MovieChat Forums > Psycho (1960) Discussion > OT: Ridley Scott at age 83 has *two* big...

OT: Ridley Scott at age 83 has two big movies out right now.

posted 3 years ago by swanstep (2715)
59 replies | jump to latest

House of Gucci w/ Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, etc. has just premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is expected to contend for Oscars. And The Last Duel w/ Damon, Affleck, & Driver again has been out in the US for about a month, sounds pretty fascinating to me, is loved by critics so may also contend for Oscars, but has famously been a commercial bust so far, grossing only $10 million in the US and less than a quarter of its large budget worldwide. (Maybe it'll get a re-release in Oscar season and maybe covid, which still scares lots of older viewers worldwide, will be more in the rear-view mirror at that point too.)

Both films are over 2.5 hours long and are notably complex productions with extensive (but very different) historical recreations and costuming and production design elements. Scott shares with Spielberg a reputation for working quickly and completing films on- or under-budget, but I think Scott is confirming now that he even more than people like Spielberg and Scorsese must have incredible reservoirs of sheer energy and an iron constitution. His work load at 83 would probably kill many men half his age. I'm starting to think that when all is said and done Scott may even outlast Eastwood as an A-list, big-budget director.

Hitchcock's days of big-budget directing famously petered out at the end of the 1960s, i.e., as he approached 70. But maybe 95 is the new 70, at least if you're Eastwood or Scott.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

House of Gucci w/ Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, etc. has just premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is expected to contend for Oscars.

---

I saw a poster (a HUGE poster) at the movie theater the other day (COVID or no, I am back to going out to them whenever the movie intrigues me)...and the poster was certainly starry. Big Al Pacino's in it, too. (Returning after his Great Year of 2019 with first movies for Scorsese and QT.) Adam Driver is perhaps our most fascinating modern male modern movie star. There's nothing conventional about his angular, long-nosed looks -- and yet he seems to have made it on charisma and line readings alone. In the ad, Jared Leto is unrecognizable. One of our "chameleon actors."

--

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

And The Last Duel w/ Damon, Affleck, & Driver again has been out in the US for about a month, sounds pretty fascinating to me, is loved by critics so may also contend for Oscars, but has famously been a commercial bust so far, grossing only $10 million in the US and less than a quarter of its large budget worldwide.

--

I saw the trailer for this (at a movie theater, on the big screen), and (a) I couldn't make head or tails out of the storyline and (b) Affleck and Damon looked rather wrong in their period outfits and weird beards. (Driver always "fits" the role given his natural odd features.)

Yeah, Matt Damon somewhat continues to draw my bemusement. Take The Bourne movies out of his career, and his movies flop a lot-- except for the surprise success of The Martian, another career save.

Critic Anthony Lane once wrote of Young Matt Damon as a star: "Matt Damon! Cary Grant would have tipped him 5 dollars to park his car." But Young Matt is middle-aged now and he's aged into his looks and even I see the star quality now. Plus, he's been around so long AS a star when he enters a movie scene or an SNL sketch or a 30 Rock episode, I say: "Hey, there's that big star, Matt Damon."

--

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

(Maybe it'll get a re-release in Oscar season and maybe covid, which still scares lots of older viewers worldwide, will be more in the rear-view mirror at that point too.)

---

I'm older, and I go to movie theaters all the time now. A couple of times, the crowds have been big, but socially distanced. Masks optional.

It does look like we are getting enough good movies now that the "2021 Oscar season" will be legitimate...unlike 2020.

There are even dueling Anderson movies: Wes has "The French Dispatch"(out now, I'm going to try to see it), Paul has "Licorice Pizza" with Bradley Cooper playing that most cloddish and evil of hair-stylists-turned-movie moguls, Jon Peters (also Streisand boyfriend in the 70s.)

An Oscar SEASON...yes. Will there be a decent Oscar SHOW? Remains to be seen. There WILL be one (it makes the Academy money), but will it be COVID desolate and as dumb as last year?

---

I'm also still in search of my "personal favorite" movie of 2021. Two possible candidates -- Cry Macho and The Many Saints of Newark -- failed. I'm banking on the Lucy/Desi movie because the writer-director is Aaron Sorkin. When my favorite movie of the year is NOT a QT, a Scorsese, or a Coens...its been a Sorkin. (Charlie Wilson's War; Moneyball; Molly's Game.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Scott shares with Spielberg a reputation for working quickly and completing films on- or under-budget, but I think Scott is confirming now that he even more than people like Spielberg and Scorsese must have incredible reservoirs of sheer energy and an iron constitution. His work load at 83 would probably kill many men half his age. I'm starting to think that when all is said and done Scott may even outlast Eastwood as an A-list, big-budget director.

--

This is another moment to confront QT and his "Tarantino theory" that the final films of "old directors" never match their early work...which might indeed beg the question: are these guys who are working in their older age doing as well as they did when they were young? With Scorsese, I'd say yes: The Wolf of Wall Street(at top speed) and The Irishman(a lot quieter) are both great films as far as I'm concerned, DIFFERENT from Raging Bull and Goodfellas(well, not different that Goodfellas) but as good. Plus: I just don't like the characters in Raging Bull, its not an enjoyable film to me.

Spielberg hasn't directed many blockbusters or timeless classics lately, but he's still in the game making competent entertainment.

And Scott's stuff is still pretty good and pretty competitive in the marketplace.

Note: I am CERTAIN that I once saw QT and Ridley Scott seated side by side on some interview show, and QT having to walk back his old director theory given his seat mate.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Hitchcock's days of big-budget directing famously petered out at the end of the 1960s, i.e., as he approached 70.

---

Yes. Hitch "fits" QT's theory - along with Ford, Capra, Hawks and Wilder -- but health and aging(and in Hitchcock's case, drinking) had different effects at a younger age back then. (An aged Hawks lost track of what day it was while filming his final film, Rio Lobo...and ended up at the Beverly Hills Hotel for breakfast when he was supposed to be with others on the soundstage that day. He thought it was Sunday, not Monday.)

But this: Hitchcock was promoted as a "big name" by Universal to the very end, and retrospectives were all over the place, but he didn't get much respect from stars at the end, as Scorsese now still does.

Big stars CLAMOUR to work with Marty, still.

But when Michael Caine was offered the killer in Frenzy, he said no. I daresay that Caine looked at Hitchcock's recent record (Marnie, Torn Curtain, Topaz) and was not interested in taking the risk playing a psycho that Tony Perkins took in the wake of Vertigo and NXNW.

Still, Caine DID play a psycho in Dressed to Kill later so... he might have.

Which brings me to my point:

Imagine if Hitchcock had been FULLY RESPECTED by all the stars he asked to be in his movies after his final "star-cast one(Torn Curtain, with Newman and Andrews.) Then we would have had:

Topaz with Yves Montand(Andre), Simone Signoret(Nicole) and Catherine Denueve(their daughter.)

Frenzy with Michael Caine(killer Rusk), Richard Burton(Blaney) , Glenda Jackson(Brenda Blaney) and Lynn Redgrave(Babs.)

Family Plot with Jack Nicholson(Dern's role), Burt Reynolds (Devane's role), Faye Dunaway(Black's role) and...Barbara Harris(always Hitchcock's first choice.) Robert Redford, Al Pacino, and Roy Scheider were also offered the script, but I'll go with the choices above.

And who knows? Maybe ALL of those final three (not just Frenzy) would be famous movies and big hits and Frenzy would have hit even bigger.

Modern stars don't look at the age of the director...they look at the reputation.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

But maybe 95 is the new 70, at least if you're Eastwood or Scott.

---

Interesting about Eastwood. As a DIRECTOR, he's been making "hit or miss" movies since about 2000. The hits were Million Dollar Baby and American Sniper; the misses: legion. But all of his directed movies look competent -- Sully is a good example of one that worked.

As an ACTOR, its been a tougher watching the handsome macho muscular brawler of Dirty Harry and Every Which Way But Loose turn elderly and frail and wizened and downright skeletal in Cry Macho. For film history, I'm glad he's a 91 year old leading man. In reality...something less. (His 70-something perf in Grand Torino is probably the last time he was REALLY a star.)

---

But here's what I really like about all our 80-something and 90-something actors and directors. I'm personally and officially a "senior" these days -- but I feel like a KID given those guys ages. Its heartening: I've got a long way to go. Plenty of life left. OK, so I don't have their wealth(which contributes to good health) or fitness programs or diet or trainers...but they still suggest, "if we can make it, so can you."

Now if only this GD COVID thing hadn't have gotten in the way....

[–] raymondoz2007 (2098) 3 years ago

Shatner and Eastwood are the same age but Shatner looks 20 years younger.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Shatner and Eastwood are the same age but Shatner looks 20 years younger.

---

Pretty much true....Eastwood always kept a thin frame, but Shatner always fought the weight. (Skinny men at 91 are perhaps healthier but more skeletal..the frailty shows on them.)

And Shatner at 90 is probably more of a role model for most of us than Eastwood -- heavy but still kickin.' Ernest Borgnine(another big fellah) made it to 93 - 95, somewhere in there. Hope for us yet.

