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TCM Schedule for Friday, July 29, 2022 -- What's On Tonight: Directed by Stanley Kubrick, Part Two
In the daylight hours, TCM is honoring Natalie Kalmus. Who is Mrs. Kalmus? You fans of classic films have seen her name in the credits nearly 400 times. From her Wikipedia entry:Natalie M. Kalmus (née Dunfee, also documented as Dunphy; April 7, 1878 – November 15, 1965) was the executive head of the Technicolor art department and credited as the director or "color consultant" of all Technicolor films produced from 1934 to 1949.
Once an art student and model, she married American scientist and engineer Herbert T. Kalmus in 1902 and later co-founded with him the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, serving for two decades as the company's chief on-site representative at studios that rented Technicolor's cameras for filming their color productions. Natalie Kalmus, who is often credited as a co-developer of the Technicolor process itself, was a member of the production team that shot the first Technicolor footage in 1917. Kalmus held strong views about the balanced use of color in film composition and often clashed with directors, cinematographers, and studio set designers who in her view sought to overuse dramatic colors simply as random accents in scenes, too often, gratuitously or for theatrical effect.
Once an art student and model, she married American scientist and engineer Herbert T. Kalmus in 1902 and later co-founded with him the Technicolor Motion Picture Corporation, serving for two decades as the company's chief on-site representative at studios that rented Technicolor's cameras for filming their color productions. Natalie Kalmus, who is often credited as a co-developer of the Technicolor process itself, was a member of the production team that shot the first Technicolor footage in 1917. Kalmus held strong views about the balanced use of color in film composition and often clashed with directors, cinematographers, and studio set designers who in her view sought to overuse dramatic colors simply as random accents in scenes, too often, gratuitously or for theatrical effect.
Then in prime time, TCM is dedicating a second evening to the works of Stanley Kubrick. Fill us in, Rob!
DIRECTED BY STANLEY KUBRICK
By Rob Nixon
June 27, 2022
8 Movies | July 22 & 29
Because he lived in England for roughly the last 40 years of his life and made most of his later films there, Stanley Kubrick is often thought of as a British director. He was born in the Bronx in 1928. As an introverted teenager he showed an aptitude for photography, and when his poor grades and attendance record kept him from attending college, he became an apprentice and later full-time staff photographer for Look magazine. His interest in – friends said obsession with – cinema was fueled by screenings at the Museum of Modern Art, particularly work by his earliest influences, such as Max Ophüls and Elia Kazan.
His first films in the early 1950s were short documentaries considered remarkably accomplished for a neophyte; they were picked up for distribution by RKO. He quickly followed with a very low-budget war film, Fear and Desire (1953), featuring future director Paul Mazursky. It was a commercial failure but brought him praise from the few critics who had seen it.
In the succeeding years, Kubrick would overcome the obstacles of funding, distribution and his own hyper-perfectionism to emerge as a master of the medium and a unique visual stylist. His staunch independence and nearly fanatical meticulousness earned him a reputation as a demanding, difficult taskmaster, never completely satisfied, often highly critical of his small body of work (13 features). Because this two-part TCM focus is programmed in almost complete chronological order, audiences can trace his artistic development over the course of 40+ years.
. . .
The second night of programming begins with the stunningly beautiful period drama Barry Lyndon (1975), based on an 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray about the rise and fall of an opportunistic young Irish man from humble beginnings to wealthy aristocratic widow to ultimate ruin and disgrace. Although some critics raved about the film’s “stately elegance” and glimpse into the “emptiness of upper-class life,” others found it to have what was by then the standard Kubrick failing, calling it the motion picture equivalent of a lifeless coffee table book. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker that Kubrick “controlled it so meticulously that he’s drained the blood out of it.” Visually, however, it can’t be faulted, from the detailed and evocative art direction to the innovative cinematography, using ultra-fast lenses to capture images in natural light and, even more revolutionary and difficult to achieve, solely in candlelight. Including it in his list of the world’s great movies in 2009, Roger Ebert summed up what makes Barry Lyndon so characteristically Kubrick: “technically awesome, emotionally distant, remorseless in its doubt of human goodness.”
