Art Is Not A Committee

Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur in Mr. Deeds Goes To Town

I like people who go against the grain, especially directors. It's difficult enough to impose your personal point of view in any field, but not so difficult as in the world of filmmaking. Movies are meant to be seen by a big audience and require a lot of help to make. For the creative process of moviemaking you need a lot of different people and a lot of different skills and of course you need a lot of money. It's hard to achieve your personal vision using the eyes and hands of others and the money from others. Frank Capra was resolute about how to make a movie. A movie is ultimately the end product of one person and that person is the director. "Art is not a committee" was his decree. Capra learned his trade in the late twenties. Arguably his breakthrough came with American Madness in 1932, establishing him as the king of the depression era. He would follow that up into the early forties with a string of depression comedies, all solidly framed within the American capitalist institutions.

American Madness (1932)

Meet John Doe (1941)

Bernie Schwartz - eternal ladies man (1925-2010)

Tony Curtis in 1955 as Jerry Florea in Six Bridges To Cross

When I got home a few hours ago I read Tony Curtis died yesterday. I can't say I was too shocked or surprised (although I feel a bit odd as I posted a still with him just last week). 

I saw the man, who came in the world as Bernard Schwartz, last year or two years ago on Jonathan Ross' talkshow on the BBC and he looked so fragile. I felt sorry for him then as I feel genuine sadness now hearing of his death. 

I've always had a soft spot for him since growing up with The Persuaders on our television in the early seventies. Next to cool and sophisticated Brett Sinclair (played by Roger Moore), Curtis played lovable foil Danny Wilde who was of course always after the ladies. Something I did not quite understand when I was 9, but what fascinated me immensely nevertheless and made Danny my favorite Persuader. 

Many, many years and thousands of movies later, I still see this persona when I think of Tony Curtis. I'm pretty sure he had the same image of himself. Even as his brittle self with Jonathan Ross, he was still projecting his dame-chasing image, not banal or offensive, but rather sweet and innocent as a little boy. He was after all not just a ladies man, but a ladies man with the biggest Peter Pan complex in the world. 

Many, many years and thousands movies later, I have also learned he was more than just a pretty boy, he was a very fine and energetic actor with a great humorous and warm voice. Anyone who has seen The Sweet Smell Of Success or Some Like It Hot will say Amen to that. His last part was, slightly ironic, a serious cameo as old Mr. Schwartz in David & Fatima. Nevertheless here's a tribute to Bernie with stills from the time he was young and handsome and lovable whether he played a small time crook, a sycophantic press-agent or the best looking crossdresser escaping the maffia. I'm pretty sure Danny Wilde would appreciate that.

With Joanne Dru in Forbidden (1953)

With Barbara Nicholls in Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)

Starring as Sidney Falco opposite Burt Lancaster's J.J. Hunsecker

In drag as Josephine in Some Like It Hot (1959)

Changing from drag to Cary Grant-like tycoon in Some Like It Hot

Poses and props

In an earlier entry I mentioned three types of movie production stills. My favorite group is the one of the publicity stills. They differ from the scene stills or behind the scenes stills in that they clearly are set up to let's say over-dramatized effect. They are made in order to accentuate a specific feature of the movie. It's these stills that were used the most in advertising campaigns as they were most suited to highlight protagonists or subplots. Very often this means luscious and glossy close-up portrait shots of the featured cast. I will feature those in the next entry or so. Portraits aren't always glossy or necessarily true depictions. THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON (1954) pictured above was not known to stand up straight or do the Mexican wave.

I like props and poses the best though. They are sly and humorous and often have a twist in referring to a small but key part of the plot. It's easy to understand that lovely Nan Grey is a bit unsure of the embrace with her mystery man in THE INVISIBLE MAN RETURNS (1940) and that said man has reason to hang on, or putting it more precisely cling on, to the love of his life.

On the other hand you might wonder why Melanie Griffith's mum , Tippi Hedren, is making such a fuss during THE BIRDS (1963).

1963 was a good year for our black feathered friends. Here's Olive Sturgess showing off hers in Roger Corman's THE RAVEN, though it's fair to say that this not-parrot wouldn't "voom" if you put four million volts through it.

