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I always liked a movie called "Song Without End" about a famous pianist and the woman who loved him -- it has some wonderful Liszt. To my knowledge never released before.
Available on a lousy pan-and-scan DVD (but previously screenable at Netflix in widescreen), "The Promise" with Kathleen Quinlan and Stephen Collins.
And my Old Faithfuls that I keep mentioning:
"Sheila Levine Is Dead And Living In New York City" starring Jeannie Berlin and Roy Scheider, directed by Sydney J. Furie. Never available in ANY format.
"Something For Everyone," starring Angela Lansbury and Michael York, directed by Harold Prince. Only available on VHS.
Abel Gance's classic silent "Napoleon," shown decades later in elaborate presentations with a soundtrack composed and conducted live by Carmine Coppola -- cable used to show it, but I've never seen it available in any home video format.
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In 1968, husband-and-wife writing team Reneé Taylor and Joseph Bologna wrote the Broadway hit comedy “Lovers and Other Strangers.” Taylor starred in that play, which the team then adapted for the screen. Unhappy with the changes made by the filmmakers, however, they left the project. When the screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award, the couple shared credit with their replacement, David Z. Goodman. They then co-wrote the semi-autobiographical screenplay for MADE FOR EACH OTHER, and after receiving encouragement from their friend, writer-director Elaine May, determined to play the lead roles themselves.
Several studios expressed interest in the script but did not want to cast Taylor and Bologna. Waiting for a studio to accept them as the stars had the secondary effect of raising the price of the script. Ultimately, in 1971, Wylde Films, a Twentieth Century-Fox subsidiary that had previously produced television commercials, agreed to bankroll the film, its first production. Elaine May was originally set to direct the film, but had to leave due to prior commitments. Her replacement, Robert Bean, had previously directed Taylor in “2,” a short film written by Taylor and Bologna, which played several theatrical engagements in 1967.
The studio insisted on screen tests of Taylor and Bologna before casting them. Bologna, who earlier had directed short films and acted on stage, made his feature film debut in MADE FOR EACH OTHER. The couple had acted together before only once, when Bologna joined the stage cast of “Lovers and Other Strangers” three weeks before the end of its Broadway run. The film was shot on a budget of $865,000 on location throughout New York City, with interiors shot at the F&B/Ceco Studios in Manhattan.
When the film opened on 15 December 1971, reviews were generally laudatory, with Taylor singled out for praise. The Newsweek review stated that “she gives the sort of performance for which Oscars are handed out.” Pauline Kael called the film “the most satisfying comedy of the year.” MADE FOR EACH OTHER was listed on the 1971 Ten Best lists of New York magazine and The Washington Post. Taylor asserted in a 1985 Los Angeles Daily News article that Woody Allen named the film as his favorite. She stated, “When he did ANNIE HALL, he told us, ‘This is my MADE FOR EACH OTHER.’”
Even though it was released at 107 minutes, lengthy for a comedy, the film was reportedly cut before its release. In 1985, Taylor and Bologna oversaw a restoration of MADE FOR EACH OTHER, with twenty minutes of previously unviewed footage added. That version opened on 3 May 1985 in Los Angeles. But in the ensuing 30 years, neither the original version nor the restored one has had a video release on any format. Years ago, the film turned up on the American Movie Classics channel, when AMC still showed “movie classics.”
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Posted: |
Jul 28, 2014 - 8:50 PM
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By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
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Following the release of their 1970 campus revolution film THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT, producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, writer Israel Horovitz, and director Stuart Hagmann began a second collaboration. As with the first film, their second was also based upon material that had originally been published in New York magazine. In this case, it was Gail Sheehy’s 1968 study of New York City’s Lower East Side drug subculture, published serially under the title “Speed Is of the Essence.” Under that title, filming began in early October 1970 in New York City and concluded in early December. The film starred Michael Sarrazin and Jacqueline Bisset as a couple involved with amphetamines.
Months later, M-G-M, unhappy with the finished film, hired director John Avildsen (JOE, CRY UNCLE) for two weeks to shoot additional footage in Manhattan. The newly shot scenes, none of which were written by Horovitz, were added to the film, which was then re-edited. During the re-editing, all scenes involving the parents of Bisset’s character, who were portrayed by actors Geraldine Fitzgerald and George Rose, were eliminated. In addition, the original score by Georges Delerue was replaced with one by Fred Karlin. Only Hagmann and Horovitz received onscreen credit as director and writer.
