Classic Movies – LFM: Libertas Film Magazine

LFM’s Govindini Murty @ The Huffington Post: Appreciating Classic Movies for Yourself: Why the TCM Classic Film Festival is Important

[The post below was featured today at The Huffington Post.]

By Govindini Murty. Each spring, the TCM Classic Film Festival arrives in Hollywood, sparking pleasant reflections on what it is for a film to be considered “a classic.” This year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, running from April 28th to May 1, 2016, promises to be as memorable as the last six. The festival will feature appearances by Italian cinema legend Gina Lollobrigida, French New Wave icon Anna Karina, classic Hollywood star Eva Marie Saint, the premiere of the restoration of Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, a special live musical event of Carl Theodore Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, and an opening night gala presentation of All the President’s Men.

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I and many cinema fans will no doubt be hoping that Anna Karina will be persuaded to reprise her soulful appreciation of The Passion Joan of Arc at the festival, as memorably captured in Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre sa Vie. There will also be premieres of the restored prints of Gregory Peck’s The Keys of the Kingdom and Jennifer Jones’ The Song of Bernadette, along with exhibitions of movie memorabilia in Club TCM in the Roosevelt Hotel’s Blossom Ballroom (the site of the first Academy Awards). These and other delights await cinema fans who make the trek to Hollywood Boulevard over the last weekend in April.

And this brings me to why it’s important to celebrate and remember the classics.
Whether it’s a classic play by Shakespeare, a classic epic by Lady Murasaki, a classic painting by Titian, or a classic piece of music by Tchaikovsky, we appreciate classic works because they are the foundation of what it is to be civilized.

This is no less true of classic films, whether they be Metropolis, Cleopatra, Mildred Pierce, Ninotchka, All About Eve, Lawrence of Arabia, The Searchers, 2001, The Seven Samurai, or Pather Panchali. All these works are the expressions of talented human beings and their personal experiences – and when such works reach an apex of artistry, they transcend time – they become “classic.” A classic work is not old – it is timeless.

And yet today, people are so caught up in the moment – so frantic to keep up with the accelerating pace of the digital age – that they routinely dismiss classic movies as being “out of touch” or not relevant to them. This couldn’t be more wrong. I think classic film is highly relevant – because any form of human expression that is excellent is relevant.

It’s odd that the more we store things in the expanded memory banks of our digital era – the more we forget. Vast quantities of data – including the digitized forms of countless classic movies, TV shows, radio dramas, musical works, paintings, photographs, works of literature, history, and science – are saved in the world’s online archives and are available to the public – and yet somehow, people are more ill-educated than ever. This is an interesting dichotomy. Why is this the case?

In some ways it recalls the transition from the oral age of Homer and the ancient bards to the literary age, when the invention of writing allowed stories to be written down for the first time. As soon as writing was invented, people’s memories of these old oral traditions were no longer needed – and they were rapidly forgotten. (Though, there are still tribal societies that preserve such oral traditions today). Continue reading LFM’s Govindini Murty @ The Huffington Post: Appreciating Classic Movies for Yourself: Why the TCM Classic Film Festival is Important

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo @ The Huffington Post: Memories Await: The 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival & The Searchers 60th Anniversary

[The post below was featured today at The Huffington Post.]

By Jason Apuzzo. The 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival is almost here, and I can hardly wait. This year’s festival – which runs from April 28th-May 1st in Hollywood – will feature Gina Lollobrigida as its special guest, a live orchestral screening of The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), and will celebrate “big-time emotions of big screen stories” with this year’s theme of “Moving Pictures.”

If you’re like me, attendance at these marvelous events long ago ceased to be optional. If you love the movies, if they’re important to you in an emotional way, then these festivals are a necessity – for the same reason that owning a physical copy of a favorite movie (whether on Blu-ray, DVD or even VHS) is a necessity: because it makes your relationship to the film closer, more permanent.

If movies are something you have a passionate relationship with, then TCM’s festivals give you the chance to seal that relationship with a personal memory – and I’m already looking forward to what this year’s memories will be.

