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Hitchcock never made a self-conscious 'magnum opus' (thoughts on Megalopolis and the like)

posted 9 months ago by swanstep (2766)
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Coppola's 40-years-in-the-making Megalopolis has debuted at Cannes and is *not* being hailed as a masterwork, rather it's something very familiar: a highly self-conscious, swinging for the fences, statement-making 'magnum opus', an ideas- not story-driven trainwreck that's often completely mad and cringeworthy but that arguably has enough highs and general energy to offset its pervasive dumbness thereby becoming strangely fascinating (at least if you're in the right mood).

Hitchcock never made any movies like this, although Vertigo has a self-exposing, reflexive quality about it that's always made it catnip for academics and that makes it the closest thing to a statement film that Hitch ever made. Not coincidentally, Megalopolis apparently explicitly links itself thematically to Vertigo a few times.

Some reviewers are comparing Meg to Southland Tales (2006), a notorious Cannes flop that even after extensive reediting for dvd etc. is a bizarre mish-mash of ideas and half-formed characters and free-floating images, but that film is an attempt, I think, to say something about post-9/11 and war-fever-driven America, which is relatively narrow and focused compared to what Meg is up to. Meg actually sounds more much like Metropolis (1927) which, for all its fame, was a huge financial-flop at the time, and is burdened by a lot of specific and silly/unconvincing social and economic theories in something like the way Meg is apparently encrusted with Roman history, Shakespeare, etc..

Anyhow, I'm continually struck by the number of highly risky, uncommercial, high probability of artistic faceplant 'magnum opus' movies that still actually get made. In just the last year or two we've had Beau is Afraid and Babylon, and before that there were things like the Wachowskis' Cloud Atlas and Malick's Tree of Life and art-film-world things like von Trier's Nymphomaniac, Wim Wenders' Until The End of the World, Noe's Enter The Void, and Sion Sono's Love Exposure (and maybe Suicide Club too - Sono's got a penchant for big statements). There may be in fact as many ''swing for the fences' movies made now as were made back in the supposed hey-day of risk-taking, '60s-'70s.

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

Hitchcock never made any movies like this,

---

You raise a point, swanstep, which I have often thought about in my years of Hitchcock fanship and study.

My comparison point is Orson Welles.

Welles made ONE great big giant all-time-worshiped classic of cinematic legerdemain -- Citizen Kane - and then spent the rest of his career making movies that (a) rarely got made for the American movie system; (b) often got re-edited BY the American studio system(The Magnificent Ambersons, The Lady From Shanghai, Touch of Evil) and (c) often couldn't get the proper financing to be made with the necessary budgets.

Hitchcock never quite made ONE all-time-worshiped classic of cinematic legerdemain -- instead, he made a LOT of movies(usually with modest budgets and small scale stories) and sort of ended up making ONE megamovie that was ALL his movies. Stitching together the setpieces from The 39 Steps to Rebecca to Spellbound to Rope to Strangers on a Train to Rear Window to Man 2(Albert Hall!) to Vertigo to North by Northwest to Psycho to The Birds to Frenzy...ONE great big decades long megaproject.

And unlike Welles(and later, William Friedkin) , Hitchcock TOTALLY respected the studio money men. Eva Marie Saint said that Hitchcock stopped filming on the North by Northwest set to "greet and praise the money men" and in more than one interview, Hitchcock said: "I am very conscious of the fact that I have been given the money to make my films and I must try to earn that money back for my backers, and make a profit."

Welles at least struggled on for decades making movies after Citizen Kane. It would seem that Greed ended Von Stroheim's career and "Heaven's Gate" severely crippled that of Michael Cimino(though though he did land a few directing assignments after that, his legitimate "Deer Hunter" Oscars gave him continuing cred.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

Anyhow, I'm continually struck by the number of highly risky, uncommercial, high probability of artistic faceplant 'magnum opus' movies that still actually get made.

---

"artistic faceplant" -- HAH! I love that phrase. Its like these directors(especially if they try to WRITE their films too) just seem to go for broke, embarrassment be damned, financial wounds to studios be damned and -- unfortunately much of the time -- the finished movies are hardly classics. TRUE classics seem to come out of nowhere "The Matrix" comes to mind.

--

In just the last year or two we've had Beau is Afraid and Babylon,

---

Saw the latter only (Babylon) and while I WAS impressed by its sweeping scope and "History of Silent Hollywood" focus -- I was NOT impressed by the constant flow of bodily fluids(man, woman, and elephant alike) on the screen and I could only believe that we were witnessing the director's fetish on screen. (How sadly often have I felt that some directors use a big hit to get the money and the budget to make ANOTHER movie solely to impose their fetishes on audiences -- Hitchcock was guilty with Frenzy and QT with almost every movie he made -- and I"m not just talking about the foot thing, which I now thing he does like "Hitchocck's cameos." The Babylon director seems to dig on disgust.)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

--- and before that there were things like the Wachowskis' Cloud Atlas and Malick's Tree of Life and art-film-world things like von Trier's Nymphomaniac, Wim Wenders' Until The End of the World, Noe's Enter The Void, and Sion Sono's Love Exposure (and maybe Suicide Club too - Sono's got a penchant for big statements).

