Like Anna Karina's Sweater

Looks like Welles, feels like Welles....but isn't Welles

Arriving on the heels of The Magnificent Ambersons is the 1943 curiosity Journey Into Fear, a film that Orson Welles did not direct, at least not officially, but has his fingerprints all over it. The film has a troubled history, and the sixty-eight minute cut that exists today offers glimpses into what could have been a great film, instead of the better-than-average (but clunky) thriller that it is. There are conflicting stories about the film -- some claim Orson was set to direct it, but was busy in South America filming It's All True. Others insist that it was little more than a contractual obligation film, and Welles was happy to give it to Norman Foster, the credited director. Yet quite a few of Welles' signatures can be found -- from the distinctively Citizen Kane-ish title card, to the finale, set on a building ledge during a rainstorm. Most of his Mercury Theater group are in the film, as is Jack Moss (Welles' business partner), playing a Nazi assassin (pictured, left). The screenplay, written by Welles and star Joseph Cotten was meant to be "the opposite of an action picture", but RKO wasn't interested in anything so clever -- they wanted a suspense picture, and wound up removing anything not related to the already paper-thin suspense plot. (The film was so badly chopped up that an expository voiceover track was added just to make some sense of it.) The plot couldn't be any simpler -- Joseph Cotten plays Howard Graham, an American engineer sent to Turkey on business. After narrowly escaping from an attempted assassination, he is forced onto a ship by the almost Stalin-esque Colonel Haki (Welles), so as to protect him from his Nazi pursuers. The bulk of the film takes place aboard the ship, where we meet a gaggle of eccentric characters, including an exotic, flirty nightclub singer (Welles' girlfriend Dolores del Rio), a Turkish tobacco salesman, a "good" German, and a cowardly socialist. The entire sequence is actually quite comical, and we feel for the hapless Graham, thrust against his will onto this ship of fools. The cast of Welles regulars, including Agnes Moorehead, Ruth Warrick and the great Everett Sloane have fun with their roles, and Welles himself is totally over the top with his performance as the cunning but likeable Turkish Colonel. There are some wonderful moments in the film, particularly the opening, which finds the assassin preparing in his dilapidated little room while listening to a scratchy opera 78 that sticks on certain lines. It's a wonderful little device that sets the tone for the film, especially coming as it does before the opening credits roll. The grand finale on the building ledge is utterly Wellesian, and it's likely that he directed the sequence. (When asked about it years later, he responded that it was directed by "whoever was nearest the camera." Yeah.) The tacked on epilogue, while nowhere near as criminal as the studio-mandated butchering of The Magnificent Ambersons, is quite ridiculous. Still, with inspired cinematography (shades of Gregg Toland), a wonderful cast, and some great dialogue, Journey Into Fear, while not quite as Welles intended, has a lot to offer in just over an hour. Journey Into Fear is only available on a Region 2 DVD from France, but shows up on Turner Movie Classics fairly often.

