The New "petit journal du cinema"

2009-04-10T18:49:00.000-07:00

From Cahiers du Cinema December 1963/January 1964, the the American Cinema special issue:
In a discussion of the growing tendency in Hollywood to make films based on best-sellers, Jean-Luc Godard says:

"Even the life of Christ is adapted based on a best-seller and not directly from the Bible: they paid some guy four million dollars to amle the life of Christ"

The Italian? style

2008-03-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

In early 1957, the journalist/novelist Michel Cournot spent the entire shoot of Henri-Georges Clouzot's film Les Espions on the set. From that experience, he was able to bring forth Le premier spectateur; histoire vraie. This work could be called a "nonfiction novel" (to borrow a term which Truman Capoté used to describe his masterpiece of the genre In Cold Blood). The following scene where Clouzot prepares to rehearse two of his actors - Gérard Séty and Curt Jurgens - is translated from that book. (page 20, my translation)

"Today, we are going to rehearse in the Italian-style"
"The Italian-style?" Séty said.
"Yes, sitting in easy chairs. Only the text. . ."
"The Italians are incapable of rehearsing in the Italian-style," said Jurgens, "they are too restless! Only the English can rehearse in the Italian-style."

Marin Karmitz on Alain Resnais

2008-03-13T19:26:00.000-07:00

This is quoted from the interview with producer Marin Karmitz on the DVD for Alain Resnais's film Mélo. It is spotted at about 3:40 into that interview.

I saw Alain arrive. He's very shy. How can I explain? He respects others, and his terrible shyness is due to his respect for others. It's very impressive and interesting because it's his respect for others that makes respectable himself. With him exchanges are intense due to his attitude of respect and trust.

Curtis Harrington anecdote concerning James Whale

2007-12-17T18:50:00.000-08:00

This anecdote is reported by Curtis Harrington in the documentary Universal Horror which is on Disc Two of the Frankenstein Anniversary 75th Edition concerning the film's preview in 1931.

"After the preview, he [Frankenstein's director James Whale] was sound asleep about 3 AM when suddenly the phone rang from the desk and they said, 'It's someone wants to speak to you, Mr. Whale'. And a voice came on and said, 'Are you the guy that directed that picture that they showed tonight'? And he said, 'Yes'. He said, 'Well I can't sleep and I'll be god-damned if I'm going to let you sleep'."

This anecdote occurs at about 49:37.

Noel Coward learns a lesson in privilege

2007-11-11T12:55:00.000-08:00

I do not have any documentation for this anecdote. It is one that I remember Noel Coward tell on Dick Cavett's late night talk show on ABC in the early 70s.

When Fiorello LaGuardia was mayor of New York City, Coward attended the opening night performance of a play involving a close friend of his. After the performance, he went to the telegraph office in Times Square to send the friend a mock congratulatory telegram. He signed the telegram "Fiorello LaGuardia". When the clerk for Western Union saw the signature, he told Coward that there was a company policy requiring that all telegrams be signed by the sender. So, Coward crossed out LaGuardia's name and wrote down "Noel Coward" in its place. The clerk then said to Coward that the problem was not that he had used LaGuardia's name but that he had not signed his own name. Coward told the clerk, "But I am Noel Coward". And the clerk said to him. "In that case, you can sign it Fiorello Laguardia"

The fleeting fame of James Cagney

2007-11-10T09:28:00.000-08:00

Frank "Pop" Mankiewicz, the father of director Joseph L Mankiewicz and screenwriter Herman Mankkiewicz was a high school teacher and later college professor in New York City. One of his students had the actor James Cagney. This anecdote is quoted from Pictures will talk : the life and films of Joseph L. Mankiewicz by Kenneth L. Geist.(page 107)

Joe loves to tell the story of how James Cagney, at the height of his thirties stardom, had stopped by their table at the Brown Derby one evening to pay his respects to his former Stuyvesant High School teacher. Pop's dedication to his academic pursuits had left him little time for seeing movies other than those made by his sons. In response to Cagney's query about whether the professor remembered him, Pop replied, "Yes, indeed, Mr. Cagney. Tell me, what are you doing now? "

Materialism and The Razor's Edge

2007-10-27T17:10:00.000-07:00

from The Secret Life of Tyrone Power by Hector Arce

The studio boasted that a record one hundred shooting days were spent on the production: its budget $4.000.000 including $250,000 for the screen rights to [Somerset] Maugham's book. It built eighty-nine sets costing $641,800 and gathered $800,000 worth of props to be used, including so much silver for a wedding scene that two Pinkerton men were hired to guard it during the filming. A single love scene between Ty [Power] and Gene Tierney cost $121,000, the studio proudly proclaimed. For the first time since the days of silent films, an orchestra was engaged to play on the set during rehearsals, to get the stars into the proper mood. The love scene was accompanied by Strauss waltzes; Clifton Webb died to funeral airs.
Overlooked was the contradiction in all this, the concerns for sumptuous settings in a film about irrelevance of materialism.

A Vincent Sherman anecdote

2007-10-17T08:52:00.000-07:00

from director Edward Dmytryk On Filmmaking (Boston : Focal Press, c1986) page 198-199.

Vincent Sherman once made a film with Bette Davis and Miriam Hopkins, two of Hollywood's more headstrong actresses. I once aked him whether he had enjoyed directing them. "I didn't direct them," he said. "I referreed."

A History Lesson for Sacha Guitry

2007-09-26T19:09:00.000-07:00

from Sacha Guitry: the last boulevardier by James Harding (volume 2, page 239)

"Who, in your opinion, is the greatest historian?" Sacha [Guitry] once asked a man who was a very distinguished historian himself. "The archives", came the answer.

The Walt Disney

2007-08-19T19:37:00.000-07:00

This is an amusing anecdote from Walt Disney The Triumph of the American Imagination by Neal Gabler published in 2006 (page 282-283).

But as preoccupied as he [Walt Disney] was, when it came to Diane and Sharon [Walt Disney's daughters], he was a doting father who sheltered them from his own fame. He enjoyed telling how six-year-old Diane had asked him if he was Walt Disney. "You know I am," he answered. "The Walt Disney?" she questioned. When he chortled that he was, she asked for his autograph.

François Truffaut on Boby Lapointe

2007-08-12T19:35:00.000-07:00

This anecdote is from a memoir by François Truffaut of Boby Lapointe, the French pop singer who had appeared in Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player, whose Provençal accent was so thick that they had to put subtitles in French for the audience in France. Truffaut admits in the article that he made up the name "Rosembach" for the sake of his story. It was published in Truffaut’s Le Plaisir des yeux and is my translation. The actual film in question is a spaghetti-western title Chapaqua.

Later Boby [Lapointe] became an actor. I saw him in Les Choses de la vie. Then i met him one night at Orly Airport. He was waiting for a plane for Rome where he was going to act in a film. His Provençal accent was still preserved, contrasted by the anxiety in his regard. I asked him about the film he was to play in. "I don't know -- it's called Rosembach."
"Do you have a good role? Are you happy?"
"I don't know. I don't understand anything in the contract. Take a look."
I looked his contract over and I saw that Boby Lapointe was engaged to take the role of . . . Rosembach. He had the title role and he did not know it.

