Posts tagged Orson Welles

MOVIES FOR NEW YEAR’S EVE

Dec28
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

New Year’s Eve is fast approaching and your classic movie guys, Joe Morella and Frank Segers are here to share their favorite NYE films with you.

Joe says there’s only ONE film to consider for the big night.  It’s 1947′s Repeat Performance.

It stars Joan Leslie (above) Louis Hayward and Virginia Field (below), and features Richard Baseheart, Tom Conway, and Natalie Schafer.  It’s film noir (with a touch of fantasy) about a lot of unpleasant people in the theatahhh in New York.

The story opens with murder, and when the star wishes she could live the year over again she is, of course, magically able to.  But she discovers the results frightening.

We don’t want to give away any of the intricate plot points.  Just take our word for it. It’s a unique take on New Year’s resolutions.  It’s a true classic.

Then there is one of Orson Welles most scorned movies, which is one of Frank’s all-time favorites. (He tediously repeats section of dialogue from the movie from time to time.) It’s 1955′s Mr. Arkadin, a sort of low-rent Citizen Kane that Welles made in his refuge-in-Europe period after he left Hollywood.  It’s about a nasty international business mogul who goes to great lengths to hide his murderous past.

Mr. Arkadin’s cast is marvelous.  There is Welles, abetted by superb character actors including Akim Tamiroff, Mischa Auer, Peter van Eyck, the great French actress Suzanne Flon, Greek actress Katina Paxinou and a surprisingly sexy Patricia Medina.

Welles wrote the film noir-ish script, and sports a number of strange wigs and beards in his portrayal of the title role. The sets are a bit cheesy but the locations are for real. The whole thing is very European (filmed in Spain, Munich and in Paris) and very cynical. (Mr. Arkadin nicely retells the legend of the scorpion and the frog taking their ill-fated swim across the river.)

But we advise going easy on the NYE refreshments, though, since the plot points move by very quickly. You have to pay attention to Mr. Arkadin since — depending on the version you see (there were five floating around at one time) — its narrative sometimes doesn’t make a ton of sense.  But boy is it fun.

For those who wish to be reminded that NYE can quite literally be life threatening, there are few movies that can top producer Irwin Allen’s 1972′s commercial blockbuster, The Poseidon Adventure. It’s about the fate of passengers celebrating the new year aboard a luxury cruise ship capsized by a giant tital wave.

The picture is a superbly made disaster outing with an entertainingly eclectic cast: Gene Hackman, the superb Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Shelley Winters, Roddy McDowall, Leslie Nielsen and Stella Stevens swimming underwater in a see-through blouse. Critics sniffed when this picture came out, but take a look.  It holds up nicely.

For the more romantically inclined there’s always 1989′s “When Harry Met Sally,” costarring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal.  Who can easily forget Ryan’s noisy simulated orgasm in a Jewish delicatessen, and the response of a nearby older woman who tells her waiter, “I’ll have what she’s having.” And the romantics running to each other’s arms on New Year’s Eve.

For our money, few films can match the genuine romanticism of David Lean’s 1945 classic, Brief Encounter. It’s about a proper married woman’s tryst with a man she meets in a train station.  The photography is superb, and the leading actors — the magnificent Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard — are remarkably good.  Now, that is one romantic movie — one that even softens our cynical souls.

Happy New Year, everyone.

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WAS GRAHAM GREENE HOLLY MARTIN?

Jun10
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

 

Hello everybody.  This is Mister Joe Morella and Mister Frank Segers here again..

Once again we welcome back our regular and increasingly prolific guest contributor, Larry Michie.

Larry, entranced by how some books are turned into some of the best classic movies, discusses a beauty today. So, here’s Larry…..

Graham Greene (1904-1991) was a phenomenally gifted and prolific writer, ranging from the chilling tale of a juvenile psychopath (Brighton Rock) to the to the warmly hilarious (Travels with my Aunt). In addition to novels and short stories, Greene cranked out screenplays, including two in collaboration with British director Carol Reed that rank among the screen’s finest accomplishments.

