Some directors specialize in comedy, others in suspense. Still others delve in horror, romance or westerns. There are directors known for many films and some known only for one. Directors can put their stamp all over their films, while others get the heck out of the way. Let’s face it, we can use a fancy schmancy phrase like “auteur theory” but let’s get down to brass tacks ~ the Director is the Captain of the Ship. She (or he) guides the actor, the action, the tone…and us. They’re responsible for getting us there. In my new little corner of the Classic Movie Hub, I’d like to (metaphorically) sit in The Directors’ Chair and look at the works of some great directors. Before I start, let me first thank Annmarie and Kellee for inviting me to join their roster of writers here at ‘the Hub.’ I’m in such good company.
When I think of classic films, I think of Hawks-Hitchcock-Huston / Wyler- Wilder-Wellman / Lang-Lean-Lewton / Sirk-Stevens-Sturges. I’ll look at this alliterative bunch and many many more and hopefully my series has a healthy mix of personal favorites and directors whose work YOU…MUST… SEE. I’ll start now with my absolute favorite director. He is British. He cut his teeth in Silents. His filmography is unmatched and unequalled in success, popularity and masterpieces. He is the most famous director in Hollywood history. He is a master filmmaker. He IS the Master of Suspense. Of course, I’m speaking of Alfred Hitchcock.
Hitchcock’s visual style lends itself to story telling and he mastered the art of filmmaking in a suspenseful way. He takes hold of a theme: family, courtroom, infidelity, voyeurism, mistaken identity and a bunch of other etceteras, and pretzels these themes until you scream. I can only think professional jealousy due to his popularity with the public prevented Hitchcock from winning a well-deserved Academy Award for direction in any one of several movies. In a career filled with masterpieces, what do you call the masterpiece of masterpieces. I call it…PSYCHO.
PSYCHO ( 1960 ) ~ A BOY’S BEST FRIEND IS…
The male gaze…
Hitchcock throws everything including the kitchen sink (…and the bathroom shower) into creating this unsettling, unnerving and unseen before 1960 journey into the macabre. (You can make your own case for “Peeping Tom” released in England the month before.)
Afternoon delightThe welcoming committee
Hitchcock twists and turns the plot with a magician’s flair for distraction. In the film, Janet Leigh is having an affair with John Gavin. Though he’s in considerable debt due to alimony payments and paying off his father’s debts, Leigh still wants to marry him. She impulsively steals $40,000 from her employer to go meet her lover. She checks into a motel late one night and after talking to the young proprietor Norman Bates, played by Anthony Perkins, she has a change of heart and decides to go back home and face the music.
A grisly discovery
She never makes it out of the motel.
Hitchcock does the unthinkable with this film, changing the entire trajectory of the movie in one fell swoop. For all that goes on in Psycho it is a small and quiet film. There’s not a cacophony of sound. There’s not a ‘cast of thousands.’
Gavin, Miles, Tuttle and McIntireMartin Balsam as Ar-bo-gast“I can handle a sick old woman”
It’s peopled with great character actors including Martin Balsam, Simon Oakland, John Anderson, John McIntire and my favorite, Lurene Tuttle (“…Periwinkle blue”) all shown to good effect. Characters get more than they bargain for when they run into young Norman Bates. Vera Miles is especially strong as the no-nonsense, determined woman who wants answers about her missing sister. I sometimes think about Anthony Perkins reading this script for the first time. What a hat trick by Hitchcock to simultaneously cement and entomb Perkins’ place in movie history.
“In using only strings, I felt I was able to complement the black and white photography of the film with a black and white sound. I believe this is the only time in films that a purely string orchestra has been used.”
So effective is Hermann’s music with or without the movie, purely listening
to the score alone will make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end
with melancholy and dread.
“Then who’s that woman buried out in Greenlawn Cemetery?”
Theresa Brown is a native New Yorker, a Capricorn and a biker chick (rider as well as passenger). When she’s not on her motorcycle, you can find her on her couch blogging about classic films for CineMaven’s Essays from the Couch. Classic films are her passion. You can find her on Twitter at @CineMava.
Silents are Golden: The Mysterious Disappearance of Louis Le Prince
If I asked you to name the first person who
ever shot moving images on film, what would your guess be? Thomas Edison? The
Lumière brothers? Someone more familiar to film buffs, like William K.-L.
Dickson? Maybe you would try to be smart and shout “Eadweard Muybridge!” Not a
bad guess, my friend, but I did say “on film.”
While it’s often debated who we should credit
for inventing “moving pictures” per se–which
would include Muybridge and the inventors of various optical illusion toys–the
first man to shoot images on film strips, the way it would be done for decades
to follow, was the distinguished-looking Louis Le Prince. A true pioneer of the
cinema, his story is extraordinary not just for how he contributed to a
brand-new art form, but for how it ends–in a tragic mystery that’s still
unsolved to this day.
Louis Aimé Augustin Le Prince
Louis
Aimé Augustin Le Prince
was born in France in 1841, to a military family. His father was a major of
artillery in the French army and had received the Légion d’honneur. While growing up he spent time
in the studio of family friend Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, who taught him about photography. (Yes, he
was that Daguerre, inventor of the
famed daguerreotype.) As a young man the talented Le Prince studied art in
Paris and chemistry in Leipzig, Germany. These different fields of study would
all play their part in his future work.
In
1866 he moved to England to work for his friend John Whitley, who’d started a
brass foundry. He would wed John’s sister Elizabeth, an artist, in 1869. The
couple would found a school for the applied arts–that is, the art of making
everyday objects both functional and beautiful. They attracted some fame for
their work in making photographs on metal and pottery, and were commissioned to
create portraits of Queen Victoria and Prime Minister William Gladstone. These
portraits, interestingly enough, were included in an 1878 time capsule that was
installed under Cleopatra’s Needle in London (where it is to this day).
Le Prince posing with his father.
In
1881 Le Prince went to the U.S. as a Whitley Partners agent. Eventually he
became a manager for a group of artists who made panoramas, which were
exhibited throughout the country. It was around this time that he took the leap
from working with still photographs to tinkering with the idea of moving
photographs. Thanks to Muybridge, this was a big topic of interest to inventors
at the time. His first experiment resulted in a camera with no less than 16
lenses. This certainly captured movement (so to speak), but by taking tons of
photos at slightly different angles–images looked pretty wobbly.
