The Mountain Eagle

Let's be pro-active today. Some of these lost films can be found one day, but there's a better chance of loosing the ones we still have. To make sure that the silent films of Alfred Hitchcock will not meet the same fate that his second film did (it is now lost), the British Film Institute launches an important restoration program  and you can help by donating on their website. As a result, the movies will be presented in 2012 fully restored and with a newly recorded soundtrack.

Now about  that second film. You should know that you don't become the Master of Suspense overnight. As many did, Hitchcock started progressively as a title designer, then accumulated jobs as films went by: set designer, script writer, assistant director, etc. That enabled him to become a director while mastering each link of the production chain. He started his directorial career with The Pleasure Garden. The film did not appeal to the distributor and was shelved.

Hitchcock then left for the mountains of Tyrol to shoot a second melodrama called The Mountain Eagle. The adventures he encountered during the shoot, as told in Spoto's book and more recently in Patrick McGilligan's seem more interesting than the story of the film itself which synopsis you get (as well as a complete set of pictures) in Dan Auiler's Hitchcock's Notebooks, probably the best source of information for this lost film.

Quickly told, the film tells the story of John Fulton nicknamed Fear O' God and  Pettigrew who hate each other. Pettigrew's son disappears from the village after he caused a mix-up with school teacher Beatrice (Nita Naldi). Pettigrew thinks the two are lovers and tries to have Beatrice thrown out. She takes refuge at Fulton's. Pettigrew has Fulton thrown in jail for ten years for the alleged murder of his son. etc.

It's funny to see that critics of the time, while praising the directorial effort, do point out plot holes in the story, a common critic for future Hitchcock movies.

Anyway, it seems that the same distributor (C.M. Woolf) opposed the release of this film too. And it would have been the same for his third (and probably last) film if it hadn't been for Ivor Montague who, seeing its potential, re-edited the movie. The Lodger was a huge success and was considered by Hitchcock his first real film. At the time, it also enable the release of his two previous films. But if The Pleasure Garden has reached us, and a tinted copy was recently found, no known copy of The Mountain Eagle is still extant. Please check your attic.

That's all for today folks!

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RKO, erasing a Major

 Who today is actually influenced by the production company when choosing which film to see? The star may be a decision factor, or the director, or simply the subject matter.
In the thirties and forties, moviegoers were going to see an MGM picture, a Fox movie, etc. They knew they could count on a certain quality, a distinctive look, a familiar sound, the same actors from one film to another, down to the same facilities in the theaters since the studios owned them. There was no internet to follow a particular director's filmography, but you could be sure to catch every film made (and advertised) by a specific studio.

And these studios are not necessarily the same ones that rule the world of cinema today. No Dreamworks, no Touchstone, Tristar, Sony, etc.
Some are still around but hardly matter compared to today's giants like MGM, some gained prestige and importance over time like Universal and Columbia (once considered almost poverty row), and some remained with more or less success like 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Warner.

But one of the most important studios actually vanished from sight in the fifties. Radio-Keith-Orpheum pictures or RKO was one of the majors then and they produced wonders such as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers's musicals, great Alfred Hitchcock movies like Suspicion and Notorious, Citizen Kane, King Kong, Clash by Night, The Thing from Another World, They Live by Night, It's a Wonderful Life, Cat People, etc.

Producer Howard Hughes took over the studio in 1948 and drove it to bankruptcy in less than 10 years. Today, a RKO company still exists and produces some films (see their website) but it is only a shadow of what the firm once was.

Pinocchio

One of the most lucrative deal of RKO, though, was the distribution of all Walt Disney films since Disney did not own a theater chain. Being the pool of artist that it was though, the company designed special logos inspired by RKO's official ones. They were integrated in the main and end titles of each film. This posed quite a problem when Disney decided to create their own distribution company in the fifties (Buena Vista). When films from their catalog were re-released, they tried to erase every trace of these logos by any means possible.

