1961 - WEST SIDE STORY, in 70mm on the big screen, accept no substitutes.

West Side Story is part of a 70mm film series that is being screened at our revival theater The Heights located in Columbia Heights Minnesota prior to the release of The Odyssey.  The 70mm print was in very good shape and it played to a packed house.  The film definitely has it dated aspects but this is film making at a very high level.

The film was directed and produced by Robert Wise.  The choreographer Jerome Robbins received co-director credit but was fired during the production on the film.  Apparently somewhat of an arrogant perfectionist Robbins went a month over the allotted schedule.

 

This film was a high point in the career of Robert Wise an excellent director. He had one of the best production teams in Hollywood working on the film.  Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay, Daniel L. Flapp was the cinematographer, Boris Levin was the production designer,  Saul Bass was a visual consultant responsible for the titles and most importantly Thomas Stanford did an outstanding job editing this film.  These craftsmen were working at the top of their creative abilities. 

 

The film was an important role for Natalie Wood.  She had started her career as a child actress and moved into adult roles.  She was a total professional on about any film she worked on.  It's well known that she didn't like her leading man Richard Beymer during production but you would never know it watching the film.  Rita Moreno had been stuck playing stereotypical Hispanic parts early in her career.  This was her big breakout but it didn't really do much for her career.  Russ Tamblyn was more an acrobat than dancer but he didn't seem to have any problem with the strenuous musical numbers in this film.

 

West Side Story was a big commercial and critical success and an award winning film during it's initial release.  Viewed 65 years later what really stands out are the impressive musical sequences.  Steven Spielberg for some reason remade West Side Story in 2021.  It was a critical success but a commercial failure.  I suppose I'll have to give his version a look.

The running time is 152 minutes 

1945 - A GAME OF DEATH, decent remake of "The Most Dangerous Game."

A Game of Death is a remake of The 1932 film The Most Dangerous Game which was in turn based on a short story by the author Richard Connell.  The story is a very entertaining melodrama about a famous hunter Don Rainsford stranded on a remote island who becomes they prey of a nutcase hunter Erich Kreiger who is bored with killing animals and has resorted to stalking and killing humans instead.  So the chase is on in this fast paced film.

Robert Wise directed this version after working with producer Val Lewton on his legendary series of horror films.  It's competent and decently made but I miss the flamboyance of the earlier film with it's over the top Max Steiner film music and it's really fast paced structure.  It's now a film making legend that The Most Dangerous Game was simultaneously filmed on the same jungle sets as King Kong with several of the King Kong actors primarily Faye Wray and Robert Armstrong in roles. English actor Leslie Banks in a very flamboyant performance was the crazy hunter who in this film is called Count Zaroff.  It's a very fun 1930's film.

 

The remake is not without it's merits, John Loder plays Rainsford and he gives a good competent performance.  Playing the madman hunter Erich Kreiger is the actor Edgar Barrier who was a member of Orson Welles' Mercury theater.  He may not have been as over the top as Leslie Banks but he gets the job done as a creepy menacing character.

 

This man hunting man plot has been so durable that it's been filmed many times.  I originally read this story in high school although I suppose it's not exactly a  P.C. kind of story anymore.

 The screenplay was by Norman Houston, the running time is an efficient 72 minutes.

1954 - EXECUTIVE SUITE - a look inside the management team of a company circa 1954

This film was big stuff when it was released.  The story involves the jockeying for power among the senior vice presidents of a manufacturing company after the CEO dies from a stroke.  The drama comes from all the manipulation and backstabbing among the vice presidents as they maneuver to replace the deceased CEO and assume the leadership of the company.

 

This film is notable for being the first produced screenplay from Ernest Lehman who went on to write North By Northwest and The Sound of Music.  Robert Wise was the director and as a former editor at RKO he knew how to pace this story for what is basically a film with a lot of talking heads sitting around a conference table. 

MGM didn't scrimp on the cast it was a major group of stars.  Frederick March is the CFO who is strictly a numbers guy and doesn't care about the employees.  Paul Douglas is the head of sales having a fling with his secretary played by Shelley Winters.  Walter Pidgeon is a VP who knows where all the bodies are buried.  Dean Jagger is the old timer who is in charge of manufacturing. A very hammy Barbara Stanwyck is the major stock holder. An impressive cast anyway you cut it.