The best part of TCM’s festivals – their core appeal – is in seeing classic movies with people associated with the film in attendance, usually introducing the film. At last year’s TCM Classic Film Festival, for example, I had the pleasure of seeing Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer at the screening of The Sound of Music, Sophia Loren at the screening of Marriage Italian Style, and George Lazenby at the screening of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Errol Flynn’s daughter, Rory Flynn, even introduced a screening of her father’s classic pirate film, The Sea Hawk.

Every one of these experiences was incredible – like watching the Dodgers play while seated next to Sandy Koufax, or enjoying a night at the Met sitting next to Plácido Domingo. Watching Sophia Loren being interviewed last year by her son, Edoardo Ponti, was especially poignant; I’ve never seen such an intense, personal interview of a major star before – let alone in person (the interview will be broadcast on TCM during this year’s festival). If it’s possible, I’m even more a fan of Sophia than I was before.

To describe these screenings as “emotional” doesn’t begin to cover it. If you’re like me, carrying around decades of memories of these films, seeing these people in person and hearing their recollections brings their films to life in a whole new way – making them even more vivid and real than they were before. Continue reading LFM’s Jason Apuzzo @ The Huffington Post: Memories Await: The 2016 TCM Classic Film Festival & The Searchers 60th Anniversary

Frank Capra at Film Forum: LFM Reviews The Donovan Affair

By Joe Bendel. Although everyone recognizes Frank Capra was spoofing old dark house mysteries in Arsenic and Old Lace, few understood he was also spoofing himself. That is because his very first 100% talky was a murder mystery set in an atmospheric manor, but almost nobody has seen it since its 1929 premiere. Perversely, there is a decent print preserved in the Library of Congress, but none of its sixteen inch Vitaphone soundtrack discs survive. On the other hand, we have the sound for its trailer, but not the film.

As part of his efforts to mount comprehensive Capra retrospectives, Film Forum repertory programmer Bruce Goldstein has reconstructed the dialogue to produce special “live read” presentations of Capra’s The Donovan Affair. Twenty-some years in development, Goldstein and company’s stagings were a highlight of last year’s TCM Film Festival and the current Frank Capra film series soon to conclude at Film Forum.

Jack Donovan is a gambler, adventurer, and all around cad. If you didn’t want to kill him, you probably didn’t know him very well. His next dinner date will be his last. He has been invited to the birthday party of Capt. Peter Rankin, who hates his guts, because he knows Donovan has been blackmailing his trophy wife Lydia (but he has not used any of the proceeds to pay off his gambling debts). Donovan also has eyes for her step-daughter, which rankles her tightly wound fiancé. To make matters worse, Donovan happens to be available now that he seduced and subsequently abandoned the Rankin’s maid.

Yes, Donovan only has himself to blame, especially when he has the lights turned out to show off his glowing cat’s eye ring, in a scene that only works in a synch-sound picture. When the lights come on again, we see someone has availed themselves of the opportunity to dispatch the heel. Soon the blustering Inspector Killian and his oafish right-hand man Carney are on the scene, but they do not inspire much confidence, especially when their attempt to recreate the murder works a little too well.

Yes, if we could hear them, Jack Holt and Fred Kelsey are probably putting the “ick” in shtick as Killian and Carney, but Capra seems to be having great fun playing with sound. Complicating matters for Goldstein and crew, Capra experiments with conversations conducted between people in different rooms, often outside the camera’s field of vision. Plus there are plenty of those chaos-generating blackouts. It is quite the tricky shoot, featuring a good deal of skulking outside the house and the exchanging of loaded glances.

Eschewing the MST3K aesthetic, the live read cast plays it scrupulously straight within the film’s dramatic context. Of course, they still convey the larger than life nature of their characters, maintaining an appropriately madcap energy level. For many viewers, Boardwalk Empire’s Allen Lewis Rickman and The Practice’s Michael Badalucco will be the most recognizable fuming and bickering away as Killian and Carney, respectively. However, for discerning patrons, James Karen is the man, having appeared in The Return of the Living Dead, Poltergeist, Samuel Beckett’s Film, and the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Yes, wow. Naturally, he brings the voice of authority to Capt. Rankin.