We take a step back from our chronological journey through the director’s career to screen A Clockwork Orange (1971). Kubrick’s adaptation is mostly faithful to Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel, a nightmarish vision of a near-future Britain in which extreme behavior modification is enforced to preserve law and order in a rapidly disintegrating society. The film was shot mostly on location around London, often using natural light, by cinematographer John Alcott, who had taken over from Geoffrey Unsworth halfway through 2001 and would go on to shoot Barry Lyndon and The Shining (1980) for Kubrick. The picture’s harsh violence and assaultive sex got it an X rating in the U.S. and widely mixed reviews, yet it still received numerous awards and accolades, including Best Film and Best Director from the New York Film Critics Circle. After a couple of high-profile copycat crimes that directly referenced the picture and a spate of death threats Kubrick received, he withdrew the film from release in Britain in 1973. It was not shown there again until after his death in 1999.
Kubrick was never one to quickly crank out pictures, but as the years went on, he took longer and longer between projects, partially a by-product of his meticulous preparation and scrambling for funding and resources. It was seven years between The Shining and his anti-Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket (1987). It took another 12 years for him to release his final film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), promoted as an erotic thriller. There is more eroticism in the simple scene of James Mason painting Sue Lyons’ toenails in Lolita than in the rather toothless (and ludicrously costumed) “orgy” scene here, and not much in the way of mystery. What Kubrick was going for instead was a dreamlike journey into the intricacies of fidelity, intimacy, personal responsibility and truth. He and Frederic Raphael (Far from the Madding Crowd, 1967) adapted a 1926 Viennese novella, which may explain why some reviewers and audiences found the settings and relationships out of step with contemporary sensibilities. The project had been percolating in Kubrick’s mind since 1968, and according to some sources, at one point he considered making it a comedy with Steve Martin or Woody Allen. Bowing to pressure to use a major star, he cast Tom Cruise as a successful doctor thrown into a philosophical and moral crisis when his wife (Nicole Kidman, then married to Cruise) confesses an erotic fantasy.
Principal photography took place over 15 months, including an unbroken shoot of 46 weeks, pushing cast and crew to the brink of their tolerance. He took an additional nine months in post-production, showing the stars and studio executives his cut in March 1999. Six days later, Stanley Kubrick suffered a heart attack in his sleep at the age of 70, leaving behind a small but impressive body of work that stands as some of the greatest and most impactful cinema art not only of the latter half of the 20th century but of all time.
By Rob Nixon
June 27, 2022
8 Movies | July 22 & 29
Because he lived in England for roughly the last 40 years of his life and made most of his later films there, Stanley Kubrick is often thought of as a British director. He was born in the Bronx in 1928. As an introverted teenager he showed an aptitude for photography, and when his poor grades and attendance record kept him from attending college, he became an apprentice and later full-time staff photographer for Look magazine. His interest in – friends said obsession with – cinema was fueled by screenings at the Museum of Modern Art, particularly work by his earliest influences, such as Max Ophüls and Elia Kazan.
His first films in the early 1950s were short documentaries considered remarkably accomplished for a neophyte; they were picked up for distribution by RKO. He quickly followed with a very low-budget war film, Fear and Desire (1953), featuring future director Paul Mazursky. It was a commercial failure but brought him praise from the few critics who had seen it.
In the succeeding years, Kubrick would overcome the obstacles of funding, distribution and his own hyper-perfectionism to emerge as a master of the medium and a unique visual stylist. His staunch independence and nearly fanatical meticulousness earned him a reputation as a demanding, difficult taskmaster, never completely satisfied, often highly critical of his small body of work (13 features). Because this two-part TCM focus is programmed in almost complete chronological order, audiences can trace his artistic development over the course of 40+ years.
. . .
The second night of programming begins with the stunningly beautiful period drama Barry Lyndon (1975), based on an 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray about the rise and fall of an opportunistic young Irish man from humble beginnings to wealthy aristocratic widow to ultimate ruin and disgrace. Although some critics raved about the film’s “stately elegance” and glimpse into the “emptiness of upper-class life,” others found it to have what was by then the standard Kubrick failing, calling it the motion picture equivalent of a lifeless coffee table book. Pauline Kael wrote in The New Yorker that Kubrick “controlled it so meticulously that he’s drained the blood out of it.” Visually, however, it can’t be faulted, from the detailed and evocative art direction to the innovative cinematography, using ultra-fast lenses to capture images in natural light and, even more revolutionary and difficult to achieve, solely in candlelight. Including it in his list of the world’s great movies in 2009, Roger Ebert summed up what makes Barry Lyndon so characteristically Kubrick: “technically awesome, emotionally distant, remorseless in its doubt of human goodness.”
