High society, New Orleans, 1852. Julie (Bette Davis) and Preston (Henry Fonda) are soon to be married, and they are constantly battling about the power over the relationship. When Preston has to break a promise to Julie to help her pick out a dress for a society ball due to bank business, Julie chooses a provocative red dress when all unmarried women are supposed to wear white. An unhappy Preston takes her to the ball, makes his best to embarrass Julie among the whispering society people (see film clip below), and after the ball breaks the engagement. A too proud Julie makes no effort to win him back, and he soon moves to "the North".
Time travels one year ahead. Preston is coming back to New Orleans, and waiting for him is a hopeful Julie who has been deeply depressed since he moved. She has realized that she was unfair to him, and now hopes to repair their relationship. But oh, no! He brings with him a wife. This leads to manipulation behind a friendly face, a social act that eventually ends with the shed of blood.
Partially this film is a masterpiece, and Bette Davis is at her very finest. I was, however, not really satisfied with the ending. I can't put my finger on it, but it felt like it was too easy and too quick. But otherwise, there's nothing to complain about. George Brent is just swell as the provocative gentleman Buck Cantrell, and Henry Fonda is great too. His character is quite flat and boring, it's true, but he's doing great - especially if you consider that he was a last minute choice for the part, and that his wife was in labour and about to deliver their daughter (Jane Fonda) and had to run off the set every now and then.
What is there more to say? A lot, I guess. But I'm satisfied with what is said, and that Bette Davis and Fay Bainter (aunt Belle) deserved their Academy Awards.
Bette Davis and William Wyler take a snack during the filming of Jezebel.
Fay Bainter, Jack L. Warner and Bette Davis at the Academy Awards, 1939.
Quotes:
Aunt Belle: Expecting a man to go to a dress makers with you! I declare, I hope Pres doesn't come! Julie: He will. Aunt Belle: But Julene! Julie: Now dumplin', don't you fret about Pres - I've been training him for years! Aunt Belle: Like that man-killing horse you bought! Julie: Pres was outrageous! He had no right to tell me what I could ride and what i couldn't! Aunt Belle: The horse showed you what you couldn't! You broke your collar bone and your engagement! Julie: And they both mended, so I was right after all [Smiles at Aunt Belle happily]
Julie: Why did you do it Prest? Preston Dillard: Because I love her. Julie: But you had my love. Preston Dillard: And lost it.
Buck Cantrell: I like my convictions undiluted, just like my bourbon.
In reality (according to movie god Robert Osbourne), Julie's dress was bronze colored. It would look better in black and white than red. (But of course, I colorized it red anyway.)
I left you off where Gloria was denied to work with Cecil B. DeMille at Famous Players-Lasky, due to petty lawyers at Triangle. Gloria is between one crappy picture and another, not satisfied with her position.
Between pictures with Albert Parker I made a picture called Station Content with a director named Arthur Hoyt. It was quite poor, but a masterpiece compared with the picture I made after Secret Code. The new film was called Wife or Country. IN it I was not only successfully tricked into spying for the enemy, I also had to pay for my wrongdoing by swallowing a bottle of poison.
[...]
I had to grin and bear it for a week and a half of overacted, overdirected, overpatriotic nonsense. Where do I go from here? I thought to myself as I swallowed the bottle of poison and lightning Hopper screamed "Perfect! Cut!"
Swanson on Swanson (1980), p. 100
Gloria Swanson, 1919.
The following morning the studio manager called and asked if he could come to the house in an hour and talk to me. I couldn't imagine what he meant, so I told Bea [a friend] not to leave. When he arrived, it was to announce that Triangle was facing bankruptcy.
"Does that mean you're closing the studio?" I asked.
"The studio has two months more to exercise its option," he explained. "But Mr. Aitken and his brother thought that you might want to get out of your contract immediately. That's why I'm here."
"Oh, they did, did they? After what they did to me?"
"The truth of the matter is, Miss Swanson, Mr. De Mille still wants you. He's tried several times to borrow you. His office called again yesterday."
