Twilight Time Discussion Thread

[Sergeant Howie]

Originally Posted by mja345

I don't think any BFI releases have been region free since their early flipside releases like "The Party's Over" and "Little Malcolm".

I checked the BFI webpage for this pre-order release and it's showing Blu-ray Region B (and DVD Region 2).

Sorry I never thought about Region Coding; I've absolutely detested it and circumvented it from the very first DVD I ever bought, in 2001: the then exclusive US Region 1 release of my favourite movie [which is British!]. I have since purchased e.g. many [US] Criterion Region 1/A DVDs and Blu-rays of films that I would not have bought otherwise.

I do know of one ALL Region BFI Blu-ray out there (because I have just checked as I would have been truly astounded if it hadn't been), though this may be an exceptional case, as it is a specially reconstructed 1945 historical document which requires no guessing from its title. Warning: 18-RATED in the UK for real-life, disturbing images of humanity's darkest doings.

[jayembee]

Originally Posted by Sergeant Howie

I do know of one ALL Region BFI Blu-ray out there (because I have just checked as I would have been truly astounded if it hadn't been), though this may be an exceptional case

I have a handful of region-free BFI releases:

Institute Benjamenta
A Zed and Two Noughts
The Edge of the World
Underground
Shooting Stars
That Sinking Feeling
Penny Points to Paradise / Let's Go Crazy
Is Your Honeymoon Really Necessary / My Wife's Lodger

[Aclea]

Originally Posted by Rory

Everybody here is such a wiseguy.

Maybe not. I interviewed Fleischer in 1994 and asked him about it:

“I think it’s one one of the best pictures I’ve made and maybe the most important film that I’ve made. I’ve seen it fairly recently and it’s beautiful film. The photography and the composition, the performances are great - Susan George is magnificent in the picture, it’s a great performance. James Mason was wonderful in the film - I didn’t like his Southern accent too much, but his performance was excellent - and what the picture is about is very, very important. That hasn’t changed, politically or otherwise. Slavery was slavery and I showed it at it’s worst and I have nothing to apologise for.

“It was, in general, savaged by the press. The press almost universally hated it except for a few people who called it a masterpiece. So go figure that out. Time Out in England devoted the whole edition and cover to it and some other film book devoted their whole edition to it and said it’s a masterpiece and should be run all the time.”

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by Aclea

Maybe not. I interviewed Fleischer in 1994 and asked him about it:

“I think it’s one one of the best pictures I’ve made and maybe the most important film that I’ve made. I’ve seen it fairly recently and it’s beautiful film. The photography and the composition, the performances are great - Susan George is magnificent in the picture, it’s a great performance. James Mason was wonderful in the film - I didn’t like his Southern accent too much, but his performance was excellent - and what the picture is about is very, very important. That hasn’t changed, politically or otherwise. Slavery was slavery and I showed it at it’s worst and I have nothing to apologise for.

“It was, in general, savaged by the press. The press almost universally hated it except for a few people who called it a masterpiece. So go figure that out. Time Out in England devoted the whole edition and cover to it and some other film book devoted their whole edition to it and said it’s a masterpiece and should be run all the time.”

I like Mandingo. I watched it because I had read that Tarantino was a fan and that a large portion of Django Unchained was inspired by it. I was expecting it to be nothing more than sleazy trash. Well, it was pretty trashy and exploitative, but also quite sobering in its no holds barred depiction of slavery. It's definitely not a movie for everyone though.

As for Richard Fleischer, well he's got to be one of the most underrated directors of all time. Maybe because he was just a solid working director and not an "auteur" he didn't get the plaudits he deserved but his filmography is so diverse and full of so many great and entertaining movies.

[mja345]

Originally Posted by Aclea

Maybe not. I interviewed Fleischer in 1994 and asked him about it:

“I think it’s one one of the best pictures I’ve made and maybe the most important film that I’ve made. I’ve seen it fairly recently and it’s beautiful film. The photography and the composition, the performances are great - Susan George is magnificent in the picture, it’s a great performance. James Mason was wonderful in the film - I didn’t like his Southern accent too much, but his performance was excellent - and what the picture is about is very, very important. That hasn’t changed, politically or otherwise. Slavery was slavery and I showed it at it’s worst and I have nothing to apologise for.

“It was, in general, savaged by the press. The press almost universally hated it except for a few people who called it a masterpiece. So go figure that out. Time Out in England devoted the whole edition and cover to it and some other film book devoted their whole edition to it and said it’s a masterpiece and should be run all the time.”

