Arnaud Desplechin is one of the major figures of world cinema. His filmography includes such acclaimed works as KINGS & QUEEN (2004), A CHRISTMAS TALE (2008), JIMMY PICARD (2013) and the new MY GOLDEN DAYS. Below he talks about his films, performers and the importance of classic films to him and to his work. Enjoy.
Last year, we posted about a vimeo archive of Dallas area press junket videos. It made for hours of fascinating viewing, especially all the awkward behind-the-scenes stuff. Now, the amazing Texas Archive Of The Moving Image (TAMI) has uploaded more such videos, from Austin reporter Carolyn Jackson.
There are interviews with Ridley Scott, Jane Fonda, Richard Pryor, Susan Sarandon, Warren Beatty and many others.
It’s all right here. Enjoy.
There is, as of yet, no official holiday commemorating those character actors who turn up in large numbers of organized-crime movies or television shows, but if there were such a holiday, today would be a great day for it.
Take a look at who was born on this date:
Remember how Terrence Malick used to keep us waiting for years or decades between films? He’s quickened his pace a little but it still seems like we’ve been waiting a long time for his new one KNIGHT OF CUPS.
Now there are two new clips from the film online here.
Even better than that, there will be a free screening of the film for AFS members on Tuesday, March 8 at the Marchesa. This is a big deal. If you’re not a member, it is cheap and easy to sign up. You can do that here.
Sal Mineo, who was murdered under still-mysterious circumstances 40 years ago today, will of course always be best remembered for his deeply affecting performance as Plato in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE. It’s one of those rare perfectly cast movies and Mineo achieves his own immortality in the film alongside James Dean and Natalie Wood.
He appeared in many other films too, of course, but starring roles were few and far between for him. Perhaps his second finest moment was in a disturbing psychological thriller from 1965 called WHO KILLED TEDDY BEAR? It’s not often seen or discussed, and to be frank, it has real flaws. It is directed by stage and TV journeyman Joseph Cates and written by Arnold Drake, probably otherwise best known as a comic-book writer – he created the Guardians Of The Galaxy.
Mineo, who is excellent, stars as a young man employed as a nightclub waiter, tormented by his own sexual hangups, who falls for the club’s new DJ, glamorous Juliet Prowse, and is ripped apart by his inner conflicts, which boil over into their lives. As you can probably guess, it does not end well for anyone.
The film is made with a raw edge, enhanced by its cheapness and the sleaziness of its real locations.
The emotional high point of the film is the following scene, when the (dangerously) emotionally reserved Mineo dances with Prowse for the first time and it’s sexy and dangerous all at the same time. They are both dancing in character and it’s a hundred times more effective than an hour of dialogue could ever be. This is a special scene, enhanced by an amazing song by Bob Gaudio and Al Kasha, which somehow was never released as a single.
At the time of making WINGS OF DESIRE, Alekan (born on this date in 1909) was 78 years old and one of the known masters of light in the world. Chosen by Eugen Schüfftan (who counted Gance’s NAPOLEON and Lang’s METROPOLIS among his piddling credits) as his camera operator, Alekan assisted the master on Marcel Carné’s PORT OF SHADOWS and continued work in this vein until the war, when he joined the French Resistance and fought bravely against Hitler and his Vichy minions, even escaping from a Nazi P.O.W. camp to continue the fight.
in 1946 Alekan shot the remarkable BATTLE OF THE RAILS, which showed the world for the first time what life under the Nazi occupation had been like. Many of the cast and crew members of the film had been Alekan’s comrades in the Resistance.
His next feature was Jean Cocteau’s BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (1946) which I believe we are safe in calling one of the most magical achievements in cinematography. His subsequent – very busy – career includes many high points – Wyler’s ROMAN HOLIDAY (1953), Jules Dassin’s fine heist movie TOPKAPI (1964), the bizarre, but beautifully-shot, samurai western RED SUN (1971), Raul Ruiz’ surreal 1982 film ON TOP OF THE WHALE, and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s still-underrated 1983 erotic drama LA BELLE CAPTIVE, among many, many others. But it is Wenders’ 1987 WINGS OF DESIRE that best calls upon Alekan’s special genius for computing the equation of light and shadow (and mirrors, as it turns out) that results in visual magic.
Here’s a wide-ranging 1999 interview with Alekan in which he discusses a lot of his career high points. A sample:
Interviewer: I know that you prefer to create effects in the camera rather than turning over to the laboratory the production of effects. I imagine that there are several factors in play in this preference – such as the challenge for you, and the viewer experiencing a greater authenticity in an effect produced in the camera.
Alekan: I think perhaps the word authentic isn’t fully appropriate. Maybe it’s the fact that the tricks done in the camera are tricks carried out by a person. While tricks done in the laboratory – though obviously also carried out by a person – involve a good bit of science. And there is a difference between scientific, rational thought and artistic, emotional thought. I just don’t believe that electronic effects can make the public experience the same communication you can achieve with a trick that is manually executed. The proof is that in the theater, the tricks are almost always done manually. And I think we fully accept the little risks, even the imperfections, that can suddenly turn up in a theatrical trick effect.