"Why didn't anybody tell me?"
"There was no reason to make you more unhappy than you already were. If you like, I'll call Famous Players for you right now."
I showed him to the telephone. In five minutes he reappeared, saying, "Mr. Goodstadt is waiting to talk to you."
Swanson on Swanson (1980), p. 100
Gloria Swanson, 1919.
"Good morning, Miss Swanson, " Mr. Goodstadt said. "I think you should come right over if you can. By the time you get here, I'll have a chance to talk to Mr. De Mille. I know he's most anxious to replace his leading lady - if you're available, that is. You might bring the gentleman from Triangle along if he has a copy of your contract with him. I'd like to look it over."
The studio manager and I had nothing more to say to each other as he drove me to Sunset and Vine. What a difference, I thought, between Triangle, where they shot an entire picture, with retakes, in ten days, and Mr. De Mille, who could stop in the middle of a costly picture and change leading ladies.
Mr. Goodstadt was waiting for us in his office. "I talked to Mr. De Mille," he said. "He's delighted you're available. You can come in tomorrow morning at seven. Hattie will be waiting for you to do your hair."
Swanson on Swanson (1980), p. 101
Read about Gloria's first day under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille in part three - coming up!
My first (and at least a little tiny bit successful?) attempt of using Pinnacle Studio to create a film clip. One more step in the direction of making a film introduction to my DVD-collection... (The explaination to why I'm a little absent at the moment - a lot of complicated technology to press into mi tiny little head!)
Here it is - my experiment. I have no idea why the sound quality is changing during the Ziegfeld clip, it seems like it was like that in the file I took it from. Anyway, feel free to come with suggestions to me, I'm eager to learn!
This is that kind of film that is wonderfully amusing to read serious reviews about. "Lame excuse to put as many stars in a movie as possible" is one comment on IMDb. Oh yes, raising funds for the National Variety Artists Tuberculosis Sanitarium is a really lame excuse to appear in a motion picture for. (Notice that the film is in "co-operation with Chesterfield Cigarettes"...)
Anyway, this is a short, entertaining film stuffed with some of the greatest stars of that day. Let me describe the very simple story for you.
The films begins with a police officer, played by Wallace Beery, answering the office phone.
"What? A murder? That ain't news, we had three yesterday."
Let go for that. But at a Hollywood party the day before, Norma Shearer got her jewels stolen (or the gangsters Edward G. Robinson and George E. Stone got them stolen after stealing them from her) - now that's urgent business! Beery collects his men (one of them, Buster Keaton) and sends out a detective (Eddie Kane) to find out who among the Hollywood stars has the jewels.
Detective Kane investigates the many Hollywood stars (among them El Brendel, playing a Swedish waiter with an unplacable accent), until child star Mitzi Green solves the case:
"Mitzi, you just saved the plot of the story!"
"And the moral of this story is: Never spank a child on an empty stomach! [horrendous laughter]"
Now, how can you not love that? Maybe if you're that kind of person who only allows himself/herself to enjoy sophisticated, well-planned comedy, in fear that a cheap laugh might undermine his/her intelligence. I enjoyed it, and it seems like a lot of the actors did too.
Gloria Swanson and Cecil B. DeMille in Sunset Boulevard (1950).
"The public, not I, made Gloria Swanson a star."
That is Cecil B. DeMille's comment on the well known fact that it he that made a star out of Gloria Swanson. Wikipedia delivers embarrassingly few facts on their great collaboration:
Swanson moved to California in 1916 to appear in Mack Sennett's Keystone comedies opposite Bobby Vernon, and in 1919 she signed with Paramount Pictures and worked often with Cecil B. DeMille, who turned her into a romantic lead in such films as Don't Change Your Husband, Male and Female, The Affairs of Anatol, and Why Change Your Wife?
Thank you for that one. No, if we want the golden years of Gloria Swanson's career described to us in a little more juicy way, I think Gloria herself is the best one to ask.