Peter Pan

Original 1937 Snow White titles

New 50s Snow White titles

 It usually meant replacing the footage by a plain Buena Vista credit, but in the case of Snow White, for instance, the RKO credit was in the middle of the main title sequence and the original artwork had been lost, so that a complete new main title had to be made. This new title is quite likely the one you've known until quite recently.

Cinderella

This replacement practice is still in order and was used throughout the film's home video history. Cinderella on VHS was simply cut short so that the logo wouldn't appear and the first few bars of the Cinderella song were also cut. On the DVD, they reinstated the music but still replaced the image with a nineties Walt Disney Pictures logo sped up.

Fantasia

The first DVD edition of Alice in Wonderland simply had black footage over the first few seconds of film.

Alice in Wonderland

Dumbo

Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs

Fortunately, Blu-ray came along and some of these beautiful images were restored for their Hi-definition debut. Original logos were reinstated for Snow White (and complete main title sequence), Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Alice in Wonderland. I was hopeful that the studio wanted to restore all titles that way and was bitterly disappointed that Bambi came with the same Disney logo replacement.

Bambi

That's all for today folks!

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Lost Horizon

Now there's an alternate title for my blog!

Welcome to Shangri-la! The name probably rings a bell. Can't remember where you heard it? Shangri-la is a fictitious place imagined by James Hilton, great author of a beautiful novel I read while I was in French Guiana. The isolation of the characters was similar to mine at the time when the place was new to me. Thankfully, the screen adaptation of this spellbinding story was given to one of the best directors in Hollywood.

The irony is that a film about the legend of the fountain of youth has known so much strife for a still incomplete version to be presented to us today. However, a special restoration technique has been used on the film, and this is what I'd like to discuss.

Frank Capra explains in his gripping autobiography that he strated blossoming in his work from the moment on he made films with a message that spoke to him on a personal level, instead of made to order blockbusters for Columbia (these had success anyway, the man had talent!).

And Lost Horizon is from that second part of his career that exalts human kindness at the risk of being over-optimistic, a critique often made about Capra but also a quality that bases his most famous films like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, It's A Wonderful Life, etc.

Lost Horizon was supposed to be the first 3-hour Columbia blockbuster. Plane crash, avalanche, superb settings are part of the show. Capra wrote he had to cut the first two reels of the film due to a disastrous preview in Santa Barbara: a framing that turned the rest of the film into a giant flash-back. He claims he destroyed the reels himself then. So there would be no chance of ever finding them again. However this can be considered pre-production as the final version of the film had not been released yet.

But the following theatrical releases was the film cut from 132 minutes to 118, then 95. In the seventies, the result was appalling: not only was the negative lost (it deteriorated), but all known copies had several scenes cut. By searching throughout the world, the restoration crew gathered elements including a complete soundtrack, but no complete film. Some scenes were available in poorer quality and the difference does show, but others simply had not survived.

The restoring team made a bold and honorable decision: they kept the complete film and replaced missing portions by stills and production photographs and the result is stunning. The fact that the film is in black and white draws less attention to the technique than in A Star Is Born even if I appreciate the work on that film immensely too.

Enough about technician aspects. About this film, except for the story and the outstanding direction, I recommend Dimitri Tiomkin's great score available on CD (Considering the fate of the film, it is amazing that the soundtrack was preserved). As for the casting, Ronald Colman stars. He also shined in the 1937 version of The Prisoner of Zenda (the best one and it is a tough competition). But secondary characters are just great. First Thomas Mitchell, Scarlett's father in Gone With The Wind, as a good hearted crook, and especially Edward Everett Horton, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers's eternal sidekick in their musicals. Horton has a style his own that you can never forget.

For the anecdote, Capra says he chose an old stage actor for the part of the High Lama and that when his maid announced the tests were good and he had the part, the old man died.


A musical remake was made in 1973, and was instantly panned by critics.

