You may not agree with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose members proclaimed in 1960 that “Pillow Talk” represented “the best writing, story and screenplay written directly for the screen” far better than the other obscure titles nominated that year: “The 400 Blows,” “North by Northwest,” “Wild Strawberries” and “Operation Petticoat.” [...]]]>

You may not agree with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose members proclaimed in 1960 that “Pillow Talk” represented “the best writing, story and screenplay written directly for the screen” far better than the other obscure titles nominated that year: “The 400 Blows,” “North by Northwest,” “Wild Strawberries” and “Operation Petticoat.” But the film, which also represented the unlikely return to Hollywood of the blacklisted director Michael Gordon (“Another Part of the Forest”) has become some sort of a classic — at least enough so for Universal to pop for a major restoration of the faded Eastman Color negative, and release it as a bright and shiny Blu-ray in the studio’s centennial collection. It’s far from being one of the great romantic comedies, but there has proved to be enough in it to keep gender studies classes fired up for decades, and even justify a few hundred words on a sleepy Sunday in May in the New York Times.

The glimmerings of female desire that appeared in “Pillow Talk” — after 25 years of repression under the Production Code — had did not take long to explode into the camp excess of late 60s films like “The Girl on a Motorcycle,” which Kino has released this week as part of their burgeoning Eurotrash line. It’s not easy to recognize the Jack Cardiff who shot “The Red Shoes” in the gauzy soft-core porn of this 1968 British production, which stars Marianne Faithfull more or less fresh from her hit recording of “As Tears Go By” and Alain Delon, as the pipe-smoking, Hefneresque professor of philosophy who introduces her to the joys of easy riding as practiced in Old Heidelberg. I’ve got a few words on that one as well.

Even George Stevens had his moments of beautiful delirium, as represented in the haunting opening sequence of his often overlooked 1952 “Something to Live For” — a series of slow dissolves between a curtain rising on a Broadway show, a woman (Joan Fontaine) peering between her fingers in a close-up step-printed to look like [...]]]>

Even George Stevens had his moments of beautiful delirium, as represented in the haunting opening sequence of his often overlooked 1952 “Something to Live For” — a series of slow dissolves between a curtain rising on a Broadway show, a woman (Joan Fontaine) peering between her fingers in a close-up step-printed to look like slow motion, and a man (Ray Milland) anxiously peering out at Times Square through the window of a cab. The film is one of the best of the many 50s expressions of discontent with the middle-class model of suburban security, and as near as I can tell, a completely anomalous expression on Stevens’s part of a yearning for escape and romantic self-destruction. Olive Films has released this rare title in a very nice copy; also this week, Kino is offering King Vidor’s often abused public domain title “Bird of Paradise” in an impeccable transfer taken from the producer David O. Selznick’s personal print, as preserved at George Eastman House. This week’s New York Times column rounds out with a few words about Arch Oboler’s “Bewitched,” an intriguing 1945 anticipation of the psycho killer film that very likely had an influence on Hitchcock.

One of the great revelations of the last decade has been the breadth and depth of the Italian popular cinema, at last made available to non-Italian speakers through the subtitling efforts of companies like Raro Video and NoShame, as well as the private initiatives of many public-spirited cinephiles on the net. Thanks to the [...]]]>

One of the great revelations of the last decade has been the breadth and depth of the Italian popular cinema, at last made available to non-Italian speakers through the subtitling efforts of companies like Raro Video and NoShame, as well as the private initiatives of many public-spirited cinephiles on the net. Thanks to the horror buffs, we’ve made great strides with filmmakers like Mario Bava and Riccardo Freda; Quentin Tarantino and his followers have unearthed such intriguing action directors as Fernando di Leo and Sergio Martino. Now, attention seems to be turning to the “commedia all’Italiana,” the remarkable surge of biting social comedies that accompanied Italy’s economic recovery in the 50s and 60s. Once widely distributed (and commercially successful) in the US, many of these movies have dropped out of circulation over the years, leaving major directors like Dino Risi, Luigi Zampa, Pietro Germi and Nanni Loy woefully underrepresented, but lately Raro, Criterion and Kino have been issuing rare work by Alberto Lattuada, Antonio Pietrangeli, and Marco Ferreri, hopefully with more to follow.