The mighty 16-lens machine.
Heading
back to England in 1887, Le Prince began designing a more straightforward
single-lens camera in a workshop in Leeds. Resembling a stubby wooden box, this
camera used paper negatives and took around 12 to 20 photos per second. On
October 14, 1888, he went to the Whitleys’ home Oakwood Grange and shot his
first film with the new machine–footage of Joseph and Sarah Whitley, his son
Adolphe, and family friend Annie Hartley walking in circles around their garden
(with some amusement). At only a few seconds long, it’s the world’s oldest
true, “shot on film” motion picture.
His equally-brief films Traffic Crossing Leeds Bridge and Accordion Player (again featuring Adolphe) were filmed soon afterward, and he began work on a projector he was planning on patenting soon. Family would claim that he successfully projected still images in his Leeds workshop, but the public would never see the results of his hard work.
In
1890, with his wife and children already in New York in a newly-renovated
mansion, Le Prince packed up his inventions and prepared to move. He planned on
holding public demonstrations of his machines when he was back in the U.S.,
much like Edison and the Lumière brothers would do years later. Before officially
moving, in September he went to visit family and friends in France. On
September 16, his brother Albert saw him board the train in Dijon, heading to
Paris–the first leg of his journey to New York. When the train arrived in
Paris, however, Le Prince was not on it.
His
bags had never arrived, there was no trace of him or his bags on board, and no
bodies had been discovered along the train’s route. No strange behavior had
been reported in either the Dijon station or on the train. Le Prince had simply
vanished without a trace.
Le Prince “The Father of Cinema”
And
that’s all we really know to this day. Naturally, numerous theories about what
happened to Le Prince have been put forward over the years, some more plausible
than others. The more common theories include:
Suicide — Supposedly Le Prince was facing bankruptcy and feeling trapped; however, this seems implausible considering his devotion to his family and all the plans to move to New York and demonstrate his exciting new inventions.
Fratricide — Since his brother Albert was the last person to see Le Prince alive, this has aroused some suspicion. However, there’s no evidence of any animosity between the brothers–quite the opposite, in fact.
Assassination — This theory’s gained the most steam since it involves the frenetic 19th-century patent wars. The story goes that Edison, hoping to control as much of the moving picture industry as he could, wanted to make Le Prince “disappear” before the Frenchman spoiled matters by filing new patents. Le Prince’s widow apparently favored this theory, but there’s never been any evidence to back it up–not to mention that it paints Edison as too much of a cartoon villain.
Le
Prince’s descendants today apparently lean toward a simpler
explanation. Le Prince apparently took a later train from Dijon than his Paris
friends expected, hence why he didn’t arrive when they thought he would. It’s
possible that he arrived late in Paris and was victimized by robbers, hence why
his bags disappeared and no trace of him was found. In 2003, a photo from the
Paris police archives surfaced showing an 1890 drowning victim who strongly
resembles Le Prince. Could he have been robbed, knocked out and thrown into the
Seine? It’s possible.
We
will likely never know for sure. In any case, despite his tragic end, Louis Le
Prince had just enough time to make a massive and lasting contribution to film
history. And this author feels that he certainly deserves the title of “The
Father of Cinema.”
Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterlyand has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.
Often it’s because of our favorite stars. Perhaps a notable director. It can be from the recommendation of a friend. But sometimes all I need is an interesting plot description.
That was the case for Once in a New Moon, a 1935 British sci-fi film that was unfamiliar in every way. There wasn’t one recognizable name in the cast that included Eliot Makeham, Rene Ray, Morton Seiten, and Mary Hinton. I didn’t know the director/writer Anthony Kimmins even after I looked at his lengthy filmography.
But the synopsis – oh, that was irresistible:
“When the small town of Shrimpton-on-Sea is dragged out
into space by the force of a ‘dead star’ passing Earth, the populace try to
organise a local government based on equal rights for all, but conflicts arise
between the local aristocracy and the villagers.”
What? A village is pulled into outer space? Fantastic! My mind was reeling with the possibilities of what I would see. Here’s where I admit I was so excited over the “dragged into space” bit that I glossed over “organise a government” which turned out to be a big part of the movie. I had too many questions.
Did it leave a hole in the Earth?
Could you fall off?
How could the villagers survive the lack of gravity or oxygen? What would happen to the animals? Would everyone float out in space?
We “see” the dead star and another small object on a collision course near Earth.
So many questions. Yet, the charmingly odd little film
doesn’t even pretend to answer them.
Once in a New Moon is exactly as described. There is a small town with the very British name of Shrimpton-on-Sea and a “dead star” that broke off a meteorite and is hurtling toward Earth. (Every time they said “dead star”, my mind changed it to “Death Star” which added to my viewing pleasure and confusion.) And there will be a fight over the organization of a new government. That’s the description and that’s the movie. There isn’t filler.
I discovered the quirky film streaming on Amazon Prime Video from a British distributor called Renown Pictures which is devoted to classic British cinema. The films are mostly low-budget, B-movies and it can show. Many, like Once in a New Moon, are roughly an hour-long so they are worth the time even when lacking cool special effects to pull off their ambitious stories.
The Earth in danger has become a conventional plot in sci-fi movies (When Worlds Collide, Meteor, Deep Impact). It always goes like this: A lone scientist discovers an impending danger of never-before-seen proportions; he/she goes to great lengths to warn people and is greeted by disbelief and laughter; danger strikes and the disbelievers go to the scientist for help.
Mr. Drake, the postmaster, (played by Eliot Makeham) and his daughter Stella (Rene Ray) read about an impending danger to the Earth in Once in a New Moon.
In this film, it’s not a scientist but the village’s
postmaster (!) Harold Drake (played by Eliot Makeham) who discovers the problem
via headlines in papers from around the world. (He also has a telescope on his
roof, so that helps.) Of course, his warnings are ignored.
Then a storm arrives. Waves are crashing. A dog hides in
his little house. Darkness falls. Two circular objects in space pass each
other. What does it mean?
The dawn rises, but phones are down and roads are washed out. The rich folk, eager to get “to town” (London), are upset. On a church rooftop they see the impossible: “Heavens, England’s gone!,” one yells.
They think a tidal wave has wiped away everything and left
them isolated. There’s not even a ship to be seen. So the rich folks do what
rich folks do: they form a committee. But in the middle of the meeting the sun
sets – at 10 a.m.! Stars come out. Confusion sets in.
