Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Knife in the Water (1962)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Jerzy Skolimowski, story by Jakub Goldberg & Roman Polanski
Produced by Stanislaw Zylewicz
94 minutes

The biggest surprise in Knife in the Water is that the filmmaking is so in tune that the script doesn’t need surprises to hold our attention. Five years of study at the Polish Film School in Lodz led Roman Polanski to the idea for a feature length thriller to take place in a confined space, though the backdrop he selected was the Mazury lake district he’d camped and sailed. Receiving a go-ahead from “Kamera” Productions — a state owned film company in Poland — Polanski and his friends Jakub Goldberg and Jerzy Skolimowski finished a script in the summer of 1959. Skolimowski had hit upon the idea for the action to span a 24-hour period. Rejected by the Ministry of Culture on the grounds that the script had no social value, Polanski was given a year to resubmit it. By the spring of 1961, a loosening of Soviet control in the arts permitted Knife in the Water to move forward with Polanski directing.

Opening March 1962, Polish critics slammed Knife in the Water. Premier Wladyslaw Gomulka denounced it as a film that “displayed the kind of thinking for which there is no place anywhere in the Communist world.” But when it was shown at the Venice Film Festival in August, word of mouth began to build. The film arrived in the United States in October 1963 for the first New York Film Festival. A critical sensation, it even picked up an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Film. Knife in the Water is an antidote to contemporary thrillers stocked with psychos or dead bodies. The subtle power games between the characters build to an inevitable clash while the nautical atmosphere and attractive actors keeps the picture exciting throughout. Krzysztof Komeda composed an elegant jazz musical score that is perfect for the film’s cool decadence.

The married couple of Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) and Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) take a Sunday drive in the countryside. Affluent enough to own a car but just barely able to conceal their contempt for each other, the afternoon suddenly becomes more exciting for the pair when a 19-year-old boy (Zygmunt Malanowicz) hitchhiking in the middle of the road is almost mowed down by Andrzej. The couple gives the kid a ride to a marina, where they plan to take their sailboat out for a day and night on the lake. Seeking to flex his superiority, Andrzej invites the kid to come with them. A drifter more accustomed to the woods than the water, the boy receives training in basic seamanship from Andrzej, a sportswriter and former sailor. Krystyna seems to enjoy the presence of the younger specimen, who reveals a switchblade knife in his possession.

Sensitive to being bossed around and dominated by Andrzej, the boy guts the afternoon out, perhaps due to his attraction for Andrzej’s wife, a skilled bosun in her own right. While husband and wife cavort in the lake — leaving the boy alone on the boat when he claims he can’t swim — the wind suddenly picks up and it’s Krystyna who climbs back into the boat and gets it under control. On their way back to dry land to drop their passenger off, Andrzej runs aground and when it begins to storm, the three of them take shelter for the night below deck. Krystyna and the boy wake early and feeling threatened by the attention she’s given him, Andrzej throws the knife overboard and in the tussle that follows, makes the boy disappear below the waves as well. The couple is forced to then decide what to do.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 1,989 users: 85% for Knife In the Water

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Repulsion (1965)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Written by Roman Polanski & Gérard Brach and David Stone
Produced by Gene Gutowski
105 minutes

In the waking moments between Alfred Hitchcock and Michelangelo Antonioni, between Psycho and Blowup, there’s Repulsion, a stark and stunning British film that’s almost certainly a thriller, though it seems to be missing a murderer. Taking place in the psyche, the picture drifts away from art and provides intense audience appreciation by piling up a couple of bodies, as well as jolts of terror so virulent you might fly out of your seat. The English language debut of Roman Polanski and star Catherine Deneuve was initiated when producer Gene Gutowski introduced the filmmaker to Compton Group, a London based exploitation picture maker. Polanski & Gérard Brach whipped up a draft for a female psychodrama in 17 days, which Michael Klinger and Tony Tenser agreed to finance for £40,000. Polanski would ultimately bring Repulsion in for £95,000.

