Grandest 'Film Folly' Of All

Greatest "ILE Thread Folly" of All.

balls you are awful at this

Luckily I don't live in NYC and believe in "almost."

The weird thing is, I'm arguing with Eric H and balls, and I generally find both of you to be very reasonable on here.

its been a while since i read the book, but i *think this is a poll of the movies the book investigates, so i don't really see the problem with eric h saying "i didn't include other movies cos they aren't in the book, so read the book", because that would be another poll.

didnt realize lust in the dust was such an extravagant production, need to see that i guess - voted for fitzcarraldo since the documentary's so memorable

feel like one of demille's silent epics should be on here but maybe i don't understand the criteria too

its been a while since i read the book, but i *think this is a poll of the movies the book investigates, so i don't really see the problem with eric h saying "i didn't include other movies cos they aren't in the book, so read the book", because that would be another poll.

If he'd said that way--and said it politely--I would have understood.

IIRC DeMille's silent epics were pretty str8forward & lacking in any kind of folly as far as shooting them went, the only exception being putting Gloria Swanson in a cage with a live lion for one of them, "Male and Female" I think. Michael Curtiz' "Noah's Ark" might be a silent-era pick, if non-book picks are allowable - the biblical scenes are ridiculously OTT and they killed several extras making the flood scenes.

One possible inclusion I thought of that I think fits the criteria as I now understand it is Hopper's Last Movie. I haven't seen it, though, so I don't really have anything to say about it.

didnt the silent ten commandments have ungodly massive sets with extras falling off them and dying?

method actors!

Sorry, but I have to break in with my impression of Billy Crystal's impression of Edward G. Robinson: "Ah, so where's your Messiah now?"

I don't recall that, I have it on DVD, but TBH I couldn't stand sitting thru it again, it's a drag. "Ungodly massive sets withextras falling off" sounds more like DW Griffith's "Intolerance".

yeah, i'm probably getting my silent epics mixed up

Honestly didn't think I was being a dickwad about it, but yeah, I'm guilty of not doing a good enough job setting the terms.

The word "folly" in this context is something drawn from out of the realm of architecture, so that's why I was being stricter about the terminology.

The best way I can think of to explain what a movie that qualifies here is: Imagine Russian Ark. Now imagine they constructed the set (i.e. the Hermitage) specifically and only for that film.

(And, yeah, there's also the fact that this is a poll of the movies in the book.)

the biblical scenes are ridiculously OTT and they killed several extras making the flood scenes

I sometimes wonder which movie has the highest death toll.

"The Conqueror" is the obvious answer to that one

quick c/p from shitipedia:

The exterior scenes were shot on location near St. George, Utah, 137 miles (220 km) downwind of the United States government's Nevada Test Site. In 1953, extensive above-ground nuclear weapons testing occurred at the test site, as part of Operation Upshot-Knothole. The cast and crew spent many difficult weeks on location, and in addition Hughes later shipped 60 tons of dirt back to Hollywood in order to lend verisimilitude to studio re-shoots.[1] The film-makers knew about the nuclear tests[1] but the federal government reassured residents that the tests caused no hazard to public health.[2]

Dick Powell died of cancer in January 1963, only a few years after the picture's completion. Pedro Armendáriz was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1960 and committed suicide in 1963 after he learned it was terminal. Hayward, Wayne, and Moorehead all died of cancer in the mid to late 1970s. Cast member actor John Hoyt died of lung cancer in 1991. Skeptics point to other factors such as the wide use of tobacco - Wayne and Moorehead in particular were heavy smokers - and the notion that cancer resulting from radiation exposure does not have such a long incubation period. The cast and crew totaled 220 people. By 1981, 91 of them had developed some form of cancer and 46 had died of the disease.[2] Dr. Robert Pendleton, professor of biology at the University of Utah, stated, "With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic. The connection between fallout radiation and cancer in individual cases has been practically impossible to prove conclusively. But in a group this size you'd expect only 30 some cancers to develop...I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would hold up in a court of law."

Eric H: Does Klawans mention Hopper's Last Movie?

I don't think so. I don't have the book on me, but I can look at the index later.

You're definitely right, Pash.

saw 'l'inhumaine ' this year

not impressed

surprised not to see 'napoleon'

not really sure 'metropolis' goes off the rails

That's one movie that I'm thinking was included to support Klawans' architectural thesis more so than directorial hubris, though it was a pretty massive and expensive undertaking, no?

yeah it was probably the biggest film made in europe at that time

there was one really huge pre-war one but i've forgotten about it

i thought metropolis was the most expensive movie ever when it was made?

xpost Yeah, I haven't boned up on my Brownlow in awhile.

Wow @ "The Conqueror"...I never heard that story. Crazy...

Yeah, one of the Medved books has a pic of JWayne and various crew standing around a geiger counter on-site and lolling.

And this is what it was all for:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8U1LVNjJx0

Not to mention this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciHbJkb9OKI

And then did I note:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsnWOyfMq4I

But I suppose there was this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYHU19ntDBQ

Meanwhile going back to Pash's c/p above -- "Operation Upshot-Knothole," okay SOMEBODY was fucking around there.

"Operation Upshot-Knothole" I mean can I just . . .

xp lol

Overseen by General Bick Dutt Wass-Sipe

Holy shit @ these Conqueror clips

The whole thing is just insane. I taped it off TV back in the early nineties and good god almighty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXXZ6URb4VU

Meantime, if you want a full ten minutes of it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gey8eAFe5uw

Stop it!

Hahah. (There's not that much more on YouTube, for which we should all be grateful.)

"The Conqureror" is absolutely dreadful from beginning to end, not even entertainingly bad, just grim and dull.

"Upshot-Knothole" I at first thought was some guy's lol-WP edit, but no, it was for real, there are video clips of it on youtube, a nuclear shell fired from a big field gun!

"The Conqureror" is absolutely dreadful from beginning to end, not even entertainingly bad, just grim and dull.

Yeah, good camp it ain't. At least some of the lines are great in isolation given who was speaking them:

Temujin: Come and take me, mongrels - if you dare. While I have fingers to grasp a sword, and eyes to see your cowardly faces, your treacherous heads will not be safe on your shoulders. For I am Temujin, the Conqueror. No prison can hold me, no army defeat me.

I was thinking of starting a similar poll, but limited to American films from approximately At Long Last Love to One from the Heart--seems like every big American director of that period had an oversized disaster (sometimes more than one). I want to check first, though (not sure what search term to use): has this been done already?

hard to know which criteria to vote on exactly here (fitzcarraldo for the stories, greed for the legend, apocalypse now for the heart attack), but since playtime is one of my favourite movies i guess i'll go for that.

i think lola montes is one of my all-time "wished i liked it better" movies

surprised not to see 'napoleon'

yeah!

jesus READ THE BOOK

Amen to that.

This restoration was pretty clear about what it was and what it wasn't, how the originally released Swanson version left out all the Africa stuff, ending with a double suicide! - and how they were filling in whatever they had to fill out the second part. I never felt like they were overselling or overreaching.