Summer re-views: favourite Sabrina moments

We can always sit down and look at SABRINA one more time - its a perennial Billy Wilder favourite, so 1954 and with that perfect black and white Paramount look. Audrey looks entrancing here, after her ROMAN HOLIDAY. Bogie is fine, maybe a bit too old, while breezy Holden (romancing Audrey at the time, before she chose Mel Ferrer) is just right too. Here are a few favourite moments: 

Audrey up in that tree at the start as the wealthy Larrabees party; her return from Paris all tres-Givenchy; that delicious moment at the party when worried Mrs Larrabee tries to put the family chauffeur's daughter in her place by asking her to come up to the house sometime to cook something delicious for them to show what she has learned in Paris - I love the way Audrey/Sabrina says "Oh, I've learned a lot" ... as she dances off in that dress with Holden, who is engaged to country club girl Martha Hyer who "does not want to spend the first twelve hours of her marriage on a plane, sitting up" - maybe a bit risque for 1954, but another example of the Wilder wit. Then there is Audrey is that little black dress posed against that New York skyline .... as older brother Linus woos Sabrina to ensure the merger with Holden and Hyer goes through. John Williams, Nancy Culp etc are sterling support and it all looks a treat. We love Sabrina's Paris apartment window looking out at Sacre Coeur, as "La Vie En Rose" plays in the background ....

Horst Buchholz

That late '50s was a fascinating period for young European actors, with all the opportunities coming their way in the booming international cinema.

We have mentioned the likes of Delon and Belmondo a lot here - as per their labels - but lets have a look at that interesting Horst Buchholz ...

Other French actors on the rise then included Brialy and Trintignant, Robert Hossein and Jean Sorel (usually in genre films like thrillers), Gerard Blain and Maurice Ronet. Marcello led the field in Italy with Raf Vallone, Renato Salvatori, Vittorio Gassman also prominent. Germany had Hardy Kruger becoming very international (in England's THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY, BACHELOR OF HEARTS, Losey's BLIND DATE, and the French SUNDAYS AND CYBELE and in Hawks' HATARI! with Blain, as well as with Monty Clift in THE DEFECTOR, 1965, and in Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON), while Carl Boehm went from the kitsch SISSI films with Romy, to being Michael Powell's notorious PEEPING TOM in 1960 and he was later in Fassbinder's very gay FOX AND HIS FRIENDS in 1974.

Horst Buchholz (1933-2003) was initially tagged "the German James Dean" due to the punks and teenagers he played in the '50s, as in DIE HALBSTARKEN (1956), which made him a teen favorite in Germany, he did several with Romy Schneider - MONPTI in 1957 is particularly charming, as per my review, (Horst, Romy labels). Being able to speak several languages he was soon in international cinema: in the English TIGER BAY in 1959 before going to America for John Sturges' western THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, as big a hit a you could get at the time, one we loved as kids. Billy Wilder chose him for his Berlin comedy ONE TWO THREE in 1961 - one of my favourite Wilders - and Josh Logan wanted him for FANNY with Caron, Boyer and Chevalier. He then went Indian for NINE HOURS TO RAMA, which we will be re-seeing and reviewing shortly, a drama about the assassination of Gandhi, made in 1962.  
A versatile actor, Buchholz appeared in comedies, horror films, wartime dramas and other genres, but his best work was mostly behind him by the mid-1960s, again like most popular young actors, he had ten good years. THE EMPTY CANVAS was an odd Italian drama he did with Bette Davis. He could have done roles in WEST SIDE STORY and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA and also turned down A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, and continued filming in Europe, later roles included LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL. 
Below, with Romy in MONPTI in 1958.

He had married and had 2 children. Usually reticent about his private life, in a 2000 interview in the German magazine "Bunte" Buchholz publicly came out saying "Yes, I also love men. Ultimately, I'm bisexual. ... I have always lived my life the way I wanted." He explained that he and his wife of nearly 42 years had a stable and enduring arrangement, with her life centered in Paris and his in Berlin, the city that he loved.Their son Christopher Buchholz also an actor and the producer of the feature-length documentary HORST BUCHHOLZ ... MEIN PAPA (2005), has publicly acknowledged his father's bisexuality.

