[Correlating with the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 2010 Winter Nights Film Series, ZapTown will be publishing essays each week on the films that will be shown in the series.  The museum will be presenting the final event of the series with a double feature: Safety Last with One Week and a live score performed by the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra on Friday, February 25. The show starts at 7 p.m. - $30 Public/ $25 for Members and $10 for students with ID. For a full schedule, visit the IMA's website (http://www.imamuseum.org/toby) or our Lead Story on The Toby (http://www.zaptownmag.com/2009/12/lets-go-out-to-the-movies-the-toby - film schedule is located at the bottom of the article).]

Past Essays on ZapTown:

The Blue Angel
Nashville
Arsenic And Old Lace
Touch of Evil
The Dirty Dozen
The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg
The Last Picture Show

Though Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton are the most common names among silent screen comedians, Harold Lloyd ranks along with them as one of the most popular and influential of the era.  Lloyd became known for his go-getting “Glasses Character” that somehow always ends up participating in elaborate chase sequences or performing feats of daring do, and no daring feat is more indelible than of Lloyd hanging from the face of a clock in Safety Last! Chances are, even those who haven’t seen the movie are familiar with Lloyd’s bespectacled hero clinging to the clock hands while the clock-face tips precariously away from the building threatening to give way under his weight.  This iconic film stunt earned Lloyd the nickname “the King of Daredevil Comedy.” [cite 1]

The clock stunt was inspired by Bill Strothers’ human fly act.  While walking in Los Angeles one day, Lloyd came across Strothers climbing a building and was so impressed, that, along with using the stunt in the movie, he put Strothers under contract with Hal Roach Studios and cast him in Safety Last! as Limpy Bill, the roommate. [cite 2]  The famous climb up the twelve-story building thrilled audiences and was one he attempted to replicate in Feet First (1930), one of his few talkies. [cite 3]  This legendary stunt has also been referenced in numerous movies from 1920s-set Thoroughly Modern Millie (1967) to such as Look Who’s Talking (1989) to international films such as Finland’s Pekka ja Patka neekereina (1960). [cite 4]

Lloyd was one of the most prolific movie stars of his era, making 178 movies between 1915 and 1932, and just fewer than 200 his entire career.  He starred in 66 films as the character Lonesome Luke, a character loosely based around Charlie Chaplin’s little tramp character, before creating his “Glasses Character” seen in Safety Last! This character, usually credited as “The Boy,” is the character featured in his most memorable films such as Girl Shy (1924) and The Freshman (1925). [cite 5]  The young, naïve, but optimistic young man seemed to strike a chord with the 1920s audience.  In fact, his “Glasses Character” became so popular that some trade papers hyped his films with the tag line: “It’s a Lloyd film – that’s enough.” [cite 6]

Even though his film career slowed as talkies began to take over the movie production business, Lloyd had already established himself as an icon of the era.  Though he had branched out to make other types of movies, such as a dark political comedy, The Cat’s Paw (1934), and even a screwball comedy, The Milky Way (1936), he will always be known as the thrill comedian performing his insane movie stunts.  None will ever be more recognizable than his clock stunt in Safety Last!

Works cited:

[1,3] Dirks, T. (2009).  “Safety Last! review.”  Filmsite.Org. http://www.filmsite.org/safe.html. Last
accessed on February 24, 2010.

[2, 5-6] Feaster, F.  (2009.)  “Safety Last!”  TCM Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article.jsp?cid=23994&mainArticleId=107921.  Last accessed on February 24, 2010.

[4] Safety Last! (2010).  Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0014429/movieconnections.  Last accessed on February 24, 2010.

[Correlating with the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 2010 Winter Nights Film Series, ZapTown will be publishing essays each week on the films that will be shown in the series.  The museum will be presenting The Last Picture Show on Friday, February 19. The show starts at 7 p.m. - $9 Public/ $5 for Members and students with ID. For a full schedule, visit the IMA's website (http://www.imamuseum.org/toby) or our Lead Story on The Toby (http://www.zaptownmag.com/2009/12/lets-go-out-to-the-movies-the-toby - film schedule is located at the bottom of the article).]

Past Essays on ZapTown:

The Blue Angel
Nashville
Arsenic And Old Lace
Touch of Evil
The Dirty Dozen
The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg

In Picture Shows, Peter Bogdanovich was asked what he had learned from making a film like The Last Picture Show. He replied:

“I found I could do it! I’d been acting like I could, but I didn’t know if I really could. You live in fear that you can’t do it, and that it’s not going to be any good. And it never really is any good for me until I see it all put together. Was there a moment of doubt, ever? Several thousand. Right up until the two weeks of pre-filming rehearsals, there were times when I wondered if I should make the picture at all. I thought it was going to t be boring and dreary. I didn’t really know I could make that kind of picture. I wasn’t sure I could work with actors or get the kind of performances I wanted. So now, what does it come to? I’m a director. It consumes my life. Directing is everything. Making movies is everything? [1]

But what is “it” and what kind of picture was Bogdanovich really making here in the context to his other work as well as the work around him?

