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#Walter Stradling
byneddiedingo · 3 months
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Gene Kelly and Judy Garland in The Pirate (Vincente Minnelli, 1948)
Cast: Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, Walter Slezak, Gladys Cooper, Reginald Owen, George Zucco, Fayard Nicholas, Harold Nicholas, Lester Allen, Lola Albright, Ellen Ross. Screenplay: Albert Hackett, Frances Goodrich, based on a play by S.N. Behrman. Cinematography: Harry Stradling Sr. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons, Jack Martin Smith. Film editing: Blanche Sewell. Music: Lennie Hayton, Conrad Salinger, Cole Porter (songs). 
Props to Walter Slezak, who is the only person in the cast of The Pirate who knows how to pronounce the name of the heroine. Everyone else refers to Manuela (Judy Garland) as "Man-you-ella." Manuela is a young woman in the Caribbean village of Calvados who is engaged to the town's portly, middle-aged mayor, Don Pedro Vargas (Slezak). Her head is full of tales of the dashing pirate Macocco, aka "Mack the Black," and she fantasizes about him taking her away from the village for a life of adventure. Don Pedro, however, likes the village perfectly well and never wants to leave. Visiting the city of Port Sebastian to have her wedding gown fitted, Manuela encounters a traveling player named Serafin (Gene Kelly), who falls for her, and during his act he hypnotizes her, hoping she'll fall in love with him. Instead, she reveals her passion for Mack the Black. Serafin follows her with his troupe to Calvados, where he recognizes Manuela's fiancé as the real Macocco, retired from piracy and hiding his secret past. From there, the plot thickens into a series of complications as Serafin decides to win Manuela away from Don Pedro by pretending that he's the real Macocco. It's not a bad premise to hang a series of songs and production numbers on, and there's some spectacularly athletic dancing by Kelly and Garland is in fine voice. The songs by Cole Porter are not his best work, however. The lyrics are sometimes silly: "Niña," for example, rhymes the name Niña with "neurasthenia" and "schizophrenia." Only "Be a Clown," which Kelly dances to first with the Nicholas Brothers and then with Garland, has had any life outside the film, and that mostly because producer and songwriter Arthur Freed notoriously copied it for Donald O'Connor's "Make 'Em Laugh" number in Singin' in the Rain (Kelly and Stanley Donen, 1952). Garland's increasing emotional problems, which worsened after she experienced postpartum depression following the birth of Liza Minnelli in 1946, also affected the production. The film feels a little disjointed and the ending feels perfunctory, a reflection of some script problems and cost overruns. It wasn't a box office success. Still, it has moments that are as good as any of the more successful Freed Unit productions. 
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citizenscreen · 2 years
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On set of THROUGH THE BACK DOOR in 1921: cinematographer Walter Stradling, director Alfred E. Green, co-director Jack Pickford, and Mary Pickford
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movierx · 3 years
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Mary Pickford in Stella Maris (1918) Directed by Marshall Neilan
Written by Frances Marion
Cinematography by Walter Stradling
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tvln · 5 years
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buddy, buddy (us, wilder 81)
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dweemeister · 6 years
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Hans Christian Andersen (1952)
Why is it that the “Hollywood ending” or the “fairytale ending” has become something to be chastised and not taken seriously? What is wrong with happily ever afters for audiences looking for an escape? Charles Vidor’s Hans Christian Andersen – which, in an opening intertitle, presents itself as “not the story of his life, but a fairytale about this great spinner of fairy tales” – is the sort of movie one expects to have said happily ever afters. Not so. A delightful musical from Samuel Goldwyn Productions and distributed by RKO, Hans Christian Andersen has a resolution that subverts (but does not reject) those expectations in ways very few fairytale films have ever attempted.
For powerful producer Samuel Goldwyn (1936′s Dodsworth, 1946′s The Best Years of Our Lives), Hans Christian Andersen was a fourteen-year undertaking that included several screenwriters submitting their scripts and no expenses spared. After accepting Moss Hart’s (1947′s Gentleman’s Agreement, 1954′s A Star Is Born) screenplay, Goldwyn greenlighted production on the film. Goldwyn became so endeared to this film that he could not be flustered by its clunky narrative and weaker musical segments. But regardless of its noticeable faults, the lavish Hans Christian Andersen is a fascinating film – demonstrating that fairytales can be compelling for children and adults.
We open in Odense in Denmark, where cobbler Hans Christian Andersen (Danny Kaye) passes the time creating and sharing stories with local children. Andersen’s storytelling is grating to the schoolmaster (John Brown), who pleads with local government officials to stop the cobbler from making the children tardy to school. Andersen implores to the officials that there is as much to learn outside the classroom as in it, and even the adults are stopping to listen to his tales. Andersen’s assistant is the teenaged orphan, Peter (Joseph Walsh), who persuades Andersen to travel to Copenhagen after secretly learning that the town leaders have voted to exile the cobbler. In Copenhagen, Andersen and Peter will stumble onto the Royal Danish Ballet and Andersen finds himself crushing on and intimidated by lead ballerina Doro (French international Zizi Jeanmarie, who by trade is a ballet dancer and not an actor). Doro asks Andersen – referring to him by occupation, not name – to fix her shoes. Andersen witnesses her husband, choreographer Niels (Farley Granger) cruelly criticize Doro, and Andersen believes that he is being abusive. Peter, watching what happens after his boss leaves, notices how loving Doro and Niels are to each other outside of rehearsal.
Andersen returns to his new Copenhagen storefront, not heeding Peter’s protestations that Doro and Niels are in love, and proceeds to write “The Little Mermaid” to tell Doro – in the only way he can – that Niels is the wrong man. Here, it is useful to remember that Hans Christian Andersen is intended to be a fairytale for Andersen himself, and that the film has some freedom to reinterpret his works and their central messages.
Before we talk about the passions found within, it is worthwhile to note that Hans Christian Andersen is a celebration of storytelling and what the art of creating stories and telling them to others can do. These tales bring healing to those suffering from their own anxieties; comfort to the hopeless; wisdom to confound even the wisest individuals. Andersen is the sort of character who, if he could, would spend his lifetime brightening the days of anyone who might take the time to listen. But life necessities and political pressure interfere – for Andersen and everyone else – and Denmark needs a decent cobbler.
