“Killer Writer”
By Raymond Benson
The likely apocryphal story Fritz Lang told folks was that in 1933, after enjoying a successful career with German silent films and a couple of talkies, he was invited to a meeting with Joseph Goebbels. The job offer was to be in charge of the Nazis’ propaganda filmmaking. Lang, a Jew, nodded enthusiastically, went straight to the train station without going home to pack a bag, and fled the country. He left behind his wife (who was a member of the Nazi party), spent some time in France, and then came to Hollywood. The rest, as they say, is history.
Lang worked in all genres but specialized in crime pictures (some of the best examples of film noir). Most of his work in any of the genres are dark, pessimistic, and have a bite. His 1950 noir, House by the River, which was based on a novel by A.
By Raymond Benson
The likely apocryphal story Fritz Lang told folks was that in 1933, after enjoying a successful career with German silent films and a couple of talkies, he was invited to a meeting with Joseph Goebbels. The job offer was to be in charge of the Nazis’ propaganda filmmaking. Lang, a Jew, nodded enthusiastically, went straight to the train station without going home to pack a bag, and fled the country. He left behind his wife (who was a member of the Nazi party), spent some time in France, and then came to Hollywood. The rest, as they say, is history.
Lang worked in all genres but specialized in crime pictures (some of the best examples of film noir). Most of his work in any of the genres are dark, pessimistic, and have a bite. His 1950 noir, House by the River, which was based on a novel by A.
- 4/4/2020
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
One of Fritz Lang’s least-known thrillers had aspects that appealed to him, and he certainly applied his personal viewpoint and visual talents. It’s a period Gothic with women in corsets, about a deranged writer who lets his desires get out of hand. It may be actor Louis Hayward’s best work. Jane Wyatt is the suffering wife, but the real honors go to Dorothy Patrick, in an all-too brief appearance.
House by the River
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1950 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 83 min. / Street Date January 14, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Louis Hayward, Lee Bowman, Jane Wyatt, Dorothy Patrick, Ann Shoemaker, Jody Gilbert, Peter Brocco, Howland Chamberlain, Sarah Padden, Kathleen Freeman, Will Wright, Carl Switzer.
Cinematography: Edward Cronjager
Film Editor: Arthur D. Hilton
Original Music: George Antheil
Art Direction: Boris Leven
Written by Mel Dinelli from a novel by A.P. Herbert
Produced by Howard Welsch
Directed by...
House by the River
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1950 / B&w / 1:37 flat Academy / 83 min. / Street Date January 14, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Louis Hayward, Lee Bowman, Jane Wyatt, Dorothy Patrick, Ann Shoemaker, Jody Gilbert, Peter Brocco, Howland Chamberlain, Sarah Padden, Kathleen Freeman, Will Wright, Carl Switzer.
Cinematography: Edward Cronjager
Film Editor: Arthur D. Hilton
Original Music: George Antheil
Art Direction: Boris Leven
Written by Mel Dinelli from a novel by A.P. Herbert
Produced by Howard Welsch
Directed by...
- 1/21/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Wow! Fritz Lang's second western is a marvel -- a combo of matinee innocence and that old Germanic edict that character equals fate. It has a master's sense of color and design. Robert Young is an odd fit but Randolph Scott is nothing less than terrific. You'd think Lang was born on the Pecos. Western Union Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1941 / Color /1:37 flat Academy / 95 min. / Street Date November 8, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Randolph Scott, Robert Young, Virginia Gilmore, Dean Jagger, John Carradine, Chill Wills, Slim Summerville, Barton MacLane, Victor Kilian, George Chandler, Chief John Big Tree, Iron Eyes Cody, Jay Silverheels. Cinematography Edward Cronjager, Allen M. Davey Original Music David Buttolph Written by Robert Carson from the novel by Zane Grey Produced by Harry Joe Brown (associate) Directed by Fritz Lang
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Darryl Zanuck of 20th Fox treated most writers well, was good for John Ford...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Darryl Zanuck of 20th Fox treated most writers well, was good for John Ford...