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

Michael Caine's doing rather well looks-wise (not to mention mental sharpness-wise) for 88 too. In fact he *looks* a lot more robust than he really is, hence the following series of observations in his most recent interview in The Guardian back in October:

the only time [Caine] leaves the house these days is when his wife has the time to take him out for a drive. The other week he was sent a screenplay that had his character running away from a bunch of crooks, and this made him laugh – the very idea he could play it. “I can’t walk, let alone run,” he says. “And I’m more or less done with movies now.”

Here's the link:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/oct/18/michael-caine-on-brexit-boris-johnson-and-big-breaks-ive-done-150-movies-i-think-thats-enough

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Caine at 88 is someone I'm sure we'd like to see get into that "90 club."

I haven't read this link yet, but evidently a coupla weeks back he said after this new movie (Best Sellers), he is retired...and then a couple of days later, he walked it back.

He has talked about needing a cane now, hard to walk.

I'm reminded that when James Cagney made his interesting "comeback" after 20 years -- in Ragtime(1981), I believe he played his entire part seated in a chair. HE couldn't walk either.

It is something for Michael Caine to contemplate.

In any event, I'd really like to see him Michael Caine 90 -- joining Clint, Shatner, Gene Hackman and his old(late) friend Sean Connery in that club.

One thing about Michael Caine -- I've practically grown up with him. I saw "Zulu" (1964) with my parents as a young lad(not knowing who he was) and then "The Ipcress File"(1965 I think) when I DID know who he was --"the British spy with the glasses." I didn't get to see Alfie, but I read about it.

...and then it was bing-bang-bong with Caine, for DECADES. He made so many movies I never saw a lot of them (Deadfall, The Magus, Play Dirty...on and on and on, he ALWAYS worked.)

But I DID see some of them, and they are beloved classics, some of them. Get Carter(1971) above all...truly great film , evocative of its time.

But also The Italian Job, The Man Who Would Be King, Dressed to Kill(Psycho ripoff it was, but Caine was good), Hannah and Her Sisters(Oscar Number One), The Cider House Rules(Oscar Number Two.)

He was hilarious in the first 20 minutes of an otherwise nothing comedy called "Surrender" with Sally Field (twice-seduced-and divorced and broke in those minutes, to a Randy Newman tune...he gets in an elevator with a pack of killer dogs rather than take the one with the gorgeous woman in it. Hilarious.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

He did the greatest "bad movie" duty of any A list actor ever in "Jaws 4 The Revenge." (As he said, "I hear the movie is terrible, but I didn't see it. I built a house with the proceeds, and I have seen it, and its great.)

Near the end: Alfred in Nolan's Dark Knight films(truly fine, especially in scenes with peer Morgan Freeman); and really, emotionally good in "Harry Brown" as an aged pensioner in ghetto London who loses his wife and his best friend to death early on and goes on a righteous rampage of very believeable, low key revenge. Fine little film.

Yep. The 60s, 70's, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s...he's always been there, Michael Caine.

And working more recently than Nicholson or Hackman...or Connery when he was recently alive.

Plus: the Hitchcock villain who got away: Bob Rusk in Frenzy. I've always wondered why, if he didn't want to play the killer-rapist, he didn't go for anti-hero Richard Blaney instead.

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

And The Last Duel w/ Damon, Affleck, & Driver....
-------
I saw the trailer for this (at a movie theater, on the big screen), and (a) I couldn't make head or tails out of the storyline and (b) Affleck and Damon looked rather wrong in their period outfits and weird beards.

I've finally seen The Last Duel and basically loved it. I've heard a lot of critics snipe at the film on various grounds, including things like accents, haircuts, and the like, but I have to say that, for whatever reason, none of those superficial matters and slight anachronisms bothered me at all. TLD struck me as one great looking & sounding film, and as very well-paced and surefooted narratively. Performances are all pretty stunning, dialogue is mostly great. I dunno, I was right on TLD's wavelength I suppose. For me it's one of Scott's best films, in that #4-#7 range for him after his first three films (Duellists, Alien, Blade Runner) are still inarguably his top 3. And it's going to be an easy top 10 film of 2021 for me (although I have masses of films yet to see, it's inconceivable that I'll run across 10 more gripping features).

I really think people are going to come to dig this film over time. In some ways it's kind of capper for Scott, knitting together aspects of his filmography from The Duellists to Thelma and Louise to Gladiator. Too bad that TLD's commercial performance has been so disastrous, and critical response was warm rather ultra-hot (so I don't think not going to get an Awards-Season second-chance to find an audience).

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

At the other end of the age and budget spectrums from Ridley Scott's octogenarian over-achievements are Edgar Wright's jokey student films which I recently came across on youtube:

At age 18, Dead Right (1993) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_i1hZD-rWY
and
At age 20, A Fistful of Fingers (1995) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGQhIBA9lI4

Not exactly recommended, but fun enough if you're a Wright fan.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Not exactly recommended, but fun enough if you're a Wright fan.

---

Ha. "A Fistful of Fingers." Sort of homages "A Fistful of Dollars" and "Five Fingers of Death" all at the same time.

I've followed Edgar Wright over the years, but not as closely as you, swanstep. I did see Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz and enjoyed both immensely.

I also believe that Edgar Wright came to Los Angeles(or was in Los Angeles on other business) and introduced "Frenzy" at QT's New Beverly revival house.

Wright has a new film out "A Night in Soho" or some such title -- perhaps you can give us a report if you see it, swanstep.

ALSO: Certainly with all this talk about "old man" directors(not so much "old woman" directors) we can be reminded that any number of impressive classic films were made by folks in their 20s -- Citizen Kane for Welles, Duel, The Sugarland Express and Jaws for Spielberg; The Lodger for Hitchcock.

And teenagers are making fine YouTube movies all the time..auditioning for whatever Hollywood is, today.

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

Wright has a new film out "Last Night in Soho" or some such title -- perhaps you can give us a report

I must sadly report that Wright's new film didn't work for me *at all* - it's his worst film in my view. While Last Night is visually quite impressive and has a few unnerving 'reality collapsing'/'unreality crashes into reality' moments especially fairly early on, such scenes multiply without end through the film and quickly become overdone and pedestrian and utterly un-scary. Wright's script sets up and pays off a few twists and reveals, but that very mechanical structure feels almost cute and cozy which completely undercuts the psychological terror/horror that Wright is aiming for. Polanski's Repulsion is a big influence on LNIS, as is Giallo generally but those films all work best when they feel drilled right out of someone's subconscious, not subordinated to an explanatory structure. Last Night also follows in a recent tradition of British psych. horror films - Censor (2021), Saint Maud (2019), Prevenge (2016) - featuring highly-educated, highly-strung, isolated, young-ish, UK women descending into madness. All those films have more bite to them, are flat out scarier and more meaningful while also being more interestingly elusive than Wright's film. Wright's film is also resolutely un-comic (taking away one of Wright's superpowers I would have thought), at least intentionally. There are, however, some unintentional laughs to be had during the film's dopey end scenes' and final shot (I laughed, audibly groaned, and rolled eyes).

Ultimately, LNIS struck me as quite lifeless, and as simultaneously both overdone and overplanned and self-satisfied, and yet confused in its tone and final messages. For me it's a 4-5/10.

BTW, I didn't like No Time To Die much either (it's a 5-6/10 for me) - sub-par direction and kind of exhausted, committee-driven writing killed it for me. (I've ended up deciding that the only Bond films I *really* like, and all anyone really needs, are Goldfinger, OHMSS, Spy Who Loved Me, Goldeneye, Casino Royale.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Ultimately, LNIS struck me as quite lifeless, and as simultaneously both overdone and overplanned and self-satisfied, and yet confused in its tone and final messages. For me it's a 4-5/10.

---

Interesting. I've read your posts enough , swanstep, that I thought you had an overall positive view of Edgar Wright(or maybe of his criticism more than his movies.) Well, I'll take the warning in stride. I like the idea of the taking away of Wright's sense of humor to be "taking away one of his superpowers."

I did see Shaun of the Dead and I remember laughing when the two heroes first encountered human-looking zombies and saw them as drunks or something...didn't take them seriously...

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

BTW, I didn't like No Time To Die much either (it's a 5-6/10 for me) - sub-par direction and kind of exhausted, committee-driven writing killed it for me.

---

I saw it and wasn't much impressed. The film has been pressed perhaps into one of those "take a side" things where if you like the old Connerys you're a sexist, and if you like the new Craigs you're
"woke," but I think it is more sophisticated than that.

I'm rather delighting myself with the knowledge that I saw Dr. No on release and thus have gone through every year, every decade, every permutation, of James Bond and it has been a "journey" to rival my Hitchcock films(most of which were released BEFORE I was born) . The funny thing is that Bond has been -- from the beginning -- pretty much a "B" serial with an A budget. Nobody ever considered nominating a Bond as Best Picture or Connery as Best Actor or Honor Blackman as Best Actress or Donald Pleasance as Best Supporting Actor. They've been "popcorn movies" from the beginning.

And Christmas time movies. Goldfinger, Thunderball, OHMSS and Diamonds are Forever were part of Christmas in a big way -- back when it was Christmastime and not Summertime "when the big movies came out" -- all bunched together. I saw OHMSS , The Italian Job, and Hitchcock's Topaz the same Christmas week in 1969. OHMSS, with all its snow and skiing scenes, felt perfect for the season.