All pictured poses reveal some of the bonds between protagonists in the movie. In the fantastic, definitely must-see THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957) poor Grant Williams is the victim of radiation and is slowly but surely shrinking into infinity. Common household objects, such as match boxes, pins and pencils are used to show this shrinking process. This publicity still zooms in on the production design that visualizes the process.

 In some cases props personify. Has anybody seen PSYCHO (1960)?  Here's the almost complete cast with Vera Miles, John Gavin, Janet Leigh and .....

It's not only doom and danger though that's represented in publicity stills. Comedy productions tend to have a more happy approach and ending. In SOME LIKE IT HOT (1959) it is obvious that Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe are meant for each other.

Not all ends are happy though. The last still here is an all-time favourite. It's a great ensemble composition. Everybody's is ready to go and full of determination. They're as hungry as a junior football team getting to their first finals. You'll never see them in the actual movie like this though, nor will neither of them manage to get to the finale of the picture.

These are Hans "Mr. Takagi won't be joining us for the rest of his life" Gruber's (Alan Rickman) terrorist boys who will all be put straight by Bruce Willis in DIE HARD (1988)

Million-Dollar Weekend

Well that was great. In the last blog I wrote I hoped to get to meet Thelma Schoonmaker last weekend. Not only did I so, but I was also invited for a chat and a cup of tea over in Thelma's cottage accompagnied by Michael Powell's son Columba. The cottage was bought by Thelma when Michael died in 1990 to preserve the history and memory of her late husband. I was struck by the hospitality and indeed the energy of Mrs. Schoonmaker. She arrived only Sunday afternoon as the filming of HUGO CABRET at the Shepperton Studios took up all Saturday. Apparently the production is a bit over schedule. Surely she must have been quite tired.

She talked about the pitfalls of 3D and digital filmmaking as well as how difficult it is to find funding for restoration projects and how overjoyed she and Martin Scorsese, who has been Michael Powell's champion for decades, were about the tremendous reception of the restored RED SHOES (1948) in Cannes last year. Here are two stills from that movie with stars Marius Goring, Moira Shearer and Anton Walbrook .

She also talked about the cottage itself. Michael Powell moved in here with his love of his life then Pamela Brown. To be accurate they moved into two adjacent cottages as they were not married and did not want to attract too much attention. The sixties may have been a liberating period, but living together not in wedlock was still not one for the option.

I don't have a suitable still in my collection of Pamela Brown, so this time only I've added a lobby card from I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING (1945). Miss Brown is the actress in the middle.

Hey! I tell a lie, here she is in ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING (1942).

 

The cottage itself is quite small, Michael Powell was in dire financial straits at the time. He wanted it to look like a boat, so he had the woodpanelling darkened, the floor painted black and a huge desk positioned at the end of the living room as a captain's table. Mr Powell of course had a thing with boats. He made his mark with the documentary styled EDGE OF THE WORLD (sorry, no stills) in 1937 in which the way of the life of the fishing communities on a small Shetland island is depicted. His next movie, The SPY IN BLACK (1939), his first movie with long-time collaborator EMERIC PRESSBURGER was an international commercial success starring the indomitable Conrad Veidt and Valerie Hobson and feature a submarine as vehicle for the plot. Boats and water were to be a recurrent theme in lots of P&P movies.

Powell and Pressburger's last commercial success chronicled the major naval battle in World War II: THE BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE (1956). To conclude this entry here's a fantastic behind the scene still from that particular movie. It features an artist whose work was hugely important for the films of Powell and Pressburger. How poignant that two works of art of HEIN HECKROTH feature so prominently still in Michael Powell's cottage now.

This encapsules the romantic value of a still as I discussed earlier in What Oh What. Here's a moment gone forever, caught in time with light-sensitive materials. 

This particular still has the bonus that it has a snipe on the back. Paper snipes are very useful to date a still and give information on what is supposed to be represented.

The snipe informs;

290.Pub.36   INFORMAL GROUP pictured on the set at Pinewood during filming of "THE BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE" are left to right:

Designer Hein Heckroth, Director Michael Powell with his 4-year-old son Columba, Mrs. Michael Powell [Frankie Reidy], and Emeric Pressburger, Heckroth acted as "guest" designer for the Manolo's Bar set.

