The pencil fell

Picked up a small stack of old Films and Filming magazines in a Stockbridge charity shop: £1 each, the best price I’ve ever seen. I nearly bought all of them, but sense prevailed and I restricted myself to issues with interesting interviews or Raymond Durgnat articles.

Here’s Francis Ford Coppola interviewed in 1969, talking about his writing gig on Rene Clement’s IS PARIS BURNING? (the interview is a fantastic guide to FCC’s screenwriting years):

“After all the scripts I had written for Seven Arts (11 in 2 years), I was promised a reward of sorts–Ray Stark said I could just go to Paris and have a vacation with my wife because the writer then working on it was a man who was very ill, dying in fact. And these are the honest-to-God words used, my job was to assist that man and ‘if the pencil fell out of his hand, I was to pick it up.'”

I totally believe Ray Stark would have said that.

On the other hand, who was this dying writer? None of the credited or uncredited scribes listed on the IMDb expired within ten years of the film’s production. Which suggests that not only did they speak callously of the guy, they punted his name into obscurity as soon as he’d pegged it.

Coppola continues to trash-talk his collaborators:

“I could write a book about the troubles we had [I wish he would]– the silly, petty, dumb things with the French Government; it was just an insane mess. Paul Graetz, the French producer, was no help. And Rene Clement, the director, was even worse. Nobody would speak up. They were all terrified. They just wouldn’t admit that there were any Communists in France during the war. Or if there were we were never to use their names. It came down to that. Why? Because the de Gaulle regime didn’t acknowledge their existence–then or now. You see, the whole essence of the plot, as I saw it, was the battle between the Communists and the de Gaullist fraction [sic] for control of the city when the Germans moved out. You see, whereas the de Gaullists wanted to stall an uprising because they wanted the Americans to come in so that they, the de Gaullists, could eventually take over, the Communists wanted to start an insurrection so that they could take immediate control. That was the story. And if we couldn’t have that, I couldn’t see where there was a movie to be made. Well, I wanted out. I wanted to go home. Then Seven Arts sent Gore Vidal to Paris, who persuaded me to try things with him for a time.”

I left the “fraction” thing in, because FCC has an occasional tendency to mangle the language (“I don’t make films for the hoi polloi,” Clive James quoted him as saying, when he meant “the intelligentsia”).

It was lucky for Coppola that he stayed on the project long enough to scoop up co-writing credit with Vidal, because the gig established him as a WWII expert and that got him PATTON, which won him a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar. (General Patton even appears in IPB?, forcefully personated by Kirk Douglas.)

All that FCC says is interesting — and I can well imagine it being true. I do wonder how much of the production difficulties he was party to and understood, as a non-French speaker. But surely the stuff about avoiding mention of communism is true. As luck would have it, I just rewatched the movie, a favourite of mine (and Spike Lee’s).

It turns out there WAS a movie to be made. The ideological question of who was to conquer Paris is replaced in the film by a patriotic one — can the first tanks in be Leclerc’s French ones? Can the Resistance take the city before the Germans withdraw? And, most urgently of all, will the departing Germans blow up every single cultural treasure in the city? And, a side-issue of nevertheless pressing import, who will survive?

Clement may have been, in Coppola’s estimation, hopeless at negotiating the political perils of the production, but he serves up a large-scale historical epic in multiple languages (I do need to find a version that preserves the English AND French-language performances — do I need to edit one myself?) and the movie is surprisingly light on its feet — no white elephant (although Manny Farber and I would disagree on that, I’m sure). And it may be Maurice Jarre’s second-best score after LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (and the best he actually did himself — LOA seemingly owes a lot to the orchestrator). I do find the GREAT ESCAPE tradition of adding jaunty marches to grim war tales rather sinister, but it WORKS — the counterpoint is both shrewdly commercial, lightening the gloom, and artistically attractive… if morally queasy. Jarre brings out his cheery tune each time a new French movie star strides into frame, which means the music gets a VERY frequent airing — look, it’s Jean-Paul Belmondo, Charles Boyer, Alain Delon, Jean-Pierre Cassell, Leslie Caron, Bruno Cremer, Claude Dauphin, Daniel Gelin, Yves Montand, Michel Piccoli, Simone Signoret, Jean-Louis Trintignant… the individual casting is shrewd, too, with Trintignant as traitor in tinted shades… Piccoli’s existential jazz-beard marks him as a commie even if the script dares not speak the name.

As William Goldman explained of A BRIDGE TOO FAR, all-star casting is useful not only to pre-sell a movie, but it makes it much easier for the audience to keep the story straight in a complex film with countless speaking parts — we already know everybody so we can follow along happily.

