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Ron Howard was five years old when he made his film acting debut in Anatole Litvak's 1959 Hungarian Revolution drama "The Journey." A year later, the red-headed scamp got cast as Opie Taylor, the son of Mayberry, North Carolina sheriff Andy Taylor in "The Andy Griffith Show," which had the effect of turning him into America's kid brother. Television viewers watched Howard grow up throughout the 1960s, so they felt as though they had a touch of skin in the game when he played recent high-school graduate Steve Bolander in George Lucas' "American Graffiti." Then he landed the role of Richie Cunningham in the ABC sitcom "Happy Days," at which point he seemed like family. Everyone wanted Howard to excel.

If, however, everyone was being honest with themselves, it was hard to see Howard's acting career lasting much longer than "Happy Days." He possessed limited range and couldn't seem to shake his pipsqueak persona.

Illustrations by Stephanie Lane Gage.As the year draws to a close, we’d like to acknowledge the extraordinary efforts of our contributors. Here are some of their finest essays, interviews, festival coverage, and more from this year. We’re looking forward to much more in the new one. As always, thank you for reading.ESSAYSIllustration by Zoé Mahamès Peters.The current cinema:Sasha Frere-Jones on Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi’s GIFTPhilippa Snow on Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor ThingsAdam Nayman on Pascal Plante’s Red RoomsCassie da Costa on RaMell Ross’s Nickel BoysAmanda Chen on Trương Minh Quý’s Việt and NamSanoja Bhaumik on Felipe Gálvez Haberle’s The SettlersNathalie Olah on Andrea Arnold’s BirdRobert Rubsam on Alice Rohrwacher’s La chimeraGrace Byron on Jane Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV GlowZach Schonfeld on M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap and Michael Showalter’s The Idea of YouSam...

Anastasia.François Truffaut saved his most pointed barb for last. Ending a short review in 1957 with a kiss-off, the notoriously venomous critic urges: “Anatole Litvak despises you; despise him back.”1 He was writing about Anastasia (1956), “a most mediocre film which has for its theme a historical enigma, one of the stupidest and emptiest subjects in a category that never fails to fill the theaters.” Anastasia certainly filled the Jolly Cinema in Bologna this June, the opening night film in Il Cinema Ritrovato’s centerpiece retrospective on the Ukrainian filmmaker, himself something of a historical enigma.The selection made for a curious introduction to the first major showcase for a director billed in the festival’s program preview as “an unjustly overlooked master…[who] made some of the most riveting and innovative films in the history of cinema.” It’s on such approbative epistles that flights are hastily booked, festival passes acquired,...

“I can’t believe we’re here,” a friend said to me about halfway through this year’s Il Cinema Ritrovato, which takes over the center of Bologna for nine glorious days every summer, before correcting himself: “It actually makes a lot of sense that we’re here, but I still can’t believe it.”

My friend was in awe not that we––a pair of New York cinephiles, both fairly well-traveled––managed to make it to beautiful Bologna, but that we had entered some kind of an Olympic village for cinephiles, each day filled with some of the most memorable moviegoing events of our lives and each night filled with hours of discussion about the day’s pleasures. At the festival, everyone’s first question is “how many years have you been coming?” and newcomers are warmly welcomed into the fray. The favored departure is not a “ciao” or...

“We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces,” proclaimed former silent film queen Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in Billy Wilder’s 1950 masterwork “Sunset Boulevard.” One of the greatest faces of the era belonged to French actor Albert Dieudonne who starred in Abel Gance’s breathtaking 1927 epic “Napoleon.” With this dark eyes, distinct nose and rock star style hair, Dieudonne channels the infamous French military leader and emperor who conquered most of Europe in the early 19th century until his disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia. Exiled to Elba in 1814, he emerged once again and suffered a massive defeat at Waterloo in 1815. He died in exile six years later at the age of 51.

Dieudonne commands the 5 ½ hour film restored by Kevin Brownlow which features the jaw-dropping triptych finale that is as exciting now as it was 96 years ago. BFI states that the film is “monumental and visionary, the story’s chapters play out...

HQ7 Studios will initially have two fully soundproofed stages.

Construction is underway on a €10m production complex on the outskirts of Vienna that will launch in the first quarter of 2024.

The HQ7 Studios will initially consist of two fully soundproofed stages with an area of 2,000 and 1,000m2 respectively.

There are plans to build another two stages between 2,000 and 2,500m2, while a third phase of construction may also see space later being made available for outside sets at the studio lot.

In addition, HQ7 will have 2,000m2 available as ancillary office and workshop space.

Speaking to Screen, HQ7’s managing director...

May on the Criterion Channel will be good to the auteurs. In fact they’re giving Richard Linklater better treatment than the distributor of his last film, with a 13-title retrospective mixing usual suspects—the Before trilogy, Boyhood, Slacker—with some truly off the beaten track. There’s a few shorts I haven’t seen but most intriguing is Heads I Win/Tails You Lose, the only available description of which calls it a four-hour (!) piece “edited together by Richard Linklater in 1991 from film countdowns and tail leaders from films submitted to the Austin Film Society in Austin, Texas from 1987 to 1990. It is Linklater’s tribute to the film countdown, used by many projectionists over the years to cue one reel of film after another when switching to another reel on another projector during projection.” Pair that with 2008’s Inning by Inning: A Portrait of a Coach and your completionism will be on-track.

