Hitler's Madman, a WWII propaganda film, had a complex origin story: filmed shortly after the real events it depicts (the assassination of senior Nazi Reinhard Heydrich and the subsequent massacre of the Czech town of Lidice in reprisal), the appearance of Fritz Lang's similarly-themed Hangmen Also Die! caused its release to be delayed and it also suffered a title change from the catchier Hitler's Hangman. On the plus side, the tiny independent production, shot in just a week, was acquired by MGM and given a bigger budget for re-shoots to enhance its production values. But Sirk ruefully admitted the new scenes actually weakened the film's Poverty Row sensibility, which gave it a slight documentary flavor which was useful.The Lang film is, I think, superior all round, but the two make interesting companions and Sirk's is tougher, in a way. Lang's movie, originally written by Brecht, attempts to build in a small victory,...
- 12/24/2015
- by David Cairns
- MUBI
Maximilian Schell movie director (photo: Maximilian Schell and Maria Schell) (See previous post: “Maximilian Schell Dies: Best Actor Oscar Winner for ‘Judgment at Nuremberg.’”) Maximilian Schell’s first film as a director was the 1970 (dubbed) German-language release First Love / Erste Liebe, adapted from Igor Turgenev’s novella, and starring Englishman John Moulder-Brown, Frenchwoman Dominique Sanda, and Schell in this tale about a doomed love affair in Czarist Russia. Italian Valentina Cortese and British Marius Goring provided support. Directed by a former Best Actor Oscar winner, First Love, a movie that could just as easily have been dubbed into Swedish or Swahili (or English), ended up nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award. Three years later, nominated in that same category was Schell’s second feature film as a director, The Pedestrian / Der Fußgänger, in which a car accident forces a German businessman to delve deep into his past.
- 2/2/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Fred MacMurray movies: ‘Double Indemnity,’ ‘There’s Always Tomorrow’ Fred MacMurray is Turner Classic Movies’ "Summer Under the Stars" today, Thursday, August 7, 2013. Although perhaps best remembered as the insufferable All-American Dad on the long-running TV show My Three Sons and in several highly popular Disney movies from 1959 to 1967, e.g., The Absent-Minded Professor, Son of Flubber, Boy Voyage!, MacMurray was immeasurably more interesting as the All-American Jerk. (Photo: Fred MacMurray ca. 1940.) Someone once wrote that Fred MacMurray would have been an ideal choice to star in a biopic of disgraced Republican president Richard Nixon. Who knows, the (coincidentally Republican) MacMurray might have given Anthony Hopkins a run for his Best Actor Academy Award nomination. After all, MacMurray’s most admired movie performances are those in which he plays a scheming, conniving asshole: Billy Wilder’s classic film noir Double Indemnity (1944), in which he’s seduced by Barbara Stanwyck, and Wilder...
- 8/8/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
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