Rocco and his brothers -1960

(black and white, 180 min, Italian)

Also known as  Rocco e i suoi fratelli  this film made Alain Delon a star and Luchino Visconti with La Terra Trema, Ossessione behind him, held promise as a film director to watch out for. He fulfilled that promise with some first rate works like The Leopard(1963), Senso (1954) and Death in Venice(1970) according to the order in quality. All the three are in color. As preface to Rocco and his brothers I shall merely mention that his films have a certain similarity in treatment. In Roger Egbert’s words’The experience of watching “Rocco and His Brothers” is rather overwhelming. So much happens, at such intensity and complexity, with such an outpouring of emotion, that we do feel we’re witnessing an opera.’ Yes it is  operatic in the intensity of drama which is needed to tie up the several strands of the story as a whole by the emotional power of some scenes. It succeeds and the success of the film has to be judged by its effect on the viewer.

Luchino Visconti’s saga centers around Rosario an impoverished widow and her five children. At the beginning she is arriving at the station in Milan,  the  industrial hub of the northern Italy. The fifth son, Vincenzo, has already established himself there but has  failed to meet them at the station. The family starts their life in Milan on inauspicious circumstances and we are given a run through of the contrast in their nature. Simon is sluggard and would rather stay in bed while the brothers raring to find work because of  snow fallen overnight. Country bumpkins they are they are amused there is work to be had in cleaning up the streets. Back in their village snow would have melted without anybody’s notice.

Rocco is silent and almost a sleepy head still living in the coziness of his past.  The unsinkable matriarch Rosaria (the great Greek actress Katina Paxinou) keeps tight control of the boys urging them to go out and achieve their place in the sun.  She mothers them and also plays up to them according to their usefulness to the family and family pride to let the neighbors know their achievements however small. Each of these brothers represents a type — upright Ciro (Max Cartier), naïve Simone, self-sacrificing Rocco (Alain Delon), etc. — but Visconti, whose extensive experience as a stage director may have made him more than usually sensitive to actors, elicits superbly gritty performances, guiding them out of the stereotype into full-bodied characterizations.

Simone becomes a successful boxer but also a drunk, a thief, and a rapist. Ciro gets steady work in a car factory, to the joy of Rosaria and the disgust of Simone. To his mother’s horror, Simone takes up with a whore, Nadia (Annie Girardot), who falls in love with Rocco, widening the rift between the devoted brothers. And so it goes, toward the inevitable tragedy.

It is Simone who turns bad, filled with low self-esteem, proud of his wins but negligent of his training — smoking and drinking too much, and finally losing both Nadia and his boxing career.

Rocco steps in behind him, starting a liaison with Nadia and also a successful boxing career (which he doesn’t even want). But when Simone explodes with grief and jealousy (truly operatic, these scenes), there is a disgusting scene where Nadia is humiliated before the saintly Rocco who is helpless and in shock. He astonishingly breaks with Nadia, telling her she must return to his brother because, “He has only you.” In his eyes it is not his physical need but the cohesiveness of the family is uppermost. In a tearful melodramatic scene Nadia brilliantly emotes the heartbreak of  being humiliated to the core.

When Simone finally goes berserk and kills her it is as operatic as Madama Butterfly resotres her honor after being jilted. The rape scene as well as the  murder scene, aroused the wrath of the Italian censors, who had great difficulties with the film and its seamy portrait of life.

Annie Girardot’s prostitute Nadia also shows Visconti’s refusal to sugarcoat his vision. Her spiral from charismatic and self-assured cynic to bitter victim, ruined as much by the boys’ unnatural devotion to each other as by the exigencies of her lifestyle, is a cinematic highlight that makes the film unforgettable.

The film is structured on series of  contrasts that is brought out in  many ways. It is north versus south of which Milan the Industrial city is of the foreground and Lucania, kind of lost paradise which, as often the case is, lives only in memory. In the episodic nature of following the lives of five brothers we see how their individual characters unformed before they arrive and undergo changes as an indictment of the corruptive influence of citylife on the plasticine character. Low key lighting also underscore drab conditions contrasted with their affluence at the latter part.

Visconti’s   La Terra Trema (1948) established his  credentials as a director and here we see a mature work that can be ranked a masterpiece in the genre.Queer Marxist-aristocrat Visconti had enormous problems with Italy’s homophobic, reality-phobic government and church. The powers-that-be weren’t exactly thrilled that Rocco was unabashedly documenting the desperate shift in population from south, with its crushing poverty, to the north, which was threatening to sink under the weight of all those emigrants. Visconti was denied promised permits, forced to shoot in unsuitable locations, and humiliated when deep cuts were made and other scenes in this visually arresting film were darkened to obscure the action. And it couldn’t have pleased the director that Rocco‘s troubles were credited with inspiring authorities to attack Fellini’sLa Dolce Vita and Antonioni’s L’Avventura

The film is shot in carefully composed black and white that foregrounds the brothers and Nadia in many shots, showing them listening or reacting to what is happening behind them.  ”Rocco and His Brothers” can be seen quite clearly, at this point, as an enormous influence on great American gangster films. Aspects of the Godfather immediately come into mind. And the critic D.K. Holm observes: “The tense, penitent relationship between Charlie( Harvey Keitel) and Johnny Boy(Di Niro) in  Martin Scorsese’s ‘Mean Streets’ is almost unimaginable without the precedence of ‘Rocco and His Brothers.’ ” At a very subtle level, the love between the brothers seems too close for comfort. Unhealthy bond to keep the fraternity from breaking or finding their own ways in life must seem so. Even when towards the end where Simone confesses to Rocco of murder Ciro is for reporting to the police while Rocco fights with Ciro and vows to defend him.

There’s a great passage near the end, when Rocco has a great triumph on the same night when Simone ruins himself. Two fights, in a sense, are intercut. The neighbors pour out on to the balconies to cheer Rocco as a new champion, and then Simone comes home in wretched defeat to the always forgiving arms of his mother. The way the two story strands come together’ is manipulative, yes, but deeply effective’ (Egbert).

