Arthur Penn

[Scharphedin2]

Arthur Penn (1922-2010)



Filmography

The Gulf Playhouse (TV series episode, 1953)

Goodyear Television Playhouse (TV series episode, 1954)

The Philco Television Playhouse (2 TV series episodes, 1954)

Playwrights '56 (TV episode, 1956)

Playhouse 90 (5 TV series episodes, 1957-1958)

The Left Handed Gun (1958) Warner (R1) – also included in The Paul Newman Collection

The Miracle Worker (1962) MGM (R1) / MGM (R2 UK)

Mickey One (1965)

The Chase (1966) Columbia (R1)

Bonnie and Clyde (1967) Warner (R1) / Warner (R2 UK) / Warner (R4 AU)

Flesh and Blood (TV, 1968)

Alice's Restaurant (1969) MGM (R1)

Little Big Man (1970) Paramount (R1)

Visions of Eight (segment, 1973)

Night Moves (1975) Warner (R1)

The Missouri Breaks (1976) MGM (R1) / MGM (R2 UK) – also included in Marlon Brando Collection / SPO Entertainment (R2 JP) / MGM (R4 AU)

Four Friends (1981) MGM (R1)

Target (1985) Paramount (R1)

Dead of Winter (1987) MGM (R1)

Penn & Teller Get Killed (1989)

The Portrait (TV, 1993)

Lumière et compagnie (Lumière and Company) (episode, 1995)

Inside (TV, 1996) Pioneer Entertainment (R1)

100 Centre Street (TV series episode, 2001)


Recommended Web Resources

Berlin Film Festival – Honorary Golden Bear awarded to Arthur Penn in 2007

Cambridge University – excerpt from Lester D. Friedman's book Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde (pdf file)

DGA Monthly – Bill Kelman “Under the Influence: Arthur Penn and Little Big Manâ€

[atcolomb]

Arthur Penn 1922-2010 ..favorites are Bonnie & Clyde and Alice's Restaurant.

[HarryLong]

I like both, but I love LITTLE BIG MAN.

[Kellen]

So sad he passed away.

I liked: Alice's Restaurant, Bonnie & Clyde, The Left Handed Gun.

[Lemmy Caution]

So sad he passed away.
I liked: Alice's Restaurant, Bonnie & Clyde, The Left Handed Gun.

You should reverse your avatar in his honor.

[antnield]

Brad Stevens discusses Penn & Teller Get Killed for Sight & Sound's ongoing Lost & Found series on neglected films.

From the same issue, here's Peter Biskind's obituary.

[knives]

Is Flesh and Blood available anywhere?

[Perkins Cobb]

Is Flesh and Blood available anywhere?

I'm working on a piece about this show (and its lamentable unavailability) but, short answer: no. Not in any major US archive nor in Penn's own collection. NBC may have it, but they have elements scattered in several vaults and were churlish when inquiries were made about a search.

[knives]

That's terrible. It's one of the few empty spots for him around. Criminal that it and many films like it (I'm primarily thinking of Frankenheimer's Turn of the Screw) aren't given their due.

[Perkins Cobb]

"Turn of the Screw" ran on TVLand once, believe it or not, but there are still many important Frankenheimer (and Arthur Penn) shows that don't exist outside the vaults, or maybe at all.

Flesh and Blood, incidentally, was mentioned in the NY Times's recent obit for its author, William Hanley, who was also John Frankenheimer's favored screenwriter around the same time.

[domino harvey]

Stumbled upon a credit for one season of Law & Order in Penn’s filmography and was intrigued. From the pay walled NYT article about his hiring

So it was a shock, Mr. Penn said, when Dick Wolf, creator of NBC's ''Law and Order'' and one of television's foremost producers, asked the director to dinner in New York and offered him the job of executive producer on that show. Mr. Penn's pay for the season is likely to top $1 million, talent agents said.

Given that television is flagrant in its discrimination against writers and producers over 50, Mr. Wolf's decision to appoint Mr. Penn is a virtual breakthrough for the elderly. ''I think there's this vast pool of guys who have had incredible careers and are much more talented than a lot of people who are having movies green-lit right how,'' Mr. Wolf said.

The average age of the writing staff on ''Law and Order'' is 46, he said. ''That's ancient on television,'' said Mr. Wolf, who is 53. ''But I'm doing dramas, not 'Friends.' For serious writing, miles on the odometer are beneficial.'' (For the second season in a row, Mr. Wolf is also using 69-year-old Ted Kotcheff, director of ''North Dallas 40,'' as executive producer of NBC's ''Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.'')

In his new job, Mr. Penn, who has made a handful of television films, will oversee the creation of each episode of ''Law and Order,'' working mostly with the directors and actors. Mr. Penn's son, Matthew Penn, is one of the directors on the show, which revolves around the police and a district attorney's office in New York. Mr. Wolf recalled, ''When Ed Sherin, who had been doing this job for seven years, decided to leave, it was, like, who do you get to replace someone who was that integral to the daily running and daily success of that show?''

Mr. Wolf said that Lewis Gould, one of the show's producers, came to him and said, ''You know who Matt's Dad is -- Arthur Penn.''

''And I said, 'Wow, what a great idea,' '' Mr. Wolf continued. ''So I had dinner with him, and when we had coffee I said to him, 'Do you want to run ''Law and Order''?' And he said yes. As you can tell, it was a very complicated negotiation.''