Mario Monicelli (above) may have been the best known of the group when he died in 2010 at the age of 95, but apart from “Big Deal on Madonna Street,” very little of his work (which includes nearly 70 titles as a director) has been visible of late in the US. Criterion has taken a big step forward with “The Organizer,” an atypically sober Monicelli film from 1963, with Marcello Mastroianni as an enigmatic labor organizer who urges factory workers toward a strike in turn of the century Turin. The film is a challenging blend of broad caricature and psychological nuance, of realist social reportage and stylized storytelling (more details here, in this week’s New York Times column). Monicelli’s equally complex “La grande guerra” from 1959 would make a terrific follow-up, but his long career has much to offer.

One of the most assured stylists of the studio era, Mitchell Leisen was able to balance wonderfully robust, built environments (thanks to his training in production design) with a sensitive direction of actors — qualities on display in a pair of hard-to-see Leisen films that recently surfaced. The 1950 “No Man of Her Own” [...]]]>

One of the most assured stylists of the studio era, Mitchell Leisen was able to balance wonderfully robust, built environments (thanks to his training in production design) with a sensitive direction of actors — qualities on display in a pair of hard-to-see Leisen films that recently surfaced. The 1950 “No Man of Her Own” from Olive Films offers Barbara Stanwyck in an expressive mix of melodrama and film noir; “Bedevilled,” a 1955 MGM production released by Warner Archive, finds him adapting to the demands of color, widescreen and location shooting with reasonable aplomb, although the film is marred by some flat sequences staged by Richard Thorpe (who took over the production when Leisen fell ill). Reviews here in the New York Times.

The Titanic may have sunk a hundred years ago, but the great ship is still steaming along for the home video industry. Seemingly every cable channel documentary and TV movie about the 1912 disaster has suddenly reappeared in the marketplace (and James Cameron’s blockbuster is returning to theaters in computer-generated 3-D this week), but [...]]]>

The Titanic may have sunk a hundred years ago, but the great ship is still steaming along for the home video industry. Seemingly every cable channel documentary and TV movie about the 1912 disaster has suddenly reappeared in the marketplace (and James Cameron’s blockbuster is returning to theaters in computer-generated 3-D this week), but I think I’ll stick with the 1958 “A Night to Remember,” which remains probably the best known film of the highly accomplished Roy Ward Baker, one of the best of the postwar generation of British filmmakers. Here’s a quick overview in the New York Times, with a few words about Baker’s sharply political “Flame in the Streets,” which was released in a watchable widescreen transfer by VCI Entertainment a few weeks ago. Amusing typo included at no extra charge!

The magazine ads for the 1948 release of John Ford’s “Fort Apache” featured an illustration (above) that could almost be the romanticized historical painting of “Thursday’s Charge” referenced in the film’s devastating final sequence, in which John Wayne’s Captain Kirby Yorke (now a colonel) declines to disillusion a group of newspaper reporters on the [...]]]>

The magazine ads for the 1948 release of John Ford’s “Fort Apache” featured an illustration (above) that could almost be the romanticized historical painting of “Thursday’s Charge” referenced in the film’s devastating final sequence, in which John Wayne’s Captain Kirby Yorke (now a colonel) declines to disillusion a group of newspaper reporters on the subject of the now-legendary heroism of his former commanding officer, Henry Fonda’s Owen Thursday. The film, of course, shows a very different event — a pointless massacre that results from one man’s refusal to change with the times.

Now available from Warner Home Video in a magnificent Blu-ray edition, “Fort Apache” remains among Ford’s finest achievements — a difficult, tightly-knotted, highly personal film that seems to contradict itself with every scene. J. Hoberman reads it as a call for a militarized America in his excellent history of Cold War cinema, “Army of Phantoms,” yet it’s a film that profoundly questions military authority and sides with the Apache “enemy” against the duplicity and exploitative policies of the US government. Ford’s remote outpost is at once a kind of idealized, democratic community (its harmony suggested by two beautifully filmed ballroom dances) and a site of loneliness and devastation, of mysteriously fragmented families and rigid class distinctions. I don’t think I’ll ever come to the bottom of this one, though here’s another thousand words of thrashing around, in this week’s New York Times.

