Saturday at the Movies: 50s 3D Horror and Early Talkie Hitchcock

I attended two very different revival screenings yesterday. In the early afternoon, I visited the Castro to catch the newly-restored Creature from the Black Lagoon in all of its 3D spender. Then, in the evening, I dropped in at the Pacific Film Archive to catch a rare, early Alfred Hitchcock talkie, Rich and Strange.

Both were fun, but neither was a must see.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon

I’d seen this 1954 science fiction monster movie three times before–all theatrical and always in 3D. But that was way back in the 1970s. Yesterday, I believe, was my first time seeing it without benefit of marihuana.

It was still pretty funny.

Set in a previously-unexplored tributary of the Amazon–that looks suspiciously like the imageUniversal back lot–Creature follows a small group of scientists, plus a colorful local fisherman, as they search for fossils and find something stranger–a sort of man-fish highbred that doesn’t appear to be particularly well-adapted for anything. Perhaps that explains why he’s all alone; his species is well on the way to extinction.

Why am I calling the creature he, despite the lack of any visible genitalia? Everyone in the movie assumes that the creature is male. What’s more, he seems strangely interested in the one female member of the expedition (young and beautiful, of course).

So let’s take a moment to consider that one female character in the movie, played by Julie Adams. She’s supposed to be a scientist, but she never does anything remotely scientific. While male scientists scuba dive to collect underwater rocks, then run tests below deck, she hangs around, puts herself in dangerous situations, and occasionally screams. But as anyone familiar with 1950s horror understands, those are the primary responsibilities of all female scientists.

(To be fair, some 50′s movies treat female scientists a tad more seriously. See It Came From Beneath the See  for a better role model.)

The other characters are equally stereotyped. You’ve got the handsome, virtuous young man, the older, wise scientist, the boss who cares more about money than research, and the colorful fishing boat captain. Much of the dialog is memorable, although perhaps not in the way the screenwriters intended:

Captain: What kind of fishing is that? Who eats rocks?

Old scientist:  I eat rocks, in a manner of speaking. I crush and look inside them and they tell me things.

This was my first time seeing Creature from the Black Lagoon with decent 3D. Before that, I had only seen it in the dreadful anaglyph 3D version of the 1970s, which required cheap, colored glasses that degraded the image.  Yesterday’s screening used modern, polarized, digital 3D, which gets considerably closer to how the film would have looked in the dual-projector setups of 1954.

Director Jack Arnold (who a few years later would make the excellent Incredible Shrinking Man) and cinematographer William E. Snyder don’t overdo the 3D effects–or at least they don’t overdo overdoing them. The underwater scenes are particularly effective in 3D. On the other hand, rear projection scenes are particularly fake.

But then, you don’t go to a movie called Creature from the Black Lagoon expecting realism.

Rich and Strange

The Pacific Film Archive‘s Alfred Hitchcock series is winding down, so it felt like a good time to catch a rare work from the Master of Suspense. Except that Rich and Strange was made in 1931, before he had come anywhere near earning that title.

You can’t honestly call this modestly budgeted British programmer a thriller, as there are very few actual thrills. image(You can, however, call it East of Shanghai; as did the American distributers.) It starts as a comedy of manners, becomes a fake travelogue, then turns into a serious drama about adultery. A shipwreck sequence near the end gives it a little bit of that Hitchcockian suspense.

Why a fake travelogue? Because everything shot for the film was done on a soundstage. Stock footage and studio sets make up for all of the story’s locations.

The plot is simple and initially conflict-free: A bored and miserable married couple (Henry Kendall and Joan Barry) unexpectedly come into some money. So they decide to travel the world first class, seeing the sites and spending time with the "best" people.

Of course things don’t go smoothly. He suffers from seasickness. She gets bored. They both get very drunk. Each is successfully romanced and seduced by someone else, almost destroying their marriage.

For an early talkie, Rich and Strange appears strangely like a silent movie. The many dialog-free sequences are clearly shot with a hand-cranked camera. It even uses a surprising number of narrative intertitles ("To get to Paris, you must first cross the channel.") These add to the light sense of fun, and make for some of the best sequences. The wordless, over-cranked opening, where the husband battles rain, a crowded subway, and a defective umbrella, is one of the funniest sequences in Hitchcock’s work.

The movie sags a bit in the middle, as adultery threatens the marriage and some broadly-drawn characters threaten the film. But the shipwreck sequence, with the characters trapped in a cabin on the sinking ship, reminds us of the Hitchcock to come.

Mildly entertaining on its own merits, Rich and Strange‘s major value today is as a glimpse of the artist who, in three years, would emerge as the greatest creator of thrillers that the cinema has ever known.

The PFA presented a rare, imported 35mm print of Rich and Strange.

Friday Night Report: Rare Hitchcock and New Studio Ghibli

I caught two very different movies at two very different theaters, Friday night. Both films were very much worth catching.

The Wrong Man

The Pacific Film Archive has been running its Alfred Hitchcock series since January, but it took me until Friday to actually get to one of the screenings. I’m really glad I went.

