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The Night of the Iguana

Blu-ray

Warner Archive

1964 / 1.85: 1 / 125 Min.

Starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr

Written by Anthony Veiller, John Huston

Directed by John Huston

T. Lawrence Shannon looks more like a dock worker than a clergyman but to the women in his congregation he’s as soulful as one of Raphael’s angels. The problem is that this particular angel’s wings have been clipped. Shannon’s faith isn’t the only thing he’s struggling with; his wandering eye and freethinking ways suggest a reined-in version of Urbain Grandier, the randy minister of The Devils of Loudon. But where Grandier was unrepentant, Shannon is a walking guilt complex.

There’s a storm brewing this rainy Sunday morning and inside the church Shannon is doing his best to match it; his sermon begins in a reverent whisper but builds to a booming confession, “He that hath no...

In the pantheon of great director-actor pairings, it is hard to match the six-film run of John Huston and Humphrey Bogart. The blustery filmmaker and his brutally handsome star confidently segued from the world-weary noir of "The Maltese Falcon" to the caustically funny misadventure of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and on to the rambunctiously romantic banter of "The African Queen." Over their first five films, Huston's style is refreshingly unfussy. He's not trying to knock the viewer out with bravura coups de cinema. Rather, he reads the emotion of his characters, and, if he's cast well, the camera always ends up in the right place, while every cut and transition flows mellifluously through to the final reel.

Huston made a lot of movies, and more than his share of stinkers, but he never misfired when collaborating with Bogie -- that is, until 1953, when they came together for the garishly cynical "Beat the Devil.

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By Doug Oswald

A French soldier and spy is sent on a mission to discover the location of a secret German U-Boat base in “Assignment in Brittany,” released on DVD as part of the Warner Archive Collection. Jean-Pierre Aumont plays Captain Pierre Metard, a member of the Free French army serving in Great Britain. He has an uncanny resemblance to a French farmer and soldier, Corporal Bertrand Corlay, a man with Nazi ties who ends up in a British hospital. The British devise a scheme where Pierre impersonates Bertrand and returns home to search out the U-Boat base. He spends weeks studying and memorizing everything known about Bertrand before being flown to and dropped by parachute in to Brittany and makes his way on foot to Bertrand’s family farm.

He runs in to two British soldiers who escaped from a...

It’s a review. No, it’s a rant. Stop, you’re both right. CineSavant’s overt mission is to demonstrate that old movies, especially old Science Fiction movies, are more relevant than ever. There is at present no authorized home video release of this amazing 1952 politico-religious pretzel of a movie. The surprise is that it accurately presages the media hysteria that underpins our present day Info Wars. Fake News comes from the sky, and a major world revolution results — for the better? Will religious fundamentalism rule all? This may be the most radical faith-based picture ever made.

Red Planet Mars

Revival Screening Review

Not on DVD

1952 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 87 min.

Starring: Peter Graves, Andrea King, Herbert Berghof, Walter Sande, Marvin Miller, Willis Bouchey, Morris Ankrum, Orley Lindgren, Bayard Veiller, Vince Barnett, Lewis Martin.

Cinematography: Joseph F. Biroc

Film Editor: Francis D. Lyon

Production assistant: Robert H. Justman

Original...

Edward G. Robinson uncovers another killer, but this time he’s after a Nazi mass murderer, not an insurance salesman. Orson Welles’ most conventional thriller is a masterpiece of style and judgment, with a good sense of time and place – and a lot of expressive shadows. How does this new Blu-ray shape up in comparison to earlier presentations?

The Stranger

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1946 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 95 min. / Street Date August 29, 2017 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring: Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, Orson Welles, Philip Merivale, Richard Long, Konstantin Shayne, Billy House.