Of course Nino Rota’s them music as always gives the necessary pathos to the five brothers growing up in an alien environment.

benny

All Quiet on the Western Front-1930

Great Scenes

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) is one of the early sound films that can truly be classed as the first major anti-war film and anticipated La Illusion Grande of Jean Renoir by seven years. The film was based upon the 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque who had experienced the war first-hand as a young German soldier. This landmark, epic film, made on a large-scale budget of $1.25 million for Universal Pictures was a critical and financial success – the grainy black and white film is still not dated and the film hasn’t lost its initial impact. From four Academy Award nominations, it won the Academy Award for Best Picture (the third winner in the history of AMPAS) and Best Director (Lewis Milestone with his first sound feature), and it was also nominated for Best Writing Achievement (George Abbott, Maxwell Anderson, and Del Andrews) and Best Cinematography (Arthur Edeson). Smarting from war wounds naturally the Nazi government of the 30s denounced
The film for its anti-militaristic tone and till 1956 it was banned in Italy.
This story is neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war…

Unlike Remarque’s novel that begins with the young men already at war, with flashbacks to earlier times, the film is told in a logical, chronological fashion. The content of the film can be divided into four distinct parts:

1. the pre-war education of schoolboys, and the enlistment of the young German recruits
2. the soldiers’ arrival at the front of World War I
3. the experiences of the cruelties and horrors of war in trench warfare
4. the hero’s homecoming, return to the front, and ultimate death

The film is episodic and in a series of vignettes and scenes we are given a soldier’s point of view which conveys the senselessness of war. We have quite a few war films, including Platoon (1986), Full Metal Jacket (1987), and Saving Private Ryan (1998)  from the point of view of the cannon fodder who shall find no glory on the battlefield, meeting only death and disillusionment. The soldier sums up his view poignantly,  “ And our bodies are earth. And our thoughts are clay. And we sleep and eat with death”.
This film is singular in giving it from a young German’s point of view and not from grandstand of the Allies. Whichever point of view you take will not make the war smell any more fresh than the blackest heart of the warmonger. Kaiser and Hitler sent raw recruits to the eye of the storm and they held consultations with generals over maps, and do you think they ever give a thought to the common soldier.
Tjaden: “Me and the Kaiser, we are both fighting. The only difference is the Kaiser isn’t here!”

Finally let me give one of the most memorable scenes from the film. How shall one give a soldier’s untimely death its grandeur? Would a pool of blood express it in proper measure?  There is no heroism that can adequately express his life when it is taken from him. He obeys higher authority to kill and if he is killed it is only bad luck.  Even in final scene just before Armistice is declared the soldier shows us he has been subjected to the most wretched experience any man can impose on another, and yet he has not lost the purity of his soul. It may be as fragile as a butterfly enjoying a brief moment of sunshine. In his reaching out for it we know it is so. For one brief moment of clarity he is connected to it as an equal : both are vulnerable and not proof against the hazards of life.
“ In the unforgettable final moments of this film, just before the “all quiet on the western front” armistice and with all of his comrades gone, soldiers are bailing water out of a dilapidated trench. The faint sound of a harmonica can be heard. Paul (Lew Ayres), a young German soldier, is sitting alone, daydreaming inside the trench on a seemingly peaceful, bright day. He is exhausted by terror and boredom. Through the gunhole of his trench, he sees a beautiful lone butterfly that has alighted just beyond his reach next to a discarded tin can outside the parapet. He begins to carefully reach out over the protection of his bunker with his hand to grasp it, momentarily forgetting the danger that is ever-present. As he stretches his hand out yearning for its beauty, a distant French sniper prepares to take careful aim through a scope on a rifle. As he leans out closer to the fragile butterfly and extends his hand, suddenly the sharp whining sound of a shot is heard. Paul’s hand jerks back, twitches for a moment and then goes limp in death. All is silent and quiet. The harmonica tune stops”.(ack: tim dirks-filmsite.org)

benny

La Dolce Vita-1960

The quote
“Don’t be like me… I’m too serious to be a dilettante and too much a dabbler to be a professional. Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.” is at the core of the movie. Perhaps it shall explain the episodic nature of La Dolce Vita: under its very entertaining surface is the tragic decline of journalist/novelist Marcello Rubini (Marcello Mastroianni) in terms of his art and personal life. The decline must come in degrees and human life,- its  success or failure , is not seamless as one might think.

Marcello and a swarm of photographers sit around on the Via Veneto all hours of the night, waiting for celebrity news to happen. The emptiness of contemporary Roman life is well drawn whether out in the streets or in the intellectual set of Streiner. Marcello’s vain search for fulfillment is the movie’s great tragedy. He dreams of becoming a serious writer, but hasn’t the courage to pursue it. He is too busy trying to become part of the ‘sweet life’. A lot of his time is spent in the arms of beautiful, bored society women such as Maddalena (Anouk Aimée), despite his engagement to the overly-possessive Emma (Yvonne Furneaux).
When Steiner murders his children and commits suicide in desperation, Marcello is left directionless. The following scene when the photographers are scurrying around the mother as she is informed that her children have been murdered is one of the most chilling and (unfortunately) prophetic scenes and it anticipates the degrading, voyeuristic nature of the modern news media.
At the film’s conclusion, the defeated Marcello ends up on a beach the morning after a drunken orgy. He collapses in the sand with a self-mocking laugh. The ultimate sadness of the movie is apparent when he glimpses the innocent Paola in the distance, calling to him (he cannot hear over the roar of the sea). Marcello waves to her in recognition, but then is forced to turn away, ashamed with himself. He wanders back to his crowd of shallow party people to go on the same old way.
La Dolce Vita is a modern parable. Fellini cinematically loads it with irony and brittleness of la dolce vita. Whenever a movie of this high calibre and of gradations is handled by a Fellini or Antonioni, one may be pardoned if the reviewer looks for comparison from Dante. The Italian humanism that Divine Comedy has inculcated ever since Dante is hard to resist. The protagonist is somewhat like Dante and the high soceity of a decadent post-war Rome could be hell.
Dante had Beatrice, Paola (Valeria Ciangottini) as she is called here, whom Fellini introduces toward the middle and also at the end. She appears first as a fresh-faced girl in the café, conjuring up visions of a nuova vita of what could be. She represents a simpler life away from the city and the over-complications of modern existence. Marcello is impressed with her innocence and gaiety but has his daily grind to attend to.
The modern Beatrice appears once again and waves to Marcello on the beach in the film’s final scene: she is telling something he is never able to hear, so he waves once, and turns back to the empty, inebriated crowd as they speculate about the unknowability of nature, embodied by a monstrous, bloated fish.
Marcello is the modern, urban human, trapped in an absurd universe. He has chosen a miserable life because of his livelihood and in the process inflicts misery on those who mean most to him. If he slowly becomes trapped in his free amoral lifestyle how far is he responsible? Interesting question,- and Fellini analyses the society neither with contempt or with affection.
LA DOLCE VITA’s visual style is poetic, some of its characters are more than compelling and hard to forget, and its musical score by Nino Rota isas always memorable. Fellini is known for his free directorial style and never being bound by written word. Spontaneity therefore is at premium and he builds film in series of ideas like a Seurat’s painting, letting them acquire an increased significance in the way they are juxtaposed:
The film’s opening scene shows of a giant image of Christ being airlifted and in a series of shots leisurely lingering over the ruins and burgeoning townships and blocks of apartments we follow the crew of reporters in another chopper: they are more keen to ogle at the sunbathers thus introducing the basic dichotomy: lust for life where religion has its part and also for sins of the flesh. Either way it is shallow and impersonal. The most memorable sequence features Anita Ekberg as an impossibly beautiful Hollywood starlet at the fountain of Trei. Sylvia (Ekberg), has descended on Rome on a promotional stop for her new movie. The press junket soon turns into a drunken nighttime party. After an enormously entertaining dance sequence (it’s a wonderful moment when you realise you have been seduced into this sweet life), Marcello and Sylvia escape to wander the deserted streets of Rome. She, seeming to epitomise the profane love in contrast to Paola the sacred love. When Marcello takes her back to the hotel her drunken husband knocks him  down, a scene that brings the paparazzi, colleagues of Marcello all scurrying around to get their best shot.
Marcello soon becomes disenchanted by his spiritually empty life and looks to the intellectual family man Steiner as a role mode. Steiner is the key figure in the film. The young reporter sees the older man as a perfected, idealized version of himself. He longs to emulate Steiner and is convinced this man knows how to live life fully. There is irony aplenty in the entire Steiner narrative. When Marcello brings his wife to the Steiner party, they meet a few interesting, but mostly insufferable pretentious ‘intellectual’ types. Steiner himself associates with these people, yet does not truly seem to be one of them. He feels trapped by his own pretentious circle of intellectuals. When Marcello tell him how much he envies and admires him, Steiner replies the quote I cited at the outset.
Steiner’s subsequent suicide confirms the deep suspicion growing within the protagonist that all of existence, as he himself has known it thus far, is fundamentally absurd and meaningless. For this reason the film is existential in its outlook.

