Re-reading Bloch, Sam's recounting to Lila of Dr Steiner's diagnosis of Norman includes the following:
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swanstep — 9 years ago(December 03, 2016 05:19 PM)
164 Odds Against Tomorrow Robert Wise, 1959
Decent tortured-Robert-Ryan-film that turns into a caper-film. Three leads (Raym, Begley, Bellefonte) are excellent with good hard-boiled dame turns from noir-stalwart Gloria Grahame and Shelley Winters. Excellent avant-jazz score too is a standout.
What prevents the film from being better-than-decent is, I think, the caper itself. It comes unstuck very quickly and realistically and then the film seemingly notices that it's coming up short tacks on a White Heat (1949) ending but without any good dialogue, which doesn't really work. A coda back in the city at the end (i.e., with some of the left behind dames and kids) perhaps underlining that the caper wasn;t really the point and offering us something else, might have been a good idea, maybe with some editing tricks to delinearize the narrative a bit.
So, for me at least, OAT isn't a complete film and so is properly in that penumbra of near-misses outside the list of best films of the year in 1959. Art-film staples that don't make Wright's list, e.g., Hiroshima Mon Amour and Pickpocket (one of Taxi Driver's models) are complete and just better. So in my view are somewhat chance-taking Hollywood things like Suddenly Last Summer and often underrated stuff like Pillow Talk and maybe The Nun's Story. (Obviously I have no disagreements with the NBNW, Some Like it Hot, Rio Bravo, Imitation of Life, Rio Bravo core of Wright's 1959 cohort). -
swanstep — 9 years ago(December 16, 2016 04:45 AM)
33 The Invisible Man James Whale, 1933
A fast-paced, good-looking romp/semi-thrill-ride from James Whale that was a big hit in its time. It struck me now however, as being as of less interest than Whale's other famous films (Waterloo Bridge, Frankenstein, The Old Dark House). The basic problems seem to be with the story itself: invisible guy, Griffin, is utterly megalomaniacal from the beginning; it's not as though the temptations of invisibility themselves are corrupting here. We really just can't wait for him to be cornered and shot. Any sympathy for him from his sort of love-interest (Titanic's Gloria Stuart in her salad days) feels completey misguided and Stuart really has nothing to play. The whole film (which is only 71 minutes) is really only a single Act and the end feels completely predestined, which doesn't make for the greatest viewing experience.
1933 was a pretty good movie year including a bunch not on Wright's list: Design For Living (peak Lubitsch), Baby Face (Stanwyck becomes a big star), Little Women (Cukor and Kate Hepburn make first beautiful music together). Invisible Man (1933) is fine but not good enough methinks. -
swanstep — 9 years ago(December 16, 2016 06:24 AM)
160 A Bucket of Blood Roger Corman, 1959
Another very short film (just over an hour). This time the obvious observation is that with a bit of trimming this could be a half-hour Twilight Zone ep. The final scene of ABOB teases us with the prospect of a seemingly impossible twist ('He's gonna turn himself into one of his statues! But how is that possible?) and doesn't quite deliver Maybe Serling could have figured out a way to make that final scene pop?
As always with Corman's own stuff, he reveals himself as a good technician. Camera amost always feels like it's in the right place, edits are punchy, decent performances are the norm. He's better than William Castle on that level, and you can feel him having really learned his lessons from Hitchcock and Welles and Lang in this film.
Takedowns of beatnik culture were old news by 1959 but the idea that the counter-culture could hide psychopaths probably felt prescient shortly after ABOB's release. Still, the story here is just so-so, and somehow Dick Miller's character never achieves any great heights of piteousness or tragedy. Corman doesn't have a Stefano or Shulberg or Chayefsky or Lehmann in his corner taking characters and scripts to the next level. And there's some (unhelpful) ambiguity as to how much Dick Miller's character understands what he's done at the end of the film, which together with the slight stupidity you have to impute to everyone else in the film that they don't pay much attention to, e.g., one of the prettiest cafe regulars going missing, makes the wrap up feel tentative.
In sum, ABOB wouldn't be anywhere my best-of-1959 list. We have a couple more Cormans coming up (his Poe films) in the early '60s. Can any of those equal X- The Man With X-ray Eyes which is currently my fave Corman-directed picture and worthy of a top-10-ish placing for its year. -
ecarle — 9 years ago(December 16, 2016 05:22 PM)
Another very short film (just over an hour). This time the obvious observation is that with a bit of trimming this could be a half-hour Twilight Zone ep.
or an Alfred Hitchcock Hourthough those started in '62.