A member of the New Hollywood movement of the ‘70s (joining the ranks of Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, Sam Peckinpah and more), Bogdanovich was influenced by the French New Wave, and especially for Bogdanovich, the Cahiers Du Cinema directors like Francois Truffaut.

Years before The Last Picture Show, he spent most of his time as a film writer — an outside looking in to the system — who developed a life-long friend in Orson Welles when interviewing him on the set of Mike Nichol’s Catch 22. [I mention this because a few weeks back, Bogdanovich made an appearance at The Toby Theater to talk about and introduce the viewing of Welles’ Touch Of Evil].

But it was Roger Corman who pushed Bogdanovich into the director’s world, hiring him as a Second Unit Director for The Wild Bunch. With people like Corman and Welles, all of the articles he wrote for publications and the support of his friends and family, there were a lot of people who had faith in the aspiring filmmaker to do just that  — make a film.

And it was not just any film Bogdanovich was making. If you look at the films being made that surrounded The Last Picture Show, colorful cult sensations like The Honeymoon Killers or Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls, war films like M.A.S.H. and Apocolypse Now, and other strange reactions to the Vietnam War and the Hippy Movement, Bogdonavich’s vision was a simple but effective one.

When Bogdanovich ran across Larry McMurtry’s novel, he thought he was getting a book about film. Upon reality, he tossed it aside only to actually read the book and be impressed with how it affected him. His decision to make the film in black and white stemmed from a discussion with Welles who convinced him to make the film the way we see it. It gives a unique film noir presence to pop culture and American life. Being that this is a film about Texas, we get the feeling of Howard Hawks ghost is present. Cybill Shepherd even looks similar to Lauren Bacall’s image in To Have Or Have Not.

Film noir is dead, the ‘70s was a vehicle for protest and pushing the envelope, The Last Picture Show was a simple look to the past that within itself became embedded in time. It did not influence for the future, but remains as an imprint of great filmmaking.

No longer an outsider, Bogdanovich made a name for himself as a director has he retorts in Bogdanovich’s Picture Shows: “When you have a success, ou make any number of untold enemies, so now I’ve added an untold number to the ones I deliberately made, as Fritz Lang had once said, ‘you pay for what you get.’ [2]

No longer a follower, from the ’70s on, Bogdanovich became a leader in Hollywood who never looked back.

[1] Yule, Andrew, “Picture Shows: The Life and Films of Peter Bogdanovich” (Limelight Editions: New York, 1992).

[2] Harris, Thomas J. “Bogdanovich’s Picture Shows (The Scarecrow Press, Inc.: Metuchen, N.J. & London, 1990).

Additional Resources:

Girish Shambu, “Cinema Elegy: Peter Bogdanovich and The Last Picture Show:” http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/01/13/last.html

[Correlating with the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 2010 Winter Nights Film Series, ZapTown will be publishing essays each week on the films that will be shown in the series.  The museum will be presenting The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg on Friday, February 13. The show starts at 7 p.m. - $9 Public/ $5 for Members and students with ID. For a full schedule, visit the IMA's website (http://www.imamuseum.org/toby) or our Lead Story on The Toby (http://www.zaptownmag.com/2009/12/lets-go-out-to-the-movies-the-toby - film schedule is located at the bottom of the article).]

Past Essays on ZapTown:

The Blue Angel
Nashville
Arsenic And Old Lace
Touch of Evil
The Dirty Dozen

It has been years since I announced my love of the French New Wave. The style and the unintentional unity of the directors all led to an historical movement that was as fascinating as say the bebop movement in jazz or how abstract expressionism was to art.

Ever since that first time I saw 400 Blows and François Truffaut’s vision of old Paris, it got to me deep inside. The stark black and white images showed the degree of mysterious romanticism within the city, yet an underlying neo-realistic approach being blanketed around Antoine Doinel’s life. What Truffaut saw of his city was the impression of how I would experience being in his city.

And not only did I feel like I knew the streets of Paris, I felt like I knew Doinel. We followed his life from adolescence (The 400 Blows) through his youthfulness (Antoine And Colette) and into his adult life (Bed & Board).

