Richard Fleischer

[HerrSchreck]

I've just seen TEN RILLINGTON PLACE (the wonderful R2 Sony Columbia disc from the UK) for the first time, and for god's sake... this movie wiped me the fuck out. Incredible handling of the material. It's got to be among the two or three finest true-crime movies ever made. The whole cast and crew is absolutely unbelievable-- screenwriting breathtaking, particularly notable for the Evans character-- and makes it impossible to know who's more devastating, Hurt or Attenborough. Having no prior inkling of the true story itself while settling down to watch, I was just demolished by how the thing played out-- completely unprepared for this. I expected a good movie, a very good movie. But I didn't expect this. I recall being impressed with IN COLD BLOOD going into all the actual locations where the crimes took place, but this is another depth altogether. I was already haunted by the claustrophobia of the postwar decay (or gothic victoriana-- for want of a better term for the old factory era flat) of the set itself... before I realized that they actually shot this fucker right in Christie's house on the real 10 Rillington (just prior to it's being demolished), Attenborough got down digging the same pits in the same garden, pulled up the floorboards in the same room. Stuck his victims behind the same pantry and wallpapered the same spot over. They even went to the very Thames embankment at Putney where Christie was apprehended.

A searing, brilliant example of what a stellar combination of utterly intelligent men can produce.. men with the discipline to allow the material to speak for itself. The material is so beautifully distilled, and Fleischer is so relentlessly adept at producing incredibly pure images which speak such authentic volumes, stylization becomes completely uneccessary and in fact a pollution. A very intelligent form of filmmaking that is incredibly refreshing to see when executed with such purity... as the relentless filmschooling of the industry, and the increased self-awareness of the mutual self-awareness of directors competing industrially & financially with one another (due to the increase in budgets, salaries, titles, and marketing) is turning contemporary features into Heavyhanded Central

One thing Fleischer-related is that I keep seeing a DVD of MANDINGO here in R1 in a particular store, but I can't find it anywhere on-line. I'm going to check the distributor/label, and report back tomorrow.

[Gregory]

Did you find out anything about that Mandingo DVD, Schreck? (I thought you might've forgotten to follow up.)

[akaten]

A searing, brilliant example of what a stellar combination of utterly intelligent men can produce.. men with the discipline to allow the material to speak for itself. The material is so beautifully distilled, and Fleischer is so relentlessly adept at producing incredibly pure images which speak such authentic volumes, stylization becomes completely uneccessary and in fact a pollution. A very intelligent form of filmmaking that is incredibly refreshing to see when executed with such purity... as the relentless filmschooling of the industry, and the increased self-awareness of the mutual self-awareness of directors competing industrially & financially with one another (due to the increase in budgets, salaries, titles, and marketing) is turning contemporary features into Heavyhanded Central

Best film analysis I've read in a while, spot on.

Had a chance to see a little known film by Richard Fleischer entitled The Last Run (on TCM UK), I believe initially John Huston began direction but he fell out with George C Scott.

Anyway I'm not going to argue it is a great film, far from it becomes rather aimless at times sadly, but the typically cynical script by Alan Sharp and the economical directing style make for an intriging film, no doubt helped by what I feel is a deeply personal and heartfelt performance from Scott, in part due to the casting of both his ex and current wives in the film.

Really would like to see The New Centurians, shame these films are so hard to come by.

[HerrSchreck]

Did you find out anything about that Mandingo DVD, Schreck? (I thought you might've forgotten to follow up.)

Sorry. I have to go back in there-- just by happenstance I havent been in that store for a couple weeks. If it's available I'll write down what it is, maybe buy it.. was watching NARROW MARGIN (Charles McGraw is the man... speaking of IN COLD BLOOD above, jesus do I love him in that film) again last night, and could use some Fliescher-widening in my collection.

[Floyd]

I must say I just watched The Narrow Margin and was totally overwhelmed. Some of the shots are just beautiful to look at and admire. Fleischer clearly makes situations for these shot ideas he has but that did not bother me much when I was able to just look at what he does with just the placement of the camera and lighting. Marie Windsor radiates. Great, great film.