---

Well, "Mainstream Man" has seen NOT ONE of those movies -- I again bow to your "cinematic bona fides" swanstep -- and I hear that Cloud Atlas has Tom Hanks in it. (Sidebar: rather like these directors who fade in older age, Tom Hanks seems to be always working these days but to no effect -- Martin Short introduced Hanks at some ecent event with "Oh, look, Tom Hanks is here -- you remember... he was a star in the 1990s." True! Also, sorry but, evidently due to a diabetes'-fighting health regimen...Hanks looks rather strange in his older age. Not like an actor you'd want to LOOK at in admiration anymore. I get to be catty. He gets to be a multimillionaire. Fair trade.)

I DID however see "The Fall Guy" last week on urging of others and...well...I can't remember it right now.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

There may be in fact as many ''swing for the fences' movies made now as were made back in the supposed hey-day of risk-taking, '60s-'70s.

--

With regard to three "commercial" filmmakers in the 70s, there was a pattern to WHY they made their big swing for the fences movies -- even when two out of three of them were NOT "deep think art films" at all.

Coppola with The Godfather; Spielberg with Jaws; John Landis with Animal House -- all three were put on very tight budgets and schedules(even for intended blockbusters The Godfather and Jaws); supervised down to the nickels, dimes, and minutes by studio personnel, and in one case, very much at risk of being fired (Coppola., maybe Spielberg too but he had studio allies.)

When each of those men got blockbusters that made them and the studios rich, they were "taken off the leash" by studios and went nuts on budget and schedules. It took awhile for Coppola to go nuts -- after Godfather II and The Conversation, Apocalype Now took months(years?) to film. After Jaws, Spielberg leaped into the costly back to back Close Encounters of the Third Kind(a hit) and 1941(not a hit) And John Landis went over budget and schedule on The Blues Brothers(which came out 6 months after 1941 and was jokingly called 1942 by some.)

It was as if all three directors were like "OK, you worked me like a supervised slave the first time but I'm going to spend all the time and money I want THIS time."

Spielberg corrected(big time) for 1941 with Raiders and ET (the second best one-two summer movie punch after NXNW and Psycho, to me). John Landis came back with the modest "American Werewolf in London"(a good movie) and then crashed for all time with the fatal helicopter crash on the "Twilight Zone" set.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

As for Coppola, his has always been one of the strangest of Hollywood careers. In some ways his career PEAKED with the first two Godfathers, back to back, Best Pictures both. The Conversation was well reviewed but a flop. Apocalypse Now started filming in 1976 and was released in 1979 and will always strike me as "a work in progress" (like Close Encounters, it now has multiple versions, pick one, please.)

And after Apocalypse Now? Coppola was always announcing some innovation in technology or distiribution and seemd to mix oddball projects with standard stuff. I LOVE these three of his movies after Apocalypse Now: Tucker: A Man and His Dreams(with good guy Jeff Bridges ruined by corrupt Senator LLOYD Bridges); Dracula(for its wacky technical prowess and a bang-up action sequence battle rescue at Dracula's castle that has one Western gunslinger on board to fight the vampires); and The Rainmaker, an all-star John Grisham law movie that could have easily been filmed by Sydney Pollack, no clue to Coppola as director at all. (The best star in it was a briefly used Mickey Rourke as a cool, crooked, but oddly decent lawyer.)

I found The Cotton Club to be "the anti-Godfather" (Richard Gere never really could carry a movie like a true star IMHO) and Peggy Sue Got Married, after a GREAT start (with our 1980's heroine going "back to the future" to Psycho year 1960 - no mention made), it just sort of fell apart. I never saw the one where Robin Williams was a "boy man." ("Jack.")

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

I just headed to IMDb to look up Coppola's directing career...the movies..and it looks like one has to go BACK to 1997 (The Rainmaker) and 1996(Jack) to find Coppola making movies with distribution that people saw. (I will assume that Coppola did those two movies back to back because he needed the money -- maybe to finance his winery in Napa/Sonoma Valley California?) Since "The Rainmaker" -- all experimental films.

Between Apocalypse Now and Jack:

One From the Heart(a big experiment that didn't pan out)
The Outsiders (from one Young Adult novel)
Rumble Fish (from another Young Adult novel)
The Cotton Club( "The anti-Godfather -- though James Remar, Bob Hoskins and Fred Gwynne were fun as gangsters)
Captain EO (A Disneyland Michael Jackson 3D production -- I saw it live, it was cool)
Peggy Sue Got Married
Gardens of Stone (A Vietnam-themed film, Coppola's son visited him during production in DC and was killed in a speedboat accident; the boat was driven by one of Ryan O'Neal's sons.)
Tucker (About a rebellious...car maker; analogy received.)
New York Stories(one segment, Woody Allen and Scorsese did others)
Bram Stoker's Dracula (A LOT of creative fun, I thought, the climax battle was exciting and VERY different for a
Dracula movie -- and I could live with Keanu Reeves.)
and...
Jack
The Rainmaker
and...
..all experimental since then.