Thunderball was a two-fer. I saw it at Christmas of 1965, and then they "brought it back" in the summer of 1966 where I saw the movie AT a beachfront theater, with its Bahama-beach background. It all merged together, the sun and the sand and the Bond girls...

...and somewhere around The Man With the Golden Gun...it was pretty much over. Bond became predictable and enjoyable but never special.

Until the Craig Bonds weirdly elected to make the whole franchise "serious," moody, emotional, political, bleak..

CONT

---

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I think there is one big Red Herring about the Craig Bonds...and one rather Immutable Fact.

The Red Herring: That the Craig Bonds are the biggest grossers of them all. Yes, sure, maybe. But then EVERYTHING gets worldwide release these days a billion dollar gross is not only easy, but expected. Population, ticket price inflation, number of theaters, number of markets -- I think Bond had more cultural impact with the one-two peak of Goldfinger and Thunderball in the 60's -- it was like Star Wars, like Titanic. You not only couldn't escape Bond or his many TV clones(UNCLE, I Spy, The Wild Wild West...)

The Immutable Fact: That movies are different in the early 21 century: they are diverse. OF COURSE we get a female M, a gay Q, a black Moneypenny. And a Black "OO7" -- which is rather a bait and switch. It is the era we live in. Same with the elimination of casual sex (like I"ve said, the Hays Code is back.)

What I DON'T get is why they made the Bond franchise so damn bleak. It was developed as escapism. Oh, well. It will keep going in some form, maybe "comes the Revolution, we'll all have a sense of humor" again.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

(I've ended up deciding that the only Bond films I *really* like, and all anyone really needs,

---

"All anyone really needs" -- ha. Bold talk! That's laying it down: these and no more. I'm not necessarlly at odds with the idea, but...

---

are Goldfinger, OHMSS, Spy Who Loved Me, Goldeneye, Casino Royale.)

So

One Connery (Goldfinger)
One Lazenby (OHMSS) (He only made one)
One Moore (The Spy Who Loved Me)
No Daltons (He only made two)
One Brosnan (Goldeneye, his first)
One Craig (Casino Royale, his first)

Fair enough. It gave me reason to think, and I go this way:

ALL the Connerys are worthwhile, because he was the most major and charismatic actor to play Bond, and because each one has a certain value:

Dr. No (It all begins, the shock of the license to kill and the available ladies; but also: it starts like no other Bond movie.)

From Russia With Love -- Connery's personal favorite, this is considered to be rather like a "real" espionage film and has Hitchcock touches(the train scenes; the helicopter chase.) The Connery-Shaw fight is the most brutal and action packed in the series. Rosa Klebb with her poisoned shoe knife is classic(and played by Lotte Lenya of Mack the Knife Fame.) BUT really crappy music over the really cheapjack climax(with boats).

Goldfinger: The first REAL James Bond movie, template-wise. Bond. Ultra-villain(Goldfinger, via Philip Vandamm). Henchman (Oddjob, via Valerian the Knifeman.) Sexy babe(Pussy Galore -- in 1964 I just thought it meant Pussycat; via Eve Kendall.) The villains' caper. Big climax(but NOT at the villains' lair.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Thunderball: The first truly epic Bond movie -- filmed in Wide Screen Panavision. All those beach scenes. The underwater battle at the end. THE best array of "Bond girls," all sampled by the man himself. Sharks (pre-Jaws; pre Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me.) The biggest Connery hit -- made more than the 5 Bonds before it, and the 5 Bonds after it. But hey -- it sure does play slow and overlong, today.

You Only Live Twice: My least favorite of the Connery Bonds -- and its box office fell, stirring Connery to leave the franchise. In its favor: the Nancy Sinatra theme song; the Japan locales; Blofeld (Donald Pleasance) equals Dr. Evil...and the big raid on the villain's lair at the end(hidden in a volcano.)

Diamonds Are Forever: Connery had been gone only for one film but we never thought we'd get him back. And we DID. And it felt great. The film was rather skimpy(all the money went to Connery) but Connery had a great fight scene and a fine final foiling of the villains. Vegas made sense for a Bond visit. Jill St. John and Lana Wood were hot American numbers after a decade of exotic foreign beauties. (Note: once Connery came back, they paid off John Psycho Gavin, who was to have had the Bond role here.)

As a personal memory, I like how Connery's Bond came back at Christmas of 1971, concurrently with Eastwood's debuting Dirty Harry and surrounded by the grit and violence of The French Connection, A Clockwork Orange and Straw Dogs. Connery was wonderfully retro that year.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Never Say Never Again. Bond comes back AGAIN, 11 years after the last time and this time, the nostalgia (circa 1983) is palpable. By now, Connery had done The Man Who Would Be King and Robin and Marion and had a "serious career." It was fun seeing him clean shaven and with a hairpiece again. The flim was made by outside producers of the real franchise...so it looked different. And it was too slow and too long(because of an amateur producer, said Connery.)

For legal reasons, the film was a remake of Thunderball, and it was interesting to see all the characters and scenes get "Van Sant Psycho" treatment -- NOT. None of the scenes matched Thunderball in content, just plot. Connery went up against Roger Moore in Octopussy that year. Moore's film won at the box office, but I can't remember it.

---

So: ALL the Connery Bonds are worth seeing and remembering, as far as I'm concerned. Most of the Bonds made after them and around them: not so much. Here's the few that mattered to me:

On Her Majesty's Secret Service: It was said that if Connery had stayed for this one, it would have been the greatest of all. But because Connery LEFT, they had more money for more epic action. The final toboggan fight between Bond and a now-macho Blofeld(Telly Savalas) was a fast-edit action set piece on the order of Hitchcock at his montage best and The Wild Bunch the same year. The ski scenes were seminal. And this pre-teen male viewer went nuts for Bond's nights in a compound filled with horny women who wanted him (and got him), one by one. There is, of course, great emotion in the film as Bond finally married(Diana Rigg from The Avengers, perfect) and she gets killed by Blofeld right after the ceremony. The Bond franchise could have ended perfectly, right there.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

The Spy Who Loved Me. Roger Moore's first two outings had not done well at the box office, and were silly , to boot(that Southern Sheriff.) The producers considered ending the series but instead doubled down on a bigger budget than usual, and made a sea-going remake of "You Only Live Twice," complete with a henchman called "Jaws" to homage a recent hit. The opening ski jump stunt is still mind-blowing and created new template for Bond movies (the pre-credits scenes weren't ALWAY action pieces.) Curt Jurgens made a nicely retro villain -- he was of the 50's , not the 70's(he'd been considered to play Vandamm for Hitchcock.) Carly Simon got one of the better Bond songs and it made the point about James Bond perfectly: "Nobody Does it Better." Fighting, loving, skiing, scuba-diving, skydiving...nothing.

--

And that's it. I can't say that a single Bond movie after The Spy Who Loved Me every really much mattered to me other than as action entertainment without any emotional resonance or sex appeal.

Except: Moore's ostensibly "worst" and final Bond -- A View to a Kill -- had a really catchy theme song by Duran Duran ("Dance into the Fire") that I loved all summer long and a climax on the Golden Gate Bridge that brought back fond memories of Vertigo AND NXNW AND Black Sunday(a blimp figures in the climax) -- with Oscared villain Christopher Walken duking it out with Bond high atop the Golden Gate. The film opened with a Eiffel Tower action scene -- MORE Hitchcock influence.

Dalton, Brosnan, Craig? Maybe some other time..

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Note in passing.

With "No Time to Die" out after such a long delay ...and thus concerns from the producers about exactly how and when to bring Bond back....its a good time to linger on Bond's links to Hitchcock :

Hitchcock almost made a film of the first book, Casino Royale.

Personally, I think that the Bond movies killed Hitchcock's COMMERICAL career in the 60's. Eva Marie Saint fully clothed trading sexy come-ons with Cary Grant laid the groundwork for the loose single women of Bond...but couldn't compete with the va-va-voom bikini "Bond Girls." Nor was Hitchcock interested in wall to wall action. North by Northwest had been good enough.

But Hitchcock made the mistake of going head to head WITH Bond by putting out the lackluster spy films Torn Curtain and Topaz in succession(albeit 3 years apart.) Bosley Crowther of the NYT actually mentioned Hitchcock's "inability to keep up with Bond" as part of the reason for the failure of Torn Curtain, and Topaz opened against On Her Majesty's Secret Service. As a "spy movie maker," Hitchcock got beat by lesser films with Bond.

Hitchcock scholar Robin Wood really didn't like the 60's Bond films,and made an interesting comment in Hitchcock's Films: "I can think of no Hitchcock film with the amount of sex and violence of a Bond film." I read this before I saw Psycho, but I thought -- "gee, not even Psycho?" I'd say Psycho's violence is more shocking than the Bond kind, at least. And of course long after Wood wrote that...along came Frenzy.

All that said, I suppose that the landmark sensuality and violence of Psycho DID clear the way for the sexy sadism of the Connery Bonds...