Buchholz died unexpectedly at the age of sixty-nine in Berlin from pneumonia that developed after an operation for a  hip fracture. Its another fascinating career. 
Next up: Gerard Philipe.

Mitchell Leisen, Hollywood Director

"Mitchell Leisen, Hollywood Director" first published in 1973 and reprinted in 1995, by David Chierichetti, is a fascinating return to Hollywood's golden age, from the 1920s onwards. The blurb says: "Mirchell Leisen's lengthy film career which spanned the silents through the advent of television, began in 1919 when he was hired as a costume designer for Cecil B DeMille. In the 1920s he moved up to set design and art direction, and he began directing in the 1930s. As director, Leisen's unique cinematic eye was responsible for such hits as TO EACH HIS OWN, EASY LIVING. LADY IN THE DARK, MIDNIGHT, REMEMBER THE NIGHT, and DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY. His story is a fascinating study of Hollywood's Golden Age." The book also gives an indication of Hollywood's rampant gay and bisexual scene back then ... Amusing stories too on those Leisen was great pals with (Carole Lombard) and those he wasn't (Miss Fontaine). 

My friend Daryl, also says this about Leisen:  "Mitchell Leisen was one of the master directors at Paramount in the 1930s; as a former set and costume designer, his films always had an elegant visual surface, and when that was coupled with a script of some merit, the results were some of the true delights of the period. (It's unfortunate that Leisen's reputation was tarnished by Preston Sturges and Billy Wilder - their anger over what they perceived as his meddling - he often cut the scripts if speeches got too unwieldy - caused them to strike out as writer-directors.)"

Leisen (1898-1972)  is now perceived as one of Hollywood's gay directors, but he was also avidly bisexual, being married and also having a long-time mistress, as well as his relationships with men. His early costume designs for Douglas Fairbanks for ROBIN HOOD and particularly THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD in 1924 are still marvellous now.In 1932 he was assistant director, and did art direction and costumes for DeMille's SIGN OF THE CROSS which I like a lot (see Peplums-1 label). He had to measure up a nude Claudette for her bath in ass's milk which DeMille wanted to come up to her nipples - but the heat of the studio was turning the milk to cheese .... 
Lets have a look at some of his successes:

MIDNIGHT, 1939. Today' guest reviewer, my friend Martin did this review of it on IMDB ten years ago, and sums it up perfectly:

As good as a movie can get. Claudette Colbert is the flapper/gold-digger/chanteuse, (take your pick), who arrives in a very rainy Paris in an evening gown and not much else. She is momentarily rescued from her predicament by a gallant taxi driver, (played gallantly by Don Ameche), with whom she immediately falls in love but from whom she runs as fast as her well-turned-out legs can carry her. She runs straight into the clutches of John Barrymore, (a magnificent comic performance), who saves her bacon, so to speak, if only she will seduce gigolo Francis Lederer who is stealing away Barrymore's wife, the always delectable Mary Astor, and thus save Barrymore's marriage.

This is a French farce of the very best kind, although it is written, not by a Feydeau, but by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett, and directed with supreme elegance by the under-valued Mitchell Leisen. Colbert is wonderful as the wide-eyed chorine, torn between love and riches, Barrymore displays sublime comic timing and Astor is as sharp as a new pin. It feels and looks like a Lubitsch but I doubt if even Lubitsch could better it.

HOLD BACK THE DAWN, 1941. Told in flashback from a preface in which the main character visits Paramount to sell his story - to a director played by Leisen himself. Romanian-French gigolo Georges Iscovescu (Charles Boyer) wishes to enter the USA. Stopped in Mexico by the quota system, his old flame Anita (a doxy on the make) advises him to marry an American, whom he can then desert and return to her, who's done likewise. But after sweeping teacher Emmy Brown (Olivia De Havilland) off her feet, he finds her so sweet that love and jealousy endanger his plans. This is a perfect romantic fantasy where the varied characters have their own stories and motives for what they do. There is that nice very pregnant American lady Rosemary DeCamp (though she is so covered up one can hardly see that she is expecting) who connives to get her baby born on American territory. Olivia again plays a good woman without being cloying - I love that school bus she drives around. She is injured in a trafffic accident after Anita (a terrific turn from Paulette Goddard) confronts her and tells her the truth about how and why gigolo Boyer married her - he then risks all to cross the border chased by the immigration people, to get to her hospital bedside to comfort her and give her the will to live .... does it all end happily? You bet - even Anita lands a new rich patsy.

