great many aspects of American society as well: social and economic class, which draws arbitrary lines between people based not on individual worth but on wealth, power, and prestige. The three Schlegel sisters - Margaret, Helen, and Tibby - belong to the upper middle class. They are comfortable but not rich: they rent rather than own a home, and their acquaintance with Continental culture, signaled by their family name and ability to speak German, brings few tangible benefits. Henry and Ruth Wilcox are much higher in the pecking order, belonging to the landed gentry and positively oozing money, influence, and real estate. Leonard Bast and his fiance Jacky are near the opposite end of the spectrum, clinging to the meager comforts of the lower middle class and knowing that even these will never be entirely secure. Then as now, a lost job or unexpected crisis could bring hardships that more privileged people rarely have to think about, much less confront.

Two pivotal incidents drive the story. One involves wealthy Ruth Wilcox, who is growing weaker by the day from the illness that will soon take her life. Margaret Schlegel befriends her, going Christmas shopping with her and sharing quiet conversations about everyday affairs, such as the fact that the lease on the Schlegels' townhouse is expiring and the sisters are looking for a new place. Margaret is quite chipper about this, but it strikes Ruth as a sad situation. Lying on her deathbed, she impulsively writes a note leaving her family's ancestral estate, Howards End, to Margaret rather than her own husband. When she dies soon afterward, Henry and the grown Wilcox offspring receive this note and have a family conference, deciding to burn the message and pretend it never existed. Among the many consequences of this sneaky act, Henry feels a nagging guilt that eventually leads him to marry Margaret, who moves into Howards End after all, still with no idea that she herself should be the owner.

The other key event involves Leonard Bast, a mild-mannered bank clerk who likes to read and take dreamy walks through the countryside, partly to get away from Jacky, the culture-free girlfriend he has promised to marry. After a lecture one evening, scatterbrained Helen Schlegel wanders off with Leonard's umbrella, and when he visits her house to retrieve it, the sisters take a liking to him. Some time later, Henry Wilcox happens to mention that the bank where Leonard works is in very bad financial shape; the Schlegels contact Leonard immediately and tell him to find a new job with a more secure establishment. Leonard heeds their advice with horrible results, finding himself with no job at all to support himself and his new wife. Feeling responsible for their desperate condition, Helen brings Leonard and Jacky to a family wedding, where Jacky drunkenly spills the beans about an affair she had with Henry years earlier. Margaret forgives Henry for the affair and for keeping it secret, but when Helen shows up pregnant by Leonard a few months later, Henry is not so quick to absolve a woman of the same sins he himself has committed. The climax takes place at Howards End, where a tragic killing occurs amid high emotions, family resentments, and confusions arising from a vague realization that class-based conventions are gradually moving toward a new, less benighted era.

The plot of Howards End may sound complicated and the social issues may seem abstract, but the story is always crystal clear, and the sociological overtones are embodied so intimately by the characters that far from weakening the drama, they add to it by raising the stakes for all concerned. They remain important issues now, moreover; the gap between rich and poor, the double standard for sexuality, and old-fashioned materialism still cause plenty of trouble. Excellent acting also brings the film to life. Thompson's prizewinning portrayal of Margaret is so natural and understated that it scarcely seems like a performance at all. Helena Bonham Carter is equally convincing as the sometimes frazzled Helen, and Vanessa Redgrave is extraordinarily good as Ruth, who seems to fade away before your eyes. Among the men, Anthony Hopkins gives a strong yet subtle depiction of wealthy, hypocritical Henry that tops even his acclaimed work for Merchant Ivory in The Remains of the Day (1993) the following year. Samuel West as Leonard and James Wilby as Henry's pompous son are close to perfect. Ditto for Tony Pierce-Roberts's luminous cinematography and Richard Robbins's pulsing, energetic music.

Taking a fresh look at Howards End is a good way to remember the greatness of Merchant Ivory Productions, which Ivory and Merchant founded in 1961. It's ironic that even when the group was at its creative peak, from the 1970s through the early 1990s, moviegoers tended to forget how varied their movies are. For some, Merchant and Ivory were primarily the monarchs of literary adaptation, dedicated to novels by towering authors. This is true as far as it goes: Forster inspired Howards End and A Room with a View (1985) and Maurice (1987), while Henry James inspired The Europeans (1979) and The Bostonians (1984) and The Golden Bowl (2000), a novel everyone else thought was unfilmable. For others, Merchant Ivory was the outfit that made movies set in Merchant's native India, such as Bombay Talkie (1970) and Heat and Dust (1983). Still others saw the team as dignified chroniclers of modern life, sometimes focusing on bygone decades, as in The Wild Party (1975) and Quartet (1981), and sometimes on the present day, as in Roseland (1977) and Jane Austen in Manhattan (1980).

In fact, however, they did excellent work in all these areas, and even their adaptations ranged beyond the literary classics; one of their very greatest films, A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (1998), is based on Kaylie Jones's autobiographical novel about growing up with author James Jones for a father. It's fitting that Merchant Ivory has been called the Wandering Company, since its interests wandered far and wide over the years. Howards End is one of the most exquisite stops they made during the journey.

Director: James Ivory
Producer: Ismail Merchant
Screenplay: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala; based on the novel by E.M. Forster
Cinematographer: Tony Pierce-Roberts
Film Editing: Andrew Marcus
Art Direction: John Ralph
Production Design: Luciana Arrighi
Music: Richard Robbins
Cast: Vanessa Redgrave (Ruth Wilcox), Helena Bonham Carter (Helen Schlegel), Joseph Bennett (Paul Wilcox), Emma Thompson (Margaret Schlegel), Prunella Scales (Aunt Juley), Adrian Ross Magenty (Tibby Schlegel), Jo Kendall (Annie), Anthony Hopkins (Henry J. Wilcox), James Wilby (Charles Wilcox), Jemma Redgrave (Evie Wilcox), Samuel West (Leonard Bast), Nicola Duffett (Jacky Bast)
C-140m.

The World of "All The President's Men" (1976)

noreply@blogger.com (Massimo Vergara Poeti-Marentini) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 17:41:00 +0000

On June 17, 1972 five men broke into the Watergate complex in Washington, DC in a botched attempt to bug Democratic Headquarters. It was a seemingly minor event that at first appeared to be nothing more that a local interest story, but would snowball into a scandal that would eventually bring down the president. The Watergate scandal was exposed by two young reporters with the Washington Post, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who would recount their painstaking investigation in their 1974 book All the President's Men, which would become a best-seller. Almost immediately upon the book's publication, actor/producer Robert Redford, who had been fascinated both by the story as it had unfolded and by the men who were writing it, picked up the rights to the book and went to work. He gave award-winning writer William Goldman the daunting task of turning a story with an outcome that was already known worldwide into a viable, compelling screenplay, and chose Alan J. Pakula (Klute, The Pelican Brief) to direct.

In the film version of All the President's Men, Redford plays Bob Woodward, who is assigned to cover the break-in at the Watergate. He goes to court to cover the five burglars' first appearance before a judge, and is surprised to find that they have hired a lawyer, when burglars are usually forced to use public defenders. He is also surprised to learn that one of the burglars has a connection to Charles Colson, one of the most powerful men at the White House. When he returns to the Post and verifies this information, he reports it to Metro editor Harry Rosenfeld (Jack Warden), who decides that this story might be a bit bigger than they'd first thought. So he assigns Woodward along with Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) to cover it, against the wishes of managing editor Howard Simmons (Martin Balsam), who thought it should be handled by more seasoned reporters.

Both reporters set out to gather more information about the connection between Charles Colson's office and the burglar, and find themselves running up against a blank wall at every turn: people refuse to talk to them, contradict themselves, and openly lie, all within twenty-four hours of the break-in. Through occasional slips on the part of the government employees they contact, they are able to at least piece together that this is a bigger story than then had imagined, one which involves highly placed government officials. It is at this point that managing editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) takes a look at what they have and tells them that they don't have enough facts, so their story will be relegated to page three. But Bradlee can recognize a good story, and tells them to keep after it.

The reporters get their first real break when they start investigating the background of the burglars and discover a check made out to Kenneth Dahlberg, Midwest Finance Chairman for the Committee to Re-elect the President (which would come to be commonly referred to as CREEP), in the bank account of a firm owned by burglar Bernard Barker. From there their investigation escalates: but when they finally run out of leads again, Woodward turns to a contact he used in a past investigation. This time the contact refuses to speak to him about the new investigation, or at least that's what he tells Woodward over the phone. The contact surreptitiously gets a note to Woodward with instructions on when and where to meet him (a dark semi-underground garage in the middle of the night). When they meet, the contact lays out ground rules: he will not be named as a source, and he will not give Woodward any information, he will only confirm. He leaves Woodward with the admonition to "follow the money," and thus the legendary shadow figure of Deep Throat was be born.

Woodward and Bernstein's investigation, which would gain momentum, notoriety, and scorn as it continued from '72-'74, would eventually lead to those closest to President Nixon, and then to Nixon himself, with revelations about his knowledge and complicity in illegal activities and the notorious "dirty tricks" campaign eventually forcing his resignation.

All the President's Men is a remarkable film that works on all levels. Screenwriter Goldman and director Pakula fashioned Woodward and Bernstein's book into a combination political thriller and in-depth look at investigative reporting. Goldman presents investigative reporting as it really is rather than as it is usually depicted in the movies: not all excitement, but frustrating and (at times) plodding with long periods of getting nowhere and running into dead ends. At the same time, Pakula miraculously keeps the tension high, even as Woodward and Bernstein are forced to go down a list of hundreds of names of employees and visit their homes strying to find someone who will talk about CREEP and how their money was handled.

The film is filled with fine performances: Redford is solid as Woodward and Hoffman is equally good as Bernstein. But Jason Robards nearly steals the film in his Oscar®-winning turn as Ben Bradlee. Robards maintains a high level of control and keeps his face unreadable as he listens to each new revelation from his young reporters, often making his responses genuinely surprising. Another fine performance is turned in by Jane Alexander as the CREEP bookkeeper who opens up to Bernstein. Alexander's high anxiety performance conveys the full range of conflicting emotions of the terrified woman.

All the President's Men should be mandatory viewing in every history course in America. But beyond that, the film is a must for anyone who loves the sheer art of movie-making.

SPECIAL COMMENTARY by Lorraine LoBianco

It was the summer of 1972, an election year in which George McGovern ran against the incumbent Richard Nixon for President of the United States. Robert Redford had just completed his own political film, The Candidate (1972), and was in Florida doing a press tour via train to promote it when he first learned about the investigation by Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein into the break-in at the Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., funded in part by the committee to re-elect Nixon. The scandal, which led up to the top level of the Nixon administration, would, within two years, lead to prison for some and for Nixon, resignation.
In discussing Woodward and Bernstein's articles with the reporters who accompanied him on the press tour, Redford was dismayed at their lack of interest. "I said, 'What are you guys going to do about it? You're just sitting here. What are you doing on this train? This is just movies.' And then they gave me a lecture about how I didn't understand how the media worked, how I didn't understand journalism and all that. They said, 'Look, this guy [Nixon] is going in on a landslide and a mandate, and McGovern is going to self-destruct. Nixon's going to get in, everybody knows it; nobody wants to be on the wrong side of this guy because he's got a switchblade mentality. He's vindictive and mean. A lot of people are afraid. And the second thing is, a lot of people know this, they're just not going to talk about it because the Democrats do it, too, it's just the standard dirty tricks thing that happens in D.C., and nobody's going to make that much out of it; people are more interested in whether Hank Aaron is going to break Babe Ruth's record." Without an editor to back them up and a publisher willing to foot the bill to do the investigation, it was impossible to write the story. Redford angrily replied, "So you guys are just going to sit here on your ass; you're not going to do anything about it but smoke your cigars and have our free booze and write a superficial story about what I'm doing and that's it?" It was. At least, until Woodward and Bernstein cracked the story wide open.

Months later, after having read a profile on Woodward and Bernstein, Redford attempted to contact them about making a film; "a little black-and-white movie, very low budget, with two unknown actors, and I would produce it. It would be about what these two guys did that summer that everybody else was afraid to mess around with". To his surprise, Woodward and Bernstein did not return his calls. It wasn't until Redford was filming The Way We Were (1973), several weeks later, that Woodward contacted Redford and gave him the brush-off, saying he and Bernstein were not interested in a film. Redford let the idea go until James McCord, who was the electronics expert convicted in the Watergate burglary, wrote a letter to the judge implicating the Nixon administration and in effect validating Woodward and Bernstein's claims. Redford contacted Woodward again and insisted that they meet. Woodward agreed if Redford could be there the next night, "I'll meet you in a private meeting place. You don't need to do anything, just show up and I'll find you." The following evening, at a promotional dinner for The Candidate, a young man walked up to Redford and whispered, "Woodward. Meet me at the Jefferson Hotel bar in about forty-five minutes." Redford later remarked that "It was very clandestine. The next thing you know I'm in the Jefferson. He admitted in our meeting that they didn't trust me, they weren't sure it was me on the phone." Woodward was nervous, believing he was being followed, and told Redford that he and Bernstein would meet him at his apartment in New York, but that he should stay away from them. "Don't you come near us, let us come to you."

