Quote of the Day #7 / The Sunday Intertitle
You have been wondering all week — admit it! — how I will produce a Woolrich-inspired intertitle. That I am able to do so is down to the researches of CW biographer Francis M Nevins, who discovered that a “William Irish” (one of Woolrich’s several pseudonyms) worked at First National Pictures in 1929, and wrote the titles for Benjamin Christensen’s SEVEN FOOTPRINTS TO SATAN. Unfortunately I couldn’t source CHILDREN OF THE RITZ, based on one of Woolrich’s very early, Scott Fitzgerald-influenced novels of the roaring twenties, and even unfortunatelier the only copies of SEVEN FOOTPRINTS extant are very low quality and have Italian intertitles. However, through the miracle of Babelfish I can tell you that the above passage translates as ~
“Your life of saves but for the oath that you have made, you must serve for three years, ours landladies.”
End of Cornell Woolrich Week — but watch out for Day Eight of the week, also this month’s entry in Siodmak Year, coming soon.
shadowplay 
April 19, 2010 at 1:44 am
Woolrich Week isn’t complete without it!
April 19, 2010 at 8:16 am
Apart from the Siodmak, it’s possibly the only major one I haven’t touched on!
Truffaut romanticises the hell out of the ending (v diff in book) but it still seems bleak to me. She may have changed her mind about him, but are they going to make it? The snow suggests not. Snow always seems to prefigure failure in Truffaut, cf the book people in Fahrenheit 451 and the lovers’ getaway in Shoot the Pianist…
April 19, 2010 at 10:37 am
DC,
Congrats on another great project. I’m glad there will be a day 8. Why should anything re: Woolrich be conventional?
Radio Woolrich continues over at my blog. Cary Grant! Amnesia!!
April 19, 2010 at 10:53 am
Outstanding! Cary and amnesia, two great flavours that taste great together.
April 19, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Indeed Truffaut does romantacize the hell out of it. Especially when belmondo tells Deneuve “You’re so beautiful it hurts to look at you” — which is precisely what Truffaut felt about her at the time. At the 1970 New York Film Festival — she was there for Tristana, he for The Wild Child — he always walked two steps behind her, like dutiful Japanese wife — staring at her in rapt admiration.
April 19, 2010 at 3:46 pm
My admiration for Belmondo is increased by that film, because despite his proven versatility, one wouldn’t necessarily peg him for a Woolrich style sap/victim. But he throws away all his confident zip and buries himself in this lonely, desperate man.
April 19, 2010 at 8:05 pm
I wonder if what Belmondo says here isn’t what Scottie would’ve said to Madeleine, had Scottie been prone to Francophone raptures.
I’ll always love “Sirene du Mississippi” for its “Johnny Guitar” joke, the one where Belmondo and Deneuve emerge all dewy-eyes from a theater showing “Johnny Guitar” and one says to the other “It’s *more* that just a film about horses …” (I’m drawing upon memory for this. Let’s hope I’m being reasonably accurate.)
Finally, I suppose someone should ask it: Is there anything at all of interest in “Mortal Sins,” Michael Cristofer’s adaptation of “Waltz Into Darkness”? Those who talk about it are so vehement in their dissing of “Sins” that part of me wonders if *something* mightn’t be going on there …
April 19, 2010 at 9:19 pm
It’s been wisely said that Vertigo comes closer to the melancholy spirit of Woolrich than Rear Window does.
All I’ve seen of Sins is the sex scene, the only bit that’s online, for some reason. The bodies are very nice, but they are SO not into each other. I’ve never seen such unconvincing coitus. And filmed from overhead with a rotating camera, puh-leeze!
April 20, 2010 at 11:54 am
Thanks again for giving me a copy of Seven Footprints to Satan a while ago when I was looking for the films of Creighton Hale, goatfucker. One thing that I found astonishing when I was checking out the actors on the IMDB afterwards, is that the guy who plays the dwarf in one of the early scenes is the dwarf who (sitting in a harness on his giant friend’s shoulders) fights Mel Gibson in Mad Max 3. Quite a career! (He’s called Angelo Rossitto, and he’s in Freaks and various other noteworthy things as well, of course. Seems like an interesting guy, but, sadly, I reckon he’s too famous for the Unsung Joe.)
April 20, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Rossitto was a classic presence in scores of movies. I just saw him as a pint-sized Norseman in Roy William Neill’s The Viking. He’s very prominent in Beloved Rogue too.
I wanted to link to your Creighton Hale piece (I recommend Shadowplayers seek it out at The Unsung Joe, listed in the blogroll), but then I figured he’d suffered under the goatfucking rep long enough!
April 20, 2010 at 1:43 pm
I saw Crying With Laughter last night at the Cameo, and noted not only its Woolrichian plot devices – especially the ever-welcome alcohol-induced blackouts – but the presence of at least one Bobo alumnus. Did you catch it at the festival last year, or do you plan to see it now that it’s got a proper release?