All language subtitles for Scorsese Journey - Part 3 - MakingOff.org

I'm often asked by younger filmmakers,
why do I need to look at old movies?

I've made a number of pictures
in the past 20 years.

And the response I find that
I have to give them is that I'm...

I still consider myself a student.

Um, the more pictures
I made in the past 20 years,
the more I realized I really don't know.

And I'm always looking for
something to...

something or someone that I could,
that I could learn from.

I tell the younger, the younger
filmmakers and the young students...

that I do it like painters used to do,
what painters do...

study the old masters,
enrich your palette, expand the canvas.

There's always so much more to learn.

Now, take this forgotten "B" film,
Silver Lode.

Now, this was directed by Allan Dwan,

one of the unheralded film pioneers
who made the first of his 400 films...

back in 1911.

At the end of his long career,
he was sort of relegated
to low-budget genre films.

But low budget or not,
watch the beautiful simplicity...

of the sweeping tracking shots
that are literally guiding
the desperateJohn Payne...

toward his final sanctuary,
the town church.

Dwan's finest movies
featured simple people,

pastoral landscapes
and the rural America of a bygone era.

But behind the lyrical images
of the Old West,

Silver Lode suggests the fragility
of our democratic institutions.

On Independence Day,
the day of his wedding,

John Payne should be
the happiest man in Silver Lode.

There he is! Look!
There! There he is!

Instead, he has to fight
for his life when he's unjustly
accused of a murder...

and suddenly ostracized
by the community.

Daringly, the fugitive's
bride-to-be convinces the town
that he's not guilty...

by forging a telegram
from a U.S. Marshal.

"McCarty not what he
represents himself to be.

Wanted for murder
and cattle rustling. "

So, persecuted for the wrong reasons,
Payne is pardoned for the wrong reasons.

- Ya fixed it!
- You have to remember that this
was the era of the blacklists.

Shoot 'em all! How many bullets
ya got left? Two? Three?

Political messages had to be
smuggled in, cloaked in metaphors.

Actually, the name of the villain,
played by Dan Duryea,

was "McCarty."

And so a church bell
and a fantastic lie saved the day.

McCarty's dead.

Dan, there isn't much that I can say.

But I think I can speak
for all of us... we're sorry.

You're "sorry"?

A moment ago you wanted to kill me.

You forced me to kill,
to defend myself, to save my own life.

But you wouldn't believe what I said.

A man's life can hang
in the balance...

on a piece of paper!

And you're sorry.

The '50s...
The '50s for me is a fascinating era...

when the subtext became as important
as the apparent subject matter...

or even more important.

I mean, look at Douglas Sirk's
film All That Heaven Allows,
which he made in 1955,

or Nicholas Ray's
Bigger Than Life, made in 1956.

Now, you have to understand
these were not "B" movies.

These were big-scale pictures
with major studio stars.

Furthermore, they were Americanas,

the most wholesome genre of the period.

Jane Wyman, the widow in Douglas Sirk's
All That Heaven Allows,

is not rejected by her community,
she is immersed in it.

Her world becomes unhinged
when she falls in love with Rock Hudson,

a much younger man
who happens to be her gardener.

A spiritual descendant of
Thoreau, he represents a solid
and serene individualism...

that seems sadly out of place
in the New England of the 1950s.

What a beautiful view of the pond.
Why, you can see for miles.

Mm-hmm. The sun comes up
right over that hill.

- Oh!
- Do you like it?

Why, it's unbelievable.

Let's take your boots off, huh?

- Hello, Dan.
- Hello, Cary.

- Cary, you know Miss Frisbee,
Mr. Allenby. Mr. Kirby.
- Yes.

- How do you do?
- Oh, what's this I hear about your... Oh.

Haven't I seen you somewhere before?

Well, Mrs. Humphrey,
probably in your garden.

I've been pruning your trees
for the last three years!

Oh, yes, of course.

- Uh, Sara, I really must be going.
- Excuse me. I'll be right back.

- Are you saying
you don't want to marry me?
- Oh, no, I'm not saying that.

I'm... I'm just asking you to be patient.

- It's only a question of time.
- Only of time.

Well, right now
everybody's talking about us.

We're a local sensation.

And like Sara said, if... if the people
get used to seeing us together,

then maybe they'll accept us.

You mean, uh, we'll be invited
to all the cocktail parties.

And, of course, Sara will see to it
that I get into the country club.

I can see that you don't want to listen
to anybody's ideas but your own.

And I can see that you're trying to make
me choose between you and the children!

No, Cary, you're the one
that made it a question of choosing.

So you're the one
that'll have to choose.

All right.

It's all over.

Once she surrenders to the community's
pressure, Jane Wyman is trapped.

Cary.

She's left suffocating in
their world of pretense and illusions...

far from Hudson's Walden Pond.

Home, family, social roles...

can't fulfill
the pursuit of happiness anymore.

Somehow, they've become
the instruments of repression.

Beneath the surface
of the seemingly ideal setting...

lay a sharp indictment
of American small-town life.

? And heaven and nature sing

Both Douglas Sirk and Nicholas Ray
stayed within the rules.

Their films had
the required happy ending.

But they hinted at the dangers inherent
in conforming to society's conventions.

You see, anything indirect...

is, uh, stronger,

in many cases, at least,

because you leave it or you hand it
over to the imagination...

of your audience, you know.

And I've always been trusting...

my audience to have imagination.

Otherwise, they should stay out
of the cinema.

- You know,
you have to leave something open.
- Mm-hmm.

The moment you start preach
in the film... preaching in the film...

the moment you want
to teach your audience,

you're making a bad film.

If you can't have a life,
settle for its imitation.

There's your present now.

This is whatJane Wyman
receives from her children...

- Oh, please, Kay...
- as a substitute for her lost love.

Mother!
Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas, Mrs. Scott.

Television, the movie's
rival medium in the 1950s,

was cast as the ultimate symbol
of alienation.