IS PARIS BURNING? stars Ferdinand Griffon dit Pierrot; Adam Belinksi; Gigi; King Louis XIII; Bernardo; Victor Manzon ‘Serrano’; President of Earth; Jef Costello; Spartacus; Cagliostro; Pa Kent; Auric Goldfinger; Louis Bernard; Von Luger ‘The Kommandant’; Cesar Soubeyran dit ‘Le Papet’; Norman Bates; Henri Husson; Dr. Mabuse; Claude Ridder; Mare ‘Casque D’Or’; Elliot Ness; Clerici; Nscho-tschi; Milkman; Slugworth; Kazanian; Julien Doinel – le beau-père d’Antoine; Scope; and Charles Foster Kane.

The Stripey Hole

The prison sequence in MODERN TIMES contributes to the film’s episodic feeling. Nothing that’s planted here is used later. Chaplin could have had himself arrested and placed immediately into a van with Paulette, I think. But, on the other hand, placing our first glimpse of her “Gamin” before the prison term helps tie the different parts of the film together. And the prison sequence is very funny. I wonder if any of the ideas here came from CITY LIGHTS, where the Tramp has a spell inside which we never see (and quite rightly).

Cast into dungeons dark dank and donk — Charlie shares a cell with, of all people, Prince Barin from FLASH GORDON, made this same year. I knew if I kept blogging for a decade and a half things would start to make sense. (Paulette Goddard’s later work with QUIEN SABE?’s Damiano Damiani in LA NOIA is another charming connection, and I’ve already pointed out how FLASH recycles sets from FRANKENSTEIN designed by Charles D. Hall, who is also responsible for the production design in MODERN TIMES) Charlie is perturbed by Barin’s needlepoint. Having this big guy — a more naturalistic Eric Campbell — thread a needle in your direction is, from Charlie’s alarmed reaction, like gazing down the barrel of a gun.

Dissolve when the convicts go to dinner indicates to me that Chaplin has made a trim. I always liked the cheap gag of his meal being ladled into his plate while he’s otherwise occupied, and when he discovers the slop has apported in front of him, he looks upwards as if some passing seagull must be responsible. Silly and low and wonderful.

NOSE-POWDER! This is an excuse to have Charlie turn into a heroic berserker warrior, as he did in EASY STREET. It’s also a surprising post-code drug reference. How was it allowed? It’s true that Charlie doesn’t consciously take the drugs, and the drugs are being smuggled by bad guys. And Charlie uses the illicit substance as a condiment, rather than shooting up as he did (accidentally) in EASY STREET. But the seven-per-cent solution turning him into an unstoppable crimefighter seems like not the message Joe Breen was anxious to get out.

Anyway, I love the dramatic iris-in on the drug connection. A technique audiences of 1936 would not have been accustomed to seeing on their screens for close to a decade. The IMDb doesn’t seem to know who this guy is. I would like that information.

Love the dynamic pan to the salt cellar. Chaplin’s camera is already getting hyper. Now we get to see Charlie deliver a masterclass in what he imagines coke is like. It’s very moreish, apparently. In case we struggle to imagine how eating the stuff would work (oh, it would work, I think), Chaplin has himself wipe the stuff across his lower face so he can also inhale it.

Distracted by Prince Barin — under the influence, does Charlie see the guy abruptly clad in a breast plate and plumed helmet? — Charlie attempts to deliver a forkful of cocaine mush into his right ear. Like William Lee in NAKED LUNCH, reaching for a cigarette on the wrong side of his mouth, he has forgotten where his face is.

The ebullience Charlie now feels — showing Prince Barin where he can get off — does seem like plausible cokehead arrogance. Rotating mechanically on the spot when the convicts are sent back to their cells does not. It’s Harpo zaniness, and another illustration of Henri Bergson’s notion that comedy comes from people behaving like machines.

In a daze, Charlie accidentally escapes, and is panic-stricken when the call of a cuckoo brings him back to reality. An interesting use of sound — the bird does not appear.

JAILBREAK! One of the two gunmen is Frank Moran, with his “wrecked jeep of a face” (Manny Farber), a few years before he became a favourite player of Preston Sturges (“Psycho-lology!”)

Charlie thwarts the breakout with a dashing display of Peruvian courage, reacting to gunfights with flashing fists, as if he could deflect bullets with his cuffs like Wonder Woman (he won’t get magic cuffs until the end of the movie) and defeats his enemies by using an iron door as an offensive weapon. Charlie has been able to play the upright citizen, but only while coked out of his face, which I suppose makes it acceptable.

MODERN TIMES star Adenoid Hynkel; Lucretia Borgia; Fat Whiskered German Soldier / The Kaiser’s General / Bartender; Porthos; Mr. Whoozis; Norwegian Radio Listener (uncredited); The Millionaire’s Butler; Prince Barin; Cardinal Richelieu; Eggs; Frederick F. Trumble (uncredited); Tough Chauffeur;

Cast of Characters

I don’t go in for lists much — I think they’re a bit lazy — but I’m feeling a bit lazy, so I thought I’d list Preston Sturges’ major stock company players and pick my fave role for each one.