That's a long time.

But it actually reads like a pretty standard director's list. Some out of personal interest(The Outsiders and Rumble Fish) some for hire(Peggy Sue, The Rainmaker, Jack) but always, always ALWAYS anchored by the two real claims to Coppola's fame:

The Godfather
The Godfather Part II

...and I say this: Coppola said he only took The Godfather to launch for a career in experimental film and The Godfather II STARTS that experimental period.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

I'm a bit down on Godfather II, and one reason is this.

As I young person, I went into The Godfather in some dread. It was THREE HOURS and -- based on things like David Lean movies -- I was expecting some "boring costume epic" in certain ways. But NO, that movie MOVED. With the long set up exposition of the opening wedding scene, the movie then went on to a delicious meal of a story, with murders as punctuation (The Godfather joined Psycho as a movie largely ABOUT violent murders as entertainment -- there were just a lot MORE of them in The Godfather.)

But...when Coppola made "Godfather II" with the leash off...damn(I remember thinking) he went and MADE one of those long David Lean type movies, the very thing that "The Godfather rejected."

Honestly. The entire Robert DeNiro part was ALREADY in the novel of The Godfather, but was REMOVED from the movie. Because: David Lean.

And: The "newly written part" (Michael Corleone fails where Vito Corleone succeeded ...in business and with family) was sort of , well , sort of predictable and Michael was very sullen and inward. (Marlon Brando and James Caan were SORELY missed.)

I have found that NY Times critic Vincent Canby shared my view in his 1974 review, so I'm not alone. Also: Godfather II earned half of The Godfather so AUDIENCES noticed the slow down.

That said, there IS a lot to like in Godfather II, what happens to Fredo IS tragic but...Coppola pretty much detached from Hollywood from that point on.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

I always like to throw in a Francis Coppola movie I really LOVE -- with memories of seeing it first run -- even as it gets bundled together with the "mastodon big budget musicals of the late 60s" so despised by Quentin Tarantino and others.

Three of are great personal memories to me: Hello, Dolly(with Streisand and My Man Walter Matthau --and my grandmother's favorite movie at the time); Paint Your Wagon(famously starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood! But most of the songs were NEW ones with hip macho sensibilities, and the Oregon scenery was fab) and..Finian's Rainbow.

Francis Coppola does a charming documentary on the Finian's Rainbow that opens with him SINGING the opening of one of the charming songs from the movie("How Are Things in Glocca Mora"?) Yes, Coppola SINGS! And he says that he took Finian's Rainbow to honor his father, a musical composer/conductor.

As Coppola says, "the movie has too much book"(ie plot and dialogue) but those songs ARE charmers and very very sexy when sung by Petulia Clark(a favorite of mine, I saw her live on stage in the 90s and my crush was intact.) Fred Astaire is pretty cool in it. A TV actor named Don Francks coulda been a star based on this, and his DUET with Petulia(That Old Devil Moon) is even MORE sexy and well directed by Coppola.

..but directed by Coppola on a green grassy soundstage set left over from the inferior Camelot of the year before.

As Coppola says, Warners made Finian's Rainbow mainly on the backlot and quite cheap. Its hard to tell, though. And Warners DID grant Coppola's request to open the movie with music and credits set to Fred Astaire and Petulia Clark(as father and daughter) crossing America from Ireland over, under and past a series of American landmarks , four from Hitchocck movies:

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

Astaire and Clark(oh, mostly their doubles) visit: The Statue of Liberty(Saboteur), Mount Rushmore(North by Northwest), The Golden Gate Bridge(Vertigo) and....the School House from The Birds(The Birds.)

Its that "Birds" reference that tells you that Coppola was using his Finian's Rainbow opening sequence as a gentle homage to Hitch before settling down to his musical.

I saw Finian's Rainbow first run, in a great big new Dome movie theater, reserved seat. That's how they showed musicals in those days. I liked it very much, I remembered the name Francis Ford Coppola for future use, and I NOTICED his youthful, hip approach to the material(his assistant on Finian's Rainbow was a fellow named George Lucas...)

I own the DVD. For what its worth, I found Roger Eberts 1968 review of Finian's Rainbow and he wrote "this is the best of the current musicals."

For what its worth, "Finian's Rainbow" is next in line after The Godfather as my favorite Francis Coppola film.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

And:

I saw Francis Coppola once in person. He sat on the floor seats at an NBA basketball game I attended. He was introduced to great applause and we watched him watch the entire game. My side of this is no more important than those nameless youths shown in the audience on those Actor's Studio shows with a star BUT...Coppola goes on the list of directors I have seen and on the much shorter list of directors I have seen who made MONUMENTAL films. (That would include Hitchcock, Capra, Ford, Minelli.) I have never seen Spielberg or Scorsese or Tarantino. Among the 70s crowd, I did a seminar with Bob Rafelson(Five Easy Pieces) and with Paul Schrader. I saw Peter Bogdanovich twice(MEETING him the first time and shaking his hand) . I have been to seminars with screenwriters Robert Towne(Chinatown) and Ernest Lehman(North by Northwest -- of which Lehman said "How did you folks like that Mount Rushmore scene? ...I think it goes on too long." Hey, says YOU.