I, with the help of Gloria Swanson's wonderfully detailed autobiography Swanson on Swanson (1980), will do a special on the DeMille-Swanson part of the motion picture history. And I will start from the beginning.
It was a few years ago now that I read Gloria Swanson's autobiography. Imagine my delight when I found it in the public library! I am nowadays, however, the proud owner of a 1981 First Pocket Book printing of the creation. (Okay, I bought on Amazon.com last year for $1.99, but still - invaluable to me! And with shipment to Sweden the prize was $14.48, so I guess that adds up.) If you haven't read it yet and will, you will also want to own the book - it is irreplacable.
But now, let's get started!
Gloria Swanson, 1917.
Gloria's first rendez-vous with Cecil B. DeMille is written with words of awe.
The year is 1918 and Gloria works for a little film studio called Triangle, making silly films not worth mentioning. She's is waiting with much enthusiasm to hear what her next picture will be about, and with not so much interest in who is going to direct it, when she receives a phone call.
"Miss Swanson, please."
"This is Miss Swanson."
"Good morning, Miss Swanson. I'm Oscar Goodstadt, the casting director at Famous Players-Lasky and I'm calling on behalf of Cecil B. De Mille. Mr. De Mille would like to see you at your earliest convenience. Could you come in at three today? Miss Swanson?"
"Oh! Yes. Yes, I can."
Mr Goodstadt started to tell me how to get to the studio, but I said I knew where it was. Everybody knew where it was.It took up a whole block at Sunset and Vine. It was where Mary Pickford worked. And Douglas Fairbanks. And Almighty God himself, Cecil B. De Mille.
Swanson on Swanson (1980), p. 95
Cecil B. DeMille at his desk.
Oh, little Gloria - 18 years old, 5'1" (155 cm) tall, and has an oppointment of her own at Cecil B. DeMille's office - she must have had lots of guts! Now, enjoy DeMille appearing like a God in front of our little heroine.
Any notion I may have had of style or elegance evaporated the moment I was ushered into Mr. De Mille's paneled office. It was vast and somber, with tall stained-glass windows and deep polar-bear rugs. Light from the windows shone on ancient firearms and other weapons on the walls, and the elevated desk and chair resembled nothing so much as a throne. I felt like a peanut poised on teetering high heels.
When he stood up behind the desk, he seemed to tower. Not yet forty, he seemed ageless, magisterial. He wore his baldness like an expensive hat, as if it were out of the question for him to have hair like other men. A sprig of laurel maybe, but not ordinary hair. He was wearing gleaming boots and riding breeches that fit him like a glove. He came over and took my hand, led me to a large sofa and sat down beside me. and proceeded to look clear through me. He said that he had seen me in a little Sennett picture and had never forgotten me, and that at the moment he was preparing a picture in which he wanted to use me. He asked me what kind of contract I had at Triangle.
"I have no contract at all."
"Well, then, who represents you?"
"No one."
"You mean your parents handle your business affairs?"
"Oh, no, Mr. De Mille. I'm over eighteen. I'll be nineteen the twenty-seventh of March."
"Ah, Aries, of course," he said and smiled.
Swanson on Swanson (1980), p. 95-96
Cecil B. DeMille (second from the right) poses with Jessy L. Lasky, Adolph Zukor, Samuel Goldwyn and Albert Kaufman after the Famous Players-Lasky merger. Ca. 1916.
They both agree that since she hasn't any contract with Triangle, there will be no problem for him to use her for his next picture. Excited, Gloria Swanson leaves his office, after receiving a gentle tap on the shoulder of Mr. DeMille, and leaves for home. Two days later she receives a phone call from Triangle, they want her for another picture. She proudly says that she is going to work with Mr. DeMille now, she can't accept the job.
Thirty minutes later she receives another phone call, now from Mr. DeMille's secretary, wanting Gloria to come right away. She meets Mr. DeMille once again.