In London there’s panic. Newspaper headlines shout that Shrimpton is gone without a trace. Earth is befuddled. This is getting fun.
Meanwhile, back at Shrimpton . . . they form a subcommittee. (There is a humorous bent to the film.) Finally they ask Mr. Drake for help. A stargazer, he has been making calculations and asks them: “Where is the moon?” It has disappeared and he posits the idea that the moon and dead star have collided, crushing the moon and splitting the Earth in half. He has his calculations and proves his hypothesis.
Mr. Drake explains what has happened to Shrimpton-on-Sea via his chalkboard diagram.
And that is that. Shrimpton has been hurled into the “celestial void” that is circumnavigating the globe. Somehow this 6-mile long, 4-mile wide island has been ripped into space with just a few crashing waves and heavy winds. Yet everyone is fine. They’re still drinking tea out of china cup.
Up to now, the film has been fun to watch as they told us it would be in the opening crawl. We’ve got our terrified proclamations (“It’s the end of the world!”). There is a panic and the requisite scientific mumbo-jumbo (albeit from a postmaster). Storms set the atmosphere.
But then a class struggles breaks out when the rich people nominate themselves to head the new government. (To be fair, they are nice people – except for the haughty Her Ladyship who has been called a “hard-bitten conservative” by her son. That son, by the way, is in love with the postmaster’s daughter, adding to the tension and giving the film a romantic subplot.) Without getting too much into modern politics, the characters in this 1935 film are saying things familiar today. When the poor ask for their share of rations, it’s called “rank socialism”; they want a general election (a president, not a dictator) and equal rights. By the time the two sides talk of war, I’m thinking “I want my sci-fi film back.” But I understand this clash between classes was important to the filmmakers in 1935.
So we don’t get aliens – like I was hoping. And it’s not terrifying. So why am I writing about this in a column called Monsters and Matinees? Because when it comes to sci-fi and B-movies, this is one of the most awesome plots ever and I needed to share. Plus it’s important that when we find a new source of classic movies, like Renown, to let others know. So let your imagination run wild as the waves are crashing about, signifying that Shrimpton-on-Sea is now Shrimpton-in-Universe.
3 more to watch
Here are short looks at horror films distributed by Renown.
Castle Sinister (1948)
The first film I watched via Renown was this “old house movie,” a favorite genre of mine. Honestly, it looked like I expected: low production values with uneven sound, lighting, and acting. But there was something about it. It was clearly shot on location near the water and the black and white photography added a grim look. Though it started slow, I really got into it. The family that inhabits Glynnie Castle in Scotland has been haunted by reports of the murderous ghost of a former lord. An officer is sent to the castle when there are sightings of a masked figure who may be responsible for a new series of murders. This masked figure isn’t shy about being seen and it’s immediately apparent it’s not a ghost. Still, it’s eerie when his head looms out from the shadows over the shoulder of an unsuspecting person. I never came close to figuring out who it was and what was going on, which adds bonus points for this horror mystery.
The poltergeist disrupts papers so Jean (Patricia Dainton) finds a letter that proves her husband is having an affair in The House in Marsh Road.
If a house is in the title, we know something bad is inside. Struggling author David and his wife, Jean, are going from town to town scamming landlords with fake money. When Jean inherits money and the country house of her aunt, she’s eager to start a new chapter. Hubby only sees dollar signs, but Jean falls in love with the house, despite it being haunted. The aunt and long-time housekeeper (who has named the poltergeist Patrick after her hubby) “understood” Patrick and lived in peace with “him.” But, he can “be very nasty to people who don’t take him seriously.” (Guess who falls under that last category?) They repeatedly refer to Patrick as a poltergeist, but he’s quite playful with Jean (moving chairs around). He’s not so nice to David, however, who spends most of his time at the village bar, has an affair with a soon-to-be-divorcee and steals his wife’s money. When they plot to kill Jean, Patrick is watching and ready to protect her. There’s a great scene where loud alarms go off every time Jean starts to sip a poisoned drink. Slowly the realization of what is happening dawns across her terrified face and it is chilling. This is where the film turns from mild ghost story to suspenseful horror-thriller and Patrick goes full-on poltergeist. Note: Known in the U.S. as Invisible Creature.
It’s the “terrible monkey’s paw” which curses the person who wishes upon it.
The Monkey’s Paw (1948)
Based on a 1902 short story by W.W. Jacobs, this is a deceptive little movie with a Twilight Zone-ish ending. It opens with a shadowy scene in a curiosity shop where the owner weaves the tale of a monkey’s paw that will grant 3 wishes but then brings bad luck and tragedy. The man hearing the story – an antique dealer – can’t resist and buys the paw. Cut to sunshine in an Irish village where the Trelawne family runs a small store: Mr. Trelawne (Milton Rosmer) who is in debt because of horse racing, his wife (Megs. Jenkins) and their son who wants to buy a motorbike to race. There’s also the fast-talking Kelly (a scene-stealing Michael Martin Harvey) who seems to do odd jobs. (Watch this guy carefully.) There’s talk of superstitions and whether things are coincidence or fate (also important). I couldn’t figure out where this was going until that dealer shows up with the monkey’s paw. It sends Kelly into a panic as he cries “the terrible monkey’s paw,” and tells of witnessing the tragedy the paw can inflict. Still, without his family knowing, Mr. Trelawne buys the paw setting a series of events into motion. What comes next is an unexpected edge-of-your-seat finale that’s very intense. I was impressed.
Toni Ruberto, born and raised in Buffalo, N.Y., is an editor and
writer at The Buffalo News. She shares her love for classic movies in
her blog, Watching Forever.
Toni was the president of the former Buffalo chapter of TCM Backlot and
now leads the offshoot group, Buffalo Classic Movie Buffs. She is proud
to have put Buffalo and its glorious old movie palaces in the spotlight
as the inaugural winner of the TCM in Your Hometown contest. You can
find Toni on Twitter at @toniruberto.
One of my favorite things about film noir is the female characters. Not just the femmes fatales – although they, of course, are quite the selling point. But all of noir’s dames aren’t bad girls – some are just badass if you know what I mean.
This month’s Noir Nook is the first in a series about films
featuring femmes whose badassery earned them their own monikers in the titles –
my favorite dame-name noirs.
