The Art of Cinema #127
The Bowery
(Raoul Walsh, 1933)
for the series:
Art of Cinema
April 30, 2006
A Is For Arbus #15
Jacqueline Susann and husband Irving Mansfield (1969)
for the series:
A is for Arbus
Great Moments in Moxie #6
Ballot Box Bunny
(Friz Freleng, 1951)
for the series:
Great Moments in Moxie
April 29, 2006
April 28, 2006
April 27, 2006
Poets are both clean and warm
And most are far above the norm
Whether here, or on the roam
Have a poet in every home! #6
Sonia Sanchez
for the series:
Poets are both clean and warm
April 26, 2006
The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes #4
In its first few minutes, Part Four of The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes seems headed in an extremely intriguing direction, as Alfred Hitchcock speaks of the lull his career fell into after two of his better films from the early 1930s, Number Seventeen and Rich and Strange, met with commercial failure. He claims not to have been entirely aware of this decline at the time, however; largely because, to hear him tell it, he'd never lost faith in his fundamental skill as a filmmaker. In the end he was rescued from the Hell of projects such as 1933's Waltzes in Vienna through the intercession of Michael Balcon, who'd produced a number of his films in the Silent era. Balcon, he says, refocused his skill in a more useful direction; putting him on the path that would lead to his mid-30s masterpieces The Man Who Knew Too Much, Sabotage, The 39 Steps and Secret Agent. What's intriguing is the tone of gratitude he displays in speaking of his debt to Balcon. He seems on the verge of a rare expression of emotion . . .
And then François Truffaut (who up till this moment has been silent) jumps in with both feet to ask Hitchcock if The Man Who Knew Too Much was really based in part on some incident involving Winston Churchill.
Terrific.
After this classic of cinephile prioritizing grinds everything to a halt, the excerpt, sad to say, is pure Snoresville. Truffaut confuses the British and American versions of The Man Who Knew Too Much, Hitchcock wearily trots out his warhorse theories on screen Suspense (even pointing out by way of understatement that this is not the first time he's gone into this rap), Helen Scott translates with her mouth full (I think they were eating lunch during this part . . . but one never knows), and the Master of Suspense concludes by complaining about Production Designers who think like Interior Decorators.
for the series:
The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes
April 25, 2006
Alida Valli Dead at 85
Alida Valli, who possessed the too-often separate graces of extraordinary beauty and extraordinary talent, passed away in Rome on Saturday at the age of 85. I could have used images from a dozen or more films to mark this occasion (not the least of which being the iconic final scene of Reed's The Third Man; which you'll find in a preceding post), but this image from Luchino Visconti's Senso will more than suffice for that purpose.
Here is the Obituary from today's New York Times.
for the series:
Obits
When Legends Gather #111
Ed Sanders, Tom Waits, Phil Ochs and David Blue share a private joke at a Sanders poetry event in New York City in 1975.
for the series:
When Legends Gather
April 23, 2006
Great Moments in Moxie #5
Ted Williams goes to bat for his favourite soft drink (until they came up with Ted's Root Beer, that is).
for the series:
Great Moments in Moxie
Seminal Image #414
Frau Im Mond
(Woman in the Moon)
(Fritz Lang; 1929)
(Note: lunar landscape by German animator Oskar Fischinger.)
for the series:
Seminal Images
A Is For Arbus #14
Tiny Tim (July, 1968)
I picked this image in commemoration of Rhino Handmade's release of God Bless Tiny Tim: The Complete Reprise Recordings. Available only for a limited time through this special offer.
Do it for Miss Vicki.
for the series:
A is for Arbus
They Were Collaborators #135
Kitten Natividad and Russ Meyer
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
April 21, 2006
Housekeeping Matter #15:
Quo Vadis the Updates, Baby?
Just thought I'd set down a few words of apology to our regular visitors for the general absence of new content the last week or so. You see, I've been staring down the barrel of a writing deadline for the last couple of weeks, and . . . deadlines are simply not my friend. Consequently, I've had little time for anything more than errant, perfunctory additions.