Hitchcock made The Wrong Man at the height of his powers. His next three films would be Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho. Like Vertigo, The Wrong Man was a critical and commercial flop on it’s original release. Unlike Vertigo, it has remained obscure. Now that I’ve finally seen it, I know that it deserves a better reputation.

Although it uses one of Hitchcock’s favorite plots–the innocent citizen imagewrongly accused of a crime–it’s unlike anything he ever made. Based on a true story and apparently following it quite closely, it realistically shows you the reality of that situation. Manny, a professional musician with a steady, modest-paying gig (Henry Fonda), doesn’t escape from life-threatening adventures, track down evil spies, or meet and romance a glamorous blonde. He gets fingerprinted and put in jail. He gets out on bail, and hires a lawyer he probably can’t afford. His wife (Vera Miles–who is a gorgeous blonde) has a nervous breakdown.

Even Hitchcock’s cameo is different than any other. The film opens with him, in long shot and shadow, directly addressing the audience, and telling them this is unlike any of his other thrillers.

And yet, in many ways, this is very much an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Right from the start, as Manny leaves work in the wee hours of the morning, takes the subway home, and talks about money with his wife, Hitchcock’s sense of camera angles, editing, and sound provides an overwhelming sense of dread.

In many ways, this is one of his scariest movies. We know that we will never be mistaken for a spy, or discover that a favorite uncle is a serial killer, or be attacked by huge flocks of crows. But if we’re sufficiently unlucky, we might actually someday be arrested for someone else’s felony. And even if we’re eventually proven innocent, the experience could have lasting emotional and financial effects.

Warner Brothers provided the PFA with a seriously scratched print that has seen better days. Good thing this was a black and white movie; at least the print wasn’t faded.

From Up on Poppy Hill

From the PFA on the UC Berkeley campus, I walked west to downtown Berkeley’s California Theater, where I caught the latest animated feature from Japan’s fabled Studio Ghibli. It was a very special screening.

Like all Ghibli films, From Up on Poppy Hill has been dubbed into English for its wide American release. But for this week, the California and Embarcadero are showing the original Japanese version–with English subtitles–for the last screening of the day.

That’s well worth catching.

Set in the early 1960s, From Up on Poppy Hill can best be described as whimsical. A dramatic comedy about first love, it focuses on a teenage girl falling on love for the first time, against a backdrop of students trying to save an old, rundown clubhouse.

This is a warm, sweet, nostalgic, and mild movie without villains or real disasters. Frightening things have happened in the past, and the scars of war–although no longer on the buildings–are still in everyone’s hearts and family histories.

Of course first love never runs smooth. This young couple run into obstacles, one of them serious enough to derail a romance.

imageThis is the rare animated feature without talking animals, fantasy creatures, magic, or broadly caricatured human beings.

Which brings up an interesting question: Why bother with animation? Why not tell the story with live action?

Two reasons:

First, because hand-drawn, 2D animation is with Studio Ghibli does, and does better than anyone else these days.

And second, because they can do so much with it. With astonishingly simple brushstrokes, the Ghibli artists can evoke a place, a community, and a human face’s emotion. It’s a joy to watch.

Catch this picture–preferably in the subtitled version.

Unfortunately, the California is screening From Up on Poppy Hill on one of their upstairs theaters–once part of this aging palace’s balcony. The screen is small, and the sightlines off. Worse, when something loud happens in the big downstairs auditorium, you hear it upstairs.

Other than these problems–which existed when the theater screened film–I had no complaints about the digital projection.

Lawrence of Arabia Again–This Time in a CineMark XD Theater

Seems kind of crazy. I haven’t been able to go to the movies anywhere near as often as I’d like, lately. Yet I’ve managed to see the same film three times in the last four months. And that film is almost four hours long.

But it was worth it. Although I now own it on Blu-ray, Lawrence of Arabia really does deserve a darkened theater, a huge screen, and an audience of more than your friends and family. And this time, I had a chance to see it in a theater that’s really optimized for a big picture, digitally projected.

The theater in question was the Century San Francisco Centre 9 and XD, and they screened Lawrence as part of their regular Wednesday Classic series.

But this was a special presentation. They screened Lawrence in their XD theater. XD promises a very high-quality digital presentation on a very large screen. They use Barco 4K projectors, a very bright image, and top sound. And sure enough, this was the best-looking Lawrence of Arabia I ever experienced.

For my other recent Lawrence experiences, see Great Projection Saturday, Part 2: 70mm & Lawrence of Arabia and The Digital Lawrence of Arabia Experience. Here’s what I say about the movie in my newsletter when it plays locally:

A+ One of the greatest films ever made. Stunning to look at and terrific as pure spectacle,Lawrence is also an intelligent study of a fascinatingly complex and enigmatic war hero. T. E. Lawrence—at least in this film—both loved and hated violence, wanted desperately to become something he could never be, and told himself that he was liberating Arabia while knowing deep down that he was turning it over to the British. This masterpiece requires a very large screen and either 70mm film or 4K DCP digital projection for its full effect.

