Containing multitudes is a time-honored cinematic tradition.
Sure, featuring a single actor as more than one character in your movie smells a bit like a gimmick—but at the end of the day, it’s an efficient and often effective means of showcasing the versatility of a performer. And that can hardly be faulted. We caught a whiff of it with Split this year, though McAvoy might be disqualified for being a Legion of One rather than a cast with a shared face. Personally, I had no idea the trend cast such a wide-reaching historical net — I’d stupidly assumed it was something made possible by the advent of modern makeup and digital tech. Again, stupidly.
Be it gimmick or something more nuanced (or both!) — it’s particularly fascinating that it has such a long standing history as a marketing device. Film quality aside, the main draw is often the performative tour-de-force itself. Some...
Sure, featuring a single actor as more than one character in your movie smells a bit like a gimmick—but at the end of the day, it’s an efficient and often effective means of showcasing the versatility of a performer. And that can hardly be faulted. We caught a whiff of it with Split this year, though McAvoy might be disqualified for being a Legion of One rather than a cast with a shared face. Personally, I had no idea the trend cast such a wide-reaching historical net — I’d stupidly assumed it was something made possible by the advent of modern makeup and digital tech. Again, stupidly.
Be it gimmick or something more nuanced (or both!) — it’s particularly fascinating that it has such a long standing history as a marketing device. Film quality aside, the main draw is often the performative tour-de-force itself. Some...
- 4/13/2017
- by Meg Shields
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
Just what is the dreaded ‘Process 97’? Henry Hathaway’s docu-drama combined newsreel ‘reality’ with a true espionage story from the files of the F.B.I., creating a thriller about spies and atom secrets that dazzled the film-going public. But how much of it was true, and how much invented?
The House on 92nd Street
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 88 min. / Street Date November 15, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring William Eythe, Lloyd Nolan, Signe Hasso, Gene Lockhart, Leo G. Carroll, Lydia St. Clair, William Post Jr., Harry Bellaver, Bruno Wick, Harro Meller, Charles Wagenheim, Alfred Linder, Renee Carson, Paul Ford, Vincent Gardenia, Reed Hadley, E.G. Marshall, Elisabeth Neumann-Viertel.
Cinematography Norbert Brodine
Film Editor Harmon Jones
Original Music David Buttolph
Written by Barré Lyndon, Charles G. Booth, John Monks Jr.
Produced by Louis De Rochemont
Directed by Henry Hathaway
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
I can’t believe...
The House on 92nd Street
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 88 min. / Street Date November 15, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring William Eythe, Lloyd Nolan, Signe Hasso, Gene Lockhart, Leo G. Carroll, Lydia St. Clair, William Post Jr., Harry Bellaver, Bruno Wick, Harro Meller, Charles Wagenheim, Alfred Linder, Renee Carson, Paul Ford, Vincent Gardenia, Reed Hadley, E.G. Marshall, Elisabeth Neumann-Viertel.
Cinematography Norbert Brodine
Film Editor Harmon Jones
Original Music David Buttolph
Written by Barré Lyndon, Charles G. Booth, John Monks Jr.
Produced by Louis De Rochemont
Directed by Henry Hathaway
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
I can’t believe...
- 12/10/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
A strangely lost and not yet found film (Reel finds, G2, 2 May) is Fritz Wendhausen's Little Man What Now (1933), with Hertha Thiele and art direction by Caspar Neher. This film co-scripted by the author of the novel, Hans Fallada was originally to be directed by Berthold Viertel, with music by Kurt Weill, prominent Jews who had to leave Germany. The novel was an international bestseller and was filmed in Hollywood by Frank Borzage a year later, in a sentimentalised version rejected by Fallada. A poster exists for the 1933 version, but the film itself seems to have been wiped off the face off the earth. Fallada was dubbed "undesirable", by the Nazis. Was the film perhaps too intolerable for them? It it followed the book, it does contain a comically stupid Nazi oaf. There will be a prize for anyone who can track down a copy of this film.
Nicholas Jacobs
London
Continue reading.
Nicholas Jacobs
London
Continue reading.
- 5/2/2014
- by Guardian Staff
- The Guardian - Film News
Colin Firth is mesmerising as a bereaved gay man with a death wish in fashion designer Tom Ford's superb debut
Christopher Isherwood was one of the great prose writers of the 20th century, a man of complexity, honesty and wit, and the fashion designer Tom Ford, making his carefully stylised directorial debut, has done an altogether admirable job of bringing to the screen what many regard as his best novel.
Born in 1904, Isherwood grew up with the cinema, was fascinated by the relationship between literature and the new medium, and his most famous line occurs his most celebrated book, Goodbye to Berlin: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking." Over the years he worked frequently on movies (his masterly novella, Prater Violet, was based on his experience of co-writing the 1934 Berthold Viertel film Little Friend), and when he and Wh Auden left Britain just...
Christopher Isherwood was one of the great prose writers of the 20th century, a man of complexity, honesty and wit, and the fashion designer Tom Ford, making his carefully stylised directorial debut, has done an altogether admirable job of bringing to the screen what many regard as his best novel.
Born in 1904, Isherwood grew up with the cinema, was fascinated by the relationship between literature and the new medium, and his most famous line occurs his most celebrated book, Goodbye to Berlin: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking." Over the years he worked frequently on movies (his masterly novella, Prater Violet, was based on his experience of co-writing the 1934 Berthold Viertel film Little Friend), and when he and Wh Auden left Britain just...
- 2/15/2010
- by Philip French, Colin Firth
- The Guardian - Film News
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