Quote:
It’s not unusual for pre-production publicity on a new film to revolve around the star or the director but it’s particularly rare when it focuses on a construction site. In the case of the glossy 1960 soap opera, Strangers When We Meet, directed by Richard Quine, the real star of the movie was the cliff top Bel Air home that was constructed especially for the film by architect Carl Anderson and art director Ross Bellah. Central to the storyline, the house with the ocean view is the vision of architect Larry Coe (Kirk Douglas) who is building it for a successful novelist, Roger Altar (Ernie Kovacs), who wants something different and unique. In the course of construction, Coe, who is bored with his marriage to Eve (Barbara Rush), meets and ardently pursues Maggie Gault (Kim Novak), a sexy, blonde housewife he first encounters at his son’s elementary school when they are dropping off their children. Coe’s advances are rebuffed by Maggie until she finally gives in, unable to bear any longer the strain and frustrations of a loveless marriage. As Altar’s architectural wonder takes shape so do new conflicts: Larry and Maggie are torn between abandoning their marriages and family and running away together; Altar experiences mid-career panic and has second thoughts about his brilliant architect; Larry’s neighbor, Felix (Walter Matthau), detects Larry’s affair and attempts to seduce Eve when she’s alone at home. Practically every relationship in Strangers When We Meet is a lost cause, but the one thing to emerge unscathed at the end is Coe’s ultra-modern dream home, perched high up in the Santa Monica mountains and glistening in the sun.

When news of the Bel Air home’s construction was first covered by the press, Columbia studio publicists revealed that it was being built in stages for the movie Strangers When We Meet and that it would be sold after the film was completed. The more persistent rumor, however, was that the house was the future love nest for Kim Novak and her director Richard Quine, who had tried to keep their affair private for years. Gossip columnist Louella Parsons had often intimated that Novak and Quine were an item but New York Times reporter Joe Hyams out-scooped her when he dropped in unexpectedly on the set of Strangers When We Meet and asked Novak point blank, “Your honeymoon home?” Novak replied, “Stop reading the papers, Mr. Hyams. Stop listening to gossip. Richard Quine and I are having a romance; it’s as simple as that. Marriage is another matter entirely…I’m not sure I want to get married and I’m not sure it would work out for Dick and me. We have always been bothered by the undercurrent of work running through our long relationship. You know how hard that makes it, very hard.” (from Kim Novak: Reluctant Goddess by Peter Harry Brown).

There had always been speculation about the love life of the notoriously press-shy Novak with rumors of past affairs with Columbia studio boss Harry Cohn, Sammy Davis, Jr. and Ram Trujillo. The romance with Quine, however, was now public knowledge but on the set it had different ramifications. In her earlier years in Hollywood Novak had been a reclusive, passive presence on movie sets such as Pal Joey (1957) but now she had gained more self-confidence and was flexing her power as one of Columbia’s biggest stars. According to biographer Peter Harry Brown in Kim Novak: Reluctant Goddess, “Her experience on Middle of the Night [1959] convinced her that she was an actress to be reckoned with. Unfortunately, she picked the wrong director (Quine) and the wrong star (Kirk Douglas) upon whom to vent her spleen. Technicians laughed behind their hands one afternoon when Kim seriously tried to give acting instructions to Douglas, who listened with a deadpan face. Off camera, he referred to her as the ‘broad Harry Cohn built.’ Within days, relations between the two stars became frosty and threatened to divide the company into armed camps. Kirk, usually a model of patience, began complaining about the time it took to photograph Novak from just the right angle, in just the proper light, and during just the right mood. The inference was that Quine was tilting the production heavily in favor of Kim.”