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

OT on an OT

But relevant to James Bond, who is relevant right now(Christmastime 2021) and maybe not again for a number of years,

Heres a thread from the "Red Notice" Board which brings in Bond (and me) eventually:

https://moviechat.org/tt7991608/Red-Notice/619034a1340fb34baea171cb/The-Validity-of-Gal-Gadot-Beating-Up-Two-Men?reply=61a21330a5f59a34fe9215a0

..thus allowing a "close out" on the very important (and yet not) saga of James Bond across decades and two centuries.

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

What I DON'T get is why they made the Bond franchise so damn bleak. It was developed as escapism.

Good question. It was certainly true that No Time To Die was mostly dour and that what the interlude with Ana de Aramas's Paloma character seemed to be about was just giving the film a relieving dose of glamour and escapism (she starts as a hapless trainee then suddenly she changes into an unstoppable bad-ass - fun but v. silly and, yes, escapist).

When Casino Royale (which now looks relatively fun and escapist compared to subsequent films) came out there was a lot of chat about Bond feeling the need to compete with Bourne, to get darker, grittier, more anguished. And 2006 remember still felt pretty close to 9/11, IRAQ (which the UK was deeply involved with - see In The Loop (2009)!) was now a complete quagmire, and all the legal and moral fallout from the US's descent into using torture after 9/11 was front-page-news every day (and kind of cheerled in the other direction on TV with Fox's 24 series with Kiefer Sutherland). It was therefore perhaps almost inevitable that Craig's Bond would end up pretty dour and even anti-fun.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

What I DON'T get is why they made the Bond franchise so damn bleak. It was developed as escapism.

---

Good question. It was certainly true that No Time To Die was mostly dour and that what the interlude with Ana de Aramas's Paloma character seemed to be about was just giving the film a relieving dose of glamour and escapism (she starts as a hapless trainee then suddenly she changes into an unstoppable bad-ass - fun but v. silly and, yes, escapist).

--

And hey -- that dress. I reserve the right to join the younger (male) movie fans who like to come to moviechat to discuss female beauty and pulchritude. There can still be a use for it. Here, Ana is gorgeous and easy on the eyes -- but she turns into a surprising character and yes, "sells" the small woman beats up men concept that is all the rage over on the Red Notice board.

And I'm pretty sure that she and Bond have no sex, but that Bond smiles appreciatively at her as she leaves and thanks her for her surprising help. Its a good "mutual respect" moment fed by the fact that he worked with her in Knives Out...maybe he's thanking her for joining him. (Craig is taking "Spectre" henchman Dave Bautista with him in "Knives Out 2.")

I grabbed on to each small tidbit of "Bond good humor and wit" that Craig doled out here. Like saying "Well, I blew his mind" when he killed one guy through the eye...

But the movie was not built for that. Hell, this one plays out like a TEARJERKER. But then, so did On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and, come to think of it, so did Casino Royale. OK, I guess.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

When Casino Royale (which now looks relatively fun and escapist compared to subsequent films)

---

Boy, aint THAT true, eh? I don't own that Casino Royale(or the REALLY silly 1967 version) but I watch it often when it comes on. The opening is a good grim "double whammy" in which Bond flashes back to his first kill (in b/w) while implementing the second kill ("They say after the first, its easier.") Grim stuff but good violence -- an opening fight in the flashback and the famous opening iris shot.

Shortly thereafter, Bond chases a guy higher and higher and higher on a maze-like series of construction cranes and scaffolding -- with little support -- and it is one of two times(Spiderman on the Washington Monument was the other) where I got REAL vertigo (dizzy, scared to look down )at a MOVIE. If only Hitchocck had this quality of HD when he made his Vertigo -- all he could do was that zoom-dolly with Herrmann's music.

The CGI was also perfect for that chase scene and suddenly all the Connery blue screen of the 60's was wiped out, competitively.

I liked how Casino Royale was built as an "origin story in modern times" -- THIS Bond does NOT like his martinis shaken not stirred, is NOT comfortable in a tux; needs to be "trained in elegance" even as he maintains brute killer instincts(ala Connery.)

It also made -- I think -- this great point: after finding "true love" with a woman who (a) betrays him but (b) redeems herself and (c) dies horribly without his being able to save her....he goes on(understandably) to become the ladies man we all know and love: love 'em, leave 'em, don't get close.

At least that's how it was SUPPOSED to play later...but it didn't. Oh, and at the end he finally says "Bond...James Bond."

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I also like how Casino Royale takes one thing from the Fleming novel that DID make it into the 1967 spoof: Bond versus LeChiffre at the baccarat table. It was Peter Sellers(one of a "group" of Bonds) versus Orson Welles in '67, and enough of that survives into Casino Royale 2006 to invoke nostalgia (Van Sant's Casino Royale?)

And this: I actually read the book of Casino Royale years ago, and I recall the book's one basic, low tech, brutal torture technique: tie Bond nude, to a chair with a rope bottom and lots of open space and -- beat upwards between his legs with a swinging rope held in LeChiffre's hand. Ouch. My male friends who saw the Craig film spoke openly and with nausea of that scene. So it worked!

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

there was a lot of chat about Bond feeling the need to compete with Bourne, to get darker, grittier, more anguished.

--

"Get off my lawn" time from me. I didn't much LIKE the Bournes and I saw all three of the first ones. The shaky cam car chases. Pretty much the same plot each time, but with a new guest star bureaucrat out to "get Bourne." My Matt Damon dislike was overpowered and rendered obsolete; he was OK and the fights to the death were very good. But overall -- they didn't much feel like "fun" action either.

--

And 2006 remember still felt pretty close to 9/11, IRAQ (which the UK was deeply involved with - see In The Loop (2009)!) was now a complete quagmire, and all the legal and moral fallout from the US's descent into using torture after 9/11 was front-page-news every day (and kind of cheerled in the other direction on TV with Fox's 24 series with Kiefer Sutherland). It was therefore perhaps almost inevitable that Craig's Bond would end up pretty dour and even anti-fun

---

All noted. Good guys, bad guys, mixed and matched and rendered "unsolveable and indefinite." But then we've got other depression-invokers now (COVID anyone?)

That said, the 60's Bonds hit in the midst of nuclear paranoia -- Strangelove and Fail Safe told us we were all gonna die -- or burn. Indeed, in Thunderball, Spectre steals nuclear missiles and threatens to blow up a city. I suppose this was "stop worrying and love the bomb" type stuff -- lets get nuclear terrorism right out into the open and have Bond stop it.

I'm not sure how to do Bond "fun" these days -- but Casino Royale came the closest. It even had an "action packed" theme song (not done by a major artist?)...the ones after have been slow, slower...slowest...

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

What seems clear is this: whoever they have hired to WRITE these Bonds, and DIRECT these Bonds...want them to play this way. Nothing stops them because worldwide grosses are almost automatically nine figures -- you can't stop these things from making money(even if the new one LOSES 100 million -- from the delays -- it will do fine.)

Somebody has suggested that given the way No Time to Die ends...one strategy would be to go "back in time to a younger Bond" and revive the series "period." What period? Well, the 60's are too far back, but perhaps the 70s or 80s might work. Timothy Dalton and Brosnan seemed to be in the most "competent and comfortable Bond vehicles" -- plenty of action, pretty women but not too loose...just good old fashioned entertainment.

Or bring back Roger Moore Bond -- Ryan Reynolds anybody?

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Dalton, Brosnan, Craig? Maybe some other time..

--

I return to say a little something about Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan.

--

It was "fun" Hollywood gossip at the time, though one man was left in mental anguish and the other as damaged goods:

Roger Moore's 70-year old look in A View to a Kill required a new Bond. Soon, one was announced: Pierce Brosnan, a handsome young fellow with a bit more heft than Moore and a little of Connery's sadism. Brosnan said "yes"-- but the producers of his TV show Remington Steele said "NO" -- he was under contract for the TV series. So Brosnan was publically "out" and Timothy Dalton came in -- as "damaged goods" -- we all knew the producers wanted Brosnan.

It would then take EIGHT YEARS -- two Dalton movies and then a six-year wait -- for Brosnan to FINALLY get to play Bond, and his first one -- "Goldeneye" -- was kind of sold as "mission accomplished." You want Brosnan as Bond? (We didn't, that much) -- you got him.

In Dalton's favor, he was the "second lead" in the 1980 movie Flash Gordon, and seemed to me to be much more of a movie star than the guy playing Flash. Dalton was playing an intergalactic Errol Flynn/Robin Hood type, in moustache in green; and Flash -- well, bleached blond ballplayer type. But it turned out that Dalton just wasn't a good movie star, after all. He DID play a Nazi-spy Errol Flynn type in The Rocketeer (1991) and felt like a star THERE.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

What I loved about Dalton's first --"The Living Daylights" . One: The A-Ha song. Exciting action packed like the good old days. Two: Joe Don Baker -- the mildly overweight Southern Mafia gorilla in Charley Varrick (1973) as a more overweight US military nut who takes on Dalton in a rather small scale climax in Baker's military museum. THEN Baker came back later as a CIA man in a Bond movie. Can't remember which one.

And three: one good stunt sequence with Bond hanging out the back of a cargo chute on a plane and cutting h is shoelaces to send a henchman to send plummeting to his doom. I can't remember Dalton's one liner on the kill; he had one, but he just wasn't that quippy.

