Cast This: "From Here To Eternity" Redux

By now you may have heard the news that an uncensored version of the famous novel From Here To Eternity, a "director's cut" to speak in film parlance, is being released on e-books next month? It will restore profanity and some homosexual content to the military epic; In the 1950s, you didn't ask and they certainly didn't want any telling (or cussing).

"THE BOLDEST BOOK OF OUR TIME... HONESTLY, FEARLESSLY ON THE SCREEN!"

It's maybe a bit corrupt of me to play a casting game with a remake I've never rooted for -- it's a terrific movie as is -- but "Cast This" is fun, isn't it? And in the case of a this new author's cut, why not? Movies have been remade for far stupider reasons. And I don't feel too bad at proposing a remake of 1955's Best Picture From Here To Eternity because it's already been remade once as a television miniseries in the late 70s.

The reinserted homosexual content would be mostly in reference to offscreen events but it got me to thinking about the movie and the fact that Frank Sinatra, an able actor and massively popular singer won an Oscar for the role that contains the content. (Basically it amounts to him being gay for pay, a hustler.)

Monty & Sinatra in From Here To Eternity | Sinatra's Oscar Win

Meanwhile Montgomery Clift, an actual homosexual and one of the defining actors of the 20th century, never won one. What a world. I don't know how close Monty ever came to winning in his four times at bat, but it would make sense that he had a reasonable shot with From Here to Eternity. It was a wildly popular film and won eight other Oscars. It's also one of those rare films where every principle member of the cast was nominated.

CAST THIS
So who would you place in the five main roles?

Prewitt & Lurene, bickering loversPrewitt (The Monty part) is a stubborn principled transfer from the Bugle corps who used to box but refuses to fight anymore... even when provoked violently. He takes up with a nightclub girl and keeps getting dragged into Maggio's troubles, some violent. This actor should be handsome and believable as a former fighter and be a bit of an enigma.

Lurene (the Donna Reed part) is a girl of somewhat shady reputation -- and conflicted about it -- who works at the nightclub where all the soldiers go for entertainment. She wants to be something other than what she is and return to the mainland (if I remember correctly?)

Maggio (the Sinatra part) is the undisciplined volatile Private and loyal friend to Prewitt, who has a hustling past and gets in bar fights and is later violently abused by a superior officer.

Karen (The Deborah Kerr part) is the Base Commandes's neglected and unfaithful wife. She takes up with the Sergeant under her husband and is eager for him to become ambitious so she can divorce her husband and marry him without, one presumes, losing her way of life. She has a great line I've never fully understood which I've written about before when she's flirting with the Sergeant and invites him in.

You're doing fine sergeant. My husband is off somewhere and it's raining outside and we're both drinking now. You probably only got one thing wrong: the lady herself. The lady is not what she seems. She's a washout if you know what I mean. And I'm sure you know what I mean.

Sgt Warden and his Captain's WifeI don't!

Like every other character in the story, she's pretty conflicted about her own desires and action.

Sgt. Warden (The Burt Lancaster part) is a man who's conflicted about cheating on his Commanding officer by bedding his wife. This actor should be masculine, confident someone you'd take orders from but who is complacent about being a cog in the machine. So a leader but not too much of one.

Obviously Sgt. Warden and Karen have to have sizzling chemistry for their legendary beach sex scene.

GO!

Tennessee 100: "The Fugitive Kind"

Michael C. here from Serious Film to join in the Tennessee Williams festivities. When I picked a film to write about I jumped at The Fugitive Kind because

A) I'm a big Sidney Lumet fan and
B) I was curious how a second Brando/Williams collaboration could fly so far below my radar. I got my answer and then some.

The Fugitive Kind (1960) directed by Sidney Lumet based on Tennessee Williams’ play Orpheus Descending is one of the most fascinating messes I’ve ever seen. There is no getting around the fact that it just doesn’t work, yet I think I’d recommend it more readily than a lot of successful movies I’ve seen. Of all its flaws being dull is not one of them.