When Redford finally met with Woodward and Bernstein in 1974, he asked to purchase the film rights to the investigation, but was told that they were writing a book about it. The original focus of the book was to be on the perpetrators of the break-in, but Redford thought the more interesting story was of how two young reporters were able to bring down a President. This influenced Woodward and Bernstein to rethink the book that would eventually become All the President's Men (1976).

The publishers, Simon and Schuster, demanded $450,000 for the film rights, which Redford paid through his own company, Wildwood Productions. With the book now a best-seller, Redford knew All the President's Men could no longer be a small "black-and-white" film with unknown actors. The original budget would be inadequate, so he put up $4,000,000 of his own money. Warner Bros was interested and invested another $4,000,000 with the caveat that Redford appear in the film as Woodward. At that time, Redford had been offered and was very interested in playing Jack Nicholson's role in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). Knowing that it would be impossible to do both films, he declined Cuckoo's Nest with regrets, believing it to be the better acting part. As producer of All the President's Men, he threw himself into the project, getting as little as four hours of sleep a night while overseeing everything from the script by William Goldman (who had written the screenplay for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [1969]), to the hiring of director Alan J. Pakula, whose Klute (1971) had made a big impression on Redford. As his co-star, Redford chose Dustin Hoffman, who had, ironically, also wanted to purchase the film rights to Woodward and Bernstein's book with the intention of playing Carl Bernstein. Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee had reservations about his portrayal in the film, telling Pakula and Redford, 'You're [Pakula] going to go on to make other films, Bob [Redford] will be riding off into the sunset in his next film, and meanwhile I'm going to be stuck for life as being to the American public whoever is playing me in All the President's Men." The role went to Jason Robards, who had worked with Redford over a decade before on television in The Iceman Cometh (1960). Redford, impressed with Robards' talent and remembering his kindness to him when he had been a young actor, hired Robards at a time when it was difficult for him to find work after a drunk-driving accident had scarred his face and damaged his reputation. "I wanted to pay him back for his generosity, which meant a great deal to me." Pakula told Robards, "If you tell me you can do it, knowing my reservations, you've got the job." Robards said, "I can do it. [...] I look like Ben Bradlee, I sound like Ben Bradlee, and I've got to play Ben Bradlee." Robards' salary was only $50,000, but the role would win him an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and revitalized a career that lasted until his death in 2000.

In casting "Deep Throat", Woodward's mysterious (and until 2005), anonymous informant, Pakula hired Hal Holbrook, even though he wasn't sure that Deep Throat even existed. He contacted Woodward and asked him if casting Holbrook would be appropriate. "If it was not right, if it's so off the mark, then tell me, because it'll be disastrous in this picture if I cast a man and it turns out, the week before the picture is released, that we find out who Deep Throat was and it turns out to be Tricia Nixon or Golda Meir, or somebody who's so far removed from my casting that it's going to make the picture look ridiculous." Hearing Holbrook's name, Woodward said nothing. Knowing that Woodward could not reveal his source, Pakula took this to be Woodward's approval and kept Holbrook. It would not be until May 31, 2005, that former FBI official W. Mark Felt revealed that he had been Deep Throat, which was later confirmed by Woodward.

With the cast now in place, the screenplay turned in by William Goldman was the next problem to solve. Pakula, Redford, Woodward, Bernstein and even The Washington Post deemed it unacceptable. The Post, in particular, told Redford, "If you make this movie, you've got us against you. This guy [Goldman] is trivializing everything; he makes it sound like it was a joke." The problem, as Redford saw it, was that Goldman was writing Marathon Man (1976) at the same time, so his full attention wasn't being dedicated to the project. Goldman, for his part, blamed what he perceived as Pakula's "indecisiveness" about what he actually wanted in a screenplay. Eventually, Pakula and Redford checked into the Madison Hotel in Washington and rewrote the script themselves, with additional work by Alvin Sargent, although Woodward later stated that he believed Goldman got the framework correct. Redford and Pakula did not publicize the fact that they had done much of the rewrite, nor did they receive credit for it. Ironically, Goldman ended up winning the Academy Award for the screenplay, leaving Redford "blown away" that Goldman actually accepted the award.

The filming of All the President's Men began in Washington, D.C. on May 12, 1975 and on the Warner Bros lot in Burbank on June 26th, where the Washington Post's offices were recreated in painstaking detail. Two soundstages were combined into one by removing a wall. The set, measuring 240 feet by 135 feet, cost $450,000 and was so realistic that trash from the Post was actually shipped to Burbank and put into the bins on the set. Ben Bradlee remarked, "I brought my daughter onto the set in the studio. She could walk right to my desk. She was stunned." To add to a sense of verisimilitude, the role of Frank Wills, the security guard who had discovered the break-in, was played by Wills himself.

All the President's Men had its first public performance in Washington D.C. on April 4, 1976, with the official opening in New York City the next night. Twelve premieres were held in all, as fundraisers for the Citizens Action Fund, an environmental and social reform organization that had Redford on the board of directors. The film was a smash hit with the public and received rave reviews from most critics. Vincent Canby of The New York Times said, "Newspapers and newspapermen have long been favorite subjects for movie makers a surprising number of whom are former newspapermen, and yet not until All the President's Men, the riveting screen adaptation of the Watergate book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, has any film come remotely close to being an accurate picture of American journalism at its best."

The film earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture (which it lost to Rocky [1976]), Alan J. Pakula as Best Director, Jane Alexander for Best Supporting Actress and Robert L. Wolfe for Best Editing. The four wins included Robards, Goldman, Best Sound and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration. Perhaps the best accolade All the President's Men received was from Ben Bradlee, who had been skeptical at the start. "The question is, does it reflect the verities of journalism and investigative reporting, and what was going on in terms of Nixon and the White House? And I thought it did just that."

Producer: Jon Boorstin, Michael Britton, Walter CoblenzDirector: Alan J. Pakula
Screenplay: William Goldman, based on the book by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
Cinematography: Gordon Willis
Production Design: George Jenkins
Music: David Shire
Film Editing: Robert L. Wolfe
Cast: Dustin Hoffman (Carl Bernstein), Robert Redford (Bob Woodward), Jack Warden (Harry Rosenfeld), Martin Balsam (Howard Simons), Hal Holbrook (Deep Throat), Jason Robards (Ben Bradlee), Jane Alexander (bookkeeper), Meredith Baxter (Debbie Sloan), Ned Beatty (Dardis), Stephen Collins (Hugh Sloan).
C-138m. Letterboxed. Closed Captioning.

The World of 'The Big Sleep' (1946)

noreply@blogger.com (Massimo Vergara Poeti-Marentini) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 22:54:00 +0000

Los Angeles private detective Philip Marlowe is summoned to the mansion of General Sternwood, a wealthy, aging invalid with two wild young daughters: the predatory, childish Carmen and the divorced Vivian Rutledge. Sternwood explains that Arthur Gwynne Geiger, a rare book dealer, is demanding payment of Carmen's gambling debts. Sternwood adds that earlier, a man named Joe Brody made a similar request, which was handled by ex-bootlegger Sean Regan, who has since disappeared. Although Marlowe advises Sternwood to pay the money, he agrees to look into the matter for him. After he leaves the general, Vivian asks to speak with him. She assumes that Sternwood hired Marlowe to look into Regan's disappearance, but Marlowe reveals nothing. At Geiger's store, Marlowe questions Agnes, the attendant, about rare books, and her confused response convinces him that the store is a cover for some illegal activity. The attractive bookseller across the street confirms his guess, and Marlowe waits at her shop for Geiger to make an appearance.

Marlowe follows Geiger to his house, where, after a while, Carmen arrives. Later, Marlowe hears a scream followed by gunshots. Inside the house, Marlowe discovers a drugged Carmen with Geiger's dead body. Marlowe also finds a hidden camera with no film in it and a book containing the names of Geiger's blackmail victims. After Marlowe drives Carmen home, he returns to Geiger's, but in the meantime, the body has been removed. Later, one of Sternwood's cars containing the body of his chauffeur, Owen Taylor, is dredged out of the ocean. That afternoon, Vivian tells Marlowe that blackmailers have demanded $5,000 for a compromising photograph of Carmen taken at Geiger's the previous night. When Marlowe asks if she can pay the money, Vivian says she might be able to get it from Eddie Mars, the gambler whose wife ran off with Regan. Marlowe then returns to Geiger's store, where he sees two men loading Geiger's stock into their car and tails them to Brody's apartment. Later, he learns that Mars owns the house where Geiger was shot. That evening, when Vivian reports that the blackmailers failed to contact her, a skeptical Marlowe drives to Brody's apartment building. Vivian and Agnes are both hiding inside, and Carmen arrives later, intending to shoot Brody. After Marlowe disarms Carmen, Brody admits that he is the blackmailer, but denies that he killed Geiger. Marlowe forces Brody to give the photographic negative to Vivian, who then takes Carmen home. Marlowe explains that Taylor, who was in love with Carmen, shot Geiger and then accuses Brody of killing Taylor. Brody is about to tell Marlowe what information Geiger had on the Sternwoods, when he responds to a knock on the door and is shot.

Marlowe catches the killer, Geiger's assistant Carol Lundgren, who believed that Brody murdered Geiger and shot him in retaliation. Now that the murders seem to be solved, Vivian tries to dismiss Marlowe, but he is convinced that Mars knows something about Regan's disappearance. Marlowe's suspicions of Mars increase when Vivian wins a lot of money gambling at Mars's club, only to have it stolen later in what appears to Marlowe to be a phony holdup. When Vivian later tells him that Regan has been found in Mexico, Marlowe believes that she is trying to throw him off Regan's trail. Subsquently, Marlowe learns from Agnes the whereabouts of Mars's wife Mona, who was supposed to have run off with Regan, and drives to the hideout, where he is taken prisoner by Mars's men. Vivian is also hiding out at the house and with her help, Marlowe shoots Mars's hired killer Canino, and they make their escape. Marlowe then lures Mars to Geiger's house and accuses him of blackmailing Vivian to keep Carmen's murder of Regan secret. After Mars is mistakenly killed by his own men, Marlowe tells the police that Mars murdered Regan and privately exacts Vivian's promise that she will send Carmen away where she will be prevented from hurting anyone else.

Why THE BIG SLEEP is Essential? SPECIAL COMMENT by Margarita Landazuri and Frank Miller

Even before To Have and Have Not was released in 1944, it became clear that Warner Bros. had a huge hit on its hands, a major new star in Lauren Bacall, and a hot romantic team in Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. Naturally, the studio wanted to recapture the magic, so they immediately put The Big Sleep (1946) into production, with Howard Hawks once again directing.

With its interlocking murder investigations that reveal a world of decadence and corruption and its world-weary private eye hero, The Big Sleep is considered one of the screen's greatest films noirs. Based on a private-eye novel by Raymond Chandler, the film has a convoluted plot. Bogart is detective Philip Marlowe, hired by a dying rich man to get rid of a blackmailer. The rich man's two beautiful daughters, Bacall and Martha Vickers, are constantly getting into trouble...and getting Marlowe into trouble as well. Even such distinguished writers as William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, and Jules Furthman couldn't make sense of the story. Chandler claimed that Hawks even sent him a telegram, wanting to know who had committed one of the murders. Chandler had no idea. But it didn't really matter. It's not the plot that makes The Big Sleep crackle, it's the witty dialogue, and the potent chemistry between Bacall and Bogart.

The Big Sleep was finished in early 1945, near the end of World War II. The studio wanted to get its war-themed films in theaters as soon as possible, so The Big Sleep sat on the shelf while those films were released. Meanwhile, Bacall's third film, Confidential Agent (1945), had been released, and she'd gotten terrible reviews. Even the fact that Bogart had finally divorced his wife and married Bacall couldn't take the sting out of those bad notices.

Bacall's agent saw The Big Sleep, and urged studio chief Jack Warner to make changes that would exploit the Bogart-Bacall chemistry, and add more of the "insolence" that had made her a star. Warner and Hawks agreed, and brought in Julius Epstein to write new scenes. Most notable was a sexy double-entendre conversation about horse racing. Among the scenes that were dropped was one that clarified plot points. Released in 1946, the new version was as big a hit as To Have and Have Not. The original 1945 version of The Big Sleep was only available in rare 16mm prints until 1996, when it was restored by Bob Gift of the UCLA Film & Television Archives. The new print premiered in Los Angeles in July 1996 and has aired on Turner Classic Movies (TCM).

Most critics consider Humphrey Bogart's interpretation of private eye Philip Marlowe the best in film history, ahead of such contenders as Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet (1944), George Montgomery in The Brasher Doubloon (1947) and Elliott Gould in Robert Altman's revisionist The Long Goodbye (1973).

The Big Sleep marked the start of a long association between Hawks and screenwriter Leigh Brackett. She would also work on his Rio Bravo (1959), Hatari! (1962), Man's Favorite Sport? (1964, uncredited), El Dorado (1966) and Rio Lobo (1970).