In his latest book about the history of Hollywood, “Hollywood Victory: The Movies, Stars, and Stories of World War II,” IndieWire’s own Managing Editor Christian Blauvelt explores how the industry responded to the onset of World War II and the need to defend the American way of life. In the book, out early next month, Blauvelt digs into how the both the films of Hollywood and the people who made them reoriented their work and lives to serve the war effort and beyond.

In our exclusive excerpt below, Blauvelt unpacks how Hollywood reacted to the attack on Pearl Harbor, thanks to a ticking clock look back at how the news (and its horror) spread throughout Hollywood and beyond.

“The sun is shining, the grass is green / the orange and palm trees sway” goes the opening of Irving Berlin’s oft-discarded verse to “White Christmas.” It could have described the...

As 2021 mercifully winds down, the Criterion Channel have a (November) lineup that marks one of their most diverse selections in some time—films by the new masters Ryusuke Hamaguchi and Garrett Bradley, Dan Sallitt’s Fourteen (one of 2020’s best films) couched in a fantastic retrospective, and Criterion editions of old favorites.

Fourteen is featured in “Between Us Girls: Bonds Between Women,” which also includes Céline and Julie, The Virgin Suicides, and Yvonne Rainer’s Privilege. Of equal note are Criterion editions for Ghost World, Night of the Hunter, and (just in time for del Toro’s spin) Nightmare Alley—all stacked releases in their own right.

See the full list of October titles below and more on the Criterion Channel.

300 Nassau, Marina Lameiro, 2015

5 Card Stud, Henry Hathaway, 1968

Alone, Garrett Bradley, 2017

Álvaro, Daniel Wilson, Elizabeth Warren, Alexandra Lazarowich, and Chloe Zimmerman, 2015

America, Garrett Bradley, 2019

Angel Face, Otto Preminger, 1953

Angels Wear White,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Luis Buñuel (left) and Jean-Claude Carrière (right).The great Jean-Claude Carrière has died. The prolific screenwriter worked across genres and penned scripts from Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being to Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, and more recently, Philippe Garrel's The Salt of Tears. Revisit Notebook contributor Lawrence Garcia's overview of Carrière's wide-ranging career here. Actor Christopher Plummer, one of the last links between Classic Hollywood and today, has also died. Throughout his long and illustrious career, Plummer worked with filmmakers like Nicholas Ray, Sidney Lumet, Anthony Mann, Robert Mulligan, Anatole Litvak, Michael Mann, Spike Lee, Terrence Malick, and Pete Docter.The International Film Festival Rotterdam has come to an end, and the winners of this year's awards can be found here. The Berlinale is continuing...

A central figure in French cinema, Bertrand Tavernier has an encyclopedic knowledge of the craft of filmmaking akin to the likes of Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. The sense of history he possesses is seen in both his narrative and documentary, the latter of which is perhaps best exemplified in his recent film My Journey Through French Cinema. Clocking in at 3.5 hours, that 2016 documentary has now received a follow-up expansion with an eight-part series and we’re pleased to debut the U.S. trailer.

Titled Journeys Through French Cinema, the director-writer-actor-producer explores the filmmakers that most influenced him, how the cinema of France changed when the country was German occupation, the unknown films and filmmakers he admires (with a focus on female directors), and much more. From better-known filmmakers such as Jacques Tati, Robert Bresson, and Jacques Demy to ones in need of (re)discovery such as Raymond Bernard, Maurice Turner,...

Above: Italian 4-fogli for Birdman of Alcatraz. Artist: Renato Casaro.Starting today with a week-long run of Robert Siodmak’s The Killers, New York’s Film Forum is hosting a 4-week, 37-film retrospective of one of the great he-men of Hollywood. With his square jaw, gymnast’s physique, and megawatt grin, Burt Lancaster (1913–1994) must have been a boon to movie poster artists and over the years he was drawn or painted by many great affichistes. I could have curated a post on just the Italian renditions of Lancaster alone: over the years he was painted by Ercole Brini, Anselmo Ballester, Luigi Martinati, Renato Casaro, Averardo Ciriello, and many more. To mark the retrospective I have selected 50 of my favorite illustrated images of the indelible star, from his brooding film noir youth (though he was actually 33 when he made his debut in The Killers), through his serious thespian mid-period to his...

Hollywood takes a hard look at the mundane horrors of mental asylums, and Olivia de Havilland scores another career high with her portrayal of a housewife experiencing a nervous breakdown. Some people found the show scary and a few felt it was tasteless, but Ms. de Havilland’s performance is riveting, 71 years later. Anatole Litvak’s intense direction makes good use of expressionistic visual devices, without veering into dippy Salvador Dalí psycho-surrealism.