Williams writing was as inescapable in the fifties as Jane Austen’s was in the nineties. After burning through his major works Hollywood decided to take one of his rare unsuccessful productions and give it the full feature length treatment. Thus Opheus Descending, the story of a musician named Snakeskin with a questionable past who strikes up a relationship with a trapped middle-aged woman while lying low in a tiny southern town, hit the big screen under the title The Fugitive Kind.

This film represents Brando’s return to Tennessee Williams for the first and only time following his iconic work as Stanley Kowalski, and Anna Magnani’s second Williams project after winning the Best Actress Oscar for the movie of his play The Rose Tattoo. This was Sidney Lumet’s first encounter with Tennessee but his success with the adaptation of Broadway’s 12 Angry Men made him a natural choice. With such a collection of talent it can leave one wondering why so few still talk about The Fugitive Kind.

Brando and Magnani: Tennessee Williams Sophomore Slump

Until one actually watches the movie that is.

Click to read more ...

Best Shot: "A Streetcar Named Desire"

Hit Me With Your Best Shot continues with A Streetcar Named Desire (1951). This week's film was chosen in light of the Tennessee Williams Centennial, the great writer's 100th anniversary is this weekend. If this is your first "best shot," partipicants are asked to watch a film, and select its best shot (or their favorite, natch) and post it, with or without an accompanying essay.

Stanley: Yknow there are some men that are took in by this Hollywood glamour stuff and some men that just aren't.
Blanche: I'm sure you belong in the second category.
Stanley: That's right.
Blanche: I cannot imagine any witch of a woman casting a spell over you.
Stanley: That's right.

Elia Kazan's masterful adaptation of Tennessee Williams happens to be, by a significant margin, the best film version of any of his work. It moves more elegantly around Hollywood's censorship of then risque material than the other biggies that followed (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly Last Summer and Sweet Birth of Youth) and it's managed to be more definitive than any film version of the other play vying for most immortal Tennesse Williams Creation (The Glass Menagerie). The 1951 film will forever be revered, and justifiably so, for providing an irreducibly perfect 'moment in time' look at the shifting of Hollywood acting; the friction between pre-50s artifice in Vivien Leigh and Blanche DuBois and post-50s "realness" in Brando's "Method" Stanley is still absolutely sensational 60 years on. As are both approaches to acting, I might add as a fine point (provided the actor is a skilled one). Too often we view all sweeping artistic shifts as progress when they are more often than not, merely lateral aesthetic shifts, opening up new pleasures but not truly replacing the old ones. Time marches on; we explore new things.

In the understandably immortal hoopla surrounding two of the greatest screen performances of all time, we often lose sight of other pleasures. A Streetcar Named Desire has many of them from Tennessee William's indestructable poetry to Elia Kazan's assured guiding hand to the Oscar-winning art direction and the expressive shadowy lighting from Harry Stradling Sr. Stradling manages effects that are both harsh and ethereal, both ugly and beautiful, but not always in the combinations you'd expect them to be and sometimes both at ones. His camera and lights perfectly bridge all of the performances, moods and characters.

But the way he lights Stella (an inspired Kim Hunter) has always fascinated me. In her scenes with Blanche, the shadows often obscure one or the other of her faces and in those scenes which highlight the mad desire for Stanley her eyes are often obscured, with only tiny sparks of light flashing and reflecting from them.

Stella: Isn't he wonderful looking?

Blanche: What you're talking about is desire, just brutal Desire. The name of that rattletrap streetcar that bangs through the Quarter, up one old narrow street and down another.
Stella: Haven't you ever ridden on that streetcar?

Stella seems unknowable, feral, as dangerous in her own singlemindedness as Blanche is in her self-deception and Stanley is in his brutality. Her eyes have an animalistic defiant glint but it's not just her irises; this is one of the horniest performances ever captured on film.

This shot in particular is just fascinating, pulling the central triangular drama into sharp (deep) focus.

My pick for best shot.