Then there's our hero William Holden the VP in charge of design and development, he's married to June Allyson who for a change isn't playing her usual goody two shoes character.  Holden is so full of the compassion for the company and employees he's just to good to be true. 

 Executive Suite has a real 1950's vibe to it and seems very dated.  Ernest Lehman did a good job moving all the chess pieces of the plot around but overall the film seems very superficial and hackneyed, time has not been kind to this film.  The film was a critical and commercial success.

The running time is 103 minutes. 

1969 - THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, outer space invasion with a twist

An invasion from outer space from an extraterrestrial life form.  In this film the twist is that they are micro organisms, captured by a United States space probe.  When the probe lands in a small town in Arizona it ends up killing most of the residents of the town.  The Department of Defense has a secret laboratory built for studying bio weapons where the organism is transported.  The drama in this film is created by a team of scientists who must study this organism and identify how to control it.

This is the director Robert Wise's second shot at the science fiction genre.  Wise was responsible for the original version of The Day The Earth Stood Still, and he brought all of skill as a filmmaker to what is essentially a film about scientists looking at stuff under a microscope.

 

Wise carefully cast the film with character actors instead of movie stars to give the film some verisimilitude.  The film's secret germ laboratory set was designed by production designer Boris Leven who early in his career had designed the impressionistic sets for that 1950's science fiction classic,  Invaders From Mars.

 

The Andromeda Strain is an excellent film from one of Hollywood's old pro's who in his 50's could still make interesting and entertaining films in many genres,

The film was written by Nelson Gidding, the running time is 130 minutes.

1965 - THE SOUND OF MUSIC, on the big screen

Revisited The Sound of Music at a revival theater on a fairly big screen, a few thoughts.

The film received bad reviews when it was released in 1965, apparently the combination of singing nuns and Nazis was just a little much for the critics to endure for a musical.  The film is incredibly saccharine and at times difficult to stomach.  Julie Andrew's character of Maria frequently grates on the nerves with her goody two shoes personality.  However I doubt any other actress could have played this part.  Christopher Plummer's sly performance as Captain Von Trapp does a lot to take the sting out of all the sentimentality and corniness of the film.

The film was produced and directed by Robert Wise and a production team that was basically the same group that had worked on West Side Story with him.  If anyone deserves credit for the success of this film, it's probably Wise who used just about cinematic trick in the book to put this film over.  Cinematography, editing and the on location filming all contributed to the success of the flm.

 

The screenplay was by a real pro Ernest Lehman,  Lehman had written North By Northwest for Hitchcock and the screenplay for the original version of West Side Story.  Lehman apparently performed some real surgery on the film's book taking out a lot of the real hackneyed stuff.

 

The Sound of Music saved 20th Century Fox Studios after the financial disaster of  Cleopatra.  However Daryl F. Zanuck got it in his head that family musicals were the future of the film business. He went on to greenlight, Hello Dolly, Dr. Doolittle and in particular Star the Julie Andrews musical disaster.  These musicals financially crashed and burned the studio yet again.

The running time is 174 minutes.

1944 - MADEMOISELLE FIFI, producer Val Lewton's World War II propgranda films.

You weren't a Hollywood studio or producer worth your salt if you didn't crank out a propaganda film or two during World War II.  One of the oddest propaganda films to come out of RKO studios was from classy low budget horror movie producer Val Lewton.

Rather than kicking out another Allies vs the Nazis film with actors like Erroll Flynn, Humphrey Bogart and especially John Wayne.  Lewton and his director Robert Wise chose to film something a little more subtle.  Using the same source material as John Ford and his writer Dudley Nichols used for Stagecoach, Mademoiselle Fifi has a group of people with different backgrounds all riding a stagecoach.  In this case the stagecoach happens to be in France during the late 1800's when it was occupied by Prussians aka Germans.

The cast is a group of character actors which I can assure you no one has ever heard from.  John Emery (Rocketship X-M, The Girl Can't Help It), Kurt Kreuger (Sahara, Unfaithfully Yours) and Alan Napier ( Alfred in the original Batman TV series) to name a few.  Probably the biggest name in the cast was French actress Simone Simon who had a very spotty career in Hollywood in the 30's and 40's before she returned to France.  Simone Simon is remembered for her role as Irena in The Cat People.