The Snake Pit

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1948 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 108 min. / Street Date April 22, 2019 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Olivia de Havilland, Mark Stevens, Leo Genn, Celeste Holm, Glenn Langan, Helen Craig, Leif Erickson, Beulah Bondi, Lee Patrick, Natalie Schafer, Ruth Donnelly, Katherine Locke, Minna Gombell, Ann Doran, Jacqueline deWit, Betsy Blair, Queenie Smith, Virginia Brissac, Marie Blake, Isabel Jewell, Celia Lovsky, Mae Marsh, Doro Merande, Mary Newton, Inez Palange, Mary Treen, Minerva Urecal.

Cinematography:...

The following remembrance was written by Deborah Davis, Mark Urman’s wife.

From Anatole Litvak’s “Anastasia,” the first movie he saw as a child at a picture palace in the Bronx, to Bradley Cooper’s “A Star Is Born” (his choice for this year’s Best Picture), Mark Urman was a man with a boundless passion for cinema. In the course of his nearly 50 years in film, Mark felt blessed to work with some of the greatest luminaries in the business, from Joseph Losey, David Lean, and Bernardo Bertolucci to Roman Polanski, Sydney Lumet, and Julian Schnabel.

He also delighted in encouraging talents as they emerged, including Ryan Gosling, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, Lynette Howell, Jamie Patricof, Christian Bale, Liv Tyler, Marc Forster, Natasha Richardson, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, Kevin Smith, Cary Fukunaga, Lee Daniels, and Bill Condon.

Mark was born in the Bronx on November 24, 1952, the...

by Salim Garami

The longevity of Danielle Darrieux's life - reaching up until the golden age of 100 as she passed Tuesday on 17 October - parallels the longevity of Darrieux's storied career. To know her path is to essentially map out the development of French cinema in a cursory sense: Beginning as a child in the very dawn of the French sound era within the musical comedy Le Bal in 1931 until a star-making turn in Anatole Litvak's Mayerling, taking a detour at the cusp of her fame to Hollywood like many beautiful French stars would, returning to her homeland right through the Left Bank faction of the French New Wave working with the likes of Claude Chabrol and Jacques Demy, finding her way to the Broadway stage with Coco as Coco Chanel, and taking a moment to work with directors of the Cahiers du Cinema second generation and the...

Witness the ‘fifties transformation of the femme fatale, from scheming murderess to self-deluding social climber. Barbara Stanwyck redefines herself once again in Gerd Oswald’s best-directed picture, a searing portrayal of needs and anxieties in the nervous decade. With fine support from Raymond Burr, Virginia Grey and Royal Dano.

Crime of Passion

Blu-ray

ClassicFlix

1957 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 84 min. / Street Date September 5, 2017 /

Starring: Barbara Stanwyck, Sterling Hayden, Raymond Burr, Fay Wray, Virginia Grey, Royal Dano.

Cinematography: Joseph Lashelle

Art Direction: Leslie Thomas

Original Music: Paul Dunlap

Original Story and Screenplay by Jo Eisinger

Produced by Herman Cohen, Robert Goldstein

Directed by Gerd Oswald

A key title in the development of the Film Noir, 1957’s Crime of Passion shows how much the style had departed from the dark romanticism and expressive visuals of the previous decade. The best mid-’50s noirs strike a marvelously cynical and existentially bleak attitude regarding crime and society.

Or, “Never on Sunday with Your Stepson.” Director Jules Dassin’s monument to his beloved Melina Mercouri transposes a Greek tragedy to a modern setting. The pampered wife of a shipping magnate is like a queen of old — she can fling a priceless gem into the Thames on just a whim, and she goes in whatever direction her heart takes her. When her attractive stepson Anthony Perkins enters the picture, there will be Hell to Pay.

Phaedra

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1962 / B&W / 1:66 widescreen / 116 min. / Street Date March 21, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.95

Starring: Melina Mercouri, Anthony Perkins, Raf Vallone, Elisabeth Ercy.

Cinematography: Jacquest Natteau

Film Editor: Roger Dwyre

Original Music: Mikis Theodorakis

Written by Jules Dassin, Margarita Lymberaki from the play Hippolytus by Euripides

Produced and Directed by Jules Dassin

Anyone into amour fou, the romantic notion of a love without limits, beyond the harsh constraints of reality?...

The Notebook is the North American home for Locarno Film Festival Artistic Director Carlo Chatrian's blog. Chatrian has been writing thoughtful blog entries in Italian on Locarno's website since he took over as Director in late 2012, and now you can find the English translations here on the Notebook as they're published. The Locarno Film Festival will be taking place August 2 - 12. We can begin with one of those anecdotes that are the stuff of Hollywood, marking the birth of a star and mapping out a whole career. Gene Tierney had already caught the eye of Anatole Litvak when aged only 17 and, after a happy period of study abroad (right here in Switzerland, in Lausanne), had been invited by a cousin to visit a Hollywood film set. But she took her father’s advice and turned down an offer from Warner Bros in favor of starting on the stage, on Broadway.

