May 11
In a funny way it makes perfect sense to watch Federico Fellini’s masterful 8 1/2 after Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin. Fellini’s vision of dreams, creative block, religion, love, and passion is iconic as a celebration of confusion and, at times, excess. The film, named such as it’s the director’s eighth-and-a-half movie, is a genius work of uncanny ego and arrogance.
The monstrosity that is Cleopatra is still regarded as one of the most expensive movies ever made. The 1963 film was supposed to be an enormous hit for 20th Century Fox but it would up nearly bankrupting the studio, clocking it at a massive $44 million after being originally tagged with a $2 million budget. The notoriously ungainly production featured a host of problems that included a very ill star, countless production delays and a healthy dose of moral outrage.
The original cut of Cleopatra presented to the studio by its director Joseph L. Mankiewicz was six hours in length. It was chopped to about four hours for an initial release, but Fox demanded further cuts and it was brought down even more to the dismay of the filmmaker. Mankiewicz wanted it split in two parts to preserve the impact, but that idea was tossed by the studio. Apparently testing the already annoyed Fox on such matters was a mistake.
Charade is a 1963 film produced and directed by Stanley Donen, the director of Singin’ in the Rain and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. Donen, also a choreographer, was referred to by David Quinlan as the “King of the Hollywood musical.” Charade represents a significant departure from the normative style of Donen, making it a most interesting film. The film is also notable for its screenplay, which plays up the witty banter between the characters and provides plenty of quirky moments and gags between the suspenseful moments in this thriller. Charade is a romance/comedy/thriller with music by Henry Mancini and an animated title sequence by Maurice Binder.
Filmed on location in Paris, Charade was said to be an excuse by the studio to unite its stars, Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Hepburn and Grant had previously been tapped to play opposite each other in Roman Holiday, but Grant turned it down because he felt he was too old to play her love interest. In Charade, Grant agreed to play the role if, and only if, Hepburn would be the aggressor in the relationship and would pursue Grant’s character, likely to avoid any notion that Grant was playing a “creepy old man” archetype. Mission accomplished, then.
Nov 11
Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds is a horror film classic. Loosely based on the short story of the same name by Daphne du Maurier, The Birds was known for innovating the “revenge of nature” type scenarios in film and used special effects and a unique soundtrack to provide atmospheric terror for its audiences. The Birds differed from many films of its era in that it didn’t have a conventional soundtrack, nor did it feature a clear-cut ending. Instead, the film is guided largely by sounds and dialogue and features an ending which provides more questions than answers.
The Birds follows the story of a 1963 version of Paris Hilton, as socialite Melanie Daniels (Tippi Hendren) meets Mitch Brenner (Rod Taylor). She begins to slowly and reluctantly fall for Brenner and winds up heading to his home in the quiet coastal town of Bodega Bay, where Brenner spends his weekends with his mother and incredibly younger sister. As Melanie arrives in Bodega Bay, strange incidents begin to snowball involving the birds of the sleepy town and, eventually, all sorts of feathered hell breaks loose.