Cinematography: Russell Metty

Production Design: Perry Ferguson

Art Direction: Albert S. D’Agostino

Film Editor: Ernest Nims

Original Music: Bronislau Kaper

Written by Anthony Veiller, Decla Dunning, Victor Trivas

Produced by Sam Spiegel

Directed by Orson Welles

Up pops Olive Films with another Blu-ray of Orson Welles’ impressive The Stranger, for the first time an HD scan...

Criterion digitally restores this earlier release, a combination offering of Robert Siodmak’s 1946 film noir masterpiece The Killers paired with Don Siegel’s retro 1964 remake. Famed adaptations of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, both filmmakers take liberties with the original material to create aggressively different products. Siodmak’s version is not only the German ex-pat’s enduring masterpiece, it’s a definite cornerstone of classic American film noir. Though Siegel’s 60s rehash is considered tacky pastiche of the era, it’s brutal, hard boiled B-grade pulp, notable for its own significant instances.

Siodmak’s version arrived during a golden era of noir, premiering a year after WWII officially ended, with cinematic masculine representation on the eve of an overhaul as method acting would soon reign supreme. Hemingway’s spare story gets a face life from Anthony Veiller (The Stranger; Night of the Iguana), using the murder as a jumping...

The Killers

Written by Anthony Veiller

Directed by Robert Siodmak

USA, 1946

Written by Gene L. Coon

Directed by Don Siegel

USA, 1964

Ernest Hemingway’s 1927 short story, “The Killers,” inspired to varying degrees the 1946 and the 1964 screen versions of the same name. To varying degrees because the story is less than 3,000 words and essentially only covers the opening of the two films. A man—Ole “The Swede” Anderson (Burt Lancaster) in the first film, Johnny North (John Cassavetes) in the remake—is hunted down by two hired killers. Right before they shoot him, Ole and Johnny do something strange, or rather, they don’t do something they should: they don’t run, they don’t really move, they don’t even seem to care. Before Ole is killed, he admits he “did something wrong, once” (in film noir, that’s all it takes), and when Johnny is told two men are...

The Stranger

Written by Anthony Veiller, Victor Trivas, and Decla Dunning

Directed by Orson Welles

USA, 1946

After all the dust had settled and leaked blood had dried following the nightmare that was World War II, the Allied states co-organized a special commission for the purpose of investigating the details thought out by the sick minds of the Nazi regime who perpetrated the ghastly horrors in Europe. Tribunals were established shortly thereafter to convict the culprits, two English-language films having been the subject of said tribunals: the aptly titled Judgment at Nuremberg (the city where the prosecutions occurred) and its more recent remake, Nuremberg, which aired on television as a miniseries in 2000. History has also taught that several of the more slippery Nazi members attempted escape from their formerly secured bastion of terror and lay low elsewhere around the globe. Just because the war and their plans of exterminating a race...

The Killers

Written by Anthony Veiller, Richard Brooks and John Huston

Directed by Robert Siodmak

U.S.A., 1946

Without question, Robert Siodmak was one of the great stylistic directors working in Hollywood during the 1930s, 40s, 50s and even into the 60s. Arriving from Europe as so many of his continental colleagues did during the period when the indescribable of evil of Nazism, had begun to spread its tentacles across their homelands, Siodmak brought with him to the film industry a stunning ability to construct rich films which balanced sharp storytelling and brilliant German Impressionistic visual allure, the latter which helped pronounce the often dire, sad, paranoid tone the stories themselves championed. The excellent thriller The Spiral Staircase (1945) and the underseen noir Phantom Lady (1944) are but two examples of Siodmak working in remarkable harmony with strong scripts and his cinematographers to produce not merely gripping tales, but gripping cinematic experiences of the classic period.

