Hitchcock...in 3D!

My introduction to 3D movies finally came this past weekend and I’m sure it surprises no one who knows me that this happened by way of a classic rather than one of today’s CGI extravaganzas.  My initiation into stereoscopic 3D film, a process that has been around forever but has gained a firm foothold only recently, took place on Sunday afternoon, when I happily watched the only 3D film Alfred Hitchcock ever made with a near-full-house audience at one of my favorite theaters, the Rafael.

The Rafael Theatre, San Rafael, CA

Dial M for Murder (1954) was the last film Hitchcock made as part of his deal with Warner Bros., a studio that had a huge hit with the 3D horror thriller House of Wax in 1953. On the heels of that film’s box office success, Jack Warner decreed, for the moment, that Warners would or should make all subsequent films in 3D. Hitchcock, who was ever interested in evolving filmmaking technology, agreed to make his final film for the studio using 3D. It would be his first and last foray into the process. Because it could not be released until the Broadway play it was adapted from had ended its stage run, Dial M did not come out until mid-1954, just as public fascination with 3D films had begun to wane. In fact, once it went into wide release, the film screened far more often in 2D than 3D. The first “golden age” of 3D film had lasted only from 1952 until 1954; the process was an expensive and unwieldy undertaking at the time, and other, less difficult to produce and exhibit technologies, like CinemaScope, would move to the forefront.

According to AMPAS, “Hitchcock used the All-Media rig developed by the optical department at Warner Bros. to experiment with stereoscopic techniques…” To emphasize the impact of 3D, he paid great attention to the film’s art direction, in particular, set design and decoration, as well as the placement of actors within each scene.  Since the action, based as it was on a play, takes place primarily on one set, a London apartment interior, this sort of approach was a necessity.  Of course, in the hands of an artist of Hitchcock’s caliber, 3D became a showcase not only for the drama at hand but, simultaneously, showcased the process itself. Hitchcock’s distinctive style coupled with the potency of 3D makes for an intense and evocative film experience. All that transpires onscreen - from a woman quietly reading her newspaper to a violent scene of attempted murder - is enhanced by the director's grasp of the 3D format.

Grace Kelly

I have seen Dial M for Murder many times in 2D. I think it may have been the first Hitchcock film I ever saw. There was once a local Los Angeles TV station that aired a different movie every week, all week: in the early evening five nights, Monday through Friday, and then again Saturday night. Was it KTLA? One week the movie was Dial M. And I watched it every night. Hooked by Hitchcock at a young age! But Dial M hasn’t been a favorite of mine. After seeing Vertigo, Rear Window, Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Shadow of a Doubt, Psycho, ETC., it seemed fairly tepid fare. And yet, when I found out it was to be screened at the Rafael, I instantly purchased tickets online. I had realized by now that Hitchcock on the big screen is a different experience from Hitchcock on the small screen (even on a good-sized small screen in HD). This realization first dawned on me when I attended a screening of the silent version of Blackmail (1929) at the Rafael a few years ago and grew more profound with later viewings of North by Northwest (1959), also at the Rafael, and Vertigo (1958), at the Paramount, Oakland’s Art Deco movie palace.

Anthony Dawson and Grace Kelly

I was not disappointed with the newly restored Dial M for Murder in Dolby 3D. At all.  With visual depth and dimension it seemed to me a different film. Where, before, the film had seemed as flat as its two-dimensional format, it now, literally, came to life.  I’d thought of it as talky and static (as filmed plays often are) but now its atmosphere teemed with suspense, every word spoken implied more, facial expressions and physical movements suggested barely concealed undercurrents. Dialogue-heavy as it is, the film now seemed to move along at a brisk clip. Though one scene was obviously designed for 3D (and must’ve caused quite a stir when the film was first shown), Hitchcock clearly understood 3D and exploited it with precision in every frame.

dialing M...

Among Dial M for Murder’s claims to fame is that it was the first of Hitchcock’s three films starring Grace Kelly. He had first seen the young actress opposite Robert Alda in an early ‘50s screen test for Taxi, a film that was never made. She would go on to make High Noon (1952) with Gary Cooper for Fred Zinnemann and Mogambo (1953) with Clark Gable and Ava Gardner for John Ford before Hitchcock managed to cast her in Dial M. If director Gregory Ratoff thought Kelly was perfect for the role of the Irish lass she might have played in Taxi because, he said, “she’s not pretty,” Hitchcock saw something else entirely. By the time the two were finished making pictures together in 1955, Kelly was vaunted as one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood - due in no small part to Hitchcock’s presentation of her.

