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Archive for the ‘DIRECTED BY Victor Fleming’ Category

RECKLESS

05 Oct

Reckless – directed by Victor Fleming. Dramedy. 97 minutes Black And White 1935.

★★★★

The Story: A Broadway musical comedy star is in love with her producer who is too above it all to propose, and tragedy ensues.

~

This was the product of David O Selznick during his brief stint at MGM while Irving Thalberg was recuperating from a heart attack in Europe, and it reveals two things plainly. One is how well-produced the film is, and Two is how ungainly his story ideas were. For the screenwriter is actually an alias for Selznick himself, and the story falls into traps which are fascinating to behold the actors climb out of or fail to climb out of. It’s worth seeing in all respects.

Selznick was L.B. Mayer’s son-in-law, and Thalberg had not been told of his replacement, so there is a certain shame before us here. The plot also hinges on a matter unspoken. Selznick resigned before long; he went into independent production, produced Gone With The Wind, using Victor Fleming to direct it; Thalberg returned to MGM and never trusted Mayer again.

What we have is a handful of terrific actors playing out a sophisticated backstage comedy, which turns violent. It was based on the Libby Holman scandal. And it starts with William Powell, that master of insouciance, playing a gambler with Damon Runyan sidekicks. He has backed the career of Jean Harlow as the actress. In a superb proposal scene you see Powell at his comic best; in a too-long drunk scene you see him ill served.

From the start, everything depends upon the skill of the playing of every actor before us. As a substitute for the absence of reality in the story, each must perform at the pitch of their talents, and they do.

Harlow is exuberant, convinced, lithe, and on target. Her grandmother is played by May Robson, and fortunately given a lot to do. Franchot Tone as the millionaire playboy is almost too good in the role. If he had been a bad actor the film might be better, but he isn’t. His is a portrait of a balloon bursting. Henry Stephenson as his father is a mystery of probity; is he kind; is he cruel? Rosalind Russell plays the jilted fiancée with a nobility so humorous you cannot but root for her. And Mickey Rooney as a child is so alive on the screen, you don’t wonder Spencer Tracy called him the best actor in Hollywood.

None of these players can extract the rotten tooth inflaming this material, which is a front-page story of the sort Warners did better. Fleming is a dynamic director; he never shows too much when he can help it. But you can just hear Selznick whispering those logorrheac memos over his shoulder. Still, Harlow triumphs in a closing closeup. Her voice is badly placed but her energy is winning. There is a wonderful moment she has picking up a hat and tossing it back. Watch for it. Audiences loved her not because she was sexy and didn’t wear underwear, but because she was so alive! She still is.

 

Gone With The Wind

08 Sep

Gone With The Wind – Directed by George Cukor, Victor Fleming, Sam Wood, Alfred Hitchcock. Drama. A selfish misguided flirt becomes a misguided survivalist. 220 minutes Color 1939.

* * * * *

It is the greatest movie ever made– because of its generosity of spirit. Everyone who made it hated everyone else who made it, and everyone hated David O. Selznick who produced it, produced it in the sense that he himself made it, and remade it, to his exact and exacting specifications. He was a terrible intruder, interloper, interferer, and one longs to know which particular details he interfered with. Perhaps and probably all details. I saw it when it came out. White dishes with red borders were the door prizes, given out in intermission at the Roosevelt Theatre in Flushing, now no longer existent. My mother took us, and I was restless; I was six. On its re-release I saw it, and was mightily moved. I thought it was the story of Melanie Wilkes. I took myself to be that devoted soul, though I lacked the deep kindness. I was more like Oona Munson as Belle Watling. Later on when I saw it, I realized it was the story of Scarlett O’Hara. The part is perfectly cast, because Vivien Leigh had a divinity’s charm, the inner hellcat, the greed for life’s rewards, and the daring to go for them, and it is her greatest screen work. Scarlett seizes other people’s property to gain her ends, and she is perfectly matched in this by Selznick himself. We hand it to Scarlett on the grounds of her sheer vivacity. And we never blame her. Why? Because she represents the triumph of what, despite our failings and meanness, we all deserve and what we will sacrifice for it. Scarlett is an accomplishment, Vivien Leigh’s performance is an accomplishment, and the film is an accomplishment, and it is all the same accomplishment, and that remains stirring to this day. The production is splendid. William Cameron Menzies sets, Jack Cosgrove’s backgrounds, Max Steiner’s moving score – all are exemplary, as are the pens of those responsible for its screenplay, Sydney Howard, Ben Hecht, Oliver Garrett and others. Olivia de Haviland wept selfishly at the Oscars when her Melanie lost to the first black actor ever to win an acting award, Miss Hattie McDaniel, who is tops. Everyone is at their best except Leslie Howard who, as an actor, in fact actually appears to be the milksop someone accuses Ashley Wilkes as being. And, above all, if he is forgotten for every other picture he ever made, he will be known and remembered perfectly for the part which captures his humor, his great charm, his mountainous masculinity, his physical beauty, his irresistible sexiness, and his great skill as an actor – in the part of Rhett Butler — Clark Gable.

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Joan Of Arc

11 Jul

Joan of Arc – Directed by Victor Fleming. A teenage country girl is inspired to save France, does it, and is punished for her trouble. Two and a half hours Color 1947.

*

One wonders what Ingrid Bergman saw in this story. She had always wanted to play it; she had done it on the New York stage; she was to make an Italian movie of it later; she was to perform Claudel and Honegger’s version of it on the European stage. The illiterate lass had the spirit of a brazen adolescent (as in G.B. Shaw) and at 17 bent her steps for King Louis’ court to win back the key city of Orleans from the Burgundians and to crown Louis at Rheims Cathedral, which she did. Not content to sit out her fame at his court, she defied Louis, raised an army of her own, and in battle after battle never won another, and only stopped when she was captured, sold by the british, tried by the Burgundians in an ecclesiastical court under Bishop Cauchon as a heretic, and handed back to the British to be burned at the stake, which extinguished her bold life aged 19. Why would Bergman want to play a part which went against so much that she had done in films? In films she played the hard-done-to one, the put-upon lady who was shuffled about or abused, as in Intermezzo, Notorious, For Whom The Bell Tolls, Gaslight, Casablanca. But Joan of Arc was a go-getter, a careerist par excellence. Julie Harris’s Lark made her feisty and Uta Hagen made her sturdy. Maybe Bergman wanted to do something entirely different from her usual way. And so, huge star that she was, aged 33, an enormous movie is mounted for her. Victor Fleming, used to the difficulties of massive movies and munchkins, directs it, and the action sequences are pretty good all right. For supporting players we have the massive Francis L. Sullivan as Bishop Cauchon, and he moves about the room like a room in a room. Jose Ferrer plays the Dauphin Louis. Yet, with all of this, the only thing you can look at are the costumes, which are sensational, and which won an Oscar that year. As did the cinemaphotography, which is glorious, particularly as it deals with Ingrid Bergman’s face which had to be carefully lit, and is, and could only successfully be photographed on the left side, which it, for the most part, is. And what sort of Joan emerges from these luxuries? The same put-upon lady she had played so many times before.  Her emotionalization of the role crashes against the story of Joan like a cannonball of custard. That weeping girl  could no more have saved France than a cow could polka. I saw the longer version. There is a shorter version. I recommend no version at all.

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