Auteur List: Otto Preminger

[domino harvey]

List is live NOW

Top 10 list of films directed by Preminger
In ranked order
PMed to me, domino harvey,
By June 9
***Deadline extended to June 16th***

[Maltic]

I'm not entirely sure I'm able to commit to reading another bio at this moment in time, but I'm curious if there are any recommended books on Preminger, scholarly or otherwise, to help inform the next auteur list project? domino, I know you've been a vocal champion and taught him in classes, so even essays/articles for supplementary material are most welcome as I try to get a head start

Chris Fujiwara's book The World and Its Double. Ideal combination of bio, production details and film-by-film analysis. There's some sort of overall thesis, too, as hinted in the title, but you can take or leave that one..

[therewillbeblus]

Thanks, Maltic!

[Maltic]

I'd be curious to hear if Domino has suggestions, though. The book covers his whole life/career, so it only goes into each film in so much detail.

There are also articles on Angel Face and Fallen Angel in the The Movie Book of Film Noir, and on The Human Factor in Dave Kehr's When Movies Mattered. That's about it, as far as my bookshelves go.

I'm guessing one could find stuff in old editions of Movie.

[Matt]

...any recommended books on Preminger...essays/articles for supplementary material

Maybe it's so obvious as to not bear mentioning, but anything by V.F. (Victor) Perkins on Preminger is worth reading. His reviews are collected in V. F. Perkins on Movies: Collected Shorter Film Criticism and longer analyses (on a scene from Carmen Jones, most notably) appear in Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies.

[therewillbeblus]

...any recommended books on Preminger...essays/articles for supplementary material

Maybe it's so obvious as to not bear mentioning, but anything by V.F. (Victor) Perkins on Preminger is worth reading. His reviews are collected in V. F. Perkins on Movies: Collected Shorter Film Criticism and longer analyses (on a scene from Carmen Jones, most notably) appear in Film as Film: Understanding and Judging Movies.

Definitely worth mentioning, thanks Matt!

[therewillbeblus]

As far as Preminger goes, I've read bits and pieces of the two big Preminger tomes that came out around the same time a while ago, but a lot of the (re)assessment comes from recent times. There was a long, long period where Preminger was viewed as a bad director (probably in part to his well-earned reputation as a total asshole) and was even joked about the same way we joke about Stanley Kramer or Michael Bay here. Times have changed a bit, but there's still some resistance. Certainly he poses a challenge for those who grade filmmakers on a curve of whether they agree with them morally-- he was a voracious defier of conventional mores and was truly progressive in his filmmaking output and to some degree production... and he was also an almost unbearable jerk to everyone he worked with and may very well have enjoyed these thumbs of the nose at rules from a position of raconteur as much as anything noble.

Yeah part of the reason I asked is because of this absence from auteurist studies as well as general critical ambivalence. He's a filmmaker without the blaring visibility of themes or style that are more apparent on the sleeves of filmmakers like Hawks, though I've definitely grown to detect elements of his formalist mastery. I recall someone posting some link on this forum about the shots of Whirlpool, which I could probably find if I did some digging, but remember it taking a pretty dense path to achieving its thesis, processing thematic analysis via technique (compared to, say, more 'laxed observational musing on the male camaraderie and stoicism in Hawks' work). Perhaps there are less straws to grasp on, but I thought that was promising that there may be more connective tissue on thematic interest than I'm currently away of going into this- though I've definitely made my own claims to his ethos in writeups before (at least Anatomy of a Murder, and I think Angel Face).

[knives]

I would argue that he does have the same degree of blaring themes and style, it’s just under explored for the reasons already elucidated on. For example his evolution in sound design becomes very apparent with a close watch of his films, some years ago I saw about fifteen in a one month span, that matches an overall paring down into minimalism by him that coincides with an increase in film length.

Thematically as well, as Domino alluded to, Preminger has some pretty clear themes dealing with institutions and left wing politics. As well female trust is a consistent theme starting by with men wondering how to trust women in Laura and A Royal Scandal and evolving into women trusting themselves in pretty much all of his later films.