All you have to do is turn that dial,
and you have all the company you want...

right there on the screen.

Drama, comedy,
life's parade at your fingertips.

Like Douglas Sirk,
Nicholas Ray offers...

both the American family in suburbia
and the psychotic elements:

The convention and the contradictions;
the sugar and the poison.

Look at Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life.

James Mason portrays
a frustrated schoolteacher...

who undergoes personality changes
when he becomes...

hooked on cortisone,
then an experimental drug.

Just use your reason calmly.

We'll have dinner the moment
you've mastered this problem.

Here he feels ten feet tall.

- Ed, dinner's been waiting two hours.
- I'm sorry.

- Richie ought to eat.
- I'm hungry too.

Ed, Richie didn't even have lunch.

The cortisone acts as a catalyst.

It reveals a mental
and spiritual dissatisfaction...

and fuels Mason's growing desire
to escape...

from the dull existence
that stifles his soul.

Lou, it'll be better for all of us
if you clearly understand one thing.

I will not tolerate your attempts
to undermine my program for Richard.

Yes, darling.

Be good enough not to speak to me
in that hypocritical tone of voice.

I see through you as clearly as
I see through this glass pitcher!

If you imagine I'm going to be fooled
by all this sweetness and meekness...

"Yes, darling, no, darling..."

you're even a bigger idiot
than I took you for.

Let's clear this up
once and for all!

I'm staying in this house
solely for the boy's sake!

As for you personally,
I'm completely finished with you.

There's nothing left.
Our marriage is over.

In my mind I've divorced you.

You're not my wife any longer,
I'm not your husband any longer.

Mason's family goes through hell
as he starts questioning every tenet...

of family life in the 1950s.

"Momism," Sunday school,
Little League sports...

and even the egalitarian principles
of American education.

Lou! Lou!

You'll be happy to know you've won.

All of my efforts
have been too late.

In this house,
our son has become a thief.

My heroes are no more neurotic
than the audience.

Unless you can feel that...

a hero is just as fucked up as you are...

that you would make the same mistakes
that he would make...

uh, you can have no satisfaction...

when he does commit a heroic act.

Because then you can say,
"Hell, I could have done that too."

And that's the obligation of
the filmmaker, of the theater worker...

to give a heightened sense
of experience to the...

people who pay to come
to see his work.

"And they came to the place
of which God had told him,

and Abraham built an altar
there and laid the wood in
order and bound Isaac, his son,

and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

And Abraham stretched forth his hand...

and took the knife to slay his son."

But, Ed, you didn't read it all.
God stopped Abraham.

God was wrong.

Ed! No! Ed! No!
Ed! No!

Richie! Run out the window!
Richie! Richie!

No! Richie!

Samuel Fuller's characters
were no intellectuals.

His was a visceral cinema,

excessive, explosive.

He once defined film
as a battlefield.

Love, hate, action, death.
In one word, emotion.

Impact was his main concern.

Whether he was dealing with
the Old West or Cold War America,

his images were bursting
with violence and sexual energy.

In Pickup on South Street,

Richard Widmark is a pickpocket...

andJean Peters a prostitute.

Here he inadvertently
takes a microfilm...

which Communist agents are
trying to smuggle out of the country.

How much is it worth to ya?

What are you pushin' me for?

You came here to buy, didn't you?

America's fate is in the hands
of two outcasts.

She's just a runner who doesn't
even know what side she's on,

while he's a cynic,
willing to do business with all sides.

How much did ya bring?

I don't wanna talk about it.

- A former crime reporter,
- How much?

- Fuller cultivated
the shocks and hyperbole...
- Five hundred.

That tabloids used in their headlines.

You tell that Commie I want a big score
for that film, and I want it in cash.

- Tonight!
- What are you talkin' about?

You tell me. You people are
supposed to have all the answers.

- Tell ya what?
- Come on! Drop the act. So you're a Red.

Who cares?
Your money's as good as anybody else's.

Now get your stern up those stairs
and tell your old lady what I want.

I'll do business with a Red,
but I don't have to believe one.

Playing both ends against the middle,
Widmark defied all "isms,"

- even patriotism.
- Get outta here!

Writer-director-producer
Samuel Fuller's work...

was a potent antidote to America's
complacency during the Cold War.

He was the most outspoken
of the '50s smugglers.

No ideology escaped his scathing irony.

American hypocrisy
was his constant target.

Fuller's heroes were hard
to distinguish from his villains.

If you refuse to cooperate,

you'll be as guilty as the traitors
that gave Stalin the A-bomb.

Are you wavin' the flag at me?

I know something
in our side you should get...

Get this. I didn't grift that film,
and you can't prove I did.

- Do you know what treason means?
- Who cares?

- Answer the man!
- Is there a law now
I gotta listen to lectures?

When he says,
"Don't wave the goddamn flag at me,"

Hoover objected to that
and verbally objected it...

in my presence at Romanoff's table
with Zanuck.

He objects that an American
would say during the heat,

the hottest point of
the Cold War with Russia,

"Don't wave the goddamn flag at me."

And Zanuck said, "He's right," to me.
"He's right. We'll leave out 'goddamn.'"

And Hoover got very angry.

"You know damn well
that's not what I mean."

And Zanuck explained very
simply, and he was a friend
of his... I mean, he knew him...

"This is his character talking,
and that character doesn't give
a goddamn about the flag.

It means nothing to him.

Any flag... You must be that character.

Otherwise, we are making
a propaganda film.

And we don't make those kind
of propaganda films."

Fuller had found a niche
in "B" films and genre pictures,

but when the studio system collapsed,

he was relegated to low-budget,
independent productions.

He had no money,
no stars and only minimal sets.

But out of these limitations
emerged an outstanding film,

Shock Corridor.

Ajournalist pretends to be a madman
in order to investigate a crime...

that took place in a mental hospital.

But instead of winning
the Pulitzer Prize, he goes mad.

Aaaah!

Shock Corridor was full
of front page material.