The revised film, now titled BELIEVE IN ME, opened in New York on 8 December 1971. Judith Crist’s reaction to the film was typical: “the people who ruined THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT” had done the same to BELIEVE IN ME, turning it into “a sloppy story” about which “you couldn’t care less.” A more sympathetic response came from Roger Greenspun of The New York Times, who reasoned that “when allowed some emotional range, Stuart Hagmann directs a rather decent movie.” Variety’s “Whit” was the most positive, arguing that “the subject has been handled realistically,” with a script by Horovitz that “is hard-hitting both in narrative and dialogue and its story is compact in building to an inevitable climax.” Hagmann’s direction, he asserted, “employs no artful devices and does not sensationalize his action; his principals’ behavior is for the most part honestly delineated.”
The film was not a success, and quickly disappeared from the box office. The film has never been released on any home video format, and when the American Film Institute sought out a copy of the film to view for its cataloging project, no print could be found.
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Hungarian-born Ján Kadár began his directing career in Bratislava, Slovakia, after World War II with the documentary “Life Is Rising from the Ruins” (“Na troskách vyrastá život,” 1945). Starting in 1952, and working with his directing partner Elmar Klos, Kadár made a number of films that touted the obligatory Marxist-Leninist doctrine and adhered to Socialist-Realist filmmaking, while also bouncing between comedy and blatant propaganda.
Kadár’s biggest success came in 1965 with “The Shop On Main Street,” about the Aryanization program during World War II in the Slovak State. The film played Cannes and later won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.
In late July 1968, Kadár began work on the first motion picture co-production between Czechoslovakia and the United States. MPO Videotronics, one of the largest American producers of television commercials and industrial films, had signed Kadár and Klos to an exclusive one-year contract. Although Klos is credited onscreen as “associate director” and with co-writing the screenplay, according to Variety he functioned “more on the lines of a producer, although Julius Potocsny gets this billing.” Potocsny was an executive with MPO Videotronics, the American company co-financing the picture.
The working title of the Czechoslovakian-U.S. co-production was “Adrift in the Water.” It was based on the 1937 novel Etwas treibt im wasser (Something Is Adrift in the Water) by Lajos Zilahy. The film’s eventual title, when it was released in the U.S., was ADRIFT, and it was released in Czechoslovakia as “Touha zvaná Anada” (“A Longing Called Anada”). The film is about a fisherman who saves Anada, a woman adrift, from drowning. He takes her to his home, and protects her. Eventually, she occupies a larger place in his life than was to be expected.
ADRIFT was filmed on location on the banks of the Danube, just north of the town of Bratislava, and at Studio Barrandov in Prague. The picture was twenty-five percent completed when, on 20 August 1968, the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia and production had to be shut down, in large part because the Soviets erected a temporary military bridge at the shooting location.
Kadár then came to the U.S., where he directed his first English-language film, THE ANGEL LEVINE, which was eventually released in 1970. In mid-1969, however, after Russian restrictions in Czechoslovakia were relaxed, Kadár was able to return to his native country. Re-assembling the same cast and crew, Kadár finished production on ADRIFT.
Kadár originally planned on producing Czech and English-language versions of the film, both of which would be distributed in the U.S. But the English version was abandoned, and ADRIFT was completely filmed in Czech. The finished picture was distributed in the U.S. with English subtitles. American model-actress Paula Pritchett, who played the woman adrift, needed to be dubbed into Czech for the film. Kadár had her say her lines phonetically in Czech rather than in English, so that the dubbing would match her mouth movements.
Upon its release in Czechoslovakia in 1970, ADRIFT established a record as the longest-running Czech film in its native country. But the film was later pulled out of Prague theatres and banned in Czechoslovakia because Kadár was considered to be "a defector” due to his prolonged absence from his home.
In the U.S, the film generally received a number of favorable reviews when it premiered in New York in June 1971. Saturday Review’s Arthur Knight hailed the film as “Hauntingly beautiful, thematically tantalizing—Kadár’s artful mingling of the past, present, and future is intriguing, and his small cast performs to perfection.” Judith Crist felt that “the success of this new work stems from [Kadár’s] return to his roots and the particular people and places that he can translate so touchingly into universal terms. . . . We are indeed set adrift in a film so rich with personal feeling that our private experience must formulate the response. And this is an exciting experience.”
But outside of New York, the critics were not so kind. Roger Ebert said that “after giving ADRIFT a lot of thought, I have arrived at the conclusion that its simplicity is not seeming, but actual [and] there is no philosophical lesson to be learned.” And the Los Angeles Times’ Charles Champlin said that ADRIFT “gathers together almost all the things which people who don’t like foreign films don’t like about foreign films. ADRIFT is very nearly uninterruptedly lugubrious.”