Wilder and Preston Sturges, in later years, bewailed the havoc Leisen wreaked on their scripts. Painted him as a flamboyant gay aesthete, who preferred décor to drama, party dresses to pithy dialogue. For Wilder, the problem with Leisen was simple. “He was a fag window dresser.”

Ironically, though, MIDNIGHT is a sharper and more stylish satire than Wilder’s dull  LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON (1957). Lacking Wilder’s pervasive sourness and contempt (to the fore in ACE IN THE HOLE, KISS ME STUPID and THE FORTUNE COOKIE), HOLD BACK THE DAWN views its hicks and whores and schemers through a veil of sympathy, suggesting they might have reasons to act as they do.  

Wilder is said to have hated so much what Leisen had done to his scripts – although it’s hard to imagine how anyone could fault MIDNIGHT or HOLD BACK THE DAWN – that he decided to become a director himself so that his scripts wouldn’t, in the future, be ‘butchered’ . "All he did was he fucked up the script and our scripts were damn near perfection, let me tell you. Leisen was too goddamn fey. I don’t knock fairies. Let him be a fairy. Leisen’s problem was that he was a stupid fairy." 
"HOLD BACK THE DAWN, an unlikely tale of redemption, of gigolos and gold diggers conniving their way across the American border from Mexico, would have been unpalatably depressing under Wilder’s direction. Charles Boyer’s and Leisen’s decision to cut a scene in which Boyer, a down-and-out playboy in his seedy hotel room, toys with and confesses to a cockroach, one can only surmise, was a good choice. It was the elimination of this particular scene that stoked most of Wilder’s hatred for Leisen."

I did these reviews here some while back:

Back to 1944 for FRENCHMAN'S CREEK, a costume drama about pirates from a novel by Daphne De Maurier, with her REBECCA star Joan Fontaine. This is now a Spanish dvd: EL PIRATA Y LA DAMA (The Pirate and the Lady), by that interesting gay director Mitchell Leisen. Mexican Arturo de Cordova is the pirate, with hissable Basil Rathbone, dependable Cecil Kellway and blustering Nigel Bruce. 

Joan is the noblewoman who tires of her husband and his decadent friends in bawdy Restoration London and who decamps with her children to her country estate, run by kindly Cecil, in remote Cornwall. She soon finds out that a French pirate moors his ship in a nearby cove and has been using her house and bedroom. They get to meet and have a chaste affair.  She soon enjoys herself dressing up a his cabin boy and getting involved in his pirate activities. 
Then her husband and suspicious Basil turn up as the plot works out to a satisfactory, for its time, conclusion as she has to give up her pirate lover and settle for dull marriage and looking after her children. Joan gives it her all and gets to wear some nice gowns. Arturo and his pirate gang seem a gay lot .... a subtext picked up by my IMDB pal melvelvit, who commented:  "I see what cinema scribes mean when they speak of Leisen's "gay sensibility"; the camera practically caressed Arturo's hairy (unusual for the time) chest and there were lots of lovingly photographed bare-chested pirates" ... A sometimes campy swashbuckler then. Joan's and Basil's fight to the death on the stairs is certainly well done and packs a punch! 

Then there is GOLDEN EARRINGS made after the war in '47 - is it a comedy, a romance or a thriller? perhaps a bit of each then as Ray Milland is on the run in Germany presumably before or during the war and has to depend on gypsy Marlene Dietrich to help him get around the country. Its actually quite amusing as directed by Mitchell Leisen and Marlene is droll in her gypsy makeup and not playing a heartless vamp for once. Bland Milland is dull - the stars did not get on - I read that Marlene sucked the eye out of a fish-head from her her stewpot during his first closeup to disconcert him. Again we get lots of comic Nazis and they do not seem to mind the gypsies roaming around or telling their fortunes - or maybe the gypsies were not being rounded up just then ! You have to laugh at the end: he comes back after the war and there is Marlene with her gypsy caravan and her stewpot as though he had left just a few minutes before...

Leisen continued into the 1950s - I caught THE MATING SEASON from 1951 once on television but it does not seem available at all now, but provided great roles for Thelma Ritter, Miriam Hopkins, and Gene Tierney. We will be looking out for more Leisen films ....  NO MAN OF HER OWN with Barbara Stanwyck sounds an interesting one.