The inmates were the product of
Cold War paranoia and Southern racism.

Every form of
American insanity was represented.
- Trent!

This baptizes a new organization,
the Ku Klux.

- Sounds good.
- No.

Ku Klux Klan.

Sounds more mysterious,
more menacing, more alliterative.

- Ku Klux Klan. Say it.
- Ku Klux Klan.

- KKK.
- KKK.

It'll catch on quick. It'll drive
those carpetbaggers back north.

Scare the hell out of'em.
Tar and feather them.

Hang' em. Burn 'em.

Listen to me, Americans.
America for Americans!

America for Americans!

Keep our schools white!

- Keep 'em white!
- That's right! Keep 'em white!

- I'm against Catholics!
- Hallelujah, man! Hallelujah!

- AgainstJews! Jews!
- Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

- Against niggers!
- Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

- Against niggers!
- Hallelujah!

- Against niggers!
- Hallelujah!

There's one!

Let's get that black boy
before he marries my daughter!

Hallelujah!
Hallelujah!

The metaphor was crystal clear.

In Fuller's vision,
America had become an insane asylum.

Sadly, Fuller's later career
was typical of the times.

To finance his unorthodox projects,
he had to move to Europe.

And for a whole generation of smugglers,
this was the end of the line.

The pioneers and showmen were gone.

The moguls were replaced
by agents and executives.

Actors and directors were starting
their own companies.

Start the wind machine.

Runaway production
was the name of the game.

Turn on the paddle wheel.

Roll 'em!

- To make films you had to go to London,
- Action!

Paris, Madrid and Rome.

A film like Two Weeks In Another Town
captured the desperation of the times.

I have an offer... leave.

There's only one name for you.

On the streets of my village
they call them...

- Welcome to Hollywood on the Tiber.
- How dare you!

- You are behind schedule.
- I need two weeks
to finish shooting this picture.

You give me two extra weeks, and I'll
give you a Maurice Kruger picture.

- Don't you want
the best movie you can get?
- No.

- Don't you have pride in
what pictures you put your name on?
- No.

Turn that off and get out.
I want to get some sleep.

Tucino, you international peddler!

Take a good look at a movie
that was made just because we
couldn't sleep until we made it.

Ironically, Two Weeks In Another Town...

- was the sequel to
The Bad And The Beautiful.
- Laugh the way he would have!

That's not a god talking, Georgia.
That's only a man.

Both films were directed by Vincente
Minnelli, produced byJohn Houseman...

and starred Kirk Douglas.

But in ten years,
from 1952 to 1962,

the industry had undergone
tremendous changes,

and Two Weeks In Another Town...

was a startling mirror
of Hollywood's decline.

Did it with style.

L-It's all right, Mrs. Curry.

Kruger, you're great.

I was great.

The golden age was over.

And for many a veteran director,
this was a painful period
of anguish and self-doubt.

Who in his right mind
would expect me to settle for you?

A worn-out, dried-up,
whining, meddling old hag!

My lawful wedded nightmare.
Frustrated and stupid.

Sticking your fat nose
into everything day and night!

Clara?

Clara?

Clara.

Don't swallow all those sleeping pills.

The doctor will just have to come up
and pump out your stomach again.

You know how sick that makes me.

Oh, Clara. Clara.

L- I look at this film
I'm shooting. I like it.

What if I'm wrong...

and it's another calamity?

Where do I go from here?

Took me two years to get this job,
and that was a fluke.

How can a man go wrong
and not know why?

What's happened to me?

Is it ego?

Self-indulgence?

Or...

am I just plain afraid?

Oh, my poor...

I've seen the film you're shooting,
and it's beautiful.

Whereas the smuggler works
undercover and his subversion
is not detected immediately,

the iconoclast attacks
conventions head-on...

and his defiance sends shock waves
through the industry.

In Hollywood, the iconoclasts comprise
the visionaries, the groundbreakers,

the renegades who openly defied
the system and expanded the art form.

Often they were defeated. Sometimes they
actually made the system work for them.

Hollywood has always had
a love/hate relationship with those
who break its rules,

extolling them one moment
and burning them the next.

The Hollywood establishment often
confused entertainment with escapism,

so borrowing from real life was deemed
either boring or sometimes subversive,

particularly if it meant
plumbing the lower depths.

But back in the silent era,
a few filmmakers challenged...

the ideals of glamour and
wholesomeness by injecting...

a dose of reality into their films,

generally within
the framework of the melodrama.

D. W. Griffith, for instance,
is often identified...

with quaint romanticism
and Victorian sensibility.

But more than once, he went beyond
the accepted melodrama of his time.

In Broken Blossoms,
he showed how a sordid reality...

can destroy the purest dreams.

This was the most delicate
interracial romance.

Physical and spiritual suffering
is what unites Lillian Gish,

the waif battered by her boxing father,

and Richard Barthelmess,
the young Buddhist
who lost his religious fervor...

in the slums of London.

Their bodies, like their souls,
are bent or stunted.

Both are broken blossoms.

Only when they find
each other do they come alive.

So, for a brief moment,

they're allowed to dream
before our eyes.

But when the racist father
discovers the situation,

bigotry is exposed in its rawest form.

Sweetness and compassion
turn to fury and savagery.

The young Chinese
who didn't believe in violence...

picks up a gun to save his beloved.

He'll come too late.

Her punishment is death.

Erich von Stroheim was
the most outrageous of the iconoclasts,
and he fell the hardest.

The Wedding March is a fairy tale,
but a tragic one,

with Fay Wray, a poor musician's
daughter, as Cinderella,

and Stroheim, the scion
of an aristocratic family,
as her Prince Charming.

The setting was Vienna in the last days
of the Hapsburg dynasty,

a decadent world that both
fascinated and repelled Stroheim.

The city of waltzes
and operettas was a pigsty.

Behind the romantic exterior, Stroheim
revealed an ugly, cruel society...

ruled by greed.