Set in Britain, this underrated feature stars Nina Foch in the title role of an unemployed Londoner whose fortunes change – but not in the way she’d hoped – when she’s hired to be a live-in private secretary to a wealthy widow (Dame May Whitty). Instead of typing and filing, Julia is drugged and spirited off to the woman’s seaside mansion in Cornwall, where she’s told that her name is Marion and that she’s the wife of Mrs. Hughes’s son, Ralph (an especially creepy George Macready). Not only that, but everyone insists that Marion/Julia has suffered a nervous breakdown and for her own protection cannot be allowed to leave the property. Turns out that the off-his-rocker Ralph has murdered his real wife and he and his mother plan to kill Julia, too, passing her death off as a suicide. Pretty crafty, huh? But they hadn’t reckoned on the fortitude of Julia Ross.
Dame May Whitty & George Macready
From the time she awakens in her strange, new surroundings, Julia is determined that she’s not going gentle into that good night. She’s fearless, resilient, shrewd. When confronted by her “mother-in-law” and her “husband,” Julia doesn’t weep or cower or show the slightest bit of the “Gaslight effect” that one might anticipate when awakening with a wedding ring and clothes bearing another woman’s monogram. “My name isn’t Marian Hughes and I’m not married to you or anybody,” she says with cool conviction. “I don’t know what this is all about, but I promise you some very serious trouble unless you stop it immediately.” Julia then proceeds to employ a number of (admittedly unsuccessful) strategies in an effort to escape, from trying to sweet-talk the caretaker into opening the gate, to sneaking into the back seat of the visiting local vicar, to pretending to take poison so that a doctor will be called. She finally outwits her captors by managing to mail a letter to a friend in London, only to learn that time is of the essence – her death-by-apparent-suicide is imminent!
Nina Foch
Clocking in at an economical 64 minutes, this movie is packed with suspense and brimming with fine performances from the principal players as well as the supporting cast, including Queenie Leonard as a sympathetic housekeeper. My Name is JuliaRoss was the first noir directed by Joseph Lewis; after this, he went on to helm such gems as Gun Crazy (1950) and The Big Combo (1955). It was also Nina Foch’s initial foray into the shadowy world of noir – she would later appear in Johnny O’Clock (1947) with Dick Powell and Evelyn Keyes; The Dark Past (1948) opposite William Holden; and The Undercover Man (1949), which was also directed by Lewis.
A pristine print of My
Name is Julia Ross can be viewed on YouTube. Do yourself a favor and check
it out. You’ll be glad you did.
And visit the Noir Nook for future posts on badass noir femmes with their names in the title!
…
– Karen Burroughs Hannsberry for Classic Movie Hub
Karen Burroughs Hannsberry is the author of the Shadows and Satin blog, which focuses on movies and performers from the film noir and pre-Code eras, and the editor-in-chief of The Dark Pages, a bimonthly newsletter devoted to all things film noir. Karen is also the author of two books on film noir – Femme Noir: The Bad Girls of Film and Bad Boys: The Actors of Film Noir. You can follow Karen on Twitter at @TheDarkPages. If you’re interested in learning more about Karen’s books, you can read more about them on amazon here:
Silver Screen Standards: How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
Marilyn Monroe, Betty Grable & Lauren Bacall in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
There’s a lot to love in the CinemaScope spectacle of Twentieth Century Fox’s How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), even if it sometimes plays like a demo reel for its technological innovation. Fox was eager to show off the wonders of CinemaScope, sure, but the movie also demonstrates the talents of some of classic Hollywood’s greatest leading ladies, namely Betty Grable, Lauren Bacall, and Marilyn Monroe. Throw in William Powell’s penultimate screen performance, a couple of romantic hunks, and a series of gorgeous costumes, and you’ve got something for pretty much everyone willing to sit down with a Technicolor comedy about three dames looking for mercenary matrimony in mid-century Manhattan.
How to Marry a Millionaire was Fox’s first CinemaScope feature, and the enthusiasm for the medium shows in every shot, beginning with the long overture performed onscreen by a full orchestra. Moviegoers accustomed to the cold opens of the modern age probably ought to be warned about that opening; even my lifetime learners were squirming in their seats through it during a recent showing of the picture at the retirement community where I volunteer. Once the story gets rolling, the CinemaScope is on display in more manageable doses as the audience is treated to views of the city, of New York Harbor, of beautiful girls modeling the latest couture, and of the snowy mountain vistas of Maine. The picture makes the most of the technology both indoors and out but proves especially delightful when the action moves to a rural ski lodge with expansive views of slopes and trees. Sadly, The Robe (1953) ended up stealing a lot of the thunder by being the first CinemaScope movie to appear in theaters, even though How to Marry a Millionaire was filmed earlier, but the technology was still so new and exciting that audiences in 1953 must have been properly wowed.
William Powell & Lauren Bacall
The wow factor extends to the cast, as well, with Grable, Bacall, and Monroe all giving terrific performances from very different points in their careers. Betty Grable was close to bowing out, having been in pictures since her early teens in the 1930s, but you’d never know it from her lively, wacky turn as the free-spirited Loco, the least mercenary of the trio. While her friends dream of jewels and wealth, Loco dreams about hot sandwiches and mustard, so it’s no surprise when she falls for a meaty forest ranger played by Rory Calhoun. Lauren Bacall was already well established as a noir star thanks to her red hot chemistry with real-life husband Humphrey Bogart in 1940s hits like To Have and Have Not(1944), The Big Sleep (1946), and Key Largo (1948), but How to Marry a Millionaire shows her talent for a comic role without Bogart by her side. Her Schatze – divorced, disillusioned, and determined to do it right this time – is the brains of the operation, coolly hocking the rented apartment’s furniture to carry on with the plan until at least one girl hooks a husband with a bank account. Marilyn Monroe had been working in Hollywood since the late 40s, but her star was finally rising in 1953, when Niagara and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes helped propel her to leading lady status. Her near-sighted, naïve Pola is one of her most entertaining performances, sweeter and smarter than Lorelei Lee and just delightful in her scenes with David Wayne.