And just three months ago, I watched Paul Thomas Anderson at work. Its all fun if non-consequential.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

And I went to Francis Coppola's winery a time or two. I hear he sold it at one location and moved it to another. I've not been to the new one.

The OLD winery had a room with a smattering of Coppola movie props. All I remember is the desk from The Godfather and the blood red armor worn by Gary Oldman as Dracula.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

As for Megalopolis, it sounds like ol' Francis has self-written , yes, an "artistic faceplant" of a movie, but I want to see it. We'll not see his like again, he's right there alongside Spielberg, Scorsese, and Lucas from the 70's Golden Age. (Remember when Spielberg, Coppola, and Lucas showed up at the Oscars to give the Best Director Oscar? It would have been embarrassing if Scorsese did NOT win for The Departed, but the lock was in. Lucas was a good sport about the joke aimed towards him -- HE would never win Best Director.)

It'll be fun to see Dustin Hoffman on screen again-- monster though he may be, I kinda think ALL of them are, what's it to us? I grew up on The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, Little Big Man, Marathon Man, Tootsie... And I always enjoy Aubrey Plaza. Part of her stardom is "schtick" (cool deadpan chick) but she's pretty with personality, and a great reader of lines. A winning combination.

Coppola evidently here joins those who are cautioning us that America shall "soon"(this decade? this century?) fall like the Roman Empire. Its being said so much lately I'm just sort of chilling out and waiting for the final announcement, y'know? After all, I've been told the world can blow up nuclear since I was a kid...and with our two Presidential candidates calling each other out like pro wrestlers...I think the Empire's already falling, anyway. Suppose they gave an Empire collapse and nobody came?

[–] swanstep (2766) 9 months ago

Apocalypse Now started filming in 1976 and was released in 1979 and will always strike me as "a work in progress" (like Close Encounters, it now has multiple versions, pick one, please.)

It's not just that there are all these different cuts of AN, there're lots of color timing differences between the editions now too. E.g. Here's an orange-tinted frame from just before the Do Lung Bridge sequence that's in common between the Theatrical Edition of Apocalypse Now and the Redux Edition:
https://shorturl.at/SCuCH

Here's the same frame from the 2020 Final Cut Edition (which is 30 min longer than the Theatrical as opposed to the Redux's 45 mins longer - both longer editions in my view, for example, extend and mess up Kilgore's dialogues about surfing etc. before the big air napalm strike):
https://shorturl.at/p3dvj

This image is predominantly blue. It's also much darker, losing the contrast between the treeline and the cloud-line in a mass of black. In some sense, the Final Cut's frame feels more realistic, less psychedelic, which feels like a loss given how woozy and drugged out the film is at this point. Does Coppola still understand his own movie?

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

Here's the same frame from the 2020 Final Cut Edition (which is 30 min longer than the Theatrical as opposed to the Redux's 45 mins longer - both longer editions in my view, for example, extend and mess up Kilgore's dialogues about surfing etc. before the big air napalm strike):
https://shorturl.at/p3dvj

This image is predominantly blue. It's also much darker, losing the contrast between the treeline and the cloud-line in a mass of black.

--

I saw a big print of North by Northwest at a movie theater this week(65th Anniversary) and...it was darker than I'm accustomed to as well. I wonder if this is a "thing" in film print processing these days.

If Coppola did it on PURPOSE, he's messing with his movie. HIs preogative, but we kinda got used to the other version, yes?

---
In some sense, the Final Cut's frame feels more realistic, less psychedelic, which feels like a loss given how woozy and drugged out the film is at this point. Does Coppola still understand his own movie?

---

Maybe, maybe not. I'm reminded how George Lucas removed the opening "realistic" blue-gray dusk sunset over Mel's Drive In in American Graffiti(1973) and replaced that sky with a garish orange-and-red sunset. That's how he IMAGINED the shot in his script, Lucas said, but he couldn't film that on his original low budget. So now the movie is "fixed" -- but I'll forever remember the ORIGINAL, more melancholy version of the shot. (That said, Paul Thomas Anderson emulated the "new" orange and red sky shot for a shot of a hamburger joint in Licorice Pizza.)

[–] swanstep (2766) 9 months ago

I'm reminded how George Lucas removed the opening "realistic" blue-gray dusk sunset over Mel's Drive In in American Graffiti(1973) and replaced that sky with a garish orange-and-red sunset. That's how he IMAGINED the shot in his script, Lucas said, but he couldn't film that on his original low budget.

