Ernest Borgnine, 1917-2012

Ernest Borgnine (Ermes Effron Borgnino, 1917-2012) was the son of Italian immigrants who grew up to become one of America’s most unconventional film and television stars. Early in his life, he showed no interest in acting, instead joining the US Navy in 1935. He was discharged in 1941, but after Pearl Harbor, he re-enlisted and served until 1945. It wasn’t until after WWII that he started to act, at his mother’s suggestion and to his father's chagrin.

He began his acting career on the stage in Virginia, eventually making his Broadway debut in 1949 in the role of a nurse in the play Harvey. Two years later, he moved to California, and in 1953 he got his break in From Here to Eternity, playing Sergeant “Fatso” Judson. He was typecast as a villain after that until 1955, when he played the romantic lead (and title role) in the film Marty, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor (the other nominees were Frank Sinatra, James Dean, Spencer Tracy, and James Cagney).

At the same time that he was making movies, Borgnine made several television appearances, eventually leading to his playing the lead role in McHale’s Navy in 1963. The show lasted four seasons, until declining ratings and rehashed storylines resulted in the show’s cancellation. In 1983, he had a co-starring role in the television show, Airwolf. This show also lasted only a few seasons, going off the air in 1986.  He continued to make guest appearances on television shows, earning an Emmy nomination for his appearances in the final two episodes of ER.

Borgnine received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6324 Hollywood Blvd. In 1996, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City inducted him into the Western Performers Hall of Fame. On January 30, 2011, he received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.

References

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000308/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_borgnine

John Ford: Young Mr. Lincoln

The USPS has issued a set of four stamps honoring great film directors and the films for which they are most remembered. The four selected are: John Ford (The Searchers), John Huston (The Maltese Falcon), Frank Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life), and Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot). We will be exploring the lives and work of these directors over the next several weeks. In this post LR Simon reviews Young Mr. Lincoln (Criterion Collection).

Young Mr. Lincoln was the first collaboration between John Ford and Henry Fonda. The fictionalized story follows Lincoln as he establishes himself as a country lawyer and local politician. The main part of the story centers on a murder case, with Lincoln representing the defendants.

Ford had a special fascination with the forces that shaped America and its people, so it’s only fitting that he would explore the life of Lincoln, in a story that explores the themes of justice and compassion. We are introduced to Lincoln as he sets out on his political career. Few directors surpass Ford’s facility with the introduction of the hero, and his introduction of Lincoln is no exception—the camera emphasizes Lincoln’s height, then gives way to the young future President’s quiet eloquence.

After a political setback, Lincoln practices law in a small firm, eventually representing two men unjustly accused of murder. The film becomes a courtroom drama at this point, showing Lincoln’s dedication to truth and justice, using an Almanac to show that the conditions at the scene of the crime were not as described by the main witness for the prosecution. Throughout the trial, there are moments of real humor and wit, as well as challenges that don’t seem easy to overcome.

The only problem with the portrayal of Lincoln is that he seems to have no flaws (inability to dance well is not a character flaw)—any humanity he has is a direct result of Fonda’s performance. Most of the heroes in Ford’s films are unambiguously the “good guys,” but they’re rarely perfect. Ford probably had some hero worship of his own underpinning the portrayal of the young Lincoln, if the closing montage is any indication, but when a character begins in a state of perfection and remains there, it is left to the other characters to provide the film with an arc.

Young Mr. Lincoln is a beautifully shot film (a Ford hallmark), and a few scenes do provoke serious thought. While it is far from Ford’s best work, it is still a worthy effort.

References

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032155/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ford

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Mr._Lincoln

John Ford: The Searchers

The USPS has issued a set of four stamps honoring great film directors and the films for which they are most remembered. The four selected are: John Ford (The Searchers), John Huston (The Maltese Falcon), Frank Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life), and Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot). We will be exploring the lives and work of these directors over the next several weeks. In this post LR Simon reviews The Searchers.

In The Searchers, John Wayne plays Civil War veteran Ethan Edwards, whose years-long search for his niece, Debbie, who has been kidnapped by Comanche, forms the structure of the film. Ford’s “less is more” ethic of silent films informs much of the style of the film, from the economic dialogue to leaving some of the most violent scenes to the audience’s imagination.