"Mandingo" is not a bad film at all. I think it's earned a bad reputation for a myriad of reasons, mostly because it shows some really ugly elements of humanity that people don't want to confront. "Drum", which obviously wasn't directed by Fleischer, is completely over the top and absurd and is the film that I think a lot of people imagine "Mandingo" to be. I have to admit though, "Drum" is so unintentionally funny in a really twisted way.

[mja345]

Originally Posted by Sergeant Howie

I checked the BFI webpage for this pre-order release and it's showing Blu-ray Region B (and DVD Region 2).

Sorry I never thought about Region Coding; I've absolutely detested it and circumvented it from the very first DVD I ever bought, in 2001: the then exclusive US Region 1 release of my favourite movie [which is British!]. I have since purchased e.g. many [US] Criterion Region 1/A DVDs and Blu-rays of films that I would not have bought otherwise.

I do know of one ALL Region BFI Blu-ray out there (because I have just checked as I would have been truly astounded if it hadn't been), though this may be an exceptional case, as it is a specially reconstructed 1945 historical document which requires no guessing from its title. Warning: 18-RATED in the UK for real-life, disturbing images of humanity's darkest doings.

Yeah, region free is the way to go. It's a great feeling when you can buy whatever films you want and don't have to worry.

[Rory]

Originally Posted by mja345

"Mandingo" is not a bad film at all.

Well, I haven't seen it in probably close to thirty years, but I can't say I really want to see it again.

[Aclea]

Originally Posted by RCRochester

As for Richard Fleischer, well he's got to be one of the most underrated directors of all time. Maybe because he was just a solid working director and not an "auteur" he didn't get the plaudits he deserved but his filmography is so diverse and full of so many great and entertaining movies.

The diversity is probably one of the main reasons: the auteur theorists tended to look down on people who didn't primarily stick to one style or genre (ie Hitchcock the thriller guy, Ford the western guy, Chaplin the comedy guy, etc) and who didn't have a specific set of themes or hangups running through their work. The very diversity of Fleischer's filmography, ranging as it does from thrillers to science fiction via musicals and historical reconstructions, has given him a kind of critical anonymity, with each film being treated on its individual merits rather than being taken as part of a body of work. The lack of any obvious auteurist thread running through his films for critics to grasp hold of and the fact that, unlike directors like Howard Hawks or John Ford, he has never had a critical champion for his work has only helped keep him undeservedly in the shadows.

His tenure as a directorial stand-in on troubled productions such as The Jazz Singer or The Last Run has also given him an undeserved tag as a journeyman-for-hire, little helped by outright stinkers like Ashanti, Red Sonja and Million Dollar Mystery that littered the tail-end of his career. But if critical establishment has yet to catch on that Fleischer is one of the great post-war American directors, audiences have been in on the secret for decades: even if they don't really know who he is, they remember a lot more of his films than most directors can boast. Perhaps the lack of recognition is a family trait. His father was Max Fleischer, one of the giants of early animation, but one who is rarely given the credit or recognition he deserves.

[Terrorfirmer]

Any Canadians here have any trouble with not receiving orders? Just went to order Working Girls and got a notice in the checkout saying they've had a lot of problems with people not receiving their orders in your country and that they would not replace the item if lost unless you pay $45 (US) for express shipping...seems kinda messed up to me, any one have some input or info on this?

[Rory]

Originally Posted by Aclea

But if critical establishment has yet to catch on that Fleischer is one of the great post-war American directors, audiences have been in on the secret for decades: even if they don't really know who he is, they remember a lot more of his films than most directors can boast.

Oh, that seems a bit much. Who exactly are the critical establishment that remains unaware of what a "great" director Fleischer was? He lived for nearly twenty years after his retirement, wrote a biography, did plenty of interviews, and has been dead for a decade. That's plenty of time for his reputation to have been reassessed, but it hasn't happened and that's because he was the very definition of a journeyman director, and importantly not one too great at developing screenplays. His movies are only as good as their scripts. A good example of this is both DOCTOR DOLITTLE and especially CHE!

[Aclea]

On the contrary, I think your assessment is a bit much. Films like Barabbas, 10 Rillington Place and The Boston Strangler aren't the work of a replaceable journeyman, and they're hardly underdeveloped scripts. Journeymen certainly don't have as many great pictures on their resume as he does. As for the critical establishment, his reputation has long suffered the same kind of revisionism that directors like Julien Duvivier (like Fleischer a prolific director whose bad films are used to denigrate his influence over the superb ones) and Marcel Carne did when they were derided as mere workhorses by the nouvelle vague, where anything good about their pictures was usually ascribed to others (for example, Truffaut's assertion that Carne had no talent and Jacques Prevert was the sole reason he made a few good films). Though it is somewhat ironic that France is probably the only place where Fleischer is now regarded as an auteur..

