Casablanca with the San Francisco Symphony

Last Friday night I attended a very special screening of "Casablanca with the San Francisco Symphony" at Davies Hall. Conductor Michael Francis led the orchestral accompaniment and a full house spent the evening in thrall to Warner Bros.' sublime 1942 film classic and composer Max Steiner's unforgettable score.

Davies Symphony Hall, San Francisco

The sell-out audience of 2,800 or so was a mix of film and music lovers of every generation. Some of the young and old attended in full 1940's attire; most spent time sipping champagne and cocktails on the mezzanine before the program got underway...


When the lights flickered and muted tones chimed,  it was time for my friend and I to take an elevator to the second tier balcony. From blissfully comfortable seats we spied a huge screen at center stage surrounded by the symphony orchestra. Mr. Francis entered, stepped to the podium, picked up his baton, glanced into a small monitor next to his sheet music and in a moment the hall reverberated with those oh-so-familiar notes that herald the start of a Warner Bros. picture. Then came Max Steiner's almost as familiar score:

The San Francisco orchestra interpreted Steiner's music a bit more gently, with less bombast, than the original movie soundtrack. The experience of a live score lent both immediacy and charm to the viewing experience and it was interesting, from time to time, to steal a look at the musicians as they accompanied familiar scenes. The harpist was fascinating to watch and listen to during the Paris flashback sequence. The essence of magic that is new love seemed to float from her strings.

...at Rick's, Bogart, Madeleine Lebeau and Leonid Kinskey

I've loved and admired Casablanca for years but it wasn't until I sat watching from high in Davies Hall that a particular thought occurred and recurred in my mind..."this film is perfect." In every respect...direction, cinematography, set design, screenplay, dialogue, wardrobe, score, editing - and the cast. This is Bogart at his apex as a romantic lead, Bergman at her most beautiful and pure - along with a most eloquent supporting cast: Claude Rains, Paul Henreid, Conrad Veidt, Peter Lorre, Sydney Greenstreet, S.K. Sakall, Madeleine Lebeau (the last cast member still living), Dooley Wilson, Joy Page and Leonid Kinskey. It's no surprise that Casablanca was honored with eight Academy Award nominations and won for Best Picture, Best Director (Michael Curtiz) and Best Screenplay (brothers Julius and Philip Epstein and Howard Koch). Humphrey Bogart was nominated for Best Actor, Claude Rains for his supporting role, Max Steiner for his score, Arthur Edeson for cinematography and Owen Marks for editing. 
 
Perusing the program during intermission, I came upon Larry Rothe's insightful write-up on the picture and read of many things I knew and didn't know about Casablanca...

I found out that the timing of the film's release was auspicious. Casablanca premiered in New York in November 1942. The Allies had invaded North Africa earlier in the month - which was significant. Even more powerful was the fact that in January 1943 President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill met in Casablanca to discuss the terms of an Axis surrender. This became headline news at the end of discussions, on January 24. Casablanca had gone into national release the day before...a windfall for Warner's PR team.

Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion

According to Rothe, Steiner wove four major musical themes through the film. The first, of course, is "As Time Goes By," a song that became immortal with Casablanca. The second is the romantic theme accompanying the flashback to Paris. The third theme is France's national anthem, the "Marseillaise," first played as part of the title sequence, but most memorably featured when Victor Laszlo leads the crowd at Rick's in a stirring rendition of the anthem. A conscience-stirring variation on the "Marseillaise," first heard when Ilsa tells Rick about her devotion to Laszlo and the Resistance, is the fourth theme.

The entire night was thrilling (and I hope the fact that it sold out will persuade the symphony to do this again), but there was one moment I don't ever want to forget...listening to the San Francisco symphony play "Perfidia" as Bogart and Bergman dance (and he presses his face to hers) ...exquisite!

Meanwhile, Max Steiner's day is not done in San Francisco. Friday, July 29, the Castro Theatre begins a seven-day, 13-picture program, "Legendary Composer: Max Steiner." Included in the series will be Mildred Pierce, The Letter, Casablanca, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Gone with the Wind, Now, Voyager, Dark Victory, White Heat, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Big Sleep, Key Largo, King Kong and The Searchers. Click here to learn more.

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Lyle Wheeler - Setting the Scene

Watercolor pre-production painting of Tara for Gone with the Wind (1939)

by guest author Captain Gregg  

The art director is one of the most important artists in the film industry for it is his talent and skill that bring a script to visual life. Lyle Wheeler was a master craftsman in this field of production design. In his career, he created the environments to over 350 films. From their initial sketches on paper to the purchasing of the props and furnishings, to the costumes of the characters, to the construction of the studio and outdoor sets, his eye oversaw each and every process.

Everything that surrounded the action in front of the camera, in the foreground as well as the background, was his responsibility and Lyle Wheeler knew how to interpret a script to set it to its best advantage.

