 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A GUNFIGHT
dir.Lamont Johnson
?
1971's A GUNFIGHT was a convoluted co-production. A European consortium of Dimitri de Grunwald and Alberto Caraco had originally offered to finance the production in Spain, and was offering $1.7 million for distribution rights in Europe. But in March 1970, it was announced that Ronald Lubin and Harold Jack Bloom's Harvest Productions, in conjunction with Kirk Douglas' Bryna Productions, would receive $2 million in financing from the Jicarilla Apache tribe for A GUNFIGHT, thus keeping production in the United States, rather than abroad. The tribe had oil, natural gas, and timber on its land and other diverse financial interests, and the business deal with the film producers received the approval of the U. S. Bureau of Indian Affairs. Producer Lubin used as many Apaches as possible on the film crew, since no Native Americans appear in the cast of the film, which is about two veteran gunfighters squaring off in the film's climax, set in a bullring. A GUNFIGHT was shot on location in New Mexico.
Although there is a copyright statement on the film, A GUNFIGHT was not registered for copyright at the time of its release. This oversight led to the issuance of any number of gray market VHS tapes of the film over the years. Finally, in 1991, Harvest and Thoroughbred Productions filed for and received a copyright on the film. This has drastically cut down on the number of gray market DVDs of the film, although some can still be found.
Since Paramount does not control the film, this is the likely reason why there has not been any official U.S. release from either Paramount or its licensees (Legend Films, Olive Films) over the years.
Say Bob,
Would you happen to know the original aspect ratio of this film? I saw it in the theatre but it was so long ago (when it was released), I forgot. I'm pretty sure it was shot anamorphic widescreen but I could be wrong. Or perhaps if Bob Fumarek is around he could tell us the real deal. The DVD here in Australia is NOT widescreen so it looks like it will be posted on the board. Oh and thanks for reminding me of Pendulum, an intriguing thriller with a disappointing finish that certainly deserves a DVD release. I'd love to see this again!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Posted: |
Nov 14, 2014 - 10:46 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
|
Born in Sweden in 1925, Mai Zetterling was a lovely, slim, green-eyed blonde with bewitchingly elfin features. Trained on the Stockholm repertory stage, she began appearing in war-era films starting in her teens. Following her debut in LASSE MAJA (1941), she made quite an impact in the terminally dark Ingmar Bergman-written film TORMENT (1944). Bergman went on to direct her in his MUSIC IN DARKNESS (1948).
The international attention she received from her Bergman association led her to England where she debuted in the title role of FRIEDA (1947), a war drama co-starring David Farrar, Glynis Johns, and Flora Robson. Developing modest sex symbol success, she went on to co-star opposite a number of handsome leading men throughout the post-war years in primarily dramatic works, including Dirk Bogarde in BLACKMAILED (1951), Richard Widmark in A PRIZE OF GOLD (1955), Tyrone Power in ABANDON SHIP (1957), and Stanley Baker in THE MAN WHO FINALLY DIED (1963).
Zetterling abandoned acting in the mid-1960s and courted some controversy when she began sitting in the director's chair. Divorced from Norwegian actor Tutte Lemkow in the early 1950s, she later wed writer David Hughes in 1958, who collaborated with her on a number of her sexy directing ventures, which seemed ahead of their time. Obviously influenced by Bergman, the dark, sexy drama LOVING COUPLES (1964) dealt with homosexual themes and featured nudity; NIGHT GAMES (1966) revolved around sexual decadency and repression.
Zetterling’s third feature as director was 1968’s DOCTOR GLAS, based upon a 1905 Victorian-era erotic novel by Hjalmar Söderberg. The novel, told in the form of a journal, relates the story of a physician in 19th-century Sweden who deals with moral and love issues. The film was a production of Denmark’s Laterna Films, and was shot in and around Copenhagen and Stockholm, with interiors at Laterna Studios in Copenhagen. Nevertheless, the black-and-white film had Swedish dialogue, and starred Per Oscarsson as the title character. Upon the film’s Danish release in June 1968, Variety’s “Kell” noted that, compared to her earlier films, “Miss Zetterling has chosen to soft-pedal the sexual images in DOCTOR GLAS,” which was “like tasting a venerable wine without being allowed to swallow it.”
Before opening DOCTOR GLAS in the U.S. in April 1969, distributor Twentieth Century Fox cut the 90-minute film by 7 minutes, qualifying it for an [M] rating. American critical reaction to the film was sharply divided between those who found it “a superb and sensitive film” in which “dealing with the darkest of passions, Miss Zetterling has achieved a lyricism of tone and a throbbing humanism that will not leave you untouched” (Judith Crist, New York) and those who found it a “grim” and “neurotic study that is depressing to watch” (Ann Guarino, N.Y. Daily News).
