Posts by itdo

"Once upon a time... there was a boy named: Marion. He had himself a little puppie, called Duke. Everybody loved that dog because he had such a cute name. Why can't I have such a cute name? asked Marion who wanted to play cowboy with the other children. But they wouldn't let him because of his sissy name. So one day, Marion just stole the dog's name - and got away with it!"

RED RIVER, by Suzanne Liandrat-Guigues

From the BFI Film classics series (each entry of a copy into the British Film Institut is accompanied by such a book), this is in interesting read. Written from the French standpoint of film critics, and from the Cahiers de Cinema as their center stone, the author looks at Red River with Hawks as an "auteur" in mind.

The BFI series is especially noteworthy because of their use of filmcells instead of still photographs. By using the actual film to illustrate you'll see pictures in these books you haven't seen before.

Ringo: yes, Hans-Christian Blech is in 08/15, and Wolfgang Preiss is in "Hunde, wollt ihr ewig leben" (both actors appear in The Longest Day). The only similarity between the Stalingrad movies is, well, Stalingrad. And you can't avoid it being a unit picture. Since both films view the conflict from the German perspective, there are similiarities as well.

I rather enjoyed "Enemy at the Gates". It is not a film about Stalingrad per se, but about the "private" battle between two snipers. So of course the film can't (and doesn't want to) do justice to the battle as a whole. It's done by Jean-Jacques Annaud which we consider just one of the greatest European directors around. I had a long talk with him, in 2000, about "Enemy", and since the theme of the film is really how legends are made, and how the public is made to believe in false legends, we were also talking about the influence of Ford on himself which he could not deny. As a joke, he finally signed a photo to me with "If the Legend becomes fact..." A very intelligent man and fascinating filmmaker.

Try to catch "The Bridge" (Die Brücke), it is considered one of the best German movies ever, and one of the very best anti-war-films. The b/w photography is striking. It was this film that enabled its director, Bernhard Wicki, to direct the German section of The Longest Day. You'll recognise the same actor from the early Stalingrad movie in it, Günter Pfitzman.

That makes my mouth water just thinking about your book, Arthur!

Ringo, "Stalingrad" isn't a remake of the Fifties version "Hunde, wollt ihr ewig leben?" which would translate into "Dogs, you want to live forever?", it's just the same topic. The earlier film is notable for its being Germany's first try on a war-film, and it's very gritty considering the time it was made it, yet it also has some of the sweetness so many German Fifties films had to offer the audience some good feelings.
The later "Stalingrad" was something of a Private Ryan for European audiences.

Guadalcanal Diary, starring very young Anthony Quinn, very early in the war, is an interesting film to watch today as well, judging it from the standpoint of what the War Department intended the audience to see about units.

There was a costly European production of STALINGRAD, a very accurate account on the whole battle, directed by Joseph Vilsmayer, but probably didn't make it to the US.

WAYNE: "Hey Perry. I guess you invited me for your Christmas show cause I have a lotta experience. I mean, who ever could forget how I brought in that baby on Christmas Eve... or the Christmas Party on Haleaka, er -- Halujeki -- Hukuleja -- that island in Donovan's Reef. One could say I'm a man of experience, haha!"

PERRY: "That's not why we invited you, Duke."

DUKE: "Oh yeah? Why, then?"

PERRY: "Because when we decided on these silly costumes we knew you could provide your own WIG!"

no more picture game?
Ever??

Hey, Kev, welcome at 36 and Happy Birthday!
Roland

BTW, regarding They Died With...
did you notice the composer Max Steiner's link to The Searchers? Using the same march song for the 7th cavalry, the Gerry Owen - in the first film to let the cavalry appear heroic, in the second, The Searchers, to let it appear almost ironic when the cavalry comes from wiping off the whole indian village (it was used again as a cruel background music for the Washita river massacre scene in Little Big Man).

BURT LANCASTER - AN AMERICAN LIFE, by Kate Bufold

While Lancaster's and Wayne's paths never crossed professionally, the author makes it a point to use Wayne's political efforts to mirror Burt's. Since Wayne was always "the first" the Republicans asked to help their causes, it was always Burt who was approached first by the liberals - and he never said "No". The book follows a life fully lived by the great life of the circus acrobat turned movie star. When he shot "Cattle Annie" on Wayne's Durango ranch (in 1979 but not released before 1982) and the news of Wayne's death reached the set, they stopped shooting for a day.

While the Republic plates are certainly nice, I believe the artist the Wayne family commissioned to do the official plates, Robert Tanenbaum, captured him best.

I was thrilled to set foot on Mr. Cartwright's spread myself one time. Only one thing was wrong: they tell the tourists "Yep - that's where it all happend." The hell it did. Bonanza was shot on soundstages of Warner Brothers - the whole Ponderosa set was built there - and even though it was a great set, it's clearly visible (painted backdrops) in most shots dealing with the immediate outside of the ranch. Of course they travelled to Tahoe every once in a while to do some cover shots, to "blurr" the lines between sets and real outdoor shots. The indoor ranch set which must be a working set - so you can take walls away to move the camera and have lights in the ceiling etc. - was done at Hollywood as well.

Pernell Roberts wanted out because he felt he had more to give as an actor than to play the same part over and over. And there was a feud between him and Little Joe which he regretted later.

The Book "Bonanza" (link to Amazon) will tell you all about each episode and guest-star:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=books&n=507846

I bought the book because I always wanted to know why Pernell Roberts wanted out.

Interesting enough, when shown on German TV, they usually try to get the scene out where the Nazis shoot the Allied prisoners - but the Panzerlied stays untouched.

Hi Michaelle
"Sharing JW with our folks" I do - or rather, I sometimes force it on them. Don't we all? After all, they have to put up with that. And they have to make room in the house for the memorabilia, don't they? So - it's best they get used to his image on the walls in a hurry.

BTW, you won't find an island called Navarone (or Navarrone, for that matter ) on the Greek map. But if you ever take a trip to Rhodes, take a better look: They still call one of the shooting locations the "Anthony Quinn Bay" today. The beautiful old city was the background for the castle scenes.

"Guns" won the Oscar for Best Special Effects.

As for the anti-war comments in the film: When it first came out, it was something completely new, actually the start of a new warfilm-subgenre: the "commando"-film which was en vogue thereafter. We might look at it differently today because so many others came along after that, a strong anti-military-film like Dirty Dozen might not have been made without "Guns" showing the way. It's really a bunch of subordinent specialists who aren't so much interested in the outcome of the war but in their personal matters: THAT's what was new then. Before that, Hollywood hat created the so-called "unit"-film, which was a propaganda product during the war: it always dealt with an unit and teamwork for the higher goal. Something the commando film completely lacks.

In the Fifties, Foreman couldn't have made the same film with the same dialogue in Hollywood. I don't remember MacLean's novels, both "Guns" and the sequel, being that anti-military, just strong, simple hero-stories. Foreman added the critical elements. The one line in "Guns", spoken by Peck on the boat, changed the direction of war-films, about having to be as nasty as the enemy to win, but: What happens when we wake up one morning and find out we're even nastier than the enemy?

It's on the German tube quite often. Interesting pairing of Brynner and newcomer West Side Story's Bernardo: George Chakiris.