A scene designed for 3D

Thanks to the resurgence of 3D, Dial M for Murder can now be seen as it was originally conceived and appreciated as the bona fide classic it is.

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How sweet it is: "The Honeymooners" on MeTV

In the final episode of the first season of AMC’s Mad Men, set in 1960, advertising wunderkind Don Draper pitches his creative concept to Kodak for its latest product, a slide projector called the Carousel. He speaks of the power of nostalgia and describes the device as a time machine with the ability to take people to that place everyone most longs to go, “back home again.” As he delivers his presentation in a darkened conference room, images of Draper’s own young wife and children flash onto a screen one by one, and the carousel works its magic on on those who watch.

MeTV is another sort of time machine. Its viewers are regularly transported to an earlier, some say more golden, age of television – the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s, those decades when the network’s target audience, baby boomers like me, was very young. Tripping into the past by way of MeTV is a purely cheerful experience, nothing at all like the harrowing journey of Martin Sloan (Gig Young) whose “Walking Distance” detour into his past took him through the looking glass of The Twilight Zone.



Thanks to MeTV I’ve once again been able to travel The Streets of San Francisco and revisit The Rockford Files, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mary Tyler Moore and, most recently, Rhoda– all great and legendary series. But the show I can never resist, no matter how many times I’ve seen it, is The Honeymooners, the classic 39 episodes that aired on CBS from 1955 – 56. Since it airs on MeTV at 1:30 a.m. PDT these days, I’ve got the DVR up and running in the middle of the night just so I can savor the antics of Ralph and Alice Kramden (Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows) and Ed Norton (Art Carney) a time or two more.

Alice and Ralph - a promised trip to the moon will end with "Baby, you're the greatest!"

Everyone in my family was a big fan of Jackie Gleason and we were crazy about his Ralph Kramden, the supersized New York bus driver, a man with “big ideas” and dreams of becoming a “big shot” one day. We got a kick out of Ed Norton, the quirky sewer worker who was Ralph’s neighbor and best friend, and adored long-suffering Alice Kramden, purveyor of sparingly dispensed but devastating wisecracks, who knew well that beneath Ralph’s bluff and bluster he was a big-hearted softy. The Honeymooners ran on television in one form or another from the early ‘50s into the late ‘70s, so it’s fair to say that it was always in the background of our lives as my brother and I grew up. 

The Honeymooners made its first TV appearance as a comedy sketch on Cavalcade of Stars, a variety show Jackie Gleason hosted on the now-dufunct DuMont Network from 1950 – 1952. When he was hired away by CBS in 1952 and began the enormously successful Jackie Gleason Show, The Honeymooners continued as a regular sketch within the show. It was wildly popular and became an increasingly more prominent part of the program, so when Gleason decided to take a break from the hour-long variety show format, it became a stand-alone half-hours series from 1955 – 56. The 39 episodes from that season came to be referred to as “the Classic 39.” When Gleason resumed the variety show format for a final season, 1956 – 57, The Honeymooners became, once more, a sketch segment.

Art Carney, Jackie Gleason and Audrey Meadows on the set

In 1962 Jackie Gleason returned to TV following a hiatus with his American Scene Magazine (1962 – 1966). The Honeymooners was occasionally featured as part of this variety show. Sue Ane Langdon would appear as Alice in two 1962 sketches and Audrey Meadows would return as Alice in an hour-long 1966 musical sketch.

Beginning with the 1966 – 67 season and through the remainder of its run until 1970, The Jackie Gleason Show was filmed in color and The Honeymooners installments of this era are known as “the Color Honeymooners.” Sheila MacRae portrayed Alice in these mostly mini-musical episodes.

From 1970 – 1978, The Honeymooners aired as a series of nearly annual specials with Audrey Meadows returning as Alice in 1976. Finally, in 1985, a Honeymooners reunion special was broadcast in May and an anniversary special aired in October.