Betty Grable & Marilyn Monroe
While CinemaScope and beautiful stars give the movie its pizazz, the laughs are largely due to deft direction by Jean Negulesco and the dry, witty comedy of screenwriter Nunnally Johnson, working from two different plays as source material. There’s a lot of humorous dramatic irony on offer, especially in Schatze’s persistent rejection of handsome Tom Brookman (Cameron Mitchell), whom she believes to be a penniless gas pump jockey but who is, in fact, even richer than Schatze’s intended target, the benevolent and lonely cattle baron played by William Powell. Loco’s problem is a tendency to misunderstand a situation, as she does with her Elks Lodge assumption and her belief that Eben, the forest ranger, actually owns the trees that he watches over, but she gets the last laugh in a really hilarious scene on the George Washington Bridge. Poor Pola, so blind she bumps into walls and reads books upside down, seems like an easy mark for a joke, but it’s her self-consciousness about wearing her glasses, not her near-sightedness, that’s really the problem. Each character is uniquely funny but also likable and capable of generous, selfless behavior that proves the mercenary act is just that, which makes the picture kinder, sweeter, and more romantic than its title might imply.
Betty Grable & Fred Clarke
CinemaScope proved a moneymaker for Fox in 1953, with The Robe taking first place as the top-grossing film of the year and How to Marry a Millionaire coming in fourth. You can read more about CinemaScope films in this article from the BFI website. If you’re interested in a different take on How to Marry a Millionaire, the movie got a TV series remake that ran from 1957 to 1959 with Merry Anders, Barbara Eden, and Lori Nelson in the lead roles.
June Knight was a celebrated Broadway and film actress, talented in singing, dancing, and acting. On-screen, her characters are energetic and vibrant—a far cry from her weak self as a child, struggling through a variety of serious health issues.
Knight was born Margaret Rose Vallikett in Los Angeles,
California, on January 22, 1913, to Holley Peter and Beryl Vallikett. Shortly
after her birth, their only child was faced with one devastating medical issue
after another. She suffered from infantile paralysis just after her birth and
contracted measles before turning two. On top of contracting measles, she was
diagnosed with scarlet fever and nearly died. Though she gradually recovered,
she remained weak. Soon, she faced diphtheria, a mastoid infection, pneumonia,
and whooping cough, while her parents did not expect her to survive another
night. By age four, she contracted tuberculosis.
Due to her infantile paralysis, Knight could not walk until age five. It was the need to build strength that essentially forced her into physical activity, opening the door to show business. She took up dance to enhance her leg muscles and began singing and dancing in public by age ten, soon taking on a lead role in juvenile theater.
Knight was also part of the children’s chorus at Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre, performing before screenings of Son of the Sheik(1926)and The Singing Fool(1928). She began dancing in vaudeville at age 13 and became part of “The Gingham Girls”, which went on to tour.
June took to dancing even after a childhood full of illness
Soon enough, she was working on stage full-time, appearing in the dance chorus of Gold Diggers of Broadway and working with the Duncan Sisters in the prologue of their film, Topsy & Eva (1927). Shortly thereafter, she became a member of the dancing stock company at Warner Bros. Studios in 1928.
Dancer John Holland changer her name to June Knight when she became his dance partner, as it was the name of his previous partner, later leading to a court case in 1940 between the two Knights. At 19, Knight appeared in the last Ziegfeld Follies show, Hot-Cha, with Buddy Rogers and Lupe Velez. She was featured in other Broadway shows, including Take a Chance and Jubilee. In Jubilee, she introduced Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine”.
Though her film career was short-lived, she appeared in twelve films from 1930 to 1940, including the hit film Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), in which she sang and danced to “I’ve Got a Feelin’ You’re Foolin’” with Robert Taylor.
Knight in Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935)
Knight was married four times, with marriages to Carl B. Squier, Vice President of the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation; Texas oilman Arthur A. Cameron; drug firm official Harry Packer; and New York Stock Exchange member Paul S. Ames.
Knight passed away at age 74 on June 16, 1987, from a
stroke. She is interred next to Carl B. Squier in the Portal of the Folded
Wings at Pierce Brothers Valhalla Memorial Park in California.
Though few, there are some places of relevance to Knight’s
life and career in California.
Knight lived at 527 Patton St in Los Angeles in 1920. Here
is the property today:
527 Patton St in Los Angeles in 1920
By 1930, she lived at 2403 Glendale Blvd in Los
Angeles.
2403 Glendale Blvd
Knight has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6247
Hollywood Boulevard.
June’s star on the Walk of Fame
Of course, the best way to remember Knight is to enjoy her performances documented in her brief but enjoyable filmography.
Annette Bochenek of Chicago, Illinois, is a PhD student at Dominican University and an independent scholar of Hollywood’s Golden Age. She manages the Hometowns to Hollywood blog, in which she writes about her trips exploring the legacies and hometowns of Golden Age stars. Annette also hosts the “Hometowns to Hollywood” film series throughout the Chicago area. She has been featured on Turner Classic Movies and is the president of TCM Backlot’s Chicago chapter. In addition to writing for Classic Movie Hub, she also writes for Silent Film Quarterly, Nostalgia Digest, and Chicago Art Deco SocietyMagazine.
Claude Jarman Jr. Child Star of The Yearling Talks about his 2nd Film, High Barbaree
CMH is thrilled to present our 2nd exclusive video interview with Claude Jarman Jr. You will probably remember Claude as ‘Jody Baxter’ in his feature film debut, The Yearling, opposite Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman, but all told Claude starred in over 10 films during the classic-era years.
Stay tuned for more from Claude Jarman Jr. over the next few months, including more videos and some guest articles. And, if you want to learn more about Claude’s experiences in Hollywood, you can read his book My Life and the Final Days of Hollywood. It’s delightful and I highly recommend it!
Thanks so much for watching and reading. Hope you enjoyed!
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–Annmarie Gatti for Classic Movie Hub
About Claude Jarman Jr.: Claude Jarman Jr. was discovered in a fifth grade class room in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1945 by film director Clarence Brown, taken to Hollywood where he starred with Gregory Peck and Jane Wyman in THE YEARLING. After receiving an Academy Award for his performance he went on to appear in ten additional films including John Ford’s RIO GRANDE with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara and also William Faulkner’s story of racial strife in INTRUDER IN THE DUST.
Murphy plays the awkwardly named Seven Ways From Sundown Jones, who reports for work at a Texas Rangers office headed by Lt. Herly (Kenneth Tobey).