[therewillbeblus]

That's an interesting point about female trust, and there are certainly others that revolve around a relativist provocation of morality that I've touched on in a few writeups (making us the jury in Anatomy of a Murder and distinguishing between facts and feelings, without didactically declaring the former as superior in our subjective experiences; allowing the femme fatale in Angel Face to be a resilient and pitiable figure rather than conscious sociopath- which I'd argue is the true interest in that film rather than a male-centered concern of female trust). What I am trying to say is that these themes and styles are not as discernible, and I don't mean that as a knock but a strength. I know you like to play the devil's advocate, but I'm surprised you'd declare Preminger's intentions to be as "blaring" as these other auteurs. They're not invisible but I think you need to work for them a bit harder and they're less clear by design- for example, the "female trust" angle one could view some films from a male perspective vs. the female's perspective on being trusted and trusting the world in the same film. These are different themes on the same double-edged knife of a focal point, which I think is often the case in Preminger's work. We are consuming ideas that are relatively focused in grey ambiguity of reference due to his sweeping, attentive objectivity, which produce several subjective approaches we can take concurrently.

It's worth noting that aside from a few of the popular films, Preminger's last two decades are my main blind spots, so it's possible that these themes/evolution of technique will become more centered and loud once I get to those, but I maintain my position on his 40s/50s work.

[knives]

I think insofar as we have a disagreement, I am being utterly sincere and not a devil’s advocate, is in how to take his evolution. The development of Hawks, to run with that example, was a fairly subtle evolution from the lost generation to a sort of utopian view of friendship. Preminger’s evolution is less focused on the tone of his key theme and more on the perspective, great point on Angel Face which starts a run ending with The Fan that fits your explanation well, which I guess is a more explicit seeming evolution. Additionally, I could see Preminger’s later attempts as political provocateur causing him to appear to have a lack of clear discernment as well because they can be so loud. The obvious, to me, evolution of the Preminger woman can be subsumed to these political ideas, to the point of practical absence in something like The Cardinal, but she remains as relevant to the character of her films as Hawks’ homoplatonic relations.

I really do in all sincerity assume that the subtleties you, and I assume others, see is informed in part because we haven’t been trained on how to look at a Preminger film in the same way we have been trained for Hawks, Hitchcock, and Ford.

[therewillbeblus]

Well said knives, I agree with that last point, but I feel the same way about grey thinking vs. black and white comfortability in social politics, morality, etc. and while you or I may be more comfortable engaging in the world like that, it doesn't mean that these themes are objectively discernible. Maybe that's a bit of an oxymoron to even assume that subjective approaches have an objective barrier blocking them, but I think in general it takes more effort, and requires some mining for information, to look at these contradictions and multiple truths and extract themes from this process, than it is to glean a surface-level example of two men engaging in utopian friendship. Now of course Hawks has far more depth than that and I'm being unfair in neglecting these depths by returning to him continuously in my examples, but my point is that there are more signifiers to string his work together right out on the surface in simple, conservative markers of codes, and Preminger is the opposite- in my interpretation of his thematic interests- by validating how complex life is, and exposing the grey murky waters with subtly; the same waters that confound this Hawksian utopia of moral clarity.

I think where we can agree is that Preminger does have tangible attitudes to engage with, and because I think they're so vast and eclectic, I was looking for resources. However, I could easily see someone come into this conversation and view Preminger's work completely differently than I am, whereas I think Hawks is clear enough in his conservatism to have a fairly homogenous reading of his work, and though that's the nature of such an objective, grey-promoting filmmaker, it's also what I'm getting at with my claims of density.

[domino harvey]

I think Preminger is hard to judge for those dealing in traditional critical tropes because he is fundamentally concerned with mise en scene and that's one of the hardest things to account for in "lay viewers". And it's no wonder he would be so outre in the academic outpouring of new critical readings in 70s when his reputation took the biggest beating (his later films being far worse didn't help either) since I don't think his films fit those molds too comfortably. I think he was kind of a cinematic man without a country for quite a while and you can still hear echos of this as recently as like, what, fifteen years ago on those WB and Fox commentaries by the old guard

[knives]

Good point Dom. I described it above as a sort of minimalism, but he really does remind me especially in that last 15 years or so more of someone like Rohmer or de Oliviera than any sort of American antecedent.

