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

London, 1965: Bunny Lake is missing

Ann Lake has just moved to London with her daughter, Bunny. When she goes to retrieve her daughter after the girl's first day at school, no one has any record of Bunny having been registered. When even the police can find no trace that the girl ever existed, they wonder if the child was only a fantasy of Ann's. When Ann's brother backs up the police's suspicions, she appears to be a mentally-disturbed individual. Are they right? 

Missing children stories crop up regularly - there is a current one here in England. Otto Preminger's 1965 thriller is an interesting variation on this newspaper staple - is there really a missing child? Who is making it appear as if the mother is mentally unbalanced?  The solution here is rather too obvious and we spend too long with one of our leads in mad mode ... but its a great cast and has some good London locations. Just like John Ford used London for his GIDEON OF SCOTLAND YARD thriller 1958, now Otto choose Hampstead - the posh part - and another great cast of British regulars for his thriller. Spot them all here:  Anna Massey, Finlay Currie, Richard Wattis - even the smallest parts are filled by the likes of Fred Emney, Victor Maddern, Delphi Lawrence, Suzanne Neve, Lucie Mannheim, Megs Jenkins etc. 

Carol Lynley is the distraught mother after not being able to find her daughter at the school where nobody seems to know anything about the child, Keir Dullea is her concerned brother, whizzing around London is his sports car. They are Americans new in London. The selling point here is Laurence Olivier as the police detective, looking more or less like himself (this was the era when he was blacking up for OTHELLO, KHARTOUM etc) and its a role he plays perfectly as he begins to doubt if there really is a child, as all her belongings and passport have also vanished and there is nobody who has actually seen Bunny. 

There are some interesting red herrings too: Martita Hunt (Miss Havisham, that was) is the retired head of the school with her tape recordings of childrens' bad dreams, while Noel Coward potters around as the rather decadent landlord. Interesting seeing old pals Olivier and Coward here, and Larry's scene with Richard Wattis reminds one of their scenes in THE PRINCE AND THE SHOWGIRL ... That 60s pop group The Zombies are seen on a pub television. The ending is rather protracted but of course the police arrive in the nick of time, and yes there really is a Bunny, but I can't reveal more.

Lee Remick & Keir Dullea BUS STOP, 1976

Carol Lynley probably has her best role, and this was the movie where Coward made that witty comment: "Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow". Keir though had a rather good career - in several offbeat movies including that 1969 piece of trash DE SADE (review Trash label), and of course 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY will play forever (its his co-star there Gary Lockwood who has disappeared). I saw him on stage too as that annoying cowboy (above) opposite Lee Remick's Cherie in BUS STOP here in London in 1976 (Lee Remick label). BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING though is quite a good thriller, as scripted by John and Penelope Mortimer. Otto went on to HURRY SUNDOWN next - we will have to re-see that at some stage too.

Advise and Consent, 1962, and that Sergeant ...

1962! - is it really 50 years ago? I was 16 and mad about movies, books and magazines and music; I see my 16 year old nephew now just as mad about his computer games and all his gadgets - he had his own laptop and internet since he was 15, I just had the radio and the two local cinemas and bookshops and library ... see 1962 label for other posts on that fascinating year - of course there is Marilyn's 50th anniversary too...

 One of 1962's big hitters, Otto Preminger's ADVISE AND CONSENT remains a fascinating re-watch now. Its from one of those important novels of the time by Allen Drury, purporting to take the lid off American politics and the inner workings of the Senate.  It was the ideal subject for Preminger after the success of ANATOMY OF A MURDER in 1959 (somehow his EXODUS in 1960 just does not do it for me), and is another great black and white film with good scope compositions and that fascinating cast: Henry Fonda as the proposed Secretary of State who may have communist leanings, Charles Laughton (his last role) as the wily Southern senator Seb Cooley trying to smear him, Walter Pidgeon has a good roles as the Senate Majority Leader, along with Peter Lawford, Gene Tierney (Otto's LAURA) as an elegant Washington hostess, Franchot Tone as the ailing President and Lew Ayres as the Vice President, Burgess Meredith and Don Murray as the blackmailed senator Brig Anderson with Inga Swenson as his uncomprehending wife.

"Films & Filming", October 1962 -
click to enlarge

What is fascinating now is that Anderson, as President of the Senatorial sub-committee considering the nomination of Leffingwell (Fonda), is being blackmailed [by Cooley's minions] over a gay relationship during his youth in wartime Hawaii - will the ambitious young senator crack under the pressure? Instead he goes to New York and tries to reason with his old army buddy, so we get that gay bar - maybe the first in a mainstream American film? - with those shadowy denizens of this strange underword; we see the senator recoil in horror and flee in a taxi, leaving his ex-pal lying in the gutter ... we soon realise due to the music and shadowy camerawork that the senator has only one solution open to him, and that involves an open razor ...