When Quentin Tarantino got a plane earlier this month, traveling to the Lumière Film Festival in Lyon, France it wasn’t just for a meet and greet. In addition to preparing for a masterclass talk, the director selected fourteen films from 1970 to screen at the festival — Arthur Hiller’s “Love Story,” Jerzy Skolimowski‘s “Deep End,” Dario Argento’s “The Bird With The Crystal Plumage,” Anatole Litvak‘s “The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun,” Eric Rohmer‘s “Claire’s Knee,” Claude Chabrol’s “The Butcher,” John Huston‘s “The Kremlin Letter,” Billy Wilder’s “The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes,” Bob Rafelson’s “Five Easy Pieces,” William Wyler‘s “The Liberation of L.B.

Continue reading Quentin Tarantino Dives Into 1970s Cinema In Full Masterclass Talk From 2016 Lumière Film Festival at The Playlist.

Hollywood's most elegantly natural, defiantly independent actress comes alive in a film biography about her personal life, using inside family testimony, rare film and her diaries. Sweden's Ingrid seems more radiant than ever. Ingrid Bergman in Her Own Words Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 82228 2015 / B&W-Color / 1:78 widescreen / 114 min. / Jag är Ingrid / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date August 16, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Pia Lindström, Roberto Rossellini, Ingrid Rossellini, Isabella Rossellini, Fiorella Mariani, Liv Ullmann, Sigourney Weaver, Jeanine Basinger. Ingrid Bergman's voice Alicia Vikander Film Editor Dominika Daubenbüchel Original Music Michael Nyman Written by Stig Björkman, Stina Gardell and Dominika Daubenbüchel Produced by Stina Gardell Directed by Stig Björkman

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Ingrid Bergman had one of the most fascinating lives of any woman of the 20th century. An ambitious actress, she let herself be guided by her desires and her heart. Although banished by Hollywood and vilified by the press,...

Decidedly weird but not altogether enthralling is the 1962 title Five Miles to Midnight, a melodramatic thriller with noir elements and one of the last films by the accomplished Anatole Litvak (who would only direct two more features after, including The Night of the Generals and the currently unavailable 1970 version of The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun).

Continue reading...

That scarlet woman Ingrid is back from exile, and hypocritical Hollywood is not complaining -- Anatole Litvak and Arthur Laurents make an intriguing romantic-psychological mystery of a bogus Romanoff Duchess who surfaces in 1928 Paris to claim the crown fortune. Good roles for Yul Brynner and Helen Hayes as well. It's a strange intersection of scandal, history and swindlers that may have found the real item... and maybe not. Anastasia Blu-ray Twilight Time Limited Edition 1956 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 105 min. / Ship Date March 15, 2016 / available through Twilight Time Movies / 29.95 Starring Ingrid Bergman, Yul Brynner, Helen Hayes, Akim Tamiroff, Martita Hunt, Felix Aylmer, Sacha Pitoeff, Ivan Desny, Natalie Schafer, Karel Stepanek Cinematography Jack Hildyard Art Direction Andrej Andrejew, Bill Andrews Film Editor Bert Bates Original Music Alfred Newman Written by Arthur Laurents from a play by Marcelle Maurette Produced by Buddy Adler Directed by Anatole Litvak

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

The cleverly written and...

A few years ago the editors of Shadowlocked asked me to compile a list of what was initially to be, the ten greatest movie matte paintings of all time. A mere ten selections was too slim by a long shot, so my list stretched considerably to twenty, then thirty and finally a nice round fifty entries. Even with that number I found it wasn’t easy to narrow down a suitably wide ranging showcase of motion picture matte art that best represented the artform. So with that in mind, and due to the surprising popularity of that 2012 Shadowlocked list (which is well worth a visit, here Ed), I’ve assembled a further fifty wonderful examples of this vast, vital and more extensively utilised than you’d imagine – though now sadly ‘dead and buried’ – movie magic.

It would of course be so easy to simply concentrate on the well known, iconic,...

Read More: Watch: 'The Lady in the Car With Glasses and a Gun' Trailer Previews Stunning Neo-Noir Thriller After adapting his own comics in his previous two feature films ("Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life," "The Rabbi's Cat"), filmmaker Joann Sfar turns to Sébastien Japrisot's noir-thriller "The Lady in the Car With Glasses and a Gun" for his latest outing. The novel was previously adapted into a 1970 film directed by Anatole Litvak, though Sfar has a style far more sexy and thrilling up his sleeve. "The Lady in the Car With Glasses and a Gun" centers on Dany Doremus (Mavor) as she drives her boss' car to a town where everyone seems to know her, although she claims she's never been in the town before. Matters become worse when she discovers a body in her trunk, which the clip above teases in full. The film hits theaters and On Demand today,...

Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.

