1956 - WAR AND PEACE, King Vidor's film of Tolstoy's novel on a very epic scale.

One of those big 1950's epic films.  Photographed in Italy for the most part and featuring a cast made up of Italian and American actors.  The producer Dino De Laurentiis as they liked to say in the film's advertising "spared no expense."

Apparently six credited screen writers were involved with the director King Vidor also doing rewrites during production.  England's top color cameraman Jack Cardiff was responsible for the photography of the film. For the time supposedly 18,000 Italian troops were hired to re-stage the battle scenes, primarily the famous Battle of Bordino.  Director King Vidor had handled complex productions in the past, The Big Parade, Hallelujah and Duel in the Sun with out losing sight of the personal stories of the characters but this film might have gotten away from him in this instance.

If the film had problems it was in the mixed cast.  Henry Fonda was all wrong as the pivotal character, Pierre Bezukhov, his American Midwestern affectations seem completely out of place for a film set in Russia.  Audrey Hepburn who was cast as Natasha Rostova at least looks the part of a Russian Countess.  However Hepburn insisted at the time that her husband Mel Ferrer play Prince Andrei Bolkonsky and he's kind of hopeless.

How's the film?  Well it's long, the color photography is good.  The sets are on a massive scale.  The battle scenes are well staged as is the burning of Moscow.  Frankly the mixed cast of Italian, British and American actors is kind of jarring at times. There is a lot of dubbing that had to occur to get everyone speaking in the same language, in this case English.  The sound has kind of a hollow reverb quality to it which can get fairly distracting.

 

This version of War and Peace is usually compared to the 1967 Russian version. But I think that this is a little unfair.  The two films were made at different time periods and are really two different interpretations of the same story.

 

Here we go, the film was written by Bridget Boland, Mario Camerini, Ennio De  Concini, Gian Gaspare Napolitano, Ivo Perilli, Mario Soldati, King Vidor and Robert Westerby.  The uncredited writers were, Jean Aurenche, Pierre Bost, Sergio Amidei and supposedly Irwin Shaw and King Vidor's wife Florence Vidor.  The film is 208 minutes.

1930 - BILLY THE KID, early sound western from King Vidor

This is an early sound western from one of the legendary silent film directors, King Vidor.  Billy the Kid was filmed in 70 mm and in 35 mm.  Unfortunately no 70mm print seems to exist so film buffs will just have to live with the 35 mm version.

The film had extensive location photography in Utah, New Mexico and the Grand Canyon so you can get somewhat of a feel for the landscape even if it is only in 35mm.  Vidor directed a couple of good action scenes and when the film is outdoors it's visually fairly impressive to look at.  As with all early "talkie" films the acting and dialog is kind of shall we say stilted.  It would take a few more years for sound recording to improve and for actors and writers to develop a new understated way of writing dialog and performing.

 

Unsurprisingly this is not the true story of Billy the Kid and Pat Garrett. Hollywood has been spinning fantasy's about their story for almost as long as there has been movies.  Still for an old movie King Vidor did a fairly good job with the story, it must have been a challenge dealing with sound cameras on these western locations.

 

 The film was written by Laurence Stallings and Charles MacArthur, the running time is 95 minutes.

1944 - AN AMERICAN ROMANCE, a tribute to industrial America

This expensive MGM film was a labor of love for the director King Vidor who not only produced the film but also wrote the story.  The film was filmed in technicolor by Harold Rossen so it couldn't have been cheap to make.  MGM  professed to like the film but went ahead and cut 30 minutes out of Vidor's finished film.  Vidor was so angry that he ended his association with MGM a studio he had worked at since 1923.

The film is rather unsatisfactory cast with Brian Donlevy playing the lead, an immigrant who rises to the top of a company he has built.  Vidor shoots a lot of scenes of factories assembling cars and planes and it's all kind of interesting up to a point.  

 

It would have been interesting to see how the film would have played if it hadn't been hacked to pieces.  As it is it's kind of fascinating.

Written by  Herbert Dalmas and William Ludwig, running time 121 minutes.

1925 - THE BIG PARADE, a classic war film, maybe.