Not as heavy a contributor to the French New Wave movement as Truffaut, Jacques Demy has something in common with the Cahiers du Cinema director. Like Trauffet, Demy used some re-occurring actors, themes and look in his films. This recycled environment made sense being that a large contribution was a trilogy of romantic films.

It would have made more sense for the Indianapolis Museum of Art to follow up Touch Of Evil with 400 Blows, being that Truffaut was directly influenced by Welles’ film noir to make his own masterpiece. But being that Friday is the kickoff to Valentines Day weekend, it’s only natural to focus on the romantic film and there is nothing more romantic then french film…or is there?

The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, 1964) is the middle of the trilogy — a musical — the first film Lola (1961) and the last, The Young Girls Of Rochefort (1967). If you dig into the specs, in a six degrees of separation sense, you will find that the names for Demy’s film Lola  came from Sternberg’s The Blue Angel, which was the first film in the 2010 Winter Nights Series.

Uninterested with what Jean-Luc Godard was doing, especially with his Rayndian science fiction dystopia of Alphaville, but interested in doing something just as unique and visual, he turned to the musical to create his most famous contribution to filmmaking.

The film takes place in Cherbourg surrounding a boutique where Madame Emery (played by Anne Vernon) and her daughter Geneviéve (played by Catherine Deneuve who went on to star in The Young Girls Of Rochefort) sell umbrellas. Geneviéve ends up falling in love with Guy (played by Nino Castelnuovo). Guy is drafted in the Algerian War, and after leaving, Geneviéve discovers that she is pregnant. Isolated and abandoned, and through the consorting of her mother, she agrees to wed Roland Cassard, who was seen wooing the lovely Lola only to be rejected. Even though Cassard understands that she is carrying someone else’s child, he continues with the agreement.
Through many plot twists and turns, it leads back to her having to deal with the realities of seeing Guy again. Through all of this, it is apparent that this is not your typical musical. The harsh realities of the film, give it the feel of a tragedy, much like Casablanca did. The characters become victims of the everyday realities of life.

All’s fair in love and war, and when it comes down to it, doesn’t all romantic dramas have a sense of tragedy to them? In the end, someone wins and someone loses. It’s the natural balance of human nature and this film clearly shows the realistic nature of love in a society that is torn apart by externalities.

[Correlating with the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 2010 Winter Nights Film Series, ZapTown will be publishing essays each week on the films that will be shown in the series.  The museum will be presenting The Dirty Dozen on Friday, February 5. The show starts at 7 p.m. - $9 Public/ $5 for Members and students with ID. For a full schedule, visit the IMA's website (http://www.imamuseum.org/toby) or our Lead Story on The Toby (http://www.zaptownmag.com/2009/12/lets-go-out-to-the-movies-the-toby - film schedule is located at the bottom of the article).]

Past Essays on ZapTown:

The Blue Angel
Nashville
Arsenic And Old Lace
Touch of Evil

By the time Robert Aldrich made The Dirty Dozen, he was already very familiar with the war film genre, constructing several war films in the previous decade and leading up to his monumental and shocking creation includes Attack, one of the more powerful war films since All Quiet On The Western Front, and the post-war twist of Ten Seconds To Hell.

Instead of using film as a catalyst to propagate patriotism, as the ‘50s did, or use it as a vehicle for protest and present the realities of war as a catalyst for peace — as the ‘70s did with films like The Deer Hunter or Johnny Got His Gun, Aldrich did a little of both by using the human condition within a war-like environment and exploiting a dire situation to show the true essence of humanity.

In a way, The Dirty Dozen is an anti-war film as much as it is a film about patriotism (again, more so in a personal sense than in a national sense), just not as evident as in Attack. But what is more evident is the sense of nobility — notably defined by the end of the film — that echoes throughout the characters in The Dirty Dozen. With Aldrich’s films, he loved to use situations to bring out the best and the worst in the human condition, as well as show the strengths of people and their ability to overcome horrible experiences and situations.

However, when we speak of nobility and patriotism here, it is a conflictual situation with the audience because with E.M. Nathanson’s book, our heroes of the film are the bad guys in society. The plot of the film is fed by the military’s actions to gather a group of mass murderers, rapists, and various criminal convicts who are given the chance to be brought back into society, rigorously trained, and to undertake a suicide mission that involves infiltrating a chateau and kill important Wehrmact officers as well as anyone else who might get in the way. It’s a win-win situation for those in command. If these hard criminals win, then the military succeeded in their goal. If they die, it is, in turn a service to society as many of the Dozen had a death sentence to begin with. Either die with dignity or die by the rope.