In the most superficial terms, The Searchers is a quest film. Ethan wants to find his niece, and is prepared to spend several years until he accomplishes his task. But the film is also about family and race, and the way 19^th Century society treated women. Once it becomes apparent that Debbie has become a bride to her captor, Scar, both Ethan and Laurie (Vera Miles) take the attitude that the girl should die. Family feelings end up taking precedence over race, and Ethan has a change of heart where his despoiled niece is concerned.

John Wayne gave one of his best performances in The Searchers, and also one of his bravest. His audience is so accustomed to thinking of him in perfectly heroic terms that playing a racist character like Ethan Edwards had to be one of the biggest risks he ever took.

In telling the story visually, Ford echoes early scenes late in the film. For example, when Ethan returns to his family early in the film, he lifts his niece, Debbie (Lana Wood) in a loving and playful manner. Near the end, after he leads a raid on the Comanche who had kidnapped her, Ethan lifts her (now played by Natalie Wood) in a similar way, showing that he’s come to value as family to the point where his earlier racism is almost forgotten.

Bookending the film are two sequences with doors that almost exactly mirror each other. The film opens with Martha going out of the house, exposing the wide vista, and soon after, Ethan coming home. At the end of the film, Ethan returns Debbie to her family, but doesn’t enter the house. Instead, he turns and leaves as the camera moves into the house, with the door closing on Ethan and his story.

Hint: Because Ford filmed The Searchers in VistaVision, it is advisable to watch this movie on the largest screen available. VistaVision was a widescreen format with deep focus; smaller screens cannot show the level of detail Ford had in mind for this film.

Director Stamps: John Ford

The USPS has issued a set of four stamps honoring great film directors. The four selected are: John Ford, John Huston, Frank Capra, and Billy Wilder. We will be exploring the lives and work of these directors over the next several weeks. First, we will look at the career of John Ford.

Over his 50-year career, John Ford made 140 films, garnering a record four Academy Awards for Best Director (The Informer [1935], The Grapes of Wrath [1940], How Green Was My Valley [1941], and The Quiet Man [1952]). The film he has probably become best known for is The Searchers (1956), which was successful at the box office, but it was not nominated for any Oscars.

Because Ford’s career spanned the transition from silent films to sound, he can rightly be considered one of the authors of the language of film. His silent Westerns helped establish the genre, which has had a love-hate relationship with film studios. The studios had shown a lack of interest in the genre until Ford’s Stagecoach revived it in 1939. The Searchers (1956) was the only Western Ford directed in the 1950s, and was named by the American Film Institute as the Greatest Western of all time in 2007.

One of the ways Ford’s experience directing silent films influenced his sound pictures is in the economy of dialogue. He preferred his characters to speak only when they had something to say.

Ford was an early innovator in location shooting. His films are characterized by long shots framing subjects against a sprawling landscape. The opening shot of The Searchers is often copied, especially in other Westerns (e.g., Lawrence Kasdan’s Silverado). One of his favorite locations was Monument Valley in Utah, which stood in for Texas in The Searchers, southern Arizona in My Darling Clementine, and other settings throughout the American West.

Ford moved the camera so seldom that some people claim that he never moved it, but that claim is erroneous. In several of the films to be reviewed in upcoming posts, Ford moved the camera to track the motion of his subjects. To modern audiences, the relative lack of camera movement and cutting can make Ford’s films seem to have a slow pace, but he thought that too much cutting and too much camera movement would make the audience too aware of the camera. He thought that if the camera moved, then the camera became a character.

He also rarely used close-ups; in the years before television, long and medium shots seemed sufficient to tell the story on a large screen. Filmmakers of his era did not have to consider how the film would play on television, let alone iPads and smartphones.

Ford also had a reputation for editing in camera, rarely shooting more than a few takes of a scene. He said, “I don’t shoot anything I don’t want in the picture.” This practice prevented the studios from changing takes or cutting or editing the picture in ways of which Ford would have disapproved. He did not use storyboards, so he had to know what he wanted when he started filming, and in some cases, filming commenced before the script was finished.

References:

http://sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/ford/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ford

See also special features on The Searchers, My Darling Clementine, Young Mr. Franklin, and Mister Roberts.

This post was written by LR Simon.

Rob Resetar

Rob Resetar, who composed the scores for both of CoyoteMoon Films' productions, Se Habla Español and The 3 O'Clock, is going to have two of his songs performed by the Tucson Boys' Chorus on The Morning Blend on Thursday on KGUN (channel 9 in Tucson). One of the songs will also be performed by the Boys' Chorus in Reid Park on Sunday, May 20. Be sure to watch!