Mr Attal, meet Mr Mankiewicz

2007-06-14T10:05:00.000-07:00

Yvan Attal Joseph Mankiewiczat 1:16 of the interview of Yvan Attal on the DVD for Ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants (Happily Ever After).which he wrote and directed as well as starred in with his wife Charlotte Gainsburg.

When I started to write I wanted to make a film with just three men. Maybe just seen in restaurants, in bars, at work, talking about their lives, without woman. But suddenly, I wrote that scene in the restaurant when the three guys are together and I didn't know, I didn't have a plan, a structure, you know, I just went to write, just like that, a scene, a scene, another scene. and suddenly, I wrote this scene in the restaurant and the guy --- the three men are there and they run into a woman he sees at school. so they have a conversation, a funny conversation about how to fluff(?) with this woman (indecipherable) and he says, "What do you know about married woman?" And at the moment when I wrote that dialogue I wanted to cut to Charlotte’s character and I imagined the scene at the Virgin mega-store. after I wrote that scene I realized that she was the character that I wanted to follow now. I didn’t care about the men.

From Kenneth Geist's Pictures Will Talk a biography of the writer-director of All About Eve and A Letter to Three Wives, Joseph L. Mankiewicz. (page 168) Mankiewicz speaking at a conference in Tarrytown NY in November of 1972
All About Adam could be done as a short.

Jacob Bronowski on Johnny von Neumann

2007-05-19T18:41:00.000-07:00

from the companion book to the BBC series from the early 1970s, The Ascent of Man, by Jacob Bronowki concerning the mathematician Johnny von Neumann.

"There was endearing and personal about Johnny von Neumann. He was the cleverest man I ever knew. And he was a genius, in the sense that a genius is man who has two great ideas. When he died in 1957 it was a great tragedy to us all. And that was not because he was a modest man. When I worked with him during the war, we once faced a problem together, and he said to me at once, "Oh no, no, you are not seeing it. Your kind of visualising mind is not right for seeing this. Think of it abstractly. What is happening on this photograph of an explosion is that the first differential coefficient vanishes identically, and that is why what becomes visible is the trace of the second differential coefficient."
As he said this is not the way I think. However, I let him go to London. I went off to my laboratory in the country. I worked late into the night. Round about midnight I had the answer. Well. Johnny von Neumann always slept very late, so I was kind and I did not wake him until well after ten in the morning. When I called his hotel in London, he answered the phone in bed, and I said, "Johnny, you're quite right." And he said to me, "You wake me up early in the morning to tell me that I'm right? Please wait until I'm wrong."
If it sounds very vain, it was not. It was a real statement of how he lived his life. And yet it has something in it that reminds me that he wasted the last years of his life. He never finished the great work that has been very difficult to carry on since his death. And he did not really, because he gave up asking himself how other people see things. He became more and more engaged in work for private firms, for industry, for government. They were enterprises which brought him to the centre of power, but which did not advance either his knowledge or his intimacy with people - who to this day have not yet got the message of what he was trying to do about the human mathematics of life and mind." (Page 433-435)

some ideas from Robert Altman

2007-05-15T19:00:00.000-07:00

some thoughts from Robert Altman on the documentary "Robert Altman : Art and Soul" which is on the "Fool for Love" DVD.

at 13:40
"I don't know of anything that I've done that has really been original I mean that just came out of ether, it's always been, there's been a stimulus from something else that I've seen."

at 14:45
"I purposely don't go into a project that I know how to do. . .I'm afraid I'd be late for work."

at 18:35
"If an actor comes up to me and says, 'Oh, how should I play this part.' I will do anything except answer that question."

A tale from Jesse Lasky Jr.

2007-05-08T17:31:00.000-07:00

In 1927, producer Jesse Lasky who was making a film about Teddy Roosevelt's "Rough Riders" outfit of the Spanish-American War conducted a nation-wide search for a TR look-alike to take on the role of the hero of San Juan Hill. Lasky's net trawled up a man named Frank Hopper. But when production of the film started, it became too apparent that the mild-mannered Hopper was not up to re-enacting the "bully" Roosevelt. Well, there was no turning back after all the publicity surrounding the casting of Hopper. So, what to do? In his book "Whatever Happened to Hollywood?", Lasky's son, screenwriter and novelist, Jesse Lasky Jr. tells the story:

"At that moment the door was opened by a slender graying man of distinguished bearing: Will Hays, former postmaster general in President Harding's cabinet, now embarking in the 100,000 a year post of custodian of motion picture morals (to improve the national image after a few too many scandals had begun to hurt business).
"Can I come in, Jesse?"
"Glad to see you general. We have a large problem."
Hays listened, a spark showing through his glinting eyes. He looked like Uncle Sam minus the beard. When the dilemma had been aired, he spoke.
"This may been out of the far end of the diamond, Jess, but there's a simple fundamental that might apply. so basic people forget it. A man reacts the way the world treats him. Other people are his mirror, he becomes what he sees in the way they look at him. Try it out on him. Get Hopper in here, now! Instead of letting him see how worried you are, introduce him to me with the greatest respect. I'll act as though I'm meeting Roosevelt himself."
. . .
When Hopper arrived, Hays proved at once he knew how to play the required scene. He had learned how with real presidents in his Washington days. when the would-be Roosevelt came cowering into the office, eyes darting nervously around, my father began with near reverence, "General, I have the honor of presenting Theodore Roosevelt."
"proud to make your acquaintance, sir." hays responded with a formal bow. "May, I say. sir. the resemblance is perfect? But more than merely physical. I can see you have the same fearless nature, the same character and patriotism. You are the kind of man who would meet the challenge of the war with the words, 'Let us pray with our bodies for our souls' desire.'" Then he turned to my father. "Mr. Lasky, as former postmaster general of the United States, I count this as a proud moment, and I thank you for the honor of meeting this man."
Astonished at first, the new treatment hit Hopper like a bolt form the blue. Red, white and blue. As he left the office and everyone rose, it could be noted that his posture had undergone a subtle
change. His head was more erect, his step had acquired the slightest suggestion of a strut.
Orders were relayed throughout every department of the studio: The movie Roosevelt was to be treated as though he were the real T. R. As told in my father's biography, by Don Weldon, I Blow My Own Horn, this was one of the rare occasions where grips, juicers, cameramen, assistant directors - everyone, in fact, but the star - was performing to the hilt.
Unfortunately, the wormed turned too far. Under this ego-massage, the simple smalltown storekeeper became almost unmanageable. The man was submerged by the megalomaniac monster demanding total attention, obsequious respect, demanding that every scene should receive his signature of approval before he would film it.

page 60-61 of Whatever Happened to Hollywood? by Jesse Lasky Jr.

