domino harvey wrote:I was (and am) one of the few defenders of the other Preminger-rescued Lubitsch project, A Royal Scandal
I loved every moment of this one, and can't remember when I've laughed as much at such clever word-play, so it surprises me to hear that it has few defenders. Is it possible that it just has few viewers?
That's what I thought, too. Looks like a classical case where an evaluative scheme (Humorless brute mishandles a comedy of the master of wit) is too tempting not to be repeated again and again.
I watched yesterday Margin for Error which is insanely bad, not only badly directed and acted, but how on earth can this have been successful in any way on stage. It isn't funny, it isn't suspenseful, it isn't interesting and so badly structured that it easily qualifies as one of the worst written films I've ever come seen from classical Hollywood. After this genuinely embarassing experience I had no hopes for Royal Scandal but it is a very witty affair and shows quite ruthlessly how all concerned have made theirselves a place in a rotten society which masks its decay with wit and how a honest man can be nevertheless a complete fool (played quite apropriately by the young lead). The problem seems to be that the film has no Lubitsch style to speak of, Preminger is a indeed a much more sober and impassioned director, but on the other hand I think he gives the film surprisingly a lot of speed and verve, the 90 minutes just fly by.
Just wanted to thank Dom for suggesting The Moon is Blue which is criminally hilarious (though I'm not sure if I entirely like the usage of a thoroughbred MPG). David Niven's reaction shots alone are worth any price.
Well, Skidoo's not quite the train wreck it's sold as, and is more of a piece with, say, Wilder's Buddy Buddy or Hawks' Man's Favorite Sport?-- flawed films that say more about the auteur at the helm's inability to change with the times than anything else. These are not bad films to an auteurist but intensely interesting for both how they deviate and, generally for the worse, how they change from the established abilities of the auteur. These titles make Hitchcock's ability after the disaster of Topaz to adapt completely to and indeed excel in new cinematic freedoms with Frenzy all the more laudable. The biggest question while watching Skidoo is the most basic: Why is this an Otto Preminger film? It's a question I ultimately can't answer. I can't even figure out the intended audience for this thing. It's a television sitcom cast from a Dean Martin Friar's Club Roast, hopelessly courting older viewers in its casting with a story they'd never go anywhere near. And seeing some of these borscht belt-y comedy legends bump up against rawer material is jarring-- if you ever wanted Jackie Gleason to call a hippie a faggot or see Groucho Marx try to feel up Alexandra Hay, good news! For everyone else, the film is a curiosity at best. And yet, were this not a Preminger film, no one would being crying "disaster," as the proper response to this misguided but harmless comedy sans comedy is more in the vicinity of a shrug. But it is and they are, and ultimately that's the problem: Preminger doesn't pick sides in his films, and you can't make a culture clash flick about how silly hippies are without lobbing most of your bombs at the free love set. And with this signature distance removed, Preminger's experiment is a bad trip indeed. Thank God he got back up again.
It probably says more about me than the film in question, but I find the movie genuinely funny. It certainly doesn't work as a whole, but I think enough of the gags work and as you say how did this exactly get made let alone who made it to make it an interesting experience if not a good film.
Also watching this movie (finally) in widescreen I have to say this is a perfectly composed film and the movie makes a lot more sense with the extra image.
Such Good Friends finds Preminger regaining his objectivity, but to dire effect. In a sense, this is a worse film than Skidoo, because it fails wholly on Preminger's terms. This is a nasty black comedy filmed as though it weren't a comedy at all, so Elaine May's vicious, often offensive lines are played straight. This doesn't work as well as it sounds, because Preminger's handling renders the whole affair an exercise in grotesqueness. Perhaps that was his idea all along: Let's all gape and point at the vapid, horrible people who populate this subsection of New York City. But not content to let the characters' words hang themselves, Preminger allows random instances of pathetic provocation, daring the audience's will to keep watching. If you've ever wanted to see Dyan Cannon slowly disrobe James Coco and give him a blowjob or watch Burgess Meredith dance nude with only a book covering his crotch, then great news! So much energy is exhausted on being wicked when it might have been better served making the film good instead.