The apple blossoms
offered a brief refuge,

but they were an illusion.

Innocence was doomed from the start.

Stroheim's heroines were no madonnas.

Like their male counterparts,
they were always endowed
with strong sexual desires.

What Stroheim was after
was a more honest depiction...

of human relationships.

Both lovers were victims.

The young girl
who surrendered her soul...

and the prince who had
not yet been corrupted
by the hypocrisy of his milieu.

Stroheim's images
could certainly be brutal,

and they inevitably got him
into trouble with the censors.

But at heart, he was a romantic...

who was haunted by the loss
and the corruption of love.

Rather than indulge in the splendors
of imperial Vienna,

he exposed its moral squalor.

The young prince's father,
a ruined aristocrat,

strikes a deal with a rich
merchant, who's desperate to
marry off his crippled daughter.

Stroheim paid a high price
for his transgressions...

and his perceived intransigence.

The very qualities that made him
a great artist undid him.

He was dubbed a megalomaniac
and ended up losing control
over most of his projects.

They would all be eventually
truncated or disfigured.

All fragments of a broken vision.

In the '30s a few topical films...

allowed the grim reality of
the Depression to seep into the movies,

particularly at Warner Brothers.

Young Darryl Zanuck,
then head of production,

ordered his writers to draw
their subjects from newspaper headlines.

I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang
was probably the most famous...

of these hard-hitting exposes.

It even led to the reformation
of the penal system in the South.

However, David Selznick at RKO...

jumped the gun on Zanuck
by releasing his own indictment
of the chain gang system...

several months earlier.

The film was called Hell's Highway.

Well, young fella,
ya won't catch cold in that sweatbox.

It was one of the three films
directed by Rowland Brown,

a forgotten figure
whose meteoric career reputedly ended...

when he punched
one of Hollywood's top executives.

Carter's dead.
Strangled to death in the sweatbox.

The contractor says
the boy committed suicide.

- Carter's dead.
- Carter's dead.

- Carter's dead.
- Carter's dead.

Somehow, Rowland Brown's audacity
epitomized the pre-Code era.

Those are the tumultuous years
before rigid censorship rules,

known as the Production Code,
came into effect.

- Where's Carter?
- Yeah! Where is Carter?

Where's Carter?

Quiet there!

A convicted bank robber,
Richard Dix is one of the
forgotten men of the Depression.

His rebellious behavior
is justified by the appalling
conditions at the prison camp.

His desperation reflects
that of the country.

Well, why don't you start?

The World War One veteran
was once an all-American hero.

Social consciousness sparked
Warner Brothers'stark dramas.

Films like William Wellman's Wild Boys
OfThe Road and Heroes For Sale.

I have to get to my aunt's
in Chicago someway.

- This is the only way I can do it.
- Well, don't your folks mind?

My mother's dead.

And we got a big family.

With me gone,
it means just one less mouth to feed.

That's why they were
kind of glad to see me go.

Wild Boys OfThe Road
was about teenagers who had
been forced to leave home...

to find work because their parents
lost theirjobs in the Depression.

Railroad dicks constantly
harassed and abused them.

Cheese it!
Railroad dicks!

The social and political context was
painted in rather broad strokes,

but the dramas were
contemporary, urgent, gripping.

Wild Bill Wellman had a natural feeling
for the vagabond life,

for the homeless youngsters
and their battles with authority.

His sympathy lay with the outcasts
and with the rebels.

Tommy!

Now, at the opposite end
of the spectrum...

you find a different breed
of iconoclast,

Baroque stylists such as
Josef von Sternberg.

Like Stroheim,
Sternberg demanded total control...

over all aspects of his productions.

But his was a voluptuous,
dreamlike, supremely artificial world,

lovingly composed
on the Paramount soundstages.

Sternberg's radical stylization
proved as provocative...

as Stroheim's extreme realism.

Each film became a ceremonial
with the director orchestrating...

the most elaborate, erotic rituals
around his star,

Marlene Dietrich.

Of the seven films
Sternberg made with Dietrich,

The Scarlet Empress was
the most baroque and the boldest...

in its depiction
of erotic manipulation...

as it traced the transformation
of an innocent Prussian princess...

into Catherine the Great,
the empress of Russia.

The woman you adore is
quite close to you, isn't she?

Catherine, I love you, worship you.

As the heroine quickly
discovered, political power and
sexual power were inseparable.

Her battles were waged in the bedroom...

as she learned the art of choosing
and changing lovers at the right time.

Catherine showed
such considerable skills...

that she even challenged
traditional sexual roles.

Behind the mirror, as you know,
there's a flight of stairs.

Down below someone
is waiting to come up.

Will His Excellency be kind enough
to open the door for him carefully...

so that he can sneak in?

Nothing escaped Sternberg's
artistic control.

He wrote the script,
conceived the lighting,

composed some of the music,

directed the Los Angeles
Symphonic Orchestra,

helped design the sets and sculptures,

Why did you send my mother away?
What wrong had she done?

And probably selected
every icon himself.

He even claimed that
Marlene was just another tool.

He said, "Remember that Marlene
is not Marlene... I'm Marlene.

She knows that better than anyone. "

That must be Peter.

Go and see if it is and tell him
to come here at once.

Your Imperial Highness,
Her Majesty wishes to see you at once.

"To the artist," insisted Sternberg,

"the subject is incidental,
and only his vision matters. "

He said, " The camera is
a diabolical instrument...

that conveys ideas with lightning speed.

Each picture transliterates
a thousand words. "

Perhaps the greatest iconoclast
of them all was also the youngest...

Orson Welles.

The downright villainy of
Boss Jim W. Gettys' political machine,

now in complete control...

He was 25
when he landed in Hollywood.

I made no campaign promises...

because, until a few weeks ago,

I had no hope of being elected.

Now, however,
I have something more than a hope.

And Jim Gettys...

Jim Gettys has
something less than a chance.