We take a step back from our chronological journey through the director’s career to screen A Clockwork Orange (1971). Kubrick’s adaptation is mostly faithful to Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel, a nightmarish vision of a near-future Britain in which extreme behavior modification is enforced to preserve law and order in a rapidly disintegrating society. The film was shot mostly on location around London, often using natural light, by cinematographer John Alcott, who had taken over from Geoffrey Unsworth halfway through 2001 and would go on to shoot Barry Lyndon and The Shining (1980) for Kubrick. The picture’s harsh violence and assaultive sex got it an X rating in the U.S. and widely mixed reviews, yet it still received numerous awards and accolades, including Best Film and Best Director from the New York Film Critics Circle. After a couple of high-profile copycat crimes that directly referenced the picture and a spate of death threats Kubrick received, he withdrew the film from release in Britain in 1973. It was not shown there again until after his death in 1999.
Kubrick was never one to quickly crank out pictures, but as the years went on, he took longer and longer between projects, partially a by-product of his meticulous preparation and scrambling for funding and resources. It was seven years between The Shining and his anti-Vietnam War movie Full Metal Jacket (1987). It took another 12 years for him to release his final film, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), promoted as an erotic thriller. There is more eroticism in the simple scene of James Mason painting Sue Lyons’ toenails in Lolita than in the rather toothless (and ludicrously costumed) “orgy” scene here, and not much in the way of mystery. What Kubrick was going for instead was a dreamlike journey into the intricacies of fidelity, intimacy, personal responsibility and truth. He and Frederic Raphael (Far from the Madding Crowd, 1967) adapted a 1926 Viennese novella, which may explain why some reviewers and audiences found the settings and relationships out of step with contemporary sensibilities. The project had been percolating in Kubrick’s mind since 1968, and according to some sources, at one point he considered making it a comedy with Steve Martin or Woody Allen. Bowing to pressure to use a major star, he cast Tom Cruise as a successful doctor thrown into a philosophical and moral crisis when his wife (Nicole Kidman, then married to Cruise) confesses an erotic fantasy.
Principal photography took place over 15 months, including an unbroken shoot of 46 weeks, pushing cast and crew to the brink of their tolerance. He took an additional nine months in post-production, showing the stars and studio executives his cut in March 1999. Six days later, Stanley Kubrick suffered a heart attack in his sleep at the age of 70, leaving behind a small but impressive body of work that stands as some of the greatest and most impactful cinema art not only of the latter half of the 20th century but of all time.
Enjoy!
7:00 AM -- Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)
1h 12m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-PG
A disfigured sculptor turns murder victims into wax statues.
Director: Michael Curtiz
Cast: Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray, Glenda Farrell
This film was produced before the Production Code. When it was remade 20 years later, as House of Wax (1953), all references to drug use were removed, and a character was changed from a junkie to an alcoholic.
8:30 AM -- Sunkist Stars at Palm Springs (1936)
19m | Short | TV-PG
Winners of a dance contest spend a day at Palm Springs with famous movie stars.
Director: Roy Rowland
Cast: Fuzzy Knight, Frankie Darro, Claire Trevor
In this MGM Technicolor short, two of the songs by composer Nacio Herb Brown and lyricist Arthur Freed - "Broadway Melody" and "You Are My Lucky Star" - were to appear again in Singin' in the Rain (1952). Arthur Freed was the head of the musical unit at the studio and his songs were used again and again in MGM pictures.
9:00 AM -- A Star Is Born (1937)
1h 51m | Romance | TV-G
A fading matinee idol marries the young beginner he's shepherded to stardom.
Director: William A. Wellman
Cast: Janet Gaynor, Fredric March, Adolphe Menjou
Winner of an Honorary Oscar for W. Howard Greene for the color photography of A Star Is Born. (plaque) This award was recommended by a committee of leading cinematographers after viewing all the color pictures made during the year.
