Friday, August 03, 2012
Edward Copeland's Top 100 of 2012 (40-21)
Fritz Lang made a lot of good movies, but nothing equaled this tale told in his native language. Peter Lorre made his mark as the hunted child killer in a film filled with atmosphere, suspense and thought.
Kept from the public for years after its initial release, the one plus to its exile was that I experienced this masterpiece of a political thriller — 50 years old this year — for the first time on the big screen in a crisp, black-and-white print. I hope that Jonathan Demme’s misguided idea of trying to remake this classic didn’t sour the original or scare younger viewers away from seeking out Frankenheimer’s version. The 1962 Manchurian Candidate contains many attributes that make it worth recommending, but every film lover must witness Angela Lansbury’s portrayal of Mrs. Iselin, a contender for the top 10 screen villains of all time.
My much-missed dog Leland Palmer Copeland didn’t usually watch TV, but whenever this classic came on, she was drawn to it. One time, Leland even seemed to sit on the couch and watch it from beginning to end. Maybe it was the music, maybe it was the colors. The sad side effect of Leland’s affection for this film that no one truly ever outgrows is that now that she isn’t here to watch it Dorothy and her friends with me any longer, Oz sometimes proves too painful for me to revisit.
No one gives this film the credit for its darkness that it really deserves. This isn't sappy sentimental drivel; this is about a man who feels as if he's been pissed on all his life and finally reaches the end of his rope. James Stewart's talent, Capra's gifts and the script by Frances Goodrich & Albert Hackett make George Bailey's journey plausible and touching. Only a Mr. Potter could hate this film.
Howard Hawks directed John Wayne to his second-greatest performance in this thrilling tale of a cattle drive and bitter rivalries. It also contains the perfect example of a Hawksian woman as Joanne Dru keeps talking, even with an arrow protruding from her body. I feel as if Hawks has slipped some in esteem among the old masters as far as the younger critics out there go. This master of nearly all genres seems long overdue for resurgence.
I wrote in my 2007 list that The Graduate and Bonnie and Clyde constantly swap slots for my choice as the best film of 1967 and damn if they haven’t done it again five years later. One of the many great lines in 2009’s (500) Days of Summer comes when the narrator, in describing Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character, says that an early exposure to sad British pop music and a misreading of The Graduate led him to believe that the search for love always leads to The One. (If I’m still around to make another top 100 in 2019, I suspect you’ll find (500) Days of Summer there — after multiple viewings I believe it’s the 21st century Annie Hall.) Back to The Graduate itself, Nichols’ direction looks better with each viewing and the cast remains remarkable. It’s just that my reaction to the story itself that waxes and wanes. It’s never bad – it’s just that sometimes I find myself loving it a bit less than the last time.
The history of movies doesn’t lack for great teamings of directors and actors and the man who more or less made John Wayne an icon with the way he introduced him as The Ringo Kid in Stagecoach also directed the Duke to his best acting performance here. Wayne always worked as a good guy, but he proved his acting chops when someone inserted an element of darkness into his characters. The Searchers also has proved to be a useful template for many other films, most notably Taxi Driver and Paul Schrader’s Hardcore. Ford brought a lot of great imagery to this story and it arguably contains the greatest closing shot of his long career.
As I foretold a couple notches back when writing about The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde holds the higher esteem in my heart in this snapshot in time. Perhaps it’s a side effect of the journey I took through Penn’s entire filmography following his death, but it’s a great film regardless. Each time I watch it again I become more convinced — harrowing moments of violence aside — this truly plays as much as a comedy as The Graduate. At the time I re-visited it, watching how the Depression-era bank robbers became folk heroes to the masses, the resonance with the destruction 21st century Wall Street bankers wreaked on our nation’s economy was easier to identify with than ever before.
In the 1927-28 contest for "Artistic Quality of Production" at the Oscars, this film faced off against Sunrise and Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness. While Sunrise won and I wouldn’t argue against its status as a superb film (It’s not that far back on this list after all), I admit to preferring Vidor's film and its tale of striving to succeed as everything in the world appears to conspire to keep you down.
There's a good reason that so many cite Robert Towne's screenplay as one of the great examples of writing for film. If only all scripts (including some of Towne’s) were this superb. It remains one of the best examples of a modern noir, filmed in color, as well as Polanski’s best work. Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes came in his unbelievable and unforgettable run of great 1970s performances that began with 1969’s Easy Rider. It also gives us one of the sickest screen villains in Noah Cross, played so well by John Huston. Chinatown always will live on in the pantheon of film’s with last lines so memorable even people who’ve never seen it know the words.
You know 1950 was a great year for movies released in the United States when a picture as great as All About Eve only finishes third on my list for that year (behind The Third Man and Sunset Blvd.). That takes nothing away from All About Eve though with its brittle and brilliant dialogue and multiple great performances, including Bette Davis’ best, Celeste Holm, Thelma Ritter and, most especially, George Sanders as Addison DeWitt.
Death comes in large doses in The Wild Bunch, but its violence, despite Peckinpah turning the carnage into quasi-ballet-like imagery, isn’t what makes the film so remarkable. The film delivers its true eulogy not for its human characters but for the death of an era and a way of life. As with so many of Peckinpah’s great films, too many misunderstood the film’s intent but The Wild Bunch only grows more evocative and timeless with age, thanks in large part to its ensemble of acting veterans who display the film’s themes through every crease and line on their faces. With the recent death of Ernest Borgnine, Jaime Sanchez (Angel) remains the last living actor who belonged to the bunch.
Billy Wilder (like Howard Hawks) had the talent to soar in almost any genre and this quintessential film noir is a supreme example. How it lost the Oscar to Going My Way and Fred MacMurray and Edward G. Robinson failed to get nominations still puzzles me. Wait — no it doesn't. The Academy picks wrong much more often than they pick right. Barbara Stanwyck gave a lot of great performances, but Phyllis Dietrichson may have topped them all — and if she didn’t, the others better look out.
Kurosawa gets routinely mentioned by many as a master (and deservedly so), thanks mainly to his great sword-laden epics, but for me this "modern" film stands high as one of his strongest, telling the sad story of a long suffering bureaucrat who seeks meaning in life when he's diagnosed with terminal cancer. A truly touching, remarkable film.
Has there ever been a more touching image placed on film that the ending of this silent film, made well after silent films were dead, when the newly sighted blind girl realizes her benefactor was a little tramp? I don't think so either.
The film that marked Woody’s leap from pure comedy to something more still stands as one of his very best 35 years later. With a structure that deserves comparisons to Citizen Kane in that you’re never quite sure what comes next that guarantees a perpetual freshness no matter how many times you’ve seen it. Allen threw almost every trick he could think of into Annie Hall — animated sequences, subtitles to translate what characters really thought, split screens (even if they actually filmed scenes in a room with a divider — and produced an instant classic. Diane Keaton delights as the title character, the film overflows with priceless lines and timeless sequences and the first great Christopher Walken monologue.
