Movies Til Dawn

George Stevens was famous--in some circles infamous--for covering every scene from multiple camera angles, a habit that only grew as his films became longer, more elaborately planned and executed and more ambitious. Yet the results of this habitual "over-shooting" didn't lead to a more uniform look or style in Stevens films. Rather it led to an increasingly quirky and highly personal mixture of methods; for as often as not, Stevens would let a scene play out in a very long take oftentimes from an unusual point of view. Then again, many of his scenes came to be assembled in a way that was fragmented and out of keeping with the "textbook" editing vocabulary of the time. In his post-war films in particular, Stevens often assembled scenes in a way that defied traditional filmic continuity yet grappled with a different emotional sensibility, one that went beyond the actors and the scene itself. I don't think Stevens shot as much as he did out of uncertainty (whic...

A few weeks ago I was privileged to spend some time on the phone with George Stevens Jr., the distinguished producer, director, playwright and arts entrepreneur--and son of legendary filmmaker George Stevens. The purpose? A re-investigation into the working methods of his father and the way in which, to my mind, his sense of time and space within an individual scene became increasingly abstract and--paradoxically--more emotional as his work went on after the Second World War. But there's a larger purpose as well to my sharing these thoughts and observations. I'm frankly puzzled as to why Stevens (who made three of my favorite films) feels critically neglected--indeed all but disregarded-- by the current day film history/criticism community at large. Certainly his reputation is a good deal less sterling than it was when he was alive. Yet the films by which he's remembered haven't dimmed and continue to captivate new watchers--especially the timeless "Shane" and...

/ In early 2002, the Directors Guild of America (of which I was then a fairly new member) instituted on the East Coast a screening series that had become quite popular in Los Angeles. "Under the Influence" was an evening that comprised the screening of a movie directed by an older member who was then interviewed by a younger member. The film was picked by the younger member who presumably had been influenced by it years before. If you've read the previous post, you already have guessed who I picked and probably which movie. In due time, Sidney Lumet was asked by the Guild if he would participate in an "Under the Influence" event at which his 1976 masterpiece "Network" would be shown, to be followed by a Q&A with a young (ish) filmmaker named Raymond De Felitta. He readily agreed. He must have not been very busy. Needless to say I was thrilled and, after careful thought and deliberation, decided against telling Lumet about how I stalked him in 1980....

Sidney Lumet, who died this past weekend, was one of my primary influences as a director and this was mostly due to two movies of his: "Dog Day Afternoon" and "Network". I watched both over and over--they were practically on a loop--on the early LA based new movie cable station known as "The Z Channel". Between the ages of ten (when we first subscribed) and fourteen, I was exposed to many new films that probably wouldn't have been typical theater going experiences for most kids that age. I saw all of Robert Altman and John Cassavetes films, Elaine May's "Mikey and Nicky", "Last Tango in Paris", "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", Paul Mazursky's wonderful "Next Stop Greenwich Village" and Woody Allen in Martin Ritt and Walter Bernstein's riveting blacklist dramedy "The Front". (There were also the cheerful duds of the era which I have a retrospective fondness for largely because I watche...

A few weeks ago I was privileged to spend some time on the phone with George Stevens Jr., the distinguished producer, director, playwright and arts entrepreneur--and son of legendary filmmaker George Stevens . The purpose? A re-investigation into the working methods of his father and the way in which, to my mind, his sense of time and space within an individual scene became increasingly abstract and--paradoxically--more emotional as his work went on after the Second World War. I've been working on Stevens for my own reasons as a filmmkaer--and because Stevens (who made three of my favorite films) is a largely misunderstood figure in film circles these days, his reputation a good deal less sterling than when he was alive. Now that I've finally gotten around to writing this longish post, however, Sidney Lumet ups and dies this weekend. So I feel it necessary to first record my two encounters with Lumet before delving into Stevens. There is also the sly satisfaction of including...

Herewith parts 4 & 5 of my father Frank De Felitta's 1967 NBC news documentary "Mississippi: A Self Portrait". If you've just found this blog entry, scroll down to the previous post to learn more about this blistering, no-holds-barred look at the deep south in the midst of the civil rights revolution. If you're pressed for time and don't think you can spend the forty five minutes watching the whole film, then I urge you to take one and one half minutes of your day and open up part two (in the previous post). Move the needle ahead exactly one minute and meet Booker Wright, a black restaurant worker, who delivers simply one of the most astonishing and heartbreaking monologues on what it's like to be a black man in the south you will ever hear.   Subscribe in a reader

Below I've posted the first three parts of the documentary "Mississippi--A Self Portrait", directed by my father Frank De Felitta. Commissioned by NBC news and shot in the title state in the summer of 1967, the film is a startling, still difficult to look at view of what might be termed the flip side of the civil rights revolution; for much of it is concerned with the attitudes of the "backwards" white citizens of the state toward the sea change of events and political and racial philosophy that seemed to be innundating them from all sides. I've shown this movie to people as recently as ten years ago who still find sections of it "offensive"--and that, I think, is one of its strengths. At a time when (necessarily) there was only one "correct" point of view about the changes that had to come to the southern United States, there was little or no attempt made to understand the difficulty that those changes brought to those who had been born...

Below are the last two installments of the pioneering jazz/blues documentary "Music Of The South", originally aired on CBS in 1956. I don't have the exact airdate but an enterprising tv-head would have no problem figuring it out. Simply watch the "outro" at the end of the show (included here at the end of part six) and dig the promos for that nights shows. "I Love Lucy" and "Ed Sullivan" were both on (remember this film aired on a Sunday afternoon) and a little diligent digging around for when those guests who are announced appeared on Sullivan or when that specifc Lucy episode was aired would solve this not very compelling mystery. Next week I'll be posting another long-lost, long-unseen documentary from the 1960's. Titled "Mississippi: A Self-Portrait", it's a look at the changing attitudes, laws and social realities of the deep south in the mid-1960's. Far from being a liberal sop at the old south and its tom-foll...