For a century, 20th Century Fox was a production machine, churning out volumes of motion pictures annually, but never achieving the greatness seen by the likes of MGM and Paramount. Yet its key movie star assets, its box office successes, and award-winning films were few and far between. In 20th Century-Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio, writer Scott Eyman takes movie fans back to the beginning and introduces readers to sometimes successful, sometimes not successful businessmen who built theaters and the movies to screen in them, keying in on the mergers that brought William Fox, formerly immigrant Wilhelm Fuchs, to build a corporation that Darryl F. Zanuck would take through important decades of the 21st century. Both film buffs and historians of the era of film’s Golden Age will find a history in Turner Classic Movies/TCM’s latest film production chronicle, connected by memorable films from its first Oscar-winner, 1927’s Sunrise, to its last, 2019’s Ford v. Ferrari, telling a story of the rise and fall of a movie empire. TCM’s 20th Century-Fox is just out from publisher Running Press and available here at Amazon.
For both film buffs and a new generation of a movie fans, a definitive guide to the most influential film directors–spanning a century of Hollywood creativity–will soon be a fixture in libraries everywhere. Turner Classic Movies/TCM and film writer Sloan De Forest, author of TCM’s Dynamic Dames (reviewed here) and TCM’s Must-See Sci-fi (reviewed here), chronicle 58 directors, their works, and influence on the filmmaking in TCM’s The Essential Directors: The Art and Impact of Cinema’s Most Influential Filmmakers. From Charlie Chaplin to Steven Spielberg, these are the directors that film aficionados will be unlikely to quibble with. Some made their marks as household names, others are legendary auteurs, while others provided a singular film or image that has made them synonymous with Hollywood royalty. From epic dramas, to laugh-out-loud comedies, readers will find TCM’s Essential Directors as the go-to source for the heavy-hitters behind the biggest movies in history.
Last month I reviewed TCM’s Summer Movies: 30 Sun-Drenched Classics, the eighth volume reviewed here at borg in the TCM library. TCM is busy with new releases this year, and its look at film noir takes a different approach. Written by Noir Alley host Eddie Muller, The Art of Noirauthor and proclaimed Czar of Noir, Dark City: The Lost World of Film Noir (available now in bookstores and at Amazon here) is actually an update of his 1998 look at film noir of the same name. It’s an essential look at the genre for both novices and diehard fans, providing just enough about the key films to entice readers to add several movies to their DVR, and giving long-time noir audiences new ways to think about some classic films. Whenever I hear someone referred to as an expert in genre, I make notes. Here I made a list of what those essential and important obscure noir films should make any book on film noir. Muller includes discussions of all of them except one, from Laura and Shadow of a Doubt to DOA, from Sorry, Wrong Number, Sunset Boulevard, and Call Northside 777, to The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and Chinatown. So the book by all counts is the real deal and worthy of its accolades for both its original and new edition. Unlike some of the other TCM books I’ve reviewed here at borg, Dark City: The Lost World of Film is not only an annotated guide to a list of recommended movies. What film noir movies would you expect to find inside?
It’s one thing to make a film about a notably B-level filmmaker and arrive at a success like the 1994 acclaimed black and white biopic Ed Wood. But when you try the same thing about one of the best films ever made, you’re practically set up for failure. It would take some kind of miracle to take Jack Fincher’s clunky, meandering script for the new Netflix film Mank and make it work. A hodgepodge of character study and Hollywood quotes, plucking half-truths and grand real-life names of Hollywood’s past, Mank misfires from poor directing decisions and camera work, a lack of understanding or attention to re-creating the magic of black and white film in the color era. What could have been a love letter to one of America’s greatest celebrated films paints a picture of a screenwriter who, rightly or wrongly, comes off as an unlikeable drunk who couldn’t possibly deserve our attention.
It looks entirely like an experimental expressionistic film, something created by an aspiring filmmaker in film school, maybe an ambitious effort to create something historical and strange like Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. Is production and costume designer-turned-director Robert Eggers′ The Lighthouse simply a horror movie about two lighthouse keepers or can we hope for something bigger, more of metaphor and allegory? Shot in black and white 35mm film, the initial appeal is for anyone fond of classic black and white Gothic horror. It’s billed as psychological horror, but will it feature psychological horrors of today or stick with more reserved terrors that reflect its more tempting, classic appearance?
The Lighthousestars character actor Willem Dafoe, and co-stars Robert Pattinson in his most public role since the announcement he will don the cowl and cape in a forthcoming Batman movie. Remember Michael Keaton releasing Beetlejuice, Clean and Sober, and The Dream Team with the new acting range spin to get us prepared to see him on the big screen as the dark knight detective? Genre niche popularity of the Twilight series and his brief stint in the Harry Potter franchise aside, Pattinson hasn’t had the universal appeal and popularity Keaton had with Night Shift and Mr. Mom, making him a household name. Can he convince fanboys and fangirls he has what it takes? Can audiences push the future aside and appreciate The Lighthouse for whatever Eggers is trying to do?
As for Eggers, who co-wrote the story with brother Max, this is his second film after the Anya Taylor-Joy vehicle The Witch. Here he’s trying that tried and re-tried convention of bringing black and white films to modern audiences. It often works, as it did with popular and critical success for Paper Moon, Young Frankenstein, Raging Bull, Dead Again, Schindler’s List,The Artist, Logan Noir, and Roma.