A week of re-viewings ...

Since I went over to Sky Movies recently, a lot more classics have been on tap, its rather nice to settle down once again and see a favourite .... so, before we head off to some new movies - good, and bad - here's another canter through old favourites.

VERTIGO. Theres a special intensity to this 1958 Hitchcock classic, its mesmerising watching it again, noticing how wonderful Barbara Bel Geddes is as Midge, and drowning in that swooning score by Bernard Herrmann, Kim may have been a replacement but is the perfect actress here. At first met by mixed reviews (I remember seeing it as a kid), this tale of an acrophobic ex-detective following a beautiful woman through a dreamy San Francisco, is now revered a a true classic. More on this and that "Sight & Sound" poll at Hitch label ... more Hitch horror in:

THE BIRDS, 1963. I simply never tire of it - every element works, and Tippi Hedren is just perfect here, whereas I do not care for her in MARNIE much at all. The premise of this classic chiller - a town in terror when thousands of birds unite to attack the residents - gets no less terrifying with age. Hitch's third Daphne du Maurier adaptation (by Evan Hunter) creates an atmosphere of muggy dread as the Brenner family board up their house against the invading birds. Visiting socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi) plus Mitch's clingy mother (Jessica Tandy) and sister are trapped - then Melanie goes upstairs .... Bodega Bay looks marvellous and Rod Taylor is just right as the guy at the centre of it all, as the teasing interplay between him and Melanie turns serious. Suzanne Pleshette is terrific too.

Watching BELL BOOK & CANDLE yet again I really like the Zodiac Club, tucked away around the corner, where Hermione Gingold presides over that beatniky offbeat scene and Kim Novak lurks in the shadows while a young Jack Lemmon plays those bongo drums ... its a great 'Christmas in New York' movie too, Kim is at her zenith, its Stewart's last romantic lead and director Richard Quine and ace cameraman James Wong Howe make it look great. Apparantly, as per other posts, gay writer John Van Druten meant the witches to be code for the secret life of gays in 1950s New York ...

SABRINA. A favourite Billy Wilder, enough said? Wilder's films are rather problematic for me - some I revere (SOME LIKE IT HOT will always be in my top 10, as per recent post on it, below and we highly rate DOUBLE INDEMNITY, SUNSET BOULEVARD, ONE TWO THREE) - but others of his I have no wish to see ... this 1954 one is a perfect treat as Audrey comes back from Paris with that Givenchy wardrobe, and starts to romance William Holden, upsetting the family's plans (love her "Oh, I've learned a lot" to Mrs Larrabee, eager to put the chauffeur's daughter in her place) - so older brother Humphrey Bogart (maybe too old, but who cares) steps in, and there's that New York skyline. Martha Hyer scores also as the rich girl eager to marry Holden and who has no desire to spend the first 18 hours of her proposed marriage "on a plane, sitting up"). A witty script and a great cast make this a fine romantic comedy, and it looks great too.

THE PASSENGER. Michelangelo Antonioni made his name in the early Sixties with that great quartet of films featuring Monica Vitti, which included L'AVVENTURA, but this intriguing 1975 anti-thriller is one of his greatest works even if it seems a little pretentious now (I wrote a review of it at the time, when I was 29, for a magazine "Films Illustrated"). It was long out of circulation owing to the intractability of its star, Jack Nicholson - who owned the rights (it couldn't even be shown in full at the 2005 BFI Antonioni retrospective, thankfully the dvd came out not too long after). Jack plays a jaded reporter in Africa, who switches identities with the dead man in the next room at the hotel, and finds himself leading a gun-runner's life .... then there is that amazing ending . More on this at Antonioni and Passenger labels.

THE EAGLE. Kevin MacDonald's 2011 film of Rosemary Sutcliff's popular novel "The Eagle of the North" works surprisingly well - a solid action film capturing the period and providing a tangled interplay of pride loyalty and masculinity. It gives Channing Tatum one of his best roles as Marcus Flavius Aquila, the Roman son in Britain trying to save his father's destroyed reputation, as he and slave Esca (Jamie Bell) head north of the border over Hadrian's Wall to the wild country beyond ... Master and slave find their roles reversed and keeps us guessing. It certainly reboots the Peplum genre.

