News for
David Raksin More at IMDbPro »

2012 | 2011 | 2010

3 items from 2012

---

The Bad and the Beautiful – review

23 April 2012 7:18 AM, PDT | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

In the early 1950s, as the big studio system breathed its last, Hollywood produced a succession of classic Tinseltown fables: Sunset Boulevard, In a Lonely Place, Singin' in the Rain, The Barefoot Contessa, A Star Is Born and, right in the middle, The Bad and the Beautiful, made in 1952 and back in the cinemas to accompany a Minnelli retrospective at the Nft. Though directed with Minnelli's characteristic delicacy, this is essentially a producer's film, made by John Houseman, one of the great figures of 20th-century American theatre and cinema. Houseman's first Hollywood job was supervising the script of Citizen Kane, his second was working for David O Selznick. In The Bad and the Beautiful, Houseman applies a similar structure, intelligence and suavity to a ruthless Hollywood genius much like Selznick as he brought to Charles Foster Kane.

An old-style Hollywood studio boss (Walter Pidgeon) brings together a movie star (Lana Turner »

- Philip French

Permalink | Report a problem

---

Laura – review

25 February 2012 4:05 PM, PST | The Guardian - Film News | See recent The Guardian - Film News news »

After success in the American theatre, a few acting roles on the screen and a series of false starts as a movie director, Otto Preminger, the Austrian protege of Max Reinhardt, suddenly revealed himself as a master when he took over the direction of this classic thriller from Rouben Mamoulian in 1944. It's basically a B-feature whodunnit posing the question: who murdered the beautiful New York advertising executive Laura Hunt? But the film is raised to classic status by the witty script, David Raksin's score, Joseph Lashelle's subtle monchrome photography, and the way Preminger is more concerned with exploring the perversity of its generally dislikable characters (including the homicide detective) than in creating suspense. Preminger made darker, more characteristically noir films than this, but his only movie that's as good, or perhaps better, is Anatomy of a Murder.

CrimeDramaThrillerPhilip French

guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. »

- Philip French

Permalink | Report a problem

---

Daily Briefing. Guy Maddin's "Spiritismes" + Gene Tierney and More

24 February 2012 2:51 AM, PST | MUBI | See recent MUBI news »

"Over eighty percent of silent films are lost. I've always considered a lost film as a narrative with no known final resting place — doomed to wander the landscape of film history, sad, miserable and unable to project itself to the people who might love it." That's Guy Maddin, as quoted by Kim Morgan, introducing Maddin's Spiritismes, happening now at the Centre Pompidou in Paris ("During 'séances'... Maddin and his actors will allow themselves to be possessed by the wandering spirits of the dead, to bring their movies back to life") through March 12:

Filmmaking, dead made undead, is happening live at the Centre — lost or unrealized films by directors as diverse as Jean Vigo, Kenji Mizoguchi, Lois Weber, William Wellman, von Stroheim (I will appear in that particular Poto-Poto), Alexandre Dovjenko and more are coming — rising from the dead, in their own unique way. Maddin will be shooting one film a day. »

Permalink | Report a problem

---

2012 | 2011 | 2010

3 items from 2012

---