The William Wyler Film Poll

er, mods: move to ILE.

You just wanted to have a poll with Carrie in it to go with the De Palma poll, didn't you? It's ok to admit it.

Which is why I need MODS to move this, please.

TBYOOL

ditto, though I guess I might be inclined to like The Little Foxes.

I've only seen Mrs. Miniver. Which is indeed terrible.

I haven't seen TBYOOL in awhile. Instinct is to go w/ The Letter, tho I like a lot of these 1933-52 (among the earlies, Counsellor at Law, The Good Fairy and Dead End).

anyone seen The Collector?

yes, it's good. Stamp much creepier than as Zod or in Teorema.

Did I ever tell you my story about when Terence Stamp introduced Poor Cow at BAM, Morbius?

i dont think so.

Wyler's Carrie is playing this weekend at Reade's Jennifer Jones fest.

Check it out – Larry Olivier's best performance.

oh – if you haven't seen Cluny Brown, by all means do so.

seen em both!

He said he had just bought a new Rolls Royce, a special color that looked black but was really green, called Rolls Royce Green. His producer told him "Terry, perhaps you shouldn't come to work in your Roller. The director is a bit left wing, he might be a bit upset if you showed up for work in your Roller."

Did I miss all the great auteur polls? Not a big fan of this guy. Even coupled with a genius like Sturges, he tripped up something like The Good Fairy (whereas, by contrast, the underrated Mitchell Leisen soared with the Sturges-scripted Easy Living). I'm going with The Letter for arguably the greatest opening in classical Hollywood cinema. Great final line too.

TBYOOL, but 'The Heiress' is really quite good. I don't know whose fault it was but they really messed up Maugham's story in 'The Letter' with the ending, in this version at least. It's not to say I didn't like the film, but my loyalties were already with the short story.

The Good Fairy was such a disappointment considering that cast!

The Little Foxes is the only one of the Bette Davis trilogy that's meh.

The Good Fairy is my pick. Considering that cast? I haven't liked Herbert Marshall better in anything else.

Second pick: Roman Holiday (typical).

i don't rate him that highly, but i did think Carrie was quite good, and These Three is worth a look despite having to nix the lesbo theme, and it has one of the great evil child performances ever

Actually, on one level, These Three is more lesbo than The Children's Hour. Patty White has a brilliant chapter on this in her book Uninvited: Classical Hollywood Cinema and Lesbian Representability (which I strongly recommend - it contains THE best analysis of All About Eve I've ever read...and laugh out loud hilarious too!). Anyhoo, she looks at Production Code records and comes to some really intriguing conclusions.

I haven't liked Herbert Marshall better in anything else.

Gawd, I could think of tons with Trouble in Paradise and my beloved Angel Face at the top.

have to see more of his films.. (anyone got a torrent for "Dead End" ;) ;) )

The Best Years Of Our Lives is absolutely magical :)

scroo torrents!

I voted for The Heiress even though it's been ages since I saw it. This guy seriously directed so many great movies: Dodsworth, Best Years of Our Lives, Little Foxes

Wasn't his nickname "One hundred-take Wyler"? And he wouldn't give the actors any clue what he was looking for when he would re-take...

Oh, I forgot about Trouble in Paradise. Lubitsch is tops.

"And waiter."

"Yes, baron?"

"I don't want to see you at all."

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

No one's defending Ben-Hur, I see.

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

Pathetic.

Funny Girl? who's the Babs fan?

Manny Farber on Best Years:

"a horse-drawn truckload of liberal schmaltz"

Club Havana calls TBYOOL the most overrated movie of 1946.

Again, they're wrong.

I can't wait for the DVD release of Renoir's Chambermaid.

xp: along w/ Great Expectations, Shoeshine and The Killers!?! What a maroon.

I'd say Detour is more overrated than all those...

wft this poll with its 13 voters.

Counsellor at Law is so good: the sets, the acting, the camera and the use/illusion of space, even the sound.

Herbert Marshall doing some kind of kitsch in The Letter. Not that he was bad, but his underplaying the role backfires; he recedes from the screen.

I agree. James Stephenson is scary-good though.

been watching so much Wyler lately he's muscled his way into my all-time favorites. Counsellor at Law was oddly the first thing i saw that started all this. One of the sharpest, fastest high-flying comedies of the pre-code era.

will get to The Collector, Desperate Hours, and uhh TBYOOL soon.

Detective Story is decent.

Herbert Marshall doing some kind of kitsch in The Letter. Not that he was bad, but his underplaying the role backfires; he recedes from the screen.
Herbert Marshall is always kind of a milquetoast. Has he ever been otherwise?

Actually, I take that back, I liked him in Hitchcock's Murder!.

He's way not a milquetoast in Trouble in Paradise as (sorta) noted above. And he's more a repulsive leech than a milquetoast in Angel Face. Kinda not one in Foreign Correspondent too. Also, milquetoasts can be likable.

like max

he's quite sexy in Trouble in Paradise.

Looks like the guy was married five times!

max?

