‘Requiem’ tempers the hilarity at TCM Classic Film Festival

April 11, 2017 by

By Film Noir Blonde and Michael Wilmington

The TCM Classic Film Festival focused on comic films this year but of course there was a dark side. (Isn’t that always the case?) One of the highlights (or lowlights) for the Film Noir Blonde team was the screening of “Requiem for a Heavyweight” (1962, Ralph Nelson).

The film was introduced by Eddie Muller, founder and president of the Film Noir Foundation (a.k.a. the czar of noir). He thanked the audience for coming to “the bleakest, most depressing movie of the fest.” He added that his father had been a longtime boxing columnist for the San Francisco Examiner so he was familiar with the hardscrabble life of a fighter.

The boxer in the film is “Mountain” Rivera (Anthony Quinn) who must choose a new path upon realizing that his best years are behind him. But his options are limited, not only because his whole life has been swinging punches but also because his manager (Jackie Gleason) is not above perpetrating an act of searing betrayal. Mickey Rooney plays Mountain’s trainer and Julie Harris plays an awkward social worker who tries to help him find another kind of job.

The film originated as a teleplay by Rod Serling and aired in 1956 on a show called Playhouse 90, starring Jack Palance in the lead; Kim Hunter played the social worker. Also directed by Nelson, the teleplay received Peabody and Emmy awards. In the film, Cassius Clay (later known as Muhammad Ali) and Jack Dempsey appear as themselves.

Quinn shows us an achingly vulnerable human being starting the last chapter of his life. Without sentimentality, he makes us feel the pain, sadness and frustration of Rivera’s deadly predicament. He also shows us how this once-great, over-the-hill athlete has been victimized by his world: the seedy, sleazy, exploitative milieu of professional boxing.

As Muller put it: “It’s really a Greek tragedy.”

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Robert Wise casts a spell with subtlety, smarts, superb acting

October 29, 2013 by

The Haunting posterBy Michael Wilmington

The Haunting/1963/Argyle Enterprises, MGM/112 min.

From Shirley Jackson’s eerie, intellectual ghost story “The Haunting of Hill House” director Robert Wise and screenwriter Nelson Gidding weave a classic supernatural thriller, a shocker without gore, a ghost movie seemingly without ghosts. Or is it?

In “The Haunting,” poltergeist investigator John Markway (Richard Johnson) and his group of spook watchers (Claire Bloom, Russ Tamblyn and Julie Harris) are ensconced in a notorious old dark house together. Harris gives a movie-stealing performance as repressed spinster Nell Lance, who succumbs to Hill House’s shivery spell and terror-laced eroticism. Like Jack Nicholson in “The Shining,” Harris makes you feel the story’s terror – the menace and the entrapment of Hill House as Nell is pulled into the evil of the haunted domicile’s very dark past.

The cast is well nigh perfect, from Johnson’s enthusiastic and charming investigator, Bloom’s ambiguous, fancily severe Greenwich Village lesbian, Julie, to Lois Maxwell (Miss Moneypenny of the James Bond series) as Mrs. Markway.

Tamblyn, who will be present for discussion at the 7 p.m. Tuesday screening of “The Haunting” in Westwood, plays smart-alecky nonbeliever Luke Sanderson. Tamblyn was reteaming here with director Wise, who had guided the actor to the highlight of his career, as Jet gangleader Riff in the 1961 Best Picture Oscar winner “West Side Story.”

Wise’s movie is quite faithful to Jackson’s acclaimed novel. The dialogue is literate and tense. The movie’s tasteful production design and the crystal-sharp black and white cinematography (by Davis Boulton) give this picture, shot in England, a classic look. It’s the kind of brainy, spooky cinematic treat Wise might have whipped up for producer Val Lewton in the ’40s, in their RKO prime time of “The Body Snatcher” and “The Curse of the Cat People” if they’d only had this kind of budget.

Roman Polanski once named Wise’s “The Haunting” as one of his favorite movies. It’s a shame that Polanski didn’t direct the 1999 remake of “The Haunting,” which was messed up by the producers and director Jan De Bont, and not helped by its big budget and gaudy effects. Subtlety, intelligence and superb acting are what cast the spell for Wise and company. Polanski probably would have brought all that back and made the movie sexy to boot – something the 1963 “Haunting” doesn’t really need.

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‘The Haunting’ marks 50 years with screening in Westwood

October 27, 2013 by

The Haunting posterCelebrating its 50th anniversary, “The Haunting” will screen at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 29, at the Regent Theatre in Westwood.

Dr. John Markway (Richard Johnson) is psyched to spend a few weeks at a 19th Century New England mansion – need I say haunted? – in order to study its creepiness. As you might suspect, things don’t go to plan. Also starring Julie Harris, Claire Bloom and Russ Tamblyn, who will attend Tuesday’s screening as a special guest. The evening is also a chance to pay tribute to Julie Harris, who died this summer.

At the time of its release, critic Judith Crist called the film “a thoroughly satisfying ghost story for grownups … completely contemporary in its psychological overtones and implications.”

Nelson Gidding wrote the script based on a Shirley Jackson novel; Robert Wise directs. Jan de Bont remade “The Haunting” in 1999, starring Liam Neeson, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lili Taylor and Owen Wilson.

You can buy tickets here.

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