His movies are only as good as their scripts. A good example of this is both DOCTOR DOLITTLE and especially CHE!

You could say the same about Ford if using The Wings of Eagles, What Price Glory or The Fugitive (the latter pretty much Ford's Che!, only with much better visuals) as examples or Hitchcock if you used Downhill, The Paradine Case or Under Capricorn.

As for Che!, it's a pretty good example of how difficult it was for any director working with the Hollywood majors on anything remotely political at that time:

“I think probably Che! is the most disappointing picture that I’ve made. We started out with a very good screenplay and high principals on that story, but while we were shooting it the studio got cold feet about the picture because they were afraid it was too anti-American and they kept insisting that certain anti-American scenes come out.

“That was the whole point of my making the picture, to show, yes, we do a lot of very stupid things and Che was right in a lot of ways. Che was also wrong in a lot of ways and we wanted to show that too. Well, it just ended up that by the time they got through making all their requests to take out the scenes they didn’t like it was just an anti-Che movie, and that’s not what I started out to make.

“I was gonna quit the picture, but I was under contract to the studio and in all the many years I’ve made films I’ve never walked off a picture and I wasn’t about to do that for Che! It wasn’t worth it. Maybe a bigger principle sometime. But why get into a mess like that and make a lot of enemies when it really didn’t matter? Whether I stayed on it or didn’t stay on it, somebody’d finish it anyhow.”

Yeah, that's pragmatic attitude, but it's hardly surprising considering he spent five years in the Sixties unable to work after his Sacco and Vanzetti film had the plug pulled.

[Rory]

Yeah, I'd love to read the original Michael Wilson screenplay to CHE! to get an idea of what could have been. I bought the TT edition. I wish it had a commentary track discussing this.

Anyway, I still contend Fleischer is not the great director you feel he is. I'm a fan of many of his movies, but I never get the impression from even his best movies that there's a great mind behind them. He was good, often delivered very good movies, but for me well shy of greatness.

How about we take as an example FANTASTIC VOYAGE? A well-made movie for sure, but as a drama, there's something lacking and it's with the script.

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by Terrorfirmer

Any Canadians here have any trouble with not receiving orders? Just went to order Working Girls and got a notice in the checkout saying they've had a lot of problems with people not receiving their orders in your country and that they would not replace the item if lost unless you pay $45 (US) for express shipping...seems kinda messed up to me, any one have some input or info on this?

Not to worry, that's a boilerplate text they have for all orders sent outside of the USA. I've never opted for that extra charge and have never had any problems importing to Canada. Orders are always well packaged, shipped quickly, customs friendly, and tracking numbers are always provided.

Originally Posted by Aclea

On the contrary, I think your assessment is a bit much. Films like Barabbas, 10 Rillington Place and The Boston Strangler aren't the work of a replaceable journeyman, and they're hardly underdeveloped scripts. Journeymen certainly don't have as many great pictures on their resume as he does. As for the critical establishment, his reputation has long suffered the same kind of revisionism that directors like Julien Duvivier (like Fleischer a prolific director whose bad films are used to denigrate his influence over the superb ones) and Marcel Carne did when they were derided as mere workhorses by the nouvelle vague, where anything good about their pictures was usually ascribed to others (for example, Truffaut's assertion that Carne had no talent and Jacques Prevert was the sole reason he made a few good films). Though it is somewhat ironic that France is probably the only place where Fleischer is now regarded as an auteur..



You could say the same about Ford if using The Wings of Eagles, What Price Glory or The Fugitive (the latter pretty much Ford's Che!, only with much better visuals) as examples or Hitchcock if you used Downhill, The Paradine Case or Under Capricorn.

As for Che!, it's a pretty good example of how difficult it was for any director working with the Hollywood majors on anything remotely political at that time:

“I think probably Che! is the most disappointing picture that I’ve made. We started out with a very good screenplay and high principals on that story, but while we were shooting it the studio got cold feet about the picture because they were afraid it was too anti-American and they kept insisting that certain anti-American scenes come out.

“That was the whole point of my making the picture, to show, yes, we do a lot of very stupid things and Che was right in a lot of ways. Che was also wrong in a lot of ways and we wanted to show that too. Well, it just ended up that by the time they got through making all their requests to take out the scenes they didn’t like it was just an anti-Che movie, and that’s not what I started out to make.

“I was gonna quit the picture, but I was under contract to the studio and in all the many years I’ve made films I’ve never walked off a picture and I wasn’t about to do that for Che! It wasn’t worth it. Maybe a bigger principle sometime. But why get into a mess like that and make a lot of enemies when it really didn’t matter? Whether I stayed on it or didn’t stay on it, somebody’d finish it anyhow.”

