Happy Birthday Jules Dassin!

I was rooting for Billy Wilder to outlive Leni Riefenstahl but he let me down. 

 

Director Jules Dassin is 96. Maybe he’ll do it. At any rate, I wish him good health and happiness.

Above is 10.30PM SUMMER, a massively underrated film by Dassin and Marguerite Duras. It’s available on DVD in the U.S. now, you should all get it. Gorgeous crazy lighting by Gábor Pogány that reminds me of Mario Bava, and an aesthetic reminiscent of silent movie melodrama, although I should add that the sound design is awesome. There’s a driving-around-at-night sequence that exactly pre-echoes Fellini’s TOBY DAMMIT, and the whole vibe is like an art film from two or even four years later. And given the speed at which cinema was moving in the mid-to-late sixties, that puts J.D. well ahead of the curve.

 

Sadly, it was the last feature from Dassin’s years of peripatetic cinema: I’d love to see what he’d have done next. Back in America he made a “blaxploitation” remake of THE INFORMER called UP TIGHT, which is better than the title and concept suggest. And then he made one of Richard Burton’s last films, with a teenage Tatum O’Neal. No, it’s not very good, but he couldn’t get out of it.

(I heard that on 1984, Burton’s last film, his curiously weak arms had to be puppeteered from below the shot to make him seem alive. A great actor, reduced to the level of Kermit the Frog. This was an aftereffect of an operation to remove crystallized alcohol from the Great Man’s spine…)

In America in the forties Dassin had made THE NAKED CITY, THIEVES HIGHWAY and BRUTE FORCE, all compelling and poetic films noir.Mark Hellinger, who produced TNC, contributes a world-weary voice-over which smoothly lulls you into the subconscious of New York City, city of eight million stories.

Persecuted by the House Unamerican Activities Committee, Dassin headed for Europe, stopping in England to make NIGHT AND THE CITY, a US-style noir with a London setting and American stars. It’s a masterpiece and I hope to write more about it soon.

Then began the roving years. Dassin is undervalued, a bit like Alberto Cavalcanti: both men worked in so many countries, and did great work in all of them, and the people of those countries think, “He’s great, but he didn’t do much.” It’s almost impossible to gather all the films together and see the total achievement. Also, David Thompson’s overview of Dassin’s work in his Biographical Dictionary of Film is a disgrace: so often where DT could do some good by drawing attention to neglected work, he is lazy and bored and just piles on another layer of dust.

Using the stage name Perlo Vita, Dassin acted in his first French film, the ultimate caper movie, RIFIFI. Using his own name, he starred in NEVER ON SUNDAY in Greece with his wife, the rather overwhelming Melina Mercouri.

She also stars in TOPKAPI, a favourite film of mine. An archivist acquaintance claims it gave him a headache for a week, but never mind, *I* like it. A PINK PANTHER-like international heist comedy with no Americans in it. I like Americans, especially American actors, but there’s something refreshing about their absence here. And I would eschew the Rat Pack anyday to go on a caper with Mercouri, Maximilian Schell, Peter Ustinov, Robert Morley and Akim Tamiroff!

There are still plenty of Dassins I haven’t had the pleasure of: PHAEDRA, THIS MAN MUST DIE, THE REHEARSAL. Hope to see them all soon, and I hope the happy longevity of this sparkling, sharp-eyed filmmaker continues for many more years.

The Greatest Movies Never Made, part 1.

Hopefully you can all join in here with suggestions, this is going to be a very partial list.

 

THE LUSTY DAYS — Sam Fuller. An epic adventure story about gathering the vote for the presidential election in the days of Lincoln. I saw Fuller pitch this live in Edinburgh. It took him two hours to describe just the first half of the story. Imagine something on the scale of THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, with a similarly cynical wit.