Aldrich liked a good challenge and using unlikely characters and put them in unexpected challenges was a weapon to creating progressive and surprisingly delightful films even for their common dire circumstances and gross realities, something we see in something like Quentin Tarantino’s film Inglorious Basterds. In Flight Of The Phoenix, Aldrich experimented with this technique, using the least definable characters that have to overcome and persevere a crash landing in the Sahara as the film is their fight for survival. In an interview with Chris Petit and Richard Combs, Aldrich admits being a fan of the “unwise martyr” and the attraction that lies in the fact that the world has been peppered with historical martyrs. [1]

This personal struggle in his films leaked into the making of The Dirty Dozen. Script problems and personnel problems, Aldrich was in a constant pre-production fight to see this film off the ground. This degree of dissentient either reflected or molded the sense of anarchy and anger in the film, as Peter Bogdonavich noted all of his films being that in some way or another. [2]

Take The Frisco Kid, a film about the Wild West. Gene Wilder portrays a Polish Rabbi (a symbol of good and morality in society) and put him into situations that would stretch his patience and beliefs. There was always a fine line where this comedy could turn into an angry film at any given moment.

But it’s the overlaying quality of anarchy that bonds these Dozen together. One of the main concerns Aldrich had over The Dirty Dozen was how to not only show the unity and spirit of these misfit soldiers, but also show that they are indeed bad people. By making apparent the corruption of establishment, you begin to feel something for these criminals as through circumstance unify for the common cause. It’s the underdog versus authority factor that turns the enemy into the hero.

In the end, war is still war and that in itself is cause for desperate measures and desperate solutions. Jean-Jacques Rousseau would have approved of Aldrich’s film as Rousseau observed that “men are crazy, and because to be sane in a world of madmen is in itself a kind of madmen.” [3] Aldrich being overtly aware of all of these factors is what set The Dirty Dozen apart from films of the genre.

[1] and [2] Miller, Eugene L., Jr., and Arnold, Edwin T., Editors, “Robert Aldrich Interviews (University Press of Mississippi, Jackson: 2004).

[3] Adler, Mortimer J. “How To Think About War And Peace” (Simon And Schuster: New York, 1944).

Further Reading:

Nathanson, E.M., “The Dirty Dozen” (Random House: New York, 1965).

Arnold, Edwin T. and Miller, Jr. Eugene L., “The Films and Career of Robert Aldrich” (The University of Tennessee Press: Knoxville, 1986).

Silver, Alain and Ursini, James, “What Ever Happened To Robert Aldrich? His Life And His Films (Limelight Editions: New York, 1995).

[Correlating with the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 2010 Winter Nights Film Series, ZapTown will be publishing essays each week on the films that will be shown in the series.  The museum will be presenting Touch Of Evil on Friday, January 29, with special guest actor, director, and author Peter Bogdanovich. The show at 7 p.m. - $15 Public/ $10 Members/ $11 students with ID. For a full schedule, visit the IMA's website (http://www.imamuseum.org/toby) or our Lead Story on The Toby (http://www.zaptownmag.com/2009/12/lets-go-out-to-the-movies-the-toby - film schedule is located at the bottom of the article).]

Past Essays on ZapTown:

The Blue Angel
Nashville
Arsenic And Old Lace

There’s a certain temptation to be glib and say they don’t make movies like Touch of Evil anymore, but that’s not entirely accurate. They’ve never really made movies like Touch of Evil, and watching it, especially for first time viewers, the film remains a unique example of what can be done with the thriller genre. Although it is widely considered a classic today, the movie was heavily cut by the studio before being released in theaters in 1958, much to the chagrin of writer-director-costar Orson Welles. The version being screened, and with which contemporary audiences should be familiar, is not the ‘studio cut’, but rather one that has been painstakingly recreated based on available footage, inserts, and Welles’ own impassioned notes to the studio when he originally found out they were going to edit the picture (He wrote a 58-page memo!) Ergo, the movie that exists today is not the movie that lucky theatergoers got to see in 1958—but it’s as close to the movie that they were supposed to see as possible!