Born on February 12, 1905 in Woburn, Massachusetts, Lyle Reynolds Wheeler began his career as a magazine illustrator and went on to become an industrial designer before joining MGM in 1931 as a layout artist. His skill in this new field was evident, and it was not long before he worked his way up to assistant art director under Cedric Gibbons (head of the MGM art department ).

In 1936 a new Technicolor dye transfer process was created and as his first assignment as a full-fledged art director Lyle worked with David O. Selznick in making The Garden of Allah, a visually stunning vehicle to showcase this new development in filmmaking. He worked on several more Technicolor films and acquired a skill in the medium that was later justly rewarded with a 1939 Academy Award for his work on “Gone with The Wind”, where – working with William Cameron Menzies – he created two of the most magnificent motion picture settings of all time - the beautiful plantation and surrounding grounds of Tara, and the burning of Atlanta.

Tara - Gone with the Wind

 Wheeler’s talent for creating historically accurate sets was exercised in many other period films of the 1940s and 50s including That Hamilton Woman (London, 1799 ), Anna and the King of Siam and its remake The King and I (Siam, 1870s ), The Foxes of Harrow (America, 1821), Dragonwyck (1844 ), Titanic (1915 ) and the numerous Biblical-era films he designed sets for, such as, The Robe, Demetrius and the Gladiators, David and Bathsheba and The Egyptian.

That Hamilton Woman (1941)

The entrance of Manderley in Rebecca (1940) - note impressive wood carvings

The Grand Room of Manderley in Rebecca...yes, it's quite graahnd

The quaint seaside cottage in Rebecca

A Lyle Wheeler setting is always characterized by its extreme clarity and sharpness of lines. Why, his scenes look so crisp and real you almost feel like you’re transported into the setting along with the characters! This is especially evident in his black-and-white productions. Through varying tones of shade and the accentuation of shadows, Manderley estate (Rebecca ) comes alive for us as much as it does for Mrs. de Winter. And in Laura we come to know the characters primarily through their personal environments. Decorated sweet and simply, Laura’s apartment reveals the kind and innocent girl behind the painting that Mark comes to love, whereas Waldo Lydecker’s place of abode is modern, aesthetic and although pleasing to the eye, it’s as cold as his marble bath.

Laura (1944)

 It was Wheeler’s decision to have Leave her to Heaven filmed in color. While all film noirs of the era were being shot in black-and-white ( to emphasis their dark storyline), this tale of deception is vividly contrasted against bright country lawns, sunny skies of New Mexico and peaceful blue waters of a private lake in Maine.

Traditional New England=style furniture in the Maine House in Leave Her to Heaven (1945)

Leave Her to Heaven included many sumptuous sets, but this is my favorite. What marvelous wood flooring and beams!

 In 1953 he created another masterpiece in color noir by effectively utilizing a carillon tower as a scene for murder in Otto Preminger’s Niagara.

From 1947-1960 Lyle Wheeler was head of 20^th Century Fox’s art department and during his tenure at the studio he worked on a broad range of productions which required sets of all sorts of different styles and themes. In The Diary of Anne Frank there is the confined quarters of a family in hiding; in Come to the Stable a songwriter’s Pennsylvanian country retreat; in The Best of Everything, the stylish living and working domains of a group of New York secretaries. The post-war buildings of Hong Kong were beautifully created for our eye’s entertainment in Love is a Many-Splendored Thing; the opulent interiors of a Parisian nightclub for Can-Can and with a giant leap into the future, we are given a glimpse of the sleek interior of an alien messenger’s private spaceship in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

The Royal Palace of Siam in The King and I (1956)

The Robe (1953) - Caligula's throne

One of my favorite of his settings is his highly imaginative creation of the center of the earth in Journey to the Center of the Earth. Luminescent cavern walls, pillars of salt, the lost city of Atlantis, rainbow colored waters, and giant mushrooms abound in this under-the-mantle world of adventure.

Professor Lindenbrook's library in Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959) - a heaven for book lovers!

Mushrooms galore are discovered beneath the earth in Journey to the Center of the Earth

After he left 20^th Century Fox, Wheeler worked for several years on Perry Mason. Here, the sets were made with the same attention to detail as on a feature film. Mason’s rich clients were surrounded with rare antiques, hand-carved furniture and priceless oil paintings in their posh apartment pads or elaborate Beverly Hills mansions – a very fitting setting for the high-end nail-biting drama that would take place within their walls.

In all, Lyle Wheeler was nominated for 29 Academy Awards (!) winning five which, unfortunately, were lost to him when they were accidently auctioned off in 1982.  He passed away in 1990 in Los Angeles. I wonder whatever became of his golden statuettes?

