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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Container:	Matroska
Runtime:	1h 52mn
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The post Richard Quine – Strangers When We Meet (1960) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Phil Karlson (“The Phenix City Story”/”Kansas City Confidential”/”Scandal Sheet”) directs with verve this gripping caper thriller based on a Good Housekeeping serialized magazine story that was based on the novel by Jack Finney and is well-written by John Barnwell, William Bowers, Stirling Silliphant and Frank Tashlin.

Four college chums from the fictitious Midwestern University, Al (Guy Madison), Brick (Brian Keith), Roy (Alvy Moore) and Ronnie (Kerwin Mathews), vacation in Reno and while gambling at the crowded Harold’s Casino are told by a cop that this casino is impossible to rob, after being humiliated when falsely accused of abetting a casino robber. Back at the university, the level-headed law student Al, the group’s leader, proposes to his club singer girlfriend Kay (Kim Novak). Kim’s vocals were dubbed by Jo Ann Greer. Meanwhile Al’s best bud, the sweet but volatile Brick, who saved his life in Korea during the war, has the former captain worried that he was released too early from his treatment at the VA’s mental ward for psychological problems caused by the war. In one incident, Brick goes violent on the new boyfriend of his ex-girlfriend and has to be pulled off the boy by Al or he might have murdered him.

By the time the next college vacation period rolls around later in the semester, rich boy Ronnie, whose dad is an oil man and owns a ranch near Reno, comes up with a foolproof scheme for the four roommates to rob the high-security Harold’s Casino that no one thinks can be robbed. Ronnie wants to rob the joint just to know he was able to do it and intends on returning the money. Brick, worried about flunking out of law school, and the always playful wise-cracking Roy, agree. But Ronnie insists they need Al to pull it off. Brick knowing Al wouldn’t agree to such a dumb prank, instead talks him into going with the boys to Reno with Kay, in the trailer Ronnie secretly just purchased, and marrying her in the place that calls itself ‘The biggest little city in the world.’

When Al is told about the heist on the road to Reno he confronts Brick, who pulls a gun and threatens to kill anyone not going along with the heist. Kay is recruited to be the driver of the getaway car.

The implausible heist is pulled off in a plausible enough manner, as the tension mounts when the boys enter the casino in disguises and force the casino money bag man (William Conrad) at gunpoint to cooperate or else. Under Karlson’s sharp direction, it becomes easy to forget that this heist for fun plot-line was a crackpot idea and highly unlikely to happen in real life. But as a movie story, it couldn’t be more entertaining. — Dennis Schwartz (Ozus’ World Movie Reviews)

2.25GB | 1h 23m | 1024×552 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/EFE2D4C1F7DD686/Phil_Karlson_-_(1955)_5_Against_the_House.mkv

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The post Phil Karlson – 5 Against the House (1955) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
‘After the First World War a young shell-shocked Prussian officer returns to Berlin. He finds that the life he knew there has vanished for ever; he cannot adjust to the new times. He drifts along without direction until finally he becomes a gigolo employed by Baroness von Semering.’
– BFI

1.46GB | 1h 41mn | 1021×552 | mkv

https://nitroflare.com/view/2E7F991E46FEA16/Schoner.Gigolo.armer.Gigolo.1978.DVDRip.x264.AC3.mkv
https://nitroflare.com/view/CDFAB539171E6A1/Schoner.Gigolo.armer.Gigolo.1978.DVDRip.x264.AC3.idx
https://nitroflare.com/view/7003808B6F9668F/Schoner.Gigolo.armer.Gigolo.1978.DVDRip.x264.AC3.sub

Language(s):English
Subtitles:Spanish, Portuguese (idx/sub)

The post David Hemmings – Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo AKA Just a Gigolo (1978) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Synopsis:
One of the biggest box-office attractions of the 1950s, Picnic was adapted by Daniel Taradash from the Pulitzer Prize-winning William Inge play. William Holden plays Hal Carter, a handsome drifter who ambles into a small Kansas town during the Labor Day celebration to look up old college chum Alan (Cliff Robertson, in his film debut). Hoping to hit up Alan for a job–or a handout–Hal ends up stealing his buddy’s fiancee Madge Owens (Kim Novak). Hal also has a catnip effect on spinster schoolteacher Rosemary Sydney (Rosalind Russell), so much so that Rosemary makes a fool of herself in front of the whole town, nearly driving away her longtime beau Howard Bevans (Arthur O’Connell). Persuaded by his friends and family that Hal is no damn good, Madge is prepared to break off her relationship. As anyone who remembers the film’s famous overhead closing shot knows, however, Madge is ultimately ruled by her heart and not her head. For a film set in Kansas, there’s an awful lot of New York talent in the supporting cast (Susan Strasberg and Phyllis Newman come immediately to mind); still, the Midwestern ambience comes through loud and clear, especially during the perceptively detailed Labor Day picnic sequence. Broadening the film’s appeal is its George Duning-Steve Allen title song, a variation of the old standard “Moonglow”. Two sidebars: The original Broadway production of Picnic starred Ralph Meeker and Paul Newman; for the film version of Picnic, William Holden was obliged to shave his chest, lest his hairy torso cause the female moviegoers to conjure up impure thoughts.