It's almost become shorthand to argue that Part II bests Part I in The Godfather trilogy, but I disagree. The original still takes the top spot in my book. I don't think the crosscutting of Michael and young Vito ever quite meshes and instead interrupts the rhythm of Part II. No such problem in the original, an example of making a movie masterpiece out of a pulpy novel. Examining the film more closely again earlier this year for its 40th anniversary while I enjoyed and admired it as much as ever, for the first time I had to acknowledge that unlike later mob classics such as Goodfellas or TV’s Sopranos, The Godfather does romanticize the Corleones. You never see innocents suffer from their line of work — Vito even denies they’re killers. It doesn’t change the film’s status as a fine piece of cinematic art, but it did make me think harder about it than I had before.
Many directors deliver great one-two punches in terms of brilliant consecutive films and Lumet pulled off one of the best of them in 1975 and 1976, beginning with this masterpiece based on a true bank robbery. Al Pacino delivers what may be one of his top two or three performances. It also contains the best work of the sadly too brief career of John Cazale and a peerless ensemble. Lumet’s direction aided by the editing of Dede Allen produced one of the most re-watchable films of all time. If I run across it on TV, even cut up, I stay glued to the end.
After more than 70 years, John Huston’s directing debut still sizzles. Watching Bogart embrace his first real role as a good guy exhilarates the viewer as he thrusts and parries with the delightful supporting cast of Mary Astor, Ward Bond, Elisha Cook Jr., Gladys George, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre, Barton McClane and Lee Patrick. What many forget about the film comes in that unforgettable climax that basically consists of five characters talking to each other for nearly 30 minutes — and it’s riveting.
The film that really put Spielberg on the pop culture map remains to me his greatest accomplishment. Two distinct and perfect halves: Terror on the beach followed by the brilliance of three men on a boat. It's also an example of how sometimes trashy novels can be turned into true works of film art in a way great novels usually miss the mark in translation (though Peter Benchley's novel at least killed Hooper off as well leaving nonexpert waterphobe Brody as the victor and sole survivor, which would have made for a slightly better ending but I'm nitpicking).
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Labels: Arthur Penn, Capra, Chaplin, Coppola, Hawks, John Ford, kinpah, Kurosawa, Lang, Lists, Lumet, Mankiewicz, Nichols, Polanski, Schrader, Spielberg, Towne, Wilder, Woody
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Edward Copeland's Top 100 of 2012 (20-1)
Charlie Chaplin was audacious enough to continue making silent films (although he did allow for sound effects and an occasional song) all the way to 1936. In my opinion, he saved the Little Tramp's best for last in this hysterical tale of man vs. the modern age. The comedy is as funny as you'd expect and even more pointed than usual. Since Chaplin knew the Little Tramp was making his swan song, he even let him waddle off into the sunrise. Sound didn't stop Chaplin, who had two great sound efforts to come with The Great Dictator and Monsieur Verdoux. Still, his early works are the most precious gifts. Truly, his silence was golden.
When compiling the 2007 list, I feared it was becoming too Hitchcock-centric, forcing the omission of other great filmmakers but dammit, he made so many films that mean so much to me, it would be dishonest to place a quota on him. In the intervening five years, seeing Strangers several more times only has lifted it in my extreme. Hitch's directing gifts come off at his most stylish and Robert Walker's wondrous performance as the sensitive sociopath Bruno who expects the wimpy Farley Granger to live up to his part of a hypothetical murder deal remains chilling (and darkly funny) to this day. One of the biggest leaps from the last list.
Buster Keaton always shares the title with Charlie Chaplin as one of the two great silent clowns and The General continues to be Keaton’s masterpiece 85 years later. However, while it doesn’t lack for laughs, the film more accurately could be called an adventure than a comedy. The realism of the film’s Civil War setting also proves quite striking and even though Keaton’s character Johnny Gray fights for the Confederacy against the Union, neither side comes off as particularly villainous and the film doesn’t contain the racist elements of something like Birth of a Nation. The film’s humor stems from Johnny’s two loves: his train and the woman he longs for who won’t love him until he joins the war effort, even though he’s been rejected as a fighter because of his skills as an engineer. The General never grows old.
When Mickey (Woody Allen), depressed and suicidal, wanders into a movie theater in Hannah and Her Sisters, it's this inspired mixture of lunacy that brings him back around. After all, who can sit through Duck Soup and not feel better afterward. The question as to which Marx Brothers vehicle was the best got settled a long time ago and Duck Soup won. With its classic mirror scene and the loosest of plots designed to make the insanity of war look even crazier, I never get tired of Duck Soup. Watch it if only for the great Margaret Dumont. Remember, you are fighting for her honor, which is more than she ever did.
As a journalist, His Girl Friday contains one of my favorite nonsequiturs in the history of film. Delivered with frantic panache by Cary Grant as unscrupulous newspaper editor Walter Burns: "Leave the rooster story alone. That's human interest." Oh yeah, this may also be one of the funniest films ever made with rapid fire dialogue, a great sparring partner for Grant in Rosalind Russell and a priceless supporting cast to boot. It's the best remake ever made (and the film it was based on, The Front Page, is pretty damn good too). Making Hildy Johnson a woman and Burns' ex-wife was a stroke of genius. Besides, when you watch any version of this story where Walter and Hildy are both men, it's clear this isn't a platonic working relationship. I don't advise any more remakes (forget Switching Channels, if you can), but I wonder how it would play if the leads were two gay men?
As I wrote when marking the 100th anniversary of Reed's birth (forgive my self-plagiarism, but it makes this enterprise go faster), "Rewatching The Third Man recently, it once again captivated me from the moment the great zither music by Anton Karas begins to play over the credits.…If you haven't seen The Third Man (and shame on you if you call yourself a film buff and you haven't), watching the Criterion DVD really is the way to go, not only for a crisp print but to be able to compare the different versions offered for British and U.S. audiences (though only the different openings are included — we don't see what 17 minutes David Selznick cut for American audiences). With its great scenes of Vienna, sly performances and perhaps the greatest entrance of any character in movie history, The Third Man stays near the top of all films ever made, even nearly 60 years after its release."