Fellini’s La Dolce Vita was made in 1959 and released in 1960. It is the ultimate cinematic portrait of a milieu, in this instance Rome in the 1950s. Some historical perspective: Rome became the international celebrity capital in the 1950s because Italy’s post-war exchange controls meant that a large proportion of Hollywood profits had to stay in Italy to finance films. Production was cheap (no Screen Actor’s Guild), the technicians were able, and the facilities of Cinecittà Studios were more than adequate for large-scale spectacles such as Quo Vadis (1950) and Ben-Hur (1959). So Hollywood’s stars ended up in Rome for long periods of time. Thus La Dolce Vita, a lifestyle of money, sex and indulgence was a natural outgrowth of post-war boom. Fellini as a true artist rises above moral issues to tell a story through a  series of images and leaves the audience to make their own interpretations.
This was also a great age of domestic Italian cinema: De Sica, Rossellini, Visconti, Monicelli, and of course Fellini, who was responsible for such films as La Strada (1954) and Nights of Cabiria (1957). La Dolce Vita was the last of his neorealist films.

Director:
Federico Fellini
Writers:
Federico Fellini (story) &
Ennio Flaiano (story) …

Won Oscar. Another 6 wins & 7 nominations more
Cast (in credits order)
Marcello Mastroianni    …     Marcello Rubini

Anita Ekberg    …     Sylvia

Anouk Aimée    …     Maddalena
Yvonne Furneaux    …     Emma
Magali Noël    …     Fanny
Alain Cuny    …     Steiner
Annibale Ninchi    …     Marcello’s father
Walter Santesso    …     Paparazzo
Valeria Ciangottini    …     Paola
Riccardo Garrone    …     Riccardo
Ida Galli    …     Debuttante of the Year
Audrey McDonald    …     Jane
Polidor    …     Clown
Alain Dijon    …     Frankie Stout
Enzo Cerusico    …     Newspaper photographer
Giulio Paradisi    …     Newspaper photographer
Enzo Doria    …     Newspaper photographer
Enrico Glori    …     Nadia’s Admirer
Adriana Moneta    …     Ninni
Massimo Busetti    …     Lying Child of The Miracle
Mino Doro    …     Nadia’s lover
Giulio Girola    …     Police Commissioner
Laura Betti    …     Laura
Nico    …     Herself (as Nico Otzak)
Domino    …     Transvestite dancer
Carlo Musto    …     Transvestite
Lex Barker    …     Robert
Jacques Sernas    …     Matinee Idol
Nadia Gray    …     Nadia

Quotes:
Marcello Rubini: You are the first woman on the first day of creation. You are mother, sister, lover, friend, angel, devil, earth, home.
Steiner: Don’t be like me. Salvation doesn’t lie within four walls. I’m too serious to be a dilettante and too much a dabbler to be a professional. Even the most miserable life is better than a sheltered existence in an organized society where everything is calculated and perfected.
Transvestite: By 1965 there’ll be total depravity. How squalid everything will be.
Marcello Rubini: [to Emma] A man who agrees to live like this is a finished man, he’s nothing but a worm! I don’t believe in your aggressive, sticky, maternal love! I don’t want it, I have no use for it! This isn’t love, it’s brutalization!
Steiner: We must get beyond passions, like a great work of art. In such miraculous harmony. We should love each other outside of time… detached.
Epilogue: many American tourists cruise Via Veneto,  and are surprised to find it never existed. In a way ‘la dolce vita,’ a spirit typical of fashionable parts of Rome  exists everywhere in cafes and restaurants and over the top boutiques; wherever  crowds hang out to chat, exchange ideas or shop for personal articles with designer labels the air is unmistakably physical and it appeals to the eyes and it has vibrancy. La dolce vita as shown in the movie was purely a product that existed only in the imagination of Federico Fellini, a poet more than a social commentator.

benny

The Informer-1935

The Informer is a John Ford film that suffers in comparison with his later works. This 1935 dramatic film, released by RKO was a painful episode for him and he, in later years was quite dismissive about it. (After a dismal preview–Ford was so devastated he left the theater and threw up–it looked as if the film would be consigned to a limited release and then forgotten). THE INFORMER was the surprise hit of the season for the struggling studio. This film was emotional in tone that gave way for a fine austere style Ford later cultivated. But THE INFORMER warrants our attention as one of Ford’s most emphatic and personal works (He came of Irish stock.) dealing with a painful subject: the Troubles following Easter Uprising of 1916 in Dublin.

The Informer is set in 1922, the period of the Black and Tans, when murder gangs from both sides went on with murders that were called ‘reprisals.’ The year Michael Collins would be waylaid and eliminated by one of his own people. The film works against this backdrop, on a much smaller canvas where an individual gets his comeuppance. It stars Victor McLaglen, Heather Angel, Preston Foster, Margot Grahame, Wallace Ford, Una O’Connor and J.M. Kerrigan.