- 11/1/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The Big Heat is playing on Mubi in the UK through January 3.Glenn Ford and Gloria Graham in a promotional still for The Big Heat.There's a moment about an hour into The Big Heat that, if you're lucky enough to be watching it in a theater, will still make the audience gasp. It's an act of violence that seems both impossible and, given the direction of the story, inevitable. It sends everything reeling. One of the silliest biases that many modern moviegoers have to overcome is the idea that Old Hollywood movies were safe: that they come from such a repressed, naive, and censored era that nothing too dangerous, worldly, or subversive could ever end up on screen. Few films can blast aside that misconception quite like The Big Heat. This is a Fritz Lang film, and...
- 12/15/2015
- by Duncan Gray
- MUBI
Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. The Big Heat is playing on Mubi in the UK through January 3.Glenn Ford and Gloria Graham in a promotional still for The Big Heat.There's a moment about an hour into The Big Heat that, if you're lucky enough to be watching it in a theater, will still make the audience gasp. It's an act of violence that seems both impossible and, given the direction of the story, inevitable. It sends everything reeling. One of the silliest biases that many modern moviegoers have to overcome is the idea that Old Hollywood movies were safe: that they come from such a repressed, naive, and censored era that nothing too dangerous, worldly, or subversive could ever end up on screen. Few films can blast aside that misconception quite like The Big Heat. This is a Fritz Lang film, and...
- 12/15/2015
- by Duncan Gray
- MUBI
Words With Friends: Gozlan’s Stylish Noir all Amalgamated Pulp
Enjoyably anxious, director Yann Gozlan’s sophomore feature A Perfect Man (Un homme idéal) would better recall suspense masters like Hitchcock or Chabrol if its narrative felt a little less familiar. As such, it seems more like the B noir cousin of the cinema Gozlan is in conversation with rather than a revisionist take on one of cinema’s greatest femme fatales—karma. Featuring an excellent lead performance from recent Cesar award winning actor Pierre Niney, there’s much to admire even as Gozlan overdoses with increasing complications that hinge on the ludicrous.
Mathieu Vasseur (Niney) is an aspiring novelist, whose first manuscript, The Man From Behind, has been promptly rejected by publishers. Working vaguely as some sort of janitorial staff and/or garbage man, Vasseur stumbles into a lecture being given about scent’s relationship to memory and literature...
Enjoyably anxious, director Yann Gozlan’s sophomore feature A Perfect Man (Un homme idéal) would better recall suspense masters like Hitchcock or Chabrol if its narrative felt a little less familiar. As such, it seems more like the B noir cousin of the cinema Gozlan is in conversation with rather than a revisionist take on one of cinema’s greatest femme fatales—karma. Featuring an excellent lead performance from recent Cesar award winning actor Pierre Niney, there’s much to admire even as Gozlan overdoses with increasing complications that hinge on the ludicrous.
Mathieu Vasseur (Niney) is an aspiring novelist, whose first manuscript, The Man From Behind, has been promptly rejected by publishers. Working vaguely as some sort of janitorial staff and/or garbage man, Vasseur stumbles into a lecture being given about scent’s relationship to memory and literature...
- 4/22/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
The 55th San Francisco International Film Festival (site), opening tomorrow and running through May 3, "will seem comfortingly the same" to many in the Bay Area, writes G Allen Johnson in the Chronicle:
[A] lavish opening-night film and party, a rocking closing-night film and, in the two weeks between, 172 more films from 45 countries and tributes to distinguished celebrities... But behind the scenes, it's been the most challenging year in the festival's history. Two executive directors of the San Francisco Film Society have died — Graham Leggat, who lost a battle to cancer in August at 51; and his replacement, independent film maestro Bingham Ray, who had two strokes and died at 57 while attending the Sundance Film Festival in January. He had been on the job only 10 weeks.
"It sounds like a line, but it's actually true that for me personally it was a relief that I had something I could throw myself into that...
[A] lavish opening-night film and party, a rocking closing-night film and, in the two weeks between, 172 more films from 45 countries and tributes to distinguished celebrities... But behind the scenes, it's been the most challenging year in the festival's history. Two executive directors of the San Francisco Film Society have died — Graham Leggat, who lost a battle to cancer in August at 51; and his replacement, independent film maestro Bingham Ray, who had two strokes and died at 57 while attending the Sundance Film Festival in January. He had been on the job only 10 weeks.