The film itself, which Welles originally seems to have hoped would be a comeback picture, was largely ignored by audiences on its initial release—it was apparently paired with a film called The Female Animal, which ran as the Headliner to ‘Evil’s ‘B’ picture, but seems today to be largely forgotten. History is funny, that way. Despite the struggle that Welles went through to bring his vision to the screen, and his frustration with the film business, the work itself is timeless, in the way all good movies are-not in any glib sense, but simply that the story of Welles and Heston’s characters, and their linked fates, seems to grow more, rather than less, relevant as time marches on. Watching the film fifty years later, one can easily play the game of trying to spot its influence on American cinema and directors of all stripes, from Scorsese (The famous opening shot, that begins with a bomb being placed in the trunk of a car, builds and builds in one long, smooth tracking shot as it follows Charleton Heston and Janet Leigh across the border, and culminates in an explosion) to the Coen Brothers (It’s not hard to imagine Coen mainstay Jon Polito as the bewigged and bedevilled Mexican mob boss Grandi, if he were available at the time). Furthermore, the film’s singular mix of black comedy and pathos is undeniably well-managed, with Welles switching between the two moods with ease, often within the same scene, never really letting the audience (conditioned by a multitude of pulp thrillers beforehand), relax. Although Welles had great support in carrying out this balancing act in the form of a terrific score crafted by Henry Mancini, the film’s tension between the ridiculous and the tragic is best personified in the two lead performances, Charlton Heston’s heroic Mexican detective, and his corrupt counterpart from the American side of the border, played by the writer-director himself. Heston glides gracefully from being the butt of a joke to traditional detective heroics with a remarkable, self-deprecating aplomb, and Welles’ own performance as Quinlan, silently raging over his years in the trenches, is fascinating to watch–by the film’s climax he has become both sympathetic and monsterous. Welles had not yet developed the full beard that would define his image in his later years, but he was already a large, bulky man when he made this movie, and he used his weight for maximum effect on screen, looming over his victims like a mountain of a man, with a craggy, worn face that he seems to have lit and shot in the most unflattering angles possible-making himself an effective counterpoint to Heston’s grace and energy.

It is, I hope, not spoiling any of the plot’s twists to describe the climax of this movie in further detail, set as it is against a decaying industrial landscape, with Welles’ detective, bemoaning his bad fortune in life as he passes underneath a towering oil derrick. The derrick, filmed in vivid close-up, looms high above him and his partner as they head to their final destination, remaining still and silent, a symbol of wealth and industry that seems teasingly close and yet eternally remote from Quinlan and his world. These final scenes of Touch of Evil are a masterstroke, in that they manage to provide the thriller with a satisfying ‘happy ending’ while maintaining a sense of cynicism (or perhaps, shattered idealism) about the way the world is. It is telling, of course, that while the film’s conclusion has the hero defeating the villain and being reunited with his loved one, the focus of the director (and by extension, the audience) has moved on by that point to another character, who gives their own, sharply different judgement of what all all the expressions of human indignity and frustration we have been party to might mean.

We are moving further away from the 20^th century every day, but it is because of the ghosts raised in movies such as   that Orson Welles haunts us still. This film is an enduring testament to his power, both as a technical filmmaker, and as a man who understood the strange nooks and crannies that exist inside the human spirit. And more than that, it is a terrific time at the movies. See it if you can.

Further Reading:

Bogdanovich, Peter and Rosenbaum, Jonathan, “This Is Orson Welles” (Da Capo Press, 1998).

Naremore, James, “The Magic World Of Orson Welles” (Southern Methodist University Press, 1989).

Munby, Jonathan, “Public Enemies, Public Heroes: Screening the Gangster from Little Caesar to Touch of Evil ( University Of Chicago Press: 1999).

Conrad, Peter, “Orsen Welles: The Stories Of His Life (Faber & Faber: 2004).

Naremore, James, “More Than Night: Film Noir In Its Context” (University of California Press: 2008).

Hirsch, Foster, “The Dark Side Of The Screen: Film Noir (Da Capo Press: 2008).

[Correlating with the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 2010 Winter Nights Film Series, ZapTown will be publishing essays each week on the films that will be shown in the series.  The museum will be presenting Arsenic And Old Lace on Friday, January 22. The show at 7 p.m. - $9 Public/ $5 Members/ $7 students with ID. For a full schedule, visit the IMA's website (http://www.imamuseum.org/toby) or our Lead Story on The Toby (http://www.zaptownmag.com/2009/12/lets-go-out-to-the-movies-the-toby - film schedule is located at the bottom of the article).]

Past Essays on Zaptown:

The Blue Angel
Nashville

Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) is perhaps one of the best known dark comedies from Hollywood’s Golden Era.  It is full of endlessly quotable lines, memorable characters, and insanely (no pun intended) over-the-top performances.  The American Film Institute recognized it as one of the 100 funniest films ever made; placing it at number 30 on their list in 2000.[1] Yet, this movie proved to be very difficult to get onto theater screens.  Contract negotiations, censorship, and the original play’s Broadway run all interfered with the movie’s premiere.