Considering the high reputation of this famous film, I was little surprised to see how much comedy relief there was in the first hour of this film.  I had always assumed that this was for the most part a very serious war drama.  

MGM's big star from this era, John Gilbert always seemed like a pretty boy actor for the most part.  However King Vidor or someone had him trim his mustache and he actually looks like a real person for a change.  He gives a decent performance as well.

King Vidor was one of those American film directors who could impose a person style even in a cookie cutter studio like MGM.  The battle scenes are very impressive and have an interesting visual style to them.

After consideration The Big Parade is a very good film somewhat hampered by some of the usual Hollywood storytelling, a love story, funny soldier buddies, settings that look like studio backlot sets, etc.

141 minutes, written by Laurence Stallings and Harry Behn.

1946 - DUEL IN THE SUN, poor man's version of Gone With The Wind.

David O Selznick's attempt at another large scale technicolor film centered around his obsession with Jennifer Jones.  This film has been described as a "stupid sex western" by the godfather of film capsule reviewers, Leonard Maltin and that about sums it up.

Selznick called all the shots during filming irritating the director King Vidor who finally walked off the set.  Selznick hired the best talent in Hollywood and it shows, the film is gorgeous to look at in 1940's technicolor.  The chief problem was the mess of a script which Selznick also took credit for.  Duel in the Sun effectively ends around the one hour mark, however Selznick sticks in a series of disconnected subplots in the second half which brings this sucker in at over two hours.   

Selznick seemed to think that Jennifer Jones was the hottest woman in Hollywood but her supposedly sexy emoting and withering is pretty ludicrous.  Jennifer Jones was capable of giving decent understated performances, but the va va va boom stuff was really beyond her range.

Martin Scorcese counts Duel in the Sun as a seminal film for him for what that's worth.

 

145 minutes, screenplay by David O. Selznick.

1938 - THE CITADEL, medical drama is a typical high gloss MGM film.

The Citadel was an extremely influential book written by Dr. A. J. Cronin.  A criticism and attack of the greed and incompetence in the British medical and health care institutions,  Cronin's book helped establish the National Health Service.

The film is the story of a idealistic young doctor who has to choose between making money or dedicating his life to caring for the less fortunate.  As is the case with MGM, the studio that hated Franklin Roosevelt and his new deal programs, by the time this book went through the production meat grinder the film was a very mild attack on corrupt doctors and poor medical care. 

The Citadel has one of those corny "aw ha" moments with Robert Donat's character  Dr. Andrew Manson, walking the streets of London at night deciding what has future should be.  Manson conveniently ends up at the London Bridge as a magnificent sunrise comes blazing up behind him.  Thanks to the light, the good doctor has seen finally seen the light.

This is almost an all British production with the exception of the director King Vidor now deep in the glossy studio phase of his career and Rosalind Russel playing a school teacher who marries Donat.

Besides Robert Donat, the cast is probably the most interesting thing about the film since it's a group of some of England's best actors.  Rex Harrison, Ralph Richardson, Emlyn Williams, Francis L. Sullivan, Felix Alymer and Cecil Parker.

Vidor directs Russell

The Citadel was the kind of film MGM just couldn't do well.  Hard hitting attacks on corrupt institutions were not their bag.  MGM was always more at ease with their Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musical film clones.

110 minutes, written by Ian Dalrymple, Frank Wead and Elizabeth Hill.

1929 - HALLELUJAH - early talkie about Black American life in the south

King Vidor shot one of the first sound films on location in the southern United States.  His subject, religion and Black American life.  Vidor incorporated a lot of musical sequences into this film which makes it a strange quasi musical drama.

Hallelujah was an honest attempt to portray black life in the late 1920's.  Watching the film today is mighty tough going.  The primitive early sound recording and the presentation of black life in a very patronizing manner no matter how well the intentions were.  It makes the film pretty hard to stomach

The most interesting parts in Hallelujah are the scenes of the religious revival meetings and most impressively the large scale baptism in the river sequence.  Here religious ecstasy is combined with a kind of sexual frenzy or hysteria, very interesting stuff. 

King Vidor must have filmed a lot of these on location scenes without sound which was probably added later since the camera work is pretty fluid.  Vidor was one of the masters of silent films.
 

