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Otto Preminger: Hollywood Ten
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Temperamental, passionate, political, sophisticated, Otto Preminger made some of Hollywood�s greatest films, including Laura, Bonjour Tristesse, Advise and Consent, Exodus, and Anatomy of a Murder. Called �Otto the Terrible,� he was equally known for his tempestuous rages and his acts of courageous kindness. Actors complained about his dictatorial style but eagerly sought the chance to work with him � including Gary Cooper, Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Joan Crawford, Jean Seberg, and more.
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One of the greatest Hollywood whodunits ever made, Otto Preminger's noir-flavored thriller stars Dana Andrews as a detective investigating the murder of New York socialite Gene Tierney who becomes infatuated with her image and memory. Memorable support is given by Clifton Webb as a sardonic columnist and Vincent Price as Tierney's callous playboy fiance. 87 min. Standard; Soundtracks: English Dolby Digital stereo, Dolby Digital mono, Spanish Dolby Digital mono; Subtitles: English, Spanish; alternate opening; deleted scene; audio commentary; "Biography" episodes; theatrical trailer.
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Preminger took LSD before making this demented, vulgar 1968 screwball musical about hippies taking over the world, in which his own trip is re-created as Jackie Gleason’s. This isn’t exactly funny, and it’s the last Preminger film one would pick to convince a skeptic of his talent, but it’s fascinating throughout. The satirical plot pits hippies against corporate gangsters lorded over by someone named God (Groucho Marx in his last film performance), whom Gleason used to work for. The cast mainly consists of aging TV stars (Gleason, Marx, Carol Channing, Frankie Avalon, Arnold Stang) and Hollywood has-beens (Peter Lawford, Burgess Meredith, George Raft, Cesar Romero, Mickey Rooney, Fred Clark). Preminger’s celebration of the counterculture may be peculiar (Channing serves as the major go-between and, oddly enough, the sanest character), but it’s certainly sincere. Don’t miss the hallucinatory “Garbage Can Ballet”—the apotheosis of this cheerful garbage can of a movie—and the sung credits at the end.
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With a mixture of opportunism and fearlessness, Preminger hired Dalton Trumbo to write the screenplay and immediately announced to the world press that he had broken the Hollywood blacklist. (Kirk Douglas soon followed suit, announcing that Trumbo had ... written Spartacus.) Preminger was no less daring when dealing with international politics. As Hirsch tells it, Preminger secured permission to shoot in Israel by promising that a chunk of the revenues would go to the influential Weizmann Institute of Science (and by giving the Institute's head an on-screen cameo as David Ben-Gurion). Once on location, he used his access to the Israeli state apparatus to its fullest—staging scenes with thousands of extras, employing huge numbers of Israeli soldiers for verisimilitude, and shooting in prohibited locations. He had an entire village built in the desert and, on a whim, had a field of clover repainted for pictorial effect. He argued script points with Menachem Begin.
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In 1960, Preminger unleashed his epic Exodus, based on Leon Uris's best-selling novel about the founding of the state of Israel. Preminger again displayed his knack for publicity. To cast a mob scene, he sold lottery tickets to 30, 000 people and delayed the prize drawing until morning, to keep the extras around all night. The prizes turned out to be tickets to the opening of Exodus. He ... made headlines by using as his screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted by Hollywood since the McCarthy hearings. With a cast of thousands, including Paul Newman, Exodus was a big-budget, 220-minute extravaganza which failed to impress audiences or critics.
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Preminger simply decided to release the film without approval (or the cuts demanded) from the industry's powerful Breen Office, inviting court battles and church-pulpit damnation. Naturally, the scandal made for big box-office, which in turn allowed him to set up his own production company -- making him in effect an "independent" from now on selling his own product to the major studios. Once shocking, "Moon" is by all reports pretty tame and tedious these days. But its Rafael showing provides a rare opportunity to see a movie that fired one of the very first rounds against the Puritan censorship codes that held Hollywood in a headlock from 1934 to the mid-late 60s.
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Hollywood Ten