Modern scholarship has uncovered that Andersen was incredibly shy about his feelings, largely closeted in his bisexuality, and that he tended to fall for women who did not return his ardor. Though this 1952 film does not reflect much of the real-life Andersen (for reasons of historiography and the Hays Code), it has a more complicated portrayal of what it means to fall in love and what love may seem to be than anyone might predict. Going into Copenhagen, we are unsure whether Andersen has felt and experienced love for another person. His social awkwardness when not telling stories probably suggests he knows little else outside the two main functions he performs. Watching Niels’ conduct to Doro, Andersen has been informed by the kindness imbued by his protagonists in his own stories, finding such behavior repugnant to the fictional love he has based his fairytales in. The film insists that Doro and Niels’ professional hostility to each other does not extend to their private romantic lives – an argument that is not well-supported by Hart’s screenplay. The differences between the public and private aspects of their relationship are unbelievably night and day, and it is too difficult to imagine how Doro tolerates how she is being treated. I stop short of calling Hans Christian Andersen as abuse-enabling, but the messages are too mixed.
Andersen’s conduct, too, knowing so little about Doro outside of fixing her shoes, could be better developed. Are his actions crossing the line in invading a couple’s privacy? Are they borne from actual love (which would require, above all, commitment and an effort to understand the other person in a way Andersen does not display)? What is apparent is that Andersen’s idealism towards love is childlike – as opposed to childish – and he does not listen to criticism or advice that contradicts that. When, late in the film, Doro finally understands what Andersen’s feelings for him are, she is taken aback and unable to respond. For too long she has taken the cobbler for granted, not believing that they are anything more than ballerina and cobbler who fixes her shoes. It leaves the conclusion, as frustrating as the romantic writing has been, with more pathos than the viewer might think possible.
Hans Christian Andersen is foremost a Danny Kaye piece, partly thanks to how Goldwyn and Vidor handled this production. Kaye’s on-screen partnership with the film’s many child actors is delightful to watch. He successfully embodies Andersen’s optimism and sense of wonder – where other adults might trudge their way to places they need to go, one can imagine Kaye’s Andersen being distracted by animals or flowers, not arriving where he needs to be until many minutes or hours after the fact. Kaye’s graciousness in his performance did not extend to how he treated his two adult co-stars. Irritated with Jeanmarie’s troubles understanding director Vidor (Vidor had a heavy Hungarian accent) and Granger for whatever he did, it does not help either of those two performances. Kaye also had a short temper with the film’s technicians and makeup artists – mystifying those on set, as Kaye never had any history of mistreating people during film shoots before or after Hans Christian Andersen. Jeanmarie’s lack of acting pedigree harms her supposed romantic connection with Granger’s character and more emotional scenes with Kaye. Granger’s lackadaisical performance – a year after starring in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train – is a critical letdown, robbing Hans Christian Andersen of romantic tension.
Samuel Goldwyn pursued Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II (R&H had already completed Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The King and I) to write the musical score for Hans Christian Andersen, but instead settled for Frank Loesser (who composed the stage musicals Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying) as composer and Walter Scharf (1968′s Funny Girl, 1971′s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) as musical director. No one song is a spectacular standout but, together, Loesser’s score is a solid effort with a few numbers that will lodge themselves – your tolerance may vary, depending on how you feel about Danny Kaye before this movie – in your head. The film’s second song, “The Inchworm” (which isn’t exactly an earworm) is an ambitious example of counterpoint – when two or more musical voices that are melodically and rhythmically distinct but come together to harmonize – that displays who Andersen is as a person. It contrasts the robotic learning occurring in the classroom nearby with his daydreaming curiosity. Soon after leaving for Copenhagen is the film’s actual earworm, “I’m Hans Christian Andersen”. Like “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from Mary Poppins (1964), “I’m Hans Christian Andersen” has verses spread across the film, fitting to whatever the situation is at that moment. Yes, this means Hans Christian Andersen has many instances where he is singing his own name. You would think the people of Odense and Copenhagen would have no need for this song by a certain point!
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"Wonderful Copenhagen” works as a memorable traveling song, maybe a Hollywoodized sea shanty, as it is one of the most repeated songs in the instrumental score. From the film’s songs, “Thumbelina” would be nominated for an Academy Award. And though I retrospectively disagree with that nomination, it is a charming, inventive ditty that shows Andersen always retains his compassion even at a desperate time. “The Ugly Duckling” is a simple musical retelling of the eponymous fable and is quite meaningful when taken in context.
But the film’s greatest musical achievement has to be the extended, climactic ballet sequence – presented like a borderless fantasy rather than depicting any divide between stage, orchestra, and audience. Combined with the cinematography by Harry Stradling (1938′s Pygmalion); production design by Howard Bristol (1940′s Rebecca), Antoni Clave (1961′s Black Tights), and Richard Day (1941′s How Green Was My Valley); and costume design by Clave (for the ballet sequence only; Mary Wills did the costume design for everything else, and she too should deserve acclaim), the ballet is a stupendous feat of visual creativity following in the footsteps of two breakout movies that started this trend in Hollywood musicals – 1948′s The Red Shoes and 1951′s An American in Paris. Yes, Niels takes Andersen’s idea to adapt it for the ballet stage while failing to understand Andersen’s true intentions behind the work. With the music based on five pieces by Franz Liszt and adapted by Heinz Roemheld (1942′s Yankee Doodle Dandy, 1945′s Wonder Man), it is a cinematic splendor that surprisingly is not from a better movie.
Before the film’s release, rumors in Denmark had many believing that Hans Christian Andersen would be an unfair depiction of their national hero. To stem the growing unrest, Goldwyn sent Kaye on a goodwill pre-release tour to Denmark. From the moment Kaye arrived at the airport in Copenhagen and made his way to lay flowers at Andersen’s statue, he was followed by thousands of his fans. At the statue he joked, “I came here to see if you would murder me.” Kaye would be killed with Danish kindness, accomplishing what he set out to do. The film became a critical and financial success in Denmark, across Europe, and in the United States – where it became the eighth-highest grossing movie of the year. After years of struggling to produce the film, Goldwyn was relieved the film was well-received.
