John Huston: C/D?

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