Take a look at this nicely moody trailer for The Lighthouse:
A leg thrown over the arm of a chair. A monster tossing a girl into the river. A gangster with a Tommy Gun shooting a room full of people. A woman is expecting a baby. A man bites a woman to drink her blood. Actresses backstage get ready for a show. Dancers on stage kick their legs. “Kept” women. Physical violence.
Rural audiences and even film goers in big cities like Chicago would label all this as “smut” or “disgraceful” back in the day. In the realm of what is appropriate and what is not, the cinema has approached each new boundary with baby steps. But in the Depression-era early 1930s, many previously unaccepted concepts soared onto film. A new book takes a look at this era, now referred to by film historians as the “Pre-Code Era”–1930 to 1934–a time when the self-regulating movie industry pushed the bounds of its own rules, only to hit a wall when the public pushed back. Turner Classic Movies′ Forbidden Hollywood takes an educational, film school-level walk through an industry fighting within itself to both make money and please an audience it would find varied widely by geography, down to the community level. The handling of decency by the industry would have ramifications that would have an impact on generations of film creators and audiences. The chaos and in-fights would last until July 1934, when religious groups combined to take a stand, prompting the industry to bow to their demands with the formation of the League of Decency. That group would govern movie standards for nearly 35 years–until the ratings system would arrive in 1968. Even real-world gangster Al Capone thought the new, 1930s era of movies was bad for kids, saying “These gang pictures–that’s terrible kid stuff. They’re doing nothing but harm to the younger element of the country.”
Film historian Mark A. Vieira provides a scholarly examination of the studios, the directors, producers, and writers, including excerpts of decisions made and processes followed (and not followed), resulting in the promotion of the careers of some of Hollywood’s biggest names: Jean Harlow, Barbara Stanwyck, Myrna Loy, Mae West, Joan Crawford, Marlena Dietrich, Clara Bow, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, James Cagney, Ward Bond, Bela Legosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney. Looking at elements incorporated into–or scissor cut from–dozens of films, including The Divorcee, Dishonored, Grand Hotel, Dracula,A Farewell to Arms, 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, Riptide, Red-Headed Woman, She Done Him Wrong, Call Her Savage, Convention City, and Frankenstein, Vieira takes an objective look at the factors that influenced all sides in determining what would be appropriate in the movies and what role movies would take in society.
Around this time last year, my good friend Steve suggested that we check out A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014) at the Silent Movie Theater here in Los Angeles and I had no clue what it was. I briefly checked the description, saw a positive Metacritic score and thought to myself, “Why the heck not?” I ended up seeing a fantastic slow-burning film that made the vampire genre fresh. I also saw one of the best images to portray a character in a long time.
Early in the film, the co-protagonist girl vampire decides to go home with a drug dealer who had previously threatened the other protagonist as well as a local streetwalker. As he bursts into his lair, he walks by a large fish tank and gives it a smack. Seconds later he’s doing lines of cocaine on a glass table, a mounted deer head and a mounted antelope head on the wall behind him, before turning on the annoying techno. He sits on a couch draped with a blanket of what looks like tigers that would jump out under black light. In the corner there is a hookah. As the girl vampire explores the rest of the pad, she finds a set of drums just below a large marijuana leaf poster. I laughed to myself as I immediately realized I had in those brief seconds already characterized this asshole in my mind with no redeeming qualities. Sure, the actions earlier helped, but that apartment spoke to me clearly and it screamed into my brain “HE IS A DOUCHEBRO.”
Those items and that music might not mean the same thing to every person. Maybe to others they see a seedy drug-dealing criminal. Some may see a guy that is definitely more current in his musical taste than I (as Clem Snide and The Replacements play as I write.) Others may see an advocate for marijuana besides business reasons that has been stigmatized due to its frequent use by hippies and non-WASPs. (I put myself in the advocate camp, by the way, as the criminalization and the imprisonment of many people in jail due to marijuana related offenses seems to be one of the many effects of the inherent racism in our justice system. But, that’s for another discussion at another time by others much more qualified than I. Check out Deray McKesson on Twitter to start your journey on that front or some of the great essays in The Atlantic by Ta-Nehisi Coates, the soon-to-be author of the Marvel comic Black Panther). I just know that for my viewpoint, the more the scene unfolded, the more it verified my judgment.
Such is the magic of great set design. As a background actor, I get to see lots of set design up close. Items might not show up distinctly on camera, but choices get made in the costume, prop and set departments that impact the feel of a scene. The care that the professionals take in these aspects of filmed entertainment mesmerizes me more than most things.
Reservations for the Bates Motel await you at your local theater later this month.
Mother would be pleased.
Turner Classic Movies is teaming up again with Universal Pictures Home Entertainment and Fathom Events to bring a film classic back to theaters for a limited screening. This time it’s Alfred Hitchcock’s black and white classic thriller Psycho, which first shocked audiences 55 years ago. It’s back, but for only two days.
We all go a little mad sometimes.
TCM host Ben Mankiewicz will introduce the show with a brief short about the movie, which will air at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. local time Sunday, September 20, 2015, and Wednesday, September 23, 2015.
