This nice guy wants to use you to explore his neurotic sex obsession … for another woman, not you.

 

Hello!

Why do we plug random stuff?  Because we LIKE it. Back in high school I took a chance on the first London Phase IV LP of Bernard Herrmann’s themes for Alfred Hitchcock, a record I played until the grooves wore out. The Psycho music was a huge hit; Vertigo prepared me for a fantastic screening at a Grauman’s Chinese FILMEX marathon in the Fall of 1970.

Later on, I eagerly invested in the Charles Gerhardt albums with re-recordings of themes from other great Hollywood composers. In many cases I had the music memorized long before seeing the actual movie, as was the case with  Friendly Persuasion by Dimitri Tiomkin,  The Red House by Miklos Rozsa and  The Constant Nymph by Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

In my last year of high school arrived Bernard Herrmann’s Phase IV take on Gustav Holst’s The Planets, which ended up being one of the records I played the most. I’m just reading now that it wasn’t well reviewed, that critics complained about Herrmann’s tempo changes to Holst’s music. I found the Herrmann slow-down to be hypnotic. Mars, The Bringer of War had twice the punch, and the final track Neptune, The Mystic was the closest this very square teenager got to a drug trip. As I was never very adept at the art of needle-drop, the three ancient copies of the LP upstairs are in various states of scratch-O-phonic sound.

I bring all this up because I don’t recall there ever having been a CD release of this album, and I always wanted one. Wayne Schmidt just tipped me off that it’s presently being sold by Screen Archives, so I’m taking the plunge on this new restoration and remaster from Quartet Records. I hope it’s good:

The Planets: Conducted by Bernard Herrmann.

 

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This week also gives me a chance to plug the multi-talented Michael Schlesinger, a Trailers from Hell guru by virtue of his directing and producing credits, but also for his good work in studio film distribution, promoting Samuel Fuller and rescuing classics from neglect.

But this week Trailers from Hell just finished posting trailers for a trio of comedy westerns for which Michael Schlesinger did the gab tracks: The Hallelujah Trail, Support Your Local Gunfighter and the Johnny Depp The Lone Ranger. Michael is a natural for this kind of personality-forward speaking. When I once covered TCMFest screenings, I’d make a point of attending Michael’s live introductions, ‘warming up the house’ for pictures like Johnny Guitar and One, Two, Three. In couple of minutes Michael could turn a sleepy, cranky 9am festival crowd back into movie enthusiasts. His many audio commentaries are funny, but also astute and well researched. The place to start is Michael’s marathon track for Criterion’s It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World — you’ll soon discover that it’s his favorite film.

Michael loves comedies … he has a good thing to say about every comedy, no matter how dire. Can he entice me to see The Hallelujah Trail again?  We’ll have to see about that.

We’ll be back with Michael when Sam Peckinpah’s Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid arrives on 4K early in July — he had a hand in keeping an alternate cut of that film from being obliterated.

Schlesinger’s Hallelujah Trail TFH Commentary …. and CineSavant’s Blu-ray review.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

One must never forget the ears … ears are important, Hoichi.

 

Hello!

CineSavant has but one review today, with a good excuse — we’re both working on some of the most-awaited titles for Spring, and I have some catching up to do after a weekend trip.

Charlie Largent and I have some great pictures in hand, that we want to give extra attention:  Once Upon a Time in the West 4K,  The Mask of Fu Manchu,  Bluebeard,  Planet of the Vampires,  Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors 4K plus wanna-cover titles like the Russian  Kin-Dza-Dza!, Nancy Savoca’s  Dogfight and  True Love,  Picnic at Hanging Rock and  High Noon 4K.

Until Saturday — thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

A serial killer in Nazi Berlin … a telling story of justice under political pressure.

 

Hello!  More Metropolis madness!

It’s a wave of Metropolis items today, cued when correspondent Ian Whittle sent along an image of the cover graphic for an old Australian VHS release — where somebody made a rather creative photo choice.  →  It goes into the hopper labeled ‘what’s wrong with this picture?’

The source is an older blog called  The Buffalo Report. The blog is an interesting catch-all, and its writer (R.J. Buffalo?) doesn’t date things consistently. At first glance, we wonder if his intention is to slam the famed Fritz Lang movie. His initial quote is  “Metropolis is an embarrassingly dreadful movie that is strangely addictive.”  But he then goes on to prove his obsession with the film.

His initial blog appears to be  When Metropolis Was on PBS. We saw it here in Los Angeles on our local PBS station late in 1978, touted as a UK restoration.  But Buffalo then continues with a long string of pages devoted to the Fritz Lang movie — 48 lengthy blog entries on the subject. They’re loaded with interesting observations and images, and scans of vintage newspaper articles. Metropolis received heavy editorial coverage wherever it played.

The first numbered entry is titled  Where It All Started. Included in the second posting are numerous newspaper articles reporting on and debating the merit of Channing Pollock’s notorious cut-down re-edit, that became the film’s (incoherent) international release version — and that was still deemed a masterpiece. But none of the 1927 editorials ask if Fritz Lang’s original is being retained.

Buffalo also links to the heavily researched and annotated posts of Michael Organ, an Australian. I see one string of his Metropolis- themed blogs beginning at  this link — it seems to be fairly recent. An example is a page from 2022 entitled  ‘Film Censor Cards and Lengths … which has an entire glossary of the film’s original German intertitles, with English translations. It’s claimed to be complete.