[King Prendergast]

There is a movement afoot to critically resurrect Fleischer from the "strained seriousness" dustbin- witness the recent retrospective articles in Film Comment and the New York Times. I just came back from the film forum having seen Violet Saturday and I was very impressed. Add that film to Narrow Margin, The Vikings, and Mandingo and that makes a strong enough career in my opinion.

[Person]

I wouldn't mind seeing Fleischer's Crack in the Mirror (1960) starring Orson Welles. An original script by Daryl F. Zanuck. Shot in black and white scope. Welles' final courtroom speech is said to be a belter.

Being a huge Lee Marvin fan, I'd also like to see The Spikes Gang (1974).

I saw Blind Terror (1971) recently. It's a pretty good thriller. Good casting of Mia Farrow as a blind woman who is being stalked in her home. Of course, such a story had already been told four years earlier, but it's well done - the scene with Mia walking across the kitchen floor strewn with broken glass had me in right old flap. My hero, Gerry Fisher was the cinematographer, but this one doesn't show off his genius with lamps, unfortunately.

[zombeaner]

Without any forethought, in the last few weeks I've watched:

10 Rillington Place
Mandingo
Soylent Green
Boston Strangler
and Tora Tora Tora

I'm on an unintentional Richard Fleischer kick.

[King Prendergast]

In a pretty amazing coup for online content Hulu has Violent Saturday available to view. A great RF film that you can't see in any other format.

[Dr.Soberin]

Nobody a fan of 'Follow me Quietly'? It's available on Region 2 DVD as part of the RKO Montparnasse collection, with removable French subtitles ('Version Originale').

Imaginative little B movie who's influence is felt in many a later serial killer thriller. At 60 minutes duration, you could fit it, Narrow Margin (71 minutes) and Armored Car Robbery (67 minutes) into Ben-Hur's running time. Nuff said.

You don't have to be a believer in Richard Fleischer the auteur to find these movies worthwhile. Incidentally, the French also have a box set in the same collection featuring 'Narrow Margin', 'Armored Car Robbery' (William Talman and Steve Brodie are the robbers, Charles McGraw is the cop. Who are you to resist, eh?) and 'Child of Divorce'.

Hoorah for the French.

[HarryLong]

As it hadn't been noted here, MANDINGO is now available in the USA...

[Gregory]

The thread for it.
An amazing film.

[HarryLong]

A thank you to whoever made my post a link!
(I have no clue how to do that. I believe Domino Harvey gave instructions on it somewhere, but I didn't quite grasp the process.)

[Gregory]

_______
The first ______ is where you would paste the URL. The second is where you type whatever text you want to show in the post. (When you're actually doing this, you wouldn't include these underscore marks, of course.)

[HarryLong]

I'll save the instructions this time.

[repeat]

I noticed that Violent Saturday is coming out in Italy next month (Amazon) on a label called "30 Holding" - anyone familiar with them? The interesting question of course is if it will be anamorphic - it does say "Cinemascope" on the cover, but it's probably unwise to infer anything from that, as the whole packaging looks kind of dodgy...

[hearthesilence]

