KING VIDOR, Hollywood maximalist and master of the small moment.

The Crowd, but Our Daily Bread, Stella Dallas, The Citadel, The Fountainhead, all fine. I wish DITS were funnier than its partisans insist.

The silents I referred to are The Big Parade and The Crowd.

In his early talkies, Hallelujah, Our Daily Bread and Street Scene are all startlingly vivid portraits of community, loving and lethal.

yeah he's similar to Borzage but less heavy-handed.

:o

Impressively (at least to me), I have seen I think literally none of these, expect maybe Duel In the Sun, which, like King Vidor himself, I think I know only from people like Scorsese constantly bringing up in documentaries. Hmmm ...

(not a swipe at those early '30s Borzage films I like)

Duel in the Sun, from my one viewing, seemed funny the way opera is funny, if you choose to be distant from it.

objectively this is The Fountainhead

objectivistly

actually i'm more interested in catching up with Ruby Gentry, which features Charlton Heston and a swamp in support of Jennifer Jones.

yeah it was a poorly formed joke, haven't seen enough of these to form an opinion but plenty of time.

Man Without a Star is good, as i remember from many years ago The Citadel is good, Stella Dallas up there obviously

Is The Champ worth a watch?

Yes. Vidor was rarely gormless.

I rewatched The Champ without remembering that Vidor directed it, and talk about a film that shouldn't work today, but does.

No one talks about Wallace Beery as a great actor anymore, but he started as a comic in movies circa 1915 (search "Sweedie") and he does an absolutely brilliant pantomime of waking up hung over in the first reel of this film.

At his worst Jackie Cooper does the standard "Gee willikers" canned kid acting of the era, but occasionally takes on the mannerisms of a 40-year-old and it's worth it. "Come down to Tijuana sometime and I'll show ya around."

Also Cooper's juvenile pal is ever-present in an unusual way for the early '30s. "This is my friend Jonah. He's colored."

There's an 80s (I think) remake of The Champ with Jon Voight that demonstrates why it shouldn't work

with Faye Dunaway having the hots for Ricky Schroder.

it was perpetrated by Zeffirelli, what else wd you expect?

Stella Dallas (1937) - only one i've seen, good tearjerker

i didn't realise it was Zeffirelli until i checked the year today, yes that explains everything

I like this bit from Scott Eyman's Speed of Sound:

Vidor was a fascinating combination of ascetic and pagan, passion and pragmatism, given to much contemplation of life's deeper meanings, but always pausing for invariably successful pursuits of the pleasure principle. He was, all his long life, a lethal lady's man, with the inevitable result that he was far more successful as a lover than as a husband. Along these lines, although he was fascinated by the spiritual, he was not above cheating on his income tax, which would lead to his being successfully prosecuted for fraud a few years later. (One deduction in particular caught the eye of the IRS; it seemed that Vidor had bet Sam Goldwyn $1,200 that his wife would bear him a son. Vidor lost the bet and tried to deduct the $1,200 as a business expense.)

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

RIP MORBS

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Who voted for The Wife of the Centaur and how did you see it?

https://www.filmlinc.org/daily/announcing-king-vidor-a-career-spanning-retrospective-on-the-hollywood-icon-august-5-14/

I'm glad that this retrospective is finally happening, and I'm hoping that some or all of it comes to The National Gallery and/or AFI Silver. But so many titles (in my opinion) are missing.

Just watched The Crowd.

Weird how the actor who played the lead never pulled himself together and died young, whereas his character in the film does.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Murray_(American_actor)

Don't think I've seen any of these, why are the video disc options so poor? It's mostly old dvds.

Silent film fans have been pleading with WB to release good DVDs/BRs of this and other late silent titles, to no avail. In theory The Crowd is in the U.S. public domain, but archives aren't letting any good elements out of the vault.

In my quick searches the only blurays I saw were Man Without A Star and Wizard Of Oz.

Beyond the Forest didn't turn up in lists of best Bette Davis films I can remember. I guess this poll doesn't have enough votes to be considered anything like a fan consensus but is it great Vidor film but not a great Davis film?

Warner Archive has a Blu of The Big Parade which I ordered yesterday. It might be a simplified reissue of this "Book Set": https://a.co/d/3cDVj9h These are both R1 releases

I seem to recall when it was issued back in 2013 that Warner was using it as a trial balloon for possible further silent/pre-code Blus, but I guess numbers weren't great and anyway within a few years any release of that nature got handled by Warner Archive after they started pivoting towards Blu-Ray, or got punted to Criterion.

Stateside, Warner Archive also did a Blu of Northwest Passage, Kino did one for Bird of Paradise, and some other labels have done War & Peace and Solomon & Sheba.

Still a pretty thin slate.