Supporting Miss Guarino’s negative view of the film was Vincent Canby of the New York Times. Canby declared that “Miss Zetterling is such a stolid, literal director that even scenes of sexual hallucination look like roadmaps for a subconscious as flat as Iowa. . . . Like the movie, [Per Oscarsson’s] doctor is obscure without being particularly complex.” But taking a positive view was Joseph Gelmis of Newsday, who thought the film to be “a mood piece rather than a conventional narrative or drama.” “DOCTOR GLAS is a first-rate cinematic equivalent of a Dostoevskian novel like ‘Crime and Punishment,’ an offbeat psychological thriller about obsession, loneliness, passion, murder and conscience. . . . Oscarsson gives a superlatively mysterious, poignant and subtle portrayal of a haunted man.”
Mai Zetterling would continue to direct during the 1970s and 1980s, including directing one segment of the 1973 Olympic documentary VISIONS OF EIGHT. Toward the end of her life, she made a return to film acting and is best remembered at this late stage for her nurturing and resilient grandmother in the film THE WITCHES (1990) wherein she is forced to tangle with a particularly virulent ringleader Anjelica Huston to save her grandson from her coven of hags. Zetterling died of cancer in 1994 at age 68.
DOCTOR GLAS has never been issued on any home video format, and Laterna Film’s U.S. copyright on the film has been allowed to lapse.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Nov 24, 2014 - 10:50 AM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
|
Although trained for the stage in his native Sweden, Alf Kjellin appeared in only a few stage productions before entering films. His work in TORMENT (1944) resulted in his being noticed by Hollywood, and he made his American film debut in 1949 under the name Christopher Kent. He soon went back to using his real name, and though he made several more Hollywood films, he worked mainly out of Sweden, both as an actor and director. In the early 1960s he finally settled in Hollywood. During the 1960s, he worked primarily as a television director on such series as “The Alfred Hitchcock Hour,” “Dr. Kildare,” I Spy,” and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”
Kjellin made his American theatrical film directorial debut with 1969’s MIDAS RUN. This heist film starred Richard Crenna, Anne Heywood, and Fred Astaire, and was filmed in London and Italy (Rome, Venice, and Milan). Elmer Bernstein provided the film’s short score, which was released on a Citadel LP and CD.
Coming as it did towards the end of a long line of heist films during the 1960s [which included TOPKAPI (1964), THE CAPER OF THE GOLDEN BULLS (1967), GRAND SLAM (1967), THE BIGGEST BUNDLE OF THEM ALL (1968), and THEY CAME TO ROB LAS VEGAS (1968)], MIDAS RUN was met with disdain by most of the critics. A.H. Weiler of the New York Times wrote that “despite its amiable, 14-carat, good intentions, MIDAS RUN contains more dross than gold.” “Another of those wild international gold-bar heists that are better on paper than on film,” said New York’s Judith Crist, while Cue’s William Wolf claimed that while “this bauble starts interestingly, if not credibly, from there it becomes less interesting and even less credible.”
Roger Ebert took particular aim at the score: “The music is one of the most distracting things about the movie. Good film music should hardly be heard; it should be somewhere over in a corner of your mind, gently underlining scenes without stealing them. But the music in MIDAS RUN is hardly subtle. It’s so overdone that its very urgency points up how little is happening on the screen.”
Nevertheless, the film had a few mild supporters. Ann Guarino of the N.Y. Daily News felt that despite the film’s “uneven pacing,” it was “otherwise [an] amusing adventure.” “In spite of its excesses, the film entertains,” Guarino said. And the San Francisco Chronicle’s Paine Knickerbocker found pleasure mainly in a few members of the cast, most notably Fred Astaire (“still debonair and with as pleasant a smile as ever”) and Ralph Richardson (who “ad-libs amusingly”).
After directing one more theatrical film (1970’s THE McMASTERS). Alf Kjellin went back to television directing for the remainder of his career, for such series as “Hawaii Five-0,” “The Waltons,” and “Barnaby Jones.” He died in 1988 at age 68. MIDAS RUN, which was originally produced by Selmur Pictures and distributed by Cinerama Releasing, is now controlled by Disney. The film has never had a video release on any format.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Dec 3, 2014 - 10:16 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
|
Little known by the general public, Moroccan-born actor Amidou can nevertheless boast an onstage and on screen career spanning almost five decades. Appearing in French films most of the time, he also worked in Morocco, in Tunisia, and in his later years in American action movies like William Friedkin's THE SORCERER and RULES OF ENGAGEMENT, John Frankenheimer's RONIN, and Tony Scott's SPY GAME. French director Claude Lelouch gave Amidou his first part in 1961’s LE PROPRE DE L’HOMME. He would then appear in nine other films directed by Lelouch, among which was his starring role in a 1969 French movie entitled LIFE LOVE DEATH (La Vie, L'Amour, La Mort).