Norma Shearer films Note: This article is being revised and expanded. Please check back later. Turner Classic Movies' Norma Shearer month comes to a close this evening, Nov. 24, '15, with the presentation of the last six films of Shearer's two-decade-plus career. Two of these are remarkably good; one is schizophrenic, a confused mix of high comedy and low drama; while the other three aren't the greatest. Yet all six are worth a look even if only because of Norma Shearer herself – though, really, they all have more to offer than just their top star. Directed by W.S. Van Dyke, the no-expense-spared Marie Antoinette (1938) – $2.9 million, making it one of the most expensive movies ever made up to that time – stars the Canadian-born Queen of MGM as the Austrian-born Queen of France. This was Shearer's first film in two years (following Romeo and Juliet) and her first release following husband Irving G.

Producer Stina Gardell with Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words director Stig Björkman Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

Ingrid Bergman won Oscars for George Cukor's Gaslight, Anatole Litvak's Anastasia and Murder On The Orient Express, directed by Sidney Lumet. In Ingrid Bergman: In Her Own Words (Jag är Ingrid), Stig Björkman's warmhearted and elaborate documentary about the star, her four children, Pia Lindström, Isabella Rossellini, Ingrid Rossellini, and Roberto Rossellini as well as colleagues Liv Ullmann and Sigourney Weaver share their memories about the mother, the woman, who never threw anything away. Alicia Vikander's alluring voiceover, Bergman's luminous face - and the camera's love for it - are a perfect match.

At Payard on Houston Street, the director and Stina Gardell joined me to discuss Ingrid Bergman, her children, Michael Nyman, Liv Ullmann relating an Ingmar Bergman Autumn Sonata moment, Eva Dahlgren and praise from Arnaud Desplechin.

Top Ten Scream Queens: Barbara Steele, who both emitted screams and made others do same, is in a category of her own. Top Ten Scream Queens Halloween is over until next year, but the equally bewitching Day of the Dead is just around the corner. So, dead or alive, here's my revised and expanded list of cinema's Top Ten Scream Queens. This highly personal compilation is based on how memorable – as opposed to how loud or how frequent – were the screams. That's the key reason you won't find listed below actresses featured in gory slasher films. After all, the screams – and just about everything else in such movies – are as meaningless as their plots. You also won't find any screaming guys (i.e., Scream Kings) on the list below even though I've got absolutely nothing against guys who scream in horror, whether in movies or in life. There are...

Ingrid Bergman ca. early 1940s. Ingrid Bergman movies on TCM: From the artificial 'Gaslight' to the magisterial 'Autumn Sonata' Two days ago, Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” series highlighted the film career of Greta Garbo. Today, Aug. 28, '15, TCM is focusing on another Swedish actress, three-time Academy Award winner Ingrid Bergman, who would have turned 100 years old tomorrow. TCM has likely aired most of Bergman's Hollywood films, and at least some of her early Swedish work. As a result, today's only premiere is Fielder Cook's little-seen and little-remembered From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler (1973), about two bored kids (Sally Prager, Johnny Doran) who run away from home and end up at New York City's Metropolitan Museum. Obviously, this is no A Night at the Museum – and that's a major plus. Bergman plays an elderly art lover who takes an interest in them; her...

After a successful career as an illustrator and as a writer, Joann Sfar tackled the medium of cinema in 2010 when he directed Gainsbourg (Vie héroïque), a beautiful and surprisingly oneiric biopic about the famous French singer. He then followed up with two animated films, one he adapted from his own work (The Rabbi's Cat, 2011) and a second one for which he directed one segment (Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, 2014). With La Dame dans l'Auto avec des Lunettes et un Fusil (The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun), Sfar comes back to live cinema with this adaptation of Sébastien Japrisot's homonymous novel, which was already transposed once in 1970 by Anatole Litvak. Sfar himself stated that he wanted to make a...

[Read the whole post on twitchfilm.com...]...

Olivia de Havilland picture U.S. labor history-making 'Gone with the Wind' star and two-time Best Actress winner Olivia de Havilland turns 99 (This Olivia de Havilland article is currently being revised and expanded.) Two-time Best Actress Academy Award winner Olivia de Havilland, the only surviving major Gone with the Wind cast member and oldest surviving Oscar winner, is turning 99 years old today, July 1.[1] Also known for her widely publicized feud with sister Joan Fontaine and for her eight movies with Errol Flynn, de Havilland should be remembered as well for having made Hollywood labor history. This particular history has nothing to do with de Havilland's films, her two Oscars, Gone with the Wind, Joan Fontaine, or Errol Flynn. Instead, history was made as a result of a legal fight: after winning a lawsuit against Warner Bros. in the mid-'40s, Olivia de Havilland put an end to treacherous...

'San Andreas' movie with Dwayne Johnson. 'San Andreas' movie box office: $100 million domestic milestone today As the old saying (sort of) goes: If you build it, they will come. Warner Bros. built a gigantic video game, called it San Andreas, and They have come to check out Dwayne Johnson perform miraculous deeds not seen since ... George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road, released two weeks earlier. Embraced by moviegoers, hungry for quality, original storylines and well-delineated characters – and with the assistance of 3D surcharges – the San Andreas movie debuted with $54.58 million from 3,777 theaters on its first weekend out (May 29-31) in North America. Down a perfectly acceptable 52 percent on its second weekend (June 5-7), the special effects-laden actioner collected an extra $25.83 million, trailing only the Melissa McCarthy-Jason Statham comedy Spy, (with $29.08 million) as found at Box Office Mojo.* And that's how this original movie – it's not officially a remake,...