Does it mean something that so many German directors adapted easily to Hollywood, while their French counterparts almost immediately beat it back to the old country as soon as they had the chance? Jean Renoir loved America (he became a naturalized citizen and lived in Los Angeles until his death in 1979) but American, [...]]]>

Does it mean something that so many German directors adapted easily to Hollywood, while their French counterparts almost immediately beat it back to the old country as soon as they had the chance? Jean Renoir loved America (he became a naturalized citizen and lived in Los Angeles until his death in 1979) but American, or at least the American studio system, did not like him: his taste for location shooting and infinite retakes made even sympathetic producers like Darryl Zanuck extremely uncomfortable, and “Swamp Water,” his first American project, was eventually taken out of his hands after Renoir fell weeks behind schedule. Yet the film, recently released in an excellent, limited edition Blu-ray edition by Twilight Time, contains much that is personal, and much that seems to relate to Renoir’s own sense of exclusion and impotence during the Occupation. A review here in the New York Times.

I had an odd filmgoing experience last week that I somehow feel compelled to share. As someone interested in 3-D (the process that is bringing depth of field back to the vocabulary of filmmaking), I thought I’d better run out to see Andrew Stanton’s pre-ordained bomb “John Carter” before it vanished, so I drafted Giulia D’Agnolo Vallan, the only other critic I know who’s sympathetic to stereoscopy, and we headed out to see the IMAX 3-D presentation at the AMC Loew’s 34th Street in Manhattan. After shelling out a breathtaking $19 per ticket, we settled into our seats, prepared for a sublime experience. But as soon as the film came on, it was apparent that we’d been issued glasses for the RealD process rather than IMAX — which, because the two systems use different left eye/right eye polarities — had no effect whatever on the blurred, double image on the screen. I went out to look for an employee, and after ten minutes or so I was able to find someone willing to exchange the RealD glasses that didn’t work for IMAX glasses that (though covered with greasy fingerprints) more or less did. What amazed me wasn’t the screw-up so much as the fact that, as near as I could tell, only two other people out of an audience of about 50 seemed to notice that anything was wrong and went out to complain (not surprisingly, the management didn’t bother to stop the movie and pass out the right glasses). So my question is, is this how people expect a 3-D movie to look — which is to say, hopelessly blurry and not in 3-D at all? Or are our expectations of the theatrical experience now so low that we just take these things in stride? All very strange, and all very dispiriting.

Along with “Laura,” “Anatomy of a Murder” has long been one of Otto Preminger’s most frequently revived films, perhaps because its confidently naturalistic style (unlike, to chose a random example, “Skidoo!”) requires no adjustment from the casual viewer. Yet, as Criterion’s excellent new Blu-ray edition of “Murder” makes clear, it is among Preminger’s most [...]]]>

Along with “Laura,” “Anatomy of a Murder” has long been one of Otto Preminger’s most frequently revived films, perhaps because its confidently naturalistic style (unlike, to chose a random example, “Skidoo!”) requires no adjustment from the casual viewer. Yet, as Criterion’s excellent new Blu-ray edition of “Murder” makes clear, it is among Preminger’s most subversive works, a film that lovingly documents the American legal system while suggesting that truth will always remain elusive and justice a remote ideal. The enigma at its core anticipates the self-conscious modernism of Michelanglo Antonioni’s “L’Avventura” by a year. I give it another look in this week’s New York Times column, along with another interesting revelation, “La Visita,” from the neglected Italian director Antonio Pietrangeli (“Adua and Her Friends”).

Above is the Polish poster for “Anatomy,” courtesy of Heritage Auctions — the only paper for the film I could find that didn’t use the famous Saul Bass design.

The beautiful jumbo lobby card from Josef von Sternberg’s “Dishonored” pictured above is part of Heritage Auctions‘ spectacular poster sale on March 23, where it currently carries a modest opening bid of $300 — bound to rise considerably as the auction approaches. Long missing from authorized distribution in the United States, the film itself [...]]]>

The beautiful jumbo lobby card from Josef von Sternberg’s “Dishonored” pictured above is part of Heritage Auctions‘ spectacular poster sale on March 23, where it currently carries a modest opening bid of $300 — bound to rise considerably as the auction approaches. Long missing from authorized distribution in the United States, the film itself is finally being offered, along with its equally elusive cousin “Shanghai Express,” as a modestly priced ($24.99) double disc set from the manufactured-on-demand TCM Vault Collection.