Best known for his romances (A MAN AND A WOMAN, LIVE FOR LIFE, LOVE IS A FUNNY THING), Claude Lelouch said that he made many pictures in the commercial vein so that he could make more weighty ones afterwards. LIFE LOVE DEATH was one of those serious pictures. Made before the abolition of capital punishment in France, its central message is the inhumanity of the guillotine. The film, which is shot somewhat in a cinema verite style, starred Amidou as a man facing the death penalty after committing several murders. The rest of the cast was also portrayed by actors unfamiliar to American audiences.
Lelouch’s frequent composer Francis Lai scored the film. Four short tracks from the score were issued on a French EP, but have never been reissued on CD. When LIFE LOVE DEATH opened in Paris in February 1969, Variety’s “Mosk” felt that Lelouch’s “mixture of sleek and surface characterization with a pungent theme does not quite jell, although it is well meant.” “Mosk” went on to assert that films on capital punishment “have to make human and social observations broad enough to make the point stronger” and that “soft-pedaling the actual ways of justice weakens the film’s cumulative force.”
When Lopert Films (United Artists) opened the picture in the U.S. in May 1969, very few critics took issue with what Lelouch had to say about capital punishment, but the majority of them did object to his elliptical narrative technique (which perhaps made the director a man ahead of his time). Lelouch’s “approach is as abstract as his title suggests,” complained the New Yorker’s Susan Lardner, while Saturday Review’s Hollis Alpert wrote that “Lelouch unfolds his story by starting more or less in the middle, and he gets to the beginning just before the end.” Apart from the “hodgepodge editing,” the N.Y. Daily News’ Ann Guarino felt that the “conflicting themes of a superficial love story intercut with scenes that lead up to a plea against capital punishment split the impact of the film.”
Among those defending the film were the New York Times’s A.H. Weiler, who held that the director had “brilliantly pieced together a grim, relentlessly detailed case history of a crime” and argued that the film ultimately had a “harrowing effect” on the audience. Cue’s William Wolf also used the word “harrowing” to describe the film’s impact and felt that LIFE LOVE DEATH “deserves to be rated among the best films made on the subject of capital punishment.” He also disagreed with the majority, asserting that it was “exhilarating to see a ‘message picture’ in the hands of a fine artist. . . . Away go the clichés, and onto the screen comes creativity at every turn.”
LIFE LOVE DEATH is now controlled by MGM, but has never had a release on any home video format.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: |
Dec 4, 2014 - 11:01 PM
|
|
|
|
By: |
Bob DiMucci
(Member)
|
Earlier this year, on March 7th, writer S. Lee Pogostin died, one day before his 87th birthday. Pogostin won a Writers Guild Award and was nominated for an Emmy for his original teleplay “The Game,” for the anthology series “Bob Hope Presents The Chrysler Theatre.” Though Pogostin lost, director Sydney Pollack and actor Cliff Robertson won Emmys in 1966 for “The Game,” and actress Simone Signoret also won that year for another Pogostin-scripted Chrysler segment, “A Small Rebellion.”
After moving to New York in 1950, Pogostin broke into the entertainment industry as a writer for radio programs including “Grand Central Station” and “Suspense.” Moving into live television, Pogostin wrote for “Lux Video Theatre,” “Campbell Soundstage” and “Studio One,” crafting teleplays such as “Something for an Empty Briefcase” (an early starring role for James Dean) and “Early Morning for a Bartender’s Waltz” (an early vehicle for Robert Duvall). His other television credits included adaptations of W. Somerset Maugham’s “The Moon and Sixpence,” starring Laurence Olivier, and an adaptation of Arthur Miller’s novel “Focus,” for which Miller personally selected Pogostin to write the teleplay.
Pogostin spent much of the 1960s living abroad, in Spain and France, but commuted to Hollywood to write for TV series including “The Dick Powell Show,” “Cain’s Hundred,” and “Slattery’s People.” After moving to Los Angeles, Pogostin became a friend and collaborator of John Cassavetes, who starred in Pogostin’s last “Chrysler Theatre” segment, “Free of Charge,” and Sam Peckinpah, with whom he worked (along with the actor Robert Culp) on an unproduced screenplay, “Summer Soldiers.”
