Sodom & Gomorrah (4) Special Effects

I'm going to write some more about Sodom & Gomorrah (see my previous posts about the film) and I will concentrate on the special effects and technical aspects. The battle scene required 4,000 people among which were the Moroccan army, the extras, the actors, and 150 crew members. It was shot between Ouarzazate and Marrakesh using three helicopters.Maurice Binder's title sequenceI mentioned James Bond production designer's work Ken Adam on the...

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Notorious

Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious is now available on Blu-ray. Here’s a perfect opportunity to see one of the director’s masterpieces.Several famous sequences come to mind. The famous tracking shot that starts at the top of the stairs, embraces the ballroom and ends on an extreme close-up of the key in Ingrid Bergman’s hand (which is not even in the script, by the way). The famous kissing scene that defied the censors who refused an on-screen kiss that...

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Mom And Dad

What do you think is the top grossing film of the 1940s ? Surely, it’s got to be Casablanca… or maybe Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life… In any case, it’s got to be from Warner Brothers or an MGM release…Or maybe not…Have you ever heard of Mom and Dad ? I guess not. In 1945, Hygienic Productions & Monogram Pictures released this William Beaudine feature and broke all records. It became the biggest money-maker of the decade.If you’ve never heard...

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King Kong

Any fan of King Kong knows that before Peter Jackson's CG monkey, long before Jessica Lange showed her boobs in John Guillermin's 1976 version, there was a 1933 RKO film starring Fay Wray with a 24 inch puppet animated by hand, 24 frames per second.A stop motion technique that inspired Ray Harryhausen.This film features one of the first symphonic score by legendary composer Max Steiner. In the early days of the talkies, although music was very soon...

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