Despite the low budget, Polanski insisted on hiring Gilbert Taylor, who’d shot Dr. Strangelove and A Hard Day’s Night. The British director of photography amazed Polanski with his ability to calculate the amount of light needed for a given shot without using a light meter. It’s the self-assured precision of the film that holds our attention while nothing much happens for 45 minutes. Polanski dramatizes the tedium of a woman’s everyday routine and the heightened sense of her dreams so fluidly that we’re unsure what’s real and what isn’t. Praised as an accurate depiction of schizophrenia, the film is far from a clinical study and succeeds by being wet and wild with imagination. Polanski had help on his sophomore feature, with an eye catching credit sequence designed by Maurice Binder and a tumultuous jazz score composed by Chico Hamilton.

A Belgian living in London named Carole (Catherine Deneuve) ends another day at the salon where she works as a manicurist. On her walk home, the quiet girl is waylaid by Colin (John Fraser), an overeager cad who pressures Carole for a date, seemingly oblivious of her complete aversion to him. She returns to the shabby flat in South Kensington she shares with her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux) and is distressed to find a straight razor belonging to Helen’s lover in the bathroom. A married man who cancels the home cooked dinner Helen was preparing when he insists the couple dine out, Michael (Ian Hendry) finds his limited charms lost on Carole and suggests to her sister that she needs to see a doctor. Later that evening, sounds of Helen’s lovemaking awaken Carole and upset her.

Helen and Michael take off to Italy for a holiday, leaving Carole with cash to pay the late rent. Occupying the flat alone, her gradual descent into schizophrenia begins when she hears bells from the convent across the street tolling at midnight. So distracted at work that she cuts a client’s finger, she’s sent home. Running out of food, Carole’s delusions intensify. From the window, she sees a strange woman watching her flat. She begins to imagine cracks forming in the walls. A construction worker Carole has noticed on the walk home shoves his way into her room and rapes her. Men start visiting the flat at a very bad time for Carole, beginning with Colin breaking down the door for a chat and later, her landlord (Patrick Wymark), who suggests a way Carole could lower her rent. Both men leave the flat feet first.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 3,844 users: 87% for Repulsion

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Roman Polanski, based on the novel by Ira Levin
Produced by William Castle
136 minutes

Crafted with elegance and wit so assured that its style is nearly invisible, Rosemary’s Baby has earned its spot in discussions of the scariest film ever made. Ira Levin — whose debut novel A Kiss Before Dying was published to acclaim in 1953 — found inspiration in his wife’s pregnancy for a second novel in 1967. Film rights were obtained by William Castle, the director whose in-theater gimmicks for movies like House on Haunted Hill and The Tingler involved rubber skeletons flying over the audience or electrified seats. Unable to raise financing for Rosemary’s Baby, Castle partnered with Paramount Pictures, whose production chief Robert Evans agreed to split the profits with Castle, but refused to let the shlockmeister direct. Castle accepted the role of producer as Evans convinced Roman Polanski to adapt and direct Rosemary’s Baby.

One of Polanski’s few revisions to the novel was a brilliant one: embracing psychological horror and leaving it to the viewer decide whether Rosemary was the victim of witchcraft or her own prenatal paranoia. Richly designed by Richard Sylbert, the film was shot in 14 weeks: two weeks in New York for exterior shooting around the Dakota Hotel were followed by 12 weeks of interiors on the Paramount lot in Los Angeles. Urban legends supported by Castle that the picture was cursed neglect how gripping Rosemary’s Baby ultimately is without using elaborate special effects to generate unease. The dream sequences are effective because like the film, they unlock irrational fears we keep locked in our subconscious. Skillfully adapted and wonderfully cast, the ending ranks among the most gloriously black of all time.

Looking for an apartment to rent, Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) and her struggling actor husband Guy (John Cassavetes) follow a leasing agent (Elisha Cook) up to a 7^th floor unit of the “Bramford Building” in New York. The couple ignores the stories their erudite friend “Hutch” (Maurice Evans) shares about the building’s “unpleasant reputation around the turn of the century”, including tenants whose preoccupation with witchcraft earned it the name “Black Bramford”. Rosemary and Guy hear their new neighbors — bickering through the thin partition wall — before they see them. In the basement laundry room, Rosemary meets reformed junkie Terry Gionoffrio  (Angela Dorian) who was taken in by Rosemary’s neighbors and given a new lease on life. Not long after, Terry is found on the sidewalk, dead from an apparent suicide.

