65 Years of the Cannes Film Festival: An Early Photographic History Part II.
Hate Binges: The Big Heat and The LawlessThe post-WWII economic expansion exploded in 1950, as the GI Bill’s low mortgage rates stoked a housing boom and pent-up consumer demand propped up retail. Success was there for the taking, but not for all. Two early 50s films that are hitting home video in impressive transfers, Joseph Losey’s The Lawless (1950, on DVD 5/29 from Olive Films) and Fritz Lang’s The Big Heat (1953, now out on Blu-Ray from Twilight Time), documented some of the anxieties caused by this enormous upheaval in American life, what would be the start of the greatest stretch of economic growth in U.S. history. More money meant more crime, and The Big Heat is a nightmare rendering of the American Dream, as good cop Glenn Ford loses his nuclear family and just goes nuclear. The Lawless is an earnest morality play about the plight of migrant fruit pickers in Southern California, doing the work Americans left for office gigs (by 1956 a majority of U.S. workers held white rather than blue collar jobs). 65 Years of the Cannes Film Festival: An Early Photographic History Part I.
Just like today, the Cannes Film Festival of yesteryear was attended by high-profile Hollywood couples often more in love with the cameras than one another as well as sexy starlets willing to bare all in order to get noticed and directors engaged in ridiculous publicity stunts for profit. The only things that have really changed in the last 65 years are the hairstyles and the fashions but while browsing though these old photographs it’s easy to become mesmerized by the charismatic faces that stare back at you. As Norma Desmond famously said in SUNSET BLVD. (1950), “We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces!” Norma may have been talking about silent film stars then but those infamous lines haunted me while I was compiling these images. Of course there’s an element of nostalgia in my opining because these are some of the faces that made me fall in love with the movies and they’re faces that I never get tired of looking at. DTV Action Items (Part 2): Intro to Stone Cold Steve Austin StudiesThis is Part 2 of 3 in my series on direct-to-video action movies. In last week’s post, direct-to-video action expert Outlaw Vern modestly proclaimed that, “for the time being I think Stone Cold Steve Austin is the most prolific star with a good track record [in DTV].” In Part 2 of my industry shaking series on DTV fight films, I exhaustively investigate this claim. Steve Austin (born Steve Anderson) was the biggest star in professional wrestling for most of the past 15 years, perfecting the persona of a blue-collar hellraiser with a rabid anti-authoritarian streak. A series of injuries to his neck and back forced him to retire from the ring, and he’s been churning out DTV bare-knuckle brawlers since 2009, after his one big bid for the theatrical market, The Condemned (2007), failed at the box office. While he hasn’t matched the insanely successful screen career of frequent WWE foe Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Austin is forging a worthy one of his own, albeit on the fringes of the movie business. Charlotte Rampling: The LookWoody Allen introduced me to Charlotte Rampling. It was during the early autumn of 1980 or possibly the early winter of 1981. I was a moody adolescent and family friends took me to see STARDUST MEMORIES (1980). At the time I was only remotely familiar with Allen’s work, having seen a few of his “early, funny pictures” but nothing had really prepared for me for the film I was about to see. And the indelible image of a broken, cheerless Charlotte Rampling quietly weeping into the camera while Allen zooms in on her remarkable face was seared into my brain. I sympathized with the hopelessness Rampling seemed to be conveying during those few moments but I’d never seen it illustrated in quite the same way. STARDUST MEMORIES quickly became a sort of touchstone film for me and the beguiling and beautiful Charlotte Rampling instantly became one of my favorite actresses. Home Video Roundup: Witches and the WestI had a similar reaction to Mr. Stewart when I watched Kim Novak purr her way through Bell Book and Candle, just released by Twilight Time on a gorgeous blu-ray. He also might have been agog at Westward the Women (1951), the William Wellman femme-Western released in a well-appointed DVD from the Warner Archive, which includes an audio commentary from film historian Scott Eyman. They are two films that focus on female desire, a rare occurrence in the generally leering male gazes of post-code Hollywood (pre-code films were replete with sexually independent women – check out Baby Face (1933) for a bracing example). Bell Book and Candle is set in motion because of Novak’s uncontrollable lust for Stewart, and Westward the Women kicks off because of hundreds of ladies’ self-sacrificing desire for a better life out in California, a gender bending variation on Horace Greeley’s advice to, “Go west, young man”. Remaking the Three StoogeSpread out! Having been on a remake kick now for several weeks, I can’t pass up the opportunity to comment on the current big-screen “remake” of The Three Stooges. The only problem is, I haven’t yet seen it (I write these blogs a week or more before they go up), so I’m not in