SPECIAL COMMENT AND TRIVIA by Frank Miller

The Big Sleep was the first novel to feature Raymond Chandler's most famous detective, Philip Marlowe. The book actually combined two earlier Chandler stories, "Killer in the Rain" and "The Curtain," both of which had appeared in the famous Black Mask mystery magazine. The world-weary private eye living by his own sense of honor won high praise from such authors as Somerset Maugham and J.B. Priestley. The film version was made to capitalize on the success of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall's first film together, To Have and Have Not (1944). After the earlier film's successful first preview, Warner Bros. studio head Jack Warner told its director, Howard Hawks to come up with another vehicle for them. Hawks suggested Marlowe's novel, telling Warner it was like an earlier studio hit, The Maltese Falcon (1941), which had helped make Bogart a star. Warner had actually considered filming the novel earlier, but had decided against it because there were too many censorship problems in its depiction of pornographers, nymphomaniacs, homosexuals and corrupt cops.

Hawks bought the rights to The Big Sleep for $20,000 then sold them to the studio for $55,000.

After reading Leigh Brackett's first novel, the hard-boiled detective story No Good from a Corpse, director Howard Hawks called her agent to arrange an interview and was rather surprised to see a short 29-year-old woman walk into his office. It didn't alter his original opinion, however, and he hired her to work on the screenplay with William Faulkner.

Brackett only had one meeting with co-writer William Faulkner. He told her they would each adapt alternate chapters of the original novel, then went off to work on his own. They finished their first draft in eight days, and Hawks patched together their various scenes.

Bogart read the script and objected to some lines he thought were too genteel for the character. He assumed they had been written by Brackett because she was a woman. When he went to request re-writes from her, she told him they were Faulkner's lines. Then she proceeded to make the dialogue even more hard-boiled and tough. As a result, he nicknamed her "Butch."

In one major departure from Chandler's novel, Hawks decided not to have Bacall turn out to be an accomplice to murder (and omitted the murder victim from the story as well). That allowed her to enjoy a final clinch with Bogart while at the same time capitalizing on the couple's success together in To Have and Have Not and their romantic relationship off-screen.

Whether it was wish fulfillment or his desire to increase the film's sexual tension, Hawks decided that every woman in the film would find Marlowe irresistible and try to seduce him.

While casting the film, Hawks was impressed by a glamorous photo of model-turned-actress Martha MacVicar. She had started acting in horror films at Universal (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Captive Wild Woman, both 1943), so he had Warner Bros. buy up her contract and then taught her how to exploit her sexuality to the maximum as the nymphomaniacal Carmen.

Philip Marlowe's habit of feeling his earlobe while in deep thought was something Humphrey Bogart incorporated from his own behavior.

Although Raymond Chandler thought Martha Vickers stole the film as Carmen, she failed to capitalize on her performance. Few directors besides Howard Hawks knew how to get such unbridled sexuality past the censors, and she herself preferred playing nice girl roles. Hawks had great hopes for her (and allegedly even had an affair with her), but eventually lost all interest in grooming her for stardom.

Re-shooting scenes a year later meant having to recast one role in The Big Sleep, Eddie Mars' wife, Mona. Originally played by Pat Clark, the role was re-shot with Peggy Knudsen.

Leigh Brackett was inspired to write her first detective novel -- No Good from a Corpse, the book that won her the job writing The Big Sleep -- after seeing Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (1941).

Gangster Eddie Mars' henchmen, Sid and Pete, are named for Bogart's frequent co-stars and off-screen friends Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre.

Bogart had to wear platform shoes to appear taller than his two leading ladies, Lauren Bacall and Martha Vickers. That may be the reason both women taunt him about his lack of height.

The film's box office success put Hawks in a position to demand an unprecedented level of freedom for a Hollywood director, allowing him to incorporate his own production company and shop projects to the highest bidder. Other directors would follow suit.

The Big Sleep marked the second teaming of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who had burned up screens two years earlier in To Have and Have Not (1944), also directed by Hawks. They would hook up again for the film noir Dark Passage (1947) and the gangster drama Key Largo (1948).

The Big Sleep was one of only two Warner Bros. films on which future Nobel Prize-winner William Faulkner received credit as a screenwriter. The other, To Have and Have Not, also starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall and was directed by Hawks.

Although they had fallen in love on the set of To Have and Have Not (1944), Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall had stayed apart since then because of his marriage to actress Mayo Methot. Their reunion for The Big Sleep rekindled the romance, however, causing more trouble for Bogart at home as he repeatedly left his wife and then moved back in hopes that she could get her drinking under control. He also started drinking more heavily himself. Despite this, it only hindered a few days of production.

Bogart's indecision over whether or not to leave his wife triggered a bout of nerves for Bacall, whose hands shook whenever she had to light a cigarette or pour a drink during the filming.

Director Howard Hawks did not approve of the Bogart-Bacall relationship. He had discovered Bacall, still had her under a personal contract, and felt rather paternal toward her. In addition to lecturing her about staying away from her co-star, Hawks and his wife tried to fix her up with other men, including Clark Gable.

Southern novelist William Faulkner never adjusted to life in Hollywood. While working on the script for The Big Sleep, he told Hawks that the studio atmosphere was stifling him and asked if he could work at home. Hawks agreed. After a few days without hearing from the writer, Hawks called his hotel, only to learn that Faulkner had checked out and gone back to his native Mississippi. When Hawks called him there, Faulkner protested, "Well, you said I could go home and write, didn't you?"

With two writers working separately on the script, Hawks ended up with a film that was too long to shoot. Faulkner proved to be an excellent collaborator though he returned to Mississippi before the film was completed. Then Hawks brought in frequent collaborator Jules Furthman to further edit the script and make other changes during filming.

Hawks and the writers tried various endings for the story. In one, Carmen (Martha Vickers) attempts to fake a suicide only to discover that her gun is loaded with real bullets rather than blanks. Next, they had Carmen confess to her crimes and walk into an ambush by gangsters. Finally, they wrote it so that Marlowe decided, on the basis of a coin toss, to allow her to leave the house and walk into the ambush. When the Production Code committee objected to the violence, Hawks asked how they would end the film, and they came up with the idea of Bogart forcing the gangster chief out of the house, where the criminal was shot by his own gang. Hawks was so impressed he offered to hire them as writers.

As was the case with most of Hawks's films, The Big Sleep was great fun to make. According to Lauren Bacall (in By Myself) they even got a memo from studio head Jack Warner saying "Word has reached me that you are having fun on the set. This must stop.""

Raymond Chandler's original novel was so convoluted that, according to legend, neither Hawks nor any of the writers could figure out who killed the Sternwood's chauffeur. Finally, he wired the author for an explanation. Chandler suggested one killer, but Hawks wired back that he was nowhere around when the murder took place. Chandler wired back, "Then I don't know either." The story may have been invented by Hawks, however, as the film's initial cut features a scene, written in the first draft, in which Marlowe explains all of the murders, including the chauffeur's, to the district attorney.

Dorothy Malone was just starting out in movies when she played the bookstore clerk who seduces Bogart. She was so nervous making the scene they had to weight the glass of liquor she offers him to keep her hands from shaking.

During shooting, Hawks added the strong implication that Marlowe and the bookstore clerk are about to make love as the scene ends. There is no such indication in the novel, but Hawks was so struck with the 19-year-old Malone's mature sexuality that he decided to make the scene steamier.

By the time the film's projected completion date arrived, November 28, 1944, Hawks had shot less than half the script. Although Bogart's marital problems had caused some delays, the main problem was Hawks's continual re-writing. While the studio closed for the Christmas holidays, Hawks and Furthman shortened the script so they could finish the film more quickly and economically, cutting whole scenes to free up sets. He finally finished the film on January 12, 1945, 34 days behind schedule. Because he had kept secondary sets as inexpensive as possible, however, he was only $15,000 over budget.

When the film previewed in February, audience response was good, but the Bogart-Bacall pairing didn't have the same impact as in To Have and Have Not. The problem, many felt, was that they didn't have enough scenes together.

Although Bacall shot another film, Confidential Agent (1945), after this one, Warners' decided to release it first, arguing that the later film was more topical and needed to come out during the final days of World War II. They also felt it showcased Bacall more effectively. The film turned out to be a disaster, however. At the urging of her agent, Charles Feldman, Hawks and the studio built up her part in The Big Sleep and re-shot a scene in which she wore an unflattering veil. The original version was only shown to U.S. soldiers stationed overseas.

Philip Epstein, co-author of Casablanca (1942), helped Hawks write the new scenes. His goal was to create more sexual chemistry between the stars, playing on the insolence Bacall had shown in To Have and Have Not. His work included the famous horseracing scene, filled with double entendre that sailed right by the industry censors enforcing the Production Code. In later years, Hawks would claim to have written it because the re-takes were forcing him to miss the races at Santa Anita.

In re-cutting the film, Hawks also removed the scene in which Marlowe explains the crimes. The film's success supported his growing conviction that audiences didn't care if a plot made sense as long as they had a good time.

In the year that passed between finishing the first version of The Big Sleep and shooting the new scenes, Bacall and Bogart had gotten married. This had strained their relationship with Hawks, who sold his personal contract for Bacall's services to Warner Bros. Hawks didn't even want to direct them in the new scenes unless they promised not to get "mushy all the time." (Hawks quoted in Joseph McBride, Hawks on Hawks.

The new scenes went into production on January 21, 1946, and were completed a week later. The film's new version previewed successfully on February 8.

Warner Bros. executives were so impressed with Lauren Bacall's work in The Big Sleep and the success of her previously released To Have and Have Not that they renegotiated her contract, raising her salary from $350 a week to $1,000.

The film's taglines labeled it "The Violence-Screen's All-Time Rocker-Shocker!" and "The picture they were born for!"

One of the screen's greatest whodunits was a Hollywood mystery in its own right. Originally completed in 1945, The Big Sleep sat on the shelf as Warner Bros. waited for the right time to release it. There was a glut of feature production in Hollywood during World War II, leading to similar decisions at other studios. Anticipating these factors, costume designers avoided passing fads so the films would remain timeless, and most such films made it into theaters with few changes. With The Big Sleep, however, the studio decided to make major changes in the original, which had only been seen by U.S. servicemen overseas. The original cut was then filed in the vaults, leaving true film buffs hungry for a look at the picture that could have been.

The Big Sleep was originally produced as a follow-up to the successful teaming of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, the latter making her film debut, in To Have and Have Not (1944). When studio head Jack Warner asked producer-director Howard Hawks to suggest a follow-up, he immediately thought of Raymond Chandler's first novel about flinty, honorable private eye Philip Marlowe. Warner had actually considered the story earlier, but like most in Hollywood, thought Chandler's work unsuitable because of censorship problems. In The Big Sleep alone, he would have to convince the Production Code Administration to pass a story involving pornography, nymphomania, homosexuality and police corruption. In addition, the story's ending suggested that Marlowe had gotten away with murder.

Hawks got most of his material past the censors by treating it suggestively, leaving a lot of the sexier stuff in the viewers' minds rather than on-screen. He also got around the problems with the ending by simply asking the Production Code representatives to write it themselves. When they came up with the final fadeout, he offered them jobs as writers.

Reuniting Bogart and Bacall was a great idea for box-office, but initially provided some problems for the stars. Although they had fallen in love making To Have and Have Not, they had stayed apart since then so that Bogart could salvage his marriage to actress Mayo Methot or at least get her to quit drinking. When they re-teamed for the new film, Bacall was so nervous around him she could barely keep her hands still. And before long, they were back together, as he entered a cycle of leaving his wife, returning to give her one last chance and leaving again. But even though the turmoil was causing Bogart to drink more than usual, it only slowed down production by a couple of days.

What really slowed production down was Hawks' penchant for re-writing. He often kept the company waiting while he and Jules Furthman redid the day's scenes, and then started shooting late in the afternoon. By the time the picture shut down it was 34 days behind schedule. Thanks to Hawks' economy in other areas, however, it was only $15,000 over budget.

The Big Sleep previewed in February 1945. Although audience response was good, people were disappointed that they hadn't recaptured the magic of Bogie and Bacall's work in To Have and Have Not -- they just didn't have enough time together on-screen. Bacall's agent, Charles Feldman, suggested re-shooting the film to build up her role, but Warner ignored him. Bacall had another big vehicle she had finished right after The Big Sleep, Confidential Agent (1945), a wartime espionage film co-starring Charles Boyer. Since her role was larger in that picture, and the film was more timely, Warner decided to put The Big Sleep on the shelf until Confidential Agent had played out. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a disaster. Although the film got some decent reviews, Bacall's work was largely panned. The good impression she had created in To Have and Have Not was almost destroyed. Feldman pressed his case again, and this time Warner agreed. Philip G. Epstein, who had co-written the script for Casablanca (1942) prepared some new scenes, which Hawks shot in November and December of 1945. The film premiered in the U.S. in 1946 and scored a smash hit with audiences and critics.