Jones is something of a green kid, who joined up after his older
brother Two’s death while serving with the Rangers; Jones is great with a rifle
but inexperienced using a handgun. Despite Jones’s dubious qualifications for
frontier law enforcement, the short-staffed Lt. Herly sends Seven out to
capture the dangerous outlaw — and ace shot — Jim Flood (Barry Sullivan).
John McIntire & Audie Murphy
Jones is aided by Sgt. Henessey (John McIntire), who tries to quickly teach Jones what he knows, especially how to handle a sidearm. Circumstances lead to Jones ultimately striking out on his own after Flood, and he proves to be more resourceful than anyone expects, capturing Flood and fending off Flood’s attempts to escape.
As Jones and Flood get to know one another on the trail back to
Texas, an uneasy respect develops; they rather enjoy one another’s company, but
Jones has a job to do…and he’s also unaware of a critical fact: Flood killed
his older brother Two.
Soon Jones and Flood have additional problems, dealing with Apache
Indians as well as men who want to take Flood in for the reward, and they don’t
care if they have to kill Jones to do it.
John McIntire & Audie Murphy
Seven Ways From Sundown is a top Murphy Western thanks to a good cast and a sharp,
well-paced script by Clair Huffaker, based on his own novel.
There’s a very nice, typically excellent supporting turn by McIntire, but the majority of the film features Murphy and Sullivan front and center, and they really strike sparks together. The two men have a relationship in the film which is quite reminiscent of Murphy and Dan Duryea in one of Murphy’s best earlier films, Ride Clear of Diablo (1954), but at the same time, Murphy and Sullivan create something unique which allows the film to stand on its own as a superior Murphy film.
Audie Murphy
This was Murphy’s 20th Western, but despite a dozen years in films and being in his mid-30s, he still has the looks of an innocent “kid.” Henessy worries that his boss Lt. Herly is going to send the young man to an early death, but Henessy argues he’s short on men and has no choice — and anyway, Jones signed up for the job so oh, well! Little do we know at that early point that Herly may have ulterior motives in assigning the job to Jones and that he would not be terribly upset were Jones to fail.
One of the interesting aspects of Murphy’s film persona, well illustrated in this film, is that while he is typically rather quiet and seems on the young side, there’s also an interesting undercurrent of danger. I’ve recently come across critics who say that Murphy wasn’t tough on-screen or a particularly good actor, which causes me to feel baffled; it seems as though we’re watching two different men! A Murphy character like Jones may be a nice, honorable guy as well as a bit of a greenhorn, but he’s also a dangerous man when crossed. Just take a look at what happens to Flood when he meets up with Jones and a hunk of wood.
Audie Murphy & Barry Sullivan
Moreover, Murphy is the kind of actor I watch closely because he tends to communicate a great deal with body language; I feel that some critics mistake Murphy’s style, emphasizing subtlety over showiness, as not being good acting. Murphy could more than hold his own opposite the best in the business, including Sullivan and McIntire in this picture, and is compelling at all times.
In contrast to the “business” side of his persona, Jones is awkward and tongue-tied around pretty young Joy (Venetia Stevenson), whose mother (Mary Field) runs a boarding house, but despite that Joy is drawn to Jones like a fly to honey. There’s a cute scene where Joy communicates her interest in Jones, repeatedly attributing her feelings and concerns to her mother, but it’s clear what’s meant and that Jones reciprocates.
Audie Murphy & Venetia Stevenson
Stevenson and Murphy are said by some sources to have begun an offscreen affair after meeting on this film. Stevenson was born into the business — her father was director Robert Stevenson and her mother actress Anna Lee (Fort Apache); she had previously been briefly married to Russ Tamblyn, and she would later marry Don Everly of the Everly Bros. She had recently appeared in another notable Western, Day of the Outlaw (1959), which I wrote about here in 2018.
Jones has little time to get to know Joy due to his assignment to
bring in Flood, and the chase for the bad man ensues, over locations in Utah
and Nevada, filmed in widescreen by Ellis Carter.
Sullivan’s smart, funny, and slightly regretful outlaw calls to mind not only Duryea’s earlier role opposite Murphy, but some of the best villains from the “Ranown” Westerns directed by Budd Boetticher and starring Randolph Scott; Sullivan’s Flood is a character on a par with Ranown villains such as Lee Marvin from Seven Men From Now (1956) — the title similarity is interesting! — and Richard Boone in The Tall T (1957).
Audie
Sullivan excelled at playing this type of rogue; one of his best
previous parts was as an accused criminal in the Western Dragoon Wells
Massacre (1957), where his character proves to have more common sense
and courage than some of the ostensible “good guys.”
In this film, Sullivan’s Flood tries to lure Jones to hitting the trail with him, but he’s also clearly not surprised that Jones remains an upright man of the law. Flood ends up taking Jones’s side against the foes they meet along the trail, and when the time comes for the ultimate reckoning, Flood tips the scales in the favor of Jones, a man he’s come to respect.
The excellent cast includes familiar Western faces such as Ken Lynch and Don Haggerty. It was the second film for Don Collier, who got into films after working on a ranch owned by actor Francis Lederer; Collier’s best-known role was playing Sam, the ranch foreman on TV’s The High Chaparral (1967-71). Little Teddy Rooney, who appears in a couple of scenes midway into the film, was the son of Mickey Rooney and Martha Vickers.
Audie Murphy & Barry Sullivan
Seven Ways From Sundown was directed by Harry Keller, whose previous Westerns included a strong Fred MacMurray film, Quantez (1957); Keller later directed Murphy in another Western, Six Black Horses (1962). Keller does a good job balancing brisk pacing with revealing character moments and some excellent bits of action.
Like so many Audie Murphy Westerns, Seven Ways From Sundown has yet to have a U.S. Region 1 DVD or Blu-ray release, though it’s available on a Region 2 release in Europe. The film turns up periodically on cable TV and is well worth seeking out. I hope readers who are unfamiliar with this Western will enjoy it, and I’d love to hear about additional favorite Audie Murphy Westerns in the comments!
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— Laura Grieve for Classic Movie Hub
Laura can be found at her blog, Laura’s Miscellaneous Musings, where she’s been writing about movies since 2005, and on Twitter at @LaurasMiscMovie. A lifelong film fan, Laura loves the classics including Disney, Film Noir, Musicals, and Westerns. She regularly covers Southern California classic film festivals. Laura will scribe on all things western at the ‘Western RoundUp’ for CMH.