a position to (yet) comment specifically on this particular rendition. But remaking the Three Stooges is nothing new—the Three Stooges were always an act of continual reinvention. The Three Stooges were a show-business anomaly, and an act comprised of paradoxes. They hit their greatest and most enduring popularity not only long after their most creative period, but even after they had reached a de facto retirement. They are remembered as a movie comedy troupe, created in the crucible of vaudeville, and preserved on television. Far beyond the Cury-vs-Shemp debate, the “three” stooges, depending on how you count, number as many as 12. Edward L. Cahn’s You Have To Run Fast (1961)Edward L. Cahn directed 11 films in 1961, and You Have to Run Fast was one of them. MGM recently released it on their DVD burn-on-demand service in a crisp transfer, making it easy to appreciate the thriller’s tight construction and open-air location shooting. The AFI Catalog lists no production dates but it was undoubtedly completed in a week or two before Cahn and producer Robert E. Kent moved on to the next programmer (17 of which are now streaming on Netflix). I was tipped to Cahn’s work by Dave Kehr’s “Further Research” column in the November/December 2011 Film Comment, where he says, “Cahn…seemed to embrace the aesthetic of speed with a passion and personal commitment not always apparent in the work of his more feverishly productive Poverty Row peers.” Cahn reportedly filmed “an astonishing 40 setups a day”, but as You Have to Run Fast clearly shows, they flow with an ironclad visual logic, and establish a moral equivalency between a mob boss and the innocent he is tracking down. Cinematically speaking, who are you? (a response)After reading fellow Morlock Greg’s article last month I’m William Holden. Who are you? I was about to “Leave a Reply” – especially since I had the chance to be the first to post one – when I stopped myself and started giving it some real thought. In truth, I struggled with my answer, realized that my response would be lengthy and, since I knew I’d be filling in for R. Emmet Sweeney soon, saved it for today. Jim Brown, Movie StarJim Brown retired from the National Football League in 1965, after nine seasons of transcendent athleticism. “For mercurial speed, airy nimbleness, and explosive violence in one package of undistilled evil, there is no other like Mr. Brown,” wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning sportswriter Red Smith. Brown was only thirty years old when he shockingly hung up his spikes, but he never much cared about public opinion. Instead of exposing his body to more pounding (he never missed a game in his astonishing career), he entered the comfier confines of the movie business, where stuntmen will happily take beatings for you. In his debut, Gordon Douglas’ fine Western Rio Conchos (1964, I wrote about it here), he establishes the quiet tough guy routine he would soon build upon. It was with The Dirty Dozen (1967) that he became a bankable name, and Brown knew it, as it was during production of that blockbuster that he announced his retirement from football. He went on to star in close to twenty films over the next decade, and the Warner Archive recently released a sample of this output on DVD, four works from 1968 – 1973: The Split (1968), Kenner (1969),…tick…tick…tick (1970) and The Slams (1973). |
Archives
This mag sound so fun! I think I saw... - Jenni
Featured Sites
Popular terms
3-D
Action Films
Actors
Actors' Endorsements
animal stars
Animation
Anime
Anthology Films
Autobiography
Awards
B-movies
Best of the Year lists
Biography
Biopics
Blu-Ray
Books on Film
Boxing films
British Cinema
Canadian Cinema
Character Actors
Chicago Film History
Cinematography
Classic Films
College Life on Film
Comedy
Comic Book Movies
Czech Film
Dance on Film
Digital Cinema
Directors
Disaster Films
Documentary
Drama
DVD
Early Talkies
Editing
Educational Films
European Influence on American Cinema
Experimental
Exploitation
Fairy Tales on Film
Faith or Christian-based Films
Family Films
Film Composers
film festivals
Film History in Florida
Film Noir
Film Scholars
Film titles
Filmmaking Techniques
Food in Film
Foreign Film
French Film
Gangster films
Genre
Genre spoofs
Guest Programmers
HD & Blu-Ray
Holiday Movies
Hollywood lifestyles
Horror
Horror Movies
Icons
independent film
Italian Film
Japanese Film
Korean Film
Leadership
Literary Adaptations
Martial Arts
Melodramas
Method Acting
Mexican Cinema
Moguls
Monster Movies
Movie Books
Movie Costumes
Movie locations
Movie lovers
Movie Reviewers
Movie settings
Movie Stars
Music in Film
Musicals
New Releases
Outdoor Cinema
Paranoid Thrillers
Parenting on film
Polish film industry
political thrillers
Politics in Film
Pornography
Pre-Code
Producers
Race in American Film
Remakes
Road Movies
Romance
Romantic Comedies
Russian Film Industry
Satire
Scandals
Science Fiction
Screenwriters
Semi-documentaries
Serials
Short Films
Silent Film
silent films
Social Problem Film
Sports
Sports on Film
Stereotypes
Straight-to-DVD
Studio Politics
Suspense thriller
Swashbucklers
TCM Classic Film Festival
Television
The British in Hollywood
The Germans in Hollywood
The Hungarians in Hollywood
The Irish in Hollywood
The Russians in Hollywood
Theaters
Trains in movies
Underground Cinema
VOD
War film
Westerns
Women in the Film Industry
Women's Weepies |