Yeah, that's pragmatic attitude, but it's hardly surprising considering he spent five years in the Sixties unable to work after his Sacco and Vanzetti film had the plug pulled.

I tend to agree with Rory on this one that Fleischer was a journeyman director, and that's not a bad thing. I enjoy the dazzling visuals of a Hitchcock or a De Palma but that sort of thing doesn't work for every movie. Fleischer is one of those guys who just did solid work without drawing attention to himself.

[Aclea]

I'd agree on Fantastic Voyage script, but that was his comeback picture and reading between the lines of his account of how difficult he'd found it to get work at Fox in particular after Zanuck Sr's departure it does sound like he almost had to beg for the job and was kept well aware that if he made waves Irwin Allen was waiting in the wings. The period after Barabbas and before Tora! Tora! Tora! seems an uncertain one for him in terms of how much he actually pushed a project or how significant a role he felt he could have in pre-production when he had practically no pull (even The Boston Strangler didn't convince Fox to give him a free hand on Che!, and I get the impression that he may have only stuck with the latter so he wouldn't lose Tora!). It's very much a 'You can still trust me' movie.

It's something you see in a lot of older directors when they realise that they need a hit to get the films they really want to do, and it doesn't usually end as well as Fantastic Voyage did - think of Philip Kaufman with Rising Sun or Twisted or Michael Mann with Blackhat or, if you want a current example, Scorsese signing up for The Joker after Silence and Hugo did so badly and The Irishman is scheduled to skip theaters altogether and go straight to streaming.

[Aclea]

Originally Posted by RCRochester

I tend to agree with Rory on this one that Fleischer was a journeyman director, and that's not a bad thing.

I have to disagree, because the definition of a journeyman is one who is reliable and competent but not outstanding (and most of us seem pretty much agreed he made some outstanding films) - and that's very different from not being a director with a recognisable visual style and signature. As for dazzling, his use of the split screen in The Boston Strangler manages to be both, yes, visually dazzling and intelligent in its application. The closest thing to a running theme in his films is his interest in the characters' psychology (not always shared by his actors - Sylvia Sidney patiently listened to him discussing her character's motivations in Violent Saturday and after he finished said "Just tell me when to cry" - but something he returned to in films like Design for Death, Compulsion, Boston and Rillington), which is not altogether surprising considering he originally trained to be a psychologist, but he's more of a Cinematic Renaissance Man who adapted his approach to the demands of the material he chose than a journeyman.

[PeterTHX]

Originally Posted by Aclea

“I think probably Che! is the most disappointing picture that I’ve made. We started out with a very good screenplay and high principals on that story, but while we were shooting it the studio got cold feet about the picture because they were afraid it was too anti-American and they kept insisting that certain anti-American scenes come out.

Probably didn't include, you know, the murders Che committed in the political concentration camp, the murders of homosexuals - so yeah, big surprise the studio was right.

[mja345]

Originally Posted by Aclea

The diversity is probably one of the main reasons: the auteur theorists tended to look down on people who didn't primarily stick to one style or genre (ie Hitchcock the thriller guy, Ford the western guy, Chaplin the comedy guy, etc) and who didn't have a specific set of themes or hangups running through their work. The very diversity of Fleischer's filmography, ranging as it does from thrillers to science fiction via musicals and historical reconstructions, has given him a kind of critical anonymity, with each film being treated on its individual merits rather than being taken as part of a body of work.

Excellent post. This section is very accurate. Fleischer's career reminds me a bit of Arthur Penn's, although Fleischer had a much more extensive filmography. Penn's films were all wildly different from one another, so his best work rarely gets talked about as one entity, similar to Fleischer.

[Rory]

Originally Posted by Aclea

I have to disagree, because the definition of a journeyman is one who is reliable and competent but not outstanding (and most of us seem pretty much agreed he made some outstanding films) - and that's very different from not being a director with a recognisable visual style and signature.

That's exactly the problem with Fleischer and why I think he's not better regarded. He had no signature style other than he had no signature style, very akin to someone like Bob Wise.

With so many of Fleischer's pictures, you can't tell they were directed by the same guy. If I didn't know it, and I saw 10 RILLINGTON PLACE and then you told me that was made by the same guy who did DOCTOR DOLITTLE, I'd think you were full of it.

It's not that he wasn't an often outstanding director because obviously, he was (THE VIKINGS is damn near excellent except for some corny melodramatics), but that he often chose to do material that he wasn't quite suited for, such as, I contend, DOCTOR DOLITTLE. If you want to consider him something closer to an auteur director (and I think that's perfectly fine if you want to do that), then you'd have to isolate a selection of his movies, and I'm sure you'd be better at choosing those than me.