Rosemary finally meets her elderly neighbors Minnie (Ruth Gordon) and Roman Castevet (Sidney Blackmer) when the couple invite her and Guy to dinner. While her husband is quickly won over by the magnetic Castevets, Rosemary is suspicious of the strange potables and desserts Minnie pushes on her. Good fortune finds Guy when another actor suddenly goes blind, landing him the leading role in a play. With his career taking off, he suggests they have a baby. The night they conceive, Rosemary feels faint and experiences a strange dream. At the urging of the Castevets, she leaves her obstetrician for one the Castevets recommend, Dr. Saperstein (Ralph Bellamy). Alarmed by her weight loss and abdominal pain, Hutch delivers Rosemary a book that leads her to suspect those closest to her belong to a coven of witches who are keenly interested in her baby.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average 26,945 users: 83% for Rosemary’s Baby

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

The Ghost Writer (2010)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Robert Harris & Roman Polanski, based on the novel The Ghost by Robert Harris
Produced by Roman Polanski, Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde
128 minutes

Humming with gleeful malevolence, The Ghost Writer could be considered a throwback to ‘70s political thrillers like The Parallax View or Three Days of the Condor if it wasn’t so much fun. Robert Harris had wanted to write about the relationship between a ghostwriter and a politician for 15 years. He found a story in 2006 when Tony Blair became dogged by war crimes accusations on his way out of 10 Downing Street. Moving one step further, the author imagined a British prime minister who was installed by the CIA and the truth being stumbled onto by the ghostwriter of his memoirs. Envisioned briefly as a stageplay along the lines of Sleuth, it became a novel instead. When Roman Polanski’s $130 million production of the author’s historical thriller Pompeii was shelved in 2007 over financing, Harris sent the director his manuscript for The Ghost.

Harris & Polanski adapted the novel in Paris and Polanski and his producers were able to raise financing from private funding sources in Europe at a budget of €32 million (roughly $45 million). Collaborating with cinematographer Pawel Edelman for the third consecutive film and editor Hervé De Luze for the sixth, Polanski’s expertise with the thriller chimes The Ghost Writer along like a Swiss clock that strikes cuckoo at the top of the hour. Shot at Studio Babelsberg for the interiors and the German island of Sylt for exteriors, the compound and the coastal wilderness where much of the action takes place sets the film apart visually, but it’s insidious wit that makes The Ghost Writer so enjoyable. Not many directors of political thrillers would pause to focus on a Filipino gardener raking leaves in a windstorm. Alexandre Desplat composed the film’s playful musical score.

An unnamed British writer we’ll know only as The Ghost (Ewan McGregor) lunches with his agent (Jon Bernthal) and is put up for the job of rewriting the memoirs of former prime minister Adam Lang when the body of the previous ghostwriter — a loyal aide to the politician — washes up on the shores of New England. A political novice, The Ghost passes the scrutiny of publishing exec John Maddox (James Belushi) and Lang’s D.C. attorney Sidney Kroll (Timothy Hutton) when he promises a memoir that the layperson can relate to. Dispatched to the desolate island of “Old Haven”, where Lang’s publisher has lent him his American vacation compound, The Ghost meets Lang’s personal assistant Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall), his cunning wife Ruth (Olivia Williams) and the charismatic Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) himself.

As The Ghost interviews Lang — a student actor who became interested in politics when he met his wife — the International Criminal Court announces an investigation into the ex-prime minister on charges he approved the kidnap and torture of four terror suspects from Pakistan. As media and human rights activists descend on the island, The Ghost is moved onto the compound for security. He discovers proof that Lang was politically active two years earlier than he claims and that the previous ghostwriter was the one who leaked the human rights scandal to British Prime Minister Richard Rycart (Robert Pugh). Sneaking onto the mainland to interview Lang’s mysterious college mentor Paul Emmett (Tom Wilkinson), The Ghost unravels a plot indicating that Lang may have been recruited and run by the CIA.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 7,950 users: 70% for The Ghost Writer

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: 77 for The Ghost Writer

What do you say?

Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

Chinatown (1974)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Written by Robert Towne
Produced by Robert Evans
130 minutes

The only thing really left to debate about Chinatown is whether it belongs among the 25 best films ever made, 10 best or whether it vaults over titles like Citizen Kane or Casablanca as The Best Film Ever Made. According to the legend as repeated by screenwriter Robert Towne, its genesis was a 1969 photo essay in a Los Angeles Times about Raymond Chandler’s L.A. Conceived as a love letter to the vanishing city of his youth and using something as vague as land and water as catalysts, Towne would sell Paramount Pictures production head Robert Evans on his concept for a ‘30s detective mystery and writing with Jack Nicholson in mind, deliver a 178 page script that both intrigued and bewildered director Roman Polanski. Pruning the epic script with Polanski, a point of contention was the ending. The screenwriter wanted good to win the day. The director preferred tragedy.

The power of Chinatown is the care the film takes to recreate Depression Era Los Angeles — which Gittes refers to only half jokingly as “a small town” at one point — and fill it with a complex story that remains mesmerizing no matter how many times it’s replayed. Through stunning production design by Richard Sylbert, a desaturated color scheme that evokes black & white photography and a sensual musical score by Jerry Goldsmith, Chinatown achieves the illusion it was produced in 1947 instead of 1974. Where most whodunits focus on little more than heists or serial killers, Towne weaves an ambitious tale of natural resources, corruption and family scandal that stretches clear into the horizon, much as the city of Los Angeles does. In addition to the sucker punch ending, Polanski contributes a rhythm that enables locations like a city morgue or a retirement home to leap off the screen and feel real.

In Los Angeles of the late 1930s, private detective J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is hired by “Evelyn Mulwray” (Diane Ladd) to verify that her husband Hollis Mulwray (Darrell Zwerling) — chief of the Department of Water and Power — is having an affair. Gittes shadows Mulwray at City Hall, where the engineer cites safety concerns for his refusal to build a dam that would ease the burden on agriculture, which gripped in a drought are sharing the water supply with the public. Gittes completes his job by snapping photos of Mulwray with a blonde in Echo Park. The photos are mysteriously reprinted in the newspaper and the real Evelyn Mulwray (Faye Dunaway) reveals herself to serve Gittes with a lawsuit. Eager to uncover who set him up, Gittes seeks help from Mrs. Mulwray, who now prefers to drop the matter entirely. Before Gittes can question her husband, Mulwray’s body is pulled out of a reservoir.

Pressed for information by Lt. Lou Escobar (Perry Lopez) — Gittes’ partner when they patrolled the morally ambiguous streets of Chinatown — Gittes is hired by Mrs. Mulwray to solve her husband’s death. Snooping around the reservoir where Mulwray died, Gittes is cornered by two goons (Roy Jenson, Roman Polanski) and has a nostril cut open. Sensing that Mrs. Mulwray is hiding something, Gittes visits her estranged father Noah Cross (John Huston), a power broker who once owned the city’s water supply with Mulwray. His interest lies in finding the girl the private eye photographed with Mulwray and he hires Gittes to do so. A key to the mystery lies in the San Fernando Valley, where farmers are being pressured to sell by an anonymous landowner who stands to make a fortune if the dam project that Mulwray blocked is now approved.

Alex Simon of The Hollywood Interview sat down with Robert Towne on the 35^th anniversary of Chinatown for an exhaustive interview on the development of the script.

Richard Ballad caught up with Roman Polanski 35 years previous for an interview in the August 1974 issue of Penthouse Magazine.

What do you say?

Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933 in Paris. The sordid details of his flight from the United States in 1978 have often overshadowed discussion of the director’s work, which at the age of 77, includes one of the best films of 2010. Is he a world class filmmaker? In the month of August, I take a look at ten directed by Roman Polanski.

