David Savage - Cinema Retro (2024)

BY DAVID SAVAGE

Kino Lorber was right to bring out Foxes (1980) in Blu-ray under their KL Studio Classics series. The elegant re-issue seems aimed at convincing film snobs that this little gem from the last days of disco finally deserves their attention after a distance of 35 years, during which time it was either dismissed as another insignificant teen comedy of the ‘80s, or as a guilty pleasure. But longtime champions of the film, myself included, need no convincing. We owned the clamshell VHS, we owned the first-generation DVD, and now, if anything, I’d venture to say we feel vindicated that it now carries the stamp as a bonafide classic by a home video label as respected as Kino Lorber. Indeed, a major fist-pump moment comes during director Adrian Lyne’s remark in the audio commentary that Roger Ebert selected it as his favorite film of 1980 and took it with him to the Dallas Film Festival that year.

Speaking of the commentary, British director Lyne’s (“Fatal Attraction,” “Flashdance,” “9 ½ Weeks”) fascinating and intimate recollections are worth the price of the disc alone. He made his directorial debut with the movie and is at times almost apologetic over what he sees as the wobbly choices of a first-time director. Viewers will note scenes that contain what came to be known as his signature style in movies like “Jacob’s Ladder” and “Fatal Attraction”: single-source lighting, using smoke on set to create light rays, and other stylistic techniques from his background as a commercial director. He is refreshingly candid and modest throughout, revealing misgivings over a scene he feels should have been cut or one that goes on too long, as well as revealing funny anecdotes about the actors. Randy Quaid, for example, donned a carnival mask in an umpteenth take of a scene that Lyne felt he just wasn’t getting right; Kandace Stroh had to be screamed at in her face so she could cry, and other funny reminiscences.

Sally Kellerman’s on-camera interview is another bonus, but she seems hard-pressed to remember much about filming “Foxes,” since at the time of production she was also shooting another feature in Israel. As a result she had to repeatedly jump on transatlantic flights between LA and Tel Aviv to shoot both pictures simultaneously. Kellerman is nonetheless a hoot just to listen to, as her trademark breathy, blousy way of talking just seduces you all over again, a la “Hot Lips O’Houlihan.” At one point she interrupts a story to ask her interviewer, “What is Blu-ray anyway?”

“Foxes” is a portrait of a group of teen girlfriends in LA’s San Fernando Valley at the cusp of the ‘80s, mothered by bossy and precocious Jeanie, played by Jodie Foster. They are real Valley Girls at varying degrees of promiscuity and jadedness. The baby-face of the group, bespectacled Madge (Marilyn Kagan) wears her virginity as a badge of shame, while druggie Annie (Cherie Currie of The Runaways) is trying to hide out from her abusive cop father, who wants to commit her to a mental hospital. They’re all trying to act older than they are, hosting awkward dress-up dinners in homes not their own, sleeping around and cutting class. Scott Baio plays a skateboarding drifter who’s dropped out of school and now fills fire extinguishers to make money. He seems to be everyone’s kid brother, when he’s not trying to sleep with one or another of the girls. Jeanie (Foster) seems to be hopelessly devoted to saving doomed Annie, to the point of suggesting lesbian longing, especially given Jeanie’s indifference to her part-time boyfriend Scott (Robert Romanus) but it never goes that far. That’s pretty much the whole plot: a loosely woven series of moments in their lives, punctuated by concerts, fights with parents, and cruising Hollywood Boulevard -- until an inevitable tragedy strikes one of them and closes the story, offering an open-ended but decidedly down take on teen life.

In one of the film’s key scenes, Jeanie and her mother, Mary (Sally Kellerman) have it out at home after Mary has picked up her daughter from another police station. Mary, herself a divorced mother who sleeps around, tells her daughter: “I don’t like your friends….You’re all a bunch of short forty year-olds and you’re tough.” But Mary’s honesty gets the better of her when minutes later she breaks down and admits that when she sees them lying around “half out of your clothes….you’re beautiful. I admit it, you’re all beautiful -- and you make me hate my hips. I hate my hips.” Lyne calls out the scene as his favorite and pays tribute to screenwriter Gerald Ayres for its emotional truth.

Visually, “Foxes” is beautiful to watch in this Blu-ray edition, whereas previous home video issues made the cinematography look murky. “Midnight Express” and “Fame” cinematographer Michael Seresin’s artful camerawork gives the picture a soft-focus and pastel coloring, even managing to make the smoggy sunlight of Los Angeles look like an oil painting. Lyne says he shot some of the Hollywood Boulevard scenes himself, and they give the film an authentic sense of time and place, with glimpses of street life that remind the viewer of a pre-gentrified Hollywood, much like New York’s 42nd Street at the same time.

As Lyne explains, the picture was put together by producer David Puttnam and Casablanca Records founder Neil Bogart, who was obviously keen to use the movie as a vehicle for his hottest artists of the time, most prominent being Donna Summer. Her beautiful disco classic “On the Radio” plays over the opening titles, while Cher -- another Casablanca artist -- literally plays on a radio in the opening scene, post-credits. Is it a duel between the two, top disco divas of ‘79-80? Fragments of “On the Radio” repeat throughout the film, taking on a more melancholy tone as the story comes to a close. Euro-disco composer Giorgio Moroder provided the score -- containing echoes of his music for “Midnight Express” (1978) -- and other artists to listen for on the soundtrack include Janice Ian, Foreigner and Brooklyn Dreams. When the girls go to see Angel in concert at the Shrine Auditorium, Lyne confirms in the commentary a suspicion I have had for years: They couldn’t get KISS, who was on tour during filming.

Released between two movies that became classics of the L.A. High School genre, Rock ‘n Roll High School (1979) and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), Foxes dared to silence its teen audience with issues of heavy drug use and overdoses, teen pregnancy, domestic abuse and premature death. In fact, Lyne reveals that writer Gerald Ayres (“The Last Detail,” “Rich and Famous”) based Jodie Foster’s character on his own teen daughter, whom he accompanied to high school and on friend outings to gain more authentic insights into her world. Tonally, “Foxes” is more of a true companion piece to “Little Darlings” (1980), starring Tatum O’Neal and Kristy McNichol, or “The Last American Virgin” (1982), both of which satisfy their audiences’ demands in the sexual-initiation and awkward-high-school-moments departments, but manage to slip in moments of true pathos.

Someday, perhaps, Jodie Foster will participate in reminiscing about the making of “Foxes” as an indulgence to the movie’s fans, as she has done on numerous other commentary tracks of her other, “serious” films. Likewise Scott Baio. In the meantime, Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray is the definitive collector’s edition to date and one to enjoy for years to come.

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Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Tuesday, February 17. 2015

By David Savage

One of the most idiosyncratic andinventive voices of genre filmmaking to emerge in the 1970s was Jeff Lieberman(born 1947), whose three best known films, Squirm (1976) BlueSunshine (1978) and Just Before Dawn (1981) have becomeclassics of horror and sci-fi. Cited as an influence on such directors as EliRoth and Quentin Tarantino (the latter lists Squirm as an essentialviewing if he’s to take you seriously), Lieberman’s filmmaking captures thelow-budget resourcefulness of Roger Corman and combines it with a singularpoint of view -- one that seems both quirky and at times, deliriously demented.Here at Cinema Retro, these areexactly the types of directors we enjoy tipping our hat to. So I’m excited toannounce that I’ve organized a tribute to Lieberman built around these threefilms with the generous participation and hosting of Anthology Film Archives inNew York City, where the retrospective will take place, August 17-19th. (www.anthologyfilmarchives.org)“3 X Jeff Lieberman” will mark thefirst time these three films have been screened in 35mm in New York since theirtheatrical premieres, a remarkable event considering how much word-of-mouthcachet each has, like prized baseball trading cards for cult film fans.“It all comes down to story,” Liebermanoften says in interviews, and watching these three films, it’s clear why. Allthree cohere around a tight, well crafted narrative that does not look to thesupernatural as the locus of horror, but at the inherently corrupt nature ofpeople as a means to bespoil nature and society. It’s a tough-minded, cynicalworldview that runs throughout his work, and the man himself. Perhaps updatingthe famous line from Sartre’s No Exit, “hell is other people,”Lieberman’s work is shot through with an even simpler maxim: Humanity ishorror.Lieberman’s first film credit wasco-authoring the screenplay for the police thriller Blade (1973),directed by his mentor Ernest Pintoff, but his debut as a writer-director camein 1976 when his AIP-distributed Squirm burst upon drive-inscreens and became a sizeable hit, considering its low budget. The fictionaltown of Fly Creek, Georgia is terrorized by a killer worm infestation after athunderstorm, which sends power lines crashing to the ground and electrifyingthe ground -- and thousands of earthworms -- in the process. As a result, theygo on a killer rampage, invading homes and most shockingly, burrowing intotheir victims’ skin. It stars a young Don Scardino (Cruising, HeKnows You’re Alone) as Mick, the interloping city-slicker beau of GeriSanders (Patricia Pearcy) the local redhead beauty of Fly Creek. Together withGeri’s sister Alma (Fran Higgins), they attempt to survive the killer wormonslaught overnight, without power and without a clue as to what has happenedto nature.

Squirm -- still Lieberman’s most popular film -- feels like adouble-feature twin to 1972’s Frogs (1972, with Sam Elliott), anotherswampy, “nature’s revenge” tale of eco-horror put out by AIP. Featuringearly makeup work by eventual seven-time Oscar-winner Rick Baker, andco-starring thousands of real worms, the film was shot on location in PortWentworth, Georgia and aside from Don Scardino, used a cast made up mostly oflocals, who contribute to its earthy and authentic atmosphere, not unlike thedrive-in mainstay The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), which was shot insimilar circ*mstances. And speaking of earthy, we should pay special tribute tothe actors, who braved thousands and thousands of real live earthworms on set.Not a rubber worm among them! The original idea, Lieberman revealed to aninterviewer this year, came from a real event. His brother, in order to getearthworms out of the ground, electrified the soil inserting a electric modeltrain transformer into the soil. When they slithered out, they noticed theyburrowed back in when light was shined on them. But are earthworms scary? Notin real life, but as Lieberman explained: “I had to go to great lengths to make[the worms] scary, because they’re not scary...until you’re shown otherwise youcan just step on it. So I had to make that scary by it burrowing into theface...so that was the big assignment and I guess it worked.” An interestingfootnote: When a 25 year-old Lieberman wrote the original title on a legal pad,(then spelled Skworm) and sketched down a paragraph containing thestory, he showed it to his wife. “She said it was the stupidest idea she’d everheard. Two years later we’re buying a house with the money that Squirm built.”