After seeing Lost Horizon, I don't know if I should hope that you find the missing scenes in your attic or if you should find your own Shangri-la.
It is now unthinkable that a good part of the speech of the High Lama was cut when it resonates today just as much as it probably did back in 1937). Run out and buy the restored DVD version if you wish to listen to it. I'm copying a part of it.
Look at the world today. Is there anything more pitiful? What madness there is! What blindness! What unintelligent leadership! A scurrying mass of bewildered humanity, crashing headlong against each other, propelled by an orgy of greed and brutality. A time must come my friend, when this orgy will spend itself. When brutality and the lust for power must perish by its own sword. Against that time, is why I avoided death, and am here. And why you were brought here. For when that day comes, the world must begin to look for a new life. And it is our hope that they may find it here. For here, we shall be with their books and their music, and a way of life based on one simple rule: Be Kind!

That's all for today folks!

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Frenzy

Today, I want to talk about the penultimate film of my favorite director. Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy. This film is available on DVD and will be soon on Blu-Ray, I'm sure. An excellent source of information is, of course, the excellent documentary of the also excellent Laurent Bouzereau: The story of 'Frenzy'.

However, two elements of this film are lost: an outtake which, to my knowledge, never resurfaced since post-production and Henry Mancini's music.

The scene I mean takes place after Babs and Blaney go to the hotel. In it, Robert Rusk chases a scared semi-nude woman who is running out of her apartment. Rusk runs into a policeman and even jokes with him that he cannot take off his tie without scaring girls. The script for scene number 52 can be found on Steven DeRosa's website.


On the only picture that remains of the scene is Margaret Nolan (nowhere to be seen in the final cut) chased by Barry Foster whose tie is already untied as she clutches her clothes to cover herself.

The choice of the actress seems to indicate that Hitchcock probably wanted more glamor (the women of Frenzy are quite ordinary looking) and wanted to keep the possibility of undressing the actress. In fact, it's not difficult to find "artistic" pictures of the young lady on the internet: she was also a model and was camera shy in the nude, as opposed to Barbara Leigh-Hunt who demanded a double for the close up of a breast and to Anna Massey who, as she freely admitted, was never planned to appear herself in the potatoes bag sequence or the hotel scene.






But Margaret Nolan is more famous for her appearance in Goldfinger: she is Sean Connery's masseuse. A massage is not the only favor she did James Bond. She is the one you can admire in the nude, painted gold on posters or other products. In the film actress Shirley Eaton plays the part of golden victim Jill Masterson, but it is Margaret who shows off for publicity and the main title sequence.

Now to the music. The composer of Frenzy is Ron Goodwin. But that wasn't always the case. In fact, since his break-up with assigned composer Bernard Herrmann, Hitchcock had changed collaborator for each new production with more or less success. For this film, the music was to be composed by Henri Mancini whose work you've heard in The Pink Panther, Charade, Breakfast At Tyffanny's, and even Disney's The Great Mouse Detective... Maybe he was chosen because of  his work on the excellent "à la Hitchcock" thriller of Terence Young : Wait Until Dark, where Audrey Hepburn is blind and must confront evil-doers who broke in into her house.

In any case, Mancini later complained about not having the same advantages his successor had: the master's recommendations. When Hitchcock expected an upbeat grandiose music for his main title sequence, the musician presented him with a dark and menacing theme. He got fired. but the music wasn't just composed. It was apparently at least partially recorded and more importantly, preserved. In fact you can hear a fragment of te main title cue in Laurent Bouzereau's documentary which implies that he found the original soundtrack.




I compared: he did not used Mancini 's own re-recording for his CD "Mancini in Surround". So we can hope for a release of the original tracks.





One final bit of trivia: Susan Travers, who plays the murderer's final victim, wasn't hired by Hitchcock by chance. She happens to be the daughter of Linden Travers who played Mrs Todhunter in his 1938 classic The Lady Vanishes.
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That's all for today folks!