Hans Christian Andersen would be the final film he made with Samuel Goldwyn – the executive who made him a movie star after distributing Wonder Man. No longer contracted to Goldwyn, Kaye’s career existed outside the Hollywood Studio System as he freelanced for the major studios and could exercise whatever creative authority he wished. Hans Christian Andersen can be difficult to watch because of its scattered plot and underwritten motivations for its central characters. Yet, in this fairytale of a fairytale spinner, it also pushes forward a complex take on love that few other films of this genre attempt – imbuing with musicianship and artistry as worthy as anything found in 1950s Hollywood. Though his faults are there for us to see, Hans Christian Andersen lives a good, honest life. With all the uncertainty and pain he goes through in the course of this story, he is never embittered, always hopeful.
My rating: 7.5/10
^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found here.
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burgerfiction · 5 years
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Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (1927/28) - Charles Rosher & Karl Struss
White Shadows In The South Seas (1928/29) - Clyde De Vinna
With Byrd At The South Pole (1929/30) - Joseph T. Rucker & Willard Van der Veer
Tabu: A Story Of The South Seas (1930/31) - Floyd Crosby
Shanghai Express (1931/32) - Lee Garmes
A Farewell To Arms (1932/33) - Charles Lang
Cleopatra (1934) - Victor Milner
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) - Hal Mohr
Anthony Adverse (1936 B&W) - Tony Gaudio
The Garden Of Allah (1936 COLOR) - W. Howard Greene & Harold Rosson
The Good Earth (1937 B&W) - Karl Freund
A Star Is Born (1937 COLOR) - W. Howard Greene
The Great Waltz (1938 B&W) - Joseph Ruttenberg
Sweethearts (1938 COLOR) - Oliver T. Marsh & Allen Davey
Wuthering Heights (1939 B&W) - Gregg Toland
Gone With The Wind (1939 COLOR) - Ernest Haller & Ray Rennahan
Rebecca (1940 B&W) - George Barnes
The Thief Of Bagdad (1940 COLOR) - Georges Perinal
How Green Was My Valley (1941 B&W) - Arthur C. Miller
Blood And Sand (1941 COLOR) - Ernest Palmer & Ray Rennahan
Mrs. Miniver (1942 B&W) - Joseph Ruttenberg
The Black Swan (1942 COLOR) - Leon Shamroy
The Song Of Bernadette (1943 B&W) - Arthur C. Miller
Phantom Of The Opera (1943 COLOR) - Hal Mohr & W. Howard Greene
Laura (1944 B&W) - Joseph LaShelle
Wilson (1944 COLOR) - Leon Shamroy
The Picture Of Dorian Gray (1945 B&W) - Harry Stradling
Leave Her To Heaven (1945 COLOR) - Leon Shamroy
Anna And The King Of Siam (1945 B&W) - Arthur C. Miller
The Yearling (1946 COLOR) - Charles Rosher, Leonard Smith & Arthur E. Arling
Great Expectations (1947 B&W) - Guy Green
Black Narcissus (1947 COLOR) - Jack Cardiff
The Naked City (1948 B&W) - William H. Daniels
Joan Of Arc (1948 COLOR) - Joseph A. Valentine, William V. Skall & Winton Hoch
Battleground (1949 B&W) - Paul C. Vogel
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949 COLOR) - Winton Hoch
The Third Man (1950 B&W) - Robert Krasker
King Solomon’s Mines (1950 COLOR) - Robert Surtees
A Place In The Sun (1951 B&W) - William C. Mellor
An American In Paris (1951 COLOR) - Alfred Gilks & John Alton
The Bad And The Beautiful (1952 B&W) - Robert Surtees
The Quiet Man (1952 COLOR) - Winton Hoch & Archie Stout
From Here To Eternity (1953 B&W) - Burnett Guffey
Shane (1953 COLOR) - Loyal Griggs
On The Waterfront (1954 B&W) - Boris Kaufman
Three Coins In The Fountain (1954 COLOR) - Milton R. Krasner
The Rose Tattoo (1955 B&W) - James Wong Howe
To Catch A Thief (1955 COLOR) - Robert Burks
Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956 B&W) - Joseph Ruttenberg
Around The World In 80 Days (1956 COLOR) - Lionel Lindon
The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957) - Jack Hildyard
The Defiant Ones (1958 B&W) - Sam Leavitt
Gigi (1958 COLOR) - Joseph Ruttenberg
The Diary Of Anne Frank (1959 B&W) - William C. Mellor
Ben-Hur (1959 COLOR) - Robert Surtees
Sons And Lovers (1960 B&W) - Freddie Francis
Spartacus (1960 COLOR) - Russel Metty
The Hustler (1961 B&W) - Eugen Schufftan
West Side Story (1961 COLOR) - Daniel L. Fapp
The Longest Day (1962 B&W) - Jean Bourgoin & Walter Wottitz
Lawrence Of Arabia (1962 COLOR) - Freddie Young
Hud (1963 B&W) - James Wong Howe
Cleopatra (1963 COLOR) - Leon Shamroy
Zorba The Greek (1964 B&W) - Walter Lassally
My Fair Lady (1964 COLOR) - Harry Stradling
Ship Of Fools (1965 B&W) - Ernest Laszlo
Doctor Zhivago (1965 COLOR) - Freddie Young
Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966 B&W) - Haskell Wexler
A Man For All Seasons (1966 COLOR) - Ted Moore
Bonnie And Clyde (1967) - Burnett Guffey
Romeo And Juliet (1968) - Pasqualino De Santis
Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969) - Conrad L. Hall
Ryan’s Daughter (1970) - Freddie Young
Fiddler On The Roof (1971) - Oswald Morris
Cabaret (1972) - Geoffrey Unsworth
Cries And Whispers (1973) - Sven Nykvist
The Towering Inferno (1974) - Fred J. Koenekamp & Joseph F. Biroc
Barry Lyndon (1975) - John Alcott
Bound For Glory (1976) - Haskell Wexler
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) - Vilmos Zsigmond
Days Of Heaven (1978) - Nestor Almendros
Apocalypse Now (1979) - Vittorio Storaro
Tess (1980) - Geoffrey Unsworth & Ghislain Cloquet
Reds (1981) - Vittorio Storaro
Gandhi (1982) - Billy Williams & Ronnie Taylor
Fanny And Alexander (1983) - Sven Nykvist
The Killing Fields (1984) - Chris Menges
Out Of Africa (1985) - David Watkin
The Mission (1986) - Chris Menges
The Last Emperor (1987) - Vittorio Storaro