The XD theater looked like a typical 21st century multiplex auditorium, but larger. The huge, moderately-curved screen recalled the big roadshow palaces of the 1960s–in other words, the type of theater in which Lawrence of Arabia was meant to be shown. The front row is set back a bit, making it just about perfect for me for this kind of movie.

I should mention that CineMark charges a premium price, $14.50, for XD presentations. But so did those big roadshow palaces.

An XD Theater

When the preshow started, I turned around and looked at the light coming from the projector. And my heart sank. Two light sources, one on top of the other, told me that the 3D housing was still on. The picture was bright, so I’m confident that the polarizing filters had been properly removed. I know that with a Sony 4K projector, running a 4K, 2D image through the 3D attachment results in a 2K image (click here for details). With Barco, I honestly don’t know. I called Barco and the theater, and got conflicting information. So I’m not sure if I’ve seen Lawrence of Arabia in 4K.

Update: It appears that the 3D attachment was left on, but it used the RealD-XL 3D system, which doesn’t reduce resolution the way the Sony does. Some image quality was probably lost, but it wasn’t significant. I definitely saw the film in 4K.

And it looked great–crisp, bright, and detailed. The occasional digital artifacts that marred a few minutes of the Castro’s December screening only showed up in only one shot. The large, curved screen made this very immersive film even more immersive. The sound was just about perfect.

A fair number of people showed up, although it wasn’t near a full house. The audience laughed and gasped in all the right places. Some, quite obviously, were seeing Lawrence of Arabia for the first time. Always a good thing.

Of course, you can’t expect a modern multiplex to offer the sort of showmanship you would get at the Castro. There was no curtain. The masking wasn’t versatile enough for Lawrence’s 2:20×1 aspect ratio (a screen shape that died with 70mm projection), resulting in blank screen above and below the image. The houselights went dark at the beginning of the overture rather than slowly fading while the music played.

In my recent piece on the UA Emery Bay multiplex, I stated "One clear difference between an art house and a multiplex: Good coffee and tea vs. none at all." I have to take that back. The Century’s concession stand sold Starbuck’s coffee and Tazo Tea.

I realize that over the past two years, I’ve written three posts about Lawrence of Arabia that concentrated on presentation and said little about the movie. I’m going to have to fix that.

Noir City in 3D

Last night I attended Noir City‘s first ever 3D double bill. Both films, Man in the Dark and Inferno, came out in 1953. That year was both the height of the classic noir period, and the zenith of the first 3D craze.

Actually, it was the only year of the first 3D craze. Hollywood turned to 3D after Bwana Devil became a surprise hit in the fall of 1952. By early 1954, the public was preferring movies in 2D.

Both films have been digitally restored, and were projected off of DCPs. This was my first experience with old 3D movies projected with new 3D technology.

The result? I have a new all-time favorite ’50s 3D movie.

Man in the Dark
This isn’t it. Overall an entertaining little crime thriller with a touch of science fiction, Man in the Dark suffers from the addition of the third dimension.

Edmond O’Brien stars as a violent gangster who, on condition of parole, agrees to experimental brain surgery that will make him a law-abiding citizen. (I’d love to know if Anthony Burgess saw this movie before writing A Clockwork Orange.) The operation also destroys his memory. He has no idea who or what he was before waking up in post-op. The movie never explains why he remembers little things like the English language, or that $130,000 is a lot of money.

That’s how much he stole, then hid, before getting arrested. His partners in crime want their share of the loot. So does an insurance investigator. None of them really believe that he can’t remember anything. Nor are they particularly concerned about his well-being or survival.

The result is a quick, slick, and totally entertaining crime movie, but not an exceptional one.

Except for the 3D. For most of the screen time, the 3D adds absolutely nothing to the picture. It’s just there. But every so often, the filmmakers remind you that you’re watching a 3D movie by throwing something at the camera. Surgical instruments, gunfire, a bat, and a spider all get in your face, taking you out of the story, and–at least with last night’s audience–producing laughs that the filmmakers didn’t intend.

I suspect that movies like this, that would have been better in 2D, ruined the 50s 3D craze.

Inferno
Now this was more like it. An exceptional story of attempted murder and human survival, set against an unforgiving desert, Inferno is a unique and totally satisfying experience. Directed by Roy Ward Baker and shot by Lucien Ballard, Inferno made better use of 3D than any other pre-digital film I’ve seen.

In fine nourish tradition, an unhappy wife and her lover (Rhonda Fleming and William Lundigan) decide to kill of her rich husband (Robert Ryan) and make it look like an accident. They leave him in the hills above a desert, with a broken leg, while they go looking for help. And when they reach civilization, they give the authorities wrong information, so they look for the missing millionaire in places where he couldn’t possibly be found.

Just one problem: Hubby doesn’t die. Most of the film cuts back and forth between the deceitful lovers and their intended victim, who drags himself across rough terrain, climbs down a cliff with the help of a rope, and walks with a homemade splint, all the while improvising ways to get food and water. (He has no one to talk to, of course, but we hear his thoughts in voice-over.)

So you’re watching two evil people enjoy a life of luxury, while their victim suffers and struggles to stay alive. You know that the tables will inevitably turn. Wondering how that will happen provides most of the movie’s fun.