The sisters have been having a serious chat. The previous night's tumult involving poker, flirtations, drunken messiness, abuse, "Stelllllaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!" and an obvious offscreen fuck-a-thon between Mr & Mrs Kowalski have disrupted their bond. If they're not quite seeing eye to eye the sisters are beginning to really listen to each other until they hear Stanley's return. We see his shadow first on the left side as then his body as the women immediately stop talking.  For the next agonizing few seconds, they seem absolutely frozen with indecision, though there's a curious sapphic charge to Blanche's silenced pawing pleas. There's another "Stella", Stanley's foolproof siren call, from the background and then Stella, ever so slightly turns his way, catching the light, his light if you want to get figurative though not literal.

She's lost to Blanche and herself again. Though Stella ends the movie an hour and some minutes later swearing Stanley off forever, our guess is she hops right back on that rattletrap streetcar named Desire once the credits roll. She's up one old narrow street and down another with Stanley as her violent conductor.

The Kindness of Strangers
Enjoy these participating posts at other fine movie-loving blogs.

• Film Actually ~ Blanche DuBois as a delusional "orchard in spring."
• Encore's World ~ emerges from the fog to find a Tale of Two Sisters
• Serious Film ~ Experiencing "Bleed Through": Meet Scarlett DuBois. Or is it Blanche O'Hara?
• Victim of the Time ~Barebones, a Streetcar Named Desolate Desire.
• Cinephilia & Sass ~ The Haunting of Blanche and the cameras relationship to her in general.
• Movies Kick Ass ~ Takes a personal trip to illusion in New Orleans.
• Pussy Goes Grrr ~ Peers voyeuristically at 'The Curiousity of Strangers'
• Against the Hype ~ Must Blanche fend for herself in the grim mise-en-scène. Another wonderfully provocative piece from Against the Hype.
• Okinawa Assault ~ "the frills and frenetics" of a silent movie!
• Dial P For Popcorn ~ examines the triangle and Stella as mediator.
• Musicinephiles ~ on Blanche & booze. So much for the one drink limit.
• Luisergho ~ hands us a series of image and shouts along with Brando
• The Owls Are Not What They Seem ~ Blanche splintered, defeated.

Next Wednesday
Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO (1960) in celebration of the release of a stunning debut novel "What You See In The Dark" by Manuel Muñoz which brushes up against this movie in interesting ways. Coming soon: an interview with the author and a book giveaway. But about BEST SHOT: It's impossible that everyone will love the shower scene best, right? Why don't you join us and try to pinpoint your favorite image? Next Wednesday at 10 PM right here... and at your place if you participate.

When Did Stars Start Posing As Other Stars?

Remember these photos of Julianne Moore as Bette Davis, Ann-Margret and Marlene Dietrich? I can't remember when they were taken exactly. I want to say 1999?

When did all this start? It's a question for the pop culture historians out there. It's been going on for as long as I can remember. And one of the funniest things about is it people get excited each time like it's a new concept. Remember the hoopla over that Vanity Fair Alfred Hitchcock shoot a couple years back when Jodie Foster did The Birds, Javier Bardem and ScarJo did Rear Window and Marion Cotillard did Psycho and so on and so on and so on?

Often this star-on-star mimicry involves Marilyn Monroe. One might have an easier time listing the people who haven't posed as her than listing the people who have. I'm not even talking about the people who have actually played Her (or thinly veiled interpretations of her) in the movies or on television or stage and that list is even longer.

Here's just a small sampling or Marilyn tributes from Madonna, Lindsay Lohan, Angelina Jolie and Scarlett Johansson.

Yes this has a lot to do with iconic imagery and nostalgia but both iconography and nostalgia predate the birth of Marilyn Monroe. Unless the scientists and the zealots are both wrong and the world began on June 1st, 1926. And if it did why the hell was Marilyn Monroe pretending to be Theda Bara?

But anyway... by the time I was born, Marilyn was already well established as Hollywood's most present ghost and she's never stopped haunting popular culture. [Tangent: The first star that I actually remember the death of was Natalie Wood on November 29th, 1981 since West Side Story, which I watched religiously every time I could find it on tv, was my gateway drug into movie freakdom. Rapid onset Oscar mania was just a few years round the corner. Was I trying to fill the hole that Natalie left by discovering Streep, Close, Hurt & Turner, Bridges & Pfeiffer and all the rest?  I was... distraught...  to say the least.]

