Bernardo Bertolucci

2019 Farewells: Behind the camera

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D.A. Pennebaker invents the music video in BOB DYAN: DON’T LOOK BACK

The filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker made the best ever and most influential concert film (Monterey Pop) and the best political campaign documentary (The War Room). And he invented the music video at the opening of his Don’t Look Back, as Bob
as Dylan holds up cards with the lyrics for Subterranean Homesick Blues.
The pump don’t work
‘Cause the vandals took the handles

Has there been a greater director of movie musicals than Stanley Donen, the director of Singin’ in the Rain?  I’m generally not a fan of musicals, but I love his first film; in the 1949 On the Town (Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin are sailors dancing away their shore leave through NYC) and his 1958 Damn Yankees (the Gwen Verdon version).  Seven Brides for Seven Brothers in 1954 wasn’t bad, either.

Writer-director John Singleton was the youngest person ever nominated for the Best Director Oscar (for Boyz in the Hood) and the first African-American.

Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian writer-director was most renowned for The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972) and the 9-Oscar winner The Last Emperor (1987). I actually prefer Bertolucci’s more recent work, beginning with the underrated The Sheltering Sky (1990) with John Malkovich and Debra Winger. I thought that his The Dreamers was the best film of 2003.

Director Franco Zeffirelli is best known for his Shakespearean adaptions, especially the lushly romantic 1968 hit Romeo and Juliet, in which he cast actual teenagers in this story of impulsive teen love.  I think his most everlasting achievement should be the 1977 TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth, which remains the screen narrative that is closest to Biblical accounts of the life of Jesus.  Jesus of Nazareth may be streamed from Amazon (included with Prime), iTunes, YouTube and Google Play.

The composer Michael Legrand, who won three Oscars, should be best remembered for his work in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a film where every line was sung. Legrand wrote the music for Umbrella’s iconic song I Will Wait for You.

Robert Evans began his Hollywood career as an actor in pretty boy roles, but was astute enough to see his future as a Suit. He was the studio exec who greenlighted The Godfather and produced Chinatown. He even narrated an irresistible documentary about his career, The Kid Stays in the Picture, which can be streamed from Amazon, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

Mark Urman, a publicist and the executive producer of Monster’s Ball, founded the indie distributors ThinkFilm and Paladin.   Urman gave mainstream audiences the chance to see the Oscar-winning documentaries Born into Brothels and Taxi to the Dark Side.

Musician Dick Dale, known as the King of the Surf Guitar and the Father of Heavy Metal, contributed his Misirlou to one of the most iconic opening sequences in cinema: Pulp Fiction.  His music also underscored the crazy surf scene with Kurt Russell, Peter Fonda and Steve Buscemi in Escape from L.A.

2018 Farewells – behind the camera

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Anne V. Coates’ greatest cut in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA from this

Anne V. Coates’ greatest cut in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA into this

The pioneering film editor Anne V. Coates won an honorary Oscar after being Oscar-nominated five times. She cut Lawrence of Arabia, The Elephant Man, Chaplin, Erin Brockovich, The Eagle Has Landed and the underrated Unfaithful and Out of Sight. She worked with directors David Lean, Carol Reed, Richard Attenborough, David Lynch, John Sturges and Steven Soderbergh. Her first editing job was The Pickwick Papers in 1942 and her last was – at age 89 – Fifty Shades of Grey. In Lawrence of Arabia, when Peter O’Toole lights a match and blows it out, the match’s flame is cut into a magnificent desert sunrise; this has been called The Greatest Cut in cinema.

Among cinephiles, the prolific director Lewis Gilbert is probably best known for Michael Caine’s breakthrough picture Alfie (1966) and the art house hits Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine. But the versatile Gilbert also managed the Bond franchise’s transition from Sean Connery (You Only Live Twice) to Roger Moore (The Spy Who Loved Me and Moonraker). In his autobiography, Gilbert explained, “Roger didn’t have Sean’s animal grace. However, he was at ease in light comedy. It therefore seemed to me much more sensible for Roger to play to the strength he had, rather than the one Sean had”.

Claude Lanzmann was the director of Shoah, a work eleven years in the making. Describing Shoah as a “Holocaust documentary” fails to capture its significance as a work of art and of history. Shoah consists entirely of testimony from survivors, witnesses and perpetrators of the Holocaust, without any file footage or voiceovers. It’s over nine hours long, which is the longest film that any significant number of living humans has ever seen in a theater. I watched it on home video – not on a single sitting, but binging over a weekend. Its length has been criticized, but it’s only two hours longer than OJ: Made in America and three hours longer than The Best of Youth, both of which are eminently bingeable; I found the nine-hour viewing experience also imprints upon the viewer the vast scale of the Holocaust.

Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian writer-director, is most renowned for The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972) and the 9-Oscar winner The Last Emperor (1987). The notorious Last Tango doesn’t hold up anymore, but I like Bertolucci’s latest work the best – The Dreamers and Me and You.

