The Sunday Intertitle: Death of a Princess

Thanks to regular Shadowplayer Guy Budziak for supplying me with a copy of Joe May’s THE INDIAN TOMB.

Of course, watching it now means trying to fit it into the oeuvre of screenwriters Fritz Lang & Thea Von Harbou, whose reputation has long superseded May’s. It feels very Langian, and not only because of the architect hero (Lang studied for that profession, a training which emerges not just in METROPOLIS and SECRET BEYOND THE DOOR, but in all those titles — HOUSE BY THE RIVER, SCARLET STREET, THE WOMAN IN THE WINDOW). What connects it to later works like METROPOLIS is the way it’s riven with factions, including but not limited to heroes and villains. DIE NIBELUNGEN is probably the best example of this “beyond good and evil” approach, where sympathy for one group of characters over another isn’t as big a deal as it generally is in mainstream movie narratives. (In NIBELUNGEN, that’s putting it very mildly indeed.) This sense is even stronger in Lang’s much later remake of THE INDIAN TOMB, which dispenses with the more overt supernatural elements (and I wonder why?).

Nevertheless, despite being impressed by the mighty sets and the scope of the sprawling story, I was somewhat tickled by the above intertitle, spoken to console the architect who dreams of building his own Taj Mahal — within seconds, he will learn that an Indian princess has indeed expired, and guess who they want to erect her tomb?

Limerwrecks limerick link

Another Childhood Chill over at Limerwrecks, the home of the movie rhyme.

Fiona: “How did they get such an amazing cast?”

Me: “It’s a film about murdering theatre critics. They could have cast it a thousand times over.”

Still, at age 12 or so, I found this one a bit much. Partly it’s the sadistic glee of the bloodletting, the grossness of the visuals (particularly Robert Morley being force-fed poodle pie through a funnel — an acquaintance reported that this scene put her off chicken pie for life), and the fact that Arthur Lowe is killed in his sleep, in bed, the place of safety. I actually had to glance around any room I entered for some weeks after seeing the film, for fear of being surprised by the severed head of Arthur Lowe. Not a very realistic fear, but there it is. Also, as a kid, I think black comedy was particularly disturbing to me — unpleasant stuff not being taken seriously threw me for a loop. Which may be why I’ve taken care to develop quite a strong tolerance for the stuff now, though some jokes still upset me (see review of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS).

Winters’ Bones

This is a prosthetic Shelley Winters, constructed by makeup effects supremo Maurice Seiderman (CITIZEN KANE, BRIDE OF THE MONSTER) for NIGHT OF THE HUNTER. The kind of thing you really don’t expect to see in a ’50s movie, and it’s so convincing you don’t realise you are seeing it. Easier to believe Shelley has an oxygen tank hidden just out of sight. I think it’s often evidence of a good film, when the crew find themselves doing unconventional things, or finding new ways to solve old problems.

Shelley never had much luck in the water, did she? Asides from the hauntingly evoked watery grave above, she suffered an aquatic heart attack in THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE and drowned in A PLACE IN THE SUN. I assume something bad happens to her in TENTACLES, and even in LOLITA, where her character’s death by drowning was altered by Kubrick so he wouldn’t have to film on an unconvincing studio lake, James Mason responds to her passing by taking a bath.

Seiderman is a fascinating figure. He was employed by RKO to sweep the floor in the hair and makeup department, when Welles spotted his talent and allowed him to design the old-age makeup for KANE. Seiderman invented the soft contact lens as part of his work. Later he designed Welles’ prosthetics for TOUCH OF EVIL, but his IMDb credits look painfully incomplete: even some of the films listed, he received no credit for.

Hollywood lore (it’s still lore if I just make it up, isn’t it?) asserts that Seiderman, like Pygmalion, fell in love with his creation and absconded with the latex-coated Shelley Winters dummy after filming was completed, later marrying it in a blasphemous nuptial mass presided over by Bud Westmore.