In 1967 spy films were all the rage in Hollywood, Europe and Asia. The world-wide popularity of the James Bond movies had created a ravenous public that was hungry for more and producers were eager to cash in on the spy craze. Most of the films that were made glamorized the world of international espionage or mocked it with humor. Only a handful of films produced during the ’60s such as The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer; 1962) and The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) were willing to show a darker and more unsavory side of the Cold War. Anthony Mann’s 1967 film A Dandy in Aspic seems to straddle both worlds. It’s a serious and stark film about spies that occasionally dabbles in fantasy and fallacy.

It was the last film made by the acclaimed American director and it’s often considered one of Mann’s lessor efforts. This is partially due to the fact that Anthony Mann suffered a heart-attack midway through filming and after his sudden death on April 29th, 1967 the star of the film, actor Laurence Harvey, took over the directing reigns and completed the picture. The film also stands out due to it’s modern setting and Mann’s decision to work with many new collaborators such as writer Derek Marlowe, cinematographer Christopher Challis, composer Quincy Jones and designer Pierre Cardin. The collaborative nature of the film seems to bother a lot of critics but I think A Dandy in Aspic one of Anthony Mann’s best movies. It features many of the director’s favorite themes but it’s also a very contemporary film that stands out due to the exceptional cast, impressive look and its cutting-edge approach to modern day espionage.
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While the TCM Classic Film Festival was wrapping up out in L.A., I was pursuing my own personal Jean Renoir festival back in NYC. The Brooklyn Academy of Music is currently exhibiting a must-see retrospective that will hopefully tour a city near you. My personal highlight of the series so far is The Woman on the Beach, his last production in Hollywood, and by far his strangest, a somnabulist’s vision of a violent love triangle.  Its peculiar, almost abstracted plot was aided by extensive re-shoots after a disastrous preview screening, which trimmed out the exposition, leaving only the trio of lovers’ impulsive, and occasionally inexplicable actions.  Renoir had already pushed the visuals  in an oneiric direction, foggy, emptied-out landscapes of hollowed-out hulls and vertiginous cliffs. He even challenged his sound man to record the dialogue at an unusually low level, to emphasize the characters’ loneliness.

The pared-down result of the studio interference then, actually reinforces Renoir’s stylistic choices, and quite possibly made it a better film. This is exactly what Janet Bergstrom argues in her superb production history: “Oneiric Cinema: The Woman on the Beach”, which she published in the Film History journal in 1999. It is my main source for this post.

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Cinephiles everywhere were envious of the TCM crew who attended the first annual TCM Classic Film Festival in Los Angeles last week. The festival lineup of films, presenters, and guests looked like a phenomenal combination of Hollywood star power and learned scholars. Fortunately, I was able to attend an event that was arguably the next best—Roger Ebert’s Overlooked Film Festival in Champaign, Illinois, affectionately called Ebertfest.

Each spring, America’s leading film critic masterminds a five-day festival in Champaign, which is home to his alma mater, the University of Illinois. This was my first year attending Ebertfest, and I found the experience to be affordable, relaxing, and rewarding, partly because of the schedule of movies personally selected by Ebert and partly because of the congenial small-town setting. The friendly, easy-going atmosphere and organized festivities were a welcome break from the rat race of Chicago, where a simple act like parking on a side street can get you shot by over-caffeinated drivers or fined by a city in dire financial straits.

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Beginning tomorrow (April 22), right here on Movie Morlocks, we will turn into a live blog for four days bringing you daily coverage from the TCM film festival with posts on the films, special events and our celebrated guest presenters and film honorees. Foremost among them will be director/actor Peter Bogdanovich, who will be co-hosting the screening of Orson Welles’ THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS with Vanity Fair contributing editor David Kamp, among other events. We discuss that and other Orson Welles films in the below interview with Peter but also cover some highlights and overlooked gems in the Bogdanovich filmography such as TARGETS (Boris Karloff & Bogdanovich pictured above),  SAINT JACK and THEY ALL LAUGHED.    READ MORE