The Lady From Shanghai 8/13 @ 5PM

The Lady from Shanghai is a 1947 film noir directed by Orson Welles and starring Welles, his estranged wife Rita Hayworth and Everett Sloane. It is based on the novel If I Die Before I Wake by Sherwood King.

Michael O'Hara (Orson Welles) meets the beautiful blonde Elsa (Rita Hayworth) as she rides a horse-drawn coach in Central Park. Shortly thereafter three hooligans waylay the coach, Michael rescues her and escorts her home. Michael reveals he is a seaman and learns Elsa and her husband, the famous disabled criminal defense attorney Arthur Bannister (Everett Sloane), are newly arrived in New York City from Shanghai. They are on their way to San Francisco via the Panama Canal. Michael, attracted to Elsa despite misgivings is persuaded to sign on as an able seaman aboard Bannister's yacht.

After setting sail, they are joined on the boat by Bannister's law partner, George Grisby (Glenn Anders), who proposes that Michael "murder" him in a plot to fake his own death and collect the insurance money for himself. He promises Michael $5,000 and explains that since he wouldn't really be dead and thus there would be no corpse, Michael couldn't be convicted of murder (reflecting corpus delicti laws at the time.) Michael agrees to this, intending to use the money to run away with Elsa, with whom he's begun a relationship. Grisby has Michael sign a confession.

On the eve of the crime, Sydney Broome, a private investigator who has been following Elsa on her husband's orders, confronts Grisby. Broome has learned of Grisby's plan and that he is actually intending to murder Bannister, frame Michael for the crime and escape suspicion by pretending to have also been murdered. Grisby shoots Broome and leaves him for dead. Unaware of what has happened, Michael proceeds with the night's arrangement and sees Grisby off on a motorboat before shooting a gun into the air to draw attention to himself. Meanwhile, a severely injured Broome goes to Elsa for help and warns her that Grisby is intending to kill her husband.

Thinking the plan is done with, Michael calls to inform Elsa but is surprised to find Broome on the other end of the line. Broome's dying words are to warn Michael that Grisby was setting him up. Michael rushes to Bannister's office in time to see Bannister is alive but that the police are removing Grisby's body from the premises. The police instantly find evidence that Michael was the killer, including his confession, and take him away.

At trial, Bannister has offered to act as Michael's attorney and feels the case is more likely to be won if he pleads justifiable homicide, due to all the evidence against his client. As the trial progresses Bannister learns of the extent of his wife's relationship with Michael and ultimately takes pleasure in his suspicion that they will lose the case. Bannister also indicates that he knows the real killer's identity. Michael is able to escape from the courtroom by feigning a suicide attempt before the verdict is to be announced. Elsa follows and she and Michael hide out in a theater in Chinatown. Elsa calls some Chinese friends to meet her. As Michael and Elsa wait and pretend to watch the show, Michael discovers that she had killed Grisby. Elsa's Chinese friends arrive and take Michael, unconscious, to an abandoned Fun House. When he wakes, he realizes that Grisby and Elsa had been planning to murder Bannister and frame him for the crime, but that Broome's involvement ruined the scheme and obliged Elsa to kill Grisby for her own protection.

The film features a surreal climactic shootout in a hall of mirrors, the Magic Mirror Maze, in which Elsa is mortally wounded and Bannister is killed. Heartbroken, Michael leaves presuming that events which have unfolded since the trial will clear him of any crimes. Wikipedia

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0040525/

"The Misfits" rescheduled for 8/6

The Misfits 7/30 @ 5 pm

This once nearly forgotten movie, the last film of Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe is now coming forward in the lexicon of film history as an underrated gem. Universally misunderstood for the most part at the time it came out it is clear now that this film was at least five of six years ahead of it's time. It fits in more comfortably with films of the late 60's and early 70's. The screenplay by Miller is one of his most striking works. A story of a group of people lost in the wide expanse of the West in search of the discarded souls of their misspent lives. The film's beautiful cinematography by Russell Metty stands out as superb artistry at the demise of the black and white era. It shimmers with the silver of the deep expanse of the desert and the flat grays and blacks of the distant mountains upon which the last act of the story plays. The music by Alex North is among his best work and gives a savage punch to the aerial scenes and the round up at the end of the wild mustangs. Montgomery Clift, by now sliding into the last years of his life is touching in his performance of Perce. His broken cowboy with the broken heart is almost painful to watch. His phone call home to his mother is among some of his best work. Eli Wallach gives a strong deeply moving portrait of Guido who has lost his wife, his way, and his humanity. He shines in his scene with Monroe where he asks her to save him. When she can't to at least say `Hello Guido'. Thelma Ritter is, well, Thelma Ritter in yet another of her excellent character roles. Ritter is the master of the one line wisecrack but here as Isobel she laces the cracks with an underlying sadness and vulnerability.....