"It sounds like a line, but it's actually true that for me personally it was a relief that I had something I could throw myself into that...
- 4/18/2012
- MUBI
The April 2012 issue of frieze is out and artist Lis Rhodes has taken on the "Life in Film" column. Also: Jonathan Griffin reviews work by Alex Israel, who "claims to believe in the 'stardust' of Hollywood, in the magic that transforms an object just through its appearance on film, pictured in association with a star whose image is just as fictitious as the movie itself."
"In the mid-1980s, film novelizations were messages in bottles for those without video recorders or access to a cinema," writes George Pendle. "Even if you had seen the film in question, these novelizations acted as memento vidi, forceful reminders of what you had seen." And yet, they're still being written:
In his 2005 essay "Novelization, a Contaminated Genre?," the cultural theorist Jan Baetens declares novelizations as a unique, if non-canonical, genre: "Novelization does not so much aspire to become the movie's other as it wants to be its double,...
"In the mid-1980s, film novelizations were messages in bottles for those without video recorders or access to a cinema," writes George Pendle. "Even if you had seen the film in question, these novelizations acted as memento vidi, forceful reminders of what you had seen." And yet, they're still being written:
In his 2005 essay "Novelization, a Contaminated Genre?," the cultural theorist Jan Baetens declares novelizations as a unique, if non-canonical, genre: "Novelization does not so much aspire to become the movie's other as it wants to be its double,...
- 3/22/2012
- MUBI
Netflix has revolutionized the home movie experience for fans of film with its instant streaming technology. Netflix Nuggets is my way of spreading the word about independent, classic and foreign films being made available by Netflix for instant streaming. Important Note: There may be some films that do not become available on the specified dates. This is merely a report of the most accurate release dates I can find, but is not directly confirmed by Netflix themselves.
American: The Bill Hicks Story (2010)
Streaming Available: 06/29/2011
Synopsis: Since his tragic death from cancer at age 32, comedian Bill Hicks’s legend and stature have only grown, and this unique documentary tells his story, blending live footage, interviews and animation to fill in the details of a life cut short. A comic’s comic and unflagging critic of hypocrisy and cultural emptiness, Hicks was one of a kind, a Lenny Bruce for the late 20th century,...
American: The Bill Hicks Story (2010)
Streaming Available: 06/29/2011
Synopsis: Since his tragic death from cancer at age 32, comedian Bill Hicks’s legend and stature have only grown, and this unique documentary tells his story, blending live footage, interviews and animation to fill in the details of a life cut short. A comic’s comic and unflagging critic of hypocrisy and cultural emptiness, Hicks was one of a kind, a Lenny Bruce for the late 20th century,...
- 6/28/2011
- by Travis Keune
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Time for a quick break from the news coming out of Cannes. With the emphasis on quick, here's a bit on what's going on elsewhere.
First, on the film journal front, Midnight Eye's posted three new reviews and a feature by Mark Player, "Post-Human Nightmares: The World of Japanese Cyberpunk Cinema." The new Offscreen features pieces on Luis Buñuel, Jesús Franco, Wristcutters: A Love Story, A Single Man and 3D. Word from Catherine Grant: "The second issue of the new Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism has just been posted online, with a wonderful looking Lang dossier, a fine tribute to the late Robin Wood, which takes the form of seven of his rarest pieces from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. And there's more besides on Susan Hayward and Vincente Minnelli." Speaking of Lang, you'll want to see David Bordwell's latest entry on how Lang shifts our alignment and...
First, on the film journal front, Midnight Eye's posted three new reviews and a feature by Mark Player, "Post-Human Nightmares: The World of Japanese Cyberpunk Cinema." The new Offscreen features pieces on Luis Buñuel, Jesús Franco, Wristcutters: A Love Story, A Single Man and 3D. Word from Catherine Grant: "The second issue of the new Movie: A Journal of Film Criticism has just been posted online, with a wonderful looking Lang dossier, a fine tribute to the late Robin Wood, which takes the form of seven of his rarest pieces from the 1960s, 70s and 80s. And there's more besides on Susan Hayward and Vincente Minnelli." Speaking of Lang, you'll want to see David Bordwell's latest entry on how Lang shifts our alignment and...
- 5/16/2011
- MUBI
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