For most of the film, Baker and Ballard avoid the throw-at-the-camera tricks that make most 50s 3D movies so annoying. Even when a rattlesnake strikes, it sends its venom to something off the side of the screen, not directly into the camera.

The filmmakers use the stereo-optical photography to emphasize the vast emptiness of the desert, adding to the drama rather than detracting from it. Only at the action-packed climax do they throw fists and pieces of furniture at the audience. But the fight is so intense, and so well-choreographed, that the effect enhances the movie rather than hurting it.

Noir City continues today and Sunday at the Castro.

Saturday at Noir City

Yesterday (Saturday) was a beautiful day, so I spent most of it at the Castro, enjoying two dark double bills–all part of the ongoing Noir City festival.

Out of these four feature films, I watched two ex-cons re-entering society, four violent crimes turn out really bad for the perpetrators, two people jump to their deaths, multiple car and truck chases, and I’m not  sure how many murders.

Oddly enough, I didn’t see a single femme fatale, despite the presence of Gun Crazy’s Peggy Cummins in the first two films.

But a more important talent snaked through these four pictures: Cy Endfield. He wrote or co-wrote the first two films screened, and directed the third (and best).

First Double Bill: Peggy Cummins Tribute

Both of these films were released in 1957, after Cummins abandoned Hollywood for her native Britain. In other words, they were English, rather than American, noir.

Curse of the Demon
To my mind, this supernatural thriller doesn’t really qualify as noir, since the evil comes from something other than human weakness. But that doesn’t disqualify such a thriller as entertainment. Dana Andrews stars as an American scientist who comes to England to debunk a Satanic cult. And if you think he’ll be proven right, you haven’t seen enough movies.

For the most part, it’s a likeable and thoughtful thrill ride, with a great villain and some truly scary moments. But two major problems, both added in post production, make it a worse movie than it should have been. First, the producers replaced the scary, unseen demon originally planned with a laughably bad monster special effect. Second, composer Clifton Parker overdid the musical "fright" stingers  until they became funny, then annoying, then funny again.

One problem can’t be blamed on post production: Andrews’ hero comes off as kind of a dick.

Hell Drivers
Now this one was more like it! An ex-con looking for honest work (Stanley Baker) gets a job driving a truck. Sounds good, except that the company he’s working for insists on dangerously fast driving, encourages the drivers to compete with each other, and takes no responsibility for the results. Loud and suspenseful, Hell Drivers examines machismo and the way it can be used to exploit working-class men.

In addition to Baker and Cummins, Hell Drivers contains a number of future stars, including three of what would be the biggest names is the ’60s spy craze: Patrick McGoohan, David McCallum, and the biggest of all, Sean Connery (in a very minor part).

One complaint: Hell Drivers contains a character of the sort that I call dead meat–someone who is sympathetic but will obviously not survive for the fade-out. I call such characters "dead meat" after a parody of this type in Hot Shots. Always a nice guy, dead meat characters inevitably befriend the hero, and have their fates clearly telegraphed to the audience beforehand.

One technical note: Hell Drivers was the first black and white VistaVision film I’ve ever seen. But despite the extra-large negative, it looked no better than any other black and white movie from 1957–and worse than many. According to Martin Hart’s invaluable American WideScreen Museum, "the infrequent black & white VistaVision films didn’t seem to gain much by the use of a large format negative."

Second double bill: Nancy Mysel Tribute

The Film Noir Foundation doesn’t only honor movie stars. Film preservationist and restoration expert Nancy Mysel died last year of cancer, and last night the festival honored her with two films she had helped restore.

These were both 35mm, photochemical, analog restorations rather than digital ones. I talked to Noir City’s head honcho, Eddie Muller, about digital vs. analog restorations after the movies. He’s not against digital (several of this year’s films will be screened off DCPs), but these two were in good enough condition to allow them to use less expensive analog processing.

Try and Get Me (aka: The Sound of Fury)
Easily the best of the four films I saw yesterday, Try and Get Me (originally titled The Sound of Fury) easily sits among the best noirs ever made. Based very loosely on the same 1933 San Jose lynching that inspired Fritz Lang’s Fury and the recently disappointing Valley of the Heart’s Delight, it follows a decent but flawed man as he sinks into crime and then faces a murderous mob.

Howard (Frank Lovejoy) has a son and a pregnant wife to support, but not a job. He also has a drinking problem. In other words, he’s a deeply sympathetic protagonist, but not someone you’d want to depend on.

Then he meets Jerry (Lloyd Bridges in a brilliantly over-the-top performance), who seems to have plenty of cash. Soon they’re robbing cash stations and liquor stores. Then Jerry leads him into deeper waters, with a kidnapping that turns into a particularly grisly murder (or at least as grisly has was allowed in a 1950 Hollywood film). Step by step, their capture becomes inevitable.

But a local journalist has been whipping up hatred for these two "animals," and the large crowd that gathers around the police department isn’t willing to wait for a trial. The horrible crimes committed by two unhinged men become the nucleus of another crime–this one committed by almost everyone.