As always with Corman's own stuff,
And it is intriguing to think about how many "Roger Corman movies" were DIRECTED by Corman. More often and as time went on he seemed to content himself with being a mini-mogul and giving chances to everybody else(Bogdanvich, Scorsese, etc.)
I've always been intrigued that given how cheapjack and poorly written most Roger Corman movies are, I think he graduated from Stanford University. Goes to show you..the degree doesn't make the man. Possibly the production and business smarts came from there, though. But Roger Corman movies look like somebody without a high school education made them.
Which leads me into a trap: a LOT of people without a high school education are very smart, and/or become very rich.
I have read that the MPAA resisted all attempts from Jack Nicholson(not the Nicholson who helped run American International; and people thought they WERE related, and they weren't) and Martin Scorsese to give Roger Corman an honorary Oscar for so much schlock. Butdidn't they? Eventually? (And I think Peter Bogdanovich's excellent "Targets" was from Corman.)
he reveals himself as a good technician. Camera amost always feels like it's in the right place, edits are punchy, decent performances are the norm. He's better than William Castle on that level, and you can feel him having really learned his lessons from Hitchcock and Welles and Lang in this film.
Interestingly put. I saw this a few months ago on TCM and at a minimum, I felt the performances were good.
Takedowns of beatnik culture were old news by 1959 but the idea that the counter-culture could hide psychopaths probably felt prescient shortly after ABOB's release.
Well Charlie Manson was ten years away and hidden more in the hippie culture, but who's to say the Beatniks were equally susceptible to embaracing madness?
I might add that "Bucket of Blood" is circa 1959 , and its more famous sibling "Little Shop of Horrors" (with Jack Nicholson doing a memorable cameo) was in 1960, and these are EXACTLY the kind of movies Hitchocck was "sensing in the marketplace" and demanding a "Hitchcock response"(Psycho, of course.)
The murders in Bucket of Blood are pretty gory, if not shown..the beheading of one poor sucker ends with his death off screen but a most Arbogastian "final scream."
In some ways, Bucket of Blood is JUST as shocking as Psycho(probably the savge nature of the murders), but ultimatelyno. The victims simply weren't built up as human beings as in Psycho, the murders weren't as graphic and extended in time as in Psycho. Stillwe're in the ballpark, content-wise.
Still, the story here is just so-so,
True. A guy kills people(well, a cat first) and puts plaster on them and voilahe's a hit sculptor! Shades of House of Wax, a little too predictable and nowhere near the weirdness of that plant that yells "Feed Me" in Little Shop of Horrors(which later became a musical and a movie with Bill Murray in the NIcholson cameo.)
and somehow Dick Miller's character never achieves any great heights of piteousness or tragedy.
True. Though Dick Miller seemed to catch the fancy of Joe Dante, who put Miller in most all of his 1980's movies that I'm not so enamored of (Gremlins, Innerspace) but is Miller in "Matinee"(1993), which I AM enamored of?
Corman doesn't have a Stefano or Shulberg or Chayefsky or Lehmann in his corner taking characters and scripts to the next level.
Hitchcock worked at the top of the studio system where talent is plentifuland expensive. Thus Hitchcock could make the best WITH the bestthough he got Joe Stefano, a tyro, at a real bargain and damngreat dialogue!
And there's some (unhelpful) ambiguity as to how much Dick Miller's character understands what he's done at the end of the film, which together with the slight stupidity you have to impute to everyone else in the film that they don't pay much attention to, e.g.,
Didn't Roger Ebert call this "the stupid plot" where the whole thing falls apart if anyone notices what's going on?
one of the prettiest cafe regulars going missing, makes the wrap up feel tentative.
In sum, ABOB wouldn't be anywhere my best-of-1959 list.
Well, as you've mentioned before, 1959 is the year where one finds North by Northwest, Rio Bravo, Some Like It Hot, Anatomy of a Murder.one of the best years ever. Oh yeah, Ben-Hur, too. And Pillow Talk.
We have a couple more Cormans coming up (his Poe films) in the early '60s. Can any of those equal X- The Man With X-ray Eyes which is currently my fave Corman-directed picture and worthy of a top-10-ish placing for its year.
I dunno. Let's find out. Vincent Price becomes part of the discussion -
swanstep — 9 years ago(December 17, 2016 11:02 PM)
In sum, ABOB wouldn't be anywhere my best-of-1959 list.