MoMA is screening a DCP of Mandingo one more time tomorrow as part of its program on Paramount Pictures in the '70s. It would've been tough for me to make any of the screenings, but I don't see any indication it's a new restoration so I just went ahead and streamed it. Pretty blown away by how bold and ahead of its time it appears to be. I never read the book it adapts, but it doesn't shy away from the horrendous realities of the South's slave culture that most films danced around or willfully obscured for many years. I read Roger Ebert's original review out of curiosity (since it's so negative and he's so well-known, it's usually singled out as representative of the critical hostility towards this film), and it's a pretty terrible review. (It's pretty cheap to hold the film accountable for the fact that children were there despite the R-rating, moreso when he goes off on a ridiculous tangent on city policy to make a joke.) I suppose there wasn't anything remotely like a positive consensus for Ebert to push back so he didn't bother to lay out a meticulous case against the film, but in May of 2012, he acknowledged that he was aware of the film's critical re-evaluation. He remained unmoved, choosing to cite a blog post by Odie Henderson. In that post, Henderson acknowledges historians and critics like Donald Bogle and Josiah Howard have championed the film but dismisses their arguments as he doesn't believe the film is really trying to make a serious statement, that it's far more interested in exploiting the salacious details for entertainment value (i.e. profit). I can't say I agree with his detailed argument - quite honestly, I think he inflates and distorts certain details that to him overwhelms a lot what's going on in either those scenes or the film in general. (For example, he has a problem with the depiction of work, which he believes is rarely shown or barely shows the kind of labor they were subjected to. Having just seen it, I don't think that's true at all.) If anything, he brings up another question that makes another point in favor of the film - if what we're seeing is truly exploitation, what does that say about the culture and what's remained the same?

EDIT: FWIW found this interview he gave to the Guardian in 1975:

Writing about Mandingo, most American reviewers "foamed at the mouth," in Fleischer's phrase. They called it a cynical exploitation picture, and worse. Fleischer replies: "Their misinterpretation of why the picture was made surprised me. Many of them poked fun at the melodramatic plot and missed what was underneath. Mandingo is an investigation of evil, which is what many of my films are. It's also the only honest documentary about slavery ever filmed...Of course the story is told in lurid terms, but that's because it was a lurid period. There's no incident in Mandingo that can't be documented. People say it's degrading to look at, and that's true, but the reality was even worse. In fact, I tempered it for the film." Typically, with Mandingo, Fleischer picked a subject that shows man at his most depraved.

[beamish14]

I saw Tarantino’s IB Technicolor print of it earlier this year (it might have been one of the very last films to get prints produced in said format until its very brief 1997-98 revival), and I think it’s incredible. An amazingly subversive and angry movie

I hope this is one of those OOP Olive titles that comes back. Jonathan Rosenbaum could do a commentary

[pianocrash]

In light of this thread, I found that Plaoin in Germany released a Mandingo BD + 2 DVD edition mediabook a little while back, with the following extras:

Disc 1 (Blu-ray):

Unabridged main version
Foreword by Jean-Baptiste Thoret (approx. 12 minutes)
MANDINGO reviewed by Samuel Blumenfeld, Jean-Loup Bourget and Olivier Pére (approx. 18 minutes)
Analysis by Jean-Baptiste Thoret (approx. 18 minutes)
Interview with James Mason (approx. 29 minutes)
Censored version in SD with alternative settings (approx. 118 minutes)
Super 8 version in three parts (approx. 45 minutes)
German and English trailer
Photo gallery with rare promotional material


Disc 2 (DVD):

Unabridged main version
German and English trailer
Photo gallery with rare promotional material


Disc 3 (bonus DVD):

Foreword by Jean-Baptiste Thoret (approx. 12 minutes)
MANDINGO reviewed by Samuel Blumenfeld, Jean-Loup Bourget and Olivier Pére (approx. 18 minutes)
Analysis by Jean-Baptiste Thoret (approx. 18 minutes)
Interview with James Mason (approx. 29 minutes)
Super 8 version in three parts

The previous US editions (127 minutes) don't seem to be listed as "uncut", but I can't compare runtimes since none is listed for this particular edition.

[hearthesilence]

During the big fight scene, there's a very harsh cut when a woman screams, an edit that looks like it was crudely done. Since I streamed it, I have no idea if the DCP has this, but I wondered if they had cut something very graphic (maybe to avoid an X rating) since it seemed reasonable that's what prompted the scream. Runtime was over two hours, so maybe it was still the "uncensored" cut?

The James Mason interview is welcome, I'd like to hear him talk about his involvement in this movie because the one thing that has been repeated ad nauseum by Ebert, Henderson and everyone other obstinate detractor is that Mason did it for the movie so surely he must've thought it was garbage he was forced to do.