Marc Allégret: From André Gide lover to Simone Simon mentor (photo: Marc Allégret) (See previous post: "Simone Simon Remembered: Sex Kitten and Femme Fatale.") Simone Simon became a film star following the international critical and financial success of the 1934 romantic drama Lac aux Dames, directed by her self-appointed mentor – and alleged lover – Marc Allégret.[1] The son of an evangelical missionary, Marc Allégret (born on December 22, 1900, in Basel, Switzerland) was to have become a lawyer. At age 16, his life took a different path as a result of his romantic involvement – and elopement to London – with his mentor and later "adoptive uncle" André Gide (1947 Nobel Prize winner in Literature), more than 30 years his senior and married to Madeleine Rondeaux for more than two decades. In various forms – including a threesome with painter Théo Van Rysselberghe's daughter Elisabeth – the Allégret-Gide relationship remained steady until the late '20s and their trip to...

Editors Adrian Martin and Girish Shambu have begun rolling out the fifth issue of Lola, wherein you'll find essays on European directors in Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s (Michael Curtiz, Anatole Litvak, Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, Curtis Bernhardt, William Dieterle, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak and Fred Zinnemann) and more. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Greil Marcus and Don DeLillo on Bob Dylan, an interview with Manoel de Oliveira, a 1963 essay by Gregory J. Markopoulos, an oral history of Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff, David Lynch's lessons on filmmaking and more. » - David Hudson...

Editors Adrian Martin and Girish Shambu have begun rolling out the fifth issue of Lola, wherein you'll find essays on European directors in Hollywood in the 1940s and 50s (Michael Curtiz, Anatole Litvak, Ernst Lubitsch, Billy Wilder, Curtis Bernhardt, William Dieterle, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, Robert Siodmak and Fred Zinnemann) and more. Also in today's roundup of news and views: Greil Marcus and Don DeLillo on Bob Dylan, an interview with Manoel de Oliveira, a 1963 essay by Gregory J. Markopoulos, an oral history of Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff, David Lynch's lessons on filmmaking and more. » - David Hudson...

Honorary Oscars 2014: Hayao Miyazaki, Jean-Claude Carrière, and Maureen O’Hara; Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award goes to Harry Belafonte One good thing about the creation of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Governors Awards — an expedient way to remove the time-consuming presentation of the (nearly) annual Honorary Oscar from the TV ratings-obsessed, increasingly youth-oriented Oscar show — is that each year up to four individuals can be named Honorary Oscar recipients, thus giving a better chance for the Academy to honor film industry veterans while they’re still on Planet Earth. (See at the bottom of this post a partial list of those who have gone to the Great Beyond, without having ever received a single Oscar statuette.) In 2014, the Academy’s Board of Governors has selected a formidable trio of honorees: Japanese artist and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, 73; French screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, 82; and Irish-born Hollywood actress Maureen O’Hara,...

Playwright and screenwriter Terence Rattigan was an indubitable influence on mid-century British cinema. He authored several of the era’s most notable titles, including The Browning Version (1951), Lean’s The Sound Barrier (1952) Olivier’s troubled The Prince and the Showgirl (1957) and Anatole Litvak’s The Deep Blue Sea (1952), which was recently remade by Terrence Davies in 2011. But it would be a 1958 American adaptation of his play, Separate Tables, from director Delbert Mann that would prove to be his most critically lauded work, nominated for seven Academy Awards, and snagging two (Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress). By today’s standards, it’s a film that feels painstakingly melodramatic. Reconsidered within the framework of Rattigan’s own impressive oeuvre, the material hasn’t aged well, and as time has gone on, its cramped exploration of sexual dysfunction now plays like a euthanized product crippled by censorship of the author’s own...

Danielle Darrieux turns 97: Darrieux has probably enjoyed the longest film star career in history (photo: Danielle Darrieux in ‘La Ronde’) Screen legend Danielle Darrieux is turning 97 today, May 1, 2014. In all likelihood, the Bordeaux-born (1917) Darrieux has enjoyed the longest "movie star" career ever: eight decades, from Wilhelm Thiele’s Le Bal (1931) to Denys Granier-Deferre’s The Wedding Cake / Pièce montée (2010). (Mickey Rooney has had a longer film career — nearly nine decades — but mostly as a supporting player in minor roles.) Absurdly, despite a prestigious career consisting of more than 100 movie roles, Danielle Darrieux — delightful in Club de femmes, superb in The Earrings of Madame De…, alternately hilarious and heartbreaking in 8 Women — has never won an Honorary Oscar. But then again, very few women have. At least, the French Academy did award her an Honorary César back in 1985; additionally, in 2002 Darrieux and her fellow 8 Women / 8 femmes co-stars shared Best Actress honors...