In his autobiography, The Ragman’s Son, Douglas recalled some of the difficulties in making Strangers When We Meet: “One morning, we were shooting a scene down at the beach. Obviously, Kim and Dick had been discussing the scene, and she was excited about a wonderful idea she had come up with. Apparently, Dick had agreed with her wholeheartedly. I listened to her argument, told her exactly why it was impossible to do the scene that way. She looked at Dick. He looked at me and said, ‘You know, Kim, he’s right.’ Kim went berserk. She ripped up the pages, started to make incoherent sounds, screamed, went nuts. It was impossible to shoot with her for the rest of the day. The next day we shot the scene the way it was written. We got through the picture, and I enjoyed working with her, although I do think that she convinced Richard to give the picture the wrong ending. The original ending in the book, very powerful, was that after our love affair had ended, Walter Matthau, who was playing a heavy, comes to pick her up in a car, and she decides what the hell, and goes off with him. Life goes on. Instead, she preferred to spurn him, pull her trench coat up around her neck, and walk off like Charlie Chaplin. I didn’t think that was the right ending, but those are the hazards of working with someone who’s romantically involved with the director.”

Douglas’s recollection of the original ending isn’t entirely accurate because HIS character is the one that calls off the affair and tries to make a go of it with his wife and family in Hawaii where an ambitious five-year project awaits him. The ending from Evan Hunter’s novel (he also wrote the screenplay) wouldn’t make much sense either since the Walter Matthau character was a boring lecher and completely inconceivable as the sort of man Maggie would gravitate toward to fulfill her emotional and sexual needs. The present ending of Strangers When We Meet actually rings true since none of the characters are able to escape their own private hells. So, Novak was right to sway Quine’s opinion on the film’s conclusion. Novak “would always refer to Strangers When We Meet as ‘that great lost weekend.’ (Several years later Kim reaped revenge on the actor in Boys’ Night Out [1962] by having James Garner chastise a smiling friend with the lines: ‘Stop showing off your teeth. Who do you think you are? Kirk Douglas?’).”

Strangers When We Meet was one of the last films Novak made for her home studio Columbia – her final film for them, The Notorious Landlady (1962), was released the following year – and it also heralded the end of her reign as a major star. She never again experienced the earlier career heights of such films as Picnic (1955) or Vertigo (1958). Douglas, of course, was still in the prime of his career and following Strangers When We Meet with the Oscar®-winning epic, Spartacus (1960), in which he served as executive producer and star. Strangers When We Meet might not have been a happy experience for either actor and it certainly wasn’t well received by critics of its era or the public. It didn’t receive any Oscar® nominations either but, regardless of this, the film yields numerous pleasures that were overlooked at the time.

Hipster comedian and innovative television host Ernie Kovacs provides a welcome diversion from the heavy soap opera proceedings as the popular writer who demands a spectacular house for his oversized ego. His character, a borderline lush and habitual womanizer, is a completely improbable character and seems to belong in a different movie but he is nonetheless an amusing and charismatic presence in the film. It’s a shame he didn’t get the opportunity to explore the film medium as he did television; a fatal car wreck in 1962 ended a promising career. The other great scene-stealer in Strangers When We Meet is Walter Matthau as the loathsome Felix who enjoys baiting Coe with unwanted advice about his not-so-private affair with Maggie. He’s rarely been sleazier than the scene in which he corners Eve in her home alone during a rainstorm – “Come on, Eve, I know you want to…” – and the film’s final shot of Felix shows him sharing his “wisdom” with his young son as they walk to school, observing numerous housewives along the way, “Love’em all, Brucie, love’em all!”

The film’s view of life in suburbia is also fascinating for its candor in addressing marital problems and couples who have resigned themselves to a dull existence together because they don’t have the guts or honesty to live the lives they really want. Other films from the same era such as No Down Payment (1957) also explored marital discontent in the suburbs but Strangers When We Meet stands out for its sad truths delivered within a glossy, artificial milieu. It’s no wonder the film fared poorly with moviegoers who expected a romantic fantasy and got a dose of Jean-Paul Sartre, American-style. The film could almost pass as a Douglas Sirk melodrama on the order of All That Heaven Allows (1955) or There’s Always Tomorrow (1956) and the dialogue is just as self-conscious and ironic. In one scene, Kirk Douglas’s character admits, “I’m such a phony. I’ve got a drawer full of manufactured labels. Architect, husband, father, man. I sew them into my clothes. The suits never fit.” The most impressive aspects of the film, however, are Ross Bellah’s stylized art direction, the beautifully framed widescreen Technicolor cinematography of Charles Lang (over 18 Oscar® nominations!) which could be cut up into stills and sold in art galleries, and the Bel Air dream house, which we are privileged to see from the laying of the foundation through its construction to its final completion as an architectural marvel – or monstrosity.