Cooley and the others are left to sort out the mess as the film shows the workings of U.S. politics and seems to be shot in the real locations.  It is a very ambitious and entertaining work with a large cast, and certainly one of the best of that great year 1962. (see label).

The advertising tried to make it more sensational ...

More '60s gays: by 1967 Marlon Brando was giving us his closeted army major deep in the American south in Huston's REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE where he is married to deep south gal Elizabeth Taylor but hankering after that soldier who goes horseriding naked in the woods .... then Rod Steiger as another frustrated sergeant in, yes, THE SERGEANT, is that lonely man in an army base in France who does not realise how much he yearns for soldier John Philip Law until he fumbles a pass at the horrified soldier, so he has to go and shoot himself. Getting back to critic Pauline Kael again, as she said at the time: Rod Steiger chases after John Philip Law so long that when he grabs him and kisses him its the climax of the picture. Then Law slugs him and Steiger goes out and shoots himself, and that's it. If Steiger had grabbed Law and been rebuffed an hour and a half earlier, he could have said "All right, so I made a mistake", and maybe the picture could have gone on and been about something. Everyone is so "normal" here that only a monster could have such aberrant impulses. Except for the Sergeant's there is no passion or sexuality of any kind in this sterile movie (directed by John Flynn) .... A repressed homosexual seems to be outside his (Steiger's) range; he keeps his face prissy, with his lips pursed - does playing a homosexual paralyze him as an actor? He gives such a tense, constricted performance its almost as if he didn't want to convince anybody. He never looks at Law with love (he looked at Poitier with more affection in IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT) ... THE SERGEANT is so insufferably "tasteful" that ironically it has less homosexuality in it than many movies have had unconsciously due to casting or indifference ...

ADVISE & CONSENT

Frank Sinatra too as THE DETECTIVE in 1967 goes after that murderer of a swishy guy picked up in a luridly depicted (no black and white shadows here, but Fox scope and colour) bar - the malicious gay guy of course taunts the repressed married man who goes berserk and bashes him with an ashtray; the other gays are all lonely oddballs whom the cops despise and treat like dirt.  By 1968 though Steiger had loosened up enough to have fun with his gay hairdresser in NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY - one of the many disguises he used to murder lonely widows (Rod Steiger label). Its a hilarious treat and George Segal and Lee Remick are a perfect late '60s couple, as were Steve and Faye in THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. Then '69 gave us the dreadful STAIRCASE where Donen, Burton and Harrison were way off key - it was quite a good play on stage actually.

[Law too, who died aged 70 in 2008, had his 10 good years from the mid 60s - with Faye in Otto's HURRY SUNDOWN and Euro-fare like DANGER: DIABOLIK and of course Pygar the blind angel in BARBARELLA ... and trash classic THE LOVE MACHINE in 1970 (Trash label)].

The gals didn't fare so well either: Shirley McLaine as Martha Dobie in THE CHILDREN'S HOUR (or THE LOUDEST WHISPER), Wyler's second film of Hellman's THESE THREE, has to hang herself when she realises she really does love Audrey Hepburn - while in '67's THE FOX Keir Dullea's woodman comes between Anne Heywood and Sandy Dennis, also with fatal results ... but the '70s and liberation were just around the corner. Vito Russo's book and the film of THE CELLULOID CLOSET has all the details and lots more ....

ADVISE AND CONSENT remains a fascinating movie - THE SERGEANT played on TCM here a while back but I couldn't bring myself to look at it again, and Preminger's next one, tackling religion, THE CARDINAL from 1963 gets a re-run this Saturday - it could be another rainy afternoon movie here, not least of its attractions being Romy Schneider in one of her early American films as The Cardinal's love interest ...

The '40s

A quick look at some choice '40s items .... left is the programme for a season of '40s films by the London National Film Theatre in 1971 - this would have been 21 years after the '40s finished, I was 25 then so of course wouldn't have remembered the '40s (my cinema-going began in 1954 when I was 8), but for older people in 1971 looking back at the '40s must be like us recalling the films of the '80s now ... [this NFT season is itself almost 40 years old now! - how quickly decades fly by...]