"THE BATTLE OF THE RIVER PLATE" is written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. A Michael Powell - Emeric Pressburger Production in VistaVision and Eastman Colour amde for the J. Arthur Rank Organisation at Pinewood Studios; starring John Gregson, Anthony Quayle and Peter Finch as Captain Langsdorf.

Still by Ian Jeayes

Thanks again Thelma and Columba for a wonderful visit!

my Powell and Pressburger still collection

my Powell and Pressburger movie poster collection

Directors in front of a camera

Tomorrow I'm flying to England on a special mission. I'm trying to meet Thelma Schoonmaker. Mrs. Schoonmaker plays quite an important role in my movie world as she connects two directors whose work I admire greatly. As editor she's been the right hand of Martin Scorsese for over forty years and has won three Oscars for Raging Bull, The Aviator and The Departed. For me even more significant is that she's the widow of Michael Powell whose A Matter of Life and Death and I Know Where I'm Going totally blew me away when I first saw them.

I've met Mrs. Schoonmaker before. In the late 1980's, still a relatively fresh kid,  I was determined to meet Michael Powell at the Dutch Filmmuseum. I went to the retrospective in his honour and he signed his autobiography and a poster for me. I hung around and sneaked into the official ceremonials. I can still remember the strange tension I felt at the time, a sort of mixture of elation, awe and sense of voyeurism. Hopefully if I can renew my acquaintance with Mrs Schoonmaker this weekend I'll be more level-headed. I have an ulterior motive with this visit, but that needs to be withheld for the moment. In any case I'm sure I will attend a pretty British affair.

Okay, to the stills. Stills of directors are comparatively rare. Stills from movies can be divided in three groups. The first group consists of stills depicting scenes of a particular movie. The majority of stills belong to this group as there are made quite a few of them, sometimes running in the hundreds. With older movies these kind of stills can be recognized by a double set of reference codes (most often numbers). The first set refers to the production code, the second to a scene. Basically you can follow the plot of the movie by following the stills. For a beautiful example, buy the great book La Dolce Vita L'Album by Sam Stourdze which shows almost all French stills made for this classic film La Dolce Vita L'Album .

As directors are behind the camera and not in the scenes you won't find them in those, except of course when they have a cameo of sorts in a movie. I like this one as an example. John Cromwell was an A-list director in the thirties shooting pictures with stars as Bette Davis, James Stewart, Katharine Hepburn and Carole Lombard. Here he plays a bishop in Robert Altman's  A Wedding (1978) with Lilian Gish.

The second group of stills are publicity stills. The still photographer assigned to the movie makes a set of photographs where the cast poses in stead of acts. Usually they wear their costumes or use specific props but they are not re-enacting scenes from the movie. These stills have a different coding than the scene code, often the number code start with a letter, like  "P" or "PUB" for publicity or sometimes "F" or "X". Because directors usually don't pose, but rant & rave, stills of posing directors are quite rare. This one of William Castle is a beautifully stylized one. William Castle was famous for his publicity stunts to sell his teenage-targeted movies, for example attaching vibrating buzzers to theatre seats which would go off when an alleged monster appeared on screen during The Tingler (1959).

Here Castle strikes the perfect director's pose for The Night Walker (1964).

The most stills with directors will be found in the third group, the "behind the scenes"-stills. Behind the scenes the director is of course the Big Cheese and he will be represented as such. Often we'll see him (and very sometimes her) in royal serenity on his throne, the director's chair, or wielding his mighty weapon, the camera. Another popular representation is the one of the director actually directing his cast, gesturing with purpose, eyes full with intent and concentration. This wil be the subject of one of my later entries in this blog. As I'm off soon trying to meet the right hand of one of the biggest directors around, it's only fair to feature him as well at his directorial best for After Hours (1985) talking the scene or script through with actor/producer Griffin Dunne.

Obviously it is important for a director to stay on the good side with the producer. According to legend this does not happen too often. Maybe that's why stills of producer and director in blissful harmony are contenders to be the rarest stills of all.

One more reason to be very happy to have this still in my collection. My hero Michael Powell with famous producer J. Arthur Rank at the set of Black Narcissus (1947).

What oh what?