By Greene’s own account, he couldn’t write a screen play without first writing a story, so when Sir Alexander Korda asked him to write a film for Carol Reed about post-WWII Vienna, which was divided into four sections by the occupying powers – American, British, Russian and French – Greene dusted off a note he had scribbled to himself much earlier, a story idea about saying goodbye to Harry. Thus was born 1949’s The Third Man.

From that note he fleshed out a story about a fellow named Rollo Martins, an Englishman who made a living by writing the cheapest of so-called westerns, tawdry copies of the yarns cranked out by U.S. writers. Rollo went to Vienna largely to see his best friend from school days, one Harry Lime. The intensely loyal Rollo could not come to grips with the death of Lime, and he tried to dig out the truth about what happened. But he was not prepared to believe the stories that Harry Lime had been trafficking in stolen pharmaceuticals, a valuable prize in destitute Vienna.

Well, movies have their own peculiar dynamics, and a couple of emotional anchors drifted a bit off-shore when it was decided to cast an American, Joseph Cotton, as the writer of cheap paperback westerns. Cotton refused to be named Rollo, so Greene dubbed him Holly, a tiny bit of a dig that satisfied Cotton. (According to Greene, “The name had to be an absurd one, and the name Holly occurred to me when I remembered that figure of fun, the American poet Thomas Holley Chivers.” Not a joke that many people would get, but what the heck, let Greene enjoy himself.

The casting of Cotton/Holly took a powerful element away from the story, as the search for Harry Lime would have had much more emotional weight if the former school chum trying to track him down had that extra faith in his friend, instead of the more skeptical sleuthing done by the American. It surely didn’t ruin the film, though. In the end, Holly pulled the trigger in the sewers of Vienna. Rollo never would have done that.

The Third Man still stands up as an engrossing film – excellent acting, powerful direction, and all different shades of mystery and human misery in the backwash of a devastating global war.

Orson Welles, of course, was the jaunty Harry Lime, with excellent support by Cotton, Trevor Howard, Bernard Lee, Wilfrid Hyde-White, and the extremely attractive Alida Valli as Anna, Harry’s squeeze and a tormented victim of the war.

Another thing about those British writers: They often display a wicked wit, often without cracking a smile. The original Greene story depicted Rollo being invited to a book-signing party where he was quizzed extensively by Viennese intellectuals. A hack writer of oaters was not in his element, to say the least. The same scene with Joseph Cotton in the movie sort of works, but it isn’t quite as telling.

Oh, and who could forget the score, perfectly selected by Carol Reed – zither music that seems to foretell every dark deed dreamed of in the haunted streets of Vienna.

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OLD MOVIES — CLASSIC MOVIES

Jun09
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

Are all classic movies old movies?  Must they be old to be classic? How old? Can a movie be a classic without being old?

Hello everybody.  Joe Morella and Frank Segers, your classic movie guys here again.

Today we are putting on our tattered philosophical hats, such as they are, and rooting around in some deep semantic waters. Stay with us.  There is a point to all this.

The questions — Does old equal “classic”?  Does classic equal old?

Well right there you have fodder for several all-nighter discussions. And you’d still be left without answers.

We believe that while “instant” classics do occur — Francis Coppola’s first “The Godfather” comes to mind as a rare example. (For example, we bet you could identify the above captionless photo,  both actor and movie title, with little or no difficulty.) Nonetheless, the vast majority of movie classics have to have aged a bit (sometimes quite a bit), rattling around in your minds and esthetic psyches.

As we have often pointed out, a movie warrants the coveted “classic” designation because it weathers beautifully over years, providing visual pleasure, emotional drive and excitement to audiences over several generations.

So by that standard, yes indeed, a movie must age before being considered a classic.

Not many movies, but more than you might suspect, can meet that qualification.  Often a picture is declared a “classic” by over-enthused critics the instant of its initial release. Then, when seen a decade or two later, it plays flat and dated.