Mississippi Burning (1988) - Peter Biziou
Glory (1989) - Freddie Francis
Dances With Wolves (1990) - Dean Semler
JFK (1991) - Robert Richardson
A River Runs Through It (1992) - Philippe Rousselot
Schindler’s List (1993) - Janusz Kaminski
Legends Of The Fall (1994) - John Toll
Braveheart (1995) - John Toll
The English Patient (1996) - John Seale
Titanic (1997) - Russell Carpenter
Saving Private Ryan (1998) - Janusz Kaminski
American Beauty (1999) - Conrad L. Hall
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) - Peter Pau
The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001) - Andrew Lesnie
Road To Perdition (2002) - Conrad L. Hall
Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World (2003) - Russell Boyd
The Aviator (2004) - Robert Richardson
Memoirs Of A Geisha (2005) - Dion Beebe
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) - Guillermo Navarro
There Will Be Blood (2007) - Robert Elswit
Slumdog Millionaire (2008) - Anthony Dod Mantle
Avatar (2009) - Mauro Fiore
Inception (2010) - Wally Pfister
Hugo (2011) - Robert Richardson
Life Of Pi (2012) - Claudio Miranda
Gravity (2013) - Emmanuel Lubezki
Birdman (2014) - Emmanuel Lubezki
The Revenant (2015) - Emmanuel Lubezki
La La Land (2016) - Linus Sandgren
Blade Runner 2049 (2017) - Roger Deakins
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cinemagal · 7 years
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And the Academy Award for Best Cinematography goes to - 1960 - (Colour) Russell Metty - Spartacus  (Not pictured - BW- Freddie Francis - Sons & Lovers) 1961 - (Colour) Daniel L. Fapp - West Side Story (Not pictured - BW - Eugen Schüfftan - The Hustler) 1962 - (Colour) Freddie Young - Lawrence of Arabia (Not pictured - BW - Jean Bourgoin & Walter Wottitz - The Longest Day) 1963 - (Colour) Leon Shamroy - Cleopatra (Not pictured - BW - James Wong Howe - Hud) 1964 - (BW) - Walter Lassaly - Zorba The Greek (Not pictured - Colour -Harry Stradling - My Fair Lady) 1965 - (Colour) Freddie Young - Doctor Zhivago (Not pictured - BW - Ernest Laszlo - Ship of Fools) 1966 - (BW) Haskell Wexler - Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Not pictured - Colour - Ted Moore - A Man For All Seasons) 1967 - Burnett Guffey - Bonnie & Clyde 1968 - Pasqualino De Santis - Romeo & Juliet 1969 - Conrad L. Hall - Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid 
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sailorrrvenus · 5 years
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Every Best Cinematography Oscar Winner from 1929 to 2019
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The 2019 Oscars are just a day away now. If you’d like a dose of visual inspiration, check out this 10-minute video by Burger Fiction. It steps through every single film that won the “Best Cinematography” Oscar over the past 90 years, from 1929 to 2018 (and 2019 nominees as well).
Here’s a complete list of the films seen and the brilliant cinematographers behind them:
Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (1927/28) – Charles Rosher & Karl Struss
White Shadows In The South Seas (1928/29) – Clyde De Vinna
With Byrd At The South Pole (1929/30) – Joseph T. Rucker & Willard Van der Veer
Tabu: A Story Of The South Seas (1930/31) – Floyd Crosby
Shanghai Express (1931/32) – Lee Garmes
A Farewell To Arms (1932/33) – Charles Lang
Cleopatra (1934) – Victor Milner
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) – Hal Mohr
Anthony Adverse (1936 B&W) – Tony Gaudio
The Garden Of Allah (1936 COLOR) – W. Howard Greene & Harold Rosson
The Good Earth (1937 B&W) – Karl Freund
A Star Is Born (1937 COLOR) – W. Howard Greene
The Great Waltz (1938 B&W) – Joseph Ruttenberg
Sweethearts (1938 COLOR) – Oliver T. Marsh & Allen Davey
Wuthering Heights (1939 B&W) – Gregg Toland
Gone With The Wind (1939 COLOR) – Ernest Haller & Ray Rennahan
Rebecca (1940 B&W) – George Barnes
The Thief Of Bagdad (1940 COLOR) – Georges Perinal
How Green Was My Valley (1941 B&W) – Arthur C. Miller
Blood And Sand (1941 COLOR) – Ernest Palmer & Ray Rennahan
Mrs. Miniver (1942 B&W) – Joseph Ruttenberg
The Black Swan (1942 COLOR) – Leon Shamroy
The Song Of Bernadette (1943 B&W) – Arthur C. Miller
Phantom Of The Opera (1943 COLOR) – Hal Mohr & W. Howard Greene
Laura (1944 B&W) – Joseph LaShelle
Wilson (1944 COLOR) – Leon Shamroy
The Picture Of Dorian Gray (1945 B&W) – Harry Stradling
Leave Her To Heaven (1945 COLOR) – Leon Shamroy
Anna And The King Of Siam (1945 B&W) – Arthur C. Miller
The Yearling (1946 COLOR) – Charles Rosher, Leonard Smith & Arthur E. Arling
Great Expectations (1947 B&W) – Guy Green
Black Narcissus (1947 COLOR) – Jack Cardiff
The Naked City (1948 B&W) – William H. Daniels
Joan Of Arc (1948 COLOR) – Joseph A. Valentine, William V. Skall & Winton Hoch
Battleground (1949 B&W) – Paul C. Vogel
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949 COLOR) – Winton Hoch
The Third Man (1950 B&W) – Robert Krasker
King Solomon’s Mines (1950 COLOR) – Robert Surtees
A Place In The Sun (1951 B&W) – William C. Mellor
An American In Paris (1951 COLOR) – Alfred Gilks & John Alton
The Bad And The Beautiful (1952 B&W) – Robert Surtees
The Quiet Man (1952 COLOR) – Winton Hoch & Archie Stout
From Here To Eternity (1953 B&W) – Burnett Guffey
Shane (1953 COLOR) – Loyal Griggs
On The Waterfront (1954 B&W) – Boris Kaufman
Three Coins In The Fountain (1954 COLOR) – Milton R. Krasner
The Rose Tattoo (1955 B&W) – James Wong Howe
To Catch A Thief (1955 COLOR) – Robert Burks
Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956 B&W) – Joseph Ruttenberg
Around The World In 80 Days (1956 COLOR) – Lionel Lindon
