When Legends Gather #301
Sen. John F. Kennedy, Gore Vidal and Tennessee Williams
for the series:
When Legends Gather
September 30, 2007
R is for Rogovin #3
Storefront Churches: Woman Playing Washboard (1958)
for the series:
R is for Rogovin
September 29, 2007
Adventures in European Filmmaking #32
Today's Adventure: Luis Buñuel directs Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour (1967)
for the series:
Adventures in European Filmmaking
Seminal Image #733
Los Olvidados
(aka The Young and the Damned aka The Forgotten Ones)
(Luis Buñuel; 1950)
for the series:
Seminal Images
They Were Collaborators #368
Catherine Denevue and Luis Buñuel
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
Seminal Image #732
Las Hurdes
(aka Terre Sans Pan aka Land Without Bread)
(Luis Buñuel; 1933)
for the series:
Seminal Images
September 25, 2007
A Is For Arbus #43
Philadelphia fashion maven Mrs. T. Charlton Henry
(1963)
for the series:
A is for Arbus
The Friends of Milt Hinton #5
Johnny Hodges enjoys a cold one at Beefsteak Charlie's in 1960.
for the series:
The Friends of Milt Hinton
September 24, 2007
They Were Collaborators #366
Billie Holiday and Coleman Hawkins
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
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! #23
Carl Sandburg
for the series:
Poets are both clean and warm
in the art deco style #3
Willem van Konijnenburg, Vier kinderliedjes zj
for the series:
in the art deco style
September 23, 2007
The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes #13
There were times – thankfully not many – when Alfred Hitchcock was moved to make a film solely to explore a technical gimmick that caught his fancy or to solve some purely cinematic problem.The most famous of these instances, 1948's Rope demonstrated just how disastrous such indulgences could be (in Technicolor, yet); for despite his oft-retailed and successfully marketed pose as the Master of Suspense, totally preoccupied with the mechanics of his craft (and then only for the purpose of manipulating audiences), Hitchcock's more everlasting creations carried what was at least an equivalent interest in matters beyond their physical production. But explaining to an interviewer the forces that drove intensely emotional works like Vertigo, or his 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, would not have been an easy thing to do (assuming for the moment that such things can even be expressed); explaining them to hero worshippers like François Truffaut was a doomed enterprise from the start. It was better, safer, far less strenuous to pretend he only cared about montage and Macguffens.
It was, if nothing else, one way of staying alive in the hopeless minefield of Hollywood.
The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes make a limp return to this blog with a discussion of that "microcosm of the War," 1944's Lifeboat, a film whose existence Hitchcock freely admits was inspired by the challenge its rather limited and claustrophobic setting posed. And for once it's easy to take him at his word, because regardless of how many defenders it has among the faithful, Lifeboat has almost nothing going for it, being an apallingly simplistic wartime fable – with none of the rude emotional power that often drives such primal narratives – populated by one tiresome stock character after another. What else could have attracted him to the project? So taken was Hitchcock with surmounting the technical issues inherent to a film set entirely within the confines of a lifeboat, in fact, that he seems blissfully unaware (even in 1962) of just how hackneyed John Steinbeck's story and Jo Swerling's screenplay really were.
True to form, François Truffaut applauds Hitchcock's labor on one of the worst films he had ever put his name to (while noting the rather limited dimensions of its human landscape), declaring it (get this) "psychological" and highly "moral" . . . this from someone who during the war frequently professed his admiration for Vichy's original old goat, Marshall Petain.
A discussion of Lifeboat's largely negative critical reception . . . and Hitchcock's brief return to Britain to make two wartime propaganda films (Aventure malgache and Bon voyage) . . . leads into a somewhat tedious footslog through 1945's Spellbound.
for the series:
The Hitchcock/Truffaut Tapes
Marcel Marceau dies at 84
Marcel Marceau in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie.
