John Huston: C/D?

Totally cornball, and the opening scenes with Robert Morley are practically camp, but this is still massively entertaining -- maybe the only time I'll accept two great actors giving broad, self-parodic performances.

Has anyone present seen Let there Be Light? Quite something.

this treasure of the sierra madre bluray is BUTTER.

god the ending is so wonderfully bleak, almost existentialist... just them laughing at the meaningless and chaos as the wind howls...

I think Treasure is one of those movies you "have" to see that isn't really all that good when it comes down to it (it's all denoument, and weighed down by its racism).

Don't get this at all.

ya wtf

That it's glib in parts and weighed down by Tim Holt's blank performance and Max Steiner's music I can take; but Bogart's decline is beautifully done (he's genuinely scary; his eyes light up more intensely every time he says "Fred C. Dobbs"), and watching him hunt Holt down as Holt slips into exhaustion gets under my skin every time.

well what's great is that it barely even IS a decline... you realize that's kind of how he's been since the beginning, his mask of civility has just slipped. i also really like how he rationalizes it to the end, acting like he's the real victim. reminded me of some conservative mofos i could think of

also that bar fight is great eh... no music, just an awkward, uncomfortable, horrible fight

i also like how the town at the beginning feels like this purgatory, full of these shambling lost souls who can't escape

Pauline Kael said the town scenes represent the best twenty-minute sequence Huston ever directed.

they are really quite amazing. great great opening.

well what's great is that it barely even IS a decline... you realize that's kind of how he's been since the beginning, his mask of civility has just slipped. i also really like how he rationalizes it to the end, acting like he's the real victim.

Yeah, and the beauty of Bogart's performance is you can believe he was once a pretty honorable guy, and still remembers to be one when the occasion demands it.

love this movie. i only saw it a month ago. i thought the ending was pretty life affirming and inspiring fwiw. like laughing and howling w rage and crying are all the same noise in the end, but theyre still laughing.

"The Kremlin Letter" is A++. Also a fave of J-P Melville's.

haven't watched Treasure in years... good but overrated.

Saw The Misfits for the first time today--not sure why it's taken me forever. Except for the drunken 15-minute detour in the middle, the one time Gable was awful, I liked it. Everything before Clift's entrance was pretty good, and the mustanging stuff towards the end was excellent. Gable's never had much appeal for me, but he's okay; Clift is awkward at first, much better later on; Wallach and Ritter are good the whole way. I've always had (as odd as this may sound) more of a clinical appreciation of Monroe's beauty before seeing this--I never had any kind of a crush on her, like with Audrey Hepburn, say. But she really is astoundingly beautiful here.

I've always had (as odd as this may sound) more of a clinical appreciation of Monroe's beauty before seeing this--I never had any kind of a crush on her, like with Audrey Hepburn, say. But she really is astoundingly beautiful here.

there was some talk on another thread about this recently, i remember it p well but could watch it again for MM. it's kinda hard to separate her beauty, which is pronounced enough in a bunch of other films, from just her tragic 'aura' & associated magnetism in this.

Meant to say that there's some weirdly self-referential stuff going on that was interesting. Clift's character talks about some big calamity he's on the mend from, and when Wallach's in the car with Monroe going 90, you can't help thinking about Clift's accident. Monroe has all the pin-ups of herself on the inside of the door. And even though I know elegiac westerns are always about the Death of Some Vanishing Way of Life, it also felt a little like Gable and that era of Hollywood being laid to rest.

One of the weaker things about the film is that 100 minutes into it, you've still got men sitting around analyzing Monroe's character aloud.

The only time I saw it (years ago) I was struck by how unaffectedly the star trio (and Thelma Ritter) hung out in conversation scenes.

Yes, especially the long scene when they first arrive at Wallach's house. And Huston's camera really catches Monroe hanging out at times, but I won't get into that.

also in the weird self-referentiality, tho extra-

the poignancy of the last lines, their being the last lines spoken on film by both actors

won't post them for the annoying spoiler!-shouting types

Notable in the Mark Harris book is that some of the time Huston was in the army, risking his ass to shoot film for the War Dept, the guvmint was investigating whether he was a communist.

The Battle of San Pietro is gripping and notably pioneering in 'war-film' technique for the rest of the '40s and '50s, even tho nearly all of it is unacknowledged re-enactment.

NYC retro (some acting-only films included)

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/series/let-there-be-light-the-films-of-john-huston

http://www.wsj.com/articles/john-huston-a-look-at-his-influence-1418860047

J.Ro on The Bible:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-bible/Film?oid=1055495

and Kael:

John Huston is an infinitely more complex screen artist than David Lean. He can be far worse than Lean because he’s careless and sloppy and doesn’t have all those safety nets of solid craftsmanship spread under him. What makes a David Lean spectacle uninteresting finally is that it’s in such goddam good taste. It’s all so ploddingly intelligent and controlled, so “distinguished.” The hero may stick his arm in blood up to the elbow but you can be assured that the composition will be academically, impeccably composed. Lean plays the mad game of super-spectacles like a sane man. Huston (like Mailer) tests himself, plays the crazy game crazy—to beat it, to win.

The worst problem of recent movie epics is that they usually start with an epic in another form and so the director must try to make a masterpiece to compete with an already existing one. This is enough to petrify most directors but it probably delights Huston. What more perverse challenge than to test himself against the Book? It’s a flashy demonic gesture, like Nimrod shooting his arrow into God’s heaven.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/film/92939/tnr-film-classics-the-bible-october-22-1966

Print of The Bible was in real good shape but quite a bit of it looked lousy even tho Giuseppe Rotunno lensed it. The whole Eden segment had the lens smeared with Vaseline so they could get away with carefully framed nudity (and Eve had her cascading hair glued to her breasts it appeared). Richard Harris as Cain v close to Dave Thomas' version on SCTV.

Ava Gardner almost as good as Sarah as Geo C Scott is as Abraham in the second half. When Dino de Laurentiis was planning on it as a multidirector event, Orson Welles was supposed to do Abraham, and apparently he wrote most of it but either withdrew credit or didn't get it. Abraham takes Isaac through the ruins of Sodom on the way to almost getting sacrificed, and the boy sees tiny skulls and asks, "The children, were they wicked too?" Sounds Wellesian! Jehovah, what an asshole.

Huston as goofy slapstick Noah is somethin' ... seems he'd wanted Chaplin.

Last night at a film event Alec Baldwin relayed a Nicholson account of the Chinatown set where Polanski would "go on" at length between takes about what he wanted...

Huston would be staring at the table in front of him. He called Polanski RoMAHN, and said after several minutes, "RoMAHN, let's just do another one."

I'm haunted by that scene in Fat City when Stacey Keach is making some sad late supper for him and his gf which consists of shoe leather steak and some cold garden peas straight from the tin.

TIL that MGM put out a Blaxploitation remake of The Asphalt Jungle entitled Cool Breeze in 1972.

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhh-QTFyWuk

Film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWlOo3GKcTQ