Looking at the programme it aims to capture the "flavour" of the '40s - what people went to see on a regular basis, as opposed to the classics which are all we see of the '40s today - so it has ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEET THE KILLER and SUN VALLEY SERENADE along with THE PHILADELPHIA STORY and CASABLANCA, LASSIE COME HOME as well as THE MALTESE FALCON, it celebrates Sonja Henie, Ester Williams and Carmen Miranda as well as GILDA (no LAURA or MILDRED PIERCE though...) Bette is represented by NOW VOYAGER, Joan by HUMORESQUE, Stanwyck by BALL OF FIRE, there's LADY IN THE DARK, THE ROAD TO MOROCCO, SULLIVAN'S TRAVELS, THE UNSUSPECTED, MRS MINIVER, MR BLANDINGS, ZIEGFIELD FOLLIES, THE YEARLING, GOING MY WAY, THE LOST WEEKEND, SINCE YOU WENT AWAY, FAREWELL MY LOVELY, WALTER MITTY, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, DUEL IN THE SUN, THE GANG'S ALL HERE and A LETTER TO THREE WIVES among the 40 chosen, so I suppose its quite representative - no DOLLY SISTERS though! Here though are a few recent choice under-rated '40s items which were quite fun to see now:

ESCAPE. This 1940 melodrama seems quite unknown now - directed by Mervyn LeRoy it is one of Norma Shearer's last films and she is not really the lead here and in fact does not feature in the strong central section where Robert Taylor is trying to rescue his mother, a famous actress (played by the famous Nazimova) from a concentration camp where she is due to be executed. It must be one of the first hollywood anti-Nazi films to feature concentration camps. It gets very melodramatic as the mother has to be given a drug to make her seem dead and then the coffin has to be opened by the guards .... the Nazis are shown as a bit dim and the locals are all too terrified to help Taylor who arrives in Bavaria to look for his mother who has disappeared. Norma as the Countess initially offers to help but she too must protect herself, particuarly as her lover is German general Conrad Veidt (practically the same role he plays in CASABLANCA 2 years later) who soon suspects something is wrong. The ending seems rather rushed but its certainly engrossing now - who though is Ethel Vance whose novel it is based on is shown at the start as though it is a major work?

Other early '40s films showing the Nazi menace would include McCarey's oddity ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON in 1942 with Cary Grant having to rescue Ginger Rogers as the American married to general Walter Slezak; Lubitsch of course makes fun of the Nazis in the immortal TO BE OR NOT TO BE, MRS MINIVER shows the plucky Hollywood British, and my favourite: Borzage's THE MORTAL STORM with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan resisting the Nazi menace in Austria in 1940. This is a real charmer and totally engrossing.

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 as though he had left just a few minutes before...

One '40s routine actioner which I loved when I saw it as a Sunday matinee as a kid is the 1942 adventure yarn SON OF FURY - John Cromwell's terrific tale with Tyrone Power in 18th century England falling foul of scoundrel George Sanders and escaping to the South Seas, cue Gene Tierney at her most alluring but Ty has to return with his riches, Frances Farmer as Sanders' daughter is more interested in his pearls, Elsa Lanchester has a touching role, and there is a terrific final duel [Ty had his fatal heart attack duelling again with Sanders in 1958...]. Its all sheer delight and one of Power's best, up there with Flynn's THE SEA HAWK or pirate romps like THE BLACK SWAN or THE SPANISH MAIN.

FALLEN ANGEL - Otto Preminger's 1945 little noir was a treat recently, perfectly capturing that mid-40s Californian small town underworld of diners and rooming houses, as drifter Dana Andrews arrives at that seafront diner where young voluptuous Linda Darnell holds sway over the customers, who include a jealous Charles Bickford. Then there is Alice Faye - odd to see her in a downbeat non-musical black and white role which rather diminishes her - and her severe sister Ann Revere. Mix it all up, include a murder, sit back and enjoy.

ROADHOUSE. I was pleased to see this finally on dvd, its one noir I really liked when saw it as a revival when I was young. Jean Negulesco's 1948 drama is engrossing, tense and exciting and is one of Ida Lupino's best. She is the very hard-boiled chanteuse who arrives at the roadhouse managed by Cornel Wilde whose best pal and boss Jefty (Richard Widmark at his baddest) has hired Ida to sing. Cornel doesn't play ball - Jefty has a habit of hiring dames and Cornel has to get rid of them, but Ida is sensational. A romance follows while Jefty is away, observed by cashier Celeste Holm who of course pines for Cornel. It all gets very tense as Jefty returns and goes predictably over the top and ends with them on the run from berserk Widmark. Its a pleasing late '40s Fox film which really delivers.

The '40s though for me also includes British films - the decade would be unthinkable without those Michael Powell, David Lean or Carol Reed classics, as well as those Gainsboroughs and Ealing comedies. More on those later .... plus De Sica and the Neo-Realists.