The movie was filmed in 1941, but was not actually released to American audiences until 1944.  The original play was a huge hit on Broadway and Warner Bros.’ contract with the play’s producers stipulated that the movie could not be released to the American public until after the play closed on Broadway.[2] The play ran until June 17, 1944.  As a result, the movie, though scheduled for release in 1942, was held until September of 1944.  Interestingly enough, while stationed in London in 1943 during World War II, Frank Capra, the movie’s director, overheard some American and British soldiers shouting “Charge!” in the same manner as Teddy when running up the steps of “San Juan Hill.”  After hearing this, he learned that Warner Bros. had released the movie to the armed forces overseas almost a year before its release to the general public. [3]  In other words, Warner Bros. found a loophole in the contract.

A large part of the play’s success was attributed to its star Boris Karloff.  One of the running gags in the play is that the character Jonathan, played by Karloff, looked like Boris Karloff due to a botched plastic surgery procedure.  People flocked to the theater to see Karloff in this sinister role.  Because of this, the play’s producers were extremely apprehensive about letting any of the original cast members, but especially their star, reprise their roles on the big screen.  Josephine Hull, Jean Adair, and John Alexander, who originated the roles of Aunt Abby, Aunt Martha, and Teddy “Roosevelt” Brewster respectively, were given time off from the Broadway production to reprise their roles in the movie.  However, Boris Karloff volunteered to stay in the play and not reprise his role in the movie to appease the play’s producers concerns over a drop in ticket sales.[4]  Raymond Massey was cast as Jonathan in the movie and wore heavy makeup in order to resemble Karloff.  According to publicity items from 1944, it took two hours to apply and then another two hours to remove.[5]

Another headache-inducer for the film and Warner Bros. was the Production Code Administration.  At that time, all scripts had to be submitted to the PCA for approval before the movies could be filmed and there were several elements to the movie’s script that the PCA did not like.  The PCA was in the midst of Joseph Breen’s death grip in 1941 and all rules and regulations of the Code were to be strictly enforced.  Arsenic and Old Lace had several elements in the script that directly violated the first two applications: murder and sex.[6] Murder was not to be depicted in a way that could inspire imitation.  Therefore, PCA requested that all references to any actual poisons, with the exception of arsenic, be eliminated from the script as well as a recipe for the poisoned wine for fear that it may be replicated by “unstable viewers.”[7]  This request may seem quite silly today, yet the PCA often worried about corrupting moviegoers.

Another element in the script that the PCA had problems with was the “sexual frustration” between Cary Grant’s Mortimer and Priscilla Lane’s Elaine. [8]  The PCA did not approve of scenes of passion that involved several lusty kisses between any couple regardless of marital status and that passion in general should not arouse baser emotions. [9]  This would explain the reason why almost all of Mortimer’s and Elaine’s supposed heavy petting was either in a taxi cab or behind a tree.  It was implied but never shown.  This concept differs greatly from many of the movies that are now considered “Pre-Code.”  Before Joseph Breen took charge, the censorship guidelines were essentially ignored by filmmakers and many scenes made it to print that never would not be tolerated under Breen’s reign. [10]  One only needs to compare the scene in The Public Enemy where Jean Harlow puts James Cagney’s face between her breasts to the awkward staging of Mortimer and Elaine kissing behind the tree in the graveyard to understand just how much of a strangle hold Breen had over the content of motion pictures at that time.

Despite Breen’s insistence that movie makers follow the Code to the letter, it should be noted that only some of the PCA’s suggestions were taken under advisement, while others, such as the poisoned wine recipe, were ignored entirely.[11]  Interestingly, even though the studio refused to remove the wine recipe from the script, the script was approved, the movie was filmed, and after sitting on the shelf for several years, it finally was released to a very receptive audience.

Arsenic and Old Lace is now considered a classic and also one of Cary Grant’s more iconic roles.  However, the journey from pre-production to filming to releasing it in theaters was a rocky one that probably made at least a few people wish for a glass of Aunt Martha and Aunt Abby’s special elderberry wine.

Sources:

[1] 100 Years… 100 Laughs. (2000)  American Film Institute. http://www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/laughs.aspx” http://www.afi.com/tvevents/100years/laughs.aspx (Last accessed on January 19, 2010).

[2-5, 7-8, and 11] Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), American Film Institute Catalog. http://gateway.proquest.com/
openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&xri: pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:afi& rft_id=xri: afi:film:27697 (Accessed through Proquest database).

[6 and 9] Hayes, David P., The Motion Picture Production Code, 2009. http://productioncode.dhwritings.com/multipleframes_productioncode.php.

[10] LaSalle, Mick.“Pre-Code Hollywood.”  (GreenCine.com, 2005). http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/precode.jsp.