But here's the thing: yet and still, not only was Dalton not Sean Connery, the series had simply lost both its brutality and its carnality. Bond was bland.

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

I thought you had an overall positive view of Edgar Wright(or maybe of his criticism more than his movies.) Well, I'll take the warning in stride.

I am a big fan of Wright's, and in some respects my problems with his new movie arise from the fact that I'm possibly a little *too* close to and familiar with the type of films he's now trying to make. I mean, I'm not only about as knowledgeable about psychological horrors and Giallos as it's possible to be, I also spent months at one point slogging through Wright's (very eccentric) list of his personal Top 1000 films, which included a range of cheapie, late '50s/'60's UK films about innocents coming first to Jazzy/Beatnik/Underground London and then later to Swinging London (Some these were almost 'Reefer Madness' level, campy, cautionary tales, others were more artsy.). And, of course, all the main actresses in Last Night In Soho, Mackenzie, Taylor-Joy, Rigg are super-well known to me at this point. Perhaps, then, all this familiarity sort of immunized me against the film's effects.

Therefore, I can't rule out that others are going to have a far better time with LNIS than me. I guess I do recommend that everyone should see LNIS and make up their own minds about it.

Possible indicator of how things are likely to break down: I didn't much like the final film Wright made with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (concluding his so-called 'Cornetto' trilogy after Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz): The World's End. It felt labored and obvious and overdone compared to the first two (and Wright's TV series w/ Pegg& Frost, Spaced) which I'd adored and probably watched at least 5x each (Spaced x2 and listened to Wright+QT commentaries on several eps! Fandom.). My sense, however, is that more moderate fans of Wright were able to just relax and enjoy The World's End for what it was more than super-fans. Maybe the same pattern will hold true of LNIS.

[–] jay440 (107) 3 years ago

An interesting list by Stephen Sondheim of his 40 favorite films re-emerged after his passing last week:

1. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Alfred L. Werker, 1939)
2. Bang the Drum Slowly (John D. Hancock, 1973)
3. The Barbarian Invasions (Denys Arcand, 2003)
4. They Were Five (Julien Duvivier, 1936)
5. Character (Mike van Diem, 1997)
6. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)
7. The Clock (Vincente Minnelli, 1945)
8. The Contract (Krzysztof Zanussi, 1980)
9. Dance of Life (Julien Duvivier, 1937)
10. Dead of Night (Alberto Cavalcanti, Robert Hamer, Basil Dearden and Charles Crichton, 1945)
11. Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003)
12. The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980)
13. Fires on the Plain (Kon Ichikawa, 1959)
14. Fresh (Boaz Yakin, 1994)
15. The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)
16. Hangover Square (John Brahm, 1945)
17. Au Hasard Balthazar (Robert Bresson, 1966)
18. Henry Fool (Hal Hartley, 1997)
19. High and Low (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)
20. Lone Star (John Sayles, 1996)
21. A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1946)
22. The Mind Reader (Roy Del Ruth, 1933)
23. The More, the Merrier (George Stevens, 1943)
24. The Nasty Girl (Michael Verhoeven, 1990)
25. Night Must Fall (Richard Thorpe, 1937)
26. The Oak (Lucian Pintilie, 1992)
27. The Official Story (Luis Puenzo, 1985)
28. The Organiser (Mario Monicelli, 1963)
29. Out of the Fog (Anatole Litvak, 1941)
30. Panique (Julien Duvivier, 1946)
31. Pygmalion (Leslie Howard and Anthony Asquith, 1938)
32. Adam’s Rib (Vyacheslav Kristofovich, 1990)
33. The Sea Wolf (Michael Curtiz, 1941)
34. A Slave of Love (Nikita Mikhalkov, 1976)
35. Smiles of a Summer Night (Ingmar Bergman, 1955)
36. The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Zoltan Korda, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan and William Cameron Menzies, 1940)
37. This is Spinal Tap (Rob Reiner, 1984)
38. To the Ends of the Earth (Robert Stevenson, 1948)
39. Torchy Blane in Chinatown (William Beaudine, 1939)
40. War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk, 1966-67)

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

@jay440. Interesting list. I've seen 23/40 and few more I've actually got copies of on a hard drive somewhere. A whole bunch then are essentially completely new to me. I'll be sure to make a list of those and to try to track down and watch a few in honor of Sondheim.

Possibly of interest. The following Reddit group is an awesome source of theater recordings including, especially right now, Sondheimiana:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProshotMusicals/

[–] jay440 (107) 3 years ago

Thanks for the link. It was genuinely moving to see stories of New York piano bars filling up with people, singing his songs in tribute. And in an odd sort-of Psycho connection, his #25 pick, Night Must Fall, about a nice guy serial killer, was a part he connected with:

"In an interview last year, Sondheim claimed that he was an adept actor since his early years and always wanted to play dark characters. According to the late legend, he always had a penchant for playing mentally disturbed characters and was obsessed with one particular figure from the play Night Must Fall by Emlyn Williams.

“I was good in college,” Sondheim claimed. “They always cast me, every play they did, if there was a very neurotic, self-destructive, gloomy, ‘Get Sondheim!’ I played every misfit. But there was one part I always wanted to play, which was Danny in Night Must Fall. It was about a serial killer, which is a play I had loved since I first read it when I was 12 years old. And once I played that part, I retired.” https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/stephen-sondheim-40-favourite-films-of-all-time/

Robert Montgomery (also in Hitchcock's Mr. and Mrs. Smith) played Danny in the film adaptation.

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

Oh yes, there are loose Psycho & Hitchcock connections aplenty with Mr Sondheim.

1. He was best buds with Anthony Perkins for many years (I assume lovers too). They co-hosted lots of mystery-themed parties that were a famous destination for Broadway and Hollywood hipsters of a certain ilk. Perkins' and Sondheim's script for the rather splendid whodunnit film, The Last of Sheila (1973) grew out of those parties. (There was a lot of The Last of Sheila in Knives Out too - note that Rian Johnson has a $450million deal with Netflix for 2 Knives Out sequels. Ka-ching! In a just world, Sondheim's and Perkins' estates would get a taste of that.)
2. Perkins was in a bunch of Sondheim productions on Broadway too.
3. Sondheim's first great success was as lyricist for West Side Story. This opened in 1957 and the movie dominated 1961. So West Side and Sondheim are kind of 'all over' Hitchcock's peak period.
4. A number of other Sondheim film picks really jump out. Dead of Night (1945) is a big tell - its famous Vent's dummy sequence is a big subterreanean influence on Psycho, as discussed here: https://moviechat.org/tt0054215/Psycho/58c7074b4e1cf308b9383a3d/OT-Edgar-Wrights-Fave-1000-films?reply=58c7074c4e1cf308b9383b01
Jon Brahms-directed Hanover Square (1945) w/ spectacular proto-Thorwald, super-Welles/Perkins/Clift-type actor Laird Cregar also has myriad Hitch connections. (cont'd).

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

(Cont'd)
5. Sondheim's relationship with his mom was.... interesting. The NY Times's 3 page Obit for Sondheim included the following segment:

Alone With Mother

Stephen Joshua Sondheim was born on March 22, 1930, in Manhattan, and lived first on the Upper West Side. Herbert Sondheim, his father, was the owner of a dressmaking company; his mother, the former Etta Janet Fox, known as Foxy, worked for her husband as a designer until he left her, when Stephen was 10. He was sent for a time to military school, and later to the George School in Pennsylvania, but until he was 16 Stephen, her only child, lived mostly with his mother, with whom he had a troubled relationship throughout his life. (His father remarried and had two more sons.)

In the years following his parents’ separation, Mr. Sondheim recalled for his biography, his mother treated him precisely as she had her husband: flirting with him sexually on the one hand, belittling him on the other. As an adult, Mr. Sondheim supported her financially; nonetheless, in the 1970s, the night before she was to have heart surgery, she wrote a letter to her son and had it hand delivered. It read, in part, “The only regret I have in life is giving you birth.”

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I love how an OT thread can (here at least) move intelligently from one "trend worth discussing" to another.

Stephen Sondheim's death seems to have come with a certain "legend and power" to it. He DOES go back to the original West Side Story, which, thanks to COVID delays, is now coming out a dead-on 60 years after the 1961 original. Sondheim's death seems almost "promotional" to the new remake, and he saw it and praised it right before his death("If you know the show there will be some surprises.")

Personally, I see Sondheim as rather "hermetically sealed" over the decades. So many of his musicals did NOT become movies: Company, Follies, Assassins. The movie ones came early -- WSS, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum...anything else EARLY?

Later, it took a long time but we finally got Sweeney Todd in 2007. I"ve read that the film had compressions and song deletions , but I found it at once tuneful and REALLY gory(I had to start closing my eyes at about the 10th spray of jugular blood from Todd's razor.) Its in a near tie for my favorite of 2007, but the other one(Charlie Wilson's War) has won. I watch it more often, I quote the dialogue. Interesting, THAT was Mike Nichols final movie. Nichols AND Sondheim were young towering figures on Broadway; now they are gone.

How interesting that Psycho did not make Sondheim's list of favorites, even with Perkins as such a close friend. Their screenplay for "The Last of Shiela" is almost TOO intelligent for me, as if they are lost in their own private game and we are only sorta invited. The sniping at people like Sue Mengers and -- who else? Was nicely inside.

