Old Directors

[mido505]

tonyw:

Here we are. Let's start with Hitchcock, as he is such a great case study. His is one of the truly great careers in cinema. A silent classic with THE LODGER. The amazing group of sound films in England. The move to Hollywood and the triumph of REBECCA. Then a string of hits and misses until 1951 when, with STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, he starts knocking them out of the park. In 1960, at the peak of his creative and box office power, he takes note of the success of Hammer Films in England, and the Nouvelle Vague in France (now there's a strange combo!) and gives us the incomparable PSYCHO and THE BIRDS. Then it all falls apart.

Unlike Tony, I don't dislike MARNIE; I think it's a wreck, but a fascinating wreck, and I enjoy rewatching it every couple of years or so. But I think Hitchcock really went off the rails with that one. Marnie is an ugly film, technically and psychologically, and Hitchcock, even at his most horrific, had never been ugly before. And he stayed ugly thereafter. We all, I suppose, have our favorite late-period Hitchcock; Tony's is FAMILY PLOT. Mine is FRENZY, which I admire for its technical accomplishment and mordant black humor, but it is another ugly, nasty film, with nary a sympathetic character (Anna Massey excepted) in sight. The technical prowess that FRENZY exhibited in 1972 showed that Hitch still had the right stuff in that regard at age 73. So why the implosion?

In Hitchcock's case, the dense armour of repression and sublimation that held his personality in check began to pop its rivets like the hull of a rusting barge. The movies weren't enough any more. He wanted it real, and there was an ugly scene with Hedren, which may or may not have included a proposition. By all accounts, he lost complete interest in MARNIE after this. An appalled studio tried to put the genii back in the bottle with TORN CURTAIN and TOPAZ, but Hitch could have cared less. He didn't want to do "Hitchcock" thrillers any more, and only roused himself for the death scenes. By the time of FRENZY, rape, murder, and food were all this complex, repressed, brilliant, bitter, troubled, disillusioned director had left.

Hitchcock was the anti-Welles; repression was never Welles' issue, to say the least. But repression allowed Hitch to play the Hollywood studio game for a long, long time. Welles, who played that game less well, understood this, and repression plays a big component in TOSOTW. Hitchcock's obsessions and repression were essentially heterosexual, and Jake Hannaford's homosexual, but from this angle, there does seem to be a lot of Hitch in Jake. His career is over when he can't keep it together.

I've been rewatching THE TRIAL as I write this. Joseph K, whom Welles told Anthony Perkins was "guilty as hell", is an innocent who cannot survive in a perverted system that thrives on repression. He is guilty because he feels no guilt. Nice irony there. Is it too much of a stretch to see Welles, who never seems to have felt guilt in his life, as K? And to suggest that Hitch, as guilt-ridden a man who ever lived, as a talented Block who woke up one day and wanted to be K, but was too late?

[Tony]

As usual, Mido, I don't disagree with anything you've said, and said so well. I can only add that, as I'm sure you know, Hitch's last picture, scripted but not filmed, is the Short Night, and its a terrific script. I've always regretted his not being able to finish it.

And yes, Hitch was very heterosexual, but the werd thing about Welles is all the gay stuff in his late films, and the double-male relationships in all his pictures. If TOSOTW and BBR had come out, people might have started talking. Perhaps, though, Welles was fascinated with repression, and Hitchock was repressed.

But of course, I love them both, even though they could both be very cruel and sadistic.

Hmmmm.........

[nextren]

I believe Hitchcock was putting himself back together psychologically (re-repressing?) with Family Plot and the script of The Short Night. Family Plot is the work of a cynic and pervert, but it is very well-controlled and well-judged and shot through with his former warmth and humor. The Short Night script is even more "human," though with touches of the strange (a dangerous lesbian; explicit extramarital sex - with at-a-distance masturbation - between two people who have only recently met; etc.). That script, too, is well-organized.

Once somebody has produced work identified as genius-level, a national arts center or program should devote funds to preserving him or her regardless of favor. In Hitch's case, probably little could have been done to keep him from going off the rails. But in Welles's case, the/a government should have given him grants in the form of multi-picture contracts.

We preserve wildlife; why not geniuses? Of course we can't expect the genius to ask for it.

I suppose the govt. can't afford it. Bombing people on the other side of the world is more important...

