Insane Stairs

Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)/D: Robert Aldrich/A.D.: William Glasgow

The Servant (1963) /D: Joseph Losey/Production Design:Richard Macdonald

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I'm a Poor Writer: Curt Siodmak on Siodmaks

Curt Siodmak (1902-2000) was a novelist and screenwriter, author of the novel Donovan's Brain, which was made into a number of films and the brother of great emigre director Robert Siodmak. His first horror credit was The Invisible Man Returns (1940), and he followed this with two Boris Karloff vehicles, Black Friday (1940) and The Ape (1940). he wrote famous I Walked with a Zombie (1943) for producer Val Lewton and director Jacques Tourneur.

Siodmak also directed some less than impressive low budget monster movies, including Bride of the Gorilla (1951), The Magnetic Monster (1953), and Curucu, Beast of the Amazon (1956). His final significant genre credit was for Terence Fisher’s German production Sherlock Holmes and the Necklace of Death (1962).His novel I, Gabriel was published in Germany, and afterward many of his early novels came back into print. Also, he's written an opera, Song of Frankenstein, and a play about Jack the Ripper.

Untitled Frame From Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte

Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964) /Dir: Robert Aldrich/Cinematography: Joseph F. Biroc

see rest of the game, here.

Ekkehard Wölk Interviewed

An Interview with Silent Film Composer
Ekkehard Wölk
from
Silent Era

Poetics of Space#3

 Still:

Eugène Atget (1857-1927)

 Motion:
Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

Eugène Atget

Citizen Kane

Suso Cecchi d'Amico (1914-2010)

Lady Suso Cecchi d’Amico, the writer of many masterpieces in Italian post-war cinema passed away today, at the age of 96. She was known for her collaborations with Visconti, Castellani, Zampa, Lattuada, Blasetti, De Sica (including Bicycle Thieves), Comencini, Camerini, Antonioni, Monicelli, Rosi, Zeffirelli and Clément. Her works embodies the development of postwar Italian cinema and "her scripts achieve a certain ‘‘transparency,’’ becoming all-but-inextricable from the finished film itself," as Verina Glaessner sums up d'Amico's very long and prolific career. "She has all too modestly described her work as akin to that of the artisan. This emphasizes her professionalism, the literate wellcraftedness of her scripts, and her endless adaptability to the contrasting needs of filmmakers working within competing stylistic conventions."

Life … Replaced by a Fresh Corpse: David Thomson & Noir

A have a new piece, a book review, published in the last issue of Noir City Sentinel (Summer 2010). The book is David Thomson's "Have You Seen...?": A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films, and my article's main focus is on Thomson's taste for film noir.

This wonderful 53-page issue have many more things to dig, including:


British Noir A Climate of Fatalism by Imogen Sara Smith

Nightmare Alley: The Musical by Dan Akira Nishimura
A Common Language: American Expatriate Directors in British Noir by Imogen Sara Smith
The Have-Nots in the Sordid Underbelly of British Noir by Guy Savage
The Forgotten World of Bargain-Basement British B-Noirs, 1957–64 by Don Malcolm
Caged: Classic, Not Camp by Alan K. Rode
Walk Softly, Stranger: When the End Undermines the Means by Eddie Muller
Paul Stewart: A Heavyweight Among Heavies by again, Eddie Muller
Elisha Cook Jr.: The King of the Character Actors by Woody Haut
Bernhardt, Litvak, Negulesco: The Forgotten Film Noir Directors by Marc Svetov
The History of the Whistler by Vince Keenan
Hearing Voices: The Varieties of Film Noir Narration by Jake Hinkson
Wilder at Heart: Billy, Willy, and the Great Brotherly Divide by Don Malcolm
Hidden in Plain Sight: The Big Sleep’s Sassiest Dame by Ron Schuler
Life … Replaced by a Fresh Corpse by Ehsan Khoshbakht

And also some notes on:

Dementia, Night Tide, and The Werewolf by Will Viharo
TV Noir: Double Dose of Duryea by Gordon Gates
Lorre & Greenstreet by Steve Eifert
The Killer Inside Me by Will “The Thrill” Viharo

Even Alan K. Rode Interviews Eleanor Parker, exclusively for Sentinel.

***

When I was working on that review, I made a list of all noir entries in Thomson's book. Now, I think publishing this index, will help noir scholars for further research.