The Tenant (1976)
Directed by Roman Polanski
Screenplay by Gérard Brach & Roman Polanski, based on the novel Le Locataire chimérique by Roland Topor
Produced by Andrew Braunsberg
126 minutes

Marrying the economy of a student filmmaker with the technical flourish of an Academy Award nominee for Best Director, Roman Polanski’s follow-up to Chinatown is an occasionally freakish problem child. The narrative misbehaves, some of the production choices are uneasy, but this thriller is unforgettable. Based on a 1964 novel by French illustrator Roland Topor, film rights were obtained by Universal Pictures for Jack Clayton to direct. It was picked up by Paramount and while Clayton labored to finish The Great Gatsby, studio chief Robert Evans apparently hooked Polanski into making The Tenant. Shot in Paris with Polanski actually playing the lead role, the second most jarring aspect is that everyone in the cast except Polanski, Melvyn Douglas, Jo Van Fleet and Shelley Winters had their voices dubbed to English for the American prints.

Alfred Hitchcock — who was much more comfortable in front of a camera — never starred in one of his pictures and it’s difficult to justify Polanski directing himself in The Tenant. While Robert DeNiro or Harvey Keitel would have launched this into another realm, watching Polanski duck in and out of scenes gives the film a unique vibe it might not have had with a star. A black sheep relation to Rosemary’s Baby without characters to empathize with, the film is equipped with a wicked black wit, unusual lighting by Sven Nykvist and a disquieting musical score by Philippe Sarde. Unconventional through and through, Polanski uses the film’s peculiarities to lure us into the story rather than alienate us.  An eclectic mix of American character actors and French performers, tongue-in-cheek goofiness and sinister thrill, The Tenant plays more like a wily Sundance entry than a labored Hollywood film.

A young man named Trelkovsky (Roman Polanski) arrives at a Paris apartment building, where he troubles the sullen property manager (Shelley Winters) to show him a room for rent. Garishly decorated and lacking a toilet, The Concierge points to the spot where the previous tenant landed when she jumped out the window. The tenant survived the fall, but The Concierge seems satisfied that she won’t recover. After passing his interview with the building’s owner Monsieur Zy (Melvyn Douglas), Trelkovsky visits Bretonneau Hospital, where the tenant is covered in bandages and cannot speak. At her bedside is Stella (Isabelle Adjani), who becomes even more distraught when her friend lets loose a blood curdling scream and dies. Trelkovsky takes Stella to see Enter the Dragon and after making out in the theater, go their separate ways.

Soon, strange things are afoot at Trelkovsky’s apartment building. Behind a wardrobe, he discovers a hole in the wall containing a whole human tooth. With a view of the toilet across the courtyard, Trelkovsky observes tenants standing still for hours. His neighbor Madame Gaderian (Lila Kedrova) and a disabled daughter knock on his door, fearful that someone has lodged a complaint against them. Later, Madame Dioz (Jo Van Fleet) visits, demanding he add his signature to a petition to evict Madam Gaderian and her son due to the noise. Not certain what she’s talking about, Trelkovsky refuses. Investigating the toilet, he discovers Egyptian hieroglyphics on the wall of the type the previous tenant was obsessed with. He becomes convinced he’s suffering a plot by his neighbors to kill him and with Stella’s help, tries to figure out why.

What do you say?

In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

The Innocents (1961)
Directed by Jack Clayton
Screenplay by William Archibald and Truman Capote and John Mortimer, based on the novel The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
Produced by Jack Clayton
100 minutes

Submitted in the category of greatest horror movies you’ve never seen is The Innocents, Jack Clayton’s exquisite, heart in a vise adaptation of The Turn of the Screw. The 1898 novella by Henry James had inspired a Broadway play by William Archibald in 1950 (titled The Innocents) and an NBC television drama starring Ingrid Bergman and directed by John Frankenheimer in 1959. Public domain in the United States, 20^th Century Fox owned international rights to James’ story and launched a film version as a British production. Archibald adapted his play, but once Clayton chose the project as his sophomore directorial effort, the director hired John Mortimer to contribute to the story. Clayton then turned to Truman Capote to flesh out a script, utilizing much of James’ dialogue but tweaking some of the action.