The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957) – Jack Hildyard
The Defiant Ones (1958 B&W) – Sam Leavitt
Gigi (1958 COLOR) – Joseph Ruttenberg
The Diary Of Anne Frank (1959 B&W) – William C. Mellor
Ben-Hur (1959 COLOR) – Robert Surtees
Sons And Lovers (1960 B&W) – Freddie Francis
Spartacus (1960 COLOR) – Russel Metty
The Hustler (1961 B&W) – Eugen Schufftan
West Side Story (1961 COLOR) – Daniel L. Fapp
The Longest Day (1962 B&W) – Jean Bourgoin & Walter Wottitz
Lawrence Of Arabia (1962 COLOR) – Freddie Young
Hud (1963 B&W) – James Wong Howe
Cleopatra (1963 COLOR) – Leon Shamroy
Zorba The Greek (1964 B&W) – Walter Lassally
My Fair Lady (1964 COLOR) – Harry Stradling
Ship Of Fools (1965 B&W) – Ernest Laszlo
Doctor Zhivago (1965 COLOR) – Freddie Young
Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966 B&W) – Haskell Wexler
A Man For All Seasons (1966 COLOR) – Ted Moore
Bonnie And Clyde (1967) – Burnett Guffey
Romeo And Juliet (1968) – Pasqualino De Santis
Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969) – Conrad L. Hall
Ryan’s Daughter (1970) – Freddie Young
Fiddler On The Roof (1971) – Oswald Morris
Cabaret (1972) – Geoffrey Unsworth
Cries And Whispers (1973) – Sven Nykvist
The Towering Inferno (1974) – Fred J. Koenekamp & Joseph F. Biroc
Barry Lyndon (1975) – John Alcott
Bound For Glory (1976) – Haskell Wexler
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) – Vilmos Zsigmond
Days Of Heaven (1978) – Nestor Almendros
Apocalypse Now (1979) – Vittorio Storaro
Tess (1980) – Geoffrey Unsworth & Ghislain Cloquet
Reds (1981) – Vittorio Storaro
Gandhi (1982) – Billy Williams & Ronnie Taylor
Fanny And Alexander (1983) – Sven Nykvist
The Killing Fields (1984) – Chris Menges
Out Of Africa (1985) – David Watkin
The Mission (1986) – Chris Menges
The Last Emperor (1987) – Vittorio Storaro
Mississippi Burning (1988) – Peter Biziou
Glory (1989) – Freddie Francis
Dances With Wolves (1990) – Dean Semler
JFK (1991) – Robert Richardson
A River Runs Through It (1992) – Philippe Rousselot
Schindler’s List (1993) – Janusz Kaminski
Legends Of The Fall (1994) – John Toll
Braveheart (1995) – John Toll
The English Patient (1996) – John Seale
Titanic (1997) – Russell Carpenter
Saving Private Ryan (1998) – Janusz Kaminski
American Beauty (1999) – Conrad L. Hall
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) – Peter Pau
The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001) – Andrew Lesnie
Road To Perdition (2002) – Conrad L. Hall
Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World (2003) – Russell Boyd
The Aviator (2004) – Robert Richardson
Memoirs Of A Geisha (2005) – Dion Beebe
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) – Guillermo Navarro
There Will Be Blood (2007) – Robert Elswit
Slumdog Millionaire (2008) – Anthony Dod Mantle
Avatar (2009) – Mauro Fiore
Inception (2010) – Wally Pfister
Hugo (2011) – Robert Richardson
Life Of Pi (2012) – Claudio Miranda
Gravity (2013) – Emmanuel Lubezki
Birdman (2014) – Emmanuel Lubezki
The Revenant (2015) – Emmanuel Lubezki
La La Land (2016) – Linus Sandgren
Blade Runner 2049 (2017) – Roger Deakins
(via Burger Fiction via Fstoppers)
source https://petapixel.com/2019/02/23/every-best-cinematography-oscar-winner-from-1929-to-2019/
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pauldeckerus · 5 years
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Every Best Cinematography Oscar Winner from 1929 to 2019
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The 2019 Oscars are just a day away now. If you’d like a dose of visual inspiration, check out this 10-minute video by Burger Fiction. It steps through every single film that won the “Best Cinematography” Oscar over the past 90 years, from 1929 to 2018 (and 2019 nominees as well).
Here’s a complete list of the films seen and the brilliant cinematographers behind them:
Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans (1927/28) – Charles Rosher & Karl Struss
White Shadows In The South Seas (1928/29) – Clyde De Vinna
With Byrd At The South Pole (1929/30) – Joseph T. Rucker & Willard Van der Veer
Tabu: A Story Of The South Seas (1930/31) – Floyd Crosby
Shanghai Express (1931/32) – Lee Garmes
A Farewell To Arms (1932/33) – Charles Lang
Cleopatra (1934) – Victor Milner
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935) – Hal Mohr
Anthony Adverse (1936 B&W) – Tony Gaudio
The Garden Of Allah (1936 COLOR) – W. Howard Greene & Harold Rosson
The Good Earth (1937 B&W) – Karl Freund
A Star Is Born (1937 COLOR) – W. Howard Greene
The Great Waltz (1938 B&W) – Joseph Ruttenberg
Sweethearts (1938 COLOR) – Oliver T. Marsh & Allen Davey
Wuthering Heights (1939 B&W) – Gregg Toland
Gone With The Wind (1939 COLOR) – Ernest Haller & Ray Rennahan
Rebecca (1940 B&W) – George Barnes
The Thief Of Bagdad (1940 COLOR) – Georges Perinal
How Green Was My Valley (1941 B&W) – Arthur C. Miller
Blood And Sand (1941 COLOR) – Ernest Palmer & Ray Rennahan
Mrs. Miniver (1942 B&W) – Joseph Ruttenberg
The Black Swan (1942 COLOR) – Leon Shamroy
The Song Of Bernadette (1943 B&W) – Arthur C. Miller
Phantom Of The Opera (1943 COLOR) – Hal Mohr & W. Howard Greene
Laura (1944 B&W) – Joseph LaShelle
Wilson (1944 COLOR) – Leon Shamroy
The Picture Of Dorian Gray (1945 B&W) – Harry Stradling
Leave Her To Heaven (1945 COLOR) – Leon Shamroy
Anna And The King Of Siam (1945 B&W) – Arthur C. Miller
The Yearling (1946 COLOR) – Charles Rosher, Leonard Smith & Arthur E. Arling
Great Expectations (1947 B&W) – Guy Green
Black Narcissus (1947 COLOR) – Jack Cardiff
The Naked City (1948 B&W) – William H. Daniels
Joan Of Arc (1948 COLOR) – Joseph A. Valentine, William V. Skall & Winton Hoch