MARGIN CALL. J C Chandor, assembling a cracking cast for his debut, depicts 36 hours at a fictional Wall Street bank on the eve of the economic meltdown of 2008 (which cost me my job too). Risk assessment manager Stanley Tucci is fired; Zachery Quinto completes his research and makes an alarming discovery. This well-crafted thriller is gripping as panic spreads through the chain of command - Kevin Spacey and Jeremy Irons excel too.

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS. If not quite the masterpiece we were told to expect, Tarantino's pastiche of war films is still rollicking good fun and has all the classic Tarantino ingredients. A celebration of vengance, its an audacious, self-indulgent take on the Second World War. Christopher Waltz deservedly won an Oscar for his incendiary turn as the "Jew Hunter", as Brad Pitt and his men track him down. Love the sequence with the French cinema and Melanie Laurent's plan to do away with the Nazi high command ..... I have been enjoying Quentin's KILL BILL saga too as it re-runs here, and now to tackle DJANGO UNCHAINED  .....  

THE CHARGE OF THE LIGHT BRIGADE. Tony Richardson's 1968 re-telling while not successful at the time, looks marvellous now - great cast, great costumes, bitter irony,and that Victorian era nicely caught. David Hemmings is the ill-fated Nolan, Vanessa Regrave and Jill Bennett are contrasting Victorian ladies - Trevor Howard, John Gielgud and Harry Andrews are the military dunderheads who let it happen ...

A chronicle of events that led to the British involvement in the Crimean War against Russia and which led to the siege of Sebastopol and the fierce Battle of Balaclava on October 25, 1854 which climaxed with the heroic, but near-disastrous cavalry charge made by the British Light Brigade against a Russian artillery battery in a small valley which resulted in the near-destruction of the brigade due to error of judgment and rash planning on part by the inept British commanders .... It may have been a commercial flop, but we liked the look of it at the time, particularly Hemmings in that Hussar uniform - very 1968! More on this at British-1 label. 

Some Like It Hot in 1959

The June 1959 issue of "Films & Filming" (from that batch of 1950s British movie magazines I acquired recently, as per my other reports on them) has a delicious review of SOME LIKE IT HOT which is worth sharing. An acknowledged classic for ages (and for me the best and best scripted comedy ever, I also think Jack and Tony should have shared the Best Actor Award that year, sorry Charlton).- but what did they think of it at the time?  This is by Peter Baker, the then editor of the magazine:

"Oh, those mad, mad Roaring Twenties. The tango bands, the yachting millionaires, the sack look,. Valentino, prohibition, Chicago gangsters ... and Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as the flappiest flappers of them all. As you will gather, SOME LIKE IT HOT is all - and more - than its title implies (with Edward G Robinson's son sending up George Raft, Monroe sending up herself, Curtis and Lemmon sending up each other; and director Billy Wilder sending up everyone).  

The story - and who's really going to worry about a little thing like that? - concerns two band boys, witness of the St Valentine's Day Massacre, who escape the mobsters by becoming band girls on a jaunt to Florida. Josephine ("not tonight") - played by Curtis - plays the sax while Daphne (that's Lemmon) plays for sex. Marilyn ("and there I was sitting on my ukelele") plays sister to them both.

Its when millionaire playboy Osgood (Joe E. Brown, at 67, not looking a day over 40) falls for Daphne and, when he proposes, decides "she" prefers to remain a girl that the campery reaches its climax, if that is not too indelicate an expression, for so fey a confection. (Come to think of it, we are never told Daphne's final settlement as "she" disappears in the night in Osgood's motor launch protesting her manhood to his assurances that he does not expect perfection).

In between, Josephine has time to masquerade as an oil magnate and persuade Sugar (thats M.M. if you didn't guess) to stop playing her ukelele to go on a midnight cruise long enough to help him overcome his Freudian complexes about women. 

If one can be serious about so uninhibited a romp, it is that Wilder lets his joke run on a little too long, and there is not always sufficient edge to the satire. The sense of period is impeccable. It had to be. I doubt if the censor (who must have been driven frantic spotting the double entendres and, on my account, has missed at least six which I suspect would have been cut if he had spotted them!)  would have passed the film in any category if the story took place today, in San Francisco, Brighton, Amsterdam, Paris - anywhere in fact where boys will be boys - and sometimes girls". 

