Calling all Classic Film Lovers!

Black Narcissus is an example of a film that was okay to make by English censors but would never have gotten past Hollywood intact. The movie is fairly critical of religion. Now The Hays Code was run by that Catholic fanatic Joseph Breen (I am sorry there are no other words for it), so he might have said, "They're only Anglicans...not real Christians" so that may be how they snuck it through.

Within Hollywood, Black Narcissus would be, "Okay, at the end we want Deborah Kerr to give a long speech about how being a Nun is great and awesome, and how she is what she is because she loves God". In the movie that all is left ambiguous.

I haven't seen 2-Strip technicolor films yet. Plan to one of these days.

I think The King of Jazz is in two-strip Technicolor. It looks two-strip anyhow.

There's a story that while filming the big production number featuring Rhapsody in Blue, they wanted everything to be blue, but the only colors were red and green. So everything in that scene is green that they somehow got to look bluish.

IIRC 2-Strip technicolor was Red and Blue. And Greens only came in with 3-strip technicolor.

The name explains it. They actually shot scenes on multiple strips of film with each strip a different color tint. 2-Strip had Red and Blue Strips, and 3-Strip had RGB. Then each three strip was bathed in a separate dye transfer and carefully mixed to create that unmistakable heavenly look. Technicolor films are actually black-and-white films in the strict technical sense. The colours aren't there in the film stock itself. And it was actual black-and-white film stock mixed. In a sense it was colorized film, albeit by intent and attention to detail. A black-and-white film would have sets and costumes selected to look like that, whereas for 3-Strip they chose differently.

The first colour film stock was developed in Nazi Germany by AGFA. When the Allies conquered Germany, they stole colour film stock and reverse engineered it. The famous colour sequence of Ivan the Terrible was shot on stolen Agfacolor, brought by the Red Army from Berlin for the benefit of Comrade Eisenstein.

Speaking of colour films, I watched The Umbrellas of Cherbourg which was just so beautiful to watch. The score was also really moving; it really meshed perfectly with the film.

Today Olivia de Havilland turns 100 years old!!

edited 30th Jun '16 3:15:14 PM by Tuckerscreator

I think I may have found the worst silent film ever made: the Larry Semon Wizard of Oz.

Give it this, though. It's the only silent film where you can see a duck projectile vomit. (Who says toilet humor is a new thing?) And Oliver Hardy, pre-Laurel, is in it.

edited 30th Jun '16 6:32:36 PM by Aldo930

It's pretty cool that we have two legendary actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood still with us. And, not surprisingly, de Havilland is TCM's Star of the Month, so we're in for some good movies.

You seem to have a perchant for finding such oddities. Do you actively seek them or do they somehow find you?

edited 1st Jul '16 6:50:37 AM by LongTallShorty64

A lot of people actually know about this one - in part because of its connection to a much more popular and well loved film, as well as the book series on which it is based. And needless to say, it does have a reputation as one of the worst silent films ever made.

I could have gone even more obscurer and found, say, the 1933 Paramount Alice In Wonderland with Gary Cooper, W.C. Fields (as Humpty Dumpty, naturally), Cary Grant, and Edward Everett Horton as the Mad Hatter - which seems like miscasting to me.

(Am I the only one who can't hear Edward Everett Horton without thinking of Fractured Fairy Tales?)

EDIT: And Charlie Ruggles is the March Hare. So there's that Jay Ward connection twice over.

edited 1st Jul '16 7:22:14 AM by Aldo930

Ah, yes. That Wonderland with the freakishly realistic costumes; the stuff of nightmares.

The stuff of nightmares is what all the great children's films are made of.

Funnily enough, I just discovered that there was another live-action take on Carroll's book before the 1933 version - a cheap, independent production done in 1931, one that reportedly didn't do very well but was rereleased when the slicker major studio version came out.

It's not as bad as the 1985 one.