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Tuesday, July 31. 2012

By David Savage

NYC’sFilm Society of Lincoln Center Screening a Whole Summer’s Worth of MidnightMovies

Midnight movies have been, in effect, the homelessorphans of filmdom for the past 20 years.
Since the demise of their theatrical homes -- second or third-run movie housesand drive-ins -- back in the 1980s, they've been regarded as too niche for corporate cable channels like IFC or TCM.With no local-channel late shows inexistence to air them, their only home has been the home video market and theart-house repertory circuit in cities like the New Beverly Cinema andCinefamily in Los Angeles, NYC's Anthology Film Archives, and a handful ofother venues around the country. In these politically sensitive times, thereare only so many places that will host a screening of Torso (1973).

This is strange, because midnight movies are not, in fact, unloved orphans.They are obsessively loved, collected, talked about, fetishized, blogged,tweeted and traded by a huge swath of filmgoers, basically anyone old enough toremember attending one in their heyday of the early 60s--late 80s. But theirtheatrical outlet remains severely limited due to a number of factors, mostlydue to the shortage of amenable venues, screenable prints (their fan base isslow to warm to digital projections) and difficulty in marketing to youngergenerations. But their influencecontinues to be felt in everything from fashion and advertising to moremainstream feature films, particularly those of Eli Roth and Quentin Tarantino-- both of whom owe their careers to the recreation of the midnight moviephenomenon and aesthetic. (It was through Tarantino's enormous generosity thatthe New Beverly Cinema was rescued from closure when he quietly bought it fromthe owners in 2010 but allowed them to continue running it as they saw fit.)

This is one reason why museums and cultural institutions around the country aretaking notice and
programming midnight movies into their film calendars, in effect, giving thesegenre films a second home in the 21st century, and in so doing elevating theirstature through the critical lens of the museum imprimatur.

Another reason is that these same museums and culturalinstitutions contain millennial-generation
staff, for who anything from the 1980s is sacred. That is a less a scientificobservation than
an anecdotal one, but I'm standing by it.

I saw a screening ofZardoz (1974) at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art last March in a Mystery Science 3000-inspired format,including a hilarious trailer reel as an intro, before an audience of mostlytwenty-somethings. And NYC’s Museum of Art and Design in 2010 devoted an entireweek to Italian zombie films, which they called Zombo Italiano. The trend is picking up heat elsewhere.

Which leads me to my main point: The Film Society of Lincoln Center ispresenting a new series of Midnight Movies every Friday night, all summer long!Now through August 31st.

In total contradiction to my above thesis, Film Comment Editor-in-Chiefseries co-programmer Gavin Smith says: "Sometimes I sit in my office andwonder why Béla Tarr couldn’t have filmed a live-action version of the gameSodoku. Because if he had, we would program it in a second. But since he hasn’t(at least so far, anything’s possible), we might as well throw The TexasChain Saw Massacre and Fritz the Cat on the screen and see whathappens."

Among the rarely screened gems in the series are: Logan's Run (June 15);Lost Highway (July 6); The Evil Deada nd The Evil Dead II(July 13 and 20, respectively); and The House by the Cemetery (August3).

Films and showtimes: http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/midnight-movies

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Saturday, June 9. 2012

By David Savage

If someone had informed this obsessive fan of WillyWonka & the Chocolate Factory, 40 years ago, that I could hold a realWonka Golden Ticket in my hands, watch behind-the-scenes footage and read abook on the making of my favorite film, examine script correspondence, listento cast commentaries and dive into all sort of Wonka memorabilia in one bigbox, I probably would not have come up for air for weeks. In fact my reactionwould probably have been a lot like Charlie’s when he discovers the last GoldenTicket.

Fans of Willy Wonka – rejoice! Has WarnerBros. Home Video got a golden treat in store for you, just in time for theholidays. The 40^th Anniversary Ultimate Collector’s Edition hasjust been released in one, big, heavy purple box, the same color as Wonka’swaistcoat, full of the same goodies mentioned above, and more. The limitededition gift set indulges and answers every possible question a fan might haveabout the making of this extraordinary film forty years ago, even giving them areal sense of what it was like to be there on the set with the cast and crew.

The Scrumdidlyumptious, 3-disc Blu-ray/DVD combocontains over an hour of extras, including Mel Stuart’s Wonkavision, abrand new interviewwith the director; a new-to-DVD featurette on authorRoald Dahl; a 144-page production book reprint filled with production photos andnotes, and archival letters. Sweet premiums like a retro Wonka Bar-shaped tinbox with scented pencils and eraser will have an infantilizing effect on“adult” fans such as myself who saw the movie first-run, so you might want toopen it alone. (I made the mistake of opening it at the office, and practicallyscared away four co-workers who sit in my area.)

Cinema Retro,ill-advisedly perhaps, unleashed me on cast members and director Mel Stuart onOctober 17^th at a press conference at the Jumeirah Essex House Hotelin Manhattan, overlooking Central Park. With the exception of Michael Bollner(Augustus Gloop) who wasn’t able to be present, the Wonka “kids” were therestill looking great, now in their early 50s. Peter Ostrum (Charlie Bucket),Julie Dawn Cole (Veruca Salt), Denise Nickerson (Violet Beauregard), and ParisThemmen (Mike Tee Vee) joined director Mel Stuart, now 83, and the “lead”Oompa-Loompa, veteran actor Rusty Goffe, for a delightful conversation andpersonal memories that have not dimmed with time. If they get tired of tellingthe same old stories, you’d never know it.

I started with director, Mel Stuart, and Oompa-LoompaNo. 1, Rusty Goffe, who has quite an impressive resume to his credit,post-Wonka, including the first Star Wars (1977) and two films in the HarryPotter franchise. Mel is a gruff but warm-hearted New York native of theold school. And, I discovered, a great raconteur.

Mel Stuart (pointing to Rusty Goffe): He was thenumber one Oompa-Loompa. Tell ‘em why.

Rusty Goffe: Tell them why? I was the youngest, I wasthe only agile one, I could speak English --

Mel Stuart: -- He did Shakespeare. If you doShakespeare, you’re number one in my book. See, you always have to cast peoplefor bit parts. You know, four lines, two lines. And I ask “Have you ever doneShakespeare.” If it’s between him and the other one, I’ll take the one who’sdone Shakespeare. Right now I’m working on a picture, a documentary --Shakespeare in Watts.

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Wednesday, October 19. 2011

ByDavid Savage

InVito, a new documentary examining thelife of Vito Russo, the pioneering AIDS activist and author of the landmarkbook The Celluloid Closet (publishedin 1981, updated in 1987), director Jeffrey Schwarz pays tribute to a man whomhe credits with being the first to break down the long history of Hollywood’sdefamation against gay people in the movies, and in so doing, advanced thecause of gay rights on a crucial front. The documentary premiered at the 49^thNew York Film Festival on last Friday, October 14^th, and is beingdistributed by HBO Films. (The cable network will air the doc sometime nextyear, an employee confirmed.)

“Moviescaused great damage to gay people’s psyches,” said Jeffrey Schwarz recently inan interview with Cinema Retro, “and he was able to tie in his burgeoning gayactivism with movies by showing films at the Gay Activist Alliance, which hefounded [in 1970], and that had the effect of creating community through film.There really was no community before. Getting gay people in a room together todiscuss films had never happened before, and he was the first person to makethese connections.”

Thedocumentary is the most personal yet for Schwarz, founder of Automat Pictures,a production house in Los Angeles which, in between their bread-and-butter workproducing EPKs (Electronic Press Kits), behind-the-scenes shorts and making-offeaturettes for DVDs and Blu-Ray releases, has been cranking out some of thebest documentaries in recent memory on the outsiders of American cinema, likeWilliam Castle, Tab Hunter and drag superstar Divine (more on the last, below).

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Sunday, October 16. 2011

By David Savage

It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years since Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, aka Cassandra Peterson, burst into our living rooms, sporting two of her biggest assets, and single-handedly revitalized the once-tame TV genre of the late-night horror host, bringing a combination of sexuality, humor and no shortage of groan-worthy bad puns. Elvira’s Movie Macabre ran from 1981-84 on Los Angeles’ KHJ (now KCAL-TV) and rapidly established her as a star with national syndication.

Feature films followed: Her own starring vehicle Elvira, Mistress of the Dark was released in 1988, followed by Elvira’s Haunted Hills in 2001. Licensing deals, frequent TV appearances, tie-ins galore, video box sets and other TV programs made Elvira America’s favorite sexy and playful horror vamp. (My favorite arcade game in the ‘80s was the Elvira pinball machine, Scared Stiff.)

Although it’s been a tough gig to keep up over the past decade, given the explosion of the niche-market television landscape and hundreds of channels all competing for attention, Elvira re-launched her original show, Elvira’s Movie Macabre in September of 2010 for syndication in several markets nationwide, and it ran for 20 episodes, through May of ’11. Unlike her previous show from the ‘80s, Elvira chose B-horror films in the public domain due to the prohibitive cost of licensing now, but it’s no less fun – she’s educating a whole new generation on the merits of A Bucket of Blood, Manos: Hands of Fate, Night of the Living Dead and I Eat Your Skin.

If you missed any of the episodes, and likely you did because of the relative obscurity of the show’s airtimes, Elvira is releasing a new line of double-feature DVDs from the show’s re-launch. Each DVD, priced at $14.98, includes two fright-fests digitally remastered for optimal shocks. The first one to hit the street is Night of the Living Dead (1968) & I Eat Your Skin (1964).

I spoke with Cassandra recently from her home in Los Angeles, where we discussed high school, her Fellini encounter, self-actualization and Tina Louise.

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Wednesday, June 22. 2011

By David Savage

The generation of subversive filmmakers who emerged out ofthe rubble of Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1970s, who wrote, cast,produced and directed their own punk riffs on narrative feature films longbefore the digital revolution made it easy, has long gone without a properdocumentary that chronicles their fascinating emergence during this era. Well,no more. Blank City, directed by French newcomer Celine Danhier, was oneof the most talked about docs at festivals worldwide in 2010, and recently startedits theatrical engagement at the IFC Center in Manhattan and across the USA atmajor indie-cinema venues.

Packed with film clips, period footage and insightfulinterviews with key players from the scene, such as Debbie Harry, John Waters,Ann Magnuson, Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, Patti Astor and Jim Jarmusch, BlankCity is a fascinating and inspiring documentary that unspools like along-overdue oral history, both of Manhattan’s Alphabet City and of the “NoWave” film movement that exploded there in the mid-to-late ‘70s. Its bombed-outstreets of vacant lots and nearly uninhabitable tenements provided the stagefor the first generation of DIY filmmakers -- nearly 30 years before YouTube --who picked up Super-8 cameras and cast their friends and themselves in hastilywritten films with names like Blank Generation, Rome ‘78, PermanentVacation and Empty Suitcases. If the titles sound like punk albumtitles, they essentially were. The same ethos that informed the short, jagged,minimalist music of bands like Television, the Voidoids, The Contortions andTeenage Jesus -- then rocking CBGB’s on the Bowery -- was also the philosophybehind these no-budget mini-masterpieces.

