OTTO PREMINGER, S / D

He's quite the antihero in DK.

I wanna read that Geoffrey O'Brien thing about him (or is it Luc Sante)

thing? about Dana Andrews?

Yeah. It's in OK You Mugs. I think C0L!n said that was the best or only thing worth reading in there.

i've been seeing that book remaindered pretty much since it came out, and every so often i'll look in the contents to see if i recognize any of the contributors' name now. i *never ever do*. subtitling it 'writers on actors' was kind of oxymoronic.

Geoffrey O'Brien, Luc Sante, Manny Farber, John Updike? Never heard of 'em

Actually I remembered that I had already read that Dana Andrews piece in Castaways On The Image Planet.

are they rly in it? obviously farber and updike i know. heard of sante.

Table Of Contents
ILX favorites Frank Kogan and Greil Marcus too.

oh klawans too huh.

Fun fact: Godard seeked out Jean Seberg to be in Breathless after seeing Saint Joan (I've only seen Bonjour Tristesse).

Carmen Jones, yes. Amazing it was made when it was.

I really love Bunny Lake is Missing. Although it's harder to watch after the spoilers of a first viewing.

Saw Bonjour Tristesse. What an odd little film. Preminger rather slyly doesn't shy away from the sexual tension between sticky-wicket Niven and Seberg. She's awkward when bantering or acting most adolescent, but she and Kerr (who's really superb and looks great in Preminger's extended great) have great chemistry.

I love the MoMA film audience. It's always like 20% Jewish 75+ psychoanalysts.

has "great" gone viral in Alfred's last line?

Its oddness is inseparable from its greatness. I wonder if Eric remembers it?

Also when I see things at MoMA someone usually starts talking to me without prompt, which I like.

whoops typo.

Carmen Jones, yes. Amazing it was made when it was.

Why? It's a beautiful film, but it's also a segregationist document in its own way.

Preminger was bold, but he was also careful and canny. He wouldn't have stepped over any boundaries if he thought there would be real repercussions.

I think he's one of the greatest Hollywood directors mind.

I've got Where The Sidewalk Ends arriving tomorrow.

I wonder if Eric remembers it?
Film criticism is the art of pretend forgetfulness.

I remember the movie, just not writing about it. No way in hell am I gonna read that piece now.

A bunch of the earliest essays I wrote for Slant's 100 are painfully earnest, I bet. The ones on trashy movies are probably a lot better.

Resaw Advise and Consent a few weeks ago: the first 90 minutes are just wonderful...then the hamhanded homo drama kicks in.

How would you prefer Kennedy-era studio films dealt with homosexuality?

With less handwringing and a better actor than Don Murray. I don't mind the gay bar scene.

Not bad, for a 23-second scene.

what'd you think of the movie overall?

Morbs could link you to my Slant review, I'm too lazy.

I think the way Preminger films the Senate chambers is as precise and fantastic as, I dunno, Bresson at his best.

Another thing I remember liking is that its purportedly central concern (i.e. Leffingwell) ends up repeatedly pushed to the back in favor of more prurient distractions. In other words, it IS politics.

apparently the Laughton character discovers Murray's body in the novel.

(I've read you being earnest without the pain, EH.)

It's certainly not as preachy a political drama as, say, Serling / Frankenheimer's Seven Days In May (which I remember liking). And it's a marvel of sophistication next to Charlie Wilson's War.

Alas, Patricia Neal is unable to intro In Harm's Way tomw night at Film Forum as planned. I will probably library-DVD it.

I never managed to make it this far into Skidoo:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xg463_skidoo-theme-song-carol-channing

(I've read you being earnest without the pain, EH.)

Yeah, I get good and weepy about John Waters.

oh, you!

Carol Channing is actually the only joyful element of Skidoo. In spite of her hard-to-watch strip scene.

Carol Channing is usually the only joyful element in anything she's in.

except Thoroughly Modern Millie.

I have avoided C.C. in most everything except her weekly appearances on PBS specials over the last 35 years singing "Diamonds" or "Hello Dolly!"

Her performance of "Diamonds" on "The Muppet Show" = best evah.

more preminger movies need to come out on dvd

Daisy Kenyon in a couple months.

Denby on Preminger. I haven't finished it.

Oy, Denby:

Preminger was perhaps too refined and modulated in his sophistication to achieve more than occasional greatness as a director. He doesn’t compare, for instance, with his fellow-émigrés Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder. It’s hard to think of a heartbreaking or truly exhilarating moment in his work. Yet, at his best, he raised civil discourse to the level of subtle entertainment: one can get caught up in the intricately choreographed give-and-take of “Advise and Consent” without caring whether the nominee gets confirmed or not

If AAC was just one of many "subtle entertainments," then isn't Preminger a great director?

I think "at his best" suggests there weren't "many." I don't know that O.P. has more than two great films.

Depends how academic we get: Laura, Fallen Angel, Anatomy of a Murder, maybe Advise & Consent as a near-great.

I've got The Cardinal in my queue.

"Can technical skill and craft, combined with worldliness and urbanity, and presented in a distinct style, rise to the level of art?"