DonovanAffair2 — From "The Donovan Affair."

From time to time, lost films are rediscovered, but this is more like a resurrection. Donovan must have been somewhat successful, since Capra’s career continued on an upward trajectory following its release. It is clearly a product of its time, but it is frankly scandalous that Columbia could misplace both the sound and the script (forcing Goldstein and his cast to supplement an incomplete dialogue transcript found in the files of the defunct New York State Board of Film Censors with studious lip-reading sessions). This is Frank Capra we are talking about. Films like It’s a Wonderful Life, It Happened One Night, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington are not just movies, they are pillars of American culture.

The effort was definitely worth it. Despite the nostalgic creakiness of the film, it leads to a greater appreciation of the breadth and depth of Capra’s career and his early mastery of sound. It is also just a lot of fun to watch the dark and stormy bedlam. This is something you cannot see every day, so if Goldstein and the Donovan players ever mount a live-read near you, jump at the chance to see it. The Donovan Affair definitely added something special to Film Forum’s Capra retro, but they have yet another special to come. Following the Wednesday night (10/22) screening of You Can’t Take It With You, Rickman will moderate a Q&A with Anne Kaufman and Chris Hart, the daughter and son of playwrights George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.

Posted on October 21st, 2014 at 11:50pm.

LFM Reviews Billy Wilder’s Newly Restored Fedora

By Joe Bendel. It turns out Norma Desmond was right. By 1978 the pictures had gotten small. One reclusive actress could make them big again, if only she were willing. One scuffling independent producer thinks he has the perfect comeback vehicle for her, but he will have to get past her suspiciously protective entourage in Billy Wilder’s newly restored Fedora, which opens this Friday at Film Forum.

Unlike Desmond, the uni-named Fedora appears truly ageless. Part of the credit must go to Dr. Vando, her personal physician, but he is just as controlling as the rest of her gatekeepers. Fedora is staying at Countess Sobryanski’s villa on the Greek Isle of Corfu, where access is strictly limited. Even though she has rebuffed Hollywood’s overtures for years, Barry “Dutch” Detweiler has come on borrowed money, script-in-hand, hoping to entice her with his modern day remake of Anna Karenina. Since the film starts in medias res at Fedora’s funeral, it is safe to assume the trip will not be a success. In fact, Fedora will dispatch herself in the manner of Tolstoy’s heroine. Of course, there will be a decidedly thorny explanation for her actions.

As we learn in flashbacks, Detweiler has a personal reason to believe Fedora might consider his offer. They once had a fling when she was at the height of her stardom and he was a very junior but very popular production assistant. There will be many more deep dark secrets from the past that Wilder and his celebrated screenwriting partner I.A.L. Diamond clearly enjoyed teasing out.

As a sort of thematic sequel to Sunset Boulevard, starring William Holden as Detweiler, Fedora ought to be beloved or reviled, yet it has been largely overlooked during the succeeding years, instead. Frankly, that is rather baffling, because their dialogue is as snappy as ever and their take on the late 1970s business of moviemaking is drily mordant. There are obvious parallels with Boulevard, but they dress it up with the scandalous trappings of the Harold Robbins novels then in vogue (sex, drug addiction, children secretly born out of wedlock).

Nevertheless, Wilder was still Wilder, so he could secure some really big stars to appear as themselves. Henry Fonda cranks his likability up to superhuman levels to play himself as the president of the Academy, specially delivering Fedora’s honorary Oscar two years before he was awarded his own. On the flipside, Michael York is quite the good sport appearing as a shallow, clueless Michael York.

Holden proves he can still masterfully handle Wilder’s adult banter, but there is also something poignant about Detweiler’s mounting desperation and nostalgia for the good old days. Even in his final years, he was a true movie star. Marthe Keller is also quite compelling in the title role, which turns out to be quite the complicated part, for reasons that would be spoilery to explain. Likewise, it is great fun to watch José Ferrer’s Vando swill his liquor and chew his scenery.