“It felt like our lives were movies,” says Blondie’s DebbieHarry, who, like many in the downtown scene, was both in a band and in herfriends’ films, such as Amos Poe’s The Foreigner (1978).

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Tuesday, May 17. 2011

Faye Dunaway has every reason to look on top of theworld. Not only is it her face gracing this year’s Cannes Film Festivalposter -- taken from 1970’s Puzzle of a Downfall Child -- but the film has recently been completelyrestored by Universal Pictures. To mark the occasion, her director from thefilm and ex- fiancé, Jerry Schatzberg, were reunited on the red carpet atCannes on May 11^th for a press photocall.

The restored print is being screened at Cannes and willbe distributed for the first time in France this fall.

It must have been something of a homecoming for theonetime couple. Forty-plus years ago, they were photographed arm-in-arm,dashing from photographers around Paris.

The 64^th Festival de Cannes runs through May22^nd.

-David Savage

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Thursday, May 12. 2011

By David Savage

One of the most anticipated genre film festivals on the North American circuit is Noir City, the annual San Francisco Film Noir Festival, hosted at the glorious Castro Theatre – itself a cinematic landmark and “character” in countless movies filmed in the City by the Bay. This year’s edition, with the theme of “Who’s crazy now?” kicks off January 21^st and runs through the 30^th, 2011. Over the 10 day span, a tantalizing lineup of twenty-four films will be screened – including three brand new 35mm prints funded by the Film Noir Foundation, High Wall (1947); Loophole (1954) and The Hunted (1948).

“We show films you can’t see anywhere else,” said Noir City co-founder and noted film historian Eddie Muller over the phone from his Bay Area home. “We are the only festival that goes out of its way to preserve rare titles, then uses those proceeds to restore other rare titles.” Festival attendees regularly turn up in period dress, Muller says, as proof of their devotion to the genre. For the Castro Theatre, built in 1922 and seating 1,400 people, it’s one of the biggest draws of the year.

Citing an arrangement his Film Noir Foundation has with a major Hollywood studio, Muller’s organization agrees to fund preservation and restoration prints to be made if the studio will deposit a print with UCLA’s Film & Television Archive – the premiere restoration facility in the world. The studio retains ownership but allows UCLA to grant screening licenses, such as the wildly popular Noir City festival in San Francisco. It’s an agreement, says Muller, that provides ongoing proof that restoration and preservation of rare and endangered films is a worthwhile effort. Still, he allows, it’s always a hard case to make to the studios, which are forever looking into the future for new revenue streams and not into the past. Once in a while, Muller says, a studio will step forward to fund the full restoration of a print, which is what Paramount did recently with Strangers in the Night (1951) when their archive heard that Film Noir Foundation was prepared to shoulder the $27,000 restoration cost on their own.

Other highlights include The Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), considered by critical consensus to be the first American film noir, starring Peter Lorre; Don’t Bother to Knock (1952) with Marilyn Monroe in one of her strongest performances of her young career; and a handful of films not available on DVD, such as 1946’s The Dark Mirror, with Olivia de Havilland (directed by noir master Robert Siodmak), Beware My Lovely with Ida Lupino, and a bizarre puzzler from 1948, Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door starring Nightmare Alley’s Joan Bennett and Michael Redgrave. According to the program literature, it’s a Noir City tradition to show one incomprehensible film each year – and this year this is it. Apparently Lang’s off-the-rails Freudian blowout is a cross between Rebecca and Bluebeard. Muller calls it “ridiculous but visually stunning.” Funded by The Film Noir Foundation, it was restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Like a grim-faced police lineup, most of noir’s beloved Usual Suspects are to be found in 2011’s edition, like Barbara Stanwyk, Ida Lupino, and Humphrey Bogart. However, audiences will also appreciate some surprising names – actors, screenwriters and directors – not usually associated with noir, notably French director Jean Renoir’s The Woman on the Beach (1947); Otto Preminger with his Angel Face (1952) and A Double Life (1947), directed by George Cukor and starring an Ronald Colman in a dual role which won him an Oscar. The script was written by screwball comedy veterans Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.

For Noir City 9’s complete 2011 festival lineup and more information on how you can join and contribute to The Film Noir Foundation, visit http:/www.noircity.com.

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Sunday, January 2. 2011

ByDavid Savage

“Prendi appunti.” (“Take notes.”)

That was the famously economical answer the great Italianneo-realist screenwriter, Suso Cecchi d’Amico, gave when asked what advice shehad for those aspiring to write films. Pay attention to the way people speakand act, and write it down, she seemed to be suggesting. It’s not in ourdaydreams where we’re going to find that convincing bit of dialogue or key to acharacter’s motivation. It’s in daily life, which holds more rich material thanany of us could ever use.

The Bicycle Thief (‘48), Rocco and His Brothers (‘60) The Leopard(‘63), Senso (‘54), Violent Summer (‘59) and Jesus of Nazareth(TV, ‘77) are only a handful of the powerful films she wrote or contributed to,among more than 100 carrying her name.

Most cited for her career-long collaboration with directorand close friend Luchino Visconti, with whom she worked on five films,including 1963’s The Leopard starring Burt Lancaster, she also held herown alongside such powerful directorial egos as Antonioni, De Sica, Monicelliand Zeffirelli.

“Scrivere Il Cinema,” (Writing Film), is a six-day tributeto Cecchi d’Amico, organized by Richard Peña, director of the Film Society ofLincoln Center, which kicks off November 26th and runs through December 1st atThe Walter Reade Theater in Lincoln Center.

I spoke recently to Peña about the significance of SusoCecchi d’Amico’s contributions to cinema and the relative rarity of a tributeorganized around a screenwriter:

Cinema Retro: A tribute organized around a screenwriteris fairly rare. Why did you choose this specific screenwriter for a tribute?

Richard Pena: Perhaps, but Suso was anextraordinarily special screenwriter. Having recently done a lot of work onItalian cinema, I was startled to see how often her name figured in the creditsof so many masterworks. She was an extraordinary talent, and her passing is aloss for all who love film.

CR: Do you think her career was overshadowed by hercollaboration with such auteurist names in Italian cinema, such as Visconti,Monicelli, et al? It seems as though a woman would have a hard time holding herown against such huge egos?

RP: My sense is that this had as muchto do with the contemporary lionization of film directors as it did plain oldsexism. From what I've heard about her, she held her own with the boys.

CR: Can you identify a common thread or characteristicstyle that belongs to Cecchi d’Amico’s dialogue or characterizations?

RP: With over 100screenplays to her credit, that becomes difficult; moreover, I've seen at best50% of them. I think she often likes to focus on a character who takes adecisive action and then study the consequences of that action on those aroundhim/her.

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Thursday, November 25. 2010

Exorcist fans are partying like it's 1973, with the recent big screen showings of the extended director's cut of the movie as well as the soon-to-be-released Blu-ray special edition that contains unseen behind-the-scenes footage. Additionally, the next issue of Cinema Retro (#19) will feature a cover story on the film and an exclusive interview with William Peter Blatty. Adding to the hoopla, the Museum of Modern Art in New York just hosted a special event relating to the film.

By David Savage

The Museum of Modern Art’s famed Titus Theater was thesetting for an unforgettable evening last Wednesday, September 29^th,as director William Friedkin, actress Linda Blair, and other crew members reunitedfor a screening of The Exorcist: TheExtended Director’s Cut. The event was timed to celebrate the upcomingrelease of a landmark new collector’s edition, two-disc Blu-ray™ set, available beginning October 5^thfrom Warner Home Video.

Projected on the big screen in a spectacular,remastered print in 1080p from the original camera negative, and with restoredsound that revealed subtleties from the original score and sound reel seeminglylost under a layer of murk until now, the entire experience was like a layer ofsooty tape had been lifted off the entire film, both heightening itscinematographic beauty as well as restoring its power to drop jaws as it did 37years ago. The theater’s Dolby processor/ 5.1 surround system seemed to turn upthe aural and emotional volume on the terror.

While the film is routinely included in the horrorgenre, Friedkin stressed that it was never intended to be a horror film, butrather “a film about the mystery of faith.” Indeed, he confirmed with novelistand screenwriter William Peter Blatty (onstage after the screening) that theynever mentioned the word horrorduring the entire production. Every decision they made, Friedkin said, wassteeped in research, realism and getting at the truthful representation of thecharacters’ confrontation with religious belief. Horror-film conventions wereirrelevant, he said, a perspective which influenced everything from thescreenwriting to the cinematography.

Personally, I’ve always maintained (and Friedkin’sremarks seemed to back me up) that the film is only on the surface about thedemonic possession of a little girl. Its deeper focus lies on a priest’s crisisof faith. As he tries to come to terms with the role he played in the neglect anddeath of his mother, he must also negotiate his own moral crossroads as hedecides whether or not to get involved with a real-life exorcism involving aninnocent 13 year-old girl.

Even at their most shocking and (to people of faith)sacrilegious, the scenes involving the demonic possession of Regan do not playas gratuitous, a point further echoing Friedkin’s contention stated above. There is a seriousness of purpose and,strangely enough, a palpable piety in the treatment of desecration, sacrilegeand heresy. Again, Blatty and Friedkin, together with cinematographer OwenRoizman (also present), discussed for months before shooting began how theywere going to approach such explosive subject matter in a manner that would notinvolve genre-conventions, shock appeal or empty, transgressive gestures towardorganized religion.

After the screening, audience members were given thetreat of a lifetime to see Friedkin joined on the stage, first by novelist andOscar-winning screenwriter (for this film) William Peter Blatty, then bycinematographer Owen Roizman (who also lensed Friedkin’s The French Connection), then by Linda Blair (looking fit and lovelyat 51), and finally by Chris Newman, the sound maestro on the film.

Blatty and Friedkin sparred like the old friends theyare, with Blatty mercilessly teasing Friedkin about a continuity lapse in onescene, which Friedkin rebutted with “Bill, I view that like cracks in fineleather.” Their tone underscored the family atmosphere that was established whileworking on the film and which continues to this day.

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Thursday, September 30. 2010

In the spirit of Cinema Retro's quest to help make audiences aware of worthwhile independent films, columnist David Savage reports on the new short Sahaja Springs.

Ifprecious few directors have exploited the inherent comedy of the ashram -- aretreat for meditation, yoga and enlightenment -- it may be because, like thefashion biz and network television, for example -- these realms do an awfullygood job of satirizing themselves.

Onedirector willing to take a stab at sending up the yoga lifestyle is emergingindie director Rebecca Conroy, a recent graduate of ColumbiaUniversity'sgraduate film program. Her hilarious short, Sahaja Springs,recently screened at the IFC Center in Manhattan, and has both tickled andangered audiences, depending on whom you ask. (Men seem to be amused; women,not so much, according to Conroy.)