Well, as you've mentioned before, 1959 is the year where one finds North by Northwest, Rio Bravo, Some Like It Hot, Anatomy of a Murder.one of the best years ever. Oh yeah, Ben-Hur, too. And Pillow Talk.
To be fair, NbNW, Rio Bravo, Ben-Hur (and also Imitation of Life and The 400 Blows) are all on Wright's list. but, yep, no SLIH, Anatomy of a Murder, Pillow Talk, Suddenly Last Summer, Pickpocket, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Shadows, The Nun's Story, and so on. Bucket of Blood is quite good but the competition's hot. -
swanstep — 9 years ago(December 18, 2016 05:24 AM)
145 The Monolith Monsters John Sherwood, 1957
Undistinguished, formula '50s sci-fi. Meteorites expand fast when exposed to water (and also seem to turn people into stone although that side of the threat is woefully under-developed), threaten to overrun small town and after that. the world? Salt water, however, turns out to dissolve them real good. The End.
Some pretty good sfx of the towering then collapsing and shattering then rebuilding meteorite monoliths are the high-lights. Everything else about the production is utterly perfunctory. Makes the Quatermass '50s films, which I was quite dismissive of earlier in this quest, look like masterpieces. TMM isn't the worst film on Wright's list but it's one of the least interesting. Not really worth watching unless you're a '50s sci-fi completist. -
swanstep — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 01:00 AM)
107 House of Wax Andr De Toth, 1953
Maybe you had to be there (either in 1953 or in one of its '60s and '70s revivals) to get this one One of the original 3-D hits, House of Wax (1953) 3-D aside is a remarkably pedestrian thriller. Vincent Price has a super-elaborate scheme for both settling scores with enemies and re-populating his wax museum. One that involves lots of collaborators and lots and lots of ways of getting found out. It should have been possible to make Price's character a piteous, Phantom-/Hunchback-like figure but the film is too busy showing off 3-D to expand him beyond stock-villainy.
In sum, I found this film a real disappointment, one of the worst, genuinely famous films. I prefer the imitator, Corman's Bucket Of Blood (1959)!
To think that Wright chose HOW (and also Glen or Glenda!) over things like The Ear-rings of Madame D., Tokyo Story, From Here To Eternity, Shane, Roman Holiday, Pickup on South St, The Man Between, and so on. -
jay441 — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 04:21 PM)
I've read some intriguing personal anecdotes on this board about encounters with Golden Age Hollywood, and now here's mine.
House of Wax director Andr De Toth visited my university film theory class in the mid-80s. Clean-shaven head, black eyepatch. No riding crop. Our young Hungarian film professor asked him, twice, about his alleged involvement in filming, for Nazi Germany, one of Hitler's invasions, and, twice, De Toth politely declined to answer.
I don't remember too much else about this visit, except that at the next class meeting one of the students said that Veronica Lake had been married to De Toth (!) and had written in her autobiography that he would practice goose-stepping in the back yard (!!). -
swanstep — 9 years ago(December 30, 2016 10:53 PM)
House of Wax director Andr De Toth visited my university film theory class in the mid-80s. Clean-shaven head, black eyepatch. No riding crop. Our young Hungarian film professor asked him, twice, about his alleged involvement in filming, for Nazi Germany, one of Hitler's invasions, and, twice, De Toth politely declined to answer.
I don't remember too much else about this visit, except that at the next class meeting one of the students said that Veronica Lake had been married to De Toth (!) and had written in her autobiography that he would practice goose-stepping in the back yard (!!).
Great anecdote thanks. I don't know much about De Toth .and hadn't heard about his marriage to Veronica Lake (she must have been quite a catch for him). Apparently he had his eye-patch at the time of House of Wax, since one of the most famous anecdotes about the film is the ironic note that De Toth with almost no 3-D perception himself nonetheless had to direct one of the biggest 3-D features. This Obit make him sound like a real character:
http://tinyurl.com/hyog8lg
I think I'll have to check out his westerns. -
Byrdz — 9 years ago(January 28, 2017 06:14 PM)
Maybe you had to be there to get this one.
You might have something there. When it opened it was quite thye thing to see and it was really
REALLY
scary. Course seeing it as a kid probably helped !
Bushinsky's wax head on the shelf and then he moves !
JUMP !!! -
ecarle — 9 years ago(January 29, 2017 08:52 AM)
Maybe you had to be there (either in 1953 or in one of its '60s and '70s revivals) to get this one One of the original 3-D hits, House of Wax (1953) 3-D aside is a remarkably pedestrian thriller.