Norman Jewison on multiple screen editing

2007-05-03T18:53:00.000-07:00

from Norman Jewison's commentary for his 1968 film "The Thomas Crown Affair".
at 06:22 into the film.

"We were trying to tell five stories at the same time. And so we all went up to the Montreal World's Festival just before we started the film and that's where we were exposed to [Christopher] Chapman's multiple-screen technique which was shown there for the first time in Habitat. And Haskell [Wexler] and myself and Hal Ashby we got so excited because in Chapman's film "A Place to Stand" there was something like 40 minutes of film and it was shown in 17 minutes because of the multiple screens and we realized that the eye is the only selective organ in the body. And therefore you could take in more than one image at the same time as long as there wasn't a lot of sound."

Andre Kertesz quotes

2007-04-30T19:14:00.001-07:00

transcribed from "Masters of Photography. André Kertész" [videorecording] West Long Branch, NJ : Kultur, 2006.

The narrator says quoting Kertesz (at 15:33 into the film) "In my own work I am an amateur", he once told a reporter. "And I intend to remain one. I avoid virtuosity. When I have found the subject which interests me, I leave for the lens the responsibility for recording the image, faithfully."

Kertesz himself speaking (at 24:43) "I never know what I am doing. I am going out without thinking photographing. I am going around. . .see something that will give me the idea. I do."

Alain Renoir on his father,(Jean) Renoir

2007-04-19T16:03:00.000-07:00

Alain Renoir was the son of the film director Jean Renoir. In the late 1930s while still a teenager Alain Renoir worked as an assistant cameraman for his father on The Rules of the Game and The Human Beast. He left for the United States during World War II and he became a professor of English at the University of California -- Berkeley. These are transcription from an interview he gave in 2003 for the Criterion DVD of The Rules of the Game.

from 11:00 to 13:35 in the interview.

"When the first World War broke out, my father was a career non-commissioned officer in the military, the French Calvary - the Dragoons. and some of the effect that he cavalry had upon him can be seen in his films. For instance, he repeated to me over and over again that in the cavalry their was no such thing as a white horse or a black horse -- it did not exist -- in the cavalry a white horse was a light gray horse and a black horse was a dark gray horse....Well, if you think for a second you can see that that applies to everything he did. You have nothing that is just straightforward and cut-and dried. People are always a little bit of this and a little bit of that."
"My father had a knack for getting people to do exactly what he wanted. Pretending for them and for himself that it was not the case. For instance, he would say to the actor, "This is wonderful, this is absolutely wonderful. But you know it may be fun to try something else. Never saying it was lousy. And eventually I knew damned well where it was going. It would be the same thing with his cameraman. He would say, "Oh this shot is wonderful. You know it might be interesting to try it in a slightly [inaudible]way". But he never told them that is what I want done."
"I will tell you an anecdote that for obvious reasons I will not give you the name. On one particular occasion, I had heard a certain actor spouting the movie and it was obviously totally wrong. Well that night I went back home and my father and I met at the door of the apartment and I said, "Oh dad, this guy I'll call him X said that-and-that. He completely doesn't understand the movie. I think you should tell him" And my father turned to me and said, "Don't you say a word to him. When an actor understands his part in a play or a movie, he can no longer play it."

Acting with Marlon Brando

2007-04-17T07:40:00.000-07:00

from Richard Shickel's biography of Elia Kazan. His fellow performers on acting with Marlon Brando in "A Streetcar Named Desire".

Kim Hunter
"It is," she admitted, "a tremendous experience to play in relationship to him; he yanks you inot his own sense of reality." Her example was the trunk scene, with Brando going through Blanche's clothes while Stella tries to protect them from his furious routings. "He had a different sort of attitude toward each of his belongings every night; sometimes he would lead me inot quite a fight with him, and other times I'd be seeing him as a silly boy. I got worn out after many months in the play, but I never got bored. . ." (page 180)

Jessica Tandy
"I can say I enjoyed acting with him sometimes and other times, God knows, I could have wrung his little neck." (page 179)

Karl Malden
"I learned to protect myself. I played off him. I let him do whatever he wanted to do and I'd go from there." (page 179)

Fellini, on fumetti

2007-04-11T15:08:00.000-07:00

In November of 1965, Cahiers du Cinema published a short interview with Federico Fellini on the subject of comic strips -- fumetti in Italian. Fellini had worked in comic strips before he began his film career. One revelation of the interview was that Fellini was a fan of "Charley Brown" and "B C". Among other things, Fellini had this to say,

The fumetti which borrow too freely from cinematic technique are for me the least beautiful, the least artistic.I remain sentimentally attached to the very simple, linear fumetti which are nearly always humorous. It was cinema which borrowed from them. Some settings of Chaplin, some characters, frame in a medium long shot, are truly borrowed from George McManus and his "Bringing up Father" and from the adventures of the "Katzenjammer Kids". The fumetti which merit popularity are those which inspired the cinema and not those which borrowed too skillfully from it

Cahiers du Cinema (Page 15 November 65)

Albert Dieudonne and Napoleon's ghost.

2007-03-19T16:17:00.000-07:00

Transcribed from the subtitles on Cinema Europe : the other Hollywood (Photoplay Productions ; directed and produced by David Gill & Kevin Brownlow ; written by Michael Winterbottom, Dan Carter) Albert Dieudonné who played Napoleon in Abel Gance's classic silent film about that legendary emperor, tells this story of going to Fountainebleau castle and a visit that he paid in costume to on of its night-watchmen who was forever claiming to be visited by the ghost of Napoleon.

"I flung open the door. I was in uniform and I said, "Asleep on duty, Matat?" The poor fellow woke up completely bewildered, rubbed his eyes and stared at me. Then I went. Next day, he told the curator D'Esparbes about it. He confessed that in the past he'd been joking a little but this time he'd really seen Napoleon. Unfortunately, the poor soul died eight days later and I may have been one of the causes."

Franz Kline anecdote Elaine de Kooning

2007-02-01T17:42:00.000-08:00

On the TV broadcast Franz Kline Remembered, Elaine de Kooning tells the story of how in Greenwich Village in the late 1930s artists such as Kline would live primarily on heavily sugared coffee. Kline was taking care of the German Shepherd of a friend of his who had left New York for a time. One day, Kline came home and found the dog dead on the floor with a half eaten bar of soap next to its body. Elaine de Kooning says that Kline's reaction was, "It just shows you that a bohemian can survive where an animal can not."

A little Seinfeld wisdom

2007-01-31T18:57:00.000-08:00

From the Seinfeld episode The Understudy. A distraught Elaine Benes shambling around on a rainy night jostles a man with an umbrella. He is J Peterman. They have this exchange.

Elaine: Oh, God! I'm so sorry. I don't even know where I'm going.

J Peterman Well that's the best way to get some place you've never been

.

The thought just passed through my head but:

2007-01-28T05:54:00.000-08:00

Has a reading of Ayn Rand's "The Fountainhead" ever inspired anyone to become an architect?
.
.