Review on IMDB by MGMboy (San Francisco) see the rest at:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0055184/

2 other links of interest:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/shows/misfits/misfits.html
http://www.desertusa.com/mag05/nov/misfits.html

Name of the Rose 7/23 @ new time: 5PM

Last week we saw the Terence Malick film: The New World predicated by a discussion and interest in Malick's most recent and somewhat controversial film: Tree of Life; see a preview of that film and a link to a review below.

REVIEW of Tree Of Life

The Name of the Rose is the first novel by Italian author Umberto Eco that you may want to check out at the Gardiner Library. It is a historical murder mystery set in an Italian monastery in the year 1327, an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. First published in Italian in 1980 under the title Il nome della rosa, it appeared in English in 1983, translated by William Weaver.

Source: Wikipedia

San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983.
ISBN:	0151446474

Film: The New World 7/16

Terrence Malick directed Tree of Life out in theaters now and these other films:

2005 The New World (written by)

 

2002 Bear's Kiss (screenplay - uncredited)

 

1998 The Thin Red Line (screenplay)

 

1978 Days of Heaven (written by)

 

1974 The Gravy Train (as David Whitney)

 

1973 Badlands (written by)

 

1972 Pocket Money (screenplay / as Terry Malick)

 

1972 Deadhead Miles (written by)

 

1971 Drive, He Said (uncredited)

Film Books at the Gardiner Library

The library has a wonderful collection of film books that were generously donated by the Rinaldo family. A few I've singled out for this week are below.

Setting the Scene: The Great Hollywood Art Directors FILM 791.43 SENN

Robert S. Sennett

Synopsis:

Setting the Scene: The Great Hollywood Art Directors pays tribute to those who make everyone else's work come alive, surveying the careers of the greatest Hollywood art directors from the silent era to the present, examining their work in detail. After a brief history the role the art director played in the Hollywood studio system, Setting the Scene looks at particular art directors' careers, their productions and sets, analyzing how art direction contributes to the success of the finished film. The book covers such memorable films as The Birth of a Nation and Batman.

Behind the scenes of The Blackguard (1925, dir. Graham Cutts) Art direction by Alfred Hitchcock

When Hitchcock arrived on the set of The Blackguard, the great German director F.W. Murnau was filming The Last Laugh nearby on the UFA lot. Hitchcock either engaged Murnau in conversation, or overheard him tell others: “What you see on the set does not matter. All that matters is what you see on the screen.”

Hitchcock never missed an opportunity to quote this remark, which became a cornerstone of his own approach: The reality didn’t matter if the illusion was effective. He then emulated Murnau by hiring a slew of dwarves to stand far from the camera in The Blackguard, creating an artificial perspective for a crowd scene.

  FILM 791.430 B HIT

-excerpted from Patrick McGilligan’s
Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light

Seductive Cinema: The Art of Silent Film
FILM 791.4309 CARD

James Card

From Publishers Weekly

In this lively, opinionated, delightful chronicle of the silent film era, film historian Card deflates the "near-hysterical devotion" to D. W. Griffith, arguing that his Biograph movies were not revolutionary in comparison with European silents. Moreover, asserts Card, the oft-repeated claim that Griffith invented the closeup and film editing is false; that honor here goes to British filmmaker James Williamson. Card, a pioneer collector and founder of the George Eastman film archive, praises the underrated pretalkie achievements of King Vidor and Cecil B. DeMille, while panning director Josef von Sternberg's "incredible lapses." Studded with glimpses of Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, John Barrymore, Greta Garbo, plus dozens more, and marvelously illustrated with photos and stills, this engaging blend of criticism, history, autobiographical reminiscence and film lore will captivate even those with only a passing interest in the silents.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Black Orpheus 7/9

Black Orpheus (Portuguese: Orfeu Negro) is a 1959 film made in Brazil by French director Marcel Camus. It is based on the play Orfeu da Conceição by Vinicius de Moraes, which is an adaptation of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, setting it in the modern context of a favela in Rio de Janeiro during the Carnaval. The film was an international co-production between production companies in Brazil, France and Italy.
The film is particularly renowned for its soundtrack by two Brazilian composers: Antônio Carlos Jobim, whose song "A felicidade" opens the film; and Luiz Bonfá, whose "Manhã de Carnaval" and "Samba of Orpheus" have become bossa nova classics.
See more : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Orpheus

two good links to explain the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice:

http://www.greekmyths-greekmythology.com/orpheus-and-eurydice/
http://www.greeka.com/greece-myths/orpheus-eurydice.htm