I tell ya, swanstep, your reviews of the Wright list are coming so fast and furious I keep missing some. The update (with the interesting De Toth story from another poster) drew me to this December post and, well, "gentle rebuttal" time again.
Vincent Price has a super-elaborate scheme for both settling scores with enemies and re-populating his wax museum. One that involves lots of collaborators and lots and lots of ways of getting found out.
Ha. I must admit the plotting here isn't particularly sophisticated. Its another reason that Hitchcock's thrillers always seem "a cut above." Hitchcock rarely took "the easy way out" on plotting. There had to be some logic and feasibility to how matters unfolded, even in the most fantastic of his thrillers. Hitchcock had a direction for writers: "Anticipate questions that the audience will be asking themselvesand answer those questions as soon as you can in the script."
It should have been possible to make Price's character a piteous, Phantom-/Hunchback-like figure but the film is too busy showing off 3-D to expand him beyond stock-villainy.
Well, I think he comes off as a bit of both. In the opening scene before he is burned and misfigured, he's a nice enough guy, an artiste who is being sold out by his nefarious in-it-for-the bucks partner. The resulting fire turns him into a madman and I think what's scary about it is that Price kills both enemies(the partner) and innocents(Phyllis Kirk's roommate Carolyn Jones) alike. We can root FOR Price when he murders the partner, but we have to root against him when he kills Jones.
In sum, I found this film a real disappointment, one of the worst, genuinely famous films. I prefer the imitator, Corman's Bucket Of Blood (1959)!
Well, its definitely a "had to be there" thing. I see "House of Wax" as really aimed at a pre-teen audience. Its almost William Castle level in terms of the simplicity of the script and the basics of the scares. Its for kids OR.."the kids in all adults."
House of Wax made the rounds of The Million Dollar Movie in Los Angeles in the 60's(9 showings a week), along with The Magnificent Seven, Them, and Dial M for Murder, so its a strong memory of childhood.
I recall a 3-D re-release in 1971 that I couldn't go to because the only theater showing it in my town wasa PORNO THEATER. My parents wouldn't let me go in there, even for a "regular" movie. I caught a 3-D showing years later(for once, I can't even remember which decade) and I know that I found most memorablethe guy bouncing rubber balls on a string off a paddle at us.
All that said, I have this great "original release" memory from none other than ..my mother. She saw the film on release in 1953 with some girlfriends and she said they were all screaming and jumping all through it. The "Psycho" of its time for THEM. A more innocent time.
Noteable: Charles Bronson(then Buchinsky) as Price's mute assistant, a character who plays rather sad and slow-minded, but nonetheless tries to put the hero's head in a guillotine during the climax. Its almost Hitchcockian, our "sympathy for the villain" here.
Noteable: this has Frank Lovejoy in it as the older heroic cop; I'm not much of an expert on 40's/50's actors, but Lovejoy sure had an accessible, gruff everyman quality to him. Durable. And his name cracks me up: Frank Lovejoy. Its like the first name doesn't match the last name, and Lovejoy sounds too sweet for such a tough guy. I recall Lovejoy as a cop in the estimable Bogart movie "In a Lonely Place" Frank Lovejoy evidently could shift from serious(Bogart) to campy(Price) as the studio required it.
Noteable: Phyillis Kirk, the female star of the movie, went on to star in a TV series version of "The Thin Man" with Peter Lawford, and then as a local LA TV host. Between House of Wax, The Thin Man TV series and that hosting job, I saw a LOT of Phyillis Kirk in the sixties. She had one of those interesting "second tier working actress" careers. And in "House of Wax," she's nude(if covered by straps while tied down on a table) at the finalerather erotic stuff for us young boys of the time. -
swanstep — 9 years ago(January 02, 2017 09:14 PM)
32 Sons of the Desert William A. Seiter, 1933
Reputedly one of Laurel and Hardy's best pictures, SOTD is certainly the best of the handful of L&D films I've seen. Unfortunately, that's not saying very much. L&D's films are visually primitive compared to Chaplin/Keaton/Lloyd and without any of the physical grace and real gifts for pratfalls that the great early comedians shared. Watching L&D here there's the occasional laugh (often at the shocking physical violence dished out to Olly by his screen-wife) but nothing too uproarious.