Are you imitating Tony Roberts in Annie Hall, Alfred?

so apparently Warners has screwed up the cropping on The Best Years of Our Lives BR?

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/dvdcompare/bestyearsofourlives.htm

http://www.hollywood-elsewhere.com/2013/10/gregg-tolands-ghost-is-pissed-off/

ok, carry on.

Saw this doc the other night (not sure if I had before), intro'd by Mark Harris re his Five Came Back WW2-Hollywood book. Some amazing footage, apparently no fakery as with some contemporaneous efforts (like Huston's gritty, recreated San Pietro). One of Wyler's cameramen died on a bombing run. WW was unhappy about the inclusion of Their Royal Majesties near the end, partly cuz the Queen just wanted to talk to him about Mrs Miniver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm1_D5crgPk

i keep forgetting you ppl don't give a shit abt anything but Best Years (which i saw again tonight)

I screened How To Steal A Million the other week. So much fun.

(xpost) Roman Holiday is my favourite romantic comedy from the '50s.

i keep forgetting you ppl don't give a shit abt anything but Best Years (which i saw again tonight)

― son of a lewd monk (Dr Morbius)

who are you growling at now?

whoever's around

the solipsist quadrille

i just read a James Baldwin essay where he casually calls Best Years a "fantasy." I essentially agree, and it's why i consider it a pretty good film rather than a great one. (JB had no use for "socially concerned" liberal art in general.)

did you finally read The Devil Finds Work?

no, i have it though; soon. That mention (along w/ his evisceration of Carmen Jones) is in Notes of a Native Son.

It's been ages since I've seen it, but is Best Years "socially concerned" liberal art? The whole thing felt like a distinctly conservative melodrama to me, what with its vilifying of the anti-war guy and all.

I'm not a huge fan of the film, by the way. Some affecting moments--almost all of them courtesy of Harold Russell--but for a piece of socially concerned art of whatever affiliation, making light of March's alcoholism always struck me as quite powerfully dickish.

putting any hint of Our Boys' suffering/trauma in a '46 Hollywood film counts as a lib move, yes

My favorite Wyler films

Is The Big Sleep on that list too?

I saw Detective Story a lot on TV in my teens, rewatched this morning. Like Dead End it's based on a Sidney Kingsley 'social realism' play (and just those two plays of his are remembered, for Wyler's movie versions). It's sort of a proto-Barney Miller as a tragedy, set in a NYPD detectives' room in one day, with Kirk Douglas as a Dirty Harry with a father complex at the center. Some clumsy speechifying for sure, but Wyler and the cinematographer Lee Garmes make it dynamic and dirty, and the ensemble cast has a lot of good and/or showy players -- Lee Grant as a shoplifter, Horace McMahon, William Bendix, and Joseph Wiseman as a psychotic burglar (he and his crony were gay in the Broadway version). Douglas melts down 2 or 3 times in the third act, and it's effective even if you chuckle at some of his over-the-top lines. With George Macready as an abortionist Kirk likes to beat up on.

is Mrs. Miniver really that bad? i watched The Little Foxes tonight and it was a boring mess, i have Mrs. Miniver because i'm trying to watch everything teresa wright was in.

hard to say, i liked TLF more; i mean Davis is more compelling than bleedin' Greer Garson

I'm not a huge fan of the film, by the way. Some affecting moments--almost all of them courtesy of Harold Russell--but for a piece of socially concerned art of whatever affiliation, making light of March's alcoholism always struck me as quite powerfully dickish.

― The New Gay Sadness (cryptosicko

eek, not otm. I agree with this: https://www.jonathanrosenbaum.net/2017/07/the-best-years-of-our-lives/

Wuthering Heights playing in town tmrw, any good?
Saw Toland shot it

as long as you don't expect... the entire story

The Westerner is among the best, best-looking (dp Gregg Toland) and funniest of the classic Gary Cooper westerns. His bromance with Judge Roy Bean (Walter Brennan) starts off with them waking up entangled in bed the morning after, and ends with a gunfight in an empty auditorium meant for a Lily Langtry touring show. Cooper has a S/M fistfight with Forrest Tucker that anticipates The Big Country.

Fun that it was made the same year as The Letter.

Think that’s about to expire from Criterion

must be better than The Big Country, two and a half hour bore from the mid-50s with nothing going on, as if he has no idea what to do in the west

The Westerner is a crisp 100m

Watched and loved that one right after it showed on the channel.

The Heiress on Criterion Channel, and, boy, is it as masterful as ever. Use of deep focus, the unerring interior design, de Havilland's never coming across as gauche -- wow. And I still can't believe a Hollywood film from the late '40s allowed the park bench scene ("Too late, Mariah...").

one of his best

We watched The Little Foxes on TCM last night and thought it was pretty good. Always funny seeing such an evil, old movie.

The shot of Davis illuminated by the lamp in front of the window near the beginning was awesome. Apparently the cinematographer was the same as Citizen Kane.

The scene where (SPOILERS) Davis attempts to cause her husband's death by not helping him get his medication as he struggles up the stairs is really good.