For the past 40 years, it’s been hard to tell who is correct about the film, since it has never had a English-accessible video release. Although there is a 1971 copyright statement for MPO Productions, Inc. in the opening credits, the picture was not registered for copyright. According to one source, the only extant print available with English subtitles was in very poor condition with many of the subtitles obscured. Recently, someone posted the film to YouTube. The subtitles were created afresh from a variety of sources and were combined with a Czech-language VHS rip. Although various reviews gave the film’s original running time as anywhere between 102-110 minutes, the YouTube version runs just 100 minutes.
ADRIFT marked the last collaboration between Jan Kadár and Elmar Klos. Kadár would go on to film LIES MY FATHER TOLD ME (1975) and several TV movies before his death in 1979.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUy6v6sOP4M
This has been posted. Thanks for letting us know about it.
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I always liked a movie called "Song Without End" about a famous pianist and the woman who loved him -- it has some wonderful Liszt. To my knowledge never released before.
Available on a lousy pan-and-scan DVD (but previously screenable at Netflix in widescreen), "The Promise" with Kathleen Quinlan and Stephen Collins.
And my Old Faithfuls that I keep mentioning:
"Sheila Levine Is Dead And Living In New York City" starring Jeannie Berlin and Roy Scheider, directed by Sydney J. Furie. Never available in ANY format.
"Something For Everyone," starring Angela Lansbury and Michael York, directed by Harold Prince. Only available on VHS.
Abel Gance's classic silent "Napoleon," shown decades later in elaborate presentations with a soundtrack composed and conducted live by Carmine Coppola -- cable used to show it, but I've never seen it available in any home video format.
'The Promise' is on DVD here in Australia but I believe it is a pan and scan transfer of this widescreen filmed movie so it's posted thanks.
Napoleon (the Coppola version) was also available here in Australia but is apparently out of print. There is some controversy over this title as it was restored again in 2000 by Kevin Brownlow. This 5+ hour new version has been shown with a live orchestral score by Carl Davis in the U.K. and that is the one everyone is currently raving about. More from IMDB:
"In 2000, film historian Kevin Brownlow prepared an even longer version of "Napoleon" (over 5 hours) with improved film footage replacing existing footage, newly acquired segments, colour tints, etc., bringing the film even closer to its original form. This newly restored version has been shown theatrically in England."
(and)
"A copyright dispute over which music soundtrack should be performed with "Napoleon" exists between Zoetrope Studio/Francis Ford Coppola and the BFI/Kevin Brownlow/Carl Davis. When Brownlow assembled the original restored version in 1981 two scores were eventually produced, one (for the American market?) by Carmine Coppola (Francis' father and composer of the Godfather scores) and another (for the UK market?) by Carl Davis, veteran of many new scores for old silent movies. Prior to two live performances of the Davis score in December 2004 to accompany a new 5hr+ restoration of Napoloen, Coppola attempted to prevent the performances going ahead without his late father's score on the grounds that his family owns the copyright over the film, even though carmine Coppola's score was written for the short 4hr restoration. In the end the perfomances went ahead with Davis' score being used, although the dispute remains unresolved. It is uncertain whether Davis' score will ever be heard again while the dispute remains ongoing."
It is the poster of this showing that I've copied onto the board.
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There's "A Gathering Of Eagles" which I recall was seen in widescreen on T.C.M. in 2006, but has yet to see a D.V.D. or Blu Ray release.
Foreign DVDs do exist on this title but it seems they are not widescreen and may have forced subtitles so it's posted, thanks.
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In 1968, husband-and-wife writing team Reneé Taylor and Joseph Bologna wrote the Broadway hit comedy “Lovers and Other Strangers.” Taylor starred in that play, which the team then adapted for the screen. Unhappy with the changes made by the filmmakers, however, they left the project. When the screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award, the couple shared credit with their replacement, David Z. Goodman. They then co-wrote the semi-autobiographical screenplay for MADE FOR EACH OTHER, and after receiving encouragement from their friend, writer-director Elaine May, determined to play the lead roles themselves.
Several studios expressed interest in the script but did not want to cast Taylor and Bologna. Waiting for a studio to accept them as the stars had the secondary effect of raising the price of the script. Ultimately, in 1971, Wylde Films, a Twentieth Century-Fox subsidiary that had previously produced television commercials, agreed to bankroll the film, its first production. Elaine May was originally set to direct the film, but had to leave due to prior commitments. Her replacement, Robert Bean, had previously directed Taylor in “2,” a short film written by Taylor and Bologna, which played several theatrical engagements in 1967.