I don’t know what I was thinking ranking Seven Samurai so low on my 2007 list. Having seen it a couple more times since, I’ve rectified that error. All films this long should hold their length as well as this rollicking adventure does. Each time I see it, it transfixes me from beginning to end. Hacks like Michael Bay should look to a film such as Seven Samurai and discover how characters trump stunts, explosions and special effects in great action-adventure films. It's amazing that with such a large cast, not just of the title samurai but of the farmers they defend as well, the actors and Kurosawa develop so many distinct and worthy portraits. Granted, the running time helps, but they establish characters rather quickly from Takashi Shimura (unrecognizable from his role as the dying bureaucrat in Ikiru) as the lead samurai organizing the mission to the brilliant Toshiro Mifune as Kikuchiyo, a reckless samurai haunted by his past as a farmer's son. Full of action, humor, sadness, a bit of romance and plenty of heart, its influence on so many films that have come since can’t be calculated.
Currently, we live in a time of a vicious circle: Movies inspire theatrical musicals which in turn become movie musicals (or in most cases, don't. Don't be looking for Leap of Faith: The Musical on the big screen anytime soon). Still, there was a time when musicals were created as motion pictures. Singin' in the Rain remains the very best example of one of those. The songs soar, the dance numbers inspire and the performances evoke joy. On top of that, it's even a Hollywood story, set in the awkward time between silent film and sound and milking plenty of laughs from the situation, especially through the spectacular performance of Jean Hagen as a silent superstar with a voice hardly made for sound and a personality barely suitable for Earth. Gene Kelly gives his best performance, a young Debbie Reynolds shines and Donald O'Connor makes us all laugh. Decades later, Singin' in the Rain got transformed (if that's the right word) a Broadway stage version. It wasn't very good. Stick with the movie.
When I wrote about this film for the Screenwriting Blog-a-Thon hosted by Mystery Man on Film in 2007, I said, "As far as I'm concerned, this film is Allen's masterpiece. Others will cite Annie Hall or Manhattan or some other titles and while I love Annie Hall and many others well, over time The Purple Rose of Cairo is the Allen screenplay that has reserved the fondest place in my heart. The screenplay isn't saddled with any extraneous scenes and no sequence falls flat as it builds toward its bittersweet ending. For me, it's Woody Allen's greatest screenplay and one of the best ever written as well." I've been pleasantly surprised at the number of people who have said to me since I wrote that how they agree, even among moviegoers who declare themselves not to like Woody Allen as a rule. It's the perfect blend of comedy, fantasy and realism and one of the greatest depictions of the magic of movies ever put on film. In The Purple Rose of Cairo, when Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels) and his pith helmet step off the screen, the repercussions end up being both hilarious, touching and painfully real.
While for me Jules and Jim stands as the high watermark of the French New Wave films, when you look objectively at the story of Jules and Jim, it may employ many of that movement's techniques but many aspects of Truffaut's film set it apart from its cinematic brethren such as its period setting and a time span that covers more than two decades separates it from the movement as well. However, that doesn’t affect the film’s magnificence. In a funny way, the 1962 film forecast the free love movement to come later that decade except its source material happened to be a semiautobiographical novel set in the early part of the 20th century. The prurience though lies in the mind of the fuddy duddy because part of what makes Jules and Jim so special comes from Truffaut's refusal to pass any judgment, be it positive or negative, upon the behavior of his characters. Despite the director's own criticism many years down the road that the film isn't cruel enough when it comes to love, the three main characters do suffer by the end but he doesn't paint it as punishment for their sins. In a 1977 interview, Truffaut said he thought he was "too young" when he made Jules and Jim. If he'd made it at any other age, it wouldn't be the same movie and probably wouldn't hold the same appeal for so many. For Jules and Jim to grab you, really grab you, I think you need to be young when you see it the first time, and that's why Truffaut, not yet 30 but captivated by the novel since 25, had to be young as well.
Wilder’s screenplay with Charles Brackett and D.M. Marshman Jr. proves surprisingly malleable, never fitting easily into one genre and playing differently in each viewing. It can be the darkest of Hollywood satires or the tragedy of a woman driven insane by a world that’s passed her by. Gloria Swanson’s brilliant performance as Norma Desmond can come off as a vulnerable madwoman or a master manipulator. Similarly, William Holden’s down-on-his-luck screenwriter Joe Gillis looks like a shallow opportunist in some scenes, an in-over-his-head dupe in others. The layers make Sunset Blvd. fresh and endlessly watchable. Wilder and his co-writers always produced great dialogue, but I believe Sunset Blvd. stands as Wilder’s greatest work as a director as well.
Hitchcock blessed us with so many classics, it’s hard to pick the best. This list contains seven Hitchcocks, but Rear Window stands tallest to me. I’ll allow two great directors to state my case. First, François Truffaut from The Films in My Life: “Rear Window is…a film about the impossibility of happiness, about dirty linen that gets washed in the courtyard; a film about moral solitude, an extraordinary symphony of daily life and ruined dreams." From David Lynch, as he wrote in Catching the Big Fish: “It's magical and everybody who sees it feels that. It's so nice to go back and visit that place." David, I couldn’t agree more.
Goodfellas rarely gets selected as the premier example of Scorsese’s brilliance as a filmmaker — and that’s a damn shame because, within its two hour and 20 minute running time, Goodfellas not only encapsulates Scorsese and filmmaking at their best but might be the director’s most personal film. If you wanted to demonstrate practically any aspect of moviemaking to a novice — editing, tracking shots, reverse pans, effective use of popular music — Scorsese disguised a film school in the form of this feature film about low-level gangsters. Goodfellas also happens to be the director’s most re-watchable film and, in a career stocked with masterpieces, it remains my favorite.
Every time I return to Paddy Chayefsky’s prescient screenplay, something new leaps out that I didn’t catch before. Most recently, it’s from one of Howard Beale’s monologues once he’s become the UBS network’s star. As part of the speech, delivered by the late, great Peter Finch, Beale tells his viewers, “Because you people, and 62 million other Americans, are listening to me right now. Because less than three percent of you people read books! Because less than 15 percent of you read newspapers!” Chayefsky died long before the Web revolution so remember that the next time someone blames the newspaper industry's death on the Internet. Better yet, watch Network and revel in the delicious words, magnificent ensemble and Lumet’s fine direction.
Many prefer the Kubrick of 2001: a Space Odyssey or later works such as A Clockwork Orange or Barry Lyndon, but I’ve always found him best when satirical, especially when that sharp humor took aim at the futility of war as in the underrated Full Metal Jacket, the great Paths of Glory and the best of the bunch, the incomparable Dr. Strangelove. To take the prospect of nuclear apocalypse instigated by a general driven mad by his impotence and produce one of the wall-to-wall funniest films ever was no small achievement, but having Peter Sellers in his multiple roles, Sterling Hayden and, most of all, George C. Scott’s hyperbolic, acrobatic and energetic work as Gen. Buck Turgidson, sure helped. That's not to mention Slim Pickens and Keenan Wynn as well and the surreal beauty of that closing of multiple mushroom clouds backed by that wonderfully ironic song.
