| THE NEW SCHOOL |
FILM SERIES 77: Program #10 |
May 14 , 1993 |
| SHORTS AS A TRAINING GROUND FOR DIRECTORS |
Since we are dealing with a dozen titles tonight, all we can really do in these notes is to identify the films in the order in which they are run; those that need additional comment will be dealt with in the introduction. About half of the shorts have been run in these showings before, but since we started in 1966 (!) and rarely repeat shorts, many of them will be new to you. There are only a couple of minor deviations from the list as published last week, and these we'll explain in the introduction. Order of showing is dictated by variety rather than chronology. |
Section One.
|
THE FIRE WORSHIPPERS (Tiffany, 1930). The first official credit - as Art Director for Edgar Ulmer. Very economical, but interesting as a footnote to his career. The Aztec Indian stock footage comes from William S. Hart's The Captive God; ZAMPA (UA, 1930), the far more polished kind of musical short - literally the music video of its day – that the Ulmer film was emulating. One of an interesting series produced in 1930 by William Cameron Menzies, already an accomplished designer and art director. This series cave him his first chance to work with actors (though some of the films in the series were purely impressionistic and without players), here Buddy Roosevelt and Wallace MacDonald as hero and villain respectively. THE PLAYGIRLS (1941), a light print of a little Warner Brothers musical one-reeler directed by Jean Negulesco (later to specialise in high-grade thrillers like The Mask of Dimitrios; THEY'RE ALWAYS CAUGHT (1938), one of MGM's "Crime Does Net Pay" shorts, an Academy Award nominee, and a sort of double "tryout" film - for Harold Bucquet, long an Asst. Director, these shorts trained him as a director before his promotion to features - and the film itself was later remade as a feature by Fred Zinneman (also a "Crime Does Not Pay" graduate) as Kid Glove Killer with Van Heflin and Lee Bowman. With Stanley Ridges, John Eldredge, Louis Jean Heydt.
|
FIVE MINUTE INTERMISSION
|
SECTION TWO.
|
| YANKEE DOODLE COMES TO TOWN (MGM, 1939). One of many imaginative shorts directed by Jacques Tourneur for MGM, interpolating stock footage with (economically designed) newer scenes. An interesting eve of World War Two preachment; with Clem Bevans. KEEP FIT (1942) - the one exception to our format tonight of trainee directors. During the war, many established directors - Michael Curtiz, Mervyn LeRoy etc. - were pressed into service to make propagandist and/or informational shorts. Since we haven't shown this before, and it's highly amusing, we're including it for variety. Arthur Lubin directs virtually all of the second echelon Universal stars: Robert Stack, Louise Allbritton, Ralph Morgan etc. It also presents the somewhat unlikely situation of Andy Devine married to Mary Wickes, with Lon Chaney Jr. as their next door neighbor! FLIRTING IN THE PARK (RKO Radio, 1933) - one of several 2-reel sound comedies former cinematographer George Stevens directed before promotion to full features. While it shows the influence of his Laurel & Hardy days, it also has a great deal of charm, and sight gags predominate over pure slapstick. With June Brewster, Grady Sutton. THINK FIRST (MGM, 1939). Back to the always reliable "Crime Does Not Pay" series – it was a temptation to include far more than the three we've selected, because they're all so good and varied, and offered pre-feature assignments to so many top directors. This one is by Roy Rowland, an extremely versatile director of the 40's and 50's (Scene of the Crime, Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, many westerns and noirs) and has a good cast headed by Laraine Day and Marc Lawrence. |
FIVE MINUTE INTERMISSION
|
MAGIC ON A STICK (MGM, 1946). An interesting reconstruction, dramatically as well as scientifically, of the invention of the match; directed by Cy Endfield (Try and Get Me and Zulu); FORGOTTEN VICTORY (MGM, 1939) Directed by Fred Zinneman; a stylish Academy Award winner with Don Douglas as the U.S. government employee who imported a new kind of wheat; THE WRONG WAY OUT (1939, MGM), a "Crime Does Not Pay" with a noir slant, rather like Lang's You Only Live Once condensed to two reels. Directed by Gustav Machaty (Ecstasy, Nocturne) a Czech immigrant whose great talent for the tastefully erotic was hardly wanted in a Production Code dominated Hollywood, and whose American output was limited to a couple of shorts and a couple of extremely interesting features. The photographic style here often reminds one of his European work. With Kenneth Howell, Linda Terry, Frank M. Thomas. One of the most interesting of the series. JOURNEY TO YESTERDAY (MGM, 1944). A Carey Wilson miniature directed by Harold Daniels, whose career in features was largely limited to interesting "B"s and programmers, but had as its highlight the remarkable RKO noir Road Block. This is an interesting recapitulation of the battle against Yellow Jack, with some footage taken from that older MGM film (including a shot of Philip Terry collapsing, and Robert Montgomery in one long shot). Edwin Stanley and DeMille old-timer Horace Carpenter are among the players.
|
| It's difficult to anticipate an exact running time for this program, but with an intro and the two breaks we should finish at approx. 10.35. We're keeping things flexible however; we will have a couple of extra shorts on hand (including the squeezed-out The Wizard's Apprentice by Menzies) should there be time (and an audience interest) or we can devote whatever time there appears to be to a discussion session. When we see how everything is progressing, we'll make an announcement over the P.A. system at the end of the third segment of the program.
A copy of the Fall program will be posted at the back, as it was last week. This will also be printed on the reverse of next week's notes. |
| --- Wm. K. Everson --- |
|