There was one big loser in the film's renovation -- actress Martha Vickers, who played Bacall's younger sister, the sultry, depraved Carmen Sternwood. Hawks had been so impressed with the model-turned-actress that he had convinced Warner's to buy her contract from Universal. Then he had worked tirelessly with her, teaching her how to turn on the sex appeal (some say he also had an affair with her). The few in Hollywood who saw the original film thought she stole it from its stars. But in expanding Bacall's part, the studio had to cut something, and that included some of Vickers's best scenes. In the time since shooting The Big Sleep, she had failed to live up to the potential shown in that film, partly because Warner's stuck her in a series of colorless good girl roles. She quickly faded from the Hollywood landscape.

The original version of The Big Sleep remained a mystery for decades, with only a few 16mm prints in circulation. In 1996, however, Bob Gift of the UCLA Film & Television Archives supervised a restoration of the original, which premiered in Los Angeles in 1997, 52 years after it was originally finished. The original not only restores several scenes with Vickers and other characters, but it lays to rest one of the most colorful stories about the film's creation. Hawks had always told interviewers that the murder mystery was so complicated nobody could figure out exactly who killed whom. When the writers couldn't tell who murdered the Sternwood's chauffeur, Hawks called Chandler for advice, only to learn that he didn't know either. At least that's the story Hawks liked to tell. But the original 1945 version includes a scene in which Bogart explains the case to the police, including a complete list of murder victims and their killers. Hawks cut the scene because he didn't think audiences really cared if the plot made sense as long as they had a good time. Besides, it gave him a great story to tell later about the film's confusing plot.

SPECIAL COMMENT by Brian Cady

Director Howard Hawks told Warner Brothers' head Jack Warner it was going to be easy. He had already blocked out half the movie ahead of time and could easily get around the censor's objections and have the whole picture ready by the end of the year. Confidence like that begs for complications and Hawks got it in spades. However, The Big Sleep (1946), meant to cash in on a popular team while they were hot, would not be released in its finished form for almost two years.

Warner was looking for another property to pair Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall after their hit To Have and Have Not (1944). Hawks, who had also directed that movie, suggested a novel by Raymond Chandler who was hot in Hollywood at the moment after Billy Wilder had used a Chandler screenplay for Double Indemnity (1944). Unfortunately, that meant Chandler was unavailable to adapt his own book because he was under exclusive contract to Paramount, so Hawks hired the man who had re-written To Have and Have Not during filming, future Nobel Prize for Literature winner William Faulkner, and paired him with Leigh Brackett, the author of another tough-guy detective novel Hawks had recently read. The director was a little taken aback to discover Leigh also happened to be a woman. Nevertheless, he decided to give the 28-year old authoress a try, launching her as one of the most important women screenwriters for action-adventure movies with work on such movies as the classic western Rio Bravo (1959) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

William Faulkner, writing with his Remington model 12, circa 1945.

Faulkner set the writing method, dividing Chandler's novel by its chapters with Faulkner and Brackett adapting alternate chapters without consulting the other. In that manner they spun out a draft that squeaked by the censors in just two weeks and Hawks began shooting on October 10 with a Christmas 1944 release a clear possibility. Shortly things began to go wrong. First, the script was still a little vague. Bogart asked at one point who was supposed to have killed the character Owen Taylor. Hawks didn't know, the screenwriters didn't know and, when they telegraphed Chandler to ask him, he said he had no idea! Faulkner and Brackett put together a scene in which Bogart's character Marlowe figures out the murder with the help of an investigator from the D.A.'s office. Then the real reason for all that heat between Bogart and Bacall boiled over. The married Bogart had ended the affair with Bacall that began on the set of To Have and Have Not and returned to his wife to try to salvage his marriage. It didn't work and Bogart went on a bender that delayed shooting through the Christmas holidays. Meanwhile Hawks took over some of the scripting duties, re-writing in the mornings in an effort to eliminate scenes and speed the picture along. It sounds like a harrowing experience but it must have had its pleasures. At one point Jack Warner sent a famous memo down to the set: "Word has reached me that you are having fun on the set. This must stop."

The fun didn't stop until January 12, 1945 when Hawks brought production to a close. Cut together over the next few months the movie had its world premiere for servicemen in the Philippines in August 1945. Warner Brothers delayed the U.S. release under the mistaken impression that Confidential Agent (1945) was a better lead for their new star Lauren Bacall. That turned out to be a mistake when the picture flopped and now the studio was desperate for a touch of that To Have and Have Not magic. However, preview audiences did not find it in The Big Sleep as it was then cut, complaining that there were too few scenes with Bogart and Bacall together. Cast and crew were rounded up, some new scenes were written by Philip Epstein and six days of reshooting took place in January 1946. Twenty minutes of the 1945 version, including the labored-over explanation for Owen Taylor's death, were cut and replaced with eighteen minutes of new footage and retakes. This 1946 cut became the final classic which was one of Warner Brothers biggest hits and kept the teaming of Bogart and Bacall, now legal after their May 21, 1945 wedding, as popular on the screen as it was in their new home.

Director/Producer: Howard Hawks
Written by William Faulkner, Leigh Brackett, Jules Furthman, Philip Epstein based on the novel by Raymond Chandler
Cinematographer: Sid Hickox
Editor: Christian Nyby
Music: Max Steiner
Cast: Humphrey Bogart (Philip Marlowe), Lauren Bacall (Vivian Rutledge), John Ridgely (Eddie Mars), Martha Vickers (Carmen Sternwood), Dorothy Malone (Acme Bookstore clerk), Regis Toomey (Bernie Ohls).
BW-114 min. (1946 version), BW-116 min. (1945 version).

The World of 'The Diary of Anne Frank' (1959)

noreply@blogger.com (Massimo Vergara Poeti-Marentini) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:44:00 +0000

As a truckload of war survivors stops in front of an Amsterdam factory at the end of World War II, Otto Frank, a lone, dejected figure gets out and walks inside. After climbing the stairs to a deserted garret, Otto finds a girl's discarded glove and sobs, then is joined and comforted by Miep Gies and Mr. Kraler, factory workers who shielded him from the Nazis. After tonelessly stating that he is now all alone, Otto begins to search for the diary written by his youngest daughter Anne. Miep promptly retrieves the journal for Otto, and he receives solace reading the words written by his thirteen-year-old daughter three years earlier: The date is July 1942, and Anne begins by chronicling the restrictions placed upon Jews that drove the Franks, Otto, his wife Edith and their daughters Margot and Anne, into hiding over the spice factory. Sharing the Franks' hiding place are Hans and Petronela Van Daan and their teenage son Peter. Kraler, who works in the office below, and Miep, his assistant, have arranged the hideaway and warn the families that they must maintain strict silence during daylight hours when the workers are there.

On the first day, the minutes drag by in silence. After work, Kraler delivers food and a box for Anne compiled by her father, which contains her beloved photos of movie stars and a blank diary. In the first pages of the diary, Anne describes the strangeness of never being able to go outside or breathe fresh air. As the months pass, Anne's irrepressible energy reasserts itself and she constantly teases Peter, whose only attachment is to his cat, Moushie. Isolated from the world outside, Otto schools Anne and Margot as the sounds of sirens and bombers frequently fill the air. Mrs. Van Daan passes the time by recounting fond memories of her youth and stroking her one remaining possession, the fur coat given to her by her father. The strain of confinement causes the Van Daans to argue and pits the strong-willed Anne against her mother. One day, Kraler brings a radio to the attic, providing the families with ears onto the world. Soon after, Kraler asks them to take in another person, a Jewish dentist named Albert Dussell. When Van Daan complains that the addition will diminish their food supply, Dussell recounts the dire conditions outside, in which Jews suddenly disappear and are shipped to concentration camps. When Dussell confirms the disappearance of many of their friends, the families' hopes are dimmed. One night, Anne dreams of seeing one of her friends in a concentration camp and wakes up screaming.

In October 1942, news comes of the Allied landing in Africa, but rather than producing relief, the bombing outside the factory intensifies, fraying the refugees' already ragged nerves. On Hanukkah, Margot longingly recalls past celebrations and Anne produces little presents for everyone. When Van Daan abruptly announces that Peter must get rid of Moushie because he consumes too much food, Anne protests. Their argument is cut short when they hear a prowler breaks in the front door and the room falls silent. Peter then sends an object crashing to the floor while trying to catch Moushie, and the startled thief grabs a typewriter and flees. A watchman notices the break-in and summons two Gestapo officers, who search the premises, shining their flashlights onto the bookcase that conceals the attic entrance. The families wait in terror until Moushie knocks a plate from the table and meows, reassuring the officers that the noise was caused by a common cat. After the officers leave, Otto, hoping to foster faith and courage, leads everyone in a Hanukkah song.

In January 1944, Anne, on the threshold of womanhood, begins to attract Peter's attention. When Miep brings the group a cake, Dussell and Van Daan bicker over the size of their portions and then Van Daan asks Miep to sell his wife's fur coat so that he can buy cigarettes. After Kraler warns that one of his employees asked for a raise and implied that something strange is going on in the attic, Dussell dourly comments that it is just a matter of time before they are discovered. Anne, distraught, blames the adults for the war which has destroyed all sense of hope and ideals. When she storms out of the room, Peter follows and comforts her. Later, Anne confides her dreams of becoming a writer and Peter voices frustration about his inability to join the war effort. In April 1944, amid talk of liberation, the Franks watch helplessly as more Jews are marched through the streets. Tensions mount, and when Van Daan tries to steal some bread from the others, Edith denounces him and orders him to leave. As Dussell and Van Daan quarrel over food, word comes over the radio of the Normandy invasion and Van Daan breaks into tears of shame. Heartened by the news, everyone apologizes for their harsh words, and Anne dreams of being back in school by the fall.

By July 1944, the invasion has bogged down and Kraler is hospitalized with ulcers. Upon hearing that the Gestapo has found the stolen typewriter, Anne writes that her diary provides her a way to go on living after her death. After the Van Daans begin to quarrel once more, Peter declares that he cannot tolerate the situation and Anne soothes him by reminding him of the goodness of those that have come to their aid. Their conversation is interrupted by the sirens of an approaching Gestapo truck. As Anne and Peter bravely stand arm in arm certain of their impending arrest, they passionately kiss. As the German soldiers break down the bookcase entrance to the hideout, Otto declares they no longer have to live in fear, but can go forward in hope. Back in the present, Otto tells Miep and Kraler that on his long journey home after his release from the concentration camp he learned how Edith, Margot and the others perished, but always held out hope that perhaps Anne had somehow survived. Otto sadly reveals that only the previous day in Rotterdam he met a woman who had been in Bergen-Belsen with Anne and confirmed her death. Otto then glances at Anne's diary and reads, "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart," and reflects upon his daughter's unshakeable optimism.

SPECIAL COMMENT by Eleanor Quin

Most people are familiar with The Diary of Anne Frank, a chronicle of the courageous Jewish teenager who was living in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation. Her story came to a tragic end in August 1944 when she and her family were found by Gestapo troops in their attic hiding spot. Anne herself would perish nine months later in a concentration camp, and her father Otto fought valiantly to ensure that her memory would be preserved through the publishing of her diary. He succeeded in 1947; the book would go on to be translated in 67 languages and achieve even greater fame when the stage version of the story opened on Broadway in 1955. Two years later, 20th Century Fox hired director George Stevens to bring the story to the film screen. One of the great American film directors, Stevens began his career with slapstick comedies, but soon graduated on to masterful works like Gunga Din (1939), I Remember Mama (1948), and Shane (1953).

Stevens began the project by asking Shelley Winters to accompany him to the stage version in New York. The pair had worked magic in A Place in the Sun (1951), earning a Best Director Oscar® for him and a Best Actress nomination for her. For The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), Stevens asked Winters to play the role of Mrs. Van Daan, a character twenty years older than the actress who was thirty at the time. In the autobiography Shelley Winters: The Middle of My Century, she recalls: "Smiling through tears, I again said to him what I'd said when he'd asked me to test for A Place in the Sun: `Mr Stevens, if you give me that role, you can photograph me any way you want to.' He said, `Shelley, will you gain twenty-five pounds to play it?' `Fifty, if necessary,' I answered." Winters would in fact gain thirty pounds in preparation for the role, and lose twenty-five during production, a testament to Steven's insistence upon the utmost realism in portraying the desperate circumstances of that time.

With Winters cast, Stevens turned his attention to the role of Anne. Susan Strasberg, daughter of famed acting coach Lee Strasberg, had been playing the role on Broadway for over two years. Stevens, however, did not have her in mind for the film version: his sights were set on Audrey Hepburn. The notion of a twenty-eight year old woman playing a thirteen-year old girl did not dissuade him, but Hepburn turned down the role due to a scheduling conflict. It was widely rumored, however, that she rejected the part as too traumatic because of her own wartime experiences in the Netherlands. So a nation-wide casting call began and ended with the hiring of Millie Perkins, a seventeen-year old model from Passaic, New Jersey. Character actor Joseph Schildkraut was cast as Anne's father, Otto, a role he created in the stage version. (Schildkraut and Stevens would successfully collaborate again in The Greatest Story Ever Told a few years later, 1965.) Richard Beymer, best known as Tony from West Side Story (1961), won the role of Peter Van Daan, Winters' screen son.

