Twilight Time Discussion Thread

[senseabove]

I first saw Harris in The Haunting—another role where she's frequently "over the top," but horror movies are a context where "over the top" is accepted/expected in acting styles. It's a long-time favorite of mine, though, and her performance there was probably the main reason I blind-bought MotW. East of Eden and Reflections in a Golden Eye are the only other performances of hers I've seen... though my memory of Eden is hazy—I wasn't crazy about it and it's been a while—Reflections certainly fits her style in the other two, though again it's justified by the character's mental state and Huston's directing. So I get the impression she's never exactly "restrained" in her acting. I Am A Camera is the role I'm most curious about...

[bruceames]

She does seem to be restrained in East of Eden, but maybe I was biased because she came across as being a very attractive, girl next door type.

[belcherman]

Originally Posted by senseabove

There are other acting styles than the modern, post-60s Method-influenced style of internal psychology, and prior styles seen in film being called overacting is a common criticism (one all too commonly leveled at performances by women). That other legitimate styles exist is implicitly acknowledged in the idea that there are different ways of acting for stage and for screen, and that it is "wrong" to act in a movie as one would on the stage. While there may be different technical features—projection, over-enunciation, etc.—appropriate for the stage but not the microphone and camera, the emotional and physical style commonly described (pejoratively) as "stagey" is merely a different way of acting, which is a perfectly legitimate thing to record with a movie camera. Dismissing Harris' performance as "whiny" is missing much of the point, and if it's not "convincing," I have to ask if it's reasonable to expect anyone involved in the movie believed a 26-year-old playing a 12-year-old on camera would be convincing. If you can imagine the answer would be no... then perhaps neither Harris nor Zinneman were aiming for "convincing" and "believable."

Realism isn't the aim of all art, and The Member of the Wedding is a story told almost entirely from the heightened, internalized view of the character Harris is portraying: an adolescent on the cusp of puberty going through multiple emotional tragedies, both minor (social ostracism) and major (parental neglect, death). As I'm sure everyone who has ever been one is aware, adolescents experiencing even major emotional trauma are known to be perfectly level-headed, rational, and reasonable in their actions.

I can't help but imagine this is one of those performances that if it were in another language and subtitled, a lot of folks would be much more receptive to it...

Just to be clear here, I was not criticizing Harris's performance. If anything, I was defending it. I did not mean to suggest that her acting in The Member of the Wedding was whiny; I meant to say that her character in the film was whiny. And trust me, I for one was pretty effing whiny as 12 year-old. As for convincing, of course it wasn't, but it's one of those things where once you're into the experience of watching the film, the viewer is willing to suspend disbelief. The question is not whether the actor physically resembles a 12 year-old tomboy, but whether by the actor's expressed emotions and mannerisms she embodies the spirit of that character. I think she succeeded.

The criticism of stagey-ness often comes up, often in discussion of film adaptations of stage plays. Usually, if there is anything stagey in the presentation, it's due to how the film is "staged" and directed. Often that is a deliberate choice of the film-makers, and it's not always a bad choice. Film adaptations of stage plays often go astray when the film-makers try to "open it up" for film.

I agree with you that it's unfair to judge period performances by modern standards. My wife is one who says that she can't enjoy the movies from the 30s and 40s because "people don't talk like that." Well they don't, and they didn't then, but it's how acting was done back then. It's not better or worse, just different.

As for method acting, you are aware that Harris studied under Lee Strasberg?

[senseabove]

Originally Posted by belcherman

Just to be clear here, I was not criticizing Harris's performance. If anything, I was defending it. I did not mean to suggest that her acting in The Member of the Wedding was whiny; I meant to say that her character in the film was whiny. And trust me, I for one was pretty effing whiny as 12 year-old. As for convincing, of course it wasn't, but it's one of those things where once you're into the experience of watching the film, the viewer is willing to suspend disbelief. The question is not whether the actor physically resembles a 12 year-old tomboy, but whether by the actor's expressed emotions and mannerisms she embodies the spirit of that character. I think she succeeded.

The criticism of stagey-ness often comes up, often in discussion of film adaptations of stage plays. Usually, if there is anything stagey in the presentation, it's due to how the film is "staged" and directed. Often that is a deliberate choice of the film-makers, and it's not always a bad choice. Film adaptations of stage plays often go astray when the film-makers try to "open it up" for film.

I agree with you that it's unfair to judge period performances by modern standards. My wife is one who says that she can't enjoy the movies from the 30s and 40s because "people don't talk like that." Well they don't, and they didn't then, but it's how acting was done back then. It's not better or worse, just different.

As for method acting, you are aware that Harris studied under Lee Strasberg?