An obvious example is 1969′s “Easy Rider,” which made Jack Nicholson a star (can you name the movie’s other two co-stars?).  Hailed 42 years ago as an low-budget ground breaker about alienated youth, “Easy Rider” is tough to take seriously today (despite its appealing soundtrack).

It illustrates a cardinal rule that movies closely tracking the zeitgeist of their times run the real risk of dating themselves when times change.

A movie classic must, in our view, be timeless, not necessarily timely. The actors and actresses must visually be as striking now as they were then.  The plot and the acting must not seem a function of period, as when hammy, over-reaching stage-trained actors were laughed off the screen when talkies were introduced in late 1920′s. Does anyone yearn to watch a John Gilbert movie today?

The British film journal, Sight & Sound, is currently preparing for its 2012 poll of international critics about which title is the world’s greatest film.  Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” has most often emerged at the top of the heap in previous polls, and no wonder.  A movie classic if there ever was one.

The folks S&S occasionally do some heavy thinking about “classics”and what makes them so. Editor Nick James offered some interesting points in this regard in the February issue. He reported that the British Film Institute’s Classics Book Series rules that a movie should be AT LEAST 10 YEARS OLD to qualify.

Writes James: ”Each re-viewing (of a classic) offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first. Yet even when we see the film for the first time, it gives us a sense of seeing something we have seen before….The films never exhaust all they have to say.  They come to us bearing an aura of previous interpretations , and trailing behind them the traces they have have left in the cultures through which they have passed.”

We agree.  Now what’s your definition of a classic?  And how old must a movie be before qualifying?

 

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BRANDO FATTER AND FATTER

May27
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

 

MARLON BRANDO – FATSO

Morella and Segers back again with more dish on Marlon Brando and his weight problems.

By the 1960’s when Brando was in his 40’s he took to wearing a poncho in hot weather to conceal his by then flabby body.

In Brando’s autobiography (“Brando: Songs My Mother Taught Me,” written with Robert Lindsey), the actor writes that he developed a love of fattening foods because “when I was a kid, I’d come home from school to find my mother gone and the dishes in the sink. I’d feel low and open the icebox, and there would be an apple pie, along with some cheese, and the pie would say: ‘C’mon, Marlon, take me out. I’m freezing in here. Be a pal and take me out, and bring out Charlie Cheese, too.’ Then I’d feel less lonely.”

Well documented is Brando’s girth upon arriving in the Philippines to shoot his memorable cameo in Francis Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”

Eleanor Coppola’s “Notes,” the director’s wife’s book about the making of the film, records the shock of the director and crew at how overweight Brando was. Considerable measures were made necessary to conceal his girth during the shooting. One estimate is that he weighed 250 pounds minimum at the time. No wonder Brando as the unhinged Colonel Kurtz is photographed from the neck up in darkly lit scenes.

By this time, Brando was 55, and the die was cast for the rest of his life.  He was apparently resigned to his obesity much as another cinematic figure — also declared a genius very early in his career – was in his final years.

“Think of Orson Welles,” author David Thomson has said, “a midwesterner too, who lost his mother when he was nine, an orphan by sixteen, brilliant, far smarter than Brando.  And somehow when he had ‘Citizen Kane’ on one arm and Rita Hayworth on the other, he ate himself to a size where he could not always get out of a limousine.”

At least Welles had the excuse that he dined on irresistible haut cuisine served in Europe for much of his middle career. By contrast, stories abounded that Brando late in his life would arrange to have sacks full of McDonald’s cheeseburgers delivered to his rambling, multi-structure spread high in the Hollywood Hills.

The only conclusion we can reach about all this:  put a highly self-indulgent genius, a taste for the most un-nutritious food and, most importantly, no one around to say “no” and mean it, it’s a wonder Brando made it to 80.  The cause of his death was reported as respiratory failure compounded by congestive heart failure, diabetes and liver cancer.

Still in all, fat or not, Brando left an enormous mark.  As Joe and co-author Edward Z. Epstein wrote in their 1971 book, “Rebels: The Rebel Hero in Films,” the actor’s “impact as a rebel and as a movie star was so great that no other actor of the fifties and sixties could escape comparison.”

