Monthly Archives: January 2019

The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming
Directed by Norman Jewison
Written by William Rose from a novel by Nathaniel Benchley
1966/USA
The Mirsch Corporation
First viewing/Netflix

[box] Pete Whittaker: [to his father] Don’t tell them anything! He hasn’t even tortured you yet![/box]

Peacenik comedy was undoubtedly funnier at the time than it is now.

A Soviet submarine commander comes up for a look at America off the coast of a small Massachusetts island and runs aground.  He sends a nine-man team headed by fractured English speaker Lt. Ronozov (Alan Arkin) off in search of a motorboat to pull the sub back out to sea.

The townspeople think they are being invaded.  Mild hilarity ensues en route to international understanding, with even some international romance along the way. With a lot of funny fellows including Theodore Bickel, Carl Reiner, Brian Keith, Johathan Winters and Paul Ford and Eva Marie Saint as Reiner’s wife.

I remember this as being better than it is.  The premise is good, the actors are funny, but it just didn’t make me laugh much.  Your mileage may vary.  The Russians Are Coming the Russians Are Coming was nominated for Academy Awards in the categories of Best Picture; Best Actor (Arkin); Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Coming from Another Medium; and Best Film Editing.

Is Paris Burning? (Paris brûte-t-il?)
Directed by Rene Clement
Written by Gore Vidal and Francis Ford Coppola from a book by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre
1966/France/US
Marianne Productions/Transcontinental Films
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Général Von Choltitz: Herr Consul, if I thought that the destruction of Paris could win the war for Germany… I would set the city on fire myself. But we’ve lost the war.[/box]

I prefer a little depth to go with my movie stars and action.

Is Paris Burning is another in a line of films starting with The Longest Day assembling a host of international stars – largely in short cameos – speaking in their own languages to tell the story of a key event in history – in this case the liberation of Paris.  Resistance units in the city argue among themselves as the armies of liberation get closer and closer.

The main tension in the story is whether Gen. Von Choltitz (Gert Frobe) will execute Hitler’s order to completely destroy the city if it seems sure to fall to the Allies.  The issue is never in doubt.  We also get a subplot about diverting a train full of political prisoners from its destination in Buchenwald.  The film culminates with combat leading to the taking of the city by DeGaulle’s army.  With a cast including:  Orson Welles, Leslie Caron, Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Jean Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon, Simon Signoret, Yves Montand, etc. etc.

The film is three hours long, in line with the size of the story it had to tell, but did it have to drag so badly?  There are obviously no surprises in the plot and none of the characters is really given enough screen time to have a satisfactory arc. The film is also crammed with stock footage.  Some of it is used to better affect than others.  I remember the bombing scene in Clement’s Forbidden Games (1952) as absolutely riveting and terrifying.  That director appears to have lost his nerve here.

Apparently it is impossible to watch the film in its intended multilingual version online.  The one on Amazon Instant is dubbed into English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4vGKvgutzw

Clip – liberation of Paris

Django
Directed by Sergio Corbucci
Written by Sergio and Bruno Corbucci in collaboration with Franco Rosetti and Piero Vivarelli
1966/Italy/Spain
B.R.C. Produzione/Tecisa
First viewing/Amazon Instant

[box] Django: You can clean up the mess, now. But don’t touch my coffin.[/box]

Corbucci’s ultra-violent Yojimbo retake ups the ante but in no way surpasses Leone’s.

Django (Franco Nero) is a man of mystery.  He arrives in a Wild West town dragging a coffin through the mud.  One of his first acts is to save half-breed prostitute Maria from Mexican bandits.  Thereafter, both become embroiled in a bloody feud between the bandidos and a gang of racist Southern mercenaries.

Double-crosses are the order of the day as the body count mounts.

My introduction to Sergio Corbucci was The Great Silence (1968).  I still remember how traumatizing the ending of that one was!  I didn’t come out of Django wanting to slit my throat at the vileness of humanity, but I didn’t enjoy its graphic sadistic violence any more than previously.  If you think Once Upon a Time in the West was a tad too tame, give Corbucci’s films a try.

Sweeping revisions were made in the Hays Code regarding the standards of decency for films, suggesting restraint in questionable themes, rather than forbidding them completely. In the new code of the Motion Picture Association of America, virtue and the condemnation of sin were still encouraged. However, it eliminated previous prohibitions of “lustful kissing” and “passion that stimulates the base emotions,” and permitted certain films to be labeled “recommended for mature audiences.”

Director Otto Preminger’s controversial courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder (1959) was involved in a court case  involving whether it should be edited for television and broadcast with commercials. Preminger brought an injunction against Columbia Pictures Corp. and Screen Gems Inc. to prevent them from interrupting the film with commercials when it was televised. Preminger charged that if the film was cut and interrupted by commercials, his reputation would be damaged and its “commercial value challenged.” The court ruled that the producer’s right to final cutting and editing was limited to a film’s theatrical release and not its televised showing.

After an appeal by Warner Bros., Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? became the first film containing profane expletives and frank sexual content (ie., “Hump the Hostess”) to receive the MPAA’s Production Code seal of approval, although the most extreme profanity was removed (i.e., “Screw you” became “God damn you!”). It was the first American film to use the expletive ‘goddamn’ and ‘bugger’. It was also the first film to be released with an M-rating (“Suggested for Mature Audiences”) warning.The second film to receive an MPAA exemption (and seal of approval) shortly afterwards was Alfie despite the use of the forbidden word “abortion.” These exemptions marked the beginning of the breakdown of the existing system of industry self-regulation and censorship, and the relaxing of code standards.

MGM distributed Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up , the director’s first non-Italian feature, in defiance of demands that it make cuts to its nude scenes. The film was released without an MPAA seal of approval. Jane Birkin and Gillian Hills, acting as teenaged groupies in the film, displayed glimpses of full-frontal female nudity, introducing American film audiences to their first view of pubic hair.

American comic actor and director Buster Keaton died at the age of 70, due to lung cancer. He now resides in heaven where he is smiling all the time.  Walt Disney died at the age of 65 on December 15, 1966, from lung cancer. He was in the process of producing the studio’s next animated feature film The Jungle Book (1967). Troubled actor Montgomery Clift died at the age of 45, the result of a heart attack. Ever since a major car accident in 1956, he had suffered from substance abuse, and his  lifestyle led to his early death.  Two years after his final film performance, Ronald Reagan was elected to the first of his two terms as Governor of California.

SSgt Barry Sadler’s “The Ballad of the Green Berets” was the #1 song on Billboard‘s 1966 Year-End Chart of Pop Singles, edging true classics like “The Sound of Silence”, “Good Vibrations”, and “Wild Thing”.  Katherine Anne Porter won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature for her Collected Stories.  No prize was awarded for drama.  The Time Magazine “Person of the Year” was awarded to “The Inheritor”, representing a generation of Americans aged 25 and younger – today we would call them baby boomers.

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I can’t say I’m inspired by most of the films on this list. I plan to power on through though. I have already reviewed Blow-Up, which was one of my first pieces for the 1001 Movies Blog Club and one of the most viewed entries on my blog.

Montage of stills from the Oscar winners

Montage of stills from Oscar nominees