The screenplay was written by Dudley Nichols from the novel of the same name by Liam O’Flaherty. It is about an oaf, but well-meaning Irishman, Gypo Nolan (Victor McLaglen), who informs on his best friend Frankie McPhillip (Wallace Ford) who is a member of the Irish Republican Army. At a time when lives of ordinary citizens in Dublin were not worth the bullet that could get them in the dark, Gypo must have been tempted. He has been ousted from the rebel organization and is starving. When he finds that his equally destitute sweetheart Katie has been reduced to prostitution, he takes his chance and betrays his former comrade, in order to collect the reward of £20. He hopes to sail to America with his girlfriend Katie Madden (Margot Grahame). The film traces his conscience-stricken emotional disintegration that eventually leads him to give himself away. That final act of retribution does come on a gloomy, foggy night. (Owing to the film’s low budget–shot in three weeks at $250,000, Ford had his scene designers, Van Nest Polgalse and Charles Kirk, “fog in” the set to mask the cheap painted backdrops and structures. So thickly does the fog blanket this cinematic Dublin that the film becomes a murky, atmospheric maze, perfectly symbolizing the state of mind of the ordinary blokes, rebels, politicians alike. An individual like Gypo Nolan could not equate ethics for his individual case. But when a politician like Eamon de Valera confuse over ethics and politics the loser would be Michael Collins and IRA. (No retribution did visit Eamon for his role or for his politics.)
‘As the lumbering Gypo Nolan, Ford cast the action star Victor McLaglen in a performance that used McLaglen’s own bulk and hamminess to create one of the sound cinema’s first authentic anti-heros. A one-time vaudeville and circus performer as well as a lesser prizefighter, McLaglen had also been one of the ‘Great White Hopes’ sent in to stop Black champion Jack Johnson. McLaglen lost in six rounds. As Gypo, McLaglen is a winner. His improvised dialogue in the trial sequence is high-key, and well-tuned to the desperation and suspense of the moment. McLaglen’s Oscar for best actor that year was well-earned. By the end of the shoot he was jittery and exhausted from the emotional demands an uncompromising Ford had placed on him’. — Kevin Hagopian, Penn State University

Trivia: Joseph P. Kennedy, a major investor in RKO’s parent company, had urged the project on Ford. In the middle of shooting, Kennedy left and the film was suddenly in a dilemma. What to do with a film that didn’t seem right? The film was briefly shut down, and then moved to a virtually abandoned sound stage. It was largely due to Richard Watts, critic, of the New York Herald Tribune who convinced the studio boss Merian C. Cooper that the film was worth the money. With a new campaign strategy it was shown the film was adapted from a serious novel, and it worked.
Perhaps the story is apocryphal but worth repeating here: when the studio boss faulted Ford for being behind the schedule the filmmaker in full view of cast and crew tore out 8 pages of the script, saying quietly, “There. We’re back on schedule now”.
The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. [1] McLaglen won the Academy Award for Best Leading Actor for his portrayal of Gypo Nolan, beating out Charles Laughton and Clark Gable for the better-remembered Mutiny on the Bounty, and Ford won for Best Director. Dudley Nichols won the Oscar for Best Writing, but turned it down because of Union disagreements. It was the first time an Oscar was declined.

The film’s other awards & nominations;

* NBR – Best Picture
* New York Film Critics Circle Awards – Best Film and Best Director
* Venice Film Festival – John Ford nominated for Mussolini Cup

A presentation copy of the script was recently found in a garbage pile in Madison, Wisconsin, and brought on to the show Antiques Roadshow. It was appraised for about $4,000.

Cast

* Victor McLaglen – Gypo Nolan
* Heather Angel – Mary McPhillip
* Preston Foster – Dan Gallagher
* Margot Grahame – Katie Madden
* Wallace Ford – Frankie McPhillip
* Una O’Connor – Mrs. McPhillip
* J. M. Kerrigan – Terry
* Joe Sawyer – Bartly Mulholland (as Joseph Sauers)
* Neil Fitzgerald – Tommy Connor
* Donald Meek – Peter Mulligan
* D’Arcy Corrigan – The Blind Man
* Leo McCabe – Donahue
* Steve Pendleton – Dennis Daly (as Gaylord Pendleton)
* Francis Ford – “Judge” Flynn
* May Boley – Madame Betty

Directed by     John Ford
Produced by     John Ford
Written by     Dudley Nichols
Music by     Max Steiner
Cinematography     Joseph H. August
Editing by     George Hively
Distributed by     RKO Radio Pictures
Running time     91 min.
Memorable Quotes:
Terry: [realizing Gypo's stuck him with the bill as an angry bouncer glowers at him] Oh dear, oh dear. I have a queer feelin’ there’s going to be a strange face in heaven in the mornin’.
—-
Katie Madden: Ah, Gypo, what’s the use? I’m hungry, and I can’t pay my room rent. Have you the price of a flop on you?
Gypo Nolan: No.
Katie Madden: What’s the use? Ah. don’t look at me like that, Gypo! You’re all I got! You’re the only one. You know that. But what chance do we have to escape? Money! Some people have all the luck!
[Indicating the ad in the travel agency window]
Katie Madden: Look at that thing handing us the ha-ha! Ten pounds to America! Twenty pounds and the world is ours?
Gypo Nolan: What are you saying that for?
—-
Gypo Nolan: And now the British think I’m with the Irish, and the Irish think I’m with the British. The long and short of it is I’m walkin’ around without a dog to lick my trousers!
—-
Frankie McPhillip: Up the rebels!
Katie Madden: Gypo, where did you get that money? Look at it, and not an hour ago you hadn’t a penny to warm your pocket. Did someone die and leave you a pot of gold?
Gypo Nolan: Why are you sayin’ that for?
Katie Madden: Well, did you rob a church or what?
—-
Gypo Nolan: [loudly at Frankie's wake] I’m sorry for your trouble, Mrs. McPhillip!
Bartly Mulholland: What are you shoutin’ for? Don’t you know there’s a wake goin’ on?

benny

Seven Samurai-1954

‘Shichinin no samurai, one of the greatest films in the history of Japanese cinema has its pride of place in the best 100 best films of all time. The film belongs to a genre that is called jidai-gecki( historical swordplay films) and can be rightfully considered the mother of all action films. The number of films it has spawned and and cited at the end attest to my assertion. For those who want to enjoy this film I can recommend – Criterion Collection – 3-Disc Remastered Edition