So rarely does the best picture Oscar go to the best film, it always amazes me that the Academy recognized Casablanca (though for 1943, since it didn’t open in L.A. until a few months after its New York premiere). Claude Rains’ irreplaceable Captain Renault may say, “The Germans have outlawed miracles,” but the most miraculous thing of all was that a screenplay without an ending and based on an unproduced play managed to coalesce into the finest movie the Hollywood studio system ever produced. With a superb ensemble of character actors and stars delivering dialogue with more memorable lines than nearly any other film ever, courtesy of screenwriters Julius J. & Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch, play it forever, Sam.
It does worry me that we seem to lack a filmmaker as ballsy as Robert Altman was (first person to suggest Paul Thomas Anderson gets punched in the face). Thankfully, he left us his body of work (some dogs to be certain, but the ecstasies we receive from his great ones allow us to forgive). For me, Nashville never wavers from its spot at the top of the Altman charts. It’s a musical, but not really. It’s about politics, but not really. We get to watch 24 characters intersect (or not) as Altman and screenwriter Joan Tewksbury design a tapestry displaying a picture of America on the eve of its bicentennial. It also presents ideas that in their own way prove as prescient as those in Network.
Many of the greatest films turn out to be examples of triumph over adversity and that certainly proved to be the case with Children of Paradise, Carné’s two-part masterpiece made during the Nazi occupation of France. When I wrote at length about this deceptively simple tale of mimes and actors, criminals and the aristocracy, I said that if I revised my 2007 list, the film likely would rise higher than its 18th rank. As you see, it most definitely has. Better to experience its beauty and magic than attempt to briefly describe it.
One wonders what the total would be if we calculated the number of words written extolling the brilliance and significance of Orson Welles’ filmmaking debut. Granted, the curmudgeons and contrarians exist and while not a day goes by that I don’t remind someone that all opinions are subjective by definition, Citizen Kane looms as the behemoth that practically defies that statement. Its status as a cinematic masterpiece comes close to being an objective truth. I have nothing new to add about this wonder. The film speaks for itself.
After what I wrote about Citizen Kane, you’d think it would rest in my top spot, but Renoir’s exquisite tragicomedy grabbed a foothold in my Top 10 as soon as I saw it in college and it took only one or two more viewings for Rules to clinch the No. 1 perch where it’s remained for more than two decades. Something personal within the film (too much identification with Renoir’s character of Octave; the character of Christine, who seems to cast a spell over all men who cross her path) hooks me in above and beyond the film’s artistry. If that explanation seems skimpy, I defer to what Octave says, "The awful thing about life is this: Everybody has their reasons."
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Labels: Altman, Carné, Carol Reed, Chaplin, Curtiz, Gene Kelly, Hawks, Hitchcock, Keaton, Kubrick, Kurosawa, Lists, Lumet, Renoir, Scorsese, Truffaut, Welles, Wilder, Woody
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Saturday, February 11, 2012
What the hell is going on at IMDb?
By Edward Copeland
Back in my mobility days, when I had just started working at a newspaper, the Internet had yet to explode into the great reference source it can be. By the time Google appeared and fact-checking became so easy (albeit with possible land mines of misinformation planted everywhere you typed), it became difficult to remember how we looked things up before the Web. The one exception for me was movie trivia — particularly Oscar trivia — because that sort of thing happens if you get exiled to a small Kansas town during your junior high years. You end up accidentally memorizing Oscar facts because instead of buying a book with all the Oscar nominations in it like a normal person (The late Wiley and Bona's Inside Oscar didn't exist yet), you check one out of the library and painstakingly type your own copy of the nominees and winners, building a visual memory without realizing it. (Yes, on a good-old fashioned typewriter no less — even did it with carbon typing paper so I'd have two copies. It's funny, because if I try to recall nominees for best actor in a certain year and get stuck, I remember the list alphabetically so I can narrow the missing actor to a section of the alphabet between the nominees I do remember.) As a result, Oscar errors leap out at me and when I find errors in the Internet Movie Database (of any kind), I try to inform them so they can make the site a better, more accurate resource. However, recently I've discovered something strange has been transpiring at IMDb and I imagine others have noticed this as well.
One gripe I've always had with IMDb is the way they denote the Oscars. For example, let's take last year. The King's Speech was named best picture for 2010, the year it was released. Now, the Oscars, even as they've moved up the ceremony, always bring up the rear, so it received its statuette for best picture of 2010 in 2011. Many an error has been made by people looking for quick Oscar facts who check IMDb because in the awards section for The King's Speech it denotes all its Oscar wins and nominations as being 2011. If you're an Oscar obsessive such as myself or Sasha Stone at Awards Daily or Nathaniel R. at The Film Experience or our own Josh R. here and countless others, you'll recognize that they refer to the ceremony. If you aren't, such as an older entertainment editor in the Midwest, you might put down that it was named best picture of 2011. It was named best picture in 2011 but of or for 2010. If you scroll lower, you'll see that any of the film critic awards the film took tend to say 2010 because they announced them before the calendar year ended. Of course, since we do have the Internet at our fingerprints, they have no excuse for not checking the real authority and looking up things on the Academy's official database which notes that The King's Speech was named best picture 2010 and best picture 2011 won't be handed out until the end of this month.
One early Oscar winner (and in my opinion, still the best of the best picture choices they made), Casablanca proves really problematic, even for movie buffs. The film deservedly holds its designation as a classic and everyone agrees that the movie was a 1942 release, owing to its premiere followed by public exhibition in New York on Nov. 26, 1942. Well, everyone except the Academy that is, It didn't open in Los Angeles for that requisite one week in a L.A. theater until Jan. 23, 1943. Despite the odds against a film opening that early in the year (and competing against nine other films, many fresher in voters' minds), Casablanca, the 1942 release, won the Oscar for best picture of 1943 at the ceremony held in 1944. On the IMDb Awards page for Casablanca. the only two years mentioned are 1942 (at the top as its year of release) and 1944 (as the year it supposedly won best picture, director and writing, screenplay. Oscar itself can have some strange occurrences such as Chaplin's Limelight, which came out in 1952 in most places, such as New York, but such Chaplin was persona non grata in Hollywood at the time, the movie never managed to open in Los Angeles until 1972, but the Academy ruled it eligible and Chaplin, Ray Rasch and Larry Russell won original dramatic score for the 20-year-old film (listed as 1973 on IMDb) — the same touching night that Chaplin received an honorary Oscar from the Academy for lifetime achievement and apologizing to him for being such an asshole to him for having opinions.