[Skylark]

I find it ironic that despite Hitchcock's track record, he couldn't get the studio green light for Psycho because Vertigo, a more concerted attempt by Hitchcock at a more serious and deep work, was a box office disapointment. Thus leading him to go a more 'independant' route by making it self-financed on a low-budget, referencing Welles' Touch of Evil quite noticeably to boot.

It was a big hit, although IMO considerably less ambitious and more simplified than TOE.

[Alan Brody]

http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/14/psycho.html

[tonyw]

As Larry Cohen said, "Lew Wasserman made Hitchcock a very rich man but a frustrated creative one." A clause in H's contract stated that he could never film his cherished project MARY ROSE. However, he was not that repressed and humorously referred to social represession in his British films such as the rat at the dinner table sequence in YOUNG AND INNOCENT and the lesbian at the birthday party run by Nova Pilbeam's aunt later in the film. Look closely at the panning shot showing the geuests. Also innuendo is blatant in the bedtime scene in THE LADY VANISHES with Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne.

Despite his more closer involvement with the studio system, H. did try to be experimental but in a much more nuanced manner that Welles and both obviously knew each other's films.

[ToddBaesen]

First of all, let me say I don't want to be to confrontational, because I usually agree with Tony and Mido, but I find it very strange that they are so off course in their opinions of Old directors, and particuarly on MARNIE. Like TonyW, I think (as Robin Wood does) the film to be a masterpiece. So I think to say Hitchcock should have retired after THE BIRDS is a very strange comment. Or to say Welles should have retired after CHIMES... equally strange.

Now I won't go as far as Robin Wood does, who says if you don't like MARNIE, you don't like cinema... But since I happen to agree with Robin Wood, I think his statement is basically right, since MARNIE is such a masterpiece of moviemaking.

So to say MARNIE is not widely considered as a great film is just wrong. . It was badly reviewed in 1964, that is quite true, but Robin Wood has led the revisionist auteur critics, who like me, consider MARNIE to be a Hitchcock masterpiece. Robin Wood is widely considered the greatest authority on Hitchcock, so if you want to disagree with him, thats fine, but to say he's wrong is just foolish. Backing up Wood are such people as Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Sarris, Rosenbaum, alongside film mags like Cahiers, Film Comment, Positif, Nickelodeon, etc. They all agree on the merits of MARNIE. Now, quite obviously you can disagree and say MARINE is a mess, but you cannot say MARNIE is not considered by many people and critics, to be a great work of cinematic art.

Along the same lines, how can anyone say that Welles, Hitchcock or Kubrick should have stopped making movies before they made what many cineastes consider their final masterpieces, such as MARNIE, F FOR FAKE and EYES WIDE SHUT.

Can anyone really say that such films shouldn't have been made, just because you don't happen to like them? Would you deny someone else the joy of seeing what they might find to be a great cinematic masterpiece? I happen to think all three of these films are great works of art, and think a great majority of moviegoers may learn to enjoy them in the future. So it's really very narrow minded thinking to say this film or that film should have never have been made. It's fine to express your dislike of a movie, but what gives you the right to say a great director, like Welles, Hitchcock or Kubrick should have stopped making movies after such and such a film? Based on that kind of thinking, Welles should have stopped making movies after CITIZEN KANE, since the majority of people seem to think it was all downhill for Welles after that.

Based on this logic, you could say Welles shouldn't have gotten to direct KING LEAR because he was overweight and approaching 70. If you really think that, I guess we now know why no studio would back Welles brilliant later scripts such as THE DREAMERS and THE CRADLE WILL ROCK.

The thinking in studio offices probably went something like this:

Orson Welles is this overweight genuis, who is close to 70 years old. He might die of a heart attack while acting or directing on the set, so we better not give him even a mere $4 million to make a small art house movie. Besides, he hasn't made a really good movie since CITIZEN KANE, and none of his movies has ever really made any money.

In reality, Welles at the end of his life was at the height of his artistic powers, and could have easily made several great films, if he was only given the small amount of money he needed to create another masterpiece. And even if he dropped dead while declaiming the HOWL, HOWL, HOWL... speech in KING LEAR, to me, having even a short version of a Welles directed LEAR would have been well worth it.