During the 1960s, Pogostin wrote the screenplays for the films PRESSURE POINT (1962) (based on his teleplay “Destiny’s Tot”), starring Sidney Poitier and Bobby Darin, and SYNANON (1965) starring Chuck Conners. And in 1969, Pogostin directed his only feature film, HARD CONTRACT.
HARD CONTRACT, which Pogostin also scripted, starred James Coburn, Lee Remick, Lilli Palmer, and Burgess Meredith. Shot on location in Spain (Torremolinos and Madrid), Belgium (Brussels), and Morocco (Tangiers), the film concerned an American hit man who goes to Europe for “one last score.” His encounter with a beautiful young woman casts self-doubt on his livelihood, and influences him to resist carrying out the contract. HARD CONTRACT had music by Alex North, whose score was finally released by Varese Sarabande in 2009.
Pogostin used the film to express his conviction that murder is either accepted without question or justified too easily by present-day society. So, when Twentieth Century Fox released the film in May 1969, this thesis caused the critics to concern themselves more with HARD CONTRACT’s content than with its style—and the majority concluded that the picture devoted too much time to philosophical discussions. “HARD CONTRACT is a film with good intentions that does nothing but talk,” said Newsday’s Joseph Gelmis, adding that “unfortunately, the long speeches are simply dull.” Similarly, Time magazine complained that because the characters spent most of their time “discussing doom, guilt, predestination, war, violence, murder and the population explosion,” the viewer developed a “who could care?” attitude toward the final outcome.
But not every reviewer was down on the film. Although Cue’s William Wolf agreed that HARD CONTRACT was “too obtuse and sometimes cluttered with pretentious dialogue,” he nevertheless affirmed that “this is one of the more interesting American films of the year,” arguing that “a movie can be interesting for what it attempts as well as for what it achieves,” namely that Pogostin had taken “an important theme and structured it with imagination.” And the Los Angeles Times’ Charles Champlin felt that “HARD CONTRACT proceeds as a message, but sustains itself as entertainment through the suspense of its story and the interplay of its remarkable set of characters.” Nevertheless, the majority agreed with Gary Arnold of the Washington Post that “HARD CONTRACT is a Socratic dialogue disguised as an international thriller.”
S. Lee Pogostin would go on to write the screenplays for GOLDEN NEEDLES (1974), NIGHTMARE HONEYMOON (1977), and HIGH ROAD TO CHINA (1983). Unlike those films, however, HARD CONTRACT has never been released on any home video format.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
With the talents involved in its production, you’d think that 1970’s TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME, JUNIE MOON would have received some sort of a release by now. But we don’t have so much as a cassette tape, let alone a DVD. Liza Minnelli stars in the film, and is supported by Ken Howard, James Coco, and Fred Williamson. Marjorie Kellogg wrote the script from her own novel, and Otto Preminger directed.
Leonard Maltin gives the “moving story” 3 and a half stars, noting that “moments of comedy, melodrama [and] compassion [are] expertly blended by Preminger in one of his best films.” Given all the obscure and dubious items that Olive Films is releasing from Paramount (such as Preminger's own SKIDOO), where is this?
Here's some further information on TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME, JUNIE MOON. The 1970 film was originally copyrighted by Otto Preminger's production company, Sigma Productions. A year after Preminger's death in 1986, ownership transferred to the Preminger estate. In 1989, title to the film was shifted from the estate to a new company, Otto Preminger Films, Ltd., where it has apparently remained for the past 25 years. Since distributor Paramount has never controlled the film, that explains why no video release has been forthcoming from Paramount or its licensees over the years.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
It's not clear why THE THIEF WHO CAME TO DINNER has not received a U.S. DVD release, but I'll hazard a guess. In the U.S., the film is jointly owned by Warner Bros. and Tandem Productions, Inc., which at the time of the film's 1973 production was owned by producers Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin. Warner Bros. did manage to issue the film on VHS cassette in 1985. But that same year, Tandem was sold to the Coca-Cola company. A few corporate sales later, and by 1991 Tandem wound up as part of Sony Pictures Entertainment. So, it appears as if Warner Bros. and Sony both have a piece of the film, and both would have to agree to any release.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thanks Bob for all of the info on one of my favourites, 'Hard Contract' that I completely forgot about. I posted it and another from the same year I was kind of hoping you might find some information on because I love it as well. It's Frank Perry's TRILOGY from 1969.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