My post was definitely not aimed at you—your defense of her was what made me want to elaborate some. It wasn't aimed at anyone in particular, really, just the general negative comments in the past page or two about Harris performance, which I wanted to defend her against. More than one person had used some variation of the term "whiny" and a few had commented, whether as excuse or criticism, that she was a stage actress before this performance, so that's why I mentioned those two things specifically.

And I wasn't aware of that! I haven't delved much into her professional history. That's really interesting, though. In the sense I was using those phrases, I don't think of "modern, post-60s Method-influenced" acting as the same thing as Method acting, but rather a style derived from it, which is the received "realism" most people mean when they say "people don't talk like that" about pre-60s movies, even though "people don't talk like" they do in Captain Marvel or Frozen or Joker or Game of Thrones etc. It's admittedly a very rough idea on my part, and it's been years since I studied any acting theory, which was for stage work even then, but I've recently started trying to dig into acting theory as it relates to pre- and post-60s acting styles, so it's something I've been kicking around in the back of my mind for a while. And whether it's the actual root of the prevalent popular opinions about acting styles or not, or an influence on a particular performance, the Method is usually the implicit line in the sand when people criticize performances in the Old/Classic Hollywood style. That's more what I meant, not "Julie Harris wasn't a Method actor so leave her alone!"

Anyway, I just picked up a book by Cynthia Baron about "Modern Acting" as a mid-century school distinct from Method Acting, and have been hunting down a few others on the development of acting styles in film and how it relates to stage acting in the first half of the century. I'm looking forward to actually having a better, more legitimately-sourced grasp on these opinions of mine, haha.

[bruceames]

I was the one who first said that she came across as whiny, and that it was annoying. But that was just my perception of it. She was supposed to be that way in the movie anyway. I suspected her overacting was a result of recently coming over from stage acting (I had read her bio years ago as I was interested in a few of her movies). It's a good movie, but everyone has older movies that are otherwise good but have annoying aspects of it, whether intended or not. My interest in it is more because of the setting in the old south, which I always find interesting.

[rip63]

Originally Posted by senseabove

I first saw Harris in The Haunting—another role where she's frequently "over the top," but horror movies are a context where "over the top" is accepted/expected in acting styles.

She's also playing a very disturbed and repressed person in that film too, which explains why she's so animated in it.

[klauswhereareyou]

I went ahead and got Cutter's Way based on the recommendations on here and watching the trailer for it on YouTube. I got How to Steal a Million too since it's marked as one that may sell out during this sale.

[bdgking]

Here is a low quantity update based on the current twilight time sale .

At Twilight Time :

Fat City x 5 remain
Best of Everything x 13 remain
Scorpio under 40 remain
Exodus about 60 remain
Also the must have found a few more State of Grace as they have x 12 remain

At Sae :

La Moglie Piu Bella x 44 remain
Kiss of Death under x 140 remain
Fat City under x 100 remain
Peyton Place under x 120 remain
The train under x 180 remain
Miss Sadie Thompson under x 160 remain
Boston Strangler under x 160 remain

Also's low in quantity are :

Theater of Blood , To Sir with love , Flaming Star , Count Yorga Vampire , The Front , The Fortune .

Hope this helps any of you whom are wanting to get something before it sells out .

Sold out titles via this sale so far .

The World of Henry Orient
Devil in a Blue Dress

[bwdowiak]

Originally Posted by bwdowiak

To those who have seen both films, which do you think is better? Morituri (Twilight Time release on sale now) or The Fugitive Kind (forthcoming Criterion release.)

I've always been a big fan of Marlon Brando, but had been under the impression that his career was colored with a lot of stinkers. Morituri sounds more interesting to me, but I don't know. He was really good in The Chase, I thought (another TT release,) but that movie was pretty bad.

I posted the above in the CC thread and maybe should have known that the TT crowd is probably a little more familiar w/ some of the middle 20th century deeper cuts.

Any thoughts?

[Aclea]

I haven't seen The Fugitive Kind, but my thoughts on Morituri:



That Morituri didn't exactly set the box-office alight in 1965 can be gauged from the fact that it's known under at least three titles (Saboteur and The Saboteur - Codename: "Morituri" - which isn't actually the anti-hero's codename!). Taking its title from the famed gladiator's address `We who are about to die salute you,' it's a surprising seabound reunion of veterans of the 1962 version of Mutiny on the Bounty who you'd think would know better and certainly wouldn't even want to see each other again, let alone board another ship after that famously nightmarish shoot. While Trevor Howard had the good sense to remain on dry land in a lengthy cameo, Brando soon resorted to type, demanding rewrites, refusing to memorise his lines or hit his marks and generally making producer Aaron Rosenberg and director Bernhard Wicki's life hell as the film drifted increasingly over budget and over schedule before slowly sinking with all hands at the box-office.