Richard Matheson on the (incredible) Shrinking Man

2007-01-17T07:30:00.000-08:00

This short exchange is lifted from an interview with the novelist- screenwriter Richard Matheson (IMDb page) which appears on a site hosted by the Rod Serling Memorial Foundation.

RM: Yes, because I waited until they wanted my novel! There are other ways to do it now, but back then I think that was the best way. My book was not called the Incredible Shrinking Man (as it if is often referred to), it was just called The Shrinking Man. The phrase Incredible Shrinking has became part of the American language. I just saw it in Weekly Variety yesterday.

WS: In other words the producer added it to the title.

RM: Yes. My feeling is, it’s already pretty incredible that a guy is shrinking! Why add the adjective?

A Lesson in acting for Hume Cronyn

2007-01-11T15:11:00.000-08:00

Charles Jehlinger was one of the most important - even if largely unknown - acting teachers in America. He taught at the American Academy for Dramatic Art for more than fifty years. The legend is that he taught Cecil B De Mille in his first class and Robert Redford in his last class. In his memoir The Ragman's Son Kirk Douglas dedicates three pages to reminiscences of Jehlinger. Likewise, Hume Cronyn in his memoir A Terrible Liar dedicates three pages Jehlinger. Cronyn tells of Jehlinger getting in his face on day and telling him,

"You're a fool, boy. Oil and water won't mix. You can't criticize and create at the same time. You're a fool."

Jerry Stiller on Michael Richards

2007-01-07T17:55:00.000-08:00

On the "Inside Look" on the Seinfeld DVD for the episode "The Doorman". Jerry Stiller says, speaking of Michael Richards, that he has a "mercurial mind in a weightless body".

Eric Rohmer on scriptwriting

2007-01-01T15:35:00.000-08:00

Transcribed from the Parlons Cinema interview released as a special feature on the Criterion DVD for La Collectioneuse. Eric Rohmer speaking at just 27:00,

"A story either comes about by chance or it's the fruit of a thought process that takes a long time to develop. Very few films have truly original scripts. Today's [1976] scripts aren't very original although perhaps more than before but on the other hand they lack the compelling power of earlier cinema. Scripts used to be adapted from existing stories that were thrilling, interesting enthralling to the audiences. Now scripts are pages from private journals so the audience isn't interested even if it's a very refined intellectual one."

at about 37:00

"I think that perhaps the great discovery that made the New Wave possible wasn't the 16mm or hand-held camera but the tape recorder."

Michael Haneke on cinema and the centipede

2006-12-19T18:52:00.000-08:00

When in the film Lumiere and Company, Michael Haneke was asked, "Why do you film?" His reply was,

"Never aska a centipeded why it walks or it will stumble."

Jacques Rivette's shortest film.

2006-12-19T17:44:00.000-08:00

In 1995, Jacques Rivette was one of forty directors who contributed a segment entitled Une Aventure de Ninon to the film Lumière and Company. Each director contributed a 52-second segment shot with an original Lumiere cinematograph. the following is a transcription of the subtitles of Rivette's comments on completion of his short.

Rivette: It's too short. Usually we have to cut, but here it needs to be longer.Let's call Martine to tell her.

Unidentified: It's your shortest film.

Rivette: Precisely, it's too short. I can't make a long enough film.

Slawomir Idziak on Kieslowski and the documentary

2006-12-17T13:40:00.000-08:00

from the Criterion DVD od Krystof Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique, cinematographer Slawomir Idziak on Kieslowski.

at 1:15 of the interview

...since he [Kieslowski] only made documentaries. He actually despised the world of feature films. He clearly stressed this point in all his early manifestos, that this was a world of artifice and deception, and that the true cinema was documentary film. He wrote a screenplay whose action took place in one night called Pedestrian Subway, about a girl who escapes from a small town and works as a window dresser. We were shooting by the book like a regular feature film, shot, countershot, master shot, etc. Film labs in Poland then functioned very poorly, so the rushes for the shoot, which took a week, arrived just a day before the end of filming. He completely broke up when he saw them, saying they were terrible. Then I suggested, "Let's do it the way documentaries are made. let's redo it from the beginning but without any setup. I'll just keep changing film cassettes and following the actors around, filming everything." Later, in the editing room, he didn't use the documentary version exclusively. He combined both versions and I think that was the beginning of transferring his documentary experience to a feature film and an attempt at his own language, his own way of expression

Composer Zbigniew Priesner speaks about Krystof Kieslowski and Van Den Budenmayer

2006-12-17T09:46:00.000-08:00

From the interview with the composer Zbigniew Priesner on the Criterion DVD release of Krystof Kieslowski's The Double Life of Veronique.

at 3:15

He [Kieslowski] really did not have much understanding of music. Let me rephrase that. He simply couldn't sing. when he sang Jingle Bells, it sounded like Silent Night. But he understood the function of music in movies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

at 14:40

The character of the composer Van Den Budenmayer in Krystof's films is reminiscent of the fictional character of Mr. Cogito in Zbigniew Herbert's work. It began as pure coincidence. In Decalogue IX, Krystof wanted to use some Mahler songs that had never been recorded in Poland. Recording them would cost a fortune. So I said, "I'll write something different. If it doesn't work you'll just have to buy the rights to some Mahler." So I wrote some very lousy music, we say it's not me, it's Van Den Budenmayer. If it's good, then we say it's me. We both liked Holland -- it's a beautiful country -- and we decided that Van Den Budenmayer was a Dutch name. Later, when the Decalogue became well-known, Krystof started receiving letters from various people, one was from the Larousse encyclopedia, and it said, "We're publishing a new edition of our Encyclopedia of Music. you must tell us about this Mr. Van Den Budenmayer. Being a serious encyclopedia, we can not be ignorant on this matter." So in The Double Life of Veronique, we decided to give dates for his birth and death. His date of birth is the same as mine, only 200 years earlier. and then it all broke loose. Of Course, there were other encyclopedias. I returned to Poland once after a few years absence. I was then living in Paris, making films with Kieslowski. and I read in the papers that I was being sued in Paris by the Van Den Budenmayer heirs for stealing his music.

Another anecdote from Jesse Livermore's "Reminiscences Of a Stock Operator"

2006-12-11T14:52:00.000-08:00

Another anecdote from Jesse Livermore -- Wall Street's "boy plunger" of the first decade of the 20th century. From his fictionalized autobiography as told to Edwin Lefevre REMINISCENCES OF A STOCK OPERATOR.

You remember Dickson G. Watts' story about the man who was so nervous that a friend asked him what was the matter.
"I can't sleep," answered the nervous one.
"Why not?" asked the friend.
"I am carrying so much cotton that I can't sleep thinking about it. It is wearing me out. What can I do?"
"Sell down to the sleeping point," answered the friend.

some ideas from Krystof Kieslowski

2006-12-10T09:02:00.000-08:00

From the documentary Kieslwski-Dialogue which is on Disc 2 of the Criterion DVD release of La Double vie de Véronique (The Double Life of Veronique).

at 7:40 into the documentary -- Kieslowski speaking of Krystof Piesiewicz who colloborrated with him on this film and many others

Piesewicz can't write but he knows how to tell a story. And he's quite good at thinking.

at 24:40

You have to break through the barrier of shame and the feeling that you musn't be weak.

at 50:25

I made a documentary once entitled Talking Heads. I asked people two questions: "Who are you?" and "What do you want?" Afterwards, I asked myself those questions. I realized I didn't have any answers.