Cinematic effects are much more advanced, it’s true. The public shouldn’t realize that we are using an effect. But they have to feel the same emotion as the person who has created the effect. Then you are dealing with people, with grips, gaffers, cameramen, who play with the effect like musicians in an orchestra. A recorded concert doesn’t move me in the same way as a concert experienced in a theater and in the presence of the musicians. And I think that trick effects in the cinema work the same way.
James Dean, born in 1931 in Indiana, found his calling as an actor early, while appearing in stage productions during his one semester at UCLA. He began making the Hollywood rounds in 1951, playing bit parts in television shows and movies (including Samuel Fuller’s FIXED BAYONETS and Douglas Sirk’s HAS ANYBODY SEEN MY GAL?).
It was during this period that over 300 members Screen Directors Guild (subsequently known as the Directors Guild of America) met on October 22, 1950 to discuss a new proposal which would require all directors to take an oath of loyalty to the United States and file detailed reports about the loyalty of all their co-workers. The Hollywood establishment was worried that accusations of communist leanings would bring sanctions from Washington and a vocal segment of the industry vowed to clean house.
I’ll let the DGA’s official historian take it from here.
It’s a thrilling procedural, with Cecil B. DeMille as the instigator of the loyalty proposal and cast of characters including Frank Capra, John Huston, Nicholas Ray, Robert Wise, Vincente Minnelli, Fritz Lang, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, George Stevens, and, maybe most iconically, John Ford, who delivered the coup de grâce to DeMille’s witch hunt:
“Finally, after midnight, Ford raised his hand with a director’s sense of drama and timing.
“My name is John Ford. I am a director of Westerns…. I have been sick and tired and ashamed of this whole goddamn thing—I don’t care which side it is,” Ford told the crowd. “If they intend to break up the Guild, they’ve pretty well done it tonight…. I don’t think we should [be] putting out derogatory information about a director, whether he is a Communist, beats his mother-in-law, or beats dogs. That is not our purpose.”
Playing the conciliator, he added, “I don’t agree with C.B. DeMille. I admire him. I don’t like him, but I admire him….You know when you get the two blackest Republicans I know, Joseph Mankiewicz and C.B. DeMille, and they start a fight over communism, it is getting laughable to me.”
The Guild, Ford said, was in crisis and needed to clean house. Then he dropped his bombshell: “There is only one alternative, and that is for the board of directors to resign and elect a new board.” His words were greeted with a roar of applause and cheers.
Ford’s proposal offered a way out, and the bleary-eyed members, some of whom were due on their sets in only a few hours, voted on the motion by ballot. The announcement by Mankiewicz of its passage earned the night’s final ovation, whereupon each of the board members rose to offer his resignation. The image of a battered, humiliated DeMille descending from the podium and withdrawing defiantly to the back of the hall was a memory few would forget.”
The documentary RICHARD LINKLATER: DREAM IS DESTINY screened at Sundance yesterday and the first reviews are in. The doc, directed by Louis Black and Karen Bernstein, gives audiences the most complete portrait yet of Richard Linklater, writer, director and, yes, founder and Artistic Director of the Austin Film Society.
John DeFore at The Hollywood Reporter calls the film “One of the most enriching and enjoyable docs about a filmmaker in recent memory,” and gives us the following appetizing teaser:
“The film offers plentiful pre-moviemaking biographical material and spends enjoyable time thumbing through the spiral notebooks where Linklater kept journals full of big ideas. Offering wisdom any wannabe auteur should heed, Linklater describes his approach to the one-man production of his pre-Slacker feature It’s Impossible to Learn to Plow by Reading Books (“It’s a long time before your technical skills catch up to your ideas.”) and shows the meticulous, Walden-inspired accounts he kept of how he spent his money and time in those days.”
The Guardian review notes that:
“The years which led up to him making Slacker are joyously depicted. In high school, Linklater loved baseball and at one point attempted to write a biography of Dostoyevsky. Then he decided to switch from being an aspiring novelist and playwright to making films. He made his own one-man productions, recording the sound on a Walkman. He moved to Austin and found like-minded friends who started a film club and would eventually become the crew and production unit behind Slacker.”
And finally, Joe Gross at the Austin American Statesman’s Austin 360 blog share the news that the film will be broadcast as part of PBS’ American Masters series after its theatrical run.
Abe Vigoda, who died today at the age of 94, seemed like a great guy. He was blessed with an unforgettable face and he was a fine actor whom everyone who worked with him seemed to love. Today most of us know him best from his role in THE GODFATHER as Sal Tessio. He was also one of the stars of the very successful comedy series BARNEY MILLER. Significantly, in MTV’s obituary they refer to him as the star of 1997’s GOOD BURGER. He lived so long that even his longevity became a fond joke.
Here is Vigoda in the place we would least expect to find him, on Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s sex advice talk show. He’s very sharp, funny and deeply lovable as he talks with Westheimer. Don’t expect much sex advice, he’s strictly business.