Thefilm's multi-thread narrative follows a group of ashram residents as theystruggle to find inner peace promised by an Upstate New York ashram run by afaux-Indian, fraudulent yogi. That the character is played by a real-lifeIndian yogi, 92 year-old Kumar Pallana -- the Indian character actor with arecurring role in many of Wes Anderson's films such as Rushmore, TheRoyal Tenenbaums, and The Darjeeling Limited -- is a good example ofthe film’s layered comedy.

Meanwhile,a male ashram resident – a hunky, magnetic loner who speaks in mystical yetbaffling headscratchers – seems to be driving all the females crazy withfrustrated lust and confusion.

It’sa smart, deadpan jewel from a young director who knows whence she speaks:Conroy drew upon her own experiences as a yoga follower, ashram-crasher anddaughter of a hippie mother.

Isat down recently for coffee with Conroy and discussed the idea behind her yogasatire and “The Great Kumar”’s surprising theatrical history.

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Tuesday, June 15. 2010

A new documentary examining the tragic and influential life of Warhol Factory star Candy Darling, entitled Beautiful Darling: The Life and Times of Candy Darling, Warhol Superstar had its US premiere at the New Directors/New Films Festival, last Friday, April 2nd, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The writer and director, James Rasin, was present with key members of his crew, most notably Jeremiah Newton, who executive produced and whose shared life with Darling provided the main focus
of this revelatory, intelligent documentary.

Framed by a present-day narrative involving close friend Jeremiah Newton's efforts to give Candy's funeral urn a final resting place (in tiny Cherry Valley, New York -- the significance of which is never explained), the documentary recounts in vivid detail the fast-burning life of Warhol's most legendary Superstar. (The only one of Warhol's Superstars, by the way, paid tribute by two Lou Reed-penned songs for The Velvet Underground.) The filmmaker and his crew weave together early video clips, film footage, recordings, photographs, period music and and original score to create a dense narrative fabric, making it one the most thorough and authoritative biopics of the Warhol clan.

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Monday, April 5. 2010

By David Savage

It’san angry time in America. Tea Partiers, Olbermann, Palin, Wall Street villains,an endless war in Afghanistan, mercenaries in Congress, flying terrorists, highunemployment and Twitter-addicted freaks.

Soit’s either a perfect time to bring out a remake of George Romero’s 1973 horrorclassic The Crazies, or the timing isreally curious, if this mainstream horror reboot’s aim is to encourage viewersto “enjoy some surprises and maybe forget their troubles for a couple hours,”says one of the producers, Rob Cowan. The movie opens in North America today.

Thedramatic irony floating over the film – in which a small, idyllic Midwesterntown descends into violence and mayhem when a water-born toxin infects half thepopulation – might be the question whether Americans even need the excuse of a crazy-making virus to descend into anarchy.Aren’t we on the tipping point already?Â

I’llleave that for viewers to discuss. Meanwhile, this remake from Overture Films featuresTimothy Olyphant (Live Free or Die Hard),Radha Mitchell (Silent Hill) and isdirected by Breck Eisner (Sahara).The writers, Scott Kosar and Ray Wright, have reportedly updated Romero’soriginal concept from being told from the point of view of the townsfolk to thehusband and wife team of David and Judy (Olyphant and Mitchell).

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Friday, February 26. 2010

By David Savage

In Roland Emmerich's upcoming multi-billion-dollarboondoggle 2012 (a date from which Mayan scholars have already distancedthemselves, unfortunately, since the whole plot hinges on a "Mayanprophecy" that the world will end in that year), the director decided tofilm a scene in which the iconic Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio isdestroyed, citing his belief against “organized religion.”

Interestingly, though, he lost his nerve when it came time to follow throughwith filming the destruction of another sacred site of organized religion: theKaaba -- that cube-shaped shrine that sits at the heart of Mecca. ExplainsEmmerich: “Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit. But my co-writer Haraldsaid I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right.We have to all in the Western world think about this [sic]. You can actuallylet Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arabsymbol, you would have a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what thestate of this world is. So it's just something which I kind of didn't [think]was [an] important element, anyway, in the film, so I kind of left it out.”

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Tuesday, November 10. 2009

By David Savage

The Film Society of Lincoln Center, in association with Cinecittà Luce, and the Fondazione CentroSperimentale di Cinematografia-Cineteca Nazionale in Rome, will present themost complete series on Italian Neorealism ever screened in New York: "LifeLessons: Italian Neorealism and the Birth of Modern Cinema", amonth-long, 40-film series on the film movement from postwar Italy. The seriesscreens at the Walter Reade Theater from Friday, October 30 through Wednesday,November 25.

This promises to be a landmark survey of a crucial period of cinemahistory and New York-area film-goers of any persuasion should try to see atleast one in the series. Rossellini’s OpenCity is often cited as the first milestone in this movement, so it might bethe go-to mother lode if you have to see just one film. Born from the war-torn landscapes of 1940s Italy, Neorealist films wereboth unique stylistically and thematically, according to the festivalprogrammers. Shot on location, using available light, casting non-professionalactors, these films were revolutionary also for their candid depictions of theworking class. Not only would the movement elevate the art form from simpleentertainment, but it opened a dialogue about the future of Italy as well ascreating films of extraordinary power and humanity.

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Thursday, October 29. 2009

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Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Monday, February 9. 2009

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By David Savage

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If the phrase Barbara, please! means something special to you and you live in New York, most likely you’ve attended at least once the weekly Clearview Classics series at Chelsea’s Clearview Cinemas, hosted by New York’s own, reigning “Queen of Green,” drag performer and comic chanteuse Hedda Lettuce. If not, you have no excuse. Mark your calendars now. Screening twice on Thursday nights and once on Saturdays, and attended by a congregation of fanatical members who can recite every word of Mommie Dearest, Torch Song, Airport ’75, Earthquake, or Xanadu at will, Clearview Classics has been the main home of “Lettuce” for eight years now. Every week she packs in a crowd for her hilarious pre-movie show in which she warms up the crowd (not that they need it) with songs (which she sings herself), key scene re-enactments with audience members, special guests and, if you should be so unfortunate, identification of “virgins” – mousy first-timers who have never seen Valley of the Dolls or its ilk and are dragged mercilessly into the spotlight.Â

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For the current schedule of Clearview Classics, its address and directions, go to: www.clearviewcinemas.com/classics.Â

For more on Hedda Lettuce, visit The Queen of Green’s website at: www.heddalettuce.com

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Friday, January 23. 2009

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Tuesday, January 13. 2009

An over-capacity crowd packed the Academy Theater inNew York last night for AMPAS’s popular“Monday Nights with Oscar” program, this time featuring a special treat: “HollywoodHome Movies: Treasures from the Academy Film Archive.” The program, curated byAcademy archivist Lynne Kirstee and accompanied by pianist Donald Sosin,afforded a rare glimpse into the intimate scenes of family life of Hollywood’s legendarydirectors, producers and actors, and were at once fascinating and strangelyfamiliar.

We saw Alfred Hitchco*ck playing with his baby daughterPatricia on their English estate; Bogart and Bacall sailing their beloved Santana out of the Newport Beach marina(she’s making dreary sandwiches down in the hull while he dashingly masters theriggings up on deck, an ever-present cigarette dangling from his lips); CedricGibbons and his wife Dolores del Rio entertaining guests poolside at their homein Santa Monica; and other peeks at the off-hours of Hollywood’s Golden Ageroyalty. Interestingly, just when the scenes began to look overly familiar inthat “every family has an over-eating aunt” way, out of left field comes asophisticated camera trick (Hitchco*ck eating a banana backwards, for example)that reminds one that these people literally had technical magic at theirfingertips.

Or, for example, watching Mickey Rooney and Judy Garlandplaying in a charity tennis match in 1939 (part of the Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.Collection) gives the viewer the sensation of being in a communal living roomand watching home movies of everyone’s relatives. Or something bizarre likethat.

The program also included revealing commentary from thelikes of Gary Cooper’s daughter, Maria Cooper Janis; Steve McQueen’s wife,Neile Adams; and the last wife of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Vera Shelton, amongothers. As Shelton recounted in an amusinganecdote, she met Fairbanksby chance at a crowded bar when she turned to the man next to her and asked hishelp in getting her a drink. For some, brushes with fame remain just that. Forothers, they turn into relationships, affairs or marriages that last decades.

One revelation I found fascinating was the availability ofcolor film to the home movie camera user as early as the mid-1930s. In theHitchco*ck segment, the clip was in a dreamy “lenticular color” which isregistered on a specialized film through thousands of minute “lenses” embeddedinto the emulsion, and then usually projected through a tri-color banded filter(these details courtesy of Wikipedia). Also holding up astonishingly well werethe Kodachrome film clips featuring Esther Williams at home (circa 1949-55) andthe beautiful saturated color footage of Marlon Brando shooting On the Waterfront (c. 1953-54), courtesyof the Charles Rossi Collection.

The program was also punctuated with early home movies of New York Harborin 1927, a beauty contest parade in Atlantic Cityfrom 1935, and the neon wonderland of Times Squarein the mid-1950s, providing a national context to the celebrity home movieclips through the decades.

Bravo to AMPAS for this entertaining and revealing evening!

The Academy Theater is located at

-DAVID SAVAGE

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Thursday, August 14. 2008

Cinema Retro columnist David Savage continues his coverage of the Tribeca Film Festival with a report on a surprise appearance by Dennis Hopper at a screening of one of his earliest films.

The newly restored 35mm print of Night Tide (1961), USA

Last year saw the passing of Curtis Harrington (1926-2007), the director of a slew of delicious psycho-thrillers from the '60s and '70s, including Who Slew Auntie Roo? (1971) and What's the Matter with Helen? (1971), both with Shelly Winters, as well as the critical favorite The Killing Kind (1973) with John Savage. So it was a fitting tribute to the director that Tribeca Film Festival screened two newly restored prints of Harrington's at Pace University last Sunday, April 29^th -- his 1948 experimental short, Picnic, and his rarely seen, first feature film, Night Tide (1961) with Dennis Hopper. Both prints were fresh out of the Academy Film Archive labs in Los Angeles. Adding to the insider-thrill of the occasion was a surprise visit by Hopper himself, who drove in from Queens where he was on location shooting a new movie. Hopper said he hadn't seen the film -- his first, full-length starring role -- in several years, so it was interesting to watch the 25-year-old actor on the screen, then steal furtive glances over at him in his seat watching himself, some 47 years earlier.