Stevens had an extraordinary resource to bring to the table for The Diary of Anne Frank: during the war, he had served in a Special Services unit that photographed and filmed Nazi concentration camps. In order to inspire the appropriate levels of emotion during shooting, Stevens had a viewing of the camp footage for his cast. Furthermore, he insisted upon realistic environmental conditions; Winters recalls in her memoir, "George Stevens made the set so real that it was almost unbearable. He would turn the heat up in August if we had to swelter. He would turn the air conditioning on if we were doing a winter scene and we would all sneeze and freeze." Despite the mental and physical prompts, Stevens still had trouble securing the desired reactions from his actors at times. To counter these moments, Winters explained, "He had recorded a tape for each actor of the sounds and music that affected him most powerfully in various emotions. He would play the tape sometimes right through an actor's dialogue, and then edit the music out in the cutting room." Stevens used music to not only create powerful emotions, but also to dissipate them: after particularly stressful scenes, he would break the tension by blasting the pop novelty song "The Purple People Eater" on the set (it was a top forty hit at the time).

The production was located on Fox's largest soundstage to accommodate the film crew and equipment. In addition, the studio had a mandate in effect that all shoots were to be filmed using the recently patented CinemaScope system. While the process worked wonderfully for majestic landscape and epic scenery, it was decidedly not the best way to film a cramped attic space. Stevens sniffed, "It's fine if you want a system that shows a boa constrictor to better advantage to a man." After much consideration and a few days of stalled production, Stevens solved the problem by having vertical beams installed on the set, ostensibly to represent roof supports. The visual created was that of a more confined space, more appropriate to the annex proportions. Ever the perfectionist, Stevens was having trouble securing a camera angle that would travel three stories from the bottom floor up to the attic level. After encountering delays by studio heads to accommodate his request, Stevens took matters into his own hands and simply dynamited a hole in the stage. He had, after all, been schooled in blasting techniques during his army service. According to Winters, she "resolved then and there never to cross him."

Explosions aside, the rest of the shoot was comparatively calm. The heavy content of the material, however, did have a lasting impact on the cast, and a mid-shoot visit to the set by Otto Frank himself was particularly emotional for Winters. During a conversation together, the actress pledged that if she should win an Oscar for her work in the film, she would donate it to the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. The 1959 Best Supporting Actress Academy Award is housed there today.

Producer/Director: George Stevens
Screenplay: Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett
Cinematography: William C. Mellor
Film Editing: David Bretherton, William Mace, Robert Swink
Art Direction: George W. Davis, Lyle R. Wheeler
Music: Alfred Newman
Cast: Millie Perkins (Anne Frank), Joseph Schildkraut (Otto Frank), Shelley Winters (Mrs. Petronella Van Daan), Richard Beymer (Peter Van Daan), Gusti Huber (Mrs. Edith Frank), Lou Jacobi (Mr. Hans Van Daan).
BW-156m. Letterboxed.

The World of 'The Time Machine' (1960)

noreply@blogger.com (Massimo Vergara Poeti-Marentini) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:38:00 +0000

Responding to an invitation issued five days earlier, five gentlemen meet at the London residence of their mutual friend, scientist George, who, having arrived late and disheveled, recounts the last five days, beginning with the group's 31 December 1899 meeting: George explains that he has been working for two years to prove the possibility of movement within the fourth dimension, time, by creating a time machine to carry man into the future or past. When George unveils a miniature version of the machine, makes it disappear "into the future" with the switch of a lever and then insists that he, too, will travel into the future, his friends suggest he contribute to the war effort instead of dabbling in tricks. As the others turn to leave, one of the men, David Filby, asks George why he is preoccupied with time. George replies that he is discouraged by human behavior and the proliferation of weapons and asks his friend to return to the house with the others for dinner on 5 January.

Returning to his laboratory alone, George seats himself in a full-size version of the time machine, a sleigh powered by a large disc at the rear, and a Victorian chair and a control panel at the helm. As George pushes the main lever forward, a display counter clocks his movement in time. At first advancing only a few hours, George can see the flowers bloom and die within seconds. Pushing ahead, George notices the mannequin in a shop window across the street change styles drastically over each passing year. When his house windows suddenly become boarded up, George stops the machine in 1917 to find a man resembling David on the sidewalk nearby. After the man, James Filby, explains that George must be mistaking him for his father David, who died in the war, George inquires about the "inventor" who lived in the house. James informs him that after the inventor disappeared, David, as executor of the inventor's estate, refused to liquidate the house, certain that the owner would come back. Returning to his house, George removes the boards over his laboratory windows and speeds ahead to 1940, stopping his journey when he feels a large bomb explode in the neighborhood. Realizing that another war is taking place, George continues traveling until 1966. The time machine is now in the middle of a park while sirens sound and all the town's citizens, including an elderly James, scurry to an atomic bomb shelter. Although James begs him to come to the shelter, George remains behind and finds that his sundial has been designated as a park monument to acknowledge David's dedication to his friend George. Suddenly, as an atomic blast destroys the town and molten lava flows through the streets, George rushes to the time machine and throttles ahead.

Encased in the hardened lava, George travels through centuries of darkness until the rock finally wears away to reveal a lush and bountiful landscape in the year 802,701. Finding himself outside the large metal door of a temple, George assumes that if man still exists, he has conquered the elements. Drawn by the noise of humans, George walks to a river where several dozen blonde, docile young men and women known as Eloi leisurely bask in the sun. When the others fail to help a drowning woman, George rushes to save her, but finds no one acknowledges his self-sacrifice, not even the victim, Weena. Joining them for dinner, George questions the group about their apathy. The small, delicate Eloi remark that they do not value life nor do they read, write or have any governing laws. When he finds that the last human books have turned to dust, an incensed George reprimands the Eloi for disrespecting the sacrifices of generations before them and returns to the temple to leave, but Weena tells him the machine has been dragged behind the metal door by the Moorlocks, who reside in caves and provide the Eloi with food and clothing. George apologizes for his angry outburst and expresses his hope that he might reawaken the Eloi's spirit of self-sacrifice and scientific inquiry.

Later, when they hear the sound of the Moorlocks' machines, Weena explains that the Eloi know about life underground through the rings, which when spun, recite a brief history of the earth. George soon learns how the human race divided itself into the master race of Moorlocks and the Eloi, whom the Moorlocks conquered and enslaved. The next day, when sirens sound, all the Eloi walk in a trance-like state toward the metal door, which opens and takes in several dozen men and women, including Weena. George then runs to a concrete well, where he and several remaining Eloi climb down into the caves, which are covered in human remains, evidence of the Moorlocks' cannibalism. When he finds the Eloi being herded like cattle, George tries to overtake several Moorlocks by wielding his torch in front of the fire-fearing, half-human, half-ape creatures. As a brawl begins, several Eloi, following George's example, use their fists to fight the creatures. Freeing the captured Eloi, George and the group scramble out of a well entrance, throwing blazing torches and dried wood into the pit to cause an explosion, which collapses the caves and kills the Moorlocks. George then tells the Eloi that with their life of leisure over, they must learn to work for themselves. Despite lamenting that he feels trapped in their world, George reveals to Weena that she is his only love. Suddenly, the temple door opens and the last Moorlocks attack George, who clambers into the time machine, pulls back on the lever and returns through the centuries to 5 January 1900.

Back at the dinner table, George shows his London friends an exotic flower from Weena as proof of his travels, but the other gentlemen have no faith in George's story and leave. Still concerned for George's health, David returns to the house within minutes, but finds both George and the machine gone when he reaches the laboratory. Spotting tracks in the snow, David deduces that the Moorlocks moved the machine, forcing George to drag it into the laboratory upon his return. When housekeeper Mrs. Watchett asks him if George might return someday, David sagely reminds her that George "has all the time in the world."

SPECIAL COMMENT by Jeff Stafford

Set in the Victorian era, George Pal's production of The Time Machine (1960) is a faithful adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel in most respects except one - it omits the author's cynical observations about the British class system. Yet it's the main premise that has captivated audiences for years: A scientist (Rod Taylor) creates a time-traveling machine that carries him forward into the year 802,701 where he finds a strange new world populated by the Elois, a passive, peace-loving race, and their predators, the Morlocks, a cannibalistic tribe that lives underground and is light sensitive.

H. G. Wells always thought The Time Machine would make a compelling film but he never lived to see it become a motion picture; he died in 1946. However, his son, Frank, saw The War of the Worlds, a film version of his father's novel which was directed by George Pal in 1953. That convinced him that Pal was the man to bring The Time Machine to the screen. Unfortunately, Paramount Studios, which had produced The War of the Worlds, had no interest in the project. Undaunted, Pal and science fiction writer David Duncan shopped their screenplay around to various Hollywood studios without success until Pal journeyed to England to film tom thumb in 1958. It was there that he forged a friendship with Matthew Raymond, the head of the British MGM studio, who helped Pal put together a budget for The Time Machine.

The project was soon given the green light by producer Sol Siegel; he had screened a rough cut of tom thumb and realized Pal's unique talent for creating film fantasies. Nevertheless, Pal still faced the challenge of working with a modest budget, which meant changing his casting plans. Originally, the director had envisioned Paul Scofield or Michael Rennie or James Mason as the Time Traveler, but he eventually settled on a relatively unknown actor from Australia - Rod Taylor. For the key role of Weena, the Eloi girl who becomes the Traveler's link to the future, Pal chose MGM contract player Yvette Mimieux, whose option had just been dropped by the studio. The success of The Time Machine soon changed all that, and Mimieux went on to become one of MGM's most popular ingenues of the early sixties (Where the Boys Are, 1960; The Light in the Piazza, 1962; Joy in the Morning, 1965).

Besides the casting, the biggest challenges facing Pal on The Time Machine were the art direction and the special effects. For example, what would the time machine look like? In The Films of George Pal by Gail Morgan Hickman, the director said, "The design all started with a barber chair. Bill Ferrari, the art director, thought that was a good way to begin. A turn-of-the-century barber chair. Then he came up with the idea of the sled-like design. He sketched that out, and I liked it. And then he put the controls on the front. I thought it was a good idea....And then Bill said we needed something behind it to indicate movement. So he came up with the big, radarlike wheel." Cinematographer Paul Vogel worked out a lighting scheme to indicate the advance of time as Rod Taylor travels into the future on his "barber's chair"; a clear gel was used for daylight scenes, a pink one for dawn, an amber one for dusk, and a blue one for night. These were synchronized on a seven-foot circular shutter rotating at varying speeds to simulate the movement of the sun through the roof of the Time Traveler's greenhouse as the machine advances into the future. Other time changes were represented by blue-backed traveling mattes (the sequence where Taylor is entombed in rock) and the use of numerous background sets which were double-printed with scenes of the traveler in the stationary time machine.

Other special effects tricks included the destruction of London by a volcanic eruption (the lava was made out of oatmeal dyed red) and the hideous appearance of the Morlocks (green latex skin and grotesque masks fitted with electrical eyes, courtesy of makeup artist William Tuttle). In the end, all of the hard work paid off because The Time Machine won the Oscar® for Best Special Effects. Pal later admitted that he "would have loved to make a sequel having the Time Traveler go back in time, or - there was a great sequence which (was cut), it just didn't fit into our plot - to go back to the same place and then go further into the future when the crabs took over. It was very beautiful - I can just see Rod Taylor and Yvette Mimieux, just the two of them...go in there where the crabs are and the ocean is flat and doesn't move anymore and the sun is hot all the time. I think we could have developed a very interesting story of the loneliness of these two people."

Producer/Director: George Pal
Screenplay: David Duncan
Art Direction: George W. Davis, William Ferrari
Cinematography: Nicolas Vogel, Paul Vogel
Makeup: Sydney Guilaroff, William Tuttle
Film Editing: George Tomasini
Special Effects: Wah Chang, Gene Warren
Visual Effects: Howard A. Anderson, Bill Brace
Original Music: Russell Garcia
Principal Cast: Rod Taylor (George, H.G. Wells), Alan Young (David Filby/James Filby), Yvette Mimieux (Weena), Sebastian Cabot (Dr. Phillip Hillyer), Tom Helmore (Anthony Bridewell), Whit Bissell (Walter Kemp).
C-103m. Letterboxed. Closed captioning. Descriptive video.

The World of 'Prizzi's Honor' (1985)

noreply@blogger.com (Massimo Vergara Poeti-Marentini) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:30:00 +0000

By the mid-1980's, legendary director John Huston was nearing the end of his life. Age and emphysema had made him frail and he required an oxygen tank much of the time. But his spirit and his creativity remained strong and he wanted to make another film.

Huston had found a subject in the novel Prizzi's Honor, a story of mafia, hit men and questionable loyalties, by Richard Condon, who had previously written The Manchurian Candidate. He convinced Condon and screenwriter Janet Roach to do a script which would then be shopped around to the studios. As Lawrence Grobel wrote in his book, The Hustons, "By mid-March 1984 John wrote to Janet Roach in exasperation over the way the studios had received Prizzi's Honor, "The script has had the craziest reception I have ever known," he said. "There is immediate enthusiasm and it would seem that only the price had to be negotiated. [Producer John] Foreman thought he was in a position to play the studios off against one another. But then they suddenly retract. This has happened now four times. Not even Jack Nicholson, say they, could make lovable a man who would kill his wife for money. All of which serves to demonstrate to what low depths the intelligentsia of the present masters of our great industry have fallen. They all miss the point, of course, that the picture is a comedy, a fact very hard to get over. Have you ever tried explaining a joke to someone?"