1940
The Letter	William Wyler	1940
The Mortal Storm	Stuart Heissler	1940
Rebecca	Alfred Hitchcock	1940
They drive by night	Raoul Walsh	1940
1941
Citizen Kane	Orson Welles	1941
High Sierra	Raoul Walsh	1941
Hold back the down	Mitchell Leisen	1941
Little Foxes	William Wyler	1941
The Maltese Falcon	John Huston	1941
Man Hunt	Fritz Lang	1941
Meet John Doe	Frank Capra	1941
1942
Cat People	Jacques Tourneur	1942
The Hard Way	Vincent Sherman	1942
Ossessione	Luchino Visconti	1942
1943
Hangmen also die!	Fritz Lang	1943
Shadow of a doubt	Alfred Hitchcock	1943
Seventh victim	Mark Robson	1943
1944
Double Indemnity	Billy Wilder	1944
Gaslight	George Cukor	1944
Laura	Otto Preminger	1944
Ministry of Fear	Fritz Lang	1944
Phantom Lady	Robert Sodmak	1944
The Woman in the window	Fritz Lang	1944
1945
Detour	Edgar Ulmer	1945
Leave her to heaven	John M. Stahl	1945
The lost weekend	Billy Wilder	1945
Mildred pierce	Michael Curtiz	1945
The picture of Dorian Gray	Albert Lewin	1945
Scarlet Street	Fritz Lang	1945
Spellbound	Alfred Hitchcock	1945
The Strange affair of Uncle Harry	Robert Siodmak	1945
1946
The Big Sleep	Howard Hawks	1946
The Chase	Arthur Ripley	1946
Gilda	Charles Vidor	1946
Humeresque	Jean Negulesco	1946
The Killers	Robert Sodmak	1946
Notorious	Alfred Hitchcock	1946
The Postman always rings twice	Tay Garnett	1946
1947
Body & Soul	Robert Rossen	1947
Brighton Rock	John Boulting	1947
Crossfire	Edward Dmytryk	1947
Daisy Kenyon	Otto Preminger	1947
It always rains on Sunday	Robert Hamer	1947
Kiss of death	Henry Hathaway	1947
The Lost moment	Martin GabeL	1947
Out of the past	Jacques Tourneur	1947
Pursued	Raoul Walsh	1947
Quai des orfevers	Henri-Georges Clouzot	1947
They Made me a fugitive	Alberto Cavalcanti	1947
1948
Act of violence	Fred Zinnemann	1948
The Fallen idol	Carol Reed	1948
Force of Evil	Abraham Polonsky	1948
Key Largo	John Huston	1948
Lady from Shanghai	Orson Welles	1948
The Naked City	Jules Dassin	1948
Raw Deal	Anthony Mann	1948
Snake Pit	Anatole Litvak	1948
1949
A ll the king's men	Robert Rossen	1949
Caught	Max Ophuls	1949
Criss Cross	Robert Sodmak	1949
Portrait Of Jennie	William Dieterle	1949
The Reckless Moment	Max Ophuls	1949
They live by night	Nicholas Ray	1949
Third man	Carol Reed	1949
White Heat	Raoul Walsh	1949
1950
The Asphalt Jungle	John Huston	1950
D. O. A	Rudolph Maté	1950
Gun Crazy	Joseph H. Lewis	1950
In a lonely place	Nicholas Ray	1950
Night and the city	Jules Dassin	1950
No man of her own	Mitchell Leisen	1950
Sunset Blvd.	Billy Wilder	1950
1951
Ace in the hole	Billy Wilder	1951
M	Joseph Losey	1951
A Place in the sun	George Stevens	1951
Prowler	Joseph Losey	1951
Strangers on a train	Alfred Hitchcock	1951
1952
Angel Face	Otto Preminger	1952
1953
Big Heat	Fritz Lang	1953
Pickup on south street	Sam Fuller	1953
1954
Beat the devil	John Huston	1954
Suddenly	Lewis Allen	1954
1955
The big Combo	Joseph H. Lewis	1955
Les Diabolique	Henri-Georges Clouzot	1955
House of Bamboo	Sam Fuller	1955
Kiss me deadly	Robert Aldrich	1955
The Man with the golden arm	Otto Preminger	1955
Mr. Arkadin	Orson Welles	1955
The Night of the hunter	Charles Laughton	1955
Riffifi	Jules Dassin	1955
1956
Bigger than life	Nicholas Ray	1956
Bob la flombouer	Jean Pierre Melville	1956
The Killing	Stanley Kubrick	1956
1957
Baby Face Nelson	Don Siegel	1957
A Face in the crowd	Elia Kazan	1957
The Wrong Man	Alfred Hitchcock	1957
1958
Touch of evil	Orson Welles	1958
Vertigo	Alfred Hitchcock	1958
1959
Odds against tomorrow	Robert Wise	1959

Bazin on Bogart: The Immanence of Death

Each time he began a sentence he revealed a wayward set of teeth. The set of his jaw irresistibly evoked the rictus of a spirited cadaver, the final expression of a melancholy man who would fade away with a smile. That is indeed the smile of death.

