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British pictures have tended toward picture postcard scenery and more languid dialogue scenes, and sometimes rather pointlessly convoluted romantic plot lines set against classical music. Lean's best picture is surely Lawrence of Arabia but some of his others pictures are utterly languid, beautiful but dull.
In later years Hitchcock pictures got rather dull and calculated, and exhibited more than ever his peculiar points of view on women. The highpoint for Hitchcock was North by Northwest, and it was all downhill from there. Then also Vertigo is probably the single most over-appreciated movie of all time, it is stultifying boring and odd.
'Vertigo'boring? You're missing a tragic amount there.
I fail to see how 'Cleo' qualifies as a British pic in the precise terms you're discussing.
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A terribly boring and bland movie, with bad backdrops and background effects.
The best thing about it was Jimmy Stewart doing a great job at crazy for a usually straight as arrow good guy. Aside from that, it is an amazingly overpraised movie. North by Northwest exceeds it on every level.
Your attitude is all wrong here.
'Vertigo' is four-layered. It starts as what would appear to be a routine 'hero has a trauma and needs catharsis' predictable idea. Then it moves to a semi-mystical 'anima' 'man lost on vortex of the feminine and fate' movie, almost arthouse, then turns into a witty mercurial crime-con film and finishes with the most astounding 'religious' layer when the innocent nun blunders in and delivers the coup de grace. That's the layers of the psyche, and until, maybe you've explored them, you won't enjoy the film.
Nevertheless, many who care nothing about these things actually enjoy the film anyway, because it's so, well, good.
NBNW is an action movie. Sure, it has its depths, the man who is a mum-fixated marriage failure who becomes someone more heroic by inhabiting the life of a man who never was. That's useful to know in life. But there's more depth to Vertigo.
When I meet a movie I don't understand, I don't immediatley write it off. I wonder about the limitations in myself. Film critics, though lauded and lionised by the press, espccially in the US (probably because they ARE the press), are not the big creatives. Learn from the film, not templates of what critics write.
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Amen, CinemaScope. When he said, "I never said it was a British picture," I thought that was either him being disingenuous, or unable to read his own post. I mean, when the very first words are, "A British picture..."
You get the picture.
***
Piggybacking just a bit on Morricone's erudite & astute post, I well remember -- and please forgive me for reiterating something I've said before on this Board -- a Merv Griffin show wherein an agent stood up in the audience to introduce his young client, one Martin Landau, with the words, "A year from now, everyone will know his face, because he has an important role in CLEOPATRA..."
Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.
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Posted: |
Aug 14, 2014 - 2:11 PM
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By: |
CinemaScope
(Member)
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I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean by his being on the production six months before shooting began.
Which time? The London shoot was directed by Rouben Mamoulian. Mankiewicz came on in Rome and inherited a script he disliked. The Fox hierarchy demanded the production be resumed and Mankiewicz began the Rome filming, addressing what he perceived to be inadequcies in the original script by re-writing it, and that is why he was writing at nights before the next day's shoot.
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/the-case-for-cleopatra
I got that from a Richard Burton biography "And God Created Burton" by Tom Rubython, that I read last year, good read. There's a lot about Cleopatra, & producer Walter Wanger sounds like a right idiot the way he was throwing around money. He paid a hell of lot of money to buy Burton out of his Camelot contract a few months early, & then Burton sat around in Rome all that time as they weren't ready for him. As well as her huge fee, all Elizabeth Taylor's expenses were paid & she was given $300 a week just to spend how she liked, her husband was put on the wage bill as her minder, his only job was to make sure she turned up on time, & he was paid $50,000 (I'm sure that's right, I'll check it I don't have the book right now). And of course the Italians got in on the act & robbed the production blind, & good for them. Remember this was 1961, a little money went a long way then, I think my dad was earning £12-£14 a week. If Zanuck had been in charge I'm sure he would have put a stop to all the madness, it was making Fox look like a company of stupid amateurs.
There's a great book still to be written about the making of Cleopatra. I wouldn't trust anything Walter Wanger wrote.
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I can't very well comment on Wanger vis a vis CLEOPATRA, not having read his book on the subject nor compared other people's accounts against his. And certainly the film is a notorious production, which makes it a problematic entry in his filmography, to say the least.
But I do want to put in a good word for him, in the spirit of feeling we should all be judged by the best things we've done, rather than our worst ones. (Like going to jail for shooting his wife Joan Bennett's lover in the groin.) And the fact is that Ivy Leaguer Wanger was a rare figure of intelligence, culture and independence in Hollywood, and over the years he was responsible for many fine films of both artistic and sociological merit, including collaborations with Hitchcock and Fritz Lang. Even Wanger's imprisonment led him to make the Don Siegel sleeper-with-something-to-say RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11.
All of which is by way of saying, whatever one thinks of CLEOPATRA or the mistakes committed in its creation, Mr. Wanger was no idiot.
FOR FURTHER READING:
http://www.amazon.com/Walter-Hollywood-Independent-Matthew-Bernstein/dp/081663548X
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Posted: |
Aug 15, 2014 - 2:31 AM
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By: |
CinemaScope
(Member)
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I can't very well comment on Wanger vis a vis CLEOPATRA, not having read his book on the subject nor compared other people's accounts against his. And certainly the film is a notorious production, which makes it a problematic entry in his filmography, to say the least.
But I do want to put in a good word for him, in the spirit of feeling we should all be judged by the best things we've done, rather than our worst ones. (Like going to jail for shooting his wife Joan Bennett's lover in the groin.) And the fact is that Ivy Leaguer Wanger was a rare figure of intelligence, culture and independence in Hollywood, and over the years he was responsible for many fine films of both artistic and sociological merit, including collaborations with Hitchcock and Fritz Lang. Even Wanger's imprisonment led him to make the Don Siegel sleeper-with-something-to-say RIOT IN CELL BLOCK 11.
All of which is by way of saying, whatever one thinks of CLEOPATRA or the mistakes committed in its creation, Mr. Wanger was no idiot.
FOR FURTHER READING:
http://www.amazon.com/Walter-Hollywood-Independent-Matthew-Bernstein/dp/081663548X
Yeah, fair enough. He may have lost it on Cleopatra (his last producing job), but he had a very impressive list of credits before that.
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