Yes quite fun, reading this from a rather jaded gay 1950s perspective, but no mention of the clockwork perfection of the script with its constant reversals or the great supporting work of Joan Shawlee as Sweet Sue, or Orry-Kelly's costumes, or its gleaming black and white photography (it just wouldn't work in colour) and so much more we love about the film still - and those great scenes and funny moments, 
no wonder Jack's Daphne had to shake those maraccas in the "why would a guy want to marry a guy?" - "Security!" scene (to give the audience time to recover from the last zinger), or the boys having lost their coats to a horse out in the blizzard, or the girls on the train to Florida with that joke about the one-legged jockey, or Sweet Sue's "I want to remind all your daddies out there that every girl in my band is a virtuoso and I want to keep it that way" or the eager bellhop with a pass-key and the hots for Josephine, or Sugar's comment that the diamonds must be worth their weight in gold (she always gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop), and her father being a conductor - on the Baltimore-Ohio! And those delicious musical numbers. Then the older guys guying themselves: George Raft, Pat O'Brien, Mike Mazurki, and Nehemiah Persoff ! 
SLIH used to be a constant television staple here, always screened over Christmas. Curtis and Lemmon in their later years dragged up again too of course for one of the "Vanity Fair" Hollywood issues . Right: Monty Clift visits the set. The young Jane Fonda did as well and remembers (as per her memoirs) seeing M.M. being prepared for a scene and isolated in her stardom. 
Of course 1959 (one of my favourite years) was a great year for movies with lots of classics but BEN HUR swept the board, so Wilder got his Awards next year for THE APARTMENT (which I don't rave about that much, I preferred his next: that zany, madcap ONE TWO THREE! ). SLIH will always be in my Top Ten, but a lot of the later Wilders I just had no interest in seeing - see Wilder label.
Its on television again here tomorrow, I will be looking in again of course. It is forever a gleaming Rolls Royce of a film where every component works perfectly. 
More on it at Monroe, Lemmon, Curtis and Wilder labels.

The taxi driver scores an ace in the hole

Or The Chuck Tatum /Travis Bickle show ...

Watching two searing dramas one after the other left one limp on the sofa. I had not seen Billy Wilder's 1951 ACE IN THE HOLE for years (its before my time obviously, I only started going to the movies in 1954 when I was 8) and maybe only ever saw it once so it was rather unfamiliar to me, whereas we over-dosed on Scorsese's TAXI DRIVER back in 1976, and in that pre-video age, went to it several times and even got the soundtrack album, but again I had not seen it for a long time ...

Chuck Tatum (Kirk Douglas), a ruthless former New York newspaper reporter now trapped in a dead-end job at a New Mexico newspaper, sees his way out by covering the story of a man trapped inside a mine. He sees this as his way back to the big time and New York. When Tatum's first story appears, crowds begin arriving at the mine site to watch the unfolding rescue. Although the man, Leo Minosa, can be rescued in about a day, Tatutm gets the local corrupt sheriff and the mining engineer to prolong the rescue by using a drilling process that will take about a week, thus ensuring that Tatum can milk the story for all its worth, as crowds gather to see what happens. It becomes a carnival as everyone is out to make a fast buck. 

This Wilder film is a dark allegory and he outdid himself in cynicism and savage wit with this assault on the trashy press which was a colossal flop at the time, even changing the title to THE BIG CARNIVAL did not help - Wilder stuck to proven hits and successful plays for most of the 50s after that. Kirk Douglas plays another heel (THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL) and is the man you love to hate. 

Jan Sterling too plays another sneering, trashy blonde, a real hard-boiled number who won't kneel to pray, as it "bags her nylons". She is the trapped man's wife and runs that forlorn diner which does not make any money - soon, though the cash register is ringing as she caters to the crowds arriving - she too wants to get away, as Chuck slaps her around and gets her to act the part of the concerned wife, only he goes too far ... 

The film undoubtedly exaggerates not only the greed of the reporter and of local traders but also ghoulishness of the public. In the end, though, it all backfires on him as the trapped man dies, thus making him effectively guilty of manslaughter, as the public and the media circus leave.  Presumably back then, the heel has to pay for his callousness, it might be a different ending today, as we are used to television cashing in on tragedies ... Co-written by Wilder and Lesser Samuels and Walter Newman, not his usual collaborators. 