The most recent IMDb incident that prompted this post concerned an error I noted in its listing of awards for the movie Pariah. I had just finished watching the film so I made a point of seeing who had done the cinematography, which I thought was exceptionally well done for a low budget film. The credit clearly said (it was the second credit after written and directed by Dee Rees) Bradford Young. As I went to IMDb to check its awards page, it said that Pariah won the Grand Jury Prize for best cinematography in a dramatic film, only it credited the win to Dee Rees. Never mind that on its full cast and credit list for Pariah it properly names Young as cinematographer as does the movie's Web site in crediting him the Sundance prize.
Always trying to correct errors, I went in to try to edit the awards listing but no matter how I tried, it kept being rejected and referred me to a comment thread. The thread was led with a not by a site administrator explaining why they didn't allow updating of the awards section because of a job opening — dating back to late 2010. Of course, someone is updating them since new awards are going in. Here is the letter's text which leads to its thread. It was posted March 14, 2011.
Hi,
This message is to provide an update on the current status of the Awards List.
As many of you will know, we closed down the Awards submissions pipeline in Spring 2010, to completely overhaul the internal systems that we use for Awards data.
We very gradually started re-opening the Awards pipeline in October/November 2010 - using the new system.
This has proven challenging, and we have attempted to make improvements to our internal tools post-launch.
In addition to this, and perhaps more significantly, the individual previously responsible for for the Awards list left IMDb in mid December. This has resulted in us being understaffed within the Database Content Team.
Those of you who regularly monitor the processing times page http://www.imdb.com/czone/times will have seen that we have been in a backlog for the Awards list for a significant amount of time.
We have been actively recruiting for a Data Manger since that time, as you may have seen from our jobs page http://www.imdb.com/imdbjobs/#129661, and recruitment is going well.
Until we have successfully filled this role, we have reallocated some workload within the team. As a result of this, we now have a team member who has taken ownership of the Awards list, and is actively working through the backlog.
There are a number of open bugs with the current interface, which are being actively worked on currently by our software team. I will post a further update on those when I have one.
I appreciate that this has been a less than satisfactory situation for our contributors, particularly those that have been attempting to submit Awards data - and I apologize for that. With a data manager dedicated to this list from this point forwards, and software developers working with that individual, we are now in a position to make the improvements this unique and important type of content requires/deserves.
Regards,
Rachel
Call me crazy, but I'd think they'd still want to be aware of the errors, even if they didn't want people to use the new system. (Never mind that there hadn't been an update in nearly a year.) Wait — there's more. Recently, when I was working on my Centennial Tribute to José Ferrer, I found a couple of errors in his biography. They also were repeatedly rejected, though I found some other way to contact them and sure enough those mistakes eventually got fixed. Here though comes the most disturbing one of all.
Right after watching the movie Margin Call, I went to read their summary, just to make sure I was getting those tricky financial terms right. While there, I discovered the summary had a big plot point error. The summary's date indicated it had been written a few months prior to the film's opening. I went to try to edit the summary where I encountered what apparently any new users encounter if they try to register, what IMDb refers to higher "identity verification" or some such nonsense. I wrote them a note mincing no words that I'd be damned if I was going to give them that information just to try to correct an error. At least I knew it was wrong. Heaven help the people who didn't. I didn't even tell them what was wrong, but they've since had an updated Margin Call summary and the wrong information has been purged, so someone else got it to them.
That error though isn't as troubling as their reaching out for cell phone and credit card numbers. What that amounts to is they expect newcomers or anyone trying to change a summary to give them their cell phone number (making the assumption that everyone in the world has a cell phone) and, more disturbingly, a credit card number that they "swear they will never use." If they are never going to use it, why do they need it? It reminded me of Kirk's question in the awful Star Trek V: "Why does God need a starship?"
The cell phone scam is easy to understand: It's the same reason that Google and Facebook try to con you into giving them yours in the name of "security" should you lose your account. It's because they figure most people don't know that one of the loopholes in the rules of the Do-Not-Call-List law is that it doesn't apply to any business that you have a relationship with, so once they get your number, let the telemarketers ring your cell off the hook. The credit card bit is more ominous. Old users are grandfathered, but for how long? What are they planning? They can't expect run-of-the-mill users to get a hankering for IMDb Pro. unless they are planning to hide more things there, but I sure as hell wouldn't pay for a reference source that doesn't consider accuracy a priority.
On the last season of Boardwalk Empire, they had the wrong actor listed playing a part. Luckily I got the real cast lists from HBO and recognized that the actor's photo and age didn't match. Their TV credit listings are laughable as some actors and actresses will submit themselves as generic types such as "Townsperson" and claim to appear in every episode, though they add uncredited afterward. On the new series Luck, on individual episodes Kerry Condon's character is identified as Rosie but on the main page for the series they still just call her "exercise girl." They don't know what the hell to do with Nick Nolte. Sometimes he's Walter. Sometimes he's Walter Smith. Sometimes he's The Old Man. All are correct, but it's same character and looks confusing that way.
Be wary, all of you. I fear IMDb could start making Wikipedia look 100% credible.
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Labels: Awards, Boardwalk Empire, Books, Chaplin, Ferrer, Luck, Misc., Nolte, Oscars
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Sunday, December 18, 2011
Centennial Tributes: Jules Dassin Part II
By Edward Copeland
As we dive into the second half of this tribute to Jules Dassin, we're on an uphill climb artistically and a downhill slide personally as we talk about when he made his best films, including two out-and-out masterpieces, and when the witch-hunting politicians froze him out of movie work by getting Hollywood to blacklist him because of his youthful flirtation with communism. Never mind that he resigned from the Communist Party soon after joining when Stalin signed his 1939 pact with Hitler, once a commie, always a commie, right? At least that was the attitude then. We haven't reached that point yet. First, following making the great Brute Force, Dassin re-teams with producer Mark Hellinger for The Naked City, a landmark because it was the first sound film to shoot entirely in New York. Henry Hathaway had filmed some scenes of 1945's The House on 92nd Street on the streets of New York, but not the entire movie. Another film had shot partly on the streets of New York, but The Naked City became the first movie to film its entire production there. If you started here accidentally and missed Part I, click here.