The Innocents is a thrill because it exercises artistic restraint, obscuring its images with space and shadow and inviting the audience to give the horrors substance. Under orders to shoot with “Cinemascope” anamorphic lenses Fox had developed and publicized, director of photography Freddie Francis (who’d move into the director’s chair for 15 years until David Lynch recruited him to light The Elephant Man in the same dreamlike fashion) generated claustrophobia with a special lens filter that created an iris effect, clouding the edges of the frame. The child performances are devilish, while Deborah Kerr is just nervous enough to imply that her character may not have both her oars in the water. Like Ridley Scott at his best, Clayton lavishes the film in striking detail and mood with a script that never strays into any blind alleys.

Unwilling to raise his orphaned niece and nephew, a London based man about town (Michael Redgrave) interviews Miss Giddens (Deborah Kerr) for the position. Inexperienced as a governess, Miss Giddens seems to care enough about children for an uncle seeking a speedy replacement for the previous governess Miss Jessel, who has died. Sent to his country estate in Bly — which her employer describes as “a rather large, a rather lonely place” — Miss Giddens is relieved to get along so well with her adventurous young charge Flora (Pamela Franklin). The genial housekeeper Mrs. Grose (Megs Jenkins) confirms that like their uncle, the children can be quite charming and persuasive. When Flora’s brother Miles (Martin Stephens) is suddenly expelled from boarding school, he arrives at Bly for the summer, just as his sister oddly mentioned he would the night before.

Strange things begin to occur at Bly. Under glare of the sun, Miss Giddens spots a man watching her from a tower top. Climbing the stairs, she finds Miles playing there, alone; Mrs. Grose claims that other than two maids and a gardener, no one else shares the estate with them. Playing hide and seek with the children, Miss Giddens glimpses a woman wandering the corridor and while hiding downstairs, she comes face to face with the apparition she spotted on the tower, peering at her through a window. The man she describes to Mrs. Grose is confirmed to be Peter Quint (Peter Wyngarde), an ill-tempered valet who suffered a fatal fall outside that window. Discovering that Miss Jessel drowned herself after Quint’s death, Miss Giddens becomes convinced that the spirits have taken possession of the children in a bid to be reunited from beyond the grave.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 130 users: 86% for The Innocents

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

The Haunting (1963)
Directed by Robert Wise
Screenplay by Nelson Gidding, based on the novel The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Produced by Robert Wise
112 minutes

While The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers both inspired remakes that dragged great sci-fi concepts out into the deep end of the pool, Robert Wise’s The Haunting has always occupied those waters, lurking in an elegant cool that’s unique among cinema’s ghost stories. Wise came upon a book review of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House in 1957 and was apparently so spooked reading a copy on the MGM lot that screenwriter Nelson Gidding made the director jump when he burst into Wise’s office. Put in turnaround by United Artists, Wise was able to interest MGM in the property, but was offered a budget short of the amount he needed. Discovering that MGM-British Studios was willing to financing the film to the tune of $1.1 million– roughly $6.7 million in today money — Wise shot The Haunting outside London on soundstages at Borehamwood.

The Haunting is a reminder of a time when movies couldn’t count on gore, much less the color red, to scare an audience. Tension is achieved through performance and atmosphere. Julie Harris plays one of the all-time great nutters, a woman who’s been poked with so much psychic trauma that spirits in the mansion seem friendly by comparison. Claire Bloom, Richard Johnson and Russ Tamblyn roll through the delicious dialogue while managing to approach the material seriously. Collaborating with director of photography Davis Boulton, Robert Wise shot the film — his last in black & white — with anamorphic lenses by Panavision that seem to peek around corners. Without the money to showcase ghosts, the filmmakers embrace psychological horror and leave it to the audience to decide what’s real and what’s not, giving The Haunting mystique while tightening up its suspense.