TAXI DRIVER. The plot of Scorsese's classic is too well known to go into again, but here it is anyway:

Travis Bickle is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War veteran living in New York City. As he suffers from insomnia, he spends his time working as a taxi driver at night, watching porn movies at seedy cinemas during the day, He is a loner who sees New York as a cesspool. His one bright spot in New York humanity is Betsy, a worker on the presidential nomination campaign of Senator Charles Palantine. He becomes obsessed with her, but takes her to the porn cinema when she agrees to a date with him..He then wants to save Iris, a twelve-year-old runaway and prostitute who he believes wants out of the profession and under the thumb of her pimp, and he may also want to shoot the senator. so the scene is set for a showdown of savage intensity. 

After years of seeing De Niro in lesser movies or movies one does not need to see at all, one forgot how stunning he was in TAXI DRIVER, and of course MEAN STREETS. I particularly like NEW YORK NEW YORK and then there was RAGING BULL and GOODFELLAS, among others (1900, THE DEER HUNTER). 
But Travis Bickle is his iconic role, "God's loney man" the classic loner going out of his mind, whether alone in his room ("You talking to me?"), or his eyes in close-up as he drives that big yellow taxi as the brilliant Bernard Herrmann score plays - and then that final shoot-out. Everyone is excellent here: Jodie Foster, Harvey Kietel, Cybill Shepherd, Peter Boyle, even Scorsese himself in that cameo as the client spying on his wife, and of course Paul Schrader's script. It was the film of 1976 for most of us.  

Audrey / Sabrina

Another joyous look at SABRINA, that Billy Wilder perennial from 1954, cementing Audrey Hepburn's stardom after her ROMAN HOLIDAY sensation of 1953. Here are some comments of mine from a previous review on it:

She has some great looks in SABRINA, where she seems one of the most gorgeous creatures ever put before a camera, whether at the start up in that tree watching the Larabee's party, or on her return from Paris when David Larrabee (William Holden) zooms up to the station to drive her home with her new French chic, or that dress she wears to the Larrabee party, or that black dress with the little hat, against the New York skyline. Is there anything more chic, even after 60 years practically - well of course there is Audrey's look in FUNNY FACE, the whole BREAKFAST AT TIFFANYS thing, the various Sixties looks she adopted for CHARADE (the mustard yellow coat!), TWO FOR THE ROAD, HOW TO STEAL A MILLION, as Givenchy and Edith Head gowned her for those movies, which are still adored today.

I love how in SABRINA (of course Bogart is too old for her, as Linus - but it doesn't matter, just like it doesn't that Fred Astaire could practically be her grand-father in FUNNY FACE) Mrs Larrabee tries to put the chauffeur's daughter in her place at the party by telling her that she must come up to the house to cook something special for them to show them what she has learned in Paris. The way Sabrina says "Oh, I've learned a lot" is perfect ...SABRINA is a marvellous black and white film too, and remains a Billy Wilder perennial. Oddly enough, I hate his other one with Audrey: 1957's LOVE IN THE AFTERNOON, another Audrey in Paris movie and a supposed tribute to Lubitsch, but a collapsed souffle for me, much as I love Gary Cooper he is simply to old with Audrey here and the film is just a damp squib. Billy regained his touch though with his next one - the funniest comedy ever made: SOME LIKE IT HOT. Indeed.

Most tributes to Audrey (like ballet dancer Darcey Bussell's recent television documentary) focus on fashion icon Audrey, but she was a marvellous actress too, as in THE NUN'S STORY, THE CHILDREN'S HOUR, THE UNFORGIVEN, and I loved her later THEY ALL LAUGHED, all at Audrey Label. 

"Closer than that, Walter"

DOUBLE INDEMNITY was on television. I know it well but looking in just as the credits rolled I was reeled in again and sat there fascinated until the last bitter moment. Billy Wilder's hardboiled 1944 noir classic is still a giant of the genre, as scriped by Raymond Chandler. So many marvellous lines to savour.  Barbara Stanwyck has her all-time classic role as Phyllis Dietrichson, that suburban Medusa lying in wait in that dusty 1930s California spanish-style home, to trap some stupid sap insurance man into that plot to kill her husband whom she now despises, after, as it turns out, killing his invalid wife some years previously when she was her nurse. Walter Neff (Fred McMurray is just right here) is just the perfect cocky guy who falls into her clutches, and together they plan their perfect crime. But his associate Barton Keyes (Edward G Robinson) comes to feel his gut reaction that something is wrong with the case. Why didn't the victim make a claim for his injured leg? - maybe because he did not know he was insured for accidents .....