Guest author "Captain Gregg" is a young (early 20s) classic film enthusiast who is also a member of the Turner Classic Movies fan site, the Classic Film Union (CFU). She recently entered a giveaway here at "Eve's Reel Life" - and won the Errol Flynn Adventures boxed set from Warner Bros. Which is how we met.  Not long after, she posted this very fine piece on Lyle Wheeler at CFU and I asked if I could republish it here. She kindly agreed.

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Jean Cocteau...born July 5, 1889...

Jean Cocteau, French filmmaker/poet/writer/artist and more (dramatist, boxing manager...), was born July on 5, 1889, into a prominent and bourgeois family in Maissones-Lafitte - a village not far from Paris. His father, an attorney and amateur artist, took his own life when the boy was just nine; young Cocteau was soon enrolled in a private school. After he was expelled in 1904, he ran off to Marseilles.

Pavlova and Nijinsky

In 1909, Cocteau met Sergei Diaghilev, the Russian impresario who launched the Ballets Russes, a company whose principal dancers then were Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky. Diaghilev encouraged Cocteau to write for the ballet and it was he who famously challenged Cocteau, "Ettonne-moi!" (Astonish me!). Cocteau responded with the libretto for the ballet Le Dieu Bleu. Cocteau also first encountered Igor Stravinsky around this time. The composer was in the process of writing The Rite of Spring when the two met and, while visiting Stravinsky in Switzerland in 1914, Cocteau completed his first novel, Le Potomak.

In 1917 Cocteau met Pablo Picasso. Together they traveled to Rome and met with Diaghilev.  The two were soon involved in Diaghilev's production of the ballet Parade. Picasso designed its sets, Erik Satie wrote the music, Lèonide Massine (Ljubov in The Red Shoes) choreographed and Cocteau wrote the one-act scenario. Although the Paris opening was a disaster, the ballet went on to become successful.

In another post-World War I venture, Cocteau founded a publishing house, Editions de la Sirene. The company published Cocteau's own work as well as scores by Stravinsky, Satie and a group of composers known as Les Six.

Jean Cocteau's first film was the surrealistic Le Sang d'un poète (The Blood of a Poet). Released in 1930, it was an early experimental reflection of his personal mythology. Cocteau also wrote what some consider his greatest play, La Machine Infernal, in the early ‘30s.

In 1946, Cocteau directed his sublime and bewitching film adaptation of the fairytale, La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) starring Jean Marais and Josette Day. Director Renè Clèment provided technical assistance, illustrator/designer Christian Bèrard served as costume and production designer (with the exteriors evoking the illustrations of Gustave Dorè and the interior of Belle's family home echoing Vermeer) and composer Georges Auric (Roman Holiday, John Huston's Moulin Rouge) created the Impressionistic score.

Marlene Dietrich reportedly was with Cocteau when the film was first screened at a studio in Paris and, at the end, after the beast had transformed into a prince, she called out to the screen, "Where is my beautiful beast?" (I felt the same the first time I saw La Belle et la Bête).
 
In 1950, Cocteau directed another of his great film works, Orphée (Orpheus). A contemporary reading of the myth of Orpheus imbued with Cocteau's pet motifs, Jean Marais starred as modern-day poet Orpheus who descends into the Underworld to retrieve his wife, Eurydice. No subtitles are necessary for the following scene...

1960 brought Cocteau's last film and the final installment in his 'Orphic Trilogy' (along with The Blood of a Poet and Orpheus): Le Testament d'Orphèe (The Testament of Orpheus). An intricate 'home movie,' the film starred Cocteau as an 18th-century poet seeking divine wisdom and included cameos by everyone from Pablo Picasso and Yul Brynner to Jean Marais, María Casares, Jean-Pierre Leaud and Françoise Sagan.

Cocteau led a high profile life all his adult years. Friend and collaborator of Picasso, Stravinsky, Satie and Diaghilev, he was also an intimate of French icons Collette and Édith Piaf. In 1940, Cocteau had written a hit play for Piaf, Le Bel Indiffèrent, and in the early '50s he wrote an article that was instrumental in reviving her career. It was Cocteau who, in 1948, introduced American wunderkind Truman Capote to Collette. Cocteau had told Collette about Capote, "Don't be fooled...he looks like a ten-year-old angel. But he's ageless, and has a very wicked mind." Collette and Capote bonded and he cherished the gift she gave him that day for the rest of his life.

Jean Cocteau died at age 74 at his chateau in Milly-la-Foret, France, on October 11, 1963 after learning of the death of Édith Piaf. Legend has it that Cocteau heard the news, remarked, "Ah, la Piaf est morte. Je peux mourir aussi..." (Ah, Piaf is dead. I can die, too) and suffered a fatal heart attack.

David Thomson has aptly described Cocteau as "a comet passing over French cinema, throwing a vivid light on the landscape..."

Le Testament d'Orphèe (1960)

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