The studio insisted on screen tests of Taylor and Bologna before casting them. Bologna, who earlier had directed short films and acted on stage, made his feature film debut in MADE FOR EACH OTHER. The couple had acted together before only once, when Bologna joined the stage cast of “Lovers and Other Strangers” three weeks before the end of its Broadway run. The film was shot on a budget of $865,000 on location throughout New York City, with interiors shot at the F&B/Ceco Studios in Manhattan.
When the film opened on 15 December 1971, reviews were generally laudatory, with Taylor singled out for praise. The Newsweek review stated that “she gives the sort of performance for which Oscars are handed out.” Pauline Kael called the film “the most satisfying comedy of the year.” MADE FOR EACH OTHER was listed on the 1971 Ten Best lists of New York magazine and The Washington Post. Taylor asserted in a 1985 Los Angeles Daily News article that Woody Allen named the film as his favorite. She stated, “When he did ANNIE HALL, he told us, ‘This is my MADE FOR EACH OTHER.’”
Even though it was released at 107 minutes, lengthy for a comedy, the film was reportedly cut before its release. In 1985, Taylor and Bologna oversaw a restoration of MADE FOR EACH OTHER, with twenty minutes of previously unviewed footage added. That version opened on 3 May 1985 in Los Angeles. But in the ensuing 30 years, neither the original version nor the restored one has had a video release on any format. Years ago, the film turned up on the American Movie Classics channel, when AMC still showed “movie classics.”
This has been posted thanks. If and when it does come out we'll have to check on its running time.
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Following the release of their 1970 campus revolution film THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT, producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff, writer Israel Horovitz, and director Stuart Hagmann began a second collaboration. As with the first film, their second was also based upon material that had originally been published in New York magazine. In this case, it was Gail Sheehy’s 1968 study of New York City’s Lower East Side drug subculture, published serially under the title “Speed Is of the Essence.” Under that title, filming began in early October 1970 in New York City and concluded in early December. The film starred Michael Sarrazin and Jacqueline Bisset as a couple involved with amphetamines.
Months later, M-G-M, unhappy with the finished film, hired director John Avildsen (JOE, CRY UNCLE) for two weeks to shoot additional footage in Manhattan. The newly shot scenes, none of which were written by Horovitz, were added to the film, which was then re-edited. During the re-editing, all scenes involving the parents of Bisset’s character, who were portrayed by actors Geraldine Fitzgerald and George Rose, were eliminated. In addition, the original score by Georges Delerue was replaced with one by Fred Karlin. Only Hagmann and Horovitz received onscreen credit as director and writer.
The revised film, now titled BELIEVE IN ME, opened in New York on 8 December 1971. Judith Crist’s reaction to the film was typical: “the people who ruined THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT” had done the same to BELIEVE IN ME, turning it into “a sloppy story” about which “you couldn’t care less.” A more sympathetic response came from Roger Greenspun of The New York Times, who reasoned that “when allowed some emotional range, Stuart Hagmann directs a rather decent movie.” Variety’s “Whit” was the most positive, arguing that “the subject has been handled realistically,” with a script by Horovitz that “is hard-hitting both in narrative and dialogue and its story is compact in building to an inevitable climax.” Hagmann’s direction, he asserted, “employs no artful devices and does not sensationalize his action; his principals’ behavior is for the most part honestly delineated.”
The film was not a success, and quickly disappeared from the box office. The film has never been released on any home video format, and when the American Film Institute sought out a copy of the film to view for its cataloging project, no print could be found.
This has been posted as well. Thanks, Bob. Oh, and the board as it presently looks: http://www.pinterest.com/arthurgrant9883/the-community-chest-most-wanted-by-fans-on-dvd-or-/
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SCTV on CINEMAX
[SOBS ]
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UNE FEMME DOUCE (A Gentle Woman) was French director Robert Bresson’s ninth film, and his first in color. Bresson based his screenplay on the novella “A Gentle Creature” by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The film looks back at the relationship between a young woman (Dominique Sanda) and her pawnbroker husband (Guy Frangin), after the woman has committed suicide. Sanda made her film debut in UNE FEMME DOUCE, and reportedly Bresson cast her after just hearing her voice over the phone.
