Alan Arkin 1934-2023

 

Julian Sands 1958-2023

 

summer 2023 knowing when to stop mixed on board

 

Ben-Hur 1959

 

If one can accept this large scale biblical epic as a rousing boy's adventure story then you might have some fun and maybe even get some enjoyment from it. I have to say that these large scale biblical epics were never my thing, even when as a kid. I first saw BH when I was 12 on the big screen, reserved seats at the newly renovated Loew's State Theater in Times Sq. during Christmas vacation. I was bored.

That said I decided after decades of ignoring it to have another look at this big Oscar winner via the blu ray edition. It looked good but I still didn't stand up and cheer . It's so overstuffed and bloated that it really was tiring at an over 3 ½ hour running time. The story is simple and reverential with all the points on how Christianity came to be highlighted and underlined.

It can also been seen as a story of a long friendship that begins in childhood between a Jew and a believer in idols and emperors. That would be Judah Ben-Hur a Jewish prince and Messala a believer in the worship of Greco Roman gods and emperors . They grow up to become Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd who have a very homoerotic reunion at the beginning of the film which over long plot strands becomes a hated and heated revenge story.

The homoerotic thing is there no doubt because Gore Vidal put it in the screenplay that he among many others worked and labored on, and is one of the legends of Hollywood Gore lore depending on who you believe. Boyd who is given to long lingering stares into Heston's eye's is the best thing in the film. He's emotional and there is depth to his performance, and his longing for Ben-Hur is potent. Wyler may have pleaded innocence when it came to this hidden meaning of male love and affection but the homoerotic is certainly there especially in the scenes of Boyd surrounded by his bare chested muscular adoring soldiers and servants and is especially telling in the steam bath scene which made me perk up for a minute.

Also in the large cast of millions is Hugh Griffith terrible in brown face so thick it looks like shoe polish as the campy Shieik llderim and won a supporting Oscar for this performance which is one of the Oscar duds of all time along with the ridiculous win for best actor to Charlton Heston.

Jack Hawkins always good plays Quinutus Arrius who comes to Heston's rescue after Heston comes to his rescue during a lavish sea battle done with miniatures and matte paintings and is one of the famous set pieces of the film, the other being the big chariot race that comes in the 2^nd half of the film, and is colossal and animated with action between Boyd and Heston racing, racing, racing. It comes to a bad end with (spoiler alert) the death of Boyd, who grasps the arm of Heston as he lies dying. Its a surprise that Boyd didn't get an Oscar nomination for his 

scene stealing performance.

And then there's Jesus. He hovers over the film in pivotal scenes but he's never seen up front and personal. Always shot from the back or in partial body parts, his hand giving slaves water, and the cruel walk to his crucifixion where he gives out with a few miracles including curing Judah's mother and sister played by Martha Scott and Cathy O'Donnell of leprosy which actually looks like a bad case of acne.

The oscar winning music score by Miklos Rozsa is loud and big befitting this loud and big film. Filmed before in 1925 with the gay actor Ramon Novaro as Ben-Hur.

Frederic Forrest 1936-2023

 The lovely actor Frederic Forrest has passed. 

Early Summer 2023 mixed

 

Humoresque 1946

Joan Crawford made this lush over the top melodrama right after her Oscar winning performance in Mildred Pierce, and for me this is the last film of hers that she still looked stunning and before she became a gorgon. In this romantic saga as I said she is still gorgeous and the beautiful deep black and white cinematography by Ernest Haller shows off her beauty in deep close-ups and highlights in light and dark. Her look is strictly late 40's (even though its suppose to be the 30's) and she is dressed up by Adrian to the hilt in glittery gowns with her trade mark wide shoulder pads. She glistens and acts up a storm playing a rich bitch society dame who supports the arts and from what we can tell the artists as well.

In a flashback we meet the Boray family, tastefully Jewish struggling at their neighborhood grocery store led by papa J.Carrol Nash and mama Ruth Nelson and the three little Boray's including the adorable Robert Blake as the young Paul who longs for a violin instead of a baseball bat for his birthday and thanks to mama bear gets it. Thus we start on the musical career and journey of Paul Borary now grown up and played by John Garfield all tightly wound up and sexy. Garfield who was 33 at the time of the film was I thought a little too old to be playing a struggling classical violinist but not too old to have a torrid and intense romance with Crawford.

However he is still great to watch because of his smoldering good looks and terrific acting. Joan is married to a wishy washy Paul Cavanagh who is hard to read. Is he a closeted gay married man who accepts Joan's parading around with young handsome men because he is off screen and off the story also parading around with young handsome men. Its 1946 so everything is beneath and behind close doors including the sex between Garfield and Crawford which is presented to us as the cliche and overused crashing ocean wave scene where both stars are fully clothed.

