59-The Blue Angel - Director:Josef von Sternberg. Cast: Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich, Kurt Gerron and Rosa Valetti.


"Marlene-
Isn't it fascinating.
When we say Marlene-
It conjures up a picture:
Beautiful beautiful legs-
Attached to a gorgeous torso-
Draped-dressed-decorated with
material or dresses or pants or coats or furs--
And one looks-
And-
OH!
There's that lovely head commanding this great show-
With it's soft and suggestive message
of all the joys life offers us--
And she is fun and sweet and true--
Thank you--
Dear Marlene--

Affectionately,

Kate. (Hepburn)


"One of the things about her that astonished me most was her knowledge of the technical side of motion pictures.She seemed to know everything.She constantly watched the camera and the light,and she would politely superintend,make suggestions to the cameraman and gaffers so subtly and so sexily that no one was offended,and she got precisely what she wanted.(I didn't mind:what possible difference could it make which side of my face was photographed?Both sides were equally homely)
She came to my house often,loved the pictures,understood them,knew many of the artists personally,and wearing some of the most breathtaking gowns on record,would come off as an intellectual,which,indeed, she was.
My view of her as an actress?I am not sure I would call it talent;it is something beyond that-mystery,unavailability,distance,feminine mystique.She is the quintessential sex goddness;she is also the quintessential German hausfrau.She is mother as sex:sex as it was intended.
-Edward G. Robinson-


Cinemateca Portuguesa (1994)

1-Nosferatu -Murnau
2-The Rules of the Game -Renoir
3-M -Lang
4-L'Atalante -Vigo
5-Ivan the Terrible - Eisenstein
6-The Passion of Joan of Arc -Dreyer
7-The Blue Angel -Sternberg
8-Napoleon-Gance
9-Viaggio in Italia -Rossellini
10-The Last Laugh-Murnau

58-The Best Years of Our Lives - Director:William Wyler. Cast: Myrna Loy, Fredric March, Dana Andrews, Teresa Wright, Virginia Mayo and Harold Russell.


---"I have never been as interested in the externals of presenting a scene as I have been in the inner workings of the people the scene is about."
-William Wyler-
The comments would be echoed and elaborated upon in 1948 by Andre Bazin,the leading intellectual among French film scholars.His seminal essay about Wyler's body of work has remained the essential analysis.Subsequent critics and scholars have either agreed or disagreed with it but have not been able to ignore it.In sum,Bazin regarded 'Best Years' as the epitome of Wyler's "invisible style"--that is,when the director chose to use it.He was an eclectic filmmaker,who lets the content of each picture determinate it's own style.By "invisible",Bazin meant his signature was honest,democratic and stripped down,in contrast,say,to that of Orson Welles,which he regarded as mannered,even sadistic.

Wyler's point,Bazin wrote,"is to provoke the spectator,not to put him on the rack and torture him.All he wants is that the spectator can (1) see everything ; and (2)choose as he pleases.It's an act of loyalty toward the spectator,an attempt at dramatic honesty". Bazin compares the neutrality and transparency of Wyler's staging--"un style sans style"--with Andre Gide's literary technique,which maximized clarity,immediacy and directness.He even counted the number of shots in "Best Years"to prove his point,noting that it used roughly one hundred-ninety per hour compared with three to four hundred an hour for the average picture.This meant longer,therefore less deceptive,shots that allow the audience to choose what it sees.Unlike Welles's use of 'deep focus' to create effects(such as foreshortening perspective or heightening suspense),Wyler makes functional use of the technique.