In the wake
of his radio show War of the Worlds,

the young prodigy was given
unprecedented latitude by RKO,

including what's known today as...

the right to final cut.

At the time
only screen legend Charlie Chaplin...

enjoyed such creative control
over his productions.

For his first film Welles set out
to explore the many facets...

of media baron
William Randolph Hearst,

whose abuse of wealth and power
defied America's democratic traditions.

Some in Hollywood were so incensed...

that they put pressure on RKO
to destroy the negative.

Fortunately, they didn't succeed.

Welles was like a young magician
enchanted by his own magic.

In fact, the most revolutionary aspect
of Citizen Kane...

was its self-consciousness.

The style drew attention to itself.

Rosebud.

Now, this contradicted
the classical ideal...

of the invisible camera
and seamless cuts.

Welles used every narrative technique
and filmic device...

deep focus, high and low angles,
wide-angle lenses.

"I want to use
the motion picture camera...

as an instrument of poetry, "
he said.

And somehow Welles'passion
for the medium...

became the great excitement
of the piece itself.

Now, you see,
I had the best contract that
anybody's ever had for Kane.

Nobody comes on the set; nobody gets
to look at the rushes; nothing.

You just make the picture and that's it.

If I hadn't had that contract, they've
would've stopped me at the beginning,

just by the nature of the script.

But it was such conditions... I've never
had anything remotely equal...

to that contract since.

So it isn't just the success.

What spoiled me is having had
the joy of that kind of liberty...

once in my life...

and never having been able
to enjoy it again.

George Amberson Minafer
walked homeward slowly...

through what seemed to be
the strange streets of a strange city.

For the town was growing and changing.

It was heaving up
in the middle incredibly.

It was spreading incredibly.

And as it heaved and spread,
it befouled itself...

and darkened its sky.

Orson Welles inspired
more would-be directors...

than any other filmmaker
since D. W. Griffith.

Yet Welles didn't change the status
of the Hollywood director.

He actually lost
all his privileges a year later...

on The Magnificent Ambersons,

which was chopped down
and partially reshot in his absence.

Do you know that I always
liked Hollywood very much.

It just wasn't reciprocated.

Throughout his career, Welles pushed
the creative envelope in so many ways.

To trace Kane's political ambitions,
for instance,

he created fake newsreel footage.

To give it the appropriate look,

he had editor Robert Wise drag the film
across a concrete floor.

Here was an opportunity
for Welles to recall...

William Randolph Hearst's
fondness for dictators.

You saw Kane posing with Hitler
for the photographers.

Now, at the same time,
in his first talking picture,

Chaplin dared to aim at
the Fascist powers directly.

At the risk of infuriating
America's isolationist forces,

Chaplin took on
the dictator singlehandedly.

Und now, derJuden.

DerJuden!

DerJuden.

Ohhhh, derJuden.

His Excellency has
just referred to theJewish people.

A comedy
drawing on such topical horrors...

as racial persecutions
and concentration camps,

The Great Dictator presented Chaplin
with another major challenge:

He gave himself a double role,

that of the monster dictator Hynkel...

and the victim, theJewish barber.

Of course, even the renegades
like Chaplin and Welles
had to work around the censors.

Attention!

The content of American films
was still strictly controlled.

Adult themes and images were
too often curtailed or suppressed.

But after World War Two,

audiences wanted pictures
to be truer to life.

A few of our filmmakers
started challenging the rules.

Hey, Stella!

You quit that howlin' down there
and go to bed!

- Joyce, I want my girl down here!
- You shut up!

Elia Kazan led the assault.

Hey, Stella!

Hey, Stella!

His Streetcar Named Desire
caused the first major breach
in Hollywood's Production Code.

I wouldn't mix in this.

Kazan fought
tooth and nail, frame by frame,

to preserve the integrity of
Tennessee Williams'drama when
he adapted it to the screen.

This meant exposing
the overtly carnal desires...

of Stanley and his battered,
pregnant wife Stella.

Now, these close shots of Kim Hunter
were not in the film...

as it was originally released...

because the Legion of Decency
objected to their sensuality.

The studio decided to cut them...

and replace the jazz score
with more conventional music.

Don't ever leave me, baby.

The camera is more than
a recorder...it's a microscope.

It penetrates. It goes into people.

You see their most private
and concealed thoughts.

I'm able... I have been able
to do that with actors.

I mean, I've revealed things
that actors didn't know they
were revealing about themselves.

You know, I seen you
a lot of times before.

Remember parochial school
out on Paluski Street?

Seven, eight years ago.
Your hair... Had your hair, uh...

Braids.
That's right.

Looked like a hunk of rope.

You had wires on your teeth
and glasses, everything.

You was really a mess.

I was 12 years old
when I saw On The Waterfront.

It was a breakthrough for me.

Don't get sore.
I'm just kidding you.

I just mean to tell you that you...
grew up very nice.

Kazan was forging a new acting style.

Edie?

Edie?

It had the appearance of realism,

but actually it revealed
the natural behavior of people...

and the truth in that behavior that
I'd never seen before on the screen.

Stay away from me!

"Brando, " Kazan said, "was the only
actor I could describe as a genius.

He had that ambivalence that I believe
is essential in depicting humanity..."

Come on! Open the door, please!

- "both strength...
- Stop it!

And sensibility. "

I want you to stay away from me.

I know what you want me to do,
but I ain't gonna do it, so forget it!

I don't want you to do anything. You let
your conscience tell you what to do.

Shut up about that conscience.
That's all I been hearin'.

I never mentioned the word before.
You just stay away from me!

Edie, you love me.
I want you to...

I didn't say I didn't love you.
I said stay away from me!

- I want you to say it to me.
- Stay away from me!

Elia Kazan paved
the way for the iconoclasts
of the '50s and '60s.

They were writer-directors
and writer-producers,

men like Robert Aldrich, Richard Brooks,

Robert Rossen, Billy Wilder,

and among the younger generation...

Arthur Penn and Sam Peckinpah.