It is a bleak, pitiless world where the lovers meet in that early type supermarket, and oddly, the door to Neff's apartment opens outwards - convenient for when Keyes drops in on Neff, just as Phyllis is about to arrive, and can hide behind the open door .... then the scales fall from Neff's eyes and the lovers meet one last time. She shoots first but can't finish it as she suddenly realises she has feelings after all ... and finally our fatally injured sap tells all into the dictating maching as Keyes arrives and hears all. Walter tells him he could not see who the guy was as he was too close, just across his desk - to which Barton dryly comments that he was closer than that ....

Wilder shot additional scenes of Neff in the gas chamber, but realised they were not needed, just like he did in SUNSET BOULEVARD, his other great classic (apart from SOME LIKE IT HOT and THE APARTMENT) showing Joe Gillis's corpse arriving at the morgue and the other corpses asking him how he got there - but preview audiences laughed at this, so Wilder wisely scrapped it (but its on the dvd extras). But we will always have Phyllis with her ankle bracelet artfully drawing Neff into her web with that sparking talk of a speed limit which Walter was exceeding ..... Play it again ! I may now have to go back and re-see GILDA, LAURA, MILDRED PIERCE, ROAD HOUSE, OUT OF THE PAST, NOTORIOUS, etc .... Black and white '40s noirs, theres nothing like them. 

All those directors !

Following on from the lists of actors and actresses we like, here is the Directors list .... its bigger than I imagined ! 

Michelangelo Antonioni  (right)

Alfred Hitchcock 

Howard Hawks 

Ingmar Bergman
David Lean
Michael Powell
Martin Scorsese

John Huston 

William Wyler 

Billy Wilder 

Joe Mankiewicz 

George Cukor 

Vincente Minnelli 
Josef Von Sternberg 

Orson Welles 

THE REST OF THE PANTHEON: 

Frank Borzage, Preston Sturges, John Ford, Frank Capra, Michael Curtiz, George Stevens, Fred Zinnemann, Alan J Pakula, Sidney Lumet, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman, Michael Mann, Terrence Malick, Charles Walters.

OF THEIR TIME ('50s/'60s): 

Elia Kazan, Stanley Kramer, Douglas Sirk, Frank Tashlin, Otto Preminger, Nicholas Ray, Anthony Mann, Robert Rossen, Martin Ritt, Stanley Donen, John Frankenheimer, Richard Brooks, Jean Negulesco, John Sturges, Blake Edwards, Richard Quine, George Roy Hill, Robert Wise, Robert Mulligan, Richard Fleisher. 

CURRENT DIRECTORS: 

Mike Leigh, Francois Ozon, Pedro Almodovar, Nicholas Winding Refn, Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Quentin Tarantino, Todd Haynes, Bill Condon, Ang Lee, Paul Schrader.

BRITISH: 

John Schlesinger, Joseph Losey*, Richard Lester*, John Boorman, Nicholas Roeg, Ridley Scott, Carol Reed, Clive Donner, Desmond Davis, Tony Richardson, Basil Dearden, J. Lee Thompson, Philip Leacock, Alexander McKendrick, Lewis Gilbert, Ronald Neame [* honorary Brits]  Right: Losey directs MODESTY BLAISE.

EUROPEAN (after Antonioni): 

Federico Fellini, Vittorio de Sica, Roberto Rossellini, Luchino Visconti, Jacques Demy, Agnes Varda, Louis Malle, Jean-Pierre Melville, Mauro Bolognini, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Max Ophuls, Luis Bunuel, Wim Wenders, Francois Truffaut, Rene Clement, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Claude Lelouch, Roger Vadim, Claude Sautet, Julian Duviver, Robert Hossein, Henri Verneuil.
Left and right: Agnes Varda and Jacques Demy.

WORLD CINEMA:

Ozu, Mizoguchi, Ray, Kurosawa, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, Wong Kar-wai, Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

Hitch & Cary