"It is through professionalism,not as esthete but as craftsman,that he has become the consummate artist," Bazin wrote,noting this was already evident in Dodsworth."When we talk about his direction,we must keep in mind...that his first and only worry is to make the audiences understand..."----

-from the essential book

A Talent for Trouble: The Life of Hollywood's Most Acclaimed Director, William Wyler by Jan Herman
-------
"It's easier to know that Wyler is Hollywood's finest director for actors than it is to explain it.He doesn't articulate his criticism.But you sense his dissatisfaction.He seems to know when there's more to be gotten than you're giving.And he's relentless until he has it.The released print is the deferred proof."
-Fredric March-
-------

"the best directed film I've ever seen"
-Billy Wilder (on "Best Years")-
----



"William Wyler is A Giant.And 'The Best Years of Our Lives" is a giant film."
-Mel Brooks-

57-The Red Shoes - Director:Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Cast:Moira Shearer,Anton Walbrook,Marius Goring,Robert Helpmann,Leonide Massine and Albert Basserman.

"I'll watch a Michael Powell film repeatedly, like a piece of music. Like you put on Beethoven —or Mozart. You don't say,‘I've heard the Fifth Symphony, I'm not going to listen to it again."
-Martin Scorsese-


"I fought against being in that film for a whole year, and (Powell) was so angry. He thought I
would sort of fall at his feet and be absolutely thrilled at this great chance. I was just beginning to do the big classics at Covent Garden, which was every classical ballerina's dream, and I didn't want to be deflected by this at all."
-Moira Shearer-


"...we had all been told for ten years to go out and die for freedom and democracy, for this and for that, and now the war was over, The Red Shoes told us to go out and die for art”
-Michael Powell-



Martin Scorsese picks for 'masterful use of light and color' in English speaking films:

-Barry Lyndon-Stanley Kubrick
-Duel in the Sun-King Vidor
-Invaders from Mars-William Cameron Menzies
-Leave Her to Heaven-John M. Stahl
-Moby Dick-John Houston
-Phantom of the Opera (1943)-Arthur Lubin
-The Red Shoes-Michael Powell
-The Searchers-John Ford
-Singin' in the Rain-Stanley Donen
-Vertigo-Alfred Hitchcock

56-The Treasure of the Sierra Madre - Director: John Huston - Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston and Tim Holt.

"American film critics are the worst in the world. As a whole they are not serious enough about film. The young ones are irresponsible, and the old ones are deadly dull. The best criticism is in the European newspapers. . . . [They] treat a film like a work of art."
-John Huston-
-----
"Directing is simply an extension of the process of writing. The most important element to me is always the idea that I'm trying to express. The audience should not be aware of what the camera is doing. They should be following the action and the road of the idea. I don't believe in overdressing anything. No extra words, no extra images, no extra music. But it seems to me that this is the universal principle of art."
John Huston-
-----

"Daring, unpredictable, maddening, mystifying and probably the most charming man on earth."
-Lauren Bacall (on Huston)-
-----

"I've lived a number of lives. I'm inclined to envy the man who leads one life, with one job, and one wife, in one country, under one God. It may not be a very exciting existence, but at least by the time he's seventy-three he knows how old he is."
-John Huston-

55-Double Indemnity - Director:Billy Wilder. Cast: Fred MacMurray, Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson.


"We had to be realistic.You had to believe the situation and the characters,or all was lost.I insisted on black&white,of course,and in making operattas I'd learned that sometimes one tecnical shot destroyed a picture.You could say that Double Indemnity was based on the principal of M(Fritz Lang),the very good picture starring Peter Lorre.I had a feeling,something in my head,M was on my mind.I tried for a very realistic picture.A few little tricks,but not very tricky.M was the look of the picture.It was a picture that looked like a newsreel.You never realized it was staged.But like a newsreel,you look to grab a moment of truth,and exploit it"
-Billy Wilder-


"...(Stanwyck) she was a freelance actor,a kind of gun for hire,and in the beginning didn't really have the backing of a big studio.I mean she had a broad range of things she could do---not the classics,but certainly heavy drama and light comedy.She could make you laugh,and she could make you cry.Chaplin,of course,could make you do both at the same time."
-Katherine Hepburn-


"With Stanwyck,I had absolutely no difficulties at all.And she knew the script,everybody's lines.You could wake her up in the middle of the night and she'd know the scene.Never a fault,never a mistake...just a wonderful brain she had."
-Billy Wilder-