 

Mademoiselle Fifi is essentially a rather talky drama about the role the French people had in dealing with the Prussian invaders occupying their county.  Simone Simon plays the only character who has the guts to stand up to the Prussians.  The film is very obviously a not so subtle comparison of  the Nazi occupation of France in the late 1940's.

 

The film is interesting especially if you are a fan of Val Lewton's films.  The dialog is literate and Robert Wise does a fairly good job making this very talkative script cinematic. Val Lewton always aimed for something a little more different than the regular movie stuff that Hollywood spit out during the 1940's.

The film was written by Josef Mischel and Peter Ruric although Lewton probably had his hands in it as well.  The running time is a brisk 69 minutes.

1047 - BORN TO KIll, film noir with one fascinating performance

A lot of critics and film buffs are fascinated with this rather violent noir film.  It is an unusual film for gentleman director Robert Wise and looking over his filmography it does stick out as something different in his career. 

However for this viewer I found the film's plot ridiculous and the dialog rather stilted. Wise's direction isn't much to behold except for a couple of murder scenes when he rises to the occasion otherwise it's point and shoot for the most part.  Only in these kiling scenes does Wise show much enthusiasm for what he's doing and it could be argued that they are are very influenced by his former producer, Val Lewton.

Let's get to the cast, Claire Trevor is once again the femme fatale scheming to steal her step sister's inheritance.  Her step sister has married Lawrence Tierney who is a very bad guy to put it mildly, he kills a couple of people at the beginning of the film almost as a whim.  The great character actor Elisha Cook Jr shows up and you know he's gonna be toast.  There is a private detective played by Walter Slezak running around blackmailing everyone.  Slezak gives the best performance in the film.

 

I honestly don't think this is a very good film but it what it has going for him it is the performance of Lawrence Tierney who is as scary on the screen as he was in real life.  The guy is simply compelling to watch and considering his violent off screen shenanigans you almost expect him to attack and kill the cast and for that matter the production crew.  His performance alone in Born to Kill makes it worth having a look at.

 

The film was written by Eve Greene and Richard Macaulay, the running time is 92 minutes.

1958 - RUN SILENT RUN DEEP, a very good war film

A very good war film, Burt Lancaster's production company purchased the rights to the book and hired Robert Wise to direct.  Wise was known as the consummate professional and a superb craftsman.  Lancaster was known for eating film directors for lunch.  This didn't appear to keep the production team from turning out an exceptional war movie about the submarine service.

Clark Gable is the new captain of the submarine USS Nerka.  Lancaster is the executive officer, Gable had previously had his submarine torpedoed in the Bungo Straits where ever that is.  As the captain of the Nerka, Gable wants to avenge the deaths of the men killed on his previous mission. 

Against orders Gable sails the Nerka back into the Bungo Straits.  The dramatic conflict involves Gable out for revenge and Lancaster who wrestles with trying to assume command of the Nerka in order to stop Gable from sinking yet another submarine through his supposed reckless behavior.

Run Silent Run Deep was filmed on sets that approximated the actual interior of a World War 2 submarine, the model and special effects work was at a very high caliber for a 1950's film.  Gable and Lancaster were both commanding personalities.  The film had a very good screenplay by John Gay.  Along with Robert Wise's excellent direction Run Silent Run Deep couldn't miss.  

Run Silent Run Deep is an impressive example of a Hollywood film production delivering the goods for a change. The running time is a tight 93 minutes.

1956 - HELEN OF TROY, one of those big budget sword and sandal epics

How did the director Robert Wise, generally a man of taste get mixed up with this film?  This is the classic story of Helen, queen of Sparta who falls in love with Paris, a prince of Troy.  As in the Greek legend it all leads to the siege of Troy which goes on for years.  The war finally ends with the Trojans dragging the Trojan horse into the city.  The horse is full of Greek soldiers who sneak out and destroy the city from the inside.  "Beware of Greeks bearing gifts," says Cassandra and she's not kidding.