YESTERDAY’S PIC: Brando the hunk.  Today’s photo shows the more mature actor. We just couldn’t bear to run a picture of the really obese Marlon Brando.  Let’s remember him in one of his 50′s films, shall we?

 

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Was Joseph Cotten the THIRD MAN?

May12
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

 

Who exactly was the third man?  Not Cotten, he was looking for the third man.

Hello everybody.  Morella and Segers here at the old stand.

You may not know this but British director Carol Reed’s  1949 classic “The Third Man” was meant to end happily.  At least that’s what the producers wanted. Reed had another idea, and thus a bit of film history was made.

You remember the ending.  It’s set in a Vienna cemetery on a raw, bitingly cold day.  Joseph Cotten as “honest, upright” Holly Martins stands in the foreground while a woman in the distance strides purposefully toward the camera. She is Italian actress Alida Valli portraying the mistress of villain Harry Lime (Orson Welles), who has just been buried. The impression is that the woman and Martins will somehow connect in a romantic finale. At least, that’s how the producers saw the ending.

Here’s how Cotten remembered that scene years later: “The hero (Cotten), smoking a cigarette, was standing in the foreground waiting for her. Like the audience, he was confident she would join him, and they would stroll away happily together, arm in arm.

“Valli walked on and on, closer and closer, until at last she was a life-sized figure in the foreground with the hero. And then, without turning her head, or even glancing in his direction, she continues her steady pace, out of the shot and into limbo.”

At the time of filming, Cotten had no idea “The Third Man” would end this way.  He wrote that “I remained there (in the scene), as directed.  My eyes followed Valli out of the shot…Nobody uttered a word. The camera kept rolling. The special effects men from their high perches continued to drop toasted autumn leaves from above.

“I continued to puff on my cigarette, and began to get quite panic-stricken. Was there more to the scene? Had I gone blank? What was Carol waiting for me to do? I took one more puff, then in exasperation threw the cigarette to the ground, at which point Carol shouted through his laughter the word I had been waiting desperately to hear — ‘CUT.’”

Cotten didn’t know it then but he had just completed one of the greatest single scenes in one of the greatest classics ever made.  ”The Third Man’s” bitter-sweet ending runs worldlessly for about 90 seconds, a long time onscreen when nothing is said and there’s little action. Anton Karas’ signature zither music plays poignantly on the soundtrack. That’s it.

“King Vidor, one of our cinematic giants, always said that in the history of films, every great moment that shines in memory is a silent one,” Cotten wrote in ” Vanity Will Get You Somewhere,” the actor’s excellent 1987 autobiography.

Born in rural Virginia in 1905, Cotten came from a well-off Southern family (his father wanted him to join Uncle Benny’s banking business).

From an early age, he was determined to become an actor, and eventually worked his way up to starring roles on Broadway in the early Thirties. He joined lifelong friend Orson Welles in the Mercury Theater, and it was Welles who brought Cotten to Hollywood to take on the role theater critic Jed Leland in “Citizen Kane.”

The association continued with 1942′s “The Magnificent Ambersons” and in 1943′s Journey Into Fear,” which Cotten wrote with Welles based on the Eric Ambler novel. Cotten also worked with Welles in a cameo part as a drunken coroner in 1958′s “Touch of Evil,” and in a small part in the director’s 1974 late-career film, “F for Fake.”

In addition, Cotten starred in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1943 classic, “Shadow of a Doubt,” playing young Teresa Wright’s cold, murderous Uncle Charlie. As film writer David Thomson notes, Cotten’s “best performances are in parts outside Hollywood conventions.” In all, he appeared in 66 films over a 40 year period, from the classics mentioned here to studio generated disaster movies (“Airport 77″) and worse.  Our recommendation is to catch Cotten’s work in four solid films: George Cukor’s 1944 “Gaslight” with Ingrid Bergman; King Vidor’s 1946 western outing, “Duel in the Sun” with Jennifer Jones; with Jones again in William Dieterle’s”A Portrait of Jennie” in 1949; and in Robert Aldrich’s “Hush, Hush…Sweet Charlotte” in 1964 with Bette Davis and Olivia DeHavilland.