Lucas changed the opening credits shot for AG in 1998 but since then he's gone hog-wild digitally removing grain throughout the movie, changing color and saturation, hyping up the sound in a range of different ways, and so on. As with his other mega-tinkerings, e.g., with Star Wars and THX 1138, I really think Lucas would save himself a lot of grief by releasing, *alongside* his various directors cuts of things, the best available, archival restoration of the theatrical version with its original (mono if necessary) soundtrack. It's Lucas's failure to do this more than the existence of tinkered-with versions themselves that drives fans crazy.

Anyhow back to the new opening credits shot... when you study it it's more than just a sky replacement, the title font is smaller (staying out of the way of the Diner signs) but also more neon and glowier, Mel's Diner details have been edited and smoothed out so, e.g. the Diner's main wall (behind the sign) is now yellow rather than orange, and the light coming through the trees to the right of the frame now looks sharp and unreal because they've had to cut out the trees from the original shot to compose with the new background, which looks bad. And so on.

Overall I'd say that when I first saw AG on vhs in the mid-'80s it felt more like a documentary than it does in recent blu-ray incarnations. It looks more beautiful now, sharper and more movie-like I'd say.

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

Anyhow back to the new opening credits shot... when you study it it's more than just a sky replacement, the title font is smaller (staying out of the way of the Diner signs) but also more neon and glowier,

---

swanstep...do you have an original 1980s vintage VHS of American Graffiti to make these comparisons (or some other means?) I can only work from the MEMORY of how that opening shot and credits looked when I saw American Graffiti on its opening Friday night in August of 1973 (the one movie in my whole life that actually changed my life and...I leave it at that these days)

---

Mel's Diner details have been edited and smoothed out so, e.g. the Diner's main wall (behind the sign) is now yellow rather than orange, and the light coming through the trees to the right of the frame now looks sharp and unreal because they've had to cut out the trees from the original shot to compose with the new background, which looks bad. And so on.

---
This sounds like one of those time travel movies like Back to the Future: "Change one detail and you change the universe..."

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

I can only work from the MEMORY of how that opening shot and credits looked when I saw American Graffiti on its opening Friday night in August of 1973

--

I will elaborate on this, with RE: Vertigo.

Vertigo got a major restoration in 1996, and that included removing some SOUND EFFECTS from the original movie and replacing them with new ones.

And the changes started right at the beginning: prints and DVDS of Vertigo since 1996 have distinctly DIFFERENT sound effects for the two or three shots fired by the uniformed policeman at the crook during the nighttime chase. I recall NOT liking those new gunshots after years of having memorized the originals -- but I could never find footage of the old gunshot sounds ..until recently.

Youtube now has some clips (somewhat recent to me) from the 1979 AFI salute to Alfred Hitchcock, at which he famously looked "out of it"(oh well) but was surrounded at his table by Cary Grant and James Stewart(both white-haired old lions by then) and wife Alma, hosted by Ingrid Bergman and with Tony Perkins and Janet Leigh stopping by to salute Psycho. And MORE Hitchcock players (like Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren and Rod Taylor.) What a night!

Anyway one of the clips shows a BUNCH of Hitchcock clips being shown to the audience and...one of them is the opening Vertigo footchase and THERE they were --the original gunshot sounds. It was nice "catch."

CONT

[–] swanstep (2766) 8 months ago

swanstep...do you have an original 1980s vintage VHS of American Graffiti to make these comparisons (or some other means?)

Youtube has the original opening credits (in 720p) here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTWJxs9jwGs
I'm not sure what this is from, maybe a laserdisc?, maybe a rare pre-1998 dvd? A still of that original opening tableau also begins the standard 'Making of AG' dvd-extra, which is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j97UZh3dzoQ
A pre-1998 version of the whole film from a TCM broadcast exists to confirm the untinkered with *look* of AG, unfortunately it's a Spanish dub, barely in 250p, has a slightly cropped image and is suspiciously dark:
https://ok.ru/video/4924858632882
This is a Russian site - which undoubtedly raises cyber-security concerns. Make sure your anti-virus and anti-malware packages are up-to-date before visiting it.

I'm pretty sure that archive.org used to have an English copy like this, but it doesn't any more and I stupidly didn't grab that copy when I should have. Archive.org *used* to have a laser-disc copy of the original version of THX-1138 too and I *did* get a copy of that, which I treasure. A French version of *that* is, however, currently available on the Russian site:
https://ok.ru/video/6296274864665

[–] swanstep (2766) 9 months ago

I just watched a youtube vid. moaning about the AI-processing that James Cameron has used on all his recently-released 4K editions of his films (he did T2 in 4K first and now - the occasion of this video - Aliens and True Lies 4Ks have just been released):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxOqWYytypg
This stuff has to be seen to be believed - it's really a new dimension of hell for film-lovers. The vid, cites lots of examples but they typically flash past too fast to be properly appreciated. So be prepared to pause and rewind and re-pause a *lot* to feel the full force of the argument. If you're like me then you'll want to pause early on, about 35s in, with some of the T2 stuff... just the color stuff in that case is absolute vandalism in my view but the fact is that's *nothing* compared to what your're about to see: all the ludicrous new parsing of the micro-structure of the images into absolute trash that this wave of tech so hatefully enforces. I wouldn't have believed this was real or even a possibility that any Director would consent to let alone promulgate. I mean, Good God, what is going on?