This subject is on my brain since I unpacked that "Life at the Movies" book and saw this photo of Tony Curtis and Natalie Wood doing a silent film Rudolph Valentino & Vilma Bánky thing.

Isn't that cute? But wait there's more. How about Paul Newman as a swashbuckler a la Fairbanks / Power

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Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

To honor the passing of the great songwriter Hugh Martin Friday at 96 years of age, a repost of a review of one of my 100 favorite movies, a member of my personal canon. (If you joined us after 2008 you can pretend it's a new essay!) Imagine giving the world such perfectly crafted enduring gifts as "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "The Trolley Song". R.I.P. Mr. Martin.

Meet Me in St. Louis "The Blossoming of Judy Garland"

Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)
Directed by Vincente Minnelli; Written by Irving Brecher and Fred F Finklehoffe from the novel "5135 Kensington" by Sally Benson; Starring Judy Garland, Mary Astor, Leon Ames, Margaret O'Brien, Lucille Bremer, Harry Davenport, June Lockhart, Tom Drake and Marjorie Main; Production & Distributor Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM); Released 11/28/1944

It's Summer 1903 in Missouri and the Smith family are buzzing about the World's Fair coming to their town the following spring. Teenage daughters Rose (Lucille Bremer) and Esther (Judy Garland) are dreaming about proposals from handsome men, the eldest son Lonnie (Henry H Daniels Jr) is off to college and the father Lon (Leon Ames), a junior partner at a law firm, is about to tell the family that they're all relocating to New York Ci -- oh, but let's stop there. For any plot summary of Meet Me in St. Louis does the movie a great disservice. This classic musical isn't plot driven at all so much as a series of three seasonal vignettes of family life: Summer, Autumn and Winter with the following Spring in 1904 serving as a coda. Almost all of what might be called "plot" in Meet Me In St. Louis is imagined. That is to say, that the story drivers are all in the future. One day the family will move to New York. One day Rose, Lonnie, and Esther will be married. One day St. Louis will catch the attention of the nation. In essence the movie is a lovingly rendered still life of a family (and town) on the brink of great changes rather than an animated portrait of the changes themselves.

St. Louis begins smartly in the kitchen, the heart of any home. Mrs. Anna Smith (Mary Astor) and her maid and cook Katie (Marjorie Main) are preparing ketchup. Katie thinks it's too sweet, Anna thinks her husband will like it that way. Various members of the cast scoot through the kitchen sharing their opinions, too. They can't seem to agree on the flavor: too sweet? too sour? too spicy? too watery? Vincente Minnelli the real gourmet cook in the director's chair doesn't have the same problem. He gets everything right.

If the director was nervous about handling his first big budget color feature with a bonafide superstar in the lead role, you'd never know it from the results. Minnelli had only directed two black and white pictures (Cabin in the Sky, see previous article, and I Dood It both in 1943) prior to this big break but Meet Me In St Louis moves with such easy confidence, gently in and out of song and book scenes, you'd think he had nothing at all to prove.

Take the terrific economy and pacing --the movie is at once both leisurely and jam packed with comic, musical and dramatic beats -- of the final two scenes that conclude the first and longest act in the movie (Summer 1903). First there's a lengthy party sequence at the Smith home wherein Esther comically tries to seduce "The Boy Next Door" John Pruett (Tom Drake). She's endearingly amateur at seduction though Judy Garland is of course anything but amateurish when it comes to ingratiating herself to the viewer. John accompanies her through her house as she turns off the lights. It's ostensibly her duty but she's makes a huge drawn out production of it -- she's only doing it to set the mood for their first kiss. The amusement of the scene is that Esther doesn't realize she's succeeding and misreads John's nerves and equally adolescent flirting. When he finally hightails it out of her house without the kiss she's been longing for she flips the lights back on, at once. It's a great deflating punchline. The follow up scene, the classic Trolley sequence, repeats the punchline.