Strangers When We Meet PAL DVD DD2.0 x264-RR.mkv

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https://nitro.download/view/41F4703ADD1E4DA/Strangers_When_We_Meet_PAL_DVD_DD2.0_x264-RR.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:English

The post Richard Quine – Strangers When We Meet (1960) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Jack Lemmon is a happily unmarried man with all the creature comforts one could desire including a wonderful butler who takes care of all his material needs. At a bachelor party for a friend, Lemmon gets drunk and wakes up married to an Italian woman who speaks nearly no English. It totally alters his life. He even changes the cartoon he writes and shifts it from a secret agent to a household comedy. When he begins to have trouble with all of these changes he starts to plot that at least his secret agent cartoon will return to order and plans, in his daily comic strip, killing his wife. When she disappears, the cartoons are used as evidence at his trial.

How.to.Murder.Your.Wife.1965.576p.BluRay.AAC.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

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Container:  	Matroska
Runtime: 	1 h 58 min
Size: 	3.27 GiB
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Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Richard Quine – How to Murder Your Wife (1965) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

“You are the first man I ever loved… and the world has only just begun…”
Plot:
American William Holden, as former architect turned struggling artist, Robert Lomax, a cynic who’s “pushing forty,” arrives in 1960 Hong Kong to make a valiant effort for his art. He’s never been there and has no idea what to expect. On the ferry boat to Kowloon, he has a sort of altercation with the very young & attractive Nancy Kwan, who claims to be named “Mei Li,” a very proper young lady about to enter into an arranged marriage set up by her wealthy father. Shortly before reluctantly introducing herself, she also almost manages to have Robert arrested by claiming he’s a purse snatcher, which, judging from her mirthful expression, she does for the sheer entertainment value of the situation.

Robert, completely lost and not particularly wealthy, soon makes his way to the Wan Chai district, and, in his naivete as American abroad, fails to realize he’s entered the main prostitution district in the city. His journey to the seedy hotel where he sets up shop as artist would be one of the highlights of the film: Robert’s amazement and confusion at the bustling, vibrant city that has become his new home come across nicely. In many ways, the brilliant cinematography and camera work turn the city of Hong Kong itself into the unacknowledged third star of the film. However, it’s a very different Hong Kong than now: very much a British colonial post, and, in segments of the neighborhoods, almost a Third World city.

6.37GB | 2h 06m | 1278×720 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/B0134DE31A8C7EE/The.World.of.Suzie.Wong.1960.720p.BluRay.FLAC.x264-HANDJOB.mkv

Language:English,Cantonese
Subtitles:English

The post Richard Quine – The World of Suzie Wong (1960) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Music Box Theatre writes:
Before becoming famous for creating PETER GUNN and the PINK PANTHER movies, Blake Edwards scripted this extraordinary, if virtually unknown, ’50s film noir, which casts a fully-grown Mickey Rooney against type as a lovelorn mechanic whose craving for fast cars and a faster woman (the alluring Dianne Foster) drives him to sign on as wheelman in a bank robbery. In what may be his finest performance, Rooney delivers a compelling characterization of the “Little Freak,” whose desire for a duplicitous woman leads to an unforgettable conclusion. One of finest noir films of the fifties.

1.13GB | 1 h 22 min | 851×460 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/F41319EF7367BE9/Drive.a.Crooked.Road.1954.DVDRip.x264.AC3.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Richard Quine – Drive a Crooked Road (1954) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Museum of Modern Art writes:
In a gender twist on the “meddling mother-in-law,” Nick Rocco’s old-world father, Vittorio Rocco (Salvatore Baccaloni), can’t help insinuating himself into his son and daughter-in-law’s lives. Nick and Emily are just a few days away from the birth of their first child and Vittorio—a skilled handyman—is called in to help with repairs in their new home. Nick is reluctant to rely upon his meddling dad, but the repairs have to be made before the baby comes home. Baccaloni was an opera singer and member of the La Scala Opera in Milan.

