― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Thursday, 17 June 2004 02:45 (nineteen years ago) link
maybe thats why i like godard
― todd swiss (eliti), Thursday, 17 June 2004 07:16 (nineteen years ago) link
so there!
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 17 June 2004 08:46 (nineteen years ago) link
The first time I saw ToE, I didn't even notice the length/complexity of that opening tracking shot. By his own criteria (which I think I more or less agree with), that was the desired response.
― _chrissie (chrissie1068), Thursday, 17 June 2004 17:30 (nineteen years ago) link
― todd swiss (eliti), Saturday, 19 June 2004 00:02 (nineteen years ago) link
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Saturday, 19 June 2004 01:30 (nineteen years ago) link
That battle scene is fabulous. Ineffable's a good word: what does it have that a massive budget and rampant, stunning use of CGI somehow can't generate? It's just two dozen guys running around a field in cheap costumes, but...
― _chrissie (chrissie1068), Sunday, 20 June 2004 12:49 (nineteen years ago) link
which do you find more interesting chrissie? other than the two i mentioned i havent seen. hah. i hold kane higher than all the others ive seen except maybe the trial.
i just watched the rules of the game by the way (ive seen grand illusion) and ive defintiely begun connecting dots with his and welles's work. after i watched it over for the 3rd time and specifially looked for where cuts were i was amazed at the seamlessness, simpleness, and beauty of his long takes. what renoir should i see next?
― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Sunday, 20 June 2004 14:57 (nineteen years ago) link
Chimes isn't available in America (or the UK) in stores. It's been beset with legal problems. It may appear eventually -- there is scary talk of a 'restoration' a la Othello* -- but the Spanish disc is the best bet at the moment.
(*If anyone can do me a DVD dub of the untampered Othello from the OOP Criterion laserdisc, please drop me a line. I find the restoration... distasteful.)
Which do I find more interesting? Yeah, The Trial! And Chimes, Touch of Evil, Othello, Lady from Shanghai... but not Mr. Arkadin, which suffers too badly from bad editing away from Welles' hands (though Michael Redgrave's 'gay' performance is endlessly amusing).
Have you seen Immortal Story? That might be his least interesting effort, bar The Stranger. Very static and subdued, which is perhaps fitting to the source material (a Karen Blixen short story), but it doesn't seem to amount to much -- might as well just read the story, for all that OW brings to it. Which is odd, as he said he'd never do a Crime and Punishment picture specifically because he'd be unable to 'give' it anything...
― _chrissie (chrissie1068), Sunday, 20 June 2004 17:01 (nineteen years ago) link
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=2289&item=6303152223&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=2296&item=6303819413&rd=1
The first one is cheaper, but both are resonable.
(These links are apt to become redundant very quickly, natch...)
― _chrissie (chrissie1068), Sunday, 20 June 2004 18:08 (nineteen years ago) link
― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Monday, 21 June 2004 01:58 (nineteen years ago) link
― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Monday, 21 June 2004 01:59 (nineteen years ago) link
― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Monday, 21 June 2004 02:02 (nineteen years ago) link
― tom cleveland (tom cleveland), Monday, 21 June 2004 02:14 (nineteen years ago) link
I haven't seen any of the television stuff, to be honest. Immortal Story qualifies, I guess -- although it had a theatrical release, it was made ostensibly for television. I'm particularly interested in seeing the early '50s King Lear, though I've read the print quality is atrocious. (It's lucky to have survived at all, though.)
You can order it in the US on a DVD with The Stranger here:
http://www.ccvideo.com/item.cfm?itemid=CCD001034
Quite cheap. If you bite, you'll have to let me know if it's worth my effort to get it. :)
― _chrissie (chrissie1068), Monday, 21 June 2004 15:28 (nineteen years ago) link
― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Monday, 21 June 2004 21:53 (nineteen years ago) link
― _chrissie (chrissie1068), Tuesday, 22 June 2004 11:49 (nineteen years ago) link
previously unpublished Heston interview on making ToE:
http://www.seanax.com/?p=189
― Dr Morbius, Monday, 7 April 2008 15:18 (sixteen years ago) link
Ah, the glory days of ILF.
― C. Grisso/McCain, Monday, 7 April 2008 16:43 (sixteen years ago) link
This is possibly my favorite movie ever made.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 7 April 2008 18:08 (sixteen years ago) link
Exaggerating slightly but not by much.
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 7 April 2008 18:10 (sixteen years ago) link
(first time I saw it I was mad ^^^ and had this theory that Welles casting All-American Man Heston as a Mexican was a coded commentary on the social construction of race)
― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Monday, 7 April 2008 18:11 (sixteen years ago) link
they need to redo the "director's cut" version in the right aspect ratio.