Sondheim's relationship with his mother does sound rather Psycho IV: The Beginning -- as does Perkins with HIS Mother after his father died (when Perkins was 5, just like Norman in the movie in dialogue evidently re-written BY Perkins.)

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

I will be interested to see how Spielberg's West Side Story fares in a few weeks. It is "Van Sant's Psycho" all over again, but musical revivals happen on Broadway all the time.

Whatever the reviews -- and just like Van Sant's Psycho -- the real issue is: will this come CLOSE to the box office and cultural impact of the original? Hitchcock's Psycho ran -- worldwide -- for MONTHS. And then two re-releases years later. Van Sant's Psycho? Gone in about two weeks, consigned to cable/streaming where it isn't really shown much.

Psycho and West Side Story have their connections.After all, they were made just a year apart and shared a key actor (Simon Oakland.)

Meanwhile, Cary Grant in North by Northwest is kidnapped on his way to the Winter Garden theater. Research suggests he was going to see West Side Story on stage. The writer of North by Northwest(Ernest Lehman) ended up writing and producing the movie of West Side Story.

I just love coincidences.

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

Personally, I see Sondheim as rather "hermetically sealed" over the decades....but we finally got Sweeney Todd in 2007.

I guess we've had Into The Woods (which nobody really liked) since Sweeney Todd. Overall though, yes, Sondheim's plays have proven hard to adapt for film: they aren't spectacles on any level, and they have lots of intricate dialogue and lyrics. In sum, they're too adult for average theater-goers let alone the average movie-goer. Sondheim has been a God for theater majors and theater insiders generally for decades but the broader culture (including myself) is still catching up with him.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Personally, I see Sondheim as rather "hermetically sealed" over the decades....but we finally got Sweeney Todd in 2007.
I guess we've had Into The Woods (which nobody really liked) since Sweeney Todd.

--

I went to see Into The Woods primarily because the music (in the trailer) reminded meof the music in Sweeney Todd(music that I LOVED, starting with the powerful Herrmannesque stuff over the opening credits.) Alas, the movie was too weird and obtuse and I remember thinking..."I just don't think this guy Sondheim's plots fit our times."

Note in passing; tons of old Sondheim interviews out there right now, some as recently as weeks before his death. But also one in which he said he didn't much like the 1961 West Side Story but DID like the 2007 Sweeney Todd, "for being transformed into a movie rather than a movie of a play." This Sweeney Todd(movie) fan feels redeemed.

There is a song called "Pretty Women" in which those two skilled crooners(ha) Johnny Depp and Alan Rickman duet together and it WORKS -- the melody is beautiful and haunting, the men sing well ENOUGH(the orchestra helps) but the point is that the two men are singing as "suspense gathers": Arch-villain Rickman is in Depp's barber's chair with the shaving blade at his throat and Depp intends to kill Rickman at the end of the song and...and...

Great song. Great scene. Two great stars(I DO miss Depp.) And one of them is gone.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Overall though, yes, Sondheim's plays have proven hard to adapt for film: they aren't spectacles on any level, and they have lots of intricate dialogue and lyrics. In sum, they're too adult for average theater-goers let alone the average movie-goer. Sondheim has been a God for theater majors and theater insiders generally for decades but the broader culture (including myself) is still catching up with him.

---

Time for one of my "autobiographical bits," but I think it is relevant here.

I grew up with Time and Newsweek delivered to the home of our family in California, and read them pretty much cover to cover each week. Always to the movie reviews first, but then often to the "Stage" section, which -- I realized only many years later -- meant that I was often reading about productions that I would never SEE (we never went to NYC, and the cost...) unless they were made into movies(which happened a lot.)

So some of those stage plays that Time(in particular reviewed) DID get to the movies -- The Odd Couple, Hello, Dolly, Hair... -- but a LOT of those plays NEVER got to movie form and so they only existed for me on the page.

Enter: Steven Sondheim. Time would write big articles -- with plenty of photos -- about plays like Company and Follies and eventually Assassins but -- those plays stayed only on the page, only in my mind, with little sense of Sondheim's musical style.

I recall my father commenting on a cover issue of Time (in the 70's?) about drug needles washing up on the New York coastline. He said "that wouldn't be a cover story anywhere else but New York -- you do realize this magazine is about New York?" He wasn't mad about it, he was just educating me that NYC was rather the center of things back then -- with sidetrips(in the magazine) to DC for the "Politics" pages. And though it wasn't called The New Yorker or New York magainze, Time WAS a New York magazine. Newsweek a bit less so...didn't it have DC offices?

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Anyway, if Time was a New York magazine that paid a LOT of attention to ANY new Steven Sondheim musical play...then that is why I came to know quite about about Steven Sondheim over my years of reading of his musicals -- musicals that Hollywood simply didn't touch after awhile.

Side-note, similar: it wasn't just musicals that Time covered on Broadway. Plays, too. And around 1970, in Time, in Newsweek, and in the NY Times(which I read at the school library) I came upon a series of raves for the new "thriller" Sleuth.

Well, around 1971, word came that Sleuth would be a movie(with Laurence Oliver and Michael Caine after Cary Grant and Warren Beatty were thought of.) OK, exciting news.

But bigger news in 1971: "Sleuth" author Anthony Shaffer had agreed to write Hitchcock's new movie "Frenzy."

Even as a young fellow, I thought that was BIG news. I knew that Hitchcock was in decline and that Topaz had been largely disparaged. I knew that he was old. BUT: if Anthony "Sleuth" Shaffer was willing to work with him, maybe -- just maybe -- Hitchcock would have a hit again.

And so he did. Hitchcock foe Stanley Kauffmann wrote " Hitchcock finally gets a good script and lo, the director has returned." Well-- Hitchcock helped write it and to visualize scenes that couldn't be written(the first murder, the potato truck.) But yes...Anthony Shaffer was a BIG DEAL...

...and I knew he was coming because I'd read all about Sleuth in Time and the NYT.

With this twist: I actually didn't think Sleuth(with Oliver and Caine) was all that good. A big twist was no twist at all(maybe it worked on the stage without known stars.) It was..stageboand.

Frenzy was much more of a MOVIE..and exciting, and horrifying.

But this twist; Sleuth, not Frenzy, got Oscar noms in 1972. Actor(both Olivier and Caine), screenplay, Director. Oh, well.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Meanwhile, a lot of first reviews are in on Spielberg's West Side Story -- not necessarily from "name" critics, but do we have those anymore? Bottom line: raves. "The movie to beat at the Oscars...front runner for Best Picture."

Let's take that last, first. Could it be? A movie from the same material wins Best Picture ...with versions 60 years apart?

It sounds like too much. But Oscar competition is not what it was -- it COULD happen.

Also: another blow to the "Tarantino theory" of aged directors doing poor work. Spielberg is 74 -- older than when Hitchcock made Frenzy(a hit, I'll grant you) but closer to when he made Family Plot(a good "old man's movie") and later had to quit. Spielberg's West Side Story feels like a bigger deal than Family Plot, or even Frenzy.

BUT: we are waiting to see how the box office does. As I've noted, modernly , it seems like movies just can't fail with international markets, so I expect bigger numbers than for Van Sant's Psycho. Ha.

Speaking of Van Sant's Psycho, I DO remember a 1998 article before it came out wondering if the movie could actually WIN OSCARS based on its 1960 greatness -- or at least get nominated. The main item being promoted for Oscar was Joseph Stefano's slide update of his great(but unnominated) 1960 screenplay from the Robert Bloch book.

I recall this pushing me to "flights of fancy"(having not yet seen Van Sant's Psycho

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Meanwhile, a lot of first reviews are in on Spielberg's West Side Story -- not necessarily from "name" critics, but do we have those anymore? Bottom line: raves. "The movie to beat at the Oscars...front runner for Best Picture."

Let's take that last, first. Could it be? A movie from the same material wins Best Picture ...with versions 60 years apart?

It sounds like too much. But Oscar competition is not what it was -- it COULD happen.

Also: another blow to the "Tarantino theory" of aged directors doing poor work. Spielberg is 74 -- older than when Hitchcock made Frenzy(a hit, I'll grant you) but closer to when he made Family Plot(a good "old man's movie") and later had to quit. Spielberg's West Side Story feels like a bigger deal than Family Plot, or even Frenzy.

BUT: we are waiting to see how the box office does. As I've noted, modernly , it seems like movies just can't fail with international markets, so I expect bigger numbers than for Van Sant's Psycho. Ha.

Speaking of Van Sant's Psycho, I DO remember a 1998 article before it came out wondering if the movie could actually WIN OSCARS based on its 1960 greatness -- or at least get nominated. The main item being promoted for Oscar was Joseph Stefano's slight update of his great(but unnominated) 1960 screenplay from the Robert Bloch book.

I recall this pushing me to "flights of fancy"(having not yet seen Van Sant's Psycho): if Stefano's screenplay could be nominated, how about Herrmann's score? And..how about Van Sant as Best Director -- which would be HITCHCOCK as Best Director since Van Sant simply aped his shots. Anne Heche for Best Supporting Actress as Leigh had been nominated? Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates(Perkins had not been nominated)???