They all defied
the guardians of public morality...

by daring to tackle controversial issues
like racism,

inner-city violence,
juvenile delinquency,

homosexuality, war atrocities,

the death penalty.

A new reality was hitting the screens.

I think producer-director Otto Preminger
did more than anyone else...

to bring about the demise
of the Production Code.

His crusade against censorship
led him from The Moon Is Blue,

a comedy about professional virgins,

to Advise & Consent,

which exposed
political corruption in Washington...

and even showed gay bars.

He was among the first to challenge
the blacklists by hiring Dalton Trumbo,

one of the "Hollywood Ten,"

to write Exodus.

One of Preminger's
most important victories was scored...

when he made the film
The Man With the Golden Arm,

probably the first honest depiction
of drug addiction...

on American screens.

Here's Frank Sinatra, in one
of his most memorable performances,

as a heroin addict
going through withdrawal.

Let me out!

Ohh!

Out!

Come on!
Let me out!

Ohh!

Ohh!

And don't try to come back,
or I'll throw you out again!

Alexander Mackendrick's
Sweet Smell of Success...

exposed a different kind of addiction...

the addiction to power.

I love this dirty town.

The arena was Broadway, with Burt
Lancaster portrayingJ.J. Hunsecker,

the master manipulator.

In Clifford Odets
and Ernest Lehman's screenplay,

the formidable newspaper and
radio columnist was to show business...

what Senator McCarthy was
to Cold War politics.

His fear and intimidation tactics...

made him a national institution,

but his ruthless world flickered
in a moral twilight.

Manny, tell me, what exactly are the...

unseen gifts of this lovely young thing
that you manage?

Well, she sings a little.

You know, she sings...

Manny's faith in me is
simply awe-inspiring, Mr. Hunsecker.

- Actually, I'm still studying.
- What subject?

Singing, of course.

Straight concert and...

Why, of course. You might,
for instance, be studying politics.

Uh... me?

- Well, you see,J. J...
- I mean, I?

Y-You must be kidding, Mr. Hunsecker.

Me, with myJersey City brains?

I know. That wonder boy of yours
opens at the Latin Quarter next week.

- J.J., uh...
- Say good-bye, Lester.

J.J. 's power is based on
a network of informers and sycophants.

That's the only reason the
poor slobs pay you... to see
their names in my column.

- Now I make it out
you're doing me a favor?
- I didn't say tha...

The day I can't get along
without a press agent's handouts,

I'll close up and move to Alaska.

Sweep out my igloo.
Here I come.

Manny, you rode in here on the senator's
shirttails, so shut your mouth.

Now, come,J.J.
That's a little too harsh.

Anyone seems fair game
for you tonight.

This man is not for you, Harvey, and you
shouldn't be seen in public with him.

Because that's another part
of a press agent's life.

They dig up scandal about
prominent people and shovel it thin...

among columnists who give them space.

There seems to be some allusion here
that escapes me.

We're friends, Harvey.

We go as far back as when you were
a fresh kid congressman, don't we?

Why is it that everything you say
sounds like a threat?

Maybe it's a mannerism,
because I don't threaten friends.

But why furnish your enemies
with ammunition?

You're a family man, Harvey,
and someday, God willing,
you may want to be president.

And here you are, out in the open,

where any hep person knows that this one
is toting that one around for you.

Are we kids, or what?

Next time you come up
you might join me on my TV show.

Thanks,J.J.,
for what I consider sound advice.

Go now, and sin no more.

? It was an itsy-bitsy teenie-weenie ?

- ? Yellow polka dot bikini ?
- Nein! Nein!

? That she wore for the first time ?

Let's not forget
that comedies can be just as
iconoclastic as dramas.

Billy Wilder's work,
first as a writer in the 1930s,

then as a writer-director
from the '40s on, is a perfect example.

Over the years Wilder's wit only grew
more abrasive.

Instead of sweetening his brews,
he kept adding more acid.

- Sind Sie ein Amerikanischer Spion?
- Nein!

You won't find a more iconoclastic film
in the Kennedy years...

than his film One, Two, Three,

? It was an itsy-bitsy teenie-weenie ??

a savage political farce that
dared ridicule all ideologies
at the height of the Cold War.

- Hey!
- MacNamara!

If it isn't my old friends Hart,
Schaffner and Karl Marx.

- I see you bring blonde lady with you.
- Ring-a-ding-ding!

James Cagney plays a Coca-Cola executive
who has enrolled his secretary...

to hoodwink the Soviet commissars
in East Berlin.

To what do we owe
this unexpected pleasure?

- You're a trade commission.
I thought we might trade.
- Coca-Cola?

No. But I hear you boys would like
Fraulein Ingeborg to go to work for you.

- You wanna trade your secretary?
- Right.

- For Russian secretary?
- Wrong.

I do not blame you.
Ours is built like bowlegged samovar.

We find proposition very interesting.
Now, what can we offer you?

All I want from you
is a small favor.

Small favor, big favor.
Anything.

There's a guy named Otto Ludwig Piffl
being held by the East German police.

- For what reason?
- Son of a gun stole my cuckoo clock.

- You want cuckoo clock back?
- Wrong.

- You want Piffl back.
- Right.

Impossible, my friend. We cannot
interfere with internal affairs...

of sovereign republic
of East Germany.

- No Piffl, no deal. Let's go, Ingeborg.
- Wait! What is the hurry?

You're not giving us a chance.

Is old Russian proverb: You cannot
milk cow with hands in pockets.

Herr Ober!
Vodka! Caviar!

Herr Kapellmeister,
more rock and roll!

Wilder's transgressions
of political correctness...

matched his transgressions
of good taste.

To Wilder, good taste was
another name for censorship.

"I'm accused of being vulgar,"
he would say.

"So much the better,
that proves I'm closer to life. "

The picture was hit
by a change in attitude.

The wall was built,
nobody could get through East Berlin
to West Berlin and vice versa.

