Im gaining familiarity with the whole Film Noir thing, as far as the collectible aspect of posters and things, but now I really need to just watch one.
So the past 2 days Ive been doing some reading up on a few people who have caught my interest. For one Im on a Edward Dymtryk kick. I guess its just seeing this black and white 8 x 10 of him sitting in a directors chair with cameras all around him. He was a handsome man. Funny a slight crush on what a man once was in looks draws me into wanting to learn about him. So Ive spent the past few days pouring through websites. Come to find out he is "The Father of Film Noir" and was basically blacklisted in Hollywood for Communist involvement n such, which he served time in jail and later renounced and came back to the US.
My other interest is Errol Flynn, Oh my he was attractive as a young fella. But I happened upon a site today showing one of his wives and children. So I looked up his sons name on the net. Found out he went to Cambodia or somewhere like that in the 70s with a CBS journalist or something and has never returned and declared dead. I was curious to see what the man had looked like, if he inherited his fathers dashing looks.
Then I veered off into Joan Crawford. Now most people know her, But I guess I wasnt really familiar with how long she had been in the industry. She was in many films during the 1920s. And she was very beautiful. I guess with all the press about Mommie Dearest, and those Huge Eyebrows, I never really found her beautiful, but looking back, wow she was gorgeous. So I found this site that listed all her films and descriptions on them, so I think mainly I would like to rent one of her old films to watch.
Dymtryk died I believe in 1999. I read a site today and this caught my eye. It was an interview with him , he said
"Hollywood has changed. It used to be run by people who really cared. What's wrong today is that these young executives think that by virtue of their titles they know something about making pictures. The corporate influence is terrible. You know the old joke about a camel being a horse made by committee? You think Michelangelo had 18 people standing around him telling him how to do it?
"The other thing is content, the extreme violence and overt sex. Now, sex to me is a private thing. We had sexy scenes. God knows we had great sexy stars, didn't we? But we didn't show them screwing, we'd only build up to it. Nobody believes in foreplay anymore. Well, we believed in foreplay. We'd build up to where you knew damned well they were going to go to bed together. And then we'd cut to something simple like a curtain fluttering in the wind or something like that. What people do now is put them in bed on top of each other, and there they are riding around and you say to yourself the old song lyric, "is that all there is?"
"We wanted to let everybody use their own imagination. If they believed that whipping each other made for better sex, they could imagine that the couple went off and whipped each other. If they believed in the missionary position, they could imagine that. Whatever their own sexual dreams and desires happened to be, they could use them. This is one of the things pictures used to do: allow you to think with them. Today it seems that not much thinking goes on at all. But you must think if you hope to succeed in pictures."
Taken from
http://www.moviemaker.com/issues/16/16_dmytryk.html
Hmmm so true, Im not a prude on movies, but still loves scenes when so exposed dont really appeal to me. Thinking of Moulin Rouge, how it just showed the 2 lovers in a embrace with her naked back, it left all of the rest to the imagination. Well Im outta here!