Battleground (1949 B&W) – Paul C. Vogel
She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (1949 COLOR) – Winton Hoch
The Third Man (1950 B&W) – Robert Krasker
King Solomon’s Mines (1950 COLOR) – Robert Surtees
A Place In The Sun (1951 B&W) – William C. Mellor
An American In Paris (1951 COLOR) – Alfred Gilks & John Alton
The Bad And The Beautiful (1952 B&W) – Robert Surtees
The Quiet Man (1952 COLOR) – Winton Hoch & Archie Stout
From Here To Eternity (1953 B&W) – Burnett Guffey
Shane (1953 COLOR) – Loyal Griggs
On The Waterfront (1954 B&W) – Boris Kaufman
Three Coins In The Fountain (1954 COLOR) – Milton R. Krasner
The Rose Tattoo (1955 B&W) – James Wong Howe
To Catch A Thief (1955 COLOR) – Robert Burks
Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956 B&W) – Joseph Ruttenberg
Around The World In 80 Days (1956 COLOR) – Lionel Lindon
The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957) – Jack Hildyard
The Defiant Ones (1958 B&W) – Sam Leavitt
Gigi (1958 COLOR) – Joseph Ruttenberg
The Diary Of Anne Frank (1959 B&W) – William C. Mellor
Ben-Hur (1959 COLOR) – Robert Surtees
Sons And Lovers (1960 B&W) – Freddie Francis
Spartacus (1960 COLOR) – Russel Metty
The Hustler (1961 B&W) – Eugen Schufftan
West Side Story (1961 COLOR) – Daniel L. Fapp
The Longest Day (1962 B&W) – Jean Bourgoin & Walter Wottitz
Lawrence Of Arabia (1962 COLOR) – Freddie Young
Hud (1963 B&W) – James Wong Howe
Cleopatra (1963 COLOR) – Leon Shamroy
Zorba The Greek (1964 B&W) – Walter Lassally
My Fair Lady (1964 COLOR) – Harry Stradling
Ship Of Fools (1965 B&W) – Ernest Laszlo
Doctor Zhivago (1965 COLOR) – Freddie Young
Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf? (1966 B&W) – Haskell Wexler
A Man For All Seasons (1966 COLOR) – Ted Moore
Bonnie And Clyde (1967) – Burnett Guffey
Romeo And Juliet (1968) – Pasqualino De Santis
Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid (1969) – Conrad L. Hall
Ryan’s Daughter (1970) – Freddie Young
Fiddler On The Roof (1971) – Oswald Morris
Cabaret (1972) – Geoffrey Unsworth
Cries And Whispers (1973) – Sven Nykvist
The Towering Inferno (1974) – Fred J. Koenekamp & Joseph F. Biroc
Barry Lyndon (1975) – John Alcott
Bound For Glory (1976) – Haskell Wexler
Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) – Vilmos Zsigmond
Days Of Heaven (1978) – Nestor Almendros
Apocalypse Now (1979) – Vittorio Storaro
Tess (1980) – Geoffrey Unsworth & Ghislain Cloquet
Reds (1981) – Vittorio Storaro
Gandhi (1982) – Billy Williams & Ronnie Taylor
Fanny And Alexander (1983) – Sven Nykvist
The Killing Fields (1984) – Chris Menges
Out Of Africa (1985) – David Watkin
The Mission (1986) – Chris Menges
The Last Emperor (1987) – Vittorio Storaro
Mississippi Burning (1988) – Peter Biziou
Glory (1989) – Freddie Francis
Dances With Wolves (1990) – Dean Semler
JFK (1991) – Robert Richardson
A River Runs Through It (1992) – Philippe Rousselot
Schindler’s List (1993) – Janusz Kaminski
Legends Of The Fall (1994) – John Toll
Braveheart (1995) – John Toll
The English Patient (1996) – John Seale
Titanic (1997) – Russell Carpenter
Saving Private Ryan (1998) – Janusz Kaminski
American Beauty (1999) – Conrad L. Hall
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) – Peter Pau
The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (2001) – Andrew Lesnie
Road To Perdition (2002) – Conrad L. Hall
Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World (2003) – Russell Boyd
The Aviator (2004) – Robert Richardson
Memoirs Of A Geisha (2005) – Dion Beebe
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) – Guillermo Navarro
There Will Be Blood (2007) – Robert Elswit
Slumdog Millionaire (2008) – Anthony Dod Mantle
Avatar (2009) – Mauro Fiore
Inception (2010) – Wally Pfister
Hugo (2011) – Robert Richardson
Life Of Pi (2012) – Claudio Miranda
Gravity (2013) – Emmanuel Lubezki
Birdman (2014) – Emmanuel Lubezki
The Revenant (2015) – Emmanuel Lubezki
La La Land (2016) – Linus Sandgren
Blade Runner 2049 (2017) – Roger Deakins
(via Burger Fiction via Fstoppers)
from Photography News https://petapixel.com/2019/02/23/every-best-cinematography-oscar-winner-from-1929-to-2019/
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sylvarwolf · 7 years
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The Spirit World - British Goblins CT013
The Spirit World
British Goblins: Welsh Folk Lore, Fairy Mythology, Legends and Traditions (1881) Book 2 Chapter 1
by Wirt Sikes
In this episode, we look at the similarities between Welsh Ghosts and American Spiritualism, as well as how the ghosts can be classified. Sikes tells us the story of Lady Stradling's ghost, the legend of Catrin Gwynn, the story of the Haunted Bridge and Cadogan's ghost. He finishes the episode by discussing the laws of the Welsh Spirit-World and how the duties that cause ghosts to walk once more upon the earth.
Running Order:
Section 1 1:15
Modern Superstition regarding Ghosts 1:50
American 'Spiritualism' 4:21
Section 2 7:17
Welsh Beliefs 7:21
Section 3 10:22
Classification of Welsh Ghosts 10:26
Section 4 11:30
Departed Mortals 11:33
Haunted Houses 12:42
Lady Stradling's Ghost 14:28
Section 5 15:42
The Haunted Bridge 15:46
The Legend of Catrin Gwyn 16:38
Section 6 18:07
Didactic Purpose in Cambrian Apparitions 18:12
An Insulted Corpse 18:22
Section 7 19:59
Duty-performing Ghosts 20:04
Section 8 23:45
Laws of the Spirit-World 23:50
Cadogan's Ghosts 25:28
  Names Used in this Section
All proper names, and words in Welsh or other languages, are recorded here in the show-notes and we've done our best to get the pronounciations right for you.