Director Cy Endfield fills the story with remarkable performances. Not just Lovejoy and Bridges, but in minor characters, as well. Katherine Locke gives a particularly touching performance as a lonely spinster. The crowd and lynching scenes have a remarkable immediacy.

My one complaint: There’s a minor character who clearly exists to express the film’s themes. He’s annoying and unnecessary. Fortunately, he’s seldom seen.

The Hoodlum
Noir is often quick, violent, and cheap. Those three words best describe the last film of the evening. Three other words also describe The Hoodlum: a guilty pleasure.

Lawrence Tierney plays the title character–a young man and hardened criminal who gets out of prison with no intention to go straight. He asks for a receives no sympathy from the people around him or from the audience, and badmouths the suckers willing to work for a living. Reluctantly working in the family gas station, he plans and organizes a daring armored car robbery. You know that’s not going to go well.

In the film’s short 61 minutes, he pretty much ruins the lives of everyone near him. That makes for an enjoyable time.

Noir City continues through February 3.

Images courtesy of the Film Noir Foundation.

The Digital Lawrence of Arabia Experience

I spent yesterday afternoon at the Castro, watching one of my all-time favorite films, Lawrence of Arabia. I’ve seen it many times, and over the last few years, always at the Castro. But this time was different. Sony digitally restored the epic this year, and this new version was played off a DCP instead of a film print.

A bit of history: Lawrence of Arabia was recut and shortened multiple times after its 1962 release. In 1988, Robert A. Harris restored the film to something like it’s original cut–with the help of director David Lean and editor Anne V. Coats. That restoration received a major 70mm release, and became the definitive Lawrence. For the film’s 50th anniversary, Sony restored the film again, using digital technology not available in 1988 to better clean up the image. This new restoration follows the 1988 cut.

So how did the digital Lawrence look? As always with this sort of film at the Castro, I sat in the center of the first row. And from there, for the most part, it looked very, very good. The details were clean and sharp, the vistas expansive, and with a visible film look. The dramatic impact of the images were all there.

But it wasn’t perfect. The image occasionally looked over-processed–as if someone was trying too hard to remove a film-based flaw. But these moments, which may not have been noticeable to someone sitting a few rows back, marred maybe five minutes of this nearly four-hour movie.

On the whole, this new restoration improves upon Harris’, which I last saw, at the Castro and in70mm, about 18 months ago. Faded images and cracks in the film emulsion that marred earlier versions are now gone, and the image is much closer to what, I imagine, Lean wanted.

But was this the best way to project this restoration? The Castro’s 2K digital projector can screen an image slightly superior to a pristine 35mm print. But 35mm was never the optimal way to see Lawrence of Arabia. It was always intended for 70mm presentation, and a 70mm frame is nearly three times the size of a 35mm one.

I suspect the film would have looked better in 70mm. The 2012 restoration credits mention 70mm print timing, so I assume that at least one print was struck. I don’t know if Sony is making that print commercially available, and if they have, why the Castro didn’t rent that.

I also strongly suspect that the picture would look even better with 4K digital projection (which has four times the resolution of 2k). Alas, for economic reasons that are understandable even if they’re regrettable, the Castro doesn’t have a 4K projector.

But the folks running the Castro did a crackerjack job presenting the film. Like most big roadshow pictures of its time, Lawrence starts with an overture–music with no image. The houselights slowly faded throughout the overture, plunging the audience into darkness just in time for the curtain to open on the Columbia logo. The projectionist was awarded with applause.

The audience expressed its appreciation throughout. No one thinks of Lawrence of Arabia as a comedy, but it has its moments of dry British wit. The audience laughed in all the right places.

A few weeks previously, I watched Lawrence without a skilled projectionist or an audience. I was at home with the new Blu-ray. It still works on that medium, and still looks great, but the experience didn’t really do it justice.

The Castro will screen Lawrence of Arabia three more times today and tomorrow–at 2:00 both days and 7:00 tonight. Click here for details.

Samuel Fuller

I’ve been throwing myself into the life and work of Samuel Fuller lately. It’s been a rewarding experience.

For those not familiar with the name, Fuller wrote and directed a string of low-budget, impressive genre films from the late 40′s to the early 60′s. His pictures are bold, direct, and in-your-face, and utterly lacking in subtlety. Yet they’re also marked with a strong, open-minded humanism, a hatred of violence (even though his films are often quite violent), and sympathy for minorities, the poor, and others on society’s margins.

After 1964, he found it difficult to raise money for new projects. He only directed a handful of films in the 33 years before his 1997 death.

Cover art for A THIRD FACEMy own recent plunge into Fuller’s world started when I picked up a used copy of his autobiography, A Third Face, at Berkeley’s Pegasus Books. I’m generally suspicious about autobiographies–the authors are seldom objective–but I couldn’t resist this one. After all, Fuller was one hell of a writer. Starting out as a reporter at 17, he wrote several novels as well as all those screenplays (far more than he directed). The book has its share of obvious errors (Paulette Goddard was not in Monsieur Verdoux), and issues suspiciously skipped over. Although he goes into great detail about many wonderful mentors and friends (all of whom he treats generously), he avoids discussing any romantic relationships except for his late-in-life and very happy second marriage.