[Harvey Chartrand]

Bravo, Todd. I couldn't agree with you more. It amazes me – I mean, I am truly floored by the fact that members of the Wellesnet board who constantly lament Welles's lost opportunities as a director are adopting the same mindset as the studio bosses who wouldn't let the Great Orson anywhere near his "million dollar paintbox"!
I interviewed Welles's friend and colleague Curtis Harrington several times in his final years and it was so sad to hear about his struggle to raise a measly $500,000 to $1 million for his cherished Edgar Allan Poe project THE MAN OF THE CROWD or his mad scientist story CRANIUM. Curtis was a great director whose death last May went virtually unnoticed by the mainstream media. Even some genre publications failed to give Curtis's death much more than a brief mention. And I doubt that Curtis will be on next year's Oscar night honor roll of recently deceased showbiz personalities.
I am convinced that Curtis in his later years could have made a few more excellent low-budget thrillers like THE KILLING KIND if someone had seen beyond his age and given him another kick at the can. Who knows if this marginalization by Hollywood didn't undermine Curtis's health. He had a stroke in 2005, from which he made a remarkable recovery, but now producers had another reason to snub him – his poor health. So perhaps Curtis represents this attitude that if you make one "bomb" in your mature years, you should hang up your megaphone for good. That bomb would have been the ill-fated MATA HARI biopic. See interview with Curtis Harrington at DVD Drive-in – http://www.dvddrive-in.com/features/cur ... ington.htm – for details about this production.
I saw MARNIE when it was released in 1964 and thought it was as good as anything Alfred Hitchcock had ever done. Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren had great chemistry. Wonderful supporting cast: Diane Baker, Louise Latham, even Welles's old associate Martin Gabel! MARNIE is obviously a solid well-made film. So why all the brickbats because of a few painted sets? Even TORN CURTAIN has some great moments: I like the scenes with secondary players Wolfgang Kieling, Gunter Strack and the late Hansjorg Felmy. Too bad Irish-Canadian expate Brian (pronounced Breen) Moore wrote such a lousy script. TOPAZ and FRENZY are masterpieces and FAMILY PLOT a breezy swan song. Yet there are those who claim Hitchcock should have retired after MARNIE's poor critical and commercial reception.
I didn't much care for EYES WIDE SHUT but if Stanley Kubrick were still around I'd certainly be looking forward to his next film.
But if Eli Roth comes a cropper with HOSTEL: PART II or if Robert Rodriguez lays a cinematic egg with PLANET TERROR, that's no reason to prevent these young turks from directing again, right?
Ageism is such a curse.

[tonyw]

Harvey and Todd, There is little that I can add. "Ageism is a curse" which is why I rarely feature photos of myself in books and articles, not that I''m a Howard Hughes type but because I think age is irrelevant and I'm not all that good looking anyway. I was once irked by a young graduate student who thought I should be retired after I reached the age of 50 but remained diplomatically polite and did not engage in a Wellesian tirade. When I first met Larry Cohen, who was then in his early 50s, he emphasized to me that "I'm writing much better now that I used to." It took me some time to realize that the ageist sub-text was very much in his mind. I remember another comment he made that if Clint Eastwood thought so highly of Budd Boetticher, then why did he not help him launch another film?

Welles died in 1985. If ageism was bad then, think what it is like now! For those posters who think that Welles was physically past it, I'd suggest they look at the featurette accompanying PRINCESS RACOON (TANAKI-GOTEN) showing 82 year-old Seijun Suzuki directing Zhang Ziyi who is obviously thrilled to be directed by such a master despite the language barrier. Also, look at the enthusiasm on the face of the young actors in rehearsals for BATTLE ROYALE 2 when the ailing Kinji Fukasaku is putting them through their paces. Then read ORSON WELLES REMEMBERED for the passages where these young talents speak of how thrilled they were to be working with Welles.

He was capable of much more and we should not "print the (Hollywood) legend" in the words of Carleton Young in THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE but investigate the available facts at our disposal. They all telll a very different picture.

[mido505]

ToddBaesen:

There is nothing wrong with being confrontational; the spark of debate ignites the fires of understanding. But I am not sure that using terms like "ignorant" and "narrow minded" is really conducive to enlightened discussion. Even a cursory glance and Tony's and my posts show that, whatever you might want to say about us, ignorance and narrow mindedness are not our most pronounced traits.