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

This stuff has to be seen to be believed - it's really a new dimension of hell for film-lovers... I wouldn't have believed this was real or even a possibility that any Director would consent to let alone promulgate. I mean, Good God, what is going on?

--

Its a sad, sad business reflective ---I suppose of the power of the key famous auteur directors who CANNOT BE STOPPED from messing with their own works.

I suppose this can traced back to Steven Spielberg "messing" with his Close Encounters movie and releasing a new version of the 1977 film in 1980. He even got the money to ADD a couple of new scenes, as I recall(like the finding of a giant abandoned ship in the desert.) Its been a long time since I saw either version but I remember the 1980 version having taken OUT scenes I LIKED in 1977 and having put in some new scenes(I recall one of Richard Dreyfuss having a hissy fit with his family) taht I didn't like.

The damage was done: I think you can now get EITHER the 1977 Close Encounters OR the 1980 Close Encounters and a single vision doesn't exist anymore. (Or am I wrong? Is the 1977 version gone?)

Its rather reminiscent of how the much less classic Hitchocck picture "Topaz" can now be viewed with ALL THREE of its bad endings and you can never "unsee" it that way again. It HAS no ending.

(Now...Hitchcock, unlike Lucas and Spielberg, didn't change Topaz on his own to "improve" the movie, he kept monkeying with a movie that he couldn't find a good ending for until he finally gave up. )

Back to Spielberg. I think for a re-release of ET, he removed the shot of a cop pumping a shotgun towards ET. He later said "I should not have removed that shot of the gun." Like suddenly he was re-censoring his self censorship! "Make up your mind!"

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

Now there "defendable variations" to these "different versions." When the STUDIO monkeys with the film and the director "gets to bring back his original vision" (usually in longer versions - Leone's Once Upon a Time in America is a big example).

But the FILMMAKER endlessly tinkering with his or her own film -- particularly to take advantage of new technologies that weren't there when the movie was originally made, well -- these aren't "crimes" of any sort. But they DO mess with certain aspects of how some of us "movie lovers"(whether high level experts or humble fans like me) have tended to BELIEVE in these movies as "stories told once, in one way to our one-time sense of enthrallment.")

If I see TWO version of Close Encounters, that's telling me that ONE story...never happened. Even in fiction.

Sudden on-topic flashpoint:

What if Alfred Hitchcock lived long enough to go back to Psycho and "fix" two things:

With new technology: Arbogast's fall. Not sure how he'd stop the fall from looking fake. In 1998 with new technology, Van Sant's version STILL looked fake -- which is when I realized that the actually VERY GOOD 1960 process shot somewhat looked fake because of how the detective is unbelievably centered in the frame. OK...so Hitchcock just TAKES OUT the fake fall and replaces it with the "easy one": a long shot of a stunt man realistically falling down the stairs. Not good, says I: you can't see Arbogast's face that way. (Note in passing: on purpose as an "homage," William Friedkin PUT INTO another horror classic -- The Exorcist -- HIS re-do of Arbogast's fall: the psychiatrist's fall to the carpet. You could say that one of the shock scenes in The Exorcist is directly from..Psycho!)

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

With a new cut of Psycho, Hitchcock could have also removed half of the psychiatrist's speech. Again, Van Sant DID that in 1998 and I think it is a much less profound, much less interesting speech than in the 1960 original.

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Anyway, I guess you can now add James Cameron to fellow auteurs Spielberg, Lucas, and Coppola in "endlessly tinkering with their films." (Let's add Coppola's constant re-assemblage of Godfathers I, II, and III to that list.)

Their prerogative...our pain.

[–] swanstep (2766) 9 months ago

The Exorcist -- HIS re-do of Arbogast's fall: the psychiatrist's fall to the carpet. You could say that one of the shock scenes in The Exorcist is directly from..Psycho!)

Nice observation. It reminds me to mention that I finally got a chance to see Mark Cousins' bizarro Hitchcock doc. 'My Name is Alfred Hitchcock' which poses as being narrated by Hitchcock himself.

A lot of what Cousins has Hitchcock saying is utterly fanciful in my view, e.g, the last real comment in the film is about Psycho as follows:

I'll tell you another secret. At the end of Psycho, I regret using that scene
so sober and conventional, in which the psychiatrist explains Norman's state of mind. During the writing of the script, it was proposed to be a scene of Marion's sister chastened and destroyed, and I wish we had filmed said take with Vera. It would have been something like...
Gloomy, overhead lighting. A shot from behind, perhaps.[shows Lila being gloomy together with Sam in his store office]

Still he has the odd good point and some lovely montages, e.g., near the beginning of the film it shows all the shots from the very earliest films forwards to The Birds of a phantom-door being closed. It's worth seeing but eye-rolling is inevitable.

