Monday next, Sept. 13th: David Lean's MADELEINE (1949) with Ann Todd; preceded by Peter Ustinov's VICE VERSA (1947) with Roger Livesey, Tony Newley, Petula Clark.
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Sept. 6 1971
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The Theodore Huff Memorial Film Society |
| THE RED DANCE |
(Fox, 1928) Directed by Raoul Walsh |
Original story: H.L. Gates and Eleanor Browne; adaptation by Pierre Collins and Philip Klein; scenario, James Creelman; Camera, Charles Clarke and John Marta; Assistant Director, Archie Buchanan; Sets, Ben Carre and David Hall;
Technical Consultant, N.V. Timchenko; titles, Malcolm Stuart Boylan; 9 reels
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| With: Dolores Del Rio, Charles Farrell, Ivan Linow, Dorothy Bevier, Boris Charsky, Dimitri Alexis, Andre de Segurola. |
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When The Red Dance opened in New York it was somewhat overshadowed by having a Movietone sound reel of George Bernard Shaw on the same program. Critics tended to devote most of their space to Mr. Shaw, commending the proficiency of The Red Dance, remarking that it was a trifle disjointed and showed signs of cutting but otherwise paying it little heed. For a silent as late as 1928, it is a remarkably vigorous film; technique there is in plenty, but none of the slow-paved indulgence in artiness for its own sake that characterised so many films of that year. Contrast it, for example, with the similarly plotted and localed Tempest of the same period, in which Menzies' production design and the superb camerawork take pride of place throughout. The Red Dance is a big, full-blooded adventure yarn, which admittedly bogs down a bit in the middle, but for reasons of plot complications rather than directorial indulgence. One could hardly find a more characteristic example of the 'old' kind of Hollywood writing; with bravura gall, Trotsky and Rasputin are used quite casually as standard villains, though with a wary eye on lawsuits, neither is identified by name! Dolores Del Rio, hardly very Russian, never quite seems to belong to it all, but it's good to see Ivan Linow in a large and worthwhile part for once. However, the real star is the art direction of Ben Carre, a set designer who had long worked with Maurice Tourneur. The sets here are quite stunning, most impressive of all being the highly stylised prison scenes - which incidentally Walsh used again, briefly, in The Yellow Ticket which we ran a few months ago. (Carre incidentally has just turned his memoirs over to the American Film Institute for ultimate publication; a handsome, fascinating document, written very decoratively by hand in the manner of the Bibles and books that used to be copied by monks of old!) Another interesting visual aspect of The Red Dance is the subtitling, which harks back (presumably at Walsh's instigation) to the methods evolved by Griffith in Intolerance with a separate style for the different aspects of the story. Dialogue titles spoken by, or informational titles relating to the aristocracy or military of old Russia are placed on a tapestry-like card, imprinted with a Tsarist symbol. Trotsky and other revolutionary leaders are given titles against a rough, rock-like surface. And the poor peasants, with little to say or do, have to be satisfied with plain white lettering against a plain white background!
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Since our "surprise" feature tonight is of mainly academic interest, we are deliberately running it second so that those not interested may leave. We also were careful to run it with a film of the stature of The Red Dance so that even those who leave will have had a very substantial hunk of film first! We appeal to everybody's sense of fair play to remember to pay if they leave at the halfway mark, since the print costs on this program were exceptionably heavy and at our customary rate of repeats once every seven years, it'll be 2020 before we can break even!
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The original cut of THE SIN OF HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK, written and directed by Preston Sturges in 1947
and finally released in 1951 as Mad Wednesday.
Since there are three divergent (and potent) split legal ownerships of this film, it will be appreciated why we were enjoined to play it without any kind of advance publicity. These who liked Mad Wednesday (we played it last in 1964) will find it an interesting comparison; these who have never seen it all will, we are sure, enjoy it enormously; but those who did not like the release version are unlikely to find the untampered-with original any more to their liking. If nothing else, this original cut gives us the opportunity to see that, once in a while at least, the original creator is not necessarily the best person to have the final word. Despite reports to the contrary, Mad Wednesday was not a ruined masterpiece; every change that Howard Hughes made improved it, and his end result was both snappier, funnier and neater. There is one totally new scene here (involving Rudy Vallee); for the rest, the additional 15 minutes can be found in lengthy extensions of existing scenes. There is much more of Harold's first drinking bout; more of his scene with Margaret Hamilton; much too much more of his final explanations in the handsome cab. Hughes pruned these, and added helpful lines of dialogue here and there. This version has NONE of the talking horse material of an interim cut, only one scene of which was retained for the very final scene in the release version. For your reference, we will be attaching to the wall copies of our original program notes (with cast, credits etc) for the benefit of anyone unfamiliar with the film.
-- W.K.E. --
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