Mr. Wolf said that what appealed to him about Mr. Penn was his obvious experience and talent working with stage actors. The cast of ''Law and Order'' includes such theater actors as Sam Waterston, Jerry Orbach and, starting in the fall, Dianne Wiest. (She will replace Steven Hill, who played a district attorney.)

Beyond that, Mr. Wolf said, Mr. Penn's signature in his early television movies, as well as ''Bonnie and Clyde'' and other films, was focusing a sociological lens on various moments in American history. ''Bonnie and Clyde,'' he said, was not merely a film about some lovers on a crime spree, but a film about the Depression. ''His pictures operate on two levels -- and we needed that for this show,'' he said.

Mr. Penn described his role on ''Law and Order'' as serving, in a sense, as a mentor to the show's directors. Directing episodes has no interest for him, Mr. Penn said.

''I would rather be available to the young directors and be able to talk to them about the possibilities,'' he said. ''A lot of directors in television have come up through the technical ranks. They have all the technical skills in the world. They're not all that familiar with actors. And on 'Law and Order' you have wonderful racehorsy actors like Sam Waterston, Jerry Orbach and, now, Dianne Wiest.''

He did not work on the series beyond the first 13 episodes of the 2000-2001 season. Penn was later nominated with others for the series’ Best Drama Emmy that year

[beamish14]

The Law and Order franchise does keep a lot of notable playwrights employed. It blows my mind that Pulitzer winner Marsha Norman (‘Night, Mother) was on staff at one point.

Penn worked on the incredibly underrated 100 Centre Street alongside his live television contemporary Sidney Lumet

[Lighthouse]

Penn has become meanwhile a criminally underrated filmmaker.
His later decline after the 70s is surely remarkable, but before he did marvellous things even in the films which were uneven. His struggles with the "system" and his sensibility maybe prevented him from making more films when he was at the top of the game after Bonnie and Clyde, but for me his best film belong still to the top of the 60s and 70s.

His masterpieces are Bonnie and Clyde, Little Big Man and Night Moves.

[Aspect]

Don’t forget The Miracle Worker. A stone cold masterpiece. Show it to a kid and watch them squirm at how violent Helen Keller is!

I also have a soft spot for (not a masterpiece) The Chase. Don’t hit me.

[beamish14]

Don’t forget The Miracle Worker. A stone cold masterpiece. Show it to a kid and watch them squirm at how violent Helen Keller is!

I also have a soft spot for (not a masterpiece) The Chase. Don’t hit me.

I think The Chase is fantastic. It maximizes every member of one of the best casts ever assembled. Another great Horton Foote script

[Lighthouse]

Unfortunately The Chase is the one which works the least for me (of his classic years), and that the editing was taken away from him (and editing was very important for him) is not excuse enough to explain all the shortcomings of this pretentious film with so many stilted dialogues and too obvious intentions.
Yes, there's a great cast and and strong plot filled with ambitions, but the result is too often underwhelming. It is a film I want to like like I did the first time I watched it aeons ago, I want that on every rewatch. Penn came form the theatre, but unlike others with this background he had a genuine understanding of filmic storytelling with focus on the editing as major tool, but unfortunately The Chase is the one which very much feels like a play.
But it is far from being as bad as it sounds here, and the intended complexity has its moments. 6/10

The Miracle Worker on the other hand is well made, but he himself thought that it would have benefited from his still progressing understanding and learning of making films. Intensive film though. 8/10

But the 3 films I mentioned above are all 10/10, a rating I don't give with levity.

[therewillbeblus]

I've been going through Penn's work this year, and it's a frustratingly inconsistent filmography. I agree that his great films are Bonnie and Clyde, Little Big Man, The Miracle Worker and Night Moves. I thought The Chase was a strange use of a surge of talent, meandering and stale when it should be focused and exciting. The Missouri Breaks is a schizophrenic mess that doesn't make anything meaningful out of Nicholson's arc, let alone anyone else's. Alice's Restaurant and The Left Handed Gun both fell flat for me, but I should probably give them another go. I remember being amused by Mickey One years back, but I'll have to revisit.

[knives]

I love Alice’s Restaurant and The Chase. Definitely odd movies that border on being novelties, but their unique grove just works for me.

[crimlaw]

I was in the 8th Grade in the Fall of 1969 when Alice’s Restaurant was released. The film was not an oddity then. It was immensely popular and definitely spoke to that generation.

[knives]

That’s sort of what I meant. Both films seem like something that could have only been born in that exact instant.

[Matt]

For me his best work might be his "The Highest" section of the 1972 Olympics film Visions of Eight, though Night Moves and The Miracle Worker never fail to impress me each time I see them.

[Stefan]

By the way, how is it that Penn made so few films after the mid-70's?

[MichaelB]

He became increasingly less bankable after a series of flops, and was less and less inclined to jump through studio-imposed hoops—especially since he had a stage directing career to fall back on.

So he largely did that instead.

[domino harvey]

My understanding is that the Chase was more popular overseas (especially in France, though not with Cahiers), in part I think because non-Americans didn’t quite clock how inauthentic and off it was and it played into common foreign conceptions

[MichaelB]

See also Three Billboards.

And, in reverse, Woody Allen's Match Point, a film that I went to with a genuine sense of anticipation following ecstatic Stateside reviews only to end up watching the most galumphingly tone-deaf load of old cobblers that I'd seen in ages. And I'm far from the only native Londoner who feels that way.