Rouben Mamoulian

[domino harvey]

ROUBEN MAMOULIAN
(1897-1987)

F I L M O G R A P H Y

Applause (1929) R1 Kino DVD (OOP)
City Streets (1931) R1 Universal MOD DVD-R / RABC Blu-ray (France)
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) RA Warner Archives
Love Me Tonight (1932) RA KLSC / RB Indicator
the Song of Songs (1933) RA KLSC / RB Indicator
Queen Christina (1933) RA Warner Archives
We Live Again (1934) R1 MGM (OOP)
Becky Sharp (1935) RA KLSC (OOP)
the Gay Desperado (1936) R1 Milestone (OOP)
High, Wide and Handsome (1937) RA KLSC
Golden Boy (1939) RABC Imprint
the Mark of Zorro (1940) RA KLSC (OOP)
Blood and Sand (1941) RA Fox (OOP)
Rings on Her Fingers (1942) R1 Fox MOD DVD-R (OOP)
Sumer Holiday (1948) R1 Warner Archives MOD DVD-R
Silk Stockings (1957) RA Warner Archives

FORUM RESOURCES

Indicator: Love Me Tonight
Indicator: the Song of Songs
Love Me Tonight (Rouben Mamoulian, 1932)

EXTERNAL RESOURCES

40th Anniversary Tribute to Rouben Mamoulian 1927-67, Raymond Rohauer, 1967
Mamoulian, Tom Milne, 1969

Slant: The Strange Case of Rouben Mamoulian

How Would Lubitsch Do It? Podcast: Love Me Tonight
There's Sometimes a Buggy Podcast: Applause, City Streets, and Love Me Tonight

[Furstemberg]

Song of Songs has a KLSC Blu-ray as well

[domino harvey]

Added, thanks!

[Maltic]

Book: Tom Milne / Cinema One, the classic 1960's format.

Podcasts:
There's Sometimes a Buggy has done Applause, City Streets, and Love Me Tonight
How Would Lubitsch Do It? has done Love Me Tonight

[domino harvey]

Added, thanks!

Going into this, I'd already seen half of Mamoulian's output and can't quite peg him down, as he's all over the map for me. So in the interest of science, I did a double feature tonight of his first two features and was surprised by how much I did not enjoy the much-lauded Applause. I won't deny its technical merits, though these have been dramatically overrated. But this film cannot overcome a truly bad script that makes a lecherous would-be husband character into someone Snidley Whiplash would find excessive. I see that misery porn of this nature is still being called "modern" by reviewers on Letterboxd just because it makes you feel like shit, but this isn't even good melodrama as there's no catharsis other than mean-spirited and cheap irony that only signals for an allegedly superior audience that the film knows what it's doing and does it anyways. Vom.

So after this, imagine my surprise when City Streets delighted me immediately and rarely let up with its intelligent and often brilliant choices, both stylistically and narratively. This is a film with so many good ideas you can hardly believe it. Not just in its lyrical and intuitive visual bridging, but in how it relays information and shows us characters interacting in a series of encounters in which all of them are the smartest person in the room. And while I found Applause's praised perf by Helen Morgan far more embarrassing than its defenders did, this movie has strong turns not just from those you'd expect (Cooper, Sidney, Lukas), but especially from Guy Kibbee. What mad genius it was to cast the affable bit player Kibbee as a gunsel, and he more than rises to the occasion here.

With City Streets, I'm delighted to see Mamoulian made another film I like as much as (and maybe more than) Love Me Tonight. It's also clear from these two alone that he can lift a good script into a great movie, but his style cannot save material that doesn't want to be saved. Beyond that, I'm still not sure where I stand with him. But six more unseen films (not all of them promising-looking) to go to figure it out...

[bottlesofsmoke]

Dan Callahan wrote an interesting appraisal of Mamoulian’s career:

https://www.slantmagazine.com/film/the- ... mamoulian/

I’ve always been curious what Mamoulian’s version of Laura would have been like, inferior no doubt but it would be fascinating to see them both and compare. Between that, Porgy and Bess and Cleopatra, it’s unfortunate that he’s almost as well known today for what he’s been fired from than what he completed. He’s made some movies I really enjoy, City Streets and Love Me Tonight are definitely among them - I also like his Zorro, it’s lightweight (though with some interesting smuggled-in commentary on World War II similar to the The Sea Hawk) but a fun romp. Even Mamoulian’s films that have screenplay or other problems, he at least makes them interesting to watch in a way that many other filmmakers don’t.

[Red Screamer]

I’ve seen a little more than half of his films and think he peaked early, when his overdetermined stylistic experiments came with genuine energy and excitement. When I had Rick Altman as a professor, I fondly remember him saying re: the early films’ soundtracks, “When I hear the name Rouben Mamoulian, I swoon!” I also find Applause sadly overrated apart from some of the musical aspects, which points to a bigger problem with Mamoulian that’s there from the beginning: his directorial skills work better in a genre & star context, getting quickly inflated and lifeless in more pretentious applications—like how the Garbo-driven romantic comedy in Queen Christina fascinates while the historical drama in the same film is DOA.