Buzz, buzz, buzz went the buzzer
Plop, plop, plop went the wheels
Stop, stop, stop went my heartstrings

As he started to leave, I took hold of his sleeve with my hand
And as if it were planned... he stayed on with me
And it was grand just to stand with his hand holding mine
To the end of the line.

Esther is obviously singing/dreaming about John but hasn't noticed his arrival beside her for the last chorus. On her last joyous note she turns to finds the object of her affections staring her in the face. It totally throws her. Oops! Once again she's more comfortable in the dream than in the reality. It's the perfect performance note to hit for this girl who is not quite yet a woman.

Speaking of which...

Judy Garland was 22 years old when St. Louis hit theaters. She was already a screen sensation with multiple Mickey Rooney hits and The Wizard of Oz behind her. According to reports she was hesitant to take this role, another teenage character, since she had wanted to move into more grown up roles. Esther Smith turned out to be just what she was after all along. The answer was right in front of her. (There's no place like home and all that).

Esther Smith proved the perfect bridge role for one of the greatest stars of all time, taking Garland from teenager to woman both onscreen and off. By the third act (Winter 1903) Esther and John are in the thrall of requited love and faced with rather adult choices about their futures. By the time Esther is singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" to her young sister Tootie (Margaret O'Brien), Judy Garland is a grown woman in full bloom and the camera treats her accordingly. By the time the film was released, Garland and Minnelli were in love and living together. It all came together gloriously. Arguably Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) is the emblematic peak of Garland's film career between her 'star is born' role in The Wizard of Oz (1939) to, well, A Star is Born (1954) itself.

But all this talk of Judy's blossoming (she was never lovelier onscreen), changing seasons, loving families and screen romances also does a disservice to the spicy flavors within this musical. While it is a sweet nostalgic slice of Americana, it never descends into mere treacly pablum. The Fall 1903 segment adds enough sour to the soup, focusing on the sometimes gruesome antics and morbid imaginations of Esther's young sisters Agnes (Joan Carroll) and particularly Tootie played by child star Margaret O'Brien who received a juvenile Academy Award for her performance --just like her co-star had in The Wizard of Oz. And the delicate balance of flavors continues all through The Winter 1903 segment when Rose and Esther behave badly at a local dance. One particular bit has Esther putting on her first corset. Rather than play up the beauty of her figure, Minnelli and Garland opt to spike the scene with laughs and physical comedy.

I feel elegant but I can't breathe.

Furthermore, the sweetness of Esther and John's romance is tempered with their very un movie-like (if barely acknowledged) realization that they're moving too quickly. The movie never settles for just one flavor. In short, it's delicious. Or, to quote Esther herself, "heavenly... simply heavenly".

For all of the undoubtedly careful mix of moods and delicate character arcs that Minnelli stirs into his career-making hit, the most impressive thing might well be how effortless his achievement plays. With the semi resurgence of the film musical in the Aughts, much has been written about modern audiences hesistation to suspend their disbelief when characters burst into song. Modern musicals still feel a bit tentative, like they're scared to do at all what musicals are best at doing. Today's filmmakers would do well to study Meet Me In St. Louis which fills its central family's life with music: they hum, they sing phrases of songs even when no production number is on the way, they play piano; Music feels as natural here as it's ever felt in a movie. The space between musical performance and acting of the non-singing variety is blissfully blurred. In the Trolley Song sequence already discussed Judy spends the first verse of the song fretting. She's not singing at all, letting the crowd handle the number as she makes her way through the crowded car. By the time she's spotted her would be man running toward the car (He hadn't forgotten her invitation after all!) the sudden lift in her spirits is expressed quite naturally by her joining in... Everyone else is singing, why shouldn't she? There's another wonderful moment late in the film which I think best expresses Minnelli's graceful direction through performance, plot and song. Mr and Mrs Smith have had a row over the family's impending move to New York and their children have already exited the scene in anger. The mother and father begin to make peace at the piano. And as the father's voice lifts, the sisters are all gently coaxed back into frame, with unspoken forgiveness on their minds. It's a beautiful grace note in an altogether heavenly movie. A