Brando's Crain/Kyle is a peace-loving, somewhat Bohemian German exile living under an assumed identity in India who finds himself blackmailed into going undercover as a Nazi by Trevor Howard's ruthless British intelligence officer ("You're a cold bastard," snipes Brando: "I was born on a chilly island," replies Howard in the film's best exchange). His mission isn't to sabotage and sink a German freighter with a vital cargo of rubber but to prevent it from being scuttled so the Allies can claim the cargo for their own war effort. Since much of the crew is made up of criminals and political undesirables less than eager to return to Germany, he finds himself occupying an intriguing moral grey area: Kyle's first and most useful ally is not found among the allied prisoners of war (many holding Janet Margolin's Jewish survivor of their torpedoed ship in as much open contempt as the Nazis) or Brynner's aggressively apolitical captain, but rather takes the form of the ship's second officer and most fanatical Nazi Party member Martin Benrath. The film isn't blind to the moral ironies and dramatic possibilities this presents and throws in numerous interesting spins and obstacles to his task, yet while it's not a bad film at all it's never really as thrilling or compelling as it should be.

Part of the problem is Brando, who had by then moved into that period of his career when he was increasingly bored with just delivering a solid performance and increasingly felt need to make his parts more eccentric to keep himself interested. It's a long way from the surreal self-indulgence of later films and it's not an especially bad performance, but rather than doing what the film requires you often get the feeling that you're watching him go through acting exercises as he drifts in and out of the film that everyone else is making. As a result it's Brynner, giving a typically arrogant and stentorian turn in a role originally intended for Lee J. Cobb who comes across as the more convincing screen presence despite having much less screen time and much less to work with.

It's on a technical level that the film impresses the most. The Oscar-nominated black and white camerawork by Conrad Hall is often astounding, with some of the most technically ambitious and flawlessly executed helicopter shots ever achieved on film, often moving from extreme long shots of the ship at sea into close-ups of characters on deck before tracking with them along the decks. In an age before Wescams or CGI the sheer physical difficulties in getting such remarkably smooth shots must have been extraordinary - between the seas and the wind alone hitting the right marks and focus points on a moving ship should have been next to impossible - making them all the more impressive. Jerry Goldsmith's score gets an isolated track, its haunting East European main title played on the zither as ominous strings build up in the background doing services in a variety of guises alongside some striking action cues using the same mixture of rapid pared-down percussion, driving piano work and electronics that would become a hallmark of his Man From U.N.C.L.E. scores.

It's a shame that the infamous short film 'Meet Marlon Brando' about the star's increasingly peculiar behavior on the film's press tour (hitting on a passing black woman in a rather patronising attempt to make a point about racism, being typically vague at a press conference and offering the words of wisdom that "You won't know how to proceed in life unless you see Morituri.") isn't included alongside the film's two theatrical trailers and isolated score, but since it wasn't included on the DVD (I don't think Fox own it) its absence isn't surprising.

[Dailyan]

Placed my second sale order:


I originally had "The True Story of Jesse James" but I sold it off as I found it to be a bit underwhelming but at the same time I've been aching for a re-watch. The opening scene is great but the whole thing just reeks of contractual obligation (which it was for Ray). I don't know how much better the film would of been if Fox had allowed Ray's "non-linear" presentation because I felt Wagner was such a dull Jesse James (most of the time it's like he's doing a John Wayne impression). In addition to the TT titles, I decided to finally get my first ClassixFix Blus.

I also have a spare 2$ off coupon if anyone wants it.

[rip63]

I like Morituri a lot, but in response to the earlier poster's question, for mine The Fugitive Kind is far superior. In fact, it's quite excellent in my view. I mean, it's Brando & Anna Magnani doing Tennessee Williams via Sidney Lumet's direction. It's a slowburn to be sure, but endlessly hypnotic and fascinating... It wasn't received so well back in the day, but has developed a substantial cult following and newfound appreciation.

[Professor Echo]

Originally Posted by Aclea

Part of the problem is Brando, who had by then moved into that period of his career when he was increasingly bored with just delivering a solid performance and increasingly felt need to make his parts more eccentric to keep himself interested. It's a long way from the surreal self-indulgence of later films and it's not an especially bad performance, but rather than doing what the film requires you often get the feeling that you're watching him go through acting exercises as he drifts in and out of the film that everyone else is making. As a result it's Brynner, giving a typically arrogant and stentorian turn in a role originally intended for Lee J. Cobb who comes across as the more convincing screen presence despite having much less screen time and much less to work with.

I swear, I don't know what it is, but I absolutely love Brando, especially from MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY on, when he seemed to first start acting in his own imagination no matter what the rest of the cast and crew were doing. "Surreal self-indulgence" is a perfect way to put it, but unlike most, I don't see that as a negative. Often I find what he's doing to not only be the most interesting part of a lot of those movies, but taking them to whole other levels of greatness that most would be too afraid of ever scaling. Of course, it doesn't always work, but the guy appeared so bored with all of it, and with life too, I expect, that he became one of those old guys tinkering alone in his workshop trying to invent God knows what. I know lots of people who can't stand him for all of this, but I find his search for challenges to alleviate a weary soul very refreshing in movies.