Live Action Alice in Wonderland would always be a problem. Recent movies have proven that.

I think Disney's 1951 adaptation is the only movie that really captures the style and spirit of the books, even if it has some other issues. It grasps that Wonderland isn't really a Constructed World but a dreamlike space so it keeps changing, and shifting, and that's something that you can do better in animation than live action.

edited 4th Jul '16 9:21:05 PM by JulianLapostat

Those recent movies were done by Tim Burton. Of course there's a problem; he hasn't been good since Ed Wood.

Still, I do have to agree that the animated Disney version is indeed the best at capturing the spirit of the book. (If you can find me a better version - I'd like to hear it.)

These days postmodern Lewis Carroll are all the rage and the books are about pedophilia or something based on clueless research of the Victorian age. The idea that we have to psychoanalyse Carroll rather than treat him as an artist and creator is part of the disgraceful nature of contemporary life.

The problems I have with the 1951 version is that Alice does not look like a scrawny 8 year old girl she looks older around 11, and her personality is kind of bland. The Alice of the books was this curious and slightly annoying child and had none of the cuteness later people injected into children's stories. In the cartoon she's boring and you have the other wonderland characters who take center stage. My favorite is the Cheshire Cat, I love the idea of him singing Jabberwocky...it's not there in the books but it just fits.

But that's the overall problem with the Disney philosopy in general. Ce sont plus Victorien que les Victoriens. The whole commodification of childhood and packaged emotions and attitudes.

We live in a jaded world, where nobody can believe that a man would want to be around children that aren't his own and not be a pedophile. (As it turns out, the charges aren't true, but who cares?)

We also don't live in a particularly good world for children's fantasies, either, but that's neither here nor there. Fantasy in general is pretty fucked these days.

I don't think those are really problems; the only problem I have with the film - and it's pretty minor - is that there's good stuff from the book that never made it to the film. How great would it have been to see a baby turn into a pig through the magic of animation? (And how trippy would it feel to see it on LSD?)

edited 5th Jul '16 7:15:58 AM by Aldo930

Recently watched a pre-code whose title was more exciting than the actual film, Sin Takes a Holiday. Like most early pre-codes it had pacing issues, but it still had the quintessential raunchy subject matter—to a lesser degree, but it was there nevertheless. I find it interesting that Joan Bennett has a creator page, and not Constance.

What are some you guys' (you all...y'alls??) favourite pre-codes and ones that surprised you the most? Mine would be the Frank Capra ones The Miracle Woman and The Bitter Tea of General Yen with Barbara Stanwyck. Having only seen his "corny" movies up to then, I was really taken a back by these pre-codes. For example, Miracle Woman is about selling religion, and has one of the most cynical characters I have ever seen on the screen, and Bitter Tea has interesting insights into racism and inherent prejudices for the year it was made in.

It's interesting how much Capra's films changed—for better or for worse, depends who you ask—after It Happened One Night.

edited 9th Jul '16 5:45:59 PM by LongTallShorty64

Pre-Code was the era of Sternberg/Borzage/Lubitsch. Without the Pre-Code you would never have Dietrich, nor would Frank Borzage be anything other than a more-than-average silent film-maker.

The most surprising Pre-Codes for me are: A Farewell to Arms (mostly for the incredible sexuality), Man's Castle (both Borzage)...Heroes for Sale by William A. Wellman, Rowland Brown's Quick Millions (Next to this, Hawks' Scarface is a MGM Musical) and Hell's Highway...practically all of Sternberg but especially Dishonored, Scarlet Empress. For Lubitsch it has to be Broken Lullaby and Design for Living. Then, not so much in content, but The Stranger's Return by King Vidor mostly for its highly sympathetic depiction of a female protagonist who is allowed to have goals and motives that don't revolve on getting married and "Falling in love", it's simple but you have no idea how rare that is. The movie is also sympathetic to adultery, so more points in its favor.