Se Habla Español in Film Festival

CoyoteMoon Films' first short film, Se Habla Español, is showing tomorrow at the Arizona International Film Festival. It's playing at The Screening Room with the Arizona Shorts, beginning at 8:00 pm. Check out the rest of the schedule here.

Premiere: The 3 O'Clock

Don't forget to join us after work!

THE PREMIERE OF THE 3 O'CLOCK AT REEL ARTS 6 IS TONIGHT, APRIL 6 AT 6PM.

Tucson's own Coyote Moon Films has taken the next step toward feature film production in southern Arizona with our hilarious new comedy.

Come see the first screening of The 3 O'Clock, written by Phoenix writer and nationally known playwright Michael Grady and starring Tucson talents: Mike Yarema, Betsy Kruse Craig and Bill Hubbard.

Reel Arts 6 is located at the Crossroads Cinema on 4811 E. Grant Rd. Tucson.

Visit www.CoyoteMoonFilms.com for more information on The 3 O'Clock and other Coyote Moon productions.

Review: The Good German

By: LR Simon

The Artist is not the only film in recent history to try to replicate an early style of film while attempting to maintain some relevance to current times. In 2006, Steven Soderbergh directed The Good German, starring George Clooney as Jacob Geismer, a reporter covering the peace process after World War II in Potsdam, Tobey Maguire as his driver, Tully, and Cate Blanchett as the mysterious Lena, who has a hold on both men.

Stylistically, the movie looks very much like a throwback to the movies of the 1940s: it’s black and white, with a reliance on light and shadow to convey mood; the actors did an excellent job of performing the way film actors did in those days; the score, by Thomas Newman, was reminiscent of some of Bernard Herrmann’s film scores. There’s even a scene that’s visually very similar to a scene in Casablanca, even though the content was vastly different.

The Good German makes some concessions to the 21^st century. Specifically, it does away with much of the Hays Code. The language is much grittier and more realistic than would have been allowed 60 years ago, and while the sex scenes are hardly explicit, they would not have passed muster with the Code.

Paul Attanasio’s script (from the Joseph Kanon novel) is a maze of secrets and reversals that will keep you guessing about specifics, but the final reveal is easily anticipated. That said, it still packs an emotional punch, which is not attributable solely to the performances. Attanasio has a good deal of experience writing scripts with convoluted plots for Homicide: Life on the Street (television) and Donnie Brasco.

The Good German is not an easy movie to recommend. It maintains high production values throughout, but it suffers for its attempt to revive a bygone film style. It will have some interest for fans of older movies, but it doesn't have broad appeal.

Academy Awards: The Artist

Of all the films nominated for Best Picture (2012), The Artist was the only one filmed entirely in Hollywood. It's also the only (mostly) silent film to win the Best Picture Oscar since Wings in 1927. The Artist is essentially director Michel Hazanvicius's love letter to the movies, and it draws on a wide variety of sources. We recommend some of the film's influences:

42nd Street (1933): Romance and show business

The Jazz Singer: Al Jolson makes the transition from silent to talkie

Singin' in the Rain: Gene Kelly makes the transition from silent to talkie

Some Like It Hot (1959): Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in drag, with Marilyn Monroe; Directed by Billy Wilder

City Lights: Charlie Chaplin's masterpiece

A Star Is Born (1954): A movie star helps a young actress launch her career, even as his declines.


Michel Hazanavicius listed these directors as influences on The Artist: Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch, F.W. Murnau and Billy Wilder.


This post was written by LR Simon and Howard Allen as part of our ongoing series on the 84^th Academy Awards.

Premiere: The 3 O'Clock

PRESS RELEASE

PREMIERE OF THE 3 O’CLOCK AT REEL ARTS 6 ON APRIL 6 AT 6PM


CoyoteMoon Films has taken the next step toward feature film production in southern Arizona with this new comedy. All of Tucson is invited.

Come see the first screening of The 3 O’Clock, written by Phoenix writer and nationally known playwright Michael Grady and starring Tucson talents: Mike Yarema, Betsy Kruse Craig and Bill Hubbard.

This 30 minute comedy follows the release of our valentine to Tucson, the short film Se Habla Espanol, still available on our website with fun DVD extras like “Even a Gringa Can Make A Tamale.” See www.CoyoteMoonFilms.com