On June 1, the TCM website featured an article in Movie News titled “TCM Selects 15 Most Overlooked Classic Hollywood Directors” as part of their month-long celebration of filmmakers. The list ranged from the expressionist-influenced Frank Borzage to 1950s sci-fi favorite Jack Arnold, but I was particularly pleased to see that Henry King made the cut.  

            Like others on the list, including Borzage, Allan Dwan, and Clarence Brown, King started his career in the silent era. At first an actor, King began to make films in the mid-teens, eventually directing over 60 silent movies by the time the sound era arrived. In 1930, Fox placed the experienced director under contract, and he worked for that studio (later 20th Century Fox) until the end of his career in 1962, when he finished almost 50 years as a Hollywood moviemaker with Tender Is the Night. King became one of Darryl F. Zanuck’s most trusted directors, and through the years, he gave Fox a number of Golden Age classics in a variety of genres, including In Old Chicago (1938), Song of Bernadette (1943), Twelve O’Clock High (1949), The Gunfighter (1950), and Carousel (1956). Toward the end of his career, his status as a notable veteran was indicated by the assignments he was entrusted with, particularly films based on American literary works such as Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) and The Sun Also Rises (1957).

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Last week I highlighted some of the 16mm features that were donated by Biograph to our film program. Today I’ll look at the shorts and, again, I’ll cherry-pick the ones I’m screening in the back yard. With an emphasis on fun I’m easily able to whittle the 30-plus shorts down to the following 11 titles. READ MORE

In the annals of forgotten inventors, unsung geniuses and visionaries who have fallen through the cracks of time, William Friese-Greene should be near the top of the list.  Even though his gravestone bears the inscription, “The Inventor of Kinematography,” his reputation as an early film pioneer is still challenged by some movie scholars while others believe he was a victim of bad luck and deserved the credit and fame that others like Thomas Edison enjoy today. THE MAGIC BOX (1951) favors the latter view and was one of the most prestigious productions of its year, produced exclusively for the Festival of Britain, a national exhibition that opened in London in May 1951 and marked the centenary of the 1851 Great Exhibition.        READ MORE

I’m eulogizing David Carradine today more out of a sense of obligation than compulsion or desire.  (And, I might add, after specifically telling one of my fellow Morlocks I wasn’t going to write this obit.)  Truth be told, he was never one of my favorite actors and I often shook my head in sadness at certain offscreen antics that my contemporaries and colleagues found so amusing.  Yet David Carradine was in my life for most of my life, on my radar from about 1969 or so, and now his sudden and rather unexpected death in a Bangkok hotel room has left a hole.  I’ve been casting sidelong glances at that hole since I heard the news yesterday morning READ MORE

I haven’t done a nuptial-related post in a while, so I’m pleased to be able to toss a bouquet out for today, June 4th.  On this date, in 1951, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh tied the knot.  It’s always kind of fascinating when two movie stars team up in real life, but of course this was early in both their careers.  Janet Leigh had been discovered by MGM in 1947 or so and was the veteran of  more than a dozen films, including Act of Violence, the 1948 remake of Little Women with Elizabeth Taylor and June Allyson, and That Forsyte Woman.  Curtis wasn’t as far along in his career; after a tough poverty-stricken early life and service in the Navy during WW II, he was able to get in to acting school on the G.I. Bill.  He had managed to break into features, but was working his way through small roles in a selection of movies, getting experience and a name for himself. 

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TCM is officially celebrating the work of the studio era’s great directors throughout this month, so I thought I might swim upstream a bit. As revered director John Ford once pointed out, “People are incorrect to compare a director to an author. If he’s a creator, he’s more like an architect.”

The more I keep learning about the shadowy figures in the background of great movies who actually wrote the story, chose the sets, edited the film and designed the look of a movie, the truth of Ford‘s comment becomes more concrete for me. The director as an architect whose vision unfolded thanks to many hands, not just his will, is particularly intriguing when you realize that, unconsciously, you “know” someone’s work, even when his or her name is unfamiliar.One of those background figures, whose work illuminated the films of Frank Capra, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, Julien Duvivier and more, much more than has been acknowledged, was cinematographer Joseph Walker (1892-1985).
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Ah, the love triangle. Perhaps the most cinematic of storytelling devices, it can be effortlessly visualized in combative group shots, a trio of conflicting motives expressed in daggered glances and dewy-eyed stares. The most venerable of these tales is told in James Cain’s novel The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934). First adapted by Pierre Chenal with the little known  Le Dernier Tournant (1939), it was then transplanted to fascist Italy in one of the earliest neorealist films (without authorization) in Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1943) , until it was buffed clean by Lana Turner and director Tay Garnett in 1946. It was given an explicitly sexual, neo-noir makeover by Bob Rafelson in 1981, and with that the murderous adultery had seemed to run its course. But the much buzzed about German auteur, Christian Petzold, has taken a stab at the material with the mournful and spare Jerichow.

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My day job at Facets Multi-Media in Chicago has recently turned into a night shift. We are currently experimenting with a midnight movie series. Dubbed Night School, our series combines the late-night movie idea with Facets’ film education efforts.  Each Saturday night, a Facets employee presents a film of their choosing with a 20-minute introduction. After the film, everyone sticks around for a Q&A. At first I was surprised that anyone would be willing  to stay around at 2:00 a.m. to participate in a film discussion, but cinephiles are a dedicated lot, and so far, the series has been a moderate success.

This past weekend, it was my turn to present a movie, and I chose The Night of the Hunter. Its creepy subject matter and eccentric vibe made it a solid choice for a midnight movie while its haunting expressionist imagery and powerful performance by Robert Mitchum gave me a lot to talk about in the introduction.  I have seen The Night of the Hunter many times before, yet each new viewing reveals another interesting aspect or detail that I had not noticed before. This time around, I was intrigued by the performance of Evelyn Varden as Icey Spoon, the character who owns the local ice cream parlor with husband Walt, played by Don Beddoe.

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