David Vining's Blog, page 84

The Collector

William Wyler returned to his roots with The Children’s Hour, met middling financial success, and did a Hitchcock. I mean that specifically regarding how as the studio system was in the final stages of collapse in the early 60s, Hitchcock had to go to England to make Frenzy. Though, it’s also to note that The Collector is somewhat Hitchcockian (make the redhead a blonde, and it’s one heavy step closer) to the point where Wyler consciously decided to not use Bernard Herrmann as composer becau...

The Children’s Hour

It doesn’t happen often, but I find it interesting when a filmmaker remakes a film they made earlier. It must come from a place where they felt like they could have done something if circumstances had been different, circumstances change, and now they see an opportunity to reapproach the material from a new point of view. They are some of the most interesting remakes. Here, in William Wyler’s remake of These Three he returns to the source play’s original plot machinations around accusations ...

Ben-Hur: A Second Look

Yes, I did just watch this movie about two months ago, and yes I did rewatch it.  And you know what? It’s still great. A hugely entertaining epic that really does stand up to multiple viewings, it’s no surprise that it has enduring where many other epics of the time (think The Fall of the Roman Empire, no disrespect to Anthony Mann) have not.

The point of doing these rewatches this way is to more firmly place them within the context of whatever I’m exploring at the time. The first viewing...

The Big Country: A Second Look

I haven’t checked this out since I first discovered it, and I purchased that really nice Kino Lorber Blu-ray of it shortly after. If I remember correctly, I watched it first from Netflix DVD, so this Bu-ray presentation was something of a revelation. The Big Country is gorgeous to look at. William Wyler, using scope cinematography for the first time and color for only the second, brought his expert framing to the wide searches of the American west for the first time since the earliest days o...

Friendly Persuasion

Well, this is a real change of pace. Going from the taut, violent thriller that was The Desperate Hours William Wyler brings to the screen this nice, funny, and touching exploration of the Quaker ethos. Oh, there’s still some violence to be had here, but the handling is so different that it feels like Wyler had changed and become a new man. It’s what happens when a director decides that even with all of the power and authority one can muster in the dying days of the studio system and just ma...

The Desperate Hours

Based on a novel and play by the screenwriter Joseph Hayes, The Desperate Hours is one of the final plays that William Wyler adapted to the screen, and it’s one that feels the least stage bound. Commanding his cast of stars and stock players with his typical aplomb, framing the events in his intricately designed, deep-focus manner, and utilizing another of those two-story sets he obviously loved so much, Wyler created a taught thriller that was somewhat based on real events.

Three convict...

Napoleon Trailer

Want. Mostly I want it to return to its original title of Kitbag, a much more interesting title.

But I love Ridley Scott’s films, especially his historical epics, and this looks like a particularly grand example of one.

I’m happy that Apple is funding this, but I fear it just being another expensive icon on a streaming service after a couple of days. I really hope that Scott (and Scorsese for Killers of the Flower Moon) got agreements on physical home video releases into their co...

Roman Holiday

With some distance from the personal tragedy of the death of his infant son, which seems to have affected Carrie, William Wyler comes back with one of his most beloved films, the film that introduced Audrey Hepburn to the world, and the third film of his that feels like an homage to Ernst Lubitsch (the previous two being The Good Fairy and The Gay Deception). This is, of course, Roman Holiday, the delightful romp across social classes through the streets of Rome. Embracing a more cinema veri...

Carrie (1952)

No psychic powers or pig’s blood? What is this?!

Based on the novel Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, William Wyler’s Carrie is a melodrama through and through, the sort of thing that recalls earlier efforts like Jezebel or Wuthering Heights. It’s also something of a compromised work to fit in with the Hays Office’s mandates on morality in film at the time, something that also hampered Detective Story. It’s obvious that Wyler was trying to push as far as he could under the strictures tha...

Detective Story

Another film adaptation of a respected stage play from William Wyler, largely taking place on a single set that never feels old because of Wyler’s immense ability to frame a shot, well-acted, and emotionally resonant. Another one. Jeez. This is getting redundant. All kidding aside, that Wyler was able to consistently output films at this quality is really amazing. I don’t think Detective Story is really the top tier of Wyler’s work, there being an issue I can’t get past regarding its central...