Night Tide tells the tale of a young sailor, Johnny Drake (Hopper) on leave in the then-derelict area of Venice, California, who becomes smitten with a mysterious, dark-haired girl, Mora (Linda Lawson) who portrays a mermaid in a carnival sideshow on the pier. They meet in a beatnik grotto-bar complete with jazz combo and snapping, turtlenecked patrons, and from there embark on an enigmatic, moody love affair that spells trouble from the get-go. Her handler and sideshow boss, Captain Murdock (Gavin Muir), warns Johnny that her previous boyfriends were both found drowned, and hints broadly that the fishtail she wears in the sideshow may not be a put-on. Other troubling signs include her serving fish for breakfast, and on one date, she succumbs to the incantatory rhythms of a beach bongo-duo and draws a crowd as she writhes expressionistically to their performance. Johnny won't listen to locals who also try to warn him off the mysterious Mona, until it's nearly too late.

Highly atmospheric and evocative of Los Angeles' beatnik art scene in the late '50s-early '60s (of which Hopper was a member), Night Tide is a odd delight, full of eccentric bit players, stilted dialogue and the lurid backdrop of a seedy amusem*nt pier. It also sets the tone for Harrington's later pictures, most of which are campy thrillers involving a mentally fragile woman in a setting of decayed glamour, in the same genre as Aldrich's What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962).

But digging a bit deeper, it hints at Harrington's involvement in the occult. Harrington, according to Dennis Hopper, was a friend of notorious occult filmmaker Kenneth Anger, with whom he went to school and collaborated on Anger's and his own first experimental films -- many of which deal in mythical and pagan topics. Their mutual friend was an artist in the L.A. art scene of the time known simply as 'Cameron,' and who plays the role of The Water Witch in Night Tide. In the film (credited as Marjorie Cameron) she appears elusively as a witchy woman in black, usually accompanied on the soundtrack by ringing bells. Her appearance throughout Night Tide is never explained, but it casts doubt on the true provenance of the character of Mona, and whether they are mother and daughter, or something more sinister. Interestingly, Marjorie Cameron was married to Jack Parsons, a pioneering genius in rocketry and occult enthusiast, and together they were friends of L. Ron Hubbard and other science fiction writers. According to a short bio on the Internet Movie Database, in 1946 she, Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard undertook the famous "Babylon Working," a complex ritual spell attempting to create a "magical child." In the early '50s she lived in a house in Pasadena reputed to be a hive of occult and sexually transgressive behavior. In 1954 she appeared in Kenneth Anger's Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (along with Harrington) and was a friend of Satanist Aleister Crowley, Dennis Hopper and actor Dean Stockwell. How well Hopper knew Cameron was unclear by his comments, but it was intriguing information, providing a glimpse into his early days as an actor in L.A. and the cast of characters that populated art galleries, living rooms and underground film sets of the time.

Hopper went on to comment that Night Tide was "one of the first independent films," made for $28,000 and listed on Time Magazine's 10 Best Films of that year, although it was never released in theatres, owing to a dispute with labor unions. "Making independent films back then was nearly impossible," he told the audience from the stage. "It was virtually unheard of to work outside the studio system." Harrington, Hopper revealed, was Twentieth Century Fox head Jerry Wald's assistant and got his start in movies the old fashioned way – by serving as a gofer and working his way up from there. Still flinty and ornery as hell at 72, Hopper makes a compelling case for career longevity and still does not suffer fools easily, as evidenced by his sarcastic answers to many questions posed from audience members. When he mentioned his authorship of Easy Rider (1969), vigorously disputed by Terry Southern and others, I was going to raise my hand. Then I thought, hmm…better not go there. This dark man of indie cinema just turned a shade more sinister.

To watch the original trailer of Night Tide, cut and paste this URL into your browser: http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi2275213593/

-David Savage

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE NIGHT TIDE DVD DISCOUNTED FROM AMAZON

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Thursday, May 1. 2008

CINEMA RETRO COLUMNIST DAVID SAVAGE'S COVERAGE OF THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL CONTINUES WITH HIS REVIEW OF THE NEW AUSTRALIAN FILM, NEWCASTLE

Speaking of surf movies (see my fellow Cinema Retro columnist Tom Lisanti's appreciation of Ride the Wild Wave by clicking here), I have proof that the genre is not a relic of the past. Newcastle, from indie American director Dan Castle, is an exhilirating new film making its debut at Tribeca Film Festival that breathes new life into one of the most formulaic conventions in the movies. Set in the Australian blue collar beach town of the film's title, up the coast from Sydney, Newcastle is as anti-idyllic surf movie as you're ever likely to see. Instead of picturesque sunsets reminiscent of Endless Summer, coal barges line the ocean horizon of this seaside town. It may be populated by golden-skinned surf gods and babes, but they are without illusions. Life is hard and surfing offers the only wave out of this dead-end town.

After placing third in tryouts for the approaching Junior Pro Surf Championship, a competition that has the power to make or break young surfers' dreams, Jesse is down but not yet out. He's determined not to end up like his brother Victor, a promising former surfer who ended his career in injury and now works on the dry docks with his father, unloading coal. He struggles to cope. His hormones are raging. His twin brother, Fergus, is likely gay (pale and with newly purple hair) and the source of constant embarrassment. When the temptation arises of a weekend away at Stockton Dunes (a remote beach) with his surf buddies, Jesse leaps at the opportunity, even if it means Fergus has to go along. Two local girls join them and the weekend holds the promise of nothing but blissful abandon on the waves and a possible "first time" with one of the girls. As they move through the weekend trip, Fergus learns to surf and thus gains acceptance by his mates, but a tragedy unfolds when Victor shows up to challenge his younger brother on the waves.

Remarkably, the film never hits a false note, even while working squarely within two classic genres: the surf movie and the teen, coming-of-age film. In the former category, Castle gives the film a sense of heightened realism by hiring an ensemble of strong actors as well as seasoned surfers, all of whom demonstrate an effortless athleticism as they carve and cut out of the waves, ride crests and "shoot the curl" in take after incredible take. Castle's team of ocean cameramen are second to none, shooting with fearless energy and great skill both above and below the waves, using natural light and mostly a handheld technique so that the viewer feels thrust right out in the action of the crashing surf. The land-based photography (Richard Michalak, ACS), by contrast, is dark and claustrophobic, filmed in French New Wave-style handheld and with little dolly action, underscoring the cramped and volatile nature of Jesse's home life.

Within the confines of the coming-of-age genre, Castle resists the cliché typecasting of teen ensemble films, and it's to his credit that he makes each character seem distinct and fully drawn, even when many of these teen boys are not fully aware of who they are themselves. There is no gross-out humor, sexual gags or other pranks typical of teen movies, but there is plenty of content which rings true to anyone who remembers grappling with the anxieties of sexuality, peer pressure, ambition and sibling violence at that fragile age.

The adult actors, most prominent among them being the award-winning Australian actor Barry Otto (Oscar and Lucinda), round out a teen cast who demonstrate a maturity and dedication to their craft that seems refreshing when compared with the Ken-doll plasticity of their American counterparts found on shows like "The O.C.," for example.

I spoke with the director and screenwriter Dan Castle at the festival and he owned up to weaving a lot of his own life into the script, which took him eight months to write once he got down to business for real after thinking about the project for a year. Bizarrely, he hails from another Newcastle: New Castle, Delaware. But it was a visit in 2001 to the Newcastle Down Under that inspired the idea for the film, even before he had any characters in mind. "As I drove through the streets during my first visit to Newcastle in October 2001," Castle said, " I knew I was in a very special place. The town, the beaches, the seaside pools, the community of surfers and the nearby Stockton Dunes all resonated with me."

He too is a surfer ("not a good one," he swears) and he too lost his virginity in a tent alongside his best friend, who was busy losing his. Even as he surfed with his buddies as a teen, he realized he was gay. From that aspect of himself the character of Fergus was born; from other aspects of himself, and no doubt from other members of his group, other characters were created. "They were at the peak of their beauty," he remembers, "and yet at the time don't realize that it's all pretty much downhill from there." The artful shots of the surfers swimming nude underwater, almost mythical in feel, or the close ups on golden-downed skin or ocean-blue eyes convey Castle's appreciation, even reverence, for that fleeting beauty.

Although Dan didn't go to film school (he did go to NYU, but majored in Business), he started out as an actor and moved to Los Angeles to pursue his career (he studied at The Actors Studio and with Shelly Winters, whom he met by chance in a coffee shop on Fairfax). It proved to be too passive, he explained, as he tired of waiting for someone to tell him "yes." So he instead took a friend's advice and began concentrating on his writing, which led to directing. His last film, a short entitled The Visitor (also with Barry Otto), garnered an Australian Film Institute (AFI) nomination for Best Short Fiction Film in 2003, and he says he's working on three new projects, one of which is a comedy entitled Surf Mom. It sounds like Dan might be a new surf movie auteur with lots of material yet to explore. (Now…where's that shark.)- David Savage

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Wednesday, April 30. 2008

57,000 Kilometers Between Us (France)

Among the more experimental entries representing France at Tribeca this year is video artist and fashion photographer Delphine Kreuter's confident debut feature 57,000 Kilometers Between Us (57000 km entre nous), a disturbing and truthful look at how technology is the great atomizer of society. The characters in this tale, all connected in random ways made possible only on the internet, mediate their daily lives through the filter of webcams, multi-character gaming, online chats, blogs and camcorders. They record, stare and chat, but never connect.

'Nat,' a 14-year-old girl at the center of the story, is struggling to connect to someone, anyone, given that her mother is caught up in a deeply dysfunctional new marriage with a man who records every waking second of his family's life on his camcorder for his blog on marital bliss, but becomes an uncommunicative zombie once offline. Her real father is a transsexual, who watches her via remote from her new home, where she is not welcome. Her only two "friends" consist of a married man online with a baby fetish (he dons diapers and sucks a baby bottle via webcam) and a teen boy, Adrien, dying of leukemia in a hospital intensive care ward. It's with this last friend she is able to find some form of simpatico, as they portray fantasy characters in an alternate-reality game, acting out thinly veiled games of heroic battle and rescue. His mother will not visit him even as he lay dying, preferring instead to hold brief chats with him via webcam. The characters' lives all intersect in some way that underscores the paradox of connectivity without connection, until Nat breaks the cycle and decides to act on her feelings for Adrien the only way she knows how. It's a moving and heartbreaking ending, if enigmatic.

Filmed in a jarring, hand-held style and alternating between digital video and film, Kreuter creates the look of a distopic future squarely within the present, which is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the entire film and which gives it a quasi-documentary feel. It's that rarity of an experimental film that manages to tell a story with clarity yet remain true to its form. While it's doubtful this feature will get picked up by an American theatrical distributor, if it shows up on Netflix, by all means grab it -- it's well worth the 82 minutes of intensity.

-David Savage

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Monday, April 28. 2008

Cinema Retro columnist David Savage reports on preliminary screenings of new films leading up to the Tribeca Film Festival. Here, he takes a look at Mister Lonely, which manages to incorporate Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Michael Jackson, Queen Elizabeth and Abe Lincoln!

