If you've used up all the available Douglas Sirk melodramas, why not try The Restless Years (1958), directed by Helmut Kautner (pronounced "Koit-ner")? It's a small town tale, focusing mainly on the teenage populace, but spreading out to follow their interaction with parents and teachers."This is a dirty, little, gossipy small town. And I ought to know because I was born here. People here are jut like a herd of sharks that turn on a crippled one and kill it." So says salesman James Whitmore to his son, a fresh-faced John Saxon, and he appears to be right, giving the film the social criticism dimension that Sirk's films likewise weave beneath their emotionally turbulent tales.The producer is the flamboyant Ross Hunter, who needs to be considered a kind of co-auteur of many Sirkian tales, only he should be credited for the dumber, soapier elements, his writers and directors for the irony and subtext,...
- 12/20/2018
- MUBI
One of the many treats at this year's Il Cinema Ritrovato festival of restored or rediscovered films was a retrospective of the works of Helmut Käutner, who has been known and admired for a few select works but whose larger oeuvre is rarely screened. Curators Olaf Möller and Christoph Huber explained that this was partly because the German director's comedies often deal with German current affairs of the day in a way which makes them seem obscure even to modern German audiences. But one humorous movie proved timeless.Käutner began his career during WWII, but never seems to have been seriously tainted by associations with the Nazi regime. Indeed his great successes shot during wartime, Grosse Freiheit No. 7 (1944) and Under the Bridges (1946) apparently made the authorities uncomfortable: framed in a setting that's not-quite period and not-quite alternate reality, where the war simply does not exist, they seemed...a touch defeatist.
- 7/20/2017
- MUBI
Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...
- 3/15/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Teresa Wright and Matt Damon in 'The Rainmaker' Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright vs. Samuel Goldwyn: Nasty Falling Out.") "I'd rather have luck than brains!" Teresa Wright was quoted as saying in the early 1950s. That's understandable, considering her post-Samuel Goldwyn choice of movie roles, some of which may have seemed promising on paper.[1] Wright was Marlon Brando's first Hollywood leading lady, but that didn't help her to bounce back following the very public spat with her former boss. After all, The Men was released before Elia Kazan's film version of A Streetcar Named Desire turned Brando into a major international star. Chances are that good film offers were scarce. After Wright's brief 1950 comeback, for the third time in less than a decade she would be gone from the big screen for more than a year.
- 3/11/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
James Whitmore, who played such American icons as Harry Truman, Will Rogers and Theodore Roosevelt, died Friday of lung cancer at his home in Malibu. He was 87.
Whitmore was twice nominated for Academy Awards -- as best actor in 1976 for "Give 'em Hell, Harry!," in which he played Truman, and as best supporting actor in 1950 for the war movie "Battleground."
He also won an Emmy Award in 2000 for a guest-starring role on "The Practice," as well as a Tony Award for "Command Decision."
Whitmore was diagnosed with cancer a week before Thanksgiving. "My father believed that family came before everything, that work was just a vehicle in which to provide for your family," his son Steve Whitmore, who works as spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, told the Associated Press. "At the end, and in the last two and a half months of his life, he was surrounded by his family.
Whitmore was twice nominated for Academy Awards -- as best actor in 1976 for "Give 'em Hell, Harry!," in which he played Truman, and as best supporting actor in 1950 for the war movie "Battleground."
He also won an Emmy Award in 2000 for a guest-starring role on "The Practice," as well as a Tony Award for "Command Decision."
Whitmore was diagnosed with cancer a week before Thanksgiving. "My father believed that family came before everything, that work was just a vehicle in which to provide for your family," his son Steve Whitmore, who works as spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, told the Associated Press. "At the end, and in the last two and a half months of his life, he was surrounded by his family.
- 2/6/2009
- by By Duane Byrge
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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