The answers were all : No. But I daresay that Stefano's script and Herrmann's music were still worthy of nomination in 1998.

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

Enter: Steven Sondheim. Time would write big articles -- with plenty of photos -- about plays like Company and Follies and eventually Assassins but -- those plays stayed only on the page, only in my mind, with little sense of Sondheim's musical style.

In the light of Sondheim's death I've been catching up with recordings of (often very famous) productions of S's shows on youtube....and what is shining though to me most often is, I'm afraid, sheer cleverness. He's reminding me quite a lot of a non-musical playwright whose work has also only occasionally transferred to the screen: Tom Stoppard. Stoppard's plays often turn on the audience having at least a passing familiarity with some intellectual field or other (landscape painting, chaos theory, moral philosophy, Hamlet, you name it...) and succeed only to the extent that Stoppard can make some moderately specialized knowledge (of the sort that Stoppard himself was able to acquire with a couple of months study) from those fields titillating to them. I stopped being titillated about the time I entered grad school. Sondheim similarly seems to get a lot of mileage out of various film genres, modern art & the art scene, etc. and I wonder whether I'm in the long run going to find it name-droppy and pandering and finally only pseudo-clever. First time through I'm finding Sondheim's stuff impressively musically difficult but the upshot is often that there's just a single song with much obvious staying-power and that you remember. Choreography except in a few instances (Follies) is minimal. Sondheim said he liked film a lot except for film musicals which he's always detested (no musicals in his top 40 list above for example). This figures since dance is at the core of the film musical. Sondheim isn't sexy and when his characters *are* having lots of sex, it just seems wrong, is the opposite of hot, e.g., Bobby in Company has lots of girlfriends (including Christina Hendricks in one recent production!) but just seems like a closeted gay guy. One starts to see why Sondheim's plays have gradually tilited towards Opera since that's a less body-oriented, less sexy, less dance-y, more intellectual medium and tradition.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

In the light of Sondheim's death I've been catching up with recordings of (often very famous) productions of S's shows on youtube....

--

I realize that for all of my talk of Sondheim's musicals NOT being made into movies, and "staying on the pages of Time and Newsweek"..the modern miracld of YouTube and the internet likely allows us to see taped versions of ALL his works, yes?

There for the taking. Also: PBS. I do recall watching "Sundays in the Park with George" (Bernadette Peters) there some decades ago.

Also, this: in the 70's, Judy Collins had a big radio hit with the poignantbut not-quite-understandable "Send in the Clowns." It think it hit on the radio because of the MUSIC...the rueful sadness of it, even if the lyrics weren't clear. (WHY send in clowns?)

That was from Sondheim, ("A Little Night Music," from an Ingmar Bergman movie, and how is HE going to weather the years?), and I believe that it was made into a movie with Liz Taylor singing "Send in the Clowns." A movie that got no Oscar recognition or box office success at all, I think.

---

swanstep wrote:

and what is shining though to me most often is, I'm afraid, sheer cleverness. He's reminding me quite a lot of a non-musical playwright whose work has also only occasionally transferred to the screen: Tom Stoppard.

---

All I can say is that I enjoyed very much reading your entire post, swanstep -- food for thought as usual and not much for me to say. Interesting that a "musical genius" like Sondheim didn't like musicals.

I suppose he's like some of our movie directors who hit big early and then coast on reputation. West Side Story, Gypsy, and Funny Thing On the Way to the Forum were known hit musical movies and plays in their day...Sondheim could spend the rest of his career doing "think piece" musicals.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

(Side note: rather like A Little NIght Music with Send in the Clowns, I feel that Gypsy and Funny Thing really only spawned one big radio hit each: "Everything's Coming Up Roses" and "Comedy Tonight," which opens the nicely manic Richard Lester film of Funny Thing with Zero Mostel getting to recreate his role, which he didn't get to do with Fiddler on the Roof.)

---

swanstep wrote:

Sondheim isn't sexy and when his characters *are* having lots of sex, it just seems wrong, is the opposite of hot, e.g., Bobby in Company has lots of girlfriends (including Christina Hendricks in one recent production!) but just seems like a closeted gay guy.

---

Hmm. I recall (from my Time reading days) that Dean Jones -- Mr. Disney movies himself -- got that lead in the first production. I'm pretty sure that Tony Perkins may have taken the role over from Jone or played it in another production. So....

Dean Jones: I have no idea of his orientation, but an interesting career. He had an interesting voice and a boyish manner -- I suppose Hitchcock could have tried him out as one of his villains. As a kid in the 60's, I mainly saw him in the Disney comedies I was raised on(The Ugly Dachshund, Blackbeard's Ghost), but he also did some "regular movies" (like Under the Yum Yum Tree) and also did the "Burke's Law" whodunit pilot as Burke's assistant who turns out to be the killer. Dick Powell played Burke in that pilot; Gene Barry took over the role(after Powell's death) for series.

DECADES later, I saw Dean Jones supporting Danny DeVito(top billing) and Gregory Peck (second billing) in 1991's Other People's Money(from a Broadway play) and I was like: "DEAN JONES? Where has he been?"

Thus concludes my Dean Jones career review. Ha. But Company must have made him "Broadway viable" for years.

--
One starts to see why Sondheim's plays have gradually tilited towards Opera since that's a less body-oriented, less sexy, less dance-y, more intellectual medium and tradition.

---

Well, if that is what worked for him. Christina Hendricks in anything is sexy, however. I'd like to see her in Company.

PS. A thought: I bought Streisand's "Broadway albums" in the 90s and 00s, and she did a fair amount of Sondheim songs. I learned them there, seeing them nowhere else to be heard.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

House of Gucci w/ Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Jared Leto, etc. has just premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is expected to contend for Oscars.

--

I sort of passed over this up at the top of the thread but I'm looking forward to this movie. The poster alone did it: Lady Gaga flanked by some Pacino(probably my Favorite Old Time star of the moment with NIcholson inactive, Eastwood TOO old and DeNiro just a little lesser in my eyes); Jeremy Irons (His scenes as the Big Boss in Margin Call will forever be seared in my mind as pure acting pleasure); Adam Driver(there's just no escaping THAT guy); and Jared Leto ("Who's that?" I thought as I looked at the poster -- what a make-up wearing chameleon!)

I hope the movie is good, but the cast alone is bringing me in.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

OT:

I chose Ghostbusters: Afterlife last week, and was personally surprised. (SPOILERS.)

I think it goes this way: the original Ghostbusters was a buddy team of guys and I think that's great. The Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, The Three Stooges. Animal House(above all), Caddyshack The Blues Brothers, and Ghostbusters continued the tradition most profitably.

But in recent years, we got Lady Ghostbusters (four funny ladies rendered not so funny) and now we get Kiddie Ghostbusters.

Really...its a kid's movie. I heard in my ears the Hispanic busboy at the end of The Candidate who says to Robert Redford, ""You no suppose' to be here."

But there is a subtext to the film for those in the know: Bill Murray was the comedy improv engine of "Ghostbusters" and he spent years personally shutting down any sequels after the subpar "Ghostbusters II,' much to Dan Aykroyd's chagrin (Murray had veto privileges).

Later on, Bill Murray "broke" with friend and Ghostbusters co-star Harold Ramis. They didn't speak for years, until Ramis fell ill and Murray saw him and mended fences. When Ramis died, Murray honored him at an Oscars ceremony in surprise remarks.

And...I think Bill Murray has been atoning ever since. He cleared Lady Ghostbusters and he cleared Kiddle Ghostbusters. And he's in them.

Ghostbusters Afterlife(the title means something) is ultimately set up as a very sweet and emotional salute to: Harold Ramis. Like the actor himself, Ramis's character(Egon) is dead in the storyline. But the rest of the gang's all here. And though I felt that 90% of the movie wasn't aimed at me at all, when the Old Guys showed up at the end, well -- emotion. (And in the post credits scenes, too.) Plus: Bill Murray is STILL funny.

Ghostbusters Afterlife is the best last 10 minutes of a movie I've seen this year.

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

25. Night Must Fall (Richard Thorpe, 1937)

I just checked out this one... and while it has some very nice, surprising (because so different from their respective, later star-making personas) performances from Robert Montgomery and Rosalind Russell, and some interesting character ideas that would *later* make for great films (an ultra-charming psychopath and a younger character who sees the truth but is also possibly fatally drawn to this charmer), NMF's script is a muddle and the directing is undistinguished. I mean *you know* Alfred and Alma must have seen this and probably the play it was based on too, They must have seen what was screwed up here, what story elements could be tweaked to make something truly sensational. Shadow of a Doubt (1943) in some sense does start here I'd say, as it has the same core ideas, but Shadow is also about 50 times better.

It's curious that Sondheim's list found no space for Hitchcock and yet includes admittedly suggestive mediocrities such as NMF (1937). 1937 was arguably the first year of Film's true Golden Age with at least 5 ultra-classics (Stage Door, La Grande Illusion, The Awful Truth, Lost Horizon, Stella Dallas) and a host of other real keepers (Make Way For Tomorrow, Pepe Le Moko, Topper, The Edge of the World, Shall We Dance). NMF is less distinguished than all those.