Silvano Agosti's free lunch

2006-12-03T09:25:00.000-08:00

Silvano Agosti who edited Marco Bellocchio's film I Pugni in tasca -- Fists in the Pocket at about 3 minutes into the special documentary A Need for Change which is an added feature on the Criterion DVD release of that film.

We (he and Marco Bellocchio, the director of I Pugni in tasca -- Fists in the Pocket) were classmates at the Centro Sperimentale where Marco was one year ahead of me studying acting. I had a funny reason for going there. It wasn’t because I wanted to go to film school but because I heard you could eat there for free. I thought, “Imagine that: free food everyday.”

Jesse Livermore on dueling and trading stocks

2006-12-02T15:23:00.000-08:00

Jesse Lauriston Livermore was the legendary "boy plunger" of Wall Street. In the first four decades of the 20th century he made and lost a few fortunes. He was blamed for the Black Thursday crash in October 1929 by the New York Times on the front page of its next Sunday edition. His fictionalized autobiography entitled "Reminiscences of a Stock Trader" as told to Edwin Lefevre was published in 1923 and is still in print today. This bit of advice is from that book.

It is like the old story of the man who was going to fight a duel the next day.His second asked him, "Are you a good shot?"
"Well," said the duelist, "I can snap the stem of a wineglass at twenty paces," and he looked modest.
"That's all very well," said the unimpressed second. "But can you snap the stem of the wineglass while the wineglass is pointing a loaded pistol straight at your heart?"

Robert Moses Fiorello La Guardia

2006-11-27T11:34:00.000-08:00

from The Power Broker Robert Moses and the Decline of New York City by Robert A. Caro published in 1974. (page 453)

Jack Madigan, a Moses assistant, is talking of the tumultuous relationship between Fiorello La Guardia and Robert Moses the public works commissioner for both the state and city of New York who did the most to shape the development of that city from the 1920s to the 1970s.

"Other people dealt with personal feelings and emotions, got emotional about personal feelings, see, but these two fellows here, they dealt with subject matter --- that was what they got emotional about --- and when the subject was over, they could be friends again --- unless one of them brought up the subject matter again."

Roberto Rosselini on imagination and reality

2006-11-25T18:16:00.000-08:00

In a interview on the Criterion DVD release of The Flowers of St. Francis, Father Virgilio Fantuzzi quotes the director Roberto Rosselini as saying:

Imagination is a part of reality.

Isabella Rossellini on her father Roberto Rossellini

2006-11-25T17:16:00.000-08:00

from the Criterion DVD for Roberto Rossellini's The Flowers of St. Francis. The interview with Isabella Rossellini.
transcribed from about 15:00 into that interview.

A lot of people try to explain the essence of human beings. Freud might say sex. Somebody else says survival, fear of death. For my father, it was knowledge. He said that the way for me that is a man -- the essence of a man is that we have a brain. The brain needs to be nourished. I see the man as a human being on his tippy-toes looking further into the horizon -- and that was the essence of humans. And that is the essence of his cinema.

Neil LaBute on Eric Rohmer

2006-11-23T18:37:00.000-08:00

from the Criterion DVD for Eric Rohmer's L'Amour l'après-midi ("Chloe in the Afternoon.)

Neil LaBute in an afterward to that film speaking of Eric Rohmer' films
at about 10 minutes into that afterward.

"Yes, they are what one would call motion pictures, but his [Rohmer's] are emotion pictures."

Jean-Luc Godard supports Claude Autant-Lara

2006-11-17T11:47:00.000-08:00

from "Godard : a portrait of the artist at 70 "/ Colin MacCabe ; filmography and research by Sally Shafto (page 132)

"Godard in a restaurant overhearing a man denouncing Vivre sa vie and going up to offer him the price of a cinema ticket 'so you can go and see an Autant-Lara.' "

I kind of wonder if that man did not take the money and go see Le Journal d'une femme en blanc a film that Autant-Lara made in 1965 (roughly the same time) which Godard put on his ten best films for 1965 list.

Renoir's Last Day

2006-11-03T19:42:00.000-08:00

In his memoir of his father, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, the film director Jean Renoir wrote movingly of his father's last day. From Renoir : my Father; by Jean Renoir ; introduction by Robert Herbert ; translated by Randolph and Dorothy Weaver (page 431)

"This profusion of riches which poured forth from Renoir's austere palette is overwhelming in the last picture he painted, on the morning of his death. An infection which had developed in his lungs kept him to his room. He asked for his paintbox and brushes, and he painted the anemones which Nénette, our kind-hearted maid, had gone out and gathered for him. For several hours he identified himself with these flowers, and forgot his pain. Then he motioned for someone to take his brush and said, 'I think I am beginning to understand something about it.' That is the phrase Grand' Louise repeated to me. The nurse thought he said, 'Today I learned something.'"

The Godbooth

2006-10-26T18:56:00.000-07:00

Richard Donner tells this story on the DVD "First works : [a revealing look at today's greatest directors]". Rather than transcribe his words from that recording a found that on E!online site, a Q&A session where he told the same story.
I was most fascinated by his use of the term "godbooth" to describe that control room from which a TV director directs.

"I was an actor on a live show in New York, and I had five lines or less. It was called Human Bondage. I was Phillip's roommate. During rehearsal, I did everything right all week. I did my three lines or my one line. It came to the night of the show before air, live. When my cue came, I said my line and went left when I should have gone right. In those days, left cued the camera, it was live, you had guys running all over the place, wardrobe being changed, and I heard this voice up in the tower, the Godbooth say "What did you do?" I heard somebody coming down what we called the Godsteps, and I knew it was the director, Marty Ritt.
And one of the actors said to me, "Bye, bye!" And he came down and he said, "What did you do, you've been going right all week!" I said, "I just thought I should go this way to get away from him, to give him some privacy." He said, "Why didn't you say that earlier? Your problem is that you can't take direction. You want to be a director." I said, "Sure." Easier said than done. He said, "You're my assistant on my next show." And that was it! I became his assistant for the next three shows. I went from that, I learned film, and I became an assistant for film."

Richard Benjamin on the "car chase"

2006-10-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

This quote from actor/director Richard Benjamin is on disc one of "First works : [a revealing look at today's greatest directors]" at about 2:15 of the way through.

"There's no such thing as a car chase in real life. There can only be a car chase in the movies because you can't be in more than one place during a car chase."

Stan Brakhage encounters Jackson Pollock

2006-10-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

This is a quote from an "By Brakhage : an anthology" a two-disc set from Criterion. It is from Encounter I on disc 1 and takes place about 4 minutes into that encounter. Stan Brakhage is speaking of a trip that he made out to Jackson Pollock's place out on Long Island.