By the end of his career in the early 1980′s Cotten was appearing in string of very entertaining horror movies with titles such as “Screamers” and ‘The House Where Death Lives” (his last movie in 1981).  Factoid:  Cotten was also part of the large cast in one of the most influential box office bombs in movie history, Michael Cimino’s disastrous “Heaven’s Gate” (1980).

Offscreen, Cotten was married twice, the second time to actress Patricia Medina (check out her great performance as a floozy in Orson Welles’ 1955 “Mr. Arkadin,” a big favorite of Frank’s). The union was a happy one, lasting until Cotten died of multiple health problems (including a stroke) in February 1994.  He dedicated his autobiography to Medina — “For Patricia, who is my world.”

The actor took a rightful measure of pride for being the star of films that three of the greatest directors who ever walked this earth — Welles, Hitchcock and Carol Reed — singled out as their finest work.


 

 

 

 

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Chat about Classic Movies –JANE EYRE

May09
2011 Leave a Comment Written by classicmovieguys

 

Hello Everybody, Those men are here again — Joe Morella and Frank Segers.  Today we have a guest review.  Daniela Gioseffi, of Brooklyn Heights has rediscovered the classic film “Jane Eyre” and wants to share her thoughts with us.

“The 1943 classic film, Jane Eyre, directed by Robert Stevenson and starring Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Margaret O’Brien, Peggy Ann Garner and Elizabeth Taylor is brilliantly done and wonderfully acted. Orson Welles as the estate owning horseman who falls in love with the young governess, Jane Eyre, gives a sterling performance that holds up well today, as does Joan Fontaine’s as the heroine. It is a brilliant old classic and better than the newer films based on the 19th century novel by Charlotte Bronte. Was Orson Wells ever so tall, handsome, and attractive?  Fontaine was excellent as the humble heroine of stalwart character, and able, like Vanessa Redgrave, to communicate worlds of emotion with her facial expressions. ElizabethTaylor was an adorable young child actress in the film, thoroughly appealing in her role as Jane’s boarding schoolfriend. One understands why the film still holds a four star rating.”

Thanks for your take on it, Daniela.  How about you others out there?  Agree with her? Violently disagree?  Let’s hear from you.

We hope many more of our readers will share their thoughts with us. Tell us about the old films you love, the ones you hate…and WHY. Just  email us at “classicmovieguys@cox.net.”

Now, another answer in our recent quiz.

 

 

QUESTION: Bogart had four wives, all actresses.  Who were the last two? (We are being merciful here about the identity of wife number four. You should have no trouble naming her.)

ANSWER: Bogart sprinted through his first two marriages within a decade. His 1926 marriage to Helen Mencken lasted a year. His subsequent, nine-year union to Mary Philips ended in 1937. Wife number three, nicknamed “Rosebud,” was the better-known actress, Mayot Methot, popular for a while in second lead movie roles often as that “other woman.”  Both Methot and Bogie were heavy drinkers, and given to brawling. Director John Huston, a lifelong Bogie pal, described Methot as “forever ‘on stage’ – raucous and demanding. She was known to throw plates in restaurants and wield knives. I can only marvel at Bogie’s putting up with her as long as he did.” In his mid-40’s, Bogie, starring in Howard Hawk’s “To Have and Have Not” in 1944, first met his 19-year-old costar, Betty Perske — otherwise known as Lauren Bacall. Their marriage, one of Hollywood’s legendary unions, began 11 days after Bogie’s divorce from Methot became final in 1945, and lasted until his death at 57 of throat cancer on Jan. 14, 1957.

LAST FRIDAY’S PIC:  Betty Grable, but not from “The Beautuiful Blonde From Bashful Bend.”  Another shot from “Pin Up Girl.”

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