Perhaps the biggest thing that L&H have going for them is also the thing that makes them largely impotent now: their buddy schtick and pricklish wives schtick and not especially artful whack-on-the-head slapstick are all the future of comedy in both movies and TV. The Three Stooges and Abbot and Costello and The Honeymooners and Martin and Lewis are just their most obvious superior descendants.
Anyhow, I'm glad I suppose to have seen Sons of the Desert, but I'll never watch it again. -
swanstep — 9 years ago(January 05, 2017 07:36 AM)
102 The Prowler Joseph Losey, 1951
A surprising, depressing noir. Hard to discuss without giving away plot points, the film concerns corrupt, murdering cops, horrendous husbands, and at-the-end-of-their-rope wives. Nobody's clean in this picture, and the picture's no fun at all I'm afraid. A black-listed Trumbo had a hand in the script but didn't manage to come up with any good dialogue this time. The story's strong with maybe just a few implausibilities holding things back. The final gun-down by police is a little too wild-west given the circumstances of the case at the time. but it makes for some good visuals.
Worth seeing.perhaps most of all for some nifty feints and red herrings early on and the High Sierra-like ending with some strong acting from Evelyn Keyes. -
swanstep — 9 years ago(January 09, 2017 08:12 PM)
143 The Curse of Frankenstein Terence Fisher, 1957
Uninspired color remake of Whale's 1931 classic. Major innovations are that (i) Baron Frankenstein is much more malevolent - he murders someone to procure his brain for the creature, he murders the maid with whom he cheats on his wife (and whom he otherwise treats abominably) once she threatens to expose him to authorities, and so on; (ii) the key assistant is the Baron's equal and actively undermines him; (iii) the creature (played by Christopher Lee) is humanized (iv) villagers play almost no part in the story, (v) Baron's wife (Hazel Court) is voluptuous.
I don't think the film is good enough to be worth going into its failings in great detail, but, for example, I was staggered at how inconsistently innovations (ii) and (iii) were applied. One moment the assistant Paul is appalled by the Baron's murderousness, the next he's happy to cover it up; one moment the creature does seem a genuinely piteous figure (but of course this was there in 1931 too - people just tend to forget it) the next a figure of something like horror (and the movie doesn't even decide whether the creature actually did kill an old man and a kid
or why). Just really poorly written I'm afraid.
TCoF makes you re-appreciate the wonders of Whale's cinematography and sfx and make-up and sets. (You believe that Whale's Frankenstein might actually be able to raise the dead whereas Fisher and Cushing's House of Wax-like bubbling beakers etc. look more fit to turn out candles.)
Apparently TCoF was a solid hit in 1957. I speculate that a generation of kids of kids who'd recently grooved on Whale's masterpiece on tv were hungry for a new Frankenstein. Hammer and TCoF shrewdly, lucratively catered to that unmet demand, but not by being any good in my view.
152 Horror of Dracula Terence Fisher, 1958
The TCoF team returns the following year with Horror of Dracula (a.k.a. Dracula), essentially a color remake of Dracula (1931) and that's more like it! There are innovations across the board so that if you are familiar with prior films then HoD is ahead of you, e.g.,
here Jonathan Harker wants to be summoned to Dracula's castle because he's actually a long-time vampire-hunter (perhaps second only to Van Helsing)
and then
Harker gets killed early on
. And most importantly for where Vamp-films would go from here: the drug-taking analogy/subtext with Vampirism is made explicit, the Count's violence and sexuality are greatly amped up, the subtext of unleashed female sexuality of his women victims is made explicit, and the violence of the vampire-hunters is vivid (crucifixes inflicting burns, etc.).
I still don't think much of Terrence Fisher's direction and everything from the plotting to the art-direction is only adequate in my view. But, especially if you're young, HoD is suspenseful and scary at times (and the sex and drug undercurrents rising to the surface are both winners) and Cushing and Lee (who's not seen enough in my view!) are real stars as Van Helsing and Dracula. They were born to play these roles, and Hammer Films would make big bucks from and for them on HoD and a host of its sequels.
In sum, even though HoD doesn't do that much for me now, I think it's worth seeing as a fairly interesting, turning-point update of the basic Nosferatu (1922)/Dracula (1931) template.
