OTTO PREMINGER, S / D

Dave Kehr: "The expansive use of widescreen and the carefully choreographed camera movements are gone... replaced by crowded, shallow images of claustrophobic spaces. Packed with some of the most garishly tasteless 1970s décor imaginable, the film’s Park Avenue apartments start to resemble the hamster cage owned by Julie’s two quarrelsome sons. (It’s unclear whom the hamster is supposed to represent, but he remains the film’s most empathetically observed figure.)"

i just read the novel Laura, v much worth it. The Clifton Webb character is tall, obese and even gayer if that's possible; the Vincent Price character is just a desperate Southern 'aristocratic' horndog. Narrator changes with every "part," which i was meh about. Many nice NYC references from the early '40s that will be pleasurable for local history buffs, like Jefferson Market being a women's prison.

I called Such Good Friends "okay, barely" upthread; seemed a little better second time around.

I think Dyan Cannon's good, Ken Howard too. Laurence Luckinbill, her husband, reminds me of Frank Langella in Diary of Mad Housewife: no shading whatsoever, a caricature of male self-absorption circa 1970--he's kind of a drag. James Coco's pretty good, although the scene where Cannon goes down on him while he's on the phone goes on forever. The ending, as I wrote the first time, is nice. Considering when the film came out, right in the midst of the most hopelessly self-indulgent new-American-cinema monstrosities, and considering that Preminger himself was riding the crest of his own auteurist stature, it's really not too bad.

What triggered the sudden interest in hospitals around this time? Within a year of each other, there was Such Good Friends, The Hospital, Frederick Wiseman's Hospital, and some junky thing called Doctor's Wives (Cannon was in that one, too).

Change of Habit w/Elvis & Mary Tyler Moore as well.

Also a bad Peter Sellers film called Where Does It Hurt? (1972).

Also on TV Medical Center peaked in popularity right at that time. Even on daytime TV, General Hospital, which had been one of the less popular soap operas in the '60s, surged to #2 rated soap in 1971-1972.

This hospital thing is actually a question that's occurred to me before. I wonder if it had something to do with the demise of the Production Code in '68. Maybe certain medical topics were considered touchy up to then, and perhaps discouraged by the Code.

Over in Britain there was also The National Health w/Lynn Redgrave.

M*A*S*H* probably fits in there as well.

What most of these films have in common is depicting hospital culture as basically dysfunctional

That's what I was going to say too: that's the focus of the Preminger, Wiseman, and Chayefsky films. It's like all at once the institution was under a lot of scrutiny.

The names in Advise and Consent kill me. Seabright. Brig. Lafe. Dolly. Hardiman. Pidge.

Pidge?

mostly come from Allan Drury (who was quite a reactionary)

I had to buy Otto Preminger's autobiography when I saw a copy on sale last night. Here's the front cover on the left and the back cover on the right. pic.twitter.com/PMCaGsbPJH

— Philip Concannon (@Phil_on_Film) June 19, 2019

love old kool baldies!

Bonjour Tristesse again. Sort of the ultimate tragic D Kerr role, and thru context Seberg somehow doesnt overly evoke a Gidget Goes to the Rivieria vibe.

David Niven's handsy playboy pop is creepy, too.

Anatomy of a Murder acting is so damn good, led by Stewart (as a pretty sneaky lawyer), Remick, Gazzara, Geo C Scott.

The only meh is Arthur O'Connell.

Stewart's work is A+, an example of how he manipulated his aw-shucks persona (e.g. playing with the fishing line in full view of the jury; blowing up knowing full well the judge would rule this or that point inadmissible).

Also, "panties."

Well the writing and casting of Stewart as a foxlike attorney is A+ too; just imagine Gregory Peck, oy.

iMdB, interesting if true:

James Stewart's father was so offended by the film, which he deemed "a dirty picture", that he took out an ad in his local newspaper telling people not to see it.

The only meh is Arthur O'Connell.

Who, of course, was one of the three Oscar nommed.

My Preminger of choice usually goes back and forth between Daisy Kenyon and Advise and Consent, but this one sucks me in every time and might be my private fave.

Edgy admission... KJB is a huge Otto stan but this one has got to be too entertaining for him.

Even with A O'C's reformed drunk, this has less hokey sap than A&C (gay blackmailer face down in the gutter included).

also George C Scott's frozen mug at his eleventh-hour misstep is spectacularly funny.

(btw that young girl playing the dead guy's daughter was played by... Bing Crosby's last wife.)

Sometimes, you are happy when someone dies in a movie. Rarer are you happy when someone commits suicide. One such case is Anne in Bonjour Tristesse.

KJB finally saw Anatomy and loved it.

p sure he'd seen and forgot it

The Human Factor is leaving criterion at the end of the month and worth a watch.

i remember him doing press for that (his last) when it was released. The reviews were respectful, after he'd had a few bombs earlier in the '70s.

is Forever Amber worth checking out? Really not a fan of costume dramas

I think Otto himself was quite displeased with it; predates his autonomous era?

Yes, 1947 I think, replaced John M. Stahl six weeks into shooting. Actually I think it was a deal he made with Zanuck where if he filled in, he could do Daisy Kenyon uninterrupted. Preminger said it was his most expensive movie, "and also the worst."

have you seen Whirlpool, his 1949 gene Tierney noir?

yeah, it's ok

Daisy Kenyon's the masterpiece from this era after Laura.

I like Whirlpool a lot; Jose Ferrer is very funny.

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