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

The Exorcist -- HIS re-do of Arbogast's fall: the psychiatrist's fall to the carpet. You could say that one of the shock scenes in The Exorcist is directly from..Psycho!)

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Nice observation.

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I remember when I saw 1973's The Exorcist...STILL first run in 1974 and STILL only after waiting in line for about three hours...that I didn't much like the movie BUT I felt with that psychiatrist's fall..."Am I seeing what I THINK I'm seeing?" in noting how much it felt like Arbogast's fall.

Decades later, Friedkin confirmed that this was indeed intended as such a "tribute."

Thus: it plays a LITTLE less fake than Arbogast's fall -- its only a fall of a few feet to the carpet -- and the carpet itself brings back memories of the carpet on the stairs and foyer floor. I think Freidkin got the falling effect this time by actually ATTACHING the actor to a camera that fell with him to the floor(the actor was probably supported in some way all the way down to the floor.)

And: in the hard-R tradition of The Exorcist itself, what happens here is that the catatonic "young girl" suddenly reveals the demon inside -- who promptly(in Friedkin's words) "grabs the psychiatrist by the scrotum" and forces him down in intense(non-fatal) pain.

I guess you might call it "the terrifying Exorcist grabs 'em by the balls scene" AND..

...sort of "Revenge Against the Psycho Psychatrist Scene" Scene?

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

It reminds me to mention that I finally got a chance to see Mark Cousins' bizarro Hitchcock doc. 'My Name is Alfred Hitchcock' which poses as being narrated by Hitchcock himself.

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Might I ask WHERE you got to see this? As a matter of regular attempt every few weeks, I try to find this "bizarro documentary" on the various streaming services I take, but I never find it. (On the other hand, I don't take ALL the streaming services.)

In other "clip/montage documentaries" i have viewed with Mark Cousins as the narrator, I find his voice to be an interesting mixed bag: that distinctive Irish brogue of his is instantly idenfiable, but his it has a very "wet and syrupy" quality that sounds like he has a little water in his mouth!

And here in this new film, he found ANOTHER narrator -- who doens't LOOK at all like Hitchcock(I've seen footage of him) but makes sure to SOUND like him.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

A lot of what Cousins has Hitchcock saying is utterly fanciful in my view, e.g, the last real comment in the film is about Psycho as follows:

I'll tell you another secret. At the end of Psycho, I regret using that scene
so sober and conventional, in which the psychiatrist explains Norman's state of mind.

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Well there's more proof: a movie that USED to generate discussuion about one GREAT scene be about one great scene -- the shower murder -- has devolved to be being discussed MORE about its one weak scene -- the psychiatrist scene.

I can't tell you how often I read "capsule reviews" of Psycho that start like this: "Psycho is not a perfect movie -- I will never forgive that overlong exposition scene with the psychiatrist -- but it comes close." Etc. Its like reviews now LEAD with the shrink scene before considering all the other classic parts of the film. And I personally LIKE the shrink scene, and you know those three important plot points in it -- and frankly the psychiatrist's information is as "landmark frank and shocking" as anything else in the film.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

The "fake Hitchcock in Cousin's film says:

During the writing of the script, it was proposed to be a scene of Marion's sister chastened and destroyed, and I wish we had filmed said take with Vera.
It would have been something like...
Gloomy, overhead lighting. A shot from behind, perhaps.[shows Lila being gloomy together with Sam in his store office]

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Well, Joe Stefano's published original script doesn't have a scene in Sam's store office, but it DOES have Lila in the DA's office starting to cry when the shrink tells her her sister was murdered. The script direction goes a bit too far, like:

"Lila cries...for Marion, for Arbogast...for ALL the people murdered in this world."

Nice to see Lila crying for My Man Arbogast --not that this would have been SAID - but clearly Hitchcock felt there should be "no crying in horror"(like "no crying in baseball") and removed that human element from the story. Marion and Arbogast died "shock horror movie slasher knife deathes" and the horror is primary there.

Still, Hitchcock's power being what it was...WE certainly felt the murders of Marion and Arbogast far beyond the "usual murder mystery murder" of the time...or often, since. (Hitchcock got similar power out of the murders of Brenda and Babs in Frenzy..their murders were SO brutal, SO cruel, and they were SO innocent.)

Hitchcock even got that kind of power out of the killing of Grpmek in Torn Curtain -- he's a '"bad guy" killed by a "good guy" but the murder itself is so drawn out and gruesome.

CONT

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

Still he has the odd good point

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Cousins usually DOES...

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and some lovely montages,

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I personally love 'montages" -- or "clips scenes" from many movies in a row -- and Hitchcock's great visual work makes such montages absolutely enthralling.

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e.g., near the beginning of the film it shows all the shots from the very earliest films forwards to The Birds of a phantom-door being closed.