Pope Miranda Lady Stradling Catrin Gwyn Coblynau (Thomas) Cadogan Newburyport, Mass. New Bedford Cambridge Hardvard College Prophet Jones Monmouthshire Sadducees Wesley & Luther Arsinoe (umlaut) of Herodotus Ebbw Vale, Glamorganshire Duffryn House, Cardiff Sir Thomas Button St. Donat's Castle Pont Cwnca Bach, Yscanhir, Carmethenshire Rheidol Yn enw y daioni, peidiwch (in the name of heaven, sir, don't go!) White Catti of the Grove Cave Machynleth Gelli Gogo Tregaron, Cardiganshire Mrs. Morgan of Newport Hob y deri dando Ystur-mant Noe, Pembrokeshire Walter John Harry Ebwy Fawr Morgan Lewis Llanvihangel Llantarnam
  British Goblins can be found on Archive.org
You can find out more about Wirt Sikes on Wikipedia.
Try the Celtic Myth Podshow for the Tales and Stories of the Ancient Celts at http://celticmythpodshow.com or on Apple Podcasts.
Our theme music is "Gander at the Pratie Hole" by Sláinte.  You can find their music on the Free Music Archive.
Check out this episode!
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byneddiedingo · 1 year
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Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons in Angel Face (Otto Preminger, 1953) Cast: Robert Mitchum, Jean Simmons, Mona Freeman, Herbert Marshall, Leon Ames, Barbara O'Neil. Screenplay: Frank S. Nugent, Oscar Millard, based on a story by Chester Erskine. Cinematography: Harry Stradling Sr. Art direction: Carroll Clark, Albert S. D’Agostino. Film editing: Frederic Knudtson. Music: Dimitri Tiomkin.  Otto Preminger was about to take on the Production Code when he made Angel Face: His next film was The Moon Is Blue (1953), a rather tepid little romantic comedy that offended the Code enforcers because its heroine, though relentlessly virginal, demonstrated an awareness of and interest in extramarital sex that was one of the Code's taboos. With the backing of United Artists, Preminger went ahead and made the film, releasing it without the Code's imprimatur. The result was a succès de scandale, a hit far beyond any actual merits of the film, after it was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency and by some local censorship boards. Two years later, Preminger and United Artists would follow the same procedure with The Man With the Golden Arm (1952), a film about drug addiction that also flouted some of the Code's prohibitions. Preminger's stand is usually cited among the landmarks leading to the end of film industry censorship. I mention all this because I was struck by how Preminger also ignores the Code's conventional morality in Angel Face, which makes it clear that Frank Jessup (Robert Mitchum) has been sleeping with his girlfriend, Mary Wilton (Mona Freeman) -- among other things, he reveals that he knows what she wears to bed, and when he goes to see her, she's in her slip getting ready to go out and doesn't bother coyly pulling on the usual bathrobe. The thing is, Mary is the film's "nice girl," the character meant to be the foil to the film's murderous Diane Tremayne (Jean Simmons). But Diane doesn't smoke or drink, and Mary does. Some of the reason for Preminger's blurring of the lines between the usual Hollywood ideas of good and bad in these characters probably stems from a desire to build suspense, keeping us from being entirely sure that Diane is the one who turned on the gas in her stepmother's room or if she really is guilty of the murder for which she stands trial. But I suspect that it has more to do with Preminger's desire to pull his characters out of the usual pigeonholes of Hollywood melodrama, to make them plausible, enigmatic human beings. To some extent he's fighting the script, adapted by Frank S. Nugent and Oscar Millard (with some uncredited help by Ben Hecht) from a story by Chester Erskine, which on the face of it is the usual stuff about a conniving woman who loves her daddy too much and who stands to gain from her stepmother's death, ensnaring an unsuspecting man along the way. Mitchum's sleepy-eyed raffishness could have been used to make him the usual tough-guy collaborator of a femme fatale, like Fred MacMurray's Walter Neff in Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944) or John Garfield's Frank Chambers in The Postman Always Rings Twice (Tay Garnett, 1946), but it's not a knock on those two great noirs to say that Preminger does something more subtle with Mitchum's Frank Jessup: He's an accomplice and a victim only by accident, letting his hormones put him in harm's (i.e., Diane's) way, and struggling ineffectually, even a little tragically, not to be dragged down by her. Angel Face is not as well-known as those other films, but with its solid performances, its effective and unobtrusive score by Dimitri Tiomkin, and its knockout of an ending, it deserves to be. 