Once 20th Century Fox gave Prizzi's Honor (1985) the green light, Huston found that his star Jack Nicholson had the same problem with the script as the studio heads. He didn't realize the film was a comedy. Kathleen Turner remembered their first reading of the script. "Jack took the first reading and as soon as I read my line, 'What kind of creep wouldn't catch a baby?' we're all laughing and Jack goes, 'This is funny.' And we go, 'Yeah'. John [Huston] said, 'It's a very funny story, what's wrong with you?' And Jack said, 'It's a comedy?' He never thought that until he heard it out loud."

Huston's daughter, Anjelica, was cast in the role of Maerose Prizzi. She worked hard to get her characterization of a mafia daughter right. "It was up to us to get our accents down, so Jack [Nicholson] went to the Brooklyn betting shops and I went to a Brooklyn church." During preproduction she was in the costume department trying on a black designer dress from the fifties with a frilly taffeta piece that came over the shoulder. She told the designer it would be interesting to take off the ruffle and drape it in Schiaparelli pink. "Just then my father entered the room, and said, 'Well, what do you think about making the ruffle in Schiaparelli pink?' That was the moment I knew there was no separation in how we saw the character."

Anjelica Huston and Jack Nicholson, who had lived together for several years, found that working together all day and going home to be together all night would be difficult, so they lived in different hotels while on location in Brooklyn. Said Anjelica, "I don't endorse the idea that actors should live their parts, but in spite of oneself, it sometimes does follow you home. There were elements of the hit-man in Jack at the time and I didn't want to be around him too much. Jack said that he generally dropped Charley Partanna [his character] toward dinnertime. I said that I often carried Maerose [her character] through to dessert."

Not only was Prizzi's Honor a family affair, with Huston casting his daughter, Anjelica and Jack Nicholson, but it was a reunion of sorts as well. Huston used old friends and co-workers: his former secretary, Ann Selepegno played the Don's wife; his first script girl on The Maltese Falcon (1941), Meta Wilde, was script supervisor, and Rudi Fehr, who was the editor on Key Largo (1948) came out of retirement and worked with his daughter, Kaja (now an editor on Desperate Housewives).

Prizzi's Honor was released on June 13, 1985 to universal acclaim. Film critic Pauline Kael wrote in her review, "If John Huston's name were not on Prizzi's Honor, I'd have thought a fresh, new talent had burst on the scene, and he'd certainly be the hottest new director in Hollywood." The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences were in agreement: the film was nominated for eight Academy Awards: Best Picture, Director (for Huston), Actor in a Leading Role (Jack Nicholson), Actor in a Supporting Role (William Hickey), Actress in a Supporting Role (Anjelica Huston), Costume Design (Donfeld), Editing (Rudi and Kaja Fehr), and Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium (Richard Condon and Janet Roach).

On the night of the awards, John Huston repeated what he had done nearly forty years before: he directed a family member in the film that won them a Best Supporting Oscar. In 1948 it was his father, Walter, in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. In 1986, it was his daughter, Anjelica. Hers would be the only award the film would win, but for John Huston, it must have been the most important.

Producer: John Foreman
Director: John Huston
Screenplay: Janet Roach, Richard Condon (based on his novel)
Cinematography: Andrzej Bartkowiak
Production Design: J. Dennis Washington
Music: Alex North
Film Editing: Kaja Fehr, Rudi Fehr
Cast: Jack Nicholson (Charley Partanna), Kathleen Turner (Irene Walker), Robert Loggia (Eduardo Prizzi), John Randolph (Angelo Partanna), William Hickey (Don Corrado Prizzi), Anjelica Huston (Maerose Prizzi), Lawrence Tierney (Lt. Hanley).
C-129m. Letterboxed.

The World of 'The Bride Wore Black' (1968)

noreply@blogger.com (Massimo Vergara Poeti-Marentini) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 21:05:00 +0000

During a cocktail party celebrating his engagement, a young Frenchman named Bliss is lured onto the terrace of his elegant Côte d'Azur apartment and pushed to his death by a mysterious woman dressed in white. A short time later, the woman appears in a rural mountain village. After enticing Robert Coral, a timid bank clerk, into inviting her to his dingy bachelor apartment, the woman kills him with poisoned wine. The third victim is René Morane, an aspiring politician with a wife and son. Once the wife has been tricked into leaving their suburban home to visit her mother, the woman poses as the son's teacher and gains entry into Morane's house; she locks him in a storage cupboard and leaves him to suffocate. Before each victim dies, the woman reveals that her name is Julie Kohler, the widow of a man who was shot to death on the steps outside the church where they were married. The fatal bullet had come from a building across the street where five men had been playing with a rifle which accidentally fired. After her mother prevented her from committing suicide, Julie vowed to have revenge on all of her husband's killers. Fourth on the list is Holmes, a dishonest car dealer, who is saved from Julie's vengeance when he is arrested by the police for handling stolen merchandise. Going on to her final victim, a painter known as Fergus, Julie agrees to be his model for a series of illustrations depicting Diana the Huntress. Although he eventually expresses his love for her, Julie kills him with the bow-and-arrow prop she used while posing. By deliberately not blacking out a wall painting Fergus made of her and then appearing at his funeral, Julie is easily recognized by Corey, a close friend of both the first and fifth victims. Openly admitting her guilt in the four murders, Julie is handed over to the police and imprisoned in the same jail where the fraudulent car dealer, Holmes, is now an inmate. While helping the matrons serve food to the prisoners, Julie takes a carving knife and completes her revenge by stabbing Holmes.

SPECIAL COMMENT by Jeff Stafford

In the spring of 1967 French filmmaker Francois Truffaut had in mind a small-scale, modestly budgeted film he wanted to make. It had been almost two years since his last picture, Fahrenheit 451 (released in the Fall of 1966), his first and only attempt to make a movie in the English language. It had been a frustrating and unsuccessful project in both critical and commercial terms and, after that experience, he took a break from filmmaking to concentrate on a book with collaborator Helen G. Scott about Alfred Hitchcock, based on extensive interviews with the director. During this difficult period - he was still upset over the end of his eight-year marriage to Madeleine Morgenstern (they had two daughters) - he began an intimate relationship with actress Jeanne Moreau. They had briefly been lovers during the filming of Jules and Jim [1962] and now Truffaut wanted to pay tribute to her by offering her a great role. The project, which was titled La Mariée etait en noir, was conceived as a B-movie noir, and based on the 1940 detective novel, The Bride Wore Black, by William Irish, whose real name was Cornell Woolrich.

Besides serving as an idealized project for his muse, The Bride Wore Black (1968) was also partly a homage to Hitchcock, which was another reason why he choose a Cornell Woolrich novel to adapt to the screen; Hitchcock had based his 1954 thriller Rear Window on Woolrich's short story "It Had to Be Murder." Without spoiling any of the movie's subtle development of its premise, all you need to know is that it is about a woman who is obsessed with a deadly personal mission. Truffaut was a great admirer of the crime novels of both Woolrich and David Goodis (Dark Passage, Shoot the Piano Player) and in an article once wrote, "I see Irish...as the artist of fear, terror and sleepless nights...The plot usually centers around an ordinary man or woman with whom the reader can easily identify. But Irish's heroes never do things by halves and no unforeseen event can stop their march toward love and death. His world frequently also includes amnesia and mental problems, and his hypervulnerable, hypersensitive fictional characters are at the opposite extreme from the usual American hero. Just as there is a touch of [Raymond] Queneau in David Goodis, there is a touch of [Jean] Cocteau in Irish, and it is this combination of American violence and poetic French prose that I find moving."

Truffaut instructed his American agent Don Congdon to purchase the rights to The Bride Wore Black. Woolrich, a very sick man near the end of his life (he died in December of 1968), haggled for more but eventually sold his book to Truffaut for $40,000 and Oscar Lewenstein, Truffaut's co-producer at MCA on Fahrenheit 451, tried to persuade United Artists to finance it. UA was reluctant to commit to the project based on the poor box office performance of Fahrenheit 451 but Lewenstein finally secured a favorable coproduction deal for Truffaut that allowed him considerable creative control and the freedom to shoot The Bride Wore Black in France.

During the 1966 Christmas season, Truffaut and actor/writer/director Jean-Louis Richard holed up in the Hotel Martinez in Cannes and collaborated on a 237-page script, taking care to create a female protagonist with a methodical revenge plan but one who was also credible and not crazy or hysterical. The casting and location scouting quickly followed and The Bride Wore Black began shooting on May 16, 1967 in a rented apartment at the Residence Saint-Michel in Cannes.

From the very beginning, problems developed between Truffaut and his cinematographer Raoul Coutard, who worked often with Jean-Luc Godard and had enjoyed a creative relationship with Truffaut on three previous black and white features (Shoot the Piano Player [1960], Jules and Jim, The Soft Skin [1964]). The Bride Wore Black was shot in color, however, and this became a major bone of contention between them. According to the biography Truffaut (by Antoine de Baecque and Serge Toubiana), "...Truffaut found the scenes underlit. He quarreled with Coutard for the first time, and interrupted the filming for two days. The Bride would turn out to be their last collaboration...As a result of this discord, the filming was tense, with Truffaut expending a great deal of energy on trying to convince Coutard, so that part of the job of directing the actors fell to Jeanne Moreau and Jean-Louis Richard. Jeanne Moreau recalled that "There were tensions between Francois and Coutard because the light was supposed to change radically every week to suggest different locations, which in fact our shooting locations were geographically close. Francois was very mysterious, very secretive. He never spoke on the set. In Jules and Jim, there had been a lot of improvisation, in The Bride, none at all. The mood was very different."

If Raoul Coutard was the prime agitator on the set of The Bride Wore Black. Jeanne Moreau was its savior, exhibiting good humor and an uncomplaining professionalism despite her own difficulties. Like Truffaut, she was despondent over her personal life; she had recently broken up with Pierre Cardin, who designed the fourteen black and white costumes she wears in the film. Truffaut would later write in a letter to Hitchcock, "On the set, she is ready to perform quickly or slowly; be funny or sad, serious or nutty, do anything that the director asks. And when misfortune strikes, she sticks by the captain of the ship: with no fuss or to-do...The danger for her in The Bride is that her part is simply too extraordinary; the heroine, a woman who dominates men and then kills them, is too "prestigious." To counterbalance this, I asked Jeanne to play the part with simplicity, in a manner that is familiar and would make her actions unexpected, plausible and human. As I see it, Julie is a virgin, since her husband was killed at the church on the day of their wedding. But this revelation doesn't come out in the film and will have to remain a secret between Jeanne Moreau, you and me."

The Bride Wore Black proved to be an unqualified hit in France despite mixed reviews but its U.S. release proved to be only a modest success. Truffaut would later state that of all his movies, he liked this one the least. Part of the reason was his dissatisfaction with the filming of Moreau - he didn't think Coutard captured her beauty on the screen and disliked her costumes as well. The only aspects of it he liked were the two episodes involving victims Coral (Michel Bouquet) and Fergus (Charles Denner). Many disagreed with him though such as his friend Alfred Hitchcock who wrote him, saying "I especially liked the scene of Moreau watching the man who had taken poison Arak dying slowly. I think my particular sense of humour might have taken them a little further so that Moreau could have picked up a cushion and put it under his head so that he could die with more comfort."

As expected, most American critics pointed out the resemblances between The Bride Wore Black and Hitchcock's thrillers, which was made more obvious by Truffaut's use of composer Bernard Herrmann, who had scored Hitchcocks's The Wrong Man (1956),Vertigo (1958), and Psycho (1960), among others. This wasn't necessarily a criticism, however, and in some cases, the reviewer preferred Truffaut's thriller over Hitchcock's. Renata Adler of The New York Times wrote that "Truffaut is such a poetic filmmaker that the film turns around and becomes, not at all Hitchcockian, but a gentle comedy and one of the few plausible and strange love stories in a long time...A sign of the absolute confidence one has in every moment of the film is that, although one of the killings is done by high-powered rifle, from a window to the street, the movie recovers from real associations to that act almost at once. Everything is so clearly the result of thought and wit; this is, for a change, a film in which it is pure pleasure to be alert...It is not a great, great picture but it is touching and fun at a level so much higher than other films..." Roger Ebert voiced a similar opinion in his review in The Chicago Sun Times, writing that The Bride Wore Black was a "homage to Alfred Hitchcock. As homage, it succeeds. As Hitchcock, it doesn't quite. What a relief. Truffaut is a master in his own right...In The Bride Wore Black, he achieves what he was aiming for in Fahrenheit: a marriage of the French new wave and Hollywood tradition....He allows something else Hitchcock would never have permitted. He never explains how in the world Miss Moreau discovered the identities of her husband's killers (or were they?). But that would matter only if this were Hitchcock, and it isn't. For the rest, Miss Moreau remains one of the screen's great actresses, and there is a supporting cast of unusual quality."