The Associated Press obituary can be found here. No word on if he'll be buried in a glass box.
for the series:
Obits
Collect 'Em All #37
Cary Grant
No. 22 in a series of 50 from Player's Navy Cut Cigarettes
Archibald Alexander Leach was born in Bristol, January 18th, 1904. At the age of twelve, his adventurous disposition prompted him to run away and join a travelling acrobatic troupe, but a month later his father found him, and he returned to school. Later he ran away again, and toured England with a theatrical company. Then he went to America, and after appearing in stock companies, won fame on Broadway and adopted his present name. A visit to the Paramount studios resulted in a contract. His latest films include Thirty-Day Princess, Kiss and Make Up, Enter Madame and Ladies Should Listen.
for the series:
Collect 'em All
When Legends Gather #297
Nat King Cole tickles the ivories while Errol Flynn tries to remember the words.
for the series:
When Legends Gather
Art of the London Underground #25
Lambing by Clare Leighton; 1938
for the series:
Art of the London Underground
Through the Lens of Cyril Arapoff #13
A second-hand carpet stall. Before the Second World War the Caledonian was the largest and most popular street market in London.
for the series:
Through the Lens of Cyril Arapoff
From the Sketch Book of Lawson Wood #20
The Harbinger
Station-Master-Porter-Clerk (to impatient passenger): "It'll be getting near now, sir; here's the engine-driver's little dawg a-comin' down the line!"
for the series:
From the Sketch Book of Lawson Wood
From the Southern Travellers Handbook for 1965/66 #8
Third-Class passengers
At one time there were also 'third class' carriages which were not only windowless but roofless as well...
...The rattling pig-pens on wheels, misnamed third-class carriages (before the late alterations) were despicable affairs, with the wonderful property if always meeting the rain in whatever quarter the wind might be blowing. They were a species of horizontal shower-bath, from whose searching power there was no escape.
for the series:
From the Southern Travellers Handbook for 1965/66
September 22, 2007
Adventures in European Filmmaking #31
Today's Adventure: Jean Cocteau directs a scene in La Belle et la bête while the crew watches (Beauty and the Beast; 1946).
for the series:
Adventures in European Filmmaking
They Were Collaborators #365
Alfred Hitchcock and James Stewart
for the series:
They Were Collaborators
September 20, 2007
they were an item #16
Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles board a plane in 1946.
for the series:
They Were an Item
September 19, 2007
Adventures in American Filmmaking #84
Today's Adventure: Lewis Milestone discusses the merits of camera mobility
with the cast of Ocean's Eleven (1960)
for the series:
Adventures in American Filmmaking
Newspapermen #19
Artists in Action #259
When Legends Gather #295
Brooks Atkinson hands Maxwell Anderson the 1935 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award
for the series:
Artists in Action,
Newspapermen
The Greatest Hits of John Tenniel
(with The Reverend Dodgson) #5
‘You are old,’ said the youth, ‘as I mentioned before,
And have grown most uncommonly fat;
Yet you turned a back-somersault in at the door—
Pray, what is the reason of that?’
‘In my youth,’ said the sage, as he shook his grey locks,
‘I kept all my limbs very supple
By the use of this ointment—one shilling the box—
Allow me to sell you a couple?’
-- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
for the series:
The Greatest Hits of John Tenniel (with The Reverend Dodgson)
September 18, 2007
(Major) Housekeeping Matter #23:
Welcome, Kimberly Lindbergs!
I've been wanting to write this for weeks, since the idea first came to me, and now I can. I have to confess I'm immensely pleased . . . as pleased as at any point during the almost three-year life of this blog . . . to welcome Kimberly Lindbergs as our fourth official contributor here at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . . . Kimberly, as many of you know, is author of the exceptional blog Cinebeats: Confessions of a Cinephile; more crucially for this endeavour, she has a remarkable eye for images (something fully attested to by her contributions to our week-long Guest Contributor fiesta last month). But perhaps most important of all, she gets what we're doing here. I'm confident I'm speaking for my co-conspirators in saying that this is something we can't value highly enough 'round these parts.
So please join us . . . and the 16th President of the United States here pictured . . . in raising a toast to our newest member!
A somewhat unrelated side-note in closing: I'd like to thank all of you who wished me your best, both publicly and privately, during my recent stretch of infirmity. Most of all I want to thank Senor Cooke and Senor Gibson for holding up the standard, as it were, the last ten days. In a few weeks I'll have to take another (hopefully shorter) leave of absence, but I have every expectation that Stephen, Richard and (now) Kimberly will fill in every bit as admirably.
Damn, but this is a good turn of events!
for the series:
Announcements
September 17, 2007
Women of Paris #5
Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith (aka Bricktop)
for the series:
Women of Paris