Seberg is inspired by true events in the life of French New Wave darling and Breathless star, Jean Seberg (Kristen Stewart), who in the late 1960s was targeted by the FBI because of her support of the civil rights movement and her romantic involvement with Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie), among others.
In Benedict Andrews’ noir-ish thriller, Seberg’s life and career are destroyed by Hoover’s overreaching surveillance and harassment in an effort to suppress and discredit Seberg’s activism.
I have always admired Jean Seberg’s work, from her “discovery” at the age of 19 by director Otto Preminger to star in his high profile 1957 film Saint Joan to her roles in films like Bonjour Tristesse and The Mouse That Roared. She endured instant fame and severe criticism for her early performances which only changed when she became an iconic figure in Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless in 1960 opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo. But that didn’t end her torment on American shores. This fascinating character study finds Jean living in Paris in the late 1960s with her second husband, writer Romain Gary. When she heads back to the U.S. to work on the musical Paint Your Wagon with Clint Eastwood and continues to show her support for the Black Panthers and other groups, she is targeted by the FBI who begin an unrelenting campaign of terror against her. I spoke to director Benedict Andrews about this riveting film.
Danny Miller: What a pleasure to talk to you, Benedict, I’ve been following your incredible stage work for years! I’m a classic movie fanatic and have been obsessed with Jean Seberg for a long time. I knew about her involvement with the civil rights movement but had no idea the extent of her targeting by the FBI. Did you come into this with a lot of pre-existing knowledge about Jean Seberg?
Kristen Stewart and Benedict Andrews
Benedict Andrews: It developed more as I got involved with the film. Like so many film lovers, I’ve had an image of Jean in my head ever since I saw Breathless as a teenager. That was a really formative experience for me at a time when I was just discovering world cinema and literature and that performance was burned in my imagination. I had a picture of her pinned up on my bedroom wall and I was enamored by her complete lack of artifice. Over time, I learned bits and pieces of her life that, that she married Romain Gary and that she had some kind of involvement with the Black Panthers, but I had no idea of the enormity of it including the horror of the state apparatus turning against a citizen like that because of her politics.
I’ve always felt defensive of her because I actually liked her early work with Preminger that was so reviled at the time. She had a quality that I thought was so appealing.
I agree, there was a natural quality that I frankly think was ahead of her time. She was criticized so harshly by the press. And then, through a series of accidents, she gets cast in this movie in Paris which ends up being the perfect vehicle for her, and kind of sets the stage for what modern post-Method acting will be — and still is today. Jean had that instinctively, she was never able to fully conform to the style of acting that was being promoted at that time, her style was so much more natural, and you see glimpses of this coming through in Saint Joan and the earlier films and then so beautifully in Breathless.
I hope this film makes people go out and look at her actual work.
I do, too. And recognize the tragedy of what happened to her because you see this luminous soul being destroyed. When Jean got roasted in Saint Joan, no pun intended, you had an unguarded and instinctive actress putting herself on the line with a real strength and life force, but someone who also had an incredible vulnerability. And then you see those qualities being exploited and violated by the FBI.
One of the things I love about the film is the lack of over-exposition that movies like this often fall victim to. I love that you treat the audience with intelligence and just drop us into the story. That said, were there any worries about people following along who have no familiarity with Jean Seberg’s life or career?
We did have some concerns as we started to show the movie to audiences who didn’t know her. But we knew that we needed to keep trusting the paradigm we had set up for ourselves. We have a character in Jack Solomon (Jack O’Connell) who actually says, “Who is Jean Seberg?” and he becomes a device to sort of unlock elements of her past. The movie doesn’t pretend to tell the story of her life, or for that matter, any of the characters in the film. Each of them could have a whole series built around them — Hakim Jamal (Anthony Mackie), for one, is such a fascinating, complex character. We don’t go into Jean’s years of growing up in Marshalltown, Iowa, becoming a member of the NAACP at age 14, making Breathless, or even the last 10 years of her life. We just focus on this window of this thing that happened to her and then leave the audience with all these other threads to pull to puzzle out her character. What interests me in cinema is to leave a space for the audience to navigate through. When you’re dealing with a real person, the temptation is high to fill in the answers for everyone, but we wanted to just plunge in and provide the elements people needed to go along on the ride.
As as a classic movie nut, I love the recreation of Jean’s original on-camera interview with Preminger and that final scene from Breathless, I though Kristen Stewart was spot-on in those recreations. Did you consider doing any more? I admit I was hoping for a bit from Paint Your Wagon between Jean and Clint Eastwood!
We actually had a scene where we were going to have her singing “A Million Miles Away Behind the Door” from the set of Paint Your Wagon. I loved it but we were fitting a lot of movie into a very tight shooting schedule and there was a lot of story there to tell! But the scenes we did recreate, we worked very hard to make them completely accurate. It’s pretty astonishing — you can Google them and compare Jean’s versions to Kristen’s. That was very deliberate on our part, because once we had those, we felt it gave Kristen more freedom to explore her version of the character.
I thought her interpretation of Jean was extraordinary. Kristen Stewart impresses me more with every film of hers that I see.
It’s interesting because she isn’t completely doing Jean’s voice that we know. That was an artificial voice that Jean put on for interviews and you can hear Kristen peppering bits of it in from time to time, but we wanted to let her be free to find the character beyond any kind of impersonation. We wanted to make a movie, not a documentary.
It’s probably cliché to talk about at this point, but knowing how Kristen started out with massive fame at such a young age and received a lot of criticism for her early film work in the Twilight series, it’s hard to imagine that there wasn’t a lot she could dial right into in terms of what Jean Seberg was dealing with at that time.
Absolutely. I mean, they are very different people, of course, with wildly different experiences, but, like Jean, Kristen also has a kind of raw instinct and truth in her work. And she certainly understands that sense of fame and enormous public exposure at a very tender age as well as the kind of abusive domestic press aimed at both of them. And, even more importantly, both of them had careers that straddled both Hollywood and European cinema, Jean with her work in the French New Wave, and Kristen with her work with Olivier Assayas and others and being the first American actresses to win a César Award. Kristen had an understanding of what those two different cinematic cultures mean and how to exist within both of them, just like Jean.
I found her performance incredibly moving.
I think she had a great tenderness and understanding of Jean. And she was willing to jump into the deep end and just kind of swim for life to do justice to Jean’s story from the inside out.