We see cards that correspond to scenes only in the  ‘Complete’ version … which is very interesting. Will this intertitle resource include titles from pieces of scenes still missing, and perhaps clear up some of the film’s remaining mysteries?  Even the Complete Version feels abridged, continuity-wise.

 

We’re still floored by Aitam Bar-Sagi’s post for his The Film Music Museum page, entitled  Metropolis Around the World. He updates the page as new information arrives. The long article gathers hard data, all documented, on where the film was shown and its exact length in different releases. Most are accompanied by original ads. It appears that Argentina received an uncut Metropolis premiere print because an exhibitor there made an early deal with UfA. His copy was struck and shipped to Buenos Aires before the Americans hired Channing Pollock to cut the movie down by half.

Aitam was a DVD Savant / CineSavant correspondent for quite a while back when the first pre-Argentina Murnau Stiftung restoration was done. Our screening at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s Bing Theater (since demolished) was a big deal, right after 9/11. The beautiful print was screened at 20 fps and Robert Israel provided a full music accompaniment. Mr. Bar-Sagi became a noted research contributor on subsequent restoration work.

I’m saving these links for further study … all this key source information is really fascinating. We plan to use one of the censor intertitle logs to read along with the video’s German inter-titles, and hopefully discover some new ones not in the ‘Complete’ video version.

(Note: all of the graphics enlarge.)

 

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Plus, a couple of extra announcements: the esteemed Alan K. Rode wants to spread the word that his Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival is having its 25th annual meet in May, out in the desert of Palm Springs, California. →

The screenings run from May 9-12 … they’re showing  Body and Soul,  No Man of Her Own, Across the Bridge and others; several screenings have special guests. The full info is at

Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival 

 

 

 

←  And Tom Weaver is spreading the word that the Ed Wood-written monster opus The Bride and the Beast, with Tom’s fun audio commentary, can now be watched on Youtube.

The movie is funny by itself, but Tom’s commentary (from 2005?) enlists the film’s star Charlotte Austin, actor Slick Slavin and movie gorilla expert (and a lot more) Bob Burns.

CineSavant was tickled to learn that Ms. Austin interrupts the commentary because she wanted to read a funny excerpt from a review she found online … and it’s the old DVD Savant review. The comment begins at 50:40.

The Bride and the Beast Commentary Version

 

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

“Don’t get attached to items you might find during your trip;
think of how awkward and inconvenient they may become later on.”

 

Hello!

Michael McQuarrie sends us another Hollywood-themed movie reel from ‘Periscope’ … the kind of vintage reel that offers glimpses into a past that fascinates us at CineSavant. Two-thirds of this half-hour is spent bopping around typical Hollywood views, starting with Grauman’s Chinese, festooned with a big sign proclaiming in CinemaScope, There’s No Business Like Show Business.

In addition to the usual sights — hey, it’s our Fairfax Farmer’s Market, you know from the Bosch books — we get a nice peek at one of the RKO back lots with ruined fake buildings, etc., and lots of neon on Hollywood Blvd. The last third drifts away to the original Knotts Berry Farm, and then to San Francisco and San Diego, ending at San Juan Capistrano. The link is at

1954 Visit to Hollywood and More 

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The new issue of the Noir City magazine is out, and once again it is a winner — editor Imogen Sara Smith and the contributing authors tap interesting angles about noir films and related hardboiled topic in literature and the (mostly) Los Angeles night world made famous in pulp fiction and pulpier movies. This issue has articles on first rank film locations (Mary Mallory), and more obscure filming destinations (Eddie Muller):

Noir City.Nicholas Laskin digs deep into the ‘street realism’ film Crime Wave, and Imogen Sara Smith seeks out insights on the ‘street rejects’ seen in the semi-docus The Savage Eye and The Exiles. There’s more coverage of neo-noir (Brian Raftery), Hardcore, The Limey and Mulholland Drive (Danilo Castro), and a debate as to whether the horror film Night Tide can be pigeonholed as noir — which also offers a telling history of the Venice Beach area.

The magazine again has more hard content (and nicer photos) than many a noir book on the market. It can be ordered at the  Film Noir Foundation News Page.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

Spectacle on a vast scale, plus world-class fantasy visuals.

 

Hello!

After Michael McQuarrie cued us to those Li’L Abner wrap party home movies the other day, the ones with Julie Newmar on the sailboat, we sent out a request in case any readers could identify any of the other party guests. Correspondent Walt House came back with one we should have caught, the famed songwriter Johnny Mercer.

That’s the only new I.D. so far, but friend and correspondent Rick Crawford sent along another YouTube link we enjoyed, by Cool Classics. It’s a long-form video show on the full career of Julie Newmar, extremely well documented with rare images and well-chosen film clips. She’s really a talent to admire … the link:

The Unknown Life of Julie Newmar 

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The relatively new branded line Janus Contemporaries works on a Criterion level with new titles — we reviewed their Christian Petzold film Afire back in February.

They’ve just announced, for July 23, the release of Wim Wenders’ 2023 film Anselm, a documentary portrait of the painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer. The interesting thing is that the disc will be released in a 3-D Blu-ray + 2-D Blu-ray combo.

It ought to be a very special disc for 3-D fans — Criterion’s disc of Wim Wenders’ 2011 dance film Pina is one of the best 3-D demo discs on our ‘depth’ shelf. A Janus page describing the film (for theatrical bookings) is here.

Thanks for reading! — Glenn Erickson

“Whe-e-e-ere Ih-hihss-sss Dahawhkkk-terrr Marrarrv-vinnn-nuh?”