Accurate or not, A Third Face is a great read. Fuller’s blunt, direct prose paint a self-portrait of the artist as a humanist rebel. He fights with producers and studio heads to make the pictures he wants to make, telling the stories he wants to tell. He even stands up to J. Edgar Hoover.

And it’s not all about movies. He goes into detail about the newspaper business in the 20s and 30s, and his experiences in the infantry during World War II (recreated and fictionalized in his 1980 film The Big Red One). His account of the vividly recreates the sense of going months and years expecting instant death at any moment. You can see why his war movies (all of which could reasonably be described as anti-war movies) carry such a strong wallop.

As I started reading the book, I decided to catch up on some of his films. I had seen enough already to know and like his work, but this gave me an excuse to dive in to more of them. (Among the films I’d already seen were The Big Red One, I Shot Jessie James, The Naked Kiss, and The Crimson Kimono.)

As luck would have it, two of Fuller’s major works, neither of  which I’d seen before, played the Pacific Film Archive as I was reading the book. The first was his first war film, The Steel Helmet. Set during the then contemporary Korean War, it follows a gruff sergeant trapped behind enemy lines. The sole survivor of his platoon, he eventually finds and joins another group of soldiers, heading on an extremely dangerous mission. This instantly became my all-time favorite Fuller film.

But it lost that status a week later, when I returned to the PFA for Pickup on South Street. Not only did this tale of a pickpocket and Communist spies supplant Steel Helmet as my favorite Fuller, it also leaped into my top tier of great film noir. To see what I’m talking about, read Anti-Commie Friday Night at the Pacific Film Archive.

I also managed to see four other Fuller films, all new to me, at home during this period. None of them matched the quality of Steal Helmet or Pickup, but I liked White Dog quite a bit, as well as parts of the western Forty Guns. I didn’t care much for Shock Corridor or Park Row. Shock Corridor went overboard with its B picture in-your-face shocks. Park Row suffered from Fuller’s other artistic flaw: It preached too much.

As it happens, I saw two other Fuller features theatrically this year–House of Bamboo and Underworld USA. That was way back in January, at a Noir City double bill. For more on these, see Noir City Report: 2 by Sam Fuller.

That means I saw four Sam Fuller films theatrically in 2012. Considering that no one did a retrospective of his work this year, that’s pretty good. Or pretty lucky.

And someone should have done a retrospective of his work. Fuller was born in 1912. This year was his centenary. At least one theater in the Bay Area should have done a series.

I’d like to close this post with the paragraphs that close Fuller’s autobiography:

So here’s my last word, dear reader.

Love,

That’s right. Love.

I don’t give a damn if it sounds like some corny ending to a B movie. Everybody’s got troubles, setbacks, frustrations, tragedies. Love gets us through them. Love inspires generosity, patience, and compassion. Love keeps us healthy and whole. If I’ve learned anything at all from writing all those stories, from fighting a world war, from making all those films, from being way up and being way down, I’ve learned that everything–everything!–can be expressed in just four god-blessed words: Love is the answer.

Okay, now all you new voices, let yourselves be heard!

Love, Friendship, Aging, and Playing by the Rules: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Clive Wynne-Candy is an officer and a gentleman. A career soldier in His Majesty’s army, he believes in following the rules of combat–even against an enemy willing to commit atrocities. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp follows Wynne-Candy through four decades, from his dashing youth to a somewhat foolish old age. Along the way, filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger–the same team that created The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus–provide warmth, heartbreak, laughs, and several viewpoints on what it means to be a soldier, a patriot, a young man, an old man, and a decent human being.

Shot in three-strip Technicolor at the height of World War II, in a bombed-out London, Blimp’s very existence seems impressive. The story centers on a foolish British officer whose best friend–sometimes playing the voice of reason–is German. Winston Churchill did not approve. Yet it was made, on a large budget, with a running time of nearly three hours.

My wife and I caught The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp Friday night at the Rafael. The film has recently undergone a major 4k digital restoration, and it looks gorgeous. This picture belongs on the big screen, and you have two more opportunities to see it that way this week.

The title seems misleading–at least if you don’t know the historical context. After all, the central character’s name is Wynne-Candy, not Blimp. And while he may have been a colonel at one point in his career, we only see him as a lieutenant and and as a general. What’s more (mild spoiler), he’s still alive at the end. The explanation: Colonel Blimp was a popular cartoon character of the time, a parody of a certain type of fat, old-fashioned, mustached British officer who couldn’t adjust to the changing times.

And Wynne-Candy is definitely a Colonel Blimp type when we first meet him in the filmmaker’s present day of 1942. Woken from a nap in a Turkish bath, he’s a ridiculous figure–pompous, full of himself, and horrified and angry at a young officer who has shown initiative.

Then the flashback–which takes most of the film’s runtime–begins. We meet the young Wynne-Candy (Roger Livesey, who also plays the middle-aged and old Wynne-Candy in very convincing makeup), on leave after winning a medal in the Boer War. He ends up in Germany, where he fights a comically formal duel, and befriends a German officer, Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff (Anton Walbrook). War, peace, and the rise of fascism will separate them and bring them back together.