Warner Brothers cast a couple of unknowns as the leads.  A French actor Jacques Sernas as Paris and some Italian sex symbol Rossana Podestà as Helen.  Playing Helen's servant is Brigitte Bardot and I would have to say I think they got the casting backwards.  The supporting cast is the usual bunch of English actors hired to class up one of these big budget epics.

Anyway back to Robert Wise.  Apparently he was looking to shoot a film in widescreen and decided to take this project on. Whatever, the film looks pretty good with the usual cast of thousands deployed for maximum movie carnage.

 

Helen Of Troy is entertaining in the usual way these big budget films are.  Lots of extras, big sets and lots of large scale battles.

The film runs 118 minutes and was written by Hugh Gray, N. Richard Nash and John Twist although I don't think they put a whole lot of effort into the screenplay.

1975 - THE HINDENBURG - on bluray format.

The director Robert Wise attempts to class up the 1970's disaster movie cycle with this meticulous film on the airship Hindenburg disaster.  If good direction, special effects and production design could make a good film this would have been a very fine film.  However the script leaves quite a lot to be desired and this ultimately lets the film down. 

As always with films like this where the primary characters are all supposed to be German the choice was made to let the American actors speak without accents.  This has always been an issue where a film is set in a foreign country and the cast is primarily made up of actors not native to that country. It frequently affects the film's verisimilitude.

The special effects are old school with model work and matte paintings extremely well done.  At times it seems like they actually built an airship and flew the damn thing to New York.  The photography and production design are well executed.  Robert Wise was always a director who put a lot of care into his films.

The film is somewhat of a disappointment but nowhere near the failure that the critics labeled it when it was released.

 The film runs 125 minutes, written by Nelson Gidding based on a story by Levinson and Link.

1951 - THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL, a little dated but still very good.

One of the better films in the science fiction film crazy of the 1950's. 20th Century Fox under the control of Daryl F. Zanuck paid attention to story and didn't go overboard with the special effects.  Studio director Robert Wise kept things moving along.  Wise had been a top editor at RKO and brought brisk pacing to a tightly constructed plot.  Bernard Herrmann was hired to compose the groundbreaking and unusual score which was a key component in the success of this film.

The film was well cast with character actor Michael Rennie as the spaceman Klaatu and a memorable robot called Gort.

The Day the Earth Stood Still with it's message of world peace and nuclear disarmament still holds up very well.  Probably the most dated aspect of the film is Klaatu's suggestion that earth adopt a Robot police force to monitor and stop the violent tendencies of human beings.  Somehow a robot police force consisting of lots of scary robots like Gort does not exactly sound like the best idea to promote world peace.

Still, this is one of the best science fiction films Hollywood ever produced.

92 minutes, written by Edmund H. North.

1963 - THE HAUNTING, an excellent horror film,

The Haunting is a very faithful adaptation of Shirley Jackson's excellent short novel, The Haunting of Hill House.  The director Robert Wise and the screenwriter Nelson Gidding meet with Jackson prior to filming to confirm various plot points and character interpretations.  I've read the Jackson book and will testify to the fact that this film version follows the very creepy book for the most part.

It's commonly known that Robert Wise got his start working with Val Lewton's low budget horror film team at RKO studio in the 1940's.  The Lewton influence is very strong throughout the film, with sounds and shadows used to scare the crap out of an audience.  Wise was also a talented filmmaker in his own right and brought a very professional polish to the film with his cinematographer who shot at times with infra red film and his production designer who added ceilings to the set for a claustrophobic feeling.

Wise carefully cast the film.  Broadway actress Julie Harris is extremely good as Eleanor Lance who is being chased by ghosts and also suffering from a few mental problems of her own.  It's fairly common knowledge that Claire Bloom was playing a lesbian in this film.  British actor Richard Johnson is the professor looking for signs of ghosts and finds out he's way in over his head at Hill House.  The first time a saw this film I thought the dancer Russ Tamblyn kind of messed with the mood of the film but now he seems like necessary comedy relief in a film which is very intense almost from the beginning to the end.  

The Haunting is a superior film in a genre with is usually more silly than supernatural.

114 minutes, written by Nelson Gidding.