Also in the film and unwelcomed by me is the annoying out of place Oscar Levant as Garfield's life long pal and fellow musician who met Garfield when he was 11. This age difference between them is never mentioned but glares out at us. There is trouble at hand between Garfield's angry mom over his relationship with Joan and serves as a side dish to the main events of Garfield becoming a great big musical star, and taking the classical music scene and Joan by storm. His playing of the violin is one of the fun things in the film and it was done by the young violist Issac Stern and the setting up and filming of Garfield's playing was complex and difficult to film and is a great behind the scenes story. There's lots of music of course in the movie which more or less is used to underline the romantic and melodramatic goings on including a soaring Tristan and Isolde by Wagner used at the end of the film for Joan's final exit. The screenplay was co-written by Clifton Odets and directed by Jean Negulesco who had a long career and was no stranger to ripe “women's movies” and melodramas a list that he should not be ashamed of.

Mocking Owl Roost

 I finally found my contribution to this magazine from Sept. 2022. 

Daniel Ellsberg 1931-2023

 

Glenda Jackson 1936-2023

We have lost one of our great actors. I have adored her since I first saw her in the film version of Marat/Sade. Just watched her great performance in women in love again, and again I was knocked out. Happily I saw her in her two recent broadway performances in Three Tall Women and Lear. What a stunning actress she was.

Cormac McCarthy 1933-2023

 

april kingsley 1941-2023

This is sad news for me. I adored April who was a close friend of mine for many years. She supported me as an artist and was the first critic to write about my art in the early 70's. I remember so many dinners with her and Budd Hopkiins who she was married to for some time at their wonderful house in Chelsea. They gave me a big birthday party for my 30th birthday. I knew this was coming, because April has been sick for many years but it still hurts. The top photo is of budd and april with philip katzan at my loft in the early 70's the second one is of me and april and grace hopkins camping it up. again the early 70's. Nothing but sadness surrounds me. The photos are of april, me april and grace hopkins fooling around and april budd and philip katzen in my loft.

Treat Williams 1951-2023

 

Early Summer 2023. Mixed on board

 

He Ran All The Way 1951

 

Small tight Noir portrait of a small time crook and loser who tries to make it big and fails big time. Set in a crummy Los Angles with actual location shooting, it starred John Garfield in his last film as the small time crook who with Norman Lloyd makes a go at stealing a briefcase full of cash. He gets the loot but he also shoots dead a cop which starts a manhunt for him. Lloyd gets shot by the cop and is out of luck and out of the movie.

Garfield takes it on the lam, running all the way and winds up in a public swimming pool at an amusement park which is colorful and cool and where he gabs and grabs on to a young Shelley Winters and talks her into letting him take her home to her small crummy apartment where she lives with her parents and kid brother. Wrong becomes wronger as Garfield is forced to take the family hostage and the rest of the film is about the uneasy situation of the family being held captive by a desperate cornered Garfield.

Winters who works at a bakery is becoming more and more amore with him and agrees to help him escape much to the chagrin and anger of her parents played by the very good character actors Wallace Ford and Selena Royal. Everything in the film is tight and crummy especially the joint he shares with his floozy mom played by the wonderful Gladys George who takes no lip from John. The film is somewhat political if you can see it as that, a down and out crook takes as his hostages a poor working class family who are struggling against the system just as he is, only they do it on legal and straight terms. It would be a different film if he had taken as hostage a rich upper class family, making our feelings and support much easier to give to him.

Garfield was of course brilliant going from soft to hard, from harsh to giving and back again. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is when he sends the young kid out to get take out food and he brings back the biggest turkey I've ever seen. Garfield is happy to share this meal but the family will not eat any of it, instead having their own dinner of weak stew. What follows is a scary moment in the film. These days when we watch old movies we have so much biographical bread crumbs on the stars, not spread out in some forest but on the occasional big theater screens and more than likely on our big screen t.v.s. And when we watch these glorious star shadows we know so much about their personal lives that it adds a certain patina to their performances, and Garfield was no different. His tough guy shadows were real.

This was a very left leaning enterprise including several of the participates winding up black listed or close to it including the director John Berry, Selena Royal and the screenwriters Dalton Trumbo and Hugo Butler. Garfield testified before the House but refused to name names and this brave approach didn't help him in his career. He died shortly after in 1952. He still had what it takes it in this film, and he was only 37 when filming started in late 1950. He looked swell and handsome giving a fine tightly coiled performance in an unsympathetic role. His career in films was short, swift and sweet and all of his performances were compelling and usually startling. A native New Yorker who got his training on the tough streets of the city before joining the Group Theater. His early life story reads like one of the Warner Bros. Films that he starred in starting in 1938 with a strong supporting role in “Four Daughters” and getting an Oscar nomination to boot. He was on a roll and a ride becoming a major star who influenced many of the younger actors of the “method school” including Brando, Clift and Dean. The pounding score is by Franz Waxman and the cinematography is by the great James Wong Howe.

Francoise Gilot 1921-2023

 

Astrud Gilberto 1940-2023