"Everything you told me turned out to be true," he said. "However, lawyers have a way of complicating things. Triangle's legal department has raised the possibility that even though you did not sign a contract with the studio, you did accept a raise in salary. They are contending that when you accepted the raise, you in effect agreed to a verbal contract. So it may still be possible you still belong to them. Were you over eighteen when you accepted the raise?"
I nodded, trying to hold back the tears. Mr. De Mille put his arms around me. "These things happen," he said. "That's why we have a motion picture association. The Triangle attorneys will present their case to an impartial arbitrator selected by the association. His decision will be binding. We won't go to court about it. There isn't time. We'll just hope everything turns out all right. Whatever happens, thank you for coming over, Miss Swanson."
Swanson on Swanson (1980), p. 96-97
Gloria Swanson, 1918.
Things didn't work out all right. Within 48 hourse Gloria received the message that she belonged to Triangle, and could not work with Mr. DeMille. Gloria realized that she had to accept it, if she ever wanted to work in pictures again. The next morning she forced herself to sign her hateful contract without so much as reading a word of it.
So, this time was not her break-through, due to pitiful circumstances created by an obstinate little motion picture company. Read about Gloria Swanson kicking off her career in part two of The Cecil B. DeMille and Gloria Swanson union!
Notice the portrait of their father hanging on the wall?
Disney's 8 minute animated version of Three Little Pigs was released on this day, May 27, 1933. The audiences loved the cartoon, and theatres actually continued running it several months after its release. (Some theatre owners even draw beards on the posters of the cartoon, to mock the fact that they were still running it.) It's hit song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" immediately stuck. (Try listen to it and not sing it for the rest of the day... I failed, epically.) The song reflected and encouraged the people's attitude to the Great Depression as "the Big Bad Wolf", and even transcended into representing Hitler during WWII.
According to IMDb, Walt Disney himself actually has one of the voices to the Practical Pig. (For some reason there are two people doing his voice.)
The cartoon actually had to be cencored, believe it or not. Originally the Big Bad Wolf dressed up as a caricature of a Jewish peddler (!), but was changed to a Fuller Brush man instead (still having a Yiddish accent, though).
I read some interesting trivia about schools in England actually modified the classic tale to "Three Little Puppies" in 2007, "to avoid offending Muslim families". A man called Ibrahim Mogra from the Muslim Council of Britain made the statement "bizarre" about that move, and the tale was changed back to its original form. Jeez...
Who's afraid of the big bad wolf - big bad wolf - big bad wolf? Who's afraid of the bid bad wolf? Lalalalala...
I've seen a lot of respectable bloggers making their own "film festivals" (see the adorable Matthew Coniam's viciously tempting Frank Tuttle Film Festival), and decided to make a contribution of my own.
After recently having watched My Sister My Love (original title: Syskonbädd 1782, 1966), from which I haven't yet quite recovered, I decided that the subject for my own film festival would be the Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman's protegee, the innovative Vilgot Sjöman. Haven't heard of him yet? No? Have you heard of "the Swedish sin"? Okay, but you do think about Swedish women as blonde and elusive? Okay, the initial indication of that comes from Arne Mattsson's One Summer of Happiness (original title: Hon dansade en sommar, 1951), where astonished audiences over the world saw Ulla Jacobsson's naked breasts - but I think offended Swedish women have a lot to blame on the fellow I now will introduce to you. (Just a small note: I am not to find among the offended women.)
Hang on, I think you'd like to put his name in bittersweet memory.
Vilgot Sjöman was born on December 2, 1924, in a working class family living in Stockholm, Sweden. At the age of 15 Vilgot worked as a clerk for a cereal company, but things would start to look brighter when he got his degree at Stockholm's University when he was 21. He started working in a prison, where he began writing plays, none of which was ever adopted on the theatre stage.
Three years later, 1948, he wrote a novel based on one of his plays called The Teacher (original title: Lektorn), which described a tense father-son relationship. A film based on the novel was released in 1952, called Defiance (original title: Trots) by Gustaf Molander.