Segments from André Bazin's enlightening piece on Humphrey Bogart, written at the time of actor's passing for Cahiers du Cinema. This is translated by Phillip Drummond for an anthology of Cahiers articles, published in 4 volumes by Harvard University Press, 1985.

Who does not mourn this month for Humphrey Bogart, who died at fifty six of stomach cancer and half a million whiskeys? The passing of James Dean principally affected members of the female sex below the age of twenty; Bogey's affects their parents or at least their elder brothers, and above all it is men who mourn. Beguiling rather than attractive, Bogey delighted the women in his films; no fear of him leaving millions of widows, like Valentino or James Dean; for the spectator he seems to me to have been more the hero with whom one identifies than the hero one loves. The popularity of Bogart is virile. Women may miss him, but I know of men who would weep for him were not the unseemliness of emotion written all over this tough guy's tomb. No flowers, no wreaths.

Much has already been written about Bogart, his persona and his myth. But none put it better, perhaps, than Robert Lachenay more than a year ago, from whom I cannot help but quote the following prophetic lines: “Each time he began a sentence he revealed a wayward set of teeth. The set of his jaw irresistibly evoked the rictus of a spirited cadaver, the final expression of a melancholy man who would fade away with a smile. That is indeed the smile of death.”

It now seems clear indeed that none more so than Bogart, if I may speak thus, epitomized the immanence of death, its imminence as well. Not so much, moreover, of that which one gives or receives as of the corpse on reprieve which is within each of us. And if his death touches us so closely, so intimately, it is because the raison d'etre of his existence was in some sense to survive. Thus in his case death's victory is twofold, since it is victorious less over life than over resistance to dying.

I will perhaps make myself better understood by contrasting his character with that of Gabin (to whom one could compare him in so many ways). Both men are heroes of modern cinematographic tragedy, but with Gabin (I am of course speaking of the Gabin of Le Jour se lève and Pépé le Moko) death is, after all, at the end of the adventure, implacably awaiting its appointment. The fate of Gabin is precisely to be duped by life. But Bogart is man defined by fate. When he enters the film it is already the pale dawn of the following day; absurdly victorious from the macabre combat with the angel, his face marked by what he has seen and his bearing heavy with all he knows, having ten times triumphed over his own death he will doubtless survive for us a further time.

Not the least admirable feature of the character of Bogart is that he improved, became sharper, as he progressively wasted away. This tough guy never dazzled on the screen by dint of physical force or acrobatic agility. He was neither a Gary Cooper nor a Douglas Fairbanks! His successes as a gangster or as a detective are due first to his ability to take a punch, then to his perspicacity. The effectiveness of his punch testifies less to his strength than to his sense of repartee. He places it welt true, but above all at the right moment. He strikes little, but always when his opponent is wrong-footed. And then there is the revolver which becomes in his hands an almost intellectual weapon, the argument that dumbfounds.

Bogart is, without doubt, typically the actor/myth of the war and post-war period. There is some secret harmony in the coincidence of these events: the end of the pre-war period, the arrival of a certain novelistic style in cinematographic écriture, and, through Bogart, the triumph of interiorization and of ambiguity. One can in any case easily see in what respect Bogart differs from those pre-war heroes for whom Gary Cooper might be the prototype: handsome, strong, noble, expressing much more the optimism and efficiency of a civilization than its anxiety. Even the gangsters are the conquering and active type, Western heroes who have gone astray, the negative version of industrious audacity. In this period only perhaps George Raft shows signs of that introversion, a source of ambiguity which the hero of The Big Sleep will exploit to a sublime degree. In Key Largo Bogart overcomes Edward G. Robinson, the last of the pre-war gangsters; with this victory something of American literature probably makes its way into Hollywood. Not through the deceptive intermediary of the scenarios but through the human style of the character. Bogart is perhaps, in the cinema, the first illustration of “the age of the American novel.”

The special ambiguity of the roles which first brought Bogart success in the noir crime film is thus to be found again in his filmography. Moral contradictions meet as much within the roles as in the paradoxical permanence of the character caught between two apparently incompatible occupations.

But is not this precisely the proof that our sympathy went out, beyond even the imaginary biographies and moral virtues or their absence, to some profounder wisdom, to a certain way of accepting the human condition which may be shared by the rogue and by the honorable man, by the failure as well as by the hero. The Bogart man is not defined by his accidental respect, or his contempt, for bourgeois virtues, by his courage or his cowardice, but above all by this existential maturity which gradually transforms life into a stubborn irony at the expense of death.

A Man And A Dog

Still:

Bruce Davidson

Motion:
Vittorio DeSica's Umberto D

Glance & Gaze: Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)

Odds Against Tomorrow (1959)/Dir: Robert Wise/Cinematography: Joseph C. Brun
Close ups of Robert Ryan & Gloria Grahame