Winner of an Oscar for Best Writing, Original Story -- William A. Wellman and Robert Carson
Nominee for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role -- Fredric March, Best Actress in a Leading Role -- Janet Gaynor, Best Director -- William A. Wellman, Best Writing, Screenplay -- Alan Campbell, Robert Carson and Dorothy Parker, Best Assistant Director -- Eric Stacey, and Best Picture
Widely considered to be the first Technicolor film that was a bona fide critical and box office success. Until "A Star is Born" and "Nothing Sacred (1937)," color films had been garish, over saturated and, as many critics complained, headache-inducing. Producer David O. Selznick insisted on muted, realistic color, and it was the success of these two films that paved the way for his Technicolor masterpiece, "Gone with the Wind (1939)."
11:00 AM -- The Barkleys of Broadway (1949)
1h 48m | Musical | TV-G
A married musical team splits up so the wife can become a serious actress.
Director: Charles Walters
Cast: Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Oscar Levant
Nominee for an Oscar for Best Cinematography, Color -- Harry Stradling Sr.
This was the tenth and final film to co-star Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, their first in ten years since The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939). Also, it was their only film together in color, and the only one they made for a studio (MGM) other than RKO.
1:00 PM -- The Drum (1938)
1h 33m | Adventure | TV-G
An Indian prince tries to save his British masters from a deadly revolt.
Director: Zoltan Korda
Cast: Sabu, Raymond Massey, Roger Livesey
This was the first film that Zoltan Korda directed in colour.
2:45 PM -- Blithe Spirit (1945)
1h 36m | Comedy | TV-G
A man and his second wife are haunted by the ghost of his first wife.
Director: David Lean
Cast: Rex Harrison, Constance Cummings, Kay Hammond
Winner of an Oscar for Best Effects, Special Effects -- Tom Howard (visual)
Writer and director Sir David Lean and cinematographer Ronald Neame decided not to use double exposure to create Elvira's ghostly appearances. Instead, Lean created an enormous set that allowed Kay Hammond to move freely in each shot. Hammond wore fluorescent green clothes, make-up, and a wig, with bright red lipstick and fingernail polish. Each time she moved, a special light would be directed on her, allowing her figure to glow even in dimly-lit scenes and giving her an otherworldly appearance.
4:30 PM -- Yolanda and the Thief (1945)
1h 48m | Musical | TV-G
A con man poses as a Latin American heiress' guardian angel.
Director: Vincente Minnelli
Cast: Fred Astaire, Lucille Bremer, Frank Morgan
Fred Astaire's first (released) colour film. Ziegfeld Follies was due to be Astaire's first colour film and he had already completed all of his scenes for that movie in 1944, before Yolanda and the Thief even went into production. However due to post production issues, Ziegfeld Follies was not released until July 1946 a full eight months after Yolanda and the Thief.
6:30 PM -- The Boy with Green Hair (1948)
1h 22m | Drama | TV-G
An orphaned boy mystically acquires green hair and a mission to end war.
Director: Joseph Losey
Cast: Pat O'brien, Robert Ryan, Barbara Hale
Unfortunately for the film's director, Joseph Losey, the eccentric, politically conservative Howard Hughes took over RKO while this film was being shot and, hating the film's pacifist message, did his best to sabotage it. Losey, however, managed to protect the integrity of his project. Screenwriter Ben Barzman, who was also later blacklisted along with Losey, would later recall that "Joe shot the picture in such a way that there wasn't much possibility for change. A few lines were stuck in here and there to soften the message, but that was about it". Barzman also remembered that 12-year-old Dean Stockwell was called into Hughes' office and Hughes told him that when the other children spoke of the horror of war, he should say, "And that's why America has gotta have the biggest army, and the biggest navy, and the biggest air force in the world!" According to Barzman, little Stockwell was so in sympathy with the film's message that he dared to respond, "No, sir!" Even after Hughes started to scream at him, the boy held his ground and refused to do it. Dean Stockwell later played Howard Hughes in Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988).