Seven Samurai is director Akira Kurosawa’s undisputed masterpiece and has never been surpassed in terms of sheer power of emotion, kinetic energy, and dynamic character development. It tells the story of a village of Japanese farmers under threat of attack by a gang of forty bandits in the late 16th century (possibly around 1587/1588). The farmers hold a meeting, and decide to fight back by hiring samurai to defend their village. Some are concerned that samurai are expensive and are known to lust after young farm women. A village elder tells them to find “hungry samurai” who will work for the village’s best food (handfuls of rice). An aging warrior, Kambei, assists the farmers in finding five other masterless samurai (“rônin”) to fight with him, together with a sixth clownish “samurai,” Kikuchiyo( Toshiro Mifune).
Offering mere handfuls of rice as payment, the village elder hires seven unemployed “ronin” (masterless samurai), including a boastful swordsman (Toshiro Mifune) who is actually a peasant farmer’s son, desperately seeking glory, acceptance, and revenge against those who destroyed his family. Led by the calmly strategic Kambei (Takashi Shimura, star of Kurosawa’s previous classic, Ikiru), the samurai form mutual bonds of honor and respect, but remain distant from the villagers, knowing that their assignment may prove to be fatal.
The samurai construct defenses to fortify the village, and train the villagers to fight. Meanwhile, the youngest samurai, Katsushirô, begins a love affair with the daughter of one of the villagers, who has been masquerading as a boy. Katsushirô’s affair provides comic relief to the bloody battle that is to be fought. The second half of the film chronicles the battle between the samurai-led village militia and the bandits. The battle is ultimately won by the villagers. Three surviving samurai are left to observe the villagers planting their next rice crop. It is perhaps the first film to depict action scenes in slow motion.
While he delineates glory and honor which are essential components of samurai tradition Kurosawa masterfully weaves underlying strands of self-interests and exploitation of the weaker by more larger or powerful: he composed his shots to emphasize these group dynamics, and Seven Samurai is a textbook study of the director’s signature techniques. His masterly use of telephoto lenses to compress action, delineate character relationships, and intensify motion shall serve as a benchmark in cinematic art. While the climactic battle against raiding thieves remains one of the most breathtaking sequences ever filmed.
This film is over 3 hours in length but it moves at a brisk pace. The first half builds the characters and sets the situation while the 2nd half is pure action.
Ack:Jeff Shannon,G. Merritt
Similar Movies
The 47 Ronin, Part 1  (1941, Kenji Mizoguchi)
The 47 Ronin, Part 2  (1941, Kenji Mizoguchi)
The Professionals  (1966, Richard Brooks)
Samurai 1: Musashi Miyamoto  (1955, Hiroshi Inagaki)
Samurai 2: Duel at Ichijoji Temple  (1955, Hiroshi Inagaki)
The Sword of Doom  (1967, Kihachi Okamoto)
The Wild Bunch  (1969, Sam Peckinpah, Paul Seydor)
The Samurai Trilogy  (1954, Hiroshi Inagaki)
The 13th Warrior  (1999, John McTiernan)
Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance  (1972, Kenji Misumi)
Movies with the Same Personnel
Throne of Blood  (1957, Akira Kurosawa)
The Hidden Fortress  (1958, Akira Kurosawa)
Yojimbo  (1961, Akira Kurosawa)
Stray Dog  (1949, Akira Kurosawa)
Drunken Angel  (1948, Akira Kurosawa)
Rashomon  (1951, Akira Kurosawa)
The Lower Depths  (1957, Akira Kurosawa)
Sanshiro Sugata  (1943, Akira Kurosawa)
Other Related Movies
is related to:      Sanjuro  (1962, Akira Kurosawa)
Samurai 7 [Anime Series]  (2004)
influenced:      Battle Beyond the Stars  (1980, Jimmy T. Murakami)
has been remade as:      The Magnificent Seven  (1960, John Sturges)
The Seven Magnificent Gladiators  (1984, Bruno Mattei)
benny

The Battleship of Potemkin-1925

Bronenosec  Potjomkin -Sergei Eisenstein’s revolutionary sophomore feature has so long stood as a textbook example of montage editing and with it the Russian film- maker changed the shape of cinema into a new direction. ( Previously the accent was on staging best exemplified by Weiner’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and the Russian master gave in its place a purely cinematic idiom of montage.)  Another feature of this film is that thin and treacherous line that often trips up a film maker who is bent on making a propaganda film. It is to the credit of Eisenstein that he didn’t fall a victim. Eisenstein of course was working under the dictates of the party bosses and had to keep true to the Marxian ideology from their position. What made it a celluloid epic despite of their interference?

In order to understand this conundrum we have to grasp the fundamentals of film. (First of all let me make it clear as with music  knowledge of grammar is unnecessary in order to enjoy film).

A film is synthesis of several arts. In visual terms a film maker might make a political statement from any historical event. In the Battleship of Potemkin, Eisenstein is narrating a crucial event of the 1905 revolution. He can play with time as in the famous  scene on the steps of St. Petersburg. The action itself, the people running up the steps into the guns of the Tsarist soldiers actually takes place in a few minutes. The detail shots of falling bodies, feet, faces, guns are all props to give an illusion of time in the viewer’s mind. If with time he can also shift points of view back and forth. The art of film being such there is no place for dogmatic statements. It is cerebral experience as well as vicarious. It was the genius of Eisenstein that he could fine tune his control on his viewer by means of montage. Like a wizard he made the experience of the protagonist as that of you and me. Montage makes it possible to shift from objective to subjective and vice versa. Thus the Russian master didn’t narrate history of the revolution as it happened but in the context of a few characters that figure in the film. Lo and behold their situation has for the moment become yours and you have become part of the experience of the protagonist!

In order to reinforce that a film maker could create the right mood as in the case of the corpse of the murdered sailor. How can a viewer be not affected by the environment,- and the rising misty dawn over the hapless sailor simply puts the viewer receptive to what is to follow. Eisenstein portrays the revolt in microcosm with a dramatization of the real-life mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin. His genius transcended politics and created a timeless classic.

The story tells a familiar party-line message of the oppressed working class (in this case the enlisted sailors) banding together to overthrow their oppressors (the ship’s officers), led by proto-revolutionary Vakulinchuk. When he dies in the shipboard struggle the crew lays his body to rest on the pier, a moody, moving scene where the citizens of Odessa slowly emerge from the fog to pay their respects. As the crowd grows Eisenstein turns the tenor from mourning a fallen comrade to celebrating the collective achievement. The government responds by sending soldiers and ships to deal with the mutinous crew and the supportive townspeople, which climaxes in the justly famous (and often imitated and parodied) Odessa Steps massacre. Eisenstein edits carefully orchestrated motions within the frame to create broad swaths of movement, shots of varying length to build the rhythm, close-ups for perspective and shock effect, and symbolic imagery for commentary, all to create one of the most cinematically exciting sequences in film history. Eisenstein’s film is Marxist propaganda to be sure, but as I said earlier polemics do not stand a chance against a creative genius who is in control of his medium. Naturally it is the secret of this masterpiece.

(ack:Sean Axmaker)

Similar Movies
October  (1927, Grigory Alexandrov, Sergei Eisenstein)
Arsenal  (1929, Alexander Dovzhenko)
Storm over Asia  (1928, Vsevolod Pudovkin)
Strike  (1924, Sergei Eisenstein)
Tabu  (1931, Robert Flaherty, F.W. Murnau)
Movies with the Same Personnel
Alexander Nevsky  (1938, Sergei Eisenstein)
Qué Viva México  (1932, Grigory Alexandrov, Sergei Eisenstein)
Vesna  (1947, Grigory Alexandrov)
Strike  (1924, Sergei Eisenstein)
October  (1927, Grigory Alexandrov, Sergei Eisenstein)
Ivan the Terrible, Part 1  (1944, Sergei Eisenstein)
Ivan the Terrible: Part 2  (1946, Sergei Eisenstein)
Our Daily Bread  (1934, King Vidor)
Other Related Movies
is featured in:           Seeds of Freedom  (1943, Hans Burger)
is related to:           Reds  (1981, Warren Beatty)
Black Sea Mutiny  (1931, Arnold Kordyum)
has been re-edited into:           Seeds of Freedom  (1943, Hans Burger)
is related to:           Blue Moon  (2002, Andrea Maria Dusl)
Sergei Eisenstein: Mexican Fantasy  (1998, Oleg Kovalov)

benny

It’s A Wonderful Life-1946

It certainly is. Especially with Christmas in the offing. Capra warms the cockles of our hearts with this much loved classic as Charles Dickens did a century earlier.  Angels and Christmas are now packaged as Christmas spirit comes by an act of will as shallow as a smile. Yet new generations are added to the ideas of self-sacrifice and reward, and an oh- so happy ending that could bring any suicide back from the brink. No small achievement if it were so?