I found the Tom Milne book disappointly thin on substance. It goes way over the top with praise, spending most of the Love Me Tonight entry going on about how Mamoulian is besting Lubitsch, for example, and even saying things of similar effect regarding von Stroheim and the minor, lurching Song of Songs. He makes the case for Silk Stockings as his greatest film. At last year’s Ritrovata, there was an attempt to reclaim the merits of Blood and Sand as one of his best, but I haven’t seen it yet to verify. Hide, Wide, and Handsome is much more formulaic and less interesting than I was hoping for, given its stars and cross-genre concept. The one film I would go to bat for as underrated is Rings on Her Fingers, which gets dismissed as a The Lady Eve knockoff but has its own enjoyable wavelength with looser direction than usual for Mamoulian, a steady stream of sharp jokes, and a delightfully goofy comedic turn from Henry Fonda.

[Jonathan S]

I have a twelve-page A4-sized brochure, presumably for a 1967 retrospective, titled A 40th Anniversary Tribute to Rouben Mamoulian 1927-67 by Raymond Rohauer "Film Curator and Program Director, The Gallery of Modern Art, New York". Four pages are devoted to an interview with RM by RR (pictured together), who asks some silly questions, e.g. "Who are the best critics?" (RM: "the ones who like my work best"). The brochure ends with a copyright notice by Raymond Rohauer.

The Gay Desperado: there's a long-OOP Milestone DVD. I'm not sure if all the European DVDs are legit (I've only seen the film in my off-air recording).

The US Warner Archive Blu-rays should all be region-free and they've now released Dr Jekyll in the UK too.

[colinr0380]

I'm afraid that I cannot contribute much, but here's Alex Cox introducing Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in the BBC's "Forbidden Weekend" season from 1995.

[domino harvey]

Thanks everyone, I've updated the first post

I also like his Zorro, it’s lightweight (though with some interesting smuggled-in commentary on World War II similar to the The Sea Hawk) but a fun romp.

I like the Mark of Zorro too-- though not, I think, for anything Mamoulian brings to it. I agree it's a fun movie, even if it's a little odd that sixteen year old Linda Darnell plays the adult romantic lead in it...

Unfortunately, I didn't much enjoy my viewing today of the return pairing of Darnell and Tyrone Power in Blood and Sand, which is a standard issue rise and fall sports movie with a few "exotic" touches of Spain As Seen By Hollywood (with the helpful addition of the film at one point beggaring belief by asking the audience to accept John Carradine as a man in his early 20s). If Ritrovata was trying to sell this as the best film of any director, as Red Screamer relayed, they are clearly trying too hard. There is virtually nothing here out of the usual for the Fox House Style, and other than a shot early on of the teenage version of Power's character slaying the shadow of a bull's head, I saw no imprint from other Mamoulian films. Yet another installment of the dangers and limits of auteurism

[reaky]

I adore Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Queen Christina (both of which inject some heady eroticism into their genres), but I’ve always been bewildered by the praise for Silk Stockings, which is so generic it could have been directed by Gordon Douglas. His is a back catalogue of pablum with the odd massive hit.

[Mr Sausage]

Unfortunately, I didn't much enjoy my viewing today of the return pairing of Darnell and Tyrone Power in Blood and Sand, which is a standard issue rise and fall sports movie with a few "exotic" touches of Spain As Seen By Hollywood (with the helpful addition of the film at one point beggaring belief by asking the audience to accept John Carradine as a man in his early 20s). If Ritrovata was trying to sell this as the best film of any director, as Red Screamer relayed, they are clearly trying too hard. There is virtually nothing here out of the usual for the Fox House Style, and other than a shot early on of the teenage version of Power's character slaying the shadow of a bull's head, I saw no imprint from other Mamoulian films. Yet another installment of the dangers and limits of auteurism

While it's been, like, 15 years since I saw it, I remember enjoying the expressive symbolism Mamoulian brought to it, including the image I remember most vividly: Power giving Laird Cregar a 'baptism of blood' by popping a wineskin over him.

[hearthesilence]

I haven't seen it yet, but I didn't realize Silk Stockings was held in such high regard by other film scholars. I was under the impression it was mostly of interest as a star vehicle for Astaire - that is, he's great and pretty much the reason to watch it.

[Red Screamer]

I think Milne’s opinion isn’t widely shared, actually, and like I said he goes to bat hard for nearly every film in Mamoulian’s discography while valorizing the man himself, so he’s a critic deep in his camp. As far as I can tell, the consensus favorites are Love Me Tonight, Applause, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Queen Christina. Sarris famously called him “an innovator who ran out of innovations.”

[Finch]

I might revisit The Mask of Zorro tomorrow since I'm down with a cold but I remember it being a lot of fun if not in the same league as the best Flynn swashbucklers. Queen Christina is the other Mamoulian I have on disc and the finale never fails to move me.

[JamesF]

The Ritrovata retrospective was a lot of fun, and many people (myself included) were humming “Isn’t It Romantic?” and declaring Love Me Tonight the discovery of the year. A day or two after the Dr Jekyll screening from the 4K restoration (most of the rest were screened from prints), at the start of another film, it was announced that Kevin Brownlow had an additional minute or so of prostitute stripteasing in his 16mm print, which we were treated to an SD video screening of. Silk Stockings may be lame but it does at least have Peter Lorre hanging around in the middle of some of its musical numbers, joining in the choreography.