WHAT'S ON TONIGHT: PRIMETIME THEME -- DIRECTED BY STANLEY KUBRICK, PART TWO
8:00 PM -- Barry Lyndon (1975)
3h 7m | Epic | TV-PG
An Irish rogue cheats his way to the top of 18th-century British society.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Ryan O'neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee
Winner of Oscars for Best Cinematography -- John Alcott, Best Art Direction-Set Decoration -- Ken Adam, Roy Walker and Vernon Dixon, Best Costume Design -- Ulla-Britt Söderlund and Milena Canonero, and Best Music, Scoring Original Song Score and/or Adaptation -- Leonard Rosenman
Nominee for Oscars for Best Director -- Stanley Kubrick, Best Writing, Screenplay Adapted From Other Material -- Stanley Kubrick, and Best Picture
Warner Bros. would only finance this movie on the condition that Stanley Kubrick cast a Top 10 box-office star (from the annual Quigley Poll of Top Money-Making Stars) in the lead. Ryan O'Neal was the number two box-office star of 1973, topped only by Clint Eastwood. Ironically, this was his only time in the top 10, as exhibitors, who voted the list, attributed the success of Love Story (1970) (one of the top grossers at the time) to O'Neal's co-star Ali MacGraw, and named her to the list in 1971. The other top 10 stars were 3. Steve McQueen, 4. Burt Reynolds, 5. Robert Redford, 6. Barbra Streisand, 7. Paul Newman, 8. Charles Bronson, 9. John Wayne, and 10. Marlon Brando. Thus, the only actors Kubrick could cast in the role while still receiving the financial backing of Warner Bros. for his decidedly non-commercial project were O'Neal and Redford. The other Top 10 stars were too old or inappropriate for the role (particularly in the case of Streisand, who would not assay a "male" role until Yentl (1983) in 1983). Both O'Neal and Redford were Irish, both had box-office appeal and both were young enough to play the role, though Redford was five years older than the thirty-two-year old O'Neal in 1973. At the time O'Neal was the bigger star, having also garnered a Best Actor Oscar nomination for "Love Story". However, Kubrick apparently offered the part to Redford first, who turned it down, and thus O'Neal was cast. Redford's star would soon eclipse O'Neal's, as he would zoom to the top of the box-office charts the next year after the successes of The Sting (1973) and The Way We Were (1973), clocking in at number one in 1974, a position he would also anchor in 1975 and 1976. O'Neal dropped off the Top 10 after 1973, which to this day represents his sole appearance on the list.
11:15 PM -- A Clockwork Orange (1971)
2h 17m | Horror/Science-Fiction | TV-MA
Scientists use mind-control experiments to turn a gang leader against violence.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Malcolm Mcdowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates
Nominee for Oscars for Best Director -- Stanley Kubrick, Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium -- Stanley Kubrick, Best Film Editing -- Bill Butler, and Best Picture
While recording narration, Malcolm McDowell would often feel the need to stretch his legs. So to satisfy McDowell and quite possibly get better narration from him, Stanley Kubrick and McDowell would play table tennis (a sport featured in Kubrick's own Lolita (1962)), and although they played many games, Kubrick never beat a rather skilled McDowell at table tennis. McDowell was later irritated to find that his salary had been docked for the hours spent playing the game. McDowell often kept Kubrick highly amused by his ability to belch on command (as illustrated at various points of the movie). They would play chess as well, and since Kubrick was an excellent chess player, McDowell never managed to beat him. Chess was a regular thing with many actors in Kubrick's films. He would regularly beat George C. Scott at chess while making Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964), and also Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall on The Shining (1980).
1:45 AM -- Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
2h 39m | Adaptation
A wealthy Manhattan doctor and his wife become entangled in a a ritualistic sexual underworld.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, Todd Field
Stanley Kubrick died just four days after presenting Warner Bros. with what was reported to be a final cut of the film, after a legendarily long shoot. His friends and family, as well as the cast and crew of the film, all claimed that Kubrick's death was completely unexpected and that he never seemed to be in poor health while making the film.
4:45 AM -- Hollywood Without Make-Up (1966)
50m | Documentary | TV-G
In this special, Ken Murray hosts his own behind-the-scenes home movies of some of Hollywood's biggest stars.
Director: Rudy Behlmer, Loring d'Usseau, Ken Murray(uncredited)
Cast: Ken Murray
San Simeon's architect, the noted Julia Morgan, is misidentified as William Randolph Hearst's secretary.
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