As for Frank Capra, we know from his biographer, Joseph McBride that he was, on a personal level, quite cynical. That most of the Capra-corn in his late-30s films were the products of his screenwriters (Robert Riskin) that he reused because it was a hit for the public and it was popular in the Depression era. So he's mostly a The Man Is Sticking It to the Man demagogue. So in the pre-code era, Capra made risque and critical movies because that was the tenor of its time (early Depression). Capra's It's a Wonderful Life was the culmination of all that, and once that movie was made he was a spent force, hence his rather shocking and stunning decline after that (4 movies, all wretched in 16 years).

Folks, the Lewis Carroll controversy is not just about latter-day people not understanding a man hanging out with little girls. He insisted on hanging out alone with little girls. And when he did he took nude photos of them. Apparently he destroyed almost all of them after a parent finally objected, which should be an alarm bell in itself. But there is a surviving photo of a pre-pubescent Alice Liddell lounging naked for the camera just like a Playboy centerfold. Sorry for the thread hijacking but I couldn't let that comment go.

As far as the topic goes I have already discussed my most shocking pre-Code film: Smarty. A guy punches his wife in the face, and that's the Happy Ending. The last line is "Tony, hit me again." Mind-blowing.

All of that was common in the Victorian era as recent biographers show, and he did that with her parents permission...I can't let this topic go either. And by the way, saying "Like a playboy centerfold" is just anachronistic on several different levels, the aesthetics in two eras are totally different.

The Pre Code Era is confusing because while it has all kinds of proto-feminist films there's like a lot of shameless unfiltered sexism also. Like Cagney stuffing that fruit in the face of that girl in The Public Enemy, which was a Signature Scene at the time.

edited 9th Jul '16 9:57:25 PM by JulianLapostat

Needless to say, recent study on the topic has shown he kind of wasn't a pedo. He was, in fact, kind of boring.

Right now on TCM there's a film playing with Paul Muni as Benito Juarez. I had no idea such a film existed.

Carroll's biographers are working to acquit him of sexual deviancy. Which he was almost certainly guilty of. I'm sorry but if you never have a relationship with an adult woman in your life but you like to take naked pictures of little girls, well, that's not hard to figure out. Nor was it "normal" to take naked pictures of little girls even in the 19th century. That's just not correct. Describing the infamous photo of Alice Liddell as a Playboy centerfold is not anachronistic, but is meant as an accurate description of the nature of the pose. Anybody who's curious can find that photo for themselves although they probably shouldn't.

And I regard myself as being fully able to separate an author from his work. The "Wonderland" stories are genius, and Carroll was a sexual deviant. Both can be true.

To avoid further thread jacking I swear that I will post no more about this although others are free to respond.

I saw Juarez a long long time ago. IIRC there was little to recommend it other than Bette Davis as the crazy empress.

Nothing else needs to be said...the minute I hear the canard about "separating the artist from the work" (which is always, in my experience, made by people who do the precise opposite of that) then that's all that needs to be said. We can simply throw out context, social norms and all the other tools contemporary anthropology and psychology has given us.

The fact is the Victorian era was pretty weird and abnormal in most respects, and generally confused. The concept of childhood that we have was created in that time, by people like Carroll himself and his books, and even then it took a huge period of adjustment. Someone like Charlie Chaplin who was far more Humbert-esque than Carroll is testament to that. He was born in Victorian London in the 1889, and spent his first 15 years in the East End and had a rather odd fondness for little girls.

I don't believe that Lewis Carroll's biographers are trying to "cover his pedophilia up"... Why would they? Is there a conspiracy that rests on keeping his image clean and pure? I'd think if there was hard evidence he was a pedophile we would have seen it by now. See here.

Recent biographies of Hans Christian Andersen, after all, mention his tendencies toward compulsive masturbation, which wouldn't fit a child friendly image, but it's there because we know it's true.

edited 10th Jul '16 4:46:42 AM by Aldo930