Of all the show's incarnations, it's the early Honeymooners I'm forever drawn to. Part of this, of course, is about the pure quality of the show during that period when it was at its peak. But another part of the attraction has to do with memories of nights with my family in front of a console TV and the unrestrained laughter that filled our living room.

~ 

Jackie Gleason and Paul Newman, The Hustler (1961)

Jackie Gleason (1916 – 1987), dubbed “The Great One” by Orson Welles, was nominated for five Emmys from 1953 – 1956. He was honored with a Peabody Award for excellence in television entertainment in 1956, won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a musical for Take Me Along in 1960 and garnered a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination in 1961 for his performance in The Hustler. “Away We Go” is etched in the marble of the mausoleum in Miami where he is interred.

Art Carney (1918 – 2003) was nominated for eight Emmys for his portrayal of Ed Norton - he won five. He was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a play, Lovers (1969), and originated the role of Felix Unger in The Odd Coupleon Broadway in 1965. Carney won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in Harry and Tonto in 1974. 

Audrey Meadows (1922 – 1996) won one of four Emmys she was nominated for for her portrayal of Alice Kramden. She worked steadily in TV and movies from the early 1950s until 1995.

~

This post is part of Me-TV's Summer of Classic TV Blogathon hosted by the Classic TV Blog Association. Go to http://classic-tv-blog-assoc.blogspot.com to view more posts in this blogathon. You can also go to http://metvnetwork.com to learn more about Me-TV and view its summer line-up of classic TV shows.

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TCM's Friday Night Spotlight in July: Francois Truffaut

Francois Truffaut

Friday nights in July are going to be hot, and I’m not talking about the weather where I live. Beginning tonight and on the 12^th, 19^th and 26^th, Turner Classic Movies will feature hour after hour of the films of one of the pioneers and masters of the French New Wave, Francois Truffaut (1932 – 1984). Film Critic David Edelstein of New York Magazine and NPR’s Fresh Air, hosts the series.

Coincidentally, I’ve been catching up with and revisiting Truffaut on my own lately. It started when I was putting together a birthday tribute to the French actress Francois Dorleac in March. Dorleac worked with several legendary European filmmakers in her brief but notable career – Philippe de Broca, Jacques Demy, Roman Polanski, Ken Russell - and Truffaut. I'd seen Polanski's Cul-de-sac (1966), Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), and set out to find de Broca's That Man from Rio (1964), Russell's Billion Dollar Brain (1967) and Truffaut's The Soft Skin (1964). I’m still looking for That Man from Rio, but did manage to get my hands on Billion Dollar Brain and The Soft Skin.

Jean Desailly and Francoise Dorleac, The Soft Skin (1964)

The Soft Skin has never been one of Truffaut’s better known films. When it screened at Cannes in 1964, the crowd booed and, in its time, the film was generally dismissed as conventional and disappointing. Following as it did on the heels of his innovative and much-admired earlier works - The 400 Blows (1959), Shoot the Piano Player (1960) and Jules and Jim (1962) - The Soft Skin was derided by some as Truffaut’s bid for mainstream acceptance. Stuffy New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther, who famously fell badly out of step with the times in the ‘60s, called it “a curiously crude and hackneyed drama.” However, as so often happens, with the passage of years came reassessment and The Soft Skin, though still relatively obscure among Truffaut’s films, has gained a reputation among film buffs as one of his stronger efforts. A deceptively straightforward but suspenseful modern domestic drama, it deals with the sudden and ardent extramarital affair of a celebrated literary scholar, and features affecting performances by its two stars - Jean Desailly as the besotted intellectual and Francois Dorleac as the beautiful young thing of a flight attendant who turns his well-ordered life upside down. Georges Delerue, the award-winning composer who scored 11 Truffaut films, composed a striking score evocative of the frantic pace and emotional disconnect that marked the Space Age. 

Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut

The Soft Skin was the first of four films in what is known as Truffaut’s “Hitchcock cycle,” a group of films he was working on at the time he conducted and published his now-famous interviews with the Master of Suspense, each of which reflects Hitchcock's influence. The Soft Skin was followed in the cycle by Fahrenheit 451 (1966), The Bride Wore Black (1968) and Mississippi Mermaid (1969). All but Fahrenheit 451 will be screened on TCM this month.

