Robin Hood Color

In case piles of dirty snow have left your eyes starved for pure color, here are pictures from The Adventures of Robin Hood, which came out in 1938.  I expected a black & white movie, then thought it had been colorized -- incredibly well, but 25% too lush for real life.  It turns out they shot it in Technicolor way back then.

The movie flaunts its color with constant costume changes for everyone but the peasants (and Robin Hood).  You'd expect the evil Bishop, the King, a lady in waiting, and an outlaw musician (clockwise from top-left, left) to be stylish.

But Olivia de Havilland as Maid Marian is radiant -- Northern Renaissance portrait-ready -- in all of the eight outfits I noticed, on top here and just below.


The evil nobles (usurping the King, who's on his way back from scourging the Holy Land for Christ) are preening peacocks, especially Claude Rains as Prince John, below left, and Basil Rathbone as Sir Guy, below right.


Though Basil does look pretty smooth for a grown man in action-hero pajamas, Claude has every right to admire himself in the mirror, below left.  Meanwhile Errol Flynn as Robin doesn't waste time on finery, unless you include the dead stag he's draped with when he crashes a dinner party at the castle, below right.


And finally, below, a peacock kangaroo court -- Melville Cooper as the High Sheriff, Basil, and some extra in purple tights -- delivers its verdict: There is no such thing as too much color!

Colonel Blimp's Trophies

Colonel Blimp, a movie based on a British cartoon character's life from the Boer War to WWII, is oddly entertaining, full of bluster and regret.  A strange but believable twist has the Colonel falling for one copy of Deborah Kerr after another.  And obviously, his trophy room caught my eye.


To keep busy between wars or after losing a copy of Deborah, he would fulfill his duty as a gentleman and rid the empire of exotic animals.


Note The Hun trophy above right.  And below, the Colonel's German opposite and friend, sick of war and barely hanging on, admires the centerpiece of the trophy room -- an awful oil portrait of Deborah Kerr -- and says "It's a strange place to hang such a lovely picture."

Blast of Silence

No love lost on 125th St.
Blast of Silence is another NYC film noir worth renting.  As the trailer [YouTube] puts it, "Your hands will sweat with his fear!"


Above left, the Valencia Hotel (now St. Marks Hotel) on St. Marks near 3rd Ave.  Above right, at Caffe Reggio in the Village (confirmed by this photo from the cafe's website).

I was thinking "Martin Scorsese had to see this before he did Taxi Driver," and this Criterion Collection article confirms it.   The protagonist here is a hit man from Cleveland, but he's got a lot of Travis Bickle to him, from his alienation to his awkward way with women -- he even looks a lot like DeNiro (with some George C. Scott thrown in).

The movie features a crusty old New Yorker narrating inside our hit man's head, a hokey twist that works fine.  Plenty of black & white scenes from all over the city, from 125th St. down to the Staten Island ferry.  There's some jazz beatnik action from the Village, and one of the most interesting characters keeps pet rats.


Above left, 34th St. between Lexington and Park.  Above right, walking past the Rockefeller Center holiday tree (looking much better than recent incarnations).  And finally, below, running out of sidewalk in East New York.

Noir Double Bill

Robert Mitchum is a modest medical professional with a perfectly decent, true-blue girlfriend.  He should be satisfied, but one whiff of expensive perfume and he throws in with an about-to-be heiress whose screws have come loose.  Twice! -- in two movies I watched a few weeks apart:


Above left, Jean Simmons in Angel Face, 1952.  Above right, Faith Domergue in Where Danger Lives, 1950 (on a DVD with the also worthy Tension).

One movie has a "happy ending."  Find out which one!

Film still capture credits: Only the Cinema, Some Came Running and tubeonline.info.

Scandal Sheet

For noir New York flavor, the movie Side Street is great -- including the opening aerial shot of the skinny towers downtown -- but I liked Scandal Sheet even more.  The title tabloid's ink-stained cynics throw a "lonely hearts" ball to boost circulation, where the grand prize, listed above, is a bed with a built in TV.


Above, a couple of lonely hearts -- pressed by the tabloid's ace reporter -- have agreed to get hitched.  When they come off stage after the announcement, the new groom asks "We are gonna get that bed with the built in TV, right?"

Later, on the trail of a murderer, the ace reporter and his sidekick interview a lineup of Bowery bums.  After a good long look at a dozen or so alcoholic faces, the sidekick quips "I will never, ever, touch another drop."

PS: Considering that the photos here are direct from my built in TV set, I think they came out pretty good.

Critical Fountainhead

First The End of the Critic?, then the war over art criticism and journalistic ethics summarized by Ed Winkleman.  Cultural criticism is under siege.

So it was refreshing to watch The Fountainhead for the first time the other day and soak up its nostalgic warning: Beware the diabolical and powerful Architecture Critic, or you'll wind up pulling a plow on a collective farm.

O for the days when critics swayed The Masses!

My notes after viewing:

- Ayn Rand was 12 years old when she wrote this, right?

- The setup: A self hating, sexually repressed Gestapo worm is chopped up and comes back as 3 people: the cold and empty, riding-crop wielding heiress Dominique Francon; the heroic, iconoclastic architect Howard Roark (Frank Lloyd Wright meets Albert Speer meets The Unabomber); and tabloid tycoon Gail Wynand, a Rupert Murdoch clone.  Then the tabloid's architecture critic, Ellsworth Toohey, conspires to destroy Howard because he is too heroically individualistic.

Still, I was so moved I put together the storyboard below.

The movie starts with a bang: Howard is expelled from architecture school because he will not conform and submit to mediocrity.  Then the 3 worms proceed to spout each others' lines to each other, as captured in the subtitles and comments:




And now, 60 years after the triumph of Ayn's will, with our shared institutions crumbling, we can heroically and individually: vote for our favorite future casino lounge singer on American Idol (owned by Rupert); poison ourselves with the bitter, dead-end politics of The New York Post and Fox News (owned by Rupert); and express ourselves by throwing up gang signs on our MySpace page (owned by Rupert).

Soon we'll have American Idol-style government that changes daily by cell phone vote.  (Which might not be a bad idea, but would be... owned by Rupert.)

And soon the last newspaper critic will be sent packing, their wealth of knowledge useless to a world that doesn't really need help choosing between McDonald's and Burger King, or really enjoy the effort it takes to decipher all those words, when pictures will do.