What is a still? As a noun it is defined as

- a static photograph (especially one taken from a movie and used for advertising purposes); "he wanted some stills for a magazine ad"
photo, photograph, pic, exposure, picture - a representation of a person or scene in the form of a print or transparent slide; recorded by a camera on light-sensitive material

All in all an useful definition. It's interesting to note that the term still is generally recognized as something to do with movies. Furthermore it seems a nice set of objective characteristics (static photograph, representation, light-sensitive material, advertising purposes) to discuss as a starting point. I will be using those in later entries.
However my interest for stills goes far byond these objective characteristics. It's not so much the definition of a still as a noun that attracts me, it's the romantic and eternal quality of stillness that does so. It has to do with the uniqueness of the moment of representation that will last forever. If I would overdramatize I'd say that as the moment of representation passes,  a minute piece of eternity is captured by time. That is of course, as long as it is recorded with the help of light-sensitive materials....
To labour and milk this point, the representation of the moment stays forever, but the moment itself is gone forever. A very rewarding romantic and atmospheric idea I think. The still serves as a historical record as well,  while at the same time it has a testimonial value.

Let's demonstrate this by the still I'm showcasing this time. I just got this one last Sunday. It's a bit of a cheat as the historic and testimonial value of this still are enhanced or encrypted by the writing on it. On the other hand it has a story of it's own to tell. I got this still while rummaging through a few boxes of movie books (thanks Dini!) that once belonged to Wim Verstappen who died in 2004.

It is a representation of Dutch cinema history. The photograph shows Sylvia Kristel in a beautiful pose of reflection. She was one of the leading Dutch exports in the seventies and became almost synonymous with erotic cinema through her role as Emmanuelle. Her fame emphasized Hollands typecast in the world as the country with the most liberal morals towards sexuality. Miss Kristel has signed the photograph and dated it (Amsterdam, Schiphol 20-1-1980). She has added a dedication:

"WIM, GA SCHRIJVEN" (meaning Wim, go and write)

It's a dedication to Wim Verstappen. Dutch readers (if any probably quite old!) might have an inkling who he was, others will probably not. Wim Verstappen was an important director in Dutch cinema history. His most well-known movie is called Blue Movie (1971) with which he purposely attacked the Dutch censor. After heavy debate he insured that the movie, containing a lot of full frontal nudity and sex, passed the censor, effectively rendering the latter powerless. If they were not able to censor virile members, what were they able to?

Anyway, the still and it's dedication refer to important figures in the early seventies in regards to both cinematic history and liberal views to sexuality. The dedication itself is bittersweet. Verstappen would not write much and would only direct three more movies since 1980. He did became an important lobbyist and fighter for the intellectual rights of artists. La Kristel would carry her sexual image through into the nineties. Actually she does so still, though not as an actress anymore but by painting and photography.

Finally, Sylvia ends her dedication with the most beautiful and magical word in dedication country:

"FOREVER"

Why oh why?

First off: please don't mind some crappy English. I am Dutch, very much not a native speaker of English, but I have no intention to grind through every piece of post. I've started this blog to gather information on movie stills and to gather people who are interested in them.  Why oh why a blog on stills? Well firstly I'm a film enthusiast since I don't know when and have collected movie posters for the last ten years or so. Lately I'm hooked on stills. Somehow there's a lot of info to find about movie posters, but not so much on stills. So there, enough reason to start a blog. Anymore reasons? Well, just check out my profile pic. That's a publicity shot of Sharon Tate from the late 1960's. Some of you might be aware of her name and that she was Roman Polanski's wife who was murdered by Charles Manson. Now you know what she looked like....
Is that all? Yes, for now it is. I will try to be as varied and interesting as possible while posting in the future. I'll even try to get scientific on you sometimes. If anybody who finds this remotely interesting likes to share views, knowledge or anything really, be my g.

Next to his blog I'm uploading thousands of stills from my collection. Check out my photostream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hazardous_operations_movie_posters_and_stills/
You''ll find a variety of stills of movies made by film directors I particularly find interesting, mostly flawed geniuses, rebels without causes or just plain underachievers.
If you want to make a comment there, you're very much welcome. I'll try to post pics and stuff here as well, but give me some time to get the hang of this blogging thing.

 Maybe 'til later!!

In the meantime here's another still of Sharon Tate, this time with Roman Polanski himself in The Fearless Vampire Killers. Let's hope these were better times for the both of them