Sure, Fedora is alternatively lurid and campy—all the best films about Hollywood are, at least to some extent. More importantly, it has the wit and the attitude you would hope for. Not exactly a masterwork and certainly not a masterpiece, Fedora is really just a ripping good exercise in storytelling. Highly recommended for fans of classic movies and the people who made them, Billy Wilder’s Fedora opens this Friday (9/5) at New York’s Film Forum.

Posted on September 2nd, 2014 at 10:55pm.

LFM’s Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post: The Ultimate Southern California Movie: Criterion Restores It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World to Its Full Glory

[Editor’s note: the post below appeared yesterday at The Huffington Post.]

By Jason Apuzzo. Sunny southern California rarely gets its due at the movies. Ever since the 1940s, when film noir classics like Double Indemnity and The Big Sleep depicted Los Angeles as a dark urban labyrinth, you might get the feeling that southern California has remained in a permanent Blade Runner nightfall of neon signs, wet streets and detectives pulling fedoras down over their eyes. A world of call girls and corrupt police, of murder and car crashes; a bleak landscape of paparazzi and Black Dahlias, of washed-up actresses and sleazy district attorneys who wear too much aftershave.

It’s a shadowy, sexy and malevolent vision — except that it’s not really the day-to-day SoCal that longtime residents know and (mostly) love. Actually, the place is a lot brighter and more cheerful than that. And a lot goofier.

For one thing, southern California is actually huge, wide-open and flat — with endless horizons, whether of the Palm Springs or Redondo Beach variety — instead of the cramped, angular spaces you typically find in crime thrillers. And it’s got color — lots of color, from the saturated blues of the ocean and sky, to the lurid red-and-gold Fatburger signs on Pacific Coast Highway. Whoever dreamt up southern California was clearly dreaming it in 65mm Ultra Panavision Technicolor.

And contrary to popular belief, most people in southern California don’t pack guns or talk like they just stepped out of a Raymond Chandler novel, diverting as that would be. Most SoCal residents are sedate, middle-class people with just a hint of craziness to them — that quiet spark that drove them long ago to pack up and leave the East Coast/Midwest/Deep South to pursue their pot of gold right here in the Golden State.

And this brings us to It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

The wonderful folks at Criterion, who are forever saving our cinematic heritage from the ravages of time and neglect, have recently outdone themselves in producing a five-disc set (two Blu-rays + three DVDs) of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, all built around a pristine 4K transfer of the film and a newly restored 197-minute ‘roadshow’ version of the movie not seen in 50 years. (See a video on the restoration at the bottom of this post.)

And this new, authoritative version of director Stanley Kramer’s beloved epic comedy makes one thing abundantly clear: that It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World is the ultimate southern California movie.

For those unfamiliar with the film, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World depicts a pack of otherwise unremarkable southern Californians unleashed in a frenzy of greed when they learn that a stash of $350,000 in stolen money is waiting for them, ready to be dug-up in a park at Santa Rosita Beach (in real life, Portuguese Bend in Rancho Palos Verdes). Unable to come up with an equitable way of sharing the loot, the group breaks up into separate teams, frantically racing toward their hidden treasure by land and air — comedian Jonathan Winters even rides a girl’s bicycle for a while — all while the Santa Rosita Police, led by Spencer Tracy, tracks their progress.

So it’s off to the races, as airplanes smash through billboards (and even a restaurant at one point), cars roar off cliffs and bridges, an entire gas station is demolished, cast members are flung through the air by an out-of-control fire ladder, and every major speed law in southern California is broken. And although the wild conclusion of the film — a Hitchcockian visual effects extravaganza filmed in downtown Long Beach — leaves none of the avaricious group satisfied with their financial arrangement, it does leave everyone with smiles on their faces. (You’ll have to see the movie to find out what that means.)