"But they [some New York painters] were like commenting and the used the words 'chance operations' which was no bother to me because I was hearing it regularly from John Cage. And the power and the wonder of it and so forth . . . but this really angered Pollock very deeply and he said 'Don't give me any of your "chance operations".' He said, 'You see that doorknob ' and there was a doorknob that was about fifty feet from where he was sitting that was in fact the door that everyone was going to have to exit be. and drunk as he was, he just with one swirl of his brush picked up a glob of paint, hurled it and hit that doorknob smack-on with very little paint over the edges. And then he said, 'And that's the way out'."

Bocca finds his Kinglake

2006-10-19T19:10:00.000-07:00

The following story continues from my post:
http://commenting-the-commentaries.blogspot.com/2006/09/writing-lesson-from-winston-churchill.html
As that post it is taken from Geoffrey Bocca's, “Best Seller : a nostalgic celebration of the less-than-great books you have always been afraid to admit you loved “ in this case pages 20-21.

"I then trundled back to Charing Cross Road. Tremulously, I entered the dustiest secondhand bookshop I could find. The proprietor was sitting alone reading A Rebours by J. K. Huysman. He looked up and raised his glasses to his forehead.
“Would you by any chance have a set of Alexander Kinglake’s nine volume History of the Invasion of Crimea: Its Origins and an Account of Its Progress Down to the Death of Lord Raglan?”
He said, “What?”
I repeated the question in full. He frowned as if he did not know what I was talking about, and said, “I beg your pardon?”
gathering the remains of my breath I said, “Would you have a set of Alexander Kinglake’s nine-volume history of the invasion of Crimea?”
Was I, I wondered about to be the straight man in one of cicilization’s oldest jokes? Was I to turn my back rudely and mutter under my breath as i left, “Go f--- yourself,” giving him the chance to riposte, “aye, and go f--- Alexander Kinglake’s nine volume History of the Invasion of Crimea: Its Origins and an Account of Its Progress Down to the Death of Lord Raglan?”
What the gentleman said was, “You don’t have to raise your voice. I heard you the first time.”
“Then why do I waste my time . . .”
He held up his hand. “Be patient, my dear sir. Be understanding. You are clearly a man of culture. It was simply that i liked to hear you say it. Nobody has asked my for that set in fifteen --- sixteen years. The first time you said it I could not believe my ears. The second time the words sounded so mellifluous and beautiful. I was all but unmanned. As you said it the third time, sir, it seemed that the whole rich mosiac of my life as a secondhand book dealer was spreading in front of me in all its multitudinous hues to the very limits of the far horizon. You are talking to a man you have made very happy. is that not enow?”
“Indeed, i am very pleased, but let me put my question another way. Do you have it?
He shook his head, “No.”
. . .
The pesky book dealer cried, “Wait, sir! I don’t have it. But somewhere up or down the Charing Cross Road, some dealer will have a set be assured. Perhaps in a cellar warehouse in East Grinstead, perhaps in poor condition. whatever they ask, offer half. If you don’t buy it they will never sell it. Now, leave me please; this has been a very moving experience. I may even close my doors for the day.”"

Marcel Pagnol talking about Raimu

2006-10-18T18:45:00.000-07:00

In the December 1965 issue, Cahiers du Cinema published an interviewed with the writer-director Marcel Pagnol by Gérard Guégan, Jean-André Fieschi and Jacques Rivette. Here is one interesting exchange:

CAHIERS: Was The Baker's Wife shot entirely on location?

PAGNOL: Oh, no. We had to use the studio. I am going to tell you why, it's something interesting. Raimu could not play a long scene outside. The wind bothered him. A real tree bothered him. And he was better at nine at night than during the day; he had been acting on the stage for thirty years. So we had to make copies of the trunks of the platanes that were close to the cafe terrace. the results were remarkable.

An ode to Max Ophuls by James Mason

2006-10-10T05:22:00.000-07:00

"A shot that does not call for tracks
Is agony for dear old Max
Who, separated from his dolly,
Is wrapped in deepest melancholy
Once, when they took away his crane,
I thought he'd never smile again"

Robert Bresson -- a Quote

2006-10-08T15:50:00.000-07:00

"It [cinema] should express itself not through images, but through a relationship of images which is not at all the same; in the same that a painter expresses himself not through color, but through a relationship of colors."

Robert Bresson --- from a press conference held in Cannes in May 1957 and printed in Cahiers du Cinema in October 1957.

"Contract of Error" or Sir Francis Bacon on "spin" in 1605

2006-10-08T15:40:00.000-07:00

This quote from Sir Francis Bacon's "The Advancement of Learning" (1605) demonstrates that four hundred years ago, Sir Francis had a good understanding of what is called "spin" today.

"For as knowledges are now delivered, there is a kind of a contract of error between the deliverer and the receiver; for he that delivereth knowledge desireth to deliver it in such form as may be best beleived, and not as may be best examined; and he that receiveth knowledge desireth rather present satisfaction than expectant inquiry."

Weegee >>> Strangelove

2006-09-29T14:49:00.000-07:00

From "Stanley Kubrick : a life in pictures" / photographs selected and with a commentary by Christiane Kubrick ; foreword by Stephen Spielberg.

"Weegee (otherwise Arthur Fellig) was a photographer Stanley always admired and he invited him over to England to work as the stills photographer on the film [Dr. Strangelove].
Peter Sellers was much taken with Weegee's accent -- a high-pitched yet muffled amalgam of Newyorkerese and German -- and this was the inspiration for the voice Peter created for Dr. Strangelove."

Godard quote

2006-09-26T12:07:00.000-07:00

Il y a une grand combat entre les yeux et la langue.

Jean-Luc Godard in an interview with Serge Daney -- Libération Dec 26, 1988

Paul Newman was no hunk

2006-09-23T18:06:00.000-07:00

In the original Broadway production of William Inge's play "Picnic", Paul Newman made his Broadway debut as the lackluster best friend Alan (played by Cliff Robertson in the film version), to leading man Ralph Meeker's Hal Carter (Hal was the role William Holden played in the film version. Not surprisingly, Newman coveted the role of Hal either in a touring company or as Meeker's replacement.
Elena Oumano tells this story in her biography of Paul Newman entitled "Newman". (page 43)

He did get to play Hal for two weeks when Meeker was indisposed, but when Newman asked director [Joshua] Logan if, on the strength of his performance, he could take over Meeker’s role in the road company, Logan again failed to discern leading-man material in the slight blue-eyed young man. “I don’t think so,” he told a disappointed Newman, “because you don’t carry any sexual threat.”

Internet Broadway Database page for 1953 production of "Picnic"

http://www.ibdb.com/production.asp?ID=2220

Bill Krohn ("Hitchcock at Work") on Hitchcock

2006-09-22T18:58:00.000-07:00

From the "making-of" documentary on the "I Confess" dvd,
Bill Krohn, author of "Hitchcock at Work" speaking
at about 8:20 into the film.