[therewillbeblus]

I might as well get started, considering I spent today watching Preminger’s six pre-Laura films. Going into this project, I’ve already written thoughts on most of my current top ten, so I’ll be focusing on rounding out the blind spots (almost all of which are from his last two active decades) and hope to find at least a few gold nuggets in there. Of his less-popular works that I've seen, I highly recommend The Fan (my sole 40s project orphan), The Moon is Blue, and the Lubitsch-rescue A Royal Scandal, if it counts.

Die große Liebe is Preminger's one-and-done German film before his trip to Hollywood (but not his last), and it's no more or less than the throwaway job he tried to distance himself from years later. There are moments that gesture towards humor but always flinch nervously and stay in safe, aimless territory.

Under Your Spell is a low-budget and low-key musical comedy that earns a few chuckles but mostly serves to establish Preminger is a master of camera control. Even in his first studio film, he demonstrates authority and more attention to detail of a scene than it deserves, and while the content isn’t much to work with, it never feels to be strung together by an amateur. This isn’t screwball per se since the leads play themselves too stiff (it would be a better film if it were a screwball) but the supporting players are funny whenever they’re on screen, and the finale is incredibly risqué

Spoiler

as the leads shed their austerity behind closed doors while we hear alarming noise of whipping violence, and then they emerge inexplicably as screwball leads!

It’s a complete devolution of the material, and such a perversely suggestive (yet harrowing) gag that I feel compelled to give this a tempered recommendation based on that alone.

Danger - Love at Work is more discernibly a screwball comedy, if not a particularly funny one. Still, Preminger’s economical form trims fat and produces an elegant delivery of narrative fluidity, which contrasts with the erratic content and anomalous characters. This mismatch between the inclusive elements and the framing of them is funnier than most of the material, but I got a kick out of how seriously Preminger takes his technique amidst an uneven madcap construction of setpieces. The supporting players are also better than the leads in this film, but not enough to save the movie from being a mostly forgettable programmer.

Kidnapped is credited to Alfred L. Werker, due to a heated argument between Preminger and Zanuck, but Preminger’s fingerprints are detectable in parts. The film is unsurprisingly disengaging during plot-focused closeups of overacting, and more captivating during the swooping spectacle of atmosphere and medium-shots of indirect character building that I can only suspect the story-neglecting Preminger is responsible for. As far as 30s period adventure films go, it’s pretty solid with grim mise en scene of unfiltered creepy visuals of intimidating monstrous adults. The problem is in the inconsistencies, though the film still excels intermittently at being an inverted children’s tale of nightmarish predicaments, with some inevitable swashbuckler action thrown in for middling measure.

This was probably not a worthwhile film to stubbornly quarrel over and consequently get rejected from Hollywood for half a decade, but neither is Margin for Error a worthwhile one to come back with.. a Nazy dramedy from the years when several auteurs produced smart, effective satires on the horrors of the war, this is a pretty naked dud.

In the Meantime, Darling, however, is not. Preminger’s first film that is both well-made and thoroughly enjoyable back-to-front. For this wartime domestic drama, Preminger’s attention to multiple perspectives shines through equally between genders, validating the women who aren’t facing literal fire arguably more than the men who are. Even though the film inevitably defaults into nationalist propaganda, it does so on its own terms, allowing itself to fit the mores of the Greatest Generation less blindly and moreso because the values of unconditional love and the struggles of intimacy are only possible when one ‘gives it up to God (or country)’ and accepts their circumstances following a mature development in honest communication. The platonic relationships both within the army and the camp wives’ crew are authentic and deep yet not utopian. There is a realist contractual expectation embedded within them, for they need to be earned and sustained with continuous action, as we see Daniel so readily spurned when he’s viewed as an outsider briefly. I love how Shirley’s advice to lie isn’t treated with moral disdain, but Preminger directs her character’s demeanor through her rationale in that scene as wholly sympathetic. Even though that’s not the ethical choice that the narrative must arrive at, it’s placed alongside the literal truth without judgment as a logical and emotional response of self, and marital, preservation.

[domino harvey]

I've only seen it once many years ago, but ♪♪ "Dan-ger, love at work" ♪♪ has never left my head

[Red Screamer]

I can think of some auteurists who have been champions and perceptive critics of Preminger throughout his career. Rosenbaum and Kehr come to mind but I'll have to look for the specific pieces/books later.