But fret not, dear visitors. Once I've delivered of myself this latest masterwork in the canon of film lterature, a regular stream of wonders (including more Hitchcock/Truffaut installments) will issue forth from these pages.
Until then, I thank thee for thy patience.
Tom
April 19, 2006
April 18, 2006
April 16, 2006
Fun at Bohemian Grove #8
The Bohemians stage another theatrical (1926)
for the series:
Fun at Bohemian Grove
April 15, 2006
Artists in Action #54
They Were Collaborators #134
Dean Martin and John Wayne cook pasta.
(vast thanks to Jeff Duncanson for this Hawksian image)
for the series:
Artists in Action,
They Were Collaborators
April 14, 2006
April 13, 2006
Seminal Image #412
Sama soruja
(Summer Soldiers)
(Hiroshi Teshigahara; 1972)
for the series:
Seminal Images
The Golden Age of Prurience #32
Kitten
(vol. 2, #4; May, 1969)
for the series:
The Golden Age of Prurience
April 12, 2006
When Legends Gather #109
Odetta and Bob Fass
(if you don't know who Bob Fass is . . . you should)
for the series:
When Legends Gather
Seminal Image #410
Footlight Parade
(Lloyd Bacon, Busby Berkeley; 1933)
for the series:
Seminal Images
April 11, 2006
The Women #11
Bebe Daniels
from The New Movie Album: An Autographed Who's Who of the Screen (1931)
"I was born in Dallas, Texas, of theatrical parents. My father, Melville Daniels, was the manager of the theatre of which my mother, Phyllis Griffin was the leading lady. I was playing with Harold Lloyd in the Hal Roach comedies when Cecil de Mille gave me my first dramatic role in motion pictures: a featured part in 'Male and Female.' This was followed by leading roles in 'Why Change Your Wife,' 'Everywoman,' opposite the late Wallace Reid in 'Sick a-Bed,' 'Dancin' Fool' and 'Nice People,' and opposite Rudolph Valentino in 'Mons. Beaucaire.' Paramount then elevated me to stardom.
"Not long after this, talking pictures came into vogue and as my contract was about to expire, I determined to do the thing I had always wanted to do--develop my voice. Mr. William LeBaron, whom I had known at Paramount, gave me a test and as a result signed me to a long term contract for RKO Radio Pictures. Since then I have been starred in 'Rio Rita,' 'Love Comes Along,' 'Lawful Larceny' and other productions. As to nationality, I am of Spanish and Welsh extraction on my mother's side and Scotch and French on my father's. On the 14th of June last year I was married to Ben Lyons."
for the series:
The Women
April 09, 2006
When Legends Gather #108
Alexander Korda, Orson Welles and Vivien Leigh
for the series:
When Legends Gather
April 08, 2006
The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes #3
Part Three of The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes has more going on under the surface than others.
Mostly bracketed by prosaic discussions of 1929's Blackmail and 1930's Murder!, a large and intriguing portion of this excerpt concerns a film few of those who claim to admire Hitchcock have time for, his underrated 1930 adaptation of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock. Hitchcock begins by describing his efforts to render O'Casey's stage play cinematically, then speaks with more than a trace of bitterness over his failure to do so and the film's subsequent commercial success (the latter he seems to find more troublesome). This leads to a discussion of the problems inherent to adapting well-known works from other media, which would be less than compelling were it not for a fascinating point where Francois Truffaut not only laments the fact that Hitchcock never saw fit to adapt Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment to the screen, but comes close to demanding an explanation from Hitchcock as to why he failed to do so.