Seeking a site to pursue his life’s work in the study of psychic phenomena, Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson) arrives on Hill House, a remote New England manor built 90 odd years previous by Hugh Crain as a home for his wife and daughter, both of whom would die there under unusual circumstances. Sharing their fate would be Crain’s second wife, as well as a caretaker, who hung herself from a spiral staircase in the library. Warning him that no one who’s visited Hill House has stayed for more than a few days, its current deed holder Mrs. Sanderson (Fay Compton) is intrigued by whether life truly exists after death. She agrees to lease the house to Dr. Markway for his experiment on the condition that her foppish nephew Luke Sanderson (Russ Tamblyn) — next in line to inherit the mansion — be included.

Dr. Markway’s research team consists of the tightly wound Eleanor Lance (Julie Harris) and the cosmopolitan Theodora (Claire Bloom). Eleanor experienced paranormal activity as a child, while Theo is a skilled psychic. Luke has no truck with the supernatural and jokes about turning the house into a nightclub. Left alone by the husband-wife caretakers (Valentine Dyall, Rosalie Crutchley) who refuse to enter the house after dark, Eleanor and Theo are terrorized by banging outside their room. Dr. Markway and Luke report hearing no such noises. The next morning, “Welcome home Eleanor” is found scrawled in chalk above the stairwell. Eleanor becomes obsessed with staying in the house and when Dr. Markway’s wife Grace (Lois Maxwell) joins the ghost hunters, her jealousy tips her over into madness.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 254 users: 86% for The Haunting (1963)

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?

In the month of July, I take a look at films released in my very favorite film stock and aspect ratio: black & white in anamorphic. Unless they’re being financed with credit cards, movies are rarely shot like this anymore because they’re impossible to sell to television. Yet these dreams sneak onto Turner Classic Movies every now and again …

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Directed by Don Siegel
Screenplay by Daniel Mainwaring and Richard Collins (uncredited) and Sam Peckinpah (uncredited), based on the magazine serial by Jack Finney
Produced by Walter Wanger
80 minutes

One of the most beloved of the science fiction B-movies that attacked the 1950s, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a testament to how a powerful story and an appealing cast can elevate an otherwise awful mess into a classic. Originally published in Collier’s Magazine as a three-part serial beginning in November 1954, Jack Finney’s source material captured the imagination of producer Walter Wanger, who was coming off a personal scandal, prison term and even worse, a commercial calamity in 1948 with Joan of Arc starring Ingrid Bergman. Languishing in a deal at Allied Artists for Walter and Harold Mirisch, Wanger and director Don Siegel made box office lemonade with a prison reform picture titled Riot On Cell Block 11. When Wanger pitched the studio The Body Snatchers, AA purchased the screen rights.

Shot in 19 days on a $300,000 budget — $2 million in today money — Invasion of the Body Snatchers was a hit in spite of its studio, which hoping to sell more tickets, mangled Ellsworth Fredericks’ 1.33:1 compositions by cropping the frame to fit RKO’s “SuperScope” format of 2:1. They also inserted a prologue and epilogue that gave the film a resolution far more upbeat than what Siegel intended. The conceit of alien pods stripping human beings of their individuality while they sleep is seductive in how easily it can apply to any number of social or political paranioas, while Kevin McCarthy and Dana Wynter appear to have a blast as the doomed couple. A stiff voiceover narration kills the suspense and makes it difficult to stay on edge about anything in the film, but with so little money for special effects, the original Body Snatchers plays like a drum tight film noir as opposed to a silly sci-fi movie.

A psychiatrist (Whit Bissell) is summoned in the middle of the night to treat to a raving lunatic being held by police at a local hospital. The wild-eyed Dr. Miles Bennell (Kevin McCarthy) insists that he is not insane and begging to be listened to, begins his story. Returning from a two-week conference to his practice in the idyllic town of “Santa Mira”, Dr. Bennell’s nurse Sally Withers (Jean Wiles) reports that several of his patients have demanded to see the doctor, only to later cancel their appointments as if everything was fine. On their way back from the train depot, Dr. Bennell almost mows down a boy running away from his mother; apparently, he’s scared to go to school. At his office, Dr. Bennell is reunited with a recently divorced college flame named Becky Driscoll (Dana Wynter).