The Invisible Imaginary Ubiquitous Winged Witness

When looking at various lists of great and/or important directors of the last fifty years, few will include Alexander Mackendrick, which is a bit of a shame. With only nine features to his name, his somewhat scattershot oeuvre is rarely considered as a whole. People either think of him as the director of some outstanding Ealing comedies (The Man in the White Suit, The Ladykillers, etc.), adventure films that appeal to children (Sammy Going South, A High Wind in Jamaica), or his dark masterpiece, Sweet Smell of Success. (The greatest screenplay ever, in Filmbrain's not-so-humble opinion.) Though his style changed over the years, his approach to filmmaking remained consistent, and his masterful technique can be found in all of his films. When Mackendrick finally called it quits as a director (he wasn't much interested in playing the Hollywood game), he decided to share his passion for and philosophy of filmmaking with others by becoming a professor at the California Institute of the Arts. For the next twenty-five years (until his death in 1993) he taught a select group of students from around the world everything he knew about filmmaking, and then some. British author and director Paul Cronin has spent the last few years pulling together anything and everything available related to these courses, as well as conducting extensive interviews with former students of Mackendrick, and the resulting book (On Film-making) and film (Mackendrick on Film) are so utterly vital that it will establish a place for Cronin in the history of cinema. The material in both the book and the film will no doubt become more valuable as time goes by -- with each passing year there are fewer and fewer directors who consider filmmaking as a process the way Mackendrick did (his mantra to students was "process, not product"). As technological advances continue to simplify the "craft" of filmmaking, these lectures will become all the more important, for they serve as a blueprint for cinema itself, described in detail by somebody who truly mastered the craft. Cronin was in town last week for the Tribeca Film Festival, where they screened two of the seven hours of material he has. To say that the experience was enlightening would be an understatement. The bulk of the material shown concentrated on the screenwriting process, and Mackendrick's approach might at first seem hostile to some screenwriters. Though he never downplays the importance of a good screenplay, he emphasizes that film is a visual medium -- the pictures should tell the story. (He believes you should be able to understand 60-80% of a foreign film without subtitles.) He would work with his students, paring down screenplays to the barest minimum. He'd have them do something called "The Streetcar Exercise", where they would have to take five to six pages of dialog from Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, and recreate the scene as a bit of silent cinema, limited to five title cards of eight words each. Fascinating. One might find this approach odd coming from the director of Sweet Smell of Success, a film comprised of non-stop verbal darts. Yet as Mackendrick shows, watching the film without the soundtrack still tells us so much about J.J. Hunsecker and Sidney Falco. What's brilliant about the Odets/Lehman screenplay is the absence of even a single line of expository dialogue -- Mackendrick takes care of all that with the camera, the lighting, the positioning of the actors, etc. Unlike Robert McKee (and his ilk) who concentrate solely on the analysis of story structure, Mackendrick felt that film grammar and dramatic construction should never be considered separately -- "form can never be entirely distinguished from content." The interviews with Mackendrick's former students, including James Mangold (Heavy, Cop Land) and screenwriter Ronald Harwood (The Pianist), are incredibly useful in that each provides examples of how they have applied Mackendrick's teachings to their own films. They also go into detail about particular lessons, including Mackendrick's fascination with the Watergate Hearings, which he believed to be directed by a true artist -- somebody who understood the rules and grammar of cinema. (Cronin includes footage from the hearings, and Mackendrick was right -- it is remarkable.) Less a documentary and more of an illustrated lecture, it goes without saying that Mackendrick on Film is essential for any serious student of film, but its appeal is such that it will be of great interest (and use) to even the armchair cinephile. (The liberal use of film clips to illustrate the teachings is a huge benefit.) As a struggling screenwriter, Filmbrain found himself walking away with newfound inspiration, something that no screenwriting book (or class) has ever come close to achieving. The book (On Film-making) will be published in the States in August by Faber & Faber. The film will be screened in its entirety in the fall at the Museum of Modern Art and (hopefully) elsewhere. Do not miss it. As for the title of this post, it's probably best to let Mackendrick explain it himself, in this excerpt from the book.

Filmbrain's Screen Capture Quiz: Round 4 -- Week 5

Jennifer Connelly certainly likes piers. In fact, this shot from Requiem for a Dream is so similar to one found in Dark City, that it's understandable why 40% of you incorrectly chose the latter. (Apparently, the Connelly pier trend continues with House of Sand and Fog, though Filmbrain hasn't seen it.) Some of you insisted that the actress in the shot is Ellen Burstyn (hence the light colored hair), yet when the character turns around it is definitely JC. Can anyone shed some definitive light on this one? As for the body of water -- why it's none other than the Atlantic Ocean, as seen from Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York -- home to director Darren Aronofsky, author Hubert Selby, Jr. (well, until he died), and Jennifer Connelly. (Oh yeah, and Filmbrain too.) It's super-cool car week here at the Screen Capture Quiz! Whose badass Pinto is that? Name the actress and the film. Send your answers to this address. Good luck!

Will Critics Not Bow to The Bow?

As Filmbrain predicted, Kim Ki-Duk's 3-Iron opened last week to high praise from US critics. Like Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, it has art-house appeal, is lovely to look at, and comes off as more intelligent (and poignant ) than it actually is. Kim's next film, The Bow, seems targeted to the same international audience. Shot in just a few weeks (his modus operandi of late), it's been described by sales company Cineclick as being stylistically like Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring, while once again employing the no-dialog-between-lead-characters gimmick of 3-Iron. It is also the first Kim Ki-duk film to feature CGI effects. Few details have been released about the film, though it's meant to be a challenging drama about the love affair between a sixteen-year-old girl (Samaria's Seo Min-jeong) and an old man of sixty who plans on marrying her when she turns seventeen. The titular bow is what the old man uses to protect the girl from the young men on the island. Hmmmm..... In an interesting, perhaps worrisome move, Cinema Janus (the film's promotional company) has decided not to hold any press screenings prior to the May 12 opening in Korea. This is a tactic used (in America at least) for Pauly Shore movies, or anything else that is unmistakably crap (Gigli). Cinema Janus insists this is not the case with The Bow, and the press barring is purely to ensure that audiences can "watch the film without prejudice". Filmbrain finds that a bit hard to swallow, but clearly it didn't worry buyers -- the film has already made back its production cost (~$1million) in international sales, based solely off a few stills and a treatment. Not bad, eh? The Bow is also being screened at Cannes, out of competition.