King Vidor directs the impressive river baptism sequence.

Hallelujah is a film of historical importance for the fact that major mainstream films about black American life were just never filmed.  The all black cast does what it can to keep the racial stereotypes from completely sinking the film.  But, this "happy darkie" stuff is what finally keeps the film from becoming a classic.
 
90 minutes, written by King Vidor, Wanda Tuchock, Richard Schayer and Ransom Rideout.

1952 - RUBY GENTRY - over heated southern drama is really overheated

King Vidor and Jennifer Jones reteam for another nutty sex epic along the lines of Duel in the Sun.

Jennifer Jones is oversexed Ruby Gentry with an "itch down there."  Jones spends the first part of the film stroking shot gun barrels and running around in tight jeans and push up bras.  Jones has the hots for Charleton Heston who talks about "big pumps" and generally turns into a horn dog when ever he is around Ruby.  Heston won't marry Ruby because she is from "the wrong side of the tracks."

Jones marries Karl Malden the richest man in town and takes her revenge on Heston for two timing her.  It all ends in another shootout with some striking similarities to the climax of Duel in the Sun.

This piece of southern melodrama cheesecake is well directed by King Vidor who at this point in his career is a long way from The Crowd or Our Daily Bread.

82 minutes, written by Arthur Fitz-Richard and Silvia Richards.

1934 - Sequel to "The Crowd" Vidor's OUR DAILY BREAD is a bunch of commie crap

During the Depression of the 1930's filmmaker King Vidor became interested in the supposed collective farm movement going on in the United States. He wrote a story about a group of people attempting to make a go of it on an abandoned farm.

 

Vidor took the story to MGM for financing and was rejected by that studio. This should hardly have been a surprise to him, since conservative MGM was not exactly receptive to Roosevelt's New Deal program
 

  

Raising money and investing some of his own, King Vidor filmed his story on a modest budget. He brought back his everyman characters from The Crowd, John and Mary Sims. He hired some top professionals like composer Alfred Newman to score the film and Joseph Mankiewicz to write the screenplay. The result was a disappointment, a poorly acted and written film with lame story telling and underdeveloped characters mouthing vaguely socialist sentiments.

Vidor seemed to be in love with the ideas of the farm collective. Unfortunately he failed to make the story interesting to the viewer. It's all here, the evil bankers the mean sheriff, the ridiculous good ethnic stereotypes, a man being pursued by an unfeeling legal system etc. The viewer also gets lots of scenes with the members of the commune tilling the fields which doesn't make for exciting cinema. Vidor even put in an "oh come on" blond bombshell character as a temptation to our socialist hero John Sims to leave the commune. Even with a short running time the film was an effort to sit through.

Only towards the end of the film does King Vidor the filmmaker finally show up. He stages an exciting scene where the commune must save the crops by putting in an irrigation system. What was so irritating about this film was the failure of the talent involved in to make an interesting film with some emotional content to involve the audience. Instead what we got was a bunch of mealy mouthed socialist garbage.

Written by King Vidor,  Elizabeth Hill and Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the running time is 80 minutes.

1928 - THE CROWD King Vidor's story of ordinary people told on epic scale

Supposedly the greatest silent film ever made and one of the most impressive films I've seen lately. King Vidor had made a ton of money for MGM with his war film The Big Parade. Vidor was allowed to pick a topic for a follow up film. King Vidor decided to tell the story of an ordinary couple living in the big city. He had at his disposal all the resources of MGM to make his film.

John and Mary meet, fall in love, get married and have children. One of their children dies, John loses his job, and by the end of the film there is some question whether the marriage will survive. That's the whole film.

King Vidor's strong direction and careful attention to detail definitely made this domestic drama a special film. The character of John Sims is not a particularly likable guy and seems like kind of a loser. His wife Mary, puts up with a lot but seems committed to making the marriage work. Telling this kind of story in 1928 with actors who were not stars was fairly daring approach.

Vidor used lots of expressionistic camera work clearly influenced by UFA studios in Germany, but he was also able to stay focused on the family right through the bittersweet ending.