184 The Curse of the Werewolf Terence Fisher, 1961
A pleasant surprise: Hammer continues its pillaging of Universal Studios monsters by tackling Wolf-man/Werewolves and really going its own merry way way with it. The adult character (played by Oliver Reed) who'll become our werewolf doesn't arrive until over half way through the film. Everything leading up to that is a convoluted prologue explaining cruel the cruel social structures leading up to the horrific circumstances of our Wolfie's conception and birth. The effect is to make the tale something like a supernaturalized Oliver Twist, that is, a romantic origin story and coming-of-age fable with claws. When Oliver Reed shows up the effect is then galvanizing because we're right there with him and together with Martin Mathews the acting shoots up at least three levels of naturalism above what Hammer usually manages. Reed and Matthews are almost too good together - they aren't plausible at all as 18C -dwellers instead we're suddenly in Reed's actual world of brawling angry, Shakespeare-drunk young men in social realist dramas. But director Fisher (again!) just runs with his actors energies rather than keeping a tight grip on period - it works.
The movie's violence escalates at the same rate as its tragicness, making for an unusual horror, very much reminding me of The Fly (1986) and also Hunchback of Notre Dame (the Laughton one). Our Wolfie protagonist is left begging for his loved ones to kill him, which must have been pretty stunning to people in 1961.
Unusual mixed film that defintely makes the case that the werewolf is the dramatically richest monster out there. I'd b -
swanstep — 9 years ago(January 28, 2017 05:04 AM)
150 A Night to Remember Roy Ward Baker, 1958
ANTR stands to Cameron's Titanic (1997) as '50s monster movies do to Alien and Aliens and The Thing (1982). In each case the '50s versions stick to essentials and move-right-along compared to their more long-winded successors (e.g., ANTR hits the iceberg in the time it takes Cameron's Titanic just to leave port!), but the advances in movie-making are so sensational in the successor versions that there's no going back.
ANTR hits most of the non-soapy beats that Titanic does, but honestly I missed the soap and the Celine Dion and the power of movie stars (not just Kate and Leo, Kathy Bates we miss dreadfully too) and the extravagant sfx. ANTR does cover more of the rescue what-ifs than Cameron finds time for in his nearly 4 hours, so there's that but it's not enough. Director Baker does a solid job, but time and again one never quite sees what one wants to see. We never really see what happens to the ship's designer, the captain, etc. everything's just impliedwell, hell no! Show me! We never see the ice-berg slice upon the ship rather we occupy only perspective of people above deck who don't know what's gone on below the water-line. Something very cinematic is going on and we can't see it in 1958 perhaps just because of limitations on sfx.
Wright putting ANTR on his list over Titanic (1997), I'm sorry, strikes me as a case of being 'too-cool-to-like-Titanic'. -
ecarle — 9 years ago(January 28, 2017 10:01 AM)
Something very cinematic is going on and we can't see it in 1958 perhaps just because of limitations on sfx.
Wright putting ANTR on his list over Titanic (1997), I'm sorry, strikes me as a case of being 'too-cool-to-like-Titanic'.
This all ties in, I think, to the idea that modern-day remakes with all the SFX that earlier eras did not haveCAN be better movies. The Thing, The Flymaybe even (for action) The Magnificent Seven.
In other wordssequels: no(in the main.) Remakes: yes (sometimes.) Newer IS better for a new generation that would like to see better effects and indeed, in Titanic, much more detail of "how it felt to be there, and what it looked like."
It took forever for the ship to hit the iceberg in the now-famous Cameron version, but it sure seemed to pay off in empathy for the ill-fated couple.
Cameron's absolutely brilliant decision and who knows if it was "true" or not was to have the ship split in two so that the stern reared up and become a "tall tower above the sea" a platform both for a series of "Vertigo-falls" to the death for certain passengers, and a "ride" for Leo and Kate to take all the way under the surfacethe two lovers are literally the last people to go underwater, which reflects Leo's intense quest to keep Kate OUT of the water for as long as possible.
Another favorite "doom scene" for me in Cameron's Titanic is when the captain elects to enter his wheelhouse and face the water alone. The windows around him fill with green water and for a moment, it is as if he is surrounded by an acquariumand then the water breaks through.
There were several other movies made about the Titanic. A TV movie with George C. Scott for one.
But in the sixties on TV, the one that got played over and over from the NBC Saturday Night at the Movies to local channels was an early fifties version (1953?) from 20 Century Fox that took the reality of the sinking and added a few nice fictional tales. It was a tearjerker at the end.
Erudite Clifton Webb and older-but-still tough Barbara Stanwyck are a rich, bickering couple en route to divorce when the Titanic docks in New York. They have a pre-teen son. Webb is cold to the son, stern in discipline, "above him."
And at the end, the son leaps out of the lifeboat from his mother, Stanwyck , climbs back onto the Titanic, and elects to stand next to his father and die with the man.