And that’s really it. The premise of Mad, Mad World — greed — couldn’t be simpler, but it’s enough to power a non-stop, three-plus-hour chase from Yucca Valley to Santa Clarita to Malibu, all filled with dangerous stunts and comic gags performed by the greatest comedians of their time: Milton Berle, the recently passed Sid Caesar, Mickey Rooney, Jonathan Winters, Buddy Hackett, Phil Silvers, Terry-Thomas, Ethel Merman, Peter Falk and Jim Backus, just to name a few. Mad, Mad World also features spot cameos from the likes of Jimmy Durante, Jack Benny, Buster Keaton, Don Knotts, Jerry Lewis, Carl Reiner, The Three Stooges and more comedy talent than you can shake a stick at. Continue reading LFM’s Jason Apuzzo at The Huffington Post: The Ultimate Southern California Movie: Criterion Restores It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World to Its Full Glory

Where Awesome Lives: LFM Reviews the Japanese Superhero Classic, The Golden Bat

By Joe Bendel. He has the looks of the Red Skull and the flamboyance of a Lucha Libre wrestler. The Golden Bat is Japan’s oldest superhero, dating back to at least 1930, nine years before Bruce Wayne repurposed his dungeon, so show some respect. This Thursday, Brooklyn’s Spectacle Theater pays homage to the strange, caped avenger, who has constantly saved our butts in manga, anime, and motion pictures, with Hymns of the Golden Bat – a special one night only program of the Ōgon Batto’s greatest hits, culminating with Hajime Satô’s impossibly manic seventy-three minute live-action epic, The Golden Bat.

Right, the Earth is pretty much in for it. The planet Icarus (dig the mythological reference) is speeding towards us on a collision course, but the scientific establishment is too snobby to heed the warnings of Akira Kazahaya, a teenaged factory worker who dabbles in astronomy. Fortunately, the Pearl Research Institute has been on the case. Led by Dr. Yamatone, they too have tracked Icarus, developing a Dr. No-certified laser canyon to blow-up Icarus in the nick of time. They just need a lens strong enough to withstand the laser’s force, which is ironic, considering Pearle can usually craft your lenses in under an hour.

Seeking a natural lens, Dr. Yamatone and nearly the entire Pearl staff is lured to the long lost island of Atlantis, where the evil Nazo has the drop on them. Ah, but not so fast. Within the temple of Atlantis, they find the Golden Bat’s Egyptian sarcophagus, where his is re-animated by Emily Pearl, the granddaughter of the Institute’s founder. Good thing they thought to take a fourteen year old along on such a dangerous mission.

Needless to say, the Golden Bat pops-up and lays a proper beatdown on Nazo’s henchmen. Of course, they are not out of the woods yet. In fact, that is just the first ten minutes of Golden Bat’s mayhem. There will also be multiple doppelgangers to contend with and laser battles galore, accompanied by the Ōgon Batto’s ominous sounding laughter and big, brassy chorale theme music.

The Golden Bat is the kind of film that can make pedantic fussbudgets’ heads explode. You just have to toss logic to the wind and hang on as it careens from one spectacle to another, like a pinball. Where else will you find a super villain decked out in a fuzzy-wuzzy rat costume with four eyes? The plot rather defies description and the laws of science, but fortunately the title caped crusader constantly reappears to pummel bad guys with his Scepter of Justice.

Oddly enough, a young Sonny Chiba is present, but largely not a factor in the smack-downs as the Picard-esque Yamatone. Frankly, Emily Takami is much better than you would expect as her young namesake, hardly cloying or annoying at all as the teenaged world-saver. Whoever was sporting the Golden Bat costume was certainly physically energetic, while Osamu Kobayashi’s voice-overs are bizarrely distinctive.

Indeed, The Golden Bat is a thing of beauty to behold, from the trippy sets to the hyper action sequences. Satô, probably best known for helming the darker cult favorite Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell, clearly was not one to do things by halfsies. There is something for everyone here, including fans of Ultraman, Kaiju movies, alien body snatcher films, and men in capes.The Spectacle should be the perfect venue to appreciate his charms with a like-minded audience of any of the above. Highly recommended to all fans of cult cinema, The Golden Bat should be a fitting capstone to a mind-expanding night this Thursday (10/24) at the Spectacle in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

LFM GRADE: A

Posted on October 21st, 2013 at 11:52am.