"He [Hitchcock] said that bad movies are photographs of people talking. A Hitchcock movie is a photograph of people thinking. "

Jean Renoir's last letter

2006-09-22T15:34:00.000-07:00

This is the last letter that Jean Renoir wrote six months and one day before his death addressed to François Truffaut.
It is from "Jean Renoir : letters / edited by David Thompson and Lorraine LoBianco ; translations by Craig Carlson, Natasha Arnoldi, Michael Wells ; translations of the letters of François Truffaut by Anneliese Varaldiev"

To François Truffaut
11 August 1978

Dear François.
I am sending this note for no practical purpose. You know how fond I am of you, and I know how fond you are of me. I am repeating aloud because I enjoy it. It is like a brief farewell on a station platform. All that is missing is the sweet smell of the soot from Victoria Station.
You don’t need anybody to help you transport your friends into a world whose citizens are all genuine knights. The New Wave gathers together its barons at a round table.
Dido and I send our love.
Jean Renoir

Paul Schrader on writing "Raging Bull" and film biography

2006-09-19T18:45:00.000-07:00

Paul Schrader on the commentary track of "Raging Bull"

"I'm not a big fan of the form of biography because people's lives don't tend to have a sort of dramatic arc. and then what you have to do is manipulate the facts which is -- always makes you feel a little queasy when you create composite characters and you have people meet who never met in real life. But if you're going to do a biography, it's always best to do one about someone who's relatively unknown. Then you can really get into the truth of their psyche without being so worried about the audience knowing that you've taken liberties. and so LaMotta was good because people didn't know that much about him."

Jacques Rivette - Cahiers du Cinema - May 1957

2006-09-19T09:45:00.000-07:00

from the roundtable "Six Characters in Search of an Auteur" published in the May 1957 special issue of Cahiers du Cinema "Situation of French Cinema"

"The ideal for French cinema would be that, on one hand, you have the super-productions made by directors like Delannoy or Le Chanois (people who are qualified to do that and do it well such that a film costing 500 million francs brings back 800 million francs or even more, which is what, after all, everyone wants) and, on the other, directors, of talent who refuse to be involved in these combinations, who possess the kind of moral integrity to and who are contented with films (let’s put it at 100 million francs) that have no need of foreign markets to amortize themselves and where they can make true works of auteurs. It is necessary that these two domains co-exist and that they be clearly distinct from each other. This is the exact case of Italian cinema, which has its crises as well, but which remains in the best of health inasmuch as it never confuses “Ulysses”, or any other super-production, and the school Rossellini, Zavattini, de Sica, Antonioni who, while they disagree on a number of points, have themselves never been compromised."

Samson Raphaelson on himself vis-a-vis Tennessee Williams

2006-09-17T09:33:00.000-07:00

Samson Raphaelson : I am a better craftsman than Eugene O’Neill - no comparison - than Tennessee Williams - no comparison. But they’re much better playwrights than I am.

Bill Moyers : Why?

Samson Raphaelson : Because their life, in both cases, feed, marvelously, into their plays. Their tragedies are part of the tragedies that they write. And -- Tennessee Williams writes one marvelous and bad play after another which if he sat down with me for two hours I could do miracles on. But I’d never be as good as the guy who wrote.

From "A Portrait of Samson Raphaelson" an episode in the "Creativity with Bill Moyers" series broadcast by PBS in the mid 1980s.

Emma Wilson on the Robert Bresson film "Diary of a Country Priest"

2006-09-14T18:49:00.000-07:00

Although it is a literary adaptation (of Georges Bernanos’s novel), Journal could not be further from the "Tradition of quality"". Bresson develops a highly individual style, typified by stark images, silences and absences, ideally suited to the recurrent concern with spirituality in his cinema from the 1940s on. In Journal, Bresson also explores the possibility of a diary form in cinema, changing both the form and content of French film.
Emma Wilson "French Cinema since 1950 Personal Histories" (1999)

Marcel Pagnol by Jean Renoir

2006-09-14T18:47:00.000-07:00

Pagnol believes in nothing but dialogue, and in his case he is right.
My Life and My Films Jean Renoir page 122.

Francois Truffaut according to Ward Just

2006-09-14T18:44:00.000-07:00

They did not understand that Truffaut's great task in The Four Hundred Blows was not to make the boy into himself but to make himself into the boy, not autobiography but anti-autobiography.
Ward Just The Weather in Berlin (p 70)

A writing lesson from Winston Churchill

2006-09-12T16:03:00.000-07:00

This story is quoted from the English novelist Geoffrey Bocca’s “Best seller : a nostalgic celebration of the less-than-great books you have always been afraid to admit you loved “ (pages 16-19)

"All at once I found myself with a chance not to be missed, and moreover with the courage to ask the question. I spoke up. 'Sir Winston, I am a writer, and I want to be a better writer. I know how much you were influenced by Gibbon and The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. I have read this too, with great profit. Have you another writer you especially recommend?'
...
"He said on word to me....The word he said was, 'Kinglake'.
...
"I had to wait until I returned to London to look up Kinglake. This is what one of the encyclopedias says.
...
While a student in 1835 he travelled Throughout the East, and the impression made on him was so powerful that he was seized with a desire to record it. "Eothen", a sensitive and witty record of impressions keenly felt and remembered was published in 1844 and enjoyed considerable reputation. In 1854, he went to Crimea and was present as a spectator at the Battle of Alma. He made the acquaintance of Lord Raglan, the British commander, whose widow subsequently placed all of the commander’s papers at the writer’s disposal. For the rest of his life Kinglake was engaged in the task of completing this monumental and largely ignored history. Thirty-two years elapsed between its commencement and publication of the last volume and nine volumes appeared in all.
...
"Churchill’s guideline to me was clear. forget the lifework, read ‘Eothen’, a title already familiar to me.
...
"I read Eothen with joy and with love possessed, and put it down saying, 'Thanks, Winnie.' I knew one of Winston Churchill’s unpublished secrets.
"A couple of years later I found myself alone with Churchill after dinner at La Capponchina. I reminded him of our earlier conversation, told him how much I felt enriched by Eothen, and asked him to recommend other reading. Churchill’s first leson had been concluded in a single word. This time he was twice as expansive. What he said was, ‘More Kinglake‘.
I said, ‘B-but, sir Winston, the only other thing Kinglake ever wrote was his nine-volume history of the invasion of the Crimea. It is completely unread.’
"Churchill’s eyes twinkled the way they so often did in wartime propaganda photographs. He pushed a thumb into my dress shirt. ‘Read it, my boy.’ he said. ‘as you say, nobody reads it. so no one can accuse you of plagiarism, can they?’ "

This story continues on;
http://commenting-the-commentaries.blogspot.com/2006/10/bocca-finds-his-kinglake.html

Nicole Kidman on Stanley Kubrick

2006-09-04T14:02:00.000-07:00

from the interview on the "Eyes Wide Shut" dvd recorded on July 12, 1999

"Stanley always was waiting for something to happen and he wasn't as interested in naturalistic acting as he was in something that - for whatever reason - surprised him or piqued his interest. that when he would go "Ahhh...OK, now we're on to something" and he was always interested in exploring things. That there was no right and wrong in relation to making a film, a performance. It wasn't about this is the right way to do it and this is the wrong way to do it. It was about all the facets of doing, so that he could go inot the editng room and edit it."