Hellinger's role in The Naked City extended beyond producing — he also narrated the film which, to me at least, turns out to be a demerit at times. In his 1948 New York Times review, Bosley Crowther, mixed on the movie overall, referred to the narration as "a virtual Hellinger column on film." Not all the narration is cringeworthy (Two examples: "How many things this sky has seen that man has done to man"; "Milk! Isn't there anything else for ulcers except for milk?") Some come off fine such as when
Hellinger notes, "There's a pulse to a city that never stops beating." When the narration grates the most are the times when it sounds like a talkative moviegoer asking their companion annoying questions such as, "Is Henderson the murderer? Did a taxicab take him to the Pennsylvania Railroad Station? Who is Henderson? Where does he live? Who knows him?" The movie itself starts with an overhead shot of the city skyline as Hellinger waxes on about the city as the daytime shots turn into nighttime images and he tells us, "This is the city when it's silent or asleep, as if it ever really is." After his narration introduces us to various inhabitants of the city who work nights, he also shows us people resting at home or out on the town (cleverly introducing people who will be major characters later without pointing that out) "And while some people work and most sleep, others are at the close of an evening of relaxation — " We see a night club getting ready to close and its attendees departing before the camera switches to a young woman's apartment where we see her being murdered by two men. "And still another — is at the close of her life." The killers try to fake her death as a bathtub drowning and we see the movie's destination at last. After some more wandering around the city the next morning (including one killer getting drunk and nervous about the crime and his co-conspirator offing him and dumping his body in the river), once the dead woman's maid discovers her body, they show a particularly nice sequence of the chain of calls through switchboard operators going from hospital to a police precinct to the medical examiner before finally ending up at the homicide squad. 
The Naked City follows the investigation of that young lady's murder in an almost documentary style. Originally, Hellinger intended to use Homicide as the title but then decided to borrow The Naked City from the books of photographs by famous crime scene photographer Weegee, whose life was fictionalized in the 1992 film The Public Eye starring Joe Pesci, because he wanted the movie to have the feel of Weegee's photos. Playing the men leading the investigation were Barry Fitzgerald as Det. Lt. Dan Muldoon, the veteran with two decades of experience, and Don Taylor as Det. Jimmy Halloran, the greenhorn who'd only been working homicide for three months. Muldoon always has to explain to Halloran the right way to solve a case such as the one they are in, giving Fitzgerald the chance to say things like "That's the way you run a case, lad — step by step" and sound even more Irish than usual as he does it. When
they determine that the murder had to be committed by two people, Muldoon pins it on "Joseph P. MacGillicuddy," his version of John Doe. Since The Naked City strives for realism, one thing sticks out that I tend not to notice in other pre-1966 police movies or TV shows: There were no such things as Miranda rights so you never hear anyone told, "You have the right to remain silent, etc." The fine cast also includes Howard Duff, reuniting with Dassin from Brute Force, as a compulsive liar who was involved with both the dead woman and her best friend (Dorothy Hart). If you look closely, the film overflows with familiar faces in brief, mostly uncredited roles including Paul Ford, John Marley, Arthur O'Connell, David Opatoshu and, making their film debuts, Kathleen Freeman, James Gregory and John Randolph. There also is a very funny scene where Halloran seeks information from a sidewalk store clerk selling soda on the whereabouts of the suspected killer and the vendor is played by the comic great Molly Picon. However, the film's true star is New York.
While The Naked City gets lumped into the noir category, personally I don't think it belongs there. While The Naked City turns out mostly fine, the film doesn't approach the greatness of Brute Force or Dassin's films that follow. What makes The Naked City stand out from other films has little to do with its story or acting, but its landmark use of New York — and I mean the real New York, not Toronto. Dassin employed several tricks to film on the streets without crowds getting in the way because word always leaked as to where they would be shooting. In one of the Criterion interviews, he tells of a fake portable newsstand they had to conceal the camera as well as a flower delivery van with a mirror on the side that they could see out of but outsiders couldn't see in. They also employed jugglers to distract onlookers so they wouldn't disrupt shooting.
On the DVD interview, Dassin said his favorite method was to place this guy a bit down the street from where they were shooting, have him climb up a pole, wave a flag and give patriotic speeches. While he mesmerized crowds, the film crew got their work done. Some of that location shooting still amazes. Taylor as Halloran does most of the running throughout the city, on and off subways and buses, past landmarks still familar today and, most especially, the climactic foot chase after the killer that leads to awesome shots on the Williamsburg Bridge. The movie ended up winning the Oscar for best black & white cinematography for William H. Daniels and best film editing for Paul Weatherwax. Now, Dassin contended that elements of the films that put more of an emphasis on class differences within the city and other social issues were cut from the film before release. In many interviews, he said that by the time filming had been completed, rumor already had begun to swirl that he might be called before HUAC to testify about his former membership in the Communist Party. He also didn't believe Hellinger would make those cuts, mainly because Universal didn't want to release The Naked City because they didn't know how to market it. However, Hellinger's contract with the studio had a clause requiring them to release it — and a good thing that it did because three months before The Naked City finally did reach theaters, Hellinger died of a heart attack at 44, another reason Dassin doubted the cuts were his. To paraphrase the film's famous closing line of Hellinger narration, "There are eight million stories from the Hollywood blacklist. This just leads to a much bigger one."
Before Dassin found a new home in Hollywood, he finally got that chance to direct some theater again, staging two Broadway productions in 1948. First, he directed the original play Joy to the World by Allan Scott, the screenwriter of six Astaire-Rogers musicals including Top Hat and Swing Time as well as other films. The comedy takes aim at Hollywood and the difficulty one has maintaining his integrity in the movie business. The play, which ran from March 18 to July 3 at the Plymouth Theatre, also has a strong plea for intellectual freedom and against censorship. Produced by John Houseman, its cast included Morris Carnovsky, who would appear in Dassin's next film and on the blacklist, being named by both Elia Kazan and Sterling Hayden; Bert Freed, TV's first Columbo; and Marsha Hunt, who starred in two of Dassin's MGM films — The Affairs of Martha and A Letter to Evie. The second production was the musical Magdalena which ran from Sept. 20 through Dec. 4. The songs were by lyricists Robert Wright and George Forrest and composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. It was John Raitt's first show following Carousel and choreographed by the most influential yet least-known dance master Jack Cole, subject of an in-development musical project with its eye on Broadway today. One of his two assistant choreographers on Magdalena was Gwen Verdon.
When Dassin headed back west, Darryl F. Zanuck and 20th Century Fox came calling, seeking to sign him to direct A.I. Bezzerides' adaptation of his own novel Thieves' Market, renamed Thieves' Highway. Before that project got rolling, Dassin received an urgent phone call from Zanuck with a very important question: "Are you now or were you ever familiar with the fundamentals of playing baseball?" Dassin told him yes. In an interview recorded in New York in 2000 and on the Criterion Collection DVD of Rififi, shared this fun little anecdote. It seems that the MGM vs. Fox baseball game was coming up the following weekend and Fox was short a player and Zanuck wanted to see if Dassin could be the one. According to Dassin, he turned out to be the MVP of the game as Fox beat MGM, which apparently was an unusual occurrence. Dassin's agent called him in a rush, wanting to know if Dassin had signed the contract for Thieves' Highway yet. Dassin told him that he had. The agent told him that was too bad — after his performance in the ballgame, he could have negotiated him a higher salary for the film.