This was the first, fresh breeze of what was yet to be created by Vilgot Sjöman - a series of provocative films dealing with relations, social standards and society problems, always stretching the boundaries of cencorship.
In 1956 Vilgot Sjöman had made his way to the United Stated and taken up a scholarship to study film at the UCLA. He worked as an apprentice for George Seaton during the filming of The Proud and Profane (1956), starring Deborah Kerr and William Holden, and soon felt ready to return to Sweden and turn the film industry and the cencorship upside down.
His debut as a film director was with a film called The Swedish Mistress (original title: Älskarinnan, 1962), sometimes just called The Mistress. The film shows a young woman torn between two men, one older and one younger, and had a cast that included regular Ingmar Bergman actors like Bibi Andersson (Persona, 1966) and Max von Sydow (The Seventh Seal, 1957).
The same year he assisted Ingmar Bergman in the filming of Winter Light (original title: Nattvardsgästerna, 1962). During that time he made a documentary called Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie (original title: Ingmar Bergman gör en film, 1963), following Bergman through the making of Winter Light. An extract from the documentary, with English subtitles, is included below.
But it was with Vilgot's second film, 491 (1964), that the cencor scissors (say that ten times in a row!) started to bother our dear director. The film was based on a novel by Lars Görling, and dealt with juvenile delinquency and homosexuality, a hot but avoided topic in Sweden at the time.
About the title: in The Holy Bible you can read about St. Peter, asking Jesus about how many times he should forgive his brother. Seven? Jesus answers that he should not forgive him seven times, but seventy times seven. 70 x 7 = 490.
The tagline of the film explains it further:
It is written that 490 times you can sin and be forgiven. This motion picture is about the 491st.
The film is made to look like a documentary that follows six tough boys being subject for a social experiment - one of observation. The boys are allowed to go wherever they want, do whatever they want, as long as they reside in the home that was appointed to them by the authorities. The absence of boundaries soon drives the boys to a life consisting of the pure thrill of brutality, petty crimes and anarchy. One scene that disturbed the audience, and quickly was cut, was a girl that, off-screen, was raped by a dog. Another cut out scene involved a homosexual rape.
The film remains unreleased in Sweden.
Stills from 491.
His next film was called The Dress (original title: Klänningen, 1964), and covered a disturbed mother-daughter relationship. The film, though featuring respected actors (among them the Ingmar Bergman favourite Gunnar Björnstrand, the squire Jöns in The Seventh Seal) it was totally rejected by the critics.
The next film by Vilgot Sjöman is the one I mentioned in the beginning of this post - My Sister My Love (also called Bed Siblings), and it is, to say the least, a remarkable film. To take it from the beginning:
The film is based upon a tragedy written somewhere between the years 1629-1633 by playwright John Ford, named 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. (Says quite a lot, huh?) Its subject of incest made the play one of the most controversial ones in the English litterature. The play was excluded from a 1831 collection of Ford's litterature, and the title has been changed many times to more acceptable versions like Giovanni and Annabella, 'Tis Pity or The Brother and Sister. The critics have been hard on the play well into the 20th century for not condemning the immoral characters enough. In 1961 Luchino Visconti directed a French adoption of the play at the Théâtre de Paris with Romy Schneider and Alain Delon.
And now to the Sjöman version. Apart from changing the names and the locations to Swedish respective ones, and redusing the moral dilemmas of the leading roles, Vilgot Sjöman has adapted the play to the screen without doing it any harm. The leading characters are played by Bibi Andersson as Charlotte and Per Oscarsson as Jacob.
As the original Swedish title indicates, the plot takes place in Sweden i the year 1782. At the beginning of the film, the young nobleman Jacob has just returned from France to his cherished sister, Charlotte. A sweet reunion scene is followed by Charlotte's announcement that she is getting married to baron Carl Ulrik Alsmeden (played by my #1 male icon Jarl Kulle). Jacob's reaction is not the one you'd expect - he gets so frustrated that he actually kills a chicken with his bare hands. In a successful attempt of making his sister jealous, he shows interest for a young Audrey Hepburn copy of a girl, Ebba (Tina Hedström). One thing leads to another, and a stolen kiss in the dark between the siblings is the sparkle that starts a fire that never could be put out. As the immoral Count Schwartz we once again see the irreplacable Gunnar Björnstrand.