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byneddiedingo · 1 year
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Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine in Suspicion (Alfred Hitchcock, 1941) Cast: Joan Fontaine, Cary Grant, Cedric Hardwicke, May Whitty, Nigel Bruce, Isabel Jeans, Heather Angel, Leo G. Carroll. Screenplay: Samson Raphaelson, Joan Harrison, Alma Reville, based on a novel by Anthony Berkeley as Francis Iles. Cinematography: Harry Stradling Sr. Music: Franz Waxman. "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you," as Joseph Heller put it in Catch-22. Considering how many plots of Alfred Hitchcock's films are variations on that theme, he might well have had the phrase posted on his office wall. Suspicion is one of the purest explorations of that premise: A woman thinks her handsome rotter of a husband is out to murder her, and the evidence keeps piling up up that she's right. Of course, she isn't, but it takes an hour and 39 minutes to reach that rather anticlimactic conclusion. Suspicion was Hitchcock's fourth American film, and it shows that he was still getting used to working in a rather different studio system than the one he had in England. After the micromanaging of David O. Selznick on his first, Rebecca (1940), he had a comparatively easier time with producer Walter Wanger on Foreign Correspondent (1940) except for the difficulty of making a film about impending war in Europe while the United States was still officially neutral -- so the bad guys could never be explicitly identified as Nazis, for example. But his third film, Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941), his first set in the United States, was a dud, in large part because Hitchcock had yet to master American idiom: The prissy character played by Gene Raymond, for example, was supposed to have been the best fullback at the University of Alabama. I doubt that Hitchcock knew what a fullback was, let alone one from Alabama. So for Suspicion he retreated to familiar territory, England at a time when there wasn't a war going on, and some actors he had worked with before: Joan Fontaine, Nigel Bruce, and Leo G. Carroll from Rebecca, as well as May Whitty, who had starred in The Lady Vanishes (1938). The chief newcomer was Cary Grant, who would become, along with James Stewart, one of Hitchcock's most reliable leading men. But Grant's presence in the film presented its own problems: He was known as a charming actor in romantic comedy. Would an audience accept Grant as a potential murderer? One story, reportedly verified by Hitchcock himself, holds that the studio, RKO, didn't want to mar Grant's image and insisted on a change from the novel's original ending, in which Johnnie Aysgarth really is guilty. Biographers, however, have disputed that story, claiming that Hitchcock really wanted to focus on Lina's paranoia and not on Johnnie's villainy. In any case, the film's ending feels wrong, mostly because it resolves nothing: Is Johnnie's fecklessness really curable? The chief problem is that Lina herself is an unfocused character, improbably wavering between shyness and passion, between common sense and paranoia, between tough determination and a tendency to faint. Fontaine did what she could with the part, and won an Oscar for her pains, but the film really belongs to Grant. Hitchcock was the one director who could really bring out Grant's dark side. He did it more brilliantly in Notorious (1946), but in Suspicion Hitchcock effectively exploits Grant's ability to turn on a subtle, cold-eyed menace.
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byneddiedingo · 1 year
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Andy Griffith in A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan, 1957) Cast: Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Anthony Franciosa, Walter Matthau, Lee Remick, Percy Waram, Paul McGrath, Marshall Neilan. Screenplay: Budd Schulberg. Cinematography: Gayne Rescher, Harry Stradling Sr. Art direction: Paul Sylbert, Richad Sylbert. Film editing: Gene Milford. Music: Tom Glazer. A Face in the Crowd's Larry "Lonesome" Rhodes is a product of the media's amoral pursuit of the colorful character, a man lifted to uncommon power by those entertained by the flamboyance and vulgarity. Rhodes isn't so much the villain of Budd Schulberg's story and screenplay as are his enablers, Marcia Jeffries (Patricia Neal) and Mel Miller (Walter Matthau), and his exploiters, like Joey DePalma (Anthony Franciosa), who enrich themselves while discovering the previously untapped potential of mass media. In 1957, this potential was just beginning to be realized, but 60 years later it took a dangerous man to the White House. I don't think Kazan and Schulberg fully realized that possibility, just as Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky didn't fully realize the prescience of Network (Lumet, 1976). Both films should serve as a permanent warning that today's satire is tomorrow's nightmare. A Face in the Crowd is an important film without being a great one. Schulberg's screenplay falls apart in the middle, and the denouement in which Marcia somehow comes to her senses and exposes Rhodes as a fraud is awkward and mechanical, largely because Marcia herself is something of a mechanical character. An actress of considerable skill, Neal does what she can to make the character live, but the words aren't there in the script to explain why she tolerates Rhodes's fraudulence as long as she does. Matthau and Franciosa come off a little better because their roles are written as stereotypes: Cynical Writer and Go-getting Hot Shot. So the film really belongs to Andy Griffith, who parlays his dead-eyed shark's grin into something that should have been the foundation of a career with more highlights than a folksy sitcom and an old-fart detective show. It's a charismatic but ragged performance that needed a little more shaping from writer and director, something that Kazan admitted to himself in his diaries when he wrote about Rhodes and the film, "The complexity ... was left out." Rather than having Rhodes revealed as a fraud to his followers, Kazan said, Rhodes should have been allowed to recognize that he had been trapped by his own fraudulence. Deprived of anagnorisis, a moment of tragic self-recognition, Rhodes becomes a figure of melodrama, bellowing "Marcia!" from the balcony at the end but probably fated to make what Miller suggests to him, the comeback of a has-been. Fortunately, Kazan and Schulberg were wise enough to change their original ending, in which Rhodes commits suicide -- there's not enough tragedy in their conception of the character for that.
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byneddiedingo · 2 years
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The Divorce of Lady X (Tim Whelan, 1938)
Cast: Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, Binnie Barnes, Ralph Richardson, Morton Selten, J.H. Roberts, Gertrude Musgrove, Gus McNaughton, H.B. Hallam, Eileen Peel. Screenplay: Lajos Biró, Ian Dalrymple, Arthur Wimperis, based on a play by Gilbert Wakefield. Cinematography: Harry Stradling Sr. Art direction: Lazare Meerson. Film editing: Walter Stovkis. Music: Miklós Rózsa.
Screwball comedy movies, in which an otherwise sober and respectable male, usually a lawyer, a professor, or a businessman, is prodded into absurd behavior and outlandish situations by a giddy, beautiful, and usually rich female, seem to be a particularly American genre. They may have their antecedents in the French farces of Feydeau and Labiche, but they need that American sense, particularly common in the Great Depression, that the rich are idle triflers, not to be trusted by everyday hard-working folk. Which may be why the British attempt at screwball seen in The Divorce of Lady X is a bit of a misfire. Merle Oberon plays the madcap lady in the film, who delights in deceiving and annoying the barrister played by Laurence Olivier until he inevitably falls in love with her. One problem with the film lies in the casting: Olivier's vulpine mien is not one that easily expresses naïveté, which the barrister Everard Logan must possess in order to fall for Leslie Steele's wiles, when she allows him to believe that she's really the scandalous Lady Mere. The real Lady Mere is played by Binnie Barnes, and the subplot revolves around the desire of her husband, played by Ralph Richardson, to divorce her, with the aid of Logan in the dual role of both barrister and corespondent -- how he got into that predicament is the rather clumsy setup for the film. Barnes and Richardson are far better suited to this kind of comedy than Oberon and Olivier, and they contribute some of the more amusing moments in the movie. It's filmed in the rather wan hues of early Technicolor, which only contribute to the general sense of underachievement.
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movierx · 3 years
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Mary Pickford in Stella Maris (1918) Directed by Marshall Neilan
Written by Frances Marion
Cinematography by Walter Stradling
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movierx · 3 years
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Mary Pickford in Stella Maris (1918) Directed by Marshall Neilan
Written by Frances Marion
Cinematography by Walter Stradling
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