What happens when Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, CharlieChaplin, the Pope, Madonna, Queen Elizabeth, Little Red Riding Hood, SammyDavis, Jr., Abe Lincoln and James Dean all find themselves living together in acastle commune in the Highlands of Scotland? Unfortunately, not much in thehands of Harmony Korine, whose new film MisterLonely, takes this brilliant premise and squanders it for 113 listless,melancholy minutes. It’s a crying shame, really, as spontaneous eruptions of brilliant! usually followed when fellowjournalists heard the plot synopsis. Instead, loud, irritable sighs wereerupting around the theater as press attendees realized an hour in that nothingmuch was going to pay-off the brilliant set-up.

When a struggling Michael Jackson impersonator, played byMexican actor Diego Luna (Y Tu MamaTambien), meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) on thestreets of Paris, he accepts her invitation to join her at a remote castlecompound in the Scottish Highlands where she lives with her husband, “CharlieChaplin” and a motley assortment of aforementioned impersonators in communalisolation, sort of like the Island of Misfit Toys from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. There he can find acceptance, shepromises, and join them as they prepare their “greatest show ever” for theirlocal community.

Meanwhile, in a Catholic mission deep inside the Panamanianjungle, a group of nuns discover a miracle: One of them has survived a fallfrom an airplane flying at several thousand feet and, asking for God’sprotection on her fall back to earth, walks away unscathed. The other nunsfollow suit and become addicted to their new-found, extreme-faith sport. Theirleader is a priest played by Werner Herzog, who appears to be improvising hislines (The two plot lines never intersect, except for allegorically, but it’sthis latter plot that provides the more interesting of the film’s two stories.)

A goldmine of material, one would think, but Korine giveshis characters little to do and nothing to say. For example, we never hearanything from the James Dean impersonator, likewise Sammy Davis Jr., norMadonna (!) nor the Queen of England. James Fox as The Pope sinks his teethinto what little script he’s given, and we never learn that he and the Queenare husband and wife until nearly the end of the film when we see them in bedtogether (she lighting a fa*g and he making small talk). Now there’s aproposition! But Korine doesn’t explore it, nor does he take much interest inthe fireworks that might result from such a volatile and rich clash of people,who are themselves imprisoned in personas of their own choosing. I began tofeel sorry for the actors more than the characters, all dressed up and nowhereto go.

The film is not without its merits. Samantha Morton imbuesher Monroe withthe same sense of tragic fragility as the real-life Marilyn, and Korine managesto convey the governing idea of “the purity of dreams” in both plot lines. Themysteries of faith and the willful suspension of disbelief as one “becomes”somebody else might just be two sides of the same coin. – David Savage

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Thursday, April 24. 2008

Beginning with this column, Cinema Retro's David Savage will be reporting from the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. In his first review, he critiques a new film about the cult of Che Guevara - and the irony of how a revolutionary who represented a brutal, totalitarian regime has somehow become a symbol of freedom and independence.

TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2008

Strike a Pose: Hasta La Chevolution

No one hates a sourpuss at a party more than me, so I regret to filemy inaugural report from the Tribeca Film Festival (technically a pre-festivalscreening) on such a cheerless note and with windless sails. Maybe I chosepoorly from the films on offer before the festival gets underway on April 23^rd,but if what I saw last night, Chevolution, is evidence of what it takesto get a documentary into one of the most high-profile film festivals in theworld, then all I can say is that the bar has been lowered so far that one needonly step over it.

Piquing my interest was the following synopsis: How did the iconicimage of Che Guevara end up on beer bottles and bikinis? This inquiry into theethics and aesthetics of appropriation investigates how the enduring symbol of Cuba'srevolution skyrocketed to fame and was ultimately devoured by its own worstenemy: capitalism. Great! Sounds provocative and timely. I was all ready tosee a well argued thesis against branding and the banalization ofonce-meaningful symbols, and even, I hoped, a useful corrective against theradical-chic cult of the Marxist assassin and Argentine revolutionary CheGuevara. No such luck.

What starts out to be a fairly absorbing investigation into thehistory one of the most reproduced images in the history of photography -- thatbeing Cuban photographer Alberto Korda's black and white capture of the youngguerilla warrior at a funeral for the victims of the ship explosion in Havana'sharbor in 1960 -- instead turns into a dreadfully shallow homage to theguerilla warrior himself, leaving countless stones unturned, a parade oftalking heads unchallenged, and a litany of problematic statements floated overour heads like methane-filled balloons. Co-director Trisha Ziff even sees fitto interview herself at one point with this helpful amplification: "He's asuperstar, and a superstar with a message," she explains to her owncamera. What message that is, exactly, she never explains, which serves as atelling bookend to this entire, pointless film.

On the surface, the directors, Ziff and Luis Lopez, invite our indignationover how an honest portrait of a communist revolutionary ended up becoming aglobal brand at the service of capitalism. Fine. Irony noted. But another layerof irony left unexplored, like much in this documentary, is how the portrait ofGuevara, Castro's collaborator (and expendable pawn) in creating the mostrepressive, blood-soaked, totalitarian regime in the Western Hemisphere came tobe the symbol of freedom and revolt against oppression. Whom did he set free,exactly? Care to take that up with the Cuban expatriates in Miami? (They don't, except for one. Seebelow.)

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Saturday, April 19. 2008

Cinema Retro's David Savagerecently spoke to the cast of Sleepwalking, a new independent film starring andproduced by Charlize Theron, also with Nick Stahl, AnnaSophia Robb and Dennis Hopper.

In Sleepwalking (opening March 14^th in the US) Charlize Theronagain demonstrates why her Oscar for Monster (2003) was no fluke. Sherepeatedly earns it back with every new film, disappearing into characters thatwe as a society find unlovable, unredeemable and worthy of every hard knockthey earn, and instead creates genuine empathy for them. She finds what propelsthem forward (“hope” she says), what has nearly killed them and then makes themwholly credible, crude and compelling.

In Sleepwalking, Theron plays Jolene, a working class singlemother who leaves her 11-year-old daughter Tara (played brilliantly byAnnaSophia Robb) with her brother James (Nick Stahl) a timid, loner 30-year-oldwho is himself on the verge of a nervous breakdown. After become his niece’sguardian and father-by-default, he takes off with his niece in search of a newlife, but all roads lead home, as more than one movie has revealed. In James’case it’s the family ranch, which his mean, abusive father (played in almostgleeful menace by Dennis Hopper) still runs. What was supposed to be a healinghomecoming instead turns into a fatal confrontation with the man who isresponsible for his broken soul.

Far from typical Hollywood star-vehicle product, the film isalmost unrelieved in its bleakness, and unfolds against the grim, winter landscapesof small industrial towns in the northern Plains states -- cheap motels, dinerson the interstate, and farms fallen on hard times. It’s the kind of environmentwhere hope and self-actualization would seem only like nice theories. As aconsequence, most likely it will not find a large audience to appreciate itsbest merits: strong performances from the principals and a storyline thatchampions the primacy of family and personal responsibility. As Theron puts it:“Just because we have the same blood flowing in our veins, we don’t have tomake the same mistakes.” As Jolene, Theron is to be commended for taking on such unglamorousfare. She served as the film’s main producer, and was responsible for hiring onthe other talent that got it off the ground.

The climax at the end, between James and his father (Stahland Hopper, respectively) feels too late in the game to pack the emotionalwallop the filmmakers had hoped for, but nonetheless, for a sophom*ore effort screenplay (ZacStafford, of The Chumscrubber) and a first directorial effort (William Maher),it’s nice to see an independent film built on ideas and backed up by strong,hard-hitting performances.

I asked Theron if she might have an affinity for playingwomen with tough backgrounds, based on her roles in Monster and North Country,as well as her own hard background as a child growing up poor in South Africa.“I think the connection between these women is resilience. They have facedtough lives and had to make tough decisions and what keeps them going is hope.It’s the only thing that fuels their lives,” she said, adding that she doesn’t,on the other hand, want to pigeonhole herself into such roles, lest they dry upas fast as they have appeared.

As a native South African, how does she createwomen who are such specific American types, recognizable to us by accent,gesture and demeanor, but surely not so easily to a transplant such as herself?“I am a keen student of human psychology. I study people all the time. Humanbehavior fascinates me. In any walk of life, these types of women are prettymuch the same. Jolene is a passionate woman, but she’s also reckless. I wantedto show this quality in her, the humanity of it, but also the carelessness ofher.”

Also turning in a remarkable performance in her first“adult” film is 14-year-old Annasophia Robb, who recalls Jodie Foster at thesame age: precocious, wounded and possessed of an adult’s perspective too soonin life. In her scenes with a very scary Dennis Hopper, she is able to carryher own as an actress of stunning depth and in full possession of hercharacter. It’s the kind of performance that will surely earn her larger rolesvery soon, if not award mentions at the end of this year. -David Savage

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Friday, March 14. 2008

Cinema Retro columnist David Savages tells us why some twice-told tales should have only been told once.

Like Norman Bates perhaps, in my head there is always anargument raging. One is the Voice of Reason, of disinterested analysis: It’s always best to reserve judgment untilone sees the finished product. Theother is the Voice of Combat, emotional, and defensive: What the hell? I can see them now, a couple of twentysomething,backward-cap-wearing Starbucks rats tapping out the ‘remake’ on their laptops. Ifthey jettison the batty old bird expert in the diner I’m going to track themdown and kill them!

Hm, maybe I care a little bit too much. Even Hitchco*ck wouldprobably be shrugging at this point, lighting a cigar. I allow the Voice ofReason to prevail: This might beinteresting. Naomi Watts is an interesting actress. Let’s see what she can dowith the role of icy, poised Melanie Daniels.

But just when my pulse returns to normal, my eyes fall onthis item: “Forthcoming remake of TheWomen…with a script by Diane English, creator of Murphy Brown…starring Meg Ryan…and Eva Mendes. Eva Mendes? Yup, it’s true folks. From what I can gather, theforthcoming remake of The Women, thelegendary, all-female, cats-in-a-cage comedy originally directed by GeorgeCukor, has been 12 years in the making and features a veritable tonnage ofaward-winning talent, from old vets like Bette Midler, Annette Bening, CarrieFisher and Cloris Leachman, to a younger generation of comic actresses likeDebra Messing (Will & Grace),Jada Pinkett Smith and Eva Mendes. This doesn’t look good. For starters, let’scompare the original’s tagline with the remake’s:

(1939): The Female ofthe Species…when the men aren’t watching!

(2008): The Women is about friends and mothers and daughters. It’s about breaking up andfinding your way back. It’s about reinventing yourself. It’s about walkingthrough fire for what you believe in. It’s about Women.

I guess the cats have been declawed, shorn of their furs,and made to mouthpost-feminist-self-empowerment-pink-ribboned-vagin*-Monologues-era bromidesinstead.

Instead of icy martinis, we’re being served steaming mugs ofCelestial Seasoning tea.