FLASHMAN — Richard Lester. A separate project from Lester’s later ROYAL FLASH. This one would have detailed Victorian arch-coward Flashman’s (John Alderton) adventures in the Afghanistan campaign (no nation has ever invaded that country without getting hopelessly quagmired). Would have featured scenes like: a snowy valley. A trumpeter blows reveille and ten thousand British soldiers emerge from beneath the snow. Not the kind of thing you can do cheaply. Cancelled by United Artists with only weeks to go, at the same time they pulled the plug on:

NAPOLEON — Stanley Kubrick. Joseph Gelmis’ book The Film Director as Superstar is recommended for the Kubrick interview where he discusses his plans for the project, including animated maps to make Bonaparte’s battle plans clear. Jack Nicholson was to play Napoleon, since Kubrick felt that intelligence was the one trait you couldn’t ACT. (Surely anybody who’s worked with actors knows this isn’t true?)

MODIGLIANI — Max Ophuls. To star Yves Montand and Simone Signoret, this was eventually made, but after Ophuls’ death. Or one might be more tempted by THE DUCHESS OF LANGEAIS shot by James Wong Howe and starring Garbo (thanks, D.E.)

RED HARVEST — Bernardo Bertolucci. To star Jack Nicholson (again) and Marlon Brando, and to be made shortly after LAST TANGO. Kind of a crazy match, but an intriguing one. The book has been adapted many times, unofficially (YOJIMBO etc) but the only actual credited adaptation, ROADHOUSE NIGHTS, stars Charles Ruggles and Jimmy Durante. That can’t be right.

L’ENFER — Henri-Georges Clouzot. A study of jealousy, with the real-life scenes in b&w and the jealous fantasies in lurid colour. To have starred Romy Schneider, roughly 45 minutes was shot before Clouzot was taken seriously ill. Chabrol later filmed Clouzot’s script, but the original footage has not been made available.

MARY ROSE — Alfred Hitchcock. A romantic ghost story by J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan), this might have had some of the same mystical beauty as VERTIGO…

MOZART — Werner Herzog. From Herzog’s early, weird, most compelling phase. The abortive film on the child prodigy is referenced in KASPAR HAUSER, where the freakshow includes the young Wolfgang Amadeus.

THE FAR SIDE — Alan Rudolph. A fascinating, insane project (”The only thing I can imagine myself doing that might be really successful,”) which was killed when David Puttnam took over Columbia Pictures. Thanks, Dave.

MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS — Alexander Mackendrick. Exists in script and complete storyboard form, a testament to  its director’s obsession. Mackendrick wanted to make an epic period film with the rugged excitement of a good western.

THE MONK — Luis Bunuel. The surrealists all loved this amazing potboiler of a novel. Bunuel came close to making it in the 60s, but funding collapsed. It would have allowed Don Luis to exercise his love of melodrama and secret passages.

THE VOYAGE OF G. MASTORNA — Federico Fellini. The sets for this unfilmed odyssey can be seen in  FELLINI: A DIRECTOR’S NOTEBOOK. The star, Mastroianni, speculates that Fellini chickened out of making the death-obsessed story out of fear that he himself would die if he made it. He died anyway, of course, but we got a slew of other fine films out of him first.

THE TEMPEST — Michael Powell. Powell read the script to James Mason, who he wanted to play Prospero. Mason stopped him during scene one. “This bit with Galileo,” he asked, “Is it Shakespeare?” “No, it’s Powell,” said Powell, and kept reading. Mason said yes, the financiers said no.

THE DOCTOR AND THE DEVILS — Nicholas Ray. Another James Mason film lost to fortune. Dylan Thomas’ incantatory script about graverobbers Burke and Hare was eventually flattened by Freddie Francis and miscasting. Ray was aiming to shoot it in Prague (which looks nothing like Edinburgh but has a funky atmosphere of its own) but eventually warped the script to the point where Mason couldn’t see the appeal anymore. Perhaps this is what ruined Ray’s post-Hollywood career: an inability to fix upon the unchangeable hub of an idea and preserve it?

MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN — Alain Resnais. One of several prospects Resnais was considering as follow-up to HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR. A big comic-book fan, Resnais has never attempted a full-on adaptation, and though we can’t regret that he eventually put this one aside in favour of MARIENBAD, it’s impossible not to dream…