The desire of the audience
to laugh was strong.

About 25 years later,

it became a smash hit in Germany.

Everybody went to see it because...

the wall was gone and, uh...

it was not gone yet, but it had eased,
you know, that whole thing.

And it became...
it became, uh...

it became a kind
of a historic vignette...

of the silliness of the Russians...

and the stupidity of the Americans.

Come on, everything.
Get it up here.

By the late 1960s
the Production Code was almost defunct.

- Bonnie and Clyde put the nail
in the coffin.
- Clyde, where's the car?

What did he do? Where's the car?

Where did he go?

Here!

The old studio system...

was so hypocritical.

They were constantly fearful of
being accused of instilling in youth...

the glory of the outlaw.

So they had these rules, for instance,

that you couldn't even fire a gun in the
same frame with somebody getting hit.

You had to have, literally,
a film cut in between.

So I thought, if we're gonna
show this, we should show it.

We should show what it looks like
when somebody gets shot,

that shooting somebody
is not a sanitized event.

It's not immaculate.

There's an enormous amount of blood.

There's an enormous amount of...
of horror of change...

that takes place when that occurs.

We were in
the middle of the Vietnamese war.

What you saw on television was
every bit...perhaps even more bloody...

than what we were showing on film.

Hey...

The Production Code didn't
survive the late '60s.

Bonnie and Clyde
and The Wild Bunch disposed of it.

Today the violence in films
is certainly more graphic.

The last frontier may be sexuality,

and beyond sexuality
the complexity of the human psyche.

This is the territory that Stanley
Kubrick has been mining in his films.

Like Kazan, Kubrick was a New York
maverick who grew into an iconoclast.

He emerged from independent production
and film noir...

to create his own
unique, visionary worlds.

His association with Kirk Douglas...

on Paths of Glory and Spartacus...

established him as a major player,

but he couldn't stand being
an employee on studio projects...

and moved to London to make Lolita.

He stayed there
and hasn't worked in Hollywood since.

He's one of the rare iconoclasts...

who's enjoyed the luxury of operating
completely on his own terms.

Back here we have the kitchen.

- That's where we have
our informal meals.
- Perhaps if you'd...

My pastries win prizes around here.

If you'd let me have your
phone number, that would give me
a chance to think it over.

Here's James Mason
as a European intellectual
discovering the trappings...

of small-town America.

Oh, you must see the garden
before you go.

My flowers win prizes around here.

They're the talk of the neighborhood.

Voil�j!

My yellow roses.

My... Uh... Oh. My daughter.

Uh, darling, turn that down, please.

I could offer you a comfortable home...

With a sunny garden,
a congenial atmosphere, my cherry pie.

When Kubrick made Lolita,

the subject of a
middle-aged man infatuated with
a sexually precocious minor...

was still completely taboo.

We haven't discussed, uh, how much.

Oh, uh, something nominal.
Let's say...

This was not
the contraband of a smuggler,
- 200 a month?

But open defiance.

Including meals and late snacks,
et cetera.

- You're a very persuasive
salesman, Mrs. Haze.
- Thank you. Uh...

What was the decisive factor?
Uh, my garden?

I think it was your...
cherry pies.

Ohh!

Why were you so late coming home
from school yesterday afternoon?

Yesterday. Yesterday.
What was yesterday?

Yesterday was Thursday.

That's right.
That's right.

Michelle and I, um,
stayed to watch football practice.

- In the Frigid Queen?
- What do you mean,
"In the Frigid Queen"?

I was driving around and I thought
I saw you through the window.

Oh. Yeah. Well, we stopped there
for a malt afterwards.

What difference does it make?

You were sitting at a table
with two boys.

I told you, no dates.

- It wasn't a date.
- It was a date.

- It wasn't a date.
- It was a date, Lolita.

- It was not a date.
- It was a date!

It wasn't a date.

Whatever it was that you had
yesterday afternoon, I don't
want you to have it again.

And while we're on the subject,
how did you come to be so late
on Saturday afternoon?

Professor Humbert's fall
befits his transgression.

- Where have you put her?
- Get your hands off her!

- Where is she?
- Obsessed with Lolita,

who's now run away from him,

he undergoes a mental breakdown.

- Hold it now!
- Don't let go!

The satirical comedy turns into
a bizarre tragedy.

Let's get this business straight.

This girl was officially
discharged earlier tonight
in the care of her uncle.

If you say so.

Well, has she or hasn't she an uncle?

- All right, let's say she has an uncle.
- What do you mean, "let's say"?

Uh, all right.
She has an uncle.

Uncle Gus.
Uh, yes, I remember now.

He was going t-to pick her up
here at the hospital.

- L-I forgot that.
- Forgot?

- Yes, I forgot.
- All right, let him up.

Uh, she didn't, by any chance,

leave any... message for me?

No, I suppose not.

Five years in the army...

and some considerable experience
of the world...

had by now dispelled any of those
romantic notions regarding love...

with which Barry commenced life,

and he began to have it in mind,

as so many gentlemen
had done before him,

to marry a woman
of fortune and condition.

And, as such things so often happen,

these thoughts closely coincided...

with his setting first sight
upon a lady who will henceforth
play a considerable part...

in the drama of his life...

the Countess of Lyndon,

Viscountess Bullingdon of England,

Baroness Castle Lyndon
of the kingdom of Ireland.

A woman of vast wealth and great beauty.

Kubrick's boldest project...

was a period piece set
in 18th-century Europe...

Barry Lyndon.

He broke new technical ground,

having special lenses manufactured...

to capture the glow of the candlelit
mansions of the aristocracy.

Instead of a picaresque tale,

Kubrick offered another
grim journey of self-destruction...

the rise and fall of an opportunist.

On the surface...

the approach was
cool and distant, deceptive.

But I found this to be
one of the most profoundly
emotional films I've ever seen.

Samuel, I'm going outside
for a breath of air.

Yes, milady. Of course.

Kubrick's style
was strangely unsettling.