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That "door bit" once revealed at the end of The Birds -- Rod Taylor reaches for a door that isn't there and we all go out into the yard with him -- is "Hitchcock magic." There is a similar shot of Henry Fonda going IN a door in The Wrong Man.

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It's worth seeing but eye-rolling is inevitable.

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Well, some thinkers hit some clinkers...but they DARE.

[–] swanstep (2766) 8 months ago

Might I ask WHERE you got to see this? As a matter of regular attempt every few weeks, I try to find this "bizarro documentary" on the various streaming services I take, but I never find it.

It's available both to buy and rent on youtube these days. But I think it's also on Apple TV and on Mubi.com and maybe on other places too. In other words after being mostly unavailable for a long time, Cousins' doc. is suddenly pretty widely available albeit not for free.

Update: I just checked and MNiAH doesn't appear to be available on youtube (to buy/rent) in the US. And when (having used a VPN to 'be located virtually' in the US) I search for US streaming options more generally I keep running into dead-ends. Wow, that's weird. Something must be legal tangled up in the US (e.g., maybe Cousins is holding out for a deal with Criterion Channel, that sort of thing) that's not been a problem elsewhere. As I mentioned, in New Zealand I have multiple paid streaming possibilities for MNiAH including youtube which only takes seconds to get going.

[–] swanstep (2766) 9 months ago

In just the last year or two we've had Beau is Afraid and Babylon,
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Saw the latter only (Babylon)

Beau is Afraid is on Netflix these days (at least where I am) and I've tried to watch it again a few times but I've never been able to get past the first act, which is surreal, brutal and insane but is still sort of hipstery and fun and so much more focused than all the rest. The 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th acts are worth seeing *once* as a kind of endurance test of the self, but are almost impossible to force oneself to revisit. When I watched them the first time I had Billy Wilder's 'It's a dream within a dream? You just lost a million dollars.' in my head at every Act/Reel change as it got more and more far out, punishing, and unpleasant.

[–] swanstep (2766) 9 months ago

Meg actually sounds more much like Metropolis (1927) which, for all its fame, was a huge financial-flop at the time

Looking around for figures on this, according to wiki, Metropolis cost an estimated 5.3 million Reichsmarks, but had total German box office of only 75K Reichsmarks so it *really* tanked - was an almost total loss - at home. A very heavily edited/shortened Metroplis appears to have had about $1 million rentals in the US and Canada across 1928-1929 which would make it a top 10-20 film for a year if so - not bad - and converts to about $4 million Reichsmarks. It does seem, therefore, that world-wide revenues would eventually technically have got Metropolis somewhere near break-even (it did eventually play everywhere - prints found in Brazil and New Zealand have been crucial to all the amazing restoration work done in recent decades) but who knows how many of those external revenues ever got back to a starting-to-hyper-inflate Weimar Germany. So in the immediate short term Metropolis almost bankrupted UFA studios in Berlin. The situation may be somewhat analogous to Cleopatra 1963 which nearly bankrupted 20C Fox (forcing it to sell its backlots thereby creating Century City) despite nearly breaking even on its massive budget *eventually* (by about 1967 when exorbidant tv rights were sold), because it made too much of its money too *slowly* to help with the studio's debt problems.

[–] roger1 (4026) 9 months ago

The situation may be somewhat analogous to Cleopatra 1963 which nearly bankrupted 20C Fox (forcing it to sell its backlots thereby creating Century City) despite nearly breaking even on its massive budget *eventually* (by about 1967 when exorbidant tv rights were sold), because it made too much of its money too *slowly* to help with the studio's debt problems.

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Its interesting to see how capital-poor some studios were(versus ARE) in that one single, overpriced movie could bring them down.

I think Michael Cimino's Heavens Gate almost sunk UA back in 1980.

And here's an interesting story I read: Lew Wasserman was being forced to sell his beloved Universal Studios to Japanese interests. I can't remember if he didn't want to do that, or if he wanted to turn over "damaged goods" but -- he allowed cost overruns on "Waterworld"(1995) to grow and grow, damaging Universal in the process.

The director on Waterworld was Kevin Costner's friend -- Kevin Reynolds -- but Costner really called the shots, and really wanted all that money spent. This had worked with Dances With Wolves -a 1990 hit that got a Best Picture win and Costner Best Director at the Oscars. But Costner transferred his "epic obsessions" to three films almost in a row that sank his career as a top star: Wyatt Earp(bested by Tombstone), Waterworld, and The Postman.

Costner thereafter struggled for a coupla decades -- always working but not the star he once was -- until Yellowstone made him a star again -- at least a TV streaming star...and...

...he's kinda got back to his old overbearing moviemaking self. He sort of quit Yellowstone(but might come back to finish the series) and he's betting everything on his series of multiple "Horizon" movies. I guess you just can't stop these guys from magnum opus filmmaking. Costner's Horizon is getting paired in articles about Coppola's Megalopolis and the take is the same: once-successful filmmakers betting it all on "personal visions."