1966 - THE SAND PEBBLES is good but mighty long

This is a well made adventure film that is also a character study.  It's a top of the line production from Robert Wise.  The photography by Joe MacDonald is impeccable, the acting with the exception of non actor Candice Bergen is of a high caliber.  The screenplay from the playwright Robert Anderson, has been carefully worked out.  The Sand Pebbles is also a very long film.

The film was a Robert Wise production which was usually a sign of quality.  Wise had started at RKO as and editor and worked his way up the studio.  He had an editing credit on Citizen Kane and had directed some good films like The Set-Up, The Body Snatchers, The Haunting and The Day The Earth Stood Still.  Wise was know for preparing and directing his films with careful attention to all aspects of the film's production.

Wise really hit the jackpot in 1965 with The Sound of Music which in someways was kind of his undoing since he never achieved that large commercial success during the remainder of his career. The Sand Pebbles was the film Wise actually wanted to make before The Sound of Music, but the pre-production of this film was so long and difficult that Wise used his downtime to film The Sound of Music instead.

The film is set on an American gunboat patrolling the Yangtze river in the 1920's.  The purpose of these river patrols were to protect American interests in China.  Since the film was made during the Vietnam War and Robert Wise was a good Hollywood liberal, there are some minor criticisms of the United States involvement in Asia that are clearly a reference to Vietnam.

The Sand Pebbles is essentially a film from the well crafted "they don't make them like this" school of film making.

182 minutes (I think)  the roadshow version was 196 (whew). Written by Robert Anderson.

1977 - AUDREY ROSE, sincere attempt to discuss reincarnation sucks as a film.

Older, experienced directors like Robert Wise seemed to have trouble finding suitable material for films in the 1970's.  Audrey Rose was obviously Robert Wise's attempt to do a high class version of The Exorcist without the vomit scenes.  The film fails completely mostly because of the poor casting choices that Wise made. 

The key role of Ivy Templeton, the reincarnation of a dead child named Audrey Rose is played by Susan Swift one of the most appalling child actors I can ever recall seeing.  Her personality is so grating that half the time you want to put a fist in her face whenever she breaks into her big phony Hollywood movie smile.  Marsha Mason plays her mother and she was never anyone's idea of a star. But thanks to her husband at the time Neil Simon, she managed to finagle her way into leading roles.  The actor John Beck is the father in the film and he's probably the only one who gives a decent performance.  This is one of the big problems with this film, these three never seem like a real family, they are just bunch of actors pretending to be a family.

Then there is the problem of Anthony Hopkins.  He is supposed to be playing the concerned father of Audrey Rose whose spirit has been reincarnated into the body of the little girl.  He comes off more as the spiritual father of Norman Bates with his ticks and mannerisms.  Hopkins acts more like a child molester than and anguished father.  The audience should feel sympathy for him, instead no one in their right mind would let their kid anywhere near this creep.

I'm not sure what Robert Wise was thinking when he put this cast together, but his casting sense really deserted him.  He had the same problem when he filmed Star with Julie Andrews and somehow got it into his head that Andrews was one of the sexiest women in Hollywood,  you saw how well that worked out.

113 minutes written by Frank De Felitta.

1953 - THE DESERT RATS, standard war story with good direction.

"All right chaps we have to hold this bloody hill and keep it out of the hands of Rommel and his Nazi swine." Or something like that.

Directed by that old Hollywood pro, Robert Wise.  The Desert Rats is a big bunch of cliches that is so well put together it's hard to get worked up over it's stunning lack of originality in story content. 

The film features two of England's greatest alcoholics actors Robert Newton and the man himself Mister Intense,  Richard Burton.  Besides staging good battle scenes, Robert Wise must have had his hands full just keeping those two sober throughout the making of the film.

James Mason is back in what is basically a cameo role playing Field Marshal Erwin Rommel.  He played the same part in The Desert Fox, although this time he is hardly the cuddly teddy bear he was in that film.  This Rommel in The Desert Rats is a tough general, probably what he was in real life.

It's amusing to watch Burton and Mason in their one scene together.  Burton acts up a storm smoldering with rage.  In contrast, Mason slyly underplays the same scene with wit and humor.  Guess who steals the scene away?

Anyway, a good 1950's war film, written by Richard Murphy.

88 minutes.

1968 - STAR a musical by The Sound of Music team.

