TCM Look-Ahead (March 20)
Back to regular programming on TCM. Whew. And a great week with some rarities coming up!
Friday, 03/20
10:15 p.m. PST Knife in the Water. Roman Polanski's first Polish feature film, the one that got him the attention of Hollywood. Taut, economic, crispy black and white. Set entirely aboard a sail boat and populated by people you hate and who hate each other. Bravura film making.
Saturday, 03/21
02:00 a.m. PST Mauvaise Graine (Bad Seed). Billy Wilder's directorial debut (co-directed with one Alexander Esway), shot in Paris whilst escaping Nazi Germany and skeedaddling to America. I know virtually nothing about this and have not seen it, so I recommend it with a bit of caution. But the film's history and setting in the streets of Paris are drawing me like a moth to flame. Concerns a neer-do-well who gets involved with a bunch of car thieves. This is also available on the mighty Kanopy.
06:00 a.m. PST Lolita. Is it a perfect adaptation of the Nabokov novel? No. Too many compromises, of course, necessary for 1961 Hollywood. Is Sue Lyon too old to play Lolita? Yes. See above (I think she's fantastic in the film, though). Still this is probably the Kubrick film that has grown the most in my esteem over time. Peter Sellers steals the show as Quilty, but it is James Mason, calling on tremendous reserves of empathy for the despicable protagonist Humbert Humbert, who lingers the longest. "Because you took advantage..."
10:00 a.m. PST Tarzan's Savage Fury. Got to admit, I am excited for this. It is directed by one of my favorite under-the-radar auteurs, the once blacklisted Cy Endfield (The Sound of Fury, Sands of the Kalahari, Zulu). I don't know much about this one, and it has been a long time since I have seen a Tarzan movie (I did, however, grow up on them), but I will be interested to see if Endfield works any Communist propaganda into what otherwise sounds more or less what you might expect. If not the Commie stuff, maybe the high-art--tough-guy style that is his Endfield's trademark. It might be terrible. But then again it might be Cy.
10:15 p.m. PST Bonjour Tristesse. If you saw Linklater's Nouvelle Vogue on Netflix, Tristesse is the film that inspired him to cast Jean Seberg in Breathless, and he insisted she keep her short, pixie-ish hair. He imagined Breathless as a sequel to Tristesse, of sorts, of Seberg's character a few years later living in Paris. At any rate, this is a lush adaptation by Otto Preminger of the Francois Sagan about a playboy (David Niven) who has what amounts to a too close relationship with his daughter, who is travelling with him as he Nivens his way around the Riviera.
Sunday, 03/22
Midnight and 10:00 a.m. PST Who Killed Teddy Bear? Batshit time capsule of the mid-60's with Sal Mineo as a sexually confused waiter who stalks Juliet Prowse through the noirish interiors and exteriors of a forgotten Manhattan. Elaine Stritch provides striking supporting relief, and comic Jan Murray (yeah, that guy from all the game shows in the 70s), is actually a pretty credible dramatic actor in the key role of the Cop left in charge of finding the Prowse stalker. Striking, recently restored oddity, directed by Joseph Cates, Phoebe's dad.
Monday, 03/23
02:15 a.m. PST Fireman's Ball. Milos Forman's last film in Czechoslovakia before heading the Hollywood for good. A delightful allegory about a party of Fireman and bureaucrats that goes horribly and comically wrong. The entire film is reminiscent of the chaotic restaurant scene from Tati's Playtime.
07:45 a.m. PST I Love Melvin. A cultish object from the cultish auteur Don Weis. I have seen a few Weis films and they are always lavish, colorful and silly. This one has been a bit hard to find and has been in my personal queue for a while. I am ready for anything. It re-teams Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds from Singin' in the Rain a year earlier. O'Connor, in the rare chance in a leading role, plays a smitten photographer.
Thursday, 03/26
02:00 a.m. PST Bright Road. Another rare one. Teachers in an all black school face a series of challenges with a problem student. The rare film with an all black cast and with, it is told, zero stereotypes. Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte, two of the more photogenic teachers you are likely to come across, star in this must-see.
04:15 p.m. PST The Passionate Friends. This was a fairly obscure entry in David Lean's canon until Paul Thomas Anderson said it was the chief inspiration for his film, The Phantom Thread. It doesn't bear many striking resemblances, but it is an absolutely heart-rending triangle of characters (Trevor Howard, Ann Todd, the great Claude Rains, fitting role of the would-be cuckold like a glove) trying to do the right thing, keep a stiff upper British lip, and not give into horniness.