Becky is troubled by a cousin who claims Becky’s uncle is no longer her uncle. Santa Mira’s psychiatrist Dr. Kauffman (Larry Gates) reveals that he’s had a dozen patients suffering the same hysteria, which he theorizes is due to stress over world events. Dr. Bennell and Becky have their romantic evening cut short when his writer friend Jack Belicec (King Donovan) and wife Teddy (Carolyn Jones) summon them to their home, where the body of a strange being with a resemblance to Jack is laid out on a pool table. Dr. Bennell later discovers imitations of them hatching from seed pods in the Belicec greenhouse, where it becomes clear that aliens lacking emotion have replaced townsfolk while they sleep. With the phone company and police already fallen victim, the couples try to stay awake long enough to get help.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 5,280 users: 81% for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

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In the month of June, Joe Valdez “takes over” programming of the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles with a series of double features on his favorite film themes.

Here’s Part 2 of a bill featuring our friends the pod people.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
Directed by Philip Kaufman
Screenplay by W.D. Richter, based on the novel The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney
Produced by Robert H. Solo
115 minutes

Whether drawing up a ballot of Best B-Movies, Best Science Fiction Films, Best Remakes or even Super Cinema of the ‘70s, oddly enough, the intoxicating 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers would land on any of those lists. Based on a 1954 novel by Jack Finney, the 1956 film version hit multiple zeitgeists in its day, arriving at a moment when Americans seemed obsessed with invasion, whether from outer space or the U.S.S.R. Directed by Philip Kaufman and adapted by W.D. Richter, the remake boasts far more insidious wit, characters as contemporary as they are compelling and a brilliantly pitch black ending that in its own way, puts a stake through the heart of the ‘60s. It’s gleefully written, perfectly cast, jarringly made and more than three decades later, looks a lot like a minor masterpiece.

The Body Snatchers beautifully exploits a paranoia that seems wired into the American psyche: fear that others are coming to eliminate your way of life. The 1978 version could be interpreted as a warning against feminism or urban alienation, take your pick. Kaufman cast thoroughly offbeat performers in Donald Sutherland, Brooke Adams, Jeff Goldblum, Veronica Cartwright and too cool for school Leonard Nimoy; as opposed to movie stars, their survival is far from assured. Kaufman employs discordant camera angles and sound effects but instead of horror, focuses on the characters and their doomed love affair, making the story intense without much in the way of gore or cheap scares. Michael Chapman handled the stark lighting while Thomas Burman and Edouard Henriques executed the unsettling makeup effects.

Seeking escape from the surface of a dying world, alien spores drift into space and reach the Earth’s atmosphere, raining down on the city of San Francisco. Taking home one of the strange pink flowers than begin to bloom, biologist Elizabeth Driscoll (Brooke Adams) recognizes the pollinization of two different species to create a third. Unable to pry her dentist boyfriend Geoffrey (Art Hindle) away from TV sports, Elizabeth shares her discovery with Matthew Bennell (Donald Sutherland), a health inspector and her close colleague at the Department of Health. Geoffrey’s alienated behavior the next morning prompts Elizabeth to follow him. Distraught by the sinister changes she begins to detect in her boyfriend and in the city around them, Elizabeth is assured by Matthew that a friend — pop psychologist Dr. David Kibner — will have a logical explanation.

At Kibner’s book signing party, Matthew and Elizabeth meet up with another one of his friends, struggling poet Jack Bellicec (Jeff Goldblum). While Kibner (Leonard Nimoy) reveals that six of his patients swear that loved ones have changed into something less human, the doc believes our fear of commitment is at the root of the hysteria. Returning to the mud baths he operates with his New Age spouse Nancy (Veronica Cartwright), Jack drifts off to sleep and is wakened to his wife’s screams when she discovers a dormant being with an uncanny resemblance to her husband growing in one of the stalls. Matthew rushes to Elizabeth’s house and wakes her before she too crumbles to dust and is replaced by an imitation. The two couples realize that most of San Francisco is no longer who they appear to be and fight to stay awake long enough to escape.

Rotten Tomatoes “Tomatometer” average among 404 users: 89% for Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Metacritic “Metascore” average among leading critics: Not available

What do you say?