2.10GB | 1 h 53 min | 1024×404 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/7CC174006BC1042/Picnic.1955.576p.BluRay.x264.mkv

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The post Joshua Logan – Picnic (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

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Subtitles: English

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

Quote:
Frankie Machine returns to his down-and-out neighborhood after a stint in rehab for heroin addiction. His wheelchair-bound wife, Zosh, doesn’t support Frankie’s dream to become a professional drummer now that he’s clean; old habits are hard to break when your support system wants you to keep feeding the monkey on your back. Graphic and unsettling, Elmer Bernstein’s jazz score is truly evocative.

2.84GB | 1h 59m | 960×576 | mkv

https://nitro.download/view/C0D6D3ED9D6ABA2/Otto_Preminger_-_(1955)_The_Man_with_the_Golden_Arm.mkv

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The post Otto Preminger – The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) first appeared on Cinema of the World.

Quote:
A jealous piano teacher Orville Spooner sends his beautiful wife, Zelda, away for the night while he tries to sell a song to a famous nightclub singer Dino, who is stranded in town.

New York Times Review:
Spoiler
HOLLYWOOD — This was an unmistakable Billy Wilder-I. A. L. Diamond operation. There was the sharp contrast of surface-banter and concentration on detail; of unpredictable laughter, brushed off by disciplined professionalism. Mr. Wilder, as director, paced near the camera or prowled among actors, a multicolored cap tilted over his pixie face. Mr. Diamond lurked solemnly in the background. At the end of each sequence at the Samuel Goldwyn Studio, the partners usually retreated into corners to compare notes.

The occasion was the latest Wilder-Diamond movie, “Kiss Me, Stupid,” starring Peter Sellers, Dean Martin and Kim Novak, and featuring Felicia Farr and Cliff Osmond. The picture, as usual, was being made for the Mirisch Corporation, with distribution by United Artists. This was the film for which three unpublished George Gershwin tunes have been supplied with lyrics by Ira Gershwin. This was also the first Hollywood work by Mr. Sellers.

Repeatedly, as the scenes were filmed, off-color quips were exchanged between Mr. Wilder and Mr. Martin. Sometimes the comments were “insides.” Thus, Mr. Martin referred to Mr. Osmond as “Ollie,” because of a suggestion of the Oliver Hardy comedy technique by Mr. Osmond in one bit.

Sight Gags

However, it was Mr. Sellers who stole the show without saying a word. He broke up Mr. Martin repeatedly with a few sly, deadpan glances. Mr. Martin, like a schoolboy with the giggles, was unable to recover for a few minutes, while the cinematographer, Joseph LaShelle, waited for a word from an astonished Mr. Wilder. “I can’t help it,” Mr. Martin apologized, trying not to look at Mr. Sellers while he smothered laughter. The English actor allowed himself the trace of a smirk, but his eyes glittered. Soon laughter was general.

“He makes jokes,” said a visiting executive of Mr. Sellers. “But don’t let it fool you. He is the damndest worrier. He is like all perfectionists. One time in England, he woke up a director in the middle of the night because he was worried about his performance the day before.”

The situation being filmed this day was crucial since, with typical Wilder-Diamond verbal economy, it established key characters and presented the basic problem from which all subsequent complications and humor would flow. Here are a couple of impecunious gasoline-station attendants (Mr. Sellers and Mr. Osmond) dreaming in a small Nevada town of fame as songwriters. Along comes an internationally famous entertainer (Mr. Martin) fresh from another Las Vegas conquest, stopping his expensive dual Ghia convertible at the station for gasoline en route to Hollywood. The problem: To persuade the entertainer to record one of their songs. Basically, Mr. Wilder conceded, this was a variation on how the country bumpkins bilk the city slicker.

As “Dino,” king of pop singers, prepared to drive away from the gasoline station, Orville J. Spooner (Sellers) begins his pitch. He is wearing a sweatshirt with the front covered by a massive head of Beethoven. He receives no encouragement and presses with: “We also have an Italian-type song, like ‘Volare,’ only better–be just perfect for you.”

Playing Post Office

“Dino’s” response: “Shove it–in an envelope and send it to my office in Hollywood.”

“Oh, no,” says Orville. “All you guys want is to steal those stamps.” The celebrity’s car spurts dust in Orville’s face as it vanished across Alex Trauner’s set. “Oh, to hell with him,” says Orville. “He sings flat anyway.” The car has, of course, been slightly damaged by Orville’s hulking partner, Barney J. Millsap. A few seconds later, Orville, with that combination of innocence and Satanism that is the Sellers’ world wide trademark, is answering an anguished telephone call from “Dino,” with:

“Oh hello there. Of course I remember you.” Then, with exquisite timing: “What seems to be the trouble.”

Soon the car is back at the gas station and the real mischief of the picture gets under way. “Dino” must be induced to remain over night. A wife (Miss Farr) must vanish and a substitute wife (Miss Novak) appear from a sleazy nightclub called “The Belly Button,” where the female costume features rhinestone set in the bared navel.

At one point, as props were being arranged for another sequence, Mr. Sellers commented briefly on the rash of his movies now being shown.

“They’ll be showing my old faded family snapshots next,” he said, “this is what happens as soon you become something to be stared at in the London Zoo.”

Billy Wilder - (1964) Kiss Me, Stupid.mkv

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Runtime: 	2h 4mn
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The post Billy Wilder – Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) first appeared on Cinema of the World.