Angels are discussing George Bailey (James Stewart), a small town savings and loan proprietor. Life is getting him down and he’s thinking of ending it all. His childhood dreams of travelling the world and doing great things have not been fulfilled.

I’m shakin’ the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m gonna see the world. Italy, Greece, the Parthenon, the Coliseum. Then, I’m comin’ back here to go to college and see what they know. And then I’m gonna build things. I’m gonna build airfields, I’m gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high, I’m gonna build bridges a mile long…

He had to sacrifice his chance of going to college for his brother and despite his own aspirations he ended up marrying his childhood sweetheart (Donna Reed) and running the family business in Bedford Falls. Now, thanks to his absent-minded uncle unwittingly giving a pile of money to an unscrupulous banking rival, he’s got money problems and is ready to throw himself from a bridge.

Enter his appointed guardian angel, Clarence Oddbody (Henry Travers), a trainee hoping to win his wings. Clarence shows George what a terrible place Bedford Falls would be if it hadn’t been for George and his string of good deeds. He’s saved lives, protected the town from the money grubbing banker Potter (Lionel Barrymore), built decent homes for folk and so on and so on.

When, after Clarence’s intervention, George returns home, the townsfolk are there with thousands of dollars from their savings, just to save George from going to jail. He is back with his family. It’s lovely. A bell tinkles on the Christmas tree.

Zuzu his daughter says: Look, Daddy. Teacher says, every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings.

George (grinning): That’s right, that’s right. (He congratulates Clarence, looking upward and giving a wink.) Attaboy, Clarence.

Corny eh? But George has found his own rewards and gifts – life, redemption, and freedom. The swelling sounds of Auld Lang Syne build to a crescendo in an affirmation of life. [The film originally ended with 'Ode to Joy.']

The film doesn’t pretend to be arty or of highbrow. It is as honest as a fart and Frank Capra knew how it could be done as natural without offending the fine sensibilities of others. I mean he let the reprehensible act of Potter, despite stealing money from the Bailey Building and Loan go unpunished — something unusual for the average Hollywood movie at the time. The inclusion of this sop to popular hypocricy would have diluted the film message. Our lives like that of George touch everyone else’s. How the good or bad is repaid is subjective and Capra simply told a story intelligently and straight to the heart.
This film was based on a story by Philip Van Doren Stern.

This film bombed at the box office which is probably why it won no Oscars despite 5 nominations. Repeated holiday TV showings from the sixties onwards hammered home the point. A lot of people like it now.

This is a film that people either love or hate… it’s an unashamed statement to the innate goodness of human nature or alternatively it’s sentimental goo.

~ Barry Norman, 100 Best Films of the Century

Director:Frank Capra
George Bailey: James Stewart
Mary Hatch: Donna Reed
Mr. Potter : Lionel Barrymore
Uncle Billy : Thomas Mitchell
Clarence: Henry Travers
Mrs. Bailey : Beulah Bondi
Ernie: Frank Faylen
Bert: Ward Bond
Violet Bick: Gloria Grahame
Mr. Gower : H.B. Warner
Sam Wainwright : Frank Albertson
Running time: 129 minutes

Academy Awards

Won (0)
Nominated (5)
* Best Picture
* Best Actor (James Stewart)
* Best Director(Frank Capra)
* Best Sound Recording (John Aalberg)
* Best Film Editing (William Hornbeck)

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Mutiny on the Bounty-1935

The 1932 publication of Charles Nordhoff and James Norton Hall’s Mutiny on the Bounty sparked a revival of interest in the  1789 ship mutiny, and MGM studio with their policy of bringing famous literature to celluloid bought the film rights. This 1935 MGM movie version won the Oscar for Best Picture. The movie chronicles the real-life mutiny aboard the Bounty and its aftermath in a series of trials. The film was one of the biggest hits of its time and remains a classic today.

Was the ship’s captain, William Bligh really a villain? Bligh is depicted as a brutal, sadistic disciplinarian. Particular episodes include a keelhauling and flogging a dead man. Neither of these happened. Keel hauling was used rarely if at all and had been abandoned long before Bligh’s time. Indeed the meticulous record of the Bounty’s log reveals that the flogging rate was lower than the average for that time. There are quite a few historical inaccuracies that however do not detract the appeal of this movie over the audience.

Clark Gable stars as Fletcher Christian, first mate of the infamous HMS Bounty, skippered by Captain William Bligh (Charles Laughton), the cruelest taskmaster on the Seven Seas. Bligh’s villainy knows no bounds: he is even willing to flog a dead man if it will strengthen his hold over the crew. Christian despises Bligh and is sailing on the Bounty under protest. During the journey back to England, Bligh’s cruelties become more than Christian can bear; and after the captain indirectly causes the death of the ship’s doctor, the crew stages a mutiny, with Christian in charge. Bligh and a handful of officers loyal to him are set adrift in an open boat. Through sheer force of will, he guides the tiny vessel on a 49-day, 4000-mile journey to the Dutch East Indies without losing a man. No small feat for a pedantic unimaginative sea-captain! The movie struck gold at the box office, and, in addition to the Best Picture Oscar, Gable, Laughton, and Franchot Tone as one of the Bounty’s crew were all nominated for Best Actor (they all lost to Victor McLaglan in The Informer). The film was adapted into the “revisionist” 1984 feature The Bounty with Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian and Anthony Hopkins as Captain Bligh.
Although its historical accuracy has been seriously questioned (inevitable as it is based in a novel about the facts, not the facts themselves) it is considered by film critics to be the best film inspired by the mutiny.
A 1962 three-hours-plus widescreen Technicolor remake, starring Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian and Trevor Howard as Captain Bligh, was a disaster both critically and financially at the time, but has come to be reevaluated by critics for being closer to the facts.