― abanana, Thursday, 10 April 2008 20:17 (sixteen years ago) link
TOUCH OF EVIL MORE LIKE TOUCH OF SHIT AMIRITE
― latebloomer, Saturday, 12 April 2008 04:13 (sixteen years ago) link
j/k this movie rules
― latebloomer, Saturday, 12 April 2008 04:14 (sixteen years ago) link
OK, what are the arguments on the "right" aspect ratio? (and we don't really HAVE a "director's cut" of ToE)
New 50th anniv DVD (1.85:1) just out, w/ commetary by James Naremore & Jonathan Rosenbaum.
http://daily.greencine.com/archives/006808.html
― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, 8 October 2008 14:25 (fifteen years ago) link
http://www.movingimagesource.us/articles/the-master-touch-20081009
This strain of camp grotesquerie encroaches on myriad aspects of the picture, certainly on Welles's larger-than-life performance as Quinlan and in the glaring presence of Marlene Dietrich as a Mexican fortune-teller. Take a look at the blind woman who sits impassively frame right as Vargas apologetically telephones his new wife. Universal cropped her out of the frame, but she was reinstated after Welles argued his case in the famous 58-page memo of December 1957, when he fought to minimize the damage wrought by the studio's editors (see Chronology, below). "It was meant to be peculiar," he insisted. The effect is deeply self-aware and quintessentially Wellesian in its cockeyed excess. His next picture, after all, turned out to be Kafka's The Trial, which he insisted was a comedy even if no one else was laughing.
― Dr Morbius, Friday, 10 October 2008 16:14 (fifteen years ago) link
I dislike the "director's cut" released in 1998; and if it's a piece of camp grotesqueness we're dealing with, then I want Mancini music.
As for Dietrich, she was right: it's her best performance.
― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Friday, 10 October 2008 16:38 (fifteen years ago) link
just saw this last night; totally righteous. seems rather dark and grotesque for the time period (not necessarily in a basic "oh that guy is creepy" kind of way, this weirdness just permeates the whole film)
tons of incredible shots of course; how the actors are locationally positioned in the scenes really strengthens the dialogue.
david lynch has got to love this movie but maybe that's a shallow assessment
― guammls (QE II), Tuesday, 13 October 2009 23:13 (fourteen years ago) link
Not shallow at all, I can certainly see that. As for dark and grotesque, I think a lot of people couldn't handle it at the time, and I'm sure there was at least one totally outraged review from the original release.
― Soukesian, Sunday, 18 October 2009 14:44 (fourteen years ago) link
This is more of a "shallow masterpiece" than Citizen Kane, and this isn't a bad thing.
― Roman Polanski now sleeps in prison. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 18 October 2009 15:02 (fourteen years ago) link
http://i.imgur.com/6twMBVY.jpg?1
― ghosts of erith spectral crackhouse slain rudeboy (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), Tuesday, 4 June 2013 22:52 (ten years ago) link
this film is fairly humdrum for the first hour or so and then utterly fucking spectacular for the last twenty minutes. better that than the inverse
― ghosts of lower belvedere high technology sludge incinerator (imago), Tuesday, 4 June 2013 22:56 (ten years ago) link
humdrum?!
― A deeper shade of lol (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 4 June 2013 22:57 (ten years ago) link
Isn't the opening sequence part of the first hour or so?
― Roddenberry Beret (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, 4 June 2013 22:59 (ten years ago) link
by welles' 'lofty standards'. charlton heston's fault mostly. opening sequence is great but then it's all brooding menace and then the epic payoff
― ghosts of lower belvedere high technology sludge incinerator (imago), Tuesday, 4 June 2013 23:00 (ten years ago) link
oh damn, brooding menace and an epic payoff, what a terrible disappointment
― ¬╡▫ ▫╞⌠ (sic), Tuesday, 4 June 2013 23:34 (ten years ago) link
no beef, just a structural observation
― ghosts of lower belvedere high technology sludge incinerator (imago), Tuesday, 4 June 2013 23:57 (ten years ago) link
RIP menacing hood Pancho
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/touch-of-evil-valentin-de-vargas-dies-orson-welles-606471
― Miss Arlington twirls for the Coal Heavers (Dr Morbius), Friday, 16 August 2013 16:23 (ten years ago) link
...so is Zsa Zsa Gabor the last living cast member?
― Miss Arlington twirls for the Coal Heavers (Dr Morbius), Friday, 16 August 2013 16:32 (ten years ago) link
i remember seeing the restored version in theaters back in 98, and there were a couple of gay dudes in the row behind me laughing really hard at the scene where janet leigh was lying in bed wearing this:
http://i.imgur.com/bSttecy.jpg
i guess thats when i learned what camp is
― i wanna be a gabbneb baby (Hungry4Ass), Friday, 16 August 2013 20:53 (ten years ago) link
Rewatched on DCP in a theater last night. Dennis Weaver's lunatic "night man" is really a marvel, and his interactions with the hoodlums at the motel have a big proto-Lynch vibe.