[Member-222782]

Has anyone purchased empty clear Blu-ray cases from Twilight Time? What type are they? They have the best deal on cases but I need better quality ones with the Blu-ray logo.

[Dailyan]

Originally Posted by Cinema84

Has anyone purchased empty clear Blu-ray cases from Twilight Time? What type are they? They have the best deal on cases but I need better quality ones with the Blu-ray logo.

They're the same as a regular TT case.

[noirjunkie]

Originally Posted by Professor Echo

I swear, I don't know what it is, but I absolutely love Brando, especially from MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY on, when he seemed to first start acting in his own imagination no matter what the rest of the cast and crew were doing. "Surreal self-indulgence" is a perfect way to put it, but unlike most, I don't see that as a negative. Often I find what he's doing to not only be the most interesting part of a lot of those movies, but taking them to whole other levels of greatness that most would be too afraid of ever scaling. Of course, it doesn't always work, but the guy appeared so bored with all of it, and with life too, I expect, that he became one of those old guys tinkering alone in his workshop trying to invent God knows what. I know lots of people who can't stand him for all of this, but I find his search for challenges to alleviate a weary soul very refreshing in movies.

My favorite late-Brando story took place during the disastrous filming of The Island of Dr. Moreau, when he got so bored he started walking around the set with a colander on his head, telling people it was his particle accelerator.

[SeanJoyce]

Originally Posted by noirjunkie

My favorite late-Brando story took place during the disastrous filming of The Island of Dr. Moreau, when he got so bored he started walking around the set with a colander on his head, telling people it was his particle accelerator.

I loved how he kept purposely flubbing takes on Guys and Dolls until Sinatra got sick from excess cheesecake consumption

[bwdowiak]

Originally Posted by Professor Echo

I swear, I don't know what it is, but I absolutely love Brando, especially from MUTINY ON THE BOUNTY on, when he seemed to first start acting in his own imagination no matter what the rest of the cast and crew were doing. "Surreal self-indulgence" is a perfect way to put it, but unlike most, I don't see that as a negative. Often I find what he's doing to not only be the most interesting part of a lot of those movies, but taking them to whole other levels of greatness that most would be too afraid of ever scaling. Of course, it doesn't always work, but the guy appeared so bored with all of it, and with life too, I expect, that he became one of those old guys tinkering alone in his workshop trying to invent God knows what. I know lots of people who can't stand him for all of this, but I find his search for challenges to alleviate a weary soul very refreshing in movies.

I read a Brando biography long ago. I can't remember which one. At that time, I had only seen his greatest hits. I walked away from the book thinking that everything he did outside of those obvious great films was crap - that his filmography was littered with duds. Then, of course, there is and always has been the narrative that he was disinterested, "mailed it in," whatever. Granted, I still haven't seen some films for which even my expectations are low (Dr. Moreau, the other films he did w/ Johnny Depp,) but if I haven't enjoyed a film that he appeared in, I at least admired the heck out of what he brought to the film.

So, I've gone through a period of discovery (his middle-tier films) and it has rekindled my love for him.

For fun, a ranking of the films I've seen:

[Show spoiler]The Godfather
On The Waterfront
Apocalypse Now
A Streetcar Named Desire
One-Eyed Jacks
Sayonara
Mutiny on the Bounty (firmly entrenched on Team Alec Baldwin here )
The Men
The Wild One
Last Tango in Paris
The Young Lions
The Missouri Breaks
The Score
The Chase

[Aclea]

Originally Posted by SeanJoyce

I loved how he kept purposely flubbing takes on Guys and Dolls until Sinatra got sick from excess cheesecake consumption

He often said that he hated acting and I always got the impression that he was constantly trying to get fired. Case in point: Robert Duvall told a story about being in a pub with Michael Winner and Brando, the latter so drunk that he peed all over Winner's trousers because he couldn't be bothered to go to the toilets, which seems a pretty good way to go about getting fired, especially from a film as worth being fired from as The Nightcomers (the only student who ever got expelled from one of my schools did so for urinating on the principal, and yes, you did read that right). Only this was Michael Winner, as much of a deferential starf***er where A-listers were concerned as he was a bully to his minions, and he actually took it as a compliment. Duvall asked Winner why he put up with that: "My boy, out of all the people in this pub that Marlon could have pissed on, he chose me" was Winner's proud reply.

[projectionbooth]

I was planning on putting in a $100 order for the sale on Friday, but I'm seeing now that TT doesn't offer free shipping? I could have sworn they did?