(ack: Hal Erickson)

Similar Movies
Billy Budd  (1962, Peter Ustinov)
Damn the Defiant!  (1962, Lewis Gilbert)
His Majesty O’Keefe  (1953, Byron Haskin)
The Hurricane  (1937, John Ford, Stuart Heisler)
The Sea Wolf  (1941, Michael Curtiz)
Treasure Island  (1934, Victor Fleming)
Across to Singapore  (1928, William Nigh)
Mutiny  (1952, Edward Dmytryk)
Red River  (1948, Howard Hawks)
Movies with the Same Personnel
Forever and a Day  (1943, René Clair, Edmund Goulding, Cedric Hardwicke, Victor Saville, Kent Smith, Robert Stevenson, Herbert Wilcox, Frank Lloyd)
The Charge of the Light Brigade  (1936, Michael Curtiz)
China Seas  (1935, Tay Garnett)
Captain Blood  (1935, Michael Curtiz)
The Mystery of Mr. X  (1934, Edgar Selwyn)
The Adventures of Robin Hood  (1938, Michael Curtiz, William Keighley)
The Man on the Eiffel Tower  (1949, Burgess Meredith)
The Pearl of Death  (1944, Roy William Neill)
Other Related Movies
The Bounty  (1984, Roger Donaldson)
The Caine Mutiny  (1954, Edward Dmytryk)
Mutiny on the Bounty  (1962, Lewis Milestone)
You Are There: Mr. Christian Seizes The Bounty
Biography: Captain Bligh – Mutiny on the Bounty

Cast and Other details:

Directed by     Frank Lloyd
Produced by     Irving Thalberg
Written by     Charles Nordhoff and
James Norman Hall (novel)
Talbot Jennings
Jules Furthman
Carey Wilson
(screenplay)
Starring     Charles Laughton
Clark Gable
Franchot Tone
Movita
Mamo
Music by     Herbert Stothart
Nat W. Finston (uncredited)
Walter Jurmann and
Bronisław Kaper
(song, “Love Song of Tahiti”) (uncredited)
Cinematography     Arthur Edeson
Editing by     Margaret Booth
Distributed by     Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Release date(s)     November 8, 1935
Running time     132 min.
Country     USA
Language     English
Tahitian
Mutiny on the Bounty, won an Oscar for Best Picture and also received seven additional Academy Award nominations:

* Best Actor in a Leading Role -
o Clark Gable
o Charles Laughton
o Franchot Tone
* Best Director – Frank Lloyd
* Best Film Editing – Margaret Booth
* Best Music, Score – Nat W. Finston (head of department) and Herbert Stothart (“Love Song of Tahiti” written by Walter Jurmann, uncredited)
* Best Writing, Screenplay – Jules Furthman, Talbot Jennings and Carey Wilson
Historical inaccuracies:
Captain Bligh was never on board HMS Pandora, nor was he present at the trial of the mutineers who stayed on Tahiti. At the time he was halfway around the world on a second voyage for breadfruit plants. Fletcher Christian’s father had died many years before Christian’s travels on board the Bounty – the movie shows the elder Christian at the trial. It should be noted though, that the movie was always presented as an adaptation of the Nordhoff and Hall trilogy, which already differed from the actual story of the mutiny.

In the final scene of the film Gable gives a rousing speech to his fellow mutineers speaking of creating a perfect society of free men on Pitcairn away from Bligh and the Navy. The reality was very different. Free from the restraints of Naval discipline the mutineers proved incapable of self government. Pitcairn degenerated into a true hell on earth of drunkenness, rape and ultimately murder. ( The same holds true even this day!?) Apart from John Adams all the mutineers perished, most of them by violence.
Memorable quotes:
Captain William Bligh: During the recent heavy weather, I’ve had the opportunity to watch all of you at work on deck and aloft. You don’t know wood from canvas! And it seems you don’t want to learn! Well, I’ll have to give you a lesson
Captain William Bligh: What’s your name?
Seaman Thomas Ellison: Thomas Ellison, sir. Pressed into service. I’ve got a wife, a baby!
Captain William Bligh: I asked your name, not the history of your misfortunes.
Captain William Bligh: Mr. Christian!
(ack:allmovie, wikipedia)
Trivia: James Cagney, David Niven, and Dick Haymes were uncredited extras in the movie.
Clark Gable had to shave off his famous moustache because the sailors in the Royal Navy in the eighteenth century had to be clean-shaven. Gable was reluctant to shave it off, though.

benny

The Philadelphia Story-1940

The Philadelphia Story is a romantic comedy film based on a Broadway play of the same name by Philip Barry, the film is about a rich socialite whose wedding plans are complicated by the simultaneous arrival of her ex-husband and a handsome journalist. It is considered one of the best examples of romantic comedy, a genre popular in the 1930s and 1940s. At a time when depicting extramarital affairs was banned in American film a screwball comedy dealing with remarriage in which a couple divorce, flirt with outsiders and then remarry was a useful ploy at a time. The film was a great success.
The Philadelphia heiress Tracy Samantha Lord Haven (Hepburn)   throws out her playboy husband C.K. Dexter Haven( Cary Grant) shortly after their marriage. Two years later, Tracy is about to marry respectable nouveau riche George Kittredge(John Howard) whilst Dexter has been working for “Spy” magazine.
Wedding preparations are complicated when she is blackmailed by publisher Sidney Kidd (Henry Daniell) over some incriminating photos. These have to do with the antics of Tracy’s philandering father, Seth (John Halliday). “Spy” must have exclusive rights to the event. Enter the tabloid reporter Macaulay “Mike” Connor (James Stewart) and photographer Elizabeth “Liz” Imbrie (Ruth Hussey) sent by the magazine. Dexter has help in the reporter: Mike Connor frowns on the rich and also drops lines to show his distrust of them.
Macaulay Connor: The prettiest sight in this fine pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges.
The other one is photographer Liz Imbrie, who has a yen for champagne.
Elizabeth (Liz) Imbrie: What’s this room? I’ve forgotten my compass.
Macaulay Connor: I’d say, south-by-southwest parlor-by-living-room”.
With such spoilers who are out to peel that rich snooty veneer off her, Tracy is forced to choose among her past love, her present love, and her new love.

The night before the wedding, Tracy gets drunk for only the second time in her life and takes an impromptu, innocent swim with Mike. When George sees Mike carrying an intoxicated Tracy into the house afterwards (both of them wearing only bathrobes), he thinks the worst, that his bride-to-be has disgraced herself. The next day, he tells her that he was shocked and feels entitled to an explanation before going ahead with the wedding. Tracy takes exception to his lack of faith in her and breaks off the engagement. Then she realizes that all the guests have arrived and are waiting for the ceremony to begin. Mike volunteers to marry her (much to Elizabeth’s distress), but Tracy graciously declines. At this point, Dexter makes his successful bid for her hand.
Of course the dialogue is supposedly scintillating, a sample of which is given below.

The play was Hepburn’s first great triumph after several movie flops (including the classic Bringing Up Baby), which had led to her being labeled “box office poison”. Howard Hughes bought the rights to the film as a gift to Hepburn. When Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer decided to make a movie out of it, she stipulated in her contract that the film could not be made unless she was allowed to reprise her stage role. Hepburn initially wanted Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy for the male leads but they were not available. The film earned a Best Actor Academy Award for Stewart in an unusually forceful performance, as the fast-talking reporter smitten with Hepburn.