Perhaps a pre-feminist ending, but very moving, as Stanwyck cries from the lifeboat, helplessly watching her son return to her husband to die, and the father(Clifton Webb, suddenly moving) tells his son "I've never been more proud of you in my life" as father and son sink below the waves.
The 1953 Titanic had a scene that was cut from the Cameron, evidently true: an old woman refuses to get on the lifeboat and elects to stay with her old husband: "I've been with him for 50 years, I don't intend to separate from him now."
The 1953 version is actually better on the effects than the British 1958 version, and certainly filled with ersatz human drama plus some of the usual truisms(the Great Thelma Ritter is the Unsinkable Molly Brown.)
I think I only saw the well-reviewed "Night to Remember" oncebut I much prefer the Stanwyck/Webb Titanic. Its got those Golden Era dramatic flourishes. And it was MY Titaniconly James Cameron came along and did it better. -
swanstep — 9 years ago(January 28, 2017 03:42 PM)
Cameron's absolutely brilliant decision and who knows if it was "true" or not was to have the ship split in two so that the stern reared up and become a "tall tower above the sea" a platform both for a series of "Vertigo-falls" to the death for certain passengers, and a "ride" for Leo and Kate to take all the way under the surfacethe two lovers are literally the last people to go underwater, which reflects Leo's intense quest to keep Kate OUT of the water for as long as possible.
Yes, this is a cinematic masterstroke all right: the ship gets much much more vertical in Titanic (1997) so that the basic structuring of the action for 30 minutes as the ship sinks (the first time is just much more suspenseful and intense). THEN the ship splits in two, then we go up again but faster this time and get completely vertical.
In some respects the whole clunky framing story is justified by having the scientists/explorers present this new basic what happened to the audience in simulation outline first (justified by the distribution of the wreck on the bottom of the sea - everyone accepts now that the ship did come down in two big pieces and that when you try to model how that could happen you just do end up with Cameron's basic account - the cinematic motherlode!) so we don't miss a thing and pre-understand everything that's going to happen.
I'll have to check out Titanic (1953) - Stanwyck and Ritter I''m in! -
ecarle — 9 years ago(January 29, 2017 09:02 AM)
Yes, this is a cinematic masterstroke all right: the ship gets much much more vertical in Titanic (1997) so that the basic structuring of the action for 30 minutes as the ship sinks (the first time is just much more suspenseful and intense). THEN the ship splits in two, then we go up again but faster this time and get completely vertical.
I remember being somewhere between awestruck and amazed as this became Cameron's "scheme" for the sinking. I think both the 1953 Titanic and the 1958 Night to Remember just gave us the slow sinking of one intact vessel.
Perhaps it was callous to turn the real tragedy of the Titanic into a "thrill" ride" with the ship splitting in two, "bouncing" and turning into a "tower of death" but man are you THERE! (I also like how David Warner's sub-villain ends up falling into the split area and dying there.)
In some respects the whole clunky framing story is justified by having the scientists/explorers present this new basic what happened to the audience in simulation outline first (justified by the distribution of the wreck on the bottom of the sea - everyone accepts now that the ship did come down in two big pieces and that when you try to model how that could happen you just do end up with Cameron's basic account - the cinematic motherlode!) so we don't miss a thing and pre-understand everything that's going to happen.
Yes, I recall being intrigued by that computer simulation and how it didn't match previous versions of the Titanic sinkingand then it all "paid off" when Cameron dramatized it.
Hitchcock was famous for many things, but his set-pieces were part of it: the plane crash into the ocean at the end of Foreign Correspondent is very Titantic-ish, for instance. Here, Cameron dreamed up his OWN kind of set-piece for the Titanic sinking, and we will never forget it.
As for the old lady framing - - it was sweet. And well spoofed by the REAL star of that scene Bill Paxton when he hosted Saturday Night Live and spoofed the final scene:
Paxton: Wait a minute, lady you've subjected us to two hours of a Harlequin Romance novel and you're telling me you DON'T have the necklace?
I'll have to check out Titanic (1953) - Stanwyck and Ritter I''m in!
They are both good. Stanwyck's reaction as a mother watching her young son leap back onto the Titanic from the safety of the lifeboat, is the stuff of tears. And Clifton Webb is quite moving in his final scene.
Ritter is Rittergreat as always. (Isn't it true that at least part of the greatness of Rear Window is that Hitchcock got Thelma Ritter for it?)