While The Naked City didn't really seem like noir to me, Thieves' Highway most definitely does, though it's noir in a setting I never imagined before — crooks run amok among those who sell fresh fruit and vegetables. Richard Conte stars as Nick "Nico" Garcos, a veteran who traveled the world following the war and brings home gifts from everywhere to his proud Greek family. His father Yanko (Morris
Carnovsky) is even joyfully singing a Greek song when his boy shows up unannounced, surprising him. (Interesting that as important as Greece will become in Dassin's life later that it's a distinct element of this film.) While the mood overflows with happiness in the Garcos house, Nick discovers that things haven't gone well during his absence when one of his presents turns out to be a special pair of shoes for his father and he urges him to try them on. There's a problem — Yanko can't wear shoes anymore. He rolls away from the table to reveal to his son that he no longer has legs. His father tells him the story about how he had a huge load of the season's first crop of juicy tomatoes and one of the biggest produce dealers on the San Francisco market Mike Figlia (Lee J. Cobb) had agreed to buy them but as he asked for his money, Figlia insisted they have a drink to celebrate first. That drink turned into more drinks and the next thing Yanko knew, he was on the side of the road under his wrecked truck minus his legs. Figlia claims he paid him and someone must have taken the money from the truck. To make matters worse, since he couldn't use the truck anymore, he sold it and the man he sold it to has stiffed him on payment as well. While Nick's mom (Tamara Shayne) tries to calm things down and argues that perhaps Figlia told the truth, Nick can tell that Figlia was lying and his dad never got paid. First though, he's getting the truck back.
When he finds Ed Kinney (Millard Mitchell), the man who bought the truck, Nick demands the keys to the truck or the money. Kinney complains that he can't pay right now because the truck has been giving him fits but he needs it to pick up a load of golden delicious apples. Nick makes a deal that he'll be his partner to pick up the apples and take them to San Francisco for the sale. The one hitch — Kinney already had a deal set with two guys Slob and Pete (Jack Oakie, Joseph Penney) so Kinney has to make up a story about how he can't make the run. The men go away disappointed — but they also tail him and see that he's lying and make it a point to harass them. If Mitchell looks familiar, he's probably best known for his role three years later as movie exec R.F. Simpson in Singin' in the Rain. Mitchell's career was cut short. A heavy smoker, lung cancer claimed his life at the age of 50 in 1953. Another interesting tale that comes out of the Dassin interviews on DVD is that Oakie, the longtime comic actor who scored an Oscar nod for his Mussolini spoof in Chaplin's The Great Dictator, was completely deaf when he made Thieves' Highway, something that Dassin didn't realize for weeks because Oakie was so good at picking up cues from other actors and never missed his mark or messed up a take. After Kinney and Nick team up, the first portion of the film concentrates on the long haul to San Francisco after they pick up the apples with Nick driving the decrepit truck, Kinney following in another and Slob and Pete harassing them along the way. As Dassin said, the enemy for these men is fatigue and drivers employed many tricks to stay wake on the roads at night.
After a near disaster, Kinney decides it's best if he and Nick switch trucks, letting him, the more experienced driver, try to hold it together while Nick takes the better rig with the first half of the load on to San Francisco. As in The Naked City, Dassin breaks some ground here by doing some amazing location shooting in San Francisco's market area with crowded streets and lots of activity. When we
arrive there, that's when Cobb appears playing the most diabolical produce salesman in the history of film. Cobb's centennial was Dec. 8, but I got so backed up with other projects I wasn't able to do a proper salute to this towering actor. In the 2005 interview on the DVD, Dassin said that Cobb truly "enjoyed his villainy." During the work on this piece, I uncovered more and more names of actors and directors who named names before HUAC that I had never known about before. I mentioned Sterling Hayden earlier, which was news to me. I also didn't know about Cobb. It's odd
how all the ire and bile aimed at people who did name names seemed to be reserved for Elia Kazan. In Cobb's case, the pressure on the actor when he was called to testify before HUAC had nearly brought his wife to a nervous breakdown so Cobb felt compelled to name names to preserve his wife's sanity. Regardless, that doesn't take away from the fact that Cobb was a great actor and not just anyone can turn a produce dealer into a plausible bad guy. Conte matches him well as the good guy without turning Nick into a bland opponent. When things heat up between Nick and Figlia and Figlia suggests they go off to his office, one man comments that Figlia will "eat that kid alive." A buyer named Midge who's seeking golden delicious apples and is played by Hope Emerson, who will be a memorable villain herself the following year as the women's prison matron in Caged, responds, "I'll take odds on the kid." One of Figlia's deceptive tricks against Nick involves utilizing a local hooker named Rica (played by Valentina Cortese, best known for her Oscar-nominated turn in Truffaut's Day for Night, in only her second English-language film and her first shot in the U.S, though her last name is spelled Cortesa). Rica keeps Nick occupied while his truck, which is stuck in front of Figlia’s stand because of flat tires, gets raided and has its apples sold off by Figlia. In the 2005 interview, Dassin told of how Zanuck was a very hands-on producer. Since Rica would inevitably turn out to be the proverbial hooker with a heart of gold who would end up aiding Nick, Zanuck insisted that they write in a part of "a bourgeois fiancée who betrays Nick" to justify the hero falling for the hooker. Barbara Lawrence played that role, Polly Faber. 
In addition to Thieves' Highway's noirish elements, which basically get segregated to San Francisco once Nick arrives and Figlia and Rica join the film, the movie's other half covers Kinney's treacherous drive in the truck that's barely holding together. Dassin builds genuine suspense in these scenes, aided by Alfred Newman's score. His journey isn't helped by the constant taunting by Slob and Pete, but as he steers the truck through curvy, mountainous highways, the sequences seem to foreshadow what would come several years later in Henri-Georges Clouzot's The Wages of Fear. When the drive finally goes fatally wrong, the truck crashes and rolls down an embankment, apples going everywhere. Even Slob and Pete rush down, but it's too late as the truck bursts into flames. "From that angle, apples rolling down the hill into the camera. I said to myself, 'That's a good shot.' I think that's one of the shots I've enjoyed most in films I've made," Dassin said in 2005. One thing in Thieves' Highway that didn't particularly please Dassin was that Zanuck shot an entirely new ending that he didn't know about because he already was in London prepping Night and the City. When Nick finally gets his physical revenge on Figlia, Zanuck's ending added police coming in to make the point that people "shouldn't take the law into their own hands." However, given what Zanuck did for Dassin overall when the witchhunters came calling, he couldn't complain that much. When the shit really started to hit the fan, it didn't sound as if Zanuck was someone who would be as helpful as he was during Dassin's crisis. In 1949, word came down that HUAC was going to call Dassin to testify and Zanuck and other Fox executives had a meeting about "the problem." In the 2004 L.A. County Museum of Art interview, Dassin said that Zanuck told him, "He was going to step on my neck because I was a dirty red."