Relatedly, the very next item on Sondheim's list:

24. The Nasty Girl (Michael Verhoeven, 1990)

is a film I saw on its release and found shallow/silly, as did everyone I saw it with. I vividly remember people joking afterwards about how we shouldn't have bothered with this film from 'the wrong Verhoeven'. And nobody has ever talked abut this movie since because...it's not worth talking about. It wasn't memorably terrible, just shallow, 'Nazis are bad' stuff that's best forgotten and has in fact mostly been forgotten. Sondheim's movie taste is, it seems, very personal to him.

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

It's curious that Sondheim's list found no space for Hitchcock

--

Its a funny thing about the "favorite movies" lists of famous people and Hitchcock. Sometimes, one ore more Hitchoccks make the lists. But sometimes, Hitch is verboten. I think he was just too successful and "brand name" for the intelligentsia to wish to acknowledge him. So NMF(Night Must Fall) gets picked instead, and its not at top HItchocck level.

I do believe that NIght Must Fall was remade in the 60's(with Albert Finney as the psycho) and bit more "Psycho" style blood and gore. I never saw that one, but I saw it listed in articles about 60''s shockers INCLUDING Psycho.

And doesn't the killer in NMF keep a severed head in a hatbox ala Thorwald in Rear Window?

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Speaking of severed heads, sudden memory flash:

As a kid going to the drive-in with my parents, I'd sometimes fear the "Coming Attractions" segment between double feature movies. Often these trailers would be for Jack Lemmon comedies and John Wayne Westerns or re-releases of Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals like Carousel, but SOMETIMES, the image would be black and white, and the music would be SCARY and the screen action would send me diving down to the car floor for safety.

Such a trailer was for "Shock Treatment"(1964), which opens with pleasant Roddy McDowall cutting the tops off of overgrown plants with a giant pair of garden shears (you know, the ones that open and close like a big "X" in the air) . Two elderly women sit sipping tea at an outdoor table nearby.

And...Roddy turns slowly and centers the head and neck of one of the women in the garden shears and...with the woman now out of the shot(she's below)...Roddy makes an ugly face and chops off the woman's head(again unseen)

WHOA. How'd Fox get that trailer approved for impressionable 1964 audiences?

I read later than Anthony Perkins turned down the McDowell role in Shock Treatment. McDowall is shown in the movie "Hitchocck" as a possible Norman Bates being considered by Hitchcock. I suppose that might have happened. Perkins and McDowall were SOMEWHAT interchangeable -- boyish(McDowall had actually been a child star), cute, skinny and slight. But Perkins had something more "deep and sensitive" going on, I think. And more beautiful looks.

CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

1937 was arguably the first year of Film's true Golden Age with at least 5 ultra-classics (Stage Door, La Grande Illusion, The Awful Truth, Lost Horizon, Stella Dallas) and a host of other real keepers (Make Way For Tomorrow, Pepe Le Moko, Topper, The Edge of the World, Shall We Dance). NMF is less distinguished than all those.

---

Again you reveal your widespread knowledge of film over time and among countries. I've HEARD of all those films, but only seen a handful. (Heck I watched the truly awful 1973 "musical" version of Lost Horizon on streaming recently just to study its badness -- its like Burt Bacharach went all atonal all of a sudden, mostly AWFUL songs. Two good ones, though.)

--
CONT

[–] ecarle (14979) 3 years ago

Sondheim's movie taste is, it seems, very personal to him.

---

As , I expect, all of our lists are to us. I know that MY list has both established great film classics (NXNW, Psycho, The Wild Bunch, The Godfather -- mainly violent, yes?) AND little known films that often get "two stars" in movie reviews (Hotel, Capricorn One, Used Cars). Its just my life as I've lived it, and the types of movies that amuse/excite me. I am personally amused that I gave "The Magnificent Seven" (2016 remake) my Number One that year; nothing much else was memorable to me as ENTERTAINMENT, and it allowed me to honor the much greater 1960 original (Number Three behind Psycho and The Apartment in 1960)

And this: I have often, in my life, seen a movie on Christmas Day. I remember this all the way back to Babes in Toyland(Disney version) in 1961. More odd was The Man Who Would be King in 1975. And one year without ANYTHING else to see on Xmas day(1994)..."Mixed Nuts" with Steve Martin. Does anybody remember THAT one? I don't even remember what its about.

Well, for 2021, it was Spider-Man whatever the title. As with my seeing Kiddie Ghostbusters a few weeks ago, obviously family obligations enter in here.

But weirdly, I flashed back to perhaps my favorite Xmas day movie -- 1966. The movie was The Professionals, Richard Brooks' "team on a mission movie" with a distinctly middle aged team of macho men: Burt Lancaster, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Woody Strode. I compared the CGI mashup I WAS watching with memories of that "muscular" Western in wide screen Panavision Technicolor. I saw THAT movie AS a kid(with its multiple killings and glimpses of topless women) and that's what kids COULD see in 1966. Now...comic books reign.

That said, THIS Spider-Man is pretty special for certain reasons. I wrote about them with SPOILERS) on its page.

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

Its a funny thing about the "favorite movies" lists of famous people and Hitchcock. Sometimes, one ore more Hitchoccks make the lists. But sometimes, Hitch is verboten. I think he was just too successful and "brand name" for the intelligentsia to wish to acknowledge him. So NMF(Night Must Fall) gets picked instead, and its not at top HItchcock level.

Well said. Of course, genius has its own prerogatives. Hitch's own film preferences could be eccentric and sometimes apparently distorted a bit by professional jealousy and rivalries. And doubtless Hitch's views about musical theater or opera or... would be interesting to hear, but I'd guess they'd always look 'very personal' from the perspective of experts in or superfans of those areas.

A deacde or so ago David Thomson wrote a nice review of the first vol of Sondheim's famous Lyric Collection/Auto-biog, 'Finishing The Hat':
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v32/n24/david-thomson/red-silk-is-the-best-blood

In it he compares briefly compares Sondheim's (peer- & collaborator-shrinking) name-status with Hitchcock's:
(Cont'd)

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

For decades now – since Company (1970), I’d say – most people have thought of the works as Sondheim musicals, just as Hitchcock films belong to their director. But like Hitchcock, Sondheim has always relied on collaborators. This book is dedicated to nine men: Julius Epstein, Arthur Laurents, Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart (A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum), George Furth (who did the book for Company and Merrily We Roll Along), James Goldman (Follies), John Weidman (Pacific Overtures and Assassins); Hugh Wheeler (A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd); and last but not least James Lapine (whose work is not covered in this volume, but who would do both book and direction on Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods and Passion, and who Sondheim thinks is the only person he knows who can do a book and direct).

Sondheim says that everything he does is aimed at serving the book: in musicals this means the story arc, the dramatic script and what people say when they’re not singing. Anyone who has done musicals will attest to the importance of this. Sondheim has never contributed the book to any of his shows – at least he’s never taken credit for it. (Hitchcock never took a writing credit.) In addition to his three masterpieces for Sondheim, Lapine has directed other plays, a revival of The Diary of Anne Frank, for example; he directed the film Impromptu, and wrote a few plays you haven’t heard of. It’s clear that, along with all the others – from Hugh Wheeler to Hal Prince (a six-time director for Sondheim), from Angela Lansbury to Bernadette Peters – he has to feel lucky to serve Sondheim.

[–] swanstep (2715) 3 years ago

I do believe that Night Must Fall was remade in the 60's(with Albert Finney as the psycho) and a bit more "Psycho" style blood and gore.... And doesn't the killer in NMF keep a severed head in a hatbox ala Thorwald in Rear Window?

Night Must Fall (1966) w. Finney is available in full on youtube here (in not great but still watchable quality):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4068E0yrWc
I thought it was a reasonably effective updating of the 1937 version. NMF64 is much more streamlined than NMF37, removing some of NMF37's most irritating plot snafus and lingering stage-play fustiness,while also adding a lot of general UK, 1960s 'angry young man' class consciousness and cinema grit. Finney's hold/domination over the three women in the film is clarified as explicitly sexual this time, albeit aren't any brutal sex scenes to make this point the way there undoubtedly would have been if NMF had been remade 10 years later. Similarly, contrary to NMF64's reputation, it contains no blood or explicit gore. Two beheading axe murders yes to NMF37's 1 smothering and 1 left completely vague beheading murder, but both the axe murders in NMF84 happen just out of frame and no blood is shown (very implausibly I'd add!). How differently this would have been handled in a post-Wild Bunch/post-Texas Chainsaw/post-Torso world?

NMF64 replaces NMF37's conventional 'Police Show Up' ending with a haunting, artsy ending with no police in sight/earshot. This will polarize people. I was a bit irritated by it. In sum NMF64 is worth a look for completeness's sake. Its commercial failure definitely derailed Finney's career for a few years right after hitting big with Tom Jones (1963) - he didn't do another film until Two For The Road (1967), so NMF64's an interesting watch from that perspective too. It wasn't so easy to craft a Psycho-style, resonant, break out horror hit: Baby Jane did it, and so did Repulsion. NMF64, like hundreds of others, did not.

OT: Ridley Scott at age 83 has *two* big movies out right now.

OT: Ridley Scott at age 83 has two big movies out right now.