The film is a masterpiece - but you can't walk away from that deep inside disturbing feeling (as intended). I wish someone had filmed my facial expressions when the film was over. I still need to recover.
You can see the last scene of the film here. (Not for touchy people!) It's not texted, but there's hardly any dialogue neither. Translation here: [Jarl Kulle, the man] "Get the doctor. Get the doctor!" [old woman] "It's a healthy baby. It's a totally healthy baby."
Stills from My Sister My Love.
The film that brought Vilgot Sjöman international fame (or at least a heck of a lot of attention) was released the next year. Does the title I Am Curious (Yellow) (Jag är nyfiken - gul, 1967) ring a bell? If not, then you have missed out on something.
This film is about a girl of twenty called Lena (played by Lena Nyman). She is a sociology student who is curious of everything that has to do with life. She wants to experience everything and collects information about it, storing it in an enormous archive. She deals with relationships, sex, political activism, meditation and interviews people about the social classes in Sweden. The film is made as a pseudo documentary, allowing us in humorous side plots to see the actors' and the director's reaction to the story and each other.
Lena: Do we have a class system in Sweden?
The interviewed: It depends on the people. Undress them, and they're all the same; dress them, and you have a class system.
Quote from I Am Curious (Yellow)
Posters and stills from I Am Curious (Yellow) and (Blue).
The film raised an international outcry for its nudity and realistic intercourse scenes. The film was shortened with eleven minutes by British cencors. In the United States copies of the film were seized by U. S. Customs in January, 1968 for being obscene, and the film itself was banned as pornography in most parts of the United States. Even though the US Supreme Court overturned the anti-obscenity ban on First Amendment grounds, the film was still only screened on two venues in the country (one in New York City and one in New Jersey) in March, 1968.
However, the film's notoriety guaranteed its success, and for the next 23 years it was the most successful foreign film in the US.
We have a lot to thank Vilgot Sjöman for when it comes to the more and more obvious boycott of the horrible Hay's Code that restricted the film making from 1934 to this date. I Am Curious (Yellow), and its sequel I Am Curious (Blue) (Jag är nyfiken - blå, 1968), inspired to John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969) and Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris (1972). (The colours in the titles are of course references to the Swedish flag.)
You can see an extract from I Am Curious (Blue)here. No nudity, though.
"One of the most important pictures I have ever seen in my life."
Author Norman Mailer on I Am Curious (Yellow)
Vilgot Sjöman would later return to similar themes in his later work, but the ice had already been broken and people weren't as upset anymore. Worth mentioning, though:
1971 - Till Sex Do Us Part (original title: Troll), about a young couple who believe that they will die if they have pre-marital sex.
1974 - A Handful of Love (original title: En handfull kärlek), for which he received the Swedish motion picture award Guldbaggen (translated as "The golden beetle", I guess...).
1995 - Alfred (or Alfred Nobel), Vilgot Sjöman's last film about the inventor, industrialist and founder of the Nobel Prizes, Alfred Nobel.
In 2003 he received the Ingmar Bergman Award for his contribution to Swedish cinema. Three years later, in 2006, Vilgot died of cerebral haemorrhage, having made an unforseen mark in both national and international film history.
Vilgot Sjöman: You get a love scene with Lena. A love scene with consequences.
Börje: What kind of consequences?
Vilgot Sjöman: I don't know. I'll think of something.
Quote from I Am Curious (Blue)
Harry Schein, Gunnar Björnstrand, Liv Ullman and Vilgot Sjöman.
Bette Davis and William Wyler take a snack during the filming of Jezebel.
In reality (according to movie god Robert Osbourne), Julie's dress was bronze colored. It would look better in black and white than red. (But of course, I colorized it red anyway.)
+1.jpg)