Cinematographer Robby Müller was endlessly groundbreaking. He pioneered use of fluorescent lighting in Wim Wenders’ The American Friend and then made the vast spaces of the Texas Big Bend country iconic in Wenders’ masterpiece Paris, Texas. He was also responsible for the one-way mirror effect in Paris, Texas’ pivotal peepshow scene. For better or worse, he jerked the handheld camera in Breaking the Waves. Müller gave a unique look to indie movies from Repo Man to Ghost Dog; The Way of the Samurai.

Penny Marshall was a front-of-the-camera star who moved behind the camera to direct. Forty years after Ida Lupino, this was still unusual; so, she was breaking ground for women working today. And without her, we woulnd’t have A League of their Own and “There’s no crying in baseball“.

Master screenwriter William Goldman adapted his own book for the sui generis and unforgettable The Princess Bride. His scripts included Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, Marathon Man and Chaplin. “Follow the money” in All the President’s Men was Goldman’s line.

Shinobu Hashimoto, the screenwriter for Akira Kurosawa’s masterpieces of the 1950s and 1960s, died at the age of 100. Hashimoto’s FIRST credited screenplay was Rashomon, one of the most original screenplays ever. He also wrote the samurai classics Seven Samurai, Throne of Blood and The Hidden Fortress, the humanistic drama Ikiru and the neo-noir thriller The Bad Sleep Well. Because of Seven Samurai, he also gets a credit for The Magnificent Seven and its remakes.

The master of the iconic movie poster, artist Bill Gold, died at 97. His first poster was for Casablanca. He followed that with hundreds of the most unforgettable poster images, including over thirty for Clint Eastwood movies alone.  Here’s his poster for Klute.

For each movie, somebody has to design the title sequence. The best was Pedro Ferro, whose work spanned from Dr. Strangelove to Napoleon Dynamite. Here is his work on Bullitt.

Bernardo Bertolucci

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THE DREAMERS

Bernardo Bertolucci, the Italian writer-director, dies recently after making 25 films over 51 years. He is most renowned for The Conformist (1970), Last Tango in Paris (1972) and the 9-Oscar winner The Last Emperor (1987). Bertolucci’s body of work benefitted from his longtime collaboration with cinematographer Vittorio Storaro.

Of course, his most notorious film was Last Tango in Paris. I rewatched Last Tango in Paris in the last few years, and concluded that it just doesn’t stand up. In fact, I found parts of the vaunted Marlon Brando performance risible and, knowing what we know now about how Bertolucci and Brando treated actrees Maria Schneider, the famed butter scene is disturbingly unwatchable.

I actually prefer Bertolucci’s more recent work, beginning with the underrated The Sheltering Sky (1990) with John Malkovich and Debra Winger. I thought that his The Dreamers was the best film of 2003.

I especially like Bertolucci’s final film, Me and You which he made in 2012 at the age of 72. I saw Me and You at the San Francisco International Film Festival, but it has never been widely available, and sadly, can only be streamed with a Realeyz subscription.

ME AND YOU

Me and You: looking for solitude, finding adventure

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ME AND YOU

In the Italian coming of age dramedy Me and You, we meet fourteen-year-old Lorenzo with his pimply face, see through mustache and bad attitude.  Lorenzo lives with his mom in a comfortable Rome apartment and yearns for some low-pressure solitude. Telling his mom that he’s off to a weeklong ski holiday with schoolmates, he instead hides out in their apartment’s basement storage unit.  He has stocked the basement with his favorite foods, it has a bathroom and he can listen to his tunes on headphones.  It’s all looking up for him until his heroin-addicted older half-sister Olivia intrudes, looking for a place to go cold turkey.

Lorenzo resents the intrusion, but Olivia threatens to tell his mom.  It turns out that the two don’t really know each other. (Lorenzo’s dad had left Olivia’s mom for his mom – and the two mothers don’t communicate.)  The siblings bicker.  As any 14-year-old would be, Lorenzo is fascinated by this young woman.  Still immature herself, she has already lived a life – and there’s much Lorenzo can learn about the adult world from Olivia.  Perhaps they can even bond for the first time as brother and sister…Lorenzo isn’t going to get his solitude, but he may get an unforgettable adventure instead.

There’s a lot of humor in Me and You, primarily stemming from the ski trip ruse and the sibling interactions.  Me and You also contains a very realistic and unvarnished depiction of detox and relapse.

This is 72-year-old Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci’s first film since The Dreamers in 2003 (my choice for the best film of that year).  Bertolucci, of course, is the writer-director of Last Tango in Paris (which I don’t think holds up well today) and The Conformist, 1900, The Last Emperor and The Sheltering Sky (which still stand up as excellent films).  With The Dreamers and Me and You, Bertolucci seems to be matching his finest work.

I saw Me and You at the San Francisco International Film Festival; it is still waiting for a US theatrical release.