René Clair and the Marx Brothers

2006-08-29T19:13:00.000-07:00

from René Clair's "Cinema yesterday and today. Translated by Stanley Appelbaum. Edited, and with an introd. and annotations, by R. C. Dale." ( page 216)

"When I saw the Marx brothers first films, I dreamed of working with these funny characters. But how could I let them know I wanted to? I was in Paris, and they were in Hollywood, where they were bound by impressive contracts. Furthermore, it was not very likely they had the slightest need of my services or even knew my name. I soon filed away that dream among the dead letters.
"Some ten years later, in Hollywood, I became friendly with Groucho and Harpo. One day, while we were talking about Paris, one of them said to me: "We looked for you in Paris; we wanted to see you. But it was summertime and you weren't there." What did they want of me? "To ask you to work with us." And when? Exactly at the time I dreamt of working with them."

Cahiers vs Positif 1956

2006-08-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

I was just searching through some material and I ran into this interesting nugget of information, from article “Books in French on Cinema” (page 110) in Yale French Studies, No. 17, Art of the Cinema, 1956

Cahiers du Cinéma (monthly, founded in 1951, deals with film as an art form; frequently lively and controversial; scenarios, general news)

Positif (a younger rival; contributors sometimes dogmatic, and violent in tone)

René Clément watches Paris burn

2006-08-26T18:59:00.000-07:00

Watching the two interview clips featuring director René Clément which are on the "Forbidden Games" dvd, I could not help but to be struck by how much he looked to age in the four years between the first one (Oct 1963) and the second (Dec 1967). That is probably what directing "Is Paris Burning?" did to him.

Roger Deakins on B&W vs color.

2006-08-24T21:22:00.000-07:00

The issue "B&W vs color" is often debated on Internet forums. The cinematographer Roger Deakins,

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005683/

who shot the film "The Man Who Wasn't There" to be shown in black and white is asked in an interview on the DVD for that film to comment on that issue. Here is part of what he says -- it happens about 22 minutes into that interview.

“I think I see things more in black and white. That’s not really right the right way of putting it. I see things more as composition and the way light falls on things rather than seeing it as a series of pieces of color. That the pieces of color don’t give me --- they don’t define what I’m looking at. That’s what I was saying before. They’re almost a distraction."

Francis Ford Coppola on "Patton"

2006-08-20T16:04:00.000-07:00

Francis Ford Coppola on the DVD commentary for "Patton" for which he had written the first screenplay.

() () ()

Discussing his opening sequence which was not liked but was used in the final script.

"Now, all you young people, bear note that the things that you are fired for are often the things that later in life you are celebrated for."

aaa

He also tells of how in 1969, he bought a German Steinbeck film editing machine which he rented to Twientieth Century-Fox. One day, he got a call from Fox telling him that the machine was not working and asking if he could send a repairman over. He had no repairman, so he took his tools and went himself. While fixing the Steinbeck, he noticed that the film he had been given to test with was a war film. So, he asked the editor as he was leaving, "What film was that?" When the editor answered "Patton", Coppola told the editor, "You know I wrote that film."

Jean-Luc Godard on "Quai des Brumes" 1964

2006-08-20T13:20:00.000-07:00

An interesting quote from Jean-Luc Godard on the TV-series "Cinéastes de Notre Temps" episode "La nouvelle vague par elle-même" first shown in the mid 1960s:

"Carné's Quai des Brumes (Port of Shadows) was a great film as it was of its time. Carné was 29 years old. It was a great film. But his "Les Tricheurs" was bad as he copied things. It lacks that earlier inventiveness."

Interesting sighting of Julien Duvivier -- Cannes 1959

2006-08-18T16:50:00.000-07:00

The Criterion dvd for “The Four Hundred Blows” includes a vintage short entitled “Reflets de Cannes”, the bulk of this short consists of François Chalais interviewing Jean-Pierre Leaud, but the last 45 seconds or so include some newsreel shots of that films showing at the festival that year. What I noticed that was interesting there was this. There is first a clip from behind of Leaud and Jean Cocteau sitting in the front row, then one of Albert Remy also from behind. Then there is this very interesting clip. Then newsreel narrator says, “Even the eyes of the jury lit up” and there is an over-lit shot of a prosperous looking middle-aged man. That unidentified man is the director Julien Duvivier who sat on the jury at Cannes in 1959.

A tale of Le Roi de Coeur

2006-08-18T16:49:00.000-07:00

In his commentary track for “The Four Blows” on the Criterion dvd, Brian Stonehill reveals that he is an American in a rather surprising way. In the carnival ride sequence, he points out Philippe de Broca’s cameo and identifies him as “the director of ’The King of Hearts’”. Now, that film which is a cult classic in America is not so well In Europe and rarely seen there.

Recently, I made a quick study of de Broca’s film “King of Hearts” on the IMDb site. 1202 users had weighed in with an opinion on the film on that site’s “User Ratings” category. to put that into perspective, only 2 Chabrol films have a higher total of users, both of recent vintage “La Cermonie” and “Merci pour la Chocolate”. Only 2 Louis Malle French language films have more user in that category, “Au Revoir, Les Enfants” and “Ascenseur pour la l‘Echafoud“. No film by either Jacques Rivette or Eric Rohmer has gotten that many votes in the user ratings category.
Comparing de Broca’s film to Claude Lelouch’s “A Man and a Woman”, two films that were released within a year of each other. These two films are rather close in number of users offering ratings, “The King of Hearts” (1202 users) and “A Man and a Woman” (1358 users) but consider this almost half of the users for de Broca’s film (572) identify themselves as USA to 176 for non-USA, while with the Lelouch film almost half are non-USA (646) to 309 for USA users.

The reason is that “King of Hearts” which was a mega-bomb in France when it opened in 1967 - reportedly, some Paris exhibitors opened the doors to try to paper the house and hope that word of mouth might rescue the film, an effort which failed, became in the USA a long running hit and a cult classic. For instance, it opened a run at the Central Square Theater in Cambridge Ma on February 10, 1971 and it did not close until April 13, 1976.

Johnny, we hardly... oh you know what.

2006-08-18T16:48:00.000-07:00

On the “making-of” documentary, on the “Dirty Dozen” dvd, Trini Lopez speaks of an incident during filming. He told John Cassavetes one day that he, in looking at the dailies, thought the Cassavetes’ performance was a certainty for an Oscar nomination. Cassavetes looked at him and told him that he did not think so.
You one thing I would have to say about Cassavetes’ performance in that film. For most other actors, that was the performance of a lifetime, but for John, that role was a piece of cake.