Always forget that Heston's primary cop ally (Schwartz) is played by Mort Mills, who was the cop with the dark shades in Psycho.
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 22 April 2018 15:39 (six years ago) link
Agree about Dennis Weaver, never knew this latter bit of info.
― We’ll Take Chanhassen (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 22 April 2018 15:41 (six years ago) link
had this theory that Welles casting All-American Man Heston as a Mexican was a coded commentary on the social construction of race
by now i hope HOOS knows that Welles didn't cast Heston (it's closer to the reverse).
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 22 April 2018 15:49 (six years ago) link
Watched this for the first time today and had a ball. Some things:
- Obviously, the opening scene is just spectacular. I found myself thinking 'Renoir!' in quite a few places.- Welles has something of Renoir about him - particularly Renoir-as-Octave?- The Janet Leigh character does consistently confusing things but she eats up the screen when she's on it. She should definitely stay away from motels.- Heston is kinda bad to be honest. Acting like he's being pulled along by his teeth. And the blackface is just, jeez (the entire portrayal of Mexicans is quietly astonishing). - That final scene in the graveyard of industry absolutely made me think it was a deliberate reference to the wheel in The Third Man. - Honestly had no idea it was Dietrich! She was the best thing in it?
Loved this: "I could work forever on the editing of a film. For me, the strip of celluloid is put together like a musical score, and this execution is determined by the editing; just like a conductor interprets a piece of music in rubato, another will play it in a very dry and academic manner and a third will be very romantic, and so on. The images themselves are not sufficient: they are very important, but are only images. The essential is the length of each image, what follows each image: it is the very eloquence of the cinema that is constructed in the editing room."
Is there a particular Welles/Welles-adjacent book I could or should go to?
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Sunday, 14 November 2021 17:38 (two years ago) link
I didn't cope too well with the Dennis Weaver character. It was like he'd been dropped in from a different film? He definitely added to the overall sense of fear and nightmarishness I guess. Similarly with 'jittery guy' who must have been told to 'bob up and down', and again 'keep bobbing!'.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Sunday, 14 November 2021 17:41 (two years ago) link
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski),
For sure his booklength interview with Bogdanovich -- such a literate man, our Orson.
I read Clifton Heylin's critical bio last month. The last two volumes of Simon Callow's bio also terrific for insights.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 14 November 2021 17:44 (two years ago) link
Nice one, cheers. My university library has the Bogdanovich. Got myself a copy of the Renoir autobiography as well - cheap hardback.
― Vanishing Point (Chinaski), Sunday, 14 November 2021 21:54 (two years ago) link
Renoir's memoir of his old man also worth a read.
― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 14 November 2021 21:55 (two years ago) link
how is thomson? I picked it up for cheap a while ago but haven’t really opened it yet
― mens rea activist (k3vin k.), Monday, 15 November 2021 22:49 (two years ago) link
Rewatched on DCP in a theater last night. Dennis Weaver's lunatic "night man" is really a marvel, and his interactions with the hoodlums at the motel have a big proto-Lynch vibe.Always forget that Heston's primary cop ally (Schwartz) is played by Mort Mills, who was the cop with the dark shades in Psycho.― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 22 April 2018 16:39 (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink
― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Sunday, 22 April 2018 16:39 (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink
rewatching on TV right now and the first appearance of the "night man" actually took my mind straight to norman bates so i'm enjoying morbs's two sentences here^^^, miss you dude
i looked up mercedes mccambridge and discovered that when she played opposite joan crawford in johnny guitar, she ended up calling her a "mean, tipsy, powerful, rotten-egg lady"
― mark s, Sunday, 11 December 2022 22:16 (one year ago) link
!!!
re the Psycho cop
― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, 11 December 2022 22:27 (one year ago) link
Definitely reminiscent of Psycho. I sat down to watch the film on TV too but unfortunately, because of the snow I assume, the satellite signalling started breaking up about halfway through and has now conked out entirely!
― Gulf VAR Syndrome (Tom D.), Sunday, 11 December 2022 22:36 (one year ago) link
mine was bit flickery yes, but made it to the end
corrupt cop who gets results toppled by jittery know-it-all wife guy
― mark s, Sunday, 11 December 2022 23:01 (one year ago) link
Just rewatched last night. So great. "I'm the night manager!"
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMmE1NDc2ZTgtODIwYy00OTViLTg0MjUtNmFhY2QzMmRkYjhlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzI4Nzk0NjY@._V1_.jpg
― Three Rings for the Elven Bishop (Dan Peterson), Monday, 15 May 2023 14:47 (eleven months ago) link
Weird, I actually watched it on Friday night, on a whim. Had never seen it before. What a picture!
― jaymc, Monday, 15 May 2023 15:56 (eleven months ago) link
"I wish it was your chili I was gettin' fat on."
― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 15 May 2023 16:00 (eleven months ago) link