I understand your passion on this issue. It is a given that ardent film devotees like ourselves are going to have firmly held likes and dislikes that go against the grain of much critical and popular thinking. I just got stomped over at the LIBERTAS site for defending Keanu Reeves in a "Worst Movie Stars" thread; I have had friends openly laugh in my face for calling Reeves our generation's Garbo (that's not a joke). I (along with member robertdavidmonell) have raised a few eyebrows on this site for defending Jess Franco. I’ll give you a few more examples: I consider Marlon Brando's critically lambasted performance in THE MISSOURI BREAKS to be one of his greatest; I adore Robert Altman's much derided BUFFALO BILL; and, as I have written before, champion Mike Nichol's CATCH-22, a film that really brings out the hate in people.

Robin Wood is a brilliant critic, and his book, HOLLYWOOD, FROM VIETNAM TO REAGAN, is the single greatest book of film criticism that I have ever read. Wood's insightful criticism led me to revisit Martin Scorsese's THE KING OF COMEDY and William Friedkin's CRUISING, both notorious critical and box office bombs, and see them for the masterpieces that they are. But I disagree with Wood on other things (he despises David Cronenberg; I only despise him after DEAD RINGERS. Wood has great things to say about HEAVEN'S GATE; I fall asleep every time I try to rewatch it). And so it goes. But citing Wood, or anyone for that matter, as an authority is a dangerous game. Wood was one of the first passionate defenders of Wes Craven's THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT. That's a rough one. Is he right? Is he wrong? Neither, what he is is illuminating, which is what a great critic is supposed to be - he shows us things we hadn't seen before.

Film appeals to us on a very primal level, I think, right down into the foundations of personality; therefore, as individuals, we are bound to have fierce disagreements about the worth of certain films. In defending or rejecting films we are, in a way, defending that primal thing, the self, or rejecting things that we find inimical to it. In my own life, I have found that, as I change and grow, my own fiercely held opinions have often changed with me. For instance, in my hot youth, I was second to none in my high opinion of DePalma and Lynch; now I find them repugnant. Ignorance? Narrow mindedness? You decide.

The original point to this whole thread is a topic that was of some importance to Welles: why do so many older directors decline artistically (not all, some). Is it personal? Biological? Psychological? Institutional? Some combination thereof? We are using Hitchcock as an example. Why? First, because he is such an important figure. Second, because, whatever we may want to say about individual films, there is a general critical and popular consensus that Hitchcock’s movies exhibit a noticeable decline of quality and vision after THE BIRDS.

No one wants to throw any films into the trash. The point being made (somewhat hyperbolically, to be sure), is that, after a certain point, the films of many great directors cease to be essential. Please understand the distinction. I am not saying they are not interesting. I am not saying they are not entertaining. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they are not. What I am saying is that these directors are no longer doing their best work. What I am saying is that, if PSYCHO, and REBECCA, and THE BIRDS had never been made, the world would be a lesser place. On the other hand, if TOPAZ had never been made, I don’t think many people would miss it. To use another example, I am on record in another forum as saying that Martin Scorsese has not made an essential film since THE KING OF COMEDY bombed. That’s an extreme position, I know, but I hold to it. I don’t think that the history of cinema would be lessened by being deprived of his output from that point on (yes, including GOODFELLAS). But it would have been lessened by losing TAXI DRIVER and RAGING BULL. But Welles, and I, and Tony, and a number of others ask, why don't more directors, and especially Hollywood directors, continue making masterpieces right into their dotage? There is no obvious reason for them not to. Other artists do it, all the time. It's not ageism, its a legitimate question.

I cannot claim to speak for Tony, but I think the point he was making, in his inimitably unsentimental and brutally realistic fashion, was that, as much as we all fervently wish that Welles had completed those last projects, his terrible health may have precluded him from doing his best work. Welles was undoubtedly at the peak of his artistic powers near the end of his life. He was also a physical wreck. The man could barely stand up in the 80’s. Could he have pulled it off? Very possibly, yes. Equally likely, no. We’ll never know, because another unsentimental and realistic fellow, Death, intervened. But it is not ignorance and narrow mindedness to open that line of inquiry. Richard Lester, a frequently great film director, pretty much stopped directing before he was sixty years old. When asked why, he said that he didn’t have the stamina anymore.