She was born to play that part. I also really liked Jack O’Connell and Margaret Qualley in the film. Was the character of Jack Solomon based on anyone real at the FBI?
No, unfortunately. That character was fictional and his meeting with Jean at the end of the film entirely speculative. Jean did eventually get access to her FBI file, but I was interested in exploring these two characters, the interweaving of the watcher and the watched, and the whole question of guilt and ethics. Jack ultimately becomes an exemplary character for our own times when we are so vigorously dealing with crises of truth and responsibility within corrupt governments.
There are so many interesting analogies of this story to today.
Yes, and Jack represents someone who is prepared to risk his own safety to bring a truth to someone else — to stand up for something he believes in. We certainly need more people like that these days.
Seberg opens today in Los Angeles and New York and will be opening in other cities in the weeks to come.
Silents are Golden: A Closer Look at – Battleship Potemkin (1925)
If there was a Mount Rushmore of Very Famous Films–and we’re talking insanely famous films that have been discussed for many decades–one spot would obviously be occupied by Citizen Kane, and other spots would be battled over by, say, Vertigo, Tokyo Story, City Lightsor The Godfather. But another spot would bear a sign reading “RESERVED FOR BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN.”
A Soviet poster for the film.
Roger Ebert once wrote that Potemkin “has been famous for so long that it is almost impossible to come to it with a fresh eye.” Indeed, at least among cinema lovers and historians, its famous “Odessa steps” sequence and pioneering use of montage are almost as familiar as the “Happy Birthday” song. So you might say it’s worth looking into the background of this famous Soviet propaganda epic if only to see it in a clearer light.
With his large forehead and a wild shock of hair, Sergei Eisenstein strongly resembled a mad scientist, but somehow the title “film director” seems equally fitting. A former engineering student, he served in the Red Army during the Bolshevik Revolution and later helped provide propaganda for the 1917 October Revolution (let’s just say he was enthusiastic about “collectivism”). Turning to work in the theater in the early 1920s, he became increasingly drawn to realism. In 1923 he insisted on having a play called Gas Masks (set in a gas factory) in an actual gas factory. Where else could Eisenstein go from there, but to motion pictures, where he could use all the real-life settings he wanted?
Sergi Eisenstein at work
His first feature-length film was Strike (1925), showcasing his structural
approach to cinema. He strongly believed in using montages to create emotional
responses–Strike, for instance,
paired images of strikers being gunned down with shots of cattle being
slaughtered. Battleship Potemkin would
represent the finest example of these theories of montage (which Eisenstein
would write about extensively).
Eisenstein didn’t work in an independent bubble–all Soviet films were made under the government’s watchful eye, and were expected to do their part to help spread communist propaganda. Battleship Potemkin was actually commissioned by the government to celebrate the 1905 revolution and was originally meant to be a series of eight episodes focusing on different pro-Bolshevik events. Eisenstein ended up scrapping most of the script and just focused on the account of a sailors’ uprising on the battleship Potemkin.
Sailors uprising on the Twelve Apostles
The film was shot in Odessa in present-day
Ukraine, with its grand marble steps leading down to its harbor. Eisenstein
actually located the real Potemkin’s sister
ship Twelve Apostles, which was
transformed into the famed battleship for the film. Wanting to keep the theme
as operatically collectivist as possible, he steered clear of regular actors
and had crewmembers and locals play the roles. Assistant directors played the
ship officers, a furnace man played the ship’s doctor and a gardener from
Sevastopol had the role of the priest. The emphasis wasn’t on individual
characters, but general “types,” all illustrating the theme of rebellion
against unjust authority.
Hysteria breaks out as disgruntled sailors revolt
Battleship
Potemkin shows sailors (who are returning from the
Russo-Japanese war) growing increasingly disgruntled when their superiors tell
them they must eat maggot-ridden meat. When some of the sailors rebel, officers
order the rebels to be covered in a tarpaulin and shot, which incites a
full-blown mutiny on board. The sailor who leads the mutiny is killed, and his
death is mourned by the indignant civilians in Odessa. When the civilians
peacefully demonstrate against the unjust events, a Cossack squadron fires on
them, and the terrified crowd flees for their lives down the seemingly endless
Odessa steps. Apparently, as soon as he saw the steps Eisenstein knew they were
an ideal setting for tragedy:
The anecdote about the idea for this scene being born as I watched the
bouncing from step to step of the cherry pits I spat out while standing at the
top, beneath the Duc de Richelieu’s monument, is, of course, a myth–very
colorful, but a downright myth. It was the very movement of the steps that gave
birth to the idea of the scene…And it would seem that the panicky rush of the
crowd, “flying” down the steps, is no more than a materialization of those
first feelings on seeing this staircase.
a panicked crowd flees down the famed marble steps
The whole sequence wasn’t easy to film back in 1925. A special trolley for the camera was built that ran the whole length of the steps, and assistants also had cameras to capture other angles of the action (one ran through the din with a camera strapped to his waist). In the editing room, the hectic series of long shots, medium shots, and closeups combined to create the shocking sequence that still packs a wallop today.
Shocking scenes from the film were so influential that they were mistaken for actual events!
In fact, the sequence–indeed, the whole
film–was so influential that even today some people believe a massacre did
happen on the Odessa steps (there were demonstrators
killed by Cossacks elsewhere in Odessa during the 1905 revolution, but not in
that exact area) and that the mutiny on the Potemkin
happened pretty much how it was dramatized. Eisenstein said he once
received a letter from one of the actual mutineers, who described himself as
“one of those under the tarpaulin”–never mind that that detail was invented by
Eisenstein for the film.
The release of Battleship Potemkin was a hectic one. A grand showing was held on December 21, 1925, at the Bolshoi Opera Theatre. Eisenstein and his assistants had been working on editing the film for weeks, and on the day of its premiere, it still wasn’t quite ready. Just as the screening was starting one of the cameramen left for the theater with the first few reels, to play while Eisenstein was bringing over another freshly-completed reel. Assistant director Grigori Alexandrov raced to the theater with the final reel–one can imagine the panic they were all in.
Another amazing Soviet poster for Battleship Potemkin
All that last-minute work paid off, however, and the showing was a success. Arguably, Battleship Potemkin’s status as a masterpiece has been unshakeable ever since. It manages to remain timelessly powerful–even in spite of its original function as government-approved propaganda.
Lea Stans is a born-and-raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterlyand has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.