1.32GB | 1 h 31 min | 858×464 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/079559D095D8CC6/Full.of.Life.1956.DVDRip.x264.part1.rar
https://nitroflare.com/view/8111A26B4AAFB05/Full.of.Life.1956.DVDRip.x264.part2.rar

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Richard Quine – Full of Life (1956) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

A Witch in Love; ‘Bell, Book and Candle’ at Fine Arts, Odeon

THE magic in “Bell, Book and Candle,” which opened at the Fine Arts and Odeon Theatres on Christmas, is not so much black as chromatic. It’s the color that’s bewitching in this film.

Actually, its story of a young lady who possesses some supernatural power, which she uses to inveigle a gentleman into falling in love with her, is neither as novel nor engaging as you might expect it to be. Pretty young ladies in movies are bewitching gaga fellows all the time with enticements and devices that are magic, so fas as the audience can tell. So the gimmick of John van Druten’s stage play, which has been used as the basis for this film — the gimmick of a woman endowed with witchcraft—is really rather silly and banal.

And, as Daniel Taradash has reduced it in a screen play directed by Richard Quine, it is not distinguished by any consistant witchary or bounce.

However, Julian Blaustein’s production of this mildly supernatural romance is as sleek and pictorially entrancing as any romance we’ve looked at this year. From the atelier of the heroine, who is a dealer in primitive art, to a smoky night club in Greenwich Village, where the local sorceresses and their apprentices play, it is vividly visual an dsuggestive.

For the wonderful things it does with color, imposed upon design, we can thank the art director, Cary Odell; the special color consultant, Eliot Elisoforn, who is setting real styles in color movies, and the cameraman, James Wong Howe, Together, these craftsmen of the visual have done things that hypnotize the eye.

To give you an example, they suggest how things look to the witch’s cat by saturating camera-distorted images in a deep melancholy blue. And what they have done with New York street scenes at dawn and twilight is necromancy for fair.

Thanks to them, we would say Kim Novak, as the slinky and seductive young lady who possesses the powers of a witch, looks a lot more convincing than she acts.

James Stewart is himself, highly lacquered, as the publisher whom she hooks, and Jack Lemmon, as a warlock, or brother-witch, is as airy as a puffball. Elsa Lanchester and Hermione Gingold friskily play a couple of old harpies, and Ernie Kovacs portrays a fuzzy author as if he were trying to put Maxim Gorky into the show.

“Bell, Book and Candle,” like the stage play, is only so-so sorcery, but it comes pretty close to magic so far as its color values are concerned.
Bosely Crowther, NY Times, December 27, 1958

1.63GB | 102:26mins | 1280×720 | mkv
https://nitroflare.com/view/C016C91BDC56478/Bell.Book.and.Candle.1958.mkv

Language: English
Subtitles: English

The post Richard Quine – Bell Book and Candle (1958) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

SYNOPSIS:
Natalie Wood was never more beautiful, and the battle of the sexes was never more fun. It’s great to see a love story that doesn’t resort to foul language or adult humor, but simply witty dialog and the vagaries of human nature.
Tony Curtis plays a tabloid reporter trying to get the goods on Helen Gurley Brown (Natalie) and her personal life to find out if she actually knows anything about sex and relationships. To this end, he impersonates an acquaintance (Henry Fonda) who is having problems with his jealous wife (Lauren Bacall) so that he can pose as a patient and seek her advice.
The confusion caused by this impersonation just leads to more problems, naturally. However, this is just a sideshow to the reporter’s attempted seduction of Dr. Brown and the glorious mayhem that ensues.

Sex.And.The.Single.Girl.1964.DVDRip.x264.AC3-SiC.mkv

General
Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 54mn
Size:	1.83 GiB
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https://nitro.download/view/FE4CD1BEFD9BEAC/Sex.And.The.Single.Girl.1964.DVDRip.x264.AC3-SiC.mkv

Language(s):English
Subtitles:None

The post Richard Quine – Sex and the Single Girl (1964) first appeared on Cinema of the World.