Since I have tossed a few bombs lately, I'll toss one more. I don't like VERTIGO. Yes, I know it is supposed to be one of the master's best, but after upteen viewings it leaves me cold, and for a very specific reason. I just can't stand Kim Novak's performance. For me, she radiates nothing but immature self regard, so I fail to identify with Scotty's obsession with her character. In a film about obsession, that's a problem. I think Grace Kelly would have made VERTIGO great. I think Vera Miles might have made VERTIGO great. Hell, I think Tippi Hedren might have made a go of it. But Novak sinks the film. And to back me up, I'll cite a good authority, Hitchcock himself, who, when asked how he liked working with Novak, responded "Well, at least I got to throw her in the water!" I hope that Glenn Anders will not think the less of me for this!

[ToddBaesen]

Mido:

Your point about "ignorant" is well taken, and I've changed it to "strange' instead. However I still think it really is taking a narrow-minded view to say that any film director on the level of a Welles, a Hitchcock or a Kubrick should have retired, because they made a string of supposedly "bad" movies near the end of their careers.

[Phil Rosenthal]

What about the similarities/differences between Welles and Chaplin? They both functioned, much of their careers, outside the studio system. If Welles had had Chaplin's ability/foresight/opportunity/whatever to contruct his own studio within which to function - that's interesting to think about. I'd be interested in hearing anyone's comments about the similarities and differences between the two.

[Skylark]

http://www.chicagoreader.com/movies/archives/1999/0799/07239.html

The above an interesting review of Eyes Wide Shut by Jonathan Rosenbaum.

I saw the film only once - I thought it was good, but left disapointed over the perceived lack of drama - but I sort of sensed it was a movie that would require several viewings to appreciate the subtleties - similar experience with the Trial - which it seems to share quite a few similiarities with.

The throwaway and sometimes artificial quality of the exteriors conforms to the same expressionist system, and if the overall spatial orientation of the interiors at times recalls Welles, it's the Welles who wound up alternating oversize and cramped interiors in The Trial. Many reviewers of Eyes Wide Shut have been citing Martin Scorsese's After Hours--a picture even more indebted to Welles's The Trial in its handling of paranoia--but Welles's influence on Scorsese can be taken as a filtered form of Kafka's influence. (Kafka's story, unlike Welles's, is set almost entirely in cramped spaces.) In Schnitzler's novella the two scenes in the costume shop are already pure Kafka, especially in the uncanny way the relationships of the characters shift between the hero's two visits, and Kubrick catches both the queasiness and the unhealthy sexuality of Kafka at least as effectively as Welles did.

[tonyw]

The quote was very informative and, yes, EWS does need several viewings which a popcorn movie culture does not encourage. Also, both Kubrick and Welles explored the arena of film noir and utilized it in their more creative ways. By contrast, early Kubrick of THE DAY OF THE FIGHT also employed many aspects of naturalist cinematic style which Foster Hirsch sees as a major contribution to film noir in THE DARK SIDE OF THE SCREEN. By naturalism, I mean the primal atavism psychopathological regression that occur in Zola and Norris (especially MCTEAGUE) that Kubrick developed in his own particular manner in the "Dawn of Man" sequence of 2001, THE SHINING, and the zoom-in to Bill during his taxi ride revenge fantasy in EWS.

Also, James Naremore wrote an article on Kubrick and the Grotesque that appeared in FILM QUARTERLY last year that is part of his ON KUBRICK book. Both Welles and Kubrick also explored the grotesque style but in their inimitable creative ways.

[Skylark]

Nice article on Psycho and TOE - there is a reciprocal influence, as The Stranger seems significantly influenced by Hitch's Shadow of a doubt -

Marnie, I find interesting - I think the ending is a little too clean cut but nonetheless an interesting portrayal of criminal motivation - and a real direct expression of some of Hitch's themes. Torn Curtain ain't bad, Family Plot's pretty cool -

Bergman with Fanny and Alexander and Kurosawa with Tokyo Story are two directors that come to mind who have had graceful final films- Huston as well, to a certain extant.

With Chaplin, one could say that there are things in common, both are writing, acting, directing 'auteurs' with strong moral and social commentary - Welles being the tragedian to Chaplin's comedy, although Chaplin is fairly tragi-comic in many of his films - and he did take up a Wellesian project with Monsieur Verdoux, of course.