Apparently the original Anita Loos screenplay (which wasbased on Clare Booth Luce’s stage play) has been thrown out. This version willpositively ooze Contemporary Relevance. No more of the mink-draped Countess DeLave, that would offend animal rights activists. No more tiaras, that’sobjectifying to women. This will be about Living, Loving, and Learning. Soundshilarious doesn’t it?

We’ll see how Diane English’s version fares at the boxoffice and with the critics. I guess remakes serve a larger purpose in ourculture. They introduce new generations to old stories, told in new ways. Theybreak in young, ambitious directors. They employ young, rising stars and agingcharacter actors (who were in the original’s principal roles). They givecritics the chance to bloviate on the originals’ superior merits. They keep themachinery going. Besides, championing a ‘hands-off’ policy toward classic filmsrisks entombing them. Given the success rate of most remakes (poor tomiddling), it only underscores why the originals are considered classics in thefirst place. You see, everyone wins!- David Savage

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Wednesday, March 5. 2008

Cinema Retro's David Savage reports on an exciting evening forfilm buffs as Keir Dullea appeared at a New York screening of OttoPreminger's Bunny Lake is Missing.

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Saturday, January 12. 2008

The polyphonically, unfairly talented and fiendishly busy actressKaren Black (who’s also my goodfriend and upcoming interviewee in the print edition of Cinema Retro) recently premiered her own one-woman show, “How ILearned to Stop Worrying and Sing the Song” in Washington, DC, to rave reviews.She received three standing ovations and by her own admission, “I almostcouldn’t stand there and accept that much acknowledgment!” In the show Karenrecounts her life through musical interludes and anecdotes, beginning as astruggling actress in New York in the early 60s (where she famously said “nothanks” to Lee Strasberg after he invited her to join The Actors Studio),through her move to hippie-era Hollywood and her steady rise to fame as one ofthe leading actresses of the 70s. Karen treats the audience to absorbingfirst-hand accounts of her work on such legendary films as Easy Rider (1969), her Oscar-nominated performance in Five Easy Pieces (1970), The Day of the Locust (1975), Nashville (1975), Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982) andmore.

If you’re surprised to learn Karen Black is also a singer, don’t be. Shecan absolutely floor you with hervoice. If you remember the scene in Nashville, inwhich she plays country star Connie White, the song she performs in front ofthe Grand Ole Opry she not only composed herself but made it sound like aviable country hit from that period. Karen grew up in a musical family insuburban Chicagoand her grandfather was the esteemed classical musician Arthur Ziegler, who wasthe first violinist for the Chicago Symphony. Another film in which she singsis Henry Jaglom’s quirky comedy Can SheBake A Cherry Pie? (1983) and the more recent Firecracker (2004) in which she plays a carnival chanteuse and really shows off herrange. Henry Jaglom, Karen’s long-time friend from Actors Studio days back in New York, cast Karen inhis runaway indie hit Hollywood Dreams (2006)as a vainglorious actress of a certain age who is having a secret tryst with anA-list “gay” actor with a secret: he’s straight. Between rendez-vous with Karen’s character Luna, he toys with the idea of“coming out” against the advice of his managers.

She also appears in Jaglom’s upcoming Irenein Time (2007) and this year’s SufferingMan’s Charity (2007), directed by Alan Cumming. I’m eager for everyone toread the interview with Karen in the next issue. Her career is a revelation tothose who pigeonhole her as a fixture of 70s disaster or horror flicks, even if she did important work in both ofthose genres as well.

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Tuesday, November 27. 2007

Cinema Retro columnist David Savage gives us his top two DVD picks for the month: two worthy films that were largely overlooked during their theatrical runs in the 1970s.

The Other (1972) dir. Robert Mulligan. This Late Show creeper fromthe early 70s from the same director as Summerof ’42 (1971) seems like it was made for TV, but research seems to indicateit did have a theatrical release (does anyone out there remember seeing it atthe theater?) In fact most people remember it from its annual broadcast ontelevision during that decade, after which it seemed to disappear altogetherand become something of a bad dream remembered by a handful of night owls. Afew years ago it was released on DVD and it's well worth a revisit. Based onThomas Tryon's taut, psychological novel, the story examines the lives of apair of twins -- one boldly evil, the other sweet but a follower – who are partof a large farm family in Depression-era Connecticut. They run rampantaround the farm with assorted cousins and neighbor kids, inventing games andpulling mean pranks. Their loving grandmother, Ada (played by Uta Hagen, here in Methodoverdrive) teaches them something called 'the game' as a way to escape themental pain caused by their bedridden mother's condition. Horrible accidentsstart to befall neighbors and family members (look for a very young JohnRitter), all of which seem to result from the twins' actions, prompting Ada to intervene in afinal mortal decision. Even if it weren't for a few dreadful scenes involvinglive rats, pitchforks in the haystack and drowned babies, the film would stillbe disturbing in that it suggests something far more troubling: can a child beborn evil? The sunny, horror-in-broad-daylight cinematography of Robert Surtees(Ben Hur, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Graduate) adds to theatmosphere. Identical twins Chris and Martin Udvarnoky, here in their onlyfilm, play the roles of the twins Nilesand Holland Perry.

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Smile (1975), dir. Michael Ritchie. This largely forgotten mid-70sslice-of-life from Michael Ritchie, who had a respectable run in the Seventieswith Downhill Racer, The Candidate, and The Bad News Bears(sadly dying in 2001 at the young age of 62) is a deadpan delight in thetradition of Nashville.Indeed, Ritchie's style is often called "Altman-esque" for its flatgaze upon the ridiculous at the center of everyday life. Here, the context is ateen beauty pageant in a small Californiatown, which Ritchie appears to simply let unfold in all its folly and sadhilarity, proving that there are some things in life which are so intrinsicallycomic that its better to just watch rather than direct. There is not so much aplot as several intersecting storylines, giving the impression of a cameracatching a thousand mini-tragedies and humiliations with each random turn.There are the inauspicious rehearsals, a local salesman in mid-life crisis,horny, ogling teens (led by Eric Shea of The Poseidon Adventure), and ahilarious "pre-pageant interview" sequence before the judges. And this being the mid-70s, the hair, clothing and interior décor are reasonenough to watch, mouth agape. With Bruce Dern and Barbara Feldon (Get Smart)in lead roles, supported by a smashing Annette O'Toole as the most seasoned ofall the pageant's contestants. Also look for an older and foxier DeniseNickerson of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory whom I would loveit interview one day, and a very young Melanie Griffith in one of her firstroles.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Gobblegobble!

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(Look for an interview with David Picker, the producer of Smile in an upcoming issue of Cinema Retro)

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Thursday, November 22. 2007

Cinema Retro columnist David Savage brings us up to date on the movie event scene in New York City.

It's nearly Thanksgiving and as the holiday season breaks into full gallop,the film calendar is already bursting here in New York. Is it possible not to overcommit oneself? A majorPasolini festival gets underway November 28^th at the Film Society ofLincoln Center (see below), followed by the 16^th edition of SpanishCinema Now, also at FSLC, beginning December 7^th. Newly restored35mm prints of Pietro Germi's classic Divorce Italian Style (1961) andAlbert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon (1956) are playing at Film Forum (filmforum.org) through November22^nd, not to mention the roster of foreign and indie featuresrolling out weekly for the press, and the seductive eye candy of newlyremastered and special edition DVD box sets from Warner Bros., Universal,Criterion, etc. winking on the shelves – how is a film reporter supposed tokeep on top of this all and keep a steady job at the same time?

Thanksgiving doesn't bring to mind many great movies, but rather a fewmemorable movie moments. One I’d like to offer up is the scene in Annie Hall(1977) when Woody Allen's character Alvy Singer is invited by Annie (DianeKeaton) to Thanksgiving dinner at her parents' house. Allen correctlyidentifies Thanksgiving as the WASP-iest of all holidays, given its Pilgrimroots, and turns it into one of the funniest Jewish-Among-WASPs moments inmovie history. In the sequence Allen recreates Norman Rockwell's famouspainting of a New England family atThanksgiving dinner and inserts himself into the tableau vivant. As thestruggling comic Alvy tries out joke after joke on Annie's family, presidedover by a frosty Colleen Dewhurst as Annie's mother, all of them fall with athud in confused silence. Eventually we see him transform into a rabbi at thetable. It's one of those scenes that showcased Allen's loose brilliance as adirector during the period, and also reminds me how few young directors today arewilling to mine the WASP/Jewish culture clash for comedy. There was the originalThe Heartbreak Kid (1972) withCharles Grodin and Cybill Shepherd, written by Elaine May, and Jerry Stillerand Anne Meara have perhaps made the most of their comic culture clash of amarriage of all entertainers. But since then? A few recent exceptions are Meet the Fockers (2004) and Meet the Parents (2000), both written byJim Herzfeld, and this year’s Knocked Up(2007) from Judd Apatow. While the story doesn’t address the topic explicitly,Apatow makes the most of the contrast between the Jewish central character, BenStone and the tall blonde shiksaAlison Scott, whom he unwittingly knocks up after a fateful meeting in anightclub. The screenplays that treat this subject usually come from a Jewishwriter, suggesting that the satirical perspective (following conventionalwisdom) comes from the cultural outsider, as was the norm for the last halfcentury. But now that WASPS are rapidly dying off as a demographic in the U.S., and moreimportantly as a cultural force, it will be interesting to see if a comedycomes along from a WASP’s perspective. It might be controversial, if saidwriter is so fortunate. If I’m missing any obvious examples other than theabove-mentioned, do let me know.

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Wednesday, November 21. 2007

Director David Cronenberg built a loyal fan base in the 1970s and 1980s with popular, off-beat cult films such as Scanners and Videodrome. Since then, he has gone mainstream - but has he lost the creative touches that originally endeared him to his fans? Cinema Retro's David Savage takes a look at Cronenberg's latest effort.

In Eastern Promises, David Cronenberg's new crime thriller set in London's East End, Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen) stubs out a cigarette on his tongue just before "operating" on a recent mob victim to prep him for disposal into the Thames – snipping off the ends of his fingers with surgical clippers, bloodless and frozen solid after spending a few days in a meat freezer. It seems to set the requisite Cronenbergian tone: fixing a cold, unblinking gaze on bodily mutilation and violence. There are a few more signature Cronenberg moments that punctuate Eastern Promises, a thoughtfully paced, gloomy tale of honor and betrayal in a Russian organized crime family, just enough to make the viewer aware that this otherwise conventional tale is in the hands of Canada's most provocative director. But the fun stops there. Working from another director's script (Steve Knight, Academy Award-nomination for Dirty Pretty Things), Cronenberg is merely lending his own signature treatment to a familiar-feeling genre piece with a Hollywood-style happy ending, ill-suited to a story set in criminality, betrayal and violence. I'll be the last person to force a director to be a one-trick pony, but this film, while well done, engaging and credibly acted, could have been directed by any of a dozen directors of Cronenberg's stature. It just doesn't seem worthy of his perverse and brilliant talent.