That's great news. I've been hoping that Criterion puts out a Seberg Eclipse with "Bonjour Tristese", "Saint Joan", and the Chabrols. Probably a pipe dream, but one I'll hold on to.
Yes, in addition to Saint Joan being a Warner Archive title, Criterion seem unwilling to do star-centered Eclipse sets (if the first five years' worth of the series is any indication).
Oops, even the exclamation point in the title didn't impress that set into my memory. It'd be more accurate to say they generally have shown very little interest in star-themed sets, except perhaps when they form an extremely cohesive group, as with the three Sabu/Kordas.
domino harvey wrote:I was (and am) one of the few defenders of the other Preminger-rescued Lubitsch project, A Royal Scandal
I loved every moment of this one, and can't remember when I've laughed as much at such clever word-play, so it surprises me to hear that it has few defenders. Is it possible that it just has few viewers?
I know these comments are rather old, but I just saw this film and completely agree. It's a fantastic film, much more Lubitsch than Preminger, imo, and yes, one of the funniest films I've seen in a long, long time. Tallulah Bankhead and Charles Coburn were both marvelous in their roles, and the wordplay is indeed very cleverly crafted. I really don't understand why it gets bad rep (born out of the whole Lubitsch vs Preminger debate, I guess), but it is undeserved. Preminger did a fine job and yes, it "feels" like a Lubitsch film through and through. The more exposure this film gets, the more its critical standing will rise, I believe.
Yes, the ratio is letterboxed within the academy ratio screen but like for European VHS, with a black border on all sides and not quite the full 'Scope frame. It's a poor DVD, no doubt, but I've sat through way worse bootlegs (including another Preminger from this decade, Porgy and Bess, which makes Billy Mitchell's transfer look 2k!)
I can certainly live with VHS styling so I'm glad on that. I'm surprised at all of the OOPs he has for the decade. By itself In Harm's Way is through the roof. I probably won't bother with Porgy and Bess yet since I believe the bootlegs are a slightly edited down version.
I'm surprised at no Dom post on Hurry Sundown. The DVD is characteristically unhelpful in developing a critical outlook on the film, but I must say I found it to be a good movie at least in the context of Preminger's late period insanity. It's really weird to watch this in dual with Carmen Jones which in many respects is the more modern film. The film has some slight similarities to Ray's Wind Across the Everglades (which I'll cop to liking more than most), but it doesn't have a Plummer equivalent character and seems to daringly be letting the habitat speak for itself. As a social picture I don't think it works since it stylizes itself in the weirdest way to almost approach a magical realism through it's sheer artificiality. Despite the location shooting the film paints itself like the opening scene of Blue Velvet.
Going back to what I started with though, the treatment of the black characters in the film is basically a less sexualized version of Carmen Jones, but it gets weird with the white characters who have this Huston grotesque look to them with exaggerated accents approaching a sort of expressionism at times (in a early scene there's this ugly woman who looks like a set of triangles. It's almost like a reversal of usual stereotypes where the affluent white characters are primates while the black characters are average folk. The film certainly has racial problems to it, but not that usually attributed (insofar as I've read) and certainly not in a clear cut way. It's split somewhere between modern and old presentations that I'm not sure if I should be offended by. The movie's just weird.
It's also excessively beautiful. The use of colour here is as good as it gets with striking whites, beiges, and reds. There's this cleanliness to that scheme that gets ruined on occasion in such a manner as to completely shock. I hate to go back to it, but in a lot of ways this film is like a lost Nicholas Ray film. It's just the sort of majesty you expect.
The Human Factor. Although the exemplar Fujiwara book details some of the making and response to Preminger's final film, The Human Factor, I just finished reading an odd little memoir that greatly helped my understanding of Preminger's casting of Nicol Williamon and the film's relationship to the source novel. John Baxter's "A Pound of Paper" comes close to being mere breezey fan-driven observations (and obsessions) of films and their source materials, however, Baxter does give some good insights into Greene's novel and its adaptation by Preminger, including interviewing booksellers about their responses to the novel and film. Baxter's memoir has a rambling structure to it, many repetitions, however it was also a useful casual reference guide to Australian cinema and especially Baxter's involvement promoting Sci-Fi to audiences in Australia.
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