UGH!!!!!!

I'm not yet a Hawks convert, but that argument is total idiocy

http://theband.hiof.no/band_pictures/levon_and_the_hawks_1964.html

aargh
http://theband.hiof.no/band_pictures/levon_and_the_hawks_1964.gif

I was this close to going to see Saint Joan last night but didn't make it and now I am regretting it.

i went to the screening of bunny lake w/ keir dullea. he did a funny impression of otto preminger (and confirmed once more that the man was a complete monster)

:o

A friend wd've gone if Carol Lynley had been there. He was scared shitless by Bunny as a kid.

i think denby is pretty much on the money, and i don't usually.

I liked Daisy Kenyon fine but masterpiece seems wild to me, maybe I should revisit... a lot of it just doesn't gel imo, particularly Henry Fonda's thousand yard stare character, seemingly airlifted out of Ford's The Fugitive from the same year.

The warmth and intimacy between the three, the lack of melodrama, etc that put it over. It's nothing like Laura or Preminger's other noir.

Watched The Human Factor last night and thought it was exceptional - I was pretty blown away. If you're a connoisseur of spy movies a la John Le Carre, this one really hits the spot. This Cineaste article captured a lot of what I loved about it (spoilers within, although the first paragraph should give you an idea of whether you will dig this or not):

This 1979 adaptation of Graham Greene’s novel, The Human Factor, was the final film of Otto Preminger’s distinguished, fifty-five-year career, and while far from Preminger’s best-known work, it’s a magnificent capstone, and a quintessential “late film.” Like the final works of some of the other great directors of the period (Howard Hawks’s Rio Bravo [1959] and Hatari! [1962] come to mind, as well as John Ford’s 7 Women [1966], Chaplin’s Limelight [1952], Fritz Lang’s The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse [1960], and especially Yasujiro Ozu’s final films), The Human Factor displays a cinematic mastery that may at first glance appear downright anticinematic. Radically dedramatized and free of stylistic flourishes, it’s a spy film that intentionally goes against the grain of what most viewers expect from the genre—it daringly courts charges of visual blandness, stilted acting, and unmodulated pacing, resembling a run-of-the-mill TV movie rather than a theatrical feature by one of the towering figures of mid-century Hollywood moviemaking. But to a perceptive viewer, this apparent blankness is the manifestation of a hard-earned cinematic wisdom, a transcendence of the youthful urge towards bold effects or self-evident expressiveness. The Human Factor is a brilliant demonstration of the devastating power that can result from eliminating stylistic adornment.

https://www.cineaste.com/fall2013/from-the-archives-the-human-factor

Sold.

Radically dedramatized and free of stylistic flourishes

I just read the book a couple of months ago. A repressed emotional tone would suit it.

Another unexpected credit in Tom Stoppard's screenwriting history (getting one distinguished writer to adapt another always strikes me as odd).... Nabokov for Fassbinder, Ballard for Spielberg, etc.

I enjoyed The Human Factor, tho OP fanatic KJB claims my failure to recognize it as a "masterpiece" indicates a massive blind spot. It's clear that Iman (who is onscreen a lot as Nicol Williamson's wife) is a first-time actor, but what some critics found "bloodless" or "juiceless" in its lack of high-pitched suspense worked fine for me.

I was put off by that bloodlessness in the first half to 2/3 of the film, but I appreciated it by the emotional payoff at the end -- most lives destroyed by international spycraft/tradecraft are destroyed without firing a shot.

I liked The Human Factor just fine, although if I hadn't known who directed it I'd assume it was, I dunno, Ronald Neame or something. Robert Morley is as amusing as ever.

I thought in the strip-club scene that he was being poisoned, from the way his eyes were bulging.

Laura is so batshit lol. I love it. When Laura's beloved maid Bessie goes into (deserved!) hysterics after realizing she's alive, Laura says, "It's okay, Bessie, go make us eggs." *walks regally out of kitchen*

Happy birthday!

I watched two Premingers this year. Was a little disappointed in Laura, but liked Bunny Lake Is Missing a lot.

I told my Laura-related Morbius story at his memorial.

Which can found here, mostly:

The Rouben Mamoulian Poll

Scroll back one for the set-up from Alfred if you need to.

i just watched Fallen Angel last night. A pretty fine noir, and a pretty interesting story. Dana Andrews' conman character is almost on the outside looking in while the grimmer noir story runs parallel to his less-than-savory con angle. it's a pretty unpredictable story, with a bit more heart and less doom than another similar story might possess. Andrews is vv good, Alice Faye is solid as the good girl, Linda Darnell is phenomenal as the supposed femme fatale, who is really more a lonely, sad, and tragic figure who's used and ogled and cast aside by men.

Like most Linda Darnell roles.

Mistakenly thought Jane Darwell

intrigued to check out Forever Amber while it's still on the criterion channel

That’s kind of a sleeper. Remember some good stuff was in it, especially George Sanders and the dogs, haven’t seen it in ages.

Mistakenly thought Jane Darwell

Trying to fight off Rudy Vallee and Howard Hughes, just to name two.