‘Gone with the Wind’ actress Mary Anderson dead at 96; also featured in Alfred Hitchcock thriller ‘Lifeboat’ Mary Anderson, an actress featured in both Gone with the Wind and Alfred Hitchcock’s adventure thriller Lifeboat, died following a series of small strokes on Sunday, April 6, 2014, while under hospice care in Toluca Lake/Burbank, northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Anderson, the widow of multiple Oscar-winning cinematographer Leon Shamroy, had turned 96 on April 3. Born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1918, Mary Anderson was reportedly discovered by director George Cukor, at the time looking for an actress to play Scarlett O’Hara in David O. Selznick’s film version of Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller Gone with the Wind. Instead of Scarlett, eventually played by Vivien Leigh, Anderson was cast in the small role of Maybelle Merriwether — most of which reportedly ended up on the cutting-room floor. Cukor was later fired from the project; his replacement, Victor Fleming,...

Above: Us poster for Forbidden (Frank Capra, USA, 1932)

In honor of the month-long retrospective of the films of the great Barbara Stanwyck starting today at Film Forum in New York, I thought I’d select my favorite Stanwyck posters. Brooklyn-born Ruby Catherine Stevens made 85 films over 37 years in Hollywood so there is an awful lot to choose from. But the remarkable thing about looking back at these posters is how artists seemed to have had a hard time capturing her likeness. The poster for one of her earliest films, Capra’s 1932 Forbidden, above, captures her beautifully, but the poster for Stella Dallas (1937), her first Oscar-nominated role (she never won, shockingly), seems to be of a different actress entirely. As for the sexed-up illustration on the flyer for The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), in that she looks more like Jean Harlow. Some of my favorite posters for her films are the Swedish and Danish designs,...

Jean Kent: ‘The Browning Version’ 1951, Gainsborough folds (photo: Jean Kent in ‘The Browning Version,’ with Michael Redgrave) (See previous post: “Jean Kent: Gainsborough Pictures Film Star Dead at 92.”) Seemingly stuck in Britain, Jean Kent’s other important leads of the period came out in 1948: John Paddy Carstairs’ Alfred Hitchcock-esque thriller Sleeping Car to Trieste (1948), with spies on board the Orient Express, and Gordon Parry’s ensemble piece Bond Street. Following two minor 1950 comedies, Her Favorite Husband / The Taming of Dorothy and The Reluctant Widow / The Inheritance, Kent’s movie stardom was virtually over, though she would still have one major film role in store. In what is probably her best remembered and most prestigious effort, Jean Kent played Millie Crocker-Harris, the unsympathetic, adulterous wife of unfulfilled teacher Michael Redgrave, in Anthony Asquith’s 1951 film version of Terence Rattigan’s The Browning Version — a Javelin Films production...

Andy Kaufman alive? Or Andy Kaufman hoax? New York City-born comedian Andy Kaufman, little known outside the United States but well-remembered in the U.S. by those who watched the late ’70s / early ’80s television series Taxi, is alive, married, and has a (previously unknown) grown daughter who goes by the name of McCoy. Well, if — and that’s a big if (or perhaps a small one, considering people’s willful gullibility and/or downright stupidity) — you believe the story reported in numerous outlets in the last couple of days: Andy Kaufman may have faked his own death of lung cancer at age 35 in 1984 so he could escape the limelight. (Photo: Andy Kaufman) At the New York-based Andy Kaufman Awards last Monday night, November 11, 2013, a woman claiming to be Kaufman’s daughter — calling herself "McCoy" (reportedly the name Kaufman used when checking himself into hospitals) — appeared on stage with Michael Kaufman,...

Vivien Leigh: Legendary ‘Gone with the Wind’ and ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ star would have turned 100 today Vivien Leigh was perhaps the greatest film star that hardly ever was. What I mean is that following her starring role in the 1939 Civil War blockbuster Gone with the Wind, Leigh was featured in a mere eight* movies over the course of the next 25 years. The theater world’s gain — she was kept busy on the London stage — was the film world’s loss. But even if Leigh had starred in only two movies — Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire — that would have been enough to make her a screen legend; one who would have turned 100 years old today, November 5, 2013. (Photo: Vivien Leigh ca. 1940.) Vivien Leigh (born Vivian Mary Hartley to British parents in Darjeeling, India) began her film career in the mid-’30s, playing bit roles in British...

Kirk Douglas movies: The Theater of Larger Than Life Performances Kirk Douglas, a three-time Best Actor Academy Award nominee and one of the top Hollywood stars of the ’50s, is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" featured star today, August 30, 2013. Although an undeniably strong screen presence, no one could ever accuse Douglas of having been a subtle, believable actor. In fact, even if you were to place side by side all of the widescreen formats ever created, they couldn’t possibly be wide enough to contain his larger-than-life theatrical emoting. (Photo: Kirk Douglas ca. 1950.) Right now, TCM is showing Andrew V. McLaglen’s 1967 Western The Way West, a routine tale about settlers in the Old American Northwest that remains of interest solely due to its name cast. Besides Douglas, The Way West features Robert Mitchum, Richard Widmark, Lola Albright, and 21-year-old Sally Field in her The Flying Nun days.