It was remade in 1956 as a musical titled High Society, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra
Director:    George Cukor
Writer:    Donald Ogden Stewart
Cast:
Cary Grant as C. K. Dexter Haven
* Katharine Hepburn as Tracy Lord
* James Stewart as Macaulay Connor
* Ruth Hussey as Elizabeth Imbrie
* John Howard as George Kittredge
* Roland Young as Uncle Willie
* John Halliday as Seth Lord
* Mary Nash as Margaret Lord
* Virginia Weidler as Dinah Lord
* Henry Daniell as Sidney Kidd

Producer:    Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Cinematographer:    Joseph Ruttenberg (director of photography)
Composer:    Franz Waxman
Distributed by MGM
(Ack: www.imdb.com, wikipedia}

Memorable quotes
Margaret Lord: The course of true love…
Macaulay Connor: …gathers no moss.
—-.
George Kittredge: [walks in on Tracy and Dexter together] Well, I suppose I should object to this twosome.
C. K. Dexter Haven: That would be most objectionable.
Tracy Lord: [Tracy and Mike have almost kissed. Both are very drunk] Has your mind taken hold again, dear professor?
Macaulay Connor: Good thing, don’t you agree?
Tracy Lord: No, professor.
Macaulay Connor: [angrily] Alright, lay off that “professor” stuff! Now, do you hear me?
Tracy Lord: Yes, professor…
Macaulay Connor: Doggone it, C.K. Dexter Haven. Either I’m gonna sock you or you’re gonna sock me.
C. K. Dexter Haven: Shall we toss a coin?
—-.
[Dexter has just proposed]
Tracy Lord: Oh Dexter you’re not doing it just to soften the blow?
C. K. Dexter Haven: No.
Tracy Lord: Nor to save my face?
C. K. Dexter Haven: Oh, it’s a nice little face.

Trivia:

In the original Broadway play Joseph Cotton played the Cary Grant role while Van Heflin did the James Stewart role.
2.
Stewart had been extremely nervous to do the scene in which Conner recites poetry to Tracy and believed that he would perform badly. But George Cukor hinted to Noel Coward,  who was visiting the set that day and Coward said, offhandedly, “Did I mention I think you’re a fantastic actor?” Stewart performed the scene unforgettably well.
3.
The film was shot in eight weeks with no requirement for retakes except for one instance. James Stewart slipped in his hiccuping during the drunk scene. Grant turned to him, surprised, and said “Excuse me.” The scene only had to be shot once.
4.
The character of Tracy Lord was inspired by Helen Hope Montgomery Scott (1904-1995), a Philadelphia socialite, She had married a friend of playwright Philip Barry.

benny

Bonnie and Clyde-1967

Bonnie and Clyde is considered a landmark film in cinema history: it broke many taboos and was popular with the younger generation as was The Graduate released in the same year.
The line “We rob banks” ranks at #41 on the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 Greatest Movie Quotes.
Some critics cite Joseph H. Lewis’s Gun Crazy, a film noir about a bank-robbing couple, as a major influence. Forty years after its premiere, Bonnie and Clyde has been cited as a major influence in such disparate films as The Wild Bunch, The Godfather, Reservoir Dogs and The Departed
The film’s final scene, edited in slow motion, is obviously influenced by the European new wave films,[Originally, the film was intended to be directed by Jean-Luc Godard or Francois Truffaut, who opted out and made Fahrenheit 451 (1966) instead.]  but that doesn’t detract from the position of the film as a turning point of the New Hollywood era.

This film is set during the Great Depression when great many lined before soup kitchens and a few took to robbing banks.  Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were robbers and they made quite a stir doing just that. The film was directed by Arthur Penn, and starred Warren Beatty as Clyde Barrow and Faye Dunaway as Bonnie Parker. It was produced by Warner Bros. – the studio responsible for the gangster films of the 1930s, and it seems appropriate that the same studio should consider the crime/gangster genre in a new light: the film is violent, innovative and gives a four-ulcer job of robbing banks loads of glamour.
The film opens with a golden, old-style Warner Bros shield, grainy, unglamorous, blurry, sepia-toned snapshots of the Barrow and Parker families (at the time of Bonnie and Clyde’s childhood) play on a black background accompanied by the loud clicking sound of a camera shutter. The credit titles are interspersed with flashes of more semi-documentary, brownish-tinged pictures. The text of the major credits fade from white to blood red on the dark background. 30′s hand-cranked phonographic music (Rudy Vallee’s popular love song of the period Deep Night) is faintly heard – a haunting omen from another era. The films doesn’t let you forget the period while the petty hoodlum and his drab and unglamorous gun moll become larger than life before our eyes. Look at the way they cavort in cartoon-style slapstick comedy [a tribute to Mack Sennett’s silent films).
When they first met in Texas in the early 1930s the real Bonnie (19 years old) and Clyde (21 years old), weren’t glamorous characters: she was already the wife of an imprisoned murderer, and he was a petty thief and vagrant with numerous misdemeanors. They were ‘white trash’ couple and described “the Southwest’s most notorious bandit and his gun moll” in the local newspaper. Their brief, bloody crime spree (involving kidnapping and murders) ended on May 23, 1934 alongside state Highway 154 near Arcadia, Louisiana (the town nearest to the ambush site in north-central Louisiana), when the desperados were ambushed and killed by four Texas lawmen (led by Texas Ranger Frank Hamer), accompanied by Bienville Parish Sheriff Henderson Jordan and his deputy Prentiss Oakley. Their bullet-ridden vehicle was hit with 187 shots. In actuality, the 25 year-old Barrow and 23-year old Parker were armed and ready for the ambush when they were killed. Currently, Louisiana’s largest outdoor flea market (held one weekend a month) originated in 1990 in Arcadia as Bonnie and Clyde Trade Days.
‘The film considerably simplifies the real facts about Bonnie and Clyde, which included other gang members, repeated jailings, and other murders and assorted crimes. One of the film’s major characters, “C.W. Moss”, is a composite of two members of the Barrow Gang: William Daniel “W.D.” Jones and Henry Methvin. In 1968, Jones outlined his period with the Barrows in a Playboy magazine article “Riding with Bonnie and Clyde.”

The screenplay was written by David Newman and Robert Benton. (Robert Towne and Beatty have been listed as providing uncredited contributions to the script.)
Its producer, 28 year-old Warren Beatty, was also its title-role star Clyde Barrow, and his co-star Bonnie Parker, newcomer Faye Dunaway, became a major screen actress as a result of her breakthrough in this influential film. Likewise, unknown Gene Hackman was recognized as a solid actor and went on to star in many substantial roles (his next major role was in The French Connection (1971))-tim dirks.

Warner Bros-Seven Arts had so little faith in the film that, in a then-unprecedented move, they offered its first-time producer Warren Beatty 40% of the gross instead of a minimal fee. The movie then went on to gross over $70 million world-wide by 1973.
Music

The instrumental banjo piece “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” by Flatt and Scruggs was made famous to a worldwide audience as a result of its frequent use in the movie. Its use is entirely anachronistic, however; the bluegrass-style of music from which the piece stems dates from the mid-1940s’(wikipedia).

The film was given Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress and Best Cinematography.
Directed by     Arthur Penn
Produced by     Warren Beatty
Written by     David Newman
& Robert Benton
Starring     Warren Beatty
Faye Dunaway
Michael J. Pollard
Gene Hackman
Estelle Parsons
Music by     Charles Strouse
Cinematography     Burnett Guffey
Editing by     Dede Allen
Distributed by     Warner Bros.-Seven Arts
Running time     111 min.
Language     English
Budget     $2,500,000 (estimated)

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