[Correlating with the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 2010 Winter Nights Film Series, ZapTown will be publishing essays each week on the films that will be shown in the series.  The museum will be presenting Nashville on Friday, January 15. The show at 7 p.m. - $9 Public/ $5 Members/ $7 students with ID. For a full schedule, visit the IMA's website (http://www.imamuseum.org/toby) or our Lead Story on The Toby (http://www.zaptownmag.com/2009/12/lets-go-out-to-the-movies-the-toby - film schedule is located at the bottom of the article).]

Past Essays on Zaptown:

The Blue Angel

In the 1970s, when it came to film, anything was fair game. You had your throwback movies and homages like American Graffiti and Chinatown. You had your inner-personal and socio-psychological films like Vanishing Point and Taxi Driver. There was the deep impact science fiction environmentalist film Silent Running and the deep struggle of Brian’s Song, just to name a few.

Because of society’s contribution and the state of affairs, popular culture in the 1970s were taken to the extreme.

The Vietnam War became a focal point based on governmental misconceptions, a civil rights outbreak, the 1973 oil crisis and mass inflation along with the deflation of the US dollar turned the country into an economic mess. And the leader of the pack was, of course, Nixon and Watergate. Film no longer became an avenue for escapism as it did an avenue of protest and realism.

Robert Altman felt no different. However, he came up with a unique story and a film experience that turned into what would be considered a true cinematic accomplishment. You may know Altman more for his films like M.A.S.H. and Thieves Like Us, but 1975′s Nashville was the creme of the crop for this director.

What he did was so oddball and strange that the formula would have made it or failed miserable. Altman took the realism of political affairs and blended them into normal everyday society and turned it all into a zany crusade. This was not your Cabaret. Altman let go of every inhibition he could think of and let the story take control and run wild.

How did he do that? He took a lofty 24 characters and set them loose in a short time span (the film takes place over the matter of a week). I will not get into the all-star cast that he came up with as there is an amazingly in depth synopsis and character analysis here: http://www.filmsite.org/nash.html.

Filming Nashville was like filming a documentary to a wild party. Altman’s methods was to just stand back and let things take their natural course. And by doing this, he was able to see things in people that most people would not normally notice.

He uses Nashville as the pinnacle for the film because the city is considered and iconic figure for the heart of America. Home to country music, it’s the city for the American people. He also uses it as a mockery — like an American Fellini — the city is a playground for an avid social and political circus gone amuck. It led to a very misleading reaction when the film was released. Critics and fans loved it while the mainstream country populous hated it, claiming it a disgrace not just to the city of Nashville but, in essence, to America.

Altman wants you on your toes and Nashville does a great job at keeping the audience on the move. Using multiple camera angles and full environments lit up, it gave for a wider range of movement and ease of flow to the characters. He loved surprises and in this rare moment of film history, he had the liberty to let the actors and actresses surprise him.

Sources:

A Movie Called “Nashville” by Ray Sawhill (Salon, June 27, 2000). http://archive.salon.com/ent/movies/feature/2000/06/27/nashville.

Nashville: Altman’s Open Surface by Jane Feuer (Jump Cut: A Review Of Contemporary Media, No. 10-11, 1976, pp. 31-32). http://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC10-11folder/NashvilleFeuer.html

Additional Resources:

Nashville Chronicles: The Making of Robert Altman’s Masterpiece by Jan Stuart (Limelight Editions, August 1, 2004).

Altman On Altman by David Thompson (Faber & Faber; illustrated edition edition, April 4, 2006).

[Correlating with the Indianapolis Museum of Art's 2010 Winter Nights Film Series, ZapTown will be publishing essays each week on the films that will be shown in the series.  The museum will be presenting The Blue Angel on Friday, January 8. The show at 7 p.m. - $9 Public/ $5 Members/ $7 students with ID. For a full schedule, visit the IMA's website (http://www.imamuseum.org/toby) or our Lead Story on The Toby (http://www.zaptownmag.com/2009/12/lets-go-out-to-the-movies-the-toby - film schedule is located at the bottom of the article).]

When Marlene Dietrich walked in to audition for the part of Lola Lola, she had no idea what a profound impact that day would have on her future acting career. Unprepared and uninterested, anyone else would have been shown the door based on her poor initial image. But there was something about her that sparkled beyond a mere unimpressive glance.

Dietrich had been an established stage performer and played many roles in films throughout much of the ‘20s, but on September 5, 1929, when Josef von Sternberg caught her performance in the music and dance revue Zwei Krawatten (Two Neckties), he knew he had to have her.