[Maltic]

Scroll down and there's a Tag Gallagher video essay on Angel Face (25 mins).

He mentions that Godard in 1963 ranked it as the 8th best US film of the sound era.

Apparently, Robin Wood put it in his death-bed-top-10

Probably not my favourite of his noirs... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The 2007 DVD is from WAC, they should upgrade it.

[domino harvey]

Bertrand Tavernier also named Angel Face on his ballot for the same list. As ever with an unusual showing of a Hollywood film years after its initial release, I suspect there was prob a revival at the Cinematheque of Angel Face in close proximity to the 1963 balloting

[therewillbeblus]

It's not my favorite of his noirs either, though I do prefer it to his lauded noir masterpiece Laura. My thoughts from the 50s thread, focusing solely on Simmons' psychology:

What makes Angel Face so special is that the femme fatale is both the central character and not driven by greed or a solipsistic ego on fire, she’s not a sociopath or manipulator in the traditional sense. Jean Simmons is a depressant, lonely person who wants the kind of love that will allow her to escape from herself into another, a far cry from the strong-willed archetype who swallows men to escape into them. Mitchum knows what she is and yet his own fatalism is not magnetized to her helplessly, but born from apathy and Simmons provides him with something different to subtly liven up his passive existence. She is the emotional one, not him (he bails as soon as he can once he is sobered to the seriousness of the situation and can easily fight his apathy with logic), another change in the genre (despite the male leads’ toughness, even the Mitchums, they usually play the emotionally driven characters). Simmons’ psychology is indicative of an untreated personality disorder (Borderline, probably) and yet it doesn’t need to be any one thing to reflect the anxiety of simply being alive in the body of someone so uncomfortable in their own skin. Look at them during the trial. Mitchum is calm, laid back, emotionless, and inactive in his own life; while Simmons’ intensity can be misread as evil or sociopathic. She’s really afraid, nervous, constantly on alert, perpetually disturbed by herself and all stimuli around her. The actions she commits, from flirtations to crimes, are resilient. Sick, twisted, and dangerous, but rooted in a place of ‘need’ (not ‘want,’ as in most femme fatales) and from a genuine place of fear rather than an artificial trick of pretend fear. She is scary because she’s only too real. And when one is this emotional, unpredictability is run rampant, able to surprise Mitchum after he’s already awake to the crazy, or so he thought. There’s no clarity in trying to understand one who is completely divorced from logic, floating up toward the clouds and ready to leave this earth with no gravity keeping her here. She’s been ready all her life in fact, it’s her baseline, and once we see that we wonder how resilient she must have been to hold onto straws as long as she has.

[Rayon Vert]

I wasn't crazy about either In Harm's Way or Bunny Lake Is Missing the first time. Should I give either or both another chance?

And what's good, if anything, post 1965?

[domino harvey]

Bunny Lake is Missing is a fun movie, I'd say it's worth another watch-- might be interesting to watch knowing the twist in advance? In Harm's Way is a preview of the downturn to come in Preminger's output, can't say I'd recommend sitting through Preminger's lazy interpretation of 1941 as filtered through hairstyles and fashion of 1965

[Rayon Vert]

I'm surprised Harm has 7.3 on IMDB. I'd ranked it pretty low among the films I've seen.

[therewillbeblus]

I'm a big fan of Bunny Lake Is Missing, though I also appreciate how at face value the reveal's devolution of psychology running counter to the mood piece that precedes it can have a diluting effect and frame the final product as underwhelming, so another viewing could help attend to the chaotic tonal exercise divorced from that twist.

Edit: domino said it simpler

[domino harvey]

I'm surprised Harm has 7.3 on IMDB. I'd ranked it pretty low among the films I've seen.

It has John Wayne in a Pearl Harbor movie, I imagine many votes come from his fan club

As far as post-65 films worth watching, none of the ones I've seen save Bunny Lake would merit seeing, but here's the most memorable image from Such Good Friends so you can save yourself the two hours but still have your life scarred (NSFW)

Spoiler

Yes, that's Burgess Meredith. You're welcome!

[knives]

I personally adore In Harm’s Way and Such Good Friends though Rosebud is my favorite of his late movies. The Human Factor, Skidoo, and Hurry Sundown also have a lot to offer.