is to be a nice guy, but you can't make it.'" — Jules Dassin
As Dassin went on to tell in that 2004 interview, after Zanuck's "threat," he was surprised to find the producer at his front door — not something you'd expect from someone at Zanuck's level. He informed Dassin that he was flying to London the next day and handed him the novel Night and the City by Gerald Kersh. Dassin told Zanuck he couldn't rush off on a moment's notice like that — he had family
problems. Zanuck disagreed with the director, saying that he also had family needs and this could end up being the last film he ever made. Zanuck advised him to get shooting on the film as fast as he could and to do the most expensive scenes first so the studio wouldn't have an excuse to shut the production down. Dassin followed Zanuck's advice and was in London readying the shoot when he learned that he'd been called to
appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Zanuck informed the panel that he was abroad and got his scheduled hearing postponed. When Dassin was about two weeks away from the start of shooting on the film, Zanuck called. He asked Dassin if he agreed that he owed him one. Yes, he did owe him, Dassin said in the 2004 interview. Zanuck requested a favor — he wanted Dassin to cast Gene Tierney in a role. Dassin was confused, since there wasn't a role in the movie that she could really play, but Zanuck explained that a love affair had just ended very badly for the actress and she was almost suicidal. When she got in those states, Zanuck said, the only thing that snaps her out of it is work. Quickly, the role of Mary Bristol was written into the script of Night and the City and Tierney joined Richard Widmark and the rest of the talented cast in one of the two best films Dassin ever made. Kersh, the author of the novel the film was based on, did not agree. Dassin never admitted it until an interview in 2005, but Zanuck had encouraged him to everything in such a rush, he never read the book. Many years later, when he did, he could see why Kersh got mad — Night and the City the movie had no resemblance to Night and the City the novel whatsoever.
I haven't read the novel but if the godawful 1992 film with the same title starring Robert De Niro and Jessica Lange hewed closer to its narrative, I'm glad that I haven't. If, on the other hand, the 1992 Night and the City just provides more evidence that nine times out of 10, when you try to remake a classic film, you only end up with the celluloid equivalent of diarrhea, Kersh should be grateful he died in 1968. I actually saw the disaster of a remake before I ever saw the original and once I saw the original, I couldn't believe that they were supposed to have come from the same source material. When ranking Dassin's films, I'm always torn between Night and the City and Rififi as to which I think is the greatest. Preparing for this tribute, I watched the films on consecutive nights. It's such a close call, but for today anyway, I give Rififi the slight edge. However, that doesn't mean I love Night and the City any less. What a script. What a cast. Every detail done to perfection. "Night and the city. The night is tonight, tomorrow night or any night. The city is London." Those are the words that open the film then we see Widmark's Harry Fabian running like hell through a square — and running will be what he's doing for a lot of the movie when he doesn't slow down long enough to try to make his Greco-Roman wrestling scheme work or to make time for Mary or listen to offers from the likes of Francis L. Sullivan's Philip Nosseross, a nightclub owner who resembles a more genial Jabba the Hutt, or his wife Helen (the wonderful Googie Withers, who just passed away in July), who wants her own action and to escape her husband.
When Night and the City opened in 1950, it depended where you lived what music accompanied Fabian's film-opening sprint. Britain, still recovering from the damage of World War II, had laws in place to ensure that it kept a certain amount of the profits of films made there
and provide workers jobs as well. As a result, there were two versions of Night and the City, and Dassin wasn't allowed to participate in the editing of either one — one because he wasn't British, the other because when he returned to the United States, he was banned from the 20th Century Fox lot. The British cut runs longer, adding some more character scenes, and contains a moodier score by Benjamin Frankel, who would go on to score John Huston's Night of the Iguana and Ken Annakin's Battle of the Bulge. The American cut, which Dassin says he prefers, has music composed by the great and prolific Franz Waxman, who composed many scores for Hitchcock
including Rear Window as well as Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd., and previously wrote the music for Dassin's Reunion in France. Waxman uses a variety of styles throughout Night and the City, parts with a jazz tinge, other moments matching the kinetic nature of various chase sequences. I've not seen the entire British version to know how it works, but I know that Nick De Maggio edited the American cut superbly. He also edited Thieves' Highway and would go on to cut another classic Widmark noir, Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street. Max Greene was responsible for the great cinematography. Some of the greatest movies seem as if they come into existence by accident. When you consider what a rush job Night and the City was, how Dassin didn't even read the book (though presumably the credited screenwriter Jo Eisinger had), how a role for Gene Tierney had to be created out of thin air and shoehorned into the story at the last minute, how a lot of the roles had to be cast with British actors by law and Dassin didn't know any (one of his casting directors turned out to be Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) and that Zanuck, who liked to meddle with his directors' pictures, didn't reshoot anything or change the editing when he really could have since Dassin was barred from the editing room because of the blacklist, it's a fucking miracle how brilliantly Night and the City turned out. Some things are just fucking meant to be. Even with the character of the huge old Greco-Roman wrestler Gregorious. Dassin drew a picture of a wrestler he'd seen once and said that's how he envisioned the person they got to play the part. Someone recognized the drawing as Stanislaus Zbyszko, but thought he was dead. Another person knew that Zbyszko actually was not only alive but had a farm in Missouri. They contacted him and he ended up playing the part of Gregorious. At a moment of professional and personal crisis for Jules Dassin, the stars truly aligned when it came to Night and the City.The ensemble does the best job at selling the movie, foremost Widmark as the smooth yet smarmy Fabian. You can see how some people buy into his dreams just as you easily as others see right through him. As Mary's friend Adam (Hugh Marlowe) so accurately describes him, "Harry's an artist without an art." Tierney does fine given that she's playing a role that really has no reason for being there. Herbert Lom manages to be both frightening and unctuous as a crooked wrestling promoter who still has concerns about his father, Gregorious (Zbyszko) when Fabian manages to bring him into the machinations. Above them all though are Sullivan and Withers as Philip and Helen, the husband and wife who don't quite know how they got together but can't figure out a way to split up. When Helen makes plans to pin her exit on Fabian's scheme, Philip warns, "You don't know what you're getting into." Helen knows deep down, but she doesn't care. "I know what I'm getting out of," she tells him. Night and the City, despite the turmoil going on on the outside, is by far the best film Dassin had made until that point. Some good ones will still come, but now he'll face the toughest time of the blacklist.
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Labels: Astaire, blacklist, Chaplin, D. Zanuck, Dassin, De Niro, Fuller, G. Tierney, Ginger Rogers, Hayden, Hitchcock, Huston, J. Lange, Kazan, Lee J. Cobb, Remakes, Truffaut, Widmark, Wilder
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