So, because he often did films, I think, he really shouldn't have done, because he "journeyed there," I still say he was largely a "journeyman director."

"A Cinematic Renaissance Man" seems a bit too worshipping to me. A thoughtful, intelligent director that knew his craft is what I'd say, but also one that should have known better what not to try and tackle, but who obviously liked to work at his craft.

Good discussion.

Originally Posted by PeterTHX

Probably didn't include, you know, the murders Che committed in the political concentration camp, the murders of homosexuals - so yeah, big surprise the studio was right.

No, the studio wasn't "right." The studio, and more exactly, the producer, lost their nerve and should have done the script both the screenwriter and the director wanted to do, and then we'd have a movie titled CHE! from 1969 much more deserving of being remembered than it is. It's an artistic pity what happened to CHE!

[Sergeant Howie]

Originally Posted by mja345

Yeah, region free is the way to go. It's a great feeling when you can buy whatever films you want and don't have to worry.

It works both ways though. I used to find, for the films I wanted anyway, that the US version was often first released and most likely superior. Then I was cock-a-hoop when a decent transfer of "The Innocents" (1961) was released by the BFI, only to find it quite soon blown out the water by a magnificent Criterion disc. I purchased the BFI... and TWO copies of the Criterion (one spare, in case it went OOP). But now I feel compelled to buy an excellent, and expensive Twilight Time limited edition ('Wow, I never expected THAT old movie to come out in HD anytime this decade!'), and then I go and pre-order the new Arrow or BFI [hopefully without audio glitch] or Eureka or Indicator UK release. And all my money goes towards the film industry and helps to finance new film. And those who provide me with the means to watch and compare my multi-national releases are supposed to be stealing from Hollywood? I've never seen region coding on audio compact discs, or vinyl records. Is that why these formats sold in their millions and millions?

Originally Posted by mja345

Top 10 Most Wanted on Blu-Ray: 1) After Hours 2) Bringing Out the Dead 3) Bob Roberts 4) O Lucky Man 5) California Split 6) The Music of Chance 7) The Limey 8) Brewster McCloud 9) The Hitcher (1986) 10) Straight Time

I have O Lucky Man in HD from iTunes (UK). I can't buy US-locked iTunes films but I can play my British ones on PowerDVD. As per the catch-phrase of the late doyen of British film critics Barry Norman (son of director Leslie): "And Why Not?"

11) Local Hero 12) Defence of the Realm

[RCRochester]

Originally Posted by Rory

That's exactly the problem with Fleischer and why I think he's not better regarded. He had no signature style other than he had no signature style, very akin to someone like Bob Wise.

With so many of Fleischer's pictures, you can't tell they were directed by the same guy. If I didn't know it, and I saw 10 RILLINGTON PLACE and then you told me that was made by the same guy who did DOCTOR DOLITTLE, I'd think you were full of it.

It's not that he wasn't an often outstanding director because obviously, he was (THE VIKINGS is damn near excellent except for some corny melodramatics), but that he often chose to do material that he wasn't quite suited for, such as, I contend, DOCTOR DOLITTLE. If you want to consider him something closer to an auteur director (and I think that's perfectly fine if you want to do that), then you'd have to isolate a selection of his movies, and I'm sure you'd be better at choosing those than me.

So, because he often did films, I think, he really shouldn't have done, because he "journeyed there," I still say he was largely a "journeyman director."

"A Cinematic Renaissance Man" seems a bit too worshipping to me. A thoughtful, intelligent director that knew his craft is what I'd say, but also one that should have known better what not to try and tackle, but who obviously liked to work at his craft.

Good discussion.



No, the studio wasn't "right." The studio, and more exactly, the producer, lost their nerve and should have done the script both the screenwriter and the director wanted to do, and then we'd have a movie titled CHE! from 1969 much more deserving of being remembered than it is. It's an artistic pity what happened to CHE!

I think we're all in agreement that he was a good director.

At the risk of repeating myself, when I say he was a journeyman director, that's not a criticism. Even if journeyman is not the "right" word, I'll just say that he was a solid professional who just got down to doing his job. Some films worked out, some didn't but like Aclea said, even the "star" directors like Hitchcock made the odd failure. Fleischer may have employed the odd parlour trick, but he didn't go overboard with the cinematic techniques so he didn't draw attention to himself as much. There are lots of directors like that out there, guys like Don Siegel, and I admire them as much for this approach as I do guys like Hitchcock for theirs.