Truffaut would later return to the work of Cornell Woolrich for Mississippi Mermaid (1969), based on the novel Waltz Into Darkness, but for his next project following The Bride Wore Black, he would enjoy a career resurgence with the autobiographical Stolen Kisses (1968), another chapter in the adventures of Antoine Doinel (Jean-Pierre Leaud) which first began with his debut feature in 1959, The 400 Blows.

Producers: Marcel Berbert, Oscar Lewenstein (uncredited)
Director: Francois Truffaut
Screenplay: Jean-Louis Richard, Francois Truffaut; William Irish (novel)
Cinematography: Raoul Coutard
Production Design: Pierre Guffroy
Music: Bernard Herrmann
Film Editing: Claudine Bouche
Cast: Jeanne Moreau (Julie Kohler), Michel Bouquet (Coral), Jean-Claude Brialy (Corey), Charles Denner (Fergus), Claude Rich (Bliss), Michel Lonsdale (Rene Morane), Daniel Boulanger (Delvaux), Alexandra Stewart (Mlle Becker), Sylvine Delannoy (Mme Morane), Luce Fabiole (Julie's mother), Michele Montfort (Fergus's model).
C-107m. Letterboxed.

The World of 'Sweet Smell of Success' (1957)

noreply@blogger.com (Massimo Vergara Poeti-Marentini) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:48:00 +0000

One night in Manhattan, slick, up-and-coming press agent Sidney Falco scans the column of New York Globe writer J. J. Hunsecker, an immensely popular journalist whose column and radio show have great influence in the entertainment world. Because J. J. has, for the fifth day in a row, neglected to publicize any of Sidney's clients, Sidney's business is rapidly failing, despite his attempts to placate each client. In consternation, he turns cruelly on his sweet secretary, Sally, but then explains that his drive for success forces him to curry favor with J. J., who is snubbing him for failing to break up the relationship between J. J.'s sister Susie and jazz musician Steve Dallas. Later, at the club where Steve performs, Sidney argues with his uncle and Steve's manager, Frank D'Angelo, who had promised him that Steve and Susie had broken up. Upon learning from cigarette girl Rita that Susie is awaiting Steve in back, Sidney interrupts the two as they celebrate their recent engagement, incurring Steve's anger. Steve, who values integrity above all else, accuses Sidney of "scratching for information like a dog." Inside, Rita appeals to Sidney to help her retain her job, which is at risk because she refused to sleep with columnist Leo Bartha, who then ordered her to be fired. Sidney secures a date with Rita, then follows Susie into a cab, where the meek nineteen-year-old questions his relationship with J. J., calling him "a trained poodle." While reassuring Susie that he considers J. J. a close friend, Sidney confirms the information that Susie and Steve are engaged, then races to J. J.'s customary booth at the 21 Club to inform him. J. J. is dining there with Senator Harvey Walker, starlet Linda James and manager Manny Davis, and when Sidney joins them against J. J.'s wishes, the columnist excoriates him, forcing Sidney to accept the abuse with a smile. When Walker tries to help, pointing out that columnists need press agents to furnish the necessary gossip, J. J. turns his lacerating gaze to the senator, humbling him by stating that he should not travel so openly with Linda, his mistress. Sidney follows J. J. outside, where the columnist greets his informer, police lieutenant Harry Kello, who is long indebted to J. J. for petitioning the mayor to save his job after Kello beat a suspect severely. After Sidney reveals Susie's engagement, J. J. allows him one more chance to destroy the relationship, stating that Susie is all he has. Desperate to protect his livelihood, Sidney vows that "the cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river." He goes to Toot Shor's club, where Bartha, J. J.'s main competitor, is dining with his wife Loretta. Sidney threatens to reveal Bartha's dalliance with Rita to Loretta unless the columnist prints an item stating that Steve is a Communist who smokes marijuana, but despite Sidney's machinations, Bartha calls his bluff, telling Loretta the truth and calling J. J. a disgrace. Sidney then petitions columnist Otis Elwell, who agrees to print the item if Sidney will fix him up with an "available" woman. To that end, Sidney brings Otis to his scheduled rendezvous with Rita, who balks at the implications of the introduction, until Sidney wheedles her into accepting, stating that Otis can help save her job as well as help him save face with J. J.

After Sidney leaves, Rita, who has just told Sidney she is "not that kind of girl," reminds Otis that they slept together years earlier. The next morning, Sidney visits J. J.'s office, where the secretary, Mary, admonishes him for his sleazy tactics but nonetheless allows him to see J. J.'s column before it is printed. Noting an item promoting comedian Herbie Temple, Sidney then goes to Herbie, hoping to win his business, and pretends to call J. J. and arrange for the publicity. Back at Sidney's office, Frank and Steve are waiting, sure that the "smear" in Otis' column came from Sidney. Sidney allays their suspicion with his customary outraged defensiveness, then, upon hearing that Steve has been fired, secretly calls J. J. and instructs him to order the club owner to rehire the musician, thus winning Susie's trust. When Susie, horrified after seeing the article, enters the Hunsecker home, J. J. imperiously chastises the terrified girl for not coming to him with her problems. Susie, suspicious and chafing under her brother's tight control, finds the strength to ask J. J. to get Steve his job back. J. J. complies but asks Steve to meet him at the radio station. Before the meeting, Sidney advises J. J. to bait Steve into causing a scene, hoping to poison Susie against him. Noting Sidney's delight with his devious plan, J. J. calls him "a cookie full of arsenic." Sidney then joins with J. J. to taunt the upright musician, prompting Steve to ask Susie what she wants. When the overwhelmed girl flees the room, Steve breaks down and rebukes J. J. as a "national disgrace" full of "phony patriotism." He storms out, after which J. J. forbids Susie to see him again. That night, Sidney joins J. J. at 21 and is taken aback to discover that the columnist now plans to destroy Steve's career. Sidney balks at J. J.'s command to plant marijuana on the musician, stating he can accept a dog collar but not a noose, but after J. J. offers to let Sidney write his column for three months while he vacations with Susie, Sidney's greed prevails and he accepts the job.

Later, Susie breaks up with Steve, hoping this will save him from further attacks by J. J., but as soon as Steve finishes work that night, Kello arrests him, beating him in the process. Sidney is getting drunk while toasting his "favorite perfume¿success" when he receives a message asking him to meet J. J. at his house. There, Susie, who has learned about Steve's arrest, is planning to commit suicide, hoping J. J. will forever detest Sidney for driving her to desperation. Sidney downplays the threat, berating the girl for "thinking with her hips," an improvement, he says, over her typical incompetence. When Susie tries to throw herself over the balcony, Sidney barely manages to rescue her. Just then, J. J. enters and, upon spotting Sidney holding a negligee-clad Susie, attacks the publicist, who realizes that it was not J. J. but Susie who called him to the house. To save himself, Sidney proclaims that Steve's arrest was J. J.'s idea, after which the columnist calls Kello and orders Sidney's arrest for planting the marijuana. Sidney runs out, vowing to reveal all he knows, as Susie packs her belongings. J. J. begs her to stay, but she coolly informs him she would rather die than live with him. As Kello beats Sidney and J. J. stares into his empty home, Susie strides to the hospital to join Steve.

SPECIAL COMMENT by Rob Nixon

Almost from the beginning, Tony Curtis was seen as the ideal choice for Sidney Falco. Lancaster had worked with the younger actor in Trapeze (1956) and enjoyed their give-and-take on the set. But Curtis had to fight hard for the role because his studio, Universal, believed (quite rightly, it turned out) that the role would destroy the matinee idol image they had created for their popular star. Curtis wanted out of the grind of costume adventure epics the studio pushed on him, and he knew he was far better suited to gritty, contemporary urban dramas. He believed in Sweet Smell of Success so strongly, he even co-produced the picture through Curtleigh, the company he had formed with his wife at the time, Janet Leigh.

Casting Hunsecker was a bigger problem. The description of the character in Lehman's story suggests someone with the physical characteristics of Charles Laughton. For a time, Orson Welles was considered. If United Artists hadn't pressed for a big name in the role of Hunsecker, Lehman would have preferred character actor Hume Cronyn, a small man who would have captured Hunsecker's dominating presence through a sheer force of malice. (To get an idea of Cronyn's ability to play a complex villain, see him in Brute Force (1947), Jules Dassin's bleak prison melodrama). That intriguing possibility was discarded though once Lancaster decided he would have more boxoffice clout in the role and cast himself as Hunsecker; HHL was his production company, after all.

Lancaster made a wise choice in hiring legendary cinematographer James Wong Howe, who had lensed two of the actor's earlier films, Come Back, Little Sheba (1952) and The Rose Tattoo (1955). While Howe and Mackendrick were in New York to scout locations, they formulated the idea of starting scenes in exteriors then following the characters indoors. They also took multiple still shots from various fixed points so Mackendrick could learn "the image of New York." Back in Hollywood, the director taped the shots as panoramas on his office wall. After living with the stills for a time, Mackendrick hit upon the idea of conveying the claustrophobic atmosphere of the city's canyoned streets by shooting low, with the buildings looming over the characters. This technique also gave the threatening, unsettling effect of showing the characters knifing upward into the air. Later filmmakers, such as Sydney Pollack, were heavily influenced by this unconventional use of lenses and their framing. "They reversed the normal shooting concept. They shot almost every master shot with long-focus lenses, from very far away, in order to pack the buildings in tightly behind the people," Pollack explained. "Then they shot their close-ups with wide-angle lenses, to keep the background in focus and, again, an awareness of the buildings. These techniques create an overall effect, in which lay moviegoers feel oppressed by the city, without necessarily understanding why."

With temperatures well below freezing, the exteriors were shot at night from late December 1956 into January 1957. The interiors were shot, with a couple of exceptions, in February and March at the Goldwyn Studios in Hollywood. Art Director Edward Carrere, who later won an Oscar for his work on Camelot (1968), re-created in great detail the "21" Club and Toots Shor's nightspot. He and Howe seized on the idea of building the sets a couple feet off the floor to make room for spewing smoke pots that gave the clubs their cigarette-heavy feel. They also had the walls and ceilings smeared with oil to give the sets a slimy sheen and carry the look of the dirty, rain-soaked streets indoors. Howe also decided to fit Lancaster with thick glasses, often smudged with oil, that when lit closely from a high angle, would deepen his eye sockets and produce a strange mask-like effect.

The careful preparation of the film's look gave the actors an evocative space in which to build their performances, and heightened the sense of betrayal, danger and sleaziness that permeates Odets's script. Curtis immediately threw himself into the role of Falco, acting so keyed up on the first take, Mackendrick had to devise obstacles and moves to slow him down. Lancaster and Curtis meshed well together, and drew inspiration - at Mackendrick's suggestion - from the predatory dance in Ben Jonson's play Volpone. But Lancaster was a demanding actor, not always easy to work with, and his tendency to try to wrest the directing reins from Mackendrick, combined with difficult location shooting on a film without a completed script, caused a lot of tension on the set. Mackendrick didn't ease the situation with his own fears and suspicions, based on what he knew of HHL's cutthroat methods and Lehman's parting warning: "They chew directors alive." Tipped off by the movie╒s editor, Alan Crosland, that HHL would fire him after principal photography and recut the movie to their liking, Mackendrick shot the much disputed final scene in a manner which would be difficult to edit (It was a moving camera shot). He wanted to favor a female character's point of view over Lancaster's insistence that he and Curtis be given the final shot. The ploy worked because after he was fired, Lancaster delivered a final cut of the film and soon realized his mistake, eventually calling MacKendrick back in to fix the ending. But even armed with his own tricks, the director admitted to being "scared stiff" during the entire production. During a heated, alcohol-fueled argument over the disputed scene, Mackendrick said Lancaster began shouting, then "came at me across the room with that coiled-spring animal energy, like a panther, and vaulted over a sofa in one of the most graceful movements I've ever seen."

Lancaster began directing the other actors, particularly relative newcomer Martin Milner (who said he "never quite connected" with Mackendrick), and constantly challenged Mackendrick's interpretation of how the film should look and feel. For Curtis, Lancaster's behavior was an inevitable bleed-over between actor and character, both powerful, confident men who got to their positions by manipulating and controlling others. But despite the tremendous problems during production and the initial failure of the film at the box office, Mackendrick looked back on it years later as a valuable experience. "The moments of your greatest fear are also the moments you look back on as your greatest thrill," he said. "The danger is an aphrodisiac. It must be."

SPECIAL COMMENT by Jeff Stafford

Alexander Mackendrick was best known as a director of British comedies (The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Ladykillers, 1955) when he was chosen to replace Ernest Lehman as director on Sweet Smell of Success (1957). The result was a visually stunning and hard-edged film noir melodrama which was actually a little too strong for mass audience acceptance in its time. It told the story of J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), a powerful and dangerous national columnist, and his obsequious assistant, Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis). Hunsecker, who has the power to make and break reputations in his daily newspaper column, was said to be modeled on Walter Winchell who had made his share of enemies during his peak years.