There are also good bits for a very young Robert Wagner and Richard Basehart in the film. One dies, one doesn't. -
swanstep — 9 years ago(January 28, 2017 05:41 PM)
This all ties in, I think, to the idea that modern-day remakes with all the SFX that earlier eras did not haveCAN be better movies. The Thing, The Flymaybe even (for action) The Magnificent Seven.
In other wordssequels: no(in the main.) Remakes: yes (sometimes.) Newer IS better for a new generation that would like to see better effects and indeed, in Titanic, much more detail of "how it felt to be there, and what it looked like."
Yes, doubtless previous directors wanted to show, e.g., huge volumes of water crashing through atriums, people being sucked down with the ship, people going blue etc./freezing to death in the icy water, and so on, but they soon wisely decided they couldn't pull those sorts of shots off. Cameron not only had modern CGI, he had $200 million in mid-'90s dollars (a budget no other director could have gotten) to do these sorts of shots (as many times and with as much research as they took to get right).
The Thing and The Fly are two great examples aren't they? The Thing (1982) is much closer to the original terrifying short-story than The Thing (1951) because Hawks and co simply had no way to make a shape-shifting/human-impersonating alien. And while The Fly (1986) isn't harking back to an original story, changing the conceit so the transformation happens gradually is so thematically and cinematically potent. if anyone in the '50s had had the idea they'd have soon abandoned it as impossible to get on film in any believable way. -
Doghouse-6 — 9 years ago(January 28, 2017 05:55 PM)
But in the sixties on TV, the one that got played over and over from the NBC Saturday Night at the Movies to local channels was an early fifties version (1953?) from 20 Century Fox that took the reality of the sinking and added a few nice fictional tales.
And it was MY Titanic
I imagine that was true for many U.S.-raised kids of our generation, ec. While
T-53
(pardon my economy) was something of a broadcast staple for years, if
ANTR
ever got any U.S. airplay around that time, I wasn't aware of it.
Based solely on the facts, a cautionary tale so full of historical import, tragedy, irony and social commentary - attaining "legend in its own time" status - seems a natural for an epic, big-screen treatment, and yet it took 85 years for one that captured public imagination in the way the actual event had.
There's something about setting intimate human drama against the backdrop of a momentous historical episode that renders it more compelling, and as satisfying as
T-53
is in this time-honored mode, it's no more about the Titanic than
San Francisco
was about an earthquake,
Gone With the Wind
about the Civil War or
Dr. Zhivago
about the Russian Revolution. They're about Blackie and Mary and Scarlett and Rhett and Yuri and Laraand Richard and Julia.
I think it must have been my first exposure to either Webb or Stanwyck, and while I have no idea whether there was any such intention on the film makers' parts, it also had a seductive effect on a pre-teen mind (mine, anyway): you tune in for the "cool" factor of history's most infamous maritime disaster, and long before you get that "reward," you've absorbed some very intelligent drama encompassing mature themes of infidelity and conflicting family dynamics, along with broader ones of class distinction, personal redemption, self-sacrifice and nobility.
And Stanwyck and Webb were just the ones to sell it. Her appealingly forceful "earth mother" toughness, the elegance and class of which were inherent in their defiant strength and forbearance, were a perfect counterpoint to Webb's highborn effeteness, which could charm and amuse even as its cold waspishness repelled. The parries and thrusts of their power struggle are irresistible.
So, while
ANTR
was the film for those seeking accurate, blow-by-blow dramatic documentation,
T-53
was the one for "lose yourself in the story" involvement. And in its own way, it may have been every bit as accurate in imparting, however fictionally, the reality of the human toll: hundreds of people of all stations in life for whom the short-term concerns of an ocean voyage, the long-term ones of emigration or ongoing ones of other personal matters were suddenly disrupted by those of life or death in the face of an unexpected event of unimaginable magnitude.
Whether one evaluates
T-97
(again, economy) as towering cinema achievement, manipulative pop culture razzmatazz or something in between, what Cameron did so effectively was to combine those approaches, employing the simple premise of star-crossed lovers allowing us access to each part of the ship - as well as to key historic figures - through whose eyes we witness every facet of the event at its most significant moment.
If he'd come along 75 years earlier, I can easily imagine James Cameron as having become one of the best-remembered pioneers of shaping early cinema, combining basic and easily digestible elements of story construction and character, depicting clearly-defined heroes, heroines, villains and themes, with envelope-pushing technical adventurousness.
Poe! You areavenged!