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Sodom And Gomorrah

Sodom And Gomorrah isn't a lost film per say. But the divine force that struck the two cities seems to oppose an official release of the film on a decent format.
And other details such as censorship cuts and the soundtrack make me want to talk about it.
Though I must admit: I have a soft spot in my heart for this film and that is my first motivation.

I remember seeing it as a child at my grand ma's and the show blew me away. Yes, because, in spite of the title, the film remains quite decent. In it, Sodomites are barely the inhabitants of Sodom, lesbianism is reduced to a few insistent gazes, all of which can very well go unnoticed for a young naive and pure child (which I was back then). Not a tit shot, not even a curse word, nothing.

This Italian-French-American co-production did not meet an overwhelming success even though it was released in many countries. Maybe it's the origins (Italian productions of the time often look somewhat cheap to me) at a time when the sword-and-sandal genre was beginning to wane in popularity. Have you noticed how Italian extras, as opposed to over-enthusiastic American ones, always seem to be waiting the end of the scene to get their paycheck? Maybe it's just me.

By now, you're probably wondering : "What's so special about this film, then?"

Apart from a few details like the involvement of two future long-time James Bond collaborators : Ken Adam for production design and Maurice Binder for his highly stylized main title sequences, the on-screen presence of Stewart Granger (Moonfleet, The Prisoner of Zenda,...), and pretty Pier Angeli, this film has two main attractions : Anouk Aimée and Miklós Rózsa's music.

Let's start with Anouk Aimée.
I've always loved the parts of beautiful, cruel, poker-faced women with power. They fascinate me. The Queen in Snow White, Ayesha in "She", and the Queen of Sodom.
The latter is, to my knowledge, never mentioned by name in the movie but is listed as "Queen Bera" on the IMDB and various other sources.
Anouk Aimée, who was never prettier than in this film, parades with a detached face but really has power of life and death over the people that surround her and she uses rivalries and the court intrigues to get rid of the one person that can rightfully resist her: her brother, with whom she cultivates a very peculiar relationship. But her influence over him and his final execution resemble a cat-and-mouse game: slow and vicious so she can see her victim suffer and relish it.

As sovereign of Sodom and Gomorrah, the Queen choses her prettiest slave to make her the favorite from whom she demands more obedience than the film can depict. But the innuendos are there.

In the end, she can only be defeated by the only entity who can defy her power : God. The scene of her tragic fate impressed upon me as a child : all alone, abandoned, without a sound (her favorite screams in her place), she faces death and with her falls the symbol of her kingdom.

The character is fascinating, but the talent of the actress (not to mention her beauty) are really what made it work for me. I saw Anouk Aimée on the stage playing Love Letters, and in another English-speaking role besides "Sodom" (she dubs herself in the French version) in a TV episode called, "Voices In The Garden" where she plays the tragic part of a sick woman whose last days are brightened by her meeting with a couple of teenagers.

Her voice charmed me every time.

I was very surprised to read in an interview by Boze Hadleigh  of director George Cukor, who ordinarily remains so consensual, that he thought working with her (on Justine) had been one the worst experiences of his career. According to him, her attitude was "intractable. Like Marilyn but without the results". I don't know what their differences were on that shoot, but I have to say I disagree on that last comment. Whatever attitude she had, the results are there. But I must admit that Anouk Aimée never had the career she could expect in the USA. However that may have been a choice.

Back to the film. About the soundtrack, this is Rózsa's last score (Quo Vadis, Julius Caesar, Diane, King of Kings, Ben Hur,... ) for this kind of movie. And what a score! The theme of the two cities marvelously conveys decadence and power mixed together. The amateur had to wait a long time before he could buy a relatively satisfying recording.

A double LP album offered a large selection of the music (although not a complete one), but in the digital era, one could expect better. A 64 minute CD was released in 1990 albeit with a monaural sound and strange cuts right in the middle of the cues. In 2001, another CD, this time in stereo, gathered only 43 minutes of music without even including the main title.