The film was initially screened as a Paramount entry in the 1969 New York Film Festival. Although Paramount released the film in France in 1969, they decided not to release it in America. Ultimately, New Yorker Films acquired the U.S. distribution rights, and the picture finally opened in May 1971 to considerable critical acclaim.
The New York Times’ Roger Greenspun declared that his critique was to be taken as “a rave review” and claimed that the movie was one of Bresson’s “greater” films. The New Yorker’s Penelope Gilliatt also called UNE FEMME DOUCE one of “Bresson’s best films.” Most of the critical debate centered not on the specifics of the film, but on Bresson’s filmic style as shown over all of his films. As described by Greenspun, “His movies are austere, relatively static, acted frequently by amateurs whom the director has trained to suppress both facial and vocal expression, and concerned with man’s inward life—which they take pains to keep inward.” And while the reviewer for Time magazine felt that “UNE FEMME DOUCE will probably prove to be Bresson’s most accessible film,” the Washington Post’s Tom Shales warned that the majority of moviegoers would respond to the picture with “bewildered boredom.” Nevertheless, a solid majority of the critics welcomed the film, and agreed with Cue’s William Wolf that “Anyone seriously interested in the French directorial scene would do well to see this example of Bresson’s kind of filmmaking.”
UNE FEMME DOUCE was released on cassette by New Yorker Video in 1995. One source claims that a DVD release is being held up due to “legal reasons,” while another claims that the film was once released on DVD in Japan as part of a boxset that now goes for $1,200. I couldn’t verify either claim, but the fact remains that no DVD is readily available.
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SCTV on CINEMAX
[SOBS ]
Or its early years when it aired in syndication. The reason? The music rights!!!
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In 1970, after producer Philip A. Waxman had purchased the film rights to John B. Sanford’s 1935 novel “The Old Man's Place,” it was announced that writer Abraham Polonsky, who had worked with Waxman on Universal's 1969 production TELL THEM WILLIE BOY IS HERE, would write the script and direct. It was also announced that the film would be shot in Spain, that Robert Blake would star, and that the film would be titled after the novel. In the end, none of that happened.
Although the film’s working title was “The Old Man's Place,” the release title had to be changed because Columbia Pictures had already registered that title back in 1962. Even before Polonsky’s name was mentioned in connection with the project, Waxman had signed Stanford Whitmore (YOUR CHEATIN’ HEART, 1964) to write a script, and so Polonsky dropped out. Directing chores were taken over by Edwin Sherin, his second film after VALDEZ IS COMING. In a concession to the Hollywood unions, Waxman agreed to skip Spain and film entirely in northern California. And Robert Blake was also no longer associated with the project. Instead, the film offered early roles for William Devane and Michael Moriarity, who made his feature film debut in the picture. (Arthur Kennedy starred.) Charles Gross, who had scored Sherin’s VALDEZ IS COMING, provided the music.
Updating the 1935 novel to the present, the film concerned two disillusioned Army buddies returning home from war, in this case Vietnam. Under the title GLORY BOY, Cinerama Releasing opened the film in New York on 29 June 1971, to poor reviews. The Village Voice’s Andrew Sarris declared that the film was one of the “characteristically bad movies of the ‘70s” that “concern themselves very pretentiously with the problem of evil in a disintegrating social unit” while simultaneously “exploiting plot elements involving rape and murder.” And Roger Greenspun of the New York Times termed GLORY BOY one of those “obscure” “films that by their own confusions and inadequacies fail to make the kind of sense they so clearly intend.” Even so, a few reviewers, like the New York Daily News’ Wanda Hale, were favorably disposed towards the “simply-made” and “modest little film.” She attributed the “forcefulness” of the “highly charged drama” to Stanford Whitmore’s “solidly-constructed, extremely literate” screenplay, and to Edwin Sherin’s ability “to draw fine, sensitive performances from his cast.”
Nevertheless, following the generally negative critical reception, the film was withdrawn from distribution. It was re-released in 1972 as MY OLD MAN’S PLACE, with a new advertising campaign. But viewing the unchanged film in early 1972, the Los Angeles Times’ Kevin Thomas found it to be “Awkward and devoid of any discernable style” and termed it “a fine opportunity largely missed.” However, looking at the film from a modern perspective, Leonard Maltin finds it to be “Not profound, but moody and interesting.”
Edwin Sherin would never direct a feature film again, and spent the next 35 years in television and the theater. MY OLD MAN’S PLACE was released on VHS by Prism Video, but has never had a DVD release. The film is now controlled by M-G-M.
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