Eastern Promises examines what happens when an interloper on a moral crusade steps into a wholly amoral world with its own perverse codes of honor. Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), a midwife at a North London hospital, oversees the birth of a baby whose mother, a 15-year old heroin addict and Russian immigrant, dies in labor. The teenager has left a diary, and within its pages Anna discovers the slavery and forced prostitution to which the young mother had been subjected at the hands of one of London's most notorious organized crime families, the Vory V Zakone, headed by Semyon (a dead-eyed and threatening Armin Mueller-Stahl). His surface charm and grandfatherly warmth as the proprietor of a private Russian dining club masks a brutal and vindictive core as the patriarch of his crime family. His new driver, Nikolai (Mortensen) and violent son (Vincent Cassel) will go to any lengths to protect the family's honor and privacy. When the diary leads Anna to the restaurant to seek information as to the girl's family and the baby's rightful inheritors, she unwittingly entangles herself in a mortal struggle involving several lives, including her own.

Unlike Cronenberg's own films which he wrote and directed (The Brood, Videodrome, Dead Ringers, Crash , eXistenZ to name a few), Eastern Promises, like A History of Violence (2005) and Spider (2002) before it, is disappointingly bereft of the familiar themes of transgression and "body horror" on a visceral level his fans have come to expect. Mortensen may be the director's new muse, as both seem on a mutually fruitful collaboration as they explore psyche, physicality and identity here and in A History of Violence. And as in many of Cronenberg's previous films, director of photography Peter Suschitzky suffuses the film with a highly atmospheric, elegant gloom, full of wine reds and deep shadows. But is it a worthwhile Cronenberg outing if it doesn't provoke an argument over dinner, or no one flees the theater in disgust? I dare say no.

With the exception of Naomi Watts, whose character evokes the sort of role Jenny Agutter might have played thirty years ago (and actually made me pine for), the cast is first rate. Mortensen creates a thoroughly credible Russian thug, due to intensive research before filming, involving traveling alone to Russia and immersing himself in locales frequented by the thugs of Russia's crime families; Vincent Cassel, likewise, is wholly believable as the volatile and conflicted son of Semyon. As Mortensen said in a press interview and I agree with him, Cassel is able to begin the film as an appalling thug and end the film by making the viewer care about his abused soul.

-David Savage

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Monday, September 17. 2007

In May of 1999, I flew to Los Angeles, armed with a taperecorder and a stack of blank cassettes to do a string of interviews with amotley assortment of characters that could be pigeonholed in any one of theseunflattering categories: Hollywood's Unjustly Forgotten; The Overlooked CareerOf…; or Aging Horribly and No One Cares. Some worked out and others didn't.Among them was Forrest J. Ackerman, founder of Famous Monsters Magazine andgodfather to a generation of horror film directors. He welcomed me into hisHollywood Hills mansion, cackling cinematically through a loudspeaker when Irang the bell, then later insisted on answering all my questions in Esperanto;Mr. Blackwell, the acid-tongued fashion critic and one of the original Dead EndKids in Hollywood in the 1930s; and Pat Ast.

I may have been the last journalist to interview actress PatAst, Warhol Superstar and best known for her role in Paul Morrissey's Heat (1972),before she died in October of 2001. I had just spoken to her a few monthsbefore she died. I was back home in New York watching TV when to my amazement,I spotted her jazzing it up in the background of Donna Summer's 1980 video"Bad Girls," of all things, as one of three backup singers. There wasPat – all 200-plus pounds of her in a floral mumu with flower behind the ear,flanked by two black vocalists, punctuating the song with the crucial refrain Ahhh….toot-toot– yeah -- beep-beep! Without knowing why exactly, I called her up and toldher what I was watching. She sounded like she wasn't sure who it was, butgamely played along.

When I visited her in '99, she was living with herAustralian shepherd Winnie in a small cottage overgrown with bougainvillea andwisteria vines in deepest Hollywood.It was one of those bungalows in a garden court hidden from the street,evocative of the days of blacklisted screenwriters like Dalton Trumbo, orNathaniel West smoking and writing Day of the Locust.

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Thursday, September 6. 2007

Looking for a chill during the dog days of summer? Check outthe Film Society of Lincoln Center’s delicious quartet of Roman Polanskithrillers: Summer Chills: Four by Roman Polanski. Screening Monday, July30, and Wednesday, Aug. 1, at the Walter Reade Theater at LincolnCenter in New York. The series features the acclaimeddirector’s cult favorite The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) and allthree classics in what some commentators have labeled the Apartment Trilogy:Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1968), and The Tenant (1976).

Given the horrors contained in the Apartment Trilogy, whatwould our favorite Polish director have made of today’s rental market? Afirst-time viewer of Rosemary’s Baby might take away this centralmessage: You’ll need no less a connection than SATAN to land a three-bedroomapartment in the Dakota when you’re a newly married, out-of-work actor and haveno visible means of income.

The Tenant, a harrowing tale of urbanisolation and paranoia, is instead a single renter’s nightmare: Not only haveyou (Roman Polanski) just moved into the apartment of a suicide victim, yourlandlord (Melvyn Douglas) hates you. The more you attempt to keep out ofeveryone’s way, the more things keep going terribly wrong. Like finding theformer tenant’s tooth in the wall. Or the nightmarish visions none of yourfellow tenants believe—even the one of the mummy-woman in the bathroom windowacross the courtyard who stares at you as you attempt to pee. The message:Living alone, while initially liberating and bohemian, usually ends in yourbecoming That Weird Guy Down the Hall Who Does Creepy Drag. The only solutionis to throw yourself out the window.

If you fail the first time, repeat.

Repulsion, conversely, is more of acautionary tale about what your anti-social roommate does when you go onvacation. So desperate is she for company, hands will reach out of the walls.Figures will appear in mirrors. She will pull your food out of the fridge, thennot eat it. Psycho-sexual frustration will lead to her crawling around on allfours and delusions of rape. The message: Roommates, like pets, are highmaintenance, especially when left alone. Either take them with you on vacation,or while you’re away, call your answering machine and make soothing sounds intothe phone.

Back to Rosemary’s Baby, I can’t resist. Oft-cited asone of the “scariest films of all time,” I think of it as more of atouchstone of inspired casting – maybe the most inspired works of casting ever.Stuffed to the rafters with everyone from 1930’s contract players (Patsy Kelly,Ralph Bellamy); robust, British thespians (Maurice Evans, in a role that fitshim like an old houseshoe); vaudevillians (Phil Leeds, Elisha Cook), Broadwayactors (Ruth Gordon, Sidney Blackmer) and a winking cameo by William Castle,the film’s co-producer (Robert Evans would not let him direct as part of thedeal at Paramount) – it’s hard to imagine a better ensemble. But according toIMDB.COM and other sources, the leads and supporting roles were the result ofweeks of negotiations, turn-downs and second choices. Polanski wanted Tuesday Weld for thelead, and Castle wanted Mia Farrow. Jane Fonda was made an offer for the lead,but turned it down so she could make Barbarella (1968). Both directorand producer wanted Robert Redford for the role of Guy Woodhouse, Rosemary'shusband, but negotiations broke down when Paramount's lawyers served the actora subpoena over a contractual dispute involving Silvio Narizzano’s film Blue(1968). Other actors considered for the role of Guy were contemporary leadingmen: Richard Chamberlain, Robert Wagner and James Fox. Legend has it that evenLaurence Harvey campaigned for it, and Polanski tried to convince Warren Beattyto do it before offering it to John Cassavetes, who in 1968 was more known as aTV actor. Perhaps most intriguing to imagine, for the roles of witch covenleaders Minnie and Roman Castevet, Polanski suggested Alfred Lunt and LynnFontanne (!) the renowned husband and wife Broadway acting duo. Might they havegiven their roles more of a Noel Coward drawing room feel, consistent withtheir theatrical careers? I guess we’ll never know. Hard to imagine MinnieCastevet as anyone other than Ruth Gordon, in her Oscar-winning performance.

Two otherwell-cast bit parts are by Emmaline Henry, who played Dr. Bellow’s wife on IDream of Jeannie (Rosemary and Guy’s party scene) and Victoria Vetri,1968’s Playmate of the Year, who plays the ill-fated, adopted runaway TerryGionoffrio. When Rosemary meets her in the laundry room and asks “Aren’t youVictoria Vetri?” she replies no, “but everyone says I look like her.” It is,of course,Victoria Vetri, all 36-21-35” of her! – David Savage

READER COMMENT:

Wende Wagner also appeared in "Rosemary's Baby," a film that used the Dakota but wasn't supposed to be set there...Robert Redford in "Blue"? It's bad enough with Terence Stamp, but Redford? The mind boggles!- Rory Monteith

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Friday, July 27. 2007

Cinema Retro writer David Savage revisits a key film from Britain's golden age of movie-making.

Leading The Charge: Woodfall Film Productions and theRevolution in ‘60’s British Cinema, July 13-26, 2007. Walter Reade Theater,Lincoln Center, New York

Celebrating one of the most influential studios in thedevelopment of cinema and bringing back to the big screen an era’s mostimportant films, the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York is presenting a two-weekshowcase of the key films of Woodfall Film Productions, formed in 1956 by TonyRichardson, John Osborne (Look Back in Anger) and American producerHarry Saltzman.

Taking audiences out of the studio and into the streets,where the real stories were, Richardsonand his partners favored realism above all: young, fresh actors, locationshooting, and narratives featuring controversial subjects such as interracialdating and sex, hom*osexuality and class. Clumsily over-reaching in some parts,deeply moving in others, but true to their founding spirit, the lastinglegacies of Woodfall were the exciting new generation of British actors itintroduced to Sixties audiences: Lynn Redgrave, Albert Finney, Tom Courtenayand Rita Tushingham; as well as the example set for succeeding generations ofBritish filmmakers to examine these subjects with an uncompromising honesty.

A Taste of Honey (1961), directed by Tony Richardson,is a key example in this cinema of the Angry Young Men, as it was alternatelycalled. Although time may have blunted the impact of its taboo-busting issues,46 years on, it’s no less flavorful for its powerful performances, most notablyRita Tushingham in her breakout role as Jo, through whose wide, expressive eyeswe see a grim world of mean expectations.

Posted by Cinema Retro in David Savage on Monday, July 23. 2007

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CINEMA RETRO'S "DR. NO" SPECIAL EDITION ISSUE NOW SOLD OUT

Thursday, March 21 2024

CINEMA RETRO ISSUE #58 NOW SHIPPING WORLDWIDE!

Tuesday, January 23 2024

CINEMA RETRO'S MATT HELM MOVIE CLASSICS SPECIAL EDITION NOW SOLD OUT!

Thursday, August 31 2023

CINEMA RETRO U.S.A. OFFICE VACATION SCHEDULE

Monday, August 21 2023

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