The Sternberg-Dietrich films might seem like prime candidates for Blu-ray release, but what we have here are the familiar transfers from Universal that have been used in the recent European releases of these titles — which means acceptable image quality with no digital clean-up, and in the unfortunate case of “Shanghai Express,” an incomplete print. Still missing is a crucial chunk of the thematically important scene in which Warner Oland’s warlord interrogates the French officer played by Sternberg’s mentor Emile Chautard — footage that seems to have vanished around the time of the film’s Laserdisc release and has never been restored. I’m grateful to David Hare for first pointing out this out to me; Liam Fennell has posted the dialogue of the entire scene dialogue in a post at Criterion Forum, and it is with gratitude to him that I reproduce it here, with the missing lines in italics:

Chang: How long have you been in the French army?
Lenard in French: For twenty years. Twenty years. Twenty years, mademoiselle
Chang, looking closely at Lenard’s passport: Your passport says nothing about your military rank.
Lenard in French, looking around bewilderedly: I don’t understand.
Lily in French: He says that your passport says nothing about your being in the army.
Lenard in French: I am no longer in it. I have been retired.
Lily to Chang: He claims he has been retired.
Chang to Lily: Explain to him if he does not tell the truth, I’ll have him shot.
Lily to Lenard in French: He says that if you do not tell him the truth, he will have you shot.
Lenard in French, suddenly looking very sheepish: When I was in the army I committed a minor offence and was discharged.
Lily to Chang: He was discharged for a minor offence.
Chang: Then why does he wear the uniform.
Lily in French, to Lenard: Why do you wear the uniform, then?
Lenard in French, very uncomfortable: I’m going to see my sister and I don’t want her to know that I have been discharged. It would cause her too much shame and sorrow.
Lily: He is going to visit his sister and he doesn’t want her to know about his disgrace.

A fifteen second gap may not seem like much, but the missing lines do contribute to the vitally important theme of deceptive appearances and elusive essences in Sternberg, stated here on a micro level but highly indicative of this meticulous filmmaker’s attention to detail.

This is no way to treat a classic, but as humble beggars before the studio gates, we have long since learned that we can’t be choosers. However compromised, the films themselves remain among Sternberg’s, and Hollywood’s, greatest achievements, and I have a few words of appreciation in this week’s New York Times column.

Lionel Rogosin’s 1957 documentary “On the Bowery” is one of those richly liminal works that exist between the old (the Flaherty school of the composed, fictionalized, restaged documentary) and the new (the soon-to-explode cinema verite movement, driven by the availability of new, more portable cameras and sound equipment). Shot in 35-millimeter, and presented on [...]]]>

Lionel Rogosin’s 1957 documentary “On the Bowery” is one of those richly liminal works that exist between the old (the Flaherty school of the composed, fictionalized, restaged documentary) and the new (the soon-to-explode cinema verite movement, driven by the availability of new, more portable cameras and sound equipment). Shot in 35-millimeter, and presented on the new Blu-ray from Milestone in a print created by the Cineteca del Comune di Bologna from the original camera negative, Rogosin’s film (his first) is an absorbing combination of artifice and observation, jamming together carefully composed, WPA-style images, non-professional actors cast as fictionalized versions of themselves, an imposed storyline that artfully fizzles out, and extended moments (particularly, a late night bacchanalia) that seem to escape the filmmaker’s control. John Cassavetes acknowledged the film’s influence on his aesthetic and methods; the film itself may have been influenced by the Beats (Ginsberg’s “Howl” was published just before Rogosin began production) and the emerging bohemian scene on St. Mark’s Place, just a few crucial blocks uptown from the area where “On the Bowery” takes place (a couple of years later, the filmmakers might have dropped in to see Thelonious Monk at the Five-Spot, though they seemed to prefer the White Horse Tavern on the other side of town). An altogether fascinating piece, I barely scratch its surface in my review in the New York Times.