Blu Wings

In my continuing work with Masters of Cinema, my latest booklet is on William Wellman's glorious and Oscar winning epic Wings from 1927. It's a wonderful film, and a unique one for Wellman's career, who would go on to create some of the most bizarre and lovingly made B movies like Night Nurse, Westward the Women, Yellow Sky, and Lady of Burlesque. 

Wings is perhaps his most famous film, and thus the booklet does what it can to honor the film and Wellman. It includes a fantastic new text and image essay from Gina Telaroli entitled "This is the excellent foppery of the world," a 1978 interview with Wellman by Scott Eyman, and an excerpt from his own autobiography discussing his own relationship with the stuntmen he worked with. 

I did find a few more things through my research, and while some of them fall under certain copyright restrictions that I cannot reproduce here, this excerpt below falls under fair use and is worth your time: "Half Way To Heaven," by Albert Boswell, which is a 1930 profile of stuntmen published in The New Movie Magazine (and only ran for about five years). Thanks to the wonderful folks at Lantern, I was able to track this down. Alas, space kept it out of the booklet, but it's a good read for you before you buy the Blu-Ray! 

Screening Log: Laughing at the Apocalypse Edition

            One note before the screening log; for those of you who don’t follow every word about Russian art house cinema, you may not know that Geoff Dyer has published a book on Tarkovsky’s Stalker called Zona. I look forward to reading it soon, especially after J. Hoberman’s review this week. I am particularly excited that next week the New York Institute for the Humanities will be holding a special 4-hour event on Stalker. The film will be played in its entirety, but stopped every half hour for discussion. The panel not only includes Dyer, but the great film critic and essayist Phillip Lopate (a former professor of mine), and Walter Murch, one of the best film editors in the business (best known for his work with Francis Ford Coppola on he Godfather films and Apocalypse Now). There are some others as well, so it should be a unique and interesting event (despite the Twitter ramblings of Glenn Kenny on the inclusion of Dana Stevens). Onto the show:

-The Iron Curtain, 1948: Directed by William Wellman. 35mm Screening at Film Forum.

-The President Vanishes, 1934. Directed by William Wellman. 35mm Screening at Film Forum.

-Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, 1964. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Digital 2K Projection at Film Forum.

-Some Like it Hot, 1959. Directed by Billy Wilder. Viewed in HD on Turner Classic Movies.

Screening Log: Noir Along the Western Wasteland Edition

For those who follow me on Twitter, you probably know I spend much more time at repertory theaters than any multiplexes (or even many art houses) these days. It is a shame, however, that I rarely write on these films, because they are often more fascinating than anything new, and more than likely available on DVD or Netflix or HuluPlus for your own viewing. Inspired by friend and fellow film critic Kenji Fujishima, I’ll be listing my screening log every Sunday. I’ll also choose one film out of the bunch to write some thoughts on, which will be underlined.

Screening Log — Monday, February 13^th to Sunday, February 19^th

This week was mainly spent at Film Forum at the William A. Wellman retrospective. The director was a mainstay in Hollywood for over three decades, directing films like Wings (the first film to win an Oscar for best picture), The Public Enemy, and The Ox-Bow Incident.

-A Trip to the Moon, 1902 (Colorized Restoration, 2011): Directed by Georges Méliès. HD Screening at Film Society of Lincoln Center.

-The Purchase Price, 1932: Directed By William Wellman, 35mm Screening at Film Forum.

-The Man I Love, 1929: Directed By William Wellman, 35mm Screening at Film Forum.

-Night Nurse, 1931: Directed By William Wellman, 35mm Screening at Film Forum.

-Yellow Sky, 1947: Directed By William Wellman, 35mm Screening at Film Forum.

-The Ox-Bow Incident, 1943: Directed By William Wellman, 35mm Screening at Film Forum.

-L’Enfant, 2006: Directed By Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 35mm Screening at IFC Center.

            There’s something about the pleasure of knowing nothing about a film before seeing it. That’s the pleasure I got with discovering William Wellman’s Yellow Sky, a film full of numerous dark and wondrous pleasures, and a post-war atmosphere to boot. Like many great films from that era, Yellow Sky falls more under the category of “psychological western,” a term used to describe westerns that showed the influence of film noir (see Pursued, River of No Return, and Winchester ’73).

With its dark and barren landscapes, Yellow Sky has much more in common with something like John Huston’s The Treasure of Sierra Madre. It follows a band of thieves in the Reconstruction period who find themselves chased to a 70-mile stretch of salt flats they are forced to crossed. Led by their stern leader (Gregory Peck, channeling the intensity of Atticus Finch without any of the kindness), the group begins a Meek’s Cutoff-like trek across a barren territory before coming across a ghost town, only populated by an aging grandfather and his very masculine daughter, played by Anne Baxter (and setting a precedent for Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar).

As the plot continues, there’s a hidden stash of gold to be found, and a series of double crosses and triple crosses to be had, as Peck dukes it out with the fine suit wearing second in command, played by Richard Widmark. Like many great noirs, this film deals with greed, anti-heroes, and masculine anxiety (the best shot in the film is certainly Baxter; she grazes Peck’s head with a bullet after she comes on to her). Late in the film, the grandfather exclaims, “guess the war's upset a lot of those boys, and set them off on the wrong foot." An observation about the Civil War, or World War II?

I wish Yellow Sky could have gone with a darker ending than the one we’re given, which kills off its villains while redeeming its lost souls. It’s the type of film that often feels smarter about these issues, and perhaps if Peck was played by someone like Robert Mitchum, we’d expect such an ending. But the core of Yellow Sky is so delightfully seething, and much richer in its details than many of the obvious textures on Wellman’s The Ox-Bow Incident (which played as a double feature), that I’d gladly return to the ghost town any time.