This is, to understate it considerably, an extraordinary posture from the man who, in Une Certain Tendance du Cinema Francaise (a legendary, poorly-written Cahiers du cinema essay of a decade earlier), inveighed against a film industry in France that routinely churned out screen adaptations of already existing works. Indeed, among the great many strident complaints he levelled throughout the 1950s against the Tradition de la qualité and directors like Jean Dellanoy was that their reliance upon the written word . . . whether it be an adaptation, a detailed screenplay written by someone such as Charles Spaak or Jean Aurenche, or both . . . utterly depersonalized cinema and cruelly diminished the role of the director in its creation. French cinema in those years, he argued, was rife with "literary ambition", and therefore needed a comprehensive change in its values (incidentally I can report firsthand that, within the realm of film writing, "literary" is still not only a greatly undesired condition, but a veritable epithet; the most withering expression of contempt a cinephile can summon). Of course he never lodged a complaint against a similar filmmaking paradigm in Hollywood (in fact, he celebrated it). But that's only contradictory if you fail to remember that his directorial ambitions in the '50s were solely focused on the French, not the American, film industry.
Alfred Hitchcock, who I'm certain never read a word of Truffaut's writing unless it was about himself (why would he, you see), gamely sidesteps the question of adapting Crime and Punishment (a notion he clearly finds idiotic) and moves forward. And in its closing moments the discussion reaches its most extraordinary moment to date:
In the middle of relating the difficulties he had shooting the German-language version of Murder!, Hitchcock takes a swift and subtle detour. "I don't want to discourage you by what I'm about to say now", he begins by warning Truffaut, and then proceeds to point out why so few French directors had ever been able to flourish in Hollywood. Some Germans made it over here; a few stray Hungarians. But Clair and Renoir and Duvivier? They might as well have stayed home for all the good it did them. What quickly becomes obvious from Hitchcock's voice . . . both low and deliberate; an extraordinarily intimate tone of voice he never permitted himself to use in public . . . is that he's not only talking about more than a mere language barrier, he's talking about how an artist survives in an industry on their own terms, as he largely had for over three decades.
It's as if Hitchcock . . . who at this very moment was beginning to undergo the gradual erosion of his creative autonomy at the hands of Universal . . . was saying to Truffaut: 'Look, I can tell from the questions you ask that you have certain ideas about this medium. You think you understand film because you've made a few of them and you have a grasp of its rudimentary aesthetic, and you admire a lot of movie directors like me for all the wrong reasons. But you understand nothing. If you had a tincture of knowledge about what you have to do, what's really required to operate for more than a season or two as an artist in cinema, up here where I am, you and your girlfriend over there would flee from this place in horror and get back to France as fast as the next plane to Paris can take you.'
Hitchcock concludes this excerpt by telling a lame joke older than the medium itself.
Truffaut, true to form, starts laughing before Hitchcock can get to the punch line.
for the series:
The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes
April 07, 2006
The Art of Crime Fiction #9
Rapture Alley
(by Whit Harrison)
(Carnival Books; 1953)
for the series:
Art of Crime Fiction
April 06, 2006
Gene Pitney Dead at 65
The passing of Gene Pitney two days ago would be an unremarkable, though undeniably sad, story were it not for the fact that barely a whisper of it issued from the organs of mass media in this country. This was not some obscure teen idol trafficking in Brill Building obscurities, but a singer of tremendous (if often melodramatic) gift who racked up a sizable number of hit singles in his season of success (he was also, with George Jones, one of the creators of a very strange Country LP, For the First Time! Two Great Singers; recorded in Nashville for the Musicor label in 1965). Yet his passing was bigger news in the UK (indeed, I only heard about it early this morning courtesy of Our Man in London, Richard Gibson) than here . . . and not just because he died in Wales, I suspect.
As we ponder the values of our epoch and listen, as I hope you do, to Pitney's 1964 recording of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's Twenty-Four Hours from Tulsa, here is as good an appreciation as one is likely to find, from yesterday's Times of London.
for the series:
Obits
April 05, 2006
The Art of Jazz #23
This is Our Music
(The Ornette Coleman Quartet)
(Atlantic; 1960)
for the series:
Art of Jazz
Fun at Bohemian Grove #7
Another Bohemian wierdo greets the day (1927).
for the series:
Fun at Bohemian Grove