William Demarest certainly got his share of major roles. I love him as Sgt. Heffelfinger in HAIL THE CONQUERING HERO and he has a kind of magnificence as the stubborn Mr. Bildocker in CHRISTMAS IN JULY, the Juror 8 of coffee slogan selection committees, and THE LADY EVE gives him the line he was born to say, “Positively the same dame!” But it’s THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK in which he breaks my heart, as well as his own coccyx (you really shouldn’t try to kick your own daughter, Constable Kockenlocker). “Daughters, phooey!” is nearly as good a signature line for him.

Robert Greig, most butling of all butlers, is staunchly reliable but of course it’s SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS which gifts him with Sturges’ most serious speech, beautifully intoned and then Eric Blore (the Lorre to his Greenstreet) takes the curse off it.

Al Bridge is a man who doesn’t get enough credit. Sturges clearly loved his saggy sourpuss face and world-weary delivery. Though his terrifying “Mister” in SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS is a revelation, to see him doing what he does best, MORGAN’S CREEK (“I practice the law and as such I am not only willing but anxious to sue anybody, anytime, for anything…”) and THE SIN OF HAROLD DIDDLEBOCK (“You couldn’t make me an attractive offer, not if you got down on your bended knee and threw in a set o’ dishes…”) are tops. Do I have to choose one? I’m not going to.

With Luis Alberni I’m going to cheat and take a film Sturges wrote but didn’t direct, Mitchell Leisen’s EASY LIVING, because I love Louis Louis of the Hotel Louis and his garbled English (“Gymnasalum!”)

Jimmy Conlin’s biggest role is as Wormy in DIDDLEBOCK, but his most important is as the Trusty in SULLIVAN’S, where he supplies the only tonal connection between the deadly serious scenes he’s in and the broad comedy elsewhere. His warm reminiscences about his friend the Blowtorch Killer are hilarious.

Julius “This is a talking picture” Tannen is funny in MORGAN’S CREEK as a Russian-accented storekeeper inexplicably named Rafferty, but he’s a real human being in THE GREAT MOMENT, Professor Charles T. Jackson, and it’s startling to see the depths of bile in him. Like Conlin, he was a vaudeville actor, in fact a monologist rather than a player of scenes. But Sturges saw the potential.

Torben Meyer, another dialect wiz, as Mr. Klink in THE LADY EVE has a whole character arc in two little scenes. A Dane, he seems able to vary his accent so that odd bits of colloquial American cut through.

Porter Hall: SULLIVAN’S. Little man talking fast thru a cigar.

Robert Warwick, same film, tall man talking fast without cigar. “Why should I suffer alone?” He was a leading man in silents, you know.

I don’t remember much about Franklin Pangborn’s role in DIDDLEBOCK, but his character name is “Formfit Franklin” and that’s good enough for me.

Frank Moran, MORGAN’S CREEK, “Psycholology.”

Rudy Vallee counts, I guess, he’s in three of them, but the first, PALM BEACH, is the best. “A pathetic creature in the final stages of futility,” wrote Manny Farber of John D. Hackensacker III. “It is one of the tragedies of this life that the men most in need of a beating-up are always enormous.”

Raymond Walburn, who has buttons for eyes, is terrific as the slimy mayor in HAIL THe CONQUERING HERO but his Dr. Maxford in CHRISTMAS IN JULY is aces.

Robert Dudley, the Weenie King, is in more Sturges films than I thought — the IMDb has him down as “man” in MORGAN’S, but of course it’s as the sausage tycoon that he’ll be remembered. “Cold are the hands of time that creep along relentlessly, destroying slowly but without pity that which yesterday was young. Alone our memories resist this disintegration and grow more lovely with the passing years. Heh! That’s hard to say with false teeth!”

There were a few women who appeared in more than one Sturges film, but Esther Howard (right) was the only one who got showstopping comedy scenes. The randy window Miz Zeffie in SULLIVAN’S TRAVELS, partnered by the sour Almira Sessions, is her finest achievement.

Lots more actors did a couple of Sturges films, and of course Joel McCrea starred in three, which is a different matter. And he obviously liked Victor Potel and Harry Rosenthal and Jimmie Dundee and Georgia Caine and mild-mannered Harry Hayden, who gets another of his great speeches as Mr. Waterbury in CHRISTMAS IN JULY: “I’m not a failure. I’m a success. You see, ambition is all right if it works. But no system could be right where only half of 1% were successes and all the rest were failures – that wouldn’t be right. I’m not a failure. I’m a success. And so are you, if you earn your own living and pay your bills and look the world in the eye.”

Sturges wrote, “My bosses could never understand why I kept using practically the same small-salaried players in picture after picture. They said, ‘Why don’t you get some new faces?’ I always replied that these little players who had contributed so much to my first hits had a moral right to work in my subsequent pictures. I guess Paramount was very glad to be rid of me eventually, as no one there understood a word I said.”