Another big budget musical failure from the musical disaster group of the 1960's which includes: Hello Dolly,  Paint Your Wagon, Sweet Charity, Camelot and Finian's Rainbow.  Robert Wise had directed Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music and was so enamored of her he looked for another film to make with her.  The idea appeared to have been that Wise would create a smart, sophisticated story around Julie Andrews where she could play a sexy,  glamorous personality.  Wise and his production team decided to do a musical biography of a stage actress named Gertrude Lawrence.

Who was Gertrude Lawrence? The audience was probably asking that when they watched the film. Lawrence was an English musical comedy star from the 1930's and 40's who made her name on the London and New York stage.  Still haven't heard of her.  She was the original Anna in The King And I with Yul Brynner back in 1951. 1951, wasn't this musical made in 1968?  Did anyone really remember Gertrude Lawrence anymore?  The answer was apparently not.   This turned out to be a huge flop of a movie.  Robert Wise and 20th Century Fox had badly miscalculated.

 

 

Almost from the beginning of the film Julie Andrews seems off, her cockney accent, her super perfect vocal performances, her look.  She brought a lot of baggage to the role, namely Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music and I hate to say it, she just doesn't have that sexy of a figure to be playing a glamorous and sexy theatrical performer.  They dress her up in a lot of pretty costumes, she sings a lot of songs (15!!!), she gets to do dramatic scenes, but she seems stiff and her performance seems almost amateurish.  The big problem however is that every time she is on screen all I could think about is where is  Dick Van Dyke?

Everything seems off in this film, the script never made Gertrude Lawrence interesting, she seems more like a pain in the ass, than a larger than life personality.  The critics at the time noted that Robert Wise copied the same newsreel storytelling technique that Orson Welles had used in Citizen Kane which Wise had edited.   But if the idea was to telescope her life and times, it didn't seem to work.  The film lurched from one uninteresting situation to another.  Apparently the songs were musical numbers chosen from Gertrude Lawrence's successful shows but titles like "Has Anybody Seen Our Ship" and "Burlington Bertie" were got going to make the soundtrack album a best seller 1968.

The blame for the failure of Star must end up with Robert Wise.  Wise was a craftsman when it came to making films, you can put his list of films up against any other director and it has some impressive stuff on it.  The Sound of Music was expertly made, but that movie had Christopher Plummer whose amusing performance kept that film from being total junk.  Wise's other musical West Side Story, is kind of dated and almost unwatchable but that's another story.

176 (whew!) minutes, written by William Fairchild.

1979 - STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE

With the restart of the series coming out in May, it's time for a few comments on the first Star Trek movie with the original cast. My anticipation was high when the film was announced although the film was clearly being made to cash in on all the money Star Wars had made. In spite of that albatross, I had a strong interest in seeing the film. They had the original cast back, Gene Roddenberry the creator of the original series was the producer and Robert Wise a very good director was hired to direct.

What went wrong:
1. Basically the script had no dramatic tension, and was pretty much a rehash of a Star Trek episode called The Changeling and that wasn't a particularly good episode.

2. Robert Wise had apparently never seen an episode of Star Trek and didn't understand the mythology of the series.

3. Apparently nobody liked Roddenberry who as it turned out was a second rate talent at best and somewhat of a jerk overall.

4. Paramount rushed the production because of worries that the science fiction craze started by Star Wars would be over by the time the movie came out.

5. The actors were never able to modulate their television style acting for the film.

6. There was an over reliance on spectacular special effects which was used to cover up the weak script, this lead to many long boring "flying thru space" scenes particularly the V'ger flyover which was endless ( in fact I got up and went out for a potty break, came back and still hadn't missed anything).

7. Some weird bald chick who was supposed to be the hot sexy thing in the movie . There was always a hot sexy thing in a Star Trek episode, but she just looked strange and struggled big time to act. Her running around in a short skirt at the end of the film actually distracted from the revelation of the V'Ger entity.

 

As they say the list is unfortunately, endless. Paramount let Robert Wise rework the movie a few years later and while it mostly involved cleaning up the special effects and tightening some of the scenes, I don't think it was is a major improvement to the film, it does look and play a lot better. This is the edition I own.

 132 minutes, the screenplay was written by Harold Livingston.