Rounding out the triangle–or perhaps the pentagon–is Deborah Kerr, playing three identical-looking yet very different young women who enter into these two men’s lives. My wife suggested an interesting reason for casting the same actress in all three roles: Every beautiful woman Wynne-Candy sees reminds him of his first love.

Despite Churchill’s initial objections, this is a very British, and pro-British film. It tells us that England should be proud that it won the Boer War and World War I without resorting to the dirty tricks of the enemy (in reality, the Brits committed their own atrocities in those wars). It also argues that the new war is different, and that we must use Nazi tactics to defeat the Nazis.

But don’t mistake Colonel Blimp for simple wartime propaganda. The characters and moral issues are too complex for that. Powell and Pressburger allow various views to be heard and considered. Besides, the story is about people, not ideas.

The filmmakers don’t use Technicolor here as creatively as they would later (see my comments on The Red Shoes), but they use it effectively. The colors pop, adding a brightness to what might otherwise have been a dreary story. Occasionally, it’s used atmospherically to convey the feel of a battleground or a dimly-lit home. Powell and Pressburger seldom distract us with technical dazzle, but every setup counts. And they found some very creative ways to tell us about the years passing by.

The Rafael is screening Colonel Blimp digitally off a DCP. Some people would object. I don’t. Sure, I would have rather seen the original, nitrate, dye-transfer print in Martin Scorsese’s private collection, but that’s not really a practical option. I seriously doubt that a new print–whether or not is was made off the new restoration–would look as good as this DCP. I’m sure it would not look better.

I saw The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp once before, on TV, and based on that experience I gave it an A. Now that I’ve seen it restored on the big screen, I’m promoting it to a rare A+.

You have two more chances to see The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp this week at the Rafael: Sunday at 2:30, and Tuesday, at 7:00. Miss them, and you may have to do with home video.

Anti-Commie Friday Night at the Pacific Film Archive

I visited the Pacific Film Archive Friday night to catch two very different films, both from 1953,  and both part of the series An Army of Phantoms: American Cinema and the Cold War. The first, Invaders from Mars, was all sorts of fun in ways that the filmmakers never intended. The second, Pickup on South Street, instantly became one of my all-time favorite noirs.

My big question: Why show the films in that order? Certainly the taut and thoughtful thriller should screen before the unintentionally hilarious sci-fi absurdity.

Invaders from Mars

I first saw this film, in a 16mm print, at  Gary Warne’s fabled Circus of the Soul bookstore. That must have been around 1977. I believe it was part of a series that Gary called It Came From Beneath the Budget. It was laughably bad then, and still is now.

It was directed by the great production designer William Cameron Menzies (Thief of Bagdad, Gone with the Wind). He should have stuck with production design. The acting is bad, the script is worse, and everything looks appallingly cheap. It cries out for MST3K treatment.

Invaders from Mars is one of those movies where aliens take over people’s bodies for their evil plans. This sub-genre produced one really good movie: the first Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In that one,  the possessed characters continue to act as if nothing has changed. When a spouse or child insists that their loved one isn’t him- or herself, you can easily believe that no one else notices a difference. But in Invaders, you sit there wondering why everyone isn’t asking "How come he’s suddenly an asshole?"

By the way, the Martians aren’t really trying to invade. They’re attacking select people working on a top secret weapon that could one day attack Mars. In other words, they’re acting in self-defense, and much like the American and Israeli intelligent forces who (most people suspect) have been sabotaging Iran’s nuclear program and assassinating their scientists.

The film was not, as I had recalled, shot in three-strip Technicolor, but in a cheaper two-color system called Cinecolor. The PFA screened a horrible-looking, scratched and soft 35mm print.

Pickup on South Street

Wow! What a difference. From a mess to a masterpiece.

Written and directed by the great Samuel Fuller (whose autobiography I’m currently reading), this Cold War noir stars Richard Widmark as a pickpocket who lifts the wrong wallet on a crowded subway. The wallet, belonging to a beautiful young woman(Jean Peters) contains a piece of microfilm with important government secrets. She has no idea that the people to whom she was supposed to deliver the microfilm are Communist agents. The US government, of course, is also after this valuable piece of celluloid.

Before he came to Hollywood, Fuller spent many years as a reporter on the city crime beat. He knew the underworld. He successfully wrote crime fiction before turning to screenwriting and from there to direction. It’s no surprise that his dialog crackles with both wit and authenticity.

In Pickup, he handles violence as well as dialog. If you’re used to today’s heavily cut action scenes, the fights in this picture are a revelation. Shot in long takes that leave no doubt that the stars took some punishment, the scenes have an immediate impact that doesn’t exist today.

And then there’s the great Thelma Ritter (the nurse in Rear Window). I’ve seen her mostly in comic roles, but here she breaks your heart as a poverty-stricken spinster who sells ties on the streets and information to the cops. She’s saving money for the only thing left she can look forward to: a nice funeral.

Pickup is clearly an anti-Communist picture, but it wasn’t anti-Communist enough for many conservatives of its day. They objected to a protagonist (the word hero doesn’t seem applicable) who’s not at all patriotic, but simply looking out for himself.