Burt Lancaster on TCM: The Leopard, Scorpio, The Killers I haven't watched Michael Winner's Scorpio (1973), an unflattering portrayal of Us foreign policy and the CIA that reunited Lancaster with his The Leopard co-star Alain Delon. As per the TCM synopsis, "a CIA hit man [Lancaster] is stalked by a former partner [Delon] when the agency turns on him." A Man for All Seasons' Best Actor Oscar winner Paul Scofield and Gayle Hunnicutt are also in the cast. Robert Siodmak's 1946 film noir The Killers is one of the best-looking efforts in the genre thanks to Elwood Bredell's glistening black-and-white cinematography. Although The Killers turned newcomer Lancaster into a major star, as far as I'm concerned this adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's short story belongs to Ava Gardner; in fact, The Killers could just as easily have been called "The Leopardess (La gattaparda)." Edmond O'Brien co-stars. For The Killers, Siodmak...

Orson Welles, Rita Hayworth, The Lady from Shanghai Orson Welles' career as an actor was both fruitful and frustrating. From Citizen Kane (1941) to Someone to Love (1987), Welles appeared — mostly in supporting roles — in about 70 features made in various parts of the world. There was one brilliant performance in one brilliant film, Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane, but the rest of what I've seen has been either forgettable or memorable for the wrong reasons. Subtlety is a quality with which Welles the Actor was totally unfamiliar. Whether or not you admire Orson Welles' work in front of the camera, Welles fans are being treated to 13 films featuring Welles as both leading man and supporting player, all day Monday, August 8, on Turner Classic Movies. The only TCM premiere in this "Summer Under the Stars" Orson Welles Day is the 1952 British-made crime drama Trent's Last Case, directed by veteran Herbert Wilcox,...

Unlike Robert Taylor, who would have turned 100 today, or Ginger Rogers, whose centennial was last July 16, Lucille Ball is actually going to be remembered on the occasion of what would have been her 100th birthday this Saturday, August 6. Turner Classic Movies' "Summer Under the Stars" series continues with 14 Lucille Ball movies. All of them have been shown before on TCM. [Lucille Ball Movie Schedule.] As an actress working mostly at Rko (1935-42) and at MGM (1943-46), Lucille Ball has been a TCM regular, as the Time Warner library encompasses films made at those two studios. On Saturday, TCM will also show the United Artists' release Lured, a crime drama directed by Douglas Sirk, and co-starring George Sanders, and two comedies Ball made during her tenure at Columbia in the late '40s: Miss Grant Takes Richmond (1949), co-starring William Holden, and The Fuller Brush Girl (1950), a reboot of The Fuller Brush Man (1948), which starred Red Skelton.

HollywoodNews.com: “The Stranger” (1946), directed by and starring Orson Welles, will be screened as the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Oscar Noir: 1940s Writing Nominees from Hollywood’s Dark Side” on Monday, July 26, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater. The film will be introduced by screenwriter Ted Griffin (“Ocean’s Eleven,” “Matchstick Men”).

Victor Trivas earned an Academy Award nomination® for Original Motion Picture Story, and Anthony Veiller wrote the screenplay for this topical thriller about the hunt for a Nazi war criminal in suburban America.

At 7 p.m. MGM Tex Avery cartoon short “The Cuckoo Clock” (1950) and the episode “Dead Man’s Trap” from the 1941 serial “Adventures of Captain Marvel” will be screened as part of the evening’s pre-feature program.

“Oscar Noir” is a summer-long series featuring 15 film noir classics from the 1940s, all of which were nominated in writing categories.

Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946), the film noir that catapulted Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner (above) to stardom, will be screened as the next feature in the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ series “Oscar Noir: 1940s Writing Nominees from Hollywood’s Dark Side.” The Killers will be shown on Monday, June 21, at 7:30 p.m. at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Screenwriter Billy Ray (Shattered Glass, State of Play) will introduce the screening. (The Killers is sold out. More info below.) Screenwriter Anthony Veiller turned Ernest Hemingway’s classic short story into a classic film noir. The Killers, about a former boxer and the men out to get him, isn’t one of my favorites noirs, but it’s great to look at thanks to Ava Gardner and cinematographer Elwood Bredell. Also in the cast: Edmond O’Brien, Albert Dekker, Sam Levene, Virginia Christine,...