The screenplay was inspired by an original story from Ernest Lehman who worked for celebrity press agent Irving Hoffman in Manhattan in the late 1930s. Lehman had ample opportunity to observe the treacherous world of celebrity gossip he was working in and he even supplied Walter Winchell with column "items" on occasion.

Due to heath reasons, Lehman, who was serving as director and screenwriter, had to abandon the film production of Sweet Smell of Success in the early stages and MacKendrick took over direction. Clifford Odets was brought in to give the dialogue more punch with street slang and New Yorker vernacular.

Lancaster, whose production company had optioned Sweet Smell of Success, was considering Orson Welles for the role of Hunsecker when he decided to play the character himself. Compromising himself further, he also began to challenge Alexander MacKendrick's directorial decisions once filming began, a possible result of identitying too closely with the overly manipulative Hunsecker character. Although Lancaster delivered a final cut of the film without Mackendrick's involvement, he soon realized his mistake and called the director back in to fix the ending. The result is without a doubt MacKendrick's most accomplished film and a testiment to his careful rehearsal and elaborate storyboard preparation for the film.

What's most surprising is the fact that Sweet Smell of Success was totally ignored during the 1957 Oscar race. Not only was Tony Curtis's breakthrough performance as the self-loathing Sidney Falco ignored but even Elmer Bernstein's dynamic, jazz-influenced score failed to garner an Academy Award nomination. The latter featured notable contributions from Chico Hamilton's Quintet and such fine musicians as Frank Rosolino, Curtis Counce, Paul Horn, and Buddy Clark.

Director: Alexander MacKendrick
Producer: James Hill
Screenplay: Clifford Odets, Ernest Lehman
Cinematography: James Wong Howe
Music: Elmer Bernstein
Editing: Alan Crosland Jr.
Art Direction: Edward Carrere
Cast: Burt Lancaster (J. J. Hunsecker), Tony Curtis (Sidney Falco), Susan Harrison (Susan Hunsecker), Martin Milner (Steve), Sam Levene (Frank D'Angelo), Barbara Nichols (Rita).
BW-97m. Letterboxed.

The World of 'The French Connection' (1971)

noreply@blogger.com (Massimo Vergara Poeti-Marentini) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:00:00 +0000

From his home in Marseilles, millionaire Alain Charnier runs the largest heroin-smuggling syndicate in the world, employing ruthless Pierre Nicoli to assassinate his adversaries. While they refine their plan to smuggle $32 million worth of heroin into the United States by hiding it in the car of their new accomplice, French television personality Henri Devereaux, in New York City two police detectives continue their dogged pursuit of drug dealers. Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle and his partner, Buddy "Cloudy" Russo, use intimidation and psychological tactics to taunt and trap their targets, sometimes skirting the boundaries of ethical behavior. One night after a typically grueling day of chasing down suspects, Popeye convinces Cloudy to go to the local club with him for a drink. There, Popeye, who thinks of little else besides his job, grows suspicious of the patrons at one table who are celebrating boisterously. "Just for fun," he and Cloudy tail the main carouser, Sal Boca, all night until he returns to the diner he runs with his wife Angie. Days later, they are still watching Sal, who has a record of petty crimes, as does his brother Lou. Cloudy, posing as a patron, is able to observe the steady traffic of local businessmen who hold clandestine meetings in the back room with Sal. One day, the detectives tail Sal to the apartment building of drug financier Joel Weinstock, and exult that they have finally connected him to a known criminal. To obtain insider information, Popeye storms into a gritty bar frequented by drug users and small-time dealers. Shoving the customers against the wall and humiliating them, Popeye picks their pockets for drugs and makes a few arrests. His real aim, however, is to meet in private with one of the dealers, Hector, who is his secret informant, without arousing the others' suspicions. To that end, Popeye roughs up Hector and pulls him into the back room, and after Hector reveals that a shipment of heroin is due into the New York harbor soon, Popeye punches him to make their "confrontation" appear real. The detectives bring their case to their captain, Walter Simonson, who derides the circumstantial evidence and berates them for failing to break a big case. Together, the partners manage to convince Simonson to allow them two wiretaps, one on Sal's diner and the other on his house.

Days later, at the same time as Charnier and Nicoli, newly arrived in New York, watch Devereaux's car being transported onto the wharf, federal agents Bill Mulderig and Klein are brought onto the case. Mulderig dislikes Popeye because, on a previous case, the detective's rough tactics resulted in the death of a policeman. Cloudy, who attempts to defend his partner, later visits Popeye's apartment and finds him handcuffed to the bed by a young sexual partner. Over the next few days, Popeye and Cloudy follow Sal's conversations on the wiretap, and one day they rejoice to hear a Frenchman call and make an appointment to meet. In the car on the way to the planned rendezvous, as Mulderig razzes Popeye from the backseat, they are caught in a traffic jam that endangers their ability to follow Sal. Popeye races out onto the street to catch sight of Sal's car, and soon the police are back on his trail as he enters the Roosevelt hotel. There, they spot Sal with Charnier and Nicoli, then follow them to a restaurant, standing on the freezing street while the Frenchmen enjoy a leisurely gourmet meal. Charnier leads Popeye to his hotel, where the detective is able to learn the Frenchmen's names from the clerk. Soon after, Sal brings the heroin to Weinstock, whose drug expert tests it and reports that it is high-grade, valuable dope. However, Weinstock, knowing the police are after Sal, insists on taking more time before agreeing to Charnier's price. Meanwhile, Charnier slips away from the federal agents posted around his hotel and walks along the street, where Popeye is shocked to spot him. Popeye follows him into the subway, but as he attempts to trail him, the wily Charnier manages to evade him, waving as his subway car speeds away from the detective. Klein follows Sal to Washington, D.C, where Sal meets with Charnier to ask for a few more days. Charnier insists on having the money by the end of the week, then tells Nicoli to kill Popeye, as he poses the biggest threat to their deal. At the same time, Simonson informs Popeye that, with no movement on the case, he must close it down. The furious Popeye, unable to convince Simonson to give him more time, fights with Mulderig. Soon after, Popeye is walking near his apartment when Nicoli, hiding on a rooftop, shoots at him. Popeye tries to secure the area, then crawls along the building's side until he can climb to the roof. There, he is able to spot Nicoli and races to follow him into an elevated subway platform. As Nicoli steps onto a car, a transit guard hears Popeye yell a warning, causing him to follow Nicoli suspiciously as he travels from car to car. On the ground, Popeye commandeers a passerby's car and speeds to the next subway station, hoping to reach it before the train. On the el, Nicoli shoots and kills the policeman, then holds the driver at gunpoint and commands him not to stop at the station. Popeye arrives at the stop and runs to platform, but when the train does not slow down, he jumps back into his car and careens wildly through the city streets, narrowly avoiding other cars and pedestrians, to reach the next station. Nicoli has confronted the conductor and passengers with his gun drawn, and now shoots the conductor as the driver suffers a heart attack. The train, rushing out of control, slams directly into a parked train. Below, Popeye sees the wreck and, stopping his car, walks disoriented to the bottom of the el stairs. Nicoli climbs through a door to the outside of the cars, crawling between them in order to escape the wrecked train, but as he reaches the top of the station stairs, Popeye gets him in his gun sights. Nicoli, now unarmed, turns to run, but Popeye shoots him in the back, killing him.

Soon after, Popeye and Cloudy are following Sal when as he picks up Devereaux's car. They pursue the car to the street where Sal parks it, and watch for days as it sits untouched. When some men approach the car, Popeye arrests them, and although they are soon revealed to be petty car thieves, he orders the car torn apart. The police mechanic rips apart the entire car but finds nothing. Popeye, insisting the heroin is in the car, urges him to try again, and this time, they uncover 120 pounds of dope in the front grille. Hours later, they have replaced the heroin and rebuilt the car, which they return to Devereaux in order to trail him. Devereaux, spooked by the police interest, informs Charnier that he no longer wants to be involved. Charnier and Nicoli then drive the car to meet with Weinstock and his men at an abandoned warehouse, where they swap the drugs for cash. Sal, exulting in his new wealth, drives off with Charnier, only to find the bridge closed off by Popeye and his men. They return to the warehouse, where all of the criminals scatter, followed by the police. Popeye, obsessed with catching Charnier, stalks through the dilapidated building. When he hears footsteps, he turns and shoots, accidentally killing Mulderig. Although Cloudy is horrified, Popeye single-mindedly continues his pursuit, wandering off into the shadows, where a lone shot rings out.

SPECIAL COMMENT by Stephanie Thames

The five Oscars® it won, including Best Picture of 1971, are not what give The French Connection its iconic status. The film stands the test of time based on two counts: its relentlessly driven main character -- cop Popeye Doyle (played by Gene Hackman and based on a real life NYPD detective) and its breathtakingly innovative car chase through the streets of Brooklyn. In the film, Doyle and partner Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) are New York narcotics detectives on the trail of The French Connection -- the source of European heroin brought into the U.S. The plot is based on a real drug case. It's the story of Eddie Egan and partner Sonny Grosso who broke up a drug operation, confiscating 112 pounds of heroin worth $32 million.

Egan and Grosso's story was first told in the book The French Connection by Robin Moore. Unlike the film, where the crime comes together rather quickly, in real life it took four months of detective work to crack the case. And it wasn't all shootouts and car chases as in the film. As Egan put it, jokingly, "I've only drawn my gun three times in my whole career." Both Egan and Grosso appear in the movie - Egan as Walter Simonson (the character representing his own boss) and Grosso as Detective Klein. They also served as technical advisors. Written dialogue was often ignored during shooting in favor of phrases from police advisors (which was ironic since the screenplay would go on to win an Oscar®). Scheider and Hackman also patrolled with Egan for a month to get a feel for the characters. But while audiences would enjoy Popeye Doyle's roguish, obsessive style, the NYPD was less than thrilled with the depiction. Egan was dismissed from the force just shy of retirement. Apparently book author Moore had it right when he said, "the police department like the military or any other institution prefers to make its own heroes for its own purposes."

Regardless of the official NYPD line on The French Connection, the movie would not have been possible without police participation - especially the car chase sequence. The scene was shot out of sequence over five weeks, with police clearing traffic for a five-block radius. Permission was even given to control the traffic signals on the chase streets. To shoot the action, two Pontiacs were used. One car with cameras mounted on the back seat and front fender. And another, with the back seat removed for the cameraman to shoot past the driver. According to the film's director, William Friedkin, Hackman himself did the driving in over half the footage used. Speeds were up to 70 - 90 mph on the narrow streets under the Stillwell Avenue subway line. The crash that occurs happened near the start of shooting and was unplanned.

There were also a few other incidents during the film's production that didn't quite go according to plan. For instance, the train conductor who was cast failed to show on the day of shooting. Instead, an actual subway conductor was used (The motorman is also a real motorman as the Transit Authority refused to permit an actor to operate the train. In addition, the cop who is shot is actually a Transit Police Officer - and Actor's Guild member). Another casting snafu happened early in production. Director Friedkin had seen a film by Spanish filmmaker Luis Bunuel and been impressed by one of the actors. He called the casting director to hire the actor for the role of French drug kingpin Alain Charnier. When the actor arrived in New York, Friedkin realized it was the wrong guy. Friedkin had envisioned Francisco Rabal from Bunuel's Belle de Jour (1967). Instead, he was sent Fernando Rey, who had appeared with Rabal in the Bunuel film Viridiana (1961). And to top it off, Rey spoke no English. Friedkin considered making the change to Rabal. But the actor was unavailable -- and as it turned out, Rabal spoke no English either so Rey kept the part.

Rey would go on to play Charnier again in the 1975 sequel The French Connection II, directed by John Frankenheimer. This story picked up right after the original left off - Doyle heads to France on the trail of Charnier. In real life, it wasn't quite the same ending. The real drug lord, Jean Jehan, did escape to France and was caught, but the French government refused extradition. There was a different real life outcome for Egan and Grosso also. The film's closing sequence says the partners were reassigned after the case. In actuality, it was two years and several cases later before they were reassigned.

Meanwhile, in New York, pieces of The French Connection have become a lasting part of the city. The subway car from the Grand Central scene is in the Brooklyn Transit Museum. And reportedly, the subway car from the chase scene has been renovated and is operating on the M and Z line.

Producer: Philip D'Antoni, G. David Schine, Kenneth Utt
Director: William Friedkin
Screenplay: Ernest Tidyman based on the novel by Robin Moore
Cinematography: Owen Roizman
Editing: Gerald B. Greenberg
Music: Don Ellis
Art Direction: Ben Kazaskow
Cast: Gene Hackman (Det. Jimmy 'Popeye' Doyle), Fernando Rey (Alain Charnier), Roy Scheider (Det. Buddy 'Cloudy' Russo), Tony Lo Biano (Salvatore 'Sal' Boca), Marcel Bozzuffi (Pierre Nicoli), Eddie Egan (Walt Simonson), Frederic de Pasquale (Henri Devereaux).
C-104m. Letterboxed. Closed captioning.