Dietrich was his Lola Lola much like Immanuel Rath (played by silent film superstar Emil Jannings) became her play toy that eventually led to the lead character’s self-destruction. The difference between the two was that Sternberg’s internal philosophy as a director was brash and ineffectual.  “I regard actors as marionettes,” Sternberg once said, “as pieces of color on my canvas.”¹

His canvas stretched out into every facet of filmmaking from the angle of lighting and how it reflected on people and props to a frame-by-frame perfectionism as produced from films like The Salvation Hunters, Underworld, and The Docks Of New York. But it was Dietrich who he treated as clay and was determined to sculpt her into a masterpiece. He used her essence and reputation to his full benefit. In Berlin, Dietrich had a reputation for being edgy and ahead of the times. She had a dedication to free love — although married and a mother — and was publicly promiscuous with her sexuality. Her anxiety regarding her morality during the shooting of the film was apparent as was Sternberg’s intentions. He once said, “I did not endow her with a personality that was not her own. I gave her nothing that she did not already have. What I did was make them visible for all to see.” ²

The Blue Angel was taken from Heinrich Mann’s novel Professor Unrat. Mann was a political and social writer, searching and exposing the causes of equality, justice and freedom. These elements — although not as distinct as his other works — modestly leaked into what became considered his greatest contribution to the German novel. The story of  a school teacher going from an overpowering and tyrannical hatred towards his pupils to an obsessive need of love towards a cabaret singer read like a news event with its distinct directness of the story that tore into the reader’s psyche.

Sternberg omitted Mann’s social-political language and focused entirely on the central theme — a man’s self-abatement. When Mann wrote the novel, Unrat was autobiographical in a sense. He saw many traits in Unrat that came from his own image: isolation, loneliness, a desperation for love and his disillusionment and hostility to the world. This self-portrait transformed into Sternberg’s work as Mann said after seeing the film, “My head and Marlene Dietrich’s legs.” Mann’s pointed beard and broad head became the inspiration for Janning’s look in the film. ³

It was not long before shooting this film that Al Jolson tantalized viewers with the first “Talkie” singing appearance in film (The Jazz Singer). Vaudeville in nature, the songs in the The Blue Angel brought distinction. Filmed both in German and English for lack of overdubbing abilities, the music was used naturally from the clock chimes to the professor’s whistling to Lola’s vocal performances.

Embedded around musical punctuation, much of the film takes place in the Blue Angel Cafe and the consistent chaos of the audience and performers scurrying around. On occasion the professor stumbles upon the company clown which later in the film he becomes. Stopping to stare at this miserable creature, little does he know that he is really staring at his future demise.

Thematically, the film not only views the inner-struggle of a man, but a German society in struggle. The beginning of the film shows a shop owner pull open the blinds of a window to illuminate a poster of Lola Lola. Beginning to wash the window, she stops and stares at the poster, then without finishing walks away. Living conditions were worsening in Berlin and Sternberg fed off that negligibility both externally and internally. Our first vision of the professor, he is in his study and notices that his canary has died. The theme of the bird bounces back and forth throughout the film where at first she is his little bird singing away to him when he soon becomes her strutting rooster only to end up having eggs smashed in his face, smearing clown make up in an almost horrific manner. The transition from horrid rooster crows to unearthly shrieking is a stark realization. This is a man who captured the fear of the German psyche of the 1930s with stark reality. The professor’s rule from his teaching desk is the same monument he clutches just before he dies. Sternberg saw a city drenched in decadence only to be disillusioned by their own selfs.

Lola Lola had nothing to gain from Professor Rath. What we see is a societal schoolteacher who upheld high moral standards as a tyrannical disciplinarian and then gradually lost everything through her. In the end, she is no different than when she met him. We see Lola Lola on stage singing “Falling In Love” as a degraded and tormented Rath who looks like The Monster in Frankenstein stammering and screeching uncontrollably out of the cabaret and into the street. With peering glances into the audience and a sultry pose, Lola Lola dares anyone to try and love her.

It is questionable who made the film more famous, Dietrich or Sternberg, but it is clear that one could not have existed without the other.

Sources:

[1] and [2] Blue Angel: The Life of Marlene Dietrich by Donald Spoto (Doubleday, 1992)
[3] The Brothers Mann: The Lives of Heinrich and Thomas Mann, 1871-1950 and 1875-1955 by Nigel Hamilton (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979).

Additional Resources:

The German Cinema by Rogher Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel (New York/Washington: Praeger Publishers, 1971).
Movie Review: The Blue Angel by Mordaunt Hall (New York Times, December 6, 1930). http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0CE2D91F38E433A25755C0A9649D946194D6CF
Roger Ebert’s Review of <i>The Blue Angel</i>, September 28, 2001: http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20010928/REVIEWS/109280301/1023
Notes On Film: The Blue Angel by Thomas Caldwell (Cinema Autopsy, October 8, 2008). http://blog.cinemaautopsy.com/2008/10/08/notes-on-film-the-blue-angel/