Above: 1968 Hans Hillmann poster for Shadows (John Cassavetes, USA, 1959).

There is an exhibition of the great German graphic designer Hans Hillmann currently running at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany. Devoted entirely to Hillmann’s film posters from 1952 to 1974, the show, called The Title is Continued in the Picture, runs through the 1st of September and I’m sorry that I didn’t know about it sooner. But for those of us who can’t make it to the Ruhr in the next three weeks, the website Kunst + Film has posted a wonderful, almost-as-good-as-being-there video of the show.

The revelation of the video for me is the size of that Seven Samurai poster. Where most of Hillmann’s film posters are 33" x 23" (slightly smaller than a Us one-sheet), and the Cassavetes above is only 16.5" x 23", that glorious Seven Samurai is 93" x 132", or 11 feet wide.

While many of Hillmann’s witty,...

Joan Fontaine movies: ‘This Above All,’ ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ (photo: Cary Grant, Joan Fontaine in ‘Suspicion’ publicity image) (See previous post: “Joan Fontaine Today.”) Also tonight on Turner Classic Movies, Joan Fontaine can be seen in today’s lone TCM premiere, the flag-waving 20th Century Fox release The Above All (1942), with Fontaine as an aristocratic (but socially conscious) English Rose named Prudence Cathaway (Fontaine was born to British parents in Japan) and Fox’s top male star, Tyrone Power, as her Awol romantic interest. This Above All was directed by Anatole Litvak, who would guide Olivia de Havilland in the major box-office hit The Snake Pit (1948), which earned her a Best Actress Oscar nod. In Max Ophüls’ darkly romantic Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Fontaine delivers not only what is probably the greatest performance of her career, but also one of the greatest movie performances ever. Letter from an Unknown Woman...

Turner Classic Movies’ (TCM) ultimate movie star showcase – Summer Under the Stars – returns this August for its 11th year as TCM pays tribute to 31 different stars in 31 days.

Sixteen of this year’s stars are being celebrated for the first time duringSummer Under the Stars, including Oscar® winners Joan Fontaine (Aug. 6), Mickey Rooney (Aug. 13), Wallace Beery (Aug. 17), Hattie McDaniel (Aug. 20), Downton Abbey star Maggie Smith (Aug. 22), Charles Coburn (Aug. 24), Martin Balsam(Aug. 27), Shirley Jones (Aug. 28) and Rex Harrison (Aug. 31). Also featured for the first time will be silent heartthrob Ramón Novarro (Aug. 8); legendary French actressCatherine Deneuve (Aug. 12), whose day features six films making their TCM debuts; Ann Blyth (Aug. 16), whose marathon will air on her 85th birthday; and Mary Boland (Aug. 4) and Glenda Farrell (Aug. 29), two outstanding character actresses who never received the recognition they deserved. They will join 15 returning favorites, including Humphrey Bogart (Aug. 1), Doris Day (Aug. 2), Charlton Heston (Aug.

La course du lièvre à travers les champs (The Race of the Hare Across the Fields a.k.a. ...and Hope to Die, 1972) is an interesting late entry in the career of French crime specialist René Clément, a kind of smorgasbord of his favorite stuff: hardboiled crime, knotty sexual triangles, a hero on the run, convoluted crime schemes, with a harkening back to childhood sins that suggests his classic Jeux interdits (Forbidden Games, 1952). This might suggest desperation to recapture past glories, but the film is also stuffed with experimentation and up-to-the-minute influences (a train station confrontation early on suggests Leone) which confirm the filmmaker as alert to new possibilities.

But the film could just as easily be approached through the sensibility of its writer, Sébastien Japrisot, a key figure in French cinema and crime cinema, or even through that of the author of the source novel, David Goodis.

Since it's the weekend, it's the time for odds and ends on S & A; this one tidbit I thought you might enjoy. It's a very brief scene from the 1961 romantic drama Goodbye Again, made and shot entirely in Paris for United Artists, by director Anatole Litvak, who had a very long career making romantic and suspense dramas, starting in France and Germany in the early 1930's, and then in Hollywood up until the early 70's. This film is also known as Aimez-vous Brahms, since a motif from his third symphony is a plot point and the basis of the movie's main theme. Carroll sings a version of it at the beginning of the scene. The picture revolves...

I was very saddened to learn this morning of the death of Celeste Holm, the Oscar-winning actress who starred in numerous classics of Hollywood's Golden Age -- among them Elia Kazan's best picture Oscar winner Gentlemen's Agreement (1947), Anatole Litvak's The Snake Pit (1948), Henry Koster's Come to the Stable (1949), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and best picture Oscar winner All About Eve (1950), and Charles Walters's The Tender Trap (1955) and High Society (1956) -- and who I was honored to count as a friend over the last decade of her life. I first met

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