Not until 2007 did Digitmovies release a double CD copying the content of the LP with 6 extra unused cues (5 Hebrew prayers and one dance). If these discs offer the most complete selection to date (and probably all that's left of the actual soundtrack), some cues are incomplete and others missing altogether (the main title is cut 2 minutes 20 seconds in at the most inappropriate time in all of these editions).

But the soundtrack got royal treatment compared to the film itself. Look for a DVD release (I don't even mention Blu-Ray) and weep. I bought the VHS tape some ten years ago. Obviously the film was not restored and was presented in the 4:3 picture format, but except for the overture, intermission and epilogue (all on the CD), the film was complete.

In the French version for instance (the film was shot in English), Tamar's torture scene was censored and the shots showing the spikes on Arno's torso are missing, which gives the impression that Tamar is dying of a big hug.

An official DVD with an English soundtrack saw the light of day in Germany. If the format of the picture is adapted to wide-screen TV, it seems that various copies of different quality were mixed together which gives a frankly disturbing result. And the main title is also cut in several places (including the first seconds) with the consequences you can imagine on the listening pleasure.

More or less legal but always deceptive editions come up everywhere in the world: in Asia, on two discs with a randomly chosen cut (clumsy considering the fact that the film has an intermission), or in Brazil where the film is "letter-boxed" (black strips at the top and bottom).

If god wants it (and especially if 20th Century Fox does), some day maybe, Sodom And Gomorrah will rise from the ashes! Hear the Queen call you : "Stay! I command you to stay !"
There will be more about the film...
 More pictures on A Lost Film Facebook page.
That's all for today folks!

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Don Quixote

Don Quixotte is the first modern novel. It is also a much appreciated source of cinematic adaptation. Two giants of cinema tried and failed.
First, Orson Welles who is, obviously, a specialist of butchered, unfinished, films. The Magnificient Ambersons reedited by RKO, Touch of Evil, changed and reshot partially by Universal, the alleged original intended version of which is restored differently from one home video release to the next, etc., the mirror sequence in The Lady from Shanghai with an unapproved music track, etc. Frustrations suffered by Orson Welles about his films were constant, and probably largely due to his personality and attitude towards studios.


In his interview for TCM, Charlton Heston talked about filming Touch of Evil and said Orson Welles left abroad before post-production when he had been accepted as a director only because Heston suggested him.  A move that Universal considered betrayal which explains the fate of the film. If you want to hear him (he talks about DeMille too), you can podcast it (Part 1 - Part 2).
Welles started a bizarre enterprise in 1955 : to start shooting without a script his Don Quixotte over decades into the 70s without ever reaching a final cut, anyway none that would allow a theatrical release.
After his death, Jess Franco edited the 10 hours of film and released it in 1992 with a new soundtrack.


Welles' project was a work in progress and carried its fate within itself. Howver, in 2000, Terry Gilliam's project, The Man Who Killed Don Quixotte, seemed a more solid production. Yet it was so problematic that the problems alone spurred a great documentary called Lost In La Mancha, in 2002.

To make a long story short, the health of wonderful French actor Jean Rochefort didn't allow completion of the film, even if many other reasons, like the weather, plagued it.

But Terry Gilliam decided to give it another shot : he replaced Jean Rochefort and Johnny Depp by Robert Duvall and Ewan McGregor. Financial backings announced in may 2010 collapsed a few months afterwards. We still wish him good luck for this adventure.



That's all for today folks!

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Marilyn uncovered

I'd like to be as lucky as this guy who found an undeveloped film at the flea market. Well, I would, but in my case the pictures would be of someone's aunt Maude or little Kevin's birthday... That guy got a $2 set of never before seen pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield which will bring him a fortune only with the returns of the books that we're bound to see later this year.
Anyway, I'm happy that this lost treasure has been found. Marilyn is so pretty.

That's all for today folks!

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