His audacity was
to insist on slowness...

in order to recreate the pace of life...

and the ritualized behavior
of the time.

A good example is this seduction scene,

which he stretches...

until it settles into a sort of trance.

What has always struck me is
the ballet of the emotions in the film.

Watch the tension
between the camera's movements...

and the character's body language,

orchestrated by the music in this scene.

WithJohn Cassavetes'characters,

the emotion was always up front.

That's great.

It was at once their cross
and their salvation.

John's approach was warm, embracing,
focused on people.

- Aah! No. No. No, no, no, no.
- Yes. Yes.

Relationships were
all he was interested in.

The laughter and the games,
the tears and the guilt,

the whole roller coaster of love.

A middle-class housewife, in despair
over the failure of her marriage,

has been picked up by a young man.

She takes him home for the night.

The next morning he finds her comatose.

Operator?

I want the emergency rescue squad.

My number?

My number is...

Come on, now. Drink this, damn it!

Goddamn bitch.
Drink this!

Come on, now.
Don't go back out.

Cassavetes embodied
the emergence of a new school...

of guerilla filmmaking in New York.

His films were literally made
on the credit plan.

John was fearless,
a true renegade setting up
one psychodrama after another...

with the complicity of a whole
close group of actor friends.

He insisted on having fun
when making films...

while looking for some kind of truth.

Maybe even a revelation.

No. You gotta stay awake.
Please.

I don't want you to die.

No.

Please, lady.

You gotta stay awake.

You gotta stay awake.

To have
a philosophy is to know how to love...

- You gotta stay awake.
- and to know where to put it.

But you can't put it everywhere.

You've gotta be a priest saying, " Yes,
my son, yes, my daughter, bless you. "

But people don't live that way.

They live with anger and hostility
and problems...

and lack of money, lack of...

You know, tremendous disappointments
in their life. They're...

So, what they need is a philosophy.

I think what everybody needs
is a way to say...

"Where and how can I love,
can I be in love...

so that I can live
with some degree of peace?"

And so that's why I have
a need for the characters...

to really analyze love,
discuss it, kill it,

destroy it, hurt each other,
do all that stuff...

in that war,

in that word polemic
and picture polemic of what life is.

The rest of the stuff
really doesn't interest me.

It may interest other people,
but I have a one-track mind.

All I'm interested in is love.

That's it! Hoo-hoo!

You're gonna cry!
Ohh, geez! Come on!

Come on. I didn't want to hit you,
but don't go to sleep on me.

Ohh! Come on, now! Cry!
That's it! That's life, honey!

Tears of happiness, man.
Just do it!

Come on, now. Ohh.

All of Cassavetes'films,

they were all epics of the human soul.

Watching them brings to mind a comment
made byJohn Ford to a collaborator...

who was complaining about the miserable
weather conditions in the desert...

when they were trying
to shoot a picture.

The guy said, " Look, Mr. Ford,
what can we shoot out here?"

And Ford replied,
"What can we shoot?

The most interesting and exciting thing
in the whole world... a human face."

You want some coffee?

- Can I trust you? Huh? Huh?
- Yeah.

Okay. I don't trust you anyway.

I don't...

Uh-huh.
You little sneaky, you.

I'm gonna get you some coffee!

So, we're gonna have to stop...

because I can't go on any further.

Number one, we just don't have the time.

Number two,
we've reached a different era.

It's the era of the late '60s, the years
that I started making movies myself,

and, uh, it puts me
in a different perspective.

We've reached a whole
new chapter altogether and I really...

I could not really do justice
to my friends who are making films...

and companions and, uh, my generation
of filmmakers from the inside.

I can't...
I can't do it.

Um, so the story really has no end,

and we haven't even
started discussing...

such incredibly major figures as...

Ernst Lubitsch, Preston Sturges,

Joseph Mankiewicz, John Huston,

George Stevens, Sam Peckinpah,

William Wyler or,
of course, Alfred Hitchcock.

But fortunately they've been
celebrated in so many ways,

in so many books and articles and in
some, actually, wonderful shows.

Documentaries about film are becoming
a genre unto themselves...

thanks to Kevin Brownlow and David
Gill's invaluable 13-hour series...

about Hollywood in its silent era...

just the silent film alone, 13 hours;

Peter Bogdanovich's film
Directed byJohn Ford,

Richard Schickel's series
The Men Who Made The Movies,

and so many British and French portraits
of filmmakers.

So many directors have inspired me
over the years,

I wouldn't know how to stop mentioning
their names, we're indebted to them.

As we are to any original filmmaker
who managed to survive...

and impose his or her vision
in a very competitive profession.

When we talk about personal expression,

I'm often reminded
of Kazan's film America, America,

the story of his uncle's journey
from Anatolia to America...

the story of so many immigrants
who came to this country from
a very, very foreign land.

You're blockin'traffic!
Come on! Move it along!

I kind of identified
with it and was very moved by it.

Actually, I later saw myself making this
same journey, but not from Anatolia.

Rather, from my own neighborhood
in New York,

which was, in a sense,
a very foreign land.

I made that journey
from that land to moviemaking,

which was something unimaginable.

Actually, when I was a little
younger there was another
journey I wanted to make.

It was a religious one...
I wanted to be a priest.

However I soon realized
that my real vocation, my real calling,

was the movies.

I don't really see a conflict
between the Church and movies...
the sacred and the profane.

Obviously there are major differences,

but I could also see
great similarities...

between a church and a movie house.

Both are places for people to come
together and share a common experience,

and I believe
there's a spirituality in films,

even if it's not one
which can supplant faith.

I find that over the years
many films address themselves
to the spiritual side of man's nature...

from Griffith's film Intolerance
toJohn Ford's The Grapes of Wrath,

to Hitchcock's Vertigo,

to Kubrick's 2001 and so many more.

It's as if movies answer an ancient
quest for the common unconscious.

They fulfill a spiritual need
that people have...

to share a common memory.