Raoul Walsh, "craftsmanlike picturemaker": S/D

He called Bogdanovich "Pedro" and wore a boss eyepatch. Also shot Lincoln in The Birth of a Nation.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/peterbogdanovich/the-raoul-walsh-file-part-1

obv The Roaring Twenties, High Sierra, White Heat and the silent Fairbanks Thief of Bagdad are all duly celebrated, but he directed a great early Spencer Tracy performance in Me and My Gal, and several collabs with the luscious Errol Flynn.

I don't like High Sierra as much as most people but, yeah, it's a key film in the creation of the Bogart mythos.

White Heat seconded (when did you finally start using italics?). Need to see more.

When I have time.

The one w/ Bing Crosby and Marion Davies is fun, too.

Walsh's 1947 Ida Lupino vehicle The Man I Love is apparently the primary source for Scorsese's New York New York.

Love the fact that he followed High Sierra w/ The Strawberry Blonde, a perfectly charming romantic comedy w/ Cagney, Olivia De Haviland and Rita Hayworth.

Forgot about The SB

yeah, I saw that eons ago... Walsh remade it as a musical 7 years later. (The '41 was a remake of a Gary Cooper flop!)

Joint Brooklyn retro in March with Scorsese films influenced by RW... I imagine Marty will show up for at least one night of this. Always been curious to see the one NYNY is rooted in, The Man I Love, as Ward noted above.

http://www.bam.org/film/2014/under-the-influence-scorsese-walsh

Bogdanovich's characterization of Walsh as a "craftsmanlike picturemaker" is the kind of non-description that tells me nothing about the filmmaker's particular craft, but watching White Heat tonight, I have to say that for every other awesome thing that it is, it is just the model of efficiency. Not a dull or wasted moment in this thing. Kind of astonishing, really.

finally saw The Man I Love... great Ida Lupino performance among a bunch of good ones, incl Bruce Bennett of all ppl as a psychically damaged great pianist. Also reasonably persuasive urban jazzbo settings for 1947 Warner Bros.

Battle Cry is the kind of Cinemascope war epic with an hour of tedium and few discernible Walsh touches, but Aldo Ray and James Whitmore are solid, and Tab Hunter hooks up with Dorothy Malone.

Sadie Thompson is the only Walsh film I've seen that I would be interested in seeing again. People rave about Regeneration (1915), but I never remember it when I have time to watch a feature-length film.

anyone seen The Naked and the Dead that's also read the book? I haven't. Walsh's film is visually spectacular, but like so many adaptions of "great literature," felt so leaden with dialogue and a thorough sense of compromise, concision, and elision.

Shot in "WarnerScope," not actually widescreen but converted later on, distinct from the CinemaScope process. this movie has some pretty interesting and unique distortions in it, mostly fat faces and bodies but it feels utterly different than the same phenomenon in CinemaScope.

Really only watched it because it was #2 on Fassbinder's top 10. Completely makes sense, he took so much from this for the BRD trilogy.

My favourite Raoul Walsh adjacent anecdote relates to this sweet volume:

https://pictures.abebooks.com/READINK/17494036587.jpg

Throughout the seventies, Edinburgh International Film Festival produced critical publications to accompany retrospectives. Written in the politically-charged and dense academic language of the time, they incensed mainstream critics. Barry Norman was angry enough to rip up the festival’s book on Raoul Walsh live on Film ’74. His display was made easier by cheap printing.

from:https://film.list.co.uk/article/43097-five-things-you-didnt-know-about-the-edinburgh-international-film-festival/

Regeneration (1915) is glorious. Bonus: Rockliffe Fellowes is phenomenally beautiful in the most masculine way possible.

To live up to that name, he'd have to be.

dear God Barry Norman was a dick

Love the fact that he followed High Sierra w/ The Strawberry Blonde, a perfectly charming romantic comedy w/ Cagney, Olivia De Haviland and Rita Hayworth.

SPOILER

...Which for a romcom takes a rather startling melodramatic turn in the third act when Jack Carson's negligence causes the death of Cagney's father (Alan Hale) AND forces Jim to do a prison stretch.

I'd forgotten that de Havilland's free-thinking nurse winks back at cruising men in the park and tells a scandalized Hayworth, "Spiritually, you winked." (Written by the Epstein brothers a year before that Bogey/Bergman movie.) Of course, she has to recant her feminism a couple reels later...

*bumping* and *bookmarking*

Watching amateurist favorite OBJECTIVE, BURMA! right now and am on the edge of my seat.

Maybe ROARING TWENTIES next.

Looks like Samuel Fuller did a later film based on the same material as an assignment.

OBJECTIVE, BURMA! was just terrific, superb. Tension from beginning to end. Leavened with every war movie cliche in the book, along with the related humor, but all done at the perfect temperature.

Did Kubrick ever talk about Raoul Walsh as an influence, I wonder. I do recall reading in an interview around the time of FULL METAL JACKET that he thought most war films “cheated,” in the technical sense of not accurately portraying the physical space.

A few of his showing as part of Errol Flynn retro at MoMA. Only weekday matinees though:(
https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/5566

O,B! does have some issues though, making it offensive to both Britishes and Japanese.

GENTLEMAN JIM really good. Now watching one with a different star from Errol Flynn that is fantastic. Will report later.

Think he's the closest there was to a pre-noir gangster movie auteur? The majority of those films were made by WB journeymen, but he has both High Sierra and Roaring Twenties.

Think he's the closest there was to a pre-noir gangster movie auteur?

Josef von Sternberg beats him with UNDERWORLD (1927) and THUNDERBOLT (1929). But do check out Walsh's REGENERATION (1915) if you're interested in the development of the gangster film and proto-noir.

Want to watch REGENERATION but it’s hard to see it seems.

There are three Walsh films in the Joan Bennett collection on Criterion right now through the end of the month: WILD GIRL, ME AND MY GAL and BIG BROWN EYES. Started watching the first one, enjoyed hearing the voice of Eugene Pallette as stagecoach driver Yuba Bill saying “Whoa, we fetched up some goobers to the children.”

TCM right now has BLACKBEARD, THE PIRATE, HITTING A NEW HIGH and WHITE HEAT for a few more days.