In June, when it aired as part of another TCM Friday Night Spotlight series, I recorded Shoot the Piano Player, Truffaut’s inventive and completely charming New Wave classic. Unpredictable, by turns comic and tragic, its special charms are accentuated by a charismatic and perfectly cast star, Charles Aznavour, and Delerue’s infectious,  jazzy score. I found it irresistible and watched it twice in a sitting. This put me in the mood for yet more Truffaut, and I very soon revisited one of his early ‘70s classics, Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film, Day for Night (1973), a delightful celluloid homage to filmmaking, the great love of Truffaut's life.

 

Jacqueline Bisset and Jean-Pierre Léaud, Day for Night (1973)

TCM's Friday night series includes 21 Truffaut films, from The 400 Blows, his first feature, to his very last, Confidentially Yours (1983). See full program schedule below. 

Click here to read Martin Scorsese’s moving tribute to Francois Truffaut for TCM in his current “Scorsese Screens” column. 

Friday Night Spotlight: Francois Truffaut 
(begins 8pm Eastern/5 pm Pacific)

July 5

The 400 Blows(1959) stars young Jean-Pierre Léaud as Truffaut’s alter-ego Antoine Doinel in his troubled adolescence

Antoine and Colette(1962), a film short with Léaud as Antoine Doinel; Marie-France Pisier co-stars as the woman with whom he becomes obsessed

Stolen Kisses(1968), Truffaut’s second feature-length film, with Léaud again as Doinel who, by this time, is leaving military service and adapting to civilian life; with Delphine Seyrig and Claude Jade

Bed & Board(1970), the third installment in “the Doinel cycle,” stars Léaud, with Claude Jade as his wife

Love on the Run(1979), the last in the Doinel series, with Léaud as Doinel, Jade as his ex-wife, and flashbacks to footage from the earlier films

The Green Room aka/Vanishing Fiancee (1978), the story of a man unable to stop grieving the death of his wife, starring Francois Truffaut, Nathalie Baye and Jean Daste

July 12

The Bride Wore Black(1968) with Jeanne Moreau in a Hitchcockian tale of a new bride’s single-minded vengeance, with Jean-Claude Brialy; based on a novel by Cornell Woolrich

Confidentially Yours(1983) - Jean-Louis Trintignant and Fanny Ardant star in the story of a wrong man accused

Mississippi Mermaid(1969), starring Catherine Deneauve as Jean-Paul Belmondo’s mail order bride; adapted from a Cornell Woolrich novel

Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1972), a black comedy with Bernadette Lafont as a beautiful woman in prison who recounts her life story to a sociologist

Shoot the Piano Player(1960) stars Charles Aznavour as a one-time concert pianist who seeks anonymity but can’t escape his past

July 19

The Soft Skin(1964), This story of a literary highbrow who falls madly for a beautiful young woman was allegedly inspired by true stories of adultery and mayhem; starring Jean Desailly, Francoise Dorleac and Nelly Benedetti

Jules and Jim(1962) with Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner and Henri Serre in the tale of an ill-fated love triangle

Two English Girls(1971) stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as a young French writer who has romantic involvements with two sisters

A Story of Water(1961), co-directed with Jean-Luc Goddard, is a short film about a young woman determined to leave her village and go to Paris; with Jean-Claude Brialy and Caroline Dim

The Woman Next Door(1981) is Fanny Ardant, who unwittingly becomes the new neighbor of happily married Gerard Depardieu, her former lover

The Man Who Loved Women (1977) stars Charles Denner as Bertrand, a compulsive womanizer whose skirt-chasing has fateful consequences, with Brigitte Fossey and Leslie Caron.

July 26

Day for Night(1973) with Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Léaud, Jean-Pierre Aumont, Francois Truffaut and Nathalie Baye – Truffaut’s timeless paean to moviemaking

The Last Metro(1980), set in Paris during the Nazi occupation, stars Catherine Deneuve as an actress whose director-husband is Jewish and must go into hiding

The Wild Child(1970), about a boy literally raised by wolves, starring Francois Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Cargol

The Story of Adele H(1975) with Isabelle Adjani as Adele, the high-strung daughter of renowned 19^thcentury poet/novelist/dramatist Victor Hugo, who becomes romantically obsessed with a military officer

Jeanne Moreau, The Bride Wore Black (1968), poster art

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