By the way, none of the bad guys have foreign accents; they’re all clearly Americans. The film never explains if they’re truly Communists, or just in it for the money.

The whole picture is damn near perfect.

The Master, by a Master, in Masterly 70mm

My wife and I caught The Master last night, in 70mm, in the Grand Lake‘s main, full movie-palace auditorium. If you care at all about quality films, you must see The Master. and if you care at all about how you see them, you should see it in 70mm.

And in the Bay Area, that means seeing it at the Grand Lake in Oakland. It’s the only theater showing the film in 70mm between Los Angeles and Seattle. (I’ll write another post about the theater shortly.)

As I mentioned in When You Least Expect It: The Return of 70mm, The Master was shot in the 70mm format, which technically speaking means it was shot on 65mm film, to be screened in 70mm (the extra five millimeters are for the soundtrack). The larger film, with a frame nearly three times the size of standard 35mm, provides a less grainy, more detailed image–photochemical high definition. 70mm projection shows more of that detail, and provides a brighter, steadier image than conventional 35mm.

(Many find 4k digital projection superior to 70mm for showing films shot in 65mm. For more on this, see More on Samsara, 70mm, and 4K Digital Projection.)

One more techy, geeky comment before going on to the film’s contents: Writer/director imagePaul Thomas Anderson, having chosen to shoot The Master in 65mm, then decided not to use the entire frame. He had the sides of the frame masked off to what looked to me like the 1.85×1, standard widescreen aspect ratio. This seems odd to me, for two reasons. First, he’s not using all of that great image. Second, every other feature Anderson has made was shot in anamorphic scope. He’s clearly at home with a wide aspect ratio.

Okay, on to the film, itself:

As you probably know, Anderson loosely based The Master on Scientology and it’s founder, L. Ron Hubbard. But this is no more a critique of Hubbard’s cult than Citizen Kane is an attack on Hearst newspapers. It’s the story of two very different men and the strange, dependent relationship between them. One of them is clearly based on Hubbard.

But the other man carries the story. Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix in the best performance of his I’ve seen) seems about as worthless as a person can get. When we first meet him, he’s a sailor in the last days of World War II. He’s an alcoholic with a knack for creating his own drinks out of stuff no sane person would swallow. If there is such a thing as a sex addict, he is one (in one scene, he imagines all of the women at a party to be naked). After the war, he becomes a drifter whose violent temper keeps him from holding a steady job.

Then he stows away on a very large yacht, and soon finds himself on friendly terms with the yacht’s owner–writer, philosopher, and cult-leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman in another of many great performances). Lancaster is everything that Freddie is not. He’s friendly, loved, charismatic, intelligent, and the head of a large family and a larger community. It’s easy to see what attracts Freddy to Lancaster, but harder to see what Lancaster sees in Freddie. Perhaps he sees a bit of himself in the young drifter, or perhaps a soul he can save.

Neither man is trustworthy. Freddy steals from his hosts, and Lancaster runs what he may or may not consciously realize is a scam. Both have short fuses. When a skeptic challenges Lancaster, he bursts out in an angry and intimidating verbal attack. Freddy, on the other hand, attacks with his fists. As he becomes a true believer, he uses violence against those who criticize Lancaster. The cult leader reprimands him for the violence, but not too much.

Amy Adams gives The Master’s third great performance, as Lancaster’s much-younger wife (he also has grown children and jokingly refers to former wives). Sweet on the outside but hard as nails, Adam’s Peggy Dodd is a true believer in her husband’s invented religion, and sees what it needs clearer than he does. (She’s also very pregnant through most of the film.) She warns him about Freddy. She dictates her husband’s book as he types what she says. In one bathroom scene, she almost angrily jacks off Lancaster when explaining what he may or may not do with other women. (I am so glad I first saw Adams in Enchanted; I never could have accepted her in that role if I’d seen her in this film, or The Fighter, first.)

If you’ve seen any of his other films, you know that Anderson is a master at creating characters, writing dialog, and coaching performances out of actors. He’s also a master at photographing them. He has a John Ford-like ability to find the exact right place to set the camera, and in doing so make his characters symbolic archetypes while still being flesh-and-blood individuals. When Freddy recalls the one true love of his life, the flashback includes one amazing close-up of the girl, with focus so tight that her face is sharp but her hair out of focus. Memory fades as it moves away from us.

The Master has received mostly lukewarm reviews, with critics complaining that it doesn’t fully explain Lancaster’s wild, pseudo-scientific theories and suspect therapeutic techniques. I disagree. We see enough of the therapy to see how it works, and hear enough of the theories to realize that Lancaster is a complete crackpot. Besides, the story is about the two men, not Scientology (or, as it’s referred to in the film, The Cause).

The Master‘s other flaw, also noted by many critics, is real. As the story moves along, it becomes obvious that it has nowhere to go. It just putters out, without a real third act. It never becomes bad or boring, but the second half lacks the urgency and discovery of the first.

To my mind, that flaw knocks The Master down to an A-. This is still a powerful and exceptional film.

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